I Just Realized That It Would Be So Easy To Make A Ocean's 8/Warrior Nun Fic With Ava, Beatrice, Camila,

Say I decided to post the next chapter of Here I Am, Next to You (You Pull at my Seams) on Wednesday instead of waiting until Saturday:

Nightcrawling - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! I'm back after last week break with a Wolfwren vampire story! Fair warning it's a little bloody (and a little sexy). Here is the beginning and if you want to read the rest of the first chapter, the link will be at the end! Enjoy!

When Sabine had decided to change career, she really could have picked anything. But because she liked to make herself suffer, she became a nurse. And because she was so tightly wound with self-control, she became a nurse at the emergency services.

Working the night shift meant that she saw less kids who broke their legs falling off a trampoline and more people caught in drunk driving accidents and high as hell teenagers convinced they could jump from the roof and into the pool. In the early hours of the evening, she might see the tail end of people who had come to the ER in the afternoon, but by two in the morning, she was just waiting for the next car accident victims to roll in.

Her coworkers had gone to get a coffee while the room was relatively quiet. Sabine had declined the coffee, as usual. The other nurses usually made fun of her, telling her then she might be young now but give it a few years and she would be running through the night shift on coffee just like them. Jokes on them, Sabine was definitely older than them.

The call came through from one of the ambulances, and Sabine picked up since she was the only one at the nurse’s station.

“Emergency?”

“We have another one for you. ETA 2 minutes.”

“Car crash?”

“Pedestrian.”

Sabine expected the worse when pedestrians were hit by cars. A lot of blood, usually.

“We’ll be ready.”

She hung up and jumped into action. She rushed out of the ER, grabbing a gurney on the way there. She pushed it out and arrived outside just as the ambulance pulled out, lights blinking hard into the moonless night. The EMTs at the back pushed the door open so hard that it snapped against the truck. They transferred the patient from one gurney to the other. Sabine pushed the gurney back inside, helped by one of the EMTs.

“Pressure is 125 over 75. She’s lost a lot of blood.”

“What happened?”

“She got hit by a car while crossing, but the car had just been stopped at a red light.”

Sabine looked down at the woman whose broken arm was clutched against her chest. She had lost consciousness already. She had to focus to understand what she was looking at. The blood, as always, called all of her attention. All she saw, for a second, was red. Her throat began to itch. It was only through years of practice that she managed to push it all aside and see past the blood. Her radius was broken, the bone protruding through the skin like a shard of bloodied stone. She had a wound on the shoulder that required stitching as it leaked blood fast. The rest were superficial nips.

“She was wounded already before the car?” Sabine deduced from the severity of the wounds and the EMT’s explanation.

“The driver said he saw her stumble in front of him but he couldn’t tell if she was bleeding or not.”

“We’ll take it from here.”

Northern Lights - a Wolfwren fanfiction

A/N: Hello everyone! Merry Christmas! This year, I decided to write a sequel to one of my earlier stories, "In this Short Life..." wherein Sabine is a singer and Shin a professional snowboarder. This is just a whole lot of Christmas fluff so I hope you'll enjoy it! Here is the beginning and the link to the full story will be at the end!

The sun was setting when Sabine’s plane landed. Winter so high up north made the days goes by in a flash. Sabine remembered it well from her childhood in Alaska. Dare she say that some winters, she missed the early nights and the snow. She certainly had the previous year, when she had celebrated Christmas with Hera and her family in Palm Spring. But this year, Shin had invited her to spend the end of year with her in Norway, and Sabine was quite excited.

She carried sunglasses and a cap to hide herself, but it seemed this far north not a lot of people cared that a platinum album artist was waiting at baggage claim with them. Stavanger had the advantage of being a fairly small airport compared to Heathrow, where she had taken her correspondence to Norway. Everyone was just staring at the turnstile, not at their neighbor. She texted Shin as she waited. Her girlfriend told her she was at the arrival gate just waiting for her. Sabine was really excited to see her again. It had been months since they had seen each other. Sabine had been busy with her tour and Shin with practice. The national selection for the winter Olympics was coming up, and Sabine was a little excited about it. Maybe even more than Shin seemed.

In short, they had both been busy. They had made long-distance work for almost two years now, and Sabine was thinking this vacation could be the beginning of the next step for them.

Sabine’s suitcase rounded the corner of the turnstile and she swept it up. No guitar this time. She wasn’t there for work, even though she knew Shin liked to hear her play. Sabine did not want to think about music for the next two weeks, at least. She had just grabbed the handle to drive it toward the exit when her phone rang out. It was Hera. Sabine picked up swiftly.

“Hey, I just landed. Can I call you back?”

“I just wanted to make sure you’d survived the London airport. It looks like you had quite a blast.”

Sabine frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a video of you singing All I Want for Christmas is You on the airport piano. It’s already approaching ten million views. Should I call the studio, offer up a Christmas album for next year?”

Sabine sighed. She’d thought the performance would placate the people swarming her for an autograph. She hadn’t expected people to be filming.

“Alright, I’m exiting the baggage claim, goodbye Hera.”

“Bye Sabine. Say hi to Shin for me.”

Sabine had just hung up when she passed through the arrival door. A handful of people were waiting for their friends and family members. Sabine looked around for Shin. At first, she could not spot her girlfriend. Then, she saw her emerge from behind a bouquet of roses. It was quite a big bouquet and had probably cost a fortune. Sabine smiled and ran up to her. She pulled Shin into a hug. Shin barely had a moment to raise the bouquet above her head before it became trapped between them.

“Hello my dashing knight,” Sabine joked.

Raspberry Swirl (Carol/Valkyrie fanfiction)

A/N: Hey guys! Here’s an extract from my new story, Raspberry Swirl, a CarolValkyrie story about ice cream and summer and Carol being an awkward idiot who can’t line up two words together. Link to the full story will be at the end.

The woman looked at Carol once again, surprised.

"And the blueberry one?"

"I think it's supposed to be call Bi-berry?"

Carol pulled out the cone out of the icebox. Its wrapper was red, purple and blue, imitating the bisexual flag. The woman chuckled.

"Fine, I'll take it. How much?"

"Oh... It's... on the house?"

The woman frowned in surprise.

"Really? Why?"

Carol shrugged, desperately trying to find an excuse.

"It's the end of the day..."

The woman continued to stare at Carol, trying to figure out why she was suddenly giving her a free cone. Finally, she gave up and picked up the ice cream off the counter.

"Thanks."

"My pleasure," Carol replied with a bright smile. "Now you can tell your friend Bi-berry's the best. I mean blueberry," she added quickly.

"I know," the woman replied with a wink before she turned around and returned to her towel.

Carol watched her go, then looked away quickly when the woman looked back. Beside her, Monica continued to stare. Carol moved away, fiddling with her phone.

"So, tipping isn't flirting, but giving free ice cream definitely is, right?" the girl asked.

Carol groaned and refused to answer.

Full story: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19198537

Hell is a Thanksgiving Dinner - A Fear Street fanfiction

A/N: Hey guys! Here is an extract from my new short multi-chapter fanfiction centered around Cindy and Ziggy going home for Thanksgiving, so you can obviously expect a lot of family drama! If you want to read the whole story, the link is at the end! I hope you’ll enjoy it!

Ziggy woke up to the sound of her alarm clock, followed by the yapping of Major Tom. He'd yet to understand that there wasn't some evil elf hidden in the black box ringing an electronic bell every morning. She didn't think he ever would. Instead, she switched off the alarm and padded her bed, prompting Major to jump back on the covers and nuzzle his nose under her hand, asking to be petted. She patted his head as she stared at the weak sunlight bouncing off her ceiling. She sighed. She didn't feel ready for the day, but she knew it was too late to back down. Although she didn't want to, she slipped out of bed.

Soon enough, she had changed into her tracksuit and was putting on her trainers. Major Tom was waiting for her by the door, his tail wagging happily at the prospect of going out. Ziggy put on her sweater, picked up her earbuds, strapped his retractable leash on Major Tom, and was ready to go.

She ran until she couldn't feel her legs, then let Major drag her for another mile until they were home. They followed their usual route. Down the street, past the wall with a thick layer of band posters, turning right on Elm Street, past the line of suit-wearing businessmen and tired teenagers waiting for their coffee, through the front gate, and into the park, up the main gravel path which traversed the park, along the small gentle stream and over the wooden bridge, past the children's playground, back out of the park, and around the block. Major was ready for another turn and Ziggy had to hold him back to bring him inside their building.

Major sprinted up the stairs while Ziggy took her time. He sat in front of the door, his tail brushing the floor of the hallway. Ziggy unlocked the front door and let Major inside. While he plopped down in front of his water bowl, she took a glass of water and drank.

She gave Major his breakfast and went to take a shower. This was the only way to make sure he was busy while she washed up. She knew he was only worried about her, but every once in a while she'd like to take a shower without him scratching and whining at the door.

Once dressed for the day, Ziggy took her breakfast. As the coffee machine was loudly brewing her a cup, she checked her phone. She had agreed to pick up Cindy at five today, but still, she felt the need to type 'Ready for today?' When halfway through breakfast she still hadn't received any reply, she suspected it was because her sister was still in bed. To be fair, it was still early. She knew Cindy would answer once she was up. She always did.

FULL STORY HERE!

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.

Again, please, please PLEASE reblog this post instead of the one I sent originally. All the information is here, and it's driving me nuts to see the old ones are still passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much.

Hollowness, or The Beginning and the End of the Ship of Dreams - a RubyxChristina fanfiction

A/N: Hey guys! I was so busy this morning I almost forgot to post an extract from my new story! It’s a Ruby/Christina Titanic AU. The link to the full story will be at the end!

They called it the ship of dreams, and Christina certainly hoped it would be. She had packed carefully for this trip. She'd taken all of her favorite dresses, her favorite books, all of her most expensive jewels. This was a one-way trip, she knew. The family company needed her father back in Boston, and Christina had a feeling this hurried return home was prompted by something else, something she wouldn't like.

They drove silently to the harbor, another car containing their many trunks following closely behind. Christina kept her eyes on the streets outside. They'd left London for Southampton in the early hours of the morning. Despite the car's plushy seats, it had been a very uncomfortable trip. Her father sat opposite her, reading the newspaper the whole time. Christina was glad she hadn't had to stare at her father's severe expression, but rather to a picture of the Titanic, so long it took half of the front page.

The silver car slowed down when they reached the harbor. They were not the only ones boarding the ship with a car or two or five. A massive crowd had amassed on the wharf, either to see the passengers off or simply to see the boat for itself.

Samuel Braithwhite folded his newspaper and placed it with unnecessary violence on the seat beside him.

"Why have we stopped?" he asked loudly.

The driver took a second to reply.

"I'm sorry, sir, but a few people are embarking ahead of us."

The blond man checked his pocket watch, although he seemed to be glaring at the hands, daring them to move forward.

"If we miss our boat I will sue," he said as he pocketed the watch back.

Christina wanted to roll her eyes, but she didn't. It would do her no good if her father noticed it. Instead, she remained perfectly still, her back straight against the cushioned backrest. She had her back to the sea, and could only see the crowd through the window. They certainly seemed excited, she thought.

"You would think they would have better planned their ship's departure, especially a big eventful departure such as this one," her father continued to complain. "I suppose that's to be expected from a company like White Star."

Christina wanted to ask why her father had chosen to travel on this ship if he didn't like the company, but she held her tongue. Soon enough, the vehicle moved forward, until it stopped again. The driver spoke with someone outside, giving the name of his passengers, then cleared his throat and said:

"Sir, you must step out."

"If I must..."

Samuel opened the car door and walked out. Christina could hear him speaking with an employee from the company.

"Good morning, sir. If you wouldn't mind following mister Johnson, he will lead you aboard. All of your belongings will be brought along."

Christina decided this was as good a time as any to make an appearance. She suspected her father was capable of forgetting her in the car. Not capable, willing. She stepped out. She was wearing a light blue dress, with white lace sleeves. Her blond hair was pinned into an intricate bun. She'd forgone a hat. An expensive pearl and silver necklace was around her neck. She shut the carriage door behind her and turned around. The boat loomed over the whole wharf. Christina couldn't see the end of it. Black paint gave way to gold then white. The hull seemed punctured by hundreds of windows. She could barely see the funnels on top of it, though she could see the smoke rising from them, joining the clouds in the sky.

"This way, sir, miss," the young crew member said.

Full story here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28086117/chapters/68812152

I'm in the middle of writing a book but Netflix has forced my hand, so who's ready for an Avatrice Priory of the Orange Tree AU fanfic?

❤️ Contributor Spotlight! ❤️

We're thrilled to finally introduce our amazing contributors! They've been hard at work creating such lovely art and writing for everyone and we can't wait to share it with you all!

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