Archive of Our Own: Protect Your Contact Information From Scammers.

In the last year, AO3 has seen a rise in "art commission" spambot comments. The bots leaving these comments pretend to be artists who want to make comics or illustrations for a fan's fic. After convincing their targets to contact them off AO3, they scam their targets into paying for that art. Fans have reported that after sending payment, they either received AI-generated art or nothing at all.

If you receive a scam comment from a guest, you can press the "Spam" button on the comment. This helps train our automated spam-checker to better detect this type of behavior.

If you encounter a scammer that has a registered account, or if you encounter a guest posting scam comments on someone else's work, please report them to the Policy & Abuse committee. To do so:

1. Select the "Thread" button on the scammer's comment. This will take you to the specific comment page.


2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Policy Questions & Abuse Reports.


3. In the "Brief summary of Terms of Service violation" field, enter "Spambot".


4. In the "Description of the content you are reporting" field, enter "This is a spambot, their username is USERNAME."

Reporting in this fashion helps us auto-sort your report so that it can be handled as soon as a Policy & Abuse volunteer is available. To help us address reports about these types of bots as fast as possible, please only submit one report per account, and don't include multiple accounts in the same report.

If you encounter a scam commenter on someone else's work, you can let the work creator know the commenter is likely a bot and link them to this news post.

(Thanks to JT for reminding me where the post was.)

These are probably going to be short and sweet, given I read them in late August through September. I'll hopefully catch up to where I am now by the time next term starts, and I go back to only reading stuff for school. Expect a bunch of books about gender, followed by all the romance novels I read on my off time, lol.


Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins, narrated by Jefferson White
I had only the vaguest memories of the account of Haymitch's games from Catching Fire, or anything else from Catching Fire, for that matter. I never did read the other prequel. If Haymitch is one of your favourite characters, and you just want backstory on all the olds who show up later in the original series, this is solid fun. Collins did a good job of thinking through where everyone came from, and how they got like they are when Katniss meets them. Effee showing up is especially fun. We also get confirmation of several queer characters (which I assume she wasn't allowed to do in 2008), and an interesting note about the Capital banning generative A.I..

I enjoyed all the themes of the amount of groundwork needed to put into a revolution, and how the lives of the people in this story eventually led to the events of the first books. Especially how the characters themselves feel like they've failed and wasted everything, but the reader can tell how it's more a process of (horribly) figuring out what works and what doesn't.

At the same time, it didn't feel like a story of only moving pieces into place for the "real story" that will start later. It certainly doesn't read as a stand alone novel, but it does stand up as being about these characters in this moment. Haymitch is such a sweet kid when we first meet him, and is a bit more of a dynamic lead than Katniss (i.e., he actually likes people and wants to talk to them), and given the pile of characters we meet for the first time (because these games have twice the number of tributes), each of the new people get enough development for the reader to become least somewhat invested in what happens to them (spoiler alert: it's the Hunger Games, so...).

I always found the games themselves the least interesting part of the earlier books, which is largely true here as well, but the story still moves along pretty fast. They probably would've been more interesting if I remembered what the story was supposed to be, as Collins puts a lot into the contrasts and surprises. The post-games section did draaaaaaaaaaaaag though. Especially the recap of the games we'd just read about, and the part that was set up as this huge poetic tragedy. I think if you're like... 14, you'd be weeping through the end, but I found it overdone, and thought her editor should've made her stop.

Still, I'm happy to have read it.


The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I hadn't read these in fifteen years, so I thought I'd swing back through to remember what we were supposed to know about all the characters we met in the prequel. Enjoyed it. Games still dragged.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins
So most of the characters from Haymitch's book actually show up here, it turns out. So I read this one. Enjoyed this too, though found the games section dragged a bit. The love triangle continues obnoxious, and I did myself the favour of not reading Mockingjay again.


On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
I've been hearing bits of this quoted since it came out, and it's quite good. I think the target is more people involved in public life, but it was still good to listen to, these being the times that were given to us. I know it's his area, but I wish there had been more examples from autocracies other than 1930s Germany, for the sake of variety, if nothing else (there were a handful of comparisons from the Soviet bloc, but it was very Nazi centric).

I think it's on YouTube for free, if anyone wants to listen. I'll probably go back to it later, so that I take more on board.


Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke
Solid primer if you're interested in the a gender-diverse approach to Christian theology. Hartke talks to a variety of other trans and non-binary Christians, especially those involved in ministry, about their relationship with God and the Bible. Each chapter focuses on a few lines of scripture, which are largely clobber verses, and discusses how they can be seen as trans affirming. It's really beautifully expressed, and thoughtfully takes on some difficult parts of the Bible. Hartke does talk about how frustrating it is to feel like he has to spend so much time justifying himself and talking about the clobber verses, when he just wants to talk about religious gender euphoria. He's since put out a second edition, which might refine that approach, but I haven't looked at that yet. I really appreciated this edition is an intro, however, and helped me put together a church service for Trans Day of Remembrance.