Renewing my recommendation for The Count of Monte Cristo. No, it wasn't published on the web, but as a serialized story for magazines, it carries/started/popularized a lot of those trends in both format and genre. It's the edgy revenge story from which uncountable edgy revenge fics were forged, and better than most of them too. It does the 'gotta hit the chapter wordcount so here's a deluge of details', many of them managing to feel essential anyway but some of them clearly padding (I know for a fact you'll read stuff that does this much worse anyway.) As a capable driven man hiding his identity, Edmond Dantes is in many ways a precursor to characters like Batman and that whole genre idea.
Because of its serialized nature, it feels much more modern than something like Dracula, and even if you don't like it, I suspect your analysis of it would be very interesting. Certainly, I've never seen a literary analysis where it's been compared to fanfic/webfic despite some stark similarities, and if you disagree with me about that, I think that analysis would be interesting too.
Yeah, you can tell I have an interest lol. Reading it again before writing that fic was the moment I realized the throughline running from it to modern serialized fiction.
I ended up spending an all-nighter reading Just Deserts. It was good enough that I briefly wondered why it wasn't somewhere on the Shills List, though the ending was admittedly a bit lackluster and the OC's personality was most interesting in the first chapter before they got good at social interaction. The search function didn't show a review for it, what are your thoughts on it besides being just generally better than the average MHA fic?
There's a simple answer to why it isn't in this blog or the list, that I caught up in 2022 before it was finished. I'll add a reread to my backlog. My thoughts on Discord at the time were:
> interesting autistic main character, cool characterization for the side cast, unique situations, and a very nice mystery main plot
I mainly read undertale fics, and a main issue with UT fics (or other media) is that they are mainly geared to people deeply invested in the game and fandom. These are a few that I recommend to people starting or are casual. They are in order of how high I recommend them.
If there is any of this list, I recommend reading this one. The author has a talent for setting and firing off Chekhov's guns. I’ve read this once twice and the description describes it best:
Undertale sprite comics have a bad habit of becoming too bloated, boring, or collapsing in on themselves. This isn’t that; it’s the gold standard for Sprite comics in the Undertale fandom.
It’s a shuffle of undertale, it uses the same characters but puts them in different roles while also maintaining the same standard of storytelling as the original.
Very long, has several full-on animations, fangames, and an original soundtrack. Not complete but it’s approaching the end.
A recursive sprite comic of a spinoff of a fic, and it should not be this good. I have read both the original and spinoff fic, and this sprite comic surpasses them.
It's the same idea as Inverted Fate, but it hits the highlights instead of covering everything.
Mainly comedy and light hearted, I’ve read this three times and would highly rec. It’s incomplete but very close to the end.
The undertale fandom has this large collective multiverse thing, but doesn’t really do anything with it. It’s mainly an excuse to bash action figures together or ship Sans.
This author in this fic decided to take the current rules and push them to there logical conclusion, and fill in holes that the wider fandom left.
A finished choose your own adventure fic, where us (the audience) are trying to build a world by taking bits and characters from others. The author is not afraid to let the audience fail or to make really bad choices.
Very high quality writing and one of the very few good undertale multiverse fics.
“Harry" Du Bois falls into the underground. The fic is in the same style as the original Disco asylum complete with the voices and options. Very funny and comedic fic, sadly also very short with 4 chapters.
You're not the first to recommend Golden Quiche to me, but the million words hold me back from anything less than perfection. At best I'd want to be done with The Dark Tower, which will take me this entire year minimum.
If you want, the author has a spinoff called "Lone defender" Slightly darker than the original, but uses the same writing style, tone, world building, ect... as the original. If you like it then you may also like the main work
Comedy, it’s really funny and I’ve read this one twice. A self-insert fic where someone wakes up in undertale, but done very well.
The beginning is a bit rough, the author knows how to write humor and storytelling really good, but not so much in starting. After the ruins the fic takes off. Besides Discotale I’d say this is one of the funniest fics in the fanfic’dom.
The same starting flaw applies to works 2 and 3, but nothing really happens and there skippable.
Work 4 is complete, it covers post-pacifist route surface with the same level of humor. I laughed a lot in reading this, both times that I’ve read.
What if instead we had a goody to-shoes child, we instead had America’s most wanted criminal? The author wanted to write a fic with an unlikable MC.
A bit dark, and some of the works in the series are basically backstory only. Fun read though.
You can skip a lot of the story though given that they are backstory, I feel like it could have been woven in better. However they are in there own works so it's all good.
I knew Cauchy (author of Intricate plots) through their work on the HP fanfic Blood Crest which while verbose on the worldbuilding also felt very fresh. Sadly I read it years ago and cant remember much detail about it. Wasn't aware of their previous work.
Naruto SI into an older sister of Kakashi, story starts right at the effective end of her field ninja career. She did the usual SI path of trying to become a child prodigy (though even she gets shown up by Kakashi) but then gets horrifically maimed during a mission, and the after effects leave her too disabled for field work, and a good chunk of the early part of the fic is her coming to terms with her new status as a desk ninja, which doesn't carry a lot of respect given the focus of Ninja society. Very good character work, covers a not too often covered time period of Naruto.
The other fic by Zarinthel might be a bit short at the moment for your preferences, but I also really enjoyed. OC Heartbreaker child comes to brockton bay and starts messing around according to her own personal fucked up moral compass. Sometimes can seem a bit like a Tanya-fic in that the interaction between the OC's morals and the rest of the bay lead to fun misunderstandings.
There's also a third fic by the author called "The Scorpion and the Frog" which doesn't quite rise to the level of recommendation IMO, but if you like the other two, give it a read.
The next two fics are just SIs in other ninja villages, which both have the protagonists acting intelligently in the even more cutthroat politics of Kiri and Iwa and also flesh out those two villages as settings in satisfying ways:
Iwa, last updated in March, claims to be a "gamer fic" too, but I think the only evidence of this is the SI having been a gamer fan and trying to recreate various powers from that series via Sealing and Jutsu. Has a fair amount of Chakra theory digressions.
Kill Six Billion Demons, potentially already familiar to you as its first form was as a MSPA forum adventure. Great worldbuilding, designs, very inventive overall. Hard copies of the first few arcs are available at a lot of comic stores via Image Comics. Currently on its final "book", so close to finished.
Unsounded, long running fantasy comic with great art, worldbuilding, and characters. It also plays with the webcomic medium in a way I rarely have seen outside Homestuck with pagebreaks, occasional animation, and CSS stuff. The finale of the 18 Chapter main story arc is being published on May 14th so it'll probably by a complete story by the time you finish it.
An issue I find with OC-based Naruto fics is that they're often just trojan horses for the writer's publisher-rejected historical fiction. I don't think it's controversial to say that if I'm reading a Naruto fic I want at least *some* known plot beats and characters to show up and matter. Does Fallow Fields and their other Naruto fics deliver on that?
Andante looks good but yeah I'll wait for a few more chapters, please let me know if it crosses 70k and I still haven't read it.
I read comics/manga on my phone, and K6BD is terrible for that, having to zoom in every single page. That's probably the only reason I haven't picked it up. I remember coding a userscript for mobile Firefox just to be able to read Unicorn Jelly, I will probably bite the bullet when it's finished.
Same issue with Unsounded, except I don't think that one can be fixed. Thanks for the recs!
Fallow Fields I think definitely does deliver on that, there's the older generation of Gai, Kakashi, Minato, Obito, the Sannin, and the canon events leading up to the pre-canon war. I might actually move "The Scorpion and the Frog" up to a tentative recommendation given your preference, since it's a big study of the canon Uchiha during Itachi's era where all the canon characters and events very much do matter even with the OC being there.
The other Kiri and Iwa fics aren't by Zarinthel, and due to being set outside of Konoha and a good bit pre-canon they tend to be working with a lot of OC characters or background characters. Both have the Ninja World Wars hanging over the story and the expected plot beats, and Float like a Stone has a rivalry between the protagonist and a young Minato after the first arc, while the Bloody Oracle of the Mist has a a good amount of Mist characters (Zabuza, Kisame, Mei) plus the Akatsuki for canon characters.
Will do for Andante.
(I also would be interested in hearing which Naruto fics you've read that seem like rejected historical fiction, because that might be up my alley to an extent.)
For Kill Six Billion Demons, the first four volumes are somehow on a couple manga reader type sites (zbato being one) so that might allow you to phone read it up to that point. Unsounded yeah is definitely best experienced on a computer screen just due to its form, given how it started in like 2010 probably hard to avoid unfortunately.
Oh the zarinthiel fics aren't anything like Compass of Thy Soul. They're set around the canon timeline without the intense sort of worldbuilding focus found in compass. They're not my favorite because they felt kinda relentlessly grim in tone.
Good attempt, but yep, read Luminosity in full, though I didn't enjoy it enough to move on to the sequel. I do wish Alicorn got back to writing long novels again.
What didn’t you like about it? The first time I read it I was too crushed by the ending to read Radiance, but later I reread it and then kept going and was very glad I did.
"what if your ma turned into an iphone" probably would be an improvement lol.
it's too bad that the fast and furious movies are bad-- i feel like "make a fun action movie about cars" should be an extremely easy task
not /exactly/ a rec, but i did just release a new webnovel-- it's 50% epistolary historical fiction about whaling, so probably not exactly in your orbit lol. but it's complete and read-it-in-an-afternoon short (90k words) so, you know, gotta do my self promotional duty 😅 https://archiveofourown.org/works/64915276
During the fateful mission to the Kannabi Bridge, Obito is too slow, and Kakashi ends up paying the price with his life. Years later, Elite Jonin Mangekyou no Obito is placed in charge of a very familiar genin team, determined to keep them safe in a world at peace.
Or:
Obito surviving wrecks everything, in twenty steps or less.
Complete. This fic has a theme, and great worldbuilding. A commenter starts posting fanart around chapter 40.
After a series of unexpected circumstances renders Ruby Rose unable to participate in Beacon Academy’s initiation test, she is approached by Headmaster Ozpin with a new offer – to use these circumstances to her advantage and infiltrate the forces of the enemy as a double agent. Before Ruby knows what accepting this truly means, she finds herself swept away in a new world where monsters roam and the thieves and assassins are only the grunts.
But as Ruby’s mission begins to take away more and more from her, questions she (and Ozpin) can’t answer begin to arise. What is this obsession with silver eyes that both sides seem to fixate on? How far will Ruby go to bring back the maiden powers Ozpin tasked her with stealing from under Salem’s nose? And just why was she, little Ruby Rose, accepted so easily by the Queen of the Grimm into her ranks?
Rated M for violence, not horny
Complete. This author’s other work is pretty good.
An MCU fan from our world wakes up in the body of Wanda Maximoff prior to the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Resolving not to meet the same fate as the original, she seeks to use her powers and metaknowledge to create a better world, stopping villains ahead of time and saving thousands or millions of lives in the process. However, there are gaps in her knowledge and reality is more fragile and complicated than she expects. Butterfly effects from her actions rapidly start spiraling out of control, setting her in opposition to heroes she'd rather have as allies. The Scarlet Witch is prophesied to either rule the cosmos or annihilate it, and she intends to save this universe... even if she has to drag it kicking and screaming the whole way.
This fic is mainly a tragedy, where although the SI tries to make the world a better place, circumstance and her own failings continue to hinder her. Chapter 33 is the best example of this.
It absolutely does not follow stations of canon. It takes familiar characters, and tells a different kind of story with them. Thats the best thing about it.
Renewing my recommendation for The Count of Monte Cristo. No, it wasn't published on the web, but as a serialized story for magazines, it carries/started/popularized a lot of those trends in both format and genre. It's the edgy revenge story from which uncountable edgy revenge fics were forged, and better than most of them too. It does the 'gotta hit the chapter wordcount so here's a deluge of details', many of them managing to feel essential anyway but some of them clearly padding (I know for a fact you'll read stuff that does this much worse anyway.) As a capable driven man hiding his identity, Edmond Dantes is in many ways a precursor to characters like Batman and that whole genre idea.
Because of its serialized nature, it feels much more modern than something like Dracula, and even if you don't like it, I suspect your analysis of it would be very interesting. Certainly, I've never seen a literary analysis where it's been compared to fanfic/webfic despite some stark similarities, and if you disagree with me about that, I think that analysis would be interesting too.
You won't trick me with your astroturfing, Alexandre Dumas (maybe in the future)
Are you the same as the author of that Worm/Monte Cristo fic?
Yeah, you can tell I have an interest lol. Reading it again before writing that fic was the moment I realized the throughline running from it to modern serialized fiction.
I ended up spending an all-nighter reading Just Deserts. It was good enough that I briefly wondered why it wasn't somewhere on the Shills List, though the ending was admittedly a bit lackluster and the OC's personality was most interesting in the first chapter before they got good at social interaction. The search function didn't show a review for it, what are your thoughts on it besides being just generally better than the average MHA fic?
There's a simple answer to why it isn't in this blog or the list, that I caught up in 2022 before it was finished. I'll add a reread to my backlog. My thoughts on Discord at the time were:
> interesting autistic main character, cool characterization for the side cast, unique situations, and a very nice mystery main plot
I mainly read undertale fics, and a main issue with UT fics (or other media) is that they are mainly geared to people deeply invested in the game and fandom. These are a few that I recommend to people starting or are casual. They are in order of how high I recommend them.
Golden quiche (Long)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296460/chapters/12226634
If there is any of this list, I recommend reading this one. The author has a talent for setting and firing off Chekhov's guns. I’ve read this once twice and the description describes it best:
-Mystery Drama
-Anime
-Extensive Surface Worldbuilding
-Expanded History and Backstory
-Magic System
-More Magic
-Both new and old people.
-Feels.
-Gambits.
What to not expect from this story:
-Toby Canon.
-Commonly agreed headcanons
-Slice of life. This is definitely not that.
Inverted fate (Long, sprite comic)
https://invertedfate.com/chapters
Undertale sprite comics have a bad habit of becoming too bloated, boring, or collapsing in on themselves. This isn’t that; it’s the gold standard for Sprite comics in the Undertale fandom.
It’s a shuffle of undertale, it uses the same characters but puts them in different roles while also maintaining the same standard of storytelling as the original.
Very long, has several full-on animations, fangames, and an original soundtrack. Not complete but it’s approaching the end.
Very high quality and fun.
Doublescrambled (Meduim, spritecomic)
https://doubletaleau.tumblr.com/post/681783039633784832/doubletale-doublescramble-sprite-comic
A recursive sprite comic of a spinoff of a fic, and it should not be this good. I have read both the original and spinoff fic, and this sprite comic surpasses them.
It's the same idea as Inverted Fate, but it hits the highlights instead of covering everything.
Mainly comedy and light hearted, I’ve read this three times and would highly rec. It’s incomplete but very close to the end.
New world experiment (Long)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/58952329
The undertale fandom has this large collective multiverse thing, but doesn’t really do anything with it. It’s mainly an excuse to bash action figures together or ship Sans.
This author in this fic decided to take the current rules and push them to there logical conclusion, and fill in holes that the wider fandom left.
A finished choose your own adventure fic, where us (the audience) are trying to build a world by taking bits and characters from others. The author is not afraid to let the audience fail or to make really bad choices.
Very high quality writing and one of the very few good undertale multiverse fics.
Discotale (Short)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/55020079
“Harry" Du Bois falls into the underground. The fic is in the same style as the original Disco asylum complete with the voices and options. Very funny and comedic fic, sadly also very short with 4 chapters.
You're not the first to recommend Golden Quiche to me, but the million words hold me back from anything less than perfection. At best I'd want to be done with The Dark Tower, which will take me this entire year minimum.
Thanks for the other recs.
If you want, the author has a spinoff called "Lone defender" Slightly darker than the original, but uses the same writing style, tone, world building, ect... as the original. If you like it then you may also like the main work
https://archiveofourown.org/works/28914393/chapters/70938324
But hey thank you! You've introduced me to a lot of good fics over the years and I recently finished Just Deserts!
I'd love to see your suggestions for someone more into the Undertale scene; I've read most of these, but Discotale was AMAZING.
Self insert saga (Long) [Works one and four]
https://archiveofourown.org/series/751296
Comedy, it’s really funny and I’ve read this one twice. A self-insert fic where someone wakes up in undertale, but done very well.
The beginning is a bit rough, the author knows how to write humor and storytelling really good, but not so much in starting. After the ruins the fic takes off. Besides Discotale I’d say this is one of the funniest fics in the fanfic’dom.
The same starting flaw applies to works 2 and 3, but nothing really happens and there skippable.
Work 4 is complete, it covers post-pacifist route surface with the same level of humor. I laughed a lot in reading this, both times that I’ve read.
Work 4 seems abandoned.
Lone defender (Meduim)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/28914393/chapters/70938324
Dusttale AU, but done well. Basically Diet Golden Quiche, uses the same magic and worldbuilding and has the same semi-rational style.
Updates periodically.
Slightly dark but nothing too much. I’ve read this twice, nothing much to say other than I like the authors writing.
Magic est postant (Long, crossover)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/9310319/chapters/21100844
Crossover which is done really well with Artemis Fowl. I’ve read this thrice.
Frisk & Chara are trying to get a good post-pacifist route, and failing. Things keep going wrong until they get an email from one Artemis Fowl.
Adventure, action, slightly comedy.
Seems abandoned.
This isn’t far away (Long, crossover)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/34807486/chapters/86672638
Comedy and a bit crackish, Omori-Deltarune-Undertale. The undertale part only shows up for 3 chapters before the fic became orphaned.
A one W.D. Gaster decies to troll, Sunny gets yeeted into Deltarune, and the Omori gang gets a copy of Deltarune.
Fun seeing the chaos.
Orphaned work.
Some others:
An accompanied minor (Medium)
https://archive.transformativeworks.org/works/13200372
Retelling of Cannon undertale but in an interesting format, told through diaries and personal experiences. Very unique.
Second chances work 2(Long, crossover)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/38424763/chapters/96028999
Crack and comedy, Undertale-deltarune crossover. No knowledge of the first work is needed.
Dreemurs end (Long-medium, depends)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/9800843/chapters/22007999
What if instead we had a goody to-shoes child, we instead had America’s most wanted criminal? The author wanted to write a fic with an unlikable MC.
A bit dark, and some of the works in the series are basically backstory only. Fun read though.
You can skip a lot of the story though given that they are backstory, I feel like it could have been woven in better. However they are in there own works so it's all good.
Ebbots wake (Long)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/7330132/chapters/16649893
Post pacifist in a town where the the discovery of monsters and magic isn’t even in the top 10 most weird things that had happened.
The author has a talent for subtle comedy and slice-of-life writing. But well, slice-of-life isn’t everyone’s favorite thing.
I knew Cauchy (author of Intricate plots) through their work on the HP fanfic Blood Crest which while verbose on the worldbuilding also felt very fresh. Sadly I read it years ago and cant remember much detail about it. Wasn't aware of their previous work.
Huh, I also liked Blood Crest, didn't know it was the same guy.
Here's a pile of recs you may enjoy.
First off, here's an author I've enjoyed the work of, Zarinthel:
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/fallow-fields-naruto-si.113891/#post-26847542
Naruto SI into an older sister of Kakashi, story starts right at the effective end of her field ninja career. She did the usual SI path of trying to become a child prodigy (though even she gets shown up by Kakashi) but then gets horrifically maimed during a mission, and the after effects leave her too disabled for field work, and a good chunk of the early part of the fic is her coming to terms with her new status as a desk ninja, which doesn't carry a lot of respect given the focus of Ninja society. Very good character work, covers a not too often covered time period of Naruto.
https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/andante-worm-oc.124946/#post-29895575
The other fic by Zarinthel might be a bit short at the moment for your preferences, but I also really enjoyed. OC Heartbreaker child comes to brockton bay and starts messing around according to her own personal fucked up moral compass. Sometimes can seem a bit like a Tanya-fic in that the interaction between the OC's morals and the rest of the bay lead to fun misunderstandings.
There's also a third fic by the author called "The Scorpion and the Frog" which doesn't quite rise to the level of recommendation IMO, but if you like the other two, give it a read.
The next two fics are just SIs in other ninja villages, which both have the protagonists acting intelligently in the even more cutthroat politics of Kiri and Iwa and also flesh out those two villages as settings in satisfying ways:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/13788408/chapters/31696218
Kiri, last updated in 2024 but had frequent updates before then.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/44699062/chapters/112463296
Iwa, last updated in March, claims to be a "gamer fic" too, but I think the only evidence of this is the SI having been a gamer fan and trying to recreate various powers from that series via Sealing and Jutsu. Has a fair amount of Chakra theory digressions.
And finally, here's some webcomic recs:
https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/kill-six-billion-demons-chapter-1/
Kill Six Billion Demons, potentially already familiar to you as its first form was as a MSPA forum adventure. Great worldbuilding, designs, very inventive overall. Hard copies of the first few arcs are available at a lot of comic stores via Image Comics. Currently on its final "book", so close to finished.
https://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch01/ch01_01.html
Unsounded, long running fantasy comic with great art, worldbuilding, and characters. It also plays with the webcomic medium in a way I rarely have seen outside Homestuck with pagebreaks, occasional animation, and CSS stuff. The finale of the 18 Chapter main story arc is being published on May 14th so it'll probably by a complete story by the time you finish it.
An issue I find with OC-based Naruto fics is that they're often just trojan horses for the writer's publisher-rejected historical fiction. I don't think it's controversial to say that if I'm reading a Naruto fic I want at least *some* known plot beats and characters to show up and matter. Does Fallow Fields and their other Naruto fics deliver on that?
Andante looks good but yeah I'll wait for a few more chapters, please let me know if it crosses 70k and I still haven't read it.
I read comics/manga on my phone, and K6BD is terrible for that, having to zoom in every single page. That's probably the only reason I haven't picked it up. I remember coding a userscript for mobile Firefox just to be able to read Unicorn Jelly, I will probably bite the bullet when it's finished.
Same issue with Unsounded, except I don't think that one can be fixed. Thanks for the recs!
Fallow Fields I think definitely does deliver on that, there's the older generation of Gai, Kakashi, Minato, Obito, the Sannin, and the canon events leading up to the pre-canon war. I might actually move "The Scorpion and the Frog" up to a tentative recommendation given your preference, since it's a big study of the canon Uchiha during Itachi's era where all the canon characters and events very much do matter even with the OC being there.
The other Kiri and Iwa fics aren't by Zarinthel, and due to being set outside of Konoha and a good bit pre-canon they tend to be working with a lot of OC characters or background characters. Both have the Ninja World Wars hanging over the story and the expected plot beats, and Float like a Stone has a rivalry between the protagonist and a young Minato after the first arc, while the Bloody Oracle of the Mist has a a good amount of Mist characters (Zabuza, Kisame, Mei) plus the Akatsuki for canon characters.
Will do for Andante.
(I also would be interested in hearing which Naruto fics you've read that seem like rejected historical fiction, because that might be up my alley to an extent.)
For Kill Six Billion Demons, the first four volumes are somehow on a couple manga reader type sites (zbato being one) so that might allow you to phone read it up to that point. Unsounded yeah is definitely best experienced on a computer screen just due to its form, given how it started in like 2010 probably hard to avoid unfortunately.
Oh the zarinthiel fics aren't anything like Compass of Thy Soul. They're set around the canon timeline without the intense sort of worldbuilding focus found in compass. They're not my favorite because they felt kinda relentlessly grim in tone.
I'll rec 'The Light of the Forge'
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-light-of-the-forge-rifts-celestial-forge.934831/
Possibly the only actually good Celestial Forge story I've read. Set in the Rifts TTRPG but you don't need any setting knowledge.
Have you checked out Skitterdoc 2077?
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/skitterdoc-2077-worm-cyberpunk-2077-crossover.1052653/reader/
It's Taylor Hebert, in Cyberpunk, with biotinker powers. I like that it goes more into the tabletop lore than the game.
Skitterdoc 2077 is superpopular, but it lost me when the other Taylor shows up and I never got back to it
That's fair, though the other-Taylor parts are short and quite skippable IIRC.
Have you already read Luminosity and its sequel Radiance? I definitely recommend them if not.
https://luminous.elcenia.com/about.shtml
Good attempt, but yep, read Luminosity in full, though I didn't enjoy it enough to move on to the sequel. I do wish Alicorn got back to writing long novels again.
What didn’t you like about it? The first time I read it I was too crushed by the ending to read Radiance, but later I reread it and then kept going and was very glad I did.
I read it when it came out, so my memories might be distorted, but IIRC after the novelty of the main character wore off she was just kind of boring
Radiance actually has a different POV character, if that makes a difference. Bella is still in it some but she’s not the focus.
"what if your ma turned into an iphone" probably would be an improvement lol.
it's too bad that the fast and furious movies are bad-- i feel like "make a fun action movie about cars" should be an extremely easy task
not /exactly/ a rec, but i did just release a new webnovel-- it's 50% epistolary historical fiction about whaling, so probably not exactly in your orbit lol. but it's complete and read-it-in-an-afternoon short (90k words) so, you know, gotta do my self promotional duty 😅 https://archiveofourown.org/works/64915276
Naruto:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/23465968/chapters/56255923
During the fateful mission to the Kannabi Bridge, Obito is too slow, and Kakashi ends up paying the price with his life. Years later, Elite Jonin Mangekyou no Obito is placed in charge of a very familiar genin team, determined to keep them safe in a world at peace.
Or:
Obito surviving wrecks everything, in twenty steps or less.
Complete. This fic has a theme, and great worldbuilding. A commenter starts posting fanart around chapter 40.
The witcher:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/20710799/chapters/49198274
Lambert takes on a quest that pays suspiciously well. Something strange is going on, but will he be able to figure out what?
Complete. No knowledge of the witcher required. More or an allegorical tale than a story, but I enjoy that sort or thing.
Comic books:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/EightBillionGenies
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ComicBook/ThePowerFantasy
Rwby:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/53962522/chapters/136593937
After a series of unexpected circumstances renders Ruby Rose unable to participate in Beacon Academy’s initiation test, she is approached by Headmaster Ozpin with a new offer – to use these circumstances to her advantage and infiltrate the forces of the enemy as a double agent. Before Ruby knows what accepting this truly means, she finds herself swept away in a new world where monsters roam and the thieves and assassins are only the grunts.
But as Ruby’s mission begins to take away more and more from her, questions she (and Ozpin) can’t answer begin to arise. What is this obsession with silver eyes that both sides seem to fixate on? How far will Ruby go to bring back the maiden powers Ozpin tasked her with stealing from under Salem’s nose? And just why was she, little Ruby Rose, accepted so easily by the Queen of the Grimm into her ranks?
Rated M for violence, not horny
Complete. This author’s other work is pretty good.
Mcu:
https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/look-what-you-made-me-do-mcu.1163790/
An MCU fan from our world wakes up in the body of Wanda Maximoff prior to the events of Avengers: Age of Ultron. Resolving not to meet the same fate as the original, she seeks to use her powers and metaknowledge to create a better world, stopping villains ahead of time and saving thousands or millions of lives in the process. However, there are gaps in her knowledge and reality is more fragile and complicated than she expects. Butterfly effects from her actions rapidly start spiraling out of control, setting her in opposition to heroes she'd rather have as allies. The Scarlet Witch is prophesied to either rule the cosmos or annihilate it, and she intends to save this universe... even if she has to drag it kicking and screaming the whole way.
This fic is mainly a tragedy, where although the SI tries to make the world a better place, circumstance and her own failings continue to hinder her. Chapter 33 is the best example of this.
Is the Naruto fic good enough to warrant 800k words? Single point of divergence makes me think it might just follow the stations of canon.
Thanks for the rest, will check out (though the comics might be tricky, since they cost money).
It absolutely does not follow stations of canon. It takes familiar characters, and tells a different kind of story with them. Thats the best thing about it.