Too Gay To Function

°.⋆ 5!Kats

The moments of us.. (Coming Soon)

°.⋆ Manon

°.⋆ Sophia

°.⋆ Daniela

°.⋆ Lara

Focus on me.. (Coming Soon)

°.⋆ Megan

°.⋆ Yoonchae (Platonic)

°.⋆ OT6 (Platonic)

°.⋆ Tags

⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠂ ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁꒰ঌ⋆✶⋆໒꒱ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁. ⠂⠄⠄⠂⠁⠁⠂⠄⠄⠂

— Fans quickly picked up on it: you were aloof, evasive, always quiet during group interactions and always wrapped up in clothes like a burrito, barely showing any skin at all.

— The other girls would laugh together, but you always seemed just a beat behind, like your presence didn’t fully register until the cameras forced you into frame.

— The fandom was divided. Some hated you for it, saying you didn’t bond, didn’t care, didn’t belong. Others couldn’t deny how bewitching you were on stage; your beauty and raw talent so undeniable that even your critics couldn’t look away.

— Luckily or unluckily, the directors had a bigger drama to milk: Manon missing practices. That storyline ate the spotlight, keeping your strangeness tucked in the shadows where you preferred.

— Your tendency to disappear became almost a running gag among the girls. They’d look around and realize you weren’t there, only to laugh it off like you’d been invisible the whole time. Some days, they genuinely forgot you were in the same room until you spoke.

— It wasn’t that you didn’t want to be close to them. If anything, you craved it: the warmth of inside jokes, the comfort of late-night snacks, the simple chaos of girlhood shared in dorm rooms and practice studios. You wanted all of it.

— But you couldn’t. Not with the truth coiled beneath your skin. Not with the risk of someone noticing the faint shimmer of scales at your collarbone, or the unnatural way your eyes caught the light when exhaustion stripped you of control.

— How absurd would it be, you thought, for a global girl group to unknowingly have a snake hybrid in its lineup?

— You learned to hide it all: the awkward weight of your tongue in your mouth, the way your pupils narrowed to slits whenever instinct flared, the sunbathing you needed each morning to keep from slipping into hypothermia.

— Every day began the same damn routine: dragging yourself to your vanity, dabbing concealer and powder over the stubborn patches of scales that refused to vanish.

— So you stayed distant. You made yourself small. You forced yourself into forgettability, letting the others laugh and glow while you lingered at the edges, building walls you desperately wished you could break.

— But the moment the stage lights hit you, everything shifts.

— Because on stage, there was no hiding. No fading. No erasing yourself into the background. There, you weren’t the quiet, absent member, you were something divine.

— When the music surged and your body moved with that unsettling, serpentine fluidity, when your lips parted and your voice curled around the melody like venom seeping into bloodstream, the audience stopped breathing.

— No one in the world could take their eyes off you.

— That was why, when your name was announced among the seven who would debut as KATSEYE, none of the girls looked shocked.

— Sure, you were reserved. Sure, they knew next to nothing about you beyond the surface. But when you gave them that soft, fleeting smile as the confetti rained down, their hearts stuttered in their chests.

— In that moment, debuting almost felt secondary. What mattered more was the rare, fragile warmth of you acknowledging them.

— Of course, the pattern of your evasiveness continued even after debut. And now that you were living with six other girls, it was becoming harder and lonelier to keep your distance.

— Still, you begged for and won the only solo room in the dorm, much to everyone’s confusion. (Because what could possibly be the reason you literally got down on your knees just to beg for a solo room?)

— The others paired off naturally: Sophia, the composed leader, with Yoonchae, the bright-eyed maknae. Manon, the eldest, with Daniela, the powerhouse dancer. And Lara, the enchanting Tamil beauty, with Megan, the goofy ginger whose bond with Lara made you privately dub them “the gay distaster duo.”

— From the safety of your solitary room, you could breathe. You could relax and not overthink the flashes of scales in the mirror, the hiss in your throat when you laughed too hard, the strange way your eyes caught the light at night.

— But every morning, when you stepped out and saw their sleepy faces and heard their casual chatter, the same ache tugged at you.

— You wanted to belong to them. You wanted to be theirs.

— And yet, how could you, when belonging meant being seen?

Sophia Laforteza

— Of course it was Sophia who noticed first. She always noticed.

— While you worked so hard to keep your distance, your habits betrayed you: your love for textured fabrics, your tendency to bury yourself under piles of blankets and clothes, always cocooned in warmth.

— It all came crashing down on laundry day. You’d forgotten that you’d shed the night before, leaving a delicate, scaled remnant tangled in your sheets. Sophia stormed into your room in a panic, breathless, insisting a snake had snuck in.

— You had no choice but to calm her down, voice low, steady, as you showed her the truth—the skin you’d shed, your secret exposed.

“So all this time… since Dream Academy, you were hiding all this?” she whispered. “Yeah…” “I thought you just had some kind of illness.” “Well... light sensitivity is what I say,” you muttered with a weak laugh.

— From that moment on, you weren’t alone anymore. You had someone who knew. Someone who cared.

— Sophia didn’t stop at keeping your secret, she made it her mission to understand.

— She asked questions, thoughtful ones: What made you comfortable? What made things worse? What could she do?

— You admitted sheepishly that you couldn’t regulate your own body temperature the way humans did, that external warmth or coolness wasn’t just comfort but survival.

— So she started carrying things. Warmers in her purse for cold days, cooling packs for the heat. She even handed you a handheld fan so powerful you swore it could double as an airplane turbine.

— When fans began sending hate because you were always in sunglasses, Sophia stepped up again. On her live, she explained, calmly and in a matter-of-fact way, that you had light sensitivity. That was all.

— Later, she bought you special contact lenses to mask the way your pupils sometimes narrowed into slits. You were touched, but had to explain that your venom broke them down after two hours.

— Her jaw dropped at that, but the very next day she was carrying four extra pairs in her bag, just in case.

— However, you had to draw a line at Sophia’s endless questions. She meant well, she always did, but sometimes her curiosity went just a little too far.

One night, she tilted her head thoughtfully and asked you a question that would change the way you view your leader. "Should i start bringing live mice as snacks for you?" she asked you, eyes sincere and a serious tone. You stared at her incredulously, lips tugging down into a frown. “I can eat human snacks, Sophia.” Her face immediately flushed red, half-embarrassed and half-laughing. “Right, right, sorry! I just-” “Unbelievable.” You cut her off with an amused shake of your head, muttering,

— From then on, she teased you about being picky with food, while you teased her about being the type of person to Google “snake diet” at 3 a.m.

— Once everyone knows about you being a...weresnake???? Sophia absolutely hates it when you leave your shedded skin EVERYWHERE. You argue with her because she finds cat or dog fur on her clothes cute but suddenly your scales are disgusting?? The double standard is crazy.

— She’s the only member who makes an effort to learn how to cook warm, hearty dishes just for you: soups, curries, anything that keeps your body temperature steady. She beams when you eat it. Especially when you ate her mom’s sinigang.

— The proud look on her face when you absolutely loved her country's delicacy: balut was something you engraved in your heart.

— The weirded out look on her face when she discovered that you actually eat the duck egg whole when no one is looking is something you're trying to forget.

Megan Skendiel

— You knew it was only a matter of time before someone else found out. Sophia kept your secret flawlessly, but the dorm wasn’t built for secrets. Not with six girls constantly in your space.

— You didn’t expect it to be Megan. In hindsight, maybe you should have. Megan had a terrible habit of barging into rooms without knocking. If the door wasn’t locked, she treated it like an open invitation.

It happened one night when you were changing into your sleepwear. Megan burst in, phone in hand, breathless with excitement. “You have to see this TikTok edit they made of you-” You spun around, startled. Instinct overtook you: your eyes slit, a hiss escaped your throat, your forked tongue flickered out, fangs glinting under the lights. Megan froze, blinked, then immediately shrieked, not because of your fangs, but because she’d just realized you were naked. She bolted out of the room so fast you barely had time to cover yourself. Then, of course, she came running back in two seconds later, eyes wide. “WAIT. DID YOU JUST HISS AT ME?!” “Megan, please-” You groaned, dragging a blanket over yourself. “NO. NO. I SAW THAT. YOUR TONGUE- IT WAS LIKE- ” she flailed her arms dramatically, imitating a snake flicker. You hissed again, this time deliberately, which only made her scream-laugh harder. “OH MY GOD, YOU’RE A LITERAL SNAKE. THAT’S SO- WAIT. THAT’S KINDA HOT?”

— The rest of the night was chaos. Megan sat cross-legged on your bed, refusing to leave until you answered at least twenty rapid-fire questions.

“Do you have venom? Can you hypnotize people? Do you shed like… once a week? Do you eat rats?” You deadpanned, “I can eat normal food, Megan.” “Yeah but like… could you eat me?” she asked with zero shame, then burst into cackles at her own joke. You threw a pillow at her head.

— Unlike Sophia, Megan didn’t panic about the secret. She thought it was the coolest thing ever. Actually, she was a little too enthusiastic. 

— Megan developed a bad habit of dropping the most unhinged pickup lines whenever you were around. Things like:

“So… do you shed your skin because you’re too hot for just one?” “If you ever hypnotize me, at least make it romantic.” “Bite me. No, seriously. I bet it’d be so hot.”

— You’d roll your eyes every time, but secretly, it was hard not to laugh at how earnestly ridiculous she was.

— She begged you to hiss on command so she could record it for her ringtone. You refused. She still swears she’ll catch it one day.

— She asked once if your forked tongue meant you could “kiss two people at once.” You didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day.

— Despite her loser antics, she surprised you with her sincerity too.

“I won’t tell anyone, you know. Not even the girls. Secrets are safe with me.” She admitted softly one night

Then she immediately ruined the moment by asking if snakes could cuddle.

“Can you like turn into a full snake and coil around me?”  “Yes.” “Will you?” “No.” “Okay but just so you know, if you ever wanna coil around me like a weighted blanket, I wouldn’t complain.”

— Ever since then, Megan would randomly barge into your room just to “check if you’re molting,” as she put it. And every time, you’d groan, but you never actually locked the door after that.

— Unexpectedly, she is the one who helps you when you molt. Especially when you get some skin stuck in your eyes, she's the one who plucks it out gently with a tweezer, smiling brightly once you blink and stare up at her with your slitted eyes

Lara Raj

— Oh this girl clocked it.

— What did you expect? She’s Lara Raj. She's sharp, self-assured, and already deeply steeped in her culture; in mythologies that spoke of beings like you.

— The moment she saw your little quirks: the way your pupils slit in the dark, the strange grace of your movements, she didn’t think monster. She thought divinity.

— But Lara Raj's curiosity is her sin.

— She didn’t push, not at first.

— She let herself become your friend, weaving herself into your space so naturally it felt like she’d always been there. 

— But the second she noticed Megan hanging too close, that spark of jealousy burned. 

— Of course Megan knew something, the girl could barely keep your secret under wraps with her constant jokes, her sudden infatuation and it irritated Lara more than she could admit.

One night in the kitchen, as she stirred a fragrant curry over low flame, she caught you drifting closer, drawn to the warmth. You leaned against the counter, half-distracted, and she glanced at you with that sultry, knowing look that always made your stomach twist. “So…” she murmured, voice velvety, eyes flicking deliberately toward your lips “When were you planning to tell me you’re a Nagi?” You blinked. “A what now?” Lara smirked, slow and dangerous, setting the ladle down with calculated elegance. She stepped just close enough for her perfume: spiced jasmine and something richer, to curl around you. “A serpent deity. Coiled, beautiful, feared… and worshiped.” Her gaze dipped briefly to your mouth, catching the faintest flash of your fangs when you frowned. “I’d say it suits you.” When you tried to laugh it off, she leaned in, whispering as if she were confessing a sin “You don’t have to hide them from me. Your fangs…” her tongue lingered on the word “…are exquisite.” And then she pulled back, returning to her cooking as if she hadn’t just set your whole body on fire. But every once in a while, her eyes would flick up, lingering at your lips again, like she was daring you to bare your teeth just to watch her reaction.

— She was making it very clear, your danger only made you hotter to her.

— That said, she couldn’t resist her teasing you.

“You know,” she teased you one night “in the old stories, Nagis were considered irresistible lovers. Want to prove that true, or should I just take the legends at their word?”

— Cue you choking on your tea while she laughed.

— With Lara, your secret feels less like a burden and more like a piece of identity you don’t have to hide. 

— Oh and Lara runs hot. Like her body temperature is warm and you’ll never admit that she's your favorite, but the other girls clock the fact that you’re almost always cuddled with Lara on long journeys.

Daniela Avanzini

— Daniela’s suspicion didn’t come out of nowhere.

— She’s a bookworm, she reads everything from fantasy novels to obscure mythology. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she already knows creatures like you exist in stories, but she never thought she’d be living alongside one. Still, the signs add up too neatly for her to ignore.

— What really gets her is your movement. Daniela is trained to study the human body through dance: posture, rhythm, muscle control. She knew how far one could push the limits of human anatomy.

— It had gotten to the point where she can spot the difference between flexibility earned by years of dance versus something innate, something otherworldly. The way you bend, twist, slither across a stage? It’s unnatural in a way that makes her both envious and unsettled.

— Naturally, this morphs into rivalry.

— Daniela convinces herself it’s about talent, how you’re too good, too fluid, too commanding without even trying. She starts competing with you in rehearsals, adding sharper flourishes, working herself harder, throwing you pointed looks like I’ll outshine you.

— The rivalry is one-sided though, because you remain so maddeningly unbothered.

— And that’s what drives her crazy. Daniela is used to people melting under her charm; her smirk, her confidence, her charisma.

— But you? You brush her off with cool indifference, as if she doesn’t matter. As if she isn’t irresistible. That bruises her ego and makes her double down. She needs to crack you, to get some kind of reaction.

— The turning point comes during a night out with Megan. Daniela isn’t the type to go clubbing often, but she lets Megan drag her along, partly for fun and partly to keep an eye on her chaos.

— You tag along as the reluctant bodyguard, your eyes scanning every corner, your posture tense in the crowd.

— Megan dashes off to dance, leaving you and Daniela at the bar. She’s annoyed when Megan asks you to fetch drinks because she can feel your distaste for the crowd, but then she notices the way your head tilts every time someone brushes too close, how your eyes sharpen whenever strangers linger too long near her or Megan. You’re on edge, but not for yourself. For them.

— Daniela tries to shake off the weird flutter in her chest when she realizes you’re protective. She distracts herself with dancing, but the moment a man touches her waist without permission, it all changes.

— Before she can even turn around to snap, you’re there. You don’t shove, don’t shout, you simply slither into her space, arm wrapping around her waist as you pull her into your side. The hiss that escapes you is low, almost animalistic, vibrating with warning.

— Daniela swears the air around you changes. Cold, sharp, suffocating. The man freezes, paling, and when you lock eyes with him, it’s like watching prey realize it’s about to be swallowed whole. He stumbles back, fear radiating so strong Daniela can almost smell it. (or maybe she was smelling the piss that was forming a very large spot on the man's pants)

— The guy bolts, practically tripping over himself, and when Daniela looks down, she realizes your arm is still around her. Your expression is blank, jaw tight, but your touch is firm, grounding. Protective.

— For once, she’s speechless. Her heart is pounding, not from fear, but from something far more dangerous, exhilaration. Something she only felt when she's driving too fast. Nobody’s ever shielded her like that. Nobody’s ever scared someone away without lifting a finger.

— She doesn’t comment that night, but something in her changes. Rivalry shifts into fascination, into obsession.

— She finds herself lingering closer to you during practices, testing boundaries, watching your every reaction.

— Daniela might not admit it out loud, but in that moment at the club, you stopped being her rival. You became something else entirely; someone she both wants to unravel and can’t stop gravitating toward.

— The turning point happens during a road trip to a meet and greet. The group van pulls over at a rest stop, everyone filing out to grab snacks or stretch. You stay behind, claiming you’re tired.

— Daniela lingers too. At first you think it’s coincidence, but then the silence stretches and you realize she’s waiting.

She slides into the seat beside you, legs crossed, her eyes sharp in the dim glow of the dashboard. Too sharp. She’s studying you the way she studies choreography, cataloging every flicker of discomfort. “You’re hiding something,” she says plainly. No fluff, no hesitation. She leans back, arms folded, and smirks. “And I’m not leaving this car until you tell me.” You try to deflect, but Daniela doesn’t budge. She’s stubborn to her core and now her opponent isn’t dance, it’s your walls. “You think I don’t notice? The way you move, the way you act like you’re not even human sometimes?” She leans closer, voice softening. She then tilts her head, teasing “What are you then, hm? Vampire? Alien? Snake charmer?” When your lips twitch despite yourself, she gasps dramatically. “Wait—don’t tell me you’re the snake?” Your sigh gives you away. Daniela’s eyes widen, then narrow, a spark of triumph lighting them up. You try to mumble a half-truth, but she cuts in, whispering with dangerous glee: “I knew it. I knew you weren’t normal.” She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t recoil. Instead, she grins like she just won a trophy. “You seriously thought you could hide this from me? Babe, I read too many books not to catch on.”

— When the others return, you’re both silent about it, but the ride after feels different. She keeps sneaking glances at you, like she’s holding onto the world’s juiciest secret.

— Daniela becomes your #1 shadow, but in her Daniela way: not clingy, not obvious, but always there. If someone were to track her movements, they’d notice she somehow always ends up where you are, like gravity’s pulling her toward you.

— Fans already started making ship edits of the both of you some of them captioned with: "when they're hot but if they're away from eachother for 2 seconds they'll explode"

— Her bookworm side kicks in hard. She dives into mythology, folklore, biology, anything that could give her a clue about snake hybrids. Her search history is unhinged:

“Do snakes blush??” “Snake hybrid temperature regulation tips” “What to do if your crush is cold-blooded (literally)”

— She swears it’s for “research,” but Sophia catches her once and just smirks knowingly.

— Daniela tests your instincts constantly. She’ll lean in close out of nowhere, just to see if your pupils slit. She’ll drop something suddenly to check if you flinch or hiss. Every reaction is filed away in her mental library.

— Her favorite game? Trying to make you blush. She’ll say things like,

“You know, you’re way too pretty for someone who could technically eat me whole.” “If you coiled around my neck and choke me, I’d never complain.” “Careful with those fangs, cariño. Don’t bite unless you mean it.”

— She lives for the moment your composure cracks.

— But it’s not just teasing. Daniela gets weirdly protective after finding out. She subtly positions herself between you and strangers at events or clubs. You once asked why, and she shrugged with a casual, “Instincts, I guess. Guess you’re rubbing off on me.”

— She starts defending you fiercely online too. If fans criticize you for being aloof, she’s the first to mention you’re “mysterious, not cold.” In interviews, she’s always the one to say, “She’s the most captivating performer we have” with this little glint in her eyes that makes the others raise their brows.

— Daniela takes your secret as a personal competition. If you move with serpentine grace, she’s determined to match it with her dance. If your presence on stage is hypnotic, she trains twice as hard to keep up. But instead of resentment, it fuels her admiration

— She thinks of you as the ultimate rival and the ultimate partner.

— She also can’t stop touching you.

— Not in an overbearing way, but in fleeting, grounding gestures: a hand on your back when you pass by, tugging your sleeve to get your attention, pressing her knee against yours during van rides.

— She swears it’s casual, but the softness in her eyes betrays her.

— Daniela loves to cuddle, but she disguises it under excuses. She’ll pout at you to cuddle her when it comes to movie nights, mumbling, “You’re just like a weighted blanket, don’t move.”

— Or she’ll wrap her arms around your waist and say, “I’m practicing snake hugging.”

— Daniela secretly loves your snake traits. She thinks your hiss is adorable, your sunbathing habit is endearing, and she’s weirdly proud of your fangs. Sometimes she jokes: “Those are deadly weapons. I feel special knowing you haven’t used them on me.”

— And of course she’s obsessed with proving snakes can blush. She’ll push every button possible to test it. When you finally snap and ask why she’s so fixated, she just grins and says: “Because if you do, it means you’re not untouchable. It means I can reach you. It means that I can win.”

— When she’s proud of you, she’ll brush her knuckles over your jaw, casual and confident, as if she owns the right to touch you like that.

Jeong Yoonchae

— Yoonchae wasn’t looking for your secret, she stumbled into it.

— It happened late at night, when you thought the dorm was asleep. You’d slipped out to the balcony to bask in the faint moonlight, your scales glimmering faintly at your collarbone.

She padded out quietly for a glass of water and froze when she saw you. For a second, she thought she was dreaming. Then you turned, and her eyes went wide. “Unnie… you’re… 빛난다…” (shining) At first, she assumed it was makeup or some stage effect left over, but when she reached out and her fingers brushed real scales, she yelped. Loud. The kind of yelp that woke half the dorm. You clamped a hand over her mouth before she could say more. Later, when you explained in hushed Korean, her jaw dropped. “So… you’re like… a real snake person?” “…Yes.” She blinked, then whispered: “…대박.” (Daebak. Amazing.)

— Once the shock wore off, Yoonchae flipped instantly from awe-struck to bratty maknae. She teases you relentlessly, but in a way that always feels affectionate.

— She gives you nicknames in Korean like “뱀 언니” (Snake Unnie) or “쌩쌩” (a playful sound for hissing). When you scold her, she just grins and says, “But it’s cute!”

— She mimics your hiss whenever she’s annoyed. Sophia tells her to clean up? She hisses dramatically and says, “I learned from the best.”

— She brags to the other members that she knew before them (even if she technically didn’t — she insists she pieced it together first). Lara shuts her down immediately, but she still smirks behind your back like she’s your chosen confidante.

— Yoonchae adores your protective instincts. When she notices how you hover a little closer during crowded events, she’ll lean into it, acting extra dramatic: “Waaah~ Unnie is my bodyguard! No one touch me!”

— You softly tell her to cut it out, but she beams like she just won.

— She becomes your partner-in-crime when it comes to hiding things. If your scales slip or your eyes slit, she’ll cover for you instantly, cracking a joke or pulling attention elsewhere. It surprises you how quick and loyal she is.

— Sometimes, though, her softness sneaks through. She’ll crawl into your bed at night without asking, mumbling in sleepy Korean: “Unnie… you’re comfy. Don’t leave.” It’s those moments that remind you she’s still the youngest, even with all her sass.

— Since then, Yoonchae has a habit of sneaking into your room when she’s homesick. She doesn’t ask, she just curls up under your blankets, whispers a quiet “Unnie…” and falls asleep beside you. You never kick her out.

— And of course, she won’t stop asking if she can see you “full snake mode.”

“Just a little? Tail? Scales? Something?” “No.” “Tch. Boring.” But she asks again the next day anyway.

— She always asks you to help her with stretching before practice. At first you think it’s because you’re flexible, but she admits one day: “It feels safer when it’s you. Like you’ll never let me get hurt.”

— She insists on holding your hand in crowded airports. If you tease her about being a baby, she rolls her eyes and says, “No, it’s so fans don’t notice your claws.” (She’s being dramatic, but you let her.)

— When you sunbathe in the mornings, Yoonchae joins you just to “keep you company.”

— She lies beside you with her phone, occasionally nudging you with a smile: “Unnie, you look like a lazy lizard.” You hiss at her, but she giggles and calls it “cute.”

— She’s obsessed with proving that snakes can laugh. She’ll do whatever it takes: telling bad jokes, showing you memes, pulling faces until you laugh. Then she points proudly: “See? Snake Unnie can smile. I won.”

Manon Bannerman

— Manon wasn’t the type to snoop, but she was the type to notice. She has a sensitive nature, always tuned into people’s moods, and she picked up on how you flinched in cold weather or how you gravitated toward warmth without thinking.

— She was the type to check up on you quietly. Bringing you tea, asking if you’d eaten, slipping little notes under your door.

— With her fragile immune system, she thought you were just the same. And she knows how that feels.

— You thought she was just being her usual caring self (and she was), but deep down, she suspected there was more to your distance.

— One evening after practice, she noticed you lagging behind. Everyone else had left, but you were moving slower, your body visibly struggling with the cold AC in the practice room. She lingered instead of leaving, watching as you rubbed your arms with trembling hands.

“You’re freezing,” she said, concern etched all over her face. When you tried to brush it off, she didn’t believe you. She walked closer, draping her hoodie over your shoulders and that’s when she saw it. The faint shimmer of scales at your neckline where your concealer had worn off. Her breath hitched, but not in fear. She reached out carefully, her voice low and gentle: “It’s real, isn’t it? It’s not a tattoo.” You froze, but the warmth in her gaze was disarming. When you finally confessed, her first reaction wasn’t panic, it was heartbreak that you’d carried it alone for so long.

— She cried and you were the one who comforted her instead of the other way around and that made her cry more because she's supposed to be comforting you?

— Once she knows, Manon is nothing but gentle. She doesn’t press with invasive questions. Instead, she asks softly, “Does it hurt? Is it hard to hide?” Her tone always carries concern, never judgment.

— She becomes almost motherly about your well-being. If the weather is too cold, she insists on bringing an extra scarf for you even if you protest. “I already get sick so easily. If you freeze too, we’re both cooked.”

— She can’t resist teasing, though. Her laugh always gives her away:

“Careful there baby, don’t hiss at me when I’m sick.” (she's always sick) “Imagine me explaining to the doctor that one of my members is a snake. They’d lock me up.”

— Her empathy runs so deep that sometimes she makes you feel guilty for hiding so long. She’ll look at you with those big, understanding doe eyes and say, “You’ve been carrying this alone all this time? But you never had to?”

— But she never lets you wallow. If you look too weighed down, she bumps your shoulder and cracks a joke until you’re forced to smile. “You’re not getting rid of me that easy, serpent.”

— Manon gets overprotective in her own way. She’ll distract fans or members if she notices your scales peeking, or drape her jacket over your shoulders without a word when she sees you shivering.

— Yes her and Yoonchae gang up when it comes to protecting your identity.

— She loves the feeling of comfort of your body when you curl around her during spontaneous lives. Once she teased: “Best weighted blanket I’ve ever had.” You hissed at her, but she laughed so hard she almost cried.

— Despite her empathy, she can’t resist bragging a little. Not outright but sometimes she’ll whisper to Sophia or Megan, “You don’t even know how lucky we are to have her,” her tone full of pride.

— And sometimes, when you’re both alone, she’ll admit quietly: “It’s kind of comforting. Knowing you’re not just human, not just like everyone else. Makes me feel less strange about my own weaknesses.”

— Manon developed a habit of flopping dramatically onto your lap after a long schedule and sigh, “Best recharge station in the world,” before breaking into that giggle she can never hold back.

— When her immune system acts up and she catches a cold, she gets clingier. She’ll tug at your sleeve and whine, “Stay with me, I feel better when you’re here.” You’ll roll your eyes, but she knows you’ll give in.

— She has a habit of randomly poking at your cheek or arm, pretending she’s “checking if you’re about to shed.” She can’t even get through it without laughing, though, so it’s never intimidating.

— If you coil your arms around her waist or shoulders like a protective snake, she melts. She’ll beam and say, “See? Built-in hug machine,” and she refuses to let you move until she feels fully recharged.

— She teases you with pet names that she can’t say without giggling:

“My beautiful serpent.” “Noodle goddess.” “Scaley cutie.”

— The more you groan at her, the harder she laughs.

— Whenever she sees you tense or overthinking, she pulls you into her arms without asking. “Shhh. You take care of me all the time. Let me take care of you now.” She says it softly, but her warmth makes it hard to resist.

— She’ll sometimes sneak into your bed in the dorm at night. Not to talk, just to curl up next to you. “I sleep better when I know you’re there,” she’ll whisper, and she’s out within minutes. (at this point all of them just sneaks into your room and fights over you lmao)

— She makes it a point to share silly little things with you first: memes, snacks, weird thoughts, all because she likes watching your expression change. She’ll grin and say, “I live for your reactions.”

— When you’re both alone, she likes playing with your hair or tracing absent-minded shapes on your skin and scales, humming while you talk. It’s her way of saying, “I’m listening. I’m here.”

— Manon’s laugh becomes one of your favorite sounds because it’s always loud, real, and unrestrained. She once told you, between giggles, “If I laugh this much around you, it means you’re home to me.”

OT5 NSFW Headcanons minors be gone...that includes you yoonchae sorry :((

Sophia

— She loves the power play. She’ll corner you against a wall, her breath fanning over your ear as she murmurs things just to watch you squirm.

— Sophia loves to hover. She’ll stand behind you, brushing her hand over your waist or shoulder just barely enough to make you aware of her presence. The smirk she wears when you stiffen tells you she’s doing it on purpose.

— When she dances with you during Gabriela, her hands linger on your waist just a little too long, pulling you closer than necessary, eyes daring you to look away.

"See how they're staring at you? They know you're mine."

— She’s the type to brush her thumb slowly across your bottom lip while tilting your chin up, just to see how flustered you get.

— Her voice always dips lower when she wants to fluster you. A casual, “You look good tonight,” sounds almost like a whisper against your ear, leaving goosebumps in its wake.

— Whispered words in Tagalog slip out when she gets caught up in the moment, and even if you don’t understand all of them, you feel the heat behind every syllable.

"akala ko ba akin ka lang?" "you don't even know what you're doing to me huh? grabe na yung pang-aakit mo sakin, it's unfair."

— She’s daring in her teasing, plucking a piece of lint from your shirt, but taking her sweet time, her fingertips ghosting over your chest until you swat her hand away.

— Eye contact with her lasts a second too long. She knows it, and she enjoys it; the tension thickens, daring you to break away first.

— Sophia pretends to act grossed out when she catches a glimpse of your forked tongue, but her smirk always betrays her. “That’s dangerous, you know,” she teases, leaning closer like she’s daring you to show it again.

— When you hiss under your breath, Sophia gets way too close, whispering, “Do it again.” The huskiness in her tone makes it feel less like curiosity and more like a game of temptation.

— Unhinged thoughts incoming, look away

— Sophia loves your tongue. Borderline obsessed with it, especially when you stop repressing your habit of darting your tongue out to wet your lips.

— She presses her fingers into your mouth and is just fascinated with how big it is???

— One way to drive her crazy is when you coil your tongue around her fingers, like when you completely envelope her digits with your tongue. Her eyes blows out, her eyes will darken and it will lead to your back being broken when you do it lmao

— Being the leader, she finds it difficult to let go of control even in the bedroom. And you knew how passionate she is, having grew up with her in Dream Academy. So Sophia definitely leans more into a gentle dominant role with you.

— The biggest surprise is the way she demands your fangs to dig deep into her skin, especially her thighs. She loves the way her blood tints your lips and the way her juices coat your chin. She doesn't care if she has to spend the next 3 days taking care of the mark you gave her, once it heals and begins to fade, she will demand you to bite her again and you can't ever say no.

— Sophia's blood kink goes crazy and you can't convince me otherwise.

Manon

— Manon has the kind of touch that feels unintentional… until you realize she’s doing it again. Fingers brushing your wrist when she passes something to you, leaning so close her breath warms your cheek.

— She’s playful in her steaminess. She’ll straddle your lap with a giggle, pretending she just wanted to “borrow your seat,” but then she lingers, brushing her hair against your face.

— She can’t hold in her laugh, but when she quiets down and lowers her tone, the shift feels intimate. Her giggles transform into a husky chuckle that lingers in your ear and caresses your soul.

— Her empathy makes her hyper-attuned to your reactions; she’ll tease you with featherlight touches until you’re begging for her to stop playing games.

— She’ll laugh during heated moments, not because she’s mocking you, but because she’s giddy with how close you are. That laugh always makes it ten times hotter.

— She has a habit of playing with your hair or tugging gently at your sleeve, grounding herself in you. The warmth in her eyes when she looks up at you makes the air feel thicker.

— When she hugs you, she stays pressed against you just long enough for it to feel like more than comfort; her body heat and the weight of her sigh against your neck make your pulse quicken.

— Manon has a weakness for neck kisses both giving and receiving. She melts under them, and she knows you do too.

— Manon likes it when you nip at her neck playfully, often dissolving into giggles when you do, and then she moans when you sooth it over with your tongue.

— Manon's neck kisses are often start with feather light kisses, but then she starts getting more and more desperate, sucking, biting, and leaving marks while she guides your hands to where she wants them.

— She can never ever keep her hands to herself omfg, she loves loves loves running her hands all over your scaled back. In fact, she gets fussy when you waste energy trying to hide your scales around her when you could spend all that energy fucking her??

— I fear that Manon is a grinder and practically straddles your thighs every chance she gets, she absolutely goes crazy over the feeling rubbing herself all over your scaled thigh.

Daniela

— Daniela is competitive even in intimacy, she’ll challenge you to see who breaks first under teasing. 

— Spoiler: she always wins.

— Daniela thrives on competition, even when it’s just between the two of you. She’ll challenge you to anything: a game, a dance-off, a playful fight; but she always closes the distance, her smug grin hovering inches away when she wins.

"I win again, amor. What's my prize?"

— When she dances with you, she treats it like a duel, circling you, daring you to keep up with her fire and grace. The tension between you two could light up a stage.

— The fans go crazy over your chemistry on stage; literally fire and ice.

— She leans into your space when she talks, eyes locked on yours with laser focus. The way her lips curl in amusement makes you painfully aware of how close she is.

— She likes to whisper “You can’t resist me” when she’s close, her voice low, her smirk daring you to prove her wrong.

— That smirk only deepens when you do resist, because the chase is everything to her, it makes your eventual surrender feel electric, and inevitable

— Daniela has a knack for backing you against walls without even trying. Whether she’s excitedly telling a story or cornering you mid-tease, her presence swallows you whole.

— Daniela also has a knack for pinning you down on your own bed, looming over you in a way that makes your survival instincts go wild. You feel as though you'll be devoured by her.

— And she does devour you. She's so goddamn competitive that she makes it her mission to take you apart piece by piece, loving the way you crumble under her touch.

— Her tongue outdoes yours actually. You think you know how to use your long tongue? She uses hers better.

— Oh and she doesn't like it when you leave marks. She spends a lot of time taking care of her body that the one time you accidentally left a hickey on her neck, she muzzled you the next night you spend with her.

"What? You act like a rabid animal, you get treated like one. Maybe if you learn how to follow instructions and behave, you'll get what you want, mi vida."

— As much as she hates you leaving marks on her skin, she loves leaving her mark on yours. She has fangs too, albeit it's MUCH MUCH duller than yours, it still leaves bite marks on your skin. One mark she loves the most is leaving hickeys where she knows the other girls would find it: the underside of your breasts, your collarbone, your inner thighs, your hips, everywhere. Oh, and you better be prepared to see dozens of lipstick marks littered all over your skin

— As payback for all the time you spent ignoring her, she makes you work for it. She makes you beg, she ties you up, teases you until you actually genuinely sob.

— She loves putting you in a leash and a strap, laying down and enjoying the way you try your absolute best at pleasing her while she tugs at the silk rope tied around your collar.

— She still controls the pace even when she lets you take 'control'

— On days when she feels like it, she wears the strap herself and enjoys the way you melt around it. You turn so pliable under her touch that she can't believe she's competing with you in rehersals just hours prior.

— She loves it when you lose control and let some of your snake out. She loves it when you make a sort of rattling sound and she's unsure where it comes from. She loves fucking you infront of a mirror and enjoying the way your slitted eyes look at her own blown out ones through the mirror, intoxicated by the way that you're supposed to be this big scary monster, the apex predator if you will, but then you're just like a domesticated pet around her, looking at her with teary and desperate eyes.

Lara

— Lara oozes natural sultriness without even meaning to. With her, it’s all about the eyes. One smoldering look from Lara across the room and your entire body feels like it’s on fire. She holds eye contact like it’s a challenge. Even when she’s joking, her gaze is magnetic, pulling you in until you forget what you were saying.

— No like actually, she makes you go crazy with just her eyes, so much so that you actually can't help but look away when she stares at you. You're not allowed to go on duo lives with her because she just flusters you so much, and when you're flustered she goes absolutely freaky.

— She doesn’t rush anything. Her sultry confidence means she’ll drag out every moment, savoring the anticipation like it’s her favorite game.

— She loves calling you out when she notices you fluster. “Oh, you’re blushing? Interesting.” Her voice always dips lower, velvety smooth, teasing yet affectionate.

— Sitting next to her always feels like an ambush; she’ll rest her chin on your shoulder, lips close enough that every exhale sends shivers down your neck.

— She’ll casually murmur something in Tamil while tracing her fingers along your arm, and even if you don’t know the words, the softness in her tone makes it impossible not to shiver.

— A picture freak. If Daniela loves taking selfies, Lara's phone has a secret vault just filled with pictures of you. She loves taking pictures of you in compromising positions that if it ever gets leaked it's going to be the scandal of the lifetime.

— The most downright filthy video she has of you that really gets her going is you fully in your half-snake-half-human form and you're just eating her out like you've been starved for decades while she has her hands weaved into hair.

— Absolutely loves the feeling of your tongue filling her up, swears it's the hottest thing you'll ever do.

— I fear that she wears the strap. No matter how feminine she presents, that harness is not leaving her hips. And she has the most extensive toy collection you'll ever see, one sight of it makes you so flustered that you actually contemplate what led you to this moment.

— Strap game is crazy actually. She makes you slobber over it, a firm lube anti, believes that spit and pre-cum are enough lmao.

— She goes crazy with the way your jaw can just stretch far beyond what is humanly possible, which she absolutely abuses, gripping your hair gently but firmly, rocking her hips back and forth however she likes. And her size increases every single night it's actually crazy. She tests your limits everyday, both your libido and your patience lmao

Megan

— Megan is a loser in a hot body, which means her steamy moments usually start by accident like tripping and ending up pressed against you. But once she realizes, she doesn’t move away. She laughs nervously, cheeks pink, but her hands still linger. It happens so much that you think that it's intentional at is point.

— She’s bold without meaning to be, casually throwing her arm around your shoulders, pulling you into her lap during group hangs, or falling asleep with her head buried in your neck.

— She gets flustered when you tease her back, cheeks pink, eyes darting away, but she never actually pulls away.

— Despite the awkwardness, she has moments of raw intensity; staring at you a second too long, her voice dropping lower when she says your name, making your heart skip.

— Megan thrives on stolen glances. She’ll catch your eye from across the room, grin slowly, and wink, knowing full well how it makes your stomach flip.

— She sends you edits of yourself, half as a joke, half because she genuinely finds you captivating. The way she looks at you while you watch them together makes it clear it’s not all teasing.

— She loves it when you watch her touch herself. And your nights usually start with her putting on a show for you, touching herself in such a sensual and tempting way that you actually go crazy.

— She LOVES sitting on your face and riding your tongue, grinding on your face with reckless abandon that leaves you both sore the next day, obsessing with the way your forked tongue flicks her clit in that specific way that makes her see the stars as white-hot pleasure courses through her veins

— She's very very whiney, very very loud, and she's not shy to beg, she's actually so desperate and the tone of her voice makes it impossible to not give her what she wants.

— While she loves your tongue, she loves your fingers more, especially when you let your hands go scaley and the sensation it gives when you're inside her; tight and snug around your slender fingers, makes her eyes roll back to her skull.

— She also locks her legs around your head when you eat her out, barely letting you breath as everything becomes muffled and your senses are filled with just her.

— Lastly, she begged for you to shift and coil around her. You indulged her once, your snake half gently yet tightly wrapping around her as your naked upper half loomed over her with a concerned look on your face.

…Ow.

Was your first thought when you woke up.

You registered your surroundings, and where the hell were you?

Your head was pounding, probably remnants of the heavy drinking from the night before. You’re not sure what possessed you last night to drink so badly, knowing damn well you couldn’t hold your alcohol (you get drunk in just two shots of whiskey). Probably the Las Vegas hype and wonder.

The most damning thing about this, though? You were as naked as the day you were born.

Stretching, you could tell you were in your hotel room from the overly cold a/c blasting away and the comfy sheets under you.

Still didn’t explain why you were naked, though.

You tried to open your eyes.

Keyword: Tried.

The pounding in your head plus the blackout curtains made it impossible to keep your eyes open long enough to process what was going on, so instead you patted around your bed and- oh shit.

If finding another very naked human body in your bed wasn’t enough to get your eyes to snap open — finding two was enough.

You fought hard to ignore the pain and instead tried to piece together what the hell happened last night. It was your last night in Vegas, so you went out to a bar, completely forgetting you can’t hold your alcohol, and... nothing. You couldn’t remember anything after your second drink, which sucked, but you were unharmed and in your own bed, so... maybe everything is okay?

You glanced at the two women, as you were the one between them. Both of their faces were covered by their hair and some… blindfolds, so you couldn’t see their faces, but the way the sun lovingly kissed their figures from the light sneaking its way in, you instantly knew that these two women were gorgeous. Yeah, how did you manage to charm your way into sleeping with two women? You’d never thought you’d be jealous of the sun, yet here you were, wishing you could be the one to kiss their lovely bodies. Or at least have the memory of doing so.

Shut up, Y/N.

You checked the time and- oh shit. You’ve been saying that a lot this morning.

Despite the pounding in your head, you had to get ready. Check-out wasn’t until later, but your flight back home was before that, and you needed to skedaddle, or else you’d be facing the wrath of your parents that didn’t even know you were in Vegas.

You slowly crept out of bed, making sure not to wake the two women. Your killer hangover and general confusion over what the hell happened last night were enough to stress you out early in the morning, so the last thing you needed was two pretty women perceiving you in your vulnerable state.

You quickly put on whatever was in your suitcase, forgoing taking a shower. You didn’t want to linger in the room for long, knowing that the longer you were there, the higher the chance the two women would wake up.

You gave the rest of the room a once-over. You didn’t have much; you were really only in Vegas for a rare long weekend, and it was mostly because you were assigned on a short-term contract at one of the Vegas hospitals for four days, and then you had a vacation day to yourself.

Satisfied with seeing nothing out of place, you quietly clapped your hands and-

For the nth time, oh shit.

Now that it was brought to your attention, you weren’t sure how you didn’t notice the weight of it before.

There was a ring on your left ring finger.

You let out a shaky breath. You knew you were unpredictable when drunk, and you may not have remembered what happened last night, but you most certainly knew that you weren’t wearing a very pretty diamond ring last night (you don’t even wear that much jewellery in the first place).

Okay, wait a minute.

Breathe.

Maybe these pretty women were just that! Two women you spent the night with, and definitely someone you did not have a Vegas wedding with. Yep. Just two very generous strangers. Nothing else.

The piece of paper you saw on the little round table sent your heart into your stomach. That better not be what you thought it was.

You slowly stepped over to it, and- yep. Marriage certificate for one Y/N… one Natasha Romanoff and one Wanda Maximoff.

Your first thought was it was nice that at least your last name still hasn’t changed and their last names weren’t yours. God, that would send your family into a surprise. Your second thought was that those names were sort of familiar, but you’re not sure where you’ve heard them. Then common sense hit you with a brick, and you realised you were married. That was your signature all right, and the certificate looked legit, signed off by a judge and everything.

You gripped the edge of the table, the ring digging into your finger. This couldn’t be happening, right?

Did your dumbass just get married after one too many drinks?

You took a deep breath; this was fine. It probably hadn’t even been 24 hours since the three of you got hitched, and the three of you were probably really drunk when it happened. You could have an annulment and pretend none of this ever happened. Nobody had to know, and you could continue on in life acting as if you didn’t make the dumbest decision of your life.

You glanced around the room, spotting a pen and a little notepad on the desk. You picked them up, writing a quick note and leaving it on the nightstand along with your keycard and the ring. You did your best not to look at the two very pretty strangers.

Taking a final glance around the room, you grabbed the handle of your suitcase and began to wheel it out the door.

However, you couldn’t help looking over your shoulder at the two strangers in your bed. One of them had red hair with lightly tanned skin and- god, who knows who put those hickies on their neck and… somewhere. Whilst the other one had red hair too and didn’t look any different, she also had hickies and a… very curvy figure. You could see why your drunk mind thought it was a good idea to marry these two women. Your hungover mind, though? Still weak for pretty women.

With that final thought, you step out of the door, leaving behind one Natasha Romanoff, one Wanda Maximoff, two wives and two strangers at once in your comfortable hotel bed.

Hi!

So, it looks like we got married, huh?

I’d tell you both my name, but you two can see it on the marriage certificate haha. (I’m sorry, I'm awkward.)

I’m leaving you two my number if you want to contact me for an annulment and my mailbox if you need to send me any documents. I know the circumstances are… weird, but I also know I’d be made fun of too much for going through with a classic Vegas wedding to think about the weirdness.

Anyways, check-out is in the afternoon. I left my key card and the ring (that looks way, way too expensive for a simple Vegas wedding, which made me feel guilty about keeping it- I also don’t really wear jewellery that much), so you two should be good to go!

Be safe!

-Y/N aka your wife.

taglist — ‧₊˚ @nebthetautora @deathbylesbianwitches

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.

PLEASE check my later versions of this post via my main page to make sure you have the latest version of this post before you reblog. All the information I’ve been able to gather is here, and it's frustrating to see the old version getting passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.