#Gadget!Reader

[onyourowndaisymae]

lucifer is a very particular man.

he wakes up early to enjoy the peace and quiet of the morning, the way the house of lamentation creaks wearily in the silence while his brothers sleep sounds in the their respective rooms. it's sobering. for a moment, he gets to be alone with his thoughts before the day begins.

he'll walk to the bathroom and clean himself up for the day in silence, before dressing and making his way to the kitchen. he appreciates the little things. the silence, the warm light illuminating his room as he unhurriedly prepares for the day, the way the permanent darkness of the devildom retreats ever so slightly as morning breaks. it's nice.

but when he enters the kitchen, lucifer realizes something is wrong. it takes him a minute to realize it, but when he does, his lips curl downwards into a disappointed frown. the kitchen is completely dormant. it doesn't seem like an issue, but it's a stark difference from his usual routine. because this morning, the smell of coffee is absent from the air.

that's right. you spent the night at purgatory hall last night, didn't you?

your relationship is a cycle of small, considerate gestures back and forth. notes on mirrors, doodles on post-it notes, and his favorite-- coffee prepped and scheduled to brew for him in the mornings before he wakes. it's a gesture that has always made him feel loved. he didn't realize how much a missed day would sour his mood.

lucifer starts to brew his own coffee, but his fingers hang suspended over the grounds a few moments before he abandons the idea altogether. he pulls his D.D.D. out of his packet and drafts a short text to you, only satisfied when he hears the whoosh of the message sent.

i missed your coffee this morning. it's never as good when i have to make it myself. message me once you wake up-- we're going to that cafe we like down the street to make up for it.

[musubi-sama]

Shopping with Kento

A happy little shopping trip with your dear husband and some suggestive banter.

Walking along the covered sidewalk, you and Kento peek into stores and eye up the products. Stores filled with chopsticks, kitchen apparel, knives, plates, industrial-sized cooking vessels.

Ah, this looks promising! Pulling your husband into a cramped and densely-packed store filled with long, tall shelves filled with all manner of kitchen utensils and wares.

Quickly losing Kento as you slipped past patrons, you are caught up examining a collection of chopstick rests. You reach for a pair of adorable dinosaurs, a wooden triceratops and a coordinating brachiosaurus.

SLAP

A surprise slap hits your ass and you let out a muffled moan, dropping the mini dinosaurs as you clasp a hand on your mouth. Furiously looking around, you snap your head and spot Kento with a small smirk on his face.

“May I help you?” you ask, feeling a warm flush through your ears.

“Just testing out the wares,” he looks over your shoulder at the dinosaurs. “I’d like to get a new spatula and multi-taksers are a far superior choice.”

“Multi-tasking?”

“Those are adorable, pick out two you like. I’m going to look downstairs.”

Kento turns on his heel and walks off. You’re left in a haze and confusion. While you’re no stranger to cooking up new fun in the kitchen, you’ve kept kitchenware out of the equation thus far.

Grabbing the dinosaurs and heading downstairs, you spot Kento looking at a lovely collection of white and blue plates.

“Wouldn’t I make a better plate than that?” You stand up on your tippy toes and whisper in his ear.

“Don’t tempt me,” he takes a deep breath and slowly, deliberately, gently places the plate in his hands back on the stack.

You stand back down on your heels, hands running down Kento’s wide back and tracing the edges of his harness. Feeling the tense muscles around the soft leather, your mind wanders to what his back would look like wrapped in just the straps of an apron. Surveying the shelves nearby, you spot a rack filled with a rainbow of apron choices.

“What do you think?” you hold up a frilly green and orange affair. Kento starts to make his way over to you.

“If that’s what you want,” he gives in his most non-committal tone, nose wrinkled.

“Hm, how about this one?” you hold up a yellow and black patterned option.

“It’s a bit full-coverage, don’t you think?”

“Who do you think I’m shopping for?” you tilt your head as you hold it up to his chest for a quick guauge of sizing. Pleased with your choice, you sling it over your arm and start walking off to the register, happy with the items you’ve chosen.

Back outside, your purchases on one arm, the other wrapped around Kento’s arm as you continue wallking down the crowded streets in Kappabashi. Falling into a lock-step together, you can smell a light whiff of his gentle cologne. One of your favorite scents. You steal a glance upward at his stong jaw, unable to see exacltly where his eyes were pointed due to the dark lenses of his glasses.

“Let’s cross here, I think Kama Asa is just over there,” Kento points at a shop a bit further down the road.

“We can stop in every shop if that’s what you want, love,” you squeeze his arm as you both come to a stop at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change.

Entering the store, you see a few neat tables of shiny pots and pans. Fry pans and woks of varying sizes, shiny sauce pan…bowls? Why are they missing handles? You slip over to the display to inspect the wares and figure out how you would use a saucepan without a handle.

Meanwhile, your husband is standing at a long display of frying pans, eyeing up one with a dark sheen and a long handle. He’s speaking with a store worker who slips away after giving Kento a quick bow. He makes his way over to you, placing a small kiss on your temple.

“I found a great frying pan, it’ll arrive in two months. Hand-made in Kanagawa prefecture,” Kento is giddy as he explains the details of his new pan to you. While you enjoy cooking, Kento loves it and is the primary chef in the house. He not-so-secretly loves looking for new kitchen hardware, trying to find the elusive perfect utensils and tools.

“Yeah? And then what?” you wink and bite your lip lightly.

“I-what? And then I season it and make you fried eggs. What is going through your head?”

Your smile starts to fall and a light blush washes over your face. But then you hear a warm chuckle from your husband as he places his hand on your lower back.

“I’m not going to turn a frying pan into something sexual, unless you’re really into that old Atari game,” he continues at a whisper, mostly to himself. “Besides, I think it would hurt, and not in a pleasurable way, first and foremost.”

You shake your head as you get back to examining the handle-less pots.

“Well that’s clever. Using a speculum to grip a pot,” Kento reaches out to a metal gadget you were staring at.

“Excuse me?” you’re incredulous the word speculum just fell from Kento’s mouth. Sure, he’d knowledgeable about anything you’ve ever asked him of, and this entire outing has been nothing but hornily-charged banter and innuendo. But speculum?

“Surely you see it. Are you into doc-ow!” you cut off your husband with a light jab to the side and an exasperated sigh. The sigh is mostly filled with the contentment that he’d never say this around yours or his friends. Content that he can open himself with you to let all the weir

“Not at all! Let’s get on to the next place, I’m starting to get hungry.”

Back out on the street, you both slip into a shop dedicated to all things coffee gear. And you walk out with the receipt for a new syphon brewer to be shipped directly to your house.

You attempt a poorly-constructed joke about syphoning Kento however it falls flat. But the laughs still flow.

"An admirable attempt, but next time I'll just take a sip of your sweet nectar," and again, your husband causes you to gasp on lost words, feeling a twinge of arousal grow.

Kento rounds the corner and spots the shop he’s been looking for during this entire excursion. A knife shop to get his heirloom cleaver cleaned and inspected. He carefully pulls it from his bag in a protective case and box. The shop owner immediately recognizes the age and craftsmanship and he promises to treat it carefully. He asks you both to return in three hours.

“Let’s get lunch while we wait. What are you in the mood for?” Kento asks as you exit the shop.

You steer the two of you into the nearest hourly hotel.

“Kento, which bag has the spatula?”

Suddenly lunch can wait.

[cutleryclown]

Cover art for my friend's Sonic Forces rewrite!!

[amethystsoda]

Going even further back for this set… 90’s games

[witchofthesouls]

The last option for the Decepticons/Autobots to discover a Gadget is hilariously on point. No one but the whackiest inspector around would stumble upon actual aliens on their break but also ruin the enemy faction's cover. Spike just staring when the bots mention the encounter before he shows them the Inspector Gadget movie.

Prowl being friends with a Gadget just gives me Good Cop/Bad Cop vibes as the latter definitely isn't that threatening in an interrogation. Plus Go Go Gadget Toothpaste Slick is a funnier possible way to deter the science bots cause its sticky and feels weird. Also something a Cybertronian shouldn't try to rub off their optics haphazardly cause it smears.

A Gadget could happen in Aligned, Animated, and Earthspark. The latter being in the same (sorta) universe as G1 so it's a bigger possibility. For Aligned, it's because of Rescue Bots side since the whackiest shit tends to happen there, like Optimus going T-Rex, so a Gadget being made plus ending up entangled in Prime's shenanigans can happen.(Prime deserves an extra dose of weirdness.)

Finally Animated is another possibility cause the human villains being insanely diverse from serious to absurd leads to the possibility of a Gadget hero. Plus Captain Fanzone as their police chief makes it funnier. The poor man knows what shenanigans their rookie gets into and them accidentally kicking Sentinel in the bearings because of a glitch is expected for him.

Exactly! Just imagine the resident Autobot-aligned humans going, "Are you sure? Did Megatron throw too hard? Ratchet needs to look at the dent in your helm."

Meanwhile, the Decepticons are furiously searching for such a terrible and terrific monstrosity! Megatron is howling that "abomination" under his command!

Prowl and Inspector friendship because both of them understand how to be an outsider from their own kind from specialized equipment and situations outside their hands/choices. Prowl helps the poor Inspector from being shanghaied by the science 'bots. They become known as Prowl's "squishy new bird" since the Inspector is generally found perched on the mech's shoulder or using the propellor to buzz around him.

The Inspector is very much aware of how much their supplies are written off by taxpayers' dollars. If they're not on the job or in danger, they don't want to utilize the armed gadgets. At least the propellor can use gasoline. It's awkward to fuel as a station, so they have an empty fuel container they lug around on vacation or their downtime in the car trunk.

Ngl, I thought of TFA as well, but there's a whole lot of dark implications in that universe and I wanted to keep it light-hearted fun. Plus, you would think with all that sci-fi, futuristic stuff going on, there would be humans with cybernetic prosthetics and a lot of other supplemental or augmentation gear. Something from I, Robot, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, My Hero Academia, or Overwatch. Having an Inspector Gadget wouldn't be so far-fetched or as fun and hilarious.

Same reasons why TFP/Aligned and Earthspark were out as well.

[lirarey]

Actually, I came back to Penny and Talon somewhere in March 2019. I even had a double sheet of paper where I wrote a fanfic right in some lesson. The idea (or title?): "How to bring together favorite characters?". Yes, a reader who would bring together Talon and Penny. I remember that in the middle there was even written "another lesson on shipping". I understand that this's unlikely to be read, but I wanted to share my memories :D

I even remembered the scene where I (obviously, at the very beginning) read my file to understand how others saw me. OMG, that brought back another memory. I was Penny's cousin. And no, I'm not ashamed. If anyone has seen me in real life, we look pretty similar. I don't even know if I should write this...

[thembofics]

*me after learning u had a crush on Dr claw *

BOMBASTIC SIDE EYE

Y'all still judging huh?

[ghedin]

BOOX Palma.

[1wh4re1]

The MI6 mention in MW3 got me thinking about MI6 Double-O reader/oc on a joint op with the 141

[sohaibsmart]

Greatest ereader for 2025 | The Verge

Any e-book reader will allow you to cram a Magnificence and the Beast-sized library’s value of books in your pocket, however so will your telephone. An e-book reader provides a extra book-like studying expertise, with fewer distractions and fewer eye pressure, and lots of embody further options, like adjustable frontlighting. Some actually are pocketable. Others are waterproof or provide bodily…

[shlimon]

Book nerds! Imagine: Highlight a quote → instantly saves to your digital journal. This digital highlighter pen is your new reading ritual. ❤️ Geek out with me

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD��S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[thembofics]

So... I have a confession to make.

I used to have a crush on Dr. Claw (yes, the 1983 version) when I was a kid aaaand I may or may not be considering a Dr. Claw x Reader one-shot (spoiler: there's a Gadget x Reader fic in the drafts lmao)

If anyone wants to send in a request for Dr. Claw, go right ahead! The askbox is always open! If you want to specify which version of Dr. Claw you want, just let me know :)

[lionheartlr]

Must-Have Travel Tech and Gadgets for the Modern Explorer

In today’s digital age, technology has revolutionized the way we travel, making our adventures more convenient, connected, and enjoyable than ever before. From smartphones to portable chargers, there’s a vast array of travel tech and gadgets designed to enhance every aspect of the travel experience. In this article, we’ll explore some of the must-have tech essentials that savvy travelers…

[frownyalfred]

okay hear me out: a fic riffing off the “Robin meets the JL while Batman is away and bolts” post I made but it’s a horror fic told from Robin’s POV as he desperately tries to escape through Gotham, using every gadget and contingency Batman gave him, running to the point of collapse and then trying to turn around and do a last stand with Batman’s holdout from the deepest pocket on his belt, the one he promised B he’d only use if it was life or death, and —

and the big reveal is that the person who’s chasing him is Superman. who readers know and love as Clark Kent, but to a terrified Robin? to a Robin who was told in no uncertain terms to run and keep running if he ever saw him?

anyway, cue Clark getting a surprise hit of Kryptonite from the terrified twelve year old and then having to explain at the next League meeting why, and how, he terrorized Batman’s sidekick when he knew Gotham was off limits. and he has to explain to Batman, who is so righteously furious, so close to losing it then and there and bringing out the Kryptonite himself.