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miekasa · 4 years ago

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wait so i was scrolling through your blog (as per usual) and i saw that you brought up levi and his streamer gf briefly. care to elaborate a lil causeee im curious 👀👀

- 🖤

Absolutely, I can. He’s such a supportive bf even tho he’s far from a gamer himself, and very very proud of you 😌

Whatever game(s) you play, Levi knows the basics. He might not have ever played them himself, but he knows enough to recognize it if it ever comes up in conversation.

He doesn’t always watch your streams, and you can hardly tell when he does because he doesn’t comment or anything. He just tunes in when he’s free to support you and see what’s going on. Sometimes to peep on your comment section, but he’d never tell you that.

He doesn’t make donations. He’d just Apple Pay you money lmfao. Supportive emotionally and financially, but all your followers/subscribers don’t have to see that.

He knows when you’re recording content or streaming and typically doesn’t bother you. The only exceptions are (a) if he forgets or (b) you’ve been in your room for a while and he’s going in to check up on you.

He doesn’t forget often—and truthfully, when he walks in on your streams its not actually because he forgot; it’s because you’re online at a different time that usual and he didn’t know—but it’s pretty cute when he does. He catches himself pretty quickly, and silently asks you if you’re streaming; to which he gently closes the door and just texts you his inquiry.

He doesn’t even really disturb you—it’s not like he enters rooms cussing up a storm on full blast. Nobody could even tell he walked in, except for maybe a small lapse in your attention when you turned to him.

When you’ve been in your room for a while, he does come in to check on you. His intentions aren’t necessarily to get you away from the screen; he just wants to make sure you’ve had dinner or some snacks at the very least. When you have all night tournaments or streaming fests, he comes by with dinner for you; silently puts it on your desk, and on occasion, leaves you with a little head pat.

He doesn’t normally appear in your streams, but he is in two of your YouTube videos: one shopping haul, and once when he helped you make him/your friends in the Sims. They happen to be two of your highest viewed videos.

People constantly ask about him. They know Levi exists, but they don’t see him often, and newer fans especially are obsessed with catching a glimpse of your mysterious boyfriend on screen. If you asked him, he’d come in for a few seconds to show his face, but he wouldn’t do it unprompted.

You mention him, of course, it’s not like you’re hiding him away either. He comes up particularly often when you play with your friends or are just chatting in lobbies. You don’t exactly explicitly refer to him as your boyfriend, but you say his name—and so does Hange—and people kinda get the picture.

Hange constantly asking for Levi when you guys are playing together. It’s one of the few times Levi comes into your chat/comments to tell them to shutup. (Yes, your subscribers go crazy for the glimpse of Levi on your channel).

He’s not a gamer, and he sees no reason to disturb your streams by appearing if you don’t ask. But, also, he’s a little camera shy, not that he’d ever tell you that. You’ve got a lot of followers, he’s not prepared to be live in front of thousands of people every night; he’ll leave that up to you.

Levi built nearly everything in your gaming setup. From the adjustable standing desks, to the wall mounts for your accessories and decorations, to your chair, to the shelves. He built it all and tailored it to your exact taste and to fit your room perfectly.

So, sometimes you feel bad when people ask about stuff because you can’t exactly give them a link or recommendation—“Oh thank you! The thing is, my—well, Levi built the desk for me so you can’t buy it—but! There are some similar ones at IKEA!!”

(Levi scoffs ever so lightly when he sees that clip. His craftsmanship cannot be found at IKEA, but they can try).

He also helped mount the TV in your room so that the cables were hidden and everything. Truly a godsend. And whenever you wanna move things around, he’s there to help you. Sometimes he even has ideas of his own, “You were looking at accent walls the other day right? I think you could do something with this back wall…”

He does play games with you, just usually offscreen. He’s scarily good at first person shooters… even tho he claims to not have any past experience with them… extremely suspicious activity.

And when he mains D.Va and Symmetra then what. Then what.

Just don’t ask him to play Fornite. Ever. (He’d be good at it, but he feels so fucking dumb playing it especially when he can hear that he is competing against a twelve year old pls).

He plays games by himself, too. Think “classic” run of the mill console videos games, I guess, nothing too crazy; Zelda, Mario, Kirby… Animal Crossing. His island is nothing short of immaculate, his only regret is that he doesn’t have oranges as his island fruit. Levi really likes oranges (he got peaches instead).

He knows that you’re pretty popular and he’s super proud of you. That doesn’t mean he likes to see fancam style edits of you on his feed. He knows that you’re pretty but still 🙄🙄

Constantly on the look out for computer/keyboard parts that you mentioned. If he sees it online or anywhere else, he’ll try and snag it for you <3 that goes for new console games, too.

He’ll also periodically upgrade some of the tech in your setup. Get you a better mic, some more lighting for your desk, a cute desk mat he thinks you might like. He’s observant, so he knows your taste in design and takes note of things you mention.

Okay okay okay but imagine putting the headphones with the kitty ears on him. He wouldn’t even notice at first and then you turn on the LEDs and bam. Very focused, very cute kitty Levi playing games on your PC.

If you’ve got a merch store, he helps you run it, and by that I mean, he practically runs it for you. Periodically, he might even have a design idea. You can count on him to get things out for shipping right on time. It’s one of his many ways of supporting you.

He’s also the one who remembers to check your P.O. box for packages from fans and from companies. It was his idea initially, too (he wasn’t too crazy about anyone, even major brands having your home address on file).

Look, he knows you’ve got some super fans, and some people who really do adore you. That doesn’t mean he’s necessarily happy when you get sent non-tech or gaming related merch (like jewelry or shoes or whatever). If he happens to put them a little bit out of sight then no he did not <2

Occasionally he’ll meet someone who recognizes your name when it comes up in conversation. He very proudly confirms that yes, he is talking about you, the streamer.

Sometimes, people will even recognize him back—“Oh, so you’re Levi, then!” Obviously. You only have one Levi in your life 🙄🙄

#🖤 anon #no bc him being a little camera shy is so cuteeeee #so easy for him to grumble and play it off as his normal grumpy aloof self but he’s shyyyyyyyyy #it’s okay levi you’re handsome and the people love you 😚😚😚😚#levi.ask

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werkwerkelizaaa · 4 years ago

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Xoxo Droplets’ Jerk Squad Band AU

So this came to me while I was listening to Yeah Right off of Evanescence’s latest album, The Bitter Truth.

Yeah I know, but hear me out:

•They were all in an after-school program for ~cultivating musical talent in troubled youth~

•Even though most of them cannot stand each other, as a whole they’re almost magical onstage

• Nate is the frazzled manager of course, constantly stretched within an inch of his life but he claims a perfect (by his standards) show is worth all the stress

• Bae writes the lyrics, handles a majority of the PR– if somebody tries to spin his words he can spin it right back on them– and I also feel he could play the electric violin for the songs that call for it (it’s a thing and it’s epic)

•Jeremy seems to be the type to have piano aggressively encouraged to him by his parents, so he’s on keyboard and composes most of the music

Imagine Bae leaning over Jeremy “No no cupcake, I know it’s difficult for anyone to keep up with my genius, but you modulate the key on the next line” and pointing

“If you don’t get that finger out of my face I will stuff this sheet music up your nasal cavity”

“...and don’t call me cupcake”

•JB takes lead guitar and does a lot of showboating, works the crowd and is usually in some sort of scandalous headline every week but she loves it

•Shiloh plays bass and provides backup vocals, he’s annoying but they keep him towards the front of the stage because his energy is infectious so we might as well put him to use

• I can see Everett having the ability to use both hands equally well, so he’s on drums and enjoys having his finger on the very heartbeat of the metaphorical system, probably dabbles in the synth too

•Pran is the one-man tech wizard and has as tiny of a presence as possible, only the most hardcore fans know what he even looks like

•[If we bring the reader into this, they were hand-selected by JB for their seemingly sweet, friendly, conflict-averse demeanor as well as their powerful voice– she didn’t want too much competition for the boys’ attention]

•[Whether her judgement is sound remains to be seen, but my money’s on not]

•[On the other hand, there’s still enough onstage chemistry between them to play it up for the fans and the press]

•They definitely squabbled over the name

• “Hear me out: Baend.” “NO” “JB and the JBs” “oh, please” “get real” “could we squish all of our names together?” “Ah yes, because none of the members of the band could ever switch out, it’s not like that happens only all the time”

• “What about ‘That Band’?” “Seriously?” “It’s no worse than anything else that’s been suggested” “Ugh fine” “wait I was being sarcastic” “well too bad we’re sticking with it now” “this is all your fault Jeremy”

each member has a good amount of groupies/fangirls. JB, Everett, and Shiloh revel in the spotlight and have a lot of overnight visitors to their respective rooms, Bae pretends he’s above all that but he’ll have the occasional “dalliance” as well which is,,, not what you’d think

Legit he sells a limited amount of ‘day dates’ to his fans at every tour stop which consists of him hanging out with them for a certain price, it’s only word-of-mouth through the hardcore base which just adds to the mystique

• Nate and Jeremy are like “gross”, but at least they have fans and at the very least that’s good for both business and their image

• Pran HATES it lol he’s just like “Why. Why.”

• “Must be a bunch of burnt out losers who weren’t hugged enough as children.”

• They all constantly diss everyone else’s outfits and haircuts, naturally

•Not the musical instruments though– except for in extreme cases– because that’s serious business

Jeremy: trips onstage

Everett: *ba-dum-tsss*

•Pran with light spotting/mic check shenanigans

•Shiloh: leans over to plug his bass in

•Pran: Points all the spotlights directly at him

•Shiloh: temporarily blinded

•Pran: evil chuckle

---------------

• Nate: Sound check, let’s go!

•Pran: turns it down low

•JB: Hello, world! ...it’s not working. Testing, one two three.

•Everett, offstage: Is it even turned on?

•Jeremy: uh yeah, the light’s green.

•Pran: snickering to himself in the back

•JB: COME ON YOU STUPID WORTHLESS PIECE OF S—

Ear-splitting, electronic screech

• Everyone minus JB and Pran: JB!!

Jeremy’s keyboard is absolutely pristine, and you cannot convince me otherwise

There’s not a fingerprint to be seen, he might even wear gloves while handling it just to keep it impeccable

Def makes the stagehands and assistants wash their hands and glove up before moving it, that’s not even a question

You could probably eat right off the thing, not that he’d let you

•JB has some cool pins on the strap of her guitar and has a few different guitars she rotates though depending on her mood

•Everett and Shiloh have similar stickers on their respective instruments, they still mock each others’ taste in decoration though because them

“Give us a headbang, Jeremy!”

“No.”

• Jeremy [and reader] do their best in making Nate’s job as easy as possible, which is very much needed since directing the rest of the members is worse than herding cats

Three minutes to showtime

•Everett: hey has anyone seen my drumsticks?

•Nate: WHAT

•Nate: YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS RIGHT NOW

• Everett: Lol jk here they are in my back pocket

•Bae: Wonnndderrrfulll, crisis averted.

• Shiloh: Everett, that’s not really funny...

• Everett: F***ing can it, freckles.

• Shiloh: :( you can it.

• JB: everybody shut up before I make you shut up

• Everett: ;) is that so?

• Jeremy: kill me now.

• Nate, offstage: I need a raise...

•[Reader once walked in on Nate aggressively rubbing at his eyes and sniffling after a particularly rough week, but he brushed it off as seasonal allergies and they didn’t press the matter at the time]

•Roommate musical chairs kept happening at every single stop until finally everyone was fed up with everybody, even the ones who usually get along, so Bae and Nate decided on getting everyone their own room while touring– they even added a clause to the contract to make sure it would happen for the divas (yes that includes the two of them)

• Credit to the amazing @gb-patch for creating the best worst guys you’ll ever love

•hey, psst. Before you go, check this out: https://werkwerkelizaaa.tumblr.com/post/648073310973952000/xoxo-droplets-jerk-squad-band-au

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queenlua · 4 years ago

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hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue. see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP. and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP. so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on. there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc. you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

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maya-net · 5 years ago

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Documentation on a Silver Exorcist, a Small Medium, a Smiling Siren, et al. - Chapter 1

Chapter 1 - Stars Align: Emma Xing Qixin, Tech Support and Professional Administrator of the Unofficial Zheng Ge’s Fanclub

The rustling of the seven large plastic packages of heavily discounted ramen complements the unforgivably nasty squeak of the styrofoam that protects the equally heavily discounted century eggs that Emma had spent the last of her weekly budget on. Squashed together in a trusty, faded blue shopping bag, they are placed very carefully on the chair. Her backpack is dropped just slightly less carefully onto another chair, and she rolls her shoulders, breathing in the various blends of caffeine and sugar wafting around the SunDollarsTM store that she had desperately scouted for.

Xiqiang glides into the chair opposite, and with an elegant slide of an arm, slips Emma’s other equally faded blue shopping bag on to the seat beside her. Emma doesn’t understand how a human being can be that graceful, and sends a silent apology to her mom for being a failure of a daughter.

“I will order some refreshments,” Xiqiang’s voice washes over the background noise of the other patrons in the café. “What would you like? It will be my treat.”

“Oh no no no, no need! I have -” Emma grunts as she bends over her backpack and pulls down the zipper ornamented with the keychain of a blond cyborg, “a gazillion SundollarsTM gift cards! My college orientation and faculty events have the occasional lucky draws or mini contests, and I’d always get something out of them. It’s great, really. I regift them to my friends for birthdays. Saves me time and money from having to buy actual birthday presents. I keep my money, they get their coffee. But. Um. You didn’t hear that.” With some difficulty, she wrestles out a bright red gift card from the stack that is threatening to burst out of the seams of the pouch sewn into her backpack. “Ah, I’ll save this table. Could you help me order a large caramel frappe? And maybe one of their giant cookies. Any flavour is fine. Please and thank you!”

A pause. “Very well,” Xiqiang graciously replies as she accepts the gift card.

Seven minutes later, Emma is happily slurping down her frappe as a countdown timer to the livestream event pops up on her laptop screen. 47 minutes to go. Her ears are now plugged with a pair of earphones. Opposite her, Xiqiang is steadily typing away on her laptop with unnaturally impeccable posture.

It is at this very moment. That the universe decides to be an utter demon and opens the gates of chaos on what was supposed to have been a peaceful night with Emma Xing and the livestream of her Zheng ge, actor-singer and golden-hearted, multi-talented John Zheng.

Incoming Video Call: Estelle Xing

Emma accepts the call on her phone, and props it up on the table with the camera angled at her. She connects her second pair of earphones (won from a secondary school Poetry-in-Motion Competition with her epic poem Blood is a Vein Work of Art-eries) and stuffs the side with the microphone into her right ear. “Mom.”

“Emma. The house has no WiFi. My phone has not enough data to stream Gege’s event.”

“What. Why? Is it the router again? Did you turn it off for thirty seconds and turn it back on again?”

"Yes. Actually, I called Cellularity and they said that they were having a city-wide network issue.”

“Tch. D*mn company. I keep telling you to switch service providers!” Emma pinches the bridge of her nose. “Wait, where’s Gramma? We all know she's the tech-savvy one, shame on you.”

“... She’s with her tai chi group today.”

“What?! I thought that was next week! And how could she miss Gege’s stream?!”

“... They rescheduled because one of their grandsons is getting married next week...”

“... Just... Go to a café or somewhere with WiFi and stream it there. Do you have leftover SundollarsTM gift cards from my last visit?”

Emma’s mom grimaces. “Yes. See, I actually thought of that. I’m at the nearest one.” The camera angle wobbles, and the queue of chattering teenagers at the cashier behind Emma’s mom blips into view for a hot second.

Emma feels a strange sense of pride well up in her chest. “Mommy! So smart!”

Mommy laughs weakly. “Haha. Ah. Yah. I bought a strawberry shake. And then they told me that SunDollarsTM’s WiFi is actually with Cellularity. All the branches. In the whole city.”

… “Mom. Why is your luck so bad. Also. Why! Are! You! Drinking a strawberry shake! You are diabetic!”

“Almost diabetic! And this is low sugar! And! All my good luck was used up to give birth to you. Emmiee~”

“Don’t Emmie me! Aiyah, hang up hang up, don’t waste your data. I’ll message Danny. He’s with DiGiTellTM, not that bloodsucking Cellularity. You can go leech off his Wifi.”

“Aiyoh, your Danny, how can you do this to him - “

“ByeMomloveyou.” Emma ends the call, and snatches her phone off the table to begin typing at the lightspeed typical of her generation. The baby blue smiley starfish phone charm attached to it smacks her knuckles.

“Um. Pardon me,” Xiqiang coughs politely. Emma’s eyes dart up. “Your earphones weren’t connected properly.”

Oh.

“Oh. Aaaaaaahahahahahahaha! Ha! Sorry about that! I’ll just...” Emma mumbles and screws in the earphone jack infinitesimally. “... tighten... this. I don’t use this pair very much. I forgot it does that. Sorry.”

“It is fine.” Xiqiang blinks at her curiously. “Your mother is in WalaysiaTM?”

Emma’s fingers pause in their assault on her phone’s keyboard, brown eyes wide. “How did you know? Oh. Oh of course.” She slaps her forehead. “Our SundollarsTM WiFi here is obviously fine. We obviously don’t have Cellularity here in CanataTM. And yeah, I kind of revert to my accent when I’m with my family. You can tell?”

Xiqiang nods politely. “I see. Well, I do hope that this works out for you and your mother. You seem to be... close?”

Emma beams. “Thanks!” She returns to her phone.

LuckyStar: Danny.

No reply. She frowns.

LuckyStar: Danny DanyDanny. Dannyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Seen by BetterDanU 7.08PM

Emma’s nostrils flare.

LuckyStar: DANNY YOU DIPSTICK WAKE UP WAKEUP I KNOW UR AWAKE EMERGENCY

LuckyStar: DANIEL NG! U WAKE UP OR ILL POST THAT NEW YEARS VIDEO OF U. U KNOW WHICH ONE

BetterDanU: …

BetterDanU: I actually WAS SLEeping because some ppl actually have to WORK friday nite and want to zzz sat morning.

BetterDanU: Have u not headr of timezones. WHAT DO U WANT

LuckyStar: Liar, i know ur schedule, u were def not sleeping.

LuckyStar: Gege’s livestream is today!

BetterDanU: … I know. U wouldnt shut up abt it. wat do u want

LuckyStar: Cellularity’s wifi is down all city and mom cant stream it

BetterDanU: tell her to go to sundollars

LuckyStar: sundollars is w cellularity! 😡

BetterDanU: … bloodsuckers.

LuckyStar: I KNOW. Anyway, mom is at the sundollars near our house. U know which one. Go pick her up n let her use ur wifi pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaz

BetterDanU: …......… fine.

LuckyStar: tnx ur the best!

BetterDanU: go away

With that situation handled, Emma neatly bites off one point of her star-shaped cookie, and turns her eyes back to her laptop screen. 36 minutes to go.

Score: Emma – 1; Universe – 0.

The Universe decides to try again.

Incoming Video Call: Emily Xing

Emma slowly swipes across her phone screen after triple-checking that her earphones are 100% plugged in.

“... Hi Gramma.”

“Emma!” Several ladies’ heads of various artificial shades of red, brown and black bob into view behind Emma’s grandmother’s face on Emma’s phone. “Why can’t we log in to your VooDooTM account on Mimi’s computer?”

“... Gramma, did you all reschedule your tai chi group to watch Gege’s stream together using my VIP account which you definitely bragged about to them?”

“Emily, we kowtow! Your Emma is the best!” hollers one of the ladies. Emma’s grandmother preens.

Gramma, Emma despairs, why are you so Asian?

“Emmie~”

Emma closes her eyes and mutters, “Don’t Emmie me...”

“We have VooDooTM open on my laptop, but there is seven of us and one laptop is not enough! Mimi’s computer cannot access the page! It says – it says – what does it say?!” Emma’s grandmother yells.

“This content is not available in your country!” Aunty Mimi yells back from somewhere behind.

Emma sighs in exasperation, “Gramma, they’ll need to install a VPN. Do you remember how we did it on your computer?”

Emma’s grandmother is stunningly silent for a solid three seconds, and shakes her head. Emma sighs again. “What’s the address?”

One minute later:

LuckyStar: Danny danny danny

LuckyStar: is everytng ok w mom?

BetterDanU: yeah, shes taken over my living room and tv I hooked up to the comp.

BetterDanU: Shes drinkin a poisonous lppking pink drink and eating those giant star cookies they hv. Theyre not going to last until the end of the dtream.

LuckyStar: … wait.

LuckyStar: wHAT COOKIES. Get them away frm her, shes almost diabetic!

BetterDanU: how can someone be slmost diabetic???

BetterDanU: … she says its low sugar. theyre actually rpetty good.

BetterDanU: *pretty

LuckyStar: u traitor! and of all the typos to correct!

BetterDanU: ….......

LuckyStar: anyway, DANNY I NEED UR HELP ITS ANOTHER EMERGENCY

BetterDanU: what now

LuckyStar: dont tell mom this,

BetterDanU: oh? gossip?

LuckyStar: but gramma is with her taichi grp now and theyre trying to stream Gege’s event on two computers but the second one wont work becz they need vpn on that one

BetterDanU: Wow. brutal gramma.

LuckyStar: danny pleeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaase can u go help them install the vpn

LuckyStar: pleeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaase 🥺🥺🥺

BetterDanU: ….............

BetterDanU: where r they

Twenty-ish minutes and one VPN install and seven impressed old ladies and one harrassed Daniel Ng later, Emma daintily bites off the second point of her star cookie.

Emma – 2; Universe – 0.

Xiqiang sips her tea quietly as Emma narrates this second victory to her, and then digresses into hero-worshipping multi-talented, golden-hearted John Zheng.

Emma swoons. “We all stan him so much across multiple generations! Sure, he’s eye candy, but you know what, even I can admit that, objectively, he’s not the best looking. No but!” She sucks in some of her frappe to quickly rehydrate, “Even though his eyes are not 100% symmetrical, you know they’re 100% real! Can’t say the same about everyone else! Not that there’s anything wrong with that. And! Even though his teeth aren’t 100% perfect... You should see his smile! Oh! My! Heart!” She clutches said heart. “So genuine! Like a bunny! And most of all, that VOICE! That BRAIN! And that HEART!”

Xiqiang tilts her head slightly in what is definitely interest.

“You should watch his songs and dramas and his interviews! He’s really mature, has a charming sort of wisdom, and he really understands his characters. He works so, so hard, and he’s super nice to everyone, even his janitors! And even his haters! Like, what the heck!” A deep sigh. “He is. The Best Guy. In the Universe.”

And thus, the Universe’s third Attempt at utter buffoonery manifests itself in the yet another round of buzzing of Emma’s Very Tired phone. Emma slowly slumps in her seat. Xiqiang’s almond eyes flick to the poor phone, and she excuses herself as she returns to her own laptop for business-y exorcist stuff.

Emma breathes in. Very Deeply. And returns to her Very Tired phone.

Alicia: Hi Emma!

Alicia: Its been a while. I hope you are well!

Emma scrolls up to check the last conversation she had with Alicia. Eight months ago, when they had exchanged the obligatory birthday wishes, and then slinked back to their respective lives until the next birthday.

It’s a bit sad, actually. Emma and a handful of secondary school friends had once been pretty tight, having gone through the horrors of academia and adolescence together. But ever since graduation, everyone had sort of just... drifted apart. With the exception of Danny, practically everyone she knew and was close to had gone on to different cities and even countries to pursue tertiary education in fields so varied you would wonder how everyone had even managed to grow up together in the same academic cohort forced to take up certain courses due to the way their country’s totally not flawed educational system had been structured because of course everyone absolutely agrees on the complete relevance to real life that is inherent in subjects such as Physics and Geography and Moral Studies (which, in all fairness, would be considered a fairly necessary subject especially in today’s society, had it not been based on pure rote memorisation of the regimented definitions of pre-determined moral values instead of critically applying said moral values in the written scenarios thrown to them every exam) and flippin’ dipsticky CALCULUS and and and -

And we digress.

Emma: Alicia! It’s been a while!

Emma: How may I help u?

Alicia: Heehee. 😇

Alicia: iirc, I think u mentioned that u got a VIP VooDooTM account?

Emma: … Alicia you leech! Go buy ur own account!

Alicia: im poor and u know it!

Emma: We’re millennials! We're all poor!

Emma: go upgrade with a 30 day free trial. Then just unsubscribe after.

Alicia: I can’t. 😭 I did it before and ti remembers my email add and wont let me do it again.

Alicia: *it *won’t

Emma: Then use another email add! We’re millennials! Who doesn’t have a back up email account?

Alicia: I did! I used up my JmailTM, insightTM, innet, etc etc accounts last year

Emma: Use ur parents’!

Alicia: I did! They were

Alicia: Confused when they got the notifs but thank goodness they thought it was Junk 😊

Emma: … Girl, how much drama do you watch on there.

Alicia: Too much. Im in too many fandoms.

Alicia: EMMA PLEASE! It's just to watch John Zhengs promo livestream for The Fox today! I swear I will not misuse ur account!

Alicia: One day when I have money, I swear I will buy my own account.

Emma: That is a lie and we both know it.

Alicia: 🤐

Emma remembers their shared afternoons of literal tears after every Calculus test they barely passed, and curses her soft heart as she gives Alicia her user name and password in an act of benevolence which she somehow has a feeling she will come to regret.

Alicia: Thank you sm. U rock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Emma: Its so u don’t get desperate enough to do anytng illegal.

Alicia: We both know im not that smart lol

Emma: We are legal! And scrupulous!

Emma: For Zheng ge!

Alicia: For Zheng ge!

“John Zheng seems to have an unusually loyal fanbase,” Xiqiang comments from behind her laptop. Emma nods absent-mindedly. She has barely bitten off the third point of her star cookie when her Very Very Tired phone begins buzzing again.

Incoming Video Call: BetterDanU

No longer keeping track of her score with the Universe, Emma sinks lower into her chair under Xiqiang’s intrigued gaze, and weakly answers her phone, “Hello?”

She does not expect her grandmother’s distraught face under the profile name of BetterDanU: “Emmie! Why can’t we log into your account with another computer? It says that – that – Danny ah, what does it say?”

Emma nearly spits out blood. “How many devices are you trying to log into?!” Her hard-earned, greatly coveted VIP account that no one else seemed to want to buy for themselves allowed simultaneous sign-ins to a maximum of ten different devices, a feature that was absolutely necessary for the three generations of the Xing family.

“Mimi’s daughters and granddaughters came downstairs and heard about Zheng ge’s livestream. Two laptops are not enough for all of us, so of course we had to get more!”

Emma sends a silent thank you to Danny who by now must be an expert on VPN installations. Speaking of which.

“Danny, you there? Just sign up for a free 30-day trial account. And don’t forget to unsubscribe later.”

“I did.” Danny’s muffled voice sounds admirably calm, but there is definitely the subtlest note of misery in it. “Aunty Mimi’s granddaughter invited her neighbourhood friends to watch the stream, and we are out of accounts.”

“How! Many! Computers?!”

Emma thinks she hears a suspicious clearing of the throat from Xiqiang that may or may not have been a laugh. Emma locks eyes with her in despair.

There is a tiny, tiny curl of Xiqiang’s lips as she casually remarks, “I am done with my e-mails for the day, and would like to relax with some form of entertainment. VooDooTM seems to have quite the selection of highly rated dramas like you advertised so eagerly to me earlier, and I have been told that there will be a promotional livestream this evening for the much-anticipated... The Fox?” There is definitely a sparkle in those almond eyes. “I thought it might interest you to know that I have decided to watch this livestream, and will do so on my newly purchased VIP account, the user details of which -” she slides over a SundollarsTM napkin covered in the prettiest handwriting Emma has ever had the good fortune to lay her bloodshot eyes on, “ - are written here.”

Emma stares at her with now goo-goo eyes. “Xiqiang! You are a literal angel!”

“Xi-what? Who are you with?” Danny’s head pops into view next to Gramma’s gleeful face.

“Danny! I’m hanging up! I’ll send you a new user account info you guys can use!”

“What -” his calm façade is definitely slipping.

Emma does not hear the curious titters of “Xiqiang? Wah! What an intimidating name!” “Who would dare to name their son Xiqiang?” “Must be very strong!” “Must be very shuai!” as she chirps in reply, “A professional exorcist, your saviour, and my new bf!”

A delicate clink of a white plate ladened with fresh chocolate chip muffins jerks Emma’s eyes up from her phone. “Oh, a snack for the stream? Xiqiang, did you order this? You shouldn’t have!”

Xiqiang leans forward to divide the muffins evenly. “It is fine.”

Danny chokes on the other line, “What what what -”

“Now don’t bother me anymore, Zheng ge’s livestream is going to start. Check your message! I’ll send you the info! See you later! Bye, Gramma! Bye, Aunties! Enjoy the stream! Zheng ge fighting!”

LuckyStar: [photo attached]

LuckyStar: Isn’t that THE prettiest handwriting you have ever seen?

LuckyStar: Oh, but if you can’t read it, the login name is YXQ_Gege

LuckyStar: and password is LuckyStar123

LuckyStar: wow. what a sense of humour.

LuckyStar: Anyway! U seriously rock! Thanks Danny! I owe u my life!

LuckyStar: Aunty mimi makes seriously good cakes, so u might as well stay.

LuckyStar: And remember, don’t tell mom!!!

BetterDanU: WHO IS XIQIANG AND WHY IS HIS PASSWORD UR USERNAME

The star cookie is decimated as Emma congratulates herself on a job well done against the schemes of the Universe. Her laptop screen is flooded with comments when John Zheng’s shy smile fades into view as the livestream finally, finally begins.

“Gege!” Emma whisper-squeals. “You can’t hear me and you don’t know I exist! But! You will not believe the night I’ve just had! Your face heals my eyes and your heart heals my soul!” She silences her desperately buzzing phone.

Xiqiang breathes in deeply, and lets herself smile for the first time in a very long time. After an unusual evening of using the Skytrain for the first time, encountering a low-levelled spirit which the Council had not thought to Cleanse, meeting the most interesting Class Three medium who was currently hugging her backpack as she immersed herself in a long-awaited livestream of a clearly beloved celebrity who she had taken great pains to introduce Xiqiang to, and putting the tiniest dent in her bank account to sign up for a VooDooTM account for various reasons, Xiqiang relaxes in her chair, and does not let herself think about tomorrow.

Character Profiles

1. Emma Xing Qixin

Emma is derived from the Germanic word ermen meaning "whole" or "universal". Emma is also used as a diminutive of Emmeline, Amelia or any other name beginning with "em".

星 (Xīng): star

运气 (Yùnqì): luck

欣 (Xīn): happy

Height: 154 cm; 5.05 ft | 159 cm (error; there is a story behind this)

Tools: Several reuseable shopping bags, backpack, blond cyborg keychain, laptop, secondhand phone, baby blue smiley starfish charm bought by her mom Estelle and customised further by her grandmother Emily

2. Xiqiang

希望 (Xīwàng): hope

强度 (Qiángdù): strength

For the sake of this story, “Xiqiang” is considered a very masculine name.

Height: 179 cm; 5.87 ft

Tools: Laptop, traditional calligraphy brush set, angled-tip pen set, normal ballpoint pen set

3. Estelle Xing

Estelle is a female given name of Latin origin, and means star.

星 (Xīng): star

Yes, her name literally means Star Star.

Emma Xing’s mother. Has rather bad luck. She admits that, although her daughter can drive her up the wall, she is her greatest blessing and happiness.

4. Daniel Ng

Daniel is a masculine given name and a surname of Hebrew origin. It means "God is my judge".

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Ng (pronounced [ŋ̍]; English approximation often /ɪŋ/ or /ɛŋ/) is a Cantonese transliteration of the Chinese surnames 吳/吴 (Mandarin Wú) and 伍 (Mandarin Wǔ). Alternately, it is a common Hokkien transcription of the name 黃/黄 (Pe̍h-ōe-jī: N̂ɡ, Mandarin Huáng).

Emma Xing’s errand boy. And former classmate. The real MVP.

5. Emily Xing

Emily: "rival" or industrious and hardworking, comes from the Latin name Aemilia.

星 (Xīng): star

Emma Xing’s grandmother. Is more techno-savvy than her daughter/Emma’s mother Estelle Xing. Story behind that TBA.

6. Alicia

Alicia means “of noble kind/sort/type” (from Germanic “adal” = noble + “heit” = kind/sort/type).

Emma Xing’s friend from secondary school. They have both narrowly passed Calculus exams together, which cannot be said for all their classmates.

7. John Zheng

The name John is a theophoric name originating from the Hebrew name יוֹחָנָן‎ (Yôḥānān), or in its longer form יְהוֹחָנָן‎ (Yəhôḥānān), meaning "YHWH has been gracious".

战争 (Zhànzhēng): war

Author is now too lazy to come up with a Chinese name, thank you very much.

Author’s Notes

Character profiles will not be written for every single character because ain’t nobody got time for that. They will be updated as the story progresses. If I have the discipline to actually write this dang story. \o/

This is just a test run. I have not truly touched creative writing in a very, very long time, and have sadly lost many different characters and plot bunnies over the years as I never had the will to just put pen to paper, or finger to keyboard. And neither have I ever tried tackling anything this ambitious, if you can call this ambitious. (Well, actually, I did make a pathetic attempt at a novel ten or so years ago, and reading THAT draft just made me cringe and shrivel up and die on the inside. Which will probably happen to this fic in ten years’ time? \o/ )

Oh my gosh, I’m so tired of formatting this now. Please excuse any typos because I just. Cannot.

If you somehow stumbled across this fic and read until the end, bless your heart, bless your eyes, and thank you for reading!

#DSESMSS #Documentation on a Silver Exorcist A Small Medium A Smiling Siren et al.#Documentation #fic #words #writing #my writing #detentio mea #do not copy to another site #don't copy to another site #derp #maya-net

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cryptid-bloodhound · 6 years ago

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Legends Crime AU

After some great suggestions from: @daughterofthewinedude, @sunflower-key, @ajays-lullaby, and @unsightedjoker I decided to expand upon the Crime AU and fill in the blanks thanks to them! If there are more suggestions, let me know! I’m always open to them (:

So, again thank you for the suggestions, they’re a huuuge help!

Basic Roles

under the cut bcus I rambled again, oops. If yall want to know more, just hmu! I might make individual character ‘profiles’ if there’s interest. Also, if anyone wants to use this for their own crime setting/au then feel free! (i’d totally love to be tagged in stuff bcus im a hoe for crime aus)

Bloodhound - Unknown Assassin - They're independent and usually can’t be hired as they seem to be working down some sort of list. They aren’t in it for the money, clearly. However, if you plead your case and it’s a good one (in their eyes) the person you’re targeting might just disappear one day. Occasionally they’ll play the silent, scary backup if one of their associates/friends needs it. Nobody knows who they are, where they came from, how to contact them, or what the hell is up with them. It’s been noted that whenever they stop by a city, notoriously nasty criminals happen to go missing. All that’s known about them is that nobody escapes Bloodhound once they start their hunt.

Lifeline - Ex-Mob Princess/Mob Doc - Ajay Che would have been considered a Mob Princess if she had stayed within her Family Ranks. Her parents made very little effort to hide the truth of their profits from her. Disgusted, she left as soon as she could and swore to never join the life. Instead, she became a doctor in an effort to help people and make up for what her family has done. However, her childhood friend Octavio drug her back into the life unintentionally. He’d get hurt and show up at her doorstep again and again. Soon enough, other mobsters and criminals started arriving, earning her the unspoken title of Mob Doc. Now it’s not uncommon to find random Family members just lounging around her place. She decided to just say ‘to hell with it’ and try to act as some sort of Moral Compass for the crew.

Octane - Ex-Mob Prince/Demolitionist/Arsonist - His family and Ajay’s are closely intertwined. They grew up together thanks to the meetings between his parents and hers. However, unlike Ajay, he didn’t feel a moral repulsion at what their families were doing. If anything, he was bored. They weren’t extreme enough. It was almost all Blue Collar crimes, nothing explosive or violent. So, in typical Octavio fashion, he jumped ship and looked for something faster, flashier, more dangerous. It landed him in the ranks of his current Family as their Demolitions and Arson guy. He managed to drag Ajay back into their lifestyle after blowing off his own legs when he blew up the building of someone who pissed him off. He may not be the smartest or most level-headed member, but there’s no one more willing to jump into a fight or play with explosives than him.

Mirage - Jack of Trades - runs the ‘Cosa Nostra’-esque bar called the Paradise Lounge. It’s a neutral meeting grounds for the varying Families and it is an unwritten rule that nobody is allowed to fight in its premise. It’s the only ‘safe spot’ in the city. He has several different jobs for the Family. Aside from running the bar and helping to launder money, he is a document forger, a con artist, tech expert and is capable of talking people out of trouble one way or another. Basically, if someone needs to ‘disappear’ or get out of trouble, they come to ‘Mirage’.

Bangalore - Ground Enforcer/Collector - An ex-spec ops soldier who left the service after the mysterious ‘disappearance’ of her brother when he was on leave. She is certain it was a rival gang who did something to him. So, she’s started a crusade to find out what happened to him and avenge him one way or another. She joined the Family after crossing paths with them on more than one occasion. After witnessing her impressive skills, they offered her whatever resources she needed to finish her quest in exchange for her services leading and training their ‘troops’. She also isn’t shy on collecting the debts owed to the family.

Gibraltar - Allied Boss - Makoa Gibraltar isn’t your typical Crime Lord. For starters, he doesn’t actively harm innocent people. If anything, he is closer to a vigilante than an evil mobster. He started his biker gang after witnessing one too many hate crimes and seeing too many horrible people walk free from a corrupt system. He protects victims from their attackers during tenuous things like court trials and breaks up hate crimes he sees in progress. He’s become affectionately noted throughout the city by its citizens and even the police like to turn a blind eye when they can when he’s seen protecting someone (or beating the ever-loving shit out of some asshole). He has a shaky alliance with The Family. At the moment, they haven’t done anything notably horrible and have helped fund his growing group. They even slip him some info every now and again about places and people who might need a ‘meeting’ with Gibraltar.

Crypto - Double Agent Hacker - Tae Joon Park is technically ‘dead’. After being framed by The Family for the murder of his adopted sister Mila, he decided it was best to stick with the idea of being dead and created a new identity for himself. Filled with a searing need for revenge, he’s entered into the Family under the guise of being their expert Hacker and pro at Espionage. There’s no code he can’t crack and no information he can’t find. He’s capable of bringing empires down from behind his keyboard and screen. That’s exactly what he plans on doing to The Family. Only, he’s starting to notice a very strange pattern. Not everyone in the Family seems to be aware of the shady business going on. Some appear to be victims themselves that are being played. Now, he also has to decide who is guilty and who’s just like him - a pawn.

Caustic - Wild Card Killer - Considered an Associate as he refuses to formally join The Family as a Made Man. Alexander Nox is also technically ‘dead’. After a run-in with the law (and a subsequent escape from prison), he had the local forger Mirage falsify evidence of his death and craft him a new identity. He functions as an interrogator and a cleaner when he feels the fancy. He’s made it very clear that he is, under no circumstance, beholden to what the Boss wants. He helps because the Boss offers him a practically endless supply of test subjects in exchange for extracting information from the people and disposing of the bodies. He also mentors Wattson in the ways of proper disposal. What his end goals are, nobody really knows and nobody wants to ask.

Wraith - Shadow Broker/Assassin - Renee Blasey is something of an enigma. Few people know her name beyond ‘Wraith’ and fewer still know what she looks like. She hides in the shadows, gathering information and eliminating targets with precision. There’s a rumor that she’s the one who brought the newcomer Crypto into the fold and that they’ve worked together in the past. Perhaps he was the one who freed her from a rival gang’s clutches. Due to her apparent connections all over the place and an almost unending supply of information, she was held captive and tortured for information. After her violent and bloody escape, she stumbled across the Family and they welcomed the notable information broker with open arms. How she gets the information she does, no one knows. She is always elusive about it. ‘A little birdy told me.’ ‘The voices knew’.

Pathfinder - Transport Expert - A ‘defective’ MRVN unit because he was too free-thinking and asked too many questions, namely: ‘what happened to my creator?’ He was going to be decommissioned and shut down permanently when a group of strangers broke into the facility and ransacked the place. After they saved him from being decommissioned, he followed them around like a puppy and unintentionally joined the Family. He functions somewhere between ‘getaway/transport expert’ and ‘team mascot’. It’s thought that he might have witnessed some damning things and that’s why he was going to be decommissioned. In the process, his memories were corrupted so it’s almost impossible to truly tell. They’ve begun proper work on restoring his memories now that the technical geniuses Wattson and Crypto have joined up alongside Mirage.

Wattson - Security/Business Front/Cleaner- Daughter of an Associate. She didn’t know her dad worked with the mob until she was older. After the initial surprise, she joined in on the business, going so far as to becoming Made. She runs the security service front known as ‘Apex Protection’ that also doubles as their money laundering business. Nobody gets past her defenses to get to Family. (It helps that her dad was rather close with the notoriously effective cleaner Caustic. She’s picked up a few tips from him and now helps with the cleaning when needed)

#Apex Legends #Crime AU #this was longer than expected huh

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minnie-marvel · 7 years ago

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Crown Fell (Peter Parker x Reader) Part 3

Asgard has been destroyed and the time has come for you to live on Midgard with your brothers Thor and Loki. They’ve decided in order to live among humans you must learn to adapt to them, and what better place to do that then highschool? Don’t worry too much though, a very cute Peter Parker is ready to teach you and might be the Prince Charming you never thought you’d find on earth.

Peter Parker X Asgardian princess! Reader

Words:2,417

Part 1 Part 2

A/N: i love calling peter a spiderling its the funniest shit. ALSO CAN I JUST SAY I’M LIVING FOR BIG BROTHERS THOR AND LOKI???

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As Tony rolled up the divider between your family, him and Peter, he heard Peter sigh tiredly. Peter couldn’t help but stare at you through the rearview mirror as you told your brothers about your eventful first day at Midtown Tech. It wasn’t that his image of you was skewed now, he just knew that maybe trying to hang out with you would be a lot harder and make him a lot more susceptible to a mysterious stabbing, or a thunderclap to the face. He shot a look of betrayal to Tony.

“When were you going to tell me?!” He hissed under his breath.

“I did tell you! Don’t you remember kid?” Tony asked a knowing smirk playing on his lips. Peter crossed his arms and looked out the window as to not draw attention to himself as he murmured.

“All you told me was that I’d be meeting someone that I have to protect today! I assumed you meant at the compound and you know, not my high school!!!!”

Tony let out a laugh.

“It's not that big a deal kid, Y/N, may be an Asgardian princess, but she’s still a teenager!! Thor and I just want her to be able to adapt to Midgardian life seeing as Asgard went to hell according to Thor and Loki,” Peter’s eyes scanned to yours while you weren’t paying attention, wrapped up in the company of your brothers. He wondered how you were able to seem so composed and collected in school, despite having so much going on in your personal life.

“So when you say I’m supposed to protect her…” Peter trailed softly giving Tony a side glance.

“Thor says that there are still enemies of Asgard out to kick them when they’re already down. They both just want to make sure their baby sister is going to be alright here,” He glanced over his glasses to look at Peter’s conflicted figure.

“Y’know kid I’d take it as a compliment, it’s not every day that the gods of thunder and mischief trust people to help them, let alone someone as close to them as their sister.” He said before turning his eyes back to the road while driving.

“Don’t stress yourself out you’ll get grays.”

Loki let his nose scrunch up as you described lunch to him and Thor. “They made you eat what?” He asked nearly gagging.

“I must admit I didn’t find it appetizing either… so I’m famished.” You confessed laying back in your chair your stomach growling.

“And this… flash, he seems like a burden,” Thor said with a shake of his head. “Be sure to let the spiderling know if he bothers you too much.” You felt your eyebrows raise. “Spiderling? Who’s that?” You saw Loki nod off at Peter who sat beyond the divisor looking bored as he mumbled an occasional word or two to Tony.

So Peter really did know Tony Stark. You couldn’t say you were surprised, contrary to Flash you didn’t think that Peter was the type to lie about himself to others unless necessary. You smiled softly to yourself. He was a nice boy, being so kind to you on your first day when he knew virtually nothing about you still made you pleasantly surprised.

Loki and Thor exchanged quick knowing glances with one another as they caught you staring at Peter. Thor wrapped his arm around your shoulders and Loki pat the top of your head drawing you out of your thoughts.

“Nevermind that, let’s just get home so we can take a moment to ourselves and relax,” Thor smiled all while keeping his eyes on the unsuspecting spiderman who stared out the window.

---

You walked beside your brothers behind Peter and Tony before you all stood in the compounds living facility standing in the kitchen. Thor roamed the refrigerator for something you could eat while Peter piped up to talk to you again.

“So…Europe huh?” He joked as you tried to keep back a laugh.

“If I knew you were an Avenger I would have told you sooner!!” You said genuinely as the two of you sat on barstools at the kitchen’s counter.

“He’s not an Avenger,” Tony chimed as he walked past the two of you.

Peter rolled his eyes as he leaned in forward to begin his assault of questions. “So since you’re like Thor and Loki’s sister, does that mean you’ve got powers too?” He asked.

“I don’t have Thor’s thunderous strength or Loki’s sly wit, but my mother has helped me with my illusions when I was younger,” you explained. You took your pointer finger letting it whir in a circle before a soft turquoise light illuminated in a ring creating the small illusion of a bee. Peter’s eyes widened before he broke out in a loud laughter.

“You didn’t!!!” he shouted staring at your illusion as the bee floated around his head. He had to admit your work was quite impressive. It fooled him and the entire cafeteria the first time, he wondered just how much you could do.

“What about the whole antler thing?? Like how Loki had when he first invaded?” He asked excitedly.

“My crown?” you asked waving a hand over your head the turquoise light creating it from the seemingly thin air. The gold crown sat on your head the sharp horns pointed backward as opposed to your brother’s and father’s crown. There were wings that framed against the side of your cheeks and went back as well to protect your face.

“I don’t really wear it often, its only for special occasions,” You explained whisking it away. “Like banquets, ceremonies, days of courtship,” you said simply with a shrug. Peter’s eyes widened but only slightly as you finished.

“Days of courtship?” His voice cracked when he asked you to explain. You nodded lamely as you watched Thor fish out some leftover french toast from the morning.

“Yes, they were always such boring ordeals but I did them for my father’s sake…” You sighed rolling your eyes just thinking back at your many evenings spent with princes of different realms and universes.

“Not many caught my eye, to be honest, I always wanted to be off with my brothers playing with them,” You shrugged.

Peter felt a lump form in his throat as he swallowed down. You were some princess alright, he wondered just how many poor souls you had turned down in your past. Before he knew the truth behind your, he would have just suggested dinner and a movie. Now he was trying to calculate in his head how much caviar might cost if he really wanted to impress you.

“None deserved your gaze my sweet sister and none do now,” Loki said putting his hands on your shoulders.Peter felt his hands get clammy. Was it just him or was his malicious gaze meant to be focused on him?

“Hey uh Odin’s angels,” Tony interjected before Peter could send a fearful gaze in his way. “A word if you will,” he said motioning to an office down the hall. “You can stay here Y/N, it’ll just be a minute, promise,” He walked ahead Thor and Loki following slowly behind.

“What is it now Stark,” Loki asked as the door closed behind them. Tony sat at the desk before pulling up a screen in the middle of the air and typing on a projection of a keyboard.

“I didn’t want to alarm you in front of your sister but I got a blip on my ETR,” he looked at the screen as he continued typing in coordinates.

“ETR…?” Thor asked his eyebrows scrunching.

“My Extra-Terrestrial Reader, it notifies me if there’s any suspicious activity from other world space crafts or portals that come into the earth. It’s what gave me a heads up when you first arrived to pick your sister up,” He explained. He pinched his fingers on a screen map of North America zooming in on a small glowing blue dot that was present in Canada not too far away from New York.

“Here’s the blip, but it’s not from a coordinate I’ve seen before,” he finished setting his arms down in frustration. “I was hoping you might know where it’s coming from.”

They both scanned the coordinates but found their minds blank as they both looked at the glowing dot curiously. Loki shook his head slowly. “It’s nothing we recognize.” He said honestly before letting out a sigh of frustration himself.

“It could be nothing,” Tony suggested. “But if it comes on my feed again it might be worth it to look into. I’d want you both with me,” he finished. “If that happens, I’m assuming you’ll want Y/N to stay here, which is fine but you should probably let her know if that’s the case.”

“No,” Loki said instantly without even registering the concept properly in his head. “Y/N has the stubbornness of my brother if she knows that there is trouble on this earth and that we’ve gone to subdue it she’ll want to come too.”

Thor nodded in agreement. “That’s not something we can let happen, Y/N is our little sister, we don’t want to throw her into any danger whatsoever.”

Tony closed the window out and folded his hands together properly as he rested his chin. “Seems like we’re all on the same page then.”

---

You placed your hands on your lap as you turned your body to Peter. You guessed it was your turn to get some information on him now. “So you’re a spiderling I hear?” You grinned causing Peter to flush red.

“Huh?? oh yeah, Spiderman!! Yeah, that’s like my alter ego when I’m helping Mr. Stark and the others out with hero stuff,” Your eyes lit up in excitement.

“You mean… Tony Stark he actually lets you come along with him in battle??” You were practically on the edge of your seat.

“Well uh yeah!!! I’m kind of like their secret weapon… they don’t call me out unless they need me,” He said puffing out his chest slightly as he stretched. Hey, it wasn’t like he was lying!! He was sort of like a secret weapon when he had that rundown with Cap. And Tony really didn’t call him out at all unless they needed him. It was just that they rarely did.

“Amazing…” You whispered starry-eyed. “I could only dream of my brothers letting me fight alongside them…” You put your face in your two hands as you leaned back on the counter.

“Well, can you fight?” Peter asked noticing your change in mood. He thought he’d have to cheer you up before you swiftly turned to him smiling as if you were happy he asked. Your arms crossed over your chest before they flashed at your sides two daggers made of a glimmering brown and turquoise marble revealing themselves to him.

“Father gave me these on my fifth birthday but I never get to use them!! I keep them on me all the time in case I need to,” You said twisting one of the knives in front of his face causing Peter to back up instinctively.

“How’d you do that!?” He asked urgently.

“Do what?”

“The- The knives Y/N!!! Like you just… whoosh!!” He said copying your movements perfectly minus the appearance of two daggers at his side.

“It’s sort of like Mjölnir, or Loki’s daggers they sort of just have an attachment to me, when I need them they come,” You said simply.

“That’s awesome….” Peter whispered now leaning forward to take a closer look at them. He noticed how smooth the skin was on your hands, how your nails were perfectly manicured as they held such a dangerous weapon within them.

“Right?? Do you want to use one and we could have a sparring match!?” You eagerly pushed the knife closer towards him causing him to back up again.

“What?? Y/N, not a chance!!! You’ll stab me in like two seconds!!” He laughed.

“Oh please, I promise to go easy on you Peter!!” You begged tossing the knife in the air catching it by the handle after it did a three sixty flip.

He rolled his eyes his shoulders still jumping up and down as he continued to laugh. “Y/N, I’d like to graduate high school without having to say I’ve gotten stabbed before,” he joked. You put the daggers away with a shrug. “Suit yourself spiderling,” you chimed.

“Spiderman!” he corrected feigning offense placing a hand on his chest. You both laughed together happily before breaking off into a silence that was filled with a pleasant atmosphere.

“School seems like it will be…interesting, and now that I have you as a friend it will only make things more pleasant for me,” You said softly full of enthusiasm.

“Maybe… I can adapt into Midgardian life…” you said just barely above a whisper. The very idea confused you, made you conflicted, even disturbed you. You still weren’t ready to give up your Asgardian life and you weren’t sure if you ever would be, but at least with Peter Ned and Michelle at your side, it wouldn’t be as terrible as you initially thought.

“Hey, if I can survive high school right now, then so can you,” Peter said placing a hand on your shoulder.

Everything stopped for a moment as your eyes landed on his hand and quickly followed his arm up to his brown eyes. You felt your chest clench with the sweet sincerity of his words, though you would never tell him.

“We’ll do it together! But like not tomorrow because it’s the weekend,” He said his teeth glimmering when he smiled. When he took his hand back you could still feel his touch on you. You pursed your lips tightly together.

“Will you be going then?” You asked softly. “I would hate to be alone here in case Loki and Thor have to leave,” Peter shook his head happily.

“I’ll be here for tomorrow, then I have to get back to my Aunt May,” he explained. “But hanging out in the tower is definitely going to be fun!! I only get to stay over if something’s really going wrong on Earth so it’s sort of like a vacation I guess?? Everything’s so expensive here and Mr. Stark lets me order pizza for dinner with WHATEVER toppings I want,” He said happily as if he were thinking about the pizza now.

“Pizza?” You asked with a small tilt of your head.

His eyes widened in shock and horror. “Oh my god you did not just say that,”

Part 4

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amillionsmiles · 7 years ago

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checking (you) out (Pidge/Lance)

Summary: Katie works the tech desk at the university library. Lance never remembers to wipe his memory card before returning the camera equipment, which is how she becomes intimately familiar with his life via, of all things, his vlogs. A/N: finally get to post this in full! Written for @plance-zine ; it was wonderful to be part of such a project, and shoutout to the mods for keeping everything running smoothly! :)

[Read and review here] or continue under the cut.

People, Katie has decided, are predictable. Watch them for long enough, and their everyday motions start to read like clockwork. At 9 AM on Thursdays, she shows up for her shift behind the library’s tech desk. At 9:20, the girl with space buns and an artfully distressed jean jacket strides in, heading straight for one of the study pods. At 9:25, somebody blows through the doors in a last-minute effort to print materials for their 9:30 class. And at 10:50, ten minutes before Katie’s shift ends, Lance McClain shows up, laboring under the weight of a camera bag, backpack, and tripod.

Katie reaches for the scanner as Lance puffs his way toward her, depositing the tripod on the table with a heavy clunk. It takes him another minute to locate his student ID card: he checks the pocket of his cargo jacket first (not there—it never is) before wriggling his fingers into his jean pocket instead. When he hands the plastic over, it’s warm from being pressed against his thigh.

Katie spares it a passing glance as she pulls up the ‘Equipment Return’ form, filling in the requisite information.

“You’re good to go.” She gives him a thumbs-up, careful not to look him straight in the eye.

“Cool, thanks.” Flashing a bright grin, Lance backpedals toward the doors, slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

Once he’s disappeared completely from view, Katie unzips the camera bag. She flicks the dial to on and goes straight to display mode. Sure enough, the schmuck hasn’t bothered wiping the memory card.

Smirking, Katie kicks her feet up on the table and leans back in her chair.

Let the entertainment begin.

o.O.o

Lance McClain does not know her name, and Katie is completely content with this. She applied for her gig at the tech desk specifically because it required minimal human interaction. Nobody expects her to make conversation; they just want to check out equipment and leave. Occasionally she has to troubleshoot a printer jam or direct tourists to the bathrooms; most of the time, though, she just does her homework and gets paid.

Still, when someone visits at least twice a week, it’s hard not to notice. The first time Lance left recording footage behind on the camera had sparked her interest, and from there it wasn’t too hard to find his YouTube channel, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Which was how she knew that he was a second-year bio major with a side-job at the Starbucks in the Garrison, the student union, and in his free time he liked to record himself attempting to do stunts with his skateboard, if not narrating a funny story about his day or answering the call of things like the Cinnamon Challenge.

Katie and Keith had gotten halfway through that video before Keith closed her laptop.

“I can’t watch you do this to yourself,” Keith said, shaking his head. “Katie, you’re too good for him.”

“I’m hate-watching!” Katie justified, attempting to wrestle her Chromebook from Keith’s grip.

“You know way too much about him to just be ‘hate-watching,’” said Keith, making air quotes with his left hand. “You have his student ID number memorized.”

Katie glared. She regretted letting that piece of information slip. Memorizing Lance’s ID hadn’t even been intentional—it’d only happened because of how many times she’d typed his information into the system during checkout.

“You go to office hours just so you can breathe the same air as your TA for an extra 120 minutes,” she retorted. “You don’t get to lecture me on sad.”

Anyways. All of this is to say that despite what Keith thinks, she does not have a weird, borderline crush-fascination with Lance. And when she stumbles into Green Library’s 24-hr study room at 3 AM to work on a CS project, he’s the last person she’s expecting to see.

Lance is slouched in a swivel chair, earbuds plugged into the desktop in front of him. One dangles loosely around his neck, the other shoved in his ear. Upon hearing someone else enter, he lurches to attention. Katie pretends not to notice—she fully intends to sit on the other side of the room—but Lance doesn’t give her the chance.

“Hey! You’re tech-desk girl!”

It’s a dumb nickname. Definitely not something to get excited about, and Katie schools her features to reflect that. She’s above all… this. Unaffected. “I have a name.”

A quirk of the lips. Lance somehow manages to hook an ankle around the chair closest to him and spins it so the seat faces toward her, an offering. “Wanna tell it to me?”

It’s uncannily close to the Pick-up Line Challenge video he posted to his account a month ago. Katie tries not to think too hard about that.

“What’s in the thermos?” she asks instead, setting her backpack down and warily accepting the chair.

“Redbull and coffee.” Lance’s leg bounces under the table, fingers tapping a jittery rhythm on the keyboard. “Wanna try some?”

“No thanks. It sounds unholy.”

“Oh, it is. Definitely a personal low, but sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.” As he gulps his strange concoction, Lance’s face wrinkles, throat flexing as if he’s swallowed a frog. “God, this is like… sacrilege for me.” His voice lowers, confiding. “I’m a barista.”

“I know,” blurts Katie. Immediately after, she freezes, hoping that the comment will drop unnoticed.

No such luck. Lance raises an eyebrow, questioning. A strange light has entered his eyes; by admitting that she’s paid attention to him, Katie has suddenly become the sole focus of his attention.

How much to admit? Best to be blunt—rip it off like a bandaid. The best defense is offense, and all that.

“You never delete your videos off the camera before you return it,” she says.

Whatever explanation Lance had been anticipating, this one catches him off guard. His face contorts as he tries to process the information. “I—my videos?”

It’s almost too easy, slipping into the impersonation. “Hey guys, it’s ya boi Lance, and today I’ll be—”

“Okay, okay.” Lance waves his hands, cutting her off. “Please do not continue.”

“I thought you’d be flattered hearing your own lines back at you.”

“Not like that, it’s weird! You make me sound like a tool.” He sighs. “Well, now I’m disappointed.”

Katie frowns. “Why?”

“I don’t know! I thought it’d be cool if you knew stuff about me because I was like, your secret Starbucks crush or something.” At this, he shoots her a hopeful look.

“I don’t drink coffee.”

“We sell other stuff. Also, you still haven’t told me your name.”

“It’s Katie,” she finally relents, breaking eye contact to pull her laptop out of her bag. When she looks over again, Lance is resting his chin on his hand, staring at her thoughtfully.

“What.”

“So does this mean you subscribe to my YouTube channel?”

“No.”

Lance pouts. “Why not?”

“I like the raw footage better. It’s funnier. Like the first take of the spicy noodle challenge, where you spewed milk out of your nose? Classic.” She cranes her neck to look over his shoulder. “What are you working on, anyways?”

“Nothing!” Lance pushes his body between her and the screen, the broad line of his back blocking her view.

“Doesn’t sound like nothing if you’re being like that.”

“Hey, haven’t you heard about this thing called privacy? 4th Amendment! Search and seizure! Gimme back the mou— ow!”

Years of wrestling with Matt has made Katie adept at underhanded maneuvers; with Lance still rubbing his side from where she pinched him, she takes control of the mouse and opens up the window he’d minimized earlier. Onscreen, several scenes are being recolored and spliced together; she recognizes the footage from earlier today.

“Do you always make your videos on the school computers?”

“I have my own laptop. It’s just shitty and will only run like, 2 programs at a time, and all that’s being directed towards a stats project right now.” Lance eyes her sideways. “Hey, what major are you? Or, wait—are you a freshman? Have you even declared yet—”

“I’m a sophomore. Computer science and math.”

“Ah, the double major.” Lance nods, then puffs out his chest. “Guess what I am.”

Common sense tells Katie that she should play dumb. Let him have the satisfaction of correcting her. But her overwhelming need to prove she knows things wins out.

“Pre-med bio.”

Lance blinks. “Wow, first guess.” His surprise turns sly. “You do have a crush on me.”

Katie rolls her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. All it takes is a quick LinkedIn search.”

“Yeah, but you only fully read through someone’s LinkedIn when you’re a) hiring or b) evaluating their bae potential. It’s okay—” he holds up a hand, cutting off her protest, “—I’m honored, truly.”

“You’re ridiculous.” This entire interaction has gone so far off the rails, she doesn’t know how to begin redirecting it. Lance, meanwhile, shifts focus easily, pulling a camera out of his backpack and popping the lens cap off with practiced ease. The next thing Katie knows, it’s pointed at her, Lance narrating: “You’ve heard of Sleepless in Seattle, but we’re here with Sleepless in the Study Room, guest-starring my new friend Katie!”

“What—who said we were friends?” says Katie, trying to duck out of the frame. Lance is an unerring videographer, though; he follows every motion. Backed into a corner, Katie swats at the lens before remembering that it’s from the tech desk and, therefore, her responsibility. She stays her hand.

“We’ve been talking for over half-an-hour,” Lance says, flashing his phone at her, where 3:30 AM makes itself known in thin white strokes. “I’d say that counts for something.”

His smile is bright and close. It’s probably the lack of sleep that’s making her loopy, but the feeling underneath her skin is not unlike a sugar rush.

“I guess,” she says.

o.O.o

She regrets everything the next morning. The minute she gets behind the tech desk, Katie thumps her head down and starts calculating. If she naps in ten minute increments, maybe she’ll recuperate some of her lost sleep and still manage to do her job.

The hours crawl by slowly. At 10:50, the characteristic whoosh of the automatic doors awakens her from her latest sleep cycle, and from somewhere above, an entirely too chipper voice says: “You look like you could use a pick-me-up.”

“This is your fault,” Katie groans, raising her chin to glower at Lance. “Because of you, I got distracted, and then I had to stay up even later to finish coding.”

“I know, I was there. You are a very aggressive programmer, by the way.”

“Just pass over your card so I can check this equipment back in,” she grumbles, wiggling her fingers in demand. Instead, though, Lance curls her fingers around a warm paper cup.

Katie stares at it blankly. “I told you I didn’t drink coffee.”

“It’s my special blend,” Lance insists. “You’ll like it, promise.”

“Yeah, well, it’s going to have to wait ten minutes,” sighs Katie, pushing it to the side and heaving the camera and tripod over the desk. “I’m not allowed to have drinks back here. On-duty policy.”

“Then I’ll keep it safe in the meantime,” says Lance, snatching it back. “I’ll just be over here.”

Katie watches him stake out a table. Blinks a few times, to confirm that he’s still there. This isn’t part of their usual routine. It feels strange but not entirely unwelcome.

When she flicks to the camera’s memory card, it’s clean. That’s weird, too—that they actually had a fully fledged conversation, and he took something she said to heart. In fact, the other night, she’s pretty sure she made him laugh. And there’d been a moment, where Lance had tipped his head back, eyes crinkling, and Katie had thought: shit, maybe Keith had been onto something after all.

When her shift ends, she heads over to the table that Lance has staked out. In characteristic Lance fashion, he’s already found a way to unfold himself over all the available space: backpack slung over the back of an empty chair, feet kicked up on the seat opposite him. Katie nudges them aside as she sits down, reaching over to grab her coffee, and Lance’s face brightens.

“By the way, your earbuds aren’t plugged in completely,” she says, sipping her drink. Lance, despite only knowing her from their interactions the night before, has somehow guessed at her sweet tooth, and the foamy latte goes down easily. “Nice music.”

Lance rips the buds from his ears, gaping down at his phone in horror. Onscreen, a disturbingly animated baby waves its arms, singing, Yes papa, as a banjo strums in the background. Katie marks that down as another piece of information on Lance: listens to educational children’s music in his free time.

“In my defense, it’s for a project.”

“Sure it is,” she says, slapping Lance’s hand away when he tries to grab the coffee back in retaliation, and it’s so natural to mess with him like this, to laugh and call him noodle arms and have everybody else glare at them for being disruptive.

I think it counts for something, Lance had said the other night.

Something, indeed.

#voltron #pidge #lance #plance #vld pidge #vld lance #otp: teenage dream meme team #my writing #fanfiction #ff: voltron

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gofu-kurself · 7 years ago

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Haikyuu Band AU

So ive been obsessing over this au for a while now and I really wanted to see if I could put it into words and maybe write a fanfic for it? idk because ive never written fanfic before but I think I have some good ideas that could maybe go somewhere.

So here goes...

Tsukishima is a singer, sings about drug and sex and is just bad boy all around. He also can play guitar but doesn't do it that often during shows. He has an ex but no one knows who the ex is. So Tsukki has this huge fan base with people that love his music, he puts on huge shows with lots of noise and crazy shit always happen at his concerts. He has so many piercings, so many. He also has lots of tattoos but not like sleeves or anything, maybe lots of geometric shapes and weird poetic stuff.

Yamaguchi is a model, known for his stunning looks and freckles that are so cute. He models for some makeup companies, does new crazy looks with vogue and covergirl. But he also does some really sexy shoots that people kind of go crazy over. He models suits and hair products and even the occasional underwear photoshoot. He does music videos too, but more about that later.

Kuroo is Tsukushima's ex. They're friends now, but after the break up Tsukki wrote a whole bunch of lyrics about the messy break up and his producer liked them so he sang the songs and kept his personal life secret, just being friends with Kuroo in public and pretending like he still hates the secret ex to the public. (I'm not sure why they broke up yet but I ship kenkuro so maybe that might come into play).

I like the idea of Kenma being in Tsukishima’s band and playing keyboard and doing all of the tech/synth stuff. His public persona is pretty much canon, always on his electronics and pretty silent with fans, giving the occasional peace sign and looking out from his long hair for pictures with his supporters. I like to think that when preforming he dyes his hair crazy colors, like whenever he’s on tour he changes it a lot because he gets bored in the hotels and tour bus. His fashion style is really unique and he wears stuff like fishnets and pastel leather jackets that his fans love.

Kuroo is a guitar player, he used to jam with Tsukki in high school and then they started dating, (Bokuto was also in their high school band). The band broke apart when some of them went to college and Tsukishima left for America to play music. Kuroo and him tried to do long distance for awhile, it lasted and was working out, but then Tsukishima started making it big and didn't want to hurt Kuroo by having everything in his life be in the tabloids. So Tsukki broke it off, but Kuroo was so pissed, he didn't want Tsukishima making these decisions for him, he flew out to Los Angeles where Tsukki was living at the time. They had hate sex, and fought for days, in the end Kuroo had to leave and Tsukishima said that he couldn't be with Kuroo because he didn't want to do this long distance, Kuroo agreed. Kuroo didn't want to be dating Tsukishima anymore, they were too different, Tsukki followed his dream to be a musician and Kuroo is in school to be an astrophysicist it wouldn't work. So they broke it off and said that they would still be friends, and they are. (I'm still working on the backstory ok?? I couldn't make Kuroo a bad guy I love his stupid self to much)

Terushima is also in the band because I'm obsessed with him. He plays the drums and is wilddd. His fans are obsessed with his bad boy vibe and love it when he takes his shirt of during performances (which is every time because hes obnoxious like that) he has just his tongue piercing and drives a motorcycle because I like to believe that he is the baddest boy around.

Anyway Tsukishima is in Los Angeles making music, doing drugs, going to wild party with other famous people and just living life as one who makes millions does. And his producer says that for his new album he needs to make some music videos with the band. So he has a song (I think I might use one of blackbears songs for lyric reference bc there's no way I'm gonna write lyrics about a shitty ex) (maybe for songs, wish u the best, Idfc, do re mi, gucci linen smthg like that. So while making a story board about the music video he wants to be shown with the person he loves and then shows the fight that ends their relationship and then shows how they both go their separate ways and to different people. All of the band members will appear In the video through shots of them playing their instruments or in other scenes that are relevant to the story.

Yamaguchi is asked about being in the music video because he's gaining a larger fan base. Tsukishimas friend from high school, that goes on tour with the band as their photographer (probably Akaashi), recommends to the band that using Yama in this video could help them get more people into their music. The band agreed and Yamaguchi was asked to be in their video. He says yes.

Tsukki sees Yamaguchi and is floored, he way prettier in person, and also a lot more meek and embarrassing. So they film the music video together but Yamaguchi has to play the role of Tsukishimas sexy ex. Hes portrayed as this playboy, with him going to clubs and dancing, having sex with a whole bunch of random faceless music video dudes. And Tsukki has to watch all of the filming for these scenes (as the writer of the music he HAS to be present for all of the filming). He slowly falls for Yamaguchi and there is lots of pining and being mocked by his friends.

Yamaguchi really likes the job and learns to enjoy Tsukishimas music, he goes to one of his concerts and practically drools over the way Tsukki provocatively preforms in his all black outfit with practically painted on skinny jeans and a tank top that can barely be called a shirt because it covers absolutely nothing.

This fic, if I ever write it bc lets be real I probs never will, will probably include background bokuaka, kenkuro, and mayyybe iwaoi if I can find a place for them to be thrown into this shitstorm. Anywho this may never happen but I really like the idea of bad boy Tsukki and Yamaguchi falling hard for him, at the same time Tsukishima falls for Yama.

In the end they fall for each other and live happily ever after lmao. (I'm working on the ending ok??)

#haikyuu!!#alternate universe #model yamaguchi #bad boy tsukki #haikyuu band au #tsukishima kei #yamaguchi tadashi #tsukishima x yamaguchi #fic prompt #fanfic idea #blackbear influences

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alexanderwrites · 8 years ago

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Hack Job: Why Were Hacker Movies Ever A Thing?

Lately i’ve been thinking about that weird and almost completely failed subgenre of movie that attempted to light up the LCD screens of our hearts, but instead faded like a broken computer screen: the hacker film. Now, I could ask what good the sub-genre has ever done for us, but the answer to that is clear and just a few inches above this block of text. The genre birthed this iconic Matthew Lillard role from the movie Hackers, in which he plays a (wait for it!) hacker named...erm...Cereal Killer. Because....he likes Cereal? Sure, lets go with that! He’s a character described by June Diane Raphael on an episode of the podcast How Did This Get Made? as “Disgusting”, and she is not completely wrong. He is disgusting, bizarre and the strangest character Lillard has played, and i’m including Shaggy in the live action Scooby Doo films. He’s a character that must be experienced, and once experienced, never forgotten. I mean - you’ve seen what he fucking looks like.

But my point remains: outside of Cereal Killer (I am bolding his name because he is an Important Man), the genre has offered up very little to the world. I admittedly know nothing at all about hacking, and I don’t care at all about Hacking, like, i’d presume, 90% of people currently residing here on earth. But I cannot imagine that people who love Hacking (or Hacker Fuckers, if you will) queuing up to see Hackers, a film that thinks this is what the internet looks like:

Now, i’m no city-slickin’ mouse-clickin’ hacker, but I don’t think that’s what the internet looks like. I could be wrong, and character actor Fisher Stevens (I was about to write “beloved” character actor, but then I remembered Short Circuit) could be skating through a flashing pillar of internet right now. It’s a cool thought! Hackers came along in 1995, when future optimism was higher than it had been in years, as everyone believed the tech-bubble would never burst (spoiler alert: it did!) and that the new millennium would bring a world of positive changes and possibilities. The poor, innocent souls of 1995 could never have possibly imagined the true horrors waiting for them on the other side of the millennium...

But before Fred Durst became a thing in a hat that you had to look at, technology was booming, affordable and exciting. You got transparent Macs that allowed you to see through into the mechanical nonsense inside it. The new fangled e-mail gave us (I don’t know why i’m saying “us”. I was 3 years old in 1995. Babies don’t get emails) all the opportunity to open your email and then close it again as many times as you liked! So this is what producers saw when they started making movies like Hackers. They put their strongest marketing minds together and came up with “People got computers now. Make comPUTER FILM!”. Those wild bastards actually went and did it! And weirdly, Hackers was kinda ahead of its time. It might’ve been wildly inaccurate in almost every possible way, but it paved the way for a wave of (well, like 3) films. The Matrix wouldn’t be released for another 4 years, and Swordfish a further 2. If it did incite a trend, it was the only trend started by Director Iain Softley, his later film K-Pax tragically failing to kick start a new genre of films in which Kevin Spacey eats bananas with their skins still on.

Good stuff! Hackers does feel like a film that is unsure of whether it’s trying to replicate fads or start them off. I mean, characters rollerblade everywhere for no apparent reason in the film. That might be something Hackers do? I’ve never seen Mr Robot, so I cannot categorically say that Rami Malek doesn’t rollerblade his way around town like a Starlight Express extra who really hates computers. But I doubt it. So with the rollerblading, and the way....ugh...Cereal Killer dresses, it seems like the film is offering you up its own funky ideas that you could follow on from if you want to get murdered on the streets. Did its aesthetic style have influence? Was the game Jet Set Radio from 2000 and its rollerblading theme influenced at all by Hackers? Did Eminem see Johnny Lee Miller’s bleached blonde hair in the film (quick deeply important side note: his character is named Dade. DADE.) and think “huh. that would really compliment my insufferable personality!”? We’ll never know. The film is a weird exercise in style and trends, and the soundtrack, crammed with The Prodidgy and Underworld, is proof that at least the soundtrack department had its finger on the pulse. And, it could be argued that the film’s costume department at least came up with some creative cyber-punk clothing, and were bold enough to make Penn Jillette look like this:

The thing is, I liked the weirdness of it all, I like this misfires in capturing modern life, and inaccuracy doesn’t bother me really if a film is fun enough. I’m not a stickler for realism. I didn’t sit down to Face/Off and complain that it’s totally unbelievable that John Travolta is a human person. That’s not the issue. The issue, really is that with all the giant screen Playstations, pounding trance tracks and references to Coca Cola (weird, I thought Mountain Dew would be the Hacker’s choice), the film is in troubled water because of the fact that Hacking is unbelievably, deeply fucking boring. It is not interesting in seeing someone go clickety clack on a keyboard and make occasional faces to indicate that “oh no! the mainframe is busting my chops!” or “Huzzah! I clicked the mouse really fast just now!”.

Thankfully, the film has some fairly decent editing which intersperses the clickety-clacking with some long exposure, sped up shots of New York City just in case you forgot it was the 90′s. The fact that they need to cut away to exciting, zooming shots that have nothing to do with anything highlights the fact that the Director and Editor knew exactly what i’m talking about: HACKING IS FUCKING BORING (if you’re a hacker reading this, please don’t hack me). And they’ve built an entire film around it! A whole nonsensical plot which involves (as far as i can remember) big ships and evil corporations that want to sink the big ships is built on Hacking. Thank god this film is so wildly ridiculous, which keeps it from being entirely boring. It’s smart in that it knows to not make the film actually about hacking, but then you kind of ask yourself the question: why is this film about Hacking at all? Why is it called Hackers? Maybe a better name would’ve been ‘Bladin’ Teenz’, as an ode to their endless rollerblading. It’s a fun film, but a dumb film and proof that films entirely about hacking cannot really work.

The Matrix was a wise film. Exploiting that hip, late-90s techno excitement that everyone was buzzing over, it featured a hacker at its centre who really doesn’t do much hacking at all. In fact, Morpheus might as well have said “You Hack? Dude fucking grow up. Come on, i’ll make you a treat”. Sure, you’ve got the iconic green gibberish that turns up on the computers and would inspire a million shitty screensavers, but again the hacking is intercut with other action going on in the film. You have characters typing away and yelling shit like “I’m nearly in!” or “i’m not nearly in!” or “I am unsure of whether I am, in fact, in, nearly in, or not nearly in!”. But that is manageable and minimal, and in the end there’s so much more to remember about The Matrix that I don’t think anyone, when asked what it’s about, would say “Oh it’s about Keanu Reeves hacking on his dell”. It understood this caveat, and created its own style which would influence every single music video ever produced over the next 5 years.

These are screenshots from the video for Don’t Wanna Let You Go by 5ive, a very bad UK Boy-band that had 4 singers and 1 rapper, all of whom it’s safe to assume have passed away.

The Matrix had the style, and the smarts to sidestep bland hacking scenes. You know what film doesn’t understand that hacking is boring? Fucking Swordfish.

Fucking Swordfish. A film so aesthetically ugly and repulsive in every way that it does the unthinkable and makes you hate Hugh Jackman. But it commits the biggest sin of all by giving John Travolta a teeny tiny beard - a decision which we still feel the fallout from today, whenever a new red carpet photo arrises of John’s new chin abomination.

Looking like a cup of concentrated Michael Bay piss, the film leans heavily into stylishness - or lack thereof. Hugh Jackman is basically...sigh...DADE in the movie, and Travolta is regularly outfitted with funny sunglasses. It borrows a lot from Hackers, but while that had a naive, 1995 goofy charm, Swordfish is an aggressively stupid and oblivious movie, that gives us a LOT of Hacking. Like...so much Hacking. The Most Hacking. Oh, The Fucking Hacking. Its a reminder of just how boring Hackers or The Matrix could’ve been if they’d fallen into the wrong hands, and a big, horribly colour-corrected reminder that films about hacking really aren’t the best. Instead of cutaways of cityscapes, Swordfish tries to build the tension during one hacking scene in the grossest way possible: by having Hugh Jackman’s character receive forced fellatio while he works, and while John Travolta smiles. It doesn’t make a boring scene exciting, it makes a boring scene fucking disgusting (the movie’s grossness doesn’t stop there. Halle Berry was heavily pushed into taking her top off in the movie, and promised extra money if she did it.). The Hackers method of randomised cutaways feels a million miles away during these scenes, and you will be willing to pay any earthly sum to make the scene unfolding in front of you stop. Maybe that’s how hackers should make their money from here on in: stop hacking, and just start blackmailing people by forcing them to watch Swordfish. Fucking Swordfish.

The movie was also a bit of a death knell for a subgenre that never really took off. People realised “Oh, this is dull and crap to watch!” when it came to hacking, and technology moved on rapidly that there was a lot more to do with it than watch some guy slapping the keys of his iMac. I find it a really interesting subgenre to look back at, because i’m a huge fan of outdated technologies, fashion styles, turn of the millennium culture, and really quite poor films (besides The Matrix which holds up nicely). Hollywood has tried to make a manner of subjects interesting. Stock markets. Fishing. White people who buy zoos. Some work, some don’t, and it’s all about the way the subject is handled. Because of their reliance on technology, these hacking films feel so dated that maybe Hollywood doesn’t want to risk dipping its toes back into the cyberwaters again. I kind of hope they don’t, because I would literally rather never see a film again than have to even know that a film about Anonymous is being made. I don’t want an ‘edgy’ modern movie that’s made for Banksy to watch while he plunges his hands down his pants and goes to town. I want silly old Cereal Killer and towers of nonsense computer language dammit! I want rollerblading, coke-drinking cyberpunks! Oh well. Whatever happens to the genre, at the very least, we’ll always have Dade and The Gang....

#hackers #johnny lee miller #matthew lillard #the matrix #swordfish #technology #film trends #film

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archiverecombinxnt-blog · 8 years ago

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ooc. what’s up! if you’re just now getting on the dash, which u should be bc it’s 6:36 in the morning, i have spent the last 1 and 1/2 hour watching the maximum ride movie. here’s the posts in order on my blog, and it’s time for my official review, under the cut. why did i do this? i suffer so you don’t have to. let’s go.

okay! so, basically, this movie wasn’t QUITE as cringe as i expected, which was a pretty low bar to clear considering maximum ride lets me down on a regular basis. thanks, jpatz.

here are my general notes:

i always get kinda excited while watching a movie based off a book i love, no matter how disappointing, which is probably the reason for the notes i left behind. with some space, and the thoughts that weren’t the first things i threw on the keyboard, though.... you’ll see

again: insomnia disclaimer. typos and weird phrasing is blamed on that.

i haven’t read the first book in a while, so this is based off my memory

the movie was... the first half of the first book, basically. they stopped right before going off to new york. so we got all of the exposition of something bigger and they’re probably angling for a sequel.

we knew going in that this movie was whitewashed. i was still jarred by it and there’ll be more notes, but basically; they didn’t look like the characters i knew at all. things just kind of... fell, after that

let me list the positives first.

they got gazzy down okay, but considering he’s basically an 8 year old that wants to blow things up in the first book, that’s not very hard.

the backflip off the wall??? hella. u could have given her more scenes like that.

....like, the scenery was cool during the flying shots????

baby max. that was pretty cool to see.

there were occasional moments when the characters harkened back to canon book stuff; max sassing off during the showdown with jeb/ari, max taking care of her children, iggy’s unfortunately brief deadpan snark, nudge being a boss with tech, gaz eager to blow things up.

not much angel. not much creepy child in this one. holla

brief ari angst. noice.

let’s get into the negatives, which are.... plentiful tbh

the general characterization was off most of the rest of the film. max tended to be a bit.... less sass, more grumble, is the way my exhausted brain is phrasing it. fang talked, like, a lot. iggy did take after the kids, but they phrased it like it was him doing his thing rather than like in the books when max pushes that onto him. NUDGE’S CHARACTER WAS SO???? NOT SOFT?? NOT CHATTY? BASICALLY A SULKY TEEN WHO GRUMBLES A LOT?????????? NOT NUDGE BASICALLY. like they introduce her ready to endanger the flock to get a jacket. while she does love shopping, it’s not to that point. gazzy again was okay. and angel was kept down to a minimum bc school

i can smell the mary-sue they’re trying to push onto max in this movie. like they do it in the books too but in the movie, max was called selfish by nearly every member of the flock except iggy and angel. some of those reasons were: not letting nudge out of the house, keeping the flock in the house, closing off jeb’s office, and saving ella from getting shot. i can feel it. it is not the trash child i know.

listen, the general characterization was pretty not great. there were occasional moments of goodness, mentioned above, but, like... not really great.

the wings were real shitty cgi. i mean, you could have done multiple things to just..... maintain more canon

please put the children in sleeves and windbreakers like in canon, and just stuff them so it looks like bulky wings, re canon, and cut holes in the shirts/sweatshirts. they’re probably cold. wait no high body temperature. but forget it. jackets.

maintain the skimpy tank tops and sleeveless hoodies and vests but have peeks of feathers and wings through them

like, i understand budgetary restrictions, but??? the scars could have just. not been a thing. and just have them in jackets.

there’s probably more but

whitewashing/casting issues. this one was left for last bc it’s a big one.

DISCLAIMER: I AM WHITE. clearly i cannot speak for poc bc i am not a person of color.

let’s walk through members of the cast/flock first

of 6 members of the flock, 3 are described with the potential to be/as POC, though max is white-passing: max, fang, and nudge. fang is described as having olive-colored skin and dark black hair; many readers presumed he’s a poc.

of those 6, the only POC is nudge

max is white to the point that her hair looks bleached; maybe it is, idk.

fang had reddish-blond hair and is nearly as pale as max.

dr. m and ella are both white, as the discourse prior to this liveblogging stated. both explicitly stated to be latinx.

there was an asian whitecoat woman.

that was it for poc given major screentime/speaking roles, as far as i could tell. nudge and an unnamed whitecoat.

clearly this is????? ridiculous?????? and outrageous?????

there should be more representation, especially when at least 5 of the main characters are stated to be poc/could be cast as poc!

it’s 2017! 2016 when that movie was made, but. jesus christ none of those actors are particularly well known you could have cast people who actually fit the roles and added diversity to this movie

to paraphrase john oliver, how is whitewashing still a thing

i’m irritated and kinda pissed and would write more but i have had to go back into my dorm room and don’t want to wake up my roommate with typing. know that this is outrageous and awful.

as far as general casting, the only characters who looked vaguely like i expected were gazzy and angel, plus a bit of jeb and ari. fang had reddish-blonde hair, iggy was a brunette, and max was basically bleached blonde. ella was okay, not great but okay, but she was older than i thought she’d be, as was nudge.

to summarize, not as awful as it could have been, but it does need some work. like? 2.5 stars maybe. the movie gets a strong ehh sound with ambivalent hand-wavey gesture.

might make some more shitpostier posts about it when i am more awake and have processed it more. we’ll see.

i am going to lay quietly and pretend i can get 30 minutes of sleep before i have to get up, rip me

#annalise watches the max ride movie #┊★ ι'd looĸ good ιn a тιara ( OOC )

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cwdcshows · 5 years ago

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Arrow - S8 E9 - Green Arrow and the Canaries

Here we go, the backdoor pilot for what I'm sure will be another stellar series in the DC/CWU; and it's a shot of someone on a motorcycle buzzing around the city. You can tell they must be in a hurry, because I'm pretty sure I just saw them pop a wheely. Oh, it's Laurel; I can tell by the way she fiercely turned from the bike to the camera like she just got off it. Sigh.... Naturally I'm trying to figure out if the scenes with Dinah and Laurel are set in the present or the future; because they sure as hell don't look to have been aged. The way Dinah keeps making pointed references to "2020" make it clear that it's not 2020 (although it does bring up an interesting point about when Crisis occurred, because that started at the end of 2019...)

....Sigh... So what, even though the Crisis was over and Dinah was shown to be an integrated part of the new Earth reality who J'Onn gave her whatever pre-crisis knowledge she needed; not only did she inexplicably wake-up in the future, but was also wiped from reality.... Fuck you writers. Just fuck you. You had a thousand different ways and opportunities to lay the groundwork for this; and you're just going to pull a dues ex machina out of your ass? I mean, it's typical, but still, fuck you. And I can tell already that it was probably Oliver, as the Spectre, who saved her and sent her to the future; probably to help his daughter. And that's fine. It's stupid, but it's fine. What makes even less sense is Dinah being wiped from reality post Crisis when they had her on the new Post-Crisis Earth; and now they're trying to shoe-horn this shit in. So is Laurel displaced in time too? I'm having difficulty telling, because the few times they showed her in the future they didn't seem to try and age her much, but at the same time I swear she's wearing a shit ton more make-up than I would normally expect. Sigh.... so Dinah's been displaced too, and has knowledge of the future of the future. Has no one involved with these shows figured out yet that they all suck at writing time travel stories? Do they lack any self-awareness? Obviously these are rhetorical questions; because just as obviously the answer to both is, yes. Give me a fucking break; Star City has been virtually crime free for the last 20 years? Just like that? Well, maybe what everybody said about Oliver being a magnet for some of the bad things that happened was true; because otherwise that's some grade A bullshit. This big ass fucking city, which presumably has only gotten bigger by some measure in the last 20 years, doesn't have the occasional murder or robbery? They're all happy, shiny people, who uphold the law out of deference to the man who sacrificed his life for the planet? Is Oliver Queen fucking Jesus now? Is that the big graduation Mia is celebrating, is she becoming the first Pope in the Church of the Green Arrow? Does the choir wear green leather and hoods? So basically the writers felt the need to toss the last year and a half of character development for Mia, in favor of her making her more like Oliver was before he became the Green Arrow. And because of the trailer for this episode, we know that Laurel is going to magically give Mia back her memories; which kind of makes this whole thing pointless. Okay, so that is JJ. Honestly, we saw adult JJ so infrequently, I wasn't entirely sure if that was him or not during the proposal scene. Although Mia's never going to look at you the way her dad looked at yours, dude. I'm going to guess though that he's going to die by the end of this episode; motivating Mia to become the Green Arrow - possibly traveling back in time, giving hopes that this future doesn't play out. Although the fact that they've established that there wasn't any crime in Star City for the last 20 years, maybe that part won't happen, but I maintain that it's a fucking stupid idea to set the proposed spin-off in 2040. We get it, they've changed the future; and now all the angry people who were fighting for control of the city in the previous timeline are now rich douche bags who.... control the city.... Oh come on. I get that it's 20 years later, but seriously, as famous as Oliver is in this future for being the Green fucking Arrow, how does Mia not at least know what Laurel looks like, even if Dinah inexplicably has been erased for their history? Commercial aside - based on the trailer for the Flash, it seems yet another character has been erased from existence, yet inexplicably preserved; and I'm going to stab in the dark and guess Cisco. I'm also further guess that he might opt to leave, either by the end of the episode or the season. A lot of the signs pointed this leading up to Crisis, what with Barry appointing Cisco their future leader, which obviously they weren't going to need when Barry invariably survived. And then they brought black-hole guy on, who was basically a new Cisco; and set it up that he would join the Star Labs crew. And since we don't need two Ciscos..... I originally interpreted this as an indication of Cisco dying during Crisis; which I still think would have been preferable to this speculated departure and erasure. But of course that would mean making bold decisions that have lasting consequences; and they couldn't possibly write off a recurring character in such a way as not to be able to bring them back later. Again, only speculation. I'm sure I'm completely wrong. Anyways.... Jon-Jons? Really? Sigh...... And seriously, he what, put a mind whammy in a ring and sent you off on a time traveling adventure? Using J'Onn as an explanation for giving characters back their Pre-Crisis knowledge was pretty sketchy when they kept it ambiguous during Crisis, but come on, this isn't just the highlights of knowing that there was a multiverse and then and then a Crisis and all the other bullshit; this is legitimately all of Mia's actual Pre-Crisis memories. How the fuck could J'Onn or anyone give her back those memories of her entire life? I mean, Vibe, maybe; that might actually make sense, but if he does turn out to be erased in the new timeline, I can see how they wouldn't want to use him for that during Crisis. (And on a side note, it just occurred to me how, the Monitor made this big deal about Vibe specifically being needed for Crisis and giving Cisco back his powers against his will; and then Vibe was barely in any of Crisis. What's up with that?) Okay, so it was Cisco. I guess that's what I get for jumping to conclusions; because it's not like this and the other shows would be stupid enough to just say that it was J'Onn. I won't however concede that Laurel mentioning Cisco contradict my above theory for the upcoming Flash episode, because Dinah was erased too and Laurel knows her.... The Time Bureau is going to come and stop them from changing time, right? No? Okay. So they're completely retconning Dinah into a completely different character. Whatever, it's not like they had any idea what to do with her for the last, what, 3 or 4 years now? Wait, let me guess, Mia's going to assume the Deathstroke wannabe is JJ, but it'll turn out to be someone else, maybe Connor; because "misdirection" - that and it's doubtful they would still have JJ end up going down that path. And whomever the actual Deathstroke turns out to be, they'll kill JJ or end up killing Zoe again; again, all to motivate Mia into becoming the Green Arrow. Are they going to address who Laurel is Post-Crisis? Because, out of the plethora of Canaries in the Arrowverse, she's the one who shouldn't exist. She wasn't at the dawn of time, she comes from an Earth that was destroyed and may or may have been merged with the Earth's history where Laurel died (we only know for sure that Supergirl's Earth 38 merged with Earth 1; and weren't given any indication that Earth-2 merged with it also). I hadn't really thought about it until either reading one or watching a Crisis review thing that brought it up; and it was suggested that this episode would address just who or what the fuck Post-Crisis Laurel was. But so far they haven't shown her to be anything more or less than what she was before Crisis. And seeing as how she has her Post-Crisis memories, they don't indicate if she's still coping with the loss of her Earth, if it came back or anything that doesn't have to fucking do with Mia. Augh, why is this episode only half over?? Seriously, he encrypted their honeymoon plans? It should have just been porn. Better yet, just a bunch of Diggle/Oliver fan-art. I mean, I get Mia being bitter about remembering all the bad stuff; especially remembering watching her dad die - but at the same time, she also remembers actually getting to fucking meet her dad, so that should probably count for something.... So, Dinah's experience as a police Captain in 2018/19 provides her with the necessary background to be tech savy in 2040? What the hell sort of advanced placement training did the SCPD give her? It's not even like she lived through the last 20 years to be able to grow with and adapt to any of the changes in technology; she just suddenly woke-up one morning and a) somehow managed to procure a bar with no social security number, not cash, no history of any kind; and b) was a full 20 years behind the times. There are older millennial who legitimately lived through the technological changes of the last 20 years, who in spite of being lumped into the artificial classification of people who are supposed tech savy, aren't actually all that adept at technology. I know a guy in his early 40s who doesn't know how to type on a computer keyboard; because he missed out on being young enough to have that transition as part of his education or home life by probably a couple of years. Can you imagine what sort of developments lie ahead 20 years from now? Whatever we guess, we'll probably be wrong. "Thank God for morons." The Arrow writers accidentally include what Greg Berlanti says every time the CW picks up another one of his superhero shows as a line of dialog... So Laurel notes that the building they're breaking into has meta-dampeners all over the place; and Dinah comments that means no Canary Cries - but isn't hers still synthetic? She lost her powers last season and was given a device to replace, right? Modeled after Laurel-1's? So has Crisis undone that and given Dinah her powers back? Which raises a question; why not carry one of those sonic necklace deals that Cisco made as a back-up when their powers are dampened? Hell, for that matter, seeing as how it modulated their own normal voice or something, just imagine what that thing could do with their meta-generated cry. Oh, cool, some guy we met like once and don't really care about is the real mastermind of this bullshit. Just to be clear, this Trevor guy is the first resident of Star City in 20 fucking years to decide to go off the deep end and do something seriously criminal? Really? Why? What could possibly set him off to run afoul of the memory of Saint Oliver? Don't forget the future newspaper Doc showed Marty... I mean Laurel showed Dinah, where Bianca's kidnapping and murder lead to Star City turning into the 9th circle of hell in one year's time. Wait, what? Exploding shrubbery? Oh, flammable shrubbery. Well, that's different.... Random thought, just how expensive must Mia's college education be in 2040? Laurel just mentioned Sara dropping her a bit of knowledge. I take it I glossed over her mentioning earlier Sara's role in helping Laurel do the one thing she and the other "legends" supposedly work to stop? "I can't believe it's been 20 years since he sacrificed himself to save the city." I believe the word you're looking for is world. Or more precisely, the fucking universe. But sure, make it all about Star City. Fucking William. William and Mia's body types are exactly nothing alike; how the fuck would anyone who might have seen her and reported the emergence of a new Green Arrow think they saw someone of William's build if they actually saw Mia? She's practically tiny enough to fit in William's pocket. So much for Mia remembering all that League of Assassins training she received in the previous timeline, for her to be tranq'd so easily... Augh...fuck you writers. So not only does Cisco somehow replicate J'Onn's inexplicable ability to restore Pre-Crisis memories and put it in a ring, that he gave to Laurel (for some reason - I guess because it was an elaborate plan to reawaken Mia?) another one of those rings made its way into someone else's hands, which they used to give JJ his Pre-Crisis memories back. Because whoever did that knows who he was Pre-Crisis. But it's not like JJ only has those memories; he still remembers the life that lead to him not leading the Deathstroke gang and just because he remembers the other life doesn't mean the Pre-Crisis version of him should override who he became Post-Crisis. But lets dig into the minutiae of this whole thing. Who would know who JJ Diggle was in an alternate timeline? How would that person learn of the magic memory ring? Why would Cisco have made two of them? Why did he even make one of them? How many people possibly even need to remember events of Pre-Crisis? Is security at Star Labs still that shitty in 20 years that people can still steal stuff from them?

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newstfionline · 7 years ago

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T-Shirts, Toilet Paper and Rotten Mangoes. This Chinese App Sells It All.

By Raymond Zhong, NY Times, July 25, 2018

BEIJING--Apple, Gucci, Tesla. Many Chinese shoppers love their top-shelf brands.

But another big slice of the population goes gaga for a 40-cent pair of earrings, a $1.50 wireless smartphone charger and 50 rolls of toilet paper for $4.75.

These are the shoppers on Pinduoduo, a Chinese app that drew close to 350 million customers in the past year, more than the entire population of the United States. Its parent company is expected to list shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Thursday, just three years into its existence.

The lightning-fast ascent of Pinduoduo (pronounced a bit like “PING-daw-daw”) suggests that China is not done producing high-flying internet upstarts, despite the vast reach of incumbents such as Alibaba. It also illustrates the clout of an underserved category of Chinese consumers.

They live outside the country’s prosperous megacities, in the cities, towns and hamlets that over a billion Chinese call home. They skew older, less internet savvy. And they absolutely cannot resist a bargain, even if the stuff they’re buying isn’t exactly top of the line.

In the southern city of Foshan, Li Tianqiang and his wife sell rice noodles and other breakfast food out of a three-wheeled truck to hungry factory workers. Over the past two years, Mr. Li, 45, has bought nearly $1,000 worth of merchandise on Pinduoduo--the equivalent of around two months’ income for him. Among his purchases: an inflatable paddle boat, a fishing bag and a cherry-red motorized car for his young daughter to drive around.

Mr. Li knows he is a little addicted. And regretted purchases? He has a few.

Some were made out of curiosity. In other cases, the items were of such lousy quality that he threw them out after they arrived. The toys he has bought for his daughter--including dolls, a violin and a keyboard--have been particularly bad, he said.

It is all so inexpensive, though, that he said he didn’t mind the occasional misfire.

“It’s nothing, really,” he said of his spending on the app.

For many years, China was a byword for shoddy goods produced at mass scale. But that is changing. Wages are rising, forcing manufacturers to compete on quality. Communist Party leaders want to nurture brands known globally for their innovations. Gadget makers such as Xiaomi and Huawei are investing heavily in design, chasing cool and cachet.

To shop on Pinduoduo, however, is to be reminded that many Chinese consumers still check prices first, and that low-end suppliers remain a big part of the country’s economy. The Pinduoduo app’s main page is a bottomless cascade of groceries, fast fashion, household sundries and electronic bric-a-brac--all carrying wildly improbable price tags.

A pair of stretchy, “Playboy”-brand men’s pants: less than $3. Eleven pounds of rice: $4. A four-pack of boxer briefs printed with an image of a wolf’s head: $2. A purple water kettle with “LOL” written along the bottom: $3. A pink, around-the-neck smartphone stand that lets you lie down and watch videos at the same time: $1. A vibrating electric belt that goes around the midsection and supposedly helps shed fat: $6.

Shipping is always free.

Pinduoduo wants shoppers to involve their online friends in the process. Group orders receive discounts. New users who persuade others to sign up are rewarded with one of a selection of free purchases. Tiny pop-ups within the app provide relentless, real-time updates on what others are buying, creating a sense of urgency. Everyone is getting great deals and you are not.

Between the deliriously strange product selection, the next-to-nothing prices, the barrage of coupons and deals, and the ease with which purchases are made, the experience feels less like shopping and more like playing a shopping video game. In regulatory filings, the company calls the app “a combination of Costco and Disneyland.”

Pinduoduo started operations only in 2015. The app is a platform for merchants to sell products: Sellers pay for their wares to be promoted on the app, and pay a fee for each sale. The company, which is based in Shanghai, has grown swiftly enough to attract powerful backers including the venture firm Sequoia Capital and the Chinese internet giant Tencent. It expects to raise $1.4 billion in this week’s share offering. That would give the company a valuation of more than $20 billion.

Because it offers so much cheap stuff, however, Pinduoduo is still way behind its rivals in the total value of goods sold. The company, which is unprofitable, said that its average shopper spent less than $90 on the platform last year. That translates into revenue per shopper of a dollar and change.

“This is the lowest quality of traffic you can get,” said Steven Zhu, an analyst in Shanghai with the research firm Pacific Epoch. And if older people are driving Pinduoduo’s popularity, Mr. Zhu added, then its prospects for long-term growth are grim by default.

The platform has also been accused of being awash with knockoff products. Last week, the company was sued for trademark infringement in the United States.

Pinduoduo declined to comment. But in its filings with stock regulators, the company said it immediately removed counterfeits from the app. And this year, the company’s founder, a former Google engineer named Colin Huang, described his philosophy on price versus quality to the Chinese business magazine Caijing.

His own mother complained to him when two of the nine mangoes she had bought for $1.50 on the app turned up rotten, Mr. Huang told Caijing. Still, he said, she continued to use Pinduoduo. “If you can buy seven good mangoes for $1.50, you’re not losing out,” he said.

For the most part, Kang Xia agrees. Ms. Kang, a 52-year-old retiree in the southwestern city of Chengdu, has used Pinduoduo to buy shoes, clothes, gadgets--“quite a lot,” she said, although the quality isn’t always great.

This spring, she got stung by two bad purchases. First, there was a $5 wardrobe with colorful fabric panels and a “real wood” frame. One touch was all she needed to realize the thing was no good. Then she bought a chiffon skirt with a floral pattern--less than $6, including a yellow T-shirt to wear with it--that arrived with a jagged tear down the side.

Ms. Kang said she is now less likely to buy things on Pinduoduo solely because they are cheap. But she still looks at the app every day.

But Pinduoduo does not have to be stuck in the bargain bin forever, said Tian X. Hou, founder of T. H. Data Capital, a research firm in Beijing. Now that it has used low prices to attract so many users, it can do as Alibaba did and go premium.

“Once you have this trust, you can grow out of the current business and create a new business,” Ms. Hou said.

That might turn off the most fervent deal hunters. But it could raise Pinduoduo’s profile among other consumers.

Zhang Huajin, 34, a manager at a tech company in Guangzhou, bought an iPhone 7 Plus on Pinduoduo this month. Or he thought he did. What arrived was a smartphone, but it was not made by Apple.

Mr. Zhang got his money back, though. And if Pinduoduo improves quality control and helps big brands sell directly on the app, he will probably buy from there again, he said.

#China #Chinese app #Pinduoduo

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alamante · 7 years ago

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BEIJING — Apple, Gucci, Tesla. Many Chinese shoppers love their top-shelf brands.

But another big slice of the population goes gaga for a 40-cent pair of earrings, a $1.50 wireless smartphone charger and 50 rolls of toilet paper for $4.75.

They live outside the country’s prosperous megacities, in the smaller cities, towns and hamlets that more than a billion Chinese call home. They skew older, less internet savvy. And they absolutely cannot resist a bargain, even if the stuff they’re buying isn’t exactly top of the line.

In the southern city of Foshan, Li Tianqiang and his wife sell rice noodles and other breakfast food out of a three-wheeled truck to hungry factory workers. Over the past two years, Mr. Li, 45, has bought nearly $1,000 worth of merchandise on Pinduoduo — the equivalent of around two months’ income for him. Among his purchases: an inflatable paddle boat, a fishing bag and a cherry-red motorized car for his young daughter to drive around.

Mr. Li knows he is a little addicted. And regretted purchases? He has a few.

Some were made out of curiosity. In other cases, the items were of such lousy quality that he threw them out after they arrived. The toys he has bought for his daughter — including dolls, a violin and a keyboard — have been particularly bad, he said.

It is all so inexpensive, though, that he said he didn’t mind the occasional misfire.

“It’s nothing, really,” he said of his spending on the app.

Shipping is always free.

Pinduoduo started operations only in 2015. It has grown swiftly enough to attract powerful backers including the venture firm Sequoia Capital and the Chinese internet giant Tencent. The company, which is based in Shanghai, expects to raise $1.4 billion in this week’s share offering. That would give it a valuation of more than $20 billion.

The platform has also been accused of being awash with knockoff products. Last week, the company was sued for trademark infringement in the United States.

For the most part, Kang Xia agrees. Ms. Kang, a 52-year-old retiree in the southwestern city of Chengdu, has used Pinduoduo to buy shoes, clothes, gadgets — “quite a lot,” she said, although the quality isn’t always great.

This spring, she got stung by two bad purchases. First, there was a $5 wardrobe with colorful fabric panels and a “real wood” frame. One touch was all she needed to realize the thing was no good. Then she bought a chiffon skirt with a floral pattern — less than $6, including a yellow T-shirt to wear with it — that arrived with a jagged tear down the side.

Ms. Kang said she is now less likely to buy things on Pinduoduo solely because they are cheap. But she still looks at the app every day.

For the established big shots of Chinese e-commerce, it is unwelcome news that many shoppers will buy very nearly anything if the price is right.

To retain customers and avoid regulators’ ire, Alibaba, which served more than 500 million buyers last year, has fought sales of fakes on its Taobao marketplace. The retailer JD.com, which had around 300 million buyers, has courted upmarket brands and cultivated a reputation for reliability.

“From time to time, there are new players, but the question is whether they can sustain themselves,” Alibaba’s chief executive, Daniel Zhang, said at a recent event in San Francisco. “We are also climbing.”

Terry Yao lives in Dandong, a small city in China’s northeast. After looking at some sneakers on Pinduoduo — pairs that should retail for more than $100 were going for a tiny fraction of that, he said — he made up his mind about the authenticity of the platform’s products.

“China has developed so much,” said Mr. Yao, 28. “But if residents of these third- and fourth-tier cities can only use things like Pinduoduo, it feels to some degree like a big failure. We’ve gone backward.”

“Once you have this trust, you can grow out of the current business and create a new business,” Ms. Hou said.

That might turn off the most fervent deal hunters. But it could raise Pinduoduo’s profile among other consumers.

Zhang Huajin, 34, a manager at a tech company in Guangzhou, bought an iPhone 7 Plus on Pinduoduo this month. Or he thought he did. What arrived was a smartphone, but it was not made by Apple.

Mr. Zhang got his money back, though. And if Pinduoduo improves quality control and helps big brands sell directly on the app, he will probably buy from there again, he said.

Taobao managed the transition, he said, and shoppers’ expectations shifted accordingly. On Taobao, Mr. Zhang said, “everybody already knows what kinds of product should be sold at what price.”

Zhang Tiantian and Claire Fu contributed research.

Follow Raymond Zhong on Twitter: @zhonggg.

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The post T-Shirts, Toilet Paper and Rotten Mangoes. This Chinese App Sells It All. appeared first on MySourceSpot.

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