We All Agree It Would Have Been Way More Interesting If Dabi Was A Woman Right?

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

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See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

Im just feeling a certain way rn

Said this earlier, but saying it again. I CALLED IT. I got *stupid close* with my guesses for what was going to happen to the LoV in the final battle, AND AFTERWARDS. Aka: Shigaraki, keeping an eye on Izuku from the next life. ⬇

MHA canon ending for the LoV bumming you out? Let me fix that! They're still dead, you still might cry, but they get a ~happy ending dammit~ and they're still an awesome found family! 💖 (links below)

It's All About the People You're With - Dabi wakes up from his coma and immediately begins exchanging insults with the ghost of his boss. 🔥💙

Indomitable Will - Tomura Shigaraki claws his way up from despair and kills AFO like the badass he is, then ditches the living world for somewhere a lot better-- and Mon-chan! With faithful Mon-chan at his side, Tomura goes on a quest to gather his League and bring them home. 🐶💖

For All the Times I Couldn't Speak - Tomura doesn't believe that Kurogiri actually loved him. Orboro Shirakumo has no intention of letting that stand, and we finally get the heartfelt conversation between Kurogiri and Tomura that we hoped for. 🖤🤍

Rain on Wisteria - In the ultimate middle finger to the old system, Atsuhiro Sako (aka Mr. Compress) lives a full life, has a family, spends all of AFO's money on a non-profit, and is delighted when his old boss comes to see him at the end of his life.🌈☔

The Sun Rose Today, Did you Smile? - a wip in progress, where Shoto comes to visit his brother at the Afterlife Villain Bar and they finally get that darn soba! 🍜🌞

repost from twt bc i like tumblr better lol

JKR attacking ace people recently after years of intense transphobia should tell you that these people hate all LGBTQIA+ folks, but they start by going for the most marginalized and misunderstood ones. they’ll move on to hating pan and bi and then all of us.

at least this shit proves that is was never about "protecting the children" from the scary transgenders and that it was always about punching down on already small and marginalized communities.

to think they have selective homophobia is delusional, to think that “oh no i’m not one of these weird gender people” is delusional. to think you're safe from their hate is delusional egoism. "oh no not me im not xenogender" "oh no not me im not trans" "oh no not me im the normal one"

at some point it will be you and by then there will be no one left to fight for your rights. this is how you weaken a community, by telling some they’re worth more than the rest.

I could chew his arms off :3c

Okay, but imagine the LoV watching the news and some segment on Endeavor comes up and then Mr. Compress out of nowhere says in the most offhand tone, "You know, a year or so before all this started, I dated that guy's daughter for a couple weeks."

And Dabi has to sit there with his eye twitching and all, Wtf, wtf, wtf, wtf...wait, why do I even care? I don't care. Fuck it. Fuyumi can do what she wants. Touya is dead and Dabi does not care if some second-rate sideshow act wannabe-- "...did...you break her heart?"

"What? No, we weren't really all that compatible, we both agreed the age gap was a little much, I found out who her father was and that terrified me because what sane person wants that for an in-law, she was starting to question whether or not she was even heterosexual at all, so we broke it off like amicable adults and haven't spoken since. Really, young man, what do you take me for?"

Completely oblivious to the small world bs that's happening and the bullet he just dodged.

aizawa fav panels sketch

redraw/rendering practice with aizawa 😗✌️ (reference below)

as someone who wants to write canon divergence but is to lazy to watch/read the canon again, i'm so thankful for the heroes who wrote the fandom wiki pages T-T

thoughts on dabi's identity reveal

i love dabi's identity reveal, it's the most dramatic thing he could have done and i love him for that.

but

i wish it had a bigger impact. of course this is obviously bc horikoshi decided the end of the todoroki storyline needed to focus on endeavor. but let's ignore that and pretend it's just because this reveal happened in the middle of a national crisis.

so what if touya had decided to do his identity reveal on a random day?

think about it. the sun is shining, the birds are singing, everything is fine. and then, out of nowhere, every single billboard and tv channel broadcast dabi's video (same as canon, without the "hawks killed twice" thing, perhaps replaced by dabi revealing he's been in contact with hawks or something). it only takes mere minutes for everyone to be aware of what's going on, and now all eyes are on touya.

1-A is in the dorms when this happens, it feels like a repeat of the endeavor vs high end fight. shouto is a mess, no one understand what's happening, even aizawa is confused as fuck.

meanwhile, endeavor is in his agency. he's watching the whole video from his computer, completely flabbergasted. even if he wants to claim dabi is a liar doing this for attention, but he knows deep down he'd be lying to himself.

hawks is watching everything too. he feels like his entire life has been a lie. the hero who saved him for his abuser ends up being an abuser too. (can you tell i hate how hawks always remains a endeavor fanboy in canon?)

during this shit show happens, dabi wanders around, burn a ything with endeavor's face in it, and watches how civilians are reacting. he's focusing on that while deciding if he'll go to endeavor's agency right after the end of his little broadcast, or if he'll let the information sink in.

it took 24 years but he finally got what he wanted. all eyes were on him. no one would ever be able to throw him aside and ignore him. he stills wants to keep on his suicide mission - it's either him or endeavor - but at least he got to enjoy having the attention for a while.

so yeah, touya is a dramatic little shit who wanted the attention that he deserved.

[i might turn this into a fic if i ever get the time]