Fanfiction Reviews, Interesting Links, and General Geekery
National Geographic - Anglerfish
Like most people, I knew that the anglerfish was a deep sea fish that could probably win the all-time butt-ugly fish contest, but there’s a lot I didn’t know. Given how interesting and concise the page is (about a screenful on a 1280×1024 display), I decided I’d just link to it.
Enjoy.
Redheads by Robert ‘Kenko’ Haynie
Length: 3 Chapters, Incomplete
Sources: Ranma ½, Slayers
Rating: 5/5
How many readers remember “Equal Halves“, the somewhat sidestory-ish sequel to “Genma’s Daughter“? Now how many of you don’t know about “Redheads”, the somewhat sidestory-ish sequel to “Girl Days“?
“Redheads” starts with a post-Girl Days Ranma trying and failing to get out of “going on a quest”. The result? Ranma and Akane in the Slayers world, travelling with Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev.
Keith P. - Repository Formats Matter
Just a blog post I ran across which describes why I like git (as opposed to other version control systems) much better than I ever could.
Tsunade’s Heir by funkmasterjo
Length: 12 Chapters, Ongoing
Sources: Naruto
Rating: 5/5
A common theme in fanfiction is a small change snowballing to fix or at least lessen all of the problems in a series. Done poorly, it’s obvious and not much fun to read… but it can be done well. “Tsunade’s Heir” isn’t perfect, but it’s different enough from all the other fics I’ve seen to be noteworthy.
For example, it provides an interesting explanation for Naruto’s whisker marks, manages to get away with easing some of the Hyuuga-related unhappiness, and doesn’t follow canon events but remains familiar. That’s always a plus.
One of the interesting ideas I first ran across in amateur fiction was the idea of weaving a bunch of Niven-style Ringworlds together to produce something with more surface area than the sci-fi interpretation of a Dyson Sphere (a hollow but solid shell around a star) and no need for “shadow squares” to create a day/night cycle.
Out of curiosity, I decided to see if I could give myself a rough estimate of the minimum amount of habitable space on such a construct. Of course, I have no expertise in this kind of math and I probably made a mistake or two, so any input would be greatly appreciated.
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