You Are What You Read

I was recently perusing the Kindle store looking for books and I noticed the Saint of Steel series by T. Kingfisher was deeply discounted. I had heard the author's name in passing on a few occasions and heard good things so I figured I would give the series a shot. I went in sight unseen other than I saw the word paladin in the description and went "sure".

First thing out of the gate, I appreciated the subtle hints at worldbuilding; at first it seemed like pretty standard fantasy-fare. The character writing was witty and I enjoyed the characterization of the broken but believable characters. The people felt real. I got a few chapters in when some of the banter started to take a turn. I was expecting fantasy, which the novel was delivering, but I was beginning to suspect that I was reading a romance novel.

Things We're All too Young to Know

Now, I am not particularly picky about what books I read. I, in fact, try to read a lot of things. Non-fiction seems to be about the only thing I don't reach for when reading. Most non-fiction books I have finished left an indelible mark on me for sure, but it really has to be a certain type of non-fiction to get me to stick with it. I, when left to my own devices, gravitate towards character-strong fantasy and science fiction novels. I don't particularly care for the world's most interesting, grounded, magic system or the most realistic space travel modality; but I do care about interesting characters and how they navigate their lives.

My exposure to romance was, as a late 90's to early 00's kid, finding Fabio adjacent novels at the local Borders. Borders, for those unaware, was a big deal in small-town America as a child. It had carpeted floors, a dedicated kids section, a cafe built in, and an elevator. Let that soak in, an elevator: one of the most captivating modes of travel, second only to an escalator. At Borders, there would be books as far as the eye could see. We'd scamper through the store, like the shitty goblins we were, and lock in on the real good stuff. We'd cackle at the judicious use of the word throbbing and delight in the discovery of some profane secret. We were in the know. All the other kids thought books were what you read in school; who even thought that they could also be smutty? The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Editions hidden on the Borders magazine rack, right behind Thrasher and Jonathan Davis's face on Kerrang! were appealing to laggards in comparison to the phallic prose in this forbidden literature.

Now, there is nothing particularly scandalous about enjoying such novels. Books are books; a respite from the world around us. An opportunity to walk in shoes of others and experience the world through perspectives which would otherwise never be our own. People should read what they enjoy and just enjoy it. The only wider consideration being that each of those experiences, no matter how small, accumulate on you. We are humans, we are malleable socially and, as a result, learn, adapt, respond, and compartmentalize in response to the experience of others. Each tragedy, victory, tryst, and lifelong romance in a novel becomes, in some small way, your own. So, here I am, a couple decades removed from Fabio, amidst the deeply human tale of some fallen paladins, and I encounter the word throbbing.

Love in the Time of Doomscrolling

In 2026, the Borders are gone. If you're lucky, small bookstores have popped up in their place, maybe a Barnes and Noble, but the death of the third place spares few. Instead, we are surrounded by ravenous, attention vampires. Unlike in 2001, we have no George W. Bush to be our Van Helsing. For a while, it seemed the final, most desirable object worth a trade was our collective attention-spans. The never ending stream of consciousness, when discretized into fifteen-second chunks, allows for maximal targeted advertising and, more usefully, leaves the average person receptive for 21st century propaganda.

However, Artificial Intelligence™ has come for the final, most guarded garden, our very thoughts. I have, anecdotally, had a couple different conversations with people who made heavy use of AI for things more than just raw productivity and they remarked how they felt they had lost their inner voice. The flattening of self was happening and some seemed ecstatic that they never needed to form their own words again, others seemed a little less enthused. And so, we have arrived at the perhaps inevitable coda of our gilded age — dragged back into the cave, where we clap in endless enjoyment as the shadows dance before us.

All the Lies that You Tell

It is, perhaps, unsurprising that the maw of our new stochastic gods is widening: first booksellers simply suspected the AI companies were gobbling up their inventory and now we pretty much know it's true. There is, as with all things, some nuance. I am not sure if you knew this, but there are a lot of books published, and people keep writing more. Post 2023, how many of those were AI-written is part of the skyrocketing noisefloor we are faced with.

The irony that I used AI to help build this website's backing application is not lost on me; I never claimed to not be a hypocrite. I am also just enough of a cynic to recognize that there can be a lesser of two evils. I can not stress this enough: I was never going to have the mental bandwidth to take a debutantes' stroll through web development without the starting nudge. I was also never really going to post my content onto some other social media site. I have, on some level, internalized this as hubris. I am mentally bundling the tension under the romantic notion that I have attempted to bind the demons to my will, and with them I will build something holy. I know fully that, with each turn, they carry away with them their pound of flesh. By way of penance, these posts form some hushed litany amidst the crashing evertide of entropy rising, my atonement for the continued transgression of AI software assistance. Whether it is absolution or apotheosis I seek, I can not say.

Ahem. As you can tell, being blindsided by throbbing and potentially even a quivering in a fantasy book sparked a peripeteia in me necessitating this post. I have gone on to read 3 more T. Kingfisher books and I will likely read all of her oeuvre (the filthiest word in this whole post) over the coming months. So the larger point remains, whether it is fantasy novels that turn into romance novels, a technical blog, one man's first-hand war reporting, to the fine grace of poetry; the slow accrual of ideas and perspectives that come with engaging with creativity is a fundamental thing that separates all of us from the noise. Just as a professional chef is shaped, over long years, by oil burns and knife scars, we are shaped by the words and thoughts of others, whether we like it or not. So in a time of homogeneous and sanitized AI-generated text, you'd best remember, you are what you read.