#the designs... the scenario... so good...

[hollow-prior]

[Image Description: A series of screenshots.

Image 1: A post on r/Ao3 on Reddit by u/EasterKingston. The post is titled "'Netflix of audiobooks' scrapes thousands of fanworks off Ao3 without permission. Yours, likely, included."

Image 2: The preview for a website titled word-stream. The page is titled "You & Me & Holiday Wine - WordStream".

Image 3: A screenshot from the website WordStream. The word "ekingston" is entered into the search bar. There are two results. One named "You & Me & Holiday Wine" and the other named "The Shape of Soup". Both have over 80 thousand views.

Image 4: Another screenshot from the same site. The name "Kara Danvers" is entered into the search bar. There are twenty results from a variety of authors that fill up the page.

Image 5: A sent text reading: "I followed you here from Reddit, where I was made aware of the truly awesome work your project Copyknight has been doing. I just discovered the website/app word-stream.com today-it's a site that's seemingly scraped thousands of works off ao3 and offers audiobook versions of them, presumably for a fee. It looks like it only went live in October, and I don't see much chatter about it (or contact information) anywhere. I was wondering if you'd heard from it/could offer advice on how to go about getting our works taken down?"

Image 6: A screenshot of a contact form being filled out. The form is on transformativeworks.org and appears to be a contact form. The subject is "New app committing grand-scale copyright infringement of works hosted on Ao3". The message reads: "Hello, A new website/app hosted on https://word-stream.com/ has scraped hundreds (thousands?) of works off Ao3 without permission, mine among them. Is there anything Ao3 can do to help us getting our works taken down? Thank you for your response! Easter."

Image 7: A series of interspersed text and screenshots. Text reads: "If you try to click on any of the sites, you get a link to the AppStore app, which is called "WordStream - Audiobooks". There is a screenshot of the app in the app store. The creator's name is Ofek Weitzman. Text reads: "Who is Ofek Weitzman? Apparently he's also known as Cliff Weitzman, the CEO of Speechify, an AI Voice generator app famous for its partnership with Snoop. Also, Cliff Weitzman is named as the copyright holder at the bottom:" A screenshot showing the copyright holder as Cliff Weitzman. Text reads: "If you search for Ofek/Cliff Weitzman, you find his name in the terms and conditions for Speechify." A screenshot showing the terms and conditions including the name Ofek Weitzman as the individual to address a notice of dispute to. Text reads: "Strange that someone with a legitimate company with a partnership with Brandon Sanderson would put their name behind a shady company stealing works from fanfic writers, but it may be worth reaching out to him on X. Best case scenario is that someone has stolen the name for an app, but in that case, it would be good for him to know. Otherwise, it would be good to start a dialogue about how authors can get their works taken down from this site!"

Image 8: A screenshot of a Tumblr post from user fazedlight (Fazed Light). It shows an image of domain registry data for Word-Stream. Text reads: Some investigation so far: 1. I don't see a way to contact them directly. This is probably by design, since they are clearly shamelessly committing copyright infringement. 2. I ran "Who is Word-Stream" in the terminal and this is some of the information that came up. The domain was registered via Go Daddy.com and their nameservers are run by CloudFlare.com. 3. I am NOT a lawyer. My basic understanding is that fanfic authors own copyright on their own fics, and are therefore entitled to register DMCA notices, but I do not understand what the risks are. That said, GoDaddy links how to go about filing a copyright infringement, and so does CloudFlare. My understanding is that DMCA notice information (Your personal information) gets shared with the offender, so please do your research/get actual legal guidance first! It's worth noting: I see no buzz about this website - not on Twitter, or Tumblr, or Reddit, etc. So I'm hoping that very few people are using it. The site itself is pretty new (The screenshot shows it was registered in June this year).

Image 9: An anonymous Tumblr asks that reads: "Re: word-stream - Check out the listing on the Apple App Store which will list the App Developer - Cliff Weitzman. The privacy policy lists the email support[at]word-stream[dot]com. The seller (Weitzman) is associated with a speech to text AI company called Speechify. The domain is hosted by GoDaddy. I have no idea what complaints can be filed. It may be possible to file something with GoDaddy or Apple about the app/site breaking their TOS in some way. The Organization for Transformative Works who have legit lawyers who may be a better resource. Anyway, what a huge insult to writers everywhere. Damn.

Image 10: An email from Rebecca Tushnet to easter.kingston. The subject is "Your message about WordStream". The email reads: "Thank you for reaching out. The Archive of Our Own does not claim copyright in any works posted to AO3 so authors have to submit their own takedown notices to sites reposting their works without authorization. The AO3 does not allow commercial reuse, so we do attempt to prevent large scale scraping, but techical measures are not foolproof. We will look into the site and see if there are further measures we can take. Yours, Rebecca Tushnet."

Image 11: A screenshot showing three subscription plans to choose from: A month long for 93 cents per day or a discounted price of 39 cents, a three month long for 53 cents per day or a discounted price of 19 cents, and a six month long for 55 cents per day or a discounted price of 15 cents. The three month plan is listed as most popular.

Image 12: A Tumblr post by user ekingston. It reads: "Christ". A screenshot of a Tumblr reply by user cliffweitzman (Cliff Weitzman) is below. It reads: "Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here. Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@word-stream.com I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, adhd, low vision, concussions, anxiety, who are second language learners, or who also love listening to fan fiction but have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Word Stream is free for anyone to use. The next iteration will also include free text to speech, we have a paid tier for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech." The same user has replied to the original comment. Their reply reads: "I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices and will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work. support@word- stream.com". Text in the original Tumblr post reads: "This man is asking us to do the work for him, all of us, individually. My man. You had an Al scrape THE ENTIRETY OF ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN to take works without our permission. This is ON YOU. friends, if you feel like spending your day sending individual notices to this man, please go ahead. I do NOT advise you sharing personal information that you wouldn't usually share online though. Also, as a person with a learning disability of her own, and the wife of an elementary teacher who accommodates kids with disabilities like these, using your dyslexia as an excuse to steal people's work without permission is DETESTABLE."

Image 13: Text reads: "cliffweitzman (Cliff Weitzman) replied to your text post." The reply reads: "Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here: I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, ADHD, vision challenges, concussions, or anxiety to access fan-fiction, because for us, reading with our eyes can be very challenging and there are no audiobooks for fan fiction typically. Word Stream is free for anyone to use. There is a paid plan for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech. The next iteration will also include free text to speech but with a lower quality bar. I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices an d will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work. support@word-stream.com Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@word-stream.com. A future release will also add the ability to tip authors so writers can make money not from selling the works but via tips from grateful readers, the ability for authors to build and communicate with an email list of readers, ability for authors to see retention graphs of where users drop off during reading, and abilities to authors to easily manage their works. We are strong supporters of second language learners (non native speakers of English), and of users who love fan fiction but who have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Once again I apologize for a beta product that got more attention that it ha d any right to before it was complete and for the clearly tone deaf wording which we are fixing to make sure communication is better about take down notices. Warmly, Cliff If you can, pl ease upvote or comment on the post so others can see the e mail they should message to have anything they don't want posted taken down immediately Word Stream."

Image 14: A Reddit comment on r/Ao3 by user word-stream. It reads: "Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here: I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, ADHD, vision challenges, concussions, or anxiety to access fan-fiction, because for us, reading with our eyes can be very challenging and there are no audiobooks for fan fiction typically. Word Stream is free for anyone to use. There is a paid plan for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech. The next iteration will also include free text to speech but with a lower quality bar, I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices and will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work, support@word-stream.com Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@@word-stream.com A future release will also add the ability to tip authors so writers can make money not from selling the works but via tips from grateful readers, the ability for authors to build and communicate with an email list of readers, ability for authors to see retention graphs of where users drop off during reading, and abilities to authors to easily manage their works. We are strong supporters of second language learners (non native speakers of English), and of users who love fan fiction but who have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Once again I apologize for a beta product that got more attention that it had any right to before it was complete and for the clearly tone deaf wording which we are fixing to make sure communication is better about take down notices. Warmly, Cliff."

Image 15: A Reddit comment from user Electronic_Dog_9526. It reads: "Word Stream's team have apologize for a beta product that got more attention that it had any right to before it was complete and for the clearly tone deaf wording which they are fixing to make sure communication is better about take down notices. They are trying to make the internet including fan fiction accessible to students with dyslexia, ADHD, and vision challenges, and it is free to use. Anyone can read on word stream for free. There is a paid tier that enables audio mode: this pays for the expensive GPUs needed for making the audio. They share they support all valid take down notices and will make it right if you reach out with the name of your work to support@word-stream.com." The comment has two downvotes.

Image 16: A partial screenshot of a Reddit post. It has 3800 upvotes, 500 comments, and 7 awards. It reads: "FINAL EDIT: I'm turning off notifications for this post, because it doesn't look like many people are reading to the end and I keep getting comments from people who are unable to find their fic or expressing how relieved they are their works 'aren't important enough to be stolen'. I did see reports that the fanwork doesn't seem to be removed, just hidden, which is pretty much what I expected; obviously a guy who would rather make money letting Al and fanfic writers do the work for him wouldn't want to undo the little effort he put in putting the database together in the first place (all those wonderfully disfigured Al-generated covers would go to waste!) so I'll reiterate what I said in one of my comments: I'll be keeping my eye on this, and I think you should too. I hate that we need this kind of constant vigilance but let's face it, tech bros have been looking at fanfic with an envious eye for some time now and even if it isn't this guy, someone else will inevitably pop up with the same new & brilliant idea to make money off of fanwork creators. We'll just have to keep not letting them get away with it. For today, I'm counting the fanwork being made inaccessible as a collective win."

End ID.]

[Plain Text: Text in red reads: "***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."]

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!

[pokemonshelterstories]

So I recently was..blessed...with an applin with a ..unique condition ...Bicephaly... and I love the little fellas but I'm worried for them? I can't find much info on this happening in the aplin line but I do know one evolutionary path has multiple heads? Is there anything I should keep a look out for

how interesting...reptilian pokemon have been known to survive with bicephaly longer than, say, bird or mammal pokemon- but to be quite honest, you need to prepare yourself for the likelihood that this applin will not survive long. bicephaly is an extensive malformation, and it comes with a variety of potential complications. this applin is also going to need to change apples frequently. applin aren't designed to fit multiple heads into a single apple, and they're possibly going to crowd each other out.

as for evolution...while hydrapple has multiple heads, it also has multiple bodies. each of its syrpents is a separate individual. chances are, your applin is unable to evolve at all, because a pokemon's body will shut down evolution if there are significant complications to the process. but even if it were able to evolve, i would recommend against trying. you don't know how its already aberrant body will mutate further under the influence of evolution, and evolution carries a significant risk of fatality in this scenario.

good luck with this little guy. you'll need to get a specialist veterinarian appointment asap to determine what its internal organs look like, because that's where the highest possibility of a fatal malformation is going to be. the vet can also tell you more about how to give it the best shot at long term survival, or let you know if humane euthanasia would be the kindest option.

[psiherer]

I love DnD, but most of my life I've been a DM, and not a player. This changed relatively recently, since I finally got invited to play in a campaign by a friend. This campaign has been running for about a year now, and oh boy... I'm having a blast with it.

I present to you, Dee!

He's half-dragon and half-couatl (technically possible in lore, I think, and I always loved both). He's a bard/druid multiclass, since the idea was to build him with the abilities that mirror his parents. He's supposed to be a shapeshifter, but giving him unlimited shapechange would be super boring, so instead it's handled by druid's wildshape and various spells, so mechanically he's just a guy.

He never met his real parents, and the only person who taught him the basics of living was a weird half-elf musician with a very hard to remember face. Dee ventured out into the world to return his lute, but after some character development, that old lute got smashed. Dee, after weeks of study and work between adventures, made himself a new lute, that was fully his (though I'm still working on the design).

The group consists of Dee, a kobold psi-fighter, and a blink dog nature domain cleric (speaking through a magical charm on his collar). They travel by a wagon, provided to them by their employer, and keep solving mysteries, which doesn't help with the Scooby Doo gang allegations.

At some point Dee also learned to switch to legs. Good for him, he's travel sized now

Also at some point our group found a weird raven-themed hivemind spirit who needs bodies to exist, since he lacks his own. We convinced it to try communism, and he's protecting a village now (my favourite character so far, to be honest).

There was a moment when Dee was considering staying with the raven spirit, to help guide him, and protect the village. His friends didn't let Dee retire this early, but I still made this as a 'what if' scenario:

Dee if he stayed behind and turned emo, basically.

That's about it! If you made it this far, congratulations with being cursed by my dnd oc lore. There will be more. This is a threat.

[katerinaaqu]

What would Cassandra of Troy have worn? Would the Trojans also have Mycenaean fashion or is the any depiction of their fashion? I’ve been trying to design Cassandra but I really wanna be accurate so I thought I might as well ask someone who has more knowledge on it probably haha

That is a very good question given how Troy is a rather interesting city mythologically. Homer and other writers ironically do not refer to it as massively different than the rest of the Greek cities, or at least it highly depends. However the way Iliad is constructed, the Trojans do not follow massively different lifestyle than the Greeks, for they worship the same gods, they do not seem to have a language barrier and they have names that do often resemble the Greek names with some exceptions. This seems to be the case that Homer seems to be hinting to the previous taking of Troy by the hero Heracles around a generation or two prior (depending on the story). So Homer seems to be implying an osmosis of cultures between the Greeks and the locals which most likely were closer related to Hittite and Assyrians given how the Hittites existed at the are around till the 1300 BC as an empire before falling mostly under control of Assyrian empire. The fights or sociopolitical relations between Greeks and Hittites were already known by the data as well as the exchanges of knowledge between the two nations which probably the Trojan War is referencing to

Now of course it is not 100% correct to take Homer as a source that somehow Troy is a mixture of Greek and Anatolian characteristics given how no matter how accurate he is in certain things, his knowledge is still infiltrated by anachronisms so we still should take into account this to the back of our heads. And the fact that he depicts the Trojans worship the same gods or have similar customs and such might as well be his way to make the Trojans even more sympathetic to his viewers at that time so instead of showing them as the "bad barbarians that Greeks have to defeat" he made them all similar, with similar customs and similar cosmotheories with their only difference being the wall that protects Troy. I am not sure that Homer himself believed that Troy was a city of heavy Greek influence at least to THAT degree that he pictures but rather that he wanted to use that trick to help his listeners to remove their own personal biases and see the two sides as similar. Similarities definitely might have existed as well as osmosis of religions but his Trojans seem to be worshiping exactly the same gods which doesn't seem to be a realistic scenario

So if you are asking me how Cassandra might have been dressed I should say that if you are looking for historical locations and historical contexts then maybe is more valid to look at Assyrian or Hittite clothing and this is an old but very nice representation you can look like:

You can also look at the infamous image of Schliemann's wife who is wearing the jewelry they discovered during those excavations they did to the city of Troy (or at least the city that we have come to interpret by the evidence as Troy)

Mythologically though I think it would be perfectly valid to give her certain mycenaean characteristics to her clothing such as pieces of jewelry or skirts or veils or hats that were inspired by it given how she is a priestess associated with Apollo and all. Mycenean-inspired makeup might also work for her as well as an idea. Either way given the closeness of the two people with each other influences of Greek cities and such to Troy would be perfectly valid either way. To what degree is up for interpretation for your mythological depictions and ideas but we definitely expect to see plenty of similarities and exchange between the two.

I hope that answers your question a bit, I will be glad to elaborate further.

[lbjeff]

After learning that is a normal height in his family

Tim, Dick and Duke: jealous for his height

And because he look so mature for his age, the other Bat usually forget and flirt with him, only to be caught in his innocent eyes

Dick *flirting like a habit*: wow, you so tall and huge, like I could riding you all night and you don’t even sweat

He almost faint when realizing he just flirted with his brother’s teenage friend (aka his crush).

But Danny just answer casually: “You wanna try?”. And then PICK him up and let he sit on his arm like Dick has no weight. Dick refused to come down (Danny didn’t mind but the Batfamily is so concerned) because it feel so good and stable up there

Danny having a chat with Jason about a classic play, and in his excitement, he act Jason’s favorite scene:

Danny *with his masculine form, handsome face and bright eyes of youth, knees one leg in front of Jason, holding his hand and look right through his eyes to meet his soul*: My king! You’re are the only one that lead us to the victory! Believe in your choice, because your words is my guide. I just ask for one mercy, one promise that life and death, strong of weakness, peace or war, nothing could come between us

Jason *be caught in Danny’s charm and forget reality*: yes, yes i do

And the Batfamily who witness this scenario is so confused, it almost like a proposal.

Tim at first find it amused that his older brothers both have crisis about crushing on Damian’s teenager crush. Then he found out Danny is such a caring, sassy and smart guy. He prepare coffee for Tim, asking to massage his head when seeing Tim’s tired, matching Tim’s ideas in almost everything and solving Tim’s problems in design new devices. And now Tim as the same way of his brothers, having crisis for crushing a teenager who built like a real husband material

Damian when he find out that his brothers are his rivals? He’s not so pleased

Bruce when he know all his sons having a hot for a teenager, whom also built like a tank, same ages as his youngest, have blue puppies eyes and black hair? He will welcome him into family as a son, he just need to adopt him first

Alfred? He has to prepare a plan for engaged party, adopt papers and Batfamily’s doctor contact in a speed dial

A Catfish??

All of the bat children are horrified when they found out the boy Damian has been talking online, someone they were expecting to be a 5’3 twig. Someone who Damian has been crushing on for years turned out to be a 6’3 muscle-bound fucker that makes Jason look small.

They are even more horrified when they realized they never gave Damian the internet talk and for some reason Bruce is not reacting like this is something of concern and what the fuck-?!

The reason Bruce is not freaking out like the rest of his kids is quite simple.

He can see the last of the baby fat clinging to Danny’s face, he notices how even though Danny is a walking tank of a being, he still glances at the doorways like they could not be trusted.

Like he wasn’t used to his height.

No Bruce is not concerned, because all signs and research just points to one fact.

Danny Fenton has came into a Fenton-sized growth spurt.

[reivelmin]

I fucking hate my internet messing shit up and I can't see if my ask if it was sent successfully cause it's an ask so I'm gonna make a goddam post for this shit.

@ventismacchiato

Ok so, you've mentioned trouble in my replying to my asks before so I'm gonna do it a different way(I'm desperate to give my fanart plsplsplspls)

REMINDER THIS IS MY DEPICTION OF Y/N IN SWY, ANYONE CAN DEPICT THE WAY THEY LOOK ANYWAY THEY WANT.

The first one is Male!Y/N(So close to redesigning them SO bad cause I am genuinely tweaking), it's a quick art so it's nothing too good. Next one is Fem!Y/N with colors cause this was the time I had motivation 🥰 the last two is based on one of your other asks where you mentioned a scenario of Y/N having pink hair, it's Fem cause I drew it with the other one😔

I'll prob take a while in making another piece cause I gotta redesign my Male!Y/N to a design I actually like so I can have the motivation to draw him more😔

[darklinaforever]

Let me be clear.

Ellen's age is never stated in the Nosferatu movie. Even less so when she met Orlok.

It doesn't even say how many years passed between her meeting with Orlok and her meeting with Thomas in fact.

The term child is also often alternated with simply young in the movie.

Ellen's age is therefore intentionally ambiguous whether in the present or the past.

The temporality of the movie is also intentionally ambiguous.

Therefore, yes, you can interpret Ellen as being a literal child at the time she met Orlok if you want, but it is actually more likely that the words child and young are just used to express the fact that Ellen was young (not necessarily a child for our time or the era of the movie) with no real life experience and or simply naive at the time. Not that she was literally a child / a little girl.

It's common in movies and in various shows. When a character says themselves to have been a child, it doesn't mean that they literally / officially were ! Shit !

House of the Dragon is a very good example with Rhaenyra telling Daemon in episode 7 of season 1 that he abandoned her when she was only a child, knowing that she was canonically 19 years old when Daemon gone and that in addition we are in the feudal era, where you can marry very young (even before having your first period) and that the majority is 16 years old for girls officially.

I say it again, if the movie was supposed to show Ellen as a child without ambiguity, the temporality would have been clearer, the ages would have been clearly stated, and especially the actress would not have been the same for the opening scene.

Oh, and the film crew would also talk about this very important detail of Ellen who would have been a child when she met Orlok, except that no, generally speaking, they too simply use the term young to designate her at that time.

I'm tired of seeing people try to pretend that it's 100% true that Ellen was a little girl when she met Orlok. No, it's not true.

Officially, it's 50 / 50.

But unofficially, it's a safe bet that since the film's timeline is blurry, that the terms child and young are often alternated in the film and that the film crew from what I saw only used the term young to designate Ellen at the time she met Orlok, well that these terms in the film are there to simply reflect Ellen's naivety at the time she met Orlok, and was simply not yet married.

Knowing that in the Victorian era, a woman is generally still treated like a child while being married, I'll let you imagine when she simply wasn't...

Especially since I recall that Orlok represents Ellen's sexual awakening.

Generally translating in fiction for female characters concerned by the "sexual awakening" aspect of the female character's entry into her real life as a woman with her who therefore leaves the world of childhood. It's a classic. And the female character still doesn't need to be a literal child for this type of scenario.

Reylo in Star Wars is a very good example of that, with Rey experiencing a passage to adulthood thanks to her meeting with her soul mate and sexual awakening Kylo Ren / Ben Solo (the same thing happens on Kylo Ben side by the way).

Or again with Shuri and Namor in Wakanda Forever, Shuri experiencing a sexual awakening thanks to the character of Namor who will symbolically make her grow up, go from child to adult (while officially in age she is already an adult, but not emotionally / on a symbolic level).

So the fact that there is ambiguity about whether Ellen was a child or just young when she met Orlok could also just fit into this category of fictional trope. Namely, Orlok was the character made to allow Ellen to grow in various ways symbolically.

The fact is that Ellen could very well have been a teenager, young or more or less old (remember that at that time women were marriageable at 13 years old, the historical context is important) or already a young woman when she met Orlok. We can't know 100% but I would lean much more towards the second option, since the question of age is never really on the front of the stage in the film (ans Ellen is still considered as young in the film in the current time frame), and not a real factor for the Orlok & Ellen relationship and especially his heart.

People try to create this classic scenario of the adult Orlok targeting a child Ellen to manipulate her as he pleases.

Except that's not the case.

Orlok wasn't interested in Ellen because she was young and easily manipulated. He was interested in her because she was like him, not of the living world, and she called to him. She is the enchantress who brought him into this world. They are connected by destiny. She brought him into this world and only she can take him out of it.

Orlok represents what society restricts in Ellen and prevents her from expressing. Her true desires that were considered evil in a woman at the time.

Seeing Orlok as Ellen's abuser from childhood to adulthood doesn't work on the overall message of the film.

Orlok is not Ellen's real abuser, but the society around her is.

It's all just told in a monstrous way because we're in a horror film who telling a gothic romance.

That was my rant.

[knightforflowers]

revisited an old concept from March I entertained for a while about the Abyssal Auction being more like a fancy masquerade ball (purely bc I love drawing these types of outfits <3)

(maskless alts under cut)

[gogogoat495]

[Image ID: A Homestuck comic about Terezi Pyrope and Dave Strider, done with a dark red as the ink colour. It is a normal day in Can Town, a small imaginary city constructed entirely from cans. A book is opened upside-down to form a pediment, which Serenity the firefly is resting in. Suddenly, the shadow of a dragon with pointy oval eyes falls over the horizon. The carapacians in the plaza, two Dersites and a Prospitian, tremble in fear. The dragon roars, her wingspan spreading the length of the city, and a jagged Libra symbol can be seen on her chest. She goes on a rampage, knocking over cans left and right, but then spots a caped figure on the horizon. His cape billows in the wind, covering his body, with a short front piece that drapes down from his collar, cut to resemble castle crenelations, and its gaiter rises to obscure the lower half of his face, which is featureless except for a pair of circular shades that look like bug eyes. He raises his arm and points at the dragon in challenge, and she likewise roars at the knight. They collide and he throws her to the ground, demolishing several cans in the process. She stares at him in confusion for a second before laughing and falling over dead. He stands there, but starts laughing too, and soon she is sitting back up and they laugh together. In the real world, Dave sticks out a hand to help Terezi off the floor, while WV looks on in dismay at the ruins of Can Town. /End ID]

well it’s comic-day activity at @homestuckartists and so I tried do a thing! It does have a lot of errors and stuff but hey, for first tey after YEARS it’s ok, I guess… Ill definately work on it again following some advice I recived.

anyway, enjoy! :D

[lord-squiggletits]

I think the key component to my personal reading of post-Delphi Pharma is that he's trying to be a horrible person on purpose. Not "on purpose" in the way that people have free will to exercise their own choices, but in that Pharma's "mad doctor" persona is a performance he puts on to deliberately embrace how much everyone else hates him. Basically, if people already think you're a "bad Autobot" and a horrible doctor who just kills his patients for fun, why try to prove otherwise to people who have already made up their minds about you? Just fully embrace the fact that people see you as an asshole. Don't try to change their minds. Don't plead for their forgiveness or understanding. Just stop caring. If you're going to be remembered as a monster, you might as well be a memorable monster, and eke as much pleasure and hedonism as you can out of it before karma catches up to you and you inevitably crash and burn.

I mean, I guess you could just go the route of "Oh, Pharma was always a fucked up creepy guy and Delphi was just him taking the mask off," but I really don't like that interpretation because, for one, it feels really wrong to take a character like Pharma becoming evil under duress and going, "Oh well clearly he did the things he did because he was evil all along," as if somehow Pharma breaking under blackmail/torture/threat of horrible death was a sign of him having poor moral character. As opposed to, you know, suffering under the very real threat of horrible death for himself and everyone he cares about while being manipulated by a guy who specializes in psychological torture.

The second reason is that it just doesn't make sense to write Pharma as having been evil all along. I mean...

Occam's Razor says that the best argument is the one with the simplest explanation. Doesn't it make way more sense to take Pharma's appearances in flashbacks, his friendship with Ratchet, his stunning medical accomplishments, and the few we see of him speaking kindly/sympathetically (or in the least charitable interpretation, at least professionally) towards his patients and conclude "This guy was just a normal person, if exceptionally talented." Taking all of these flashback appearances at face value and assuming Pharma was being genuine/honest is a way simpler and more logical explanation than trying to argue that Pharma for the past 4 million years was just faking being a good doctor/person. I mean, it's possible within the realm of headcanon, but the fact is Pharma's appearances in the story are so brief that there simply wasn't room in the story for there to be some sort of secret conspiracy/hidden manipulation behind why Pharma acted the way he did in the past.

I just can't help but look at things like Pharma's friendship with Ratchet (himself a good person and usually a fine judge of character) and the fact that even post-Delphi, pretty much every single mention of Pharma comes with some mention of "He was a good doctor for most of his life" or "He was making major headways in research [before he started killing patients]" which implies that even the Autobots themselves see Pharma's villainy as a recent turn in his life compared to how for "most of his life" he "used to be" a good doctor.

And although Pharma doesn't know this, we as the readers (and even other characters like Rung) know about Aequitas technology and the fact that it actually works, so... if Pharma really was an unrepentant murderer, why couldn't he get through the forcefield too? The Aequitas forcefield doesn't require that a person be completely morally pure and free of wrongdoing or else how could Tyrest get through, just that they feel a sense of inner peace and lack feelings of guilt. Pharma has murdered and tortured people by this point, and put on quite a campy and theatrical show of how much he sees it as a fun game, so why then can he not get through?

It circles back to my headcanon at the start of this post that the "mad doctor" persona is just that-- a persona. Delphi/post-Delphi Pharma's laughing madman personality is just so far removed from every flashback we saw of him and everything we can infer based on how other people see/saw him before that, to me, the mad doctor act is (at least in large part, if not fully) a persona that Pharma puts on to put his villainy in the forefront.

To avoid an overly simplistic/ableist take, I don't think Tarn tortured Pharma into turning crazy. To me, it's more like the constant pressure of death by horrific torture, the feeling of martyrdom as Pharma kept secret that he was the only one standing between Delphi and annihilation, the physical isolation of Messatine as well as the emotional separation from Ratchet, being forced to violate his medical oaths (pretty much the only thing Pharma's entire life has been about), etc. All of that combined traumatized Pharma to the point that the only way he could avoid cracking was to just stop caring about all of it. Because at least then, even if he's still murdering patients to save Delphi from a group of sadistic freaks, Pharma doesn't have to feel guilty and sick about doing it. As opposed to the alternatives, which were probably either going off the deep end and killing himself to escape, or confessing to what he did and getting jailed for it.

In that light, Pharma becoming a mad doctor makes sense. It avoids the bad writing tropes of "oh this character who was good his entire life was actually just evil and really good at hiding it" as well as "oh he got tortured and went crazy that's why he's so random and silly and killing people, he's crazy" and instead frames Pharma's evil as something he was forced into, to the point where in order to avoid a full psychological breakdown and keep defending Delphi, he just had to stop caring about the sanctity of life or about what other people might think of him.

Then, of course, the actual Delphi episode happens, and Pharma's own lifelong best friend Ratchet basically spits in his face and sees him as nothing more than a crazy murderer who went rogue from being a good Autobot. Then Pharma gets his hands cut off and left to die on Messatine. At that point, Pharma has not only been mentally/emotionally broken into losing his feelings of compassion, he's received the message loud and clear: He is alone. Everyone hates him. Not even his own best friend likes him any more. No one even cared enough about him to check if he actually died or not. He will only ever be remembered as a doctor who went insane and killed his patients.

So in the light of 1. Having all of your redeeming qualities be squeezed out of you one by one for the sake of survival and 2. Having your reputation and all of your positive relationships be destroyed and 3. People only know/care about you as "that doctor who became evil and killed his patients" rather than the millions of years of good service that came before.

What else is there to do but internalize the fact that you'll forever be seen as a monster and a freak, and embrace it? People already see you as a murderer for that blackmail deal you did, so why not become an actual murderer and just start killing people on a whim? People already see you as an irredeemable monster who puts a stain on the Autobot name, so why beg for their forgiveness when you could just shun them back? You've already become a murderer, a traitor, and a horrible doctor, so what's a few more evil acts added to the pile? It's not like anyone will ever forgive you or love you ever again.

Why care? Why try to hold on to your principles of compassion, kindness, medical ethics, when an entire lifetime of being a good person did nothing to save you from blackmail and then abandonment? Why put yourself through the emotional agony of feeling lonely, guilty, miserable, when you could just... stop caring, and not hurt any more?

[twisting-roads]

like, RW's ecosystem and AI is very complex and thought out... yet at the same time its not? I'll always remember joar's original idea of "smart enough to make mistakes" line from the devlog regarding lizards. Because its true

like, the AI has object permanence but the way its programmed can mean it might not always be right about where the hell you went. has nobody else seriously thought of that??

[bacchuschucklefuck]

the never stop blowing up vhs is where cute twinks go to get harmed

[starrysharks]

chapter 1 of reassassination's nearly done script-wise! hopefully the next chapters won't take like 6 months of on-and-off work to complete lol

[icewindandboringhorror]

I was just thinking what a cool job this might be.. what if you were just the person who makes little still images of cute animal figurines doing various activities to post on social media...? like.. show up to work and just spend the whole day like "hmm... this table should be placed to the left a little.. let me set this miniature bagel down in this way... this tiny rabbit should be wearing a scarf", setting the backgrounds, the lighting, etc. ... dream job perhaps lol...

[that-foul-legacy-lover]

HEY! If you haven't seen the new area yet and don't want (appearance, not gonna talk about lore) spoilers, then ignore this ask!!!

I'm screaming over the fact that there are multiple, smaller & purply All-Devouring Narwhals. Like, they're not the ADV (as far as I'm aware), but aaaaaaaaaa I love themmmm <3

~ The anon who wanted Kaveh but didn't want Baizhu or Ganyu I managed to get the update on my phone! With 300MB to spare lmao. Unfortunately lost my 50/50 to Keqing, but grinding to snatch a confirmed Arlecchino hehe

NO ME TOO OH MY GOODNESS. I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW MUCH I LOVE SCYLLA he's such a good sparkly whale dragon lad,,,

i think he and Foul Legacy would be such good friends too, once Scylla reassured Legacy that he was not, in fact, the All-Devouring Narwhal. you meet the Prince of the Dragonborn during an expedition to Remuria, long after the golden-haired traveler passed through and repaired the endless symphonies, and your Abyssal moth monster is immediately fascinated. you and Legacy swim together, weaving between the ichor strings of the aqueduct as Scylla floats alongside you. he becomes a good friend, able to understand both you and Legacy and happily welcomes your company, telling you stories about the sunken city and helping you navigate the depths- Childe is the wariest of him, when you bring him to visit, but quickly becomes enthralled by the tales of battle and how Remuria was destroyed

Foul Legacy occasionally goes for a swim while you're working, learning how to play Remuria's instruments by himself with helpful advice from Scylla- he wants to be able to play a song for you, one day, something from one of your favorite records at home. he also somehow helps Scylla swim INTO Fontaine, and quite near the city, too! you'll be running errands and doing chores and take a casual glance towards the ocean, only to see Legacy enthusiastically waving at you, the tip of Scylla's head poking out behind him... to say you've gotten in trouble a few times with the Iudex would be an understatement, but at least that allowed Scylla to have the friendly chat he's been waiting for!

[kirkwallguy]

I'm upset about the lack of choices and the likelihood that the solas romance is going to be pushed more but bringing up the new characters as something that could have been replaced by old ones is a pretty bad faith arguement imo. It's a new game, of course there's going to be new characters? The cameos were never the forefront or the cornerstone of my enjoyment. I mean if you hate the game and only play it in the hopes of getting scraps of your favorite characters from the previous games then ok but why torture yourself like this lol

i mean as long as they don't repeat the mistakes of inquisition and expect us to have read extra material to understand what's going on, i don't care about the new characters THAT much, i just think it's funny to act like they're actual cameos when most people don't know who they are. a charitable read would be that they're rewarding hardcore fans but likeeeee... they're trying to sell books lol

tbh cameos wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me normally, i can take them or leave them in da2 and obviously there are none in origins. but combined with everything else we know about the game i AM still on the fence about getting it... no worldstates means it's unlikely they'll bring up any of the plots i was interested in having resolved or explored further 😑 so it all comes down to the quality of the writing and plots they introduce, which is very hard to judge from the promo esp since apparently everything they're showing is from act 1