Fanfic Recommendations: The Next Generation

[Jinx999]

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/102618/foxfire-esq

Noa, the author of Pound the Table, has started an original legal/superhero work. It's currently six chapters and just getting going, but given her previous work, I'll recommend it anyway.

[Matrix Dragon]

Fan Comic instead of fanfic, but close enough I feel.

An AU for Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where Zelda doesn't get sent back in time, and teams up with Link to resolve the latest crisis to hit Hyrule.

https://www.tumblr.com/proxycrit/7639306...urce=share

[classicdrogn]

Magical Girl Gunslinger is a nebulous-near-future urban fantasy piece with the theme it says on the tin. It is very well written, though the MC's motr hinted around than explicitly stated personal issues may bother those with sensitive dispositions. For my own part, a medicine adjacent background made me drop out of the narrative in a particular scene because it should have been vastly more visceral and forey, but that's the kind of problem most people would say isn't, I expect. MC just makes me want to give her a good book and a plate of comfott food (and a nice chair with the back to a wall near an easy exit) before sitting quietly across the room with my own, because that would be far less stressful than the briefest of hugs or head pats and wow do I ever know that feeling.

250k words in 36 chapters, of which the last is the beginning of a new arc might be better left unread to leave off on a "complete book." Sadly, updates seem to come at a minimum of two or three moths apart, with the gap from the previous chapter having been ten.

SB threadmarks

Royal Road index

Bring a hanky or two.

[classicdrogn]

Do you know Da Wei?

Born to the mistress of a clan patriarch in a locally powerful sect of a backwater continent, his cultivation was crippled in a plot to weaken the clan and take over his betrothal to well-placed daughter. This pathetic fate was overturned by the revelation that the gragon pearl amulet his mother had given him on her deathbed was actually a heaven-shaking secret item, but memories of another life in our modern world lead him to reject the temptations of the Demonic Pat grandpa it carried... and also following up on all those protagonist flags.

Exiled by his own choice from the sect, he wanders off to a small village in a spirit forest, to simply live quietly and enjoy the company of people without the cut-throat mentality of the cultivation world. Alas, it seems the heavens are not done with Da Wei...


That's my own, only semi-serious summary of the premise of I am the Main Character? No thanks!, and on a scale of blah to BoC I'd say it's maybe at 70-80%. The first few chapters are a little rough, switching between the initial events and the present a few months (maybe as much as a year or so?) later when he's gotten more back on his feet, but it's not too bad about that and the storytelling smooths out rapidly once it starts moving forward from the established opening situation.

It is for now entirely available on SB and from author comments Royal Road, but as Book 1 wrapped up this past Nov-Dec those indicated he was going to try to publish it "soon" so I'd say to check it out quickly lest it be stubbed, and archive a copy via whatever means or make plans to buy it if/when it goes up for sale.

SB Threadmarks link

[Bob Schroeck]

I just stumbled on this one and while I'm not yet done with it, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. It's a Worm AU, called How to Train Your Endbringer and it's just as cracky as it sounds:

The Simurgh dipped out of the clouds and came rocketing down towards the group. At the very last moment she slowed her dive, just in time to come to a stop an inch from the ground.

Legend jumped backwards, both hands raised as if to fire at the Endbringer.

The two stared at each other while the wind shifted around them. The parking lot was deathly quiet for a few long seconds. "Simurgh, stop antagonizing Mister Legend," Taylor said. "Mister Legend, please don't laser my friend."

Legend slowly lowered his hands and loosened his tense shoulders a little. The Simurgh nodded at him as if they'd reached an understanding of sorts and floated backwards to stop near Taylor's side.

"Come on, there's no reason we can't all be friends!" Taylor said.

[Initiate Friendship Protocols?]

"Exactly!"

[Preparing for Orbital Bombardment.]

"What!" Taylor spun towards the Simurgh. "No, that's not how friendship works!"

The Simurgh tilted her head to one side. [Contrite. No Friendship Cannons? Sadness. Wasted Preparation Time.]

Taylor buried her face in her hands while all the--mostly--normal humans around her took in her one-sided conversation with the Endbringer. "No, Simmy, no orbital friendship cannons. Where did you even learn about those?"

[Anime!]

"You watch cartoons?" Taylor asked as she started walking towards the park again.

[Not Cartoons. Anime.]

"What's the difference?"

[Exasperation.]

Behind the little group, Legend felt as though he had made a very big mistake somewhere along the line.

[robkelk]

If I may blow my own horn... This isn't a new fic, but it is brand-new on my brand-new AO3 account.

As I said in the notes, "if you're interested in reading a short-fic that's from the era of Y2K compliance statements, or you're curious as to how much I have (or haven't) developed as a writer since then, read on..."

Almost As Good, a story of the Knight Sabers

[Matrix Dragon]

( Whoops, meant to put this in Completed.)

[classicdrogn]

"No, Simmy, no orbital friendship cannons. Where did you even learn about those?"

[Anime!]

"You watch cartoons?" Taylor asked as she started walking towards the park again.

[Not Cartoons. Anime.]

"What's the difference?"

[Exasperation.]

... but the Orbital Friendship Cannon meme is from MLP:FIM, making it explicirtly cortoons, not anime, at least in the context of that kind of conversation. Sure, defeat mens freindship is a long standing anime trope, but the OFC formulation specifically is from the Sonic Rainboom episode.

KYM link

[Bob Schroeck]

"No, Simmy, no orbital friendship cannons. Where did you even learn about those?"

[Anime!]

"You watch cartoons?" Taylor asked as she started walking towards the park again.

[Not Cartoons. Anime.]

"What's the difference?"

[Exasperation.]

... but the Orbital Friendship Cannon meme is from MLP:FIM, making it explicirtly cortoons, not anime, at least in the context of that kind of conversation. Sure, defeat mens freindship is a long standing anime trope, but the OFC formulation specifically is from the Sonic Rainboom episode.

KYM link

Well, it might originate there, but it's pretty clear it has roots in Lyrical Nanoha as well.

I will note, by the way, that the Simurgh isn't just screwing with people here. She actually built the Orbital Friendship Cannon, and fired it (by Taylor's command) at a raging Lung in a later chapter. One thing we don't find out until then is that the Orbit is around the Moon... and just how deep the beam burns into the earth even from there. (And the effect it has on Lung is hilarious.)

I have to add as a footnote that the story stops abruptly in the middle of its Tournament Arc and hasn't been touched since something like 2018. But until then it is vastly entertaining.

[classicdrogn]

On SpaceBattles,

"It does not come from something that you can learn or do, U'bai." I briefly closed my eyes. And I don't want you to have to go through what is needed to obtain powers, if it remains even possible here and now.

Taylor, talk about that last part out loud!

Taylor, please.

Taylor, stahp. You're building upon your legend.

TAYLOR YOU'RE NOT HELPING YOUR CASE BEING SOME MYTHICAL BEING FAVORED BY THEIR PHYSICAL GOD.

EDIT:

Taylor you're making them think you came to this world through the power of anime and nepotism!

post link

It's part of the comments on Sandworm, where post-GM Taylor finds herself on Arrakis... and her (reset) power works on the sandworms. More serious than funny in the text itself, but quite good.
threadmarks link

[ECSNorway]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/593533.../151374805

"To Dance on Thin Ice"
Honkai Impact 3rd
Ana Schariac SI - but the SI has never played any Honkai games, has never heard of them, and thus assumes that she's stuck in a generic Japanese Harem Anime Game World. Wrong Genre Savviness ensues.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/462098.../116335732

"Spy Wars"
Star Wars, prequel era
Young Anakin recognizes Palpatine for what he is right off the bat, and tells Obi-Wan. Knight and Padawan embark on a conspiratorial plot to Save The Republic.

[classicdrogn]

Everything Everywhere, One Thing at a Time is an HP/SG-1/Kung Fury fusion by Karmic Acumen, described as "The mindfuck that keeps on giving" by QQ's FTR2017. (Oh, and FLowers for Algernon, and a few other things in smaller bits too.) While that makes a number of divergences in the setting and background baked ion before hand, the apparent point of divergence is Harry having a couple of lucid or prophetic dreams that lead to the Philospoher's Stone not being destroyed, and writing to Nicholas Flamel for advice on that sort of thing as a returned favor for having ensured its return.

There is a whole lot of fucky-wucky time and dimensional hijinks, but no lewds (to date) despite being in QQ's NSFW section - nothingn beyond a PG or T-rating, though. Still not something to read at work due to thread comments and one-click-to-smut .sig links, of course. 140,000 words in22 chapters, but Karmic just put it on hiatus as it doesn't get much pop and he was losing enthusiasm (see also lack of smut and rare action with only moderate violence...)

threadmarks link

[Mamorien]

Learned about this little BLEACH trifle last week, give or take, from one of the ANAI discord gremlins: The World that I Reject.

A foolish soul of our would has been reborn as a Quincy.
Now a player in the great game, her Heresy has set the world on a new course.

A former soldier of the Wandenreich, in her fragmented memory lay the key to victory and perhaps salvation of those who would be lost.

What awaits at the end of the coming war? Paradise or perdition.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/464130.../116856727
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/...i.1063337/
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/th...si.142082/

[Bob Schroeck]

Something I just discovered yesterday by which I was pleasantly surprised:

Harry Potter and the Skittering Spouse by "Fencer". Contessa arranges to exile Taylor to a parallel earth after she turns herself in to the PRT. Not long afterwards, a drugged Taylor meets a drunk Harry Potter on a bender in Vegas during the summer between fifth and sixth years, and together they get dragged into a wedding ceremony arranged by Tonks for herself and Remus. The next morning Harry and Taylor discover they are the lucky winners of a very permanent magical marriage... and things rapidly diverge from HP canon from there.

As i said, surprisingly good, and the most recent chapter was posted on Friday 4/25.

[Matrix Dragon]

At Least I'm Not Airachnid

A Transformers Self-insert by yours truly, inspired, as the name would suggest, by an old spacebattles fic.

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/...i.1232330/

[classicdrogn]

Cool bearings! New tab opened at the head of the queue. Oh, and while I'm here, I'll mention that UnwelcomeStorm (author of Constellations, Stacked Deck, Hunter, and several other good to great fics that haven't been updated in a while) has started a new story thread, Someone Else's Toybbox: A Worm CYOA Gone Wrong in an attempt to get back in the writing groove after various IRL complications in the past few years. As the title suggests, it is indeed a CYOA based SI, but one where the build was altered or botched from the MCs without explanation, and indeed without any cringey ROB chats at all. Not normally up to the length or level of interest that I'd bring here, but UnwelcomeStorm has a solid backlist and if nothing else helping them get the hype back for writing might spark a return of one of the others, so just like Alivaril a new fic thread by them is one I'll immediately jump on no questions asked.

And if you missed it, Alivaril's new fic is Antagonistic Appropriation, an original magical girls setting with a Dark MG who grew up in and was recruited by the Umbral Empire as the primary protagonist. I'm pretty sure I did in fact bring it up here before, but since it came up I linked it again, and I know original fiction doesn't get the same traction as fanfic where existing interest in the setting or characters makes for an added draw but just check it out if you haven't. You're missing out on some very fun stuff.

[Jinx999]

A Young Woman's Dynastic Records
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/...s.1230065/

Tanya reborn into Qing China, just before everything goes to hell. If she wants a decent life, she has to salvage the collapsing wreckage of a once great country, from the position of a minor noble daughter in a highly sexist and oppressive culture. No pressure.

It's written in the format of a Chinese Palace Drama, so the language and format are rather unusual, but evocative and there is a lot of subtle scheming for face and status.

[Dragonflight]

I recently learned a few of you are working on a reverse Isekai storyline. The main character isn't, but everyone else is. I just had a silly thought about that. What if a genuine, mobile isekai environment just happened to latch on to your location. A bar, which wanders the entire omniverse, run by a humanoid version of a character from My Little Pony: Equestria Girls, the human take on the franchise. For those with a high tolerance for sugar, I present, Sunset's Isekai!

https://www.fimfiction.net/story/441859/sunsets-isekai

[Mamorien]

PRESS RELEASE: SAN FRANCISCO 2161

June 1st, 2392

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEW BERLIN, LUNA

The Tranquility Press announces the 200th anniversary republication of “SAN FRANCISCO 2161: 47 Days That Changed the Galaxy and Created the United Federation of Planets” by author Aubrey B. Marincola, originally published in 2192. This remarkable story of the birth of the Federation is another important text largely lost to history found by our resident literary archaeologist, Xander Malingowski. Says Malingowski, “This text, most forgotten now, provides direct insight into the minds of our Federation Founders with direct interviews and observations from Marincola, who covered the conference as a reporter. On a personal note, I am pleased to share this piece of personal history with our readers.” Malingowski is the great-great-grandson of the author.

The San Francisco Conference of 2161 occurred on Earth between June 26 and August 12, 2161 C.E. During this time, fifteen delegations, fresh from the bloodiest war many of them had ever seen, met to discuss the future. What might such a future look like? What values from more than a dozen delegations representing thousands of political, economic, societal, and scientific traditions would be enshrined in a single, static document? How would bad actors attempt to disrupt the proceedings? Why wouldn’t the Justice Committee let outside folks sit at their lunch table? Most importantly, how do we continue to define and redefine our utopia?

Author of “San Francisco: The First 500 Years” and “NOT ME, US; the Biography of Grethe Zhor”, Aubrey B. Marincola covered the San Francisco Conference as a reporter for the San Francisco Tribune, 2158-2171, communications director for Federation Councillor Lydia LIttlejohn (217{X}) and Camila Benso (2173) before beginning his successful and long running “A Night with…” lecture series through Marquette-Beloit University. During this series, he interviewed dozens of delegates to the San Francisco Conference and more than one hundred observers and attendees.

These nearly two decades of work, and his own personal notes of the conference, provide the bulk of new insights in this electrifying, fresh telling of the conference that birthed the Federation. Through anecdotes, recently declassified documents, and personal insight, Marincola helps us understand the personalities and characters that provided the blueprint for the United Federation of Planets. Though it ended in a small compromise, it began in large dreams.

In the run-up to the promised launch party on Draylax in Zhoria City, the book is being posted seriatim at Malingowski's personal feedsite; at present, only the title page and the foreword (by Conference delegate and early Federation President Thomas Vanderbilt) are available, but it's a promising start and should be worthwhile for anyone with an interest in Federation history.

---

Okay, getting out of character now.

This novel-length fan “non-fiction” is an in-universe pop history book, written from the perspective of a journalist who covered the San Francisco Conference in 2161. In Star Trek history, we have long known as fans that this event is where the United Federation of Planets was born. However, in nearly sixty years of storytelling, it has hardly ever been explored. In collecting our fleetingly rare on-screen references, beta canon materaial, RPG guides, and other fan works, I’ve attempted to give a compelling, historically rich narrative of what could have happened. With both fan favorites and returning characters, many discussions about rights and responsibilities, dozens of new characters, and even a party or three, there is plenty to dig into for Trek fans, history fans, or just fans of a good read, with plenty of easter eggs hiding in the footnotes. I have had many inspirations within the fandom and this is best understood as a collective effort. Please check out the Thank You’s page to see all the amazing other Trek fans and artists who have brought this work to life.