Alright, to ao3's soon to be arriving Wattpad Refugees, a basic guide to general user culture:

1.) Unlike Wattpads vote system that let's you like each chapter, the ao3 equivalent kudos only allows one per work. Everyone is generally quietly annoyed about this. To engage with each chapter, you're heavily encouraged to comment. Trust me, it makes people's day.

2.) Ao3 has no algorithm. By default it's latest updated work first. You can find things to your taste through searches, filters and tags.

3.) 'No archive warnings apply' and 'user has chosen not to use archive warnings' mean two very different things. No archives warnings means the work is free from any content that could require a warning tag (character death, graphic depictions of violence, non-con, etc). User has chosen not to use archive warnings means it could contain any of the warning content, be it hasn't been explicitly tagged. Treat it like an allergen. No archive warnings apply is allergen free. User has chosen not to use archive warnings, may contain traces or whole chunks of the allergen. If you're likely to have a bad reaction, maybe don't take the risk.

4.) Speaking of warnings, ao3 has very few restrictions on the type of work that's allowed. Whatever your personal thoughts or feelings on that are, thats how the site is. You're likely to run across some dark subject matters and a lot of people are uncomfortable with reading that. You're well within your rights not like these works and have your opinion on whether they should be allowed, but harassing the authors of such works (or any works) is more likely to come back on you than them. Ao3 operates on a strong policy of 'don't like, don't read'. Use the tagging system to your full advantage to only engage with the kind of works you want to see.

We look forward to welcoming you all and seeing the fantastic works you create. Happy writing!

some of my favorite tiny love stories

update:

(from nyt’s modern love column)

#no bc in 10 years their website is gonna be like#brave columbia students stood on the side of justice! we are the home of progressive thinking!!#theyre gonna be making instagram posts for the anniversary of the encampment on the admissions page

Looks like even this protest song is getting a reboot

just a topical audio edit for your fine whatever part of the day it is when you've happened upon this.

Transcript:

Lmao how is this real, "the ambient sounds of the world were wrong, sir"

Imagine paying Columbia-amounts of money to be taught by someone with kindergarten-level art literacy. Like, motherfucker, the wholeass point of 4’33” is to emphasize how every performance of live music is inextricably linked to the ambient sounds of the context in which it is performed!!!!!!! Paying attention to and thinking about the context of the performance is the point of the song!!!! If the point was to hear birds chirping and people walking, John Cage would have fucking recorded that instead. Insisting that art is only good when contains good things and makes you feel good things is baby-level art criticism. How the fuck is this dude a professor.

real life: sorry im just not a social media kind of guy… i wanna live in the moment y’know…. im like really private i like having secrets

on tumblr at 11:41 pm : guess whose period just started while watching fraggle rock season 1 episode 17

apparently people are now purchasing thick water to make slimes with because of a trend on tiktok

thick water is for disabled people who can’t swallow properly. stores usually have extremely limited supplies of it.

please don’t buy thick water for fun or to make slime with. it’s literally the only way some disabled people can drink anything. It’s not a fucking toy

I’m torn about this. Don’t we normally encourage folks to buy accessibility products to teach stores to carry more of it? Like, if it’s the last one on the shelf maybe leave it for the intended buyer but if there’s a shelf-full and you’re buying one? Idk

NO!!!!!!!! PLEASE DO NOT DO THIS

there are EXTREMELY FEW DISABLED PEOPLE WHO NEED THIS PRODUCT. A statistically TINY group of people who have to go store to store to buy it in bulk because they don’t keep more than 4 on the shelf

It’s not like a weighted blanket or compression socks. You won’t increase production by buying them all from the store because this product is literally so little-used that most people in the notes don’t know what it is and have never heard of it

also it’s WATER!!!!! WATER THAT VERY SPECIFIC DISABLED PEOPLE NEED TO DRINK!!! WHO WILL GO WITHOUT DRINKING IF THEY CANT GET IT.

YOU ARE 70% WATER!!!! IMAGINE NOT BEING ABLE TO DRINK ANY AND HOW DISTRESSING AND CRUEL THAT IS

DO. NOT. FUCKING. BUY IT. PLEASE.

ITS NOT WORTH IT. YOU WILL NOT SLEEP WELL AT NIGHT KNOWING YOU TOOK SOMEONE’S ABILITY TO DRINK AWAY IN THE NAME OF MAKING SLIME.

I've noticed as someone with physical disabilities and celiac, that while making mobility aids more accessible is generally a benefit to those who do need it, the opposite appears to happen when it's applied to food. Because of fad gluten free dieters, gluten free food has actually become MORE UNSAFE for people who have actual celiac. The manufacturers are catering to the fad dieters, not the people who actually have to rely on gluten free food for health.

More and more often I'm buying gluten free food that look legit but then I get home and see that I've missed "made on equipment that processes wheat" warnings on it. Or if I'm ordering groceries online, it'll be labeled as gluten free only for the box/jar/whatever to have warnings on it in person. In one obscene case that I talk often about, I nearly bought "celiac certified" ramen that was made from BARLEY! Meanwhile the manufacturers of these dangerous foods marketed as gluten free are still jacking up the price for a criminally low fraction of the amount you'd find in regular food. This was happening before covid and has just gotten worse.

Speaking of, at the beginning of covid I went hungry even when my SNAP was plentiful because people panic bought all the gluten free food. I couldn't find anything in multiple stores. I don't know how high the rate is in my city for celiac, but I'm still suspicious that this was due to the celiac population.

I've been told by epileptics that the same thing is happening because of fad keto dieters. Food that is mislabeled as ketogenic for the fad dieters is dangerous for epileptics to eat because the nutritional ratio is off and it's screwing up their careful and strict diet that's supposed to be so they can control their goddamn SEIZURES.

Tl;dr: don't touch specialized diets if you don't need them. You're not making them more accessible to people who need them, you're making the food manufacters cater to people like YOU instead of the people the diets claim to help and making it even more dangerous for us to eat.

(And if all you care about is money, know that you're wasting it on shitty food in the first place which makes no fucking sense to me)

tip for people who want thick water for fun or slime:

heat up a big pot of water. add some cornstarch. mix thoroughly and let it dissolve.

you can get water from the tap for pretty much free and cornstarch is buyable in bulk for cheap

thick water is probably more expensive for not that much amount

1. holstein 2. jersey

3. brahman 4. highland

6. texas longhorn 7. black angus

8. brown swiss 9. guernsey

10. watusi 11. hanwoo

im so so sorry im so sorry i've let you down

belted galloway honorable mention

this is like 100% petty all things considered but i just can’t wait until some of u learn that it is absolutely normal for people of any age to refer to their dads as “daddy” in many parts of the south like it isn’t a red flag there. 60 year old women in my family still refer to their dads as “daddy.” and btw i think anyone should be allowed to call their own fathers whatever they want without someone either making it nasty or being accusatory like don’t you get tired of making ppl uncomfortable for no reason

good morning to every person who calls their parents mommy or daddy or pápi or papa or mama or baba or any other “childish” name. and to everyone who is unnecessarily rude or condescending under this post please go back to sleep and get some good rest so you’re not as cranky and mean to strangers on the internet.

does anybody have that one comic of a stick person driving home and suddenly thinking “penis” and making a face that looks like 

I KNEW I HAD THIS SOMEWHERE AND THIS IS THE FIRST POST I FOUND EVEN RELATED TO IT ON GOOGLE. AFTER LIKE AN HOUR OF DIGGING THROUGH VINTAGE MEMES I FOUND IT.

@weirdhusk-y

it’s survifrisk

Made the worst brownies ever created just now

Chat where did I go wrong

the reviews are in

leoreturns:

Dropout makes you say sentences.

the intrepid heroes reached new levels of Accurate Teenage Friendship tonight