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The Best Damn Fics You've Ever Read.

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Just came in here derec the metropolitan man. I know it's on the list and all but the story has huge flaws. It drives me apoplecticly angry about missing the entire point of superman and then making him a stupid assholes who can't even argue for is ideals and actions. Oh the great lex is the rational ubermench able to think circles around superman and lo how he manipulates a clearly not!loose lane int helping him kill superman.
If you want to portray his ideals and actions are wrong, at least have him competently defend himself and not be a stupid fuck. Also in the context of DC comics, lex doomed the universe with his action, so I sure hope he enjoys getting impaled on a pike by parademons. God the ending is so stupid i literally had to take 10 minutes to breath it out and not punch my phone.
Rant over.

Tldr Metropolitan Man sucks and I De rec it .
 
Wait, Metropolitan Man managed to get on the list?
I'll throw another derec towards it.
 
Same on that derec of Metropolitan Man. It was interesting at first, but Lex was far too much of a Rational!fic protagonist for my personal taste, and Superman never felt like Superman. (Honestly, for the parts I read, I found Clark more interesting than Superman)
 
I want to drop a rec for Again, its a fanfc by Dirch, that's complete (yes, I am sure the horsemen of the apocalypse aren't coming, no, the sky isn't falling, no, the trumpeteer hasn't tooted his horn) where after ending the calamity in BoTW, Link finds himself trapped in a loop, he wakes up at the start of BOTW every time.

The fic does a fantastic job balancing the darker aspects of a timeloop (the declining mental health of link as well the pent up stress) without going onto edge territory like say, Chunin Exam Day. The repeated timeloops take a toll on Link as he explores every possible avenue to escaping the time loop.

I feel Dirch wrote a fairly compelling story, some breaks from the lore were taken, but they add and make the story richer, than making it poorer (such as the nature of the fierce deity mask, its a chance I can live with because it makes sense and it still keeps to the original name of it in JP, Kishin).

Overall a very enjoyable read that sets a conflict that cannot be solved by the simple use of brute force, but by meticulous research, and Dirch also has the common sense to not over stretch the segments of both research and drama. It has just enough drama to keep you hooked, but it also lasts just long enough to go away before it becomes tiring, you can feel link chipping at the loop while also solving the underlying mystery with a lot of help.

Best Damn Zelda fic I've ever read, and trust me, I've read a lot of zelda stuff. Most is sadly incomplete and one in particular soured me enough with its ending that I am not happy.
 
Duncan Idaho said:
I want to drop a rec for Again, its a fanfc by Dirch, that's complete (yes, I am sure the horsemen of the apocalypse aren't coming, no, the sky isn't falling, no, the trumpeteer hasn't tooted his horn) where after ending the calamity in BoTW, Link finds himself trapped in a loop, he wakes up at the start of BOTW every time.

The fic does a fantastic job balancing the darker aspects of a timeloop (the declining mental health of link as well the pent up stress) without going onto edge territory like say, Chunin Exam Day. The repeated timeloops take a toll on Link as he explores every possible avenue to escaping the time loop.

I feel Dirch wrote a fairly compelling story, some breaks from the lore were taken, but they add and make the story richer, than making it poorer (such as the nature of the fierce deity mask, its a chance I can live with because it makes sense and it still keeps to the original name of it in JP, Kishin).

Overall a very enjoyable read that sets a conflict that cannot be solved by the simple use of brute force, but by meticulous research, and Dirch also has the common sense to not over stretch the segments of both research and drama. It has just enough drama to keep you hooked, but it also lasts just long enough to go away before it becomes tiring, you can feel link chipping at the loop while also solving the underlying mystery with a lot of help.

Best Damn Zelda fic I've ever read, and trust me, I've read a lot of zelda stuff. Most is sadly incomplete and one in particular soured me enough with its ending that I am not happy.
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I'll second this. Like most time loop fiction it skimps on detail often, but includes it when necessary, and works toward an actual conclusion instead of getting bogged down in trying silly things.
 
I'm interested in the premise, but honestly I'm already at the point of a tentative derec entirely because the first 8000 words are just a recap of the original plot of Breath of the Wild. Maybe it improves from here on out, but there's no way in hell a story that spends 8000 words where it could use 200 to sum up "well first, the plot of the game happened, you all know the story, Link saves Hyrule at the end" feels like one that values my time as a reader.
 
McFluffles said:
I'm interested in the premise, but honestly I'm already at the point of a tentative derec entirely because the first 8000 words are just a recap of the original plot of Breath of the Wild. Maybe it improves from here on out, but there's no way in hell a story that spends 8000 words where it could use 200 to sum up "well first, the plot of the game happened, you all know the story, Link saves Hyrule at the end" feels like one that values my time as a reader.
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Thanks for the rec, I'll definitely go read the story now. Sounds to me like you're complaining that the author made the story accessible to those not intimately familiar with the source material, which IMO is a per-requisite to even be considered for this list.
 
I read it up to the part where Link gets a dragon transformation and takes Zelda flying and then dropped it. All challenge had left by that point in the story (around the time where Link started being able to decorrupt the Guardians and the villain was just trapped in a loop of being buried by Link's infinite robo-mooks). All that was left was Link, Zelda and the science-monk gradually getting closer and closer to resolving Link's situation without any real threat or opposition while receiving ever more power ups (insert unnecessary "oh boy the Fierce Deity Mask sure is the most powerful and scary thing ever, right?" bit here). Maybe it gets better somehow later in, but again I wouldn't know, and the dragon thing did come after a pretty significant chunk of the story so I'm not going to be all that open to "it gets better later, promise".

IIRC, it wasn't a bad story by any means: spelling was fine, characterisation seemed pretty ok, comedy was more on-point than not, and so on. But personally I absolutely wouldn't put it in the "best fics ever" list due to the glaring "there's no challenge at all, just an increasing series of powerups, so what's the point?" flaw, so derec
 
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Shinji117 said:
read it up to the part where Link gets a dragon transformation and takes Zelda flying and then dropped it.
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Like that's an inherent issue of the timeloop stories, eventually the protag will find a way to use their accumulated knowledge to their advantage. Yes, the challenge was leaving and that was the point, it was not accidental, Link by this point had spent fighting calamity Ganon for a decade. He was absolutely intimately familiar with Calamity Ganon's tactics and the fic opted to shift to focus from how easily Link was curbstomping ganon, to how the loops were affecting Link, mentally.

Shinji117 said:
(insert unnecessary "oh boy the Fierce Deity Mask sure is the most powerful and scary thing ever, right?" bit here)
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FDM was and was not a powerup, as the story reveals at the end, Hylia by this point had gotten sick and tired of seeing the same cycle repeat itself over and over. Link, zelda dna Ganandorf are born, they fight, Ganandorf dies, something else pops up, maybe Ganandorf resurrects, but the curse keeps haunting all three parties involved.

Ganandorf was too far gone on his hatred, and in fact, Ganandorf was planning on setting the loop on himself, Hylia intervened and switched the target to Link. This was to ensure he was ready for both the FDM and to understand every trick CG had under its hat.

Hylia had a goal in mind with all of this, using the FDM and empowering Zelda with most of her power, they destroyed the curse. There is no curse of Demise anymore, there is no going to be this eternal recurrence where those three are destined to fight or some poor innocent (manga!Vaati) gets dragged onto this problem. Because as Spirit Tracks handily shows, even if Ganandorf is dead, it does not means the curse will search to puppeteer someone else to try and kill Link and Zelda.

Its also part of why I give it the damn best fic ever qualifier, its the only zelda fanfic I know off that has worked to end the Curse of Demise.
 
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Shinji117 said:
I read it up to the part where Link gets a dragon transformation and takes Zelda flying and then dropped it. All challenge had left by that point in the story (around the time where Link started being able to decorrupt the Guardians and the villain was just trapped in a loop of being buried by Link's infinite robo-mooks). All that was left was Link, Zelda and the science-monk gradually getting closer and closer to resolving Link's situation without any real threat or opposition while receiving ever more power ups (insert unnecessary "oh boy the Fierce Deity Mask sure is the most powerful and scary thing ever, right?" bit here). Maybe it gets better somehow later in, but again I wouldn't know, and the dragon thing did come after a pretty significant chunk of the story so I'm not going to be all that open to "it gets better later, promise".

IIRC, it wasn't a bad story by any means: spelling was fine, characterisation seemed pretty ok, comedy was more on-point than not, and so on. But personally I absolutely wouldn't put it in the "best fics ever" list due to the glaring "there's no challenge at all, just an increasing series of powerups, so what's the point?" flaw, so derec
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I also read it, and I enjoyed it sufficiently I binged it over the past two days, but I'll second the derec, to be honest. The ending of a story like this should really feel like a culmination of everything the hero's learned over all the loops up until now, where they're facing a threat so overpowering they have to pull out every single trick they have just to have a chance of success. It helps make the journey feel worth it.

Instead, Link scarcely uses half of the stuff he conceivably could. The Guardian army isn't even used in the final fight, the dragon transformation shows up for all of like, two sentences (the entire dragon thing could literally just be cut from the story entirely and almost nothing about the overall plot would change in the slightest), and for all the hype it got, the Fierce Deity mask honestly feels superfluous. Link honestly didn't even need it to win the fight, just for some meta-gambit of Hylia's to end the curse of Demise permanently. If you cut Hylia's plan from the story then I got the impression Link could've easily won the last fight without the Fierce Deity mask (so, in an odd way, it mimics the actual Fierce Deity mask, where it's an interesting curiosity that's supremely overpowered and supremely unnecessary for the actual story).

While I enjoyed it well enough, the ending being kind of a flop and the amount of ultimately kind of pointless subplots (the dragon thing, for one) makes me feel it isn't really worthy of the list.
 
Duncan Idaho said:
Like that's an inherent issue of the timeloop stories, eventually the protag will find a way to use their accumulated knowledge to their advantage. Yes, the challenge was leaving and that was the point, it was not accidental, Link by this point had spent fighting calamity Ganon for a decade. He was absolutely intimately familiar with Calamity Ganon's tactics and the fic opted to shift to focus from how easily Link was curbstomping ganon, to how the loops were affecting Link, mentally.


FDM was and was not a powerup, as the story reveals at the end, Hylia by this point had gotten sick and tired of seeing the same cycle repeat itself over and over. Link, zelda dna Ganandorf are born, they fight, Ganandorf dies, something else pops up, maybe Ganandorf resurrects, but the curse keeps haunting all three parties involved.

Ganandorf was too far gone on his hatred, and in fact, Ganandorf was planning on setting the loop on himself, Hylia intervened and switched the target to Link. This was to ensure he was ready for both the FDM and to understand every trick CG had under its hat.

Hylia had a goal in mind with all of this, using the FDM and empowering Zelda with most of her power, they destroyed the curse. There is no curse of Demise anymore, there is no going to be this eternal recurrence where those three are destined to fight or some poor innocent (manga!Vaati) gets dragged onto this problem. Because as Spirit Tracks handily shows, even if Ganandorf is dead, it does not means the curse will search to puppeteer someone else to try and kill Link and Zelda.

Its also part of why I give it the damn best fic ever qualifier, its the only zelda fanfic I know off that has worked to end the Curse of Demise.
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But "how the loops were affecting Link, mentally" was another basically solved problem around when swordspirit and sciencemonk got involved, so that wasn't a challenge either. Like, I understand emotional and mental stakes. I can enjoy and appreciate stories where it isn't a physical challenge. However, the story, by the point of the dragonmorph, had managed to drop those also. If it was actually Link wearing himself to the bone to try and find a solution it could have been something. It's why I read as far as I did, because the first chapters hinted at the whole work being like that and that was neat. Instead, he offloads the solution to other people and then just spends his time sightseeing around the land, looking for even more powerups and random collectables (see when he realizes that his first times few he had only managed to get half of one of the collectible types, shock horror). That isn't the act of someone desperately fighting against a relentless press of time and trying to stay mentally sound, that's closer to the act of someone who is goofing off.

And maybe because I've only played like 5 Zelda games (6 if counting Warriors) and so I'm not super into the lore, I don't really care that much about ending the Curse of Demise just for the sake of ending the Curse of Demise. If that happens in a good story, good. If it doesn't happen in a good story, also good. What matters is the story quality itself, not just that it worked on ending the overarching threat of the Zelda narrative. If I read a story that is "Link colleceted all the collectibles, as well as a bunch you readers will remember from the past games while stomping the main antagonist over and over, and then ends the Curse of Demise", I...don't care that much.

Edit: In any case, to be less wholy negative regarding Zelda fics, I remember enjoying A Glass of Port as a neat, small oneshot character study.
 
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I enjoyed Again quite a bit, but I agree with the criticisms. It's a touch wordy and indulgent, and there just wasn't much investment left to carry me through by the end, beyond mild curiosity. I think Link makes for a poor protagonist here, and it it does suffer from the common pitfalls and issues of time loop stories fall into: specifically dull repetition. There's not even really a sense of hopelesness or despair with the endlessness of it. Link struggles, but then just gets over it and becomes a dragon... because why not, and then merges with the Fierce Deity and boom, job done.

I think the biggest complaint I can muster is that what emotional development the story has is revealed to exist just because Hylia isn't able to communicate. And at the end, suddenly she arrives and exposits/cries about how she did a bad thing. It's all a bit too convenient and too awkward for me to accept it.

Edit: To be clear, the time loop is helping Link power up enough to defeat Demise's Curse. Tension and mystery and some emotional trauma is derived from obfuscating this, and it just deflates at the end when it is all laid out.

Regretfully, derecomended.
 
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For me, it was like Zelda porn, but without sex or eroticism or fetishes or any of those things that make porn fun. Which means I was having great fun recognizing and seeing gear and artifacts from the games and seeing them do their thing, which is also what broke the spell. I was expecting a wolf transformation, got dragon. Wasn't bad on its own, but then the unnecessary power ups and the repetition made things boring. Ganondorf blasting his way to the surface and the first half of the fight was entertaining, but then turned to an over long curbstomp and was boring again.

This is a fun thing to read if you like Zelda lore, and the dragon free early parts are great, then rest is only kinda fun. Plus I was promised a young Impa that never happened. De-rec.
 
Honestly, I'm giving it a rec because its the only thing that I feel deserves it on what I've read.

What Makes a Hero is like, good, has a lengthy Link x Midna romance (TP Link), its half novelization, half retelling, but then the end/epilogue comes... and Illia, Mayor Bo's daughter takes advantage of a depressed and drunk link, forces herself on him.

There is one with brawlingwolf where TP Link finds a way to twilight land and has to fight an OC crazy wizard, but its nothing special.

Somehow, everything else I've gotten my hands on is dead or gone.

I do think that for its flaws its one of the best damn fics I've ever read.
 
Mopman43 said:
Going by the rest of your post, you're saying it's the only LoZ fic you've seen that you feel deserves it?
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Yep.

There are others I feel could contend if they were complete, and not permanently dead.

Like, Whom she found, OOT Link being transported to FE7 and showing how versatile he is, but also that he is flawed in many ways (he actually ends getting captured iirc) and is slowly but surely derailing FE7's and eventually FE6's plot. But WSF is not complete and I feel it'd need a polish up in a couple parts. But WSF is not complete.

There is one where Link ends in Fairy Tail that has interesting world building and lots of nice stuff, but its not complete and the prose gets drier than the sahara and absolutely boring once Link and Erza manage to find a way back to Hyrule.

Peptuck had a nice OOT fic, but its been dead for a long ass time.

There is one Wind Waker one that's complete, but I feel that casting the King of the Red Lions as this super evil master mind that managed not only to kill OOT Link, but one of the Sages all out of a grudge because (he was not OOT!Zelda's father, but husband for the purposes of the fic and Zelda was interested in Link) he was Zelda's 2nd love. Bleh. I think its interesting, its complete, but I don't consider it awesome.

And so on and on.

Given FF.net and AO3 being FF.net and AO3 finding anything complete and awesome is kinda, sorta impossible.
 
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Duncan Idaho said:
Yep.

There are others I feel could contend if they were complete, and not permanently dead.

Like, Whom she found, OOT Link being transported to FE7 and showing how versatile he is, but also that he is flawed in many ways (he actually ends getting captured iirc) and is slowly but surely derailing FE7's and eventually FE6's plot. But WMaH is not complete and I feel it'd need a polish up in a couple parts. But WSF is not complete.

There is one where Link ends in Fairy Tail that has interesting world building and lots of nice stuff, but its not complete and the prose gets drier than the sahara and absolutely boring once Link and Erza manage to find a way back to Hyrule.

Peptuck had a nice OOT fic, but its been dead for a long ass time.

There is one Wind Waker one that's complete, but I feel that casting the King of the Red Lions as this super evil master mind that managed not only to kill OOT Link, but one of the Sages all out of a grudge because (he was not OOT!Zelda's father, but husband for the purposes of the fic and Zelda was interested in Link) he was Zelda's 2nd love. Bleh. I think its interesting, its complete, but I don't consider it awesome.

And so on and on.

Given FF.net and AO3 being FF.net and AO3 finding anything complete and awesome is kinda, sorta impossible.
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Can I have links to the fics you have mentioned? besides the wind waker one.
 
There was one, one that I was following that was post MM Link on Fairy tail and it was... surprisingly nuanced. Y'see it had this nice conflict between Link and Erza, they're both followers of the path of the sword, but each one of them has a different perspective. This Link is stuck on a young body (again) and is a bit more, morose, but not edgy. He actually points to Erza that hey if you pick a sword, you need to understand people can and will die if you use it.

Erza being still a child at the time (like some time after her escape from the Tower and having been for a while a member of FT, but not FT FT erza, so like... 12 years old erza) is confused and grows angry that Link killed someone who challenged him to a duel. Link for his part argues that those who take the sword must accept that they can fall and die to it. Erza disagrees and wants to beat Link fair and square without killing him.

Makarov is trying, heavily, to play mediator.

But its dead.
 
Duncan Idaho said:
There was one, one that I was following that was post MM Link on Fairy tail and it was... surprisingly nuanced. Y'see it had this nice conflict between Link and Erza, they're both followers of the path of the sword, but each one of them has a different perspective. This Link is stuck on a young body (again) and is a bit more, morose, but not edgy. He actually points to Erza that hey if you pick a sword, you need to understand people can and will die if you use it.

Erza being still a child at the time (like some time after her escape from the Tower and having been for a while a member of FT, but not FT FT erza, so like... 12 years old erza) is confused and grows angry that Link killed someone who challenged him to a duel. Link for his part argues that those who take the sword must accept that they can fall and die to it. Erza disagrees and wants to beat Link fair and square without killing him.

Makarov is trying, heavily, to play mediator.

But its dead.
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On the topic of Zelda Fics, I recall a pretty good one that's set post ... everything? That has Link working with Ganon as a rebel against the now crazy Zelda. Unfortunately I'm pretty sure it was incomplete and I've since lost it.
 
Duncan Idaho said:
Honestly, I'm giving it a rec because its the only thing that I feel deserves it on what I've read.

What Makes a Hero is like, good, has a lengthy Link x Midna romance (TP Link), its half novelization, half retelling, but then the end/epilogue comes... and Illia, Mayor Bo's daughter takes advantage of a depressed and drunk link, forces herself on him.

There is one with brawlingwolf where TP Link finds a way to twilight land and has to fight an OC crazy wizard, but its nothing special.

Somehow, everything else I've gotten my hands on is dead or gone.

I do think that for its flaws its one of the best damn fics I've ever read.
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The Fourth Piece is pretty good. Post Twilight Princess story with a lot of wider elements brought in for a large scale conflict. Finished too.

I'll go ahead and rec it actually.
 
Heya! Back again to let you guys know it's time for another bi-monthly sweep! Same deal as before- update should come after a day or two, and every post after this one won't count until the next one. Now I'll just quietly sink back into the abyss again lol
 
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