Another fic rec list

This started as a rec list for “well-written fics with feral characters”. It kinda got out of control, and I started questioning “what even counts as feral in a characterization sense”, but hopefully some of these hit the mark. They are all fics that I love a lot and recommend more generally! All of these are gen and mostly rated T, unless noted otherwise:

A Dark Night in Ba Sing Se: ATLA, 20k words, first arc complete, on hiatus. Zuko gets arrested for taking the guard’s swords when he fought Jet at the tea shop, but he will not stay arrested, and further shenanigans ensue. Sweet, funny, excellent characterization, many delightful OC’s that really fill out the world of Ba Sing Se.

Towards the Sun – ATLA, 57k words, first arc complete, on hiatus. Same author as the previous (muffinlance). Zuko becomes firelord in rather worse circumstances than canon. TBH the “feral” part doesn’t really come in until near the end, when it turns out that trying his hardest isn’t enough, so he tries something else. Same author as the above, with really excellent characterization, a humorous kind of narration that will keep you laughing through the tension and heartbreak. Beware the angst in the middle but it gets better!

There May Be Some Collateral Damage – Bleach & HP, 60k words, complete. Ichigo is sent to bodyguard Harry for the 5th year, everything is delightfully chaotic and hilarious.

“I don’t take things from people,” Ichigo corrects her indignantly. “I mean, sometimes I chop them up and set them on fire, but I don’t take them. Stealing is wrong.”

Trust Me, I’m an Alchemist – FMA & YOI, 55k words, complete. Also by metisket. What if everyone in Yuri!!! On Ice had to deal with Elrics instead of Yuri Plisetsky? The answer is mafia connections and secondhand trauma but also more friendship and general shenanigans! Incredibly crack-y premise and the beginning to set it up is a bit weird and confusing but I promise the rest of the fic is 100% worth it. So funny, so wonderful, I re-read my favorite bits of this at least once a week. Technically lots of shipping (this is YoI after all) but it’s all played for laughs/characterization, not particularly romantic. I would post a favorite quote like for the above but I couldn’t choose just one.

Play it again – Teen Wolf (but no familiarity required), 63k words, complete. Same author as the previous two (metisket). Dimension-Travel fix it, Stiles is 200% chaotic but he has a plan and it’s gonna work. The Hale family is alive and so much fun, especially Laura. Also very funny, some romance at the very end but it’s pretty low-key.

What Goes Around – Teen Wolf, 71k words, complete. Kate kills Sheriff Stilinksy as well as the Hales, so Stiles and Peter team up to take out hunters like her in revenge. Unlike most of my other recs, this one is not funny, but it is interesting, and while they’re very methodical about it I think the way it handles “serial killers hunting serial killers” definitely counts as feral. Also this one is rated M rather than T and has Stiles/Derek at some point but I forgot the details.

Subject: A Comprehensive Report – BNHA, 83k words, updates very sporadically. Izuku remains quirkless but becomes the scariest damn researcher. I would call this “feral about investigating.” I love the multi-media formatting of this work and the expansive, in-depth worldbuilding the author contributes to explain how the hero system of canon came to be.

Something Borrowed – BNHA, 130k words, abandoned (for now at least). AFO!Izuku, who personality-wise is pretty nice, but when he goes all-out with his quirk he goes all out. I REALLY love the creativity the author brings to exploring and combining quirks, and how the characters work together to figure these things out.

Mr. and Mrs. Todoroki’s Excellent Day at Hero-Con – BNHA, 5k words, complete. I love “hero cosplays at fancon, trolls fans” as a story genre, and for some reason I haven’t really seen that outside of BNHA? Anyways this is one of the most chaotic and fun versions of this. Features Izuku and Uraraka trolling the entire world and especially Todoroki with utter panache. It’s Izuku/Ochako/Shotou but the shipping is pretty low-key.

Looping Back to the Beginning – BNHA, 10k words, complete. Class 1-A is caught in a time loop so they have fun with it. Featuring pranks, taunting villains, general shenanigans. Probably more “chaotic” than “feral”, but it’s a lot of fun!

Yesterday Upon the Stairs – BNHA, 424k words, complete. Look if you read BNHA fics you don’t need me to tell you about this fic, but suffice to say I think it’s status as the most-read English language work on AO3 is entirely deserved. Izuku is particularly feral in Ch. 7-9 (USJ attack), Ch. 26-27 (final exam), Ch. 34-40 (Kamino Ward), Ch. 50-end (Nighteye internship – esp. 57-59 for the showdown with Overhaul).

Twin Swap – BNHA, 55k words, two complete arcs. Fuyumi and Touya get body-swapped, shenanigans ensue. This is funny and cracky and endearing and more towards “found family feels” than feral escalation, but I’m putting it on here b/c Fuyumi is so done with everyone’s shit, and Dabi is, well, Dabi. Background Dabi/Hawks and Fuyumi/Miruko.

Abolish Private Property - Naruto, 27k words, sporadic updates. “The raging communist SI/OC that no one asked for, or really, deserves.” It’s, uh, very cracky but pretty funny. TBH I much more enjoy the sister fic Sanitize but that is the opposite of feral. Yui suffers no fools but she’s here to bring the wonders of modern medicine (what she can of it) to a preindustrial society wracked by war.

Several Yelp! Reviews of the Bridge~Port Brew Pub – Leverage, 900 words, complete. Parker is just always feral but this is my favorite Leverage fic, it’s fun!!

…and I didn’t end up with any FMA recs on here did I? woops. Uh, I recommend going through metisket’s and silentwalrus’ author pages, they both write great ridiculous Elrics. Mind the tags.

Okay so this started as an addition to @sinningsquire‘s recent post and the subsequent discussion but then it kinda took on a life of its own and then it got REALLY STUPIDLY LONG so I’m going to avoid cluttering the notes and just put my ramble here on my own blog lmao. Anyone is free to disagree, this is just me being inspired by the discussion and adding some thoughts, but this is also how the characters come across to me and I’m unlikely to change my mind at this point. Also I’m putting it behind a cut, but if you’re on mobile, I am so fucking sorry omg. Go filter ‘long post’, refresh, and then you’ll be okay

So the thing about Kylo and Hux that I keep coming back to years into this ship is that they’re complimentary opposites, which I think this is another example of. While I am on team ‘Kylo is going to be bad at Supreme Leadering’, I don’t think that necessarily means he’s bad at all leadership and military-related things ever. Because he’s not, it’s just that what he’s good at vs what Hux is good at are different things and there’s more to Supreme Leadering than a military operation

(Opinions lie beyond here! Read at your own discretion!)

First, I will say I’m basing more of this on TFA’s considerations than TLJ’s because TLJ suffers from Good Guys Need To Win syndrome really badly and that was honestly my biggest complaint about it, even immediately after coming out of the theatre. This is far from a rare occurrence and many sw villains have been essentially neutered by this (e.g. Thrawn in Rebels; one of the greatest Imperial strategists sort of succeeding like once ever and otherwise being repeatedly outsmarted by a child for most of the series). Hux was the most obvious victim of it (tbh I don’t think Kylo was ooc at all in TLJ), but I also think Snoke got hit a little too. Basically RJ painted the Resistance into such a tight corner that the only way he could get them out was to make the FO, which had apparently just recently claimed a big victory, look like complete morons

Personally, I’ve headcanoned Hux being useless in TLJ as a result of his repressed post-Starkiller breakdown. He just lost his life’s work and his boss physically abused him in public over it at least once, so it adds up, for me. Thus most of this comes from TFA and the pre-TLJ novelizations. But anyways. I’ll say now if you’re hard on the useless Hux train, you’ll probably disagree with every point below here lmao

So the thing about Kylo is that he seems good at small-scale operations. Give him a single squadron or a small group (e.g. his Knights) and I think he can get the thing done effectively, provided his emotional state remains stable (which, with him, is a pretty big concern). As some pointed out in the notes on the post that inspired this, he does do alright on Takodana. The mistake he makes is in taking the unknown quantity that is Rey as opposed to the known quantity that is BB-8, though in his defence, there’s no way he could’ve known just how badly that would go. And perhaps he did so partially because the Resistance had arrived and he didn’t have time to find BB-8 before it got messy when she was right there, so I’ll give him that one. He does make some other strategic mistakes, such as in the snow fight when he makes the mistake of underestimating and toying with Finn, but perhaps we can chock that up to his emotional state, him actively bleeding out at the time, and the fact that everyone seems to underestimate Finn. Still, I think he’s largely successful at small-scale stuff, as long as he’s relatively calm (note: he is not calm nor successful for the entirety of TLJ, aside from killing Snoke, which he had help with in the form of a distraction , so I won’t really go into it. It is the most cunning we see from him in any piece of SW media, but it appears to me to be an outlying example. It’s also the only time he’s ever managed to succeed at something he set out to do, aside from killing Han, which was only emotionally difficult, not mechanically so. But anyways)

As an aside, I also don’t think the main argument of Kylo’s family is enough of a claim to show he’s a good leader. Some go so far as to suggest leadership is genetic by discussing Padme, Anakin (who was Not Great, but did succeed sometimes), etc. but that’s not a thing so I’m not going to. He could have studied them, and maybe he did, but it’s not ‘in his blood’. Leia may have exposed him to some politics, but it’s hard to say. Last Shot suggests he spent most of his time with Han when he was little and we don’t know how young he was when he went to Luke, where he would’ve seen nothing. He could’ve been sent away at 5-6 and never even seen the Senate, or Leia could’ve brought him to Senate meetings regularly so he could learn until he was sent away at 15 or something, but as of now, there’s no proof either way. I mention this because of its popularity, but I don’t personally find the argument convincing either way and I don’t believe we know enough to say for sure

Now Hux, Hux is good at large-scale operations. He’s in charge of the Stormtrooper program, which he adapted from previous methods and has had exactly one aberration slip through the cracks ever. He commands the Finalizer and was chosen to work at the same level as Snoke’s personal apprentice, the two of them sharing second-in-command to Snoke (who appears to do fuck all). He’s also in charge of Starkiller and though there is some debate as to how involved he was with it, he certainly oversaw its construction and usage. Lastly, he also oversees the FO’s entire suite of technological advancement projects, according to TLJ. So Hux already has a lot on his plate that he’s managing and appears to be doing at least reasonably well at these things. Hux can command and organize and I don’t think anyone can dispute that

In terms of flaws, he fails to stop Finn and Poe from escaping partially because Poe is That Good and partially because he overcomplicates it, which tends to be the flaw of all big-picture thinkers (also, some luck on their side, considering they both survived the crash. iirc Poe didn’t in the original script, but Oscar asked JJ to please not make him die this time. So perhaps a bit of Good Guys Need To Win too). Small-scale fucks him up because he makes mountains out of molehills and that’s where he’s weakest, as seen also when Poe comes in with a single ship in TLJ, with the chase of the Raddus, etc. He’s capable of running large-scale operations, as I mentioned above, and while there’s debate on whether or not he’s a good strategist, I tend to lean towards ‘a bit above average’ for no other reason than it feels right to me, but there isn’t really any definitive evidence either way. He is also arguably the least responsible for Starkiller’s destruction; yes, there was a weak point, but it was shielded well and unavoidable to have. Phasma lowering the shields and Kylo not finding the explosives due to family problems are both more responsible than he is, imo

(Hux’s other fatal flaw is his underestimation and low opinion of the Force, which will most likely be what kills him regardless of how things play out, but that’s not terribly relevant to this discussion so)

So, with all that in mind: Supreme Leadering. What does that actually entail? Well, it is large-scale, which gives Hux the advantage based on my arguments, and even if we accept he is completely useless at strategy, there’s just so much more to it than that. The Order is now in control of the galaxy at large and needs to manage it, something Snoke most likely would have delegated based on what little we know of him. There’s making and maintaining trade routes, there’s managing supply lines, there’s bureaucracy, there’s the prioritizing of projects, there’s lawmaking, there’s the managing of staff, citizens, etc. This is essentially nation building we’re talking about here, except on a galactic scale. It’s complex, it’s tedious, and it is a massive undertaking, the kind of thing that Hux seems like the type to masturbate thinking about, given how he appears to thrive when taking care of large projects and also his power fantasies

And when it comes to Kylo? The thing is is that even if he could do it well, even if he could look at the big picture and effectively manage people and all of it, I don’t think he cares to

So not only do I think Kylo is ill-suited to something that large, as I originally discussed, I more importantly think he would hate it. Kylo hating paperwork may be fanon, to my knowledge, but it’s one of those things that no one ever really contests because it fits his character. Kylo is not patient. Kylo does not care about the bigger picture. Kylo is self-centered, as in he is focused only on his own interests, not those of anyone around him, even within an organization he claims to support. “Personal interests”, anyone?

In the TFA novel, it’s noted that Hux refrains from yelling at his staff even when he wants to because he knows it will only stress them out and make them sloppy. Kylo is known to violently attack those under him when he’s upset. So even if Kylo has the troops’ fear, Hux has their loyalty (the TLJ novel disagrees with some of this, most notably concerning the older Imperials, but tbh I doubt JJ is taking that anywhere so I’m ignoring it for now. They’re relics of a dying age, anyways. If I end up being wrong, though, I will adjust haha). Pablo Hidalgo explained on his now-defunct twitter, when asked why Kylo didn’t just rip the location of the Resistance base from Poe’s mind, that the reasoning is that he only wanted the map; the Resistance was Hux’s problem. This is in spite of the fact that the Resistance is the FO’s problem in general and Kylo is not only part of the FO, but a high-ranking member. There is also the failure on Crait, which was legitimately embarrassing, and while, yes, that was largely due to his emotional state, Kylo is in a state of emotional crisis for most of his screentime. So, not exactly a great defending argument. I also strongly suspect that will be a continuing trend with him until his inevitable death and/or redemption

These are not signs of a good leader. I also can’t see Kylo suddenly being interested in building a government, even if he could do it. Because he’s going to be focused on getting revenge on Rey for rejecting him, eliminating any fledgling Jedi Order she may or may not be attempting to make, and possibly a plot with his mother. Kylo’s motives have not and do not align with building a nation and at no point does he even seem to care about that in any capacity that involves actually doing something about it

So. This got really long but the main points here are that Supreme Leadering and military strategy are different skills, Hux and Kylo are good at different things (large-scale vs small-scale), and that even if Kylo could Supreme Leader effectively, he most likely doesn’t care to meanwhile Hux seems like he’d actually be pretty good at it (and, even if you think he wouldn’t be, at least he gives a fuck). So uh, yeah. There’s my significantly more than 2 cents and if you actually read this whole thing, then applause for you because it’s longer than the last fic I posted XD