Title: Harvesting the Multiverse
Author: ThatGit
Pairing: Zatanna/OC
Library category: Alternates
Link: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/84060/harvesting-the-multiverse
Summary:
Hydrys Black is a planeswalker. Born to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, Hydrys' Spark ignited and he was cast loose into an infinite multiverse filled with endless danger and possibilities with nothing but his wand and the clothes on his back. Follow him as he studies new magics, learns about himself, and explores worlds beyond anything he imagined was possible.

I know half of you have already closed the thread or at least thinking of it. The name and summary reeks of spacebattles. And anything that has the words most ancient house and planeswalker can't be any good.

Legitmate doubts. I had them too. But the blacks are not glorified, and are shown as clear bigots. As was the main protagonist, and the first chapter seeing the main character's unreliable narrative trope is positively hilarious. Even after travelling to another world and getting good at other magics, Hydrys still uses HP magic for 99% of things(I am in chapter 43, so I wouldn't know anything after that.). And most importantly the author hasn't nerfed hp wizards as most crossovers are wont to do. This fic gives me toppling heroes vibes, and that is the highest praise I can give it.

The DC characters do not seem to be nerfed too, from what I can see. The romance between Hydrys and Zatana is cute, and I am somewhat dreading what will happen once Hydrys' past crimes are revealed. And yeah, the story has explicit content. Don't know why so many talented online authors like to write smut, but well I am not complaining.

The mc is not overpowered nor does he constantly mouth dumb shit like sb protagonist do. He is interested in magic, had bad parents and is ambitious. He is relatable.

The author shines at duels, and his created own character voices. On the flipside, he is bad at writing aqualad and megan who are properly fleshed out in yj, and struggles to get a grip on their dialogue.

Maybe I am exaggerating how good the fic is because I have a sweet spot for crossovers, but would rate it 4 stars out of 5.

 

You had me at the mc is a bigot. I will check this out

 

As a note:
- This is a quest from spacebattles' NSFW sister site, which is pretty much all you need to know in a lot of cases.
- This used to get daily updates (100 daily updates straight is impressive) but the author is currently having personal difficulties

Writing is technically proficient, premise is fine. Either way, it's fine as popcorn reading but not at all library-worthy. There's very few quests I would recommend as actual writing as the concept generally goes against long-term plotting or good writing. Looks like the other ratings generally agree with that.

 

QQ thread here, or reader mode here.

This is a quest, so you can drive the actions (at least a little). The author's written a few other things on QQ, and his other long story is absolutely worth reading, but it very much deserves the NSFW. I don't know how much the RR version keeps though.

This week marks a very weird break in posting - we had a chapter on Monday, and nothing since. We normally get a chapter a day.

I enjoy the story, and look forward to the daily updates - technically, it's all good. Very little in the way of SPG mistakes. Re-read it semi-recently, as I'd missed a few updates, and whilst I enjoyed the re-read, it's not one of the greatest.

Only one vote each update (normally), which avoids one of the biggest problems I've had with quests previously (timeskipping around to match up the different votes each update). ~2.5k updates, on a frequent basis (until now), so that's solid.

Planeswalkers are broken, and Hydrys being a wizard already makes it more so. But I wouldn't want to read a story about someone who doesn't know what they're doing.

3.5, rounding up to 4/5 - it's a lot better than nearly any other planeswalker fic or quest I've tried.