What are you reading?

[Anastasia]

100% agreement. It was staggeringly stupid, the sort of stupid that leads to being bald, broke and beaten by the time you're 25.

[Anastasia]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6052381/26/Sleeping_With_The_Girls_Vol_II_Chaos_Theory

An update, if it wasn't obvious.

[Dracos]

Debt of Sword (Gabriel Blessing) wasn't well written.

But it was an amusing and pleasant read.  A simply told story.

[Anastasia]

I read it and thought it was solid. I don't see why it would be considered not well written, though.

[Dracos]

Probably a bad way of putting it.  At least half of it is very rough, by virtue of it being written as forum omakes and then finished up into a story, methinks.

[Anastasia]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/224361/1/

A nice, clever one shot involving Angel and the Screwtape Letters.

[alethiophile]

GB's stuff has a habit of being rough in the technicals, and Debt was worse than usual that way because of its origin. Still wonderful. GB is one of the few writers I'm willing to give a pass on the "don't make idiotic spelling mistakes" rule.

[Anastasia]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8280285/1/The_Dark_Lords_Ascendant

Part 3 of the Dark Lords of Nerima series has begun. This one lost me with the interlude, but I figure some of you might appreciate this more.

[Brian]

Part One was decent, didn't we all :| on Part Two?

[Anastasia]

Yep.

I figure there might be curiosity about it.

[Jason_Miao]

Yep.

I figure there might be curiosity about it.

Who wants to brave finishing part 2, so that they can ascertain whether part 3 is worth the effort of making it through part 2?




This story updated:  http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4545558/1/Five_Kingdoms_for_the_Dead

I posted it before, with a one-line description of this before, saying "...the first four chapters start as a bog-standard Sakura-motivated-to-not-suck, then takes a turn to weirdness at the start of chapter 5." but I should probably say something more than that.

Spoiler: ShowHide

A darkly tinted buildingsroman* + MPD.  The MPD is the basis of the title - the Five Kingdoms correspond to the five personalities, and a general description of the story itself is Sakura advancing as an effective ninja while trying to hide the fact that she's insane.

The original fangirl personality is gone, shattered into darker personalities.  e.g, the first one is Orochimaru.  There are others.  I've seen attempts to do this sort of thing with Naruto+Fox, but it doesn't really work as well because they're usually written as "Rawr, I am being pointlessly and stupidly malevolent" or "I'm really a nice monster, deep down inside.  Me, eat people and rampage?  Base lies" neither of which lends itself to much depth.  This story has some depth.

Downsides - Story is fundamentally wish-fulfillment.  The writer uses the MPD to avoid one-dimensionality of the heroine, and I'm given to understand that the writer revised the earlier chapters to remove the more unreasonable instances of this, but it still wish-fulfillment at its base.  Granted, most people watch anime such as Love Hina anime and actually like it, which is far more blatant, so I doubt most people will really have a problem with this story.

Also, the writer is a self-professed Neji fangirl.  I am not a fangirl of any stripe, so descriptions of him "standing calf deep in the water, long hair dripping and silk armor clinging to lean bodies" isn't really all that compelling.  Given who the main character is, I can't say it's OOC, and the occasional descriptions aren't much longer than what I just wrote, but it's not to my taste.

[Brian]

I was drawn in by the 'Sasaki and Kyon' tags.  They did not appear anywhere in this fic:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8286715/1/The_Forgotten_One

Neither did Haruhi.  It appeared to be a story about some original characters who happen to share names.

Oh, well.

[Anastasia]

http://addventure.bast-enterprises.de/255303.html

DK:A updated.

Ami status: One again megascrewed. Should be awesome to see how she gets out of this one.

[Arakawa]

Ami status: One again megascrewed. Should be awesome to see how she gets out of this one.

For following DK:A I've adopted the rule of thumb that she's not megascrewed unless the summary page (http://addventure.bast-enterprises.de/frecent.php?tag=Dungeon+Keeper+Ami) is tagged 'Dark' (the episodes with a black square next to them). You'll notice Catastrophic Failure (the one which could easily have been titled

Spoiler: ShowHide

Incredible Badass Pyromania

) wasn't tagged that way, and neither is this one. It's mostly banter like this:

Spoiler: ShowHide

"Do I look like a native of the dark god's realm who has taken on a physical shape to you?" Tiger asked back.

"Yes. No. Maybe?" The blonde rubbed the back of her head. "You've got horns."

"So do cows!" Tiger crossed her arms.

On the other hand, some of the options for the next chapter sound horrible. Throwing in Kunzite on top of everything falling down around Ami's ears would get very messy...

[Anastasia]

On the other hand, some of the options for the next chapter sound horrible. Throwing in Kunzite on top of everything falling down around Ami's ears would get very messy...

I dunno. It could be, but I have the feeling either the Light Gods or Metallia is going to manipulate Kunzite's attack. Ami has enough enemies going for her already, you know? I figure the author will get more out of Kunzite than merely using him to attack Ami.