Hello! I hope you are doing well and that the festive season treated you well. 

Sadly, as the title says, I won't be updating Quietly for quite a while, as I edit it. While I do this, I also don't feel comfortable leaving up the old version for a number of reasons.

The first is that it feels like a false promise: it was a version that was only uploaded out of necessity, due to the tourney, and it didn't receive the thought and time it needed in order to make it into the story it deserves to be. I certainly posted the majority of these chapters thinking, "That'll do, just upload it," which is not the mindset I want to be in when I'm putting my work out into the world, especially not with a series that means as much to me as this one.

The second is that I need to look more into Tapas' rules on AI data scraping, and if they're safeguarding our work to the full extent of their abilities. It's a key responsibility of hosting platforms to do this and stay ahead of the curve, especially regarding generative AI technologies. I hope that Tapas is: they certainly have rules when it comes to uploading AI-generated work, whether novels or comics (in short: don't (which I wholeheartedly agree with, jic that wasn't clear)). I need to know that they're not putting the weight of responsibility on their authors and artists to safeguard ourselves without offering us robust advice and guidance on how to do so. Like I said, I don't know anything about where they stand on this specific issue within the mire that is the generative AI minefield, as of the time of posting. Frankly, this was another lapse of judgement on my part: I should have looked into this before posting anything.

There are other reasons, but those are the biggest. 

Honestly, admitting that I made multiple mistakes here has been really hard. Taking the necessary steps to ensure that I only put out my best work, under the best circumstances, and in places where I know it will be handled with care by the people in charge has been even harder. I've gone back and forth on this for over a month, but I know this is the right choice.

I'll be back in contact once I've reached a conclusion on both points mentioned here. If you have any information or thoughts regarding either (particularly point 2), then please comment. I would love to hear it all.

Once more, thank you for your patience.