Aspiring writer, avid traveler and perpetual dreamer.
Plot bunny enabler. Suffers from an overactive muse and starts to write too many novels and fanfictions without finishing the previous ones.
So, I’m finally getting around to writing that post I mentioned on AI, Chatgpt and fandom, and in particular fanfiction. There have been a lot of very good posts on the topic that I encourage you to check out (here ; here and here among many others)
I’ll preface this by saying that, as far as I know, my writing hasn’t yet been fed into an AI for an ending or alternate version. But I know it’s happening with other people’s fics, and I know it might happen to mine at some point. The very idea of it makes me sick, hence this post. The ‘you’ I’m addressing in this isn’t a specific person: it is targeted at anyone who is thinking about feeding my works into something like chatgpt, and anyone who might have already done so.
Let me be very, very clear right from the start: I do not consent to any of my works being fed into any AI, be they chatgpt or similar bullshit, just as I do not consent to anyone plagiarizing my fics, writing their own endings of my fics or trying to dictate what that ending should be. Anyone doing that with my fics is rudely invited to go sit on a cactus and never interact with me or my works ever again. I don’t give a fuck if you don’t plan on ever publishing that AI-generated shit you got about my work. Don’t fucking do it in the first place.
My problem is not just about my writing being used to train a computer program without my consent. That is part of my problem, obviously, but not the most important aspect of it in my eyes, and in the eyes of many other writers who have already spoken out about the problem - and by that, I mean fanfiction writers and professional, published writers.
My main issue is with the people using chatgpt to write endings or alternate versions of fanfics written by other people.
By all means, if you want to use chatgpt for your own stories, I can’t stop you - I can and will judge you, because seriously, there are so many fics out there you can most probably find exactly what you’re looking for with some good tag filtering, and if not you can just do what the rest of us do, which is write your own. That’s how most of us got into fanfiction to begin with. Don’t use the dubious writing ability of a robot and its absolute lack of creativity that sees it cannibalize other people’s writing and frankenstein it back together. I would rather read a twelve-year old’s first ever fanfic, full of clichés and spelling mistakes, than anything written by an AI, because I know the twelve year old poured their heart and soul into it, put the time and effort into it, and that makes it so much better in my eyes.
But if you put someone else’s story into chatgpt or similar? You are dead to me and do not deserve the hard work fic writers put into their stories. Yes, even if you’re not planning on publishing the results.
Those are our stories. The ones we’ve put time, energy, effort in. That we’ve spent hours writing. Some of us have the whole plot planned out for the next thirty chapters. Some of us are making it up as we go along. Some of us are doing both. But it’s still our stories. Writing them, finishing them, is our right and privilege.
Chatgpt and similar computer programs have no clue what we have planned for the rest of the fic. They can make calculated guesses based on all the words you’ve just fed them and all the stories they’ve previously scrapped, but even if - and it is a big if - they do get the basic plot right, it still won’t be exactly the same. It won’t be the same quality, it won’t be the same word choice, it won’t be the exact same style.
It won’t be written by us. It won’t be the ending we planned or are still planning on.
You were reading that fic because you liked the plot, the characterisation, the writing style. Because you enjoyed the fruits of the efforts the writer put into it.
And now you’re asking a computer to plagiarize that same writer and ghost write you the ending? And, I’m guessing, the ending you want to see, or to rewrite the fic to your liking?
That is not okay. That is beyond not okay. I don’t tolerate people trying to pass off my writing as their own. I have specifically told people they were not allowed to use certain original elements of my writing or of the plot I have come up with, because those are stories I am planning on writing myself, or background lore I have already planned for. I have told people off for trying to tell me which way my fics should go, which pairings I should write, how I write certain characters.
What makes you think I would tolerate you using chatgpt and alike to do the same?
Because let me be clear. Using those is stealing. It’s stealing the time and effort we put into this, and selfishly feeding it all into a machine so it can spew out exactly what you want from it.
This is not you asking the writer of an abandoned fic if you could pick it up and write an ending for it. This is not you asking the writer of an on going fic if you can write a side story for it.
This is not you asking permission for anything from the writer of the fic. This is not you writing a heavily inspired fic, or even just copy pasting an entire fic into a new document and tweaking it to fit your personal desire. This is not even you writing anything.
Even if it’s fanfictions, we writers still have rights to our intellectual property, to the stories we write. There is a reason AO3 reacts quickly to any complaints of plagiarism or reposted fics. There is a reason mirror sites or apps of AO3 are taken down. There is a reason writers like @neil-gaiman, @seananmcguire@dduane and so many others will never read fanfictions of their own works and have to regularly remind their own fans to stop sending them headcanons or fanfics: because even if what we write is based on their work, it’s still our ideas and if they write something too similar to the ideas their fans sent them, there could be legal consequences. Plagiarism accusations. For similar ideas. Not even the exact same words. Ideas. Yes, even for fanworks.
There is the plagiarism issue, as I just mentioned, but there is also the respect issue. You obviously don’t respect my writing, if you’re so quick to feed it to an AI just because you’re not getting exactly what you want right this second. You obviously don’t respect me, as a person or as a writer either, if you’re willing to disregard all the time, effort and thought I put into my work.
Yes, sometimes fics are abandoned, and you really, really want to know how it would have ended. Sometimes, the writer fell out of the fandom, sometimes real life got busy, sometimes you never know. Sometimes they died, and we mourn their silence. Often, an explanation is never given. Sometimes they reappear years later, sometimes they don’t. It’s a fact of life, a fact of fandom.
I myself have stories I haven’t updated in years that I still have plans for, that I haven’t abandoned but that I just need time and inspiration to continue writing, and yes I know I have people who want to know what happens next. Some of these people are more polite about it than others. Some act like entitled spoiled brats and get their comments deleted because I’m not here to cater for them.
No amount of time passed since the last update makes it okay to use something like Chatgpt to finish their stories. At the very least, have the decency to respect the effort they put into it and write your own version, yourself, and keep it to yourself.
Or, if they’re available/if you’re able to contact them, ask the writer for permission to write a continuation, or a fic based on their own, with proper credit given and a link back to the original! Or even ask them POLITELY how the fic would have ended! Some of them will happily tell you what they originally had planned, even if they are never going to finish the fic! A writer I follow actually did that just today - updated their fics to say ‘Hey, I might never finish this, but here’s what I had planned for it in case I never come back to this.”
But don’t use chatgpt, or any similar program.
Because if you do, what is even the point of us writing anything in the first place?
I have been writing fanfiction for a long time. Over fifteen years. I have dealt with a lot of different readers, some way worse than the majority of them, and even then I consider myself lucky when I see what some of my fellow writers had to deal with back on ffnet, and still have to deal with on AO3. I have built a community around my fics, with my readers, and I love it. I love fandom, despite the drama that always comes with it. I love my readers, too, love their enthusiasm when I post a new chapter, love seeing their reactions and getting yelled at in the discord for leaving them off on yet another cliffhanger.
But anyone who puts my writing in an AI? I don’t love you. You have no place in fandom, and especially not in the part of it that I have built.
You make me feel sick. You make me furious. You act like you are entitled to an ending, to a continuation, to getting exactly what you want… for what? Reading my fics? Maybe leaving a comment at some point (one that probably demanded an update, or that I write your specific pairing, or that I change this character to your specifications)?
Fuck. You.
I don’t write for you. Unless I’m specifically writing a gift for someone, I don’t write for anyone but me.
I share it on AO3 because I’m proud of what I wrote, because I think other people might like it, because I like getting feedback and interacting with others in the fandom. That does not mean it becomes your property, or that you can do anything you want with it.
I don’t get paid for writing. You are not paying me to write. You do not get to tell me what to write, or what to do with my writing, or to do what you want with my writing.
I write because I love writing, because I have too many ideas in my head and need to get them out of it, and putting words on a page is the best way for me to do that.
I don’t make any money from writing, and can’t afford to be a full time writer. And even if I could, unless you were my publisher and I actually had a contract with you stating that I’m being paid to write something for you, you still wouldn’t get to demand updates from me.
I’ve taken to straight out deleting comments that are demanding updates or asking if a fic is abandoned. Not only are these rude, they’re actively detrimental to my mental health and make me want to work on the fics in question LESS.
You feeding my work into AI? The only thing you’re doing is making me want to share my writing even less than that.
no but seriously I still get chills thinking about turning off my headlamp in the cave and The Hand That I Did Not Actually See, and it’s been twelve years since it happened
it’s such an unreal experience
like
you turn off your light in a cave and wave your hand in front of your face
and
you can see this shadowy thing moving in the black space where your hand is
it looks like the same shadowy thing you would see in your room at night if you waved your hand in front of your face, it’s there and vaguely hand-shaped, and your brain recognizes it as your hand because your brain is aware of where your hand is and what it is doing
But You Are Not Seeing Anything
Inside a cave, there is No Light. No matter how far your pupils spread, there is no light for them to draw in, no light to put an image on your retina.
But your brain just Fucking Assumes that because it knows where your hand is and what it is doing, clearly it can see it.
So it creates a shadowy thing for your eyes to be seeing.
Brain is like “there’s a hand there”
Eyes are like “yup sure thing brain I can totally see it”
Brain is like “nice”
but there is no hand, you cannot see the hand, you are seeing a literal actual hallucination in the cave because your brain thinks it knows best
Caves are awesome, but also terrifying. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
we once went spelunking, and a our guide said that once he was in a cave with a stream, so he could hear running water, and his brain was like ‘oh, running water? that means there must be Ducks out there’. and he saw like…low light shadows of ducks. that his brain just Put There.
As a cave guide: we call that ‘cave blindness’! True darkness absolutely wigs your brain out - we’re such visual creatures that after a while our brain throws a hissy after not seeing anything. Sensory deprivation is a very real kind of torture. We have a huge, deep cave system at work and there are a lot of places where you’re hundreds of meters in solid rock in this tiny, dark, still space.
I like to turn my torch off, sit down with my back against the wall, and wait to see how long it takes before I start seeing things or feeling like the ground is moving, or hearing things. Because I know I’m not - I’m in complete darkness, utter silence, sitting in rock that hasn’t moved in hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Proof that brains are Ridiculous and over-react to a lot of stuff!
I want to add to this that people who lose their hearing as adults have reported hearing music “being played loudly from somewhere”, and other auditory hallucinations, bc the brain will just panic and put your brain’s ipod on *fucking shuffle* if it’s not getting any input
If I read something on the asks that feels genuinely threatening or dangerous, or that’s actually abusive, I just delete it and block the person.
If I’m answering an ask here you can assume that as far as I’m concerned even if it’s apparently threatening or angry, it’s meant humorously or with love.
It’s never appropriate to dogpile people. Never appropriate to threaten or abuse them, even if you think you are doing it for me and with the best of intentions. Don’t.
If you are upset on my behalf, or on behalf of all Tumblr users, just think “this is probably a tone-deaf attempt at humour” and let it go.
Reblogging because I’m seeing people upset or offended on my behalf. To repeat, If I’m answering an ask here you can assume that as far as I’m concerned even if it’s apparently threatening or angry, it’s meant humorously or with love.
If I think something is actually unpleasant or bad, I’ll just block them.
Don’t dogpile on my behalf. I don’t want you to, I think it’s actively a bad idea, and it’s bullying. (Remember: it can still be bullying when more than one of you turn up, even when you think you’re in the right or the aggrieved party.)
Play nice, never attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to internet-caused text-based tone-deafness or misinterpretation, and everyone will have an easier time.
insane how many people just have these incredible artists in their families who get no recognition outside of crocheting circles because this art form is devalued for its association with women
in my country, the word for crocheting, is used metaphorically, to compliment a surgeon’s work.
every AFAB person my mother’s age and older, had practiced this craft at one point on another.
My mom has made literal paintings, that decorate our house for years (I’ll come back with pictures when I visit next) you can only see that they are crocheting when you go very close.
as promised here’s my mom’s crocheting “paintings”
There is another one but it had been stored many years ago, (i remember it from my childhood) and sadly it is probably damaged by mold, it depicted wild horsed running in nature
I want an ice maker and enough room in the freezer for a pizza and that is IT.
I want the dumbest fridge you got. Gimme the orange tabby of refrigeration. I want my fridge to pull the wrong lever and turn my enemies into llamas instead of killing them. I want the following features: keeps things cold, has compartment that keeps things colder, a door that opens and shuts.
reading classic lit with an online community is admittedly fun but sometimes i see posts like “scholars are so stupid” and “academics are nothing compared to us!! we on Tumblr truly understand the text best” and i get Worried like. its just a joke. its just a joke haha right? right? because it becomes a specific flavour of… not quite anti-intellectualism but adjacent to it, enough that it legitimately becomes difficult to differentiate the two. theres a lot to criticise about academia but this overgeneralisation of it as some fixed monolith rather than an ever-evolving landscape leaves a foul taste.
ive met academics i know that are the most stubborn people alive refusing to adapt to change despite seeing it happen right in front of them. ive also met academics that are unfathomably kind and openminded, and so so supportive of the weirdest essay ideas imaginable. literary analysis is ripe for weird shit! open to marginalised identities in a way so much else isnt. augh it just feels bad whenever i see a post decrying the competence of academics, like yea ive read my fair share of articles with obtuse language and shite ideas but just. maybe don’t dismiss the entire field?
I was young, so it feels like something I read in a book sometimes. I remember how chilly it could get at night in the summer, which doesn’t seem to happen as much anymore.
That’s actually the thing that seems to keep popping back up in my mind - that like, it was really chilly in the mornings in summer even, and it would warm up, and it seems to just kind of… stay warm all the time.
I dunno. The seasons were more distinct, there were bigger temperature swings on individual days, and like… weather was more predictable on a seasonal basis, if not on a daily basis.
Like… the kind of seasons you read about in Olde Tyme Books? They… were real things. We didn’t always have snow on Winter Break, but we had a pretty predictable number of snow days?
And it almost feels silly to talk about it. “What were normal seasons like, Uncle Spider?”
But yeah.
Watch seasonal-based movies made before about 1975 – ones set around Easter, or Halloween, or New Year’s – and pay attention to what people are wearing. Late October? It got cold when the sun went down, like ‘put on a jacket’ cold and I’m not talking northern US, I’m talking Georgia.
Today (Aug 18) is only a week before the start of most public schools in the US. A week from now? Back then, it’d already be chilly in the morning, enough to need a windbreaker on the way to school. By midday it would’ve warmed up, but even in Georgia the mornings had a nip to them by end of August, start of September.
And in northern Virginia, not sure about now, but the schools used to plan for ten snow days a year. I recall one year we had eleven days off thanks to a foot or so of fresh snow every two or three days. Even in years we didn’t use all the snow days, there were still frequent late openings and early closings. It wasn’t all that uncommon for summer vacation to start a week later, because those days had to be made up, somewhere.
Locally, this summer has (despite the terrible heat elsewhere in the US) been a strange bit of callback to my childhood. Excepting two nights all summer, every night it’s dropped to 72F at the highest, but most often in the 60s – with the caveat that it sometimes took half the night to get there. It’s not a sharp drop like I remember, as a child. But at least it has been cool enough to leave the windows open and a fan on – and that’s the kind of summer I grew up with, in Alabama and Georgia (regions significantly warmer, otherwise, than the mid-atlantic where I live now).
That sharp drop was the reason my dad installed a whole-house fan every place we lived: because the evening air would legitimately drop a good 5-10 degrees as the sun set. Enough to open the windows, run the fan, and the whole house would cool right down by dinnertime.
Now? If we go by last summer, even having a house set up perfectly (central open staircase) for a whole-house fan, what’s the point if the temperature stays just as high after the sun goes down, as it was before?
I recently read a poem about climate change making the seasons less familiar in a poetry collection published in 1978.
I was like, excuse me? It was noticeable already? Obviously I know it’s changed in my lifetime, but…
so I was reading this book Travels in Alaska by John Muir and in it, he mentions visiting Glacier Bay and that within living memory of the locals, that Glacier Bay used to be entirely iced off, but that the seasons had been changing for the warmer and the ice was in retreat. he posits in the book that this might have something to do with people burning more coal.
“We chose the term “asexual” to describe ourselves because both “celibate” and “anti-sexual” have connotations we wished to avoid: the first implies that one has sacrificed sexuality for some higher good, the second that sexuality is degrading or somehow inherently bad. “Asexual”, as we use it, does not mean “without sex” but “relating sexually to no one”. This does not, of course, exclude masturbation but implies that if one has sexual feelings they do not require another person for their expression. Asexuality is, simply, self-contained sexuality.”
And that’s only the date that Manifesto was written, so asexuals as members of a community must have existed at least some time before that.
So, no: we are not just Tumblr trenders. Get out of here with that.
supporting my asexual friends and foes by rebbloging this
It’s 50 years this month since the first version of the Asexual Manifesto was written. Aces have been writing about our experiences under this name for at least half a century. We are not an internet fad.
“The Brothers Grimm were important contributors to popular cultural European literature” and “The Brothers Grimm were violently antisemitic and misogynistic” are two facts that can and should coexist with each other.
