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Great fic. I love all of KizuKatana's works.

Finders Keepers Universe (wwx joins the nie before the war) by KizuKatana

Finders Keepers Universe (wwx joins the nie before the war)

by KizuKatana (@kizukatana)

T, WIP, Series, 49k, Wangxian

Summary: Madam Yu decides that the best way to reinstate the severed engagement between her daughter and her best friend’s son would be to publicly punish and humiliate Wei Wuxian in front of the other sects, particularly the Jin. Since he was the one who caused it to be broken, it was the least Wei Wuxian deserved, to remind him of his place. And if it also got back at her husband for allowing the engagement to be broken in the first place, she viewed that as an excellent side benefit. Unfortunately, she hadn’t considered that other sects might actually snap up the talented disciple that she had planned to only temporarily toss aside. The consequences of that mistake are much farther-reaching than she could have ever imagined. Canon divergent after Wei Wuxian gets sent home from the Cloud Recesses lectures after punching Jin Zixuan. Novel canon universe and characterizations. Kay's comments: Kizu dropped another banger!! And now that the first part of the series is finished, I just have to rec it. A story where Wei Wuxian gets kicked out by the Jiangs and publicly humiliated, but Nie Huaisang is right there and immediately snatches Wei Wuxian up for his sect, because he knows how much of an asset he is, something that Wei Wuxian immediately proves. I just love seeing Wei Wuxian surrounded by people who will have his back even while he's a total badass. And the Wangxian characterization is on point once again too! Excerpt: “Shameless!” a familiar voice said, just as Wei Wuxian had almost made it to the top of the steps. He’d been so focused on his own thoughts that he hadn’t noticed that some of the Lan and Nie disciples were gathered in the courtyard, greeting each other. Wei Wuxian supposed it shouldn’t be a big deal that Lan Wangji was yet again voicing his disdain and disapproval of him. But unlike the times during the guest lectures at the Cloud Recesses where he’d been more prepared for it (and sometimes even provoking it on purpose), this time it cut a bit deeper. Anger surged up at him at the judgmental tone in Lan Wangji’s voice, amplifying the hurt and resentment he was already feeling from what had just happened. The only things Lan Wangji had ever said to him while he was at Cloud Recesses—when he bothered to talk to him at all—were to call him boring, shameless, or ridiculous. All Wei Wuxian’s attempts to be his friend had only ever been pushed away.

pov wei wuxian, canon divergence, series, wip, work in progress, wei wuxian leaves the yunmeng jiang sect, wei wuxian joins the qinghe nie sect, bad parents jiang fengmian and yu ziyuan, public humiliation, cultivation sect politics, nie huaisang & wei wuxian friendship, qinghe nie sect, post-wei wuxian's expulsion from the cloud recesses scene

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(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

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One of the best, well written and researched fics I have ever read about Wangxian. And I absolutely loved all the opinions and observations about the characters. The author put so much thought into it. A must read.

💙 The Shade of Old Trees by Kryal

💙 The Shade of Old Trees

by Kryal

T, 363k, Wangxian

Summary: “We rest in the shade of trees our ancestors planted.” They called the man in the ice Yiling Laozu, after a folk hero associated with the town in the foothills of the mountains where he was found. No one expected him to be alive! Kay's comments: I have never been less surprised to see that a story was written by a PhD student. The end notes at the end of each chapter are very extensive and just amazing. So much information, so much research, 363k of an incredible story that had me completely hooked. I read it in a week and could hardly focus on anything else, because that story was just so present in the back of my mind and I wanted to know what would happen next. Got introduced to the story by the stunning art by @toffee-arts. I loved the entire plotline of Wei Wuxian having to first learn modern Chinese in order to speak to the scientists (and mostly Lan Zhan) who decided to thaw his supossed corpse. I love how it all came together, how it all wrapped up neatly and the slow burn! The slow burn almost killed me! And how cultivation just awed everyone in modern day!! I just know this story is going to be a favourite I will re-read again and again and there are certainly a lot of details I must have missed during my obsessed binge. Excerpt: Everyone in the observation room tensed. This was, after all, the most delicate point. If it wasn’t going to be possible to remove the ice without beginning to thaw Yiling Laozu, they would have to move very quickly to preserve some of the data they wanted. The cellular damage caused by the freezing process meant that once the ice thawed, the damage would spread rapidly. Lan Wangji glanced at Wen Yuan. “Leave if you need to,” he told the boy quietly. Wen Yuan shook his head. “No, I want to stay…” Lan Wangji wasn’t certain what caught his attention – a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye, a hint of sound, a flash of intuition. He looked up to see Lan Xichen slam into the window. Drop out of sight, stunned by the impact. Beyond, shards of shattered ice fell from black robes scattered across the floor as Yiling Laozu’s body tumbled off the lab table— Twisted. Landed on his feet. Stood. Piercing silvery-grey eyes flickered across the room, wary and confused. Lan Wangji froze. Yiling Laozu was awake. …Yiling Laozu was alive.

pov alternating, modern setting, modern with magic, different first meeting, time travel, time travelling wei wuxian, time travel of sorts, canon divergence, slow burn, worldbuilding, getting together, developing relationship, academia, research, science, bamf wei wuxian, yiling laozu wei wuxian, grief/mourning

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(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

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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.

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Love these

I'm starting a collection

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Saw this number plate and had to take a pic. someone must have written a modern day mdzs fic with a Dr Wei. Here is an image for it.

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Couldn't resist drawing Wang Yibo with his platinum hair.

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This is beautiful ❤️

Sketch prompt: couple sleeping, curled up together entwined. Would love either WWX/LWJ from Untamed or Jester/Caleb from CR. Your art is gorgeous!

Oh thank you! I’m still deep in the mdzs zone so this was the instant winner, then it also became fic art because that’s just how it is some days.

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About to kiss???

"Lan Zhan had always thought kissing was a strange thing to do. The pressing of lips together, the exchange of saliva, it hadn’t made sense to him. 

Wei Ying drew back, his face anxious as he studied Lan Zhan’s expression. “Ah, sorry, too much at … “ he started before Lan Zhan leaned in. Wei Ying’s mouth was so pretty, and suddenly, to him, pressing his lips to Wei Ying’s did make sense. It made a lot of sense, and it felt nice. Soft and warm, gentle, a little unsure, but nice. Actually, better than nice. "

Drawn for my modern-day wangxian fic The tea to my heart on AO3 HERE

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I found this picture in Instagram. I think it's of Xiao Zhan as Guo Jing in Legend of the Condors Heroes. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyhow - how amazing does he look on a horse ... in a flowing shirt and his windblown hair.

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Great mood and the colours are so pretty ❤️💙

💞‼️

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Well yeah, a pair of bunny slippers and a bunny hot water bottle that Yanli gives A Yuan in my modern-day wangxian fic The Tea to my heart on AO3 HERE. Nearly ready to post the next chapter... 😘

You can be sure that Wei Ying wants some slippers like that too, and Lan Zhan might just indulge him if he can find adult-sized ones. I'd like to think he would commission them if they weren't available. 💙❤️

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When Lan Zhan is drunk, Wei Ying braids his hair for him.

This is Lan Zhan in the morning, not wanting to take out his hair because it has Wei Ying's red ribbon woven into it, even though it is getting a bit messy.

Drawn for my modern-day wangxian fic The tea to my heart on AO3 HERE. Nearly ready to post the next chapter... 😘

 Xichen stood up with his teacup in hand and commented ... “Wei Ying did a nice job with your hair.” Lan Zhan’s hand flew up, and he felt unfamiliar small braids. 

“The ribbon is a nice touch,” was Xichen’s parting shot before he left the room. Lan Zhan pulled his long braid forward to see the red woven into it. His lips turned up into an unbidden smile to see Wei YIng’s ribbon in his own hair.

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Wen Ning - ghost general. Our favourite fierce corpse.

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Modern-day Wei Ying looking so good in a red and black silk shirt. Nie Huaisang asked him to choreograph a K-pop style dance for his birthday and Lan Zhan can't keep his eyes off him.

Drawn for my modern-day wangxian fic The tea to my heart on AO3 HERE

"Lan Zhan watched him intently. Wei Ying’s feet moved so lightly. His body was fluid and unrestrained. His shirt had become untucked, and the red silk rode up as he raised his arms."

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Wei Ying saw this earring and had to buy it because it reminded him of Lan Zhan. Drawn for my modern-day wangxian fic The tea to my heart on AO3 HERE

"Wei Ying’s earring flashed and caught his eye. Lan Zhan stared, entranced, at the little silver rabbit. The earring was swaying against the column of Wei Ying’s neck. He couldn’t look away."

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Drawn for my modern-day wangxian fic The tea to my heart on AO3 HERE which I will be updating soon.

Lan Zhan hates parties, but Wei Ying convinces him to go to one. Lan Xichen suggests he wear a pretty hairpiece since it is a special occasion. Here he has just caught sight of Wei Ying's new rabbit earring. He really likes it.

Because I wanted to get this done quickly to illustrate my fic I adapted a previous piece of art which you can find here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CNHg2eSgYCh/?hl=en - Referenced from the cold pond cave part of the show, but here I have given him an almost smile because of Wei Ying and the earring.

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Drawn for my modern-day wangxian fic The tea to my heart on AO3 HERE in which Wei Ying does Aikido and teaches the kids' classes at his dojo in exchange for free training. Here he is ready to start a class.

The following is an excerpt from when they are still getting to know each other - in which Wei Ying tells Lan Zhan that he does Aikido :

. . . Wei Ying said enthusiastically. “Yeah, I took aikido up after… ah, well. I was a hyperactive little shit Lan Zhan, be glad you didn’t know me then. I think I probably drove a few people crazy with not being able to sit still.” 

Lan Zhan had noticed that Wei Ying was constantly in motion, but it didn’t bother him. He enjoyed the energy that Wei Ying brought with him. 

Wei Ying drew his legs up, wrapped his arms around them and rested his chin on his knees, head slanted towards Lan Zhan. “Luckily, I had an amazing teacher at school when I was 12. He ran lunchtime Aikido classes and then convinced my family that I should start training at his club. The fees were cheap, and they thought it would be good for my discipline.”  

Wei Ying huffed a laugh, “It actually did help. I learned a lot about dealing with people. In Aikido, we don’t push back, using strength against strength. We step off the line, let their energy pass and redirect it.”

He sat up and scooted back, then stretched out his arm, palm facing Lan Zhan, “Here, put your palm against mine and push.” 

Lan Zhan did so, and Wei Ying pushed back. “Look, stalemate,” he said as they pushed against each other. Then he shifted his body a little to the side, and as his hand changed direction, Lan Zhan had to catch himself as he lurched forward. Wei Ying kept up the contact, following his movement and keeping a light pressure on. 

“We do this as an exercise at the dojo,” Wei Ying said, as he felt Lan Zhan push back again, “we learn how to keep contact so we can feel what our partner is doing. We take the energy they give us and redirect them where we want to, keeping them off balance.” Wei Ying gave a little again to Lan Zhan’s push and then turned slightly to catch his wrist before letting go. 

“Sensei told us it is a useful lesson which can be applied to any sort of conflict,” 

Wei Ying then laughed a little self-deprecatingly, “It took me a long while to learn how to apply that to arguments. I had a habit of being very direct in my opinions.” 

Lan Zhan thought he might be somewhat the same. He didn’t suffer fools lightly. It was his brother who excelled in being conciliatory. 

Wei Ying continued with a smile, “Yeah, good for debating – not so good in class when you try and correct the teacher.” He chuckled at a memory and then digressed and told some stories about his time at school. . . .