Sexy times with Wangxian

Sexy times with Wangxian (sometimes known as STWW or STWWX) is an Untamed/Mo Dao Zu Shi fanfic by virtual1979 that is perhaps best known to fandom for the large number of tags included in the work on AO3. 
More tags were added with each new chapter, and the fic eventually achieved an all-time high of approximately 4400 tags, before most tags were removed in April 2021. (accessed 15 April 2021) 
A fan in 2022 referred to it as "Wangxian the Ao3 breaker." comment by 
Auragongal at What is the most infamous fanfiction ever written? (November 2022) 
Although the fic had been a WIP since 2019, it passed a threshold of panfandom notoriety in early 2021.
virtual1979 started tweeting about the situation in mid February, first under cruisin_forever, then under virtual1979. The author was suspended on AO3 for threats on February 21 and cross-posted their fic to dreamwidth a week later, tweet by cruisin_forever, 26 February 2021. (Accessed 26 February 2021.). As of April, the version on dreamwidth was friendslocked, but contained more chapters than the version on AO3., dreamwidth post by virtual1979, 24 February 2021. (accessed 16 April 2021)
The fic was deleted from AO3 on May 31, 2021.
==Author's summary==
Author's summary:
In mid-February 2021, the author's summary was updated to include in bold: 
==Story Length==
Sexy times with Wangxian is the longest fanfic in the MDZS fandom on AO3. The longest AO3 fanfic overall is a five-million-word Hobbit/Lord of the Rings/Silmarillion work titled At the Edge of Lasg'len, which claims to be "the world's longest English language narrative fanfiction". (Accessed 6 February 2021.) See Longfic for more story length record-holders.
==Tags and Other Metadata==
The author updated both the story and its metadata frequently.
The Wayback Machine copy of the fic from just before it was hidden on February 21, 2021 displays 2300 tags, including 14 fandom tags.Wayback Machine, 21 February 2021 (accessed 17 April 2021) Various fans were tracking the tag counts in February and reported on their findings: As of February 15, 2021, the work had 1754 tags by aroceu on February 15, 2021 (Accessed February 15, 2021), increasing from 1598 on February 2, 2021, anon comment on fail_fandomanon, 2021-02-02.. In April 2021, twitter user dudski created a google sheet containing all tags on the work, including the many tags added after the work was hidden.. google sheet here. (accessed 16 April 2021) 
As of February 6, 2021, Sexy times with Wangxian was over a million words long and had 266 chapters, 52 comments, 1920 kudos, 453 bookmarks, and 314494 hits. It was marked m/m, Explicit, and Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings. (Accessed 6 February 2021.) In November 2020, the story was also marked Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, and Underage; and had 866,408 words, 174 chapters, and 729 comments.November 1, 2020 Wayback Machine copy
The story has been marked complete for some time, but AO3 users have complained that new chapters continue to be posted frequently, causing the work to reappear at the top of many common tags. The large number of porn-related tags has resulted in many fans outside the fandom becoming aware of it. In February 2021, the author also added tags for every other MDZS relationship, so MDZS fans of other ships reported suddenly seeing the fic in their tag searches; by mid-February, the author had also begun tagging other fandoms, including Heaven Official's Blessing, The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, BTS (K-pop group), Legend of Fei, and RPF.Feb 19th 2021 Wayback Machine copy
AO3 restricts tag length to 100 characters, but there was no apparent limit on the number of tags allowed. As a result, the work took up a large amount of screen real estate on the search results and tag pages that many fans use to browse the website. Some users reported page loading problems on their devices. Fans who use screen readers reported that the number of tags on the fic made the site unusable for them. According to an AO3 Support volunteer, "We've heard anecdotes that the work's appearance in search listings negatively affects site and browser performance, but haven't had enough reports with specific device information that would let us conclude if this is an intermittent browser issue or a larger problem.", 6 February 2021 (Accessed 6 February 2021.) One reply to a submitted report explained that pages were structured in such a way to enable screen readers to skip the wall of tags.twitter screenshot (Accessed 25 February 2021.)
On or before May 14, 2021, the author replaced the summary on AO3 with what looked like a random collection of tags describing various explicit sex acts. The AO3 title was also updated to a sequence of porn emojis. Both title and summary are fields visible on the works search page. The author's twitter account indicated that the goal was to deter people from looking at or sharing screenshots of the fic."It's good that I'm weeding out those who stalk for the sake of stalking. I rather have a few courteous and nice readers than hundreds or thousands of wankers. The drama is unnecessary." "I hope people who take pictures of the fic in AO3 will think twice before sharing." The title and summary were changed multiple times in May, leading other fans to conclude that the author was trolling. See #Reporting below.
==Reactions==
===Hiding the fic===
Fans on social media shared various methods of hiding the fic when browsing AO3. Types of workarounds included:
*excluding the author from search results 
*excluding by word count (ie: <1 million words) 
*excluding the specific work ID
*excluding tags used by this work and few or no others
*bookmarking the search string with the exclusion criteria already added to the fandom tag
*adding a line of code to a parent skin (like Reversi) or using a parent skin and adding a line of code so that the work would be permanently excluded
*adding code to a site skin to hide tags past a certain number, such that only the first 30 tags on any work are displayed
*using an unofficial browser tool such as this site skin by Xparrot or ao3 tags savior by bluecat 2 on greasyfork.
These workarounds circulated on sites such as Twitter and Tumblr, with some users of the site creating tutorials for how to apply the settings shared. A few workarounds were posted in the Fanwork Research & Reference Guides tag on AO3 itself: 
* How to: Block a fic & Automatically hide tags of over-tagged fics (without needing to block them manually) by Smiling_Seshat 
* A guide to block a fanfic with really long tags by hiyomii
===Comments to author===
Some fans commented on the work itself to ask the author to fix the completion status or tagging issues. Other comments were violent. (Accessed 6 February 2021.) A comment from the author:
The author stated in their FAQs that they would not remove tags, split the work into a series, or mark it as in progress., 6 February 2021. (Accessed 9 February 2021.) In response to reports that the fic was crashing people's browsers, the author said, "I'm sorry but I cannot help you with your technical problem. The site is working fine for me.", 9 February 2021. (Accessed 9 February 2021.)
In February 2021 the author first moderated comments on the fic; around the same time that the author began tagging other fandoms and updated the summary to indicate crossovers, they turned off comments entirely.
===Reporting===
Fans have been arguing over whether the tags violate AO3's rule against "threatening the technical integrity of the Archive" (Accessed 27 February 2021.) because the work caused browser problems for some users. Other fans were frustrated by the inclusion of tags that didn't seem relevant to the story, but AO3 requires only that fandom tags--not character, relationship, or additional tags--be accurate.
So many people submitted Abuse reports that the system wouldn't allow further reports. (Accessed 20 February 2021.) (AO3 only allows a few reports per work to prevent mass-reporting campaigns.) Some people submitted support requests instead, but official responses explained that the fic was not a policy violation. (Accessed 20 February 2021.)
On February 21, the fic was hidden and the user account suspended for a month, but for posting threats, not because of the tags. (Accessed 22 February 2021.), tweet by the author, 21 February 2021. (Accessed 22 February 2021.) A screenshot on twitter showed a note in which the author stated they hoped the people bothering them in comments died of COVID. (Accessed 26 February 2021.) The fic was not visible again until April 13, as documented by twitter user dudski, who said they received update notices from AO3 after the one-month suspension ended, but couldn't access the new chapters. (accessed 15 April 2021)
In May 2021 the fic title and summary were changed multiple times. Some of the title changes included the addition of slurs, and at least one summary update changed the text to include a carriage return after each character, which increased the work's screen real estate on the works search page.See the Wayback Machine copies on May 18 and May 28, 2021. Twitter users said they had tried reporting the work again but that it was already maxed out on reports. The matter was also discussed on fail_fandomanon, where people were divided on whether the author's actions could or should be against the terms of service: see this 2021-05-26 thread. And on reddit one user commented, "The child wants attention and people are lining up to give them it." in r/AO3, 29 May 2021. (Accessed 30 May 2021.)
===Related fanworks===
*aroceu made a Sexy times with Wangxian prompt generator in late January
*Twitter started circulating memes about zooming in on the wall of tags and the first one you see means ....
*On February 19, Bland Times with Wangxian was posted and within hours went from being one WIP to a collection of several stories by multiple authors: Bland Times with Wangxian AO3 collection. A week later, the collection included 34 works.
In contrast with the original, the "bland times with wangxian" works used minimal tagging. Some people were annoyed with the proliferation of [blank] times with wangxian parodies, and one person posted a work on AO3 that was just a complaint about the trend: .
Within a day of Bland Times with Wangxian being posted, AO3 users also noticed new works on the archive with huge numbers of tags. AO3 users on social media say they saw entire fics posted in the tags instead of the body of the work, or large sections of copyrighted works such as Harry Potter or 1984. Many of these were then reported and deleted. An anon at fail_fandomanon claimed to have had their account suspended for providing an invite code to someone so they could create one of the "wall of tags" works. Fans on fail_fandomanon and elsewhere also discussed whether these new works were annoying trolls or activism that would force AO3 to change their stance on tag limits or get them to code fixes faster. Annoyed OTW volunteers on tumblr noted that the so-called activism was taking up time they could have been spending on fixing the original problem, which they were already working on."I’ve got at least half a dozen channels and group messages lighting up, vying for my attention, as a direct result of all this trolling-slash-point-making. What hasn’t been lighting up, however, is the thread where we were already discussing the questions @ao3commentoftheday mentioned." , 21 February 2021. Other fans predicted that anti-shippers would start using these tactics to spam the tags of ships they didn't like.
==AO3 Policy Changes?==
:See AO3 Tag Limits.
Sexy times with Wangxian not being against AO3 site policy led to fan discussions about AO3 tag policy and whether it should be changed to limit the number of tags allowed on a single work. Some fans suggested changing the default site skin to limit the number of tags that display on search listings without limiting the tags themselves. Although this fic was the most egregious example, fans have long complained about overtagging, especially on short story collections posted as single works.
Rumors of an upcoming blocking feature prompted some fans to reiterate their analyses of racism on the archive, arguing that the OTW was showing its true colors by not developing the blocking feature in response to ongoing racist harassment but only when white fans were inconvenienced by Sexy times and its copycats. A Vox article by Aja Romano spread this idea further. Other fans pointed out that the blocking feature had been promised in a June 2020 post long before anyone was talking about Sexy times. It was also noted that the OTW was too slow and dysfunctional to have whipped up a blocking feature a month after the tag complaints.
The OTW posted An update on blocking and muting features on April 1 and generated more claims that "wall of tags" works were the inspiration.
When virtual1979's AO3 account suspension was lifted, they reported that AO3 had a new limit of 75 tags per work:
A ticket to limit tags was opened on AO3's public bug tracker on March 31,Limit the number of tags that can be used on works (accessed 16 April 2021) but the policy change was not officially announced until August 24, 2021:
The admin post noted that less than 0.5% of works had more than 75 tags, existing works would be unaffected unless updated after the code change, and that having too many tags was not a terms of service violation. Some commenters on the post referenced STWWX, while others expressed their hope that the change would bring an end to multifandom drabble collections and other "wall of tags" oneshot compilations posted as a single work.
==Deletion==
The fic was deleted from AO3 on May 31, 2021. The reason is unknown. Twitter user dudski said that the author must have deleted the fic after it was hidden again by the Abuse team because shortly before the work was deleted, she got the same "You don't have permission to access" message that clicking on the fic generated post-suspension in February. by dudski, 3 June 2021. (Accessed 28 October 2021.) What the TOS violation was is unknown. The author tweeted about deleting the fic around the same time: 
As of October 2021, the fic is presumably still up on the author's dreamwidth account, but it is friendslocked and no one currently has been granted access. (Accessed 28 October 2021.)
==Meta/Further Reading==
*, discussion at fail_fandomanon, 22 January 2021
*, tweet by weaponstriangle, 25 January 2021
*, discussion at fail_fandomanon, 1 February 2021
*, 4 February 2021
* tweet by on_reserve, 4 February 2021
*, discussion at fail_fandomanon, 6 February 2021
*, r/AO3 subreddit, 6 February 2021
*, tumblr post by ao3commentoftheday, 7 February 2021
*, tumblr post by yiling, 9 February 2021
*, 21 February 2021
* discussion at fail_fandomanon, 21 February 2021
*, 21 February 2021
*, 21 February 2021
*, fail_fandomanon thread, 21 February 2021
*, fail_fandomanon thread, 21 February 2021
* , :/r/fanfiction subreddit thread, 21 February 2021
* by Aja Romano, 26 February 2021
*, 26 February 2021
*, 26 February 2021
*, 26 February 2021
*, 27 February 2021
* by LiviasFigs on r/HobbyDrama, March 2021
* by Angel Wilson at The Geekiary, 14 May 2021
* by ColeyDoesThings, 16 May 2022
*, virtual1979's own account of events
==References==
Category:Mo Dao Zu Shi
Category:2019 Fanfiction‎Category:2020s Fanfiction
Category:Social Media Feature-Wank Wednesday