AO3 Comment of the Day

this blog is attempting to come back from hiatus The views expressed in the answers and original posts on this blog are mine alone. I previously volunteered for the Organization for Transformative Works (“OTW”), but these views have not been approved by, and are not intended to reflect the opinions of, the OTW.

[ao3commentoftheday]

If you're looking for one of my site skins, you can find them all on my github.

The readme files give instructions for applying them to your account.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I was experimenting with setting one skin for my laptop and a different skin for my phone and ended up with a halfway decent dark mode of my medieval skin by adding that one and my simplified low contrast skin together.

Still haven't figured out how to get totally separate skins based on screen size, but this was a fun little unexpected treat lol.

[ao3commentoftheday]

This was close enough to a usable dark mode that I figured I'd poke at it a little bit, and it seems ilke if you remove one single line from my medieval skin, it all works out.

If you haven't already got it, create a site skin for my medieval skin. Instructions are in the ReadMe file.

In the medieval skin code, find ol.index.group, and delete it (line 18 in the github file)

If you haven't already got it, create a site skin for my simplified low contrast dark mode skin

Create a third site skin to combine those first two together

In the CSS box for that third skin, paste this code (it doesn't do anything but you need to have something in that box): li.blurb { background: transparent; }

Scroll down and tap on the button labelled Advanced

Scroll down again and tap on Add Parent Skin

In the text box, start typing the name you gave to the medieval skin and select it from the drop down

Add Parent Skin again

Type in the name you gave the dark mode and select it from the drop down

Tap on the Submit button to save the third skin.

On the new page, Use the third skin.

Now you've got a dark medieval skin with a simplified interface for AO3.

PS. You might want to adjust the colours for the tags? If you need help, lemme know.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I was experimenting with setting one skin for my laptop and a different skin for my phone and ended up with a halfway decent dark mode of my medieval skin by adding that one and my simplified low contrast skin together.

Still haven't figured out how to get totally separate skins based on screen size, but this was a fun little unexpected treat lol.

[ao3commentoftheday]

#this is kinda gorgeous actually #i wish i knew how skins worked

I'm going to start by telling you what skins do.

They basically take a website and put a little outfit on it. So for example, instead of having a white background, a skin makes it so that AO3 has a dark purple background. Or an image for a background. Or a gradient background.

Skins change the way the site looks, and those changes can be small (like what font is used or what the background looks like) or they can be large (changing a username to an icon, putting the filters on the left instead of the right).

The way that skins do that is through code. Websites are built in a code language called HTML. Skins are built in a language called CSS. What CSS does is modify the way HTML looks.

People like me think it's really fun to write CSS code that makes AO3 look different from the default site. We're fan coders (and sometimes professional coders), and we share our code with other people so that they can put a cute outfit on their AO3 account. Those other people don't need to code at all. They just have to copy our code and paste it into AO3.

(sidenote: I'm talking about site skins here, not work skins. Works skins just put a cute outfit on a specific fic, and the author does need to do a little bit of coding to apply those)

If you want to put a site skin on your AO3:

tap on your name at the top of the site and go to your Dashboard.

From there, select the link called Skins.

On the Skins page, tap on the button labelled Create Site Skin.

Give your site skin a unique name (if it's not unique on the Archive, you'll get an error and it won't save). I just add my nickname at the end of whatever I end up calling the skin. That usually works.

Copy the CSS code of a skin you like and then paste it into the big empty box labelled CSS.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and hit the Submit button. This will save the skin to your account, but it won't apply it yet. You can have dozens of skins saved if you want to.

After Submitting, AO3 will send you to a page that shows you the saved code for that skin. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, and select the Use button. Now the skin will be applied to your account and AO3 will look different for you.

What I did here was create a new site skin that I just called "combo skin for pi" and I added my other two skins as a parent to it - essentially combining them together.

To add a parent skin, you can edit what you already saved or, after step 5 above you can select the button labelled Advanced, then on the button labelled Parent Skin and type in the name of the skin you want to add on.

You'll need to have both skins available to your AO3 account, so either save two (or more) custom skins from someone like me who posts code for folks or use one (or more) of the public skins that AO3 provides.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I was experimenting with setting one skin for my laptop and a different skin for my phone and ended up with a halfway decent dark mode of my medieval skin by adding that one and my simplified low contrast skin together.

Still haven't figured out how to get totally separate skins based on screen size, but this was a fun little unexpected treat lol.

[ao3org]

Trust & Safety Phishing Comments

Date Posted: July 23, 2026

AO3 has recently seen a wave of comments claiming to be made by the "AO3 Trust & Safety team", notifying you that your account has been restricted. These claims are not true. These comments are not being made by real AO3 volunteers and your account has not been restricted.

AO3 volunteers, including the Policy & Abuse committee, will never communicate with you through comments on your work. All important communications from AO3 will be sent through the email associated with your account. More general announcements will be posted on our official social media accounts or published as news posts on AO3 or OTW.org.

If you receive one of these comments, do not click on any of the links in it, reply to it, or interact with it in any way. The links in these comments lead to sites asking you to verify your identity by providing payment information. This is a common credit card scam. AO3 does not ever ask users to provide payment information, and the Policy & Abuse committee will never comment on your works asking you to "complete an identity verification process".

If you encounter one of these comments or believe your account has been compromised, please view the instructions under the cut!

We suggest that you review your account to verify that you're using a unique and secure password. Check out the advice from our Policy & Abuse committee on Protecting Your AO3 Account and Keeping Your Account Secure.

If you believe your AO3 account has been compromised for any reason (i.e. you received an email that your username changed), you can change or reset your password to ensure control of your account. Changing your password will automatically log you out of all sessions on all devices. You can find the option to change your password in your Preferences.

If you encounter one of these comments on your own work or someone else's, please report them to the Policy & Abuse committee. To do so:

Select the "Thread" button on the scammer's comment. This will take you to the specific comment page.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Policy Questions & Abuse Reports.

In the "Brief summary of Terms of Service violation" field, enter "Spambot".

In the "Description of the content you are reporting" field, enter "This is a spambot, their username is USERNAME."

Reporting in this fashion helps us auto-sort your report so that it can be handled as soon as a Policy & Abuse volunteer is available. To help us address reports about these types of bots as fast as possible, please only submit one report per account, and don't include multiple accounts in the same report.

We also encourage you to share this post and help spread the word about how to protect yourself from scammers and reduce spam on AO3.

For more information about spambots on AO3, you can review our News Post on the topic.

[transformativeworks]

Why AO3 Doesn't Have an Official App

#AO3 has no official app. All AO3 apps are from third parties – please be cautious about sharing your data with them. For information about why we don't have an app, and tips to make your AO3 experience more app-like, check out our latest news post: https://otw-news.org/yckzuv3v

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[ao3commentoftheday]

there are two wolves inside of me

the one that wants to help people search and filter better by demonstrating how I just realized that the way I was searching was stopping me from finding what I wanted

and the one that does not want to air out my particular interests on a platform of any size 😆

(anyone have a thing they've been trying to find and can't?)

[ao3commentoftheday]

You know what? fuck it.

So I was searching for "Jane Foster size queen" at first. But then I realized that putting both the character and the descriptor in the same tag wouldn't work.

In order for that to exist as a single tag, it would need to be a popular enough idea in the MCU fandom for at least three different authors to have used it. And with a fandom the size of the MCU, it's probably closer to 5 or 10.

So then I tried using the search form to find the character Jane Foster along with the additional tag size queen. But that returned zero results, and I realized that size queen isn't a canonical tag, so I was asking AO3 to find Jane Foster fics with the tag "size queen" instead of the concept.

So then I went to the tag search and looked up size queen and checked off the wrangling status as "canonical or synonymous" and that gave me 627 synonyms for the concept I was looking for and the first four results included a character name, but the fifth one was just "also he's a size queen" so I clicked on that and I found out that the canonical tag I could use to find fics with that concept was size kink

so I went back to the search form and looked up character Jane Foster and additional tag size kink and I got 39 results.

hope this helps!

[ao3commentoftheday]

there are two wolves inside of me

the one that wants to help people search and filter better by demonstrating how I just realized that the way I was searching was stopping me from finding what I wanted

and the one that does not want to air out my particular interests on a platform of any size 😆

(anyone have a thing they've been trying to find and can't?)

[ao3commentoftheday]

I make aesthetic site skins as creative, interactive artworks. I spend time figuring out the look I'm going for, and then i learn the code necessary to get my vision to work on the site.

It doesn't always work, but that's alright. I'm having fun and learning things and I end up with something pretty that I can share and feel proud of.

But since I'm doing this as a creative outlet first and foremost, and because I'm focusing on the fun I tend to get irritated when people ask me to change a light mode skin to a dark mode skin. Or to change a pink theme to a blue one.

I had an idea and I executed it, and now I'm done. I want to move on to the next thing, not go back and redo what I've just finished.

The way I go about coding skins, it generally requires a significant rewrite of code to do those things. And I know that people don't know that and I try not to be too mean when I say no to those requests. (also, I'm just speaking for myself here, not for anyone else who makes skins)

But it's also kind of like someone commenting on a fic you're really proud of and asking if you could write it again for a different ship. I wasn't thinking of that other ship when I wrote it. I was thinking of my ship.

I wasn't thinking of a dark mode when I coded it. I was thinking of a bright/light mode.

Anyway, I just wanted to put that out there because I've been feeling bad about saying on my last skin post that I'm not going to code a dark mode. I'm not going to, but I also think I was maybe too blunt with saying that. Consider this the long version of the message.

[ao3commentoftheday]

For anyone who hasn't seen them before, Hidden Search Operators are handy tricks you can use when you're either searching or filtering AO3.

summary: string is a generic way of explaining that you can search AO3 for a specific word that appears in a summary. You can do this from the search bar in the header, from the Any Field box at the top of the Advanced Search form, or from the Search Within Results box at the bottom of the filter menu.

Examples:

summary: Bruce

summary: "Bruce Banner"

summary: Bruce OR summary: Banner OR summary: Hulk

You need to put quotation marks around your search term if it is more than one word. The quotes make sure that the site searches for those two words together.

The other two operators listed work best in the Search Within Results box.

expected_number_of_chapters: 1 will return results where every fic has only 1 chapter currently posted.

You can use expected_number_of_chapters: -1 if you want results where every fic has more than 1 chapter currently posted.

otp:true will return results where there is only 1 relationship tag on the fic. If you want results where there are 2+ relationship tags (and no fics with only 1 relationship tag) then you can use otp:false

[katri-24]

This page is so beautiful and honestly I hope it reaches and helps any new people that are just starting out on Ao3 because it's helping me and I’ve been using the site for 5+ years now

[ao3commentoftheday]

I saw your tags @jackdaw-sprite and I figured I could offer you some help? You've got a few options to find fics that are actually about your fave who is often sidelined.

My own personal go-to is to use the Search Within Results filter. You can find the filters by clicking/tapping on any tag. If you're on a wide screen like a laptop, they'll be on the right hand side of the screen. If you're on a narrow screen like a phone, you'll need to press the Filters button at the top of the page to open up the menu.

In that menu, scroll down until you're near the bottom. That's where you can find the box labelled Search Within Results. In that box, you can type

summary: Renhardt OR summary: Rendog

When you filter for that result, you'll get 19 fics with that name mentioned in the summary, and if the name is in the summary you've got MUCH higher chances of them being central to the fic.

There's also a way to find fics with a tag in the X position. Fan coders have had this same issue, and so they've created userscripts that you can add to your web browser (like an extension). Here are a few that might be helpful for you to try:

AO3 Actually Relevant Characters - Sorts and highlights works based on how relevant the tagged character seems in the work's tags and summary.

AO3: Prioritise my Faves - Hide work if chosen tags are late in sequence, or if blacklisted tags are early

AO3 Secondary Character & Pairing Filter - Replaces works with placeholder if the tags you want aren't the first few tags, with option to show work.

Editing to add: this version of the post has a syntax error in it. To remove oneshots with a filter, use

-expected_number_of_chapters: 1

[robinminustherichard]

This year is my 15th AO3 Anniversary! How long have you been on AO3? (hint: the day you joined is in your Profile)

1-2 years

3-4 years

5-6 years

7-8 years

9-10 years

11-12 years

13-14

15+ Years

Voting ended onJul 21

[ao3commentoftheday]

dopamine decor ao3 site skin

I've been poking away at this one for a few weeks now but I finally put in the effort to finish it off.

If this looks like a skin you'd like to try, you can find it on my github.

before you ask - no, I'm not planning on making a dark mode. yes, you're free to modify my code to suit yourself.

[ao3commentoftheday]

I need to hurry up and finish this skin because every time I finish one little section I want to post pictures 😆

[ao3commentoftheday]

Video has no sound and shows the comment box at the bottom of an AO3 fic, with a site skin applied.

The skin has outlined the fic in a thick pink border with rounded corners. The page has bright blue and white stripes. The footer is pastel pink. The comment box has a scalloped purple border around the outside, purple text, and a purple comment button.

The text area where a comment will be typed has a thick purple border with rounded corners, and the text box has a background in which the top left and bottom right corners are light pink and dark pink check. The middle of the comment text box (on an angle from top right to bottom left) is white with a wavy border that cuts into the checker patterns.

When the user taps into the comment box to type, the background changes to a solid white and the user types with black text. End video description.

i'm still working on this skin, and I just learned how to do a new thing tonight :D

[ao3commentoftheday]

Yeah, so this is my new favourite trick 😆

[ao3commentoftheday]

Video has no sound and shows the comment box at the bottom of an AO3 fic, with a site skin applied.

The skin has outlined the fic in a thick pink border with rounded corners. The page has bright blue and white stripes. The footer is pastel pink. The comment box has a scalloped purple border around the outside, purple text, and a purple comment button.

The text area where a comment will be typed has a thick purple border with rounded corners, and the text box has a background in which the top left and bottom right corners are light pink and dark pink check. The middle of the comment text box (on an angle from top right to bottom left) is white with a wavy border that cuts into the checker patterns.

When the user taps into the comment box to type, the background changes to a solid white and the user types with black text. End video description.

i'm still working on this skin, and I just learned how to do a new thing tonight :D

[ao3commentoftheday]

Work in Progress Wednesday Thursday

I don't remember the last time I was quite this excited about a skin that I'm making. I have no idea if all of this will end up in the final version, but I'm just having so much fun with seeing what I can actually do that I wanted to share some work in progress shots.

(honestly? the hardest part has been finding the images. any tips on where to get medieval illuminated artwork would be much appreciated!)

In the first image, the AO3 title and the lady/dragon are separate images so on a desktop monitor the AO3 part is on the left and the dragon piece is on the right.

Editing to add the github link: get the skin here!

[randomisedmongoose]

Been using this skin for a while and it's lovely! But lately there seems to be a problem with an element on the work page. There's the picture of the scribe in the stats/tag box that gets repeated below in the work text, and I can't figure out how to remove him without removing the stats/tag box image as well. Unfortunately he's obscuring the text... Any pointers? (Screenshot to illustrate.)

[ao3commentoftheday]

I have no idea why this happened, but here's the fix. Find this part of the code:

.works-show.region div.wrapper dl.meta { border: none; box-shadow: none; background: url("https://64.media.tumblr.com/6fdc92a6e98b450d03f65bb1538acb0e/7fa12c05ca858dab-83/s500x750/86dae0593b29adb575c45a9a2cbfb7c763a6d8bb.png"); background-position-x: right; background-position-y: top; background-size: 30%; background-repeat: no-repeat; }

and add that dl.meta to the end of the first line. That'll restrict the background image to just the metadata area.

[ao3commentoftheday]

as part of tumblr's aging userbase, I'm going to take a moment and shoutout my new glasses which are 'office progressives'

if you're in the bifocal club and you're constantly annoyed by trying to find the right angle for the computer work or crafting that you're doing, I recommend talking to your optometrist. seriously lifechanging shit.