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DO NOT JUST OPT-OUT OF THIS AI THING. NIGHTSHADE EVERYTHING.

Many of you have chosen to Opt Out of Tumblr's new thing it's doing where it sells all our art and writing to train AI. But apparently some data has already been scraped and may have already been sent. So I think we're past asking them nicely not to steal our creative works.

There is a program called Nightshade. It was developed by the University of Chicago (who also made Glaze) for exactly this kind of situation. It corrupts the AI learning data set. You can read the specifics at the link above. The point is, it's a way to say "fuck you" to anyone who tries to use your blog's images without your permission.

Here's how to use it:

Make sure that your system is compatible. (Your GPU has to be on this list) If you don't know what your GPU is, pull up your system search, type in "Device Manager." In the window that brings up, find where it is says "Display Adapters" and click the little triangle next to it. That will show your GPU.

If your unit it compatible, you still have to download the CUDA Toolkit from Nvidia. Nightshade requires this toolkit because it takes a lot of GPU Memory to run it and they didn't have the resources to develop their own driver to go with the product.

Download Nightshade from their website. Extract the files to your system, then run the program.

Once the program opens, it will need to download some resources before it's ready. Once that's done, you can Nightshade your images. Try to add them once they're post-ready. Resizing or cropping them could make them less effective. You also have to tell Nightshade what word you're trying to corrupt. (Example: you have drawn a bunch of pictures of cats? Cat is the word you are corrupting. Your style is anime? Anime is the word you are corrupting.)

I'm still working on putting my own art through the Nightshade program, but in the meantime I wanted other creators that follow me to know a good way to fight back against this absolute bullshit choice made by Tumblr's leadership.

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Since it’s Free Comic Book Day, I figured I’d share my short comic from the Valor Anthology, The Nettle-Witch, (pretty loosely) based on the fairy tale The Wild Swans. Something about the imagery and the locations in the story always made it one of my favourites to read as a kid, and I tried to get some of that feeling into the look of my comic.

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One of my all time favourite tweets from Taliesin, reach out to your support system <3

#mental health

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Actually Captain Jack Harkness is SO important. During a time when we couldn't get a single queer on screen in most shows and even those few we did get ended up dead 90% of the time, he was not only openly bisexual, he was openly bisexual and LITERALLY unable to die.

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This just in, men are babies. Film at eleven.

so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

#men are babies

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there's something deeply gutting about being a writer right now. watching studio execs brag about starving people like you out of your very house just to not pay you anything above the pennies you currently make. watching some people cheer over AO3 being targeted for a DDOS attack. the complete lack of profitability of writing commissions or writing in general in transformative spaces, especially in contrast to fanart. the pivot of so many social media platforms to be video and image based near-exclusively.

I don't know. it just makes me sad to know that the hobby that kept me alive while growing up homeschooled with dial-up internet and local antenna TV... is only ever gonna be a side job with minimal engagement. I know this site is good about supporting libraries and the concept of books but, do me a favor? Reach out to a writer friend you know. Leave a comment on your last five read stories on your favorite website.

Tell us you care.

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this is a poem

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Star Wars 'What if?' AUs, Part 4

Part three here

Darth Bane’s Rule of Two never quite caught on, but the Sith of today don’t actually know much about each other because there’s so few of them. Palpatine’s plan fails in several key parts because another Sith’s plan got in the way. AND because the Jedi never discounted the idea that the Sith were back - because they never actually left. The Enemy of my Enemy is still my Enemy, and with the Sith all getting in each other’s way, the Jedi and clones manage to eke out a win.

Whatever happened to Dexter Jettser? I’m not knocking what Bail Organa did for the Rebellion, but Dex was Obi-Wan’s friend too, and he already had contacts in low places. So this story would have him either following up on all the things the Jedi Order never had time/experience for (who really ordered the clones, who was the Sith Master, how can we issue a shutdown order to all the Separatist droids?) during the war, or else afterwards he helps give the nascent Rebellion a huge boost.

Anakin gets apprenticed to the most appropriate possible person - Nico Diath!  Who is also from Tatooine, has a family home there in fact, and in canon his Padawan was his nephew. Also, Nico felt a burning hatred for slavery in general and Hutts in particular. Anakin finally gets to (help) free all the slaves, and Nico helps teach him about attachment and the perils thereof, and how to love your family without being so possessive of them you fall.

Supposedly it was one of Darth Plagueis’ experiments with midichlorians that led to Anakin’s birth - what if he was born to someone else? Shaak Ti could be good. Breha Organa would be too young, unfortunately. Mother Talzin would be interesting, especially since males aren’t valued on Dathomir - would Anakin take Maul’s place in canon, or would he be so powerful she’d keep him with her? Or, what if he was born to An’ya Kuro, aka Dark Woman. She’s got very unusual, and cruel ideas about proper use of the Force (while still considering herself Light!) and how to teach it. But would she consider a ‘Force-sent’ pregnancy something she would follow through on?

Or maybe Dark Woman is the one to find and apprentice Anakin. If you know anything about her, you'll realize this could be a story just as dark as canon, but I’m suggesting either Anakin ran off like Jon Antilles did, or Jon and his friends (Nico, Knoll, Fay) found him and removed him from Dark Woman’s influence.

Speaking of Dark Woman’s former padawans, one of them was Aurra Sing. A misunderstanding led Aurra to start developing a lifelong hatred of Jedi, and she killed several of them. What if Sidious decided to have more than one ‘Jedi Killer’ as his clone template? Supposedly Force Sensitives can’t be cloned because they turn out brain dead since the Force knows who they are, BUT either you can ignore that or - harvest the DNA, kill Aurra, then create the clones. She’s not alive for the clones to be affected by.

Or, canonically Aurra was on Tatooine watching the Boonta Eve Classic. What if she decided to try and take Anakin as her padawan?

Aurra Sing got kidnapped by pirates (which she thought Dark Woman arranged as part of her training), but what if she got rescued by Mandalorians? I’m thinking True Mandalorians, so she would be there to keep them from dying/getting killed like in canon. She faces off against the Jedi on Galidraan, some of them recognize her, and after it’s all over she goes back to the Temple just long enough to tell them how messed up Dark Woman’s training is, before leaving again. This leads to the Jedi Council taking a closer look at how initiates and padawans are taught and making changes, which ultimately, when combined with the True Mandalorians becoming the leading faction on Mandalore, derails Sidious’ plans.

Next idea involves a time crunch - Obi-Wan’s time on Melidaan (or Mandalore, protecting Satine) coinciding with the clones being taught on Kamino. Early in the process (when the oldest clones are physically 10-12) the clones rebel and escape Kamino. They either end up on Melidaan and help the Young take down the Elders before helping them set up a new community together, or they end up on Concordia trying to track down Pre Viszla so one of them can challenge him for the Darksaber and the clones can become the newest faction to rule Mandalore. Or they don’t have enough fuel/need an emergency landing and end up on Melidaan on their way to Mandalore. Basically a lot of teens and tweens getting their Lord of the Fly on, but a happier ending where they kill all the bad adults (including Sidious and Plagueius).

The Jedi Temple is apparently on top of some type of Force Nexus which allows it to be much bigger on the inside than outside, and they have a giant menagerie full of plants and animals inside it. Sounds like a great place for all the Jedi in the Temple to retreat to when Darth Vader and the 501st come to kill them all. And who really knows how a Force Nexus works? Maybe enough force sensitives crying out for other Jedi to help/to stop the clones from hurting their friends transports the whole Temple (and maybe all Jedi around the galaxy) to, like Lothal or Tython (and fries all the chips).

Barriss Offee is the one sent back in time, to her child body, young enough in the midst of her freak out she runs into a still-alive Sifo-Dyas. She tries to pass off her future knowledge and panic as dreams of the future, he talks about his own visions, and Barriss ends up explaining what his visions meant. Together they start a new Jedi schism aimed at non-violence in order to prevent the Jedi being involved in the coming war.

Apparently Etain Tur-Maken was in the Temple during Darth Vader’s attack on it and died defending a group of younglings. What if Anakin was completely not shielding his mind while leading the attack and when he got near enough he heard her thoughts about her clone lover, Darman, and their son? He’d start thinking about his unborn child with Padme and just…stall out.  Consider also that he could then look around at the children and see a bunch that, coloring-wise at least, look like him and/or Padme. Etain manages to subdue Anakin while he’s caught in a mental maelstrom of worry for his unborn child.

After the Rusaan Reformation, the Jedi took the rule of dismantling their armies to mean no more Knights. All the Jedi on Coruscant are part of the Services Corps (Agricorp, Exploricop, Educorp, Medicorp). Anyone wanting to use lightsabers on a regular basis or be a warrior monk ends up transferring to one of the other temples (or maybe they have their own Temple on, like, Tython or Lothal). Palpatine falls into the same misunderstanding that the Senate has, thinking that the majority of the Jedi are the ones on Coruscant, so his ultimate plan for taking over the galaxy is different since it doesn’t involve clones chipped to turn on their Jedi. Then when Palpatine stages his takeover he’s blindsided by the large number of Jedi Knights that had been wandering around the galaxy fixing problem ‘as the force wills’.

#star wars #star wars au #star wars clone wars #what if

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[FIC] To Be Free Once More (That's Worth Fighting For) ~ Star Wars: Prequels ~ Fox/Obi-Wan ~ Mature ~ Ch 1/15

Title: To Be Free Once More (That’s Worth Fighting For) Fandom: Star Wars Prequel Era Author: Batsutousai Rating: Mature Warnings: Alternate Universe, Qui-Gon survives, Jedi Shadow!Obi-Wan, Jedi culture positive, Coruscant Guard deserve better, clone trooper dehumanisation, institutional abuse, discrimination, learning to trust, Jedi and clone trooper relationships, strangers to friends to lovers, idiots in love, trans/nonbinary/agender clone troopers, Summary: As a Jedi Shadow, Obi-Wan hadn’t expected to have much to do with the clone troopers. Until, suddenly, he does.

Notes: This fic will be 15 chapters long, with the final chapter going up at some point on the 17th of May, for those who prefer to binge.

CHAPTER ONE

“Aayla gets on well with her troopers,” Obi-Wan commented, having heard about her friendship with her commander from Quinlan, who seemed torn between being overprotective of her presumed virtue, and delighted that she’d been paired with a commander that she got on with. “Anakin, too.”

“Anakin has never been particularly comfortable with authority figures,” Qui-Gon commented drily. “His refusal to act like one was wholly expected.”

“Yes, I wonder where he got that particular mindset from,” Obi-Wan muttered loud enough for Qui-Gon to hear, and studiously ignored his former master’s chuckle. “When are we dropping from hyperspace next?” He wasn’t certain about comming Anakin for advice, but Aayla might have some actionable suggestions, and it had been far too long since he’d last spoken to her.

Qui-Gon hummed, then used the Force to call his comm to him, typed something on it, then set it down and went back to his trimming.

Obi-Wan rolled his eyes at the complete lack of answer, then left the bed, which he’d been lying on, since the only chair was serving as a plant holder, to kneel in front of Qui-Gon’s footlocker, delighted when it opened at his first guess for the code.

“What, exactly, are you doing?” Qui-Gon asked, tone dry, but presence in the Force warm and amused.

“Disregarding your presumed boundaries,” Obi-Wan returned cheerfully, even as he pawed through his former master’s belongings.

Qui-Gon huffed, then called, “Come in, Commander!” when the quiet doorbell chime sounded.

“You asked to see me, General?” Commander Cody asked, once they’d stepped into the room far enough for the door to close again behind them, curiosity curling through the Force around them.

“Yes,” Qui-Gon agreed, setting down his sheers and turning to face the clone. “Obi-Wan was asking whether there was any way to make the troopers more comfortable with him mingling with them.”

Obi-Wan groaned into the footlocker; he should have guessed that his former master’s solution would be to simply ask one of the clones. “If the answer is there isn’t one,” he said, before the commander could open their mouth to respond, “please just tell me so; I’m perfectly capable suffering the next week dealing with Master Jinn.”

Read the whole chapter at Archive of Our Own!

Please DO reblog this post; sharing is the best way to tell creators that you enjoyed their work.

#fic:To Be Free Once More (That's Worth Fighting For) #foxywan #excellent

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TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel - deleted fic

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1GCpcN61KPrI7wPfuOcDbiDxZwSN7hPDo?usp=sharing

#tardisistheonlywaytotravel #deleted ao3 #star wars fic

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I would dance all over this circle while laughing.

something charmingly twentieth century about this

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Star Wars 'What ifs?' part 3

Part two here

Someone explain the Gods of Mortis. Father, Daughter, Son - where is the Mother? Is the Mother the Force itself? You've also got the Bendu on Atollon, who we call he, but maybe Bendu is the Mother?

Speaking of the Bendu, what if after taking down Thrawn's army, Bendu takes a look around a the galaxy and realizes hey, this is all shit. So he goes to the World between Worlds and moves people around through those viewing mirrors to fix things - but remember, he's not a mortal being and will do things differently.

Droid uprising. Droids canonically develop sentience if not mind-wiped on a regular basis, and what if enough droids managed it and banded together to free all their metal brethren? If before the Clone Wars, then the droid army would probably not happen; if during the Clone Wars, the Droid Liberation Front would free them, causing chaos galaxy-wide either way.

When Obi-Wan was protecting Satine, what if , to keep her safe, he decided to flee Mandalore - to Melidaan? Satine gets exposed to a society of people (her own age) who don't want to fight anymore, but refuse not to be able to defend themselves. This changes her specific stance on pacifism and she gets more people on her side to follow her rule.

Similarly, what if Arla Fett managed to band several other people brain-washed by Death Watch together and overthrow them? At least long enough to escape. And they escape to Melidaan, where they help the Young overthrow the Elders, and then work together to take overthrow Death Watch.

When Anakin was sent off with Padme at the beginning of Attack of the Clones, what if it had never been Padme, but one of her near-identical handmaidens? And he doesn't find out until the Geonosis Arena - if things even go the same way.

Speaking of Geonosis - those braiworms. What if Palpatine had decided to use those instead of inhibitor chips. How would they work? Who would be the 'Queen' controlling the others?

Palpatine planned everything out, but he wasn't counting on thing - the free press! An intrepid reporter, maybe after the fiasco at Galidraan, maybe just out of curiosity out of how the Jedi Order actually fits into the Republic, goes looking, and finds the order for the clones - years before Palpatine was ready for the war to start.

#star wars clone wars #star wars #star wars au #what if

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More Star Wars 'What if?' AUs

Yet more Star Wars AU Disney could make - or people could write.

Post 1 here.

Palpatine's plan to have the people lose faith in the Jedi hits a snag because it started before he planned - before the war even. Galidraan has Jedi poll numbers taking a nosedive and when the Jedi are proposed to be generals there's a giant outcry because the people don't think they can do it without kriffing up (like they did Galidraan). Jedi aren't generals = Jedi aren't where Order 66 can conveniently have them killed. Plus! The outcry focuses on how Jedi are meant to be peacekeepers, not soldiers, so the Jedi still have popular support, just not as pieces of the galaxy's war machine.

Caleb Dume actually does get found by the Bad Batch and goes with them, and ends up staying behind with Cut and Su Lawquane. He becomes their 'oldest son' and meets Hera earlier and they manage to start/continue the Twi'lek resistance earlier and build it bigger/connect it to the wider resistance earlier.

Apparently it was Darth Plagueis' experiments that led to Anakin's birth, but what if Shmi miscarried? Where would all those midichlorians go? Into Shmi, of course! But now not only is there a Force Sensitive adult that just sprang up out of nowhere, but since Force Sensitives who are untrained and experience trauma are known to cause massive upheavals and damage to various things...like slave chips, chip transmitters, Hutts' lives...

Speaking of slave revolts, what if the Alpha clones found out about the chips when they were younger and, realizing how many more of them there were than the Kaminoans+trainers, dechipped enough younger brothers that they could make a stand. Would they take all the clones and leave, kill all the trainers and Kaminoans and stay?

What if the chips actually worked less like 'woo-ooh, space magic' and more like you'd expect? Fics seem to say the chip completely overrode the clones' personalities and they became 'good soldiers' that were just 'following orders', but watching The Bad Batch, affected clones seem to have the same personalities. If the chips couldn't assert immediate, complete control over the clones, but instead just blared out the Order and what it meant, and in order to get it to stop the clone had to follow through, none of the clones would have followed Order 66, if only because it would have been a hugely confusing thing to have happen (when they'd never experienced it before).

After Nute Gunray got arrested because of Darth Sidious' plans, he decided following a Sith wasn't a good idea - especially since he lost MONEY on this gambit! The Trade Federation is no longer backing Palpatine's plans and since Palpatine has already killed his Master, Hego Damask II of the Intergalactic Banking Clan, he's not got them either.

My favorite way of killing Palpatine - what if the Zillo Beast ate him?

Mother Talzin decides the Nightsisters should actually take a leading role in the galaxy's war. Sidious is extremely unprepared.

Palpatine encounters an unexpected roadblock to getting his Emergency Powers - the Senate. None of the good Senators want him to have that much power and none of the bad ones do either - because they'd have to give up some of their own power to him!

#star wars clone wars #star wars au #what if #star wars what if

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Disney should make Star Wars 'What if?'s

They own both Star Wars and Marvel, and the Marvel 'What if?' format would work great for the GFFA. And you can, of course, go with the obvious AUs such as 'Prince Luke and Leia Skywalker, moisture farmer' or 'Qui-Gon lives and raises Anakin' but considering how far the Star Wars universe stretches, both forwards and back in time, you're not limited to the core characters. You could have even weirder options, such as:

At Galidraan, instead of Jango Fett being the last True Mandalorian, the Ha'at Mando'ade kill all but one of the Jedi, that being Padawan Komari Vosa. She's ripe for becoming Sidious' Apprentice and now the Republic is insanely fearful of the Mandalorians and Palpatine moves his army plans up.

In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon and Queen's escape shuttle isn't damaged and they don't need to land on Tatooine. Anakin isn't found, but he manages to win the Boonta Eve Classic at some point and frees himself and his mother. Then he follows up on freeing the slaves, and long before war between the Republic and CIS is on the horizon, the Freed have declared war on the Hutts.

Back in the Old Republic, instead of Tarre Viszla leaving the Jedi to become Mand'alor, he uses his connections to start a satellite Jedi temple on Mandalore and the episode is a fast forward to our usual (mostly) characters in a completely different Jedi/Mando future.

Asajj Ventress was the one given to Sidious for his Apprentice; Maul gets found by Jedi Ky Narec.

The Jedi never centralized their temples, so when Anakin gets turned down by the Coruscant temple, Obi-Wan takes him (and his mother) to Correlia. Palpatine never meets him (until he's much older).

Montross wins that showdown against Jango and is the template for the clone army.

Yoda died when he was younger and wasn't around to 'guide' the Jedi into his vision of what they should be.

Palpatine is found and raised by the Jedi and Darth Plaugeious ends up with a different Apprentice and has to alter his plans for galactic domination somewhat.

Jango Fett actually kills Padme and what with his grieving padawan Obi-Wan never discovers the clones, which means when the Republics' new grand army is introduced there are a lot of plot holes showing.

Jar Jar Binks is actually a Force entity of Chaos and gets attached to Padme and Anakin and decides to help thesa people out.

#star wars #gffa #what if #star wars au

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Ahsoka > Obi-Wan too

Here I talked about how Ahsoka behaved like more of a Jedi than Yoda during Order 66. But honestly, afterward she acted like more of Jedi than both him and Obi-Wan. Yoda hid out on Dagobah and did nothing else. Obi-Wan was ostensibly watching over Luke (but not training him or anything) and spent the rest of his time trying to figure out how to contact Qui-Gon's ghost (except for if you count the Kenobi show). Ahsoka basically helped build the Rebellion from the word go, constantly fighting against tyranny and trying to help people wherever she could - like a true Jedi.

#star wars #star wars clone wars #ahsoka tano

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At one point, Mr. Kaminsky was asked to produce 900 birth and baptismal certificates and ration cards for 300 Jewish children in institutional homes who were about to be rounded up. The aim was to deceive the Germans until the children could be smuggled out to rural families or convents, or to Switzerland and Spain. He was given three days to finish the assignment.

He toiled for two straight days, forcing himself to stay awake by telling himself: “In one hour I can make 30 blank documents. If I sleep for an hour 30 people will die.”

Mr. Kaminsky died on Monday at his home in Paris, his daughter Sarah Kaminsky said. He was 97.

Full text under the cut for non-subscribers

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SHAZAM, but make them goddesses

Apparently the acronym SHAZAM was created by someone who, not having access to the internet, really half-assed their research into ‘Greek Gods’. Both what qualified as Greek, and what qualified as Gods. And they haven’t bothered to update the meaning since, but apparently they’ve started referring to those guys as ‘immortal elders’.

So here’s an alternative listing, though admittedly I couldn’t make them all Greek so I went with ‘Old World’. And they’re all women, too, because why not?

Sekhmet, an Egyptian warrior goddess and goddess of healing

Hecate, Greek goddess of magic, witchcraft, sorcery and crossroads

Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom and war strategy

Zarik, a Persian daeva personification of aging and poison

Ammit, Egyptian goddess whose name means ‘devourer of the dead’, specifically those who are judged evil

Menhit, an Egyptian/Nubian war goddess whose name means ‘she who massacres’

Yes, I ran into a problem with Z; not too many goddesses whose names start with Z to begin with, and then I had to find one with powers that could be used for crime fighting. Goddesses of childbirth or dawn don’t really help there. But there were many other options for the other letters: Hathor, Artemis, Spes and Minerva, the Roman counterpart to Athena.

#shazam #Captain Marvel #goddesses #dceu #dc movies #dc captain marvel