Hey! I don't believe we've had a thread like this for at least a few years now, and the fanfiction landscape is bound to have changed a bit since then.

The key question here: Which fandoms are worth diving into, or at least worth familiarising yourself with purely to get access to good fics?

For example, have you ever given any series a shot purely so that you can access the massive wealth of fanfiction behind it? That was the sole driving reason I read Naruto - there was such a great quantity of fics that the top tier stuff was worth the slog through the long-running series. Also tried that with Inuyasha and bloody hated the series and the fanfiction, come to think of it...

Or, in the same vein: which fandoms are unusually high quality compared to their size?

A few spring to mind for me: Hikaru No Go, (an anime about the ancient Chinese equivalent of Chess, of all things), has a lot of pretty solid fics written by a bare handful of authors. Dresden Files probably fits under this category too, since DLP as a collective has a boner for it and we write some damn good fics.

So really, what would you recommend? What gems are other people missing out on by not being in on the fandom?

 

The sole reason I started Worm was to read the massive amount of fanfiction written on SpaceBattles.

It's also worth getting into The Elder Scrolls fandom just to read Dragon from Ash, the only TES fic to date that I actually think is good:
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11181393/1/Dragon-from-Ash

 

I was never really into Star Wars that much, but there’s some pretty good fics in the verse (as well as a bunch of hp crossovers obviously). The nice thing here is that you wouldn’t need to do much to /get into/ the fandom. Most everyone’s picked up enough Star Wars lore from popculture to be able to just dive right into the good fics.

Extraordinary Times on its own is enough reason to get into the X-men fandom.

I’ve also read two or three surprisingly good fics in the Castle fandom?

Edit: How could I have forgotten about Pokémon!? There’s the whole grimdark thing and all. Some good stuff there.

 

Dragon Age (Origins era, not 2 or Inquisition) and Fate/Stay Night come to mind. Well, Fate is a personal favorite of mine, but the fandom should still be a few steps above the mainstream garbage, despite how popular it's become. I also second Hikaru no Go, I actually have a few fics favorited... that anime is worth a watch. Love Hina, perhaps? It's old though, I'm not sure how well the fics there have aged.

Pretty much all of the big names are too full of garbage. A personal annoyance of mine is Code Geass - fics just can't catch the dramatic flair the anime had, and always and up dry and lacking.

 

ASoIaF/GoT is the only other major fandom that hasn't been mentioned yet.

Recently I started reading How to Train your Dragon fics. There are a handful of high quality stories at the entrance fee of one two-hour movie.

 

I have recently been planning to read GOT just to get the many fics that have spawned from it myself. I have never been a 'kill your characters' reader though and that has held me back so far.

Sorrows: can you give some suggestions on those Stargate fics. I enjoy the universe on the 2 or 3 fics I have read though I never watched the show personally.

I would say the Dungeons and Dragons fandom is pretty good to get in to. It takes no real investment to just hop into some fics and enjoy. Plus between the games and the novels, there are a decent number of fics scattered throughout FFN.

 

Dragon Age Origins was the fucking best. The others though... I pretend they don't exist.

 

As far as I can tell, all fandoms have a more or less similar ratio of shit to quality. The bigger the fandom, the higher the amount of decent fics, even if the percentage hasn't changed. On large fandoms, good fics can be found, even if the source material is shit. Conversely, even if the source material is good (or at least, well-suited to FF) if it hasn't kicked off it's likely that there will be few to none good fics.

As a general rule, it's worth it to at least try to check out the source material of huge fandoms. You might not always be able to watch/read/play the whole thing, but it's worth a shot to gain access to the fics.

Alternative, just use fics to get an idea of what the source is like. Between canon-rehashes and fics that assume the reader hasn't experienced the source material, you can get a pretty good idea of what canon was like. If it sounds good, you can check it out after.

 

Rosario+Vampire. This franchise is a boring and unfunny sex-comedy that tries to become a fighting show at some point. It has two stories worth reading: He Who Fights Monsters and Big Human on Campus. I don't think you need a lot of exposure to the series to enjoy either story, but the more you know, the more enjoyable both fics are. The first is a deconstruction of the original work that takes the classic Nietzsche quote ("He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.") and runs with it . Lamora said it best:

The second is a straight up comedy that pokes as much as possible at the original work. It's also a crossover with Ranma 1/2. It's an absolute riot; the author has pitch perfect comedic timing. This is one of those fics that I go back to every couple of years and re-read.

 

Imo you don't need to watch Rosario to read He Who Fights Monsters. The fic just that good - skim the wiki summary of Rosario and you're good to go.

 

I agree with both of you. He Who Fights Monsters is on my yearly reread list, and each time it gets me. If you changed the names a little and played with the story line a bit it could easily be a standalone book.

 

I've found a decent few in the Legend of Zelda fandom, which is small but active due to the nature of the series.

Another worthwhile mention is the Japanese light novel adaption fandoms, especially for crossovers. Although they're dross on their own the worlds are often fascinating and fertile ground for fanfiction. On the rare occasion when writers tear themselves away from harem nonsense to focus on plot. DanMachi, Highschool DxD, etc. Utter shite to began with, but a decent writer can pare back the puberty to showcase the best parts: humans used as pawns in the war between fallen angels and devils after the death of god? Dungeons 'n' Dragons esque rpg mechanics combined with the conflict between mafia families headed up by gods? Fantastic settings for fanfiction with a billion possible points of divergence.

 

Dragon from Ash is a full retelling and you actually only benefit from knowing the franchise if you go deeper into the lore including an extra-game stuff.

 

@CareOtters care to share a few recs for Legend of Zelda or the rare good lightning novel fanfiction? Even if I search not the library, but by tag, I am not finding that much.

 

You can always get into the SCP Foundation.

Not only you'll get literally thousands of stories, but there's a Project Crossover hub on the site which crosses the SCP Foundation with other works of fiction.

It's definitely worth getting into.

 

Miraculous Ladybug had a surprisingly high quality library from what I could tell.

 

Read through the various 'canons' as well. They take the SCP universe and fit it into various stories. My favourite one is where Cold War America tries to turn the Foundation towards warfare, which they refuse and are thus exiled from the Western/Soviet worlds. Entities are then used for nationalistic purposes, for better or worse (hint: it's mostly worse).

 

The Ranma 1/2 fandom has loads of great fics, it's also pretty easy to crossover due to the setting and the nature of the Ranma plot.