A Little bit dummy

Body Horror: Things that cannot happen in real life. EX: The Thing, stomach mouths, eyes on hands, etc

Gore: Fresh injuries, often severe. EX: Severed leg, gutspill, deep gashes, etc

NEITHER: Healed injuries and burns, congenital differences, missing appendages, etc. If I could theoretically go to the store and see that character browsing the isles- It isn't body horror or gore. That's just a person. *AND the amount of people that tag, not just fictional characters, but real human beings as body horror is staggering. Its not solely a fandom issue, ableism and bigotry against anyone that looks sufficiently "different" is prevalent in real life and has devastating consequences.

AO3 SCAM

There's been a number of people reporting over on the AO3 subreddit that they're getting messages like this posted in the comments shortly after posting new fics.

The AO3 team are NEVER going to try and contact you about TOS violations via the comment section (or about anything else for that matter)

Don't click any links. Report the accounts involved (which might claim to be things like "LucySupport"), delete the message and move on.

AO3 SCAM

There's been a number of people reporting over on the AO3 subreddit that they're getting messages like this posted in the comments shortly after posting new fics.

The AO3 team are NEVER going to try and contact you about TOS violations via the comment section (or about anything else for that matter)

Don't click any links. Report the accounts involved (which might claim to be things like "LucySupport"), delete the message and move on.

Hey, yeah of course.

So my problem with ellipsus is that it's very, very hum about how it finances itself. If you dig through the FAQ, you will eventually find this buried under "How can I support Ellipsus:"

This is not transparent. This does not tell me how it is financing itself right now. Now, when you dig a bit through google, you'll find that it's venture capital backed (which means through investments) as a start-up. It's not entirely clear who backs it, but it's listend on SpeedInvest, a venture capital fund. Further, PitchBook—which lists data on companies and startups— has this data on Ellipsus:

Now, none of this is inherently shady. But it tells you that this is a for-profit company, that together with its investors will eventually expect to, well, you know. Make Profit. And the aforementioned paid tier is, in my opinion, probably not going to cut that. Which too would be fine, but taken all this in the light of how they market incredibly aggressively to fandom, present themselves as just "writers and nerds" with "dachshunds" etc etc. is... not trustworthy, in my opinion. So—what if the paid tier does not pay off enough? What's the plan now? Why, if none of this is An Issue, do I not find any of this information transparently and easily on their own goddamn website? I'm not saying anyone should run a writing program for free. I'm saying if you pick your market in fandom, I don't think it's too much to expect very straight-up information beyond a lot of promises ("we won't sell your data/we won't use AI/we won't do anything weird just trust us broskis").

I said this various times before but: if you don't know how a service pays for itself, and you're not paying, then you're the product. And beyond a "oh we're so fandom family uwu" messaging with no substance or proof, Ellipsus has given me literal subzero indication to trust them of this not being the case.

Which isn't to say that gDocs or whatever is better. But I'd deeply, deeply recommend using LibreOffice for a free alternative, or Scrivener, which is a one-time/lifetime purchase. It's also not to say not to use Ellipsus at all; use something else as your main software, then use it if you need something for on-the-go, or for easy draft-sharing or whatever. Like, all I'm saying here really is: don't just trust it blindly. Historically, things marketing themselves this aggressively to fandom with any lack of transparency are. Well. yk. Pretty often Not That Great.

well, that happened much faster than even I anticipated, I hate being right about these things. Also frankly, I do not think that this is enough to financially sustain them long-term, although I suppose that remains to be seen.

envy

gluttony

greed

lust

pride

sloth

wrath