"Why can't the freaks on AO3 just go and make a site for all the gross stuff and leave AO3 alone."
Because AO3 is that site. Because AO3 was that site long before you decided AO3 was better than the sites you bullied us off of before, and I can promise you if someone somehow comes up with a fanfic site you like better specifically for the 'gross stuff' you'll try to bully us off that too so you can benefit from it.
AO3's specific core purpose is to preserve fanfiction, yes, but it was also instigated as a host site for the fanfiction that kept getting yeeted off other platforms like Wattpad. Its designed to preserve all fanfiction, not just the fanfiction you, personally, think is 'allowed' to be written.
AO3 is the site for all the gross stuff the freaks make. We've been there just as long as you. We've been funding it just as long as you have. AO3 has specifically said you have a place here. The timeline was literally:
Wattpad/FF.net/LiveJournal purge fanfics > AO3 is born > The people who's fics got purged moved over to AO3 > AO3 gains popularity as the best functioning site > The people who pushed for the fics to be purged off Wattpad move to AO3 > The same people try to push for AO3 to purge fics.
AO3's source coding is open-access. You go make a polished, strict, rigid site where nothing 'icky' is allowed. You go make a site where you can control what is hosted. We already have our space.
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always told myself that i’ll be that bride who posts a new chapter to AO3 on her wedding day. i will make it happen. i wanna be sitting there on my laptop, ready to walk the isle, but be like “hold up, i just need to post this final draft!”
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I’m seeing a lot of stress from Americans about AO3 being down! If that’s the case for you, gentle reader, then may I advise you to take action against KOSA (Kids Online Safety Act)?
This act threatens to allow the government to censor what they decide what they deem “obscene content” online. Given Rupublicans’ very recent history of deeming all LGBT+ content of any type “too obscene for kids”, this can very possibly result in restricting access to any sort of queer resources and queer content online, for the sake of ‘protecting kids’. Which includes your favorite gay fanfics!
For more information, and a very easy way to contact your representatives, click HERE!
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A03 is Back, and Please Do Not Blindly Spread The Claim That A Group Called "Anonymous Sudan" Is Behind This
A03 is back online, and that's great! However, there are posts going around right now blindly saying that a group called "Anonymous Sudan" is behind the attack and repeating the group's stated goals. As A03 has already said, there is good reason to doubt that this group is being honest about it's political motivations and affiliations. We don't know the whole story yet, but it's quite possible that the group is attempting to intentionally stoke islamophobia.
Please do not blindingly spread posts repeating the group's motivation, and be extremely wary of islamophobic statements that might be coming across your dash. More information will come out in time as security experts are able to do their job and trace down the group in question.
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I can't help but think about how Merlin's magic would have been such an alluring thing to Arthur, had he been given the chance (and time) to fully appreciate it. The power dripping from Merlin's voice, the way it lowers an octave as the old English words spill from his lips like the language had been etched into his mind long before he even begun practicing. The way the magic thrums through Arthur, emanating off of Merlin in shock waves as if the power is too much to be contained in the lanky manservant all at once, overspilling like an overly indulged well.
None of us are new to the idea of Arthur having a magic kink.
But nobody ever talks about how Arthur must feel when he witnesses Merlin—No, Emrys— when he uses his dragonlord powers. Like, imagine! The possibilities! Merlin's voice does more than deepen, his voice is rough and powerful and demanding and ohmygodsmerlinisamazing.
Just imagine.
Merlin: OH, DRAKON—!
Arthur: Yes sire. Here sire. On my knees sire. Whatever you ask, sire. Emrys, sire. I'm a penDRAGON, you see. At your service, sire.
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I realized that the updated Tag Search function makes it way easier to attempt to parallel search relationships including a specific character.
This method works better for characters who are not glitter and shipped with every person and creature and object under the sun.
This tutorial is written for people not familiar with tag ids. If you know how tag ids work, you should read the last two paragraph of this tutorial first.
You can find the Tag Search by looking at the menu at the top of the AO3 page that’s off to the left side.
Click Search and click Tag (the third option from the top).
Type in your character. If the character only ever appears in one fandom, you also include that. If the character you want to search as a very common name, you will probably have to include a fandom to avoid pulling in unrelated tags. Do not include more than one fandom otherwise the result will only pull up any tags that exist in all the fandoms you listed.
Select Relationship for type
Select Canonical
Hit Search Tags
The results should pull up every relationship that includes that character for that specific fandom or if you did not restrict by fandom, every relationship that has character with an identical name to the character you’re searching for.
For the character I picked, “Arm”, there are 29 results.
Open the Work Search page in a new tab or window. You can find a link in the same menu as Tag Search.
Or you can also open it through button labeled Work Search beside the Tag Search heading.
On the Work Search page, find the Any Field box.
This next part will be time-consuming but you will need to format all the relationships you want to parallel search like this: "X/Y" OR "X & A" OR "B & Z".
The tags need to match how they were shown on the Tag Search page. Each relationship needs to be placed between straight quotes. Curly quotes will break this search. Between each relationship tag, there needs to be an OR in all caps, but not one at the start or end.
After you’ve formatted things like this you can paste it into the Any Field box. (You could have just composed your search in there but if you’re parallel searching many relationship tags, doing it in notepad or something may make it easier to see what you’ve already included.)
There are filter options on this page. If you want to sort by completed or such, this is the point you need to do it at this point. This kind of search does not allow you to filter after you have clicked search. Unlike filtering on a specific tag, there is no filtering sidebar. A few other caveats:
If you want to exclude tags, you will have to input them into the Any Field box alongside the relationship tags. Those excluded tags will need to be formatted like such: - "tag 1" - "tag 2"
Basically they just need a minus sign in front of them. You do not need to include OR between them.
If you include more than one tag in the Character, Relationship, or Additional Tag boxes, the search will only bring up results that match all of your search parameters. So if you inputted “Fluff” and “High School” into the Additional Tag field, it would only bring up works that have both the “Fluff” and “High School” tag as well as any of the relationship tags in the Any Field.
I just want search for every work that includes Arm so I have no other filtering added. It looks like something below.
Once you’ve finished setting up your search, click the search button.
In the case of my search, I only set it up to pull up any of the 29 relationship tags I found that included Arm. When I saved this screenshot, there were 412 results.
A few important things to note. While AO3 doesn’t really restrict how many text characters you put into the Any Field box, most browsers have a limit. So if you want to parallel search a lot of relationship or any tags in fact, you may run into your browser breaking your search.
If you’re searching a high number of tags, it’s better to use tag ids instead because they’re shorter and so you’ll be able to include way more information with less text characters. The tutorial works similarly except the list will be formatted like such: filter_ids:123 OR filter_id:456
You will not need to put quotes around a tag id. To find a tag id, you can open a specific tag and look at its RSS Feed, or by using the following script: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/29917-ao3-display-tag-id
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