#they had three audios where they were already hanging out and then got two (technically three) more where barnaby checked in!
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i don't know what order to start Dissecting, so i'll just start with:
it's absolutely fascinating how the dynamic Wally & Barnaby had - to my knowledge - before the update, and a dynamic i'd seen speculated elsewhere and generally accepted, has been completed turned on its head
see, given that Wally is the "main character" and Barnaby is classified as "his best friend", i got the feeling that Barnaby kind of... tags along on Wally's 'shenanigans'. that he's the sidekick, the best friend. especially since their dynamic has been previously & briefly described as "Barnaby is very polite to Wally." he's the Companion.
but the audios sorta paint a reverse picture. in the Interview, when Barnaby enters stage right, he completely bowls over Wally's introduction and dominates the interview. when the interviewer asks how the two of them are handling the fame, even outright asking Wally, Barnaby doesn't hesitate to answer the question himself, and only about himself. Wally doesn't get another word in edge-wise until the interviewer explicitly singles Wally out.
(now, an argument could be made that Barnaby knew that Wally was somewhat overwhelmed with all of the questions, and tried to take the reins to give him a reprieve. but, considering that the interview seems to be very early on the possible timeline - like, very soon after Welcome Home debuted - i don't think this is likely. i doubt Barnaby and Wally would've had the time to solidify their dynamic or really get to know each other that well yet)
and Barnaby continues to take point in pretty much all of their other conversations, too. like in the mystery Howdy/Barnaby/Wally audio, their interaction gives off the vibes that Wally is Barnaby's sidekick, his tag-along.
(on a related tangent, it's fascinating how the website described the episodes as "[beginning] with Wally introducing the focus or theme for the day before coming across other characters who would join him on his escapades until the end of the day." but from pretty much everything we've seen so far, it seems like He's the one who's just along for the ride, bouncing from neighbor shenanigan to neighbor shenanigan instead of having his own adventures.
of course, if the 14 audios are present time, which is honestly somewhat likely, this could be because the show isn't running. they aren't doing episodes - they're just existing, doing their things. no need for Wally to take point in any way shape or form. tangent over)
in the 14 audios with Barnaby, he doesn't even acknowledge Wally until the very end - which, of course, could be because that's how the scenes are set up. except that in some of them, the characters do directly acknowledge Wally's presence outside of the endings. Eddie in 5-14, Howdy and Poppy in 1-14, and Frank in 4-14 (technically, since he was infodumping to Wally at the very start before Barnaby interrupted). you'd think that a guy would try to include his best friend a little more!
maybe i'm reading into it too much. & given what we know about Wally as a character, it would make sense for Barnaby to be the go-getter Main Guy of the two. but it really seems like its Barnaby & Wally instead of Wally & Barnaby. he's just kinda... there. going along with whatever Barnaby is up to.
but also, on the other side of things - & it's occurring to me as i type this, it's interesting how in a lot of audios, Barnaby seems to seek Wally out. in "Just So", he shows up to fetch Wally. in 4-14, Barnaby interrupts Frank and Wally's gardening session, almost as if he's stopping by to check on his little buddy. in 7-14, Barnaby calls Julie's house (presumably) searching for Wally, or at least checking in once again. something to consider in all of this!
#and if the 14 audios are in the same day along a timeline - which they Are. im trying to puzzle it out rn but anyway -#its interesting how barnaby just kept. checkin. in.#they had three audios where they were already hanging out and then got two (technically three) more where barnaby checked in!#it feels like there's something there...#separation anxiety? a compulsion? love for his buddy? a secret fourth thing?#maybe he could tell something was Off with wally that day...#(which is a topic i will ramble about in a different post)#its a push & pull to be certain....#but yeah that plus all the evidence of Barnaby kinda being the Lead and wally being brushed off to the side....#what a complicated fuckin picture it paints!!! dont know what it means yet!#i have another post im working on centering on how the neighbors seem to treat each other - wally & eddie especially#but this post aint about that. itll be related though#homebogging#wh speculation#please let this have made sense!#when i make posts i just kinda throw myself at it bc i have No organizational skills!#my brain is a complete incoherent mess and i am so sorry if this post is messy <3
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How would you rank the 18 Class Trials from THH, DR2, and V3 from worst to best?
This is... virtually impossible for me, lol. Comparing the trials from each game to each other?
How about I just rank them within each game? That'll make it a little easier for me to deal with...
DR1
6) 5th. It's driven by lies and ultimately rushed to its end before the characters can draw any solid (pointless/meaningless) conclusions. So of course it's last for this game, and it’s probably last for the entire series as well. If there are any saving graces to this trial, it’s the surprise when your closest ally is willing to let our protagonist die... and that this trial contains the fake/bad ending route.
5) 3rd. Although the main culprit is pretty obvious from the jump, it requires some surprising twists to explain how everything got to be the way it turned out. But did I always find those twists plausible? Errrrm... not really.
4) 2nd. Pretty good trial that's hurt for me by the fact that there'd barely be any need for a trial at all if a certain third party didn't dick around with the evidence for no reason. Also, the dual nature of Toko is an incredibly predictable reveal. Without those two aspects dragging it down, though, this could easily go higher.
3) 1st. Sure, the major hint given and, subsequently, the eventual culprit are pretty obvious, but this one establishes so much about how the trials work and how much the details you observe will matter that it’s still pretty fun that first time around. The initial surprise of the first victim makes for a great way to keep you invested in the trial experience. This trial is damn near iconic now, so it feels almost mandatory to respect it.
2) 6th. DR1 still has the best "final trial,” easily. SO MANY great reveals, and they all totally work for me. Nothing rings false or disappointing, and it also features Makoto finally coming into his own and taking the lead. I nearly labeled this my top pick for DR1, but...
1) 4th. It's easily the most emotionally dramatic/satisfying for me, and there’s something weirdly inspirational for me about Hina’s incredibly harsh stance during it. This one GOT ME IN THE FEELS, and in part that was because I saw so little of it coming. After the more predictable elements of the first and third trials, this felt like the writing was firing on all cylinders.
DR2
6) 2nd. You have to accept a couple leaps of logic to make this trial keep flowing, and the fact that trial is ultimately reliant on someone noticing a candy that’s very small and hard to see while the person is also in a stressful situation and they are groggy from being drugged/asleep and it necessitates the person retaining this seemingly useless detail inside their brain .... that’s always bugged me. The “escape route” conversation even retroactively raises questions about the first trial. Oof. On the upside, the reveals it brought us about Fuyuhiko and Peko were incredibly important, satisfying, and legit surprising turns. And it’s pretty cool how it’s basically a two-for-one combo trial because you have to solve the Twilight Syndrome case before you solve the current case.
5) 3rd. Other people have pointed out the leaps of logic and missing pieces of this trial, but at the same time, the candlelight hanging is so intense and the ultimate reveal of the culprit is such a brutal turn that I have to give it some props. The culprit’s primary plan is ultimately one of the most ingenious in the series, IMO, and definitely one of the most twisted/fucked-up, which earns it some points.
4) 4th. This is probably the single murder case in the franchise that I understood the absolute least about when entering the trial, for better or worse. On the one hand, that made it really fun to see the mystery gradually unfurl, but on the other hand, it made it tough for me to provide the right answers at certain points in the trial, leaving me fumbling. A big part of those issues was how it was initially hard for me to wrap my head around the nature of the funhouse via the provided 2D graphics... but once I eventually got there, I had to respect the creativity that went into devising such a “weapon.” Also, it can be hard to tolerate Komaeda in this trial. He’s even more of a know-it-all-but-reveal-none-of-it jackass than ever before, and his turn towards overt cruelty towards the others (and Hajime in particular) left me raging. The culprit reveal is good, but the motive does beg the question of why he didn’t just come forward from the jump.
3) 6th. There are a lot of great reveals in the final trial that totally reframe how you see the characters, and some of them are deliciously twisted. There’s also a ton of great dialogue provided, and in retrospect, it’s actually sort of neat to have one endgame mastermind reveal in this franchise that doesn’t involve the “They were hiding among us this whole time” trope. All that plus the surprise return of our surviving heroes from the first game! However, this is also where they officially reveal a core element of DR2 and its setting that I've never liked. This knocks the trial down a few pegs for me. Of course, by the time you reach the trial, I'm sure 99% of players have already figured that particular "twist" out. There’s adequate evidence to predict it in the first freaking chapter, and I know this because I DID predict it in the first chapter of my initial playthrough... which further hurts the supposed “reveal” of the island’s true nature when it comes around.
2) 1st. Probably my favorite of the “first trials,” there are lot of components that go into this one. There’s a combination of two premeditated killers plus one spur-of-the-moment accidental victim, there’s a satisfying (though admittedly maybe too easy) reveal of the killer being one of the most unpleasant people to be around during the first chapter, and I really dig how audio became a very important component of the mystery due to the total blackout. This is also the part of the game where we learn just how twisted Komaeda really is, which is HUGE both in terms of its immediate shock factor for a total newcomer and in terms of its impact on the game as a whole. Of course, since it’s a “first trial,” it can’t be too complicated... but they still manage to confuse so many of us with “MEAT ON THE BONE” :P
1) 5th. Again, I will almost always give the most emotionally intense one the top slot. The “traitor reveal” is obviously THAT MOMENT in DR2. I also love how this one used the strange internal logic established early in the game RE: Komaeda’s luck to develop the eventual solution. And forcing us to make use of evidence gathered in multiple locations outside of the immediate site of the body/murder? That more complexity of that type that I see relevant to a trial, the more I appreciate it, and this one has loads of that stuff. Although I guess the investigation isn’t technically part of the trial itself... but it’s still very relevant to it.
DRV3
6) 4th. I found this whole trial to be just... extremely predictable. Maybe it’s because I was so far into the series that I’d gotten used to its tricks by this point, but this was the most predictable trial for me since the first one in the first game. The whole looping/rollover map setup of the VR? Obvious. The murder weapon? Obvious. Our culprit’s ongoing confusion at everything discussed? Obvious. There were only a couple of points I didn’t have already figured out when I walked into the trial room, and those turned out to be basically irrelevant (such as the bottle of poison). The eventual motive is at least a surprise, but I also found it hard to accept that this culprit would really kill people over it. Overall: Super lame.
5) 3rd. Another double murder trial, and once again one murder overshadows the other. The séance murder is definitely clever. Sure, you know the culprit pretty early on, but the methodology is the good part. However, the real fascinating one for me is the art lab “locked room” murder. Going into the trial, I couldn’t fathom how they were going to explain that one, and I found the answer both smart and satisfying. It’s funny to imagine how many times the culprit had to try that stunt with the lock before it actually worked, heh. This is probably the best of the three “double murder” mysteries in the series, but the trial isn’t as emotionally affecting as the 3rd trial in DR2 to me. Moreover, the trial loses points for the most infuriating Hangman’s Gambit of the series and especially for the motive reveal. When the killer’s motive can be boiled down to “they’re basically just a psycho serial killer,” it’s not very interesting.
4) 6th. The first part of the trial, which deals with re-assessing the first case? It’s pretty damn on-point. That leads to the mastermind reveal, which... isn’t great, really. It’s not a terribly interesting character to make the mastermind, they have no interesting motives or characterization to unevil, and they’re ultimately just a pawn behind another, off-screen group of masterminds. But then things get uproariously funny to me. The metatextual stuff is just so goddamn ridiculous. It’s frustrating and annoying how much of our not-mastermind’s explanation is clearly full of lies and half-truths that we’ll never have complete answers on, but that’s also part of what makes it all fascinating. We get to swap protagonists like four times! There’s a fake-out Game Over! These are really cool things. But it all leads down the road of our protagonist arguing that fiction does affect reality (yes, good), that fictional people can still matter (definitely) and that... fictional lives are equal in value to real ones? Uhhhhh slow down there, champ. That only works for YOUR universe, where fictional people can be made out of living, breathing individuals. But in light of the metatextual stuff you’re surrounded by, you kinda sound silly AF right now?
3) 2nd. Look, this is still incredibly irritating to me. Also, if you go down the alternate “lying” route at one point, you are forced to accept that these piranhas were somehow trained to only eat dead things, which is just... so deeply dumb. But what is good is the entire ropeway conceit (which is a very significant part of the trial!) and the idea of the partition inside the tank. This was a murder with an elaborate, intelligent plan that is very well-executed. And the motive reveal? It’s one of the best in the series! I respect that stuff. (If I had the right to toss the execution in as part of the soup, I’d say that it’s also one of the series’ best. Let’s call it the icing on the cake.)
2) 1st. The writing that made this trial work is undeniably clever. The way the narration told us exactly what was happening without really telling us what was happening? It was a masterstroke of both great writing and perfect localization coming together. When it becomes clear during the trial what is about to happen, it’s a huge shock. The transition to another protagonist with the lights flickering out and back on is beautiful. Even the core concept of a protagonist who was willing to step up and try to kill the mastermind immediately is just deeply interesting. And obviously this one made my emotions run high. HOWEVER! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Kaede Akamatsu was a more interesting, unique, and compelling protagonist than Shuichi Saihara ever was. Ultimately, the protagonist-swap, no matter how well-written, was a mistake because they shifted us from a unique character with an interesting new perspective to a character who is, in many ways, “Makoto Naegi with even less self-esteem.” Yes, I know he has aspects that make him distinct as his own person, but there’s still just too much there that feels like we’ve done it before, and he never fully escapes from that. It feels like a massive waste and a huge missed opportunity to ditch Kaede like this. Now, if they had just done the protagonist swap in reverse — making us start out with Shuichi before flipping things over to Kaede — we could’ve had ourselves something amazing here.
1) 5th. I know I decided that I couldn’t rank all among each other, but if I did do that, I feel confident that the 5th trial in DRV3 would rank very high indeed. You go into the trial unable to even determine who the victim was due to the fact that two people are missing and there was nothing left of the body that spoke to an identity. Going into it, you naturally figure that one of the two missing parties has to be the victim and the other one is probably the culprit. But even with just two friggin’ suspects, the amount of turnabouts in the case that made me rethink all my assumptions was insane. Sure, the explanation for how the person inside the Exisal can maintain “character” is pretty damn thin, but once you get past that, I don’t think there’s a single false note in the trial. It even breaks unprecedented ground by continuing into another Non-Stop Debate after everyone has already voted. And of course, it culminates with a lot of intense emotion. Even the execution is emotionally satisfying! ..... although I’m not sure if I should count the execution as part of the trial, but hey, still. As far as Dangan trials go, the fifth one in DRV3 is basically a masterpiece.
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Oh! What about a classification universe where everyone takes a test and gets their classification (little,neutral, caregiver). Everyone gets what was expected (Virge and Ro little and Pat, Lo, and Janus are caregivers). Everyone expects Remus to get neutral but he gets little. He tries to hide it for a bit until Logan walks in and finds out! (Maybe Pat could be Virgil's cg and Janus could be Roman's? What ever works for you!) Thank you!
Warning: there be a few cuss words here babies.
Remus fiddled with the corners of the envelope he held between his fingers. The friend group had all taken the tests together so they could find out their classifications at the same time. And now here they were, all sitting around in Patton's living room.
He wasn't nervous of course. He knew what everyone including himself would get. Patton was literally the dad friend so of course he would be a caregiver, and if Patton was the dad friend, Logan was the stricter, more cautious mom friend. Then there was Janus who was also a mom friend, but a little more relaxed. He would bet money that Virgil and his brother were littles. Vee already exemplified basically all of the traits and he and Patton pretty much already had a caregiver, regressor relationship going as it was. Then of course Roman was just childish and creative. But Remus? Remus was all crude jokes, chaotic energy and innuendo. He would not be a good caretaker and definitely not a regressor. So he was okay with being the only neutral in the group and told them all as much.
"Now kiddo, we havent even opened our envelopes yet! We dont know what any of us are going to be. Don't make assumptions."
Patton wagged a finger at him playfully.
Logan straightened his glasses. "Actually the true answer lies between both of your responses. While we technically dont know what our results are yet we can make an educated guess based on the traits we exemplify and how likely it is for us to be sorted into each category baised off our traits."
"Ugh! Let's just do it already! I'm tired of waiting!" Roman said exasperated before practically ripping into his. He beamed at the results. "We were right! 'Regressor: 4 to 7 headspace!" He cheered. Janus rolled his eyes with a smile. "Now that one was obvious." There are cheers and congratulations from around the circle and they move on to the next person. Janus is of course a caregiver, as are Logan and Patton. When the circle reaches Virgil he shrinks in on himself and fidgets with his envelope, looking at it like it might come to life and bite him.
"Here kiddo," Patton offered, holding out his hand "would you like me to read it?" Verge nodded and handed it to Patton, stuffing his hands in his pockets and looking down.
Patton carefully opens the envelope and scans the contents before breaking out in a smile. "Regressor: 1 to 4 headspace!"
He immediately pulls Virgil in for a hug, likely to comfort him and quell any panic that might be arising as everyone else congratulates him. Virgil of course latches on like a sea monkey and rests his head on Pattons shoulder with a small smile, giggling as the dad friend whispers some joke in his ear, almost assuredly a pun.
Finally only Remus is left. With all eyes on him he smirks and tears open his envelope, ripping out the paper only to stop dead at what he sees in print. He only has a few seconds to think quickly, keep his poker face and turn it into a smile as he tucks his paper back in the envelope.
"Well no fucking surprise here! Nuetral!" Patton reprimands his language but they all smile and clap for him, although Janus looks at him a tad suspiciously.
"Well we should all probably get home. It is getting rather late." Janus commented.
Roman gets a ride with him and Virgil decides to sleep over at Patton's place. That left Logan and Remus.
"Do you require a ride home Remus?" Logan asked.
"Nope! Just gonna shove a broomstick up my butt and fly home on it like a witch!"
Logan looked unimpressed.
"...yeah I could use a ride."
"Well alright then." Logan smiled and grabed his keys. The two waved to Patton and Virgil before heading out the door. They got in the car and Logan double checked to make sure Remus had his seatbelt buckled. He hadn't forgotten the time he almost flew through the windshield and got glass in his forehead because 'seatbelts just take all the excitement out of driving'
Remus rolled his eyes but complied and satisfied Logan began the drive to Remus's house, playing some nerdy music on the car audio.
Remus didnt look at Logan the whole drive. He just stared out the window and felt his stomach turn as he recalled the actual contents of his results.
A regressor. But he couldn't be! It had to be wrong! Roman was the childish one with his disney and cartoons. Remus was...punk, feral, deranged some might even say...he was the furthest thing from a kid.
A few minutes later his thoughts were interrupted by his phone buzzing and he sighed. It was Roman telling him that Janus had agreed to try out being his caregiver and he was going to spend a few days at his house instead. He was going to have a few very lonely days ahead of him. But that might be for the best as he has to process everything.
Before he even realized it Logan was pulling up to his house. He thanked him devoid of his usual energy and walked inside. Missing the concerned look Logan threw his way.
The first thing he did was hide his letter under his mattress and then he stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out how this could have happened.
He came to the conclusion that he wasnt a regressor. The tests were wrong. Or at least he wasnt going to be. He was Remus for satans sake and he intended to stay that way. And if he ever started to feel SMALL. Well then he would just ignore it until it went away. That shouldn't be too hard right?
Wrong. It had been three weeks since they all got their classification and Remus felt like absolute shit.
Both Roman and Virgil had regressed a few times and were settling in with their caregivers. They seemed...happy. but Remus? He was just tired. Every once in a while (especially when things seemed to get ovewhelming) he would feel his head start to go fuzzy and he would begin to feel an odd sense of calm and a sinking feeling. However he was always able to push it down and shake it off before continuing on with his day like it hadn't happened. The only problem was it seemed to be increasing in frequency. It had gone from happening a few times a week to a few times a day and truth be told he was starting to get overwhelmed.
Then it happened. The worst episode hit him while they were all hanging out at his house. The others were having some sort of conversation but he couldn't focus on what they were saying. Too busy trying to get rid of it. It wasnt working though. He subconsciously leaned into the nearest person to him for comfort, which happened to be Logan. He raised an eyebrow at this as Remus was generally not one for physical affection. He wraps an arm around his waist anyways. If Remus needed him he would oblige. "Are you quite alright Remus?" He asked causing Remus to jump and realize what he had been doing. He had to get out of there. Now.
"Mhm! Yuppers, fit as a fiddle...I'm gonna go lay down. Bye!"
And with that he scampered off to his room. Curling up in his blankets he took his envelope out from under his mattress and glared at it as if that would somehow magically change the results. But of course it didn't. All of a sudden his emotions were alot harder to suppress and he was just so confused and upset and angry all at once. He felt something warm on his face and realized he was crying which made him cry harder, he stuffed a blanket covered fist in his mouth to try and muffle the sounds and hugged a pillow close to his chest.
There was a knocking at the door then. "Remus? Are you quite alright? You left rather suddenly and I thought it best to check on you." Logans voice drifted in from outside his door and part of Remus wanted to open it and launch himself into his arms and just stay there, cuddled up while Logan comforted him. But he didn't. He wasnt a baby, he could deal with this on his own.
When no answer came Logan tried to knob and the door creaked open. Remus cursed himself silently for not locking it.
Upon seeing remus curled on the bed, teartracks down his face and obviously upset, logan rushed over and laid a hand on his shoulder.
"Remus? What's wrong? Are you hurt?"
That's when his eyes caught on the envelope on his bed and he picked it up. Remus emmiting a high pitched whine when he did.
Logan looked confused for all of a second before he put the pieces together.
"...you arent actually a neutral, are you?"
He shook his head sadly and Logan sighed, sitting on the bed with him.
"Remus, you didnt have to hide this. We're all here to support you." He rested a hand on his shoulder again and Remus leaned into the touch, giving Logan an idea.
"Remus, may I hold you?"
He practically jumped at the offer and noded vigorously. That's all he wanted right now.
Logan smiled softly and crawls on the bed, leaning up on the headboard and pulling Remus against his chest, where he instantly relaxed. He hummed softly to him and rested a hand on his back.
"May I see your results?" He asked and Remus nodded slowly. He trusted Logan.
Logan nodded and pressed a kiss to the top of Remus's head as he opened up the envelope and took a look at the contents inside.
Regressor: 3 to 7 headspace.
Logan nodded to himself and slipped it back in the envelope.
"Thank you for letting me see that Remus, can you tell me how old you are right now?"
"M seventeen." He mumbled and Logan sighed, changing tactics.
"How many times have you regressed in the last three weeks?"
There's a long pause and Remus shifts awkwardly against him.
"Remus?"
"....none." he whispered. He knew it wasn't good to suppress regression but he had done it anyways.
Logan pursed his lips, but honestly he had expected this.
"Come on love," he coaxedRemus out of the bed. "We're going to get you out of the house so you can regress without being around everyone. Is that alright with you?"
He noded and followed Logan. They left with some excuse about running an errand and get in Logan's car. He made sure Remus was buckled and started the engine.
"Where we goin?" Remus asked curiously.
"The store." Logan responded. "I assume you dont have any supplies?"
Remus blushed and nodded his head. No use buying little gear if you told yourself you weren't going to regress.
They pulled into the parking lot of a store for that purpose a few minutes later and Logan took his hand as they walked through the parking lot which only served to make him feel smaller and push him further into regression.
When they entered the store Logan took him down a few aisles, stopping when they reached the toys.
"Okay, you may pick out two toys, I'm going to go and get you a few more things. Stay there alright?"
Remus nodded, in awe of all the options the toy isle held. While Logan was off shopping he picked out a nerf gun and an octopus plushie, running up to the cart excitedly to drop them in when Logan returned.
He smiled. "Did you find something you liked little cephalopod?" This caused Remus to nod and giggle happily and Logan chuckled back in response. He had filled the cart with other supplies. Sippy cups, pacifiers, a couple of snacks and small foods as well as some assorted juice boxes.
Remus looked at them all in excitment. And Logan led him through the checkout. Buckling him back up in the car with his octopus, the rest of the bags in the back.
Remus swung his legs happily in the passenger seat while he clutched his new stuffie. Gaining a small smile from Logan.
"Are you alright if we go back to my apartment cephy?"
Remus nodded happily and they made their way to where Logan lived. He was the oldest and so he lived on his own in an apartment just off his college campus.
He quickly unloaded all the groceries and picked Remus up, carrying him inside much to his delight.
The two spent the rest of the day together. Remus ate dinosaurs nuggets and ketchup for dinner which he used to create a whole mess that Logan rolled his eyes fondly at but cleaned up. Then they watched cartoons and snuggled together and Logan watched as he used a new coloring book. Praising every drawing even if they were slightly... unorthodox. Eventually Logan announced that it was bedtime for little boys and while Remus pouted when he was set down on the soft bed he couldn't help but look at Logan like he put all the stars in the sky and he gathered up the courage to ask him his question.
"Lolo?"
"Yes Chephy?"
"Will you be my caregiver?"
"I would be delighted to."
The day ended perfectly for both of them, cuddling on the bed until they fell asleep.
#agere#sfwagere#sanders sides#virgil sanders#fanfic#sanders sides agere#sympathetic deceit#logan sanders#patton sanders#agere remus#sympathetic remus#remus sanders#cg logan#Janus Sanders
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Want to f**k with your child’s life? You picked the wrong child.
This is not a hate post. This is about the revenge that we got on these bastards, pure and simple. If you want to go off all high and mighty about how awful <Topic> is since it was in this story, fuck off and do it somewhere else. This is about her revenge, not your opinion.
Anyways, let’s begin.
I’m going to retell the original story from the MC post because I left a lot out there. Sorry if you already read it.
About three years ago, I was in a multi-school academic support network, which had a summer camp. At this camp, I met K.
K was a closeted lesbian, and was very scared of us telling her parents due to their extreme political and narcissistic views. I had dealt with this situation a few times, but not on this extreme of a level. Her parents were so far off the end of the scale, I dared not say anything about politics or religion in fear of starting an inquisition. These people made Westboro look like moderates.
To give an example, they had complete control over her phone, emails, mail, and pretty much every other route of communication. So when they decided one of her friends was “too Jewish” (his last name sounded Jewish to them) they deleted him from her life. They called the program and rearranged her schedule so she would never see him. Later, we found out they filed false, anonymous complaints against him so he wouldn’t be invited back. Overnight, they removed him from her life.
And this was not the last kid they did this with.
K was terrified of her parents, but they owned her. There was no way to escape short of suddenly becoming an adult.
I was seriously worried about her, to the point where I bought her an emergency-only prepaid phone, which I told her to hide. This was, unequivocally, the best decision I’ve ever made.
Fast-forward to January. K is struggling with the stress of everything, and says something innocuous in group chat along the lines of “good thing I don’t have to worry about boys”.
We suddenly stop hearing responses from her. Her cell phone goes offline. The house phone kicks all of our numbers, but not pay phones or other lines. The parents pick up, but say that there’s no one with that name at this address, then hang up. Her classmate says she doesn’t show up for class that day. Alarm bells are going off for everyone.
And then I get the call from K. “Please, come pick me up. I was kicked out. It’s cold.”
I’m the closest, and I had a car, and I was driving in blowing, heavy snow in far below freezing weather. I won’t say that rage and panic fueled me, but I will say it got me there in one piece. I have never, ever, driven a car as recklessly, as hard, or as fast as I did that day.
When I got there she was huddled under a tarp, barefoot, in pajamas, at the foot of her house’s stairs. The parents saw my car and rush out to scream at me for “taking their child from the path of god” and “corrupting her with devil worshipping ideas” or some shit like that. I told them that if she listened to me, it was the first time she had ever done that.
And then the critical sentence (direct quote for once): “she’s not our child anymore! You godless heathen ruined her mind!” And then, “She’s no daughter of ours!”
Now, I’m going to pause this for a moment to preface everything that happens from this point on: this is not a pro-atheist or anti-Christian post. These whack jobs are the furthest thing from human I’ve ever seen. Do not use them as a generalization for <Religious Group> or a bandwagon to sell your ideals. I’m not dealing with that shit here.
K, freezing and scared, hides in my car. The parents start to get aggressive and hostile towards me, so I make two things very clear to them.
I am recording everything they say. I have a camera on my car and my phone, and I have a police officer waiting for me at the foot of the driveway (I called the cops before I arrived due to not feeling safe).
I am leaving and never coming back, as per their request. K will be coming with me, since she is not their daughter, per their screaming rant.
They start arguing with (aka screaming over) me about how she can be ‘cured’ by methods that range from dubious to straight up illegal. By this point, I’m done. I get back in my car while they’re screaming at me and head back down the driveway.
The cop and I have a short chat, and he recommends we be brought to the police station ASAP to prevent the parents from saying I kidnapped her. After a six-hour ER visit for her hypothermia and minor frostbite, escorted by police, we arrive. All of my video and audio recordings are entered into official records, and the officer’s dashcam footage, and K’s ER report are filed away.
I didn’t know it at the time, but all of that would prove to be essential in court later.
I sign her into a hotel in my town, and lawyer up. The lawyer I know specifically deals with cases like hers for free. He is very, very good at it.
There was a lot of legalese, and a long process and a lot of angry exchanges that I really didn’t understand or participate in, but two years later, she was emancipated. I got to be a witness, and that recording and the ER report cinched the case, proving neglect. The parents didn’t even try to argue against it, instead using some weird religious law argument.
K’s older half-brother learned what was happening during the first year and supported her financially while she was in school. He hated the parents far more than either of us did (K feared them more and I was just disgusted by them).
It wasn’t much of a fight. The parents represented themselves, and tried to drop the case on “religious grounds”, which isn’t a thing.
After this, the revenge started. And K did not hold back.
During proceedings, it was discovered that the parents had been using their children’s Social Security cards for loans, credit, bank accounts, and other sketchy stuff. They were already going to jail for that, but K took it to the next level.
Now, these were all the things K told me after the fact. I wasn’t involved in this part, and I didn’t write down all the details that well, but the following is approximately what happened from what I have been told or remember.
So, WARNING; fuzzy details.
One of the things that had been purchased in her name was the father’s truck. K reported it as missing, since she was technically an owner of the truck. They pulled the father over and confiscated the truck as stolen, because his name was not in the title, the wife’s was. When he tried to prove it was his by filling out the bill of sale on the back, he found that the title for the vehicle had been invalidated when K had ordered a new one and donated the vehicle to the fire department for Jaws-of-Life training. That same day.
The mother’s credit cards were the same, but K just cancelled all of them and declared ID theft. This froze some of the mother’s bank accounts, which were under K’s SSN.
The family was already in chaos but K cranked it to 11. Due to the SSN, K was listed as the main contact for the family’s cell phone and internet plans. She cancelled both. She killed the email accounts in her name that she could access and rerouted her mail to her new PO Box, where she may have “accidentally” forgotten to say they should only reroute her mail.
She also called in repossessions on everything that had been bought with her SSN on credit. The loans included renovations on the home, so the parents were forced to sell.
By the time K was done, the parents were happy to go to jail for fraud, identity theft, and their other, numerous crimes rather than live on the street.
All I do know is that they became social pariahs in town before that. Stores banned them for their increasingly violent attempts at converting people. People they knew for years turned on them. The father was fired for failing a performance review, and the mother lost her job selling <Stuff?> due to her increased radicalization.
In the end, K’s siblings went to live with her half-brother since he was the closest living relative. The parents lost all rights to visitation, as the state nullified their parental rights and gave guardianship to the half-brother, mostly due to the criminal charges.
But the real revenge might just be that as the sentencing was carried out, K flipped the parents off in front of the judge and the judge just laughed at the parent’s attempts to claim it was hate speech.
TL;DR: Narcissistic and awful parents attempt to ruin child’s life for being lesbian. Child sends them to jail.
(source) (story by CynicalAltruist)
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Chaos Theory
Part Two
(Here, have Jackie solving puzzles. That’s all this part is.)
The city buses stopped running at eleven each night, which meant when Jackie arrived at a bus stop at 12:32am he wasn’t even going to entertain the idea of taking a ride back to his apartment. Besides, even if they did run this late, he doubted any bus driver would give a ride to the city vigilante, which he was easily identifiable as while wearing this suit.
He sat down on the bench, using the light from the streetlights to see while he tore open the cardboard box. The laptop inside was clunkier than the most recent models, and it didn’t have a brand label on it anywhere. When he pried it open, there was a yellow sticky note on the screen, with a message made from letters cut out from a newspaper: The password is your birthday, year and all. 6 digits.
“Oh great. Psycho knows my birthday, got a real stalker here,” Jackie muttered to himself as he powered up the computer. A hysterical smile twisted his face. “What else does he know? My shoe size? My underwear color?” He let loose a small giggle as he typed his birthday into the slot for the password: 100790.
PASSWORD INCORRECT flashed on the screen. Jackie blinked, then reentered the series of numbers, slower. The same message popped up. Jackie leaned back against the bench. Were there more numbers? No, the note said six. Then it hit him. He typed in 071090. The lock screen disappeared, the desktop loading up. Jackie breathed a sigh of relief. Stupid backwards American dates. Stupid American creep getting him to play this twisted game.
Speaking of that guy, he said the first set of puzzles would be in the files. Jackie went to pull off his glove so he could use the mousepad on the laptop before remembering he already took it off. He shrugged, then gave the screen’s desktop a once-over. Mostly empty, except for a few shortcuts on the desktop, including one for Google Chrome. The background picture was a blank red screen that kind of hurt Jackie’s eyes to look at. The only thing pinned to the taskbar was the file explorer, so Jackie clicked on that.
After exploring the files, he found there was a single zip folder in the Documents named “Set 1.” After unzipping it, he found it contained two files: 1.txt and 1.ogg.
Wait, wasn’t .ogg an audio file? Did he dare risk playing whatever message this...gamemaster left for him while in a public place? Sure, it was midnight and the streets were empty as far as he could see, but you never knew...and then Jackie noticed the pair of white earbuds sitting in the box next to the laptop. He closed his eyes and sighed, then plugged the earbuds in and put them on.
The laptop came with an audio player installed, which he clicked on, uploading the 1.ogg file. He pressed play and—
“Jesus fuck!” Jackie yanked out the earbuds, instinctively leaning back against the wave of distorted sound that had blasted his ears. He hurried to press pause on the sound. “What the shhhhhit was that?” He hissed.
He decided to come back to that later, opening the 1.txt file with notepad. Inside was empty, except for a url: 6368616f737468656f7279.com. Jackie frowned, then opened the Internet browser, copy-pasting the url into the search bar.
The webpage that popped up was blank white except for a single line of text: Enter Password with a space to type something.
“Are you fucking—?!” Jackie set the laptop on the bench and stood up, walking a few circles around the bench and pulling on his fingers while he tried to calm down. “Okay. Okay, focus. Think, Jackie. Get into that zone. What could the password be? Where could I find it?”
After a few minutes of walking, something occurred to him. That distorted audio. First, what was the point of it? Why include it if it wasn’t important to the puzzle? And second, he’d heard a lot of distorted audio before. This didn’t sound like random white noise. It sounded like something that had been a normal audio file, but had been tampered with.
So, stands to reason that there would be a way to un-tamper it. And maybe...there would be a message once the puzzle was unscrambled. Jackie took a deep breath, then sat back down and grabbed the laptop again.
The computer’s audio player had settings to edit the file with. After speeding up the sound, playing with the pitch, and reversing the audio, he had it sounding almost recognizable. In fact, it sounded familiar...Jackie pressed the earbuds closer. He knew this song. “What is this?” he muttered. He racked his brains, flapping his wrist to help him think. Come on, he definitely knew it...
“Lone Digger!” He finally shouted. “Yea!” He punched the air. The song was by Caravan Palace, who were absolutely fantastic. Jackie wasn’t usually one for electro swing, but he liked them. He actually recommended them to JJ the other day—
Jackie froze. Oh. JJ.
On the one hand, the gamemaster could’ve chosen the song at random. On the other, if this guy knew who his friends were...how many conversations could he have overheard? What if the song choice meant something?
Jackie checked the time on the laptop clock. 12:41am. He had five hours and nineteen minutes left. That sounded like such a short amount of time. He took a deep breath. The night felt a lot colder than it had even a few moments before.
He’d done his best to clear up the distortion in the song, but there were still some odd random noises. Maybe there was another program to help with that. He scanned the shortcuts on the desktop. A visualizer program? He opened it, then loaded his editted version of the 1.ogg file. There were a few filters he could turn on, and he began messing about with them. When he turned on the spectrogram, he sat up straight. Numbers had suddenly appeared in the visual representation of the sound file. 1031, it read.
Jackie switched back over to the strange website, entering 1031 in the spot for the password. After a few seconds when he waited with baited breath, the page changed from the password screen to a map, along with a sidebar with some text along the left of the screen. He recognized the area the map was showing: a spot in the west side of the city, a historic section. The map had no markers. But the sidebar with text could hold some answers. Three questions were written there.
Jackie took a deep breath, fingers drumming on the bench next to him. This area wasn’t too close, but if he ran, he should get there within thirty minutes. Okay. He was doing good on time. He could do this. He deliberately pushed away the voice in his head reminding him of the stakes of the game, reading through the questions.
1. Q: What is the shortest blade a knife can have and still be brought to a public gathering, as of current city laws?
A: _ inches
2. Q: How many letters are there in the British Sign Language Alphabet?
A: 2_
3. Q: What year was the first film with sound released?
A: 192_
Okay. If Jackie had any doubts about who he was trying to save for the first set, they had now been erased. His stomach was full of worms, but he pushed them down farther and calmly opened another tab on the browser.
He had to Google the city laws on knives, and then open up a converter for metric system to American system, but he found the answer easily enough. He didn’t need Google for the second question; it was technically a trick. If you were talking letters and not signs in general, there were the same number of letters as the spoken and written English alphabet. He did have to look up the last one, though.
(3) inches. 2(6) letters. 192(7).
367.
Jackie examined the map on the screen again. There, an address in the area: 367 Studio Blvd, a street appropriately named as an old film studio was located there. In fact, the studio’s address was 367.
The time was 12:49am.
The clock was tick, tick, ticking.
Jackie slammed the laptop shut. He knew how to get there. He was fast, and he had the stamina to run for a while. He packed the computer and its earbuds back into the cardboard box, then stood up.
“Hang on, Jays. I’m coming,” he whispered. And then he ran.
#jacksepticeye#jacksepticeye fanfiction#jacksepticegos#septic egos#jackieboy man#brigid writes fanfiction#chaostheoryfic
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The Shocking Case of O.J. Simpson (Part 2)
And we are back! So in Part 1 we looked at an overview of the case; here in Part 2 we’re gonna look at the suspects! I’m thinking this is how it’ll go for true crime episodes in the future. Speaking of which, if any of you guys have an idea of an episode for me to do next, whether it’s supernatural or true crime, feel free to suggest it!
Now that we’re getting into suspects, I feel I should reiterate my warning from Part 1: we’re gonna get into some of the... heavier details in this part. If at any point you feel uncomfortable or distressed by what you read, you are totally free to stop reading. I personally had no problem with what is addressed, but I realize not everyone is me. Your feelings are valid, and you are not a lesser person for wanting to stop reading.
And now, without further ado, enjoy!
Tag list: @cosmicrealmofkissteria @ashestoashesvvi @kategwidt
VINNIE [voiceover]: Now that we’ve covered the timeline and important events in the case, let’s get into the suspects. Unlike our other cases, this case has one clear top suspect: O. J. Simpson. So we’re going to break this down into two sections; why O. J. is the killer, and why O. J. is NOT the killer. Let’s start with why he could have done it. First off, let’s start with a possible motive. O. J. and Nicole Simpson had been going through a break, and at the time of the murders were living in separate residences. Also at the time of the murders, Nicole and Ronald Goldman had grown increasingly close, leading some to speculate that they were perhaps more than friends. Though Goldman said this was not the case.
That is obviously a clear motive right there.
Yeah, obviously. Even if Goldman said it wasn’t the case…
O. J. could still think he’s lying and they’re getting romantically involved.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Now, let’s return to the timeline. If the murders did in fact occur around 10:15 PM, the time the dog barking began, that would give O. J. enough time to commit the murders, clean himself up, and be back at his house by 11 PM, in time to greet the limo driver.
[cut to the three driving in the car in Brentwood. It is now night]
VINNIE: Right now, we’re headed to O. J.’s Rockingham Estate, which, not-so-fun fact, was only six minutes away from Nicole’s townhouse.
PAUL: Oh man, really?
GENE: So it’s definitely feasible, especially if he was booking it.
[car stops, and they all look out the window]
PAUL: Is that it?
VINNIE: That is it. [camera pans over a gated entrance as Vinnie speaks] So this the former site of O. J.’s Rockingham Estate. It was demolished in 1998, but… probably very happy to leave.
[screen cuts back to the slideshow]
VINNIE [voiceover]: Going into DNA evidence, O. J.’s blood, as well as Nicole’s and Goldman’s, were found on the glove left at the scene of the crime. Further damning is the fact that this glove matched a glove found at O. J.’s estate behind the guest house, near the area where O. J.’s friend Kato heard loud thumps at 10:40 PM. Both gloves had blood on them that matched Nicole, Goldman, and O. J. O. J. also had a cut on his finger the day after the murders when the police interviewed him. The knitted hat contained hairs that were proven to be O. J.’s by the FBI hair and fiber laboratory. Also found at O. J.’s residence was Nicole’s blood on a sock, and blood was also found in his driveway. The bloody shoeprint found at the crime scene matched O. J.’s size, and the sole pattern matched another pair that O. J. owned at the time. O. J. had also purchased a knife matching the type the coroner predicted had been used. Though, the knife and the shoes were never found.
I’m sorry, how is this an unsolved case again? Because it seems pretty obvious to me that he did it.
Well… *sigh* I don’t know how to answer this question…
I’m pretty sure this is where most people draw the line and say, “Yep. He’s guilty.” I think this is where my grandfather was convinced anyway.
Wasn’t your grandfather kind of a dick, though?
Okay, regardless of whether or not Gene’s grandfather was a dick, I will say that yes, this is where many people draw the line.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Another key detail was the fact that O. J. had been a perpetrator of spousal abuse against Nicole Simpson in the past, reportedly resulting in nine police visits to the Simpson residence responding to domestic disturbance calls. In 1989, O. J. was found guilty for spousal abuse, and plead no contest to the charges. Bizarrely, in 2006, O. J. himself wrote and published a book called “If I Did It”; a hypothetical account of the murder. Though the book was first cancelled due to public outrage, it was still later published, with all profits going to the Goldman family.
Wait wait wait, hang on a sec.
Uh huh?
So O. J., the man everybody thinks did it…
Yes.
…after getting acquitted for these murders…
Yes.
…writes a goddamn book on what could have happened if he did it?
Yes.
…
*wheeze*
*laughter* What the fuck, man?
This guy’s got some balls on him, that’s all I’ll say.
VINNIE [voiceover]: For those that are new to this case, O. J. Simpson was found not guilty. Despite the DNA evidence found at the crime scene, the defense team called to the attention of the jury technical mistakes made by the forensic team, which created some doubt over the evidence. Evidence was not packaged correctly and even left in a van to overheat. This ultimately led them to suggest that the crime scene may have been contaminated.
So, do we have any commentary on this?
*sighs*
Nope.
I got nothin’.
Okay then.
VINNIE [voiceover]: During the trial, the defense team had O. J. try on the glove found at the crime scene, and it was too small, leading to the now famous line by his lawyer, “If it doesn’t fit, you must acquit.” Though, it’s worth mentioning the prosecution team was against having O. J. try on the glove, because it had been frozen and unfrozen multiple times as a preservation method, and it also had been covered in blood.
Oh, THAT’S where that line comes from!
Yep, this is where it’s from.
I was wondering what line they were parodying on that one Rick and Morty episode.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Many also believe that race played a factor in O. J.’s acquittal, due to the events that surrounded the trial. In 1992, race riots occurred due to the LAPD’s senseless and horrific beating of a black man named Rodney King; a beating for which the assaulting officers were acquitted of all charges. The defense strategically used law enforcement racism as a reason for O. J.’s charges; they showed a video of Simpson handcuffed as soon as he returned from Chicago, demonstrating the rush in judgement by the police. Perhaps one of their biggest arguments was centered around Detective Mark Fuhrman. During the trial, the defense played for the jury a tape of audio in which Detective Fuhrman was recorded using racial slurs over FORTY times in one recorded sitting.
What the fuck?!
Jesus…
VINNIE [voiceover]: This is noteworthy, because Detective Fuhrman was also the first person to step inside O. J.’s Brentwood Rockingham Estate after the murders occurred, a feat he accomplished by jumping over the wall of the estate. This is a critical detail, because according to Fuhrman’s own testimony, it was during this time after he jumped the wall that he alone discovered the notorious, matching bloody glove behind O. J.’s guest house. With this information, the defense was able to suggest that Detective Fuhrman planted the glove and perhaps all other evidence found at O. J.’s estate, effectively tainting the evidence regardless of whether or not it was true. Christopher Darden, a deputy district attorney assigned to the O. J. case summarized it in this quote: “It will do one thing. It will upset the black jurors. It will say, whose side are you on, ‘the man’ or ‘the brothers’?” The jury was made up of eight black people, one Hispanic person, one white person, and two people of mixed race. All these things considered, the jury reached the verdict of not guilty, after only four hours of deliberation. However, it’s worth mentioning that O. J. lost the eventual civil case for the wrongful deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, with the jury awarding their families $33.5 million in punitive damages.
[cuts back to the office]
PAUL: This episode is gettin’ me down, man.
VINNIE: Yeah, I— [starts laughing]
PAUL: This sucks.
GENE: I agree, this is the worst.
VINNIE: Yeah, it is not fun.
PAUL: Jesus, I’m getting JonBenet Ramsey flashbacks. This is the fucking worst.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Though, if O. J. Simpson didn’t kill his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman, then who did? Let’s get into some alternate suspects. The first suspect is convicted serial killer Glen Rogers. In an investigation discovery documentary, Clay Rogers, the brother of Glen Rogers, said that while on death row, his brother Glen confessed to murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Though, even if this theory is true, O. J. would still be guilty. Glen Rogers had reportedly been hired by O. J. to steal a pair of earrings from her condo, but was told to kill her if she got in the way. However, it’s possible that Rogers was serving a six week jail sentence at the time of the murders, and therefore lied about his involvement.
So O. J. hired a serial killer to steal a pair of earrings?
Yeah, that… that doesn’t make a lot of sense.
No, it really doesn’t.
Those must’ve been some pretty damn expensive earrings.
VINNIE [voiceover]: The last suspect is Jason Simpson, O. J.’s son, and is the sole theory of famed private investigator Bill Dear, one of the few private investigators to be inducted into the Police Hall of Fame. Though, it’s worth mentioning that people have discredited Dear’s case as entirely circumstantial.
I already am suspicious of this theory.
Oh, just wait.
Is it bad?
Well, I don’t know if I would call it “bad” per se, but it’s… it’s kind of fucked up.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Nonetheless, Dear presents his theory in a book, and the highlights are as follows: At the time of Nicole and Goldman’s murders, Jason was on probation after having attacked his former boss with a knife. According to Dear, Jason had also attacked a former girlfriend named Jennifer Green. Dear also spoke to another former girlfriend of Jason’s named Dee Dee, who claimed Jason almost broke her back after throwing her into a bathtub, and perhaps even more suspiciously, cut off her hair with a knife, giving Jason two reported assaults involving a knife. Dear also reportedly obtained medical records of Jason’s—illegally, some might add—by dressing up and impersonating a doctor at Cedar-Sinai Hospital, where Jason had been a patient, for two weeks.
Okay—wow.
He, *laughing* he impersonated a doctor for two weeks just to get this kid’s medical files?
*wheeze* It does sound ridiculous when you put it like that.
Why didn’t he just ask the hospital for the records?
Well, there were probably a ton of hoops he would’ve had to jump through if he did that. Like, I know there’s a law protecting doctor-patient confidentiality for one thing.
… Okay, that makes sense. But still… weird.
Definitely weird. The Police Hall of Fame didn’t seem to think it was weird, though.
Is that really a thing?
Yes.
Okay... I dunno how to feel about that, but okay.
VINNIE [voiceover]: According to Dear, Jason had been diagnosed with Intermittent Rage Disorder, and around the time of the murders, Jason stopped taking the prescribed antipsychotic drugs. This was also during the time when Jason reportedly told doctors he was “going to rage.” Jason’s alibi was that he was working at a restaurant that night. Dear feels this is a flimsy alibi, due to the fact that his timecard is reportedly handwritten, which could suggest it was written after the murders. This reportedly handwritten timecard is even more suspicious when you consider the fact that the electronic time clock was fully functional that night. Dear also reportedly has pictures of Jason wearing a knitted hat that bears resemblance to the hat found at the scene of the crime, pictures taken before the murders and not after. To cap this off, Dear suggests that O. J. was only present at the scene of the crime to protect his son, and that this would explain his bizarre behavior such as the famous Bronco chase. But as mentioned before, many have discredited Dear’s case as almost entirely circumstantial.
I will say this: he does make a solid case.
Yeah, but… I dunno…
I hesitate to say this theory is good, because unlike with O. J., there’s no definite, hard evidence that he did it.
Yeah, there is that.
There’s no DNA evidence, his theory on the alibi is kinda shaky…
It’s almost as if he’s twisting around facts to support his theory…
It really does.
Which as we all know is intellectually dishonest.
Very intellectually dishonest.
VINNIE [voiceover]: Unrelated to this case, on September 16th, 2007, O. J. was connected to a robbery in Las Vegas, Nevada. In the 2008 trial that followed, O. J. was found guilty for twelve counts, including armed robbery and kidnapping, and was sentenced to 33 years in prison. According to a CNN survey, the overall percentage of Americans who believe O. J. did murder Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman has increased from 66% in 1994 to 83% in 2014. Perhaps one day we will have a definite answer to the question of who murdered Nicole Simpson and Ronald Goldman. But for now, the case officially remains… UNSOLVED.
[as the credits roll, we cut back to the office set. Paul, Gene, and Vinnie all look unsure of what to do next]
PAUL: Jeez… Well, thanks for this, Vinnie. This has been fun.
GENE: Yep. We got into some heavy shit this episode.
VINNIE: Well I’m sorry for heeding the request of the masses. [gestures to the camera] They’re the ones that kept suggesting this case.
PAUL: I will say, this did not bum me out as much as JonBenet Ramsey.
VINNIE: I mean, all of us were bummed out by the JonBenet Ramsey case.
GENE: You guys are givin’ me flashbacks.
[beat of silence]
VINNIE: [sighs] I need a drink. [stands up. Paul and Gene follow]
PAUL: I feel like I need a shower.
GENE: I’m gonna go watch some Looney Tunes. I need some humor after all this heaviness.
PAUL: Good idea. [looks and points at the camera] All you guys, go watch some Looney Tunes. Give yourself a laugh. Self-care is important.
BUZZFEED UNSOLVED TRUE CRIME
What unsolved mystery do you want to see next?
#kiss unsolved#kiss unsolved true crime#lol I really put the boys through the wringer on this one eh?#I promise the next true crime case I write up for them will be a bit lighter#well as light as it can be anyway#I always really enjoy writing for this au#it's really fun and these three work really well together#if only they were like this in real life...#well that's what fanfiction's for#hope you guys had a good time reading this#please feel free to suggest another episode to cover#kiss au writing#my writing#thanks for reading!
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Transcript: Have You Seen Me? Episode One: Kitty Scott is Missing
Hey listeners! Sorry this took us a while. We at HYSM? are dedicated to accessibility in the audio drama community and will always make transcripts free to everyone. If you are interested in viewing annotated scripts, though, they are soon to be available to patrons! For as little as $1 per episode, you can get early access to episodes as well as these annotated scripts and other goodies. Click here to learn more.
Without further ado, here is the transcript for Episode One: Kitty Scott is Missing.
SFX: A cassette tape click. OPHELIA takes a deep breath, a second. When she speaks it is with a slight tremble.
OPHELIA
This is going to be difficult to say. When I first started using this recorder, I never thought I would be doing anything serious with it. Not like this, I mean. I always thought our investigations were serious and important, like it mattered that we were proving something’s existence. I mean, ghosts are real, but of course we knew that way before we put it on cassette. We agree that if Bigfoot does exist, and we aren’t saying that they do, they should just be left alone. Three-eyed deer who will draw you into the woods to great fortune or great peril… again, some of us remain unconvinced, but I myself am a believer.
I… The date is April 19th. My best friend, Kitty Scott, has been missing for almost 48 hours. And I have no idea where she is.
To say it’s unlike her would be a gross understatement, but I guess that’s what a lot of people say, right? When people go missing? “It seems so unlike them. I can’t imagine why. You think you know somebody.”
The thing is that I do know Kitty. I know her better than I know anybody in the world, even Isaac, even myself. Her brother James--who can go straight to you-know-where at his earliest possible convenience--he says that she skipped town. And that’s what everybody thinks, but it isn’t true. I’m sure of it. Kitty wanted to leave, but she wouldn’t. She’s still here. Somewhere.
So, who’s on my side? Isaac, for sure. He’s known Kitty for her whole life--well, everyone here has--but she’s basically lived here for the last two years. He not her best friend, but he is her best friend’s uncle and legal guardian, so close enough.
Sheriff Hayle will back me up, I bet. She’s something of a mystery herself, sure, but when it comes down to it she is smart as anything and hates James just about as much as I do. Not great for mayoral-police relations, but I don’t think anybody really cares that much. If I tell her what I know, she’ll believe me. Oh, maybe she’ll even let me work the case with her! Oh my god, Kitty will think it’s hilarious. “Detective Ophelia Joy, Amsterdam PD! Pew pew pew pew pew!” Yeah, I like it.
And then there’s the new kid. He’s already offered to help, which is great news. It’s kind of hard to get a read on him, but he seems honest enough. Pretty sharp. Nice and all.
Maybe I’m not giving him enough credit. We never get new folks in town, so I don’t really have a lot of room for comparison. Everyone I know is someone I’ve known for years. And someone who’s known Kitty for years, which will either be very good or very, very bad. She has a very unique… and… strong personality. That I love, obviously.
But I guess that’s the team. Isaac, Sheriff Hayle, the new kid, and me. Now I guess we do what detectives do; we look over what we know. We investigate what we don’t. We solve the case!
Let’s break it down.
SFX: A click as the tape ends.
After a moment:
KITTY
Bug, I love you, but that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard in my life.
OPHELIA
Just think about it--
KITTY
Ghosts? Why not. Werewolves? Okay, fine. I’ll even take a stab at fairies if they aren’t the Tinkerbell kind. But what you’re spouting is bullshit, babe.
OPHELIA
What is so hard to believe about a three-eyed deer?
KITTY
(Dramatically) The three-eyed deer, eerie in its grace, its centerfold eye radiating gold. Beware its gaze, or it may steal thine soul! “Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven, or to hell.”
OPHELIA
...Well when you quote Macbeth you make it sound stupid.
KITTY
Shakespeare was right about a good many things.
OPHELIA
But this is real. I’ve been doing research at the library archives, and--
KITTY
You’ve been sneaking into the library archives when Mrs. Fumero isn’t looking.
OPHELIA
I’ve been sneaking into the library archives when Mrs. Fumero isn’t looking. And there have been multiple accounts of these deer. Not like, on the front page, but still. A lot of people say they felt compelled to follow them into the woods, where great danger surely awaited… or greatest fortune.
KITTY
You see? How does that not sound fake?
OPHELIA
Truth is stranger than fiction, dear.
KITTY
(Tsks) Listen to us, sounding like an old married couple. And you know what wives do for their wives? They tell them how the Scottish play ends.
OPHELIA
They tell them how the Scottish play ends?
KITTY
Oh, would you? You’re a doll.
OPHELIA
You can memorize it--not even one of the best lines--but you can’t bother reading all of it?
KITTY
Please don’t question my genius, Bug. And I know you didn’t read it either. You just watched some high school performance on YouTube!
OPHELIA
It was meant to be seen and not read anyway.
(She sighs)
Pretty much everyone dies because MacB isn’t fit to be king. Um, Lady MacB gets obsessive about washing her hands clean of blood and then dies. The witches give ole Mickey a prophecy that no man born of a woman can kill him, so Macduff kills him because his mother had a C-Section, so he wasn’t technically born, so he can kill Macbeth.
KITTY
Wow. That shit’s depressing.
OPHELIA
What do you think “the Tragedy of Macbeth” means? It’s on the front cover!
KITTY
Bold of you to assume I read what I don’t have to. As exciting and invigorating as this is, I better get going. It's, like, ugh, midnight, and that essay’s due first period. It’s not going to write itself! I would know, I’ve bet on that happening before.
That ending’s kind of stupid, anyway. Lady MacB could have killed him. She’s not a man of woman born, right? A little stab there, a little “I am no man!” Lord of the Rings, baby!
OPHELIA
Eowyn could take me out, honestly.
KITTY
Like a date, or with her sword?
OPHELIA
I’m impartial.
KITTY
I feel it. Hey, we’re gonna meet at the Igloo after school, right? You promised a birthday sundae, and if you fail to complete your end of the bargain, well… (Her voice drops) You may meet an unfortunate accident.
OPHELIA
(Laughs) I won’t let you down, boss.
SFX: Kitty leaves and walks down the stairs
Hey, what do I get out of this?
KITTY
(Distantly)You get to hang out with me! Love you, Bug!
SFX: The door slams behind her.
OPHELIA
Love you too.
SFX: A cassette tape clicks.
OPHELIA
I hate the phrase “the last time I saw her.” Let’s call it the most recent time instead. It seems more confident. It was the night before her birthday, the 17th. Well, April 17th, and she turned 18 on the 18th. Oh, this could get confusing. Okay, so let’s call April 18th the day of the incident, which is also her birthday. But, come to think of it, we don’t know whether whatever happened… happened on the day of the incident, the 18th. It could have happened very late on the 17th, when I saw her most recently.
Oh my god, this would be way clearer written down. Curse my dyslexia! Pens are way too slow, and the computer is even slower. Tape, you are the only constant in life. I owe it all to you, buddy.
In any case, we don’t know when the uh… the incident, uh, incited. I used to ask her to text me when she got home, but she always forgot, so I kind of gave up. I haven’t talked to James or Lizzie yet. Which is to say that they’ve tried their best not to talk to me. Sometimes I forget that Lizzie used to be my babysitter. She used to be so cool before she married that d-bag.
It’s like once they got married they started sharing all of his baggage. I’m an only child, so maybe I just don’t get it, but aren’t you supposed to love your siblings? Maybe that’s a lie fed to me by years of TV, but I thought the worst it was supposed to be was a few pranks, maybe a scuffle. I’ve never seen people with as bad of a relationship as Kitty and James. I don’t think he’s ever given a crap about her, and she knows it. It’s a wonder the whole town doesn’t know it, but he’s the golden child. He could probably kill someone and they’d forgive him for it.
(Pauses) He wouldn’t, would he?
Okay, maybe I need to get a little perspective before I accuse the mayor of murder. He probably didn’t do it, but I wouldn’t put it past him, morally speaking. Can you hire a hitman in Ohio? I don’t think so, but it might be worth looking in to.
(She clears her throat)
Back on the case. At first I didn’t realize that anything was wrong. We don’t have any classes together before lunch, but I didn’t see her at our usual table. I asked around, but Cassidy B said that she didn’t see her in geometry or English. I texted her during lunch, but she didn’t respond in time for the next class.
Now, when your friend doesn’t show up to school one day, typically your first thought is that she’s sick. Maybe she’s throw up, or she has a fever. Say it’s her birthday, which it was; Maybe she’s skipped class to play video games all day. It wouldn’t be out of character.
I, on the other hand, had the initial thought that she had been kidnapped. After she left that night, I admit that I watched a few… or a lot of true crime videos online. I can’t stop thinking about the case about this girl from the early 2000’s. She was a child genius, she played a ton of instruments, that kind of thing. Then one night, a man that once did construction on her family’s house broke in through her window and kidnapped her. It took them months to find her, and among the other unspeakable things that happened to her, she had been hidden in plain sight. Her kidnapper would dress her up in a disguise--you know: glasses, a wig, a veil--and called her his wife, and hardly anyone was the wiser.
The whole thing is pretty scary. No, it’s more than that. The idea that it could happen to you, or to anyone, even, it keeps you up at night. The idea that there’s just something right in front of you, and you just can’t see it.
Better keep my eyes open, I guess.
SFX: A click as the tape ends.
SFX: A voice mailbox tone.
SFX: Bird chirping.
KITTY
This is Kitty. Leave a message, or don’t. The choice is yours. Use it wisely.
SFX: A voice mailbox tone.
KITTY
This is Kitty. Leave a message--
SFX: A voice mailbox tone.
KITTY
This is Kitty--
SFX: Bells jingle as Ophelia walks into the Igloo. Birdsong fades.
EMPLOYEE
(Bored to death) Sorry man, cash only.
LIAM
Wait, for real?
EMPLOYEE
That’s what it says on the sign. We don’t even have a card reader.
LIAM
(Stumbling over his words) Okay. Then you can just--keep it, I guess.
OPHELIA
Hey, wait! I can cover it for you.
LIAM
Really?
OPHELIA
Yeah. It’s, what, a tornado with M&M’s? Those things are like, two dollars. It’s not a big deal.
LIAM
I can pay you back, I promise.
OPHELIA
Deal. And can I get two sundaes, the works?
EMPLOYEE
Sure thing, ‘Felia.
LIAM
Felia?
OPHELIA
Oh, it’s a nickname. The whole thing is Ophelia Florence Joy, which is exactly why I go by Fee.
LIAM
Yeah, that checks out. I’m Liam. Summers. Liam Ferdinand, if you want the whole thing.
OPHELIA
I must say, that’s a pretty good one.
LIAM
Thanks, I picked it out myself and everything.
OPHELIA
You’re not from around here, are you? Not to be weird, but I would remember seeing you. We don’t get a ton of fresh faces outside of summer fair season.
LIAM
I was hoping it wouldn’t be so obvious, but yeah, my parents and I just moved here. Yesterday, actually.
OPHELIA
I didn’t see any moving trucks. Um, where are you...
LIAM
Birch street. On the other side of downtown from here, I think.
EMPLOYEE
(In the background) Two sundaes, plus the tornado, that’s seven.
OPHELIA
Here. That’s a really nice area. You might be neighbors with my best friend. Have you met Kitty yet?
LIAM
You’re actually the first person I’ve really talked to here. We just got to town last night, and we had to switch banks when we moved here, right? So I don’t have an account at the new bank and I spent all my cash on road trip snacks. Hence, the credit card fiasco and my debt to you.
OPHELIA
(Sighs) I was kinda hoping you’d met her. She hasn’t been responding to me all day.
LIAM
Is she sundae number two?
OPHELIA
Yep. You know, this could really work out well for both of us. Want a ride home?
SFX: The recorder clicks on.
OPHELIA
Like I said, the new kid is pretty cool. He’s from New York--the city, not just the state--which automatically makes him the coolest person I know. Kitty would kick me for even daring to imply that it isn’t her, but she’s never even left this town, so that’s that. I mean, aunt Jen is from Jersey, but it’s not quite the same.
You technically aren’t supposed to be on the phone while you’re driving, but I figured I would make an exception while I drove the new kid home to call James’ office to see what was what. His assistant, Janet, definitely knows that he has something out for me. She didn’t even bother giving me some dumb excuse, like “he was in a meeting.” She just put me on hold for the whole ten minute drive to Birch Street. Birch… you know, there’s a scathing rhyming joke I could make, but hey, high road.
As I guessed, Liam now lives right next door to the Scott residence. I say right next door as if there isn’t three acres between every house on that road. It isn’t a very neighborly area, but then again, neither is my house, so I have no room to talk.
Macey answered Kitty’s door. She’s about six or seven now, and she’s already really smart. Kitty loves those kids, Macey and Junior. Which is why, when Lizzie came to the door and told me that Kitty hadn’t come home that night, I got out of there pretty quickly. I think kids understand more than we give them credit for.
SFX: Recorder clicks off.
SFX: The sounds of light traffic.
SFX: A door slams, followed by...
SFX: the sound of running as Ophelia approaches the police station.
OPHELIA
Sheriff Hayle! Sheriff Hayle!
SFX: She trips over gravel.
Sh--I’m fine! I’m fine.
HAYLE
Jesus, kid. Almost made me drop my tea. What’s got you screaming?
OPHELIA
I--She, Kitty, she--
ISAAC
Fee, what’s wrong?
OPHELIA
She--Uncle Isaac, what are you doing here?
ISAAC
I got off early. I’m having tea with a friend. Ophelia, what’s going on?
OPHELIA
Kitty didn’t make it home last night. Sheriff Hayle, she was over at my house until maybe midnight, and then she left, and then I didn’t hear from her, and her sundae melted, so I went to her house and Lizzie said she didn’t come back, and I-- You know, not to jump to conclusions but--
HAYLE
Let’s take a deep breath, okay? You’re not just jumping, you’re headed for the trampoline. You sure she’s not just at a friend’s house?
OPHELIA
Sheriff, you know Kitty and I aren’t the kind of people to have two whole friends. We refer to those as “backup buds.”
HAYLE
Have you talked to James?
OPHELIA
I tried. It went about as well as you wouldd expect.
HAYLE
I’ll probably have better luck. You said you saw her last night?
OPHELIA
Yeah. Hey, here's an idea; I’ll head along Mulberry, see if I can spot any clues, maybe talk to some neighbors? I bet Angela Bryant saw her drive by, that woman is always up late--
HAYLE
I don’t think so. Isaac’s gonna drive you home, and you’re gonna stay there. You’ve had enough excitement for today, I think.
OPHELIA
Um, sorry? I’m not going to sit down while Kitty’s god-knows-where! What if she’s hurt, or, or scared?
HAYLE
Young lady, are you doubting my ability to do my job?
OPHELIA
(Quietly) I mean, a little.
HAYLE
Ophelia, I’ve known you for a long time, and I like to think I know you pretty well, you and Kitty both. And if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you’re going to try to take this into your own hands. How many times have I caught you hopping my back fence?
OPHELIA
Only, like, three times. Four, tops.
HAYLE
This isn’t the case of the missing garden rake, you hear me? We don’t know quite what this is yet, but if it’s serious business I can’t get a civilian tangled up in it all. Not only for your sake. I need you to think of Kitty. If you start poking your nose where it doesn’t belong, I don’t know what could happen.
OPHELIA
Sounds like a threat.
HAYLE
Jesus, Joy. You know I didn’t mean it like that!
ISAAC
Come on, both of you. Nothing’s getting done just standing here.
OPHELIA
Fine. But you’ll let me know if you find anything, right?
HAYLE
Sure, kid. Sure.
SFX: Ophelia and Isaac walk across gravel.
SFX: Car doors open and shut.
SFX: Street noises fade.
SFX: The engine starts.
ISAAC
How about we go home? I think there’s some pizza in the fridge.
OPHELIA
Okay.
ISAAC
(The most awkward man alive) Just watch, Ophelia. Things are… They’re gonna be okay.
SFX: Recorder clicks on.
OPHELIA
As you can probably guess, I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night. Maybe three hours, tops. I didn’t hear from Sheriff Hayle that afternoon, but later that night Isaac told me that James had no idea where she was, either. They didn’t find her car, cell phone. Nothing. It’s like she was whisked away. Not in Kansas anymore. Now there’s just… hoping and waiting.
Wow, I couldn’t even convince myself for five seconds, huh? I know the sheriff has good intentions, but she’s got to be the dumbest person alive if she thinks I’m going to sit back like a good little girl while she does all the work. I’ve got a good brain and a car and a tape recorder. I know Amsterdam like I know my own brain, and I know Kitty even better. I’ve got, you know, goodness and the power of love on my side. That’s all it takes, right?
Let’s get ‘er done.
SFX: Recorders click off.
SFX: The light chatterings of a crowd.
HAYLE
I’d like to thank everyone who came out to this preliminary search. As you know, Kitty Scott has been declared missing as of yesterday, presumably since very early that morning. Now, Kitty is no longer a minor, so no Amber alert has been issued, but her safe recovery is still an APD priority.
We will now be breaking into small groups of two or three to comb the area between the Scott residence on Birch Street and Foxhole Road. We’ve passed out maps with individual areas highlighted. Those will be your search areas. The whole thing should be about five square miles. If you find anything suspicious, please let the police department know as soon as possible, and an officer will be dispatched. Sound good?
SFX: Murmurs of agreement from the crowd.
LIAM
Hey, Ophelia! Uh, Fee!
OPHELIA
Liam? Hey.
LIAM
Do you have a search partner yet?
OPHELIA
Well, I was with my uncle, but I think he’s gone off somewhere. You can be with me, if you want.
LIAM
Great, thanks.
SFX: They start walking.
SFX: The sound of the crowd disappears.
I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry. About this whole thing. I know you’re best friends and all.
OPHELIA
Yeah, we’re pretty iconic. Dynamic duo, kind of thing. Sundae number two.
LIAM
It really sucks, then. That she would just leave like that.
OPHELIA
So that is what people are saying. That she’s a runaway.
LIAM
I mean, yeah. Just from what I’ve heard, it doesn’t seem like she had a lot of Amsterdam spirit.
OPHELIA
That much is true. She doesn’t.
LIAM
But you don’t think she ran?
OPHELIA
Even better. I know she didn’t.
LIAM
Then what happened to her? Maybe it’s just me, but if it were my best friend, I would rather she have run away than anything else. Better out there and free than here and hurt, you know?
But I’m sure she’s fine!
OPHELIA
I know that Kitty wouldn’t leave voluntarily because I’m still here. She wouldn’t run away. Not without me. Kitty is in Amsterdam, and I’m going to find her. Just watch.
SFX: Outro music.
NARRATOR
This episode of Have You Seen Me? was written by Emma Quinn and directed by Lauren Miles. It starred Emma Quinn as Ophelia Joy, Tobias Paul as Liam Summers, Gina Moravec as Sheriff Hayle, Jared Bruett as Isaac Joy, Lauren Miles as the Igloo Employee, and featured Kashia Ellis-Taylor as Kitty Scott. This episode was recorded at Redhawk Radio with sound production by Mikel Prater.
If you like what we do and want to support us financially, please consider becoming a donor on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. [EDITOR’S NOTE: We have now switched over to a per-episode payment schedule] Go to patreon.com/hysmpod to learn more. If you would like to support us emotionally, consider leaving us a rating and review on iTunes. Follow us @hysmpod on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, or at Have You Seen Me? Podcast on Facebook. We would love to hear from you.
Thank you for listening, and keep your eyes open.
SFX: Outro music fades.
#hysm pod#hysm#Have you seen me#have you seen me podcast#transcript#podcast transcript#everyone does all their lines so neatly#except for me (emma) lol#the burden of talented friends
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Solaris Caelum (6)
Sandalphon shows up fashionably late and shakes things up.
Mirrors in reblogs.
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6. Burning Ring of Fire
True to Asuka's word, she had taken Rei shopping the next day, along with Shinji, Kaworu with Kaji acting as chaperone. By the time they got home with their spoils, it was well after noon and Asuka, Shinji and Kaji entered the apartment to find Misato sitting at the table, eating her usual fare of instant ramen. She straightened up and said, "Did you two have fun?"
"Mhm! Finally got Rei to wear more than that school outfit! And we got them both, y'know basic necessities." Asuka smiled, preparing to take her single bag of items to her room.
"It was fun," Shinji added with the hint of a smile.
"You should have come along, Katsuragi," Kaji grinned his trademark grin at her, "I wouldn't have minded seeing you try on some new clothes!"
The only response Misato gave was grumbling that sounded a bit like 'what a pig'. Asuka, noticing the tension, piped up, "We got some swimwear, y'know. Just in case."
Misato frowned, "You and the other three are on duty, if you're talking about the school trip. I was going to mention it at dinner tonight,"
A small silence went over them until Asuka sighed, "Well, I saw that a mile away. Glad we all figured that out in advance then."
Misato beamed, "Good because you two can spend it studying!" she took a pair of floppy drives from her pocket and brandished them, "Both your test scores are lacking! You should know I get these sent right to me!"
Asuka groaned. She had seen this coming but it wasn't any more pleasant than last time, "Kanji is just so difficult!"
"Which is why you two can study!"
Asuka couldn't tell Misato that one lifetime hadn't drilled it into her and this one probably won't either but she really wished she could. "Hmmm...well, I'll do that..," she paused for dramatic effect, "...later!"
And with that, she marched off to her room, bags in hand. Shinji watched her go and said, "Don't worry, Misato. I'll go study."
Misato smiled softly, "If you wanna take a little bit before you go too, I don't mind. Just don't wait until the last minute like Ms. Soryu is bound to do."
"I heard that!" Asuka's voice came from her room.
Misato laughed softly then looked back to Shinji, "Anyway, I want you to have as much fun as you can nowadays."
Shinji nodded slowly, "I understand..." before walking to his room himself to put up his clothes.
He was stopped in the hallway by Asuka coming out of her room with a bag over her arm, "Shinji!" she cried with a devilish grin.
Shinji cringed but asked, "What is it?"
She held up her bag which Shinji could see her newly acquired red and white striped swimsuit in, "Let's go swimming! NERV has a swimming pool, right?"
"I mean, I think..."
"Sweet! Grab those swim trunks we got and let's go!"
Shinji blushed, looking away, "Do I have to?"
Asuka scowled, "Technically, no. But I'd like the company."
"Just you?"
Asuka had to fight to not grin wider, "Unless you'd like me to invite Rei or even Kaworu."
Shinji sputtered, "N-no! I wouldn't...I wouldn't want to inconvenience him!"
"I think I could ask him to wrestle a tiger with us and he'd ask me where's the tiger. So no, I don't."
Shinji fidgeted, quietly wrestling with the decision. Asuka patiently waited, as she already knew what the answer would be. She could play Shinji like a fiddle. "I'd like that..." he murmured.
"Sweet, let's round him up!"
"How about Rei?"
Asuka paused and asked, "What about her?"
He shrugged, "I'd feel bad about excluding her."
"Then let's go get them!"
First, they went next door to Rei's, Asuka knocking on the door when they did. There was no answer. She furrowed her brows and knocked again. Still nothing. Shinji offered, "Maybe she's out and about?"
"I guess so," Asuka said, walking down to Kaworu's apartment. She wondered if Rei not being at home was the norm. She never paid enough attention to her last time to know.
"Or she had to go to NERV...for some reason..." he shrugged slightly. That was very plausible but Asuka said nothing.
Kaworu answered his door and grinned at them when he did, "Hello! Just saw you, what is it?"
"We're going swimming!" Asuka declared.
He looked behind him at the bags that were still on his table, "I haven't really gotten a chance to put those away..."
"Good! Then we're not interrupting you!"
"...alright. Let me get something to swim in," he conceded.
Asuka was the first to change and went ahead of the boys. She was pleasantly surprised to find Rei swimming laps in the pool. "Rei!" she called.
Rei paused, looked at her then swam on over. Asuka met her at the water's edge, "Lucky seeing you here, huh?"
"I suppose so. I swim here often."
"I'm here with Kaworu and Shinji. Decided to take a break before Misato made me and Shinji start studying."
Rei nodded and pulled herself onto the edge. Asuka took it upon herself to sit by her and an idea came to mind. "Hey, Rei, can you keep a secret?"
Rei blinked, "Unless you wished it, I can carry it to my grave."
Asuka tried to not grimace but flinched anyways. She regained her composure, "What if I told you I'm pretty sure Shinji had a crush on Kaworu?"
Rei blinked again, "A crush?"
Asuka blinked back, "You don't know what that is?"
"No one has told me."
"Well, it's uh," Asuka wrung her hands as she tried to think of how to explain it, "It's when you like someone. But not just as a friend. Like you feel very happy around them and want to be close to them. You wanna date them."
Rei looked at the water as she processed this, "And a date is?"
"A date is...well, you spend time with this person and it's romantic. Different than hanging out with a friend."
"I think I understand. So Shinji desires this of Kaworu."
"Pretty sure."
"Why have you told me this?"
Asuka shrugged, "It's killing me keeping it to myself. And I know you wouldn't tell. Maybe you can help me push them together!"
That was basically Asuka's reasoning on it. The idea itself was a whim but she doubted Kaworu would mind her telling Rei. And if he did, he'd never have to know.
Rei went to answer but immediately went silent when Shinji and Kaworu entered. Shinji was glancing at Kaworu out of the corner of his eye, unable to look at him. Kaworu was oblivious to it. "Hi Rei! There you are," he waved to Rei.
Rei waved back and without much more of a word, dipped back into the water to do her laps. Shinji sat at the edge but Kaworu ran past, leaping into the water. He resurfaced, laughing, "Come on, guys!"
Shinji mumbled, "I'm not good at swimming..."
Kaworu smiled, "Don't worry. I won't let you drown."
Shinji nodded slowly and slipped into the water at carefully as possible. Asuka stood, "Well, look at this boys! I might not be able to go diving in Okinawa but I can here!"
She jogged back a few feet then ran at the water, leaping at the last second and cutting through the water like a hot knife through butter. When she resurfaced, Kaworu was clapping. Shinji asked, "How'd you get so good, Asuka?"
"Training regiment over in Germany. Swimming was my favorite part actually."
Shinji turned to Kaworu, "Did you have a regiment like that too?"
Kaworu shook his head, "Not really. I remember learning to play piano but that doesn't really help synch, now does it?"
"Are you any good at piano?"
Kaworu shrugged, "I'd like to think so."
"I can play cello," Shinji deflated a little, "But I don't think I'm any good."
"Do you like playing cello?"
Shinji furrowed his brow at the question, "I guess so."
Kaworu beamed, "Then that's all that matters! Me and you can play together sometime."
"Really?"
"Of course."
Asuka tried to not look too smug as she listened in. She paddled away a little so she'd look inconspicuous. Rei swam back by her, looking from her then the boys, "They seem...happy."
"Just according to plan."
Rei's mind made an uncomfortable comparison to Commander Ikari and she shook her head to clear it. That would not do. "So what do we do now?"
"We wait. They will come to terms with it when they do."
Rei nodded, glancing at the boys. Shinji asked Kaworu, "Say, I saw you had a note on your locker yesterday?"
Asuka perked up and listened in. Kaworu tilted his head, "I appear to have a secret admirer. So I wrote back. Basically just they should come say something to me. They seemed shy though."
Shinji looked away, unable to look him in the eye, "What will you do when they reveal themselves?"
He shrugged, "We'll just have to see who they are then."
Asuka laughed softly, "And see, we will, Rei."
They next day, the kids weren't scheduled to come into NERV. But things moved on. The bridge team along with Fuyutski overseeing an investigation to Mt. Asama. Fuyutski muttered to their right as he looked at the screen. One it was a orange haze with an oval-shaped shadow in the middle. "This isn't that clear. I can't really tell what we're looking at."
Aoba commented, "The report we received from the research lab on Mt. Asama did say this shadow is suspicious. I'm inclined to agree."
"Oh no, I do agree."
Ritsuko turned to Maya, "What's the Magi say about this?"
"Fifty-fifty its something we need to look into."
"Like an Angel," Fuyutski spoke what she had on her mind into being, "Is someone there?"
"Captain Katsuragi's already on site,"
Technically Misato wasn't scheduled to come into NERV either. That morning she was awoken with the command to catch a VTOL to the Mount Asama Research Laboratory and to take someone with her. That someone was Hyuga who she looked over the shoulder of as they lowered a probe into the volcano. "Not yet. Another 500 feet, please."
One of the lab's operators protested, "It's too deep."
She didn't bother to look at him, "If it breaks, we'll replace it."
The operator sighed, knowing better to protest and did as requested. Hyuga reported in, "We're monitoring a reaction."
Misato leaned over and said, "Begin analysis."
"Yes, ma'am."
The computer hummed as orange text scrolled across it. From the probe audio on a lab's operator's computer, there was a dull metal crunch. Hyuga's screen came to a standstill. The operator reported, "The probe has imploded due to extreme pressure."
Misato grimaced but asked Hyuga, "Did you get it?"
"Barely made it. It's a pattern blue."
Misato studied the image on the computer screen of something that looked like a fetus suspended in an egg, "No doubt. It's the eighth angel."
She stood straight and cried, "As of now, this lab is sealed off! It is under NERV jurisdiction for the foreseeable future! Until then, any and all access to the outside world is prohibited and all records of the past six hours are classified!"
She glanced back at the screen, at the fetus Angel. Direct action was to be taken and right away. She walked out of the lab, taking the satellite phone from her pocket of her coat. Once she was sure she was away from listening ears, she dialed Aoba and launched right into her request, "Request an A-17 for Commander Ikari. Top priority."
"This is an open line, you know?"
"I know, so hurry up and switch to a scrambled line!"
Unfortunately for Commander Ikari's peace of mind, the call came right before a scheduled meeting with the Committee. He did tell the Captain to do what she deemed fit but still, he was late. So he had little choice but to explain himself. The Committee did not tolerate a lot of things and lateness was one. It made them feel like they won't the most important thing to Ikari. Not that they were but they didn't need to know that.
One of the Committee had cried, "A-17?! You plan to launch an offensive!?"
Another piped up, "Unacceptable, Ikari. It's too dangerous. Are you so ready to forget what happened fifteen years ago?"
"I am well aware," the Commander said, "This is an opportunity to switch from a defensive position to an offensive one for the first time."
Keel Lorenz, at the head of the formation said, "The risk is too large."
"I am sure you know how important a live Angel sample would be compared to the dead ones we've studied."
The committee was silent as they thought about it. "Just know we do not tolerate failure," Keel warned and with that, the holograms of the Committee winked out.
Fuyutski answered to himself, "Failure? If we fail, it means the destruction of the human race. It is not an option."
He turned to the Commander, "You're really sure of this?"
From behind his gloves, Commander Ikari smiled, "I have faith in the Captain's ability to see to the Angels' destruction."
The next day found the four Children in the command room, being briefed on their next operation, which was not an immediate launch. It would be refreshing if Asuka hadn't already gone through this song and dance. "So that's an Angel?" Shinji studied the image of the fetal Angel.
"Yes," answered Ritsuko, "It's a sort of chrysalis prior to reaching the adult stage."
Shinji still looked confused. "Like a butterfly," explained Kaworu.
"This operation's main directive is to capture this Angel. We must capture it alive and as close to its original state as possible. If we can't, we will destroy it immediately. Understood?"
All four said, "Yes, ma'am," but were also in their own thoughts. Asuka herself was thinking about the past iteration of this operation.
"Now for the actual pilot assigned to this operation...," Ritsuko trailed off, looking through her clipboard.
Asuka stole a glance at Shinji. He looked uncomfortable and glanced away from Ritsuko. Asuka's lip quirked ever so slightly up. You're not the one doing this...I hope, she thought. Even if someone else was put on, she'd insist she was to do it. It wouldn't be out of character.
"Asuka will carry out the operation in Unit Two."
She grinned, "Sure! Should be a piece of cake!"
Ritsuko nodded, acknowledging her, "Asuka is more experienced as her training involved deployment in harsh environments. While this was all in theory, it's better than Shinji's utter lack of experience involving this."
Asuka thought experience being the reason she was chosen was an amusing reason but said nothing. Ritsuko didn't know the half of it.
Rei piped up, "And me?"
"Unit Zero is incompatible with the special equipment we'll be using," Maya answered.
"Thus, Rei and Unit Zero will remain at headquarters on standby. In case of attack," Ritsuko finished.
Rei nodded, holding her blank facade. But under it, worry gnawed at her. Leaving her friends behind was...upsetting.
"I'll be here, if you're worried," Kaworu said to her before turning to Ritsuko, "...right?"
"Of course. Shinji will come with Asuka and serve as standby. But there's a good chance you'll just be standing around...no offense, Shinji," she answered.
He laughed nervously, "None taken..."
"Anyway, since an A-17 has been ordered, we'll scramble immediately. So get ready. Asuka, the plugsuit has been left in the locker room by the room we're fitting 02 with the equipment. Meet me outside when we're done."
Asuka grimaced but did as she was told.
She wasn't looking forward to this operation for a couple reasons and the plugsuit was one, as frivolous as it was. Once she had it on, she walked outside, playing up studying it, "Doesn't feel any different."
Without looking up from her clipboard, she gestured at her, "Try pressing the switch at the right."
With another grimace, she did as she was told. The plugsuit swelled up until it it was fully expanded, leaving her uncomfortably wedged between the walls. Ritsuko did not look up still as she walked to the next room. Asuka followed, squeezing herself through the entrance and suddenly very ready to get into the plug.
She frowned at her Evangelion in its own protective suit, "Poor Unit Two..."
"I don't think it would mind," came Kaji's voice from the catwalk above.
"Kaji?! Why are you here!" she cried, legitimately surprised as she had forgotten that detail. Why was here here?!
He chuckled, "To see you fight with such a gallant figure!"
She gasped, "You're making fun of me!"
Rei piped up from where she was standing, "If this embarrasses you, I shall go in Unit Two."
"No!" she snapped.
Rei's expression didn't change but she flinched slightly. Asuka felt a wave of guilt wash over her, "This is my mission and no one else is gonna do it. I will deal with it."
"How mature of you," Kaji smiled warmly at her.
She found herself smiling back before she turned away, preparing to board the entry plug. Kaji had faith in her so she would as well.
The flight to Mount Asama was quiet which left Asuka a lot of time with her thoughts. Mainly, going over what happened last time. Obviously, the chance for divergence was there as the last Angel demonstrated. So she thought of it was a loose framework to reference. She smiled at herself at how professional she was with this.
If things went as they did, it would be as simple as suggesting the coolant plan right off the bat. Ritsuko had explained the equipment's properties right before they left so the information was something she'd feasibly know. All she had to do was follow the plan and be ready for the Angel to break free. Since it inevitably would.
Once there, her and Shinji were unloaded from the jet and she was loaded right onto the crane and told to standby the edge of the crater. They had to finish final checks on the Units and equipment which wouldn't take long.
There was nothing to do as she waited so she asked, "No Kaji, huh?"
Misato was immediately riled up, "That jerk won't be here because there's nothing for him to do."
Asuka fought back a snicker, "Well, he'll just miss how awesome I'll be!"
Unbeknownst to her, Kaji was riding a trolley up the mountain with a woman, one of his contacts from the Japanese government. She did not look at him, "With an A-17 being ordered, that includes a freeze of all NERV's assets."
"Mhm," Kaji nodded, "I'm sure there are many people who will be put out by that."
"Why didn't you stop them?"
"I have no excuse. The order was official."
"But if NERV fails, it will mean the end of the world."
Kaji looked up at the peak of the mountain where NERV was set up, "They're not that arrogant. They wouldn't have allowed it to be called if they didn't have faith they could do it."
The woman looked at him out of the corner of her eye, "You have faith in the children?"
"I have nothing but faith in them."
Overhead jets streaked across the sky. The woman commented, "And it appears the UN does not."
Back at the peak, Shinji had seen the jets too, "What are those?"
"The UN Air Force is on standby alert until the mission is completed," Ritsuko explained.
"And if it isn't?" Shinji asked warily.
"They're here to clean up if we fail,"
"How will they do that...?" Asuka asked lowly, knowing the answer already but figuring Shinji wouldn't ask.
Almost too casually, Ritsuko explained, "They will use N2 depth charges to take out the Angel and us with it."
"That's terrible! Who would order that!" Shinji cried.
"Commander Ikari."
Shinji leaned back in his chair, digging his teeth into his teeth lest he say something he'd regret. The same thought was going through Asuka's mind as she hissed through her teeth. She had a lot of words concerning the Commander but her luck, she'd get called out for insubordination.
Misato's voice came over the comm, "Operation is a go. Asuka, are you ready?"
"Yes, ma'am. Anytime you are."
With a lurch, Unit Two was lifted off the ground and Asuka was forced to switch to action mode. The crane slowly lifted her over the edge and she found herself looking down into the crater. Had she been this nervous the first time? She swallowed thickly and said to herself, "Go time."
Misato still felt that terrible dread she felt every time she called the pilots into battle. Still, her duty called for her to push it away and that she did. "Launch," she commanded.
With another lurch, Unit Two began to descend. As she got closer to the lava, her nervousness grew but Asuka pushed it away. With little fanfare, Unit Two reached the lava and began to go under. The sensation was weird, not at all like the diving Asuka had compared it to last time. There was no grace in the lava, it was too thick. Immediately, visibility plunged as all she could see in front of her was an orange haze. And no doubt it would get worse.
She took a deep breath and looked at the monitors on her screen. She reported in, "Current depth is 170. Speed of descent is 20. No problems detected. Visibility is zero. I'm switching over to CT monitor to check that."
Even with that, all she saw in front of her was a red haze, "Visibility with CT monitor is no more than 120."
"Alright, Asuka. Keep us updated," Misato said.
"Roger."
She listened as the techs counted her depth, scanning the lava as she did for any sign of movement. The orange haze did not change. Maya said over the comm, "Depth is 1300. Estimated target level."
"Asuka, can you see anything?" Misato asked.
Asuka gave the area one last good scan with her eyes before checking her screen, "No reactions detected. Must not be here."
Ritsuko sighed, "It seems the lava current is faster than we thought."
"Which means the target's velocity doesn't match our predictions," Hyuga said.
"Hurry up and re-calculate then," Misato looked back out over the crater, "Continue the operation. Resume descent."
Hyuga knew better than to question Misato but that didn't stop him from glancing at her. Her face was a mask, hiding how she truly felt. Of course, she also could be just that determined. Hyuga looked back at his screen as the machine re-calculated the Angel's location. Maya continued counting Asuka's depth.
One of the tech's voices drifted over the comm, "A crack has occurred in the second cooling pipe."
Asuka glanced at the ceiling of the entry plug, as if she was looking at the pipes, "Hang in there."
Maya reported, "We're over the maximum allowed depth."
"And we haven't made contact with the target yet...," Misato turned to the comm, "Asuka, are you alright?"
"I'm doing fine. Just can't wait to be out of here."
She nodded, "Keep going. Asuka, when we're done here, we'll hit up that hot spring near here. Just hang in there, alright?"
"Will do."
Asuka already knew Misato wanted to kill the Angels, even moreso than anyone else. Ironically, this was about the time last time Misato said she had been at ground zero at Second Impact. Anything else, she had never told her. Asuka made a note to ask about it lightly.
A snap alerted her and she was helpless to see her prog knife fall into the depths of the lava. Moments later, she heard one of the techs, Hyuga. speak up, "Miss Katsuragi, any more of this and something bad may happen! There's a human on board this time."
Misato shot him a glare but he didn't back down. She said coolly, "I am in charge of the operation. Proceed, please."
Asuka piped up, "I lost my prog knife. What if the Angel hatches before I can get it out?"
"What do you suggest?" Misato asked.
"Shinji throwing me his."
Misato mulled over the idea then shook her head, "No. It would delay your descent and we would risk losing it. We want you out as soon as possible."
Asuka gnashed her teeth. A good point but one that might not even be valid. "What if it does hatch?!"
"We'll deal with that if it happens," Misato said in a tone that meant 'I am not changing my mind'.
A few moments passed and Asuka stewed in her anger and the uncomfortably warm entry plug. She perked up as a shape made itself apparent in the lava. "I can see it!" she cried, readying the cage.
"Alright, prepare to capture," Misato said.
"You have one chance since both of you are being moved by convection currents," Ritsuko said.
Asuka smirked, "I won't miss."
She held out the cage, watching like a hawk until the egg was in her grasp. She deployed the cage, seeing it light up faintly in the lava and the egg inside. "The target has been captured," she reported, unable to keep the gleeful tone out of her voice.
"Nice one, Asuka," Misato said and Asuka beamed. She couldn't be that angry at her.
"We're bringing you up," Misato continued and Asuka could hear the faint creak as it began to pull her back up.
She leaned back and sighed, letting her relax at least a little. Shinji's image appeared on her screen, "Are you alright?"
"Never better! It was easy!" Asuka smiled at him.
Shinji smiled back, "I'm glad."
"Let's just hope this is the end of it."
Back at the command center, Ritsuko turned to Misato, "Looks like all your tension let loose all at once."
"You think?" Misato quirked an eyebrow at her.
"You were scared too about this operation, huh?" Ritsuko asked.
"Well...yeah. If we handled it badly, we'd have had a repeat performance."
Ritsuko nodded, "Of Second Impact, yes. We don't need another one of those."
"Still..." Ritsuko looked at the graphic on the screen of Asuka ascending, "...Asuka seems really worried about it hatching."
"Right...we might not be out of the woods yet..." Misato looked too at the screen.
Leaving the lava was an odd experience and it contributed significantly to Asuka's anxiety. She had been watching the egg like a hawk since she got it. It had been quiet and still. One would think she'd feel relief but all she could wonder was when it was going to break out. There was no way it wouldn't. She wasn't that lucky. "What the plan now, Dr. Akagi?" she asked.
"We're going to transfer it to headquarters ASAP to be held and studied. You and Shinji will stand guard until we can do that."
"Alright...good," Asuka eyed the egg as she was lifted from the crater.
It was brilliant red and shiny, just like an Angel's core. There was not a blemish on it and it shone in the sun. Through the glass-like surface, she could see the shadow of the Angel. There was another lurch as she was let down onto the ground by the crater. "You can put it down if you'd like while we wait, Asuka," Ritsuko said to her.
"I'd rather not if it's the same to you."
Ritsuko raised an eyebrow, "Alright, Asuka."
Moments, treacherously long passed, with no activity by the crews outside bustling to get the jets prepared for the trip back. Shinji had stepped closer to study the egg, "It looks like a core," he said over the comm.
"Almost makes you wanna stab it, huh?" she asked.
"No! Ritsuko will kill you!" he cried.
She rolled her eyes, "I won't stab it until I'm told to, alright?"
Inside the cage, the egg shuddered, a cry coming from it. Asuka froze. No! Just as she thought, it was hatching! It had just taken longer this time.
Ritsuko cried, "Not good! It's starting to emerge! Much sooner than we had predicted!"
"Can it hold it!?" Misato asked.
"There's no way the cage can hold," Hyuga answered.
"Asuka! Jettison the cage into the volcano!" Misato cried.
"No!" Asuka yelled, an idea forming in her head.
"That's a direct order!"
"No, I mean it's better if I don't! The Angel must be adapted to the lava, right?"
Everyone in the control room went silent in thought. Ritsuko nodded, "Only a logical way of thinking."
"And this way me and Shinji can fight it with more room."
Misato nodded, "Alright, new orders. Take it as far from us as you can then engage as soon as possible. Shinji, take a rifle and give Asuka your prog knife."
Shinji took his prog knife from his shoulder pylon and handed it over. Once Asuka had taken it, he sprinted for the weapons cache which was already open. He took a rifle from it and ran back after Asuka who was waddling away as fast as she could. She hissed, "Is there any way to get this off?"
"Not in a timely manner," Ritsuko answered.
"Scheisse," she hissed.
"Here! I'll take it!" Shinji took the cage from her and took a running leap off the mountain, leaving Asuka blinking in surprise. She shook her head with a soft smile and took off after him.
Shinji hit the ground and the egg cracked ominously. He disengaged the cage and brought his rifle up to his shoulder, firing a volley of shots into the egg. Asuka had done her part bravely, now it was his turn to do his. Determination quelled what nervousness he had felt.
The egg lit up with a brilliant light and Shinji threw his arm over his face to shield himself. The light died down and the Angel propped itself onto its front arms, somewhat clumsily. It looked straight out of ancient times and was obviously not adapted for land. If Shinji didn't knew better, he'd think it was confused. Then with surprising strength, it launched itself at him.
It bowled him over, pressing him against the ground with its sheer weight. Its arms grabbed onto his arms and squeezed. He yelped, "Get off!" and drove back his leg and kicked to dislodge it.
The Angel was unfazed, pressing its mouth against his Eva's face like a kiss from Death. He yelped again and a crushing pain shot through his face. His armor cracked under the pressure. "Get off, get off!" he kicked at it again, finally dislodging it enough to get his rifle arm free.
He pressed it against its throat and let loose another volley of shots. It howled in pain as it was blown off him, landing against the ground hard with a squeal. He fired another volley, backing off as he did. It was unaffected and scampered after him.
"The cavalry is here! But she needs you to keep it still!" Asuka cried as she slid down the mountain.
"Alright!" Shinji discarded the rifle and circled the Angel. It attempted to track him but he was moving too fast for it. Once he was behind it, he pressed his foot into it, holding it down. Even out of its element, it was strong and he found himself struggling to hold it down.
Asuka got over, looking just as clumsy, and drew the Prog Knife, driving it into the skin. It refused to give for a moment but then sunk in. She grinned and cut down the length of its back, intent on tearing it apart and finding the core if she had to.
But the Angel has other plans. With renewed strength, it pushed them off then launched itself at Asuka, knocking her over. Unlike Shinji, she wasn't likely to get up any time soon. She hissed in fury and stabbed it in the back. It squealed in pain and pressed its mouth against the glass, it cracking and splintering under the pressure. "Damn you!" she screamed, stabbing its back in a frenzy.
Still, it did not relent, holding on stubbornly. "This is going to take too long. Shinji!"
"What is it?!"
"Run up there and get a canister of coolant!"
"Why?"
She smirked, "Thermal expansion."
Shinji had already taken off running but asked, "What do you mean?"
Asuka paused to try to pry off the Angel to no avail, "When things heat up, they expand and when they go cold, they contract. The Angel is tough because its suited to a hot environment."
"But a cold one will get past that because it will contract and become brittle!"
"Right!" She smiled, "Exactly it!"
She tried once more to pry it off but it only squealed in response. A long crack ran across the glass. This was the only thing protecting her face. If it latched on and wasn't stopped, it would crush her Eva's skull in a minute. An idea formed in her head and she began to rock back and forth. The Angel thrashed but this only helped her efforts in getting it onto its back. She began to stab it in the belly which was more yielding. It disengaged in surprise. She had to be fast if the plan was to work.
She grabbed its arms and held it down, leaning back so she was out of range.
"I'm back!" Shinji yelled, stopping by her and holding a white canister with a hose in it.
The Angel lunged and Asuka screamed, "Stick it in its mouth and turn it on!"
He shoved the hose in, right before it connected with Asuka again. He turned the knob on it and immediately it began to flood the Angel, its skin freezing over. Asuka sank her knife into its belly which yielded easily, cracking as it did. She tore its skin away, a familiar red sphere glimmering inside. She grabbed it and squeezed.
The Angel screamed in pain and thrashed but Asuka hung on. Finally, a resounding crack went through the area and the Angel went still. Asuka stood shakily, "Get clear!" she yelled.
She tried to run back but her legs wouldn't obey her. A flash of terror went through her as the Angel's corpse began to glow. Shinji grabbed her around the waist and took off, not quite at a run but still fast enough. A bright light washed over them, pushing them both over, Shinji on top of Asuka.
The command center lost contact. "Are they alright?!" Misato cried, looking over at Hyuga's screen.
Hyuga scanned the screen saying nothing until it came back up with a ding. "They're alright. The Angel is dead."
When it faded, the kids were no worse from wear. There was a crater behind them but the mountain was unharmed. Shinji rolled off of Asuka and began to apologize, "Asuka, I'm sorr-"
"Don't apologize!" she cried, "The Eva would have been damaged worse if you hadn't! I could have even been hurt! How about you?"
"Oh, I'm fine. Just sore everywhere."
"I'm not much better," she paused then said softly, "Shinji, thank you. Not just because of that but for taking the egg down here and keeping The Angel occupied."
Shinji beamed, "O-oh...alright. You're welcome."
Misato came in over the comm, "Thank God, you're both alright. We'll get you out of there ASAP then go over to the hot springs, alright?"
Asuka smiled, "That sounds lovely..."
Asuka sank into the water with a sigh, "I needed this..."
It was sunset by the time they had gotten everything over with and were finally out of their plugsuits. "So did I," Misato smiled, turning to look at the soaps behind her, "Huh, no body shampoo."
Asuka stood and yelled, "Shinji, toss us the body shampoo!"
"Oh, alright!" a few seconds later, it came sailing over the barrier.
Asuka moved a few inches to the right, the bottle falling harmlessly in the water, "Thank you!" she yelled back, opening it and working up a lather in her hands.
"Be glad you probably won't be in LCL anytime soon," Asuka said as she scrubbed it off of her.
"Oh, I don't envy you," Misato replied, washing herself as well.
Asuka took the body shampoo when she was done, tossing it back over the barrier. "Ow!" Shinji yelped and she couldn't help but laugh.
"What happened to the camaraderie?" Misato asked, smiling.
"I didn't mean to," Asuka innocently batted her eyes at her.
Once they finished bathing, they sat at the water's edge, watching the sun dip below the horizon. Asuka stole a glance at Misato and the scar stretching across her chest. "Oh this?" Misato gestured to it, "I got it in Second Impact."
"I was wondering..." Asuka paused then continued slowly, "You were at there then?"
Misato raised her eyebrow, "How would you know that?"
"I mean, everyone knows about that the Katsuragi Expedition was there. What they were doing there?" Asuka shrugged, "Who knows."
Misato chuckled, "That makes two of us."
Asuka tilted her head, "How do you not know?"
"I didn't really leave my cabin. My father invited me along, probably to bond with me or to upset my mother. I wasn't happy though. He invited me on a work trip where he wouldn't see me..." she frowned, "I somewhat regret being so angry though."
Asuka frowned, "Because he didn't make it."
"Not just that..." she looked down at the water, "I wouldn't be alive if he didn't do what he did. He put me in the last capsule there. It was terrible...he was barely holding it together yet he saved me."
"He loved you," Asuka breathed, memories of her own parents coming to mind.
"Yet, I'm still so angry..." Misato paused, "I shouldn't talk to you about this. You're just a child."
An old feeling, annoyance, reared its ugly head but Asuka pushed it away, "I shouldn't have asked."
She sighed, "But you know all about my past, don't you?"
Misato quirked an eyebrow, "Yes. It's part of my job. This isn't going to be a 'you know mine so I should know yours', right?"
"No, no. I just wanted to clear it up."
Misato looked back at the sunset as it slipped behind the distant mountains, "It's ancient history for both of us. We shouldn't let it bother us."
Asuka nodded slowly. Some things needed to be let go. She'd do that later, after all of this was over.
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I finally caved and bought myself a pair of magic earplugs.
I murder earbuds. I spent the years 1999-2016 inclusive destroying pair after pair of earbuds by getting the cord wrapped around something, or the bud caught under a heavy thing in the bottom of my bag, and yanking. I'm moderately fussy about earbuds in the same way I'm moderately fussy about shampoo -- which is to say, not very, but I do need something at least one step above cheap. My very favorite ones were Sony MDR-E9s, which were $10 a pair for a good ten years, and were absolutely everywhere until Sony broke my heart by discontinuing them. I ruined about a pair a month, on average. RIP, all my pretty blue earbuds.
I graduated to Bluetooth earbuds when I got tired of knocking headphones off my noggin when practicing with my hoops. I tried braiding the wires (and at one point the actual Sansa Clip MP3 player) into my hair, but there's no way to do that and also keep the pads on or the earbuds in while I'm moving. You have no idea how much time you spend untangling yourself from your goddamn headphone cords until you don't have to do it anymore. Not having a tether always running from my head to my bag got me down from $10 a month to $35-40 once or twice a year, which was nice. They survive me long enough for the battery or USB port to flake out, which as cheap as I am, is about six months.
Generally I got the ones with a wire linking the two buds. Acesori is nice for the (very low) price, as is Phaizer. (The magnetic backs are a nice touch -- they're meant to stick to each other when you wear them around your neck, but the buds are light enough that they'll also stick to, like, the fridge, or the side of my clothing rack, even with the USB charge cable hanging off of them.) I wanted the magical musical earplugs, but when I started looking around for them, AirPods were $160 when you tried to buy them without an iPhone attached. That's about $120 more than any sane person ought to be paying for a set of tiny speakers, no matter how snazzy they are. No. Just, no.
I finally drove another set of Phaizers into the ground, so I went looking around on Amazon, and lo and behold, true wireless earbuds are down in the $35-40 range now. I have trouble convincing myself to spend money on just about anything, but I really do use these things every single day, and I go mad without a music player, so I gritted my teeth and clicked the order button.
My main thought is, "I'm gonna lose these damn things someday."
MicroSD cards have already gotten down to the point where you could accidentally insufflate the equivalent of the Library of Congress, and I have several times had to play hot-and-cold with my earbuds to find where I put the fucking phone down. ("My podcast is still running, it has to be in the house somewhere.") Now I have little plastic things smaller than my thumb joint that are streaming music into my ears from my tablet, that is... somewhere on the bed? And running Google Play Music, so it's actually spooling data from servers in, I have no idea, California? Iowa? The Marianas Trench? Who knows. It just finished playing something Samira Saïd recorded in Arabic like twenty years ago.
I'm training myself to put them back into the case every single time I take them out of my ears. I've made it like three days and I still know where both of them are. So far, so good.
I bought these, if anyone cares. I have no idea why they all insist they are for iPhone/Samsung; Bluetooth is Bluetooth, and they play fine with a really rather nice Lenovo IdeaPad Touch, a perfectly acceptable Kindle Fire 7, and an Alcatel OneTouch "smartphone" that rides the short bus to phone school. The case is also the charger; each bud is supposed to get 3-4 hours of play on a 45 mAh battery, with an additional 650 mAh reservoir in the case, which should be enough to cope even with me.
They're about 98% as awesome as I thought they would be.
The sound quality is solidly "$35 earbuds". They're not hyperintelligent Bose noise-canceling studio headphones. You are not going to master an album on these. On the other hand, they're pretty good earplugs -- that's how they stay in place. Any drivers with halfway decent bass response are going to sound pretty good when you jam them directly into your ear canals. The tannoy on the T sounds like the grown-ups in the Charlie Brown cartoons when I have them in, but the tannoy on the T sounds mostly like that when I have them out, too. The important part is that I can hear my music, and I cannot hear the conversation you're having on your speakerphone in the middle of the train car about that embarrassing medical condition, and that's all I care about.
The downside is that they are not especially robust, and they're too small to have any controls on the earbud itself. The ones with the linking wire have the charge port/battery/buttons on one bud and I'm pretty sure the Bluetooth module is in the other; these have to have a Bluetooth chip and battery in each earplug, which doesn't leave a lot of room for anything else, so the only control on the earbuds themselves is a single click button. One click on either bud for play/pause, and press-hold to turn them on or off individually. You have to do everything else on the actual widget that is streaming the audio. I know most people are already staring at their phones all the time, but mine doth not internet, so it's usually in my bag, and I have to dig it out to skip a song.
The earbuds have a very anxious-preoccupied attachment style with respect to the phone, and hate intervening walls, but I suspect I probably could have solved that issue by spending another $10 on them. In theory, they're Class III devices, which should have a range of about 10 meters, but in practice they're twitchy and have no real shielding, so if there's anything weird like power lines or catenary wires around, they get more like 5-10 feet. I shouldn't ever be farther from my bag than that, but still.
The most interesting glitch is one I didn't expect. Instead of both pairing with the device, one bud pairs with the device, then the second bud pairs with the first. If there's any lag at all -- because, I don't know, the impedance of my head has suddenly changed? -- the audio gets ever so slightly out of sync. Like, milliseconds. It's not noticeable at all with music, where the stereo field tends to be wide and the background very busy, but it makes audiobooks or podcasts sound odd.
If it's not specifically done as a radio drama, voice-only things tend to be recorded as if they're mono, from a single mic with no spatial orientation, but mixed down as two identical stereo channels, because everything expects stereo nowadays and it's easier than trying to dig through the menus for that one weird setting. The result is a voice track that seems to originate from a source that's "nowhere"/somewhere the middle of your head. When the buds slip out of sync, the slight temporal shift effectively becomes a slight shift in stereo phase, which suddenly either makes the voice seem to have a physical location, or be coming simultaneously from a source on either side, depending on how long the delay is.
It's interesting on a technical level, but mildly annoying, so I've taken to just sticking one of the buds back into its case if I want to listen to podcasts. Which is what I do most of the time with the ones that hang around my neck anyway, so I can hear the stop announcements on the bus. Ain't technology grand?
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A Life Through Actions, or Who I Am is What I’ve Done
When I was fifteen, my grandfather passed away. To date, he had been the closest thing I had had to a father figure in my life. My own father wasn't really in the picture (for a lot of reasons that boil down to "two people who probably shouldn't have had kids at that point in their life did anyway, and it destroyed them both"), so it was kind of a big deal. So I collapsed in on myself and shut down, and stopped going to school altogether, and got expelled for excessive absences some weeks after I turned 16, and had to go through summer school to get back in.
Two weeks after the start of that new school year, though, I wasn't feeling well, and I decided that I needed to stay home because I was sick. This happened to be the second time that had happened (I'm still not sure if it was emotional bullshit or a legit physical thing), and my mom decided that I had become unreasonable, and sent me to live with my father (who had come back into the picture during that summer) in a completely different state. I uprooted my life literally overnight. It wouldn't be the last time. (Fun fact: one thing that may have made a larger difference, may have not: on my way from my old home in Michigan and my new home in Illinois, I took too long while packing and my father was thus unable to take me to a football game at the Big House in Ann Arbor. Who knows? Maybe that would have put us off on a better foot and paved a better path. It's been almost fifteen years now, so it doesn't matter, but it's a bit of food for thought.)
During the summer before my senior year of high school, now in Illinois, a friend of mine introduced me to this website that was fairly popular among people our age. It was called Gaia Online. (Don't sweat this, I'm laying some groundwork here.) At that point, I was 18, pining hard for the recent ex-girlfriend of one of my closest friends (but not for long), and living in a homeless shelter, as I'd been kicked out of my dad's house less than a week after I turned 18.
The next summer, a few months after I'd graduated high school, I got word that my grandmother was on the cusp of passing away, so I was bundled back to Michigan with the intent that I would stay a week to attend the funeral, and then return to Illinois to resume...whatever it was I was doing. (Waaaaaay too much drinking and smoking, of various substances.) Instead, I stayed in Michigan for the better part of a year, couching it with friends.
While I was there, I cultivated a few relationships on said website, Gaia: the first, with a guy who shares a lot of my fractured understanding of the world, and the second, with a woman I'd met through friends, and the next summer, she came up to visit and we spent most of a three-day period in a hotel room. On the last day, I had a dispute with my best friend at the time that was fairly bad, and I decided then and there to leave, and I moved, on the spot, to North Carolina, with my future wife (and also future ex-wife, because life's just funny like that).
About a year and a half later, we'd bounced from place to place, not just in an apartment sense, but in a North Carolina -> Arkansas -> Oklahoma -> Alabama sense, and we were living with her mother at the time. Now, my former mother-in-law is a crazy drunken evil person, so it was difficult on the best of days, but in late December, shit came to a head and she drunkenly decided to try to force us to live in the uninsulated garage (and shit, I know it's Alabama, but my ex was *pregnant*, and it did get a bit chilly that winter), and when we balked at that, quite reasonably, I felt, she flipped the fuck out and kicked us out of the house altogether. So we bailed on Alabama, and drove back up to Illinois. (We considered Michigan, but I had had previous experience with the homeless shelter structure here, and to this date I'm not even aware if one exists in the Detroit Metro outside of the city proper.)
Fast-forward to a year and a half later, where two things happened, in some order: the friend I made on Gaia years before introduced me to a little webseries that had been popular on Something Awful, and was starting to spawn similar series: Marble Hornets; and I went up to the local community college and took a calculus placement test with the intention to start school in the fall. I did not.
A little over a year after that, my ex left me and forced me out of the apartment with a restraining order. I, being in no state of mind to really do much of anything rational, ended up in a psychiatric hospital for a little over a month. While I was in there, I made a contact with a local support service provider, but nothing really came of it. When I got out, having nowhere to go, I entered the homeless program. Again.
During the first winter I was homeless, I met a dude who seemed chill and shared my love for comic books and other generally nerdy bullshit, including things like Red vs. Blue. We became friends, and when he got a place at the end of the next summer, he let me crash there sometimes when the weather was really harsh. He also introduced me to another friend of his, who also became my friend.
After the second summer I was homeless, I was put back into contact with the service provider I'd talked to two years before, in lieu of going back to the hospital, and they got me into housing, where I still am. The next winter, I started school. At the beginning of the following fall semester, in the second or third week, someone joined my calculus class from another section that they couldn't actually be placed in. I took note of them, and after a couple of weeks, they took note of me and we started to hang out occasionally.
About eight months later, at the end of the spring semester, we had taken another class at the same time, and I was at their house for some gathering or another, when their stepfather happened to be outside and asked if I could use some extra work helping his company pull wires.
That was three years ago. I just attended an A/V industry expo in Chicago today, and in a few weeks I'll be able to put "professional audio engineer" in my work information on Facebook. (Technically I probably could have done it sometime early last year, but I didn't.) I have a nine-year-old daughter that I never see because she and her mom live across the damn country from me, and my own piss-poor living situation has led to my parents straight up not letting me know when she's in town. I have ridiculous trust issues and maybe four real friends. (Who they are depends on the day, sometimes.) And I have this life because of one decision.
Except I don't, not really. The decision to not go to school when I was fifteen may have been the thing that opened the door, but I walked through it. Others walked through it. It's odd that I can trace the course of my life to one thing. To my giving up on trying to be a social being. I accept that. I accept that things would have been different, would have *had* to be drastically different. I would have graduated a year earlier than I did. I very likely would have gone to college. I would probably have lived at home with my mom until I got a degree, and then I would probably have started teaching math, or been cajoled into going to law school or some shit. At least, that's the best guess I have playing out from that timeframe.
But I'm okay with that not being my reality. Changing the decision points in my life might not feel like they would have made a huge difference at times, but they would. Staying in Illinois after high school wouldn't have changed me ending up with my ex-wife, I was already on that path before I left. But it might not have happened at the same time as it did. If I hadn't bailed to North Carolina, I would have eventually (probably) moved down there eventually anyway. Even if I didn't move to Oklahoma, we almost certainly would have ended up in Alabama sooner or later. But without that experience, I wouldn't have a Zippo that's probably the only actually significant "thing" I own, because it's been with me longer than anything else I own that isn't clothing. If we'd moved to Michigan instead of Illinois when we came back north, I wouldn't have been in the places I needed to be to have anything else happen. I certainly wouldn't have come here to visit.
If my friend hadn't introduced me to Marble Hornets, I wouldn't have met a community of people that supported me when I needed it most, but then cast me aside. If I had gone to school when I originally intended, I wouldn't have been in a calculus class a few years ago that introduced me to someone I've worked with for years. If I hadn't met my friend in the homeless system, I wouldn't be on the verge of starting a second YouTube channel with him and our other friend.
Everything that I am is the sum of the things I have done. All the little things that don't seem to make much sense at the beginning, add up to the picture of a complete person. Broken, dejected, volatile, sure, but complete.
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Peter Todd on the Essence of Bitcoin
Audio interview transcription — WBD068
Note: the following is a transcription of my interview with Peter Todd. I use Rev.com from translations and they remove ums, errs and half sentences. I have reviewed the transcription but if you find any mistakes, please feel free to email me. You can listen to the original recording here.
You can subscribe to the podcast and listen to all episodes here.
In this episode, I talk with Bitcoin legend Peter Todd. We talk about the essence of Bitcoin, why it worked whether other attempts at digital currencies failed as well as key topics such as fungibility, lightning and why other projects are scams.
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Interview Transcription
Interview Date: Saturday 26th Jan, 2019
“Anyone who understands economics and finance and how markets work will be a maximalist because it is more efficient to have one currency than a bunch of ones.”
— Peter Todd
Peter McCormack: Hi there, Peter. How are you?
Peter Todd: I’m great, thanks.
Peter McCormack: Thank you for coming on the podcast. I’ve wanted to talk to you for quite a long time. I followed a lot of your work. And, one of the things that really stood out for me is when I went on your blog, and not only did I not understand the content of your articles, I didn’t even understand what they were about.
Like there’s a certain level of technical competence that I think you have to have to kind of understand this work. And, I then read about a story that you were emailing Hal Finney and Adam Back when you were at like 15?
Peter Todd: Yep.
Peter McCormack: I’ve got to ask about this. What’s the background? How does a 15-year-old start talking to Hal Finney and Adam Berk about Hashcash? What’s the journey to that?
Peter Todd: Well, the great thing with the Internet is, no one knows that you’re dark, and even when they do, they don’t care. And I mean, if you go back far enough, as a young kid, I watched a lot of Star Trek and thought the ideals of democracy and freedom of speech, they’re all said and well and good.
And, my dad’s an economist by training. So initially, really early on, I got interested in the freedom project, which is a decentralised censorship resistant publication network. Long story short is, it lets you make a website that no one can take down, lets you publish.
And I thought, “Oh! That’s really cool.” And, got interested in it, did a little bit of work on it. So actually, first time I kind of worked on creating an exploit, was actually against Freenet. The work I created a tool to go and map out the interconnections of different nodes, so those are all well and interesting.
But, I think the big issue with Freenet network, was, as I was thinking to myself, “Well, obviously the next step is you need decentralised money. Just being able to publish your thoughts isn’t enough. Political movements need money. Take a look, political movements for the marginalised, the poor.
If you’re a rich person, you have the way of funding the things you need to fund to make your political movement happen, whereas the poor don’t have that. We are often kind of talking about it in reverse, the rich will gain politics, and so on. And, reality, I mean you can’t kind of stop that. But, for the disadvantage, you definitely need that option to be able to move money around. You need to be able to without surveillance.
So, I think long story short is, somehow or another, I wanted upon a mailing list, the Blue Sky mailing list, which if I remember correctly, it was advertised on the Freenet mailing lists. So, I signed up, we started talking about stuff, and I spent a lot of time trying to invent Bitcoin, and like many people completely failed at it.
And, it’s really interesting looking back and seeing just how wrong I was, in almost 180 degrees offset what was the right answer. And, a lot of people, I think, had that experience.
Peter McCormack: So you tried to invent a Bitcoin?
Peter Todd: Yeah. I was one of many, many people trying to create decentralised currency. And, really failed at us.
Peter McCormack: What was version?
Peter Todd: Well, I think … I mean, I didn’t have a proposal, ’cause I realised all my thoughts on it weren’t going to work. But, I think what I caught so wrong was I had thought about Hashcash in terms of the thing that controls the creation of money. And, that’s not actually an important thing. The creation of money is not the important thing. It’s preventing double-spending that is.
The creation is just a onetime event. Allowing money to be moved consistently, and accurately without double spend, is actually the critical thing. And, unfortunately, because I tied proof of works to the creation so tightly, I never really came up with the concept of, “Well hang on.” No, no. We tied proof of work to the changes in the ledger, to make sure it’s difficult three or at the changes.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Peter Todd: And, my thinking on my kind of solution where we have some kind of decentralised database, how do you do that? I don’t know. It can be attacked, it can be civil attacked. And, I just constantly shot down ideas, and could never figure out, how do you make this work, when the answer was juts so simple. But, it was 180 degrees opposite what I was working on.
Peter McCormack: But, I’m guessing you’re saying it’s simple ’cause the answer was Bitcoin, right?
Peter Todd: I mean, literally someone could have sat down … Like honestly, it’s to the point where one tweet from the future, saying how Bitcoin works, would probably have been enough info for me to have created Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: But, what is the key, the one key element then?
Peter Todd: Using proof of work to make changes to the ledger difficult. That one sentence, I think, encapsulates the key part of Bitcoin that we were missing back then.
Peter McCormack: So, it’s more the game theory than the code?
Peter Todd: I don’t even … The point is, I don’t even think the game theory part is a really critical thing. Like, absolute core of it that you must have is tying proof work to changes to the ledger, to make it expensive to change. You could probably have Bitcoin without even a financial reward. It would still work far better than any of the crazy ideas people had come up back then.
Peter McCormack: So, the Bitcoin white paper comes out, you’re obviously are aware of it, you read it. Is it obvious at the time or?
Peter Todd: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: Oh, immediately you could?
Peter Todd: Yeah. For me, I believe I read the Bitcoin white paper for the first time, like late 2009. And, I remember, you know when I read it, I was like, “Oh, shit! I should’ve thought of that.” It was actually, for me, it was opposite many people.
For me, I read it, and this is obviously gonna work. And, only later did I come up with reasons why it wouldn’t.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Peter Todd: Whereas, for many people, they read and think, “How would this ever work?” And then, later they’re convinced it does. But, I’d been primed, ’cause I’d already worked on this and tried very hard. So, when I saw it that’s … It just was so obvious to me. “Oh, I was wrong. This was the missing piece”
Peter McCormack: How, as a 15-year-old, do you make the leap from realising that there is a need for money to finance certain projects and things, to it must be having to be a decentralised type of money that doesn’t already exist? How do you make that leap?
Peter Todd: I mean, the idea of e-money and cypherpunk stuff around that was not exactly like an unknown concept. I partly even read Sci Fi stories at the time talking about that. The notion of credits is really sort of a common term in Sci Fi stories. I mean. it’s just …
And also, money itself has a property. I mean, sure, it’s issued by the government, but paper money I can give to you, and no one can stop me. The idea that money would have to be controlled on transaction basis is this very new thing, pushed by big companies who want to go make money off this, and Law enforcement who would like to surveil everyone. This is the opposite of how money should work. This is not the status quo.
Peter McCormack: So, this Bitcoin worked then, or is it working?
Peter Todd: I mean, in terms of doing what money should do, it’s a hell of a lot closer than say PayPal. It’s a lot closer to what PayPal was meant to be. I mean, people who started PayPal wanted to create censorship resistant e-currencies. They didn’t have the tech to do it, and they didn’t have the legal frameworks to get away with it.
So, they didn’t. But, that was the initial concept with PayPal. So, Bitcoin’s a lot close to that. I mean, Bitcoin has scaled boldy problems. But, the core thing of what Bitcoin does is much closer to that than alternatives, certainly closer to things like Liberty Reserve, which of course got shut down.
Peter McCormack: Yeah, I guess there’s always been the centralised problem, right?
Peter Todd: Yeah. Centralisation kills things if they have adversaries. Often centralisation’s way to go. I mean, I have approached it myself, called Open TimeStamps, which is absolutely centralised. There are four calendars of the Open timeStamps system. I run two of them, two other people run another two.
It’s a centralised system. But, Open TimeStamps doesn’t really have adversaries in this way that Bitcoin does. And, no one’s going to profit by shutting down Open TimeStamps in the way you would with Bitcoin.
And also, because Open TimeStamps relies on Bitcoin for the truth of the timestamps, the central third parties on a position to fake things.
Peter McCormack: Okay. So, I wanna … I should’ve asked this at the start. I love asking this question, ’cause it’s so simple. And, the first time I heard it was when Epicenter asked Adam Berk, and it also blew my mind, just hearing it set out. So, I’m just gonna ask you again. What is Bitcoin? The answers are always different as well.
Peter Todd: Well, I’ll give you a different answer.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Peter Todd: Which is, Bitcoin is a shared data structure, that we make artificially expensive to change, by destroying energy every time we update it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I’ve heard that one like four times. No. I’m joking. Yeah. I’m only joking. Okay. Okay.
Peter Todd: Bitcoin is an elephant, and it’s pink with like little spots.
Peter McCormack: I love the energy angle. So, you’ve been around since the start, right? It’s 10 years and-
Peter Todd: Not quite.
Peter McCormack: Pretty much.
Peter Todd: I mean, I’ve known about Bitcoin, since nearly the start. But, I actually got more active into it a bit later. And, the reason is, I mean, relative to many other developers, but the reason is because when I first learned about Bitcoin, well, I’d just started a new job at a crazy startup. And then, I was crazy enough to then also try to do a physics degree, while I was at the startup. So, I didn’t exactly have a lot of free time.
Peter McCormack: But, I mean, I’ve gone through the exercise of going through old mailing lists, and old Bitcoin talk forums. And, there’s a number of names I recognise. A number I don’t. And, I’ve seen you in there commenting and talking. So, you were there like pretty much since the start.
Peter Todd: I mean, I started working on this stuff full time 2014.
Peter McCormack: 2014.
Peter Todd: Which is a lot earlier than many people.
Peter McCormack: But, having been there, through the whole experience, how do you take it all in, because even though you knew it would work, there’s a difference between knowing theoretically it would work.
Peter Todd: Well, remember, I thought it would work.
Peter McCormack: You thought it would work?
Peter Todd: And then, I started realising, hang on, this isn’t as good as it sounds.
Peter McCormack: Right. Okay. We’re going to come back to those things. But, 10 years on is still exists. It holds billions of dollars in value. At one point, hundreds of billions. There is the talk of ETS. We have futures. We have so much happened. Did you foresee all this?
Peter Todd: I mean to be perfectly honest, this it doesn’t really surprise me that much. I mean, you always gotta be a bit careful. I mean, your memory of what you thought five years ago can be a bit vague. But, I don’t think if you’d asked me that many years ago, would it? Could it get to where it is now? I would have said no.
I think I would have said, “Yeah, I mean, this is plausible. It is an obvious utility. Digital gold is obviously useful. So, if things don’t fail and it continues to grow, I mean, surely could get to this point.”
I think the more interesting question is, well, how big could it get? And, I would actually put relatively small limits on it. We’re not gonna see … First time I bought Bitcoin, I bought it for 20 cents of a Bitcoin.
Peter McCormack: Right.
Peter Todd: And, I tell you, that was the best financial decision of my life. The worst financial decision of my life was only buying $20 worth.
Peter McCormack: Hold on. What is that? That’s like a hundred Bitcoin. Yeah. But, we won’t have hindsight.
Peter Todd: But, the thing with that is looking at how that grows. I mean, how many zeros is that times? Call it 10000 times growth or whatever, depending on what price you pick. We’re not going to get another 10000. The world economy is too small for that. We’re not that far away from having more money in Bitcoin than in the US dollar and gold combined.
Yeah. That’s if I remember correctly, it’s like a hundred X. That’s pretty … That’s a lot smaller than 10000X.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. But, I’m not convinced you care that much about price beyond the wider kind of a PR [inaudible 00:12:17] and brings people into the system. I don’t think you’re that. I don’t see you as somebody that is incentivised by the price.
Peter Todd: Well, I mean price is a funny thing, ’cause people often say, the price doesn’t matter. And, that’s definitely not true. Bitcoin security model relies on it being valuable. There is no getting around that. And, it probably would not work, if the price was said a thousand times less. Someone would probably attack it for kicks and giggles.
Peter McCormack: So, you were saying you started to look at the reasons why it won’t work. What were the main issues that you found, and where the things you attempted to try and break?
Peter Todd: Well, really, like the one big thing for me was when I realised, “Oh yeah. Scalability really matters, and this stuff doesn’t scale.”
Peter McCormack: Right.
Peter Todd: I figured that out, you kind of says embarrassingly late. But, in terms of like how long I was looking at Bitcoin seriously, fairly early. From the time I started looking at Bitcoin seriously, to when I realise this, and how important it was, we’re probably talking like three or four months.
And, that was while I was at a startup, doing a university career at the same time. Simple truth is, I just didn’t pay that much attention to it for quite a few years. And, when I realised that, well, I got very active and tried to solve this problem. And, also importantly got very active in debating people who thought it wasn’t an issue.
Peter McCormack: So, were you debating Rodger?
Peter Todd: Oh, he wasn’t around but around then.
Peter McCormack: Like you were going about earlier, okay. So, who would be debating this?
Peter Todd: Gavin Andresen, and actually literally debating Gavin Andresen on Bitcoin talk forums was probably the thing that got my name up there.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay. Because-
Peter Todd: There is a thread on Bitcoin talk where I disagree with Gavin Andresen, and it just spiralled.
Peter McCormack: And what? The disagreement was what? Block size?
Peter Todd: Exactly.
Peter McCormack: Okay. What did he want?
Peter Todd: His viewpoint was, yeah, he can … If I remember correctly, his exact viewpoint was you can have an unlimited block size. And, that was just such an extreme position. I laid out, very carefully, why this did not work. And, it wasn’t the first time there’d been a disagreement on that, but at least for me personally, that was the timeline when, “Hey, this is Peter Todd, the guy who disagrees with Gavin Andresen on this. And, these seem are a good point.
That’s really why my name got known. And, things just built on there.
Peter McCormack: But, there are different reasons why … Well, people give different reasons for why a larger block size won’t work. Some people I’ve heard discuss it because it doesn’t scale in computer power, ’cause of nodes.
Peter Todd: Remember, the notes Gavin’s view there was an unlimited block size. He thought the incentives were such that miners would voluntarily restrict the size of their blocks, even though they could make the biggest blocks if they want. And, I laid out basically with a bit of math and game theory why this is a bad idea.
That wasn’t even like a bigger picture. It’s just this is broken, because miners can do this when they create a bigger block, they’re going to push out the competitors. That’s kind of the arguments in a nutshell. And, the simple reality was, I was right on that. And, that’s just so well supported by academic research since. And, Gavin was just dead wrong.
Peter McCormack: And, has he ever come back and said, “You were right”?
Peter Todd: Nope.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Peter Todd: I mean, there’s a reason why he’s no longer involved in Bitcoin in any real sense. He just wasn’t competent enough to do it.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. There’s probably more than one reason as well, right?
Peter Todd: Supporting Craig Wright was probably not the best move. But, all that stems from the fact he just isn’t that competent at what he was doing.
Peter McCormack: And, I guess it requires a certain level of competency to be able to work at that level. And, it doesn’t feel like there’s a lot of people at that level.
Peter Todd: No, definitely not. No. Most programmers in general, do you not have the capability to work on this stuff, because they don’t think it adversarially. It’s a tough thing for people to imagine. Most people are just not used to imagining, “All right, what are the bad things that could happen?”
Whereas for whatever reason, I, and a few other people, are good at that. I’m quite happy to imagine all the ways people could screw people over.
Peter McCormack: What do you make of Luke’s ideas around a smaller block? Is it 300K?
Peter Todd: I think his technical arguments for that are good, but I think he doesn’t understand the social side of that, which essentially makes it impossible. And after all, I mean, let’s face it, Luke is a crazy evangelical Catholic. He has very, very, very strong beliefs that are ultimately driven by very strongly held principles.
He is, to us, an evangelical crazy Catholic. But, that comes from him having very well defined beliefs and very strongly held principles. And, the logical conclusion of that is his belief system.
And, I think what Luke … I’m not even sure I could say that he fails to see, ’cause he may very well understand this perfectly, but you know why Luke would say something like that is, he has the principles, and he takes it to his conclusion. Whereas the way I’d put is, “Yeah. I mean, he’s not wrong, but it just ain’t gonna happen.”
Peter McCormack: Right. Okay. Where do you envisage the block size being in the future? Do you think it was gonna stay as it is, or do you think at some point there’ll be a change?
Peter Todd: Oh, I think it’s plausible actually for the rest of life of Bitcoin, we’re not going to see another block size increase. And, the reason why I say that’s plausible is ultimately things lightning and whatnot work pretty well. And, what would it be right now? Like 15 transactions per second or something is actually a fair amount.
And, the way people use Bitcoin, like after all, for Bitcoins be wildly successful, it doesn’t necessarily mean that people are actually making payments on it. Bitcoin as a store of value can be an incredible success story.
I think the bigger threat we would have is actually Bitcoin’s inflation schedule, ’cause in the long run … And, this isn’t a short term thing, but this is like 10, 20 years down in the future, there might not be enough inflation to pay for security.
Peter McCormack: I just wrote that down, actually. So, I’ve got a couple of questions about that. So, if it’s just a store of value, and there wasn’t enough Bitcoin being moved around for fees, and the mine of rewards have dropped, that’s a huge risk for the security of Bitcoin, right?
Peter Todd: Absolutely.
Peter McCormack: And-
Peter Todd: But, that’s a risk like 10, 20 years in the future. That is a very long time. And, by then, who the hell knows what the risks are?
Peter McCormack: But Peter Todd thinks adversarially, and I think that goes into the basket of things that you probably are thinking about now.
Peter Todd: Yep. Well, let me look this way. If I were able to go back in time, and redo Bitcoin, ’cause of course, I am Satoshi as is everyone else.
Peter McCormack: I’ve read it. I’ve read you invented Bitcoin at 12.
Peter Todd: Yeah, yeah. If I was able to go back in time and create Bitcoin from scratch, I would have made it have a perpetual say 0.5% or 1% inflation rate.
Peter McCormack: Okay. That’s controversial, for some people.
Peter Todd: I’ll put it this way if you can’t afford like a 0.1% or 0.5, or even a 1% inflation rate, what the fuck are you doing with your life? It’s 1% a year. So what?
Peter McCormack: So, who have you discussed that with? And, like you don’t have to name names. But, have you discussed that with people? What’s the general reaction? Because there’s no reason for that not to be introduced in the future, right? I mean …
Peter Todd: I think the general reaction is … Well, first of all, Bitcoin right now has what a 4% inflation rate. We’re a long way from any of this discussion being relevant. So, I think the general reaction right now is, it's pushing it to the future. It’s just not a discussion worth having right now.
It’s drama, and of course, you look at my twitter account, and I don’t shy away from that. But, most of the development community wouldn’t really wanna touch the issue. And, I think they’re right. There is no reason to touch this issue until it actually matters.
Peter McCormack: What about if Lightning Network is hugely successful? And, people stop using the base chain, because Lightning is fast, and it’s cheap, is instant. Could we get to the point where there’s no argument to use the basechain, because Lightning is as trusted as the base chain? Do you see what I’m getting at?
Peter Todd: Well, I mean, Lightning security model is riskier than the base chain. It just doesn’t … Lightning, there’s a good reason to use it beyond scale. I mean, Lightning has much better UI experience. But, the simple reality is the Lightning security model is more dangerous than Bitcoin itself, assuming that you’re able to wait for confirmations.
Under certain cases, Lightning can actually be much more secure. I mean, if I go pay you with Lightning, the security of that payment from the point of view of being reversed 10 seconds from now is far better than the main chain ever could be. In effects, it will be better probably what an hour or two into the future.
But overall, if you’re making big payments that aren’t time sensitive, main chain has better security. On the other hand, this idea of Lightning taking my transaction fees, that’s not unique to lightning. Tons of things do this. Exchanges do this. Probably the most payment volume that happens is actually on exchanges. Liquid side chain does this as well. Liquid takes transaction fees away from the main chain.
There’s no end of things that take transaction fees away from the main chain. And, the inflation arguments I would give is very simple. It’s, well, make sure you always have this mechanism to ensure that the chain keeps marching forward.
Even with transaction fees, you actually need this for a kind of subtle to game theory technical reasons. The simple reality is, Bitcoin without an inflation subsidy has a much worse security argument than Bitcoin with an inflation subsidy, even if you have transaction fees paying for things.
Peter McCormack: I haven’t heard you talk about this a lot though, right? So, are you waiting? Is it a case of priorities? Deal with what needs to be dealt with now? And, you’ll bring this up in 10 years?
Peter Todd: Yeah. It’s just isn’t relevant for literally like another 10 years or so.
Peter McCormack: What about 10-minute blocks across the solar system though? When is that going to be a precedent? I read that.
Peter Todd: Well, yes. I did a talk, actually. I believe the title of the talk was a solar powered space miner. Yeah. Solar Powered Space Pirates, a Threat to Bitcoin. And, the simple answer to that is yes, if space travel becomes cheap enough that big mining operations are operating far enough away from earth that the speed of light gets people out of consensus, yeah, Bitcoin’s fucked, and we’ll probably have to increase the block control.
Peter McCormack: And, say are you general evil?
Peter Todd: Yes, I’m a bad person capable of love.
Peter McCormack: Okay. Outside of Bitcoin, ’cause other Bitcoiners are very Maximalist in nature. But, I have seen you talk about Zcash and a theory. Like, what’s your position on alternative coins and alternative currencies?
Peter Todd: Well, the thing is, I’m not a Bitcoin Maximalist. I’m a Maximalist. Anyone who understands economics and finance, and how markets work will be a Maximalist because it is more efficient to have one currency than a whole bunch of different ones. That’s just not a controversial opinion. And, it’s a controversial opinion amongst scammers who want you to go by their ICO.
But, standard non-scam driven, economic thinking, this is not a controversial opinion. This is how the Euro got created. And, there are certainly downsides to not having multiple currencies. The one world currency thing has a lot of very real economic problems. But, they’re not problems that apply to things like Bitcoin.
For digital payments in a decentralised environment, it’s just natural to end up with one coin. Whether or not it’s actually Bitcoin, who the heck knows? But, Bitcoin’s technical design and sort of technical ethos currently are definitely the most suitable for being the one currency everyone uses.
That’s just a matter of like simplicity, reliability, of disinterest in making deep dangerous changes. And, there’s just … Conservatism is a good thing for that store of value. It’s just a pretty obvious set of combinations that mean Bitcoin’s kind of the default there.
Peter McCormack: But therefore, is it good to have competing alternative currencies?
Peter Todd: I mean, it’s not going to hurt things. But, for the most part, the competing alternative currencies are scams.
Peter McCormack: Every single one?
Peter Todd: Well, some are more scammy than others.
Peter McCormack: Is Ethereum a scam?
Peter Todd: Ethereum is a funny example, because the way it was launched, and the way it was promoted, that’s much more of a scam than any of the surf currency itself. Had Ethereum, for instance, been launched. I mean, it’s hard to kind of come up with an example of where this would be possible.
Let’s suppose, hypothetically, somehow launch Ethereum, where it was just an add on to Bitcoin, where somehow the people behind Ethereum were making money off of it. This isn’t really technically feasible, but let’s assume for the sake of argument was. It would still wind up being a scam, even without a separate currency, because they were advertising things that they knew would not be possible.
Ethereum is just a bed of lies if you will. And, I think it’s very unfortunate, ’cause it also means a lot of academics, because they can get grant money from this, and because Ethereum is easy to experiment on. I think it’s pulled down ethical standards of academia.
And, it’s just an unfortunate position to be in. And, this is also … I mean, maybe a good way to explain this is the private chain side of things. Well, some of that’s perfectly reasonable. A lot of the more grandiose claims made are effectively scams. And, it’s sort of a new interesting category of scam where it’s not like we’re directly ripping people off, but rather were lying about what our products can actually do, and we’re getting away with it because it’s security.
And, in security, well I can sell you a magical rock that keeps lions away. How do you know it doesn’t work? There are no lions around.
Peter McCormack: So, what are the main claims for Ethereum then that you think of false?
Peter Todd: I mean, it’s a funny one, ’cause it’s tough to pin down because the main claims were designed to be vague. Claims like this is a world … A great example is the world computer thing. What does that actually mean?
When you start thinking about any reasonable interpretation of it is, no, this is total bullshit. But, it’s presented in a way which is vague enough, it’s tough to argue against. You’ve got to play pin people down on what does a world computer mean? What’s it actually computing?
Now, you ask a normal person, I think, “Oh yeah, computations done somehow on Ethereum.” And, it’s no, that’s not how it works at all. Your Ethereum node redoes the computation. It’s not a computer, it’s a verifier, whereas the sort of general way of building consensus applications I push is client-side verification, which is quite explicit.
Yes, we have this big dataset that your computer verifies. And, other people don’t even have to verify the data. They don’t even necessarily know what it means. They may never even have a copy of it. But, if I want to convince you that something’s true, like I just sold you a house, I give you the data to prove it’s true, and you verify that data yourself, and you come to a conclusion that yes, you now own a house, or no, I’m trying to defraud you.
That is a sane way to talk about block chains. A world computer is not. A world computer is a pie in the sky scam material. And, even Vitalik, I mean he’s kind of admitted, “Well, the world computer stuff was a bit of a red herring.” I’m sorry. The moment you say red herring, and please go and invest in my thing, you’re probably scamming someone.
Peter McCormack: I don’t get the feeling he intentionally scammed somebody.
Peter Todd: You know about his quantum computing thing?
Peter McCormack: No, tell me.
Peter Todd: Well, just prior to Ethereum, he was involved in a quantum computing scam.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Peter Todd: And, essentially what the scam was was they would do simulated quantum computing that would somehow be better than anything else. It just didn’t make any sense. And, his claim is, “Oh! I kind of young, and just had higher hopes for it. That’s all.” No, you weren’t that stupid.
First of all, you were like 19, at university. You knew what this was. You knew this was bullshit. Yeah. The guy’s got the mind of a scammer, basically. He’s got the intentions of a scammer.
He’s very clever about it. He’s not someone who is careless. He’s not someone who gets himself clearly involved in a scam in the way that you can prosecute. But, he’s pushing dishonest stuff. I mean, that’s what scammers do.
Peter McCormack: So, ETH 2.0, I’m guessing you’ve read some of the specs.
Peter Todd: I mean, it’s one of those things where he just go put up a whole bunch of complex shit on the wall to try to be resistant to criticism. I think I believe Greg Maxwell was the one who deserves credit for this. But, he’s pointed out how the general approach of Ethereum crowd is, they put something out, it gets shot down because it doesn’t work. So, rather than go back and fix the problems, they make it more complex.
And, if you keep repeating this, eventually you appear to be secure, not because you’ve actually created something secure, but rather, you’ve created something sufficiently complex, it’s just too much work to criticise.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I mean, I’ve read James Press, which is medium posts recently looking at ETH 2.0. I don’t know if you saw it.
Peter Todd: I might have.
Peter McCormack: I mean, the only thing I could think of when I was reading this is, “This just seems an insanely complicated way of creating a distributed database.” I was written about sharding, and then I was reading about state rent, and that certain things would be on chains. And, I was just thinking, “What’s this for?” I just can’t get my head around it.
Peter Todd: It is designed to be sufficiently complex that you can’t criticise it. Now, on the other hand, if I wanted to explain to you how Open TimeStamps works, I could do that in a morning, including the part where I explain how hash functions work. It is dead simple.
If I wanna explain to you how my proof Marshall Project works, I’d probably have to go spend the afternoon as well. This stuff is designed to be dead simple. I mean, this is why, on my twitter profile for a long time, the pinned tweet was, “A blockchain is a chain of blocks.”
Peter McCormack: I knew that was coming.
Peter Todd: Yeah. Blockchains are not complex things. People try to make them complex things, so they can go sell stuff, or in the case of academic skill, write papers and make them relevant. But, they just aren’t that complex.
Peter McCormack: Yup. And, they have one purpose. Like, Jimmy talks about this a lot. The blockchain has a really good purpose for Bitcoin and money. Nothing else really. And, I’ve tried-
Peter Todd: I actually disagree on that.
Peter McCormack: Well, that’s good, because I’ve tried to be open-minded, and tried to kind of just be as open-minded as a can say, “Okay. Is there something else here?” Like-
Peter Todd: You’ve gotta remember because I define a blockchain is a chain of blocks, I would actually have the viewpoint that, “Yeah. Blockchains are worth adding basically anything.” I mean, the moment you have a data structure, where you even wanna create a backup of it, it might as well throw it blockchain in there so it can update and ensure you have a complete copy.
My Open TimeStamps project, it’s a centralised system that creates timestamps, long story short. Well, one issue with it is if the central servers go down, you want to have a backup of all the timestamp proofs they made. How do you make that backup? Well, currently, you go and go through this HTTP, RPC, restful protocol, total box standard stuff, and he just download one after another.
How do you know that your copy of the back up is the same as mine? Well, obviously you gonna add hashing to it. Well, how are you going to add hashing to it? Well, why don’t you go and make updates, and have one update hash another? Oh, what do you know? We’ve created a blockchain.
Peter McCormack: Indeed a blockchain, yeah. Okay. So, I met with Zac Prince of Block Fight, and we have a long chat about Bitcoin. They do crypto back loans. And, it’s a market that makes sense. But, he also said, it doesn’t make sense when they’re Lending money, say to Argentina, that if you’ve got to lend out Bitcoin because it’s volatile.
He said it makes sense to do a stablecoin. A stablecoin is built on Ethereum. So, whether it’s a scam or not, the fact that people are building things that people are using, how do you sit with that?
Peter Todd: Well, so the point I’d make there is, the stable coin’s built on top of Ethereum. From a tech perspective, that could actually be the right decision. And, the reason why there can be the right decision is, yeah, I mean the infrastructure is there. We know we can throw together something. It doesn’t work as well as it could. But, the tooling’s there, we can get it done, push it out the door.
I’ve literally told clients of mine, “Well, you actually might want to build this on Ethereum, ’cause alternatives don’t exist yet.” We know they can exist, but the effort to actually make it work hasn’t been done yet. And, in all equally, I’d say the stable coin idea is just an obvious no brainer.
You might want to have exposure to this currency. Why wouldn’t you want to have some nice digital way of doing it with a well-defined trust relationship? It’s just not a complex thing to talk about. It has very obvious reasons to, in much the same way like having an ETF, it makes a lot of sense for certain people.
Now, having an algorithmic stable coin, where you try to do consensus, decentralised magic to keep the price stable, there’s a pretty good reason. I think those are impossible. It’ll never work.
But, a trusted stable coin, where you have a central issuer, who you have legal mechanisms to ensure that you get your money back, yeah. I mean, why not? Hell, in some cases, a stable coin that’s actually a total fraud can actually make sense. If I’m a trader, and I want to temporarily move out of a position into a stable thing, and then move into another position, even if the stable coin is a total fraud, and there’s no US dollars or whatever backing it, it can still be useful for me as a trader, because my risk of the stable coin going belly up, and the fraud playing out maybe less than the risk I have of not moving my currency, not moving my assets into that stable currency for whatever reason I needed to.
Peter McCormack: I only see the two use cases. I see Bitcoin and a stable coin. That to me is pretty much all I think we need, personally. I mean, you probably can think of some great other examples.
Peter Todd: Well, if you’re talking about money, and things related to money, I think you’re a lot more right than people would want you to be.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. Well, do you know why? Because other people want to invent other uses for blockchain, ’cause they want to monetise it. And, other people want to shoot down stablecoin-
Peter Todd: So, I guess the way I’d put it is, if there’s a money component involved, I think you’re ultimately right. If there’s not a money component involved, and we’re just trying to do something related to some asset or some data structure, which for a reason we what consensus over, I mean, yeah, block chains basically always make sense.
But, that’s because of blockchain is just a chain of blocks. It is not rocket science. I mean, I love the example GET. People say, “Oh, but then is GET a blockchain?” And, my answer is, well yeah. it’s basically a blockchain. It doesn’t quite precisely match the linear chain of blocks in how we use it. But, why GET is a set of hashed things in a direct acyclic graph is essentially the same reason why Bitcoin is a chain of blocks.
I want to make sure that my copy of the source code on my computer is the same as your copy. That’s why Bitcoin is blockchain. That’s why GET has something nearly a blockchain.
Peter McCormack: What about privacy coins? Obviously, I’ll see you tool more about Zcash than-
Peter Todd: Say proof of what?
Peter McCormack: Privacy coins.
Peter Todd: Oh, privacy coins?
Peter McCormack: Yeah. So, I’ve seen you talk about Zcash more than, say, Monero. What’s your position on privacy coins?
Peter Todd: I mean, they make a lot of sense if they work. The only reason I want to talk more about Zcash that Monero is Monero has less wrong with it.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Peter Todd: Monero definitely could, in theory, have less privacy than Zcash. The underlying idea of what Monero is, it certainly has the potential for less privacy than Zcash. But, the Monero people have just done a competent job implementing something with very little drama, and the people behind it all seem pretty ethical. And, there’s very little criticised about Monero.
Peter McCormack: It’s the only other crypto I hold. I’ve got Bitcoin and Monero.
Peter Todd: Yeah. I mean, I hold essentially trivial quantities of Monero and Zcash, enough to use on occasion. But, in theory, Zcash should be better. Its privacy, the potential for privacy’s much better.
Peter McCormack: Is that ’cause it uses Zcash nodes?
Peter Todd: Exactly. Yeah. The difference is, in Monero, your payments might’ve come from immediately one of say 10 different people, and then of course you know a hundred and so on, whereas in Zcash, the moment you do a payment, if it’s a shielded payment, you’re now part of this big anonymity set.
What’s wrong with Zcash is sort of all the implementation details and sort of the people behind it.
Peter McCormack: Wow! So, I interviewed Zooko last week. And, one of the most important questions I think I put to him is I said, “Is a Zcash a company?” ’Cause that’s what it feels like. It feels like it’s a company.
Peter Todd: Yeah, it is, effectively. And, the reality is the way they do … The way they will do Zcash is very explicitly centralised. And, they kind of try to put fake leaves on edge. But, probably it’s a company of a few different people with really dubious ethics. It’s just …
I mean, it’s kind of fortunate, ’cause it’s a scary thing to have. The best privacy tech out there, for that type of use case, run by people who will lie to you.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. And, I’m not surprised that it seems like [inaudible 00:38:40] brothers have a preference to Zcash. It didn’t surprise me.
Peter Todd: Yeah. Well, the thing I think with it is, people in that kind of sphere, they would rather work with people who are not totally ethical. I get the sense this is why Coinbase and Zcash kind of seemed to get along, because they kind of see eye to eye on, “Well, we’re not going to strictly tell everyone exactly how this really works. We’re happy to Futz with stuff.”
I mean, when they did the trustee set up. The simple reality is they botched it. And, rather than just come and say, “Look, here’s where we made our mistakes. Here’s what we’re going to do better.” They just lied. They said it was multiparty set up in. And, the reality is, it wasn’t.
It was intended to be, but due to technical failures, I don’t think you can make that claim. In the Bitcoin world, I think had that happened with the people behind Bitcoin, they would have said, “Look, we screwed up this, this, and this. We’re going to fix this next time. Here’s the timeline where we roughly wanna do it. Here’s why this isn’t necessarily a big deal, et Cetera, et cetera.”
Had Zcash has simply done that, I think Zcash would still be a success. But, that’s not the way they think. They think, “Well, shit, we got to have good PR on this. We’ve got to preserve our money coming in.” And, after all, I mean, they get a ton of money from Zcash. They have incentives to hide flaws, because that’s her income, whereas in the more long term view, would be, “Well, all right, we might lose some money in the meantime, while we lose some market confidence. But, the longterm effect will be people will actually trust us.”
I don’t trust Zooko not to lie me.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I’ve got to say, I trust Ricardo a bit more.
Peter Todd: Yeah.
Peter McCormack: You’re a big fan of Ripple Coin, right?
Peter Todd: Well, I think Ripple’s wonderful idea. You mean Ripple, the original concept to like peer to peer payments, right?
Peter McCormack: I’m on about Ripple Coin.
Peter Todd: Yeah. That’s remarkably scammy.
Peter McCormack: Yeah.
Peter Todd: It’s interesting. So, I, at one point, worked for R3. And, I should be careful what I say here, cause there’s probably NDAs, and they’re a bit … They are not very happy with me. But, long story short, I think what I can say is, initial was working as a consultant, evaluating other coins, and other systems. And, I think their business plan there was let’s just go buy something and let’s package it up and sell it to banks. A perfectly reasonable thing to do, act as middlemen.
Well, they had me analyse Ripple, ’cause at the time, there was a lot of interest among banks. And, I analyse it, and said, “Yeah, the centralised system obviously.” Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For banks, I think, that would have been fine.
Of course, I soon found out, they weren’t saying it was centralised banks. They were just flat out lying about what it actually was. So, when I did a big presentation in front of most of the world’s major banks and representatives from them, they’re like, “Wait, Ripple’s what?” ’cause they’d been lied to.
And, ripple these days, I don’t actually get the sense that’s true anymore. I get the sense that Ripple, the company, has become much more reasonable. But, Ripple’s tied to currency, and they don’t have any ability to get rid of this currency, which doesn’t really … It isn’t needed for technical reasons.
So, I think they’re putting in a very awkward position where there’s rabid fan base of big holders, essentially.
Peter McCormack: Very strange group.
Peter Todd: Yeah. Very, very strange. And, I would not be surprised if … Like as an example in Twitter, you say something about Ripple and the XRP troll army comes down on you. I would not be surprised if, for the most part, that sort of army of crazy people is actually not that involved with Ripple, the company selling things to banks. I don’t think that that dumb.
But, they can get away with it. There’s no mechanism for Ripple, the company, to actually extract themselves from the currency. Like it or not, they created the currency. They own a big chunk of it. They can’t get away from that. And, I mean this is one of the real dangers of creating coins for services. You might get tied to a coin that’s pointless.
Peter McCormack: Well, that’s why I call it Ripple Coin. I never changed from Ripple Coin, because I think it’s important for people … It was like with Bitcoin cash becoming BitCash. The alternative name, I think, was important.
I always call it a Ripple Coin, because I think people have to know, they have to know, it was created by the company. That it wasn’t a gift.
Peter Todd: I mean, it’s worse than that. I mean, last I checked in government, I haven’t looked very recently, the consensus was still controlled by the Ripple company. You can’t get away from the fact Ripple’s architecture is centralised.
The XRP community can say all they want. “Oh, all you know, it’s just nodes. You can go pick a different set.” Well, yeah. I mean, I can go pick a different currency. Unless you and I agree on the same set of nodes, the reality is we’re not looking at the same currency. And, that was really all my paper was.
I just pointed out. Yeah. Obviously, if you pick a different set of central nodes controlling the consensus than me, we can get out of consensus, and all hell will break loose. Thus, the only sane thing to do is pick the same set of servers for control of consensus.
Peter McCormack: One thing I do want to ask you about is because I think one thing, a lot of other alternative currencies have managed to do, whether it’s right or wrong, but by design have been able to create an incentive structure and financial incentives for developers.
Bitcoin is still largely voluntary, or there are some contributions in different ways. I know you’ve had a contribution. But, it’s-
Peter Todd: My point is not voluntary in the sense that developers go unpaid. It’s voluntary in the sense that the currency itself isn’t directly paying developers.
Peter McCormack: Of course, yeah.
Peter Todd: But, the reality is there’s enough money floating around for developers get paid, even total screw ups like me.
Peter McCormack: Are you still working on Bitcoin?
Peter Todd: I’m not working on Bitcoin core. But, I am working on projects around it like Open TimeStamps and Proof Marshall. And, I’ve had surprisingly good success getting paid for that.
Peter McCormack: I guess it depends on who you are though. And, the reputation you’ve built, you can be funded. But, when you say there is funds available for developers, I mean, how do they go about receiving funds? How do they do it?
Peter Todd: I mean, it’s kind of like anything. You do a bit of work, you show that you’re competent, and you find someone who’s interested in paying you to do more work. If you’re competent, and you prove that, the simple reality is there are ways to go get money. It is not the hardest part.
The hardest part is getting to the point where you’re confident. And, the things that us, even in coins which have developer funds, getting money out of those developer funds is surprisingly hard.
Peter McCormack: Right, okay.
Peter Todd: Like Zcash is a great example where the Windows clients for Zcash we’re completely unmaintained because Zcash wasn’t giving them any money.
Peter McCormack: Okay. So, ’cause I sort of say would Luke put up his patron, and I supported them. It just feels like there should be almost like something he shouldn’t have to worry about.
Peter Todd: How? I mean, the simple reality is, having funds in these coins is not a magic solution to that either. Yeah. The bigger problem is more you getting to a position where you’re doing interesting work that’s getting valued. And, if you’re able to do that, and actually contribute, getting that money is not that hard.
Peter McCormack: Is there enough developers coming through? ’Cause we talked earlier about enough of the kind of biggest and brightest minds who can really think adversarially or think outside the box. But, are there enough developers coming through who can we just work on more simpler tasks?
Peter Todd: The impression I get is mostly yes. But, the interesting thing about this is like Bitcoin core itself, that actual core software, I may not be very popular saying this, but I think it’s true that they’ve got good enough developers, maybe a little too many.
Bitcoin core itself doesn’t necessarily need to change that much. And, it can change on a somewhat slower basis than it has. I mean, it’s not really a big concern. The more interesting thing is like all the periphery infrastructure around it. Things like libraries that actually work are well documented and so on.
And, that’s not very sexy work. So, that may actually be the thing where we need more money put into. But, when you look at other coins, which should do over funds, they don’t do a good job with this either. So, it’s not like this is a magic solution that’s proven to work. This seems to be more a solution which has proven to make the people founded the coin a ton of money.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I spoke to Brian Bishop. And, I think he says something along the lines of, “It would be great if some parts of the cost start to become compartmentalised, ’cause it’s kind of a big sprawling mess right now.” Is that correct?
Peter Todd: Oh, yeah, yeah. The fundamental like Bitcoin core architecture is not, I think, how you would do it these days. I think in the context of when it was created, it was probably the right decision to make. Do this very simple thing, which one person can create, and one person can comprehend, and it’s just one code base that’s very easy to review. But, for what we want it to do now, it’s probably not ideal.
On the other hand, I mean, people often think, “Oh! Bitcoin core doesn’t have this feature. It’s terrible.” Well, so what? Just turn on Bitcoin core node, grab the data from it and do whatever you need to do. What do you need to do? Do you need to have an index of transactions? Just follow the blocks and index your transactions. It’s slightly less efficient. But, so what?
Peter McCormack: Even if people who kind of want the base change essentially ossified. Is that the word they use?
Peter Todd: Base protocol is pretty stable. Not quite as stable as say TCP/IP. But, it’s reasonably stable. And, equally, so has the stability of TCP/IP held back the Internet. I don’t think you’d make the case at all. If anything it’s helped it by having the simple thing that works, and you can build on top of it.
Peter McCormack: I wanna ask you a bit about the work you’ve been doing. But, before that just one kind of … I’ll say one final question. I haven’t got through hardly anything here. This has been great. But, I do want to ask you about your views on fungibility, because in doing my interviews, I’ve kind of had two different perspectives.
There are some people who do want fungibility on the base chain. But, there are some like Saifedean wouldn’t. Saif’s view is that we want to say a completely transparent based chain, so we can ensure nobody is operating with say, fractional reserves. Where do you sit in that kind of field?
Peter Todd: I think his viewpoint is technically ignorant there. You can definitely have … I mean, as an example, ideally, Zcash would be completely non-transparent. In reality, it’s nearly entirely transparent, ’cause you’re actually using the shielded transaction features is hard and discouraged.
But, in theory, Zcash could be completely shielded. And, even then, it’d still be easy to be transparent. The better argument to make there is all the technology for privacy on base chains is potentially dangerous.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Peter Todd: Yeah. Example being, with Zcash, you have that trusted set up. A trusted setup could easily fail. Implementation bugs could easily cause it to fail. In fact, the fundamental Zcash library, the thing that verifies transactions, just prior to release, they found a bug in it that could have allowed a moment of inflation. And, that’s not even like a trusted set up failure. It’s just a simple bug in it.
And, it’s not an easy bug to find. You really got understand math in very deep detailed find something like that, because you’re relying completely on the math to protect you from inflation. Whereas in Bitcoin you’re relying on stuff you could explain to a drunk art student. Speaking about a fine arts degree.
So, I’m a little bias there. I liked this level. But, that’s useful, ’cause it means tons of eyes can see this stuff. When Bitcoin had this some recent inflation exploit-
Peter McCormack: CV bug.
Peter Todd: Yeah. Had that actually being used, chances are alarm bells would have gone off in tons of places, because people are looking at, doing the math, figuring out how many Bitcoins are in existence. Does this number make sense? Any idiot can do that. It’s not hard. For Zcash to do that, you need to re-implement all Zcash nodes. And, it is a nightmare.
Peter McCormack: So, I guess you’re keen on some form of fungibility, but do you … Are you keen on it, say as a side chain or some kind? Like how do you-
Peter Todd: Well, I mean, Lightning adds that. Any add on to Bitcoin that’s scalable will naturally have better fungibility. And, the reason is, to scale, you have to distribute less data to less people. It’s just not possible to create a scaling solution that doesn’t at least add privacy to some adversary.
As an example, Coinbase. Let’s suppose, well, PayPal. Let’s go really out there. PayPal, compared to Bitcoin, has better privacy against most adversaries. If I pay someone with PayPal, North Korean spies don’t know what I did.
Obviously, the US government probably has a full copy of everything. But, most of my adversaries now do you not know that I made that payment, and have no way of knowing. That is categorically better than Bitcoin from that narrow perspective.
If my adversary’s US government, totally different discussion. But, PayPal scales. And, the only way it could scale is by reducing the data available to the bad guys.
Peter McCormack: Okay. All right. Look, we’ve done a lot here, but I do want to cover some of your work. So, when I spoke to Jack Ma, he was like, “Peter’s really busy working on Proof Marshall.” I don’t know anything about it. Can you tell me, what is Proof Marshall?
Peter Todd: Well, all right. So, first of all, my simpler project is Open TimeStamps. And, Open TimeStamps proves data existed in the past. The problem with Open TimeStamps is it doesn’t prove anything about whether conflicting data also existed. An example being, I sell your house. I give you a sign digital document saying, “I, owner of 1234 Main Street sell it to you.”
What you don’t know is if I already sold that someone else. Proof Marshall fixes that problem by … It’s a library to create data structures where you have consensus over. And, what consensus means there is simply, in the definition of selling a house, all the possible places where I could have put that data, you now can see. Thus, you can rule out me selling the house to someone else.
And, how do you do that? Well, you throw in a whole bunch of Merkle trees and hashing. This is … I mean, what’s hard about Proof Marshall is that the strategy for the implementation is effectively taking pointers and abstracting that concert.
Pointers are such a low-level fundamental idea in computer science that just … The low-level mechanics of actually implementing this is challenging and tricky to do well. And, you get a lot of issues. Like, if I’m giving you a math proof that now you own this house, I want to make sure that even if the code or writing that application isn’t that careful, that math proof won’t, for instance, use up all the memory in your system.
Turns out that’s actually a hard problem. It’s not a hard problem for like Bitcoin level reasons. And, this is an economics problem. It’s just, it’s a tough thing to implement at a computer science level, or maybe I’m just not a very good coder.
Peter McCormack: So, what’s your status? Where are you at with the project?
Peter Todd: About two weeks, for sure.
Peter McCormack: All right. Is that this week?
Peter Todd: No. I mean, truthfully, it’s something where I’m always thinking, “All right, I could finish this in two months.” But, two months later I say, “Oh, yeah. I didn’t realise but this isn’t this.”
I mean, as an example, the first version I had, for how it would represent, how it would obstruct a pointer, made the assumption that you always hash the data. And, I did a bunch of work in that, and I was, “Oh, yeah. That doesn’t actually work. That causes other technical problems that, long story short, this doesn’t work.”
Another example was I had this … My most recent implementation had a thing where when you took the data, in processing, and deserialised it, you would make a copy of it. And, I naively thought, “Oh, that’s not big deal. Make a copy of it. It’s all well, and good.” Of course, I go through the adversarial think, I was, “Oh, shoot. Because I made a copy of this, now my API doesn’t have a good way of assuring I don’t run out of RAM, ’cause all of these extra copies.”
So, I had to effectively redesign it so that all the data can be operated on directly. If you’re a programmer, the term I would say is the serialised version of it is identical to what you would process in main memory. Thus, you don’t have to make a copy to process it.
And, this is all like very much in the weak technical stuff. But, to make a robust implementation that works well, you have to solve these problems. And, it’s just hard. And, because it’s still at such a fundamental level of design, having two people work on it once, it’s very challenging.
Peter McCormack: Okay.
Peter Todd: ’Cause if I make a change, I’m usually changing how any of the code works. And now, if I have a partner working with me, suddenly everything they’re doing is broken. Maybe if I was sitting next to a guy in an office, this might go faster. But, it’s just not there. And-
Peter McCormack: It’s a one-man project.
Peter Todd: Yeah, yeah. For now. But, if it works, it’ll eventually work, and long store short is it’ll be a nice library to write consensus applications, to do all kinds of things you want. As an example, you could even implement GET and Proof Marshall to just have a good way of making sure you and I have the same copy code. Certificate Transparency is another example.
When you go to a website, the certificate that proves your talking to the computer you think you’re talking to, like your bank, for instance, that are published in a blockchain. The people who create certificate transparency, of course, hate the term blockchain and probably would strangle me if I said this in front of them. But, the reality is the data structure is effectively blockchain.
In proof Marshall, you could do things like that and … All right. You can do them now, but it’s just a lot less work when you have a library that just does it for you. It’s like … I mean, SQL databases are like this.
Sure. Prior to dimension SQL, you could, in theory, do anything you do with. It was just so much more work to get there.
Peter McCormack: I think I’ve kept up with about a good 50% of today.
Peter Todd: Well, it’s enough to do a 51% attack.
Peter McCormack: Well, yeah. I do wanna do that. I wanna 51% attack. We’re just going to have to do another one another day, ’cause there’s so much more wants to talk to you about. But, there is a couple of final closing things I want to talk to you about. One is just a bit left field.
I’ve noticed you tweet quite a bit about journalism. Why does that get to you so much?
Peter Todd: I think this really comes down to … And, I’ll say straight off, this is an example of not staying in your lane. This kind of phrase going around, stay in your lane, only talk about the stuff that you’re supposed to do professionally, and so on. And, I really don’t care what that for Twitter.
And, a lot of that gets down to, what does it take to have a society of the functions? You have to have people agree on basic facts around the world. And, I think the reason why I’m critical of that, same reason ultimately I’m critical of many scams in the crypto world, where people were saying things, but the projects just aren’t true, and polluting the ecosystem of ideas with false things.
And, unfortunately right now, we have a big problem with journalism where, first of all, it’s not very fun. It’s not well funded. It just isn’t that money to actually pay journalists to do their job properly.
I have quite a few friends who are journalists, and I see this every day. I mean, the timelines they have to operate on are ridiculous. There’s no way for them to do a good job given how fast they have to put out articles with how little help. And, on top of this to make money, you wind up with all kinds of dark practices, like clickbait.
And, when you combine that with the very ugly political landscape of the US, you get really ugly things like Covington, where I think it’s pretty fair to say major media organisation are, “Oh, this is a great story. Fits our narratives really well. We’re going to get a ton of clicks on this. Let’s rush published before anyone else does.”
And, the rush to publish is a really big deal. I’ve been told, directly by people managing media organisations in the crypto space, that collectively people like me are a huge competitor to them, because I can tweet faster than they can publish, and literally minutes matter in this stuff. If they’re not first to publish, they will get less clicks, less views, less money.
It sounds so stupid, but this is the truth of it. And, that pushes a cycle that just doesn’t allow for good research and good work. And, unfortunately, there are no easy ways to stop this. Maybe one of the solutions could be more use of defamation laws, and life moves on. But, there are very like very, very real risks to this for freedom of speech.
Peter McCormack: Yeah. I mean, my last interview that went out yesterday was Andrew Torba from Gab.com. What do you think of Gab? I mean, the content is tasteless. But, do you agree that …
Peter Todd: I’ve never actually looked at Gab’s website itself. And, I’m kind of sympathetic to them. I mean, I think organisations like that should be able to exist. I think the fact that they’ve been deplatformed from payment providers is a straight up antitrust issue. And, they’re not the only example of this.
I mean, the fact of the matter is companies like PayPal, MasterCard, Visa, are able to restrict freedom of speech very effectively. Not as effectively as they could without safe things like Bitcoin. But, the amount of control they have over what content gets produced is very scary.
Where deplatforming ends up is people being able to restrict speech, because they can say, “I don’t like what you’re publishing, and we’re going to cut off your money.” And, you can’t, for instance, do journalism without access to a flow of money to go pay people to do stuff.
And, this is a very, very real issue. What Patreon has done is scary. Now, as a libertarian, I’d say Patreon itself, I don’t have issues with them cutting off people. What I have issues with are the payment providers who have now said, “Oh, you’re trying to compete with Patreon, we’re going to cut you off as well.”
That’s where I think this crosses the line. It’s getting very scary as a society. So again, do I support Gab itself? Whatever. Let them do what they want. But, do I support fighting back at why Gab has a hard time running a business. That’s what matters to me.
And, I’m just not that concerned about people spreading hate on the Internet. I don’t think that’s actually a big concern for society. Particularly when we go see the left’s doing exactly the same thing but in a different context. There’s no like clear moral high ground here. And, obviously, if the left can do this, and society hasn’t collapsed, it’s not necessarily such a bad thing.
And, in some ways that kind of thing pisses me off more ’cause I definitely identify as liberal.
Peter McCormack: Well, yes I do sometimes. But, I was saying to Andrew that like politically, I’ve got no idea anymore where I am, because I’m finding so much to dislike about everyone. But also, there are these certain conservative things I do like, and then there’s a kind of liberal things I like. And, I’m just so confused. I don’t know where to position myself.
Peter Todd: I mean my entire adult life … I live in Canada. My entire adult life I’ve voted for the Liberal Party, which in Canada, the Liberal Party’s what the name suggests. It’s the Liberal Party.
These days I’m not sure I identify with them anymore. I’ll probably still go on voting for them because they’re the best of bad options. But, yeah. And, I think part of it too is like many of the social issues I do care about. Like freedom of speech, and gay rights and so on. A lot of that’s actually kind of solved.
Abortion’s legal in a lot of places. Gay Marriage is legal. The things that I cared about, we solve those problems.
Peter McCormack: Through free speech.
Peter Todd: I mean just through like the way politics moved. The Conservative party’s eventually, “All right, fine. We’ll go along with this.” And then, probably isn’t … At least in Canada, it’s probably not going to get reversed. So, now it’s like, “Oh, do I need to go vote for liberals again? I mean, the things that we’re fighting for gut solve, the things that they’re now fighting for, I don’t agree with. It’s a very strange situation to be in.
Peter McCormack: I think we could do a whole show on this. All right. Just to close out. We’ve had 10 years of Bitcoin. So, we look back. Looking forward over the next 10 years, what are the key things you would like to see happen? And, what are the most important things, not just in terms of code and develop it, but just overall for Bitcoin? What’s gonna be important?
Peter Todd: Well, I’ll give you a very specific answer, which is the things I’m working on with client-side validation like Proof Marshall I think are critical to moving this stuff to the next step. Getting past this narrative of all we need some Ethereum chain, where everything’s in one place, which we knew just doesn’t work.
I think smart contracts are actually really useful. But, they’re not useful done in the way Ethereum people want to do them. It doesn’t work technically. So, yes, this is kind of very narrow answer. But, this is the stuff I’m directly working on. And, I think that’s a very fruitful ground for making new and interesting things.
Beyond that, I mean, I’m sure the Lightning crowd, and so someone will do great work in making payments better and so on. But, on the store of value stuff, just not screwing up is enough to make that possible. So, that’s kind of my answer there.
Peter McCormack: Great. This was utterly fantastic. Thank you so much for coming on.
Peter Todd: Thank you.
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for The Sweet Birthday Boy, Chris “@crankyplier“ Nestor
u get ur bad present early bc i will probably forget on the actual day tbh ): also there’s no returns srry
y'all don’t know it but i lowkey fuck w evthan (u also don’t know that i wrote this at like 3am a few nights ago and it took me like four days to edit and finish it)
Several huffs and noises of disapproval drifted quietly out of the room, repeating every few minutes and a name among the frustrated sounds.
“Tyyyyylerrrr,” Ethan sighs and walks through his room’s doorway to huff exaggeratedly into the small living space of their apartment. “Can’t I just borrow one of your shirts, or maybe you could actually help me?”
“No, because they’d probably be too big for you-” (An annoyed noise is made to interrupt him, but it goes overall unnoticed.) “And it’s kind of your date, not mine, so why should I?” It’s all spoken without even a glance up at Ethan from the sofa, eyes glued to the phone grasped in his hands.
The younger looks back down at the graphic tee currently adorning his upper half, his torso emblazoned with several RPG character icons he knows and loved. Alongside several he admittedly doesn’t know, but he tries not to dwell on that. “Tyler, please. I just want you to tell me if something looks okay or not!”
Tyler looks up at him lazily. He eyes the shirt, skipping the dark pair of jeans that fit with all of Ethan’s wardrobe, eyes his sneakers. “Get rid of the nerdy shirt and put on something that doesn’t scream “I once played a game for three days straight with no sleep while I lived off yoghurt and Pepsi”, and you’re good.”
“It’s not nerdy!” Ethan shouts as he retreats back into his room to change yet again.
“It’s nerdy.”
He only huffs once more in reply. As much as Tyler did have a point, there weren’t many shirts that he owned that were suitable for a “casual date”. He didn’t even know if Evan was going full-on casual or just borderline casual.
God, now he’s even more nervous if that was possible. He hadn’t even thought of this. Evan had said over their texts it wasn’t some fancy restaurant they were going to with small plates for big prices. There isn’t a place in his mind that isn’t a fancy restaurant that would be a place for dates. If Ethan was planning this, he’d probably bother Tyler with date ideas and eventually stick with the plan of the local Italian place that he found online. But Evan had promised something small, nothing elaborate where neither would enjoy it. Just a small date with some food they know they both like. No biggie.
Ethan fumbled to put the shirt he had on back on the coat hanger and in the closet, pulling out any less “nerdy” shirt he could grab.
It’s only been a few months since they actually started talking; is this too soon? Jeez, his nerves are getting too out of hand tonight. His hands fiddle with the hem of his shirt when it’s comfortably on, scanning over the design and biting his lip in thought. Maybe talking more or even Skyping a few more times? Then again, maybe it’d be a horrible idea to video chat more before this.
There’s been a handful of times - actually, it might be all of the times they’ve video called - where Ethan’s almost dropped his phone or spilt his drink. It’s entirely not his fault! He’s letting Evan unknowingly take all the blame for the egg-sized water stain in his bedroom carpet because it is technically his fault. Ethan’s not to be held responsible for Evan’s good looks and charmingly devilish smile.
“Ethan!” Tyler calls out to him and footsteps approach his open doorway. “Your date’s here.” He says blankly.
“Shit, okay, uh-” Ethan almost the bare coat hanger that was still in one of his hands. “How does-How does this look?” He asks and looks expectantly down at his own shirt as if it held the answers.
Tyler’s quiet as he looks at him again before pulling out one of the few button ups he owns and passing it to him. “Just put that over it and you’ll be fine. Stop worrying before you sweat through both of your shirts.”
“Don’t say that!” Ethan complains as he shrugs on the button up. He pats his pocket to check his phone is there, pats his other for his wallet and keys, fluffs up his hair a little in the mirror in passing out of his room. “You sure I look fine?”
“Yes, now just go have fun!” The older insists, nudging him faster towards the apartment door where Evan probably stood. He must look fine, right? Right.
Ethan can’t lie and say it’s not a shock at how stunned he is when he pulls the door from where it stood partially open. There’s only so much bad FaceTime and Skype quality can do to the video feed, alongside several photos he’s seen of Evan, but Christ on a cracker Ethan hadn’t expected an angel on his doorstep.
The other had definitely gone casual, not so much that it seemed like they were just hanging out but not too less that it was obvious it was a date. Ethan almost felt overdressed in a way with the extra upper layer compared to the black V-neck adorning the other. The same dazzling grin he had during calls was also there, perking up small dimples and rounded tan cheeks and yeah, okay, let’s hope no drinks are spilt tonight by Ethan’s hand because of this.
“Hey! I, uh, didn’t realise it was almost 7 already.” Ethan almost chokes on his own saliva to get the words out, quickly managing to throw a goodbye over his shoulder to Tyler as he shuts the door.
Evan breathes something akin to a laugh and sidles next to Ethan down the stairwell to his car. “I wouldn’t worry too much; I would’ve been late if it weren’t for the five alarms I set on my phone.”
It’s certainly good to know he wasn’t the only one almost late for their set time, and he’s thankful it’s not an awkward stride into an even awkwarder evening like he inwardly assumed it would be.
“Thanks for picking me up, by the way,” Ethan finds himself saying when they’re in Evan’s car buckling his seatbelt. “If Tyler drove me wherever we’re going, he’d probably either follow me in or never let me leave the car.”
“Nah, it’s all good!” Evan waves him off with a laugh and the engine starts. “Plus, it makes it more of a weird, shitty surprise when we get there.” He grins again at Ethan, soft and sweet, and Ethan realised that something is probably gonna be spilt this evening.
They do end up at an Italian place, but it’s instead a small pizza place that only has one or two people inside.
“I know it looks shitty, but I promise this pizza is so good that you’ll never order anywhere else again.” Evan had promised, and he definitely kept good on that promise. They both got a few slices of their own choices each and even Ethan’s own choice of the classic pepperoni tasted heavenly.
“Now, I don’t usually eat pizza too often,” Ethan began after a few bites of his second slice. “But I know I’m probably going to a lot more now.” Because, yeah, he’s definitely going to make Tyler drop him off for lunch here over the next coming weeks.
“Yeah?” Evan looks up at him, halfway through his own slice of americano. “Thank god, I almost made a last minute choice for somewhere else, believe it or not.”
“Dude, I swear down on my firstborn that any other pizza place we went to would’ve tasted like ass.”
And Evan laughs again and god, every time he hears it in person is just as heavenly as the pizza. Maybe even more, dare he admit it.
“Okay,” Ethan begins after a sip on his Fanta. “I’m making a rule right here, right now, for you to take me to this place for any dates that take place from now onwards.” Ethan almost chokes again, this time on pizza, when he realises the words that left his mouth. Nope, he totally doesn’t sound over-eager at all. Nice one, Ethan.
“Future dates, huh?” Evan smirks and even if Ethan wasn’t looking at him, it’d be obvious he was going to tease. “Ethan Nestor-Darling, is this your way of asking me on a date while we’re on one?”
He tries to ignore the oh-so-obvious flush creeping up his cheeks. “Yup, totally, if that’s what helps you sleep at night, Evan.” Ethan retorts with a slightly embarrassed smile of his own. It’s better than sitting here awkwardly if he’s honest.
“Well, that’s just an offer that I can’t refuse if you care so much about my well-being and healthy sleep schedule.”
And sure, it might not be a drink he spills, but the piece of cheese and pepperoni that slips off his pizza when he clumsily struggles not to let the slice fall from his fingers is an easy equivalent to a tipped drink. But it’s worth sacrificing a part of his pizza if it meant hearing the laugh that digital audio can’t do justice and a promise of more time with Evan.
They end up getting a McFlurry each after pizza as dessert and - if Ethan’s being totally honest with himself here - no amount of soft serve ice cream with chocolate brownie bits could captivate him as much Evan has in the dull white interior overhead light of the car. It’s a horrible light, he admits, but fuck, if it doesn’t make Ethan at a loss for words and how it dimly lights up the other’s eyes, how soft he looks with the dusk and distant city lights outside the window behind him.
He doesn’t even realise his ice cream is melting in the pot as he watches Evan enthusiastically talk about a chubby chow dog he saw today until Evan stops talking suddenly to grin at him. “You starin’ at something you like?” He teases.
The younger almost blurts out an instantaneous “Yes,” before he catches himself and notices the slowly liquidising dessert in his hands. “I mean, if I didn’t then I might not be here, right?”
“Not that it’s all about looks! I’m more personality myself; it doesn’t matter what you look like as long as you have a good personality, y’know? But that’s also not to say you don’t look great! You look more than great, okay, and-”
A hand is placed on his knee and he stops his sudden rambling. “Don’t worry, Ethan. I get what you’re saying.” He gives a reassuring smile and the blue-haired male relaxes almost instantly because thank god he didn’t blow this date just yet. He almost feels proud that it somehow wasn’t ruined back at the pizza parlour.
It’s a minute or two of comfortable silence; the hand hasn’t moved from his knee yet and Evan is apparently the one staring at him now.
“Didn’t you ever get told that staring is rude?” Ethan murmurs. It doesn’t feel right to talk at a normal level, as if the evening would be ruined for sure if he did.
Evan huffs a small laugh and places his McFlurry pot on the dashboard so he can shuffle in his seat to face Ethan. “I can’t help it if the person I’m staring at is gorgeous as hell.”
Ethan feels an instant flush climb up his cheeks, but he stays quiet. “That’d also make you hypocritical since you were staring first.”
“Ya got me there.” He says softly.
It’s another few seconds before Evan speaks again. “Can I kiss you?”
Ethan only feels himself nod before it fully hits him what’s been asked, but he certainly doesn’t mind. His heart’s hammering in his chest suddenly as he places his own melting dessert on the dashboard. It only beats faster when a hand slips onto his waist and another onto his thigh, lips meeting his in less than a second after.
Ethan inhales softly because it’s everything he shamelessly thought kissing Evan would feel like. It’s soft and gentle and he tastes sweet from the ice cream and Ethan would gladly let himself be lost like this for the rest of his days if it meant Evan was the one kissing him.
A smile grows against his lips and both of the hand’s cup both his cheeks. Evan pulls back and places one more singular kiss to Ethan’s mouth before grinning while resting his forehead against the youngers.
“Was that too soon for the first date?” Evan asks softly. His thumb is moving back and forth over his cheekbones and Ethan is definitely melting under his touch right about now.
“Couldn’t have done it sooner, I think,” Ethan responds with a smile of his own, cupping Evan’s own face and fingers fiddling with the raven hair and then softly pressing another kiss to the pliant lips before him, deepening the kiss this time and leaving the McFlurries forgotten.
It’s almost 10 o'clock when Evan pulls up outside his apartment building. It feels like it’s gone too quick with so little done, and a part of him wishes they spent longer together. Though, he’s not so disheartened when he remembers their promise of future dates.
“I had fun tonight, Evan,” Ethan says. The other looks just as unhappy as Ethan feels about their departure, but after leaning over the gear stick and pressing a long kiss to his lips, Evan looks a bit brighter. “Seriously, thanks for inviting me out.”
“Me too. I’ll text you in the mornin’?” Evan looks so hopeful, as if he thinks Ethan didn’t enjoy this date. Ethan’s half-tempted to say that it’s one of the best evenings he’s ever had.
“Unless I do first.” He replies and ah, there’s that dazzling smile again that always makes his insides warm. “Goodnight, Evan.”
“Night, Ethan.” The older says fondly after one last peck on Ethan’s cheek.
A sigh leaves him after they part ways and Ethan opens his apartment door, greeted with Tyler still sat in his spot and on his phone again.
“Had fun?” Tyler asks. He’s fiddling with his phone and it’s obvious he’s not actually doing anything on it.
Ethan hums in answer as he puts the apartment keys on the kitchen counter and checks his own phone for actual notifications. “You weren’t watching from the window, right?” He already knows the answer, but he also knows the truth. Tyler’s not as nonchalant as he thinks he is, sometimes.
“I wouldn’t dream of intruding on you and your boyfriend, Ethan,” Tyler answers with a glimpse up at the younger.
“Tyyyyler, he’s not my boyfriend, okay? I’ve told you this!” He says in exasperation. The amount of teasing gone on from Tyler and Mark about Evan being his boyfriend, mostly during the ‘flirting phase’ of their messages was too much to count. (But did it still count to deny it now? He doesn’t actually know, but he’ll enjoy the day when he doesn’t have to deny it.)
Tyler snickers up at Ethan from his seat, just as he’s heading to his room. “Yeah, sure, and I’ll keep saying he is until you admit it.”
Ethan huffs and almost retorts before he sees his phone light up in his hand, and just a glance at the name makes a grin sprout on his face and forget all about Tyler’s teasing.
#ik it's on ao3 but i like to crosspost okat#next time on: things u didn't know i shipped#blue does writing#text#evthan#ethan#idk what else to tag but here ur go#this is queued uh oh#crankyplier
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Playing Catch Up! How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather
Playing Catch Up has really been helping me through my ever growing TBR list. I'd like to welcome all other blogs to participate too! If you do, be sure to post your links in the comments section. I'd love to see your Playing Catch Up Reviews, and I'm sure others would too!! *wink*
Want to know more about Playing Catch Up? I'll tell you all about it here!
How to Hang a Witch (How to Hang a Witch #1) by Adriana Mather
Genre: Young Adult (Paranormal)
Date Published: July 26, 2016
Publisher: Knopf Books for Young Readers
It's the Salem Witch Trials meets Mean Girls in a debut novel from one of the descendants of Cotton Mather, where the trials of high school start to feel like a modern day witch hunt for a teen with all the wrong connections to Salem’s past.
Salem, Massachusetts is the site of the infamous witch trials and the new home of Samantha Mather. Recently transplanted from New York City, Sam and her stepmother are not exactly welcomed with open arms. Sam is the descendant of Cotton Mather, one of the men responsible for those trials and almost immediately, she becomes the enemy of a group of girls who call themselves The Descendants. And guess who their ancestors were?
If dealing with that weren't enough, Sam also comes face to face with a real live (well technically dead) ghost. A handsome, angry ghost who wants Sam to stop touching his stuff. But soon Sam discovers she is at the center of a centuries old curse affecting anyone with ties to the trials. Sam must come to terms with the ghost and find a way to work with The Descendants to stop a deadly cycle that has been going on since the first accused witch was hanged. If any town should have learned its lesson, it's Salem. But history may be about to repeat itself.
How to Hang a Witch is the first book in the How to Hang a Witch Series by Adriana Mather. Although I love Paranormal Fiction, I typically don't like it when it involves witches and witchy type magic. Plus add in the ghost... All that in one book? It's just not what I prefer to read, and I almost didn't. But I like reading about the Salem Witch Trials. It's a sad and scary part of history that has always interested me. So, I decided to give this book a go. Boy, am I glad did!
There are so many things going on within this story. There is a subtle romance. The magic was not too hocus pocusy, which I really appreciated. That's where witch books usually lose me. The ghost aspect wasn't hoaky. He was believable, and actually quite endearing. So many things went wrong, or right, depending on who you ask, in regards to the the Salem Witch Trials. This story brings some of that to your attention and allows you to draw you own conclusions and encourages you to think for yourself on how some things may have occurred in history, and it does so without affecting the plot and making you feel like you've missed out on something. All of this was cleverly woven together, bringing the past into the present. It shows how, as a society, we really haven't changed much. We like to think we're so much more civilized, but we're still trying to "hang witches" in some form or fashion. It surprised me with the level of emotions it brought out while I read.
I was extremely impressed with this story and all the detail and thought that went into it. Sometimes, you can just tell when a book is close the the author's heart, and that's how this one felt. With good reason too, the author has a pretty personal tie to someone who was at the heart of everything going on during the Trials. Her last name will give away who. I listened to the audio version. It was narrated by the author herself, which I think added to the enjoyment, because I feel like I was hearing the story the way she meant it to be told, and she told it well.
Chapter One
Too Confident
Like most fast-talking, opinionated New Yorkers, I have an affinity for sarcasm. At fifteen, though, it’s hard to convince anyone that sarcasm’s a cultural thing and not a bad attitude. Especially when your stepmother can’t drive, ’cause she’s also from New York, and spills your coffee with maniacal brake pounding.
I wipe a dribble of hazelnut latte off my chin. “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I love wearing my coffee.”
Vivian keeps her hand poised over the horn, like a cat waiting to pounce. “All your clothes have holes in them. Coffee isn’t your problem.”
If it’s possible for someone to never have an awkward moment, socially or otherwise, then that someone is my stepmother. When I was little, I admired her ability to charm roomfuls of people. Maybe I thought it would rub off on me—an idea I’ve since given up on. She’s perfectly put together in a way I’ll never be, and my vegan leather jacket and torn black jeans drive her crazy. So now I just take joy in wearing them to her dinner parties. Gotta have something, right?
“My problem is, I don’t know when I’ll see my dad,” I say, staring out at the well-worn New England homes, with their widow’s walks and dark shutters.
Vivian’s lips tighten. “We’ve been through this a hundred times. They’ll transfer him to Mass General sometime this week.”
“Which is still an hour from Salem.” This is the sentence I’ve repeated since I found out three weeks ago that we had to sell our New York apartment, the apartment I’ve spent my entire life in.
“Would you rather live in New York and not be able to pay your father’s medical bills? We have no idea how long he’ll be in a coma.”
Three months, twenty-one days, and ten hours. That’s how long it’s already been. We pass a row of witch-themed shops with dried herbs and brooms filling their windows.
“They really love their witches here,” I say, ignoring Vivian’s last question.
“This is one of the most important historical towns in America. Your relatives played a major role in that history.”
“My relatives hanged witches in the sixteen hundreds. Not exactly something to be proud of.”
But in truth, I’m super curious about this place, with its cobblestone alleys and eerie black houses. We pass a police car with a witch logo on the side. As a kid, I tried every tactic to get my dad to take me here, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He’d say that nothing good ever happens in Salem and the conversation would end. There’s no pushing my dad.
A bus with a ghost-tour ad pulls in front of us. Vivian jerks to a stop and then tailgates. She nods at the ad. “There’s a nice provincial job for you.”
I crack a smile. “I don’t believe in ghosts.” We make a right onto Blackbird Lane, the street on the return address of the cards my grandmother sent me as a child.
“Well, you’re the only one in Salem who feels that way.” I don’t doubt she’s right.
For the first time during this roller coaster of a car ride, my stomach drops in a good way. Number 1131 Blackbird Lane, the house my dad grew up in, the house he met my mother in. It’s a massive two-story white building with black shutters and columned doorways. The many peaks of the roof are covered with dark wooden shingles, weathered from the salty air. A wrought-iron fence with pointed spires surrounds the perfectly manicured lawn.
“Just the right size,” Vivian says, eyeing our new home.
The redbrick driveway is uneven with age and pushed up by tree roots. Vivian’s silver sports car jostles as we make our way through the black arched gate and roll to a stop.
“Ten people could live here and never see each other,” I reply.
“Like I said, just the right size.”
I pull my hair into a messy ball on top of my head and grab the heavy duffel bag at my feet. Vivian’s already out of the car, and her heels click against the brick. She makes her way toward a side door with an elaborate overhang.
I take a deep breath and open my car door. Before I get a good look at our new home, a neighbor comes out of her blue-on-blue house and waves enthusiastically.
“Helllloooo! Well, hello there!” she says with a smile bigger than I’ve ever seen on a stranger as she crosses a patch of lawn to get to our driveway.
She has rosy cheeks and a frilly white apron. She could have stepped out of a housekeeping magazine from the 1950s.
“Samantha,” she says, and beams. She holds my chin to inspect my face. “Charlie’s daughter.”
I’ve never heard anyone call my dad by a nickname. “Uh, Sam. Everyone calls me Sam.”
“Nonsense. That’s a boy’s name. Now, aren’t you pretty. Too skinny, though.” She steps back to get a proper look. “We’ll fix that in no time.” She laughs a full, tinkling laugh.
I smile, even though I’m not sure she’s complimenting me. There’s something infectious about her happiness. She examines me, and I cross my arms self-consciously. My duffel bag falls off my shoulder, jerking me forward. I trip.
“Jaxon!” she bellows toward her blue house without saying a word about my clumsiness. A blond guy who looks seventeenish exits the side door just as I get hold of the duffel strap. “Come take Samantha’s bag.”
As he gets closer, his sandy hair flops into his eyes. Blue. One corner of his mouth tilts in a half smile. I stare at him. Am I blushing? Ugh, so embarrassing. He reaches for the bag, now awkwardly hanging from my elbow.
I reposition it onto my shoulder. “No, it’s fine.”
“This is my son, Jaxon. Isn’t he adorable?” She pats him on the cheek.
“Mom, really?” Jaxon protests.
I smile at them. “So, you know my dad?”
“Certainly. And I knew your grandmother. Took care of her and the house when she got older. I know this place inside and out.” She puts her hands on her hips.
Vivian approaches, frowning. “Mrs. Meriwether? We spoke on the phone.” She pauses. “You have the keys, I assume?”
“Sure do.” Mrs. Meriwether reaches into her apron pocket and retrieves a set of skeleton keys rubbed smooth in places from years of use. She glances at her watch. “I’ve got chocolate croissants coming out of the oven any minute now. Jaxon will give you a tour of—”
“No, that’s alright. We can show ourselves around.” There’s a finality in Vivian’s response. Vivian doesn’t trust overly friendly people. We had a doorman once who used to bring me treats, and she got him fired.
“Actually,” I say, “do you know which room used to be my dad’s?”
Mrs. Meriwether lights up. “It’s all ready for you. Up the stairs, take a left, all the way down the hall. Jaxon will show you.”
Vivian turns around without a goodbye. Jaxon and I follow her to the door.
Jaxon watches me curiously as we go inside. “I’ve never seen you here before.”
“I’ve never been here before.”
“Even when your grandmother was alive?” He closes the door behind us with a click.
“I never met my grandmother.” It’s weird to admit that.
In the front foyer are piles of boxes—all of our personal belongings from the City. Vivian sold everything heavy when she found out this place was furnished.
We step past the boxes into an open space with glossy wooden floors, a wrought-iron chandelier, and a giant staircase. Vivian’s heels click somewhere down the hallway to the left—a sound that follows her around like a shadow. As a child, I could always find her by listening for it, even in a roomful of women in high heels. I wouldn’t be surprised if she slept in those shoes.
I take in our home for the first time. Paintings in gold frames hang on the walls, separated by sconces with bulbs shaped like candles. Everything’s antique and made of dark wood, the opposite of our modern apartment in NYC. This is some fairy-tale storybook business, I think, looking at the curved staircase with its smooth wooden banisters and Oriental rug running up the middle.
“This way.” Jaxon nods toward the staircase. He lifts my bag off my shoulder and starts up the stairs.
“I could’ve carried that myself.”
“I know. But I wouldn’t want you to fall again. Stairs do more damage than driveways.” So he definitely saw me trip. He smiles at my expression.
This guy is too confident for his own good. I follow him, holding the banister in case my clumsiness makes a second appearance.
Jaxon turns left at the top of the stairs. We pass a bedroom with a burgundy comforter and a canopy that any little girl would go bonkers over. After the bedroom, there’s a bathroom with a giant claw-foot tub and a mirror with a gold-plated frame.
He stops at the end of the hall in front of a small door that looks like it could use a fresh coat of paint. The doorknob’s shaped like a flower with shiny brass petals. A daisy, maybe? I twist it, and the wood groans as the door swings open.
I gasp.
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Adriana Mather is the 12th generation of Mathers in America, and as such her family has their fingers in many of its historical pies – the Mayflower, the Salem Witch Trials, the Titanic, the Revolutionary War, and the wearing of curly white wigs. Also, Adriana co-owns a production company, Zombot Pictures, in LA that has made three feature films in three years. Her first acting scene in a film ever was with Danny Glover, and she was terrified she would mess it up. In addition, her favorite food is pizza and she has too many cats.
To learn more about Adriana Mather and her books, visit her website.You can also find her on Goodreads, Instagram and Twitter.
#playing catch up#adriana mather#how to hang a witch#Teaser#excerpt#young adult#book review#paranormal
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