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so sorry for everyone's who's been waiting hoping asking to read the fanbinding dissertation — i've submitted it, got a great grade, many thanks again to everyone who contributed, was correcting the typos and implementing the comments when, in true ao3 author's notes fashion, i lost the use of both legs and had to have spinal surgery, will update as soon as i can!

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God I love fanfic authors

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Book Decoration: AKA All The Ways I Don't Use a Cricut

(this post is for people who don't want to buy an expensive cutting tool, or for those that do have an expensive cutting tool that would like to mix things up a little)

1. Print That Shit

If you're already printing your own textblocks, an easy step for titles is to print them. Above is a title printed onto an "obi" of decorative paper. I measured out where I wanted things on the finished book and laid it out in Affinity, then printed it on a full sheet & trimmed it down to wrap around the book. A more simple method is to print & glue on the label into a slight indent in the cover (to protect it). A third option is to do the spine in bookcloth, while you print on paper for the cover and then glue that paper onto the boards (this usually looks even better when it is a three-piece bradel bind).

2. Foil Quill / Heat Pens

The heat pen is one of my go-to tools, but it can be a bit touchy about materials. The most popular version is the We R Memory Keepers' Foil Quill (which is one of the most ergonomic), but other pens exist that can get you to a higher heat temp, finer lines, or more consistent foil. For example, I have a pen created by a local Japanese bookbinding studio that fares way better on leathers than the WRMK quill & with a finer tip, but it's hell to control. Best results in general are on paper or smooth bookcloth (starched linen, arrestox, colibri - even duo will work but its less solid). The fuzzier a bookcloth is, the less your foil quill wants to deal with it. This means the heat n bond method of making bookcloth does not play nice with a heat pen usually, but there are two solutions: 1) use this tutorial on paste + acrylic medium coated bookcloth instead that will get you a perfect surface for the heat pen, or 2) use the pen on paper & then glue onto the cloth. I did a video tutorial for both foil quill use and this type of homemade bookcloth for @renegadeguild Binderary in 2023.

You get the most consistent results by tracing through a printed template that is taped in place, as I do in the video above.

3. Paint That Shit

Acrylic paints will do you fine! The above is free-handed with a circle template, because I wanted that vibe. If you need straight lines that won't seep, lay them down with tape first & then paint over it first with a clear Acrylic medium, then your color. Same goes for stencils. Two more examples of painted bookcloth:

4. IT'S GOT LAYERS

By using layers of thinner boards, you can create interesting depths & contrasts on your cover. You can also make cutouts that peep through to the decorative paper behind. The most important part to this technique is the order in which each edge is wrapped. To get a good wrapped inside edge, you will split the turn in into tabs to get them to conform to a curve. You can also layer multiple colors of bookcloth without multiple layers of board, as seen below left, so long as you mind your cut edges for fraying.

5. Inlaid... anything

Mirrors! Marbled paper! I saw someone do a pretty metal bookmark once! The key is creating a little home for it to live in, which is pretty similar to the above layering method. On one layer you cut the shape, & glue that layer onto the bottom solid board before covering. You can do the top layer as an entire 1 mm board (like I did for the mirrors) or a sheet of cardstock, like I would use for inlaid paper.

6. Decorative Paper

Decorative paper is always helpful & adds to the paper hoard... & its effects can be layers with other techniques, as below. Marbles, chiyogami, momi, or prints & maps of all kinds can be great additions. Some papers may need a protective coating (such as wax or a sealer).

7. Stamps (with optional linocut)

While I've not used many more regular rubber stamps, I do know some who have, successfully! And I've used one once or twice with embossing powder (see photo 3 up, the gold anchor on the little pamphlet bind). What also works is to carve your own linocut or stamp, & then use block printing ink to ink it onto your fabric (as i did above). A bit time intensive, but it was nice how easily reproducible it was, and I liked the effect I got for this particular bind.

These methods are not exhaustive, just ones I've used, and there are of course many others. I haven't gone too into detail on any of these for the sake of length (& post photo limits) but feel free to ask about more specifics. Usually I'm using them in combination with other options.

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Ao3 HTML/Coding References-Part I

I recently made a code-heavy choose your own adventure fic, and I wanted to compile all of the really helpful resources I've found along the way. Basics, Text altering and Fancy Formatting (adding dividers, columns, photos, videos, tabs etc.) is below!

(Note: I've had to split this in two, so see Part II for all the website mimic HTML)

Basics:

This Ao3 Posting Doc converts Google doc into HTML, adding bold, underline, italics, strikethrough, paragraph breaks, and centered text. Major game changer for heavy HTML works

The Fic Writer's Guide to Formatting by AnisaAnisa: This is a masterpost in itself, covering links, images, boxes, borders, fonts etc. So I'm putting it here since it's amazingly helpful

HTML References by W3 schools- I've linked the HTML colors here, but this is a platform designed to help people learn/reference HTML

Ao3's own guide to HTML on their site Lovely Q&A for Ao3 specific HTML questions

A Guide to Ao3 HTML by Anima Nightmate (faithhope) This walks through what HTML code means SO WELL!

Text resources: (altering the color, font, emoji, style etc.)

Font's chapter: The Fic Writer's Guide to Formatting: okay I know I already linked it above, but listen it's very good so I'm linking again

Fonts colors and work skins oh my by Charles_Rockafeller takes fonts to a different level.

Multicolored text skin by ElectricAlice GRADIENT TEXT

All the Emoji by CodenameCarrot while Ao3 has signifigantly improved on hosting emojis, this code helps with using some more unconventional emojis. Amazing resource.

Upsidedown text and Zalgo text generators - these specific text generators allow for you to see their direct HTML codes

Fun CSS Text Effects by DoctorDizzyspinner

Workskin for showing and hiding spoilers by ElectricAlice makes text appear when hovered/clicked. Amazing for Trigger Warnings

Make text appear when you click [Work skin] by Khashana clickable end notes buttons for your work, similar to the spoiler button text

Hide spoilers like Discord by Professor_Rye

Desktop/mobile friendly short tooltips workskin by Simbaline

How to make Linked Footnotes on Ao3 by La_Temperanza

User-selectable Names in a Fanfic work by fiend Ever want people to select between different names in a fanfic? I could also see this used as ability to switch gender in a fanfic.

AO3 Comic Text Effects using CSS by DemigodofAgni Ever want a giant comicbook POW in your fic?

How to override the Archive's Chapter Headers by C Ryan Smith

Collection: CSS Guides by Goddess_of_the_arena (many helpful text walkthrough resources)

Fancy Formatting {Note: this got long so I split it up into more manageable sections}

Coding Masterpieces (Multiple things within the same fic)

Personal Experiment with HTML and CSS by MohnblumenKind This has a variety of help, Chapter 6 & 7 were great for choose your own adventure, Chapter 4 talks about columns and skins, and Chapter 10 even has a newspaper made entirely from site code.

Repository by gaudersan google searches, ao3 stats, instagram and text messages galore

CSS in Testing/Bleed Gold by InfinitysWraith Masterclass in cool formatting, including overidding default headers, Doors opening animation, Grid interactive photos, Hovering to change a photo, Retroactive text etc.

CSS in Testing:Second in Series by InfinitysWraith: Interactive keypads, Mock news site and interactive locking mechanism.

Coding Encyclopedia by Anonymous: chess, opening html envelopes, functioning clocks, HTML Art– this book is genuinely the most advanced stuff I’ve seen with HTML code on Ao3– and I’ve looked at every guide on this list.

Decorations (Boxes, Dividers, letters/background)

How to mimic letters, fliers and stationary without using images by La_Temperanza Really helped with box formatting

Decorations for Fic (HTML/CSS): Fanart, Dividers, Embedded Songs and More by Jnsn this has SO MANY cool coding features, including a chessboard that moves when you hover over it

Build a divider tool demo by skinforthesoul

How to make custom Page Dividers by La_Temperanza

Found Document work skin by hangingfire

Embedding other formats: (Images, gifs, youtube videos, audio, alt text)

Embed that Audio by Azdaema 

Newbies guide to Podficcing by Azdaema

Embedding youtube videos on ao3 to scale with the screen by pigalle add youtube videos mid fic

Conlangs and Accessibility by Addleton this fic instructs how to have accessible translations in fic

How to make Images Fit on Mobile Browsers by La_Temperanza great image adding code

How to Wrap text around images by La_Temperanza image text wrapping

How to put pictures and gifs on Ao3 from Google Drive by gally_hin

Choose Your Own Adventure Code

How to make a Choose Your Own Adventure Fic by La_Temperanza allows for clickable links and hidden text.

Interactive fiction Workskin Tutorial by RedstoneBug BEST CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE RESOURCE

How to make your fic look like the game by MelsShenanigans, ThoughtsCascade (I was a Teenage Exocolonist is the game but it’s a Choose your own adventure re-skin)

Newspaper/Article/Blog mimic

How to make a News Website Article Skin on Ao3 by ElectricAlice

Newspaper/Magazine Article Template by deathbymistletoe

Newspaper Article by lordvoldemortsskin --basic but adaptive for mobile

Newspaper Article Adaptation by KorruptBrekker modification for different columns

TMZ WorkSkin by Anonymous

Basic blogpost skin by Anonymous

Blog Post Work Skin by Anonymous

Journaling App by egnimalea

Email Mimic

How to insert Gmail emails in your fic by DemigodofAgni

How to mimic Email Windows by La_Temperanza

Gmail Email Skin by Sunsetcurbed

The idiot’s incoherent guide for learning css & html for ao3 in dystopia by anonymous (Gmail skin) 

Search Engine Mimic

Google Search Suggestions Work Skin and Tutorial by Bookkeep

Baidu Search History Work Skin by Bookkeep

Repository by gaudersan 

Misc. General formats with HTML (mission reports, spreadsheets, other documents)

Screenplay skin by astronought

Screenplay workskin by legonerd

Mock Spotify Playlist WorkSkin by Anonymous

How to make a rounded playlist by La_Temperanza Ever want to show a character's music playlist within your fic

Workskin for in Universe Investigative/Mission Report with Redaction by wafflelate case files/CSI reports

Learn to Microsoft Excel by ssc_lmth insert a spreadsheet in your fic

Ao3 Work skin: a simple scoreboard by revanchist shows how to code a scoreboard

Colossal Cave Adventure by gifbot Working Keyboard anyone?

Tabbing experiment by gifbot (clickable tabs)

Bonus: Ever wanted to see how crazy HTML can be on AO3? Try playing But can it run Doom? or Tropémon by gifbot

Happy Creating!

Last updated: Dec 28 2024 (Have a resource that you want to share? My inbox is open!)

See Part II for Website Mimics here!!

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I for one think the symbiotic relationship between Tumblr and AO3 is beautiful

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Rogue Archives, by Abigail De Kosnik

In my last two posts, I revisited some aspects of De Kosnik’s dissertation,  Illegitimate Media: Race, Gender, and Censorship in Digital Remix Culture;  this week, I’d like to give an excerpt of her book Rogue Archives (MIT 2016). One of the things that I like about the book is the way in which it not only documents the voices of fandom but captures the feels of fandom; consider this section of the book subtitled “The Moment of Discovery””

One of the strongest themes that emerged in my research team’s interviews with fans was their strong and positive affective response when they first found online fan fiction archives. I will call this initial encounter, described by so many interviewees, the moment of discovery. Alexis Lothian, remembering her moment of discovery, which took place in 2003 when she stumbled upon Harry Potter fan fiction, says, “I loved it. I was incredibly—it was exciting. … Definitely it was a very visceral excitement” (Lothian 2012b). nightflier states that her moment of discovery, which was the first time she came across the Gossamer archive in the late 1990s, “was like a revelation. I’ll never forget that day” (nightflier 2012). eruthros, using similar terminology as Lothian, recalls that she “sort of stumbled into some sort of online fandom, I think it might have been Due South first, and the Due South mailing list … and archive,” and says that “thirty seconds after I found the archive I found slash fandom and decided that was pretty awesome, and I wanted to be there” (eruthros and thingswithwings 2012). oxoniensis also employs the metaphor of “stumbling” to characterize her moment of discovery, with Lord of the Rings fan fiction, in 2002: “My first contact with fan fiction was an accident. I’d never heard of fan fiction, either by word of mouth or online, so it was all rather a surprise when I first stumbled across it. … Some stories were moving, some funny, some incredibly hot, some utterly gripping. And to be able to find this all just by searching the Internet was wonderful” (oxoniensis 2012). oxoniensis says she feels “very nostalgic” about “those heady first days of discovery.” Like Lothian, eruthros, and oxoniensis, Robin Nelson remembers her moment of discovery as happening by chance. “It was pure accident,” says Nelson (2012) of finding a Usenet group dedicated to Anne Rice fan fiction in 1996 or 1997. “I didn’t know that fanfic even existed at that point. … I was actually thrilled. I was elated.”

De Kosnik connects this feeling to the idea of the archive - not just the Archive of Our Own, but any archive, any large grouping of stories.  As she explains, the very number of stories online is thrilling and validating:

The size of online fan fiction archives (which I explore in the conclusion)—the number of stories housed on these sites, and the number of authors who contributed them—gave Lothian, Nelson, Victoria P., and others a “sense of belonging,” a feeling of recognition (“I GET IT”), and the security of knowing that they were not alone. In other words, if these sites had not been archives, had not immediately given the impression of being well-stocked repositories, trafficked by many writers and readers, then they may not have not have communicated to fans the same aura of safety—safety in numbers, safety in being among “like-minded individuals, safety in standing with others.” (151)

I GET IT!

--Francesca Coppa, Fanhackers volunteer

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Unconditional by @letteredlettered

💚 This is an A6 binding of the lovely typeset that was so generously shared by @pleasantboatpress. This gave me the opportunity to first bind and then read this highly praised fic for the first time, which I since did and which changed my brain chemistry in very fun ways. Cannot recommend this fic enough, it's absolutely fantastic.

❤️ This was my first time using this particular type of tenxtblock paper, and it turned out lovely, if slightly heavier than I expected of a book this size.

💙 The design is pretty minimalist, with full cloth cover in dark blue linen with title and a simple illustration of hands reaching towards each other (because touch is a very important aspect of the story) foiled in gold, with solid color blue endpapers and blue and gold double-core endbands.

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my 2024 year-end round-up

Well! 2024 sure was a year, wasn't it! Despite [insert any number of horrors here] I still managed to publish and produce a ton of work that I'm proud of. So in the style of last year's round-up, here's my year in writing, editing, and podcast interviewing, below the cut:

writing

I wrote a pair of pieces for WIRED this year, one of which was probably one of my most widely shared ever—on people illegally selling bound copies of Manacled and other (mostly Dramione) fics. Later in the year, I watched a meltdown in one of my own fandoms (Interview with the Vampire) and wrote about how the broken creator-viewer contract in the streaming age creates a wild amount of uncertainty for fans.

In my Atlas Obscura column, I had the pleasure of reporting a ton of non-dramatic fandom stories. Back in January, I talked to organizers of and participants from Terror Camp—part academic conference, part fandom convention. In the spring, I interviewed some of the fanbinders from the Renegade Bindery, and fan studies scholar Daniel Cavicchi about his work searching for "fan"-like terms that predate "fan" and "fandom".

Then in the summer, I put out a call for folks who had included recipes in their fic, or cooked something from a recipe in a fic—the response was overwhelming! And finally, I traveled back to my college town to visit Emily Dickinson's house, which has recently been decorated with props and furniture from the show Dickinson.

Outside my fandom reporting, I published a few other things: a review of Kara Swisher's Burn Book in the tragically shuttered Roadmap (can't even share a URL!), and my judgment in this year's Tournament of Books, where I had to choose between Justin Torres's Blackouts and James McBride's The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.

editing

This was the year Fansplaining the podcast went on hiatus 🥲, but I've been publishing at least one written piece per month since the summer. It's been a great pleasure to edit these writers on such in-depth, nuanced fandom pieces:

"The Fan-Journalist Tightrope" by Kayti Burt Low pay, minimal worker protections, and pushback from both publicists and fellow fans. Is covering the thing you love even worth it?

"The Yellow Balloon Movement" by Maria Temming Within jam band fandoms often dominated by substance use, clean and sober fans are building their own communities

"The Traumatized Gatekeepers of Broadway" by Laura Wheatman Hill Theatre fans measure their passion by nitpicking. Does it do the industry more harm than good? 

"The Acolyte’s Squandered Potential" by @hellotailor The show brought a whole new set of fans to a stagnating franchise. Its cancellation suggests Star Wars is only interested in looking backwards. 

"The Scream Fandom’s Enduring Divide"  by Michael Boyle Nearly a year after star Melissa Barrera was fired for pro-Palestinian social media posts, fans remain torn over the future of the franchise.

"The Beatles Live!" by @areyougonnabe New generations of fans are cultural archaeologists, working with the materials of the past to create the passion of the present. 

"Bringing Fanfiction Into the Classroom" by @aba-daba-dooo Fic does something that my traditional English classes cannot: it places the power in the hands of the student. 

interviews

We had only a few guests in the final six months of @flourish's Fansplaining tenure, but they were all fantastic:

Allegra Rosenberg, who talked about Tumblr, Terror Camp, and her forthcoming book on pre-internet fandom Tiffo aka Fanboundbooks, who represented the Renegade Bindery and gave us a fanbinding 101 Kayti Burt, a fan-journalist who discussed the piece linked above Effie Sapuridis, a fan studies scholar who works on self-insert fanworks (both written and visual)

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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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Book 5/50!

'Pray For Us, Icarus - Atalan'

Fandom: Good Omens

This dang fanfic really does haunt me in the most beautifully painful way possible 😂 it's actually one of the fics that made me wanna start fanbinding honestly! Loved that there was even a playlist for it so included that as well for good measure! 💖

Slowly heading back into fanbinding, don't wanna jank my thumb because not only do I need it for binding, I need it for my uni work 👏😂

HOWEVER.. not how I planned for the cover to turn out even though happy with it 😂 long story short; thumb injury midway through the original cover made it a very slow process and my patience to get this made became non-existent 😂

Main take aways:

Gotta thank past me for having cut the boards already for this bind 🙏 also weeding this cover was A PROCESS but worth it!

I need to get me a bigger heat press in the future

Cream/ivory paper is stunning! Actually quite like how there's a mild ghosting from the other pages too!

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shoutout to the fanfic so fucked up so smutty so particular to canon that it’s impossible to turn into an original novel. when something exists solely for making other fans eat glass. and you can only tell a very particular kind of person at a very particular time in their life about it after reading, creating a unique warrior bond forever

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perhaps the real irish unification of 2024 was the canon ships we made along the way

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"Would anyone want to read --" Listen, imma stop you right there. Yes. YES, someone would want to read that. You write that weird little fucked up story. Or that domestic little slice of life story. That drabble or that 300k monster.

I promise someone wants to read it.

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*cups ao3 author's face in my hands gently* please. you are the only one who understands the blorbos correctly. you must write more.

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If I Loved You Less by Misthios

I knew I wanted to bind this lovely Austen-esque story on chapter 1, and the design came to me like a divine blessing.

💐 The cover is a nod to the wonderful Penguin Clothbound Classics series, with the image ptinted directly on linen. This was my first attempt at the technique, and I'm VERY happy with the result (though lining up the straight lines to the lines of the cover was very challenging).

💐 I proceeded to go full hog on the violet theme, with the endpapers being purple with an extra leaf of yellow, to echo the colors of a pansy, with the endbands repeating the same color scheme.

💐 The title page is a true star of the show, as this graphic was what inspired the rest of the design, and the chapter titles are all done in Jane Austen font.

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It's that time again! Wingz is finally here! Fall 24 - Hornz edition, comin' at ya.

Written by SaucySmutPigeon

Hi all!

Your dutiful Wingz magazine staff has once again put out (lol) another fabulous issue - Hornz!

It's got lots more of what you're looking for but this time with a devilish twist, cause you're into that sorta thing, apparently.

Huge thanks to those who stepped up to contribute to this issue. A handy list of contributors and where you can find more of their great work is here: https://wingzmag.com/fall24

Instead of listening to me yap, go read Hornz! Portable/mobile friendly version: https://wingzmag.com/issues/wingz-fall24-to-go.pdf

And as always, the full monty: https://wingzmag.com/issues/wingz-fall24-the-full-monty.pdf

Cheers, all! ❤️❤️❤️

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