DAGON

“We’ve received a complaint. I’m sorry, I can’t say from whom, apparently one of your coworkers overheard a conversation between you and your teammate, Joanna. In the context we received the complaint, you were discussing her date from the previous night, and you made the remark, “there are plenty of fish in the sea.” You’re not in trouble. We just ask that you think a little bit more next time and use more inclusive language. Instead of that, why couldn’t you say something like, “there are plenty of others out there.” When you say something like “fish in the sea” you are, maybe unwittingly, invoking the legacy of fishing, and that can make some people feel unwelcome. We just want everyone who works here to feel comfortable in their own scales or skin, as the case may be.”

~

Dear Colleagues,

I would like to apologize, both on behalf of the company, and personally, to all of you for my use of the phrases “net profit” and “net loss” in the quarterly earnings report. I am troubled to say that I was not fully aware of the connotations of these phrases in light of the dark history of our country and indeed, our entire species. Several of you came to me in private to help me understand what I did wrong and how I can try to be a better ally. I now see that the use of the “n-word” can be very disturbing or triggering to Thalassian People. I know there can be no real excuse for what I have said, but I am striving every day to work on myself an improve. Going forward, we will only use the more inclusive term, “revenue minus cost.”

Thank you,

~

“Hello, Mohinder, thank you for making the time to come see me today. No, please don’t think of this as a reprimand. We can’t, of course, tell you what to eat—no one is telling you that, obviously that would be an overreach. However, in your bio in the org chat, you describe yourself as a ‘pescetarian’ – again, obviously, the diet you choose is up to you. That’s a personal choice. But we are asking you—the company is asking you—if you wouldn’t mind removing that word from your description.

“No, no one has complained yet, but we are concerned that it might be upsetting to some of our new hires. In the employee code of conduct, which you signed after you onboarded, it states that employees should not use any polarizing or divisive language, including language that may have offensive racial, sexual, ableist, or humanist associations. We appreciate your cooperation.”

~

“Mr. Ward, thank you for coming in. As we indicated to you in our email, we have received a number of distressing calls from some of our customers about your alleged posts on social media. In particular, one caller indicated some very troubling tweets that you seem to have made in which you refer to “fish people”, and in which you describe another user as having “the Innsmouth lean.” We also received several screenshots in which you use the word “bait”, which is a known human-supremacist dog whistle according the SPLC and the ADL. Moreover, they show you responding to the accounts of several prominent Thalassians with single word replies such as “sushi”, “sashimi”, “ceviche”, and on one occasion, “fish sauce.” I shouldn’t have to explain that this behavior is unacceptable.

~

Ticket Status: Closed.

“Hello, Ms. Corbett, and thank you for taking the time to write this report. We have investigated your claim about the incident on November 18th, and the finding at this time is that no violation of ethics or the employee code of conduct occurred. We spoke to several of your colleagues, and all of them indicated that Barekdagon’s guttural shrieks, which you interpreted as sexual aggression, are involuntary and reflexive when he hears the ancestral voice of the great ones who even now lay dreaming in the nameless abyss that was old when the stars were young. We understand that some of our employees are still at the beginning of their antihumanism journey, and we remind you that we have many resources available on the company HR portal, which can help you relate to and aid in the struggles of Molluscan, Icthyan, and Gastropodal People of the Ocean. (MIGPOO)

~

Subject: New Hires

Hello Team,

We are pleased to introduce our newest hire, Munzzur. In her own words:

Hi everyone! The closest you will be able to get to pronouncing my name with your human tongues and mouths is Munzzur’Ak’ak, and I am so excited to be part of this company and its mission. A bit about my background: I spent the past 3000 years in a trance at the bottom of an ocean trench, preparing the way for my master’s re-entry into the world. My hobbies include hiking, scrapbooking, and raising my nightmare brood of eldritch pelagic horrors. I’m a full-time sales strategist and a full-time mom!

~

“Damn squids. They smell funny, you know?”
“Hey, don’t let anyone hear you say that. But just between you and me, yeah, they smell like rotten fish.”

“Look man I’m not a humanist, ok, I just don’t like ‘em.”

“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I don’t like them. I try to judge everyone as an individual, you know?”

“Oh, totally. And let’s be clear, there’s a difference between thalassians and squids, yeah? Like, not every thalassian is a squid.”

“The thing that really pisses me off, ok, if we’re being honest here–”

“This is a safe space, it’s OK, I won’t judge you.”

“–Is that those fuckers basically live on fish, they eat an all fish diet, but god forbid you or I want to have a nice bite of fish, no no, that would be humanist, meanwhile Lapidoth down in IT is munching on like a pound of sashimi and that’s just fine for him.”

“I miss tempura shrimp. Used to be you could just go out and eat a nice plate of tempura shrimp. Ponzu sauce. I went to the izakaya down on 12th yesterday and they didn’t even have shrimp on the menu. Only Japanese place left in town.”

“You know in China they don’t give a shit. They eat shellfish, salmon, tuna, like none of this even happened.”

“Political correctness. Eh?”

“My buddy went to Shenzhen on a business trip last month. He said there was a stall on the street selling boiled squid, you know what I’m saying?”
“No shit.”

“Swear to god.”

“Did he try it?”

---

This, along with Key Performance Indicators, constitutes some kind of white collar horror, or corporate horror, which is to say, bureaucratic horror. It’s a common and even easy genre because we live every day in the belly of leviathan. Whereas Key Performance Indicators suggests the nadir of the human soul might be realized if the rituals of managerial control could were applied to our personal lives, Dagon asks the impious and unconscionable question: is there a limit to the logic of inclusion and diversity? Is there any degradation, any humiliation which our government (through its emissaries, HR deparments) will not ask us to endure, for the sake of this principle?

I think the answer is obviously no, and this story angered a number of people because the dedication to these things is in no wise rational or predicated on any kind of cost-benefit analysis; it is a religious observance, a sacrament, something which is beyond questioning. If there were eldritch fish people who wanted to raise the Old Ones to devour all mankind in an orgy of fire and blood, then the priesthood of diversity, equity, inclusivity, or death would indeed react by creating new speech taboos to make them feel welcome in the workplace.

That’s all they know.

That’s all they can imagine.