Fannish 50 Challenge 2025: Post # 19: the infamous due South troll

[ride_4ever]

If you are in due South fandom you know about the "infamous due South troll," she of many names and one obsession: for decades she has been seeking out due South fic and vids that don't jibe with her personal opinion about which ships and which storylines are "true or not". She was flaming me even before I posted my first fic...back in 2011 she flamed my comment that I made on YouTube about a due South vid that I liked, telling me what was "wrong" with the perspective of the vid and how I was "wrong" for liking it. She actively seeks out for reading and for watching stuff that she knows she won't like and then she reads it or watches it and then she spews out her hatred. The last most recent time that she flamed me -- before TODAY -- was in 2023 when she pounced on a fic that I had written eleven years earlier and said hateful things about it -- I did not respond to her hate and TODAY she returned to that same fic and in even greater detail than previously FLAMED THE SAME FIC A SECOND TIME. Hells, that is some tenacity -- REREADING a fic to which she had already "objected" (she told me that she "disagreed" with my fic) and then commenting further in the face of my previous non-response. /o\

Comments

[verushka70]

Like I said in email... that is some serious decades long untreated or undertreated mental illness. She'd never have the balls to do this in person, I'll wager. It's the kind of thing cowards do online BECAUSE they're cowards in real life. Sorry you had to put up with it.

I've only gotten crap on a fic from her once, & it was NOT from a registered AO3 account - it was a fic where I'd left blank the "comments allowed only from registered AO3 users" ticky-box. (I otherwise have that box ticked ALL the time for all my fics.)

I don't think she can get an AO3 account anymore - I think she's banned from getting an AO3 account at the IP address level because she's been reported so. Many. TIMES. for so many, many years. But if you don't turn that option on, anyone can comment on your AO3 fic using whatever identification (real or fake email) they choose. Which can be nice... Or it used to be, before the Internet was overrun with millions of children & unstable adults who behave like children.

It's a bummer, & I'm sure it cuts down a lot on the comments one might otherwise get, but it's the only way to block this kind of bullshit from mentally unstable cowards like her. Besides, non registered users can still leave kudos.

[ride_4ever]

Ah, I did not know that it's possible to totes ban someone from AO3. I thought that as long as they kept opening a new account under a new username they would be able to get on again.

I haz learned a new AO3 thing from you

[verushka70]

I don't know for sure that that is the case, but I know that previous iterations of various fic archives using the same Linux software as AO3 were able to do IP level bans of abusers. These days, with high speed Internet service providers and mobile phone companies using dynamic IP addressing servers to provide Internet service, it might be more complicated than that...

But then, these days, more detail is also given in the IP "handshake" between connecting devices (phones, tablets, laptops) and fic archive servers (including data unique to each device, like IMEI number & MAC address). So I just figured it's still be possible to ban connections from specific devices.

Of course, people can still connect from public devices, such as library computers. But even if trolls could get AO3 accounts by connecting that way, they'd still have to BE at a public computer that AO3 admins don't have blocked at the IP/IMEI/MAC address level, in order to use it, as far as I know. Or use a VPN.

(I don't think AO3 blocks VPN connections because of fen connecting from countries where what they're reading (such as homosexual relationships/slash, for example) is illegal, and they're just using a VPN to get around such censorship and discrimination.)

So if you as an author restrict fic comments only to registered AO3 users, and a troll gets an AO3 account using a public computer because their device can't connect to AO3 or create an account on it, then the troll'd only be able to use their public-computer created AO3 account on a public computer, during, for example, library or Internet cafe hours, or some other non-blocked/non-banned device... Not from any IP/IMEI/MAC address that's already banned (such as their personal cell phone or laptop). I'm sure Squidgie would know for sure, though.

btw, I signal boosted this post of yours on Tumblr and it's been reblogged a few times among dS fen.

[ride_4ever]

TYK for the signal-boost to Tumblr.

[pigtailed_goddess]

I'm so sorry they've done this throughout to you and taint the fandom and experience for you, for us all, like this. You especially do such lovely works and take time to keep fandom active and engaged.

I want to thank you for being on here and other spaces. I don't comment often enough.

The good should drown out the weirdly obsessive butting in negative. They've no place to do that to people creating, there's no justification, and it's such ick behaviour.

[ride_4ever]

Thank you kindly, bb.

[hsavinien]

Jesus, she's still kicking? Sorry you're in the line of fire again.

[msilverstar]

Can people just block her on AO3?

[ride_4ever]

No use blocking her -- fen have tried -- she just gets a new account under a different name and then comments back with sarcastic remarks like "ooooh, I'm so scared, you reported me and had me blocked...." and think continues with something like "I'm not really scared when I can just get a new account...."

[msilverstar]

:-((((((