Fanfic Recommendations: The Next Generation

[Jinx999]

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/102618/foxfire-esq

Noa, the author of Pound the Table, has started an original legal/superhero work. It's currently six chapters and just getting going, but given her previous work, I'll recommend it anyway.

[Matrix Dragon]

Fan Comic instead of fanfic, but close enough I feel.

An AU for Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where Zelda doesn't get sent back in time, and teams up with Link to resolve the latest crisis to hit Hyrule.

https://www.tumblr.com/proxycrit/7639306...urce=share

[classicdrogn]

Magical Girl Gunslinger is a nebulous-near-future urban fantasy piece with the theme it says on the tin. It is very well written, though the MC's motr hinted around than explicitly stated personal issues may bother those with sensitive dispositions. For my own part, a medicine adjacent background made me drop out of the narrative in a particular scene because it should have been vastly more visceral and forey, but that's the kind of problem most people would say isn't, I expect. MC just makes me want to give her a good book and a plate of comfott food (and a nice chair with the back to a wall near an easy exit) before sitting quietly across the room with my own, because that would be far less stressful than the briefest of hugs or head pats and wow do I ever know that feeling.

250k words in 36 chapters, of which the last is the beginning of a new arc might be better left unread to leave off on a "complete book." Sadly, updates seem to come at a minimum of two or three moths apart, with the gap from the previous chapter having been ten.

SB threadmarks

Royal Road index

Bring a hanky or two.

[classicdrogn]

Do you know Da Wei?

Born to the mistress of a clan patriarch in a locally powerful sect of a backwater continent, his cultivation was crippled in a plot to weaken the clan and take over his betrothal to well-placed daughter. This pathetic fate was overturned by the revelation that the gragon pearl amulet his mother had given him on her deathbed was actually a heaven-shaking secret item, but memories of another life in our modern world lead him to reject the temptations of the Demonic Pat grandpa it carried... and also following up on all those protagonist flags.

Exiled by his own choice from the sect, he wanders off to a small village in a spirit forest, to simply live quietly and enjoy the company of people without the cut-throat mentality of the cultivation world. Alas, it seems the heavens are not done with Da Wei...


That's my own, only semi-serious summary of the premise of I am the Main Character? No thanks!, and on a scale of blah to BoC I'd say it's maybe at 70-80%. The first few chapters are a little rough, switching between the initial events and the present a few months (maybe as much as a year or so?) later when he's gotten more back on his feet, but it's not too bad about that and the storytelling smooths out rapidly once it starts moving forward from the established opening situation.

It is for now entirely available on SB and from author comments Royal Road, but as Book 1 wrapped up this past Nov-Dec those indicated he was going to try to publish it "soon" so I'd say to check it out quickly lest it be stubbed, and archive a copy via whatever means or make plans to buy it if/when it goes up for sale.

SB Threadmarks link

[Bob Schroeck]

I just stumbled on this one and while I'm not yet done with it, I'm enjoying the hell out of it. It's a Worm AU, called How to Train Your Endbringer and it's just as cracky as it sounds:

The Simurgh dipped out of the clouds and came rocketing down towards the group. At the very last moment she slowed her dive, just in time to come to a stop an inch from the ground.

Legend jumped backwards, both hands raised as if to fire at the Endbringer.

The two stared at each other while the wind shifted around them. The parking lot was deathly quiet for a few long seconds. "Simurgh, stop antagonizing Mister Legend," Taylor said. "Mister Legend, please don't laser my friend."

Legend slowly lowered his hands and loosened his tense shoulders a little. The Simurgh nodded at him as if they'd reached an understanding of sorts and floated backwards to stop near Taylor's side.

"Come on, there's no reason we can't all be friends!" Taylor said.

[Initiate Friendship Protocols?]

"Exactly!"

[Preparing for Orbital Bombardment.]

"What!" Taylor spun towards the Simurgh. "No, that's not how friendship works!"

The Simurgh tilted her head to one side. [Contrite. No Friendship Cannons? Sadness. Wasted Preparation Time.]

Taylor buried her face in her hands while all the--mostly--normal humans around her took in her one-sided conversation with the Endbringer. "No, Simmy, no orbital friendship cannons. Where did you even learn about those?"

[Anime!]

"You watch cartoons?" Taylor asked as she started walking towards the park again.

[Not Cartoons. Anime.]

"What's the difference?"

[Exasperation.]

Behind the little group, Legend felt as though he had made a very big mistake somewhere along the line.

[robkelk]

If I may blow my own horn... This isn't a new fic, but it is brand-new on my brand-new AO3 account.

As I said in the notes, "if you're interested in reading a short-fic that's from the era of Y2K compliance statements, or you're curious as to how much I have (or haven't) developed as a writer since then, read on..."

Almost As Good, a story of the Knight Sabers

[Matrix Dragon]

( Whoops, meant to put this in Completed.)

[classicdrogn]

"No, Simmy, no orbital friendship cannons. Where did you even learn about those?"

[Anime!]

"You watch cartoons?" Taylor asked as she started walking towards the park again.

[Not Cartoons. Anime.]

"What's the difference?"

[Exasperation.]

... but the Orbital Friendship Cannon meme is from MLP:FIM, making it explicirtly cortoons, not anime, at least in the context of that kind of conversation. Sure, defeat mens freindship is a long standing anime trope, but the OFC formulation specifically is from the Sonic Rainboom episode.

KYM link

[Bob Schroeck]

"No, Simmy, no orbital friendship cannons. Where did you even learn about those?"

[Anime!]

"You watch cartoons?" Taylor asked as she started walking towards the park again.

[Not Cartoons. Anime.]

"What's the difference?"

[Exasperation.]

... but the Orbital Friendship Cannon meme is from MLP:FIM, making it explicirtly cortoons, not anime, at least in the context of that kind of conversation. Sure, defeat mens freindship is a long standing anime trope, but the OFC formulation specifically is from the Sonic Rainboom episode.

KYM link

Well, it might originate there, but it's pretty clear it has roots in Lyrical Nanoha as well.

I will note, by the way, that the Simurgh isn't just screwing with people here. She actually built the Orbital Friendship Cannon, and fired it (by Taylor's command) at a raging Lung in a later chapter. One thing we don't find out until then is that the Orbit is around the Moon... and just how deep the beam burns into the earth even from there. (And the effect it has on Lung is hilarious.)

I have to add as a footnote that the story stops abruptly in the middle of its Tournament Arc and hasn't been touched since something like 2018. But until then it is vastly entertaining.