There Are Some Days Where I Will Absolutely Happily Chew Through 3934849 Fics Of The Exact Same Premise/trope/plot

There are some days where I will absolutely happily chew through 3934849 fics of the exact same premise/trope/plot and then some days where I don't even want to touch a fandom or pairing because the Popular Trope Trap is so significant within it I simply don't have the energy or willpower to wade through it all to find something else.

I think maybe on those days my main issue is that there's sometimes not much variance within the trope itself. Coffee Shop AUs, for example. They're almost always meet-cutes or meet-awkwards. Its always some harried barista wistfully using hot drinks to flirt with an even hotter customer. Its almost always winter or Christmas and its an endless cycle of the same puns, dialogue and endings.

Give me the coffee shop that's a front for the mafia. Remember that post about the guy who went into the restaurant and it was so very clearly a mafia front but he got served anyway and had the time of his life? Give me that!

Give me the customer watching a "barista" in a three piece suit nearly lose an arm trying to froth a latte for the first time. A man who kills for a living slowly experiencing a mental breakdown as he tries to add a leaf decor to a cappuccino. Mr. Dark and Deadly dying inside as a gaggle of sorority girls rush the counter for 32 pumpkin spice vanilla two-pump caramel syrup extra shot whipped creams.

Give me the customer accidentally ordering the one very specific drink that is actually a secret code and getting a cup full of cocaine baggies instead. Or a man who joins him at the table with an expensive iPad and begins asking him all sorts of weird questions about how he wants his lawn mowed or his pest control problem handled.

Give me the poor barista who applies for the job not knowing its a mafia front. Who just thinks its some weird rich people business venture because nobody really buys coffee there but it never goes out of business and oh my god that is not a bag of coffee grounds that is a bag of so, so many drugs.

Teacher-parent AUs? Hey, guess what, my child is actually a werewolf but hasn't had his first change yet and we all just assumed he was born human except oops, he isn't, because he just suddenly became a little snacksized werewolf in the middle of detention and you're screaming and he's stuck in his desk chair howling and wow you are absolutely right when you say teachers do not get paid enough to deal with what they do.

Hi hello yes, I'm the private tutor you hired, what a lovely little family of... 5.... 9.... 15 children you have. I'm so sorry to hear you're single, Mrs. Henderson. I'm sure their father would be proud you're raising them so well. What do you mean there's no father? What do you mean you made them? What do you mean; 'would I like to see the lab'?

Just. Give me some flavor sometimes.

Good News Network

This Startup Is Using Dead Leaves to Make Paper Without Cutting Trees

The company already produces 3 million paper carrier bags per year from 5,000 metric tons of leaves from their headquarters in Paris.

"Businesses like to talk about the concept of a closed loop or circular economy, but often they’re trying to close small loops. Releaf Paper takes dead leaves from city trees and turns them into paper for bags, office supplies, and more—which is to say they are striving to close one heck of a big loop.

How big? Six billion trees are cut down every year for paper products according to the WWF, producing everything from toilet paper to Amazon boxes to the latest best-selling novels. Meanwhile, the average city produces 8,000 metric tons of leaves every year which clog gutters and sewers, and have to be collected, composted, burned, or dumped in landfills.

In other words, huge supply and huge demand, but Releaf Paper is making cracking progress. They already produce 3 million paper carrier bags per year from 5,000 metric tons of leaves from their headquarters in Paris.

Joining forces with landscapers in sites across Europe, thousands of tonnes of leaves arrive at their facility where a low-water, zero-sulfur/chlorine production process sees the company create paper with much smaller water and carbon footprints...

“In a city, it’s a green waste that should be collected. Really, it’s a good solution because we are keeping the balance—we get fiber for making paper and return lignin as a semi-fertilizer for the cities to fertilize the gardens or the trees. So it’s like a win-win model,” [Valentyn] Frechka, co-founder and CTO of Releaf Paper, told Euronews.

Releaf is already selling products to LVMH, BNP Paribas, Logitech, Samsung, and various other big companies. In the coming years, Frechka and Sobolenka also plan to further increase their production capacity by opening more plants in other countries. If the process is cost-efficient, there’s no reason there shouldn’t be a paper mill of this kind in every city.

“We want to expand this idea all around the world. At the end, our vision is that the technology of making paper from fallen leaves should be accessible on all continents,” Sobolenka notes, according to ZME Science."

-via Goodd News Network, August 15, 2024

What is "comship" and "safeship?"

(I saw an anti tag their anti ship post with #safeship which doesn't make sense to me but I was afraid to ask them lmao)

Comship and safeship both have multiple meanings and modern usage.

"Comship" is shorthand for "complex ship." This is being used by both antis and proshippers but is currently being hailed as an "alternative to proship" by most people.

"Comship" is also shorthand for "comfort ship," although you may sometimes see it spelt as "comfship."

"Safe ship" is another term for "comfort ship." That one pairing which is just homey, always hits the feel good spot, ect.

*Some antis are using "safeship" as a way to mark their account as "safe for shipping" excluding proship or questionable/dark content. So essentially a place that is "safe" to "ship normally."

Seeing them being used together is definitely a contradiction; but its likely they were just using the tags for exposure and to generate interaction. Its a common tactic used by both proshippers and anti-shippers.

(For example if I make a post which is relative to both anti shipping and proshipping, and/or I want discussion from both sides, I will use both the anti-ship tag and the proship tag.)

*Some proshippers also use #shippingsafe or #safeshipper to indicate they are a "shipping safe space."

Wattpad's TOS are actually criminally hypocritical and ridiculous the more you read them. The website is literally just:

"Give us all your content for free to do with as we please and let us expose you to 493737573 website cookies and advertisements but also if you change the color of our logo we'll sue and if someone gets inaccurate medical advice from your fanfiction and sues we're also going to sue you for exposing us to risk."

Wattpad can mine your content but you can't mine Wattpad.

Wattpad can sue you for absolutely anything they perceive as "damaging" or "breach of terms" but the moment you make an account you release them of any and all claims, damages and responsibility.

If Anne Rice 2.0 does happen, Wattpad has so kindly declared that they reserve the right to be the sole defense, so they can throw you under the bus and then charge you for any and all fees incurred including legal and "related" costs. Oh, and you have to co-operate because, guess what? You agreed to!

In the instance you do wind up in a legal battle for your own content you're shit out of luck because Wattpad will have no part in it other than making sure its absolved of any responsibility and costs, and you're restricted to attending Court only in the Province of Ontario.

Like. How anyone still uses Wattpad is beyond me. Completely. It so obviously nothing more than a for-profit content theft facilitator. I feel like we've just moved so far beyond the need for Wattpad. Its so outdated even if you don't look at the TOS.

What’s your opinion on c.ai roleplay, ai art and generative ai in general?

My opinion is that AI should make peoples' lives easier, rather than stealing peoples' creations and spewing out butchered replicas so it can "replace them."

All current creative accessible AI is modelled on the stolen content of hundreds of thousands of people. Character AI? Stolen fanfiction. ChatGPT? Stolen essays, novels, fanfiction, images. Generative AI? Same thing.

And once its in, its impossible to remove entirely. And the techbros making tens of thousands off your stolen content don't want to remove it anyway. When Glaze first came out they threw fits and tried to get Glaze legally destroyed so they could keep stealing and profiting off of content theft.

And its so fucking easy for people to mine content off of websites and steal your content without you ever even knowing! And if or when you do find out, its too late. Your content is part of that code forever. Its been absorbed, butchered, regurgitated.

AI in creative spaces does have a place, but it needs to be so, so carefully controlled and used. The widespread ability to just mangle together other people's creations and claim ownership of whatever it churns out is... Horrifying at best.

I vomit every time I see "made with ChatGPT!" on AO3.