*taps mic* Is this thing on?

[obstinatecondolement]

So! I have been incommunicado on here for Some Time now, but I thought I'd swing by and write a quick update.

RL stuff involving workplace bullying and mental illness

I've been having kind of A Time of it with my mental health and various RL things—I was bullied very badly at work by a supervisor and eventually let go at the end of the probationary period^*, which has been a blow. I will be starting a 1–2 year accountancy technician course soon though, so onwards and upwards.

In more fandom-y news however, I participated in pod_together for the second year, and had a great time. I was in two teams: one as a writer and one as a podficcer. I also contributed some line readings to the team I wrote for, because it was a Discworld fic and I thought that having a second reader for the footnotes would help mitigate potential confusion.

I wrote Radio Killed the Semaphore Star which semperfiona adapted to audio in the podfic version of the story. It's a post-canon imagining of the invention of radio on Discworld (full credit for this premise to semperfiona! I thought it was such a great idea for this event) in the form of various connected vignettes featuring different sets of characters interacting with and reacting to the new medium. The podfic is very creative and semperfiona did a great job with it.

The podfic I made for the event was [Podfic] Death with Dignity, based on a fic by Thebiwife's fic Death with Dignity. The story is s an examination of the social model of disability through the lens of Deanna Troi's backstory and the extent to which she experiences extra sensory abilities having been aritrarily pathologised both on Betazed and Earth depending on what's considered the "default" where she happens to be at the time. In the final part of the fic, she interacts with everyone's favourite ex-Maquis Betazoid murderer, Lon Suder from Star Trek: Voyager, whose lack of empathic abilities have also been pathologised and problematised throughout his life. The fic is very poignant and I think it hit it out of the park.

There is a fully soundscaped version of the audio version I made featuring some intro and outro music, in addition to many bells and whistles as I could jam in artfully integrate from a combination of sound effects available on TrekCore and Free Sound. This was my first time experimenting with audio effects beyond just trying to get the raw audio of my own recording cleaner with noise reduction and the Audacity de-esser plugin etc., and I had a lot of fun with it.

For people who prefer less busy audio in their podfics, there is also an effects light version that is mostly vanilla audio with the exception of a little echo and reverb added to telepathic lines of dialogue—there are time stamps for the above lines in the work itself as well as information and time stamps for specific sound effects I thought could trigger misophonia in the soundscaped version. I will try and add a completely vanilla version in the near future!

^*Possibly these are somewhat related, but it was also just... a mess there for various reasons that I don't think were my fault and I frankly think that it was a terrible management decision to let me go and they didn't know what a good thing they had with me, but you'll have to take my word for it. I also got fired almost immediately after disclosing my disability, so. Lol. [click to return]

Comments

[flamingsword]

If your government offers any protections against this sort of thing, please report the bigot/bully to the appropriate authorities? If they did it to you, they'll do it to others.

[obstinatecondolement]

Unfortunately, to submit a complaint to the Workplace Relations Commission I would have had to have tried to make a complain through HR channels within that workplace first as well as made them aware that I was considering making a complain to the WRC.

Some specifics

I never made it a HR issue because I was afraid of retaliation that would be hard or impossible to prove—and honestly, since she always did it when we were alone it would have been her word against mine and I am not confident that I would have been believed.

I spoke to the bully about a specific incident once in a way that was not even accusatory or that mentioned making a complaint so much as me saying "Just so you know, I was not trying to be disrespectful when [more diplomatic way of saying 'you verbally berated me to tears and then demanded I look you in the eyes and that I could "faint later" but had to "listen now" because you "weren't having it" when I apologised for being upset and said that I hadn't had a chance to eat that day and was feeling quite vulnerable and faint'], but I am autistic and while I'm usually good at masking, when I am upset it is much harder for me and that's why I couldn't make eye contact when you told me to" and she blatantly gaslit me to my face and denied that it had ever happened because she would "never speak to someone like that" and "wasn't that kind of person" and I must have "imagined it" and remembered it as her saying it to me when it was actually my internal monologue being self critical.

The thing she was shouting at me about was that I had said something to the effect of "Oh, sorry, I was doing it X way, because [manager] told me she wanted me to" a few times that day, which she interpreted as me trying to undermine her authority and talk back when criticised. The same day, in what was probably what got her boiling (that day) in the first place, she also tore part of a note I wrote to the manager about a question regarding an order that one of the curtain makers had asked me over the phone. The note had something like "I checked the system and asked [supervisor], but there wasn't anything on the computer and [supervisor] didn't know either" and she told me that it was inappropriate to write that because there was no reason she "should" know and I shouldn't be throwing her under the bus, to which I was like "I'm sorry, it definitely wasn't intended as criticism. I was trying to explain to [manager] what avenues I had explored so she knew what I'd exhausted and didn't try something I had already done, since neither of us are in tomorrow and she wants me to communicate handovers more clearly" and then she got even more angry and was telling me to drop it and that it "didn't need this level of nitpicking" and that it didn't matter, because "it's just retail." I was, at that point, in serious fear that I was going to lose my job because the manager kept criticising me over tiny perceived missteps and I was trying really hard to do what I was expected to. But... anyway.

[flamingsword]

You may not be able to tell government authorities about this because of the anti-labor way such rules are written (which is such 💩), but maybe you could request an exit interview with HR? Or email HR directly, whichever suits your temperament. If you go over what this persona non grata said to you, how it was abusive, and how it was ableist, then HR will know that her crappy personality is leaving them open to future legal culpability, and maybe someone will hold her to account. It may also serve to reinforce in your head that you did not deserve that, and that such bad behavior deserves to be pushed back on. It’s one thing to tell ourselves that we deserved better, and another to act on that impulse to defend ourselves and others.

I may be speaking to my own traumas here, but I let people push me around in school and in relationships like that, and eventually I had to stop letting people do whatever 💩 thing they liked with no pushback, because it was bad for my mental health to not at least say something. But I am one of those Fueled By The Fires Of JUSTICE™️ type of autistics, which not everyone is.

[obstinatecondolement]

To be perfectly honest, I do not have the emotional energy or resilience to do this and I don't want to burn bridges with the manager of that place in case I need a reference. The bully is going to retire in two years and while I hope that she doesn't treat anyone else the way she treated me, she has managed to beat me down enough that there's not anything I have the energy to do about it. I still have not been able to get in touch with social welfare to tell them to re-means test my disability payment because I'm unemployed again, which involves sending a single email, and I am averaging about one shower a week and am almost always day for night, so I just... can't right now.

*offers hugs*

[flamingsword]

That is so crappy, and you deserve better. I’m sorry that your brain is doing a depression / executive dysfunction to you, and hope that that calms down soon.

I wish we could return that stuff to sender, like “here, Bully, have some executive dysfunction!” Sadly, the world doesn’t work that way. But it should. * glares at your former coworker* 😒

[kavyina]

I'm very sorry to hear about the workplace bullying. But I wish you good fortune on your accountancy technician course! I am, as the kids say, manifesting good things for you. Or something. :)

Podfics are great! I've dipped my toe into podficcing but never actually published one, mostly because my recording capabilities extend only to "my laptop in my closet," but I did record some audio for an excerpt I wrote to nail down line delivery and even got to practice my accents with it, so there's that, at least. Maybe one day! I must admit that being able to pick out sound effects and do all the bells and whistles (as you say) does sound quite fun.

[obstinatecondolement]

Thank you x It was a very difficult experience, but in a way it's a relief to be out of that environment. Hopefully the accountancy course will open up opportunities for better paid jobs in a non-retail setting.

Oh, hot tip! If you have a smart phone, they're actually really good to record audio on, because they are designed to be good at excluding outside sound and the quality is very good. I recorded the pod that I did for pod_together on my phone and if anything it sounds better than the ones I recorded on my mic.

In terms of bells and whistles, doing a Star Trek pod was a fun fandom to try out sound effects, because Trekcore has such a great range of iconic Trek sounds to download for free. I definitely think that sometimes people can be snobby in a "podfic is only a valid art form when you have effects/music/etc." which is annoying, but it is also fun when a podfic uses the medium to do things that are not possible in a text format and it's something I'm kind of curious to explore in the future.

[vriddy]

Wow, the way that job ended is awful. So sorry that happened. Good on you for bouncing back like this and wishing you the best with the course.

The event sounds really cool, glad you were able to participate from different angles, that's neat! :D

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah, it was genuinely nightmarish ngl. I have been on a pretty low ebb since then, but I'm hoping that once I'm getting out of the house again I'll be doing better.

It's really fun! I'd definitely recommend checking it out next year if it's something you're interested in, either as a writer or a podficcer. You can also sign up to be assigned a partner or partners through the match making sign-ups, or you can sign up through team sign ups with one or more other people. I went with the latter and both of my partners were people I met on the Discord server's channel for finding teammates. I'm really glad that I joined two teams, because having experienced both halves of the equation was very fun. I also hadn't thought of doing a Discworld fanwork, so it was really fun to do that! I've written a handful of Discworld fics this year and I think I'm just about starting to get the hang of the third person omniscient style of narration, because starting out with the first few fics I wrote it was hard for me to break out the third person limited mould that I'm used to.

[vriddy]

So cool :D I subscribed to the comm, we'll see if the timing works out next year!!

[obstinatecondolement]

I hope the stars align!

[ilthit]

Having a second reader for footnotes was a brilliant idea tbh!

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah, I think it worked really well! I stole the idea from one of the more recent Discworld audio books, which had three readers: one for narration, one for dialogue, and one for footnotes. My specific innovation was clearing my throat before each footnote as if I was interrupting semperfiona's narration, haha.

[ilthit]

Dude that is GENIUS.

I got so excited at the idea that I skipped a breath, closed the mobile I was reading my notification email on and opened my PC to come and tell you that.

I neither produce nor consume podfic but I truly admire it as an artform.

[obstinatecondolement]

Thanks so much! In the audio books I think there is a bell sound effect to signal footnotes, but I thought it was a kind of fun twist to have it more explicitly framed as an interjection like this.

Yeah, there's a lot of skills that go into it! I'm obviously still pretty baby, but I'm very impressed by the community. And honestly the fact that it's got more niche appeal than text-based fic is kind of nice, because it helps me to get some mental distance from the idea that the point of making and posting fanworks is to get lots of attention. Vidding similarly helps me with this. It's kind of a nice return to an earlier form of internet fandom where you interact with a relatively small group of people who are all highly invested in what other people in the group are doing and are invested in building relationships.

I am just now remembering this as I'm writing this comment, but when I was a little kid I had a lot of fairy tales on tape, and my dad then also recorded himself reading my favourite books on cassette for me to listen to, so that I could listen to them when my parents were too busy to read for me, so in a way that was my first introduction to podfic, haha. I think I made one myself too? I imitated the style of a series of books I had that came sort of dual format that you were supposed to listen to and read along with and they would have a bit at the beginning that said, "Turn the page when you hear the chime ring like this *chime sound effect" and in my take on this I also said, "Turn the page when you hear the chime ring like this, 'Brrring!'" so I was making my own foley too 🤣

[ilthit]

I had those books too! Cassette and picture book with text.

Small communities really are better, and I also try to practice distancing myself from expecting reaction. I know I'm going to get a lot more hits on my Scum Villain fic even if it's inane trash, and a fic I think is better might not get any, and you just kind of have to accept that's how it works. I'm not gonna click on any link for an introspective fic in a fandom I don't know either. XD

[obstinatecondolement]

Yeah big time! Sometimes you write the best thing you've ever produced and you get 12 hits on it, because it doesn't have an active fandom and like... that's just how it goes! Write it anyway if you want to and the idea inspires you! And maybe in five years someone will read it and be incredibly grateful that you did, or maybe they won't, but either way your first reader (yourself) enjoyed it.