#counterhacking

[bhodi-anjo-daishin]

“The 2024 Election was hacked at the tabulation level.

I am a leader in hacking and counterhacking for over 25 years. I'm well paid for it.

Here is what you are seeing. The Tabulation Systems at the County level were hacked far in advance of the election. The hack was probably written into the code even before the code was installed. It will have a WHEN function and IF/THEN functions to have the machine force balance to a given outcome within a specific window of time. You could test the machines 1000 times before election night, and the result will be correct. If you run it during the time window, the force balancing will be turned on and regardless of inputs you will get a programmed output.

It is very simple to prove this. Take the two most outlandish precinct results from any county and just hand-count the ballots. They won't match the tabulation outputs. From what I am seeing, you will find 8-11% avg. shifts from Dem to Rep. Be sure to check heavy Red areas, easier to cover up a run up of the score.

That was how it was done in Ohio vs. Kerry - GOP flips in already highly red areas.

Now, why the Bomb-Threats? The threats were NOT to help hackers gain access to the machines. The programming was already in place, they were to break Chain of Custody and produce legal grounds to not trust a recount.

Every place that GOT a bomb-threat is a place the courts will now have to consider the factual argument of whether the ballots COULD have been tampered with while the evacuations were going on. They weren't. But that is the argument the GOP will make to prevent recounts.

Now that a full blown #fascist takeover is underway, and they did it by hasecking the tabulation machines as described, please engage. I will lend any expertise if asked.”

—Above posted today by Stephen Spoonamore, a consultant for finding hackers, and in the DEVELOPMENT AND INSTALLATION of hacks designed to ferret out the misuse of systems.

His customers have included numerous governments and F100 firms. He has written risk assessments of smartgrid technologies for Obama, and IP e-protection for GE.

Attached. Letter Stephen wrote to Gov Shapiro of Pennsylvania

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Lancer Campaign Idea: Picking up in media res, we follow the adventures of a strike team on a long term assignment. As they face enemy mechs and sabotage factories and explore dangerous shortcuts, they are accompanied by a film crew… well, really just a friendly and talkative drone that acts as a proxy for the Announcer of a news channel, or a propaganda network, or a reality show? Something like that.

The players take turns controlling the Announcer both in and out of combat - it’s really hard to hit and has minor abilities to assist the PC team with Lock On or counterhacking. Ask them to come up with interesting question prompts for side interviews and topics that the Announcer will try to promote. Use scenes from the show as a framing device, to create drama, or to reveal hidden information.

Eventually, as the team gets closer to their goals, they meet allies who can’t see the Announcer’s drone. Perhaps it’s been a shared hallucination… but then, who broadcast the episodes of the show that tells their story? They’ll need to get to the bottom of this mystery, hopefully before the mission is over.

[dailycharacteroption]

Subsystems and You 14: Dynamic Hacking

(art by ianllanas on DeviantArt)

A fascinating thing about cyberpunk and near-future scifi in general is how they speculate on what threads technology will go down in the near future.

For example, a lot of cyberpunk fiction speculated that hacking in the future would involve avatars facing off against elaborate 3D representations of security systems and the avatars of counterhackers in what amount to cyber-wizard battles, with things like DDOS attacks, viruses, and the like being visualized in this 3D hacking space as “spells” or special attacks.

You see this sort of thing in anything from Johnny Mnemonic to The Matrix, though in the latter case, the visualization was more the heroes setting up links so that the folks back in the ship could do the real hacking.

Of course, hacking in the real world has never been so fancy-looking or glamorous, and most programming is dedicated to making hacking programs and viruses able to interact with and overwhelm a system rather than making them show a neat picture to represent them doing so. (Not to say they don’t sometimes do that).

But we’re not interested in the real world right now. In the world of Starfinder, which draws inspiration from all over sci-fi, you can absolutely see characters having their own badass avatars and performing elaborate acts of hacking, which is where today’s subject comes in!

To be up front, this subsystem is meant to be used sparingly, as players are not likely to enjoy being bogged down with an elaborate computerized battle every single time they remove a virus or hack a door lock. Indeed, this system is meant to be used more for major hacking jobs. Things like elaborate defenses for campaign-important databases, battles against malevolent AI on their home turf, and so on.

In any case, the dynamic hacking system functionally turns hacking into a form of combat, with rounds and turns and everything.

First, every hacker has a Deceive, Hacking, and Process bonus, which covers the user’s ability to hide their persona from countermeasures, overcome those countermeasures, and perform various other effects separately such as scanning, repairing the persona, and so on.

Each of these three stats use your computer skill by default, but you can set up each with bonuses or penalties before and during a hack to specialize in infiltration, offense, and support, as long as you don’t go over a certain total bonus based on your computer skill.

From there you have the lead hacker, whose persona avatar is on the line, while other support hackers aid them in various ways.

While the support hackers can only perform minor actions, the lead hacker can perform a minor and major action per turn, plus extra if they’re willing to take penalties.

Each dynamic hacking encounter has countermeasures that seek to protect the system, nodes which provide paths to various files and programs, and modules, which represent protected files or programs which the hackers desire access to in order to access their data or function. Each one has their own abilities as well as the DCs to overcome them, the countdowns for any reprisals they offer, and so on.

In order to overcome these obstacles, the hacking team has several actions they can perform, ranging from minor (aiding and assessing) to major (blending in, creating decoys, modifying programs, recalibrating, repairing the persona, and of course, resolving the current obstacle.

Finally, it is also worth noting that this subsystem has rules for incorporating already existing class abilities and other special abilities tied to hacking, allowing them to apply in appropriate ways, such as faster hacking instead reducing the penalty of multiple actions, or countermeasure negation instead giving a massive bonus to resolving them.

As we can see, this style of hacking is not useful for casual hacking actions in normal play, but it can be a fun way to make for a fun and climactic encounter, or even add another layer to a combat encounter, where the party hacker has to crack the code while their allies keep security robots and the like off of them.

Either way, it's also a good reason to come up with your character's persona avatar appearance and other quirks of their hacking style.

That will do for today, but we’ve got one more subject lined up for tomorrow, from Second Edition Pathfinder! (For real this time).

[strykingback]

Location: Balders Island, Off Of the Atlesian Archipelago Time: 7:00 PM Atlesian time Zone. OST: Enemy Base (Warning For Autoplay!)

_____________________________

A timid man was currently approaching the doors of the CEO's office as he gulped a bit holding some files and papers in place from everyone. Feeling his own heart racing as the doors opened.

"Come in." A young but deep and burly voice said with the man walking in timidly as the doors closed behind him. As he tried to keep his composure as he was not expecting himself to be the one delivering the news the CEO of the Solitas Liberation LLC. Yet, he took a deep breath in and exhaled carefully.

"S-Sir. As you may know I have brought the reports you have asked for from the counterhacking team who sadly failed to contain the hacker that managed to steal some important data, plus some of the bills from the ships we have smuggled from the Atlesian Military and modified to our own benefit." He said holding up two of the papers.

"And?" the CEO continued.

"O-O-Oh yes! There is also the fact that after much toiling from the S-S-Science Department that we have finally found a 99.8% chance of bringing back the dead with no other defects shown with Project Immortalis after a two week levy. As for creating immortal soldiers.... its still a fifty percent chance, S-Sir." The Timid man said while a huff was seen with a strong hand putting his cigar on his ashtray for a minute.

"Ahh..... I remember it like it was yesterday... back fifteen years ago. I was merely but an old man at that point. Seeking out his own reasons to start a war.... and yet I wanted to dance upon a pyre of those Brumelian whelps..... witholding all that dust to themselves and much more....." the CEO said leaning back against his chair the back still being faced towards the Timid employee.

"S-Sir?"

"Ahaha.... Then when I simply requested Dr. Democritus a new way of energy little did he know I had him create a weapon.... a weapon that would revolutionize war. Shame the weak crybaby had to off himself... I could have used him for this..... and Jacques Schnee my young protege... he is still as weak as ever from what I heard. Yet, when I came up with Project Immortalis it was originally born out of my own greed..... to create immortal soldiers to slow down the Brumelian march on Atlas.... fuck those Mantlean weaklings." He said picking up his cigar.

"Now when I "died"... heh. Lets just say I still had plenty of supporters who were willing to pick up the slack.. you included. Soon we gained more benefactors and sponsors as we grew. While I was in "incubation." Heh. Its funny ain't it, but then though that damn traitor who used a blizzard against us and used it well against us.... did you find out his name?" The CEO continued.

"U-Uh! Yes sir... his name is Zek Sunna Simo...." The Employee said with the CEO chuckling. "And who is up next for testing of Project Immortalis....." he asked.

"A Mrs. Atya Sunna......Zeks mother... sir."

"Heheheh. She's his mother? Well if she dies we can send her body to him as a way of saying how hard he fucked up.....because now. We're just going to make sure she suffers...." The CEO said.

"Y-Yes Sir.... but aside from this dont you think it is possible that it is p-p-possible that the Atelier Paladins will a-a-attack..?" the Timid employee asked.

"Please no need to call me Sir." The CEO said turning around to be a strong looking man with a smirk on his face as he took a huff of his cigarette.

"Just Nero will do, son."

CLONE OF THE DISGRACED GRAND COUNCIL MAN OF ATLAS, CEO OF THE SOLITAS LIBERATION LLC, NERO BASILLICUS.

"And if those pieces of shit want me... they'll have to get through a lot to get to me...."

EVENT DATE WILL BE REVEALED SHORTLY!

[vampirebiter]

somehow my grandmother simultaneously thinks that every time im on my computer i am both doing the most important thing in the world and cannot be interrupted and also that im doing nothing at all and just staring at a blank screen. there is a middle ground umma... i am watching They Live (Nineteen Eighty Eight) and drawing, not counterhacking to protect nuclear launch codes or mindlessly staring at nothing

[review-anon]

We got this team! :D

WHY IS THAT VOICE ACTRESS SO HARD TO FIND?!

*Review Anon is still zooming around the ship trying to find Kana, and tearing everything apart in the process...that is until the intercom system cracks to live*

Now what's going on?

???: Testing...Testing..is this on? Ah good it is!

That voice...Kana...

Helllooo Voidship residents! It is I Kana Ise and I will be your host for this session!

Now I understand some of you might be cross with me regarding the current rampage Review Anon is doing...but I'm not gonna hide anymore and face her head on.

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

Oh it seems Ise is broadcasting from the PA system.

Shit...this isn't good...if Miss Anon knows where she is, then Christmas might be saved.

Sorry Miss Ise but your plan isn't gonna work!

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

So Review Anon if you want to find me-

*Suddenly the speaker cuts off*

Oh that sounds like Sannoji has hacked into us...Chihiro?

On it!

*Chihiro then types a lot of commands and manages to regain control of the speakers*

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

Well that was anti-climatic, I guess that's what happens when you have a hacker with you.

Yeah it kinda is-

*The speakers blare back to life*

Kana: And we are back everyone! Sorry about that a certain clown wizard over in the food and commerce sector hacked into me!

WEEGGGHHH! The speakers came back! How did this happen?

Mr. Fujisaki counterhacked and doxed my location!

Kana: Anyway if you want to find me Review Anon, then I'm over near the entrance of the pool near the food and commerce sector so come and get me!

Well would you look at that, they are nearby...so we can go and get them!

R-right....

Let's go...

*All the Voids and Kokichi move towards Kana's location but only Mikado seems happy*

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

And now time for some Christmas Songs!

*Kana then sets the tunes to some certain music tracks*

Annndd done! Now we all need to do is wait for Review Anon to get here!

And perhap ourselves for a Void beatdown.

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

Oh you sneaky bitch Kana...no wonder I couldn't find you...you were hiding there.

But you made a BIG MISTAKE announcing your location as I'm gonna make you regret doing that!

*Review Anon starts to zoom towards Kana's location*

[letrune]

Just install a counterhack software that will backdoor them and when their guard is low enough, say, after a very fitting line, you can hack into theirs.

....i got no idea what I am doing help...

Girls trying to hack into my cyber vagina

[decafcatfeen]

[the facilities loudspeakers blasted to life] “R-R-R-REMINDER THAT ALL LIFEEEE IS TRIFLEABLE AND WILL TRIFLE BACK!”

...who the hell is in the PA system-

Goddamnit activate the turrets and internal counterhack systems!

Do not let that little shit get away with this!

[the-sina-multiverse]

Character Post #2 - Codasina

Name: Codasina

Title: Sina of Coding

Gender: Girl/Woman

Pronouns: She/Her

Species: Human Half-Sina

Favorite Color/s: White and Pale Yellow

Character Type: Coder

Element/s: Code, Light

Types: Coder, Light

Soul: Light yellow with a cyan outline and a light coming from the center

About: The Sina of Coding, and the only one ever known to out-hack Hackasina. In the cyber realm, she can use her Counterhack ability to block hacking/hack-based attacks. She is also friends with Hackasina and allied with AV-Sina.

She also has some form of connection to Lightasina.

[hackingmonuments]

Negro Matapaco, Santiago de Chile

Negro Matapacos (translated as Black Cop-Killer)[1] was a Chilean dog that acquired notoriety due to his participation in the street protests that took place in Santiago, Chile during the 2010s. Among his characteristics was his black fur and the red handkerchief that was tied around his neck, although he also had a blue and a white handkerchiefs that were placed by their caregiver.[2]

Chileans have realized last week a monument for Negro Matapaco that has been vandalized, probabily by police. People has realized than on its cinders, a monument made of flowers.

Thanks to Paz & Felipe for the story!

[seeds-of-the-garden]

Pidge and Lance get stuck in an air vent together and have to unload some big feelings w/ each other.

Brilliant. Nothing resolved in this one, but that’s half the fun for anyone who wants to pick it up. :)

~~~~~

Pidge taps gently on the thin metal of the air vent, the marvel of how structurally sound it is to hold not only her weight, but also that of Lance, crosses her mind only briefly. Finding the bridge without a map has been not been an easy task. The information rests in the back of her mind, compartmentalized along with all the useless trivia she and Lance had quizzed each other on the way here, to relieve nerves.

They've run missions like this so many times before, but being in the middle of a Galra base with only a teammate, a bayard, and her wits still keeps Pidge on edge. Its her and Lance against an entire battle ship full of aliens who would torture and kill them. Commander Bineck more than most - he's the only Galra commander who has managed to counteract her hacking attempts. If Pidge is to get past his firewall, she has to do so from the bridge. And they need his systems down in order to get much needed supplies to the planet below and make contact with the underground government.

Pidge is stressed and annoyed that she doesn't own the hacking fight this time around. That was her thing, she's supposed to take care of it with much more ease than this and from a distance, not risk her life and Lance's like this.

White, black, and blue appears in front of her. Pidge gasps and coughs, not realizing she'd been holding her breath.

"Lance," she hisses softly, "get your foot out of my face."

Metal creaks as he shifts around in the confined space. "I think my leg fell asleep. I need to stretch," he whispers back hurriedly. "Can we get out of here yet?"

Pidge taps the metal again. "I don't think we're even close." Its so disheartening. The team is counting on her. In normal circumstances she would be thrilled to be sharing such a confined space with Lance, relishing in his need to be in her space and her heart jumping when he put his arm around her, warmth tingling up her arms at the simple act. But he's behind her, the two of them tangled in a strange mess on a mission to save the planet.

"No," she snaps. Lance breathes in, about to respond when the familiar clanking of sentries marching sounds off below them. "Be serious, Lance." It hurts her to say. He's so good at being the distraction she needs, but not right now when she knows what Binek has in store for them and the pressure on her to get to the bridge and bypass that ridiculous firewall...

"I'm not a goofball!" Lance insists hotly.

Pidge blinks. What? "I never -- " But she had said it. Not just now, but before. She gapes, the image of their route to the bridge replaced by a multitude of different things she should tell him - chief among them that she appreciates his goofiness typically but she's super stressed right now and can't--

The metal that held the two of them gives way, Pidge hears her own yell blend with Lance's scream as artificial gravity sends her arm to the hard floor.

A light sigh. Before them, ahead of a squad of sentries, is Commander Binek himself.

"You Paladins are much... noisier, than I expected," he remarks calmly, hands tucked professionally behind his back. "Your military training is abysmal. Why you haven't been squashed yet is beyond even my knowledge."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Bruce Schneier's "A Hacker's Mind"

A Hacker’s Mind is security expert Bruce Schneier’s latest book, released today. For long-time readers of Schneier, the subject matter will be familiar, but this iteration of Schneier’s core security literacy curriculum has an important new gloss: power.

https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393866667

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

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/07/trickster-makes-the-world/#power-play

Schneier started out as a cryptographer, author of 1994’s Applied Cryptography, one of the standard texts on the subject. He created and co-created several important ciphers, and started two successful security startups that were sold onto larger firms. Many readers outside of cryptography circles became familiar with Schneier through his contribution to Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, and he is well-known in science fiction circles (he even received a Hugo nomination for editing the restaurant guide for MiniCon 34 in 1999).

https://www.schneier.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/restaurants-san-jose.pdf

But Schneier’s biggest claim in fame is as a science communicator, specifically in the domain of security. In the wake of the 9/11 bombings and the creation of a suite of hasty, ill-considered “security” measures, Schneier coined the term “security theater” to describe a certain kind of wasteful, harmful, pointless exercise, like forcing travelers to take off their shoes to board an airplane.

Schneier led the charge for a kind of sensible, reasonable thinking about security, using a mix of tactics to shift the discourse on the subject: debating TSA boss Kip Hawley, traveling with reporters through airport checkpoints while narrating countermeasures to defeat every single post-9/11 measure, and holding annual “movie-plot threat” competitions:

https://www.schneier.com/tag/movie-plot-threat-contests/

Most importantly, though, Schneier wrote long-form books that set out the case for sound security reasoning, railing against security theater and calling for policies that would actually make our physical and digital world more secure — abolishing DRM, clearing legal barriers to vulnerability research and disclosure, and debunking security snake-oil, from “unbreakable proprietary ciphers” to “behavioral detection training” for TSA officers.

Schneier inspired much of my own interest in cryptography, and he went on to design my wedding rings, which are cipher wheels:

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/09/contest_cory_do.html

And then he judged a public cipher-design contest, which Chris Smith won with “The Fidget Protocol”:

http://craphound.com/FidgetProtocol.zip

Schneier’s books — starting with 2000’s Secrets and Lies — follow a familiar, winning formula. Each one advances a long-form argument for better security reasoning, leavened with a series of utterly delightful examples of successful and hacks and counterhacks, in which clever people engage in duels of wits over the best way to protect some precious resource — or bypass that protection. There is an endless supply of these, and they are addictive, impossible to read without laughing and sharing them on. There’s something innately satisfying about reading about hacks and counterhacks — as authors have understood since Poe wrote “The Purloined Letter” in 1844.

A Hacker’s Mind picks up on this familiar formula, with a fresh set of winning security anaecdotes, both new and historical, and restates Schneier’s hypothesis about how we should think about security — but, as noted, Hacker’s Mind brings a new twist to the subject: power.

In this book, Schneier broadens his frame to consider all of society’s rules — its norms, laws and regulations — as a security system, and then considers all the efforts to change those rules through a security lens, framing everything from street protests to tax-cheating as “hacks.”

This is a great analytical tool, one that evolved out of Schneier’s work on security policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. By thinking of (say) tax law as a security system, we can analyze its vulnerabilities just as we would analyze the risks to, say, your Gmail account. The tax system can be hacked by lobbying for tax-code loopholes, or by discovering and exploiting accidental loopholes. It can be hacked by suborning IRS inspectors, or by suborning Congress to cut the budget for IRS inspectors. It can be hacked by winning court cases defending exotic interpretations of the tax code, or by lobbying Congress to retroactively legalize those interpretations before a judge can toss them out.

This analysis has a problem, though: the hacker in popular imagination is a trickster figure, an analog for Coyote or Anansi, outsmarting the powerful with wits and stealth and bravado. The delight we take in these stories comes from the way that hacking can upend power differentials, hoisting elites on their own petard. An Anansi story in which a billionaire hires a trickster god to evade consequences for maiming workers in his factory is a hell of a lot less satisfying than the traditional canon.

Schneier resolves this conundrum by parsing hacking through another dimension: power. A hack by the powerful against society��— tax evasion, regulatory arbitrage, fraud, political corruption — is a hack, sure, but it’s a different kind of hack from the hacks we’ve delighted in since “The Purloined Letter.”

This leaves us with two categories: hacks by the powerful to increase their power; and hacks by everyone else to take power away from the powerful. These two categories have become modern motifs in other domains — think of comedians’ talk of “punching up vs punching down” or the critique of the idea of “anti-white racism.”

But while this tool is familiar, it takes on a new utility when used to understand the security dimensions of policy, law and norms. Schneier uses it to propose several concrete proposals for making our policy “more secure” — that is, less vulnerable to corruption that further entrenches the powerful.

That said, the book does more to explain the source of problems than to lay out a program for addressing them — a common problem with analytical books. That’s okay, of course — we can’t begin to improve our society until we agree on what’s wrong with it — but there is definitely more work to be done in converting these systemic analyses into systemic policies.

Next week (Feb 8-17), I'll be in Australia, touring my book Chokepoint Capitalism with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We'll be in Brisbane on Feb 8, and then we're doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 9. Next are Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I hope to see you!

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

[Image ID: The WW Norton cover for Bruce Schneier's 'A Hacker's Mind.']

[arcplaysgames]

okay so I was kinda right about Medjed! is that another victory in my column or not? hm

After sleeping for I think 22 days, Futaba wakes up and gets to counterhacking the hackers.

Reverie and Morgana get bored and start cleaning up her room while she works.

Reverie got them skills. I still want an AU where he's a housespouse who moonlights as a cat burglar, if the fandom hasn't written a dozen of them, what the fuck have they been doing.

gurl, we need to get you some vitamin c and iron, holy shit. i hope you like edamame and oranges, it's all your eating for the next week.

Does anyone else think this voice actor does NOT fit this character, or is it just me? It's a constant distraction.

Aw he looks nice. What horrific creative crimes has he committed?

I finally belatedly noticed that the Palaces are all built around one of the deadly sins. "Arc, how could you not notice--" deadly sins are dumb, it's not in my authorial wheelhouse, blah blah. so anyway we did Lust, Vanity, Gluttony.... then the Thieves call out Futaba's sloth in the calling card, but she's actually associated with Wrath? Which is confusing. That means our options are.... uh. /googles.

Envy, Sloth, and Greed.

If the Final Boss is, like, the dude positioning to be the future Prime Minister, then I would say he should be Greed? Greed for power? But who even knooooows.

OKAY SO I WAS KINDA RIGHT! She was Medjed! But it's basically Anonymous, it's a placeholder name for anyone who wants to use it. Yeah 'cause that always goes well.

looks worriedly at Morgana

Beige Boy shows up to sass Sae some more and

squints at these dialogue boxes

You know what I'm interested in seeing? I figure Akechi is gonna join the Thieves in some capacity at some point, it's being set up pretty aggressively. What interests me is whether we will see his persona awakening or if he'll already have a persona when he joins.

'Cause like.... Okay I'm pretty sure Akechi knows the Thieves aren't behind the mental shutdowns. I'm 70% sure. Ergo:

There is a 70% chance that Akechi is the black masked guy in the Metaverse causing the mental shutdowns.

Or there is a 30% chance that Akechi is being played by someone he trusts, who is giving him bad information re: the mental shutdowns. Which... would dovetail nicely into him joining the crew, actually, if they uncovered the true culprit and Akechi (like his Detective Prince predecessor) swapped sides to the Thieves upon realizing they're the only people who can stop the true perpetrator.

Actually, that would be an incredibly tidy bit of writing, I'm gonna say its 50/50.

He's still sus as fuck 24/7/365 though.

hello i am here for the Futaba and Sojiro Show

Also Sojiro fucking drops the fact that his curry recipe was from Wakaba. He made her curry once and she was so intrigued, she asked for information on how to make it, then returned to Sojiro with a refined, scientifically reinforced recipe, and that's the one Sojiro still uses.

I love Sojiro, what the fuck.

BITCH JUST TELL ME WHO YOU PUSHED YOUR FUCKING MALWARE APK TO AND SAVE ME THE TIME, I KNOW IT WAS YOU.

Makoto has this whole plan to basically give Futaba's interpersonal skills a workout until she's a little more able to handle Thief-y work, but of course Futaba latches onto Yusuke, because she has excellent taste and they are both kindred weirdos.

oh yeah you guys are gonna be besties, i can tell

She also keeps putting on a big costume head when she gets nervous, which is an interesting literalization of "masking" I guess.

I have no intelligent commentary, I just like that when Futaba whines at Sojiro here, he stops and assesses the situation, deems it harmless, and goes back to what he was doing. There's no doubt he'd jump in to help if needed, but also I think Futaba is just the time to simper and tug at his attention because both of them enjoy that. It's very good, I like it.

Also, again: Futaba's VA choice is so fucking good. Love it.

Next up is a beach trip and I cannot imagine it beating P4G's incredible beach vacation, but we shall enter it with open hearts and open eyes.

[rynmaru]

While digging deeper into Castor Creed, L.E.I.D.A., and Castor’s NHP, the Lance’s hacker and leader, Malware, discovered a myriad of HR reports on the P.O.L.L.V.X. NHP and the havoc and unease they caused wherever they went. More professional complaints called them “impish” and “malicious,” while others went further, with phrases like “The freak needs to be put on a leash.”

During her dive, Malware was counterhacked by a mysterious unknown person, their only calling sign being a web and an eight-eyed, maniacally grinning face. The intruder taunted her before implanting a ticking clock of their face in the corner of her screen, counting down to something…only P.O.L.L.V.X. knows what.

[baldmisato1]

maya = efficiency, ethics ('work' ethic, duty, scientific ethics), diplomacy (mediating the misato/ritsuko convo abt the soul salvage plan after misato slaps ritsuko), patience. her tarot card is "temperance."

to have these traits, you'd have a significantly optimistic outlook. but stg that i see misunderstood (by myself at first too) is that her apparent optimism makes her nebbish, timid, awkward, insecure. maya isn't those things? maya's competent and confident as a result, if not a little silly at times (her statement on the train to aoba). she's the eyes of the bridge, alerting everyone to the otherwise incomprehensible metrics from pilot/eva synchronization. maya is ritsuko's only support in 13, both of them counterhacking an organism that someone comments works at inhuman speeds. maya questions gendo, questions ritsuko, throws baleful looks at misato. she handles stress well -- better than aoba and hyuga (she doesn't panic in 13, 3.33, or Avant) until violence is involved (EoE). but it's like.... why would she bother to fight at that point? what could she justify it with? she asks if they were right, and they weren't. maya misread the situation and realized she can't kill people in addition to everything else she helped facilitate... at least she's prepared to stare down the barrel of the gun... and if i recall, she's still working til the end. (and perhaps this read is even still too sentimental, too kind, for maya.)

maya is naive, yes, in the same way that ritsuko's cynicism makes her naive. but naivety does not necessarily = childlike, or even immature, or socially inept. maya is naive bc she's a scientist who believes nature can be reliably and absolutely known thru science. she's naive bc she thinks technology = always already good. yes, technology can be used for good, but not in the service of war, imperialism, the military, surveillance. science and technology can be used for good, but not when children are your test subjects and your soldiers. it's funny that maya is framed as the ethical backbone of the cast when she manages to hold these contradictory truths at once. ofc, if you believe that the ends of science justify the means, why shouldn't it work itself out eventually? isn't there a greater good?

her personality "upgrade" in Q is unsurprising. nature has betrayed her and science has failed her. after all, if science is the ultimate good, the privileged epistemology, then how could she not have anticipated Near Third? Or, in the show's case, Instrumentality? She's hardened. Now she needs to get shit done and there's no time for bullshit.

[lesbx]

my quick reblog stopped working @april stop counterhacking me