No, as far as I have heard it is just about stories with excessively long tags. The tl;dr of why this happened: there is someone in the Mo Dao Zu Shi fandom who has a story that they update daily, and was hella over tagged. Like, ~7k words worth of tags. It's not a ficlet collection afaik, just a very long porn fic. Qhen people complained that this fic that was always at the top of the search had unnecessarily long tags, the author threw a snit and made the tags longer, and also made it a crossover with other fandoms, so people eg in the BTS fandom are going "...why is there a mdzs fic here. ...WHY AM I STILL SCROLLING THROUGH THE TAGS?". And then explosion of people making things with absurdly long tags to... annoy? ao3 into dealing with the situation.
The offending fic is called "Sexy Times with Wangxian," for anyone curious. It's not like it's a particularly new problem, either- I've had someone in my AO3 Savior filters for years for putting 2 pages of tags on a 300-word poem. The trolls are just making it more immediate.
I read a fair chunk of it at one point. While it wasn’t my thing, it was a completely normal work of fanfiction, at least as far in as I got. I’m willing to give many things a fair shot, but I’m not reading that particular fandom because I hunger for something that isn’t dark or weird. It showed no signs of letting up, by which I mean doing anything dark or weird. Since I just wasn’t clicking with the style, I was kinda doubtful that I wanted to find out what some of the more out there tags might be like in that style whenever the story eventually got there. Now I’m suddenly vaguely curious about whether the story actually does include that content, but what on earth would I gain from going to the effort to find out? I did not have this doubt before. It never even occurred to me. It was a totally regular fanfic that happened to have a comically large tag wall. I’m just so unimpressed with the author’s response to the complaints about it. Under basically any other circumstances, I’d be happy for someone who had found an activity they enjoyed enough to be that prolific regardless of whether it was my thing at all. I wasn’t even really bothered by the tag wall until the damn thing started showing up everywhere no matter what you were looking for and how much it wasn’t that. It used to get a mild “oh you” eye roll at worst. Now it’s starting to gather the inescapable dismay of another Classically Abby youtube ad.
I think AO3 needs a tag collapse feature. A thing I'm working on ends up requiring about a full page of warning tags.
Ao3 already has a browsing feature where you can hide all additional tags by default. I think adding a max tags limit to it after which they get hidden automatically would be good. I've complained about needing better tagging guidelines a lot in the past (I have a problem where my ship is a common Beta Ship and half the shit in the tag doesn't actually feature any content for them) but I don't think better guidelines are gonna solve this one without encouraging people to just give up tagging altogether :/
There are also public site skins for Ao3 that have various functions, this one by xparrot automatically adds a scrollbar to any tag field that's over five lines long. It's been around since 2012. Also it works on mobile without the arcane nonsense of getting userscripts running on a phone.
I like having the option of many tags, but want to be sure there's multiple resources - AO3 default and various custom options alike - for people to not have to deal with them.
I agree with wanting an option for many tags. Like I said, I really didn't mind the giant wall of tags when it wasn't an intentional abuse of the tagging system that makes the site harder for people to use. Some stories require a lot of tags. Authors have different needs, priorities, and approaches. I have only personally felt affected by this one single incident, not counting anyone maliciously sharing the life story of Gregor Samsa to make a point. Which I happen to think is hilarious, though not a valid use of tags. But I definitely think there should be more official site options about this. And other options of course. I did appreciate the css option that worked on mobile without hassle, but it didn't seem (at least as far as I could tell) to support dark mode, which would make it unworkable for me. I personally would not like something that collapses tags or imposes a max line limit by default, because if I don't have time to scroll past all the tags then I absolutely do not have time to scroll through embedded subwindows for individual works. I do not think my thumbs would appreciate that ergonomic situation. (The least of my complaints is how much I hate the look of scrollbars on mobile and resent the real estate they take up being ugly, but it's still something that would probably stop me cold from considering an option.) What I would like instead is an option to collapse the tag field on an individual work, which would be fully expanded by default.
I mean it seems like it would be an easy, handy feature to have a "hide tags" function on ao3 that collapses the field, right at the top of the field box itself, so you can just go through and collapse the tags box on individual fic as you come across them.
there actually is a way to make it work with darkmode, by making the darkmode workskin a “parent work skin,” i think? unfortunately i have misplaced the tumblr post that had a tutorial for this, will report back if i find this. (also, agreed about disliking the look of scrollbars on mobile.)
I think this is my favorite proposed solution, honestly. I’m very much against the idea of an imposed tag limit (doesn’t help that a lot of the limit proposals I’ve seen in the wild have been unreasonably low), but at the same time I think there should be a built-in option to collapse ‘em, or even have them collapsed by default past a certain point and have a “click to view” option.
The post from before (my reblog here) has instructions for using a public skin as a parent skin, and sticking in some modified CSS, does that do what you're thinking of?
Okay so this is incredibly petty but- why does everyone hum so much in fanfic these days? I'm seeing it at "a breath he didn't know he was holding" frequencies and I think it's usually supposed to be the character making a thoughtful or satisfied noise like "Mmmm," but every single time I picture them stopping whatever they're doing to hum a tune.
i write it as 'hmm' or 'hmmed' instead of 'hum' for this very reason. not a real word but im writing for fun, so you get what you get XD
Hokay, so if you’re describing how Deadpool smells, and pus, dried blood and eau de spandex-caked-to-skin-with-old-scabs don’t put in an appearance before you get to “something indefinably masculine,” I’m pretty sure you’re doin it rong.
Assuming that "something uniquely him" and variants are code for "congealed gore" would certainly make some fanfic more exciting, I'll give it that.
I’m pretty sure he’s repeatedly canonically described as very stinky. If there is any character where I would have absolutely no questions about whether extensive scarring over all skin might negatively affect ability to sweat and therefore produce the standard variety of body odor, it would be Deadpool. I’d buy it without even kicking the tires. But I wouldn’t be describing it as masculine unless I thought masculinity was approximately 90% depression and 10% very intense but probably misdirected sheer physical exertion. There’s of course tons and tons of comics and I haven’t read all of them by any means, but I have read a fair few. My impression of Deadpool at his most quietly domestic is more or less a particularly extreme version of foul bachelor. He can get away with so much more, from eating questionable food to neglecting any task that cannot be carried out from the couch while watching television, and he gets a lot less return on the effort of health and hygiene. With most characters, mundane hygiene activities are relatable or show a vulnerable moment. With Deadpool they feel alien and absurd, like he must have spaced out unless he’s going out of his way to perform a ritualistic behavior divorced of meaning. Taking care of himself won’t make him feel good and comfortable, and failing to do so will have pretty much zero consequences besides contributing to depressing surroundings. It’s not that he couldn’t habitually brush his teeth twice a day, it would just always seem like he’s either not entirely there, or he’s way, way too present for a person doing this activity. Maintaining a reasonably uncluttered and hygienic personal living space by methods other than new property acquisitions and arson is probably a loss anyway without some very persistent supernatural assistance. Although characterization varies because comics, he would rank high on an “actually sadly accurate depictions of executive dysfunction” list, right down to failing to compensate for extreme distractibility by leaning into obsessiveness, in all areas of life. Not really that great for housekeeping. I could believe he occasionally cleans everything, or always cleans some things, but I will never believe that he doesn’t default to living in at least a little squalor. All the relatability you lose by not being able to brush your teeth without seeming weird returns to you tenfold. So even without accounting for open wounds, which really seems like it ought to be the most important factor of all, this man is simply not destined to smell good. It’s not like he’s getting paid extra for that anyway.
