Listen, if Toph had went off on her own for a while in Ba Sing Se there is no way she wouldn’t vibe with Zuko.
“Welcome to Pao’s Family tea shop, I’m Li, waddaya want?”
“Chaos.”
“Understandable. Sadly, that’s not on the menu. Would you settle for a cup of Jasmine tea?”
“Sure.”
Jet, bursting into the tea shop: THOSE TWO ARE FIRE BENDERS! Toph, interrupting Zuko who is about go attack this mouth wheat boy: And where’s your proof? Jet, suspiciously: I saw the old man with a hot cup of tea right after he complained that it was cold? Toph, about to cause some chaos: Then clearly, you need your eyes checked. Toph, gesturing to Iroh: This man is a Water Bender.
I work retail, and have for many years now. I’m not an easily fazed person and have a Talk No Shit, Take No Shit mentality. However, I also have a pretty intense anxiety disorder on top of other mental health issues and when I started 6+ years ago there were some customers who got to me.
So, to all the workers facing Karens and Kens out in the wild, here’s my advice - cry.
If you have the type of relationships with your coworkers and managers that will support you, don’t try to hold it in. Cry like the overworked, underpaid peon you are.
Nothing terrifies an asshole Karen like the indisputable proof that their actions/words are affecting you as a real live person. They feel perfectly entitled to cuss out a cashier over a wrong order/no cash policy/ face mask mandate but when that person starts to cry and asks them why they’d say such mean things? A whole other story, my friend.
There’s no way to make that situation look good to the manager they demanded to speak with, either. My manager literally got a security guard fired for being so verbally abusive he made one of her employees cry.
This strategy has multiple benefits -
1. You’re not standing there trying to pen up your emotions, crying is a great physical release for negative emotions and you may very well feel somewhat better afterwards.
2. The person who precipitated the situation is forced to not only see you as a person with feelings, but also has to confront the fact that their abuse has consequences beyond themselves.
3. It can actually give your higher-ups leverage to address these situations. ‘They yelled at my employee’ is one thing, but 'They yelled at my employee until they were in tears’ is a waaaaay worse offense. A good manager can use that. Hell, it can get a security guard fired!
tl;dr: We live in a capitalist hell but we can work the system and cry at work to shame awful customers
The above are the first half of the slides I presented at GeekGirlCon (along with some annotations to explain things I only said out loud :) ) – for the second half, read more below the cut. I’ll also be sharing the slides from the other presenters here, too, as they’re posted!
The gender representation work is part of a longer analysis that I will be posting in full soon!
Beneath the cut are also a few additional slides that I would have presented with a bit more time – several of which address things that came up in the question session.
…And the extra slides:
Good moment to remember that AO3 exists to support fandom. And fandom needs to support AO3.
90% of online dollmaker skin tone options are like
except sometimes there’s blue
There’s also occasionally Literally Yellow and Literally Red, which is just…
… No. Don’t do that.
Rainbow/jewel colors are fun for making clearly-fantasy characters, like space aliens—it’s just frustrating when the creator can clearly distinguish between pale skin tones and hues and has options for “pale with warm complexion” and “pale with neutral complexion” and “pale with cool complexion” but the browns are like…. very weirdly tinted, maybe a very dark mahogany, and literal obsidian, with little to no gradiation between “very pale” and “very dark”.
2020 for me has just been “am I stressed because of a global pandemic and an increasingly fascist far-right government, or am I just struggling to exist under capitalism” and I’m really getting tired of it
The fact that Dante created the most popular image of the afterlife with absolutely no theological basis for it will still be the funniest thing to me
Church: Heaven is eternal connection with God, while Hell is total separation from Him. Anything else is only speculation.
Dante: Actually Hell has layers like an onion, and the devil is big and mean and also frozen. People are fighting and there’s a mountain to get to Heaven and a nice place for babies. Also I know this because I went there with my friend :)
I spent the afternoon arranging our books by size and color (and it’s so satisfying and looks amazing) and my partner came home and stared in shock at the bookcase and then said “i’m a librarian, you can’t do this.”
him: you split up all the song of ice and fire books
me: yeah i know, they’re all primary colors, it’s perfect
him: [self-destructs]
You’re a monster
As a former bookstore employee, this hurts my soul. I mean, sure it looks nice, but how do you find anything?
it has occurred me during this process that apparently not everyone thinks about books by what color they are? like, literally when i’m looking for a book, i picture it in my mind. i have a very…tactile experience with the books i read and idk! i thought everyone did that lol.
my partner was like “how will i find [this book] for instance” and i replied “easy, it’s purple” and he looked at me like i was a witch.
OP your brain is neat and I love you for it you funky little color-coded cupcake. But you’re still a monster.
IF YOU ARE UNMARRIED, DON’T HAVE KIDS, AND HATE YOUR PARENTS PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD HAVE A FUCKING WILL
this has been a public service announcement from your friendly neighborhood probate lawyer
Again:
1. The law doesn’t care how long your parents and family have been out of your life
2. The law doesn’t care about your long term friends or “found family”
If you don’t have legal documents that say otherwise, your biological family calls all the shots.
This goes especially for LGBTQ+. Please do not get deadnamed in your obituary.
If you aren’t legally married (even if you are, to be safe), consider having:
1) a medical power of attorney. This allows you and your partner/spouse to make life saving or life ending decisions. Keep several copies in accessible places like your glove compartment, a lock box at your home. While love might have won in the courts, medical professionals only have to follow your wishes if they want - or unless you can beat them over the head with the legal documents and the threat of a lawsuit
2) a legal document stating that you, as the spouse/partner, have the right to claim your partner’s/spouse’s body should they pass away. Frighteningly, even estranged families have more rights than a queer partner/spouse when it comes to this macabre task
