Thanks… for the passive-aggressive praise? I suppose a 4/5 is generous, considering you suspect the story might be AI. Though calling something “clumsy” and “suspicious,” then following it up with “I’m subscribed and eagerly reading every update!” feels a bit like calling a meal undercooked and then going back for seconds. (That was a simile, with metaphorical framing and a pinch of analogy. Just in case you’re still tallying rhetorical devices.)

I have no intention of “getting on your case.” I promise you, it’s not that interesting. I’m not here for stars or scores. I’m here for honest feedback on where I can improve, and to share something I care about. If it resonates with people, I’m grateful. If it doesn’t, that’s all right too.

That said, allow me a few small corrections to your recent post:

Punctuation and Other Dark Arts: Who knew Voldemort was hiding in my hyphens? Apparently we don’t use dashes in writing anymore? I’ll admit, I only knew them as “the long ones” and “the short ones” until I saw your comment. Out of curiosity, I looked it up.

Here’s the twist: MS Word doesn’t insert em dashes automatically. What you’re seeing are en dashes, the kind Word creates when you type a hyphen, hit space, then write another word, and hit space again. It’s formatting, and Microsoft being Microsoft. Not AI sorcery.

So if you’re going to nitpick punctuation… maybe pick the right dash?

The Author’s Note in Chapter 22 – “hilariously unhinged": Honestly? Totally fair. It was long. Dramatic. Veering into melodrama. But it wasn’t a defence. It was transparency. If someone’s about to commit hours to a story, they deserve to know that certain pockets of the internet believe it’s AI. That wasn’t a rant. It was a courtesy.

And as for the claim that I compared my writing to the Declaration of Independence…
You might want to reread that part. Slowly this time.

I wasn’t drawing parallels. Not in tone, not in purpose, not in historical significance (used a tricolon, by the way. Couldn’t resist).

I was explaining how tricolons work. That line from the Declaration is simply the best-known example. If that somehow turned into “he thinks he’s Thomas Jefferson,” then maybe someone skimmed a little too fast… or just arrived with their verdict already packed and ready to deliver.

For those curious, the Author’s Note is here, at the beginning of this chapter:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/69305201/chapters/182860951
Feel free to read and decide for yourself whether any comparisons were made.


So yes. I use tricolons, strong rhythm, and occasionally absurd metaphors. You can call it “AI vibes” if you want. But if cadence and craft are your only diagnostics… maybe the issue isn’t the writing.
Anyway, glad you’re still reading.


Edit: Just discovered a neat trick. Probably old news to many of you, but I’m overjoyed nonetheless.
Alt + 0151 gives you an em dash, and Alt + 0150 gives you an en dash. So if you’re using Ctrl + F to search for them, now you know exactly which is which.

It saves me a ton of time. No more waiting for Word to magically stretch my hyphen into something longer. I can finally summon the right dash straight from the keyboard like a proper wizard.
Thanks for pointing me towards this tiny but oddly satisfying bit of research.

 

Don't call these people authors, IMO.

 

In this particular case, I'll concede to you. When someone is using AI that shamelessly and brazenly, they don't deserve the title.

That said, I still on the whole maintain my stance of innocent until proven guilty and that vibes are not a sufficient qualifier for if a work is AI. And that if AI accusations are allowed to flow freely based solely on feelings or things people might find a little weird, the entire fanfiction community is going to become an ouroboros where all that's left is the old guard who established themselves before AI and mounds of actual AI generated stories because the people who post it aren't personally attached to the works, so accusations slide right off them.

 

To be fair, I had a manic episode a few years ago and cranked out a 130,000 word fic in a little over a month, all whilst holding down a full-time job.

 

I first want to say I like it. I understand that you're focusing on the characters. Sadly I currently don't have the time to go into more depth what parts I like and don't like from this perspective.

But something that irritates me to no end is that Remus, McGonnagol, and Dumbledore doesn't question the argument

- the Potter's address written on the slip of parchment is in Peter's style
- therefore it's Peter who wrote the slip.

Not one of them question this argument. No one ask the question "wouldn't Sirius be able, having practically grown up with Peter, write a short message using Peter's handwriting". Or (something similar to LLMs), have a spell that fullfills the query

If you have the Fidelus charm, I can't imagine you wouldn't be able to have that type of spell.

That slip of parchment is currently a deus ex machina.

Lastly, I want to reiterate again that I'm enjoying reading the story, even if it's a bit slow at times.

 

You know, I was bitching about this Fic being AI, but I really do miss the rapid updates.

 

I don't think the fic is AI-generated (in full, anyway) because I've driven myself crazy using LLM models to write guilty-pleasure ideas for my own reading, and have become very familiar with them. This fic's writing is better than any model I've used. If they used AI, they did a lot of editing and wrote a lot of the dialogue themselves.

...But the author's responses here 100% sound like shit ChatGPT would write.

The "You're absolutely right," the constant ellipses, the ENDLESS 'It's not that, it's this' type sentences.

This is a glaring example:

Every bolded part is exactly the way AI talks. If the author isn't generating their writing here, they certainly use AI elsewhere and are adopting the style.

More examples:

The short sentences, the slightly quirky ending clauses, the ellipses.

I mean, this "That's not [this]. It's [this]" structure is all over your writing.

Definitely the type of adjectives I see AIs use often.

 

It's funny, because there's this story where AI usage is completely hypothetical, and we're coming up on the second page of speculation. Then you have @Skeletaure writing his fic that is, explicitly noted, with AI, and nobody cares because of how good it is. It's hilarious.

I don't give a single, solitary shit. If the fic is good, then good. If your shit sucks, then AI won't be able to help it.

 

I don't think you're right about that at all to be honest, there are plenty of people who completely turn off of a fic or any other piece of media for that matter if they suspect or realise that it was created with AI. The responses to the changes to Victoria Potter weren't wholly positive either. It's definitely more ethical to disclose that you're using it like Taure did, but I'd personally never knowingly start reading a fic that was made with heavy AI use, and I think that using it to finish an ongoing story has a noticeable effect on quality. Editing something with an LLM is fine I guess, but creating a first draft with it or letting it do much of the writing process is a step too far for me. If this view is in the minority, I suspect that it's a substantial minority.

 

Brother, I spent the last two days reading/grading Grade 10 term papers and the amount of AI dreck I had to subject myself to makes me just weep.

I read fan fiction to escape all that, not read more of it.

 

You're right in the part where actually expressing the usage of AI is good and hiding it is shitty. Hiding your usage of it is some chickenshit... well... shit. Any author or artist or anything else should acknowledge it. I 100% agree. You're right, and that's something I didn't really recognize in my OP.

I do, however, also maintain my last sentence of the last post. I have no research here, no sample sizes, but I do believe that if a story is good, and has AI, it will unlikely be accused. If a story is bad, well...

If any of you all have some evidence, let me have it. Also no em-dashes or en-dashes here lads, so please spare me. Heh. Unless that is some AI evidence. It really is just a shit joke about AI lol

All that being said: man, I really don't care. Like at all. Humans or computers, give me good stuff to read. But also. Computers have some pretty goddamn serious work to do

 

I think that we are unfortunately entering a new era of writing where any new author who produces high quality works without an established record will be under suspicion of using AI.

This is true in academia, actual publishing, journalism and in fanfiction. I think that this is absolutely horrible, because in 'elevating' some authors, it drags everyone else down. I don't think that there's an easy solution to bridge this new credibility gap.

Maybe AI disclaimers will have to become the norm on all fics in the future, in the way that the copyright disclaimers used to be so common. If authors disclose to what extent if any they used AI at the beginning of a story, readers can make an informed decision. Many will press the back button, but as you said above, I'm sure that there is an audience for AI produced fics.

You can run documents through AI detectors, but I have no idea how reliable that is. Ultimately we're going to have to take people at their word though, as even an integrated AI checking tool in AO3 or FFN wouldn't stop speculation and would probably be cost prohibitively expensive.

I wasn't weighing in above on this specific fic, as I tried to read it a while ago and stopped as it just wasn't for me, AI use or no AI use. I just wanted to respond to what you said, as this review thread seems to have become the general AI use in fanfic discussion.

 

A huge part of the problem is that many readers don't have the intellectual capability (especially on lower brow sites like FFN, AO3 or QQ) to understand that AI-assisted != AI-generated. And that even with the former, there are shades.

Admitting there was any AI involved at all, in any way, shape or form, is indistinguishable to those people as saying you let ChatGPT write the entire thing and copy-pasted it with no further questions.

So even when authors use it sparingly (I use it as a first draft beta for review and touch up before a draft goes to my human beta, for example), there's kind of a need to pretend that we don't until the technology is mainstream enough that even casuals understand more of the nuance.