Underrate Reality

This is a close up? A CLOSE UP YA JERK! A CLOSEUP!

Zombies are docile when adorned with flowers.

Settlements overgrown with herbs and flora.

Barely any banditry; everyone is focused on farming and gathering.

Different human factions and towns named after flowers like Lilies, Orchids, Roses, etc.

It’s incredibly risky to attack zombies. The scent of the attacker’s aggressive intent coupled with spilled pungent rotten blood drives other zombies into a frenzy.

Zombies given funeral rites grow flowers within their bodies, eventually bursting from their chest and head area. These zombies are naturally gentle and their presence tames other zombies in the vicinity. Due to their helpfulness, it’s taboo to harm “blooming” undead:

Sweaty summers are the worst and everyone hopes they have enough dried flowers to last the winter. 

It’s a colourful apocalypse! An overabundance of flowers in the world leads to plenty of dyes and busy little honey bees!! Scented candles are a thriving export.

Survivors who help spread flowers, look after “blooming” undead, cull the hordes, and herd zombies away from safe areas are affectionately called Florists.

Regular weapons such as guns and knives are still used but everyone prefers perfumed water guns, spray bottles, and incense.

Sorry, Dad. I couldn't think of a nice way to say "America Stinks!"

Happy black cat day!!

It's the "I kept picturing" line listing things that really reveals the nonsensical processing of AI, because choosing visual moments that would make good connected comic panels is more difficult to simulate, and it also attributes "the glimmer of amber scales" to Essek when that is very very obviously Caleb in the fic, and there is a grammar/punctuation issue ("as panels the row") that doesn't feel natural. And for the scam element, the classic unsolicited "reach out to me on Discord" hook should always be suspect.

I decided to check the user's tumblr profile, and what do you know: it's empty, of course, with 0 posts. And their profile banner is literally an AI generated image with the big DREAMS TIME watermark right in the middle. And if this was not enough: all their Likes/Comments are visible. And all of them are on posts with Ao3 links like mine, and every single comment shares the exact same format. A few sentences complimenting themes and moments, followed by "I draw comics, and honestly I kept picturing [that scene] as a panel/series of panels [described]. If you ever want to see a scene as a comic, I'm on Discord at margarita._.morales. This fic really stuck with me, thank you for sharing it." And the time stamp for all these comments are like 2min apart, because the bot is trawling for ao3 link posts that have the tag "Ao3 link".

Most people already know or should know that any comment from a stranger (positive or negative!) that's trying to get you to go to a different platform like Discord is almost always a scam. The laundry list of other flags are also familiar: soulless empty profile, the fact that likes/comments are not hidden, the fact they only follow the default Staff account, the fact some things that don't quite make sense in the message. But before I registered all these things, the effusive specificity of the message initially made me happy. It achieved seeming real at first glance, even if it fell apart immediately under a due diligence mental checklist. And it's because it fed my work into fucking AI.