And we’re back on track! The theme for July by majority vote is Electricity!
Remember this can be fanart, fanfic, photo manipulations, claymation, poetry, aesthetics posts, ANYTHING as long as it fits the Megamind-verse and the theme.
Okay okay let’s go let’s go! The masses have spoken; our theme for the month of July is Moonlight!
For this month create any kind of fanwork related to Strange Magic and the theme, and be sure to tag this blog so we can share it and add your name to the drawing! If it’s NSFW, just make sure it gets under a Read More, please and thanks!
If you’re like me, you use the AO3 Work Search form all the time to help zero in on the fics you want to read. But this form has some weird quirks. Take the “warnings” section for example:
What do I do if I want to search for fics that don’t include Major Character Death? If I just check the MCD tag like so:
Then my search brings up all fics that DO contain MCD!
I can instead choose “No Archive Warnings Apply” of course, but that will also rule out “Violence”, “Non-Con”, and “Underage” and maybe I’m OK with those. All I want to do is to avoid MCD, that’s all.
I can try adding -“major character death” to the search terms, but doing so will also rule out any fics tagged with benign variations like “temporary major character death”.
What I want to do is specifically avoid fics which use the MCD archive warning. So how do I do that?
You need to make use of the specialized search parameter terms that AO3 actually sends to its servers when you use the work search form. For the archive warnings, these are as follows:
Chose not to use = warning_ids:14
None Apply = warning_ids:16
Violence = warning_ids:17
MCD = warning_ids:18
Rape = warning_ids:19
Underage = warning_ids:20
So, if I want to rule out MCD and only MCD, I search for “-warning_ids:18″ (the hyphen before the search term means “not”) by entering that into the “Any Field” search bar:
And voila! All fics except those with MCD warnings!
If you want to avoid violence or non-con or underage instead, simply change the warning_ids number to the one you want to rule out. You can also rule out more than one at a time, like so:
Combine this with your other favorite search terms and happily find the fics you want and avoid those you don’t 🙂
You can use variations on this trick to more accurately search for specific categories and ratings too. If people are interested, I’ll make a separate post about those.
And for everyone that doesn’t know!
You can also block things like certain characters,relationships, fandoms, or any commonly used tags from the archive page its self using -filter_ids:(number)
Note: This will not work for the custom tags.
So lets say I wanna read some Rotg fics but I don’t feel like searching through all the Frozen crossovers. (I have no problem with the frozen crossovers I’m just not always in the mood for crossovers)
I would go to the Frozen tag and hover over the RSS Feed button.
At the bottom left of the screen a URL will appear with a number
Now I can enter -filter_ids:966650 into the search bar on the side and Ao3 will filter out all fics that have frozen as one of the tags.
And you can do this to as many tags as you want by adding a space in between each filter!
I suggest you have a place to write down the numbers of the tags you don’t want so you don’t have to go to an unwanted tags page more than once.
Happy Reading!
Reblog to save a life
@ao3commentoftheday I can’t remember if you’ve reblogged or made a post on how to avoid specific tags on fics?? It’s super useful to have!
As we sit on the cusp of changes to the Internet, after your other activities to support Internet freedom, archive your
fandom stuff.
Save the electronic files of your favorite online fandom works. Consider print-outs of your favorite online
material. And save paper
ephemera from fandom events.
Why save? Because you put the effort into a fanwork. Because you may be surprised when a fandom stays alive for years, or gets revived, or when an academic asks to cite your work. Because it’s stupidly hard to find items on Tumblr. Because, lo, in ages past, many fandom archives have risen and fallen, taking favorite fics off the ‘Net. Because it made you happy, makes you remember. Because you never know.
What can
you save?
Fanart
Stories you wrote
Epic comments on stories you wrote
Stories you love that other people wrote
Meta and meta-related discussions
Translations others did of your works
Physical items: paper ephemera, clothing, accessories, art prints and drawings.
Behind the cut…saving from Tumblr and AO3, delving into lost web sites, how to save computer files for the long term, and why I’m glad I saved physical fandom items from 10+ years ago.
So I am going to add onto this because there is, in fact, a professional archival interest in preserving fandom as well. I’ve spoken with some people about this before, but here’s the bottom line: PROFESSIONAL ARCHIVISTS WANT TO PRESERVE YOUR STUFF! HELP THEM DO THIS!
There are pre-existing fandom archives. Where are they?
The University of Iowa Special Collections. U o I is partnered with the Organization for Transformative Works (which runs AO3) to help collect and preserve fandom. They’re one of the biggests out there. Here are some of their existing collections
Pete Balestrieri, who curates the collection, is the man to talk to about this. Please consider giving him your stuff!
The Library of Congress has been archiving select webcomics, and now maintains the Web Cultures Archive which includes sites like Cosplay Paradise.
These are the big institutions doing collecting, but the archival profession and fandom need to start talking more. Born digital material is always at risk, and at present, it is mostly Western fandoms being preserved! Moreover, some facets like cosplay are currently overlooked, and that is something that needs better documentation!
Also don’t forget the Browne Popular Culture Library at Bowling Green State University, the oldest and largest library of its kind in the US!
And outside of the big active collaborations between between fandom and major special collections libraries, more and more university libraries and archives are offering free workshops on Personal Digital Archiving. If you’re not in school or there’s no local group offering workshops in your area, lots of archives and archival organizations now have guides online sharing strategies, tips, and sometimes even suggested freeware programs you can use to get started. While the guides are typically geared towards archiving/preserving stuff like family digital photos or research papers you wrote in school, you can easily apply the same strategies to preserving your fanworks and other fandom stuff.
Here’s a small sample of resources to get you started:
A big part of the charm of Strange Magic is how very fun it is—the film deals with a number of serious issues, but there is still so much joy and happiness in it. So I would like the theme for February to be ‘fun’!
It’s a new year and a strange world. How are you planning to take care of what you hold dear in these uncertain times?
Remember this can be fanart, fanfic, photo manipulations, claymation, poetry, aesthetics posts, ANYTHING as long as it fits the Megamind-verse and the theme.
setepenre-set 