Qwerty Keyboard

[userse31]

"Hey are you alright?"

WILL YOU BLASTED NEUROTYPICALS STOP ASKING ME THIS!?

I rest my forehead on the edge of the table because I like doing it! It's kinda comfy, and it's how I enjoy playing on my phone.

Head down, phone in hands on my lap, playing spider solitaire.....

Trust me if something is bothering me you'll know about it. Damn useless hacks....

[userse31]

Warrior Cats: Into the Wild; Thoughts and Snark

0.) "\"But that seems foolish! Why can't the Clans work together and share their hunting grounds, instead of fighting each other?\" Firepaw suggested boldly."

Because the plot requires it Firepaw. The plot requires it.

All we need next is Warrior Cats fanfiction where the "International Feline Soviet" is established. Call it the "SovietClan" or something lol.

Imagine the cats singing The Internationale. (Perhaps this one: https://youtu.be/TVbwtiAkvCc?si=1HvcKnSyEFvU8u4C) The theme of communism being inevitable, even among talking cats in the realm of fantasy, is an interesting one. It would make for an interesting story! Well, atleast by my standards it would.

This story as is isn't really my "cup of tea". I'm really only doing it for Oliver lol. (Page 60)

1.) "There was no trace of the house cat in him now." Bruh, it has only been two days. Stop stroking your own dick Firepaw. (Page 82)

2.) "Firepaw smarted at the she-cat's words. Could she smell the scent of Twolegs on him, even now, after all this time?" Yes, because it's only been two days.

3.) Nikolai: "🎵Firepaw and Yellowfang sitting in a tree🎵 🎵K-I-L-L-I-N-G🎵"

I really hope this isn't some weird sort of romantic setup between Firepaw and Yellowfang, that would be cringe. My aromantic ass wants plot, not token gesture romance. (Page ~86)

4.) "He could smell the fear-scent on her." I'm pretty sure cats don't smell different when they get scared.

Regardless this "fear scent" thing is a really weird creative decision. Cats have body language, and we see that in the book, so why the addition of this "emotion smells" thing? (Page 89)

5.) Also this "she-cat" phrase. Why? Just WHY? Every single female cat in here has been referred to with "she-cat". The male characters don't get this: They don't get referred to with "he-cat". They just get referred to with "cat"!

I thought maybe it was a strange title at first, but no it's clearly gendered language. "She-cat" also just sounds weird. What's next? "They-cat"? Do enby cats get referred to with "they-cat"?

What a weird form of misogyny. (Various pages)

6.) "\"It's just to dangerous to bring an enemy warrior into the heart of ThunderClan! Now that she knows the camp, even the youngest ShadowClan kit will hear of it. We will have to move."

Not exactly the most natural of dialog. Regardless, doesn't all the clans know where the other clans are? I mean they know the placement of the borders, just trespass and locate the massive crowd of cats. All of this didn't come off to me as clandestine.

Also: How would the rest of ShadowClan know about this? Yellowfang presumably got kicked out or something. Also these are cats. They don't uh... Don't have any mobile phones or ham radios, you know what I mean? Communication is slow.

But assuming ShadowClan knows where the capitol of ThunderClan is..... WHO GIVES A SHIT!? This information isn't what I'd call "national security" worthy. No need to move. (Page 94)

7.) "Never before had one Clan driven another from its hunting grounds." Oh bullshit! And then what the fuck was that battle at the very beginning of the book for then? Shits-and-giggles? That was very blatantly an attempt to slurp up territory!

8.) "\"Usually she trains only the kits of deputies!\"" Mistook "trains" for "trans" which lowkey got me excited lol.

9.) "\"Firepaw, although you showed bad judgement in talking to a house cat." Um.... WHAT? God this is more dictatorial then the United States! Wtf would talking to a "house cat" do? Cause the destruction of the universe?

10.) How do the cats know about lions and leopards and stuff? It's clear the famous African big cats are being referenced but uh.... Those are in Africa, not North America. (Page ~145)

11.) The clan leader getting eight Totems of Undying.... How is this kept secret from the humans? The clan cat religion thing is a real thing in this world, so do the humans already know about it? If so, do human religions revolve around it? Do the major religions like Islam and Christianity deify cats?

12.) "We'll follow the warrior code, even if ShadowClan doesn't."

"Don't worry ladies, Israel signed the ceasefire! They won't attack!"

5 minutes later Israel attacks. (Page 169)

13.) I enjoy how smells play a role in both the narrative and world building!

14.) "You should hunt if you are hungry and then get some rest." DID YOU NOT JUST GO ON ABOUT THE WARRIOR CODE!? Specifically the thing of hunting on the land of other Clans? (Page 174)

15.) "The sun would be rising soon." The passage of time is so weird in this book. It only felt like five minutes! (Page 183)

16.) Oh so Bluestar chewed Firepaw a new asshole for talking to Smudge (is that his name?) but here she's talking Barley. Fucking hypocrite. (Page 183)

17.) "\"Rats!\" spat Tigerclaw. \"Barley has sent us into a trap!\""

Lol, just be glad this isn't my Rats of NIMH fanfiction Tigerclaw. You'd be facing rats armed with submachine guns there. Would be riddled with bullets in about a minute!

(Rats are small. Can't carry much! They also don't have much strength to resist recoil. As such the Army of NIMH has SMGs with low fire rates!)

Barley supposedly sending them into a trap of rats is odd, isn't it? Did BrokenStar promise Barley a beer or something? (Page 185)

18.) "\"He's wanted to be deputy ever since he took care of Redtail-\"" Oh screw you. Dumb plot twist, I don't like it. (Page 199)

19.) "The warriors looked hungry and battle-scarred, but Firepaw could see the hard muscles pounding beneath their patchy fur."

Yeah that's not how mammals work. Muscles are expensive, and they're one of the first bits of tissue the body will break down during starvation.

You can't be both malnourished and jacked at the same time. (Page 259)

20.) So ShadowClan is filled with scrawny weak cats..... Then how the shit did they launch that attack against ThunderClan? You can't sustain a war if your people are starving and weak.

21.) "\"ThunderClan warriors do not kill unless they have to,\" he growled in Firepaw's ear. \"We just need to let them know not to show their faces here again!\"" Ah yes, just give the murder happy cat a warning bite. What could go wrong? (Page 260)

22.) BOO!!! Should've killed Brokenstar when you had the chance!

[userse31]

Feather's Feathers

This is a dumb story.

So there's this Youtuber named "Feather's Feathers": https://youtube.com/@feathersfeathers?si=DbIB-8iLMZaqVqCS

About a year or something ago I came across her earlier ASMR videos and was like "Oh. She's uh.... Her voice is really nice!"

I do like women with stereotypically deep masculine voices. (I did do a bit of a "male gaze" thing in my Rats of NIMH fanfiction involving Richard Stallman initially making moves on a woman before backing off.) I don't really know why though. It's kind of "just is".

I no longer find interest in Feather's voice for.... Well, you'll see why.

Regardless I formed my very first parasocial crush! And it was for a mystery "VTuber" trans woman on the internet. Absolutely "fantastic". Not uh.... Not beating those self imposed chaser allegations lol.

Now I knew from the get-go that this was a parasocial relationship. In general I don't form parasocial relationships (it's probably the autism?) I instead view content creators on the internet as "people who make interesting content". I like my platonic relationships like my consoles and computers: Physical!

Even inside stuff like Discord servers and Direct Message lists I view the other people around me essentially like acquaintances. Except for the IRL friends I contact via platforms, those are platonic.

So what did I do with this parasocial crush? Well..... I commented "Oh no I have a crush!" or something like that..... Not uh..... I said her voice was hot! Yeah I didn't do all that much. I think. I hope! I didn't want to come off as creepy.

Now I was under the impression this person was in their 20's and in college. Especially with the color grading video (https://youtu.be/mrywVcKQBQw?si=k-p90Q5_cDH_9QQQ). So around my age!

Try..... Mmm... I don't know.... Seventeen.

She made a video regarding online echo chambers (https://youtu.be/c6duvQ3Al5s?si=vrfo7zHBB1PBKKIO) and casually mentioned being seventeen. (Also she's a stinky liberal lmfao.)

So I had a parasocial crush on a FUCKING TEENAGER! EW! Just.... EW!

Needless to say I no longer have that parasocial crush. I like older women.

I suppose the lesson here today is..... I don't fucking know, It's hard to gauge the age of someone on the internet? Already knew that one.

I suppose the other lesson here is: Buy Japanese when it comes to used 1990s-2000s cars.

[userse31]

Redwall: A Missed Opportunity

I have finished Redwall (the book). It was alright.

Just because a book has death, gore, and violence in it, doesn't automatically make it more mature. You have to actually engage with the deeper themes, not "throw it at a wall".

Brian Jacques "throws it at a wall" in the first book. Not sure about the later ones! I uh.... I'm not all that interested in continuing with the series.

Anyhoo the amount of deaths in the book is so ridiculous, it comes off more.... Comical? Not sure how else to describe it.

So many side characters gets introduced and then killed off. There's no emotional buildup for an impactful death. The only side characters I cared about where Snagg and Shadow, and that's because I thought they where interesting villains! They where competent! And they posed an actual threat! Them being around would've improved the story!

And then we get to the deaths of main characters, where we still don't get any emotional buildup.

Chickenhound nonchalantly caves Methuselah's skull in (which comes of as quite minor compared to Cornflower's dad getting ripped to shreds). He pops up in Matthias' dream, goes "You're on your own now!" And then pisses off.

Matthias has a depressive episode that lasts five paragraphs, and then he "gets over it". You get the ol' "It's what Methuselah would've wanted!" Calls, but that's it!

Or take Father Abbot's death: He slowly dies from Cluny's poison. He takes this opportunity to, well, essentially name successors. He also tells Cornflower to marry Matthias which.... You know.... EW!

Talk about "dead father-in-law pressure". God I feel horrible for Cornflower, you just KNOW she had no real choice in the matter.

I can picture it: Cornflower brings up her hesitation and/or doubts, but everyone is like "Yeah but Father Abbot says you should! You loved Father Abbot didn't you? I'm sure you wouldn't want to disappoint him."

But I mean, this war does kill a lot unnamed people. I'm sure Brian took the opportunity to demonstrate the emotional consequences of war! These are normally peaceful people, surely Brian explored the topic of what they feel like suddenly engaging in (legalized) murder. They normally heal and help, them killing Cluny's soldiers probably doesn't sit with them well, despite it all bring self defense.

....No? Brian doesn't explore these (self evident) themes? He just uh.... He just mentions that people get killed in one-liners? How disappointing.

For fuck sake people don't even lament that their loved ones got killed. Matthias shows more self reflective thought towards a shrew he only knew for a few days over his own fallen comrades. And Matthias merely went "Oh. This shrew was still alive a few hours ago, how unpleasant. Welp, time to get Martin's sword!"

Compare this with something like Call of Duty World at War.

An ironic choice, yes. Also a bit of an unfair comparison as World at War has the benefit of visuals. Regardless I think it's a good comparison, although I will be ignoring the visual stuff for fairness.

Despite being a video game, and thus having far less character dialog, the likes of Corky Lehmkuhl, Craig Houston, Paul Golding, etc, where plenty able to have impactful deaths.

Reznov and Chernov are both setup to complicate/contradict each other nicely. Chernov is the "foil" to Reznov. The "Jenga Tower" is built up, the audience (in this case the players) become invested, and finally the tablecloth is yanked off the table.

The table falls (Chernov gets killed), and Reznov reacts with a bit of character growth. It's all done really well!

Hell this was at one point supposed to be Chernov's death (Trigger warning: Many things, but most notable death by flamethrower/mercy killing.): https://youtu.be/kE__8Od--XQ?si=JKsGYW8IL_035c8X

Being a video game World at War has the feature of being interactable: Chernov's diary changed based on what you (the player) does at key points in the campaign.

Granted World at War is an "M" rated game, but children's media can still explore unpleasant topics!

Hell the 2D cel animated adaptation PBS did with Redwall still carried much of the death (although they dropped almost all of the gore for obvious reasons). Rose's death (which was either season 2 or 3, I don't remember which, and I'm too lazy to look it up lol) was done very well! It was emotionally moving!

No idea what Rose's death was like in the book though. I'm not interested in continuing this series tbh. For fuck sake, I'm 22! The societal stigma of adults being into childish stuff is notable reason, but I also "crave" more mature stuff. Most of these children's books are quite simplistic story wise, and thus not all that "mentally satisfying".

I'm also poor and don't want to waste money buying completing these series, nor do I want to waste my time pirating books I don't truly want to read.

Anyway that's my thoughts on Redwall's depiction of death.

[userse31]

Redwall Plot Holes and Thoughts.

-So the reason Cluny wants Redwall is that he thinks it would make a nice castle, especially with all the resources around it.

-If Redwall Abby is peaceful and doesn't get attacked, then why does it have defensive walls and gates?

-How did the rat sentries not notice Matthias and Basil mucking around on the opposite side of the field?

-Matthias had a great opportunity to try and sabotage something at Cluny's makeshift camp in the church. Burn the place down, smash the weapons..... Piss in their food rations. He had options!

-Cluny has an amazing disregard for his own source of manpower. Not only that, but he treats his soldiers like shit. If anything his soldier and officers should mutiny.

-Why doesn't Asmodeus (the giant fuck-off snake) simply swallow Ragear whole?

-Pushing forward into Cluny's retreating army (with him being carried off) was ABSOLUTELY a great idea! This sort of thing is a classic maneuver done all throughout history. It would've caused a route. Strike while the iron is hot!

But no. "Father" Abbot let the iron cool off.

-The sun and moon don't move in static arcs in the sky. Seasons and the tilt of the earth. All that stuff! As such the shield moonlight reflection thing would only point out the correct spot, at best, a few weeks every year.

-Why on god's green earth did Martin put all this effort into creating these insane riddles and stuff?

-Fangburn, one of Cluny's commanding officers, is illiterate. How the <b>FUCK</b> did Cluny appoint an illiterate rat into a position where he needs to read and write shit!? <b>WHY!?</b>

-And why.... Why would you install your sword inside a weather vane? And surely someone would've noticed it by now. Not so much looking up at it from the ground (the subconscious filters things out) but definitely when someone inevitably has to go up there to perform roof work. (Damn Abbey roof be leaking again!)

-"nOt EvEn In ThE oLdEsT rEcOrDeD wRiTiNgS wAs ThErE aNy MeNtIoN oF a CrEaTuRe VeNtUrInG tO cLiMb As HiGh As ThE AbBeY rOoF". By that logic both the construction workers who built the damn Abbey and that bird who stole sword didn't exist, and whenever a nasty rainstorm came in the Abbot goes all "BRING OUT THE BUCKETS <b>BITCHES!</b>" all Jim Carrey's "The Mask" impression as, again, THE ROOF WORK THING!

My snark levels with this book merely grow larger with each turn of the page.

-"Nobody in all the world was a better climber then his mother." Brian be conveniently ignoring Shadow over here.

-Constance twirling and then flinging Redtooth around was fucking awesome! This isn't a plot hole, I just enjoy stuff like this!

-Matthias gains some trust of the birds, but like, why not try and rope the sparrows into harassing Cluny's forces? Gain air superiority over them!

-Basil and Jess really should've pissed of with Cluny's staff, not just the stolen banner. Would've really pissed Cluny off and, perhaps as a bonus, "partially incapacitate" Cluny's decision making from being so angry.

-Jess did the same "twirl the rat by the tail" thing Constance did but.... Constance is a lot larger then the rats! Jess isn't.

-So the sparrows talk in a manner only Matthias is good at understanding..... But we don't really get to see that? We get to see the way the sparrows talk! But Matthias doesn't really, like, change how he talks when talking to them, except for a few times.

Also: If Matthias is the only one who can understand the sparrows well, <i>then how the hell did Jess understood she had to climb up there and fetch Matthias?</i> Wouldn't she not understand the bird, assuming it was attacking her, and attack it out of assumed self defense?

-"He would never forget Dunwing and her eggchick Warbeak. Friends in need are friends indeed." Fair, but like, ignoring the bit where "Well you're all not really friends are you? Only knew each other for a few days." Shouldn't Matthias have told the birds about their <i>Cluny Problem™?</i> I'm sure the birds aren't entirely aware of the full context behind the massive crowd of rats, weasels, etc, right outside the walls of Redwall.

They'd probably really appreciate being informed that, well, they where under siege, and that Cluny plans on killing everyone! "Everyone" naturally including the sparrows. Maybe they'd, you know, <i>join in on the fight on the side of the inhabitants of Redwall.</i>

Yes, I'm harping at this again, but having air superiority over Cluny would've been <b>EXTREMELY USEFUL!</b>

-Jess's tail is now getting in the way of her climbing? Well that's oddly convenient for the tension portion of the plot! There was no mention of her tail getting in the way before! What the hell Brian? The fuck?

And don't "at" me with the whole wind thing. A: There's just a lot of wind high up; B: <b>JESS IS A FULL GROWN ASS SQUIRREL!</b> This shouldn't be a problem!

-"Anything that did not suit the young fox's taste was smashed or vandalized." Alright, how in the ass did nobody hear this charlatan going around stealing and smashing stuff?

(Various smashing noises.)

Maid 0: "What is that crashing noise? We should go see what it is."

Maid 1: "Oh that's just Chickenhound stealing our-"

Maid 0: "HOLY SHIT! We need to tell so-"

Maid 1: "No! No need. He'll run into Father Abbot, try running away, and then get killed by the massive fuck-off snake. Besides, the plot requires it!"

Maid 0: "Oh. Well, all's good the-"

Maid 1: "Brian does retcon out Chickenhound's death though. He's gonna come back in about five years and steal our children for the purposes of being construction slaves for an underground cult."

Maid 0: "What the fuck?"

This... This is why you don't add these one-off world "building" lines. Deleting the detail where Chickenhound smashes crap up would've prevented this stupid plot hole.

-"You young blaggard! So this is how to repay our kindness. You are far worse than your wicked mother!"

Wait, how does Methuselah know about Sela's tomfoolery? Did Constance hell him? Even then, Constance was merely suspicious of Sela. Wait.... Did Sela and Constance even talk with each other, or was that Chickenhound?

Regardless, this comes off as Brian doing one of them "author infoleaks" where the writer inadvertently gives a character info due to said info being upfront in one's brain, but the detail of a character not knowing that isn't.

At the very least, we do get to have the mental image of Constance chasing his ass down!

-Cornflower cries over Matthias' false death. <i>Except this isn't the PBS show.</i> Book version of Cornflower is a named background character who hardly interacts with Matthias past serving him food.

Bit of that "Team RWBY is stated to all be friends, but it doesn't feel like that" type of thing.

-Not a plot hole but "drummer-cum-soothsayer"? Lol.

-"What would you know about loneliness and trying to preserve one's standards in a decaying world?" I do think Brian initially intended Redwall's world to be sapient animals in a post-human world. Not a plot hole though, just an observation.

-Why doesn't Constance make more then one sniping arrow?

-Warbeak has her soldiers compromise the doors..... But not also attack Cluny's soldiers at the same time?

-It takes skills to use a sword effectively, but Matthias just..... Doesn't need to train I guess?

-Damn it Friar Hugo, you see Cluny and Matthias come towards you fighting each other and you hide? Coward. (Page 344)

-"A warrior needs a good wife." EW! Just EW! Fuck you Abbot. I don't care that you're actively dying, that decision is up to Cornflower, not you! We observe feminism here, specifically transfeminism. (Page 349)

-"Silent Sam" suddenly talking is uh.... Yeah I don't like that. Being mute isn't a choice.

[chelonianmobile]

It wasn't always peaceful. it was built immediately after they overthrew a villain army and they wanted to make sure they didn't come back. Mortimer explains that.

Adders bite their prey and then maneuvre them into position to swallow whole, which is what Asmodeus did. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJW__4dSAiA

Matthias... DID sabotage the rats' efforts? By freeing their prisoners? That was what he was there for? And do you seriously think it's a good idea to stick around in an enemy camp once you've done what you're there for?

Cluny's officers usually DIDN'T need to read and write. Redtooth was the only one who needed to deal with writing, the others just needed to direct rats to go kill stuff. Most armies throughout history have not been literate and they managed just fine.

Shadow's dead when Sam thinks that, and also Sam didn't know he existed in the first place? Sometimes things are said from the point of view of characters?

Yes, how unrealistic that he'd remember someone who saved his fucking life.

Sela was a notorious trickster throughout the land and the Abbeydwellers knew that. That was established when she talked to Constance. Even if not that, Constance could have, you know, had a conversation with Methuselah?

The Abbey's a pretty darn large place, it's not unreasonable that they'd happen not to be within earshot.

Yes, that's how you correctly use the term: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26488/how-does-one-use-the-latin-word-cum-in-a-sentence

The book already repeatedly established Matthias has ghost support from Martin in using the sword.

Friar Hugo isn't a fighter, what else exactly could he do? How dare he want to live.

Sam is a literal infant, and kids learning to talk a bit late isn't the same as muteness. I have a friend who didn't talk at all until they were four.

[userse31]

First off I want to say thank you for actively engaging with what I wrote. I enjoy the ol' (good faith) debates! Satisfies the mind!

But enough talk, have at you!

1.) That explains things.

2.) I suppose this is an issue caused by the weird scale of things in the book. I watched PBS's 2D animation adaptation of the book first, and Asmodeus is fucking MASSIVE! The other issue is that the massive fuck-off snake has this weird habit of biting his victims but then leaving them lying around the place. Would've thought Asmodeus would've swallowed them soon after they died.

3.) Yes, but Cluny's camp was largely deserted. He still had a good portion of time to both free the POWs and "do something else". Missed opportunity if you ask me!

4.) Interesting point, but I'd like some sources backing up that claim of "most commanding officers through history where illiterate". Preferably not Wikipedia.

5.) It was more a jab at Brian himself.

6.) I should've numbered by thoughts list. I'm not sure which one of my points your responding to with this one.

7.) This is a stretch imo and comes off as "It happened off screen, so don't complain about it!" Also the way I read the book it came off.... Strange.

8.) If this is the bit with Chickenhound smashing crap: The Abbey is big, but it also has a lot of people manning the place! At the very least someone passing through should've heard him smashing plates and.... Presumably whatever else he was smashing up. Atleast ONE person should've heard all of that.

9.) It's funny though!

10.) Same thing with point 6: Should've numbered my post!

11.) Cluny was clearly dealing a good bit of damage on Matthias. Friar rushing up on Cluny would've turned that 1-on-1 confrontation into a 2-on-1 confrontation. Even an unskilled combatant like Friar joining the fight would've been a serious help towards Matthias! Especially given that Cluny very likely would've been taken off guard by the attack as he'd have his full attention on Matthias.

12.) No? And regarding the thing with your friend, it very much doesn't come off as a development disorder. Atleast not from my reading.

[userse31]

Redwall Plot Holes and Thoughts.

-So the reason Cluny wants Redwall is that he thinks it would make a nice castle, especially with all the resources around it.

-If Redwall Abby is peaceful and doesn't get attacked, then why does it have defensive walls and gates?

-How did the rat sentries not notice Matthias and Basil mucking around on the opposite side of the field?

-Matthias had a great opportunity to try and sabotage something at Cluny's makeshift camp in the church. Burn the place down, smash the weapons..... Piss in their food rations. He had options!

-Cluny has an amazing disregard for his own source of manpower. Not only that, but he treats his soldiers like shit. If anything his soldier and officers should mutiny.

-Why doesn't Asmodeus (the giant fuck-off snake) simply swallow Ragear whole?

-Pushing forward into Cluny's retreating army (with him being carried off) was ABSOLUTELY a great idea! This sort of thing is a classic maneuver done all throughout history. It would've caused a route. Strike while the iron is hot!

But no. "Father" Abbot let the iron cool off.

-The sun and moon don't move in static arcs in the sky. Seasons and the tilt of the earth. All that stuff! As such the shield moonlight reflection thing would only point out the correct spot, at best, a few weeks every year.

-Why on god's green earth did Martin put all this effort into creating these insane riddles and stuff?

-Fangburn, one of Cluny's commanding officers, is illiterate. How the <b>FUCK</b> did Cluny appoint an illiterate rat into a position where he needs to read and write shit!? <b>WHY!?</b>

-And why.... Why would you install your sword inside a weather vane? And surely someone would've noticed it by now. Not so much looking up at it from the ground (the subconscious filters things out) but definitely when someone inevitably has to go up there to perform roof work. (Damn Abbey roof be leaking again!)

-"nOt EvEn In ThE oLdEsT rEcOrDeD wRiTiNgS wAs ThErE aNy MeNtIoN oF a CrEaTuRe VeNtUrInG tO cLiMb As HiGh As ThE AbBeY rOoF". By that logic both the construction workers who built the damn Abbey and that bird who stole sword didn't exist, and whenever a nasty rainstorm came in the Abbot goes all "BRING OUT THE BUCKETS <b>BITCHES!</b>" all Jim Carrey's "The Mask" impression as, again, THE ROOF WORK THING!

My snark levels with this book merely grow larger with each turn of the page.

-"Nobody in all the world was a better climber then his mother." Brian be conveniently ignoring Shadow over here.

-Constance twirling and then flinging Redtooth around was fucking awesome! This isn't a plot hole, I just enjoy stuff like this!

-Matthias gains some trust of the birds, but like, why not try and rope the sparrows into harassing Cluny's forces? Gain air superiority over them!

-Basil and Jess really should've pissed of with Cluny's staff, not just the stolen banner. Would've really pissed Cluny off and, perhaps as a bonus, "partially incapacitate" Cluny's decision making from being so angry.

-Jess did the same "twirl the rat by the tail" thing Constance did but.... Constance is a lot larger then the rats! Jess isn't.

-So the sparrows talk in a manner only Matthias is good at understanding..... But we don't really get to see that? We get to see the way the sparrows talk! But Matthias doesn't really, like, change how he talks when talking to them, except for a few times.

Also: If Matthias is the only one who can understand the sparrows well, <i>then how the hell did Jess understood she had to climb up there and fetch Matthias?</i> Wouldn't she not understand the bird, assuming it was attacking her, and attack it out of assumed self defense?

-"He would never forget Dunwing and her eggchick Warbeak. Friends in need are friends indeed." Fair, but like, ignoring the bit where "Well you're all not really friends are you? Only knew each other for a few days." Shouldn't Matthias have told the birds about their <i>Cluny Problem™?</i> I'm sure the birds aren't entirely aware of the full context behind the massive crowd of rats, weasels, etc, right outside the walls of Redwall.

They'd probably really appreciate being informed that, well, they where under siege, and that Cluny plans on killing everyone! "Everyone" naturally including the sparrows. Maybe they'd, you know, <i>join in on the fight on the side of the inhabitants of Redwall.</i>

Yes, I'm harping at this again, but having air superiority over Cluny would've been <b>EXTREMELY USEFUL!</b>

-Jess's tail is now getting in the way of her climbing? Well that's oddly convenient for the tension portion of the plot! There was no mention of her tail getting in the way before! What the hell Brian? The fuck?

And don't "at" me with the whole wind thing. A: There's just a lot of wind high up; B: <b>JESS IS A FULL GROWN ASS SQUIRREL!</b> This shouldn't be a problem!

-"Anything that did not suit the young fox's taste was smashed or vandalized." Alright, how in the ass did nobody hear this charlatan going around stealing and smashing stuff?

(Various smashing noises.)

Maid 0: "What is that crashing noise? We should go see what it is."

Maid 1: "Oh that's just Chickenhound stealing our-"

Maid 0: "HOLY SHIT! We need to tell so-"

Maid 1: "No! No need. He'll run into Father Abbot, try running away, and then get killed by the massive fuck-off snake. Besides, the plot requires it!"

Maid 0: "Oh. Well, all's good the-"

Maid 1: "Brian does retcon out Chickenhound's death though. He's gonna come back in about five years and steal our children for the purposes of being construction slaves for an underground cult."

Maid 0: "What the fuck?"

This... This is why you don't add these one-off world "building" lines. Deleting the detail where Chickenhound smashes crap up would've prevented this stupid plot hole.

-"You young blaggard! So this is how to repay our kindness. You are far worse than your wicked mother!"

Wait, how does Methuselah know about Sela's tomfoolery? Did Constance hell him? Even then, Constance was merely suspicious of Sela. Wait.... Did Sela and Constance even talk with each other, or was that Chickenhound?

Regardless, this comes off as Brian doing one of them "author infoleaks" where the writer inadvertently gives a character info due to said info being upfront in one's brain, but the detail of a character not knowing that isn't.

At the very least, we do get to have the mental image of Constance chasing his ass down!

-Cornflower cries over Matthias' false death. <i>Except this isn't the PBS show.</i> Book version of Cornflower is a named background character who hardly interacts with Matthias past serving him food.

Bit of that "Team RWBY is stated to all be friends, but it doesn't feel like that" type of thing.

-Not a plot hole but "drummer-cum-soothsayer"? Lol.

-"What would you know about loneliness and trying to preserve one's standards in a decaying world?" I do think Brian initially intended Redwall's world to be sapient animals in a post-human world. Not a plot hole though, just an observation.

-Why doesn't Constance make more then one sniping arrow?

-Warbeak has her soldiers compromise the doors..... But not also attack Cluny's soldiers at the same time?

-It takes skills to use a sword effectively, but Matthias just..... Doesn't need to train I guess?

-Damn it Friar Hugo, you see Cluny and Matthias come towards you fighting each other and you hide? Coward. (Page 344)

-"A warrior needs a good wife." EW! Just EW! Fuck you Abbot. I don't care that you're actively dying, that decision is up to Cornflower, not you! We observe feminism here, specifically transfeminism. (Page 349)

-"Silent Sam" suddenly talking is uh.... Yeah I don't like that. Being mute isn't a choice.

[userse31]

Nail Polish, Agender, and Autistic Non-Human Identities

Looking at myself in photos and videos always felt a little.... Odd. A bit of that "weird unexpected" feeling. But only sometimes, and never in the mirror (except once).

And recently this was reaching something approaching emotional existential crisis levels so uh.... Yeah I decided to confront it.

Being committed to the path of trans liberation (as all communists should), I naturally read up a bit on "what the trans experience is like".

But I'm not female. I was suspecting if I was perhaps agender or something, especially given that this isn't the typical manifestation of dysphoria. Regardless my diagnostic skills say "rule out the basic stuff first" so I painted my nails!

I got that same "weird feeling" when looking at photos of my own hands, and whenever I caught a glimpse of my hands I "clocked" them as "female hands" for a split second.

But all that only lasted a few hours. After that? Complete emotional neutrality.

Which is, you know, weird?

So I looked more into the agender experience and.... Yeah that's not me. I don't/didn't have the experiences agender people have.

But then.... Then I remembered the thing where us autists sometimes have non-human identities. So I looked into it and came across this: https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/1ker3a4/does_any_other_autistic_person_here_have_a/

I must say u/oberheims looks kinda.... Fabulous....

(Jolts out of it.) Uh... Well, anyway! That wasn't the straightest of thoughts was it? Lol.

I'm not like many of the people in that thread. I don't "feel like" a robot, an alien. I don't feel like a cat or anything.... But a part of me does resonate with the vibes there.

I suppose the closest is u/Haunted_Hills' "Yes, a featureless cube." Which.... I kind of have similar vibes going on.

I just.... Feel like myself you know? Not so much a human, just "me". I don't really have an internal portrait of myself.

It's just ol' Qwerty Keyboard up here! Disembodied internal monologue voice, alongside whatever avatar/animated character I last saw. Eg "whatever's still in the L1 cache".

I very much enjoy being a human of course. Being sapient (and thus capable of complex thought) is extremely nice! Don't forget the arbitrary speech and hands, those are also valuable!

With that revelation, I took the nail polish off. It did it's job: It helped me figure myself out!

Still a cishet male though.

----

I suppose this also explains something I almost completely forgot about.

When I was little, and to a slight extent even today, I hated imagining humans. It felt extremely awkward/cringe. Not when reading though.

Instead I cobbled together these fictional creature things to, well, play around with story wise.

Then I read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH!

Had a short stunt when I was five/six where I liked hamsters. Mrs. Frisby reactivated it and changed that to rats/mice.

As I matured my "writing" skills improved. Thought up more complex and deeper stories. Then I actually committed to writing the stuff down.

And now it uh.... It's tradition now. I just like writing about sapient rats and mice doing stuff!

[userse31]

The RWBY "Waifu" List

This post was inspired by this video: https://youtu.be/43e42IpEklw?si=81GeXJcfP8onk_L7

Being a cishet male, who would I choose from RWBY to be my girlfriend/wife?

Almost none of them. Granted part of that is me being aromantic but there's also the whole thing where almost all the onscreen female characters in the show are.... They're just awful! Or just invalid choices!

-Ruby Rose: Too young. Also the "crash Atlas into Mantle" thing.

-Weiss Schnee: Too young. Also the "crash Atlas into Mantle" thing.

-Blake Belladonna: Too young. And even if she was older, she's an obnoxious liberal who probably has a severe allergic reaction towards dialectical materialism. <i>Also the "crash Atlas into Mantle" thing.</i>

-Yang Xiao Long: Too young. And she's an off putting Vindictive asshole.

-Nora Valkyrie: Too young. Also she's already engaged.

-Pyrrha Nikos: Too young. (Are you starting to see a pattern here?) Also she's dead.

-Penny Polendina: Not only is she a robot and thus <i>probably aroace</i> but she's also a <b>literal flying weapon</b>. Intimacy is just ASKING to get maimed/killed.

-Summer Rose: Missing-In-Action. Ignoring that, she's probably also in her late 30s/early 40s by now. As someone in his early 20's that's really pushing it.

-Raven Branwen: Also a vindictive asshole, and a <b>literal war lord</b>. She deserves to be hung, not find love. Ignoring all that, she's <b>also</b> probably in her late 30s/early 40s. And again, even if we ignore <i>all of that</i> she's not even pretty. I have no idea why people like her (be it lust or even antagonist wise).

-Maria Calavera: Way <b>way</b> too old! She is one of the few characters on here that is both an interesting person and hasn't done awful things though. She's all around agreeable to be around! As for the elderly reading this: I found a great contender for all of you!

-Emerald Sustrai: Sided with the weird demon witch thing, facilitating the murders of tens of thousands, probably millions. The fact she got a "redemption" really pisses me off. My first thought seeing her would be to <i>locate the nearest 12 gauge shotgun</i> not ask her out to a date/hookup.

-Salem: The literal incarnation of evil. Pass.

-Cinder Fall: She's a narcissist. She can accidentally poor hydrofluoric acid on herself and die a horrible and extremely painful bone failure related death for all I care.

-"Tock": She's dead.

-Coco Adel: She's a lesbian, so an automatic disqualification for me. Apparently she's also a sex pest who likes to stare at other women for pleasure. Just..... EW!

-Velvet Scarlatina: She kinda just.... Exists in my mind lol. Probably too young.

-Glynda Goodwitch: She'd be middle aged. Was probably killed-in-action during the Fall of Beacon too.

-Vernal: Too young.

-Miss Malachite: Kinda comes off as a scumbag.

-Malachite Twins: Also come off as scumbags.

-Gender bent Bartholomew Oobleck: Extremely goofy history nerd. Yes!

-Ilia Amitola: Again she's a lesbian, so an automatic disqualification for me. While watching the flaming dumpster fire that was Season 5 I can really only describe Ilia's presence as "extremely annoying" and "viciously disinterested". I was SO FUCKING GLAD when she pissed off the first episode of Season 6!

-Sienna Khan: A fellow revolutionary? And one who's actively organizing the masses albeit in a heavily flawed way? And she has decent looks? Yes please! Now let me grab my copies of The Foundations of Leninism and other works- Oh. She uh..... She got killed. Nevermind.

-Neon Katt: Not interested.

-Winter Schnee: She kinda pretty and.... Oh. She uh.... She backstabs Ironwood and follows through with team RWBY's hairbrained idea. Nevermind.

-Caroline Cordovin: Too old. Pass.

-Olive Harper: RWBY has a lot of forgettable characters doesn't it? Good looks, but again, pass as I have <i>no god damn clue who she is.</i>

-Elm Ederne: Good looks.... That's uh..... That's about it.

-Harriet Bree: Gives off massive "brat" vibes. No thank you!

-Robyn Hill: The whole election subplot thing came off as political pandering to me, and not in a good way. Found the whole thing so <b>incredibly insufferable</i>. Robyn gives off "Kamala Harris" vibes and just.... Ew. Just <b>EW</b>. <b><big>FUCK</big></b> no!

-Fiona Thyme: Would be a useful "friend" on account of her pocket dimension lol. Infinite storage for all my trashpicked findings!

-Joanna Greenleaf: I'm not interested. Sorry Joanna.

-May Marigold: Probably in her 20s? Honestly she's cute! Smash but only if she likes men.

-Neon Katt: Oh god, she's loud and never shuts up. Like Bailey Bucket when I was still in school! That brat was ultra high pitched and loud, even during stuff like tests. FUCK no!

-Neopolitan: Other then playing a key part in mafia affairs, sure why not? I do kinda headcannon her as aromantic though.

-Jaune's sister and her girlfriend: They're lesbians and already engaged: Pass.

Alright so the only real options for me are:

-The token gesture trans woman Rooster Teeth threw in to try and appear "progressive".

-Roman Torchwick's former business partner. (I don't consider that a ship.)

Everyone else is either dead, too young, too old, not interested in men, and/or horribly unlikable. Lmfao.

[userse31]

"You should be more grateful"

There are many things I'm grateful for: Cheap bread, good quality energy efficient lighting, antibiotics, the communists winning the Chinese Civil War, ibxtoycat choosing to do Youtube, etc.

But if you came up to me and asked if I was grateful for having a roof over my head, I'd respond with "FUCK no!"

Phew! Oh wow, boy oh boy, I'm so fucking glad my family has just enough money to satisfy the landlord!

Jee whiz, I'm so grateful the CUNTS at the insurance companies decides to cover my dental checkup!

There are genuine cases of being grateful for what you have. A gift someone gave you, scoring something you find valuable for cheap, the people you know, stuff like that.

Having the bare minimums for survival is not it. Just because "my situation could be worse" does not justify "being grateful" that the capitalists took it slightly easier with you.

The only people who are genuinely "grateful" their lives aren't worse consist of ignorant liberals and fascist sycophants who find romance in people suffering.

Communists (or really anyone with a functioning moral compass) do not find gratitude in having the bare minimum: They demand that everyone has a good and fulfilling life.

[userse31]

Windows 8, Dell Laptops with faulty RAM, Petty IT Class Teachers, and an Autistic 10/11 Year Old with VirtualBox

It is some time after the 26th of October 2012, perhaps a few months, and 10 or 11 year old me is home on the "family" laptop which, at this point, was essentially mine in all-but-name at that point.

Now a decent chunk before that point the Youtube recommendation algorithm at some point changed from recommending a mixture of VSauce, Shoop da whoop, and DVD players, and instead recommended videos of programming stuff in <i>Windows Batch Script</i>.

It was probably me watching UXWILL now that I think about it. Thanks William! You're video of that DVD player with a bad power supply, and then all those computers you trashpicked, helped lead me to today where I'm combing through the RAM dumps of ancient Qualcomm BREW flip phones in Ghidra!

I'm not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely grateful! Show some love to danooct1 for his videos too.

Even if the fact I first learned programming via <b>fucking Windows Batch Script</b> gives me self embarrassment just thinking about it.

Despite now using Linux, I don't know a lick of BASH scripting short of piping and using command line utilities. I do know a bit of Makefile scripting! I suppose some things don't change.

First learned Javascript here! Some might argue that's somehow even worse, and I might be one of those very people in question.

Anyway 🌈aaaaalllll of this🌈 on that school issued iPad 2 eventually lead me to messing around with Virtual Machines on that Dell Inspiron 1501. Don't remember how, other then having to shuffle the installer and various ISOs via USB flash drives because I didn't know how to setup a WIFI password in Windows Vista. I just know I eventually got there.

Oh shit yeah! I was setting up virtual machines before I properly knew how to connect to a WIFI network lmfao. How.... How does that even happen!? Was playing hoodamath flash games on that laptop but then the WIFI SSID changed or something. Ended up being a year or two before that machine connected to the internet again, and it was <i>our then neighbors next door.</i>

Screw that mystery function light switch with a neon indicator above it in the basement stairwell of my now-nonexistent childhood home, I want to know how all THAT nonsense even happened!

<i>Trying</i> to keep on topic, Windows 8 launched and I eventually watched this classic video from back in the day: https://youtu.be/WTYet-qf1jo?si=by3baE1ww0xHOdME; "Windows 8: The Animated Evaluation" by @blogphilofilms

Because <i>autism</i> I ended up watching that video many MANY times. Tbf the guy has just.... The humor is great! It's a good video!

And because <i>autistic 10/11 year old</i> the whole hate fixation thing happened. Which makes the fact I installed <i>Windows 8 inside a VM on top of Windows Vista on a Turion TL-50 with 1GiB of RAM</i> quite baffling to me.

The fact it even ran is baffling too. That laptop had faulty RAM!

Anyway I grabbed the ISO off some sketchy website., loaded it up in VirtualBox, waited what was probably a good few hours for it to install as the whole thing was decently slow from all that overhead (which the copious amounts of sketchy software including literal malware I installed on the machine wouldn't of helped with), and.... Just messed around with the OG Windows 8.

It was slow, but I wasn't surprised by that. Thought Windows 8 was fine tbh. I generally knew my way around the OS on account of all those Windows 8 rant videos I watched ad nauseam.

I didn't do all that much with that install. It was pretty slow, especially without the guest edition drivers being installed. Atleast I don't think they where installed? Regardless it probably only had 512MiB allocated to it, there wouldn't of been much I could've done with it.

Other then not hyper fixate hating on something anymore (which might have been a first for me by then!) I largely lost interest and moved on, albeit with a very short lived interest in Microsoft's software.

I did set the default search engine to Bing on my stuff for a short while though. Why the flying fuck did I do that? Lol.

But then: Microsoft Office 2013!

The IT department at my elementary school didn't update the machines to Windows 8, they all stayed on Windows 7. I don't blame them tbh.

They did, however, install Office 2013 on the machines. The then new Metro GUI was hard baked into the program.

During one of the lessons the IT class teacher was following us though the new GUI. Eventually we all get to the standard File Open/Save dialog box supplied by Windows 7, so the old GUI just.... Showed up.

Yeah the software capitalists can be really silly with the "MAKE ALL OUR STUFF HAVE THE SAME DESIGN LANGUAGE" thing, especially when there'll be instances where the old design pops up lol.

So the teacher, she makes a throwaway comment, along the lines of "now the GUI we're used to is back" with a hint of "The new design they're pushing sucks am I right, or am I right" to her inflection.

Which would've went over the heads of almost all of my classmates. Most of them would've been more concerned with reasonable stuff like cartoons or Minecraft! Most of us probably didn't even use Windows 8 at that point, or even have any form of context around the whole start menu thing that happened!

People like to go on about people not giving kids enough credit, which is very much true, but they're still kids. An eight year old probably roughly knows what death is alongside the its contexts.

But you won't be able to hold a meaningful conversation regarding software piracy. They don't know the material reality regarding capitalist IP laws, they haven't learned about them yet, let alone the material conditions that arise from it!

Except, as you just read, I <b>did</b> understand the context around that throwaway comment! So I made my own throwaway comment, something along the lines of "But I kinda like the new GUI".

That must've pissed her off. I don't remember all too much from 4th grade, a mixture of both time and deep irritation from being forced to move from one wing of my district's elementary school to it's other, but I do remember there being generally ✨bad vibes✨ between me and her from that point on.

Which, if that is what caused the ✨bad vibes✨, then she's an incredibly petty asshole!

----

Now we go back to today.

I no longer mess with virtual machines. Haven't done so in years! I just.... I like my physical hardware you know? Something you can grab with your hands!

It has probably been about ten years since I last touched Virtualbox, and that was sometime during fuck-face-Trump's first term (I really hate how he got a second term what a CUNT!) on my Dell Inspiron 700m running..... I was going to say Debian, but I might of still been running Lubuntu on that machine.

Anyway, it messed up APT/DPKG, which was really annoying to clean up. Not as annoying as when that laptop went into "sleep paralysis" while Lubuntu was updating though. That uh.... Yeah. Messed up the install! Was really annoying to clean up. All because it partially entered sleep mode, but without actually entering sleep mode!

ACPI on that machine is so crap tbh. Infact under modern Linux it thinks the sleep button is constantly depressed or something, causing the machine to constantly go to sleep. (Although now that I think about it, might be the broken lid switch!)

Resuming from sleep also.... Doesn't work properly. Doesn't matter what OS! Linux...... I think partially tolerated it? Windows just full on crashes lmfao. Although Windows Vista remains partially interactive, responding to mouse and keyboard inputs, but interactions either do nothing for fully crash Windows.

The Dell Inspiron 700m is a little weird tbh. Otherwise lovely laptop! Was given it as a kid, very lightly used. It's now HEAVILY worn out and sits in a computer bag for its retirement.

Sadly I don't have that original Dell Inspiron 1501. I'd end up accidentally destroying the motherboard, which was the final nail in the coffin for that laptop, and it was thrown out.

I did buy another 1501 though!

By the way, did you know there's atleast two different versions of the Inspiron 1501? One has PCMCIA, while the other has ExpressCard? My childhood laptop was the PCMCIA version and came with Windows Vista, while the one I have now has ExpressCard but has a Windows XP license sticker.

I believe I've found my niche though: Old feature phones! Or "flip phones" for the "normies" in the audience, although that specific term refers more to a physical form factor then a general hardware/software platform. (Remember "bar phones"? "Sliders"? Wait, are modern smart phones bar phones?)

More accurately, I like doing security research on these phones. Even found some memory corruption bugs!

For fuck sake, I have a RAM dump of the LG Voyager (VX10000) loaded up in Ghidra for reverse engineering and combing though looking for anything interesting/useful.

Got both the J2ME and Qualcomm BREW SDKs installed on my Windows 7 machine. (Imagine noting you have mobile phone app development experience and when questioned you pull out a fucking flip phone lmao.)

There's this bug in the Teleca/Obigo web browser on the LG Voyager where the pointer for where the "I beam" cursor is located can be updated and end up pointing out of bounds, leading to both an info leak and ability to overwrite adjacent data on the heap. Finally figuring that bug out felt SO GOOD!

It's a fun hobby!

[userse31]

Iran and my Rats of NIMH fanfiction

There's a few slightly eerie similarities between the Second World Anti-Fascist War (WW3) plot arc in my Rats of NIMH fanfiction and the war of aggression the United States and Israel is currently waging against Iran.

-The Rat Republic and Iran are both underestimated by the United States.

-The wars in question are existential crises for the Rat Republic and Iran (respectively). Both are determined to win the war.

-Both Iran and the Rat Republic hate the United States.

-While politically different (Iran is a liberal democracy, the Rat Republic is Marxist Leninist) they both refuse to "bend the knee" towards the west, and as such, have suffered from the United States and allies constantly launching stuff like terrorist attacks and CIA operations against them.

-The Rat Republic and Iran have extreme sanctions applied against them. Despite this, they have manners of partially getting around them. (IRL Iran has loose geopolitical relationships and limited industrialization. The Rat Republic, governing Canada, has more diversity and quantity of raw materials necessary for an independent industrial base.)

-Both are "ruthless" when raging war, almost all cards are on the table. (Iran tracked US troops booking rooms in hotels and subsequently struck those same hotels. The rats fire cruise missiles with incendiary warheads into US cornfields to deliberately cause food shortages.)

-They both use cheap cruise missiles! The Iran's Shahed 136 and the Rat Republic's NFW-CM5. They get used as part of saturation attacks, and they overwhelm (and eventually exhaust) missile interception systems (Iron and Golden Dome respectively). Although only one of these can be called cheap and nasty, and that's the NFW-CM5 of course!

-They both understand how wars are actually won. Iran is attacking the major of the middle east's industry (with a keen focus on petroleum production) while the Rats of NIMH attacks the United State's.... Uh... Well, everything! The winners in wars are those who can keep the lights on longest!

-Both have been anticipating their respective conflicts for years. Iran being the most paranoid, with the Rats of NIMH somewhat less so, bit getting their asses (or "tails" lol) into gear beginning in 2010.

Of course there are differences. The existence of sapient rats and mice for one! But in the more abstract, the Rats of NIMH (who are in control of Canada) while in a more precarious position militarily, are in a much MUCH stronger position geographically (and thus materially).

Canada doesn't just have "more stuff", it also has better diversity in raw materials/base industrial inputs. Canada doesn't just have oil production, it also has good agriculture! Fishing! Mining! There's easier access to the ocean (and thus trade)!

Oh, and the entire place isn't the physical manifestation of an amplified Minecraft world. There's flat land, which makes stuff decently easier!

The Rat Republic goes on to win the Second World Anti-Fascist War, triumphing over the United States and imperialism in general.

IRL Iran...... Does not have the luxury of a preplanned story. We're not in a story posted on AO3!

Godspeed to Iran. They're "fighting the good fight", and it's not easy. I wish the best for them. If they play their cards right, and us in the west fumble ours (perhaps "intentionally" 😉), Iran very well might manage to win this one and survive. The United States (and the west in general) might finally get kicked out of the middle east once and for all. (Or atleast significantly weakened.)

That would be a glorious sight!

[userse31]

Live RAM dumps on the LG Voyager.

In order to get a RAM dump (and other info) from the old Qualcomm BREW flip phones I mess with, I wrote this.

"BrewIt" is a useful little thing, but the RAM dumps from it are kinda static. I'd very much appreciate having dynamic access to the contents of RAM on the phone outside of "BrewIt". There are a few memory corruption bugs inside the phone's builtin menus and other builtin programs! (I'm looking at YOU teaser link!)

Such as the web browser! In fact the web browser is of moderate interest to me as it runs the "Teleca" browser, and is equally as poorly written as the rest of the software on the phone.

There's an off-by-1 bug involving HTML text boxes I want to settle the score with, but there's a weird javascript bug where setting an array's length to $FFFFFFFF and then pushing data onto it causes the phone to crash.

But it's fairly trivial to get code execution happening on the LG Voyager, so why bother with all of this? Easy: The LG 306G.

That phone runs the same god-fucking-awful "Teleca" web browser as the LG Voyager, and it too shares the same array length bug as the Voyager.

But unlike the LG Voyager, the LG 306G is a Tracfone and as such is horribly locked down. Figure out how that bug works, and we very well might gain a beachhead for which to launch a communist invasion.

----

While Qualcomm BREW 3.1.x does kinda support background processes and PC-Phone links over USB, writing something like that up just sounds like a pain in the ass you know? Writing software for the platform is an already 🤌absolutely🤌horrible🤌 experience with all the forced boilerplate and stuff. Writing the code for drawing a GUI already takes a couple dozen lines of code to accomplish so I don't even want to ENTERTAIN the concept of writing a daemon for this platform.

There's JTAG! The "RIFF" box is fricken expensive and I don't feel like trying to get the debugging stuff to work using my bootleg FT232rl.

Also the "BTIL" program that ships with the BREW SDK just straight up doesn't work on the LG Voyager. The phone installs it, but it just..... Does nothing. The client "BTIL" utilities on the computer can't connect, leading me to believe the Voyager just.... Doesn't do background processes?

It's almost as if this entire software stack is cobbled together poorly written SHI-

Hmm.... You know, we have complete full read/write access to most of the phone's memory address space. BREW on the MSM6550 seems to be misconfigured or something (Gee what a surprise!) and runs all userland programs in "Supervisor mode".In fact that's how I reenabled the web browser on the phone.

So what if I just.... Do nasty horrible things to the phone's emulated AT Hayes modem terminal?

----

Qualcomm BREW does not have Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). This is going to make our lives easier.

Digging into the RAM dump in Ghidra, I eventually located the bit where some of the data for the AT commands are located.

At ~$001ac700 lies what are probably structs defining both the ASCII strings for the commands alongside the data the little command interpreter uses when running them.

At $001ac7d4 there's the string "+EFCS", and then some bytes later at $001ac7f0, $001ac7f4, and $001ac7f8, we have some pointers! The first one is a pointer to position in memory where the current value stored in that command is. Patching that pointer with this other nasty program I wrote and then running "AT+(command)?" lets us get an arbitrary read/write to anywhere on the phone!

But there's still the "stuck running a specific program" issue. I want to set the address of that pointer from the modem terminal thing! Doing that is pretty easy: Set the pointer for one command so that it overwrites the pointer of another command.

And yeah, that works! But there's a snag: We can't just set the value of these commands to any arbitrary unsigned 32 bit integer value. There's bound checking!

----

It would take a couple weeks (of mostly procrastination) until I figured out what that second pointer does.

I figured the bounds checking would be hard coded inside the functions that parse the commands issued. But then just today while walking and daydreaming I got smart.

I asked myself: "WeLl WhAt iF tHe BoUnDs VaLuEs ArE iN a SiMiLaR sTrUcT aRrAy ThInGy?"

As it turns out: Yes!

The pointer at $001ac7f4? That goes to another stuct! Eight bytes down at $015b2bcc lies the uint32 value of "2".

What's the value range of +efcs? Let's ask the phone!

at+efcs=? +EFCS: (0-2) OK

Alright, let's use that memory patching tool I wrote and set $015b2bcc to $ff

.015b2bcc ff

Alright, let's ask the phone again.

at+efcs=? +EFCS: (0-255) OK

Holy shit ladies, that just fucking worked! SWEET!

Except there was a bit of a speed bump: Some instructions use unsigned shorts (uint16) for the bounds values. I wanted to use "at+esr" initially, but that one uses uint16's! Means we top out at 65535. That's not good!

Luckily poking around with the other commands leads us to both "at+ilrr" and "at+efcs". Those two DO use uint32's for the bounds values! "at+esr" reads and writes the regular uint32's so why the compiler clamped just the bounds to 16 bits is beyond me. Classic Qualcomm BREW being poorly written lol.

Anyway both "at+ilrr" and "at+efcs" are one of those "kinda mostly does nothing" commands, which means us screwing with them won't cause some weird undefined behavior and crash the phone or something.

So going back to that memory patching program, I cobbled together this:

Set max +ILRR value: .00F463C0 FF .00F463C1 FF .00F463C2 FF .00F463C3 FF Set max +EFCS value: .015B2BCC FF .015B2BCD FF .015B2BCE FF .015B2BCF FF Set +ILRR to modify +EFCS pointer: .001AC8F8 F0 .001AC8F9 C7 .001AC8FA 1A .001AC8FB 00

The comments don't get typed in, just the ".xxxxxxxx yy" things, but hey! That does the trick!

at+ilrr? +ILRR: 30949884 OK at+efcs? +EFCS: 1 OK

Let's go to the beginning of memory, and read that.

at+ilrr=0 OK at+efcs? +EFCS: 3925897043 OK

3925897043=$EA006F53. This is being read as little endian, so flipping it around we get $536F00EA. Looking that up in the RAM dump loaded in Ghidra, and yeah!

00000000 53 6f 00 ea b _reset

That is correct! And we can even write to places too!

I'll have to write a script that'll do all the stuff on the computer, but on the phone side of things, we're good!

[userse31]

International Women's and Nonbinary People's Day.

Happy late International Women's and Nonbinary People's Day everyone!

[userse31]

The horrifying way some old flip phones boot

In my adventures of reverse engineering the RAM dump I made of the LG Voyager I've come across something genuinely horrifying.

But first: Some context!

Different CPU's begin executing code in certain ways right after reset. The 6502 reads what are essentially function pointers right up near $FFFF, finds the reset vector, and sets it's program counter to that value.

The Z80 sets the program counter to $0000.

32 bit ARM CPUs start executing at $FFFF0000. (Except sometimes.)

Now on a modern phone (even phones from the very late 2000s) that bit of address space maps to a mask ROM baked onto the SOC. The code inside sets up the hardware, verifies the boot loader is signed (and if so run it), and usually offers some sort of emergency firmware flashing mode so that you can plug the phone in and reflash the firmware if things get corrupted.

I expected the LG Voyager (and by extension the MSM6550) to do largely the same: Verify the bootloader chain of trust and offer a firmware flashing mode.

Fun fact: No.

The reality is both baffling and terrifying.

So there's this thing called a "boot sequencer" on the chip. After the SOC is released from reset it does the following:

-Hold the CPU in reset for the time being.

-Bank into the processor's address space a bit of SRAM beginning at $FFFF0000.

-<i>Slurp up the very first 8KiB of data stored on the NAND flash and shove it into that SRAM.</i> No verification, no code signing, merely a hardware version of memcpy().

-Release the CPU from reset.

I can't help but think of the Family Guy skit where Brian responds to Peter saying he's doing crack with "WHAT THE FUCK!?"

First of all, that seems like a convoluted solution. I can't see how that would be easier/smaller then just shoving a mask ROM on the die.

Second: "\"Security\"? Never heard of them."

The hold bootloader locking thing is really just a capitalism problem. Verifying the bootloader isn't tampered with by the fucking zionists or NSA is very much a <b>GOOD</b> thing. The reason we can't put custom stuff on our phones is because the capitalists don't want us to.

Under socialism it'd be possible to "adhoc" sign our own firmware and have it run on that phone, and that phone only. Trying to flash a compromised bootloader (or any bootloader for that matter) would instruct the security processor to trash its encryption keys, meaning a bad actor can't install a key logger or simply dump the user partition. (More accurately make those tasks much MUCH harder to do. All locks can eventually be picked.)

Phones are everyday carry things, with stuff like personal photos, bank details, login credentials, all that sensitive stuff on them. I sure as HELL don't want someone like the police or petty criminals getting easy access to that!

So the fact that ~20 years ago someone could take your phone, slip some malware inside the bootloader, and then put it back is.... Horrifying.

[userse31]

100 Totally True RWBY Facts

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[userse31]

LightLark but my self insert goes around stomping on the story.

Forgettable Character 0 (FC0): "Hey, what's that metal box thing with the tube on it?"

Stanley the Cat: "This? Oh, it's a uh... Magical marathon contestant timer! Let's just say it'll give you QUITE the incentive to reach the finish line."

FC0: "Uh.... Alright...."

Kiki the Cat: Fires off flare gun, signaling the start of the race.

All the contestants start running. Stanley loads the Browning M1919 and starts firing the thing.

[whataboutsprout]

Bumbleby comm

[userse31]

Blake post season 5: "Huh that's weird, I thought it was only guys that turned me on."

Yang post season 5: Enjoys WLW porn on her phone in bed as usual.