As you know, you can make writers lives easier by doing unnecessary exposition scenes in real life, thereby making them realistic.

btw just in case I haven't been clear, I haven't been keeping up with progress on the new Fairly OddParents reboot and I have some things blocked to prevent spoilers (and because I wanted to avoid negativity / bashing, if any), so I'll probably be a late arrival to the scene.

But if the Pixies really do return after 16-17 years, I want everyone to drown me in tagged posts telling me so, plz and ty <3

Obsessed with this baby creeper I doodled today

This was shared as a "bad" joke but I was so charmed by it I've been thinking about it for days.

favorite pastime: looking at obscure fandoms and pairings on ao3

The amount of people with the attitude that fan writers are being entitled or dramatic in response to the lore fm app debacle is really disheartening. I know I stood by fan artists against AI and any unauthorized use of their art, still do, and you didn't hear half the snide comments we have about them being upset about it. It just shows again that our works aren't considered on the same level as fanart. Fanartists can profit off their work. We can't. We do this purely for fun, to engage in fandom. And let's not forget our unsung heroes in fandom, the podficcers. They do their best to make fanfic more accessible.

This isn't us being against accessibility—many, myself included, are disabled ourselves in different ways. But all signs have pointed to dubious intentions and, at best, major mishandling and unprofessional behavior.

Fandom friends, we have won the battle (although we definitely did not win the war).

Yesterday, I wrote this post about lore.fm, an AI scraping app that was being marketed as an accessibility tool. Now, the person that has been promoting this app decided, in the light of plenty of backlash, to backtrack and pull it down, as they "feel uncomfortable" with how authors reacted to it.

Of this video, it's very important to highlight a couple of things:

the video is 3 long minutes of guilt-tripping: she keeps repeating that her (and her team, whose existence wasn't disclosed until yesterday: this app was marketed as being a sole woman's pet project) wanted to do good and create an accessibility tool. This comes with the underlying layer that all the authors who rightfully decided to defend their creations are ableist and in the wrong. It's a manipulation tactic;

there is no acknowledgement of the fact that the app was created by a team that specifically works to create apps that generate AI stories;

there is no explanation as to where the money to fund this app is coming from, and we all know that, when you're not paying for the product, you are the product;

this is backtracking, not genuine conversation: since the other day, the videos promoting this app went viral on r/Ao3, and plenty of people began contacting [email protected] to ask for their works to not be included. Then, the news spread on Tumblr too. They originally thought they could get away with "legally" stealing as much material as possible, and had to cut the project short because authors were doing everything in their power to stop them. The decision to take the app off for "reassessment" doesn't come from the goodness of their hearts.

At this point of the conversation, I think it's clear that the entirety of the project was relying on the perceived naïveté of fanfic readers and writers, who are oftentimes seen and stereotyped as being silly teens and not adults with real jobs and real knowledge of the law. When they saw dozens, if not hundreds, of authors contacting them to ask their works to not be featured, some of them threatening legal consequences, they had no other choice but to backtrack.

For now, the issue is closed, but don't think it'll be forever. Know your rights, even if you're "just" a fic author, and defend yourself and your works too from these scummy companies that see us as nothing but machines that churn out material for them to steal and profit off of with no consequences.

Update: lore.fm deleted all their previous tiktoks and apparently retired the app from the stores. The only one up now is this one.

This is apparently not the first time they've tried to bring this project to life - someone had found a tumblr post from a few months ago about it. So I think we might see them pop up at a later date but rebranded.

The 'write for yourself uwu' culture shift has done real damage to fic writers imo. I recently had a post on the importance of strategic commenting break containment and I'm surprised by how many strangers who rb it in agreement feel the need to reassure in the tags that they do write for themselves, but...

There is a kernel of truth in the heart of this sentiment--if you only chase stats, you are unlikely to find joy in your writing. At the same time, I think we've veered too far in the other direction.

It is only natural to want engagement and the write for yourself crowd often overlooks how communal an effort fic writing usually is. So many story ideas are born from casual discussions about h/c's and favourite scenes and what ifs and the comment box is a cornerstone of this process. Not only can the discussions in the comment box be a hub for idea generation on their own, but even when the said idea generation takes place in DMs or Discord chats, commenting is often the first/easiest way into befriending authors; it's where community building starts.

Further, the write for yourself crowd similarly overlooks that the things a writer can write for themselves are often vast and many at any given time, and relative engagement levels across fandoms/ships can play a large part in which of those ideas a writer chooses to pursue--or whether they choose to publish their finished work at all.

In sum, I don't think we need to be this apologetic as writers for wanting feedback and engagement for what we post -- writing is hard work and it's only human that we want something external out of it in turn, however rewarding the process might intrinsically be.

I mostly wanted to touch base and make sure you weren't confusing my lore for actual canon 😅 (A.C. has no canon title besides "leader/ruler of the Anti-Fairies" and I didn't want that to bite either of us in the future).

-> I had a past encounter years ago (non-FOP) where several people in a friend group confused my lore as the canon, sent me snappy messages when I asked them not to say it's canon, and told me I was rude for providing sources to show them I'd made up that lore and that it wasn't in the canon.

It's not something I want to repeat, so I wanted to make sure we were on the same page that those are fanon terms. Thanks for being polite!

Over the years, people have asked to make works with nods to my lore and I've given some permissions, but I should make some clear statements in a place that's easily accessible. I guess it's still strange to think that people enjoy my overcomplicated Fairly OddParents lore, haha.

I'm glad you're enjoying your time in the fandom. Thanks for crediting future works!

(Tone: /curious & /not scary)

Hey Nanita, are you working on a project that draws from my personal FOP lore? I'd love to hear a rundown of what your plans are with it if that's okay <3

-> https://www.tumblr.com/nanitasheart/750432555179950080/they-were-not-having-a-business-dinner-better-pics?source=share

I just saw you use the terms "High Count" for Anti-Cosmo and "starpiece," which are terms I made up and it caught me off guard to see them in the wild. When you have time (/no rush /not angry /just surprised and curious), can we chat about what parts of my lore you plan to use in your own work?

Thank you, and I hope you have a good day! :)

oh my god hi!!! haha that piece was just something silly i did between myself and a friend of mine (because we’re both pretty invested in your fop lore LOL) but yes i ended up drawing on your stuff for it!! it was a one off thing based on some jokes we made and it completely slipped my mind when i posted it… theres not even much context behind it besides anti cosmo generally being a nuisance toward hp and forcing him into publicity stunts to tick him off lmfaoo

i will definitely tag you in it now that youve reminded me but wahh omg this caught me so off guard to see in my inbox haha!! ive been trying to work through origin of the pixies btw as a side note and i love your writing style so much but its so dauntingly long </3

First cat video ever? 1899, colorized & speed corrected.

How many times can the same thing break your heart?

missing ranchers forever and ever and ever (a redraw of THIS from a year ago)

[click for better quality! + closeups under the cut]

Crying at these spawn eggs for fish in Minecraft Bedrock Edition. They actually look like fish eggs... I'm on the floor.

Yeah, the "mammal" species can hatch from regular eggs, but you better believe the fish have fish eggs.

Beta 1.2.14.2 on the Spawn Egg wiki page

I'm getting so sick of major female characters in historical media being incredibly feisty, outspoken and public defenders of women's rights with little to no realistic repercussions. Yes it feels like pandering, yes it's unrealistic and takes me out of the story, yes the dialogue almost always rings false - but beyond all that I think it does such a disservice to the women who lived during those periods. I'm not embarrassed of the women in history who didn't use every chance they had to Stick It To The Man. I'm not ashamed of women who were resigned to or enjoyed their lot in life. They weren't letting the side down by not having and representing modern gender ideals. It says a lot about how you view average ordinary women if the idea of one of your main characters behaving like one makes them seem lame and uninteresting to you.

My favorite mermaid art is the one of a family photo with a mermaid mother and old sailor father and their sons are both reverse merfolk (human legs with fish heads).