Don’t Know If This Is Common But:

This is my fight song

Summary: Castiel breaks up with you to protect you but he can't quite seem to stay away from you. He sees you again months later only, he doesn't like what he sees... Chapter 1: Heartbroken "You can't do this. Not to me," you pleaded weakly, lips trembling. It was a fight just to hold back the tears in your red, watery eyes as he stood before you cold and unmoving. "I'm doing what needs to be done. This whole relationship should never have begun in the first place. I'm an Angel, your human, it can never work. You should move on because I don't need you." You could feel yourself breaking a little more with those words. He didn't need you? No, he was lying. He had to be. He loved you. If you could just get him to open up and tell you what was wrong then maybe..."Cas-" "Castiel," he interrupted, sounding almost resentful. His usually soft blue eyes were now blank and devoid of any feeling. "Why are you doing this to me? What did I do wrong?" You whispered. You no longer bothered to hold back the tears. You wanted him to see how much he was hurting you. "Goodbye," he said before turning and vanishing without another word. You stared at the spot where he once stood and fell to the floor, sobbing loudly when you realized he truly wasn't coming back. Dean was the one who found you. He crouched down and wrapped his arms around you in comfort. "Hey, what's wrong?" You sniffed tearfully and looked up into a pair of concerned green eyes. "Cas...broke up...with me," you grabbed his shoulders and buried your face into him. "He left me, Dean. He left me." Dean had to swallow back his anger towards the Angel. You weren’t the kind to willingly break down so easily in front of another but you needed him now and that took priority over everything else. Slipping an arm underneath you, he picked you up with ease and carried you back to your room, ignoring the questioning look on Sam’s face as you both passed him. He set you down and layer next to you until you finally cried yourself to sleep. His hands clenched. That Angel had a lot to answer for. You left the bunker not long after that against the wishes of the Winchesters. There was just no point in staying there. Your relationship was over and it was just too painful to stick around especially when you knew he would still pop in now and again to help the Winchesters. You couldn't deal with the pain of seeing him, the constant reminders that you weren't together anymore and the awkwardness of being in the same room in a sort of tired silence after he so cruelly broke your heart was unbearable. Neither brother wanted to see you go but it was better for everyone in the long run. You needed to purge yourself of your feelings for Castiel and you knew if you stayed it would only be a matter of time before certain questions haunting you would accidentally be released. Questions you knew you didn't want the answers to. Did he still think about you the way you did with him? Did he ask after you? Did he wonder where you were and what you were doing? Had he moved on? Did he ever actually love you or was it all pretend? Getting over him was so hard. You tried everything you could to get him out of your head and your heart but so far, it was having little affect. You tried going out and picking strangers up but that was only a temporary fix. You always felt worse afterwards and the wounds on your heart never seemed to heal. You tried forgetting him completely but that didn't last long. No matter what you did, you just couldn't forget. During the day, you still hunted but you were a silent shadow of yourself. At night you would cry yourself to sleep and wake up to nightmares. Over the next few weeks, your mood dampened, your patience grew thin and you could barely muster up the will to interact with people much less hunt and save them. It didn't help that you could still sort of feel Castiel's presence around you once or twice. But that was rediculus, wasn't it? After all, he left you. The presence left as quickly as it came so you put it down to your imagination and left it at that. Now if only you could convince your heart to do the same...

His little Mate

Summary: An odd girl, Silver's somehow different than anyone else in Derry, and her life's about to get much more complicated. With children going missing, bullies in every corner and new friends, she'll have to gather enough courage to survive the summer that's coming, and the choice that must be made, if not by her then by another. Rating may change later. Also struggled to pick the genre.

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Chapter 1

Footsteps and laughter echoed in the Denbrough home as seven year old George Denbrough ran into his older brother's room. It was absolutely pouring down and Bill was sick with the flu, but he'd promised to make Georgie a boat he could take outside and play with. Georgie's face had lit up and he nodded with a large grin, staring out of the window and into the distance as Bill made the boat with some paper from his notebook, old newspaper and some tape. He could hear the crinkling of the paper as it was folded again and again until at last, there it was. Bill grabbed a thick black pen and wrote S S Georgie on the side. "Now, g-go t-t-to t-the cellar a-a-and get m-me the p-p-paraffin w-wax."

"What's that?"

"I-it will a-a-allow t-the boat t-to f-float."

"Okay." He rushed obediently to get the wax, eager to get going. He passed his mother in the lounge. She was playing the piano. Georgie was careful not to disturb her, creeping past the doorway and down the cellar. The wax was on the shelf just as Billy said it was, but something was...off. Georgie hated the cellar. It was large and dark - the perfect place for monsters to hide in, which was ridiculous because both his parents and more importantly, Bill and Silver, said there were no such things as monsters. No such thing as monsters. It was something he kept reminding himself of. Yet, as he picked up the wax, there was a noise that made him almost jump out of his skin, his heart racing in his chest. He spun around, his torch shaking in his hand as he tried to find the source - a pair of glowing lights staring at him in the dark. His eyes widened in fear, but he stayed where he was, his free hand going for the light switch. The light turned on, his shoulders slumped in relief at the sight of the "glowing lights", which were nothing but two torches lying side by side on the shelf.

He giggled and ran up the stairs, walkie talkie in one hand and the wax in the other. He had to put one down in order to turn off the light and shut the door, picking it back up after and running back to Bill. It never occurred to Georgie that the two torches couldn't have possibly been responsible for the glowing lights in the Cellar, as they were both off at the time. If it had, his fear would have returned and he probably would have questioned it further. It only took about five more minutes to finish the boat, grab his bright yellow raincoat and green wellies and rush out of the door. Rain pelted down on him as he stopped at the end of the driveway and turned to wave to his brother in the top window. "Bye, Billy!" He didn't bother to respond when he heard Bill's voice on the walkie talkie, warning him to be careful. It was slowly getting dark, it was pouring down and there was not another soul in sight, but Georgie didn't mind as he placed his boat down in the water next to the curb and began chasing after it in glee. If Bill Denbrough knew that was the last thing Georgie would ever say to him, and the last time he ever saw his brother, he would have done something, anything.

But he didn't. And Bill Denbrough never saw his brother again.

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For being October, the weather wasn't as cold as you would have expected. It was just raining. Georgie laughed loudly, jumping in puddles as he ran down his street onto Witcham Street. The boat was yards in front of him. Georgie was so busy keeping an eye on it that he forgot to keep an eye on where he was going. He slammed into one of the road signs with a loud "Oof!", landing on his back. Unfortunately, this allowed the boat to pull even more ahead, something he noticed. He shot to his feet, running faster than before. But the water was running too fast, and his boat ended up going down one of the storm drains. "NO!" He lunged at the boat but missed by a few seconds. "No." He crouched down, uncaring whether he got his clothes soaking wet or not, and peered in despite knowing it was a lost cause. "Bill's gonna kill me."

Georgie switched positions so he was on his hands and knees and ducked his head a little more. But it was dark; too dark too see anything. It didn't help that the water going into the drain sounded almost like a hollow waterfall. He was about to leave when a pair of amber eyes opened suddenly and stared straight at him. He screamed, jerking back.

"Hiya, Georgie."

The voice was sweet, soft and somewhat high pitched, yet he had a feeling it came from a male rather than a female. The voice moved closer to him until he was able to see who - or rather, what, it was. It was a man dressed as a clown. He couldn't make out all of the clown's features but he noticed it was chalk white with rather plump cherry lips and a painted red nose instead of one of those stupid red noses clowns usually used and a ruffled costume.

Hold on, I thought they were amber. I'm sure they were amber a moment ago. 

But who the hell has amber eyes? And yet, the eyes Georgie swore were amber moments ago, were a bright sky blue - the same colour as his mother's. In his white gloved hand, he held up Georgie's paper boat. What was a clown doing in the sewers?

"What a nice boat. Do you want it back?"

"Um, yes please."

"You look like a nice boy," he whispered. "I bet you have a lot of friends."

"Three, but my brother's my best, best."

"Where is he?"

The question revealed the clowns two rabbit like teeth that Georgie thought was kind of adorable.

"In bed, sick."

Good. That makes things easier.

"And I have a sister. She's older than us." 

Well, she's not really my sister, but close enough. 

"Her name's Silver because of her silver hair. But some call her the silver dragon because she can be fierce and terrifying sometimes. She says dragons are territorial. They're supposed to be possessive and protective over their things - things they claim as their treasure. That's why my brother and his friends call her the silver dragon. She also said you don't have to be blood family to be family. You may not be able to choose your blood family, but you can damn well pick the family you choose to have around you."

"That's very wise of her. Very wise indeed."

"I know. She very smart."

"And where is she?"

"Um, I don't know. She's probably at home if she hasn't had a craving and gone to the store to fix it. She get's craving all the time. I remember she once said something about them being bad, but if she were pregnant, they'd be a lot worse."

"And is she?"

"Is she what?"

"Pregnant? I could give her a present to welcome the new baby. I could give her a balloon. Do you want a balloon too, Georgie?"

"She's not pregnant. She's only a teenager. She's too young for that stuff. Everyone else says so. And I'm not supposed to take stuff from strangers."

"Oh, well, I'm Pennywise the dancing clown," bells jingled as he jerked his head abruptly at the word 'dancing'. "Pennywise, yes, meet Georgie. Georgie meet Pennywise." His hand pointed between the two of them upon introductions. Georgie let out a soft laugh. "Now we aren't strangers, are we?"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Georgie knew something was wrong. But he let it go because this clown was funny and friendly, and there was no danger as far as he could see. He barely heard the door of the house in front of him, open. He didn't see the old woman come out, pulling the blinds up. But she noticed him. She pulled her coat tighter around her and ran back inside. "What are you doing in the sewer?"

"The storm blew me away. Blew the whole circus away," he chuckled with a grin. His grin faded as he regarded him with a slightly more series expression. Even more of the clowns face was revealed enough for Georgie to see the two red painted lines going from either side of the end of his top lip to underneath his eyes. His teeth were too large because he was drooling badly. "Can you smell the Circus, Georgie?" Now that he thought about it, he could smell something. And he swore he heard voices of children softly singing. "There's peanuts...cotton candy...hot dogs aaaaand...?"

"Popcorn?"

"Popcorn! Is that your favourite?"

"Uh huh."

"Mine too," Pennywise laughed, his grin returning, "because they pop. Pop! Pop! Pop! Pop!"

Georgie laughed joining in until he suddenly stopped. Georgie did too. Pennywise stared at him with such intensity, it made Georgie uncomfortable. He needed to get home anyway; the rain wasn't letting up anytime soon and his family would no doubt be worried about him by now, and he didn't want to get sick like Bill. They'd want him home, and truthfully, Georgie had enough with playing outside. He was cold, tired and soaking wet. All he wanted to do now was go home, get dry and changed and maybe have something to eat. It must be close to dinner time by now anyway. It was the perfect excuse to leave. "I should get going now."

"Oh, without your boat?" 

He once again held up Bill's boat. But this time, Georgie was hesitant. The bad feeling from earlier was back and it was growing stronger every second. Then he remembered what Silver once told him.

Always trust your instincts. They'll never steer you wrong. If you have a bad feeling, it's because something's wrong and your instincts are trying to warn you. Don't ever ignore it.

The clown obviously noticed his uncertainty, because his next words were the reason Georgie made the biggest mistake of his life. A mistake in which he dearly regretted making, having wished in the next few minutes that he had listened to Silver's warning instead. But he didn't.

"You don't wanna lose it, Georgie. Bill's gonna kill you."

He has a point. I don't want Billy to kill me or get angry for losing it.

Pennywise's mouth twitched upwards- something Georgie failed to notice and he stared thoughtfully at his boat. "Here. Take it," Pennywise offered, emphasizing the word 'it'. "When Georgie didn't immediately go for it, he tilted his head and said, "Take it, Georgie." His hand rose a little, and Georgie found himself getting closer. The boat was just inside the drain - close enough to reach out and quickly pluck. But Georgie didn't want to be rude, so he reached in instead. He had almost got it when Pennywise pulled his hand back, forcing him to shuffle forward more so his hand could reach even further.

If Georgie had listened to Silver or if he had been focusing on the clown's face, he would have realised the wrong feeling was because of It. Unfortunately, he was so focused on getting his boat back, he never noticed the clowns eyes turning from blue to amber, indicating his earlier thoughts about It were in fact, correct. Once he was close enough, he grabbed Georgie by the wrist, his buck teeth transforming from something cute and adorable to anyone's worst nightmare. Rows or incredible sharp teeth that reminded Georgie of a Dinosaur or a Dragon, grew, and he opened his mouth wide - wider than possible- and bit down on his arm. Georgie let out a loud scream as he instinctively fought against his attacker. Whether it let him go or not, didn't matter. White hot pain shot through his arm and through the rest of his body. Georgie found himself on his stomach not far from the storm drain. At first, he was relieved, but when he looked down at his arm, it was gone. Blood poured out of the wound, mixing with the rain as he tried crawling away. Shock hadn't yet settle in, his wound and the agony crippled him enough that he couldn't just get up and run, giving that thing the advantage.

Unseen by him, a gloved hand crept out of the drain, stretching to an impossible length and grabbed him by the ankle. Georgie felt himself being pulled and knew it was that thing. Terror gripped him tight as he tried and failed to find anything to hold onto. He gave one final cry of, "SILVER!" before he was pulled down the drain. He missed the woman from before, rushing out after hearing his screams, only to see blood and water but no child. The only thing he knew upon being dragged down was yet more agony then nothing.

Georgie Denbrough's last thought, besides wishing either Silver or Bill were there to save him, was that Silver was wrong; monsters were in fact, real.

Yep.

Casgirl here

reblog if you're a Cas!girl

I feel lonely out here in this desert

The most adorable thing I've ever seen!

Who misses the old Castiel in season 4 and 5 where he was a badass? He once told Uriel he was close to blasphemy.

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 listed. 

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.