#* fandom

[porcupine-girl]

Fic-stealing AI site alert!

Heard about this on Bluesky, checked and they have four of my fics up! The site posts AI cover art and an AI-generated audiobook of your fic, along with the full text. I haven’t found a way to request fic get pulled from yet, I’ll update if I do.

A screenshot of my fics on the site:

UPDATE:

@museaway has dug into the domain registration and found where/how to report things to their host:

[questions-about-blorbos]

This request was sent to us and we made a poll in response to it. Send any Blorbo-related question you want to our inbox and we’ll make a poll on which people can vote with their own Blorbos in minds

[creelarke]

shaming and making fun of people for still engaging in fandom activities once they reach a certain age is so embarrassing because why are you giving yourself an expiration date of time you have fun? why are you not-so-indirectly saying you will stop having fun once you reach a certain age? or do you really believe you have to stop engaging in fandom activities and having fun once you turn (x)? do you not think you will, what, live that long and turn that age too? do you think fun will suddenly stop for you and life will all of a sudden lose its meaning once you reach a certain age? how sad to be giving yourself an hourglass and just waiting for your time of having fun to run out.

adults can and should engage in fandom activities if it's what makes them happy.

adults can and should continue doing whatever they like doing as teenagers if it's what makes them happy.

age is just... part of life. it's a part of me and it's a part of you. shaming people for something you will have to go through (unless you don't think you will live that long) is such a loser behavior. indirectly saying you will stop having fun once you reach a certain age isn't the flex you think it is. it doesn't make you look "cool and edgy", it makes you look miserable.

[kanosherm]

you would

[starklike34]

Idk

[bebx]

[wisteriasabloom]

[prokopetz]

"The existence of people who've never heard of [insert fandom here] makes me feel old" buddy, there are people who've never heard of just about anything you can think of. On a densely networked site like Tumblr, you're probably at most four or five mutual-of-a-mutual jumps removed from someone who's genuinely never heard of Batman.

[luanna801]

I think when people say that, they're not calling Kirk and Spock "the oldest ship" in the sense of the characters being the oldest (which is, as you say, obviously untrue), but the oldest example of the modern phenomenon of shipping itself.

Meaning that it's at least one of the earliest examples of (a) people participating in a very specific kind of fan culture and fan activities about the relationship, that (b) we still have an existing record of.

There may well have been Victorian-era girlies shipping Holmes and Watson, but to my knowledge we don't have any record of it from that time or anywhere near it - no stories or art depicting them that way, no essays making the argument, etc.

Obviously given the Victorian-era homophobia anything like that would've had to be kept even more underground than the early K/S fanfics of the 1960s. So it could have existed and been so carefully hidden that it's just lost to time. But again, we don't have any record of it. I don't actually know of anyone depicting them that way before the 1970s (see this timeline made by a fan, for example), but I'm not an expert so there may be something I'm not aware of from a bit earlier.

As for Gilgamesh and Enkidu, that's so far back in history that I think it's hard to say how people back then perceived them or map anything onto current fan culture. If some guy in the 10th century B.C. carved a statue of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, is that "fanart"? Do we know if that guy saw their relationship as romantic, or was just celebrating their friendship, or viewed them in terms of a homosocial warrior bond that transcends that binary entirely? I think it's very hard to view it in terms like "shipping" without being entirely anachronistic and/or making assumptions we can't possibly know.

(Interestingly I think you probably could make a stronger case for Achilles and Patroclus, since we have existing examples of Ancient Greeks (a) overtly making the argument that their relationship was romantic, and engaging in debate and analysis about it in a way not entirely unlike modern fans, and (b) creating retellings that made their relationship more explicitly romantic than Homer's earlier version. That's not to say I think these things exactly align with modern fanfic or ship meta, but there's a recognizable similarity that I think you could make the argument for - as the article I linked does.)

every time i see someone call kirk and spock the oldest ship, i'm filled with the urge to go "hmm actually the holmes and watson girlies have been here for a hundred years now", and i refrain because i know the natural conclusion of this game is gilgamesh and enkidu

[myfandomrealitea]

I am actually begging some people to just let some spaces exist untouched by real-world issues and horrors.

Like I've lost count of the amount of times peaceful game or fandom servers have been ruined by people stampeding in with political rants, bitching about world issues, demanding internal activism, demanding vent channels so they can whine about their shitty parents, ect.

Like. Respectfully. Not every single space has to be inclusive of and welcoming of outside topics. The real world sucks. We don't needed to be reminded of that absolutely everywhere.

[pinkiemachine]

I made a thing….

[wdapteo]

hey everyone be careful

I don't know if anyone has talked about this, but lately this has been happening in other fandoms too. There'll be these bot accounts that straight up steals people's posts and adds "expand" "read more" "continue" as a link in the end of the post - DON'T CLICK ON THAT, it's most likely a malware or something of the like.

so if you see a post like this: no profile picture, something that looks reposted (I've seen this happening to artists too) and a link at the end, even if the post has tags, that's a bot. Block and report it.

stay safe, and I hope @staff finds a way to stop these bots soon!

[fanfoolishness]

If you’re using AI for these things please take a long hard look at why, and what you’re giving up (in addition to the fact that AI art steals and scrapes from other artists without their consent).

The joy of creation in fandom is in the struggle, the striving, the effort. The finished product is the goal, but the journey is where you pour your passion. You learn and grow by producing fanworks. You figure out what inspires you and makes you feel connected; you learn how to reach out and connect to other fans; you play, you make mistakes, you carve out beauty where there was nothing there before. And the way you do it is like no one else in the world. You can see the fingerprints of the artist in every piece of art no matter what kind of art it is — traditional, digital, writing, gif sets, musical arrangements, crafting, embroidery, dollmaking, mods, cosplay, custom action figures. These are all media that I have seen fellow fans create in, and they create things that are lovely! Unique! Personal!

Sometimes our work can be a little homely or awkward or untrained, but that is no problem, as these things are still beautiful. It shows that the artist is willing to learn, that they have an idea they want to share, and that is wonderful. That is passion. This is the joy! This is the power! Why would you ever want to take that away from yourself?

like i'm sorry but we as a fandom have to stay firm on our anti-AI values. we cannot suddenly start giving AI a pass when it's something we "want to see" like destiel kisses. it's not suddenly fine. we're not going to start using AI to make fanfic scenes come to life or audio AI to make characters "say" stuff we want to hear. you have GOT to be firm on your anti-AI stance. if you start making exceptions then suddenly anything will fly. fandom is for real art and creations made by real people. no AI fanfics. no AI art. no AI rendered "bonus" scenes. no AI audio. none of it has a place here.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

[animentality]