#except its based off vibes and level of whatever demon has possessed me that month

[grittyreadsfic]

What’s your fic finding approach? Do you just read the entire hrpf fic tag on ao3 as it gets updated? or is it something else?

at this point it's a lot of just skimming the tag daily (or, well, it's been every few days more recently just as a combo of there being less fic over all and a higher percentage of things that i personally don't read) with about half a dozen things filtered out between ships, characters, and tags

lately i've had open a hrpf tag a bit more heavily filtered that i've been deep diving in from like. oldest to newest? so i'm in like. 2014 rn in that, though i've added word count filters to that despite knowing that there's a lot of spectacular fic out there that's under 4k

but honestly i did a lot of deep diving into tags when i first started reading hrpf (which is kinda what i do with any fandom, i find tropes or pairings i like and deep dive. for hrpf it was kid fic and not a hockey player and zach/willy, but also my standards for any new fandom that are usually identity porn, online dating/dating app related tags, meetcutes, and coffee shop aus) and then just. go from there.

I remember for hrpf specifically i was noticing authors i tended to like (this was pre tracking so that was actually kinda new for me) and i'd read their body of work and then look their bookmarks. i actually found one of my all time favorite fics (the ej/dstrome sugar baby fic) from looking at the gift fics for an author who i literally spent a weekend reading through their entire body of work and was desperate to keep the vibe alive

(checking out the works of the authors of your favorite fics is actually the best and checking their bookmarks is the best and again also gift fics like wow it's such a fun like mish mash and i'll sometimes find gems from other fandoms too)

some ship tags i've been through in their entirety? like i went through the tknp tag fully twice when it was under 300 fics and then kept up with the hrpf tag daily when it was at around 500, so there's very few fics for them that i haven't read that i'd be into. zachwilly i go through once or twice a year. same with mattdrai. i've read through probably all of grilled cheesby, mcstrome, and a couple of others

i've also deep dived into specific players like for a hot minute when i was just craving some good mtkachuk content i just went to his parent tag and looked through literally every sub tag it had for a ship to find things

i think it's also important to note that since i started this blog 18ish months ago i've read under 500k of hrpf fic in a month once, and usually it ranged in the 750k-1.5mil range (it's been a lil less this year because i deeply fixated on 911 and DC at various points so it's been more keeping up and less deep diving)

i also read my friends fics, fics from anyone who follows this blog if i spot it and it doesn't have any of my hard nos, recs from here and recs from friends

anyway i think the answer to this is that i don't know how to like this a normal way and fic has historically been my like. Thing ™

#this is a lot more than you asked for but uh i like to talk about this lmao #my approach to like finding fic is a finally honed system #except its based off vibes and level of whatever demon has possessed me that month #gritposting