10 Aug 2025 - AJ
So, this week’s came by complete chance from a thread in r/scams.
I mean, a lot of mine do. But in this one, most people were suggesting something was an artist scam (someone wants to get a picture painted, sends a fake check with too much mone) or a muse scam (someone wants to send money for using your picture, but of course they send too much), but one sole person suggested that it was a different scam that hit a very specialized form of creatives - fanfiction authors! Of course I had to find out more.
Now, I don’t know a lot about fanfiction - I mean, I know about fans, I’ve got a few things I’m a fan of, but not fiction about it until this week. That being said, I learned the lingo and discovered how unfortunately common this scam was in the fanfiction/fan works crowd. Also the community’s effort to combat it, which is hard as the scammers of course keep adapting. For example, it looks like early scammers straight out mentioned doing art in their first comment, but the community was good at catching those so they had to evolve.
Also, there are people who do free fanart, which is an accepted thing by the community. But that’s because it’s not being paid for. (There are subtleties with fanart - people do commission fan artists, but are careful not to mention it’s for payment on a site that forbids even a mention of commercial activities.)
(Also, I’m sorry for missing last week’s post. Usually I remember to throw up a “be back next week” but I was tied up with another issue.)