#pirate trial

[badolmen]

“I’m scared to pirate stuff - ” do it scared!*

*with Firefox and Adblock and a VPN and -

If you want a nonspecific, nonexhaustive “where do I even start” guide…

Sail the cyber seas at your own risk!

Streaming - “I want to watch xyz”

This is normally what most people want when they talk about pirating.

Use Firefox with uBlock Origin and additional privacy add-ons such as PrivacyBadger, TrackMeNot, etc.

Free VPNs are out there. Get one - but vet it’s efficacy. My go-tos are Proton VPN, or Windscribe if you plan to do a bit of torrenting.

What is torrenting? How does it work? Here’s a guide!

Back to streaming -

Make sure that a) you’ve got your Mozilla browser with all its adblocking private glory, and b) you’ve got a VPN turned on to hide what you’re doing in that browser from your ISP (internet service provider).

Now you need to actually find a site to stream from. This is the tricky part, because openly sharing these sites will get them taken down if they’re talked about widely enough. (Remember how tiktok idiots got zlibrary taken down?)

You’re going to have to talk to people on forums. You’re going to have to experiment with sites you find yourself. Search for ‘x online free’ and look at the links that come up - is the preview text mangled or clickbaitey? Are there Reddit threads about that website confirming or denying its content? A good rule of thumb is to ignore the top result or two - copycats of good streaming sites will often buy out the top result spot. Eventually, you’ll develop a good gut feeling and understanding of what a good site ‘looks like’ from the results page alone.

However, there are some places that compile good sites that haven’t been nuked by lawyers (yet) - check out r/FMHY! The masterposts are actively curated and updated when a site goes down or is found to have malicious downloads.

Remember - loose lips sink ships. No tweeting (xeeting?) or Facebook statuses about your new favorite piracy website and where you found it. Even posting to tumblr (kind of like this…) isn’t a great idea if you want those websites to stay under the radar and stay accessible. Nobody talks, everybody walks (away with their share of pirate booty)

If you aren’t downloading media, pick pretty much any site and watch away! Adblock and Firefox will keep away pop-ups and other annoying ads, and your VPN means your ISP can’t tell that you’re visiting an unofficial streaming service.

Note: In my experience, I’ve never heard of visiting a site and watching stuff on it infecting or otherwise compromising your computer. That tends to come from misclicks on invisible or overwhelming pop-up ads that redirect you to an automatic download or similarly malicious bullshit. If you’re using Firefox and uBlock, you shouldn’t be in any danger of an accidental redirect.

Downloads - “I want to keep xyz”

This is the realm of pirate archiving - you’re keeping files physically on your hard drive, an external hard drive, or burning a disk.

Adblock + Firefox browser? Check. VPN on? Check.

Go to your streaming site of choice - most if not all have download options. You can download those files or, manually, right click and save the video file from the webpage as an mp4. I honestly don’t know if there’s a difference in quality or more danger in clicking the download buttons, but regardless -

Run that puppy through VirusTotal.com! It’s a reliable browser based virus checker - if the file is too large, use a local virus checking program (your native Windows Defender on Windows computers or, I prefer, Malwarebytes)

Generally mp4 and mp3 files are clean - choose where to save them for the long term, and bam! Free forever media.

Optionally, I also upload mp4 files to a named Google document - this way I can easily share them or make them findable through a ‘xyz Google doc’ search for others :]

Torrents - “I want to keep and share xyz”

I’m not going to go into this subject in depth because, honestly, it’s not something I do regularly.

See the previously linked Torrenting guide for information on how the process works, and check out r/FMHY for recommendations and warnings about different torrenting clients (I’ve personally only used qBittorrent - I’ve heard to stay away from the Pirate Bay and Bittorrent.)

As with streaming, turn on that VPN baby! You’re going to need one that supports peer-to-peer (p2p) connections, so Proton’s free version is a no-go. Windscribe is what I’ve used for torrenting (and it’s a good free VPN on its own - I’m just partial to Proton). You get 10GB every month on Windscribe’s free version, which is more than enough for a few movies/a season or two of your favorite show.

(Bigger torrents like video games are easily 30+ GB, so be prepared to either pay for a no-limit premium account or spend a few months downloading your files in chunks.)

VPN on? Double check.

Boot up your torrenting client - I use a slightly out of date version of qBittorent, but there are other options. The Reddit thread and previously linked torrenting guide have a few dos and donts of selecting a client, so be thorough before you download your client of choice.

This is getting into the logistics of torrenting a bit, so forgive me if this is vague or incorrect, but now you need a torrent seed. These will be .tor files found through pirating websites or archives - these are rarely malicious, but it’s good to run any piracy related download through something like VirusTotal.com or scan it with a local program like Malwarebytes.

You open your seed file in your client and wait. A ‘healthy’ seed tends to have lots of seeders and few leeches, but sometimes you’re stuck with an obscure seed you just have to wait for.

Your torrented files have fully downloaded! Now what? a) keep your client open and seed those files for others as long as you want to - sharing is caring! and b) run those files through a security program like Malwarebytes (not sponsored it’s just the only program I’m familiar with).

Be wary of what gets flagged - sometimes the files seem important, but are just trojans, and likewise sometimes they seem malicious, but are just cracked software getting flagged by your system. It’s good to check and see if others have had a problem with this particular torrent before - Reddit threads from 2008 are your long dead friends.

And that’s about it. Feel free to correct me if anything I’ve recommended is malicious or outright wrong. I’ve been doing this for years and haven’t had an active problem to my knowledge, so if there is something fishy with how I do things, I am a statistical outlier and should not be counted.

I wish you smooth sailing and strong winds in your ventures me hearties!

Obligatory ‘don’t pirate small author’s or artist’s works what the fuck dude’ statement.

[echo-stimmingrose]

PRINCESS BRIDE REFERENCE?? PRINCESS BRIDE REFERENCE IN MY TOA BOOK????

[tsrdfs]

Artists Susan Herbert (1945-2014) Gilbert & Sullivan cat painting "family portrait", So go to him, The sun and I

[greencheekconure27]

I made a quiz

[coffeeoverlord]

oooo gay people oooo

[yonemurishiroku]

The Little Mermaid AU in which Bianca is Ariel who has left her brother to see the land, falls in love with someone up there, and dies trying to get his love.

And now Nico, with his sister gone, resents the land and the humans living on it - hides away in the trench, his tears ripples across the currents, creating numerous disasters in the sea, drowning many sailors alike in his own loneliness.

And Percy just happens to be a pirate obsessed with conquering dangerous seas.

[byfulcrums]

Seeing people saying they find TOA Apollo annoying annoys me. So fucking much. I cannot fucking stress enough how much this bothers me

First of all, he is a god. He's not your typical hero. Gods (in PJO, at least) aren't supposed to have self-sacrificial tendencies. They're not noble heroes, they're Greek Gods. They're petty, mean, unfair and powerful. Of fucking course he brags all the time. He used to be one of the most powerful forces in the world

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fantasy Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries and submitted endorsements below:

The Trials of Apollo (The Hidden Oracle, The Dark Prophecy, The Burning Maze, The Tyrant's Tomb, The Tower of Nero) by Rick Riordan

How do you punish an immortal? By making him human. After angering his father Zeus, the god Apollo is cast down from Olympus. Weak and disorientated, he lands in New York City as a regular teenage boy. Now, without his godly powers, the four-thousand-year-old deity must learn to survive in the modern world until he can somehow find a way to regain Zeus's favour. But Apollo has many enemies—gods, monsters and mortals who would love to see the former Olympian permanently destroyed. Apollo needs help, and he can think of only one place to go… an enclave of modern demigods known as Camp Half-Blood. Fantasy, mythology, middle grade, adventure, urban fantasy, series

Crimson Sails series (Hunt on Dark Waters, Blood on the Tide) by Katee Robert

Endorsement from submitter: everyone is lgbtq+ and it gets very spicy

Evelyn is a witch with a perfect storm of impulses: terrible taste in bed partners, sticky fingers, and a lust for danger. After she steals from her vampire ex and falls through a portal to another realm, she’s fished out of the waters by a band of seafarers and their telekinetic captain. She’s immediately given a choice—join their group or die. Bowen has no memory of his life before he became one of the Cŵn Annwn. He and his pirate crew are bound by vow to patrol through Threshold, the magical sea in between realms, keeping the portals to other worlds safe. When he rescues Evelyn, he doesn’t expect to be attracted to the unflappably brassy pickpocket. The longer he spends in her presence, the more he begins to question if his heart is the next thing she’ll steal. But as tension heats up between Bowen and Evelyn, danger escalates as well. Because Evelyn has no intention of keeping her vows to the Cŵn Annwn, and if she betrays the crew, both she and Bowen will pay the ultimate price…. Fantasy, romance, romantasy, queernorm, pirates, vampires, selkies, adult

[bookishlyvintage]

Monday Blues ❄️

[anonymous-ace72]

What it’s like to live in my head:

I didn’t know how to encapsulate the topic Roman art history into an image to use for this, but just know that that’s knocking around in there too.

[teehee-vibes]

Do you think Drey’s amnesia extends only to the lore or history based memories and events/people that factor into his trauma? Or do you think he’s also forgotten some mundane things?

Do you think Drey remembers that he’s allergic to bees?

[incorrect-riordanverse-quotes]

Chiara: I may have... stirrings for Damien. Nico: Stirrings? Chiara: Stirrings. Nico: What, like, feelings, you mean? Chiara: No, no, no, no, not quite all the way to feelings. More like... Nico: *confused* Chiara: Alright, feelings, damn you.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

PIRATE AU PIRATE AU PIRATE AU

who remembers the pirate au i did a while back?

well it's back~

come get ur sunflower sibs meet-haties fic <3

this was for @augustwritingchallenge! six prompts, six chapters! we'll see if i update on the days the prompts on are haha but I promise this will get done in this month! :D

[fluffy-bacon363]

Your Love Is Sunlight (solangelo)

A pirate!Nico and siren!Will solangelo fic!!!

Description

All those old stories about giant sea monsters, the sirens and the merfolk that Nico was so found of as a child have turned out to be mere myths.

At least that's what Nico tries to tell himself, but he soon realizes that there is a shred of truth behind each of these stories.

- ongoing multichapter fic

[byfulcrums]

There's a guy here that gives off the ultimate Lester vibes

[puddgyy]

does anyone else remember T.I.T.S. ?? trials in tainted space.. i think?? it was this in-browser text-based adventure, in space of course, with lots of furry and inflation stuff??