Don’t Get Cussed Out

Actual hand drawn art is symmetrical. Hair that blows off into the background on just one side? Probably AI. A necklace that stretches over one end of the characters body but not the other? Probably AI. Artists notice those details and will make them symmetrical, AI doesn't concern itself with those details.

The eyes are another one. AI eyes are usually a little cross-eyed or strange. If you stare at them, you'll notice mismatched pupils or more white on one side than the other.

I've been seeing more AI Lucien in the tags recently. I know no one in this fandom intends to support AI stolen from our artists (except for the people creating it and passing it off as their own), and I think just knowing the tells of AI makes us all better consumers of fan works. We should continue to support the artists who keep creating content because they love the same books as us, and whole-sale rejecting AI no matter how "realistic" you think it looks. It's stolen. I've seen AI generated images being passed around that were clearly fed @krem-does-stuff's art, which is a shame because she hand paints every piece she does and that takes time.

y'all are doing this over an author who wrote a character whose dick is too big for his underwear. Like, she wrote that. On purpose. She wrote random accidental beheading, she mixes up character names, she confuses dates, she wrote a fae king who has packs of red thongs at his house for ??? reasons. I guess because you never know when your guests will need packs of red thongs.

For the style prompt, all @the-lonelybarricade and I could think about was Lucien and his cruel beauty.

As always, @vaieart delivered 🦊

Not only is this deeply disrespectful to the artist and author whose labor is being sold without credit, profit, or permission, it is also illegal. SJM has copyright to any written works involving her worlds and characters and selling acotar fanfic is an infringement on that copyright.

Please, please do not buy or comission bound fanfic. It puts the authors of those fics at risk and will be a very quick way of ensuring that those beloved fics get taken down. If you see someone selling bound fanfic, please do not support them.

Fanfiction binding is supposed to be done for personal use. I think it's a very beautiful trademark of fandom to love a fic so much that you go to the effort of printing and binding it yourself. It is a labor reminiscent of the creation of fanfic itself, pouring in hours of work purely out of love for the story that made you feel something special. It is a wheel coming full circle, and commercializing it for profit is a gross corruption of the spirit of fandom and book binding.

I think the rise in Booktok popularity has exascerbated some issues that have been permeating fandom for a while, and its created an influx of fans who treat fandom content as though they're commercialized goods.