#How to Detect Devices Spying?

[onemonitarsoftware]

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[hungwy]

In a press release, the FTC said that "Ring deceived its customers by failing to restrict employees' and contractors' access to its customers' videos, using customer videos to train algorithms, among other purposes, without consent, and failing to implement security safeguards." In one case, an employee "viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms," the FTC said.

That allegedly occurred between June and August 2017 and invaded the privacy of at least 81 female users of Ring products. "The employee wasn't stopped until another employee discovered the misconduct. Even after Ring imposed restrictions on who could access customers' videos, the company wasn't able to determine how many other employees inappropriately accessed private videos because Ring failed to implement basic measures to monitor and detect employees' video access," the FTC said.

...

Amazon completed its purchase of Ring in April 2018. The FTC complaint says that in August 2020, "a whistleblower notified Ring that between March 2018 and September 2019, a former employee had provided Ring devices to numerous individuals and then accessed their videos without their knowledge or consent."

The complaint continued: When the employee left Ring in September 2019, the whistleblower alleged that he took copies of these videos with him—without the knowledge or consent of his unsuspecting victims and without Ring noticing that anything was amiss. In February 2019, Ring changed its access practices so that most Ring employees or contractors could only access a customer's private video with that customer's consent.

"Importantly, because Ring failed to implement basic measures to monitor and detect inappropriate access before February 2019, Ring has no idea how many instances of inappropriate access to customers' sensitive video data actually occurred," the FTC said. "Indeed, Ring only discovered the incidents described above through the good fortune of employee reporting, despite having given employees zero security training and no responsibility to engage in such reporting. It is highly likely that numerous other incidents of spying, prurient behavior, and other inappropriate access occurred entirely undetected."

(emphasis is mine)

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Subprime gadgets

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me THIS SUNDAY in ANAHEIM at WONDERCON: YA Fantasy, Room 207, 10 a.m.; Signing, 11 a.m.; Teaching Writing, 2 p.m., Room 213CD.

The promise of feudal security: "Surrender control over your digital life so that we, the wise, giant corporation, can ensure that you aren't tricked into catastrophic blunders that expose you to harm":

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

The tech giant is a feudal warlord whose platform is a fortress; move into the fortress and the warlord will defend you against the bandits roaming the lawless land beyond its walls.

That's the promise, here's the failure: What happens when the warlord decides to attack you? If a tech giant decides to do something that harms you, the fortress becomes a prison and the thick walls keep you in.

Apple does this all the time: "click this box and we will use our control over our platform to stop Facebook from spying on you" (Ios as fortress). "No matter what box you click, we will spy on you and because we control which apps you can install, we can stop you from blocking our spying" (Ios as prison):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

But it's not just Apple – any corporation that arrogates to itself the right to override your own choices about your technology will eventually yield to temptation, using that veto to help itself at your expense:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Once the corporation puts the gun on the mantelpiece in Act One, they're begging their KPI-obsessed managers to take it down and shoot you in the head with it in anticipation of of their annual Act Three performance review:

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

One particularly pernicious form of control is "trusted computing" and its handmaiden, "remote attestation." Broadly, this is when a device is designed to gather information about how it is configured and to send verifiable testaments about that configuration to third parties, even if you want to lie to those people:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/08/your-computer-should-say-what-you-tell-it-say-1

New HP printers are designed to continuously monitor how you use them – and data-mine the documents you print for marketing data. You have to hand over a credit-card in order to use them, and HP reserves the right to fine you if your printer is unreachable, which would frustrate their ability to spy on you and charge you rent:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/hp-wants-you-to-pay-up-to-36-month-to-rent-a-printer-that-it-monitors/

Under normal circumstances, this technological attack would prompt a defense, like an aftermarket mod that prevents your printer's computer from monitoring you. This is "adversarial interoperability," a once-common technological move:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

An adversarial interoperator seeking to protect HP printer users from HP could gin up fake telemetry to send to HP, so they wouldn't be able to tell that you'd seized the means of computation, triggering fines charged to your credit card.

Enter remote attestation: if HP can create a sealed "trusted platform module" or a (less reliable) "secure enclave" that gathers and cryptographically signs information about which software your printer is running, HP can detect when you have modified it. They can force your printer to rat you out – to spill your secrets to your enemy.

Remote attestation is already a reliable feature of mobile platforms, allowing agencies and corporations whose services you use to make sure that you're perfectly defenseless – not blocking ads or tracking, or doing anything else that shifts power from them to you – before they agree to communicate with your device.

What's more, these "trusted computing" systems aren't just technological impediments to your digital wellbeing – they also carry the force of law. Under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, these snitch-chips are "an effective means of access control" which means that anyone who helps you bypass them faces a $500,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence for a first offense.

Feudal security builds fortresses out of trusted computing and remote attestation and promises to use them to defend you from marauders. Remote attestation lets them determine whether your device has been compromised by someone seeking to harm you – it gives them a reliable testament about your device's configuration even if your device has been poisoned by bandits:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/05/trusting-trust/#thompsons-devil

The fact that you can't override your computer's remote attestations means that you can't be tricked into doing so. That's a part of your computer that belongs to the manufacturer, not you, and it only takes orders from its owner. So long as the benevolent dictator remains benevolent, this is a protective against your own lapses, follies and missteps. But if the corporate warlord turns bandit, this makes you powerless to stop them from devouring you whole.

With that out of the way, let's talk about debt.

Debt is a normal feature of any economy, but today's debt plays a different role from the normal debt that characterized life before wages stagnated and inequality skyrocketed. 40 years ago, neoliberalism – with its assaults on unions and regulations – kicked off a multigenerational process of taking wealth away from working people to make the rich richer.

Have you ever watched a genius pickpocket like Apollo Robbins work? When Robins lifts your wristwatch, he curls his fingers around your wrist, expertly adding pressure to simulate the effect of a watchband, even as he takes away your watch. Then, he gradually releases his grip, so slowly that you don't even notice:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nextfuckinglevel/comments/ppqjya/apollo_robbins_a_master_pickpocket_effortlessly/

For the wealthy to successfully impoverish the rest of us, they had to provide something that made us feel like we were still doing OK, even as they stole our wages, our savings, and our futures. So, even as they shipped our jobs overseas in search of weak environmental laws and weaker labor protection, they shared some of the savings with us, letting us buy more with less. But if your wages keep stagnating, it doesn't matter how cheap a big-screen TV gets, because you're tapped out.

So in tandem with cheap goods from overseas sweatshops, we got easy credit: access to debt. As wages fell, debt rose up to fill the gap. For a while, it's felt OK. Your wages might be falling off, the cost of health care and university might be skyrocketing, but everything was getting cheaper, it was so easy to borrow, and your principal asset – your family home – was going up in value, too.

This period was a "bezzle," John Kenneth Galbraith's name for "The magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it." It's the moment after Apollo Robbins has your watch but before you notice it's gone. In that moment, both you and Robbins feel like you have a watch – the world's supply of watch-derived happiness actually goes up for a moment.

There's a natural limit to debt-fueled consumption: as Michael Hudson says, "debts that can't be paid, won't be paid." Once the debtor owes more than they can pay back – or even service – creditors become less willing to advance credit to them. Worse, they start to demand the right to liquidate the debtor's assets. That can trigger some pretty intense political instability, especially when the only substantial asset most debtors own is the roof over their heads:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/06/the-end-of-the-road-to-serfdom/

"Debts that can't be paid, won't be paid," but that doesn't stop creditors from trying to get blood from our stones. As more of us became bankrupt, the bankruptcy system was gutted, turned into a punitive measure designed to terrorize people into continuing to pay down their debts long past the point where they can reasonably do so:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/bankruptcy-protects-fake-people-brutalizes-real-ones/

Enter "subprime" – loans advanced to people who stand no meaningful chance of every paying them back. We all remember the subprime housing bubble, in which complex and deceptive mortgages were extended to borrowers on the promise that they could either flip or remortgage their house before the subprime mortgages detonated when their "teaser rates" expired and the price of staying in your home doubled or tripled.

Subprime housing loans were extended on the belief that people would meekly render themselves homeless once the music stopped, forfeiting all the money they'd plowed into their homes because the contract said they had to. For a brief minute there, it looked like there would be a rebellion against mass foreclosure, but then Obama and Timothy Geithner decreed that millions of Americans would have to lose their homes to "foam the runways" for the banks:

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2012/08/how-treasury-secretary-geithner-foamed-the-runways-with-childrens-shattered-lives/

That's one way to run a subprime shop: offer predatory loans to people who can't afford them and then confiscate their assets when they – inevitably – fail to pay their debts off.

But there's another form of subprime, familiar to loan sharks through the ages: lend money at punitive interest rates, such that the borrower can never repay the debt, and then terrorize the borrower into making payments for as long as possible. Do this right and the borrower will pay you several times the value of the loan, and still owe you a bundle. If the borrower ever earns anything, you'll have a claim on it. Think of Americans who borrowed $79,000 to go to university, paid back $190,000 and still owe $236,000:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/12/04/kawaski-trawick/#strike-debt

This kind of loan-sharking is profitable, but labor-intensive. It requires that the debtor make payments they fundamentally can't afford. The usurer needs to get their straw right down into the very bottom of the borrower's milkshake and suck up every drop. You need to convince the debtor to sell their wedding ring, then dip into their kid's college fund, then steal their father's coin collection, and, then break into cars to steal the stereos. It takes a lot of person-to-person work to keep your sucker sufficiently motivated to do all that.

This is where digital meets subprime. There's $1T worth of subprime car-loans in America. These are pure predation: the lender sells a beater to a mark, offering a low down-payment loan with a low initial interest rate. The borrower makes payments at that rate for a couple of months, but then the rate blows up to more than they can afford.

Trusted computing makes this marginal racket into a serious industry. First, there's the ability of the car to narc you out to the repo man by reporting on its location. Tesla does one better: if you get behind in your payments, your Tesla immobilizes itself and phones home, waits for the repo man to come to the parking lot, then it backs itself out of the spot while honking its horn and flashing its lights:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

That immobilization trick shows how a canny subprime car-lender can combine the two kinds of subprime: they can secure the loan against an asset (the car), but also coerce borrowers into prioritizing repayment over other necessities of life. After your car immobilizes itself, you just might decide to call the dealership and put down your credit card, even if that means not being able to afford groceries or child support or rent.

One thing we can say about digital tools: they're flexible. Any sadistic motivational technique a lender can dream up, a computerized device can execute. The subprime car market relies on a spectrum of coercive tactics: cars that immobilize themselves, sure, but how about cars that turn on their speakers to max and blare a continuous recording telling you that you're a deadbeat and demanding payment?

https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/09/24/miss-a-payment-good-luck-moving-that-car/

The more a subprime lender can rely on a gadget to torment you on their behalf, the more loans they can issue. Here, at last, is a form of automation-driven mass unemployment: normally, an economy that has been fully captured by wealthy oligarchs needs squadrons of cruel arm-breakers to convince the plebs to prioritize debt service over survival. The infinitely flexible, tireless digital arm-breakers enabled by trusted computing have deprived all of those skilled torturers of their rightful employment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

The world leader in trusted computing isn't cars, though – it's phones. Long before anyone figured out how to make a car take orders from its manufacturer over the objections of its driver, Apple and Google were inventing "curating computing" whose app stores determined which software you could run and how you could run it.

Back in 2021, Indian subprime lenders hit on the strategy of securing their loans by loading borrowers' phones up with digital arm-breaking software:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

The software would gather statistics on your app usage. When you missed a payment, the phone would block you from accessing your most frequently used app. If that didn't motivate you to pay, you'd lose your second-most favorite app, then your third, fourth, etc.

This kind of digital arm-breaking is only possible if your phone is designed to prioritize remote instructions – from the manufacturer and its app makers – over your own. It also only works if the digital arm-breaking company can confirm that you haven't jailbroken your phone, which might allow you to send fake data back saying that your apps have been disabled, while you continue to use those apps. In other words, this kind of digital sadism only works if you've got trusted computing and remote attestation.

Enter "Device Lock Controller," an app that comes pre-installed on some Google Pixel phones. To quote from the app's description: "Device Lock Controller enables device management for credit providers. Your provider can remotely restrict access to your device if you don't make payments":

https://lemmy.world/post/13359866

Google's pitch to Android users is that their "walled garden" is a fortress that keeps people who want to do bad things to you from reaching you. But they're pre-installing software that turns the fortress into a prison that you can't escape if they decide to let someone come after you.

There's a certain kind of economist who looks at these forms of automated, fine-grained punishments and sees nothing but a tool for producing an "efficient market" in debt. For them, the ability to automate arm-breaking results in loans being offered to good, hardworking people who would otherwise be deprived of credit, because lenders will judge that these borrowers can be "incentivized" into continuing payments even to the point of total destitution.

This is classic efficient market hypothesis brain worms, the kind of cognitive dead-end that you arrive at when you conceive of people in purely economic terms, without considering the power relationships between them. It's a dead end you navigate to if you only think about things as they are today – vast numbers of indebted people who command fewer assets and lower wages than at any time since WWII – and treat this as a "natural" state: "how can these poors expect to be offered more debt unless they agree to have their all-important pocket computers booby-trapped?"

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/2024/03/29/boobytrap/#device-lock-controller

Image: Oatsy (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oatsy40/21647688003

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

[jojikawa]

VALORANT SHIP DYNAMICS 2 💟

Ships: Sova, Fade, Sage, Cypher, Kayo, Omen (again)

This is completely for fun and not to be taken to seriously! 🌟

SOVA

Thinks you are a goddess

Sends you selfies of him and his grandmother. He talks to her about you as well. Brings you her cooking.

Is awkward but you can’t tell bc he’s so cool. You find him very charming.

Mildly protective bc he doesn’t want to be overbearing.

Is the type to want to have alone time in the private quarters of the protocol to drink hot cocoa!

Forehead kisses

Wants to teach you Russian

FADE

Your goth gf

Protects you from nightmares

Tsundere! Acts like you smother her but she really craves the affection. She is very touch starved.

Is always your rock when you need comfort from anxiety/panic attacks.

Forehead touching ❤️

Thinks you’re too good for her. Too innocent for valorant too.

Refuses to let Chamber talk to you. He’s too flirty. Pheonix too

Kissing is her favorite thing to do.

CYPHER

Literally so depressed and exhausted with everyone but you always seem to cheer him up.

Doesn’t really get why you give him time when he believes your precious time could be spent on anyone else

Gets flushed when you ask about his tech or when you express concern when it’s broken.

Respects your privacy and doesn’t spy on you.

Let’s you see his face…once.

Gets super flushed when you go on about how cute he is!

Calls you pets in Arabic like كيتي (kitty/kitten)

SAGE

You are the reason she makes difficult decisions and wants to get stronger

Mommy gf ofc. Makes your bed and does your laundry.

Cooks for you. Packs lunches.

Eskimo kisses + hand holding (falls asleep holding your hand) 🥹

Heals you first no matter what

Takes the time to learn how to do your hair

Random gift giving. Her love language is LITERALLY DOING EVERYTHING.

KAYO

Forgets that he’s a machine when he’s with you. You make him feel things that do beyond the shackles of his AI.

Let’s you hold and even throw his knife.

Regularly threatens the other agents over you. Especially Reyna.

Wonders what if you’d like him as a flesh person.

Urges to teach you self defense. He’s lost so many and he doesn’t want to lose you too 😭

Replays cute past events in his memory files while you’re sleeping. And is always storing new ones.

Can’t lie to him bc he documents everything. He can always detect when something is wrong.

More OMEN

Is a private guy so he will only ever agree to hold you when no agents are around. If you’re really needy he’ll smoke you two for privacy. Probably finds more comfort on it than you do!

Has a hard time with his whole shadows situation and not being able to remember himself before “omen” but believes that if he has you then he’s okay how it is.

Tries to be funny…fails. His voice makes the punchline go over your head.

Sends you emails to your protocol device when your away too long.

Doesn’t allow you to go on any missions alone or he is a nervous wreck.

I’ll add more soon! These are fun to write before bed.☺️ I gotta find more of these cute pictures! I get them all from Pinterest so I can’t exactly credit the original artists. Hopefully they don’t mind! - Maron!

[michellecee0]

KinderRonpa

The first victim. The first blackened.

.

.

(Victim): Monty.

Cause of death: A blow to the back of his head. (what a headshot..)

Additional information: His body was in front of room door, maybe he was just minding his business and rest in his assigned room? Or.. Something else has been going on..

The spy and the detective are currently checking clues on the body.. Lily is feeling his body, to see if any more injuries were there. Checking and finding clues on the murder.. Leaving the blackened feeling snarky and confident, thinking that they'll get away with the murder.

But the Ultimate Spy.. Already knew who the blackened is..

And he's already going to tell his sister about it, and find more strong evidence to call out the blackened..

Billy: Lily.. I know who did this..

In the trial..

Lily: it's clearly obvious on who the blackened is.

Ted: How so, Lily?

Lily: Well, do you all remember who was the last one to talk to Monty?

Ozzy: Wasn't it, Jerome? So it's him then!!

Jerome: What the hell?! Why the fuck would I kill my best friend?!

Ozzy: This is a life or death game we're "supposedly" playing!

Jerome: Well I didn't kill him!

Billy: Guys! Focus! Ozzy, it wasn't Jerome who talked with Monty last.

Jerome: Ha!

Felix: Ok? Then who? The last people I saw talking to Monty is Penny and Carla.

Carla: Hah?? You think it was me or Penny??

Penny: H-huh..? But I would never do such a thing!

Buggs: Shut up! You! You're the detective here, and you know who the blackened is! SPIT IT OUT ALREADY!!

Lily: I was about to, until you all kept interrupting! As I was saying. I know who the blackened is, and so does my brother Billy.

Billy: Yes, since I've been wondering around this place, I overheard someone's conversation.. Monty's conversation. It sounded like Monty wanted to show the person something in his room. Then I heard a loud metal like hit, which I assume was the murder weapon. I decided to take a peek on what happened, the first thing I saw was Monty on the floor bleeding, then I saw the blackened. They were currently cleaning themselves up while saying "Finally".

Lily: Then Billy told me who the blackened was, and I'm honestly not surprised.

Lily: Which means there's obviously one person who pretty much disliked Monty from the start. Isn't that right..

Lily:.. Carla..?

.

.

Carla: H-Huh..? You're joking.. Sure I find his ass annoying! But I wouldn't kill the dude! You and your damn brother are lying! YOU-

Billy: Everyone! Cast your votes now!

(After everyone casted their votes, ignoring Carla's protests. The poll started rolling, landing on Carla, whistles and cheering was hears from the machine)

Monokuma: Ding Ding Ding! You all got it right! The blackened was non other then Carla! Great job Ultimates!

(Carla was speechless)

Carla: No.. No, No!

Monokuma: Yup Yup! Do you all know what that means?? That's right! It's..

PUNISHMENT TIME!!!

Carla: NO! NO!! NOOOOOOO-!

.

(After Carla was pulled by a chain to the neck, she was now in a room with full of explosives.. as she looked around the room, she already knows what to do when she saw a little device in front of her. She only has 5 minutes to disable every single TNT in that room. Carla kept going and going disabling every single bomb in that room, but they were too many explosives for her to disable... obviously she's not going to make it..)

(BOOM)

(she ran out of time.. As all the students looked at the room to see Carla's pieces everywhere..)

.

.

Kid: Oh. This is not good..

That concludes Chapter 1.

... (btw the Lily murder was supposed to be the final chapter and last victim kill. This one's the first kill and chapter)

[mochiimadness]

Hey, I dunno if your still taking requests but I have one!

What about s/o having hair like Entrapta's from She-Ra? I would love to see how they would react to their s/o with that!

Hello, I'm sorry for the long wait! I'm finally getting around to answering old requests, before opening new ones.

I haven't seen She-Ra, but I did look Entrapta up, so I hope I haven't gotten anything wrong!

Neon Leon

Leo is both insanely fascinated over your hair-

But also, very very terrified at first.

Remember when Leo wore that blond wig that ended up being completely and utterly evil??

Leo does.

Leo has flashbacks of this when he first sees you using your hair to grab a mug off the counter that was just out of hands reach.

May or may not have screamed.

"S/o, I don't mean to freak you out but- YOUR HAIR IS CURSED!"

"What- wait no it's just-"

"Don't worry- I got this!" he says, as he whips out his sword

Cue panicked screaming from everyone in the room as Leo attempts to 'save' you

He really thought you were in danger okay-

After managing to convince Leo to not chop off your hair,

You have to explain to him that your hair isn't actually cursed by some weird dude looking to steal stuff

"I was born like this, I can just make my hair move and stuff."

Cue Leo's suspicious squinting.

He does believe you! He just cant help peaking around corners detective style to spy on your hair at first.

Once he gets use to it tho, he's got to admit, having hair you can use to grab things jussst barely out of reach is amazing!

His jaw drops when he realizes you can fight using your hair too-

Your hair wraps around a rather slippery warthog mutant and launches him several feet away

Leo is staring in shock and possible fear

They'd been trying to get a hold on that mutant for ages, and you just managed to grab him no problem???

And launch him like a soft ball???????

Mad respect

Enchanted/cursed hair or not, Leo's just glad it's not using you for evil!

Plus, you seem to be having fun, so he's cool with it now.

Don Tron

Donnie's insanely curious about your hair

Absolutely runs some tests and experiments (with your permission ofc)

He's seen you lift mugs and smaller objects-

But what's the weight limit???

Is it like a muscle that can be trained to lift more over time????

Is it possibly sentient?!

You let him come up with new theories

But as soon as the conspiracy board and red strings come out,

You're lifting him with your hair and carrying him away for a break.

He loves when you help him out in the lab

Using your hair to grab and hold tools or parts

It's similar to using his spider arms, but 10x better since it's his s/o helping him.

Your hair also inspires him to make a different version of his spider arm battle shell-

This one using a more fluid movement to match your hair!

He lowkey looks like Doc Oc...

Villains do their best to avoid you both

Having one person who can grab and yeet them away was bad enough-

But now there's two??????

They are sprinting as fast as they can

Not fast enough though!

You're able to use your hair to grab and swing from walls, catching up to villains with ease

Donnie's impressed, you didn't even need a tracking device!

You two also found out another trick you could do,

You're able to use your hair as a extra set of arms- so you both came to a realization

You could use your hair to hold more controllers.

You two need an extra player???

Bam, you're holding two more controllers

Donnie cackles manically every time you two score extra points using this method

Is it technically cheating????

Maybe

You can't deny it takes a lot of skill and practice to do though, so who cares?

Not you and Donnie, that's who!

Mystic Mike

:0 !!!

Your hair can move?!?!

Please please show him what you can do!

Absolutely loves seeing all your tricks

From lifting a mug, to scaling a building-

He thinks you and your hair are awesome!!

One day, he's literally in the middle of talking to you when he interrupts his own sentence in a huge realization-

"So then I chased them down on the shells hogs and- WAIT WAIT HOLD THE PHONE-"

"Holding."

"NOW ANSWER IT!"

"Hellooo?"

"You can use your hair to paint!!!!"

Cue both of you jumping up and sprinting to his room

You can, in fact, use your hair to paint!

Whether it be using your actual hair as a paintbrush,

Or holding multiple brushes and items at once!

It makes art time ten times more efficient- but also extremely chaotic

Sure, now you both have easy access to art materials, but now your hair can literally spin everything

The guys entered the living room one day and saw it absolutely covered in buckets of paint

You are now banned from holding stain causing items in the common areas and Donnie's lab.

When you two go fight together

Mikey quickly learns that you can use your hair to help climb and scale buildings

Which leads to you crawling upside down on a ceiling at full speed, with Mikey floating beside you, at enemies

There are high pitched shrieks whenever you join the battle

You may or may not be a local cryptid now.

"S/O, they're calling you a spider mutant!"

"Nice."

Big Red

Like Leo,

Raph also thinks your hair is alive

Though, he's more concerned than fearful

If your hair is alive, then should he ask it if he can pat your head??

You reassure him that your hair is not alive or sentient

He's still wary about it though

Definitely gives it suspicious looks when you're not looking just to test it

When you catch onto this though, you start moving your hair 'without your knowledge' just to play around

Raph shrieks

"I KNEW IT!!!"

You'll have to explain that you were just pranking him lmao

He does realize that your hair isn't alive eventually though.

Is genuinely impressed by what your hair can do

Especially when he realizes you can lift heavier objects too

If you're able to lift him with your hair, he'll scream

Definitely has a fanboy moment

"WHAT!? How is it so strong?!?"

Even if you can't lift him with your hair,

He's still impressed!

Throughout the day, you'll use your hair to grab things that are out of reach and hand it to him

Usually it's subconscious,

Like when he just barely got into a comfy spot after a long patrol and realizes his phone is just out of reach

You grab it and hand it to him offhandedly

Or when he's sleeping and the blanket slips off, you'll reach around to pull it back up and make sure he's covered

He appreciates these little gestures so much

Absolutely warms his heart and makes him a little misty eyed.

During battle,

He sees you literally form a fist shape with your hair and deck a rather aggressive yokai right in the face,

Sending them flying down the street

Raph will stop and stare in awe

"Woah!! S/O that's amazing!"

He's so proud of you

Then he realizes the hidden city police are making their way towards the two of you

Cue both of you hauling it towards the nearest portal

"GO GO GO!"

"I CAN'T GO BACK TO JAIL!"

Hey everyone, I'm going through my old requests and writing them. I can't promise I'll get to all of them, but I'll do my best when I have time!

Sorry for the huge wait, life got crazy

[rose-tea-and-strawberries]

??? Is this where I drop by to share my headcanons about House of Mouse Yuu? Tumblr is so confusing. Anyway, back on track.

It’s a newer idea of mine but I am kicking and screaming about the idea of a Detective! Yuu!

She starts to get suspicious of things after Leona’s overblot. Things are WAY too convenient to be mere coincidences. She at first brushed off Riddle’s overblot as a one time thing. It was clear that Riddle was long overdue for his damn to break.

But Leona, a man of great intelligence as well as physical strength that can beat ten men like he’s squishing a cockroach overblotting during the biggest, most important events for him? Plotting against Diasomnia’s team was clearly only the first layer. The time and place was way too convenient. If Yuu hadn’t been there to find out his secret plan and fool him, it’s likely Leona would have succeeded. What Yuu thought was just a petty ploy for revenge against people who always saw Leona as lesser turns into a game of follow the strings.

Don’t even get me started on book three. Illegal scamming and forced labor? Suspicious. Yuu finds it way too odd that she had the perfect team to beat the overblot after she foils another housewarden’s scheme. Any why so soon after Leona’s overblot? A few months between each blot fight might seem large to some but three overblots in the span of a school year? Each one perfectly linking the first to the next? It doesn’t seem plausible that THREE students secretly decided to act out plans of demise only to overblot afterwards?

Yuu knew they all had sob backstories but GEEZE. (Even Idia found it suspicious about the amount of overblots)

And now, how this all plays out into the House of Mouse.

Yuu goes about her work like a normal person, except she’s incredibly talented at solving puzzles or word games. If there’s an accident in the kitchen while no one is there watching, Yuu puts together clues and finds the answers in record time.

Patrons like Roger (from 101 Dalmatians)might bring a newspaper to the club one night to have some fun with the word cross only to get befuddled when suddenly Yuu pops up behind him and gives him the answers to the hardest ones because she knows it’s rude to ruin people’s fun. Yuu gives Roger a pat on the back and continues on with serving the villains’ food and drinks.

Yuu just knowing oddly specific information about things the crew like Donald or Mickey might not know. For example knowing exactly what Goofy had for breakfast despite being in Twisted Wonderland all morning or where Donald left that one CD in his house boat that he could never seem to find. Or if Minnie and the others can’t remember a code for a work computer or something like that, Yuu walks in when she hears about it and simply types in the entire 20 digit code from memory and then walks out again like it was nothing. Even when Minnie is very sure she never told Yuu the code to that specific device. And that no one had told Yuu, either. (I don’t know why they wouldn’t tell her-maybe for security/safety reasons? Y’know, with Pete{is that his name? I haven’t watched HoM lately} always trying to destroy the HoM?)

Omg—I didn’t realize how much I was rambling until I scrolled?! So I’ll leave you with these last few bits!

•Grim wearing a beige trenchcoat and fedora during the second book while they try to figure out what Leona is hiding and Yuu not having the heart to tell him that’s not actually how detectives/investigators actually dress

•Yuu having multiple impossible to solve rubiks cubes and hand written what-if scenario essays scattered inside her dressing room to pass the time

•Yuu having AT LEAST three makeup items like lipstick or a compact mirror that is actually gadgets like a mini sleep-dart gun or just simply using the mirror to spy on people behind her

•Yuu playing video games like ‘bomb diffuser simulator’ or murder mystery board games like Clue when Ace, Deuce, and others come over

•Yuu ironically/purposefully using a cork board and red string when solving cases just because it’s fun

Okay so when you first said Detective!Yuu, my first thought went to The Great Mouse Detective. Like imagine Yuu and Basil of Baker Street being mystery solving besties (with Basil sitting on her shoulder or breast pocket). I feel like detective!Yuu would remind Basil of Sherlock Holmes (especially in that one scene in the Savanaclaw manga where Grim wears the classic deerstalker and is holding a smoking pipe)

Meanwhile Professor Ratigan is sulking because he was supposed to be besties with her.

I remember there was this one Goofy cartoon which was 'How To Be A Detective' and Yuu is just in the sidelines shaking her head and laughing at all of his antics.

Since Yuu is just a teenager I reckon that she wouldn't be an actual detective but would be more like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew or the characters in the Enid Blyton books, 'Famous Five' or 'The Five Find-Outers and Dog.

I bet that she even goes head on with Professor Von Drake for a battle of the minds when he gets too full of himself (and then beats him, much to Mickey's amusement).

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s1 episode 17 thoughts

i enjoyed this episode and was deeply excited for my nightly scully and mulder time. these two factors led to me taking a lot of notes tonight, even by my standards!

the first thing i wrote was "okay i read the synopsis... are they going to get CANCELLED" (thankfully this did not happen!)

the title screen reading "present day" did not predict me watching this in 2024 but i love to prove ppl wrong!!

the trucker pulled his shotgun out and fired at a spaceship which was a bold move. we need to praise him for his courage if nothing else.

then our intrepid heroes jump to tennessee!! and mulder unpacks all his little gadgets to check for aliens... aww it's endearing to me

in the interrogation room they were talking to the trucker and this man really WAS lounging about in a whorish manner like that famous post said!!!!! i was shocked!!! no decorum, not even at an interrogation!!

okay they're talking about "gulf war syndrome". i need to look something up real quick -> good lord i thought they made that up for the show but it's real and that is horrific. wow. that will be the next research rabbit hole i dive down.

(she opens her mouth to say something) (he holds his finger up) "not-not here" argument SUCCESSFULLY POSTPONED!

some background character asked scully for a pen and she gave it to her and i KNEW it was a sneaky trick... my guess was that she was going to use her fingerprints for something but in actuality it had a tracking device in there!!!!

THEY TOOK A BUS!!! new mode of transportation unlocked for our duo!!!!!!! you can tell this is fiction because it involves the US having functional public transport!!!!

mulder takes scully to his latest collection of freaks and conspirators. he says that barney is the world's most evil agent which once again raises the question: what did barney do to deserve all this?

one of the ufo nerds says "she's hot" right in front of scully which she graciously ignores. but then she says the us government is incompetent and the guy says "she IS hot" louder this time and mulder tells him to SETTLE DOWN!!!! he said that is my FRIEND and you will be RESPECTFUL!!!

(scully gives her $20 bill to a strange man) (he rips it up) she says, in the most indignant scully voice you have ever heard, heyyyy >:(

she says those guys were the weirdest people with the most outlandish theories she had ever met and mulder responds with "you think it's remotely plausible that someone might think you're hot?"

(A STUNNED SILENCE FILLS THE ROOM. MANY WANT TO KNOW WHY HE SAID THIS AND NO ANSWERS HAVE BEEN ACHIEVED. HELLO???? WHAT WAS THE LOGIC HERE???? is he flirting. is this is twisted humor. scully, once again, GRACIOUSLY says nothing)

she's all mad at how self important those guys were being- "they probably think they're being tracked wherever they go!" (cut to tracking device in pen reveal) oh these silly geese!!!!!!!

mulder at home reveal!!! we haven't gotten much of this before. he promptly fell asleep on his couch lmao what a guy.

a deep throat return!!! he hands mulder a package from under his coat like they do in all the good spy media!!! shoutout to that weird old man!!

scully thinks it's weird that mulder is trusting some guy and says a line that will certainly haunt me forever: "mulder, you're the only one i trust" "then you're gonna have to trust me" (immediately proceeds to get betrayed by trusting that guy. lol. lmao, even)

he says they'll meet up at her place and reassures her with a shoulder grab and lean in that was entirely unnecessary but it brought me great pleasure

scully uses her sleuthing skills (eyeballs) to realize the alien photo deep throat gave them is very fake. she is a detective!!! but he is very angry that she won't go with him to chase this new lead!

(wait i wrote all of this next part down i loved it so much)

"i have never met anyone so passionate and dedicated to a belief as you. it's so intense, sometimes it's blinding. but there are others who are watching you, who know what i know, and whereas i can respect and admire your passion, they will use it against you. mulder, the truth is out there, but so are lies." <- banger monologue that really pissed off the man it was directed towards (even though she said she admires him!!!!!!)

when he realizes the photo is indeed a fake, he menacingly leans in towards scully and says "we're alone on this one. there's no one we can trust" and yeah it was scary but i was looking at scully's freckles. sorry (it WILL happen again)

mulder meets deep throat in an aquarium!!!! need to see him in an aquarium for recreational purposes. get him a little shark keychain in the gift shop.

but now he's MAD at deep throat for lying to him and denying the world the truth: that aliens exist! shh keep your voice down you might scare the sharks!!

deep throat says "a lie is most convincingly hidden between two truths" to which i wrote, "ooo good line"

deep throat knows mulder is being listened to electronically which made me think that if i knew i was being wiretapped, i would blast the most insufferable hyperpop i know over and over again. hello welcome to the 10 hour 100 gecs livestream in my living room, feds. i give you 20 minutes tops before you give up.

(cutscene to mulder ripping apart all of his furniture in his apartment) <- me when i get that Cleaning Urge at 3 am

ohhh the little finger hand signal means someone is listening to us !!! the intimacy of being able to communicate with someone with just a motion!

scully hails a cab which is so nostalgic for me, because i have never hailed a cab in my life and only see it happen in tv shows or movies. now we just call an uber which is like kinda the same thing but taxis popped off with the bright yellow design. sad i've never experienced that.

sometimes while i'm watching the show it will randomly go to like vhs level quality and it did that here while scully was buying a plane ticket lol

next thing i wrote was "there are only 15 minutes left they are NOT gonna solve this one boys"

mulder fell asleep in the car with his mouth wide open... that is my cringefail loser princess

the alien got away! (jk it was a trap... but i was momentarily happy for the alien)

scully was scared by this turn of events! "god mulder, i can't stop shaking"... oh, an episode 1 parallel?? (she still gets scared by these things!!! just not often!!! which makes it more impactful when it happens!!)

then they crashed a random party in the woods which i can only imagine is very good for your health, especially if its a ufo welcoming party

they very briefly got aliases to break into the government facility and i LOVE a good alias but it didn't really go anywhere. sad!

a guard is stalking them breaking into a place they Should Not Be and scully gives up and turns herself in, but mulder makes a break for it!!! "oh this isn't gonna end well," i wrote, "why does he keep doing this?"

but we meet DEEP THROAT at the scene!!! who reveals that post ww2 there was an ULTRA SECRET WORLD POWER conference during which they agreed to kill any aliens that landed on earth and that HE was one of the 3 people on earth to kill an alien!! which he did when one crashed in vietnam...

and that the innocence on the alien's face still haunts him, which is why he helps mulder out, to give him a chance to atone for his sins... a LOT to unpack there

mulder says he is trying to figure out which of these things he said is a lie and my money is on the super-secret conference. you think people had nukes but drew the lines at aliens being a safety threat to bring them all together? bffr.

but there is no resolution as to if mulder is mad at scully for throwing them under the bus as the episode ends! they just watch deep throat fade into the distance together which hopefully means it's water under the bridge.

overall i really liked this episode! it was fast-paced, involved a roadtrip, had the leads both fighting and comforting each other, confessions of admiration, secret hand signals, an aquarium, a peek into mulder's living space, him calling up some weird guys he knows... what more could you really want?

[wolfliving]

Meanwhile, in Brickland

Cory Doctorow:

Analog companies can raise their prices, or worsen next year's model of their products. *Digital* businesses can *travel back in time* and raise the price of something you already own, but need to pay a "subscription" fee for. They can reach back in time and remove features you've already paid for. They can even go back in time and take away things you already own. The omniflexible, omnipresent digital tether between a device and its manufacturer creates *so many* urges that they can't resist:

Are you one of 4,000,000 people who built "smart home" products from Wink into your walls, ceiling and foundation slab at any time since they started shipping in 2014? Surprise! Now you have to pay a "subscription" for all of those gadgets or they'll *brick your fucking house*:

Did you buy a "Mellow Sous Vide" gadget? Surprise, it now costs $48/year to use that gadget!

Did you buy an Exogen ultrasound device to stimulate bone growth after a fracture? Surprise, it bricks itself after you've used it 343 times! Enjoy your e-waste, Hopalong!

Did you *buy a Ferrari performance sports-car*? Surprise, it bricks itself if it detects "tampering" - and the only way to un-brick it is to connect it to the internet, so you'd better hope it doesn't brick itself deep in an underground parking garage. Oops!

Did you buy a Peloton treadmill? Surprise, your $3,000 "smart" treadmill no longer works in standalone mode - unless you pay $480/year, that treadmill is now a clothes-drying rack:

Did you buy an Epson printer? Surprise! It will brick itself after you print a certain number of pages, *for your own good*, because otherwise its ink-sponges might leak:

Did you get - no, wait for it - *did you get a neural implant?* Surprise. The company's new owners don't want to continue supporting your implant, and they won't let anyone else do so either. So now, *part of your brain* has been bricked:

This is like a lifetime money-back guarantee - *for companies*. Any company that experience's seller's remorse can cancel or alter the transaction, retroactively. It's as if Darth Vader opened an MBA program whose only lesson was *I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further":

Darth Vader has the Force. Corporate enshittifiers have something even more powerful: IP law. Companies can cleverly arrange overlapping layers of IP - anticircumvention, trademark, patent, trade secrecy, terms of service, cybersecurity law, contracts - to criminalize otherwise legal activity, like reverse-engineering, jailbreaking, creating alternative clients or third-party parts:

That means that companies know that they can enshittify to their heart's content without fearing a competitor's disenshittification products. Raise the price of ink all you want, because you've figured out how to criminalize generic ink cartridges:

That's a lesson Spotify took to heart. Aaaallll the way back in 2022, Spotify started selling $90 "Car Thing" tablets - little car-vent-mounted gadgets that made it slightly easier to connect your car stereo to your Spotify account. Now that a suitable interval has gone by, Spotify has decided to remotely brick every one of these solid-state devices, no later than December of 2024:

Now, this may seem like a loss to all those Car Thing owners, who are out $90. But consider this: our descendants are *gaining* thousands of pieces of immortal, infinitely toxic e-waste.

So there's that.

Then there's this: Jason Koebler just published a breakdown of a leaked sSamsung repair contract on 404 Media, revealing how Samsung requires its "independent" repair partners to trick you, abuse you, spy on you, and literally destroy your phone:

First: every time you bring a phone to an independent Samsung repair shop, the company has 24 hours to notify Samsung, providing your name, email, phone number, address, the IMEI of your phone, your warranty status and complaint.

Then, the technician is required to inspect your device for any evidence that you have had it serviced by unauthorized technicians or fixed with third-party replacement parts. If they believe you have failed to act in accord with Samsung's shareholders' interests, the technician is required to *immediately destroy your phone* and notify Samsung.

(This is radioactively illegal, and has been since 1975, when Congress passed the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, which protects your right to use third-party parts:)

Why does Samsung do this? They can't help themselves. It's in their nature.

[rosewind2007]

Ha!

Some people have asked in the last 48 hours:

“Like why the hell would anyone ship Murderbot and Gurathin?”

(I like to imagine them like ART clutching its function in Artificial Condition—“Ship Gurathin and Murderbot? That is irrational!”)

So, let me explain…no, there is too much. Let me make a few points:

This really starts out by asking the question: why did Gurathin want to know how the PresAux SecUnit was spending its time? Which is a really odd thing for him to want to know if you think about it.

The SecUnit is, as they have been told, merely a tool: it’s an adjunct to the SecSystem and HubSystem of the habitat, it’s a company device, a tool, a product of corporate surveillance capitalism and authoritarian enforcement. Up until the worm incident some of the PresAux team didn’t even now it had a face. Mensah didn’t want to rent it as part of the bond guarantee agreement, and called it (basically) a “hellish compromise.”

So, the rest of PresAux are in varying states of awareness about what Murderbot is.

In Future of Work Compulsory we get some insight into common knowledge of SecUnits: the workers are unaware they can speak, in fact adamant they cannot:

Asa took her arm gently. “They can’t talk,” he told her.

She [Sekai] shook her head as her friends steered her toward the access bridge. “No, it talked. I heard it.”

The PresAux team know their SecUnit can talk, it gives them a security briefing. Do most of them think this is the equivalent of a recorded message, delivered rote?

Surely Mensah, having seen its face and knowing of its intelligence (that hellish compromise) can’t think it’s anything less than a slave? But that aside: I am talking about Gurathin. And what what Volescu says Gurathin wanted to know:

Then Volescu said, “Gurathin, you wanted to know how it spends its time. That was what you were originally looking for in the logs. Tell them.”

Funny thing to want to know, like do you want to know how your roomba spends its time? Okay, this is Tumblr, possibly the wrong place for this question.

So Gurathin is suspicious, apparently right from the start of the book since on page 33 he first asks it a question:

“What about your systems?”

I would note that Gurathin asks MB two questions about how it is functioning, both just after it does something that goes against its governor module:

The other good thing about my hacked governor module is that I could ignore the governor’s instructions to defend the stupid company. “They’re supposed to be able to, but equipment failures aren’t unknown.”

Next thing anyone says is:

Then Gurathin said, “What about your systems?”

Later:

It was one of those impulses that comes from my organic parts that the governor is supposed to squash. I said, “As the only one here with experience in these situations, I’m your best resource.”

Gurathin said, “What situations?”

This looks to me like someone who either detects that MB is acting unlike a SecUnit should, or even that he can tell a governor module is being defied.

HOW does Gurathin do this/know this? He is after all augmented, perhaps he is detecting something in the feed? In Rogue Protocol when MB is spying on Miki via a drone it has taken over, Miki realises something is up:

Miki didn’t move, still staring into the dark with the opaque surface of its eyes. The feed was clear, it couldn’t know I was here.

Then Miki sent a directionless ping

I think Miki does know (Miki stares at the drone); and I think somehow Gurathin also knows.

This seems to indicate that Gurathin may know more about SecUnits than he’s giving away—but whatever: this is someone who has been closely watching Murderbot.

Like, really closely.

I think an absolutely reasonable reading of ASR is that Gurathin has a bit of a fixation on this SecUnit, and it’s a fixation that started before the worm incident.

He’s watching this piece of company equipment with unusual intensity.

I am happy to headcanon that this started with the security briefing, that Murderbot couldn’t keep its feelings out of its voice. I mean, can you imagine Murderbot doing the in-flight safety announcement on the plane? It brings to mind project mayhem’s replacement safety handouts…

Did Gurathin hear Murderbot’s real voice bleed through? Cynicism and sarcasm, a dose of irony?

It’s a thought. He never seems to doubt it’s a person. The fact that Rathhi says: “This is no more a machine than Gurathin is—”perhaps says something about how he sees Gurathin too.

I would note that Gurathin and Ratthi aren’t friends in All Systems Red—something which surprised me a little (I didn’t think they got along as well as they do in later books, but when I looked into it I was surprised!

Gurrathi Meta

So when the team heads off to DeltFall Gurathin is very suspicious and watching SecUnit, which it reports upon but doesn’t seem to spot the significance of—which is rather unlike our paranoid Murderbot.

Gurathin is the only member of the team not to express enthusiasm for MB going on the trip.

Gurathin was the only one staying behind who didn’t say anything

MB is actually about to start poking around to figure out what Guarthin is up to when the feed drops out (probably trying to figure out what’s wrong with it).

If anything I think Gurathin acts oddly about his rogue SecUnit suspicions.

If he knows SecUnits he will probably have heard the propaganda, which MB believes:

To quote MB: “I sure as hell would have reported me. Rogue SecUnits are fucking dangerous, trust me on that.”

I wrote a little essay on how Gurathin is right about a lot of things when it comes to Murderbot:

Gurathin was right

(It’s called that because he is)

Perhaps the strangest thing is that he just tries to immobilize it, and then makes his case. He doesn’t try and have it shut down whilst “unconscious”, and doesn’t even mention the (fairly critical information) until pushed. Gurathin’s expression was stiffer than usual. “This Unit has killed people before, people it was charged with protecting. It killed fifty-seven members of a mining operation.”

At this point MB believe this is true, and it lies to the diary about it, by omission at any rate: “What I told you before, about how I hacked my governor module but didn’t become a mass murderer? That was only sort of true. I was already a mass murderer.”

So: I honestly don’t think Gurathin’s behaviour here makes a whole lot of sense if you read it in a lot of ways—the way I think it makes more sense is that he is fixated. This could be sexual: perhaps when:

[Gurathin] said, “Why don’t you want us to look at you?”

My jaw was so tight it triggered a performance reliability alert in my feed. I said, “You don’t need to look at me. I’m not a sexbot.”

Well—perhaps MB is picking up something about the way Gurathin looks at it?

My personal reading is that Gurathin has become obsessed, an obsession perhaps sparked by MB’s anomalous behaviors? He is watching it intensely. It doesn’t have to be sexual, humans can get fixated without sexual attraction.

And then he so quickly accepts the rogue unit into his team! It holds him up against the wall by his neck (I mean, wow—one of the most intense bits of physical contact in the book). But Gurathin is rapidly team SecUnit: and he never sees it as “not a person” he isn’t kidding when he says.

(“I do think of it as a person,” Gurathin said. “An angry, heavily armed person who has no reason to trust us.”

“Then stop being mean to it,” “Ratthi told him. “That might help.”)

Gurathin and SecUnit work together to overcome GrayCris, Murderbot even grudgingly admitting Gurathin’s help:

“Gurathin had figured out how to use the hack from their HubSystem into our HubSystem to get access, but he needed to be close to their habitat to actually trigger their beacon. ”

“(Last night Gurathin had said this was a weak point, that this was where the plan would fall apart. It was irritating that he was right.)”

So: that’s some of the reasons from the first book, All Systems Red

[zahri-melitor]

Okay. I’ve started Rebirth and read the opening stories of the following titles:-

Batman

Detective Comics

Nightwing

Batgirl

Batgirl and the Birds of Prey

I’m paused JUST before Night of the Monster Men and so I haven’t added All-Star Batman yet.

My first observation? Oh what a relief. It’s not perfect. There is work to do and it’s not a straight roll back to preboot but after reading my way through n52, characters and dynamics I recognise are back. It’s like DC suddenly remembered that people enjoy characters interacting with each other. And so, as best as I can tell, the concept was to sort of scatter everyone back to team positions that would make sense if the last comic you picked up was in 2011.

There is definitely some inferred off-screen characterisation going on: both Dick/Babs and Tim/Steph are extant relationships again. Dick and Babs had been longing ‘will they’ exes for the last 5 years of writing where they kept being out of sync with each other (the last time the two were actively dating on page was in 2003; the failed engagement was 2006, and they’d been caring exes shading back to flirting from about 2010 onwards). Tim/Steph broke up in 2004 and at BEST were amicable for 2009-2011.

Batman: Rebirth #1 – this is just a really lovely little stand alone issue that’s setting up Bruce taking Duke on as an active student. It’s just tightly written, with an interesting plot, nods at traditional characterisation, a less-used but known villain – it works really well as basically a training case for Duke. Note for everyone – Duke is still just a kid learning to be a vigilante at this point in the classic Robin model.

Batman #1-6 (2016): The team here is Bruce, Duke, Henry Clover and Claire Clover. This really feels like a back-to-basics storyline. The parallels between Henry and Bruce are not subtle, and they’re not meant to be; Bruce rescuing a family in his own situation and how it plays out is a well trodden story in DC, as is characters getting powers that the use of which ends up harming them. It was almost a modernisation of a Silver Age or Bronze Age story device that we’ve all seen plenty of times – which I guess makes sense for a Tom King story. I do have a soft spot for Claire here. This absolutely feels like a one-storyline-and-done set of characters (Gotham and Gotham Girl) who get hauled out occasionally in the future but mostly left alone. Waller seems somewhat more herself but unfortunately has still not recovered for her dieting. Every time they haul Psycho-Pirate out I wait for him to make some commentary on multiversal stuff, given he’s technically still on the shortlist of people who remember pre-Crisis, I believe?

Honestly, this storyline was mostly a relief after some of Snyder’s drama (said with full tongue in cheek over the fact it also included Bruce steering a crashing plane from the outside with cable and two rocket thrusters)

Nightwing: Rebirth #1 and Nightwing #1-4 (2016): This is very much a transitional storyline. It’s Dick’s story, but Damian, Bruce and Barbara are popping in and out of it. In terms of moving on fast from Grayson, the fact that Tim Seeley is writing this means that we don’t get a clean break (this is still basically a spy mystery story), but Dick putting back on the Nightwing suit with blue was such a moment of relief, I can’t tell you how big. He hadn’t worn that since 2009. It also unfortunately involves Court of Owls drama carried over from Batman & Robin Eternal and the 2011 Batman and Nightwing runs, but hey, Dick’s back talking to people, he sounds more like himself, he’s wearing BLUE, and he’s hanging out with Damian in a ‘I love him but he drives me up the wall’ way which is honestly not bad as characterisation. Also this line from Nightwing #2 (2016) stuck with me: “But Batman also taught me every life is worth saving. Even if it always seemed like I believed it more than he did.” While I have my quibbles over the second line (ACTUALLY Seeley that philosophy is pretty fundamental to Bruce), for Dick? At this exact moment in time? After recent events? It feels like a renewal. Every life is worth saving.

Damian here is an irritating little snot, but in the largely affectionate way he tends to get in better writing with Dick, and he’s still acting like a kid, which is always nice to see.

Detective Comics #934-#940: I’m not crying, my eyes are just watering, okay? Oh my GOD. This is Kate Kane, Tim, Cass, Steph and for some reason Basil Karlo on a team together. Okay. I see why Tynion’s run is considered a highlight. It’s not perfect, it’s in no way at all perfect, but Tynion took on an unenviable task (merging Tim, Cass and Steph into usable versions of their preboot characterisation/personalities grafted on to the existing situation of all three characters at the end of n52) and he did it in a way that spent a lot of time signalling that yes, he’s actually read their solo runs. They all had moments where they sounded like themselves and acted like themselves.

Tim still had his stupid arm computer and is at peak arrogance and at one point said “This is what happens when you give a sixteen-year-old genius who doesn’t sleep an unlimited budget” (sigh. SIGH. C’mon, Tynion) but my initial fears from the way the first issue was framed that Tim was going to be treated as less capable than Kate Kane (someone who, even in n52, Tim had spent more time as a vigilante than) were relieved by Tim slotting capably into the ‘support strategy’ role he is so good at. Of course as well then he is sort-of not-really playing around with the idea of moving on (he’s got his invite for university but you can read him as either ‘wanting to move on but trapped by Bruce inviting him back to being closer’ or as ‘Tim didn’t expect to get this, is stymied by it, and feels he’s being pushed about taking the opportunity if he lets people know’). It’s a concept he flirts with on occasion but can’t go through with. And then my sweet boy sacrifices himself and shows up Ulysses fucking Hadrian bastard Armstrong and… we get the acknowledgement that TIM IS THE GLUE. He’s just pulled this team into working together in a functional manner and we get “You were reconnecting threads that could not be reconnected. You’re so loved, so deeply intertwined. It became crucial that we take you off the field.” Which? He hasn’t been for 5 years of stories. That’s my boy, my fix-it Robin.

Steph…is sort of controlling and clearly lacking in training and has some edges to her and bickers with Tim? Which oh my god, I can see actual continuity with pre-War Games Steph here. It’s not perfect, she’s suddenly in an established relationship with Tim and quite focused on that, but I can see some Dixon in her! It’s a miracle!

Cass has had the hardest reboot of the lot and has lost 99% of her vocabulary and is back to her cryptid ways, but even there I can see Batgirl 2000 characterisation moments peeking through. She drops in the window while Tim is stripping down (Fresh Blood! FRESH BLOOD MY BELOVED. The parallels here!), she supports Tim during a fight but pushes Steph out of the way and takes over…that’s Cass’s assessment of their fighting abilities. That’s Steph overreaching her capacity and Cass dropping in to haul her out of trouble.

Kate Kane is very much Kate Kane and while I disbelieve that she and Bruce are really that close in age, this is the start of Rebirth and doing things like gently stretching back out the timeline so that we’re in Year 18 or so again, not Year 6. (Year 18 is rough back-of-the-envelope Year 3 = Graysons fall, Year 13 = ALPOD, Year 15 = NML, Year 17 = OYL to Reborn, then n52 is a single year). I like seeing her actually spend some time actively working with other Bat characters if she’s going to be fully integrated, rather than just turning up for events.

Batgirl #1-5 2016: oh Babs. While this run is winking at past Barbara characterisation (the use of Amy Beddoes as an alias! However there is no awareness that that is a name known by the Suicide Squad and Waller and not only heavily linked to Oracle, but to Barbara’s feelings about guns and Joker), it remains squarely in the ‘fluffy light storytelling that might be suitable for a 22-23 year old character but doesn’t match anything about Barbara Gordon’. I really wish this was good.

It is, I guess, an adequate tonal sequel to Burnside, and if that’s your Barbara you will probably enjoy it, but I can’t help but mentally want to slot every single one of these stories into a past history that occurred during Babs’ ORIGINAL stint at Batgirl.

The concept of Barbara going on a world training tour break isn’t bad and echoes Cass being sent off to Hong Kong (though Hong Kong is skipped over for Tokyo, Singapore, Seoul and Shanghai), but the heavy reliance on Barbara’s eidetic memory as her strong point and THEN Barbara ‘switching it off’ to be faster???

Batgirl and the Birds of Prey Rebirth & #1-6: It's Barbara, Dinah and Helena all on a team together? Miracles really do come true!

First point out of the gate: yes, I hate that this contains several take-thats at fans of Barbara as Oracle. I think they're mean spirited and exhausting to read. There is absolutely nothing wrong with fans of a team created by Oracle wanting to see it lead by ORACLE. THAT SAID, characterisationwise this is the closest I've had to my girls for a while.

Barbara is far more like Simone's n52 Batgirl than Burnside. She actually acknowledges aspects of her past, and the struggles it's brought with it and why that should have resulted in growth.

Dinah is unfortunately still running around as Dinah Drake Lance with the shitty n52 backstory retcon intact and reliance on the band stuff. Sorry, Dinah. The first run really didn't do much to recanonise anything preboot for Dinah, just outlined her new history, though Siu Jerk Jai got a few references.

Helena? Look. This is the fourth? version of Helena's origin I've read and it looks like it's most riffed off Huntress Year One, and it's sticking with Helena's mum having an affair, sigh. However, on the scale of "is this actually Helena Bertinelli", there is so much credit on the 'once again has a backstory that actually works as a Helena Bertinelli backstory' side of the ledger that I don't really care. This is about the process of rehabilitation, and Helena is not just a Bertinelli, but the first thing she does is butt heads with Barbara over their combined stubbornness and her refusal to take direction, soooo. Yeah, pretty stoked.

I will say, with this lineup of new histories, instead of being the "two cops' daughters and a mafia princess" group it's now the "Missing Mothers Who Might Be Evil Issues" team. Which is a downgrade. I wouldn't care about them bonding over their mothers so much if it wasn't stereotype missing mother hour.

Overall conclusion?

I became emotional reading Batman: Rebirth, 'Tec, and B&BOP. Even for their flaws they all were trying hard and hit me with what they were attempting to achieve.

This was in no way a complete fix, and heck DC is STILL untangling some of the threads that they started trying to fix here with Rebirth, 8 years later. But oh it is enjoyable to see writing teams actually try and act like yeah, people are allowed to like preboot characterisation.

[spousesolution]

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[caliburn-the-sword]

finished reading scarlet; last thoughts and reactions and ponderings

was about to be like "ew wtf did not want r*pe in MY y/a book" AND THEN HE SLIPPED HER AN I.D. TO ESCAPE

thorne is SO real for only being concerned about his jacket despite human bites being very dangerous lol

why are these werewolves acting like vamps

it's kind of nice how cool thorne is with lunars with all the lunar hate there is - i remember when reading cinder being apalled about how she generalised them all as corrupt

YES SCARLET KNOWS SHE KNOWS NOW

NO NOT GRANNY I'M LITERALLY IN STUDY PERIOD RN I CAN'T CRY (note: i managed not to cry in study period but god my eyes burned for a while lmao)

tf i thought wolf was just being possessive in like a protective way against ran and not just a plain old possessive way. he's honestly making me nervous rn like goodness i can literally feel scarlet's fear rn. STOP WITH YOUR I CAN FIX HIM DISEASE AND RUN (note: okay he got brain fucky wucky by mind control so this isn't him)

HOLY SHIT THEY'RE ALL FINALLY MEETING I'M FROTHING AT THE MOUTH

i think kai is going delulu. i bet his office isn't bugged and he's got a spy. literally since cinder my money has been on torin. but maybe huy

omg kai's recognition of cinder's sacrifice by going to the ball <3

gotta agree with everything cinder's saying about kai's marriage because it's everything i've been thinking since kai decided to marry levana. i wish he would see how it's a bandaid for a stab wound. he's barely fixing a short term problem, which is gonna have the same long term problem regardless

the girls (all current pov characters) ARE FIGHTING. not mad tho because i'm a messy bitch who lives for drama <3

"She'd had the bridge built for herself out of very special glass, so that she could watch (...) all without being observed herself" levana YOU MEAN A TWO WAY MIRROR??? don't go acting all superior you're not special

from what wolf has described of his Tragic Backstory there is NO way he ISN'T a virgin. i'm so sorry that was my only takeaway but i'm trying to distract myself

"We met less than a week ago and in that time I've done nothing but lie and cheat and betray you" FKSDHFSDK sounds JUST like ouat rumpelstiltskin and yet he's STILL healthier than him and not toxic LMAO

wait did wolf need to pretend betray scarlet without her knowing instead of just making THAT the plan because those supersoldiers can smell hormones?? i bet they can. i reckon he needed her to feel REAL fear (note: now that i think about it it's probably just the bioelectricity crap but also ONLY the thaumaturge would be able to detect that???)

if i keep having to read "alpha female" with my own two eyes, i'm going to need bleach. marissa meyer you owe me financial compensation for the psychological distress i've been caused. 3 is in fact 4 times too many. it is a crime that it was ever thought into existence

predictions for cress

didn't do this last time between cinder and scarlet but figured it would be fun!! you guys get to silently laugh about how wrong i am, no spoilers

first off, doc erland's place in africa becomes the home base and cinder starts her training

someone tries to recreate garan's device since it will be useful for the rebellion - could be a joint effort between cinder and cress since they have the hardware and software down respectively. idk who's gonna fill the last role of like. bio stuff and the surgeries tho but we'll see

MORE THORNE BACKSTORY

definitely more wolf pov chapters now that marissa no longer needs to make him dodgy

cress is at least a LITTLE bit delulu wackers bonkers cray z lost her marbles etc etc from being so isolated for so long. i would LOVE to get into that mindset and character voice. would make for a very interesting pov

on reading the blurb:

i'm REALLY fucking dumb it finally occurred to me that in rapunzel the hero falls from the tower and gets blinded by thorns. so that tells me exactly who carswell thorne is (rip to when i thought he was the prince from sleeping beauty cause that's embarrassing). i wonder if he gets ejected into space from the satellite and his eyeballs freeze out of his sockets or something

i wonder WHY cress would be locked up by the queen BEFORE she was even able to hack since she wouldn't have been useful then. my first thought was that glamour doesn't work on her like with shells but she's not a shell herself but that wouldn't make sense because the thaumaturges seemed surprised by cinder and michelle benoit so it can't be that. for the sake of my running joke of every fairy tale character either being related or knowing each other, i'm just gonna pin it down to her being somewhere in the family tree and leave it at that

can these people STOP getting separated from each other?? i can't handle it. from the blurb it seems like the boys got cut off from the girls??? and then kai is also separated from all of them lol. this is a prediction only in the sense that i'm trying to guess who's getting separated from who. i think it would tie well into separating everyone from their love interest like poor cinder

i wonder if this will be the book that we meet princess winter since with royal etiquette and all that her presence will p r o b a b l y be required during all them wedding preparations and what not

@eddisfargo @francforever @winterrhayle @winterpinetrees

[legionofpotatoes]

Hello! I just saw your new Blasto poster and it's v good! I was wondering if you would give a quick rundown of your "process"? I love the style, and I'm trying to get back into digital art, so I think it might benefit me and several others. :-)

Hi there, thanks for waiting! I went ahead and cleared this with Bioware so I could answer your question with some in-depth references from our actual process. So I hope this ends up useful both technically and in terms of approach. And not too much of an overkill!

It's tricky to speak of the process here by starting at style, because the initial pitch was quite varied and it could have really gone anywhere. Ultimately what dictates the most high-level building blocks in something like this is layout and color, and choosing those are essential steps in focusing up the concept and eventually informing the style part as well.

I mention this because that pipeline illustrates a key difference between client work and personal work. I could start with style if this was my passion project, but I had to stay loose to Bioware's pitch and conform to the our iterative process (despite them knowing my work well and even providing very clear north star from my own work as a target).

So, when the idea isn't yours, but you are told to play to your strengths, how do you interpret a pitch to design a mock movie poster for Blasto? My approach: look at the raw pitch and your vision as two ingredients in a soup. And then bust out a number of sketches that each contain different dosages of those ingredients. One will be super close to reference and play to your established work, one will be as literal a translation of the pitch as possible, one will be a loose mix of the two that organically tows that line, etc.

The pitch was for Blasto to have a dirty-harry-style spy movie poster that would feature the infamous tagline without walloping into obscene territory. The reference was my fan poster for Boba Fett. So I came up with these:

Immediately from the reference I understood what they had in mind; the "tentacle gun tornado" variant came first as a safe bet for a target. Then I went ahead and looked at old spy thriller posters and came up with #2; no loose plot details, just tropes and visual flair from that illustrated poster era. You can tell how different the style would end up being if we'd gone down that route. And then I had a bunch of variations on #3, which by-and-large all involved Blasto in action and a larger framing device shrouding a villain character. That was also in-line with my earlier work but communicated that detective story feel stronger.

I tried not to shoehorn the humor here; playing it straight felt funnier. It's a fucking jellyfish there cocking a gun with two tentacles. You can't crank the knob on that any further. And technically speaking, these weren't ultra-polished thumbnails. I don't push fidelity in my work anyway, but since I like to communicate depth, strong silhouettes, and tight composition, I tried to hit those targets with loose grayscale values and call it a day. Thumbnailing is its own goal-oriented task.

The tools I use here are just basic brushes and flats, with some semblance of a sketchy line layer. Again, no technical craft, but hints at what strengths we'll squeeze out of the layout. Which as I mentioned in the beginning is primary building block #1.

So naturally once we chose an option it was time to get to #2; colors. I did a second pass at the sketch, brought everything out into rough lines, enriched the dynamism with more implied details and quickly blocked it in with colors that I then spent a very, very long time alternating into palettes.

Picking a color palette and sticking to it early on is one of my personal unwritten rules and it's a nice feather in the cap when managing client expectations during the concepting phase. I looked at those same old posters, then some contemporaries, then my own reference points, and pulled all sorts of wacky color combos until I whittled them down to six I really thought would work well for the target. I took care to maintain a sense of depth in values, since this was a center-stage character-action focused piece. And yes, I think this is a good place to start being deliberate with that, and not to go all wishy-washy until the broad strokes are locked in. You can always play with accent pops afterwards, but fundamentals are fundamentals and their service to your thumbnails is invaluable.

Of course, if that was just me, I would have a style and even a color target set much much earlier. But exercises like these are still good to do mid-process; challenge your own vision, discover new ideas, maybe even a trick you can migrate over. It also helps you see a roughly rounded version of what the finished thing will look like; and that's always extra gas in the tank. This is why I always evangelize iterative-holistic processes instead of linear ones; it's exciting to see layout and colors working together into a cohesive, unique thumbnail, even if it's a simplistic doodle. It motivates you to finish the thing. By comparison, spending a day hyper-rendering a leg then zooming out and seeing nothing but that leg is, unsurprisingly, deflating.

Anyway, we went with #2, and that basically meant Boba Fett but make it Blasto. And I was just fine with that :D from there, the process becomes simple; it's a sprint to final that involves as many flexible and mutable parts as you can muster. You have to stay nimble and ready to incorporate comments on very fundamental levels, so you use lots of layers, and you make very deliberate choices in order to serve the high-level goals.

Here is where the "style" of it comes into play as I try to wrangle legibility and effective framing out of the thumb. I use depth-softened colors in linework and spend time building up the main characters so they have that organic pop when the eye wanders over them. It was fun gathering reference for all the iconic guns and designing the asari out of scraps of Blasto lore (and don't even get me started on the hoopla I raised about determining the correct amount of hanar tentacles).

Illium, in terms of visual priority, is a backdrop; a forest of texture, so I use very little lines and mostly focus on breaking up the various "plates" to create, again, a sense of depth. It's vector-based shapes all the way here, dotted with lights representing windows and skycars, softened in values near their base, arranged to fit most of the other elements around them. They also create a nice symbolic "fence" that Blasto rises above of, as if the city itself is the corruption that only he is uniquely equipped to fight. This was all semiotic nonsense that came to me in the process, but was still super informed by the original layout.

And then you just add in all the details and ideas without violating those basic rules of color depth and clean composition that were promised to the client by the very first sketch. All those things like planets and stars and fumes end up being glorified framing devices for centering the focus on our heroes, adhering to some internal math of element relation and action lines, and helping guide the viewer to what matters most and not overwhelm them with visual noise. I don't know how exactly to coach this, but references and study help a LOT.

Ultimately it's that exercise in restraint and concerted effort that ends up becoming a "style", and is subsequently super rewarding because the thing then is both effective and representative of your initial pitch. Style is very seldom the starting point; it's the product of tricks and quirks and discipline that you pick up throughout years of doing this. It's boring and obvious, but yes.

Just start and keep drawing to build those tricks up and be holistic in your approach and challenge your instincts and study contemporaries and iterate and iterate and iterate. Trust me, it's so worth it.

You might even get Blasto to tell you he loves your work.

[deans-baby-momma]

Law & Love Chapter 9

A/N: This chapter and the next might be triggering to some so here's my warning. READ WITH CAUTION! I don't know how to warn against what is in this chapter without revealing what is in this chapter.

THEN

I see his finger squeeze the trigger and I close my eyes as the sound of a gunshot reverberates through the diner.

NOW

'Am I dead? Is this Heaven? Is that why there's no pain?' is on repeat in my head. I'm terrified to open my eyes. I don't know what to expect if I do. 

So, instead I use my other senses to determine what the hell just happened. The air is permeated with the stench of burnt sulfur; my ears are ringing from the close proximity of a fired weapon and I can feel my heart thumping erratically against my chest.

Wait, if I'm dead and in Heaven, why is my heart beating?

I slowly open my eyes to see Joey laid out on the dining room floor, a puddle of blood spreading out from under him. Wait, who shot him?!

I turn to see Deb crouched on the floor, in the same spot she had been, her shoulders shaking as she cries.  

Looking back toward the kitchen, Pops is standing there with a spent shotgun in his hands, smoke still rising from the barrel.

"Are you okay?" he asks.

Before I answer the bell over the door rings and Hoyt enters with a couple officers I recognize from my visit to the station. I look past them for Beau but Jenny smiles sadly and shakes her head.

He ain't coming?! His new girlfriend has been held at gunpoint and almost murdered and he couldn't even bother to come check on her?!

Beau is out of breath and panting as he finally reaches the peak of the mountain that the victim fell from, after being shot. 

"You didn't tell me we would be going on a 12K through that Grand Canyon-" Beau says to his associate, Cassie Dewell, a Private Investigator, as he joins her at the crest of Dead Man Falls. "-I'd worn my marathon boots and brought some oxygen."

"It's funny because you kept going on and on about how you were 'born for the outdoors' the whole way up here," Cassie snarks.

"I ever tell you how flat Texas is?!"

Cassie rolls her eyes at the Sheriff's theatrics and begins looking around. She sees something and steps closer. "There's footprints over here," she announces and then peeks over the ledge. "There's a water bottle down there."

Beau helps Cassie climb down where she uses a napkin to grab the evidence before climbing back up to join him at the top.

They both examine the water bottle and all the stickers and labels for different locations. 

"This is a well-traveled canteen, " Beau states.

"Hmm. And all the places the missing backpackers family said he'd been," Cassie tells him. "This is proof he was here."

"Didn't you say Sunny Barnes' camp was somewhere around here?"

"Yeah. Thinking we should check in, give her an update."

"That's exactly what I was thinking," Beau agrees.

"Oh, so you weren't...You weren't at all thinking about spying on your daughter?" Cassie jokes. 

"'Spy' is a harsh word," Beau defends himself but could tell Cassie wasn't buying it at all. "I mean, I'd just like to maybe say hi, see how she's doing."

"Riiiight," Cassie says with a smile.  "So, spying?"

Beau rolls his eyes and grins. "Let's go spy on

my daughter. Yep."

The Sheriff's phone rings as they begin their descent but as soon as he pulls it from his pocket, he loses reception.

By the time Detective Hoyt hangs up the phone, Deb has come to her senses and has me sitting at the counter with hot tea steaming in a mug. 

"Drink this," she tells me. "It'll help with your nerves."

The officer who had arrived with her is speaking to Pops across the room and I see the old man nod and then go into the kitchen and pull something from a shelf.

"As soon as I saw the gun, I started recording."

Pops hands the mobile device to the officer and he looks over at Jenny, questioningly. She nods and he walks out of the diner.

"Officer Harris is going to take the recording to the station and log it as evidence," she explains to me. "I called Beau. He's up in the mountains with Cass, working on a missing persons case and reception is shifty. I left a message for him to get here as soon as he can."

She places her hand on my shoulder. "Is there anyone else I need to notify? Do you have any family in the area?"

I shake my head no and close my eyes,  trying to ward off the tears that are threatening to fall. The traitorous drops escape anyway and drip to my cheeks before trickling down and falling to my lap.

"Can you tell me-" she asks quietly. "-do you think he was your stalker?"

"Yea," I answer softly. "He admitted to it."

I force myself to look at the now-empty spot where Joey's body had landed.  The EMTs were quick to load it up and get it out of here when they arrived; probably could tell both Deb and I were close to losing it and wanted to help alleviate our distress.

"He thought we were together," I tell her. "He heard me telling Deb about staying with Bea-Sheriff Arlen- and freaked out. Admitted to everything; the break-in of my car, the gifts. Said we had a connection, we were meant to be."

"Did you also witness his confession?" Jenny questions Deb.

"Uhhhh…" Deb hesitates in answering. "Uh, no. I can't say that I did. I'm sorry Y/N, but as soon as I saw the gun, I froze."

I nod my head in understanding and Jenny looks suspiciously at her. "Deb Wilhawks, right? You live on Sycamore Street, right?"

"Yea?"

"Joseph Bryant,  our suspect lives on Sycamore also, right? Do you-I mean, did you know him?"

"Well yea sure," Deb says but I notice a slight tremor in her voice. "Helena isn't that big of a town, everyone knows everyone."

"Isn't it true that you and Joey live in the same building? Just about a year ago, you and Mr. Bryant were involved in a civil dispute over animals in the building?"

"Yea, he complained that his girlfriend was allergic to my cocker spaniel, Buddy."

"That's right," Jenny says as she stands and begins reading Deb her Miranda rights.

"Deborah Wilhawks, you are under arrest for aiding and abetting Mr. Bryant in stalking and threatening the life of Y/N Y/L/N."

"Wait," I jump up, in shock at the surprising turn of events. "What the hell is going on?"

@spnbaby-67 @sea040561 @delightfullykrispypeach @larajadeschmidt13 @atc74 @vicariouslythruspn @squirrelnotsam  @sandlee44 @blacktithe7 @hoboal87 @mogaruke @supraveng @deandreamernp @akshi8278 @lyarr24 @kazsrm67 @chriszgirl92 @deanwithscissors @raisinggray @fanfic-n-tabulous @hobby27 @deans-spinster-witchs-favorites @yvonneeeeeeee @tmb510 @fallenlilangel99

If your tag has a mark through it, that means nothing is coming up for your screenname.

[wolfsbanesparks]

Love your post on underrated Captain Marvel/Fawcett Comics characters. :) Thinking the Fawcett Comics Characters story potential, how would you use Spy Smasher, Minute Man, Phantom Eagle, or Commando Yank in a modern day Captain Marvel/Fawcett City story?

So It has taken me literally forever to answer this, but I wanted to give it as much thought as it deserved (not to mention I've been swamped lately and needed some extra spoons before I tried).

This got very long, so it's under the cut.

Now these characters you've mentioned have some overlap in their origins/traits/motivations so I think there could be a good story that features all of them coming together to face a larger threat.

So to start off here are some ideas of slightly more modern takes on the characters (assuming they are all in their crime fighting prime at the time of the story rather than the older retired mentors some of them were portrayed as in certain comics runs).

Spy Smasher: A brilliant detective and fighter, Alan Armstrong works with the American government as a counterintelligence agent. He has a public persona as a championship athlete that he uses to cover his movements. I imagine that he is the type to pursue his leads at great personal risk and is willing to go rogue with his information if he believes its the best way to save as many people as possible.

Minute Man: Jack Weston is a highly trained American super soldier regularly sent on secret solo missions, fighting enemies that most don't know exist. He fights against diabolical villains who have managed to keep their illegal operations out of the public eye (unlike many supervillains the JL fights who make a big show of their evil plans).

Phantom Eagle: Mickey Malone is a young aspiring pilot in the airforce. A loose canon and a revolutionary, he regularly disobeyed orders to do what he thought was right, eventually earning himself a discharge from the military. Still eager to join the fight and help others he joined forced with Commando Yank as his pilot and air support.

Commando Yank: Chase Yale is an investigative reporter determined to document human rights violations overseas, often reporting from active warzones. Not content to merely record what's going on, he dons a vigilante costume and fights to protect the civilians.

I think that considering their connections to the government and the military, they should come together as a team because they each have discovered a different piece of an international terrorist plot. I would utilize Captain Nazi as a villain (as they were all initially created to fight Nazis whether America wanted to join the war or not) though he can be working alongside the Mask (the leader of a dangerous spy ring that Spy Smasher often goes toe to toe with).

An example for how this would work (or at least begin): Minute Man is sent on a mission where he faces off against Captain Nazi, barely escaping with his life. The confrontation garners enough attention that the US government has to deny their involvement claiming he acted on his own in an unsanctioned mission.

Around the same time Commando Yank and Phantom Eagle are on the scene where the detonation of an unknown device has caused untold devastation in a small small country (testing of the secret weapon Captain Nazi and the Mask are creating) and as they help the survivors they learn about the weapon and the organization that might have set it off.

Meanwhile Spy Smasher uncovers a lead that the Mask was on the move and planning something big, possibly even getting a potential target. But he is told not to pursue it any further (possibly due to corruption/a double agent working with the villains because he's a neonazi).

Eventually they all come together to stop the terrorist plot. Minute Man gets his rematch with Captain Nazi and defeats him with the help of a gadget designed for him by Spy Smasher. Commando Yank and Phantom Eagle help evacuate the civilians in the targeted area, fighting off the grunts rigging up the weapon and providing a swift exit for the team should things go sideways. Spy Smasher faces off with the Mask while attempting to defuse the weapon/stop it from launching.

I am by no means an expert on any of these characters, but I hoped this made sense. Also if anyone else has some ideas of their own for a modern adaptation of these characters feel free to share in the comments!