Since that last line makes it clear you appreciated my recommendation so much that you're desperate to hear another one from me, I'll put forward The Lonely Lioness, an amusing Cersei Lannister quest on sufficient velocity where the thread makes every important decision with the wit and wisdom of a metagaming cucumber, and the QM is actually willing to make them face the consequences for it. It's also complete.
I too am weirdly fascinated by AI writing-- every so often I see a scandal float by where someone discovers "this self published romance author LITERALLY was too lazy to remove the chatGPT 'certainly, i can write that scene for you' header" and it makes me wonder just how much is getting out into the world where the author is not stupid enough to leave that in lol.
For self published amazon stuff where it is 'release a new novel every 3 months or fall off the automated rec system', i have to imagine there is a lot of it getting through. High pressure + financial incentives + readers not known for having particularly picky taste in prose would definitely make it fertile ground. At least us web fiction authors are publishing voluminous amounts of garbage out of sheer unpaid love of the game, rather than making any money.
I have played around with chatGPT to see how well it "understands" fiction-- it's actually shockingly decent with medium length (<100k words) text these days. It has some minor utility as a "rubber duck debugger" writing tool + the fake out social engagement of typing your thoughts to "someone" who will respond which i will admit can really help with motivation to keep going sometimes , but I keep having to yell at it to stop suggesting specific lines to me because its prose is unbearably bad lmfao
as far as recs, a genuine "this is imo really good" plug for The Stone Gryphon Chronicle ( https://archiveofourown.org/series/15017 ). It is a rare example of Chronicles of Narnia fic that has something to say. The good parts of it are a WW2 spy story [the bad parts of it are religious philosophy; it's a CoN fic though so par for the course ]. Caveat that it is unfinished, and although it updates randomly into the present day, it will likely never be finished in a satisfying way, as the author wants to write random short stories instead of a larger plot. Part 2 (Queen Susan in Taashban) is the best segment by far-- it's the most tightly woven/satisfying plot-- and it's a bit downhill from there. But that part is astoundingly good imo. I know this is coming off as a bit of a mealymouthed rec, but I'm trying to expectations set lmfao-- if I don't do that, I end up saying "this is the best fic i've ever read" (true) in a way that disguises the true nature of the thing haha. I read it years ago and it was a massive inspiration to me.
Anyway, thanks for the reviews as always! See you next month!
Yeah, it's improving very rapidly afaict-- I feel like this time last year, it was nowhere near as good at keeping longform texts straight, let alone offering fairly coherent commentary on story themes/symbolism/etc, which it's now honestly not terrible at* these days. It definitely doesn't feel like we've hit a point of diminishing returns with improvements yet, though I'm not an industry insider, so who knows. It's all so fascinating to me-- I feel like most of the other writers I know are freaking out angry/scared about it, but I just kinda want to poke it with a stick and see what it is capable of haha.
*"maybe this means your themes etc are too surface level so it's easy for the robot to state them" shhhhhhhhhhh
“Or the original PGTE really is that bad. Probably the latter.”
I’ll bite, I guess… here to shill PGTE.
Would put it a notch or two below Worm or Worth the Candle on how big/memorable the highs are, but otherwise I think it’s in the same league (and length) — writing is sharp and consistent (more so than Worm), pacing is good and compulsively readable (some arcs are slower than others and the violence occasionally feels a tad repetitive, but it never really falls apart or loses its stakes), characters are fun to spend time with, good balance of humor / action / world-building / strategy and head games. It’s a serious work by a serious author, not web trash.
I did just binge the first few chapters of the comic, and I’m impressed… it’s a real adaptation, not just some pictures slapped onto the story, and it captures some of the feel and pacing of the original while taking advantage of the medium. But now it wants me to download the app, so… ehh maybe
Hey now, the currently running live action Percy Jackson show is great both as a series and as an adaptation. Where it departs from the source material it's fixing plot holes or early installment weirdness to be more consistent with the tone of the later books.
Since that last line makes it clear you appreciated my recommendation so much that you're desperate to hear another one from me, I'll put forward The Lonely Lioness, an amusing Cersei Lannister quest on sufficient velocity where the thread makes every important decision with the wit and wisdom of a metagaming cucumber, and the QM is actually willing to make them face the consequences for it. It's also complete.
I too am weirdly fascinated by AI writing-- every so often I see a scandal float by where someone discovers "this self published romance author LITERALLY was too lazy to remove the chatGPT 'certainly, i can write that scene for you' header" and it makes me wonder just how much is getting out into the world where the author is not stupid enough to leave that in lol.
For self published amazon stuff where it is 'release a new novel every 3 months or fall off the automated rec system', i have to imagine there is a lot of it getting through. High pressure + financial incentives + readers not known for having particularly picky taste in prose would definitely make it fertile ground. At least us web fiction authors are publishing voluminous amounts of garbage out of sheer unpaid love of the game, rather than making any money.
I have played around with chatGPT to see how well it "understands" fiction-- it's actually shockingly decent with medium length (<100k words) text these days. It has some minor utility as a "rubber duck debugger" writing tool + the fake out social engagement of typing your thoughts to "someone" who will respond which i will admit can really help with motivation to keep going sometimes , but I keep having to yell at it to stop suggesting specific lines to me because its prose is unbearably bad lmfao
as far as recs, a genuine "this is imo really good" plug for The Stone Gryphon Chronicle ( https://archiveofourown.org/series/15017 ). It is a rare example of Chronicles of Narnia fic that has something to say. The good parts of it are a WW2 spy story [the bad parts of it are religious philosophy; it's a CoN fic though so par for the course ]. Caveat that it is unfinished, and although it updates randomly into the present day, it will likely never be finished in a satisfying way, as the author wants to write random short stories instead of a larger plot. Part 2 (Queen Susan in Taashban) is the best segment by far-- it's the most tightly woven/satisfying plot-- and it's a bit downhill from there. But that part is astoundingly good imo. I know this is coming off as a bit of a mealymouthed rec, but I'm trying to expectations set lmfao-- if I don't do that, I end up saying "this is the best fic i've ever read" (true) in a way that disguises the true nature of the thing haha. I read it years ago and it was a massive inspiration to me.
Anyway, thanks for the reviews as always! See you next month!
“prose is unbearably bad lmfao”
Agreed. For some reason the AI likes putting commas everywhere.
It’s good at error checking things that google docs misses, like periods, capitalization, or misspelling Character names
It’s interesting how fast it has developed…
Yeah, it's improving very rapidly afaict-- I feel like this time last year, it was nowhere near as good at keeping longform texts straight, let alone offering fairly coherent commentary on story themes/symbolism/etc, which it's now honestly not terrible at* these days. It definitely doesn't feel like we've hit a point of diminishing returns with improvements yet, though I'm not an industry insider, so who knows. It's all so fascinating to me-- I feel like most of the other writers I know are freaking out angry/scared about it, but I just kinda want to poke it with a stick and see what it is capable of haha.
*"maybe this means your themes etc are too surface level so it's easy for the robot to state them" shhhhhhhhhhh
“Or the original PGTE really is that bad. Probably the latter.”
I’ll bite, I guess… here to shill PGTE.
Would put it a notch or two below Worm or Worth the Candle on how big/memorable the highs are, but otherwise I think it’s in the same league (and length) — writing is sharp and consistent (more so than Worm), pacing is good and compulsively readable (some arcs are slower than others and the violence occasionally feels a tad repetitive, but it never really falls apart or loses its stakes), characters are fun to spend time with, good balance of humor / action / world-building / strategy and head games. It’s a serious work by a serious author, not web trash.
I did just binge the first few chapters of the comic, and I’m impressed… it’s a real adaptation, not just some pictures slapped onto the story, and it captures some of the feel and pacing of the original while taking advantage of the medium. But now it wants me to download the app, so… ehh maybe
Well, thank you once again for fic recs that I should read and should avoid, I’ll be reading Burnt locus.
Thanks for the tumblr AI blog as well that was interesting to read.
For recs… uh I have undertale but I did that last time.
It’s fun reading this once a month and poking my head out of the lil slice of internet I stay in.
Hey now, the currently running live action Percy Jackson show is great both as a series and as an adaptation. Where it departs from the source material it's fixing plot holes or early installment weirdness to be more consistent with the tone of the later books.
I had mostly seen complaints about the casting, honestly, but I'll trust you over my fourth hand knowledge and add it to a footnote.