Discover Top Posts Tagged with #webnovel

I caught up on the manga I was reading, so I moved onto this absolutely wild webnovel that I heard about on Tumblr. It's about two closeted trans women who have been best friends since they were kids but aren't out to each other (or anyone). One of them learns about a competition with a $1M prize where cis men ONLY compete to see who can grow the largest breasts via hrt provided by the competition. She signs up for the free HRT but eventually has to come clean to her best friend/roommate when it becomes too hard to hide and she signs up for the competition to protect her friend from this nonsense. But there's also a bounty in the competition for participants to expose trans femmes among them because then that disqualifies the competitor.

I'm now caught up and it's very "come for the satire, stay for the exquisite character drama".

A trans girl hatches a brilliant scheme: Infiltrate a community of cis men who compete to see who can grow the biggest breasts by taking hor

#ranked competitive breast growth #rcbg #webnovel #trans #trans fiction #queer fiction

I got this comment on a story from my Other AO3 Account this morning.

(Info redacted because I prefer keeping these accounts separate but no one follows me on the side blog I have for that account.)

The story was posted almost a year ago and is relatively “popular” by my average statistics even though it has tropes and themes that are big turnoffs for a lot of people (hence separate accounts). This popularity is undoubtedly because it’s a Marvel Loki story and that fandom is massive.

So there is obviously an algorithm or a bot scrubbing ao3 statistics and leaving this comment on fics that meet a certain metric with the main character of the fic inserted into the comment.

I had a little time to kill this morning so I decided to investigate further. And y’all this is so predatory. Come on this journey with me. It made me mad. It may make you mad.

First, if you go to Webnovel’s website, you HAVE to choose between male lead or female lead stories before you can go any further. WTF?

And that’s weird, but this gets so much worse. This is basically a pay-to-read site that has different subscription models. Which… okay BUT! The authors don’t get paid! Look at that comment again. They’re promising a supportive and nurturing community, but zero monetary compensation. It’s basically, “post your stuff here so we can get paid and you can get… nice vibes?” I mean look at this Orwellian writing:

Using the phrase “pay-to-read model” in the same sentence as “qualitative changes in lifestyles for authors” deliberately makes you think that you can get paid and maybe even make a living on this website. But that’s not actually what it says and authors will not receive one red cent.

Oh but wait, the worst is still to come. In case this breaks containment (which I kind of hope it does) this is where I mention that I’m a lawyer in the US.

I don’t do intellectual property or copyright law but I do read and write contracts for a living. So I went to look at their terms of service. It was fun!

Highlights the first, in which Webnovel gets a license to do basically whatever they want with content you post on their site. This is how they get to be paid for people reading authors’ writing without paying them anything.

Highlights the second, in which Webnovel takes no responsibility for illegally profiting off of fan fic. This all says that the writer is 100% responsible for everything the writer posts (even though only Webnovel is making money from it).

Highlights the third which say that by posting, the author is representing that they have the legal right to use and to let Webnovel use the content according to these terms. So if a writer posts fan fiction and Webnovel makes money from people reading the fan fiction, and the House of the Mouse catches wise, these sections say that that’s ALL on the writer.

So that’s a little skeevy to start off with but the thing that is seriously shitty and made me make this post was that these assholes are coming to ao3. They are actively recruiting people in comments on their fan fiction. And they are saying they are big fans of the character you’re writing about and that they share your interests.

They are recruiting fan fiction writers and giving every impression that you can make money from posting fan fiction on their site and hiding the fact that you absolutely cannot but they can make money off of you while you try, deep in their terms of service which no one but a lawyer who writes fan fic and has some time to kill will read.

I see posts on here regularly from people who don’t understand how this stuff works, don’t understand that they (and others) can not legally make a financial profit from fan fiction. And there are tons of people who will not take the time to dig into the details.

Don’t deal with these bastards. Fuck Webnovel.

#went down a rabbit hole #got mad #webnovel #this is a scam #how to ao3 #fan fiction #please spread the word #long post #50k

"Using immense strength, he pulled open the heavy wooden lid and discovered that the thick, long nails had fallen off at some point in time. There was nothing inside the pitch-black coffin. Nothing!" — Lord of Mysteries 852

Lord of Mysteries Collectors' Edition Volume 11: Undying (Part 2) new illustration

#lord of the mysteries #lotm #lord of mysteries #leonard mitchell #webnovel #official illustration