Alrighty friends! It takes some specificity, but you can do this. Let me show you how!
So I started with going to the Sherlock (TV) section of Ao3. On the right we find this lovely section! ((I know Iām going over things you already probably know, but I figure this post may go to new Ao3 users, so bear with me.))
Underneath this, I chose sort by Kudos, because thatās a quick way to find most popular fics, for the sake of this demonstration.Ā
With those filters on, we end up with this being our first two results:Ā
As you can see, we have Nature and Nurture by earlgreytea68, and The Internet Is Not Just For Porn by cyerus. So what if I am utterly sick of seeing earlgreytea68 on my list? Letās pretend Iāve read all their fics, or that I just donāt like her, or whatever. I want this author out. I go to this section on the right:Ā
InĀ āSearch within resultsā I type earlgreytea68 into the bar, with a minus sign in front. This gives me the following page, upon hitting the sort and filter button:
There goes earlgreytea68! But now Iāve decided that Crack is just not my thing, Iām sick of that, too, for heavenās sake, I want something reasonable in my gay slash fanfiction about detectives that solve crimes about glowing dogs and irish megalomaniacs. Heaven forbid this get ridiculous.
Well, then I add this to my search:
Which gets rid of everything with that tag. My results are now:
Performance in a Leading Role is now my first result!
You can do this as many times as you want; the biggest problem I have is trying to filter out multi-worded tags. For example,Ā āSecret Relationshipā is hard to filter. Better to go with authors you dislike or with words likeĀ āDubConā.Ā
I hope this helps! Also remember that googling site:archiveofourown.org and then adding search terms will mean google searches Ao3 for you, and sometimes that works far better.Ā
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
dededos
romaincrisis
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
yousharknotpass
pixelskylines
titsay
andulkaphoto
