#but I'm going to archive lock them eventually because of scraping and bots

[fourth-dimensional-thinker]

A small glimpse into Marty's life two years after the end of Time Is a Flat Circle. I miss writing for this AU.

[valoisfulcanellideux]

IMPORTANT: If you read my fics but you don't have an account on AO3, please read this post 👇

ETA: I've amended this post since first making it. I realised that I can lock commenting only to registered users. So I won't be locking the ability to read my fics to registered users; only the ability to comment on them.

I've finally been hit by one of the spambots that come in waves on AO3. Apparently a ton of fics have been hit today by a bot created by some utter waste of space that's posting 'scary/creepy' images in the comments.

This bot - alongside the negging bot and the AI-accusing bot - have become active again this week. They always post using a Guest account, which means that - if you don't lock commenting down to registered users only - the bots can (and eventually will) post whatever the fuck they want in your comments.

The latest chapter of AToTD just got hit with a large image in the comments. Luckily, I saw the email alert (and of course I immediately got excited, because so far that chapter has had a lot of views without a single reaction, so my "Oh, I got a comment!" brain got all excited, only to see it was this fucking shit, and you cannot imagine how fucking depressing that was; I could honestly cry right now), I froze the comment thread immediately, and reported the comment as spam.

But this is a heads-up, and I know that posting it this close to Christmas means that hardly anyone is going to see it, but I'm posting it now regardless:

Commenting on all my fics is now locked to registered users only.

This means that if you don't have an account you won't be able to comment on any of my fics, so please get on the waiting list for an account. The current wait is approximately two weeks, but with this huge ramp-up in the amount of bot-spam, expect more writers to lock their fics, and more people to get on the list for accounts, which means the waiting list will get even longer.

To get in the queue for an AO3 account, go here:

I only have four or five people reading AToTD anyway (well, four or five people who are commenting, at least) and they all have accounts. But I have an untold number of silent readers, so if you're one of them and you think that one day you might want to comment, then I'm afraid you'll need to get yourself an account.

I'm really sorry I'm having to do this. I've avoided comment-locking my fics throughout all the previous waves of bot-spam and the concerns over AI-scraping, but this is honestly the last straw.