Hannibal's Imago

A Flexible Arrangement by @purplesocrates @hannibalsimago

Lucas (Jagten) x Allan Fischer (Rejseholdet Unit One)

A video request from Hannibalsimago with love to her smut wife for life <3

https://twitter.com/AO3_Status/status/1678468065070030856

The culprit (as with a few other DDOS attacks recently) is Anonymous Sudan, a group that is likely Russian, not Sudanese. The ‘reason’ they gave–that AO3 is “full of disgusting smuts and other LGBTQ+ and NSFW things,” is thin and probably not completely legit, though still legitimately concerning.

The AS claim: https://twitter.com/FalconFeedsio/status/1678397195039526912

Reporting on AS: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-28/anonymous-sudan-does-group-behind-microsoft-cyberattack-have-ties-to-russia (you can use archive.ph to get this one, 12ft doesn’t seem to work)

As noted here, https://twitter.com/honeyskeleton/status/1678449598703050769:

DDOS protection is expensive especially for a high traffic site like ao3. And it’s uniquely vulnerable as an independent site without ads or other corporate support. SPECIFICALLY targeted bc of its queer works and yet ppl will still complain every time they ask for donations lmao 

When I first moved to the city I live in now and didn't know many people, an acquaintance invited me to a barbecue at her place. While she was doing her bit as hostess and chatting with me, we got on the subject of your books and I mentioned I'd read all of them to date and enjoyed them. She asked if I had read Sandman yet, and I admitted that I hadn't. She said, "Everyone ought to read Sandman!" and just gave me her entire Sandman comic collection. Turns out she was getting ready to move to another state and didn't want to bring a lot of excess stuff with her, so she was trying to offload some things onto people who needed them more.

So I tried to read them, and I just couldn't seem to get into them. I was young and sheltered and I wasn't ready to cope with them, so I just put them away on the bottom of my bookshelf and more or less forgot about them. More than ten years passed, but even though I went through several spring cleanings and donating old books to the library book sale, I never let go of them. They had been a kind gift from someone I remembered fondly, and I had faith in your ability as a writer and knew they must be good if I could just figure out how to approach them.

And then the Sandman TV series was announced, and I knew all my friends would be watching it, so I said to myself, "I should get those old comics out again and read them." So I did, and this time I got hooked. I blazed through them over the course of a week or so, coming home from work every day excited to pick up where I'd left off. In the end, I loved them, just like I loved the TV series and the audiobook productions.

I don't know if there's a point to this story, unless it's to tell people that the right story will find you at the right time, even if it's by a long and winding route, and also that if you don't like something the first time it's sometimes worth giving it a second chance.

Folie à Deux – Info Post & Navigation

Folie à Deux is an 18+ Discord server for Hannibal & HEU creators, built with the intention of fostering community and support among fandom creatives. All creators and creatives—writers, artists, gif makers, etc.—are welcome, but you must be an active or aspiring Hannibal and/or HEU creator.

In addition to our general discussion channels, we offer creator resources, workshops, roleplay/beta/collaborator searches, opt-in dead dove channels, group writing sprints, creator hangouts and voicechats, server events and streams, and more!

We also host a selection of Hannibal & HEU creator challenges in which all are welcome to participate—members and non-members alike.

Interested? Come check us out on Discord! Got questions? Send us a message or ask!

Members, remember to tag your works with #FADserver so we can easily promo them!

Navigation & Links

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Has anyone actually sent either of you banana daiquiris/money after reading this?

As I advise with most things that seem super daunting and complicated, it’s about the little things. The small details that build on each other and all fit together to create one jigsaw of a human being. Humans are more than just the things they do and the things they say. It’s the details behind those things, and showing the reader those things is what makes the character three-dimensional in their mind.

Here’s a little list of things you should share with the reader to make them seem more three-dimensional, and that a lot of authors forget:

What does your character think they want?

What does your character really want?

What does your character need?

What does your character fear the most?

What does that fear say about your character?

Who or what would your character make the greatest sacrifice for?

What would they have to sacrifice?

What are your character’s core values?

What are the implications of these values?

What is your character’s greatest strength?

How can that strength turn into a weakness?

How does your character cope with stress?

Where did this coping mechanism come from?

What is the character’s most notable traumatic memory?

How did this trauma change them fundamentally?

Who does your character think they are?

Who does everyone think your character is?

What’s the difference?

What are your character’s most contradictory traits

How do these traits affect each other?

What is your character thinking that isn’t said?

What is your character feeling that nobody could understand?

What is your character going through that nobody knows about?

This is definitely not where you should stop in developing your character. They’re a full, human person, and they’re just as complex and contradictory as anybody else. Remember that, get that across, and you’ll have a character that’s plenty unique.

If you enjoy my blog and wish for it to continue being updated frequently and for me to continue putting my energy toward answering your questions, please consider Buying Me A Coffee or supporting me on Patreon.

❤️ V-DAY GIVEAWAY ❤️ Kicking off the upcoming launch of my shop (https://gaeguli.bigcartel.com) with a BIG giveaway!

🥩 RULES 🥩 - Must be 18+ to enter - Must be U.S. resident/live in the U.S. (Unless you’re willing to pay intl shipping) - Must follow “thedarkmongoose” on Tumblr - Must LIKE AND REBLOG this post: https://www.tumblr.com/thedarkmongoose/708172673730117632/v-day-giveaway-kicking-off-the-upcoming?source=share - Giveaway ends February 19, 2023 at 11pm EST *Winner will be announced February 20, 2023 on Tumblr/Folie à Deux Discord

✨PRIZE PACKAGE ✨ - (1) “Protec” Acrylic Keychain [2.5”] - (1) “Attac” Acrylic Keychain [2.5”] - (1) “Protec” Vinyl Sticker [3”] - (1) “Attac” Vinyl Sticker [3”]

(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!

Hello!

In this case, I suspect that the pirated works were bot-scraped, so there really isn't much you can do to prevent theft if your writing is posted online. I searched up a number of the stolen titles on AO3 to see if I could identify a common thread to figure out what types of stories were at risk, but they had little in common. Among the 500+ titles in the publisher's catalogue, there were stories from many different fandoms, works over 300K words, works under 20K words, works that were complete, and works that were incomplete and still updating on AO3! The only things the stories seemed to have in common at all were 1) they were in fairly mainstream fandoms (AAA video games, popular TV shows, major franchises like Marvel), and 2) they had a lot of readers on AO3. It's likely the pirates chose some arbitrary number of views or kudos and just swiped the top X number of works in several major fandoms. Additionally, the ebook formatting was a hot mess and all the covers used the same basic template, which makes me think much of the process may have been automated.

As I explained in my follow-up post, this sort of scheme is actually relatively common in the publishing world, too -- only it's even worse there. Pirates will acquire and reupload an ebook from a successful self-published or small-press author, then serve a fraudulent DMCA notice on the legitimate author to get the original version of the book removed from Amazon, so the only copy of the book available for purchase is the pirated one! Amazon's DMCA team gives the benefit of the doubt to whoever files the first complaint, so it can be difficult (and costly, if legal representation is required) for authors to prove ownership and get their accounts reinstated. At least with works stolen from AO3, there's a clear timestamped source we can send in to prove that the online work long predates the existence of the pirated one.

If you’re looking for the fic, it’s linked here or on the @hannigramtropefest masterpost. You’ll find me as Hannibalsimago over on AO3.