#archive reblog

[nimata-beroya]

Hi dearies!

This is my piece for Day 5 of @tbb-appreciation-week. I'm really excited to share this fic that it's part of The Warrior & the Ice Vulture series! Besides the day's prompts "Whump" and "Hiding face on neck", I also threw in this “I don't need you to help me, I can handle things myself.” as an early prompt from Whumptober 2023, and "I will only slow you down" from my @badthingshappenbingo.

Yeah, a lot will happen on this thing 😆

Chapters: 1/2

Fandom: Star Wars: The Bad Batch (Cartoon), Star Wars - All Media Types

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: CT-9904 | Crosshair/Original Character(s), CT-9904 | Crosshair/Katkris Pex, CT-9904 | Crosshair/Original Mandalorian Character(s)

Characters: Crosshair (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Katkris Pex (Original Mandalorian Character), Original Imperial Characters (Star Wars), Hunter (Star Wars: The Bad Batch)

Additional Tags: tbbaw 2023, The Bad Batch Appreciation Week 2023, TBB Appreciation Week 2023, Day 5, Whump, hiding face in neck, Whumptober 2023, (Posted Early), Day 15, “I don't need you to help me I can handle things myself.”, flirty banter, Crosshair Has Issues, So Has Katkris, Crosshair Needs a Hug (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Katkris Needs a Hug, Mentioned Tech (Star Wars: The Bad Batch)/Phee Genoa, Bad Things Happen Bingo, I Will Only Slow You Down

Series: Part 2 of The Warrior & the Ice Vulture, Part 1 of Whumptober 2023

Summary: The last thing Crosshair thinks when he takes the bounty to kill an Imperial captain is that Katkris will be involved in it too. And it's just his luck, because when the Mandalorian bounty hunter is around, chaos always follow.

DARK ANGEL WITH A SHOTGUN

CHAPTER 1

Through the rangefinder of his rifle, Crosshair spies the stronghold that the Empire seized from locals and established its headquarters on this backwater planet. He adjusts the vision to thermal to see how many Stormtroopers are inside the structure. Crosshair expects his target to make it easy for him to eliminate him by coming out of the building at some point. He needs a plan B, however, for the eventuality that the Imperial remains stubbornly inside. As he suspected, the security in the complex is heavy, with numerous groups of troopers patrolling the hallways and gates. It isn't going to be easy to infiltrate, but not impossible if Crosshair times his movements correctly. The idea is to maintain his incursion a secret as long as he can, while eliminating hostiles as he goes. That'll make his exit much easier once he takes the target out.

Bounties on Imperials don't come often, much less with such a high reward. It makes him wonder what dirty business this Imperial is involved in, that even his higher-ups have turned a blind eye to the great bounty and haven't made it go away. Whatever the reason, Crosshair has every intention of collecting this one nevertheless.

It could've been an easier job if he had a team to work with, like the Bad Batch. But after all that has happened in the last several years, that isn't his life anymore. He touches down on Pabu on occasion between hunts when he needs a place to lie low, but the relationship with his siblings has never returned to what it used to be. It isn't as bad as it is when they’ve been on opposite sides, but there's too much hurt and guilt coming from all sides to pretend as if nothing has happened. And he doesn't have many other people he can trust; he can count them on one hand.

Crosshair shakes himself out of those thoughts and refocuses on the task at hand. He can do this on his own.

A cluster of heat signatures on the East end of the building catches his eyes. At first, he thinks it's his target in the company of four Stormtroopers guarding him, but as he watches, Crosshair realizes that he's mistaken. The smallest person in the room falls to the ground as one of the four bigger figures manhandles them. Without wasting time, the other three guards gang up with the first and start beating the person on the ground. Crosshair assumes it's someone who has committed a petty crime against the Imperial in charge, and this is their punishment for it. He knows more than anyone else that, sometimes, even something as simple as existing is enough a crime for the Empire. It's a lesson that he learned the hard way.

Telling himself that whatever is happening there isn't of his concern, he redirects his rifle in the opposite direction. He has a job to do, and it doesn't include rescuing a random person.

Crosshair spends the next hour or so studying the comes and goes of Stormtroopers around the building and finding out where his target is actually located. Despite the considerable numbers of Stormtroopers guarding the stronghold, he detects a pathetic high number of vulnerabilities in their patrol patterns. Hardly a surprise; Imperial conscripted soldiers will never achieve the efficiency of the clone army. Crosshair intends on using each one of those vulnerabilities to his advantage. However, there is something that, regardless of his initial dismissal, keeps bothering him. His attention has returned repeatedly to the East end of the building. It isn't relevant to his mission, and yet, he can't stop wondering who the poor bastard in that room is. No doubt, it's somebody having a very bad day.

The beating stopped a while ago, and the person has barely moved since then. They're lying on the floor in the same spot that the guards left them. If it weren't because their heat signature is as strong as it was in the beginning, Crosshair would think they're dead. Unconscious maybe, but something is telling him that it's not the case. And what happens in the next couple of minutes confirms his suspicion. A trooper returns to the room and kneels next to the person. The thought of that, being a rookie move on their part, crosses his mind at the same time that the “unconscious” person springs to life.

Keep reading on Ao3

[belphegor1982]

Art trademark!

Drawings:  Recognition on sight is the color. Distinct schemes and saturation. Rich yet somehow soft? Very satisfying! Aesthetically pleasing. Characters look Round and Soft. Scanlan esp. He’s so PURDY. 

Gorgeous detail in his outfits like omg the embodiment of eye candy esp when I zoom in and get to see all the careful attention paid to each part of his clothing. Like omg the TIME it must’ve taken. The patterned embroidery on his vest and his sash and his trousers and all the gold and glitter and his fancy earrings and sometimes he has necklaces and he’s so fabulous even when covered in blood. That and the drawn to scale size comparisons sends me bc he’s TINY. A sack of potatoes. It’s great! Vax’s hair/feathers and Pike’s armor are cool too! I’m just a sucker for Scanlan.

Writing: Delightful Scanlan voice. His dialogue and behavior in both ur comic/fics is *chef’s kiss*. He’s the strangest blend of sincere yet also insincere. Esp in ur Scrambled brain-eggs fanfic. His POV is fascinating to see play out. Feels organic too!

Particularly fond of ur version of Grog’s voice. The way he pays attention to his buddies thru a simple but insightful lens in ur Sea and Sand fanfic is alksdjfalskdjf. The big and his smalls! He loves them so much!!! The fact he apologized for getting Scanlan’s hair wet after promising not to (AFTER the near death!!!!) haunts me in the best way.

srry i went a lil insane i just like ur werk and finaly got the nerve 2 say it bai

I HAVE BEEN STARING AT THIS FOR FOUR WHOLE MINUTES STRAIGHT

SERIOUSLY

Midnight and a half, I send my WIP to my Kindle for a reread and prepare to switch off the computer - and I get THIS?? Look, whatever happens this week, I'll just think about this message and it'll make me smile instantly!! I lovelovelove putting little details hoping people will spot them, and since I'm not a native English speaker I work very hard on the rhythm and melody of words and characters' voices in general, you made my absolute day here

thank you SO MUCH

[tomhardysprostate]

@castielsprostate jailblog and backup blog <3

[belphegor1982]

#I couldn't use glaze bc it fucks up toon style bad#it's great for detailed painterly stuff but plain colour looked :/#so I am hopeful for this (x) 👈

A new tool lets artists add invisible changes to the pixels in their art before they upload it online so that if it’s scraped into an AI training set, it can cause the resulting model to break in chaotic and unpredictable ways. 

The tool, called Nightshade, is intended as a way to fight back against AI companies that use artists’ work to train their models without the creator’s permission. Using it to “poison” this training data could damage future iterations of image-generating AI models, such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, by rendering some of their outputs useless—dogs become cats, cars become cows, and so forth. MIT Technology Review got an exclusive preview of the research, which has been submitted for peer review at computer security conference Usenix.   

AI companies such as OpenAI, Meta, Google, and Stability AI are facing a slew of lawsuits from artists who claim that their copyrighted material and personal information was scraped without consent or compensation. Ben Zhao, a professor at the University of Chicago, who led the team that created Nightshade, says the hope is that it will help tip the power balance back from AI companies towards artists, by creating a powerful deterrent against disrespecting artists’ copyright and intellectual property. Meta, Google, Stability AI, and OpenAI did not respond to MIT Technology Review’s request for comment on how they might respond. 

Zhao’s team also developed Glaze, a tool that allows artists to “mask” their own personal style to prevent it from being scraped by AI companies. It works in a similar way to Nightshade: by changing the pixels of images in subtle ways that are invisible to the human eye but manipulate machine-learning models to interpret the image as something different from what it actually shows. 

Continue reading article here

[sagegarnish]

🦀 Kudos Crab 🦀

If you are scrolling and see Kudos Crab, your fics will be blessed!

You will get good comments and kudos!

You will beat your writers block!

GO AND WRITE!

[belphegor1982]

#“I’m not a native english speaker 😔” and then proceeds to out-write SHAKESPEARE (x)

ARE YOU KIDDING WHAAT

[polarisbear]

happy finale!

[avatarofthetired]

CANON bits of tma lore that are too goofy to be real

Martín added the “K” just for the vibes

Jon SPELLED OUT “el oh el”

Jon lied and said he was 10 years older than he is to seem professional

See now that I’m listing them I forget

[drdrizzey]

Jon and Gerry!! My eyes are BURNING from drawing that in the dark at full screen luminosity at 4am but now I'm free since that WIP was waiting for months to be finished

I also post on Instagram if that interests anyone!! (My username is Drizium)

THANKS FOR THE REBLOGS YALL ARE CRAZY LMAO

[nauti-ca]

projecting onto kaladin again

(fixed his scar)

[inshelliesworld]

proof that @nancydrewwouldnever is usually right...

RANDOM MUSING: Remember that anything pulled out of someone's ass is usually just a turd.

[enigmatic-enigmas]

POV: You're Elias Bouchard

[starsandwriting]

Haha. Hahaha.

[ID: Alternating excerpts from the transcripts of The Magnus Protocol episode 11 and The Magnus Archives episode 112 and 67.

1.

Gwen: I thought he was going to kill me!

Lena: But he didn’t, which means you’ve passed the first part of your probation. Congratulations. Did you scream?

2.

(Elias): congratulations. You’re doing a lot better than I expected.

Archivist: Feels like all I’ve managed to do is… not die.

Elias: And believe me, that is a remarkably rare skill.

3.

Gwen: I don’t understand.

Lena: Yes, you do.

Beat.

Gwen: But… why?

Lena: “Why” comes later. For now, it’s best you try to process the “what.” I’ll let you know when I have another liaison assignment for you.

4.

Archivist: So you obviously know how to stop it. You could just tell me!

Elias: I could. But I believe that if I did so, you would fail. The Stranger is antithetical to us.

[The Archivist sighs heavily]

5.

Gwen (defeated): I… Ok.

Gwen opens the door.

Lena: Oh, and Gwen?

Gwen: Yes?

Lena: Get some sleep. You look dreadful.

6.

Archivist: Of course, of course. Understood.

Elias: And for God’s sake, get some sleep.

End ID]

Thank you @princess-of-purple-prose for the ID!

[cleverlittlejay]

So I just noticed some old comments on my fics, and now I’m overthinking replying since it’s been so long. So tumblr: