Having Depression And Autism Plus Hyper Fixations Is Crazy Cause Whaddya Mean I Was Sobbing Uncontrollably

I feel like Mary would be the one to give a shovel talk if Billy ever got a romantical partner (not likely cause aroace billy for the win!)

Like, I want her to be the protective one. Let her be the one to stand behind Billy and menacingly glare at whoever is being slightly rude.

Every time somebody asks Billy why he doesn’t do a thing half the time he answers with “House number [insert number here]” and the JL eventually don’t question him further and just apologise before shuffling away awkwardly.

Billy Batson answering (as Captain Marvel) the question of why he doesn't join in for a drink with the group after being pressured for the 800th time, this time by Guy, who already pisses Billy off in general tho he tries to hide it.

"House number 5. I don't drink."

"what the hell does that mean?"

"foster home number 5. Got beat black and blue by the foster parents bc one of the other kids stole their liquor and they blamed it on me. Nasty alcoholics, the both of them. So I told myself, when I grow up, I won't touch the stuff."

Guy tries back pedaling, but one of the others has already slapped him upside the head for pushing the captain.

"I'm sorry you went thru that cap, I guess we shouldn't have been bothering you to drink so much"

Idk something along the lines of whether true or not, Billy decides to tell them something that'll make them regret pushing. Still kinda percolating in my brain

when you dump the rats out in the front yard where do you think they go

imagine having a devastating piece of gossip (the Waynes were secretly sleeping with their butler) and trying to flip that around as an attack/leverage on their now-adult kid mid-fancy event but said kid is Bruce Wayne and didn’t lose his cool last week when the entire actual Earth was about to blow up so all he does is raise one eyebrow, shrug, down his entire glass of champagne in one graceful chug, and waltz off with a breezy “Guess it’s finally time to get that paternity test, huh?”

Arcane is a story about the horrors of war

How no one is safe, no one is free from it, even after it ends

How war can destroy everything if it’s not quelled

There were so many names in that bowl

Arcane is a story of caution

It’s also a story of devotion

Singed is so devoted to his daughter he destroys countless families and nearly brings his people to ruin

His devotion is rewarded

Ekko is so devoted to his people and his land that he takes on more and more and more until he breaks down

Ekko is so devoted to Powder and to Jinx that he leaves a perfect life to save her

That he tortures himself, watching her die over and over until he can find the right words to save her from herself

He is punished for his devotion

Caitlyn is so devoted to the memory of her mother that she is willing to tarnish it to try to prove her love for someone no longer there to receive it

She is so devoted to the past that she is willing to let go of her future with Vi for it

She is both rewarded and punished for it in the end

Violet’s devotion to her family, bled into her devotion to Powder - Powder’s devotion to Violet bled into Jinx’s devotion to Vi

Vi’s devotion to Jinx is found in Jinx’s devotion to Isha and is reciprocated in kind

Vi’s generational devotion can’t save them but it does save her

She would trade places with Jinx in a heartbeat, just as Jinx would have for Isha

Vander is so devoted he places his family above his principles- working with those who oppress his people to keep his family safe

It’s not enough

Silco is devoted to his cause to the point that he is willing to go to the same depths as his adversaries

He’s even willing to kill his own people in the name of saving them

Sevika is also devoted to the same cause, enough so that she was willing to go on the frontlines, willing to throw the first punch against a much larger opponent

In the end her devotion leads her to working with the same people she’d once planned on attacking, for the benefit of her people, in honor of those she lost

Ambessa has a twisted understanding of devotion, so devoted to her daughter’s legacy that she kills in Mel’s name, a child just like her, breaking their connection in that very moment in the name of devotion that she was afraid of

Mel is devoted to her own principles, come by naturally and inherited from her brother, even after she is punished, banished for it, she remains ever devoted - not even Kino’s death or Ambessa’s makes her falter in her conviction- but it does change her

Viktor is so devoted to being good, over being great, over being remembered, he is so devoted to being good that he tells Jayce to destroy the one thing that can save him no matter he fears the ticking clock and Jayce, so devoted to Viktor, can’t

And when Viktor’s devotion is corrupted, Jayce takes it on

In their final moments Viktor, the truest version of him, tries to push through his fears and do one final act of good - save Jayce, he’s on the brink of death and he tells the most important person in his life to leave him

Jayce who had so much to live for, who could have done so much good still, so devoted to Viktor refused to leave him, no matter the consequences

Ximena is so devoted to her son she will do anything to save him, even stand up to the most powerful people in her city for him

It gives him time

It does not save him

She is still left alone in the end

Several background characters weave in and out of the main character’s stories, and time and time again we see them do everything for the people they love

Some are rewarded

Most are not

Arcane is a story of how war shows us the depths of our devotion, the lengths we are willing to go for it

Arcane is a story of caution

my phone isn’t charging even though i plugged her innnnn dramatic ass bitch. YOUR PUSSY IS FILLED! WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT

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.

A summary of Cass's early years:

Cassandra: (baby noise)

David, handing her a loaded gun and watches her nail every target:

Sometimes I feel like I live in a timely loop where every two weeks there’s another “pick your favourite/who’s the best Robin” poll.

One day Stephanie is going to win and then you’ll all see.

I love making these lists and I can’t stop

Things I think the Marvel Trio (Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel & Capt Marvel Jr) have done in front of other heroes that prove they are all siblings.

(Yes I know most of these are more argument-based but these are all sibling moments and if I think of anything wholesome I’ll make another list.)

Cap yanked off Mary’s cape and ran for it with her in hot pursuit.

Jr & Cap kicked each other under the table for half a hour straight during a hero meeting.

Mary put Jr in a headlock and dragged him around.

Jr & Mary duck taped Cap to the watchtower cafeteria ceiling.

All three kept blowing raspberries at each other during a big fight against a supervillain

Cap & Jr both kept making fart noises every time Mary took a step.

All three showed up to a mission with ice creams smooshed on their heads and glares being thrown between the three of them.

Cap & Jr were put in the Get Along Shirt.

Mary & Cap were put in the Get Along Shirt.

Jr & Mary were put in the Get Along Shirt.

All three were put in the Get Along Shirt by a grumpy Batman.

Mary threw Jr into the sun after an argument (he’s fine.)