About...

...This Site or Whatever:

This 'website' is a collection of HTML and CSS code which exists on what is often referred to as 'the internet'. Many such 'websites' exist, and they can have many different purposes. This one exists to showcase this one girl's 'fiction', which is a term describing the process of writing things that aren't true for fun.

...'Me':

Did you ever have to do that thing where you're in a class, or starting a new job, and it's just...all eyes on you, 'please tell everyone a fun fact about yourself'...and then you freeze...and then, for some reason, your brain tells you that it'll be funny if you say something that, the subsequent reaction tells you, was not an ice breaker, but deeply unsettling information you should have saved for...I dunno, therapy?

...'Me':

Fine. Hi, I'm Bel. I'm...a disaster sapphic trans girl whose writing 'career' started with fanfiction and writing OCs to do stuff in little worlds I created. But that was long ago. Since then, I've seen things you wouldn't believe.

I survived the flame wars of the pre-Facebook era. I've watched entire fandoms implode in since-banned subreddits, over the pettiest and weirdest of Tumblr threads. I've seen queer representation shift from para-canons hewed into being using slashfic and force of will as bricks and mortar...to Adora randomly going starry eyed over some Mad-Max coded desert butch.

This world is not the one I knew. And all I wanna do is write my gay little books and eat my gay little sandwiches and try to love my gay little self until I'm, inevitably, relegated to a gay little grave...and it's all lost in time...like tears in the rain.

...'Pay-Walling':

So I like money. Many do, is my understanding. If you'd like to give me it, I'll be adding a paid subscription tier - 'Perks not Works'. Basically, I'm not paywalling any actual content, but I'll probably write some extra stuff for that tier. Simply: this is an 'I accept donations but will feel guilty if I don't give you something for donating' thing as opposed to a 'please purchase access to my output' thing. Y'know?

...'The Content':

Y'see the Headers up top of the page? You can get to the project pages easily through those. If you enjoy scrolling through a seemingly endless feed of updates, we have that too, just head back to the 'Feed' page (also linked up top).

...'AI':

lol. Okay, so maybe I just included this so I could rant a little.

So...Fanfiction, right? Y'know how there are thousands - hundreds of thousands in most fandoms - of stories, and most of them are just...trash? And I'm not talking about the technical quality of the writing, so much as the 'wish fulfilment' aspect. The 'wouldn't it be cool if w said x and then y did z' of it all. It's not context, it's formula. And you can fucking tell, y'know? And sometimes you don't care, because yes, you do just want to read about what w says to x and what y did as a result. Trash isn't new; it's not even bad. It's just not good. And that's the thing. AI gives you trash; it Xerox's and mish-mash's and remixes content. It doesn't have the capacity to work with anything that's not already there.

There is, however, a lot of really great fanfiction. It requires...building out. And you could do that with AI - use it's reductive, bland, miasma of output to build out something cool. But that would require more effort than...y'know...doing it...without...AI? Like if you lay out a structural foundation and then you need to tear up the foundation and re-formulate it before you start building the house...you would've been better just...building the right foundation from the start?

Anyway. I don't use AI for art. I've got plenty of ethical concerns which inform why I think it's bad to use for art in general, but honestly? From a purely practical perspective? It's not functionally capable of making good art unless you're investing more effort than would have gone in to just making good art without it. Stop trying to take the effort out of output and just pick up the fucking pen, y'know? Get good, basically.

...'Signing Up':

If you're a fan of inbox clutter, boy do I have some good news for you...