MAZE
Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle
by Christopher Manson
A maze in the shape of a book, now in the format of a tumblr blog.
I invite you to enter my Maze. I say it is mine, because despite who else I might be, I am the architect as well as your guide. Your first goal is to find the shortest route through the Maze—a simple task, I assure you, if you know what to look for. I have planted clues throughout for your interpretation—or misinterpretation. Indeed, you will be fascinated by the Maze's ambiguity, stimulated by its mystery, stymied by its riddle. But fear not! I will be with you all the way. Fear not, that is, if
you truly believe that my clues or I can be trusted.
Enter room 1. Which door should you take from here? Someone in the narrative uses the word “story,” and the same word appears above the door to room 20. Is that the connection? Is there a connection? Give it a try and go to room 20, which is peculiar in its own way. Just inside the door to room 27 you see what looks like the bottom half of an archer’s arrow—an arrow pointing the way perhaps? I will not tell. Perhaps it wouldn't help if I did. It is up to you to decide, as you move from room to room, hoping that fact is not illusion and that your best judgment has not led you astray.
Tempted? Test your wits against mine. I guarantee that my Maze will challenge you to think in ways you've never thought before. But beware…one wrong turn and you may never escape.
DIRECTIONS
CONTEST RULES
PROLOGUE
Transcriber's note: it is my belief that the translocation of the Maze into an online, interactive Tumblr format constitutes a transformative work and is as such a fair use of Mr Manson's intellectual property, especially as the original book has long since gone out of print. However, admirers of the Maze and respecters of Mr Manson's artistry are strongly encouraged to seek out and purchase one of the remaining copies of the original book through online or brickspace retailers.
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Let’s talk about the oft-repeated accusation that AI is “stealing” or “plagiarising” content. It’s a loaded claim, designed to provoke — and like most loaded claims, it deserves careful unpacking.
🧠 When a Human Learns from Art…
Let’s say you read a novel. You love it. It influences how you think about pacing, dialogue, maybe even inspires a character or two in your own writing. That’s how humans learn: by absorbing, remixing, iterating. If you quote the novel directly without attribution, that’s plagiarism. But if you write something inspired by it — that’s transformative. That’s how all creative culture works.
We do not accuse someone of “stealing” when they say they were influenced by Dickens or Morrison or Kurosawa.
🤖 But When AI Learns the Same Way…
It doesn’t act like a pirate library or a photocopier, and it doesn’t normally regurgitate books word-for-word. What it does is learn patterns — structure, syntax, rhythm, pacing. In some edge cases models can reproduce memorised snippets, but that’s a technical and governance problem, not their primary behaviour.
Yet somehow, when an AI synthesises a new sentence influenced by its training data, we call it theft. Why?
⚖️ Where’s the Actual Plagiarism?
Plagiarism is about presenting someone else’s language or ideas as your own without proper credit — substantial uncredited copying of specific content. It’s an ethical and academic violation, not a technical process.
AI doesn’t intend anything. It has no authorship or ego; it just outputs patterns. Any ethical responsibility sits with the humans using it.
When a model reproduces verbatim text from training data, that’s a technical and governance problem — a risk to privacy and copyright that needs to be mitigated — not proof that every single output is theft.
🧂 A Dash of Hypocrisy?
You’ll often hear:
“AI is just scraping artists’ work and remixing it!”
But then we ask:
“Have you ever written fanfic? Used a prompt list? Played with visual references? Quoted a line in your fic title? Watched a tutorial? Written like your fave author for fun?”
Because if the answer is yes… congrats. You’re already engaging in transformative work, the same fundamental mechanism AI relies on. The only real difference? You're squishier.
🧾 “But AI Was Trained on Copyrighted Material Without Permission!”
This is the big one, isn’t it?
It’s true that many AI models were trained on large datasets scraped from the public web — which include copyrighted works that were publicly accessible. That’s not the same thing as deliberately raiding pirate libraries, but it’s also not ethically trivial, and some lawsuits argue that certain systems scraped paywalled material without consent.
Legally, this is still an active fight. In places like the U.S., regulators and courts haven’t given a single, final answer. Some legal scholars and early court decisions say that using copyrighted works as training data can count as fair use when it’s about learning patterns rather than reproducing the originals, especially if the outputs don’t compete with or substitute the source material. Others disagree, or are still deciding.
But “it touched copyrighted material” is not, by itself, proof of theft. If reading a copyrighted book teaches you how to write your own — did you “steal” it?
If “learning from content” equals “theft,” then your memory is a crime scene.
Does that mean there are no concerns? Of course not. Transparency, consent, opt-outs — all of those matter. But shouting “it was trained on IP without permission!!” isn’t a moral mic drop. It’s a simplification that falls apart under scrutiny.
💬 So, is AI really stealing?
Only if you are.
🔗 Further Reading / Sources:
U.S. Copyright Office – Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 3: Generative AI Training (2025)
Overview of how U.S. law currently thinks about training on copyrighted works; concludes legality depends on context and fair-use analysis.
https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intelligence-Part-3-Generative-AI-Training-Report-Pre-Publication-Version.pdf
Carlini et al. – Extracting Training Data from Large Language Models (USENIX Security, 2021)
Shows that verbatim memorisation can happen in edge cases — a real risk, but not the default behaviour of these models.
https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec21-carlini-extracting.pdf
Micaela Mantegna – ARTificial: Why Copyright Is Not the Right Policy Tool to Deal with Generative AI (Yale Law Journal Forum, 2024)
Argues that stretching copyright to “solve” AI problems is a bad fit and risks harming creativity and the public.
https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/artificial-why-copyright-is-not-the-right-policy-tool-to-deal-with-generative-ai
Electronic Frontier Foundation – AI and Copyright: Expanding Copyright Hurts Everyone—Here’s What to Do Instead (2025)
Explains how using AI panic to expand copyright would undercut fair use, research, and small creators.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/02/ai-and-copyright-expanding-copyright-hurts-everyone-heres-what-do-instead
Cory Doctorow – Copyright Won’t Solve Creators’ Generative AI Problem (Pluralistic, 2023)
A creator-centred critique of copyright maximalism as a fake solution to AI and labour issues.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/09/ai-monkeys-paw/
Every now and then I think about how subtitles (or dubs), and thus translation choices, shape our perception of the media we consume. It's so interesting. I'd wager anyone who speaks two (or more) languages knows the feeling of "yeah, that's what it literally translates to, but that's not what it means" or has answered a question like "how do you say _____ in (language)?" with "you don't, it's just … not a thing, we don't say that."
I've had my fair share of "[SHIP] are [married/soulmates/fated/FANCY TERM], it's text!" "[CHARACTER A] calls [CHARACTER B] [ENDEARMENT/NICKNAME], it's text!" and every time. Every time I'm just like. Do they though. Is it though. And a lot of the time, this means seeking out alternative translations, or translation meta from fluent or native speakers, or sometimes from language learners of the language the piece of media is originally in.
Why does it matter? Maybe it doesn't. To lots of people, it doesn't. People have different interests and priorities in fiction and the way they interact with it. It's great. It matters to me because back in the early 2000s, I had dial-up internet. Video or audio media that wasn't available through my local library very much wasn't available, but fanfiction was. So I started to read English language Gundam Wing fanfic before I ever had a chance to watch the show.
When I did get around to watching Gundam Wing, it was the original Japanese dub. Some of the characters were almost unrecognisable to me, and first I doubted my Japanese language ability, then, after checking some bits with friends, I wondered why even my favourite writers, writers I knew to be consistent in other things, had made these characters seem so different … until I had the chance to watch the US-English dub a few years later. Going by that adaptation, the characterisation from all those stories suddenly made a lot more sense. And the thing is, that interpretation is also valid! They just took it a direction that was a larger leap for me to make.
Loose adaptations and very free translations have become less frequent since, or maybe my taste just hasn't led me their way, but the issue at the core is still a thing: Supernatural fandom got different nuances of endings for their show depending on the language they watched it in. CQL and MDZS fandom and the never-ending discussions about 知己 vs soulmate vs Other Options. A subset of VLD fans looking at a specific clip in all the different languages to see what was being said/implied in which dub, and how different translators interpreted the same English original line. The list is pretty much endless.
And that's … idk if it's fine, but it's what happens! A lot of the time, concepts -- expressed in language -- don't translate 1:1. The larger the cultural gap, the larger the gaps between the way concepts are expressed or understood also tend to be. Other times, there is a literal translation that works but isn't very idiomatic because there's a register mismatch or worse.
And that's even before cultural assumptions come in.
It's normal to have those. It's also important to remember that things like "thanks I hate it" as a sentiment of praise/affection, while the words translate literally quite easily, emphatically isn't easy to translate in the sense anglophone internet users the phrase.
Every translation is, at some level, a transformative work. Sometimes expressions or concepts or even single words simply don't have an exact equivalent in the target language and need to be interpreted at the translator's discretion, especially when going from a high-context/listener-responsible source language to a low-context/speaker-responsible target language (where high-context/listener responsible roughly means a large amount of contextual information can be omitted by the speaker because it's the listener's responsibility to infer it and ask for clarification if needed, and low-context/speaker-responsible roughly means a lot of information needs to be codified in speech, i.e. the speaker is responsible for providing sufficiently explicit context and will be blamed if it's lacking).
Is this a mouse or a rat? Guess based on context clues! High-context languages can and frequently do omit entire parts of speech that lower-context/speaker-responsible languages like English regard as essential, such as the grammatical subject of a sentence: the equivalent of "Go?" - "Go." does largely the same amount of heavy lifting as "is he/she/it/are you/they/we going?" - "yes, I am/he/she/it is/we/you/they are" in several listener-responsible languages, but tends to seem clumsy or incomplete in more speaker-responsible ones. This does NOT mean the listener-responsible language is clumsy. It's arguably more efficient! And reversely, saying "Are you going?" - "I am (going)" might seem unnecessarily convoluted and clumsy in a listener-responsible language. All depending on context.
This gets tricky both when the ambiguity of the missing subject of the sentence is clearly important (is speaker A asking "are you going" or "is she going"? wait until next chapter and find out!) AND when it's important that the translator assign an explicit subject in order for the sentence to make sense in the target language. For our example, depending on context, something like "are we all going?" - "yes" or "they going, too?" might work. Context!
As a consequence of this, sometimes, translation adds things – we gain things in translation, so to speak. Sometimes, it's because the target language needs the extra information (like the subject in the examples above), sometimes it's because the target language actually differentiates between mouse and rat even though the source language doesn't. However, because in most cases translators don't have access to the original authors, or even the original authors' agencies to ask for clarification (and in most cases wouldn't get paid for the time to put in this extra work even if they did), this kind of addition is almost always an interpretation. Sometimes made with a lot of certainty, sometimes it's more of a "fuck it, I've got to put something and hope it doesn't get proven wrong next episode/chapter/ten seasons down" (especially fun when you're working on a series that's in progress).
For the vast majority of cases, several translations are valid. Some may be more far-fetched than others, and there'll always be subjectivity to whether something was translated effectively, what "effectively" even means …
ANYWAY. I think my point is … how interesting, how cool is it that engaging with media in multiple languages will always yield multiple, often equally valid but just sliiiiightly different versions of that piece of media? And that I'd love more conversations about how, the second we (as folks who don't speak the material's original language) start picking the subtitle or dub wording apart for meta, we're basically working from a secondary source, and if we're doing due diligence, to which extent do we need to check there's nothing substantial being (literally) lost -- or added! -- in translation?
On one hand, when I make "X is literally fanfic" comments, they're like 60% jokes because 'fanfic' is a specific mode of storytelling specific to fan culture and relationship to copyright and all that jazz.
On the other hand, given the percentage of modern genre fiction that is:
A) official remakes, reboots, or spin off of existing franchises
B) unofficial explicit or coded retellings of existing works
Or
C) written by authors who cut their teeth in modern fanfic communities
I do think it's fair to say "a grounding in transformative work is helpful in navigating modern spec fic"
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Sometimes I forget how much work went into this and then I look at old comparisons like this.
I really like this side by side because it shows the amount of mesh modding and texture editing that went into cleaning up the base model's defective right eye. This was not a quick fix. It took a lot of trial, error, and patience.
For clarity, the image on the left is Stefano Valentini, the original base model. The image on the right is Sunder, an OC I created using that model as a starting point.
Just like some roleplayers use celebrity face claims or AI these days, I chose to work with existing video game models and transform them through mesh mods and texture edits to build original characters.
I do not own the models, as these are purely transformative and recreational works, but I do own the stories, and over time Sunder and others have developed deep backstories and a lot of personal meaning for me.
If you saw the OC post I shared back in October on @sadisticlens, that shows the current version of him. This image is a bit outdated, but it still highlights the contrast and all the work that went into transforming the base model.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately and I want to understand something fundamental about what we're doing when we write fanfiction: We're not just playing with characters or indulging in wish fulfillment. We're participating in the creation of modern mythology.
Think about how ancient myths worked. They weren't static stories told exactly the same way every time. They were living, breathing narratives that changed with each telling, adapted to fit the needs of different communities, different times, different storytellers. The myth of Persephone wasn't just one story, it was dozens of variations, each emphasizing different aspects depending on what the teller wanted to explore. Some versions focused on her as a victim, others on her as a powerful queen of the underworld, still others on her as a symbol of seasonal change.
Every major fandom operates exactly like ancient mythological traditions. We take core characters and archetypes (the hero, the mentor, the trickster, the lover) and we retell their stories in infinite variations. But here's where it gets interesting: each retelling doesn't just entertain, it explores different aspects of the human experience.
Look at how we treat characters like Sherlock Holmes. Arthur Conan Doyle created a character, but what we have now is a mythological figure who has transcended his original context. We've got Victorian Holmes, modern Holmes, Holmes in space, Holmes as a woman, Holmes as different ethnicities, Holmes dealing with PTSD, Holmes navigating modern relationships. Each version tells us something different about intelligence, friendship, justice, and what it means to be an outsider who sees the world differently.
That's not derivative, I think that's how mythology has always worked. The ancient Greeks didn't just tell the story of Odysseus once. They told it over and over, each time emphasizing different themes: leadership, homecoming, loyalty, the cost of war, the relationship between mortals and gods.
Modern transformative work serves the same cultural functions that ancient myths served. It helps us process complex emotions and experiences by projecting them onto larger-than-life figures. It allows us to explore "what if" scenarios that help us understand our own world better.
When someone writes a modern AU where Steve Rogers is dealing with PTSD from his time in the military, they're not just writing Captain America fanfiction. They're creating a story that helps us understand the veteran experience, the cost of war, the struggle to find purpose after trauma. They're using the mythological framework of the super soldier to explore very real human experiences.
When writers create stories where characters navigate coming out, they're using established mythological figures to create narratives about identity, acceptance, and self-discovery. These stories become part of our cultural understanding of what it means to be LGBTQ+ in the modern world.
Here's where transformative work becomes especially powerful as mythology: it fills in the gaps that traditional myths left empty. Ancient mythology was largely created by and for specific groups of people. The stories that became "canonical" were often those told by people in power.
Modern transformative work democratizes mythology. Suddenly, we have versions of beloved characters that reflect experiences that were never included in the original stories. We get disabled superheroes, queer fairytale characters, characters of color in fantasy worlds that originally excluded them. We get stories that center on women's experiences, trans experiences, that explore mental health, that deal with poverty, immigration, trauma, joy.
This isn't "political correctness" or "forced diversity." This is mythology doing what it has always done: evolving to meet the needs of the communities that tell it.
The most powerful fanfics tap into archetypal patterns that have existed in human storytelling for millennia. The enemies-to-lovers arc? That's the ancient story of opposites finding unity, of conflict resolved through understanding. The hurt/comfort dynamic? That's the archetypal pattern of healing through care, of vulnerability creating connection.
The "found family" trope that's so popular in fanfiction? That's one of the oldest mythological patterns in human culture – the idea that the bonds we choose can be stronger than the ones we're born with. From the Round Table to the Argonauts to the Fellowship of the Ring, this pattern appears again and again because it speaks to something fundamental about human nature.
Carl Jung wrote about the collective unconscious: the idea that certain symbols, patterns, and archetypes are shared across all human cultures. When you look at fanfic through this lens, you start to see something remarkable: the same archetypal patterns emerging independently across different fandoms, different cultures, different languages.
The villain redemption arc appears in fanfics across every fandom because it speaks to our deep human need to believe in the possibility of change, in the power of love and understanding to transform even the most damaged souls. The soulmate AU exists in every fandom because it addresses our fundamental desire for connection, for the idea that somewhere in the universe, there's someone who understands us completely. These aren't just popular tropes, they're modern expressions of ancient archetypal patterns.
What makes transformative work particularly powerful as mythology is how it's created collectively. Unlike traditional publishing, where stories are created by individual authors, fanfic is created by communities. Stories build on each other, reference each other, respond to each other. Tropes develop organically as multiple writers explore similar themes.
This is exactly how ancient myths developed. They weren't created by individual storytellers working in isolation, they were created by communities of storytellers, each adding their own elements, their own interpretations, their own cultural perspectives.
Scholars are finally starting to recognize what fanfiction writers have always known: that transformative work is a legitimate form of cultural expression. Henry Jenkins' work on participatory culture, Anne Jamison's research on fanfic as literature, the growing body of academic work on fan studies – all of this is documenting what we've been doing all along. We're not just consumers of culture, we're active participants in its creation. We're not just readers of stories, we're the storytellers, the mythmakers, the keepers of cultural memory.
One of the most important functions of mythology is cultural preservation, keeping important stories alive across generations. But it's not just preservation; it's evolution. Myths stay relevant because they change with the times while maintaining their essential truth.
This is exactly what fanfiction does. We keep beloved characters and stories alive, but we also update them, make them relevant to contemporary experiences, and ensure they speak to new generations of readers.
When someone writes a Pride and Prejudice AU set in modern times, they're not just playing with Austen's characters, they're preserving the essential truth of her story about love, class, and social expectations while making it relevant to contemporary readers.
Ancient mythology didn't separate the sacred from the everyday. The gods had human flaws, human desires, human relationships. They dealt with love, loss, jealousy, betrayal – all the messy, complicated aspects of human experience.
Modern transformative work operates the same way. It takes characters who have become larger than life and makes them human again. It explores their relationships, their inner lives, their struggles with identity and purpose. It doesn't diminish them, it makes them more relatable, more meaningful.
I think we're witnessing the emergence of a new form of mythology, one that's more inclusive, more democratic, more responsive to the needs of diverse communities than traditional mythology ever was. We're creating stories that reflect the full spectrum of human experience, not just the experiences of those who historically had the power to tell stories.
This is transformative work in the truest sense. It's not just transforming existing stories, it's transforming how we think about storytelling itself, about who gets to tell stories, about what stories are worth telling. We're not just writing fanfic. We're writing the myths that future generations will use to understand our world, our values, our dreams. We're creating stories that will help people make sense of love, loss, identity, community, justice, hope.
That's not derivative. That's not lesser. That's sacred work.
