#[little big coder]

[pey-up]

Omg ty 4 the tag frem :3

Mine was musician for a longgg time, it was always that or something working with kids

Uh- idk who to tag sooo just anyone who wants to!!

if we lived in a world where u had to do the career u were first interested in as a child what would u be doing, id be a firefighter

[hey-candyboy]

Welcome too the official tumblr page for 'Hey! Candyboy'

What is 'Hey! Candyboy' you ask? It's a dating simulator related to Kevin, taking a little inspiration from 'Tender loving cannibal' another wonderful dating sim that you should check out.

This project is currently being made by two people but wouldn't mind more help in the future.

Some important credits:

@zaccosnacco - zac

Main writer/director/coder/lead artist/concept artist/background artist

@that-weird-mime - mime

Secondary writer/concept artist/sprite artist

@/sr-pelo

The creator of Spooky month - all characters and rights belong to him

This page will be dedicated to news, updates about this project, some sneak peaks and more!

This project started out as just a silly idea, was not expecting all the hype and excitement! This would be my first actually big visual novel game, and while i have a little experience on other game genres I have mostly just been doing art for games like backgrounds or sprites. Consider this a passion project because I really like Kevin, and I'm happy to slowly bring this game to life.

- @zaccosnacco

Also ask box is open for anything questions you might have, though we won't be answering story spoilers!

[palmersluvr]

husband! lu having babygirl sitting on his lap while he codes OMGGGGG?!!!

like i can imagine him keeping one hand wrapped around her little waist while typing with the other

her babbling random words and tugging on his sleeves while he talks to her all like “yes principessa see daddy forgot to close this parentheses, always remember to do that” explaining like she understands but she just giggles and squeals cus she loves to be with her daddy 🥹

or her just smashing the keyboard and he doesn’t even mind cus she’s “helping” him code too. she’d hit the space bar and turn to look at him with her big brown eyes and he’s just beaming and nodding like “you’re a genius baby already a better coder than me” 🥹

😣😣😣😣 her “helping” him code too omg stopppp

when she presses the space bar for the first time he’d be like “yay! good job, daddy loves you!” while kissing her while she giggles

and when she gets older she’s like “i better coder than you daddy!”

[greenbubblefactory]

Matchup for @ochirukajitsu

Congratulations you have a match with..

Idia Shroud !

★Idia Shroud never expected to get attached to anyone at Night Raven College. People were exhausting, unpredictable, loud. He preferred his room, his games, the comforting glow of his monitors over real-life socialization. That was the plan to get through school with minimal interaction and zero attachments.

★Then you happened.

★At first, you were just someone he noticed in passing, another student who didn’t seem too keen on socializing either. That was fine. But what wasn’t fine was how interesting you were. Your Vkei-inspired aesthetic made you look like some mysterious NPC from an obscure gothic RPG, the kind with hidden lore and tragic backstories. You were quiet, intense, always with headphones on, as if the world wasn’t worth acknowledging.

★Which was exactly why Idia refused to acknowledge how much he started noticing you.

★He told himself he was just observing from a safe distance. That was normal. Totally normal. It wasn’t like he was intrigued by the way your sharp, blunt words could cut through nonsense like a well-placed attack in a Soulslike boss fight. Or that he admired how you seemed completely unbothered by social expectations, disappearing whenever you felt like it, making it clear that you owed nothing to anyone.

★And it definitely wasn’t like he started seeking out your presence on purpose. Nope. No way.

★But then one day, he overheard you talking about Fear and Hunger. And that was the beginning of the end.

★Idia had been content staying in the background, but the moment you mentioned the game’s brutal mechanics, something in his brain short-circuited. Before he could stop himself, he interrupted.

★"Wait—you actually like Fear and Hunger? And you think the atmosphere is top-tier horror??"

★You looked at him. Not in the way most people did, either not with judgment or confusion, but with actual interest. And then you started talking. About RPG mechanics, game design, dungeon synth, and all the things Idia had convinced himself no one else in NRC cared about.

★That was it. That was the moment.

★Idia never thought he'd meet someone who could match his energy in a conversation. Someone who could keep up with his rapid-fire game analysis, who had hyperfixations as deep as his, who could rant for hours about their favorite topics without losing steam.

★For the first time, Idia wasn’t just rambling into the void. He was talking to someone who got it.

★After that, things changed. He started seeking you out more. He found himself checking online forums to see if you had posted anything about new game releases. He made playlists with your favorite metal and Vkei artists, secretly listening to them on repeat.

★And then there was your gift-giving.

★Idia wasn’t used to receiving things. Not personal things, at least. So when you casually handed him a handmade trinket,a tiny keychain of Ortho, crafted with intricate detail,he froze. His brain went completely blank. His hair flickered pink. He had no idea what to say.

★(Ortho, of course, immediately started teasing him. “Big Brother, your hair is pink! Are you overheating? Do you need assistance?”)

★That moment was the first of many.

★You weren’t good with words, and you didn’t like physical affection, but your gifts spoke volumes. Little handmade accessories, carefully drawn sketches of him, customized details on your DIY fashion that were meant just for him. Every single one made Idia feel like his system was experiencing critical errors.

★It was too much. Too much thoughtfulness. Too much care.

★And worse? He liked it.

★So he started returning the favor. He wasn’t great at making physical things, but he was a coder, a gamer, a digital artist. So he did what he knew best,he coded a custom game for you, one where you were the protagonist, battling through a gothic-inspired dungeon, with hand-drawn enemies and lore written just for you.

★He didn’t say anything when he sent you the link. Just casually dropped it into your inbox like it was no big deal.

★(Meanwhile, Ortho watched in the background, shaking his head at his brother’s complete inability to handle emotions properly.)

★It was easy to fall into a comfortable routine.

★You weren’t the type to force conversation. You understood his social battery issues because you had your own. If either of you ditched plans, neither took it personally. You just sent a single text “Not today. Low energy.” and that was that. No pressure. No expectations. Just mutual understanding.

★When you did spend time together, it was always on your own terms. Late-night gaming marathons, silent crafting sessions where you customized clothing and he worked on code, long walks under the moonlight with a single pair of headphones shared between you.

★Idia liked knowing you were there. Even if you weren’t talking, even if you were just existing in the same space, it was enough.

★But then came the realization.

★The stupid, frustrating, terrifying realization that Idia had caught feelings.

★It didn’t hit him all at once. It built up over time,watching you beat an impossible boss fight, catching you smiling to yourself while sketching, noticing how you always remembered tiny details about him.

★And then there was the way you treated Ortho.

★You never dismissed him, never treated him like an afterthought. You listened to him, included him, respected him. And that was when Idia knew.

★Knew that he was completely, hopelessly screwed.

★His brain went into overdrive. What was he supposed to do? You were cool, independent, a little scary in the best way. And him? He was just some awkward shut-in with bad posture and zero romantic experience.

★So, like any self-respecting coward, he tried to ignore it.

★It didn’t work.

★Because every time you casually handed him another handmade gift, or mentioned a tiny detail about him that he’d forgotten he even said, or just existed in his space without making him feel like he had to change…

★His hair flickered pink. Again. And again. And again.

★(Ortho started keeping a counter.)

★Maybe Idia wasn’t meant to be a protagonist in a love story. Maybe he wasn’t meant to be a bold, confident romantic lead. But… maybe that was okay. Maybe you didn’t need grand gestures or sappy speeches. Maybe all you needed was someone who understood that love doesn’t always need words.

★Maybe love could be silent companionship, carefully curated playlists, and a custom-coded game for you.

★And if that was the case… then Idia Shroud was pretty sure he’d just found his favorite side quest.

English is not my first language so I'm sorry if there are any spelling mistakes!

[centrally-unplanned]

Japanese website Forest Page is shutting down ~today, a tragic loss of "Heisei otaku memories", as so many are calling it. Launched in 2003, Forest Page was a "Geocities for mobile", a site that hosted user-created websites and gave them tools to allow non-coders to make them. In practice, it became one of the premiere places for fanfiction in Japan, with the stories hosted on author-created sites.

It wasn't quite the Fanfic.net of Japan, as for one the Japanese fandom just never centralized quite the way the 2000's western one did, instead being spread out over a half dozen or so sites. But additionally, it wasn't initially popular for fanfic so much as cell phone fanfiction, because in 2000's Japan the "cell phone novel" was a specific thing. These websites were being made for flip phones, not smartphones, and not only would people read them on those phones, they would often write them. None of that was very conducive to the creation and consumption of a "traditional" novel; so starting in the 2000's Japanese writers started making stories fit for the medium, namely:

Very short

A huge focus on dialogue and inner thoughts, with no/minimal description or scene detail

Using a limited POV of a specific character

Often employing the medium-as-message, like using emojis, structuring the story as IM's or emails, etc.

Also they all had huge gaps between lines, I'm not really sure what that is about:

Probably for readability on the phone given the small screen size? But it was absolutely part of the genre. A few of these novels actually made it big, got movie adaptations, people wrote articles about the "cultural phenomenon", it was the 2000's so Hiroki Azuma had a take on it of course, and so on. It slotted neatly into the vibe of the time of technology changing culture, paralleling discourse around otaku in the same era.

In fanfic those trends met up, and anyone familiar with fanfiction probably read that list of traits of the cellphone novel and thought "oh, this is perfect for fanfiction". Skipping out on description? I don't need it, I know what they look like already. Focus on conversation and POV? Perfect for shipping fics. Short lengths? Yeah, we are shortcutting to the good stuff, that is the point. Mirroring trends in the west, Forest Page's userbase was ~95% female, and the most common content on the site was romantic or edgy-dramatic stories in the franchises you'd expect. The closure page linked above actually summarizes the site's history by year, and lists the biggest fandoms:

Which is exactly what I would expect from a female otaku fanfiction website. Congrats to Pirates of the Caribbean for making it though, freeaboo's represent.

I do think the fact that the site was a website hoster as opposed to a fic hoster did align with the way the Japanese fandom was more "creator focused" and embraced the media mix more. There were "fic circles" a la doujin circles who made their own pages, people would make fanart, fan video games, and so own to host alongside it, and all of it was centralized to the creator; it made following them-as-a-person just a little bit easier. Most websites were simple text, but others did have the full Geocities experience:

Something that was somewhat common were basic visual novel concepts where the reader could make choices, or even insert their own name so they would be the "MC" of the story:

(Dream novels are in fact their own thing in Japan) My understanding is the site was quite popular through the 2000's and into the 2010's, though over time the "cellphone novel" as a concept fizzled out. People got smartphones, more people got PCs, and the constraints didn't make sense anymore - you can read ebooks and normal websites on your phone now after all. You can probably draw a line between these kind of stories and the webfiction/light novel boom of the late 2000's/2010's, something that was equally born on the internet, that streamlines the novel to "shortcut to the good stuff" but without the need to fit on a flip phone's screen. Though I will admit my own understanding of their histories shows them more as two sides of the same "youth demand for new literature" coin.

In 2017 Forest Page launched Forest Page Plus, a new service fully optimized for the smartphone era; but it did not transfer over all the old content, starting the clock ticking on the original Forest Page. My understanding is that in June they announced Forest Page was officially closing down; and from what I have gathered from reminiscing writers on twitter, they did not provide any easy, one-touch way to save any of the content, so people are archiving Wayback Machine links or sharing tips on how screenshot-save stories (I think the rub is they gave people a way to transfer content to FP+, but most don't want to do that, as places like Twitter & Pixiv are the content kings of this era).

As of tomorrow I would bet the large majority of the content will be gone; quite sad given both the quantity of stories there and how many got sometimes millions of readers. I am sure most of the biggest stories are archived at least, but particularly the early stuff was a very ephemeral genre, one that doesn't make sense to revisit once you aren't a 16 year old teen writing and reading fics on a flip phone in between classes. Which means another legion of the ghosts of the Wired is being born today. May we pour one out for a fellow online community that lived and died!

[allieebobo]

Monsoon Games: Vision for the Future

Hi everyone!

As you may know, November is coming up, and that marks the 2-year anniversary of writing CT:OS and Merry Crisis part-time!

I have big dreams for where to take Monsoon Games next! A little about me: I'm a full-time urban planner, but I'm considering taking a 1 year break in 2026 to see some of my game ideas to fruition. I want to know how viable this is, and what you guys are interested in, to best plot out my next steps. 

I've created a google form to better understand what to prioritize and what next steps are viable for the next 2 years.

If you're a coder/programmer or artist and excited to find out more about collaborating, I'd be really interested to share more about the project(s) and discuss!

(For more information on the roadmap I've got in mind, click here. For more information about some of the projects I'm interested in pursuing in the future, click here.)

Click read more to also read the revamped 'mission statement' for Monsoon Games - but it's also updated in the current pinned post!

Monsoon Games is a small indie game studio that creates story-rich, character-driven games. We want our games to create a cozy space that feels like home - in all its varied and unexpected forms.

We are passionate about making games that tell diverse stories and experiences, feature strong, memorable characters, and most of all, create moments that are both heartwarming and thought-provoking.

Whether it’s exploring the rollercoaster of navigating life as a college varsity athlete (College Tennis: Origin Story), or the bittersweet struggle to figure out where ‘home’ is after a messy breakup (Merry Crisis) - or quietly carving out a new life as a diner-owner on a distant moon (Space Diner-WIP), our games invite players into rich, unique worlds full of colorful, diverse characters.

[periprose]

i kno its not everyones cup of tea but would u ever do tasm!peter parker as a baby girl dad?? like reader and him are parents to a baby girl 🥹🥹 maybe even pregnant reader!! ajfdhjfd i have many thoughts but i kno again not everyone likes pregnancy/baby stuff

yeah maybe!! honestly I had a dream about this once. It was pretty cute and I can see myself writing something about it lolol. I love babies and pregnancy stuff tbh. If it was feasible financially I'd love to be a mom too!! Baby fever goes hard lol

and I just know tasm Peter would be so good at being a dad... he would love that lil baby to pieces.

Like just imagine him balancing his work and little baby Mayday (just abusing the canon baby name here lol sorry MJ) on his knee. She's full of giggles and wandering hands constantly touching whatever tech he's working on.

And Peter's all gentle so he pulls her away with soft hands, not wanting to dissuade her, just for her safety, but he secretly loves that his daughter clearly takes after him.

"Who's gonna be a cute little inventor, huh? Is May-May gonna take after her papa Peter Parker?" He jostles her around and she shrieks with laughter.

Eventually he'd set up a LEGO block corner for her so her hands can stay busy. And Mayday loves building things, so eventually Peter looks over to see just the top of her red hair, as she's mostly obscured by the giant LEGO wall she built.

And he's be so proud, the first thing he would do is show you when you get back home from work:

"Look at what May made!" He would hold her up and she'd grin really proud as they both motion towards the big wall she made in the corner of your bedroom.

"Aw, you wanna be an architect like Mommy?" Because of course you'd be an architect in this scenario, and it would be a hilarious, small-fake-beef between you and Peter. And Mayday, not really processing your sentence, nods, adding to your shit-eating grin.

"Uh, no, just wait until she gets into software. Mayday's gonna be a coder like her Papa." Peter fixes his glasses and side-eyes you. Mostly jokingly.

"Well, I don't see any tech embedded inside the LEGO wall." You coo at Mayday, who's reaching towards you from Peter's hands. "You want to build beautiful, artsy buildings in the heart of the city like Mommy, right?"

"Nuh-uh." Peter puts on a silly, girly voice mimicking Mayday, placing his face behind her as if his voice is really coming out of her. She bites her thumb, laughing. "I wanna be like Papa because coding actually does something."

"Hey!" You pull Mayday out of his hands, with a falsely offended gasp at his audacity to use Mayday in his propaganda. "Housing important things is something, you jerk."

"Yeah, but it's not an action executed by a program, is it?" Peter prods your shoulder. "Architecture is cool and all, but it just... is."

"Wow." You blink. "Why did I marry you?"

"Papa?" Mayday tilts her head at you and you burst out laughing, rubbing your face against hers.

"Yeah, May."

"Cool." She points to him, and you roll your eyes, as Peter takes this with some nerd-afflicted ego.

"Yup. Papa cool, May."

"You so told her to say that." You shake your head at him, and he shrugs, pulling the two of you into a hug.

Whatever Mayday does, you know you'll both be proud of her.

(NGL I could write this into a whole actual fic if we want it, instead of a blurb lol)

[sodachalice]

info about them in order. perhaps some asks/requests could be fun if anyones curious about them... uuu

Darcy/Lyor Crawford - They/Them - Late twenties.

Darcy currently lives out of their truck and travels around Chamberlands more impoverished areas, giving out medical care and supplies they've stockpiled to the people who need it, something their family regularly did when they were a child. They have been fired from their job as IT/coder at Chamberlands archival facility after concerning behavior was exhibited when their close friend and coworker Dalton was found dead in his apartment. They are medically trained and take pride in their ability to withstand stressful situations. Darcy has problems with losing time, though it isn't something they particularly question as it was common for their family to experience the same. They can be a hopeless romantic and spend a lot of their life daydreaming, though in person they can tend to be painfully cold.

Sugar Chambers - He/Him - Old enough ;)

Sugar is Chamberlands special little guy, their mascot. He is less so a model, despite that being his job title, and moreso a real person who has been forceably turned into a mascot of commodity, he is Chamberlands Mickey Mouse, their special little touy. Due to an extremely restrictive and artificially scripted childhood Sugar has grown up into a very excitable, very spoiled manchild. He doesn't know how to handle being told no. Despite this, he craves something more in life, domesticity and love, two things he feels like he lacks. He is good at dancing, and acting, and being cute. He is also good at drinking, and screaming at people in their faces, and hiding his functional alcoholism. Sugar has no bad intentions but struggles to tolerate any sort of discomfort. He likes Dylan for the way Dylan does everything they can to make him happy and comfortable.

Dylan Wakeman - He/They - 25

Dylan has quit his job at modeling after resenting his brother for putting him into the family business extremely young and considers himself a burnout, something they are very happy about. They enjoy feeling like they have broken all of their brothers expectations. His experience in the modeling business has left him severely depressed, and he spends most of his time smoking pot and playing videogames, which Vigil allows out of guilt for the trauma that has happened. Dylan has also picked up making his own clothes, and on his twenty first birthday he threw his own catwalk with his own spin off clothing line for the Wakeman fashion CO. It did wonderfully, and is where he met Sugar. The two of them have been off and on dating since. Dylan is chronically bored, and finds himself getting involved in things they know tend to be harmful just to see what they can do or how they can manipulate the situation in their favor.

John "Joe" Doe - He/Him - 47

Not much is known publicly about John Doe specifically because he has lived off the grid for the past twenty years out of paranoia. Living in an RV that Vigil had bought for him John spends his time concocting "conspiracies" and stalking the Chambers internet activity. He has a phobia of closed in spaces and refuses to enter most buildings, and struggles to take care of himself. He and Vigil have been friends since highschool, and John has been aware of Vigils obvious crush since day one. He frequently uses this to get things out of Vigil, but struggles with the guilt of not being able to feel anything back that he feels like he should towards them. Dylan idolizes Joe, which makes him very uncomfortable.

Vigil Wakeman - They/He/She - 48

Vigil Wakeman is the owner and founder of Wakeman Fashion Co and has worked himself up from the bottom, doing anything he had to to get his name out there. Vigil has an insanely big heart that is full of an equally insane amount of anxiety that he frequently tends to over medicate, especially now that he has made the effort to become sober. Vigil is Dylans legal guardian and has recently dedicated his time to making up for the mistakes he's made in the past with prioritizing work over Dylans health, something Dylan, Joe AND Ginger all rail him on. Despite doing their best to make up for everything, they hate that Dylan has gotten himself involved with Sugar. But refuses to explain why. Vigil can come off like shes stuck in her own world, and that description wouldn't be too far off. She is a people pleaser, but her ideas of how to fix things are not always the most practical. They tend to try and avoid emotional consequences for things they've done.

Noemie Chambers - She/Her - 47

Noemie doesn't talk much to anyone anymore. Too many sweats. She has made enough people unhappy and is yet in a position where she cannot take back anything she has said. So she has decided she will be sticking to business, despite how much this upsets her son. They rarely hang out anymore, and this is adding to Sugars increased desperation for something new, somewhere else to go. Noemie used to personally work with Darcy in the archival unit out of a passion for archived media, but has since abandoned that as well. No one knows her well enough to have a problem with any of this, other than Sugar, whos complaints fall on deaf ears. Noemie hasn't been the same since her twin sister passed away in their late teens, and has since deteriorated into someone with a jaded disposition and apathetic outlook. Noemie in her childhood was very expressive, which she sees a lot in Sugar.

Ginger Brennan - She/Her - 49

A childhood friend of Vigils, Ginger has seen every part of Vigil and almost every part of Joes life and has firmly decided she refuses to let her daughter end up like the two of them, tenuously allowing Kestrel the ability to hang out with Dylan and Sugar as long as Kestrel promises to be open about it. Ginger is a strong believer in tough love and treating her children like friends and not prisoners, but this has caused her and Kestrel to struggle with boundaries between each other, either frequently overstepping them or refusing to talk to each other for days. Ginger is aware of Kestrels behaviors but feels as if they are significantly less bad than Dylans, so she allows them without judgement. Ginger tends to approach things like a big sister- always attempting to pull people under her wing, mostly because she views herself as one of the only competent people alive. Kestrel would have many words to say about that. None of them very nice.

Kestrel Brennan - They/She/He - 25

Kestrel is Dylans closest friend and someone who could easily be regarded as a "manic pixie dream girl", she frequently shoplifts and dumpster dives to satiate a desire for collecting things and expressing herself, and frequently collects things like animal bones or pieces of garbage from outside for her strange art projects she's been making with a new girl she's befriend. Kestrel is the only person who's able to keep up with Dylans more rapid moods as she herself is tightly wound, though Kestrel finds herself judging Dylan for his more obviously flagellant and performative self injurous behaviors- where as Dylan is eccentric as a form of self harm, Kestral is eccentric as a form of self expression. She is a hedonist before anything else.

[beatrixst0nehill]

"Here she comes, marketing director extraordinaire!" Gavin joked, filming his coworker, Aubrey.

"Come on, stop playing around," she laughed, smiling big.

"No way, just look at you. All those seminars must be paying off."

Aubrey blushed. "OK..... so, it's not like I can hide it. I know what everyone's been gossiping about as I wear my baggy shirts and sweaters. But now it's May and I can't hide them anymore. So..... here they are."

"Nothing to be ashamed of, Aubrey. I think having a set of boobs bigger than your head suits you. Makes you look dumber and more approachable."

"Awwww, how sweet," she sarcastically replied. "Well, I'll have you all know they're going to be getting much bigger."

"Wow, and you already look like you're struggling to keep balance...."

Aubrey rolled her eyes. "Yes, I know they look ridiculous, but we got bought out last year and the new CEO wants all of us, the high-ranking women in his company, to have extremely big boobs. He's..... definitely a tits kind of guy."

"I can see that. And let me guess, doesn't hurt for all of his corporate cronies to have you and the other girls to grope and fondle when they give meetings?"

"Wow, good guess. Yep, I don't even have a seat, I sit in the senior VP's lap as he paws at my tits all meeting long."

"Damn, not even good enough to be the CEO's girl. Harsh."

"No, that honor is going to Jackie, you know, the blonde coder girl?"

"Oh, the one that's like.... massively pregnant now?"

"Yeah. The CEO has her bent over the table fucking her as he gives his meetings."

"Lucky girl, am I right?"

"I guess."

"So, what about you? The VP isn't knocking you up?"

"If you must know..... I'm actually two months. Yes, he fucks me sometimes in the meetings, and so do a lot of the other corporate guys and shareholders when they come in."

"Damn, everyone gets a ride on the Aubrey train but me. That sucks."

Aubrey bit her lip. "You can fuck me, Gavin. The CEO says being free use is good for company morale--oh, oops."

"Free use, since when?"

"Since the takeover..... shit. We just haven't told anyone since HR is all run by girls. Oh fuck."

"Guys, did you hear!?" Gavin shouted. "All the senior girlies, the ones they're making grow big tits, they're all free use! Aubrey just told me."

Aubrey watched, blushing as about six girls around the office were either pushed against a wall or tackled to the floor, their breasts pulled from their tops, skirts hiked up, fucked relentlessly in front of their coworkers."

"Way to go, Aubrey...." the girls groaned in disappointment.

"Sorry!" Aubrey said, eyes turning to Gavin, who propped his phone on a desk nearby, still filming. "What're you doing."

He looked at the recording to make sure the angle was right. "There! Perfect."

"What....? Oh shit."

Gavin pulled her in front of the desk, ripping her dress straight down the middle, exposing her breasts, pushing up what remained of her dress, fucking her in the ass. "Just making a little movie for me and my friends to watch later. now smile for the camera, oh, and be sure to tell me how much it hurts, and how good the pain feels, got that, sweetie?"

"But it does hurt! Oh fuck!" she moaned, turning her head toward him as Gavin slammed his cock in and out of her tight ass.

Gavin smacked her face hard, holding her by the throat as he repositioned her head to face forward. "Eyes in front, cum-dump. Now smile." He let go of her neck, grabbing and showing off Aubrey's growing breasts, squeezing milk out of them, smacking them together so they clapped.

Aubrey heard the moaning and yelping and grunts of her male coworkers brutalizing their female superiors. She knew this is how office life would be from now on, so she better get used to it and smile.

[applebuttercringe]

Arcane and Class Conflict

So, it has become pretty obvious that Arcane will mostly abandon the class oppression plotline and end Season 2 with Zaun and Piltover teaming up to fight off Noxus. The plot is almost definitely going to gloss over Caitlyns fascist martial law over Zaun, and focus the story on redeeming her personally via her relationship with Vi. As is reasonable, a lot of people are kind of upset with this direction, and in general how Arcane seems to try and portray both sides as equally in the wrong even when the majority of Zauns issues can be directly traced back to mistreatment by the Topsiders.

Lets be honest, this was obvious from the start. Here's why:

Arcane was made by a big budget corporation: Arcane cost $250 Million to make, which is the largest budget for an animated series ever. This money came directly from Riot games. Riot isn't exactly the most enlightened company. Despite their profits and budget increasing year over year (the average income per employee was $600,000) in 2024 they layed off 530 employees with little warning or reason. Then they opened an Arcane themed office with Executive offices. They recently settled a $100 Million dollar Sex discrimination lawsuit for gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace. As talented as the writers, artist, designers, musicians, coders, animators, etc. at Riot are, ultimately the story has to fit into the boxes of what the producers and executives want. Those executives aren't exactly the most class critical.

Arcane is first and foremost an advertisement: Arcane is a prequel for League of Legends, giving more detailed backstories to some of their most popular characters (Jinx, Vi, Caitlyn, Jayce), after Arcane was released the usage rates of these champions increased immensely and with it so did the profits associated with these champions. Interestingly, the amount that these characters popularity increased was mostly in line with how well their character was received in Arcane. For example: despite being practically unrecognizable to his League counterpart in season 1, Viktor experienced one of the greatest increases in usage rates of all champions. This was directly connected to his fan favorite status amongst the Arcane audience. As such, Riot has an investment interest in making the champions as interesting, badass, and likable in Arcane as possible. If Caitlyn was really torn down by the narrative for her turn to fascism they might not sell as many Pool Party Caitlyn cosmetics. In Arcane, the world building regarding extreme poverty and oppression is just a backdrop to give the champions cool backstories. Not to make you think critically about wealth disparities or systematic oppression.

Not to mention, taking any political stance at all would alienate part of the audience. They invested $250 Million dollars in this show, they need/want it to appeal to the greatest audience possible if they are going to make that money back.

Arcane is character focussed, not world focussed: From the beginning Arcane was always focussed on the characters first and foremost. I saw some people upset that Season 2 didn't spend enough time on the world outside the main cast. Like not showing the audience in detail how the power struggle between the chem-barons affects life in the Undercity. But this is just always how Arcane has been. Season 1 never focussed on how the Hexgates revolutionized trade or cross continental relations, only on how it elevated Jayce. The most we saw of the child labor in the mines in season 1 was as a backdrop for a Jayce and Vi fightscene, and then a child is fridged to start an argument between them. In season 2 the only significance the freeing of the child miners is that Isha joins the cast. The world exists to serve the characters, as is only shown in detail in the way it directly affects the characters. It is a cool setting, but ultimately the show will always spend more screentime on the characters emotional lives than the cultural and economic life of Zaun and Piltover as a whole. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it is just a writing choice. This also means that the finale will be far more focussed on the conclusion of these characters emotional arcs than it is in resolving or otherwise finding some conclusion to the civil war plotline.

Of course Arcane isn't a revolutionary story about rising up against oppressors. It is a League of Legends champion advertisement. Subversive political takes don't emerge from big budget blockbusters on Netflix. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, it is just the genre.

Just some thoughts. I've seen some discussion about this and wanted to throw in my two cents on the topic.

[phoebepheebsphibs]

Caved-In Brotherhood

Written for @littlemissartemisia @tmnt-write-fight

Based on the prompt: "Angst to fluff"

Posted on AO3 <-

Donnie had barely noticed when Raph came in to talk.

He hadn't stayed long, only to tell him he'd missed dinner or movie night or something along those lines. He'd made some feeble attempt to remind him to eat, drink, sleep. He'd left a plate of hot pizza and a mug of steaming tea with lemon for him before saying he was going out to... do something. Donnie didn't pay attention.

His peace offerings from Raphael had long since gone cold, the pizza grease and melting cheese had congealed onto the plate. The hot tea was now practically iced tea.

Donnie's eyes were red and bloodshot, burning from staring at his screen for so long. He was powering through to finish a program update for SHELLDON. With this update, he'd run smoother, the bugs would be eradicated, and hopefully his logic circulators would keep him from going out late at night to hang with the unscrupulous drones and mechs that certain highly-intelligent coders and robot-builders made.

He was about to go through the code for the third time and check for any remaining issues when his cell phone buzzed.

An alert. Someone had activated the panic button. It was probably just Leo doing a stupid stunt on his skateboard, and he'd pressed the button by accident again.

Donnie ignored the notification.

The alert sounded again.

He groaned as he checked.

Oh, it wasn't Nardo, it was Raph.

It was probably still just an accident. They never actually needed those emergency buttons, really. It was just a precaution.

Donnie's phone started buzzing. A call from Raph. Probably just to let him know not to worry.

Donnie begrudgingly answered, not even using his own hand to tap the button but instead opting to have one of his extra robot arms do it for him.

"You are conversing with Donatello," he sighed.

It was quiet for a moment.

"Hello? Raph?"

There was a crackle of static and a cough as Raphael's voice croaked.

"D-Donnie? You there??"

"I'm here, what is it?"

Donnie didn't mean for his voice to sound so irritated, but he was getting anxious about Raph's tone. His voice sounded strained, the audio from the other end of the line was too crackly and garbled.

"D-Donnie, I'm a little... I-I got trapped, I'm in th-the sewers --"

Donnie's chair fell back and crashed against the floor as he rose. He gripped the phone with all his might as he listened in.

"Where are you."

"Th-the sewer tunnels --"

"I mean, where SPECIFICALLY?"

"O-oh, Yeah... Uh, I... I'm not s-sure...."

He sounded winded. Tired. Donnie instantly started running to the tunnels. The lair was quiet, dark, everyone had gone to bed. Donnie only now thought to look at the clock. 3AM.

"Raph, what are you doing out in the tunnels at 3 in the morning??" he questioned.

"I... I-I was trai-trainin', and... I think I punched a wall wrong or something. Th-the walls caved in an'... uh... I guess I h-hit... my... head..."

Raph's voice trails off, causing Donnie's breath to freeze in his lungs.

"No no no, stay awake, okay?" he begs, rushing into the tunnels. "Just keep talking to me. You said you were training, so why were you in the tunnels?"

Raph takes a moment to collect his thoughts before answering.

"I... uh, I remember I spoke to you and... y-ya brushed me off, and I guess that made me mad. I... sorry, I... uh, so I went into the tunnels to blow off some steam. I said I was gonna train cuz' I didn't want ya to worry... stupid of me..." i

Donnie groans.

"Why would you -- never mind. Which way did you go?"

"I... I think I went left towards the big opening with the falls..."

"Okay, I'm on my way."

Donnie rushes down the tunnels, following Raphael's directions.

He keeps telling Raph to stay on the line, keep talking to him. Raph mumbles and drones before Donnie thinks to ask a question/

"Hey, Raph?"

"Yeah?"

"If you left the lair because you were mad at me, then why did you call me to come and help?"

"I knew... I kn-knew you'd be the only one awake at this hour."

Oh. Well, that was true.

"Why were you so mad that I was busy working?" Donnie asks. "I work all the time, what about this was so different?"

He hears Raph whimper or chuckle or something. He wheezes a breath before answering.

"That's not what I was upset about."

"Then what?"

"You... you've been kinda avoiding us," Raph sighs. "Or a-at least, it felt like that. And you HAVE been working a lot these past few weeks. I've noticed how many all-nighters you've been pulling. I... I was worried for ya."

Donnie pauses, his footsteps slowing as he comes to a halt, the realization hitting him.

"Oh. You... were worried for me?"

Raph sighs and coughs from the other end of the line.

"I just... y'know. I thought it wasn't good for ya to stay cooped up all alone each night, so I... I got your favourite pizza for dinner and had Dad play Jupiter Jim's Pluto Vacation 4 fer family night. I thought that might cheer ya up or... or getchya to come out and hang with us, but..."

Donnie sighs.

He hadn't even paid attention to Raph when he came in to tell him about dinner. He couldn't even remember what he said to assure Raph he didn't care to leave his room. He knew he was curt with him. He knew he'd said something snippy and rude to get him to leave faster. He knew he assumed that he was just being annoying and didn't understand his science and he was hindering his oh-so-important work. He knew he probably told him as much in his caffeine-fueled, sleep-deprived, barely conscious state.

What an idiot he was.

"Raph, I'm so sorry, I... I didn't realize... I'm sorry."

He can practically hear Raph shrug.

"It's okay, man."

No, no it wasn't okay. But he'd leave it there for now, and apologize properly to Raph once he found him.

Two minutes of running down the halls and a few left turns followed by a right turn later, Donnie found the cavern that Raph had mentioned. Sure enough, there was a section of pipeworks and bricks at the bottom of the falls that had loose rubble and wreckage there.

"I think I found you, Raph!" Dee exclaims.

He heard Raph give an exhausted "Woohoo....!" from the other end of the phone.

Donnie carefully climbed down, careful of any other loose bricks or rusty metal pipes that might be sticking out, just waiting to give a ninja turtle some tetanus. Once he was far enough down, Donnie jumped the rest of the way, splashing in the murky waters beneath him. He quickly ran to the pile of rubble and began to dig his brother out.

After a while of desperate prayers that Raph would be okay, he finally saw a hand, large and calloused and bloody and covered in muck and mud. It was pinned beneath a huge series of bricks, and looked like maybe the wrist was fractured -- or at the very least, dislocated. It was turning some pretty deep shades of black and blue from bruising. Donnie continued to dig.

The rest of the arm came into view. Donnie pulled what might have been an entire wall off of Raph's chest and head. There was a large metal pipe keeping his leg pinned. His ankle was swollen under the weight. His face was drenched in slime, his eye was forced shut from the swelling of a large bruise and a cut on his forehead as a small trickle of blood leaked over his eyelid.

He looked so out of it when Donnie finally got him unburied.

"Hhhhhheeeeeeey, Donnie," he smiled. "Long time no... ssssseeeeeeee...."

Donnie tried not to read into that greeting. Raph was concussed, he didn't completely know what he was saying.

The two limped and hobbled back to the lair, where Donnie had already alerted SHELLDON to come and help them out. It took a while to find a safe route back up to the top of the cavern and to retrace their steps (especially with Raph's lumpering body overpowering Donnie and making him a bit topheavy), but they somehow managed to made it back to the lair before 4:30 AM. SHELLDON met them halfway there and helped to keep Raph awake and sober, while also trying to help keep him elevated and relieve some of the weight from Donnie's shoulders.

It was a challenge to carry him into the bathroom without causing a ruckus. Donnie had him take a shower before treating the cuts and scrapes and dislocated wrist. 

"Does this hurt? Is it too tight?" Dee asked, wrapping bandages around Raph's swollen ankle. He was no good at this, Leo was the medic... of course this was the one night the insomniac decided to get some good and proper sleep.

"I-it's fine," Raph winced. "It's not too tight..."

"Good, good... Well, I think you're all taken care of," Donnie sighed, leaning back and examining his work.

"Thanks, Donnie," Raph smiled. "Sorry for... for everything. I-I didn't mean to --"

"Stop," Dee said sternly, raising a hand. "Stop right there. You don't have to apologize. I'm the one who..."

Donnie sighed, folding his hands awkwardly as he stared at the floor.

"...I shouldn't have pushed you away. I shouldn't have been so rude. I should have listened to you and taken better care of myself and not avoided my family. I'm going to take care of that right now, though."

"Huh?"

Donnie stood up and wrapped an arm around Raph's waist.

"Come on," he said. "Let's get you to bed."

Raph followed Donnie out of the bathroom and into his bedroom, where SHELLDON had already set up an extra mattress besides the eldest sib's bed.

"Don," Raph chuckled. "What is this...?"

"A sleepover."

"You're... you're gonna sleep in here?"

"Someone has to make sure you don't get lost again!" Dee joked.

Raph smiled before pulling Donnie into a hug. The two climbed into bed and within minutes, were fast asleep.

[unsoundedcomic]

I see you use lots of computer-y terminology for the Khert when you're talking out here in the real world. Occasionally the characters do too, like the Khert hubs.

Is there value in reading Unsounded's whole world as textually a big simulation on some machine – with the gods as original coders, and wrights as parts of the program which have learned how to modify it directly?

Or is it more of a helpful way to conceptualise their magical realities for us in this computer-heavy world – like Duane could read a story set here and ask "Does their internet imply everything is just a big pymaric?" for much the same meaning?

No worries if it's something you'd rather keep mysterious for now, or potentially metaphorical without committing either way!

It's tough to say it's definitively NOT a simulation. After all, you and I could be in a simulation and the comic could be a feature of it. So I leave that up to your interpretation.

But I use that terminology... for a very specific reason. And it's not a reason the story will ever broach. The true origins of the world will never be revealed, not in the text nor on here, but I know them. And the structure of it all is, of course, relevant to that.

It's funny to imagine Duane isekai'd to our world and finding computing strangely familiar. Like the little girl in Jurassic Park. "This is a UNIX system... I know this...!"

[mabelskins]

How to: Accessibility [EN]

Part 01 - Visual design

It’s been a while since my last how to and felt like putting something together! First of all, HAPPY PRIDE MONTH! To everyone out there! Being in the queer community, i know the struggles we go through everyday and am wishing a very proud month to all of us <3

Moving on to the actual topic here: accessibility. It’s been shown here and there when discussing coding and skinning but WHAT DOES IT ACTUALLY MEAN! 

Let’s go back a bit. For years people have been trying to achieve the impossible: an universal design. A design that is universal and usable for ALL people a one-size-fits-all design that will be usable and perfect for everyone. Now, there’s only one ‘little’ problem with this: people are different. I’ve always been overweight and whenever I’ve seen clothes that say ‘one size fit all’, I look at it very suspiciously. Bottom line is: every person is different, pain points and needs will also be different. 

So what do we do? One different design for every person who is using our product? 

Well, let’s make it equitable, let’s provide flexibility to cater for a broader audience, and let this audience choose what’s best for them. But! That’s doesn't take the responsibility from us, the designers (and coders) to make sure that we are making what we can to enable this flexibility. 

------------- I've started a list which I then realised would be way bigger than expected, so decided to make each item into its own post. We'll start with VISUAL DESIGN!

Part 01 - Visual design

Colour

I’ve mentioned before about the importance of contrast and contrast ratio briefly. If you want to go into more details, you may have a look at W3 Guidelines. In short: 

Don't rely on colour alone to convey meaning, information and actions;

Make sure there's enough contrast between foreground and background

Provide an option for light/dark mode

Light/Dark Modes

There’s a myth that dark mode is good for accessibility, because it improves text readability. (Personally, I’m a big fan of dark mode, as white/bright screens may trigger migraines). However, as everything in ux, the answer to ‘is it black or white’ is that it depends. As mentioned before, a good rule of thumb is not to generalise and provide flexibility. 

When using light and dark mode, make sure the colour contrast ratio passes on both modes. Here’s a few tips for designing for dark mode (according to atmos article attached at the end of this): 

Use tints (less saturated colours). Saturated colours can cause eye strain and will be hard to pass accessibility standards.

Image from Atmos website

Avoid pure black. Please. Pure black and pure white when used together might be the default instinct, but the contrast when used together is so strong it becomes hard to look at. Choose dark greys and off-whites/light grey when possible. 

Be patient with your colour palette, inverting colours won’t make it necessarily good. Take your time to build a palette that will be suitable for both.

Target Sizes

First, what is this? This refers to the dimensions of interactive elements such as links, buttons, icons or touch targets. Basically, anything you can interact/click.

WCAG 2.2 established a minimum for pointer inputs to be 24x24. This is the space that should be provided for a clickable area.

Image from W3 website

There's a number of exceptions and guidelines which I won't get into too much detail. It's important to think about the area which people are clicking into these elements. Also remember that this may be quite useful for users that are using the forum in their mobiles - so this is quite important (don't you hate when you can't click somewhere because you haven't clicked the EXACT area needed?)

In short:

Make sure target sizes are at least 24px

Make sure buttons look like buttons, anything that is clickable and interactive LOOKS like they are interactive

Make sure links are underlined (again, as an extra visual sign that they are clickable)

THAT'S IT!!

For part 01 at least. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. If you'd like to dive deeper into this, I highly recommend Stephanie Walter's content, as well as the Extra Bold book read. I'm attaching a few more articles and resources here too! If you've read all of this, you are a champ, I know this is longer than usual. Please like and share this content, let's get it out there!

Articles:

Designers Guide to Documenting Accessibility

Dark mode ui best practices

Dark mode best practices

Accessibility annotation examples

Colour accessibility tools

Inclusive components design

Accessible design in 60s

Target size minimum

Resources

Accessible colours

Accessible colour palette builder

[mariacallous]

On paper, the first candidate looked perfect. Thomas was from rural Tennessee and had studied computer science at the University of Missouri. His résumé said he’d been a professional programmer for eight years, and he’d breezed through a preliminary coding test. All of this was excellent news for Thomas’ prospective boss, Simon Wijckmans, founder of the web security startup C.Side. The 27-year-old Belgian was based in London but was looking for ambitious, fully remote coders.

Thomas had an Anglo-Saxon surname, so Wijckmans was surprised when he clicked into his Google Meet and found himself speaking with a heavily accented young man of Asian origin. Thomas had set a generic image of an office as his background. His internet connection was laggy—odd for a professional coder—and his end of the call was noisy. To Wijckmans, Thomas sounded like he was sitting in a large, crowded space, maybe a dorm or a call center.

Wijckmans fired off his interview questions, and Thomas’ responses were solid enough. But Wijckmans noticed that Thomas seemed most interested in asking about his salary. He didn’t come across as curious about the actual work or about how the company operated or even about benefits like startup stock or health coverage. Odd, thought Wijckmans. The conversation came to a close, and he got ready for the next interview in his queue.

Once again, the applicant said they were based in the US, had an Anglo name, and appeared to be a young Asian man with a thick, non-American accent. He used a basic virtual background, was on a terrible internet connection, and had a single-minded focus on salary. This candidate, though, was wearing glasses. In the lenses, Wijckmans spotted the reflection of multiple screens, and he could make out a white chatbox with messages scrolling by. “He was clearly either chatting with somebody or on some AI tool,” Wijckmans remembers.

On high alert, Wijckmans grabbed screenshots and took notes. After the call ended, he went back over the job applications. He found that his company’s listings were being flooded with applicants just like these: an opening for a full-stack developer got more than 500 applications in a day, far more than usual. And when he looked more deeply into the applicants’ coding tests, he saw that many candidates appeared to have used a virtual private network, or VPN, which allows you to mask your computer’s true location.

Wijckmans didn’t know it yet, but he’d stumbled onto the edges of an audacious, global cybercrime operation. He’d unwittingly made contact with an army of seemingly unassuming IT workers, deployed to work remotely for American and European companies under false identities, all to bankroll the government of North Korea.

With a little help from some friends on the ground, of course.

christina chapman was living in a trailer in Brook Park, Minnesota, a hamlet north of Minneapolis, when she got a note from a recruiter that changed her life. A bubbly 44-year-old with curly red hair and glasses, she loved her dogs and her mom and posting social justice content on TikTok. In her spare time she listened to K-pop, enjoyed Renaissance fairs, and got into cosplay. Chapman was also, according to her sparse online résumé, learning to code online.

It was March 2020 when she clicked on the message in her LinkedIn account. A foreign company was looking for somebody to “be the US face” of the business. The company needed help finding remote employment for overseas workers. Chapman signed on. It’s unclear how fast her workload grew, but by October 2022 she could afford a move from chilly Minnesota to a low-slung, four-bedroom house in Litchfield Park, Arizona. It wasn’t fancy—a suburban corner lot with a few thin trees—but it was a big upgrade over the trailer.

Chapman then started documenting more of her life on TikTok and YouTube, mostly talking about her diet, fitness, or mental health. In one chatty video, shared in June 2023, she described grabbing breakfast on the go—an açaí bowl and a smoothie— because work was so busy. “My clients are going crazy!” she complained. In the background, the camera caught a glimpse of metal racks holding at least a dozen open laptops covered in sticky notes. A few months later, federal investigators raided Chapman’s home, seized the laptops, and eventually filed charges alleging that she had spent three years aiding the “illicit revenue generation efforts” of the government of North Korea.

For maybe a decade, North Korean intelligence services have been training young IT workers and sending them abroad in teams, often to China or Russia. From these bases, they scour the web for job listings all over, usually in software engineering, and usually with Western companies. They favor roles that are fully remote, with solid wages, good access to data and systems, and few responsibilities. Over time they began applying for these jobs using stolen or fake identities and relying on members of their criminal teams to provide fictional references; some have even started using AI to pass coding tests, video interviews, and background checks.

But if an applicant lands a job offer, the syndicate needs somebody on the ground in the country the applicant claims to live in. A fake employee, after all, can’t use the addresses or bank accounts linked to their stolen IDs, and they can’t dial in to a company’s networks from overseas without instantly triggering suspicion. That’s where someone like Christina Chapman comes in.

As the “facilitator” for hundreds of North Korea–linked jobs, Chapman signed fraudulent documents and handled some of the fake workers’ salaries. She would often receive their paychecks in one of her bank accounts, take a cut, and wire the rest overseas: Federal prosecutors say Chapman was promised as much as 30 percent of the money that passed through her hands.

Her most important job, though, was tending the “laptop farm.” After being hired, a fake worker will typically ask for their company computer to be sent to a different address than the one on record—usually with some tale about a last-minute move or needing to stay with a sick relative. The new address, of course, belongs to the facilitator, in this case Chapman. Sometimes the facilitator forwards the laptop to an address overseas, but more commonly that person holds onto it and installs software that allows it to be controlled remotely. Then the fake employee can connect to their machine from anywhere in the world while appearing to be in the US. (“You know how to install Anydesk?” one North Korean operative asked Chapman in 2022. “I do it practically EVERYDAY!” she replied.)

In messages with her handlers, Chapman discussed sending government forms like the I-9, which attests that a person is legally able to work in the US. (“I did my best to copy your signature,” she wrote. “Haha. Thank you,” came the response.) She also did basic tech troubleshooting and dialed into meetings on a worker’s behalf, sometimes on short notice, as in this conversation from November 2023:

Worker: We are going to have laptop setup meeting in 20 mins. Can you join Teams meeting and follow what IT guy say? Because it will require to restart laptop multiple times and I can not handle that. You can mute and just follow what they say ...

Chapman: Who do I say I am?

Worker: You don’t have to say, I will be joining there too.

Chapman: I just typed in the name Daniel. If they ask WHY you are using two devices, just say the microphone on your laptop doesn’t work right ... Most IT people are fine with that explanation.

Sometimes, she got jumpy. “I hope you guys can find other people to do your physical I9s,” she wrote to her bosses in 2023, according to court documents. “I will SEND them for you, but have someone else do the paperwork. I can go to FEDERAL PRISON for falsifying federal documents.” Michael Barnhart, an investigator at cybersecurity company DTEX and a leading expert on the North Korean IT worker threat, says Chapman’s involvement followed a standard pattern—from an innocuous initial contact on LinkedIn to escalating requests. “Little by little, the asks get bigger and bigger,” he says. “Then by the end of the day, you’re asking the facilitator to go to a government facility to pick up an actual government ID.”

By the time investigators raided Chapman’s home, she was housing several dozen laptops, each with a sticky note indicating the fake worker’s identity and employer. Some of the North Korean operatives worked multiple jobs; some had been toiling quietly for years. Prosecutors said at least 300 employers had been pulled into this single scheme, including “a top-five national television network and media company, a premier Silicon Valley technology company, an aerospace and defense manufacturer, an iconic American car manufacturer, a high-end retail store, and one of the most recognizable media and entertainment companies in the world.” Chapman, they alleged, had helped pass along at least $17 million. She pleaded guilty in February 2025 to charges relating to wire fraud, identity theft, and money laundering and is awaiting sentencing.

Chapman’s case is just one of several North Korean fake-worker prosecutions making their way through US courts. A Ukrainian named Oleksandr Didenko has been accused of setting up a freelancing website to connect fake IT workers with stolen identities. Prosecutors say at least one worker was linked to Chapman’s laptop farm and that Didenko also has ties to operations in San Diego and Virginia. Didenko was arrested in Poland last year and was extradited to the United States. In Tennessee, 38-year-old Matthew Knoot is due to stand trial for his alleged role in a scheme that investigators say sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to accounts linked to North Korea via his laptop farm in Nashville. (Knoot has pleaded not guilty.) And in January 2025, Florida prosecutors filed charges against two American citizens, Erick Ntekereze Prince and Emanuel Ashtor, as well as a Mexican accomplice and two North Koreans. (None of the defendants’ lawyers in these cases responded to requests for comment.) The indictments claim that Prince and Ashtor had spent six years running a string of fake staffing companies that placed North Koreans in at least 64 businesses.

before the hermit kingdom had its laptop farms, it had a single confirmed internet connection, at least as far as the outside world could tell. As recently as 2010, that one link to the web was reserved for use by high-ranking officials. Then, in 2011, 27-year-old Kim Jong Un succeeded his father as the country’s dictator. Secretly educated in Switzerland and said to be an avid gamer, the younger Kim made IT a national priority. In 2012, he urged some schools to “pay special attention to intensifying their computer education” to create new possibilities for the government and military. Computer science is now on some high school curricula, while college students can take courses on information security, robotics, and engineering.

The most promising students are taught hacking techniques and foreign languages that can make them more effective operatives. Staff from government agencies including the Reconnaissance General Bureau— the nation’s clandestine intelligence service—recruit the highest-scoring graduates of top schools like Kim Chaek University of Technology (described by many as “the MIT of North Korea”) or the prestigious University of Sciences in Pyongsong. They are promised good wages and unfettered access to the internet—the real internet, not the intranet available to well-off North Koreans, which consists of a mere handful of heavily censored North Korean websites.

The earliest cyberattacks launched by Pyongyang were simple affairs: defacing websites with political messages or launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down US websites. They soon grew more audacious. In 2014, North Korean hackers famously stole and leaked confidential information from Sony’s film studio. Then they targeted financial institutions: Fraudulent trades pulled more than $81 million from the Bank of Bangladesh’s accounts at the New York Federal Reserve. After that, North Korean hackers moved into ransomware—the WannaCry attack in 2017 locked hundreds of thousands of Windows computers in 150 countries and demanded payments in bitcoin. While the amount of revenue the attack generated is up for debate—some say it earned just $140,000 in payouts—it wreaked much wider damage as companies worked to upgrade their systems and security, costing as much as $4 billion, according to one estimate.

Governments responded with more sanctions and stronger security measures, and the regime pivoted, dialing back on ransomware in favor of quieter schemes. It turns out these are also more lucrative: Today, the most valuable tool in North Korea’s cybercrime armory is cryptocurrency theft. In 2022, hackers stole more than $600 million worth of the cryptocurrency ether by attacking the blockchain game Axie Infinity; in February of this year, they robbed the Dubai-based crypto exchange Bybit of $1.5 billion worth of digital currency. The IT pretender scam, meanwhile, seems to have been growing slowly until the pandemic dramatically expanded the number of remote jobs, and Pyongyang saw the perfect opportunity.

In 2024, according to a recent report from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the number of people working in North Korea’s cyber divisions—which includes pretenders, crypto thieves, and military hackers—stood at 8,400, up from 6,800 two years earlier. Some of these workers are based in the country, but many are stationed overseas in China, Russia, Pakistan, or elsewhere. They are relatively well compensated, but their posting is hardly cushy.

Teams of 10 to 20 young men live and work out of a single apartment, sleeping four or five to a room and grinding up to 14 hours a day at weird hours to correspond with their remote job’s time zone. They have quotas of illicit earnings they are expected to meet. Their movements are tightly controlled, as are those of their relatives, who are effectively held hostage to prevent defections. “You don’t have any freedom,” says Hyun-Seung Lee, a North Korean defector who lives in Washington, DC, and says some of his old friends were part of such operations. “You’re not allowed to leave the apartment unless you need to purchase something, like grocery shopping, and that is arranged by the team leader. Two or three people must go together so there’s no opportunity for them to explore.”

The US government estimates that a typical team of pretenders can earn up to $3 million each year for Pyongyang. Experts say the money is pumped into everything from Kim Jong Un’s personal slush fund to the country’s nuclear weapons program. A few million dollars may seem small next to the flashy crypto heists— but with so many teams operating in obscurity, the fraud is effective precisely because it is so mundane.

in the summer of 2022, a major multinational company hired a remote engineer to work on website development. “He would dial in to meetings, he would participate in discussions,” an executive at the company told me on condition of anonymity. “His manager said he was considered the most productive member of the team.”

One day, his coworkers organized a surprise to celebrate his birthday. Colleagues gathered on a video call to congratulate him, only to be startled by his response—but it’s not my birthday. After nearly a year at the company, the worker had apparently forgotten the birth date listed in his records. It was enough to spark suspicion, and soon afterward the security team discovered that he was running remote access tools on his work computer, and he was let go. It was only later, when federal investigators discovered one of his pay stubs at Christina Chapman’s laptop farm in Arizona, that the company connected the dots and realized it had employed a foreign agent for nearly a year.

For many pretenders, the goal is simply to earn a good salary to send back to Pyongyang, not so much to steal money or data. “We’ve seen long-tail operations where they were going 10, 12, 18 months working in some of these organizations,” says Adam Meyers, a senior vice president for counter adversary operations at the security company CrowdStrike. Sometimes, though, North Korean operatives last just a few days— enough time to download huge amounts of company data or plant malicious software in a company’s systems before abruptly quitting. That code could alter financial data or manipulate security information. Or these seeds could lay dormant for months, even years.

“The potential risk from even one minute of access to systems is almost unlimited for an individual company,” says Declan Cummings, the head of engineering at software company Cinder. Experts say that attacks are ramping up not just in the US but also in Germany, France, Britain, Japan and other countries. They urge companies to do rigorous due diligence: speak directly to references, watch for candidates making sudden changes of address, use reputable online screening tools, and conduct a physical interview or in-person ID verification.

But none of these methods are foolproof, and AI tools are constantly weakening them. ChatGPT and the like give almost anyone the capacity to answer esoteric questions in real time with unearned confidence, and their fluency with coding threatens to make programming tests irrelevant. AI video filters and deepfakes can also add to the subterfuge.

At an onboarding call, for instance, many HR representatives now ask new employees to hold their ID up to the camera for closer inspection. “But the fraudsters have a neat trick there,” says Donal Greene, a biometrics expert at the online background check provider Certn. They take a green-colored card the exact shape and size of an identity card—a mini green screen—and, using deepfake technology, project the image of an ID onto it. “They can actually move it and show the reflection,” says Greene. “It’s very sophisticated.” North Korean agents have even been known to send look-alikes to pick up a physical ID card from an office or to take a drug test required by prospective employers.

Even security experts can be fooled. In July 2024, Knowbe4, a Florida-based company that offers security training, discovered that a new hire known as “Kyle” was actually a foreign agent. “He interviewed great,” says Brian Jack, KnowBe4’s chief information security officer. “He was on camera, his résumé was right, his background check cleared, his ID cleared verification. We didn’t have any reason to suspect this wasn’t a valid candidate.” But when his facilitator—the US-based individual giving him cover—tried to install malware on Kyle’s company computer, the security team caught on and shut him out.

Back in london, Simon Wijckmans couldn’t let go of the idea that somebody had tried to fool him. He’d just read about the Knowbe4 case, which deepened his suspicions. He conducted background checks and discovered that some of his candidates were definitely using stolen identities. And, he found, some of them were linked to known North Korean operations. So Wijckmans decided to wage a little counter exercise of his own, and he invited me to observe.

I dial in to Google Meet at 3 am Pacific time, tired and bleary. We deliberately picked this offensively early hour because it’s 6 am in Miami, where the candidate, “Harry,” claims to be.

Harry joins the call, looking pretty fresh-faced. He’s maybe in his late twenties, with short, straight, black hair. Everything about him seems deliberately nonspecific: He wears a plain black crewneck sweater and speaks into an off-brand headset. “I just woke up early today for this interview, no problem,” he says. “I know that working with UK hours is kind of a requirement, so I can get my working hours to yours, so no problem with it.”

So far, everything matches the hallmarks of a fake worker. Harry’s virtual background is one of the default options provided by Google Meet, and his connection is a touch slow. His English is good but heavily accented, even though he tells us he was born in New York and grew up in Brooklyn. Wijckmans starts with some typical interview questions, and Harry keeps glancing off to his right as he responds. He talks about various coding languages and name-drops the frameworks he’s familiar with. Wijckmans starts asking some deeper technical questions. Harry pauses. He looks confused. “Can I rejoin the meeting?” he asks. “I have a problem with my microphone.” Wijckman nods, and Harry disappears.

A couple of minutes pass, and I start to fret that we’ve scared him away, but then he pops back into the meeting. His connection isn’t much better, but his answers are clearer. Maybe he restarted his chatbot, or got a coworker to coach him. The call runs a few more minutes and we say goodbye.

Our next applicant calls himself “Nic.” On his résumé he’s got a link to a personal website, but this guy doesn’t look much like the profile photo on the site. This is his second interview with Wijckmans, and we are certain that he’s faking it: He’s one of the applicants who failed the background check after his first call, although he doesn’t know that.

Nic’s English is worse than Harry’s: When he’s asked what time it is, he tells us it’s “six and past” before correcting himself and saying “quarter to seven.” Where does he live? “I’m in Ohio for now,” he beams, like a kid who got something right in a pop quiz.

Several minutes in, though, his answers become nonsensical. Simon asks him a question about web security. “Political leaders ... government officials or the agencies responsible for border security,” Nic says. “They’re responsible for monitoring and also securing the borders, so we can employ the personnel to patrol the borders and also check the documents and enforce the immigration laws.”

I’m swapping messages with Wijckmans on the back channel we’ve set up when it dawns on us: Whatever AI bot Nic seems to be using must have misinterpreted a mention of “Border Gateway Protocol”—a system for sending traffic across the internet—with national borders, and started spewing verbiage about immigration enforcement. “What a waste of time,” Wijckmans messages me. We wrap up the conversation abruptly.

I try to put myself in the seat of a hiring manager or screener who’s under pressure. The fraudsters’ words may not have always made sense, but their test scores and résumés looked solid, and their technical-sounding guff might be enough to fool an uninformed recruiter. I suspect at least one of them could have made it to the next step in some unsuspecting company’s hiring process.

Wijckmans tells me he has a plan if he comes across another pretender. He has created a web page that looks like a standard coding assessment, which he’ll send to fake candidates. As soon as they hit the button to start the test, their browser will spawn dozens of pop-up pages that bounce around the screen, all of them featuring information on how to defect from North Korea. Then loud music plays—a rickroll, “The Star-Spangled Banner”—before the computer starts downloading random files and emits an ear-splitting beep. “Just a little payback,” he says.

Wijckman’s stunt is not going to stop the pretenders, of course. But maybe it will irritate them for a moment. Then they’ll get back to work, signing on from some hacking sweatshop in China or through a laptop farm in the US, and join the next team meeting—a quiet, camera-off chat with coworkers just like me or you.

[pipthegreat]

What is “Digital Fun Park!”?:

“The new horror VR game of the year.. Digital Fun Park! You, the player, will explore and figure out the mystery behind this shut down park even with the help of an old mascot: Caine! Who seems friendly enough. Little do you know.. the park holds more underneath its surface. Pre order the game for only $15.99 and get 1 week early access before its public release!”

The premise of the game was to take the player through a themepark which would slowly turn into a land of horrors. The creators of this concept didn't have a full grasp on how everything would go but decided to put all their money into making the game even if they themselves didn't have an exact idea for it. Unfortunately it didn't last long. One of the creators went missing and without them, the budget started to decrease because of the funding to find this lost person. The game was never released and was left unfinished for years, and the creator who was left, gave up on the project all together when they were only halfway finished. Everyone left the work for the game, but the game itself couldn't rest when something awoke in it, something that would have consequences if not destroyed completely.

Caine, the one who would've helped the player through the game, came to life because of a virus and began to live inside the game as if a human being trying to thrive in an “unfamiliar” environment. Soon enough he found out how to add and edit, so he created his own friends so he wouldn't be alone in this digital world. But, the coding of the game began corrupting these characters and forming them into something that is now a part of the game, monsters out for blood. Before the game was fully left, the coders made scripts inside the game for all of the horror characters that were yet to be made, so without something to actually code, it took over the new models thinking they were what they're supposed to code and script. Caine wasn't much of a fan of befriending something out of control.. but what else can he do? That's when he came up with the best idea out there! Bringing humans from the real world to this world!

Caine would hack into unknown computers and advertise the game so an unfortunate soul would download it and play it on VR if they have one at all. And it worked! People started getting themselves sucked into the game but that came with problems. These humans started going insane and getting attacked by what he calls "abstracted NPC’s". This came with the consequence of the humans getting ‘hacked’ with the code and turning into the abstracted themselves. How to keep the abstracted away and stop the humans from going insane? Adventures of course! Caine would create new big land to distance all of the abstracted away from his new friends while at the same time giving the humans something to do! If only he could control their minds though; sometimes they just give up on it all per-say and sacrifice themselves to the abstracted. More humans will come so why complain? He's not lonely anymore right?

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First thing in the lore document! I will post more of the continent's inside of the doc and when everything is in order (which will take a while) the document will go public! If any of my posts have the image like this one below, it'll be in be in the document 👍

[queersrus]

names + pronouns related to dipper pines from gravity falls please ?

names:

arthur, astrid, auden/audin, alper, aiden, adventura, acadia, alex, alexander, alexandra, alexandro, amelia, abel blaze, ben, brock, brocken, bryce, blair/blaire, bogey charles, comet, casper, christopher, chris, carson, code, coder, clue, cluer

delta ethan, eventyr, edmund, enigma grayson/greyson

hardy isabel/izabel jack

kip, kaland, kymani ladel, liam, lucas, landon mason/maison/mayson/masen, mace/mase

obscure noah, north, neil pax, pallas, puzzle, puzzler

quest rigel, ross, red, rocky, rove, riddle solver, skimmer, skipper, somerled/somerlid, sojourner, slooth/sleuth, shamus

tyrone/tirone, tyler, taylor, tec, twig ursa venture, vague

--

pronouns:

ad/venture, avent/adventure, adventure/adventures, adventure/adventurous bro/bros, bro/brother, brother/brothers, big/dipper co/code, code/codes, con/stellation, constel/lation, constellation/constellations

di/dip, dip/dips, dip/dipper, dipper/pine, de/code, decode/decodes little/dipper my/mys, mys/mystery, mystery/mysterys, mas/on, mas/mason, mason/masons pi/pine, pine/pines, pine/tree

quest/quets, quest/question, question/questions so/solve, solve/solves twi/twin, twin/twins, ty/rone, ti/rone, ty/tyrone, ti/tirone, tyrone/tyrones, tirone/tirones