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The Best Damn Fics You've Ever Read.

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Abhorsen said:
It's not finished. THat's one of the two requirements. Maybe one could argue that the first book is, but that doesn't really count IMO
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Singular books as part of an unfinished series have been allowed to be recced in the past, as long as the book being recommended is finished.

However, a link to the book and short description of the work would be nice.
 
Nitro said:
Singular books as part of an unfinished series have been allowed to be recced in the past, as long as the book being recommended is finished.

However, a link to the book and short description of the work would be nice.
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Beware of Chicken
"In which a transmigrator decides the only winning move is to get the hell out of dodge."

The beginning is rough, irreverent and profane in a way that contrasts with the tranquil later chapters. The story is amusing once it hits its stride. I find it a smidge repetitive in places, re-using the same punchline of 'this isn't how a cultivator should act' as an end towards itself.
Not sure if I would recommend it, going to re-skim it.

Delayed Nth recommendatiom for Tri-Phasic Model of Demonology. Very strong fic, repetitive and slow paced, but very, very, tightly written and focused.

I want to de-recommend Fixation and I'm not entirely sure why. The prose is not clicking with me. It has a bunch of floating, unattributed dialogue. But without anything more concrete to de-rec it on I'm just going to give it the side-eye.
 
Hatter said:
Beware of Chicken
"In which a transmigrator decides the only winning move is to get the hell out of dodge."

The beginning is rough, irreverent and profane in a way that contrasts with the tranquil later chapters. The story is amusing once it hits its stride. I find it a smidge repetitive in places, re-using the same punchline of 'this isn't how a cultivator should act' as an end towards itself.
Not sure if I would recommend it, going to re-skim it.
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A brief look at the story thread shows that the work is unfinished so it doesn't qualify for this thread regardless of how good it may be.
 
Ah sorry, I missed the completion requirement, my bad.
Edit: I also realised that the freshly completed ' Harry is a dragon and that's ok' hasn't been rec'd either! That story features my favourite dumbledore of any HP fic I've red.
 
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Megamataman said:
Ah sorry, I missed the completion requirement, my bad.
Edit: I also realised that the freshly completed ' Harry is a dragon and that's ok' hasn't been rec'd either! That story features my favourite dumbledore of any HP fic I've red.
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Again, a link, brief description of the fic, and an explanation of why you think its one of the best fics you've read would help. It having your favorite Dumbledore is a good start, but is that the only thing? Also, why are they your favorite Dumbledore (assuming you can provide more detail without too much in the way of spoilers)?
 
Eh, I'll write a recommendation for Vol1 of Beware of Chicken, just finished catching up on it.

The story is a western take on a predominately Chinese genre, Xianxia, which I can best describe as high fantasy with ancient chinese aesthetic and mechanics sort-of copied from Taoism. Heaven is a bureaucracy, the way to power is through spiritual cultivation and martial arts, enlightened animals are common, and so on. If you've ever read Journey to the West, it's that kind of world.

Thing is, Xianxia is absolutely filled with works of the same quality as Dark!Edgy!Overpowered! Naruto and Harry Potter fanfics. Protagonists are often immoral monsters who we're supposed to think are good, even though they act just as bad as their incredibly monstrous enemies if not worse. People are killed in unnecessarily brutal ways, there's rampant misogyny, martial arts sects get into brutal feuds, power mongering is a virtue even when the seeking of it kills millions of innocents, characters are often only relevant to the current arc, there's always some cool!new!forgotten! secret power for the protagonist to cheat with....there's just a lot of gunk in Xianxia.

Beware of Chicken begins with the protagonist, a random nobody from Canada, waking up in the body of a typical Xianxia protagonist near the beginning of his journey, Jin Rou, after he got almost killed by the typical 'arrogant young master' starting antagonist. He realizes what kind of world he's in, and promptly runs away to the most peaceful, and thus weak, place he can find and sets up a farm. Thus begins his average, every day life as a super-powered martial artist in a place he is way over-leveled for. And the rooster who he accidentally awakened into a spirit beast.

The action scenes are good, but this story is carried by its characters and how they interact with the world.

Jin Rou isn't seeking to 'uplift' the world like a lot of Isekai/ISOT stories, he's a nice guy who just wants live high on life and avoid the cycle of misery and violence that is a Xianxia world, and he does a pretty good job. He interacts with common mortals and they are just as developed and realized as he is, and have meaningful impact on the plot and its progression. Even the characters who trend more towards those typical of the genre, like Bi De the Young Master and Cai Xiulan the pride of her sect, are all nuanced, well rounded, actual people,with their own flaws and virtues that change and grow with the story.

This is definitely a story that will miss some people, but it's worth the read.
 
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Beware of Chicken has to be read in the context of it being a not-quite-deconstruction, not-quite-parody call out of the seriously problematic tropes so common to the Xianxia Genre. It takes all the Xianxia aesthetics and beats it's edginess into plowshares.

in that context it's very much the best of Xianxia. Because 90% of Xianxia is completely unironic personification of corporate sociopathy. And the story that takes the piss out of all that while still making fans of the genre cheer is indeed a spectacular accomplishment.
 
Yes, Beware the Chicken is much like the Airplane! movie. It works fine as comedy even if you know nothing about the setting, but most of the deep jokes are poking fun at its genre.
 
I'll recommend the first book of Beware of Chicken as well. Just great. The opening is a bit out of tone for the rest of the book, but it's a fantastic, easy hook to draw you in. And I simply adore the characters.
 
Derec for Beware of the Chicken. The mockery of Xianxia tropes is perfectly on point and was funny for a while, but the story keeps going and that well eventually runs dry out until I dropped it out of sheer boredom. Didn't even realize the story was still going somehow.

But then I was never a fan of comedy that beats the dead horse over and over and over -it is why I never got much into Abridged series- if you have tolerance for that I imagine it could stay funny for the first volume, which is what is being talked about, if not the even longer second volume.
 
I'll add my recc of Book 1 of Beware of Chicken as well. I generally despair of the usual Xianxia tropes and most attempts at trying to subvert expectations in the genre and try to avoid them all together usually result in ending up right back where they started. Beware of Chicken wasn't like that, working within the usual tropes I was familiar with, but approaching them from a fresh angle that was enjoyable and nevertheless countered expectations and defied the usual conventions while still paying homage to the classic cliches of the genre.
 
And another rec for Chicken. I honestly thought the early tone shift was intentional, it felt like Jin was exiting Xianxia as he went into the country and established himself.
 
Beware of Chicken is a good story. Vol 1 is great mix of comedic with normal actions causing extreme reactions due to who makes said normal actions, warm and fuzzy home life and world-building. And it's a good hook for what is to come later.
 
Sounds like this Beware of Chicken might be good. I think I'll have to add it to my list of things to check out.
 
Having just binged the thing over the last couple days, I'll also recc book 1 of Beware of Chicken. I've tried to dip my toes into xianxia before and every time, I either recoil in disgust or give up after reading another excessively worded cultivation bit. Jin Rou playing the straight man and everyone's confusion at his motivations is exactly what I needed to relate, and the cultivation bits become extended comedic bits when given to the characters that actually undergo them. Just perfect. Wish there was more than the single book complete, but that book is complete, so It gets my recc.
 
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When it comes to My Little Pony fanfiction, this fic is incredibly good in my opinion. I find it odd that so few seem to have read it.

Mortal Coil

It's a 472k words in length and the style of the story makes me think the stories that happen in the Forgotten Realms.
 
I'll be the second to derec Beware of Chicken. I found it too repetitive, predictable, and boring and dropped it over a dozen chapters before the end of volume 1. I also found the characterizations of I believe just about everyone to be very uninspired and disappointing.
 
I enjoyed the first volume of Beware of Chicken, but I'm torn on recommending it. It's a good slice of life in a fantasy setting and the main character's disdain for power and desire to help people in mundane ways were both quite refreshing. Unfortunately, it doesn't really feel like a complete story on it's own.

I think my big problem comes down to which arcs concluded and when they concluded. For example, Big D maturing from an arrogant novice to a humbler disciple who cares more for others and acknowledges his own shortcomings has both the narrative weight and tension to work as a main arc for the first volume, especially if you also include Jin changing how he views the animals. However, that arc completes well before the end of the first volume, so it doesn't help the volume feel complete.

Conversely, the wedding is treated as something closer to a climax, but Jin and Mei's relationship never had the sort of tension that lends itself to climaxes and endings. Rather, it has a stead sort of progress that makes the wedding just one more step in a path they're already walking. To be clear, the wedding was well handled, and I like their relationship in general, but I don't think it's what ties the first book together and the wedding itself isn't really the end of that arc.

Finally, Xiulan has an interesting mini-arc that follows her arrival, departure, and eventual return and the way they mirror her changing views on both herself and the world. It could have been a good arc for the first volume if it started sooner and was a larger focus, but as it stands it serves more to set-up new threads for the next chapter, as do a number of other events that happen near the end. That last bit might actually be the biggest problem: Most of the stuff that gets focused on in the first volume either gets resolved in its own mini-arc or is relatively low tension with incremental progress, but there are a lot of new threads that either get introduced or receive renewed focus towards the end of the volume and that makes it feel like less of an ending and more of a transition.
 
Epsilon Rose said:
I enjoyed the first volume of Beware of Chicken, but I'm torn on recommending it. It's a good slice of life in a fantasy setting and the main character's disdain for power and desire to help people in mundane ways were both quite refreshing. Unfortunately, it doesn't really feel like a complete story on it's own.

I think my big problem comes down to which arcs concluded and when they concluded. For example, Big D maturing from an arrogant novice to a humbler disciple who cares more for others and acknowledges his own shortcomings has both the narrative weight and tension to work as a main arc for the first volume, especially if you also include Jin changing how he views the animals. However, that arc completes well before the end of the first volume, so it doesn't help the volume feel complete.

Conversely, the wedding is treated as something closer to a climax, but Jin and Mei's relationship never had the sort of tension that lends itself to climaxes and endings. Rather, it has a stead sort of progress that makes the wedding just one more step in a path they're already walking. To be clear, the wedding was well handled, and I like their relationship in general, but I don't think it's what ties the first book together and the wedding itself isn't really the end of that arc.

Finally, Xiulan has an interesting mini-arc that follows her arrival, departure, and eventual return and the way they mirror her changing views on both herself and the world. It could have been a good arc for the first volume if it started sooner and was a larger focus, but as it stands it serves more to set-up new threads for the next chapter, as do a number of other events that happen near the end. That last bit might actually be the biggest problem: Most of the stuff that gets focused on in the first volume either gets resolved in its own mini-arc or is relatively low tension with incremental progress, but there are a lot of new threads that either get introduced or receive renewed focus towards the end of the volume and that makes it feel like less of an ending and more of a transition.
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What's bothering you is pretty much the point, as far as I can tell.

Jin's goal is to not be a protagonist. He wants to be a farmer with as normal a life as possible. He and the people around him are being pulled by the usual world tendency and narrative contrivances of a Xianxia world, and the fact that he successfully had an ordinary wedding represents his success at that.

Each of the subplots and mini-arcs are people and creatures being faced with that logic - live a good life, don't be horrible to one another, live in and with the world - that is in opposition to the usual conventions of the setting and being changed by it.
 
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