#Stream Authorization
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ekingston · 2 months ago
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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):
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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:
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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.
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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.
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While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:
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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:
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@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: 
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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.
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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 :
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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):
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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)
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... 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:
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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:
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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!
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badolmen · 2 years ago
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People against piracy fail to realize that no, I can’t just ‘buy it.’ They stopped making DVDs and Blu-Rays. They’re barely offering digital copies for download. I am not spending money I could use for food or bills to pay for a subscription service just so I can always have access to a beloved piece of media. Especially not when the service will remove media on a whim without concern for how the loss of access to that piece will make its artistic conservation nigh impossible.
For example, I recently learned that Disney+ had an original film called Crater. It’s scifi, family friendly, and seems cool - I would love to buy it as a holiday gift for my little brother! But: it’s exclusive to D+ and THEY REMOVED IT LITERALLY MONTHS AFTER ITS RELEASE.
The ONLY way I can directly access this film is through piracy. The ONLY available ‘copies’ of this film are hosted on piracy websites. Disney will NEVER release it in theaters, or as something to buy, and it may NEVER return to the streaming service. It will be LOST because we aren’t allowed to purchase it for personal viewing. If I can’t pay to own it, I won’t pay for the privilege of losing it when corporate decides to put it in a vault.
So yes, I’m going to pirate and support piracy.
Edit: if you are able, use $5 you would otherwise use for a streaming subscription to donate to a GazaFunds campaign.
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ozzgin · 27 days ago
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Monster!author finding streamer!reader's live while looking for writing inspiration (or a friend told him to check this streamer's live or smthg) and who may or may not end up writing a human character very similar to reader...
Just a little idea that's been chilling in my fever-warmed brain 😌
With love,🧍🏻‍♀️anon ❤
Additional plot twist: Monster!Author is Streamer!Reader's favorite monster smut writer.
After your latest livestream, you lean back in your chair and search for the latest work with a grin. You scroll through the paragraphs, taking in the shameless debauchery, when you begin to notice that a lot of the human descriptions are eerily similar to you.
"Wait...Isn't this what I wore yesterday?"
You stare silently at the text. How would...how would they know? On the other hand...it's just getting interesting, so you briefly put your worries aside and continue with the story.
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itzmellooo · 1 month ago
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Can't stop thinking about Fiddleford's stupid tee-shirt.
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frownyalfred · 9 months ago
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today’s fun writing fact: did you know that most writing coaches estimate that it takes around one hour for the average writer to write 1000 words?
I know what you’re thinking — that’s really slow! I can write that in 20 minutes. Right, but that assumes that when you started typing, you knew exactly what you were going to write — every line of dialogue your characters were about to say, every description perfectly pre-planned, etc.
And then you have to go back and edit it. And tag it. And cut out parts that don’t work and add new bits. So by the time you’ve got that “short” fic all ready to go, you’ve probably spent at least two hours on it, maybe more.
So yeah, as an author, I cringe seeing the “this was so short!!” comments on fics, even when they’re well-intentioned. Because someone just took 2+ hours out of their day for something you could read in less than five minutes and be done with.
The next time you see that author put out a 1-2k chapter, remember to do the math! And leave a comment 💜 that’s how you keep those updates coming.
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milesplayshu · 1 year ago
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People thinking Gale is not the victim in his story with Mystra are just plain stupid. They are completely missing the entire game's singular theme, the one thing connecting all the main characters, the one word spoken by the Narrator repeatedly:
AUTHORITY
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thirdity · 2 months ago
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We still talk in terms of "conquest" — whether it be of the insect world or of the mysterious world of space. We still have not become mature enough to see ourselves as a very tiny part of a vast and incredible universe, a universe that is distinguished above all else by a mysterious and wonderful unity that we flout at our peril.
Rachel Carson, "Of Man and the Stream of Time"
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haine-kleine · 7 months ago
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Taking a break from doomposting to once again ponder the meaning of the chapter from a storytelling point of view. It fails to complete any storyline point previously established. Ochako is still repressing her survivor's guilt and covering it up with fake sweet smiles. Deku and Ochako don't really reach any understanding nor comfort each other after this traumatic experience: Ochako still blames herself for Himiko's death, Izuku has seemingly moved on from Shigaraki's death using it as a learning example on his way forward. The party is random and the cheer is forced. Eri mutilating herself with the help of an adult hero goes unaddressed. The old lady is the only character exhibiting any development but it falls flat because we don't have much reason to care about the character who is not Tenko that she saves. It was Shigaraki who needed saving and didn't get it.
The one thing this chapter achieves is destroying any hope the readers had left. The next chapter is not necessary, judging by how meaningless most of the epilogue chapters have been so far.
But looking at this from another angle, the one thing Horikoshi can do, after killing the remaining embers of our hope, is subvert our expectations.
The only logical conclusion from the nameless boy looking so much like Tenko was obvious, but his appearance had very awkward timing if all the purpose this character has is to show the positive changes in society. He would have fit in the framing of chapter 427, which was focused on the society's opinion about Shigaraki Tomura and how they perceive him. It talks repeatedly about the collective fear of the next Shigaraki resurging and what preventive measures they can take. The old lady, whose character purpose was to not save Tenko, even appears in that chapter! If the positive change was the intended message, why cut her narrative into awkward parts and squeeze the second one in place of Ochako's supposed resolution? And once again, why show the boy so early? He appeared in the chapter that started slowly revealing the fates of the villains, and his appearance was immediately followed by Touya's. The logical connection is obvious. Teasing that not-Tenko character to leave the audience guessing for a month, seems like a red herring, and if the nameless boy being saved by a person who could have saged Tenko and didn't, is just there to fool our expectations, it's an unnecessarily cruel move from the author. He knew what he was doing. Despite his death, the epilogue heavily focuses on Shigaraki Tomura and various people's opinions on whether or not he deserved to be saved. Horikoshi killing him and saving a new barely introduced character in his place seems like a negative answer from the author himself.
Then, again
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Shigaraki's death, despite being confirmed by the characters, was not actually shown on screen, with Kurogiri being conveniently close by, very motivated to save him.
So what if the not-Tenko boy is indeed a red herring, whose purpose is to fool the audience for one last time?
Here are some random ideas how this can work:
• not-Tenko is actually Tenko, his memory is just fucked up. The boy's backstory is about being kept imprisoned by his family in the house against his will. Well isn't that awfully convenient, cause you know who else hated being in his house
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• Tenko is not the new boy, but he is alive, out there somewhere. Healing, being taken care of by Kurogiri, possibly trying learn using his new quirk. Watching his name being dragged through the mud on the news everyday.
• Tenko reconstructed himself back from the dust wrong, as it was his first time using the new quirk. Maybe he had accidentally merged himself with Kurogiri. Maybe non-Tenko's memories that he shares are his damaged consciousness' rendition of Tenko's actual backstory. Maybe he decided to leave Japan forever and fucked off to America, who even knows, the author clearly doesn't so go wild with your imaginations
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cerubean · 6 months ago
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somehow ramon, the least popular guy in school, pulled her?? something tells me she has an ulterior motive....
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ekingston · 2 months ago
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does anyone know wtf word-stream.com is or where to send them a takedown request? i just found a bunch of fics, including my own, hosted on this AI slop site—apparently offering what I assume are AI-generated audiobook versions & (equally AI-generated) ratings and reviews. i can’t take a closer look without signing up, which, no thank you, but it looks like they’re hosting the full fics and are peddling a paid subscription for the trouble of hosting them. can someone more knowledgeable than me explain what our options are in this situation?
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gotchibam · 2 months ago
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Thank you guys sm for all the help & support!!! 😭 I finally got enough amount to pay my rent ;_; I really appreciate it a lot!! 🙏🙏🙏 (seriously I can't thank you guys enough ;____;)
Also I can finally start streaming again soon! I might be able to do it tomorrow morning (so around 7+ hrs from now). I've been digging so much abt finding ways to stream from a low-end pc & finally found a way to do it. Kinda excited to try it tomorrow even tho I'm not really sure it it'll even work smoothly :))
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senpa10 · 7 months ago
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ENG:I want to make such a small announcement that with the arrival of 50 kittens on telegram I will launch a voice chat on the channel and let you know when it will be, and so I will record in parallel for myself on memory and edit something <3
It won't be anything special, but:
1) I will answer all any questions 2) I will draw according to your requests (bagels bagels) 3) I will give everyone permission to use voice mail so that everyone can speak 4) I will ask you not to quarrel with each other, and do not fool me, I promise there will be no glitches (probably-) ((Believe me, this will be my first time-))
RUS:Хочу такое маленькое объявление сделать что с приходом 50 котят в телеграме запущу голосовой чат на канале и сообщу когда оно будет, а так буду записывать параллельно для себя на память и редактировать что-то <3
Ничего особенного не будет но:
1) Отвечу на все любые вопросы 2) Буду рисовать по вашим запросам (бублики бублики) 3) дам каждому разрешение на голосовую чтоб каждый смог заговорить 4) Попрошу не ссорится друг с другом, и не надо меня дурачить ыхвхыв, не будет глюков обещаю (наверное-) ((Поверьте это будет мой первый раз-))
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storybounded · 2 months ago
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Curse p.rime for needing a sub to p.aramount to watch S.onic 2 😔
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shizucheese · 6 months ago
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New Stream Announcement!
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Hey everyone! As some of you may or may not know, besides being a vtuber I'm also a writer! (And editor!)
As anyone who writes (or does anything else creative, for that matter) might know, actually Sitting Down and Doing The Thing can be one of the hardest parts, so in the interest of holding myself accountable, and maybe even creating a space that helps others get their own work down, I've decided to do weekly writing streams! Introducing Friday Night Writes! A chill, cozy streaming time where I'll be working on my writing on stream, with Spirit City: Lofi Beats running in the background! I'll have a pomodoro timer going, with 25 minute sessions (ignore the timer in the screenshot it tells only lies), with 5 minute breaks in between, lofi music, and and background noises consisting of rain, thunder, wind and a fire place!
Feel free to bring your own writing to work on while we all hang out and chat! Not a writer? That's totally fine! Bring your art, bring your homework, bring your dinner and your coziest blanket!
These streams will be starting at 8:00 pm Central every Friday!
For more information about what's going on with my streams, be sure to follow me here on Tumblr and Instagram, and join my Discord!
twitch_live
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rand0msmil3z · 2 months ago
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Well, it finally happened--my *free* fanfic was scraped off of Ao3, placed on a shitty AI-generated app, and hidden behind a subscription paywall. Here's the website: https://word-stream.com .
Worse, I have no way to get my story taken down. There's no developer I can contact, no listed email or phone number, nothing. This is so disheartening. Anyone have any suggestions? 😢
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duckprintspress · 1 year ago
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Pre-Orders Now Open for “Many Drops Make a Stream” by Adrian Harley!
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Pre-orders for Adrian Harley’s debut sapphic fantasy novel Many Drops Make a Stream are now open!
A memory-stealing cult. The ever-watchful City of Eyes. Making small talk. Join Droplet as she faces all these horrors and more…
Vigilante shapeshifter Droplet has trained her entire life to take down those with more power than scruples, but she still makes mistakes. When a rescue mission goes wrong, a memory-stealing cult of blood mages escapes with kidnapped captives in tow. To save them, Droplet reluctantly teams up with the outgoing, tenacious Azera. Droplet knows better than to trust a human—she made that mistake once, and that person’s betrayal scattered her community across the known world—and she can tell Azera is hiding secrets behind her sunny smile. But if they can’t learn to work together, even Droplet’s own memories could be lost.
Many Drops Make a Stream, Adrian Harley’s debut novel, is the stand-alone first book in a series of related fantasy-mystery-heists featuring the shapeshifter Droplet and the friends and found family who work alongside her to fight the corrupt powers-that-be. Many Drops Make a Stream is rated general (adult) audiences and features shapeshifting shenanigans, a nascent f/f quarrelers-to-lovers pre-relationship, a wonderful extended cast of family and pseudo-family, necromancy and blood magic and spellwork (oh my!), and one (1) very angry goose.
For this campaign, we’re offering:
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Droplet!Dux Die-Cut Sticker
Many Drops Make a Stream Cover Art Print
Shapeshifting Droplet Enamel Pin
Patron-exclusive extra wooden coaster (for people who support Duck Prints Press at the $10/month and $25/month level on Patreon and back this campaign)
Better yet, you can get a discount by picking one of three bundles:
Many Drops Make a Stream E-Book + Merchandise
Many Drops Make a Stream E-Book + Print Book
Many Drops Make a Stream E-Book + Print Book + Merchandise
You can learn all about the book, the author, the campaign, and our offerings by visiting the pre-order page NOW!
Want a chance to win a trade paperback copy of Many Drops Make a Stream? Help us spread the word about this campaign by liking and signal boosting our posts on any of our platforms that including “sharing” functionality (such as Tumblr, Mastodon, Bluesky, and Facebook), and you can get up to 4 entries per platform where you share!*
Campaign backers will also get bonuses based on the number of signal boosts our posts receive! All the social media links for sharing are on the linked pre-order page, so help us tell the world about the awesome book, and who knows – you might win a copy! (But only if we fund, ’cause we can’t afford to print the book if we don’t fund, so help us make sure people who want to buy The Awesome learn that The Awesome exists!)
*sweepstakes rules and conditions
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