F e l i x ♱ C u l p a

I’m tired of working too much and achieving nothing, of living off spare change. I’m tired of feeling like I have to choose between doing something that makes me happy and doing something that pays the bills. I’m tired of knowing that, even if I work until my body gives out, there’s no guarantee of any retirement. I’m tired of Artificial Intelligence, of feeds with no authenticity, of staged photos and curated thoughts. I’m tired of feeling that, even though I want to learn and study so much, I have neither the time nor the energy to do it, because I have to survive. I’m tired of feeling that when I rest, I’m wasting time. I’m tired of opening books and being unable to focus.

Estou cansada de trabalhar de mais e não conquistar nada, viver de catar moedas. Estou cansada de sentir que tenho que escolher entre fazer algo que me faça feliz ou fazer algo que me dê retorno financeiro. Estou cansada da perspectiva de, mesmo que trabalhe até meu corpo esmorecer, não ter garantia nenhuma de aposentadoria. Estou cansada de Inteligência Artificial, de feeds sem autenticidade, de fotos e pensamentos planejados. Estou cansada de sentir que, mesmo querendo aprender e estudar muito, não tenho tempo nem energia para o fazê-lo, porque preciso sobreviver. Estou cansada de sentir que quando descanso, perco tempo. Estou cansada de abrir livros e não conseguir focar.

It has come to my attention (reading comments from the AO3 community) that some people think the use of “—” (the dash) is a "sign" of stories created by ChatGPT.

First of all, that is fucking stupid, it is a punctuation I see in almost every english book I have, like? Writers from different languagues use the dash almost as much as us, Brazilians like to use “()” [parenthesis] and commas. Secondly, I, like many who read books in other languagues besides north american English, don't need to use that crap to tell us how to use punctuation — although, recently, I've read some other romance books I found in English, and many of them used this punctuation because it's nicely dramatic and useful for avoiding repeating commas and putting multiple things in parentheses.

My master's advisor has been forcing me to use it a lot more for articles, and she made a very good point. According to her, proficient writers use a lot of dashes because it changes the meaning, it's like moving the words to have the height you want (“ stop using so many commas, use the dash and cut some points”, is what she's always saying, she tells that to my face too, the nerve… But, she is older, smarter and has been in the field longer than I exist, so I just listen to her). 

Anyway, I write now mostly to practice my English, which explains the typos and even grammar mistakes you might find. I write in the early hours, post it, and only reread it once, lol, I'm lazy af. So, the plot errors, the dialogues, and the long descriptions of settings that look like a novel by Eça de Queirós are all mine. I'm heavily influenced by the Brazilian authors I read; anyone who knows them should notice. Unfortunately, this makes translating some of the allusions I make difficult, but again, that's all on me. Besides, there are so many more synonyms in Portuguese than in English. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to write translating from your head and realizing you've repeated the same word multiple times because there are so few in the language you're writing in? I can understand why Shakespeare invented so many more.

There's also the pure and simple personal taste of the author. There are certain authors you can identify by how they like to write. Some focus on dialogues, others love describing settings in detail, and some prefer one type of punctuation over another. Furthermore, most people who starts writing fanfiction are young, in or just out of high school, and are still creating their own writing style, which will certainly change as they write more.

Most of all, I don't believe in asking AI to write a story for me to post. If I don't even spend 5 minutes writing it, why should you spend time reading it? 

I don't believe in art created by IA; I don't get into trends of transforming photos; I abhor those who go to “IA chat therapy”, and those who ask their bots to write their emails and reply to their friends' messages. 

In short, that's why I say I don't care who points out English errors, because I genuinely don't give a damn about mistakes. My errors are proof that I took the time out of my life to type, because I enjoy writing something that isn't scientific theses. I've been a fanfic writer since 2009, when I started on Nyah (a Brazilian website), and I persisted on AO3, where I learned to write in English just to keep creating oneshots.

I took my time to learn how to create, and that is the proof that I exist beyond my boring desk work.

But many of the youngs don't know much about construction in text, and it shows.