https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9793511/1/The-Last-Guardian-of-Aura - A Pokemon fic that reminds me quite a bit of the Sun Soul. The protagonist is Ash but he's also Red at the same time. Kind of like how Ash was supposed to be the anime version of Red before the money started pouring in.

Ash is a bit overpowered what with the aura and all. But it's kind of expected when he is living up to Red's hype and the potential he had at the beginning of the anime.

There's a few grammar and spelling mistakes littering the fic. It could do with a beta, but other than that I think this could be almost library quality.

 

Dunno if it's in the Library, but it was written for one of the DLP writing contests back in the day. One of my bigger writing regrets was having to dash off the ending fast and unsatisfactorily, penning it the evening before having to evacuate with wife, sprog, wife's two sisters, and mother-in-law due to a forest fire.

This summer promises to be the worst in memory for the American Southwest for drought and fire. In honor of this event, perhaps we should revive the contests?

 

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10346769/1/Relevant-Wizardry
A Dresden Files/Person of Interest Crossover.

Only 6k words so far those are enough to say that this story is worth keeping an eye upon.

 

http://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/rebuild-of-sword-art-online.210/

I am honestly a bit divided whether I should put this up for review or not, hence I may as well throw it in here first. The original SAO light novels had an interesting concept that was unfortunately marred by a Gary Stu and a shallow cast. This fanfic is basicly a remake of SAO with a more gritty reality.

The gripes I am having so far is that so far it follows cannon pretty well. I wouldn't mind seeing it diverging more. Second I am quite divided in regards to how the author is portraying Sachi's group. I am a bit afraid that it's borderlining stereotyping Sachi's guildmates in the typical and black&white type.

 

Just for clarification, is this an attempted full rewrite or an AU with names copy pasted from the original work?


Haven't the time to jump in at the moment, I'll leave a proper review once I've read more than the opening paragraph.

 

It's the latter, an AU with names copy pasted from the original work.

 

Didn't really find myself all that interested in that SAO fic. The guy goes a long way to show that he isn't overpowering Kirito and it's rather disheartening. Or it just seemed that way to me when Klein put Kirito on his ass.

That, and unlike alot of people I actually liked Kirito being a solo-player badass. I mean, teaming up in clans is cool for RPG's but I prefer to play solo and that kinda translates over for SAO fics. And the talking this writer was doing with others on the forum about not making Kirito a solo-player didn't endear me at all to it.

The technical writing is great though, and the dialogue and inner thoughts of Kirito were awesome. I'm not much of a fan of where the plot is heading, but I can admit freely that this is a vert high quality fic. Maybe even library worthy in my own opinion.

 

So basically he nerfs Kirito? Fuck that shit.

Kirito was one of the few interesting Anime Protags. He starts out skilled and only gets more powerful from there. He's not a weakling ass moron like most anime protagonists.

His Drama comes not from stupid the 'I'm not powerful enough', but the more interesting 'I'm only Human'.

Gritty, darker reality and great writing or not, the premise sounds asstarded.

Also Kirito the Gary Stu, LOOOL.

 

If you find Kirito to be fine that's alright. However I found Kirito to be an unbearable protagonist. Although I admit that he was better portrayed in the anime. In the original light novel (which was where I based my comments on) he was being glorified for the most retarded reasons.

Also, in regards to Gary Stu:
1. Solo beating Gleameyes, a raid boss that is supposedly to be beaten by huge groups of players.
2. Out of 10.000+ players only he gets Dual Wielding? Come on dude MMORPG doesn't work like that at all.
3. Right after Eugeune vs Kirito battle apparently after 1 duel an entire army of players decides to lay down arms. I must have missed something, but last I recalled videogame players tend to be fairly toxic.
4. Winning some sort of money game right after meeting Sinon in GGO. Despite that dozen of players before him never managed to do it, including Sinon.
5. For some reason Heathcliff decides everything on a solo match against Kirito? There was no reason at all. I can imagine Kirito being on the level of a pro player, but surely there are other people around that are on equal level? It made 0 sense to me.

There are far more examples out there. Though these are some that come straight to my mind. Perhaps I am a bit biased, but this is nowhere close to how online gaming behaviour works, which killed the entertainment for me. Hence, a more gritty and realistic portrayal is something that endears to me. In all honesty, the original SAO LN felt more like a fantasy of "if only I was the best player with no equal around" and apparently that was given form by the author. Either way, I was fairly divided if other readers would have similar feelings. Hence I dropped it in here in first place. So, yeah, if you don't feel that way it's completely fine just skip it.

 

I'm fairly sure it's only Marty Stu when timetravel is involved. But that's only based on my belief it's a reference to Marty McFly.

 

I must admit, I am fairly confused with which "stu" refers to what in all honesty. Ah well, long live wikipedia I guess.

 

I like that Kirito was playing solo and was bamf but I didn't like how ridiculously overpowered he was. Soloing a boss, having the power of love somehow overpower the programming of the game, and other such things.

 

To be fair, Asuna did that first.

 

Now, I know squat about SAO, so I can't make any comments about the rest of this, but I do feel the need to point out that much of the asshole nature of online gaming is a result of the fact that it's all anonymous, and therefore consequence free. If the playerbase knew, fundamentally knew, that they had to work with each other or die for real, the vast majority of such behavior is going to evaporate very quickly.

A setup like SAO is pretty much perfect, and possibly the only possible one, for getting people in an online game to behave in an almost-universally positive manner.

 

The Eugene vs Kirito battle took place in a different game world without the consequence of death.

 

That scene took place in the Alfheim Online where the players didn't die for real.

 

That particular scene took place in ALO (Alfheim Online) where there was no death in-game = death IRL.

Basicly the scene went as follows: Salamander faction came in with a huge army to invade a negotiation group between Sylph faction and Caith Sith faction. Kirito jumps in and bluffs that he's a representative of another faction, and attacking Sylph + Caith Sith will anger their faction.

The leader of the Salamander group, named Eugene, proclaims he will believe Kirito if Kirito beats him. They fight with Kirito as winner. Suddenly the entire Salamander applauds Kirito and apparently completely decide to forego following their entire attack. The Salamander leader decides he believes him, especially after having a fellow Salamander backing Kirito up (even though Kirito killed his character a few chapters earlier). Salamander faction departs and the faction leaders from both Caith Sith and Sylph attempt to seduce Kirito. It has been a while since I have read the LN of SAO so I may have missed a few details or am wrong on a few minor stuff, but that's the general gist of it. It's cliche and retarded on a whole new level...

 

Uh ...

The point of "proving" he was a representative of another faction was that
a) He was a Spriggan, a member of another faction
b) He had starter gear

So the Salamanders figured he was bluffing, since only noobs use starter gear and an emissary woudn't be a noob. Then Kirito showed of his OP stats from two years of SAO and they figured high stats=high status=actual emissary.
--
I like that Kirito's a badass solo player and his nerdyness and obliviousness is hilarious to me. The novels got a lot more funny once I really realized they were narrated by Kirito. The 4komas are great too.

It's just that he got to much and a lot of it seemingly only for coolness sake.

Lone Wolf.
BUT social smarts, knows people, knows factions and has great friends.

"Beater"
BUT helps every damsel he stumbles upon

Grinder (to justify his OP ness)
BUT constantly takes detours to help people, takes up angling of all things, enjoys live in Aincrad.

Wants to save Asuna at all costs
BUT takes massive risks and detours for no pay off (that he knew of)

He can be the ruthless Beater OR help the helpless, the strong silent type OR flawlessly talk down important people, be the lone wolf or be personable.
But both are just Stuish.

The author seems to be aware of that though, since in an authors note in the Underworld arcs, he said that he's trying a new approach and Kirito woudn't meet a new girl in every arc now.
(He and his new mate saved two girls they were tutoring from evil, aristocrat rapists a few arcs later.)

Imo, SAOs worldbuilding and plot don't make much sense, but the themes it invokes are strong enough to make up for it. It also has pacing and is reasonably well written (in contrast to most fanfiction).

Something like Yureka by contrast has more distinct characters, the plot doesn't make you facepalm, but it's slower, doesn't have the hammyness of the death game and never got an anime.

 

It also irritated me how he had the players crapping their pants and breaking formation after casting that illusion of turning into a monster. Like they're all noobs or something.

 

Oke, then I was mistaken with that particular part. Either way, my other points still stand though. I feel that SAO's concept was interesting, but the LN execution was poor.