i mean this so sincerely if you are a man in 2026 you should expect to be on thin fucking ice with the women in your life and if this confuses or enrages you then you are part of the reason why
if you aren't even aware that we are right now all of us living in an ongoing worldwide antifeminist backlash, that is not a oh-no-cute-oopsie kind of ignorance. that fully goes past "complicit" and enters "actively part of the problem" territory. it makes me contemptuous of you. it makes me not want to know you at all. i doubt i'm alone in that.
Like many of you, I woke up to the AI slop It Lives Within "TV show" on the Choices app. Having spent thousands (no joke) of loving hours on the fan-made It Lives Within, I admit it felt like a bit of a kick to the gut, especially since I'd stayed up until 2 AM the night before, meticulously working on improving the programming of textbox animations for the updated version of the game.
But at the end of the day, the people are what own stories. It doesn't matter what PB puts out, especially when it so blatantly disrespects a series we all hold close to our hearts. We can choose what to support, what to value, and what to be our true version of these stories.
As such, I wanted to provide an update for "It Lives Within: The Obsidian Cut." We are working extremely hard to finish rewrites, and I apologize it's taking so long - but real work takes time. We take so long because we don't use AI to do our work for us. Our testers have found hundreds of bugs, which have been corrected. I'm currently working on some rewrites for chapters 21-22, and once that's finished, I'm going to play from start to finish with different MCs to include more complete personality variants for your MC.
While our game was highly beloved (which I am still so wholly grateful for three years after the final episode aired), I know some of you tried the original version and decided it wasn't for you. Others maybe never heard of it. But, with the news of AI It Lives Within dropping today, I just wanted to invite everyone to give our fan version a chance. If you tried it before and gave up, or haven't played it yet, I recommend waiting until Obsidian airs to experience that version for the first time. And if you did play the original, stick around! You'll love Obsidian when it airs. All of our testers are highly enjoying it and say that it improves on the story with every change, while still be the story they knew and love.
AI It Lives Within is frustrating and offensive, but ultimately, we never needed their blessing, and neither do you. Our story started small, with a team that never made any money. Everything was done out of passion and love for this series and these characters, and we were and still are, devoted to creating truly player-drive stories where your choices matter. A LOT. That passion is something that can never be generated in any machine. Stories from the heart speak to the heart, "canon" or not, and what really matters is how theses stories impact and inspire us.
A couple days ago, I made a post addressing Pixelberry/Series Entertainment's "It Lives Within." At the time, I wasn't aware of the story, I only knew that the name was the same. Since then, I saw many people accusing it of plagiarizing our game. I decided to look into it more, and after having watched all the episodes on YouTube, the claims of plagiarism unfortunately seem to be valid. As such, I'd like to further address this situation, and provide a list of stolen ideas and art with screenshot proofs and explanations.
A few years ago, I had a video call with one of the original writers for the It Lives Series. He no longer works for Pixelberry, and did not work with them at the time of the video call. Though I knew nothing about their original plans for the game before starting this project (including that they also intended to name the game "It Lives Within"), he told me their plans on that call. It was going to be a survivor-type cave crawl story with giant bug-inspired and creepy crawler monster enemies, where you play as a new character who is attacked by these creatures while camping and separated from their friends. From my understanding, Connor and his crew would be sort of like Sam and Dean from SPN, acting as these experienced "hunters" who help protect them.
That is not what the story of what Choices "It Lives Within" was. At all.
This means that the AI """writers""" at Series Entertainment/PB were not creating this story based on the original writers’ plans. They made their story idea later - after ILW was completed in its entirety. Therefore, it's reasonable to follow that unlike the title, these similarities are not coincidence. Though even then, the title It Lives Within had to do with the cave setting and going literally into the earth, while the AI version has nothing to do with caves. So the reasoning for the title is not the same as the reasoning for their original title.
With all this in mind, let’s go over the similarities between our game and the Choices It Lives Within AI show. I am going to be putting it beneath a read more, in case there are people who are interested in playing ILW and don’t want to get it spoiled.
Major things they stole:
Their villain, Silas, is Matthias. Literally, that's it. He's Matthias.
Silas is an immortal man who's been alive for almost 200 years and was a member of the Westchester cult, where he knew Cora. Matthias is an immortal man who's been alive 200+ years and was a member of the Westchester cult, where he knew Cora. Silas wants to sacrifice redfield Noah due to his connection to the Power as part of a complicated ritual he's put together in order to... I'm not quite sure what, exactly, as the story was a bit hard to follow. Matthias wants to sacrifice Rowan, due to their connection to the Power, as part of a complicated ritual he's put together in order to gain more power and freedom and heal the corrupted Power. Silas thinks he’s all manipulative and the main crew states that "He’s getting us to do his work for him!” Matthias thinks he's all manipulative, and gloats about being a "puppet master" and getting people to do his work for him.
And then there's his appearance. That's literally the same hairstyle - even has the part on the same side and the same curly swoops. He's the same age. Same race. Literally, just like Connor in their story is a recognizable AI-version of his in-game sprite, that's what Silas looks like to Matthias. All he's missing is the beard.
The gang's base of operations is Cora’s cabin
This one is interesting. It's such a tiny detail, and I'd grown so used to the cabin being their safe place that when Connor was like "We need to get back to the cabin" it literally took me a moment to realize - wait. They had nothing to do with that cabin in the original series. Using that as a home base was literally our idea, an It Lives Within original.
The main enemies are mind controlled townspeople working for Silas
Instead of following the precedent of the previous games and having the enemies be Power-twisted animal monsters, they decided to make their enemies humans that are mind-controlled into zombie-like beings with that attack the gang in hordes. This is a rip-off of It Lives Within's horrors, which are power-corrupted townsfolk that Matthias takes advantage of to oppose the main crew. And on top of that, they copied the carnival scene where Harper drives through a horde of horrors, including a scene where Devon drives through a horde of mind-controlled/zombified townsfolk.
Noah and Devon's relationship
Their relationship in this '"TV show" has suspicious similarities to their friendship/romance routes in ILW. They made Devon be redfield Noah's anchor to reality, and even had Devon use memories to help ground Noah, which we showed in the cabin scene where Devon and Noah play baseball together. And I know there were Noah x Devon shippers outside of me before ILW released, but it was never PB's plan to canonize them. So the fact that they are seemingly changing course to canonize them after they grew so popular in the fan version feels a bit too coincidental.
Scraping fan art for their AI animation frames
But what's even more egregious is that they have even stooped to scraping from fan artists, who have nowhere near the same following or exposure as our project does. Seriously, what are the odds that the MC they choose to use matches this artist's MC's race, gender, hair, and outfit exactly, that they used Noah's old outfit, that they are literally positioned on the same sides of the image? It's blatant plagiarism, and it's despicable. @errajay I'm so sorry they did this.
These are the biggest similarities, but considering that it was only like 15 minutes of content, that means that a high percentage of the story was stolen. Sure, the exact details of "Silas's" plan are different (he's like a horcrux for the "entity" aka power and he was split into 43 parts and Noah's one of his parts and he needs to kill him to get it back and be free or something) it's the same concept: immortal man who's trapped making a complicated ritual requiring sacrifice while manipulating people to get everything into place.
If you want to see for yourselves, please find it on YouTube. Do not support them with clicks or traffic on their app. Thank you! Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering, no AI was used in the drafting of this post 💖
Drug arrives years after pandemic’s peak, but could still offer protection to vulnerable populations.
An antiviral pill has, for the first time, been shown to prevent COVID-19 in people exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus at home, according to trial results published today in the New England Journal of Medicine1.
The drug could be a lifeline for those who still face real danger from the virus, such as care-home residents or transplant recipients on immune-suppressing medication.
I really like spellfyre and am hopeful for its success, but having a singular ally quest chain (3 quests) cost 90 diamonds, when players can earn maximum 10 diamonds a day (assuming they are logging in every six hours AND have a scene to play) is just insane. the barrier of entry to a pivotal part of your story (getting know your allies on a deeper level) is so high literally only whales will see it, leading to even LESS potential customers having the chance to become invested enough in these characters to even want to spend money?
Listen, fellow trans women, I love you all, but if you think that trans men or transmascs are an oppressor class you need to log the fuck off because you are being brainpoisoned by discourse-mongers. That is a legitimately rocks for brains take
There is a HUUUUUGE gap between "transfems experience a unique intersection of oppressions which are not experienced by transmascs", which is true, "some passing trans men benefit from male privilege", which is true, "trans people are not immune to transphobic rhetoric and this can sometimes take the form of transmascs engaging in transmisogyny", which is true, and "transmascs should be treated as equivalent to cis men because trans men are men and therefore as men they are a danger to trans women" like do you see where the gigantic leap of logic comes in here?
There is something personally offensive to me about accounts that go out of their way to post about transmascs being dangerous or untrustworthy or transmisogynistic when the primary danger to trans women right now is the goddamn United States government. Like we've got people in the white house who would outlaw all HRT if given the opportunity and you're gonna post about trans men?? I don't even mean this in a "we have bigger fish to fry" sort of way I mean this is the sense that building solidarity is one of the most important things you can do when faced with a hostile government and society. It's not just that the claims being made are bullshit and transphobic it's that the whole thing feels actively self-destructive toward creating any kind of community that's of any use to anyone
i feel like people aren't getting how dire ai is. we are running out of drinkable water. our brains aren't engaging as much with what we see and hear. people near data centers don't get clean water and experience electricity blackouts. it's being used to make pornography of underaged people and women. it often just lies. it affirms everything. it lies. it has made people kill themselves. it lies for gods sake. and people act as if im dramatic for being staunchly against it. 'now i KNOOW you hate ai and whatever, but look at this cute video' this isn't me being a new age puritan about internet videos, this is about the fucking earth and our future living on this planet. people are suffering now, people will suffer more, and my friends and parents will roll their eyes and think im annoying for despising ai so explicitly. we need to wake up because we cannot live like this
i miss when choices art was still peak and they actually still made it cause notice how these 2 r literally the prettiest book covers among all the book covers for the entire series cause you can just TELL they put a lot of thought into it with the warmth it makes you feel and you can see they really tried to make an effort on showing how beautiful sapphic relationships can be 🥹 especially knowing these 2 women had one hell of a character development amidst their relationship with mc 😭😭 sigh bring back old choices
watching the pitt and nostalgic for the greatest tv medical drama that never was (because it was a playchoices book) . so it of course results in low effort traced over redraw for the nostalgia <3
Copyright class actions could financially ruin AI industry, trade groups say.
AI industry groups are urging an appeals court to block what they say is the largest copyright class action ever certified. They’ve warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic’s AI training now threatens to “financially ruin” the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement.
Authors have until March 30th, 2026 (That is just 9 days as of this reblog, which I am posting on March 21st, 2026) to file their claim against Anthropic to be reimbursed up to $3,000 per work found in the list.
Updated February 18, 2026 IMPORTANT: The Claims Deadline Is March 30 Background Bartz v. Anthropic is one of the major copyright lawsuits b
Please click the above link for all of the exact details of how to file a claim and to check for your works, and share this post as far and wide as you can before March 30th, 2026!
