A guide to block a fanfic with really long tags

by hiyomii

Summary:

Did you see that fanfic with 6 gazillion tags forcing you to scroll endlessly to skip through it? Ever wondered how to block a specific story without having to download a 3rd party app or make an annoying bookmark? Guess what? You can block specific stories and authors directly from AO3, and it works in mobile! 

Spanish translation available

Yes this is about a troll fic making it's way around AO3.

Updated with instructions to block works by a user (See ch3).

Notes:

• Translation into Español available: Una guía para bloquear un fanfic con etiquetas realmente largas by account 2 post ancient gay chinese ships (Palma_XiaoRi)

Chapter 1: The how-to guide

Xie Lian was really sick of seeing a long fanfic with so much tag spam so he asked Hua Cheng to help him block it. That fanfic made no sense, it was called "Sexy time with something or another" and the author felt it was appropriate to tag everything in the English language. How rude and inconsiderate! Hua Cheng looked into it and wrote a nice guide for Xie Lian to use.

To block that fic:

1. From Dashboard, go to Skins, and click Create Site Skin.

   

2. In the Title field, enter a name for the skin. In the CSS field, paste the following code:

   .blurb#work_20963498 {
   display: none;
   }

   Make sure you copy everything, including the period in the beginning!

   

3. When you're done, click Submit, and then click Use.

   

You're all done now! You'll never have to see that monstrosity ever again. It doesn't matter where you're browsing from, as long as you're logged in, you won't see that fanfic anymore.

To block more works:

If you want to block more stories, you can go back to the skin you made and add the code with a different fanfic ID. Each fanfic has a unique ID you can find in the URL. For example, this one is 29509287

If you wanted to block this, you would have the following:

.blurb#work_20963498,
.blurb#work_29509287 {
display: none;
}

To block by authors, see Ch3.

Tip: If you are already using a site skin such as Reversi, you'll need to do a bit more work.

1. In Step 2, scroll down to Advanced and click Show to expand.

   

2. Locate Parent Skins and then click Add parent skin.

   

3. In the field under Parent, enter the name of the skin you want (eg: Reversi) and select it.

   

4. When you're finished, click Update, and the parent skin will apply in addition to the custom blocklist you've made.

Note: This only serves to hide the work from you. Each page is meant to display 20 works. If a blocked work appears on a page, you'll see 19 works instead of the full 20.

 

"Wow!" Xie Lian exclaimed when he saw what a thoughtfully written guide Hua Cheng had made. "I'm going to have to send it to my good friend Shen Yuan who also loves reading fanfics. I bet there's a ton of shit he'd like to filter out of his feed too!"

So he sent it to Shen Yuan who was forever grateful because he'd also started seeing that same shitty fic clogging up his feed too.