Flamethrower

Fan
Name:	Flamethrower
Alias(es):
Type:	fan writer
Fandoms:	Star Wars, Harry Potter
Communities:
Other:
URL:	Tumblr
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Flamethrower is a fan and fan writer in the Harry Potter and Star Wars fandoms.

Many of their works were originally posted on The Archive - the Flamethrower's Fiction.

Selected Fanworks

Star Wars

• Letters to Qui-Gon Jinn
• Re-Entry

Harry Potter

• Of a Linear Circle
• Swung by Serafim

The "GFY" tag

Starting in May 2015, Flamethrower began tagging all of their AO3 works with "GFY", which reportedly stands for "go fuck yourself". This practice continued for the rest of their time on AO3, and was adopted by other AO3 users who were fans of Flamethrower's works. Currently, there are over 100 pages of works using the tag (2,000+ works), though it is unknown how many of these are by fans of Flamethrower.

Note: "GFY", in mainstream media, stands for "gay for you" and is often seen as a form of bisexuality/pansexuality erasure ("this character having a One True Love of the same gender doesn't mean they're gay/bi/pan/etc, they're totally straight; they're just gay for this one specific person!"). It is unclear whether Flamethrower is aware of the meaning or history of this acronym in the LGBT+ community.

Flamethrower asserts that their usage of the tag began as a reaction to Star Wars fans who were upset about how their fic "Re-Entry" was published as over 60 separate works rather than as a multichapter fic. This publishing quirk was apparently due to AO3's multichapter option being unreliable at the time.

Specifically, Flamethrower claims that the fans in question harassed their family:

one day some rude Anons came into my Tumblr Inbox and demanded I change the way I posted my Star Wars fic on AO3, as it was “flooding out” certain tags and how dare I be prolific and fix it or else. Lots of very rude bluster. Lots of rude comments left on fanfic posts.

When I refused to cater to their whims, listed my valid reasons, and told them off...they attacked my youngest child […]

My angry Mama Bear response, among other similar responses from other users, was “Go Fuck Yourself.” And thus, the GFY tag was born. I gave them the tag they asked for, and it has spread among many other AO3 writers who don’t want bigoted shitstains reading their fic.

Flamethrower does bring up their family themselves in at least one anonymous ask relating to the event. Approximately half an hour later, an anon mocked Flamethrower for it.

The lol_meme community on Dreamwidth claims to be partly or fully responsible for Flamethrower's use of this tag. One of their members describes it as an opportune trolling event in which they, and possibly other Star Wars fans, kudosed fics that were not Flamethrower's en masse in order to change the listings when sorting works by kudos count:

SO THE FIRST TIME SHE UPSET MEME WAS IN 2015 OR 2016, I DON'T QUITE REMEMBER, I ONLY REMEMBER IT WAS IN MAY BECAUSE SW_MEME WAS EXTREMELY ACTIVE. SHE'S BEEN WRITING THIS FIC SINCE LIKE 2005 AND IT'S STUPID LONG AND INSTEAD OF PUTTING IT IN AS A CHAPTERED WORK, SO SHE DOESN'T CLOG THE FUCKING TAG, SHE POSTS EACH NEW CHAPTER AS A NEW FIC. A MEMER WAS A LITTLE PUT OUT ABOUT IT AND SUPER POLITELY ASKED IF SHE COULD START POASTING AS A CHAPTERED WORK OR ELSE TAG IT, BECAUSE SHE HAD CLOGGED THE SHIT OUT OF THE TAG. FLAMETHROWER LOST HER FUCKING SHIT ABOUT THIS SO DISPROPORTIONATELY THAT EVEN THOUGH MEME FONDLY AGREED THAT MEMER PROBABLY SHOULDN'T HAVE ASKED HER, THIS WAS STILL PRETTY OTT. NOW I DO NOT KNOW IF MEMERS WERE TROLLING HER AFTER THIS DOINT, OR IF SW_FANDOM AT LARGE HAD ALL BEEN THINKING THE SAME THING AND SINCE THE SEAL WAS BROKEN, FUCKING POUNCED- I SUSPECT BOTH- BUT SOON SHE WAS GETTING ASKS AND REBLOGS ABOUT IT AND STARTED HAVING A RLY GIGANTIC TEMPER TANTRUM. A MEMER THEN SENT HER THE MOAST BEAUTIFUL "COMFORTING" MESSAGE ANY OF US HAVE EVER SEEN, WHICH WAS SOMETHING ALONG THE LINES OF "I DON'T RLY LIKE YOUR FIC, BUT I DON'T THINK IT'S FAIR TO ACCUSE YOU OF CLOGGING THE TAG. EVERYONE INO IN THIS FANDOM KNOWS TO FILTER YOU OUT. SORRY YOU'RE GETTING GRIEF FROM N00BS. :("

FLAMETHROWER WAS FAIRLY APOPLECTIC AT THIS DOINT, AND THERE WAS LITTLE MEMERS COULD DO TO PUNISH HER ASSHOLERY, BUT SOME MEMER CAME UP WITH KUDOSING EVERY FIC IN THE TAG BUT HERS UNTIL SHE WAS KNOCKED OFF AT LEAST THE FIRST PAGE WHEN YOU SORTED BY KUDOS. WE ALL INSTALLED HOLA UNBLOCKER AND OVER A PERIOD OF ABOUT THREE DAYS, MANAGED TO KUDOS EVERYONE ELSE UNTIL SHE GOT BUMPED TO PAGE THREE.

WHILE SHE NEVER ACKNOWLEDGED THIS, SHE MUST HAVE NOTICED, BECAUSE SHE THEN GOT SUPER MAD AND WENT, "FINE! YOU ASSHOLES WANT ME TO TAG? I'M TAGGING MY FICS GFY, FOR GO FUCK YOURSELF, AND IT'S GOING TO BE ALL OF THEM, NOT JUST RE-ENTRY, SO LOL IF YOU FILTER FOR GFY, YOU'LL NEVER SEE ANY OF MY FICS AGAIN! LOL HOPE IT WAS WORTH IT, LOSERS!", AND ALL OF HER FANS STARTED TAGGING THEIR FICS GFY IN SOLIDARITY, AS IF ANY OF THIS WAS A PUNISHMENT.

Concerns about antisemitism

There has been recurring tension between Flamethrower and several users on AO3 and Tumblr about the use of antisemitic jokes in Flamethrower's Harry Potter series "Of a Linear Circle", in which Severus Snape is portrayed as Jewish:

“I didn’t know you were Jewish.”

Severus rolls his eyes and taps the bridge of his nose. “It isn’t obvious?”

Nizar gives him a baffled look. “What does your nose have to do with it?”

“It’s a…stereotype.” Severus grimaces at Nizar’s continued look of confusion, but he still meets older adults who’ve never heard the word used that way. “Racism.”

In 2017, AO3 user seashadows, who identifies as Ashkenazi, notes that the transliterations used in "Of a Linear Circle" are not consistent with the widely accepted pronunciations and transliterations of Hebrew when written in English. Flamethrower claimed, among other things, that "Hebrew has no vowels. None. Technically it would be Tnkh in English-based text." and that Flamethrower is "someone whose best friend is Jewish" and that this friend agreed with them that "*your* particular Jewish sect" might spell it as Tanakh but that they would not.

In 2019, Tumblr user heatherly84 left a comment and submitted an ask requesting that Flamethrower tag or warn for the comment about Snape's nose. Flamethrower refused, claiming that doing so would "see it [the fic] immediately black-listed as anti-semitic". Several other Jewish Tumblr users were uncomfortable with this response and sent asks and submissions of their own. Flamethrower responded angrily to some but not all of these, though ended up deleting the responses and replacing them with posts claiming they were being harassed. A fuller accounting of these events is available on Tumblr.

Concerns about racism

On 20 August 2022, Tumblr user caparrucia came forward with allegations of Flamethrower responding to criticism of their fic Of A Linear Circle with insults and anti-Mexican slurs.

Flamethrower instead called me a pretentious, ignorant beaner and a barely literate wetback because I said “Castellano” instead of “Castilian”. She went on a tirade assuming I was Mexican-American and therefore did not speak Spanish natively, had no real knowledge of Spain at all, and was just attacking her because I was jealous she’d come up with the phrase at all. She also decried that I had no basis or sources to back up my comments and that I was basically an idiot. It was a very virulent, very aggressive strand of hateful, racist vitriol.

Repeated violations of AO3's Terms of Service

Flamethrower has been contacted multiple times by AO3's Policy & Abuse team for violating the Terms of Service, at least four of which concerned AO3's "no commerce" rule. The other times may or may not have been about different policies.

AO3 Terms of Service:

What you can't do:

make available any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising (defined as solicitations for direct or indirect commercial advantage), junk mail, spam, chain letters, pyramid schemes, or any other form of solicitation;

Promotion of commercial products or activities is not allowed.

In general, unsolicited commercial activity is not permitted on the Archive.

AO3 Terms of Service FAQ:

How strict is the "no commerce" rule?
We want the Archive to remain a non-commercial space. That means that it isn't the right place for offering merchandise, even fan-related merchandise. Linking to your personal page (not, for example, an Amazon author page) is fine, even if the personal page includes some items for sale, but the Archive is not advertising space.

The "no commerce" rule has been in place at least since 2009.

2014

On 3 June 2014, Flamethrower made a post that one or more of their works had "been flagged for removal despite NOT VIOLATING THE TOS." Approximately one month prior, AO3 announced updates to their Terms of Service in which they implemented a DMCA policy and clarified what counted as ephemeral non-fanwork content. It seems that whatever work Flamethrower had been contacted about fell afoul of one of these changes.

2015 warning

On 15 November 2015, Flamethrower made a post referencing that they had received a formal warning for linking to "a project", and that at least one work was hidden for containing this link. It can be assumed that the link was to some form of commercial activity, but Flamethrower does not provide more details than the name of the work ("Lost in the Echo VIII", part of the "Re-Entry" series). It was presumably unhidden after the offending material was removed.

AO3's Terms of Service states that "An administrator may also hide content from other users where appropriate", but does not define what is and is not considered appropriate.

2018-2020 warnings

In early 2018, Flamethrower had run into financial hardship and begun using their Tumblr to ask for support from fans. Over the next few years, a large portion of Flamethrower's Tumblr was dedicated to this "Fundraisening". This included selling jewelry and art, adding items to an Amazon wishlist, providing Paypal/Ko-fi links, and offering one new chapter of fic for every X amount raised. Initially the amount per chapter was $100, but half a year later it had jumped to $500 per chapter. There were numerous references to achieving these fundraising milestones in the notes of Flamethrower's fics on AO3 itself, which violates AO3's TOS.

Flamethrower claimed at one point that they had received "1 warning in 2018" for commercial activities. However, the precise date and reasons for the warning are difficult to verify.

On 20 August 2019, soon after the anti-Semitism incident on Tumblr regarding Flamethrower's potential harassment, Flamethrower was warned once again for commercial promotion. Based on posts in and after 2019, Flamethrower did not know which works were reported or why, but at least two of them were previews for Flamethrower's Original Works (adapted from older fanfiction) that contained links to the product pages on Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Flamethrower apparently required several rounds of back-and-forth with Policy & Abuse to remove the links and mentions of fundraising, and Policy & Abuse reportedly told Flamethrower that "failure to comply with the terms of our letter, which included removing all commercial promotion material from your account, or further violations of the Terms of Service might result in the temporary suspension of your account."

Sometime in early 2020, Flamethrower was apparently warned yet again about commercial promotion, not suspended like AO3 had hinted at. Flamethrower also claims that "someone in AO3 helped me go through EVERY SINGLE FIC". This assertion by Flamethrower seems to run counter to AO3's long-established policy of not pre-screening content and only contacting users about the work or works that were directly reported to them. It also seems unlikely that the AO3 volunteers would do this for someone who had been contacted as many times as Flamethrower had by this point, particularly as the 2019 incident also involved multiple works and had been accompanied by a promise of suspension. Tumblr posts that reference this 2020 incident are similarly difficult to verify, though Flamethrower did reblog a PSA post about not mentioning commissions or linking to Ko-fi on January 15, 2020.

2022 Suspension from AO3

On 28 July 2022, Flamethrower made a post announcing that they had been suspended for commercial promotion for a month "for actual bullshit reasons" and that "AO3 is currently thinking of leaving my account suspended for a year." The primary argument appears to have been that the violating material (which included an Amazon link and a reference to "caffeine donations") was not in violation of the current TOS, that it was posted many years ago, and that because an AO3 volunteer went over some of Flamethrower's works in 2019 and/or 2020, that Flamethrower should not have expected to have to do so themself at any point afterwards.

Flamethrower also claimed to not have access to their works and that this was a violation of IP law. "Access" presumably refers to edit access, not viewing access, since the works were still visible on the site. It appears that because the "Delete Work" button on AO3 is located on the "Edit Work" page, suspended users are barred from deleting works themselves. According to AO3's Terms of Service FAQ, "the suspended user can remove, but not edit, content uploaded prior to the suspension" and clarifies that in order to remove content, "Suspended users who wish to delete or orphan their fanworks may contact the Abuse team to have this done for them." It is unclear whether Flamethrower made this request to the team.

Another recurring complaint from Flamethrower is about AO3 having a supposed "three strikes" policy, despite this incident being Flamethrower's fourth or perhaps fifth violation of the "no commerce" rule. According to Policy and Abuse, "generally speaking, if this is our 2nd+ time contacting someone about a similar violation, we are more likely to suspend them for it. When someone repeatably [sic] breaks a rule despite warnings that they will be suspended if they keep doing it, which is how our letters are all worded, our only choice is to suspend." It is not wholly apparent how to reconcile this with Flamethrower's mention of four separate commercial promotion warnings (2015, 2018, 2019, and 2020) prior to the 2022 suspension.

A number of Flamethrower's fans started contacting social media outlets run by AO3 itself or by known AO3/OTW volunteers. It is unknown whether most of them received any response or whether doing this had any effect other than bothering volunteers who were not part of the Policy & Abuse team for answers that they could not give.

Tumblr user ao3commentoftheday made several posts about what happens when someone violates the Terms of Service. The initial post asserted that it was made because "I’ve been tagged in several different posts in recent weeks dealing with different cases" but subsequent reblogs and other posts around this time appear to indicate that the primary catalyst was Flamethrower, as they addressed topics like why years-old violating content might still result in a strike, deleting accounts while suspended, and downloading works from AO3 in order to cross-post them on other sites (all of which were things Flamethrower had claimed were unfair or impossible).

Flamethrower posted over a dozen times in the next four days, citing impatience at the lack of response from AO3. A number of people pointed out that in the wake of the malicious attacks against OTW volunteers in May 2022, OTW's investigation was still ongoing several months later and volunteer operations (including those of Policy & Abuse) had yet to return to normal. Flamethrower did not seem to be impressed with this argument.

deadcatwithaflamethrower said: @stormy-seasons That shit went down in MAY, though. May 3rd. It’s the end of JULY now.

Two business days

The original post about Flamethrower's 2022 suspension was made on Thursday, July 28, 2022 at 08:41 UTC. A subsequent post indicates that AO3 first contacted Flamethrower on July 28th, though the precise time is unknown.

15 hours and 37 minutes later, Flamethrower reblogged the original post to announce that it had been "almost 24 hours" since either the original email from AO3 or Flamethrower's own response (it is not stated which). In the next post (20 hours and 9 minutes after the original), Flamethrower asserts that over 24 hours had passed, and that "I’ve never had to wait longer than 18 hours. (Usually it’s less than 12.)" for a response. Flamethrower does not specify whether they had previously enjoyed this unusually speedy turnaround time from AO3's volunteers specifically or when dealing with customer service employees elsewhere, but given that in 2014 Flamethrower complained they "have not received a reply to their email", it seems more likely to be the latter.

On Friday, July 29, 2022 at 20:08 UTC (1 day, 11 hours, and 27 minutes after the original post), Flamethrower made a post saying that it was now "Day Three" of the suspension (despite claiming that it was still Day One 20 hours prior).

On Sunday, July 31, 2022 at 11:52 UTC (75 hours and 11 minutes after the original post), Flamethrower made a new post claiming that it had been over 80 hours since the previous email.

On Monday, August 1, 2022 at 07:32 UTC (3 days, 22 hours, and 51 minutes after the original post), Flamethrower claimed that it was "Day 5 of no AO3 contact". Less than an hour later, Flamethrower reblogged their previous post and announced that AO3 had responded at last. It is perhaps worth noting that the 95 hours and 39 minutes between the original post about the suspension and the reblog containing AO3's response equates to just under 4 calendar days, not more than 5 days.

Response from AO3

On 1 August 2022, less than four days after the original suspension notification, Flamethrower posted excerpts of AO3's response. Not all of the quotes Flamethrower provided are reproduced below, but it is notable that there was no mention from Policy & Abuse about any year-long suspension like Flamethrower originally claimed.

Thank you for your reply. While we appreciate your willingness to remove the violating content immediately, you must first serve your suspension to its completion before you are able to edit your works. The Policy & Abuse committee does not rescind suspensions unless your appeal furnishes mitigating information that would have changed our initial determination.

Furthermore, while we do not have a "three strikes" policy, Section IV.A. of our Terms of Service states: "Repeated violations of the ToS will trigger suspensions. A suspension will generally be for a defined period of time, such as a month." On 20 August 2019, you were informed that failure to comply with the terms of our letter, which included removing all commercial promotion material from your account, or further violations of the Terms of Service might result in the temporary suspension of your account.

Regardless of how long it has been since the content was uploaded or whether you intended to violate the Terms of Service, all content currently on the Archive must comply with our Terms of Service.

As long as you remove all violating content from your account and you do not otherwise violate the Terms of Service in the future, there will be no further consequences beyond serving your suspension. However, if you have any other works with commercial promotion material that you do not remove, or if you upload such material in the future, it is possible that you will be reported again. If we later learn that there is any other violating content on your account, you may be temporarily or permanently suspended, regardless of when the content was posted.

... any additional commercial promotion found on your account after this case will be considered a new commercial promotion violation, regardless of when it was posted. You are responsible for checking and editing your works for compliance with our Terms of Service.

Flamethrower reiterated once again that they thought it was unfair that content posted on AO3 years ago was still subject to the Terms of Service, and repeated the allegation that a month-long restriction from removing works themselves (as opposed to making the request for AO3 admins to delete the works for them) was a violation of copyright.

Flamethrower ended the post by saying "The version of AO3 that exists now will never see another dime from me." and included a gif of Draco Malfoy with his face twisted in scorn and the text "This is bullshit" overlaid on top.

Move to SquidgeWorld

On 1 August 2022, five minutes after posting AO3's response, Flamethrower made a new post announcing that they (and some of their followers) were moving their works from AO3 to SquidgeWorld, another archive that uses AO3's open-source code. SquidgeWorld's policy on commercial promotion is that links to Patreon, Ko-fi, etc are not allowed on fanfiction but (unlike AO3) are permissible on Original Works.

There were enough new users that SquidgeWorld's admins made a welcome post the same day. Flamethrower is the first comment on that post.

A user on Tumblr noted that SquidgeWorld is run by a single person (making it much more likely to fail) and that in the event SquidgeWorld shuts down for good, all content uploaded to SquidgeWorld will be imported to AO3 (making Flamethrower's move somewhat redundant).

Reaction from other fans

In general, the notes on Flamethrower's own posts were full of support and commiseration, though Flamethrower posted numerous times about the drop in their Tumblr follower count.

Users on Tumblr, fail-fandomanon, and lol-meme also posted directly and indirectly about the incident. The majority of these posts were a mix of gleeful and skeptical.

Not to name any names but possibly the most hilarious thing about the latest bnf ao3 drama is that there isn’t any question about whether or not the bnf in question did it. Instead, the argument is over whether or not ao3 had enough evidence on the ao3 website to prove said bnf did it. Instead of just, you know, looking at the bnf’s tumblr page where they repeatedly mention doing it.

IMAGINE GOING THROUGH ALL OF FLAMETHROWER'S POSTS TO BUILD A CASE STRONG ENOUGH FOR AOOOOO TO BOTHER WITH A YEAR-LONG BAN. THAT PERSON MUST'VE BEEN POSSESSED BY A FURY.

What in the actual fuck. If I find who reported, I will gut them with a rusty fucking spork. And if AO3 doesn’t give you a chance to respond, I’ll be boycotting them and starting a movement for others to do it. What a stupid system for violations!

It's cute how a BNF can think she's a big enough deal that AO3 will give a shit.

#lmao #how much of an ass do you have to be to get subtumbld by ao3cotd

What the actual fuck. @astolat is this what you wanted AO3 to become?

AO3's TOS is not required to only restrict things that are illegal. If they wanted to put in the TOS "you cannot use AO3 while wearing a green shirt", then it would be against TOS to use AO3 while wearing a green shirt, and they would be 100% allowed to ban you for it regardless of the law.

To be fair, most people never read TOSes or EULAs. Mysteriously, the vast majority of AO3 users still never run afoul of P&A ONCE, let alone FOUR TIMES for the SAME ISSUE.

I had assumed it was a KDP version of her fics, but as an anon above points out, one of flamethrower's grifts is to publish Amazon wishlists and encourage people to buy her things off of them. I wouldn't be surprised if flamethrower thought requesting goods rather than money was a workaround for the TOS, even though any idiot can look at that and tell you right away that it's the same fucking thing, ultimately.

even if that's innocuous, she still has four other violations she's being suspended for. and a whole history of breaking the tos and bragging about it. like her prevaricating on "milestone"--sure, it could mean word count, but the entire goddamn internet saw her saying she'd release a chapter per $500 raised. she has a track record of doing this bad faith rule skirting, and it's caught up to her.

The woman raised tens of thousands of dollars through Tumblr for her fanfic that was posted on AO3. This isn’t a “Well HYPOTHETICALLY, she didn’t do anything bad, she’s just being singled out unfairly”. She did, blatantly, break AO3′s rules. Repeatedly. There’s no question of this.

I am so glad for this post, because I was really confused about the use of the term "milestone" in flamethrower's defense posts. Like, I don't associate grape juice with crimes but if someone with flamethrower's reputation was going to be like "ACTUALLY there are MANY uses for grape juice that are PERFECTLY LEGAL" I would be like "okay what did you do with the grape juice, is this a bootlegging situation, did you poison someone, I know you did something." I don't know why I didn't think about like, fundraising milestones; I thought maybe it had something to do with book sales? I'm not very bright sometimes. Anyway, glad someone finally cleared that up. (Also glad someone cleared up the coffee thing because I had not seen that on LJ, and I came into fandom right at the start of the LJ era, but I guess I wasn't following authors with tipjars.)

AO3 misplayed by holding her hand through the editing process the last time she got flagged. It just encouraged her in believing she's due special treatment, and that having TOS enforced without some kind of grace period is unfair.

They should have sent her one "remove all instances of X" email and been done with it.

Yeah, I think that's her primary argument, and as arguments go it's probably the best one she has: to say "look, obviously, in the past, I had a poor understanding of the rule. I went through all my stuff with a staffer in good faith and removed everything that violated the rule, and from then on, I did not include any new material that violated the rule as I understood it based on that interaction. Now it turns out that at that time, some violations were missed, but I didn't have any way of knowing that because I had been assured everything left was fine. How is it fair to hold those old violations against me when even an Ao3 staffer missed them, and when since then all my new material has showed that I *am* respecting the rules?"

Which, in isolation, I think is actually a decent argument! It requires believing that Flamethrower sincerely did not understand what to me seems like a pretty simple rule, but frankly, given everything else she's saying I could buy that she's just none too bright. If she really was reassured that all her remaining material was okay, it's reasonable for her to have believed that.

However. In the larger context of everything else she's said, it seems extremely unlikely that this is an accurate representation of events. Like "how can you hold something I did seven years ago against me!" when in fact, that was the only first of several violations. I have to imagine that Support answered her questions about the rules each time, and tried to explain the underlying logic, and yet by the third time they had to talk to her, she still had so many violations, she had to go through every single one of her works to weed them out? Like, she's complaining about not being aware Ao3 had a three strikes policy, but obviously it doesn't because she has already had three strikes!! This is her fourth strike! Or her whole, actually, one of these isn't even a violation, wait, no, it is a violation, my bad. Or "look, it's technically not in the TOS that you can't link to Amazon!! How was I supposed to know that?" Or the fact that apparently she regularly posts the first few chapters of an original work and then deletes it so she can sell it professionally.

Given all that, not only do I not believe her account of the events, I don't believe her when she says there weren't any new violations! She has such a persistant history of violations of this particular rule that I can only see two options: one is that she's just lying. She understands the rule and keeps trying to sneak around it, and then pretends when she gets caught that it was an honest misunderstanding. In which case, I have no reason to believe she's not lying about the age of the violations, since we know AO3 won't reveal details.

The other possibility is that she's not lying. She's telling the truth as she understands it. She really doesn't understand why her stuff is violating the rules. In which case, I don't trust her assessment that there are no new violations, because she clearly doesn't know how to identify violations! And honestly, if after seven years, three reprimands, and one handholding through all her stuff, she still doesn't understand the rules? I think that indicates she may not actually be capable of understanding them- in which case, she is going to continue to violate them, because she doesn't know how not to.

My instinct is more the first than the second, but maybe there's some amount of the second mixed in because she doesn't seem to realize how bad she's making herself look. If she was a more competent liar, she should have stuck to the single story without adding all the "and another thing!!" details that reveal that there's clearly more going on here.