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So most stories take place when Events are Happening, and this means that no matter what kind of job the characters have, they’re probably not too focused on them. Fanfics, on the other hand, often show the down time. Which means that the writer has to figure out what the hell these characters do in their jobs. Unless the characters have a job the author understands or knows well, the author is often at a loss for what to have the character doing.

So they sit them at a desk and give them paperwork. What is the paperwork for? Rarely specified. It is Paper Work for the characters Important Adult Job they have and they need to read or sign it or something. And there’s always a line about how Character Hates Paperwork. Doesn’t matter if Character is a Mafia Boss or a General or a Diplomat, here they are in an office trying to get out of Doing Paperwork.

There’s also a sense of, like, humor and mundanity that comes with it. Like the examples above, it always particularly stands out to me when a dangerous individual is griping about some paper they need to sign or something. The less you can picture Character doing paperwork, all the better to force it upon them. If Character is saddled with Paperwork, they’re usually now concerned about the physical damages their motley crew causes, because damage = More Paperwork.

Timesheets

Expense reports

Requisition requests

Budget justifications

Payroll

Performance evaluations

Incident reports

After action reviews / post-mortem analyses

Incident Action Plans

Contracts

Contract proposals / grant applications

even when the royalty look like they're just fucking off to have fun, they're doing Socially Mandated Fuck-Off and Have Fun Time

Invoices.

Intake sheets (information about new clients. The one for my firm is 13 pages and requires an hour long meeting. Then you have to do something with the info gathered)

Data entry for invoices and intake sheets.

Billing. (More involved than timesheets because you’re justifying to clients why you’re getting paid so much).

Form letters.

Taxes. Including 1099s for any contracted work.

Bank statements/accounting spreadsheets. Gotta track how expenses are trending.

Insurance documents.

General messages. Lots of office still use a paper system for missed calls and “important” stuff because it just works better than emails and chats for some people.

Cause there’s the invoice, and the follow up invoice and the we are about to have a problem follow-up invoice.

There’s the incident report and then the I swear I yelled at that worker about this don’t be mad at me if they do it again second warning documentation

The requisition form and the it has been six months now get me the fucking thing or you’re gonna hear from Cindy escalations form.

"Hey, Gen Z, we're gonna relabel vacations into something else now and tell you how you really should be wary of taking vacation because it might impact your financial future."

the idea that failure is an individual failing and not the oppressions of a broken system.

the above guidance applies even if a fic isn’t warned/tagged. ao3’s tagging system is not 100% perfect and never will be. no manual system is. you will always have missed tags or — rarely, please repeat that with me — bad actors mistagging things on purpose.

part of being able to manage your own experience online isn’t just heeding warnings or tags. it’s being able to set yourself up for success when you encounter something triggering or uncomfortable in the wild. because you will. on accident, via malicious tagging, or maybe you missed a tag or forgot to read the new warning on a fic.

you will encounter your squicks or triggers in the world. your job is to BACK OUT of those situations as quickly as possible. read the room and make a judgement call.

is the main character about to get tortured and you have a thing about amputations? when they bring out the clippers, that’s your cue to dip.

if you can’t handle reading non-con, clicking on a fic with “dark” and “dub con” tagged is a risk, proceed with caution.

the author didn’t tag [trigger] but you’re reading the fic and have a bad feeling it might pop up.

the fic has “chose not to use archive warnings” and no other triggers/warnings tagged.

people in some online spaces will tell you that if everyone tagged their fic perfectly with every single trigger (instead of using “chose not to warn” which, again, is MORE than fair to use on its own) from the get go, nobody would ever get triggered again.

but that’s just simply not true. sometimes we don’t know we have a trigger until we encounter it. sometimes we thought we could handle something and we can’t. sometimes our trigger is so specific, asking the average author to tag it ahead of time is beyond impractical.

so yes, don’t like, don’t read. but also — don’t like, don’t continue reading. know your triggers, know what topics you can’t handle, and back out as soon as you see them. know that it will happen, inevitably, and have a plan.