I feel like since they’ve started using AI to do most of the art in these books I have worried about the inevitable: AI use in the writing of stories.

Which brings me to my main claim: I believe that RC and Klara have used AI, at least to a certain extent, to write Waterlily.

If you feel uncomfortable with that I completely understand, it was one of the books I have been most excited about and genuinely enjoyed. I have made posts praising it and only two days ago I would have had defended this book wholeheartedly.

In the past day unfortunately I have been presented significant amounts of evidence that show that the writing has many of the hallmarks of AI. At first I was confused and denied it but the more I have looked into it, the more I have realized the severity of the situation.

I cannot feasibly list everything in this post that has been curated showing AI usage but I would like to give some examples that have been particularly egregious to me. All of these are things that are seen regularly when using generative AI in creative writing.

1) Heavily repeated words.

- For those have heard of the book Shy Girl, you know that it was revealed to have been made, at least in part due to AI. One of the big things noted in the book was the overuse of the word “sharp” as a descriptor. This book unfortunately not only had this problem, but has it in part with the very same word.

- Sharp is repeated 17 times, including 7 times in one chapter. This includes many lines where most humans would likely not consider that to be the optimal word for the situation. While that’s also possible to be human error, it’s the pure amount of times it is repeated that gives me pause. Examples: “some truths are too sharp to say out loud”, “he inhales sharply”, “is grin widened, sharp and delighted”.

- Other words that are so far noticeably used repeatedly include: heavy, weight, spine, and memory. They’re not insanely overused but they are used pretty consistently in similar metaphors and contexts (such as both the lines “the memory burns” and “the memory releases me” in the same chapter). Memory in particular seems to be a word often repeated by AI.

2) Repetitive and Fragmented Sentence Structure

- A common gen AI writing style seen is short fragmented sentences, some examples from WL include: “I looked away first. Heart hammering. Throat dry.” “Not like that. Not in a sad way. In a poetic way.” or “Me at the edge. Tiffany beside me. The shift in weight. The push. The fall.”

- In less than the first three chapters this is seen at least 20 times (there may be some not spotted yet, and more in the remaining two chapters).

- Again these are commonly used writing tropes on their own but the sheer amount is unusual, even among something like fanfic (which ofc AI has been trained on).

3) Mirrored Dialogue Cadence

- Again this is shown at least 13 times in the first three chapters alone. While this is a common writing quirk, it is very common in this story.

- Some examples include [Riley: “It's called repetition for emphasis.” / Declan: “It's called a limited vocabulary.”], [Lily: “Stop sulking. We're having fun.” / Riley: “You're having fun. I'm having heatstroke” / Lily: “Same thing.”], and [Fabian: “Girls tend to like my confidence.” / Riley: “Girls tend to like a lot of things that are bad for them.”]

4) Overuse of Similes:

- This includes both ‘like’ and ‘as if’ statements.

- Again if any of you know of the Shy Girl drama, you know that book had a severe over reliance on similes, many of which make less and less sense when thought through.

- While I like a lot of the imagery in this book, looking at the similes in one document together raised many red flags.

- A total of at least 46 similes are used in the five chapters of WL that are currently out. That’s almost ten a chapter. I know many people enjoy writing flowery language but this book has an over reliance shown in examples such as Shy Girl.

- Some just first glance examples that I find to be a little unusual are “a touch so gentile it feels like a secret” or “in the corner stands the easel, draped like a corpse”.

5) The Dramatic Pause

- Ok full disclosure: I love an ellipses, truly I do. But it gets to a point. When there’s over 55 uses of them in just 5 chapters it raises some red flags for me. These are seen in dialogue from every main character as well, it doesn’t read like a character quirk from any one person.

- I guess some examples: “Yes... I guess you always did have a hard head.”, “Your hands are... questionable.”, or “To stay in there. Most people would find it... haunting.”

- Idk if I even need to include those, I’m sure most of you know what ellipses are. I’m sure many of you are also aware of gen AIs overuse of both ellipses and asterisks so I don’t know if I have to explain this one as much.

6) “The Kind Of”

- Another thing noted as being common in gen AI writing is using the phrase “the kind of”. This is seen in WL in lines such as “A harp. Gilded and gleaming. The kind that belongs in a concert hall, not a bedroom.” and “The kind of voice that's learned not to give anything away.” These aren’t the only examples but a full list of them hasn’t been compiled yet.

7) “not —— but —.” or “no —-. No —-. Just —-.”

- This is an extremely common thing to see in gen AI writing. I bet even if you don’t know too much about it, you may have heard about this at some point.

- For instance “I’m not lying, I’m just managing”, “No expectations. No pressure. Just live the summer.”, “No pretense. Just sound.”, or “He didn’t want everyone. He just wanted to be wanted.”

- I’m not fully sure how many of these there are total since they’re still being curated but there certainly seem to be many so far.

Some final thoughts:

AI has been trained off of human writing, so to an extend most creative writing will read in some ways similarly to AI. This is why I am hesitant to even accuse Klara of using this amount of AI. It does seem suspicious though that she possessed a large amount of the writing quirks seen in AI. Many of these sparingly or individually don’t raise any red flags to me but the sheer amount raises uncertainty.

If it is true that RC is moving in a direction that either encourages or allows AI to be used in the writing process, I would feel less inclined to support them. It’s unfortunate but I truly don’t understand the point of making visual novels if not to have someone write the novel. AI steals from other artists and I consider it to be theft, I am very hesitant to support a company that encourages theft.

So yeah, that’s the thoughts of today, I apologize for the ramble. Again thanks to @cordonia for the hard work she has put into examining this book. There will be much more added to her current document looking into this and I’ll update this post in reblogs as more comes out.

Again please know I wouldn’t be making this post if it was not a major concern for me. I was very into the book when it came out but I worry now that this is showing a bad direction RC could be going in.

Some sources:

- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-style.html

- https://recordcrash.substack.com/p/how-to-identify-ai-written-web-fiction

- https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1p899da/im_really_tired_of_the_overuse_of_simile_and

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbeKTa5xhZo&t=1961s - I watched this and unfortunately saw some things that reminded me of Waterlily, hence why “sharp” is a major tell for me.