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Fandom: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Thorin Oakenshield/Original Female Character(s), Kíli (Tolkien)/Tauriel (Hobbit Movies), Bilbo Baggins/Bofur Characters: Thorin Oakenshield, Original Female Character(s), Bard the Bowman (Tolkien), Kíli (Tolkien), Fíli (Tolkien), Gandalf (Tolkien), Bilbo Baggins, Tauriel (Hobbit Movies), Sigrid (Hobbit Movies), Thranduil (Tolkien), Dís (Tolkien), Original Dwarf Character(s), Original Elf Character(s), Original Characters Additional Tags: Modern Character in Middle Earth, Female Character of Color, Dwarven Ones | Soulmates, Soulmates, Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Pre-Quest of Erebor, Post-Quest of Erebor

Summary: Some people call it fate — a culmination of past lives, a thread of red string. How many times have they done this before, she wondered, dancing around each other before their timelines were finally in step?

In which a modern day surgeon is given a second chance to save the man she loves. In return, she must help the stranger who wears his face reclaim his kingdom from a fire-breathing dragon.

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The atrocities of IDW?? No, never heard of her 🙄 all I remember is how everyone had a really good time, making gingerbread houses, being jolly and silly. It just happened to be that Starscream and Megatron were fighting about their combined efforts so Megatron blasted away the stress of it all 🤷 meanwhile the waves? They’re all good, just a house was too boring for them tho, so city it is

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Hello 👋

I wish you a happy new year 🎉

Today is ezzdeen's second birthday in the genocide, he turned 8 years old

He is ADHD and very needy & picky, so the family is suffering with him 😔

You can help ezz by reblogging our family's artwork here and donating if you can 🙏🏻

Thank you

campaign is vetted by 🇵🇸 @/gazavetters List at #291 !!

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Ugh the movements of these bucketheads 😫

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happy holidays everyone x have a shy fort max under a mistletoe

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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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I’m going to perform medical malpractice on you cuz I love you

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tossing and turning in my sleep because not only did bayverse had THE megan fox in their movies but also VICTORIA SECRET MODEL ROSIE HUNTINGTON WHITELEY ?!?!? and they still managed to ruin both their characters ??

sam witwicky’s relevance to the plot never made any sense, mikaela should have been the main character. brave, compassionate and a brilliant mechanic — she would have saved the day. easy. never forgiving bay for slandering her. god forbid a woman stands up for herself.

sick of beautiful , drop-dead gorgeous women being reduced to nothing but damsels in distress and eye candy. if a romantic plot should exist, it should’ve been one of the girls ending up with an autobots. robot-kisser nation we would have won…

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Humanity's Imprint; The Quest To Be Remembered Credit to: @mag200 (x), @janemorris (x), @zegalba (x)

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seasonal anthologies ft. the mtmte bots, sfw !

summer is for celebrations and driving down to the beach with drift, where the air hot and thick despite the setting sun in the distance. you stick your head out the passenger window to feel the wind rushing past your ears, the excited roar of his engines bouncing off the cliffside. it's sitting on rodimus's shoulders as he runs past the shore, the spray of cold water making you squeal into the side of his helm. june, july, august — salt dissolves in your mouth while thunder rumbles in the distance. you sit by the steps of your porch with swerve, the air heavy with heat. as if the earth was holding its breath in anticipation, waiting to break and give way to rain. his big, blocky fingers awkwardly tearing through an orange for you to eat. saccharine and sticky, the fruit drips down your forearms with every bite. green is the grass between your toes, grey is the sky as it melts to nightfall. summer is when the mattress dips unequally to one side, where you and tailgate sleep back to back, skin to metal. the warmth sinks into your bone, blanket on the floor as the faint whirring of his systems lulls you to sleep. fall is for new beginnings, shorter days, and knitted scarves. where the sunlight is lighter and softer, casting long, golden shadows across ratchet's face. he displaces his mass to help you tie your coat by its belt, pulling you closer to soak in the heat radiating off his chassis—soft wool between his shiny servos. september bleeds into october, and somewhere between, where the air is so clean it shivers, cyclonus walks next to you in muted contemplation. optics quietly taking in the ocean of leaves crunching underneath his pedes. cinnamon between your teeth as you swallow your longing, fingers tracing over the holo-picture of skids. nautica says the muted colors remind her of him, but she blames it on the morning chill creeping past her cables. you tell her that fall is the season of reminiscing, of missing what is gone and what is yet to come — the ending and beginning of things, the place where all things come to die. the soil is soft and the world is asleep. this is the part where you turn off the lights and leave.

winter is for joy and relaxation, november a mosaic of warm orange windows and deep blue nights, where the moonshine falls thin and silver. minimus is determined to keep you from straying off the path, guiding you through the thick heap of snow — arms intermingled, hand and servo intertwined. your laughter rings into the night like bells, airy and light; a quiet wish, a happy prayer. for some, december is asleep. it's reclusive and shy, just like rung when he gives in to your request to stay inside, submitting to the weight of the duvet as it swallows you both. for others, the darkness only makes them vigilant. optics wide awake, prowl slinks back into the shadows, pale like the blizzard, soundless like a secret. early mornings and frozen lakes, megatron tells you the winter is cruel — barren and empty, silencing the earth. you disagree, telling him that winter is full of hope, where the snow is white with the promise of forgiveness. the promise to begin again.

spring is for waking up under the sun, where the light kisses your cheeks and shoulders; brainstorm suddenly envious of the star. you chew berries against the bark of an old, dying tree. skin buzzing with a new kind of energy, heart bursting at the sight of perceptor studying the small animals in the distance. in february, you stretch your arms to welcome a night of storms. in march, you patiently listen to whirl complain about the pollen in his cogs. finally, in april, the air is alive, sweet and rosy, laughing and singing. first aid lifts you with his open palm, across a running stream, down a winding, rocky path. somewhere behind you, misfire raises his helm to the clear, cloudless sky. drowning himself in the sound of strange birds and even stranger insects. there is a tenderness to all of this, capricious and fickle, flowers buried in the wash of green grass. a dream you don't want to wake up from, an embrace you're not ready to part with. nightbeat says he hates when beautiful things are fleeting, and you think he's no longer referring to the spring, optics sad and distant as they land on you.

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do you have any specific prime-verse headcanons? ❤️❤️

hi lovely anon ! thank you for the message, i'd love to answer this so please send it in my inbox on @megtrns ! cause i've moved my writings there ( this blog is mainly for reposts :) + also never mind the closed request sign on my other blog, i'll still answer this with the next round of requests !) thank youu 🤎

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behind closed doors. ੈ♡˳

optimus prime x afab human reader warnings: nsfw.

he is fascinated.

it took a great deal of convincing. not him, but you - over mass displacement. you argued that with all the warnings from ratchet the purpose of such mechanisms should only be applied for tasks of importance.

optimus, as stoic as he can be now, could only hide his smile behind the battle-worn mask. "you are of importance", he said, such a simple reply. yet, he watched as you gaped like a goldfish, flustered beyond belief.

the prime had seen many a spectacle. overgrown forests bursting with life. deserts as dry as the sands of beachy hills and glacier cooled mountains under canopies of wind and snow. none could ever compare to humanity. so delicate and resilient, resourceful.

this adoration grips his spark in stride, especially when you finally get over nerves and slowly slip the velvet of your robe off a shoulder.

it's an intimate affair. skin and curve and softness, much closer than before. he's taller still, at least several feet. but now, he can gently grab your arms. squeeze his digits like scooping gold and watch entranced when the love indents form.

"optimus..."

a whine. he gingerly lets you go, still crowding your space. you show no actual discomfort and it's obvious by the time the puddle of fabric slips to your ankles, creating a halo around your feet. his optics, electric, take in the swell of your ass. your thighs, calves, biceps.

"the shower will get cold, my love."

now you are the one in a trance. so, you slide open the glass door, fingerprints leaving a kiss in the fog. your lover follows behind slowly, as if you might bound off like startled deer.

optimus wrangles his pondering by working the knots from your back instead.

the noises leaving your wet lips stir at his core. he feels perverted, watching your head tip back until the crown hits his chassis, spine arching beautiful as those modes of destruction and heroism glide down the front of your body.

droplets cling to your chest and drip down your chin. his fans, internal, click to a blast which is dampened by cascading shades from the shower-head.

"you look so small.. like this."

surprise takes your features by storm and his helm feels hot, not meaning to have said the thought aloud. however, when you part your legs to allow him to sponge lavender and honey suds with care, he can tell you find his sentiment charming.

he was so awkward with you at first.

now, the leader is wrapped tight around your fingers and you are wrapped tight around his. he can't help himself, thick silver of his middle digit pumping in and out. greedy where milky white coats and while his servos are still navigating, pleasing, you're practically drowning for him already.

you're cute. cute when you lift to the balls of your feet when he just can't take it anymore, array unlocking and spike rocking a steady pace that has you panting against porcelain.

when you aren't sounding dumb anymore, dribbling and babbling like you've lost your mind, you might laugh at the idea of the optimus prime being an ass-man.

it's a shameful vice when he switches positions. you're much bendier underneath warm drizzles, so you let him lift your leg just enough to hitch close to your hip so he can find that special angle that gets you singing. those "ah, ah, ah!"s when your flesh ripples, crushed ribbon beneath his grip.

and then you're crying, tangle of limbs while he sits. still full to the brim, strawberry pink coating your clit as he keeps close to you in a way you can't speak of beyond closed walls.

robolvrr 2024.

a/n: it has been so busy with holidays coming up! i am one tired gal. but i wanted to write a lil something (and i love this old tired man.)

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"Why did I do that?"

close up

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Regency Era AU, Ultra Magnus is a HORSE, no i dont take any criticism on this