As much as I have enjoyed finding new material through this thread, that enjoyment is kind of dampened when finding the fic in question was never finished and hasn't been updated in four years. Would it be possible to include if a fic is alive, dead or finished in the description?
CV12Hornet Cleans Out His Fanfiction Favorites List (Beware of Shit Taste)
- Thread starter CV12Hornet
- Start date
Occam's Razor + Ripples + Legend of the Galactic Horses
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
In which the Lila we know and hate was a long-term Akuma possession of a shy, unassuming Italian girl named Vera. While the surface draw is a Lila fic that doesn't indulge in the usual bashing and saltfic tropes, the heart is the pathos inherent to poor Vera, who has spent months Akumatized in large part because her parents aren't present enough to notice. She's a very pitiable figure, in other words, making it all the better when Marinette befriends her.
You're on the list!
This fic did not impress me with its opening reliance on long-term transformation jutsu usage to get the plot going. Sasuke has the Sharingan. The instant he uses it on Sakura the jig is up, and the number of hoops the story would have to jump through to avoid that is monumental. But the fic compounds this issue by a complete lack of indication that perspective changes are happening, not to mention a lot of perspective changes. And no technical excuses like Dungeon Keeper Ami had.
You're not on the list.
An almost parodic story that has Tempest Shadow gather up a group of ex-villain unicorn mares to go stop the remnants of the Storm King's army. Along the way, a ton of sci-fi references are dropped.
Seriously, it's better than it sounds, though it's definitely just a popcorn fic.
You're on the list.
Flairina
Least Omnipotent Goddess
- Location
- The next infinity over
That'd be a difficult task for the middle option. I haven't updated To Twist The Crimson Threads in years but was working on it just a couple weeks ago; it'd be hard for CV12Hornet to explicitly declare something "dead" without the author themself weighing in. Unless you consider a fic dead if it just hasn't updated within a specific cutoff point, but given the kind of timeframes I've seen some fics operate on/come back from, I'm not sure that would even be possible to generically specify.
(Also, thanks for keeping me around all three times I've appeared in this thread! Appreciate it. O(∩_∩)O)
Personally, I'm not a fan of the fact that no one pays any real heed to the people still plugged into the Matrix- I feel like someone in Zion should have at least raised 'wait, haven't we been trying to save these people?'
That they end up being nuked leaves a sour taste in my mouth, ngl.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
After working my way to '09 in this thread, it is dawning on me that I might not actually like fan fiction 
How the fuck did we live like this in the 00s?
How the fuck did we live like this in the 00s?
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh come on, it wasn't all bad. We had My Immortal. ~
Since Flairina got featured, I'm just waiting for one of my own fics to show up here. But I take it that's true for all of us
- Location
- Poland
Well, you can declare a story to be in "on hiatus" stage (like the HIATUS tag on Royal Road) automatically, using greater value of some kind of specific cutoff point and the cutoff with the value equal to that of the median time between updates (for example cutoff = max(1 year, median time between updates)).
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
I made it to the SB/ponyfic sections.
How the fuck did Demon Cleaners, of all the things I've written, make it both onto this list and onto TVTropes?
I was drunk out of my mind writing Demon Cleaners.
I forgot I had written Demon Cleaners for almost a decade, until stumbling on it in the TVT Meduka Meguca recs page a few years back.
Shit's wild
How the fuck did Demon Cleaners, of all the things I've written, make it both onto this list and onto TVTropes?
I was drunk out of my mind writing Demon Cleaners.
I forgot I had written Demon Cleaners for almost a decade, until stumbling on it in the TVT Meduka Meguca recs page a few years back.
Shit's wild
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- Location
- Australia
I'm not sure if you're taking recommendations @CV12Hornet, but if you are here are a few:
Here Comes The New Boss (Nothing Like The Old Boss): The first major Butcher!Taylor fic, and the inspiration for inheritance. Its focus is much more on Taylor fighting an internal battle against the Butchers (and her own anger) to become the hero she always wanted to be. It has just concluded a Shadow Stalker reveal arc which handles that revelation better than pretty much any other version, (including canon Worm imho). Also, Coil is taken out like a chump in a really satisfying encounter.
Regrets™: Yagi Toshinori Rendition: A cozy MHA fic. Before the start of canon All Might is hit by a quirk that turns him into a bunny rabbit. He's picked up by Izuku and basically forced by him and Inko to rest up and heal. It has some great introspection from Yagi, and the reveal when All Might returns to his human form in front of the Midoriyas is very funny.
Stargate Etheria: This is mainly a culture-clash fic between Reboot She-Ra's Etheria and the nebulously 90s Earth of Stargate. It also has some fun action and blends the two universes together really well.
Morality Chain: The Azula redemption fic. I love this so much, mainly because it sticks incredibly close to Azula's canon characterization. She still has difficulty understanding compassion or empathizing with other people (her arguments with Gaang in book three are excellent, and show that she still doesn't quite get what the Fire Nation did wrong, but that she is willing to accept counter-arguments). Also, this fics rendition of Azula's conquest of Ba Sing Se runs rings around her canon plan, and is both somehow cooler and crueler than canon.
Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay: This is a pretty cozy, almost slice-of-life Harry Potter fic where the one main change is that... Harry is a Dragon. This has the only fanfiction Dumbledore I've ever read that follows his canon characterization without veering into Evil! or Incompetent! territory. The story overall actually tackles the systematic issues present in Magical Britain (Pure Blood Supremacy, disenfranchisement of Magical Creatures etc.) and demonstrates how those can be fixed through the slow changes at Hogwarts. If it has a flaw it's that Voldemort and the Death Eaters are even less threatening than usual here, but that is in service to the fic showing how actual progress on systematic injustices is made in the real world. Also, Ron becomes a magical Astronaut by the end, which is very cool.
Here Comes The New Boss (Nothing Like The Old Boss): The first major Butcher!Taylor fic, and the inspiration for inheritance. Its focus is much more on Taylor fighting an internal battle against the Butchers (and her own anger) to become the hero she always wanted to be. It has just concluded a Shadow Stalker reveal arc which handles that revelation better than pretty much any other version, (including canon Worm imho). Also, Coil is taken out like a chump in a really satisfying encounter.
Regrets™: Yagi Toshinori Rendition: A cozy MHA fic. Before the start of canon All Might is hit by a quirk that turns him into a bunny rabbit. He's picked up by Izuku and basically forced by him and Inko to rest up and heal. It has some great introspection from Yagi, and the reveal when All Might returns to his human form in front of the Midoriyas is very funny.
Stargate Etheria: This is mainly a culture-clash fic between Reboot She-Ra's Etheria and the nebulously 90s Earth of Stargate. It also has some fun action and blends the two universes together really well.
Morality Chain: The Azula redemption fic. I love this so much, mainly because it sticks incredibly close to Azula's canon characterization. She still has difficulty understanding compassion or empathizing with other people (her arguments with Gaang in book three are excellent, and show that she still doesn't quite get what the Fire Nation did wrong, but that she is willing to accept counter-arguments). Also, this fics rendition of Azula's conquest of Ba Sing Se runs rings around her canon plan, and is both somehow cooler and crueler than canon.
Harry Is A Dragon, And That's Okay: This is a pretty cozy, almost slice-of-life Harry Potter fic where the one main change is that... Harry is a Dragon. This has the only fanfiction Dumbledore I've ever read that follows his canon characterization without veering into Evil! or Incompetent! territory. The story overall actually tackles the systematic issues present in Magical Britain (Pure Blood Supremacy, disenfranchisement of Magical Creatures etc.) and demonstrates how those can be fixed through the slow changes at Hogwarts. If it has a flaw it's that Voldemort and the Death Eaters are even less threatening than usual here, but that is in service to the fic showing how actual progress on systematic injustices is made in the real world. Also, Ron becomes a magical Astronaut by the end, which is very cool.
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
I think I've tried all of these and bounced off them at one point or another.
- Location
- Australia
Ah that's a shame. I'm glad you gave them a chance at least!
- Location
-
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I would like to recommend a pair of older fics.
Lost in the Woods is a ST:TNG and Firefly cross. Some time after Q tossed the Enterprise at the Borg, he's back to toss them into another dimension's Chara. This time the Enterprise is in the position of being the massive ship with impossibly advanced technology. Wanting to know what they've gotten into, they hail the nearest ship, a small Firefly-class freighter. This is one of the stories that I feel really gets Trek, and the combination of idealism and responsibility that's the Federation at its best.
No Good Deed The Enterprise has come and gone and left a few changes in Chara. The crew of Serenity is in pretty good shape and are continuing on their way. Madame Li, the chair of the Blue Sun corporation, is investigating an anomaly in the outer system. Captain Picard is facing an inquest over his actions in the Chara system. This is the sequel to Lost in the Woods and works out all the consequences to wrap up the story. If I have a complaint, it's that the Federation side doesn't tie back to the other side of the plot, so weaving the chapters together is a little disjointed.
They are nicely contained stories, around 80k words combined.
Lost in the Woods is a ST:TNG and Firefly cross. Some time after Q tossed the Enterprise at the Borg, he's back to toss them into another dimension's Chara. This time the Enterprise is in the position of being the massive ship with impossibly advanced technology. Wanting to know what they've gotten into, they hail the nearest ship, a small Firefly-class freighter. This is one of the stories that I feel really gets Trek, and the combination of idealism and responsibility that's the Federation at its best.
No Good Deed The Enterprise has come and gone and left a few changes in Chara. The crew of Serenity is in pretty good shape and are continuing on their way. Madame Li, the chair of the Blue Sun corporation, is investigating an anomaly in the outer system. Captain Picard is facing an inquest over his actions in the Chara system. This is the sequel to Lost in the Woods and works out all the consequences to wrap up the story. If I have a complaint, it's that the Federation side doesn't tie back to the other side of the plot, so weaving the chapters together is a little disjointed.
They are nicely contained stories, around 80k words combined.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
If it hasn't been reviewed here yet, I'd recommend Persona Quest: Another Calling by CrimsonMoon. Quite a few people wanted a review for it over on EarthScorpion's old review thread, but it never happened. While the Quest was dropped, a final Q&A went in-depth into how the rest of the Quest would've gone.
If you want a Persona Quest that properly finished though, well, just look at my sig
If you want a Persona Quest that properly finished though, well, just look at my sig
The Maretian
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
This is some good shit.
If I could lay any critique at the feet of The Maretian, it's the pacing - Kris Overstreet's commitment to daily updates means a lot of filler covering things that were skipped over in the movies and books. To Kris' credit, most of the time this is the good kind of filler, small moments in life on Mars that establish the characters, show heartfelt emotion, or are simply just funny. Nonetheless, by Sol 400 or so I was starting to noticeably flag as the endless stream of short chapters that individually did little to advance the story in time wore down my patience. Still, as flaws go this is a small one, which as I noted is a credit to the author's writing skills.
Everything else? Great. It's not really a first-contact story, but it's enough of one to satisfy my cravings for it. Mark has a deep store of Earth pop culture on hand to help not go insane with isolation and boredom, and that gives the Equestrian characters a good crash-course in it. Indulgent, but the fun kind of indulgent. There's figuring out their respective languages, societies, and physics.
The characters all bounce off each other well, by which I mean they all get on each others' nerves because none of them really know each other very well except Cherry Berry and Dragonfly, the Equestrian team having been thrown together more for politics than mission compatibility. Forgiveable when you're only planning a five-day trip. With a two-year stay on Mars that becomes a problem that needs to be resolved, and while everyone finds points of commonality and inevitably bonds, they also, as I noted, get on each others' nerves and that nearly breaks up the team. To say nothing of unresolved personal issues like Dragonfly's fears of her own Changeling biology and how that would make everyone else treat her.
And, of course, it can't be a crossover with the Martian without sciencing this bitch. You want magic-assisted scientific problem-solving? Read The Maretian, it's going to satisfy that urge for months. You think Mark planting potatoes was cool? The team here sets up an entire farm in a cave, a farm that's still going two years later, and while the plants inside are in need of some TLC, that they're still there at all is astonishing.
They need that ingenuity, because Mars is doing its level best to kill them1. Some of the hazards from the book, like Hab decompression, dust storms, and food remain, but the presence of the Equestrian team adds new ones. For example, Dragonfly going a little mad with the lack of magic and draining Mark into a catatonic state and then hiding in a cocoon of shame for two months. This is a problem when she's the only one who can repair the Equestrian space suits, which are not built for all the abuse they're put through.
It doesn't take long for you to be on the edge of your seat wondering what's going to go wrong.
I like how well the technology is shown and described without bogging down into exposition. It's all very cool - and funny when Mark is boggling at the speed and insanity of the Changeling Space Program.
And can I just say how much I appreciate this being an optimistic sci-fi where things don't end in tragedy? We need more of that in the world, please.
You're definitely on the list!
- And no, that's not a colorful metaphor this time. Thanks to all the magic dumped on Mars, the planet is awake, sentient, and wants everyone dead.
Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean about the daily grind turning it into a bit of a slugfest to get through - for a similar reason it took me a couple attempts to get through Mauling Snarks.
It's also very much still problematic issues beyond the interpersonal - trying to work out how to keep Fireball healthy with a dragon's specific dietary requirements... and how that and what they had to do to create the cave farm resulted in an accident that might easily have killed at least one of the team.
I freely confess, however, my favorite part was launching from Mars toward the end of the story.
It's also very much still problematic issues beyond the interpersonal - trying to work out how to keep Fireball healthy with a dragon's specific dietary requirements... and how that and what they had to do to create the cave farm resulted in an accident that might easily have killed at least one of the team.
I freely confess, however, my favorite part was launching from Mars toward the end of the story.
- Location
- Soviet Canuckistan
The Maretian is one of those stories that are vastly better than they sound like they're going to be. Strongly seconded.
Ready or Not + Statute Under Siege + The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
Yes, that Exiled. Current-owner-of-Spacebattles Exiled. I thank him for adding to the canon of great Ruby fics.
This fic takes the Terminator angle to time travel, sending back a monster to murder Team RWBY before they ever get strong enough to challenge Salem1. A single warrior is sent back in time to counter this Grimm, with the usual Terminator tropes of arriving only as yourself with no clothes or weapons. This is a very welcome change from most time travel fics, which tend to be taking their cues from Days of Future Past. It's a lot less "set right what once went wrong" and more focused on stopping this one thing.
This gives the story focus and prevents it from meandering too far. Both Future!Ruby and the plot are laser-focused on stopping this Grimm and saving the girls, and neither deviate far from that path. It's a nice, brisk pace. It also shows the ripples this conflict is sending out. The list of people dead is long and includes important figures like Jacques Schnee and Adam Taurus. Makes me wish Exiled had gotten around to the second part of this story, see those ripples expand outward.
Appropriately, Future!Ruby is a total badass without peer in this. She defeats all four Ace-Ops by herself with a subpar (by her standards), goes mano e mano with Amber with only some help, and in general shows quite clearly why, beyond just her silver eyes, she's the only one who can stand up to this Grimm, justifies to an extent her insistence on not acquiring the help of the downtime authorities. And the fic does this without shortchanging anybody, this Grimm is just that beefy.
And finally, we have the real emotional core of this fic: Weiss and Blake. They're the first two Future!Ruby saves, which puts them as their pre-canon selves in close proximity to each other. There are bad feelings, which swiftly move into mutual friendship. By the time the story reaches Patch they're working together like veteran Huntresses. And I do like the emotional resonance of Blake wielding Blush, Adam's weapon.
You're on the list. If you like RWBY fic, go read this.
If you're wondering how the hell the author is planning to fuse these three together, so did I. So far he's done a decent job of it, but the story is still in its early goings so it can still stumble. Aging up Negi gets a raised eyebrow from me, even if it does make sense on several levels.
In general, the fic is still in the setup stage, moving pieces into place for some big event at the Mahorafest. Given the title, that's a very appropriate setting for the fic - the Mahorafest was all about a not-so-evil plot to break the Masquerade and reveal magic to the world.
Anyway, rereading it I found I still want to know what was going to happen, so onto the list it goes!
While the idea of setting the story entirely from the eyes of Westeros makes some sense, the fic itself doesn't work for me. The big problem is repetition: every chapter is a short snippet mostly of the Westerosi reacting in a combination of awe, confusion, fear, and derision to modern technology. That gets old fast, and it's not even covering a very interesting time in the ASOIAF canon, with Earth's intervention defusing most of the interesting things that could happen.
Blah. You're not on the list.
- And after fic after fic aping Days of Future Past instead, this is a very welcome change of pace.
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- Location
- Ylisse
There's either a number here that isn't meant to be or SV didn't save the footnote.
Uneasy Lies the Head + Fool's Gold
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
In concept, Uneasy Lies the Head is a very good story. It's a mystery story involving a mysterious insurgent by the name of Fox who poisons Kakashi early and has some sort of evil plan in mind for the village. It's also got a solid emotional core built around addressing Kakashi's self-esteem issues stemming from years of trauma, in particular his self-sacrificial nature and need to do things himself.
Unfortunately, in execution it falls short of its excellent premise. For one, Fox is supposed to be a philosophical villain, a man driven mad with grief and angry at the Hokage's office and the unbroken dynasty stretching back to Hashirama. The problem is not that this philosophy is made malignant and hypocritical with his plans, which among other things involve plunging the continent back into war, but the fact that for most of the fic no one has any answers for him. Hello! Continent-wide war here! That's the kind of thing that tends to invalidate social critique!
Worse, at the end, when Fox spills a bunch of Konoha's dirty laundry to the public, the reaction once things are cleared up is a resounding "meh". Way to sell this guy as an ideological threat. Also, way to contrast with the village being up in arms over Fox-in-Sai's-body murdering Koharu.
There's also a repetitive feel to the narrative. Multiple times the story cycles through the same beats of investigation, getting blindsided by Fox's next move, and then running into a blind alley. There's a sense throughout that this shouldn't be this hard, that Fox shouldn't be this successful. That the investigation has no cohesion or direction. This is not helped by Kakashi's repeated insistence at running off to try and solve things himself without telling anyone. It impedes the investigation several times, and from a Doylist perspective it's the same damn problem I ranted about in MHA fanfic of specific characters having to solve everything themselves. Turns out I despise it just as much when it's an adult involved, if that adult is slowly dying from an organ-destroying poison.
I get what the author is going for in terms of character arc, but dammit, Shikamaru is right there and perfectly suited to this kind of mystery!
You're not on the list.
And neither are you, sequel.
Assorted Fics 5
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
How you start a story is important. This is especially the case when you have an OC who'll be one of the main characters. You need to establish that OC's personality and life immediately, and this is what gets this fic in trouble. The fic jumps right to our OC Bianca meeting Ash in the bowels of Alto Mare, and the problem this creates is... who is Bianca? Why do we care about her? The fic doesn't ever bother to establish either thing, and so it fails to hook in the reader.
A tip I like to use for this is a type of pacing commonly seen in half-cour anime. Your first episode/chapter is used establishing your protagonist's everyday life, introducing us to who they are. Then at the end you can blow up that ordinary life. What this fic needed was a short chapter to establish who Bianca is and why we should care about here, and then we show her nearly getting in a fight with Ash.
You're not on the list.
I'm not sure how to feel about this. I mean, points for not wallowing in misery before getting to the point like that one Youjo Senki crossover. But I'm not sanguine about the fic taking place in Sorcier, where an Abyssal carrier is the next best thing to a dark god, rather than on Earth.
Ah, what the hell, I'm willing to see where this goes. You're on the list - for now.
I was hoping for a better version of that one Mass Effect crossover I read a while back. It is not better. It is, in fact, rather garbage, mostly on the technical side. The voicing is just spectacularly bad and there's not enough detail.
You're not on the list.
This is so goddamn real. The shouting of "FUCK YOU, MARS". The sudden late-night cravings. The manic behavior, the annoyance at all the things he has to do to get healthy again, the binge-eating of stuff he couldn't eat in space - and at the end of it all, that sudden craving for Martian potatoes, half his damned curiosity and half his body being "STARVATION = POTATO". It's brilliant.
You're on the list.
Hmm.
I mean, kudos for pitch-perfect Vernon Dursley characterization. I guess. Not sure that's a good thing. The man is an unpleasant Karen without an ounce of depth to him. He really is just a man defined by status. Hermione putting him in his place is neat; that it kills him honestly fills me with some warm fuzzies. Also, it feels like something's missing...
Eh, I think I'll leave it off.
This is hilarious. It's more than just an aping of the Who's on First skit - it's an entire hurricane of puns and the clones having fun at the expense of everyone around them not up to wordplay.
You're on the list!
This could go somewhere, with the G-man interfering and the Combine presumably looming. But as it stands this fic is mostly just another bog-standard alt-power. I'll revisit it at some point, but as it stands, this isn't worth keeping a close eye.
You're not on the list.
So, Bianca isn't quite an OC. She was part of the fifth Pokemon movie, the human girl that Latias disguised herself as.
This fic is apparently a time line shift of that movie later to the Sun and Moon seasons, which isn't well explained in the text, but the character is technically canon, but being expanded on in this fic.
Mattman324
you expected some anime, non-IRL giant robot, eh?
- Location
- Working in the basement on my giant robot.
This is something that sets off "Satan is not a fucking pogo stick" levels of theological debate in the Pokemon shipping community, because the only thing determining whether it's Bianca or Latias in disguise is that Latias can't talk while in disguise, and the fifth movie ends with Bianca running up to Ash, kissing him, and then leaving, and because of how the scene is framed it's either the first time a human showed Ash physical affection in a way that implies love, or it's a Legendary Pokemon doing that, and there's twenty years of debate as to which of those things is Definitely True which have happened.