#first link is to the original version

[lonicera-caprifolium]

Nothing was amiss in the corridor leading to their cabin. He tapped on the door. No answer, but no sound of running water either. Easing the door open revealed that there was indeed rest for the wicked. Or at least, for Crowley’s brand of wicked. Crowley sprawled, half on his stomach, in a diagonal across the bed. Sheets wound around one leg and over his torso, leaving what little modesty Crowley may have had completely unprotected. Well, there was no shame in admiring the human form, and it wasn’t like Aziraphale was leering. Alright, maybe a bit.

a redraw of another 2019 GO Big Bang pic, that was drawn to go with chapter 9 of @ladyshipwreck's Doubt Thou the Stars are Fire 💫

[rivetgoth]

Not sure what it’ll take to fix the massive misconception that testosterone HRT is something you take for a series of superficial / external changes and then stop. I mean it’s obviously fine to do that if you’re doing so with intentionality but all the time I see guys casually say stuff about “having gotten all the changes” or “the changes have plateaued” or “it’s not doing anything anymore” and citing that as reason to stop taking it. That just objectively isn’t how HRT works.

The external changes are great but hormones are doing way more behind the scenes than just giving you facial hair and a deeper voice, especially when it comes to aging. Individuals with T-dominant endocrine systems and individuals with E-dominant endocrine systems age differently. Fat distribution isn’t a one and done thing; those patterns continue to change and evolve over the course of your life. You as an old man on T for decades will look different than someone who has had an E-dominant endocrine system for that same amount of time. Tbh I think a lot of it is the fact that guys are accessing T at younger ages now and it’s just par for the course that young people don’t take aging into consideration lol. At 18-19 and younger you aren’t even really comprehending that you’re going to age, and for a group statistically more likely to be suicidal that’s tenfold. Lack of substantial research on the longterm effects of both HRT and stopping HRT play into this too.

That said though I think detransition fearmongering and even sort of misdirected transmisogyny kinda comes into play here as well. Testosterone as a substance that causes “permanent damage” is largely weaponized against trans women but it is also used to threaten us not to transition in the first place. The word “permanent” carries with it a lot of weight and you see all these people talk about the “permanent” effects of T but what’s lost in these conversations is what cisgender society is threateningly calling a “permanent” change is like… different than what these changes in an estrogen-dominant body do actually look like. We talk a lot about facial and body hair being a “permanent” change on T, but transmascs who stop T and trans women on E alike can report that estrogen causes these hairs to grow in softer and lighter; they won’t look how they did on T. Bottom growth is another “permanent” change that can shrink as erections soften. Your voice (another often-described-as-permanent effect) can change as E changes the body’s ability to grow and retain muscle. I think beyond splash damage from societal transmisogyny I’d even say some of the lack of understanding here comes from intracommunity transmisogyny & trans men not fully comprehending the level of change possible on estrogen, internalizing the sentiment that trans women’s changes are less meaningful than ours and not talking to trans women about what estrogen-based transition really looks like.

And again I’m not saying this to berate the people who intentionally go on T, know what to expect by stopping it, and do so with intentionality because they have a vision for what they want. That’s awesome, 100% valid. Do you. It’s more the wider misconception I see of HRT as something that “plateaus” and leaves a series of permanent unchanging effects while no longer doing anything else. And to overstep just a little I honestly think there are some men who would be happier if they continued to take T and are falling victim to larger transphobic institutions that have convinced them it’s unnecessary. As itskobold said on my post about HRT timelines you will keep changing forever. So it’s best to really consider what you want the layout of your endocrine system to be as those changes continue to occur.

[starsystems-fr]

Gijinka Telephone: Flight Rising Experiment Version, based on this post! Featuring art by @buff-dunerunner, @recallback-art, @cosmicpoppies, @warewolfish, @footofananimal, @lostplanetvoltia and me!

Thank you so much to all the artists, and I'm so sorry I sat on your art for so long! It was really cool to open these up and see everyone's pieces again, and I feel guilty that they've been sitting on my computer for many (MANY) months.

When I was drawing the first piece, I thought "aha, wouldn't it be cute to start with a dragon from one of the artists' lairs so they can see how it changes?" and I thought CrystalBlackpaws' Dangao looked fun. In my mind, I drew a character that was suitably different enough from the original that it wasn't obvious what the base dragon looked like...

...and in hindsight, it was a bit too clear what the inspiration was 🥲 like, it accidentally was the world's most convoluted art trade haha. But even with that, everyone did a really great job transforming Dangao into and out of different forms! Seeing everyone's skull masks was my favorite part for sure!

Thank you again to the six of you for taking part in this weird little game, and sorry again for not sharing your awesome art sooner!!

[reverienne]

my contribution to @idrellegames's Wayfarer's 3rd Anniversary!

a translation of "caro diario," written by me / both the translation and the (clunky) Italian original available on ao3

a diary entry set during the Prologue, spoiler-free, gen

615 words / Corinne Varyn (then - Corina Briadis), a little bit of complaining about the hardships of being a recruit, simple language because my Italian is simple

___

dear diary,

My name is Corina Briadis. I am 13 years old. I am someone called a magianis. I do not have magical powers, but it does not mean that I am a boring person.

Existing in a world where everyone has magical powers when you do not have any is difficult. People believe that people like me are freaks of nature. Of course, it is not true, it is not fair, but what can we do?

The society loves magic.

Not having magical powers is rare.

It is easy for people not to meet anyone like me for their entire lives! Because of that, it is easy to "forget" that not all people can use magic... or that magic is necessary to do many things.

If you do not have magical powers, you have to be creative.

I have to be creative if I want to live in the society.

For example, I have to walk a lot because using any technology that requires the use of magic, like teleportation portals, is impossible for me.

I do not like that. I do not like doing sport, but I do not have any choice because I cannot become a mage.

My birth family abandoned me. They did not like the fact that I was born without magical powers.

They are horrible people.

I hate them.

I do not want to see my mother, my father, my brothers or my sisters, or any of my cousins and other relatives ever again.

I hope that they are all dead.

I know that they are all fine.

It is not fair, but there is still time.

My new family is the Wayfarer Order. My favourite teacher, Brissa Varyn, is my mentor and my guardian. She is more like a mother to me than my birth mother ever was.

She has a partner, another teacher, Rindan Cenric, and I like him as well.

There is also a boy around my age by the name of Aeran Kellis who is another student and mentee of Varyn. He is like a brother to me.

Aeran is very brave. He is not afraid to argue with our mentor, Varyn, or anyone else.

I, on the other hand, am afraid of everything.

My future seems very frightening. I have to become a warrior because my new family is full of warriors.

When you join the Wayfarer order, you have to become a warrior.

I do not have any choice here. Even Varyn - who has a true talent for diplomacy and works as the Order's diplomat - is also a great warrior.

And me? I am shy and nervous. When people look at me, I become even more nervous, and when people actually listen to me... no, it is just too weird for me. I have been invisible my whole life and suddenly becoming brave when you are 13 years old is not easy.

Moreover, the people that I have to talk to are often mean, yet I always have to be polite and diplomatic with them.

It is a hard, difficult job.

Unfortunately - or maybe fortunately? - I am better at diplomacy than Aeran. Aeran simply refuses to be polite and diplomatic.

Varyn says that I have a bit of her talent for negotiations.

It is incredible... it is my first time being better than someone at anything... but now if I want the talks to go well, I have to step up and do the talking myself, and I hate this.

I am not a good warrior.

I know that I have to improve.

I do not want to die young.

But it is very difficult and I am so tired...

Until the next time!

Corinne

[holmesoldfellow]

The covers of "Muppet Sherlock Holmes," a 2010 four part comic book mini series written by Patrick Storck and illustrated by Amy Mebberson. With Gonzo as Holmes and Fozzie as Watson, they spoof on "The Adventure of the Speckled Band," "A Scandal in Bohemia," "The Red Headed League," and "Musgrove Ritual."

[doctahchang]

would like to know the lore of my own oc that i have had for like ten years

edit: found an old sketch of her... i basically drew her for the first time eons ago and haven't changed her design ever since (sad that i won't be able to find those drawing again)

[encrucijada]

might be silly and write bullet points for a possible tears of the kingdom fic 🫶

[maburito]

I'm really on a Legend of Zelda hyperfixation lately.....After Legend of Zelda 1986, and Zelda II : The Adventure of Link, I'm playing A Link to the Past.

And I'm having so much fun

[izzy-b-hands]

Didn't think the 1989 version of The Woman In Black would be scarier than the one with Dan Radcliffe in it

I was Wrong flkjdsafkldsja, but I'm delighted to have been wrong. I had missed getting scared with more practical effects/careful timing of things in the background of shots appearing and disappearing, and this one scratches that itch well.

[pocketramblr]

Not again (<- she woke up with another idea for original flavor Link backstory)

[unproduciblesmackdown]

"While the true star of The Mysteries is its accomplishment as a behemoth of theatre and design, the audience's stamina over six hours relies on the vibrant performances by a fabulous ensemble that despite its size utilizes the diverse collection of talent it contains. Standing out among these are [...] Asia Kate Dillon as a Lucifer with a conscience."

[https://m.facebook.com/hidramas/posts/732666403439943] "Hi! Drama"

"A high tone is set early on with the conflict between questioning and growing self-knowledge espoused by Lucifer (Asia Kate Dillon) versus loving adoration given by Gabriel (Alice Allemano) to God (Matthew Jeffers)."

"Because of their ensemble structure, the [York mystery] plays force the issue of how to create a large-scale mega-narrative out of a series of associated short parts. For this reason, the playwrights held to certain conventions. By and large, heroes spoke in high-register language; villains used slang, wobblier verse forms, and more percussive sounds, so that their moral turpitude registered in hearers’ ears before it registered in their thoughts. Satan, however, was supremely engaging—funny, seductive, charming. He was bad, but likeable.

[...]

The play cycle is intensely jocoserious, taking its theology as a provocation for community reflection, meditation, and introspection, and riffing deftly and recursively on other literary traditions. By rejecting the compulsion to treat Biblical history as completed and thus part of the simple past, The Mysteries is a triumph of transhistorical experimental theater. It remains extremely faithful to the basic structure of the medieval plays, sometimes even integrating slices of Middle English from the plays themselves—often the most famous, the York mysteries. When Lucifer urges Eve to eat the apple of the tree of knowledge, they say, quoting the York Play’s diabolically plosive alliteration, “Bite on boldly.”"

[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!

[klaytheguildlessperso]

I've just remembered Romantically Apocalyptic exists

[rainymess]

Lets talk about some of the new changes happening with the remastered version of OFF!!! (LETS FUCKING GOOOOO!!!!!)

All this info is from the Mortis Ghost stream he made talking about the game!

There's now a respawn function! When you die, it gives you an option to start back at the room you originally died in

There's now a hint button you can press when you're unsure what to do next or if a puzzle is a little too hard

Updated animations/sprites (footstep trails! ladder animation!)

New main menu screen!

Zacharie's shop menu is also new!

New things are in the game that can't be shown yet, but here's some info we are allowed to know about;

Battle system has been reworked, more balanced and more fun

There will be more announcements in the future about the development of the game!

They no longer have the rights to the OG music + soundtrack so they have to remake it all for this version

The original game will forever be free and the original soundtrack will stay on that version too

New content including new secrets, new bosses, new areas and more!

Will release in English and French at first and will later get a Japanese version at another date

Could (probably) have Steam achievements though he's unsure

Some new lore is being added in the comic book that's only available in the Switch Collector's Edition

EDIT:

I'm a fool that didn't post the links-- Here's the stream vod! The Twitter trailer! And here's the website that talks more about the remaster, including where to wishlist it on Steam and more info on the Switch version!

[cy-cyborg]

Free Manual Wheelchair Reference Models

ID: A banner with grey 3D models of 5 kinds of manual wheelchairs in a line in front of the disability pride flag and text that reads "Manual Wheelchair References" /End ID

For disability pride month, I decided to release a pack of 3D manual wheelchair models.

The pack includes 5 wheelchairs:

2 Active urban-style chairs (one of which includes a smart drive)

1 off-road active chair

1 children's wheelchair

and 1 standard "hospital" wheelchair).

All the wheelchairs are based off either wheelchairs I or friends of mine have used

Downloadable here!

or on the Clip Studio Paint Asset Store (ID 2097442) (there's been an issue with the CSP version, but the models in the download folder can be imported into clip studio paint until I can fix it)

More info about the download contents below:

The first download link includes the original .Blend file with all 5 chairs, as well as individual .obj or .fbx files the chairs (All but 1 have an .obj file, as they're only meshes. The chair with the smart drive is rigged, which is why it has an .Fbx file instead so it will retain that information) as well as a "read me" file that explains in more depth what kind of disability/character/lifestyle each chair is made for (These are just what I had in mind when I designed them, they are usable by other characters who don't fit the suggestions for the most part!) I wanted to include the Read Me contents in the CSP Asset Store listing, but CS said it was too long lol.

Also, as the title says, these files are free to use! While it's not mandatory, I would appreciate credit if you use them (or even just a tag so I can see the cool art you make with them!!)

I actually made these ages ago, the original plan was to use them in a series of posts then release the pack, but I never got around to making the series and so they've just been sitting here. I took a day off from art fight attacks to clean them all up and get them ready to post. If you experience any issues, let me know and I'll try to fix it up.

I had a couple more that were supposed to be in the pack including a sports (basketball/Tennis) wheelchair and some different styles of wheelchair, but I think the files corrupted so once I fix (or remake) them, I'll probably make a second pack.

If you have any issues, please let me know!

[bumblingbee1]

Gosh, I fucking LOVE The One! To this day, it is still my number 1 favorite COD Zombies easter egg song ever!