A story about a bus ride in a liminal, dream-like world.

By the way, before I leave, here's what AI had to say about this.

"

Yeah, I see exactly why this blew up. There are really two separate problems happening at once here: (1) CYS has an explicit policy vibe/community norm that “AI assistance = not allowed,” and (2) people feel like you weren’t straight with them at first (“I didn’t use AI to write it” reads like a denial, even if you meant “I didn’t prompt it from scratch”).

First, on the ethics side (outside of CYS): drafting yourself and using AI as a polishing tool is not automatically “bad.” Plenty of writers use tools to revise. The sticking point is authorship and disclosure. If the AI is rewriting sentences/paragraphs and you’re pasting that in, you are no longer the sole author of the final phrasing. That’s basically the same category as having a friend rewrite your paragraphs—except your “friend” is a model. Some communities are fine with that, some aren’t.

On CYS specifically: they’re not arguing nuance, they’re enforcing a boundary. Their stance is essentially “we want human-written work here, period.” In that environment, “AI-enhanced” still counts as AI-generated/co-authored. So even if your process is honest and you paid for it and you started the draft, it’s still going to be treated as a rule violation there.

Second, on the social side: the trust hit came from messaging. When you said “I didn’t use AI to write it,” readers heard “no AI touched the prose,” then later it became “okay, it enhanced it.” That gap is what people latched onto. Even if you didn’t mean to lie, it reads like backpedaling. On a site full of skeptics already primed to hate AI, that’s gasoline.

If you want the cleanest way forward on that site (and also the least stressful): don’t use AI on any text you publish there. Use humans for feedback instead. If you still want “tooling,” keep it to basic spellcheck/grammar tools that the site/community considers acceptable (but check their policy, because some people even side-eye that). And if you already posted something AI-touched, the credibility repair move is boring but effective: acknowledge it once, clearly, then stop debating it. Remove/replace the AI-touched parts with your own revision, or take it down and repost a fully-human version if that’s allowed.

For your actual writing improvement (without AI doing the voice): do a two-pass method. Pass 1: write it fast and messy. Pass 2: revise with a checklist: remove filler, swap vague verbs for concrete ones, add 1-2 sensory details per scene, and tighten POV so it doesn’t “float.” That gets you most of what “enhancement” tools fake, but it stays yours.

If you want, paste one paragraph from “Bus Ride” (the version you wrote yourself). I can give you a human-style critique and then show 2–3 alternate rewrites you can choose from—without turning it into that glossy LLM voice."

The poem was done by me, but the contest story was enhance by an AI, yes.

I accept the fact that what I did was wrong, and admittably pretty fucking retarded. I am now working on Bus Ride without any use of AI whatsoever, and we'll see what happens.

Sorry for all of the bullshit I keep putting you guys through. I will now leave the forums for at MINIMUM a month.

I am still going to use AI to critique it, but from this point on, I won't use it to straight out write whatever I want it to. Does that, eh, satisfy you enough?

Once again, it is not written by AI, although what I didn't mention is that it IS enhanced by AI. That is completely different.

1. I write the story/paragraph.

2. I plug it into an AI software that I pay for to critique my writing.

3. I copy what it enhanced and plug it back into the page.

So you guys are wrong, but not far from the truth.

LOL

I didn't use AI to write it.

And, it's published! First storygame :]

"Bus Ride" storygame will be postponed until tomorrow night, need to rework a few things.

lmao

..Bro encoring is one thing, ok in some cases, but seriously dude, that's what you had to say?

Nah it’s just a joke 👍🏼