Antony444
, whose work is found on free sites like FanFiction.Net, Archive of Our Own, and for a monthly fee, on Patreon (with bonus maps and such), with the author having vowed to quit their job and write fan fiction full time if they get a certain number of patrons. Antony's stories are known for being Doorstoppers with World of Ham dialogue, Good Is Not Soft morality and Not His Sled plot twists (particularly in regards to Adaptational Villainy and Adaptational Heroism).
Antony's works are all currently ongoing (as of March 2022) except A Different Weasel Makes a Difference, which concluded in 2017, which is also not long when Antony started some of the other stories. The Weaver Option, The Odds were Never in my Favour, and recently An Impractical Guide to Godhood are updated once every 1-3 months, but the other stories tend to go on long hiatuses.
Works (in order of how successful they seem to be)
- The Weaver Option: A ritual gone awry in a Bad Ending of Warhammer 40,000 summons several major characters from Worm into the past of the Imperium, with Pest Controller Taylor Hebert tearing into the corrupt nobility, the marauding aliens and the supernatural beings that make the galaxy a Crapsack World.
- The Odds Were Never In My Favour: A Harry Potter AU. It initially seems like a simple Gender Flip Alternate Universe, but with all kinds of original villains rearing their heads, Neville the Boy-Who-Lived having Acquired Situational Narcissism, and Dumbledore embodying Light Is Not Good, the plot and stakes are greatly different from the books, even as the fic follows vaguely broad outlines of each year's plot.
- Let the Galaxy Burn: A Song of Ice and Fire in a Space Opera setting, where a Hate Sink version of Rheager survives the Battle of the Trident and Robert doesn't. However, the White Walkers and festering rebellions in all but one of the Seven Sectors guarantee that it's not a victory he'll enjoy indefinitely.
- An Impractical Guide to Godhood: A The Camp Half-Blood Series and A Practical Guide to Evil story where Percy ends up sharing a soul with the Tyrant of Helike and developing some valid reasons to work to bring down Zeus.
- A Different Weasel Makes A Difference: A For Want Of A Nail A Song of Ice and Fire story where Walder Frey dies on the eve of The War of the Five Kings (or the War of the Eight Kings in this universe), with massive ripple effects.
- The End of Times: A rather grim Warhammer crossover with A Song of Ice and Fire. The North and their allies are genocidal Chaos cultists, while their enemies have a great deal of self-righteous hedonism and Decadent Court moments.
- The Dance Is Not Over: Another A Song of Ice and Fire For Want Of A Nail story. King Aegon and Queen Rhaenyra both experience different earlier deaths in the Dance of the Dragons, causing two different, more competent monarchs to succeed them and altering the future of the Seven Kingdoms. This is followed by the tale of Westeros being still divided after the fighting stops, with both sides certain that there will be a Second Dance to reunite the Seven Kingdoms at some point, but neither side being in a good position to be the one who starts it.
- An Impractical Guide to the Force: Various Dread Emperors from A Practical Guide to Evil possess Star Wars characters and alter history at key moments in a series of one-shot stories. Each chapter is set in a different alternate timeline.
Tropes in The End of Times
- Evil Versus Evil: Virtually everyone in the North serves some faction of Chaos or another. The South is a Decadent Court ruled by the insane descendants of the last dragonlords.
- Right for the Wrong Reasons: The Seven call for a Crusade against the North for murdering the king. The truth is that while the North was plotting to conquer the Southern Kingdoms in the name of Chaos and was setting up for a number of assassinations as an opening move, King Aerys died in his sleep of natural causes before they were ready to start actually killing people.
Tropes in An Impractical Guide to the Force
- Beat Them at Their Own Game: During the middle of Palpatine's bid to discredit Supreme Chancellor Valorum over the Naboo Crisis, Valorum (who has apparently been bodyjacked by a dimension-travelling Dread Emperor) displays force sensitivity, mind-controlling the Trade Federation Senator into confessing to the plot. Valorum then proposes a bold series of punishments that will have the side effect of enhancing Valorum's power. Palpatine is left seething at Valorum, manipulating and mind-controlling the senate before he himself could, and hypocritically wondering where the Jedi are to stop this when he needs them.
- Negative Continuity: This isn't really a story, it's more of a collection of independent short stories united only by the base premise that someone in the Star Wars universe has the powers and personality of a Dread Emperor/Empress.
