What are you reading?

[Dracos]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8601250/1/A-Dead-World has updated.  Cain and Alex continue to try and survive the sierra madre.

I'm absolutely in love with this author's prose. She's got a way with words that can really put you in a character's shoes. The last few chapters have been real gems.

Aye that.  The writing is really great.

[Dracos]

Caught up on: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8501689/1/The-Havoc-side-of-the-Force but more relevantly on https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8594589/1/The-Unsuspecting-side-of-the-Force

The first is Harry Potter, International Bounty Hunter thrown into Star Wars land.  It's amusing in a sort of chaotic super-spy fashion.

The other side though is the reactions of folks.  People trying to put pieces together.  "Why is he doing this?"   It also sometimes covers things that happen, good or bad, that he doesn't have perspective on.  Like "Why is the target already knocked out here?"

[Arakawa]

The first is Harry Potter, International Bounty Hunter thrown into Star Wars land.  It's amusing in a sort of chaotic super-spy fashion.

Reminds me of Stainless Steel Rat:

• Go to planet.
• Big heist with huge collateral damage.
• Bureaucrats heads asplode.
• Repeat until no more planets to heist.

[Arakawa]

Also, HK-47 is basically like the Horned Reaper in DK:A, only with more intelligence and wit. Must give him stuff to kill or he goes stir crazy.

[Anastasia]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/ring-maker-worm-lord-of-the-rings-alt-power.517894/

Ring Maker continues on. I find it narratively unsatisfying at this point, for all I still think it does some neat things.

[spoiler]The Amy vs the Resistance battle really felt unsatisfying with the established characters there. It was like one of those can't win boss battles in an RPG, one of the ones that doesn't feel right and isn't properly executed or supported by the plot.

I do like that it's willing to take some of the characters seen the most favorably in the fandom (Dragon, Amy, the Brockton Bay Wards) and cast them in a slowly more negative and corrupted light. It's just that the overall frame and set up of the story leaves me

[Jason_Miao]

Death Mage who doesn't want to die a 4th time.  https://lightnovelbastion.com/project.php?p=248

Japanese LN which adheres to the protagonist being an antihero a little more faithfully than most Japanese LNs do.  Has RPG-like mechanics, and some light nation-building

Of note: has undead/monster harem theme to it - it's not the defining trait of the series (such as, for example, Shield-Hero's furry harem), but ever present.

[Dracos]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/i-woke-up-as-a-dungeon-now-what-dungeon-worm.620521/

https://royalroadl.com/fiction/15935/there-is-no-epic-loot-here-only-puns

There have been updates of both.

and I think of other things.

[Anastasia]

http://fubarfics.fubarinc.com/cc/index.html

Reread this. It's an decent Sailor Moon/Ranma crossover.

[spoiler]If you're going to pull the Ranma cast can keep up with the SM cast gambit, one way to sell it is by having them be a generation older than the senshi. That part holds up pretty well, along with the general wackiness of things at times. The story still has some flaws - the final attack on the Dark Kingdom really comes to mind here - but it's an enjoyable romp.

[Yuthirin]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/ring-maker-worm-lord-of-the-rings-alt-power.517894/

Ring Maker continues on. I find it narratively unsatisfying at this point, for all I still think it does some neat things.

Spoiler: ShowHide

The Amy vs the Resistance battle really felt unsatisfying with the established characters there. It was like one of those can't win boss battles in an RPG, one of the ones that doesn't feel right and isn't properly executed or supported by the plot.

I do like that it's willing to take some of the characters seen the most favorably in the fandom (Dragon, Amy, the Brockton Bay Wards) and cast them in a slowly more negative and corrupted light. It's just that the overall frame and set up of the story leaves me
[/quote][spoiler]I really couldn't get around how the author felt the need to change the Wards with the rings. It made the story MORE wooden, if anything. I just can't stomach it. Great premise, horrible execution.

[Anastasia]

[spoiler]

I think Ring-Maker is a case of good concepts, interesting ideas and lacking execution. On paper I like a lot of what he's done, but it isn't really working out well. On the subject of the Wards - on the rare occasional a power up fic actually gives out power boosts to anyone but Taylor/the SI/OC, you'd expect those changes to be a big deal. For all the rings are narratively important, it doesn't feel like it's quite fulfilled that for them. Sure, it's shown them with improved abilities and Amy with spider, but yet...

I dunno. It's not satisfying that itch for power ups that the premise would suggest.

Really, it comes down to Taylor becoming less and less interesting as the story goes on. She just doesn't have the charisma the story tells us she's supposed to have.

Likewise, a Taylor joins the Wards fic can be interesting to subvert the normal structure of Worm. Yet this one feels increasingly hollow and uninteresting, more just...not there.

I dunno, the more I pick at Ring Maker the more issues I think it has. The Taylor in the Wards thing makes me wish A Harsher Truth wasn't dead.

[Jason_Miao]

I Was a Sword When I Reincarnated: The adventures of a guy who is a living sword, and his badass taciturn-catgirl wielder. 

This LN is precisely as deep and complex as that description makes it out to be.


https://ensigblog.wordpress.com/current-works-main/i-was-a-sword-when-i-reincarnated-main/
That link includes an index to some of the starting chapters.  Too many translators for this, and I don't think any one of them as a complete index.


Also read some of Nidome no Yuusha, but...no.

[thepanda]

That one reminds me of some "Usagi is betrayed by everyone" fics from way back when.

Ryuugi is at it again. Sailor Moon meets Overlord meets Xianxia. The informational posts might be more enjoyable than the actual story so far.

Man off the moon has been fun. I hadn't read any Fatefics using the Nameless version of EMIYA before. Updates fairly regularly.

Common Sense of a Duke's Daughter. I think this is one of the more enjoyable 'reincarnated as the villain/rival in an otome game' genre. The twist being that instead of incarnating years before the plot and trying to avoid death flags(like one does) the main character instead incarnates at the end of the game right at the point where the rival character is falling from grace and continues from there.

[Dracos]

I read some of the beginning chapters of his Sailor Moon fic...  and then read a random one.

I...didn't really feel like I understood anything the chapter was saying.  I mean, I understood the words.  But not the sentences?  I couldn't understand how it had gone from an Overlord cross to whatever that was.  Honestly, pretty turned off by his Xianxia crosses since it just feels like a lot of characters with different names and power references.

[Jason_Miao]

SM x xianxia seems like an odd mix.  Esp. since most xianxia can be described as "chaotic neutral."

Read through Duke's Daughter.  It feels like it skips over most of the development aspects, but given my reading for the past year or two, that's probably me more than any flaw with the story itself.



The Tutorial is Too Hard
Korean novel about people who get RPG-like powers, are suddenly prompted to pick the difficulty level, etc.  Too bad the main character was drunk when he was summoned, and picked Hell Mode.

[Dracos]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/miracles-of-ancient-wonder-rwby-exalted.389319/ thought I linked this here.  It's an interesting blend of Exalted and RWBY where hunters are basically in the role of the dragons, trying to both face off against the grim, and stop the horrible exalted from showing up.