I Also Walked Myself Into A Corner R.e. Leaving Out The Context For Nerdi's Big Blowout Scene Because

It has now become fond ....

this is the funniest thing I’ve seen in any review ever

molly

Commenting fanfiction is the easiest thing in the world once you start doing it. 

Something to watch for, which I learned from stage magic but which is extremely relevant to detecting scams as well:

The magician or scammer will *tell you* how he is going to prove his honesty.

The magician rifles through the deck until you say "stop", then he says, "Are you sure? I'll keep going if you want." and asks "Now, you agree that you could have stopped anywhere you wanted, so there's absolutely no way I could know which card you got" and because it's a magic show and you aren't paying close attention you didn't notice he didn't deal a card from where you stopped, he dealt the bottom card of the deck.

The magician doesn't ask you, "What would it take for you to believe this" because you might say, "I'd need you to use a sealed deck" or "I'd have to personally shuffle the deck" or some other proof that would make the trick impossible.

Magicians say "You agree that if I did *this*, it would mean *that*, right?" and you say yes, and it feels like you are the one who got to verify things, but of course the magician is lying and the proof is nothing of the kind.

Scammers do the same thing. A really concrete example is phone scammers pretending to be working for the government will say, "Look, I see you're skeptical if I'm who I say I am, I'm going to hang up and call back, and you'll see on the caller ID it says, 'FBI' and that tells you that I'm really working for the government."

Now, caller ID can be spoofed pretty easily, so it doesn't prove anything at all.

But it *feels* to you like you demanded proof and the scammer was willing to give you the proof.

But you didn't tell the scammer what out would take to prove it to you, the scammer told you what the proof would be.

This is actually like a really basic thing to look for if you want to start decoding magic tricks and scams.

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Planers, 1875

gk

kitty car 🐱

AND DO YOU HAVE ANY MCSR FIC RECS. FORGOT TO ASK

thank you for the asks! i mostly do my mcsr stuff on my sideblog but since you’re here anon i do have a few (and i will get to the other ask in a bit) i hope you don't mind incomplete fics, because i have quite a few of those in here. anyways, in no particular order:

A Field Guide to Speedrunners by loanword. honestly you should go and read all of tri's stuff but this is the fic that got me. snappy writing style and a great grasp on characterization

Grave Digging by sumactic is an ongoing fic in their pjo au and i am so fascinated by what is going on with their nerdi and k4. good writing and a very interesting dynamic and i cant wait to see more

into this world in wonder from a starlight sky by confusedkestrel is a fun read and i love how they wrote the dynamic between poundy and fein. you should go read all of their mcsr fics tbh

coffee beans, fein-ly ground by igneousarchive and *megamind meme* no villains? by justpressX are two (unrelated) oneshots that i thought were fun.

[FILE: FALLEN ANGEL ET AL VS. SHOCKWAVE ET AL] by weareallstardustfallen is set in a superhero au and also makes use of mixed-media (or, text-based simulations of it), which i am always a big fan of

and now, time for a bit of hashtag self promo but my current ongoing series is outfished. its an au making use of my oc universe setting and can best be described as a modern-day fantasy with a focus on worldbuilding and intrigue. i also play around a bit with css formatting and in-universe documents if you're into that sort of thing.

there's a lot of good fics out there in the tag that i haven't listed here so when you have the time i would recommend just going through the entire tag. its not a terribly huge tag (though it is growing) so its a pretty manageable browse imo. (then again, my perception of reasonable may be a bit skewed. iykyk.)