I wish that ao3 had an option to filter warnings (and tbh certain authors) out like I will never ever want to read it and just seeing it puts me off so much that often I end up closing my browser because that content upsets me so much lmao
There is a way to do this but I can’t recall how to do it. it’s something you type into the box for “other filters” or something, I don’t remember. who knows??
It’s not a great option, and I don’t know if you can sort out authors that way, but it’s better than nothing if someone can reblog this with how to do it!
Alrighty friends! It takes some specificity, but you can do this. Let me show you how!
So I started with going to the Sherlock (TV) section of Ao3. On the right we find this lovely section! ((I know I’m going over things you already probably know, but I figure this post may go to new Ao3 users, so bear with me.))
Underneath this, I chose sort by Kudos, because that’s a quick way to find most popular fics, for the sake of this demonstration.
With those filters on, we end up with this being our first two results:
As you can see, we have Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68, and The Internet Is Not Just For Porn by cyerus. So what if I am utterly sick of seeing earlgreytea68 on my list? Let’s pretend I’ve read all their fics, or that I just don’t like her, or whatever. I want this author out. I go to this section on the right:
In “Search within results” I type earlgreytea68 into the bar, with a minus sign in front. This gives me the following page, upon hitting the sort and filter button:
There goes earlgreytea68! But now I’ve decided that Crack is just not my thing, I’m sick of that, too, for heaven’s sake, I want something reasonable in my gay slash fanfiction about detectives that solve crimes about glowing dogs and irish megalomaniacs. Heaven forbid this get ridiculous.
Well, then I add this to my search:
Which gets rid of everything with that tag. My results are now:
Performance in a Leading Role is now my first result!
You can do this as many times as you want; the biggest problem I have is trying to filter out multi-worded tags. For example, “Secret Relationship” is hard to filter. Better to go with authors you dislike or with words like “DubCon”.
I hope this helps! Also remember that googling site:archiveofourown.org and then adding search terms will mean google searches Ao3 for you, and sometimes that works far better.
Good luck!
An excellent in-depth guide! Thank you!!
omg changed my whole ao3 rarepair game
An excellent guide to filtering on AO3!
You can filter out phrases by enclosing them in quotes. For example, if ABO and Hydra Trash Party are not your things, try:
-“alpha/beta/omega dynamics” -”hydra trash party”
I have more advice!
Say, you’re in your random fandom- I went with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, since I’ve been reading Iron Man stuff recently. Tony Stark is awesome.
But anyway, you’re on the page, and you see that there are 174,774 works! That is way too many for a casual afternoon’s browsing.
And you see that the first one is Peter Parker/Tony Stark and that is not your jam. It doesn’t work for you, or it squicks you, whatever. Wouldn’t life be easier if you could browse without seeing that pairing (or whatever pairing you don’t like)? You can!
First, click on that pairing tag(You may want to open this in another tab, actually.):
and it’ll take you to the page for that pairing tag. Click this button:
and then look at the address bar! The actual page is unimportant. Copy the numbers located here:
and go back to the original search page! Down on the side, in the same place you can get rid of other tags, type -relationship_ids:”the number you just copied”
Then hit ‘sort and filter’ annnd… magic!
The fics with that pairing are gone! You can also do multiple pairings, get rid of any tags you don’t like, and sort it by date or length or kudos, or whatever.
Enjoy.
I’d just like to add that these sorts of search modifiers ALSO WORK IN GOOGLE AND MOST RESEARCH DATABASES.
The more you know.
Just a quick reminder that AO3 uses Luceneas a search and index engine.
That means you can pretty much use all the Lucene Query Syntax in the “Seach within result” field.
I don’t think AO3 indexes the whole fic for searching but definitely it’s meta data. Combined with Lucenes awesome query syntax you can do pretty much every search you heart desires.
Addtional Lucene Query Syntax that has not been mentioned yet and you might find useful:
Wildcard Searches
You can use wildcard searches within single terms. For a single character wildcard search use the “?” symbol. For a multiple character wildcard search use the “*” symbol.
AND/OR
Lucene allows you to combin terms through logic operators. You’re looking for fics that are either “reunion” or“enemies to lovers”?
Just put in >“reunion” OR “enemies to lovers”< into the field
and you end up with all the stories that are either or but not both.
But wait, now you’re looking for fics that are both “reunion” and“enemies to lovers” at the same time? Now worries Lucene got you covered.
Just change it into >“"reunion” AND “enemies to lovers”“<
and you’ll get all the fics that mention both “reunion” and “enemies to lovers” somewhere in their meta data (note: it’s not just tags. It’s also title, summary …)
Boosting
You can also boost specific terms when doing a multi term search.
You can use the “^” Operator followed by a number to boost a specific term.
Say you’re interested in fics that are either “first kiss” or “bed sharing” but you’re much more interested in “bed sharing” fics and feel they are more relevant.
You can use the search >“first kiss” “bed sharing”^5<
to manipulate the order of your results in a matter that the score of every fic that contains beg sharing is multiplied by 5. Therefore all fics containing that term are given priority and shown at the top of the list.
You can also combine all of the above, target specifc fields (that’s what you did with the “relationsship_id:xxx”) and many more things.
May 17th is the anniversary of the founding of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the organization that owns and runs and fights for archiveofourown.org (AO3). So for the whole month of May, we want to celebrate with a multi-fandom, multi-creative, multi-media collection inspired by what the OTW/AO3 means to you.
Major themes include transformation, protection, creativity, & community - but really, the door is as wide open as your imagination.Want to write an AU where your fav characters are all fanfic writers discussing their blorbos? Maybe art about them being super-powered defenders of free speech? Pen a poem, scribble a songfic, or cross-stitch an OC - wherever your heart takes you - we want to see it all!
This is not a fandom-specific event! If you tag the Cake Shop with your fic (tagged in your post, please, with appropriate content warnings/ratings) we’ll reblog it! Let us show our appreciation to this bastion of free speech, creativity, and community.
I don’t remember it’s name or the author but it was about Salem / Sabrina (Sabrina’s Secret Life), it was something about Salem become human and Sabrina getting very frustrated after being rejected by Harvey on a party so when she gets home she talk about it with Salem and they eventually make out. Anyway idc if i’m going to be “judged” by asking for this but please, if anyone knows a way for me to find it again (or if anyone has it saved) help me, i will be very grateful
actually the hardest part of shipping an ot3 is figuring out what fucking order you list their names in when you make a post about them and will it be the same order you remember next time you post about them (no. it wont)
Not to takeaway from your post lol but in case anyone didn’t know, I 95% am certain I read something where it doesn’t matter which order you list the ship in on AO3. So if you search for Brim/Sage/Viper any fic w that tag in any order will show up!
There’s a fic where I put “Breach/Sova (in the background)” as a ship tag but it’ll show up if you’re filtering by just breach/sova!
So, speaking as someone who writes (and has written for years), let’s be honest:
sure yes you can write whatever you want; however, you should not be getting mad at a reader/commenter who asked you to tag your surprise (as an example) incest or similar topics instead of leading the reader blind into your story without them realizing what is about to go down – especially when you waste nearly a whole chapter later to rant (not address, rant) with cringy fancy words to make yourself sound “sophisticated”, I suppose, when it’s on par with “um its fiktion incest sweaty :)” instead of just moving on and perhaps tagging it just in case. Tagging isn’t hard, we should practice it instead of blaming everything on the readers.
My mind has etched your smile, and my heart leaps at the memory.
I have not crossed your path, and so the more I crave your touch.
I intend to meet you soon, my love, and privately. I will hold you in my arms, and as you tell me about your day, I will watch your lips. My gaze will befall you, and I shall kiss you. I will capture your heart as you have captured mine. Over and over.
I will shower you with affection until your lips burn and your lungs ache for air. My hands are going to caress your skin and provoke you slowly. You won’t be able to stop yourself, and neither will I.
I will love your body equally to your mind. You are to be cherished and adored. That is my duty as your lover. I savor my moments with you, always giving you my attention and care.
I want to have many memories with you. One lifetime is not enough.
Until that desired moment, I will await the dismissal bell. I will drown in my thoughts of you, sinking without you beside me to pull me up.
Opinion poll: should I remove the AOS tag from my fics?
Since I’m already in the process of overhauling my ao3 works–
We all know my fics are written about the TOS characters/timeline/universe. I’ve long tried to maintain ambiguity (e.g. not mentioning Kirk’s hazel eyes) for AOS fans on several of my stories that I wanted to think/pretend could be read as either universe/cast, but… there are still details that differ between the 2 universes and will always distinguish them from one another whether I intend to make a distinction or not. I use “sickbay,” “synthesizers,” and “landing parties” instead of “medbay,” “replicators,” and “away teams.” I never refer to New Vulcan or a second Spock. I almost never have Kirk cursing, and he is Not Blond in my fics (I usually describe his hair as brown with auburn highlights because that occasional tendency of it to look almost red in certain scenes on the show has always been weirdly important/meaningful to me as a redhead ).
All that said, am I just part of the larger problem of incorrect tagging now? (i.e. trying to keep potential readership as wide as possible but thus refusing to acknowledge that dialogue alone is usually enough to make TOS irreconcilably different from AOS, among other things) Especially now that, to say nothing of the disparities between TOS and AOS, we also have Str@nge New Worlds and Disc0very involving their own actors and versions of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, et al (and their own new f*cking-around with canon, from what I hear not bashing or shaming, I’m just old and set in my ways), I’ve lately been feeling that perhaps I should just bite the bullet and admit to everybody who Might be a potential reader that no, my work really probably isn’t interchangeable with AOS (or any of the other new series) and is just TOS-specific.
As much as I don’t want to alienate folks who are okay with both timelines, I admit it would feel more honest and it would certainly look “cleaner” to have all my fics be uniform. And how many readers would I even be sacrificing anyway? Anyone who gets into anything I’ve written can likely very easily tell within the first few paragraphs that I’m biased toward TOS anyway, and if that’s not their cup of tea I assume they just turn back.
“I made this Refuge what it is. Before me, this place was a joke. Absolute bedlam. But look at it now. Everything runs exactly as it should. There are rules, protocol. We couldn’t function without order and discipline.” - Warden Snyder
Thank you @blberry-bacon for this beautiful edit of my story! It was a wonderful surprise and very thoughtful. And of the characters you chose to feature (as you said, Doc, Crazy, Lion, Jack, Muggs, Elena, & Alexei), you’ve captured their energies perfectly in the images and the lyrics. Much love And thank you for reading! @blberry-bacon
— House of Refuge boys in their own respective circles of hell. A darker deep dive. x.
“Only the poets escape hell, I’m afraid.” — Doc Maltese
Limbo. Unbaptised and virtuous pagans. Trapped, perhaps forever, without escape. Grim can’t seem to stay out of the Refuge and is plagued by guilt. No Name becomes a prisoner in his own mind thanks to a multitude of factors. Both are doomed to relive their trauma over and over again.
Lust. Whirlwind of torture for the lustful and adulterous. Spot regularly sleeps with Jack Kelly’s sister in exchange for joining the strike. Lion shamelessly beds anything that moves to get what he wants.
Gluttony. Icy rain and blizzards for all eternity. Craving for vice. Starved by addictions. Fleet is a functioning alcoholic. Alexei is a manic opium smoker. The two struggle without their respective fixes on the island.
Greed. Desperation for means, battling for a way out. Shakespeare uses his wits to make counterfeit money. Z is a swindler and has a bridge to sell you. They’re shallow, looking for suckers who’ll give them the time of day.
Wrath. Explosive emotions and unstable powder kegs. Crazy’s brickbat-swinging anger is easy to trip. Rails poisoned his father after an altercation. Jesse’s act of revenge landed him with a noose around his neck at Sing Sing.
Heresy. Entombed in flaming crypts, choked with ashes. Doc and Raffi are secular healers. Marquette marries outside his religion and decides against baptizing his daughters. All three are necromancers in their own right. Doc saves Calico, among others. Raffi saves Grim. Marquette paints portraits of the dead, bringing their memory back.
Violence. Rivers of blood and fire. Muggs engages in his fair share of violence for three lifetimes — against his family, his friends, and his foes. Tide is a severe melancholic, who often confides in Grim about his self-desctruction. Calico commits violence against himself, following a hurricane of disasters.
Fraud. Desolate place full of trenches and clouds of fog. Cards got his name by cheating his way through games of chance. River is an unassuming grifter who spins lie after lie until the real person underneath no longer exists.
Treachery. A frozen wasteland for traitors. Atlas comes across as pious and holier than thou, but he’d sooner offer someone in need a rosary than actual help. Jack sells out his friends during the strike. He fails those he loves countless times, including his sister Sophie, Sarah, Kloppman, the Refuge boys, and himself.
No Name ran a hand through his long, black hair. “Judge sent me. He said this place would do me some good. Keep me sober, you know. I think I may have a bit of a problem.” That was Randall’s Island. A place you could resent, rebel, relapse, repent, and repeat. x.
I’ve seen a lot of fics disappear from my bookmarks, some 10+ years old, because they were added to an unrevealed collection. It makes me wonder if people realize what your fic being added to a collection actually means and if the authors approved it automatically without realizing what would happen.
If someone adds your fic to their collection, they can hide it! They can mark the collection as unrevealed and your fic will be unreadable to anyone other than them! If you’re writing works for a surprise event, like a Secret Santa, this is really nice.
But if you’re just writing and someone adds your fic to a collection for their own personal use and marks it as unrevealed, that… really sucks.
I bookmarked this fic in 2017, almost 5 years ago. Knowing me, the fic itself was probably at least a couple years old at the time I bookmarked it.
This is a 5+ year old fic that is completely inaccessible now because it was added to a collection that, as far as I can tell, is literally just for the collection owner’s own reference. There’s almost 30 fics in the collection, all of them unrevealed.
Please don’t blindly accept collection requests and if your works ARE in a collection, make sure that they aren’t being hidden without your knowledge or consent.
Are you able to remove a work from collection after you allow it or is it just a story that’s just fucked?
Yes, you can remove your works! From the faq:
If you’re the creator of the work:
1) Select the “Edit” button from the work’s page and scroll down to the “Associations” section.
2) Select the red (×) beside the collection name you want to remove next to “Post to Collections / Challenges”.
3) Select “Post” to apply the change. The work will be immediately removed from the collection.
I’m not sure if you get an alert if your fic is marked as unrevealed though, so keep an eye on the collections that your works are part of.
There’s also an option in your preferences to accept collection invitations automatically. I would highly recommend making sure that that option is not selected.
I realize this might be a dirty trick pro-censorship fandom harassers might try to pull on some people, so yeah.
Boosting for visibility.
There’s also another way of removing works from collections - if you go into Collections > Manage Collected Works > Approved, you can use the dropdown menu and change the “approved” option to “rejected”.
Generally, though, turn off the automatic option and opt in for the email updates - you’ll be notified whenever your works are requested to be added into a new collection, or when the collection status changes.
If you’re a reader and want to “add” a fic into a collection without its status being affected, you can simply bookmark it within that collection instead - according to the Ao3 Collections FAQ, even if the collection is changed to unrevealed, the bookmarked fic’s status shouldn’t change.
PSA: This post is, as of AO3′s current code (today’s date: Jan 26 2022), misinformation!
I have just tested this with @mimsiical, who was skeptical about the whole thing. While I think this was perhaps true in the past, it is certainly not true anymore! We experimented by having mimsiical make a collection and add two of my works. The process went as follows:
Mimsiical created a visible collection and added one of my works
I approved the work
Mimsiical changed the collection to unrevealed
Mimsiical tried (and failed!) to add another of my works to the unrevealed collection
I voluntarily added that work to the unrevealed collection using the “edit work” page
Here is what we determined, though if you’re at all skeptical I encourage doing some experimentation of your own. (I’m also going to include some stuff that’s already been established in the thread above, just for the sake of thoroughness.)
Fic owners must approve a collection owner’s request to add their work. (This can optionally be set to “automatically agree” in your preferences, but the default is no unless the fic owner approves it.) The fic owner is sent an email with the name of the collection and the name of the work(s) to be added.
If a collection is already set to unrevealed before the collection owner tries to add a work, AO3 will not allow the collection owner to add the work. Only the work owner can add the work to the collection using the “edit work” page (as one does for moderated exchanges). That’s great news for anyone who was worried about having the “automatically agree” option turned on!
If you (the work owner) add a work to an unrevealed collection using the “edit work” page, then and only then does the work disappear. So do check that you’re adding works to the right collection when you do it yourself, but collection owners don’t have the power to just yoink a fic into oblivion like that.
If a work is approved and added to a visible collection, and the collection is later changed to unrevealed, the work is not hidden. The first of my fics that Mimsiical added to the collection never disappeared–we were able to continue accessing it both through the collection and through my profile. (In fact, AO3 never even sent me a notification about the collection settings changing. It’s possible we just didn’t wait long enough for AO3 to send out an email, but even so the default seems to be “keep the work visible.”)
This is excellent news for OP and everyone who has been reblogging the thread above. If a collection is visible when your work is added, the collection owners cannot hide it later. I can only assume that the AO3 volunteers also learned about this problem and fixed it going forward. No idea if there’s been anything done to unhide fics that were already hit by this though :(
TL;DR: AO3 collections no longer have anywhere near as much power as the post above suggests! Your works are safe! By all means, reject collection requests if you like, but just know that you don’t need to worry about your works disappearing someday just because you hit the “approved” button.
Edited to add a small update: Apparently when mimsiical deleted the collection while it was still unrevealed, the one fic that I added and had hidden got reclassified as “commaeleons just posted this!” and sent out a new fic notification email. Which is not really a problem, just funny.
I went looking for some more information about AO3′s Collections and found this nugget. Thank you, @commaeleons!
May 17th is the anniversary of the founding of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the organization that owns and runs and fights for archiveofourown.org (AO3). So for the whole month of May, we want to celebrate with a multi-fandom, multi-creative, multi-media collection inspired by what the OTW/AO3 means to you.
Major themes include transformation, protection, creativity, & community - but really, the door is as wide open as your imagination.Want to write an AU where your fav characters are all fanfic writers discussing their blorbos? Maybe art about them being super-powered defenders of free speech? Pen a poem, scribble a songfic, or cross-stitch an OC - wherever your heart takes you - we want to see it all!
This is not a fandom-specific event! If you tag the Cake Shop with your fic (tagged in your post, please, with appropriate content warnings/ratings) we’ll reblog it! Let us show our appreciation to this bastion of free speech, creativity, and community.
May 17th is the anniversary of the founding of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the organization that owns and runs and fights for archiveofourown.org (AO3). So for the whole month of May, we want to celebrate with a multi-fandom, multi-creative, multi-media collection inspired by what the OTW/AO3 means to you.
Major themes include transformation, protection, creativity, & community - but really, the door is as wide open as your imagination.Want to write an AU where your fav characters are all fanfic writers discussing their blorbos? Maybe art about them being super-powered defenders of free speech? Pen a poem, scribble a songfic, or cross-stitch an OC - wherever your heart takes you - we want to see it all!
This is not a fandom-specific event! If you tag the Cake Shop with your fic (tagged in your post, please, with appropriate content warnings/ratings) we’ll reblog it! Let us show our appreciation to this bastion of free speech, creativity, and community.
May 17th is the anniversary of the founding of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), the organization that owns and runs and fights for archiveofourown.org (AO3). So for the whole month of May, we want to celebrate with a multi-fandom, multi-creative, multi-media collection inspired by what the OTW/AO3 means to you.
Major themes include transformation, protection, creativity, & community - but really, the door is as wide open as your imagination.Want to write an AU where your fav characters are all fanfic writers discussing their blorbos? Maybe art about them being super-powered defenders of free speech? Pen a poem, scribble a songfic, or cross-stitch an OC - wherever your heart takes you - we want to see it all!
This is not a fandom-specific event! If you tag the Cake Shop with your fic (tagged in your post, please, with appropriate content warnings/ratings) we’ll reblog it! Let us show our appreciation to this bastion of free speech, creativity, and community.
