#dpdmstla

Thank you so much, this really does mean a lot to me.

Wait, so does that mean Warren Buffett owns GEICO? Do I pay Warren Buffett ninety bucks a month for car insurance?

Pretty much. If it helps, he spends it on cherry coke and Utz potato sticks. 

lnsybird replied to your post “How rich does someone have to be for your company to decide to...”

Do you research the high winning lottery winners or is that a no-go since they often have so many randoms begging/demanding money?

It’s less that they get a lot of randoms and more that their wealth is usually not what we’d think of as sustainable -- it’s a one time event, and unless they invest it unusually well, they don’t have ongoing wealth the way, say, a hedge fund manager does. Combined with the fact that they usually aren’t in the habit of philanthropy and they’re hard to get to (because of the randoms approaching them for cash) and they’re a low return on investment for us. Plus I think the average lottery winning is something like $15M which is kind of smallish potatoes for us. We have people earning $15M every year, they’re much higher priority. (This is what I mean about this job messing up your sense of proportion.)

If someone who had given to our organization before did win the lottery we would certainly note it, and we would send them a congratulations card, maybe assign a gift officer/fundraiser to them, just in case. But in general unless they had a connection to the organization, we wouldn’t bother. 

dpdmstla replied to your post “How rich does someone have to be for your company to decide to...”

sorry if you've already answered this before, but what kind of information do fundraisers usually need? also would you ever write a fundraiser/researcher AU

Setting aside what is really the bulk of our job, which is finding new people for fundraisers to consider or visit, when a fundraiser is going to talk to an individual person or going to be meeting a series of people at an event, we really have only a few basic documents we prepare. 

For events, we do one-page documents that are very basic: a single paragraph biography, whether they’ve given to our organization and how much, who their spouse is, whether they have children, and where their other philanthropic giving is. This is just basic contextual information so that they know, you know, what’s going on. Like the other day there was an event and I was preparing documents for it which included a guy who founded a CLEANING PRODUCTS EMPIRE, and also his friend, who was convicted of financial fraud in the late 1990s. Both good things to know! 

When someone is about to visit to either “qualify” a donor for a major gift (make sure they can give and have an inclination) or actually ask them for the gift (which is usually a separate visit from qualification) then we sometimes prepare a much longer document, usually between five and seven pages. That document has a detailed biography, information on their parents and siblings, more detailed information on their spouse and children, detailed information on their giving to us in the past and their current financial situation, information on other people they have relationships with who support us (like say, they sit on a board of directors with someone who also gives to us, that’d be noted), and more extensive information on their other philanthropic giving. This is to help the fundraiser figure out the best angle to come in at, and also ensures that they have a lot of context they can rely on in conversation with the donor. 

I missed out on the contest because I came to ME post-contest, but that is a steaming pile of bullshit to begin with, BEFORE the heaping amount of erasure/sexism/racism on top of it. This is such a cogent write-up of WHY.

I just got into ME last year so I completely missed out on all of this too and I’m definitely coming to it five years too late haha. so I’m sure this has all been said before. but sometimes it feels like I have five years’ worth of anger to catch up on

@al-spudnik said:

I totally grok this, even though I'm the hypcrite who writes about a default white redhaired "default" shep, arguably because of some shallow self-projection as a white, red-haired fan (I am not proud), but I own that. And GODDD you are right on every point, and I felt all the same discomfort in that beauty contest and her subsequent, like... guhgaghgh sexing up??

In my core though, I really strongly believe there is no "default" shep. It is SO important that this character - as she or he functions in the game - be a lens through which the player may project themselves, and thus, connect with the characters and universe. "canon" interepretations just fuck that up, and all that gets further complicated in fan works, which take on all their own rules and regs depening on what fantasy is being fulfilled.

I completely relate to the urge to have one “default” character to use consistently for the purpose of fic and art, even if your playable character is different (like it is for me -- I usually use Marian in fic/meta but further break down her character in “my headcanon realm” and turn that Hawke into my OC) but somehow even knowing that it’s always default femshep that I just can’t get over lmao.

there are some things that I do think make the most narrative sense for some of these protagonists to be, based on narrative and contextual clues of the story: Hawke as a mage, Inquisitor as a human (who else would embrace the Herald of Andraste thing so easily) or an elf (with all the elf history and Solas stuff). and that’s absolutely not to say OCs who don’t fit that are wrong (like, rogue!Hawke is my all time favorite class and background). but there’s a lot about Shepard that opens itself equally to all of the six backgrounds they make available, and of course you could headcanon one or a combination make the most, but ultimately they don’t have much influence on the story or the depth of Shepard’s character (save except for Arrival, if you had colonist and/or ruthless background). anyway all of this is to say I agree with you, though I would be willing to fight BW in a dark alley over my belief that it makes way more sense thematically, if not within the confines of their own world building, for Hawke and Shepard to be moc or woc

@dpdmstla said:

mmMMM also tbh bioware's thing abt how in the future everyone's more racially diverse always bothered me? like I personally love it, but w/o the actual in-game support/worldbuilding like w/ default shep, it just seems like a way to cop out of actually srsly engaging with race and whiteness etc. and kinda seems like that thing where white ppl "want" to be "oppressed" or be the minority, and also kinda harkens back to racist/eugenicist fears of the white race dying out??

that is a really good point and now I’m surprised I didn’t connect these dots sooner, but now that you mention it I’ve been thinking a lot about how human centrist movements almost undoubtedly stem from white supremacist movements (not just in the sense that the BW team copies their language to write Cerberus propaganda, but also in that I literally believe white supremacists would’ve started human-first movements in the ME ‘verse, and it makes complete symbolic sense to me that Cerberus is being run by an old-fashioned older white man with a genetically-engineered-to-be-perfect white woman as his right hand). running with that, I’d think that puts POC!Shepard’s relationship with Cerberus on thin fucking ice (especially if they’re a sole survivor like my Shep) and to me that’s another avenue to explore, like, what does it say about Shep that they agree to work with them anyway? but also, POC!Shep is now put in an infuriating and compromising position working with terrorists, that would undoubtedly color her relationship with TIM and probably also Miranda, at least until she gained her trust or defected.

on one hand I can understand preferring to cover this in codex entries and side notes in a video game because the main plot is an alien race attacking, not human sociopolitics, but also... if you present a status quo for the human race that differs from today, you should engage with it a bit. like, in one codex entry in kasumi’s loyalty they mention a second american civil war being fought over the usa expanding to include canada and mexico. i guaran-fucking-tee you a major trigger for that war would’ve been due to confederate loyalists and racism against mexicans. and yet we don’t see it mention of it ever again, lol.

dpdmstla replied to your photo “I got up this morning and churned some cultured butter, made baked...”

did the cream cheese cake taste less eggy this time sam?

It did! I used less egg yolk this time, I think is part of it, and also fully cooled the butter mixture so I wasn’t worried about it cooking the egg. 

It’s still better after a night in the fridge, though. Om nom nom. 

lololovescheese replied to your photo “I got up this morning and churned some cultured butter, made baked...”

Dang, you cook, you sew, you write...omg you're a fully functioning adult!!!!

Well, I do my best. At this rate I’ll make some 19th century pioneer a great wife. :D

lexrhetoricae replied to your photo “I got up this morning and churned some cultured butter, made baked...”

You churned butter on a Sunday? That seems blasphemous.

ooh does this mean u got ur computer back

yassss i love it when that happens like u have the structure down and some really nice phrases and wording too and stuff and u kno exactly what evidence u want to pull out its great