sad bath cat

em dash

“not x, not y, but z”

short sentence stacking as a stylistic choice

none of these belong to ai. these are all what human writers have been writing since day one, way before ai was invented. ai was trained to mimic how human writers write — so em dash, not x not y but z and short sentence stacking would never have been used by ai at all if ai hadn’t learned and mimicked them from human writers.

no, you are not “fighting against ai” by accusing every work that has em dash, not x not y but z or short sentence stacking in it as ai-generated, you are helping ai harm the writing community by engaging in witch hunt and scaring human writers away from creating/sharing their works for fear of being wrongly accused of using ai.

A french one a friend sent me, we send each other pictures of doors for.... reasons.

The direct translation is "door out of use" and "just like us all", but the french word for "out of use" also means "doomed". So it would be something like "door doomed, just like us all".

i’m not talking about gender affirming posts for trans guys designed to offset actual dysphoria. i’m talking about the more general ones like “you’re still Manly if you have depression” or “taking care of your health/asking for consent/cooking/etc is actually Super Masculine because xyz”

it’s the same phenomenon as people reassuring straight men that Physical Affection Isn’t Gay, like yes you’ve identified the symptoms of the problem, that men won’t discuss or do certain things bc they are terrified of not seeming Manly Enough™ but it isn’t getting to the root of the problem

which in this case is that patriarchy draws a line around women and anything associated with women and calls it tainted, lesser, weak, foolish, crazy, worthless. And so men don’t want to be associated with those terrible Womanly things because maybe that would mean that they were just as tainted, lesser, weak, foolish, crazy, or worthless as women are.

and insisting that some of these ‘tainted’ things are actually Manly After All doesn’t solve the root problem. even if you succeed there will always be other important things men are cutting themselves off from because they don’t want to be tainted by the association with women.

so like even if your only priority is men being whole and healthy people, even if you don’t give a shit about women, if your goal is to make it okay for men to cry and be vulnerable and seek help and live full and happy lives as complete human beings who aren’t constantly dividing and subsuming and destroying vital pieces of themselves they don’t think are Manly enough –

if you want to let men just live without the pressure to constantly prove themselves Manly Enough –

targeting misogyny is just the only viable way to do that.

hegemonic masculinity requires a ‘lesser’ thing to set itself up in opposition to, something that’s hated and despised and demeaned that men have to be trained to try to not be like. Without misogyny the whole thing collapses. There’s no pressure to be Manly™ if there’s no shame in not being a man.

That seems fairly pointless from a liberation standpoint; it challenges nothing, and adds very little. Men in this perspective are still entitled to power over women, but the things they must do to maintain that power are slightly different and perhaps a little less violent.

The idea that men are and must be masculine, the concept of gendering certain traits as Manly and others as Womanly, is inherently a patriarchal construction and any attempt to expand these categories or salvage some kind of healthy way to use them is doomed.

Courage, integrity, kindness, all these things people are currently championing as “healthy masculinity” - these traits can and do exist in people of all genders. When we urge men to behave in prosocial ways, it’s ultimately counterproductive to appeal to their desire to identify with hegemonic masculinity, because we’re still, in that case, working with and upholding the gender hierarchy.

Men are capable of doing good without being rewarded with the power that comes with a higher station in the gender hierarchy, and it is both unnecessary and counterproductive to promise this reward by identifying good behaviours as “masculine”.

It is unnecessary and counterproductive to gender the traits required to engage with others in a positive way. And it’s ultimately more useful to think of ourselves as human beings trying to live our values, instead of trying to redefine divisive and hierarchical gender roles into something healthy and progressive.

Not seeing constant acts of resistance doesn’t mean it isn’t happening all around you all the time. Some very effective methods require silence and secrecy.

Me when I understand the things that have historically harmed creative industries.

Right off the top of my head here are five terrible possible consequences of such a policy that would harm creatives:

Forcing second language learners out of the market or making them more subject to scrutiny (and !!!!possible PROSECUTION?!?!?) - second language learners are more likely to be accused of using AI in their writing because their tone may come off stiff, stilted, or 'unnatural' - all things that people are told to look for to identify AI.

Weaponization of accusations of AI use against creatives to force takedowns or account closures. Since it's impossible to prove that something was created WITHOUT ai if you don't have documentation of the creation it would be easy to brigade an artist with unlabelled AI reports (similar to the way that false DMCA reports are used). (This would also immediately be weaponized by corporations against applicants - the example above uses AI rejecting resumes as an example of harm but it's insane to think that companies wouldn't reject applicants for suspected AI use in their resumes, which would make it exceptionally hard to prove bias because, well, lots of people DO use AI to help write their resumes)

Immediate gatekeeping of "non-AI" versions of tools. You used to use smart select to remove the background in photos? Get good with that magnetic lasso unless you want to pay extra for the AI plugin so that Adobe can meet the labeling requirements. And then get ready to label your photos or collages as AI-assisted (it's very easy to make an argument that the magic wand or smart selector tool in most image programs is powered by machine learning/AI). Did you increase the resolution of your scanned photo? That's upscaling now, that's an AI tool and must be labeled. (Note: these aren't necessarily ACTUALLY ai tools, but if a company can make more money by charging you for the 'non AI' option they will, and if a bad actor wants to accuse you of using AI because of a tool that doesn't *technically* use AI, how will you prove that you didn't use the AI upscaling?)

Gatekeeping on platforms. "This post has been given a tentative AI label, please submit a request for review." "Your request was rejected, please submit your process documentation to challenge the rejection." "The hosting entity is responsible for unlabelled violations" is exactly how we got SESTA/FOSTA and your uploads are going to be scanned (by a perfectly legally labeled AI tool or left to the subjective judgement of people) and labeled or rejected with a strong bias toward false positives to avoid responsibility on the part of the platforms.

Mandatory labeling of tools you already use and don't think of as AI. Which, like, maybe that's a good thing in the end because maybe that would get people to think about what they mean when they say AI but. Like. You know that most digital photography uses some kind of machine learning process, right? Whether that's autofocus or smart lighting adjustments or HDR, that's a machine learning component of the camera's software that was trained on millions of images by uncredited photographers. I'm a big fan of manual photography (here's a guide I've written on it so that you can get an SLR and ensure the purity of your artwork in the future), but if you use digital photography as reference or to do color selection or to trace backgrounds, get ready to label your work as AI-assisted.

Remember that the goal here was to not hurt creatives and we have arrived immediately at a plausible scenario where creatives could be required to label all of their work that used digital photography at any stage in the production and could be prosecuted for not doing so.

Anyway.

Are you a gold star artist, or is your work unclean, forever tainted by the fruit of the poisoned tree?

Think about that for a second.

Now, think about how you'd prove it if someone was serving you legal paperwork requiring that you demonstrate there was no AI used in the production of your work.

I came across this Tumblr post and here's why people blaming the fans for the writers fatal flaw is just wrong.

And now I'll get to the most unpopular opinion I've ever shared online - fully aware that what I've already said very few people on here would agree with: I don't think it's Rob Thomas who killed the show with his ill-adviced decision, it's the fans who did that. Not that they are not aware of it, but they still refuse to take the blame for it, as if there could not have been any other reaction. And clearly they don't regret it. After they paid to bring Veronica Mars back once before. They collectively decided that season 4 was a crime against the fandom and that it never happened. Therefore making it impossible for anyone who did not feel the same way to get more content and have some closure. I know I don't get to be mad about that, but it is sad. And I've been on the other side of this a few times and stopped watching a show after a certain point, but that never triggered a cancellation. I've seen favorite characters killed off many times without it ever leading to a fandom turning hostile like that, sometimes even ripping everything else apart about the show. And it's not even like Veronica Mars was a cosy show where people didn't die. It was neo noir. It started out with her solving the murder of her best friend ffs. So, how did this happen? How did one character's death kill the show? Was it because he was the main love interest over more than a decade? Why does it now feel like he was more important than the protagonist? Or was it maybe because the fans campaigned for it's return and even funded the movie? Was it because they felt more invested in a way and later betrayed although they did not pay for the last season to get made?

I know this take circulates a lot: “The fans killed Veronica Mars. If they hadn’t reacted so strongly to Season 4, we’d have gotten more.”

But after watching this happen over and over, across shows I love, shows that shaped me, shows that built entirely new corners of fandom culture. I just don’t buy it.

Fans aren’t killing shows. Writers are breaking the emotional contract, torching the narrative spine, and then blaming the audience for the smoke.

And if Veronica Mars were the only example, maybe we could write it off. But this specific heartbreak, this implosion of trust, has now happened on too many shows, in too many fandoms, with too similar a pattern to chalk up to “one overreacting audience.”

It didn’t start with Season 4. It didn’t start with Logan Echolls. And it didn’t end there.

It’s The Handmaid’s Tale. It’s Game of Thrones. It’s The 100. And on and on.

This is a cultural pattern. A breaking point between audiences and creators, and VM is just the case study where people still argue about who struck the match.

The pattern is the same every time: the writers kill the relationship they spent years telling us mattered most.

This is the part critics pretend not to understand.

Fandom doesn’t melt down because a character dies. Characters die constantly in television, and people grieve them, yell about them, move on. They melt down when a character dies in a way that breaks the story’s thesis. Let's take a deeper look:

Veronica Mars: Logan Echolls

Years of storytelling, marketing, PR, revival hype, and arc-building told us:

Logan is Veronica’s person. He’s the love story that grows with her. This relationship is the heart of the show.

Season 4 then kills him in the last 90 seconds as a plot device. Not a turning point, not a thematic evolution, just a twist that contradicts everything the show told us about her healing.

The Handmaid’s Tale: Nick Blaine

Four seasons of narrative work (and two books) told us:

Nick is June’s equal, mirror, moral counterweight, and match. Their love is radical, raw, complicated, feminist, and central.

Then Seasons 5 and 6 decide:

Actually, punish him. Actually, flatten him. Actually, the story is about motherhood, not womanhood or desire. Actually, June belongs with the safe man.

That isn’t a character arc. That’s an ideological pivot.

Game of Thrones: Daenerys Targaryen

Eight seasons told us:

Daenerys is the heart of the myth. She breaks chains. She frees people. She’s the emotional and moral center of the show’s grand design.

The final three episodes say:

Forget that. She snaps because… trauma? lineage? vibes? The woman who liberated millions is actually a tyrant.

A series that built itself on emotional logic ends on plot logic. The single most disorienting pivot a story can make.

When the ending contradicts what the story was, fans don’t feel shocked. They feel gaslit.

Killing the love interest isn’t the issue. Killing the thesis is.

This is the part nobody wants to talk about, because it forces a reckoning with the power and legitimacy of fandom interpretation.

Logan wasn’t just Veronica’s boyfriend. Nick wasn’t just June’s romantic partner. Daenerys wasn’t just another lead.

These characters were:

thematic mirrors

emotional anchors

narrative engines

symbolic structures

the emotional grammar of the show

and the embodiment of the protagonist’s arc

You don’t just rip those out. Not without re-breaking everything around them. It’s like pulling the keystone from a bridge and then blaming drivers for falling into the river.

Why does this keep happening? Because TV writers mistake cynicism for prestige.

This is the actual disease that keeps killing fan-beloved shows:

Prestige = tragedy

Prestige = subversion

Prestige = women alone

Prestige = punishing love

Prestige = nihilism masquerading as maturity

It’s a worldview that sees romance arcs, emotional continuity, loyal love interests, or morally gray partners as “cheap,” “fan service,” or “too soapy.” And because of that mindset, writers keep doing one of two things:

1. They kill the love interest to seem edgy or surprising.

2. They rewrite the protagonist or their partner beyond recognition.

And sometimes both. Either way, the show loses the very thing that made it groundbreaking. The fans didn’t kill Veronica Mars. They mourned what the creator killed first. If a fandom was powerful enough to:

campaign for a return

fund a movie

keep the discourse alive for a decade

pull the show into the 2010s streaming era

…then maybe, just maybe, they had a point about the story’s emotional core.

People didn’t walk away because Logan died. They walked away because his death dismantled the show’s moral vocabulary.

Just like:

People walked away from The Handmaid’s Tale, especially 6x10, because they dismantled the show’s feminist thesis and punished the very arc they built around love, agency, and liberation. (Ahem Hulu's TT because I will be shocked if it's not heading for a similar exit.)

People walked away from Game of Thrones because the finale dismantled eight years of character logic and replaced it with plot convenience.

This isn’t “toxicity.” This is narrative literacy.

Fans understood the assignment better than the people writing the final chapters. The truth is this: fans don’t kill shows. Shows kill themselves when they decide the audience was wrong about what mattered.

And here's the irony that never gets talked about: Writers taught us what mattered.

They built these love stories. They crafted these arcs. They centered these relationships. They marketed these dynamics. They put these characters in promos, posters, finales, interviews, season-long narratives. They told us these bonds mattered.

So when they then turn around and say:

Actually, wrong. Actually, silly of you to care. Actually, this was never the point.

Of course people walk.

It’s not immaturity. It’s not entitlement. It’s not “fandom killing the show.”

this is how you end up with bizarre plot twists, killing popular characters for shock, etc, etc, bc modern writers look at fandom, see the pieces the fans are putting together and theorising the plot or character relationships, and are like "oh no! we have been successfully predicted! we must do something to subvert that stat!" and then promptly torch the story they were telling to introduce some wacky twist no one saw coming - and feel betrayed when fans respond with anger or confusion, rather than awe at the crazy twist no one saw coming because the writers thought it up ten minutes ago rather than foreshadowing it throughout the story from the beginning.

a good story is one your audience can predict, tbh. even for mystery stories. part of the fun is learning alongside the protagonists, to putting the pieces together and understanding what the catharsis is going to be for this particular conflict or how this story will end. but that's not how modern writers view "good stories" nowadays. fans are to be outsmarted whenever they start theorising, or even be mocked (remember the episodes from BBC Sherlock or Supernatural mocking those exact fans?).