arven mi armor

How do y'all discern when a fic has been written using AI? Because I think I just found my first example of it out in the wild, and it has me pissed off

Like I don't want to accuse a writer of doing something like that because that's such an incredible insult, so I wouldn't comment about it or flame them or some shit, but like fr what tools are we using to tell us "yeah this is ai slop"

I can usually tell w videos and images, but for writing I'm just not sure

First off, cannot recommend starving saints enough. Just a super good creepy, dread filled read with fascinating world building (story is about three women trapped in a castle full of people. Castle has been under siege for months, and they've run out of food. The God Of The People Arrives With Help, but all the clergy are like "hey that's not god.")

But the luminous dead is giving me such area zero depths vibes. Like just imagining a mix of the cave in luminous dead with the glimmering cave in area zero is just

Imagine you're a caver who gets hired under the table to do some (potentially illegal??) work doing a dive into area zero's depths. Not the surface bits with the moths, but the glowing underground.

The government banned unsanctioned travel to the entirety of the zone around a decade ago, but you've got enough of a death wish and wanderlust to go yourself for the right price.

Through your employer, you're decked out in a space age suit that will keep you alive in the cave as you descend further and further down. You don't know why you're being sent down exactly, but you figure it may have to do with finding more veins of terastal ore. Lord knows that demand has sky rocketed, and it's surely a finite resource.

The suit with you inside is managed remotely by a team who are able to oversee your vitals and the environment around you as you survey the area. They guide you and look out for threats in shifts even as you sleep because there are absolutely things that will come for you in the unending dark.

Except.

There's only one voice who instructs you over the comms. A man's voice. Terse. Tired. He gives his name as Arven when you press him for it.

He's the only one who responds even after you've spent days going further and further down through winding passages.

Dread fills your gut as you realize just how alone you are with only one guy looking out for you. You can't even rebel against him or get yourself back out if you want, should he decide to remotely lock your suit. Who is he anyway? Your employer? You never actually met the one who was funding the excursion, but he eventually fills you in that yes. This is his private project. He's the one who will be paying you when this is all over. If you make it.

You keep going further and further down, doing your best to maintain a semblance of autonomy while trying to figure out what exactly he's trying to get out of this. If it were a search for ore, you'd already passed so many deposits.

Eventually it comes to light that he's been down here. He was injured before he could get very far, and he can't go back now. He's searching for his lost family.

Back before the government locked the place down, a team of the region's best scientists were sent on an excursion to survey the area. Among them were his mother and father.

Only his mother crawled her way out, days after they were all expected to return. She spent years continuing her research topside, doing all she could to figure out how things could have gone so horribly wrong, trying to find a way to get her husband's body home, not to mention the bodies of their team mates.

When she was gone, her son was the one left to pick up the pieces. By now, folks on the inside have a bit of a better understanding of what makes area zero so dangerous, but that doesn't answer all of Arven's questions. It doesn't get any bodies home.

Hence you.

And the three dozen or so divers he hired before you who either bailed or died down here.

You're left grappling with what to do next. Clearly this guy has lost it. How many people has he gotten killed in his attempts at closure?

You're ready to say fuck it to all of this and get yourself out by any means necessary, when in the glowing light of this portion of the depths you see...

A woman?

She's only in your sight for a few moments before she disappears back into the shadows and darkness.

But she looked....feral.

Arven's voice, softer and smaller than you'd ever heard it, crackles through the comms of the suit, reverberating in your ears.

He hasn't done art since the academy and even then he didn't really paint much

But he (while tipsy tbf) does his best to paint a photo he has saved on his phone of mabosstiff

It ends up being the painting of all time like one of those medieval childrens interpretations of what an exotic animal looks like

or like one of these

And like the evening ends and Arven is so proud of this painting

Only to look at it in the morning where he left it at the entrance to his apartment

Like mabosstiff is standing next to the painting as Arven stares at both side by side like

He hasn't done art since the academy and even then he didn't really paint much

But he (while tipsy tbf) does his best to paint a photo he has saved on his phone of mabosstiff

It ends up being the painting of all time like one of those medieval childrens interpretations of what an exotic animal looks like

or like one of these

And like the evening ends and Arven is so proud of this painting

Only to look at it in the morning where he left it at the entrance to his apartment

Like mabosstiff is standing next to the painting as Arven stares at both side by side like