#custom approach

[taoofbill]

[dailymanners]

When entering any place of business, such as a store or restaurant, if a staff member greets you, then acknowledge them and greet them back.

Although for many jobs it's a required part of their job to greet you, especially retail workers, receptionists, and restaurant workers to name a few, that doesn't make it feel any less dehumanizing to say "Hello!" to another human being only for them to ignore you. Acknowledging staff members and greeting them back is important for acknowledging their humanity, they are, after all, a human being, and not an automated machine.

This is also important when going to check out at a store. If you approach the cash register, and the cashier greets you, you should acknowledge them and greet them back. Cashiers already have to deal with being dehumanized enough. The least you can do is help humanize them by acknowledging them when they greet you and speak to you.

[justabiteofspite]

I honestly don't get the spawn vs ascended debate when we really should all be coming together to shame those who think it's "unrealistic" that Astarion could fall in love with default dragonborn Durge on account of that Durge "not being attractive."

Like, I'm sorry, but are you fucking high? In what world is Default Durge not peak sex appeal? Big, tall, muscley thicc ass man who can barely run because he's so caked up with a deep, haunted voice struggling to overcome the darkness within himself all while looking like he could bite Cazador's head off in one satisfying crunch? You're telling me Astarion wouldn't be speed running that romance arc to climb him like a tree? Like that wet pathetic cat man looking for protection and attention wouldn't be the president, vice president, and treasurer of the "Top That Nice But Kind of Disturbed Hot Lizard" club?

Get fucking real.

[gilbirda]

DPxDC Prompt: Wrong Number Jazz edition

Based on this amazing post I saw

"Danny, it's been a week. Sam said you took the phone with this number. Everything alright?"

"Please. It's been a month now. I just want to know if you are alive."

"I won't look for you. I know I promised. But you promised to check in."

"The funeral was today. They didn't attend, forgot what day it was."

"I miss you."

Jason came back from a Outlaw out-of-the-grid mission finding messages from an Unknown number. A quick check gave him a name and address, and also news about a missing little brother. The more he searched the fishier it all looked.

Good thing he didn't unpack his things yet.

[fadetouchedsilk]

im not sure how to parse this exactly (probably since the thought hasn't marianted fully yet) but i wonder if the tone of veilguard's writing is less about appealing to a younger audience and more of a response to falling media literacy rates

kind of thinking out loud here but like.

i'm recalling the girl on booktok who proudly annouced that she only reads the spoken dialogue in her books, not the narration & the people in her comments laughing and agreeing (no wonder they can 'read' so many books per year, they're only reading 25% of the words). or 'starting to think some of you don't like media or characters, just fanfiction tropes.' you can hand someone like that a complex narrative, but what are they going to do with it aside from completely & happily misunderstand things that are very obvious context clues & themes? we can joke about the fandom mischaracterizing our blorbos & trying to be cool about just scrolling past but idk, personally i feel like i've seen an uptick in completely off-base takes in the last few years (probably some fandom bias there but this isn't my first time playing dragon age or narrative driven games in general so i don't think i'm entirely wrong)

it doesn't help that this group also loves to be loud online & the bioware devs (to their ongoing detriment) seem to be unable to distance themselves from fandom. we saw larian's response to this type of outcry, i wonder if bioware is just trying to get ahead of the curve. they make some questionable decisions, but they aren't stupid & i don't think people like that are especially hard to market to from their standpoint.

i don't think that older titles like dao are perfect or anything but i sincerely doubt that large swaths of current audiences would 'get' it. like, there IS a lot of narrative hand-holding in this game & i'm not talking about things like the map markers or accessibility features. 'do the companion quests!' you get told multiple times, more or less outright, & i'm still seeing people confused about getting 'bad' endings despite ignoring this incredibly obvious series of hints. there's a fair amount of information to be found in the codexes, but are people going to read them? we don't know, so we're going to repeat the relevant item name several times over on the off chance you might end up remembering it. like yes this is some people's first foray into rpgs, but you would think that progressing the story would be intuitive (especially given the structure & the journal itself).

the 'the curtains were blue!!!' crowd is unfortunately a very large audience these days, ea is a corporation who wants to make money & they do need that if they intend to keep making games. it might not even be intentional, it truly could just be the result of following market trends.

don't take this as me making excuses for bioware or anything, but there's definitely some sort of reason we ended up the way we did. i see the scaffolding of something interesting here with a lot of potential to be better than what the final product was, a lot of hooks we could have spent more time chasing & that leads to me wondering just what the hell happened.

[rovermcfly]

okay so when I said "I'm taking this side gig as a museum tour guide to get my foot in the door and try to enter that field" I just said that so people would stop asking me what I'm gonna do with my life. I didn't think I would ACTUALLY be offered a proper job at the museum to do in combination with the tours so I can finally quit my current retail job. I thought I was lying when I said that! I didn't think I was manifesting!

[carlyraejepsans]

for real WHERE does the idea that [utdr humans] are nongendered so that "you can project on them" come from. their literal character arcs are about NOT being a blank slate to be filled in by the audience

i think i understand the assumption on some level for undertale, because there is a very intentional effort to make you identify with the "player character" in order to make your choices feel like your own (the beating heart of undertale's metanarrative lies in giving you an alternative path to violence against its enemies after all, and whether you're still willing to persue it for your own selfish reasons. YOUR agency is crucial).

of course, the cardinal plot twist of the main ending sweeps the rug from under your feet on that in every way, and frisk's individuality becomes, in turn, a tool to further UT's OTHER main theme: completionism as a form of diegetic violence within the story. replaying the game would steal frisk's life and happy ending from them for our own perverse sentimentality, emotionally forcing our hand away from the reset button.

i think their neutrality absolutely aids in that immersion. but also, there's this weird attitude by (mostly) cis fans where it being functional within the story makes it... somehow "editable" and "up to the player" as well? which is gross and shows their ass on how they approach gender neutrality in general lol.

but also like. there's plenty of neutral, non PCharacters in undertale and deltarune. even when undertale was just an earthbound fangame and the player immersion metanarrative was completely absent, toby still described frisk as a "young, androgynous person". sometimes characters are just neutral by design. it's not that hard to understand lol.

anyone who makes this argument for kris deltarune is braindead. nothing else to say about it.

[highly-opinionated-nerd]

If I were a Jedi, I'd put a wiimote wrist strap on my lightsaber. Nonnegotiable. That thing is my main source of both offense and defense and I'm NOT about to risk dropping it in the middle of needing it

[caspersscareschool]

he literally sews his kids stupid little outfits from scratch does anyone even fucking care

[peachfuzz-nygma]

the statement “tattoos shouldn’t be allowed in the workplace” is so weird to me. like yeah tattoos are definitely still considered a taboo thing but i keep getting compliments on my tattoos while i’m at work. i’ve never once had negative comments about them. and that makes me really happy

[cornsarts]

Make a terrible comic day apparently!!!!!! I did this on company time!!!!!

[knightposting]

Pro tip: if you've had green tea and didn't like it, consider brewing at a lower temperature than boiling water (165f is my go to) and for less time than black tea.

[birdfem]

Sometimes, it's hard to imagine yourself in another's shoes until you experience it yourself.

Please understand that what you think you'd do in a situation vs. what you'd actually do are quite different. If you are of the belief that you would never fall victim to someone malicious, such as an abuser, realize that not every threat is a cartoonishly obvious villain. Someone may say and do whatever it takes to get you to trust them, to empathize with them, and to put yourself in a vulnerable position. It's not to say that everyone is malicious, but to exercise caution and think critically about the circumstances someone is in.

Just the other day, myself and one of my customers were nearly victims of trafficking, if my suspicions are to be correct. The lady who approached my customer was giving a story in being a single mother, having no relatives, having a broken-down car, and not having any way to get home. When I first overheard it, I felt nothing but empathy and even wanted to cry for her. But something wasn't adding up. Some things she said and her insistence on getting a ride rather than just asking for $20 for an Uber felt off. When she was further confronted, she started to get more aggressive, grabbing one of our spray bottles and yelling about how the customer shouldn't have told anyone her business. She lingered on the property for several minutes after, lurking among the other establishments and even hiding in the bushes.

If it weren't for my suspicion of what the lady was claiming, if I had left her side at all, if I hadn't called some coworkers over, or if we hadn't had male coworkers escort us to our cars, I fear for what may have happened to us. Now, I have to overhear claims from people I know that me being shaken up is a bit too extreme of a reaction. That it was nothing more than a crazy customer and that I'm overreacting in my fears and how shaken i am.

Remember: You never know what you'll do until it happens. Before you claim that someone "deserved it", understand that people will say and do whatever it takes to get you to trust them. Before you write off someone's experiences and fears, understand that something that may not affect you or that you might be able to see a mile away may be detrimental or not obvious to another.

[silksinging]

A list of things I’d suggest to make Lenore Loomington’s design work better:

1. Since she’s a ghost, I think it would be only right for her to be translucent. She even has the eyeband makeup from Haunted! It baffles me that she isn’t translucent already.

2. Either add some painted detail to the plastic accessories, OR make them glow in the dark. Personally, I’m leaning towards the second. I think thematically, since she’s supposed to be an eerie ghost walking through a garden at night holding a lantern, it would only make sense for there to be glow in the dark details. (It even looks like some parts already might be but?? Since they’re not making a show of it I’m presuming they don’t actually)

3. Please put her hair up. Not only would it help sell the Victorian vibes they’re going for, it would also better complement her headpiece (which, let’s be honest, looks kinda silly on its own) . Also it would make her stand out more! As it is she looks like someone just put her on the default settings…

4. This is the sort of thing that might be easier to draw than to explain but…. I think the plastic chest piece would be better if it covered less area. As it is, it completely obscure the top part of her dress, and it overall makes her look very messy and formless. I’m thinking something like a spiderweb-shaped under bust corset would’ve left more room for the dress to shine, and been a bit more flattering. Tbh just cutting off the top half of the current design might work.

5. I think something’s off about the stock pictures ngl. The fabric of the dress is So Dark, which obviously isn’t bad in itself, but, especially since the lighting itself is pretty dark, it means most of the details of the dress are completely obscured. Alternatively, they could’ve used a more reflective satiny material, so the texture difference would make printed on detail pop more.

6. Finally, and perhaps most importantly… her face up. I think there was an opportunity sorely missed in not making her look sad. Edgar Allan Poe’s poem is a tragic one! Make her look like a tragic figure! Give her sad brows, like how the Rochelle face ups have! Give her downturned eyes! The glitter tears are a solid idea and probably my fave detail, but I think it could’ve gone harder! Make them run down her cheeks!! Maybe even make them darker, so they really stand out!!! Honestly I genuinely think just changing her brows would make such a huge difference, it would make her seem more like a character with a personality and with whom you can relate to…. Which is especially important because she is this brand new character that no one has an emotional connection with. Make! Me! Care!!!

So yeah that’s my take.

[joyridingmp3]

so humiliating going to the local indian grocery store being half indian and white passing. just got jumpscared by the guy working there following me around asking "do you need any help? :)" I'M INDIAN I SWEAR

[dravidious]

You're more amazing than functionally no rares

Made some Duskmourn cards and also thought about the upcoming set currently known as "Death Race" and got in a vehicle mood