Half Cat, Part Time Owl

this kind of policing is why ao3 was created

remember, kids, the three laws of fandom are:

- don’t like; don’t read

- your kink is not my kink

ai is everywhere anyway, from search engines to grammar checkers. like other writing tools, it's just a tool after all? it helps with the little stuff so the bigger vision, which took a lot of effort to come up with. fanfic writers usually don't have a big team to proofread or edit, so it's only natural they use whatever tools are available to them. why should a beautifully written fic that used little ai be seen as inferior to one that had multiple betas and too many people brainstorming? the fic made with ai like claude often comes from a single mind, which i think actually makes it more special in its own way.

ai is only going to get more and more advanced, so i don't really understand these morally superior opinions among f1 writers here, lestappen ones especially. ao3 allows ai fics. nowhere does it say they must be tagged. also why a fic that used little ai must be tagged as ai-generated? which is false. this selective outrage just feels targeted, because some writers couldn't come up with those fic ideas themselves and are jealous of the success of the ones they look down on.

and aren't the readers the real court of public opinion? if they're okay with reading ai fics, why are other writers so bothered? also no one is stopping others from using ai for fics. lot of big writers are open to ai now, so i think you must update yourself.

giving ideas to ai to help write is still different from generating the whole fic with ai.

oh boy. anon I feel like you started this ask with good intentions, however it very quickly devolved into passive aggression and so I will matching that energy tenfold. based on what you've said, I don't think what I'm about to say will change your mind, but that's fine. maybe it will help someone else.

so, firstly, I want to establish a couple things.

there is a difference between AI and generative AI. I understand that there are other forms of AI that can be very useful and have far less environmental impact. I want to be clear that what I'M talking about is gen AI.

you claim later on that there is "selective outrage" because writers are "jealous" so before you can claim the same for me, let me state some facts. across my 24 works in f1 rpf, I have more than 70,000 kudos, close to 30,000 bookmarks, and more than 6,000 comments. there are more than 2000 accounts subscribed to ME as an author, 7000 additional subscriptions spread across my 24 stories. my fic, Where You Go, I Go, is the fourth most kudosed in the ENTIRE f1 rpf tag. it's beaten by three fics that were ALSO not written with AI. I have a server dedicated to wygig with more than 400 people in it. I have more than 2000 followers here on Tumblr, for a blog that is basically just entirely me answering questions about my lestappen fics. no, I am not "jealous". there is nothing for me to be jealous OF.

I also want to be clear that there are multiples reasons why I hate AI: It's plagiarised to create it's database; data centres have a massive carbon footprint, and have HUGE water consumption and are literally diverting potable water that you and I need to LIVE just to cool down their servers; data centres also directly impact the communities around which they're built, making YOUR electrical bills more expensive, creating noise pollution that's near unliveable, and, as mentioned earlier, diverting water from DROUGHT STRICKEN AREAS ALREADY ON WATER RESTRCITIONS. in fact, this study says that a massive 17% of all AI prompts are to generate fan fiction. there is not one single argument anyone can make to me that justifies why you get to accelerate the climate crisis because you want to read another version of your faves kiss. oh but hey!! guess what!! at least your AI usage is making you dumber :)

now, to address what you've said.

"what if the author's first language isn't english? it feels like a privileged take that native speakers often don't consider."

your argument presupposes that a writer is entitled to people reading what they publish, which they aren't. not even I'm entitled to that, with the many kind subscriptions I have, and I would never be egotistical enough to say so.

a writer does not have to publish in English, and the reason they do is because they want a wider audience. fine, whatever. what the fuck do you think people have been doing for DECADES before now? if they wanted to publish in English, they learnt English. maybe they used google translate. maybe they were lucky enough to have someone translate it for them! maybe they just wrote it with their bad English because they felt passionate enough about it to just write something.

maybe they just published in their own language, on websites catered to that language with many readers who read that language! I know for a fact there are Chinese-specific platforms, and Russian specific platforms. I have to assume that there are others for other languages. sometimes English-readers miss out on a fic that's beautiful, and you know what? that's just the way the cookie crumbles.

in fact, I remember being 13 and painstakingly copying and pasting each paragraph of Spanish fics into google translate so I could read them. readers and writers have always found a way, and being lazy hasn't been one of them.

like other writing tools, it's just a tool after all?

no, it's not. not just because of the huge environmental cost that I outlined above, but also because it was trained on OTHER people's hard work. comparing someone either AI generating or assisting their fic with someone who uses spellcheck or grammarly (pre-integration of gen ai) or a writing specific platform that lets someone organise their ideas is just an argument made in bad faith.

and at what point does the AI user even LEARN? if I use spell check to help me figure out where to put my comma, at least I learnt something in the process. someone who has a response spit out from AI didn't learn - they will still just use AI next time to do the exact same thing.

it helps with the little stuff so the bigger vision, which took a lot of effort to come up with.

the idea is not the story. the WRITING is the story. as my original screenshot said, anyone in the entire world can come up with an idea or even plot one out!! only a WRITER can write it. that's a skill, and one you have to learn and develop.

fanfic writers usually don't have a big team to proofread or edit, so it's only natural they use whatever tools are available to them. why should a beautifully written fic that used little ai be seen as inferior to one that had multiple betas and too many people brainstorming? the fic made with ai like claude often comes from a single mind, which i think actually makes it more special in its own way.

which is it anon?? do fanfic writers have a big team helping them or not??

I do not know a single person who is writing fic that has more than two betas at MOST. even IF they do have multiple people, it's still coming straight from heart and soul. AND, published books always have HUGE teams to help smooth them out. are you really going to stand on all ten toes and tell me that some slop (AI assisted OR generated) is worth more than Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings or the Great Gatsby or literally any other book that's ever been published, just because they had other people help? if you are, then you're unreasonable.

you say that a fic made with AI comes from a single mind, but it doesn't. it fucking doesn't. it came from the 20 million fanfics it scraped that were written by a person, it came from the billions of books written before it. the only reason AI can even get remotely close to writing something is because it stole the work that other people put effort into.

so, yeah. I do think someone who used AI is inferior. I think anyone who says "I'm totally fine with consuming up to five gallons of water so that ChatGPT can tell me if my comma is in the right place, instead of going to 5 minutes of effort to google something" is inferior. In fact I think they're morally reprehensible.

ao3 allows ai fics. nowhere does it say they must be tagged.

for now, sure. maybe it always will allow it. again, if someone decides that they're totally fine with the water consumption that comes with that, I can't stop them. I can be damn sure I'm not going to fucking read it, though.

also why a fic that used little ai must be tagged as ai-generated?

it should be tagged as AI assisted.

and aren't the readers the real court of public opinion? if they're okay with reading ai fics, why are other writers so bothered?

I'm a reader. I'm not okay with it. I don't want to read that shit, I don't want to be tricked into reading it, I don't want someone who decided it was okay to do all of the above to get any level of feeling accomplishment for doing fuck all.

AND. you say you don't think AI fics should be tagged, and that's because you know that if they were, a lot of people wouldn't read them. they'll probably also be called out for it. that's because readers DON'T want to read it.

but if readers are so happy to read AI fics, like you claim, then if its tagged I'm sure people can seek it out. just like there are tags for things being betaed or unbetaed, including kinks and tropes or what not. you tag it so people can decide.

lot of big writers are open to ai now, so i think you must update yourself.

no.

and guess what??? I do in fact think that I'm superior in every way to someone who used AI. you think I sometimes don't know what I'm doing? you think I don't spend hours researching details so I get them right? you think I don't use spellcheck, or search up correct grammar? I do. I put the time and effort in to better myself and my writing, and that only makes me better at my craft.

giving ideas to ai to help write is still different from generating the whole fic with ai.

I don't even know what you think the difference is here. in the second instance, you think that the person is also getting concept from the AI? not really sure how that person is anything but a copy and paster lol.

We write because we have a story to tell, because we have something beautiful and important to us trapped in our heads and we want to give it life and substance in words! The universe gave us the ability to make art so that we could partake in the divine act of creation, if you feed these beautiful ideas you have into the lifeless maw of gen AI, you have killed them, and they are no longer yours, because the machine takes and keeps them, without care nor consent, like it has taken thousands of stories before, stories created by the blood sweat and tears of those who wrote them word by word, and it has ripped them to shreds and used their innards to piece together the thing it spits back out at you.

The worst thing about gen AI stories, is not even that they aren't human, but that pieces of them once were and are not anymore.

And no, I can't tell if AI was used to write this ask, but either way, you don't sound human to me at all.

I don't believe ao3 will ever mandate tagging the use of AI, because at the end of the day that too goes against what ao3 is, an archive and a collection unbeholden to laws and rules, and that is the beauty of it. It was created by and for wincest shippers first, as a space to write and post whatever fucked up shit you want without censorship, which is and will always be vitally important.

But they designed this tagging and sorting system for a reason, because this website itself is just an archive, but the people on it are a community.

Nobody is required to use the tags or trigger warnings, but we do it because we care about each other. We tag 'dead dove do not eat' because we don't want you to eat dead doves unless you want to eat dead doves. We tag well and correctly as a fandom culture, because we want to share our stories with the people who want to read them, because 10 hits and 10 kudos from informed readers feels better than 1000 hits and 10 kudos from readers who were unpleasantly surprised... Because I don't particularly want to read wincest just like I don't particularly want to read AI.

Ao3 culture operates on a don't like don't read basis. I believe there would be a great deal less arguing and pitchfork hunting if we didn't have to keep finding out fics are AI four months later, of course people will be mad at you if you knew AI is unpopular and then conveniently left out the fact that you used it.

We can't stop you from using AI, but knowing how many readers have mixed feelings or dislike it, it's only kind and polite to at least just tell us so we can scroll if we wish.

So no, we can't and probably won't stop you, but even so, I implore you don't use AI.

Write it yourself, write it badly, write it in scottish, german, spanish, russian, french and cantonese, whatever, because at least then it will be yours and you will have written something worth writing, even if only to yourself.

And let me tell you, however niche and however strange or broken or supposedly bad your writing is, chances are someone will still read it and love something about it. And next time you will write again and it will be better and you will love it even more, and you will write until your writing is stuffed to breaking point with the human in you.

And that is where you will find connection, that is where you'll get comments and asks and you will find friends, you will find people who see you in that story and love that part of you enough that they will want to share it further, they will ask can I translate this for you so that we can share this with a whole new language of people, they will ask hey, do you want a beta, hey, can I turn this into a podfic, can I draw something about this, can I write something inspired by this, and they don't ask you because there is a rule stipulating they have to, they ask because they want to talk to you and share this thing that you inspired back with you.

Because we are all human and that's why we do it. It's precisely because writing is hard and ugly and imperfect that it's beautiful.

I really just have to summarize Thomas's entire life:

He was in a committed relationship with a male swan named Henry for 18-24 years before a female swan named Henrietta showed up and mated with Henry.

Thomas was initially jealous of the pair and attacked them, breaking 2 of the 5 eggs Henrietta had laid. However, once the remaining eggs hatched, Thomas warmed up to them and helped raise them.

Henry couldn't fly because of an injured wing, so Thomas taught the cygnets how to fly.

When they needed to reduce the goose population in the pond where Thomas and the swans lived, they dyed Thomas's feathers red so he wouldn't be separated from Henry.

Henry, Henrietta, and Thomas remained in their happy throuple for years and raised 68 cygnets before Henry died in 2009. After Henry's death, Henrietta found another swan and flew away, leaving Thomas alone.

Thomas finally met and mated with a female goose in 2011 and had his own babies. However, another goose named George stole them and raised them himself.

As Thomas grew elderly and blind, he was relocated to a wildlife center where he raised orphaned cygnets.

His caretaker at the center described him as "pretty high maintenance."

Thomas died in 2018 at the age of around 40. He had a funeral that included a small coffin and a procession that was led by a bagpiper. He was buried under the stone where Henry was buried, the two finally reunited in death.

Man ranting on the internet about the Superbowl halftime show or complaining that something is "woke"? Hobbyless Behaviour. Girls mocking another girl for not looking right? Hobbyless Behaviour. Mindless vandalism? Hobbyless Behaviour.

Mercedes having illegal engines? ❌Boring, unoriginal, repetative, demonstratably false