#i want something that makes me log onto my alt account

[crowsent]

takin a break from irresponsible use of my time to say that the abusive cunt never used pet names in canon but in my head he did so any mention of sweet familiarity gets distorted into sick memories of someone who literally shoved you off a cliff UwU

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for telling someone that roleplays are a two-way street and refusing to re-engage with them?

Occasionally, if I'm in the mood to write but I don't really know what, I'll browse ship tags on Omegle. Its become synonymous for roleplays, and I've found its (typically) pretty fun.

As with every social thing, there's the odd... Less than pleasant experience. Last night was one such experience. I connected to someone on a ship tag, they sent a prompt, and it was actually a pretty interesting one, so I responded.

It was an AU prompt, but I generally kept my characterisation as close to the character's canon as I could, while still matching it to roughly what someone's personality in that profession and location would be.

(E.g; if the character was a proper old-country style cowboy, or a socially awkward secretary, ect.)

It became very clear, very fast, that the other person had very, very specific ideas about the roleplay, what happens, what my character was supposed to say/do, ect. To the point where (as I later told them) they should've just written fanfic so they had complete control.

Near enough every time I responded, they'd "correct" it or argue against it both in character and in brackets as themselves. For example if I noted something about the background or story of my character, theirs would immediately say "no that's not what happened" or they'd say [hey actually can you change that, it doesn't fit/I don't like it/its not what I envisioned].

After about fifteen minutes of this I got incredibly vexed and decided I was done. I don't mind a roleplay having certain goals/main points/guidelines, but they were literally trying to control every tiny aspect of what I did. So I sent them this:

[I'm sorry, the RP sounded interesting in the prompt you sent, but its rapidly becoming clear you don't actually want a roleplay, you want to be the sole one dictating everything that happens. Honestly I think its best you turn this idea into a fanfic and not a roleplay. It kills off any enjoyment of the roleplay when I have you contradicting every tiny detail I include or dictating what I'm allowed to do or say. I'm not going to sit there waiting for you to approve of everything I intend to say. Thank you for your time, but good night.]

I disconnected, and decided I'd spend another fifteen minutes browsing the tag before I did something else. Well apparently, the other person decided they were going to spend fifteen minutes stalking the tag trying to find me again, spamming every connection with messages ranging from extreme insults and threats to demands I 'speak up again, bitch, I wanna talk' and so forth. After connecting to them for the tenth time, I sent:

[I'm not going to re-engage with you. I said what I did, and frankly, it was a valid statement. If you can't handle the fact that roleplaying means a 50/50 creative allowance with someone else, and that you can't micro-manage or bulldoze every single detail, then you shouldn't roleplay. Frankly, knowing how vile you can be from simple criticism, I'm glad I disconnected. Take a breather and re-evaluate yourself. I'd be embarrassed.]

Well. This morning I logged onto Tumblr and after some browsing, I actually came across them again. Here. By means of a post where they included screenshots of everything and are even going so far as threatening to stalk Tumblr and AO3 to 'match up the writing' so they can find me and presumably say their piece or whatever.

I talked to a friend about it, and surprisingly, they think I'm an asshole. Not for what I said in the first place, but for not re-approaching the other person (through DMs) so they'll stop filling the ship's tag with negative stuff. (They've made 3 posts about it all so far.)

I don't want to do that because it means opening up my private social media to this obviously unhinged individual. I know I can expect to be spammed, sent hate mail, have them try to track down my other socials, ect. I could make an alt account for it, but honestly that's effort I don't see the point in making. If they can't let this go, its not my problem.

AITA? Should I make an alt account just to let them get it out of their system? I don't know how to proceed with this.

What are these acronyms?

[th3-0bjectivist]

Chipper and Romi, A Love Story (and page update w/ Springin’ Chip)

Heya Tumblr folks, its page mascot Springin’ Chip here, and its autumn! And I’m in loooooove. Met a young woman. Her name is Romi. Young love is painful, folks. It’s supposed to teach you lessons that’ll help you adjust as an adult. And let me tell ya, there’s lots of pain in this relationship! So far, Romi and I enjoy playfully fighting in the park, late-night sleepovers, and deep talks about our future and the nature of the universe. It’s good to find something positive in 2024! I hope you had little specs of happiness this year as well. ANYWAYS, onto the brief page update.

So, folks, we’re going to be taking election week entirely off, maybe two weeks. When we get back, we’ll have three more songs to post and a few more paintings/drawings in 24’. Why take election week off you ask?? Well, primarily because partisan politics completely ruined Tumblr this year. It literally sucked all the fun out of everything and turned some usually normal people who we follow(ed) into shrieking, insufferable, irrational, pants-shitting dipshits. There’s nothing more useless than keyboard activism, and when we log in to Tumblr, we’re mostly looking for something that helps us mentally escape the harsh reality we’re living in. I mean, folks, as a dog, I really couldn't care less how you vote. What you do in the voting booth, just like in your bed, is none of my damn business. I followed your blog because I think you create exceptional art, or take excellent pictures, or generate excellent poetry, or make quality sounds, or because you have some hidden X factor, or because I think you’re a goddamned bona fide genius. I do NOT come to Tumblr for politics for several reasons, but mostly because… no one on here is a political expert and I’d rather not know how you vote at all. I’d rather you keep me guessing at how you vote and keep that to yourself. If for no other reason, because your politics matter to you, and I appreciate a bit of mystique.

Th3-0 wants me to tell you he early voted in North Carolina today. He said it was easy; he showed up early, he’d done his research beforehand, so he knew how he wanted to vote, it took like ten minutes. It was like, zip-zip-zip. The people at the voting site were friendly, the ballot process was streamlined. You don’t need to know how th3-0bjectivist votes. All you need to do is stop telling others how to vote and go out and vote. If you’re with friends or family that haven’t voted, tell them, “Okay c’mon! We’re all gonna go vote now!” Stop whining, stop whinging, and just go and vote folks. These last six months have been exhausting and demoralizing for the entire US. And if your side loses, learn how to lose with grace. Don’t let them see you sweat and think to yourself; what did my side do wrong to lose this election!?

Depending on the seismic reaction after the election, it could be up to two weeks until this blog is back up folks. Just please, grip fast to your mental health, hold your nose, and treat each other with respect. This year has been crazy enough. There’s no need to get crazier. th3-0bjectivist’s blog will be back for about two months and then after that we’re gonna take a LONGASS break from this platform to recover from the wretched, traumatizing, ass-ramming partisan shitstorm that was 24’.

Alt-links below in case you miss th3-0.

Stop bitchin' and just vote, Springin’ Chip

*****

The 0bjectivist on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2sONH8IwzL_2sZie0ZNSnw/

I’m also on BitChute: https://www.bitchute.com/channel/uvKfJpNkzkIL/

FULL ART GALLERY on Instagram at: https://www.instagram.com/th3_0bjectivist_gallery/ <—- This just in, Instagram is for selfie-takers and living-my-best lifers! Delete your account early, just like early voting! We deleted our account this year, and we don't miss it!

FULL ART GALLERY on DeviantArt at: https://www.deviantart.com/th3-0bjectivist/gallery

[nkirukaj]

vVv is for Voe (19)

Pairing: RadioBeau

Warnings: Swearing; Graphic Depictions of Violence

Genre: Humor! Angst!

Word Count: 1.4K

19. Get Even

Voe stood outside the shining tower. She thought over her plan again, deciding she was resolute and perhaps willing to die again. She looked up at the sign and, for the first time, noticed that they had never even changed it. Dickheads. She waltzes inside and faces Courtney, who opens her mouth.

“Either you’re with me or against me, Courtney, and if you’re against me, you can have some of what they’re having,”

The receptionist closes her lips and sinks into her chair, allowing Voe to pass by. She wasn’t exactly sure what she would do regarding Velvette, but she figured she would come up with something on the way there. Now, she was ascending the stairs and still had nothing in mind. Voe entered the studio with no words.

“Well, well, well, look who’s come crawling back to us,” Velvette mused with a smirk “I must say that I’m not surprised,” she turned away from Voe “We expected that it might be a little less ti-“ the British doll is cut off by Voe knocking her out with a pipe that she ripped out of the wall. She collapses onto the floor with a thud. 

“I couldn’t think of anything,” she says to herself, shrugging and dropping the pipe onto the floor and heading over to the doll’s computer, which was already open and logged in, conveniently enough for her. 

Voe navigates through the files, finding where she keeps her designs and concepts. She logs into her alt account on Sinstagram and posts the looks, leaking them to the public. 

Velvette of the Vees stole these designs from lesser-known creators. She does none of her fashion work; she only knows how to steal. 

The Overlord’s notification began blowing up instantly, her follower count dropping like it was hot. Voe looks down at the unconscious sinner. 

“Well, that was easy,” she says, kicking the woman’s body.

Of course, this plan wouldn’t be completed in a day. Some people still supported Velvette, which was to be expected, but she knew that her plan was in motion when she saw the queen of fashion make a video defending herself.

“I don’t know what anyone is talking about. I don’t steal anything. If anything, that person stole from me!” Her follower count is dropping like a waterfall. Voe could see the woman freaking out in her head. Potentially runs around while trying to ignore it and complaining to Vox, while he chooses not to listen. The thought gave her a chuckle as she lay in her bed. Alastor enters the room quietly.

“They said you called for me,” He announces

Voe sits up “Yes I did, I wanted to tell you something. 

Alastor raises his brow in intrigue “Yes?”

“I wanted to let you how this started. How I ended up here at the hotel,”

“I know how,”

“But you don’t even know why,”

“Vox kicked you out, I’m aware,”

She shakes her head “You don’t know why Vox kicked me out,”

“Tell me then,”

“Well, he came in my room and we were getting…intimate,” Alastor rolls his eyes “Stop and listen,” she grabs his arm “And I said your name,”

Alastor’s look of indignation turns into the smuggest of all grins, with pride that he doesn’t want to try to hide “Is that so?”

Voe could barely hide her blush and smiled herself “Yes,” she admits, “I had been…thinking about you before he had shown up, and the next thing I knew, your name was coming out of my mouth,” She looks up at him a little sheepishly “I just felt that you should know that,”

“Well, my dear, I am glad you told me that. Another thing that I have over Vox,”

“Ugh, oh no, that inflated your ego, didn’t it?”

Alastor doesn’t answer but taps his temple with a close-lipped smirk. 

“Angel,” Voe called after the spider in the halls of the hotel

He lifts his head while he’s texting “Yeah,”

“You ever thought about beating up Val?”

“Excuse me?”

Voe smirks “Beating up Val,”

“Why would I do that?”

“Cuz he sucks,”

He looks around as if to make sure Val can’t hear him “I can’t- I can’t do that,”

Next on the list was Valentino, who was not the easiest to overrule. He used fear to keep his souls in line. And fear is not an easy emotion to override. 

“You could if you had help…right?” Voe leans into the spider

“I guess...” he furrows his brows “Whatchu gettin’ at?” he crosses a pair of his arms

She raises her brows in delight “What if I told you that I convinced all the actors to stage a mutiny against Val? Would you join?” she mirrors him

His eyes widen “I’d say you were crazy,”

“Call crazy all you want, but I did it,” she grins

“Sure,”

“Sure what?”

“I’ll think about it,”

She puts her hand on his shoulder “I hope to see you there,”

It was a surprise for Val to show up at the studio and see Voe sitting in his chair, legs elegantly crossed and checking her nails, flexing her foot in empty air.

“Hmm, looks like somebody decided to come crawling back,” he smirks “Doesn’t mean you can sit in my seat, Chiquita,” he licks his teeth

Voe looks up “Funny, that's exactly what Velvette said,” She mimics his accent “Hello, Valentino. I’m not here to crawl back to you,” her eyes turn up towards him “I’m here to liberate,”

Val snickers “Oh really? And to whom might you be referring?”

She gestures to his actors and crew, “Them,”

The Overlord crosses his arms in amusement “Really?”

She looks at the demons, her eyes wide in anticipation, nobody moves and makes a sound “Seriously, this is the moment we were waiting for.” she looks back around “Do I have to make the first move?”

He laughs and leans down to her “Looks like you and your-“ *POW* Voe punches square in his moth face, where a nose would be if he were human. “Why you, little?” he reaches for her when another demon screams a war cry and pounces on Val’s back, biting down on his shoulder. “Ow! What the fuck!” he goes to swat that demon, and another jumps and grabs onto his arm. Suddenly a hoard of porn actors and actresses pile on top of the Overlord, ripping his flesh and fur from his body. All Voe could see was Val’s hand reaching up for some help before another pounced on his and completely covered him from head to toe. Voe raises her head to see Angel cowering behind some set pieces. They lock eyes and Voe tilts her head.

“You like butts right?!” Travis yells, grabbing the boom mic and bringing it over to the Overlord, Voe hears the feedback as the mic goes up his butt cheeks

“AAHHHHHH!” His screams go up in pitch as Voe starts to get a bit uncomfortable.

She gestures out of the room and walks out. 2 down and one to go. And she saved the best for last.

Alastor and Lucifer sat down next to each other begrudgingly as Voe sat opposite them.

“Thank you two for tolerating each other enough to hear what I need to say to both of you,” Alastor elbows Lucifer, and Lucifer elbows him back “Guys, this is important!”

Lucifer clears his throat “What is it you need?”

“Lucifer, I already told you this part, so I’m directing this to Alastor,” Lucifer puffs out his chest with pride, knowing that he got to know first. She turns to the Radio Demon “Alastor, the reason I’ve been acting so oddly, and why I came home,” his smile widens when she calls the hotel ‘home’ “Is that, while I was at Vee tower, someone ….. took advantage of me,” she pauses “Sexually,”

Alastor’s eyes go black and he clears his throat “I assume the culprit is dead?”

She shakes her head “Not exactly,”

He leans forward in confusion “And why not? Also, why did this bumbling buffoon get this information before me?”

“That doesn’t matter right now!”

“Yeah, Alastor. It doesn’t matter that she told me first because she trusts me more,”

He turns his neck so he’s facing the King “Listen you-“

“Guys!” They both snap their necks toward her “I’m ready to say who did it,” The men both widen their eyes in anticipation “It was-“

[crispycreambacon]

Alt text: A Twitter thread from Ashimates on Twitter that reads:

!! Please share this thread !!

My dad is Pro lsrael.

He and I have never been close but we've been getting into heated arguments about it. Which is something we've never done. He gets his news from fb and YouTube autoplay on our tv. I know I can't directly change his mind.

Mentions of my political views leads to an argument. So I logged into his yt account (his main news source), and have been slowly pushing more Palestine news onto his suggested page. Liking and disliking videos, slowly changing his feed. I never told him. I don't plan to.

I could see his face change a little when he really sees the numbers, images, and especially dates. Everything his old news lacked—evidence. He isn't one to admit when he's wrong. Which is why he still CLAIMS to support Israel.

However I see differently. Before the videos on YouTube he watched were on auto play and from the fyp. But now he's deliberately grabbing the remote and choosing videos that go more into detail about the violence in Gaza. He wants to learn.

His YouTube suggested page is changing more and more. He's still never apologized to me but I could tell he's really trying to learn more Our relationship is still strained because he hates admitting he's wrong but l'm proud of him. So proud.

He's currently learning about boycotting. I saw him going online and researching brands. I saw him checking the backs of products seeing where they're from. He cares. Whether he admits it or not. And the adjustments to what he usually buys got easy for him to get used to.

I say this to every small YouTuber, every artist, every creator: Your work matters. Keep speaking up, keep talking about the genocide. A single drop of rain looks like nothing but a shower can flourish a garden. Together we can and DO make a difference to those around us.

Free Palestine. /End Alt Text

A thread yall wanna read.

Bless this person for shedding light to their father, and bless the father for changing his way, as many people tend to still deny even given the evidences. May their relationship be mended, amen.

[skorchinq]

Bows Only: WE'RE SO BACK!!!!!!!

[Image IDs in alt text]

Ok so apparently the last time I updated was in August? And it's April now... um. Sorry about that? I didn't realize it's been so long TTOTT there hasn't been much to talk about honestly

Actually uhhh scratch that. I didn't update in so long ON PURPOSE. Totally. The reason I didn't was because I didn't want to update again until the curse of Jean was broken. And guess what finally happened B)

But before we get to that, let's start where we left off with our last post... way back in August of 2023...

As we waited with bated breath for the release of Version 4.0, I did manage to get a few more notable acomplishments. Namely...

Childe friendship level 10!

And clearing floor 9 with all 9 stars! (I still cannot do this consistently on this account as I type this btw ._.)

When 4.0 finally dropped, I fist went to wish on Yelan's banner. Things were off to a great start:

We got another stringless! I already had two built up, so I used this one as refinement for one of them.

And then... the shooting star lit up gold, and... well, you know how that went.

Try as I may, and Try as I might, Yelan would not come home. And, in this account's most humiliating L to date...

The banner cycle ended with no Yelan and no Lyney.

Still, I could not afford to simply give up. I still worked hard throughout September, earning primogems and building my characters...

I got this really satisfying set of Daily Commissions once

So like. That kinda makes up for not having Yelan. sure

Also! I decided to test Childe's limits!

Look at that damage. All Tartagles babyyyyyyy

And uhhh the date on that one is in September and the date on this next one is in January so. I suppose nothing of interest happened in those months. Makes sense honestly, I had enough to gurantee a 5 star on here so I wasn't quite as desperate for primos and therefore wasn't logging on much... Plus with all the new content that comes with a major version update I was spending more time than usual on my main, leaving less time for this account. But anyway!

In the second half of 4.3 came two very important banners, one for each of my accounts:

On my main, My Raiden went from C1 to C2!

And, here on Bows Only, that 50/50 gurantee from the Yelan disaster finally came in use:

After dodging us countless times... in 2.8... in 3.2... in 3.7... Finally... FINALLY!!! We've obtained the most elusive fireworks maker!

Our quest to max ascend all our characters also continues:

And uhhh here's some event scores:

I also did Klee's story quest, and something they mentioned at the end really stuck out to me:

...They talk a lot about Ludi Harpastum in this quest, but we still haven't gotten to see that festival in game... Not once...

And it was soon after this that... my computer broke .-. I downloaded genshin on my phone while I waited for the repairs on it to be complete, but mobile genshin fricking sucks so I was only logging onto my main account to do limited time events and that's IT. I wasn't even doing my dailies on there and I was barely even touching Bows Only at all...

And it was only supposed to be a couple of weeks, but things kept getting delayed (They ordered the part they needed. they were sent the wrong one. they sent it back. they got the right part but it was broken. they sent it back. they got the wrong part again--) and my computer was gone for like two months TTOTT So I was stuck on mobile for the entirety of 4.4 and the better part of 4.5...

But eventually my dear puter came back to me (and I deleted genshin off my phone immediately) and I was able to consistently play on both accounts once more! It's a good thing, too, because coming up in 4.6 was a Lyney rerun...

I decided to do the Ararycan quest on this account because there's a follow-up to it I still haven't done on my main and I wanted to replay the first as a refresher. And uh

How do I still keep forgetting this is my name. Genshin characters talking about David Bowie still throws me through a loop.

We garnered up primogems upon primogems... by the time the 4.6 update day came around, I had 94 fates at hand. But I also had 0 pity, and no 50/50 gurantee...

I knew what was coming. I knew exactly what to expect. When that shooting star turned to gold, it would be C5 Jean coming to greet me. But even so, I had plenty of savings, and 3 weeks to get even more. As long as I was a little lucky with how many fates it took for each 5 star, getting Lyney afterwards wasn't out of the realm of possibility.

At the 5th 10 pull, it turned gold. "Good," I thought. "That's early. I could get back up to soft pity before the banner ends."

And then, on 52 pity, the impossible happened...

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

BOWS ONLY HAS OFFICIALLY WON OUR FIRST EVER 50/50!!!!!!!

Ever since this account first came to be, nearly 2 years ago now, we've lost ever single 50/50, and to the same character no less. But finally, after L after L, right when I least expected it, we've finally taken the W. And it's all thanks to this wonderful, amazing, magical catboy. Thank you, Lyney. I love you

I... did not prefarm for him like at all but that's okay, I had over 100 fragile resin saved up. I fought that crab countless times, and in only a day:

It's what he deserves <3

He's not the only one who got to be ascended that day, either. After him, there was only one character left who was still on ascension 5, but not for much longer:

Now that all of our characters are max ascended, we have three main goals for this account:

Continue to build our characters in other ways. This includes ascending and/or replacing weapons, leveling up talents, and of course, the artifact grind... and also I might level the characters up to 90. We'll see. Pretty sure I have the books for it tbh

Gather primogems. Because of how early we got Lyney, we've got a good head start on our savings for the next 5 star bow to release or rerun (though the only character we still need to rerun is Yelan). But it's always better to be safe than sorry. Just because the curse of Jean has been lifted doesn't mean we can't still lose 50/50s (though if we lost a 50/50 to Tighnari I'd be quite amenable to that). And finally...

Advance the main story. Cyno's Act II story quest is being added this version, so I'd like to replay Act I on this account first before playing the new one on my main. In order to do that though, I first must complete Act IV of the Sumeru Archon Quest-- and I haven't even done the Chasm Archon quest on here... Still, I think it's about time we did the Sumeru Archon quest. Actually, assuming there's another Traveler Archon Quest coming before Natlan, which there ought to be, I should play Caribert on this account too. So, that will be our goal. We play up to Caribert, and then give archon quests a rest for another while.

With those goals in mind, I think this series may be seeing more frequent updates for a while... maybe. Don't @ me if that ends up being wrong.

As always, feel free to send a friend request if you're on Europe server:

And if you're on America server, here's my main:

[traumatizeddfox]

Hey Fox, if it's not too much to ask, do you know what I can do about a person who has been stalking me?

We're ex-friends and no matter how many times I explicitly state I do not want any further contact from them, they followed all my blogs on an alt, stalk all my socials they can find, and joined my Discord server, acting like they don't know me. I found out it was them because their username was logged onto something with their main user and I was like "NO WAY..."

I asked them why they're stalking me and am currently waiting on a reply.

Anyway. I want to know if there's anything I can do IRL about it perhaps? My parents don't know and I'm not sure how to bring it up to them. I know the person's real name, face, and a previous address, if that apparently helps at all. They live several states away from me.

Thank you, even if you have no advice!

I’m not toooooo sure and i don’t live in the united states so i might be wrong

buuuut

- i think you can contact the police and ask them, they would know way more obvs

-i would write down everywhere they have followed or tried to interact with you.

- take screen shots, and compile it up. you could always let them know too that if they don’t leave you alone you might have to get police involved but im not too entirely sure if that’s the best.

- and if you can maybe make new accounts if you can

but i would say ur best bet is to contact police

[yukihime242]

I feel that I need to be more proactive in this coming year, especially on my games and video ideas. But it is kind of difficult to keep up since I have school and work to juggle with. Often times I would prefer to just sit and relax without thinking I need to do anything.

But in this new year, I strive to be more proactive, while trying to complete my university studies (god help me...). It is not that I can’t choose to stop doing what I am doing, but rather I enjoy what I am doing (not the studying part). Let’s say that this post is my 2023 new years’ resolution.

1️⃣ Genshin Impact Storyline Updates

(Picture Source: MMO Culture thru’ Google Image Search)

I have two accounts for this game. My main account is more or less kept up to date with the main storyline and events. I am using it for pure enjoyment of the game, recording the events stories and just simply having fun. The only thing that bothers me is the need to grind and build my characters.

As of now, I have only completed 10% of my current characters list (fully built, I mean). It would be lovely if I could log in everyday to farm for the materials and level up my characters as much as possible but with the upcoming school and other matters to attend to, I have to really look into how I should schedule my farming. 

Not only do I need to think for my main account, I also have my alt account to consider. Given how I mainly use the second account for recording the main storyline and the other side storylines, there isn’t a need to rush the progress of the game in the second account. However, I also cannot afford to neglect the second account too much. There are characters to build and maintain while progressing through the storyline. Moreover, I have been uploading the storyline onto my YouTube Channel and I really do not want to neglect the updates to that playlist.

2️⃣ Sky Children of the Light

(Picture Source: Bleeding Cool thru’ Google Image Search)

Sky can be quite tiring, to be honest. One is because I need to constantly farm for candles. Secondly, I am not good at making friends nor am I good at maintaining relationships. Sure, I do have two but time zones are really horrendous.

One of my friends happens to be 3 hours behind me and by the time she is free to come online, I left only 30 minutes of play time 🥲 (and that’s basically after 12 midnight). Not only is the timing a concern, I am also an working adult with part-time studies so time is very precious to me.

Despite all of the negativity of the game I just mentioned, I am still not willing to let go of it yet. One major reason is because most of my video ideas comes from this game. It has a blank slate (somewhat) that allows me to be creative with my characters for the video. Heck, I even have one video idea that I put aside for so long I almost forgot about it. 

Perhaps I need to be more confident in my befriending approach. I used to do it on Discord by exchanging QR codes but I think it’s time to change tactics and really be the proactive one.

3️⃣ Monster Super League

(Picture Source: EmulatorPC thru’ Google Image Search)

I ought to really be more active in this game. But the thing about this game is that it is tied to Genshin in a way that if I open Genshin to play, this game will also be opened because I can just use the auto-farm feature to level up my Astromons. 

To be honest, there isn’t much for me to consider for this game since it heavily relies on Genshin’s activeness. Also, like Genshin, I have a whole lot of Astromons to build 😅

4️⃣ Cookie Run Kingdom

(Picture Source: Laughing Place thru’ Google Image Search)

This game is slowly gaining my full attention. It is easy and super fun to play. I tend to open this game towards the end of the day (technically close to midnight) and I think that is not a very feasible thing to do. 

Although the game does have an auto-battle feature, it is not something I wish to utilize yet. One reason is because my cookies are not strong enough to be left to their own... flour? It’s not that they are not strong but rather I am still a new player and they are not at their fullest potential. For now, it is a manual battle for me.

Another reason is because the cookies total power level (think of it as attack stats) are almost the same as the enemies power level now. Many of the players I have asked in the community said that the power isn’t something I should worry about. But then... I have a feeling they are forgetting that they are talking to a new player... 

5️⃣ My Switch Games

(Picture Source: iMore thru’ Google Image Search)

For now, I have 3 games on my Switch console that I am actively playing - Death’s Door, Animal Crossing, and Pokemon Scarlet. I also have some upcoming ones but I believe those are not necessary for me to be extremely active.

The issue I have with Switch is that the eShop, strangely, is not available in my country. So, I can’t just happily purchase and download the game software into my console. Most of the time, I have to check if the games do come in hardcopy cartridges. 

Another thing about my Switch games is that 90% of the games I play on Switch are shared between my sister and I. Meaning that we both share the same cartridge. Also meaning that we have to take turns. 

But the good thing about most of the Switch games we bought is that we don’t have to log in to all of the games everyday. Contrary to belief, Animal Crossing is also a game you don’t need to log in everyday... technically. I mean, the weeds growing on your island means C A S H, and the bugs in the house is just a minor issue. I mean, given how the game runs, can you imagine them demolishing your house simply because you haven’t come online for a long time? I think bugs are a better thing to have than having to constantly be in debt to Nooks.

I digress. It seems like Switch is an investment for both my sister and I to have, but it is also subjected to availability of the game cartridges. We shortlisted a few games that we want to play but not all of them are available in the cartridge version. I foresee that we are gonna have a lot of Pokemon games in the future...

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Of course there are other matters I have to look into for the new year but those are somewhat personal. All I can say is that they are related to my games. 

I also have a lot to learn for video editing and drawing digitally. YouTube seems to be meeting my needs for those for now but I wonder if I have to consider going further... Let’s hope I don’t have to and just stick to free ol’ YouTube.

[mariaiscrafting]

can i ask why you dislike dream? im not being passive agressive or something lol i am genuinely curious

S’all good, kinda figured you weren’t being, and a lot of people have asked me this lol. There are so many reasons, and I’ve said this so many times already, but I’ll try to go over some of the main things I can remember:

1) Arrogance: kinda put me off how he’s always responded to criticism. Always kinda had an air of superiority about shit, and it never really bothered me on its own because I think lots of CCs are arrogant & I’m arrogant myself, but combined with all of the following, it became a reason for me to dislike him lol

2) Manipulation of his audience: look, I kinda always knew that CCs with huge fanbases, especially CCs who grow this quickly, have some kind of grasp of how to treat and foster their audience to their greatest advantage. I’ve always been wary of CCs that put on soft or nice personalities, especially since the whole Shane Dawson debacle. But with Dream, it’s been a whole other thing ever since his cheating response video, and I’ve never been able to see him in a good light in regard to how he responds to his fans, ever since. I went into it in a lot more detail back when I first watched the video, the day it dropped, but I’m too exhausted to scrounge that post up, so I’ll summarize: that video had a very specific strategy that he used to victimize himself and appeal to his fans’ compassion for him, and after rewatching the video for the third time that day, it felt gross and calculated to me. The way that he focuses very little on the actual mathematical part of his argument. The way he frames the issue of the mods having favoritism or bias. It was already proven on Reddit and throughout Twitter that the numbers the mods looked at were for good reason, and not because they just wanted to pick the numbers that made Dream look the worst, but that’s how he framed the argument. When I logged onto Twitter and Tumblr that day, there were thousands of fans who had latched onto what he said in the latter half of that video and coming to Dream’s defense, and that’s kinda when it hit me: this guy fucking knows what he’s doing, and he’s doing it well, and I really really dislike it. There’s about a hundred other ways he manipulates his audience, including not coming to people’s defenses when huge chunks of his audience attack them (even though the people had respectful and correct criticisms of him), defending stans so adamantly in the face of antis, and posting periodic alt tweets that help garner the illusion that he super cares about his fans; but, that cheating response video was the major red flag, for me.

3) Cheating & lying: as is likely no surprise to y’all, I think Dream cheated lmao. At first, I was ecstatic that he had actually made a detailed response video and put out a report with the help of an actual professional, but as I read up on his supposed statistical argument and dissected the parts of his argument that felt off to me, I realized maybe he had cheated. Talking to some STEM major friends of mine, who weren’t into MCYT but had obviously heard about the whole debacle because they like Twitter and Minecraft, kinda put the nail in the coffin for me. I’m not nearly smart enough or have a good enough memory to detail exactly why I think he cheated on this blog, right now, in April, but essentially: his main argument relied upon claiming mod bias, instead of a sound mathematical or statistical argument; there’s no way of proving that the world files he provided to the mods and in the open source weren’t altered; the statistical problems he points out (i.e., stopping effect) don’t actually skew the original mods’ model nearly as much as his supposed PhD guy would say; and the odds he comes up with might not be nearly as impossible as 1 in 7 trillion, but they still come up to around 1 in 100 million, which is still fucking ridiculous, considering that there are only, like, 120 million people in the world who play Minecraft.  Not impossible, but laughable that he expects people to believe that. But... I guess they did, lmao. The thing that peeved me the most about the whole thing was the adamant lying lmao. When you look at the situation from the perspective of “dream cheated,” you realize just how fucked up all his Twitter responses, his adamance in streams and that video, and the general mood among his friends is... idk man, it’s just highly fucked.

4) Relationship with stans: look, there are significant numbers of  his fans that take part in Twitter cancelling vendettas, who spread around information about other CCs and their fellow fans that is false and meant to villify them, etc., and he never fucking says anything. It really, really bothers me. There are too many instances to enumerate, but a few that have caught my eye were when Dream stans would attack Techno, prior to their battle and when a Native American woman politely explained why he shouldn’t use Native music, he responded and said he wouldn’t, but tons of stans continued to attack her in her replies for “being so harsh/mean.” Like, he knows that just one word from him will make his fandom follow his beck and call. All it would’ve taken was one fucking word. There are so many fucking people that have been harrassed off of social media platforms because of the hivemind that is dttwt, for christ’s sake.

5) Reddit posts: All of the above were reasons for me to mildly dislike the guy prior to the Reddit posts, but they weren’t really enough to make me stop posting about c!Dream or reblogging fanart or reading DNF fics or watching Manhunts. I kinda just clowned on the guy, answered the occasional ask about the cheating thing or something related, and left it at that. The Reddit posts not only pissed me off for their content, but for the lying, as well. Do you think I fucking cared about him cheating at speedrunning Minecraft, of all games? Fuck no. What I cared about was the adamant lying that went into the whole debacle. Kinda the same with the Reddit posts. I’m one to usually forgive creators who acknowledge past errors, obviously. It is creators who try to brush stuff off, or even worse, create an elaborate lie to cover up allegations, that put me off a fuck ton. This is the reason I could never be comfortable with watching Pewdipie after I realized all the shit he had brushed off, and it’s now the reason I can’t go back to watching Dream. There is so much evidence that points to guilt, including but not limited to: his first move when the slideshow dropped (before posting to Twitter) being deleting as many old Discord messages as he could, the contradiction between him at first denying the account was his at all then changing the story to say he shared it with a friend, the wording and phrasing in the political posts being almost identical to the non-political posts that were clearly him (i.e., the one that explains his demographics perfectly), and the timing of the political posts (some of them being posted mere minutes after posts that were verifiably him, like the picture of Patches to the cats subreddit). People can claim that he’s likely changed, and what this it matter, as long as politics don’t affect his work now, but I can’t believe this fundamental misunderstanding of why bigotry in entertainment matters. I’ve always had a problem with the adoration this fandom has for cishet white men, and the constant criticism of non-cishet, non-white, non-men, but this really feels like the final slap in the fucking face. It’s like everyone truly believes that it doesn’t matter, that his beliefs couldn’t have possibly affected the way he’s treated fellow CCs in his circles or any of the number of people that depend upon Dream, directly and indirectly, for employment/CC clout. It’s like everyone truly believes that political ideology has no effect on the way we perceive, treat, and behave around other people in literally any field, not just politics. I, just... Christ. I don’t really wanna unpack my emotions about this whole thing right now, so I won’t. I’ll just say: I dislike Trump supporters and ex-Trump supporters alike, I dislike conservatives who claim they’re centrists (every fucking guy my age does this, it’s infuriating and makes me want to bash my head into the nearest wall), I dislike people who levy their fans against criticism - even when it’s righteous - and I dislike people who lie about their past actions; Dream fits all those categories, so I dislike him.

[xoxo-ren-xoxo]

smptwt as of 04/07/2020

Right. You asked for it, so you shall recieve. Below the cut is probably one of the most thought-out, in-depth, hopefully unbiased (but probably not) and above all helpful accounts of what the fuck is happening in the smplive and lunch club fandoms right now. I will be covering everything I can- but in the case that I’ve forgotten something, please let me know so I can have a crack at making an update.

Before the cut, I’d just like to link my first three posts about this same topic, covering my thoughts and the events of the last couple of months of drama. It feels so strange that I’ve made so many of these, but as long as they help people, I’ll keep making them.

Part 1: https://crunchy-corvid.tumblr.com/post/619547090403622912/the-cscoopsmptwt-drama

Part 2: https://crunchy-corvid.tumblr.com/post/619746266158661633/more-on-smptwt-long-post

Part 3: https://crunchy-corvid.tumblr.com/post/619886809143476225/smptwt-part-3-030620

I’d like to preface this with a huge thank you to everyone who helped me collect and compile information for this post- and those who helped censor twitter handles and edit screenshots. Without you, this post would have never been made. 

Thank you to everyone on the Cancelled Heaven discord server:  https://discord.gg/emrh2u

Now, onto the thing.

So we’ll start at the beginning with the easiest ‘drama’ (I hate calling it that) to cover. Charlie (slimecicle) tweeted on his second account and it caused a little upset. It’s not much but it feeds into a greater conversation that I think is relevant here: 

We’ll start with Charlie’s original point, then move on to the reply. Obviously, this post was poorly timed, because everyone thought it was about the Cooper (cscoop) drama, when in reality it was just a general comment. I saw a lot of replies along the lines of ‘it’s okay you can @ cscoop’ and similar things. If you’ve read my previous posts you’ll know how I feel about the Cooper situation, but regardless, there are a few reasons why this is a Bad Take/poor interpretation of what Charlie said.

Charlie and Cooper are friends. They haven’t fallen out as far as we know. Charlie is left-wing, and definately doesn’t seem like the kind of person to be friends with someone who is racist/transphobic/sexist etc. So why would he be talking about Cooper in this post? 

Also, Charlie is clearly talking about people who still say slurs, not people who have said slurs in the past. This is how I read it, a jab at streamers and gamers who use ‘dark humour’ to justifty their actions. A lot of people seemed to relate this to Cooper, despite him never trying to justify his use of slurs. The people who did try to justify his actions this way were fans, not the man himself. So again, this post doesn’t relate to Cooper.

On to the reply, which sparks a different conversation all together. While I see where the commenter is coming from, and agree with them to an extent, Charlie is allowed to have his own opinion on the matter. And he is right. Using insulting language against heterosexual people does create a larger divide and doesn’t get anyone on our ‘side’. It just makes us look immature and causes a lot of straight cis people to assume that we hate them. 

On the other hand, I do think that saying things like ‘disgusting hets’ can be a funny joke if you are saying it to your friends who don’t have any issue with it. You probably shouldn’t get into the habit of saying things like that though, just in case you actually hurt someone with your words. Both sides of the argument have pros and cons, so anyone angry at Charlie for his opinion really have no reason to be.

Charlie’s reponse to this comment was reasonable, responsible, and mature, and he is clearly showing that he understands the concerns of his audience. This is all I’ll say about Charlie in this post. Honestly, he’s generally unproblematic and ‘safe’ to keep watching, if you enjoy a very drama-free environment. Have fun!

Now I’ll move on to Ted. He’s made some great points recently about cancel culture which I strongly agree with. Here’s his first tweets:

I don’t have much to add here, this is perfectly valid in my opinion- though I feel like sometimes you can tell a lot about a person by the people they follow. For example, if someone follows Trump, Ben Shapiro, and a bunch of right-wing youtubers, they probably agree with a lot of the things they say. But I think the point Ted is trying to make is that he shouldn’t be harassed about drama his friends fall into. If he isn’t involved, leave him out of it. 

Next we’ll take a look at his tweets on stans, probably sparked by the drama with Carson, which I will be talking about later. 

Again, I have no issue with what Ted is saying here. His idea is a good one, and a fun way to distinguish casual fans from people who create art, content, and (appropriate) fanfiction for the ‘flandom’! 

Basically, how I see it, is that a ‘fan’ is a casual viewer who doesn’t really get involved in the flandom, maybe posting about smplive and/or lunch club occasionally, but not being too involved. A ‘flan’ is someone who interracts a lot, creates art and fiction that respects boundaries, and posts more about the boys than a casual fan does. A ‘stan’ is a stalker-fan, creepy and obsessive, too invested, maybe creates art and fiction that crosses boundaries, and obsessively posts about the boys.

I think this new terminology is really cool and Ted is smart for coming up with it (also, probably hungry when coming up with it too). I think that the term ‘stan’ should be thrown out and used to describe the ‘bad’ side of fandoms. There is a risk that people will hide behind the term ‘flan’ to disguise the fact that they are a stan, but this is still a good step foward. 

But you’re not here to listen to me ramble about Ted or Charlie. You’re here for Carson. So let’s get on with it.

Carson made a series of tweets talking about stans, much like Ted did later. He seemed tired of stans harassing him about his friends, a sentiment shared by Ted (who faced very minimal backlash over his tweets). Here’s what he said:

Which is something I fully agree with. For big content creators like Carson and his friends, stan culture is absolutely insane. Recently they’ve been trying to ‘catch out’ many people who are part of smplive and/or lunch club, most obviously with Cooper and Schlatt but I’ve seen the others getting ‘called out’ too. Carson’s anti-stan stance is well-known in the flandom (yes I am using that word get used to it) so these tweets didn’t surprise me. 

For some reason stans seem to think that if one creator is okay with their behaviour, every other creator is too. This is not the case. Carson was within his full right to say these things about stans.

Obviously the replies got out of hand. People became horribly angry very quickly, and clearly Carson had already had enough because pretty soon he started blocking stan accounts- which only made them more mad.

Of course, there were supporters and anti-stan comments out there too, such as this fun exchange:

But a whole lot of people got angry. Carson was trending for a while, too, after he started blocking stans. Unfortunately some people did get wrongfully blocked, which sucks, sure, but use of an alt account or logging off of twitter can solve that problem (this can also be said for stan accounts. Carson didn’t stop any of them from viewing his content, just blocked them so that he didn’t have to see their tweets).

Carson did this for his own mental health. After a long conversation with older people who have been in fandoms for decades, I can tell you that being at the top is always hell. New threads created about you every day, friends you can’t trust, and people giving you shit for things other people said. I can’t imagine how someone as popular as Carson has dealt with this for so long.

People who were blocked started to claim that they were having panic attacks, that they hyperfixate so they can’t help being obsessive, and that Carson doesn’t care about mental health for these reasons. They said some pretty toxic and manipulative things and a lot of people clearly didn’t know what they were talking about:

First of all, these comments on the Katerino and Fitz situation are honestly disgusting. These people are only proving Carson’s point that stans will be super supportive one second and turn around to hate you the next. To bring up something like this, something completely unrelated and highly personal- knowing Carson will see- is disgraceful. To speculate about a relationship that Carson has explicitly stated he doesn’t want people to speculate about just to try and make a point? Horrible.

A lot of stans seem to have this ‘we made you famous so we dictate how you feel’ mentality, which I hate. Exactly as the reply says, they sound like toxic parents with these words. To think you deserve ‘respect’ from someone after accusing their friends of horrible things and harassing them to the point that they block you is so manipulative and quite frankly cruel.

Again, Carson has the right to block anyone he wants. Creators are not your friends, they are entertainment. If you are making them upset and harassing them, you shouldn’t get mad when they block you. 

Listen. It can be tough, finding out that someone you look up to has blocked you. Yes, I’m sure people had a not-so-nice time with their mental health when it happened to them. But in most cases, they were blocked for a reason. Some people were even literally asking to get blocked and then got mad when they did. But again, no one has been barred from viewing Carson’s content. He simply blocked people who he didn’t want to see in his comments section.

You have freedom of speech, but you don’t have freedom from consequence. If you say something that hurts someone else, you’re not always going to be free from their judgement. 

Carson has been very open about his own struggles with depression and imposter syndrome recently, and people are viewing his actions as... hypocritical? This is flawed logic. Carson blocked stans because they were bad for his mental health, the fact that some claim to have had ‘panic attacks’ as a result is not on him. He has the autonomy to block who he wants to block. 

Wilbur Soot made some comments about the situation, which can be found in this video from 7 minutes 30 seconds in, and goes until 10 minutes and 11 seconds in:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/667971714

What Wilbur says here is completely understandable. He doesn’t have a problem with stans, but doesn’t speak for anyone but himself. Just because one person is okay with something doesn’t mean someone else is, too. 

Also, a lot of people think that it’s okay to hate on someone like Carson or Schlatt, then turn around and stan Wilbur, which is kind of fucked up, because they’re friends in real life. How would you feel if someone was super nice to you, then turned around and harassed your friends?

A lot of people claimed to have ‘hyperfixations’ on Carson or lunch club, which they used as an excuse to be obsessive and creepy. This is bullshit, but someone else explained it a lot better than I could:

And I absolutely agree with this. You cannot use neurodivergence to explain away your creepiness. That’s just offensive to people who do hyperfixate, and leads to even more problems and misunderstandings.

Carson did a stream much later where he talked about all of these things, and boy did that go well (not). Here is a clip of him talking about hyperfixations:

https://m.twitch.tv/clip/SuaveBlushingDotterelBCWarrior

Now, here’s where my support for Carson falters. He should have done more research on what hyperfixations really are before he said things about them. He hurt some people with what he said, and just saying he’s uneducated on the topic isn’t really an excuse.

HOWEVER. Carson was given very little time to research (about 24 hours between his original tweets and his stream) and, more importantly, it is very obvious that the use of the term ‘hyperfixation’ has been warped and manipulated by stans who are misusing the term to excuse their behaviour. Carson probably saw stans using it and assumed it was something synonomous with ‘obsessions’.

What he said was poorly worded, but the point he was making is the same as the (much more researched and informative) tweet above. Anyone getting mad that he is somehow ‘invalidating mental health or autism’ with his comments clearly don’t understand the point he was trying to make in the first place.

And here’s a clip of Connor talking about it, too, as well as defending Carson’s right to block people as he wishes:

https://www.twitch.tv/connoreatspants/clip/YummySlickPlumageSpicyBoy

https://www.twitch.tv/connoreatspants/clip/JazzySpotlessMelonMoreCowbell

What he said here is completely valid, a little poorly worded in the same way as Carson’s statement, but overall something I stand behind.

Some people are claiming that Carson is being manipulative or ‘gaslighting’ fans and stans:

Carson is not against fans who create cool stuff for him and his friends. He is against the people who harass him, accuse his friends of horrible things, and try to look for every little thing they’ve said and done wrong. This is what he said, and people got mad at him for it, and so he blocked them. That is it. There is no gaslighting. There is no manipulation. I’ve seen much more manipulative things coming from the stans’ side of things.

Now we move on to Noah’s reply to Carson’s tweet. Which, yes, caused a whole new can of worms to be opened.

Now, for those like me who have trouble figuring out Noah’s way of speaking, let me translate: ‘stans are insecure people who start to feel entitled because they’ve started to view a streamer they like as a friend/someone who shares their pain.’ 

For those of you who don’t know, this is what ‘don’t negotiate with terrorists’ means:

However, almost predictably, stans saw the word ‘terrorist’ and lost their goddamn minds. That, coupled with the complicated phrasing of Noah’s words, caused a lot of stans to freak out.

This conversation is full of Bad Takes, but my main issue is that they are trying to diagnose Noah with an actual mental illness. That is not only offensive to people who have that illness (especially calling him ‘insane’ in the same sentence, as well as implying that having said illness makes you a bad person) but is also highly hypocritical since so many stans claimed to all be neurodivergent themselves. 

Also, 90% of his fans aren’t stans. They’re mostly fans or flans. You are a loud minority. You aren’t as powerful as you think you are. Noah even started to retweet hate comments, that’s how few shits he gave. He also shows that he is concerned about people making things up about him, which is understandable.

Plus he outright said that stans are not fans of him, which in most cases, they’re not. Noah’s content isn’t as widely watched as some of his friends’ stuff, and a lot of stans don’t watch his streams.

But anyway, here’s one good take I saw floating around:

After this, before his stream, Carson deleted his original tweets and spent some time with his family, which was a sensible and mature thing to do at this point. 

During Carson’s stream, someone notified him that his ‘fans’ had started to doxx stans. Here is his reaction:

https://m.twitch.tv/callmecarsonlive/clip/SpicySassyGerbilArgieB8

A lot of people got mad that he didn’t do more to stop the doxxings, but I want to raise the question: what was he supposed to do? He can’t control his ‘fans’ (another breed of stans who don’t call themselves stans were doing the doxxings, to be honest) and he said not to do it. He was streaming, he didn’t know how serious it was or even if it was true, at that moment, what was he supposed to do?

It did get serious. People I know were doxxed. Anyone posting anything (positive or negative) about lunch club, smplive, and Carson were in danger. It was not fake like some people claimed. The twt handles in this post are blurred out because of the doxxing threats. I am making this post at my own risk, but I do feel that tumblr is safer than twitter at the moment.

This being said, it is in no way Carson’s fault how out of hand this has become. He has been against doxxing in the past and his sentiments haven’t changed. He has said more about the doxxings in replies to tweets such as this one:

Also, here’s what the mods on Carson’s discord server had to say about the situation. They’ve clearly talked about this with Carson, and are strongly against anyone who is doxxing these people (especially since a lot of the people being doxxed are minors).

A similar sentiment was shared on Ted’s discord server:

Here is what ItsAsaii had to say:

So that’s basically where everything stands right now. If you want an even fuller update on everything, check out Carson’s stream ‘afternoon fellas and fellettes’ where he talks about everything.

Here’s the last tweets I have from Carson regarding the whole situation:

And I agree fully with what he has said. And again, Carson doesn’t owe stans anything. Just like what was said here, he had subs and fans before he had stans, they did not ‘make’ him, and they cannot control him.

This is all I have to say, for now. If I have missed anything or you’d like me to cover anything else, please let me know. If I have hugely missed the mark and said something super wrong/offensive, let me know. If you’d like me to talk about a streamer or youtuber not related to lunch club, throw me a DM or an ask and I’ll try to compile some things, even if I don’t watch their content or know who they are.

If you’d like up-to-date information about drama in smptwt, streamers, and youtubers, join the Cancelled Heaven discord server- which I linked at the start of the post. 

I thank you all for reading, and suggest that you reblog this so that as many people as possible can see it. If you want to risk it, go ahead and link this post in a tweet or something, but please do be careful. 

For some ‘extra reading’ (watching) I highly recommend Contrapoints’ video on cancel culture: https://youtu.be/OjMPJVmXxV8

And Philosophy Tube’s video on artists and fandoms, there’s some really insightful things about parasocial relationships: https://youtu.be/3IG0Y63LkDM

Lots of love, and have a great day <3

[prorevenge]

Pretend to be a "good guy" and exploit my buddy? Let me show you how to REALLY be an evil villain!

Hello there and welcome to a tale of (what I hope is at least somewhat) pro revenge. Be forewarned, it's a bit long.

Before I start, I would like to point out that this story did not take place in the real world, but instead took place in the online world of the space MMORPG called Eve Online. For those unfamiliar with it, it's a game where you fly around space with ships of varying sized (the largest up to 20km's) and basically blow shit up, or build stuff. It's one of the truest sandbox games out there.

​Eve Online however, is notorious for being both extremely difficult, and VERY unforgiving. Certain practices that are straight out banned in other games, are not only allowed, but actively encouraged by the developers. Things such as scams, theft, espionage on a massive scale,... You name it, as long as it's done with the ingame mechanics, it's allowed and it's been done by a LOT of people.

Also, if a ship is destroyed, it's gone, poof, and you have to buy a completely new one.

Enter, myself. I was never a good guy, I was one of the worst of the worst, doing everything, using every dirtiest trick in the book, just to get the advantage and win fights, steal money, scam people. I would purposely look for defenseless corporations (the clan system in Eve) and then extort money from them. If they refused, I'd declare war on them and hunt them down mercilessly.

So you might be thinking, the pro-revenge was executed on myself? Well, sorry to disappoint, but no. Plenty of people have tried, all have failed.

No, this story is about a friend of mine that wanted to play the game. The problem was, he wasn't an evil bastard like I was and only wanted to build stuff peacefully. So I gave him some cash, advice, and left my calling card for when he ever got in trouble.

One of the pieces of advice I gave him, was to hook up with a decent corporation. They'd be able to help him further with the industrial side of the game (I know most of it, but not some of the finer details).

And here is where things went wrong. You see, in Eve, there's 2 things that I really dislike. The first is people that fuck over true friends, and the second is sleazy corporate CEO's (corporation leaders) that mercilessly exploit new players to do mindless drone work for them, while they stuff all the profits into their pockets.

Guess which type of CEO my friend managed to get himself involved with...

So after I was contacted by him, because he started to smell something fishy, he explained the situation and I was quickly able to verify that my buddy was not only selling his minerals to his CEO at WAAAAY under market price, the CEO was actually using those minerals to build capital ships (some of the biggest ships in the game), which he then sold on for a premium, raking in a massive amount of profit and not sharing any of it with his "subjects/slaves".

Consider my pet peeved...

I might be a bad guy, but at least I don't pretend to be a good guy while ruthlessly exploiting others and force them to do mindless work. I just straight up take everything that isn't bolted to the floor and take off.

So I went into evil genius mode and started planning. I started by telling my buddy to start putting in extra effort (keep in mind, he was thinking of just leaving that corporation at the time) and try and work himself into a position of power.

At the same time, I used a few of my many "alts" (second, third,... accounts with characters, I had 8 or so when I quit) to infiltrate his corporation. One of them was my own "industrial" character that had basic manufacturing skills, but an insane library of blueprints (the stuff you use to build stuff with, spoiler, they were all stolen at one time).

I used this character to get access to the corporation's POS-es (Player Owned Structure), that they were using to research their capital blueprints, using the excuse that I'd also like some time on there to research my own blueprints. After 3 days, I had the access I needed and stole everything. Their entire POS infrastructure and all of their blueprints that were there at the time. Totaling some 15 Billion isk (the ingame credit). Converted to real money at the time, it came to about 500 dollars in damage. (To put the 15 billion into perspective, that is the money that would, at the time, buy you 100 fully equipped battleships, just about).

However, I wasn't done yet. There was a reason I had infiltrated multiple characters, and several more were present as sleeper agents. Being a bit active, but not much, just enough to stay in the corporation. Meanwhile, my buddy was hard at work at proving himself to the corp. The CEO even complimented him publicly for his "new-found" vigor. I suppose a 7.5 billion paycheck will do that to you. He eventually managed to get himself promoted to "director", as one of the officers under the CEO.

I actually held off on phase 2 of my plan for well over a year and a half, in order to let the CEO recover a bit from the blow he'd been given. All this was taking place around the time when CCP (the developers) were introducing the replacement structures for POS-es, namely, citadels. I actually got lucky with my theft since not a month after I stole their research POS, CCP introduced the replacement structure (Engineering Complexes). Naturally, as soon as they had put down their first citadel, I struck again. This time on my main character that is a notorious racketeer.

I gave them an ultimatum to pay me 2 billion, or I would commence a war and destroy their citadel. They refused.

Naturally, it ended up in them being chased across half the cluster and dying in droves. They got desperate as I was finding them no matter where they went, even in the remotest of corners. This was because I had activated one of my sleepers a month before I had declared war. Using this character, I was aware of the location of every single member out in space, and I had a literal live feed on hostile comms.

That said, I did make it a point to hunt down the CEO whenever I got the opportunity, which led to him losing quite a few expensive ships.

Other groups had smelled the blood in the water though, and soon enough there were multiple incoming wars onto the corporation, which led to me getting an opportunity that I simply couldn't resist.

Earlier, I had given the CEO the idea for a fit (basically the gear you put on the ship) for a very expensive ship (a Vindicator if you're wondering). And I'd purposely made it VERY expensive with high end gear, with the hope that he'd be dumb enough to go ahead and just buy it to then use it against me (keep in mind, he had a habit of using his credit card to buy plex in order to sell that and get ingame money).

The bait was too juicy, and he took it, hook, line and sinker. Except there was one teensy tiny issue.

You see, in order to buy the ship, he'd gone to one of the main market hubs (Amarr) to buy the ship for the best prices, except there were guys from another war right there, waiting for him to undock from the station so they could blow him up (they may or may not have been friends of mine and they may or may not have received a tip).

So I jumped on the opportunity and used my sleeper agent to convince the guy, to trade his ship to one of my other characters, so I could transport it to his home base.

5 minutes later, and I was the proud owner of a shiny new Vindicator worth in excess of 2.5 billion.

Naturally, this burned my spy, but at the time, I couldn't care less, I had more.

Eventually, the war ended with their station being destroyed, multiple billions of ships destroyed (he actually bought a second Vindicator, and lost it against me), a 2.5 billion isk ship stolen and their corporation in tatters.

I wasn't done yet.

You see, I don't toy with my food, when I can, I go straight for the jugular.The first time around, I had to wait to execute my plan because my friend wasn't in a position of power yet. But now he was.

Using YET another one of my characters (no sleeper agent this time), I contacted the CEO and proposed a deal. I pretended to be a businessman and proposed to invest in his corporation due to the promise I saw in him.

I lured him in with the promise that I had 2 moons ready for mining (they had literally just released those structures and the possibility to use them in high security space) and that I would provide the infrastructure and ownership, and they could use it for a fixed percentage of their profits (the moons themselves being quite valuable, one single haul being upwards of 800 million). That, and a majority stake in corporate shares, through which the profits would be paid out. Naturally, the CEO didn't want to give up corporate control (I had been counting on it from the beginning), but we were able to arrange it so that I would receive 40% of the corporate shares, with both he and his 2 directors each taking 20%. That way they would still be in control of the corporation, but I'd be able to exert some pressure on them (in reality, shares are actually 100% useless if you don't have a majority control).

However, my buddy was a director, and as such, we did have a majority stake in their corporation.

As soon we knew the other director was going away for an extended weekend off-grid and the CEO logged off, my friend used his shares and ran for CEO.

Both my friend and I voted for him to win, and nothing could stop us. By the time the CEO got back online, it was too late. He'd been reduced to a grunt and was left to see as we emptied the corporate hangars from everything he'd put in there (a LOT of stuff, at least 20 billion worth).

We then kicked both him and the other director, and anyone else that was loyal to him.

Eventually, under the guidance of my friend, the corp was quite successful and they even decided to just outright buy my moon mining installations. Last I heard, they put up some more and are steadily growing.

I've since hung up my coat however and "won" Eve so to say.

But it's still one of my best stories from my time there.

(source) (story by Nunu_Dagobah)

[skyfallofcybertron-blog]

Transformers: Skyfall. Bonus Chapter: There’s a Light That Never Goes Out

He didn’t witness it. After their mission; Night Glide and Skyfall went their separate ways. He had to report to Thundercracker. Skyfall had to go and upload the files she stole into to the ship’s computer for decryption. It was standard procedure. It should have been simple.

On the commanding deck; the young Seeker’s meeting was interrupted by a panicking Vechicon drone. One stationed in the labs. Night Glide didn’t need a further explanation and, luckily, the member of Megatron’s top commanding trine he was speaking to was the sensible one. Thundercracker excused him to go to the medical bay.

The Convent’s medic, Echo, hung by the ceiling; working away quickly by the time Night Glide got there. Echo was an incredibly small two-wheeler. So, to make her medical skill set useful to patch up bigger sized bots; the engineering team aboard the ship constructed her a harness so she could be suspended over the injured. Working completely obstructed above all those who entered her base of operations.

However, even Echo’s small servos where nothing compared to the patient she was working on. Skyfall layed on her side. Wires attached to the Minicon’s spinal strut criss-crossed all across the medical berth she was nestled in as she struggled for every intake.

‘She just collapsed.’ The Vechicon that reported her explained, ‘She just hooked herself up for the download and collapsed.’

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the Autobots’ files had implanted a virus into Night Glide’s small Deployer.

He ghosted a servo over Skyfall’s helm only to be surprised by not only the external damage done to it when she fell, but the extreme heat that was coming off her plating. Night Glide pulled his servo back quickly. His talons fidget slightly. Night Glide’s processors was trying to come to grips with the thing on the berth was in fact his partner.

“Report.” He broke the silence in the chamber.

Echo turned from her screen that she was working on to swivel in front of her commanding officer. The femme lacked a voice box. It was damaged in the Exodus. However, her visor screen lit up with the medical report as requested.

Virus: Trojan. Disguised as Autobot base schematics. Activation upon log-in to Decepticon networks.

Function seems to target Decepticon Deployers to eliminate spies within the system.

Virus attacking neural net.

Symptoms: Fever, respiratory impairment, lack of response, fainting and seizure. Continuing observation.

Unrelated symptoms: Helm denting, minor lacerations do to fall. Damage stabilized. Will repair once virus is neutralized.

Working on Antivirus: 15% completion. Awaiting more tests.

Night Glide could feel his denta grind just reading Echo’s report. He hissed at the little medic.

“Speed it up.”

Echo tilted her helm. The diagnostic disappeared. Replacing it was a single, deep red optic. The Seeker glared at the video of Shockwave.

“Speeding up the process is illogical. The Minicon is the first to contract this virus. Further studies must take place to insure the safety of Decepticon spies.”

Night Glide could feel his energon boil up through his tubing. Shockwave made a habit of only referring to Skyfall as ‘Minicon’. Simply because, he didn’t she her as anything else, but a disposable waste product. Of course, Shockwave never had the pleasure of actually spending time with her. Getting to know here. Making her laugh.

The Seeker’s wings twitched.

“And risk having my communications officer die?!” Night Glide spat.

“The Convent is under Thundercracker’s command, is it not?”

“Skyfall is an important member of this crew and I am not going to stand idly by just so you can use her as a lab animal-”

“You’re attachment to the Minicon is irrational. You’re anger is also misguided. If the Autobots are planning to use this virus in a wide scale attack; having data on how it operates and how to nullify it is the best course of action. The Minicon will provide that data. Also, if you are insistent on overstepping your rank; I will pull mine.”

The optic barely moved as it addressed the medic, “Echo, continue your work. Upload all of your findings to my personal storage. I will continue my work from here.”

Shockwave ended the call. Night Glide wanted to fling the closest object across the room.

Echo’s screen flickered once again.

(ง •̀_•́)ง

The Seeker felt the slimmest smile on his face. The Convent was a ship filled with the Decepticons that Megatron didn’t want. Cast-offs of the greater Decepticon good. In a way, they all looked out for each other. Night Glide was happy for the allies he had found himself with.

Deep down, he knew that Echo was going to sped up the process as fast as she could. Without getting caught by Cybertron’s top scientist.

The medic swiveled back towards Skyfall; hooking in a cooling unit to at least stabilize her. Judging by the report Echo just gave, Skyfall had burnt through her own supply of coolant. Night Glide caught himself subconsciously running the base of his thumb along the tips of his digits upon the memory of feeling the radiation off the femme’s body. He frowned softly at this.

“Echo.”

The medic’s screen turned to face him, displaying a question mark.

“Keep me post.”

She nodded.

He paused for a moment and added, “Do not lose her.”

Echo’s screen flashed one more time.

(ง •ૅ౪•᷄)ว

***

He wasn’t a social butterfly by any account. Quite the opposite really. Unlike most of this Seeker kin, Night Glide didn’t find keeping friends much of a use. He lacked a Trine. Something that the rest of the Seekers mocked him for. However, in solitude he found himself at peace. An understanding of himself that the others never did.

Then, suddenly, Skyfall entered his life like a blazing comet.

At first he didn’t understand her. She was fussy; terrified of everything around her. The full grown Minicon clung to his plating like a panicked sparkling more often than not. She cried all the time too. Often she was huddled up in her alt. mode., ready to jet off as soon as somebot even came close to intaking near her direction. Skyfall also, at first, could barely hold the gun she was given; let alone shoot it an a reasonable target.

She was a civilian. Barely.

Night Glide couldn’t fathom why the higher command would steal her to begin with and to be completely honest, he hated her. In the beginning at least. He was civil about it; allowing her to make a fool out of herself and keeping a good arm’s length from her at all times. No need to stoop to her level when he didn’t need to be.

Skyfall was hardly the partner he was promised when they said they had found a Deployer for him. If Night Glide was honest with himself, he expected someone like Ravage. Sleek. Elegant. Knew how to handle itself.

What he had was Skyfall.

He remembered one night, before they got their transfor to the warship, he caught her singing. It was almost unhearable. Too light in voice and too heavily buried under the collective snores of 20 young Seekers. Yet, Night Glide’s audios picked up the sounds of a Vosian lullaby that he had long since buried in his memory. Along with the rest of his childhood.

“I’m sorry…” She murmured.

The little femme had chosen to stare at one tiny bolt on the floor. Skyfall lived under his berth. Probably the safest place for her not to crushed under the excited heels of Seekers. Dim maroon optics barely lit up her face in the darkness of the barracks. The other Seekers there barely notice her little voice that deep into recharge.

“...I’m sorry…”

Night Glide simply watched her from his berth. She dipped out of sight. Hiding once again in the safety of her hold. The Seeker rolled onto his back. His optics found a seam in the wall and he traced a claw through it.

“...Who taught you Vosian?” He asked quietly.

It was a moment before he got a reply, “...I did…”

“You learned it yourself?”

“I know. I’m not- wasn't allowed.” Skyfall was quick to lower herself even more, “I went to school- I was paid to- Calloway…” She paused and somehow her voice was even smaller, “I can stop…”

The dorm filled up once again with snoring; Skyfall seeming deciding for the two of them not to continue.

Night Glide frowned. He didn't like the silence now. The Seeker continued to stare at the ceiling. Vos now seemed so far away.

“Keep singing…” He asked, “You sound like home…”

Skyfall remained silent for a moment. Night Glide could hear her breathe beneath the frame of his berth. The Seeker could practically hear her swallow as she took a deep breath and picked up in the song where she had stopped.

The wilting lullaby raise up through the thick, stuffy air of the dorm. Night Glide continued to look up at the ceiling; trying to picture Vos’ towers through the shadows of his wingmates.

The proud Seeker wasn't ready to accept that he was homesick.

He still wasn't. Eons later. Though, his home wasn’t even crystalline towers anymore. It wasn’t the pale blue skies. Nor was it The Convent. Or even Cybertron, if he was honest with himself. No, home to Night Glide shifted to a small femme clinging to life in the medical bay.

When he returned to check on Echo’s progress, the femme was wrapping Skyfall up in an insulator blanket. Echo had striped Skyfall down to her protoform in what he could only assume was to keep her cool. Skyfall, herself, didn’t have much protoform to began with. Most of it encased her spark chamber. While her limbs were just basic framework and bare wires. A by product of being ‘low quality’.

“How is she?” Night Glide dared to ask.

Echo tilted her helm towards him; gathering the swaddled Skyfall in her arms.

Status: Unconscious, but stable. Last seizure reported: 2 hours ago. Overheating is still an issue, but fever as leveled.

Working on Antivirus: 87% completion. Awaiting final test results and Shockwave’s approval on formula.

Skyfall is very strong.

The Seeker let go of the intake he was holding. With a weak smile; he nodded in agreement.

“Good work, Echo…”

(๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

The medic carefully transformed Skyfall’s tiny form into his arms. It was only in that moment when Night Glide really realized how fragile Skyfall was. She easily could stand in the palm of his servo, but seeing her all bundled up like this only reminded Night Glide of a freshly ignited sparkling.

Echo tilted her helm once more and added to her text.

Shockwave is expected to call in 21 minutes.

Requesting: Energon break?

“Yes, of course. You’ve done more than enough. I’ll COMM. you if he calls early.”

Shockwave never calls early.

“True.” Night Glide chuckled lightly. A rarity, but he was in much better spirits now that he knew that his partner wasn’t going to be murdered by an Autobot virus. Echo was the best medic he could have ever asked for. “Go have supper.”

✲ﾟ｡.(✿╹◡╹)ﾉ☆.｡₀:*ﾟ✲ﾟ*:₀｡

Echo’s harness lowered her to the floor; transforming and pulling away as her peds swung around. They landed on the floor with a muted ‘thud’. The tires on her heels keeping her steps light. Again, Night Glide was reminded that he was a giant among grounders. Echo’s small motorcycle frame made her out to be about half his height. Not that anyone would ever notice with her strung up most of the time.

The medic gave Night Glide a thumbs up, before disappearing down the darken halls of The Convent. Night Glide felt his wings slowly sag down his back. All that tension and the automatic Seeker provado that was drilled into him since his sparking. He was exhausted. In more ways than one.

He sighed. Sitting on the edge of the medical berth. He cradled Skyfall close. He watched his partner’s small spark chamber rise and fall. Her breathing was much better than before. He was thankful for that. It pained the Seeker. Every Seeker valued the movement of air; be it on their wings or in their lungs.

Night Glide stroked the back of Skyfall’s head as it lulled to one side; nuzzling into his cool chest plates. Night Glide felt his spark swell. She was so tiny. Just a toy to most that had seen her. Yet, she was the most Cybertronian creature he had ever met; kind and compassionate. Even through this war.

And she was his. He was honored to have been paired with her.

Now, he just needed to wait until she was awake for him to tell her that.

[gaiatheorist]

Improvising, and unpaid labour.

Half past four in the morning, I’m working around how to make a pie and a curry at the same time, with my ‘limited capacity’. I’m also factoring in energy costs, the impact of processes on end-products, and how to maximise my use of the ‘dead’ time between stages. My disabilities have an impact on my available functional hours, the hyper-vigilance that comes with my PTSD perversely helps me to portion-out my productivity. (Thanks, Mother, you didn’t teach me how to cook, or clean, or budget, but some other things you didn’t do mean that I can.)

Oliver Burkeman in this morning’s Guardian, is using the term ‘shadow work’. Most of us have always acknowledged that we have to do our own cooking, household chores and such. The category on my PIP award that scored the highest number of ‘points’ was ‘preparing and cooking food’. In reality, I actually find some of the other descriptor-categories more difficult, dangerous, and draining, but I was able to list more adaptations to my food-processing practices. If you don’t eat, you die. (Yes, that’s dramatic, it would take weeks to starve to death. If I miss too many meals, the blood sugar dip impacts on my background fatigue. I forget to turn the heating on, or take painkillers on schedule, and there’s that foggy-fugue state, where I’ll just stare at the phone until it stops ringing. I also sleep too much, not to escape the hunger-pangs, I don’t feel those, but because my body realises I have no energy, and effectively CTRL/ALT/DEL shuts me down.) 

‘Shadow work’ takes on a different meaning when there’s a disability to factor in. It’s not just the “I’ve put it in the bag, you beepy bastard!” annoyance at the self-scan checkout, or remembering dozens of passwords for online utility billing and such, it’s varying degrees of everything. 

Necessity is the mother of invention. I had a short discussion with an acquaintance earlier this week, he’s damaged his ankle, and has a cast and crutches for a minimum of nine weeks. This is the first week, and he’s finding a huge number of basic tasks difficult. I’ve actually offered to go to his house and help out during this initial adjustment phase. By week four, he’ll be managing everything much more easily, and by week six, he’ll quite possibly be finding uses for the crutches that the NHS wouldn’t like endorsing. It’s what people do, we improvise and adapt. That particular chap ‘only’ has nine weeks of this, but it’s still a useful analogy. Cast-and-crutches, or one arm in a sling, or your car off the road, after the initial “Well, this is an absolute disaster.”, you start to work around things. 

I’m looking at the idea of ‘shadow work’ from multiple angles. Head-on, the increase in automation of some previously-human employment will flood the labour market with the people who used to do a job that a machine does now, that’s increased competition for jobs, which will be a concern for me when I’m fit-for-work. Historically, I objected to part of my previous job becoming automated, which was at odds with my principles, and odd in that I’d streamlined another part of my job, to need as little human-input as possible. The future is computers, though, and it’s none of my business how that all-singing-all-dancing software actually works in practice. 

Recently, I’ve been entangled in doing shadow work for DWP, ‘Sleeping with the enemy’ to provide information that they already have, for their fancy new system. (Pride goes before a fall, but I’m probably using it more effectively than the staff paid to use it, they could have cut a significant number of person-hours if they’d followed my initial straightforward suggestion, instead of their convoluted one. They’re making part of my payment manually while I chase the ex to change the tenancy agreement, instead of a 30-second check with HMRC. They’re also making me ill, boo-hoo, poor me.) I saw a quote, I can’t remember the source, someone within DWP stating that claimants weren’t allocated any payments during the first week of a claim, because “The claim process won’t give people time to write a CV.” Furious, me? (I’m always furious, frontal lobe brain injury.) 

Despite peripheral issues in an imminent brain-scan, and providing evidence to student finance, I managed to fill in the forms, and find the additional evidence that was behind the ‘beware of the tiger’ tab. (Wasted trip to the cash-point, thanks to Kenneth on the help-line, who’d told me to take an advice-slip issued on the day, when what the system actually asked for was two months of bank statements.) Luckily for all concerned, the new work coach barely glanced at the bank statements, I was fully expecting the Spanish Inquisition on the plethora of Amazon purchases after the PIP money went into my account. Mostly disability-aids for ‘normal’ household tasks, and repairing/replacing things I hadn’t been able to do while I was living on fresh air and food bank parcels as it goes, but I’d overheard enough “You don’t NEED Sky Sports, cancel it.” interviews to know there was the potential for them to pick through the statement. 

I’d filled in the forms, secured the requested evidence, and moved onto the next task on the ‘to-do’ menu, because it was there. “Oh, you already have a CV uploaded, that’s great!” and “Did you write these? They’re excellent.” I’d done my work coach’s job for her, and I’d done it very, very well. (Arya Stark “You want to watch that one.” and such. That’s not a threat, it’s a reference to the conversation my previous work coach probably thought I couldn’t hear, “She will already have done it.”) *Liam Neeson voice over* “I am a nightmare.” It’s the paranoia that keeps me three steps ahead, I know I’ll have days when I’m less functional, so I ‘bank’ tasks before they’re due, to avoid missing deadlines, I did that before the disability, to mitigate against working hours lost to migraines, and ensure I never left colleagues in the s*it if I was absent. Now, with ‘please log in today’ emails pinging to my phone all over the place, that anxiety is compounded, my work coach has confirmed that my claim won’t be ‘stopped’ if I don’t respond same-day, and noted a mitigation/reasonable adjustment that I’m less functional later in the day, but there’s still that anxiety about missing a computer-generated ‘task.’ and incurring a sanction. My phone battery is wearing down faster because I’m repeatedly logging into my email, in case one has come through while I’ve been in a signal dead-spot. Shadow-work, the coach probably ‘should’ have made me an appointment in a month to review my Claimant Commitment, and another a month after that to write a CV. It’s done, she doesn’t ‘need’ to see me again until January, except she will, because I’ll have to produce a copy of the tenancy agreement once the ex sorts it out. 

That’s not the only shadow-work I’ve done for DWP. There was the pointless ‘Work Capability Assessment’, and the horrendous PIP process as well. Almost half of women taken through the WCA process have attempted suicide. I know I contemplated it once or twice, and that’s a major admission coming from me. (I don’t know why that statistic only focused on women, unless it’s because men are more likely to complete suicide, due to choosing different methods, that’s a different scenario, ending-all as opposed to reaching that point, and still having to live through it.) 70% of PIP applications that are initially declined are accepted at Tribunal. It took me 17 months, from applying for PIP this time, to having my ‘award’ granted at Tribunal, and it wasn’t 17 months of sitting on my behind just waiting for it to happen. There are agencies and individuals who can assist with WCA and PIP processes, but they’re stretched too thin to cover everyone who needs help, and I’m a bugger for prioritising the needs of others over my own. (I’m also something of a control freak, I’m very difficult to work with when I perceive others working inefficiently, my “Oh, you’re making a right mess of that, give it here!” streak is strong.) During the UC/WCA/PIP process, I was over-stretching myself, and I became very frayed as a result. I was over-stretched in part because I should have asked for help sooner, and in part because when I did ask for help, it was too stretched and fragmented to be of any use. A social prescribing case-worker, a social worker, a welfare rights advocate, and two ladies from Citizens Advice. Little old brain damaged me, sitting in the middle of this fragile web of support, asking one party not to duplicate work being done by another, to save them work-load, and trying not to bang my head on the desk and say “It would be easier if you did it *this* way.”   

Shadow-work. Providing the same medical evidence to two different parts of DWP. “Rolling six benefits into one”, my arse, the ‘disability’ part is still separate from the ‘unemployment’ part, I have an award of PIP for three years, which is completely distinct from the one year notice of ‘limited capacity for work’. Both departments have exactly the same evidence on me, I know, because I photocopied the files myself. (At 10p a page, I’ll have you know.) 

The PIP process, and the WCA strand not only involved a hell of a load of shadow-work in terms of admin and coordination from me, they also cast light, and, paradoxically, shadow on my improvisations. Back to the crutches/cast analogy, you look at where you are, and where you need to be, and you figure out whether you can get there. You fall over a bit, and adjust your methods to avoid falling over again. Unless you can’t get up, and the police end up breaking in when the neighbours report the flies, and the smell. There are hundreds, or thousands of things I can’t do ‘normally’ any more, so I’ve had to make my own ‘reasonable adjustments’. (Some of them are bizarre, some are profoundly maladaptive, but they get me through most days without major incident.) Those improvisations, the additional shadow-load that’s on me every single day of my life, for functions that used to be so simple they required no conscious processing are a Very Bad Thing when it comes to PIP and WCA ‘assessors.’ “You said you had difficulties with x, I have decided that you can x.” over and over again. I didn’t say I “couldn’t”, I said I have difficulties, but some bloke in an office somewhere can ‘decide that I can.’, and that’s supposed to be case-closed. At that point, I was supposed to ‘just get on with it’, to limp around my various disabilities as best I could, because a decision had been made that I wasn’t disabled enough. Physically, I can’t do that, but, more importantly in my twisted little head, emotionally, intellectually, and socially I can’t do it, without my deficits placing myself or others at risk of significant harm. If I have a bad fall, or a cognitive lapse, not only is my life at risk, but I could place others at risk when they have to fish me out of whatever mess I’ve landed myself in. I won’t do that.   

Another layer of shadow-work for DWP, painfully describing my improvisations in more detail. That part alone is enough to deter some people, it’s demeaning to have to explain, yet again, how you get on and off the toilet without assistance from another person. (Also the PIP system keeps the descriptor activities the same, but alters the qualifying thresholds without telling anyone. “Can you walk 200m?” has somehow morphed into some ambivalence about being able to move that distance, regardless of how long it takes, how difficult or painful it is, or what aids or adaptations are needed. They haven’t so much ‘shifted the goalposts’ as changed the game altogether.) I knew from the outset that the ‘computer says no’ would be the outcome, that the ‘assessors’ wouldn’t see the additional adjustments I have to make every day, they’d just bounce back that I ‘can’ complete all of the descriptors. Not repeatedly, reliably, or within a reasonable time-frame, though, and only with a massive degree of improvisation, which is physically and mentally draining, compounding the fatigue-element of my condition. (Shuddering at the thought of ‘home help’ assisting me with washing, dressing, or toileting, but that’s the PTSD, and PIP claims only deal with your most-recent condition, not anything underlying that compounds it, bizarre system.) 

You’re damned if you do improvise, because DWP/PIP will tick the ‘can’ box, the ‘fit for work’ box. You’re damned if you don’t, because some faceless decision-maker will decide you’re just not trying hard enough. What about the people that can’t improvise? The ones who are already stretched to the limits of their functional capacity? Have they tried just not being disabled/depressed/dependent? 

“Making work pay.” is a cute tag-line, but underneath it is the reality that vulnerable and disabled people are being churned through a workhouse that doesn’t work. We’re inputting our own admin. I have some cognitive issues, but nowhere near as high a level as some people. I have some visual issues, and my left hand doesn’t work properly, reading and typing are time-intensive, and painful, but I ‘can’ do it for a narrow window, given plenty of screen-breaks, some people can’t. It’s not hyperbole at all to say that this government has blood on its hands, it does, and it will have more to come while these systems are in place. People will fall through the gaps in the system, which will suit statistics, because ‘unemployment figures are falling.’ People. People are falling, into a shadow-realm of not being counted as ‘anything’. Some people’s improvisations to deal with that will be brutal. Domestic violence will increase when the ‘dole money’ suddenly stops going into bank accounts. Street robberies and burglaries will increase when people run out of their own things to sell. Referrals to social care and food banks will continue to increase. Evictions will increase, placing additional strain on local authorities to provide emergency accommodation, and I seriously doubt that people in emergency accommodation will be able to satisfy the conditionality of checking their online account for ‘to-do’ actions. Two-for-one sanctions there, I wonder if there are bonuses for that? 

This isn’t working, I genuinely don’t believe it was ever meant to, I think that the intent all along was for it to be so complex and intensive that people would just opt-out. All well and good if that opt-out is into gainful employment, some of the opt-outs will be of a more permanent nature, and the government will still have to allocate resources to deal with the very long shadows this shadow-work will create.

[hmollik]

A Beginners Guide To Binance Exchange 2019

Binance Exchange 2019 Introduction

Binance is a global cryptocurrency exchange that provides a platform for trading for more than 100 different types of cryptocurrencies.

Since early 2018, Binance is considered as one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world in terms of the trading volume.

Binance no longer just a single exchange platform, it has released a lot of updates madee some announcements and has some new offerings in the past year. So here are some of them.

Binance Exchange 2019 Platform

First off for those of you who are in the US it’s been recently announced that Binance has updated their terms of use and stated that Binance is unable to provide services to any US person.

Effective September 12th on 2019, users are not in accordance with Binance’s terms of use.

They will continue to have access to their wallets and funds but no longer able to trade or deposit on Binance.com.

However, Binance Exchange 2019 has also announced that it is formally expanding to the US by a dedicated platform which will be Binance.us.

For those of you either in the UK or Europe, it’s worth mentioning that there’s a new version of Binance which is Binance Jersey or Binance.je. This is where you can buy Bitcoin or Ethereum with GBP or euros.

They also do have Binance Uganda available as well. What I’ll do is I’ll put in a summary below for guidance.

Working in partnership with spinouts is launching a dollar back to the stable coin. The upcoming stable coin which is dubbed as Binance USD will be pegged one to one with the US dollar.

They have also received the blessing from the New York Department of Financial Services.

When it’s launched, verified PAC source customers will be able to purchase B USD tokens directly through the company’s wallet using either U.S. dollars or PACs, which is their own stable coin.

Binance users will also be able to trade USD for bitcoin, Binance Quinn or exile him.

Binance Exchange 2019 App

There is now a Binance mobile app so it allows you to trade anywhere from the palm of your hand and it is available to download from the App Store and from Google Play.

But let’s take a look around Binance.com. So obviously you have the exchange but you also have some other different offerings that are available here now.

So one of those things is you have the academy. So the Academy is a great way for educating yourself on all things crypto and you can see here they have some playlists, some quizzes and other information that you can learn from them. They also have their own wallet.

No, I personally haven’t used this and I don’t have experience with it. Just make sure that whenever you’re going for a new wallet then do your due diligence with those.

Binance Exchange Trading Volume

Now just heading back to Binance.com. They also have this section here called lending. In late August and 2019, Binance launched its own lending platform on a subscription-based service, which was available kind of on a first come first serve basis.

It sold out really quickly, is a value-added service to Binance users who hold idle digital assets.

What it does it allows for Binance Exchange 2019 users to grow their funds by earning interest income for lending out their holdings over a specific period of time.

They split this across different types of phases. So phase one of the lending launches included a 14-day fixed term for BNB U.S. dollar terror and Syria.

And the second released early September included 14 and 28 fixed day terms and added the likes of Cardona and bitcoin to the list.

So, what we could do is just take a look at the markets. And you can see there are different types of markets and crypto pairs that you can trade with.

So, you have the nice of your bitcoin market and you can see all the different pairings that you have available here and there’s a whole host of those.

You don’t have alts market now. These were previously known as a Syrian market. They’ve now been renamed to alts markets so that all the different types of auctions that you can trade with.

You then have your US dollar markets and you have BNB markets. That BNB Binance has its own coin. So when you purchase your crypto using there BNB coin you get money off the fees you pay for the Binance trading it used to be around 50 percent but it is now about 25 percent.

So by using their coin, you can save yourself on some of those trading fees. You can also convert any small fraction of US cryptocurrency that is leftover from a trade which is also known as dust into their Binance coin.

These smaller amounts can be found on your balances so if you go to a wallet, then you go to balance, and then you have the option to convert to a Binance coin.

It states here that you can convert balances with a valuation below zero point 0 0 1 bitcoin to Binance coin.

Binance Exchange 2019 Explained

However, I’ve actually done a full tutorial around how you actually do this. So what I’ll do is I’ll put that in the top right-hand corner now. So now let’s actually go into the Binance exchange 2019 itself.

So for those of you who don’t already have an account you can simply click onto the register button.

However, I do have a log in so I’m going to simply click on to log in here. And if you are logging in for the very first time, you will be asked to enable two-factor authentication and you can do that using either Google authentication or SMS authentication.

The reason why you need to do that is the exchanges are far more likely to get hacked because they have a lot of assets held on them.

So what you want to do is just give yourself that extra level of security. Now, this is just a test count for me today. So all I do is simply go to skip for now.

Then one of the first things you’re going to want to do is actually deposit funds into Binance. So we do that is if you go to the wallet and then go to deposit and what it’ll do is it has this section here. This is a coin and it has bitcoin.

If you click onto the dropdown, you’ll see there are lots of different coins that you can actually deposit into Binance. Now, fortunately, you can actually deposit fiat currency into here but there are a whole host of different types of cryptos that you can.

Is going to keep on bitcoin for the moment. So if you have bitcoin in the likes of a blockchain wallet or an exodus wallet, you’ll then have this address that you can obviously copy or you can show a QR code.

So, what you need to do is send your funds to this bitcoin address. Now one thing to be aware of is that you must ensure that you are only sending bitcoin to this deposit address as sending coins or tokens of bitcoin to this address, may result in the loss of funds.

So, just ensure you are sending the right cryptocurrency to the correct address. And then once your funds are in there then appear within your balance.

Now, if I just scroll up and if I go to exchange under the exchange you have two different types of exchanges, so that you have the advanced and you have basic. Advance allows you to do things like the chart.

But we’re just gonna be focusing on basic today. So if you’re new to cryptocurrencies and you’re a beginner or you’re new to exchanges you might find this whole scheme very daunting.

There’s a lot of different numbers and charts here. So what I’ll do is just take you through the screen.

So, first of all on the top left-hand corner here, we have the type of market that we’re actually looking at the information for.

So, everything that is on this page relates to repel and bitcoin if you want to change that. And if you’re interested in certain different types of market. So I’m just gonna type in XLM here and if I press onto the button it would then change all the corresponding information.

So what it provides me with here is the lost price? It gives me an idea of how that’s changed within a 24 hour period.

It gives me my 24 hours high, 24 hours low and, the volume. Now if this is a pairing that I like to use regularly I can also mark that as one of my favorites so that I don’t have to scroll through every single time.

And then in this red hand section here, is all the sell orders. So it gives me an idea of the price the amount that’s actually being sold and the total in Bitcoin.

And the bottom here is all your buy orders. So, again it gives you exactly the same information on this screen. We then have our chart. So what we have here is we have something called our candles.

So on here, it gives you an idea of some of the buys and some of the highs and some of the lows over a one hour period in terms of trading.

You can also change that to different times so whether that be one day, one week or one month. Then we’ll take a look at the trade history.

So, this is all of the trade history going on in the market at the moment. It gives us our sell orders than any of our buy orders there in green. If you click on to yours, so if you have already traded it will show you all your personal trade history in this section.

Then just taking a look at the exchange itself.

Different types of orders in Binance Exchange 2019

Now, there are different types of orders that you can place within Binance. So they are limit market and a stop-limit orders.

No one to take you through the market, first of all, that’s one of the easiest ones to understand. Just clicking on market there. So what it has here is it says Buy XLM.

So you have bought here on the left-hand side and you have your sell on the right-hand side here. So a market order will basically automatically fill.

So, it will happen absolutely instantly. And what it will do is all you’re doing is you’re buying at the current market price.

So, all you simply need to do is enter the amount that you’d like to purchase or alternatively you can either say you want to have 25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent, or 100 percent of your bitcoin balance.

Then all you simply need to do is click on to Buy XLM and or buy the type of cryptocurrency that you’re interested in and then that order will automatically fill, and exactly the same rules apply in terms of when you have some XLM that you want to sell.

So you type in the amount of XLM that you’d like to sell or you say 25 percent, 50 percent etc. and then you press on to sell XLM.

This is really good for when you are in a hurry and you want to purchase it immediately. However, this may not necessarily be at the best price.

So what going to do is take you through the limit. What limit does is allows you to define the price you really want a buyer or seller?

So, you have the price in bitcoin here. So what you can do is you can actually edit this, so you may want to say I don’t want to buy this at the market price.

I want to buy that slightly below you then state the amount that you would like to purchase. And it would give you your total amount here in bitcoin.

Now, exactly the same rules apply in terms of selling. So you can sell at a higher price than what the current market is dictating and you can obviously put in the amount that you then want to sell, it’ll give you your total in bitcoin and you can click on to sell.

Now, this may take a little bit of time for the market to reach the price that you’re actually defining here. Now one of the other great things is the fact that you can actually cancel these orders.

So, when you have something like a limit order that doesn’t complete immediately if you find that the market isn’t quite reaching that amount either it’s gone way too high or way too low.

What you can do is you can simply cancel all your orders and then you can resubmit an order. You don’t have something called a stop-limit order.

So stop-limit order is an order to buy or sell a coin. Once the price reaches a specified price. So in here, you can state you want to stop at a certain amount of bitcoin, the amount that you would like to buy your XLM at the total amount you’d actually like to purchase and it would give you your total.

And it’ll do exactly the same in terms of selling as well. Again this won’t obviously be an instant order so you can cancel these at any time.

Now once you’ve purchased your cryptocurrency what you want to do is you want to withdraw that from the exchange.

As I said earlier, they are far more likely to get hacked. The best security practices do stay you should withdraw your funds into your chosen wallet.

So, what I want to do is take you through how you can withdraw your funds?. So if we go to the wallet and then go to withdraw.

Now in relation to withdrawing, there are some fees associated with this as you would do with a lot of different types of exchanges. So what I do is I just take you through that now.

So here you can see any associated withdrawal fee to the different types of coins that are available. There are also minimum withdrawals as well so you can withdraw you know very small amounts.

There are minimums in here as well. But as you can see, there are fees associated with almost all of the different types of currencies in here.

Just take us back to our withdrawal. So in here, first of all, you want to state the coin that you’re withdrawing from Binance. So, that can be your ethereum or it could be your bitcoin.

I’m going to use bitcoin in this example again. So in here what I would now need to do is enter the recipient’s bitcoin address. So you could be withdrawing this from the likes of a software wallet like blockchain or something like more safe like a hardware wallet like the likes of your Ledger S. or Trezor.

So what you’d need to do is put in your recipient bitcoin address. So, you simply paste that into this section here.

You would then put it in the amount that you want to actually withdraw from here or you can click on to the available balance here to withdraw everything from the exchange, you would then click on to submit.

Now one other thing to mention is if you are withdrawing another different type of old coin just be aware and just ensure that the wallet is actually receiving those funds, does support that type of cryptocurrency.

Once you are ready it will tell you where your transaction fee will be. It will cost you the total amount that you will receive and then you can simply click on to submit.

So, that was a run-through of the Binance exchange 2019 as well as some updates and new offerings that they have available. I hope this will be helpful.

To know more visit : https://binancewiki.io/binance-exchange-2019/

[komyou]

Part 2: Techno Mumbo Jumbo

This is part of a series describing the history, context, and technical details of the modding we've been doing resulting in this big En Masse / NA TERA commotion:

Introduction. What's all this about?

Part 1: The History – A Timeline. Take a walk down memory lane from 2012 to today.

Part 2: Techno Mumbo Jumbo ⬅ You're here!

Part 3: What Can Be Done?. What do we know, and how should we address it?

Conclusion (not yet published). Obligatory closing thoughts.

Feel free to skip around to the parts that interest you.

Last time we talked about what happened and when, but now we're going to get into the how. How do DPS meters and tera-proxy work? How even do the skill prediction and other things work? I'll be answering that in this installment.

First, a disclaimer. This post analyzes in detail the alteration of game behavior. Many places will consider this "discussion of cheats, hacks, or exploits". If you want to post a link to this post anywhere, make sure it follows any submission rules there about this sort of topic.

If it's so sensitive and controversial, why am I still posting it? Because I would argue this post has nothing new to offer to anyone with malicious intentions. Remember, TERA has been out for 5 whole years already, and there's plenty of underground communities dedicated to illicit activities. Plus, the recent storm has only brought even more attention to tera-proxy. The proxy, along with ShinraMeter, CasualMeter, and Alkahest, are all open source. Everyone can look at the code, and anyone with the technical knowledge and ability to do bad things would have already figured out what we're doing by now.

First, we'll talk about how TERA's networking works normally. Then we'll look at how we use that knowledge in a packet sniffer (such as Shinra), and then we'll extend that idea onto tera-proxy. Now, tera-proxy does nothing on its own; everything it does comes from plugins, or "modules". So to round it all off, we'll talk about how tera-proxy modules work at the end.

If you'd like, you can skip all the way down to the tera-proxy sections. Everything above is not strictly necessary for those, so that's going to cut your reading time by a decent chunk.

Throughout this post, I'll be adding a number of charts and diagrams. Some may be helpful, and some may not. If you're not sure how to read a diagram, don't fret too much. They mostly reiterate what I've already written about, so you're not missing anything if you just don't get it.

How TERA Talks to the Server

When you click the big "PLAY" button on the launcher, or when you back out to server select, TERA sends a request to a specific website to get a list of game servers. From there, it can do things like log you into the last server you played on based on what EME's account server said it was, or it can show you the server list.

Either way, once a game server is selected, the TERA client tries to connect to it. I'm going to assume the vast majority of people are familiar enough with the concept of "server" and "client", but here's a diagram anyway, which will serve as a convenient reference point for the various approaches we'll be taking later on.

In particular, we'll be zooming in on exactly what's going on in the "Client" and "Server" bubbles here, and then we'll be taking a step back to look at how other programs fit into this.

After the client establishes a connection to the server, they do something that's called a handshake; the client and server talk to each other to make sure that this is indeed for a TERA connection and they are ready, and then they share their encryption keys.

I assume most people are at least familiar with the concept of encryption, but we're going to want to define a few more terms just to be sure we know what's going on. Remember, this is going to be a very simplified explanation, so don't expect it to be 200% accurate. Just enough to help everyone understand the concepts.

Let's choose a very simple example. Let's say you want to encrypt a message like "hello". There's lots of ways (infinite, actually) to go about doing that, so we're going to need to pick a specific encryption algorithm. Let's make one up right now.

Start with a number n—for instance, 2. Then, for each letter in the original message, you turn it into the nth letter after it, and then increase n by 1 and go to the next letter. So, in this example:

You see "h". Since n = 2, you turn it into "j" (h → i → j) and make n = 3.

You see "e". Since n = 3, you turn it into "h" (e → f → g → h) and make n = 4.

... and so on, until you end up with "jhpqu".

You know how we picked the starting number of 2? That's called the key. You can sort of think of it like a password; if you know the correct key, you'll know how to correctly decrypt the result, but if it's wrong, all you get is meaningless data.

But the starting number wasn't the only thing that mattered. Our encryption also had to keep track of what n was at each step of the way. That's the encryption state. This isn't something you're supposed to modify and play around with yourself, but it is important. For "hello" with a key of 2, the last three letters came out to "pqu". If we skip the "e" and try "hllo", then the last three letters become "opt". Even though we started with the same letters, we got a very different result because we had a different encryption state when we reached them.

So, with the definitions of encryption key and encryption state out of the way, we can get back to how the client and server talk to each other.

The two establish a connection and send their their encryption keys to each other. (In this case, the encryption algorithm requires two keys.) After that, they both hold a copy of their encryption states: one state for themselves, and one state for the other. Why two states? Because this is a "duplex" connection—data goes both ways. The client can send stuff to the server, and the server can send stuff to the client, and both of those directions needs its own encryption.

The rest of the connection is then encrypted. So it's important that both the server and client are tracking the correct encryption states. As they process incoming data, they have to decrypt it, which updates the incoming encryption state. As they send outgoing data, they have to encrypt it, which updates the outgoing encryption state. If either side gets either state wrong, you end up with garbage values and eventually a disconnect.

In fact, if anyone tries to add, modify, or delete a single thing in the encrypted data as it gets passed between the client and server, the decryption will go into a wrong state and you'll never be able to recover. You'll read garbage values until you realize something isn't going right. TERA chalks it up to a disconnect and boots you right back to server select.

To the casual eye, it might sound pretty fragile, so why don't you disconnect very often at all? How is it handling when you receive data in the wrong order, or have packet loss and drop packets like the bass at an EDM concert? Well, the short answer is that you can't. TERA's network connections use something called TCP. Here's a quick summary: TCP is built to be reliable, error-free, and in-order. If you receive something, but you know there was something sent before it and you never got that, you have to ask the other side to resend the previous message and wait for it before you can continue.

TCP means that as far as TERA is concerned, packets are never received out of order, packets are always correct, and you can never miss one (unless you get totally disconnected, in which case you obviously miss all). That also explains some lag spikes. If you have packet loss, the client has to play catch up, and it can't go forward while it eagerly awaits retransmission of every single packet that it missed. All the server can do is resend those and everything else that happened while trying to recover, and for some connections that can snowball hard.

So now we know how data is encrypted, transmitted, and decrypted between a TERA client and server, but what exactly is being transmitted? To answer that, we'll need to talk about protocols.

A protocol, in terms of network communications, is a specific format, or a set of rules, for how to transmit information. We know one already, actually; TCP is a very heavily used protocol that dictates how tons of packets are being sent over the internet on a daily basis. In fact, you're most likely viewing this post thanks to a TCP connection. A TCP packet can hold any arbitrary data, but for our analysis on TERA networking, it holds TERA's network data. That data follows BHS's own custom protocol.

As I go into the specifics of the custom protocol, let's take a minute to think about why we even need a protocol. As humans, natural language is easy for us to use and process. "Move my character one step forward" is very clear to an English speaker, but computers aren't humans, and while it's a bit of a cliche to say that computers "speak in ones and zeroes", the idea of it should be enough to show why an English sentence just won't cut it. We need to represent that same idea in a way that's compact and efficient for a computer to process.

Under this custom protocol, we can construct what I personally call a "message" (think "sentence"). Each message starts with two numbers. The first number says how long the message is (as in, "how many letters?"), and the second is an opcode—short for "operation code", which defines what operation to perform. Like taking a step forward. Any additional data will depend on the opcode. For player movement, you'll want to send details like your speed and position in game, so for the message that uses the player movement opcode, there's a very specific order and format in which to put information like your in game position and other things like movement type.

So, if that's how we can construct a valid message, then the game's protocol is comprised of the rules for what opcodes mean and how to format and order additional data and all of that stuff.

Notice that I switched from "packet" to "message", even though you probably only ever heard about packets. Semantically speaking, they're different; you may want to send two actions happening at the same time, in which case you can just bunch them together under the same TCP packet. Other times, a message is just too large and you don't want to make the packet too big, so you have to split it across multiple TCP packets. But for the most part you'll see people just calling them "packets" because it's a lot less ambiguous than "message", which could also refer to things like chat messages or system messages. So from now on, I will likely use the two terms interchangeably.

Now you know pretty much all there is to know on how TERA's network communication works. One side, client or server, constructs a message following the rules set by TERA's protocol, then it gets encrypted and sent over, where it's decrypted and read according to the protocol.

Packet Sniffers and DPS Meters

The first type of publicly released mods that wanted to look at this network data used a method called packet sniffing. A packet sniffer is able to read (and only read) the data that's being transmitted over a network, and often has tools to help analyze the packets.

So we set up a packet sniffer to read the data over your net connection, but remember: TCP is a standardized and widely known protocol while BHS's TERA protocol is custom made, so our packet sniffer can only help us as far as TCP. Even then, we're seeing much more than what the server and client see. We're seeing all the other stuff that happens from TCP: packets being resent and packets being received out of order. So we have to do all this work of figuring out how to recombine the packets that we're seeing so that we can most accurately reconstruct what the server and client are sending and receiving. Sometimes, rarely, you get it wrong, and everything breaks because our encryption and decryption depend on their state, and if we mess up reconstructing a message, we end up with an incorrect encryption state. (If your meter sometimes occasionally breaks, this may be why.)

But let's assume that, as is the case the vast majority of the time, we got it right. We're reading the packets properly—but they're still encrypted! Well, that's easy to handle. We know how the handshake looks, and how the server and client exchange encryption keys, so we can just recreate the same encryption states and we're ready to decrypt.

We've rebuilt the packets being sent and we've decrypted their data, so now we're down to BHS's custom protocol.

As mentioned, each message under this protocol always begins with the message length and the opcode. That's convenient for us, because if we see an opcode that we don't care about, we can totally skip ahead to the next message. Unfortunately, opcodes generally change on every major TERA patch, and that's why you need to update meter and proxy. (A "major patch" is one where the first number of the patch version goes up; check the version list on the right side of the EME patch notes for an example.) Luckily, we can actually very easily call a function in the TERA client to convert an opcode to a readable name like C_PLAYER_LOCATION.

When we do encounter an opcode we recognize and care about, we need to figure out how to read the rest of the message. Say we found a message with the opcode corresponding to C_PLAYER_LOCATION and we want to use the info from it, but we don't know how that info was stored. That's where more work comes in, because we haven't yet figured out a way to automatically dump this from the client.

If we don't know how the rest of C_PLAYER_LOCATION is formatted, we look at the data to try to see what they correspond to. Don't forget that we're working with computers, so at the end of the day, everything is just numbers. "Looks like this number is a 1 when you start running, and a 2 when you stop, and a 3 when you jump. This number looks like it could correspond to a letter of the alphabet, so we can try converting it to text and seeing what it says." And so on.

This is a tedious process known as reverse engineering.

DPS meters are only interested in a very specific set of opcodes, and since both Shinra and CasualMeter are in popular use (and especially since one developer works closely with both), they usually just need to figure out how those handful of messages look and then they're done dealing with TERA's networking without too much hassle.

tera-proxy

But we had to go a step further. For the sake of completeness, let's first talk about what exactly a proxy server is. You can imagine the connection between a client and server as being like two people having a chat with each other. A packet sniffer will be sitting off to the side, letting the client and server have a direct chat with each other while it's up to the packet sniffer to eavesdrop and make as much sense of the conversation as they can or need, while being unable to interfere or even interact at all with the conversation.

A proxy server, the middleman, sits between them. The client must talk to the proxy and receive replies from the proxy. The server must also talk to the proxy and receive replies from the proxy. The client and server no longer interact directly with each other.

This can be used in a number of ways. Maybe the middleman is a translator, and the client and server need something like that between them in order to understand each other. Maybe the client and server are just really mad at each other because the server is based in Japan and only wants to serve clients that live in Japan, in which case the proxy can act as a Japanese client on behalf of the real client. Even if the real client is completely fluent in Japanese, everything the client sends must still go through the proxy, likely completely unmodified, because the real client is not living in Japan and those are the server's rules.

You should have a pretty good idea by now how tera-proxy fits into this. Actually, there's two proxy servers; remember how the client has to fetch the server list so it knows where to make a connection? The first thing we do here is proxy the server list, so when the client requests it, that request goes to us first. We ask the real server list what's up, and when we get the reply, we can change whatever it says before handing it back to the client. Like adding an extra entry called "Mount Tiltrannas" that points to a game proxy server.

So the game client got this new server list and now it wants to connect to this special server we've added. We know the connection handshake, and we know that the real client and real server are going to exchange encryption keys which we can save and forward very easily.

Since the proxy talks to both the client and server, it handles two connections. Each connection has two ways data can flow (towards or away from the proxy), so that means we now have four encryption states to take care of: the two between client ↔ proxy and the two between proxy ↔ server.

But if we do our job right, both sides are oblivious that there's even anyone in between them, because as far as they're concerned, the data they're receiving is getting decrypted properly. Everyone's happy.

Unlike packet sniffers, we're not just eavesdropping anymore. This data from both sides is being sent straight to the proxy and only the proxy. It's our job to decrypt according to one side, re-encrypt for the other side, and then send it to its intended destination. Since we can do that, we can also do things like modify the data, adding and removing things at our leisure because now we have control of the encryption states.

Besides everything already mentioned, there's one more thing that distinctly set tera-proxy apart from DPS meters.

tera-proxy doesn't have a specific focus like meters have with DPS. We no longer care only about meter-related packets anymore. If someone finds any opcode at all that looks interesting to them, they can try to figure out how its packet data looks, write up a definition for it, and (hopefully) add it to tera-proxy. It might get used by others too, and it can also be verified or updated by other people because that's the beauty of open source. In fact, as of the time of writing this, we have well over 400 definitions mapped out thanks to a lot of people. We've been hard at work.

That means we know how to handle a lot more opcodes, but what does that mean for our proxy?

tera-proxy Modules

By itself, tera-proxy does nothing substantial. It overrides the server list to point to itself, it decrypts and encrypts the data, and it's capable of reading and writing messages with the knowledge we've given it of TERA's protocol. But by default, it has no reason to read or write anything.

That's what modules are for. Each module essentially says, "Hey, when you see any of these particular packets, I want you to tell me the data it contains and then I want you to do these things." This is called a "hook". If you hook C_PLAYER_LOCATION, then when tera-proxy sees a C_PLAYER_LOCATION packet, it reads it and converts it to a format that's much simpler for a programmer to use.

Again, let's look at some old diagrams:

We start with this 0012 0123 0256 0390 4800 0002 message, the section outlined in the middle. After decrypting a packet, that's what tera-proxy might see, so it checks what opcode 0123 is and finds out that it's C_PLAYER_LOCATION. It knows that you registered a hook for that packet, so it first tries to make sense of the packet. Checking the definition we've written for that packet, we have names for each field like before:

So now it runs your hook, and in your hook, you can retrieve (and modify) the values by messing with a variable called position or moveType.

You can also silence the packet to prevent the intended recipient from ever seeing it, and you can also construct your own packets.

And that's pretty much all a module can do to a TERA connection.

Maybe you've noticed it by now, or maybe you haven't.

It took well over 3,000 words and plenty of graphs and charts and diagrams to explain how TERA's whole networking system works. Then we described tera-proxy modules in just a handful of sentences.

There's a reason for that—and it's not because you learned everything you needed to know.

The real reason is that you didn't need to know in the first place. That's the proxy's blessing and curse.

In our example, we wanted to get a C_PLAYER_LOCATION and modify it. We can do it in three lines of code. We never had to bother ourselves with the details of the encryption, the protocol, the proxying, or any of that.

There's more. Most languages require the use of a compiler; you write code, give it to the compiler, and you get back "machine code" that you can run. For tera-proxy, I use a language called JavaScript. It's an "interpreted language", which means it doesn't need compiling for someone to run it. Actually, you've probably already been using JavaScript quite a lot; it's the language used to make webpages interactable, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a single website that doesn't use a single line of JavaScript.

Since we don't need to compile anything, anyone can just open up a text editor, write some module code in JavaScript, run the proxy, and it just works.

Does that sound very powerful? It should. Can you make really cool stuff with it? You bet. Can you also cheat really hard with it?

Unfortunately, yeah. But that discussion is reserved for part 3.

Most modules will be rather self-explanatory (when a cutscene happens, hide it from the client and instantly send the skip packet; when a Vanguard is completed, instantly send the accept rewards packet; etc). But a lot of people are up in arms about the skill prediction stuff, so it's time to get into a little more detail about that.

Skill Prediction

First, let's pick some arbitrary ping. Say 200 ms. That means you sent a "ping" packet to the server at some time, and when you received a "pong" packet back from the server, it had taken 200 ms. For now, it will be sufficient to assume that this means the time it takes for a packet to reach the other side was 100 ms, so when we sent something and got something back, it took twice that time, or 200 ms.

There's only one thing in TERA that happens on your screen as soon as you press a button, and that's movement. This is a technique called client-side prediction. It's still going to take 100 ms for the server to receive your new position, and then half of everyone else's ping for them to see it, but at least on your own client, you see when you step forward or back instantaneously. It feels smooth and fluid.

That's just about the only thing client-side predicted as far as we're concerned.

What does that say about casting skills? Well, when you press the button, your client doesn't actually do much of anything yet. It sends a request to do it to the server, who verifies a number of things (Was it off cooldown? Was it on a valid target? Are you not stunned or slept?) and then sends back an acknowledgment along with other information like the attack speed. Only then does your client animate that skill.

Let's ignore chain skills for a moment. We've casted our first skill, but now we want to cast the second. We can't do that while we're already in a skill, so we have to wait for the first skill to finish animating.

But our first skill already took 200 extra ms to start.

And then we have to wait another 200 ms for the server to acknowledge our second skill.

That's what's colloquially known as "ping tax", and you pay it on most everything you do in TERA.

Lockons are extra awful in this department. Entering the lockon pays ping tax, acquiring a lock pays ping tax, and then firing the skill pays ping tax.

And Rapid Fire? All right, let's look at this. Let's say you've got a total of an arbitrarily chosen 120 + 60 = 180 attack speed, which translates to 150% animation speed. Each hit of Rapid Fire chains into the next after somewhere around 300 ms at base speed (I think?), so we can cut that down to 300 ms ÷ 1.5 = 200 ms per hit of RF.

First, a perfect world where latency doesn't exist. We can send each hit of RF as soon as we get the chance, so we can send the seventh and final hit after 6 animation cycles (200 ms). 6 × 200 ms = 1.2 seconds.

But we have 200 ms ping. That means to send the next hit, we first have to wait for the acknowledgement of the previous hit to reach us (200 ms), and then animate it (200 ms). Six cycles of that is 6 × 400 ms = 2.4 seconds.

In fact, it doesn't matter how much attack speed you get. In this case, you'll always take 1.2 seconds longer to reach the seventh hit of RF because you have to pay that ping tax six times no matter what. That's disgusting.

(As an aside, for someone living very close to the servers with the luxury of about 30 ms ping, their RF time comes out to 6 × 230 ms = 1.38 seconds. That's only 0.18 seconds (180 ms) more than the perfect case scenario—less than the time we'd be waiting for our very first hit at 200 ms ping. If your ping is already very low, there's very little to gain, especially because you have to balance those millisecond bonuses with just how much desyncing you're going to be dealing with. I explain that in more detail below.)

So how do we fix it?

Well, we can't get rid of latency. It'll always take 100 ms for the server to receive anything you send.

But what we can do is try our best to eliminate the ping tax on the client. When you try to cast a skill, skill predictors are really just tera-proxy modules that predict the acknowledgment reply from the server and send it to the client.

You say you want to cast Rapid Fire? The predictor instantly replies that you did it. That's a whopping 0 ms on the ping tax. No need to wait for the server when you can just assume it was successful.

Sometimes, we get it wrong. There's a lot of things the client doesn't check before sending the server a request to cast a skill, so skill predictors have to be checking if you're stunned or slept or knocked down, if you have appropriate prerequisite buffs to cast something, if you have glyphs or buffs that alter a specific skill's attack speed... If we guess any of those wrong, you get desynced. Your client might still animate it, but it might be too slow, or too fast, or it wasn't actually cast at all. Damage doesn't happen, but you're still stuck in animation.

The three main skill predictors, each written by a now banned developer, handles things very differently. Mine had lockons for lockons and fast-fire to focus solely on three skills (Rapid Fire, Burning Heart, and Burst Fire), both of which made no attempt to resolve desyncs. Both Bern and Pinkie aimed to generalize the approach for all skills in the game, but I can't discuss how they went about resolving desyncs and similar issues due to not personally examining any of their code.

But that's pretty much it. Your client asks to cast a skill and the proxy instantly replies with an acknowledgment so it doesn't have to wait. We're not actually casting anything if we couldn't already do it. We're just tricking the client into thinking it's doing it instead of waiting for the server to say it was valid.

That covers all the technical parts of how everything is working, from TERA's network connection to DPS meters and from the proxy to its modules.

I hope it wasn't too difficult to get through, but there's a ton of information to cover, and a lot of details that typically get glossed over because most people don't care to know much more beyond "tera-proxy is hacks and skill prediction is lagging servers".

Armed with all this knowledge, the next thing we'll be looking at is what EME and BHS have done to try to address these things and what they can do about it in part 3: What Can Be Done?.

[twotoned2marta22-blog]

RESCUE! ==>

[[ logs and some daring events with @geminidoomed​! end result: ???? ]]

geminidoomed II haven't 2een you on iin a few niight2, ii2 everythiing okay?

twotoned2marta22 > Is this one going to be as much of a hassle as The Ringleader. Please, goddesses, no.

hell0 artiifex, s0rry f0r taking s0 l0ng t0 get back t0 y0u megid0 is the name. snips is unavailable f0r the time being

geminidoomed Why ii2 2niip2 unavaiilable, and why are you on hii2 account?

twotoned2marta22 0n his acc0unt because his palmhusk was severely damaged and im transferring the data, i n0ticed tr0lls have been trying t0 c0ntact him it seems there was an accident inv0lving s0mething expl0sive! unsure 0f the details but hes quite alright n0w, luckily, m0stly hes been sleeping the sh0ck 0f it 0ff

geminidoomed oh man that 2uck2 a lot, II'm 2ure a lot of people are worriied about hiim be2iide2 me

> What a beautiful live connection to the computer sending these messages, you think you'll just pull up the view finder

twotoned2marta22 n0t really, which is a shame. he seems a nice fell0w

> Lie. Total lie. He tried to stab you in the throat with the broken handle of a teacup this evening.

geminidoomed 2ometiime2 people do head offliine for a few niight2 at a tiime. hey are you wiith tho2e friiend2 of hii2 II thiink he mentiioned before?

>You are now directly looking at her and the room surrounding her, and idly noting down the coordinates.

twotoned2marta22 g00d p0int, im rarely ever 0n myself. he was 0n his 0wn when i f0und him, d0 y0u have c0ntact inf0rmati0n f0r these friends? i w0uldnt want them t0 be w0rrying

> How many of these people that he's talked to are actually his friends. The Captor wasn't supposed to develop a social circle while isolated from society. > Aradia is in her own block, filled with ancient artifacts and a partially complete skeleton of an ancient lusii. The Peixes symbol can be seen in fuchsia over the door. There's mild burns visible on her face and arms.

geminidoomed II'm afraiid not 0n0 II've never 2poken wiith hii2 real liife friiend2.

>Yeah there's no way in fuck he'd be anywhere near a Piexes, volentarily. Sparks knows how he feels about the 'witches' >And the rebellion.

how diid you happen two be iin the neiighborhood..?

>He leaned on  one arm, putting his chin in his hand and began to write a program, the code spinning into his mind's eye.

twotoned2marta22 well thats sure a pr0blem! ill ask him when he wakes up again

> You'll ask him when you damn well feel like it, sometime after he stops trying to murder you every twelve seconds. > What's a feasible story. Easy to remember, easy to stick with.

i was running a dig site s0me kil0meters away when we heard s0mething det0nate, s0 i went 0ver t0 investigate

geminidoomed >He released the code gently. all it was was a locator. Starting from her coordinates find his artifacts.

oh man cool, what were you guy2 diiggiing up way out there?

twotoned2marta22 a very specific 0ld civilizati0n, literally buried! but the specific part has t0 be a secret f0r n0w. s0me tr0lls w0uld rather hist0ry be f0rg0tten and i d0nt want their claws anywhere near my w0rk!

> When he tracks the artifacts down, he'll find that Snips is still wearing them. He'll also find that Snips looks beat to shit, and is in a large block with just. so much pink. so many pinks. It looks luxurious, though, and there's a mediculler currently checking up on him.

geminidoomed >Holy shit shes. Shes just so bad at this. Shes so terribly bad, why has she been allowed to actually try to fool people into anything?

2hiit II wouldnt want you two be caught 2ayiing 2omethiing you 2houldn't on the iinternet and gettiing your whole diig ruiined or liike. culled or anythiing.

>Holy fuck thats so much pink. Thats just. An obnoxious amount of pink. Hes going to spend a while watching the mediculler, and Snips. The one flaw is that there isnt any audio on this shitty thing. Maybe he ought to work on that..

twotoned2marta22 > Let her live dude, most of her attention has been taken up but your (justifiably) murderous alt down in the basement. > Also yeah, this generally isn’t her job.

im n0t t00 w0rried, snips here has apparently been telling every0ne and their lusus that hes a limebl00d and n0b0dy has c0me after him

> Except the "2talker Pyrope" of course. She almost chuckles at that.

> Snips doesn't appear to be saying anything, but occasionally he flinches and starts to turn on the mediculler like he intends to attack. The mediculler jumps away, Snips slumps back down, the process continues and repeats.

geminidoomed That2 true, but 2ometiime2 deviice2 have word triigger2 iin them you never know, yeah?

>He tapped his fingers against his chin, lips thinned out into a line.

twotoned2marta22 i supp0se anyways! is there anything y0u want me t0 pass 0n t0 snips f0r y0u? 0ther than the general "hey, s0 and s0 asked if y0ure 0kay"

> Aradia slumps back on the floor rug she's laying on. It was a mighty beast at some point. Now it's just fur.

> Snips gradually lashes out less and less. By the time the mediculler packs up their things, he looks barely responsive. He shuffles toward a recuperacoon when motioned towards it.

geminidoomed yeah let hiim know II've been worriied and II'm lookiing forward two 2eeiing hiim agaiin wiill you? -hey iit wa2 niice meetiing you Aradiia but II need two jet.

>To snips, he needs to jet to Snips, he grabs his armored coat  and shrugs it on without doing up the buttons, and double checks to make sure his sword is in his strife specibus, before he relocates himself to the coordinates hes watching snips from. He wanted to grab him before he hit the sopor because the sopor would make things at least twice as more difficult than they needed to be.

twotoned2marta22 will d0. h0pefully hes g0ing t0 be right as rain and back 0nline s00n

> She doubts it. The kid has developed a stubborn streak since going wild, and he won't listen to reason until it breaks. Aradia is tired of wrigglers.

> Snips is unbuttoning his shirt slowly, fumbling with the buttons but hissing if anyone attempts to help. He can deal with this on his own, fuck you very much.

geminidoomed >The sudden appearance of a wild space pirate in the room cant be going completely unnoticed, he started closing the distance between them. "2niip2!"

twotoned2marta22 > The mediculler was just leaving, and upon witnessing the... sudden and very magical appearance of another troll, yanks open the door to shout for the guards. Two clowns and three blue brutes pile in as the mediculler makes their escape. > A door appears in the wall behind the recuperacoon, and through it steps a troll cloaked in black and fuchsia. The door disappears.

> Snips takes a solid five seconds to realize his name is being called. He looks up sluggishly.

geminidoomed >Man those guys are fucking fast, they appeared almost as quickly as he did. Did the mediculler already drug snips more? He wishes he'd had a better angle to see what he'd been doing.

>Sparks began to mentally map where everyone in the room was- including holy shit that fuchsia where the shit did she even come from??

>Time to try to scoop snips up. He obviously can't move fast enough right now.

>He was prepared to be bitten this is his life now.

twotoned2marta22 > They've been hovering in hopes of a chance to beat down the lime, honestly. They each have dead or hurt friends this week because of him. The mediculler had no drugs, this is plain old exhaustion, but they are fumbling to run and get a palmhusk out of their bag to contact Aradia.

> The witch hasn't moved from behind the coon yet, while the blues and clowns have already fanned out, blues already charging ahead while the clowns hang back. The air starts to feel thick and distorted from chucklevoodoos.

> Snips does flash his teeth, though it's hardly a threatening sight. Then he slips right out of Sparks' reach, the floor yawning open and closing the moment he's fallen through. Then he pops out of the wall and hits the floor winded, right next to the witch.

geminidoomed >Sparks's teeth were much more impressive as he bared them, half grin and half challenge, eyes blazing up bright his sword appeared in his hand and crackled with psionics. His reaction to fear was to primarily spin it into rage, to kill whatever he was afraid of, some of his panic attacks had been lethal or near lethal for people.

> - First deal with the trolls closing in, he whirled on them to engage while he let the rest of his brain calculate the exact position his friend was in relitive to his, because between kicking someone away from his sword, and turning to another he was going to dissappear and appear near snips again to take a chance and try to scoop him up even that close to the witch.

twotoned2marta22 > There's a brief second of confusion as they each realize that their opponent is a gold psion, and that he's clearly wielding magic. For a moment, the witch's snarl of outrage overrides the chucklevoodoos stuffing up the atmosphere with noise. One of the clowns decides to get into Sparks' head. With a lowblood, it's bound to be easy.

> Between magic and voodoos, Snips has completely frozen up in terror. He makes no attempt to move from where he is on the floor, aside from curling up on his side and covering his face.

geminidoomed >That tore a snarl out of him, the moment he felt an actual touch on his mind he mentally grabbed onto it and lashed his power back along the link between them wrecklessly.

>Snips is no help but he just has to get him up into his arms, and his psionics will help- it was just too hard to do the calculations to get them out of there with them seperate.

twotoned2marta22 > The first clown stumbles back with a shout, stunned, and two blues rush Sparks again while the third glances back in confusion.

> Manacles conjure up from beneath Sparks and cease his legs; the witch launches an orb of black something that hits Sparks' back hard.

geminidoomed He fell forward, caught by the legs and struck from behind, and came back up, eyes flashing, to  make a gesture in the air with his hand,  then slicing it toward the witch. Dramatics all of it, he gutted the part of her physical code that dealt with phenotype and replaced it with the typing for a rust blooded troll. - He was distracted momentarily with that.  and when his attention tore back to the guards rushing in they were far too close, he struck out at a knee while he tried to get his feet back under him and away from the things holding him down.

twotoned2marta22 > The witch collapses, loudly groaning but already struggling to get off the floor. She's stubborn. One blue's sword clangs off Sparks' leg; the other brings a hammer down on his chest with full force.

> The witch has Snips fall through an open window in the floor. He's moved elsewhere in the room but unseen.

geminidoomed He felt the weight of the sword his his leg, and the force of it all the way through to the bone, though the edge was turned away.

There was a crack, and a shattering pain that went all the way through his body, his sword found the inside of the hammer wielder’s elbow and thrust, twisting it he was seeing white as the hammer came down on him, sword work too late to stop it, and arm too weak to block a blueblood's blow, a bubble of swirling blue force burst outward from him to throw everything near him away, while he struggled to breath, his chest was shattered and he was suffocating- he didn’t have long, he had to fix this in his code

twotoned2marta22 > The blue isn't going to be wielding his hammer again anytime, stumbling back and clutching his wound, then thrown with the rest by the burst of psionics. Sparks would have a reprieve, except the witch comes shrieking in with a last action, crafting a hammer of her own of the same inky black material as before and sending it to the hands of the second clown, who brings it down on Sparks with even greater force and rage than the blue. > Mostly rage.

geminidoomed The clawing desperate pain and pressure in his chest exploded - He saw white, and then black, his body was ruined and he was overwhelmed. The half dead god stopped breathing, his heart stopped beating, everything stopped, and he laid crumpled.

twotoned2marta22 > The fighting stops, and this is when Aradia arrives. A clown is unconscious on the floor, all of the blues are bleeding, the witch is keening on the floor while the other clown stands over her holding an magically constructed hammer, there's a strange corpse in the middle of the room, the Captor is gone--

> Oh, there he is. His head is poking out from the pile of blankets and cushions to one corner of the block, staring in shock at the body. He's weeping.

“Artiifex...? Artiifex?? Fex?!”

> Aradia brings her hands together in a loud clap, startling everyone silent and bringing the trolls’ attentions to her. The medicullers she ordered to follow warily peek into the room.

“Docterror, get these four to the medical ward immediately. Jolyre, send down a cleaning crew for this mess and then go make sure your brother’s pan hasn’t been fried, Sister, tell me right now why you’re hiding in your cloaks more than usual and why there is a dead body in this block.”

> The witch doesn’t say anything, just uncovers one now-rust eye and stares up at Aradia. She heaves a sigh.

“Go with the medicullers, explain everything to me later.”

“No.”

“No?”

> The witch gestures to Sparks’ crumpled body, face twisted in disgust. “The psion struck a deal with something. He still lingers.”

“Can you take care of it?”

“Of course I can.”

> The witch and Sparks disappear through doors that exist for a moment. Aradia stays in the room, staring Snips down until cleaners and a new batch of guards arrive. She doesn’t say anything when she leaves. Snips doesn’t say anything either.