a large cat, or possibly the shroud of turin

Hey there! Just a friendly reminder/PSA from your friendly neighborhood Pixiemage!

“Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” is too often (incorrectly) used as a cover-all tag, on fics ranging from Vaguely Uncomfortable to Serious Shit, as a replacement for any intense tags relating to the story. People will use it to say “Holy shit guys some INTENSE SHIT happens in this story” without actually saying what that Intense Shit™ is.

In actuality, the “Dead Dove” tag is meant to be used in addition to other warning tags. Pulled from a scene from the show Arrested Development (look it up on YouTube!), it means “Hi! Hey! I labeled this fic to warn you of what’s in it, so you might REALLY want to read those labels! This fic is exactly what it says on the tin! The tags are accurate! Don’t say I didn’t warn you, because this is me warning you! Read the tags!”

So before you accidentally use the “Dead Dove: Do Not Eat” tag without context, here’s your preemptive lesson for next time. Please tag your fics accordingly! Ta!

AO3 saying they will not be banning AI-generated works on their platform

I agree with them and I respect them for this. no, I am not a fan of AI-generated fics, but as I’ve said many times before in the past:

AO3 was built with the “complete anti censorship” stance. them banning AI-generated works would be them going against their own core values of “no censorship”. and “no censorship” means nothing is censored. and that includes works you dislike for ethical or whatever reasons.

as of now, most (I believe) of creators who use AI to write for them properly tag their works as “AI-generated”. so you can safely filter these works out if you don’t wish to consume them. but I have no doubt the majority (if not all) of them will stop tagging their works as AI if AO3 actually bans AI works, which means these AI works will be untagged. you can never know for sure if the fic you read is AI or not, since they aren’t properly tagged anymore.

whether or not you like it, AI is getting better and more human-like, meaning it’s getting harder to spot when a fic is AI.

speculation, witch hunts, wrongful accusations and harassment harm real writers, as well as writing community as a whole, as much as AI does, if not more.

it’s impossible for AO3 to effectively ban and remove “only AI-generated works” without innocent human-made works getting wrongly marked as AI and deleted in the process. so if AO3 were to ban AI-generated works, it would mean

there was a chance of a human-made work getting wrongly marked as AI and taken down

there was a chance of an AI-generated work being wrongly accepted as human-made

fandom drama could and would cause innocent writers to get their human-made works falsely reported as AI

human-made fics that “upset people”, in terms of contents, could and almost certainly would be reported as AI, because there were people who “found the fics inappropriate/disgusting and wanted them taken down” — and the only way they could do that was by falsely reporting these fics as AI

AO3 volunteers would have to decide which works were AI “based on vibes alone”. and not only was it impossible for them to always make the correct judgement, there simply weren’t enough volunteers and time for every single work that was reported as AI to be thoroughly read by a human volunteer

no, “AI detector” is unreliable and the machine itself is also AI — it’s known to have incorrectly marked human-made works as AI and AI-generated works as human-made.

and for all of yall that are still figuring it out or aren't getting the support you deserve:

All the frogs.

They will then violently insist that this version is superior to the canon one and act like they "fixed" them and it's like. Buddy that's not the same character anymore. That's just your own oc commiting identity fraud. Like. I get the desire to experiment with different interpretations of a story. But first of all it's okay to just make an original character if that's what you really want to do. And second of all, are you even really a fan of the character you "fixed" if they're a completely different person afterwards?

It can be difficult to drum up interest in something original when you primarily hang out in fan creative spaces (e.g., "I like the way you write fic but why would I read your original story about characters I have no preexisting emotional attachment to?")

Every time someone makes an original character that's as well-rounded, balanced, interesting, and/or powerful as a canon (usually straight white cis male) character, they're accused of making an Mary Sue (or, less often, a Marty Stu). Fandom (an amorphous group that heavily skews both female and queer) repeatedly tells itself and its members that original characters (which often reflect at least part of their creator's identity—female/queer/POC/etc.) being as smart/capable/powerful/interesting/complex as canon protagonists is Bad and people who make such OCs should feel Bad.

Point 1 is unfortunate. Sometimes there's no crossover in interest between fans of fan works and fans of original works. This seems strange considering how many fans of fan works start out as fans of a media on which fan works are based, but there really are those who prefer fan works to the original. (How many times have you read a fic you felt was better than than the book it was based on?) Sometimes this is because they've been burned too many times by media that had a lot of potential from the outside, only to look deeper and discover most everything that made it interesting was removed to make it palatable to the largest audience possible. Fans searching for a certain je ne sais quoi (representation, emotional depth, character development, relationship complications that don't boil down to lack of communication, etc.) that rarely makes it to mass-market media may choose to forgo all original works in favor of fan works. While original works from indie creators may also contain all the complexity these fans feel mass-market media lacks, they're less likely to take a chance and invest time/money in something whose quality they can't be certain of.

Point 2 is a straight-up tragedy. Until fans stop policing themselves and others into believing the lie that fictional characters must follow certain specific guidelines, we will continue to see fan writers and artists creating interesting, complex original characters using the names of canon characters. Because they've been told creating memorable and unique original characters is a bad thing that only 14-year-old girls (derogatory) do. And the worst thing that can happen to someone on the internet is to be accused of being a young teen girl, because then no one will ever take them seriously.

Top Frame: A nondescript figure (labeled You) reaches for a yellow ball (labeled A Normal Life Full of Normal Things.)

Bottom Frame: A hulking pink behemoth (labeled JayTim Week 2026) pulls You away from A Normal Life Full of Normal Things.