I'm Mikkeneko, Mikke for short. I'm a writer, American, asexual, she/her, in my mid-30s. I post primarily fandom stuff, flowers, and anything else I find interesting or cute or funny.
My AO3 can be found here and contains fic written for Dragon Age, MCU, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, Critical Role, The Witcher, The Untamed, and the latest fandom of interest is The Scum Villain’s Self Saving System. My writing tag on Tumblr is ‘mikke fics,' there is some overlap with my AO3 but not total duplication, so you can peruse that tag if you want.
I am also on bluesky and dreamwidth.
I'd like to make my blog a nice place for people to visit, but at the end of the day this is my space and I will reblog (or not reblog) to satisfy myself over any other consideration. I will occasionally signal boost real-world or political posts I find relevant, but I keep that a fairly low ratio of my content.
Triggers I tag for:
blood cw
bones cw
high heights (for heights)
clusters cw (for trypophobia posts)
shirtless cw (for all partial-nudity content, not just bare chests)
loud noises cw
flashing cw (for any jerky light/motion content)
(Not a trigger per se, but any post that’s longer than two screens gets the long post tag.)
If something comes up that I don't reblog frequently enough to have a reliable tag for it, I will try to tag it "[distressing content] cw" but that may be a bit hit or miss. If there is another category of content that turns up frequently enough to be upsetting and you'd like a tag for it, let me know. I may or may not be able to fill your request but I can at least consider it!
Fun things to do in my blog, I guess?:
Get to know my writing habits by perusing my mikke memes tag
Watch me liveblog The Untamed at the mikke watches the untamed tag
Hear my opinions about fandom as an abstract at the let me sing you the song of my people tag
Look at adorable baby animals in my cute animals tag
Roland Maurice Jefferson was a botanist focused on the study of several types of trees. He completed a B.S. in botany following his service in the US Army during WWII. He was initially hired for a basic position at the US National Arboretum to make labels for plants, and developed a new, more durable method of labeling before being promoted to botanist a year later. While working at the Arboretum Jefferson conducted international research on crab apple trees and wrote a book on the subject. He then began conducting historical and botanical research on the cherry blossom trees of Washington D.C. Japan sent hundreds of cherry trees to the US in 1912 as a symbol of friendship between the nations. These trees typically live for around 40 years, so by the 1970s the original gift trees were rapidly dying out and were replaced by cherry blossom trees from elsewhere in the US. Jefferson identified this decline and took cuttings from as many of the original surviving trees as possible, creating genetic clones of the trees which had borne witness to decades of history in the nation’s capitol. He published the definitive work on D.C.’s cherry trees, and provided over a thousand cuttings to the city of Tokyo to replace trees lost in the post-war period. Jefferson was invited to move to Japan in an instructory and advisory capacity, and conducted additional research into the classification of different varieties of cherry blossom trees. He improved the genetic diversity of US cherry trees by introducing new varietals which were better adapted to American environmental conditions. He also founded and ran a seed exchange program for American and Japanese school children, who exchanged dogwood and cherry seeds.
*sigh* Its that time of year where freshman high school classes start reading Romeo and Juliet.
And I'm just so tired of the "well they werent REALLY IN LOVE they were just dumb teenagers with hormones" take.
What do you mean "not really" in love? They werent real people. They are fictional characters. The story says they are in love. The omniscient chorus says they are in love. The themes of the entire play are built on the fact that they are in love.
So what does it add to undermine that except as an excuse to not engage authentically with the story? To suggest that actually it's the two teenagers fault that they died because they were being stupid and hormonal, rather than society and their families for the senseless hate that forced them to extreme measures? Does that seem like Shakespeare's intent? Does that seem like an interesting or useful reading, or as a cop out reason to role your eyes and refuse to engage with the play at all?
I understand that we are now in an age where "love at first sight" isnt really a valid literary trope anymore. Even Disney is taking shots at it. But this play was written in 1597- when the omniscient chorus tells you that they are in love, it isnt tongue in cheek.
romeo and juliet is about a certain kind of love that isn’t adequate, and it’s not the love of romeo or juliet!
it’s about the way their parents and families failed to love them enough, or failed to demonstrate that love adequately. it’s about how putting pride and honor and revenge above things like “love” and “the safety and happiness of your children” is a shitty way to parent.
idk i think it’s really interesting because that’s actually kind of a subversive message! the message “children have a responsibility to respect and obey their parents” was fucking everywhere in Shakespeare’s day, even more than it is today. it’s kind of a big deal to say “hey also, parents have a responsibility to love their kids more than they love themselves.”
Romeo and Julliet were a pair of teenage dumbasses. But teenage dumbasses grow up to be functioning adults all the time. Being a teenage dumbass is a step on the path to adulthood. It is the adults' responsibility to create an environment in which being a teenage dumbass is not a death sentence.
But I do want to push back on the idea that Romeo and Juliet are "dumbass teenagers."
The things people generally point to as them being dumb tends to be fast/impulsive decisions, but there are reasons in the narrative for why they are forced to make those decisions quickly. The violence and Juliets impending arranged marriage put them on a timer that they didn't choose. If they had waited, not gotten married, not been together on their wedding night- they might have lived, but they also wouldn't have had even those few fleeting hours together.
Juliets feigned suicide with the sleeping potion is supposed to allow her to sneak away with Romeo without escalating the bloodshed by getting Romeo accused of kidnapping, and without her being forced into the *deadly sin* of adultery if she were forced to marry while already being married. She BEGS her parents for more time, to delay the marriage to Paris so she can think of something better, and is told no.
And the plan WOULD have worked if the messenger had successfully reached Romeo- but didn't because of plague slowing travel.
So you know, they tried. And I think while it may appeal to teenagers to characterize them as dumbasses (teenagers love to criticize other teens, and then they can engage with the story by listing all the things THEY would have done differently), I don't think it's particularly fair to do so. And more importantly, I think the more emphasis we put on Romeo and Juliet being impulsive or dumb, takes away from the tragedy of the circumstances they were forced into, and undermines that their love was true. Their first conversation forms a sonnet, the rhyming couplet at the end is sealed with a kiss. They *should* have been together, and...come hell or high water....they would be together.
Students that I work with actually get really invested in criticizing the adults in the story, and the circumstances. Gen Z / Gen Alpha High schoolers care a lot about like the rights of children and youth, how adults treat them, how external circumstances impact characters pov and actions, and they pick up on all of it, and it’s so much fun every year.
To see kids go from ‘I don’t want to read Shakespeare, love is gross, school is dumb’ to boldly debating who’s more at fault for what happened to Romeo and Juliet, and also other characters like tybalt ! oooh the kids always love tybalt. and they blame Romeo a little for his death, but they also blame the adults, and the culture, and the messaging that both Romeo and tybalt are given as young men.
One student, a struggling reader I was working with, who is also one of our EL students, was completing an assignment this year where for part of a class, students take a character, write a paragraph about how that character would translate to the modern day, and then draw the modern day version of the character. He didn’t know where to start with the writing, so I told him to start with the drawing first, then we would work on the writing together. At first he didn’t know which character to even start with, so I read some of the shorter lines from some of the characters in the most recently assigned section, and I forget exactly what it was but it was something about Tybalt being described by another character, he stopped me. He said he wanted to do Tybalt. I asked him why and how he wanted to make Tybalt modern.
He started the drawing and while he worked, he told me about his older brother who taught him to play soccer, a fast and skilled athlete, who hasn’t been able to play much recently because he took a part time job to help out the family. Who laughs loudly and takes every opportunity to be active, but who also cares deeply for his loved ones and would defend them. He sketched out a (very rough sketch, he’s an athlete at an arts school, he’s doing his best) drawing of a tall boy in a soccer jersey, shin guards, cleats, and wrote in pencil at the bottom, ‘[his brother’s first name] prince of cats’ all lowercase. Then we worked on talking through his paragraph. At the end of class, when students could pick up their phones from the phone holder, he wanted to show me a picture of his brother, mostly joking with me, to try to convince me that he did actually put effort into his very quick very rough sketch. But also probably because I let him tell me about his older brother, who he clearly idolizes, as younger brothers sometimes do.
When the class got to the death scene and were reading and discussing it, this student spoke up and said he didn’t blame Romeo. He wanted to know how were the characters supposed to know that they are defending the same family (since Romeo had married in to the family secretly right before this fight scene) and wanted to know why no one taught them to talk things over first before fighting. He referred to Romeo and Tybalt as family a few times in that discussion, getting so specific about reminding other students that they’re related to each other now, and didn’t get the chance to figure that out because they always have to be fighting.
I think after this year, every time I read or teach R + J, I will always picture this student’s older brother playing the role of Tybalt.
As you may or may not know, I was laid off about a year ago. I still don't have full-time employment, but things are getting less bad. Here are some things I have learned that may help people in the same situation.
Something I need you to understand right now
The market is very very bad. The last time I remember it being this terrible was right after the mortgage busts in 2008-10. It might honestly be worse. The last time I looked for a job was three years ago and it has changed completely.
The number of people applying to available jobs is w i l d. The stats coming out of this r/recruitinghell thread are nuts. 2000 applications, even after screening out the obviously unsuited they still went through 900. There's no way to screen all of them. It is, unfortunately, mostly a numbers game.
I'm not telling you this to scare you or discourage you. But it will be hard, because so much is tied up into work, labor, and our senses of self. And if you're going to get through this, you need to understand what you're up against.
I hope the stuff below the jump will help you do that.
(If you need to contact me hmu on Bluesky or via pearwaldorf at gmail. I have messaging and asks turned off because spam and because I'm not on Tumblr much)
If you've just been laid off or are going to be
If you still have access to your old work's systems, grab what you need.
Get yourself the Laid Off/Let Go Checklist from Never Search Alone. Even if you don't sign up for NSA, this is helpful.
Never Search Alone is a mutual support group for job hunting that is supposed to help you figure out your alignment and purpose (Job Search Council). It feels very silly that we do not run these things in general, because it was actually extremely helpful when I found my JSC.
If you feel like you're spinning your wheels and trying to figure out what's next, this might be helpful for you. It's a lot of work, but I think if you put it in it will help you.
(I joined a JSC that kinda fizzled out so if you have questions, happy to answer them. Also if you want to do a JSC but don't have the money for the book, I can help you with that.)
I found Overqualified through a promoted post on LinkedIn (lol) and it has been useful small bites of information about things I don't want to think about much (like AI in hiring and marketing yourself on LinkedIn). The videos are short (under 5 minutes) and still helpful even if they're a little... yeah.
Give yourself a little bit of time to decompress if you can. You’re probably suffering at least a little bit of burnout.
**MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHEN YOUR UNEMPLOYMENT IS RUNNING OUT.** (This totally didn't happen to me. Nope.)
The Actual Hunt
Sites to use
Hiring.cafe is an aggregation searcher built by Redditors that allows you to filter by lots of parameters, including ease of application, tech stack, cognitive load on the job, mobility, and physical labor required. It has a robust Boolean search that allows you to exclude companies you don't want to work with.
Welcome to the Jungle is for jobs with startups/smaller companies funded by VC (defined extremely broadly: Khan Academy is considered one). This is good if you have a tech stack and/or skill set you're proficient in.
Indeed is what I've been using because it allows you to filter on actually important things, like whether or not a job has a posted salary and allows you to hide companies/positions you're never going to apply for. Also locations that are too goddamn far despite trying to properly dial in what a reasonable communitng distance is. (Ahem.)
Flexjobs is a site that has fully remote positions with people who vet them and make sure they're real. To support this, the site is pay to access. Try the cheap version first--it might not have enough of the types of jobs you're looking for.
The best thing to do if you really want to be considered is to apply on the company's website if possible. Yes, I know it sucks and is way harder than just clicking a couple buttons. But that's a calculation you have to make about effort vs convenience.
Sites to avoid
I have an anti-rec for LinkedIn because it gets so much traffic and you can't exclude companies. Also the jobs get stale really quick because they get so many applications.
Lensa and Wiraa are weird scammy reposters that I have never been able to figure out. Do not sign up or click on links from them.
Pay
You're never going to remember hourly > salary conversions. Keep a note on your computer or a sticky note with relevant numbers:
Minimum wage in your state
When you're applying to remote positions (which vary wildly in pay) you do not want to aim for anything less.
Minimum wage in the biggest city close to you (if it's within commuting distance)
The reason I say this is because there can be a HUGE difference. Washington state minimum wage is ~$16 but varies greatly by locale. You don't want to concentrate on jobs in places that pay $4 less an hour if you could commute to a place that has to pay way more.
The hourly equivalent of your unemployment benefits
Don't even bother applying for anything lower than this if you still have them.
Hourly > salary conversions for round numbers (like $50K, $60K)
This might just be me but it was helpful to see the equivalents
Posted salaries
Personally I never apply to anything without a stated pay rate. In my state (Washington) it's illegal to post a job listing without one if your company has more than 15 employees. Lots of places will attempt to weasel around this by posting pay ranges that encompass whole-ass tax brackets. It sucks and those companies should go on your shit list.
Be aware of your rights regarding soliciting salary histories. It's illegal in Washington to ask for that, but may not be in your state. Some state labor and industries departments also have databases of businesses who have been cited for violating wage laws by employees.
You will quickly learn to feel in your bones Chris Rock's commentary about minimum wage.
Ghost jobs
Some companies leave job listings up for ages and/or aren't actually hiring. These are called ghost jobs and they suck. You'll learn to spot these as you become familiar with what's normal for your market. This list compiles some companies that do the ghost job thing. Which is not to say they're all fake, but this aligns with my experience.
(There are many legit reasons for posting jobs that may not actually be hiring, but we're not dealing with those here.)
Networking
I have a whole post about networking for introverts here. I think it is applicable to even those of you who are not. It also contains a bit of stuff about how to tweak your LinkedIn profile.
Resumes
If you need Word (or other Office apps), you can use it online for free. The only annoying thing is you can't save .doc/x files to your computer, so get used to putting everything in PDF or ODT.
Layout should be barebones. Do not buy the cute little templates from Etsy. I recommend finding any random ATS-friendly template and making sure it degrades gracefully. No columns, minimal formatting (bold and italic, font sizes). Or make a plain-text version.
This guy used to do recruiting for Google and has lots of excellent advice.
This is how you should construct your resume. Nobody gives a shit about the things you did, but rather what you accomplished while you were there.
Construct bullet points in this way, so they flow together and create a coherent picture of what you did. This is also a great place to keyword stuff.
The wait
Honestly I would not expect to hear back. Some people keep track of the number of applications > declines > interviews > offers, but I think that will drive you batty. I have found that if people want you to interview, you'll find out within a couple weeks or not at all.
The thing I was super surprised by? The lower-paying jobs like retail and food service are the ones I hear back from the least. If I'm lucky they eventually close the position and I get notified that way.
The grind. The fucking grind.
You will get a lot of rejections. Try not to take it personally, although I know it's easier said than done.
Like, I got turned down for a job that I was approached for, in that an HR person forwarded my resume to this other person, we talked for 90 minutes and I had an interview, and I still didn't get picked. That was kinda rough.
You will also run across a lot of entitled bullshit in job postings. You do not need to do a video interview or write a goddamn essay to stand out. This is how they identify the desperate.
Please leave time for processing all this, with or without a JSC. You cannot hunt well if you're all up in your head about how much something sucks, and it does suck.
That being said, come up with some boilerplate answers for common questions on applications like "Why do you want to work here?" It will make you feel less like dying of pure resentment when you already have an answer.
Do not be tempted to halt all searching if you get an interview. It fucks your momentum and makes it more difficult to pick back up if you get rejected (and you will).
A lot of feelings and attitudes will come up about how you perceive work, class, and "skilled" labor. Do not shy away from these, because examining this stuff is how we break down and interrogate how we come by these beliefs. Try and be a little dispassionate about it--you can't think clearly if you feel ashamed about having this stuff in your head.
Interviews
(I don't have a lot to say about this because I haven't had enough numerically to see if they're different from the usual advice.)
This is a conversation. You're just getting to know someone new for 20-30 minutes.
But also, STAR, STAR, STAR. You need to be able to think of times in your past where you have demonstrated qualities hiring people think you need to succeed in this job.
Interviews are farces, but that doesn't mean you get to opt out of them. Put on that jobsona, practice it until it feels more realistic. If you have a career center or unemployment office available, ask to mock interview there or with your friends.
I think one of the most important things to do is to ask questions of your own (lots more good lists at the bottom). Not only does it make you look engaged, it also gives you so much information about how the person sees the company and their role in it.
For example, a question I always ask is "What do you like about working here, and what would you change?" If somebody can't answer something as simple as that, it tells you a lot. I interviewed twice at a company with a dress code. Neither person went for the easy answer about abolishing the dress code, instead addressing a more substantiative issue that affected their work. I also interviewed with a consulting firm where the recruiter couldn't figure out a goddamn thing about what she'd change at the company.
Other random things:
It doesn't hurt to ask ideal timelines
Be a little wary of processes that seem to move too quickly
Misc advice
Keep doing it, be consistent, show up.
If you think you're being annoying, you're probably not the type of person who is actually being annoying.
Wherever you stop, that's probably a place you need to ask for help.
FIN
OK that was very long. Here is a picture of a bulldog in a stroller for scrolling to the end.
A HANDY CHART FOR THOSE OF YOU WONDERING WHAT THE FUCK IS UP WITH THESE. NOTE THAT THESE ARE ALL THE INFORMAL AND YOU IS THE FORMAL SO LIKE YOU WOULD ALWAYS ADDRESS YOUR SUPERIOR/ OLDER PERSON/ SOCIAL BETTER WITH YOU BUT WITH YOUR BUDS YOU CAN USE THESE.
[ID: A chart titled “How To: Thou/Thee/Thy/Thine/Ye” with three rows, titled “Shakes”, “Modern English”, and “How the Fuck to Use It” respectively. The chart will be transcribed in the order as listed already (emphasis mine)
Thou = You
thou whoreson = you son of a whore
(To) Thee = (To) You
*“You” is the object, hopefully “it” isn’t herpes
I gave it to thee = I gave it to you
Thy = Your
*In front of words starting with consonants
thy mother = your mama
Thine = Your
*In front of words starting with vowels
thine enemy = your enemy
