The Great Cow Race of 2003
By Maurice Lane
Additional Bad Ideas by Jaymiel

I like reading fanfic but I recently realised I almost never read fanfic for anything but anime shows. So, since I have plenty of time at work to read and am scrapping the bottom of the barrel of anime fanfics... I decided to branch out. Of course there is SO MUCH of it that I have no idea where to start.
If you have any good fanfics that fit the following criteria, I'd be happy to hear about them!
What I'm Looking For:
No Porn: This is my one hard and fast rule. No graphic depiction or descriptions of sex acts. Innuendo and sexuality is fine, but lascivious descriptions of sex organs turns me right off.
No "Shipping": That is a story whose sole purpose is to set up character X and character Y in a romantic relationship. Especially if this runs contrary to canon (ie, turning a character gay who was not or breaking up an existing couple just so that they can get together with other characters). I'm okay with romance, but strictly as a subplot.
No Godmoding: That is, no stories wherin a character gets a significant boost in power level, competence or a significantly weird change in personality. Ie, if the story features Xander, Xander should not have superpowers, be turned into a cyborg, learn magic or suddenly decide to act like Batman (in anything but a goofy manner).
Complete/Progressing Only: I dislike reading stories that will never be finished intensely (it makes me sad when they're good). Thus. only stories that are finished or are getting regualrly updated (ie, have recieved two or more updates in the last year) please.
I'm interested primarily in Buffy and or Angel fanfiction. Also Harry Potter, Star Wars, Supernatural (TV series), Americomics (DC/Marvel etc), most fantasy novels (David Eddings, Dragonlance and so on).
I'm not interested in Stargate SG-1 fanfiction, thank you.
I like Crossover fanfiction and have no objections to Self-inserts (for obvious reasons).
Much appreciated in advance.
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Epsilon

I put this together for the second AC3 fanfic panel, as an example of how writing style affects the story. I doubt I'll ever do anything with it, so...

It was raining in the city by the river. A hard rain; the kind that makes you wish you could afford to buy another bottle and crawl into a hole with it. The best I could do was stay in my office. That's the one with the sign that reads "Philip Nakajima, Private Detective" on the door. It wasn't like I had anywhere else to go that day.
I was trying to figure out where I was going to get the money to pay next month's rent when she walked in the door. A vision of loveliness, with a smile that lit up the room, legs that went all the way up and a skirt that didn't make much of the return trip, and a magic wand with a crescent moon on the top.
My ulcer and my wallet argued over whether I needed the headaches of a magical girl client. My wallet won.
"Hello," I said, looking her straight in the face. "What can I do for you?"
"Mr. Nakajina," she answered in a breathless voice which was probably breathless because the elevator went the way of the dodo two days ago, "they call me Sailor Moon. I need help to find the other Senshi, and a friend said you could help me. Please, Mr. Nakajima, I don't know where else to go..."

-Rob Kelk
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Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

In another thread, I posted an excerpt of the first prologue to a fic I'm working on. Unfortunately, I've hit something of a wall in writing it -- namely, in the scene I'm working on, I need to portray Petunia Dursley in a relatively sympathetic fashion while remaining in-character for her. This is complicated by the fact that I can't quite seem to get her speech patterns quite right.
Anyone want to try to help?-- This message brought to you by Ely Lilly, makers of SeraFem: Happy Pills for PMS.

"What's done?" I hear you ask. This is done:

Many years ago, when the intarwub was young and AOLers were still walled up in their prison of free CDs, I started work on The Jihad to Destroy Barney Writer's Guide. The goal was to create a who's who for the (then-burgeoning) members of the Jihad to Destroy Barney the Dinosaur. Somehwere along the way, it turned into a combination guide and GURPS netbook. I certainly never expected to take this long to finish it, but finished it is! And a finer-looking netbook you'll not find. I am extremely proud of how it all came together.
The Jihad to Destroy Barney itself has pretty much been forgotten by the rest of the intarwub, but the few of us left invite you to take a look at our stuff. Who knows? Maybe there's something worth using for your own creations in there.
Jihad.Net's Roleplaying page
The Jihad to Destroy Barney Roleplaying Game & Writer's Guide (Warning: 6.3MB PDF file)---
Mr. Fnord
Raving blogger
http://www.jihad.net/
"when edison thinks down pipes into special Future Death Machine, in 21st Century another teenager on MySpace gets hit by a car." --Warren Ellis
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

testing 1 2 3..-Terry
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"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." - Antoine de Saint Exupery
Please Remember: "Luge strategy? Lie flat and try not to die." - Carmen Boyle (Olympic Luge Gold Medal winner - 1996)
Mary Sue's theme music
-Terry
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"so listen up boy, or pornography starring your mother will be the second worst thing to happen to you today"
TF2: Spy

Huwaaahhh... home again. ^_^
Okay, so, in my copious free time between panic, labor, and sleep, I've been reading Gundam SEED fanfic of late. Despite the fact that most of the fanbase (and, hence, writer population) seems to be about the same age as the core cast, though about an order of magnitude less mature, not all of it sucks.
The bunny that's struck me isn't even really that new, since I seem to be far from the only one who has disbelief suspension issues arising from a pair of twins who end up being part of different subspecies. My take on it works like this...
Once upon a time, when Cagalli was fairly young, perhaps five-to-ten or so, she did something utterly, typically (both for her personally and kids that age in general) reckless. In the canon Seedverse, she got away with it with no more than the usual repercussions of scaring Kisaka shitless.
Here, though, she slipped.
She would, eventually, recover fully, but in the process, she also made her first visit to a hospital that didn't already have all her medical information ready at hand. While they were working on getting her injuries treated, one of the attending doctors handed off a few samples to an orderly with the order to take it to the lab and have them tell him everything he needed to know about the girl, ASAP.
The answer he got back was basically that he could proceed as normal, but should probably account for the Markman's Disease in his treatment regimen.
Markman's, you see, is where the endocrine system fails to adjust a Coordinator's hormone levels the way it's supposed to - the details involve more biology than I'm prepared to try and bullshit my way through, but the end result is that you end up with an apparently-normal (though likely above average) human being. No super reflexes, strength, healing, learning curve... Since Coordinators are both artificial (ie, designed on a budget) and relatively recent, Markman's is quite common. Fortunately, it's also easily treatable - overall, about as significant as needing glasses, if less obvious.
The standard fanfic approach would be to just go, 'okay, hey, cool, now she gets a Gundam at the start of the show!'
I don't want to do that.
Cagalli, remember, is the heir to the leadership of a fairly major nation - a noteworthy figure even this early, when she's being kept mostly out of the spotlight. The future Representative of ORB, a Coordinator?
You couldn't keep that quiet with all the money in the world.
I have my own ideas of what some of the repercussions would be, but I'd like to hear what y'all think before I start sounding off.
Work resumes on Hime and Fate stories tomorrow. After I sleep.
Ja, -n
(ETA: grr. typos.)

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"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"

Trying to clear out some shelf space and scrape a little cash together, so I've got a few eBay auctions up. Some RPG material, a couple of Jeff Rovin's encyclopedias, and a few odds and ends.
Take a look. Bid early. Bid often.

While randomly browsing the "latest" listing for Twisting The Hellmouth, I stumbled across a fic written around one of the entries on Chris' "Things Xander Is No Longer Allowed To Do": Inventory, by Chaoseternus.
It's not particularly great, but it's there, and that got me to wondering -- hey, Chris, have there been any other stories born out of that challenge that you've heard of?

-- Bob
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For Jor-El so loved the Earth, he sent his only begotten son...

A Drabble is a short form, a composition excercise, consisting of precisely 100 words. I was asked recently (and posted in my LJ) for one starring Honor Harrington, of fame in several excellent novels by David Weber. And this popped into my head:

Quote:

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Once upon a time, a witch named Willow Rosenberg cast a spell.
It was an extraordinarily powerful spell. It changed what had once been an empowerment given to a single person into something tied to the bloodlines of every potential recipient.
It changed the balance of power in the universe forever.
Some two thousand years later, Admiral and Steadholder Honor Alexander-Harrington, and her treecat companion, Nimitz, emerged from an alleyway in Landing City, as Honor slid a wooden stake back into the pocket hidden under her skirt.
One could explain a lot of things with 'genetic augmentation' these days.

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