Olethrus

“There was a softness in that bright green glow, dancing in the night. For a moment Steb thought they resembled the emerald of Scar’s eyes.”

[olethru-s]

Dance of The Emerald & Aquamarine

This blog is dedicated to my arcane scarxsteb fanfic!

-> read here | masterlist | art | #my art

Themes - plot heavy - romance - war - classism - moral dilemmas - character study

Summary - Scar is deemed de facto leader while Ekko heals from an injury at the Bridge of Progress. Scar and Steb meet by chance during a raid while tensions escalate between the twin cities. The more the two Vastaya learn about each other, the harder lines blur between their roles as enforcer and Firelight.

“The enforcer was presumably Marai; thin-framed with green opalescent skin, teal gills that lined the cheekbones of his face, and eyes that shone like aquamarine. He looked unassuming, seemed more reserved and rather quiet compared to most of the brutish and gnarled enforcers Scar had to face in his lifetime. If it had to come down to a fight between the two, Scar would almost regret having to strike that face.”

[olethru-s]

Emerald & Aquamarine

“Not Yet”

“Steb lifted his head and wept. Something ugly, something desperate. The noises that left his lungs could hardly be heard over the activity of the battle.”

- chapter 37

[olethru-s]

Emerald & Aquamarine

Chapter 37 is out abridged | unabridged

Chapter content could be sensitive to readers (please read tags)

Steb cries a lot

Author may have cried a lot too

Soap opera vibes

Working on an art piece for it

[silcozaunite]

could we reblog this with books from our world you’d imagine Silco would likely keep on his bookshelves or have within arm’s reach on his nightstand?

i’d love to get a discussion going and see what everyone would choose. perhaps add a few titles to my ever-growing tbr, too.

philosophy, history, political theory, poetry, the classic literary fics, whatever genre!

[olethru-s]

Some stuff I imagine Silco might have on his shelves

1984 and Animal Farm, George Orwell

The Art of War, Sun Tzu

I could see him having written work by some Classical Realists too! I'm vaguely familiar with them from a poli class, but I found some text titles:

History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides

The Prince, Machiavelli

The Discourse on Livy, Machiavelli

Definitely a chess table somewhere

Other books/games focused on strategy

Potential canon-texts: stolen history books from Piltover's library, maybe access to Piltover's newspapers too

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

I just came across two "authors" that have written fics Im interested in.. and I rigured out they used ai for the whole thing

How should I deal with blogs like that? Do I report them? Block them? Should I do anything at all?

Because I commented on the first fic asking if its ai and they blocked me so I cant even protect anyone else from reading that because I forgot their name

And on the second fic I commented I asked the same thing and they suddenly deleted all of their post but they had a full ass masterlist

Is asking about ai an insult now? Cuz i dont want to blame this people out of the blue Im asking, but they are quicker to get offended then to defending "their" work..

Am I the crazy one??

can I be honest? you are in the wrong here. I stand with the two authors, and I’m glad they blocked you.

you said you “asked if their works are ai” which means the authors did not specifically said their works were ai-generated, meaning you guessed, based on vibes, and then you threw an accusation at them. I have already talked about why it’s rude, entitled and insulting for someone to ask a writer if their works are ai-generated here, here and here.

and I have said time and time again that “ai witch hunt, speculation and accusations harm the writing community as much as ai does, if not more”.

so whether or not you know it, you are harming the writing community — just like ai does, if not more — by going around asking random writers if their works are ai, as if writers owe you anything (fun fact: they do NOT owe you anything).

every “ai telltale” is something human writers write. what do you think ai was trained on? what do you think it was trained to mimic?

“how do I deal with this?” by curating your own internet experience. block them if that’s what you want (you can block anybody for any reason). it’s not your problem or your business how a writer writes, whether or not they use ai.

no, I am not a fan of ai, but I can accept that if someone chooses to let ai write everything for them, then that is their business. do I agree with them? no. will I harass them for it? no. will I call them out? no. what they do is literally none of my business.

also no, it’s not your job or your business to “protect anyone from reading their works”. you are not their parent. if someone reads their works and if they think it’s ai, then they can make their own decision on whether or not they will continue reading it.

if you think their works are ai, you can choose not to read them. you can block them if that’s what you want. but

1. writers do NOT owe you anything

2. yes, it’s absolutely valid for a writer to NOT want to be asked if their works are ai — them deleting their works after you asked them if their work is ai is NOT proof that they used ai. they could very well be devastated that something they worked so hard on was accused of being something it’s not, and if that’s the case then you should be ashamed of yourself. (if they did use ai then that’s still their choice, their business and something they have the rights to do — even though I don’t agree with them, I will never condone harassment.)

3. I have already seen enough writers step away from posting their human-made works online BECAUSE PEOPLE KEEP ASKING IF IT’S AI. and it can be very disheartening for them. (me personally I don’t care if someone asks me this, because I know I don’t let ai write for me and I never let strangers’ negativity affect me, but I understand why some other writers care.)

3. no, you cannot know “for sure” if a fic is ai-generated. unless the author says so themself, you can only guess based on vibes. as I’ve said before, every ai telltale is something human writers actually write, otherwise ai would never have been able to mimic it at all.

4. harassment will never ever make you the good guy.

also you cannot report them for being ai, let alone because you personally suspected that it’s ai, because ai-generated works are allowed. it’s allowed on ao3 (here’s what ao3 said about ai-generated works on their platform), and since tumblr as a site itself, just like every other social media platform, also promotes and uses ai to help them run the platform, I guess it’s fair to assume they allow ai-generated contents on their platform too.

again, I am not a fan of ai fics, but I condemn harassment, ai witch hunt and speculations more.

respectfully, do better.

if anything, I believe you owe these two writers an apology.

[laurelynfaye]

Also, unless they’re using an anti-ai writing tracker there’s no way for them to “prove” they aren’t using ai. Also, what kind of ai are we talking about here? Grammarly’s writing check uses ai now (very irritating), and so does half the other shit one way or another. Are you accusing them of generating whole cloth? One section? Like. Generative Ai usage is generally pretty bad at writing, actually, so it would be difficult to get a full fic out of it that made any sense at all. Let’s give fic authors the benefit of the doubt.

[hostelhell]

An anti-ai writing tracker itself IS ALSO AI. IT IS KNOWN TO BE SUPER UNRELIABLE. IT DOES NOT WORK. IT NEVER WORKS.

It literally flagged Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as AI. (X)

The only way you can know if a piece of writing is AI is if the author themself says so. Otherwise you’re just guessing. And for the hundredth time, “AI checkers” NEVER WORK. It’s flagged human-made works as AI and AI- generated works as human-made so. many. times.

Also AI can write terrifyingly good. As someone who once decided to read a fic that is tagged as AI out of curiosity, I can confirm AI can write a terrifyingly good fic. It’s scary how good it can get now.

[laurelynfaye]

I specifically mean the kind that tracks your writing in real time, like a “video” record of you writing not the checker. Personally I feel like I can tell usually it’s ai writing from certain mannerisms, and I tend to find ai prose repetitive and irritating. The not this but that, short, one sentence paragraphs and a few others. Dialogue tends to be an especially telling, imo. My reaction to that is just to stop reading the fic, though.

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

the “not this, but that” is something I personally write, and I’ve been doing it for about a decade now, way before gen ai became a thing. I also love em dash. and I know several writers who love short sentence stacking as a stylistic choice.

every “ai telltale” is something a human writes, that’s how ai was able to mimic them. I don’t know how many times I have to say this.

*I am not saying "you can't suspect a fic of being ai ever" because that would be... weird (as long as you don't actually ask the writer and you just choose to click away from it if you no longer want to keep reading it, you're already doing the right thing), but it bothers me when someone says "yeah I think this is ai because it has xyz in it" and the xyz in question is something human writers have been writing for ages before ai starts mimicking them

[olethru-s]

Dance of the Emerald & Aquamarine: Ch 36 completed

As promised, there is the abridged and unabridged version!

Ty readers for the wait 😭 part 1 of the finale is finished and posted! Things are heating up and it gets worse before it gets better, I promise!

Abridged - condensed chapter that focuses more on Batfish

Unabridged - includes scenes with side characters (where Scar and Steb are not present)

[lileeeeee]

something's fishy here....but i can't tell right of the bat....................

more options on pat-pat reon <3

[olethru-s]

Emerald & Aquamarine Update

TLDR;

First draft done -> currently editing

abridged: 16k~ || unabridged: 20k~

Only cut out scenes with 0 Batfish

Will be split into parts & posted individually

So the wait won’t be as long

There will be a short epilogue

Thanks for the readers who voted in the poll, it seriously means a lot 🥹🫶

The first draft for the finale is FINALLY finished! Much much editing is still needed, but the unabridged clocked at around 20k, and the abridged about 16k words (this will fluctuate once I start editing)

I really wanted to note that the abridged version will still include side characters. But only the scenes where they’re interacting with either Scar, Steb, or the both of them. I completely cut out all scenes that didn’t include either of them at all (and maybe still included one very short scene that was still vital for the plot)!

Abridged will be paired to mainfic, unabridged to “Snippets”

Because it’s the finale I really want to dedicate some good time to it. Y’know, give the fic a proper send off 🥹 So the plan is to split them into parts and edit them sequentially. If I didn’t do that, chances are it would take that much longer to post it all at once.

The good thing is, my time will be freed up way more because this last semester of classes was ridonkulous, guys 🫩 and there’re still some obligations I need to get to. But because the whole draft is already finished + my semester is over, the next parts will be posted much sooner (I promise).

Also, an epilogue will be written! It will likely just tie up more loose ends and include side-characters this time. There will probably not be an abridged version—I don’t imagine the epilogue will be very long (at least compared to the average chapter word count).

^-^)/

- O.

Ps. If any of y’all ever had questions or comments, or are too shy to ask, please feel free to use the ask box here on tumblr, it’s anonymous! It genuinely means a lot whenever I hear from you guys, and it also helps motivate me ngl ;w; (I think fic authors naturally crave to hear from their readers haha)

[olethru-s]

Emerald & Aquamarine question for readers 🦇🐠

Should I make an abridged version of the finale?

Yes 👌

No 🙅

Other (comments/ask box)

Voting ended onMay 13

Unsure if readers will see this, but as I’ve started writing out the final chapters, I’ve noticed a few things:

Tying up loose ends is HARD.

It’s also hard to tie up loose ends without giving decent chunks of attention to supporting characters (meaning, some scenes won’t have Batfish in them at all).

I personally think giving these side characters more “screentime” would create a richer background for the ending, but it also means when you see Scar and Steb, it’ll be shuffled in between other scenes with other character POVs.

This is why I’ve come to you guys 🫲😔🫱 your input really matters, and if an abridged version would make the read more enjoyable, please let me know ^o^)/

[olethru-s]

OCs Jin and Ahn

[olethru-s]

Fic progress:

The semester is finally over, and I can breathe again 🥹 To any readers out there, ty for sticking around! I’ll be dedicating myself to finishing the next chapter.

[kairaartabsurd]

Okay uh.. no, don't even ask me

✨Fih✨

[skull-it-nice-blog]

[guanzed]

[scribblemon-scribbles]

Basil enjoying(?) a lovely outdoor bath

he is not perceiving a damn thing

[anarchistmemedistro]

[olethru-s]

Emerald & Aquamarine: Rough Sketches

I had a vision and then squiggled it out!

*Suggestive