September 7 - 20, 2012
CV12Hornet
Riter.
- Location
- Tacoma, Washington
Impressions before reading:
This better not be another "gritty training fic".
Review:
On the plus side, it's not. On the downside, I really can't take this seriously, and it's not funny enough to just brush off as comedy. The misunderstanding that leads to Anko becoming Team 7's instructor just gets escalated past the point of absurdity, and I can't take it anymore.
Verdict:
Impressions before reading:
Stone Gryphon + MCU? Yes, please!
Review:
Narnians, Unite! is easily divided into three parts. The first naturally jumps off from where Rat & Sword Go To War left off, with Peter and Susan in France fighting and simply tossing Peggy Carter and Steve Rogers into the mix. Simple, straightforward, reasonably satisfying. The second part is a good deal better, involving Edmund, now a full-time British spy, encountering Natasha Romanov over his many years of service, and eventually helping her defect from the Soviets. That one neatly ties in Edmund's own childhood betrayal into his motivations for arranging things.
But it's the last part that really elevates this entry, I think. That's Lucy's part, and it is delightful. Lucy kind of gets the short end of the stick of the Pevensie siblings in the mainline Stone Gryphon stories, which is sadly kind of inevitable. But this chapter perfectly nails Lucy, in my opinion. Constantly on the short list for the Nobel Peace Prize, intensely spiritual, still a wild, free spirit uncaring about standard propriety even at 75, and unfathomably empathetic and kind. It is a clinic on Lucy Pevensie character writing, and it's perfect for the Bruce and the Hulk.
Okay, seriously, what is it about this series that gets me gushing?
Verdict: Yes, keep!
Impressions before reading:
Ah, Old Man Henderson. An old, shitty Call of Cthulhu meme that inspired a rash of bad HFY. Back when I was a teenager, I thought that story was cool. Now, it's just another amusing example of the kind of shit tabletop gamers get up to.
Add in a "what if?" type of summary, and I am not looking forward to this.
Review:
This is just straight-up cringeworthy and invites all sorts of weird fridge logic about what the hell else Shirou does when he's not at home smoking weed and doing... other things.
Look, if you're that curious, it's 2000 words long, go read it. Just don't say I didn't warn you.
Verdict:
Impressions before reading:
Yes, I know Nerve Circuits are, in fact, a terrible, awful idea. Just roll with it and let the fic have its unicorn and go with the execution. And by execution, I mean the fight scenes, because from what I remember of this fic those are going to make or break it.
Review:
Nerve Damage has... issues. Nasu purists hate it, I'm sure, for Shirou's mystery teacher, for a wide variety of small lore errors and author headcanons, for mucking about with Shirou's characterization, and of course, for raw "NERVE CIRCUITS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!!!" rage. More pertinent to my interests, the description is sparse, the narration flat and passive and riddled with small but annoying errors, and Shirou and his teacher tip dangerously close to Sue territory at times.
That said, none of this overly affected my ability to actually read the fic, and so my brain glossed over it in favor of popcorn-fic fun. That's the real draw of Nerve Damage: fun brawls between servants. Astoundingly, while Shirou and his four Sabers are overpowered, the fic quickly proves that they're not unstoppable once the new Servants are brought into play. One on one, there are a lot of overpowered Servants in this new Holy Grail War, ones that will individually give the Sabers trouble and that will most likely take opportunities to gang up on then.
Really, the fic adheres to a writing principle borrowed from a Pacific Rim/Mass Effect crossover that I find far more sensible than the old "Give Frodo a lightsaber, give Sauron a Death Star" principle that's floated around for a long time: Kaiju are not mooks. Or, in other words, don't turn the established antagonists into fodder.
Verdict: I enjoy this a lot, and that's all I need to keep it.
Impressions before reading:
A nice bit of humor.
Review:
So, just FYI, this fic puts Team Gai in the same graduating year as the rest of the genin.
Anyway, that one was at once sweet and hilarious, though I'm not fond of the sudden timeskip in the last chapter. Sweet mostly in the Team 8 (Choji/Ino/Naruto) interactions, and hilarious mostly in the Team 7 (Sasuke/Neji/Kiba) interactions. Curing neuroses by means of specific, targeted, bloody-minded spite!
Verdict: Keeper!
