Saying “this niche, properly tagged, warned, and rated piece of fiction could theoretically hurt someone” is not a good argument. This properly labeled cookie with the allergen information at the bottom that contains gluten could theoretically harm me very badly, but only if I consume it. Tags are like nutrition labels, and warnings are like allergy information. If you know you have an allergy to something, the logic is to stay away from it. It is the same with fiction. I’m not running through stores yelling at people to take all the products with gluten off the shelves just because it could hurt me. Instead I ignore it and go to the gluten free section and find cookies that are right for me. And if running through a grocery store yelling sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. Stop doing the same with fiction.

this is the best way i’ve seen this put!!

And just like with food, what might be harmful for one person to consume could be quite *beneficial* for others. One man’s trigger is another man’s catharsis.

AND if you lack the maturity/self control/awareness to stop yourself from eating things that could potentially harm you, you either 1) are too young to be making your own food choices and should be supervised by a parent/other adult who is supposed to be responsible for you (and the store clerk who put the food on the shelf is NOT) or 2) need to take accountability for your own actions, because if you deliberately consumed something you knew could hurt you as a fully autonomous adult, then you really have no one to blame but yourself.

I’d like to add that within AO3, “Choose Not To Use Archive Warnings” is, in this food analogy, like the food labels that read “This product was manufactured in a facility where [potential food allergens] are used in the production of some products”. It’s not telling you they’re in there, but even more importantly, it’s not telling you they’re not. This is not the same as “No Archive Warnings Apply” which would be the certified [food allergen] free food. One guarantees a certain experience, the other has given you no promises as to what may or may not be included and is very much a consume-at-your-own-risk product.

just tried to show my older brother something while my little brother tried to show me something. poetic cinema in motion

The colour alignment implies that the littlest brother is gonna eat the oldest brother’s phone

That’s just what little brothers do

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umm actually no it implies goodness and happiness. don’t you know basic color theory

girls night

so I read the article and the story is both less and more insane than it sounds.

basically, there's been an ants' nest near a vent shaft of this abandoned Soviet bunker for decades. the nest spilled over into the bunker itself at some point once it was abandoned and there was no way for the ants to make their way back up to the nest, no queen but a constant supply of new colony members raining down from above, and no source of food in the bunker other than the corpses of their fellow ants.

fast forward to some scientists looking for bats that stumble on what's basically a post-apocalyptic ant society. they go "holy fuck" start studying, and observe that, all things considered, the ants still pretty much act like regular ants doing regular ant things.

fast forward some more, and the scientists feel like they have enough data from observing the colony as-is, so they decide to try an experiment. they put a little walkway between the bunker colony and the og colony in the vent shaft so the bunker colony members have the option of leaving and rejoining the og colony.

spoiler alert: every single ant in the bunker immediately nopes the fuck back to the colony in the vent shaft. within days the bunker is completely empty. the scientists leave the walkway in place so when more ants inevitably fall back down the vent shaft they can just climb back up instead of starting up the cycle anew.

tl;dr it's not "oh noes evil ants are on a rampage", it's "ants forced into a horrible situation to survive get to go home"

In an effort to avoid supporting megacorporations, I shall now be posing questions directly to tumblr that I would otherwise have googled.

If Mayonnaise is just eggs and oil, why it creamy?

Because it's also evil

Thanks!

Have scientists figured out what dark matter is yet?

Yup! It’s anything that takes up space, has mass, and is goth.

Wow!

What happens if you eat 23 packages of peeps?

You meet god

Thank goodness!

What's the correct way to eat a banana?

Whole, in one gulp.

Delicious!

Who is the Muffin Man?

Father of the Muffin Boy

Makes sense!

Why is my car making a ker-klunk noise?

Car's haunted

Uh Oh

How to fix a haunted car?

Slam into a priest in a crosswalk going at least forty miles an hour

It worked!

Where does the wax in scented candles go?

into the sky, where it turns into stars

Cool!

Why are weddings so damn expensive?

priest has to pay for medical bills related to haunted car crashing into him

....Ah

susie you have no idea how many people love you (platonically and romantically)

personal opinion but, in fandom space, ai generated works are not fan-created contents. because a soulless robot cannot be passionate about something nor can it be “a fan” of something the way human artists are

writing advice that changed my life:

the reality that destroyed me:

shoutout to AO3 authors who write 100k fics for free while juggling mental illness, academic burnout, 3 jobs, and a deep-rooted need to fix fictional people.

when ur friend says a speech pattern that u also use

"don't worry scientists will invent a way to solve climate change!" They already did... several times over... just the people who didnt like their solutions (cough cough oil companies) had enough cash to shut them up both legally and illegally

Sphinx

the way some of you describe art that you like is genuinely incredible

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a feel like the new generation of fanfic readers NEED to understand that clicking on a fic (interaction) does nothing. ao3 has no algorithm. your private discord discussions of fic do not reach the authors. if you do not actively engage with writers they will stop posting. this isn’t social media this is community.

Illustration by Sophie Lucido Johnson

I want to apologize to @homunculus-argument for assuming their claim that pigeons can identify cancer was a shitpost.

As I stated earlier:

(original photo source)