Hello there!
First off, here’s the official backcover for the third book of the Pale Lights series, “Borrowed Trouble”.
“The Thirteenth Brigade returned from Asphodel famous and triumphant, but as their second year at Scholomance dawns they learn they cannot afford to rest on their laurels.
Between the fresh students flooding Port Allazei, the addition of a fifth member to the brigade and the mysteries revealed by a sinister graduation ceremony there is quite a bit of trouble to go around. Of course, the Unluckies being who they are, even before ancient nightmares begin running wild they’ve somehow found additional trouble to borrow.
Tristan finds religion (then promptly loses it) while Angharad finds herself haunted by consequence (and, more concerningly, ghosts). Meanwhile, Song’s quest for accurate essay citations earns a (continuously rising) body count and Maryam learns that legacies are a heavy burden to bear (even when you have two backs).
As for Izel Coyac, still fresh to the Thirteenth, he does not need to borrow anything: trouble followed him all the way from home, and this time she isn’t taking no for an answer.
By the time their second year comes to a close, no one will ever doubt again that the Unluckies earned every bit of that sobriquet.”
Second, as a quick reminder there will be an AMA today at 5 PM Eastern Time on the Discord, which I link here.
Updates will be resuming the 11th of March, though I’m sad to say that for logistical reasons (and in part because of WordPress’ increasing affiliation with a whole gaggle of generative AI stuff) I’ll no longer be updating here. The story will be posted solely on RoyalRoad, as linked here. Updates there happen at noon, so no more midnight releases.
See you at the AMA, and if not on the 11th!
E.E.
Pale Lights 
Sad to see wordpress go, end of an era. But quite understandable.
See you on RR!
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I don’t particularly understand. Has EE posted elsewhere with a longer explanation? Does RR provide revenue sharing or something?
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I’m not aware of a longer explanation being posted, but if wordpress is affiliated with generative AI stuff, that PROBABLY means they’ll be using what is posted here as training data.
So EE’s works would be used to train an AI, which could then be used to churn out writing based on it, without EE seeing any reward for it. And diluting EE’s style with inferior imitations.
I can understand why an author might not want to do that.
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11th of April, I suspect, unless you’ve made some very good friends in the Titanomachy recently.
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Just out of curiousity, why does them affiliatiing with generative Ai make you want to leave? :3
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The AI will be stealing anything EE writes as training data. It’s a bit silly to say ‘stop stealing my work’ when you continue to upload to the site that supports the thieves.
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But as far as I know WordPress itself doesn’t train any models. How does boycotting them prevent openai from scraping palelights chapters?
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I can’t make the AMA.
How do announcements like these work on RR? I only see the final chapter
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Royal Road entries is posted at a different schedule than WordPress. So this announcement probably will hit Royal Road in about two hours.
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I don’t see how the choice of website platform impacts whether anthropic or openai or Microsoft include content in their training sets. This makes more sense as a business decision.
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I don’t really think AI companies are asking for permission like that…see the recent deluge of Studio Ghibli Knockoff Art.
Still this is the End of an Era…in all honestly WordPress as the center focal point has been dying since the Discord took off. And the downward spiral accelerated when Patreon started getting actual chapters early so this is the final nail in the coffin.
So Long And Thanks for All the Fish.
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