The Break of Dawn

-ˋˏ ༻Bagginshield tender kiss༺ ˎˊ-

♡ / ↻ — are appreciated😌

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!)

Kurama 🌹

for your next poem/story

Agelast - a person who never laughs

Afroth - in a state of lively or angry excitement

Apatheia - freedom or release from emotion or excitement

Biblioklept - one who steals books

Calendula - any of a small genus (Calendula) of yellow-rayed composite herbs of temperate regions

Deipnosophist - a person skilled in table talk

Ductile - easily led or influenced; capable of being fashioned into a new form

Eremitic - characterized by ascetic solitude in mode of life

Imbibe - to take in or up; to receive into the mind and retain

Intellection - the act of the intellect or exercise of the intellect; a synonym of thought and reasoning

Jentacular - pertaining to breakfast

Obliquity - deviation from moral rectitude or sound thinking; indirectness or deliberate obscurity of speech or conduct

Pernoctate - to stay up or out all night

Saccade - a small rapid jerky movement of the eye especially as it jumps from fixation on one point to another (as in reading)

Solitudinarian - a person who leads a secluded or solitary life

Solivagant - rambling alone; marked by solitary wandering

Troglodyte - a member of any of various peoples (as in antiquity) who lived or were reputed to live chiefly in caves

Umbrageous - inclined to take offense easily, belligerent

Variegated - having discrete markings of different colors

Vestige - a trace, mark, or visible sign left by something (such as an ancient city or a condition or practice) vanished or lost

If any of these words make their way into your next poem/story, please tag me, or leave a link in the replies. I would love to read them!

These people are Volunteers.

I better not see anyone complaining next dono season. These guys are busting their asses to make sure the archive is up and running.