Fiction Is My Reality

Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.

Including (sigh) the em dash.

There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.

A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.

No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.

You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.

Defend the em dash.

(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)

I have waited ALL FUCKING YEAR TO POST THIS

even the main characters’ arcs reflect this: Wirt is scared of rejection and humiliation from Sara and Jason Funderberker, but after returning to the real world, Sara is more than receptive toward him and Jason Funderberker isn’t even an issue. Beatrice is too ashamed to face her family after turning them all into bluebirds, but at the end of the story it’s such a non-issue for them that they only use the incident to affectionately tease her and everybody is perfectly happy.

and it all cumulates in the final episode when Wirt and Greg finally face the Beast. for the entire series the Beast has been a looming figure of evil, something dark and strange and unimaginably powerful that you never, ever want to meet. but when Wirt actually dares to face the monster head on, not running or hiding or falling for its tricks, he destroys the Beast in less than a minute! the monster that’s been terrorizing the woods for who knows how long, preying on fearful travelers and eating the souls of its victims, is extinguished by simply blowing out a lantern.