No Thoughts Just Rune Factory

Jace/Jason | They/Him | Adult | UK nerd | Welcome to my pit of farming sims, anime, and shitposts. Hope you enjoy! | Feel free to add to or comment on any of my posts.

[plow-and-propose]

Tag list

gaming - #jace plays

my cosplay - #my cosplay

cosplay references - #cosplay reference

writing references - #writing ref

art references - #art reference

dog walking updates and anecdotes - #dog blogging

I'm also on Bluesky!

[starrynet]

that’s his little guy!!

[littleguysdaily]

I wish I had what they have...

[jr-everything]

"how do I find fics about this one specific topic on ao3?"

summary search!!!

[jdebbiel]

The girl with the dragon boy

Prints available from June 2-10

[queerpontmercy]

PRIDEQUEST SIDEQUEST HAPPY BIRTHDAY GAY PPL 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

i have a mission for you, should you choose to accept it!

you know how libraries weed and edit their book collections based on what circulates? and how censorship doesn't have to be explicit bans to proliferate in our communities? and how being queer on the internet is getting increasingly fraught?

we need accessible physical media. we need physical accounts of our history, of our past and present. we need informative free books that help people explore themselves-- and it's harder to justify discarding or weeding actively used resources.

do you have a library card? if not you should get one first- you wouldn't believe the number of resources you can find.

if you do though, will you join me in checking out and reading- and requesting- queer and/or trans books? fiction or nonfiction, historical or current. come back to this post and share what you found, if you like!

it's one tiny step in the face of the horrors, but it matters when we're talking about keeping community and information accessible to all.

[decadentqueentidalwave]

Some libraries also count books that were removed from the shelves! Last year I went through my library's tiny collection of civil rights type books (you can find some quotes and critiques on my blog).

[this-is-trans-joy]

in response to being a teen and seeing trans adults:

being a visibly trans adult and seeing young people, talking to them, and being a person, imagining that someday someone might realize they're trans and come out after interacting with me. interacting with children and answering their questions about am i a boy or a girl, telling them i get to pick what i am and that I'm happier now

This is trans joy!!!

[plow-and-propose]

thinking about it the insistence that we went to one of those Japanese bbq restaurants where the grill is part of the table during a record breaking heatwave didn't directly end the friendship but it was definitely a factor

[zegalba]

Kelly Rowland Texting Nelly Via Microsoft Excel And Then Getting Annoyed When He Doesn’t Text Back (2002)

[doubleca5t]

[apilgrimpassingby]

The Folklore of Wetlands

Another of my British folklore posts, this one about, well, wetlands. Note that "wetland" and "swamp" are rarely used in Britain; we prefer "bog", "marsh" or "fen".

Will-o’-the-wisps: The most famous bit of wetland supernatural lore are will-o’-the-wisps or ignis fatuus (fool’s fire), cool blue flames hovering over marshes and not seen since the 19th century – the most common scientific explanation, albeit an imperfect one, is that they were flammable marsh gas [1]. The folkloric explanation, however, was that they were spirits leading travellers astray [2]. Sometimes they were said to be ghosts, particularly of people who moved boundary stones [3] or of a specific sinner called Will (hence the name), barred from Heaven and carrying a torch, or to be faeries, hence the West Country name “pixy-lights” [4].

Speaking of names, will-o’-the-wisps went by a multitude of names. Some of them referenced hobs, a common English name for faeries (as I posted about here), such as “hobby-lanterns” (East Anglia, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and southwest Wales), “Hobbledy’s Lantern” (Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire again) [5] and “hob with his lantern” (Radnorshire) [6]. In a similar vein, in the Scottish Highlands they were called teine sith – faerie fire [7]. Some of them referenced the ghost legend, such as “Billy-wi’-t-wisp” in West Yorkshire [8] and perhaps “Jacky Lanterns” (from “jack-o’-lanterns) in the West Country [9]. Interestingly, there are a host of female names for the phenomenon – “peg o’ lantern” in Lancashire, “Kitty-wi’-t’-wisp” in Northumberland, “Jenny-wi’-t’-lantern” in Northumberland and North Yorkshire, “Jenny-Burnt-Tail” in Oxfordshire, “kitty-candlestick” in Wiltshire [10], “kit-with-the-canstick” in Hampshire [11] and “Gyl Burnt-Tayl” all over England , the last of which was also an insult for promiscuous women [12]. Finally, in none of these categories we have the name “pinket”, found in the Worcestershire parish of Badsey [13].

For some actual lore about them, in Wales they’re spirits called Ellylldan leading travellers into bogs [14], in the New Forest they’re pixies [15] and on the Devon-Somerset border they’re called hinky-punks and have bodies consisting of one leg and a light [16]. In the Scottish Lowlands they were called spunkies and described as evil spirits leading travellers to drown by taking the form of wrecked ships or boys with signal-lights [17]. The same level of malice is found in the Lantern Men, as they’re called there, of East Anglia and Lincolnshire, who are attracted by whistling [18]. The name “spunky” is also used in Somerset, but there they’re the souls of unbaptised babies, who both lead travellers astray and act as omens of death and additionally appear on Halloween to guide ghosts to funerals and on Midsummer Eve to greet the newly dead [19]. Hertfordshire had quite a bit of lore about them; two men from the village of Bushey followed one all night on an occasion in the 1840s [20] and after a man from the village of Aymestrey was led astray by one and survived, he paid to have the curfew bell rung every night [21].

In Cornwall, Jack the Lantern and Joan the Wad are a pair of spirits of wildfires and will-o’-the-wisps who travel the moors [22] in the form of red, white or blue lights that dart away from the onlooker whenever approached [23] and guid travellers either to home or astray and can be compelled to do the former by saying the charm: “Jack the Lantern, Joan the Wad, that tickled the maid and made her mad; light me home, the weather’s bad” [24]. Joan the Wad was often said to be the queen of pixies, and bronze lucky charms of her dipped in water from a faerie well in Polperro been sold since the 1930s [25].

Sometimes they were linked to Christianity. In a story from Devon, man got lost in the bogs of Dartmoor at night and prayed for guidance. He saw a will-o’-the-wisp, followed it due to trust in God, and found himself on dry ground [26]. In a story from Shropshire explaining their origin, a man called Will the Smith was granted a second life by St. Peter, but used it in such wickedness that he was barred from both Heaven and Hell, and was sent to wander the earth with a burning coal provided by the Devil [27]. Finishing off with some miscellaneous lore, in Sussex they’re a death omen [28], in Warwickshire being misled by them was referred to as being “mabled” [29] and several places in Worcestershire are named after them [30].

Faeries and Fens: In a similar vein to the above section, a major theme here is faeries leading people astray. A farmer who made his family miserable was led into a bog and drowned by faerie is a story found across England [31]. In a Somerset version of the story, Old Farmer Mole was a drunkard who abused his wife and children who got so drunk at fairs that he slept in ditches, and was led by pixies into a bog where he drowned. His pony returned home, and his family celebrated; they left out water for the pixies ever after and the farm, particularly the pony, prospered [32]. By contrast, in Devon, faeries used will-o’-the-wisps to lead horses into bogs [33], and the colt pixy was a spirit from Hampshire and Dorset which took the form of a horse, using it to mislead travellers and lead them into marshes [34]. At the opposite end of England, the Hedley Kow was a spirit haunting the Northumberland village of Hedley-on-the-Hill, and among many other mean-spirited pranks led two men into a marsh by appearing as their girlfriends [35]. By contrast, a harpist lost in a bog in Bala, Merionethshire was led out by a beautiful small woman who kissed him; he woke up in a sheepfold with a dog licking his face [36].

Up in Scotland, a kelpie arose from a bog by the River Conon in the Scottish highlands, repeatedly crying “the hour has come but not the man”; hence, when a horseman arrived, they locked him in the ruined Catholic church there as he insisted on travelling through the bog; however, he died anyway, falling into a fit and drowning in a water trough [37]. Glamis Castle was initially built on a hill and torn down overnight repeatedly by faeries, until a voice from them was heard saying “build the castle in a bog, where ‘twill neither shak nor shog”, and so it was built in the Vale of Strathmore [38], and faeries attempted to teleport Langton Castle at Duns, Berwickshire to Dogden Moss, but were foiled by prayer [39]. For a final miscellany, Cornish pixies played in the marshes [40], in Wales peat bogs were said to be the fishponds of Gwynn ap Nudd, the faerie king [41] and 17th-century clay tobacco pipes found in the bog of Fenn’s Moss in Whitchurch, Shropshire were credited to faeries [42].

Black Dogs in Bogs: Starting with the most famous of these, Black Shuck is a calf-sized black hound in East Anglia with red eyes the size of dinner plates who is an omen of doom [43] first seen in the 12th century by a servant boy who died of shock shortly after [44]. The name comes from an Anglo-Saxon word for devil, he haunts cliffs, fens and churchyards [45], and the creature is almost always seen within five miles of water, and in the vast majority of cases within one mile of it [46], with one of his recurrent haunts being Wicken Fen in Cambridgeshire, which he shares with will-o’-the-wisps and ghostly chanting monks [47]. A gravel ridge on an island in the fens outside Ramsey Heights, Huntingdonshire is home to a black dog, another one appears whenever a member of the Allpress family from the county’s fens is about to die [48], while another one lives a building called Tinker’s Barn in the marshes of Walberswick, Suffolk [49]. Other black dogs live in marshes near Welney, Whittlesey and Woodcraft Castle in Cambridgeshire [50] and Salthouse and Stiffkey in Norfolk; the last of them was particularly nasty, tearing a man’s throat out on one occasion and chasing another man inside [51]. A boggy pool called Bath Slough in Burgh, Suffolk was haunted by a spectral white dog [52].

Marsh Hags: A distinctly Welsh folklore concept. One of them, called Yr Hen Wrach, lived in the Cardiganshire bog of Cors Fochno, ate bog beans and toadstools and was described by an old woman who saw her as being a thin, bony seven-foot-tall woman with yellow skin, a huge head, black teeth and floor-length coiling black hair. She appeared on misty nights and entered houses, giving the inhabitants ague by blowing into their faces, and was banished by the villagers burning coal instead of peat [53]. The more famous one is the Gwrach-y-Rhibyn, a hag living in Caerphilly Castle in Glamorgan who appears as a portent of disaster and appears in the form of a hunchbacked being in a green hood and cloak with either only darkness under the hood or a face so hideous it causes insanity – drool of blood or saliva, webbed or clawed hands and feet, one tusklike tooth, extremely thin and pendulous breasts, a long barbed tong, long thin grey hair, green-or-blue-tinted skin and batlike wings. She attacks sleepers, especially the young, the old and the sick, drinking blood over a long period of time until the person dies. She can prophecy when someone of pure Welsh descent will die, appearing to them when they arrive at a crossroads and crying out “my husband”, “my wife” or “my child” (depending on age and sex) – which is usually so frightening it kills the person [54]. Her original abode was Caerphilly swamp, and she took up residence in the castle when the swamp was filled and became a lake [55]. Her hair is tangled, her teeth are long and black and her arms are long and withered; hearing her shout words omens various deaths, but an inarticulate shriek dooms the listener [56]. She is huge, has leathery wings and cries “woolach, woolach!” during funerals [57].

Wetland Witches: On Halloween in the 19th century, people in the Cambridgeshire Fens took precautions against witches, including putting food on the doorstep for them, filling keyholes with salt, locking up all animals, killing a cockerel and hanging up its tail feathers on stable doors, and strewing osiers around the thresholds [58]. Vixen Tor on Dartmoor in Devon was home to a witch who sat on a high crag and lured travellers to drown in bogs by conjuring mists and was defeated by a friend of pixies who had received a magic ring from them that made him invisible, allowing him to sneak up behind her and push her into the bog [59].

Wetland Wizards: William of Lindholme, a folk hero and sorcerer from the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire, was hired to produce a causeway in the fens, and sent a rider galloping along the proposed path. The rider looked behind him, saw a host of imps laying the causeway, and cried out “God bless the work” in confusion and panic, causing the imps to vanish and the project to fail [60]. The remains of the causeway built by William are cursed; no moss grows on them, any horses attempting to move it drop dead and the world will be covered in blood when grass grows over it [61]. Likewise, Mitchell Scot, a similar figure in Scotland and northern England, commanded the Devil to build roads (including a Roman road, Mitchell Scott’s Causeway, in one night) over hills and through marshes [62].

Miscellaneous:

 In the 19th century, a Lancashire man called Fowler purchased thousands of acres of moor land and began reclaiming Dartmoor with modern technology such as steam ploughs and steam threshing-machines; at that, a moorman came to Fowler and told him that Old Crockern, the spirit of the moor – described as having grey granite skin, sedge eyebrows and peat-water pool eyes – had warned Fowler that “if he scratches my back, I’ll tear out his pocket” – sure enough, Fowler went bankrupt before the peat bogs were drained [63].

The church at Tunstall, Norfolk was damaged by a fire, and during an argument over where the bells should be housed, the Devil seized them and threw them into a boggy pool which leads to Hell after being chased by the priest. To this day the bells can be heard ringing on occasion [64].

The bog at Llanberis in Caernarfonshire contained a well called Ffynnon Chwerthin (Laughing Well), so named because crossing the bog caused the well to bubble or “laugh”. Pins and corks were thrown into it, and three witches practiced their magic there [65].

Bibliography

Robert Johnson, 2019, Bronze Age Worlds: A Social Prehistory of Britain and Ireland, Abingdon: Routledge, p.242

Marc Alexander, 2002, A Companion to the Folklore, Legends and Customs of Britain, Sutton Publishing Ltd., p.84

Katherine Briggs, 1976, A Dictionary of Fairies, Penguin Books Ltd., p.231

Dee Dee Chainey and Willow Winsham, 2021, A Treasure of Folklore: Rivers and Seas, London: Batsford, p.150-152

Briggs 1976 p.231

Jacqueline Simpson, 1976, The Folklore of the Welsh Border, London: Batsford, p.73

Walter Evans-Wentz, 1911, The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.86

Briggs 1976 p.231

Ibid p.237

Ibid p.231

Ibid p.254

Ibid p.213

Ibid p.327

Alexander 2002 p.85

Brice Stratford, 2022, New Forest Folklore, The History Press, p.160

Rosalind Kerven, 2019, English Fairy Tales and Legends, Batsford, p.150

Chainey and Winsham 2021 p.152

Jo Bourne (editor), 2009, The Most Amazing Haunted and Mysterious Places in Britain, The Reader’s Digest Association, p.123

Briggs 1976 p.382

Doris Jones-Baker, 1977, The Folklore of Hertfordshire, Batsford, p.53

Ibid p.46

Briggs 1976 p.231

Tony Deane and Tony Shaw, 1975, The Folklore of Cornwall, Batsford, p.91

Dee Dee Chainey, 2018, A Treasury of British Folklore: Maypoles, Mistletoe and Mandrakes, National Trust Books, pp.81-82

Alexander 2002 p.152

Ralph Whitlock, 1977, The Folklore of Devon, Batsford, p.35

Briggs 1976 p.231

William Henderson, 1879, Notes on the folk-lore of the northern counties of England and the borders, London: Nichols and Sons, p.50

Roy Palmer, 1976, The Folklore of Warwickshire, Batsford, p.73

Briggs 1976 p.4

Ibid p.168

Ibid p.329

Whitlock 1977 p.29

Briggs 1976 pp.78-79

Ibid p.219

T. F. Gwynn-Jones, 1970, Welsh Folklore and Folk Custom, Redwood Burn Ltd., p.59

Alison Galbraith, 2023, Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales, Flame Tree Publishing, pp.276-277

Raymond Lamont-Brown, 2024, Scottish Folklore, Edinburgh: Birlinn Ltd, p.86

Briggs 1976 p.150

Evans-Wentz 1911 p.184

Gwynn-Jones 1970 p.52

Simpson 1976 p.77

Alexander 2002 p.23

Chainey 2018 p.99

Mark Norman, 2015, Black Dog Folklore, Troy Books, p.90

Ibid p.99

Bourne 2009 p.106

Norman 2015 p.209

Ibid p.233

Ibid p.189

Ibid p.221-222

Ibid p.231

Gwynn-Jones 1970 p.83

2010, Encyclopaedia of Vampire Mythology, McFarland & Company, Inc., p.71

Colin Bord and Janet Bord, 1985, Sacred Waters: Holy Wells and Water Lore in Britain and Ireland, Granda Publishing Ltd., pp.132-133

Briggs 1976 p.210-211

Gwynn-Jones 1970 p.212

Ronald Hutton, 2002, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.379-380

Whitlock 1977 p.51

Jeremy Harte, 2022, Cloven Country: The Devil and the English Landscape, Reaktion Books, pp.146-147

Ethel Rudkin, 1934, “Lincolnshire Folk-Lore”, Folklore, volume 45, number 2, pp.144-157

Harte 2022 p.145

Whitlock 1977 p.64

Alexander 2002 pp.296-297

Gwynn-Jones 1970 p.111

Theo Brown, 1966, “The Triple Gateway”, Folklore, volume 77, number 2, pp.123-131

Stratford 2022 pp.13-24

Alexander 2002 pp.38-39

[this-is-trans-joy]

idk how to animate but i was sad and i wanted to see rocky dancing to carmelldansen

[fantasy-harvest-rune]

No context Rune Factory

[paperseat]

Mutual pining school AU subakagu who are childhood friends that live next to each other (delusional)

(Dec 2025)

[nacch-an]

wow this is just like juuyoku

[pearwaldorf]

Job hunting observations, possibly advice

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.

[mikkeneko]

@veliseraptor in response to your posts the other day

[aliencatart]

3 boyfriends 3 kisses

[stjohnstarling]

In light of recent events, I have begun submitting bug reports when I see mature content labels applied inappropriately to posts, especially if an appeal has been rejected.

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

Extremely good idea - how are you doing it? Through the contact us option?

[stjohnstarling]

Yeah it’s one of the options on the Contact Support form:

[sharas-bae]

for what it's worth: after a few months of submitting help tickets as 'feedback' when i saw a post inappropriately flagged as mature, i tried following this suggestion instead. today i got my first-ever response from tumblr support on this issue, letting me know that a post i'd submitted a ticket before has had its mature content flag removed.

[stjohnstarling]

Hey it worked! Maybe if enough of us make a stink they’ll fix the fucking system.

[edupunkbitch]

This is legitimately brilliant. Bug burndown reports (the rate at which your software team can close bugs) is a major metric for most software houses.

It takes an extra step in our part, but this is part of what makes it effective. It's not one click, one reblog activism and it hits them where they care: their damn KPIs.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I think the thing that annoys me most about AI on a personal, day to day, level is what it has done to grammar checkers. If you've never done a lot of editing, or used to 5+ years ago but haven't really in the last couple years, I can't even begin to describe how fucking BAD this shit has gotten. And as an author it is EXHAUSTING.

I just want to catch spelling errors and accidental double spaces and repeated phrases and whenever I use the wrong too/to or affect/effect and shit. But no. They've shoved AI up the ass of every grammar checking software out there and now they all fucking suck and make the most random, obnoxious, nonsensical suggestions.

And yeah, I can ignore all the times it's trying to get me to cut out any semblance of my own voice, or shove things into the wrong tense, or make the most random suggestions on comma usage. But if it's getting all that WRONG, what is it just straight up missing that I SHOULD be correcting? What real spelling and grammar errors are still lurking in there?

[thatdisasterauthor]

"Use Libre Office."

I get why people keep saying this (and other versions of it like "Use Adobe alternatives" and "Use Google product alternatives."). But here's the problem: I do not create in isolation. Even my own 100% personal projects are getting sent to other people whether it's editors or printers or beta readers and unless every single person in that train is using the same products, things can get wonky.

Libre Office and Word handle formatting differently on the back end, which can completely break documents if you move them back and forth between the two. So if I write in Libre Office but my beta readers are still using Word, when I send them a manuscript for review there's a good chance things won't look right and my beta reader will not actually be reviewing what I sent them.

Industry standards are industry standards FOR A REASON. Having everyone on the same workflow can be crucial to getting things done effectively and correctly without creating a lot of extra work. And those things are not going to change overnight, as much as we might want them to.

[thatdisasterauthor]

:| :| :|

Yeah, Word, let me just leave this whole chunk of dialogue without the closing quotation marks. That's the thing to do. How dare I have two punctuation marks in a row. It's not like that's how closing quotation marks fucking work.

[thatdisasterauthor]

I am going to light something on fire.

[thatdisasterauthor]

And you know, for young writers, this has got to be so detrimental just from the perspective of opening your document and seeing a million corrections that, frankly, don't need to be there. If you're a young writer you're likely not going to have the background knowledge to know what is and isn't a good suggestion, you're just going to see a document that makes it look like you made every mistake possible so clearly you must be a terrible, stupid writer and should just give up.