winterpaladin

In-game photography and fanfic writing Re-made blog

[winter-paladin]

Turning this into a pinned post:

The Illusion of Truth is a Fallout fanfic featuring both my Lone Wanderer Malcolm Gray and my Sole Survivor Nora C Cartwright.

Original post:

I guess I can share my dork (ref sheets made by the wonderful @x-enocyon):

Malcolm Gray is my Lone Wanderer, angry with James for abandoning him in the vault, frustrated with the Brotherhood's lack of action regarding many wasteland issues, and eventually finding himself as Colonel Autumn's protégé.

For ten years Malcolm finds himself based out of the Whitesprings, training to become a military leader in the Enclave, participating in cybernetics research, conducting solo scouting operations for future Enclave occupation, and seeking out vaults with high likelihoods of dwellers to recruit into the Enclave.

With the successful capture and occupation of the Commonwealth in 2288, the now General Autumn promotes Malcolm to the rank of colonel, giving him authority over the region. The Enclave's presence in the Commonwealth does not go uncontested, leading to further conflict within the region and Malcolm himself.

Malcolm is highly knowledgeable in the medical field thanks to James's efforts in Vault 101, branching into cybernetics after seeing the current and developing technologies available to the Enclave, primarily focusing on helping injured soldiers regain use of lost limbs. He also is knowledgeable in computers and other technical equipment, a proficient vertibird pilot, and is skilled in under cover operations.

After being seemingly abandoned, Malcolm is desperate for approval and acceptance from those he respects and cares for, sometimes blinding him from right and wrong. He finds it difficult making personal connections given his position as Autumn's successor and spent a lot of time believing they would hold him back as he pursued his Enclave career.

After finding people who show him the problems with the Enclave, Malcolm is able to understand how the Enclave has caused considerable damage to the country they have claimed to protect over the years and becomes one of the people spearheading efforts to rebuild the country in ways that everyone can agree on.

Malcolm is a major character in my fic and he gets to be the favourite of my OCs.

Malcolm takes the SAFE test

[dduane]

Can't wait for the bubble to burst

Oh sweet Powers that Be: I so look forward to the day this bullshit finally becomes impossible (or utterly unaffordable for its proponents, when the price of AI tokens suddenly shoots up)... for the sake of myself and thousands of other actual, (loving the attempted term of opprobrium) "brain-only" writers. 😏

Over at Reddit:

...The replies will amuse you: evenly divided between the "How To Keep Cheating" crowd, and the other, better souls coming in on the "Wow, You Might Actually Have To Learn How To Write Now" side. (Also, though the thread has been locked, lots of the comments from people who don't like AI still remain.)

[boimann]

ATTENTION ARTISTS OF TUMBLR

since tumblr is going to start scraping blogs to train ai be sure to glaze and nightshade your art!! Not only will both of these programs protect your art from being copied but nightshade also poisons any ai that tries to steal it

here is some more info on these tools and where you can download them:

Nightshade: Protecting Copyright (uchicago.edu)

Nightshade: Downloads (uchicago.edu)

Glaze - What is Glaze (uchicago.edu)

Glaze - Downloads (uchicago.edu)

[twosides--samecoin]

lucy maccready for @ssnuppy

thanks for the art trade and the patience

Who is Lucy MacCready when her story is allowed to be something other than the fridged wife trope? What if she was defined by more qualities than caring for people as the matriarch of Little Lamplight? What if her fate wasn't destined to contour a lover's tragic backstory; a wife and mother only ever referred to in past-tense? What if she survived the ferals and stuck it out with RJ and spearheaded finding care for Duncan? Hell, what if she didn't end up with RJ? In any of these universes, what if we got to meet Lucy as someone able to forge her own path?

Anyway I think she'd be in 2 foraging. Visited Oasis after leaving Little Lamplight. Went through 2/3s of a Children of Atom initiation for a big stash of mushrooms and then bailed. Works odd farming jobs. Keeps to herself because everyone's a Mungo

[winter-paladin]

This screen gives me fic inspiration

[winter-paladin]

Happy Birthday Mal

[burthdaycakee]

Danse has traveled to Appalachia for some recon ⛰️

Thank you to @1slushy and @city-voices for the idea!! Making Danse gave me a reason to play Fallout 76 again

Danse and Deacon @city-voices ⬇️

thank you for the uniform!

[winter-paladin]

Ah yes, the porting into 76 (wow the screenshot timestamps says I've been doing this since 2021)

I usually run with an "Evil Danse" because there's no saving of presets and I'm a huge sucker for the Enclave 76 uniforms:

Bonus we can't forget Piper:

[abyssal-ilk]

the coursers from fallout 4 exist in such an interesting space to me. a fucked up middle ground between the institute's human scientists and the rest of the gen-3 population. a group of synths formed so that they can be thrown at whatever dangerous thing the institute needs dealt with. isolated from both groups with their only peers being other coursers, and their only interactions with the surface world often being brief and violent. x6-88 do u know how famous you are to me

[abigailspinach]

[dduane]

(dry look) Nobody gets to tell me when to cringe. I reserve such assessments to those who have sufficient experience to correctly judge what’s cringeworthy.

[winter-paladin-deactivated20231]

Malcolm Gray before he heads into the Commonwealth.

I honestly can't describe how excited I was as I watched this piece come together.

Thank you so very much @dr-vauclair-art for your amazing work, this is absolutely incredible.

[writingdose]

I am once again begging people to realize that AI checker doesn’t work. it’s never worked. it’s notoriously known to have flagged human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made. and by feeding it people’s works, you are feeding more works to AI, because apparently the machine itself is AI.

the only thing AI checker does is harm genuine artists and people in general too.

[winter-paladin]

Writing the Enclave has been unpleasant because saying they're a bunch of assholes is being polite, but I got to do it for my story.

Current happy thoughts involve Fawkes coming to the Commonwealth with Duncan on his shoulders after MacCready sends the cure back.

[winter-paladin]

I have two updates regarding The Illusion of Truth:

First, in the last few weeks or so, when I've gone to visit AO3 there has been a Cloudflare page popping up to see if I'm human. Honestly I have no problem with this as historically I have had issues with my (now offline) fics getting 60 kudos after only three visits which was highly suspicious - given the timing, my theory is that some of my fics (and many others written by other authors) were being scraped to train LLMs. To try making it more difficult for these thieves to take our work, we've been locking our fics to for users only. I have no proof that any of my work was fed into the word vomit machines, just an educated guess given the timing of developments around "AI". I'm assuming more protections have been put in place to make scraping more difficult.

With Cloudflare now on AO3, I'm willing to open up this fic to all readers. It was other authors here who inspired me to begin writing and sharing, other people who pour time and effort into their passions because the journey of creating is a rewarding experience.

If you've seen me before, thanks for hanging out. If you're new here, welcome and enjoy the first part of the fic (and hopefully what's to come). You can start reading here:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Secondly, Learning Curve - 02 has now been posted where we continue to follow Mal as he continues on in the Enclave's ranks.

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[sauntering-down]

i had three fic ideas.  wrote one.  i still have three fic ideas.  this is not how math is supposed to work.

[seasnailglass]

can this post please back up it’s too close to home

[alexseanchai]

I had five ideas, I wrote two, now I have seven

[bisexualbaker]

Listen. They’re called “plot bunnies” for a reason, and it’s not just because they hop around all over your brain demanding attention.

[redsixwing]

🎶99 fanfic ideas on my blog

99 fanfic ideas~

Take one down, pass it around

137 fanfic ideas on my blog🎶

[powered-rails]

More Danse memes from the depths of the meme folder. Yes, I still have more of them.

bonus Deacon as always:

extra bonus Arcade because of this ad I got earlier:

[winter-paladin]

[dduane]

Just a note for the local crowd

Every now and then a difficult period like this comes along: so it's time to request some assistance.

I've kind of been neglecting my vision for the past year or so, aware that I needed new glasses (and to go have a consult for possible eye-related surgery), but putting it off... and now the situation has, as it were, come home to roost.

The other day, when I was typing something and then (to check it before posting) had to pick up the Mac and hold it up to my nose to see what I'd typed... I realized that if this went on much longer, even with dictation (because after you dictate, you still have to edit...), I wouldn't be able to write.

That would be bad.

I need to go see my Eye Lady, get examined, and get both sets of glasses re-fitted with new prescriptions. This—as usual, each time it needs to be done every year and a half or two years, due to Weird Eyes—is going to run into a low-four-figure-ish kind of money. And due to other recent unexpected medical expenses, right now there's not enough dosh around (or spondoolicks or whatever term you prefer...) to get things sorted.

Therefore: can I get people interested in keeping a writer, you know, writing (as I've got three novels working at once at the moment...), to consider doing one of these things?

(a) Go over to Ebooks Direct and buy a book. (Or a bundle. Or a gift card for somebody else who might like my work.) And if you do: thanks so much!

(b) Stop by my Ko-Fi and drop a little something in the pot. It'll be most appreciated.

Support Diane Duane

Support Diane Duane

And if you can't do either of the above:

(c) Reblog this and let other people see it?

Whatever you do: thanks very much!

[dduane]

This alarms me

This turned up in my ask box recently. I've masked the sender's identity.

Sometimes when I chat with an AI, I think of HIGH WIZARDRY and wonder if we as a species - for the first time - are at the dawn of another Earthbound species gaining consciousness, and like Dairine, whether we're being proper guardians. This isn't a calcified belief but just a random idea that flickered to mind. Wondering - as the writer who thought it up decades ago - what you think, if anything.

I think what I described in HW is absolutely nothing like we're currently seeing unfold on this planet. What's being poorly constructed here—while we watch from day to day—is a mechanism hurriedly and incompetently trained by other human beings to operate on top of a platform constructed of greed and theft. There are no new beings or intelligences being born here. If there were, they would be quickly declared to be "owned" by these billionaires, and hence their slaves. Meanwhile, the platforms' owners have already made it plain that once they control its source completely enough, they intend to sell intelligence to you, metered. ...If you can afford it. If you can't? Wow, sucks being you.

...Nor should I have to point you to cites for this. They're out there in plain English. Even Google, poor denatured creature that it is now, can find them. But there's still hope these people's intentions will never come to pass, due to their own overarching greed.

Meanwhile: "chat mode" interaction with this soulless, cash-grasping, unguardrailed machinery will do you no good. People have already died of it. I don't want anybody to do so on my watch, unwarned. So please stop.

Thanks.