Caernnunos

Dout (v) - To douse or snuff out a light, flame, or fire.

In a sentence: As the lights were doubted, the room fell dark.

Let me make it abundantly clear: No one owns an idea. Several authors can come to the same creative decision independently. Collaboration and sharing ideas is to be encouraged.

I fucking love it when authors riff off each other’s ideas, or take inspiration and lore to build fanon together.

Copying another writer’s premise into some AI ‘creative writing’ tool is different. It strips the words of context, turning the original symbolism into a perverted mockery of what it was.

First, it was the occasional, laughably bad slopfic. So lurchingly and obviously inhuman, wobbling and flailing like a scarecrow in the wind.

And then it got better. Learning from us, rifling through our works. Posing as harmless editing tools to ‘improve your writing’ or ‘help you write faster.’

Still, it was clumsy and easy to spot, running away guilty and shamefaced.

But it grew, again. This time subtler. This time more pernicious. My friends- not friends by any standard of the word, as I’d never spoken a word to them, but names and faces whose creations and characters appeared next to mine - started changing.

If you don’t see your neighbor in a month, you might not take note of subtle changes. Have they just gotten a haircut, lost a little weight, sharpened up their attire? Or were they always like that.

My neighbors now are different. Their vocabulary, writing cadence, tone- and something feels wrong

They do things they’d never done before. And I’m left, standing in my little garden, wondering if this is natural evolution of their writing-