#anyway you can block authors on ao3 with site skins so they don't show up in your results

[nientedal]

Don't get me wrong, your interpretation is fine and dandy and very reasonable. You've identified how his actions are fucked up and bad, you've identified the narrative of personal growth and responsibility! Good for you! Gold star! But dude...none of what you've pointed out is actually incompatible with someone being a good person.

The idea that doing bad things Makes someone a Bad Person (tm) and they're Just Not A Good Person At All until they Stop being a Bad Person is not the truth universally acknowledged you seem to think it is. Most people are a blend of good and bad, is the thing, and "sometimes good people do bad things and need to learn to do better in order to thrive" is just as reasonable an interpretation as yours, if that's what floats someone else's boat. And like, of course you don't have to enjoy stories that go "his ability to change means there was good in him all along," you don't have to agree with that concept. Again, and I do mean this sincerely, your interpretation is fine and dandy and very reasonable.

But it's also very limiting. It's extremely black and white, and sometimes, other people (people who aren't you, and who think different things) enjoy playing with grayer areas. Sometimes you're going to think those gray areas are out of character. Sometimes they might BE out of character! That's unfortunate. And I guess you're dealing with it how you want to deal with it, but I gotta say. This was really not constructive. More just destructive and unkind to people who are out here quietly enjoying something in a way you don't vibe with. I've edited this after posting and then checking the notes again & seeing you didn't actually intend to be nasty with this (I think you replied while I was composing it, whoops), but I do stand by this. There's more than one valid way to interpret these characters. Sorry you haven't found much that's fit your personal interpretation, I wish you luck going forward. I'd be interested to hear what kind of stories you might be looking for, if you have ideas. There's a lot on fanfic.net that hasn't made it over to AO3, I might be able to remember something you'd like. Might not, but worth a shot.

ok but the thing that drives me up the wall with the megamind fandom is this pervasive idea of "oh he was actually good the whole time, he just needed to be given a chance" because-- NO!!! That Is Not How That Went.

the whole point of megamind isn't that he is some misunderstood hero, it's that he is The Villain!!! he revels in ruining people's day! he wants to be feared! he wants to cause chaos and mayhem and yeah it's all tied up in childhood trauma of his good intentions being continually and willfully misunderstood, yeah he made his choice to be the bad guy thinking there was no other thing he could be, but it was still very much a choice!

megamind still very much made that paint bomb and built that robot suit and kidnapped that reporter. stole that art. stole that money. terrified those people. rejoiced when he thought he'd finally managed to kill his rival. when he's depressed minion suggests a kidnapping to cheer him up and for a few seconds it works. the slave army segment on tv. like yeah it's all played in a very humorous way but megamind is not a good person, and that's the point.

it all comes down to that conversation with roxanne in the rain. because he's been lying to her. he's been lying to her for months and was fully prepared to keep on lying to her as long as he could get away with it, and she calls him out on it. it doesn't matter if he's nice, it doesn't matter if he makes her laugh, what matters is that he tricked her and lied to her and would have continued to do so. what matters is that he killed a man and terrorized a city. what matters is his actions.

when he apologizes to minion, he says, "please don't make this city pay for my wrongdoings." megamind has finally come to terms with the fact that he did some fucked up shit, and he is ready to take responsibility. for his whole life this prison has been home, but it's also still very much a prison. he is locked up to keep people safe. he is locked up as a punishment for his behavior. and when he is finally ready to put aside his villainy and become the hero the city needs, he leaves the prison for the last time.

no matter why he made the decisions he made, he still made them. he still hurt people. he has to make the choice to stop hurting people and start helping them. he has to make the choice to stop being the villain and start being the hero. it's isn't about the audience's perception of him shifting it's about megamind realizing he's gone too far and now he has to become a hero to save his city from the consequences of his own villainy.

[elfwreck]

Honestly the only things I’d change about AO3 would just be a better block feature —- good for filtering out authors who write fics with a million tags you don’t care about but end up cluttering the search screen—-as well as good for “this author has fetishistic/demeaning writing qualities I find untasteful if not offensive” as well as a flagging(?)/“user recommended tags” feature that could be turned on or off by the reader. Tags should ultimately be the decision of the writer—-sometimes some things deserve to be kept private/as twists, sometimes the author favors the aesthetics of a shorter (but accurate) tag list—-but readers should still be allowed to determine if they want to risk reading something where they don’t know “if the dog dies”.

That way it would also be harder for trolls to spam LGBT/POC content because readers would always have the original tags to fall back on as well as the ability to turn off user suggested tags from their view. Most people favor fanfiction about characters and fandoms they know well so a “anti white” or “groomer” tag suggestion on something like a M “Our flag means death” or G “Steven universe” fanfiction looks fake from a million miles away , but a “car crash tw” suggestion would obviously be a more useful or “real” suggestion since “car crash tw” is easily something an author could overlook including and isn’t a tag that too many people would try to avoid (many might find it useful in helping them avoid their triggers but it’s also not going to yank an author or their fic so it would be a weird/bad way to try and troll someone with)

Also maybe an account-wide tag block? So you don’t have to fill out the “tags to exclude” for triggering content every single time.

They're working on better block & mute features. There are some workarounds right now with custom site skins:

Right now, if users want to suggest tags, they can make bookmarks, and they can make a collection to put those bookmarks in. Unfortunately, collections are clunky and bookmark features are limited - they'd need to promote the collection offsite. But they could go through their fandom of choice, bookmark everything and attach the appropriate tags to the bookmarks if they're not in the original.

There is never going to be a "suggest these tags to the author/other readers" feature more direct than that, because there is no way that doesn't turn into a mud-slinging toxic wankfest. People who are worried about "does the dog die?" will need to ask friends to check the works in advance, or talk with the author if they have a public presence somewhere. (Some authors won't answer anyway.)

The problems are not people adding "racist fic" or "groomer Rose Quartz" to fanfics. (I mean, those are potential problems, but those are not the real problem.) The real problem is: Someone decides X author is a Bad Person, and tags all of their works with pedophile, nazi, child abuser, rapist, illiterate grade-school dropout, ugly and fat, only sluts read this, and a swarm of other slurs based on whatever's trendy to hate this year.

The first thing to consider with any new potential feature is: How could someone with absolutely no goodwill use this to try to hurt people?

And what measures would need to be taken to mitigate that?

Right now, someone could add all of that to bookmarks. But bookmarks don't show up on a toggle-switch next to the work's author-made tags. You have to look for them. If they got really bad, the Abuse Team might force the bookmarks to be set to Private (I have no idea if they can do that); they don't have to remove them or argue about the accuracy of the tags in order to keep them from harassing the author or other readers.

A whole new category of tags, visible at the top of the work, would be a new special nightmare.

...But they're working on better block features, and mute features, and I'm hoping there'll someday be "save my search settings" so I don't have to keep excluding A/B/O fics every time I go looking for a new pairing.