Gon should’ve gone to the Dark Continent

AO3 saying they will not be banning AI-generated works on their platform

I agree with them and I respect them for this. no, I am not a fan of AI-generated fics, but as I’ve said many times before in the past:

AO3 was built with the “complete anti censorship” stance. them banning AI-generated works would be them going against their own core values of “no censorship”. and “no censorship” means nothing is censored. and that includes works you dislike for ethical or whatever reasons.

as of now, most (I believe) of creators who use AI to write for them properly tag their works as “AI-generated”. so you can safely filter these works out if you don’t wish to consume them. but I have no doubt the majority (if not all) of them will stop tagging their works as AI if AO3 actually bans AI works, which means these AI works will be untagged. you can never know for sure if the fic you read is AI or not, since they aren’t properly tagged anymore.

whether or not you like it, AI is getting better and more human-like, meaning it’s getting harder to spot when a fic is AI.

speculation, witch hunts, wrongful accusations and harassment harm real writers, as well as writing community as a whole, as much as AI does, if not more.

it’s impossible for AO3 to effectively ban and remove “only AI-generated works” without innocent human-made works getting wrongly marked as AI and deleted in the process. so if AO3 were to ban AI-generated works, it would mean

there was a chance of a human-made work getting wrongly marked as AI and taken down

there was a chance of an AI-generated work being wrongly accepted as human-made

fandom drama could and would cause innocent writers to get their human-made works falsely reported as AI

human-made fics that “upset people”, in terms of contents, could and almost certainly would be reported as AI, because there were people who “found the fics inappropriate/disgusting and wanted them taken down” — and the only way they could do that was by falsely reporting these fics as AI

AO3 volunteers would have to decide which works were AI “based on vibes alone”. and not only was it impossible for them to always make the correct judgement, there simply weren’t enough volunteers and time for every single work that was reported as AI to be thoroughly read by a human volunteer

no, “AI detector” is unreliable and the machine itself is also AI — it’s known to have incorrectly marked human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made.

that kind of adds a new layer to the extermination campaign of the chimera ants who obviously reproduce at an extremely fast rate, populating the world with the "wrong" sort of species. but the chimera ants don't actually do anything the humans and hunter association aren't already doing. and their actions are abhorrent, but netero kills them with a nuke dictators have been testing on their civilian populations, and then the hunters association does a colonial land grab where havoc can run wild on the whims of the most influential hunters (like pariston). the hunters basically run the entire world and dictate what violence is permissible versus what is unacceptable and there's no coherence to it other than convenience.

these rather weak governments just can't keep up with the struggle taking place between not just hunters but nen users broadly. a friend of mine brought up the mafia clearly governs pretty much all of yorknew, places like meteor city don't even have a government, monarchies and dictators are rampant but also constantly being overturned, and the only global system that seems to be devised and actually means anything is the hunters association which can apparently undermine entire international organizations like the V5 with small loopholes. it's very much a might (and profit) makes right world. whoever can accumulate the most amount of money, resources, and land through the violence that rules the society, whether that be a government, an NGO, or an underground formation (like the mafia or the phantom troupe), gets to take advantage of the political instability of the world for their own aims.

in fact, the phantom troupe even have the belief the violence they enact is for the good of meteor city, because becoming brutal villains was the only way to provide the resources the impoverished residents needed. they have been so ruthlessly abused by a society where human trafficking and corruption and abuse is rampant that they see violence and becoming the offending party as the only practical solution. this is why pariston is such a rad antagonist actually. he shows how someone with very little care for others and a priority of just being entertained has a major social and systemic benefit in this very chaotic world.

I'm sure that their conversation here is what sealed Gon's opinion of Ging

Don't get me wrong, Ging's advice is good, but it is insanely cold and detached. Once again, he subtly pushes his "son" away by telling him to figure out what he wants instead of asking him directly what he wants. Does he (Gon) want to be with him and relearn nen so he can continue his life as a hunter? That's probably what a father would have asked.

But it wasn't a coincidence that Gon called Ging instead of someone he was more familiar with, like Wing, Bisky, or even Kite. Because I'm sure Gon was ready to accept Ging as a father figure at that moment. He's still extremely naive and probably hoped that Ging would be more open.

But that's not what happens.

Ging talks to him like he isn't concerned about him at all. And Gon finally understands.

Gon realizes he never really wanted to see Ging anyway. That Ging is more like a cool uncle than a dad. But maybe if he could have felt how awesome and strong Ging is, he would have chosen to stay with him (It's sad that he still believes Ging would have let him join him, poor Gon)

Gon slowly but surely starts to understand that he never really mattered in his father's life.

This is considered one of the most insightful quotes Ging has said, but I find it kind of bittersweet.

Because it implies that if his son had been an “important thing by the side of the road” Ging might have taken care of him and been a present father.