Back at it again with my annual Pride anthology! This time, the theme is the symbolism of the number 4, since this year is 2024. So tell me, readers, are you ready four it?
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Unconscious Incompetence: One does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit.
"All right, everyone, hello." Exalted cleared his throat and ran his fingers through his spiky black hair, brown eyes shining behind his sunglasses. "Welcome to the first Blackwater Insurance Sensitivity Training. Thank you all for attending!"
"I mean... Did we really have a choice?" Distorted asked innocently, tilting his shaggy, blonde head and tapping his chin. "We have to clock in and be here every day, so it's not like we were going to be anywhere else."
Seated nearby, Reaper and Archivist chuckled under their breaths. Had anyone else made a smart-aleck remark like that, they would've been labeled as such, but the Blackwater Insurance team knew better than anyone that their mentally youngest often took things too literally, or said things that could be misconstrued as rude by an outside observer. Archivist was almost as immature and inexperienced, as he was in very frail health.
He had wild brown hair, and his face was covered in band-aids. He was often confined to a bubble, kept at base to ensure no pathogens could touch him, ever wearing a baggy black hoodie for warmth because his skinny body never retained much heat. But at least he was aware of the world that existed beyond Blackwater. Poor Distorted had only recently escaped a pocket dimension, so even though he was physically as old as the rest of the team, he had a lot more to catch up on.
And he's not the only one, Exalted thought with a small smile. But hey, that's exactly why I put this little presentation together. I'm going to walk them all through the four stages of competence...
Though Blackwater was only an insurance company—and an admittedly unscrupulous one at that—Exalted still firmly believed that they did not need to behave as heathens or savages. They could still be respectful individuals, even if their work could get a little unsavory at times.
It was actually their boss, Inspector Sands, that really inspired the event. As an entity made entirely of wax, Sands technically did not have a gender. People often addressed Sands with he/him pronouns merely because Sands appeared more masculine then feminine, but it never meant much to the wax entity. Exalted happened to overhear a conversation between his cousin—Unhallowed—and his boss, which inspired the training.
