I am really baffled by the people attacking AO3 for hosting stories that involve rape, incest, pedophilia, and other dark things. Have…have they never been to a bookstore or library? People write stories about all manner of dark, horrible things. This is not remotely new. And at least on AO3 and other fandom platforms, the dark things are generally tagged. In bookstores and libraries, not so much.
V.C. Andrews was freaking popular when I was in jr. high and high school. Her books were in the school libraries. They needed to be stamped with trigger warning: EVERYTHING, but mainly things from the fun list of rape, incest, pedophilia, and child abuse. Her books are still sufficiently popular that there are new ones coming out despite the fact that she’s been dead for years!
Her books are in the library I work at. Her books are in most bookstores. Her books are probably still in the libraries of the jr high and high school I went to. Does that mean anywhere that has her books supports rape, incest, pedophilia, and child abuse?
That’s not how it works. Yes, there are occasionally things that a store or library will decide they don’t want to carry, no matter what. The first bookstore I worked at wouldn’t even special order The Turner Diaries. A lot of bookstores won’t even special order The Anarchist Cookbook. I’m sure there are other books out there that people are reluctant to touch, even with a ten foot pole. But, barring those few exceptions, most bookstores and libraries are not in the business of policing the content of the books they deal in.
Not because booksellers and librarians are all monsters who should be reported to the FBI, but because there’s a long history of censorship going very bad places very fast. Also, free speech is considered an American value. Hell, let me just link to the ALA page on censorship.
I don’t pretend to know why stuff like V.C. Andrews’ books, or the fics on AO3 that some people want to report to the FBI, are popular. I don’t get it. It doesn’t appeal to me. Yet I recognize that different dark things are in kinds of fiction that I do like – violence, murder, torture, war, other things that most of us really fervantly hope never to experience in our lives. I don’t know whether fiction is an outlet for whatever darkness lurks in everyone’s hearts, whether it’s a way of dealing with our fear of bad things happening, whether human culture just finds bad things fascinating, or what. Maybe humanity is just super fucked up and Pluto really is a warning buoy telling other civilizations not to go near the planet with the creepy mammal infestation on it.
But I don’t think going after fic platforms because some of the fic hosted there is disturbing is a solution to anything. (And if the people doing so are not also on an equivalent campaign against bookstores and libraries, I suspect that what’s going on is not what they claim is going on.)
VC Andrews was ABSOLUTELY the first thing I thought of when I started hearing about this, because hoooooo my god. And I definitely remember being able to get my hands on those at a young age.
There’s plenty of shit I don’t want to read on AO3. Luckily, that stuff – or at least most of it! – is TAGGED, so I don’t have to. That’s the ENTIRE POINT. It’s not breaking a law, and you are not being forced to read it.
if you’re offline or away and i message you something (like a link to a meme or a picture or w/e) honestly just assume that i’m just leaving it there for when you get back and not expecting you to answer straight away. i don’t need you to respond with “hey, sorry, i wasn’t at the computer!” or anything. i was leaving u a gift for later.
I do this all the time on Discord. I’m not expecting a response, I’m just sharing a thing for whenever you happen to see it.
I regularly send my friends memes when I know they’re asleep because I know
they will wake
and then
they will scream
This post, but also when you’re awake and online and even posting. It’s chill! I’m leaving that there for you whenever, that’s the nice thing about technological advancements like instance messaging, it means I can do that without sending you awkward clunky emails, and they DON’T mean we as human beings need to be available to each other immediately! I’m sending you a letter. Take care of it whenever!
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.
llanrwmaibtgadijivavwtgttatwmatdwhsktdysr: ladies lords and nonbinary royalty watch me as i beat this geek and do it joyously i’ll vanquish any villain with the gall to try and toy with me ask the dragon witch she knows the drill you’re screwed royally
swceoaifyvwwyrsfettr(p)icmteibyetsydnwbwmpidolewiftnamupiruhaybdawocihtbollaytghppiuictbtbbaibiu: Stricken with clairvoyancy events occured as I’d foreseen, your verse was weak your rapping stinks flamboyantly employing these trisyllabic rhymes (psh) I can match that easily I’ll beat you every time so you do not want beef with me Princey, I drown out lesser emcees when I flow there’s no avoiding me, under pressure I rise up, hollar at your buoyancy, diadems are worn on capita I had this battle on lock like attica, your through go home Princey back it up I claim to be the better bard and I backed it up.
Wthhfaaop: what the heckity heck, five abs and one pec.
I love these additions so much
Ilmdss: I love my dark strange son
Ifbjanvg: I’m feeling bitterly jittery and not very glittery
rip tumblr 