What are you reading?

[Anastasia]

It's a good popcorn fic, I think. Fun to kick back and read without thinking about it too hard. Though I do hope the author keeps mixing it up like he's done so far.

[Dracos]

I enjoyed https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12836068/1/When-a-Curse-is-Not-a-Curse so thanks for linking Miao.  Found it a neat duo of character pieces done through an investigation.

[Dracos]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8601250/1/A-Dead-World updated recently.  Seems about ready to wrap up the arc.  Curious where it will go next.

[Anastasia]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-crown-of-neverwinter-ranma-1-2-x-dnd-forgotten-realms.746239/

Story's okayish so far, it's what you'd expect once you see words like 'lockfic' and 'D&D crossover'. It's worth a read to see if it's to your taste. That's not what I'm really here for, though. Read the comments instead. There's some discussion about clarifying comments Takahashi made in various 90s interviews about Ranma, from cut plot points to small details. I haven't seen these before (like that Ranma's favorite mangas are shoujo, for example) and a bunch of cut content. Anyone know if this stuff is on the level or not? There's a story involved that's tripping my bullshit sensors pretty heavily, but I suppose it's not impossible it's true.

[Jason_Miao]

Anyone know if this stuff is on the level or not? There's a story involved that's tripping my bullshit sensors pretty heavily, but I suppose it's not impossible it's true.

Haven't read any of it so far (haven't even read the fic itself, although that will likely since you've posted the link.)

I'm guessing you're asking about the posts that say:

Yeah... Ranma was meant to explore them a lot more than it ever really did according to the pages and pages and pages of angry ranting Rumiko did. If she'd had her way we've found signs of at least twelve volumes of scrubbed content, including an entire flashback arc to Ranma and Ryouga at school.
[Do I have sources to back my assertion that Takahashi had some whole TG-exploration angle?]
Unfortunately no, all digital copies that were known have long been lost to time and the collapse of 90s era websites. *annoyed kitsune* I only know of this through a friend who owns hard copies because she and others at the time went through the effort of translating them... Into German mainly since they are German and lived there at the time. (not that that stopped a few enterprising bastards from translating a few pages here and there into ancient Egyptian or Russian for a laugh, bastards. At least I can read the ones in old English.) Translations are a bit rough since Japanese and German have about as much in common as an elephant and a mouse. That is to say, they are both technically human languages, and that is about it. Some lines did not translate well and we've sorta had to take best guess to what they actually meant.

I remember nothing of this.

Translations are as much of an art as a science, and time erodes memory, so who knows how much of this is genuine and how much of it is the poster's ideas.  So decades later, with only a forum poster to mention it, who knows?

You might ask that poster if he or she recalls any of the defunt URLs to those sites.  Archive.org started in the mid 90s, and you could see if it captured any of these "angry rants."

[Anastasia]

I ended up staying out of it as the entire thing...well, just read. It's a thing.

[Jason_Miao]

I ended up staying out of it as the entire thing...well, just read. It's a thing.

*reads

Unfortunately no, all digital copies that were known have long been lost to time and the collapse of 90s era websites. *annoyed kitsune* I only know of this through a friend who owns hard copies because she and others at the time went through the effort of translating them... Into German mainly since they are German and lived there at the time. (not that that stopped a few enterprising bastards from translating a few pages here and there into ancient Egyptian or Russian for a laugh, bastards. At least I can read the ones in old English.) Translations are a bit rough since Japanese and German have about as much in common as an elephant and a mouse. That is to say, they are both technically human languages, and that is about it. Some lines did not translate well and we've sorta had to take best guess to what they actually meant.

I wish I could offer more. A lot of what I'm saying sounds unbelievable, but I can't. The hard copies are not mine, nor mine to share and my friend is rather reclusive. They like their privacy. All I can say is due to how weird some of what we've found out is I'm using only what actually shows in the manga as official source material. I do use some things pulled from the PR Papers, but only in places where it makes sense and I'm not against it myself... which doesn't help since you can't see them. *sighs* I'll make it clear when I use things pulled from them.

Smells like someone trying to drum up a conspiracy theory.  "Yeah, I totally have access to all this proof about 9/11 being a government plot to resurrect Aeris by crashing a plane into Shen Long to defeat him.  I just can't show any of it to you because of brief implausible reasons.  But if it were true, it explains so much! so I'm gonna focus on that instead of the brief implausible reasons."

Maybe unintentional.  People remember fanfic as cannon (e.g Spring of Drowned Twins splitting the curse started as a chapter-1 gimmick of a Ranma-chan plot, which later spawned several other Ranma-chan stories with the same gimmick, and even later some FFMLers swore Takahashi said it was cannon as part of some past interview).  Why not Godly Ranma is a Egyptian-themed Nekoken God?


Anyway...
The Strange Adventure of a Broke Mercenary: https://unluckyslime.wordpress.com/2018/04/10/chapter-1-stuck-after-running-away/

Japanese fantasy (not isekai, not game, not 1st person with mid-chapter switching of perspectives) webnovel of a mercenary who is forced to become an adventurer to make ends meet.

[Arakawa]

Caught up on Dreaming of Sunshine. Enjoyable to fall far behind on fics like these and have a lot of reading to do. But I totally lost track of Shikako's power level by now. Here is overanalysis.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/7347955/150/Dreaming-of-Sunshine

Shikako: Mini-Jiraiya Seal Master with Low Self-Esteem would be very goofy by now, but I think the author's idea is that in this world,

Spoiler: ShowHide

 no matter how many utterly broken insta-kill type abilities Shikako develops, jutsu tricks don't matter against serious opponents who are just better/faster/stronger at every single ninja essential. Probably a good worldbuilding point to emphasize and counter Naruto world's innate tendency to turn into Ax Cop with Broken Special Move #2 existing mostly to counter Broken Special Move #1 and keep the plot from grinding to a halt.

Still, a different genre of fic would easily spin this character's arsenal as "unstoppable unkillable S-Rank assassin" in its own right. Just work out the kinks in her shadow clone backlash, have the shadow clone turn into formless shadow blob, sneak into place, touch any hapless non-S-rank ninja, ninja not able to move have nasty seal on skin, game over.

Caught up on DK:A. Yeah, it's getting repetitive with Mukrezar posturing like he's going to Do Something Big (but continues to stay in the shadows and avoid making himself Ami's Problem #1). That proves he is Smartest Villain but means he does not contribute story wise at all.

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/dungeon-keeper-ami-sailor-moon-dungeon-keeper-story-only-thread.30066/page-9#post-12096923

And then I went for a stroll in the ff.net "most reviews" section for Naruto. This was short and completed, hence read it. But it is an "enh. recommend??" fic:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6040262/1/Teach-Your-Children-Well

It's really (maybe unintentionally) bashy of both Sasuke and Kakashi and ends in midair. But I found Medic Sasuke and Punching Specialist Sakura to be an interesting alternate destiny.

[Dracos]

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12086721/1/Transposition-or-Ship-Happens updated.  Robo lisa is joining on team win.

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/there-is-no-epic-loot-here-only-puns-dungeon.590739/ The gargoyles left disney.

[Anastasia]

Caught up on DK:A. Yeah, it's getting repetitive with Mukrezar posturing like he's going to Do Something Big (but continues to stay in the shadows and avoid making himself Ami's Problem #1). That proves he is Smartest Villain but means he does not contribute story wise at all.

https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/dungeon-keeper-ami-sailor-moon-dungeon-keeper-story-only-thread.30066/page-9#post-12096923

DK:A desperately needs to get its stuff together and get to the point. I really enjoy that fic, but it's stalled out and meandering so hard that it's unreal.

[Arakawa]

DK:A desperately needs to get its stuff together and get to the point. I really enjoy that fic, but it's stalled out and meandering so hard that it's unreal.

Could be worse. As I found, there is always the Teach Your Children Well route to 'completing' a fic: "and then Kakashi overused Kamui and accidentally woke up in the future but all the character development still happened offscreen".

*author runs off into the sunset cackling maniacally*

[Anastasia]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/cosplayer-worm-ocsi.749458/

Yes yes, it's an OC/SI affair. Yes, he has a broken power. It's still doing a pretty good take on it and isn't power wanky at all. I'd suggest reading the first two chapters to see if it's to your taste. It's more about the SI's identity issues than anything else.

[Arakawa]

Ghibli stuff is not a fertile ground for fan fiction but I remember enjoying this one:

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/6197726/1/

Idea is simple: Haku must find a new job.

[Dracos]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/bleach-worm-arana.305947/ this has been an interesting enough Bleach crossover.  It's basically taking Taylor waking up as a hollow, so using Bleach metaphysics post gold-morning.  And taking them fairly literally.  In bleach, throughout the series, Soul Society is the peak of a 'good ending' past death...and it really quite sucks for the majority and sort of requires a lot of intervention to get there.  Well with quite so many dead there's not a lot of that going around right now and it tries to explore that.

[Anastasia]

https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-high-priest-worm-dresden-files.752524/

Eidolon gets tossed into the Dresden Files moments after Scion utters the four words. It's early on but looks to have promise.

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13210769/1/A-Gift-by-Starlight

Sailor Moon/Buffy crossover. Weird things happen and somehow Naru manages to save Nephrite by becoming a slayer. Much better than it sounds, though the prologue is a little rough.