Subject: Goodfic Rec Thread!
Author:
Posted on: 2017-09-18 00:38:00 UTC
Do you read self-published tales about already established stories?
Are you sick and tired of reading tales that are less than good?
WELL DO I HAVE THE THREAD FOR YOU!
For those unaware, this thread is dedicated to people recommending fics that they believe are awesome! Feel free to make your own recommendations below.
Elementals of Harmony by FanOfMostEverything - Rated E
Something is gathering around the bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Something dangerous. Something magical. There's only one pony with the knowledge, the skills, and the muffins needed to save Equestria as we know it.
A Friendship is Magic: the Gathering crossover, taking place between seasons 1 and 2. Here there be flashbacks, briefly seen OC's, and possibly every emotion known to man or tiny horse. Abandon all pretenses of not being a nerd, ye who enter here.
This is a Magic the Gathering/MLP crossover that is actually accessible even without any real knowledge of the Magic universe (as was the case with me). And for those of you who are into alternative interpretations of Derpy Hooves/DItzy Doo/Muffins' wonky eyes, well, this should be right up your alley.
Here are some I intend to add to the rec page on the wiki whenever I get around to it:
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Marionettes
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11594755/1/Marionettes
A delightful skewering of the "Villain off the Week" trope with lots of twists and turns.
Doctor Who
Broken Cycles (xover w/ Puella Magi Madoka Magica)
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10352376/1/Broken-Cycles
Basically the Doctor comes in to straighten out the timeline, and throws in characters from other series to fill the magical girl roster but it's much better than it sounds. It also takes the time to explain details that the original show didn't bother touching on, not to mention fixes one of my biggest issues with the series (I won't go into details because Spoilers).
Gravity Falls
Flat Dreams
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11802026/1/Flat-Dreams
Gives a backstory for Bill Cipher that really gives him some depth - metaphorically speaking. And the parallels between certain characters really adds to the story.
Steven Universe
Little Rebellions
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11777697/1/Little-Rebellions
Shows what it's like for the Pearls serving under the Gem Empire and how they rebel. Warning: some chapters have some pretty intense moments...
Harry Potter
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4356667/1/Wish-Carefully
The Death Eaters get what they want... only for everything to go downhill. An oddly cathartic read.
Well, I already recced a ton of fic, but I haven't done comics. So...
-xkcd[NSFW]: It has recently come to my attention that at least a few boarders are as of yet unaware of one of the most popular webcomics ever. Xkcd was, is, and remains an integral part of nerd culture in many corners. Plus, while it doesn't always hit its mark, when it is funny, it is *really* funny.
-1/0: Yeah, I've brought this one up before. But it's quite possibly the best piece of metafiction ever written, so I don't care. Yes, that is a bold claim. I don't care, this comic is amazing, and deep and heartfelt and raises meaningful questions about love, fiction, religion, and endings, all while delivering a fairly consistantly funny four-panel gag strip. And by comic standards, it had a very short run, so the archive is tiny.
...I was about to post more, but I just read that EME passed through the W3C and the EFF has resigned from said body, so I'm a little to depressed to do it properly.
So we've got a whole series of Wiki pages where people recommend fics
(I'll probably plug something and/or create one of those sometime later, but I figured this needed to show up in the thread.)
- Tomash
And angst? I do love me some werewolf angst!
Lemme plug a couple of fics by Stoplight Delight.
Against the Moon
The odds were stacked against him: a child from a blended home with no friends, no social skills to speak of, and a terrible secret. Yet slowly Remus Lupin began to discover there was a place for him in the world, if he could find the courage to claim it.
Currently at 132 chapters and still going strong, the fic follows Lupin from first year presumably all the way to seventh—it's still updating and is in the middle of third year right now. Stoplight loves to play with people's heartstrings and this fic really showcases how well she writes angst.
In Desperate Manner
He could not believe it had come to this. February, 1990: late in a hard and hungry winter, Remus Lupin has come to the end of his options. Desperate in the hours before moonrise, he travels to Knockturn Alley to transact some dangerous business.
This is a recent addition of hers and it's even angstier than the other fic. Unable to feed himself, Lupin goes to sell his blood in Knockturn Alley just so he'll have a little bit of coin. It's only three chapters so far, but it's an amazing look at what the years before book three were like for him.
Again, this is Iximaz recommending angst, so take it with a grain of salt.
Because what else did you expect of me at this point?
These are all on my Rec page, but I'll copy them here for convenience, too.
I have a LOT of recs. I will leave off the obvious ones (I assume that you've read OFUM, Shoebox, etc already, they're already on your reading list, or they're Just Not Your Thing), but even then, there's a LOT of stuff to recommend.
Just a note, not ALL of these are technically fanfics. Some of them or original universes, AARs, or some other sort of writing.
Other note: I'm not sorting these in any way. A lot of them are Warhammer, some of them are not. Most of them are NSFW, whether that be swearing, or actual adult content. With all that out of the way:
-The All Guardsmen Party[NSFW - language]: Some of you have been following the Dark Heresy game on Discord with interest. I know I have. It's been entertaining. Now, what do you get when you crank the funny up to 11, get a truly EVIL DM, have all the players play Guardsmen, and have it all written up in third person IC by a remarkably entertaining writer? You get The All Guardsmen Party. And it is glorious.
-Old Man Henderson[NSFW]: You know how I said that I'd be leaving out the obvious? I lied. Old Man Henderson is arguably the most amazing story ever recorded about a TRPG. It's funny, it's jawdropping, it's really, REALLY funny, and it ends with one of the most legendary things to ever happen in a Call Trail of Cthulhu game. I know most of you have read it, but it is basically Required Reading. So I'm putting it here!
-The Ballad of Edgardo[...Might be SFW? I don't remember,so assume NSFW]: You may have noticed I have an affection for entertaining stories of RPG nonsense. This is another one. Learn about how a poorly-optimized character in a semi-freeform Forum RPG would up on a quest of mighty vengeance with a squidman. And won.
-Thri-Kreen Erotica[VERY NSFW]: I love Tailsteak. Everyone here should probably know that I love Tailsteak by now, seeing how much I've plugged 1/0 (actually, go read 1/0 right now). So when someone on 4chan's /tg/ board posted asking whether D&D's Thri-Kreen were Furry (because it's 4chan), and a discussion ensued on the impossibility of writing good Thri-Kreen erotica, Tailsteak responded in a... uniquely Tailsteak fashion. It was hilarious, and somewhat disturbing.
-Toyhammer[Probably SFW - swears at worst]: You know, there are a few fics written about Warhammer 40k models that come to life, or the 40k factions at model scale. None of them matter save this one, because this one is just that good. It goes from wacky antics to Animorphs-esque secret war over time, and remains consistently engaging through all of it. Sadly, it hasn't updated in a while, and may never be finished. But it's still fantastic.
-Avoiding Stupid Deaths in the 41st Millenium[NSFW]: Some of you may know about TIANTDATPPC. Others of you may recall Skippy's list, or Things Mr Welch is No Longer Allowed to do in This RPG. This fic, which started as an attempt at an IG-focused 40k equivalent, became VERY different over time. It slowly developed a recurring cast of characters, an increasingly present in-universe author, and even, gradually, a storyline that I am invested enough in to check the fic for updates regularly. Cerebus has been kind of 40k fics...
-Love Can Bloom[Rating Unknown: Assume NSFW]: All right, I'll admit it: I haven't had time to read Love Can Bloom yet. But it is one of the most well-known 40k fics out there, to my knowledge, had a large number of spinoffs, and is generally beloved, although sometimes somewhat controversial. And most of you probably haven't heard of it. It's the story of an Eldar Farseer (Taldeer from Dawn of War) and a Vindicare Assassin who fall in love. It has become synonymous with sweet and gentle happenings in the Grim Darkness of the 41st Millennium. I'll tell you more when I actually read it...
-The Millenial King[SFW I think...]: Necromancers get a bad rap. But do you have to be evil to be a Necromancer? /tg/ didn't think so, so they wrote this collection of stories about a good necromancer and the kingdom that he ruled.
-Warhammer High[varies, but some NSFW]: Warhammer High is not a Warhammer 40k Highschool AU. I know it sounds like it should be, but it isn't. It's actually an AU where the Horus Heresy never happened (because The Emperor took Eldrad more seriously), and the Primarchs got daughters who all go to highschool together. I know. Somehow, the various writers at /tg/ managed to take this absolutely ludicrous concept and make some fics that are absolutely brilliant. Given, not all of these fics are great: there are parts of the written lore that are just stupid (Caliban and a lot of the other Sons) and are written poorly, and there is at least one piece of smut so eye-sporkingly bad that I may consider missioning it if I ever get Permission. It also tends to be much lighter in tone than the standard 40k fair. Having said that, Meet the Primarchs is absolutely hilarious, and the alleged smutfic Venus' Burn is absolutely fantastic and basically the inverse of PWP to the point that I had trouble finding the smut. Actually, Someone Else's (that's really his username) work for Warhammer High in general is excellent, especially the one he wrote after Venus' Burn, Bleeding Out.
-The Golem's Garden[SFW]: You can get my attention in two ways: You can be funny, or you can be heartwarming. This is the ladder.
-Marcius Flavius[I don't remember]: One of the hardest parts about crossovers is justifying them. How do characters from one world find themselves in another? Thankfully, 40k has a built-in answer: Warp Shenanigans. Not that this fic needs it, it's too funny to be bogged down by that. But I digress. Star Trek's Federation, and 40k's Imperium: Never were there two spacefaring civilizations in sci-fi more different. So what happens why they collide? Well, in this case, they organize a cultural exchange program, and hilarity ensues: Riker becomes an honorary Space Marine, and Marcius Flavius of the Imperial Fists is put under Picard. Neither deals with their new allies well...
Confessions of a Wayward Son[SFW]: I'm a Sons player, and they're probably my all-time favorite faction, so I'm biased on this one. Anyways, one type of 40k fic we see a lot of is the idea of the Chaos Space Marine who ends up changing his allegiances and fighting for The Imperium once more, kind of Drizzt-style, except hopefully not as Sue-ish. This actually kind of makes sense: There are some Marines in the Traitor Legions that never really wanted what happened. Like, to pick a completely random example, a good chunk of the Thousand Sons - although they hate the Imperium more. So what happens when a Son decides that Magnus was *definitely* wrong, and the Imperium was right to do what they did? Well, you get this fic. Some would say it's too angsty (and I have been known to mock the angst myself), and it certainly has some flaws here and there, but I never claimed that I had some highly developed taste in fic. At the end of the day, I like it. YMMV.
In most fandoms, you read the source material before you read the wikis, fanfic, etc. In 40k, this is not necessarily true: Warhammer 40k's high cost and obscurity mean that many fans will start by reading wikis or fanworks. And with the dizzying scope of the universe, it's easy to get lost.
So, I want to take a moment to introduce to you one of the first 40k fanworks I ever really experienced, and one that cemented my interest in the setting: If The Emperor Had A Text-To-Speech Device[NSFW].
From its first episode, TTS was... okay, the first episode was kinda rubbish. It was basically an excuse to spend 5 minutes having the Emperor mock the Grey Knights, the Ultramarines, and the general state of the Imperium, setting the tone for the episodes that would follow. However, as time went on, the show's production values and attention to the lore increased, and it became something a lot more interesting. By the dawn of Season 2, it had moved towards telling a more serious story... a more serious story where the main players were an Australian wizard, and insufferably literal individual, an overly emotional Custodes, three walking innuendos, and a grumpy constantly-swearing definitely-not-god who's in a state of eternal torment, but a more serious story nonetheless.
Also, later TTS is shockingly educational for a comedy series. Educational about 40k lore, yes, but educational nonetheless. I hold Episode 19 as a crowning achievement, explaining what The Warp is, how it functions and the nature of the Chaos Gods to a fairly-accurate degree (well, as accurate as you CAN be, seeing as it changes, and with the characters in question discussing it), being IMHO one of the best explanations of the subject ever.
It also has a fantastic spinoff podcast...
Anyways, I may be overselling it bit, but TTS is absolutely worth watching. If only to find out why I keep nicking myself ROGAL DORN in Discord.
And did I mention the characters play Yugioh? WIND-UP KITTEN, IN ATTACK MODE!
This one manages to achieve feels in about a page (which is good because that's its total length): https://1d4chan.org/wiki/The_doll
Class about to start so I'll find more later. *poofs*
It's mainly about Worm since that's what I've been reading recently, but not all.
The recs are all about an author posting on Spacebattles and Sufficient Velocity, Cerulean.
His first work for Worm, in hiatus for now, is Atonement. This is an AU starting up with the locker scene... And Taylor's death, putting the focus on another character, Madison as she triggers out of guilt and decides to, well atone, by being a hero. Cerulean takes an one-notice character, and manage to create an excellent story.
Next, my favorite, his other Worm AU, Intrepid. The initial premise is similar to Atonement, with a worst-than-canon locker scene for Taylor (although more AU elements can be spotted as the story continues, no spoilers here), leading here some girls of the bullying trio, Madison and Emma, to trigger when they realize just how ducked-up was their behavior, before going to cape life. The fic alternates between them, Taylor and Sophia Hess. It's in my opinion an even better story than the former, updates roughly once a week, and includes a... spin-off I guess, Odyssey, from Vista's POV, although it's also canon to this story. A sort of fifth POV, I guess?
But Cerulean also writes original fiction. Namely, an urban fantasy web-novel called Heretical Edge, updating twice a week. The story is about Flick Chambers, a young girl who just got selected to be part of a monster-hunting school. Still, expect a few surprises, here because this premise let to a really interesting 'verse.
I went into this one fairly blind in regards to my knowledge of Worm, but it's still one of the best fics I've read (it's still updating).
Stacked Deck (Or, Colin Wallis vs. Single Parenting)