Unknown Number

3.5
Parts of this are great while other parts feel less authentic.
This is a story told as Gaby receiving texts from an unknown message, they give their name, however it is redacted, which I thought was a good style choice. However I also thought it was an odd choice for Gaby to use the redacted name several times, she mentions that it feels weird for herself, but why keep bringing up as it is an aspect of dysphoria for the other person? It seems like it would have been more compassionate to use other forms of address, like Gaby does say ‘babe' but after the redacted name. She mentions at one point living in Georgia, to me it would reasonable to also address Redacted as hon or honey. And then at the end Gaby calls ‘Redacted' Gaby. I understand this is probably her way of encouraging/affirming Redacted and one could argue her own self, but I think Gaby should let Redacted find their own name, maybe April. This whole conversation is supposed to have happened over the course of 2hrs and 18 minutes, even though Gaby asks for ‘some time' during part of it, which is somewhere around 15 minutes. Other little nitpicks take away from its authenticity. The time stamps and battery power indicator was a nice detail though.

like a butterfly flapped its wings and so I took estrogen

Unknown Number is a short story that was originally published as mock-up text message screenshots through a Twitter thread and is, as of writing this review, now in the finals for a Hugo Award.
I stumbled over it by pure chance and it intrigued me to read that a literary text released via a social media platform like this made it so far in this fairly prestigious awards ceremony.

The original post of the story is still available here [ https://twitter.com/Azure_Husky/status/1420177933826732034?s=20&t=kTeU3GMTrLutK2MntHRZnA ] and as you can probably imagine, it's a quick read. Around 60 screenshots of fictional text messages chronicling a conversation between two people.
The concept is pretty clever and brings some good perspectives on gender identity and roads not taken. It's clear that this story reflects the experience of real people in a way and it does a good job at making it accessible to the reader.