vivid-fairy

[vivid-fairy]

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.

[vivid-fairy]

thinking about creatures.

[vivid-fairy]

Not Out of My League

alden parker x reader

‘Undercover. Great.’ (Y/N) thought as she heard the news that Parker and herself were to be going undercover as a rich couple, at some party that a suspect would be present at. It’s not that (Y/N) didn’t like going undercover for a case, but it wasn’t her favorite thing to do. (Y/N) has had a crush on Parker since he took over as team lead, and only Jessica and Kasie knew about it. As soon as Jessica heard about the op, she immediately went to (Y/N)’s desk and left a note saying, ‘you should finally tell him’. Parker didn’t mean to read the note from Jessica on (Y/N)’s desk, but it was next to the stack of paperwork he needed for the op.

‘Tell who?’ Parker thought. He secretly hoped it was him, whom the note was referring to. He has had a crush on (Y/N) since he took over as team lead. He knew he shouldn’t, but there was just something in the way she has compassion for everyone she meets, she’s always up for helping Kasie and Jimmy with whatever they need, and her overall gentle demeanor. And don’t get him started on how she looks when she’s holding a gun. Beautiful and badass. Parker hoped not a lot of people knew about it, but he had a sneaking suspicion Vance knew when he picked (Y/N) to be his undercover wife. Parker was so nervous, which is highly unlike him, but little did he know that (Y/N) was just as nervous. 

(Y/N) didn’t have anything close to what she needed for the op, so she borrowed a dress from Jessica, which just so happened to be the one she wore to the wedding with Jimmy. (Y/N) tried it on in Kasie’s lab and she looked and felt incredible. She felt like Mrs. Smith, and it was wonderful knowing that Parker would be her Mr. Smith. But what she wasn’t expecting was for Parker to look so damn fine in a tux. After she had finished getting ready for the op, (Y/N) made her way to the bullpen to go over everything one last time. The first thing she saw when she entered the room was Parker. And without thinking, said, “Hot damn.” Everyone’s attention went to her, including Parker’s. ‘Great, (Y/N). Just great.’ (Y/N) thought to herself as Jessica and Nick smirked at her sudden outburst. 

The op went smoothly, and the suspect was taken into custody. When they got back to the office, they were surprised to find Delilah sitting with Tim and Jessica. “So, how was your night, (Y/N)? Anything good happen?” Delilah said, trying not to laugh. “Yes Delilah, it was great. Thank you. How was yours?” (Y/N) responded, knowing that she was bright red at this point. “It was fine.” Delilah replied. (Y/N) said she needed to change out of the dress and give it back to Jessica, but in reality, she just needed to take a minute and decompress after the case. 

(Y/N) thought of how his hand never left her body. From a gentle touch on the small of her back while they walked through the crowd, to a hand on her thigh, rubbing gentle circles over and over and over again. She never wanted him to stop. What she didn’t know, was that Alden didn't have to pretend he’s absolutely head-over-heels for her. He is absolutely head-over-heels for her. 

(Y/N) felt better after changing and headed back up to the bullpen. She didn’t mean to overhear the current conversation, but it was happening right as she quietly walked in. The only thing she heard was Parker saying, “I just don’t know what to do. I mean, at a certain point tonight, I didn’t have to pretend I love her. I do love her. I love (Y/N), and I don’t know how to tell her.” Tim felt (Y/N)’s presence in the bullpen, but didn’t say anything, because he knew that both Parker and (Y/N) needed to hear it. “You just did.” Tim said, gesturing towards (Y/N). 

(Y/N) couldn’t believe what she just heard. The man she’s been in love with for months, not only feels the same, but he said it outloud. (Y/N) walked up to Parker, and shyly asked, “Is it true? Do you really…?” At first, Parker was scared he overstepped and made (Y/N) uncomfortable. He never wanted to make her uncomfortable. In a moment of bravery, he said, “Yes. All of it. I love you, so much. And you don’t have to say it back or feel the same-” (Y/N) cut him off with a passionate kiss. He very enthusiastically returned the kiss, and he broke the kiss to say, “Wait, you really feel the same way? I always thought you were out of my league.” “Out of your- I always thought you were out of my league.” (Y/N) said with a slight chuckle. 

Jessica interrupted the moment by saying, “Go home you two! And if you need to take the day, we understand.” she said with a wink. “Goodnight!” Parker and (Y/N) said, practically sprinting to the elevator, hand-in-hand. And they did have a magnificent night, and they might have taken the day. It would be a bit awkward to explain to Vance why they both called in sick, but neither of them cared in the moment.

[vivid-fairy]

“I used to dislike being sensitive. I thought it made me weak. But take away that single trait, and you take away the very essence of who I am. You take away my conscience, my ability to empathize, my intuition, my creativity, my deep appreciation for the little things, my vivid inner life, my deep awareness of others’ pain, and my passion for it all.”

— Unknown

[vivid-fairy]

Just a man and his duck

(via)

[vivid-fairy]

If you're reading this...

go write three sentences on your current writing project.

[vivid-fairy]

fluff dialogue prompts

“take my hoodie; it’s cold outside.”

“can i hug/kiss you?”

“your hands are really warm.”

“you look adorable.”

“can i sleep next to you?”

“i’ll protect you no matter what.”

“i’ll always be by your side.”

“give me your hand.”

“i love you.”

“i really like you.”

“can i play with your hair?”

“your lips/hands/hair are/is really soft…”

“i don’t wanna get out of bed!” “well, you have to.”

“i had a nightmare…” “c’mere.”

“pinky promise?”

“let me take care of you.”

“are you blushing?”

“can we cuddle?”

“it’s okay, you’re safe now.”

“don’t worry. i got you.”

“i can give you a massage if you’re sore.”

“you’re as pretty as the stars.”

“don’t get up yet. please?”

“let me make you something to eat.”

“i really missed you.”

“trust fall!”

“i think i like you.”

“can i hold your hand?”

“you’re amazing.”

“as much as i love you, please go to sleep.”

“i got you a present.”

“you’re my safe spot.”

“you wanna get some ice cream?” “it’s 2 a.m.” “and?”

“let’s go on a car ride.”

“breathe.”

“kiss me.”

“i can’t believe you’re actually mine.”

[vivid-fairy]

50 prompts to write and chill to

a collection of prompts I've used and hoarded for a while :')

Day three

Just died

Twenty-three

His wife

Sound imitation

An undelivered message

To be frank:

Deer

Tomorrow

Challenge

Pun

Burning it all

People who don’t exist

Shadow in hiding

I’ll decide in the car

Alone in a cathedral

Truth

Men cooking

Buttons

Car ride

Dawn

Growth/Decay

Is anyone listening?

Earthly pleasures!

The view from up here

Obsession

Chemical reaction

Hometown

Natural light

Parasitic

Heaven/Hell

Submerged in water

The city

Pink, like your brain

Euphoria

Bearing fruit

Grief

How did the sky look?

Tough to be a bug

Moon

Hands, wrists, teeth

Into the woods

Focus on the texture

Black hole

Extinction

Serpentine

Fight or flight

___ as a weapon

Monochrome

Dusk

[vivid-fairy]

I have an idea

And I need to write fast cause the call of sleep urges me

Naruto fanfic, Founders Era, Izuna Lives, Tobirama-centric

Instead of Tobirama being half Hatake, he's half Kaguya

And he does have the bone kekkai genkai

Always love to play with the AU of Tobirama being an extremely overworked workaholic that's trying his best to hold Konoha together and no one seems to notice. Tobi locking himself at his desk, endlessly pouring over admit istration work, project reports, damn near everything in their little fledgingly village of Konoha cause Hashirama isn't exactly helping.

Have tobi work so much that most of Konoha is built with his blood, sweat, and tears (figuratively)

Have it not be enough. Let the coffers run dry and resources suddenly skyrocket in price. Tobirama foresees the ruination of his brother's village before it even begun, a half built city destined for abandonment

So Tobi provides the resource needed to finish off construction. No one knows where the Senju Heir managed to get incredibly fine "white concrete" powder to mix with the chakra resistant foundational concrete blocks but whatever it is, it's quality stuff.

Tobi provide more "white concrete" powder, all the while his skin turns sallow as he continues laboring over administration. He turns guant, his terrible eating habits finally catching up to him as he "mysteriously" starts being excessive calories.

People who work down in the basement with him grow more and more worried but they're nobodies. Hokage-sama isn't going to listen to the concerns of errand runners and Tobirama doesn't seem to have any friends.

Where's the rest of the gang?

Madara has been given the task of securing Konoha's immediate future by earning the approval of the Daimyo to build a village and have several civilian noble lords invest in a shinobi village as a tax write off. He's been gone for years. He comes back home victorious from the warfront of the Courts to receive a warm welcome from his best friend and Izuna.

Hashirama is super eager to give Madara a tour of their childhood dream. Look at all the buildings! The public parks! The fountains! The academy! It's all coming together so well!

And Madara does look around. Sees the roads so carefully laid, the proper communities, the wealth of diversity and people thriving. He turns to Hashirama:

"Who built this village? This is more than the work or either you or I."

It comes out rather easily that Tobirama has been slaving away keeping the bare bones of this village together and...

Well Tobirama's 'unwellness' grew gradually over time so while Hashi knows his little brother is sick, it's just from too much caffeine don't worry!

Except Madara's last memories of the pale Senju were of one healthy, and hale. He knows immediately that something is desperately wrong and speedruns figuring out why.

It will later be revealed:

Tobirama did more than hold together the bare bones of their fledgling village.

His literal bones were used to make the village.

[vivid-fairy]

Three dinosaurs are running across the desert when they stumble upon a magic lamp.

They rub it, and a genie appears.

“I have three wishes, so I’ll give one to each of you,” the genie announces.

The first dinosaur thinks hard.

“Alright,” he says, “I’ll have a big, juicy, piece of meat.”

Instantly, the biggest, juiciest piece of meat he’d ever seen appears in front of him.

Not to be outdone, the second dinosaur thinks even harder.

“I know! I’ll have a shower of meat!”

Immediately, huge pieces of meat rain down around him.

The third dinosaur, certainly not to be outdone, thinks harder than the previous dinosaurs.

“I’ve got it!” he cries, “I want a MEATIER shower!”

[vivid-fairy]

So my village has a charity christmas fair on the last sunday before christmas every year. My sister is in charge of organizing prizes for the lottery/tombola, and she always writes to local businesses to donate items, gift cards, whatever. The companies are usually really generous, it's awesome. First prize is s flat screen tv from a electronics dealer.

We have one shop for home decor that's sadly giving up its business, and donated a whole box of glass decorations.

Among them, this glass shrimp. In a fancy jewelry box.

I'm the only one who loves him 🥺❤. My sister wanted to throw it in the bin because 'who would want a glass shrimp'.

So.

Like and Reblog if you'd want to win a glass shrimp in a tombola, i guess? Let's save him from the bin!

[vivid-fairy]

true love isn’t always rose petals and shiny rings and filtered smiles it’s screaming “go to hell” with the same mouth that sighs “i love you” it’s learning vulnerability to shed your skin like a snake and show them what’s hiding beneath the surface it’s admitting you’re wrong even when you believe you’re right it’s unlocking the closet and allowing your individual skeletons to move in with each other and build a home the way you two have it’s trying trying everyday to write a love story worth finishing because it’s a story that only you can write a romance and an adventure and a drama all wrapped in one feature film you are the audience and the cast and the writers and the directors you have created something indestructible and incredible and utterly unlike anything else your love is not the stuff of fairytales it is real it is work it is worth it

(cc, 2022)

[vivid-fairy]

commissioned by @jesuisbetejesuispatissiere​!! TOOTS TRUMPETS this is a birthday gift for @coffee-without-a-pause asksflksdkj a drawing for their fic “Dites-le avec des fleurs“ which can be found over here!! <3 <3 HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY i hope you have a great one akjsdls!!!

[vivid-fairy]

nothing more disappointing than a shower with low water pressure. i don't want to feel like a wet sad beast left out in the rain i want to be power washed.

[vivid-fairy]

My cat’s killer whiskers + her favourite blanket

[vivid-fairy]