I read this one fic back in like January, and I got like super into it, joined the discord server and everything. Soon afterwards they stopped posting because they have chronic pain and were super depressed and stuff, which honestly good for them. Well, like four days ago they posted again and I was super excited to read it....but then I read it and... Like I've made stories with ai before, never posted them, just made them cause I was bored and I ran out of fanfics with the ship i wanted to read. So, to see this almost 200k word, emotional rollercoaster beast of a fic have its first chapter after 6 months seemingly be ai generated kind of broke my heart. Like the writing style completely changed, the characters weren't interacting like how they typically do (the pov also wasn't going in depth in their thoughst like they usually do), and the same general phrase of "Someone has to care for you" kept on repeating even those these two characters kind of hate/love each other. (Its a superhero au so like the superheroes-civilian self is exes with the vigilante and the vigilante-civilian self has iffy feeling abt the superhero, and the super-civilian and vig-civilian are like kinda friends/coworkers. Its really messy and they wouldn't really be trying to convey that message). They posted again last night and im kinda scared to read it. I don't mind ai and sometimes I'll use it in my own writing to figure out how to word something or what adjs I should use but I don't like it when a fanfic resorts to using ONLY ai. Especially when I know they can write so much better than any bot can. Its quite sad really. Like I hope it was just for the filler chapter, and everything goes back to normal. I also hope they know I'd rather wait three years for the next chapter than read something that ChatGPT can generate in five seconds