• Version Codes
  
  • v5.6.0 was 61b5c, v5.6.0b is 45822.
  • This is a client-side update that should not require downloading a new version of the app.
• May Seasonal Event – Village-Green Lazy Day
  
  • It’s with great embarrassment that Pete regretfully admits why there was no Valentine’s Day this year… Some troublemaking slingshotter hit clean through his mailbag, scattering all this year’s love letters in the snow! With Wilbur and Orville taking over, Pete is taking a little spring break sabbatical from all the stress… These breezy days are perfect for daydreaming about his longtime love, Phyllis. “Do you know what she said to me the other day? ‘What are you looking at?! Wipe that dopey look off your mug!’ Oh, my heart… Her billed lips are so beautiful when they speak such harsh words!” But while Pete relaxes, there’s still work to be done! This May, we’ll be participating in Harvey’s Colorful Picnic gardening event, the Kite Flying Fishing Tourney, and the Hide-and-Seek Scavenger Hunt to collect 30 wildflower bouquets from each for a total of 90 wildflower bouquets available from events this month. The more bouquets you gather, the more outdoorsy prizes you’ll receive through the planner including handheld foxtail and wildflowers, grassy napping spots, and the grand prize, the wildflower rest spot! We’ll need to forage deep in the woods to gather all the love letters scattered months ago… and hopefully even Pete’s treasured missives to his beloved would-be missus! (Not that she would ever agree…) May’s amazing, not-so-lazy days begin with Harvey’s Colorful Picnic a little early on April 30th GMT!

• May Terrain – Village Green
  • May’s new terrain set ushers a civic springtime atmosphere into your campsite with a verdant park square replete with striking fountains, blue flowerbeds, weirdly cubic trees, and a rustic clocktower standing watch. What’s more, this terrain’s middle ground will be given to all players—a little awkward without the foreground to complete the water path, but you can get a little creative and hide the rift with other water features or large-scale decorations. The background includes a homey albeit bustling, old-fashioned town and a blimp roving the airways while the sky adds fresh greenish, teal, and gold hues to your vista you might not often see. Your visitors might not exactly be green with envy considering everyone’s getting this terrain, but they can still park their rears to enjoy your campsite’s outdoor amenities when this terrain set of middle ground, foreground, background, and sky becomes available April 30th GMT.

• May Gardening Event – Harvey’s Colorful Picnic
  • Harvey’s not sure why his beloved Harriet never responded to his thoughtful love letter a couple months ago… But he’s totally not gonna let it get him down! With the breezy, clear weather, it’s the perfect time for this free-spirited nomadic dog to have a picnic with his favorite pals… and put his aspiring photography skills to good use to document the event with a panoply of pics to post on social media. Harriet is bound to see it and know for sure that he’s not pining for her day and night! But for the picnic to work, we’ll need to plant daisy seeds to attract sandwichbees… The prospect of eating these creatures is a bit disturbing to stomach, but just think of them as lively kebabs! More importantly, sticking enough of bite-sized buzzers will earn fixings for a festive picnic including flag garlands, take-out drinks and sandwiches, and shaded picnic blankets! Completing this event in full will also yield 30 wildflower bouquets as part of May’s Village-Green Lazy Day campaign, so be sure to replant and exchange bugs with friends often! With outdoor hors-d’oeuvres and sportive knickknacks, it’s the almost-perfect respite between RV outings… Now if he could only get them to call him “Harv” like she used to… Stuff down your doggone feelings with a refreshmental health break when the groovy gardening begins April 30th GMT.

• Rudy’s Airship Cookie
  • Maybe it’s a resemblance to a certain reindeer, but Rudy’s always taken as much pride in delivering goodies as he does in his favorite pastime of taking to the skies with inflatable aircraft… He’s not especially careful aboard these dirigibles or hot-air balloons… but if he finds himself freefalling from these feline-friendly floats (and it’s happened many times before), he always manages to land on his feet. So when he spied a love letter addressed to Harriet lost in the brush on one of his airborne outings, Rudy saw it as his civic duty to trustily tend to its safe delivery… And to make sure his noble act of inspiration inspires as many as it should, he’s taken the opportunity to hire a bountiful brigade of blimps and balloons to celebrate the letter’s airborne journey, no expenses spared! For no other particular reason, it’s a raucous, helium-fueled festival starring an airship helmed by Boomer (who has no time for such foolishness but takes his piloting task with utter seriousness), and animals have come from miles around to watch the airshow as Rudy suddenly realizes how hard it is to make out Harriet’s address from the frankly indecipherable scribbles on the envelope. And what is “Harv”? Is that even a word? With refreshments from the balloon-fest food cart, viewers watch the proceedings through their handheld opera glasses as Rudy makes his grand pronouncements over the intercom of his 5-star balloon-fest airship. “Thanks everybody for all your support in completing our big mission. We were gonna hand-deliver this letter originally, but we figure there’s a pretty good chance this ‘Harriet’ is in the crowd somewhere, so we’ve made the decision to helpfully read it out loud for her own convenience, and also to, uh, save fuel and the environment. Ahem: ‘TO MY DEAR SWEET HATTIE. YOUR PRECIOUS PINK FUR IS MORE BEAUTIFUL THAN THE FRESHEST MORNING PEONY. BUT THIS AIN’T NO PUPPY LOVE. YOU’VE TRIMMED THE UNTAMED HAIR OF MY HEART INTO A PERFECTLY COIFFED COAT THAT KEEPS IT WARM, AND NO OTHER GAL WILL ’DO! SORRY, I NEED TO WRAP THIS UP—THIS ANNOYING BIRD ON MY HEAD KEEPS TUGGING AT MY HEADBAND. FUREVER YOURS, HARV. PS: THIS LETTER IS FOR HARRIET’S EYES ONLY.’ Wow, well, that definitely wasn’t worth this big party... Uh, let’s go find some more lost mail to rescue, Boomer—mush, mush!” Launch into the catmosphere to jubilantly help out animals in need with a spy-high view of all their business when this read-nosy cookie launches May 1st GMT!

• Airy Picnic Outfit Collection
  • You can carry your merry little derrière a little airier with this crisp attire featuring the colors of blooming spring flowers, comfortable blue skies and ponds, and even your favorite manilla folder. And even if you live in a pollution-ravaged landfill, you can still see the striking, verdant greenery of spring through the keen lenses of the green picnic sunglasses! Make sure life’s a picnic with this cookout-ready clothing collection served hot off the grill May 5th GMT.

• Blue-Sky Wall & Floor Collection
  • This expansive wall and floor collection might come in handy if you want to transform your cabin or RV into a well-kept city park or attempt an interior design that takes place entirely midair! We’ve had a couple sky and cloud wallpapers before but none before that featured a swarm of balloons like in that disturbing number from the Brave Little Toaster Mars movie. The vintage-style illustrations of the plentiful-picnic wall will also harken back to simpler days of rustled-up breakfasts on rustic vacations at the family cabin or on the open road. Look for these vagrant and free-floating designs when they release May 10th GMT.

• Grasshopper Goals
  
  • You have much work to do, young grasshopper. But it’ll probably be pretty easy. This misleadingly named rerun of an April 2022 goals event will see the return of Animal Crossing mainstay and Pocket Camp common insect long locust to Sunburst Isle, where you can find it hopping about the tropical grass—make sure not to step on one! They only sell for 10 Bells, so you might find them to be more of a nuisance than an asset after you finish catching enough for your standard Leaf Tickets and Rudy's airship cookie. But they’re sure to hop along when this goals event concludes after May 11th – 14th GMT.
• May Fishing Tourney - Kite Flying
  
  • For May’s fishing tourney, we’ll be gliding over to Saltwater Shores to catch an ironically grim assortment of monochrome fish from tourneys past. String enough of these sable sea fish together to unfurl prizes you can let sail into the wild blue yonder like colorful stacked kites and a birdy parachute toy—perfect for May’s spring breezes. Handheld pinwheel toys and even colorful wind socks make appearances as well, likely as loving references to the Gamecube days where wind socks could be spotted in May and players could carry pinwheels around as rare handheld decor. Completing this event in full will yield 30 wildflower bouquets as part of May’s monthlong Village-Green Lazy Day campaign, so be sure to set up your rod, reel and string every 3-hour rotation you can. You might get a few bites… or a few kites to catch a gale of a tale! Turn your attention upward and decorate your campsite skies with this colorful assortment of draft-ready aircraft… And while we don’t have any stormy or windy terrain still (tragedy of tragedies), you can still pair this with items from last June’s Drizzly Daydream Scavenger Hunt with its windblown grass and trees to complete the picture of a windswept, fun day. And if there’s any animals bothering you, tell ’em to go fly a kite when this winding race to the skies kicks off May 12th GMT, ending May 18th GMT.

• Special Visitor Furniture – Pete's Petite Post Office
  • With collected letters fluttering back in, it’s not too late for Pete to roll up his sleeves and start sorting the retrieved mail in his simple post-and-beam treehouse… as long as Twiggy’s pet birds quit harassing him. With this special visitor furniture, you can install Pete’s rustic postbox in your cabin or at your campsite and listen to him regale you with lofty thoughts on the lost arts of mail and romance… You can even do some matchmaking by combining it with Pelly’s postal counter to see if Pete will be too busy mooning over Phyllis to notice the admiration of her sister down below… Clear up a mess of messages with mailman whose treetop cubby is as well-billed as its drama when this pillary, pelicanny post goes on sale May 15th GMT!

• Twiggy's Chirpy Cookie
  • With the muddy trail of Curly gone cold, Detective Beardo has had to return to field the mountain of requests on his desk for his P.I. services, but one lonesome plea stood out from a Java sparrow by thname of Peck… “You’ve gotta help me, crunch. I finally achieved my dream of a solitary bird sanctuary all of my own. Then the next thing I know, I’m getting kicked out by Lyle with a whole series of lawsuits, and this birdbrain named Twiggy moves in! I don’t like the way she’s looking at me, Beardo! She keeps calling me her super-cute pet and won’t let me leave—she says it’s too dangerous for a bird like me. Is anybody home in that hollow noggin of hers, crunch? These wings of steel can beat up anybody! Holy moly, and the racket around here! She moved in with eighteen flocks of the loudest birds alive. I’m lucky if I get two winks of sleep! Peck’s Peaceful Paradise is a thing of the past—now it’s Twiggy’s Tweedledeelightful Chirpatorium, and she says she’s opening a new branch of Flora’s bird and breakfast retreat! When I tell her how hard I’ve worked these muscles to get here, she says that’s ‘just the way things are’ and the ‘fortune cookie powers that be’ have this stuff all hammered out! I’m not afraid to say it, Detective—I really need your help! I’m starting to think there’s something a little sexist here about who gets to have what fortune cookies, but I don’t wanna ruffle any feathers.” With a sparrow in harrowing straits, and never one to turn away from fowl play, Beardo and his trusty sidekick Merengue book the first flight out to Twiggy’s brand-new bird haven… only to find that Peck is nowhere to be seen! They check every nook in the bird-haven birdhouse, try to interview bird-lovers lounging on the redundantly named bird-haven birdy sofa… but with all the colorful bird-calling and caterwauling going on around them, they can scarcely hear any potential leads! They meet with Twiggy at the 5-star bird-haven tree, but it leads to more chicanery than answers… “ISN’T THIS PLACE THE TOTAL BEST? IT WAS SUCH A SNOOZEFEST BEFORE I GOT HERE, AND NOW IT’S, LIKE, A CHIRPY CHOIR CACOPHONY DELIVERED STRAIGHT IN MY EARDRUMS! WHAT’S THAT? WHERE? PECK? UH—I GUESS ON THE CHEEK, BUT ARE YOU SERIOUS? I JUST MET YOU! TALK ABOUT CHEAPERS CREEPERS! OH, YOU MEAN THAT HIGHTAILED HOTTIE WHO WAS HERE A COUPLE MONTHS AGO? I HAVE, LIKE, NO CLUE WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM, BUT I CALLED DIBS, SO IF YOU SEE HIM, HANDS OFF!” There’s no trace of Peck to be seen, but just then, that’s when Beardo and Merengue spot it—a handheld java sparrow perching on Twiggy’s forewing! This seems a dark coincidence… Did Peck make a brave avian escape, or did this burly boy-chick meet a perilous fate as a pet?! Beardo and Merengue keep watch on every bird and bird-watcher in this pet-filled paradise, but mum’s the bird among the patrons and no one’s making a peep… Just a cuckoo commotion that they can’t help consider would drown out a Java sparrow’s cry for help… Try to reach the bottom of a cheep trick of bye-bye birdie when this birdcagey cookie makes some noise May 17th GMT!​

• Bright Bird Outfit Collection
  • May’s second clothing collection works as a companion to Twiggy’s fortune cookie. It’s bright, it’s birdiful, and it’s very LOUD with bird-emblem tunics and long cardigans in, ahem, very strong colors that will certainly make a statement flapping in your viewer’s face. We reached out to Robin for her thoughts on this collection’s bird bags… “So undignified. I can’t imagine people would be too pleased if I started wearing plastic people bouncing around my derriere, carrying my loose change, hm?” Being a crazy cat lady is so 8 months ago… Become a crazy bird lady (or a crazy bird lord!) when this collection flits in on May 18th GMT.​

• Birdy Wall & Floor Collection
  • This set of ravin’-avian designs will set the heart aflutter of anyone who has birds on the brain… (for anyone else… they’re not bad). You can capture the visages of birds forever in the bird-photo wall or cavalierly set them free with the bird-window wall. If you enjoyed last June’s lily pond wall but feel like it was just a little too beautiful, the park-pond wall here will do you nicely. Get a little cocky with these bold patterns for your cabin or camper when this flock of refurbishments alights May 18th GMT.

• Threadfin Trevally Goals
  
  • This oddly timed rerun of a November 2021 goals event will see the return of the threadfin trevally to Saltwater Shores in the form of tiny-size shadows (size 1 of 6). They sell for 400 Bells each at base price and are uncommon-tier when gifted to animal campers, so not a bad catch, but if your interest in this wispy fellow is dangling by a thread, or a fin, you can still nab some Leaf Tickets and an Rudy’s airship cookie for your trouble during this limited-time event from May 19th through 22nd GMT.
• May Scavenger Hunt – Hide-and-Seek
  
  • For May’s scavenger hunt, we’ll be searching the very best hiding places around the various recreation spots to spy hide-and-seek gyroidites. And watch out for their extra foliage as camouflage… even their bushes might be hiding behind bushes! Ferret out enough of these stealthy sneaks to earn prizes for a recess-ridden recreational park, crammed with nooks where animals can hide for classic games of hide and seek… some of them more effective than others. (I’m looking at you, Al.) Judging by the Happy Homeroom classes, the most likely Leaf Ticket items are the hide-and-seek slide and jungle gym, and then either the hide-and-seek lightpost, pipes, or drinking fountain—just some speculation, though. Completing this event in full will yield the final 30 wildflower bouquets to complete May’s monthlong Village-Green Lazy Day campaign, so be sure to keep the hunt on even past sundown (and check out the quarry and your campsite animals too!) to finish off the month in sneaky style! This outdoor décor makes for a calmingly mellow ode to nostalgic days from childhood (and from Animal Crossing: City Folk and New Leaf!) that will make finding your campers for your daily chats more ~~frustrating~~ I mean fun than ever! Hunt for gyroidite and animals when this oxenfree-for-all begins May 20th GMT (ending the 30th GMT)!

• Curlos and Pals
  
  • While there isn’t technically much datamined here, this update did add an animal batch under the name of “Curlos and Pals” to the date of May 25th GMT. It seems this will be after the next update as map assets haven’t actually been added yet for this batch, but we do know that “Gwen and Pals’ Island” will be joining Curlos’s island, likely as part of this batch. With only 8 animals left— Benjamin, Biff, Curlos, Gwen, Sydney, Velma, Freckles and Mott—it seems likely this means they will be finished releasing all the animals at the end of this month, but as of now, this is unconfirmed.
• Happy Homeroom
  
  • This update included the typical 3 classes each for Harvey’s Colorful Picnic gardening event, Rudy’s airship cookie, the Kite Flying Fishing Tourney, Twiggy’s chirpy cookie, and the Hide-and-Seek Scavenger Hunt, as well as 8 classes each for new normal Courses 53 and 54.

People Involved

• TikTok user unravel.me.now, face of Lore.fm and sole person appearing in all the official TikToks
• WishRoll, the company behind Lore.fm that has previously made an AI-story-generating app, and was on Forbes 30 Under 30 for their music-sharing app Kiwi

Timeline

• May 6 24 TikTok user unravel.me.now posted a TikTok titled "pov: you built a personal app for yourself that turns any ao3 fic into an audiobook but your mom is asking you what you're listening to when you're washing the dishes (it's a 90k word gojo x reader angsty slowburn).
• From May 6 - May 16 the account continues to upload videos where the app allegedly goes from a personal project to a fully completed app called Lore.fm calling for Betas and eventually fully launching on May 16 2024 posting invite links & puzzle videos to guess the invite code of the day to generate buzz. The videos with the invite code puzzles have since been deleted since the screenshot below.
• Throughout May 6 - May 18 (the time of posting for this write up) any negative comments or comments that expressed concerns were deleted by unravel.me.now. Any comments that contained polite questions deemed too difficult to answer were also deleted.
• People with experience in creating and launching an app noticed that it is highly unlikely this was a simple personal project considering how fast it got everything together for launch. Later people began to research the creators of this app, but at this time any comments expressing suspicion this was a simple personal project striking lightning were deleted.
• Each video marketed the app as "Audible for Ao3". Unlike Audible, which uses voice actors and gains full rights and permission from authors, Lore.fm used AI generated voices (created with voice actors who consented to their voices being used for AI) and did not ask for any permission.
• The way the app was intended to work according to the Apple Store was that users could add any link they wanted and the app would generate an audiobook with the voice they selected. This data would be stored both locally and on Lore.fm's servers.
• On TikTok, unravel.me.now was saying that eventually the app would have even more capabilities. Eventually the app developers wanted a "Spotify Wrapped" experience. They wanted a top charts list with most listened to fics on the platform.
• In Lore.fm's TOS it explicitly bans using the app to circulate and disseminate various things like scams, solicitations, etc. This implies the app was always intended NOT to be only a personal library.
• May 16 2024 officially launches in the Apple Store and the Google Play Store. It uses Archive of Our Own's urls in it's demo pictures. According to the opening paragraphs of the TOS there was no data scraping for AI learning nor was there any third party selling of data. According to Privacy Policy they work with third-party partners and services to obtain data about their users.
• May 16 2024 The Privacy Policy on lore.fm confirmed that despite conflicting comments by unravel.me.now on TikTok, the app WOULD store a copy on the users device and on lore.fm's servers. Their policies stated that it was the users granting them permission, despite knowing for a fact their users would not be uploading material with a clear copyright in their name. "Information submitted to lore.fm will be transferred to, processed, and stored in the United States. When you use the Software on your computing device, User Content you save will be stored locally on that device and synced with our servers. If you post or transfer any Information to or through our App, Software, and/or Services, you are agreeing to such Information, including Personal Data and User Content, being hosted and accessed in the United States."
• May 16 2024 u/totallymandy posts a reddit thread titled "Audible for Ao3 :/" which brings attention to this app from people who do not use TikTok.
• Redditors find one of the rare times unravel.me.now answers a question, confirming that lore.fm cannot access locked fanfiction (fanfiction on Archive of Our Own that has been set to be viewable only by people who are logged into an AO3 account). See screenshot section below.
• This quickly spirals into multiple threads all over Ao3, Tumblr, and Twitter. There were posts on Tumblr prior to this one, but the post that ended up traveling wildly through Tumblr was posted by creativitycache on May 16th
• May 16-17 Authors begin massively flooding into the [team@lore.fm](mailto:team@lore.fm) email inbox to Opt Out. The team is unprepared for this, and begins responding with wildly unprofessional and guilt tripping responses. Eventually as the flood continued the responses became standardized. Ex 1, Ex 2, Ex 3
• May 17 It became clear the lore.fm team is monitoring both Tumblr and Reddit, as they are linking directly to reddit threads in their replies and are addressing Tumblr posts in response to private dms. rivkae-winters on Tumblr got some of the first replies showing they were actively reading threads on other websites. It was just as unprofessional as you'd expect.
• May 16 Users became aware that previously the team that worked on lore.fm produced a story-generating AI app that has gotten terrible reviews. This deepens the distrust that data uploaded to Lore.fm will not be later used for furthering AI stories, despite the current TOS. Redditors, Tumblrites, and whatever Twitter users call themselves now all began to speculate just how the app was planning on running. Where were they getting the funds? Where were funds projected to come from in the future?
• May 17 A TikTok is posted by unravel.me.now stating they are pausing release of Lore.fm. This TikTok does NOT state they are shutting down entirely, but that they are considering it and are opening a discussion. They continue to delete any critical comments on their TikToks. Other users pointed out that this TikTok contains language accusing any detractors of ableism, not mentioning the main reasons people are upset/not actually addressing the concerns people have, calling other screen readers poor products, and using auto-generated captions that were not edited and have multiple errors in them despite touting themselves as an accessibility company.
• May 18 lore.fm is finally pulled from the app stores. The main website remains online, as does their TikTok account.

Problems With The App

• Copyright laws are a nightmare, and I'm not touching the legalese breakdown here. Just in general, that. AO3 doesn't have an official app for deliberate reasons, due to the app store's policies.
• Using AO3 as a content-generator for an app. If it were a screen reader, or one of the other various apps that read things in a pleasant voice for accessibility reasons, there would be no problem. But this was a separate app that did not link back to AO3 or allow its users to give AO3 writers any interaction/feedback. This app essentially billed itself as a way to package free fan work provided to AO3 as content it controlled.
• Suspicion of intent. How were the developers going to recoup their costs? Why wasn't the data encrypted? Why were they marketing this as specifically for AO3 instead of a general accessibility tool? Why were they not addressing any concerns brought to them before or after launch? Why were they marketing this as a small personal project that implied it was a fan-created app, instead of putting their company name big and bold on it? What were their intentions regarding their other story AI app?
• Opt Out/Consent Since this app was in a legal quagmire, clearly not designed primarily as an accessibility tool, and was hiding all criticism, authors did not feel comfortable with their work being used for this app. They were especially furious that they had to reach out to the lore.fm team and ask to be taken off- they had nothing to do with this project and yet were being told it was their responsibility to refuse instead of lore.fm's responsibility to ask. Authors were also upset on behalf of all the works marked Anonymous, Orphaned Worked, works where the Author's didn't have a way of even hearing about this app's existence, and deceased Authors who never could have predicted an app like this.

Screenshots