One thing I really like about Beverly Engel's book It Wasn't Your Fault, which is about PTSD-induced toxic shame, is that quite a bit of it deals with people who haven't broken The Cycle of Abuse (TM) and have gone on to hurt others. That's a really underserved and vulnerable patient population, and statistically, it's also MASSIVE. I don't think I've read a single other self-help type book on PTSD and self-loathing that confronts the possibility that you're exactly as bad as you think you are.
I felt better that it so much as mentioned that children can react to abuse with ungovernable rage. Everybody likes the image of PTSD patients as internalizing everything and becoming doormats, which does happen, and often, but it's not the only narrative. Personally I've always hated my abusers and have always wanted everyone who so much as breathed wrong in my direction from ages 0 to 18 to burn eternally in hell. I *never* thought any of it was my fault and ever since I was a toddler I was willing to make it everybody else's problem, and it's really relieving to read a clinical perspective that acknowledges that abuse victims can act that way too.
It's wild to me that its such a neglected subset of abuse victims. Its really common. When I still lived with my parents and was still subjected to my father every fucking day I would lash out terribly at my mother, to the point when i went to visit them for years afterwards she was afraid I would lash out again. We've worked it out, I'm a much better person when I'm not regularly subjected to mental and emotional abuse, but like, its just so common.
I think it must be, at least partially, because, people hate the imperfect victim. Its easy for so many people to sympathize with someone who never lashed out. Less so for people to sympathize with people who are angry and lash out. Even though its a perfectly sensible reaction to being hurt over and over. I'm sure most people would like to think they would simply never.
I don't think this is the whole reason, but, I think it plays into it.
Similarly, there’s a narrative of, you cannot experience grief over having fucked up. That if you are hurting because you caused harm, because you were the cause of harm, that you’re not allowed to grieve, because you “earned your sorrow. You deserve to bottle it up and to hurt for the bad things you have done,”
Which is punitive logic. It’s copthink. Which is bad.
I was thinking about the whole "fandom moves on to something else" thing and it made me think about my annual picnic. Every year, I have a big picnic in early November and invite a bunch of people. I rent out a pavilion at a local lake, have people bring food that I grill for them if they want, have some games for the kids in the group, and just generally hang out.
Now, the way this goes is that I have everyone show up around 4:30pm. People show up, it's a big crowd, it's pretty warm out because the sun is still up and the mingling is great. People eat, share food, the kids run around in the trees and check out the lake, and we all just generally enjoy ourselves and catch up. Then the sun starts to go down.
People start getting under the pavilion, it starts getting a little chilly, and maybe those with really young kids start to pack up and say good-bye. This is usually when I light up the fire in the pavilion's fireplace and people will begin gathering around there. I let the grill burn down and sit down with everyone as everything gets a bit more mellow. Maybe we make s'mores or have cookies or something but this is usually were you start having more people say their good-byes and head out. That's how it goes for the next couple of hours, little dribbles of people winding up and heading on home until it's 9:30 at night and there's just a few people left in the pavilion in the woods sitting around a little fireplace quietly talking.
You know what? That's the best time at these things. Some years we'll be out there until almost midnight, just chatting quietly and staring into the coals. You learn things about people then, you hear interesting things, and you just feel closer.
So what does this have to do with fandom and moving on? Well, I see it like this. The show is still on, that's the early part of the day. Plenty of people around, lots of activity where art gets made, headcanons and meta fly fast and furious, and tons of fic gets written. Then the show ends, people are still creating but a few peel away, they have other things they have to do or just aren't interested in sticking around. Slowly but surely it goes until it's just a few people left.
That's when the interesting things really start coming out. You still have the other stuff but you start to get off the wall headcanons and wild meta, you get odd art, you get fic the person finally decided to write, and it's good. And hey, every once in a while, someone shows up late and you grab some food out of the cooler for them and warm up a burger for them over the coals while others grab a chair for them and you get them up to speed on the conversation and maybe show them some pictures from earlier in the night and they get to have some of that glow from earlier even if they missed the original.
That's fandom to me. As long as a person is still sitting around that fireplace late into the night, ready to chat, the fandom is never dead.
Are there any quick, easy and free substitutes for river water if I don't have any rivers nearby? My socks lie unwatered and I fear they may not survive the winter
in this case, I recommend buying a paid subscription to a local reservoir
signs at stores? émail? menu ?? instruction ? post online ? caption with andswer to question ? group hand outs ??? street sign ??? no. The Written Word Is The Enemy
#The number of compliments i have gotten for reading a thing
The ability to occasionally Read A Thing will make you a hero in your workplace, especially if it is for example an error message that tells you what you need to do differently, or instructions on unjamming a printer.
I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.
There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.
So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"
So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.
The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."
So I take a few deep breaths.
Then I lie to her.
I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"
Client is reporting that Some Thing Program doesn't work. I ask if there's an error message with further information about what's not working. Client says "no". I go over and ask Client to open Some Thing. Client double-clicks on the icon for Some Thing, it starts to boot, an error message dialog flashes up on screen, Client closes error message before I can read it, Thing closes after the error.
"What did that error message say?" I ask.
"What error message?" asks Client.
I tell Client to open the Some Thing again and then not click anything else. Client opens Some Thing, error message appears, Client clicks it away again.
I tell Client to stand up, step away, and give me physical control of the computer. I open Some Thing, start looking at the error message without closing it, and Client says "You should close that." I tell Client that I am reading the error message. Client is apparently accustomed to treating error messages as a kind of spam email that should be deleted as fast as possible, and gets agitated that I'm reading it.
I read the error message. It tells me what the problem is. I fix the problem. Some Thing works now.
---
Later, I start thinking about how such an error message might perhaps be engineered to be more attention-grabbing and close-resistant as a way of making people read it. It's not important for some random program here, but there are more important systems (medical, etc) where it would be reasonable to demand the user's attention because people's lives depend on paying attention to the error message.
But then people with a perverted intellect would still be thinking about ways to avoid reading the message, like dragging it off edge of screen or hiding it behind another window. So maybe the dialog box could have an always-in-front feature to override other windows, and the alert could use the computer's hardware "beep" functionality that can't be switched off by muting the regular sound system, and keep beeping... shit, I realize I'm reinventing pain, and get philosophical about it.
She was a computer programmer / analyst, a... Long Time Ago. Called in for a system she'd installed before, the office folk said they kept having problems where it Didn't Work Right (no error, a malfunction)
She investigated, and told them that could only happen if they did 3 specific things in a specific order, which they should not ever do.
So, she asked, did they ever do that?
No! Of course not, was the answer.
So she made a couple of small changes, packed up and said that should be fine, but they should call her if there were problems.
The next week
She had a call saying "We're getting a strange error message on the system, can you help?"
I come into the house with my arms full of stupid stuff, four hours late to feed the cats dinner. The cats are extremely agitated. I rush to put the stuff down in order to feed them.
That's not what they're yelling about. There's a goddam bat loose in the house.
While scrambling to put my stuff down, and put the cats into a bathroom so I could open doors/windows to chase the bat out, I lost sight of the bat. I truly cannot locate this flappy idiot. In an effort to triangulate the bat, I release the cats. They promptly start attacking the broom I was using to try to poke tall areas.
Oh man. I had this happen too. Got home from a work trip to find the cats staring at my closet door intently. Opened it and a bat flew out at my face. Cue lots of screaming. Finally the bat got exhausted, landed on the end of the broom, and I was able to just walk him out the house and shake him off into the night.
Have you read the trilogy pentalogy of Jiang Cheng getting stabbed?
asunder by alessandriana
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
There's a demonic cultivator in Lu'an. Jiang Cheng goes to investigate.
So does Wei Wuxian.
Excellent fic that explores Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian's relationship post canon, as a case fic with very interesting OCs. And Jiang Cheng gets stabbed.
One Slash, Two Hearts by Cerucee
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Jiang Cheng gets stibby-stabbed.
Also an excellent post canon fic focusing on Jiang Cheng and Wei Wuxian's relationship. And Jiang Cheng gets stabbed.
Wrecked (These days I'm becoming everything I hate) by KatAnni
When a post-canon case of demonic cultivation comes up in Jin Ling's territories, Jiang Cheng of course takes up the task. And of course, Jin Ling still shows up.
(and of course, everything goes very, very wrong.)
Jiang Cheng doesn't need Wei Wuxian's help, and he will not ask for it. Eventually, though, he still gets it. Post-canon Yunmeng Bros reconciliation fic where Jiang Cheng gets into a very precarious, very tricky situation involving demonic cultivation and bloodline curses. Written for MDZS RBB 2024.
Also a post canon casefic focusing on Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's relationship in which... Jiang Cheng gets stabbed !
letters from inside the storm by serein
https://archiveofourown.org/works/32434594
"Jiang Cheng," Wei Wuxian hears himself say, echoing and strange as if from underwater. His hands feel slow and fumbling as he reaches for Jiang Cheng's chest, watching the blood soak through the silk and keep dripping.
______________
A year post-canon, Jiang Cheng takes a blade meant for Wei Wuxian. Things unravel.
Guess, what it's an excellent post canon fic focusing on Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's relationship (with some flashback to the past) in which Jiang Cheng gets stabbed.
After going months without speaking to the happy couple, Jiang Cheng is captured by a group of demonic cultivators alongside Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji. Wei Wuxian puts a daring escape plan into motion. Lan Wangji investigates a question that has plagued him for months.
Jiang Cheng, whose entire life is one long, deeply unfunny joke, gets stabbed.
Surprisingly, this is an excellent post canon fic focused on Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng's relationship in which Jiang Cheng gets stabbed.
Corporate and you: how to handle large scale group organizing and master bureaucracy without going fucking insane.
So, couple disclaimers at the beginning. This is the how to survive Corporate and why you need to learn bureaucracy rant I mentioned a few days back. This is based on my 12 years working (and thriving!) in a Corporate environment based around the US but not being physically living in the US. It's also the result of 20 years doing consistent activist work with large scale organizations and doing mostly logistics support.
Full disclosure, the realization this rant needed to exist came from a very popular blog chronicling a Bad Work Spiral and a friend sharing that with me, and me having a Weird Uncomfortable reaction to it. I will not be linking to this person because they're already having a really shitty time of it, and having a random stranger they don't know from Adam writing commentary on how to avoid landing in that kind of situation seems to me deeply unkind.
I want to be clear and upfront about this from the beginning: these observations are not meant to absolve an abusive, toxic workplace just because it's Corporate. What I'm trying to do is give you tools to navigate boundaries in Large Groups Of People, of which Corporate is one of the most common places you will find yourself in. Not knowing how to navigate the dynamic makes you vulnerable to exploitation; it never makes you responsible for it.
So with that in mind:
What the fuck is Corporate?
Colloquially, Corporate is the name we give large labor forces that are organized under a single hierarchy and function under a distinct identity. I'm talking about the work force and not the Corporation itself, because as part of the fun (read: unconscionable and corrupt) structure of modern day Capitalism, a Corporation is just a piece of paper that obscures individual ownership of things. We're not talking about the legal and financial entity of a Corporation (and the source of all those fraud ads about not paying taxes if you set up an S-Corp! Totes legit!).
I'm talking about the labor force. I'm talking about the actual people that make up a Corporation and how those people are organized and how that structure works.
Corporate at its core is bureaucracy under another name. Privatized bureaucracy, to tell it apart from Government bureaucracy, which is also deeply stigmatized and presented as an inescapable labyrinth that no mere mortal can traverse. This is equally bullshit. Don't buy that snappy, snarky nonsense. If governance and organized labor are inaccessible and incomprehensible, that only means they're forever out of reach. That you have no hope of affecting change or taking control of it.
That's a lie.
Ultimately Corporate is just a way to organize a large group of people to more or less effectively get shit done. And I know. I know. You've worked in Corporate and spent hours doing nothing. You think Corporate is the most inefficient fucking thing to ever exist. There's meetings and meetings and endless chains of emails. "Middle Management" is just a bunch of assholes collecting a large paycheck for doing nothing!
But see, that's the propaganda. That's taking your misunderstanding of how Corporate works and weaponizing it to keep you out. To keep you from seeing the purposefulness of it. If you don't understand WHY things are done a certain way, you can't identify who made those decisions and who benefits from them. And you can't really tell, at a glance, if you're dealing with a Corporate entity you want to interact with or not.
Ultimately, Corporate is bureaucracy: it assigns a role to each person and each role comes with responsibilities. What is obscured in most cases is how these roles and responsibilities interact with each other. And that's where people fail.
How it breaks down.
Let's say, for example, that you're hired as a secretary or personal assistant. And one of your roles is to manage meetings for your boss. Their entire job is meetings, it seems, with all sorts of people. And your job is to make sure their calendar doesn't contradict itself, and maybe that the meeting room is setup properly, for each meeting: i.e., if they need to present, there's a projector or the right cables or the right speaker, etc.
This is pretty straightforward, right? And when you're first hired to work Corporate, it really does feel like it's a simple job. You can manage someone's calendar. Send a few emails. Sure. And then friction happens: two very important, very busy people want to meet with your boss on the same day and at the same time. Or something is broken, in the meeting room.
The first friction, double-booking, is within the scope of your job. You need to reach out to their secretaries and negotiate time and see if it's possible to reschedule or move things around: you might need to reschedule other meetings and reshuffle the entire calendar to accommodate. But that IS your job. To manage the calendar. And that's something to keep track of to show you're doing your job properly. That you send cordial emails or networked with other secretaries to resolve this with a real time chat instead of a long email trail. Or traded favors to shuffle schedules, etc. That's within your role. That's something you're expected to do.
The second friction, however, it's not part of your job. It's a trap waiting to snare the unaware. Because your job is to make sure the meeting room is ready to be used. But your job is not to fix whatever was broken. And here is where the nature of bureaucracy/Corporate breaks some people. Some people will look at a frayed cable or a missing speaker and go "that's an easy fix, I just need to go to the hardware store." And what's worse, they'll do it. Out of their own pocket, they will pay for a cable or a speaker or what have you, and personally fix the problem. And they will feel very accomplished and satisfied with themselves. They will note this down and present it as "going above and beyond" when they talk about their performance with their boss. "Look at me," they say, "I'm fixing SO MANY THINGS."
Well, we have a name for people like that, in the Corporate sphere: The Well-meaning Idiot.
Because they're idiots. Full stop. They're in fact fucking up and documenting they're fucking up, and they're so busy self-congratulating over how Good They Are At Work, that they don't notice all the ways they've fucked up royally. But they're not mean-spirited idiots or actively trying to cause problems. They're well-meaning. They are trying their best.
It's just that their best doesn't work.
How it's SUPPOSED to work.
I know, I know. Hear me out. The thing about working in Corporate, is that there is probably someone whose job is to "fix frayed cables" and "replace missing speakers." There's probably a policy or an intake or a way to contact them and say "look, this meeting room needs to be ready by this time, and this needs to be fixed by then." And they would be able to help you deal with that friction without having to pay out of pocket for things. Or worse, they might not be able to help, because they're understaffed or underfunded, and your request not being fulfilled could be a blessing to them. Because they might have been telling their boss "we need more people/money" for months, but their boss can't actually give them anything, because there's no evidence of it. No one has complained. No one has documented it.
You went out of your way to be "a team player" and "think outside the box" and sure. You fixed your problem. But systemically. Structurally. The problem remains. The "fix cables and missing speakers" team is still understaffed and underfunded. Your fix is temporary. And possibly only benefiting you, individually. After all, if you bought the cable, you're not leaving it in the meeting room. That's your cable! You keep it for yourself and your boss' meetings.
But you will never be repaid for that cable. And you will not be graded on that cable, either. Because it's not part of your job so it's not something you're expected to do. It will get you a pat in the back and maybe some warm, social capital and maybe being treated as "a hero". But it won't reflect in your performance or your metrics or the things that decide if you get a better salary.
And that's the view that people don't see, about Corporate. Corporate runs on failure.
What you should have done was raise a request with that other team. And if they replied back and said "sorry, we're backed up and it's not possible for us to do this now"? You escalate to your boss. "Hey boss, FYI, the meeting room is not going to be ready for this meeting: the cable is broken and the team responsible doesn't have time/money to fix it." And then your boss - if they're a good boss - sends an email to the boss of that team, asking to be prioritized. To get it solved. And now there's documentation. There's evidence of an impact. So the boss of THAT team can reach out to THEIR boss and be like "see? I need more people/money." And because there's evidence, there's documentation, there's a paper trail, there's a bunch of people from varying ranks in the hierarchy speaking up about this being necessary? Yeah, something will be done.
The minimum viable solution will be applied.
And it will always be the minimum. As it should be. Remember, the point of a corporation is to make money. The reason there's policies and structures in place that demand evidence before authorizing fixes is because this is a measure against waste.
Imagine a world where, rather than going to the "fix cables and missing speakers" team, you had the option to just. Order a new cable. You don't pay for it, the business does. But you ordered it and they send it to you and it feels like YOUR cable. So instead of leaving it in the meeting room as public property, you decide to keep it. It's yours, after all. I mean, it belongs to the business, but you ordered it and it was given to you. It feels like your work laptop. Yours, but not really. But still yours enough to be exclusive.
What happens if someone else needs to use that meeting room? Well, they'll order their own cable. And now there's multiple cables, for the same meeting room, because without the friction of having a team administering those fixes and having to provide evidence of failure to release resources, you perceive things to belong to you, instead of being common goods.
Corporate policies have a tendency to be misrepresented as inaccessible and archaic and just straight up nonsense. That's propaganda. That's saying "I don't understand why this works this way, therefore it's nonsensical." Instead of "I don't understand why this works this way, therefore I should research and try to learn more." It's a thought-ending cliche designed to keep you from learning how to navigate this kind of dynamic.
And it's important that you learn how to navigate this dynamic. That you get comfortable and used to the fact "failure drives action" and "evidence justifies results."
Because that's how large scale groups of people operate.
Sike! We were talking about bureaucracy the entire time.
Bureaucracy runs on failure. Bureaucracy requires evidence of failure, in order to dispense a fix. The reason for this approach is to prevent waste. Waste can take many shapes! It can be money or food or time or people.
Bureaucracy is the best way humans have found to coordinate large scale groups of people towards a common goal. In the case of governments, to distribute and administrate common resources towards the common good. (Think, spending tax money towards improvements for the community.) In smaller scales, like activist groups or common good advocacy or sociocracy organizations the point is to divide labor up and distribute available resources towards specific goals.
Here's the thing though. In real life, we're not playing with cheats on. Money runs out. People burn out. Corporate (and bureaucracy) is frustrating and annoying until you realize the whole point is to preserve whatever resources we have and trying to route them to best possible recipient. This means people go without. This means there's always someone getting left behind.
That is the cruel reality of not having enough resources to do all the things you want to do. And in the majority of social endeavors you find yourself organizing large scale groups of people? You will not have enough resources pretty much ever. This is where compromises come from. This is where concessions and negotiation comes in.
This is where ideological purity seekers get shattered inside out and refuse to engage with the system. Any system.
Because there's not enough to go around to fix EVERYTHING. And if you don't understand how priorities are built, you are never going to be able to advocate for YOUR priorities to be taken seriously. You need to document failure. You need to build evidence. You need to SPEAK the language of bureaucracy, to get what you want.
But failure feels bad!
The elephant in the room is that failure sucks tho. Failure feels bad. Failure might require people to incur harm. Preventable harm! Harm that you could personally stop if only you step out of your role and-
Nope, nope. Look, I get it. I do. I'm brown and queer and fat and neurodivergent and VERY expendable. I understand there's a human cost, down the line. I understand there's a level of detachment and cruelty to requiring failure to action... and even then it doesn't guarantee that there WILL be a solution.
What that means is you don't put all your eggs in a single basket. And you become aware of what you personally can do. Where do you fit in the large scale system, what shape of cog are you. And where ELSE might you fit.
Because the thing that people forget in the midst of being paralyzed by the horrors is that there ARE multiple systems in action at the same time. Sure, there's government: but there's Federal and Local and State government. And even outside government, there's private and public support networks.
The lie is the idea that there's only one singular system and it's too complex and big to change or move with any kind of velocity. This is a lie. There are MANY and multiple systems of varying sizes and speeds, to respond to your needs. The more urgent your needs, the smaller the system you need to push for, because it's less numerical and more personable.
But the bigger the problem, the more long-lasting the solution you want, the bigger the system you want to tackle.
One of the most important things I have ever learned in my time as an activist has been the ability to scope out a problem and match it to the right size of system to interact with. Because yes, actually, it's insane to tell someone who is fucking starving "I get it, you're hungry, but we need DATA of starving people in order to start the multi-year process of reallocating resources to get people like you food." It's fucking evil!
It doesn't mean it's not true.
But you can get that data from a soup kitchen that's serving starving folk. You can route the starving individual to a immediate fix for their FUCKING STARVATION, while also engaging with the soup kitchen to use their data and use it as evidence to pressure local government.
All of these interactions are nuanced and complex, but they boil down to "someone has a job that is JUST to fix this, and by not routing people to them, you're fucking them up and setting them to fail." Think of all the librarians desperately asking people to use their services. Think of all the advocacy non-profits desperately wanting people to attend seminars or workshops. Because that's THEIR job and they have metrics and quotas. Because the resources are limited. And they need to justify the resources they've been given, to keep existing.
So how do I navigate this?
First and foremost, you need to accept that social problems cannot be solved individually. Please stop looking at issues as opportunities for you personally to be a hero.
Instead, figure out the shape of your cog. Where do you sit in any of these systems? And if you don't... then figure out how to join. Join local town halls. Join neighborhood watches. Join local humane aid societies.
Figure out what you are responsible for, and then try to route anything you're not responsible for to the person who is. Give them data. Give them examples. Make sure people and their needs are documented. That they don't end up as a conversation that no one remembers a month later.
Understand what are the metrics your resources are tied to. What do you need to demonstrate to get increased scopes. And also identify what are short-term solutions for those long-term goals that can be passed on to people in need.
Help people understand that challenging and reforming systemic issues is a long-haul, slow, tedious but extremely necessary process, and that it is a distinct thing from helping people who need things immediately. And that very often the people doing one are NOT the people doing the other.
Educate yourself and those around you, and do not let yourself be radicalized into paralysis. Don't let people convince you that you're too small to matter. That you can't possible affect any sort of change anywhere. But also be on guard against the people who see any kind of concession or negotiation as a betrayal. Watch out for attempts to diminish or negate efforts to improve things because they're not efforts to improve ALL things. Whether they know it or not, those people are spewing propaganda and trying to rob you of your ability to impact the world around you. Do no fucking let them.
Sure, sure, Comrade, but what the fuck do I do about my Corporate job?
Fair, fair. My main bone is the fact negativity towards Corporate structures very often bleeds into negativity about bureaucracy, which is truly negativity about large scale organization and the paths to empowerment that individuals have when they join a group of their peers.
And while these are all principles you can apply to your Corporate job, here's a few things to help you decode how to navigate that world:
Read the fucking policies.
Every Corporate job out there has policies in place. These are the ground rules. These are the things that truly dictate what needs to be done and by whom. Sure, a power tripping manager might be giving you all sort of grief, but what matters is the policy.
Read it. Understand it. If you don't understand the policy, ask the person who wrote it until you do. And then follow it.
And if you're ever asked to break or circumvent that policy: DOCUMENT IT. Get it in writing. Don't be aggressive or combative. Play the clueless nerd card.
"I'm sorry, I know in the meeting you told me to do X, but as I understand, it's policy to do Y. Can you confirm you want me to do X?"
If someone wants you, repeatedly, to break policy and is being slimy about confirming it in writing, document it yourself anyway, and consider passing it on to HR.
HR is not the enemy. They're also not your friend.
HR exists to keep the company from being sued. The moment you threaten a lawsuit, that's the moment HR starts treating you as a threat instead of part of the company.
While HR is not your friend and will not go out of its way to look out for you, personally, and you should not expect them to: HR exists to protect the company from lawsuits. Policies were written to enable the company to complete its work, comply with regulatory requirements and avoid lawsuits. When you avoid or break policies, you're a danger to the company and will be targeted by HR. Redirect that shit to whoever is demanding you avoid or break policy and duck your head to avoid the fire.
Do what you're paid to do, not what you think they should pay you to do.
The most important thing to be able to survive and even thrive in Corporate is to know what the fuck they're paying you for. What's your role. What are you responsible for. If at any point you're not sure, go ask your boss. Get it in writing. If your boss can't or won't give you clear expectations of what your role and responsibilities are?
Fucking.
Run.
Do not look back.
Do not let yourself be swayed by promises of future growth or raises.
If you can afford to, quit immediately. Otherwise, start looking for employment elsewhere.
Remember, the whole point of Corporate is that you're a cog in a machine. You have your little scope of what you're responsible for and what people expect you to do. You're the guy who wrangles the calendars. Or the dude who schedules the meetings. Or the guy responsible for replacing frayed cables. The system only works when everyone has a role and they KNOW what their role is.
When your boss can't or won't define your role, your boss is trying to exploit you. If you don't know what you're being paid for, you don't know what counts as extra. You have no real visibility as of what's considered the minimum you should do, or what success looks like. This is a common problem of companies that are large enough to be Corporate, but small enough to still have people who run things on vibes.
Nope. Fuck that. There is no amount of promised pay that makes that kind of environment worthwhile. I promise you, they will exploit you for all they can, squeeze every tiny bit of usability out of you, and then kick you to the curb and scam you out of as much money as they can, on the way out.
Figure out what you're being paid for. Get it in writing. And also get in writing what your boss considers "minimum" and "acceptable." You'll find in Corporate there's always the whole "year end review" about what you did and what you can improve and how to grade your performance. Well, you can't be graded without a metric. If you don't know what your boss thinks is "Satisfactory"? You will never be able to make decisions about your own work.
In toxic work places, this is by design. If you don't know what "good enough" looks like, they expect you to just. Work endlessly. Tirelessly. As hard and as fast and as much as you can. And that's a one way ticket to burnout city.
Which brings us to my favorite piece of Corporate advice:
Do not ever fucking put 100% on anything. Ever.
So the truth of it is, even if your manager isn't actively trying to sabotage you. Even if they're not a massive dick. Anything they see you do once is something they will expect you to do always. Unless you make a big deal out of it and get it in writing that it's a big deal and make an effort to remind them that it's a big deal? Yeah, they saw you do it which means you can do it, which means you should do it.
So no, do not stay late without overtime pay. Do not switch to work a double shift. Do not do more than you're required (BEING PAID FOR), without thoroughly documenting and clearly getting IN WRITING notice that it's a one-off and also what reimbursement you're getting for it.
But I just want to be nice to my coworkers! Right. So you're taking on the extra work instead of letting the system fail and your manager realize they're understaffed and need someone else to join. I mean, are you REALLY understaffed if you're there and able to do the work? For no extra pay? Why would they hire new people?
It all circles back to: what's your place in the machine? What were you hired to do? If they want you to change or move or do more, politely request a meeting with HR and ask to explore your options for further compensation.
You do this for money. They want you desperately to forget it's all about money. Do not fucking let them.
In the most general way, you're exchanging labor for money. However, you should be aware of whether you're selling specific actions/end results, or if you're leasing your time. These are not the same. And one might be better for you than the other.
Here's an example:
I get paid for doing a report. The report is my responsibility. The expectation is that I deliver the report on time. If I'm selling a specific action, that means I will be paid the exact same if I take an hour or forty, building the report. All they care about is that it's delivered on time. And in that scenario, the faster I can make that report, the more my time is worth.
Conversely, if the report is not as important as me being available during a certain hour window to answer questions/respond emails, I am leasing my availability. And since my boss is paying for that window of time, they probably want to see me look busy as much as possible, to feel like they're getting the most out of their investment. But looking busy doesn't mean being busy. And if it's been established that I get a certain amount of hours to do something, and I manage to do it faster? There's no real benefit to anyone about it. Because I will not get a break. I will get more tasks to do. And if it was a fluke, getting rid of new tasks is a lot harder than being assigned them.
You're not a slave. You're not a serf. Your purpose in life is not to be working 24/7.
But what if I'm idle? What if I could be PRODUCTIVE? Are you? Actually productive? Or are you putting the entirety of your sense of self on your ability to be a Good Cog and get a good grade in Working, to the point you sacrifice any kind of freedom and space to breathe you can afford? Are you actually helping or are you being a Well-Meaning Idiot and fixing shit before it fails and therefore ensuring it NEVER gets properly fixed?
It's just a job, dude. As long as you know your role and your responsibilities and you're keeping up with those?
It's okay.
A job should not feel like torture. I get it, we're in a Capitalistic hellscape and everything is awful all the time. But like. Do remind yourself, even if you can't, for any reason, remove yourself from the Torment Nexus that is your job: a job should not feel like torture. You're not insane for wanting to be treated with respect. There are in fact places where you can exchange labor for money and not be routinely exploited. I hope you're able to find one.
But mostly?
Understand the systems around you. Understand the systems you belong to. Identify when they're broken and when they're fixable.
And don't let doomerist bullshit convince you there's no way out.
If your gut reaction to this is "no it's not" I swear, I promise, that disappointing people, particularly disappointing people who have unrealistic, outdated, manipulative, or just plain wrong expectations of you, or versions of you in their head, is better than continually disappointing yourself. Signed, an inveterate people pleaser who FINALLY realized this and made my life almost immediately more authentic and fulfilling by acting upon it.
Please can you explain the difference of meaning between hanfu and huafu ? Sorry if you already got the question
Hi, thanks for the question, and sorry for taking ages to reply! (hanfu photo via)
The term “hanfu” (traditional Chinese: 漢服, simplified Chinese: 汉服) literally means “Han clothing”, and refers to the traditional clothing of the Han Chinese people. “Han” (漢/汉) here refers to the Han Chinese ethnic group (not the Han dynasty), and “fu” (服) means “clothing”. As I explained in this post, the modern meaning of “hanfu” is defined by the hanfu revival movement and community. As such, there is a lot of gatekeeping by the community around what is or isn’t hanfu (based on historical circumstances, cultural influences, tailoring & construction, etc). This isn’t a bad thing - in fact, I think gatekeeping to a certain extent is helpful and necessary when it comes to reviving and defining historical/traditional clothing. However, this also led to the need for a similarly short, catchy term that would include all Chinese clothing that didn’t fit the modern definition of hanfu -- enter huafu.
The term “huafu” (traditional Chinese: 華服, simplified Chinese: 华服) as it is used today has a broader definition than hanfu. “Hua” (華/华) refers to the Chinese people (中华民族/zhonghua minzu), and again “fu” (服) means “clothing”. It is an umbrella term for all clothing that is related to Chinese history and/or culture. Thus all hanfu is huafu, but not all huafu is hanfu. Below are examples of Chinese clothing that are generally not considered hanfu by the hanfu community for various reasons, but are considered huafu:
1. Most fashions that originated during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), especially late Qing, including the Qing aoqun & aoku for women, and the Qing changshan and magua for men. I wrote about whether Qing dynasty clothing can be considered hanfu here. Tangzhuang, which is an updated form of the Qing magua popularized in 2001, can also fit into this category. Below - garments in the style of Han women’s clothing during the Qing dynasty (清汉女装) from 秦綿衣莊 (1, 2).
2. Fashions that originated during the Republican era/minguo (1912-1949), including the minguo aoqun & aoku and qipao/cheongsam for women, and the minguo changshan for men (the male equivalent of the women’s qipao). I wrote about why qipao isn’t considered hanfu here. Below - minguo aoqun (left) & qipao (right) from 嬉姷.
Below - Xiangsheng (crosstalk) performers Zhang Yunlei (left) & Guo Qilin (right) in minguo-style men’s changshan (x). Changshan is also known as changpao and dagua.
3. Qungua/裙褂 and xiuhefu/秀禾服, two types of Chinese wedding garments for brides that are commonly worn today. Qungua originated in the 18th century during the Qing dynasty, and xiuhefu is a modern recreation of Qing wedding dress popularized in 2001 (x). Below - left: qungua (x), right: xiuhefu (x).
4. Modified hanfu (改良汉服/gailiang hanfu) and hanyuansu/汉元素 (hanfu-inspired fashion), which do not fit in the orthodox view of hanfu. Hanfu mixed with sartorial elements of other cultures also fit into this category (e.g. hanfu lolita). From the very start of the hanfu movement, there’s been debate between hanfu “traditionalists” and “reformists”, with most members being somewhere in the middle, and this discussion continues today. Below - hanyuansu outfits from 川黛 (left) and 远山乔 (right).
5. Performance costumes, such as Chinese opera costumes (戏服/xifu) and Chinese dance costumes. These costumes may or may not be considered hanfu depending on the specific style. Dance costumes, in particular, may have non-traditional alterations to make the garment easier to dance in. Dunhuang-style feitian (apsara) costumes, which I wrote about here, can also fit into this category. Below - left: Chinese opera costume (x), right: Chinese dance costume (x).
6. Period drama costumes and fantasy costumes in popular media (live-action & animation, games, etc.), commonly referred to as guzhuang/古装 (lit. “ancient costumes”). Chinese period drama costumes are of course based on hanfu, and may be considered hanfu if they are historically accurate enough. However, as I wrote about here, a lot of the time there are stylistic inaccuracies (some accidental, some intentional) that have become popularized and standardized over time (though this does seem to be improving in recent years). This is especially prevalent in the wuxia and xianxia genres. Similarly, animated shows & games often have characters dressed in “fantasy hanfu” that are essentially hanfu with stylistic modifications. Below - left: Princess Taiping in historical cdrama 大明宫词/Palace of Desire (x), right: Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji in wuxia/xianxia cdrama 陈情令/The Untamed (x).
7. Any clothing in general that purposefully utilizes Chinese style elements (embroidery, fabrics, patterns, motifs, etc). Chinese fashion brand Heaven Gaia is a well-known example of this. Below - Chinese-inspired designs by Heaven Gaia (x).
8. Technically, the clothing of China’s ethnic minorities also fit under the broad definition of huafu, but it’s rarely ever used in this way.
From personal observation, the term “huafu” is mainly used in the following situations:
1. Some large-scale events to promote Chinese clothing, such as the annual “华服日/Huafu Day”, will use “huafu” in their name for inclusivity.
2. For the same reason as above, Chinese clothing including hanfu will often be referred to as “huafu” on network television programs (ex: variety shows).
3. A few Chinese clothing shops on Taobao use “huafu” in their shop name. Two examples:
With the exception of the above, “huafu” is still very rarely used, especially compared to “hanfu”. It has such a broad definition that it’s just not needed in situations for which a more precise term already exists. However, I do think it’s useful as a short catch-all term for Chinese clothing that isn’t limited to the currently accepted definition of hanfu.
If anyone wants to add on or correct something, please feel free to do so! ^^
Character sketch sheet commission of the client's character Azalea! I was so delighted upon first seeing his design - those wings! That hair! The makeup! The arms! So many fantastic elements! I was super excited to draw him and show them all off. ^_^
