#I was at work when I saw a post about it on social media and my jaw hit the floor

[ktyekmrf30]

I was so upset about it yesterday because that's it. They are acting. The entire cast and crew love this show so much, they put so much effort into it, they are literally the only ones promoting the show every friday on social media, interacts with fans and making content and gives us commentary about characters' inner thoughts. That's literally what this post was about. About their work, about art of love of two people, about characters.

GMMTV gave them the bare minimum for promotion and all the events and offers they are getting now are all due to the actors work. Its their hard work and the amazing show that people noticed and that's why they became popular. GMMTV literally did nothing because even the casting was handled by P'Mui and Pardbee, she was the one who wanted William as Thame and saw Po in Est. Est said that he signed contract with GMMTV because of the leading role in ThamePo. That means GMMTV didn't sign him for a role in Beauty Newbie and Frenemy, he was casted like an outside actor for these series, but he need to be signed as GMMTV actor for a leading role. And that's what he did. He signed with them and he puts his soul into this character alongside with William.

And one of the disgusting things is how these people in qrts tried to act innocent and speak FOR William and his parents about how William wasn't actually asked for consent for this scene (bullshit) and how his parents are probably against these scenes (even more bullshit). William was THE one who talked nonstop about this episode the entire week before because he was so proud of his work and the effort he put into it. Not to mention that actors read the entire script before filming and do a screenplay so they have time to back out if they wanted to, and there is no way that William's parents, who btw in a few days will no longer be responsible for William's documents, were against this show or any of these scenes. His parents are literally the most supportive people in the world, constantly liking videos of the show and videos with their son and Est and even Est's solo videos. But these people tried to speak for them to make it fit their "opinion" and insult Est.

The way these people are trying to make William look like a child, making themselves as his real mother's protege - and again his real mother doesn't see a problem with any of it - and the whole mommy culture in Thailand needs to just go away because babysitting grown men is not okay.

Every friday ThamePo fandom has to deal with William's haters, LYKN fans who are either asking for William to be kicked out of the group or making the show look like a burden to group when the main problem is the agency's poor management, and solo stans, and now it's all mixed up with this random homophobic shit about how William is a minor and actually shouldn't be acting in a BL show! So, next Friday is William's birthday and he will be an oficiall adult. We're about to see the new excuse to hate on them because the previous reason will be invalid!

And the way GMMTV quickly hid all the videos and deleted tweets with ThamePo even when there weren't that many of these comments? It makes me angry. Even thai fans were shocked. As a company that produces LGBTQA+ content the way they allow haters and homophobes to speak louder than the fans or community is simply unacceptable. Although what am I talking about when this company continues to employ homophobes and misogynists. But it was just... So disrespectful to William, Est and Pardbee team. It looks like they panicked but later returned most of the content but only when people start speak about it and make trends. Like why you did that in the first place? You literally were the ones who accepted the scenario and agreed with the cast.

The saddest part of it for me? Both William and Est 100% saw this because they know everything what's going on and Est was online when this whole thing started. I was so happy that he didn't delete this post because there literally nothing to be ashamed of, it's part of their hard work. I was a little bit afraid because today was WilliamEst event with fansign but you know, they were all lovey-dovey and Est wrote that the most impressive thing William has done to him is him being protective.

Also one of the fans asked them about their favorite kiss scene. It was a chance for them to do the funniest thing ever and guess what? They did it and choose THE kiss they got crucified for by homophobes the day before. Kinda iconic if you ask me.

In case you are wondering all EP9 content regarding the kiss/nc scene have been wiped off GMMTV's social media accounts.

Why? Did you see the tweet of Est I posted about the NC scene?" Well...

People being blatant homophobic here and I am also angry at GMMTV giving in to those people. This will just set a future present.

[sturniololuvz]

Can you do smth where Chris and reader’s relationship is private (family knows just not social media) and in the most recent video you can see Chris touching readers hips and lower back, in the view of the camera and nick didn’t notice while editing it.

yesss! and somebody put to stop tagging smut #’s on my post with a child reader , and thank uu for saying that bc i wasn’t even looking at the tags i just put anything that said sturniolo on it😭 so sorry again .

“Caught on Camera”

Chris Sturniolo x y/n

Warnings : none

Chris and Y/N had been together for months now, but no one outside their close circle knew. Their relationship was something they wanted to keep just for themselves—no internet, no fan speculation, just them. Matt and Nick were in on it, of course, but the rest of the world? Completely clueless.

That’s why neither of them thought twice when they filmed their latest YouTube video—a casual Q&A while sitting around in the living room, laughing and joking like always. Chris, as always, found excuses to be near Y/N, whether it was leaning into her when he laughed or resting his arm behind her on the couch. It was second nature at this point.

A few days later, Nick edited the video like usual, chopping out dead space and lining up the cuts. He didn’t overanalyze the footage—he had done this a million times. Once he was done, he uploaded it, and they all went about their day.

Then, the comments started rolling in.

“Did anyone else notice Chris’s hand on Y/N’s hip at 12:42???”

“Wait, am I crazy or is Chris HELLA touchy with Y/N in this video? 👀”

“Guys, go to 15:10. HIS HAND. HIS HAND.”

Chris was scrolling on his phone when he saw the comments. His stomach dropped. “Oh, shit.”

Y/N, sitting beside him, furrowed her brows. “What?”

He turned his phone to show her. The comment section was flooded with people analyzing their every move. Fans were rewatching the video, timestamping moments where Chris had absentmindedly placed his hand on Y/N’s lower back or rested it on her hip while shifting positions. It wasn’t even that obvious—at least, he didn’t think so—but the fans had noticed.

Before Y/N could react, Nick walked into the room, phone in hand. “Bro, are you seeing these comments?”

Chris sighed. “Yeah.”

Matt trailed in behind Nick, looking amused. “How did you not notice this when you edited the video?”

Nick groaned, rubbing his forehead. “Dude, I was just cutting clips, not analyzing where your hands were the whole time. My bad.”

Y/N was trying not to laugh at how worked up Chris looked. “It’s not that bad,” she said, nudging him. “People are just speculating. We don’t have to say anything.”

Chris exhaled, nodding. “Yeah, I guess.”

Nick smirked. “Or you could just admit it and save me from having to edit around your hand placement every time we film.”

Chris threw a pillow at him, making everyone burst into laughter.

“Guess we’ll just be more careful next time,” Y/N said, smiling up at Chris.

Chris shrugged, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Or not.”

And with that, their little secret was safe—at least for now.

[anakindoodles]

I've had this

in my notes since I saw that scene in the Kenobi show, so it might as well be time to draw it

[thelaurenshippen]

oh! also! while we're on the subject of pride month and Damien and A Neon Darkness, that character of course would be NOTHING without the incredible voice behind him - Charlie Ian. the audiobook of AND is sO GOOD CHARLIE IS SO GOOD and also Charlie is a trans woman and uses she/her pronouns and she and I both thought people might like to know that!!!!

[icewindandboringhorror]

I have found a beautiful perfect humble rock specimen that is light yellow with a weird dark yellowy brown lining, somewhat resembling a chunk of smoked gouda cheese... effervescent

[forcedhesitation]

this undeniably has to be one of the worst opinions I've seen about this season. like out of the plentiful failures season 4 had... you really couldn't choose one to talk about? max's mental health was one of the only things that I felt season 4 handled pretty damn well.

I do think it could have been better written, yes. the ending of her arc in season 4 was....insulting at best.

but overall? the show does a great job of addressing that max actually hated billy (she literally fucking admits to wishing for his death) and that her grief is more complicated than just missing a person. because she wasn't missing a person! she was ultimately glad billy was gone. but even in death, he torments her.

she watched a person she grew up with be brutally murdered by some fleshy abomination, RIGHT in front of her. her shitbag step father bailed on her and her mother after billy died, forcing them to move to the trailer park. her mother abuses alcohol and is never home because she's always working so they can afford to live in the trailer park. her friend group has been split in two by the byers moving away, which took el away from her too. she doesn't know how to reach out to lucas, deep down doesn't feel she deserves his love & concern, despite lucas' best efforts (vecna literally taunts her with lucas turning on her at the final confrontation). she wished so badly to have someone like steve in billy, but she knows that billy would never be that person. he was the complete opposite & she can't just have steve in his place. she mourns the brother she never had. she is devastated by the way billy still hurts her, even after he's gone.

she's what. fourteen??? when this all happens?

like the death of an abuser is never so simple as "hooray! I am so very joyous now that the source of my pain is gone!" the damage an abuser inflicts on you is not some cut to the skin that can be healed and one day forgotten. it's so much more tortuous than that. especially for a child.

[roscoehamiltons]

also while i'm on a tangent, i think ppl need to stop using twitter and the man who owns that site needs to be de-platformed 👍

[marsixm]

u know that whole "theres a whole world out there we're unaware of" thing that usually gets applied to like, unheard of network tv shows, the zynternet, suburban family trends, etc? thats how i feel when i hear about like, in person events or whatever via some random reel, like showing some massive hyper specific event with like hundreds of people doing some activity or at some place w zero context or explanation, seemingly in america just like me, that i have never seen or heard of in my life. like where did this come from? was this always a thing? is this a thing that only popped up in the last 3 years like a lot of weird specific trends? im not judging im just confused 😭

[radmystique]

Twitter “activists” are something else, man.

[silvermoon424]

Healthcare, workers' rights, and the like are what the left needs to hyper-focus on in conversations with conservatives. Socialist/leftist ideas are actually extremely popular with most conservatives... as long as you don't actually label them as that.

The ultra-rich have pumped billions of dollars into mouthpieces like Ben Shapiro, whose role is to disseminate propaganda and convince people that all of their woes are because of *insert minority group scapegoat here* instead of capitalism and the 1%. The best way to reach those people is to talk about leftist ideals while presenting them as "common sense" and apolitical (which they should be anyway!).

something interesting is happening

[ekingston]

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.

PLEASE check my later versions of this post via my main page to make sure you have the latest version of this post before you reblog. All the information I’ve been able to gather is in my reblogs below, and it's frustrating to see the old version getting passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much!

[maaarine]

Why are British teenage girls so unhappy? Here’s the answer (Caitlin Moran, The Times, Sep 13 2024)

"The report, by the Children’s Society, found that British 15-year-old girls are the most unhappy in Europe.

British girls aged 10-15 are “significantly less happy” with their life, appearance, family and school than the average boy — and their happiness is still declining.

Boys’ life satisfaction, meanwhile, remains broadly stable. (…)

But I still didn’t have an “aha!” moment about why this so disproportionately affects girls until… I talked to some teenage girls.

It was at a party, and I went to vape with them on the patio. Because I take my nicotine like children do.

“Duh — it’s the boys,” one said when I brought it up, as all the others agreed.

“The boys?” I asked.

My last book, What About Men?, had been all about how much boys struggle these days: their loneliness; their suicide rates. I’d spent the past year feeling very sympathetic towards boys.

“Yeah, well, who do you think they’re taking out their unhappiness on? It’s us,” another girl said.

“One boy at school used to draw a picture every day of how ugly I was,” a third girl said. “Every day for two years.”

“They’ve all got ‘Rate The Girls’ polls on their WhatsApps,” the first said. “They mark you down for weight gain, haircuts, what you say.”

“But then, if you’re hot, it’s just as bad, in a different way, because they’ll be talking about how they want to f*** you.”

The girls discussed coping techniques. Bad news: none of them worked.

“The only way you can stop them is if you become ‘one of the boys’ and hang out with them. But then,” the second girl said with a sigh, “all the other girls call you a slut. Because you’ve gone over to the boys’ side.”

“Surely it’s not all the boys?” I said. “There must be some nice boys?”

“Oh, yeah,” one girl said. “But they keep their heads down. Because… well, look.”

She showed me the Instagram account of her friend. Under every picture she posted of herself — smiling in a new dress; with her dog — dozens of anonymous accounts had replied with the most rank abuse.

“Fat.” “Slut.” “You gonna try and kill yourself again, for attention?”

“They’re all boys from her school,” she said. “And look, this one boy tried to defend her.”

I saw a series of messages from a brave teenage boy, posting things like, “You’re all big men, leaving these replies under anonymous accounts.”

As I could see, this boy immediately became a target too. Mainly accusations that he was “white knighting” this girl: “You wanna f*** her, bro?”

“So,” I asked, “you don’t think it’s social media pressure to be beautiful, or the economy, that’s making girls so sad?”

“Well, yeah, them too,” the first girl said. “But, Monday-Friday, 9-3, I’m not on social media. I’m not… in the economy. I’m just with these boys. And no one talks about how horrible they are.”

I thought about another recent report, showing a 30 per cent ideological gap between Gen Z men, who are increasingly conservative, and Gen Z women, who are increasingly progressive.

I thought about Andrew Tate, who has nine million mostly young male followers — and faces human trafficking charges, which he denies.

And I thought: maybe these girls are on to something. Maybe more people need to vape with teenage girls and ask them for the school gossip."

[secretidentie]

Since Bruce is a celebrity everyone assumes his PR team runs his socials but since he's a cluster of paranoia he refuses to let anyone else do it. That means when he randomly tweets something out of pocket he has the perfect excuse.

------

BRUCE WAYNE TWEETS : "Had a meeting with share holders today and I finally understand why red hood had a bag of severed heads" AND FOLLOWS IT UP WITH "I'd like to apologize on behalf of my social media manager for my last tweet" BUT STILL DOESN'T TAKE IT DOWN.

-----

Clark, trying to be nonchalant : hey I wanted to ask about your post from yesterday.

[a picture of Alfred's cooking posted on IG with the caption "dinner almost looks as delicious as @thesupermanofsteel 🤤"]

Bruce *sweating bullets under the cowl and pretending to work *: oh I haven't seen what my team posted yet.

Clark *immediately burning the bouquet he brought to confess his feelings before Bruce sees* : oh, okay

-----

At a gala

Lex Luther: so I saw your last tiktok

[video of the Waynes on vacation captioned "with the wind in my hair and my kids by my side, @lexluther can't relate"]

Bruce in full Brucie mode : you know how it is with media managers, lexy. I mean yours just posted a whole Twitter rant saying I had work done and then deleted it an hour later HAha, can you believe it!

Lex who can definitely believe it because he wrote that rant himself at 2am :........ Umh...... I'll have to see who's responsible for that.

[cy-cyborg]

So, there's a lot I want to say about the paralypics, but every time I try I just... can't articulate what I want to say without it turning into a monster of a post that puts my writing advice posts to shame lol. This includes in response to the anonymous asks I got on the topic btw. So I'm going to try and summarise my thoughts here.

As someone who was working towards the Rio paralympics - who was basically one of the people they were actively training to be the next paralympians and who got to go if their choice first athletes had to drop out, the Olympics and paralympics are a... touchy subject for me. I loved playing. I loved my sport. I loved the people I played with. I loved the people I played against. But the way the public and people in power treats disabled athletes sucks. It Really really sucks. and it hurts to talk about.

The vast, vast majority of us aren't paid. We are expected to train at the same intensity as the Olympians with none of the breaks and none of the support to do so, resulting in injuries that are disabling in and of themselves, while juggling normal jobs. many of the paralympians are also in school or at university as well. both schools and jobs see these elite athletes as dedicated hobbiests at best.

I had a friend who were fired from their job because they were denied time off to compete at the paralypics and well, if i had to choose between the paralympics or stay at a shit job paying minimum wage, I know which one I'd pick, and so she didnt have a job when she came back. I have friends who are still in the closet because their sponsors would drop them if they came out as gay, who ended years-long relationships to keep the funding that allowed them and their teams to compete - funding that just covered the costs of travel by the way. They never saw a cent of it themselves, but it was the difference between us having to pay $50 each for our plane tickets and accommodation and having to pay $2,000Aud + for every away game. I have friends who were supposed to go to Tokeyo but were kicked off the teams weeks before the games because of a rule change that decided they weren't disabled enough anymore, wasting years of work with absolutely no warning. They weren't even given the decency of an appology from the people who made the call. Several went through terrifying mental health spirals over it. It was their life's work, gone. I saw so many friends just give up because their disabilities were "too hard to classify" into the International Paralympic Commity's boxes and who were made to feel they weren't welcome by the system spouting off about its diversity and inclusion and empowerment of disabled people.

And then with all that, the best we can hope for is for the social media teams to turn us into a joke for ableds to laugh at or into inspiration porn to make them feel good about themselves - because at least theyre not us. Because obviously, there are no other options in how to show us/sarcasm.

My phone doesn't even have "paralympics" as a recognised word. I have a Samsung. The company that is currently at the paralympics using them as a marketing opertunity. We aren't even recognised as a word in the phones made by the company that is currently using the paralympics as a marketing opportunity. The phones they're giving the athletes won't even recognise the name of the event that they got it at. If I've spelt it wrong, it's because it autocorrects it every time I try to spell it right, and im dyslexic and can't see the difference until I stare at it for a minute or so.

I just... this isn't even scratching the surface of my thoughts. But I wanted to say at least some of it. It will be the last I'm going to talk about it, at least until the event is over.

[galariangengar]

Wow, I sure do love waking up and immediately starting the day with a fucking bloody nose 🙃

[revolutionsingingintherainnn]

Hard Launching ∘°∘♡∘°∘

Summary: lando and y/n wanted to hard launch their relationship after dating secretly for a while. lando finds the perfect way to do so.

☘ ln x reader ✧˖*°࿐

☘ fluff + humour ✧˖*°࿐

masterlist ☾☼

lando and y/n had been discussing for a while about hard launching their relationship. they had managed to keep it out of the media for an entire season, but the media liked to paint lando as a villain, in more ways than one. not only were they attacking his skills on track, they began collecting pictures of lando with women, no matter how many years ago, and publishing them with articles about him being a womanizer.

the funniest ones were the pictures of lando and her sister out on some bonding time. reading those articles always made y/n laughed, and she would be lying if she said that she didn’t have them bookmarked in her browser for a pick me up when she was having a bad day.

at first, they had thought of doing a simple post with a cheesy caption. enough to let the fans knows that he was off the market again. but, it also felt kind of boring, and that was not lando or y/n’s style.

they discussed it for weeks, looking at different social media websites for inspiration, until it struck lando. scrolling through instagram, he’d found the perfect way to hard launch his relationship with his girlfriend.

when y/n asked him, he said, “you’ll just have to wait like the rest of the world, my love. but, i know you’re going to love it.”

y/n waited, just like he had told her to. she waited for two months, until one day, in the middle of her work, she received the instagram notification of lando posting and tagging her. this was the moment, y/n thought.

opening instagram, she found a reel, instead of a post or a story like she assumed. quickly, wearing her airpods, y/n clicked on the reel, increasing the volume in the background.

the reel opened with someone recording lando as he walked, head down and concentrated. the person recording said, “excuse me, what are you listening to right now?”

lando took out one of his airpods, and said, “my girlfriend yapping,” and then walked away.

the reel immediately cut to different instances of y/n talking and lando patiently listening. they were all sped up videos, and y/n watched her animated hands as she ranted, and lando listening, changing his position every so often. the music in the background was a lively, jaunty sound, and it fit so well with the reel.

there were a series of videos, from their home, from the paddock, from conference rooms where they were waiting for zak, or even from the gym where lando worked out, and y/n basically followed him, still talking his ear off. there were multiple videos of them on facetime as well, or screenshots of their hour - hour and half long conversations.

y/n laughed. it truly was the perfect way for lando to hard launch their relationship. it described them perfectly, if she did say so herself.

scrolling through the comments, she saw a lot of fans crying that he was a taken man now. she saw some saying things like, “this is the realest representation of a relationship.” there were some hate comments too, but they were stupid, so she ignored them.

she commented on the post as well, typing, “wait till i send you a 20 minute voice note on my lunch break” to which lando immediately responded with, “can’t wait, i got my airpods and my phone fully charged”

y/n laughed again, opening her text messaging app, and sending a quick “i love you this was perfect” to her boyfriend.

·̩̩̥͙＊•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙˚˚•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙˚＊·̩̩̥͙

hi! i hope you guys enjoyed this! it came to me while i was driving to college! this is my prompt list, so y'all can select a number, give me a driver and i will write it as soon as possible! i also have a google form for a taglist if anyone's interested! you can sent in your requests here :)

taglist: @maketheshadowsfearyou ; @anamiad00msday