Hello Yes This Is Dog

I think people also often forget that power dynamics don't always fully favor the customer, and sometimes power dynamics can be tilted in the favor of the customer service worker and subsequently abused. Able bodied customer service workers can be, and often are, ableist to disabled customers. White customer service workers can be, and often are, racist towards customers of color. Customer service workers who are men can be, and often are, sexist towards customers who are women. Customer service workers who are non-immigrants can be, and often are, xenophobic towards immigrant customers. Shall I go on? That's obviously not an exhaustive list and I could very well go on.

When I worked retail I had a co-worker scream at a little old lady and kick her out of the store because she spoke to him in a language he didn't speak. I saw her face as she was leaving and she looked so shaken up like she was about to cry. I've overheard so many of my co-workers calling customers racial slurs behind their back. Once again, I could go on, but I feel like my addition here is already getting long enough.

Sephiroth is an interesting, complicated, complex, character who serves as a direct foil to at least two different characters within the story he resides- and technically he's only half white/white-passing because his dad sure is Asian, but the other two are 100% white.

And there's really no reason Seph, Aerith, and Zack can't be black. In fact, in the remake, Barrett being the party's only black guy is the next most sensitive to the planet's fluctuations of the humans, so there's even a strong implication that Barrett *being black* is closer to the Cetra than any of the rest of the party, which means Aerith *really* has no reason to not be at least half black.

And yet Aerith gets derided and abused by the fandom for being a woman (there's also no reason that any of these characters can't be women BUT I digress), and Barret gets completely ignored and neglected for being black.

Alabaster shares a lot of traits with Sephiroth- he's even described as handsome and thin and lanky within the narrative, and is just a little bit older than Seph at that. He shares much of the same traumas, he copes much along the same self-destructive lines, and he commits much of the same acts of mass destruction albeit in slightly different contexts due to the slightly different way their worlds work. The trope is very strong with both, and the major difference is that Sephiroth *didn't know and finds out and breaks* vs Alabaster who *did know and broke a long time ago and finally has had enough*.

But actually, their major difference is that Seph is extremely pale, almost artificially doll-like (much like Alabaster's beloved Antimony), while Bast is dark, dark, dark skinned, almost true black instead of brown, so black he's basically blue-black. They point out the irony in naming such a dark skinned man after a white stone more than once. He himself thinks it's funny. There's an implication that *he* named *himself* that.

Every time I say there's no reason that the innocent and somewhat naive and traumatized little girl can't be black, I will think of Damaya. Every time I see a Sansa Stark or Yennifer, I will think of Syenite. Every time I play as a woman whose entire life has been torn apart and she just has to keep putting one foot in front of the other because her only other option is to curl up somewhere and let herself die, I will think of Essun.

There's no reason these interesting and complex characters can't be black. There's no reason they can't be women. Hell, there's not even a reason they can't be trans- not with the plucky and nerdy and bubbly Tonkee.

Star Wars discovered that "psychic samurai in space" was a compelling idea. Miraculous discovered that double secret identity romances were compelling. Neither is actually very good, and the parts that get close are those gesturing at using the ideas well.

I don't think these are great literary motifs, more close to being newly discovered artificial flavoring. Popcorn entertainment's new flavor of butter. But they are satisfying, enjoyable.

The administrators of that extremely early city had to keep track of lots of things, and doing this by memory alone was a nightmare. These spreadsheets were devised as a solution to that as an evolution of an earlier system that used clay tokens and balls.

solipcyst is a puzzle game/visual novel about being a, really really bad therapist to vulnerable women. i am making it for the toxic yuri vn jam (phoenix wright-alikes are visual novels right) (rhetorical). as you can tell by my silly mockup i do not intend to use ai for this. i will instead be likely press ganging my lovely wife into making art assets for it, or i might use google images placeholders, we'll see, and doing all the writing and coding myself, since those are two things i like doing anyway.

This shouldn't be as big a deal as it is, but did I tear up a little? MAYBE.