Fanfiction Recs

[Azrael]

sorry for the sudden message, still getting used to his site. is there a thread anyone has made specifically fgo for yuri ships?

if anyone knows a thread for it, appreciate. idk if anyone has posted a recent thread for yuri specificity if anyone ever does, i'd like to see that

[Orange]

sorry for the sudden message, still getting used to his site. is there a thread anyone has made specifically fgo for yuri ships?

if anyone knows a thread for it, appreciate. idk if anyone has posted a recent thread for yuri specificity if anyone ever does, i'd like to see that

I'm pretty sure that doesn't exist. You'll have to manually find it if you want to. Also im pretty sure there aren't many F/GO stories in this particular forum because the fanfic section in general is much less active than it used to be.

[warellis]

I've been enjoying a Yu Yu Hakusho x Fate/Grand Order crossover called The Uncertain Case of Yusuke Urameshi, where he runs into a certain oni named Shuten Douji, and has to figure just how the heck had she escaped from the Spirit Realm where she supposedly was locked up.

[Leftovers]

Moshi moshi, recommendation time.

I've spent an unreasonable amount of dead time browsing fanfic archives outside of BL in search of fics whose mere sight doesn't make my eyes puke, and while the results aren't encouraging for this FGO-infested, SI-riddled, OC-plagued fandom it's entirely probable that character biases and aversion to dumb-looking crossovers have let the proverbial Good Stuff slip past my radar. So, what TM fanfics have you read and enjoyed recently (so like, in the past year or so) and on what merits would you recommend them?

My recs are eraserheadbaby's TM fics, on account of not only being tentative shipfics with actual consideration to the characters' personalities and the nuance of their relationship, but also for having an eye and a deft descriptive flair for the unsavoury and squicky elements found in the violence and sex of the VNs and making use of them as the vitally important vehicles of character exploration that they, at the best of times, are. The way these themes are used as well as certain details which trace their roots to lines from the original works demonstrate an understanding of them that is rare enough to find in these trying times. It doesn't quite feel right to call them shipfics rather than interpersonally framed character pieces, but if I called them that no one would read them, and that would be a shame indeed.

To wit:
matryoshka - Shiki, Kohaku, Akiha, fantastic character sketch giving rise to belated regrets that Tsukihime didn't explore such a dynamic between those three.
ελεημοσύνη - Kotomine, Sakura, worms, and the surprising number of times I thought 'goddamn now that's a great way to put it' in the span of 800 words.
regeneration - Arcueid, apartment, 17 pieces, reminding you that the conflation of murder and sexual desire had a point beyond epic rape jokes.
on keeping promises and building coffins - Scathach, Cu Chulainn, death, a classic winning recipe.
chasing crows - Atalanta, Achilles, harking back to myth, I can't say it made me care more about Apocrypha or the cat but this does feel like Atalanta and not a cat which is good enough for me.

I genuinely can't think of anything else to recommend? Maybe hideously beautiful white ____ but reading it brought on thoughts like "I can't believe this is a thing that was written" veering into "What is even going on" rather than "this is good", so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Mattias]

Super short, but pretty good. They need better descriptions though, not flavour text. Really liked the Arc one.

[Leftovers]

Being super short, I reckon any more description would detract from the experience of reading them.

[Imperial]

I've only read the Cu and Scathach one so far, and I've got to say this is the good shit.

Thanks, Leftovers

Just when I thought this fandom was consigned to crappy self-inserts about authors going on FGO road trips with their battle harems or people writing Shirou like he's the Punisher, you served up something great.

[Leftovers]

yw but I can't be the only person here with a rec‽

[Dragolord09]

I think I'll try this rec one more time:

Fate Genesis by Cybertoy00 While fighting against Dr. Eggman, Sonic and the gang are transported to Fuyuki at the beginning of the 5th Heaven's Feel. A Chaos factor like no other has been introduced to the Holy Grail War, and Masters and Servants alike find their plans blown away by a sonic boom!

As to why I recommend it, I think it's got a decent pace to it when reading, doesn't seem to be as inane as some of the other fics out there, and honestly gave me a few chuckles here and there.

[Leftovers]

From the first two chapters it seems above the expected readability of a Sonic fanfic but all the same like what I'd expect one to be in regards to how it interacts with the other side of the crossover. Can't say it's my cup of tea but a grasp of how to structure prose and some ideas about how to shake up the premise are more than most Fate/ xovers can offer.

[SpoonyViking]

Just when I thought this fandom was consigned to crappy self-inserts about authors going on FGO road trips with their battle harems or people writing Shirou like he's the Punisher, you served up something great.

Haven't you been keeping up with the forum's contests?

[Mattias]

yw but I can't be the only person here with a rec‽

Most of the ones I read tend to be crossovers, so if you like Worm, here's a few:

Thaumaturgic Awakening: post-UBW good End. Rin's Harem get taped to find out why people with superpowers are springup out of nowhere and why the Counter Force is putting them down with extreme prejudice.

Spinning the Gacha: Crack fic where Taylor gets the ability to literally burn money to summon heroes, and goes full Learning with FGO. Includes hunting for summer/bride special servants, slightly different versions of the same character at highest rarity to allow for max whaling, and feeding a low tier twenty identical copies of itself to grow stronger. All Worm-verse heroes though so prior knowledge is a must.

Worm Grand Order: A serious take on the above. Taylor gets isekai'd to the start of FGO instead of getting superpowers, and returns when they find her homeworld as a Epic of Remnant. Curbstomps ensue, because what's a sea monster going to do that can top Tiamat? Chapter three is a bit of a slog since it's giving quick character flavour to all the servants, but there's almost 200 at this point so it fucking drags.

[Silva]

I've been enjoying a Yu Yu Hakusho x Fate/Grand Order crossover called The Uncertain Case of Yusuke Urameshi, where he runs into a certain oni named Shuten Douji, and has to figure just how the heck had she escaped from the Spirit Realm where she supposedly was locked up.

I would second this. The quality of the writing is good, the the melding of the setting is well done. It's also one of two fics that include Ibaraki Douji in a meaningful capacity beyond cameos or status as a minor reoccurring character. Specifically, in an interlude which shows a still-living Ibaraki living in the modern day, with fairly heavy hinting that she'll be important later on.

The other being A Poisoned Chalice on Sufficient Velocity and fanfiction.net. The premise of it is that the catalyst system was never implemented, so the Grail summons servants based on compatibility with the master. Because I have something of a one-track mind, I'll just comment on the part that got my attention. It portrays Ibaraki Douji within a serious context, while still giving nods to her more human aspects we get to see in F:GO, such as her distaste for human flesh being hinted at (though, it can also just be thought to be her preference for sweets, but given Shuten did say she doesn't like it and her materials say she doesn't enjoy the act of killing and consuming people in and of itself...), but her complete willingness to partake in it as needs be. Other notable features include Kerry summoning Hassan of Serenity, Kariya ending up with Atalanta (and being much more stable because of it), and Kayneth summoning D'eon.

As a side note, when I said those were the only fics with Ibaraki as a major character, I do mean that literally. I trawled through the whole archive on fanfiction and found nothing else of value at all. So if anyone has anything to recommend in that area...that'd be really appreciated.

[Zork Knight]

The other being A Poisoned Chalice on Sufficient Velocity and fanfiction.net. The premise of it is that the catalyst system was never implemented, so the Grail summons servants based on compatibility with the master. Because I have something of a one-track mind, I'll just comment on the part that got my attention. It portrays Ibaraki Douji within a serious context, while still giving nods to her more human aspects we get to see in F:GO, such as her distaste for human flesh being hinted at (though, it can also just be thought to be her preference for sweets, but given Shuten did say she doesn't like it and her materials say she doesn't enjoy the act of killing and consuming people in and of itself...), but her complete willingness to partake in it as needs be. Other notable features include Kerry summoning Hassan of Serenity, Kariya ending up with Atalanta (and being much more stable because of it), and Kayneth summoning D'eon.

This made me realise just how much easier it is to get into a fanfic where you already know all the characters and what they're doing, just that circumstances have changed.

[Prix with a Silent X]

Update on the project of re-doing/re-organizing/updating the previous thread's rec contents:

I finally worked on it again for a while. I got down to Steel and Cherry Blossoms by Elf, for my own reference and for anyone keeping track.

It feels like doing a post-mortem of a bygone era when people actually engaged with fandom rather than everything being a drive-by argument.

I read somewhere the other day that maybe one reason the experience of being in fandom has changed is the change from media tending to release gradually over a period of weeks or months to a model that drops whole series at one time on streaming services. And yet, I don't know how much that applies to western Japanese media fandom except when the content is simultaneously subbed/dubbed. Anyway, this is largely irrelevant unless some of you want to comment.

I have no idea if this project will ever get finished, especially given the sort of sad unraveling feeling it gives me, but I am going to make my best effort to do it as a sort of sad love letter to something that once was that I hardly met at all. An apology to the lack of appreciation and the lack of apprehension that these reviews had that someday it's all gone.

Keep reccing on this thread in the meantime, though. You yougins are all that's left.

[SpoonyViking]

This made me realise just how much easier it is to get into a fanfic where you already know all the characters and what they're doing, just that circumstances have changed.

That's the main appeal to writing fanfic in general, I'd say: it's usually much easier to write because a lot of the work has already been done by the original work. Like, I can write a fic about, I don't know, Shirou and Rin breaking up five years after UBW, and all of the groundwork - who are these people, how did they meet, why did they fall in love, etc. - has already been covered, leaving me free to just tackle the break-up in itself.

[Mattias]

I actually ran into a fic this last week that didn't do that. Had a small exposition dump every time a new character or organization showed up, and not just a normal "here's what person/place/thing looks like to MC" one, but going on tangents that aren't currently relevent to the story but are presented in the original text. It was sort of frustrating. Especially given that it wasn't a crossover fic, so why would you be reading a fanfic if you didn't already know what these things are?

[neveron]

There's some value in explaining preexisting things if you're going into the less mainstream bits of the media (say you're introducing Zouken in a pre-Heaven's Feel movie world), but most of the time excessive exposition is just them being a subpar fanfic writer. Maybe they're more used to original works where some amount of introductory character description is necessary, maybe they're raised on a diet of bad fanfic, maybe they're more used to crossover fics where that stuff is useful for fans of the other half of the crossover, whatever.

There's also some value in establishing what the protagonist feels about characters if the protagonist is a non-standard one, I guess? For example, we've already been inside Shirou's head - but what does Issei think when he meets Lancer down at the fish market? This requires the protagonist to not just be the default one, though, and you should still keep the description to a handful of sentences and probably less focused on appearance (which we already know) than attitude and mannerisms.

Having a preset table on which you can present what-if scenarios is definitely the appeal of fanfic and fanworks in general, yeah. You like thing, so you want more thing. If there's not enough thing, you make more thing.

[DrProphet]

Update on the project of re-doing/re-organizing/updating the previous thread's rec contents:

I finally worked on it again for a while. I got down to Steel and Cherry Blossoms by Elf, for my own reference and for anyone keeping track.

It feels like doing a post-mortem of a bygone era when people actually engaged with fandom rather than everything being a drive-by argument.

I read somewhere the other day that maybe one reason the experience of being in fandom has changed is the change from media tending to release gradually over a period of weeks or months to a model that drops whole series at one time on streaming services. And yet, I don't know how much that applies to western Japanese media fandom except when the content is simultaneously subbed/dubbed. Anyway, this is largely irrelevant unless some of you want to comment.

I have no idea if this project will ever get finished, especially given the sort of sad unraveling feeling it gives me, but I am going to make my best effort to do it as a sort of sad love letter to something that once was that I hardly met at all. An apology to the lack of appreciation and the lack of apprehension that these reviews had that someday it's all gone.

Keep reccing on this thread in the meantime, though. You yougins are all that's left.

It feels weird for me, being new here. Because I sort of feel the same way. I've mostly just been going around, reading threads to try to get a feel for things. Seeing so many old threads full of replies, and how little there is now... It's a weird feeling. I really fell in love with the Nasuverse, especially Fate/Stay Night as a setting, but it feels kind of late. "Bygone era" is really apt, to be honest. It's an odd feeling.

[The Name of Love]

To be honest, I'm just surprised this website's still up and running after all these years.