Scam baiting is a form of Internet vigilantism, where the vigilante poses as a potential victim to the scammer in order to waste their time and resources, gather information that will be of use to authorities, and publicly expose the scammer. It is, in essence, a form of social engineering that may have an altruistic motive or may be motivated by malice. It is primarily used to thwart the 419 Nigerian advance-fee scam and can be done either out of a sense of civic duty or as a form of amusement. - Wikipedia

all AUs are canon

Not technically all but almost all...some meta AUs might be impossible but those are too much of technicalities probably................

characters

Cory
Leo

world

The basic idea is that sometime while they're going about scambaiting something odd happens, either of them baits someone or something they shouldn't have, they get dragged into a group of...people who bait a different kind of scam.

I'm not sure about the details, but lately I've been imagining these scams as something similar to dreams where to break the scam the person in it must first realize that it's a scam (and from experience, it's often hard to realize when you're in a dream...). Even though it's not as hard as realizing you're in a dream and some...scammers? produce scams? that are easily identified as such (e.g. complete change in landscape, people you know being very OOC), sometimes things get very convincing. The one thing that remains constant is that the source of the scam? will keep demanding something from you, whether it's affection, or time, or energy, or something like that. It'll keep draining you, sometimes subtly and sometimes not, until you have no energy left to offer it (and most likely, you die and the scammer? moves on to another victim).
To break the scam, you physically destroy (difficult)/scare off the scammer. The point of baiting is to wear it out and occupy its time so it doesn't go after other people. Also, time can bend in imaginary spaces. :I

initial notes

Actually the main point of me posting this stuff is - almost as soon as I thought of the potential of this as plot fodder, a couple of characters popped up and they're sort of haunting me right now. idk man

character thoughts

now has doodles!
I still can't decide on colours though. And whether the hairpins/clips stay...

Said couple of characters - a pair of high school boys who've been friends from childhood. Currently in the same school, classmates or one class apart.

The first kid (I'm just going to call him Lionel) is the brains, though pretty dense when it comes to emotions. I'm torn between making him entirely emotionally stupid or just blocking them off voluntarily. He tries to be as objective/logical about things as possible, thinks that anyone who lets their emotions get the better of them must be pretty stupid...although he seems to get angry pretty often. (Angry at these types, which is irony irony irony.) He's not entirely socially inept, though - he can turn on the charm if he wants, but that's...only if he wants. He relies on knowledge of human behaviour and psychology? (that he explicitly researched at some point or the other, and still is researching on) to deal with people. It tends to work, but where generic experimental results don't apply, he's completely at a loss. (i.e. if you spend too much time with him, you'll realise he's a terrible person to be with.)
He looks kind of cultured and scholarly, but has a bit of a mean streak in him. Ambitious and self-centred. In my head, he used to be something of a bully in his childhood. Would put as maybe chaotic neutral.

The second kid (who has been pegged as a Cory in my head) is a really nice guy. He is the perfect person to go to to talk about your worries and whatever else you have on your mind. He reads people like books. He knows what to say or do to make you feel better when you're down. And he really is genuinely nice. The only problem with that is that he tends to give out too much of himself for the sake of other people, which Lionel (Leo to Cory and I JUST WANT A SHORT NAME) finds incredibly annoying. It's very easy to influence his emotions - if you come crying to him, he'll probably end up crying with you while you talk to him. It's exhausting, yes, which is why at the end of the day he likes being around Leo, who is a total robot/always predictably angry at the same things (given up trying to not make him angry). He's something of a walking lie detector (so you can only make him sad if you're genuinely sad), and is a pretty convincing liar himself, although he doesn't like to lie. He's pretty easy to read himself - he doesn't keep any secrets of his own and is really open about everything. Though, maybe, that's only the way he looks.
Smarts-wise, he's okayish, I suppose. Maybe slightly below average, depending on the emotional status of his peers for the relevant school semester. Not that he's stupid, he just...doesn't study enough.
Haven't really settled on his appearance. Definitely looks approachable and friendly, though. Slightly messy? Would put as maybe neutral good.

Both of them are extremely close despite being such opposites.
Leo is willing to let his emotional guard down for only Cory, who's one of the few people who can stand him for so long. Cory...could probably do without him, but might fall apart if not for the first kid being a stable emotional pillar of support.
On the surface, though, it tends to look like Leo bullies Cory a lot...yelling at him whenever Cory goes to great lengths for someone he barely knows ("bleeding heart" is apparently a favourite), or worries himself sick for someone else to the point where it affects his well-being...

Leo was the one who introduced Cory to scambaiting.
To him, it's a fun little hobby. He comes up with some ingeniously amusing and cruel ideas, which Cory doesn't really approve of...
To Cory, it's a way of preventing innocent people from being cheated of their possessions. He's not too sure about lying so much, but if it means that neither side is harmed, he'll keep doing it.