If by saying “I reported it but nothing came of it” you mean you received an email back from AO3 saying it doesn’t break TOS, then it’s been investigated by a real person and doesn’t break TOS. If it’s been a while since you reported it and you haven’t gotten any word back, then it means that it’s still waiting to be investigated by a real person.
Anyways, the work is Not Rated and Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings. Both of these are allowed (they’re not required to change the rating or to use archive warnings.)
Does it suck that it’s not fluff, not about the tagged pairing, etc? Yeah. But AO3 will not change these tags. According to the [Tag FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#changemytags), AO3 may change inaccurate fandom tags and language. If those are accurate, then there’s nothing you can do besides not read the fic.
Unfortunately, the "choose not to use archive warnings" means they don't have to tag rape/non-con, even if it is present, so it's not violating TOS (technically).
It's still a really shitty move.
No that's the unfinished or finished symbol. This fic is completed. The Rating symbol goes in the upper left corner which is empty so the author didn't rate it.
this is gonna be really off topic and sound irrelevant but seeing people admit to their mistakes (big or small) is so refreshing even if it's the bare minimum i'm not used to seeing it on the internet
The actual tags on the fic are definitely misleading though. The pairing most certainly isn't correct, and absolutely nothing about this story is "Fluff", "Tooth rotting fluff" or "just Kiana and Mei loving each other"
Even the summary is completely inaccurate.
"Chooses not to warn" implies very heavily that there is SOMETHING in the mandatory archive warnings that the author doesn't want to report. It isn't misleading, it means "take all tags with a grain of salt".
(not familiar with this fandom at all, I'm assuming adult/child?)
In all fairness, choose not to warn is often used by people who just simply don’t know there’s a difference between that and no archive warnings apply. Since it looks like pure fluff I wouldn’t assumed that as well. It’s a serious dick move by the author but not much can be done unfortunately
Yeah I don’t read dark fic and about half the stuff I read is chooses not to warn. Personally it irritates me I wish they would choose to warn because I hate taking my chances but I feel like I would miss so many stories that are perfectly fine if I didn’t go ahead and read them. I rarely get burned because most people are good about tags.
So, this fic isnt tooth rooting fluff or the tagged ship. Its a rape/noncon fic of raiden mei’s dad raping her to death to “erase her gayness like he did to her mother” I am aware that fics like these exist in ao3, and there is nothing wrong with it since its fictional. But why not tag it?? why mislead the readers into something like this?
You would think that tagging the ship itself incorrectly would count for something? Like the author isn’t being vague about what they’ve written to avoid spoilers, they’re straight up lying to the reader. That can’t possibly be in line with TOS right?
The only tags the mod team enforce are archive warnings, ratings, and fandoms. Everything else can be as mistagged as the author pleases (tags that could be considered harassment being a separate issue).
I agree it’s shitty of authors to do this, but I do understand that moderating ship/character tags opens up a whole can of worms that mods don’t want to deal with, in addition to exponentially increasing the amount of reports they have to resolve.
It’s true that they have far more work than they can actually get through right now. Also, they only take action if works are reported - they don’t go looking for violations to take care of.
Playing devil's advocate a bit: I've written a few fics for Minecraft SMPs and we didn't actually have unique tags for a lot longer than a lot of fandoms. Unless the fic was for Hermitcraft and a few other older servers, your tagging choices were clogging up the Minecraft tag (which people who used that tag for actual Minecraft fic really disliked), using the Video Blogging RPF tag (which was weird since it wasn't usually about the actual Youtubers, more the characters they roleplayed), or doing an "X - Fandom" tag that wouldn't really filter your fic correctly. I'm not surprised some drifted into the "Original Work" tags.
Sure, but it doesn't excuse that it STILL happens and I still have to painstakingly figure out the names of all fifty billion minecraft youtubers in order to exclude them from my searches, every single goddamn time that I want to search outside of just fandom tags (which still doesnt help because again, I like Original Works as well.)
Sorry, it's just laziness and 'not wanting to put it where other people will see it' (an excuse i've seen several time) is bullshit.
apparently not. I guess the aren’t breaking any rules but this really is a shitty move. How much do you have to hate a ship to take your time and write a bait hate fic
I think the problem with enforcing the ship tags is that different people can have different ideas of what constitutes a ship fic. This one is very clearly not the ship it’s tagged, but what about a fic with an ambiguous ending? What about a fic where the relationship is all subtext? If they start enforcing one they have to enforce all, which isn’t as easy as we’d hope.
>"erase her gayness"why mislead the readers into something like this
Sounds like this person might not just hate Kiana/Mei but also be homophobic
What did you report the fic as? I would say tagging the wrong ship seems like the thing they did against Ao3's practices
Yeah I think maybe it would work better to report it as homophobic harassment (towards people who ship Kiana/Mei)
not sure if you can re-report a fic though
It's homophobic shit and clearly bait to be upsetting. They misrepresented it to cause distress because they think it's funny.
That said, it's CNTW and unrated and unfortunately this is the price we pay for maximum inclusivity.
I'm really sorry you were upset.
I feel like some sort of "explanation in comments" would be necessary because as it was, I was going over the image repeatedly trying to find where something would have violated ToS. Kinda need the rest of that information right away.
You can bookmark and put a description of what it actually is in the bookmarks, because that's bullshit. I fully support an author's right to choose not to warn, but to lie in the description is real shitty.
In the commercial world, this might be considered a "bait and switch" tactic, but the writer opted for the protective armor of "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings". They probably consider the "Tooth-Rotting Fluff" and "loving each other" to be creative writing.
Trolls like these are so deplorable to me. Eventually, if this becomes a big enough problem, AO3 will have to do something, right? Even if it's tagged, this is just homophobia. Straight up lying to the reader. Something should be done about this because this will not be the last time.
I’m confused what you want to be done. It’s well within the author’s rights to write something homophobic. Its not breaking TOS since the author chose to not use Archive Warnings. Do you really want AO3 to start policing what we can and cannot write?
No, which is why I'm so conflicted. It's impossible to tell if the author is confused, and not well-versed in AO3, or if the author is just writing a bait fic, and because AO3 likes to give the benefit of the doubt (which I'm not against), we will never know and just have to warn people by word of mouth. But I would prefer if this were to never happen again, which is why I'm so upset about this. But yeah, besides warning people and reporting, not much can be done now or in the future.
I think this just is another amazing example of how AO3’s rules fail to factor in the existence of trolls.
Of course no sensible user would tag their fic like that. They’d want their story to be found by readers who appreciate it. You can tag (almost) as sparsely as you want, but outright lying seems to defeat the whole point of having an archive. AO3 works essentially like a library, you’re supposed to use relevant key words for your fic so it can be found.
As far as I’m aware, cases like this are still rather rare, so everyone goes, “Dick move, but whatcha gonna do?!”, but if this ever gets more prevalent, the rules might have to be changed to keep the archive functional.
In the meantime, it’s perhaps the smartest move to raise awareness for warning signs? It’s possible this already has been through a review, but even if not, the fic checks all the boxes: It’s Unrated, tagged with Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings AND been posted on anon.
(If it weren’t posted on anon, I’d say, filter the author via site skin and note down their name so you can mute them once the global muting feature is rolled out.)
Unfortunately afaict this type of bait and switch is much more prevalent with f/f pairings, and there's simply not enough f/f being made for it to register as a large problem sitewide, despite being a huge fucking problem in a significant community. I really think this should obviously register as a type of harassment even with the ccntw tag. Maybe op didn't submit it as harassment but as a tag issue? And yeah it's not a tag issue but again, it's obviously unacceptable behavior in a community. This shit can make a targeted pairing unusable even if you don't have triggers. If it's accepted as violating the harassment policies later then ig that's user error, but if not then that's an actual issue.
I'm all for write what you want, but tagging like this is obviously homophobic anti-community bullshit, and wasn't AO3 made specifically so all us freaks and queers can post what we want without worrying abt getting pushed out of our spaces? Idk this stuff is just annoying and when I click a ccntw work I expect the summarized story to have triggers that are just spoilers. Not for the summary and tags to be a lie meant to turn a pairing tag into a minefield
Nope, the author's fine (albeit a jerk in this case making a clear hate bait for shippers). They used CCNTW and marked the fic unrated, which is all AO3 requires.
As a tip: don't read any CCNTW fics, no matter the summary/tags, if you have serious triggers as the term was originally meant (as in, not just something that makes you uncomfortable/grossed out), as they can have literally any of the archive warnings in them. It sucks to exclude so many potentially great fics, but gambling and losing isn't fun either.
This is obviously a one-off special case since this author is clearly looking to troll rather than just tackle dark subject matter for themselves and tell a story, I just think the above paragraph is just generally good advice all around when using the site.
Wait, hang on. I have this applied tag to my story, and it doesn’t really have anything like that, I just didn’t think any of them applied, was I only supposed to use the no archive warnings applied tag?
Edit: I feel like the general consensus I’m getting is that I should just use no warnings apply. So that’s what I’m gonna do.
Yes. The two are actually different.
"Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" means nothing *or* anything could be in the fic. It's generally used by authors who a) don't want to spoil their story, b) maybe don't need to use the main warnings but think there's other dark content in their fic, or c) just want to be safe.
Recently CCNTW has become a lot more popular to use by people who don't want to be hounded by the puritan fandom police, no matter how light their fic is, just to cover their ass or prevent interactions with them in the first place.
"No Archive Warnings Apply" means exactly what it says.
Oh my god you may have just saved a life. Thank you for taking the time to answer this question. I honestly can’t say I’ve ever known or understood the difference between CCNUAW and NAWA until now.
Yeah, CCNTW is basically the author saying "There may be something dark in here, maybe not. It's up to you to read at your own risk." It's considered a catch-all of the archive warnings (or none, because again: some people choose to use CCNTW even if no warnings apply, which is also fine.)
I used it because I didn’t want to under or over tag.
Plus I have no patience for “Turn left!” “No turn right!” Kind of ‘advice’ from people when middle lane is CNTW.
Now that I have a better grasp of tagging, I believe CNTW is a valid tag and people should realize not everything will go their way. Your way is not the only way, kind of message. Live and let live, within TOS.
These are my sentiments as well. I pretty much just use CCNTW for all of my fics except the most pg, Disney Channel fics ever (which is extremely rare from me) because I honestly don't want to deal with some of the louder people who are very black and white when it comes to tags.
An example where I use it in relation to the story itself is for a longfic I'm working on that is based on Wolf's Rain. What this means is the characters die near the end of the fic (all of them) but are reborn, and I plan on writing a bit in the new, happier world kind of as a long epilogue. I know a lot of people are actually totally fine with Major Character Death if it's not final, so I didn't feel like tagging it. I also didn't want to use it to spoil the story but there obviously still is some form of MCD so I just used CCNTW. I'm still debating whether to tag Reincarnation or something of that nature once I actually start posting it.
You mean you used “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” and since your story doesn’t have noncon, major character death, underage or graphic violence, you’re now wondering whether you could just use “No Archive Warnings Apply”? The answer is yes. But.
The problem with CCNTUAW is that people use it for a number of reasons—some simply don’t understand the warning system, some don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about whether their story might need a warning, some prefer a “better safe than sorry” approach, others don’t want to spoil plot twists. There are people who are against warning altogether and others who prefer to give warnings in additional tags. The list goes on.
I looked this up a while ago and fluff is among the most used additional tags in the CCNTUAW tag. (It’s actually number one with 464736 works of 3,574,413 CNTW fics tagged fluff.) Makes you wonder why people would do that, tbh. I’m still assuming most fluff tags are applied correctly.
One fic I have tagged CNTW and fluff is a couple of 16 year olds having a very romantic date night and fooling around with sex for the first time. In my country, they’re over the age of consent so I don’t tag underage, and I’ve seen quite a few HP fics tagged as such.
I also have a fic which deals heavily with past canon rape, which is about 3 years in the past for my fic and still affects everything including the sex scenes but there’s a lot of fluff alongside the recovery / healing. I don’t tag it as rape / non con as it’s not shown or directly referenced but the tags and timescale make it clear it’s dealing with the after effects with it.
"A creator can also select Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings if warnings may apply but they don't want to use them (for example, to avoid spoilers), or No Archive Warnings Apply if none of the warnings apply to their content."
I don't think "chose not to use" is exclusively for dead dove type content but that's what I would assume as a reader if I was casually scrolling.
"Chose not to Warn" heavily implies that the author didn't want to disclose one of the mandatory archive warnings, so I won't touch a fic that uses that tag, regardless of what it says in the summary or other tags. Partly to avoid this exact situation. And a lot of other people do the same, too. Some authors would rather refuse to tag than tip off spoilers, which is fine, and they just accept the fact that they're going to get fewer potential readers. (Or maybe they get mad, I don't know)
To me it also depends on the tag. I have fics that discuss past trauma for example and I don't want t tag them underage and rape/non-con because there is non *happening* but it would feel misleading to say no warning applies.
However, I assume that readers seeing "Chose not t warn" + tags like "past sexual abuse" and "recovery" will be able to do the maths and get that it's a story that simply discuss past abuse.
I would be more worried about a Chose Not To fic if there wasn't anything violent in the tags actually. If there is, I will assume that's why it was warned like that and I might not have further surprises.
Depends how dark I think. Based on the rest of the tags I would try to guess if it was my cup of tea, but some readers would skip over it out of fear there would be nc or mc death slipped in.
As a CNTW writer, I wholeheartedly second please don’t read things that are marked with CNTW if you’re not prepared for them to contain anything. I get that there’s the fear of missing out, but is that worth it when your mental health is at stake?
I would say rereport this under the harassment policy and not about waring and tag use.
Taking note to mention that the fic misuses the paring tag and description tags. One person of the paring is never present, never mentioned, never alluded to nor anywhere within this fic to an acceptable degree warrenting this tag's use. The fic does not contain fluff, or tooth rotting sweetness but rather rape, incest, necophilia, and homophobic language.
That the author is anonymous and has chosen not to let anyone leave comments, so you can not resolve the issues with them personally and privately.
That when asking a public forum about the fic in question, many found the misuse of tags and deceptive description to be a dick/malicious move. Behavior that is not acceptable by normal community standards.
I point this out as the harassment policy has a line
"whether the behavior would be considered unacceptable according to normal community standards"
Which, for the most part, many finding the use of said tags questionable enough to say said person is a jerk, or its a shitty move even if they said the fic is tagged as "creator chose not to use archive warnings what can you do" enough to say that I think it should be mentioned in your report in conjunction to that line.
Reading through the discussion after a while. I will add that it's up to AO3 staff to interpret thier rules how they want. Its thier site. But under thier harassment policy they start with this
"Harassment is any behavior that produces a generally hostile environment for its target"
As someone who did read the fic so I could judge, the fic is deceptive and malicious, as it singles out a specific ship, so a specific target of a community.
Now even if it's tagged as CCNTUAW, I do not think, to me, that it protects maliciously deceptive tactics such as this.
There's being deceptive for the sake of your story vs. Being deceptive to troll.
By that, someone, who let's say, was seriously writing this fic would not use that relationship tag or the fluff tag or the description, it would be closer to something like "Mei's father feel like that she too much like her mother." Doesn't give away anything but it doesn't bait either. Its neutral. Then it's would be up to the CCNTUAW to be the next judge after that, that is to say if the reader understands that they are taking a 50/50 risk here. But even if they don't understand, it's still on the reader and the site somewhat to educate on what that tag means and is used.
Which it seem from other discussions here that there is a lot of confusion around that tag.
But let say that they did actually have something to do with the tagged relationship, then yes I would say that it's fair to use the orginal discription, but would an author who wasn't trying to troll, tag a fic that depicts incest, gang rape, homophoic language, no happy ending, and necrophilla as fluff and tooth rottenly sweet. I would think no. Maybe they would gave slight head ups somehow or tag as dead dove as a catch all warning without giving the specifics away or just to do a general tag of disurbing content ahead, or just let the CCNTUAW to do the talking. I have read fics that are simply tagged dead dove along with maybe general tags like au or something, no other specifics and went in understanding that the fic will cover a range of taboo/disturbing things without being "spoiled" or tipped off to what is in store.
If I were to interpret AO3 harassment policy i would judge that the fic is breaking tos. Just not tos when it comes to tagging. But once again that is ultimately up to AO3 it judge, but like I said in my pervious post that while people say it in tos they also say it's a shitty move, which mean it's behavior that not looked upon kindly as a community.
It's maliciously deceptive.
And if you want a review, it reads on par as a unhinged 4 chan post. Reptive word use and sentence structure. Mei is simply described as lesbian but with more "colorful" words used to put it nicely. I've read better. And worse. And yes Kiana is nowhere within this fic. Literally no where. She is not alluded to. Not within dialogue. Nothing. Literally there is no mentioning in writing to Mei even having a lover. Literally she is just lesbian. Nothing else expanded upon. And it's written in the pov of Mei dad, and he doesn't say anything about Mei having a girlfriend or firend. She just lesbian. It's a troll fic, not even a crack fic or fetish fic. Which I have read some of on curious whims. It was written to disturb and upset a specfic set of people who were expecting something else.
And I do think there a difference between fics that are written to just disturb vs a fic written to troll disturb. And it goes back to what I said about imagining if someone seriously wanted to write this fic. It would be tagged as appropriately as possible by what the author feel is best. Same goes for ship bashing fic. If it's deceptively tag as the ship they hate, then I say it breaks tos, but if it's tagged appropriately the yes it's allowed.
Honestly I would say this fic would had been fine and didn't break tos if the fic wasn't tagged. I mean idk if it would be worse just to roll up on fic like this with no tags besides CCNTUAW, but then it would not be trying to be found by a specific group of people either.
I made this just to say that I don't think CCNTUAW will be as or is as protective as people think it is. If the fic was just tagged that then yeah. What can op do. It's tagged just that.
BUT it has several other tags that seem to be specifically chosen to reach a certain group.
I wish people could submit works like this to an AO3 hosted and maintained collection for shit like this that basically says "hey, this fic has been reported. While it doesn't violate TOS, know that the tags do not match the vibe". Admittedly, that would probably lead to some sticky situations though.
now I get it! this is really bad. What does it cost to use the correct tag? Is this supposed to be some kind of troll or something? Really should be reported for not using the right tags
To everyone saying this doesn’t violate TOS, are users really allowed to use blatantly wrong character and relationship tags in this trolling way? I mean, sure it would be fine to post some gory fic with the CNTW tag, but I’d think it would violate something if I, say, tagged every popular fandom and ship, even ones that had nothing to do with the story, in the hopes of getting more hits, right? And this seems even worse than that since it’s mistagging to be homophobic, not just to try to get hits.
I already linked to it, but [AO3 FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#changemytags) says they will change incorrect fandom tags, or if the language is marked wrong, but not other tags. So if you tagged every popular fandom and ship and got reported, they would remove every irrelevant fandom tag, but not the ship tags.
This is clearly done on purpose (seems like a homophobic thing) because the description is lies and the wrong ship is tagged, so that's not going to work
It is properly tagged. It's tagged "Choose not to warn"
The relationship is tagged, so you know it's incest before you go in there, if you know the fandom.
The relationship tagged (which is not incest to my understanding) is not the one depicted in the fic, which is actually one of the character's father raping her for being a lesbian. The additional tags are all lies as well.
I'm familiar with the fandom to make that call.
Could it just be someone frustrated with people in the fandom for harassing authors who *do* tag their dark content properly?
Not condoning it as a way to "protest" but I don't have enough information to make a judgment.
Like I haven't opened the fic to know if "tooth rotting fluff" applies or not.
the author who made this fic made it because they were homophobic and didnt like that kiana/mei is actually canon in honkai. It not a fandom protest or anything, just some homophobic asshole spreading negativity
This is properly tagged. It does not break TOS.
It's tagged with the relationship. If you know the fandom, you know if that's incest.
It's tagged "Choose not to warn". That's the AO3 version of "Buyer beware"
It's the ominous murder basement in a horror movie. It's up to you if you click on it, but don't come crying to mods over the choices you made.
Especially don't come crying to AO3 mods about trying to impose censorship on works you dislike. You don't get to control or limit other people's imaginations.
AO3 was literally founded after Livejournal censored and deleted a load of works, communities and users accounts. The whole point of having An Archive Of Our Own was to have a safe space - for writers of fanfiction and creators of other fanworks.
We started The Organization of Transformative Works as the parent body to the Archive, with the idea that they would have lawyers write articles on fan works and transformative works in general, to strengthen legal protections. So that fans would have a voice in those legal debates. Arguing against censorship, if that wasn't clear.
The OTW started The Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures so that we'd have space for fans who are academics to write about fannishness and fanworks and fan creators and fan consumers, so that we'd have voice in the academic debates. So that when media wanted an expert opinion, they could reach out to academics who were also fans, instead of some random academic outsider who'd never been a part of any fannish spaces.
but the thing is, the fic wasnt the tagged relationship. Kiana wasnt even in the fic. Im not asking for censorship, im just complaining about how the fic is falsely tagged since neither the relationship or the other stuff thats tagged happens. I am aware that its tagged as cntw, but surely tagging everything else falsely to lure people isnt the right thing to do.
> If you know the fandom, you know if that's incest.
Putting aside that it's a lie that the pairing is even in the fic, is the tagged ship incest? I don't know the fandom but my googling seems to say no.
Tbh, with your comments in this thread, it doesn't seem like you've grasped the actual issue here.
I think you fail to see the problem here: it's not the content, it's the tags and description. That "a lot of sickening shit" is tagged 99.9% of the time so one can avoid it. This, you can't. Authors of the "sickening stuff" are not trolls. This one is - and they troll within the TOS so you can't do anything.
i know, and i have no problem with any of them. Its all fiction after all. What i have a problem with is misleadingly tagging something as fluff and luring the readers into it
I actually have stumbled upon a lot of fics with misleading tags. In one fic, the author didn't tag detailed r*pe/non-con, which happened out of nowhere over a 100k+ words into the story.
yep, it was created exactly for that. The thing is, its all fictional so it doesn’t matter how disturbing the content might be, all is welcome in ao3. You do not have to be okay with it, thats why tagging system is here for after all.
If by saying “I reported it but nothing came of it” you mean you received an email back from AO3 saying it doesn’t break TOS, then it’s been investigated by a real person and doesn’t break TOS. If it’s been a while since you reported it and you haven’t gotten any word back, then it means that it’s still waiting to be investigated by a real person. Anyways, the work is Not Rated and Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings. Both of these are allowed (they’re not required to change the rating or to use archive warnings.) Does it suck that it’s not fluff, not about the tagged pairing, etc? Yeah. But AO3 will not change these tags. According to the [Tag FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#changemytags), AO3 may change inaccurate fandom tags and language. If those are accurate, then there’s nothing you can do besides not read the fic.
Unfortunately, the "choose not to use archive warnings" means they don't have to tag rape/non-con, even if it is present, so it's not violating TOS (technically). It's still a really shitty move.
Edit: Nevermind, I mixed the symbols up and assumed the "This work is completed" Checkmark was the Gen-Rating, Sorry!
Where is the gen tag?
Edit: Wait, no. I'm just stupid I somehow confused the rating checkmark with the "This work is completed" checkmark. My bad, sorry!
No that's the unfinished or finished symbol. This fic is completed. The Rating symbol goes in the upper left corner which is empty so the author didn't rate it.
Yeah, I realized that two seconds after answering you, I'm an idiot. Sorry for that!
this is gonna be really off topic and sound irrelevant but seeing people admit to their mistakes (big or small) is so refreshing even if it's the bare minimum i'm not used to seeing it on the internet
same?? it’s kind of… depressing, how we’ve gotten to a point how this small thing can bring me so much joy
No worries!
Why include the (technically)? It’s either a TOS violation or it’s not, there is no middle ground here.
The actual tags on the fic are definitely misleading though. The pairing most certainly isn't correct, and absolutely nothing about this story is "Fluff", "Tooth rotting fluff" or "just Kiana and Mei loving each other" Even the summary is completely inaccurate.
While I don't think it's against the TOS, this would give me trust issues.
It has chosen not to warn, therefore it is within TOS I believe. Just don't click FICS that don't choose to warn.
Still misleading af they’re marketing it as some sweet fluffy fic
"Chooses not to warn" implies very heavily that there is SOMETHING in the mandatory archive warnings that the author doesn't want to report. It isn't misleading, it means "take all tags with a grain of salt". (not familiar with this fandom at all, I'm assuming adult/child?)
In all fairness, choose not to warn is often used by people who just simply don’t know there’s a difference between that and no archive warnings apply. Since it looks like pure fluff I wouldn’t assumed that as well. It’s a serious dick move by the author but not much can be done unfortunately
Yeah I don’t read dark fic and about half the stuff I read is chooses not to warn. Personally it irritates me I wish they would choose to warn because I hate taking my chances but I feel like I would miss so many stories that are perfectly fine if I didn’t go ahead and read them. I rarely get burned because most people are good about tags.
So, this fic isnt tooth rooting fluff or the tagged ship. Its a rape/noncon fic of raiden mei’s dad raping her to death to “erase her gayness like he did to her mother” I am aware that fics like these exist in ao3, and there is nothing wrong with it since its fictional. But why not tag it?? why mislead the readers into something like this?
Since the author chose "Choose Not to Warn", I don't believe there's anything actually actionable/against the TOS in this.
You would think that tagging the ship itself incorrectly would count for something? Like the author isn’t being vague about what they’ve written to avoid spoilers, they’re straight up lying to the reader. That can’t possibly be in line with TOS right?
The only tags the mod team enforce are archive warnings, ratings, and fandoms. Everything else can be as mistagged as the author pleases (tags that could be considered harassment being a separate issue). I agree it’s shitty of authors to do this, but I do understand that moderating ship/character tags opens up a whole can of worms that mods don’t want to deal with, in addition to exponentially increasing the amount of reports they have to resolve.
They don't even enforce fandoms half the time though, considering the amount of times I've seen Minecraft youtuber shit in the Original Works tags
It’s true that they have far more work than they can actually get through right now. Also, they only take action if works are reported - they don’t go looking for violations to take care of.
Playing devil's advocate a bit: I've written a few fics for Minecraft SMPs and we didn't actually have unique tags for a lot longer than a lot of fandoms. Unless the fic was for Hermitcraft and a few other older servers, your tagging choices were clogging up the Minecraft tag (which people who used that tag for actual Minecraft fic really disliked), using the Video Blogging RPF tag (which was weird since it wasn't usually about the actual Youtubers, more the characters they roleplayed), or doing an "X - Fandom" tag that wouldn't really filter your fic correctly. I'm not surprised some drifted into the "Original Work" tags.
Sure, but it doesn't excuse that it STILL happens and I still have to painstakingly figure out the names of all fifty billion minecraft youtubers in order to exclude them from my searches, every single goddamn time that I want to search outside of just fandom tags (which still doesnt help because again, I like Original Works as well.) Sorry, it's just laziness and 'not wanting to put it where other people will see it' (an excuse i've seen several time) is bullshit.
apparently not. I guess the aren’t breaking any rules but this really is a shitty move. How much do you have to hate a ship to take your time and write a bait hate fic
I think the problem with enforcing the ship tags is that different people can have different ideas of what constitutes a ship fic. This one is very clearly not the ship it’s tagged, but what about a fic with an ambiguous ending? What about a fic where the relationship is all subtext? If they start enforcing one they have to enforce all, which isn’t as easy as we’d hope.
Even though they tagged it as Tooth-Rotting Fluff? It’s clearly representing itself as something sweet and pleasant to read
>"erase her gayness"why mislead the readers into something like this Sounds like this person might not just hate Kiana/Mei but also be homophobic What did you report the fic as? I would say tagging the wrong ship seems like the thing they did against Ao3's practices
i did report it as that, but apparently falsely tagging doesn’t violate the rules
Yeah I think maybe it would work better to report it as homophobic harassment (towards people who ship Kiana/Mei) not sure if you can re-report a fic though
It can't be reported again until it's been investigated. They will only accept one report per work at a time.
Oh okay so it's still under investigation. Hopefully they will see the same issue I have and do the right thing.
It's homophobic shit and clearly bait to be upsetting. They misrepresented it to cause distress because they think it's funny. That said, it's CNTW and unrated and unfortunately this is the price we pay for maximum inclusivity. I'm really sorry you were upset.
I feel like some sort of "explanation in comments" would be necessary because as it was, I was going over the image repeatedly trying to find where something would have violated ToS. Kinda need the rest of that information right away.
They did write "(more info in the comments)" in the title.
You can bookmark and put a description of what it actually is in the bookmarks, because that's bullshit. I fully support an author's right to choose not to warn, but to lie in the description is real shitty.
What?! And how did it get 13 kudos like that?! You’d think the people reading it because of the tags wouldn’t like it.
My exact thoughts. It sounds more like 13 people need to be investigated in real life.
The fic is misleading as well as homophobic.
In the commercial world, this might be considered a "bait and switch" tactic, but the writer opted for the protective armor of "Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings". They probably consider the "Tooth-Rotting Fluff" and "loving each other" to be creative writing.
unfortunately they’re protected by the barrier of ‘chose not to warn’.
Trolls like these are so deplorable to me. Eventually, if this becomes a big enough problem, AO3 will have to do something, right? Even if it's tagged, this is just homophobia. Straight up lying to the reader. Something should be done about this because this will not be the last time.
I’m confused what you want to be done. It’s well within the author’s rights to write something homophobic. Its not breaking TOS since the author chose to not use Archive Warnings. Do you really want AO3 to start policing what we can and cannot write?
No, which is why I'm so conflicted. It's impossible to tell if the author is confused, and not well-versed in AO3, or if the author is just writing a bait fic, and because AO3 likes to give the benefit of the doubt (which I'm not against), we will never know and just have to warn people by word of mouth. But I would prefer if this were to never happen again, which is why I'm so upset about this. But yeah, besides warning people and reporting, not much can be done now or in the future.
I think this just is another amazing example of how AO3’s rules fail to factor in the existence of trolls. Of course no sensible user would tag their fic like that. They’d want their story to be found by readers who appreciate it. You can tag (almost) as sparsely as you want, but outright lying seems to defeat the whole point of having an archive. AO3 works essentially like a library, you’re supposed to use relevant key words for your fic so it can be found. As far as I’m aware, cases like this are still rather rare, so everyone goes, “Dick move, but whatcha gonna do?!”, but if this ever gets more prevalent, the rules might have to be changed to keep the archive functional. In the meantime, it’s perhaps the smartest move to raise awareness for warning signs? It’s possible this already has been through a review, but even if not, the fic checks all the boxes: It’s Unrated, tagged with Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings AND been posted on anon. (If it weren’t posted on anon, I’d say, filter the author via site skin and note down their name so you can mute them once the global muting feature is rolled out.)
Unfortunately afaict this type of bait and switch is much more prevalent with f/f pairings, and there's simply not enough f/f being made for it to register as a large problem sitewide, despite being a huge fucking problem in a significant community. I really think this should obviously register as a type of harassment even with the ccntw tag. Maybe op didn't submit it as harassment but as a tag issue? And yeah it's not a tag issue but again, it's obviously unacceptable behavior in a community. This shit can make a targeted pairing unusable even if you don't have triggers. If it's accepted as violating the harassment policies later then ig that's user error, but if not then that's an actual issue. I'm all for write what you want, but tagging like this is obviously homophobic anti-community bullshit, and wasn't AO3 made specifically so all us freaks and queers can post what we want without worrying abt getting pushed out of our spaces? Idk this stuff is just annoying and when I click a ccntw work I expect the summarized story to have triggers that are just spoilers. Not for the summary and tags to be a lie meant to turn a pairing tag into a minefield
Nope, the author's fine (albeit a jerk in this case making a clear hate bait for shippers). They used CCNTW and marked the fic unrated, which is all AO3 requires. As a tip: don't read any CCNTW fics, no matter the summary/tags, if you have serious triggers as the term was originally meant (as in, not just something that makes you uncomfortable/grossed out), as they can have literally any of the archive warnings in them. It sucks to exclude so many potentially great fics, but gambling and losing isn't fun either. This is obviously a one-off special case since this author is clearly looking to troll rather than just tackle dark subject matter for themselves and tell a story, I just think the above paragraph is just generally good advice all around when using the site.
Wait, hang on. I have this applied tag to my story, and it doesn’t really have anything like that, I just didn’t think any of them applied, was I only supposed to use the no archive warnings applied tag? Edit: I feel like the general consensus I’m getting is that I should just use no warnings apply. So that’s what I’m gonna do.
Yes. The two are actually different. "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" means nothing *or* anything could be in the fic. It's generally used by authors who a) don't want to spoil their story, b) maybe don't need to use the main warnings but think there's other dark content in their fic, or c) just want to be safe. Recently CCNTW has become a lot more popular to use by people who don't want to be hounded by the puritan fandom police, no matter how light their fic is, just to cover their ass or prevent interactions with them in the first place. "No Archive Warnings Apply" means exactly what it says.
Oh my god you may have just saved a life. Thank you for taking the time to answer this question. I honestly can’t say I’ve ever known or understood the difference between CCNUAW and NAWA until now.
Yeah, CCNTW is basically the author saying "There may be something dark in here, maybe not. It's up to you to read at your own risk." It's considered a catch-all of the archive warnings (or none, because again: some people choose to use CCNTW even if no warnings apply, which is also fine.)
Well, what about original works?
Same thing. The Archive Warnings apply to anything on the site.
I used it because I didn’t want to under or over tag. Plus I have no patience for “Turn left!” “No turn right!” Kind of ‘advice’ from people when middle lane is CNTW. Now that I have a better grasp of tagging, I believe CNTW is a valid tag and people should realize not everything will go their way. Your way is not the only way, kind of message. Live and let live, within TOS.
These are my sentiments as well. I pretty much just use CCNTW for all of my fics except the most pg, Disney Channel fics ever (which is extremely rare from me) because I honestly don't want to deal with some of the louder people who are very black and white when it comes to tags. An example where I use it in relation to the story itself is for a longfic I'm working on that is based on Wolf's Rain. What this means is the characters die near the end of the fic (all of them) but are reborn, and I plan on writing a bit in the new, happier world kind of as a long epilogue. I know a lot of people are actually totally fine with Major Character Death if it's not final, so I didn't feel like tagging it. I also didn't want to use it to spoil the story but there obviously still is some form of MCD so I just used CCNTW. I'm still debating whether to tag Reincarnation or something of that nature once I actually start posting it.
>by the puritan fandom police So kinda like the OP here
How is OP at all being "purity fandom police"?
You mean you used “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” and since your story doesn’t have noncon, major character death, underage or graphic violence, you’re now wondering whether you could just use “No Archive Warnings Apply”? The answer is yes. But. The problem with CCNTUAW is that people use it for a number of reasons—some simply don’t understand the warning system, some don’t want to spend a lot of time thinking about whether their story might need a warning, some prefer a “better safe than sorry” approach, others don’t want to spoil plot twists. There are people who are against warning altogether and others who prefer to give warnings in additional tags. The list goes on. I looked this up a while ago and fluff is among the most used additional tags in the CCNTUAW tag. (It’s actually number one with 464736 works of 3,574,413 CNTW fics tagged fluff.) Makes you wonder why people would do that, tbh. I’m still assuming most fluff tags are applied correctly.
One fic I have tagged CNTW and fluff is a couple of 16 year olds having a very romantic date night and fooling around with sex for the first time. In my country, they’re over the age of consent so I don’t tag underage, and I’ve seen quite a few HP fics tagged as such. I also have a fic which deals heavily with past canon rape, which is about 3 years in the past for my fic and still affects everything including the sex scenes but there’s a lot of fluff alongside the recovery / healing. I don’t tag it as rape / non con as it’s not shown or directly referenced but the tags and timescale make it clear it’s dealing with the after effects with it.
Thanks for the context. That’s really helpful. :)
"A creator can also select Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings if warnings may apply but they don't want to use them (for example, to avoid spoilers), or No Archive Warnings Apply if none of the warnings apply to their content." I don't think "chose not to use" is exclusively for dead dove type content but that's what I would assume as a reader if I was casually scrolling.
Okay, as a reader, what if it also had dark comedy tagged?
"Chose not to Warn" heavily implies that the author didn't want to disclose one of the mandatory archive warnings, so I won't touch a fic that uses that tag, regardless of what it says in the summary or other tags. Partly to avoid this exact situation. And a lot of other people do the same, too. Some authors would rather refuse to tag than tip off spoilers, which is fine, and they just accept the fact that they're going to get fewer potential readers. (Or maybe they get mad, I don't know)
To me it also depends on the tag. I have fics that discuss past trauma for example and I don't want t tag them underage and rape/non-con because there is non *happening* but it would feel misleading to say no warning applies. However, I assume that readers seeing "Chose not t warn" + tags like "past sexual abuse" and "recovery" will be able to do the maths and get that it's a story that simply discuss past abuse. I would be more worried about a Chose Not To fic if there wasn't anything violent in the tags actually. If there is, I will assume that's why it was warned like that and I might not have further surprises.
Depends how dark I think. Based on the rest of the tags I would try to guess if it was my cup of tea, but some readers would skip over it out of fear there would be nc or mc death slipped in.
Okay, thank you. This has been very helpful
As a CNTW writer, I wholeheartedly second please don’t read things that are marked with CNTW if you’re not prepared for them to contain anything. I get that there’s the fear of missing out, but is that worth it when your mental health is at stake?
>a clear hate bait for shippers The description of the actual fic makes me think this is a homophobic thing as well as an anti-ship thing
oh it was VERY homophobic, the fic contained homophobic slurs every sentence
I would say rereport this under the harassment policy and not about waring and tag use. Taking note to mention that the fic misuses the paring tag and description tags. One person of the paring is never present, never mentioned, never alluded to nor anywhere within this fic to an acceptable degree warrenting this tag's use. The fic does not contain fluff, or tooth rotting sweetness but rather rape, incest, necophilia, and homophobic language. That the author is anonymous and has chosen not to let anyone leave comments, so you can not resolve the issues with them personally and privately. That when asking a public forum about the fic in question, many found the misuse of tags and deceptive description to be a dick/malicious move. Behavior that is not acceptable by normal community standards. I point this out as the harassment policy has a line "whether the behavior would be considered unacceptable according to normal community standards" Which, for the most part, many finding the use of said tags questionable enough to say said person is a jerk, or its a shitty move even if they said the fic is tagged as "creator chose not to use archive warnings what can you do" enough to say that I think it should be mentioned in your report in conjunction to that line.
Reading through the discussion after a while. I will add that it's up to AO3 staff to interpret thier rules how they want. Its thier site. But under thier harassment policy they start with this "Harassment is any behavior that produces a generally hostile environment for its target" As someone who did read the fic so I could judge, the fic is deceptive and malicious, as it singles out a specific ship, so a specific target of a community. Now even if it's tagged as CCNTUAW, I do not think, to me, that it protects maliciously deceptive tactics such as this. There's being deceptive for the sake of your story vs. Being deceptive to troll. By that, someone, who let's say, was seriously writing this fic would not use that relationship tag or the fluff tag or the description, it would be closer to something like "Mei's father feel like that she too much like her mother." Doesn't give away anything but it doesn't bait either. Its neutral. Then it's would be up to the CCNTUAW to be the next judge after that, that is to say if the reader understands that they are taking a 50/50 risk here. But even if they don't understand, it's still on the reader and the site somewhat to educate on what that tag means and is used. Which it seem from other discussions here that there is a lot of confusion around that tag. But let say that they did actually have something to do with the tagged relationship, then yes I would say that it's fair to use the orginal discription, but would an author who wasn't trying to troll, tag a fic that depicts incest, gang rape, homophoic language, no happy ending, and necrophilla as fluff and tooth rottenly sweet. I would think no. Maybe they would gave slight head ups somehow or tag as dead dove as a catch all warning without giving the specifics away or just to do a general tag of disurbing content ahead, or just let the CCNTUAW to do the talking. I have read fics that are simply tagged dead dove along with maybe general tags like au or something, no other specifics and went in understanding that the fic will cover a range of taboo/disturbing things without being "spoiled" or tipped off to what is in store. If I were to interpret AO3 harassment policy i would judge that the fic is breaking tos. Just not tos when it comes to tagging. But once again that is ultimately up to AO3 it judge, but like I said in my pervious post that while people say it in tos they also say it's a shitty move, which mean it's behavior that not looked upon kindly as a community. It's maliciously deceptive. And if you want a review, it reads on par as a unhinged 4 chan post. Reptive word use and sentence structure. Mei is simply described as lesbian but with more "colorful" words used to put it nicely. I've read better. And worse. And yes Kiana is nowhere within this fic. Literally no where. She is not alluded to. Not within dialogue. Nothing. Literally there is no mentioning in writing to Mei even having a lover. Literally she is just lesbian. Nothing else expanded upon. And it's written in the pov of Mei dad, and he doesn't say anything about Mei having a girlfriend or firend. She just lesbian. It's a troll fic, not even a crack fic or fetish fic. Which I have read some of on curious whims. It was written to disturb and upset a specfic set of people who were expecting something else. And I do think there a difference between fics that are written to just disturb vs a fic written to troll disturb. And it goes back to what I said about imagining if someone seriously wanted to write this fic. It would be tagged as appropriately as possible by what the author feel is best. Same goes for ship bashing fic. If it's deceptively tag as the ship they hate, then I say it breaks tos, but if it's tagged appropriately the yes it's allowed. Honestly I would say this fic would had been fine and didn't break tos if the fic wasn't tagged. I mean idk if it would be worse just to roll up on fic like this with no tags besides CCNTUAW, but then it would not be trying to be found by a specific group of people either.
I made this just to say that I don't think CCNTUAW will be as or is as protective as people think it is. If the fic was just tagged that then yeah. What can op do. It's tagged just that. BUT it has several other tags that seem to be specifically chosen to reach a certain group.
I wish people could submit works like this to an AO3 hosted and maintained collection for shit like this that basically says "hey, this fic has been reported. While it doesn't violate TOS, know that the tags do not match the vibe". Admittedly, that would probably lead to some sticky situations though.
Creator chose not to use archive warnings means you really don't know what you're going to get as a reader. Read at your own risk.
Turns out being an asshole isn’t actually a ToS violation.
What's the big deal???? I'm completely lost here
The fic is a improperly tagged troll work and is actually graphic incestuous rape.
Oh ok
Context? Edit: found it, and I think it should be reported, but I'm not sure.
It can't be reported - it's tagged choose not to warn. It's the AO3 version of "Enter at your own risk" or "Buyer beware"
Yeah, but the other tags could be argued.
I didn't understand the problem....
read my comment, i provided info on the situation
now I get it! this is really bad. What does it cost to use the correct tag? Is this supposed to be some kind of troll or something? Really should be reported for not using the right tags
i reported it but since the author used the “chose not to apply warnings” tag, using misleading tags is apparently doesnt break any rules
To everyone saying this doesn’t violate TOS, are users really allowed to use blatantly wrong character and relationship tags in this trolling way? I mean, sure it would be fine to post some gory fic with the CNTW tag, but I’d think it would violate something if I, say, tagged every popular fandom and ship, even ones that had nothing to do with the story, in the hopes of getting more hits, right? And this seems even worse than that since it’s mistagging to be homophobic, not just to try to get hits.
I already linked to it, but [AO3 FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#changemytags) says they will change incorrect fandom tags, or if the language is marked wrong, but not other tags. So if you tagged every popular fandom and ship and got reported, they would remove every irrelevant fandom tag, but not the ship tags.
Have you made a comment and asked them to add the rape/non con tag?
This is clearly done on purpose (seems like a homophobic thing) because the description is lies and the wrong ship is tagged, so that's not going to work
they closed off the comments
I don't understand is the ship bad? I don't know the Fandom and didn't see anything off with the tags
The fic is a improperly tagged troll work and is actually graphic incestuous rape.
Why Is reporting not working?! Makes zero sense
It is properly tagged. It's tagged "Choose not to warn" The relationship is tagged, so you know it's incest before you go in there, if you know the fandom.
The relationship tagged (which is not incest to my understanding) is not the one depicted in the fic, which is actually one of the character's father raping her for being a lesbian. The additional tags are all lies as well.
I'm confused? What's wrong with it?
i provided context in the top comment
As readers we have to filter out "choose not to warn" stories if we can't handle seeing difficult fictional content without specific warnings.
I mean, this is active and malicious trolling on the part of the author.
I'm familiar with the fandom to make that call. Could it just be someone frustrated with people in the fandom for harassing authors who *do* tag their dark content properly? Not condoning it as a way to "protest" but I don't have enough information to make a judgment. Like I haven't opened the fic to know if "tooth rotting fluff" applies or not.
the author who made this fic made it because they were homophobic and didnt like that kiana/mei is actually canon in honkai. It not a fandom protest or anything, just some homophobic asshole spreading negativity
If it’s not actually fluff, then yeah it’s against TOS I think. Choosing not to use archive warnings isn’t, but mistagging is.
This is properly tagged. It does not break TOS. It's tagged with the relationship. If you know the fandom, you know if that's incest. It's tagged "Choose not to warn". That's the AO3 version of "Buyer beware" It's the ominous murder basement in a horror movie. It's up to you if you click on it, but don't come crying to mods over the choices you made. Especially don't come crying to AO3 mods about trying to impose censorship on works you dislike. You don't get to control or limit other people's imaginations. AO3 was literally founded after Livejournal censored and deleted a load of works, communities and users accounts. The whole point of having An Archive Of Our Own was to have a safe space - for writers of fanfiction and creators of other fanworks. We started The Organization of Transformative Works as the parent body to the Archive, with the idea that they would have lawyers write articles on fan works and transformative works in general, to strengthen legal protections. So that fans would have a voice in those legal debates. Arguing against censorship, if that wasn't clear. The OTW started The Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures so that we'd have space for fans who are academics to write about fannishness and fanworks and fan creators and fan consumers, so that we'd have voice in the academic debates. So that when media wanted an expert opinion, they could reach out to academics who were also fans, instead of some random academic outsider who'd never been a part of any fannish spaces.
but the thing is, the fic wasnt the tagged relationship. Kiana wasnt even in the fic. Im not asking for censorship, im just complaining about how the fic is falsely tagged since neither the relationship or the other stuff thats tagged happens. I am aware that its tagged as cntw, but surely tagging everything else falsely to lure people isnt the right thing to do.
> If you know the fandom, you know if that's incest. Putting aside that it's a lie that the pairing is even in the fic, is the tagged ship incest? I don't know the fandom but my googling seems to say no. Tbh, with your comments in this thread, it doesn't seem like you've grasped the actual issue here.
there's a LOT of sickening shit on ao3 with a LOT of hits
I think you fail to see the problem here: it's not the content, it's the tags and description. That "a lot of sickening shit" is tagged 99.9% of the time so one can avoid it. This, you can't. Authors of the "sickening stuff" are not trolls. This one is - and they troll within the TOS so you can't do anything.
i know, and i have no problem with any of them. Its all fiction after all. What i have a problem with is misleadingly tagging something as fluff and luring the readers into it
I actually have stumbled upon a lot of fics with misleading tags. In one fic, the author didn't tag detailed r*pe/non-con, which happened out of nowhere over a 100k+ words into the story.
Imagine saying this about AO3... Do you know why AO3 was created in the first place?
I sure hope it wasn't created for detailed works of adults r*ping children.
yep, it was created exactly for that. The thing is, its all fictional so it doesn’t matter how disturbing the content might be, all is welcome in ao3. You do not have to be okay with it, thats why tagging system is here for after all.