Proof that the remaining 10% is worth building additional pylons for here.
These are recommendations made by Tropers for StarCraft fanfics, all of which have to be signed to stay on the page. Feel free to add a fanfic of your own to the list, but remember to use the template found here.
You can also add to the current recommendations if you want. Refrain from posting Conversation in the Main Page though; that goes in the discussion page.
Fan Animations
Sheer awesomeness demands that we mention here two fan animations of very high quality:
- StarCraft: First Contact,
released in 2009 - StarCraft: Final Metamorphosis, released in 2011.
- StarCraft: First Contact,
Authors and Websites
None yet.
- Recommended by: Song7
- Status: Dead; last updated November 2018
- Synopsis: Total war befalls the Koprulu sector as Amon, the Dark God, unleashes his hybrid horde and threatens to consume the galaxy unto oblivion. Khalis, a female high templar, will have her first taste of combat as the Protoss move to retake Aiur and into a conflict that will drag old heroes and new faces onto the map of battle.
- Comments: A retelling of the Legacy of the Void Campaign from the perspective of a group of protoss as they endure cultural differences and face old characters from the first Starcraft game. Also sheds some light on what the Terrans and Zerg were up to during the End War.
The Brain Damage Trilogy by Toasterman
- Recommended by: USA Bobcat
- Status: Currently being re-written by the author.
- Synopsis: A rather long-running story set after the Brood War following the adventures and misadventures of a strange group of individuals including a Marine, Ghost, Reaper, Medic, Probe, Zealot and more as the series progresses. (Sic) (Taken from the Pit)
- Comments: A long-running trilogy that goes from lighthearted mocking of Starcraft fighting all the way to sinister plots and more. A Ragtag Band of Misfits form a mercenary band and kill a lot. Somehow manages to capture the feel of a world where a common Marine can die quite easily, but keeping the humor and the badassitude. Well worth a read, all the way to end of all three stories.
Flight to Freedom by Qwerty-Man
- Recommended by: Happy Man, USA Bobcat
- Status: Dead
- Synopsis: Post-Wings of Liberty. Kerrigan struggles to cope with her situation while the heroes from Starcraft gather to face the looming danger ahead.
- Comments: Despite this story is doomed to be Jossed once Heart of The Swarm comes out, it's something you must read if you love Starcraft. Absolutely brilliant and enthralling. It has loads of Character Development as well as a good bunch of well-written action scenes. The characters feel more real and complex than in the game. The interaction between the characters is, without any doubt, its strongest point, and what makes this story worthy of reading.
Parallax by mirari1
- Recommended by: Kadael
- Status: Dead
- Synopsis: During the "Supernova" mission of the Liberty campaign, the pilots of a terran banshee and Tal'darim phoenix crash-land on Typhon IX. Communications are down, their ships are in bad shape, and they don't feel inclined to trust each other.
- Comments: Although only the second chapter is up, it looks excellent so far. The characters are interesting, the prose and pacing fit with the dramatic-yet-humorous tone of the story, and the situation is something that certainly could happen during that mission.
A Hydralisk Named Bane, The Bane Series By Deadfast
- Recommended by: Yellow 13
- Status: Dead
- Synopsis: A hydralisk with human level intelligence. Instead of being an evil, out of control monster, this Hydralisk is good and fights with his human friends.
- Comments: Slow updates, but each one is WELL worth the wait.
- Ucal: If you're like me, you read this premise and thought it was stupid. Well, it is, but the author manages to make it acceptable with some turns on the premise that make it interesting, and not the 9 kinds of stupid I was expecting.
Aftermath and Revelations by Ragnarok666
- Recommended by: DARTHYAM
- Status: Dead
- Synopsis: Kerrigan tries to find redemption for her sins, while Raynor and the others try to comprehend what is to come...
- Comments: Is weak in some areas it is pretty good overall. Kerrigan's revelation that she remembers every last one of her atrocities is genuinely heartbreaking, and the scene where she comes face to face with Artanis is also pretty intense. The author makes call outs to the Dark Templar Trilogy, and we get a glimpse of Duran and The Dark Voice.
Her Body's Plaything by BlackHole1
- Recommended by: Hello101, WAEGirl, Happy Man
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: The Artifact has fired and the Queen of Blades has been defeated. The war, however, is far from over. A 'Novelization' of Heart of the Swarm. At least, what the author imagined it as (the story was finished before HoTS was released).
- Comments: A rather good read. Kerrigan is a far more The Atoner for what she did as the Queen of Blades than in canon, and the Zerg are also treated in a similar way, with several OCs also showing up (And one of Kerrigan's main crew a Deadpan Snarker Zerg Space Marine.)
Primal by Drich (comment thread here)
- Recommended by: throwaawy, WAEGirl
- Status: Dead
- Synopsis: I abhor my life. I detest my life. I loathe my life.
If I could express the sheer disdain I felt at this moment, this entire planet would have burned, flash fried right down to the core.
But above all else, I despise you, ROB.
I mean, seriously, fucking Zerus? Why?
Why me? - Comments: A self-insert prequel to the franchise. Drich is a Primal Zerg in a Zerg-eat-Zerg world of Zerus. Join Drich as Drich consumes, adapts, consumes some more, adapts some more, and... oshi- is that the Overmind forming? Damn you Random Omnipotent Being.
StarCrafts by CarbotAnimations
- Recommended by: Nightelf37
- Status: Complete
- A series of funny and cute one-shot short animations featuring our favorite StarCraft units.
When One Domino Falls by warchief
- Recommended by: Appletank
- Status: Complete
- Synopsis: All it takes to change history is one thing to fall differently. So what would happen if the battle of New Gettysburg played out differently? What if the Commander was wary enough to buy some time? Will follow the story of Starcraft from New Gettysburg right through to SC2 and beyond.
- Comments: Long story short, the Magistrate gets a mysterious warning about all the bad shit that would go down if he let Mengsk abandon Kerrigan. Butterflies explode. In other news, the characters are all well crafted, and the interactions are top notch. Battles feel sufficiently dangerous and gripping, and the reveal of how Magistrate gets the warning is pretty good. Note: This was written before Legacy, so the how and why of things are slightly differently interpreted, but it is frankly a minor quibble.
- Julius Caesar the Second notes: Gives the Magistrate a characterisation and gives you an idea on what he/she would do if they were still fighting after Tarsonis. Though SC2 is still a far time away, Brood War is still on the horizon and the story is quite strong. Though it is my opinion, this is a story that really deserves it's own tropes page... Which it now has as of Dec. 2023.
- Now has a sequel - Where the Domino Lands (Ongoing)
Putting the Pieces Back Together by Stoppelbart
- Recommended by: Happy Man
- Status: Complete.
- Has a sequel in progress.
- Has a sequel
- Synopsis: Two years Jim had to wait until she finally returned to him. But what happened in those two years? Why did it take Sarah so long to return to Jim? And what happened afterwards to them? Here's an answer to that.
- Comments: If you were disappointed by how laconic the ending of Starcraft II was, then this fanfic is for you. This fanfic explores the Korpulu Sector after Amon's fall in amazing detail, showing that the Big Bad being defeated does not mean that everything is now lolipops and rainbows. It also examines Jim and Sarah's characters, as well as their relationship, in such detailed and exhaustive way unseen in any other fanfic. The fic also has one of the best (and funniest) takes on Izsha as well.
Cycles Upon Cycles by The Incredible Muffin
- Recommended by: Tallens, WAEGirl
- Status: Dead; last updated September 2019
- Synopsis: StarCraft/Mass Effect. Right after they defeat Amon, Tassadar warns the three Korpulu races of a new threat on the horizon. Putting aside their differences (mostly) they start to rebuild and prepare for this new threat, which takes an unexpected turn when a strange device is discovered in a remote system…
- Comments: This one has some different takes the usual Stations of the Canon, such as the first contact with the ME side being with the Quarians, rather than the Turians, who are then attacked by Batarian pirates. The war with the Turians, and Council at large, doesn't happen for some time after that. The humans from the ME 'verse are all adapted into SC-style units, Shepard being a Spectre (the Ghost variant), Ashley a marine, Vega a Marauder, Zaeed a Firebat and Grunt a Zerg. And the Normandy is a Battlecruiser variant with a cloaking device.
- Overall, characters are well-written and interact believably with each other, though there are chapters which seem to be entirely made up of characters conversing. It may seem to be skewed heavily in favor of the SC side, but it does make clear that if they went into a prolonged war the Koprulu races would eventually be at a disadvantage due to fewer numbers and because the Turians would learn their tactics.
- Updating on a fairly regular basis, with large and developed chapters each time, seeming to indicate the author has the story planned out pretty well, if not already written completely.
- Overall, characters are well-written and interact believably with each other, though there are chapters which seem to be entirely made up of characters conversing. It may seem to be skewed heavily in favor of the SC side, but it does make clear that if they went into a prolonged war the Koprulu races would eventually be at a disadvantage due to fewer numbers and because the Turians would learn their tactics.
Starcraft AU: Tiberium Galaxy by avatar-of-kane
- Recommended by: Steel Dusk
- Synopsis: A StarCraft/Command & Conquer: Tiberian Series crossover alternate universe fanfic set after the events of Tiberian Twilight and during the events of Starcraft II.
- Comments: This fanfic mainly focuses on Kane after his ascension, finding himself in a strange new world and recreates the Brotherhood of Nod while at it. Meanwhile, the Terran Dominion and the Protoss are baffled by the discovery of mysterious green crystals, which would attract some of Kane's old enemies...Expect lots of action! This fanfic also contains Unit Profiles and 'Unit Versus' sections which compares C&C units to Starcraft units and which one of them will be more likely to win in a fight.
- Status: Dead
Sudden Contact (FanFiction.net link) by A Very Thirsty Megalomaniac.
- Recommended by: Nederbird
- Crossover with: Mass Effect
- Status: Sudden Contact (Complete); Has two sequels in Sudden Supremacy (Complete) and Sudden Terminus (Ongoing/Dormant: updates somewhat "regularly" every 1-2 years).
- Synopsis: The Protoss and Turians make violent first contact after the former accidentally chase a Terran scavenger through a previously dormant Mass Relay in the Sara system. A few turians end up on the Koprulu side of the relay and emergency-land on Mar Sara, encountering both terrans and the invasive Zerg. The war in the hitherto isolated Koprulu sector soon spills over into Citadel space, pulling the rest of the galaxy into a three-way war between the zerg on one side, the terrans, protoss, and Citadel races on a second side, and Sovereign and his geth on a third side.
- Pairings: Raynor/Kerrigan; later Raynor/Miranda, Kerrigan/Garrus, Tychus/Jack, and Nova/Saren.
- Tags: Fusion Fic; Fix Fic; Original Flavour; Switching P.O.V.; Alternate Universe (for humanity only: the colonies are the Koprulu terrans while Earth is the UED); plenty of Deconstruction too, though that is not a primary characteristic.
- Comments: Point of View is divided between multiple characters from both franchises, whose numbers skew heavily in favour of StarCraft in Sudden Contact but is balanced in the sequels. The fic starts at the beginning of both games' storylines and is interwoven instalment-to-instalmentnote in such a seamless and lore-friendly manner that it feels as if they had always been one and the same. The author endeavours to present most characters as true to their canon personalities as possible, except where he nuances antagonists such as Mengsk, Udina, and Arterius into something less cartoonish, where they still preserve their canon traits as flaws in a more complex personality. The fic presents the races at varying degrees of parity with each other: the terrans, the UED and the Council species are roughly at part with each other, with each side having some technologies that are superior to the others', while the zerg and protoss vastly outmatch the others... at the outset.
- Recommended by: DaLintyMan, Chaos The Void, Omeganian.
- Status: Dead; last updated August 2017
- Synopsis: This is one of those stories that people credit for their inspiration. The Swarm of War is based on the reincarnation of a random nerd, steeped in his favorite franchises, into a Zerg Larva after being hit by a car. After a short stay on Aiur, James is sent to a different universe due to the influence of the Xel'Naga Artifact firing. But he doesn't make it. Instead, his mind forms the basis for a new Overmind, described as "The last remaining humanity of James Malcolm Raynor merged with the tiny bits of the Xel'Naga pulse energy and then liberally sprinkled with the genetic memories of the Zerg."
- Comments: Liberal amounts of grimdark abound, and massive battles are waged.
- There is a decent amount of character development, with most of the story so far written from a First Person point of view of the Overmind. Watch as the Swarm evolves to counter its new threats, and shows the wars they go through.
- The first arc takes place on a cut-off planet, with a four-sided war.
- The second arc is set after the events of Space Marine and before the events of Dawn of War. Both Titus and Cyrus play major parts.
- This would probably count as a Dark Fic, as the seeming protagonist lost any morals he once had.
- There is a decent amount of character development, with most of the story so far written from a First Person point of view of the Overmind. Watch as the Swarm evolves to counter its new threats, and shows the wars they go through.
