I find these to be entertaining!

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/9478097/1/

He was flawed, most definitely, but he was still innocent before he entered SAO. After 10,000 people are trapped within a virtual death game, if he wants to return to his former life, he must fight on. His name was Kirito, and in order to survive, he must adapt. They say selfishness and arrogance is unbecoming of a person... however, that might be the only way to escape...

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/10984662/1/

He was always there for her, and she for him. They were a unit, a pair. When they worked together, nothing was too big a challenge. They were partners. AU where Kirito brings Asuna with him after the first floor boss.

https://m.fanfiction.net/s/11469815/1/

On January 1st, 2050, 5 million people become trapped in the virtual world created by computer genius, Kirigaya Kazuo, son of Kirito and Asuna. In order to be set free, they must defeat Kazuo and conquer this world within the next 10 years. In this difficult battle across the real world and virtual reality, The Star of Seven must win wars using giant fighting robots called Mecha...

 

Tell us why we should give 2 cents on reading these thing instead of summaries.

 

None of those summaries make me want to read their stories.

 

The first story is called "Alpha, not Beta" which is probably a reference to beta testers, but already sets off my "over the top try hard Alpha male" alarm. Pop culture references. Angst. Sorry but I couldn't get past the first couple of paragraphs.

 

Hilariously, it is exactly that. I ctrl-f'ed for Alpha and found the first in-story reference from Asuna's perspective: To me... he was the best person I've ever met. He was, in this game... the Alpha.

Several chapters later we get this gem: I can't believe I was going to be defeated like this... The Alpha getting conquered without a sword being drawn... apparently this was the day the strength of men failed...

You read that correctly; Kirito calls himself "The Alpha" in his own head. His defeat by a woman means that the "strength of men" has failed. Kirito must only be the pinnacle of manly men. This could make for a fantastic comedic farce: Kirito, just Alpha dogging so hard through SAO. Busting out his masculine chest and glutes. Do you even lift, bro?

The author also suffers from a terminal case of ellipsisitis. He needs emergency treatment.

 

After proving how Alpha he is, Kirito is asked by Black Ops agents to infiltrate a new game called Alfheim Online. Upon entering the game, Kirito realizes it's about faeries and that faeries are decidedly not Alpha. In fact they're completely gay. Bound by contract to his Black Ops mission he picks the ultra angst class Spriggan. Realizing he can fly in Alfheim, Kirito scoffs at the dragonfly wings of other players. Testosterone appearing around his body in a shimmering aura, Kirito flexes his Alpha physique! His lats burst out of his tunic spreading wide! A gust of wind catches and he zooms off into the sunset. All of the female Spriggans in the immediate vicinity orgasm upon witnessing such a manly action and become pregnant.

5/5 would definitely read 100k words of this shit.

 

I said they're entertaining not that they have any quality to them.

 

Would be helpful if you expanded on what about them you find entertaining. Good characterization? Funny moments? Epic fights?

 

And I also asked why you like the story. C'mon man, give us something here. Recommending a story does not consist only of "Hey man, I liked this stuff, you should read it" and expect us to go and read it.

All we're asking if you are recommending a story is a short description of it which could be the summary and why you enjoyed it. If you want to go the extra mile (which is not really an extra mile) provide us with decent feedbacks grammar-wise and plot-wise.

e.g I like Alpha because it depicts a unique perspective of an SI, wish-fulfillment story about how the power of positive thinking (Alpha) can actually benefit person into becoming what he envisioned himself to be.

Anyway, as for those three you mentioned, quality was subpar at the most. Cliches and wankfest are everywhere. Basically a wish-fulfillment SI named Kirito.

That Partners story had little substance to it. I could barely slog through the first few chapters because all it did was basically follow canon story-line with Asuna added to it without her doing anything of significance to the plot.

 

Does anybody know of any actually good SAO fanfic? I read a Worm/SAO cross and liked it, but haven't really found much else.

 

Decent one at the top of my head is FanFiction.Net.

Premise centers around Kayaba using ALO as his death-game rather than SAO and while SAO was purely focused on Kirito, this one fleshes out side-characters really well and is on a multiple POV style of writing.

So, if you are interested in reading SAO fanfic that purely focuses on how awesome Kirito is or how he's gonna curbstomp everybody or even on how lovey-dovey Kirito and Asuna is together, this is not for you.

 

I haven't been able to stand any SAO fic because I've already seen Kirito's story in canon and can't really be bothered to re-read it with a few changes. I'm interested in characters, and I've already seen those character arcs in canon. I want new stories, not re-hashes of the old. Kirito going through the motions to beat Kayaba and win The Girl isn't an idea that appeals to me on its own.

The SAO/Worm fic is good because it focuses on Taylor and Kayaba inside an SAO governed by an AI which appears to be going rampant. We get to see Kayaba from an angle we didn't in canon. Kirito and Asuna are there as supporting characters, and usually doing their own thing off screen. The AI is its own character, and mixes up the situation enough that it's become unrecognisable.

There are good arguments that the story has become too dark, too unwinnable, but I want to give the author a chance to show us how the characters are going to pull out of this nosedive before condemning it.

edit: I'm talking about ...Fucking Tinkers by violetshadows

 

Spoiler alert. [spoiler No you don't./[spoilre] Oh hell I failed to put that behind a spoiler wall.

Spoiler

Real spoiler time. It keeps getting worse. The author gave away his plans for some reason. It is this. Everyone dies too much because it keeps getting worse. For some reason, somehow more people are abducted into SAO to fight and die some more. Then after more death, suddenly the SAO AI thing suddenly becomes a robot in the real world and everyone has to fight now in the real world!!!1 This is not a joke.

I'm not making this up. I am taking the piss out of it but violetshadows did say that would happen.

What I want to see is a story that deals with the non-characters as they get involved with the real world. How would a person interact after dealing with that? Have a character study on a person that hunts the people that kill innocents in the game. A study on a character that was the moral support for a minor guild. A study on a coward that did nothing and achieved nothing.

 

Hahaha. I'll give it a go anyway. Even ridiculous ideas can work if the execution is good.

Oh, yeah. Hunting down and killing the PK'ers is a worthy goal for your messed up post-SAO life until you can find a new balance and direction.

 

I second that rec. Fairy Dance is probably the only SAO story on ffnet that actually fleshes out the characters and the VRMMORPG world.

The technical writing is solid as well.

 

If you don't mind crossovers and haven't read it yet, then I recommend you try Halkeginia Online by zero0hero. The world building is great and the OC get quite good too. The story's massive. There are a few more chapters done on SV than there are posted on ff.net.

 

I might give it a go. I've skipped it in the past because the summary didn't grab me.

Here's some other SAO fics on SB/SV. Do you guys know anything about the quality of these?

1. W40K: Destiny Online (40K/SAO) [OCs-Centric] by Older-than-Time
2. Zi-on-line (Worm / SAO crossover) by Star-Raven
3. Souls Art Online (DS/SAO) by shadenight123
4. A Magus in Aincrad (SAO/FSN) by Wavelet
5. ParaHumans Online [SAO/Post-canon Worm] by physxman
6. Sword Art Administrator [Worm/SAO Crossover] by Magnive

 

Catsy's stories are really the only good SAO fanfics that I have found. She was on DLP for a time as well, so, always cool to interact with an author here. She has a story focusing on two OCs that was decent as well, IIRC.

Really should catch up on Fairy Dance of Death. Read it it like two years ago and forgot to subscribe to it and it fell of my radar. Apparently, it got regular updates and is clocking in on around 400k words.

Second Fucking Tinkers although that one gets really irregular updates.

Edit:

Then there is Fate Revelation Online by daniel-gudman

Rated: Fiction T - English - Sci-Fi/Fantasy - Illyasviel von Einzbern, Shirō E., Asuna/Asuna Y., Kirito/Kazuto K. - Chapters: 64 - Words: 324,284 - Reviews: 1,002 - Favs: 1,853 - Follows: 1,844 - Updated: May 13 - Published: Oct 5, 2013 - id: 9740933

It's...decent, I suppose. I am no fan of Shiro, so, seeing him do his hero thing was of limited interest to me. So, him running around, trying to save people was meh, although i did like the fact that he moulded his character solely so that he can save people. The SAO cast is the SAO cast who, outside of Catsy's fic, are rather bland anyway.

Really, the biggest joy of this story is Ilya being Ilya, especially when she is ruthless and arrogant, which is understandable, since she is better than everyone else. It's hardly library material, but if you are on a SAO kick and know Fate Stay Night and its characters, it's worth checking out, I suppose. Honestly, I stopped reading the updates a while ago, although I think I could try a reread, just skipping to the Ilya chapters.

@ Yak: Why are there so many Worm SAO crossovers?

 

No idea. It surprised me too. I just grabbed the latest six fics from SB/SV and half of them turned out to be Worm crossovers.

Perhaps it's inspiration/dissatisfaction from ...Fucking Tinkers. You might call it the Gabriel Blessing effect.

 

There's also another one quite similar to Halkagenia Online but takes a rather unique perspective on Louise summoning the whole ALO community/World Tree for her familiar biniding contract.

A little bit of pubstomping from ALO but understandable since they are, after all, VG characters. Now that I think about it, it might have been heavily influenced by Database Databaaaaase! aka. Log Horizon.

Story covers multiple perspectives as well as semi-fleshed out side-characters. Also amateur politiking. Haven't been updated in a while though.

Link:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9359892/1/Fae-is-Foul