chasing daybreak

#XIV HEATWAVE FESTIVAL 02 - 05 water, swimming, “come on.”

Day 2. Solace | Eternity

~

em dash

“not x, not y, but z”

short sentence stacking as a stylistic choice

none of these belong to ai. these are all what human writers have been writing since day one, way before ai was invented. ai was trained to mimic how human writers write — so em dash, not x not y but z and short sentence stacking would never have been used by ai at all if ai hadn’t learned and mimicked them from human writers.

no, you are not “fighting against ai” by accusing every work that has em dash, not x not y but z or short sentence stacking in it as ai-generated, you are helping ai harm the writing community by engaging in witch hunt and scaring human writers away from creating/sharing their works for fear of being wrongly accused of using ai.

10. finding yourself staring at their mouth and getting caught.

/ characters: thesa + thancred /400 words, pre-relationship.

It had started innocently enough, which Thancred couldn't say about most of his actions as of late. The part of him that was keenly aware of this fact winced when he noticed the merchant's eyes over him. Yet, the other part held his own smile back as he finally tore his eyes away from Thesa — squinting at the distance to nothing in particular.

He waited for the merchant to excuse himself before clapping both hands together, looking back toward the path they had chosen. "Shall we be going?"

Yda has always been prone to exaggeration. Papalymo, not so much. Minfilia always had this genuine awe in her eyes when speaking of the warrior who now carries their future on her shoulders, so the other scions struggled to gauge where she stood with them.

Before he knew, it was decided for him. Her hand grasped at his wrist as she pulled him back to look her in the eyes like he had been avoiding since the merchant caught him. Then, that rare hesitancy in her voice appeared again.

"Before we part," she says, and to his misfortune, her claws — which dug into his wrist a moment ago — left him to reach that persistent crack in her lower lip again. "Did I mispronounce something?" She asks, nervously, but cutting his thoughts short.

He is reduced to holding back that same smile again. "No, you didn't," he answers, though he's not sure. Thancred heard very little of that conversation, but he wasn't worried about that now that he realized she did notice his ogling.

That reply, little as it answered, seemed to ease her. Thesa changes her posture, giving her lip a reprieve to cross her arms as she stared down at him. "Then, what is it?"

The smile that spread across his face was not subtle this time, not that Thancred has ever been known to be. "Did I give you the impression there was anything amiss, my lady?"

Her whole face twitches. Nose scrunched, furrowed brows, that one edge of her lips tugs on the side as she shakes her head. "No, my mistake." Her hand settled on her side to rest by the small knife on her belt, and somehow, that felt safer than anywhere else she'd put it in the past hour. "We should be going."

"Aye, we should." Thancred waited for her to turn to leave first, which she gladly did.

It always ends this way...

miserable posting w/ the dearest void eyes for @tearlunars's bday <3