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

The Shape Of The Nightmare To Come and its sequel are simply magnificent.

Fate Black Reflection. Really awesome.

Challenge of the Superfriends: The End.

The Legion of Doom comes into contact with a being from another dimension, and learns just how big the other fish in the pond really are.

The level of detail and imagery is higher the most popular fan fics I know of. It's got the occasional grammatical hiccup, but the dedication to fleshing out the setting and character-crafting is mind-boggling.

Nothing else in this thread comes close. Nothing I've ever written comes close. I'm rather intimidated by that. I suppose what's really so exemplary about it is that the guy took the Superfriends and put Disgaea levels of depth into it. I'm almost certain this guy isn' writing alone, because if he is... god damn.

edited 9th Dec '13 11:16:20 PM by FOFD

To The Stars, by far. It's one of the first fanfics I've ever read, and it's fucking surreal. It's essentially a ginormous original sci-fi novel using Puella Magi Madoka Magica as a base. And it is huge: 348 000 words and it's barely a third of the way through. The worldbuilding in it is freaking fantastic. Like, better than most published novels. Not Tolkien-level or anything but some really extensive stuff. And the OCs are done nicely as well.

Edit: Oops, just realized I already posted mine way back at the beginning. Nevermind then.

edited 11th Dec '13 11:31:33 PM by storyyeller

Considering I read almost no fanfic (and some that I have I've later come to regret though not due to writing quality reasons) I have a rather small reference pool, but I absolutely loved the "Unofficial Official" Grim Fandango Novelization. After reading it I could only wonder why there couldn't be a way for this to be professionally released.

I was drawn to it for two big reasons. First I tend to enjoy novelizations far more than original stories (probably a big reason I don't both much with fanfic, and that holds true for professionally released books as well) and secondly Grim Fandango is one of my top 5 favorite games ever.

The only real flaw for me was the presence of some rather heavy swearing considering the game itself has only infrequent mild swearing so it is a bit jarring trying to reconcile the two together. By and large I didn't mind the mild story alterations from things that happened in the game.

Oh God-fucking-damn you fanfiction.net and your no copy-paste shit. Well, I was going to read To The Stars, but I'm not going to ruin my eyes with three hundred thousand words worth of computer monitor.

Replace the URL with m.fanfiction.net, the mobile version of the site, that does allow copying.

Ooh, now there's a useful trick. Thanks.

Protip: There's always a way to copy the text if you try hard enough.

Out of curiosity I just went to fanfiction.net and tried a random fanfic. Not sure how they disabled clicking, but going to view source and copypasting from that (or just downloading the html directly) works.

P.S. If you want to turn it into an ebook, Calibre works well.

P.P.S Here's a page with a bunch of other solutions

edited 14th Dec '13 11:40:54 AM by storyyeller

Ill Met By Starlight of course

Nothing like taking a slapstick comedy and turning it into a dramatic tragedy.

Breath of Fire II: War Of The Demons takes the cake as the best fanfic I've ever read, hands down. It's a novelization of BoF2, but you don't have to have played the game to enjoy it. It has a... consistency, for lack of a better word, that I find lacking in most other recommended fics. It's all around solid and definitely worth a read. Complete.

Other honourable mentions: Methods of Rationality is a unique AU Harry Potter story that tries really hard to cover all possible exploits with magic. It's a fun read, although I don't like how the theme changes from humor into serious business as it progresses. Incomplete.

Sleeping with the Girls is a self-insert multi-crossover fic. Don't let the title fool you, though. It's not a wish fulfillment story, unless the author's a masochist. Incomplete series.

He Who Fights Monsters is a Rosario Vampire AU that eschews the romantic comedy and focuses on what life would be like for a human trying to survive while surrounding by monsters. Complete.

Queen of Sorrow from the Fire Emblem Tellius series. It's a dark For Want Of A Nail in which Ike and friends fail to save Lucia in time from her execution. It's much more enjoyable if the reader has played the Tellius games, as a lot of the beauty comes from the disparity between dark!Elincia and canon Elincia. Complete.

The Silent Kingdom is a post-game Twilight Princess Zelda fic. It features a long, epic adventure with tons of solid OCs, but isn't complete yet.

The Unity Saga: An epic Star Wars / Star Trek crossover by SF Debris.

Shampoo 1/2

Team 8

edited 16th Jan '14 3:22:05 PM by BigMadDraco

...I am once again struck by the low standards of the community.

Let's be honest. Many people look back 2-5 years and wonder how they liked what they did then.

Low standards? It's more like answering a non-existent question. I incorrectly answered the question as "What fanfics have you most enjoyed reading?", and treated the thread as a Best-Of-Fanfic-Recs across multiple fandoms. I see that's not the case; my bad for not reading. Looking back at the OP, the question was for a story that's good based on its own merits, i.e. usually high quality of prose, riveting plot, genuinely interesting things to say. Something akin to a very good published work, except from a different source.

In that case, high quality of prose? Nothing comes to mind. Plenty of people can write well, but I don't think I've truly liked any piece based on wording alone, fanfic or not. Riveting plot is probably the easiest condition to satisfy. For me, War of the Dragons still comes to mind among fanfics. I enjoyed it as a plot-centric book, kind of like how I enjoyed Wheel of Time; not too much in the way of underlying messages, simply an enjoyable plot. I'm heavily biased towards it because I played the games and liked the characters by default. I can't properly imagine what it'd be like reading it as if it were a standalone book without prior knowledge. With that caveat, if you're looking for a fantasy fanfic comparable to a published work, I'd stand by it.

Genuinely interesting things to say is the hardest condition to match. Even among published works, the only story that's ever spun a message in a striking way for me is Ender's Game. In that case, there was the idea that children, no matter how smart, will believe something if you continuously tell it to them without letting in contradictory information. Ender believes the adults about the bugger simulations being games, and again in "Ender in Exile" Randall believes Achilles is his father. I thought it was all strongly analogous to religion. Children won't believe something based on its own merits. They'll believe what they're told if there's no conflicting information. That's a subtle enough message that I would consider genuinely interesting. If that's what this thread is looking for, I can't think of any fanfiction that has replicated that "ah-hah!" moment for me. Actually, I don't get that feeling even among legit literature. I'm sure there's tons of great stories with interesting things to say (i.e. Dorian Gray or something), but I've never been convinced by anything on the same level that Ender's Game convinced me.

So tl;dr: if it's a question of raising standards, War of the Dragons is good plot-wise, but I'm biased. For cool morals/ideas or prose, no dice.

I was actually referring to Unity, which is, as I've observed before, an epic story as told by pro wrestling bookers. From TNA. Much as I love the Debris, he's not a great writer.

That said I've yet to forgive Admiral Tigerclaw for the hack work that was Test Dummies, so.

Most well-written fic I've read so far?

An Outlaw Star lemon spanning 50 chapters over the course of 2 years, with equal parts romance, drama, ship-concept porn, and space war battles.

edited 16th Jan '14 10:42:47 PM by nomuru2d

50 chapters?

Whenever a story gets that long, see if it's possible to change all the names and some ancillary aspects of the canon and make it a book.

@Night: Oh, alright.

@Jinx: This world isn't ready for another 50 Shades, man.

edited 17th Jan '14 9:15:48 AM by TheGiantRock

Sleeping With The Girls is awesome, but I don't think he's ever going to finish it.

I just got done reading He Who Fights Monsters. It was very interesting and has struck my fancy. I could have wished for better writing though, and I don't think I like the direction he took it in overall.

Sadly, the author of this fanfiction died IRL. It was a story about the True Overlord Zenon. It's like a tournament and the prize is ONE wish that can grant anything. She is forced to make a choice between her lesbian lover [Also one of the best fanfiction OCs I have ever seen] or the universe's restoration. The concept isn't unique but the writing and execution really emphasized Zenon's sorrow.

It's really subtle, yet deep in terms of symbolism.

How would you feel if you were granted with immense power yet as a price everything and everyone you hold dear is taken away from you?

How would you feel if that power is the cause of many worlds being destroyed simply because of other supreme beings want that power for their own selfish reasons?

How would you feel if regardless you are stuck guarding that power, as it corrupts any of its hosts with you as an exception, thus an even bigger reason not to give it away and eventually going insane and paranoid just from that?

It's a really depressing fanfiction...

UNTIL THE FINAL BATTLE AGAINST MISAN AND THE UTTERLY SATISFYING ENDING!

edited 9th Oct '14 3:55:10 AM by Nina-chan

Anything Fernwithy has written concerning Haymitch Abernathy. The Hunger Games universe is so much fuller from a big-picture perspective. (Plutarch serves as a foil whose picture is entirely too big. Loads of historical trend analysis going on under the surface of these fics.)

House of Cards, in the same continuity, is from Peeta's perspective in the first half of Mockingjay. Needless to say, it's a veritable darkfic - not usually Fern's style, and not exactly something you want to reread - but it's worth it anyway for the two chapters containing Caesar's backstory. Her Caesar is beyond awesome.

I mostly read pro-wrestling fics for a long time (until they all became "the new Diva" and "submit your OC" stories). The best one out there is one called "A Ring Of Their Own" by Lodylodylody.

In it, Victoria wins the lottery and starts her own women's wrestling promotion, where women can be taken seriously as athletes instead of being treated as eye candy, like they were in WWE at that time. Almost every major female wrestling star from when it was written in 2010 appears, as well as bringing Trish Stratus and Molly Holly out of retirement.

As an avid reader of, frankly anything, novels, manga, VN, manga, short stories, light novels, poems and the such, and having read both new age novels along with classics and cult classics; when I say a fan fiction is well written I mean it is better then a large majority of published any things. That being said, the absolute best fanfictions I have ever read are:

HPMOR (harry potter) Kyon: Big Damn Hero (haruhi/higurashi) Dauntless (code grass) Ice and fire (code grass) The sun soul (Pokemon) Regret (Pokemon)

Along with honourble mentions: Hill of swords (for being 300k+ words and still too short) He who fights monsters (for being the single best ff for the series and yet still killing off my favorite pairing.)

edited 1st Oct '15 9:51:11 AM by Okabe