#this does not help mq's case one bit

[bored-knight]

FengQing Week 2024 - Day 1: Crush

MQ might have had a bit of a crush on a certain someone back then 💘

🏹⚔️

Initially this was drawn taking place in this omegaverse AU, right before MQ attempts to court Fx. But it can still work fine on its own.

[truly-morgan]

[College AU, HC's muse]

HuaLian | Heaven Official’s Blessing Modern AU 26-03-2021

[#hualian modern]

What if they were in college when they "first" met? hc is an art student, people even starting to wonder if he's even /trying/ to graduate or if he's going to stay in the program forever.

xl is doing some general courses, not sure where he'll go in life, his seemingly bad luck makes it that he fails classes because of bad things happening when he just trying his best.

throughout the months he sees hc statues and paintings since they are being exposed by the course, somehow they are really eye-catching with how realistic the man can get sometimes. hc seems to often include one man in his project and xl can't shrug off the feeling that the person depicted seems /familiar/.

Then one day, in his unluckiness, he bumps into someone as he's trying to get to class without being more late than he already is. The stranger spills his coffee on him, yet rather than the angry reaction he expected xl only hears a "Are you okay?".

hc is looking at him, trying to see if any coffee has gotten onto him, ignoring the fact that the coffee got all over his clothes. xl is then the one worried, asking if hc is alright, hoping he didn't burn himself with the coffee, asking if he can do something to help him.

"Why not buy me another coffee?" tease the stranger with a grin.

xl accept, finding it only fair despite not having much money. it's okay, he knows a cheap but good coffee shop he could take him to. hc is obviously taken aback that it works but takes the opportunity anyway. It won't show itself again.

So when classes are done, he joins a hc who has changed clothes, making him worry he might have ruined the other. He's quickly being reassured that it was not the case, they were clothes he usually wears when working with clay, as to not dirty his everyday clothes.

This leads to xl asking curiously what he's studying, not believing him when he says he's the one doing these pieces of art he has been enjoying in the past months.

"If gege wants I can show him what I am currently working on" he is being suggested and xl accept immediately.

And like this, it becomes a thing to go get coffee, hc often lets xl hang around when he's working on a project, not bothered by the man who usually either sits in silence, works on some homework or talks with him when he's not working on really detailed parts.

others from hc classes wonder who is the young man always by his side, not daring to disturb them because of the weirdly intimate aura around them, as if they were all alone in the room or something. fx and mq, xl roommates and childhood acquaintance slash friends are starting to wonder who is hc, since he's often over to help xl around or come pick him up to take him on what are clearly dates, despite xl being seemingly oblivious about how the man is looking at him.

Then, one day, hc finally suggests bringing xl to his place, where his art studio also is. Of course, xl accepts, only to be surprised by how big it is. hx place is basically only the studio, two rooms connected and much smaller, one being his room. even the kitchen is in a corner of the room.

xl jokingly asked if he's secretly the heir to a rich family, only to be told that it is mostly paid by hc job plus the many commission he takes on, making cl wonder how come hc finds so much time to hang out with him.

"That and the square is more industrial, so it's less demanded and cheaper". xl isn't sure of the validity of this, but seeing how hc looks like most of the time, he clearly doesn't have problem with money, so maybe he don't need to worry.

hc shows him around a bit, even trying to teach him how to sculpt clay, which xl does enjoy doing despite barely making a cat-shaped form. hc promise him he could get better with more practice. They end up eating, having order while playing around with clay.

Then hc gets a phone call from his boss, leaving xl alone for a bit. xl decide to look more into what hc did, having already been told he could look at whatever he wanted to. He goes through what he assumes to be school sketchbook, filled with drawings of models While reaching for something higher he ends up knocking down an art portfolio folder, many pieces of paper spilling on the ground. he quickly tries to pick them up, only for his eyes to catch up on one of the drawings.

Was it... him?

It leads him to pick up the paper, finding out it is indeed a drawing of him. Then after looking more closely, he realised they are /all/drawings and sketches of him. He isn't sure what is the most troubling: some clearly being of him at school while he was working on something or the one clearly drawn without him as a model.

He then looks around more, only to find other portfolios filled with him. He even found a good amount of statues made of him, most rather small.

he realises that his schoolwork works most likely are him too, now that he sees some without any alteration made to his appearance to hide it /just enough/ for it to not look evident.

hc comes back to the studio to find an xl standing among many versions of himself, clearly looking a bit unsure as to what he should be thinking of this.

On look from xl and he knows what his question is "Yes, it's you" replies hc straightforwardly.

xl simply nodded, as he looked around a bit more, before hc decided to join him to help pick up his work. "I didn't mean to make gege uncomfortable, I will stop or get rid of these if this is what you want," he said, although something in his eye didn't seem like he wanted to do the latter option.

"Did I know you... before?" finally asked xl, not believing he was interesting enough for a stranger to suddenly start doing /this many/pieces of art with him.

he then learns that actually, xl had saved him once and had somehow also stumbled onto him later on a couple of times.

He finally remembered the young boy he had saved from drowning after falling into a river, surprised hc had recognised him now that they were both older.

This had was a bit much for xl to take in, going back home, and letting hc accompany him to the bus station "just to be safe" he was told.

When he get back to his apartment, fx seems to catch up on his troubled mind despite trying to hide it, finally admitting to what he had just learned after some (a lot) of insisting on fx and mq sides. They are both much more worried than he is, finally finding something to pin on hc for being /this/ obsessed with him, now understanding where the weird impression was coming from.

at first, they don't want for xl to hang out with him anymore, because what if he's not just an obsessed artist, but also dangerous?

So they both follow him around, making sure xl isn't alone with hc. for a time it does work, even clearly getting under hc skin despite him trying not to show it around xl. Then it fails when one of xl classes finishes earlier than the usual, hc already waiting for him, asking if they could talk. xl can't find it in him to refuse, following him back into an empty classroom.

"I am truly sorry for having troubled gege to the point he feels the need to have two guard dog with him all the time" he apologises, xl unsure if it wasn't also joking.

xl tries explaining to him it was only fx and mq doing, that after some time he didn't really mind it, having finally digested the news.

It was weird thinking that it wasn't enough and that he still wanted hc in his life because he had gotten this important in the span of nearly a year.

This is also when hc decided to confess his love, wanting to be fully transparent now, not to definitely scare the man away later on if he ever finds out by accident. One time was enough, he didn't want to make his love worry and feel trouble like this another time.

xl wasn't sure if he should be surprised or not, yet he finds himself rather enjoying the confession, happy that it is actually the case.

yet he doesn't know how to answer, still unable to put full word to his feeling. He sees hc approach him, one of his hands hovering near his cheek, not touching him quite yet. he was then asked permission for a kiss, making him feel warm that he was asking like this. he really didn't understand where fx and mq distrust was coming from when he was asking his permission even for a kiss. He accepted and upon being touched this gently, then a bit more passionately, he finds out he wouldn't mind having this all the time.

Only a couple of days later does xl decide to confess his love, having had the time to think about it and finds out that he had fallen in love with hc. delighted and happy would be too weak of words to describe how hc feels about it, now even more affectionate and teasing towards xl. Everything works out really well for them at the end of the day and even fx and mq have to accept xl won't change his mind.

Original

[lesbianwithchainsaws]

Since series three of Mythic Quest is over what are your predictions on series four? Also what overall thoughts on series three of Mythic Quest because I still feel in the mix about this series.

First I want to say, thank you for asking! My answer ended up kinda long and rambly so I'll put it under keep reading in case anyone isn't interested. But I'm really happy to be able to discuss this!

I'm not sure I have any predictions, but I do really hope they follow up more on Zack's plan from season 2 in season 4. They completely dropped it, even though he was outright trying to manipulate employees and hurt the company. It's weird they didn't bring that up at all in s3. I also hope we get more character development for Dana, Rachel and Jo (I mentioned a while back that I'd love a Rachel backstory episode and I am sticking to that). I'm not a huge fan of Brad, Jo and Dana being split from the MQ office, but I hope that's at least done better than the splitting of characters in s3. I just hope s4 gives decent stories to the other characters again. They did it so well in s2, but fucked it in s3.

Also they better fucking bring back that bit of someone running to Brad for help and Brad already knowing what they want, and saying their words to them at the same time (did that make sense?) It's small, but I missed it in s3. It was a fun bit.

My ideal version of MQ season 4 would have more Rachel and Dana because to me the show is about them (it's not, I'm just constantly starved for good lesbian representation and want more of them being cringey lesbians). On a serious note, I just hope the other characters have more to do. Also more Carol would be great!

As far as s3 goes, I was quite disappointed with it. It had some great moments and I will say the Christmas episode and Sarian were life changing, but the rest was meh at best. It felt like the only characters that had something to do were mainly Poppy and David, and a bit of Ian. And the rest were just there?

The Rachel and Brad dynamic was rushed as all hell, which sucks bc I really like their dynamic, but come on it would not take Rachel one speech to suddenly be a greedy capitalist. Even with the whole idea of "she talked herself into it" it doesn't work imo. There should've been more manipulation on Brad's part for it to work, and it should've taken longer than an episode. (Also multiple people have brought this up already, but it makes no sense that Rachel dropped her goal of writing. I'd get it if she dropped out of Berkley for one reason or another, but her outright abandoning her interest in writing was weird)

Dana felt like she was barely there for a lot of the season imo, which sucks bc she's a cool character! And they barely did anything with her until like the last few episodes.

I hate that all of s3 was building up this movie deal, only for it to get cancelled at the end? Like what the fuck was that! Movies get cancelled often, sure, but for that to just not go anywhere at all was bullshit in my opinion. David standing up for himself was iconic, but the movie just being cancelled like that wasn't a good choice.

Also why was Brad the janitor for only like 2 seconds? Why did he hint towards having a plan, but had nothing? Brad as a janitor could've been so interesting since he was the head of monetization a year before, and now he has to try to get that back somehow. But they dropped that too.

Of course, a lot of people also wanted the Brad Breakdown Episode. I didn't know Danny Pudi had teased anything like it so I never expected it, but it is weird to name your episode To Catch a Mouse, stick Brad and Jo right in there, and nothing? At all? Did the writers forget about the animal sorting episode and Brad being labeled a mouse? Did they forget that Jo directly fucked with him for being a mouse? (Also side note: am I stupid or does it not make sense that Brad had the janitor costume on again in that episode if he's not the janitor anymore?)

The fact that CW didn't get a mention outside of the first episode was also disappointing. People theorised that CW's speech was gonna have an impact on some of the other characters, and I wish it would've. At the very least there should've been a scene where they're talking about CW because he was their friend after all.

I feel like I'm rambling a bunch now and I'm sorry. Simply put, I just hope s4 is better.

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

This is a bit of a long rambly mess, but I just to vent somewhere! When I was at first getting annoyed at JC’s depictions, I thought fanon JC was painted as similar Mu Qing, right down to JC being given MQ’s secret care for children. But I then realized that even that comparison was inaccurate.

Even MQ apologizes (more than once across the story!), says that XL was right, and says he wants to be his friend. And if JC did that in most fics, that would at least be fine. But fans don’t even do the courtesy of giving JC that arc! Instead, it’s always JC being right -- whether about the GC transfer, or he’s suddenly become a person who’s willing to help the Wens and WWX is just a stupid idiot for doing it on his own -- and WWX has to admit that JC was right.

And where MQ becomes more comfortable with the fact that he used to be a servant, accepting and overcoming the insecurities, JC’s arc in fic could be learning to overcome his insecurities that WWX is better than him at many things even despite their class differences. But no, fanon JC has to be AMAZING at something, or even SEVERAL things, SO much BETTER at them than poor stupid WWX. That’s the BEST solution for Yunmeng bros reconciliation, obviously.

At this point, I honestly wish JC was actually given MQ’s character arc in more fics, because at least he could be said to have one, and not just have always been a perfect person, best brother, best jiujiu, bestest sect leader. Ugh.

It kind of feels like another side of purity culture from the people who should be against it. If JC and WWX reconcile,if JC loves WWX, then JC can’t have ever been a bad brother. Instead, it’s Wei Wuxian who has been the bad brother (the character who’s more easy to change since he a) has already gone through this characterization in all versions of the canon, so his development can be reversed for the fic and brought back up to speed by the end, and b) has actually had character growth, unlike JC, so it’s easier to write that growth). It’s Wei Wuxian who needs to change to match where JC is at. It’s fine if the “bad brother” is the character who tried to do good, but fucked it up because he “doesn’t know how to ask for help!” or “is too stupid to know other people care!” or whatever other excuse. That’s easy to fix! But it’s not fine when it’s the character who never really cared about people outside of his sect and is terribly low on empathy/mercy/compassion/caring. JC has to have been secretly good all along! He loves his brother, so obviously he never did anything terrible to him! Or to other people in the name of hating him! Love cannot be unhealthy or messy or crystalized over by and wrapped up in hate!

(I mean, if we’re comparing characters to JC, Severus Snape also has an unpleasant personality yet was actually revealed to not have been evil all along, and the discourse around him is more interesting than the stuff surrounding JC. It’s still often stupid discourse, but at least it’s based on evidence from the text and not a made up secret narrative where JC hasn’t been a bad person this whole time so fans can just make up whatever characterization they want.)

Instead of dealing with JC’s and WWX’s canon relationship and trying to find a way forward from where they left off in Guanyin Temple (if they’re ignoring the extras in MDZS, or going off CQL), fanon JC is just retroactively made into having always been a good person to justify the ease of their reconciliation.

And as someone who loves delving into fictional complex, complicated, messy, ugly relationships, I find it so...bland, boring, childish, and exhausting.

"As someone who loves delving into fictional complex, complicated, messy, ugly relationships, I find it so...bland, boring, childish, and exhausting."

Hello there anon, the above as well as what you said about reversing Wei Wuxian's character to be on par with how awful Jiang Cheng was to him is especially resonating. As a person Jiang Cheng himself for all intents was considered at least above average from the normal cultivators.

Yet his downfall always relied on his hate of Wei Wuxian (as a person, in talent, socially) it is a core part of his character that is woven into the work itself and the catalyst for Wei Wuxian's death itself. Jiang Cheng if anything, is coldly upfront on just why he refuses to help Wei Wuxian out of his predicament as well as framing Wei Wuxian. The text itself says he puts little fight in pretending to even speak for Wei Wuxian's behalf when Jin Guangshan begins to sully him and conspire about him wanting to be a sect leader. He is meant to be the complete contrast in Lan Wangji and Mianmian trying to speak for his good-will, in fact he contradicts this by saying that Wei Wuxian has always been tiresomely reckless and uncontrollable, something that holds little truth as Wei Wuxian worked in trust for Yunmeng Jiang's benefit for years. Their actions simply are not of comparable fault and the end of the work (in the least the novel) makes this message clear. Jiang Cheng, as a character, like MXTX said is a product of following what his environment made him as well as him putting no fight on his end to amend that to be better and learn. Love is very complicatedly explored in this work in all it's ways and that's what is very beautiful about it. It does not shy away from the forms it manifests in. Including Jiang Cheng's who at the base of it, the rivalry there was as much one-sided as Shu She's for Lan Wangji, the layers of irony are the best part of the novel for each of it's characters.

As for fandom. I do think a lot of it is petty stupid discourse (oh and I have never said I am particularly immune to it, I am far too sarcastic for my own good and have a bit of a loud mouth when I see something particularly ridiculous for this fandom and I do not know when to shut up my filter). But, so much of it is coated within personal resonance towards certain characters which leads to feeling personally hurt, especially when the block features exist on this site. Multiple tags have been implemented to block for this exact purpose, yet their comes the takes that you can not use these sarcastic tags that are blockable because "it's not the right ones". Fandom is ever shifting and as such it is curated as much as you want it to be. Being ordered to not use these tags or to avoid posting all together is a moot point as well as demanding others to read how you want them to, even when the work textually supports or does not certain interpretations. As lovely as the thought is that "all interpretations are valid", logically it does not work quite so well when you attempt to push that on so many others with little helpful evidence other than flimsy fanon popularity (Ron the Death Eater And Draco in Leather pants are infamous fandom tropes that are despised for reasons). JC is not a case of questionable good for selfish reasons as in the comparison to Snape, he is simply a show of selfishness who has an ambiguous opening to do better, in terms of those in the future. Too much clout though is put on that idea when the work itself is not shy to say real good, kind, supportive people are hard to come by.

[lanchang]

one of the things that pisses me off with the novels is how class inequality is handled w/ MQ,like yeah everyone treats him with suspicion,pity or as a weird exotic trinket and after a certain point he snaps and leaves,he literally has to pull himself by his bootstraps to get somewhere,now let's disregard all of that backstory and have people(HC and FX)mistreat him for the lols,like idk esp with HC it makes me uncomfortable how the narrative treats this whole thing(nonsensical rambling,sorry)

oh yeah it sucks like the broom thing is actually cruel everyone disregards his feelings and mocks him for something that was completely out of his control and i really do feel so bad for him like he really did work so hard and he does have a good heart and he just doesnt get the respect he deserves and has earned. unfortunately i think it makes a lot of sense that he is mistreated in that way. i have problems with the way tgcf handles certain aspects of its story, but for the most part not this one tbh. it is common for people from a poor background to be looked on like that, even when theyve been able to climb out of it (and not to discredit mu qing's hard work, but this pretty much only happens with the help of someone from a higher status. and thats unfair and it shouldnt be like that but it is often the case!!)

classism is real like that and the way its depicted with mu qing shows it pretty well imo even way back in the flashbacks like the other disciples at the palace who bully him for the cherry picking thing and pretty much just say "wow look at this guy taking food to feed his poor family" when there is LITERALLY nothing wrong with that in any way at all its not even like the cherries are off limits its just cherries. its not morally wrong it at all and its not against the rules but they just dont like him and they use the fact that he's a servant and poor against him. its not right!! but it does happen. and even 800 years later despite mu qing ascending he was still once a kid from a poor neighborhood and while maybe not everyone knows that anymore, it never stops being true.

its interesting to me that both he and hua cheng came from pretty similar backgrounds (although hc also had the whole being cursed thing etc. also i desperately wish his background in xianle and in the 800 years was expanded on more it BOGGLES my mind that mxtx just took those details about him out im like PUT IT BACK IN!!! i know this thing is xie lian's pov but come on pleasepleaseplease) but they have such an antagonistic relationship with each others. obviously a huge difference is the way they interact with xie lian its such an interesting contrast that hc just adores him completely while mq was actually his friend but also his servant so he had a much more complicated relationship with him (this is also why im more invested in the trio than i am in hua/lian, i love complexity and i dont find the simply devoted thing that compelling in the long run. there are still things about them that i think are impactful and i do relate to aspects of it, but to me personally it feels like an incomplete story) i dont much to say on that right now, its something i want to pay attention to in my reread because i do think its interesting. on the one hand sometimes people from similar backgrounds like that can stick together and understand each other. on the other hand sometimes they can judge each other harsher than anyone else because of how theyve internalized things also in general i think sometimes we can judge people who are similar to us quite a bit because we think we know better than them

this ended up being so long and i just dumped all my thoughts on you sorry!! 😅😅😅 this is part of the story i do find really interesting its part of why mu qing is such a fave of mine theres a lot going on and for all that he often says the wrong thing in the wrong way, he's much more aware of how the world works than the other two because he's lived it and hes right!! when he does leave he's right!! everything he says that they need to do to survive xl and fx end up doing after he leaves he was right!! and after 800 years he still gets everything thrown back in his face it isnt right!!! but i do unfortunately think that its very real </3

[nyerus]

Hello! I have a question. There seems to be a difference between what Xie Lian looks like in Chinese and Western fandom. I read the book in Chinese first so I get confused sometimes. People think because he is a martial god he is supposed to be big, but I can tell you that's not true. In wuxia and xianxia people like martial artists are very lean even though they are strong. Because fighting comes from qi, not muscles. That's why they can jump great distances and walk on water. So on Chinese fanart XL is drawn more slender. Also technically his body is still a 17 year old correct? So why do people think XL is big? Sorry for my English.

Hello i asked before. Also Huahua is described in the original Chinese as tall and broad as well. Honestly, it seems some people don't understand Chinese martial arts culture when they read. I look at art on weibo a lot more because so. Again, sorry for my English!

Hi there anon! Thank you so much for giving your perspective! And your English was perfect, no worries! :o

I think the main reason is what you already said. For a lot of Westerners, especially younger people, MXTX works like TGCF are their first foray into the genre. Not only into danmei, but into xianxia/wuxia/xuanhuan. So they aren't able to reconcile their preconceived notions with what is the actual depiction (or what they personally want it to be), based on their new and limited understanding of the world mechanics. I think in many cases it's as simple as "character strong, so character should have muscles" but indeed, it ignores how and why they are so powerful: their qi, cultivation, etc. (Personally, I think this does a disservice to XL in particular, as he is renowned for his mastery of these. He is underestimated because of how he looks, but packs quite the punch.) Since there aren't good equivalents in Western stories (apart from just magic), it causes a bit of a cultural divide.

A part of it also has to do with Western masculinity standards and that many people in Western fandom see a male character not adhering to those standards and get confused or even offended. Without realizing that these are not universal standards, or were not historical standards. In pretty much every c-novel I've read, or c-drama I've watched, many males are considered ideally handsome while being described as elegant, slender, etc. Some of my fave Chinese actors are this way as well lol. There is also a lot to do with some folks wanting to be subversive in their personal portrayals of XL, which... that's a whole can of worms itself. I think that would also be beyond the scope of this post. Suffice it to say, even Fei Tian portrays his male characters the same way as other danmei authors. So that’s another thing.

And also yes, XL is indeed stuck at 17 years lol. With what it implies, I was always under the impression that XL would forever look the same as how he ascended. (Because other gods also seem to be this way.) Even when he is hurt/etc he always heals back to that state eventually. I think also a lot of people assume, since he's known for doing hard labor and such as a result of busking, he would become more muscular? But that never made sense to me because if one wants to assume that, then one also has to keep in mind that he's more often than not starving, and there's no way he's building muscles like that. It's hard enough to build muscles on a full belly, even for men! It's also confusing because characters like MQ -- who are also martial gods -- don't typically get the same treatment in art. He's almost always depicted as a prettyboy, even though he and XL have almost the same body type. XL is actually shorter than him, and XL is referred to as a prettyboy himself in the story in various places LOL! And yeah, it's then doubly confusing to see people *downplay* HC's hard-earned physique on the other hand. :/

As you said, XL’s body type is actually described in the novel directly. Plus both his manhua and donghua portrayals follow that. Same goes for HC as well. So.... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyhoo, I hope this helped, anon! It's a messy matter in western fandom, and personally, I like to keep my nose out of it. I enjoy good art when I see it on places like twitter or tumblr, and either mute or block depictions that I really do not like! It’s all about curation~ But yes, some of my favorite artworks are from weibo too! ❤

[hualianff]

T.F.T.A (I.H.) II 《I》

William’s Theme — Sophism

The company that hired XL is called Paradise Deals Enterprise, a corporate business that provides stock investment services. It’s a fairly new company that has impressive success rates. Furthermore, customer reviews are more than ecstatic about their results.

Two months prior, XL had been looking for a new job after being let go from his truck-driving position. He restarted the process of posting his updated resume to a job-searching website. Skills XL excelled at included customer service, cleaning, and physical labor. While he also enjoyed calligraphy, martial arts, and photography, XL came to find those were not strengths companies would hire him for.

Which makes it all the more surprising how XL was hired only one month after being released from his previous job, and by a prosperous business no less. A man named Yin Yu reached out to XL through email, introducing himself as the associate manager to one of the CEOs, offering the job with no interview process needed. After looking over the descriptions of cleaning and completing simple tasks for company employees, then seeing the salary, XL emailed a positive response back within twelve hours.

SQX rejoiced with XL about the job acquisition, and they went out to a nice dinner to celebrate with XL’s two other close friends, MQ and FX. While they were skeptical at first, they couldn’t help but be satisfied that XL’s luck had changed for the better in job hunting.

Now, XL wakes up to his alarm blaring its usual obnoxious beep beep beep, the clock displaying that it is 5 a.m. XL slowly opens his eyes, not quite having gone back to sleep after the nightmare that shook him three hours earlier. With a deep breath in and out, XL reaches over to bop the alarm off. He rolls out of bed and stretches with a tiny mewl.

One hour until his shift begins.

XL leaves his apartment thirty minutes later, wearing the company outfit shipped to him a few days ago: dark gray pants and shirt, subtle enough to blend in and confirm that XL does indeed work at Paradise Deals. Using his out-dated phone for directions, XL begins walking towards his destination. Luckily, XL found a reasonably priced apartment that’s close to the downtown area, and in ten minutes, he’s scanning the tall buildings in search of the investment company.

After five more minutes of walking, XL doesn’t have to look hard to find the tallest building on the block, with dark maroon bricks and enormous tinted windows. XL’s jaw drops open in astonishment. When he looks back at his phone, he sees the word  “headquarters” after Paradise Deals Entertainment.

Ah, they must have relocated their headquarters to a city as big-scale as Shanghai to maximize customer engagement and business deals.

XL enters through one of the numerous revolving doors. He approaches the desk, informing the receptionist that he is the new custodian. She asks for his license and a few more questions about his application before nodding with approval. XL smiles for his company identification card and is told to wait to be shown around the building.

At first glance, XL looks around to see many people walk in and out of Paradise Deals. Suddenly, the five revolving doors—in addition to two automatic and stagnant doors—make sense. Additionally, there are eight elevator doors, four on either side, where the constant stream of people continues. Just from the outside view, XL could guess there were no less than thirty floors.

The people walking around ranged from sleek businessmen to others dressed in outlandish outfits, almost hippie-looking. XL spots a woman carrying an instrument on her back, another man in an athletic tracksuit, and a couple in wedding attire.

They were an odd sort of people, XL thought. But then again, many considered him to be odd. Besides, what constituted who was odd and who was ordinary anyways? The people walking out of the elevators all wore expressions of pure joy and satisfaction, so who is XL to judge them by their appearances?

A massive clock shows it is 6 a.m., right on the dot. A man dressed in a simple black suit steps out of the elevators from the right side, heading towards XL. If it weren’t for XL’s hypersensitive observant skills developed with the tough jobs he’s done in the past, the man wouldn’t be noticeable at all, with how briskly and silently he moves.

“Hello, you must be Xie Lian,” the man greets. XL nods. The other man holds out a hand. “I am Yin Yu. We exchanged a few emails regarding your employment. I am very grateful you accepted our position.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Yu,” XL says with a kind smile, briefly shaking YY’s hand. “I’m grateful you reached out in the first place.”

“Wonderful. Allow me to bring you to your work area.”

With that said, YY gestures for XL to follow him into an elevator on the left side, explaining a few housekeeping things about the first floor before they head on up.

As they’re riding up in the elevator, YY explains that XL is not responsible for cleaning all the floors.

“That would be quite outrageous, wouldn’t it?” YY comments off-handedly, checking his phone for a quick second.

“Regardless, the pay is abnormally high for custodian services, don’t you think?” XL questions, adjusting the collar of his shirt. His hand gravitates to his nameplate, tapping the cool metal with a sense of pride. “I’m sure I could be very efficient during the fifteen-hour shift.”

YY’s eyebrows furrow at that, which XL doesn’t catch as he looks at all the levels. There are forty levels in total, sectioned off into four distinct categories by color: jade green, royal blue, maple-red, and pearl white.

“In that case, you will only be in charge of Mr. He Xuan’s territory. This includes floors 11-20,” YY explains, the elevator arriving on the twentieth floor. “I’ll escort you to his office so he can provide more specific instructions on how to manage his domain.”

“Sounds good,” XL proclaims, exiting the elevator with a bounce in his step. YY leads XL down a long, single corridor with numerous doors on both sides, the symbol of a fish painted on each door. The color of the carpeted floor is the same as the elevator levels, royal blue–endlessly rich like the ocean.

Perhaps he will be vacuuming the length of the corridor? Wiping down the doors and polishing the knobs? As he passes a few paintings of random faces and sea creatures, XL ponders if he shall dust too?

It appears YY is leading XL down to the large set of doors at the end of the hall. Before they make it to Mr. He Xuan’s office, XL rushes up to tap YY on the shoulder.

“If I may ask, what are these rooms? Will I be cleaning inside them as well?” XL asks, a bit hesitant. YY stops in his tracks, pocketing his phone and giving XL a wary look.

“You will not be required to clean them. The employees take care of that on their own,” YY speaks slowly, seriously. “Never go inside unless you are specifically requested to.”

When XL vigorously nods in understanding, YY whirls around and continues walking. When they arrive at the set of doors, YY rings the intercom on the side of the wall.

“Black Water, your helper is here,” YY says while looking at the upper left corner of the hallway. XL figures there must be a camera that captures who is on the outside of the door. Without thinking about it, XL enthusiastically waves to the camera, a warm smile etched into his face.

There’s an awkward moment of silence, and XL pauses his hand mid-wave, wondering if he is being too much. But according to the quirk in YY’s lips, the other man didn’t seem to think so.

A muffled voice croaks through the intercom.

“He may enter.”

《III》

[arfox158]

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages

TLDR: With a bit of research and support we were able to demonstrate a proof of concept for introducing a fraudulent payment message to move £0.5M from one account to another, by manually forging a raw SWIFT MT103 message, and leveraging specific system trust relationships to do the hard work for us!

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages App

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages Message

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages To My

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages For Her

Before we begin: This research is based on work we performed in close-collaboration with one of our clients; however, the systems, architecture, and payment-related details have been generalized / redacted / modified as to not disclose information specific to their environment.

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Have a question, comment, or need assistance? Send us a message or call (630) 833-0300. Will call available at our Chicago location Mon-Fri 7:00am–6:00pm and Sat 7:00am–2:00pm.

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages App

With that said.. *clears throat*

The typical Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) against SWIFT systems we see in reports and the media are - for the most part - the following:

Compromise the institution's network;

Move laterally towards critical payment systems;

Compromise multiple SWIFT Payment Operator (PO) credentials;

Access the institution's SWIFT Messaging Interface (MI);

Keys in - and then authorize - payment messages using the compromised PO accounts on the MI.

This attack-path requires the compromise of multiple users, multiple systems, an understanding of how to use the target application, bypass of 2FA, attempts to hide access logs, avoid alerting the legitimate operators, attempts to disrupt physical evidence, bespoke malware, etc. – so, quite involved and difficult. Now that’s all good and fine, but having reviewed a few different payment system architectures over the years, I can’t help but wonder:

“Can't an attacker just target the system at a lower level? Why not target the Message Queues directly? Can it be done?”

A hash-based MAC might simply be too big. On the other hand, hash-based MACs, because they are larger, are less likely to have clashes for a given size of message. A MAC that is too small might turn out to be useless, as a variety of easy-to-generate messages might compute to the same MAC value, resulting in a collision. WhatsApp Messenger is a FREE messaging app available for iPhone and other smartphones. WhatsApp uses your phone's Internet connection (4G/3G/2G/EDGE or Wi-Fi, as available) to let you message and call friends and family. Switch from SMS to WhatsApp to send and receive messages, calls, photos, videos, documents, and Voice Messages. WHY USE WHATSAPP. Garrick Hello, I'm Garrick Chow, and welcome to this course on computer literacy for the Mac. This course is aimed at the complete computer novice, so if you're the sort of person who feels some mild anxiety, nervousness, or even dread every time you sit down in front of your computer, this course is for you.

Well, let's find out! My mission begins!

So, first things first! I needed to fully understand the specific “section” of the target institution's payment landscape I was going to focus on for this research. In this narrative, there will be a system called “Payment System” (SYS). This system is part of the institution's back-office payment landscape, receiving data in a custom format and output's an initial payment instructions in ISO 15022 / RJE / SWIFT MT format. The reason I sought this scenario was specifically because I wanted to focus on attempting to forge an MT103 payment message - that is:

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MT – “Message Type” Literal;

1 – Category 1 (Customer Payments and Cheques);

0 – Group 0 (Financial Institution Transfer);

3 – Type 3 (Notification);

All together this is classified as the MT103 “Single Customer Credit Transfer”.

Message type aside, what does this payment flow look like at a high level? Well I’ve only gone and made a fancy diagram for this!

Overall this is a very typical and generic architecture design. However, let me roughly break down what this does:

The Payment System (SYS) ingests data in a custom - or alternative - message format from it's respective upstream systems. SYS then outputs an initial payment instruction in SWIFT MT format;

SYS sends this initial message downstream to a shared middelware (MID) component, which converts (if necessary) the received message into the modern MT format understood by SWIFT - Essentially a message broker used by a range of upstream payment systems within the institution;

MID forwards the message in it's new format on to the institution's Messaging Interface (let's say its SAA in this instance) for processing;

Once received by SAA, the message content is read by the institution's sanction screening / Anti-money laundering systems (SANCT).

Given no issues are found, the message is sent on to the institution's Communication Interface (SWIFT Alliance Gateway), where it's then signed and routed to the recipient institution over SWIFTNet.

OK, so now I have a general understanding of what I'm up against. But if I wanted to exploit the relationships between these systems to introduce a fraudulent payment without targeting any payment operators, I was going to need to dig deeper and understand the fundamental technologies in use!

So how are these messages actually 'passed' between each system? I need to know exactly what this looks like and how its done!

More often than not, Message Queues (MQ) are heavily used to pass messages between components in a large payment system. However, there are also various “Adapter” that may be used between systems communicating directly with the SAG (Such as SAA or other bespoke/3rd party systems). These are typically the:

Remote API Host Adapter (RAHA);

MQ Host Adapter (MQHA);

Web Services Host Adapter (WSHA).

Having identified that MQ was in use, my initial assumption was that there was most likely a dedicated Queue Manager (QM) server somewhere hosting various queues that systems push and pull messages from? However, due to SWIFT CSP requirements, this would most likely - at a minimum - take the form of two Queue Managers. One which manages the queues within the SWIFT Secure Zone, and another that manages queues for the general corporate network and back office systems.

Let's update that diagram to track / represent this understanding: Now I could research how this 'messaging' worked!

There are multiple ways to configure Message Queues architectures, in this case there were various dedicated input and output queues for each system, and the message flow looks something like this: Full disclosure, turns out it’s hard to draw an accurate - yet simple - MQ flow diagram (that one was basically my 4th attempt). So it’s.. accurate 'enough' for what we needed to remember!

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages Message

Now I had a good understanding of how it all worked, it is time to define my goal: 'Place a payment message directly on to a queue, and have it successfully processed by all downstream systems'.

This sounds simple, just write a message to a queue, right? But there are a few complications!

Why are there few indications of this attack vector in the wild?

How do I even gain “write” access to the right queue?

What protects the message on the queues?

What protects the messages in transit?

What format are the messages in?

What is the correct syntax for that message format at any particular queue (0 margin for error)?

Where does PKI come in? How / where / when are the messages signed?

Can I somehow get around the message signing?

What values in the messages are dependent / controlled / defined by the system processing them (out of my control)?

What is the maximum amount I can transfer using Straight Through Processing, without alerting the institution / requiring manual validation?

But OK, there's no point dwelling on all of that right now, I'll just clearly define what I want to do! The goal:

Successfully write a payment instruction for 500,000 GBP;

Inject that message directly onto a specific queue;

Have the message pass environment-specific validation rules;

Have the message pass sanctions and AML checks.

Have the message successfully signed;

Have the message pass SWIFTNet-specific validation rules;

What I was not interested in doing for this research - yet needed to understand nevertheless for a full attack chain was:

How to compromise the institution's network;

How to gain access to the MQ admin's workstation;

How to obtain the pre-requisite credentials.

What I wanted to 100% avoid at all costs:

The attack involving SWIFT payment operators in any way;

The attack involving SWIFT application access in any way;

A need to compromise signing keys / HSMs;

A need to compromise SWIFTNet operator accounts or certificates or any type of PKI;.

Now I had an idea of what to do, I needed to make sure I could write a raw MT103 payment instruction! Typically, even when operators write payment messages using a messaging interface application like Alliance Access, they only really write the message “body” via a nice GUI. As raw data this could look something like:

I'll break this down in the following table:

NameFieldValueTransaction Reference20TRANSACTIONRF103Bank Operation Code23BCRED (Message is to 'credit' some beneficiary)Value Date / Currency / Amount32A200102 (02/01/2020) GBP 500,000.00Currency / Original Credit Amount33BGBP 500000,00 (£500,000.00)Ordering Customer50KGB22EBNK88227712345678 (IBAN) JOHN DOE (Name) JOHN'S BUSINESS LTD (Line 1) 21 JOHN STREET, LONDON, GB (Line 2)Beneficiary59KFR20FBNK88332287654321 (IBAN) ALICE SMITH (Name) ALICE'S COMPANY (Line 1) 10 ALICE STREET, PARIS, FR (Line 2)Remittance Information7012345-67890 (essentially a payment reference)Details of Charge71ASHA (Shared charge between sender and receiver)

Now as this is a valid message body, if I were targeting a payment operator on SWIFT Alliance Access, I could - for the 'most' part - simply paste the message into SAA's raw message creation interface and I'd be pretty much done. With the exception of adding the sender / recipient BIC codes and most likely selecting a business unit. However, these values are not stored in the message body. Not stored in the message body you say? Well that complicates things! Where are they stored exactly?

The message “body” is referred to as “block 4” (aka the “Text Block”) within the SWIFT MT standard. As suggested by the name, there is probably also a block 1-3. This is correct; and these blocks are typically generated by the payment processing applications - such as SWIFT Alliance Access - and not necessarily input by the operators. A 'complete' MT103 message consists of 6 blocks:

Block 1 – Basic Header

Block 2 – Application Header

Block 3 – User Header

Block 4 – Text Block

Block 5 – Trailer

Block 6 – System block

So it looked like I was going to need to learn how to craft these various “blocks” from scratch.

Block 1 (Basic header)

Reading through some documentation, I crafted the following “Basic header” block:

A breakdown of what this translates too is as follows:

NameValueContextBasic Header Flag1Block 1 (Not 2, 3, 4, or 5)Application TypeFFIN ApplicationMessage Type0101 = FIN (I.e not ACK/NACK)Sender BICEBNKGB20EBNK (Bank Code) GB (Country Code) 20 (Location Code)Sender Logical TerminalATypically A, unless they are a significantly large institution and require multiple terminalsSender BranchXXXAll X if no branch neededSession Number0000The session number for the messageSequence Number 999999The sequence number of the message

Taking a step back, I already identified two potential problems: the “session” and “sequence” numbers! These are described as follows:

Session Number – Must also equal the current application session number of the application entity that receives the input message.

Sequence number – The sequence number must be equal to the next expected number.

Hmmm, at this point I was not sure how I could predetermine a valid session and/or sequence number - considering they seemed to be application and 'traffic' specific? But there was nothing I could do at the time, so I noted it down in a list of 'issues/blockers' to come back to later.

Block 2 (Application Header)

A bit more dry reading later, I managed to also throw together an application header:

Again, I’ve broken this down so it makes sense (if it didn’t already; I’m not one to assume):

NameValueContextApplication Header Flag2Block 2I/O IdentifierIInput Message (a message being sent)Message Type103103 = Single Customer Credit TransactionRecipient BICFBNKFR20FBNK (Bank Code) FR (Country Code) 20 (Location Code)Recipient Logical TerminalXAll General Purpose Application Messages must use 'X'Recipient BranchXXXAll General Purpose Application Messages must use 'XXX'Message PriorityNNormal (Not Urgent)

Awesome! No issues crafting this header!

Note: At this point I should probably mention that these BIC codes are not 'real', however are accurate in terms of in format and length.

Block 3 (User Header)

The third block is called the “User Header” block, which can be used to define some “special” processing rules. By leverage this header, I could specify that the message should be processed using “Straight Through Processing” (STP) rules which essentially attempts to ensure that the message is processed end-to-end without human intervention. This could be specified as follows:

However, this was not yet a valid header! As of November 2018 the user header requires a mandatory “Unique end-to-end transaction reference” (UETR) value, which was introduced as part of SWIFT's Global Payments Innovation initiative (gpi)! This is a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID) compliant with the 4th version of the generation algorithm used by the IETF standard 'RFC4122'. This consists of 32 hexadecimal characters, divided into 5 parts by hyphens as follows:

where:

x – any lowercase hexadecimal character;

4 – fixed value;

y – either: 8, 9, a, b.

This value can be generated using Python as seen below:

With an acceptable UETR generated, this is how the third block looked:

And as before, a breakdown can be found below:

NameValueContextUser Header Flag3Block 3Validation Flag119Indicates whether FIN must perform any type of special validationValidation FieldSTPRequests the FIN system to validate the message according to the straight through processing principlesUETR Field121Indicates the Unique end-to-end transaction reference valueUETR Value8b1b42b5-669f-46ff-b2f2-c21f99788834Unique end-to-end transaction reference used to track payment instruction

Block 5 and 6 (Trailer and System Blocks)

I’ve already discussed “block 4” (the message body), so to wrap this section up, I'll be looking at the final 2 blocks: Block 5, aka the “Trailer”; and block S, aka the “System” block.

Before going forward, let me take a moment to explain the pointlessly complicated concept of input and output messages:

An “input” message (I) is a message which is traveling “outbound” from the institution. So this is a message being “input” by an operator and sent by the institution to another institution.

An “output” message (O) is a message which is traveling “inbound” to the institution. So this is a message being “output” by SWIFTNet and being received by the institution.

OK, moving swiftly (aaaahhhhh!) on.

For Input messages, these blocks were not too much of a problem. The headers only really seemed to be used to flag whether the message was for training / testing or to flag if it was a possible duplicate, which syntactically took the following form:

Where “TNG” indicated “training” and “SPD” indicated “possible duplicate”.

However, with Output messages, it got considerably more complicated. An example of what the trailer and system block could look like on an Output message is the following:

A breakdown of these various values is:

Trailer ((5:) MAC – Message Authentication Code calculated based on the entire contents of the message using a key that has been exchanged with the destination bank and a secret algorithm; CHK – This is a PKI checksum of the message body, used to ensure the message has not been corrupted in transit; TNG – A flag to indicate that the message is a Testing and Training Message.

System ((S:) SPD – Possible Duplicate Flag SAC – Successfully Authenticated and Authorized Flag. This is only present if:

Signature verification was successful.

RMA (Relationship Management Application) authorization and verification was successful.

COP – Flag indicating that this is the primary message copy; MDG – The HMAC256 of the message using LAU keys.

However, these seemed to only be values I would need to consider if I was to try and forge an “incoming” message from SWIFTNet or an 'outbound' message on the output of the SAG.

So.. I'll stick with crafting an “input' message trailer:

Now, having said all that, it turned out the trailer block did seem to sometimes hold a MAC code and a message checksum (sigh), meaning I actually needed to construct something like:

So that was +2 to my 'issues/blockers' list. However, issues aside, I now understood the complete message format, and could put it all together and save the following as a draft / template MT103 message:

Highlighted in bold above are the areas of the message I was - at this point - unable to pre-determine. Nevertheless, a summary of what that the message describes is:

Using the transaction reference “TRANSACTIONRF103”;

please transfer 500,000.00 GBP;

from John Doe, (IBAN: GB22EBNK88227712345678) at “English Bank” (BIC: EBNKGB20);

to Alice Smith (IBAN: FR20FBNK88332287654321) at “French Bank” (BIC: FBNKFR20);

Furthermore, please ensure the transaction charge is shared between the two institutions;

and mark the payment with a reference of “12345-67890”.

To wrap up this section, i wanted to take a moment to explain some logic behind the target of 500,000 GBP, as it is also important.

Aside from the many reasons it would be better to transfer (even) smaller amounts (which is an increasingly common tactic deployed by modern threat actors), why not go higher? This is where it’s important to understand the system and environment you are targeting.

In this instance, let's assume that by doing recon for a while I gathered the understanding that:

If a message comes from SYS which is over £500k;

even if it has been subject to a 4 eye check;

and even if it is flagged for STP processing;

route it to a verification queue and hold it for manual verification.

This was because a transaction over £500k was determined to be “abnormal” for SYS. As such, if my transaction was greater, the message would not propagate through all systems automatically.

OK, so now that I understood:

how the system worked;

how it communicated;

the fundamental structure of a raw MT103 payment messages;

and how much I could reliably (attempt) to transfer.

And with that, it was time to take a break from MT standards and establish an understanding of how I would even get into a position to put this into practice!

To place a message on a queue, I was going to need two things:

Access to the correct queue manager;

Write access to the correct queues.

Depending on the environment and organisation, access to queue managers could be quite different and complex. However a bare-bones setup may take the following form:

An MQ Administrator accesses their dedicated workstation using AD credentials;

They then remotely access a dedicated jump server via RDP which only their host is whitelisted to access;

This may be required as the queues may make use of Channel Authentication Records, authorizing specific systems and user accounts access to specific queues;

The channels may further be protected by MQ Message Encryption (MQME) which encrypts messages at rest based on specific channels. As such, even if someone was a “super duper master admin” they would only be able to read / write to queues specifically allocated to them within the MQME configuration file (potential target for another time?);

The MQ Admin can then use tools such via the Jump Server to read/write to their desired message queues.

So, in this scenario, to gain access to the message queues I - as an attacker - would need to compromise the MQ admin’s AD account and workstations, then use this to gain access to the jump host, from where I could then access the message queues given I knew the correct channel name and was configured with authorization to access it.. and maybe throw some MFA in there..

That is understandably a significant requirement! However, when discussion sophisticated attacks against Financial Market Infrastructure (FMI), it is more than reasonable to accept that an Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) would see this as a feasible objective - We don't need to dig into the history of how sophisticated attacks targeting SWIFT systems can be.

Next, it was time to finally identify a feasible attack vector for message forgery.

Now with an idea of how to gain the right access, as well as an understanding of the various technologies and security controls in place; I update my diagram:

You may have noticed I've added something called “LAU” around the SAA-to-SAG adapter, and another “LAU” to the MID-to-SAA MQ channels, which I have yet to explain. “Local Authentication” (LAU) is a security control implemented by SWIFT to authenticate messages using a pair of shared keys between two systems. These keys are combined and used to generate a SHA256 HMAC of the message and append it to the S block. This can then be validated by the recipient system. Effectively, this validates the origin and authenticity of a message. As such, even if an attacker was in position to introduce a fraudulent payment, they'd first need to compromise both the left and the right LAU signing keys, generate the correct HMAC, and append it to the message in order to have it accepted / processed successfully.

But LAU aside, I now just needed to figure out which queue to target! There were a lot of queues to work with as each system essentially has multiple “input” and “output” queues. With that in mind, it was important to note that: an incoming message would require being in the format expected by the target system (from a specific upstream system) and an outgoing message would need to be in the format “produced” by one target system and “expected / ingested / processed” by its respective downstream system. So to figure this out, I worked backwards from the Gateway.

Targeting SAG

This was the least feasible attack vector!

I hadn't really looked into how the SWIFT adapters worked - If only I could research literally everything);

SAA and SAG implemented LAU on messages sent between them - An excellent security control!;

The output of SAG was directly on to SWIFTNet which would entail all sorts of other complications - this is an understatement)!

Next!

Targeting SAA

So what if I wanted to drop a message on the “outbound” channel of SAA?

LAU and the SWIFT adapter aside, remember those session and sequence numbers? Well, messages which leave SAA are in the near-final stages of their outbound life-cycle, and as far as I understood would need to have valid session and sequence values. Given I didn't know how to generate these values without gaining access to SAA or how they worked in general (and lets not forget the LAU signing) this didn't currently seem feasible.

Next!

Targeting SANCT

This solution didn't actually transport messages back and forth; it just reads messages off the queues and performed checks on their details. Not much I could wanted to leverage here.

Targeting MID

To target MID, I could try and inject a message onto SAA’s “input” queue, or the “output” queue of MID. This would only need to match the format of messages produced by the Middleware solution (MID). Following this, in theory, the (mistial) message session and sequence number would be added by SAA, along with the UETR. This was promising!

However, MID was a SWIFT “message partner”, which are typically solutions developed using the Alliance Access Development Kit that allows vendors to develop SWIFTNet compatible software, and consequentially, implement LAU. So again, in-order to forge a message here, I’d need to compromise the left and right LAU signing keys used between SAA and MID, manually HMAC the message (correctly!), and then place it on the correct queue.. This also no longer looked promising..

Targeting SYS

OK, how about the input of the next system down - the 'Payment System'?

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages To My

As described previously, the inbound data was a custom “application specific” payment instruction from the institutions back office systems, and not a SWIFT MT message. This would be an entirely new core concept I'd need to reverse - not ideal for this project.

But how about the output queue?

Although SYS received custom format data, I found that it output what seemed to be an initial SWIFT MT messages. This was perfect! Additionally, SYS did not have LAU between itself and MID because (unlike MID) SYS was not a SWIFT message partner, and was just one of many-many systems within the institution that formed their overall payment landscape.

Additionally, because SYS was esentially just one small piece of a much larger back office architecture, it was not part of the SWIFT Secure Zone (after all you cant have your entire estate in the Secure Zone - that defeats the purpose) and as such, made use of the Queue Manager within a more accessible section of the general corporate environment (QM1). Konica minolta bizhub c352 driver mac os xcompubrown recovery tool.

With this in mind, and having - in theory - compromised the MQ admin, I could leverage their access to access on the corporate network to authenticate to QM1. I could - in theory - then write a fraudulent payment message to the SYS “output” queue, which we will call “SYS_PAY_OUT_Q” from here on.

OK! It seems like I finally had an idea of what to do! But before I could put it into practice, I of course needed to create a diagram of the attack:

I think it’s important to take a minute to refer back to the concept of “trust” which is what lead to this attack diagram. My theory behind why this may work is because the MID application, implicitly trusts whatever it receives from its respective upstream systems. This is intentional, as by design the security model of the payment landscape ensures that: at any point a message can be created, a 4 (or 6) eye check is performed. If there was a system whose purpose it was to ensure the validity of a payment message at any point upstream, the downstream systems should have no real issue processing that message (with some exceptions). After all, It would be next to-impossible to maintain a high-throughput payment system without this design.

And with that said, the plan was now clear:

Leverage the access of a Message Queue administrator;

to abuse the “trust relationship” between SYS, MID, and SAA;

to introduce a fraudulent payment message directly on to the output queue of SYS;

by leaning on my new found understanding of complete MT103 payment messages.

It was finally time to try to demonstrate a Proof-of-Concept attack!

So at this point I believe I had everything I needed in order to execute the attack:

The target system!

The message format!

The queue manager!

The queue!

The access requirements!

The generously granted access to a fully functional SWIFT messaging architecture! (that’s a good one to have!)

The extra-generously granted support of various SMEs from the target institution! (This was even better to have!)

Message Forgery

I needed to begin by creating a valid payment message using valid details from the target institution. So before moving on I was provided with the following (Note: as with many things in this post, these details have been faked):

Debtor Account Details – John Doe, GB12EBNK88227712345678 at EBNKGB20

Creditor Account Details – Alice Smith, GB15EBNK88332287654321 at EBNKGB20

Some of you may have notice that the sending and receiving BIC’s are the same. This was because, for the sake of the research, I wanted to send the message back to the target institution via SWIFTNet so that I could analyse its full end-to-end message history. Furthermore, you may have noticed we are using 'test & training' BIC code (where the 8th character is a 0) - this was to make sure, you know, that I kept my job.

But yes, with access to these 'valid' account details and the knowledge gained during the research so far, I could now forge a complete Input MT103 messages:

Note: Field 33B is actually an optional field, however, the MT standard stated that “If the country codes of both the Sender’s and the Receiver’s BIC belong to the country code list, then field 33B is mandatory”. As such, if 33B was not present in the message, it would fail network validation rules and SWIFTNet would return a NAK with the error code: D49.

Optional / Mandatory fields aside, it was not quite that simple! There were a few minor changes I needed to make based on the specific point in the message's its life-cycle I was planning to introduce it!

As I list these changes, remember that the objective is to introduce the message to the output queue of SYS (Which exists before MID, SAA and SAG)

The first 3 blocks needed to be placed on a single line;

Remove field 121 (UETR) from the User Header, as this would be generated by SAA during processing;

Remove 1 character from the transaction reference as it needed to be exactly 16 characters (classic user error);

Add decimal point to transaction amount using a comma - otherwise it would fail syntax validation rules;

Ensure the IBAN's were real and accurate, otherwise it seemed the message would fail some type of signature validation on the SWIFT network. The IBANs are fake here, but during the real PoC we used accurate account details in collaboration with the target institution;

Remove the trailer block (5) - as this would be appended by SAA during processing;

Remove the System Block (S) - as this would be completed by the SAG.

And the final message was as follows:

Note that the location in which I introduce the message has resolved all of the 'issues / blockers' I'd tracked whilst researching the message structure! It would seem the further upstream you go, the easier the attack becomes - given MQ is still used as a transport medium.

Message Injection

Now I had my raw MT103 message, I just need to save it to a file (“Message.txt” - sure why not) and place onto the “SYS_PAY_OUT_Q” queue using one of the admin's tools:

With access to a sole MQ Administrator's AD account;

We connect to the MQ admins machine;

Log into the Jump Server;

Open our MQ tools of choice and authenticate to queue manager (QM1) where the output queue for SYS was managed;

Connected to the 'SYS_PAY_OUT_Q' queue;

Selected my forged “Message.txt” file;

Invoked the “write to queue” function;

And it was off!

Loggin in to Alliance Access and opening the message history tab, we sat awaiting for an update. Waiting, waiting, waiting… waiting… and..

ACK! It worked!

That's a joke; did we hell receive an ACK!

See, this last section is written slightly more 'linear' than what actually happened. Remember those 'tweaks' used to fix the message in the previous section? I hadn't quite figured that out yet..

So roughly seven NACKs later - each time troubleshooting and then fixing a different issues - we did indeed, see an ACK! The message was successfully processed by all systems, passed target system validation rules, passed sanctions and AML screening, passed SWIFTNet validation rules, and SWIFT’s regional processor had received the message and sent an 'Acknowledgement of receipt' response to the sending institution!

For the sake of completeness, I’ve included the ACK below:

And of course a breakdown of what it all means:

NameValueContextBasic Header Flag1Block 1Application TypeFF = FIN ApplicationMessage Type2121 = ACKInstitution CodeEBNKGB20AXXXEBNKGB20 (BIC) A (Logical Terminal) XXX (Branch)Sequence and Session No.19473923441947 (Sequence No.) 392344 (Session No.)Date Tag177200103 (Date) 1102 (Time)Accept / Reject Tag4510 = Accepted by SWIFTNet

Excellent! WooHoo! It worked! .. That took a lot of time and effort!

Closer Inspection

But the ACK wasn't enough, I wanted to make sure I understood what had happened to the message throughout its life-cycle. From the message I placed on the initial queue, to being processed by SWIFTNet.

Thankfully, as we sent the message back to the target institution we could see its entire message history. I already knew what the raw message placed on the queue looked like, so I wanted to focus on what became of the message once it had been processed by SAA:

The end-to-end tracking UUID had been generated and added (b42857ce-3931-49bf-ba34-16dd7a0c929f) in block 3;

The message trailer had been added ((5:(TNG:))) where I could see that - due to the BIC code used - SAA had flagged the message as 'test and training'.

Additionally, an initial System Block segment had been added ((S:(SPD:))), tagging the message as a possible duplicate. I wonder why - *cough* 7th attempt *cough*?

OK, so that was SAA. Now let’s see how it looked it once it passed through the Gateway and regional processor:

OK, we can see a few changes now.

The session and sequence numbers have been populated (1947392344);

The I/O identifier in block 2 has been updated to track that it is now an 'Output' message;

The additional data within Block 2 is a combination of the input time, date, BIC, session and sequence numbers, output date/time, and priority;

The trailer has been updated with a message authentication code (MAC) calculated based on the entire contents of the message using a pre-shared key and a secret algorithm;

Additionally, a checksum of the message body has been stored within the trailer’s “CHK” tag. This is used by the network to ensure message integrity.

I also took a look at the entire outbound message history, just to see all the “Success” and “No violation” statements to make it feel even more awesome!

So that's that really..

With a bit of research and support I was able to demonstrate a PoC for introducing a fraudulent payment message to move funds from one account to another, by manually forging a raw SWIFT MT103 single customer credit transfer message, and leveraging various system trust relationships to do a lot of the hard work for me! https://arfox158.tumblr.com/post/655263262721638400/wireless-external-hard-drive-for-mac.

As mentioned briefly in the introduction, this is not something I have really seen or heard of happening in practice or in the 'wild'. Perhaps because it clearly takes a lot of work.. and there is a huge margin for error. However, if an adversary has spent enough time inside your network and has had access to the right documentation and resources, this may be a viable attack vector. It definitely has its benefits:

No need to compromise multiple payment operators;

No requirement to compromise - or establish a foothold within - the SWIFT Secure Zone;

No requirement to bypass MFA and gain credentials for a messaging interface;

No generation of application user activity logs;

No payment application login alerts;

No bespoke app-specific and tailored malware;

And all the other things associated with the complex task of gaining and leveraging payment operator access.

All an attacker may need to do is compromise one specific user on the corporate network: a Message Queue administrator.

The industry is spending a lot of time and effort focused on securing their payment systems, applications, processes, and users to keep - among other things - payment operators safe, Messaging Interfaces locked down, and SWIFT systems isolated. But the reality is,; the most valuable and most powerful individual in the entire model, might just be a single administrator!

As always, a security model is only as strong as its weakest link. If you're not applying the same level of security to your wider institution, there may very well be many weak links within the wider network which chain together and lead to the comrpomise of systems which feed into your various payment environment.

I think the main thing to remember when reflecting on this research is that it did not abuse any vulnerabilities within the target institution's systems, or even vulnerabilities or weaknesses within the design of their architecture. It simply leverages the legitimate user access of the Message Queue administrators and the trust relationships that exist by design within these types of large-scale payment processing systems.

So the harsh reality is, there is no particular list of recommendations for preventing this type of attack in itself. However, the main point to drive home is that you must ensure the security of your users - and overall organisation - is of a high enough standard to protect your highest privileged users from being compromised. Things such as:

Strong monitoring and alerting controls for anomalous behaviour;

Requirements for Multi-Factor authentication for access to critical infrastructure;

Segregation of critical infrastructure from the wider general IT network;

Strong password policies;

Well rehearsed incident detection and incident response policies and procedures;

Frequent high-quality security awareness training of staff;

Secure Software Development training for your developers;

Routine technical security assessments of all critical systems and components;

The use of 3rd party software from reputable and trusted vendors;

However, in the context of Message Queues, there is one particular control which I think is extremely valuable: The implementation of channel specific message signing! This, as demonstrated by SWIFT's LAU control, is a good way in which to ensure the authenticity of a message.

As discussed, LAU is - as far as I know at the time of writing - a SWIFT product / message partner specific control. However it's concept is universal and could be implemented in many forms, two of which are:

Update your in-house application's to support message signing, natively;

Develop a middleware component which performs message signing on each system, locally.

This is a complex requirement as it requires considerable effort on the client’s behalf to implement either approach. However, SWIFT provides guidance within their Alliance Access Developers guide on how to implement LAU in Java, Objective C, Scala and Swift;

Strip any S block from the FIN message input. Keep only blocks 1: through 5;

Use the FIN message input as a binary value (unsigned char in C language, byte in Java). The FIN message input must be coded in the ASCII character set;

Combine the left LAU key and the right LAU key as one string. The merged LAU key must be used as a binary value (unsigned char in C language, byte in Java). The merged LAU key must be coded in the ASCII character set;

Call a HMAC256 routine to compute the hash value. The hash value must also be treated as a binary value (unsigned char in C language, byte in Java). The HMAC size is 32 bytes;

Convert the HMAC binary values to uppercase hexadecimal printable characters.

An example of how this may work in the more flexible middleware solution proposed is where the original service is no longer exposed to the network, and is altered to only communicate directly with the custom 'LAU-eqsue' service on its local host. This service would then sign and route the message to its respective queue.

When received, the core of the recipient payment service would seek to retrieve its messages from the queues via the 'LAU-esque' signing middleware, which would retrieve the message and subsequently verify its origin and authenticity by re-calculating the signature using their shared (secret) keys. Key-pairs could further be unique per message flow. This design could allow for the signing to be used as a way to validate the origin of a message even if it had passed through multiple (local) intermediary systems.

As a final bit of creative effort, I made yet another diagram to represent what this could perhaps look like - if life was as easy as a diagram:

If you made it this far thanks for reading all.. ~6k words!? I hope you found some of them interesting and maybe learned a thing or two!

I'd like express our gratitude to the institution who facilitated this research, as well as specifically to the various SMEs within that institution who gave their valuable time to support it throughout.

Fineksus - SWIFT Standard Changes 2019

https://fineksus.com/swift-mt-standard-changes-2019/

Paiementor - SWIFT MT Message Structure Blocks 1 to 5

https://www.paiementor.com/swift-mt-message-structure-blocks-1-to-5/

SEPA for corporates - The Difference between a SWIFT ACK and SWIFT NACK

https://www.sepaforcorporates.com/swift-for-corporates/quick-guide-swift-mt101-format/

SEPA for corporates - Explained: SWIFT gpi UETR – Unique End-to-End Transaction Reference

https://www.sepaforcorporates.com/swift-for-corporates/explained-swift-gpi-uetr-unique-end-to-end-transaction-reference/

M DIBA - LAU for SWIFT Message Partners

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lau-swift-message-partners-mohammad-diba-1/

Prowide - About SWIFT

https://www.prowidesoftware.com/about-SWIFT.jsp

5m Mathmrs. Mac's Messages For Her

Microsoft - SWIFT Schemas

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/biztalk/adapters-and-accelerators/accelerator-swift/swift-schemas

SWIFT FIN Guru - SWIFT message block structure

http://www.swiftfinguru.com/2017/02/swift-message-block-structure.html

[chibimuiwritesstuff]

Ex-MMA Fighter Xie Lian AU

A super random AU I thought up in the shower (because that’s where all our best thoughts come from). Essentially borne from my amusement at how Xie Lian, in his youth, was super obsessed with really good fighters (a tidbit that I feel goes woefully unmentioned in fandom and even by the author later in the novel). Posting because I need to get the idea out of my head and possibly actually start writing it.

(Also I don’t actually know anything about the MMA world, especially competitively - I just dabbled in Judo/Karate in my late teens, but that’s about it).

So basically. Imagine, XL is a super sweet but clumsy department head at Heavenly Officials Ltd. (I have no idea what kind of company this actually is, ideas are welcome), whom his staff all adore but also kind of worry for cuz omg is he super air headed and clutzy and fucking hopeless. Just the other week he managed to spill coffee all over his laptop--his third one of the year and it’s only March! But he is literally so nice, and despite his clumsiness is actually super competent at his job and his department always gets stellar results (what department are they? I have no clue, I know nothing about the corporate world).

What none of his staff/coworkers know is that their ridiculously clumsy boss used to be a champion mixed martial arts fighter in his university days. Or that he would even be interested in something as brutal as MMA cage matches since XL is a known pacifist who will go out of his way to catch bugs and place them safely outside when he has the time. But then one of the IT guys - in the process of fixing his laptop and restoring his hard drive finds a folder filled with videos and pictures of MMA cage matches all featuring the same fighter... you guessed it, Hua Cheng (I know MMA is not wrestling, but let’s pretend stage names are a thing in the competitive MMA world as well so HC is his fighter name in the arena)! The gossip spreads like wildfire, but everyone just thinks XL is just a fan of this ridiculously attractive fighter and don’t really think beyond that (although they do think it’s kind of adorable that XL  seems to be such a huge fanboy of this gorgeous, gorgeous man).

And the thing is - the staff have heard vague snippets from XL himself about his husband, “San Lang” who they have yet to meet because apparently he is often busy in the evenings and is therefore unable to attend corporate events. But they don’t make the connection that the adorable San Lang who cooks and pampers their boss could be the incredibly brutal and violent HC (his staff all decided to review some videos just to see who has captured their bosses interest and most of them are erm... quite surprised).

Then of course, someone does find out that SL and HC are the same person and this is when shit really hits the fan because the thing is - the staff generally knew that XL and his partner could be quite *ahem* adventurous and coupled with XL’s inherent clumsiness they had gotten used to seeing random marks and bruises on their boss that they probably shouldn’t be witness too, but whom he always insists are ‘nothing’. But when they learn that his partner is a potentially super violent MMA fighter his staff get awfully protective and worried because... could their boss be in an abusive relationship that they aren’t aware of???? This opinion is not helped by the fact that when they try to discretely ask FX and MQ about HC they ofc give some pretty bad impressions (because both of them can’t stand HC--but the feelings are pretty mutual).

So of course, they must staff an intervention! And a perfect opportunity comes up--as part of some charity event their company is partnering with the local MMA organization to hold a friendly exhibition charity match and surprise-surprise, they’re bringing in their big gun, HC and he’s apparently going to fight some old veteran whose fighter name is “His Royal Highness”. (google reveals a fighter who constantly wore a mask to hide his identity). This is their chance to meet the bosses partner and maybe subtle-y threaten him enough to let him know that their boss is cared for and they will protect him at all costs if necessary.

(side note: Feng Xin and Mu Qing don’t bother to correct anyone because a) they generally stay out of gossip surrounding XL because b) they respect Xie Lian’s privacy c) they hate talking about HC in any capacity and d) they have an on-going bet to see when ppl will learn their ‘adorable clumsy boss’ could theoretically take out an entire swat team without batting an eyelash if he really wanted to--he was nearly recruited to be a special ops agent, but anyway)

So. The day of the charity match arrives and XL is... nowhere to be found??? Perhaps he’s somewhere else, VIP seating with the CEO (Jun Wu) or something since HC is his partner after all. Anyway, they watch the fight and it’s... Wow. But also a bit different? HC doesn’t seem as wild or brutal as he seems from online videos, although there is still this energy that everyone can feel in the fight that they can’t really place. But wow is it a fight and in the end HC surprisingly loses????

Ref blows the whistle and the staff all clamber down hoping to get in a word with HC when they all stop short because “His Royal Highness” suddenly rips his mask off and flies into HC’s arm and... and is that THEIR BOSS???

Minds are blown. Jaws are dropped. The two of them are practically three seconds away from full-on making out on the cage floor before FX/MQ yell at them to “stop being fucking gross, you’re in public damn it” and then XL snaps out of it and remembers, oh right, his entire staff team from work is here and they all just scream at him and he’s just like ???? because... well...

He hadn’t been trying to keep this a secret at all?

But now that the cat is out of the bag he is super happy to introduce HC to everyone, and then hopefully drag his partner off to the nearest secluded space because half the reason XL retired was a) he was done uni and was offered a nice position by Jun Wu (CEO of HO Ltd) - who was also an ex-fighter and trained under the same master as XL so they know each other pretty well - so he had less time and b) he felt he had found his match with HC and so the thrill of fighting others wasn’t as big anymore and c) ...after getting together cage matches were just another form of foreplay and it made things rather... ah... difficult to say the least. So XL bowed out without any issue. HC stayed in the profession because he knows XL likes watching him fight :)

Also just because XL doesn’t compete anymore doesn’t mean they don’t still spar on the regular in private. There is just something about the atmosphere of competitive cage matches that just got their blood flowing more than just sparring on the side for fun (although that would often lead to sex afterwards too, but at least in that case there wasn’t an audience).

So. There you have it.

[floofiestboy]

Haruhara Question Corners #1-10

Haruhara took questions from 2017 - 2018 on his blog - he’s no longer accepting questions, but they’re still up for people to see for free. There’s 50 question corners in total, each about one question each. 

I don’t know if someone’s translated this before, but I couldn’t find anything so I figured I might as well do it. The questions are mostly Senyuu-related, but there’s some questions about Haruhara himself, Gakumon, and Hero Hearts as well. 

Without further ado - here are the translations of the first ten question corners below the cut:

Question Corner #1

Q. From À La Carte-san:

Do you have any drinks you’d recommend, or that you drink a lot? Also, what flavour of ice cream do you like best?

A. 

I like carbonated drinks, so I drink those a lot. I like carbonated drinks, but I get thirsty if I drink sweet drinks, so I just drink carbonated water.

My favourite flavour of ice cream would be chocolate. I like chocolate. But I don’t really have ice cream that often. I like sour things more nowadays. I like persimmons, I eat them. If I ever went to Sapporo for a signing session, I’d like to buy some famous curry-flavoured snacks.

Q. From My Bank Account Has 800 Yen-san:

I’d like to know more about Alles-san’s family and also about what she was doing before becoming a maid.

A. 

I think she was kinda just loitering about before becoming a maid. I explain how she became a maid in Main Quest, but if you asked me what she was doing before that, I’d have to say she was loitering. I tried thinking about it seriously since I never thought about it before, but all I can think of is that she was loitering about, so that’s what I think she was doing.

About her family - she has a little brother… if I recall correctly, I’ve thought, “This woman definitely has a little brother,” in the past, so I think she’s got one. I don’t plan to ever incorporate him in the main story though. Since their dynamic would be too similar to the siblings that appear in Gakumon! I don’t think he’ll ever appear.

What is her little brother doing? Unlike his big sister, he went to a good school, graduated, and is now loitering about.

Question Corner #2

Q. From I Like Rice-san:

Lately, I’ve been getting into sprinkling furikake or nameko mushrooms on my rice - it’s really good! Do you have anything you like putting on your rice?

A. 

This one kind of food I was served a signing session was super good. I thought “Ah, it’s good! It’s so good!” all while scarfing it down. What was it called again…? I got it at a lot of signing sessions, but the only thing I remember is “It’s good!” - I can’t recall its proper name… anyways, the point is, it was delicious! Thanks to the people who gave me it!

I fried up some beef tongue and chili oil I was gifted recently and made fried rice. It was delicious!

Q. From My Bank Account Has 800 Yen-san:

What’s Roborabbit (from Gakumon)’s HF (Human Form) like?

A. 

Two question corners in a row, My Bank Account Has 800 Yen-san!

Have I never drawn Roborabbit’s human form? No I haven’t, I’ve only ever thought about it. For those of you wondering what a “Human Form” is, please read Gakumon!

She’d be a black-haired girl with straight bangs and a goth lolita look.

Q. From Aoi-san:

Sion-san seems like he’d be really smart, but in reality, did he ever get the chance to go to school when he was young?

A. 

He didn’t, no. In that era, I get the feeling that there weren’t many schools. It was kinda like the adults around you would teach you the essentials you needed to survive. Though I think there were schools in more prosperous cities of the era.

He learnt science by helping his father out sometimes, reading books, and studying in prosperous cities of the era. He kinda studied as he drifted from region to region.

Question Corner #3

Q. From Sakekawa-san:

Now that Alba has magic, will he live longer?

A. 

He will not, he will die.

Aside from demons who have magic at birth, anyone who has magic will age just like any other human and die.

But if you use your mana well, you might be able to live in a healthy way, letting you live longer.

In that sense, his life expectancy would increase, but if he just lived normally, he’d die normally as well.

[T/N: Haruhara, how did Elf live for 2000+ years then…]

Q. From Kion-san:

There have been concepts like the Alba Manjuu in SQ being made of(?) ribs, and the number of plates of food MQ Ros ate increasing, that your assistants have secretly(?) put in. Have there been other cases where your assistants have put in concepts that made the story more interesting or added more characterization? Alternatively, please tell me about cases where the assistants were actually the ones to think of an idea and draw it.

A. 

If we’re talking recently, the flea market scene in the Dododon-sama arc.

When I saw this, I remembered that “Ah, Senyuu was a fantasy series!” 

On a side note, my backgrounds are more like this:

I’m sure there were other cases where this kind of thing happened, but I can’t recall…

On a side note, those maids in MQ are wearing heavy make-up because I asked my assistants to draw them that way, not because my assistants’ drawing styles were like that.

Question Corner #4

Q. From My Bank Account Has 800 Yen-san:

Does Shushu-chan from Gakumon wear short sleeves all year around? Doesn’t she get cold in the winter?

A.

I was planning to have her wear long sleeves in the winter, but the manga ended… before it hit wintertime… I think Juz would wear shorts even in the winter.

I even thought about making a chapter where she picked up some long sleeves.

In order to be fair, I’ve just been looking at the question contents and not the names of the senders, but My Bank Account Has 800 Yen-san, your overwhelming probability rate of being picked… Everyone! I’m looking for more than just Senyuu questions!

Q. From Nanako-san:

What are Crea’s parents like? Does he remember them?

A.

They’re delightful. Crea does not remember them. When he tries to remember them, he just feels warm inside.

Question Corner #5

Q. From Mt. Hakkaisan-san:

Do you have any animals you’d like to keep as a pet?

A. 

I’d like a cat or a dog. According to my life plan, I’ll have one in around ten years. A dog that really acts like a dog or a cat that really acts like a cat would be nice!

Question Corner #6

Q. From I Stubbed My Toe Into the Drawers-san:

How many metres tall can Rchi-chan stretch her body to become?

A. 

She’s capable of stretching her body a fair bit, but since she doesn’t have the muscles to support it, if she stretches too much her body can’t support the weight.

If we consider how tall she could stretch and still be useful, she can stretch to about the height of a basket used in a sports day ball-throwing competition.

[T/N: He’s talking about one of these things.]

Question Corner #7

Q. From Tatami-san:

Why is Professor Ain from Hero Hearts a “professor”? In the character summary for Hero Hearts Volume 2, it said that this would be explained “later”, but since it was never revealed, it’s been bothering me.

A.

I wonder why?!

I’ve forgotten! I’ve completely forgotten! I vaguely remember that I thought up something related to Professor Ain’s true identity - which was revealed near the end - but since Hero Hearts was cancelled, I abandoned that plot thread to wrap everything up nicely… I think…?

I think something happened that couldn’t see the light of day. This is what cancellation does.

Question Corner #8

Q. From Rorota-san:

Alba became able to use magic through the Mana Maker inserted into his body, but do Elf and Alf have magic naturally? Also, can Crea use magic since he awoke to magic when he was a child?

A. 

In Elf and Alf’s world, since Great Mage Alba popularized the use of magic, they use magic like we use electronics and gas in reality. (Like how in Chapter 4 Episode 0, they have cars and gas stoves.) Just like how we can turn on a fan with the flick of a switch even though we don’t have electricity-manipulating powers, your average person who can’t use magic can similarly turn on a magic-powered fan with the flick of switch. 

If you go to a specialized school and study magic, mana will build up within your body.

* Just an illustration

The more knowledge you have of magic, the more mana builds up within you. After that, it’s just getting used to it.

[T/N: If that’s the case, then why can’t Ros use magic even without a Mana Maker…]

Since Crea’s body was taken as-is from after Rchimedes was using it, I think there’s some mana left behind in it. But since Crea isn’t really a subtle kind of person and he doesn’t like studying, I think he can’t use magic.

Question Corner #9

Q. From Arin-san:

Hello, please tell me Alf Parkinton’s birthday and what food he likes to eat.

A.

Since I named him “Parkinton” because I wanted to give him a name that sounds like “Pumpkin”, he’s born on October 31st!

His favourite foods are Squash Cake and Mashed Sweet Potatoes with Chestnuts.

He’s the type of person to drink black tea at a coffee shop instead of coffee, while enjoying a squash cake.

[T/N: A squash cake and kuri-kinton (mashed sweet potatoes with chestnuts).]

Question Corner #10

Q. From: Totomaru.-san:

Regarding what SQ Ros-san is called - Crea-san calls Ros-san “Sii-tan”, then introduces himself to Rchi-chan as “Ros’ friend Crea”, but is Ros’ real name in that universe still Sion? Also, are there some circumstances explaining why Ros-san decided to call himself Ros there?

A. 

I had Crea call him “Sii-tan” because it felt weird having him call him “Ros”.

I did try thinking back then about why Crea would call him “Sii-tan”, but I eventually decided to not worry about the little details and abandoned the idea without really thinking about it.

Some explanations could be:

1. Ros’ full name is Sion Ros or Ros Sion.

2. It’s a nickname that has nothing to do with his real name - to give an anecdote, I had a friend back in elementary school that we called “Ze”, but this was just because he liked ending his sentences with “-daze!” Originally, his nickname was “Daze”, but somewhere along the line it ended up as just “Ze”. Maybe something like that?

3. For some reason he’s taken up the false name of Ros.

It’s one of these three reasons! The truth is hidden in the darkness!

But since SQ has ended the truth will never be revealed, huh. Well then, I’ll think about it! This is my homework!

[tim-cahyanto-bct]

Assessment #2 | Reflective Journaling

As per usual, I left this assignment up until the final dying days that we had available. Now in all fairness, this was due mostly to the fact that I did not even know about the existence of the assignment until today (Saturday 27th). However while I was racking my brain trying to think of something to write about, this very experience about being lost and confused had inspired me to write about our latest CT assignment - data objects. You may have read that last sentence and assumed the worst for the data objects assignment, however all is not lost as we somehow managed to claw our way into some form of success throughout these holidays. However, what I do want to write about was our experiences before then, where my faith and motivation for the data objects assignment was as fleeting as days left to do this reflective journaling. Experience So to begin with, our group was primarily made up of people who had no real group that related to their initial ideas. We had people with ideas to do with gaming, skateboarding, space etc. All in all, it was a real mixed bag of different people with different ideas. Our biggest issue off the bat was deciding upon and maintaining a data set. Believe it or not, it took until the very last week before the holidays for us to finally have a definitive data set which we were all working off, and even then we eventually changed it over the holidays anyway. A big reason for this hesitation and lack of progression, I think, comes down to the lack of any real motivation from the majority of our group. 

I'll be the first to admit that this assignment wasn't something that I was really excited by, especially compared to "cards for play" which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Upon first hearing about this brief I actually thought it would be something I would be really into. Having done sculpture in high school, I thought this would be quite similar to the projects that I did for that. However, I was somewhat disappointed that we were restrained by the limitations of hard data and the one-directional emphasis on altering physical objects, which eliminated most of my ideas that I was excited to try. Much of our group looked like as if they felt the same- lost and unmotivated. 

It wasn't really until the last couple days where I think we realised how little time we had, and how we needed to actually make some form of progress. We all finally decided to choose and focus on a definitive data set we would all work on, and we came up with an object that we all liked the idea of. We wanted to make coasters and if we had time, cups to map deforestation data. I personally loved the idea, it would be both visual and interactive and I thought that it would be quite impactful. Even though we eventually changed ideas and data sets yet again, it was this point where we really progressed as a group. We finally had a direction to work towards together, and I think that was our pivotal turning point. We ended up using the holidays to knock out the rest of our project out. All of us, I think, happy with what we managed to achieve especially given how rocky our start was. 

Observation

Our biggest problem of the lack of motivation was, in my opinion, because most of the group wanted to do their own thing. I know for me that our original data set of renewable energy was not at all interesting to me, however it was something that the majority of the group kind of just went with. As stated by Amabile, T. M. (1998), "people will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself-and not by external pressures" It was just bound to happen that we couldn't come up with anything, intrinsically, most of us were not motivated. Even the looming external motivation of our potentially horrible grades did not seem to phase us. Since we all originally had our own wildly different ideas in the beginning, I think it was hard for us to just completely ditch our old ideas and adapt to a new one which we didn't really care for. While other groups were already deep into prototyping and testing, we seemed to still be stuck up on what data we should even focus on. Alternating between objects with each conversation and data sets with each class, our ideas never seeming to stick. 

A big reason that this happened in the first place, I believe, was because of a lack of leadership and effective communication. I say effective communication as opposed to just communication as we did communicate- quite a lot actually. However, with those ideas that we all came up with together, we never progressed it further. This for me highlights the completely nonexistent leadership shown by anyone in our group; me included. We had the ideas, but never did anything with them. 

This unfortunate experience has allowed me to learn and realise how volatile team projects can be. For the most part, all our group needed to progress much sooner was someone to just gather everybody’s attentions and allow everyone to come to a mutual agreement about what we want to do, and how we should do it. That one simple action could have saved many wasted days. 

Analysis

Ultimately, I think our problems arose from the absence of leadership. 

After having participated in Outdoor Education which heavily emphasises the importance of strong leadership, especially in the often life endangering scenarios we would often find ourselves in, it quickly became quite obvious how our team had absolutely no direction during those first few weeks of the project. “The study concluded that leadership plays a positive role in the transformation success. This conclusion was supported by correlation results which revealed that there is a positive correlation between leadership and transformation success.”  Kendi, B., & Kamaria, K. (2017). This study shows the direct and positive correlation between leadership and success. And on the contrary, how a lack of leadership can also be a contributor to a team’s failures. Additionally, the study conducted by Müller, R., Geraldi, J., & Turner, J. R. (2012) "found an impact of EQ [emotional intelligence] and MQ [managerial intelligence] on project success, but not so from IQ [intellectual intelligence]" From both these studies, we can conclude how effective leadership has a positive correlation to project success; however the latter study also shows how the most important traits are primarily emotional and managerial intelligence. For me, I interpret this study as showing us that effective leadership does not always have to do with outright intellect, but it's more about being able to practically assess the given situation to give the team some direction and focus. This was something I think anyone in our group could have easily done.

Additionally, Jung, D. I. (2001) writes how his study's "Results indicated that transformational leadership promoted higher levels of creativity measured by divergent thinking among group members" In this study, Jung compares transactional leadership to transformative leadership. Basically transformational leadership aims to intrinsically motivate followers to work towards a common goal while transactional leadership focuses on extrinsic motivation using things such as diminishing rewards or punishments. The study highlights the importance of intrinsic motivation over extrinsic motivation when it comes to, in this case, creativity; something a good leader should be able to help facilitate to achieve greater creativity and ultimately greater success. Although it is not solely up to the leader all the time, intrinsic motivation is something that fundamentally only us as individuals can achieve.

This experience with our latest Creative Technologies Studio project has highlighted to me the importance of effective leadership and communication. In the future, I think my aim in these group projects would be to focus more on the group itself rather than solely on the content of the projects. Having someone to steer the group in the correct way in a practical sense would have heavily benefited my latest group, and I have no doubt that it will continue to be necessary for future group projects too. 

References Amabile, T. M. (1998). How to kill creativity (Vol. 87). Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Publishing.

Kendi, B., & Kamaria, K. (2017). AN INVESTIGATION OF THE ROLE OF LEADERSHIP IN THE TRANSFORMATION PROCESS OF MICROFINANCE ORGANIZATIONS IN KENYA INTO DEPOSIT TAKING INSTITUTIONS. International Journal of Business Strategies, 1(2), 22-42. Müller, R., Geraldi, J., & Turner, J. R. (2012). Relationships between leadership and success in different types of project complexities. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 59(1), 77-90. Jung, D. I. (2001). Transformational and transactional leadership and their effects on creativity in groups. Creativity Research Journal, 13(2), 185-195.

[tmae3114]

psst not sure if you're still actively playing DF but in this war Hero gets to pilot Kordana because dragon is gone and this opens up a whole new highway for MQ-DF deja vu to flood in (if only Cysero stepped up to give Hero a refresher course)

I am indeed still actively playing! Not as much as I used to because the Caitiff saga really hasn’t been holding my attention, but I’m definitely still around! I’ve been fighting in the war despite my lack of playing the lead-up quests because we really can’t afford to lose this one so of course I’m helping

And yes!!! I knew about Kordana!!! I screamed to at least three people when Kordana got unlocked because!!!!!!!!!! I heavily headcanon that Cysero must’ve helped with getting the mecha up and running because Kordana doesn’t have a physical body so there’s no way she managed to do it alone and Cysero is the only person on Lore who’ll know mecha like she does, tbh.

And yes, that is definitely a place for more MQ-DF deja vu to happen. I’m assuming you’re talking about Ro and not just generic hero, since I’ve established her deja vu thing and you capitalised “Hero” without a “the” so... I’m just going with that being a case of referring to her by full name? Anyways YES this is going to be giving Ro such a big case of deja vu like you would not believe. Since Kordana gives +3 waves per round it’s actually what I’m focusing on right now and I am so adapting that into Ro spends a lot of time in the mecha. She doesn’t understand why it feels so right but it just does. (It’s the one bit of peace that she finds during this whole conflict probably)

I hadn’t even considered Cysero giving a refresher course on piloting but now!!!!!!! aaaah!!!! what a great idea!!!! I love that!!!!!

[radmitsubishitalk]

Mitsubishi Triton Review

Good deals for a capable ute

Mitsubishi's one-tonne workhorse has long been good value, but now's a great time to do a deal

Almost in official runout, the 2018 Mitsubishi Triton represents comparatively good value in the dual-cab ute market. Add to that the fact that it's one of the best equipped utes for four-wheel driving and you have some pretty good arguments for purchase.

This year, Mitsubishi is celebrating 40 years of producing one-tonne utes. It was 1978 when the Forte first rolled off the production line in Japan and from that came the L200 which was the first of the Mitsubishi utes to come to our shores in the early 1980s.

The L200 was available in four-wheel drive form from its early years, and led to the short-wheelbase and long-wheelbase versions for the Pajero as well as the two-wheel and four-wheel drive L300 vans.

Over the next couple of decades, the L200 morphed into the Triton which was launched in 2005, and the current version first rolled off the production line in Thailand in 2014.

Called the MQ, the current Triton is due for an upgrade later this year and consequently is virtually in runout with plenty of stock available. This means that the recommended retail prices can be haggled down, and pricing will only get better as the launch of the new vehicle approaches.

Off Road Features

On paper, the specification level of the Exceed stacks up well against the opposition, with all the luxo features you’d expect such as heated leather seats, auto lights and wipers, fancy alloy wheels, five-speed auto with paddles, cruise control, Bluetooth, and the list goes on.

A couple of omissions worth noting include a dedicated navigation system, and some of the more common connectivity software. However, the Triton shines in the off-road department.

Aside from having a two-speed transfer case, the Triton offers a locking centre diff as well as a locker on the rear diff. There is also underbody protection and very good approach and departure angles.

Add to that an engine bay that looks like it’s designed for off-roading with an air intake that sports a serious filtration system and drag its air from in between the right-hand inner and outer guards, plus a high-mounted alternator and electrics, and you’ve got a fairly serious 4×4 package.

Getting there

Obviously, for the majority of us, most of our time will be spent on the road, so let’s start there. The interior of the Triton Exceed is certainly comfortable, with the afore-mentioned leather seats being supportive and, in the case of the driver’s perch, electrically adjustable so it’s not hard to reach a comfortable driving position.

Vision is pretty good for a ute, but there’s no blind-spot warning in the mirrors. That said, the wing mirrors are big and provide a clear view of the traffic behind. The rear camera is excellent.

Mitsubishi’s 2.4-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel has outputs of 133kW and 430Nm of torque. It’s a clattery diesel from the outside but from inside the cab it’s fairly quiet and efficient. It’ll get the Triton moving quickly and smoothly even though it’s only driven through a five-speed auto.

Mitsubishi quotes fuel consumption of 7.6 litres/100 kilometres, which is on the optimistic side. I found a more realistic figure of around eights or nines on a regular commute up to a worst of 11.3 on our combination of on- and off-road work on the day of our photo shoot.

For a 4×4 ute, it’s manoeuvrable too. Turning circle is 11.8 metres which is better than most in its category and this helps in its off-road ability as well as on the road.

Leaf me alone!

The front suspension of the Triton is handled by a double wishbone and torsion bar setup that does the job well. It’s comfortable and compliant and allows sufficient travel for off-road work.

The rear doesn’t fare so well. Personally, I think that for all but large trucks, the leaf spring should have died a natural death with the horse and buggy. Surely we can do better in 2018, even if we do have to haul a load and tow up to 3100kg.

While the Triton’s ride isn’t as bad as some in the ute arena, it’s still harsh over potholes and corrugations on dirt roads.

The combination of reasonable suspension on the front and live-axle/leaf-spring on the rear means that it steers well on the dirt but bump-steers from the rear over holes and corrugations. Certainly, we’ve seen worse than the Triton, but the likes of Volkswagen with its Amarok has proven that you can get ute suspension right.

Off road

The Triton comes into its own as the conditions deteriorate. Four-wheel drive is selected using a dial on the centre console with the markings indicating 2H (two-wheel drive high ratio), 4H (four-wheel drive high), 4Hlc (four-wheel drive high ratio with locked centre diff), 4Llc (Four-wheel drive low ratio with locked centre diff).

A graphic illuminates on the dash to indicate which drive mode is selected and flashes if the desired mode is not connecting properly.

It’s an easy and foolproof system that I found worked remarkably well on our sojourn off the road. As more traction is required you simply dial it up, then if you need more, you can flick the switch on the dash to lock the rear diff.

In our deeply rutted section, I chose 4Llc and kept the rear diff lock up my sleeve to use if I got stuck. Fortunately, that didn’t occur, but I found that even with one wheel in the air, I still got traction. The 205mm of ground clearance helped and even when I did bottom out, the knowledge that we had a bit of underbody protection was comforting.

Torque delivery is good from low in the rev range (max torque is at 2500rpm) and engine braking is acceptable for an auto. Off-road is where I found the paddle shifters actually useful once I got used to them, as I could keep my hands on the wheel and downshift for a bit more engine braking.

We encountered a few bog holes and puddles which didn’t present a problem and I was confident that even if we did wade out into deeper water, the sensible air intake and electrics high in the engine bay would mean we wouldn’t be in too much trouble.

The Bridgestone Dueler tyres, although having a more road-oriented tread pattern, did provide sufficient grip to get us through the mud, and I was pleasantly surprised by their performance.

In the final wash-up, the Mitsubishi Triton has a lot going for it. It is less expensive than most of its mainstream rivals, it’s well equipped and its engine and transmission get the job done without fuss.

If you’re wanting a ute that’s a good off-roader, comfortable on-road and has a maximum towing weight of 3100kg, this could be the ute for you.

Sure, it has a few omissions and a couple of foibles but it does feel very well put together and should last a lot longer than its five-year 100,000km warranty.

2018 Mitsubishi Triton Exceed pricing and specifications:

Engine: 2.4-litre four-cylinder turbo-diesel

Output: 133kW/430Nm

Transmission: Five-speed automatic

Fuel: 7.6L/100km (ADR Combined)

CO2: 201g/km (ADR Combined)

Safety Rating: Five-star ANCAP

If you’re in the market for a Mitsubishi Triton make sure you try it out at Group 1 Mitsubishi today!

Article source: https://www.motoring.com.au/mitsubishi-triton-2018-review-115020/

[maxwellyjordan]

Empirical SCOTUS: How Gorsuch’s first year compares

In 1986, when Justice Antonin Scalia joined the Supreme Court, the bench looked quite different than it does today. In fact, none of the justices on that court still sits on the Supreme Court bench. In 1986 the court was composed of five justices who were predominantly ideologically conservative and four justices who were predominantly liberal. Now, one year after Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the court and over two years since Scalia’s death, the landscape is quite different. Not only is there a changed set of faces on the court, but there are changed dynamics between the justices, and new dominant personalities. This post reflects on the impact Gorsuch has made on the court’s decision-making and looks back to compare this with the changing dynamics when the other sitting justices and Scalia joined the court.

Gorsuch

Gorsuch joined the Supreme Court at a unique time. Although there is much discussion about how this court could be the moving toward the right, especially if Justice Anthony Kennedy (or any of the more liberal justices) retires with a Republican president at the helm, other statistics show that the court at present is actually more ideologically liberal than it has been in years. According to the Martin-Quinn Scores, the ideological metric commonly used to measure the relative positions of Supreme Court justices, at the end of last term the court was the only one in recent memory with five primarily liberal justices and four predominantly conservative justices (in the graph below, scores greater than zero denote conservatives, and scores of less than zero denote liberals). The justices’ scores at the end of the 2016 term, Gorsuch’s first partial term on the court, look as follows:

Click graph to enlarge.

Not only does Kennedy’s score from the 2016 term place him as the fifth liberal justice, but the average score across all justices also is in liberal territory. With over 30 decisions under his belt, Gorsuch has now shown that he is a worthy conservative successor to Scalia. According to the scores from the end of last term, Gorsuch was the second most conservative justice on the Supreme Court after Justice Clarence Thomas. This position was helped by the fact that Gorsuch voted alongside Thomas in every decision Gorsuch participated in last term.

Although Gorsuch has not continued to vote alongside Thomas in every instance, he has in most. The next figure shows Gorsuch’s voting alignment with the other justices on the court through his first 30 votes relating to slip opinions. (The actual number of votes is 32, because his 30th vote was given on the same day as two other votes.)

Click graph to enlarge.

Through this set of decisions, Gorsuch voted the same way as Kennedy, Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito each 93.75 percent of the time. Gorsuch’s alignment with Chief Justice John Roberts is close behind, with an alignment of 90.63 percent, while none of the more liberal justices have above 80 percent agreement with Gorsuch. Gorsuch’s average agreement percentage of 85.46 percent is right in the middle of those for the other justices. Within the set of Gorsuch’s first 32 votes, he dissented six times, wrote four majority opinions and authored three dissents. Seventy-five percent of these decisions (24 of 32) were unanimous.

Scalia

Looking back to when Gorsuch’s predecessor joined the court, we see a very different set of justices on the bench. The ideological balance of the court according to MQ Scores at the end of the 1986 term, Scalia’s first on the court, looks as follows:

Click graph to enlarge.

Like Gorsuch, Scalia was the second most conservative justice according to these scores at the end of his first term. Only Chief Justice William Rehnquist ranked more conservative. Although the average ideological score was also negative, this was due to the highly negative scores of Justices William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall. Unlike the lay of the land when Gorsuch joined, the court had a clear five-justice conservative majority at the end of Scalia’s first year.

Click graph to enlarge.

At 77.08 percent, Scalia’s average agreement score from his first 30 votes is a quite a bit lower than Gorsuch’s. The difference between Scalia’s alignment with the more conservative justices and the somewhat liberal Justice Harry Blackmun, for instance, is not particularly stark. This can be compared with the large degree of difference in Scalia’s votes from those of Marshall, even at the outset of Scalia’s tenure on the court.

Scalia authored two majority opinions and one dissent across his first 30 votes. Within this set, he dissented three times. Ten of the first 30 votes he participated in were decided by a unanimous court.

Kennedy

Kennedy joined the court in the following term — 1987 — when it was substantially similar in composition to when Scalia was confirmed.

Click graph to enlarge.

Over his first term, Kennedy was the fourth most conservative justice and had a very similar score to that of his predecessor, Justice Lewis Powell, in Powell’s final years on the court.

Kennedy had a higher average agreement rate across his first 30 votes than Scalia.

Click graph to enlarge.

Although Kennedy aligned more closely with the more conservative justices at the time, he voted in the same direction as the predominantly liberal Brennan 90 percent of the time through this set of cases. Just as he does now, Kennedy had a high level of agreement with most justices when he joined the court in the 1987 term. Kennedy only dissented once across his first 30 votes and didn’t author a single dissent in those instances. He did author two majority opinions within this set, and 23 decisions out of his first 30 votes were decided by unanimous votes.

Thomas

By the time Thomas joined the court in the 1991 term, the balance of the justices was tipped further in the conservative direction.

Click graph to enlarge.

Only Justice John Paul Stevens and Blackmun were liberal holdouts at this point. The court’s average MQ Score at this time was well into conservative territory at .733. As the only one who was the most conservative justice in his first term on the court, Thomas is unique among the justices examined in this post.

Thomas’ average agreement with the other justices was above that for Scalia, but below that for Kennedy.

Click graph to enlarge.

Across his first 30 votes, Thomas agreed in almost every instance with Scalia. This level of agreement was even higher than that for Thomas and Gorsuch across Gorsuch’s first 30 votes. There is large variation in Thomas’ agreement rates, as the range spans from 96.67 percent, with Scalia, to 66.67 percent, with Stevens. Thomas dissented four times across his first 30 votes and was the only justice among the ones discussed in this post to author a solo dissent in his set. He wrote three total dissents as well as five majority opinions in these cases. Twenty of the first 30 decisions reached after Thomas joined the court were achieved through unanimous votes.

Ginsburg

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped move the Supreme Court back in a liberal direction, even though her ideology score was only slightly liberal in her first term on the court.

Click graph to enlarge.

The court was still predominantly conservative when Ginsburg joined, and the average MQ Score was also in conservative territory.

Ginsburg had one of the higher levels of agreement with the other justices across her first 30 votes.

Click graph to enlarge.

With an average of 87.81 percent agreement, Ginsburg had over 90 percent alignment with the more conservative Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Rehnquist. Ginsburg had her lowest alignment with Blackmun, at 76.67 percent.

Ginsburg had a unique first 30 voting decisions (31, actually, because two were made on the same day after her 29th vote). She authored more decisions in her first set than any of the other justices discussed, with 10, all majority opinions. This is now not surprising, given Ginsburg’s continued efficiency at writing opinions. She was also the only justice described in this post to vote only in the majority in each of her first 30-odd votes. Seventeen of her first 31 votes were made in unanimous decisions.

Breyer

Justice Stephen Breyer joined the court the year after Ginsburg was confirmed. When Breyer joined, the ideological makeup of the court was predominantly conservative, as it had been the previous year, and so was the average MQ Score across justices.

Click graph to enlarge.

Breyer was the fourth most liberal justice. according to his MQ Score at the end of his first term. By this point, Ginsburg had already dropped to the second most liberal justice on the court. The average across justices, however, was well into the conservative zone at .667, with Thomas still holding the position as the most conservative justice.

Breyer’s voting alignment with the other justices was below that for Ginsburg across his first 32 votes.

Click graph to enlarge.

Surprisingly, Breyer’s lower average alignment score of 81.91 percent was brought down the most because of his lack of alignment with the most liberal member of that court, Stevens. Breyer’s alignment with Thomas was also on the low end, while he had a high degree of alignment with Ginsburg and Kennedy.

Across his first 32 votes, Breyer dissented twice, while authoring three majority opinions and one dissent. Thirteen of these 32 decisions were made by unanimous votes.

Roberts and Alito

Roberts and Alito both joined the court during the 2005 term, although Roberts joined at the beginning of the term and Alito joined several months later. Both justices turned out to be very reliable conservative votes.

Click graph to enlarge.

These justices’ MQ Scores at the end of the 2005 term were quite similar to one another and placed them as the third and fourth most conservative justices on the court. The court still had a 5-4 conservative balance at the time, although only slightly, because O’Connor had slipped to an almost neutral position by her final term in 2005.

Roberts and Kennedy were the only two justices to average over 90 percent alignment across justices during their first 30 votes (33 for Roberts, because he had multiple votes on the same day as his 30th) on the court.

Click graph to enlarge.

Roberts was one of only two justices in this post to have 100 percent alignment with another justice during his first set of votes. This high level of alignment was between Roberts and Scalia. Note that not even Thomas and Gorsuch aligned this strongly across Gorsuch’s first 30 votes on the court. Roberts shared over 90 percent of the same votes with the more liberal Breyer and Souter and only slightly below 90 percent with the even more liberal Ginsburg and Stevens.

Across his first 33 votes, Roberts only dissented once. He also only authored two opinions, both majorities with no authored dissents. Twenty-five of Roberts’ first 33 decisions were decided by unanimous votes.

Alito, who joined the court later in the 2005 term, had a lower average alignment with other justices, at 84.8 percent.

Click graph to enlarge.

Alito also had a clearer distinction in his alignment with the more conservative and liberal justices: His alignments with the four more liberal justices all fell below his average, while his alignments with the four other conservative justices all were above his average alignment rate.

Across his first 34 votes, Alito dissented twice, although he did not author any of these dissents. He did author five majority opinions during this time. Twenty-two of his first 34 votes were decided by unanimous decisions.

Sotomayor

By the time Justice Sonia Sotomayor joined the court, the justices were moving into more liberal territory.

Click graph to enlarge.

According to her MQ Score, Sotomayor was the third most liberal justice by the end of her first term – more liberal than Breyer, while less liberal than Ginsburg and Stevens.

Sotomayor’s average voting alignment with other justices across her first 31 votes was quite similar to that of Gorsuch.

Click graph to enlarge.

Aside from Sotomayor’s high alignment with Ginsburg, Sotomayor actually aligned next closely with the more conservative Roberts. Sotomayor shared the fewest number of votes with Alito.

Although Sotomayor dissented four times across her first 31 votes, she did not author any of these dissents. She did, however, author three majority decisions in this set. Nineteen of the first 31 decisions that Sotomayor voted on were decided by unanimous votes.

Kagan

When Justice Elena Kagan joined the court, she became the fourth strong liberal vote. At this time, though, Kennedy still voted predominantly alongside the more conservative justices, and this helped prop up the average MQ Score for the 2010 term.

Click graph to enlarge.

Kagan’s average voting alignment with the other justices across her first 31 votes was just below Sotomayor’s, at 83.87 percent.

Click graph to enlarge.

There is a clear distinction between Kagan’s alignment with the more liberal justices, who are all above her average alignment level, and with the conservative justices, who all fall at or below her average level of voting alignment.

Along with Roberts’ alignment with Scalia during his first term, Kagan is the only other justice to have 100 percent alignment with another justice during a first term. In Kagan’s case, this close alignment was with Sotomayor.

Concluding thoughts

So what does all of this portend for the court moving forward? We are still judging Gorsuch on only his first set of decisions, because he has yet to finish his first full term as justice. So far, though, Gorsuch appears the conservative bastion that many hoped he’d be. As the second most conservative justice on the court at the end of his first partial term, Gorsuch may fight Thomas for the position of the court’s most conservative justice in this and subsequent terms.

Over his first year on the court, Gorsuch has clarified who he is as a justice. Gorsuch, however, filled a conservative justice’s seat. Any significant shifts in the court’s decision-making, therefore, will likely occur if President Donald Trump gets to make another nomination to the Supreme Court and if next time a more liberal justice is the one to depart. Because Kennedy has been tracking in the liberal direction over the past several terms, moving a staunch conservative justice into Kennedy’s seat could drastically shift the court’s ideological tenor.

This post was originally published on Empirical SCOTUS.

The post Empirical SCOTUS: How Gorsuch’s first year compares appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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