#on fic

[shiftylinguini]

Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack:

@phoebe-delia asked in response to this fun lil ask game:

Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back? . (for the ask anything) Do you have any advice for getting out of a slump/getting writing confidence back?

Now THIS. This is a good question, and something that is very much on my mind and has been for a while, as I am currently absolutely in the midst of this and trying to army crawl my way out. I don't have any magic bullets (is that the saying? idk) but I have been here before and i do have a small arsenal of tips or methods that I find can help me. 

Here is my Fuck I Can't Write Crisis Pack (In no particular order):

Write anything 

This is hardly groundbreaking advice, and it's also the hardest thing to actually do (imo) so do not beat yourself up if it takes a while to get to this. Basically, write ANYTHING―it can be aimless, it can be pointless, it can be crap (crap is subjective!! don't let the brain gremlins win!!). 

Don't think about posting it, don't worry about anyone else ever reading it, just fling a few words onto a page and feel the rusty faucet turn on, proving to yourself that it still works. 

Try and sus out what it is that's blocking you 

Again this one is hard and annoying but functional. Once you can put your finger on the particular reason you're staring at a flashing black line on a blank page it can help you kick that reason off your lawn and into the bin. 

And then, take it out of the bin and be kind to yourself about whatever that reason is. Maybe you feel shit because you're comparing yourself to others, your last fic felt like a lead balloon, you can't muster enthusiasm for what you once loved doing and fear that it's gone forever, you're projecting in a Tumblr post―whatever it is, it's something all the writers you admire and aspire to be like have felt, and been annoyed with themselves for, and so you can wrap it up in a blanket and put it on a shelf and be kind to it so it, (respectfully) shuts the fuck up. 

(and remember, everyone feels insecure about their stuff. Like literally everyone, at some stage, feels like their stuff is rubbish)

Cheat on your OTP 

Okay this one might not work for everyone, but it really does for me lol. Ruts (not the sexy kind) can often come with not wanting to engage in my usual ships, being annoyed by my lack of ability to fucking write them/anything/all my ideas taste like cardboard/bleh, and stepping out on them and reading something new can snap me out of it. Just, an injection of new ideas or scenarios or words or even just a little reprieve from being fed up with myself, which ideally, is why we're all here anyway. 

(And then I come crawling back, and am welcomed with open arms haha)

In a similar vein:

Engage in media 

This subtitle is genuinely terrible, i am sorry, LMAO, but essentially: find a piece of media that makes you go "oh, helLO sailor", unhinge your jaw like a snake, and consume it whole. 

Let it nourish you, inspire you, excite you, making you feel SOMETHING, and then take that and think "fuck, what if i wrote bleepbloopblarp" and even if you write nary a single word, you've thought about it and that fucking counts. 

It might be an album, a book, a song, a show, gifs of a hot person, the wikipedia summary of a movie, literally anything counts here if it makes you feel a twinge of creativity. 

Ask yourself, what would Astolat do? 

No for real. @candybarrnerd and I genuinely use this haha.  

Worried your idea is stupid? Astolat would say write it. 

Worried it's too weird? Nah, just write it. 

It's dumb and no one will read it? Just write it for you *waggles eyebrows* (and then find out that yeah, nah, someone else will absolutely read this and be real fucking happy about it haha.)

Worried you're a one trick pony and have already written this fic before, like, and not even once before, and also you're projecting again in Tumblr post? WRITE IT AGAIN! As Astolat once said, "it's a fic so nice, I wrote it thrice". 

It's good advice. 

Make a friend or lean hard on the ones you have here

Misery loves company because it knows they'll come out of this together :). I know, I know, that's fucking NAFF, but fandom is all about finding like-minded freaks and blowing up their DMs because you saw a gif and now feel a kind of ways about it. 

And lastly: 

FUCK STATS! 

I mean I love stats (yay validation!), but god can they make you feel like a worthless shit (hey where did my validation go :((( ). It can be really insidious, so piss that right off when it starts to fuck with your confidence or outlook on your own writing.

Hopefully there is something useful here, even if it's just looking at this advice and thinking "no that's shit, it's writing POISON" cos then you can maybe do the version you think is NOT shit, and that might work. 

Good luck, fellow travelers!!

[seaweedbraens]

Hi! I've been following your fics for a few years now and I was just wondering, do you have any tips for new writers? Specifically for fics that is. Any advice from planning a fic outline to just general writing advice would be hella appreciated!!

hello!!! welcome to fic, we're super happy to have you here <3 i'd love to drop you some 'tips' (i am using quotes because i am not sure if im qualified to give advice - and i'm not sure if it'll work, but here is what works for me!)

when i outline fics, i almost always know what my starting and ending is. i've definitely mentioned this before but i always always know my endling LINE, i dont start writing a fic if i don't know where it's gonna end up. again, this may not be you, so dont panic if it isn't! this is just how i begin.

since my fics are on the...ahem, lengthier side, i usually have 'sections' of content between my beginning and end. i write down (usually by hand, but it doesnt matter what you use tbh) significant 'events' or 'goals' of the section. for instance, as i was writing my bigfic (we could walk straight through hell (with a smile)) one of my chapter outlines looked like this:

since this fic used multiple character POVs, i also made sure to label which section was being seen through which character's eyes. sometimes, as i'm making my sections, i'll get inspiration for dialogue, and i include that too. as you can see above, i also highlighted sections as i completed them, though that's just more to keep track than anything else.

i wish i could give you more insight into writing, but really the biggest piece of advice i can give is to keep reading. reading fic is good but reading books is even better because you'll learn so many words, absorb so many kinds of writing styles, and learn what you like and what you don't like and patterns that you'll settle into. i have to confess i dont read much these days, which i need to change, but i used to be a voracious reader, and that definitely helped me as a writer.

i've been writing fic for a long time, though. so when it comes to writing fic in particular, i am a huge advocate for a couple of things (and these are pretty general, not necessarily writing-related):

don't force yourself to write!! sometimes you just arent feeling it and thats okay. i write in insane spurts - as i wrote wcwsthwas i occasionally pumped out 10k in a single sitting - but i go months and months without writing in between. if you're in a rut i don't think you need to force yourself out of it, because more often than not i've found myself dissatisfied with my work when i do force myself to write. as creatives, burnout is common, but because this is fic we're lucky enough that we operate on our own schedule. we don't need to push ourselves to write if we don't have to. but trust me, when you feel the urge to start writing again, it's wonderful, and the words will flow out of you!! just make sure you

stay inspired! again, reading good books helps you expand your own vocabulary, and it'll come in handy when you find yourself needing to write descriptions. observe the world around you, learn movements and expressions and how things and people tick. explore writing prompts and see what inspires you best (i took one look at soulmate au prompts and never looked back). it's cool to be inspired by fellow creatives online (just make sure to give credit if needed) but also try to be inspired by yourself! a lot of my fics stem from my own experiences and thoughts and emotions, and i think to some degree that resonates with people, which is always great. try to examine things on a deeper level. draw on memories from your own life and they'll hit more often than they miss. think about what makes your hurt, and rage, and cry, and flinch, and smile. remember the little things that make interactions so special. when you put yourself in a character's shoes in a certain situation, question why they'd act or react a certain way. and make sure

you do you. if your work doesn't sound beautiful and prose-y, that's fiiine. it's okay to keep it simple!! it was a bitter pill to swallow and it took me many years, but i have finally realized that my strengths as a writer are in my dialogue and emotional dump-writing. i don't think i'll be ever to be one of those poetic writers who can pull words from the trails of your thoughts like a some kind of sick magical literary genius. i have some friends who just. they write so BEAUTIFULLY and i'm so envious of them, but that's their strength, and i have my own. remember that!! and please for the love of god

don't worry about stats. write for YOU. this may sound lofty but i can't stress this enough. i was unfortunate to start writing fic when i was very young, and as a competitive little brat i was obsessed with the numbers. i desperately tracked every comment and like and favorite and follow. i let that dictate my writing, because i knew that if i wrote a certain way, made fics extra fluffy or whatever, they'd draw in more comments. i'd force myself to write more, update fics to show how active i was as an author in the fandom, and in the end, that truly sucked out the joy of writing for me. i found other ways to channel my creativity for a long time and then returned to writing. now, i write when inspiration strikes, and to my surprise and joy people still want to read. i love when a fic does well, but it doesn't debilitate me if it doesn't. writing for yourself, and for the love of a good story, and for the love of the source material, and for the love of writing, will make you a better writer. and on that note:

quantity does not equal quality. i've been asked quite a bit how i write such long fic but that's largely because i like to read long fic. i like it when a story is build up and fleshed out and you end up knowing everything about everyone. i like drawing out moments, giving characters depth and thoughts and relationships. a lot of my fics are full of extra padding that goes into building character relationships and friendships, because as an only child they are super important to me. HOWEVER there is real fucking skill required to write a short fic. to fit a beginning and middle and end into the least amount of words possible. it's incredible, it's a skill i wish i had, and deserves every laurel that long fics get. as a writer, if you find your fic ending earlier than expected, that's fine. you don't need to add more words just for the sake of puffing up the wordcount. at the end of the day, if your story shines, that's all that matters, and readers will respond to it.

im not sure if this will help you but this is kind of the bulk of what i've learned all these years writing fic. at the end of it all, what works for me may not at all work for you, but i'm certain that with time, you'll find your groove and carve out a niche for yourself, just as we all have. just remember: have fun! the internet is batshit and sometimes not the best place but my time writing fic has exposed me to the most wonderful people. writing will help you learn and grow in ways you won't be able to foresee now - just go with the flow and take it all in as it comes! be positive, accept critique and feedback and learn from it, and stay enthusiastic about telling your stories. feel free to message me anytime, and please drop a link to your fic if you ever post :) i'd love to read it!

sorry for the late response, and for making you read this NOVEL, holy shit. haaave a good day/night <3

[jestbee]

Okay, I signed up for @fandomtrumpshate, my semi-retirement is ending for one night only

[dulcidyne]

absolutely barking at 3am while reading On The

Care and Grooming of Gentleman Necromancers like bro are you fucking kidding me with this characterization and the intimacy of shaving a loved one im losing my mind forget kissing the ground u walk on i am straight up eating the dirt

thanks for existing

First off, thank YOU for existing @pizzapaps! Because this inbox message completely made my day. I'm perpetually in a state of anxiety whenever I post fic, because my brain is broken like that, but responses like this honestly make it worth it. I loved the idea of really intense intimacy in a 'platonic/SFW' context. I also just thought Emmrich deserved to be pampered! Emmrich's character is really fascinating to me, and I empathize with him on nearly every point except...the fundamental personality component haha. There's so much there I connect with: the obsessive fear of death (which goes hand in hand with a somewhat dysphoric fear of aging in my experience), being a mentor/teacher, the kind of awkward experience of having to be the 'adult' in the room full of other competent professionals, being a stickler for nice clothing/grooming (a 'trifle vain'), a love of academics and the blind spots that come with it, the impeccable bi/demi-ness vibes, and a morbid job that makes most people go "Ew, I could never do that." Oof, I just love him and I love writing him! I'm so glad other people can enjoy my take on him too, that's what I love about fandom, really. Thank you again, also just for taking the time to read and then taking even more time to message! <3 <3 <3

[andillwriteyouatragedy]

currently writing ch 24 of 25 of this fic (yippee!) and trying to decide if i should edit and post it all at once, or edit and post it chapter by chapter........... the entire fic will be written so no chance of it being unfinished. but i simply can't decide!

[hideandsqueek]

I know I’m pretty secretive about who I am in other spaces (literally every social media I’m on has a different username, and the one on here has “hide” in the name after all). This was done mostly to avoid drama going from place to place. There was LJ drama when I joined tumblr. It’s all ancient history. But my point is… irrelevant to that, mostly. My point is, you may not know about it, necessarily, but

I write fic sometimes. Have done since the mid-00s. I have a lot of fic online. One in particular from 12 years ago has a pairing at which some people take umbrage. And despite being very clear in the notes that tho X and Z fuck (unpopular ship), it’s actually very much an X/Y fic (very popular ship), it gets hate.

And it is very much an X/Y fic! Life and relationships are complicated, why shouldn’t they be in fic?

But I’ve had people tell me in comments that the fic made them physically ill. That Y could never forgive X. That it’s disgusting. Fine, it’s not your flavor. Thanks for letting me know, I guess. Yesterday someone wrote a phone-screen long diatribe about how it was so out of character, X would never, etc etc. They quoted parts they couldn’t accept. Then told me they were just being constructive and that I’m a good writer. THEN they deleted the comment before I could reply.

Now I really, really want to write an X/Y/Z fic that like maybe 5 people would read, purely out of spite.

Maybe I don’t want to avoid drama anymore?

[izzythedemigod]

I just found the funniest font ever

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

[just-french-me-up]

'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'

what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip

[theaftersundown]

the holy grail types of fanfic

[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!

[frownyalfred]

the fact that I’ve actually had this happen multiple times when I’ve entered a new fandom is hilarious like what do you MEAN

[rafterdarkr]

why are all these modern aus for the Odyssey set in a high school. where's the retelling where Odysseus is just a guy lost in an airport who keeps missing his connecting flights home due to a comical series of delays and disgruntled airline employees

[queer-here-and-in-fear]

BTW i see these posts all the time like "ohhh i dont know what to comment on fics.." and every response is "keysmashes! or hearts!! anything works :3" and thats GREAT!! thats helpful!!

but: consider. if u genuinely like analyzing writing.. do u know ur just allowed to go through and quote your favorite parts and ramble abt what they mean to u and the author will LOSE IT WITH HYPE?

genuinely. i felt SO WEIRD the first time i did it.. but like. holy shit authors love it. its crack for authors. the first time i did it, it was on a fic that hadnt updated in half a year, give or take, and the author made 3 updates that month BECAUSE OF MY COMMENT.

LIKE. as an author every comment is INCREDIBLE!!! but also, dont feel like your comment has to be short or otherwise ur invasive or smth!! authors ADORE long comments more than ANYTHING.

[thescriptorium]

no way ppl are using ai to write ao3. what happened to being a tortured writer. what happened to blood on the page. what happened to the ao3 curse. people used to get run over, have their houses burned down, break their entire spines and they still put in the work to finish a chapter. fuck you, using ai. y’all are weak

[housederiva]

My housemate's cat came into my room while my dictation was on...