I keep a close watch on this heart of mine ⏳

See, this is what sucks THE MOST!

Because I am, quite explicitly, OKAY with people posting my work elsewhere (especially for like, meme purposes, or edits, etc) AS LONG AS CREDIT IS GIVEN AND CLEAR. People voice-act my comics on YouTube, and I've been fine with this THE WHOLE ASS TIME.

I'm assuming you didn't find my work because the reposter led you to it? It's because other people in the comments told you where to find me.

So this bozo is just doing extra damage without need for it, and also pretending they can make money on it somehow, which is hilarious.

I'm thinking the best way to deal with this is to just keep commenting on all their posts that this isn't their work, and where to find me, because at least it'll be going some small amount of good.

AND THE OTHER WORKS, TOO! They've stolen other comics as well, so if you have the clock app, please go and comment on their posts and link back to the original authors!!

It put a real big dent in my schedule for pages too, because I didn't want to upload anything new while someone was actively looking to take it for themselves. It also took the wind out of my sails for making new pages at all. I'm getting back to it now, thankfully, but it still wasn't a great feeling to deal with.

If you go to that account now, my comic pages are gone, but that was only after I went through a series of ridiculous steps to make that happen. I'm hoping that maybe telling people what happened will help them get their stuff taken down too.

As a summary of the pure bs I had to go through:

Someone tagged me in my Discord server telling me that they had found pages of chapter two of the comic on TikTok under a different account than my actual TikTok page. Currently my uploads on TikTok stop at "Check-In", because my comic really isn't formatted for that app and the views were very inconsistent. Plus its just a hassle to update there lmao

I had noticed there was a lot of new subs and server members over the past two weeks, and now I knew why. They were likely being funneled very indirectly from this account.

Well, when I found time to take a look for myself, I had been blocked already! The comment my gf made saying "Hey this is so and so's comic and you can read it here," was also gone!

Looking around on my side account I could see that they had stolen other comics as well; @pink-onyx-au and @su-revived stood out to me because I know those two creators personally. I knew C4 just... didn't have an account at all and that Mod Joe had complained in the past about someone stealing his comic, which is prolly what led him to making an account and posting pages himself since he hadn't been posting them previously. I had assumed that all got dealt with but clearly not cause this guy is still here taking stuff 😔

Anyway, I found out that before they were stealing Tapas comics (and yes it just Tapas - I'll come back to that in a second) they were running a failed Roblox page! Turns out if you do a Google search of their username, it has some extra metadata attached that isn't visible on TikTok-

If you look up that other username- oh wow look a TikTok account that posts Roblox content!

And if you look up that name on Roblox, oh boy there is indeed an account with a matching player avatar there too!

So, since they blocked me on the SU account, I then tried to message the Roblox one.

I genuinely didn't care that they were uploading my pages. Plenty of people have asked to translate my comics and post them and I've said yes. Hell, if any of you reading this wants to do that, here's the Goggle Drive link to all the blank pages and resources to do so. I don't need clock app clout, if I gave a shit I'd still be posting pages myself.

I did care that they were actively taking credit for them and refusing to let readers have full free access to my comic by removing any comment saying where to read the whole thing.

They pretty much just ignored me when I messaged them and then blocked me, but notably, they also blocked my alt on that account too after blocking it on the SU one, which is how I know the account belongs to them given that I never at any point used my alt to contact them about the comic pages.

After exhausting any normal means of communication to ask nicely, "Hey can you please add credit to those uploads or literally just a Tapas link", I decided enough was enough. I went and filed a copywrite takedown form (and as a certified commie queer and copywrite law hater this pained me) and asked my server to leave comments on as many videos as they could saying who created the comic and where to read it. I then privated this blog and changed every upload on Tapas that they hadn't posted yet to be an image saying to come to my server to read the rest. Anyone who had actually been reading up to that point could still get past the security question just fine, so I wasn't worried about locking out any readers.

If this guy was that hell bent on taking my stuff, I wasn't gonna make it easy.

About 24 hours later, after blocking several of my serve members and deleting probably dozens of comments, all my pages magically vanished. Whether my report spooked them or they got miffed by the total shutdown of their source for pages with a very clearly targeted message attached or they just got sick of deleting comments, I don't know. But if putting them on blast it what it takes for them to start doing the bare minimum, so be it.

I wasn't aware they were making attempts to monetize the uploads. That's prolly why they're so determined to do this. If this account gets outted at any point for NOT being the sole source of these comics, they lose money. And the reason they're taking from Tapas is likely because not a lot of people are familiar with the platform. If something is on Twitter, that is super easy to source, but an app exclusively for reading web comics on, not so much. And I know they're only stealing from Tapas because A) privating my tumblr didn't stop them, in fact they actually made a new post about 10 minutes after I privated it with more of my comic, and B) they seemingly stopped posting Ponyx pages where the Tapas comic ends, even though the blog has plenty of content past that point.

Fanartpalooza #4: @wtl-archive I've only recently started to read Walk the Line fully, and I gotta love me a multiverse romp of cosmic proportions. Also GILFs. I mean what.

[Each image here is drawn by the person who owns the AU!]

Drift Together | @drift-together-au | AO3 Link

I'm a bit biased since I help out with the art and beta read for it, but this fic is sooo well-written, and it's updated very often. This AU is about a version of Steven split as a baby, forcing his two halves to live very different lives. The gem half is raised like the Steven we're all familiar with, while the human half is raised as an orphan that gets sent from house to house until he ends up in Beach City with Vidalia. It's a romantic, high school centered slow burn with about 40 chapters already finished. Plenty to read!

Evelynn, Evelynn | @lone-gem-half + @local-edgelord | AO3 Link

This is a very quick read on AO3, a lot of subtext and vibes but excellent nonetheless. I'm a sucker for anything that explores Steven's gem, doubly so if he's an extremely autistic little rat lmao

Steven Universe Movie: Alternate Cut | @sumac-comic

This is one of the older AUs that's still kicking. Updates are slow, but the artwork is so high quality it's worth the wait. It's exactly what it says on the tin; and alternative take on what happens in the Movie.

Slipping AU | @suslippingau

A brand-spanking new AU that piqued my interest. Sometimes you just gotta see where something is headed and that's how I feel about this AU.

Blue Diamond AU (Stevy) | @wastelandkg72

Lotta Blue Diamond AUs out there but I really like this one. It's different. Like really different. If you put a gun to my head I would have never guessed Stevy's dad was fucking JAMIE THE MAILMAN. Very cool. It's got great artwork too, I love all the designs! I think this deserves way more love and attention than it gets.

Twiniverse | @twiniverse | Tapas Link

Another long standing AU about a version of Steven who has a twin sister, Nora, that has Pearl's gem. Steven still has Rose's. As you can guess, without Pearl present and a new kid added, the main CG dynamic is a bit different. There's a nice, chunky comic on Tapas you can read for it.

Ponyx | @pink-onyx-au | Tapas Link

I cannot sing enough praises of C4's Ponyx, truly one of the best AUs around besides WDAU. The art is amazing, the characters are well-written, and the story is so compelling. If you haven't read it for some reason, I highly recommend it, even if AUs are not typically your jam. This one is canon-complaint and slots in between "I Am My Monster" and "The Future".

Divide AU | @unixxverse

Steven and his gem get separated at a young age, but the gem half is essentially "reset" into something entirely new. I adore the designs for this AU, especially Rosyn <3

Bleeding-Heart | @zef01

This one is kind of forming in real time— it's like of an exploration of relationships and character dynamics more than anything. I like to peep in on occasion and see how it's shaping up.

Shatterer Steven | @crudaka

Another brand new AU, featuring a Steven that ruthlessly shatters the Diamonds. He reminds me of a significantly more unhinged but way less suicidal Heartbreak lol, like one who hadn't escalated to full on genocide.

Honey and Liberty | @wendystarseed

...with your help!

Hey there! Are you enjoying The Lunar Gems? Do you ALSO enjoy other Steven Universe comics? Well have I got the content for you!

Starting from May 1st and until May 31st...

I will be drawing 1 piece of fanart for a Steven Universe AU every day, and tagging it with "Fanartpalooza" - the name this concept took on when @ask-whitepearl-and-steven did it a while back!

So why do I need your help? I'd like suggestions as to what AUs to draw for the month! I have a couple in mind, but I thought it would be nice to open it up to my audience to point me towards works that deserve fanart!

Please note that due to the nature of this event, I won't be able to get around to drawing EVERY AU!!

ask and ye shall receive: When I write in Japanese I usually also throw it in google translate to double check that I'm not using the wrong kanji by mistake, and two years ago it gave me very dry and literal translations.

I was doing it today and noticed it had a pretty strong voice added to the output

For reference, to give a dry translation I would put: Lately I'm into in Hanafuda. Nobody seems to know anything about it here, so they probably wouldn't understand my brilliant jokes. I guess you guys will never be able to understand "Mister November and the Scary Cave".

I have a fluent friend who is able to check my work for me and give me tips on hitting the correct tone (I was going for a comically casual feeling), so I'm confident that I'm expressing the feeling I'm intending. While Google is also hitting the same emotion, I really don't like knowing that it's assigning tone in the first place.

To check if it was editorializing based on informal grammatical choices, I formal'd up the writing to be more polite and remove any non-standard vocabulary.

What do you mean I'm just using the browser versi-