Can I just say something honestly and very seriously to all you writers?
With the Internet going down the "nothing adult, no death, no nothing. Make it kid friendly" route,
Please don't ever stop making art or writing wips that are gruesome, horror, other things like that. Don't let the Internet sanitize how you wanna tell a story. Channel your rage into your art and keep going and don't give up
10000% this. And if I might add a corollary for readers: Step up and support authors making gruesome, horrifying, edgy, angry art. Read confidently; practice resilience with slightly uncomfortable topics so you can deprogram whatever cringing flinch response the purity-culture Internet has tried to impose on you. If you hear about some "scandalous" book that is "too problematic" for anyone to be allowed to read it, go read it on purpose just to see what all the fuss is about. Put edgy, difficult, bold books on your rec lists, praise them BECAUSE they're edgy and angry and bold, talk about those "dark" aspects that you love... And, crucially, find ways to do so without an apologetic disclaimer for the material the book contains.
Personally, I wish we could transition to saying something like "Contains depictions of {XYZ}" rather than "Content warning: {XYZ}" because the former is more neutral -- less of a value judgment. The latter, by use of the word "warning", quietly reinforces an idea (eagerly co-opted by the worst purity-culture antis and Christian fascists) that it is Wrong to write about those things, and that therefore the work is somehow Dangerous to the entire general public, even people who are not carrying {XYZ}-related trauma.
We HAVE to push back on the idea that serious topics make a piece of fiction inherently harmful, "sinful", or morally suspect -- and readers have to be as much a part of this conversation as authors are.
