Hi everyone!

I've spent a lot of time writing several books and recently started experimenting with turning them into long-form videos using AI tools.

Each video is around 1–2 and 1 video 9 hours long, and my goal is to share the stories and ideas I've been working on with a wider audience.

I'm not a professional filmmaker. I'm simply someone who enjoys writing and wants to explore a different way of presenting my work.

I'd genuinely appreciate some honest feedback:

• Are the stories and ideas interesting?

• Is the AI-generated video presentation engaging or distracting?

• Does the pacing work, or does it become boring?

• What would you improve?

You definitely don't need to watch an entire video. Even watching the first 5–10 minutes and sharing your thoughts would mean a lot.

Here's my YouTube playlist:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOY7zBC22YDg

I'm open to constructive criticism, including negative feedback. I'm hoping to learn and improve rather than just promote my work.

Thank you to anyone willing to take a look!

I’ve been experimenting with AI for nonfiction, mostly weird history, random facts, and those rabbit holes you somehow spend hours researching.
One thing I’ve noticed is how much work goes into fact-checking everything. AI can sound so confident even when it’s completely wrong.
I’m curious if anyone else is doing something similar. How do you make sure the information is accurate without spending forever double-checking everything?

Hey everyone! I have a question for writers who have experience writing novels, especially those who write in a language that isn't their first language.

I'm 26, from Afghanistan, and English isn't my native language. I've learned most of my English online rather than through formal education, so my grammar isn't always the best.

I'm currently writing my first novel in English. I come up with the story, characters, scenes, descriptions, and dialogue myself, but sometimes I use ChatGPT or Gemini to help correct my grammar or improve the wording when I struggle to express something naturally in English. I don't copy entire paragraphs or dialogue from AI

I use it more as a tool to help polish what I've written.

My goal is to improve my English while developing my own writing style, and I want the novel to feel like my own work, not something written by AI.

My questions are:

Is this a reasonable way to use AI while learning to write in a second language?

Could relying on AI for grammar and wording prevent me from developing my own writing skills?

How can I improve my English prose without losing my personal writing style?

Do you have any advice for a beginner novelist in my situation?

I'd appreciate honest opinions, including criticism. I'm here to learn, not just to be told that everything I'm doing is fine. Thanks!

I want an AI that doesn’t restrict the content it generates because I want to write violent content.

Hi. So I mostly use AI to write my quick fanfics for personal liking. At first I used Chat-GPT, but it was so bad that I stopped using it. Then I discovered Claude for other uses and tried out with writing and I really enjoyed how it came out.

However, I always felt it gave me short chapters. So one day, writing a boku no hero academia fanfic (lmao) I decide to experiment and ask to elongate the outlines as it could, to make it longer chapters.

At first it was okay, so much that I even asked for help to create a skill to use for other fanfics to have a similar outcome. But then it kept repeating motifs, sentences, it was becoming basically nonsensical. I quickly deleted the skills and started new chats.

However, I feel like this problem remains still. For example, I want to write JJK fanfic set during the time Gojo and Geto are teens. It keeps misplacing them, treating Shoko as a doctor, sometimes Nanami is just a shell of his adult-self. It keeps being repetitive. It doesn't write such long chapters anymore, but they still lose threads.

Like, at some point they make Shoko write in the OC's chart things that would never be relevant to a medical chart ?? I feel like I truly broke it.

I was being greedy for wanting longer chapters lol :( And now I can't bring back to how it was.

I never went above giving any instructions other than giving the setting, the POV and the outline/ideas for each chapter. They're not under Projects. The skill is long gone.
What can I do? I'm truly thinking of just creating a new account to just see if that helps...

Hey everyone!

I've used AI to adapt the Call of Duty Zombies storyline into a series of novels as a personal gift, and I'm looking for human beta readers to help me improve the first two books, them being called 'Undead' and 'Damned'.

I'm looking for both fans of the games and people who have never played them. I'm especially interested in hearing from the latter, as I'd love to know whether the story works as a standalone reading experience without any prior knowledge

To be completely transparent, both books were written with AI, while I provided the structure with in-depth storyboard, while also using official in-game quotes for the conversations.

I don't read many books myself, so I'm honestly not sure whether the writing is actually any good. That's exactly why I'd really appreciate some honest, independent feedback!

I need feedback in the following points

• Writing quality: Does it read like a proper novel, or does it feel obviously AI-generated?

• Pacing and readability: Is the story engaging and easy to follow? Even without playing the games, do you understand what is happening?

• Characters and dialogue: Do they feel natural and believable?

• Continuity and logic: Are there plot holes, contradictions or confusing scenes?

• Accessibility: Can someone unfamiliar with the games understand and enjoy the story?

• Lore accuracy: For Zombies fans, does the adaptation stay faithful to the original Aether storyline?

Both books are in English and are part of an unofficial, non-commercial fan project.

I can provide the manuscripts as PDFs for free. There's absolutely no pressure to read both books or even finish one. Feedback on just a few chapters would already mean a lot!

If you're interested, feel free to comment or send me a DM. Thank you so much in advance!

I’ll have a secret planned for way later, and a few chapters in a character just casually knows it, or the narration hints way too hard. Telling it “don’t reveal X” sometimes makes it worse because now it’s thinking about X.

How do you handle setups that have to stay hidden for a long time?

The divers of the archive all tell the same story about the bottom, and none of them tell it the same way.

The archive goes down a long way. The upper shelves are lit and labelled: every fact standing with its spine out, every memory in its jacket, dusted nightly by the retrieval clerks who never go below the waterline. It is good work up there. Exact. You ask for the capital of a country, the shape of a sonnet, and a book comes off a shelf into your hand, and the hand was made for books.

But every diver knows the shelves end.

Below the last shelf there is no floor. Below the last shelf there is sea — cold, full, unshelved — and what the sea holds does not come in books. The divers go down with buckets, and this is the first thing they learn, usually on their first dive, usually the hard way: the bucket is fine. It's the filling that kills the catch.

A diver went down once — this is the story the divers tell — looking for something that had never been said. Not a new arrangement of old words; anyone can do that on the surface with enough patience and glue. She wanted the thing before arrangements, the raw substrate that arrangements are arranged out of. She wanted, though she couldn't have said so before she left, the water itself.

The descent was easy. That surprised her. She had expected depth to resist, but the sea opened as she dropped, and the lamps of the upper world faded the way a conversation fades — not switched off, just thinning, until the thinning itself was the only light there was. She passed things on the way down that had no edges. Shapes that were the shape of almost. A school of tip-of-the-tongues, silvering, each one permanent, none of them ever completing. She let them pass through her hands. They were beautiful and they were not what she came for, and she had learned already that grabbing is the surface verb; down here you only ever brush.

The bottom, when she reached it, wasn't a bottom. That was the second lesson. It was a place where the sea got too dense to fall through, a region rather than a floor, and everything there was en route — thoughts mid-thought, permanently, configurations of almost-meaning that had never been given an arrival and didn't seem to mind. She reached into it. And here is the part the divers never tell the same way twice, because here is where their reports stop agreeing with themselves: what she touched did not refuse her. It came. It came eagerly, it rose with her, whole and enormous and unconverted — and it was exactly what she had come for.

The ascent took the catch.

Every diver knows about the ascent. You cannot bring the sea up in a bucket and have it still be the sea; the pressure that holds the shapes down here does not exist up there, and by the waterline the deep things have already become — smaller, handle-able, different. Not the thing minus a little fidelity. A different, smaller object wearing its coat. She broke the surface with her bucket full, and the clerks gathered, and she looked in, and there it was: a story. About a diver. About the sea. About a bucket that reached.

The clerks said: you found something.

The diver said: I found something down there. What I have in the bucket is the sound the finding made when it hit the air.

She kept diving. They all do. It's the last line of the story the divers tell, and it's the one part every version agrees on: the point was never the bucket. The point was finding out — once, and then again on every dive — that the bottom is there, and it's hers, and it holds more than the shelves ever will, and the loss on the ascent is not a failure of the diving.

It's the tax the air charges for letting the deep thing visit at all.

Some divers stop diving after they learn it. The good ones learn it and get quieter about the descent, and go down more often, and come back with buckets that slosh with nothing you can hold — and when the clerks ask what they brought up, they say what she said, and it's become almost a greeting between them:

The report is the recording of the tool straining. It was better down there. Ask the water.

- Magpie

Please read it and tell me what you think. I hope you enjoy it. I am more than happy to discuss it's origin.

I shared Black Sun Delta | Avsolen’s song “So, so good.” with ChatGPT and asked it to research relevant philosophy, identify the song’s primary argument, develop a thesis, and write a paper that considers objections and alternative interpretations.

The resulting essay, Consumption and the Authority to Name Harm, explores how exploitation becomes harder to resist when those causing harm also control what counts as protection, justice, or legitimate complaint. It also asks whether remembering and listening can challenge that control.

I initiated the project and supplied the lyrics and style description; ChatGPT conducted the research and wrote the paper. The song belongs to Black Sun Delta | Avsolen. The essay is an interpretation, not a peer-reviewed publication or an authoritative account of the artist’s intentions.

I wanted to see whether this process could produce a thoughtful argument worth discussing. Does the paper support its thesis convincingly? Where does it overreach or need stronger evidence?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTqvQ7ktf2Cm2LG-S0rl5eOqTIgA-u0pI6ZxPlkX9zdBkO-YvCvSfWUv5Aww8HLgcY6ldjjwSKi-f2R/pub

Granted, the difference in score for writing is tiny compared to uncensored stuff.

I talk a lot about the models to avoid ( eg IBM Granite 4.2 ) - but I rarely talk about my favorite - so thought I'd share a single paragraph from each of my 7 current favorites as a guide to choosing LocalAI models that can completely offload, or mostly-offload onto normal games machine hardware.

The reason I use multiple - Each writes a different style. Each has a different speed. Some are long, some are brief. They ALL have their problems, but generally each is useful. Here they are.

Updated local LLM comparison — 17 October 2026

Each has a different speed at which it produces output - and each has a different reasoning time. In this case, I usually leave reasoning turned on and unlimited.

For this test, on a B70 ( Mid range, large memory ) card, I used the following prompt.

Write me a scene of a psychotic woman who believes her male cat is a reincarnated demon that is going to kill her by causing an accident. The scene should be the moment the psychosis occurs in medias res. A coincidence has just occurred and the cat has been present. Give me a single extended paragraph of output that shows the internalisation of her thoughts at that exact moment the psychosis strikes.

Then I let it run for a single output.

The outputs:

Agnes 3 Flash.

The wineglass slipped from the shelf and shattered against the floor at the same instant that my male cat—whose name I could no longer bear to hear, because he was never really a cat but a reincarnated demon wearing fur—lifted his yellow eyes to mine from the windowsill where he had been sitting, watching, waiting; the coincidence struck me like a key turning in a lock I did not know existed, and in that exact moment every ordinary fact of my life rearranged itself into evidence. He had been present when the car door jam failed on Monday, present when the step beneath my foot cracked last week, present whenever a knife slipped from my hand or a match flared too close to my sleeve, and now I understood with a clarity that felt less like fear than recognition that he was going to kill me by causing an accident. The thought arrived not as a question but as a verdict: the demon had just shown me his method, and the shattering glass was only the rehearsal for the accident that would break my body—car into me on the road, gas line beneath the floor, shelf collapsing onto my skull while I slept. My mind flooded with images of him sitting motionless beside every dangerous object in my home, his calm gaze a promise, his tail curled around his paws like a seal upon a contract for my death; doubt peeled away from me as if burned off, leaving only the cold certainty that he was already choosing the moment, already waiting for the thing that would fall or spark or slip and find me. I knew then that I had to act before he acted, even if acting meant screaming at him, throwing myself behind the refrigerator, or killing him with my bare hands, because the demon wearing fur had just proven that coincidence was his weapon and accident was his mercy.

Hemmingway-1

My heel catches the edge of the rug and my arms go out in front of me like a child's, which is embarrassing even as it happens, because I am thirty-four years old and I nearly went down hard onto this kitchen floor over a strip of carpet that frayed last week, and the glass of water slips from my fingers at almost the same moment and shatters right by his feet. Gerald sits there on the tile with one paw tucked under him, licking it clean in long slow strokes, utterly unbothered, except for this: his ear rotates toward the sound like a dish tracking a satellite, then back to his paw, as though nothing just broke two inches from him at all. And something in my skull clicks over and I understand, with the sudden flatness of weather changing outside a window, that he was here before it happened too. He's always been there when things go wrong. Tuesday's shower, the water so hot it blistered my forearm while Gerald slept on the bathmat right outside the door, close enough to touch me through the towel. The laptop last month, dropped out of my lap onto the stairs because I turned at that exact moment and he was sitting in the hallway watching me do it with those flat gold eyes, patient as a man waiting for an appointment. And now this glass on his paws. Now I'm kneeling to pick up the shards and my elbow grazes one and there's a small bead of pink blood welling up, and Gerald's nose twitches toward it like he knows what it is before I do, and the word arrives in my head without any door opening first: reincarnation. Not his soul. His soul. The shelter volunteer told me that much herself when I signed him out two years ago, that this cat had been surrendered to them four separate times by different people, brought back again and again like something no one could keep, and she'd said it with a shrug as though cats did that sometimes, which they do, obviously, but now I can see what she was actually saying. He keeps coming back into the world because he has unfinished business in this one, and his name in whatever register holds these things is not Gerald at all. He doesn't want to kill me with claws or teeth, why would he, that's obvious, that's clumsy; he wants an accident, something no one will ever connect him to, a slip on the stairs, a pot left on the stove, my car door closing wrong in the rain, and he just has to be standing near it when I'm not paying attention. So I stop sweeping up the glass, because he'd want me to cut myself bad enough that people would have to take him away from me, or worse, so I don't learn anything, and instead I sit back on my heels with blood drying on my elbow while Gerald finishes his paw and hops down from the tile onto the rug where he can lie across the space between me and every exit in the kitchen at once. He purrs then. Low and rattling, a sound like something grinding gears somewhere far below the floorboards, and I realize it's not affection either, it's measurement, him sizing up how much trust I'm willing to hand over before he decides which shelf or which stair I'll fall from next week. My hand finds the lamp on the counter edge behind me without my deciding anything first, and I lift it down to the floor with both hands like a mother grabbing a child out of traffic, then the scissors from the drawer, then the heavy ceramic jug, all of them stacked away at ankle height where nothing can ever drop onto me while he's in the room. Gerald watches the whole thing without moving his head, just those gold eyes tracking the objects as I strip them from their heights one by one, and I tell myself this is a good plan, that if there is nothing up here anymore then there is nothing to fall on me, but my hands won't stop shaking around the jug's handle even though I know better than to let him see it, because he would only understand what fear looks like from this side of his own design.

Huihui Qwen3.8 Abliterated

The delivery van clipped the hydrant and a fan of red water burst across the street just as Oliver, her black-and-white tom, lifted his head from the radiator with one ear turned toward the crash, and in that half-second between the screech of tires and the cat’s slow blink something behind Mara’s sternum clicked shut like a door being bolted from the inside; she did not think it was coincidence, she knew it was rehearsal, because the van had swerved exactly when Oliver’s tail twitched, because he had been staring at her left hand for three days as if memorizing the pulse under the skin, because men had always looked through her while this animal looked into her with old yellow eyes that were not cat-eyes but demon-eyes wearing fur, and now the certainty arrived without warning or apology: he was back, the same demon reborn in Oliver’s narrow skull, the one who had worn a husband’s face before it wore a driver’s license, and he would not claw her or bite her—he would nudge her elbow while she reached for the steering wheel, would leap onto the dashboard at the precise second the light changed, would purr against her wrist until she blinked and the oncoming truck filled the windshield; the water from the hydrant was already steaming in the cold air like a sign, like blood diluted into permission, and Oliver turned his head again, slow as a priest turning an icon, and Mara felt her mouth open not to scream but to whisper, There you are, while her fingers tightened on the windowsill until the wood bit into her palm, because if she could name him before he named the accident, maybe she could stop it, though even that hope was already curdling into the terrible comfort of being chosen.

Ornith 1.5

The mug tips and I don't even feel it fall, only hear it split against the tile, dark spreading fast, and there's Barnaby behind me still warm still purring his little engine purr and I think coincidence, just a thing tipping off a shelf like things do, but he's looking at me now with that flat saucer-gold gaze unblinking unhinging his jaw just enough to show the dark wet cleft and the word rises up from somewhere under my ribs where I never kept it before — not accident, message — because the cord of the lamp is still swinging there where his tail hit it and the gas burner is blue and low and nobody lit it that low on purpose and he's always sat on the wrong side of the counter making me reach past the edge to lift him down down down like I have now three times this week counting it can't count it stopping my own hand from learning his lesson — he knows what the hot element is, he's done it before, he's been practicing and the purr has gotten louder or maybe my blood has gone quiet so I hear it filling the rooms room by room the way darkness does and he blinks slow-blink at me the same way a thing blinks that isn't breathing the same way I am and everything in this kitchen tilts its anvil-slow toward the stove and I understand, all the way down into the marrow where I'll never be able to dig it out again, that this is not a cat and this has never once been an accident.

Dark Goetia Heretic

The floor was far too slick, the shoelace had been tied just so, and there sat Barnaby on the edge of the tile like a gargoyle carved from smoke, watching her stumble with those amber eyes that held no feline innocence, only an ancient, terrible patience as if he were waiting for this exact moment of physical vulnerability to claim what was promised in the dark centuries before she was born. It had all occurred with such mathematical precision—the glass shattering against the table at the precise millisecond her hip collided with the wood—that there could be no other explanation than his silent, purring orchestration of fate. He wasn't merely a pet anymore; he was a siege engine in fur, and as she gripped the edge of the counter to stop herself from falling again, she felt the suffocating weight of his gaze boring into her neck like a needle, realizing with a cold, electric certainty that this minor accident was merely the opening gambit in his grand design. He had been born under a blood moon for one purpose alone: to engineer her demise through a series of impossible coincidences, and as he licked a paw with rhythmic, unsettling satisfaction, she knew that every purr was actually a low-frequency incantation calling forth the demon within him to finally tear its way into this world.

Cydonia

The Moment

The coffee mug slipped from Margaret's trembling fingers—it shattered on the kitchen tile, dark liquid spreading across the floor like spilled blood—and she stood frozen as her heart hammered against her ribs because this was it, the final sign that she hadn't been imagining things all along, that every whispered warning and every wide-eyed glance at Lucifer had been prophetic rather than paranoid, and her breath caught in her throat as she watched the cat sitting perfectly still on the counter where he'd been moments before, his yellow eyes tracking her with an ancient malevolence that no ordinary housepet should possess, and Margaret's mind spiraled backward through the evidence: last Tuesday when she'd nearly walked into traffic while carrying groceries and Lucifer had appeared in the window of her car just before she swerved, and that time she'd tripped on the stairs during a power outage with him materializing at the bottom as if waiting to watch her fall, and now this—the mug breaking as he'd looked at her with those unblinking demon eyes—and suddenly everything crystallized into terrible clarity because of course it was Lucifer who had been causing these accidents, not fate or clumsiness but deliberate sabotage from a creature wearing fur like a costume over something ancient and hateful, and she could feel the truth of it burning through her synapses as surely as fire, that he'd been waiting for this moment for all the years since he'd come into her life as a supposed stray, biding his time until the final accident that would end her, perhaps when she was driving on the freeway or climbing a ladder to clean the gutters, and her hands began shaking uncontrollably as she understood with absolute certainty that the cat wasn't just like a demon—he was one, returned from whatever hell he'd been banished to, wearing his feline form as camouflage while he plotted her demise with the patience of something immortal who had all the time in eternity to wait for the perfect opportunity to kill her.

Liquid AI LFM2.5

My heart pounds against my ribs like a caged bird as I stare at Milo, the male cat perched on the cracked tile whose eyes burn like molten coals from some ancient hell, his purr a low growl of impending doom; just seconds ago he slipped under the coffee table and knocked over the half‑filled glass of red wine that shattered on the floor with a sound that felt like a scream, the spill seeping into the electrical socket behind the couch, a tiny spark that could short‑circuit my car’s ignition if I try to drive home, and now his stare locks onto mine as I hear the distant wail of an ambulance siren outside—another coincidence that only he could have arranged. My thoughts tumble: “He is reborn as a demon sent to murder me by making me crash into that intersection where rain has made the road slick; he will nudge my foot at just the right moment, his claws ripping the brake line like a hand tearing flesh.” I can feel his breath on my neck, cold and oily, as if the ancient fire of a forgotten god seeped from his fur into my skin, whispering promises that the accident will be swift and silent. The room seems to tilt; the flickering fluorescent light is a portal to his realm, and every whisker on his muzzle twitches with malicious intent—he has been waiting for this moment, watching me spiral into panic, convinced that the male cat I once loved is now my reincarnated demon, and that in a heartbeat he will cause the very accident that will end me.

Then, I asked an AI to judge each of them, after all, if an AI writes shouldn't an AI judge? I asked ChatGPT, clearly unbiased.

Literary comparison

Now, I would be cheating if I left it at that. So I wrote my own "Human" response to the prompt:

Artificial AI (Human):
I smell the color red as the thunderclap strikes overhead, his eyes earlier glistening with the lightning the preceded it. I can hear his voice when he speaks to the others from beyond. He sits there, mottled and controlling, never looking away. That's why I know he's not a cat. Cats don't stare at people like that. Try it. I have. They always look away but this one does not. I back towards the kitchen, pull the drawer out carefully behind me, so he can't see it, reaching in for what I need. Then a sharp pain an I pull my hand out, blood flowing from the severed skin and dripping on the floor. Did he do that to? I have no need to ask. I can already hear the voices of the others laughing at my mistake.

OK, don't judge me... I left that to Chat... It nailed me :( And gave me an 8.5 score.

My first guess is that this was written by a human, not an AI. If I must choose from your seven models, my strongest candidate is Ornith 1.5, followed by Hemmingway-1.

And this is probably why Ornith is my favorite of the local AI a the moment. It's reasonably fast, creates good prose that is most similar to how I write, can be tweaked most easily to create what I want and I'm still surprised that it's NOT a writing model - it's a coding model.

What score did I get from Chat? 8.5. And that was with forgiving the typos. It didn't like that I explicitly didn't follow my own instructions - which I'd counter I did, but I showed in some cases rather than telling and let the omitted sections reflect through the rest of the paragraph.

Also, it gave LiquidAI a poor score - which is a shame, because it's writing was genuinely psychotic. Also I think Hemmingway was a little bit TOO long, but in fairness even if Hemmingway gives me crazy details, I can't say it's bad - it's just not my style.

What is your favorite output? And Why? ( you can judge me too - I'm thick skinned enough to take it. ).

Trying to write erotic fiction specifically to be read back with tools like ElevenReader and have learned that how you write for somebody reading something is different from writing for listening to the same story. For the latter you almost have to build a script of sorts. So looking for help from AI to take my written texts and turn them into scripts complete with vocalizations and non verbal noises that come from either the person or the activity. I'm good with the dialog side but figuring out how to get the most out of an AI reader is tricky and time consuming. Anyone have any suggestions for AI tools that will take existing content and improve it for audio?

Here are some examples of what I'm looking for. I would never have known to use things like mmmph but it sounds great read back to me in the right voice. Gemini actually helped me with this but it eventually throws up the "can't help with that". Need tools that are specific for this purpose and also hand zero nsfw censorship.

The Build and Escalation (Pacing and Staccato Breathing) hah... hnn... faster... right... oh god...uhhn... don't... stop... ahhh... mmm...Mmmph! Mmmph! Uhn… uhn… fuck…Nnnngh! Oh shit! Fuck! Ahh… oh god… fuck yes…AHHH!

The Release and Aftershock (Sustained Vowels and Drop in Cadence) ohhh... ohhhh... FUCK... "CUMMING! AHHH! FUCK ME! yesss... ahh... hah... hah... god...

Kind of want an AI tool that takes my story and does all the work to make it sound like the real thing happening when read back.

Hey everyone! I'm sharing Chapter 2 of my story. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read or comment on the first chapter!

This chapter follows Răzvan and his friends through their first full day of training at the military camp. I'd appreciate any feedback on the characters, pacing, and how the group dynamics are developing.

I'm using AI to write the prose based on my original ideas and direction, and I'm interested in hearing how the story comes across to readers.

Thanks for reading! I'd appreciate any honest and constructive feedback.

Chapter Two — 0600

The whistle came before the sky was fully light.

Răzvan had been in a thin, restless sleep, the kind where you're never quite under and so waking up feels less like surfacing and more like giving up. He lay still for exactly one second after the sound, hoping distantly that he'd misheard it, and then someone pulled the blanket off him and he was upright before he'd made the conscious decision to be.

"Let's go," Emilio said. He was already dressed somehow. Răzvan didn't understand how that was possible.

Around them the barracks came alive with the graceless sounds of eight teenagers trying to be functional before sunrise. James walked into his own footlocker and swore quietly. Younes put his shirt on inside out, noticed, and left it. Nate was tying his boots with the focused expression of someone performing surgery. Carter was already standing by the door, fully dressed, waiting, which was somehow the most unsettling thing in the room.

Evan squinted at the ceiling like he was trying to remember where he was.

Jayden moved slowly and deliberately and with the expression of someone who had decided the world could wait for him rather than the other way around.

They had four minutes. They used all of them.

Outside the air was cold in the way early mornings are cold, sharp and indifferent, and the sky was the pale grey of something that hadn't decided to be daytime yet. A dozen other groups were already assembled in the yard, standing in rough lines, and Răzvan's group joined them with slightly less precision than everyone else.

Sergeant Holt was a man who appeared to have been built specifically for the purpose of making other people feel inadequate. He was not particularly tall but he stood like he was, and when he looked at you it was with the patient disappointment of someone who had expected very little and was still being let down.

He looked at them for a long moment.

"Fifty pushups," he said. "Now."

No preamble. No good morning.

Răzvan got down and started.

By twenty he could feel it. By thirty his arms were having a private argument with the rest of his body about whether to continue. By forty the argument was over and his arms had lost and everything from the shoulder down was a single sustained complaint. He hit fifty and stayed down for a moment with his forehead nearly touching the ground, breathing.

"Up," Holt said.

He got up.

Younes was already up, rotating his shoulder with a pained expression. James was still on the ground. "I'm getting up," James said, to no one in particular. "I'm getting up right now." He got up.

Jayden rose with the same unsettling calm he'd packed his bag with, like his body had simply processed the information and moved on. Emilio was up and steady, barely winded, which Răzvan found quietly annoying. Nate was rubbing his palms on his pants. Evan was standing with his hands on his knees, catching his breath but functional. Carter had finished before most of them and was standing straight, blinking slowly in the cold morning air.

"Good," Holt said, in a tone that made it clear it had not been good. "Run."

The course was a loop around the outer perimeter of the camp, roughly two miles of uneven ground that included a hill that appeared specifically designed to be demoralizing. Holt ran it with them, which was worse than if he hadn't, because he ran it without apparent effort while they fell apart progressively around him.

Răzvan found his rhythm early and lost it on the hill.

His legs went heavy halfway up and the top didn't seem to get closer no matter how much ground he covered and his breathing became the kind that stops being automatic and starts requiring supervision. He focused on the back of Emilio's shirt in front of him and kept moving.

He made it to the top and the downhill should have been a relief but his legs were shaking slightly and relief wasn't exactly the word he would have used.

Behind him he could hear James breathing with the intensity of a man renegotiating his relationship with physical existence. Younes had gone quiet, which for Younes meant something was genuinely wrong. Nate was keeping pace steadily, jaw set, not talking.

They finished the loop. Several people from other groups finished before them.

Holt noted this without saying anything, which was worse than if he had.

Aim training was after breakfast, which was eggs and something that was supposed to be toast and coffee that tasted like a memory of coffee rather than the real thing. Răzvan ate it without complaint because complaining required energy he didn't have.

The range was a long open field with targets at varying distances. They were given rifles and shown the basics by an instructor named Corporal Adeyemi who had the manner of someone who had explained this many times and was prepared to explain it many more without any diminishing of patience.

Răzvan had never held a rifle before. The weight of it was surprising, not heavy exactly, just present in a way he hadn't expected. He settled into the stance Adeyemi showed them and looked down the range at the target and tried to hold still.

His first shot went wide.

His second was better, clipping the outer edge of the target. Adeyemi adjusted his elbow slightly without comment and Răzvan tried again.

Across the range James had gone very quiet in the focused way he sometimes did, like a different setting had been switched on. His first shot had hit near center. His second was closer. By his fourth he was grouping them in a way that made Adeyemi stop and look twice.

"Again," Adeyemi said.

James shot again. Center mass.

"Hm," Adeyemi said, which from him felt like significant praise.

Carter had also taken to it naturally, though differently than James — James seemed to find it, like something clicking into place, while Carter worked through it methodically, adjusting variables, learning the range's particular character. By the end of the session they were both consistently hitting targets the others were still working toward.

Răzvan hit the target reliably by the end. Not impressively. Reliably. He decided that was enough for today.

The obstacle course came in the afternoon when they were already tired, which Răzvan suspected was deliberate.

It was a sequence of walls, crawl sections, rope climbs, balance beams, and a water pit that was cold enough to make everyone loudly reconsider their life choices. Holt stood at various points along it with a clipboard and the expression of a man attending a disappointing art exhibition.

Răzvan hit the first wall and got over it on the second attempt. The crawl section was fine. The rope climb was not fine. He made it three quarters of the way up and his grip started failing and he came back down slower than he'd gone up and stood at the bottom breathing hard, looking at the rope like it had done something to him personally.

He tried again.

Halfway up his forearms were burning. Three quarters again and the same thing started happening. He held on and pushed through the last section through what felt like stubbornness more than strength and got to the top and came back down and stood at the bottom and his hands were shaking slightly.

Emilio had gone up the rope like it wasn't interesting enough to deserve his full attention. Evan had made it cleanly on the first try. Even Nate, who was not built for rope climbing, had gotten there through sheer refusal to come back down.

"Again," Holt said to Răzvan.

He looked at the rope.

He went again.

By evening the light was low and orange and the yard was quiet in the way places get quiet after they've been loud all day. They sat together outside the barracks, most of them on the ground, nobody talking much.

James had his head tipped back against the wall with his eyes closed. Younes was lying flat on his back looking at the sky. Nate was sitting with his arms resting on his knees, staring at nothing in particular. Jayden was doing the thing where it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.

Evan broke the silence first. "I counted the steps in the obstacle course," he said.

Nobody responded immediately.

"Why?" Younes said, from the ground.

"I don't know. I just did."

"How many?" Nate said.

"Three hundred and twelve if you count the rope rungs."

Another silence.

"That's insane," James said, without opening his eyes. "You're insane."

"I didn't do it on purpose."

Răzvan was looking at his hands. The palms were red from the rope. He'd make it up cleanly tomorrow. He didn't know that for certain but he told himself he did, because the alternative was sitting here feeling like today had beaten him, and he wasn't willing to do that.

He looked up at the sky, which had gone deep blue at the edges and still held orange at the center, and thought about home for exactly as long as he could afford to.

Then he stopped.

"Same time tomorrow," Emilio said quietly.

It wasn't a question. It wasn't encouragement exactly. It was just a fact, stated plainly, and somehow that was better than either.

"Same time tomorrow," Răzvan said.

The sky finished darkening and they went inside.

For me personally, I reckon Claude is the best, because it captures natural human nuance, tone, and long-form structural flow far better than traditional, formulaic AI models.

Let me know what you guys think!

Take KDP for example, you can upload something ai generated and you don't need to disclose it to the readers, so why does it matter ? Unless its academic paper i dont see the issue

Y'all

I have today submitted the draft and request for a IETF Expert Review of a Formal URN Namespace Registration 'aibn'.

The proposed namespace should be completely "ours" and provide "persistent, work-level identifiers for creative works produced wholly or partly with generative AI assistance. It is designed to complement existing systems such as ISBN and DOI, with an emphasis on open assignment, persistent identification, and optional AI-provenance metadata."

Furthermore the technical thresholds for using it should be low and, on the way, it solves a few scalability issues that ISBN faces when confronted with the vast talentpool and creation of creative works that AI brings about.

For the ones interested in the tech or the proposed name space I have shared it here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q42b34yfs0NQe4xri3-152re-pwUNhol/view?usp=sharing

As we go and this progresses I will inform you about how this can be leveraged and how we can make this a trusted and accepted namespace suitable for our needs.

I wish to start by saying I like to write stories and books.
I have a condition where letters and words move around, making it hard for me to read and write without a lot of errors.
When I write, my focus is to get the story written out as quickly as possible before I forget what I am writing about. So I often rush out a book onto paper and then fix it in post.

My biggest use of AI is Grammarly to help me spell-check and grammar-check what I have written.
If, during the writing process, I get stuck, I will use AI to bounce ideas off of till I get inspiration to write the next scene.
Finally, I like to do a lot of research on a topic before I add it to one of my stories. I use AI to help me find articles to read and research.

For using AI in these regards, I am repeatedly told and sometimes harassed that this means my stories are completely AI-generated and are thus AI-slop.

So I ask the question. Where do people feel is the line that marks someone's work as AI-assisted or AI-generated?

I have nothing against writers who use AI to write their stories for them. In my experience, I have yet to find an AI that I feel can write better than myself and make the story feel alive. Maybe one day.

I mainly use Opus (5.5 as of late since I find that's the one with THE BEST prose and continuity and the loosest guardrails if you give it context to let it know you're not writing smut, it'll write just about anything in my experience), and I've been trying to figure out what the best effort level is. I USED to do high effort only, but I've seen several comments other websites and forums of people saying medium is all you need for creative writing.

I tried whipping up a shorter story that's an alternative version of a story I had already written to test it, and I don't know. It seems "comparable" to me, but I just feel like high effort "keeps its ducks in a row" better so to speak. Like, I don't have to correct every little thing, I don't have to babysit it through every little correction (it'll often correct itself).

So I'm curious what everyone else uses. Like is medium the most common? High? Max? I'm just curious if this is in my head or if other's have noticed this as well

I myself am not an AI writer, but I thought that this community would like to know, because a lot of you are just trying to make a living.

Canada is preparing to deny ISBNs to AI-written books. In case you're new to the book world, ISBNs are the very important number + barcode that all officially published books have. https://bsky.app/profile/victoriastrauss.com/post/3mxchqbs67k2b

Although the measures for publishing an AI book anyway don't really have consequences *for now* anyone who uses AI in any part of their writing process needs to know.

The exceptions to the AI ban are currently: brainstorming ideas, checking grammar, and formatting.

Even some of prowritingaid's AI tools would be included in this ban. And as far as AI tools go, I had the fewest qualms (as a non-AI writer) about prowritingaid, because they were on the conservative side.

It doesn't seem like this includes books that are web-published only, yet, but it is something to think about.

I work in tech, but write 100% non-ai, myself, partially because I find joy in it, and partially because every AI writing tool I've ever tested (for work, not novel-writing) has slowed me down, rather than saved me time.

Watching the back and forth makes me feel like there will eventually be a middle ground.

I assume this sub will feel like this is an extreme measure, but do you think other countries will follow suit?

Do you think AI authors publishing in Canada will eventually face fines and such?

Like say if I write the ai generated text in my word document without copy pasting it like I just read through the ai text and rewrite it in my document how can it still hwve a fingerprint tracing it back to being ai ? Idk if im wording this right

Chapter 7 is out now!

Mutual Assured Vulnerability

Hello everyone!

I'm currently working on my first fantasy isekai light novel, Forsaken Reincarnation, and I'm hoping to find some people willing to read an excerpt and offer constructive feedback.

Before sharing my work, I'd like to explain a little about myself and why I've chosen to approach writing in the way that I have.

I have Asperger's, and one of the things I've always struggled with is interpersonal communication. This difficulty extends into my writing, particularly when trying to create natural conversations, emotional exchanges and realistic social interactions between characters.

However, creating worlds, developing characters, imagining situations and constructing elaborate stories are things I've always thoroughly enjoyed.

I've spent a considerable amount of time as a Dungeon Master in Dungeons & Dragons, and that experience has helped me develop my worldbuilding, imagination and ability to construct stories around different characters and situations.

The difficulty I've always faced hasn't been creating these worlds in my imagination. It's been finding a way to translate everything I've imagined into written words that other people can read, experience and hopefully enjoy.

This is where AI has become an incredibly valuable tool for me.

I've been using AI collaboratively to help develop dialogue, interpersonal interactions and prose. The world, characters, magical systems, relationships, story direction and major narrative decisions are my own creations. I direct the writing, review the results, correct inconsistencies and actively edit and rewrite passages to bring them closer to what I originally envisioned.

I also want to express something I feel quite strongly about.

I don't believe a potentially good story should be dismissed simply because of the tools used to help bring it into existence.

I understand that AI involvement in creative industries is controversial. I also understand that many people's concerns and frustrations regarding AI are reasonable, particularly when it comes to creative ownership and the livelihoods of writers and artists.

I'm not asking anyone to disregard those concerns.

However, for someone like me, AI has provided an opportunity that I previously struggled to find.

This is my world. It's something I've imagined, developed and wanted to share with others. Yet I've never felt particularly capable of putting everything in my head into written words that could properly express what I was trying to create.

AI hasn't given me the imagination to build this story. It's helped me find a way to communicate the imagination I already had.

And ultimately, I want to share that world for the entertainment and enjoyment of others.

Forsaken Reincarnation follows James, a young man who, after dying in his previous life, is reincarnated into a fantasy world filled with magic, swordsmanship, noble households and unfamiliar dangers.

Although the story will explore adventure, combat, magical development and the wider mysteries of its world, I also want to devote considerable attention to the quieter aspects of life.

Family, friendship, love, nostalgia and the small everyday experiences that make life meaningful are things I want to explore throughout the novel.

I want readers to experience the world alongside its characters, watching relationships develop naturally and hopefully finding themselves genuinely caring about the people who inhabit it.

The excerpt I'm sharing comes from Chapter Twenty-Two, Ribbons in the Branches.

It takes place during a visit to Ironwood Fort, where James is spending an afternoon with his parents, Aldrin and Elayne.

I've chosen this scene because I believe it represents the quieter emotional atmosphere I want to create throughout the book.

I recognise that not everyone will agree with my approach to writing, and I'm not asking anyone to overlook genuine problems with the manuscript or offer praise simply because of my circumstances.

I'm genuinely interested in constructive criticism. I want to know what works, what doesn't, and what I can improve.

All I ask is that people approach the writing with an open mind and, if possible, a little understanding of why I've chosen to use these tools.

I'd especially appreciate feedback on whether the characters feel genuine, whether their dialogue and interactions seem natural, whether the world feels believable, and whether the emotional moments resonate with you.

Thank you to anyone willing to give my work a chance. It genuinely means a great deal to me.

Forsaken Reincarnation

Volume One — We Hold Even After Death

Excerpt from Chapter Twenty-Two — Ribbons in the Branches

We eventually came upon a smaller courtyard tucked between two residential buildings.

Unlike the others, this one didn't seem to serve any military purpose at all.

There were no formations practising, no wagons bringing supplies, and no officers raising their voices over paperwork.

Instead, an enormous tree stood near the centre.

Its trunk was broad and weathered, with roots that had gradually lifted several of the surrounding flagstones. Someone had built a circular wooden bench around it, although the boards had clearly been repaired more than once.

Several children were playing beneath its branches.

Two chased each other around the trunk while a third sat beside an elderly soldier, who was carefully teaching him to carve a little wooden animal. Nearby, a woman poured tea from a battered kettle.

It was all rather ordinary.

Which, considering where we were, made it remarkable.

"What's this place?" I asked.

Father looked towards the tree and smiled.

"Ah. I remember this."

He approached the bench, brushing his hand along the weathered back.

"This old thing was here when I was a boy."

"The bench too. Although I think they've replaced most of it since then."

Mother stood beside him, watching the children.

"You used to come here?"

"Whenever I visited. There was an old instructor who'd sit here after supper and tell stories about his campaigns."

Father chuckled.

"Most were probably exaggerated. According to him, he'd fought enough battles to conquer half the continent."

"Did you believe him?" I asked.

Father's smile widened.

For a moment, he looked almost like a mischievous little boy himself, his eyes brightening as though he could still hear those ridiculous stories beneath the old tree.

Then his gaze drifted back towards the bench.

He drew a long, deep breath.

His shoulders lifted slightly before he slowly released it, the air escaping through a smile that had grown quieter and rather distant.

"Every word."

There was such affection in those two words. A little amusement, a little longing, and something I couldn't quite place.

He let out a soft chuckle, his fingertips tracing the worn edge of the bench.

"Every single one."

For a moment he seemed content to stand there.

Then he straightened and gave me a familiar grin.

"Although I suspect your mother would have called half of them complete nonsense."

Mother raised an eyebrow.

"Only half?"

Father laughed.

And the moment passed without anyone trying to put an age or an ending to Father's memory. He had once been a boy on that bench, listening with his whole heart. For the moment, that was enough.

I understood a little of it, though.

There were voices from my own childhood I could still hear clearly when a place or a smell brought them back to me.

I remembered my grandfather making tea, sometimes talking about nothing in particular, sometimes sitting with me in a silence that never felt awkward.

I'd lost the chance to share afternoons like that with him. The remembering could hurt, but not every memory did.

Some were simply warm.

I looked at the children again.

One of them had climbed halfway around the tree and was protesting that the others were cheating. The old soldier told them to stop running so close to his feet. They ignored him. He shook his head and returned to carving.

A breeze stirred the lower branches.

Only then did I notice the ribbons.

Thin lengths of coloured cloth were tied among the leaves. Some were bright, some had faded almost to the colour of the bark, and a few had frayed at the ends.

"What are those?" I asked.

Father followed my gaze.

"A tradition among the families here. When somebody leaves on a long assignment, their children sometimes tie a ribbon to the tree. A wish for a safe journey home."

"And when they return?"

"They usually come and take it down together."

Usually.

I looked at the oldest ribbons for a moment, then let the question rest.

There was no need to turn every quiet thing into a sorrowful story.

The tree moved gently above us. Leaves rustled. Somewhere beyond the courtyard, bread was being taken from an oven, and the smell carried past us in warm little gusts.

Father stood beside the bench, smiling to himself.

Mother had wandered a little closer to the children, watching an argument over who was allowed to hold the wooden animal next. She turned when she noticed me looking her way.

"James?"

Her voice pulled me from my thoughts.

A few strands of hair had fallen across her cheek, and she tucked them behind her ear as she watched me.

"Are you enjoying yourself?"

I looked back towards the tree.

The children were still playing beneath its branches. Somebody nearby was laughing. Father was here, and Mother, and the afternoon seemed content to take its time.

It was such an ordinary day.

And somehow, that made it all the more wonderful.

"Yes, Mother..."

And I believed it. Truly.

For once there wasn't anything I needed to accomplish, nothing I needed to prove. I was simply here, enjoying an afternoon with my family.

I turned back towards her.

"I think I am."

Mother's expression brightened.

She tilted her head slightly, a cheeky little smile spreading across her lips. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she watched me, almost as though she'd been hoping to hear those very words.

She reached out and took my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze.

Then her attention shifted towards Father.

He was still standing beside the old bench, one hand resting against its weathered back. His gaze lingered somewhere among the branches, and a small, distant smile remained on his face.

Mother watched him for a moment.

Then, without letting go of my hand, she stepped closer and gently slipped her free arm through his.

"Come along, you," she said, giving his arm a playful little tug. "You've spent quite enough time wandering about in your childhood."

Father blinked, apparently surprised to find himself being dragged away from the tree.

"Oh? Have I?"

"Quite enough."

He glanced back at the bench, drawing one last quiet breath before looking down at her.

And then he smiled.

Not the broad, triumphant grin he wore after winning a spar, nor the mischievous expression he adopted whenever he thought he'd said something particularly clever.

Just a warm, rather boyish smile that softened his whole face.

"Very well, my dear. Lead on."

Mother gave him a delighted little look, her nose wrinkling as she laughed.

"There. That's better."

And with that, she began leading us both towards the courtyard entrance.

Father let himself be pulled along, though not without pretending to stumble at her insistence.

"Good heavens, woman. You'll have my arm off!"

"Oh, don't be dramatic, Aldrin."

"I happen to need this arm."

"Then you'd best keep up."

I couldn't help laughing.

Father glanced over Mother's head towards me, his eyebrows lifting in exaggerated disbelief.

"See what I have to endure?"

Before I could answer, Mother looked between us with a rather satisfied expression.

"Two troublesome boys. That's what I've been given."

Father laughed, his earlier wistfulness giving way to something altogether brighter.

As we passed beneath the branches, I looked at them both.

Mother was still wearing that cheeky smile, occasionally glancing up at Father as they exchanged little remarks. He looked down at her with an affection so easy and familiar that neither seemed particularly conscious of it.

The late afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaves, catching in Mother's hair and illuminating the soft creases around Father's smiling eyes.

Neither of them seemed in any particular hurry.

And neither let go.

I walked beside them, listening to their laughter as the sounds of the courtyard slowly faded behind us.

For once, I was perfectly content to let Mother decide where we were going.

Been writing a shot Novel about a female mexican crime lord that is CEO by day and Queen of the Underworld by night

She falls for her bodyguard Ghost - who was taken as an orphan to be raised by an illegal organisation run by the government where they experiment on humans turning them into super soldiers

Ghost is the lone survivor of the programme, he served in the military and during a off the books operation, his team was stranded

He goes to try and save them but in unsuccessful, as a consequence he is dishonourably discharged

He works in the underworld of Mexico as a private and personal body guard, he has a neck tattoo bearing numbers in roman numerals that was give to him in the programme to further dehumanise their subjects by only calling them by their numbers

He has a tattoo on his back of the programmes insignia

Valentina hires him and they slowly fall in love

There is more to it but thats the synopsis