What are you reading?

[thepanda]

Tried reading http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7832146/4/Swapping-The-Cage.

Writing is fine but it's actually pretty bad in concept.  SuperNaruto replaces Naruto.  He's a smug jerk who's super capable and looks down on all of Konoha.  Possibly part fox monster, who knows who cares.

Basically the core flaw is Konoha mostly comes off as incompetent bumbling fools save for Danzo, Root, etc

Super!Naruto is from one of the author's other fics. Not that it changes anything you said.

[alethiophile]

Yeah, the other fic is one where Naruto dies when he's sealed, and his body starts being run by the Kyuubi. I tried reading that, but found it...bleah.

[Altes]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7632419/1/Two-Birds

A Teen Titans/Young Justice crossover, where TT literally travel to the alternate reality where YJ dwell to catch a number of their escaped criminals. I'm 11 chapters through, and I love the author's writing style so far. The only huge flaw I can see is that the story hasn't been updated for 9 months. A shame; still, it's worth reading.

[Dracos]

Some guy was rambling on Gabe's new fic, Monsters of the Wilds.  Based on some Manwa and a porn game he really likes.

I looked at it.

I kind of regret.  It's pretty bad.  Super-short chapters, korean style naming (Song Jong "Jowy" Su) and honorifics, a lot of short concept type scenes strung together that lack impact.  Visual humor that has some trouble working due to pacing and description.  The main character seems to not do much actively and more has contradictory descriptions.

Borderline mysoginst and in active relationship with 5 women as the passive passed around dude and house-husband doesn't click well.

[Empyrean]

Some guy was rambling on Gabe's new fic, Monsters of the Wilds.  Based on some Manwa and a porn game he really likes.

I looked at it.

I kind of regret.  It's pretty bad.  Super-short chapters, korean style naming (Song Jong "Jowy" Su) and honorifics, a lot of short concept type scenes strung together that lack impact.  Visual humor that has some trouble working due to pacing and description.  The main character seems to not do much actively and more has contradictory descriptions.

Borderline mysoginst and in active relationship with 5 women as the passive passed around dude and house-husband doesn't click well.

If you don't like stories where characters have Korean names it's not a good idea to read crossovers based on Korean webcomics. They often have Koreans in them, with their attendant naming schemes and tangled mess of honorifics (which GB evidently is handling badly, but Korean honorifics always looks like a train wreck to me). The rest of it's mostly just about how he would write the various non-human characters from Monmusu Quest as humans, with a chapter dedicated to each of them. If you're not familiar with the source material (reading Shirou Emiya: Erogame Protagonist is sufficient) there's really nothing else in this story so far.

I started Path of the King today, which Anastasia linked a few days ago. I'm eight chapters in. The story is interesting but writing leaves a lot to be desired. The author isn't a native English speaker and it shows. Their notes mention getting a beta reader, so we'll see how much of a difference that makes in later chapters. It's good to see Shirou, who is supposedly obsessed with being a hero, being a little proactive in that regard. It's also a change of pace because it takes place (so far) a little bit before the Fifth Grail War, but I guess that comes around eventually.

[Dracos]

I actually had read Erogame Protagonist and think it's a better fic.  From it and others I know who the characters he's using are.  I just still think it's not well done.  It spends far more time on characters and scenes, so the scenes have more impact.  Here it feels like a non-stop set of intro episodes that don't even have the characters (Aside from Alice) do much of anything.    "Here's your requisite 10 paragraphs.  You're introduced.  Now moving on."  "Wait, don't I get to do anything besides have sex with the main and comment on his bruise?"  "No."

More the other side of things feels poorly introduced.  There's 4 named characters, and except for Moon and Queen, they've all basically gotten 1-2 walkon 'Okay, tell a joke' type scenes.  I can sort of see what's going on, but again, it lacks impact.  For light fast moving scenes, 12 characters is a lot and its resulting in all of them getting just a bit more than: Haircolor, outfit, emotional tick, background summary, go.

I would've probably just passed on it, but it got praised strongly, so I took a look, and was super short, so that look finished the fic as present.  Gabe's done fics with this kind of style well before, this just isn't one of them.

[Anastasia]

I started Path of the King today, which Anastasia linked a few days ago. I'm eight chapters in. The story is interesting but writing leaves a lot to be desired. The author isn't a native English speaker and it shows. Their notes mention getting a beta reader, so we'll see how much of a difference that makes in later chapters. It's good to see Shirou, who is supposedly obsessed with being a hero, being a little proactive in that regard. It's also a change of pace because it takes place (so far) a little bit before the Fifth Grail War, but I guess that comes around eventually.

It picks up once he gets a beta reader, yeah. It gets better as the author's English improves and he gets deeper into the meat of the story. You should know if the story's for you by about chapter 14-16.

Incidentally, the author's mentioned a desire to fix up the early chapters. It's a low priority, but he plans to do it someday.

[Dracos]

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7485060/1/Game-Theory

Been reading this.  The writing is good and I get the concept, but I'm still early and it pretty much seems to be walking around people being miserable and keeping themselves so.  Fate isn't happy.  Arf isn't happy.  Nanoha is beaten repeatedly and very not happy and somewhat isolated.  Both her friends are really not happy.  Her parents and family are not all that happy either.

And it's raising the competence level of the group that already had most the power.  In theory the payoff might be really neat, but its hard to read where it is where pretty much nobody is happy and the villains of the piece are steadily and effectively moving into position to have no lose conditions without deus ex machina (Power, Skill, Information, Positioning, Numbers... they basically are trumping on all fronts right now).

I'll probably go a bit further, and hope it starts upturning, but if not, it will have exhausted my ability to sit through all the characters being both unhappy and isolated.

[Jason_Miao]

Here it feels like a non-stop set of intro episodes that don't even have the characters (Aside from Alice) do much of anything.    "Here's your requisite 10 paragraphs.  You're introduced.  Now moving on."  "Wait, don't I get to do anything besides have sex with the main and comment on his bruise?"  "No."

This is explainable, because the fic is still covering the intro chapters to Girls of Wild where they introduce people, and you're running into the limitation that it's a fanfic.  It's the same thing that one tended to run across in Ranma fanfics - If you write out the whole scene where Ranma is introduced, the people who know the source get bored because it's 99% the same.  If you don't, then people who are new to the series may get lost ("Why is Ranma suddenly a girl?  Why is he affianced to someone who hits him?")

That said, I also am not a fan of this fic (I hadn't heard anyone gushing about it, but I'll take your word that those people exist).  It's not so much the series that he's combining; even though I didn't like GoW and I've never played the Alice hentai game, I've read other fics of his where he crosses series I disliked and ended up liking those stories quite a bit anyway.  But in this crossover, I'm not sure what the hentai game is supposed to bring to the table that makes GoW different.

GoW is already a "harem" story, and it already has combat-obsessed women.  There's a few differences between the protagonist of GoW and this one, but nothing really dramatic or interesting enough to carry a story, especially when it's the same protagonist.  "What if the protagonist was a vampire?" brings immediate and striking differences to Kenchi, even without the background of abandoned friends.  "What is the protagonist wasn't worthless at combat?" has dramatic differences in Sekirei, even without magic and swords per se.  "What if the male lead of a harem anime already had a harem?" is not so different.

[Empyrean]

I was the person rambling about it. Not gushing, since I think there are a lot of better stories out there, but there are a few things that make it interesting that I think are being missed here.

That said, I also am not a fan of this fic (I hadn't heard anyone gushing about it, but I'll take your word that those people exist).  It's not so much the series that he's combining; even though I didn't like GoW and I've never played the Alice hentai game, I've read other fics of his where he crosses series I disliked and ended up liking those stories quite a bit anyway.  But in this crossover, I'm not sure what the hentai game is supposed to bring to the table that makes GoW different.

This fic has a fully anthropomorphic take on the characters from the game. Erubite, for example, was originally a slime monster. Alice was a lamia, and so forth. In this fic, they are just humans.

The changes GotW in two ways. First of all, the male lead in GotW knows nothing about combat and doesn't handle women well at all, while adding the MMQ girls into the mix a few years before the main events of the fic changes that. The second big change is how it upsets the balance of power in the GotW setting. In GotW, nobody outside the school is worth a damn. A handful of schoolgirls curbstomp dozens of yakuza, and the latest arc has them throw the yakuza boss to the male lead, who they have been training for about a month, with every expectation that he'll win. In MotW, we have five characters outside of the school who are all depicted as total badasses, aside from the male lead whose combat capability hasn't been explored yet aside from a few hints that he's quite capable.

GoW is already a "harem" story, and it already has combat-obsessed women.  There's a few differences between the protagonist of GoW and this one, but nothing really dramatic or interesting enough to carry a story, especially when it's the same protagonist.  "What if the protagonist was a vampire?" brings immediate and striking differences to Kenchi, even without the background of abandoned friends.  "What is the protagonist wasn't worthless at combat?" has dramatic differences in Sekirei, even without magic and swords per se.  "What if the male lead of a harem anime already had a harem?" is not so different.

It's interesting that these are the examples you chose of dramatic differences, because the question of "What if X wasn't worthless at combat" applies to both the protagonist, and to a few other people outside of GotW's original narrow competence zone. The difference isn't really that he has a harem, it's that there are combat capable characters outside of the school, with the protagonist among them. Since GB has stated that he wants to write a big martial arts tournament fic, these are pretty substantial changes from the original GotW.

[Anastasia]

Speaking of Game Theory: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/9059345/1/Of-The-Stars

From the same author. It's a take on Sailor Moon, based on updating it and a few various media sources. It's basically Sailor Moon+1 and I'm enjoying it so far. It's deeper and has a deft touch so far.

[alethiophile]

Game Theory does get somewhat better on the everyone-is-miserable front, but it remains somewhat grim throughout. This until the very end, where you get a payoff so astounding as to erase previous impressions entirely. It's very much worth it, IMO.

[Jason_Miao]

I was the person rambling about it. Not gushing, since I think there are a lot of better stories out there, but there are a few things that make it interesting that I think are being missed here.

It seems like you've stuck with GoW further than I did (I stopped reading at the chapter where they're all visiting his house).  So maybe you're seeing some angles that I'm not, since I stopped reading fairly early on. 

That said, there's a reason why I am generally not a fan of xovers with these sorts of differences you've pointed out.  These usually get articulated in story-specific threads or over IRC when discussing xovers in general, so I don't usually go into them here.

This fic has a fully anthropomorphic take on the characters from the game. Erubite, for example, was originally a slime monster. Alice was a lamia, and so forth. In this fic, they are just humans.

So the change is "What if, in GoW, a fic that deals with strongly-powered human girls had more strongly-powered human girls?"  I'd think that if GB hadn't changed the new characters from monsters, it would have had a sharper impact.

The changes GotW in two ways. First of all, the male lead in GotW knows nothing about combat and doesn't handle women well at all, while adding the MMQ girls into the mix a few years before the main events of the fic changes that.

In the past, when countless Ranma 1/2 xovers were being posted, one of the first questions I always asked was "What quality does making this a Ranma xover add to the story?"  There are many distinctive points of the Ranma cast (aqua-triggered-transexuality, absurd martial arts techniques, or the particular ridiculous characterization) which would work.  The answer, most of the time, was "protagonist now knows martial arts" to which my reply was "the writer didn't need to try writing a crossover with a series with all its attendant baggage just to introduce that factor."

In the same vein, MoW has this change over GoW.  But, as I mention below, it's not really that big of a change (yet) and I have the same concerns as for the generic Ranma xovers.

The second big change is how it upsets the balance of power in the GotW setting. In GotW, nobody outside the school is worth a damn. A handful of schoolgirls curbstomp dozens of yakuza, and the latest arc has them throw the yakuza boss to the male lead, who they have been training for about a month, with every expectation that he'll win.

And my memory of GoW is that the school trains fighting champions, so that makes sense.

In MotW, we have five characters outside of the school who are all depicted as total badasses, aside from the male lead whose combat capability hasn't been explored yet aside from a few hints that he's quite capable.

After 3 chapters, they're depicted as total badasses.  Combat capability hasn't been explored.

IMO, that's not a striking difference.

It's interesting that these are the examples you chose of dramatic differences, because the question of "What if X wasn't worthless at combat" applies to both the protagonist, and to a few other people outside of GotW's original narrow competence zone.  The difference isn't really that he has a harem, it's that there are combat capable characters outside of the school, with the protagonist among them.

Running with that:
IF: "What if a harem manga that involves fighting replaces naive character with a bloodthirsty and ruthless vet?"
MotW:"What if a fighting manga brings in naive character with a person of at undetermined fighting skill (who still isn't fighting all that much)?"

In execution, IF makes a dramatic difference over their source manga (compare chapters 1 and 2 of the fic with the intro-chapters of Sekirei).  It doesn't have to add flash to be different; Don't Look takes Shinji's introduction in Eva, and replaces an exploding tac-nuke equivalent with a gradually revealed horror.

Again, I'm not sure what MMQ, in particular, brings to the table that makes MotW different from GoW.  The protagonist does a bit of dodging in chapter 1 (which indicates at least some skill), but still meets Queen, still works at that carwash job, still needs money for his siblings, etc, etc.  That's not to say that one can't write a successful story that tracks the plot events of the original series (e.g most of the way through, IF tracks events in Sekirei at a high level) but something about the story has to be vastly different (e.g, IF ends up with Shirou using his own past experiences with cold-hearted mages and such to better understand some situations, and to completely misunderstand other situations - which leads to very different ways that some scenes played out). 

Anyway, if you're enjoying the story, don't let me dissuade you from reading it.  I just didn't want you to get the impression that I'm panning something you like without any reason behind it.

[Brian]

A Naruto fic in which a younger Naruto and Sasuke are identified as loner-type orphans and common sense kicks in (one of my favorite seeds for a Naruto fic, actually): They're put together to watch out for one-anothers immediately after the Uchiha Massacre.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5817309/1/Brother

It has had a recent update, but I believe it is (or will shortly become) abandoned.  There is one element which I didn't particularly like:

Spoiler: ShowHide

And it's not that Sakura joins Sasuke and Naruto as a tutor, it's that it's so ham-handed and feels freaking forced.  Naruto's supposed to have had a crush on Sakura forever, so him instigating it instead of it being sprung on him would have at least felt more natural.

Other than that, while not great, was pretty enjoyable.

[Dracos]

Read a bit of Fly Free, a fic with an interesting premise and terrible first-fic style execution.  Robin from One Piece gets knocked over to Naruto-verse pre-genin exam.  Seems neat, since there's a lot of potential understanding for her and Naruto and her and Sasuke.

Sadly, there's just constant ham-fisted explanation of One Piece factoids, delivered with all the feeling of someone reading them out of a stat book and not believing it or having thought about it.  Robin isn't Robin.  She has all the subtlety and caution of a rock, when being quietly aloof and distrustful of new groups is one of her standbys.  Giving her a 'I can see into other dimensions power' is just really an awkward thing altogether.

Not linking cuz not good.

Trying out a naruto/fairytail crossover now.  I'll yammer on it later.