#<- op's ideal fic tags (someone give them recs)

[unfinishedmural]

They definitely aren't perfect, but it's so cool that some of my ideas actually exist now. In real life. And now the next person out there who wants to read the same stories I did can actually do that.

I can't-

[zahri-melitor]

To give the OP of the previous post a break, sort by kudos is extremely effective in a few situations:

- what is the fandom VIBE, which characters and pairings do they like, what’s their story specialty (is there a lot of media fic like early Avengers MCU days? Is this Star Wars, the home of the monster time travel fixit fic where characters slip between eras? Is this fandom afflicted with being used as an AU in other settings, like poor His Dark Materials? Is this early season Supernatural, where the fandom is split over which taboo they’d rather break - Wincest or J2?)

You need to do this research because this is how you work out what filters you require so you can look for the fic you actually want to read. Maybe you vibe with the popular stuff! (Lucky) Maybe you’re instead only interested in a small subset of the output (me and the Hunger Games, where I really only care about stories regarding Victor interactions with the machinery of the Games. I want the adults searching for ways to adapt and rebel within a system they’re trapped in).

- kudos search to find what’s popular once you slap down an extensive set of include/exclude filters (this is far more calibrated to finding stuff to your taste, but you can’t do it effectively until the search before tells you what you need to exclude).

- the initial search also helps you discover what Extremely Popular Fic that you despise is essentially a warning sign when you see it in someone’s bookmarks.

- Bookmarks! Bookmarks bookmarks bookmarks. Searching by bookmarks gives a set of fics that skew slightly more to rereadability than a general kudos sort presents. However if you’re working with a Very Old Fandom with lots of fics published on AO3 in 2010-2014, it’s going to be less effective, and you’re potentially better off doing a time period bounded search or a comments search.

- search by comments will also sometimes point you towards the corner of the fandom where the Olds hang out and the people who gossip/theorise in comments. This is helpful if you are also an Old.

- also find someone who writes stuff you like, mine their bookmarks, repeat.

- go into the bookmarks of stories you like and search through who has bookmarked it. This takes more effort, but ideally what you’re looking for is someone who’s had an AO3 account for at least several years, has a bookmark list in the 3 to low 4 figures, and (if you’re lucky) leaves comments or notes or personal tags on their bookmarks.

3 figs means they bookmark the stuff they really want to reread, not everything, but there’s also enough there in your fandom that you might find something new. Long term accounts generally mean they’ve been around long enough to understand fandom trends and bookmark in several fandoms, which helps you calibrate if you have similar tastes faster. Rec notes of some sort tells you WHY they like that fic and can talk you into reading something you’d otherwise skip.

- God tier: someone who you know and trust their taste is already in the fandom and bookmarks for recs. Go to them, filter their bookmarks to the fandom and find The Best Stuff. (This will sometimes result in getting Things You Would Not Read Otherwise, but when you’re an Old and you’ve run into this person in 6 previous shared fandoms and you always enjoyed their crack_van recs/Delicious back in the day you’re in pretty safe hands)