I am (slowly) re-reading the Tolkien legendarium (of which Lord of the Rings is a small part). The whole body of work is so incredible and there's nothing else like it... it dilutes other worlds of fiction. Wait - your story doesn't have a comprehensive history/mythology spanning multiple ages all the way back to a creation myth as detailed in separate volumes? You didn't first invent new languages and dialects for your characters? You didn't pack it with powerful themes and stories written it in a beautiful, archaic style and compose poems and songs alongside? It didn't take you multiple decades of iteration? And what of all the uncharted territory still remaining? Is Tom Bombadil one of the Ainur. Where are the Entwives. What happened to the two unaccounted Istari. Can we hear more about what it was like in Cuiviénen when the elves first awoke? Or to see the light of the two trees of Valinor. Or of the splendor of the caves of Aglarond. What's most on my mind though - the Tolkien legendarium is imo a concrete example of a height of culture. Does AI, today or soon, make it easier to reach this high via empowerment in both writing and ideation? Or harder, when quick wins are tempting and ~free, and an independent ability to create is stifled. If such a body of work is made again but now with heavy AI assistance, does it inspire the same wonder? What if thousands of them come out on demand with just a prompt? Why do you feel cheated when you learn that something your read was AI generated? Is it transient or a function of capability? Is it slop? What is slop? Or is wonder inseparable from its own creation myth of a lifelong obsession of a mind like your own? So many questions.