Fanfiction Authors: HEADS UP

(Non-authors, please RB to signal boost to your author friends!)

An astute reader informed me this morning that one of my fics (Children of the Future Age) had been pirated and was being sold as a novel on Amazon:

(And they weren't even creative with their cover design. If you're going to pirate something that I spent a full year of my life writing, at least give me a pretty screenshot to brag about later. Seriously.)

I promptly filed a DMCA complaint to have it removed, but I checked out the company that put it up -- Plush Books -- and it looks like A LOT of their books are pirated fic. They are by no means the only ones doing this, either -- the fact that """publishers""" can download stories from AO3 in ebook format and then reupload them to Amazon in just a few clicks makes fic piracy a common problem. There are a whole host of reasons why letting this continue is bad -- including actual legal risk to fanfiction archives -- but basically:

IF YOU ARE A FANFIC AUTHOR WITH LONG AND/OR POPULAR WORKS, PLEASE CHECK AMAZON TO SEE IF YOUR STORIES HAVE BEEN PIRATED.

You can search for your fics by title, or by text from the description (which is often just copied wholesale from AO3 as well). If you find that someone has stolen your work and is selling it as their own, you can lodge a DMCA complaint (Amazon.com/USA site; other countries have different systems). If you haven't done this before, it's easy! Here's a tutorial:

HOW TO FILE A COPYRIGHT COMPLAINT FOR STOLEN WORK ON AMAZON.COM:

First, go to this form. You'll need to be signed into your Amazon account.

Select the radio buttons/dropdown options (shown below) to indicate that you are the legal Rights Owner, you have a copyright concern, and it is about a pirated product.

Enter the name of your story in the Name of Brand field.

In the Link to the Copyrighted Work box, enter a link to the story on AO3 or whatever site your work is posted on.

In the Additional Information box, explain that you are the author of the work and it is being sold without your permission. That's all you really need. If you want, you can include additional information that might be helpful in establishing the validity of your claim, but you don't have to go into great detail. You can simply write something like this:

I am the author of this work, which is being sold by [publisher] without my permission. I originally published this story in [date/year] on [name of site], and have provided a link to the original above. On request, I can provide documentation proving that I am the owner of the account that originally posted this story.

In the ASIN/ISBN-10 field, copy and paste the ID number from the pirated copy's URL. You'll find this ten-digit number in the Amazon URL after the word "product," as in the screenshot below. (If the URL extends beyond this number, you can ignore everything from the question mark on.) Once this number has been added, Amazon will pull the product information automatically and add it to the complaint form, so you can check the listing title and make sure it's correct.

Finally, add your contact information to the relevant fields, check the "I have read and accept the statements" box, and then click Submit. You should receive an email confirmation that Amazon has received the form.

Please share this information with your writer friends, keep an eye out for/report pirated works, and help us keep fanfiction free and legally protected!

NOTE: All of the above also applies to Amazon products featuring stolen artwork, etc., so fan artists should check too!

IT WAS ERIC AFTER ALL!!!! I'm so glad we got to meet him (before Vil snaps him away with those Infinity Gauntlets) (can't wait to see what happens when we get the matching Infinity Tiara to go with them, there will be no survivors)

(sorry to be so slow/rough lately, just got a lot of stuff on the ol' brain at the moment! alas, if only I could spend all my time drawing incredibly stupid characters I mean I do but)

Sometimes I try to live my life normally but then I remember that when Tim properly met Dick for the first time the man was in full clown makeup.

Theres a foreshadowing joke in that but I can’t quite put it into words.

Steal their look 👗

I know Bethesda has the (well deserved) reputation of creating their games out of hacked together duct-tape-laden spaghetti code on an ancient quirky engine but I feel like FromSoft deserves their fair mention too. Bonfires aren't objects, they're a visual mesh with an invisible NPC standing on top of it that you "talk to" when you want to sit. Tons of enemies are just two NPCs glued on top of one another because they didn't know how to make an enemy have more than one attack that can fire off at a time. Winter lanterns' frenzy buildup attack comes from an invisible guy sitting on their heads shooting you with an invisible gun. Djura doesn't shoot you with his gatling gun, he just sits there doing nothing (with his cape sitting right around his ears due to how the game renders cloth physics from far away) because the actual NPC shooting you is the gun itself. Lothric and Lorian aren't two separate NPCs holding onto each other, they're one NPC with a second, invisible NPC glued to its back that takes damage on behalf of Lothric. Why? Because they couldn't figure out how to make one NPC ride on another one. They straight up went "We couldn't figure out how to make one NPC ride another, so we combined two NPCs into one and then glued another one to its back, simple." Really it's amazing how much of FromSoft's game design is just "we put an invisible guy here to do things because we couldn't figure out how to make the visible guy do it"

Even Elden Ring for all its advancements in mounts and whatnot has hilarious behind the scenes quirks. When Radahn does his meteor attack he doesn't track you, he teleports his horse underneath you and then aims at the horse

look we all want buck in tommys hoodie....

but i raise you a tommy who accidentally grabbed bucks hoodie and walks into harbour only to have lucy laugh so hard she falls out of her chair

one of my favourite things about AO3 tags is their dedication to canon accuracy, even when that means it devolves into complete mayhem like

Percy was not named with a fan following in mind, this was clearly a running gag but it's his name so they have to use all of it

OK OK OK OK-

Ok is ANYONE else talking about the “evil coffee” theory yet??? Or is that just the discord I’m in

Cause like…. Who the FUCK puts THAT much emphasis on a RANDOM CUP OF COFFEE??

I mean Aziraphale literally says “I made my position clear” and then Metaron is immediately like “aAAH, but I brought you.. an OAT milk LaTé 👹” with foreboding music and ominous shots like some scene straight out of a fucking Disney movie, OH Kay… I see you you Jafar sounding bitch 😭😂

You know when you’re falling asleep and a random image or meme blips into your vision? Yeah

-Please do not reupload/edit/use without proper credit and linking back. Ask first.-

I remember I had a friend named Curtis for a while. And while he was a really awesome guy, he leaned into dropping memes at times where it didn’t fit. His favorite was that one meme of Markiplier and the big “E”, which is fun, but there’s a time and place.

Like at one point I was having a somewhat deep discussion with a friend, and my friend was saying stuff like “Yeah, I feel like while it’s true that morals aren’t an objective measure, and while there’s a lot of bad that people show, there’s still a level of goodness that we as a society generally still show to total strangers. Like holding the door open or saying please and thank you, we as people still have a baseline of respect for someone just for being a person”

And of course we just hear “E!!!!!”

My response was obviously “Common Curtis E”

i think i'm hilarious -- aka i made blood blossom danny au memes

all of these come from my DpxDC prompt "i am pushing the batdad agenda--" and it's corresponding additions in the reblogs ksdjlf.

i am. rotating them in my head. forever and always. personally i think there should be more batdad aus in dpxdc, their dynamic could be neat. :)

some (extremely) quick doodles to celebrate the glorious return of glorious masquerade! I haven't had a chance to do much personal drawing lately, but I didn't want to let it go by without doing something!

FBI person on CNN is now saying that the recovered documents are so sensitive that the FBI is literally going to run secure fingerprint analysis to see who even touched them.

I'm not saying prayer circle to send Donnie Jr., Eric!, and Javanka to jail along with Donnie Sr., but also I am saying exactly that.

“Why are you bullying Hal Jordan so much in this fic?” Because it’s funny. Because it’s funny and he’s not a real person.

Game night results (from this poll)

Character selection inspired from extraterezi's post!