Title: This Bites!
Author: Xomniac, CV12Hornet and The Patient One
Rating: T
Genre: Adventure/Friendship
Status: WIP
Fandom: One-Piece
Pairings: None
Summary: Sea Kings, sea-sickness, sunburns, a 95% genocidal Marine Corps and more than a million and one other assorted ways to die. It's official: Being inserted into an anime sucks ass... Buuut I guess it could be worse. I mean, look on the bright side: At least I'm sailing with the future king of the pirates. (Self-Insert)
Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11515678/1/This-Bites

I think this is the best story in the One-Piece fandom. Admittedly that barely qualifies as an accomplishment, considering the dross that makes up the rest of it, however I'd also call it a very good fic in general, especially for a self-insert.

Cross the SI gets transported to One-Piece by a R.O.B (who continues to have a presence in the story). On the island, he starts on, he meets a talking transponder snail named Soundbite who ate the Noise-Noise fruit. Then the Strawhats turn up, they join the crew and participate in the adventure.

It may not have the most promising start (honestly I'd advise you to just skip the forum discussion and begin with Cross waking up on the island) but it does get good pretty quickly. Cross and Soundbite are well written characters, I wouldn't call Cross a Gary-Stu and Soundbite's fruit isn't a storybreaker.

The spelling and grammar are excellent, I honestly can't recall any errors. The canon characters are true to their personalities, they talk, act and feel like themselves. While the story inevitably re-treads canon, it doesn't just repeat it, the dialogue's never copy-pasted and since the story's from a 1st-person perspective we only see Cross' fights and the rest happen off-screen. As another plus Cross joins the crew after Arlong's beaten so you don't have to bother reading through the East Blue arc again. I'd also claim this to be one of the funniest fics I've ever read and although that's not a huge boast either, it very often makes me smile (not laugh though, it's not that good).

The fic's best point I feel is that it might actually get finished rather than die halfway through Alabaster like all the others. Hell, it's finished Enies Lobby and other than Shinobi of the High Seas I don't think anything else has managed that.

I think my biggest problem with the fic is characters over-emoting about various things. Characters howl with laughter over things that are mildly amusing or scream their heads off over things that are slightly aggravating.
Granted that might be appropriate for One Piece but it bothers me all the same.

All in all I'd give it a 4-4.5/5. Not perfect but nothing I'd consider genuinely bad and pretty entertaining.

 

I tried that once a few months ago but couldn't get more than 2-3 chapters in.

Especially the whole ROB (Random Omnipotent Being for those who don't know) thing is something that should die in a fire and never be used in an actual story. Thought that whole ROB thing started to make fun of lazy authors who just made something up in a slapdash manner, not to actually emulate and celebrate that particular brand of lazy writing.

The SI also seemed really annoying, at least he was at the beginning. Maybe it gets better but it wasn't the story for me.

 

I'd say that it gets better as it goes on, the turning point probably being when they reach the Grand Line. I'll admit the first couple of chapters feel quite forced in a lot of ways but that's par for the course with self-inserts.

I can understand finding Cross or Soundbite annoying and while I think they improve, if you outright don't like them at the start I doubt they'll sufficiently grow on you to make the fic worth reading. The same applies to the comedy, it gets a lot better but if it completely falls flat at the beginning it's probably not worth it.

While I agree that R.O.B's are terrible, all SIs occur by nothing more than suspension of disbelief so I wouldn't call that a deal breaker by itself if the story's good enough. Also the R.O.B here's a bit more than a plot device to start the fic, as it occasionally gives Cross things to help him, one of which is a major part of the story and sometimes communicates with the crew. I think if a R.O.B is used that's one of the better ways to handle it.

 

An entertaining read. I was initially put off by the massive wordcount by i gave it a try and I now eagerly await the next update. Major plus to the three fanfic authors who certainly put in a lot of effort. To write 800k+ words in 48 regular chapters is only 15 months or so is no mean feat and I do give kudos to fanfic authors who do seem to be able to complete their stories. Indeed, considering that they are attempting to take on the entire series while expanding it even further, yet do seem on track to accomplishing it, i cannot help but look on positively on their efforts

As for the story, i feel it certainly captures the spirit of the original series while adding on their own unique twists to it. I love the new characters that are added to the One Piece crew, with not only fan favourites like Vivi added in but other characters that do come out of nowhere like the Kung-Fu Dugongs that take a lot of inspiration from TMNT. I appreciate that although they do stick to some stations of canon, like the various islands they visit and the events that happen there, there are numerous canon divergences that keep the fanfic fresh and interesting by adding on to the original story. I do not think the main character is a Stu, but at the very least, fanfic and OP could do with more characters that need to talk, rather than to punch their way out of things

Furthermore, I don't really mind the R.O.B. The world of One Piece is one that fundamentally defies the laws of rationality anyway and the authors do not handle the Deus ex Machina poorly anyway. It is needed for the central conceit of the story to happen for most of the canon divergences to occur, namely that other characters know what the SH crew is up to with the global braodcast and react appropriately, either causing mayhem and reevaluating their position.

I do agree that characters do over-emote and the exaggerated traits of the OP characters become even more pronounced in this fic and it can grate. Still there are humorous aspects like Nami wanting to wine and dine the gold gained from Skypeia. Furthermore another problem is the length. The authors do want to write about everything and the side characters can take up a lot of space and words if it is not your cup of tea. The Loads and Loads of characters can drag the story a little and make it lose focus as everyone needs an action scene

Overall i would rate the fic 4/5, because it is quite wordy and even i think i wont want to reread it anyway unless i do have a lot of free time. Still it is a fun fic and i love seeing characters work together and be friends

 

I don't have as much of a problem with the over emoting as it fits the tone of One Piece. That said, there are some big problems with this fic that make it so that it'll only ever be decent at best.

The main problem? It's a rehash. Sure, it tries to cover it up by drawing focus to the SI and the jokes, and changes things just a tad bit, it's still mainly just a rehash. How much has the SI really changed? There are some background things, like Bartolomeo and MI3/4/5, but besides that? He told Ace to bring back up to his fight with Blackbeard. That's.....about it. Alabasta went down near entirely as it did in canon with the only change being that events conspired to add Vivi to the crew. Skypeia? Luffy's fight with Enel went down exactly the same, Angel Island was still blown to hell, etc, the only difference being that the crew got Conis.

I'm only just getting to Water 7 and it looks like the same thing is essentially gonna happen.

This leads me into the next problem. The cast is just plain too big. On top of the original Strawhats, (7 so far) there is the SI himself, Soundbite, Vivi, Carue, Five Different Kung fu Dugongs, Conis, her fox Su and for a small bit of time, the Two Old Spice South Birds. Over half of those are just outright Expys/Reference/Joke characters based on Solid Snake, the TMNT and the two Old Spice Commercial Actors who are hard to ever take seriously. And are overall 11-13 extra characters in the scene at any goddamn given time.

It's very clear the fic is suffering from Character Bloat.

The last real problem is in the SI itself. They're just not very....interesting. Beyond 'Danger Loving Maniac' and 'Smug Jackass' I don't feel like Jeremiah Cross really has much of a personality. Granted, this is a bit of a common thing with SI's, but still. And on one hand, I'm torn, because they've kept from making their SI a mary sue with Uber-powerful skills, but on the other hand...none of their fights are all that interesting or epic either, because of it. He relies on Soundbite and that's it. What he does do is steal some of the epic moments and lines of other characters. Especially in regards to Luffy. There are several times when Luffy would have said or done something epic or heartfelt, only for Cross to beat him to it, but it's okay because he'll turn to Luffy and say 'Right Captain?' As if he didn't just steal the moment.

Which is annoying as fuck.

All in all, the fic is a prime example of how the culture of SB and SV can effect a work. They encourage half-assed shit like this, only caring if it somehow offends their sensibilities without caring for the actual quality of a work. That the, apparently several authors at this point, consider their biggest rival to be fucking DuncanIdaho the author of the spectacularly crappy New Game Plus, just hammers the point home.

Basically, these reasons and several listed above this post are why this fic will never be more than 3/5 at most. At the moment i'd give it maybe....2.5? 2/5 if I had to round.

 

Eh, while I agree with several of Probellum points, specially how uninteresting Cross is after the SI acclimatization period ends, I think it's quite well written, it fits fantastically well in theme with One Piece and does what I thought impossible, translates well the humour from OP to the written word. Most of the times.

A 3.5/5 up to 4 for me. I think it has potential to be excellent so long as the authors grows some balls and give Cross something. That stealing epic moments is so fucking incredibly annoying, and cheap, but that's SV/SB for you, they think stealing others people's work and accomplishments make you awesome. See everyother fic where they abuse metaknowledge to the maximum.

 

Honestly, I don't really think this is fair.

Don't get me wrong, This Bites does have its problems. Personally, I think a lot of it is overbloated, really massively too long. They're putting out fifty thousand word chapters that take a lot of getting through. I also think it had a pretty weak beginning, that lots of divergence doesn't really come into it, and really I was close to dropping it for a long time. For a quite a bit at the beginning it did feel very meh.

Still, the bit that This Bites does very well is that it's just a lot of fun.

It's written by a group of fans who just really enjoy One Piece and really enjoy writing their story, and that shows a lot. The One Piece-style exaggerated humour is dead on, the characterisations are great, they've got plenty of jokes, and there's actually a lot of real creativity in the fic.

It's not a matter of SB/SV encouraging low quality work; it's that there's a lot of people very invested in the story and enjoying the journey. There stuff you can pick apart, sure, but there's just so much more in that you've really just got to enjoy.

Personally, I see it as almost more of a serial than a novel, something that you can come back to and have fun with almost constantly. It's a very light-hearted story; the references galore, the character expies, the over the top reactions are totally intentional and there to be enjoyed. Pretty much Soundbite's whole gig is 'yep, I want to push in as many quotes, one liners and references in here as possible'.

As far as the SI is concerned, Cross feels very much One Piece and fits in with the cast. He knows he's stealing the moment a lot of the times, it's his gig, but it fits with his personality as just another eccentric in a crew of eccentrics. I quite like that Cross remains pretty unpowered for most of it too - he's a guy who relies on the people around him to get things through. It brings back One Piece's whole theme of 'the power of friendship' in quite a nice way.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely would not force this fic on anyone simply for the fact that it's currently nine hundred thousand words and growing, and it could easily leave a lot of people very bitter trying to eat through all that. Still, if you can bite your way through and just reach the point where you can enjoy it, you can have a lot of fun though.

For what it is, it's really pretty good. I'll give it a 4/5.