TORCH reality-check rule

The TORCH reality-check rule is a practice at VAV for interrupting an account that has begun to adopt an abuser’s framing. Its name expands to Time Out, Reality CHeck!, and its immediate purpose is to help speakers distinguish their own reality from the abuser’s story. In the novel, Soo-Lin Lee-Segal explains the rule to Elgin Branch as a way to recognize and halt an abuse cycle, not simply as a correction of factual details.

The Call and Its Purpose

When a speaker slips into the abuser’s story, a VAV member stands and calls, “Time Out, Reality CHeck!” Soo-Lin illustrates the pattern with a statement that echoes an accusation she says Barry used to make about her: that she is always tired and only wants to talk about work. The example shows how the rule targets the adoption of an abuser’s interpretation as much as any individual complaint. The interruption is meant to make room for the speaker to separate that imposed account from their own experience.

Soo-Lin describes the practice as the first step toward halting the abuse cycle. She also explains that VAV defines abuse broadly and in a way intended to affirm members’ self-worth. The group acknowledges members as victims while encouraging them to move beyond victimhood; in that framework, naming an abusive pattern is not the same as being defined by it.

Soo-Lin Applies the Rule to Elgin

During a staff meeting, Elgin tells Soo-Lin that he is beginning to question his sanity because of problems at home. Soo-Lin responds that he would not get through two sentences about Bernadette at a VAV meeting without being TORCHed. Her response applies the rule to the way he is describing his circumstances: she challenges him to consider whether he is minimizing or absorbing a harmful account rather than recognizing what is happening in his life.

To ground that challenge, Soo-Lin recalls concrete facts about Elgin: he is a senior figure at Microsoft, has vested out three times, and has a daughter, Bee Branch, who is thriving academically despite several heart surgeries. She contrasts those circumstances with his life at home, which she characterizes as deeply troubling, and declares him TORCHed. Elgin thanks her but says he needs to concentrate on the meeting and will read her message more carefully later. The exchange presents TORCH as both a group intervention and a direct attempt by Soo-Lin to redirect a friend toward evidence about his own circumstances.

The Rule and WYP

The practice has a follow-up in Soo-Lin’s account of her own participation. After being TORCHed at VAV, she says she is not allowed to return until she has completed WYP and Read It. WYP, short for Write Your Part, is pronounced “weep,” not “wipe.” It requires an inventory in which the writer owns their part in the abuse; Soo-Lin also says that if she slips into victimhood, she has to TORCH herself.

Soo-Lin reports spending three hours writing her inventory before sending it to Audrey Griffin. This aftermath clarifies that TORCH is not only a spoken interruption: within the process Soo-Lin describes, it leads to written reflection and a condition for returning to the group. The rule thus pairs a public call to reality-check an account with an individual effort to examine one’s own role without collapsing that examination into self-blame or victimhood.