i love browsing through ao3 for a nice little morning fic to read and then finding that someone has plagiarized one of my works 🥲
Hi everyone. So, I made a decision a couple years ago when AI was on the rise to lock all of my AO3 fics in hopes of protecting my work from being used without my consent and fed to AI. While it wasn't a guarantee that my work would be protected, it felt like a better alternative than a worst case scenario of removing my stories from AO3 completely.
When ST5 came back around, I decided to go ahead and unlock my stories again as the fandom grew. I wanted the works to be available to anyone and everyone who wanted to read them.
Unfortunately, with finding that someone has blatantly stolen excerpts from one of my longest and most popular works, I’m going to go ahead and lock the stories that are solely written by me. Please be aware that you will have to have an AO3 account to read my fics from here on out, and please let anyone else know that if they’re unable to find one of my stories!
The last thing I’ll say is this: fandom spaces are such a special thing. Fanfic writers often have lives outside of this hobby, but we do it out of our own passion for storytelling and our love for the fandom. We create for free and share our stories with the world because we love to do it. I know I have personally spent many hours crafting the stories I share with all of you, and for the plagiarized story in particular, this is one that’s dear to my heart due to it being an exploration of grief. I wrote that story as a way to process what I was feeling in the aftermath of a deeply personal loss and to help people do the same.
To steal another person’s work is unacceptable, and it is a symptom of the larger issue of disrespect that our fandom in particular has for its authors.
It’s okay to be inspired others’ art. It’s okay to create things that are based on the same ideas and themes that are floating around the fandom! But what isn’t okay is taking someone’s work, making a couple small changes, and claiming it as your own.
I’ve already reached out to the author and won’t be naming the story or the author specifically, so please don’t ask about that. Otherwise, thank you for all the love and support from everyone who’s ever read one of my stories, and thanks for getting through this long ass post. I’m going to lock my stories later when I have my laptop, so please be aware and let anyone know if they’re looking for something of mine. ❤️











