#agree with you because at least i for certain ddo not | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

late-to-the-magnus-archives · 7 months

Text

Pedantic, chapter one - a Malevolent AU

Arthur Lester is the best IT architect in the world, and the reason Carcosa, Inc. has its fingers in every pie. Government, medical, everyone in the world uses its systems.

Arthur is also going blind, with a rare genetic condition that can’t be fixed.

The looming depression is bad. He can’t imagine a life where he can’t create anymore. Arthur nearly gives up… until a deeply annoying cybersecurity programmer prods him into trying something new.

Great, right? Now, if only this John Doe weren’t clearly hiding something so wild that not even PI Parker Yang can dig it out…

Chapter One: Time for a bet.

AO3

----------

Arthur couldn’t see his view.

He knew it was good. He could still see when picking out the penthouse three years ago. He also knew it was a complete waste for him to hang on to this view now when he couldn’t see it, but he didn’t give a fuck. It felt like revenge against whatever force saw fit to do this to him, by depriving some other bastard of a view like this.

I’m telling you, it isn’t compliant, the robotic voice in his head said, synthesizing that fucking American’s words in the least emotional manner possible.

Arthur had never heard John’s actual voice, but was certain it wasn’t emotionless. “It does. I checked it against CIC standards, and YTM, and even the elusive Carney and Dobbs scale. You’re wrong.”

No, you are, argued the distant engineer.

Arthur didn’t have time for this. “Listen, Mister Doe, it is two o’clock in the morning here. I know damn well what I sent you works. So the problem is on your end, and I expect you to figure it out. ”

Silence. A long moment of silence.

Arthur knew precisely two things about John Doe. One, he was some sort of security whiz, capable of sniffing out backdoors and potential risks before even the pro hackers did, and two, John Doe absolutely hated his guts.

It was personal. Had to be. He never agreed to anything, always dragged out every damned conversation. Damned pedantic son of a bitch.

Finally, an answer: I think you need to check your code.

Check his code! Arthur did not need to check his code. “Excuse me?”

Check your code.

“No. It is two o’clock in the morning here, Doe.”

It is noon here, Lester. I have four hours to get this implemented. If you don’t fix your fucking code, I will.

And there we go. Pointless threats. Inappropriate language.

The sucky thing was, while normally altering code like this without approval would be enough to get someone fired, John Doe could get away with it.

Doe had come out of nowhere; Arthur had never heard of him, and he’d made no waves, but boom, old Hastur had promoted him to chief of cybersecurity for the whole company, and evidently paid him enough to live comfortably in the Upper East Side, Manhattan.

And Arthur had to admit: Doe was some kind of golden boy. He knew his stuff. It may feel like he sprang fully-formed from Hastur’s head, but he knew cybersecurity. It was like he had a fucking pipeline to the bad guys, the way he was able to spot exploits before anyone else could grab hold.

What Doe didn’t know was art. Or beauty. Or utility. Or any of the things Arthur’s entire life had revolved around since he was twelve and used Python to design his first Linux GUI.

Arthur sighed. He turned away from his glass walls and wraparound balcony, from the view of Melbourne at night which he could not see, and made his way to his computer.

His monitor—enormous, because all the text had to be, as well—booted up, and he sighed as he entered the usual frustrating and painful balance of trying to focus, squinting, dealing with the pain of the monitor’s brightness (without which he couldn’t see the damn screen) and adjusting the size of the text until he could handle it and read through what he’d written.

Gods, this was a gorgeous design. Lullabye, he called it, because it was designed to help after a DDOS attack, to put all relevant and endangered systems right to sleep, cutting off access, stopping whatever invasion was going on right in its tracks.

It was flawless. It was efficient. It was beautiful. It was a hell of a major project to go out on.

He could not spot whatever put Doe in a tizzy. Fuck.

The easy solution would be to give Doe permission to patch it, requiring detailed notes of what changes he made.

The medium-hard solution would be to give him permission to patch it, but live, with Arthur sharing his screen, so Doe couldn’t do anything unmonitored (and maybe Arthur could finally understand how Doe thought).

The dangerous solution was to refuse him, foment more conflict for no pay out, and watch Doe have his way, anyway.

Damn it. But it’s perfect, he thought, unable to keep from whining a little.

Arthur sighed. Carcosa had been good to him. Hastur had rewarded his artistry over and over. The ungrateful thing would be not to trust Doe. “Fine,” Arthur muttered. “Cassilda, email John Doe.”

Emailing, she replied through the implants in his head, voice as musical as he designed her to be, damn near singing.

“Permission granted to make changes to the code as long as we do a screenshare and all changes are approved by me. Send.”

Silence for a moment.

About fucking time, Lester. Here’s my number. Text is fucking faster.

This guy knew his stuff, but he did not know how to be fucking appropriate in a fucking business setting. “Is he serious?” Arthur said. Maybe he did spring fully-formed from Hastur’s head, he snorted. Being a year old would explain it all. “Reply: If you’re trying to cover your ass legally, that won’t work with a company phone.” It was both sarcasm and a warning. Also, logic. Touché!

Arthur’s smugness lasted all of the 60 seconds it took for Doe to receive and reply: I have my own personal phone and so do you. Don’t be a dick. Let’s get this done.

How did… What? Why did Doe know that? “I’m not a dick,” Arthur muttered, trying to decide if this was a great big personal information violation, or…

Well, it was, but did it really matter? He could change the number. Block Doe. Whatever he wanted to do here. And it would be quicker. The Hyades global network was faster than any email because Arthur had helped design it. (Hastur had given him an incredible bonus that year.) “Cassilda, send Doe my phone number.” Okay, why had he done that? Why? “Because I’m not a dick,” he answered himself. “I’m an idiot.”

The reply took literally as long as Doe needed to save the contact to his phone. Nice to meet you.

“We haven’t met yet, Doe,” said Arthur, replying through Cassilda.

Call me John. Now let’s fix this code.

“Damn you, there’s nothing to fix!”

An exclamation mark! A swear word! Looks like I finally got some emotion out of you.

Arthur gaped at nothing. “I will have you know that you get plenty of emotion from me. Primarily, frustration.”

Glad to know you’re not frigid. Okay, I’m sending the screenshare request now.

“Frigid? What the fuck… Wait, wait, give me a moment. Got it, got it. You prick.”

Better believe I am. Now, pay attention. Line 1004. Doe—John—read the code to him via text, because Cassilda would read it next.

Arthur paled. It had a typo.

He couldn’t see the typo. The font showed the difference between a lower-case l and a numeral 1, but he couldn’t see it.

He leaned in, face nearly to the monitor, peering. The serifs might as well have all been erased.

See it? Good. Next we’ll jump down to line 8524.

Arthur didn’t reply. He swallowed.

It was another typo, but this one… he didn’t need to know this was the big one. The typo on 1004 just rendered that bit of code inoperable; nothing would happen. But this one…

This one. Instead of a semi colon, it was a colon, which meant…

This is the big one, said John unnecessarily. Arthur didn’t reply. This one means this process keeps running, and the particular ping it creates to find the invading bug also leaves it open to malicious injection.

“I was right,” Arthur whispered, because he had been. He’d thought, deep down, this would be his last major project.

About what?

Arthur hadn’t meant to send that. He leaned back in his chair, reducing the familiar, beloved language on the screen to blurry dots and squiggles, and was surprised to find he was crying. He wiped his face, furious. “Nothing.”

Tell me. It could be relevant.

Fuck him. “It’s not relevant.”

It might be. We’re getting this fixed so you can go to bed and I can go get drunk. Come on, Lester.

He sighed. “Arthur. Just Arthur.”

All right, Just Arthur. What were you right about?

Arthur checked. Cassilda confirmed that “just” had been capitalized. Like receiving a knighthood, or something.

He laughed weakly. “Didn’t know you were funny, Doe.” A pause. “John.”

Only when it’s worth my while.

So… well, this moment was certainly worth his while. They had three hours left to implement this thing. “Just that this was my last big hurrah. That’s all. I knew. I knew it. Just didn’t want to know it, if you get what I mean.”

Why the hell had he said that?

Arthur sighed. There was no undo send with Hyades and the Carcosa phone line (Dancer—it had long put Apple out of business). It was better, Arthur believed and had argued, to have a record of communication, even when things were sent by accident. Better to have that record, legal and powerful, then try to handle the fallout of removed knowledge and the potential for deceit.

It doesn’t have to be, fucking hell.

That made him laugh for some reason. “Right. Sure.”

It doesn’t. I’m guessing the coding doesn’t work so great with Cassilda for you?

No, it had not worked with Cassilda. Cassilda could read it all out (Line 147, from enum import Enum semicolon. Line 148, class Day(Enum) colon. Line 149, all capitalized letters, MONDAY space equal sign space the numeral 1).

Yeah, he couldn’t do that. It was like trying to listen to an audiobook one godsdamned letter at a time. “It doesn’t work for what I do.”

You just need someone who knows how you think who can put your stuff into code, then. You’re good at this, Arthur.

“I’m going blind, John.” Which of course he knew. Everyone knew. Fucking TIME magazine knew.

So?

“Excuse me?”

You a betting man?

“Oh, what the hell are you saying?” Arthur muttered. “Don’t send that!”

It’s already sent, Arthur. My apologies.

He sighed. “No, it’s fine. Continue to send automatically unless instructed not to. I guess we’re doing this.”

John was scrolling on his end, highlighting bits of code and fixing them. It wasn’t a lot. The whole thing was nearly 100 million lines of code, and Arthur had made a total of four mistakes. That wasn’t bad.

Except that when Arthur could see, he never made any.

The code scrolled. Too fast; he didn’t have time to focus on what John was doing (and doing quickly, with an ease that spoke of artistry the idiot himself did not understand). The next generation, folks, picking up the slack.

One wild, intrusive thought of throwing himself off his expensive balcony later, Arthur shook it off. “What bet?”

Let’s design something together.

Oh, this could go so badly. “What?”

Don’t know yet, but here’s the catch.

“Of course there’s a catch.”

Heh, heh, heh.

What a silly text to send. Arthur’s lips quirked. “Out with it, you dork.”

You share your vision with me, and I design it. Your specs. I won’t interfere with your idea of beauty or whatever you call it. You stick to the parts you love—making it pretty, and how the user accesses it. I’ll make sure it works.

Arthur swallowed. He’d never successfully designed with anybody. It always fell apart. “I don’t know.”

Let’s make it big. We won’t announce it. If it falls apart and I lose the bet, I’ll do whatever you want. Quit. Shave my head. Whatever.

Arthur laughed. “Shave your head?”

But if I win—

Arthur waited. He frowned. “Did you fall on your overlarge head and die?”

Shut up. If I win, you have to keep creating shit, and I get to be smug at you over coffee.

Eh? “That’s—” He didn’t know what to say. “What kind of a stupid bet is that?”

Beneficial to us both. You think my best work isn’t done on your coattails? It is. My star rises and falls with yours. I need you, and for once, you need me, too.

That was too much, and Arthur walked away from the desk. He had to pace.

This shouldn’t be personal, but it was. “How the hell was that both flattering and infuriating at the same… need… what in fuck’s name…”

Of course, Casdilda sent that.

By all means, keep going. This is funny as fuck.

“Fuck you.” Arthur sat back down. He was shaken. He felt like he was a million years old.

It’s cleaned up. Do you want to test it?

“No, it’s ready to go live. I… I trust you.” Because he had to, at least in this. But this bet… insane. Insulting. Ingratiating? What the hell? How was he supposed to take this? It was the weirdest thing he’d ever been offered.

And it’s implemented. Congratulations. Updates are going out now. Got any champagne?

“It’s three in the morning. What I have is bed. We’ll talk tomorrow. Goodnight, Doe.”

It’s John. Dick.

Arthur decided not to answer out of pure pettiness, and was still churning the entire conversation in his head when he fell asleep.

------

CHAPTER TWO

Notes:

This was posted on the road and written on my phone, so I beg your patience as I correct inevitable coding errors typos. Also, the tech stuff is made up. Just pretend it’s an alternative future. We’re all here for John and Arthur, anyway.

#john x arthur #arthur x john #malevolent #malevolent podcast #malevolent fic #malevolent fanfic #john doe malevolent #arthur lester #kayne malevolent #malevolent au #pedantic fic

7 notes · View notes

valhallansim · 7 years

Note

Hey! So I'm on my way to becoming a hanzo main. I love him to death. But it's so disheartening because whenever I join a game and choose him my team are like... no >:[ and I get so much abuse it's even worse because I'm a girl and when I start trying to defend myself they either just stop talking altogether (like why tho I'm not scary?) or the insults just get worse. It's really turning me away from ranked :/ is it just a hanzo thing or a girl thing or both argh I'm so stressed. I just wana play

I’m so sorry to hear you are having to deal with these kinds of toxic arseholes. Sadly, I know exactly what it’s like to be called out for the characters I play or because of the fact that I’m a girl. So, because this is an issue that is very dear to my heart, I will respond to this with a wall of text. Beware!

Let me start off by saying this.

Never, ever, ever, ever let sexist behaviour stop you from enjoying the games you play.

Under no circumstances let them stop you from using the features of the game you want to use, just because you are of a certain gender or you sound a certain way. Keep playing. Keep your head high. It will get better eventually - if they keep hearing women, if they keep seeing women in their games - we will have a future in gaming where women are an unquestioned part of. Please, never stop doing what you love in gaming because of sexist behaviour. Sometimes, it will be hard when you encounter vile people that are determined to ruin your day - you are allowed to be upset, but do not let it stop you from enjoying the game.

You are allowed to play your game. There’s girls out there playing the game you are playing now. In a lot of cases, you paid good money to play the game you want to play. You are allowed to play it the way you want to, just like they do. Your gender does not make you worse.

About encountering sexismEven if it might feel like your reports do not make a difference: please, please report EVERY. SINGLE. ARSEHOLE. you come across and clearly state in the report that they are showcasing sexist behaviour if this is the case. I contacted Blizzard support a while ago because of a very vile player that threatened to find my IP address (which is impossible - Blizzard support ensured me), find my house and come there to rape, beat and ddos me. If people, be it in Overwatch or any other Blizzard game, are threatening you about harming you in real life, you are allowed to make a seperate report via the Support section on the Blizzard website. This will bring you in contact with a Game Master that you can correspond with and that will manually ban a player for you if necessary. The person from Blizzard Support that I had contact with was very adamant in letting me know that reports do help, and they do try their hardest to punish players for their behaviours.

So, with that out of the way: a lot of people will tell you to just mute and block the person that is being toxic towards you, but I do not think that solves the problem, at all - nor does it make you feel better. I will be honest and say that I have always gone against the person that insulted me for being a girl and turned it into a toxic back-and-forth of insults, often to the point of the person in question resulting to throwing the game because I was too quick to shot their toxic behaviour down with remarks. When people start insulting you for whatever reason, especially just because of sexist behaviour, I advise you to do one of 2 things:

1. If it makes you feel better, make a snide remark back, but do not make my mistakes and continue the conversation if it escalates. Because I know it can be very hard to come up with something witty the second something is happening, here is a tiny list of some of the things I have said to arseholes:

Sometimes they will mistake you for a so-called ‘squaker’, also known as a young boy that hasn’t grown into his adult voice yet (NOTE: there is absolutely nothing wrong with being young and playing games, however some people will be very hostile towards any young-sounding people). “Wow, shut the hell up, stupid kid.” to which I always respond, “Oh, you don’t know what an actual real life woman talking sounds like? Figures.”

“LOL you sound like one of those triggered feminists” > “I don’t know, the only one that seems pretty ‘triggered’ about there being a girl in-game is you” or “I thought that Reddit meme was declared unfunny months ago” or “Nice joke, did you find that one on the internet yourself?”

“Why do all girls play Mercy/Support/D.Va?” > “Why do all arseholes play [insert their character here]?”

“Girls can’t play” / “Oh, it’s a girl, we’re going to lose” / “No wonder we’re losing, we have a chick on the team” > “Oh, is that why we are losing? I mistook you for some guy that can’t play all along”

And the famous ones “Get back into the kitchen” / “Suck my dick” / “Make me a sandwich” > “Please let me know when you find some original insults” or “Nice. I think 2005 called and it wants it insult back”

What also often helps when all else fails is to just burst into obnoxious loud laughter, even if you don’t think it’s funny. It will make them feel ridiculed and have them shut up, even if it’s for a few seconds

However, never let the situation escalate to the point where you lose your focus on the game. After making a remark, drop the issue and report them. If they continue insulting, mute them - and tell your team you did so. “Alright, this guy is muted, let me know if he says something useful (like callouts, warnings, ult charge, et cetera)”. I know it’s very hard, and if you are anything like me, you will get very upset and angry (especially if you have been through this many times before), because it is not fair. It’s not fair that you have to justify being a girl, or choosing a type of hero just because some arsehole decided to comment on it. However, your wellbeing is a priority. If you need to turn off voice chat, if you need to leave the chat or disable it - do it.

2. Completely ignore them, but stay active in chat and voice. Act like they do not even exist. The second they start talking to you, making insults, trying to provoke you - either mute them, or just completely ignore them. Instead, try to still be active in voice chat and make helpful callouts, let people know there’s a flanking Genji, tell them about your ult progress, et cetera. Nothing is more infuriating to someone like that to be ignored and then still having their ‘victim’ enjoy the game.

Never hesitate to leave voice chat, team chat or match chat if you need to. Do not be scared to use this feature if you are bothered by what is happening. It can be a breath of fresh air to just play the game without having to worry about people commenting on you or on your performance.

About encountering hate for playing a certain characterIn the case of Quick Play and Arcade: simply said, fuck ‘em. QP and Arcade are there for you to have fun in and try out new heroes and strategies, to just relax with your favourite hero, and to have fun. If people start complaining about your choice of hero - mute, immediately. It doesn’t matter if you win or lose in QP or Arcade. You don’t need their help - you are there to have fun.

However, Competitive is about winning games. Even though I encourage you to play heroes you are comfortable with or you want to play, try to see what is fitting for your team and switch your hero if it is not working out. ‘Maining’ a hero is a good think, being a ‘onetrick’ is not! (meaning: if there is a main hero you are best with, that’s great - but if it’s the ONLY character you can play, that poses a problem for your team)

That does not mean you let yourself be bullied into switching a character, even in Competitive. As soon as things start going bad for your team, a lot of people will have the tendency to blame the ‘weak link’ of the team - aka the person they think is contributing the least, which is often the hero pick they do not agree with. Hanzo, Sombra, Widowmaker, and plenty of other heroes are good examples of that. However, just because people are playing the blame game and have decided that you, as a Hanzo, are not doing well, does not mean you immediately have to switch. In a lot of cases, you might not even be at ‘fault’ for your team not doing well. Try to keep a clear head and assess the situation to see if there’s something YOU can do to make a difference. Are you doing enough for your team? Are you getting kills? Are you staying alive well enough? Are you getting enough damage in? Are you not dying constantly?

If you are fond of playing a hero a lot of people deem ‘unfit’ or ‘not meta’ and you know some people are going to have an issue with it, just communicate. When starting a match, just say something in chat like: “hey guys! I am a Hanzo player, it’s the character I’m most comfortable with and I can do well with him. If it’s not working out, I will switch, don’t worry! I can play [characters you are able to play], as well.” In some cases, you might have to compromise and play a different hero. That’s okay! Competitive is about winning - but do not play heroes you are not comfortable with. My advice is to learn 1 or 2 heroes in every category - so at least 1-2 tanks, 1-2 supports and 1-2 DPS you are good with. When starting a match, just feel free to pick the hero you want to play and communicate with your team with what you guys need to get a good composition going.

Please do not be discouraged by people being rude. Ranked is very hard in that matter that people are very scared of losing their precious SR and do not want to lose. Therefore, toxicity is higher there. Partly, Blizzard is at fault here for not enforcing a stricter banning and reporting system, but if we are to believe what they are telling us, that is getting fixed, soon.

I myself am taking a break from Ranked play for the moment. I was close to hitting Grandmaster, but my own frustration plus toxicity has ruined the experience for me for the time being. Sometimes all you need is a step back for some perspective.

Please just have fun and try to focus on your own personal addittion to your team. Even if you lose, you will know you did well in the end and helped your team in the best way you could have.

I hope my giant rant can help you and others somewhat. Sorry if it comes across sort of rambly, but I have a lot of feelings about sexism in games, haha. You do you and play the game the way you want to! ♥

#language cw #swears cw #adult language cw #sexism cw #long post #valhallan replies #nonsims #Anonymous

81 notes · View notes