hugs and kisses!
2. Recommend a fic that is not posted on ao3
4. Recommend a fic that is over 50, 000 words
6. Recommend a fic that does something cool with format/structure
7. Recommend a fic that uses a trope you love
9. Recommend a fic from a book fandom
10. Recommend a fic that is more than 10 years old
12. Recommend a fic that formed or changed your opinions on something
15. Recommend any fic of your choice
hiiiii 🥰 [kicking my feet, twirling my hair etc] i'll put all of these below a cut because. well it would be pretty mean not to
2. Recommend a fic that is not posted on ao3
Listen, listen. We have all read the bad isekai crossover PJO fics. Or if we haven't, we've all read the bad crossover HP-Narnia-Alex Rider-Batman-Twilight-Insert-Tween/Kids-Book-Here fics. If 90% of all fanfiction is kinda hot garbage, then this particular strain is like, 99.8% garbage. However there must be an exception that proves the rule, and oh boy, is Salt-Breaker by Team Otters on ff.net the exception. It's PJO crossed over with A Song of Ice and Fire, but honestly I wouldn't say you absolutely needed to be an ASOIAF fan to enjoy it: Percy has no fucking clue what's going on either, so you learn alongside him.
Because this is not on ao3, I don't have a handy excerpt ready to go, but just trust me. Trust me. It's good. It explores the Ironborn more than George did, doesn't look down on them or their culture like a lot of fic authors fall into the trap of doing, and believably makes changes to both the canon of ASOIAF and an older Percy's character inkeeping with the narrative.
4. Recommend a fic that is over 50,000 words
First, I must shamelessly plug my bookmark collection on ao3 which is specifically for all my bookmarks of fics that are over 100k, Call It Epic. It's not fandom specific, it's literally just every fic I've enjoyed enough to bookmark (I think, anyway. I did have to go through them manually when I made it, which took a while and I might've missed some) so you'll probably find something in there.
Most recent 50k+ fic I've been enjoying, that I'm not planning to plug on another answer, is actually another crossover (despite these first two answers, I'm not actually crazy into crossovers, I promise). It's Weak Hero x Twinkling Watermelon, two k-dramas which feature the same actor in two main roles: as Twinkling Watermelon is a time travel story, a lot of crossovers with it are built around that aspect, but Shining Hero by Infinite_Twilights instead focuses on Ryeoun's very different characters - Eungyeol (Twinkling Watermelon) and Baku (Weak Hero) - and asks: what if they were twins? What if they were twins, and they didn't know they were twins?
My absolutely favourite parts of this fic are the character dynamics - the way these characters bounce off each other, and each other's worlds being so far apart and simultaneously so close. It's also regularly updated, and every time I get the new chapter email it absolutely makes my day. Would recommend knowledge of both canons for readers, they're both outstanding shows so I'd recommend just watching them anyway lol.
“You don’t look like her.” Humin blinked, surprised. “What?” “You don’t look like her,” his father repeated like a broken record “You don't look like me.”
6. Recommend a fic that does something cool with format/structure
I am an absolute sucker for a good social media fic, and thankfully for me there are so, so many. Special mention however must go to Diehard, the first in the Bare Metal Fan series by felldownthelist which I actually cannot recommend strongly enough. It's a social media fic.... set before social media existed, which is perfect for an Umbrella Academy fanfic, as it's vaguely set in a 21st century where the digital age never really happened.
The author describes the series as a love letter to the internet, and I cannot agree more. It's a beautiful, beautiful series and the structure of it is like nothing I've ever seen before or since. It honest to god feels like something that needs to be preserved in the Internet Archive or something, because it illustrates a very specific period of internet history so well without ever 'just' being about that.
MMKAY87: holy shit is that the actual Diego Hargreeves DIEGOHARGREEVES: Yes. COLOSSUSRULES99: nah. They pretend they r tho. We let them keep the name DREAMSTAR: they’re pretty funny so its worth it
7. Recommend a fic that uses a trope you love
There are a lot of tropes I love, but the ones I keep on coming back to are usually genderbends, so I'll give you one that is (imo) the absolute gold standard for the trope. First Impressions by @anghraine is the first in a series of Pride And Prejudice But Genderbent, and oh boy, if you thought that you knew Gender Fuckery in the 21st century, just wait for Gender Fuckery in Regency England.
It goes without saying that gender and the strict gender roles and expectations placed on women in the 1800s are absolutely inseparable from Austen's story, and so much of it simply does not work in another era, one where daughters could just inherit their father's property or earn a living for themselves rather than having to marry into money, but anghraine manages to make it all work beautifully with the original plot and characterisation.
"You must change your name," she announced. Henry stared at her. "I beg your pardon?" "I am sorry - I should have mentioned it before. It is a silly thing; I cannot think why my father did it - well, I understand, of course, and it was quite sensible in a way - but it is terribly awkward to explain." "I . . ." Even by the standards Henry usually applied to Miss Darcy's incoherent conversation, this was incomprehensible. "What?" "When we are married," she explained patiently. Henry's jaw dropped.
9. Recommend a fic from a book fandom
I have a lot of book fandoms, but I went with one which I'm truly a fan of the books first, not the films or anything else that came after, and that's the Hunger Games. (As an aside, THG has one of the best good-to-trash fic ratios of any fandom I've ever been in: I'm not sure why this is, as if anything, you'd assume that a bestselling series would have more rubbish instead of less, but I notice and I am grateful.) This fic is in my top 3, ever. Ever. To put that into context: I have been reading fanfiction since I was a preteen. As of right now, I have 3751 works bookmarked on ao3, and that's after I went through on a mission to get rid of the ones that didn't Spark Joy. This is not just one of my favourites, it is very often my favourite. I only say teop 3 and not top 1 because the top 3 are basically in constant rotation, depending on which I read most recently. My favourite. Not just of Hunger Games fics, but just. All Fics. It's the fic I recommend most often, both because most people have a passing knowledge of THG and because it feels like a crime to hide it away, and I've never met anyone yet who didn't love it just as much as I do.
When the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun by @porchwood is a masterpiece. It's a fairytale fusion with prose like poetry, descriptions of food that will make you feel like your soul itself is starving, and love baked in. It's absolutely brimming with warmth and tenderness, and against a backdrop of the bleak world of Panem. It's... I don't know how to do it justice, truly I don't. I reread it at least once a year, usually twice. If anything I write is ever able to create something even a fraction as powerful as this fic does in a reader, I can honest to god die happy. There's a trillion excerpts I could use, because as I said, reading this fic is like reading poetry, or a spoken hymn, but I'll try and use one that will do it enough justice that people reading this will give it a shot:
"What's the occasion?" "I do believe I've tamed a bird," he confides, his bright eyes twinkling. "The rarest and loveliest in all the woods." "Don't get your hopes up," I warn, but playfully in my turn. "I think this one is just a common blackbird. There are thousands like her in these parts." "A black bird she is indeed," he concedes softly, "but this one has hints of scarlet in her plumage." He leans in to nudge one of my beribboned braids with his nose and I want to kiss him so badly that I almost turn to catch his lips. "I've never seen her like, let alone so close," he goes on huskily. "But I think she might be a mockingjay."
10. Recommend a fic that is more than ten years old
Most of my favourite fics from Smallville are this, as the show first aired 24 years ago---25 in September. Being all of a year old, I didn't watch it at the time, but I fell in love with it in 2019-ish and finding a back catalogue of thousands of fics, many by some of the best writers to ever do it, was an absolute joy.
For this I think I'll go with Arise, You Sleeper (I Am Your Dream) by Nifra_Idril, which was archived to ao3 from the Smallville Slash Archive, because yeah, it's that old. It's ten dreams of Clark's, and I picked it because I think it works for a lot of different continuities, not just Smallville's -- if you have even a glancing knowledge of Superman, you'll understand a few of these, and hopefully be able to appreciate the rest.
"Do you love me?" Clark asks, trailing along after them down the long, straight street, underneath the strange light of the dual moons. "Did you really love me?" "Of course," the woman tells him, stopping to brush a kiss against his cheek. "Of course we did." "I didn't do anything wrong? To make you send me away?" His voice trembles and he can't look up, but the big hand on his face is gentle and he hears the man who is his father clear his throat again. "No, Kal-El," his father says, "you were perfect."
12. Recommend a fic that formed or changed your opinions on something
Again, being a bit of a weirdo, I have a collection for these because it happens not infrequently. Sinking the Ship of Theseus by Skierunner was one of the very first Avatar (James Cameron's Avatar, that is, not The Last Airbender) fics that I read after coming out of the cinema with my brain rewired in early 2023, and thank fuck I did. My understanding of R!Quaritch, which was a little shaky in the beginning because he's got a Lot going on, was unquestionably scaffolded by this character study and I found myself coming back to it a lot when I was writing him (and probably will again when the Avatar bug gets its claws in me in future).
After Spider pulls him from the waters, saving him from certain death, Quaritch wonders what it was like for Theseus. How was it to relive his journey every year? Was it joyous to remember the glory? Was it painful to remember the fallen? Spider snarls at him, spurns his offer. Theseus died violently, if he ever lived at all, but if he did have the chance to grow old, did he ever become too old to sail? And if he did— Spider turns. Dives. Leaves. —how did it feel, to watch his beloved ship sail away without him?
15. Recommend any fic of your choice
You know how I said that When the Moon Fell in Love with the Sun was in my top 3, which was in constant rotation? Right now, number 1 is tenterhooks (feel so good) by Lindra. This fic is---well. Well. I have left multiple comments on every chapter. Every new chapter that comes I do a little happy dance and spend honest to god hours dissecting and rereading and analysing inbetween screaming, crying, throwing up. It's got identity porn, literal porn, long-lost siblings, memory loss, C-PTSD, the most unreliable narrator you've ever known, grand conspiracies, terrible parents, terrible not-parents, multiple fucked up found families, unspeakable grief, court cases, accountability for the unaccountable, recovering from the unrecoverable, forgiveness for the unforgiveable, the highest highs, the lowest lows, catharsis like I've never known and twists so unhinged that I literally cannot talk about them even vaguely without writing an essay spoiling the entire thing.
The bad news: the fic is for a show that aired ten years ago (which has two names? Hello Monster and also I Remember You) and kinda died out. The good news: the fic is better than the show. The fic is so, so much better than the show, which most people agree was pretty damn good. The fic is like ambrosia and also rat poison and also crack cocaine. The show is also available on viki, probably various less than legal sites, and I am so obsessed with this fic and how insane it makes me I bought the show on DVD twice.
Why, May, did you buy it twice? I'm so glad you asked, person that isn't here. The first time I bought it I thought I would just get it, download it, make fanvids (that is still the intent btw. They will likely not be good but I think we've reached the point of no return on the obsession) and end. But the DVD I bought was in comically low quality, like, 360px? It had a good English translation though. (The show is Korean. Sorry for not mentioning that earlier but I'm trying to sell you on this so I have someone else to scream about this fic with.) The seller has a no returns policy, and there's no official DVD for sale anymore.
In Korean. Or English. However, I found a Japanese subbed version which came in, I shit you not, twelve separate discs and cost far, far more money than a person should pay for a show they a) already own and b) cannot understand the audio or subtitles of. I think it's actually the most money I've ever spent on a piece of media ever. I'm still ashamed.
But the picture quality was good, so I bought it. With money I earned with multiple hours of my one and only precious life. So now I have two versions of the show on DVD, one with decent English subtitles and one with decent picture quality, and I'm slooowly putting the two together so I can make---and I must be clear about my skill level here---what will inevitably be extremely mid fanedits for a show that hardly anyone has seen or remembers just because this fic makes me so. fucking. insane.
Heads up to read the tags, and read them well, because the fic touches on some deeply, deeply disturbing shit---hence why it is at least part rat poison, but like me, I know some of you love rat poison---but. This fic genuinely has changed my brain chemistry. It's been going for ten years, is currently at 600k, and when it's done I might have to teach myself how to fan bind so I have a copy to physically hold close for the rest of my life that needs to be hidden from everyone else I know forever. Like with some others, there are just too many excerpts to pick one, so I'll go with the one have on my bookmark from crazy early on in the fic, when things are still insane but almost comprehensible in their insanity:
Hyung, he wants to say. Hyung, look at me, look at me. Hyung, look at me. And Hyun doesn't know, but he does. He does, he is. He is.
....if anyone made it to the end of this, sorry. Hopefully you're in at least one of the fandoms mentioned so you can read some excellent fic. Or ask for a fandom specific rec if this wall of text didn't scare you off, asks are still open :))
