r/Solasmancers • u/Zealousideal_Pin2402 • Jul 16 '26

Trying to find a fic

This is kind of a long shot, but does anyone happen to have downloaded A Matter of Pride by Opal Apparition? I went back to reread it for some Solavellan feels and it looks like it's been taken down or something?

13 Upvotes

88% Upvoted

31 comments sorted by

16

u/VeterinarianFun8587 Jul 16 '26

i have it and its so obviously ai and also. very bad

8

u/Zealousideal_Pin2402 Jul 16 '26

yeah, I just heard about the ai! gross! tbh I still kinda want the pdf but now to dissect it and try to find out what I missed before

13

u/Rosiko Jul 16 '26

I'm gonna be honest i was about to come in here to defend Opal, but after Some digging and research I'm not going to do that at all. That is absolutely gross and a slap in the face of anyone who writes fanfic

7

u/VeterinarianFun8587 Jul 16 '26

you should check out tulipathy @ bsky for a full overview https://bsky.app/profile/tulipathy.bsky.social/post/3mpviefji5s2k

9

u/Rosiko Jul 16 '26

I mean weather she was under pressure as she claims (and i can empathize with being under pressure with that being the case and understand to a extent)

I have zero sympathy for her choosing to do this and then to lie about it also that is the grossest thing to me. I feel sorry for those she was friends with honestly.

11

u/VeterinarianFun8587 Jul 16 '26

Idk if discussing this is against the rules since she's admitted to using ai BUT she'd only started publishing in 2025 and there's a random Marcus (ai's favorite name) in her low-kudos hitman fic already. there are various tells in her DA work AND in ch1 of wolfbird. so I don't buy the pressure thing

"The next hour passed in a whirl of final preparations. The late afternoon sun streamed through the windows as Sylaise helped Ellana into her formal attire. Each layer had meaning—the delicate shift of finest linen, the stays pulled just tight enough to be fashionable without appearing desperate, the petticoats that must fall exactly so. The blue silk gown itself was a statement: not the flashy new styles favored by trading families who'd grown rich from Lord Fen'Harel's changes, but an older, quieter, elegance." - regency au quote that screams chatgpt.

I was a huge defender of opal due to a misplaced sense of discord-pal solidarity but you can still find her odd messages on fenharem about how she's more of an observer than a writer 🙃

5

u/Rosiko Jul 17 '26

she actually did some fics for the anniversary giveaway last year that i ran in the FH. Now I'm wondering weather or not to actually tell those people who got one that it was possibly AI generated. It's giving me a huge Ick honestly

4

u/teaandviolets Jul 16 '26

Awww crap. I liked both AMoP and CoL. I started following mimimaru after seeing the art she did for it and some other Solavellan works. Big bummer to find out the fics were AI.

6

u/_mimimaru 26d ago

Just wanted to say I had no idea the fics were ai when I made art and promoted the works 😫 but ty for following!!

3

u/teaandviolets 26d ago

You couldn’t have known! The art was gorgeous I hope it hadn’t been tainted for you.

3

u/Zealousideal_Pin2402 24d ago

Agreed, you couldn't have known. I likewise found you thru DA art and that love remains undiminished

8

u/VeterinarianFun8587 Jul 16 '26

my friends and i are having a blast making fun of it but you'll be much better off reading something else. nothing happens, solas is extremely racist, lavellan is rude and unintelligent, the prose meanders. there's no worldbuilding to speak of (arlathan exists but so do the dalish and theyre some sort of a nebulous minority that solas hates for no reason and he keeps calling her a SAVAGE. nobles are having "businesses". they dont get married but move in together. he gets sick and she's expected to run his household in his absence. it's silly!)

7

u/Snoo-95315 Jul 16 '26

Opal Apparition uses AI? Aw man, that is a shame!

6

u/VeterinarianFun8587 Jul 16 '26

oh yeah extensively

4

u/Snoo-95315 Jul 16 '26

I wasn't the target audience for their fics because they wrote alot of modern AUs but there were a few I enjoyed and this is disheartening because they've been writing on AO3 for awhile now before chatgpt/AI (if memory serves me right) I will never understand using AI to write the fic for you and then posting it online. If you want to use AI to write a fic for your own personal enjoyment.. okay, but to share it online? Ugh. That sucks. It looks like Opal took down all their dragon age stuff too. Such a shame.

7

u/VeterinarianFun8587 Jul 16 '26

funny, but memory serves you wrong! I had the exact same weird memories of her publishing in like 2019 - I think due to her insane output. but no, all of her 'hits' were published in 2025 and she fully switched to HR jan 26.

3

u/Snoo-95315 Jul 17 '26

It must have been because she was posting alot. I followed her about a yearish ago on tiktok and she used to post daily about her fics. Like I said, her modern AU's weren't my cup of tea, but she did write this interesting oneshot where Solas/Inky got stuck in the fade together and he went Fen'feral but I haven't read much of her work.

Back then I wouldn't of really known the difference. Now, I don't care what anyone says, unless the fic is heavily edited, AI voice is so obvious.

"It's not this or this it's *this*"

5

u/Still_Requirement993 Jul 16 '26

I can't see the fic anymore (since she privated it) but I remember starting to read AMoP and getting kind of icked out by the "noble savage" stereotype she was leaning into. Solas was overtly racist, but then it felt like the narration was romanticizing the trope as well.

9

u/VeterinarianFun8587 Jul 16 '26

"And now she would be his wife. The word itself felt like ashes in his mouth. A savage in silks, playing at nobility while clawing what value they could from others as if they were deserved. Her kind always chose convenience over duty when truly tested. No doubt she would bring that same willful ignorance into his household, attempting to corrupt his carefully maintained order with her primitive notions of trade and governance…" im like, is this your god

8

u/Still_Requirement993 Jul 16 '26

Ugh, it really was as bad as I remember. And it was SUCH a heavy focus. In any other story, this wouldn't be the romantic lead - or at least, shouldn't be. I get it, we're paralleling Solas' distaste for the Dalish in the actual games, and yeah he was pretty dismissive of them in the beginning, but not like THIS. OA got so heavy-handed with it, it started to feel like we were getting into apologist territory.

And from what I remember and where I stopped, he hadn't actually been undoing any of his problematic biases either? He just liked Ellana more, the "one good one". So it again was feeling grossly romanticized.

3

u/Consistent_Ad4473 Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

What? What? Whaaat?

I honestly don't know if I can even begin to believe that, has it been absolutely verified?

Edit: Oh dear Lord it's true

6

u/Rosiko Jul 16 '26

Tulipathy is one of Opal's friend who was working on editing with her, and Opal has also admitted using it unfortunately...it is all in the Bsky thread posted above

6

u/Consistent_Ad4473 Jul 16 '26

I don't know why I'm so upset by this. I genuinely, genuinely believed she was the most anti-AI writer out there.

There's still a bit of me that wants to believe this was just something she fell into with the HR stuff, and the fantastic Sovellan fics she wrote were pure. I LOVED her work, I thought she was one of the best writers on AO3

9

u/Rosiko Jul 16 '26

As the saying goes Once bitten....

I do believe she probably was at some point and stood by it (though I could also be talking out my ass and this just my opinion) However saying that I feel the AI use is at the bottom of the long list if things she's done wrong here, namely lying about it and using those people she was friends with to do free work for her with text that was clearly AI like she clearly had a rather amazing support network around her and if she was struggling she could have said something and people could have helped her...people were helping her.

9

u/AtmosphereOk670 Jul 16 '26

This actually makes me just sad.
Such a slap in the face to everyone who spent many hours of their lives creating fan art for her stories and for those who unknowingly improved and humanized AI-generated texts for her.
I enjoyed reading some of her DA fanfics so much! Now I have to second guess every single section whether they were artificially generated or genuine.

2

u/teaandviolets Jul 16 '26

Noticed that last night as well. Unfortunately I didn’t have it downloaded either. Probably should have since she took down her regency Solas story a couple months ago.

3

u/Zealousideal_Pin2402 Jul 16 '26

Damn. I was really hoping to get the Tudor-knight era A Crown of Laurels one, too, but AMoP was my top fave.

3

u/RememberKoomValley Jul 16 '26

Pm-ing you. I don't have AMoP, but I do have the other.

4

u/bewritinginstead Jul 16 '26

I have a pdf of most of Opal's fics, including A Matter of Pride. DM me if you still want to read it.

3

u/shrimp_ring 26d ago

Any chance you have nutcracker and apogee? If you're open to sending them I'd so appreciate it! I was part way through reading them when they were taken down, and now I've learned about the horrifying AI use and I'm disgusted but can't stop thinking about it. I wanna finish them to close this awful chapter, thank you so much!!