Gush / Fanfiction

Gush about Fan Fiction here.

---

• Has nobody mentioned Eagle of Truthiness yet? Two words: Professor. Colbert.
• Misfiled Dreams - An entirely plausible sequence of stories set a few months ahead of the current Misfile webcomic storyline.
• Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness and its sequel Sluagh. Quite possibly the best fanfic ever written, anywhere, ever. Thanfiction, you are truly a genius.
  • I've been reading Harry Potter fanfic for 10 years. Next to Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness, the best of the rest looks like My Immortal by comparison.
• Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality is one of the best books that I've ever read, and yes, it is a book more than it is fanfiction. As multiple reviewers have noted, more thought seems to have gone into this than into the actual HP books, and into ensuring that there are no dastardly, for-the-lulz evil villains, magic based handwaves or storms of cliches. The HP:MOR world works in a way the original doesn't, simply because it makes a world of magic so believable that it's hard to realise that someone actually sat and worked out rational explanations out after Rowling had already had a bash at it. It is a must read for anyone even vaguely interested in the Harry Potter universe, as long as they don't mind the occasional Author Tract.
  • I, Grognor, love the Hell out of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality. I never read Harry Potter, I don't understand four-fifths of the references, and I'm missing probably all of the subtle foreshadowing. I still love it. When I first started reading it, I couldn't do anything else for several days.
• On that note, Arc of Sacrifices by Lightning on the Wave. A fascinating AU, and one that truly deserves to be called an AU: the characters have been stripped down to their basic selves and set in an entirely different situation, but react to it the way they would were it canon. With the exception of Lily, perhaps, everyone fits their characterization like a glove, and there are no handwaves. This is a fic that manages to make Harry a Slytherin and friends with Draco, among other things that I won't say in case someone wants to read it, and it works, beautifully and tightly. Lightning introduces his/her OC's so well that multiple people have said they thought they were canon characters that simply didn't get enough time in the original books to make an impression, and this troper for one has been surprised at the mention of characters in other, unrelated fics that I'd thought were OC's. It is the only fanfic that I will say this for: were it not for its dependance on Rowling's world and characters, it would be published as-is, with the exception of about three typos per book (there are seven "books", getting longer as the story progressed beyond what Lightning had originally intended). Granted, it would be shelved strictly in the adult section, but I find myself not wanting to go back to a universe that doesn't contain these characters and situations.
• Sam Vimes/copperbadge is absolutely brilliant. His Stealing Harry/Laocoon's Children AU series is what Harry Potter would be in a better world, and all of his other series and stories are so wonderful I want to hug the screen. I could go on and on about how wonderful his fics are, but I will say this: that man truly does Remus Lupin justice.
  • copperbadge. Hands down.
• The Second Try manages blending two of the most overused plots in Eva fanfiction and make it working, giving them its own spin. At the same time the character development is superb, taking the canon characters and making them evolving in ways that make sense. And the heart-warming moments are incredibly tender.
• The Cyclonus Diaries by Pivot is probably the funniest Transformers: Armada fanfic out there. It's a parody of Mary Sue fanfiction that is completely random and makes perfect sense at the same time.
• The true awesomeness of Shinji And Warhammer 40 K cannot accurately be expressed in words, although using tropes comes close; it's basically a combination and distillation of Refuge in Audacity, Rule of Cool, and Moment of Awesome to create what is possibly the most unbelievable, incredible experience on the internet.
• I love Yuletide Treasure. If that archive were a person, I would marry them. During the time it was down for Christmas I was so sad at being cut off from the fun experience of finding stuff for fandoms you never knew you had that... I started writing again. I hope to contribute to it as soon as I can myself. And just for an extremely random taste of things— this gushing comment was brought on by rereading Small Monsters again. It was the last awesome straw that broke the awesome camel's forcefield protecting it from becoming more awesome. And now it's even more awesome.
• Titan Legends. A fanfic that could probably pass for a highly obscure alternate DC continuity in and of itself.
• Tony's Mansion of Heroes is one of my favs. It's not perfect but it brings together several characters from different universes to save the Worlds from familiar to obscure villains. You get Sora, Riku, Glitch, Stitch, Peter, Kaiba, and several others to stop the villains' plan to resurrect the Dark Gundam and the dragon creature known as Kikros. It seems that the writer has recently began to fix his earliest chapters. Spacing out paragraphs better, getting rid of subplots that haven't gone anywhere since 2005, and it's looking better.
• Eyrie Productions' works, especially Neon Exodus Evangelion. This fic is great, I love the plot twists, long digressions, painstaking research, and Alternative Character Interpretations. I even love DJ Croft no matter what anyone else says. And the ending is simply one Moment of Awesome after another.
  • I can't speak for NXE, but the EPU's flagship work, Undocumented Features, is frankly a little frightening in terms of sheer scale (hundreds of megabytes of plaintext!) and awesomeness. Even the "crap years" are very entertaining (thanks in part to excellent use of Rule of Cool), and it quickly gets awe-inspiring.
• This troper is writing a serious literary analysis of Full Life Consequences.
• Tiberium Wars. Proving that Novelizations can be good, Fiction Identity Postulate is real, and effort can turn around the worst Wall Banger.
• 4Paws Studios' "Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Chosen" is, to me, the definition of what a good Fix Fic should read like. I was referred to it by this very Wiki, and haven't looked back. There isn't a page for it yet in the Fanfic section (why?!), but it's miles and miles of good characterization and character development, humor, tenderness, and a generous dollop of awesome. It's like the Buffy-fic equivalent of rich, fulfilling chocolate. ^_^
• It breaks this troper's stupid little heart that he seems to be the only one to have read X to the Zoltan's Godzilla Daioh crossover series. Sure, it sounds crazy, but it's better than it sounds! Or even better, his Azumanga Daioh / Star Wars fusion! The writing, the characterization, the tragedy, it's SO GREAT! AAGHH, why does this reduce me, normally The Stoic to a little pile of heart-wrenching joy and love and sadness every time?! It is this troper's dream that this author return to (Azu Dai) fanfiction someday...
• whydoyouneedtoknow's Harry Potter AU Dangerverse and associated AUs (yes, AUs of AUs) have been called "better than canon".
• This troper really likes The Great Disney Adventure and its growing sequel on Fanfiction.net. Though technically unoriginal since its interpretations of the movies have the same ending, it has several saving factors. 1. It throws some original characters into the mix/characters that don't belong in the story. 2. It takes the effects of its main character more seriously than one might expect. 3. It's super funny. 4. It has a lead female who's not only cynical, but also pushy, realistic, and sly; hardly Disney hero material, and watching her interact with our childhood's favorite characters really makes it for me. Plus, it's got Pirates of the Caribbean messing up all the movies ever so slightly.
• Nobody Dies. It's Shinji and Warhammer40k for people who like their Crazy Is Cool levels administered in safer doses.
• Manchester Lost and its marvelous sequel, Paradise Thwarted. Wonderfully hilarious fanfic that lampshades itself to the moon and back, yet it still has time to go through a marvelous plot and sweet moments of complete fluff.
• Thirty Hs.
  • Now, let's not be so hasty as to simply post the fic. Let's explain why this thing is a total masterpiece. It's a cocktail of insanity, a twisting of plot so horrendously bizarre that it stops being stupid and becomes what could possibly be called Pure Spiral Energy, engulfing the reader in its amazing attitude, incredible nature, and disregard for rationality all in one amazing package.
• Code: Total Drama Reality is an excellent blend of the Total Drama and Code Lyoko series, which sounds a bit far-fetched at first, but Lord Maximus is able to squeeze every bit of adrenaline out of such a premise and make a completely awesome crossover. It's also recommendable by how LM keeps characters from both shows intact, even coming up with rather Tear Jerker backstories for quite a few as well as the chance for several Total Drama favorites and Aelita to take major levels in badass.
• My Immortal could easily be the best ever example of So Bad, It's Good. This is the most genius troll fiction (it must be!) I have ever read, and it probably made me laugh more than anything else on the internet.
  • This fanfic is seriously one of my favorites just because of how much joy it brought me.
• Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami is a brilliant, hilarious Troll Fic. But what sets it apart from the crowd is its unique execution; it doesn't just rely on poor grammar and Rouge Angles of Satin. No, it contains not only all the good qualities of your standard troll badfic, but also a wonderful sense of humor that will leave the reader in stitches. An amazing read that will have you laughing for days.
• Evangelion 303: It takes the Eva characters and shove them in an interesting Alternate Universe similar to the real world where the Evas are war planes. The world tries to be realistic without being unnecessarily cynical and dark, and the characters still have personal traumas and insecurities that they have to learn to grow out of.
• The Interloper is a realistic take of the future after the ending of Digimon Adventure 02, it starts out giving you the fact that humanity simply hates digimons rather than loving them, and that there had been a war between Humans and Digimons for three years, currently, it's a fanfiction in work... But the author, The Silent Insomniac on fanfiction.net proves to spare no expense when it comes to the story, all of his chapters take on absurd detail about everything, everything, there is also an OC called Christopher Van Numen who, while he is a Sue Power-Wise, proves to be a very, very interesting character, the author even goes into absurd detail on his backstory and Christopher isn't even one of the Main Characters. Absurd word count - over 400k words up to chapter 23 - but definitely worth a read if you care about Digimon at all. Forewarning: Battle chapters tend to be gory
• No meantion of Fallout: Equestria? It is a story that I still adore after finishing it months ago. It has interesting characters that are believable and easy to care about. The two different universes seem to mix perfectly, and the atmosphere is pulled off flawlessly. It is an emotional roller coaster that will leave you shell-shocked.
• Soul Chess is amazing. Simple as that.
• Poké Wars is an absolutely amazing fan fic. Realistic character interactions, well developed characters, great worldbuilding and a great plot all combine to make this a hell of a story. Add absolutely dazzling fight/action scenes to this and you have a winner.
• Homeless Two Tail is the greatest Sonic Fanfiction featuring tails as the main protagonist. Its moments funny, heartwarming, sad, nightmare fuel, and awesome are stupendous. Its characters are pretty cool, too. All of the characters from the official media are portrayed nearly identical of what they're like in the source material. Although there are a few exceptions, this is not a bad thing. It's also one of those few fan fictions that uses fan characters that aren't Mary sues. Smoke stack is a really cool character, Igneous Rock is flippin' hilarious, Karst Ice is an irredeemably evil villain with quite the ego, and Hang Nail is a character who is a monster of the highest caliber, especially when he comes back. Its page on this wiki needs more love. And its own Character Sheet, Crowning moments of funny, heartwarming, awesome, tearjerker, and nightmare fuel pages.
• A Second Chance At Life (Miranda Flairgold), anyone? The single best AU Harry Potter fanfic I have ever found. Reasonable divergence from cannon, brilliant Original Characters, and even some elements of the original thrown in for flavor. Also: time travel! Dragons! Vampires! Animagus forms! Space elves! And more! Currently in the third story out of an unknown number. Hasn't been updated in a while, but Flairgod is still active on FanFiction.Net, as far as this troper can tell.
• This troper's favourite fanfiction so far could actually be Scar Tissue, a Neon Genesis Evangelion post-Third Impact fanfic. It's very, very dark, with a premise (After the events of End of Evangelion, while the world is trying to recover from the catastrophe, Asuka, now living with Shinji, has been brutalizing him in every possible way, while he accepts everything she does to him because he thinks he deserves it for what he's done in [EoE]. The story starts after Asuka, in a fit of rage, has beaten Shinji so hard that he ended up in hospital, and she realized how much she was hurting him, and tries to make amends) that may make some people cringe, but it actually handles very well the characters' psychology, reaches repeatedly the peaks of heartwarming and depressing and, while it is fairly dark, the way it deals with the characters' efforts to heal the scars left by the events of the series and eight months of an abusive relationship that wounded them both even more deeply is very, very touching and it leaves a wonderful message of hope. It's a read that I would suggest to anyone who knows what Evangelion is. And even those who, as I did the first time I read it, don't know it.
• Best Laid Plans by dfastback68. I mean, dfastback68 takes two tiny characters in Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen and gives them an amazing backstory that makes me want to gush forever. It sets up the background wonderfully and really fleshes out Demolishor's and Sideway's characters, complete with all their little quirks (westerns vs. horror...ha). AND it has cameos from Barricade, Scorponok, Soundwave, and the Constructicons. With no grammar or spelling errors. And it does not get the attention it deserves - it's heartwarming, in-character (to toy bios), and the ending... gah, it made me CRY. Not in the happy way, either. To sum, Best Laid Plans is fucking awesome, and I have not found a better fan fiction yet.
• This. With this. To put it simply: War Is Hell - Parody The Musical!
• Hey you! Want to read something that's terrifying? Want to read something with cute ponies? Want to read something with cute ponies being terrified? Then read My Little Castlevania!
• The North Remembers by SilverRavenStar doesn't just set the standard for ASOIAF fanfiction, but for fanfiction in general. The author's intertwining of all the intertwining plotlines integral to the series and characterization is so spot on that you'd swear George R. R. Martin himself was writing this.
• The New Look Series by Shinnok has some of the best stories about crossdressing fictional characters I've seen in a while. Most of the stories have well-conceived characterizations and a healthy amount of Mythology Gags in the universes the stories are based on. Everyone is in character, it's funny, well written, and overall very good fanfiction (with the exception of Naruto's New Look which even the author didn't like).
• Game Theory, a Lyrical Nanoha that is simply amazing. It goes into an extreme amount of Worldbuilding, particularly for a fanfic, to make the series much more realistic. Yes, it's pretty strange to call a story with interdimensional travel and magic "realistic," but the world and characters are very believable and likable. The handful of Original Characters and all unique, and the numerous Early Bird Cameos fit perfectly into the plot, rather than seeming as though they had been thrown in. Plus it manages to simultaneously be a Deconstruction Fic and a Fix Fic. The sequel, Power Games, is just as good. It is bar none this troper's favorite fanfic.
• Halkegenia Online, a seemingly bizarre Crossover between The Familiar of Zero and Sword Art Online that is better than either. It has some spelling issues, but not enough to detract from the awesome. Said awesome includes: a well thought-out and unpredictable plot, a huge number of well crafted and entertaining Original Characters, and a unique concept for a Familiar of Zero crossover. Instead of Louise just summoning a single familiar from some other story, she summons all of ALFheim Online! Toss in some great fight scenes, plenty of Shout Outs, some real Tear Jerkers, and an incredible update speed (does Triggerhappy even sleep?), and you've got one of the best fanfics this troper has ever read.
• Anyone here also loves The Immortal Game? It's an action-oriented My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic with awesomeness up the wazoo, which occasionally gets really dark but ultimately does not sacrifice the message of the original show.
  • I agree, this fic, in my opinion, is MLP War Fic done right. I actually enjoyed it more than Fallout: Equestria. Strong characterization, very well-written action scenes (better than some published novel, I say), and managing to stay on hopeful and idealistic side despite of some very dark moments.
• The Blooming Moon Chronicles: a 10-book series that is an excellent blend of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and Norse Mythology. The best parts about this series, in my mind, are the world-building. BlackRoseRaven creates a universe that while radically different, remains faithful to the show. The characters are also amazingly well-developed and relatable. These versions of well-known characters like Luna or Twilight are some of the best interpretations I've ever seen in my life. The series has both its moments of hilarity and its moments of darkness. The fifth book, Because Love Conquers All, is honestly one of the darkest fanfictions I have ever read.
  • It may be a Canon Pony/OC shipping fic, but it does it well.
  • The series also has many references to Norse legends, but the author also puts his own spin on those tales to make it even more interesting.
  • Its sequel series, Songs of Lost Children, expands on this universe. While it features an all new cast, the characters from the previous series also appear as supporting characters. Of notable mention is what just might be the most badass version of Princess Cadence to ever grace the halls of Fimfiction.net.
• Persona: The Sougawa Files is a very well-done Persona fanfiction that honestly feels like it could be an actual game. It has one of the most well-written protagonists I've seen and a fun supporting cast. While the writer, Arsene_Phantom, is still working on finding her writing style, she manages to breathe life into these characters and make them feel real, and the plot is also intriguing, exploring some directions that haven't been seen before.
• What happens when you combine several well-known and beloved cartoons, an even blend of comedy, drama, action, and horror, an entertaining Myth Arc, a powerful Reality Warper, and sprinkle meta humor and genius bonuses throughout? You get the Halloween Unspectacular series, an amazing October tradition over on Fanfiction Dot Net.
• While Total Drama crossover fanfictions are nothing new or special for the most part, Total Drama Everything is a fantastic read. With so many characters from diverse series, it gives so many chances for hilarity, romance and of course, drama. I had never heard of around half of the characters in the series when I first started reading, but I was still able to understand them or grow to like them. This is written better then some seasons of the actual show.
• Against the Moon is one of the best Marauders fanfics that I've ever read, mostly because the characterization for all the characters, especially the four Marauders, is on point. Young Remus is the sweetest little boy ever and deserves the entire world. James and Sirius are huge assholes, but still have their hidden depths, with Sirius' quarrelsome relationship with his bigoted parents and James' support of social justice in spite of his privileged background, and can be quite charming. Peter is a quiet boy, at times flaky, at times a brown-noser, at all times concerned with self-preservation. And the little snippets we see of other canonical characters like Lily Evans are excellent. Stoplight Delight even made sure that characters who didn't get a line or description in the original canon like Dorcas Meadowes, who is reimagined as the strict Gryffindor Head Girl, have fleshed out and likable personalities. It's a travesty that it hasn't been updated in five years.