That Garlic Bread Looks Really Good Ngl

That garlic bread looks really good ngl—

garlic bread to share to your aspec friends :)

rb to share

totally normal and not deranged thing to say

Okay, so I haven't talked about this for a while and I'm pretty sure this is an okay place to share this, but...

A few months ago, I realized I'm pretty sure I was lesbian, HOWEVER, I also kinda realized something, like, just now.

I don't like sex. The talk of sex makes me uncomfortable.

I'd prefer if I can just block certain tags that can contain sex (NSFT/NSFW I clearly remember filtering; I don't recall if I did the same for smut), but not every post that should be marked for such is.

I can't tell if someone is a bot or are just expressing themselves (unless they tag a fandom I follow, then I can clearly tell it's a bot) so I just tend to end up feeling bad for blocking. Forgive me for my dumbassery.

That being said, I think I might be sex-repulsed asexual.

The colours are so prebty.

Fandom friends, we have won the battle (although we definitely did not win the war).

Yesterday, I wrote this post about lore.fm, an AI scraping app that was being marketed as an accessibility tool. Now, the person that has been promoting this app decided, in the light of plenty of backlash, to backtrack and pull it down, as they "feel uncomfortable" with how authors reacted to it.

Of this video, it's very important to highlight a couple of things:

the video is 3 long minutes of guilt-tripping: she keeps repeating that her (and her team, whose existence wasn't disclosed until yesterday: this app was marketed as being a sole woman's pet project) wanted to do good and create an accessibility tool. This comes with the underlying layer that all the authors who rightfully decided to defend their creations are ableist and in the wrong. It's a manipulation tactic;

there is no acknowledgement of the fact that the app was created by a team that specifically works to create apps that generate AI stories;

there is no explanation as to where the money to fund this app is coming from, and we all know that, when you're not paying for the product, you are the product;

this is backtracking, not genuine conversation: since the other day, the videos promoting this app went viral on r/Ao3, and plenty of people began contacting team@lore.fm to ask for their works to not be included. Then, the news spread on Tumblr too. They originally thought they could get away with "legally" stealing as much material as possible, and had to cut the project short because authors were doing everything in their power to stop them. The decision to take the app off for "reassessment" doesn't come from the goodness of their hearts.

At this point of the conversation, I think it's clear that the entirety of the project was relying on the perceived naïveté of fanfic readers and writers, who are oftentimes seen and stereotyped as being silly teens and not adults with real jobs and real knowledge of the law. When they saw dozens, if not hundreds, of authors contacting them to ask their works to not be featured, some of them threatening legal consequences, they had no other choice but to backtrack.

For now, the issue is closed, but don't think it'll be forever. Know your rights, even if you're "just" a fic author, and defend yourself and your works too from these scummy companies that see us as nothing but machines that churn out material for them to steal and profit off of with no consequences.