Primary Colors.

Me @ me: you cannot cram every thought you have about a character into one fic you cannot cram every thought you have about a character into one fic

my favorite character archetype is beautiful intimidating sexy woman who is actually a lonely little dork with deep psychic wounds

please support the Tahsen family’s evacuation!

my ipad decided to pass on this morning, so all of my artwork from the past two years (that i dutifully declined to back up like an idiot) is gone ✌️✨

so uhh yeah, just fyi there’ll be no new art for a while till i somehow organise a new one

Super Sisters

i did this instead of writing

Zhizhaf (Chill)

“There’s the last of it,” Kara said cheerfully, dimming down her heat vision in order to hand Lena her hot cocoa. “No more heat vision until we get back on Earth.”

“So we really don’t have to worry about that asteroid field?” Alex asked.

The four sat in a circle on the floor of J’onn’s cruiser - Kara, Lena, Alex, and Kelly all facing one another, piled onto pillows and blankets as their ship made its way through space. J’onn had been kind enough to let the four borrow his ship for the journey to Argo, taking about a day - longer than the last time Kara went, to avoid stressing the engines - for a trip to Kara’s homeland.

Unlike Kara’s first time aboard the cruiser, J’onn had made considerable improvements, allowing it to have a bigger interior than her first trip to Argo or Mars. There were controls facing out towards windows of endless darkness, a small area with a TV and couches and blankets that also served as a place to sleep, a storage closet with leftover supplies, and a small bathroom. Finally, the back of the ship had a small airlock, leading to the exit.

(Kara had suggested making it a convertible car like her trip to Mars, but she was soundly outvoted.)

“J’onn’s ship can navigate the asteroid field automatically,” Kara shrugged. “Besides, I don’t trust your flying.”

“Hey, I saved you after you threw Fort Rozz into space,” Alex said back. “In your own pod.”

“This ship is bigger! And there were no asteroids!”

“Earth is surrounded by debris-”

“Maybe we can watch a movie,” Kelly grinned, eyeing Lena across the way, who was holding back a laugh at the bickering sisters. “We brought a copy of Die Hard with us.”

The group agreed - aside from Kara murmuring The Mummy is better under her breath - as the group repositioned their nest of blankets and pillows. Kelly grabbed the DVD, popping it into the TV before snuggling up against Alex and reaching for the remote.

Lena, in turn, snuggled up against Kara - causing the kryptonian’s heart to skip a beat. Keep it together, Kara thought, we’re just friends.

But before Kelly could press play, Lena interrupted. “Guys? Should that be happening?”

The group turned, following Lena’s gaze to the windows ahead, where a small layer of ice was forming at the rims. “That’s not good,” Alex said, as the four shuffled to their feet.

They approached the screens of the ship controls, as Lena began to tap away. “Flow is normal in all steam pipes,” Lena said, “No sign of a leak or reduced gas pressure-”

“But the temperature’s dropping fast,” Kelly murmured, rubbing at her arms as Alex stepped in to warm her. “Something isn’t right.”

“Our course is off,” Alex said, nodding towards a neighboring screen. “We still have the same plot mapped, but we’re deviating significantly.”

“Because of the asteroids?” Kelly asked.

“This is too far for that,” Lena murmured.

“No…” Kara whispered.

The other three women looked up at the kryptonian, noting her wide eyes and suddenly concerned features. “Kara?” Lena asked.

“We need psychic inhibitors,” Kara said, turning to run towards the storage closet, “Alex, stay at the controls, autopilot might disengage.”

“Kara, what’s happening?” Lena asked, as she and Kelly followed. Kara was already digging into the first box she pulled down.

“We need three psychic inhibitors, you guys need to start looking,” she said frantically, as Kelly pulled down a second box and began her search.

“Three? You don’t need one?” Lena asked, pulling down a third box.

“You don’t,” Kara said, refusing to meet Lena’s eyes as she was digging. “You might be the only one left sane in a moment.”

“What are you-”

“Found one,” Kelly said, holding up the small earpiece.

“Put it on Alex since she’s driving,” Kara said, as Kelly got up.

“Why would I be the only sane one?” Lena asked. “Kara, what’s happening?”

“Zhizhaf-shed,” Kara said gravely, shoving her box aside to grab another. “I thought they were a myth.”

“I don’t know what that means-”

“They’re-” Kara hesitated, avoiding looking Lena in the eye. “They’re sirens.”

“Sirens,” Kelly said, returning to continue digging through another box. “Mythological creatures that sing to men at sea, so they can crash their ships into the rocks?”

“Kryptonians have a similar legend, about psychic attacks, making people euphoric enough to run out the airlocks,” Kara said. Lena pulled out a second psychic inhibitor, to Kara’s great relief. “Give it to Kelly,” Kara said, watching as Lena passed the device and Kelly attached it to her head.

“Aren’t you immune from psychic attacks?” Lena asked worriedly, continuing to dig into a box.

“Only sometimes,” Alex said from across the room, “Psi was able to break through.”

“How do you know it’s them?” Kelly asked.

“The first sign is a chill coming across the ship,” Kara said, “And then they-”

“Autopilot disengaging!” Alex shouted, “I’m taking over the controls manually.”

“-do that. We don’t have much time,” Kara said, shuffling around the boxes. “We just need one more.”

“Why only one?” Lena said, glancing to the devices on Alex and Kelly’s heads, “Why won’t it affect me?”

“Sirens only, um…” - Kara shifted another box - “They only tempt people who love women.”

Lena and Kelly’s eyes both widened, realizing the additional similarity between Earth and kryptonian sirens. “Then we need two more,” Lena said.

Kara’s head jerked up to Lena. “What are you talking about?”

“We all need them, Kara,” Lena said firmly.

It was Kara’s turn for her eyes to widen-

“Found a third,” Kelly said, holding up a device. Kara muttered something under her breath, grabbing the device from Kelly’s hand, leaning forward to place it on Lena’s temple before she had time to argue. “One more,” Kara said firmly, as they all resumed digging.

But they were out of time.

Lena and Kelly didn’t notice for a moment as they searched - and Alex couldn’t, as she concentrated on navigating the asteroid field, fighting whatever powers were trying to tug the ship off of its path as the air became colder and colder.

But Kara had stilled. “Beautiful…” she murmured. 

Lena glanced up, feeling a sinking sensation in her stomach as she looked over at the kryptonian’s blank face. “Kara?”

“Do you hear that?” Kara said, rising to her feet.

“Kara,” Kelly said, glancing worriedly towards Kara before grabbing another box. “Stay with us, Kara.”

“They’re - they’re beautiful,” Kara said, turning, “They’re calling to me…”

Lena tried to tackle her as Kara walked towards the back of the ship, but - even depowered - Kara was simply too strong. “Kara, Kara stay with me-”

“They say I can go home-”

“You are going home!” Lena begged, trying to pull Kara back. “We’re going to Argo, your parents are waiting-”

But it didn’t seem to matter, how hard Lena pulled back on the kryptonian, what she said. Kara’s eyes were far off and glazed over, entranced and distant as she resolutely made her way to the airlock. “They said I don’t have to be alone anymore,” Kara said.

“Kara-”

Kara pushed Lena back, bounding towards the airlock switch, tapping at the buttons as Lena shuffled to her feet. “Damn it, Kara, they’re not real!”

Lena’s heart raced as the layer of the airlock opened. I can’t let that close with her on the other side, Lena thought, darting forward to again, trying to come up with a plan that was better than another pathetic attempt at wrestling the kryptonian to the ground.

But nothing occurred to her as she caught up to Kara, grabbing her arm. “Kara, please, don’t!”

“I have to,” Kara murmured.

“Why?!”

“I can have everything,” she replied simply, stepping inside. “I can have what I can’t have.”

“Kara-”

There was no more thought. 

There was no more reason. Lena could think of nothing else to do when she surged forward, wrapping her arms around Kara’s neck. Maybe it was some combination of I didn’t know you were into women so now I can put my hat into the ring or just as simple as what if what you want is me. Anything to distract Kara from the siren’s call. Something desperate and stupid.

Lena pressed her lips against Kara’s.

She expected to be thrown back again, shoved aside as Kara finalized the dance of the airlock before losing her life somewhere in space. 

But to Lena’s relief, Kara froze. The kryptonian planted a hand on the wall next to the latch, body tense with confusion. Lena pulled back to look into Kara’s eyes, watching as the fog seemed to partially lift. “Lena?” Kara asked, blinking and dazed but somehow more herself.

“I’m here,” Lena said.

But to her horror, the fog seemed to only temporarily clear. Kara’s eyes began to glaze over again as the ship became colder still. Lena was dimly aware of Kara moving to flick the switch of the airlock, of a tap-tap-tap sound approaching behind her, of the kryptonian pushing her away as the trance began to grow again-

Then Lena felt a small push to the side, as Kelly stepped in, pressing a device to Kara’s temple.

Lena sighed in relief.

-----

Kara slept for most of the remaining journey, fitful between stretches of sleep and brief moments to drink some water. “This really wiped her out,” Alex said.

Kara was still shaky when they arrived on Argo, though her grogginess faded faster - by the time they were all sitting for a meal with Alura and Zor-El, she had mostly recovered from the stressful ordeal. Warm hugs and introductions were exchanged, stories told over the evening as the group settled in for their stay.

But Kara had not once met Lena’s eyes.

Evening became night - dishes were cleaned, bags were placed in guest rooms, and Kara excused herself to step outside and watch the starry skies of Argo. I need to clear the air, Lena thought to herself, glancing to the door as Alex and Kelly wandered off to shower and sleep.

Lena stepped outside, grateful that Kara’s parents were content to remain indoors, reading for the evening. She glanced up ahead, watching where Kara stood in a dim garden, leaning on a railing as she watched the sky. 

Lena walked forward, fighting the shivers from the cool night, knowing that Kara could hear her padding across the stone steps, before she gingerly stepped to Kara’s side. Lena leaned against the railing, eyes gazing out in the same direction as Kara’s, as they stood in silence.

Lena heard Kara draw in a quiet, resigned breath. “It worked because it was you,” Kara confessed.

“What do you mean?” Lena asked gently.

“The kiss. It woke me up,” Kara said, swallowing nervously. “It’s- it’s not just that you’re a woman. It worked because it was you.”

“Oh,” Lena breathed.

“I probably should’ve told you a while ago,” Kara murmured. “How I felt. I didn’t expect…”

Kara trailed off, shuffling nervously on her feet. Lena placed a comforting hand on her arm. “It’s certainly not how I imagined our first kiss,” Lena murmured.

That startled Kara enough to finally - finally - meet Lena’s gaze. “You- imagined?”

“For years,” Lena said softly. “Personally, I think we should get a do-over.”

Kara smiled. “Really?”

“Really.”

Kara examined Lena’s face - glanced to her eyes, before dropping to her lips, back up to her eyes again. Lena could see the slight blush on Kara’s cheeks in the dark, and she knew hers were in a matching shade.

Kara moved slowly, tentatively - opening her arms for Lena to step into them, which Lena did. Lena found herself lifting her hands, cupping Kara’s face as the blonde smiled softly back. Tentatively, Kara leaned forward, as Lena tilted her head.

Lips met soft lips, and Lena could feel her heart flutter in her chest, feel Kara’s tension sublimate to eagerness. Lena parted her lips in an invitation that Kara blissfully followed, the blonde tightening her arms around Lena’s waist as Lena’s fingers made their way into Kara’s hair.

And Lena no longer felt the chill of the night.

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.

finally completed my comic based on the song ivy by taylor swift!✿ please zoom in to read the text and see the details~

✿.✿.✿

you can get the digital zine pdf here! it includes extras like character profiles, costume design, more art of willow and ivy, zine-exclusive sketches and an illustrated guide to the symbolism of all the flowers in this comic.

you can also get prints of individual pages here!

✿.✿.✿

had art block this week and it was awful lol 

anyway, here’s some stuff from a reign is gone and everyone gets to go to argo au