Mea culpa in advance for the self shill, but you're the only person I know of who might consider seriously reviewing a million word long gay milSF anime fanfic, so I feel obligated to shoot my shot when you ask for recs 😅
You should read *A Wheel Inside a Wheel*. It's a *Legend of the Galactic Heroes* roleswap AU fanfic. Fair warning that it's heavy on character drama-- it's a very operatic space opera lol-- but it's also very much about court politics and military movements. I have no idea if you'll like it, but I was inspired as an author by many of the things on the shills list, so maybe you will. It's not ratfic, but it's at least a bit ratfic-adj haha.
[It's also on SV, but the SV thread doesn't have all the meta content]
Self shill over 😅. I recently-ish discovered yoyr blog and really appreciate it. Thank you for taking webfic/art seriously as art-- god knows basically no one else is
Thanks for the reviews, I had read Foreach and give it a tentative recommendation, though it does feel like a step back in time in a lot of ways. I read the Columbo one and it was great.
This might be what finally gets me to read Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, but I've held off for this long.
"I’ve only read xianxia/cultivation “deconstructions”, so I’m the worst person to define this."
I will take this as an opportunity to recommend Will Wight's Cradle series, which I think is a cultivation story played straight... though admittedly I haven't really read other cultivation stories either. But: given my limited understanding of the usual tropes, it seems to have them? And to play them straight? It also adds a dash of sci-fi, which I gather isn't typical for cultivation, but a dash of sci-fi makes any fantasy story better imo.
Anyway, it's very good. Not, like, great literature good, but very entertaining, well-plotted, lots of action, writing is smooth and goes down easy, characters that are almost 3 dimensional and/or actually hilarious. Definitely worth the read.
"I’m just seething that there hasn’t been a good Ace Attorney game in a long time, and I just wanted to read something like it"
This probably won't fully scratch the itch, but in case you missed it, the author of Unsong wrote a book review of an ancient Icelandic saga that includes a re-subbed Ace Attorney segment that is very entertaining: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-njals-saga
Cradle is probably my type of thing, I agree, even though it's definitely another decon/reconstruction from what I've heard, it'd have to be since the base genre is pretty much a collection of bad storytelling decisions.
However, there's so much high quality fiction available on the Internet for *free*... I know Cradle is often partially free as a promotional tactic (as I keep being reminded by Cradle fans), but the last book is always paid, and my backlog of non-paid works is huge.
And yeah, I sadly already subscribe to ACX, so I've read that review. Thanks for trying, though!
Mea culpa in advance for the self shill, but you're the only person I know of who might consider seriously reviewing a million word long gay milSF anime fanfic, so I feel obligated to shoot my shot when you ask for recs 😅
You should read *A Wheel Inside a Wheel*. It's a *Legend of the Galactic Heroes* roleswap AU fanfic. Fair warning that it's heavy on character drama-- it's a very operatic space opera lol-- but it's also very much about court politics and military movements. I have no idea if you'll like it, but I was inspired as an author by many of the things on the shills list, so maybe you will. It's not ratfic, but it's at least a bit ratfic-adj haha.
Obligatory link
https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650067
[It's also on SV, but the SV thread doesn't have all the meta content]
Self shill over 😅. I recently-ish discovered yoyr blog and really appreciate it. Thank you for taking webfic/art seriously as art-- god knows basically no one else is
Legend of the Galactic Heroes has been on my backlog for a long time, but I will remember to check your fic out when I finally watch it.
Thanks for the reviews, I had read Foreach and give it a tentative recommendation, though it does feel like a step back in time in a lot of ways. I read the Columbo one and it was great.
This might be what finally gets me to read Reach Heaven Via Feng Shui Engineering, but I've held off for this long.
"I’ve only read xianxia/cultivation “deconstructions”, so I’m the worst person to define this."
I will take this as an opportunity to recommend Will Wight's Cradle series, which I think is a cultivation story played straight... though admittedly I haven't really read other cultivation stories either. But: given my limited understanding of the usual tropes, it seems to have them? And to play them straight? It also adds a dash of sci-fi, which I gather isn't typical for cultivation, but a dash of sci-fi makes any fantasy story better imo.
Anyway, it's very good. Not, like, great literature good, but very entertaining, well-plotted, lots of action, writing is smooth and goes down easy, characters that are almost 3 dimensional and/or actually hilarious. Definitely worth the read.
"I’m just seething that there hasn’t been a good Ace Attorney game in a long time, and I just wanted to read something like it"
This probably won't fully scratch the itch, but in case you missed it, the author of Unsong wrote a book review of an ancient Icelandic saga that includes a re-subbed Ace Attorney segment that is very entertaining: https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-njals-saga
Cradle is probably my type of thing, I agree, even though it's definitely another decon/reconstruction from what I've heard, it'd have to be since the base genre is pretty much a collection of bad storytelling decisions.
However, there's so much high quality fiction available on the Internet for *free*... I know Cradle is often partially free as a promotional tactic (as I keep being reminded by Cradle fans), but the last book is always paid, and my backlog of non-paid works is huge.
And yeah, I sadly already subscribe to ACX, so I've read that review. Thanks for trying, though!