Stephan Sokolow's Blog

I’ve been giving too much effusive praise recently, so let’s try something different.

Divine Blood by Thrythlind is an interesting case, because it does so many things wrong, yet I re-read it despite that. (This being my third time reading it when it’s over 400,000 words long.)

Overall, I’d give it a 4 out of 5, but the interesting part is the “why”.

The story is a study in starting out weak and getting strong, beginning with the kind of “skipped an essential story arc”feel that usually comes about because a bad author decided to arbitrarily change aspects of canon “because I like it better that way”.

The Cons

The prologue has Ranma Saotome raped, impregnated, and locked in female form by greek gods when the most Greek thing in Ranma ½ canon is Chinese amazons and the most “darkly consequential” thing in Ranma ½ canon is Saffron’s temporary death at the end of the final story arc. …and, after that, it time-skips to an adult, female Ranma and her three half-divine OC children. (ie. a half-OC and her three half-divine OC children.) That screams “bad Ranma ½ fanfic”.

Also, the kids have the “weeaboo Japanese” names “Deimosu”, “Naiki”, and “Eija”. Even assuming that it’s justified as “Their mother wouldn’t have known any better”, it’s too distracting. Thrythlind should have exercised his world-building prerogative to justify something that doesn’t act as a prose-level barrier to making the narrative immersive.

For a final issue, the feel of the story starts out slapdash. For example, details like magical aptitude on an application form carry an undercurrent of that “western 90s fanfic” feel to it, which comes about when the author doesn’t know how to extrapolate a desired element from any of the source series and, instead, constructs it out of whole-cloth. (Seen more strongly in stories like Generation Lost.)

Essentially, it implicitly promises a Ranma ½ component to the story, then starts out by rubbing the reader’s face in how much of what is Ranma ½ it can arbitrarily throw away or change just because the author wants it… and, as the scope of the story continues to grow, the original justification for using Ranma becomes shakier. (Post-canon Ranma is, at best, a big fish in a little pond, yet the justification hinges on Ranma being the best candidate in the world for a plan which requires that “she” not die.)

It does have a bit of a propensity for one-shot references and, once the epic story arc really gets going, a bit of a laissez-faire attitude toward multi-crossing in characters to flesh out the roster from other countries, but, if you’ve gotten that far, it only really “helps to give the story that fanfic flavour”.

The Pros

Now, if it were just those, the rating might wind up in the 2.5 to 3.5 range. So, what about the good bits?

Well, If you haven’t lost interest by the third or fourth chapter, it settles into a first story arc which feels like a reasonably engaging story about OCs in a crossover between Full Metal Panic and some of the more headcanon-ish 1990s Ranma fanfiction… leaning toward the former.

…and, once Oh My Goddess enters the story proper in chapter 7, the world-building really kicks off. In that very chapter, it brings a clever take on why demons act as they do that injects a surprising amount of depth and potential very quickly. From that point on, it starts to feel like a more even balance between Full Metal Panic, Oh My Goddess, and a wavering mix of Ranma ½ and OC elements.

The world-building in this story is a joy to read and my impression while re-reading it was that, whether or not Thrythlind was actively trying to world-build, my level of engagement correlated very strongly with how much a scene was revealing about his larger conception of the Oh My Goddess or Full Metal Panic settings and characters. (For example, the origins of Gods and Demons, the nature of Yggdrasil and Nidhogg, and what the Whispered signify for humanity.)

Also, once you’ve read enough to start to learn to accept that “the story is what it is, take it or leave it”, the Ranma ½ and OC elements start to get engaging too.

Overall, like most good epics, once it gets going, the story is a strong blend of in-close character development and large-scale world-building.

What Could Have Been Improved

So, far be it from me to just complain, let’s analyze how it could have been done better.

First, I remember Thrythlind having been working on a non-fanfic version of the narrative, so I want to address that… I have no interest in it. The story’s greatest strength, by far, is how it explores and merges the greater Oh My Goddess and Full Metal Panic elements, and making the story a standalone piece just turns it into a dime-a-dozen idea for a cosmology that I might have actually come up with and dismissed as uninteresting during my teen years.

The actual problems are threefold:

Slow Startup Of The Epic Elements

First, the story is slow to get started… but in a somewhat unusual way. The story isn’t boring… but it feels like a different genre until enough elements reveal themselves for you to start to recognize an epic feeling in it. A story which grows into a huge epic shouldn’t spend its first six chapters feeling like a twist on a canon Full Metal Panic story arc.

(In essence, it’s a failure of the “make a representative first impression” principle, but the author is skilled enough that, even a failed attempt still manages to achieve “good enough”.)

Perhaps ironically for a fanfic, the solution is that it’s not OC enough. Aside from kicking out the Musk characters for being distracting small fry who delay the development of the epic tone, there’s not really much that can be cut or shrunk without making the first arc feel rushed. It really does need a certain degree of patience to establish such a tone and for the Full Metal Panic cast to start to connect with the main characters, so the solution is to make spending that time more worthwhile… something that could have been solved by jettisoning the Ranma ½ connection entirely, so there’s valid reason to spend that much time getting to know the main characters.

If nothing else, a cast of purely OC main characters who have to hook reader interest more or less cold-turkey would ensure proper recognition is given to the need to make the OCs interesting.

Inconsistent Feel For The Villains

While it gets better near the end of their times as characters, the villains never really feel like they belong to the Oh My Goddess setting that they claim to be from. Scenes which involve them feel like they come from some unknown or original work that got crossed into the setting and their behaviour and presentation feel so divorced from what culture is shown or implied in Oh My Goddess canon that it feels like they’re scheming hermits who left to go live and plot in a cabin in some private pocket dimension.

(Compared to the OCs who do work, which feel like “native OCs” hailing from either Full Metal Panic or Oh My Goddess.)

Detrimental Aversion To Using OCs

This ties into the second problem: None of the Ranma ½ elements feel like they need to be Ranma ½ elements for the sake of the greater narrative, and, in some cases, they run against the grain of the story.

Sure, they’re entertaining to read about… but it feels like the story would have been better off if Thrythlind had taken the time to extend either the Full Metal Panic or Oh My Goddess settings with proper “native OCs”. (Something supported by how well-fitting OCs work when they are used, such as Lusca Kraken and Kodachi‘s pseudo-clones.)

The inclusion of Ranma seems to serve two purposes:

First, as a cheap attempt to avoid having to reconcile the presence of “organic/local-scale magic” (eg. feng shui, exorcists, human half-breeds, etc.) with the Oh My Goddess and Full Metal Panic settings, which present “bureaucratic/enterprise-scale magic” and a mild/near-future blend of psionics and super-tech, respectively.

Not only does this cast Ranma in a role that is quite removed from canon, it’s unnecessary. All of this can be justified just as readily by writing the local-scale magic as “the intersection of Oh My Goddess and Full Metal Panic overturned over a rock and the cast noticed the minor magics that scuttled out.”

Second, as a cheap attempt to justify the skill level of the main character and the relevance of her three OC kids… which also isn’t necessary.

For all the crazy magic going on around Ranma Saotome, it’s inherently a failed errand to use that plus a ~15 year time-skip to justify “her” having become just as much a mystic practitioner as a martial artist. That takes a story arc to justify, you can’t just gloss over it, and it’d probably cheapen the overall series to attempt it nonetheless.

Likewise, Thrythlind has demonstrated an ability to write engaging OCs, so I think the story would have been much better off if Thrythlind had acknowledged that these are OCs, regardless of what he names them, and then dedicated proper attention to developing them.

Solution Summary

So, here, in short, is what could be done to raise this to a  4.5 or even a 5.0 out of 5:

First,replace Ranma with an OC “hailing from the Full Metal Panic setting”, with the story being touched off when the gods from Oh My Goddess decide to “play old-school Greek Pantheon” with her. (She can still be a practitioner of minor magics and the like… just not with the reader preconceptions associated with Ranma ½.)

In my estimation, that would lead to the most effective tone for the story. (As-is, it sort of reads like two interesting stories operating as conjoined twins in the same universe, rather than one very interesting one and the Ranma ½ elements are a big part of this problem.)

Second, mitigate the sense that the story is slow to start by packing more exploration of the now-fully-OC main characters into that initial arc. (Which must necessarily be somewhat slow to handle the “OCs get to meet the canon Full Metal Panic cast” and “reveal hints of The Whispered being more than shown in canon” aspects in a way which feels satisfying, believable, and un-rushed.)

Third, use some of that OC development to explain how “local-scale” magic fits in “off-camera” in this hybrid Oh My Goddess – Full Metal Panic setting. (eg. Either “confidently ignore” or clarify the various implications of having human hybrids and other potentially weaponizable supernature in the Full Metal Panic setting. To avoid getting things side-tracked, I prefer to lean toward seeing it as “The Whispered are significant because they’re new, while the rest has been known to aspiring Mengele types for long enough that what we see today is a state of equilibrium sort of like the ‘average people ignore the strange and unknown’ from The Dresden Files.”)

Fourth, spend proper effort justifying and explaining how such archaic, villainous gods can believably “exist off-camera” in Oh My Goddess canon.

The Plot

Anyway, so what actually is the plot?

The gist of it is that Zeus, Poseidon, and Hecate hatch a plan to bring down the doublet system, overthrow the current leadership, kill off “half-breeds and traitors”, wipe out the human interlopers who infest “their” Earth, and return to the age of war against the demons (who see them in turn as interlopers on “their” Earth).

However, for a variety of reasons, Murphy’s Law takes effect… including that the Whispered are actually a sign that humanity is on the threshold of ascending to become much like the Gods and Demons and circumstances conspire to let some of them play Prometheus, just as the Gods did when the Demons emerged from their KT-event shelter and tried to reclaim Earth.

Now, obviously, this is a very abridged explanation, and omits so many engaging details but, if you don’t mind a spoiler, the doublet system falls, Yggdrasil and Nidhogg crash, and humanity at large is introduced to the true reality of things by a flood of god and demon refugees, soon followed by attacks from their respective insurgent factions.

Speaking of which, I also love the elegance of having the demons develop an animal-based supercomputer (Nidhogg), the Gods using a plant basis for their knock-off (Yggdrasil), and humans completing the Animal/Vegetable/Mineral trifecta with a crystal-based knock-off of the other two (Silmaril).

All in all, it’s an incomplete but good story… if you can overlook the flood of warts in the first few chapters, but it could have been so much better.

I’ve had another extremely busy week, so I’ve decided to try another approach to delivering a quality recommendation without having to re-read an entire story to make sure I’ve got things right… a story where the details are so spoiler-y that digging up details would be a waste of time.

The Petriculture Cycle by Kwakerjak

Beginning with the eponymous Petriculture, this series of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fanfics is one of the most satisfyingly clever cases of world-building I’ve ever read.

That said, it’s also one of the trickiest stories to write a recommendation for because simply saying Alternate Universe rather than a more euphemistic “world-building” is spoiler enough for the first story in the series that it’s not listed in the story’s tags. (Let that sink in for a moment. The first story in the series contains such a fundamental plot twist that properly tagging it would be a spoiler.)

As the very sparse intro to the TVTropes page says, “the premise of each successive story is more or less grounded in the surprise ending of the previous story”.

All I can really say for those who want the full experience is that the series is a brilliant example of out-of-the-box creativity in how it blends novel character, setting, and plot details and I’d give it a 5.0 out of 5.

I highly recommend that you just read the series for yourself. I didn’t read the first story until a spoiler for the twist got me curious, and I still regret that.

That said, if I hadn’t seen the spoiler, I might never have read it, so here’s a series of increasingly twist-ruining spoilers for if you’re not yet convinced:

1. The key detail which forms the core of why this setting is fascinating (and completely spoils book 1) is that Pinkie Pie is Twilight Sparkle’s imaginary friend, who gained her own independent existence during that first Sonic Rainboom and her strange abilities are due to her unusual nature.
2. The reason it makes it so fascinating (which is a partial spoiler for the later books) is that she’s not the only canon character who’s actually a reified imaginary friend.
3. The cherry on top (which is a bigger spoiler because of how it gets you thinking) is who these other “thoughtforms” are and whose minds they were born from.
4. If you’re still not convinced that you want to read it, maybe knowing some (but not all) twist-spoiling specifics will sway you. Nightmare Moon was an “imaginary antagonist” created by Luna who got out of hand. She gets redeemed and becomes an interesting OC. Discord is a name Celestia’s imaginary friend took on when he felt he’d been abandoned by her. Thoughtforms not taking rejection well is a recurring theme.

That said, it’s what Kwakerjak does with those spoilers which earns the story such a high rating. Spoilers or not, it’s still a great read.

Enjoy. 🙂

Since I had to cut back last week, here’s another list to make up for it.

One though that almost has to have occurred to anyone who’s seen the movie End of Evangelion is how the only way Shinji seems to be special is in his ability to remain an ordinary guy under all that pressue, yet still become an epic hero by befriending those who become titans. Some stories do touch on the oddity of that distinction, by having him return from 400% sync with harmless cosmetic modifications, but that’s not really satisfying.

So… here is my list of good stories which answer the question “What might be if something about Shinji’s biology were as extraordinary as his role in the story?”

(Also, just a heads up. These fics have a higher-than-usual tendency to mix in elements from EVA spin-offs, such as T•RIDEN•T.)

True Angel by Innortal

Length: 206,915 Words
Status: Incomplete (and not updated since 2008)

Yui Ikari used herself as the first test subject for Evangelion Unit 01, and Rei looks like Shinji because she was engineered using DNA from Yui. Heck, “Rei” is what Shinji would have been named, had he been born a girl. All of these are canon… so what if Gendo attempted to experiment on Shinji before deciding he was a failure and creating Rei?

Yes, this is a “Shinji, the Nephilim” fic where Shinji arrives in Tokyo-3, but it’s not just any such fic. This is a Shinji whose abilities and understanding of them leans more toward Tabris than Rei.

In other words, it’s one of those “give the hero a free boost” concepts which works because the author is skilled enough to recognize that, if you lessen the struggle in one way, you need to make up for that source of reader interest in another. (And Innortal does a good job of finding ways to make things different, rather than easier.)

From a plot standpoint, what makes this story so special is that Shinji is more than a mere Nephilim, and his presence starts to have interesting effects on those around him (both human and EVA) over time. I don’t want to give away too much, but I will say that I love how Innortal has written the characters so they focus on the bigger picture as they become aware of it.

Given how often Evangelion fics focus exclusively on exploring fairly canonical characters, putting that kind of effort into well-done deviations from canon is refreshing and I especially love that this is one of those few stories that are both well-written and work to flesh out the nature of Adam and Lilith.

It was also an interesting choice to fuse in a coherent set of characters from Dual: Parallel Trouble Adventure when more were needed. (On that note, if you like Eva, check out Dual. It’s by the creator of Tenchi Muyo, it’s enjoyable, and, in hindsight, I now see that it has some interesting similarities to Eva that may be homages, such as both NERV and the organizations in Dual! being headed by academics turned warriors.)

As for the tone and focus, the story is mostly serious, but with the occasional bit of light-heartedness to it (such as the punchline for Pen-Pen’s reaction to Misato’s cooking) and it puts a fair bit of focus on Rei and her interactions with Shinji (and later, Tabris too)… something which I have a certain fondness for in Evangelion fanfiction.

The story is frustratingly close to being complete, having stopped updating part-way through its version of End of Evangelion, but, given how many stories die “right when things are getting good”, I’m not going to hold that against it. More content is more content and, all else being equal, that’s never a bad thing.

All in all, I’d say it wavers between 4.5 and 5 out of 5, depending on how much I’m willing to penalize it for my sense that a better balance between familiar and novel elements could have been struck. That said, it is still a story I’ve re-read and it definitely has that special something to it which I normally use to identify top-tier stories.

P.S. Don’t skip the omakes at the end of most of the earlier chapters. Innortal’s consistent use of them as “comedy outtakes” is beautiful, with my favourite ones being chapter 3’s, where Gendo’s Plan B for defeating Angels involves cloned Rabbits of Caerbannog, and chapter 17’s, where Innortal ran with the implications of typoing “Angel” and “Angle”.

Shinji’s Nightmare (FiMFiction.net) (Fanfiction.net) by Harry Leferts

Length: 67,877 Words
Status: Incomplete (and not updated since 2014)
Crossover: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

Before you skip over this due to the crossover, bear in mind that Harry Leferts was the one whose writing managed to add MLP:FiM to the list of fandoms I follow via this and another fic. (The other fic being The Wizard and the Lonely Princess, which showed up in the Fanfiction.net faves list of an author whose taste I trust.)

Also, this story is effectively just an Evangelion story with an under-explored MLP character dropped in as a second main character. (If you listen to the excellent fan-songs The Moon Rises and Lullaby for a Princess, by ponyphonic, you’ll basically know everything relevant that was known about the character at the time. It’s up to fanfic authors to decide details such as whether Nightmare Moon was some kind of personality break, a possessing entity, etc.)

That said, on with the review.

This is another story with a similar abstract concept to True Angel. Shinji winds up more than human, the inability to keep it a secret provides interesting character interaction, and, with the resultant power, he enacts change for the better without fully understanding what he’s doing. That said, it’s significantly different in two ways: First, the primary relationship explored is different and, second, in this fic, Shinji isn’t merely “more than human”, he’s not human at all.

The divergence point for this story is the end of Shinji’s experience with 400% sync, when a freshly-defeated Nightmare Moon, floating in the aether, senses an opportunity to not only possess a body, but shape it as she wishes. The result? One Alicorn (winged unicorn) Shinji, complete with grippy hooves, pegasus magic, and instinctive levitation magic to drive Ritsuko to distraction, and a general physical inhumanity that Asuka does not take well… not that Shinji takes it very well at first either.

This is a very character-centric story. As in True Angel, it’s used as an opportunity to put more focus on Rei, her relationship with Shinji, and interactions between Shinji and Yui’s spirit within EVA-01. However, this does not happen to the exclusion of other characters, with Leferts not only finding screen time for Misato, Ritsuko, and various others around Shinji without it feeling unbalanced, but also having a knack for coming up with interesting and entertaining things for them to do and say.

In short, the story doesn’t forget what it’s about when allotting time. Shinji first, Nightmare Moon second… as is appropriate for such a recent and fundamental change, the story is still primarily focused on Shinji himself and his coming to terms with his new (and still evolving) circumstances.  Leferts just happens to be good at finding ways to make scenes do double or triple duty. (eg. Ritsuko teasing Maya… during a sync test with Shinji. Reforming a villain into a second mother figure… for Shinji. Shinji being forced to accept and use demigod-like powers to protect those around him. etc. etc. etc.)

…and, yes, that is part of how the story develops Nightmare Moon’s character. This story goes with the interpretation that the immortal sisters cannot have children, and the exiled fragment, created from social isolation, inadvertently accomplishes something they would envy her for in gaining a son.

I don’t want to give away too much else, so I’ll just say that I really enjoy Harry Leferts’s writing style, this is my third or fourth read-through of this fic. While the story arc isn’t as complete as True Angel’s, I’d still rate this as a solid 4.5 out of 5.

Alpha and Omega by Xed Alpha

Length: 222,719 Words
Crossover: Mass Effect
Status: Complete, with a sequel

Finally, let’s go for something a little different: A post-canon story.

In this Mass Effect crossover, EVA-01, winds up crashing into a cargo bay on Omega. Naturally, Aria T’loak is none too pleased when the human government flatly denies any association with it, despite the printed markings clearly indicating human origin and decides to claim it rather than letting them cart it away for research. Their poking and prodding at it then proceeds to wake up the fading remnant of Yui’s spirit and a half-angel Shinji, held in stasis within the EVA’s core since he reversed instrumentality at the cost of locking himself outside the universe… the last living remnant of many universes ago.

Now, first, let me be clear. I’ve never played the Mass Effect DLC that the author gives as the source for this characterization of Aria T’loak, so I don’t know how in-character she is here. That said, aside from that, I like how the story is written.

The story is a romance between Shinji and Aria and there’s a certain elegance in how Xed managed to draw parallels between Asuka and Aria, simply by showing Aria’s interactions with Shinji in appropriately chosen situations. Both of them with an interest in Shinji, both careful to not let anyone get close, and both with a dislike for weaklings. At the same time, it’s a story in which Shinji finally comes into his own, with Aria much more expertly finishing what Asuka sought to start.

This isn’t one of those stories where some adventure or exploration of a setting drives the narrative. This is a very character-centric story.  The main thing being explored is “Who is Aria T’loak?” and the primary adventure is Shinji adapting to his new surroundings and the slowly-emerging implications of his new demi-human status. (Leave the adventure for the sequel, which crosses over with what I believe to be Rebuild of Evangelion.)

That said, drama and adventure do start to come in about half-way through the second act… they’re just used as an authorial tool to develop the characters, rather than as the primary focus of the story. For example, at one point, Shinji gets kidnapped, which leads to this delightful quotable:

“Interesting…” said Liara thoughtfully, “In my experience it is usually the governments who enact sanctions on the criminals, not the other way around…”

Also, while I don’t want to spoil to much, I will say that a third main character is introduced at the mid-point of the story who is an interesting twist on the “they carried an echo of the past with them” concept I’ve seen in other fics (which either weren’t memorable enough to make the cut for this list or were more suited to a list of do-over/Peggy Sue fics).

Now, with all that said, I do feel like the initial meld between Shinji and Aria felt a little on the “rushed for plot convenience” side, but it’s not something that ruins the story as a whole and, during and after Shinji’s first evening in Afterlife, the quality picks up quite a bit. In fact, one of the conversations feels like a belated attempt at lampshading the somewhat rushed nature of what comes before.

Assuming this portrayal of Aria isn’t horrendously out of character, I’d give the story a solid 4.0 out of 5 overall and, like all of the other stories I’ve been pulling out of my review backlog, this isn’t my first time re-reading it.

Oh, and I almost forgot… the fic has some adult scenes in it. Just a heads-up.

I had a very busy week and didn’t quite get my planned review post done in time so, rather than leave you with something incomplete or nothing at all, I decided to try something that wouldn’t require me to re-read entire stories in order to make sure I have my facts straight… a generalized author recommendation.

Early in my time on Fanfiction.net, my main approach to finding new stories to read was to read more or less everything by an author I liked, then poke through their favourites lists and repeat the process. (A digital successor to my very conservative approach to trying new print authors back in my teen years and before.)

Two of the fics I discovered in that process which really stick in my memory to this day were A boy in the hand (a Ranma-Sailor Moon comedy where Hotaru decides to try and catch a boyfriend) and Glaring Problems (a comedy which starts everything off with Uzumaki Naruto decides that maybe the civilians of Konoha should know what it’s like to have countless pairs of eyes glaring down at you).

As a sample of said humour, here’s a paragraph from the latter story’s take on Team 7 meeting the Demon Brothers on their first real mission:

Team 7 crested a hill, only to find a pair of nin standing back to back in the center of the path, surrounded by an ungodly amount of orange squirrels who just stared at them unmoving.

Both of these fics are written by the same author: dogbertcarroll. …an author with a knack for creative ideas, and an amazing rate of output (despite, apparently, having trouble keeping volunteers willing to transcribe handwritten prose) …but “a bit of a problem completing stories” would be an understatement.

Even the automatic “96 stories” listing Fanfiction.net generates is misleading, since over 800,000 words of that is in nine “Fragments” stories… compilations of whatever new ideas for first (and sometimes, second, third, fourth, etc.) chapters come to dogbertcarroll’s mind… occasionally getting split out into their own stories if they get long enough.

That said, it’s not to say longer stories never get updates. For example, Walking in the shadows is over 70,000 words and still receives the occasional update. (In it, D’Hoffryn convinces Xander Harris to accept an interdimensional detour for his roadtrip and he picks up Sirius Black as a travelling buddy.)

The key to enjoying dogbertcarroll’s work is to treat it less like your novel of the week, and more like a newspaper comic strip or bathroom reader… A little, usually self-contained bit of entertainment of predictable character to receive in your inbox as a pleasant surprise every now and then. In other words, sort of like the Lone Traveler series of shorts by dunuelos (basically Quantum Leap, Harry Potter edition) or the multi-author Infinite Loops multiverse started by Innortal, but with less of a concrete theme to risk growing tired of.

On the other hand, dogbertcarroll does still update some longer fics on occasion. For example, Lex Marks The Spot, in which, Xander Harris wakes up as Lex Luthor and decides to fix as much as he can, while trolling the Justice League with his comics-originated knowledge of when and how they’re likely to spy on him.

In short, if you’re willing to try out high-quality funny fics with the caveat that they are likely to never be completed, I highly recommend dogbertcarroll.

Enjoy. 🙂