i love a good fix-it fic but i do not think that removing all conflict and misunderstandings from a story in favor of characters pleasantly communicating like they're getting an a+ in couples' therapy actually qualifies as a fix
Alright! Sorry for being so absent today! I was building a tool so you can all check your own names on demand.
I am asking that you not talk about it on Hugging Face. I'm sure word will get there eventually, but I'd like to avoid them accessing this as much as possible. Feel absolutely free to spread around Tumblr.
AO3 search tool is here! Use page 1 to search scraped fics by username. Use page 2 to search by work ID (which you'll need to do if you're looking for an anonymous work).
Or you can use this version, which is strongly recommended if you've published more than about 20 fics on the username you're searching.
If you're unsure which to use:
The first link is better if your entire username is a common word. For example, if you're username is just "bread" then you probably can't search yourself in the second link. The first version is way slower, so I recommend trying the second link first and using the first link as a backup option if the second fails.
The first link contains a page to search by work ID. This is good if you have an anonymous or orphaned fic, since that's not going to appear by searching your username.
The second link is better if you have a LOT of fics. It will give you a count of fics so you don't have to add them up. It will show the top 2,000 work results found.
If you have more than 2,000 published works, first off, I am jealous of your motivation. But second, that won't display right on the public version of the tools. You can send an ask or DM to have me do a custom search for you if you have more than 2,000 total works under 1 username.
You can also ask or DM if your entire username is a common word, because you're likely to get drowned out of the search results in that case. Try the tool first, but if it returns a lot of author results for your search, and YOUR name isn't in the results, ask me! There's a decent chance you're in there, but one of the tool's weak points is searching extremely common words.
In case this post breaches containment: this is a tool that only has access to the work IDs, titles, author names, chapter counts, and hit counts of the scraped fics for this most recent scrape discovered in April 2025. There is no other work data in this tool. This never had the content of your works loaded to it, only info to help you check if your works were scraped. If you need additional metadata, I can search my offline copy for you if you share a work ID number and tell me what data you're looking for. I will never search the full work text for anyone, but I can check things like word counts and tags.
Please come yell if the tool stops working, and I'll fix as fast as I can. Version 1 is slow as hell, but it does load eventually. Give it up to 10 minutes, and if it seems down after that, please alert me via ask! Anons are on if you're shy. Version 2 typically loads results within 1 minute and handles most users well.
On mobile, enable screen rotation and turn your phone sideways. It's a litttttle easier to use like that. It works better if you can use desktop.
Some FAQs below the cut:
"What do I need to do now?": At this time, the main place where this dataset was shared is disabled. As far as I'm aware, you don't need to do anything, but I'll update if I hear otherwise. If you're worried about getting scraped again, locking your fics to users only is NOT a guarantee, but it's a little extra protection. There are methods that can protect you more, but those will come at a cost of hiding your works from more potential readers as well.
"I don't want to know!": This tool is 100% optional. If you don't want to know, simply don't click the link. You are totally welcome to block me if it makes you feel more comfortable.
"Can I see the exact content they scraped?": Nope, not through me. I don't have the time to vet every single person to make sure they are who they say they are, and I don't want to risk giving a scraped copy of your fic to anyone else. If you really want to see this, you can find the info out there still and look it up yourself, but I can't be the one to do it for you.
"Are locked fics safe?": Not safe, but so far, it appears that locked fics were scraped less often than public fics. The only fics I haven't seen scraped as of right now are fics in unrevealed collections, which even logged-in users can't view without permission from the owner.
"My work wasn't a fic. It was an image/video/podfic.": You're safe! All the scrape got was stuff like the tags you used and your title and author name. The work content itself is a blank gap.
"It's slow.": Unfortunately, a 13 million row data dashboard is always going to be on the slow side. I think I've done everything I can to speed it up, but it may still take up to 10 minutes to load. It's faster if you can use desktop, but it should work on your phone too.
"My fic isn't there.": If it was published after March 15th, 2025, that was likely after all of the scraping took place. Otherwise, from what I can tell so far, the scraper's code just... wasn't very good, so most likely, your fic was missed by random chance. I am continuing to look for methods to reduce the chances of a work getting scraped anyway, and I will share on this blog if/when I find something that works.
Thanks to everyone who helped with the cost to host the tool! I appreciate you so so so much. As of this edit, I've received more donations than what I paid to make this tool so you do NOT need to keep sending money. (But I super appreciate everyone who did help fund this! I just wanna make sure we all know it's all paid for now.)
(Made some quick edits to the post on 04-May-2025 to update information a bit!)
here's a list of programs/sites/whatever that were helpful to me when i was moving away from using spotify & back to downloading music:
soulseek - peer to peer downloading program, has most music you'd want. there's "rules" to it though and the UI is a little confusing, but you can figure it out. there's tutorials. i believe in you
cobalt.tools, ytiz.xyz, yt-dlp - mp3 downloaders, for the songs that you can't find on soulseek
musicbee - music player, extremely customiseable. reminds me of when i used itunes back in the day. has a lot of good features, including syncing music over to your phone
lastfm & listenbrainz - sites that keep track of your listening stats. i'd recommend this even if you still choose to use a music streaming service
syncedlyrics - cmd thing that gets you timed song lyrics, like the ones spotify has. there's no UI but it's easy enough to use. just grab the lyrics and timestamps it spits out and paste it into musicbee
music presence - program that shows what song you're listening to in your discord status, in case you use discord and enjoy the thought of other people seeing what you're listening to, which i do for some reason
i'm not going to lie to you and say that switching away from spotify/streaming services is an effortless task, it took me half a whole day of nonstop Work to get all my music downloaded and sorted out, but i will say that it was worth it!! and you should do it š if you want to
I hate when I say things like "oh I want an ipod classic but with bluetooth so I can use wireless headphones" and some peanut comes in and replies with "so a smartphone with spotify?" No. I want a 160GB+ rectangular monstrosity where I can download every version of every song I want to it and it does nothing except play music and I don't need a data connection and don't have to pay a subscription to not have ads and don't have popups suggesting terrible AI playlists all over the menus.
Gimme the clicky wheel and song titles like "My Chemical Romance- The Black Parade- Blood (Bonus Track)- secret track- album rip- high quality"
vaporwave
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
romaincrisis
