blacksilkcravat

[blacksilkcravat]

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.

[blacksilkcravat]

Another take I saw going around when Season 2 was still airing (and I've seen snippets of it popping up to this day, it rises and falls with the Discourse), was that Izzy was "protecting the crew from Ed".

Look. I'm not getting into all the many many examples of that not being true, because people more eloquent than me have made posts talking about this. The short version is that we never see any on screen evidence of Ed physically harming the crew until he goes fully suicidal and forces them to kill him. Up until that point, he's mostly moping around in his cabin, snorting rhino horn (which is textually treated like cocaine) to get him through raids, drinking alone, crying, and playing with the cake toppers, and overworking the crew. Izzy steps in at the last possible second, to stop Ed from literally killing the crew and himself (and by extension Izzy). Even if Ed was harming the crew (and let's be clear, we have no evidence he was), why would Izzy care??? That's just typical pirate captain shit, according to Hornigold and Ned Low. And Izzy very much approves of "typical pirate shit", it's the reason he begs the crew to "just kill him" instead of saving his life after Ed shoots him. Because what's the use in a First Mate critically injured who might not be able to fight/go on raids anymore? Useless crew members get discarded, that's Izzy's pirate philosophy.

And speaking of Izzy's pirate philosophy.

Izzy didn't save/protect the crew. Stede did.

The crew are overworked, miserable, distraught, grieving the people they've lost and people they might never see again. They care about each other so much. And what do they do? Jim tells Fang a story to cheer him up. Jim and Archie refuse to fight to the death, choosing love over violence. They save Izzy's life even though Izzy is literally begging them to kill him, because Izzy might be a piece of shit but he's still a member of their crew. And that must make Izzy so angry, if he even realizes. Stede isn't around but his personal philosophy and ideals are so strong that even when he leaves the ship he doesn't leave the ship. Stede's influence is all over The Revenge. Ultimately, it was found family that protected the crew. Not Izzy.

[blacksilkcravat]

"Hello, excuse me?"

Ed turns around at the exit door of the store to see a solidly-built man with wavy blond hair, black jeans that look painted on, Chelsea boots and a button-down shirt in a shade of teal that rivals the clearest Caribbean waters. He's holding the chocolate dessert, a tentative smile on his face. "I think you forgot to get this."

Ed seems to have forgotten how words work. He looks between the man's expressive hazel eyes and the chocolate dessert, mouth slightly open in shock. The man's smile fades. "I'm sorry-- you probably think I'm some weird stalker or something, it's just that I saw you looking at the desserts in the bakery aisle and you looked like you really wanted this one, but then you put it down and you just looked so sad, and I thought, no one should deprive themselves of a little bit of joy, and I wanted to say hello but I didn't know how and---" He trails off and looks away, lowering his hand holding the dessert. "I'm sorry, I'm being too presumptuous, I'll just...go."

He's turning to walk away and Ed's brain finally reboots. "Wait!" he says, maybe a bit too loudly, because about a dozen people in earshot immediately turn to look at him, including Blondie. "I just--" He blows out a breath, looks away as he tries to find the right words. "I'm not used to...to people--strangers--being nice to me for no reason."

Blondie smiles. "What about friends you haven't met yet?"

Ed chuckles ruefully. "Don't have many friends, mate. People think I'm...scary."

"Well I'm not scared of you. I'm scared of making a fool of myself, but not scared of you." He offers the dessert again. "Here, please, take it. My treat."

Ed holds out his hand and accepts the dessert. "Thanks, mate. Really appreciate it." He puts the dessert in his cart and turns to go, figuring the interaction is over, but a hand gently placed on his arm - not restraining, just touching - stops him, and he turns back.

"This is probably very forward of me, but...would you like to, uh, meet up? Sometime? For a coffee, or- or tea, I don't know if you like coffee or not--"

That's twice now that Blondie has struck him speechless. Ed searches his eyes for some trick, some deception-- did his asshole ex put this guy up to this?-- but no, the man is an open book, sincerity written in the laugh lines around his eyes and mouth. Blondie starts to pull his hand away, an apology forming on his lips--

"That'd be great actually," Ed says, and Blondie's smile is dazzling, the sun emerging from a blanket of clouds.

"Great! Uh--yeah you said that already. Super!" Blondie says, and Ed can't help but laugh. Blondie laughs too, and pulls out his phone. "Can I get your number? So we can decide on a date?"

Ed's impressed that this guy, this absolute lunatic, managed to get up the courage to approach a complete stranger with a gift, and he figures he can be brave too. "I have a better idea. Why don't we split this dessert over some coffee? There's a little coffee shop a few doors down from here."

"Brilliant!" Blondie says, bouncing on his toes with excitement. This guy's joy is positively infectious, and Ed feels the clouds around his heart dissipating.

"Just one thing--what's your name?" Blondie says, as they walk out together.

"I'm Ed."

The man offers his hand. "Stede."

Ed going grocery shopping by himself, wandering through the aisles aimlessly, picking up items and then putting them back down, because why would he need a chocolate dessert to eat by himself, and it's fine, it is, he's used to it, but he looks longingly at couples shopping together and wonders why he's only good for one night stands and not going shopping together and bickering over which cereal to choose, and it's fine, it is, and he's probably getting the sniffles, so he rushes his trolley to the checkout (no, he didn't take the chocolate dessert) and completely misses a blonde guy watching him from the dairy aisle, who was just plucking up the courage to say hello...

[blacksilkcravat]

Some of y'all here who consider yourselves fans of Rhys should know that shitting on one of his close friends because maybe that friend said something about fandom that hit a little too close to home for you is not gonna endear you to Rhys. Especially when he's been friends with the guy for over a decade and they've been touring together for years, long before Rhys got popular. Rhys is a grown-ass man and he knows who his mates are.

[blacksilkcravat]

This is a reminder to:

Never mention a possible pregnancy/abortion to anyone, especially not through a social media app messaging service such as messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, Snapchat, etc.

Delete all period tracking apps and to start tracking using a planner or physical calendar

Book appointments for a form of birth control if possible, or to always carry condoms for yourself and other

Look into sterilization options if that is the route you want to go down (here is a list of 1000 doctors willing to sterilize you without a fight)

Protect your fellow person, protect the women in your life, the queer people, the disabled people, everyone will be affected by this

Form communities. Tell your people that you love them. Protect one another. Check in on one another. None of us are alone.

[blacksilkcravat]

@celluloidbroomcloset ‘s post here just hit me in the feels.

I’ve been mulling over the devices used to present Ed and Stede for a while in terms of gender identity and traditional hero/heroine archetypes. These are just threads of ideas I’ve tried to pull together.

For me, Ed’s personal journey is somewhat of a traditional female narrative, which is groundbreaking when you consider he is also characterised as Blackbeard. Wronged and jilted by a lover. Suffering and dying brokenhearted. Brought back to life by the love of a Disney Prince. Ed can be quite passive around certain masculine behaviours. Struggles with agency. Leaves things to fate. Talks to woodland creatures. Emotionally open when allowed to be.

And it also got me thinking how many times Ed is presented lying down in the show compared to Stede. I mean, he’s barely upright.

It’s all very therapist’s couch. But it’s also a feminine aesthetic, this reclining. Ed’s even recumbent privately during the Kraken-spiral, whilst publicly performing hyper-masculinity. It’s a pressure-valve whilst alone. Emotional release.

Whilst tortured on deck by Ned Low’s crew, the trope continues with Ed flat, Stede upright.

There are times Stede is the one lying down. At the cute-meet and just afterwards. Stede, the sleeping damsel rescued and watched over by a fervent prince. The pattern repeats again in 109, Stede in the bunk waiting for his Ed to come up with a rescue plan.

But it’s Ed who’s jilted. By 1.10, Stede is seen through a chivalric hero lens; Ed the lover who needs rescuing, emotionally.

The characterisations are so complex. They’re both queer, both enjoy traditional masculine identities, but also gnc ones. Both capable of being the rescuer and the rescuee.

Through an artist’s lens, Stede, represents the masculine vertical, Ed, the feminine horizontal. The perpendicular lighthouse and the flattened mirror. The light enhanced in the reflection, the mirror needing something to reflect (104). Stronger, more beautiful together.

In literary terms, Ed’s a sort of a male heroine. Stede, a femme hero.

Really, they both represent the complexity of the human condition. They are both characterised with male/female tropes and the subversions of these tropes.

Like them, we’re individuals, one-offs. Imperfect, contrary, vulnerable and brave. Whether we’re standing or lying down; or in a diagonal slump like I am most days. Honestly, I just love them. Through all of the art and symbolism, I love them for being so damn flawed and relatable and adorable.

[blacksilkcravat]

OK: it is spectacular that OFMD did not, in fact, bury their gays. Their gays lived happily ever after. They ended on a gay wedding, and the gay main couple moving into an inn to continue their life, and their healing, together. It ended with a boat full of queer people sailing off into the sunset, and two men who literally died and came back to life to look into each other's eyes, smiling at each other across their shared porch on the threshold of their shared home that they are preparing to rebuild together.

It ended with such a moving message of hope that, even if the story has more to come, will forever be meaningful.

The gays lived.

[blacksilkcravat]

[blacksilkcravat]

you ever think about how back right after s1 in all his interviews about ofmd rhys kept being like "all the dramatic acting was really challenging because i'm just a silly little comedian! i hope i did all right" and then how he must have felt getting the scripts for s1 and being told ok this time you're going to find out the love of your life died in despair and misery under circumstances you consider at least partially your fault dashing your hopes to reunite with him, which has been your driving goal since you last saw him and which you burned down your entire life for, and you're going to push those emotions aside for a couple scenes and then let the weight of it hit you as you look upon his face in death for the first time since realizing you loved him but then you get the smallest hint that he might be alive and in that moment of desperate hope you're going to call him out of a coma with the power of your love. you cannot play any of this even a little bit for comedy because the only comedic element to this scene will be something you film completely separately

and then he goes and knocks it out of the park actually

[blacksilkcravat]

People died. Innocent people died Granda. And they were someone’s mother, father, daughter, son. Nothing can ever make that ok. And the people who took those lives, they’re just gonna walk free.

[blacksilkcravat]

Friendly reminder that almost half of the states in the U.S. have same day registration! This means you can go to the polling center for your location, register there, and cast your vote same day. So if you are over 18, are a U.S. citizen, and live in one of the states listed below, it is not too late to register and vote! I’m going to put notes for some of the states where voting is extra important due to the political climate of the state.

California

Colorado

Connecticut

D.C.

Hawaii

Idaho

Illinois

Iowa - recent polls indicate state could flip from red to blue

Maine

Maryland

Michigan

Minnesota

Montana

Nevada

New Hampshire

New Mexico

New York

North Carolina - swing state! Could go red or blue

North Dakota - voter registration not required

Utah

Vermont

Virginia

Washington

Wisconsin - swing state! Could go red or blue

Wyoming

You can go here for more info on voter registration

I also have a huge list of voting resources here

[blacksilkcravat]

Vote for those who can't

Some of you who live in the US might not be enthusiastic about voting this year.

Maybe you hate both Trump and Harris. I've heard your reasons, and I'm not here to argue about them.

But if you can't find your own reasons to vote, I urge you to vote on behalf of people who can't vote in this election. What are their needs and interests, and what can your vote do for them?

Young people who are not old enough to vote. They will live in the future longer than you will. What kind of world will we leave to them?

Disabled people who can't get to the polling place in person but live in states where it is difficult to get an absentee ballot. Which party will make it easier for them to vote in future elections?

People who don't already have the form of ID that is required in their state. They would have to pay a fee and send off for a birth certificate, and then get to a government office during business hours to get a suitable ID. Maybe they don't have a car and can't get time off from their two or three jobs (and cash is still tight). Again, who will make it easier for them to vote?

Felons who have completed their sentences but whose voting rights have not been restored. What policies will encourage them to reintegrate into society and avoid re-offending?

Non-citizens who are in the US legally. They don't have the right to vote here, but they pay taxes and our government policies affect them too. What is fairest to them?

In fact, I hope you will care about people who are here illegally. Which party will treat them humanely?

People outside the United States. I'm not going to use the trite phrase "leader of the free world," but the President of the United States is one of the most influential positions on Earth. Who will make things better for everyone, not just for Americans? I've heard your concerns about Israel's war against Gaza; but please be sure to consider the opinions of actual Palestinians, not just online leftists in the US.

See vote.org or vote.gov if you need information about where or how to vote.

[blacksilkcravat]

due to systemic oppression, usamerican leftists don't currently have the political power to instate a leftist president. we do, however, have enough power to make one of two candidates lose the election. we could use this power to make the white supremacist lose to the black woman, or we could use it to make the black woman lose to the white supremacist. the obvious choice for leftists would be to prioritize making the white supremacist lose, but tumblr users have devised a loop hole, where they agitate primarily for making the black woman lose, but omit the detail about who she would be losing to. this makes their stance more palatable to people who correctly believe that having a white supremacist president would be the worst possible outcome.

[blacksilkcravat]

All of this. People, you gotta get involved in your local community if you want to effect change. All these anti-trans and anti-abortion laws? They start at the local level, with your school boards and your library boards, your city and town councils and county boards of supervisors. A lot of state and federal level politicians get their start at this level, and voter turnout for local races is habitually low. Pay attention to your state legislatures, your state delegates and state reps and state senators. Find out who your state's attorneys (or commonwealth attorneys, if you live in one of the 4 commonwealths in the US) are, what their politics are, what crimes they prosecute and what they let slide. And at an even more micro level? Get involved with your homeowners and condo associations (yes I know they suck, but one of the reasons they suck is because they're run by old fogies with too much time on their hands who are incessantly nosy about what their neighbors are doing). Get involved in community groups. Does your apartment building have a residents' board or association? Get involved with it. Volunteer. Build coalitions with like minded people. This is how you agitate for change. Most of the laws you live by are decided at the city, town, county and state level. That's how all these abortion trigger laws took effect after the Dobbs decision - they were already on the books and there may not have been any, or enough, pressure to repeal them. The best time to repeal them was while we still had federal protections in place, but the second best time is NOW. Please, get involved. And familiarize yourself with non-candidate ballot initiatives, what they mean in plain language and make a plan for how you're going to vote on those. Get your local and state jurisdictions in order, because if there is no established law at the federal level, then state laws apply. And it's much easier to get laws on the books or repealed at the state level than it is to do it at the federal level. Please, please get involved, however you can, to the best of your ability.

I would say vote if you can tomorrow and then no matter who wins, get involved in your local community.

[blacksilkcravat]

if you are capable of taking a one-time low-personal-cost action to make it less likely that netanyahu gets the genocidal outcome he wants re: palestine, and you do not take that action, you are complicit in genocide.

netanyahu wants trump to win the united states presidential election because a trump win would best facilitate the outcome he wants for palestine.

[blacksilkcravat]

The thing about attraction (and who you think is hot), especially for demisexuals (and I do think that Ed is a little on the demi side, and Stede is very much demi) is that you might think someone's good-looking, but once you get to know them (and like them as a person), you find them more attractive. And I think it's okay to write Ed as generally being into blond guys built like fridges, and then he meets Stede and he's initially intrigued, and the more he gets to know Stede the more he's attracted to him. Being attracted to Stede's mind also makes Stede's body attractive to Ed, and if you're writing a fic from Ed's POV, then I think it makes sense for him to think that Stede is gorgeous.

And to tack on to what @celluloidbroomcloset is saying, I agree that the stars today that most people swoon over don't really do it for me. I mean, they're attractive in a general sense I guess? But outward appearance isn't what draws me to someone. It's one of the reasons I'm a fan of David Tennant, who is not necessarily the Hollywood ideal, but he is an AMAZING actor and also a really kind and generous person, and that is what makes him attractive. The person he is on the inside makes the outside beautiful, if that makes sense.

Fandom Pet Peeve!

I do feel that sometimes we treat Stede as a "hot girl in glasses" circa 2002. (As in he's written to be objectively hot but we explain it away to support his characterization.) Like, we need him to be self conscious and outcast, but we can't fathom Ed being into him if he isn't peak DILF. So he's always hot AF but Too [insert whatever].

But I think being a little funny looking makes you interesting! And tbh I think Ed would think so too. I like that he and Stede are into each other because they find the other interesting, not just because they're hot.

What I'm saying is, let Stede be a little funny looking, as a treat. He's got a bit of a weird nose! And that's fine! He's still attractive. But he's also, objectively, a goofball weirdo.

[blacksilkcravat]

Like, c'mon, if Izzy isn't the absolute pinnacle of cis white male mediocrity? Dude has absolutely no skills that make him stand out or that allow him to really function in the "real world." His power consists of cruelty and bullying, and it is only effective when his PoC boss is around to give him authority. His entire career is based on being Blackbeard's second-in-command; he is famous by association (Jackie and Geraldo do not give a damn who Izzy Hands is, they give a damn that he represents Blackbeard).

He is a mediocre white man who exists solely as a support for the exceptional MoC and there is a tiny piece of him that knows that. He knows that Ed doesn't need him, but he desperately needs Ed and he deeply resents that fact.