#fanfic being scraped by AI

[chemicalarospec]

Ao3 and AI

They made a short blog post here and I dearly hope you read it, but the most important thing is:

1. Most AIs are trained off one dataset, the Common Crawl dataset.

2. Common Crawl can be be blocked in two lines of code.

3. Ao3 implemented that code in December 2022.

4. Fics that were already scraped will remain scraped and there's nothing we can do about it, but any fics posted after they put in that code will not be used to train AI unless the AI-makers make a new data-scraper.

5. Ao3 has also put code in place to slow down scrapers and they check their traffic for signs of abuse.

In short, you do not need to set your fic to members-only to stop it from being part of the Common Crawl dataset, though it will add another layer of protection for other scrapers if you feel really strongly about it. Please note that the blog post says locking your fic "will not block every potential scraper."

[copperbadge]

AI Scraping Isn't Just Art And Fanfic

Something I haven't really seen mentioned and I think people may want to bear in mind is that while artists are the most heavily impacted by AI visual medium scraping, it's not like the machine knows or cares to differentiate between original art and a photograph of your child.

AI visual media scrapers take everything, and that includes screengrabs, photographs, and memes. Selfies, pictures of your pets and children, pictures of your home, screengrabs of images posted to other sites -- all of the comic book imagery I've posted that I screengrabbed from digital comics, images of tweets (including the icons of peoples' faces in those tweets) and instas and screengrabs from tiktoks. I've posted x-ray images of my teeth. All of that will go into the machine.

That's why, at least I think, Midjourney wants Tumblr -- after Instagram we are potentially the most image-heavy social media site, and like Instagram we tag our content, which is metadata that the scraper can use.

So even if you aren't an artist, unless you want to Glaze every image of any kind that you post, you probably want to opt out of being scraped. I'm gonna go ahead and say we've probably already been scraped anyway, so I don't think there's a ton of point in taking down your tumblr or locking down specific images, but I mean...especially if it's stuff like pictures of children or say, a fundraising photo that involves your medical data, it maybe can't hurt.

If you do want to officially opt out, which may help if there's a class-action lawsuit later, you're going to want to go to the gear in the upper-right corner on the Tumblr desktop site, select each of your blogs from the list on the right-hand side, and scroll down to "Visibility". Select "Prevent third party sharing for [username]" to flip that bad boy on.

Per notes: for the app, go to your blog (the part of the app that shows what you post) and hit the gear in the upper right, then select "visibility" and it will be the last option. If you have not updated your app, it will not appear (confirmed by me, who cannot see it on my elderly version of the app).

You don't need to do it on both desktop and mobile -- either one will opt you out -- but on the app you may need to load each of your sideblogs in turn and then go back into the gear and opt out for that blog, like how you have to go into the settings for each sideblog on desktop and do it.

[tim-official]

all the frothing-at-the-mouth posts about how "don't you dare put a fic writer's work into chatGPT or an artist's work into stable diffusion" are. frustrating

that isn't how big models are made. it takes an absurd amount of compute power and coordination between many GPUs to re-train a model with billions of parameters. they are not dynamically crunching up anything you put into a web interface.

chances are, if you have something published on a fanfic site, or your art is on deviantart or any publicly available repository, it's already in the enormous datasets that they are using to train. and if it isn't in now, it will be in future: the increases in performance from GPT 2 to 3 to 4 were not gained through novel machine-learning architectures or anything but by ramping up the amount of data they used to train by orders of magnitude. if it can be scraped, just assume it will be. you can prevent your stuff from being used with Glaze, if you're an artist, but for the written word there's nothing you can do.

not to be cynical but the genie is already far more out of the bottle than most anti-AI people realize, i think. there is nothing you can do to stop these models from being made and getting more powerful. only the organizing power of labor has a shot at mitigating some of the effects we're all worried about

[tenpintsof-sundrop]

-> people stealing, binding and selling fics on Etsy, risking everything that AO3 has built since the Anne Rice lawsuits

-> AI scraping being everywhere and Gen Z seeing nothing wrong with using AI to "help" fanfiction or outright "write it" for them, while older fanfic authors have struggled for years to perfect the style you love

-> comments being down across the board and consumption culture being at an all time high. a fic gets 800 notes practically overnight and doesn't get a single comment (and sometimes I literally have to beg for comments/feedback on my fics when I know that hundreds of people are reading them)

-> me, grinding my teeth while pouring my heart and soul into a 40k fic that I know will be forgotten by fandom in a month or could possibly be stolen to be sold as a "novel": I do this because I love this. I do this because I love this. I do this because it's my passion. I don't want to quit doing something that I love so much.

[tippenfunkaport]

FYI, I have also locked all my fanfics down to registered users only because of the AI scraping on AO3. I'm one of many fan creators doing this right now and I know it stinks for users without an AO3 account, but it's the only option writers have available to us at the moment to stop our work from being scraped and stolen.

If this makes you mad, the Federal Register is currently open to comments on AI accountability until June 12th, 2023.

It only takes a second to leave a comment to ask for legislation that works used in AI creations or training MUST secure the express consent of the original creator before they can be used. If we can get protections for artists, writers, musicians and everyone who creates that their work cannot be used in AI without their permission, we can go back to making fanworks freely available without fear of them being misused. Until then, we're stuck playing defense until the courts catch up.

(If you're a fan creator looking to do this as well, AO3 has a tool to let you do all your fics at the same time in seconds. On your dashboard, go to Edit Works and you'll be able to change the status on everything at once.)

If you missed the context, AO3 recently found that the archive was scraped for use in AI services like ChatGPT and Sudowrite. While they put in protections in December 2022 to try to stop it from happening in the future, it's not foolproof and there is nothing they can do about works already swiped prior to that date. The archive is recommending fan creators restrict their works to registered users only to prevent against additional large scale scraping in the future.

[queenburd]

I am trying so hard to be nice about this issue. I know it’s mostly younger people doing it. I know they are scared of being bad at writing, that they dont think they have ideas, they want to make things and be liked.

I was a young writer too, I get it. and I know everybody being angry at you about it isn’t helping, it only makes you feel worse for “not having ideas” and you get defensive because they have to be making a bigger deal out of it that it actually is, right? you ARENT doing anything wrong!!!

that is the instinct. thats why Im trying so, so hard, to be compassionate about this.

but I am actually quite upset. Not because I’ve been victim to people scraping my works (god I hope not anyway. Ive never been big enough in ANY fandom for people to look twice at my stuff), but because watching more and more stuff labelled “written by AI” is hollowing me out.

Im not going to read it. Straight up. It’s just more stuff clogging up and hiding the stuff I DO want to read. and more of my fave writers are hiding their shit.

and it REALLY kills my own inspiration to write, because I like being analytical in my stuff and I feel more and more that people dont WANT that. They dont want to see interesting takes and media analysis they just want to take things that already exist and rehash and rerehash. this.... this isnt a contribution to a fan community! this isn’t anything!!!

I try so, so hard to be empathetic, compassionate, kind in my wording, constructive with my criticism... because I know nobody else is doing it.

but god, I am so tired.

stop making fanfic using AI, my guys. Please.

[lets-all-calm-down-a-bit]

wiat can someone explain to me why chat ai is bad, im so ootl on this /gen

Yes, of course!

So, If you are familiar with the ethical debate around AI art, you should know that today's "AI" is not actually AI. The AI we have now is not artificial intelligence. It is merely a program cobbling together things fed into the machine to produce a new image or piece of writing. However, what is created is not actually NEW. "AI" art and Character "AI" scrapes artists' and writers' original works from the internet without their consent, then mushes it all together to create the desired outcome of the prompt it was given. These artists and writers are not consulted or compensated before their art is used. This means that your favorite fanfic writers and artists' work is regularly stolen and used to create someone's "AI" art image or Character "AI" conversation without them knowing or being able to stop it.

Along with this, there is a more culturally relevant reason to not support Chat "AI." As the writers' strike continues, it is becoming increasingly more worrying that large film companies might replace human writers with "AI." This would not only put immense amounts of people out of work. It would also almost completely erase creative job options. They aren't only trying to start using "AI" to write scripts. Due to the recent SAG-AFTRA strike, they have proposed scanning the likeness of an actor to be used indefinitely without that actor's long-term compensation. And the elimination of artists in the graphic design field is self-explanatory. Why would a company pay twice as much money to commission an artist for their work, when they could get a result for half the price in mere seconds?

Capitalism is literally trying to eliminate the need for creatives in the workforce. This is disgusting. From the beginning of time, people have created art. They have sold art. They have bought art. Large corporations are trying to make that obsolete.

If you care at ALL about the creative community and the future of art itself, do NOT feed the "AI." It is actively working against you.

[volixia669]

OTW’s Legal Chair is Pro-AI and What That Means

traHoooooooo boy. Okay, so for those who don’t know, OTW shared in their little newsletter on May 6th an interview their legal chair did on AI.

Most people didn’t notice...Until a couple hours ago when I guess more high profile accounts caught wind and now every time I refresh the tweet that links the newsletter that’s another 10+ quote tweets.

The interview itself is short, was done in February, and...Has some gross stuff.

Essentially Betsy Rosenblatt agrees with Stability AI that its fair use, and believes that AI is “reading fanfic”.

To be EXTREMELY clear: Generative AI like ChatGPT is not sentient. No AI is sentient, and Generative AI are actually incredibly simple as far as AI goes. Generative AI cannot “read”, it cannot “comprehend” and it cannot “learn”.

In fact, all Generative AI can do is spit out an output created out of a dataset. Its output is reliant on there being variables for it to spit back out. Therefore, it cannot be separated from its dataset or its “training”.

Additionally, the techbros who make these things are profiting off them, are not actually transforming anything, and oh yeah, are stealing people’s private data in order to make these datasets.

All this to say: Betsy Rosenblatt does not actually understand AI, has presumably fallen for the marketing behind Generative AI, and is not fit to legally fight for fic writers.

So what does this mean? Well, don’t delete your accounts just yet. This is just one person, belonging to a nonprofit that supposedly listens to its users. There’s a huge backlash on social media right now because yeah, people are pissed. Which is good.

We should absolutely use social media to be clear about our stances. To tell @transformativeworks that we are not okay with tech bros profiting off our fanworks, and their legal team should be fighting back against those who have already scraped our fanworks rather than lauding a program for doing things its incapable of doing.

I have fanfic up on Ao3. I have fanfic I’m working on that I’d love to put there too. But I cannot if it turns out the one safe haven for ficwriters is A-Okay with random people stealing our work and profiting off of it.

[sotwk]

Wait. People sell A.I. "Artwork" now as commissions??

How naïve am I that I just realized that this has become a thing??!

I know how hard real artists work to sell and create commissions. The thought of AI being used to make money via commissions in an already crowded market makes me pretty *bleeping* mad.

Please do not support these "businesses". It is one thing to use AI for personal fun, but it's another level to use it for profit.

It's pretty much the same thing as a book that was AI-generated from data scraped off Ao3 fanfics getting published and sold.

Please support and buy artwork from REAL ARTISTS who thoughtfully drew it for you from scratch (digital or traditionally) with their own hands. PLEASE.

Artificial "art" will never be as good as Real art. Never. We do not want our creative spaces flooded with ugly fake art because we failed to support real artists.

Artists struggle enough without having to deal with this kind of insult.

[eternalglitch]

PSA: my fanfics are all now locked for AO3 users only!

This is due to the rise of AI scraping fanfics to unfairly repurpose our skills without permission. If you want to read my works, please login or create an AO3 account to do so - it's very easy to do and gives lots of other perks like being able to subscribe for updates from fanfics you are reading.

[snickerdoodlles]

pulling out a section from this post (a very basic breakdown of generative AI) for easier reading;

AO3 and Generative AI

There are unfortunately some massive misunderstandings in regards to AO3 being included in LLM training datasets. This post was semi-prompted by the ‘Knot in my name’ AO3 tag (for those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s supposed to be a fandom anti-AI event where AO3 writers help “further pollute” AI with Omegaverse), so let’s take a moment to address AO3 in conjunction with AI. We’ll start with the biggest misconception:

1. AO3 wasn’t used to train generative AI.

Or at least not anymore than any other internet website. AO3 was not deliberately scraped to be used as LLM training data.

The AO3 moderators found traces of the Common Crawl web worm in their servers. The Common Crawl is an open data repository of raw web page data, metadata extracts and text extracts collected from 10+ years of web crawling. Its collective data is measured in petabytes. (As a note, it also only features samples of the available pages on a given domain in its datasets, because its data is freely released under fair use and this is part of how they navigate copyright.) LLM developers use it and similar web crawls like Google’s C4 to bulk up the overall amount of pre-training data.

AO3 is big to an individual user, but it’s actually a small website when it comes to the amount of data used to pre-train LLMs. It’s also just a bad candidate for training data. As a comparison example, Wikipedia is often used as high quality training data because it’s a knowledge corpus and its moderators put a lot of work into maintaining a consistent quality across its web pages. AO3 is just a repository for all fanfic -- it doesn’t have any of that quality maintenance nor any knowledge density. Just in terms of practicality, even if people could get around the copyright issues, the sheer amount of work that would go into curating and labeling AO3’s data (or even a part of it) to make it useful for the fine-tuning stages most likely outstrips any potential usage.

Speaking of copyright, AO3 is a terrible candidate for training data just based on that. Even if people (incorrectly) think fanfic doesn’t hold copyright, there are plenty of books and texts that are public domain that can be found in online libraries that make for much better training data (or rather, there is a higher consistency in quality for them that would make them more appealing than fic for people specifically targeting written story data). And for any scrapers who don’t care about legalities or copyright, they’re going to target published works instead. Meta is in fact currently getting sued for including published books from a shadow library in its training data (note, this case is not in regards to any copyrighted material that might’ve been caught in the Common Crawl data, its regarding a book repository of published books that was scraped specifically to bring in some higher quality data for the first training stage). In a similar case, there’s an anonymous group suing Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI for training their LLMs on open source code.

Getting back to my point, AO3 is just not desirable training data. It’s not big enough to be worth scraping for pre-training data, it’s not curated enough to be considered for high quality data, and its data comes with copyright issues to boot. If LLM creators are saying there was no active pursuit in using AO3 to train generative AI, then there was (99% likelihood) no active pursuit in using AO3 to train generative AI.

AO3 has some preventative measures against being included in future Common Crawl datasets, which may or may not work, but there’s no way to remove any previously scraped data from that data corpus. And as a note for anyone locking their AO3 fics: that might potentially help against future AO3 scrapes, but it is rather moot if you post the same fic in full to other platforms like ffn, twitter, tumblr, etc. that have zero preventative measures against data scraping.

2. A/B/O is not polluting generative AI

…I’m going to be real, I have no idea what people expected to prove by asking AI to write Omegaverse fic. At the very least, people know A/B/O fics are not exclusive to AO3, right? The genre isn’t even exclusive to fandom -- it started in fandom, sure, but it expanded to general erotica years ago. It’s all over social media. It has multiple Wikipedia pages.

More to the point though, omegaverse would only be “polluting” AI if LLMs were spewing omegaverse concepts unprompted or like…associated knots with dicks more than rope or something. But people asking AI to write omegaverse and AI then writing omegaverse for them is just AI giving people exactly what they asked for. And…I hate to point this out, but LLMs writing for a niche the LLM trainers didn’t deliberately train the LLMs on is generally considered to be a good thing to the people who develop LLMs. The capability to fill niches developers didn’t even know existed increases LLMs’ marketability. If I were a betting man, what fandom probably saw as a GOTCHA moment, AI people probably saw as a good sign of LLMs’ future potential.

3. Individuals cannot affect LLM training datasets.

So back to the fandom event, with the stated goal of sabotaging AI scrapers via omegaverse fic.

…It’s not going to do anything.

Let’s add some numbers to this to help put things into perspective:

LLaMA’s 65 billion parameter model was trained on 1.4 trillion tokens. Of that 1.4 trillion tokens, about 67% of the training data was from the Common Crawl (roughly ~3 terabytes of data).

3 terabytes is 3,000,000,000 kilobytes.

That’s 3 billion kilobytes.

According to a news article I saw, there has been ~450k words total published for this campaign (*this was while it was going on, that number has probably changed, but you’re about to see why that still doesn’t matter). So, roughly speaking, ~450k of text is ~1012 KB (I’m going off the document size of a plain text doc for a fic whose word count is ~440k).

So 1,012 out of 3,000,000,000.

Aka 0.000034%.

And that 0.000034% of 3 billion kilobytes is only 2/3s of the data for the first stage of training.

And not to beat a dead horse, but 0.000034% is still grossly overestimating the potential impact of posting A/B/O fic. Remember, only parts of AO3 would get scraped for Common Crawl datasets. Which are also huge! The October 2022 Common Crawl dataset is 380 tebibytes. The April 2021 dataset is 320 tebibytes. The 3 terabytes of Common Crawl data used to train LLaMA was randomly selected data that totaled to less than 1% of one full dataset. Not to mention, LLaMA’s training dataset is currently on the (much) larger size as compared to most LLM training datasets.

I also feel the need to point out again that AO3 is trying to prevent any Common Crawl scraping in the future, which would include protection for these new stories (several of which are also locked!).

Omegaverse just isn’t going to do anything to AI. Individual fics are going to do even less. Even if all of AO3 suddenly became omegaverse, it’s just not prominent enough to influence anything in regards to LLMs. You cannot affect training datasets in any meaningful way doing this. And while this might seem really disappointing, this is actually a good thing.

Remember that anything an individual can do to LLMs, the person you hate most can do the same. If it were possible for fandom to corrupt AI with omegaverse, fascists, bigots, and just straight up internet trolls could pollute it with hate speech and worse. AI already carries a lot of biases even while developers are actively trying to flatten that out, it’s good that organized groups can’t corrupt that deliberately.

[composeregg]

disclaimer: I am a volunteer for the OTW. I am speaking for myself, not on behalf of the organization, anything expressed here is my own. I may be wrong about some things, I'm very much not involved in any of this as part of my work. Additionally, I haven't run this by anyone else in the org, so take that as you will. I'm just a person, hoping to reassure other people, fans like myself.

A few people have come to me asking questions about this, and asking clarification already, so I just.... Want to reassure everyone. A lot of people follow me and know I volunteer, even if I don't talk about it much.

No, Ao3/OTW is not endorsing AI. Scraping is not being allowed or encouraged (you can, in fact, see here in this link, the code of Ao3 disallowing scraping). There is only so much the organization can do to prevent this. If you set your works to logged-in users only, it does somewhat give more protections. Data miners are very proactive, and prevention measures can only do so much. After the data is harvested, with or without consent, it is that much harder to pry back and out of those hands.

Many, MANY people are panicking. They saw an excerpt of an interview in this week's OTW Signal news roundup. This interview was from someone on the legal team of the OTW. She was speaking not for the organization, but as someone with credentials in the fields being discussed. Much of this has been misinterpreted and relayed second-hand. It was a conversation primarily about trademarks and AI.

I don't know the course the OTW is going to take regarding AI with the law, myself. That's not my field whatsoever. I can say, how would we even have the TIME or ABILITY to "develop an AI to be integrated with AO3" as some people speculate? It took our volunteer coders years to work out a block/mute function and get it from idea through testing to implementation.

The OTW does not want to just feed everyone's fanfic into AI. The organization may end up taking a middle-ground stance on the legality of AI and AI-generated creations. I don't think that Disney would care much for the distinction between "This is an AI generated item infringing on our trademark, remove it" versus "This is a fan-made item infringing on our trademark, remove it." The legality of AI versus fan creations is a very tricky topic, and from my understanding, that was the focus of the interview and what was being discussed (along with some other ideas).

Protecting the right to fanfiction and fan creations existing is the primary goal, and navigating new, emerging technologies that could find similar arguments, whether or not people at the org agree with them, means they may end up protecting them somewhat. This is not a betrayal of fandom. Every volunteer is an individual, and opinions within the org are all over the place, but we are all fans as well, and we don't want random bots just lifting all our fics and creations without any say-so either.

The topic of AI is a landmine right now, and I do think it was insensitive and ignorant of the current fandom/political sphere to highlight something like that interview, especially in the way it was done. It immediately led to panic, distrust in the org, and people spinning off numerous infeasible ideas because they simply do not have information, and hear rumors or don't parse a conversation about legalese well (I know I had trouble with it! A lot of my understanding comes from reading discussion about it myself). Nuance is important, as is the fact that nothing is ever published or discussed in a vacuum.

I don't blame anyone for having misinformation, I get it. It can be hard to find correct info. Transparency is something the org is not always great at (it's being worked on! Everyone is aware it's an issue! We are just very,,,,, very slow at implementing changes, as a volunteer-run organization). Time is the OTW's most valuable resource, and we are constantly, constantly in demand and in need of more time and manpower. It can make communications difficult, and very stressing.

The OTW is a non-profit, it is not selling any data. It does not want to sell your data. The money it makes is solely from donations. There is not going to be any selling to AI, there is not going to be any attempt to implement AI for the OTW itself.

Honestly, beyond that, I'm super not qualified to talk about the legal aspects of everything in the article/interview. I don't know all the inner workings of the org, I don't know all the thoughts and opinions and legal stances. I don't even know all the nuances of AI legal issues myself. I just know that I don't think it can replace creativity, and that it could be a fascinating tool in a better world (but I do not trust how it could be used here and now).

I hope this helps anyone who sees it. I hope that this is a reassurance, and that maybe it will help people feel better. I know panic is a powerful force, and I know there is a great distrust in any organization even mentioning AI (usually for valid reasons!). I know information can be hard to find, and legal discussions hard to read, I've been there with the org myself.

But the OTW is a group of people trying their best to make sure that fandom has protections. There are like, a thousand of us or something. Not all of us are going to agree on everything, but we all agree fans deserve a space to create and have those creations protected. One of the inciting incidents of its founding was a hatred of the idea of some company trying to profit off of fanworks with complete disregard for the fans themselves.

The OTW was founded to prevent fans from being taken advantage of, and to protect fandom's right to exist. It is never going to betray that core tenet. Partially because we're all fans ourselves and have a vested interest in keeping it that way, but additionally: This organization is nothing without its volunteers, and if someone high up on the board or something genuinely tried, we would know and we would make ourselves known.

(Just look into the Board Election of 2015!)

[wangxianficrecs]

Hello!! Could anyone please explain to me what squidgeworld is?? It seems very similar to ao3 but with different colours? Are they the same? What is happening please help

Hi! Squigeworld is another fandom archive that runs on the same open-source software as AO3, which is why it looks so similar!

Some fanfic writers have decided to leave AO3 and post on other sites for the time being, because they are unhappy with AO3 and the OTW, especially in regards to how they handle issues like racist harassment and abuse or AI scraping (which is also why many have locked their fics).

I hope this short explanation helps and if anyone wants to add something else, feel free to do so! For now though, I would also like to add that there is no need to panic, we're just witnessing new sites appearing and only time can tell which ones will be able to perservere.

~Mod Kay

[frostedpuffs]

How do you protect your fanfiction from being stolen via AI? Is there something you have to do in the coring? Do you keep it log in to read only or is Ao3 actually doing anything more for author protection?

the sad truth is that i don't think there is really any way to protect fanfiction. you can limit your fics to users with accounts, but i don't even know if that stops writing from being scraped for AI. if there is a method out there, im unfortunately not aware of it

i considered restricting my fics to users with accounts, but then i would be locking a lot of my readers out from reading my stuff, and that didn't sit right with me either.

unfortunately, with all the AI "art" being made, it is a very sad world for creatives. it genuinely makes me really sad and it's very discouraging. and it makes me so angry. so angry.

but I love to write, I love to draw, so i create anyway. ive dealt with my art getting stolen since i first joined this fandom and even in fandoms before. it's why I left the ml fandom for a little while. it sucks, it hurts, and i wish people had more respect for the amount of work that goes into creating fanfic or fanart

but i have to keep creating. if I don't make art, i won't be whole

[athingofvikings]

Intro Post: Who I Am And What I Write

So this is overdue, but I figure that I should finally get around to it; I have an older, half-finished version... somewhere in my drafts on here, and well... I stopped looking for it and started over, just to give you an idea of how deep in there it's gotten.

So!

Hi, I'm athingofvikings, aka Joe, aka The Evil Authorlord as dubbed by my readers. I've been in fandom for close to 20 years, and for the last seven or so, I've been primarily in the How To Train Your Dragon fandom. I was a substitute teacher in the US, and have since emigrated to Germany, as my spouse is a German national. These days, I'm studying German, trying to decide if I want to try to teach again in the German school system, and trying to get my own writing career off the ground.

As for fandom, my then-fiancee, now-spouse introduced me to the first HTTYD movie during the Parental Introduction Visit in 2016; my first comment after finishing the movie was, "Cute, but not historically accurate."

A month later, I was preparing for NaNoWriMo 2016 when the plot bunny bit down.

"But what if it was historically accurate?"

So that's the core plot concept for my eponymous fanfic, A Thing Of Vikings. I take the first HTTYD film, anachronisms and all, and drop it as a Real Life Event in our history, and proceed to write it as an Alternate History, with the movie being the point where the timelines diverge.

And boy do they diverge, because, in a time when the most advanced military tech on the planet is Greek Fire, a small Norse tribe up in the British Isles suddenly has a fire-breathing air-force.

I do my best to keep to historical accuracy, even as I also borrow judiciously from other fictional media to patch holes in the historical record and add to the narrative as I need them, and since I'm a Leftist and my primary fictional source material is a movie made for children, there's a distinct progressive bent to the story itself, and I make no apologies for that. And since I'm Jewish, I also have a Jewish subplot that has made many people very happy, and made a number of bigots absolutely furious to almost ludicrous extents, which I consider to be a positive on both ends. (There was a period where some reactionaries with a fondness for Alt-History were recommending my story to others of their ilk just to troll them, which, well...)

And, of course...

I explore what would happen if humans suddenly have access to the capabilities of dragons in the context of the medieval era--what flight, the ability to breath fire, shedding fireproof scales, and more--will do to human society... especially as one of the main characters is a certified technical and engineering genius. To say that I have fun with the Mundane Utility aspects is an understatement.

I hope that you're intrigued, and if you are, you can find the fic on AO3 here (currently on lockdown to registered users only; I don't fancy my work being scraped for AI training sets).

[imperiuswrecked]

It's so frustrating as a fanfic writer to know that so many people want to screw us over.

People who aren't in fandom spaces, who aren't fanfic writers, who don't give a single fuck about the way fandom works or about being respectful to fanfic writers decide they can constantly try to profit and commercialize our work.

From secondary apps making people pay for an app to access fics that are FREE, so the writer gets less traffic, views, kudos, comments, and of course none of that app money.

And now book binders are stealing fics to bind for people. Literally stealing fics, not asking the writer, not caring about anything except making money off of some one else's work.

How is that fair. How is it fair that so many people keep coming in to steal our work? Fanfic writers cannot get paid to write, unlike fan artists taking on commissions, without being slapped with lawsuits. That's fine because most writers do this for the love of their fandoms.

Writers put in so much time, hours and sometimes years of work into writing, they do this for free, they share it for free, because they love the fandom, and instead of just leaving fic writers alone people are constantly walking in and going "omg what if I stole this and made people pay me for it?" Sincerly who the fuck do they think they are? They aren't smart when they try to swindle people. All that will happen is writers will start to pull their fics offline. They'll go back to sharing fics among a small group of trusted friends in private servers.

This is why people leave fandoms, this is why fandoms die and all those fun free fics go away.

Hope your greed was worth it. Assholes.

Edit to add: I completely forgot that Chat AI scrapes off fanfics too. People need to stop leeching off writers and stealing their works.