#for helping to facilitate a funny time

[eebie]

played DTI with the boss and i]t was really fun

[headspace-hotel]

Going through the bills proposed in the kentucky 2024 legislative session and some of the things being proposed are

make a PFAS Working Group

require homeless shelters to provide free menstrual products (it's actually disturbing that they didn't already)

require schools to provide free menstrual products

create harm reduction centers and lower penalties for possessing controlled substances

require insurance to pay for cancer screenings (okay. low bar but okay)

abolish the death penalty (actually has a couple republican sponsors)

decriminalize cannabis

make fluoridation of water in districts optional (?????)

make coal the "state rock" of Kentucky

Prohibit children from being interrogated in a "deceptive manner" (?)

Make weight discrimination illegal

pay schools to food grown at kentucky farms to provide for school meals at low income schools (hey that's rad)

Lower the age of carrying a concealed deadly weapon from 21 to 18 (?????????????)

Require companies to give their employees earned paid sick leave

Impose restrictions on the collection of biometric data by private entities

Allow poultry to be sold at farmers' markets and at farms

pay for cancer screenings for firefighters

let pregnant incarcerated people have midwives or doula services

require that public high school curriculum include instruction on the history of racism

Remove Robert E. Lee Day, Confederate Memorial Day, and Jefferson Davis Day from the list of public holidays (WE HAVE THOSE?!!?!?!)

Retroactively expunge some cannabis convictions

"Prohibit public school districts from expanding any resources or funds on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging or political or social activism; prohibit public school districts from engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging" (HUH?????)

require schools to give kids a lunch period of at least 30 minutes (the bar is in hell)

provide scholarships for teachers to help the teacher shortage and give teachers compensation for planning time

require schools to have defibrillators

make it so a homeless person doesn't have to pay to get a copy of their birth certificate

require a working smoke detector to be present in any house sold (...did we not already have this?)

create the Kentucky Urban Farming Youth Initiative

Require local governments to lower minimum square footage requirements for housing, and facilitate multifamily housing, manufactured housing, and "tiny homes," and require that zoning laws have a "substantial connection to protection of public safety, health, and usage of property" (This could be a good thing??)

require hiring and licensing authorities to allow people convicted of a crime an opportunity to get a job

Propose a new section of the Kentucky Constitution that guarantees the right of an individual to buy, sell, or use a certain amount of cannabis and to grow a small amount of cannabis plants, and put this on the ballot (LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOO LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE please this would be so funny)

Now let's watch how many of the good and basic common sense laws get left to die by Republicans because Republicans are ghouls

this is why it's important to vote in local elections, this is the kind of stuff that's being decided upon

[tossawary]

I was thinking about Xie Lian being able to snap the Xin Mo sword in half with his bare hands again, and then I thought to myself... "Wait, Xie Lian and Luo Binghe interaction could be really cute, though?"

Like, let's say that Xie Lian, during his time as a wandering trash god, accidentally falls into an interdimensional rift and ends up in the SVSSS world. His luck is bad like that. But while this is weird, sure, it's not that bad! The worlds are pretty similar and he can still make his living! So, Xie Lian wanders along as usual, curiously learning about this new world, picking through trash, occasionally punching demonic beasts to death to rescue awed civilians.

And at some point, Xie Lian runs into a young Luo Binghe while he's living on the streets. Let's say that Xie Lian rolls into town shortly before the death of Binghe's adoptive mother, has a few sweet encounters with this cute and kind child who doesn't have much to spare for a trash collector, and is there to comfort his new young friend when Binghe's adoptive mother passes away. Xie Lian is still there when Binghe gets thrown out onto the streets and he agrees to help the boy travel to Cang Qiong Mountain Sect.

So, Binghe gets to spend a month or two as a trash-collecting god's apprentice! He doesn't know that Xie Lian is a god. He suspects that Xie Lian is just a very powerful rogue cultivator who is living very humbly for some reason. The time isn't entirely pleasant, because life is hard and Binghe is grieving, but Xie Lian understands pain very well and is an excellent companion. He sees Binghe safely to Cang Qiong.

At which point, clingy Binghe does not want to separate from this extremely nice person, but Xie Lian insists on it. He wants Binghe to have a better life. He's worried that his bad luck will somehow spread to this poor boy who reminds him of so many other people he's loved and lost. Xie Lian supervises the confusing entrance exam, while the adult Cang Qiong cultivators desperately try to figure out who this strange person is (Airplane Bro is going "???!!!"), and then leaves wistfully. Binghe will later look back on this particular period of his life very fondly.

Xie Lian can then go in and out of the SVSSS plot as a person pleases! I think it would be very funny if Liu Qingge ended up with an unwilling crush on Xie Lian as well, when they have a spar for some reason and Xie Lian handily SLAMS him into the ground. Xie Lian would probably end up running into Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang somehow, both of whom I think would end up being a little obsessed with him.

I think that the best place to bring Xie Lian and Binghe back together is maybe after Binghe escapes the Endless Abyss. So that Binghe can have a nice cry session on Xie Lian's shoulder. Xie Lian can possibly then introduce Binghe to Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang. Or else generally fumble his way through facilitating Bingqiu actually communicating and being less of a painful mess. Shen Qingqiu (Shen Yuan) is very confused by this character?! Where did he come from??? Who is he??? He's very nice, though, and Shen Qingqiu is feeling maybe a liiiiittle jealous over Binghe.

(I don't know how to handle the System in this AU, but I do like the idea of the System just... not being able to handle Xie Lian. Xie Lian is a god from a different worldbuild. He kind of just breaks everything.)

(If you want to get a little angsty and ghostly, you could have a plotline in which Xie Lian helps the ghost of Shen Jiu somehow. Qijiu resolution?)

Binghe would probably be open to the idea of getting together with Xie Lian as well as Shen Qingqiu. He has a type! He is full of love! But Xie Lian is definitely not interested and is very good at wiggling away from come-ons, so Binghe respectfully doesn't pursue that passing thought / childhood crush, no matter what Tianlang-Jun is saying about threesomes again.

Binghe ends up using the (tamed? broken?) Xin Mo sword to send Xie Lian (his "gege") back to Xie Lian's own world. (Or Mobei-Jun could maybe do it?) Xie Lian has been gone for years and wants to see how his world is doing. Binghe tearfully promises to visit him regularly and to come get him WHENEVER HE WANTS. Xie Lian pats his head and agrees to stay in touch.

So, then Xie Lian tumbles out back into his own world and into the start of the plot of TGCF. And at any point in the plot of TGCF, he's now able to summon a heavenly demon from another dimension (with a super powerful sword that can move mountains?) who would absolutely be willing to fight all of heaven for him.

Xie Lian generally isn't going to do this, because he doesn't want to involve Binghe in his problems, even though Binghe is CHEWING THE WALLS with the desire to help him in return. However, Xie Lian does really like to go out with Binghe and Shen Qingqiu (and sometimes people like Airplane Bro and Mobei-Jun and Liu Qingge as well) to nice restaurants every other week or so. "So, what's new?" "Oh, I've ascended to heaven again and it's a little troublesome, ha ha. How are you?"

Hua Cheng is... nonplussed. On one hand, he's a little jealous. On the other hand, FINALLY, people can recognize that Xie Lian is the best person in the world. Luo Binghe has GOOD TASTE and is just some well-meaning kid whom Xie Lian likes a lot and who rightly thinks heaven sucks. Hua Cheng is determinedly shaking Luo Binghe's hand and giving him advice from a Ghost King to a future Demon Emperor.

(Tianlang-Jun CANNOT be allowed into Ghost City. He will NOT leave. I think that Hua Cheng is strong enough to throw him out if necessary, but Tianlang-Jun and Zhuzhi-Lang would just keep slipping back in somehow. Permanently banned from the gambling tables no matter what he offers, but Tianlang-Jun is still allowed to hang out at the Ghost City playhouse because he quickly becomes the favorite audience member of all of the ghost actors. He has AWFUL taste. Yin Yu hates this guy.)

(Also, I do think that Xie Lian would not really like the Xin Mo sword at all. E'ming is a beautiful baby boy made from and by Hua Cheng, who is Xie Lian's favorite person in the world who has never done anything wrong ever. Xin Mo is some random blade that destroys Luo Binghe's mental health and turns him into the worst version of himself! Xie Lian could and possibly should snap that possession sword like a twig.)

[trillscienceofficer]

from Sci-Fi Universe magazine, October 1996

COLOR TELEVISION: DEEP SPACE NINE's colorblind perspective deserves credit for not being simply black and white entertainment

by Eric Wallace

Here's a story that may or may not be apocryphal: In 1967, Nichelle Nichols decided to leave Star Trek at the conclusion of the fledging show's first season. Soon after making this decision, Nichols met Dr. Martin Luther King while attending an NAACP fund-raiser. Upon learning of ner decision, Dr. King proclaimed, "You cannot leave. You're opening a door that simply must not be allowed to close." Dr. King went on to explain how Nichols' portrayal of Uhura demonstrated to Americans each week that blacks could live, work and prosper in racially-mixed situations. Consequently, Nichols changed her mind, and the rest is history.

Fast forward to 1996, twenty-eight years after Dr. King's assassination. I'd love to say that Nichols' decision resulted in a multitude of positive black roles on television. But I would be lying. Television reflects the society from which it springs and the fact is that blacks continue to be under-represented in positive, let alone leading, roles on American television.

Thank God for Deep Space Nine. Here is a show that not only features blacks in prominent supporting roles—Jake, Cassidy [sic] Yates, Worf—but has a black male star—Captain Benjamin Sisko. This is cause enough for celebration among black television viewers searching for positive portrayals of their own. But DS9's importance to the black community goes further.

From Good Times' JJ to Martin Lawrence on Martin, it is no secret that "the clown" is the most common image for blacks on television. "The gangsta" and "dope addict" run a close second. Limiting the entire black populace to these three images is not only offensive, but just plain false. This is not to say that black people aren't funny or that we aren't burdened by troublesome individuals. We are. But we're also much more: we are novelists, millionaires and world leaders like Alice Walker, Quincy Jones and Nelson Mandela. So where are these images in American programming? Not in most networks' prime-time line-ups. Perusing the latest copy of TV Guide will confirm this.

Instead of offering up more destructive stereotypes, DS9 boasts strong black characters who behave like genuine, complex, unique individuals. Charismatic, sympathetic and intelligent, these black characters function in ways that mere stereotypes never could by both expanding the sometimes constricted perception of non-black viewers towards racial minorities (thus facilitating communication and a better understanding between racial groups) and helping to inspire the previously-stated traits among their own viewers, thereby providing minority youths, specifically those living in impoverished or hostile environments, with positive role models. In regards to this last element, Sisko, a dynamic leader and caring parent, personifies this ideal.

The relationship between Sisko and his son, Jake, is one of the most satisfying aspects of DS9. Loving, emotionally mature, and far from perfect, their relationship reflects the tragedies and joys which constitute family life.

The pinnacle of the Sisko/Jake relationship (so far) is, without a doubt, The Visitor, a tour de force episode brimming with passion and melancholy. Watching this episode left me proud of the intensity of the love shown between this black father and son, and in tears at the eloquence with which the show handled the poignant and universal themes of disillusionment, obsession, aging, loyalty, love and loss.

Aside from The Visitor, DS9 regularly boasts touching moments of natural interaction between black father and son, all of which make the show a privilege to watch. Just some of these moments include Sisko's overt show of affection for his son, Jake's wisdom in helping his father deal with romantic troubles and the manner in which father and son nave helped each other cope with the death of Sisko's wife.

Some readers may not understand why am I making such a big deal about DS9. After all, science fiction has featured blacks in prominent roles for years. Let me be blunt. There is a word for programs which strategically place one minority character in their ensemble. It's called tokenism. Yes, tokenism fulfills the "visibility" quotient for black characters. However, it fails at the larger task of presenting black characters who possess emotional depth and resonance. Black characters without such traits are cyphers, hollow representations which belittle the true intellectual and emotional capabilities of blacks.

Program creators and viewers who point to token blacks as examples of racial progress inadvertently court cultural hypocrisy. Because token black characters are the norm to which non-black viewers are exposed, they are harmful and destructive road-blocks on the march towards racial equality.

DS9, in contrast, allows its black characters to deal with issues usually reserved for white characters in white-dominated prestige dramas like ER. These issues include: the sacrifice of putting duty before love (For The Cause), the pressures of command (To The Death), the joys of parenthood (Explorers) and even conquering the Earth (Our Man Bashir). White characters that clearly dominate the television landscape have been allowed to cope with these issues for years. For black viewers, seeing themselves portrayed as real flesh-and-blood characters who cope with and ultimately solve life's great challenges is a rarely enjoyed breath of fresh air.

In addition to presenting well-rounded black characters, DS9 presents blacks interacting and succeeding in a multi-racial world. Most black shows, especially black sitcoms, feature an all-black line-up. The characters find success and stature, but only among other blacks. The insidious implication which arises, intentionally or not, is that blacks can succeed among their peers, but not in the real world where it counts, DS9 shatters this antiquated notion by presenting black characters who successfully interact with people of all races, colors and creeds.

Considering its positive impact, it is all the more tragic that DS9, one of the best shows on television, is currently one of the least watched. For those in the 'cultural majority' who have yet to latch on to the DS9 phenomena, I invite you to sample what this well-made, thought-provoking science fiction program has to offer. To black viewers who crave quality television, I urge you to give this remarkable program a try. You might be surprised at what you find: a little piece of yourself.

ERIC WALLACE is a former Army brat and a freelance screenwriter living in Los Angeles. Since his escape from the rural South, he has become a much friendlier person.

[max-levchin]

Shamir Secret Sharing

It’s 3am. Paul, the head of PayPal database administration carefully enters his elaborate passphrase at a keyboard in a darkened cubicle of 1840 Embarcadero Road in East Palo Alto, for the fifth time. He hits Return. The green-on-black console window instantly displays one line of text: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” 

There is nerd pandemonium all around us. James, our recently promoted VP of Engineering, just climbed the desk at a nearby cubicle, screaming: “Guys, if we can’t get this key the right way, we gotta start brute-forcing it ASAP!” It’s gallows humor – he knows very well that brute-forcing such a key will take millions of years, and it’s already 6am on the East Coast – the first of many “Why is PayPal down today?” articles is undoubtedly going to hit CNET shortly. Our single-story cubicle-maze office is buzzing with nervous activity of PayPalians who know they can’t help but want to do something anyway. I poke my head up above the cubicle wall to catch a glimpse of someone trying to stay inside a giant otherwise empty recycling bin on wheels while a couple of Senior Software Engineers are attempting to accelerate the bin up to dangerous speeds in the front lobby. I lower my head and try to stay focused. “Let’s try it again, this time with three different people” is the best idea I can come up with, even though I am quite sure it will not work. 

It doesn’t. 

The key in question decrypts PayPal’s master payment credential table – also known as the giant store of credit card and bank account numbers. Without access to payment credentials, PayPal doesn’t really have a business per se, seeing how we are supposed to facilitate payments, and that’s really hard to do if we no longer have access to the 100+ million credit card numbers our users added over the last year of insane growth. 

This is the story of a catastrophic software bug I briefly introduced into the PayPal codebase that almost cost us the company (or so it seemed, in the moment.) I’ve told this story a handful of times, always swearing the listeners to secrecy, and surprisingly it does not appear to have ever been written down before. 20+ years since the incident, it now appears instructive and a little funny, rather than merely extremely embarrassing. 

Before we get back to that fateful night, we have to go back another decade. In the summer of 1991, my family and I moved to Chicago from Kyiv, Ukraine. While we had just a few hundred dollars between the five of us, we did have one secret advantage: science fiction fans. 

My dad was a highly active member of Zoryaniy Shlyah – Kyiv’s possibly first (and possibly only, at the time) sci-fi fan club – the name means “Star Trek” in Ukrainian, unsurprisingly. He translated some Stansilaw Lem (of Solaris and Futurological Congress fame) from Polish to Russian in the early 80s and was generally considered a coryphaeus at ZSh. 

While USSR was more or less informationally isolated behind the digital Iron Curtain until the late ‘80s, by 1990 or so, things like FidoNet wriggled their way into the Soviet computing world, and some members of ZSh were now exchanging electronic mail with sci-fi fans of the free world.

The vaguely exotic news of two Soviet refugee sci-fi fans arriving in Chicago was transmitted to the local fandom before we had even boarded the PanAm flight that took us across the Atlantic [1]. My dad (and I, by extension) was soon adopted by some kind Chicago science fiction geeks, a few of whom became close friends over the years, though that’s a story for another time. 

A year or so after the move to Chicago, our new sci-fi friends invited my dad to a birthday party for a rising star of the local fandom, one Bruce Schneier. We certainly did not know Bruce or really anyone at the party, but it promised good food, friendly people, and probably filk. My role was to translate, as my dad spoke limited English at the time. 

I had fallen desperately in love with secret codes and cryptography about a year before we left Ukraine. Walking into Bruce’s library during the house tour (this was a couple years before Applied Cryptography was published and he must have been deep in research) felt like walking into Narnia. 

I promptly abandoned my dad to fend for himself as far as small talk and canapés were concerned, and proceeded to make a complete ass out of myself by brazenly asking the host for a few sheets of paper and a pencil. Having been obliged, I pulled a half dozen cryptography books from the shelves and went to work trying to copy down some answers to a few long-held questions on the library floor. After about two hours of scribbling alone like a man possessed, I ran out of paper and decided to temporarily rejoin the party. 

On the living room table, Bruce had stacks of copies of his fanzine Ramblings. Thinking I could use the blank sides of the pages to take more notes, I grabbed a printout and was about to quietly return to copying the original S-box values for DES when my dad spotted me from across the room and demanded I help him socialize. The party wrapped soon, and our friends drove us home. 

The printout I grabbed was not a Ramblings issue. It was a short essay by Bruce titled Sharing Secrets Among Friends, essentially a humorous explanation of Shamir Secret Sharing. 

Say you want to make sure that something really really important and secret (a nuclear weapon launch code, a database encryption key, etc) cannot be known or used by a single (friendly) actor, but becomes available, if at least n people from a group of m choose to do it. Think two on-duty officers (from a cadre of say 5) turning keys together to get ready for a nuke launch. 

The idea (proposed by Adi Shamir – the S of RSA! – in 1979) is as simple as it is beautiful. 

Let’s call the secret we are trying to split among m people K. 

First, create a totally random polynomial that looks like: y(x) = C0 * x^(n-1) + C1 * x^(n-2) + C2 * x^(n-3) ….+ K. “Create” here just means generate random coefficients C. Now, for every person in your trusted group of m, evaluate the polynomial for some randomly chosen Xm and hand them their corresponding (Xm,Ym) each. 

If we have n of these points together, we can use Lagrange interpolating polynomial to reconstruct the coefficients – and evaluate the original polynomial at x=0, which conveniently gives us y(0) = K, the secret. Beautiful. I still had the printout with me, years later, in Palo Alto. 

It should come as no surprise that during my time as CTO PayPal engineering had an absolute obsession with security. No firewall was one too many, no multi-factor authentication scheme too onerous, etc. Anything that was worth anything at all was encrypted at rest. 

To decrypt, a service would get the needed data from its database table, transmit it to a special service named cryptoserv (an original SUN hardware running Solaris sitting on its own, especially tightly locked-down network) and a special service running only there would perform the decryption and send back the result. 

Decryption request rate was monitored externally and on cryptoserv, and if there were too many requests, the whole thing was to shut down and purge any sensitive data and keys from its memory until manually restarted. 

It was this manual restart that gnawed at me. At launch, a bunch of configuration files containing various critical decryption keys were read (decrypted by another key derived from one manually-entered passphrase) and loaded into the memory to perform future cryptographic services.

Four or five of us on the engineering team knew the passphrase and could restart cryptoserv if it crashed or simply had to have an upgrade. What if someone performed a little old-fashioned rubber-hose cryptanalysis and literally beat the passphrase out of one of us? The attacker could theoretically get access to these all-important master keys. Then stealing the encrypted-at-rest database of all our users’ secrets could prove useful – they could decrypt them in the comfort of their underground supervillain lair. 

I needed to eliminate this threat.

Shamir Secret Sharing was the obvious choice – beautiful, simple, perfect (you can in fact prove that if done right, it offers perfect secrecy.) I decided on a 3-of-8 scheme and implemented it in pure POSIX C for portability over a few days, and tested it for several weeks on my Linux desktop with other engineers. 

Step 1: generate the polynomial coefficients for 8 shard-holders.

Step 2: compute the key shards (x0, y0)  through (x7, y7)

Step 3: get each shard-holder to enter a long, secure passphrase to encrypt the shard

Step 4: write out the 8 shard files, encrypted with their respective passphrases.

And to reconstruct: 

Step 1: pick any 3 shard files. 

Step 2: ask each of the respective owners to enter their passphrases. 

Step 3: decrypt the shard files.

Step 4: reconstruct the polynomial, evaluate it for x=0 to get the key.

Step 5: launch cryptoserv with the key. 

One design detail here is that each shard file also stored a message authentication code (a keyed hash) of its passphrase to make sure we could identify when someone mistyped their passphrase. These tests ran hundreds and hundreds of times, on both Linux and Solaris, to make sure I did not screw up some big/little-endianness issue, etc. It all worked perfectly. 

A month or so later, the night of the key splitting party was upon us. We were finally going to close out the last vulnerability and be secure. Feeling as if I was about to turn my fellow shard-holders into cymeks, I gathered them around my desktop as PayPal’s front page began sporting the “We are down for maintenance and will be back soon” message around midnight.

The night before, I solemnly generated the new master key and securely copied it to cryptoserv. Now, while “Push It” by Salt-n-Pepa blared from someone’s desktop speakers, the automated deployment script copied shard files to their destination. 

While each of us took turns carefully entering our elaborate passphrases at a specially selected keyboard, Paul shut down the main database and decrypted the payment credentials table, then ran the script to re-encrypt with the new key. Some minutes later, the database was running smoothly again, with the newly encrypted table, without incident. 

All that was left was to restore the master key from its shards and launch the new, even more secure cryptographic service. 

The three of us entered our passphrases… to be met with the error message I haven’t seen in weeks: “Sorry, one or more wrong passphrases. Can’t reconstruct the key. Goodbye.” Surely one of us screwed up typing, no big deal, we’ll do it again. No dice. No dice – again and again, even after we tried numerous combinations of the three people necessary to decrypt. 

Minutes passed, confusion grew, tension rose rapidly. 

There was nothing to do, except to hit rewind – to grab the master key from the file still sitting on cryptoserv, split it again, generate new shards, choose passphrases, and get it done. Not a great feeling to have your first launch go wrong, but not a huge deal either. It will all be OK in a minute or two.

A cursory look at the master key file date told me that no, it wouldn’t be OK at all. The file sitting on cryptoserv wasn’t from last night, it was created just a few minutes ago. During the Salt-n-Pepa-themed push from stage, we overwrote the master key file with the stage version. Whatever key that was, it wasn’t the one I generated the day before: only one copy existed, the one I copied to cryptoserv from my computer the night before. Zero copies existed now. Not only that, the push script appears to have also wiped out the backup of the old key, so the database backups we have encrypted with the old key are likely useless. 

Sitrep: we have 8 shard files that we apparently cannot use to restore the master key and zero master key backups. The database is running but its secret data cannot be accessed. 

I will leave it to your imagination to conjure up what was going through my head that night as I stared into the black screen willing the shards to work. After half a decade of trying to make something of myself (instead of just going to work for Microsoft or IBM after graduation) I had just destroyed my first successful startup in the most spectacular fashion. 

Still, the idea of “what if we all just continuously screwed up our passphrases” swirled around my brain. It was an easy check to perform, thanks to the included MACs. I added a single printf() debug statement into the shard reconstruction code and instead of printing out a summary error of “one or more…” the code now showed if the passphrase entered matched the authentication code stored in the shard file. 

I compiled the new code directly on cryptoserv in direct contravention of all reasonable security practices – what did I have to lose? Entering my own passphrase, I promptly got “bad passphrase” error I just added to the code. Well, that’s just great – I knew my passphrase was correct, I had it written down on a post-it note I had planned to rip up hours ago. 

Another person, same error. Finally, the last person, JK, entered his passphrase. No error. The key still did not reconstruct correctly, I got the “Goodbye”, but something worked. I turned to the engineer and said, “what did you just type in that worked?”

After a second of embarrassed mumbling, he admitted to choosing “a$$word” as his passphrase. The gall! I asked everyone entrusted with the grave task of relaunching crytposerv to pick really hard to guess passphrases, and this guy…?! Still, this was something -- it worked. But why?!

I sprinted around the half-lit office grabbing the rest of the shard-holders demanding they tell me their passphrases. Everyone else had picked much lengthier passages of text and numbers. I manually tested each and none decrypted correctly. Except for the a$$word. What was it…

A lightning bolt hit me and I sprinted back to my own cubicle in the far corner, unlocked the screen and typed in “man getpass” on the command line, while logging into cryptoserv in another window and doing exactly the same thing there. I saw exactly what I needed to see. 

Today, should you try to read up the programmer’s manual (AKA the man page) on getpass, you will find it has been long declared obsolete and replaced with a more intelligent alternative in nearly all flavors of modern Unix.  

But back then, if you wanted to collect some information from the keyboard without printing what is being typed in onto the screen and remain POSIX-compliant, getpass did the trick. Other than a few standard file manipulation system calls, getpass was the only operating system service call I used, to ensure clean portability between Linux and Solaris. 

Except it wasn’t completely clean. 

Plain as day, there it was: the manual pages were identical, except Solaris had a “special feature”: any passphrase entered that was longer than 8 characters long was automatically reduced to that length anyway. (Who needs long passwords, amiright?!)

I screamed like a wounded animal. We generated the key on my Linux desktop and entered our novel-length passphrases right here. Attempting to restore them on a Solaris machine where they were being clipped down to 8 characters long would never work. Except, of course, for a$$word. That one was fine.

The rest was an exercise in high-speed coding and some entirely off-protocol file moving. We reconstructed the master key on my machine (all of our passphrases worked fine), copied the file to the Solaris-running cryptoserv, re-split it there (with very short passphrases), reconstructed it successfully, and PayPal was up and running again like nothing ever happened. 

By the time our unsuspecting colleagues rolled back into the office I was starting to doze on the floor of my cubicle and that was that. When someone asked me later that day why we took so long to bring the site back up, I’d simply respond with “eh, shoulda RTFM.” 

RTFM indeed. 

P.S. A few hours later, John, our General Counsel, stopped by my cubicle to ask me something. The day before I apparently gave him a sealed envelope and asked him to store it in his safe for 24 hours without explaining myself. He wanted to know what to do with it now that 24 hours have passed. 

Ha. I forgot all about it, but in a bout of “what if it doesn’t work” paranoia, I printed out the base64-encoded master key when we had generated it the night before, stuffed it into an envelope, and gave it to John for safekeeping. We shredded it together without opening and laughed about what would have never actually been a company-ending event. 

P.P.S. If you are thinking of all the ways this whole SSS design is horribly insecure (it had some real flaws for sure) and plan to poke around PayPal to see if it might still be there, don’t. While it served us well for a few years, this was the very first thing eBay required us to turn off after the acquisition. Pretty sure it’s back to a single passphrase now. 

Notes:

1: a member of Chicagoland sci-fi fan community let me know that the original news of our move to the US was delivered to them via a posted letter, snail mail, not FidoNet email! 

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for being condescending towards an asexual kid in GSA?

🙃🏳️‍🌈 to find later

Long post so buckle up.

I (17, they/it/he) am one of three co-leaders of my school’s GSA, along with R (18, she/her) and N (17, he/him). All three of us are openly bi, and I’m also openly trans and (most importantly) very loudly aromantic. We’re all in 12th grade now but we were leaders last year (in 11th grade) too. The school/GSA is small enough that all four grades (9–12, so around 13–18 years old) are in the same GSA, there’s no separate upper grade and lower grade groups. We also have two advisors, both cis queer teachers; and some younger queer faculty members also join sometimes for formal events. We take turns running events during club time, such as fun crafts or watching music videos. Sometimes we also do educational stuff or documentaries, including having teachers come in to facilitate discussions.

I’ve been planning (since early December) to run a two part series of discussions about asexuality and aromanticism (separate discussions of each). I really just wanted to do one day about aromanticism, but R said that if I did that, people would derail it and just talk about asexuality anyways, which both N and our advisors also agreed made sense. So, it’s two days, and the asexuality one is first so that the aromanticism one can be closer to Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week (ASAW).

There’s a girl in GSA, let’s call her A (16, she/her), who’s in 11th grade. She’s very socially awkward and if someone points out that she’s accidentally said something rude or offensive she’ll make a big deal out of not knowing and generally derail the conversation. Also, two years ago A made a ton of “jokes” about me and my little sibling (16MtF) being “secretly dating.” When I asked her (politely at first) to stop, she said she was just joking around, and kept doing it. I asked her again and also asked the theatre teacher and school counselor for help, and eventually she did stop. But A kept following me around and trying to be friends with me, and I was super uncomfortable to the point that I asked the school counselor to facilitate a conversation between A and I so that I could ask her to fucking stop. It somewhat worked. Now she still keeps trying to start conversations with me in the hallways and such, but I just brush her off or ignore her.

The one place I can’t do that is during GSA. Since I’m a leader, I have to be civil to everyone and actually talk to people (R, N, and I set norms at the start of the year during our planning meetings). A is asexual but not aromantic, and today she showed up like 5 minutes into lunch (cafeteria lines are annoying) and loudly asked if she was late. We weren’t doing anything in GSA today, just chilling. At some point during the meeting I announced casually that next week we’d be discussing asexuality, and then the week after that we’d talk about aromanticism, which leads nicely into ASAW during February break. When I said this, A immediately said that she would be extra ace that week [during ASAW]. I was like, “during aromantic spectrum awareness week?!?!” in the same tone of that “during pride month?!?!” meme. She looked like someone had just given her an F on the most important test of the year and said she hadn’t known.

I also made a comment about how there’s way more openly aspec people at our school than at most schools, and N said that maybe the presence of role models is part of that (clear subtext: he was referring to me). I said pretty loudly (more people could hear) that it was kinda funny that I’m the “ace role model” when I’m literally not asexual. A looked super lost and confused at this, and I think she might’ve thought I was ace, even though I’m super open about not being ace, and have told her directly more than once.

Here’s where the potential assholery comes into play. There’s an ad for PrEP that was fairly common on the back covers of theatre playbills in the past year. The ad shows a Black man dressed in ripped leggings with fishnets, shiny knee-length heeled leather boots, and some sort of white leather harness, doing a bridge pose with one leg extended upwards so that the “r” in PrEP is resting on the sole of the boot. The ad has a bright red background and text that says “you cast of PrEP options is changing” along with a small QR code and website link. The pose is somewhat provocative, but not out of place on a playbill for an all-ages show.

During GSA, A was saying that she thought the ad was bad, because of the leather being “fetish gear” and “weird” (basically the same arguments people use to say that gay people shouldn’t be allowed in public). I told A that there’s nothing wrong with someone wearing leather, and she said that “it’s fetish gear and that’s disgusting and degenerate and just bad advertising!”

I explained calmly, like I would to a child (although I probably wouldn’t talk about this topic with a child), that PrEP is a medicine that people take if they anticipate having sex with someone who’s HIV-positive, so it’s okay that the ad is somewhat suggestive. She seemed to accept that, but still said that the leather was weird, and the ad should’ve shown “a diverse group of people getting pills at a pharmacy” instead, because “fetish gear” was too much.

I asked if she thought that all leather clothing was inherently fetishistic, to which A said yes, and then I asked, “do you know that people can’t just choose fetishes?”

She hadn’t known that, but she still said the ad was too sexual. I pointed out that it was a fairly well-targeted advertisement, using theatre references, but maybe A was not part of the target demographic. I also said that sometimes outfits are just hot without there needing to be any fetishes involved, which she didn’t refute, and that even if it was a fetish, that wouldn’t make it inherently “bad” or “degenerate” at all.

A said that she still didn’t like it, and I told her that she was entitled to have whatever feelings she wanted to have, but that doesn’t mean the advertisement itself is a problem.

Another person (17, he/him) called out “[OP], what do you think about kink at pride?” in a sort of nonchalant way, so I walked over while saying “i’m pro–kink at pride.” The conversation eventually moved in other directions, and then club ended and we had to go to our next classes.

TL;DR: given my position of power and responsibility as a GSA leader, AITA for being kinda condescending towards an ace person who’s 2 years younger than me because she was being very sex-negative about an ad for PrEP?

What are these acronyms?

[cyberl6ve]

𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐒 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 ─ 𝟏

CHECK MASTERLIST FOR OTHER CHAPTERS !!

⋆⭒˚.⋆꩜ .ᐟᯓ★

જ⁀➴ : It all started at a vibrant birthday party. Y/N L/N catches sight of Chris Sturniolo from across the room. Drawn to his easy charm and magnetic presence, she decides to make the first move, knowing he was the biggest heartthrob on social media. With a confident smile, Y/N approaches Chris and introduces herself. Their conversation flows effortlessly, and they exchange numbers before parting ways. In the weeks that follow, their connection deepens, evolving from playful teasing to a genuine and exciting romance.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ STORY CONTAINS MATURE CONTENT !! ⋆✴︎˚｡⋆

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

⊱ ۫ ׅ ✧ : 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐲 𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐠𝐲 𝐚𝐬 𝐈 𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐚𝐲 𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐲. Brightly colored balloons bobbed above the crowd, reflecting the vibrant atmosphere. Glancing around, I noticed a few familiar faces— fellow influencers and content creators.

As I approached, Larray turned, noticing my approach. His face broke into a warm smile, and he flung his arms open wide. “Y/N!” he exclaimed, pulling me into a tight hug.

“You made it!” he beamed, holding me at arm's length and eyeing me up and down with approval. “And you look stunning, as usual.”

I chuckled, taking in Larray's effortlessly stylish appearance. “Look at you, though,” I teased, “looking great as always.”

He preened, running a hand through his hair. “Oh, you know me. Always looking fabulous.”

Larray looped his arm through mine, steering me deeper into the party. “Come on,” he urged, “let's find you something to drink and introduce you to some people.”

As we navigated the crowd, Larray effortlessly started introducing me to various influencers and online personalities. Despite my introverted nature, he seamlessly facilitated connections, his social butterfly skills never failing to impress.

He continued to lead me through the party, occasionally pointing out someone noteworthy or sharing a funny anecdote. Despite the seemingly endless introductions, my eyes continued to scan the room, searching for a particular face among the sea of recognizable YouTube stars.

As we stood to gather some refreshments, Larray paused, his attention diverted by someone beckoning at him from across the room. “Hold up,” he said, lightly patting my arm. “I'll be back in a sec, gotta say hi to someone real quick.”

I nodded, watching as he expertly maneuvered his way through the crowd, his laughter and banter punctuating the air. With Larray momentarily away, I stood alone, nursing a drink and feeling a flutter of anticipation in my stomach.

As I took a sip of my drink, my eyes involuntarily flicked across the room, and there he was— Chris Sturniolo, the heartthrob known for gracing my social media feeds. Despite not knowing him personally, I had heard countless stories from Larray, who seemed to have connection with the Sturniolo Triplets.

As I stood there, my mind flashed back to the countless times Larray and I had watched the triplets' videos together. Their unique blend of humor and authenticity had always impressed me, and I couldn't help but find Chris especially intriguing.

Larray, being the observant friend he was, would often tease me about catching my eye whenever Chris appeared on screen. Today, I had no idea that fate was about to bring us face to face.

The realization dawned on me that tonight I would actually come face to face with the man who had captured my attention through the screen. The thought sent a flutter of excitement through me, mingling with a hint of nervous anticipation. Finishing the last sip of my drink, I placed the empty glass on a nearby table, steeling myself for the unexpected encounter that loomed ahead.

My thoughts were suddenly interrupted as Larray reappeared at my side, his eyes sparkling with mischief. “You were checking out Chris, weren't you?” he teased, bumping my shoulder lightly.

I rolled my eyes at Larray's remark, playfully swatting his arm. “Since when did you suddenly reappear?” I retorted, my tone tinged with feigned annoyance.

Unfazed by my response, Larray chuckled and pointed an accusing finger at me. “Don't ignore my question. You were totally eyeing him, weren't you?” he teased, a knowing grin plastered on his face.

“I don't know what you're talking about,” I said, trying to sound innocent while avoiding Larray's piercing gaze. He was always one step ahead of me. I crossed my arms, attempting to appear nonchalant despite the flutter in my chest.

Larray chuckled, leaning in closer to whisper, “Oh, come on. I saw you checking him out. You were practically drooling.” He grinned mischievously, clearly enjoying my discomfort.

I protested adamantly, a mix of denial and mock offense in my voice. “No, I wasn't,” I said, shaking my head and trying to brush it off.

Larray chuckled, unable to resist his teasing nature. “You sure about that? You got a little drool over here, sweetheart,” he joked, his finger pointing at the corner of his own mouth.

I followed his finger to the corner of his mouth, and realization dawned on me - he was messing around with me. I couldn’t help but burst into laughter, shaking my head at his antics.

“You're ridiculous,” I said, still chuckling as I playfully slapped his arm.

Larray smirked, his eyes shining with mischief. “But you love me,” he teased, before adding, “You should go introduce yourself, you know.”

I rolled my eyes but couldn't help the faint flush creeping onto my cheeks at the suggestion. “Easier said than done,” I muttered, feeling a mixture of excitement and nerves.

Larray, sensing my hesitation, gave me an encouraging nudge. “Come on, this is probably your only chance. Go say hi.”

My heart pounded in my chest, but Larray's supportive words gave me a burst of courage. I took a deep breath, straightening my shoulders and silently praying I wouldn't embarrass myself.

“Alright, I'll do it,” I said, taking a step forward. “But if I make a fool of myself, it's all your fault.”

Larray flashed a reassuring smile, his words of encouragement calming my nerves. “What could go wrong?” he said, his tone filled with genuine reassurance. “You're beautiful, kind, caring, sweet, bold, confident, and pretty hot too. You got this, don't worry.”

His words echoed in my mind, bolstering my self-assurance. I knew I could do this.

With Larray's words of encouragement echoing in my ears, I summoned my confident demeanor and mentally prepared myself. Drawing in a deep breath, I squared my shoulders and began to make my way through the crowd, steadily approaching Chris and his two brothers.

I approached the trio, my heart rate picking up as I mustered my courage. I smiled at Chris, meeting his eyes directly. “You must be Christopher, right?” I inquired, holding out my hand.

Chris returned my smile, his touch warm and firm as he shook my hand. “Yeah, you can call me Chris, though. No need to be formal,” he replied, his voice friendly and inviting.

I turned to the other two brothers, feeling more at ease with each introduction. I extended my hand to the one on the left, his resemblance to Chris unmistakable. “You must be Matt,” I said, smiling as he shook my hand.

Next, I shifted my focus to the brother on the right. “And you must be Nick,” I continued, offering my hand.

The brothers returned my smile, each shaking my hand confidently. Matt spoke up first. “That's right,” he confirmed, his eyes warm and welcoming.

Nick nodded, his dimpled smile brightening. “You got it,” he chimed in, his charming demeanor putting me at ease.

I continued to chat with the brothers, feeling more relaxed as the conversation flowed naturally. “It's great to finally meet you,” I said, smiling warmly. “Larray talks about you guys a lot— good things, of course.”

The siblings chuckled, seemingly accustomed to Larray's praises. Chris spoke up, his tone lighthearted. “Oh, really?” he said, a hint of playful sarcasm in his voice. “He hasn't told us anything bad yet?”

I chuckled along with them, amused by their casual banter. “Well, to be fair, I don't think he has anything bad to say about you,” I replied, grinning. “He speaks highly of all three of you.”

The brothers exchanged amused glances, clearly pleased by my words. Nick, with his charming grin, piped up curiously, “How did you know about us?”

“Well, I knew who you were first,” I said, gesturing towards Chris playfully. “I've seen you all over my feed on social media and since Larray knows pretty much every creator in LA, I asked him if he knew who you were, and he said you were a triplet. So, he told me your guys' names, and I started matching faces with names. We even watched some of your guys' videos together.”

I continued, expressing my admiration for their close bond as brothers. “I have to admit, I really admire how strong your brother bond is,” I said, my tone sincere. “It's refreshing to see such a positive and supportive relationship on social media, and it adds an extra layer of uniqueness to your content.”

The brothers seemed genuinely touched by my words, their smiles becoming more heartfelt. Chris spoke up, his voice warm. “Thank you,” he said, nodding appreciatively. “We always try to keep our content authentic and entertaining, and our bond as brothers definitely helps bring an extra element to it all.”

Nick chimed in playfully, his characteristic charm on full display. “Yeah, as annoying as they can be,” he teased, jabbing an elbow lightly into Chris's side, “they're not the worst brothers a guy could ask for.”

I chuckled at Nick's playful jab, but before I could respond, Larray suddenly appeared, wrapping his arm around my shoulder and Chris's. His easygoing nature instantly filled the air with a light-hearted atmosphere.

Larray gave both Chris and me a friendly squeeze, a cheeky grin on his face. “How's the interaction going?” he chimed in, his tone laced with playful curiosity.

The brothers chuckled, seeming entertained by Larray's presence. Chris responded with a smirk. “It's going great,” he replied, his eyes flickering between Larray and me. “Just getting to know each other a bit better.”

The evening went on, with everyone chatting and enjoying each other's company. Eventually, it was time to sing happy birthday to Larray, so a small crowd gathered around, singing loudly and joyfully as he smiled and pretended to be embarrassed.

Matt and Nick made their way to get drinks, leaving Chris and I alone. I glanced at my phone and realized it was getting late.

“I'm gonna head out before it gets too late,” I said, watching his expression carefully.

Chris gave me a friendly smile. “We should hangout sometime,” he suggested, his tone casual. “You know, get to know each other better.”

I smirked, unable to resist a little teasing. “Are you asking for my number?”

Chris chuckled, seeming amused by my playful response. “Maybe I am,” he admitted, his eyes sparkling with a hint of mischief. “It doesn’t hurt to try though”

I chuckled at his straightforwardness, admiring his confidence. I grabbed his phone and swiftly typed my number into his contacts. Handing it back to him, I teased, “I suppose I'll hear from you soon?”

Chris grinned, accepting his phone back and looking at the new contact with a mix of satisfaction and slight surprise. “You definitely will,” he replied, his tone slightly flirty. “I won't waste any time.”

My heart raced at the subtle hint of flirting in his words. I couldn't help but enjoy the banter between us. “I'll see you around then,” I said, offering him a parting smile.

Chris returned my smile, his eyes locking with mine for a moment longer than necessary before pulling away. “Definitely,” he agreed, his voice still friendly but with an undertone of something more. “I’ll text you.”

I nodded, a mix of anticipation and excitement coursing through me. Before parting ways, I added, “Tell the other two I said bye, and it was nice meeting them as well.”

I waved bye to Chris and was about to head towards the exit when Larray suddenly caught up to me, his expression playful.

“You're not ditching me already, are you?” he teased, a smirk on his face.

I chuckled at Larray's smirk, replying, “I have to, it's getting late.”

Larray's expression grew even more mischievous as he leaned against the wall. “So, how was it?” he asked, clearly hinting at my interaction with Chris.

I couldn't help but smile at his question. “I got his number, he said he would text me later,” I admitted, trying to hide my excitement.

Larray chuckled, his teasing evident. “Oh, really? Someone's excited,” he teased.

I rolled my eyes playfully and jokingly hit Larray's arm, unable to resist his teasing. “Shut up.” I said, attempting to sound annoyed, but a smile tugged at the corner of my lips, betraying my true feelings.

I finally let out a sigh, realizing I really did need to leave. “But seriously, I gotta go,” I said, reluctantly admitting it.

Larray wrapped his arms around me in a warm hug, expressing his gratitude. “Thanks for coming,” he said, his voice sincere.

“I had a great time,” I replied, returning his hug and appreciating his support. “It was fun.”

As we pulled away from the hug, Larray gave me a reassuring smile. “Text me when you get home, okay?” he said, his tone protective.

I nodded, touched by his concern. “Of course, I will. See you soon,” I assured him, giving a small wave.

With a final goodbye, I made my way toward the exit, leaving Larray behind.

I arrived at home, parking my car in the garage and stepping into my house. As I closed the door behind me, my phone suddenly buzzed, a message notification illuminating the screen.

“Hey, it's chris”

© CYBERL6VE

[inevitably-johnlocked]

I’m so sorry if this question is ignorant or stupid I really just want to understand so I can become educated. When someone is asexual would they still gain something from reading explicit fic scenes? Again sorry if I’m ignorant

Hey Nonny *HUGS*

SO SORRY it took so long to reply to this one... Kind of started and then it got forgotten, and I am sorry for that. No better time than Ace Awareness Week to help you understand!!

So, short answer to your question, is YES, SOME aces do, whether to facilitate in self-pleasure, or because seeing their faves happy, or as placeholders because some aces take pleasure-by-proxy, or a variety of other reasons, it just simply makes some of us happy. You'd be surprised how many of those smutty authors are actually ace themselves. It's one of those funny misconceptions that aces are all woobie-uwu-innocent-pure-thoughts-only magical creatures, and I'm here to shatter that illusion... Aces are some of the smuttiest-minded people you will ever meet. Why, I have no idea, maybe it's because we don't fantasize about sex the same way allos do that we can come up with increasingly hornier ideas? LOL No idea.

The thing about asexuality is that it's a HUGE spectrum, and no one ace is exactly the same. A sex-negative ace might get something out of reading smut because it's not involving them. Or they might not at all. Same with sex-positive/neutral aces. It's ALL a matter of what makes us tick.

BUT here's where I go into my LONG answer, and get you REALLY into the Ace Lore™.

I want to introduce you to the microlabel of Aegosexuality (formerly autochorisexuality), which is a term that loosely translates to "sexuality with oneself". The expanded definition, from the Sexuality Wiki, bolding is mine:

It is [...] a disconnect between oneself and a sexual target/object of arousal; may involve sexual fantasies or arousal in response to erotica or pornography, but lacks desire to be an actual participant in the sexual activities therein.

Aegosexuals are known to:

Become aroused by sexual content (at times) without wanting to personally engage in sexual activities.

Masturbate, but feel neutral or repulsed by the idea of having sex with another person.

Fantasize about sex (with varying frequency), but envision people other than themselves, and/or view it in third person, as if watching it on TV, instead of imagining it in the first person, through their own eyes.

Predominantly—or exclusively—fantasize about fictional characters or celebrities in place of people they know personally.

Identify as asexual, feeling little-to-no sexual attraction to people though enjoy masturbating (with varying frequency), are aroused by sexually explicit content, and/or fantasizing of such.

[/end quote]

====

Basically, smut turns them on, but some aces don't want to engage in the smut for-reals. This microlabel makes it ESPECIALLY confusing for newly-figured-out-aces because there hasn't been a lot of information about asexuality's huge spectrum until recently. Aegosexuals can initially believe that they AREN'T ace, BECAUSE they get turned on by porn or smutty stories, but then they're SUPER confused because the idea of having sex themselves is appalling or undesirable. It's a bizarre contradiction, understandably, to outsiders, but it makes COMPLETE sense once an ace figures this out, I promise you.

This is the microlabel I myself fall under. It's not from any trauma or past problems or medical issues. It's just me. That's it. And because of the confusion that this sexuality can bring, it often takes us a LOT longer to have ourselves figured out. For me, it was an accidental stumbling upon the "autochorisexual" label (before it became Aegosexual) and reading up on it that EVERYTHING fell into place. Before that, I thought I was maybe demisexual. After learning about it, I felt okay FINALLY calling myself ace, that I finally found the "right fit" for me. It was the piece of the puzzle that I was missing. I felt really liberated of my self-doubt after that.

And, of course, aros have their version as well called Aegoromantic, which is exactly the same but in a romantic sense.

Here are some more resources for Aegosexuality, if you'd like to learn more about this lesser-known branch on the spectrum:

What Does It Mean to Be Aegosexual? (Cosmopolitan US || November 24, 2022)

WHAT IS AEGOSEXUAL? MEANING, HISTORY, AND USAGE. (Gayety.co ||July 11, 2022)

History of Aegosexuality (The Michigan Gayly || February 1, 2021)

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TOO KNOW ABOUT AEGOSEXUALITY (Live Love LGBTQ+ Blog || October 27, 2017)

VIDEO: 5 Signs You Might Be Aegosexual (Lynn Saga, YouTube || August 6, 2022 || 6m20s)

VIDEO: What is Aegosexuality? | Aspec 101 (Slice Of Ace, YouTube || July 15, 2022 || 3m54s)

VIDEO: Asexual Identities: Aegosexuality (Ace Dad Advice, YouTube || May 22, 2022 || 12m27s)

====

AGAIN, I'm SO sorry I put this ask off for SO long, but I'm glad that I did, so that I could educate you guys on my brand of Asexuality during Ace Awareness Week!

And, finally, no offence taken at ALL! I LOVE educating y'all about stuff I learned through my journey, and you were very respectful in your ask :)

Hope you are well, Nonny, and hope you're still here to see this 🖤💜

[ckret2]

For those of you that still wanna try to meet my impossibly high standards for some reason, I'm still taking title suggestions but here's the updated criteria:

MANDATORY: must include the word Goldilocks, or a "Goldilocks" pun that's SO OBVIOUS it's nigh impossible to NOT hear it. If you have to stretch to hear it, it fails. If there's an unrelated word inserted between "gold" and "lock," fail.

MANDATORY: The Goldilocks reference must be about the Goldilocks principle, the Goldilocks zone, or something else like that and NOT about Bill or the fairy tale. If it's a Goldilocks & the Three Bears reference, automatic fail. If the word "Goldilocks" is being used to refer to Bill, Bill's appearance, Bill's name, Bill's ANYTHING, automatic fail.

"I don't feel like it should be mandatory. It wouldn't bother me if the title doesn't meet these criteria." It's not your title. Please don't send me asks like that, I didn't put those points up for negotiation.

Has to sound like it's about THIS fic. Think of a random different "human Bill's stuck in Gravity Falls and gets a redemption arc" fic. Could the title describe that fic just as well? It's out. Here's the general themes I've thought of if u wanna muse over them.

Bonus points if it's a funny/punny reference to some other phrase in a way that sounds like it would fit in as a Gravity Falls episode title; double major bonus points if the reference actually fits this fic.

The subjective points that still stand from the first criteria list: interesting enough to intrigue new readers; easy to remember (not too long/complicated); actually sounds like a title.

Short & snappy. If you read the title once, left for an hour, and tried to remember it, would you be likely to remember it word-for-word? Is it built in a way that facilitates being easy to remember (like, built on a common phrase or distinctive words)? Or are there a bunch of little prepositions & phrases that risk getting changed or getting their order swapped or left out?

Gotta be better at meeting these criteria than "Wasting Away Again in the Goldilocks Zone" is.

The rigid criteria list isn't to be a demanding dick; it's because I know y'all are nicely volunteering help and I don't want you to generously spend your time brainstorming helpful suggestions that I already know I wouldn't take. If you read all that and go "dang! I wanted to suggest something but I can't think of anything that fits," 1) i appreciate that you wanted to help and that's okay you're not obligated to send anything; and 2) you and i are in this boat together 🤝

Mainly I've still got my fingers crossed to the last minute that some stranger will come into my inbox like "lo, the gentle hand of the Greek Muse of Cartoon Fanfiction Titles has touched my mind, and like a prophet I pass this message on to you." Otherwise I don't expect much.

[misc-obeyme]

a threesome with solomon and luci would be insane... as long as lucifer doesn't kick solomon out for being annoying

Ah, noticed my tags on this post huh?

The thing is, I just think the Solomon and Lucifer relationship is really really funny. So throw in getting sexy with MC and the hilarity ramps up significantly. Plus can you imagine if it was a condition for Lucifer to make a pact with both MC and Solomon???

I really think Lucifer would only make a pact with Solomon if it was the only way to get a pact with MC. Like MC just says it's all or nothing, buddy.

Lucifer would refuse for a while, but I think he'd cave eventually.

Then MC hits him with the oh yeah and a threesome lol.

He'd be so angry. Solomon would probably be like as fun as it is to troll Lucifer, I'm a little concerned for my own well being.

I like to think of it as MC being sly. Both Lucifer and Solomon are not exactly thrilled with the idea, but they're also not against it and if that's what MC wants, then okay.

But then it turns out they're inexplicably attracted to each other and MC mostly just gets to watch them with a smug expression.

More description and NSFW MDNI below the read more (it's mild nothing super explicit).

It starts when Lucifer sees all of Solomon's pact marks for the first time. He can't help but be turned on by the sight of all that power just casually displayed on Solomon's skin.

And Solomon can feel him looking. It's making his limbs tingle. He's suddenly a little shy and can't meet Lucifer's eyes.

MC is just sitting on Lucifer's bed (because you know he would insist on this happening on his own turf), watching them with a little smile.

Lucifer clears his throat and turns to MC, trying to make it seem like he's only interested in them anyway.

MC can see them just struggling with the fact that they're more interested in each other than they want to be, so they kinda step in and facilitate things.

It's easier for both of them if MC is in the middle, you know? Then they can pretend to themselves that it's about them.

I suspect at some point, Solomon does annoy Lucifer, who absolutely threatens to kick him out, but MC is able to redirect him before he does.

After that, things are never the same between those two. And everybody else is like what's going on with them? Meanwhile MC is just like huh who can say? LOL I'm so sorry this is such a crackship but it's just so funny to me, I can't help myself.

[bleue-flora]

tbh to me c!sapnap is on the same level of betraying c!dream as c!sam. It may seem far-fetched considering what c!sam did and considering we don't have much real lore content with c!sapnap or c!dreamnap, but when you look at what we DO have, it's kind of a picture

like, he's not just some stupid or short-sighted character, as it might seem at first glance - we have a ton of evidence that he understands perfectly well that prison makes c!dream physically and mentally ill, but he agrees with it. In the dialogue with c!michael he literally says "dream fucked up, prison fucked him up in another sense, but it doesn't matter, cause dream has to get better and become *my* dream again, let him stay in prison and improve, even if it breaks him idc", like wtf is this? funny, but at the same time, c!sapnap doesn't visit dream more than once, how will he know that c!dream is making progress? In c!sapnap's head, prison is supposed to be a rehabilitation for c!dream, only no one checks his progress in stopping being a "fucked up", he either sits there completely alone or people go there to hurt him and c!sapnap understands and acknowledged it, but he doesn't give a shit. I'm sorry, but this gives off sam's "I thought I broke his will to do something like that". He obviously doesn't care about c!dream and just wants his good old *convenient* friend, and he doesn't care about the consequences.

But he's not just passively harming c!dream, he's doing it actively. If the threat could still be interpreted as an emotional outburst, something he could say and regret, then his other actions clearly say the opposite. Like, the dude literally stalked and harassed c!dream for months after he found out where he lived??

The revival book was more important to him than torture. Even in the beginning, he didn't care about c!dream's reputation, when c!wilbur and c!tommy dragged it into the dirt for no reason, and he repeatedly went against c!dream or supported things that directly harmed c!dream. For me, one of the most telling scenes is c!sapnap and c!george's meeting with mexican dream's ghost, where c!sapnap, without any reason, pins the explosion of El Rapids on c!dream, and then, when he finds out that actually c!quackity was the one who did it, c!sapnap immediately says that they urgently need to go and find out why he did it, to check if he's okay and all that. This is literally the attitude you'd expect from c!tommy, to attribute every bad event to c!dream, but no, this is his so-called best friend! And of course, he only wants to know the reasons for an action when someone else does a bad action, but not c!dream - well, of course, cause it's clear that c!dream reasons are "being evil" or smth.

So, I've been in my c!sapnap hate arc for over two years now and you all should join me lmao

I didn't think I'd write SO much, but emotions took over after reading the new chapter of your fic and some of your posts, sorry abt that :"^

[context a & b]

Honestly, in my opinion his betrayal is almost worse than Sam’s, which is saying something since he literally enabled and facilitated daily torture. But like Sam wasn’t Dream’s self proclaimed brother, and at least Sam’s delusion kinda makes sense. Sapnap is just like - the chicken tastes rubbery and overcooked, so I put it in the oven and then it tasted burnt, so I put it back in the oven to help the taste and at some point I’ll take it out of the oven and then it’ll taste good again. No idea how long that’ll take, and no don’t be ridiculous I’m not gonna check on it. I swear though if anyone touches my chicken before it tastes good again like so much as removes it from the oven or seasons it I’m gonna throw it in the trash… vs Sam who’s like - the chicken tastes rubbery but I spent money on it so I’m gonna put it in the oven and turn it to charcoal so at least then it won’t be a complete waste…

ya know? Like at least Sam was corrupted by power, financial benefit, manipulated a bit, and had the blood of a “child” on his hands. Sapnap doesn’t even have that, he has a life long best friend who he heard made a speech about not caring about anything and then later a speech about wanting to control everyone, a fish in a item frame and a letter saying “thanks for visiting”…

Well I don’t know about the “even if it breaks him” I don’t think he is thinking that directing about Dream’s suffering if that makes sense, but Sapnap is delusional no doubt. I also don’t know if he even cares that much about the book in general, he just doesn’t seem to given a damn about the torture. He seems to really just be about the fear of what Dream might do and how he needs to be stopped before that.

And you do have a point, in the beginning even as his “brother” he on many occasions went against him, down to the very first disc war where they killed him multiple times. I mean if Sapnap weren’t American, he’d have probably been right alongside clingy duo in L’manberg and stuff… oh I had no idea about the El Rapids thing but am also not surprised…

What do you even mean, I am literally an engineer of this Sapnap hate train 🚂 choo choo! I be shoveling coal to keep this engine running ya know. like literally the more lore I watch the more he actually just kills me.

but anyways, I mean you read the chapter (and presumably the one before) so you know my thoughts on Sapnap lol. ;D

[dballzposting]

It's just that well simply put Gohan didnt have any time to himself ever. There was always bullshit happening. Then Goku died and Goten was born and Gohan had to keep his mother from falling apart and his baby brother healthy and happy. And it's rewarding work. But yknow

When he wasn't tending to the baby or helping with other domestic chores, he was in his room studying. It's nice to learn about the world he fought so hard to save. It's also nice to not have to have a relationship with his body (as with fighting) so that it's easier to dissociate from all the bullshit. Academia was a lifeline out. It was also a definitive "good" thing to be doing. It was also an escape. And also a source of the stress that he's so accustomed to. And yknow. Maybe the letters started to dance on the page after a while. A life unlived will find life in other places. Maybe the historical figures were his friends. Maybe he memorized chemicals like one would memorize constellations. Maybe different mathematical functions began to represent and facilitate different experiences of emotion. You know how it is

I mean maybe not. Maybe he got out enough and was present enough to not dip into that. If his time alone was really that needed, then I imagine that he would get angry if interrupted; but I don't imagine that he snapped often when his mother called him to attention or when his brother needed something from him. I think that he finds fulfillment and peace in his family and he wants to be there with them. But I think that he also finds habits of repression or self-denial.

I'm not saying that he represses all of his anger, because he doesn't. What he does repress is infinite amounts of survival rage. What he doesn't repress - and what seems like he's not even aware of when he expresses it - is sharp annoyance. A mild example would be when he snapped at Goten for bothering him during his training, which was super funny. A more poignant example is Every Time Somebody Insults his Great Saiyaman Persona somehow. First he was interjecting into his classmates' (strangers!) conversation to correct their misnaming of the new hero, and he didn't seem to notice how rude his tone was or how surprised his classmates were. Then later he stopped two reckless drivers, and they made fun of his goofy persona, and Gohan (without resistance) just threw a petulant fit - and he did not seem to notice how he was Destroying The Road by stamping his foot.

My favorite example was when Krillin told him he looked dumb. I should probably get screenshots. Gohan's Eyebrows Twitched and Reared like Rattlesnakes. And his passive aggression was enough to constituent manslaughter. Masked behind saccharine positivity. It was a vile display. What do YOU know about Fashion, Quiverin..! (<- What we sometimes call Krillin in my house becasue he's always cringing and quivering and being fearful lol.)

OK I didn't get screenshots but I have this timestamped video from the youtube.

And it makes sense that Gohan is super defensive about The Great Saiyaman. It's the first thing that he's gotten to do/be that was up to him.

I understand that Bulma designed the original get-up, but it was still collaborative; it's not like when Chichi dresses him in what she can afford to buy or make, or when Piccolo dresses him in what he himself likes to wear. And Gohan picked the name. He picked the poses. He picked the voice. He picked the personality. He picked the role.

You know that Oscar Wilde quote that goes something like "give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth"? Yeah. There's madness behind that mask.

It's also a very significant time for him because he's for the first time having the opportunity to associate with peers in a consistent way. And he wants so bad to be "normal" and that's also why the mask is so integral and alluring. And he wants to be a normal bloke and make normal friends, but at the same time, he's out of practice without really realizing it; he hasn't come to terms with how in order to make friends, you have to put yourself out there. He thinks that he can simply make friends while hiding himself and lying about everything. And when Videl starts trying to figure out who he is and pry the mask off, it's a horrifying inconvenience. And Gohan just isn't in the habit of receiving well others' companionship, having lived isolated for so long; when Videl makes him teach her how to fly, he's nice to her, but you can tell that he just wants her to leave.

Her insistence on drilling into him is why they become friends and eventually marry, though.

He seems like an optimistic fellow, and his appreciate for life must be sincere, as his history necessitates it - if life sucked, all of that would have been for nought. But remember, for a good seven years it was just him, his mother, and the new baby. No drama or adventure to bring him out into the world. No friends his age that he could connect and evolve with. Just him up there on Mt Paozu stagnating.

There was definitely a lot of goodness and happiness and stargazing and lovely dinners and hanging out with dinosaurs. But there was also a lot of boredom and avoidance and why-is-the-baby-crying and mom-please-put-the-wooden-spoon-down and mom-please-stop-crying and can-i-have-the-time-to-study-unbothered-please and an undercurrent of feeling bogged down that really isn't apparent until you get out and get moving.

Gohan never says this outloud or thinks this definitively, but it's a natural truth, like the wood that a house is made of - he is going to do everything he can to be a good brother and to protect his baby brother. And it's a given, too, that he'll do everything it takes to keep his mother sane and happy, because everybody else shies away from her, and it's SORT OF Gohan's fault that Goku had died, and he very much wants to give back for all of the nurturing that his mother has given him.

And when you want to be a force of Good that badly, it completely turns you away from the parts of you that may be Bad, and encourages you to be afraid of certain feelings or needs.

When Gohan snaps at people out of irritability or defensiveness, it really seems like he doesn't know that he's doing it, and it comes out in the way that a hurt child may just act out. Everything else that is ugly about him just gets buried deep. And that makes him a weirdo. That's what it seems like anyway

[weebsinstash]

Ok but like

Imagine if there is 1 spider who can tell the difference, a bestie you had that was perhaps the one who was sent to recruit you in the first place, and/or the one who was the first to go on a mission with you, and the first(outside of Miguel because ofc he had to watch and decide to let you join) to go yandere.

And imagine when YT shows they dont care, actively trying to distance themselves from her in any way they can. And they're the only one who can tell the difference, with just even seeing how they walk being enough to know it's not you.

But when they point out that's not you all the other spiders deny it, saying they'd be able to tell the difference without even trying(they cant lmao).

Then YT decides to make they're life hell because how fucking dare this rando try to out her?! So all the spiders bounce back and forth from treating them like shit to treating them how they normally would depending on which you they talk to.

Then when they nearly or they think they kill you they freaking the fuck out, having to be restrained to stop from helping you. Possibly even being degraded for trying to help 'YT', with some even saying they should kick them out of the society after.

Holy shit- imagine if they're the reason you live taking off their's and throwing it to you because they'll just go back to they're universe unlike you.

Or imagine they leave the society after you 'died', possibly even getting kicked out for attempting to attack 'you' in a fit of rage. Only to once back in they're own universe do their best to try and find a way to bring the real you back.

Queue you at your new home or job and what a looks like a hobo bursts in sobbing they're eyes out and calling your name. Tackling you into a hug, insisting their never letting you go and never letting those monsters near you again.

God love all this drama and heartbreak ♥️💕♥️💅

An idea I had thought of was "what if a Spiderperson Reader had been close to had to go do stuff in their own universe and that made them too busy to come and visit and during all the YouTwo drams they're instrumental in saving your ass"

Like for example Peter Porker and Spider Noir are absent from the second movie so say we've got Miguel and the other relevant Spiders are having their weekly "We Love Reader" power hour when Noir descends from above and shares the findings of his investigation, pure detective style, with pictures and everything, or lil Porker can tap into some toonforce shit and just glance at YouTwo and say "haha OK really funny, but where's the real one?"

Say you're good friends with Hobie and he has to "go underground for a lil while" cause he has to focus on fighting the fascists back home, and then he pops up like two months later, you're glitching out because YouTwo just smashed your bracelet and Miguel and tons and tons of other Spiders watching and facilitating and Hobie takes one look at YT, "who's this slag?"

Or, before he takes his trip, he comes to visit you at your apartment, definitely knowing it's you he's speaking to, and YouTwo is in Nueva York and you're starting to get paranoid and you open up to him about all your worries and the weird shit starting to happen, how you're worries about being replaced and how people are coming up to you about things you didn't say or do, and you even suggest a secret password so that the next time he speaks to you, he can know it's really you, and Hobie can tell you're just, absolutely stressed the fuck out about all of this, probably even passes the word on to Gwen and Pav since they're mutual friends to help keep an eye on you while he's gone, and to watch out for YouTwo

Cue Hobie "I hate fascists and tyrants" Brown coming back and you're just glitching all over the place with your bracelet broken on the ground while Miguel and tons of other Spiders are just WATCHING and you see him and immediately start screaming the password and "hobie, don't let them kill me, this is gonna kill me hobie, please help me, i dont wanna die, please i dont want to die" and, obviously best case scenario is "Hobie convinces them that YT is the fake" or "he opens a portal back home, gives you his bracelet, and both of you immediately fuck off to go flee into his home universe" but of course the more chaotic "you vanish and all hell breaks loose, a full on civil war between 'the Reader Loyalists' vs 'the YouTwo beta cucks' and everyone is scrambling to find you while you're off like, hanging out with Miles as he helps heal your trust by being a good little brother or getting creampied by Miguel 2

But like. Lmao. Imagine some shit happens like Reader was good pals with Sun Spider, told her you thought it was really inspiring to see a disabled Spider (and I mean depending on your preference Reader has problems themself) and like. It's a week after you've been "poofed away" and everyone is hanging out at like a celebration party or something just because, so many of then are convinced YT is you which means they're also still being nice as fuck to YT because you had been starting to become depressed and also the whole elevator incident and, everyone's having drinks and snacks and suddenly YT makes this sort of. Comment. It's either something like "who's the Spider in the wheelchair" or something like. Vaguely or super offensive "it's just kind of, awkward, you know, being around one of THOSE people"

And Pav is there and just kind of chuckles because he's confused and YouTwo continues "I just mean, you know. We're kind of better than them, you know? How did a cripple become a Spider?"

Cue everyone in earshot just, like, all but dropping everything in their hands as the realization sweeps over the room, "oh shit that's a fake, the real you is gone"

I imagine until they got caught that YouTwo is an absolute menace. Could suck up to one of the scientist Spidermen to help make bugs and wiretaps to spy on you in your apartment so YT can better impersonate you, intercepting any social plans and showing up in your place, learning personal info, private mannerisms. YT, to be blunt, using sex to control any Spiders who like you thst way to have them make fake alibis or spread rumors or help YT make other helpful connections (who are all also furious when YT is exposed, because, like, for ones who slept with them, dude that's rape, they all thought they were sleeping with someone else. Could you imagine Miguel fucking YT and that's like the first person he's been with since his wife has died and he had meant it to be with you and it actually be some big impactful like extremely emotional thing for him, and it's this massively personal invasion of his privacy and trust that it turned out to be an imposter. He feels dirty and disgusted and, oh my god he GOT RID OF YOU for this, this evil, selfish, manipulative whore

Reader off trying to mind their own goddamn business in their new home, either on their own or New Miguel, and you bump into someone who you USED to consider a friend and, with good intentions they tell the Spider Society you're alive and, it begins this massive manhunt with the intention of bring you "back home". THEY are all super extremely happy, making preparations to throw one big "We're So Sorry We Kind Of Replaced You And Almost Killed You" party, meanwhile YOU are terrified at the sight of any of them because you can't trust them and the Society as a whole anymore and, what if they tried to kill you again?

Miguel: I can't even express how glad I am that you're still alive. We've been looking everywhere for you because we're sorry and--

Reader, shoving bagels into their purse: sorry I have to go

[fatherfigurefusion]

Randomly generating Ultimate Talents for the DRDT cast and ranking them on how fitting they are (V3 Edition):

Teruko Tawaki- Ultimate Maid

6/10: Pretty mixed on the idea. On one hand, Teruko's personality doesn't really owe well to being a maid. On the other hand, the talent can easily factor into her backstory, having to work as a maid in order to avoid living on the streets.

Xander Matthews- Ultimate Cosplayer

7/10: Can kind of see it. Would probably specialize in shonen cosplays.

Eden Tobisa- Ultimate Robot

8/10: A robotic clockwork Eden would be adorable!

Hu Jing- Ultimate Detective

8/10: Yep, I can easily see it. Pretty funny that she got the protagonist's talent last time, so the wheel landed on another protagonist talent.

J Moreno- Ultimate Child Caregiver/Assassin

9/10: They definitely have the Maki-esque personality for it.

Veronika Grebenshchikova - Ultimate Astronaut

9/10: The talent provides the right amount of risk and intrigue to fuel her. Also, Veronika with a galaxy theme would look SO beautiful.

David Chiem- Ultimate Pianist

10/10: I feel as though David's fashion sense (just swap out the star pins for music note pins and it would be perfect) and struggles with the limelight would owe well to an Ultimate Pianist. Similar situation with Hu, in that he had the protagonist's talent in the DR1 edition, and got the (initial) protagonist's talent in this run.

Arturo Giles- Ultimate Entomologist

9/10: A creepy butterfly-pinner aesthetic would honestly fit Arturo very well. Maybe, instead of just ugly people, he just hates people in general, preferring the company of "beautiful" insects.

Levi Fontana- Ultimate Supreme Leader

5/10: Levi Fontana, a notorious pushover, as an Ultimate Supreme Leader? Maybe it could factor into his dark past. I also think Levi could rock the uniform.

Ace Markey- Ultimate Magician

4/10: Can't exactly picture him as a magician.

Min Jeung- Ultimate Tennis Pro

9/10: Tennis seems like the most fitting sport for Min!

Whit Young- Ultimate Adventurer

9/10: It's the Rantaro energy. I can also imagine Whit being able to speak multiple languages, in order to facilitate his communication with others.

Charles Cuevas- Ultimate Artist

8/10: When seeing this prompt, I can't help but imagine Ena Shinonome.

Arei Nageishi- Ultimate Inventor

9/10: Very fitting for her (in terms of personality mostly), but just imagine the "maintenance scene" but it's Areden.

Nico Hakobyan- Ultimate Anthropologist

10/10: This could actually work REALLY well!

Rose Lacroix- Ultimate Aikido Master

8/10: Terrifying prompt: Rose Lacroix, but able to beat someone up.

[transthadymacdermot]

image in the middle my art, all others except for that of the belfast 14th july celebrations from pinterest

WIP Reintro: Red and Riotous Light

Status: seven morbillionth draft

Genre: historical fiction, gothic horror

Content warnings: gore, death, cannibalism, place & time typical bigotry, &c

The year is 1796 and the island of Ireland, once considered peaceable, is awash with sedition. In Belfast, the arrival of a mysterious Englishwoman whose defection to the French makes her a target of both curiosity and suspicion brings with her tidings of a prospective deal between a local United Irish cell and the French government: guns, and ammunition, sold at a premium price, delivered by a French ship. The only problem? The ship is arriving at the opposite side of the country, and these would-be insurgents need it where they are -- and the French said nothing about transport. Additionally, the committee seems to have had a suspicious number of brushes with authority lately. More than they used to. Hopefully someone isn't getting cold feet...

Meanwhile, in the isolated townland of Áth Síomóin, the arrival of a hapless new schoolmaster sparks the powder-keg the two sides of the area's sectarian divide have long been sitting on and leads, inadvertently, to the death of a Catholic of some consequence -- and, crucially, does not lead to the punishment of his killer. The resulting crackdown on Defender activity, facilitated by the arrival of another English visitor, is to be expected at first. However, as the situation deteriorates, it becomes clear that local agrarian resistance leaders have neither intent nor indeed means to capitulate, and all sides begin to adopt increasingly extreme measures in an attempt to win the seemingly endless feud. And there's also something off about some of the local children -- hearing voices, saying funny things. It can't be good for them, after all. All this bloodshed.

Ask to be +/- from the taglist + main characters under the cut

William Hughes Rearden - an extremely driven and neurotic member of the Belfast United Irishmen hellbent on getting French arms for his men. he/him

Lady Maria Whittaker - an English reformer who defected to the French; Rearden's close friend. Her mission is to arm the UI and she doesn't care what she has to do to accomplish it. she/her; first name pronounced "mariah"

Seamus "Seamy" Breen - a small, unhappy Irish Catholic boy who, after he witnesses the death of a schoolmate, develops the ability to speak to the dead. he/him; nickname pronounced "shaymie"

Eoin O'Donnell - a womanising Defender leader in Áth Síomóin who has decided that he will also be taking and using some of these French arms, actually. he/him; first name pronounced "owen"

Sarah Connolly - a nihilistic Catholic peasant woman trapped in an unhappy relationship with an abusive boyfriend, who knows much more than she lets on. she/her

Edward "Lazarus" McClure - the loyalist owner of a rural inn who has lately betrayed his principles for a Catholic boyfriend who he seems disturbingly devoted to. he/him

Elizabeth "Eliza" Durham - the heiress to the fortune of an Anglo-Irish landowning family who runs her family's estate like it's the navy and suffers little dissent. she/her

Anthony Franklin - an actor, committed abolitionist, philosophy enthusiast, and London Corresponding Society delegate originally from the West Indies. he/him

Charles Nathaniel Maurice Irving-Hamilton, Lord Drenning - a foppish English soldier brought over by Eliza to help quell agrarian disturbances. Really really bad at his job. he/him

Eleanor "Ellie" Gage - a waif of uncertain background who lives with the Presbyterian minister in a neighbouring townland and works unofficially for the local regiment. she/her

[vidavalor]

Hello Vidavalor! I just finished reading The Vavoom and you've convinced me entirely. I just have one thing that I'm not sure on. What about Azi saying "doesn't seem likely" in the pub? Is he teasing him? Why would he reject Crowley being so hot like that?

Hi there! :) Thanks for reading. Chocolate truffle?

So, two reasons, imo, for not letting Crowley get what he wanted out of that moment. (Aziraphale was absolutely melting internally, though, let's be real lol...)

The first reason is that, yeah, he's teasing him. He likes Cupid pursuing him lol. But maybe the funnier reason is rooted in the earlier part of the conversation and that's just that Aziraphale is making some meta and hilariously bitchy judgements about Maggie and her feelings for Nina so he has trouble envisioning Crowley's romantic vision as applicable to their parallels. He calls Maggie's feelings "a pash" a bit dismissively to Crowley after a quick pause of trying to find a word he feels is accurate for what he saw in the shop and then describes the issue to Crowley as "and I don't think she knows how to conduct a courtship." He's basically like The girl's a hapless mess, dear. She has no idea what she's doing. Zero game, whatsoever. Poor Nina. In doing so, he's making a comparison between their relationship and Maggie and Nina, which is also present in his response to Crowley's idea.

Aziraphale is aware that Crowley is seizing on the opportunity to romance him a bit with his vavoomy reply but Aziraphale's response is less about how romantic the way Crowley describes their kiss is and more like he's (pretend) irritated that Crowley thinks that the kiss is replicable for other people lol. He's like you dare to bring up The Vavoom as something you could just *make happen* for *Maggie*? The same Maggie that was just sobbing in her shop over a woman who barely knows her name?

Crowley, on the other hand, is a hopeless romantic and he believes that there's a vavoom opportunity possible for anyone who wants one and, next to yelling at his plants, his favorite hobby is facilitating romance for the humans. (He also seems to have a better appreciation of Maggie not being a teenager anymore, which seems harder for Aziraphale.) If Crowley's love wants these ladies to see some potential sparks then Crowley's game. Mags needs some help wooing the Coffee Shop Human. He gets to make it rain. Great day in the works for Crowley. He was more just seizing upon the opportunity to romance Aziraphale in the process by recounting his and Aziraphale's own first kiss than completely answering Aziraphale's request for ideas for Maggie and Nina and Aziraphale knows that. He knows Crowley's point is that he is a very old being who has been on Earth for a long time and has seen countless people fall in love and his definition of romance is and always has been him and Aziraphale so, if Aziraphale is requesting the gold standard Cupid package here for Maggie and Nina, Crowley's reply is nothing less than trying for a version of when he and Aziraphale tipped from big pash into vavoom sorted.

Aziraphale's "doesn't seem likely" response to that is actually misconstrued a lot, imo, because what he really is saying is more along the lines of: Doesn't seem likely. You and I *realigned the Earth* with that kiss. Maggie and Nina don't have that kind of passion. Maggie can barely tell Nina what her name is. They are mortal humans-- you might *kill* them if you tried to replicate our sort of vavoom, Crowley. Do be careful with my shop lesbians, dear...

(I also thought this was a very funny choice for the scene because if they're burying the idea of the first kiss here, episodes before 2.06, in such a way that this scene will seem very different if it turns out in S3 that Crowley was describing their first kiss in this scene, then Aziraphale's "doesn't seem likely" is also a meta dry joke over the fact that this whole thing is debatable between S2 and S3. They already knew they were writing towards the 2.06 kiss and that some would see that as the first kiss so throwing in Aziraphale replying "doesn't seem likely" to what will ultimately be Crowley describing what actually *was* their first kiss is something that's awfully funny and is another reason in support of the vavoom theory being true, imo.)

Crowley's "No. No no no no... get humans wet and staring into each other's eyes..." response to is both knowing that Aziraphale is playing with him a little and being semi-faux-long-suffering back like oh come *on*, that was so romantic of me and you're really not going to give me anything, are you, you absolutely marvelous bastard? Sure, pet me in the pub and make me husband Mr. Vacuum away but barely blink at The Vavoom... Fine, you know what? It wasn't even us at all. I saw it in a Richard Curtis film, which we both know is total bullshit but I've got my pride, ok? That said, I will do literally anything to get His Supreme Archangelness out of the guest room with haste so whatever will do that...

...wait, why are we now talking about Jane Austen and that time in the South Downs in this love conversation, angel, hmm?