john_amend_all

( 'Prompt me' posts )

Various off-LJ/DW resources and adventures in JavaScript:

( Fanfic masterlist )
( Random generators )

It's doubtless the height of egotism, but I've been experimenting with getting AI to make covers and/or illustrations for some of my fanfic. The tool of choice this time was Google ImageFX.

In general, it doesn't do too badly with two or three people in the picture, but it seemed to find the half-dozen required for a Jamie's Angels ensemble pretty taxing. And while it's pretty good with spelling, pretty good is not perfect.

( Under the cut for size )

When I was in Waitrose this evening the attendant manning the self-service checkouts was putting free bunches of daffodils in everyone's shopping. At least they were real daffodils rather than plastic ones.

(Also, an afterthought re AUs — it didn't occur to me until just now that 'Nordic Noir' was a perfectly valid type of AU, and one which Taskmaster has canonically visited.)

A tumblr post by

lurking_latinist suggested the concept of a "Taskmaster AU", and since I already had the Ten Alternate Universes meme lying around...

You Have Ten Alternatives (1000 words) by JohnAmendAll
Chapters: 10/10
Fandom: Taskmaster (UK TV) RPF, Doctor Who (2005), My Lady's Money - Wilkie Collins, James Bond (Movies 1962-2002), Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga), Babylon 5 (TV 1993), Sapphire & Steel (TV), Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Greg Davies, Alex Horne (British Comedy RPF), Amy Pond (Doctor Who), Mike Wozniak, Old Sharon, George Wickham, Susan Ivanova, Stephen Franklin, James Bond
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Anime, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Alternate Universe - Pirates, Alternate Universe - Space, Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Romance Novel, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Regency, Drabble Collection
Summary:

Applying the "Ten Alternate Universes" meme to Taskmaster.

I certainly wasn't aware that Hugh Burden played Lord Peter Wimsey on the radio, with Clifford Norgate as Parker.

Yoinked from

thisbluespirit:

Rules: give us the links to your fics with the most hits, second most kudos, third most comments, fourth most bookmarks, fifth most words, and fic with the fewest words.

( Answers below )

10 minutes of plot and 80 minutes of people kicking each other in front of flashing lights so you can't see who's kicking whom.

(OK, I didn't time it with a stopwatch but that's what it felt like).

Ever since the 2005 revival, and probably before, there's been a fairly standard template for an article about Doctor Who which goes: "Introducing the new companion, who's completely different from all the helpless screamers who came before her." Or, retrospectively, "X was a radical introduction as companion, so different from all the helpless screamers etc."

I think today's the first time I've seen the division between 'helpless screamer' and 'competent companion' placed as late as between Rose and Martha. I mean, say what you like about Rose (and I have) I'm finding it very difficult to picture her as 'hysterically screaming at every threat'.

(And another demerit to the article's author for capitalising the Doctor's "The" like it's a royal pronoun).

If you can get at the iPlayer, there's a little 15-minute thing: Peter Davison Remembers... Campion. (They've got the actual episodes up on iPlayer at the moment, too).

Following up on my last post: Quite a few audio adaptations of John Dickson Carr's works seem to have made it to YouTube, and people have been collecting them into playlists. This one starts with Fire, Burn! with some guy called Richard Hurndall in the lead. (Richard Hurndall playing a time traveller? Nah, it'll never catch on...)

Archive.org has the BBC Radio series of Carr's Dr Gideon Fell mysteries, with Sir Donald Sinden in the title role. I remember listening to some of them in lunch breaks at work when they were originally broadcast, and enjoying them. So far this time round I've listened to He Who Whispers, which seems to be faithful to what I remember of the book.

This was a British Library crime reprint that I purchased on a recent visit. It's apparently "considered to be one of [the author's] finest works" according to the blurb on the back, and got a glowing review from Dorothy L. Sayers on initial publication.

My reaction, having read it, was that there's a reason Sayers, and Christie, and Freeman Wills Crofts were bestsellers, whereas Anthony Gilbert wasn't. ( Don't think there are any major spoilers, but just in case... )

Memed from

shivver: ( 1. How many works do you have on Ao3? )

Following on from my attempt to get AI to generate the evil alternates of Isobel, Victoria and Zoe, I remembered I'd also had a request for the punk Clara fragment from Off the Map.

This turned out to be unexpectedly easy (if slightly unnerving), because Stable Diffusion 2.1 and its derivatives know what a "Jenna-Louise Coleman" is. It literally was a matter of entering a prompt like Jenna-Louise Coleman driving a jeep, studded leather jacket, punk, shaved head, buzzcut and then sitting back while the AI did its work.

( Thus )

The technique appears to work on most NuWho actors that I've tried, either with their own names or the characters that they play. Sadly not for our favourites of 1960s cardboard TV, though. In one hilarious case, I tried 'Victoria Waterfield' as a prompt and the AI coughed up... a sports field with water in it.

A few years back, when I wrote Exchange Students,

AllyHR commented:

Isobel as a punk is something I’d like to see illustrated.

I realised yesterday that with the current state of AI image generation, that's not so impossible now as it was then. So here is evil mirrorverse punk Isobel.
( Jezebel )
And then I decided to do Victoria's and Zoe's counterparts too.
( Tori )
( Slash )

(Technical notes: The main tool I used was the Stable Diffusion 2 "Inpaint" tool, which allows me to use text commands to replace part of an image. I also used the "Outpaint" tool to give Jezebel some shoulders, because the picture I started from was a very tight shot of her face.)

I probably owe apologies to Ms Faulkner, Ms Watling and Ms Padbury too.

If a sensitivity reader is someone who updates literature from previous decades by removing racist and ableist language and so forth...

Then presumably someone who updates literature from previous decades by adding in oaths and homosexuality and other things that are accepted now but weren't mentionable at the time would be an insensitivity reader.

It's a good week for fans of reaction videos and spooky 1980s TV -- Medusa Cascade has just started on Moondial, and Marie-Clare is most of the way through The Box of Delights, with the promise of Sapphire and Steel to follow. ( Various Box of Delights spoilers )

On an unrelated note: The other night I had a realistic, consistent dream in which the Fourteenth Doctor was being played by none other than Sir Tony Robinson. I didn't think the script was anything special, though.

lurking_latinist wondered who the AI-generated companions Duncan, Lloyd and Stardust might be.

I created some prompt text for the generator (basically, taking the companions' names and capsule biographies from TV Tropes, for Susan up to Harry). Then I'd add the requested character's name and hit the Big Blue Button.

( Duncan, Lloyd, Stardust, Alice and Mavis )

While I'm still on the subject of AI, I recall seeing a Spectator article along 'Journalists are all doomed, we'll be replaced by AI text generators' lines. What caught my eye was the prediction that fanfic would be one of the first areas of writing to succumb to the robot hordes. I can certainly see a place for robot-generated fanfic (particularly for someone whose interest was in a niche pairing *cough* Jamie/Sam *cough*), but since fanfic is a hobby that scratches a writer's itch I find it hard to believe that there wouldn't still be humans doing it the old-fashioned way.

(I did once try to get an AI to generate Lucie/Karen, priming it with the text of Professional Development. It just output more bickering, except that each time Karen insulted Lucie she'd conclude her remark with a kiss).

A quick roundup of my continuing AI generator experiments.

( Cut for length and a sprinkling of NSFW )

Well, a vignette, anyway.

Valen's Angels (864 words) by JohnAmendAll
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Babylon 5 (TV 1993)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Jeffrey Sinclair, Kosh (Babylon 5), Ulkesh Naranek
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Anime, Vignette
Summary: A young lady in distress needs to hire a hard-bitten PI. We all know how this goes.

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john_amend_all

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Recent Entries

Resource Post

Amazing what you can do with AI these days

I sense the hand of the Master in this

Fic: You Have Ten Alternatives

Actors I've seen elsewhere

AO3 stats meme

Star Trek: Section 31 spoiler-free nano-review

I've not seen the line drawn there before

Drive-by

I'll be in the Carr

Drive-by rec

Recently read: Death in Fancy Dress by Anthony Gilbert [Lucy Malleson]

AO3 Questions Meme

It's not what AI knows, it's who AI knows

Mean Girls

It's straightforward logic

Currently rereading

Companions that never were

You are in the Kitchen of Ai on Level 3. Your grade is Neophyte.

And then there was fic