#i love the clone shenanigans

[art--harridan]

[Image description: A digital painting of Alex Rogan from the film The Last Starfigher. It is a head shot of Alex with a disbelieving expression on his face, mouth slightly open. You can just see the start of his starfighter outfit on his shoulders. His skin and clothing is painted in warmer colours while his hair is partially in cooler ones. There's harsh rim lighting around his hair, and some of his shoulders. The style of portrait is done with a lot of colour-blocking and hatching textures. The background is a light blue, with shooting star shapes littered about. These shapes look like the logo of the Starlite Starbrite in Alex's trailer park.]

Inktober - Day 4 (Exotic)

Film - The Last Starfighter (Nick Castle, 1984)

[wondersinwaynemanor]

imagine the brooding, intimidating Batman fighting criminals in the street when he hears this special ringtone in the comms and they're for specific people: his grandkids.

he has to hide in the shadows and goes Grandpa mode, clears his throat and coos lovingly to the comms to talk them.

Nightwing: Oh, he's cooing again.

Red Hood: Lian must have called and asked for more fruit loops.

or

Spoiler: B's doing that baby voice again, it's kinda creepy.

Red Robin: My baby must have dialed, he likes his grandpa's voice.

The rest of the batkids: WHAT BABY?????

Superboy: Our baby.

the batkids curse in different languages, confused and shocked.

***

when some of the rogues or criminals hear Batman in his Grandpa mode, they think he's gone soft.

nope. he's more determined, more restless, more protective, so he won't stop unless they're in Akrham or in jail.

but it's worth it when he comes home to little kids, who are excited to see him.

[themistymountainscold]

echo: if you don't apologise, i'm going to tell rex.

fives: i am an arc trooper, what can rex do?

echo: ok- REX!

fives: no wait! kriff! i'm sORRY!

[handless-and-dangerous]

Some brotherly validation is the perfect cure when you're feeling down.

-Wing

[mamuzzy]

“Got a package got a a clone, uhh, no CT number here, but the message reads ‘Happy Birthday Dreadbolt!’ ”

“Could someone please pick up the parcel?! I’m gonna get squished flat under this humongous thing.”

hope I’m not late, happy birthday :D

It's never too late! Thank you so much for thinking about me and for the present too <3 (i hope the corries will give it back soon).

Currently I only have my sketchbook at hand, on train to go visit my parents for a few days. But I wanted to draw something silly with Fox =D

[toastydoesthings]

Is there a Star Wars equivalent to Elton John? There should be. How else is my Padawan OC going to annoy the shit out of Cody with Waxer and Boil if crocodile rock is not involved???

[oliviaeatworld]

Ok you all are aware of my love for Echo but since we only got a few episodes of it during the Clone Wars there’s a very special place in my heart for The Bad Batch that is just Hunter, Tech, Wrecker and Crosshair. Just those four. I don’t know why but I particularly just like them together and Echo separate? I don’t know why? Like during the Bad Batch series I loved seeing Echo with them but now that I’m left to ponder after the series ended I’m usually just thinking about the og CF99

[fangirlforeversthings]

Don't talk to me or my 6.268.168 pookies ever again

[hardcase-ct-yolo]

2 things, Hardcase.

1, never ever say you're just an ordinary Trooper. That's never the case. Each of you are unique, including yourself.

2. The nail biting. Did you do that because of anxiety or was it a stim? I ask because I used to chew my nails as well!

<3

I've been called unique many times 🤣, but thanks!

Just meant that I'm no ARC or Medic. Just an average, if a little weird, heavy trooper. The Cap has threatened me with ARC training though, but ARCs don't get to play with the big guns often.

My nail biting, that was a stim. But like any stim it would be worse with anxiety. I'd chew them down pretty bad. Kix, well he bandaged up my fingers a fair amount from it and he worried I'd end up with an infection or worse. I mean we were cadets, he didn't have real injuries to worry over. Anyway he helped me eventually switch to other stims and of course the gloves helped eventually. Now I would only have to worry about the one hand! But I don't get the urge often.

[bibannana]

**Kix adopts school nurse vibes and just starts handing out ice packs one day.**

Fives *wonders into medbay*: Hey Kix I think my- *icepack hits him in the face*

Kix *sitting at his desk*: Sit with that on it for an hour and then tell me how it feels. In the mean time get back to work.

Fives *holding the icepack*: No really Kix, I think my arm is brok-

Kix *turns away*

[starqueensthings]

a 3 am glass case of emotion 🙃 (I’m sorry in advance)

I wish I could have been celebrating his tactical prowess; he had always been a capable soldier… reliable, steadfast, proficient. Instead, all I could do was mourn the complete loss of his autonomy. His clandestine programming had kicked in like the flip of a switch, the turn of a key… or the mention of a word. In this case, four words. Execute order sixty-six. The same man who had been arrested, and put up against a firing wall as a consequence for disobeying questionable inhumane orders, was now blindly following another. Annihilate the Jedi and anyone that tries to stop you… murder your former Commander. Nevermind the fact that he had just spent countless hours withstanding torturous mind probing to protect her. Nevermind the republic sigil tattoo that he had donned on his face for years; a daily reminder of the service that he was proud to provide. Nevermind the deep loyalty to his captain, his brother whom he had stood shoulder to shoulder with through everything. None of that mattered once his autonomy, his choice, had been taken. The mission objective was simple; eliminate the traitors or die trying, and that’s what happened to ARC Lieutenant Jesse (CT-5597)

[kissingarthurclaus]

I've got slight poo brain tonight but im hggghh thinkign

[matchademi]

Falls:*sitting around in the corrie guard medbay*

Corries:*obvious yelling and chaos and obvious sounds that they started it*

Falls:not my circus not my monkeys, not my circus not my monkeys.....

Torrent company:*even louder chaos*

Falls:Oh...*gets up quickly* My circus my monkeys my circus my monkeys!!!

[squirrelno2]

So my intent once the two sw fics I'm doing are done is to work on the time slip sequel and hopefully also finally get back to that han solo time travel thing I was threatening forever ago, but I also really want to keep playing with my more niche oc centric things, so.

Does it feel early to post this? Perhaps now, but I'm feeling eager with the time slip fic just needing its epilogue, and the cody/oc fic is surprisingly easy to write (so far, I say, knocking on wood). By the time this is finished it'll be a useful time to start considering the answer

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing”

20 years ago, I got in a (friendly) public spat with Chris Anderson, who was then the editor in chief of Wired. I'd publicly noted my disappointment with glowing Wired reviews of DRM-encumbered digital devices, prompting Anderson to call me unrealistic for expecting the magazine to condemn gadgets for their DRM:

https://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2004/12/is_drm_evil.html

I replied in public, telling him that he'd misunderstood. This wasn't an issue of ideological purity – it was about good reviewing practice. Wired was telling readers to buy a product because it had features x, y and z, but at any time in the future, without warning, without recourse, the vendor could switch off any of those features:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/12/29/cory-responds-to-wired-editor-on-drm/

I proposed that all Wired endorsements for DRM-encumbered products should come with this disclaimer:

WARNING: THIS DEVICE’S FEATURES ARE SUBJECT TO REVOCATION WITHOUT NOTICE, ACCORDING TO TERMS SET OUT IN SECRET NEGOTIATIONS. YOUR INVESTMENT IS CONTINGENT ON THE GOODWILL OF THE WORLD’S MOST PARANOID, TECHNOPHOBIC ENTERTAINMENT EXECS. THIS DEVICE AND DEVICES LIKE IT ARE TYPICALLY USED TO CHARGE YOU FOR THINGS YOU USED TO GET FOR FREE — BE SURE TO FACTOR IN THE PRICE OF BUYING ALL YOUR MEDIA OVER AND OVER AGAIN. AT NO TIME IN HISTORY HAS ANY ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY GOTTEN A SWEET DEAL LIKE THIS FROM THE ELECTRONICS PEOPLE, BUT THIS TIME THEY’RE GETTING A TOTAL WALK. HERE, PUT THIS IN YOUR MOUTH, IT’LL MUFFLE YOUR WHIMPERS.

Wired didn't take me up on this suggestion.

But I was right. The ability to change features, prices, and availability of things you've already paid for is a powerful temptation to corporations. Inkjet printers were always a sleazy business, but once these printers got directly connected to the internet, companies like HP started pushing out "security updates" that modified your printer to make it reject the third-party ink you'd paid for:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/11/ink-stained-wretches-battle-soul-digital-freedom-taking-place-inside-your-printer

Now, this scam wouldn't work if you could just put things back the way they were before the "update," which is where the DRM comes in. A thicket of IP laws make reverse-engineering DRM-encumbered products into a felony. Combine always-on network access with indiscriminate criminalization of user modification, and the enshittification will follow, as surely as night follows day.

This is the root of all the right to repair shenanigans. Sure, companies withhold access to diagnostic codes and parts, but codes can be extracted and parts can be cloned. The real teeth in blocking repair comes from the law, not the tech. The company that makes McDonald's wildly unreliable McFlurry machines makes a fortune charging franchisees to fix these eternally broken appliances. When a third party threatened this racket by reverse-engineering the DRM that blocked independent repair, they got buried in legal threats:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cold-war

Everybody loves this racket. In Poland, a team of security researchers at the OhMyHack conference just presented their teardown of the anti-repair features in NEWAG Impuls locomotives. NEWAG boobytrapped their trains to try and detect if they've been independently serviced, and to respond to any unauthorized repairs by bricking themselves:

https://mamot.fr/@q3k@hackerspace.pl/111528162905209453

Poland is part of the EU, meaning that they are required to uphold the provisions of the 2001 EU Copyright Directive, including Article 6, which bans this kind of reverse-engineering. The researchers are planning to present their work again at the Chaos Communications Congress in Hamburg this month – Germany is also a party to the EUCD. The threat to researchers from presenting this work is real – but so is the threat to conferences that host them:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/researchers-face-legal-threats-over-sdmi-hack/

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You're paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can't rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it's worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/25/moral-injury/#enshittification

But even if everyone at that table is a swell egg who wouldn't dream of enshittifying the product, the existence of a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature makes the product vulnerable to external actors who will demand that it be used. Back in 2022, Adobe informed its customers that it had lost its deal to include Pantone colors in Photoshop, Illustrator and other "software as a service" packages. As a result, users would now have to start paying a monthly fee to see their own, completed images. Fail to pay the fee and all the Pantone-coded pixels in your artwork would just show up as black:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/28/fade-to-black/#trust-the-process

Adobe blamed this on Pantone, and there was lots of speculation about what had happened. Had Pantone jacked up its price to Adobe, so Adobe passed the price on to its users in the hopes of embarrassing Pantone? Who knows? Who can know? That's the point: you invested in Photoshop, you spent money and time creating images with it, but you have no way to know whether or how you'll be able to access those images in the future. Those terms can change at any time, and if you don't like it, you can go fuck yourself.

These companies are all run by CEOs who got their MBAs at Darth Vader University, where the first lesson is "I have altered the deal, pray I don't alter it further." Adobe chose to design its software so it would be vulnerable to this kind of demand, and then its customers paid for that choice. Sure, Pantone are dicks, but this is Adobe's fault. They stuck a KICK ME sign to your back, and Pantone obliged.

This keeps happening and it's gonna keep happening. Last week, Playstation owners who'd bought (or "bought") Warner TV shows got messages telling them that Warner had walked away from its deal to sell videos through the Playstation store, and so all the videos they'd paid for were going to be deleted forever. They wouldn't even get refunds (to be clear, refunds would also be bullshit – when I was a bookseller, I didn't get to break into your house and steal the books I'd sold you, not even if I left some cash on your kitchen table).

Sure, Warner is an unbelievably shitty company run by the single most guillotineable executive in all of Southern California, the loathsome David Zaslav, who oversaw the merger of Warner with Discovery. Zaslav is the creep who figured out that he could make more money cancelling completed movies and TV shows and taking a tax writeoff than he stood to make by releasing them:

https://aftermath.site/there-is-no-piracy-without-ownership

Imagine putting years of your life into making a program – showing up on set at 5AM and leaving your kids to get their own breakfast, performing stunts that could maim or kill you, working 16-hour days during the acute phase of the covid pandemic and driving home in the night, only to have this absolute turd of a man delete the program before anyone could see it, forever, to get a minor tax advantage. Talk about moral injury!

But without Sony's complicity in designing a remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrade feature into the Playstation, Zaslav's war on art and creative workers would be limited to material that hadn't been released yet. Thanks to Sony's awful choices, David Zaslav can break into your house, steal your movies – and he doesn't even have to leave a twenty on your kitchen table.

The point here – the point I made 20 years ago to Chris Anderson – is that this is the foreseeable, inevitable result of designing devices for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades. Anyone who was paying attention should have figured that out in the GW Bush administration. Anyone who does this today? Absolute flaming garbage.

Sure, Zaslav deserves to be staked out over an anthill and slathered in high-fructose corn syrup. But save the next anthill for the Sony exec who shipped a product that would let Zaslav come into your home and rob you. That piece of shit knew what they were doing and they did it anyway. Fuck them. Sideways. With a brick.

Meanwhile, the studios keep making the case for stealing movies rather than paying for them. As Tyler James Hill wrote: "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing":

https://bsky.app/profile/tylerjameshill.bsky.social/post/3kflw2lvam42n

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/playstationed/#tyler-james-hill

Image: Alan Levine (modified) https://pxhere.com/en/photo/218986

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/