little-shadows-story

[little-shadows-story]

About Tumblr and AI companies and having to opt out of it + Tale 2 of "Little Shadows"

In case you haven't heard, this is what's happening. I've already opted out in all of my blogs here, but man. This sucks a lot.

I guess the biggest problem for me is: how long have they been doing this? Not knowing frustrates me to no end. I decided tumblr would be one of the main places to put my experimental writing precisely because there was no AI third parties involved, but if this is how they're gonna play now I have to reconsider uploading my stuff here.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not gonna leave Tumblr. This is one of the only social media I actively use unlike FB or IG that I have but are basically dead, and I left twitter waaay before the beginning of the fall, way before Musk even bought it iirc. But I'm not comfortable anymore uploading and sharing my writing here, and it sucks. I wanted tumblr to be sort of an archive for my writing (besides my own archiving in my computer) but I'm having second thoughts now.

Tale 2 of Little Shadows was supposed to come out today, but now I'm secong guessing wether I really wanna post it here or not. I have Royal Road, and I have my own blog via Blogger too -and now that we're talking about this, idk if Blogger also has a deal with AI companies or not, fuck- so maybe I'll just. Upload there? I saw a while ago an iniciative for a new tumblr like site, I gotta look thru my likes and reblogs to find it, so maybe I'll go there? Ugh. Like, I'll still use tumblr for doing updates on my progress or shitpost, but when it comes to sharing my writing, even the experimental one.... yeah i don't know about that man.

So I guess. I guess this is it for this blog, huh? Wow, that sucks. I won't delete it, and I while I thought I can use it for promoting the links to the Royal Road chapters, I now think my main blog is better for that, since I have more followers there. I'm sorry. I just can't keep posting here in good faith for the time being.

So again, FYI: I won't delete this side blog, but I probably won't post more in here unless something happens that makes me come back.

If you liked Little Shadows so far, thank you so much!!! Here's the link to Tale 2 in Royal Road. From now on, if you'd like to continue getting news and notifications about when a new chapter comes out, please consider following my main @mary-is-writing, or give a follow to the wip in RR itself.

Thanks for the support so far, and I hope I see you again someday soon. This blog will go to sleep now.

[little-shadows-story]

Automattic will sign a contract with OpenAI for Midjourney to learn off of Tumblr and Wordpress

Hello! Automattic, Tumblr's parent company, will sign a contract with OpenAI and Midjourney so Midjourney can learn off of Tumblr's and WordPress' art and other user data. :) (The full text of this article is copy/pasted in the cut below). You can opt out! but I truly cannot imagine a more idiotic or out of touch decision on the part of Tumblr's CEO.

First thing's first: When/if this goes live, opt out of this immediately. Do this even if you're not an artist. The more people opt out, the less valuable this contract is to Midjourney. in an ideal world, literally all of the active users would opt out, but if we can even get to 50% that's pretty delicious.

Second: Contact Tumblr Support. It's vital that you do this politely. Tumblr staff is not responsible for this decision and the point of doing this is to show the userbase's unwillingness to be involved in this, not harangue Tumblr staff. (Seriously, stop haranguing Tumblr staff). Here's a script:

Hi, I'm writing in to express my disappointment in Automattic's pending contract with OpenAI to sell user data. Midjourney is already embroiled in copyright lawsuits, and it is not possible to train it without compromising copyright, including violating the IP of artists on this site. I strongly protest this contract and will opt out if it goes live. Depending on the privacy terms around what user data is sold to OpenAI and why, it is possible I will leave the platform entirely. Thank you for your time.

Third: Download Glaze and start poisoning them prompts, my friends

Fourth: Stare into the middle distance for a second with me because holy fucking shit? How stupid can one decision be?

Tumblr and Wordpress are preparing to sell user data to Midjourney and OpenAI, according to a source with internal knowledge about the deals and internal documentation referring to the deals. 

The exact types of data from each platform going to each company are not spelled out in documentation we’ve reviewed, but internal communications reviewed by 404 Media make clear that deals between Automattic, the platforms’ parent company, and OpenAI and Midjourney are imminent.

The internal documentation details a messy and controversial process within Tumblr itself. One internal post made by Cyle Gage, a product manager at Tumblr, states that a query made to prepare data for OpenAI and Midjourney compiled a huge number of user posts that it wasn’t supposed to. It is not clear from Gage’s post whether this data has already been sent to OpenAI and Midjourney, or whether Gage was detailing a process for scrubbing the data before it was to be sent. 

Gage wrote:

“the way the data was queried for the initial data dump to Midjourney/OpenAI means we compiled a list of all tumblr’s public post content between 2014 and 2023, but also unfortunately it included, and should not have included:

private posts on public blogs

posts on deleted or suspended blogs

unanswered asks (normally these are not public until they’re answered)

private answers (these only show up to the receiver and are not public)

posts that are marked ‘explicit’ / NSFW / ‘mature’ by our more modern standards (this may not be a big deal, I don’t know)

content from premium partner blogs (special brand blogs like Apple’s former music blog, for example, who spent money with us on an ad campaign) that may have creative that doesn’t belong to us, and we don’t have the rights to share with this-parties; this one is kinda unknown to me, what deals are in place historically and what they should prevent us from doing.”

Gage’s post makes clear that engineers are working on compiling a list of post IDs that should not have been included, and that password-protected posts, DMs, and media flagged as CSAM and other community guidelines violations were not included.

Automattic plans to launch a new setting on Wednesday that will allow users to opt-out of data sharing with third parties, including AI companies, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, and internal documents. A new FAQ section we reviewed is titled “What happens when you opt out?” states that “If you opt out from the start, we will block crawlers from accessing your content by adding your site on a disallowed list. If you change your mind later, we also plan to update any partners about people who newly opt-out and ask that their content be removed from past sources and future training.” 

404 Media has asked Automattic how it accidentally compiled data that it shouldn’t share, and whether any of that content was shared with OpenAI, but did not immediately hear back from the company. 404 Media asked Automattic about an imminent deal with Midjourney last week but did not hear back then, either.

Another internal document shows that, on February 23, an employee asked in a staff-only thread, “Do we have assurances that if a user opts out of their data being shared with third parties that our existing data partners will be notified of such a change and remove their data?”

Andrew Spittle, Automattic’s head of AI replied: “We will notify existing partners on a regular basis about anyone who's opted out since the last time we provided a list. I want this to be an ongoing process where we regularly advocate for past content to be excluded based on current preferences. We will ask that content be deleted and removed from any future training runs. I believe partners will honor this based on our conversations with them to this point. I don't think they gain much overall by retaining it.” Automattic did not respond to a question from 404 Media about whether it could guarantee that people who opt out will have their data deleted retroactively.

News about a deal between Tumblr and Midjourney has been rumored and speculated about on Tumblr for the last week. Someone claiming to be a former Tumblr employee announced in a Tumblr blog post that the platform was working on a deal with Midjourney, and the rumor made it onto Blind, an app for verified employees of companies to anonymously discuss their jobs. 404 Media has seen the Blind posts, in which what seems like an Automattic employee says, “I'm not sure why some of you are getting worked up or worried about this. It's totally legal, and sharing it publicly is perfectly fine since it's right there in the terms & conditions. So, go ahead and spread the word as much as you can with your friends and tech journalists, it's totally fine.”

Separately, 404 Media viewed a public, now-deleted post by Gage, the product manager, where he said that he was deleting all of his images off of Tumblr, and would be putting them on his personal website. A still-live post says, “i've deleted my photography from tumblr and will be moving it slowly but surely over to cylegage.com, which i'm building into a photography portfolio that i can control end-to-end.” At one point last week, his personal website had a specific note stating that he did not consent to AI scraping of his images. Gage’s original post has been deleted, and his website is now a blank page that just reads “Cyle.” Gage did not respond to a request for comment from 404 Media. 

Several online platforms have made similar deals with AI companies recently, including Reddit, which entered into an AI content licensing deal with Google and said in its SEC filing last week that it’s “in the early stages of monetizing [its] user base” by training AI on users’ posts. Last year, Shutterstock signed a six year deal with OpenAI to provide training data.

OpenAI and Midjourney did not respond to requests for comment. 

[little-shadows-story]

you don't actually have to post/share any of your writing to "participate" in writeblr btw. you don't even have to introduce your wip(s) if you don't want to. you can just talk about your process generally and the experience of writing. you can just reblog stuff. you are welcome to lurk, even (technically not "participating" but there's nothing wrong with that!) do whatever you want. be free

[little-shadows-story]

I finished the draft for Tale 2 today woohoo!!

I'll revise it a few more times and then get the translation ready for the 28 to upload here :D

[little-shadows-story]

Tale 2 is scheduled to come out Feb 28 :3

Little Shadows Volume 2 | Tale 1– "The Researcher"

Content Warning: Body horror.

His coworker had been replaced by another, and only he noticed.

He knew it when he grew a head taller from one day to the other, when his limbs became larger and nobody said anything. When his eyes changed its color and his voice its tone, he started to avoid even looking at him. To see him walk in the lab as if it was a day like any other, while his stretched body advanced barely moving its joints gave him goosebumps.

His suspicions only grew when he started asking him obvious things. When he had the bad luck of being in the changing room at the same time as him, the last one asked the first one about the scars under his chest, even though he had been there as moral support for his surgery. When he approached without making a sound from behind while the other used his phone, he asked him about the girl that showed his phone’s wallpaper, even though he had met his daughter many times before. And in several occasions he didn’t react when his name was called, as if he’d forgotten his own name until, when remembering it, he laughed with a smile so big it hurt to just watch.

As the days passed, the changes started to become more repulsive. The bulging eyes without eyelids, the ribs and the spine started to show of how much he was slimming down, the hair became thinner and the skin paler… And the height. The heigh that didn’t stop augmenting was unbearable to the sight.

When had that started? He tried to remember, in vain. Where did that good man, that had helped him in so many ways, had gone? He didn’t see anywhere the gentle smile, replaced now by a grin that tried to look like one, with falling yellow teeth. The wasn’t either sign of the hands that once made his heart beat faster with just a touch, now there were only some bony things left that cracked every time he moved them.

He couldn’t go to work with eased mind anymore. The sight of that being was too much, and he wanted to skip work many times. HE though of quitting, but he couldn’t; he was legally tied to that lab and that organization. IF he was alone, maybe he could bare the consequences, but his daughter? He couldn’t leave her alone, not force her to a life of persecution. He had no choice but to hold in the cold sweat that overcame him whenever that thing, once a loved man, appeared in front of his eyes.

He endured a month like this… Two… Three…

By the fourth one, he felt he was going insane. How come no one else saw it? Why? The creature had such a height that it’d started to bend to fit inside the building. Day after day he asked himself: where did it came from? What’d happened to his coworker? Where was he now, while that beast tricked everyone posing as him?

In a fit of despair, he sneaked towards the guard’s office to see the security recordings. He saw with horror that the creature was also reflected there and went back in time trying to figure out when the change had happened. One month ago, then two…three…four…

He found it. An accident in which their test subject had gone out of control and during which his coworker ended up in the floor, hit in the face by it. That was the only proof he had of something out of the ordinary happening to him. After it, they’d done tests, but didn’t find anything wrong with him. Had they missed it? Had he been affected by the test subject somehow? Or something worse had happened, something that ate at him from the inside and changed him inside out? Whatever it was, he needed to show that to his superiors, so they’d do something about it, thus he saved the record in an USB and turned around to leave.

The creature was by the door. He screamed. Then, with a voice like a grave out of tune note, it spoke:

“You can see me, right?”

Before he could run away, it extended its long arms and took him by the neck with its claws. A kiss he’d only dreamed about in another time, now seemed so repulsive that he stopped breathing. A tongue too rough and slimy extended through his throat, and tears fell from his eyes as he fought back to free himself. When it let him go, he fell to the ground, coughing and vomiting. He shook from head to toe, with the blood cold and the heart thumping.

He felt dizzy. There was a numbing sensation going through his body that made him lose his senses slowly. Where was he again? What was he doing? Uncertainty made him pale. Had that beast infected him too?

Little by little he stood up, but he wasn’t the one controlling his body. Neither was he who left the lab, got inside the car, and drove home. He wanted to scream, cry, ask for help, tear off the skin that didn’t belong to him anymore, all useless. He took out his keys and opened the main door. His daughter played with her dolls sitting in the living room’s rug.

When he hugged the child, the penumbra overcame him.

------

Start Vol. 1 / Start Vol. 2 (you're here!) / Next (coming soon)

[little-shadows-story]

So, um. There's a really good chance I'm going to end up homeless later on this year. I know this seems really sudden, but Tree and I just had a talk, and long story short, we probably won't be able to afford this apartment for another year. He's got a place to go, but I really don't, and looking at what's up in terms of the housing market right now, I don't really know if I will in May.

Things might change in the next few months; I don't really know. But I also think that it's going to be an extremely hard few months, and the last thing I want to do is go back to live with my family, even to get myself back on my feet enough to start again.

The debt we're in is thousands upon thousands of dollars, so I'm not sure if this would help, but if you enjoy my writing, please consider donating to my Ko-Fi?

At the very least, maybe I'll be able to get some of my own debt under control so I can afford rent in New Jersey or something.

[little-shadows-story]

So I’m staying at a friend’s house in Boston

And in their guest room is a door.

And my first thought was closet. Just an ordinary, tiny, New England closet.

But no!

There are STAIRS in that closet!

Now where do those stairs go, you may ask?

Up to the black void attic of course.

But you know, it doesn’t seem to end there.

Because for reasons no one seems to know, this door deadbolts from inside. There’s nothing but a black void up there. Why must it lock on that side of it???

Of course, it was then that I spotted something else.

Why yes, those ARE scratch marks on the inside of the door. Which, one might think dog because they’re so low on the door (only a third of the way up).

But you know, this wouldn’t be fun if that was all there was.

That deadbolt has scratches all around it too.

Funzies!

Because guess what.

That deadbolt is five feet off the ground. And there is no dog in this house tall enough to reach it.

Pretty sure I just entered a horror film.

[little-shadows-story]

the fields.

a comic about sheep.

--

creative notes:

--

The collection this comic is part of is available to buy now! 100% of profits will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians, the PCRF and CareforGaza in a 40/40/20 split.

BUY HEART-EATERS NOW

[little-shadows-story]

Something Ive learned about writing horror while doing this project is that there's a fine line between saying too much and not saying enough. My writing tends to be, imo, over descriptive, so when it comes to describing sensations or scenery I want to do a lot of it. I think this is why in volume 1 the stories went a bit out of my hands and I felt like I was doing too much exposition and barely doing any horror or suspense writing.

But ever since planning and starting volume 2 I think I'm getting the hand of it a bit more, and I'm starting to learn that balance between describing things to create a image that's scary but also not saying too much to let the imagination of the reader do the rest. Like there's a lot of appealing to the senses of the reader when it comes to horror, more than just describing an ugly scene, to create the feeling of dread. And deciding to limit myself to only 2 pages or around 1K words per story is helping me figure out what are the bare minimum things needed for it.

[little-shadows-story]

Shout out to this one woman from Blair Witch Project. According to the directors everyone involved in the scene was a plant, except for her, some random woman from the real Burkitsville who was asked about the Blair Witch and immediately made up a story about seeing a documentary on the Discovery Channel about disappearing hunters. While carrying a child. Unsung MVP of horror

[little-shadows-story]

This card simbolizes pending dues and for you to trust your impulses.

The Judgment card reversed suggests that you feel like you are bumping into externally imposed restrictions, even if you thought you had let go of limitations.

Read Little Shadows Vol. 1 Tale 3 - "Whispers" here

[little-shadows-story]

Tree Writer Ask Game

Gingko: What part of your story is the oldest, has stuck around from that original idea?

Douglas-Fir: What's something in your story that pretends to be something its not?

Paper Birch: Which character has the most layers peeled back?

Quaking Aspen: What is something that happens many times the in your story, each time basically the ssame?

Basswood: What's something calming in your story?

Sugar Maple: What's the sweetest part of your story?

Lilac: Are there any scents you describe in the story? What are they?

Tamarack: What character fits into two different groups that are usually opposites?

Redwood: What's the biggest thing in the story, whether a thing, a place, or a problem, something that seems impossibly big?

Cottonwood: What event has the most impact throughout the story, leaves it's trace in many scenes?

Pawpaw: How do you name your characters?

Smooth Sumac: What's something that's common & generally helpful in your story?

Poison Sumac: What's something that's entirely harmful in your story?

Red Maple: Which character is the most showy?

Sycamore: Which character is protective, would be a great person to turn to in times of danger?

[little-shadows-story]

This card represents apathy and independence, often seen as egocentrism.

The Hanged Man advises you to surrender illusions of control. Accept that you have been overcome and deceived by your own devices.

Read Little Shadows Vol. 1 – Tale 2 "The Watch" here

[little-shadows-story]

Ive lost the page where I drew the rest of the tarot cards for the characters of this wip 😩 I'll look for it again and if I can't find it, I'll redo the designs cause I wanna go back to drawing those

[little-shadows-story]

Little Shadows Volume 2 | Tale 1– "The Researcher"

Content Warning: Body horror.

His coworker had been replaced by another, and only he noticed.

He knew it when he grew a head taller from one day to the other, when his limbs became larger and nobody said anything. When his eyes changed its color and his voice its tone, he started to avoid even looking at him. To see him walk in the lab as if it was a day like any other, while his stretched body advanced barely moving its joints gave him goosebumps.

His suspicions only grew when he started asking him obvious things. When he had the bad luck of being in the changing room at the same time as him, the last one asked the first one about the scars under his chest, even though he had been there as moral support for his surgery. When he approached without making a sound from behind while the other used his phone, he asked him about the girl that showed his phone’s wallpaper, even though he had met his daughter many times before. And in several occasions he didn’t react when his name was called, as if he’d forgotten his own name until, when remembering it, he laughed with a smile so big it hurt to just watch.

As the days passed, the changes started to become more repulsive. The bulging eyes without eyelids, the ribs and the spine started to show of how much he was slimming down, the hair became thinner and the skin paler… And the height. The heigh that didn’t stop augmenting was unbearable to the sight.

When had that started? He tried to remember, in vain. Where did that good man, that had helped him in so many ways, had gone? He didn’t see anywhere the gentle smile, replaced now by a grin that tried to look like one, with falling yellow teeth. The wasn’t either sign of the hands that once made his heart beat faster with just a touch, now there were only some bony things left that cracked every time he moved them.

He couldn’t go to work with eased mind anymore. The sight of that being was too much, and he wanted to skip work many times. HE though of quitting, but he couldn’t; he was legally tied to that lab and that organization. IF he was alone, maybe he could bare the consequences, but his daughter? He couldn’t leave her alone, not force her to a life of persecution. He had no choice but to hold in the cold sweat that overcame him whenever that thing, once a loved man, appeared in front of his eyes.

He endured a month like this… Two… Three…

By the fourth one, he felt he was going insane. How come no one else saw it? Why? The creature had such a height that it’d started to bend to fit inside the building. Day after day he asked himself: where did it came from? What’d happened to his coworker? Where was he now, while that beast tricked everyone posing as him?

In a fit of despair, he sneaked towards the guard’s office to see the security recordings. He saw with horror that the creature was also reflected there and went back in time trying to figure out when the change had happened. One month ago, then two…three…four…

He found it. An accident in which their test subject had gone out of control and during which his coworker ended up in the floor, hit in the face by it. That was the only proof he had of something out of the ordinary happening to him. After it, they’d done tests, but didn’t find anything wrong with him. Had they missed it? Had he been affected by the test subject somehow? Or something worse had happened, something that ate at him from the inside and changed him inside out? Whatever it was, he needed to show that to his superiors, so they’d do something about it, thus he saved the record in an USB and turned around to leave.

The creature was by the door. He screamed. Then, with a voice like a grave out of tune note, it spoke:

“You can see me, right?”

Before he could run away, it extended its long arms and took him by the neck with its claws. A kiss he’d only dreamed about in another time, now seemed so repulsive that he stopped breathing. A tongue too rough and slimy extended through his throat, and tears fell from his eyes as he fought back to free himself. When it let him go, he fell to the ground, coughing and vomiting. He shook from head to toe, with the blood cold and the heart thumping.

He felt dizzy. There was a numbing sensation going through his body that made him lose his senses slowly. Where was he again? What was he doing? Uncertainty made him pale. Had that beast infected him too?

Little by little he stood up, but he wasn’t the one controlling his body. Neither was he who left the lab, got inside the car, and drove home. He wanted to scream, cry, ask for help, tear off the skin that didn’t belong to him anymore, all useless. He took out his keys and opened the main door. His daughter played with her dolls sitting in the living room’s rug.

When he hugged the child, the penumbra overcame him.

------

Start Vol. 1 / Start Vol. 2 (you're here!) / Next (coming soon)

[little-shadows-story]

life sucks but at least there’s bisexuality and my chemical romance. and the horrors

[little-shadows-story]

Volume 2 of Little Shadows is up and ready in Royal Road!! Give it a read there if you can't wait for the 31st to read Tale 1 "The Researcher" here on Tumblr