Good lord I never thought anyone would actually do this and blatantly put it out for others to see.
The comments are all naturally telling this person in a thousand different ways that this is abhorrent. (Some in a much cruder way than I would approve, but the outrage is entirely understandable)
This is genuinely the most disrespectful thing you can do to any kind of writer.
I would have hoped that anyone in any fandom would at least understand this as a bare minimum, but it seems not.
When a person posts a fanfic for others to see, they are sharing the culmination of their love for a media. They are communicating their thoughts and feelings and original interpretation to make something they enjoy and are choosing to let others enjoy it with them. That is something beautiful. Of course, in a lot of cases, fanfiction takes time. This could be for many reasons: Creativity burnouts, length of fic, real life circumstances, maybe some are deeply invested in making sure their work is up to a certain standard before sharing it for all to see.
I’m sure almost everyone who reads fanfiction has experienced the want to see the end of an unfinished fanfiction that they got invested into. The reason for that is because the fanfiction has that mix of aspects I mentioned earlier: The author’s thoughts, feelings and original interpretation.
You know what has none of those? Generative AI.
The conversation of why AI writing or art is unethical has been had already a million different ways, but to keep it simple, here’s an imperfect metaphor.
Imagine if a hundred chefs each spent hours upon hours perfecting a recipe for a signature dish for a cooking competition. Then imagine if someone, who simply couldn’t be bothered to put the time in to learn to be a chef, simply got a sample of all the signature dishes of the other chefs, blended it up into a sort of stew instead and passed it off as their own creation. You’d hardly call that person a chef at all, much less want them in the competition. Because they simply stole the efforts of others.
Now, imagine the stew ends up decent enough to the judges because of the expertise of all the chefs who had put time into their craft. The thing about this stew is that its taste never really changes, it is the same phenomenon as when you mix all paint colors together, you just get black that happens to be okay in taste. Imagine if this stew wins because it is easy to replicate, keep taking samples from chefs and mindlessly mix them together. Sounds pretty unfair, right?
That’s the issue with AI writing, it’s mind numbingly easy to prompt, which unfortunately speaks to the laziness present in every person. However, there’s really no place for it in fandom. If you like something and want to interact with others about it, you should really be willing to put in a smidgen of effort, whether it be rants, comments, art, writing or spam reblogs in the case of tumblr. That’s veering off topic, though—
Even when you feed an AI someone else’s work and tell it to replicate the style, it can copy certain writing patterns, vaguely follow a storyline given, but it wouldn’t understand why anything happens, it can’t put itself in the emotional states of characters or come up with new ideas to add to the narrative, it can only take from its large pot of signature dish sample stew.
This person posted the work calling it a sequel, except it isn’t one, it isn’t written or even endorsed by the writer of the first fic and the most important fact is that it simply isn’t how the original poster would write it at all. I don’t even need to read the fic to know this. This person is serving black stew flavored with hints of the original writer’s work and expects to be applauded.
This isn’t even to say that writing something based off of another’s fanwork is abhorrent. Many have done this, including myself, however the pivotal difference is that I and many others injected our own thoughts, feelings and interpretation into it by making it ourselves instead of letting an AI do it for us. I personally know what it is like to have something written based off of my work and it is euphoric and immensely motivating to see how others build off of my stuff. It really does boil down to those three simple things.
So that being said, had this work been written by the poster’s own hand without an AI, this would be an entirely different discussion. Maybe it would even something immensely flattering to the original writer. As it stands though, this poster has probably only succeeded in disheartening the original writer. I’ve seen the saying of: "Why would I read something nobody bothered to write?" But people should really consider that this is the kind of thing that makes writers think: "Why should I post something nobody will appreciate?" Which is the kind of heartbreaking mentality that kills fandom.
If you genuinely think an AI can churn out something that holds a candle to something human made, then the beauty of human creativity is entirely lost on you. In my eyes, that makes you more than pitiful. Therefore, I humbly ask you either entirely subtract yourself from spaces meant for that human creativity or take a long hard look at yourself and your meaningless joy that comes from spitting on others.
May this thing be deleted and anything like it never happen again to me or anyone else.
