Jack | Aries/Ram | He/They | 1991

The retail workers are working 12 hours shifts. We are threatened with losing our jobs if we don’t show up unless we’re dying in the hospital. I had an assistant manager show up with fucking strep because he would’ve been fired otherwise. Yes, he did infect 7 and hospitalize 2 coworkers; who knows how many members of the public he infected.

The stores have, maybe, 5 of that special cheap thing you’re after. Corporate does this on purpose, and stores are not allowed to order enough. The prices aren’t even that much lower. They lie about how expensive something is to fool you into thinking you’re getting a discount. You aren’t.

Most of the workers you will come across will be new hires for the sole purpose of being bodies for about three months before they’re fired. They actually don’t know anything because they’ve been working there for maybe two weeks, and have had no real training. I was once hired at Staples a week before Black Friday and expected to know how to deal with phones, coupons, the online ordering site, and AS400 after five 6-hour shifts. This is the kind of person you will likely be dealing with at Black Friday.

it’s totally normal and okay to not have experience with women at any age. it’s okay if you have never been with a woman and you’re 30 or 50 or 70 or even older. it’s okay if you didn’t come out until after you married a man or had children with him. it’s okay if you didn’t even realize you were gay until 25 or 45 or older.

you’re still a ‘real’ lesbian if you didn’t realize you were gay, or if you have a long history of dating men, or if you’ve never slept with a woman. 

• ‘golden skin’ • ‘almond-shaped/tilted/slanted/ch*nky eyes’  • a strong accent despite being born in or growing up in an English-speaking country • helicopter parents/a tiger mom • scrawny, short genius stereotype • for Chinese characters: (especially older ones) loud in public stereotype • cheap for no reason • research your food… we don’t live off of noodles and dumplings • girls who are quiet and submissive • also east asian kids/teens who have a chunk of dyed hair and rebel against their family for no reason • ABGs are people too, your one dimensional caricatures of girls who like makeup and clothes ain’t cute • stop fetishizing east asian women and making them prostitutes in fantasy • e asians playing lackey/sidekick to the All Powerful Whitey is ugly • Asian Americans grow up with a weird blend of their family’s traditional values and the values of America (or whatever country they grew up in. I know Koreans who grew up in Mexico, New Zealand, Canada, Thailand, Greenland, the Netherlands, France, China, and more). That cultural and personal dichotomy is really interesting to me, but I rarely see it discussed in any media because y’all are too hellbent on sweeping us under one big stereotypical rug… Cool I guess • also forget that Asia is a massive continent containing nearly 50 countries!! There are so many cultural differences between China, Taiwan, and Singapore ALONE, Japan and Korea should never be conflated because there’s bad juju there, the fucking L/unar C/hronicles were such a mESS, I could go on but it’s lunch time. 

well…. yes, yes they are. real ppl who exist outside of your novel’s universe will be interacting with your book, even if those specific racial/ethnic dynamics don’t exist in your writing.

 you can’t just say “they’re not e. asian but they look like them” and expect e. asians to not be annoyed. that contributes to the shitty rhetoric of “oh, they’re not e. asian, those kinds of ppl don’t exist in fantasy, they just have the ~*aesthetic*~”, which i personally hope you’re not going for. 

obvs you’re not intending yellowface since you’re trying to describe them as e. asian without being offensive, but like… if you’re ASKING how to describe e. asian features, its time to stop beating around the bush. don’t say “technically they’re NOT lol”... don’t deny it. 

graphic design is my passion

But AY. I’ve been developing a closed species for a while now and they’re up and running over on dA!