Hollowness, Or The Beginning And The End Of The Ship Of Dreams - A RubyxChristina Fanfiction

Now is the Time (For You and I to Cuddle Close Together) - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! Happy Halloween! To celebrate my favorite holiday I have posted a wolfwren one-shot. You will find an extract below and if you want to read the whole thing, the link will be at the end!

The old Sedan pulled up into the school’s parking lot and Baylan cut the engine. Shin could hear the music booming from the gymnasium already, some pop song she couldn’t stand. She kept her gaze on her lap and made no move to get out.

“Just for an hour,” Baylan said. “If you don’t like it then call me and I’ll come to pick you up in an hour. Otherwise, you can stay for as long as you want.”

Shin didn’t move. A couple of monsters walked past the car and despite their costume, she recognized them as football players. She wanted nothing to do with them, or anyone at this stupid school party anyway.

“Competitions are coming up,” she said. “I should be at home training. Sabine is…”

Baylan turned as best he could in his seat to look at her.

“You’ll train tomorrow. Today you get to be a normal teenager. I’m sure Sabine Wren takes time off training every once in a while. Now come on, get out there before I decide to humiliate you by stepping out of the car.”

Shin rolled her eyes but unbuckled her seatbelt. She opened the car door but before she could step out, Baylan called her back.

“Don’t forget your mask.”

From the backseat, he grabbed a mask and handed it to her. It was a wolf mask, gray and metallic, with a snout extending over the nose and ears at the top of the head. Shin had not chosen her costume, not really. When Baylan had told her what she wanted to be for Halloween, she had dismissingly said a wolf. Now it was coming back to bite her.

She tied the mask behind her head. She had tied her platinum hair up into a bun, uncovering the short, shaved underside. The mask’s strap sat just at the edge of the undercut and immediately began to itch.

“One hour,” she said.

“Or more. Depends how much you’re enjoying yourself.”

She rolled her eyes again and slammed the car door shut. Baylan took that as his signal to leave. He turned on the engine and drove off slowly, mindful of the other students walking through the parking lot in the direction of the gymnasium. Shin was almost tempted to stay out here for an hour, sit on a bench and wait for the time to pass. However, the night was colder than she was ready for. She wore a gray checkered shirt and her usual black trousers. Already smoke escaped her nose as she breathed. Though she would rather be anywhere but there, she hurried to the party.

Full story here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51259537

What Is It That Stays My Hand Now? - A Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! I'm back with another multichapter story! This one is a canon divergence AU where Shin became Asajj Ventress' apprentice and Sabine became Fennec Shand's apprentice. As the two bounty hunters keep meeting, so do our girls. Here is an extract from the first chapter and if you want to read all of it, the link will be at the end!

Whatever conversation the thugs were having with the little girl was interrupted when the sound of Ventress’ boots echoed around them. The three thugs turned back to see her emerging from the shadow.

“Are you going to kill a child for a handful of screws?” she asked.

“Is she yours?” the thug holding the girl asked.

“She’s not. Call me a concerned bounty hunter.”

“She stole from our stash. Nobody steals from the Bolts. Nobody.”

“Ain’t that what bounty hunters do anyhow?” another thug told her, failing to be intimidating. “Hunting down thieves?”

Ventress stood in front of them, arms crossed. The kid looked at her with pleading eyes, green and bright with tears. Ventress would never let anyone call her soft, but she supposed that she must have mellow, at least a little, to be invested in the fate of this girl. She blamed Vos for most of it, and Omega, more or less.

“Put the kid down. Let her go. Take your screws and get lost.”

“No, we gotta teach her a lesson,” the lead thug insisted.

“You’ve spooked her enough. Let her go.”

“This is none of your business.”

Ventress did not move, but her refusal to walk away was enough for the thugs. The leader motioned for her with his head, and the other two converged on her, fists raised. Ventress sighed. They were going to regret it.

The first thug closed in on her with a punch. She dodged it with ease and kneed him in the stomach. Before he could recover, she grabbed his arm and dislocated it out of his shoulder. He fell to the ground crying. The second thug stepped back as he became more hesitant to attack. He glanced at his boss who huffed and threw the girl at his feet to motion for Ventress again.

“What are you waiting for?” he told his companion.

Reluctantly, the second thug charged her. She avoided his punch too and kicked his knee, snapping the patella in half. He hit the ground with a yelp, holding his broken leg. Ventress turned to the third thug, who pulled out a blaster on her. She was unimpressed, until he pointed the blaster at the girl’s head.

Full Story Here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65038186/chapters/167232250

Here I Am, Next to You (You Pull at My Seams) - An Avatrice and MaryShannon fanfiction

Hey everyone! Here’s an extract from my new summer romance fic, featuring in equal measure Avatrice and MaryShannon! If you like what you read, the link to the full chapter will be at the end!

On the other side of the pool, Ava was paddling away from the shallow part. She ignored the pain in her limbs and pressed on, all the while Mary was calling from the side of the pool.

“Ava, come back on this side. Don't you want to learn how to swim properly, rather than... whatever you're doing?”

Ava shrugged off her comments.

“I'm fine,” she shouted back.

She was in the middle of the pool now, where the ground was so deep that she couldn't feel it even with the tip of her toes. She was paddling her arms and legs as fast as she could to keep her head above the water. On the side of the pool, a young woman in a black swimming suit stepped up to the diving board. She had long, strong legs. Her hair was hidden beneath a black swimming cap, though a few small one still peaked out, plastered on the nape of her neck. Droplets of water had collected in the hollow of her throat, now running over to the edge of her swimsuit.

Ava forgot to paddle. She stared. It lasted only long enough that she felt herself sinking beneath the water. Panic rose in her chest and she kicked the water hard. She couldn't calm down. Every kick of her legs only seem to drag her further under the water. She tried calling for help, but water filled her mouth and smothered her voice.

She didn't hear the splash, only felt someone grabbing her and pulling her to the surface. She continued to struggle, but her rescuer was strong.

“You're okay,” the voice of a young woman told her. “You're okay.”

Ava finally snapped out of her panic. She was being pulled toward the ladder, held firmly above the water. Once she could finally grab the ladder to keep herself from drowning, she pulled away from her savior. Her heart sputtered in her chest when she realized it was the girl from the diving board.

“I'm...”

Ava wasn't sure what she was trying to say. They stood so close to one another that she could see the freckles on the other girl's face. I'm grateful? I'm Ava?

“I'm dead,” she thought and said at the same time, because she had to be.

The girl frowned.

“No, I... I pulled you out,” she replied with confusion.

“Yeah, no, obviously. I'm not dead, dead. I'm just... I'm Ava.”

Before the other girl could introduce herself, Mary arrived just in time to drag Ava out of the pool.

“I told you to stay in the shallow part. I warned you, didn't I?”

Ava rolled her eyes and exited the pool. Mary threw her towel at her and Ava brushed the chlorine water out of her eyes.

“I was fine. I did it on purpose again.”

Then, she saw her rescuer was climbing after her, and giving her strange look, and Ava was quick to respond.

“I mean I didn't do it on purpose to scare anyone. I had everything under control, totally.”

“That's the stupidest thing you've ever said,” Mary replied, earning herself a glare.

A moment later, another woman joined them. She wasn't wearing a swimsuit, but shorts and a tank top, her long brown hair held in a ponytail.

“Everything alright?” she asked.

“I'm sorry, Miss Masters,” Ava's rescuer said. “I thought she was drowning, I...”

“You did good, don't worry.”

“I'm sorry about that,” Mary intervened. “Ava doesn't know when a joke has gone too far.”

“It's fine. Better safe than sorry.”

“I just got tired all of a sudden is all,” Ava tried to defend herself against Mary's glare without passing for a complete loser in front of the cute girl.

Full chapter 1 here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45141238/chapters/113558530

Chapter 2: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45141238/chapters/114008935

Resistance is Futile - a CindyxAlice fanfiction

A/N: Hey guys! This is an extract from my new flower shop/tattoo shop AU oneshot, in which Cindy stubbornly hates Alice because it’s easier than confronting her feelings. It’s a fun story, I promise. If you want to read the whole thing, you’ll find a link to it at the end! Have a nice Sunday!

A minute is enough to change the course of someone's life forever, for good or bad. A flash, an instant, is enough to turn rags to riches and back around. It can be the difference between life and death. One decision, one moment, can lead one's life down a perfectly different path. In the case of Cindy Berman, however, this kind of radical change of life took fifteen minutes, at the very least.

The Milkman's was where they met after work. By six-thirty, the bar was usually crowded beyond belief, so whenever they wanted to have a drink, Cindy would go ahead while Tommy closed shop. Cindy didn't mind. The bar was clean, seemingly decorated by a baseball fan who hadn't seen a game since 1978, with memorabilia on the walls and over the booths. Most of the usual crowd was made up of nearby shop owners. Fier street was the most commercial street in town, and all the people working there made up a small community of kind, fun-loving people.

When Cindy settled in one of the empty booths, a few of the regulars who had already closed up shop welcomed her. She didn't order anything just yet. Tommy would be here any minute, and they would order then.

One after the other, the red leather-bound half-moon booths were filled up, usually by one person sent ahead like Cindy. Then, the rest of the group would arrive, filling up the booth. They too saluted Cindy in passing. She began to lose patience. She checked her phone, wondering what was taking Tommy so long. He closed off the shop on his own almost every evening, he should be here already.

When the front door opened, and the bell above it rang, Cindy was quick to look up. But it wasn't Tommy. It was a young woman, wearing a rock band tee-shirt. Her hair was a short mess of blonde locks. Both of her arms were heavily tattooed. Cindy spotted the image of a large green and orange snake disappearing beneath her sleeve. The woman looked over the room. All the booths were taken, but there were still a few empty tables at the back, and by the bar counter. Cindy watched as, from behind the bar, Ruby talked to the woman. The blonde turned around to face the waitress. There was enough of a brouhaha already, in addition to the music coming from the speakers, that Cindy couldn't make out what they were saying. Soon, Ruby left to pour a drink and the blonde leaned against the counter, waiting. There was a chain tied to the side of her black jeans. Although she wasn't wearing platforms, the sole of her shoes was still giving her an additional half-inch.

The blonde turned around suddenly, leaning her elbows against the bar. Her eyes spotted Cindy staring at her almost immediately. Cindy averted her eyes, pretending she'd only been giving passing glances to the room and not at all staring at the stranger. She made a show of huffing and checking her phone, then looking back up. The blonde was still looking at her. She gave her a wave. Cindy looked away.

Someone sank in the booth beside her and Cindy jumped out of her skin. It was only Tommy, wearing the orange tee-shirt with his shop's logo on it. The Lumberjack, house plants and botanical shop.

"Where have you been? I've been waiting for fifteen minutes, at least."

Tommy shrugged.

"The curtain got stuck again."

"The longer you wait to call a repairman, the more you're gonna have to pay to replace it when it breaks down for good."

"I'll do it tomorrow," he said, and she knew he would forget and it wouldn't be done until she called someone for him.

"Anyway, what do you want?" he asked as he slid out of the booth.

"The usual."

She followed him with her eyes and noticed the blonde had disappeared from the bar. She was probably hidden in the growing crowd, Cindy figured.

They lingered in the booth for an hour, drinking a beer each – a light pale lager for Cindy, a tall old ale for Tommy. They talked about everything and anything, about Cindy's classes and Tommy's football friends and the movie they were about to see. When Cindy checked her phone again, it was about time for them to leave and she was thirsty.

"I'm going to get a water and pay," she said as she slid out of the booth.

"Can you get me one too? I'm gonna stop by the bathroom."

Tommy stepped through the crowd, too tall to disappear through it entirely. Cindy gently elbowed her way to the bar and waved Ruby over. However, the waitress was fleeting from one table to the next, serving drinks and picking up empty glasses. When Cindy finally managed to flag someone down, it was the bar's owner, Harry.

"Can I get two waters? And then I'm going to pay."

"Sure thing."

Harry slid down the bar and Cindy drummed her fingers on the countertop, following the rhythm of the music.

"Leaving already? Can I convince you to stay for one more drink?"

FULL STORY HERE

Don’t forget to love each other.

We Will Raise Warriors - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! Who's ready for a new episode in my "Ahsoka season 2 and Beyond" series? This one is about Sabine and Shin finding a little orphaned and Force sensitive kid and they need to figure out what to do with him. Here is an extract and if you want to read the whole story, the link will be at the end!

They dashed to the station. When they came into the light, they saw the ship fly off, too high to be reached or pulled back down with the Force. Sabine holstered her blaster and cursed:

“Karabast! We missed it!”

She pressed a button on her vambrace.

“Hera? It’s me. We missed it by a minute. It’s a YV-929 light freighter. We’re too far to track it. Please advise.”

Then, she turned off her communication and huffed. Beside her, Shin stared at the small ship. It was shrinking quickly toward the clouds. One more minute and they might have been on board to save those kidnapped children.

“Should we get back to the ship?” she suggested.

She turned to Sabine, only to feel eyes watching her. She turned away. Something huddled in the shadows, out of sight behind empty crates. Sabine knew her wife well enough to know that something had caught her attention. She approached the crates slowly. Shin followed. She wasn’t feeling hostility, but dreadful fear. She clipped her lightsaber back onto her belt.

Sabine pushed one of the empty containers aside, revealing a little boy on the other side. He looked up at them with tear-filled eyes. His dark hair curled atop his head. His black skin was marred by bruises around his neck and a scratch on his cheek. The sleeve of his shirt was torn. As soon as he spotted Sabine, he recoiled and knocked into another empty crate behind him.

“Wow, hey,” Sabine said.

Gently, she took off her helmet and smiled down at the boy.

“We’re friends. We don’t want to hurt you, promise.”

Still, the boy wasn’t at ease. He crawled away from the woman made of metal and hid behind Shin’s legs. Shin stayed perfectly still, afraid to hurt the boy if she tried to step away from him. Sabine kneeled in front of him, setting her helmet on the ground.

“Where you in the big cargo box? Did you escape from the ship?”

After a moment of hesitation, the boy gave a tiny nod.

“We wanted to stop the ship but we weren’t fast enough. You must be very brave to have escaped.”

Shin couldn’t see the boy’s expression, but she could feel a strange buzzing coming from him, like the air was singing. She’d never felt anything quite like it before. She focused on it. In front of her, Sabine continued to talk to the boy:

“I’m Sabine, and this is Shin. What’s your name?”

Instead of answering, the boy curled up against Shin’s leg even more.

“You have nothing to be scared of now that we’re here, I promise,” Sabine told him.

Still, the boy remained quiet. Sabine gave him a tentative smile but it seemed no use.

“Poor kid. They really did a number on you.”

“His name is Finn,” Shin said.

Past and Present Song - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! Here comes the final story in the Wolf, the Wren and their Cub series! Here is the beginning and the link to the full first half of the story will be at the end!

It took six years to clear out the rubble of Sundari. Droids had to be rented from the New Republic to safely dismantle the taller buildings that loomed over the city, including what remained of the dome. The city was still regrowing, but Bo-Katan did not want to wait to clear out the ruins of the other cities. So, in the summer before she enrolled at Lothal’s Junior Academy of Arts and Sciences, Uschi volunteered to help clear out the ruins of Keldabe.

She hadn’t exactly volunteered. It was more like a requirement to finally be added to the Song. Sabine thought she was ready to receive her armor and taker her oath, but she also thought Uschi needed to spend more time around other Mandalorians. So, she was joining a group of kids also about to receive their armor for their summer program, which consisted of forging – or in her case reforging – their armor and clearing out what remained of Keldabe.

Uschi’s team had been dispatched in the city’s seventh quadrant, where the buildings had been ponded to the ground and nothing loomed above them, unlike in other parts of the city. They had been given shovels, but the bigger pieces usually required two or three of the pre-teens to work together. Delia, in her tall loader body, thrived here. She picked up the bigger pieces with ease and carried them to the truck as if they were made of foam.

“They should make Delia an honorary Mandalorian,” Lae said as the droid walked past her.

“Yeah, they should give her the armor instead of Uschi,” Eagis joked. “She’s been twiddling her thumbs over there.”

Uschi glared at him. She decided to teach him a little lesson. She reached out her hand and Force lifted five large pieces of ruble, including the one Eagis had been dragging on his own.

“Uschi,” Axe warned her.

Uschi lowered the rubble back to the ground. They had been agreed that she wouldn’t be using the Force, and would use her hands like everyone. Of course, she was still using the Force to carry the rubble with her hands, but no one needed to know that.

Reblogged from Writing About Writing Facebook page.

Guess who wrote a story for Tales from the Clone Wars? That's right, and it's about our (my) two favorite bounty hunters!

"Mistakes are valuable lessons often learned too late." - Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "Deal No Deal" S7E6.

✧ — ✧

zine preview

fennec shand vs. asajj ventress by Coralie

✧ — ✧

Pre-orders begin on May 4th! ✧ tcwzine.carrd.co ✧

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.