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

[ride_4ever]

Oh, that's definitely who I'm talking about -- that it's "any story of [yours] that included Vecchio" leading to her lecturing you is the clincher. She styles herself the ultimate guardian of Vecchio's honor, the ultimate promoter of the friendship aspect of RayV & Fraser, and a RayK-hater while ranting about alleged RayV-haters.

It's unfortunately likely that she will turn up commenting on your fic again -- so I hope you will now see her for the unreliable voice that she is and you won't continue letting her undermine your confidence. She's been at this for decades and no sign that she intends to call it quits.Try to think of it as an unfortunate rite of passage in dS fandom -- there's hardly a dS fanworks creator who has not drawn her ire. She has even flamed me in comments on fic of mine where the fic IS RayV-positive because it wasn't positive ENOUGH for her taste.

[lucy_roman]

She certainly doesn't seem to see the irony in hating RayK and defending RayV to the hilt.
I think now I'm older and more sure of myself as a writer I will be able to just ignore her.

[minoanmiss]

If your fics are on AO3 you can block her username(s).

[lucy_roman]

I think she posts as a guest. But I haven't had any bad comments yet!

[ride_4ever]

She may or may not on occasion post as a guest, but it's not her preferred method since that would keep her from commenting on fic that specifies comments are only allowed from account-holders. Her usual method is to just keep changing her user-name and getting new accounts.

[minoanmiss]

One can also limit comments to registered users only. Apparently this dingbat keeps making accounts but every little bit should help.

[lucy_roman]

She hasn't commented yet on mine, thank goodness, but if she does I will try and block her.

[ride_4ever]

She's been blocked on AO3 again and again. She just keeps getting another new account under another new name and continues trolling, plus she even goes to the effort of commenting anew where she was previously blocked to sarcastically say "ooooh, you reported me to the Abuse Team, I'm so scared...."

[ride_4ever]

Yes, decades ago some of us tried to have actual conversations with her but eventually we adopted the saying "don't feed the troll".