u/respanza

In light of the AI kerfuffle that is coming out over the HR fandom and the sheer amount of AI generated fics that have been exposed, and in light of the amount of drama that comes about from readers who don't want to read AI generated fics, I have a genuine question to ask of these registered users who feed prompts into an AI site and get a large amount of words that resemble a story in return:

If you are cognizant enough to create a fic that has been made with the use of AI, and then post it, even though you know that readers do not want to read AI written fics, WHY do you do it anyway? Why do you betray the trust of readers who want to support HUMAN creativity, and post words that did not come from yourself? Why do you lie to your readers about this, and deny any accusations of using AI?

What prompted this? Was it because of the hyperconsumerism of the book community that spilled over into fanfiction during COVID? Was it because of grasping, entitled behavior of readers who were new to the community, who didn't understand how much time, effort, energy and talent went into writing fanfiction? Was it jealousy of seeing the Big Name authors getting so much attention, that you had to try to get some of it for yourself? Were you too worried about your writing skills that you didn't think that you had enough in you to write a fic? Were you intimidated by the long fics that are over 300k words, that seem to be the preferred length for the readers?

If you have been doing this, I beg of you: PLEASE STOP DOING THIS. PLEASE. Learn to write with your own brain. Embrace the imperfections of Human created writing. Learn to authentically write with your own voice. AI will all sound the same, and it is disturbing to read the same feeling fics over, and over, and over again. It hurts our collective mentality and our collective souls, and emotional intelligence. We need as Humans to read the experiences of other people that have lived and gone through the circumstances that drove them to need to write these specific stories. Feeding prompts into artificial intelligence, dumbs down your own ability to convingingly tell a story and convey your emotional imprint into the world. We as readers will not truly experience what you are trying to communicate, because it is being filtered by a preprogrammed algorithm, and that which is uniquely yours is stripped away, and feels lifeless and bland.

Start writing your fics out by hand, on paper. Start with this step, because this will force you to rely completely on yourself. Stay away from Claude. Stay away from every type of AI generator. You can break the cycle. You can be the change in the world that needs to happen. It starts with people all realizing that change begins with themselves.

I am aware that this is me basically screaming into the Void with this post, but I would actually like to have some real answers. Because there are a very large amount of Dramione fics that are new, that are discouragingly, AI generated, and that has been an ongoing problem for the past few years. And it's not just Dramione, it's in pretty much every fandom and every major ship. And there are prominient "authors" who have popular fics that are definitely AI, and are now going to branch out to rare pairs, and will infect those smaller ships with AI generated "stories" and it just makes me so upset as a reader, and an author, and as someone who grew up watching movies like Dune, The Matrix, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, Alien, and every other science fiction story and/or movie that showcased the dangers of artificial intelligence, and to see society embracing the dangers without any qualms.

It is frightening to witness.

You should truly try to understand why people like myself are blowing an alarm on this situation. It really should be something that you take seriously. Humanity should not have to make a stand against this. It should have been glaringly obvious.

written by an author who started as a reader, and made the executive decision to not heavily edit the run on sentences and glaring typos in this post, to make a point.

This post is for every reader that feels like a drabble, one shot, two shot, or any other fic less than 50k is not a "real fic" or "not enough", and feel like they "have" to have a "full length fic".

I just saw a post in a Facebook group, and yet again, the reader comments truly bothered me.

It was a post by an author about a prompt that had been floating around. They shared the prompt, and the link, and the fact that it's a two shot. Awesome and amazing. I absolutely love this for that author.

However! There were some readers who posted comments that I found triggering. Here they are, and I quote:

"Please for the love of everything wonderful in the universe make this a full length fic (3 sobbing emojis) I just saw this like 5 mins ago and rushed to read it and I need more than 2 chapters (2 sweating forehead grinning emojis))"

Another:

"Can this be more than two chapters please?! (hands praying emoji) this needs to be multichapter full blown fic based on that prompt!!!!!!! Please please with cherries and sprinkles on top!!"

And can I just say, that I find this behavior extremely off-putting?

Please allow me to give some context:

I'm friends with another author who is an ESL writer, and she does not use AI. She has an extremely active imagination, and comes up with amazing story concepts, and they flow through her like a burbling spring fed brook. I'm amazed at her range of ideas. She has a Tik Tok account with thousands of followers, and she posts videos that have her drabbles on them. And she has hundreds of short stories on her AO3. She doesn't write long form fics for the most part. She is exclusively a drabble writer. She is constantly begged by her followers for long form fics. She'll post a drabble that tells a story, and is concluded in the single post. And she'll receive so many comments of:

"OMG when will the fic drop!!"

"Tag me when you write the story!!!"

"Please write a full length fic!!"

And the kicker is: She'll start a longfic, and tag the reader, and they don't engage any further in the story. Which discourages her.

Here's where I am bothered. Drabbles ARE real stories. Just because they're not a long fic, doesn't make them less of a compelling story to read. And just because you want to know more about what happens in the world that the short story author created, does not mean that you are entitled to have more from them, then they are willing, or capable, to give.

Speaking as an author who has 6 fics posted, 5 of which are oneshots, and the other being a long fic WIP, I have to tell you this very important thing to remember as a reader:

Writing a story is HARD. And the longer the story is, the harder it is to write effectively and compellingly. Especially if you are not using generative AI. Some writers are quicker than others, but trust me, if you've never attempted to write a long, multichapter fic, it is much harder than you realize.

I wrote a Romione for the Non Con Ron fest, and it was less than 4k words, and that took me a couple of weeks to write. I wrote a sci-fi Tomione for another fest, which was 12k, and that took me 2 months. I wrote another fic as a birthday gift, which was 10k, and that took me 3 weeks. And I wrote a 3k fic as a gift for another author which was a "What If" AU for a chapter in her story, and that took me another 2-3 weeks. The point being, it takes time to write a story. It doesn't automatically come quickly and easily. Demanding longfics from authors, and demanding updates quickly, is entitled and grasping behavior.

Drabbles ARE real stories. They're a lovely art form in the creative writing catalogue, and they have just as much of a right to exist exactly as they want to be written by the author, as any other fic that you deem as "long enough" to meet your (speaking to the entitled readers here) hyper consumption standards.

The demand for longer and longer stories, causes more authors to feel the pressure to use AI. If you are a reader who feels entitled to longfics, and tries to beg and plead for a longfic from an author who only had it in their hearts to write a shorter fic, because that was what their Muse was telling them to write, you contribute to imposter syndrome in authors, and contribute to the rise of the use of AI. If you are also a reader who doesn't want to read AI, please come to terms with the fact that you are contributing to the problem that you claim to not want.

Please come to terms with the stories as they are written. Please learn to accept not knowing all of the answers to your questions. If you wish to know a little more for the aftermath of a story, politely asking for an epilogue is sometimes received well by some authors, but please don't be grasping when you do so. Just because you have become accustomed to 100-500k stories in the fandom doesn't mean that all fics have to be that length. And for the short stories, it also doesn't negate the validity of their right to be read and loved.

Before I end this more lengthy than normal post for me in this sub, I wish to reiterate again: If you keep demanding longer and longer stories from fanfic authors, you WILL contribute to more AI being used to write them. Because of how some people will only want to see the higher numbers, and automatically assume that this means that the story is better. More is not always more. Sometimes more equates less than. And: Sometimes less is more.

As an exercise in learning to appreciate the shorter fics that are posted, I highly recommend that you seek out one-shots. And maybe even read just one-shots for your next 10 fics. Its merely a suggestion, but I feel like it's a good way to reconnect with shorter stories, and to learn more appreciation for the world an author is able to build in a smaller set of words.

Fanfiction is a community. Please learn how to be respectful of all members of the community.