Fanfiction.net: the good bits

[jegs2]

Do not know much about Warhammer 40K, but this fanfic does a pretty good job of describing it. It crosses that universe with Star Wars (around the Galactic Alliance era), and it is long (around 144K words). The kid who wrote it is certainly creative, if a bit repetative in describing things. His spelling errors can be a bit distracting (substituting "too" for "to" and mispelling the word, "shining"). Found the story very entertaining though, and he wrote sequel:

Two Galaxy's Saga

[Amerigo Vespucci]

I'd just like to say thank you to everyone who's provided stories through this thread. They've given me quite a bit of interesting reading material, and I appreciate not having to trawl through ff.net.

[Night_stalker]

Do not know much about Warhammer 40K, but this fanfic does a pretty good job of describing it. It crosses that universe with Star Wars (around the Galactic Alliance era), and it is long (around 144K words). The kid who wrote it is certainly creative, if a bit repetative in describing things. His spelling errors can be a bit distracting (substituting "too" for "to" and mispelling the word, "shining"). Found the story very entertaining though, and he wrote sequel:

Two Galaxy's Saga

I agree, he does a good job, but I would like to counter that with Chains of the Kindred!

[Gerald Tarrant]

Do not know much about Warhammer 40K, but this fanfic does a pretty good job of describing it. It crosses that universe with Star Wars (around the Galactic Alliance era), and it is long (around 144K words). The kid who wrote it is certainly creative, if a bit repetative in describing things. His spelling errors can be a bit distracting (substituting "too" for "to" and mispelling the word, "shining"). Found the story very entertaining though, and he wrote sequel:

Two Galaxy's Saga

It's a good bit of fiction, but some of those errors are distracting.

unintentionally hilarious:

The two sides clashed, these alien reptiles swung, dived and sliced into his warriors tearing the front line, severing limps and cutting of heads but the Yuuzhan Vong were just as deadly, swinging their amphistaff's either stiffened or bending like whips severing bladed limps, cutting through abdomens and tearing of heads, being volleyed over the heads of the Yuuzhan Vong were small swarms of thud and razor bugs that soared and tore through the reptiles.

tearing "of" heads and severing "limps", it makes me chuckle.

[drakensis]

Cain & Abel

Service in His Shadow and On Emperor's Day

The memoirs of a junior commissar assigned to the 597th Valhallan and the mentorship of everyone's favorite Commissar and Hero of the Imperium.

Our eyes were drawn to a black cloud that fell into the fireplace, coating the ground and table in ash and soot. Laspistols trained onto the fireplace as we expected our assailant to appear shortly but nothing came. Things fell quieter for a moment, save for a dampened version of the grinding noise from earlier. A moment later we heard some sort of noise from the fireplace, something deep, heavy, and muffled.

"Was that…ho ho ho?" I asked, trying to figure out if what we heard was speech. As we took a step closer, we heard something else – something far more discernable and disconcerting.

"Blood for the Blood God!"

"Oh shi-"

Cain didn't even get to finish his expletive as the wall above the fireplace suddenly broke apart and the monstrous red-armoured figure of a Chaos marine dropped into the living room.

[Dessel_Ordo]

a decent one I managed to stumble across was The Confederate. Devently funny Starcraft/40K crossover, the characterization is good (if a bit stiff in some cases) and the story has a good mix of funny and awesome.

Some of the Cononical muck-ups and errors made it hard for me to get past the first few chapters of Saga of Two Galaxies... does it get much better further in, or no?

[Korgeta]

xcom story by Hobbes

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/245417/1/XC ... own_Menace

One of the best stories I have come across regarding sci-fi, and is mostly well written as well.

This is a good parody regarding tenchi writing by Galaxy1001D

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/3766294/1/T ... the_Spoils

A lot of his writing has pop media refrences, and I think he is overly reliant on that at times but his creative writing is very good. The parody was a good responce to a troll writing death threats on the tenchi fanfiction section along, well the implied stuff is put nicely into a form of MST.

One writer who is clearly in a league of his own is FF.net writer Davner

http://www.fanfiction.net/u/17993/Davner

He has wrote several Tenchi stories and others and he is very good at writing on a whole. I hope one day he uploads more of his Tenchi writing such as paradise lost, though not on FF.net it's a brilliant story but due to abuse he got from tenchi muyo fans alike, he hasn't touched tenchi writing since. Yes even fan communities shoot themselves in the foot.

[Darth Yoshi]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5399870/1/T ... lda_Exoria
After an age of medieval rule, a modern Kingdom of Hyrule enters a chaotic war with the nations of Gerudo and Valent. Against all odds, Crown Princess Zelda finds hope in the most unlikely of persons, the mysterious Hylian Joint Intelligence Agent Link.

Think of it as Turn A Zelda. I think it does a pretty good job of setting up the conditions for a Zelda quest in a modern/near-future setting.

[lord Martiya]

On Babylon 5: The Last Star. It's a story on the last months of the Earth-Minbari War, from the same author of The Dilgar War. For now, it has a good start.

[randomlygenerated]

Far more of The Last Star is posted here on spacebattles.com

[Krisnack]

Culture Shock, which explores what happens when the Boy Who Lived grows up on an Orbital. Sadly, its last update was in September '08.

And on the other end of the scale we have Thirty Hs, the most metal Harry Potter story ever. Oh, and it has groinsaws.

[LionElJonson]

Luminosity by Alicorn24
Luminosity is an AU reworking of the Twilight story where Bella is a rational self-knowledge junkie. It is sort of the Twilight version of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality".
Twilight - Rated: T - English - Fantasy/Romance - Chapters: 34 - Words: 123,135 - Reviews: 92 - Updated: 9-5-10 - Published: 7-13-10 - Bella & Edward


It's not quite as pretentious as HPatMoR; she's somewhat more practical about it than HPatMoR Harry is, and a lot less of a genius, with all that implies. She certainly never starts expounding about this theory or that piece of rationalist philosophy. She just uses them, to achieve the goals she has set out to achieve.

[Jans]

Culture Shock, which explores what happens when the Boy Who Lived grows up on an Orbital. Sadly, its last update was in September '08.

Culture Shock is surprisingly middle of the road for Ruskbyte. I would suggest Evil Be Thou My Good and Quo Vadis? (by the same author) for the discerning reader, especially if you're a fan of horror. EBTMG is a Hellraiser crossover, and Quo Vadis is an adaptation of an old published short story that I forget the name of at the moment.

Recs for the night.

This one is a bit hard to describe. Eva fic, time travel, Shinji fixing canon... mixed with high flying action and epic duels between monsters in angelic and human form. Not nearly as serious as S&WH40k, Thousand Shinji, or ANE but definitely a fun read.
ARSENAL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5565307/1/ARSENAL

And, despite not being on FF.net, this should be read as well. It is part Let's Play, part fanfiction. Even if you've never played (or didn't enjoy) FF8, Albert has changed it to read like a fun-house mirror of awesome. That aside, think tactical warfare from the perspective of a fledgling god and his peers. It pretty much re-defined how I view this game. The only (potential) downside is that the main character's name is Thay instead of Squall, which some people can't stand. Still, if that's just a minor annoyance and not going to turn you off the story, you'll get some vindication somewhere around 150 pages in (Disc 3ish).
Final Fantasy VIII: The Altimate Rewrite : http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?p=9709874 Spoiler

Now I'm really wondering what it'll be like, 30 years from now. There aren't more than a few dozen people who can call down a Guardian Strike right now. Any of us could level a city block with Queztacoatl, and I'm sure Shiva and Ifrit are comparable. How many people working for the Gardens realize the implications?

Do any of the nation-states? Do any of them even know what this program is about? What will happen when they find out?

EDIT: Now that I look back I see that I missed a few more pages than I had previously expected. >_> I'd like to, 4th? I believe? Methods of Rationality. The fic is at times confusing (really confusing), slow (somewhere in the 30s it starts to drag before picking up again a few chapters later), and a little over the top (just, just a smidge), but its also almost 300k words long at the moment and that happens to lengthy pieces. Overall its hilarious and interesting, not to mention intellectually satisfying! (To quote one reviewer, "Strongly recommended. And if you manage to learn about sources of cognitive bias like the Planning Fallacy and the Bystander Effect (among others) while your sides are hurting with laughter, so much the better.")

And if you can make it all the way through to chapter 45 (Humanism pt. 3), you're in for a real treat.

... It also updated while I was writing this. ^^ Avante!

EDIT2: rrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!! #_# Brain melty.

[StrikaAmaru]

Two Harry Potter fics (from someone who stopped caring after Book 4, heh)

"Flying Without a Broom" (Abandoned; 9 short/medium chapters, last update in 2004)
A fic written Just For Fun; despite this, it actually manages to have a plot, and an engaging one at that. The premise is that a bunch of Death Eaters believe the Boy Who Lived will be easier to catch if he's drugged up to his gills; it backfired horribly, and made him into a hyperactive loon who keeps spewing accidental magic all over the place (and who then also gets drunk). A hilarious tale of pure madness. Find a secluded place to read this, lest people hear you laughing and call the padded wagon.

"Partially Kissed Hero" (Ongoing; 94 chapters, with lengths all over the place.)
As year 3 begins, events conspire to keep Harry away from the new DADA teacher in the train; as such, when the Dementors come a-callin' the Patronus is a little late (hence the Kiss; what were you thinking about?). This destabilizes the Horcrux, and sends Voldie's mind careening into Harry's. This is just the plot device (all this happens in the first chapter). You can draw parallels to 'Shinji and WH40K', in that after this things turn awesome in short order. And then keep piling it on. And on. And on. And then fae kind shows up, and any remnants of sanity go out the window (along with the masquerade. Good riddance).

It's a very long work, it took me around 20 hours to read it. It's also extremely engaging; twice now, I've stayed up until 2AM, and I had work in the morning. The author sometimes climbs on soapboxes and bashes Snape lovers and vampire fans alike, but this works with the story; there are reasons for the bashing to exist.

[darthdavid]

"Partially Kissed Hero"

That story sucks so hard the only way anything ever escapes it is as hawking radiation. Which seems to be a theme for ol' lionheart these days. Along with a bunch of petty revenge fantasies. I mean he spends like a whole chapter where he talks about how Snape was an irredeemable monster even as a kid so one of his characters who was time-traveling castrates him with a waffle iron, curses him with palsy (so he'd never be able to learn his only joy in life, potions) and basically did everything in their power to ruin his life. For things he hasn't done yet. This is presented as Good and Moral™.

[StrikaAmaru]

"Partially Kissed Hero"

That story sucks so hard the only way anything ever escapes it is as hawking radiation. Which seems to be a theme for ol' lionheart these days. Along with a bunch of petty revenge fantasies. I mean he spends like a whole chapter where he talks about how Snape was an irredeemable monster even as a kid so one of his characters who was time-traveling castrates him with a waffle iron, curses him with palsy (so he'd never be able to learn his only joy in life, potions) and basically did everything in their power to ruin his life. For things he hasn't done yet. This is presented as Good and Moral™.

That scene of the story is indeed disturbing, and mercifully short; barely a paragraph, IIRC. But I do disagree with you on the revenge-fic air you're trying to apply to Partially Kissed. The author doesn't spend a whole chapter, etc, etc, etc (I should know, I just finished reading it):

The start of the time travel arc has a severe change in Snape's background when he was a wee kid (his abusive father wound up killed by the time traveler, accidentally, no less, and his mom was compulsed to leave for France; that was a mistake in my opinion, but not shown as such in-story). Then you don't see him for several chapters, in which the story progresses by nearly a decade; he shows up again, in narration, and he's presented as having pretty much the same attitude as in canon. The major difference is that, not having his witch mum to teach him magic, he was far weaker.

The time traveler checks up on him before Snape goes to Hogwarts, sees basically no change, and her idea of damage control is the above-mentioned humiliation conga ('damage control' here explicitly defined as limiting his power so he won't be able to hurt as many people, not least of all other kids who were his students, in a story where original-timeline-Snape is shown performing experiments on Muggle-born students, experiments in which they often die). His palsy got cured in year 3, but by that time he missed his start. He never became a potions' master, but he STILL joined the Death Eaters and was a prick, just a far less damaging one.

The point wasn't that brewing potions was his only joy, the point was, and the author insists on this, that he was one of a small category of people (again he insists, SMALL category) for whom making others miserable is the only joy. A sociopathic little shit, in short. And this is all well presented in-story.

I will agree that the 'humiliation conga' paragraph was way over the top. I could have happily lived without ever reading it. It's most disturbing because, proven little sociopathic shit or not, it's still inflicted on a kid; Evil!Dumbledore has a worse death scene, and that didn't even made me blink. BUT, saying the whole story sucks, with that I can't agree; Partially Kissed is absolutely huge, and it won't get spoiled by one overly-disturbing detail found in a single paragraph.

Out-of-story, as stated in the author's notes at the end of the chapter, it was a massive author rant against idiotic fangirls (or boys, he didn't specify) who repeatedly pestered him in reviews that if Snape would have had an iddy bitty liddle thing changed in his history, he would turn all good. He then goes on to state that people have to choose to change and that while a harsh background can cause damage which others should pay attention to, that most definitely doesn't allow the victim to inflict misery on others. Snape did that, and that turned the author against Snape.

He also claims for himself a background similar to Snape's: very abusive father, mother who won't stand up, colleagues who are bullies, and such. The nail in Snape's coffin is that using his sob story of a background the way he did royally pissed on the author's own achievement of having risen above the mess in which he started.

To the rest of the board, I probably owe an apology; this post has nothing to do with revealing a new fanfic, mostly because this thread is where I get my 'fic recommendations; those two above were accidents. On the other hand, arguments have happened before in here, and nobody complained.

Joke Edit: Incidentally, black holes don't suck; they attract.

[Mutant Headcrab]

I stopped reading "Partially Kissed Hero" when it started to get to the point where Harry got himself a harem, became a super shape-shifting fey, and established safe havens across the solar system via stupid plot contrivance. StrikaAmaru is correct: this is not a revenge fic. This is nothing but fan masturbation of the worst sort.

[Murazor]

I am in the middle of a major geekgasm right now.

Somebody went and managed to weave a good resolution for Asimov's Foundation series, following the events of Foundation and Earth, by taking elements of the Second Foundation novels written by Benford, Brim and Bear. The narrative flows well, feels highly Asimovian and, at least to me, is far more satisfying a conclusion than what Asimov offered in his last works. If it isn't the best fanwork I've ever read, it still makes it into the top five with no problems.

Foundation's Resolve. Go read it now. Seriously.

[jgkitarel]

Well, new to this site, and naturally I hit this thread. There goes my free time.

As for your criticisms on ol' Lionheart, yeah, I agree. The fact is, he can't get past the fact that what you sometimes know, may radically change. I always put it up to him venting about whatever problems he has in RL, but that's me. And if you think Partially Kissed is painful (it started nice, but yeah....), read Chunin Exam Day, which started out as amusing, and then jumped the shark after Naruto turned the Forest of Death into a deathtrap for Orochimaru (the CMOA for the fic).

As for fan masturbation, that's tolerable, provided it's done well, or in an entertaining manner.

[Setzer]

I think it has some interesting ideas about magic, but I'm mainly reading it to see just how silly it can get.

[Master_Baerne]

I think it has some interesting ideas about magic, but I'm mainly reading it to see just how silly it can get.

Assuming you mean 'Partially Kissed Hero,' seconded. The fic jumped over the (half-fey, time-traveling) shark long ago, but the magic systems and teh way they interact is genuinely interesting and I want to find out how bizarre things will get.

[Setzer]

Yes, that was what I meant. Like when Luna Lovegood said that witches had limited career prospects in the magical world. I suppose having a woman as the head of Magical Law Enforcement doesn't count.

EDIT: And now I'm at the part where Sibyl Trelawney travels back in time and ends the cold war by using the Imperius curse to make the Soviets nuke Moscow. What the hell...

[lord Martiya]

I'm reading it it because it's still fun, in its silliness, and it has some good ideas.

[jgkitarel]

True, it does have some good ideas.

Now if he could stop the damn WALLBANGERS!

[Night_stalker]

EDIT: And now I'm at the part where Sibyl Trelawney travels back in time and ends the cold war by using the Imperius curse to make the Soviets nuke Moscow. What the hell...

Did I just read that? To end the Cold War, she nukes MOSCOW? How does that end the war, and wouldn't that just cause all the Russians nuclear weapons to be fired in retaliation? Talk about jumping over the Moral Event Horizon