Before The Sun Explodes

Review blog for fanfiction in the Bug Fables AO3 tag. Updates every Friday, more inbetween if I feel like it. At least one (1) longfic review per month.

[bugfableskino]

★ ABOUT

Hello! This is my review sideblog for Bug Fables fanfiction. The end goal is that I will (hopefully) eventually read every single non-crossover, completed Bug Fables work in the AO3 tag.

This blog is nothing too serious or anything, mostly just for funsies. Yeah it's pretty cool. Yeah, I know. You can borrow the Lambo too. Yeah.

★ IMPORTANT STUFF

❋ FAQ ❋ TAG SYSTEM ❋ RATING SYSTEM ❋ RATINGS SPREADSHEET

★ OTHER STUFF

❋ MAIN BLOG ❋ AO3 PROFILE ❋ AMAZING VIDEO

[bugfableskino]

Review: The Merciful Bandit (#17)

written by Tangyfighter - originally published on 2022-10-15 - 121553 words 37 chapters - rated: Mature - content warnings: none

After so many moons of traveling Bugaria to seek out the answers to his encounter with Team Snakemouth’s mercy, Astotheles is unconvinced but remains troubled by his moral compass left skewed by the trio. Returning home to continue his synthetic peace within the inhospitable world of nature and new law, he comes across another bug that may have the answers he sought after during his long leave.

Will he learn what it means to show mercy? And will his family accept such a contradicting notion?

score: 5/5 ★★★★★

Writing is fucking hard. Writing OCs as more than just character designs with fun facts is harder. Writing OCs as characters with heft intertwined with canon is even harder. Writing a project double the size of an average young adult novel containing all of these factors is EVEN harder. And then, doing all of this, while having it be good, and then sticking the landing after the dust has settled, is almost impossible: at least, from what I've read before.

After having dedicated a month to this work, I can say that The Merciful Bandit stands alone as what I consider to be one of the best stories out on the tag right now. A lot of the strengths are given benefits of a longer-form work: the wordcount allows a lot of these characters to really get the chance to breathe out and expand that wouldn't be possible in a more typical one-shot or shorter work. There's not a single word wasted in this entire fanfic, with every moment important in its own right to the overarching storyline. There's details introduced in the first couple of chapters that pay off at the very end, a phenomenon that repeats over and over again. Every new detail helps recontextualize the story before it, and this fic is one of those kinds of stories that is really fun to just sit down and think about.

You want characters? We got fucking characters. The Merciful Bandit is a rare case in which I think both the canon characters and OCs are given tons of room to shine, rather than one particular faction getting most of the love. Astotheles and Isau are interesting enough in the game already, but are given even more layers of complexity in The Merciful Bandit that were extremely enjoyable to chew into. Astotheles is forced to confront all of these things about himself and his bandit family that go against everything he's ever known and experienced, a journey that spurs from his interactions with Isau in the beginning.

Outside of canon, the new additions are absolutely wonderful. There's a bit of a stereotype in fandom spaces in general where OC x Canon is, to put it kindly, just a little bit rough around the edges. When you mash two completely contrasting characters together, it is often that you find that the two are incompatible, and it can especially go wrong when said focus is on the OC. Using Asto's bandits as a place to put said OCs is honestly brilliant, and is such a natural extension of what's already in game that it hardly feels out of place at all. I appreciate the fact that Astotheles is kept as the main focus in the story, with these OCs kept mostly as supplementary characters to his plight, of which helps solve the aforementioned issues of an OC feeling shoved into a narrative. The focus is lazer-tight, and most forays outside of Astotheles's perspective are intentional and add to the story instead of taking away.

I love all of the new characters. Not all of them are super deep or complex, but the ones that are REALLY stand out and were easily the most fun to read. One of Astotheles's lieutenants, Venx, and his entire contrast with Astotheles was one of the core hooks that kept me reading in the latter half of the story. Tento's entire arc with his mentorship under Isau was really entertaining, and I was audibly popping off whenever Grash showed up on the page. Shoutout Grash, by the way, that's the best character in the entire fic bar Astotheles or Isau.

And best of all, there's actual plot and character development and fucking THEMES in this work. I know people saying "themes and such" is like, a meme, but give me a second.

I don't mean this as a dig against the medium. Fanfiction is fucking awesome. But like, a good portion of the stuff I read is character interaction. Too short to be fully realized. Even some of the works I herald as being pretty good fall into this category: like, I fucking loved Matters Of Will And Testament, but there's just not enough room in 4000 words to fit a full character arc in there.

But this work? Astotheles goes through shit, man. I can't speak on my favorite parts without spoiling it outright, but just know that Chapter 16 was un-fucking-believably good. I think this work tackles generational trauma and the cycle of violence in so many different ways and forms and the way the bandits and Defiant Root meld and interact together over the course of the story is something that I really enjoyed reading.

So yeah. This work's so damn good. Go read it. If you start now, a chapter a day will let you finish it within a month and some change. If you like Astotheles as a character, you will love him even more after reading this story.

[bugfableskino]

Monthly Recap 1 (June - July) - July 23rd, 2026

Hello! It's me again at the helm. Yesterday was the 1-month anniversary of the bugfableskino blog, and I think it'd be nice to start doing these on a regular basis to keep people up-to-date on the current progress of this project. Read below if interested...

On a purely statistical basis, here are the important numbers.

TOTAL WORKS LOGGED: 16

In the spreadsheet, you can definitely notice that a lot of these were majority done in the first couple of days in the post-blog creation, and then slowed down quite a lot afterwards. As I start going into a time of my life where I'll be far busier (university), expect this number to stay quite small for the most part.

OVERALL WORKS IN CRITERIA: 490

I think I should definitely consider tracking this number in some way, although it might be something to not worry about. Stat-keeping is pretty fun, but I'd rather focus on the reading instead.

PERCENTAGE LOGGED: 3.27%

This seems like a pretty hefty amount of progress until you realize this is a month's worth of effort. Assuming this pace matches (it won't), this project will still be in-action for almost the next 3 years! So, uh, yeah.

---

On a more personal note, I've actually been enjoying this project a lot more than I first thought! Projects like this, of which originate from spur-of-the-moment decisions are extremely prone to dying out within a week or two, and so the fact I've actually kept this up for a bit is something I will congratulate myself on.

Favorite story from this time period is probably Matters Of Will And Testament, an absurdly good story that manages to make Kina into an actual character. If you're looking for the good stuff, I'll be posting my favorite non-longfic story from each month in these updates.

In the future, the eventual plan is to move into once-a-month longer-form stories and sprinkle in the shorter one-shots and chaptered stories between those. As of now, I am on Chapter 33/37 of The Merciful Bandit and will be finishing that story tonight (tl;dr almost nothing but positive things to say about it), with the review for it coming out this Friday. I'll also be reading Bewildering Buddies: Bug Fables through sometime after, and posting something for that too.

For the next long-fic to be read after: I am still scanning the field for potential subjects, but All he Remebered, All he Forgot seems pretty cool, and Book I: The Beginning of My New Life as a Bee has tags and an author's note that really, really make me want to read it, mostly out of curiosity. If anyone has requests for any fics to be read, consider sending an ask! Only criteria is that it has to be non-crossover and it has to be finished.

Otherwise, there's not much to say! I've been slowly getting myself back into the rhythms of a normal-enough sleep schedule, living well, all that good stuff. Thanks for reading, and if applicable, being interested in these reviews.

[bugfableskino]

Review: Scar (#16)

written by dreamyyartist1310 - originally published on 2021-11-21 - 624 words 1 chapter - rated: General - content warnings: none

Atta asks Cobalt to help him with getting a dress off and Cobalt discovers that Atta has a scar.

score: 2/5 ★★

Almost missed the day I set last week because I was on the game. Oops. It's been a second since I've read something short like this, and the fact it's actually another story from this author's OC canon (of which I read before, see You are Atta (#4)) was a nice surprise.

Stuff like this is always a bit hard to give properly long reviews considering the content: it's a short, contained narrative where Cobalt and Atta, two OCs, get a little moment to bond together. I'm admittedly more curious about Atta in this story, given the fact that one of the tags is "Atta Lives AU" but this might have to be homework for another day. Even if it's a bit simple in terms of execution, it's effective at what it wants to do, and like, hell yeah. Good for Atta and Cobalt. I am glad the two of them are happy.

This post-review section now will be dedicated to stuff I learnt from scrounging the author's toyhouse. For one, I did not know until writing this that Atta and Cobalt were in their 40s: from experience, bug OCs in general are either like, in their 20s, or are hundreds of years old, so it's cool to see some that are middle-aged. I have now also learnt about Moli, and this is where I learnt that Atta was raising a kid in the AU where he dies? That's pretty cool. Personal fan of this bit of trivia myself:

Most of what Moli knows comes from Atta. They were never able to write everything down, so they feel guilty every time they realize they forgot something, like the lullabies he sang to them

I think my personal rating scale has skewed a little stricter over time, as I've definitely been skewing a little lower on these past few reviews compared to the last. Statistics is cool, though, so it'll probably look a bit more normal once I'm 100 in rather than 16 in.

[bugfableskino]

Review: Abyssal Somewhere (#15)

written by Termistae - originally published on 2026-03-25 - 4,140 words 1 chapter - rated: Teen - content warnings: none

Team Celia suffers an incident during a cave expedition relatively far away from the Ant Kingdom.

score: 1/5 ★

I try my best to be as respectful as possible in these reviews, because in a fandom as small as Bug Fables it is more than likely that one of these authors is going to read one of my reviews of one of their works, and the last thing I want to do is to make a creative feel shitty and stop doing things altogether. When you type about how much Terraria sucks on Backloggd, or how shit Taylor Swift's new album was on AlbumOfTheYear, there's an assumed level of separation between you and the artist that gives some level of freedom to the words used to talk about it. I can call Terraria a "worthless piece of shit game", but Re-Logic has no reason to care about me saying their game sucks because they've already made a billion gazillion dollars and have a billion other people saying that their game changed their life.

In a medium like fanfiction, though, that veil doesn't exist. Not everyone has the luxury of having a crowd of readers that have told them their work is awesome--the majority of people don't really have many, actually, and so I know how bad it can hurt when one of the few voices that speaks up does so in a negative manner. I can sit right next to the author on a subway and they can hear every single word I have to say about them, good or bad. Even in works I don't like much, I try to find something good to say about them, because I don't think anything is un-salvageable.

And on an objective level, there is honest-to-Venus things to enjoy about Abyssal Somewhere, a part of why I feel so torn about the final score I am giving for it. Rating a work this low feels wrong considering what my standards currently are. Even a work like Play, one that is primarily somewhat primitive dialogue and extremely sparse in writing, still manages to slip into an "Okay" under the bugfableskino scorebook. Calling this work "actively bad" would be doing a disservice to the actual technical skill and writing present in the work. And, like, this work is fine! The writing's fine, the imagery's serviceable, the ending's actually pretty good in the context of the tone of the story, it's a perfectly enjoyable story, one that would fit a 2/5 perfectly.

But, there is just something fundamentally missing from this work, something that makes it feel... bland, acutely flavorless.

When I read a work like Numb, or PPE Protocol, or Another Day In Paradise, there's a voice there, an element of personal flair added to every single word and thematic element explored. When anger is described in a work, that anger is explored in a thousand different ways from a thousand different angles. Maybe Vi getting angry is described as her becoming a blubbering mess by one person, or screaming and lashing out by another, or silent and intangible by someone else. Words and imagery written with vitriol, sadness, lust, joy.

Instead, Abyssal Somewhere has nothing. Almost everything is stated as matter-of-fact, no expansion given in a way that could characterize Celia or the author past what is strictly happening on the page. Celia's expedition went wrong. Her body hurts. She would survive. She tried to get up and couldn't.

Every single piece of prose in here is utterly boring to sink my teeth into. There's a stunning lack of imagination put into the imagery, the most interesting parts purely conceptual. The idea of a hidden, mysterious statue in the depths of a cave with esoteric and unknown origins, the idea of Celia losing Levi and being forced back into a life she once lived before exploring, the idea and conflict of this fic in general. Everything has so much vibrant potential flowing through its veins and it's instead chosen to be painted in greyscale.

Celia suddenly remembered Levi, she wondered for a small second if she too could see him once more, once she finished this climb, but the rational side of her brain, as much as she wanted to deny it, considered it unlikely.

In context, this moment comes after Celia climbs to the top of the hole after having been trapped for so long. A moment like this, one with so much potential for emotional catharsis--the mix of satisfaction in finally escaping combined with grief of realizing that the one you've spent your days with is most likely gone--is just discarded, and before you can even process that, you're onto the next detail. The entire work feels stunningly impersonal, giving only the slightest nods to the things Celia is going through.

I think this is lame. I don't like this style of writing, I don't like this story. I want to feel the emotions of the character. I want to feel what Celia is going through, even if that emotion is nothing-ness. I want to feel thrust into the dark cavern Celia is stuck in, I want to feel the confusion of trying to understand the mysterious statue in the cave, I want to feel the ennui Celia experiences after being so far removed from that experience where the afterimages of Levi are the only thing that remains. There are more than enough different ways to write that type of feeling without just forgoing the specifics altogether. I'd rather read a work very clearly emotionally charged and sloppy and messy than one that feels completely devoid of it at all, because the former actually contains a pulse I can feel.

[bugfableskino]

Hello! I'm doing my monthly-ish foray into the main Bug Fables tag to post about my new mascot/sona/OC/self-insert/whatchamacallit for this fic reviewing sideblog: Kino! He's a snazzy lil' termite who will one day read everything* on the Bug Fables tag. If you read any of these reviews on the blog, just imagine this guy's typing them out.

He's also a jazz enjoyer, if that's of importance to you.

* not actually everything, only the completed, non-crossover stuff

[bugfableskino]

A New Face - July 12th, 2026

Hello! Hope you've all been well. If you remember that other newspost, I was talking about how I wanted to have a little bugsona or OC to represent this blog in the future. This following post is for REAL PLAYAS only, refrain from clicking below if you aren't one...

Now, there's not really a name for this guy yet, or like. Much of anything? Just know he's transmasculine and has a snazzy vest on, w/ bowtie. Later in the week, once I've not been up for 26 hours, I'll make a more complete OC sheet and introduction. For now, imagine this guy writing and reading all the reviews. I even made him my skintone. Thanks all for reading. I made the realization that this project is slated to take at minimum multiple years to complete: rather scary to think about, honestly, but we'll get there eventually. The time will pass.

[bugfableskino]

Review: Another Day In Paradise (#14)

written by runningdownadream - originally published on 2026-07-06 - 4830 words 1 chapter - rated: General - content warnings: none

Finding joy in monotony and the ability of choice.

score: 3/5 ★★★

Woah, actually reading something that came out this year for once! I'm realizing now that I might have to pace this a bit faster if I wish to finish this project before like, the sun explodes? But, I'll get to that when I get there.

This one's got not much to say about: it's essentially what you could expect from a self-described "rambly" fanfic of this nature. I have a bit of an implicit bias towards runningdownadream in this regard. I already like his stuff--in fact, I'd probably herald him as one of the greatest authors in the entire tag. One of the hallmarks of his work (in my opinion) are the parts in his fics which get slightly more flowery to talk about the general theme in said fic, long-winded and yet utterly genuine and meaningful in their execution. I love these bits to death, and they're my favorite parts of his stories in general.

Another Day In Paradise is like you took those sections and made it the entire work. It's nice! I can confidently say I enjoyed reading it, and I think runningdownadream's style is perfect for these types of flow-of-consciousness works. As someone who's tried that sort of thing before, it requires a certain level of sauce to execute those and make them actually tangible to read to outsiders. It's what it says on the tin, it doesn't overstay its welcome, and it's overall just a really comfortable fic to read. It's the kind of fic best enjoyed with a warm drink under some blankets, one you read when you're kind of tired and come out feeling rather good about everything in general.

This one's only marred by the fact that I have been more than privy to runningdownadream's other longer, more striking works in the past. Like, Give Or Take is genuinely one of the best works in the entire tag: this is not a bit, Give Or Take is a strong 5/5, review on this one will come soon and I will write 1000 words about how much it affected me when I first read it through. If runningdownadream was Albert Hitchcock, you can consider Another Day In Paradise to be the Saboteur to Hitchcock's Vertigo. Still a great work in its own right, but relative to his other works, it's definitely a bit lower on the scale.

[bugfableskino]

Review: Weaponry! (#13)

written by Chocohuman - originally published on 2025-06-20 - 1615 words 1 chapter - rated: Not Rated (Teen) - content warnings: none

Hoaxe has some doubts about openly attacking the Ant Kingdom, So Ultimax helps reassure him in the best way - A Song!

What's the best way to keep a population down? Weaponry!

It's a songfic. Or is it musical? Ultimax sings it.

(Takes place during the start of chapter 5)

score: 2/5 ★★

Songfics have been a topic of debate among fan circles since before the 21st century: while I have mostly stayed in my two little fandom circles most of my fandom-life, I have at least seen a couple of song-fics before. I get the general idea of what they're going for and I've left the few I've read mostly unchanged. I don't think they're bad, but there's a lot more that could be done when you change the bounds.

Weaponry! is a true and honest attempt to make something cool, though. I don't like it much, nor do I really "hate it". Most of my issue comes with how the pacing is because of the prerequisite of needing said song lyrics baked into the prose: you get these lines of Ultimax singing followed by a short description of the terror befalling the Ant Kingdom. The tonal dissonance here from what the song is and what's actually going on in the story is not lost on me: having a Phineas and Ferb song sung by Doofenshmirtz's robot son as the backing track to what's portrayed and written as a massacre and razing of Ant Kingdom makes me feel just a little bit off.

This to mention that the pacing due to the song lyrics makes the fic feel just a little bit clunky while reading. There's not enough room given to the non-song lyrics to let them breathe and expand out, but it still tries hard enough to make those scenes potent in their imagery that it ends up feeling... kind of weird? A lot of this just gets kind of glossed over in a manner that doesn't feel right, this cartoony, theatric song in your auditory memory repeating over depictions of civilians being murdered.

“A Favorite of the Scout and Bombing Teams!” As A Bomber tosses a Spicy bomb at the hotel, creating a hole in the second floor revealing a group of Ant citizens hiding inside as some Scouts fly inside and begin throwing needles and stabbing the Ants inside, their cries being heard.

In general, I think this fic is an awesome concept tragically stuck in the wrong format. The way it currently reads befits an animatic more than anything, and I think that would honestly solve a lot of the pacing issues currently present. My dislike of the way the imagery's done in tandem with the song lyrics would immediately change if there was an active visual element to it, and I think it'd help make the whole thing more cohesive. Or, alternatively, you could take this idea to the opposite end of the spectrum: shed the songfic chitin and just go full war-time horror with it! Like, that shit would be so cool. Sorry for the tangent, but I was writing this and I realized this would actually be such a cool one-shot. Review's over.

(Maybe someone ought to make a songfic of Rockets fall on Rocket Falls by GY!BE, now that I think about it.)

[bugfableskino]

Review: The Fungus In All Of Us (#12)

written by MonomonTheCreature - originally published on 2021-01-22 - 1590 words 1 chapter - rated: Explicit - content warnings: smut

Well, mostly just Leif and Kabbu.

[graphic smut]

score: 2/5 ★★

I'd have to review one of these eventually, so here we are. I've read this in what I can only assume to be the most optimal environment to read something like this: hydrated at 4 in the morning, on my laptop with the fan on, in my comfy bed. The fact this work had 133(!) kudos at time of writing made me just a little bit curious as to the quality of this work, and so I went into it with at least a little bit of expectation of what to see.

The problem, however, with attempting to review a work like this, is that I think the lens I have used to read and review everything prior simply does not apply to smut as a genre. Of course, this is conjecture based off the sum of the Bug Fables-related smut works I have read as of writing (1.25) combined with more broad experience from my time on AO3, but consider the following:

Smut is like, this entire other thing with a different set of rules and standards that run parallel to everything I've done before because the purpose is different. You're most likely not reading smut for the purpose of taking some sort of artistic message from it, you're reading it because you want to read the characters mentioned fucking nasty style. I don't want to write this in a way that seems like a condemnation of all things sex-adjacent: I am of the belief that this stuff has a right to exist in creative space, and obviously, if you look close enough you can find their own artistic merits of their own that should be acknowledged. But also, like, it's just fundamentally different to experience compared to a normal one-shot.

The way in which this work is structured reflects this point: the basic conflict is set up simple and clean enough to where there's a lead-in for the upcoming quote-unquote "good stuff" to happen (Leif has spores stuck in him, and take about 2 guesses where they'll come out from), they have sex, and that's about it. Most character building stuff is left to be implied from what the game has already established, as these two moreso act as a canvas for the laundry list of acts one is performing on the other.

Some of the language present here makes it hard to take the work seriously, which altered my experience in what I would consider a negative way: I mean, you read something like "Kabbu let out a soft shriek as a cold cock--lubricated with a certain type of berry juice--speared him right in the ass." and it's hard not to at least giggle at the juvenile levels of genitalia-assorted terminology and naughty language thrown about like a kid having a temper tantrum in the cereal aisle, especially given the source material. It's an incredibly informal work in terms of writing, which I will be truthful in saying it did make me giggle at times. At this point, I think I'd be satisfied calling this a 2/5 and going to bed.

But, my struggle as a reviewer at this point in time is that I have no idea where the balance of rating-as-normal and rating-as-smut for something like this.

Am I missing something core to the reader experience by treating this work as I would an art study rather than something to sate my vices? If the intent is to incite pleasure within the reader, how fair of a rating can I even give it if I go into it without actively seeking it out? I consider this feeling similar to playing Minecraft and then rating it based off of 500 hours spent only playing Hypixel Skyblock--I'm experiencing it nonetheless, sure, but it feels like I am getting an objectively different experience and outcome compared to someone who might have viewed this in more optimal conditions and mindset. Did 133 other people get their rocks off to this work, and left it more satisfied than I did?

And like, I think the answer to this is easy, because at the end of the day these reviews are mostly subjective. There's a bias to my view of things that will invariably affect the works I review, whether it's the emotional state I read something in or the place in which I ponder on it. I shouldn't sacrifice what I personally think of it for some lame, half baked opinion that I had to meet halfway for.

My view on smut as a genre is that I think it's kinda bumbly and un-interesting. I have no problems with (good) sex scenes but the cheap thrills of smut have always just been kind of anti-repelling to me. My personal pull for reading fanfiction has always been seeing the ways in which a story gets told, the way the characters grow and shape into a constructed narrative. My favorite fics reviewed so far have had a story to actually tell: Matters Of Will And Testament is so engaging because it re-fits Kina's storyline into something tangible, showing how a familial relationship gets strained under multiple sources of pressure. survivor syndrome shows the effects of which Kabbu's loss has immediately affected him in this really cool, minimalist style. The stuff rated below these usually has something similar going on, but it just misses the landing or is kind of unclear: it's the difference between a story feeling like it's motivated by some theme, versus a story feeling like [x] character in [y] situation.

This work lacks that and exchanges it for that immediate dopamine-hit of imagined pleasure. Smut feels like the latter in this former example: you are seeing [x] characters in [y] situation performing [z] sexual acts on each other. Big whoop, I can rotate these metaphysical concepts in my head already.

But, Is that to say that this work is irredeemably bad? Fuck no, I'd go out and say it's competently written at that, but it doesn't hit me the same way as a more structured, in-depth work wold do.

I think smut can be compared to that general idea of contextless fight animations, where the main appeal is not in the story being told through the fight, but of the general technical mastery and feeling of "Holy shit this is awesome" you have while watching it. The way in which these characters got here is not important, nor the relationships between them. It's the choreography, the flow, every intentional choice which pulls you into the world the animator has established, and it's why fight animations are sick.

And when you look at smut in that sense, I actually think it's much easier to "get" the appeal of it. You replace 'choreography' with 'gay sex' and replace 'flow' with 'Leif puts their fingers into Kabbu's mouth' and suddenly, it's a lot more obvious as to why this fic in particular has 100+ kudos. People like reading this stuff because it's meant to be titillating, exciting, because it sates a burning desire that exists in someone. Like a good fight scene, smut pampers the specific part of the brain that wants to see that source of arousal here and now with no extra strings.

And maybe this is why I don't like this fic too much: the audience for this is simply not me at this point in time. My brain was not wired at this point in time to be aroused because I was reading it in the view I read everything else. Is this a failing of me, the reviewer, in fairly looking at and judging this work? I don't know.

In any case, this review acts as the corner stone of which all future smut reviews will be made upon. Perhaps a future work will break the mold of what I expect smut to be, but until then, I feel confident in calling this work just alright.

(Sorry for such a long expository dump in this review in particular, most of which was rather general and unfocused. However, I think it's one that will have been worth having in the future when I eventually have to read another work of smut.)

[bugfableskino]

Review: Matters Of Will And Testament (#11)

written by MantisGod - originally published on 2022-12-05 - 1827 words 1 chapter - rated: Teen - content warnings: none

Maki's injuries from the Wild Swamplands land him in the hospital. Kina pays him a visit for some much-needed talks.

score: 4/5 ★★★★

Was a bit torn on what my rating should be, but after my re-read through, I think this is easily deserving of being considered a 4/5 on the bugfableskino scale.

Kina in Bug Fables is given the short end of the stick when it comes to being an actual character: most of her characterization ends up being stuck to Maki like glue, and then honestly not much else outside of that. I think this fic does a great job of re-interpreting Kina's story into something with a bit more heft with it.

Why is Kina so attached to her brother? Well, he's going on all of these life-threatening missions while she's stuck with a daughter he put into her care. It's genius. The conflict in here feels incredibly potent because it feels like such a natural progression of what's in Bug Fables already.

This is not to even mention the very nice writing, par for the course of what I've read of MantisGod before but it's arguably better than average here. Kina's rage isn't overblown, but there's very real emotion behind some of her sentences, and MantisGod does a nice job of absolutely punching you in the gut sometimes with the wizard's writing. I'm a big fan of this line in particular, quoted below:

"...I'm still mad. I don't - I don't think I can just forgive you because you understand. Sometimes I- I kind of wish you would just- just die on a mission already instead of just... leaving me to worry."

Even though this one's short, I think it's the type of story that honestly doesn't even need to be that much longer. It's one of the best feelings in the world to read something and feel satisfied, nothing more needed from the work at all.

[bugfableskino]

Consistency-posting - July 7th, 2026

I took a walk and made a nice chicken-and-rice wrap for lunch going on dinner and I was thinking about this blog.

I think it might be time to try and put this onto a somewhat consistent schedule: while I am still mostly aiming to have this be a more laid-back, casual blog, a concrete day on which this blog will have at least 1 update would be cool to have. There's still some future life stuff ahead that will most assuredly change when this day is, but for now, I am thinking every Friday will be good for this. Nothing super frequent, but still enough being 'done' that I would eventually get this done: not counting the extra reviews I'll most definitely be making between Fridays. Later today, I'll be posting my review of Matters Of Will And Testament, so be tuned for that as well.

Also, we're at 6 followers! That's pretty cool, thanks all for liking this stuff. The bugfableskino-mmunity is small but dedicated, and I hope you guys find something cool from this blog by the end of its lifespan.

Terms of other kino-related material:

Tonight i'm gonna start getting back on consistently reading The Merciful Bandit, the current longest work (under the bugfableskino ruleset) in the Bug Fables tag right now tonight: I'd love to have that work finished before the end of the month.

The first Explicit rated review will be going up sometime this week as well (I am still figuring out what will be read, but The Fungus In All Of Us has 100+ kudos, so I am thinking that will be a good starting point), so make sure to look out at the content warnings if you don't want to read the review for that. It feels silly to try and "review" smut, given the place and time it's supposed to be consumed in, but I think it'll be a fun exercise for me as a writer. Maybe some of it will be nice! I don't wanna judge because I haven't even given it a chance to be observed yet.

My own aforementioned long-fic project has been shelved at this point in time: I apologize for the self-promotion, but you can read the first half of A Mind I Knew on AO3 now. A little disappointed that I fizzled out on this, but at the very least, there's more time to write for this blog now.

Thanks all for reading. Take care.

[bugfableskino]

Review: No-Name (#10)

written by SpectralGecko - originally published on 2025-04-27 - 368 words 1 chapter - rated: General - content warnings: none

Hoaxe had no name.

He also had no concept of the sort, so he didn't mind much.

score: 2/5 ★★

Well, it's the 10th review! I was going to review something else for this milestone, actually, although it was a fic perhaps a little ill-advised to review right after having reviewed a fic with such a heavy subject matter. So, here's a little ficlet review instead.

To be concise: it's nice! The fact is that short stuff like this is basically fated to struggle for a rating because there's less to work with: but, I thought this one was neat. The language used here, stuff like nonsense-sounds and noise-jumbles and Hoaxe's description of names as pictures in charcoals is really cool and Spectral does a nice job at painting the picture of Hoaxe's character. I also like the ending for similar reasons, describing what I can assume to be Dead Landers as 'dark-bugs'.

Short, sweet, the verdict is that it's enjoyable. You can read this one in about 30 seconds, and it'll be a well-spent 30 seconds in my opinion.

[bugfableskino]

Review: Numb (#9)

written by Niko_Jpeg - originally published on 2023-02-02 - 1080 words 1 chapter - rated: Mature - content warnings: suicide attempt

Hes made his desicion.

So why was he hesitating?

score: 2/5 ★★

Rating stuff like this feels a little harder due to the circumstances around the work itself. I had originally read this one about a week ago, and I decided to take a little more time to stew on this one compared to some of the other stuff I've read before due to the more serious subject matter present.

On one hand, I think there's a level of technical polish lacking that prevents it from being the most effective piece. But on the other hand, is that polish necessary to hit someone where it matters? The term "artistic intent" comes to mind, the tags and author's note supporting my thesis: this is a type of piece that comes from a very, very personal place and time in the author's life.

It's a very vivid portrait of what I can assume to be first-hand experience. I actually quite dig the rather sparse, to-the-point style this fic has. While I think it sacrifices some potential for imagery to do this, the tone itself matches quite well with the pace of the fic. It does a great job of illustrating the fast, anxious thought process of Neolith in this situation without sparing a second elsewhere.

When the fic repeats "He had made his decision" over and over again as he teeters closer and closer to the ledge, it helps build some really nice tension in the story as each detail is given a pain-staking amount of time to sit and boil. It gets rather intense by the end, although the level of intensity is hurt a bit by the aforementioned prose: a sentence per action works well, but I think it almost ends up being "too fast" without giving enough breathing room to the feelings.

I also appreciate the ending. It doesn't hit you with a "and Neolith is happy forever after and never commits suicide ever again", instead taking a more balanced approach to it. By the end of Numb, Neolith is still struggling with those feelings, still hurt, but there's a small sense of ground he's able to find with the people close to him. Despite his repetitions over and over again that he had made his final decisions, he'd never fully gone through with it. I have a bit of criticism on the fic in general, despite its fairly strong roots. The parts where Leif and Vi bond with Neolith, namely, feel a bit thrown in without chance to really be expanded on due to the aforementioned light prose. It fits, yes, but the sentences are not written strongly enough to emit the sort of reactions that longer, heavier paragraphs can get from me.

On this recent second re-read, I found the work to be a little plain in the imagery department, although you could argue the minimal descriptions of the environments Neolith actually fits the tone quite well: it didn't quite hit for me, though, and I left feeling a little less introspective than I had the first time.

The conclusion I reached is that I think this fic just isn't meant for my eyes in specific. I can hardly say I've experienced those types of thoughts myself as of writing: but, there's a deep, personal charm to Numb that will perhaps capture someone else who has been much closer to the void than I've ever been.

[bugfableskino]

Review: Weird Trivia Night (#8)

written by Laxxius - originally published on 2022-07-13 - 866 words 1 chapter - rated: Mature - content warnings: none

Team Snakemouth goes to a trivia night

score: 1/5 ★

Weird Trivia Night has honorable aspirations: a psychological horror story is a genre of which I will always dig, especially applied to Bug Fables where most of what you get is of the big 3 (fluff, angst, and hurt/comfort). There's actually a lot of room for horror within the game's cast that I honestly think it's a rather under-explored genre, one of which that more people should tap into.

Unfortunately, I was left rather disappointed by this fic by the time I finished my read and subsequent confusion fueled re-read. The fic's messy and a bit unrefined in a few too many aspects for me to pull much value from it: weak imagery that fails to paint an interesting mental picture while reading, non-existent tension that jumps too quickly into the deep end, prose that just doesn't fit the genre it's attempting to fit into. Having narration written like it's a story being told to you can work, but "friend in a Discord call reading to you" just isn't as effective for getting you invested into a story than other options. There's not enough room given to the words to make them have the power that horror needs in order to be effective.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with a shorter story. It's more than possible to make something strikingly horrific in less than 1000 words, but you need to utilize every single word in that limitation like the structure of it will collapse if just one word is slightly out of place. Too much of this fic is dedicated to details that add barely anything, and the focus of the fic not immediately being on Leif hurts the potential scare-factor of this story heavily: by the time things actually start feeling wrong, there's been nothing to get us invested into the horror from Leif's personal perspective, nor anything to suggest that they're actually the main focus of the work. The most intense parts of the work are not sustained long enough to be effective, and overall it leaves a rather flat impression that lasts until your eyes stop looking at the words.

I also just do not like the ending. It's, well, boring, to put it plainly. It leaves too light of an outline to form coherent mental gaps in the narrative that usher you to fill them in yourself. It's an ending that tries to make you ask "Ooh, I wonder what happened!" without the paragraphs of tension and inquiry-building necessary to inspire that sort of thought.

->

Splintering. Stillness. That’s all it is.

<-

When you take a closer look at what's attempting to be said, the words disintegrate. It's a story that crumbles under an eye any closer than a skim-through.

[bugfableskino]

Review: PPE Protocol (#7)

written by MantisGod - originally published on 2024-01-26 - 893 words 1 chapter - rated: General - content warnings: none

You are a new apprentice of Charmcraft, preparing for your first venture into enchanting a Medal. Your new mentor runs you through some basic lab safety.

score: 2/5 ★★

I will always appreciate someone who pushes their creative muscles in a unique way, even if the result ends up not being the most captivating thing for me for one reason or another. PPE Protocol fits under this category of work, self described even by the author themselves at the beginning in that way:

->

Hello! This fic leans heavily on lore we have invented for OC Purposes, and may thus be inaccessible to people who don't know too much about our OC lore!

<-

All of PPE Protocol is very loosely Bug Fables in the sense of its characters, but it instead does some really cool things with its world building in relation to Medals. It's actually quite rare to see Medals come up in Bug Fables fan media in general, at least from what I remember seeing myself: there's been some cool applications of it in AUs but they otherwise remain as mostly an after-thought in most things. For good reasons, too. In my opinion, they're too game mechanic-y to comfortably fit into a fanwork when they're in the same space as actual character stuff. There's not much of a way to smoothly to namedrop like, Last Wind when you can focus that on a character moment instead (think of Kabbu in chapter 5 during the Beast fight).

I appreciate the level of care put into this work in particular, though, mostly because I think it does a great job at getting someone who doesn't know much about it potentially invested. The prose is fittingly casual for the fact that it's from the reader POV of listening to someone with years of experience under their belt. It manages that feeling of getting the run-down from an expert extremely well, and there's enough intrigue to stop it from just being monologue. Good prose is able to always propel you forwards, and to be able to get that same feeling in a topic that is unfamiliar to 90% of readers is a feat in of itself. This ending part in particular had me raising my eyebrows: ->

Every emotion you feel, in this line of work, will alter how your finished product performs. It's normal to be invested in your work. It's normal to care about what you make. But if you allow yourself to get too closely tied to it, if you touch it too closely without something to protect you - then you will run the risk of becoming your work, and that's not a fate I want for you.

<-

It's a cool introduction to a system and world that I am sadly still a stranger to at the end of the day. I always find it a little unfortunate to stumble upon a niche work like this where I am simply just not the intended audience, but there's a crystal clear passion and effort that is able to shine through the surface of which I'm able to admire. This is a fic that, if it interests you from the short introduction it has made, I would highly suggest looking into further as there is most definitely hours upon hours of details to sink your teeth (or mandibles #lol) into.

My hope is that someone will read this review one day and be able to appreciate it more than I was able to do so at this point in time. If that person is you, and this work has caught your fancy, you can find MantisGod's blog linked either at the bottom of the work or here.

[bugfableskino]

Review: survivor syndrome (#6)

written by rockinmusicquarterly - originally published on 2022-11-20 - 1282 words 1 chapter - rated: General - content warnings: none

It hurts, thinking about any of it.

So, you lay down, attempt to silence the tempests clouding your mind and filling your heart with a distinctly cold pit.

The Sands are bitterly cold tonight; you shudder, hug yourself tightly, and try to pretend you are not alone in your small, makeshift campsite.

score: 4/5 ★★★★

It's a nice change of pace to review (or rather, re-review) a fic like this of which I already know I like quite a lot, and thus being able to share this love for it anew on this blog. Like made of rot, I've actually read this one way back when last September, and there's a comment on the fic showing this as well. There's quite a few of these old fics I like that I will be grandfathering into this blog, as they definitely deserve that sort of praise. Overall, I find this fic to be extremely solid. Anything involving Kabbu is going to have the potential to be something truly great: his backstory is prime for re-telling and further development in the realm of post-canon, a fact of which fuels many of my current favorite stories involving him. survivor syndrome is rather short, but it packs its paragraphs full of rather effective writing.

The use of 2nd person perspective here is quite well done and it's one of the things I find unique about this fic in particular. It's rare you ever see a written piece use this kind of perspective--unless you frequent a site like MS Paint Fan Adventures, where that's basically the entire X-factor of that genre of fictional work--and I think it's the kind of thing that is hard to use in a way that justifies it. But, for a fic like this that delves deeper into Kabbu's mental state almost immediately after the tragedy that befell him in the Swamplands, it actually works super well. It puts you into his mind in a way that regular 3rd person perspective would be unable to achieve, and it helps the writing hit much harder.

I attribute this a lot to the aforementioned stellar writing rockinmusicquarterly has shown here. It's not as dense as you think a fanfic like this would be--the prose is rather sparse, actually, but fits in more than enough detail to sell the emotions Kabbu is going through. The unintentional double spacing here, while I'd usually dock points against a work for having, actually unintentionally enhances the sort of scattered feelings exhibited by this fic, giving the flow of Kabbu's thoughts as the fic progresses a bit more of a natural feeling. Not to mention some of the quotes I could pull from it: without just copy pasting the entire fic, here's this bit from the ending I quite enjoyed: >

They laugh, laugh, laugh so hard you think they’re beginning to cry – from where you lay, it’s impossible to tell. You can’t understand what’s so funny. You try with all your strength to reach for them, open your mouth and say something, anything…

...

You see crimson between the reeds. Bit doesn’t stop laughing. ---

You awaken with laughter in your ears, and tears in your eyes. >

survivor syndrome is a great example of what "less is more" actually entails, rockinmusicquarterly able to fit an extremely potent version of Kabbu's backstory into less than 1500 words. It takes a ton of skill to be able to write something like that, in such a limited format, in an off-meta writing perspective, and have it end up good by the end of it all. Quite like this one, I'd say, and I think the only reason it's not in that category of 5-rated works is, ironically, its length. survivor syndrome gets pretty damn close, though, which is saying something for a ~1000 word oneshot.