#search tip

Hey everyone! We get a lot of asks requesting help locating lost stories for readers, but in a lot of cases, you might actually be your own best bet in locating a misplaced story.

AO3 has a “My History” feature that automatically records any fics you visit while logged into your account:

There’s a gray bar at the bottom of each fic showing the date you last visited the story:

Using this feature, if you can recall the approximate date/month that you read a certain fic, you can scroll back through your own Ao3 history for that time period, and then search for key words in the summary/tags using the search feature in your internet browser. 

Hey guys! We’ve gotten a lot of asks over the past few weeks that are in the format of:

“I really enjoyed (specific story). Do you have any fics similar to that one?”

While we’re happy to provide rec lists for specific tropes when we can, it’s important to note that we get upwards of 50 new asks every week and therefore the mods are not able to read every fic that we link on this blog. Unfortunately, that means that asks like these are very difficult to answer, since we may not have read the fic in question.

So, what can you do instead?

The simplest way to find other stories that are similar to the one you’ve just read is to click on some of the additional Ao3 tags on that story. 

For example, here are the tags on The Third Option by Uncertainty_Principle

Clicking on any of these (Homeless Peter Parker, Identity Reveal, Physical Abuse, etc) will pull up other stories that have these themes. Then you want to make sure that you include “Peter Parker & Tony Stark” in your search, like so:

Or, using a combination of tags (ex. Homeless Peter Parker AND Identity Reveal) will narrow the search even further.

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