saw this on twitter rn, if you ever feel discouraged about writing fanfiction, read this again

...This.

FanFiction.net is not gone.

Right now it's a victim of DNS (Domain Name Service) spoofing. This means that a malicious party is trying to trick people into thinking that they are the real FFn (/steal traffic/make money/whatever) by purchasing a very similar domain.

So if you want to read fanfiction and not see leaves, you have have to type out "www.fanfiction.net"

You know what I don’t get?  When fanfic authors apologize for long chapters.  It’s like?  You gave me bonus content, for free, and you’re sorry about it?  Bruh.  I have already named my firstborn after you.  Dude.

You know what else I don’t get?  When they apologize for short updates.  It’s like: look at these new words I gave you!  Sorry I didn’t give you even more free words.  Bro, that’s at least two words that I did not have yesterday.  For free.  Dude.  Thank you.

And another thing: when people drop out of nowhere with a surprise update and then apologize for it taking a while.  Like, dude, I wasn’t expecting anything, and you gave me words.  I thought this fic was abandoned, but wait: there’s more.  You just popped in and reminded me that this is a Good Fic that I should probably reread.  You made my goshdarn day.

Basically fanfic writers are under no obligation to publish anything so when they do update it’s always a net positive because the story is longer now, and I have something to read, so thank you so much to everyone who writes fic at whatever pace or quantity they want.

On another note, people have absolutely no right to be angry at fanfic authors for having shorter updates than usual or straying from their usual type of content. It infuriates me when content creators have to ask their fans to stop requesting a specific type of content when it’s clearly not what they want to do. THEY ARE NOT OBLIGATED TO CREATE FOR YOU OR CATER TO YOUR NEEDS. Writing, drawing, and CREATING should be fun and you have no right to demand things from someone who’s doing you a favor by creating anything in the first place!!

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

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

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

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

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

Don’t Add Fanfiction To Your Goodreads Shelf

Hi folks, I know some of you like to use Goodreads to track all your reading and don’t want to distinguish between books and fanfiction.

I am, however, begging you not to do this. It is extremely jarring and disconcerting to be a fic author and find your works somewhere in the wild where you did not personally put them. Fics are not books, are not published in the same way as books, and exist in a precarious legal space.

Please don’t attempt to elide the separation that exists between fandom and the world of official publishing.

Well this is much nicer than how I said it 🤣

[ID: tweet from @westiectweets — “PSA: Don’t Fucking Add Fic to Goodreads What the Fuck”]

update to add:

if you are a fic author and you find your fic on Goodreads, you can get it removed!

Here’s how:

I hope this helps some of my fellow fic authors!

hey guys please reblog this version

I’ve seen multiple people reblogging the original post with tags saying how they have struggled to get their fics taken down off Goodreads & I want folks to know that it IS possible

kind of wanna reinforce this here. because i’ve seen ai writing become so popular on tik tok.

ai writing is not okay.

it’s literally theft. just like how ai art steals, ai writing steals. it’s using authors’ very real work to generate whatever you type in. and this also needs to be said as well.

writing is a form of art. fanfiction is a form of literature.

seeing this all over my fyp is REALLY discouraging. fanfic itself is already a labor of love and we love it when you interact. but please do not use ai writing for your fanfic needs when this writing literally steals from fanfic authors.

genuinely don’t know if this post will go around because my interactions outside of hcs are shit, but i hope it does.

THE DAD BRACKET: ROUND 3

Stoick - How to Train Your Dragon / Ethan Winters - Resident Evil

If you like what I’m doing, reblog so others can participate! And remember: Bring your favorites up, don’t bring the others down!

A reminder that sell-buy dates or best-used-by dates are not the same as expiration dates.

I love that a food bank is providing this info as they are experts in stretching food budgets and knowledgable in shelf-stable food items

Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

Art thieves already hate it:

Drawing tips by Disney artists Griz and Norm Lemay

Some ppl in a server wanted this so I happily obliged, and I figured I’d post it on here bc why not :p also my wife @princepixelbunny helped some as well ty sweetie <3

the suffering never ends

This is the real process

Resources for you!

Character Ideas:

Character Design Ideas:

Naming Help:

Creating Background/backstory:

Character Interactions and putting your character into your world/story:

Bonus art masterlist!

BLESS EVERYONE IN THIS POST.

(source)

This looks like a shitpost but it’s actually solid advice, like, if you want to achieve a goal you have to pace yourself and be patient instead of expecting too much too soon and then giving up

For artists who have problems with perspective (furniture etc.) in indoor scenes like me - there’s an online programm called roomsketcher where you can design a house/roon and snap pictures of it using different perspectives.

It’s got an almost endless range of furniture, doors, windows, stairs etc and is easy to use. In addition to that, you don’t have to install anything and if you create an account (which is free) you can save and return to your houses.

Examples (all done by me):

Here’s an example for how you can use it

Great find, thanks!

OMG HEAVEN!!

Bless you!!!!

And if you happen to have the Sims, it’s useful too

...that your audience won't hate.

This is a method I started using when NFTs were on the rise - thieves would have to put actual work into getting rid of the mark - and one that I am now grateful for with the arrival of AI. Why? Because anyone who tries to train an AI on my work will end up with random, disruptive color blobs.

I can't say for sure it'll stop theft entirely, but it WILL make your images annoying for databases to incorporate, and add an extra layer of inconvenience for thieves. So as far as I'm concerned, that's a win/win.

I'll be showing the steps in CSP, but it should all be pretty easy to replicate in Photoshop.

Now: let's use the above image as our new signature file. I set mine to be 2500 x 1000 pixels when I'm just starting out.

Hey friends. Do this:

This probably took this person 3 seconds to do but it immediately told me that they liked my story enough to come back and read it again and they liked it again the second time.

Your favorite writers Do Not Know that you think about their stories after you read them. I generally assume that my stories make people happy for the few minutes they’re reading and then they never think about it again. To know that that’s not the case and that someone has returned just makes my little heart swell with joy.

I needed this today. If you’re the person who left this comment (or if you’ve ever commented on any of my writing) I love you.

Well this is the most popular post I’ve ever done by an order of magnitude…

The best part has been the people putting tags on their reblogs along the lines of “I’m totally going to do this now” and “I didn’t think authors would like something this simple but I can do this” and authors saying how much this type of comment also means to them.

The second best part was the person who went and read Worship because of this post and then commented on it.

An interesting part has been seeing what a kind of popular post does to your notifications.

I’m really glad this post took off, especially if it means a few more authors get this kind of comment.

A master post of Thomas Romain’s art tutorials.

There’s not enough space to post all of them, SO here’s links to everything he has posted (on twitter) so far : 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12. 

Now that new semesters have started, I thought people might need these. Enjoy your lessons!

Plagiarism Advice

Hi all! Throughout my unfortunately substantial experience with my work being stolen, I’ve learned a lot of really useful tips to deal with plagiarism. I hope these help!

- Compiled and written by Meggie Royer