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One of the biggest things I've ever drawn!!! Damn these backgrounds 💀 And detailing 💀💀 But I really enjoyed drawing this! Learnt a lot from this comic of what style I'd like to have, the pipeline and so on.

See that bit at the bottom? Don't do that. Insert ParamedicGuy.gif going "Don't."

Other malicious spam comments I've gotten seemed designed to make an author question their writing, or outright encourage them to delete their stories from AO3. This one is different, in that it tries to get you to destroy the work on your own computer.

If you ran that command, it basically locates your Documents folder, then deletes everything in it, including all subfolders. It also does it without any prompt, so you have no chance to second guess your actions.

This is just fucking trolling.

Coincidentally, we just did training on a cyberattack similar to this, called a ClickFix attack. You can read about how that works here.

As a general rule, if ANYONE or ANY WEBSITE tells you unsolicited* to do anything in Powershell, CMD RUN, command prompt, shell command, or something similar, DON'T.

*There are legit reasons for running commands in PowerShell or the command prompt, but in those cases you are likely seeking out a solution to a problem you are already experiencing. Don't just run random commands on your computer as recommended by some unlogged-in guest on a fan fiction site.

Always think and consider before taking action, and get a second opinion from a trusted source. When I got this comment I was pretty sure what the command would do, and it took me about three seconds of googling to confirm it.

Here's a bit of a further breakdown for the ones curious about what the hell this command does.

What you're basically telling your PC if you ran this is "go into this folder (Documents) and then Recursively (for all sub-folders) Remove (delete) all files therein Forcefully (without any user input and also if a file was locked)."

The little "Exclude *.archiveofourown" they tack in there is just honestly absolutely diabolical if you don't know what you're looking at.

As an inexperienced user, you'll think "oh of course, exclude ao3, that's what I want!"

*.archiveofourown is a file ending, including any file title.

There are not archiveofourown files.

This is telling your PC to ignore files that don't exist.

Honestly, the gall of these trolls is astounding.

DO NOT DO THIS.

And as a further alarm bell, even if a well-meaning anon came to your comments to warn you:

why has ao3 not put out this warning officially?

this command is for Windows users. WHAT ABOUT ALL THE PEOPLE WHO USE MAC OR LINUX?

— gale trying to explain some ancient weave theory while astarion lounges across furniture like an overfed cat, interrupting every five minutes with “you’re very pretty when you’re pretentious, you know.”

— astarion pretending he doesn’t care about magic until gale casually lights candles with a flick of his wrist and suddenly astarion is staring at him like he personally hung the stars over waterdeep.

— gale being one of the first people to compliment astarion in ways that aren’t transactional. not “beautiful,” not “seductive,” but clever. funny. observant. things attached to personhood instead of performance.

— astarion absolutely abusing prestidigitation once he learns what it can do. gale walks into camp and all his wine has been chilled perfectly and there are dramatic rose petals everywhere and astarion’s sitting there acting like he has no idea how it happened.

— gale reading aloud at night because astarion likes the sound of his voice even when he claims the books are “terminally boring.”

— astarion stealing gale’s clothes specifically because they smell like parchment, cedar, and expensive spell components.

— the first time gale sees astarion genuinely, uncontrollably laugh, he forgets what he was saying mid-sentence because he’s too busy staring.

— gale, who spent years loving a goddess who felt unreachable, falling disastrously hard for someone painfully real and sharp-edged and frightened.

— astarion acting smug whenever gale gets flustered, only to completely short-circuit the second gale starts flirting back intentionally.

“careful, my dear,” gale murmurs, leaning close enough for candlelight to catch in his earring, “you do realize wizards are capable of learning patterns.”

and astarion just. visibly bluescreens.

— they would either spend the entire evening making out dramatically over a study desk or arguing over semantics for three hours straight. sometimes both simultaneously.

— gale kissing astarion’s hands like they belong to something holy.

— astarion, who spent centuries being consumed, discovering what it feels like to be adored. slowly. reverently. without expectation.

together they become absolutely insufferable in the most romantic way imaginable.

backgrounds aren't my thing, buuuuuut>_<... I think I was able to cope@_@ I hope it keeps you sleepy;)