1. When you go on AO3 there may be works you don’t like. You might click on a story after reading the summary and tags and think ‘huh this sounds good,’ but after reading the first part, it’s not what you expect. More so, you hate it. That’s okay. Stories aren’t for everyone. What is not okay is leaving negative comments and harassing authors for work they share for free. Let me repeat that. We do this for FREE.
If you don’t like a story, click off it. I don’t care how much you dislike it and how opinionated you feel. Click off it. Don’t like. Don’t read. And definitely do not comment. Us writers do not share our work for hate. We share it because we want others to enjoy our work and get a confidence boost in the form of kudos and comments. POSITIVE COMMENTS.
If this still baffles you, here’s some tips:
1. You can filter out tags you don’t like on AO3.
2. If you go on a work that you believe is incorrectly tagged, click off it. You might think it’s incorrectly tagged after 1 chapter of (?), but that is you jumping to conclusions.
3. Even if it is incorrectly tagged, click off it. It is never okay to leave hate.
Life is short. Be kind. Treat others how you’d like to be treated. Don’t be a dick.
I’ve answered a lot of questions on tiktok about how to make AO3 look better when reading. More often than not, the answer is to use a site skin.
There are a lot of ready-made skins available for logged in users, but if you want a particular feature or function, you need to know a little bit of CSS.
If you don’t know how to code, that may seem intimidating to you. So I’ve gathered together some bits and pieces of code for different features and functions and put them into a work on AO3. If you can copy/paste, you can create your own site skin with the features you like.
You might have seen that ao3 is rolling out the first part of the blocking feature (blocking users from commenting on your works) but they have also added user-IDs to comments and that sent me in a complete and utter spiral!
So, You know that user? the one that leaves you the best comments? the close friend you have? :D you can now color their comments to make them stand out amongst them all!!
I’ve made 5 basic skins (the one you can see above) but in the work itself you’ll find the explaination on how to change the images and the colors and a few other details.
In light of this sad post, I just want to FYI anyone that might be anxious about it:
I will never delete any of my fics for any reason.
1 - I take the Archive part of AO3 very seriously. I’ll edit and update, but not delete because in my mind it’s been archived once it’s posted.
2 - I’ve seen too many fics/authors I loved disappear, never to be seen again. If I posted it, then someone who loved it might have found it and someday get the intense urge to read again like I do for those fics, and I want them to be able to find it.
3 - What better way to get back at someone heckling you than to just stone-cold ignore their mean-spirited demands? To leave a fic up that infuriates the person bothering me so much for existing on AO3 at all? Even if it was really bad, I would just walk away. Make it written by Anonymous. Abandon it on the site. Comments can be turned off. Notifications can be turned off. An entirely new account can be made to start over with.
The fic can be orphaned.
For any author who is being bothered into deleting their fics/account, please at least consider orphaning your work instead of deleting it wholesale. Orphaning is a wonderful, innovative feature of AO3 put there specifically to thread the needle for people in exactly your situation. To bridge the gap of those who no longer want to be associated with a fic, and those who loved what you wrote and want to be able to revisit it.
An Untamed fic I really loved got the author a lot of harassment and they contemplated deleting it while they were still posting chapters because of the awful comments a handful of people were leaving with each update, but instead orphaned it after finishing. I have reread that fic at least five times since then. I don’t remember the author’s name anymore, just as they certainly wanted, but I still enjoy that fic and I know I’ll come back to it again and I’m so grateful that I can.
No amount of hate erases how much someone else genuinely loved what you wrote.
And there is ALWAYS someone to love it. Even if it’s just one person. Even when things are hard and the horrible people are very loud, try not to forget that they are there too.
Don’t make the hateful one the most important one.
The fic can be orphaned.
This is so important, and I wish more authors used this option. (Thank you, @mondengel, for your reassurance!)
I honestly understand wanting to withdraw your fic: from harassment or just the vague embarrassment that something you wrote 5 years ago doesn’t really reflect you as a person or a writer anymore.
But.… there is ALWAYS someone to love it. Unless you are withdrawing the work to publish it as an original piece, I will always encourage an author to simply orphan the work. Your name vanishes. You get no comments/notifications. It is entirely separated from you. And then… the fandom community remains enriched with something many of them love.
I truly understand the urge to strike back, especially if you’ve been hurt or harassed. And the only weapon an author has is taking their piece away from the fandom. But. That hurts so many innocents, too.
In this fandom, we have many AO3 fics hidden behind collection/mystery walls, and I live in hope that the author is just taking some time to cool down (and allow the harassers to target someone else) before putting them back up for the rest of us to enjoy.
Be kind to your authors.
And maybe they’ll be kind right back to you!
And if you want to maintain control of the work you can (temporarily or permanently) add it to an anonymous collection (instructions for how to do that here). Your name will be removed from it and it will no longer show up on your author page but you will still receive comment notifications and if you go to your statistics page you will be able to see it. You can still edit the work this way and choose to orphan it later if you so desire.
Another option is to create a second account and shift works you don’t want associated with you there and then turn off all notifications from that account (which can be done from the preferences page). You may already have invitations (check the ‘invitations’ tab on your AO3 dashboard) or you can request one to be sent to you here (there is a waiting list, but you should get one within a week). Then once you have a second account set up, go to the preferences pages on both accounts and click the ‘Allow others to invite me to be a co-creator’ button. Then edit the work and add in the new account as a co-author, save the change, then edit again and remove your original account author and save it again. Ta-da! You’re main account is no longer listed as the author to the fic!
I can’t say for sure how many times I’ve gone down my bookmarks and hit the advisory “This work has been deleted.” …and just felt my insides seize for the loss of something that had been very much enjoyed.
If you’re having difficulties, please consider orphaning instead of deletion.
Video description: a tiktok video discussing AO3’s new comment blocking feature.
The video begins by showing a tweet from the Ao3_status twitter account. The tweet reads, “Comment blocking is now live! ” and is responding to the tweet linking the AO3 News post announcing that comment blocking is coming.
The narrator then goes to the comments section on one of her works and points out that there is a new button available. On comments from other users, you can now see a button labelled “Block.”
She taps on the Block button and it takes her to a confirmation page. The confirmation page outlines what blocking will do: stop a user from commenting on your works and stop a user from replying to your comments elsewhere on AO3. It also outlines what blocking will not do: hide that user’s works or bookmarks from you, delete or hide their existing comments on your works, hide their comments elsewhere on the site.
She confirms that she wants to block the user and then returns to her comments section. The button that formerly said “Block” now says “Unblock.” She says you can remove the block on a user by pressing that button again or by tapping on your username at the top of the page and selecting My Preferences from the dropdown menu that appears.
On the My Preferences page, there is now a button labelled “Block users.” After tapping that button, she goes to a new page. On that new page, you can see the user she just blocked and a button next to their username that says “Unblock.”
She taps that button and it takes her to a confirmation page which outlines what will happen if she agrees. Unblocking a user will allow them to comment on your work or to reply to your comments elsewhere on the site. She confirms.
The screen goes back to the Blocked Users page found in My Preferences, and the narrator explains that you don’t need to find a comment from another user in order to block them. If you’d like, you can type their name into the text box provided and block them directly from that page.
Not shown: you can also block a user from that user’s profile page.
If you’d like to know more about more blocking and muting features that are planned, read the News post linked above.
FYI to all it looks like this to the people you have blocked:
[image description: screenshot of the buttons and kudos left at the bottom of an AO3 work. Where the comment box would usually be, there is a blue infobox that reads, “Sorry, you have been blocked by one or more of this work’s creators.”]
thank you so much for checking this out and sharing with us!
You might have seen that ao3 is rolling out the first part of the blocking feature (blocking users from commenting on your works) but they have also added user-IDs to comments and that sent me in a complete and utter spiral!
So, You know that user? the one that leaves you the best comments? the close friend you have? :D you can now color their comments to make them stand out amongst them all!!
I’ve made 5 basic skins (the one you can see above) but in the work itself you’ll find the explaination on how to change the images and the colors and a few other details.
