#fic on tumblr

[1moreoffkeyanthem]

GREETINGS! So to the handful of gorgeous people who are fans of the The Webs In The Rafters universe, I give you episode one of what I’m calling

Weaving With PCE

Allow me to explain. If you’re an OrangeJuiceVerse enjoyer, chances are you’re familiar with my tumblr bonus series Bedtime Stories With PCE, with little self indulgent snippets set within the OJV. Well, I wanted to do the same for TWITR. (More explanation and the story (!) below the cut)

Now, ofc TWITR is a good deal darker than the OJV, so this bonus series will be a lot more centered around trauma and recovery. I’ll do my best to tag appropriately, but an overarching rule is that these WILL address the events of the main story, Kyle’s ptsd, past abuse, gaslighting, physical trauma, eating disorders, descriptions of injuries, the whole shebang. Fair warning.

For episode one, we’re covering something mentioned in No Strings Attached, the first TWITR sequel: Kyle’s hair being cut short. Here’s how, and why, that went down and the significance of it, in

•Holding Memories•

—————————————————————————-

Exhaustion still has a chokehold on all of them, a week since the fall.

Kenny was out of the hospital now, though still under strict instructions to take it easy, or else face the wrath of Wendy Testaburger. By some connections Stan couldn’t pretend to be surprised by, Cartman had secured the former residents of The Haven several units in an apartment complex on Main Street, all while most of them were still shell shocked and recovering.

Stan didn’t know if Kyle would ever completely recover.

He himself was alright physically after a couple days of painkillers and some rest, when he allowed himself to take a break from worrying about his crew. The only visible reminder of the confrontation with the Spider was the fading bruise on his forehead from their skulls forcibly smashing together.

It was weird, he thought, studying his body in the bathroom mirror like he had plenty of times before. It was weird seeing his bare shoulder without the crisscrossing scars; the mark of The Oath he’d had since he was sixteen.

Sometimes, he thought he could still feel it burning the skin.

Tugging a shirt on, Stan switched the light off and slipped back into the bedroom, relieved to see that his shower hadn’t woken Kyle.

The frail redhead still slept, but uneasily, like his dreams were anything but pleasant. He’d been sleeping a good deal the past few days, his poor, battered body too exhausted to do much else. Soon, the more he started to heal, the more reality would sink in, and the psychological consequences would push to the forefront. They were expecting night terrors, PTSD flashbacks, horrible panic attacks. Stan knew he had to be the strong one here. He was okay as long as Kyle was okay, but Kyle had been through more than any of them. He’d need all the support Stan and their friends could give him.

Stan smiled sadly as his partner whimpered quietly, starting to stir. He’d probably only be up a few hours before needing to rest again. Stan sat down lightly on the edge of the bed, Sansa at his feet.

Green eyes opened about halfway, and Kyle was moaning lowly, his pain awakening faster than he was.

“Hi, dude,” Stan whispered, gently running his fingertips over Kyle’s cheek. “Good morning, Ky.”

“Mm. Hey.”

“How do you feel?”

Kyle grimaced, looking down at himself. “‘Bout as good as I look,” he said shallowly. “And sound.”

The strained breathing was something that hurt Stan’s soul to hear, a raspy reminder of broken ribs and a bruised diaphragm from being beaten and put through the wall. Kyle struggled to sit up.

“Easy,” Stan murmured, moving to help. “Go nice and slow. You dizzy?”

Kyle squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then relaxed a little. “I think I’m okay.”

Stan breathed a sigh of relief. Kyle’s vertigo had returned, though unlike a few years back, they knew what the cause was. Lingering poison in his fragile system made him unsteady and nauseated at any fast movement. It was awful, seeing him wait for a wave to pass, so they always tried to move slowly.

“I think I want to make some tea,” Kyle declared firmly.

“You don’t want me to do it?” Stan asked.

Kyle pushed off the blanket with his good arm, determined expression on his slim face. “Not today, sweetheart. I need to do a few things for myself, okay?”

He didn’t like it, but he knew his Firefly. Kyle was fierce, and stubborn, even when he was practically on the verge of crumbling with every move. Stan moved to the side so he could get up, trying to to resist the urge to hover.

Stan always turned the heat up in the mornings, because Kyle was easily chilled but had started feeling trapped if he was bundled in too much clothing. The thin tank top and sagging pajama shorts only accentuated his gauntness, pale skin littered with bruises in varying stages of healing, bony joints painful to look at. He held his sprained elbow to his chest as he trudged to the kitchen, not liking to sleep in the sling but healing too slowly to straighten his arm comfortably yet.

Was it shitty to say that looking at the love of his life hurt so much?

It wouldn’t forever, Stan told himself. Kyle would get better. They all would.

Stan followed behind, attempting to disguise his protective lingering as making a pot of coffee and filling Sansa’s food bowl. He bit his lip as Kyle struggled to fill up the kettle, hand shaking with the weight.

“Cut it out.”

It was like they could read each other’s minds. Stan feigned innocence. “Uhh, cut what out?”

Focused, Kyle managed to get the kettle on the stove. “Pitying me, Stanley; I’m not helpless.”

“Dude.” Stan planted a gentle hand between his shoulder blades, reaching the other around to turn the burner on and drawing Kyle against his chest. “Baby, I’m not.”

Kyle scoffed.

“I’m not”, Stan insisted. “I can just tell that you’re already hurting this morning, and I want to make sure you’re not straining yourself.”

There was a long pause, and then Kyle sighed as deeply as his broken bones would let him. “I’m so sick of everything hurting, dude.”

Stan planted a kiss on the top of his head, thinning red curls tickling his face. “I know, Ky. You wanna go sit down?”

Kyle looked down dejectedly, and Stan, feeling him giving in, started to carefully direct him to the couch. “Would you maybe want to try taking something?” Even as he said it, he cringed. Kyle had been firmly opposed to medication of any kind since he was coherent enough to leave Wendy’s clinic.

Blessedly, the first few days after getting the shit kicked out of him, he’d been willingly taking painkillers; without them, he hurt so badly he couldn’t think. By the time Kenny had woken up, Kyle had decided he was done.

Stan respected that, but he hated seeing Kyle in such an awful way. So he still offered, even though he knew the answer.

“Agh, I’ll pass.”

Figures.

“Alright, baby.” He kissed him again and went back to their morning hot drinks.

A black coffee, strong, with a tiny splash of cold water so Stan didn’t burn his tongue. Jasmine green tea, with the bag still in, so Kyle could see how much his circumstances had changed.

“And an ice pack,” Stan announced, setting the mugs on the table. He pressed close to Kyle, delicately taking his inflamed arm in his (hopefully not too rough) hands. “God, dude, it’s still swollen.”

“I just heal slow,” Kyle mumbled.

Stan could feel the strained tendons beneath thin skin, and he found himself nearly growling like a protective alpha wolf at the clear fingerprint shaped bruises. How many times had he seen similar marks and been able to do nothing about it? To goddamn many.

Stan Marsh did not get angry easily, but physical evidence of Craig’s violence against Kyle had always made him want to kill.

“Hey. Stan. Hey. Look at me.”

He did. Sympathetic forests invited him in.

“I don’t like to see that look in your eyes,” Kyle murmured. “Come back to me.”

He’d always find his way back into the forest, eventually, find the comfort in dappled sunlight and orange wildflowers blooming in the clearings. Kyle was that forest. Beautiful, strong with a delicate balance, wild. Stan looked down, embarrassed at letting his rage take over, however briefly. “I’m sorry. I’m here. I’m okay.”

Kyle tilted Stan’s chin up so their eyes could meet. “We’re okay. We’re safe now. I’m safe now.”

He always knew when Stan needed that reminder.

Stan would keep him safe, too. He gently eased the ice over the worst of the swelling, keeping Kyle’s arm in his own lap so the smaller man fit naturally closer into his side. His other hand ran absently over Kyle’s hair.

“It’s been falling out more the past few months.”

“Hmm?”

Kyle sighed. “My hair. I know you’ve noticed. I’m practically bald now. I look like Gollum.”

It wasn’t like Stan hadn’t noticed every time he went to play with those long red curls he loved so much, there seemed to be less of them. He just really didn’t want to point it out. It was a huge stressor for the both of them, each fluffy lock that came away far too easily. Kyle wasn’t “practically bald”, though. It was just freaky to find a clump of hair not attached to the head it was supposed to be attached to.

“It’ll stop soon,” Stan promised, because Wendy had told them the poisoning symptoms would eventually ease up. “Just wait, this time next year, the only one of us shedding all over the apartment will be the dog.”

Kyle laughed weakly; it didn’t last long on account of his ribs, and he was hunching over slightly afterwards to catch his breath, but it was still a laugh.

“Still,” Kyle panted, “I was thinking about going ahead and shaving it. Fresh start, and all that.”

“Dude.” That was… big. A big change, a big step. Stan never did great with change, especially when he got attached to something. And he was very fond of Kyle’s hair.

“Think about it, Stan,” Kyle urged. “Hair holds memories, right? That’s like, a thing.” He looked up with shining eyes. “How many horrible memories does mine hold?”

Stan considered what he was saying, really listening. He then slipped a frizzed lock through his fingers and whispered, “but not all of those memories are bad.”

“That’s why I want you to do it.”

“You… want me to cut your hair?”

“You are my good memories, sweetheart,” Kyle insisted. Then he smiled. “Plus, how the hell am I gonna do it? I’m right handed, and even if I wasn’t, I can’t raise my arms up much anyway.”

He had a point, but that was a lot of pressure.

And then Kyle, looking so vulnerable and trusting, pale and wan and traumatized, said in hardly a whisper:

“Please, dude. You’re the only one I trust.”

Stan nodded resolutely. “Alright. Now?”

“Now.”

They decided that the bathroom made the most sense for their purposes, Stan bringing in a stool so that Kyle wouldn’t have to stand during the haircut. The clippers were already on the counter from Stan’s own much needed trim the other day, and he took a deep breath as he picked them up.

“Oh, we should, uh, probably do this without your shirt on. Don’t wanna get hair all in it.”

“Right.”

Both of them braced themselves for the frightening sight that was Kyle’s bare torso. Stan carefully helped him get out of his shirt, and held back the tears that threatened to spill. He’d never get used to it; the deep purples and blues, bright reds, sickly yellows and greys at the edges of each impact point. Clear lines of bruising pressed the stamp of his brittle ribcage onto the skin, and Stan could see which ones were broken without having to think about it. He’d been helping Kyle change since the beginning, but he wasn’t desensitized to that sight. Stan had a feeling Kyle wasn’t, either.

“It’s starting to look better back here,” he lied.

Kyle scoffed. “Bullshit. I can’t turn well enough to see it, but I can feel it.”

Stan kissed the nape of his neck in apology. “I know, baby. You’ll get there. I’ve got you.”

He met Kyle’s gaze in the mirror. “So, how do you wanna go about this?”

Kyle shrugged, then winced. “Ow, fuck. Okay, so I guess just cut the majority of the length with scissors and go from there.”

Nodding, Stan rifled through the drawer until he found what he was looking for, and gathered a handful of curls before he could lose his nerve. “K, Ky, are you-“

“Quit thinking and just cut,” Kyle commanded.

So Stan cut.

A fiery tangle fell to the floor, mesmerizingly, drifting like a red gold ember. Stan grabbed another section and let the distinct sound of scissors cutting through hair fill the otherwise quiet apartment, repeating the process until Kyle’s hair was significantly shorter, if not pretty uneven.

“Scary part’s over,” he said lowly, more to himself than to his partner. “I just have to neaten it up.”

“I trust you,” Kyle reminded him.

The droning *bzzzzzz* of the clippers provided an ambiance weighted with change, with release, with relief. Stan was as focused as he’d ever been, like he was welding or something. Except this felt like so much more than the inherent danger of a blowtorch. And it wasn’t just a haircut. This was a symbol.

Fluffy, drifting clumps fell to the tile, scattering to all corners where they’d be a bitch to sweep up later. Stan kept concentrating, morning the length he’d always gazed longingly at a little, but ultimately seeing this for what it was.

It was slow; almost indulgent. Then, with a final run of his hand over the crop, Stan could breathe.

“Done.”

Kyle opened his eyes to look. “Damn.”

“Did… did I do okay?”

His shirt was immediately caught in a small fist, pulling him down. Kyle kissed him, long and tenderly. “I feel better already.”

“Good enough to come get breakfast with me?” Stan implored. “Nic said Chef has something special he wants you to try.”

God, that smile. Fleeting as it could be sometimes, Kyle lit up the darkest of shadows when he smiled like that. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.

Stan dropped another kiss to the new hairstyle. It would take some getting used to, just like everything these days, but they’d make it. Make new memories, too.

“That’s all you can do.”

——————————————————————————-

ALRIGHT! If anyone made it this far, y’all know the drill, let me know what you thought, and I HOPE IT PLEASED AND SPARKLED!!!

[cobalt-sugar-punch]

I had to go looking for this in my history because I remembered I read one where the Creature was worried that his new fully functional cock would release nasty gross like his tears, but it's literally some peach ring cream, like he's supposed to have eaten some when she had the candy out, right before they killed Janet. I love it even schtick aside it's really good fiction and y'all should read it.

[221btardisimpalawithloki]

eat your dirty laundry - the hot mic au

Dean pulled into the KAZS station parking lot in the dark of early morning, headlights cutting through the inky blue. His four hours of sleep were doing him no favors, and as he walked in he knew the station's space-age coffee maker would be the only ting keeping him alive this morning.

If nothing else, waiting for the pressure boiler to heat up and espresso beans to grind gave him a moment to collect his thoughts. Only two more monthis til his contract was up, and he could renegotiate to move to dayside and maybe even get paid enough to move out of his brother's guest room. Only two more months and he could get to a market in the top 150 and get paid the same peanuts but get broadcast beyond northern Kansas and central Nebraska.

Grabbing his horrible coffee concoction from the driptray, he made his way to the bullpen to grab a rundown and bother whoever was in there. He brightened up seeing it was Cas, his favorite meteorologist.

"Mornin', sunshine," he said, leaning a bit too far into his space.

Cas didn't react. "Good morning, Dean. What does this sounding look like to you?"

Dean choked a little on his coffee. "Sounding?"

Cas sighed and turned around, rolling his big blue eyes. "It's when they send a balloon up and it measures air temperature and humidity."

Dean looked at the graph thing on Cas' computer. "It looks like a graph thing. And one of the lines goes up, and one of the lines zig-zags a lot?"

"That's what I was afraid of," Cas said.

"Yeah?" Dean asked.

Cas pointed a long finger at one of the lines on the graph. "When the lines intersect, it means the atmosphere is unstable, and severe storms are more likely. The more unstable the atmosphere—"

"The more severe the storms," Dean interrupted.

Cas slumped a little. "Yeah."

"Has the National Weather Service said anything?" Dean asked.

"The Hastings office is monitoring it, but it's not even 6 a.m."

Dean looked at his watch. 5:47. Shit. "I gotta get on the desk. I trust your judgement though. Knock 'em dead."

With that, he gave Cas a rough pat on the shoulder and headed out to the studio. Billie, the floor manager, waved him over.

"You read the rundown yet?" She asked.

Dean glanced it over. In the A block, his rights were getting stripped away, in the B block a kid broke a fishing record with a Barbie fishing rod. At least in the C block he would get to improv banter with Cas before doing it all over again at 7 a.m.

"Remember to smile this time," Billie reminded him.

Dean grimaced with all his teeth. "You got it." He walked backwards to take his place next to Jo behind the desk, clipped his lav mic to his blazer and put in his earpiece.

But the thing was, he could deliver all the vile news every morning with a smile. It was his job. Be careful not to alienate the geriatric ghouls who actually watch the 6 o'clock news, because it was his practiced neutrality or fuckin' Fox News. And as they came out of the B block into commercial, he didn't feel any more disillusioned than usual. And his favorite part of the morning was coming up: Cas.

Dean could see him in the control room, sharing a heated discussion with Naomi the news director. However it ended, it meant Cas came into the studio in a mood. As he took his place in front of the chroma key, the reflected green light set his features into a sickly pallor.

Cas looked over at him. "Dean. As journalists, our job is to tell the truth, right? Even if it's inconvenient?"

Dean didn't like where this is going. "Yeah, man."

Cas nodded, having made up his mind. "You've been a good friend at this station. Thank you for your support."

"Of course, I trust you. Cas, what—"

Billie cut in. "We're back in five, four—"

"Thank you, Dean."

"Three, ✌🏾, ☝🏾"

"I love you."

[izzythedemigod]

I just found the funniest font ever

Like. What is this. Why is this. Who is the target audience of this?

[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!

[theaftersundown]

the holy grail types of fanfic

[cobalt-sugar-punch]

here it is also if you're like me and like saving things on AO3 for easier sorting

I complained that Morpheus's season 2 cemetery fit wasn't tits-out, @magnusbae said "tits in outfits are so devastating because you know there's tits to be seen but they're in," I decided that's something Hob would say while drunk and that he should say it to Dream's face. And here we are.

--

“Listen,” Hob says, with the slurred, utter conviction of the very intoxicated, “listen. This’s. Important.”

“I am sure,” Dream agrees, sipping his wine. He himself is not drunk, but he’s gaining a surprising amount of amusement from watching Hob.

“You listening?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah,” Hob sighs, looking down into his glass. “You’re a good listener.”

Before Dream can respond to this, Hob shakes himself.

“But listen. S’such a tragedy you know?”

“What is?”

“Tits,” Hob says passionately, and Dream chokes on his wine.

“In,” he manages, once he’s swallowed and not asphyxiated, which felt dangerously possible despite his nonhuman form, “what way?”

“Always covered up,” Hob says mournfully, face crumbling. “Should be more societal—” he stumbles over the words, tongue heavy in his mouth, “socially acceptable to just. Be tits out. You know?”

Dream is not certain he himself has a strong opinion on the matter. He does not spend much time contemplating others’ breast tissue.

“Perhaps one day it will be,” he says, in an attempt to soothe Hob’s devastated expression.

“Can’t come soon enough,” Hob agrees, and raises his glass to Dream’s in a toast to the matter.

Dream obligingly clinks their glasses, and after Hob has drunk, swaps Hob’s glass of beer for a glass of water. Hob doesn’t seem to notice.

“Horrible to know that they’re there and you can’t even see them,” Hob continues.

“Torturous,” Dream agrees. “Unsurvivable.”

“Nah nah nah,” Hob counters, waving a hand. “Tits is a reason to survive.”

“I see,” Dream says, hiding a smile. He suspects Hob will be too hungover to even remember this in the morning. Probably it is for the best.

“Eleanor had great tits,” Hob sighs. “Among other things.”

For a moment Dream worries his cheerful drunkenness will tip over into melancholy, but then Hob adds, seemingly oblivious to how he’s blowing past his usual boundaries, “You know. I always thought—” he hiccups “—that you would have. Fuckin’. Bangin’ tits.”

Dream drops his wine glass.

It shatters against the table, but he pays it no mind as he stares at Hob, who’s looking off into the middle distance, lost in a memory.

“Dunno why,” he says. “You’re always so. Covered up. But I know there’s something there. You’re beautiful, you’re…” he trails off.

Dream does not know what to say to this, to the revelation that Hob is thinking of him in such a way. It strikes him more strongly than even hearing the word tits applied to his person, which is its own hard shock indeed.

Perhaps he is more drunk than he’d thought, for the first response that does come to his mind is would you like to see them?

This is undoubtedly a cue to end the evening.

“I think perhaps you should have some water and sleep now, Hob,” he says. “Your body will not thank you tomorrow.”

“Mmm,” Hob says, not really listening to him. “Yeah…”

Dream takes him by the arm and pulls him up from the table, manages to maneuver a stumbling Hob to the stairs at the back of the inn, to his bedroom, where he lays Hob down on the bed, pulling off his shoes. Hob reaches for him, and for a moment Dream is afraid Hob is going to grab at his chest, but he doesn’t, just lightly touches Dream’s cheek.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, the words all blurred together, and something in Dream’s chest tightens.

“Sleep now, Hob.” He brushes a hand over Hob’s forehead, and Hob falls asleep instantly, relaxing into the pillow.

Dream lays a blanket over him, leaves water and aspirin on the nightstand. Stands, observing Hob, for longer than is proper or necessary. And then takes his leave to the Dreaming, where Hob’s words, drunken ramblings though they were, circle him for hours afterwards.

--

The fact of the matter is. Dream wants Hob. And has for some time. He does not know when exactly it struck him, only that he has increasingly become fixated on Hob’s hands, on the breadth of his shoulders, the warmth of his eyes. He has not known how to broach the topic. He has never had a lover who was a friend before.

Nor had he known whether Hob would be receptive to such a thing.

He supposes he has that answer now.

Hob has also handed him, though he probably did not realize it, an easy way to convey his interest. It will also, Dream thinks with a little smile, be somewhat… amusing to surprise Hob with the reality of his desire. Likely he never thought that would be the outcome of ranting to Dream about his breasts, such as they are.

I will visit him tits out, he resolves. Tomorrow, when he wakes.

--

Dream is no stranger to more revealing attire, though he has not cared to wear it since his captivity. This, he thinks, is worthy of making the change. He garbs himself in normal slacks and boots, his usual long coat open and unbuttoned— but under it is a sheer, long sleeved shirt, ruffled collar, cut out over the chest precisely as Hob had requested, drunk though he was. Truly, Dream thinks, observing the look in the mirror he has manifested in his chambers, the fashion of this decade is interesting indeed.

Thus clothed to the requirements, Dream commands his sand to take him to Hob’s flat, now that he can feel Hob has woken. He stands in Hob’s living room, and he waits.

Hob comes into the living room at the sound of his arrival, rubbing his eyes, still sleepy and hungover. He’s still in pajamas, and clearly has not been awake long. “Listen, Dream, I’m so fucking sorry, I should not have said— oh holy fuck.”

“I thought this would appeal,” Dream says, and watches Hob reel, eyes wide.

“Appeal. Appeal? Appeal to what, my fucking dick? Oh Jesus Mary and God-fucking-dammit, I’m making it worse—”

Dream is feeling very validated in his choice now. He smirks, taking a step closer. “You were very passionate last night. I thought perhaps. You would like to test your theory.”

Hob’s eyes are still huge. He swallows, throat bobbing, gaze bouncing between Dream’s eyes and his lips and his bare chest.

“My theory,” Hob says faintly. “Are you coming onto me? Please tell me you’re coming onto me and not just trying to break me. Because you broke me, I’m broken.”

“Until you spoke last night I… did not know that you thought of me like that,” Dream admits.

“Didn’t know? And here I thought I was the most obvious—” he bites the sentence off. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not dreaming, am I? I guess it could still be you…”

“You are not dreaming,” Dream confirms.

Hob steps closer to him, then, as if hypnotized. Strokes a thumb lightly over one of Dream’s bare nipples, and Dream shivers at the touch. Then Hob presses his hands flat to Dream’s chest, cups what little flesh is there in his palms. Dream does not have a particularly substantial chest but Hob seems compelled anyway.

“Are my ‘tits,’” Dream asks, quoting Hob from last night, “‘banging,’ Hob Gadling?”

Hob goes bright red, but doesn’t remove his hands. “Yeah, Dream,” he says, strangled, “you have the prettiest little titties I ever saw.”

This is not something Dream has ever cared about or even considered about himself, but he preens anyway.

“And if you’ve no objections I’d really like to get my mouth on them,” Hob continues. “You free now? Or did you come just to upend my world and run?”

“I am ‘free,’” Dream confirms. This is, in fact, his desired outcome. “Is that the only place you will put your mouth?”

“Fucking hell.” Hob kisses him then, rough and hot, hands going to Dream’s waist to pull him in so their bellies are touching. Dream hums in pleasure. And Hob pushes his coat off his shoulders. It falls to the floor, unheeded. “No, I want to fucking bite you. Kiss you everywhere. And I dunno what you have going on down there, but I’m going for that, too.”

Dream raises an eyebrow. “‘What I have going on down there?’”

Hob huffs. “Well I don’t know, you personification of insanity. What do you have going on down there?”

“What would you like me to have going on?”

“No,” Hob says, half a whine. “Don’t say shit like that, I’m not a strong man. Come on.”

He takes Dream by the hand, drags him towards his bedroom. And Dream smiles to himself. A desired outcome, indeed.

[potofsoup]

Oh look, it seems like there's a Republican-led movement to purge voter rolls in the lead-up to the election! It's almost as if your vote matters and they don't want you to vote! Anyway, I whipped up a quick map (based on this) that shows when the voter registration deadline is in each state. There are a few deadlines coming up in the next week or so.

If you live in a state that regularly purges voter rolls for infrequent voters (the orange ones in the first map), or if you moved recently, it's good to check if you're still registered to vote.

Vote.org makes it super easy to check your registration: https://www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote/

Just put in your address and DOB and they'll tell you whether you're registered. (And they give you a quick link to register online if it turns out that you're not! Only the 9 states in white on my map don't have online registration, and for those they provide instructions on how to do it via mail or in person.) If you want an extra verification, find your state's election website and double-check there.

So yeah, give yourself peace of mind -- do a quick check. :)

[the-coffee-fandom]

Had to make a meme to describe me currently

[slighlyconfused]

Posting on AO3 is like, I'm doing this for myself, but also immediately refreshing the page every 5 seconds to see if you get any hits comments or kudos. But totally only writing for me.

[kookntae4ever]

This is me. Kinda jealous of all the writers who can write quickly because I can't.

[happy74827]

Oh the Deadpool tag is trending? I wonder why—

… oh

[gothamite-rambler]

Duke Thomas gets added to the payroll

Bruce Wayne (seeing Duke walk past his office): Duke.

Duke backwards walked to Bruce’s office.

Duke: Sup?

Bruce: Did you check your bank account? The direct deposit should’ve hit.

Duke: The what? Oh you were serious about that?

Bruce: Of course, you’re not only my son, but you do work for me and you deserve an income.

Duke: Thanks dude, but I can’t take your money I work at the library.

Bruce: Duke, trust me. You deserve this. I do it for all my kids… except Tim.

Duke: Why not Tim?

Bruce: Long story… he owns part of my company, plus he- he definitely embezzled a lot of my funds before I noticed so him working at my company is his paycheck.

Duke (alarmed): That was him?!

Bruce: Yeah, but that’s not important currently. You enjoy your first payhcheck and I’m proud of you.

Duke: Thanks man.

Duke left the office, checking his phone as he walked to his room. He nearly dropped his phone seeing the four digits in his bank account that had five dollars in it three days ago.

Duke (shocked, happy): Three- Three thousand dollars?! Woooooooo! I’m eating good tonight! No wait, game stop here I come!

Duke ran out the house passing by Stephanie and Jason.

Duke: I can finally buy a PlayStation!

Jason: Wait until he finds out it’s a monthly payment.

Stephanie: I’ll tell him later. Want to go tell Tim about it first?

Jason: 100% yes.

[arrja]

Sukuna finds a strange creature in the forest and decides to bring it home

Fanart inspired by- The Child With Marks on AO3 (Make sure to check it out!)