What's the most well-written fanfic you've ever read?

Okay, so I don't post here much, but I have a question I'd like to put to the troper hivemind:

What's the best piece of fan fiction you've read in any fandom soley based on its merits as a story (i.e, usually high quality of prose, riveting plot, geniunely interesting things to say, etc.)? In your opinion, of course.

I realize the traditional goal of fan fiction is not to produce great works of English Literature. Lately, however, I've been increasingly curious about the existence of authors who may have missed that memo long enough to ofter the internet something akin to literary fiction under the guise of fanfic. With so much fanfic out there, it must happen occasionally... right?

And so I ask: notwithstanding favorite characters, genres, Fetish Fuel, and other forms of compatible Author Appeal, what have you read that you might tentatively describe as "good", perhaps even to people who are not fans of the original work... or to your english teacher? What, if anything, have you guys read that has blown your mind in the manner that a really great original story might? Or what's as close as it gets as far as you've seen?

Apologies if we've had this conversation before — I can't seem to find a thread like this.

edited 1st Jul '11 6:10:52 PM by Bailey

The only fanfic I've thought was really well done, was a (no kidding) CSI: Las Vegas/Charlie and the Chocolate Factory crossover called Death By Chocolate. As bizarre as it sounds, the author did a very good job of keeping the characters true to their source and capturing the voice of each one of them. There are also no original characters.

edited 1st Jul '11 6:26:33 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

In Flight by gabriel blessing is my favorite of all the fanfiction that I have read and is a story that can stand on its own. After all, I had no knowledge of half of its crossover, Sekirei, and when I first read it had yet to play through Unlimited Blade Works Route in Fate Stay Night, the route that it followed.

Sure, it has a few minor typos in places. (Most memorable typo is mpy. It was meant to be not, but each key moved one to the right) But it makes up for it with its great plot, long chapters, great action sequences and frequent updates. Usually you get a 15k word chapter every 10-14 days.

Sadly, it hasn't updated in around 3 weeks but we forgive him because he is starting his internship in Japan.

Edit: Back to rereading it again! Must get to most recent chapter before it updates sometime next week (according to Wordof God

edited 1st Jul '11 6:32:40 PM by gwonbush

My favorite fanfic, by far, is Methods Of Rationality. There are a decent number of fanfics whose style is 'good enough', read 'as good as I could write'; MoR is the only one I've ever read that overshot that mark by far. Decent ones (by 'decent' I mean that I enjoyed them quite a bit, but they aren't as good as MoR, which is exceptional) include Team 8, Rogue Fox and People Lie in the Naruto fandom, Nightmares of Futures Past in Harry Potter, and Shinji And Warhammer 40k and Nobody Dies in NGE.

Shinigan (Naruto fanfic)

I'm not sure how I feel about Methods. I highly enjoyed it when I first started reading it. But after I went to bed and was no longer sleep deprived it lost a lot of its luster. It felt like there was a lot of Author Tract and it just wasn't my taste anymore so I dropped it.

Harry Potter And The Methodsof Rationality is also my favorite. Though the Author Tracts are a little annoying, they aren't that frequent, especially later on.

Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's Play

Inb4 Wide Sargasso Sea. (Never read it, but it's the easy mode answer.)

edited 2nd Jul '11 1:47:43 AM by feotakahari

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

That work doesn't fit for two criteria. First, you never read it so you can't say it is the most well-written fanfic that you have read. Second, as a published work, it loses the quality of being a fanfic and is more a published novel based on the work of another author.

Shifts by Fernwithy. I don't know for a fact that you could read it without having read Harry Potter - the Prisoner of Azkaban backstory is taken as a given, IIRC - but damn, does it provide its own intrigue, in spades. Also, plenty of Remus Lupin teaching mojo. The truly glorious thing is that it's in Lupin's POV, written before Half-Blood Prince came out, and you can barely even tell.

Hail Martin Septim!

Maybe we should divide this into one-shots, short stories, and long-length fanfics. Mainly cause each requires a different set of skills.

ophelia, you're breaking my heart

Mine would have to be Tiberium Wars.

"Hipsters: the most dangerous gang in the US." - Pacific Mackerel

The Connection I geuss.

I'm here to help.

Okay, now I'm curious: how far does Methods diverge from the original Harry Potter storyline? Is it just that Rationalist!Harry makes different choices and things play out differently, or does it have an entirely different plot and structure?

Also:

I should have said as much in the OP, but for purposes of this thread, I'd like to skip the debate about what fanfic is and stick to the conventional illegal-to-publish-for-profit variety. Consider this the thread where we discover whether or not there's another Jean Rhys lurking among us on the interwebs.

edited 2nd Jul '11 4:01:30 PM by Bailey

Methods has an entirely different plot and structure, and it has not just one event that causes divergence. One thing I can honestly say is that it is not as good if you haven't read the novels because you won't be trying to figure out why it is different.

All in all for Methods: good story, if you can handle Author Tract.

edited 2nd Jul '11 5:01:29 PM by gwonbush

Gurren Jesus; We never said it had to be a work of art, right? Just the most well-written thing in Fan Fic we have ever read. This is the most well written fanfic I've ever read because it manages to keep the audacity of the situation in check without going into troll logic, and every time I hear the reading, it brings a smile to my face.

My webzone.

I reccomend Luminosity by Alicorn. It's technically not a fanfic, as it's written by someone who didn't enjoy Twilight and wanted to do a reimagining where Bella is much smarter, more proactive, and more interesting; Edward is no longer a stalker; and the Love Triangle is nonexistent. It's pretty riveting - great plot construction, and good writing.

edited 2nd Jul '11 10:08:10 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

"War doesn't prove who's right, only who's left." "Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future."

^ I actually rather dug Luminosity, which is part of why I feel I should give Methods a whirl. Though Harry Potter was never begging to be be schooled in the ways of reason quite the way Bella Swan was.

"Wax on, wax off..." "But Mr. Miyagi, I don't see how this is helping me do Karate..." "Pubic hair is weakness, Daniel-san!"

Wait, what?

Good fanfic really isn't that rare. A lot of it is crap, true, but it's an unfiltered internet— everything gets through.

Back when I was in the HP fandom, I read a lot of really good fanfic. After the End was pretty epic— it's an exploration of what could have happened to Harry and the gang after the war ended. It was written pre-book 5, so it's not canon-compliant, but it's still a great read, as good as many published fantasy novels.

Fernwithy's HP series, mainly the ones focused on Remus and Teddy Lupin, are all good. Fern is published author, I think— she wrote a Star Trek novel, I think. Anyway, she's awesome, and her stories, with not in the JKR style, feel very canon.

Oh, and Arabella's "The Very Secret Diary" is great as well— it's a retelling of Happy Potter and the Chamber of Secrets from Ginny's point of view, as she writes in her diary. The diary that contains Tom Riddle's soul, remember. It's a fantastically dark story, showing how Tom manipulates and abuses Ginny for a whole year, slowly sucking her soul out so his can reform. If it weren't so heavily reliant on prior knowledge of the HP books, it could easily be a great novel in its own right.

Thanks for the all fish!

^ I'm not saying there's not lots of good fanfiction, persay. I totally, openly Did Not Do The Research and can't comment either way.

But the tricky thing I've noticed in the realm of fanfic is that often it's really hard to tell what kind of curve people are grading on when they say something is good. For example, and this is not to pick on you specifically, when someone tells me an author writes great stories and adds that they've also written a published Star Trek novel, I suspect they're maybe defining "great" in a way that relates to how easy it would be to mistake the story for licensed commercial fiction, which is a little below the mark I'm shooting for. Ditto with saying a story is as good as many published fantasy novels — I hate to be such a downer, but we must agree that many published fantasy novels suck, right? What's a lover of great transformative fiction to do?

Admittedly, though I'm not terribly into Harry Potter, I am consistently impressed from that fandom's demonstrable interest in writing actual stories (as opposed to porn or other sorts of fantasies) more often then plenty of other fandoms I've seen. And 'Very Secret Diary' sounds pretty neat.

edited 3rd Jul '11 6:51:49 PM by Bailey

^^^

[1]

edited 3rd Jul '11 6:59:05 PM by DonZabu

"Wax on, wax off..." "But Mr. Miyagi, I don't see how this is helping me do Karate..." "Pubic hair is weakness, Daniel-san!"

What you see with Harry Potter is the variety that its gigantic fandom allows. With half a million fanfics on ffnet alone, even with Sturgeon's Law saying that only 10% is good, that leaves you with 50,000 good fics. Even if only .01% was great you would still have 500 great stories.

It is not so much that the Potter fandom is better, but that the size allows a considerable number of gems to be left after you sift through the silt, and nobody talks about the silt (although they do talk about the poop that was left in the sieve).

edited 3rd Jul '11 7:17:11 PM by gwonbush

^ That does make sense.

^^ The awesomeness of that link just vitrified my brain. Others should be warned, in case they prefer a brain that is not molten glass.

edited 3rd Jul '11 7:51:02 PM by Bailey

I do think that Harry Potter naturally lends itself to fanfic—there's just enough worldbuilding to get you started, but just enough unknowns to fill in the blanks. (Granted, there is the problem of American writers who're ignorant of British culture, but that has about as much of an effect as ignorance of sex has on Lemons.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful