So, I’ve read a lot of fanfiction. Since I was thirteen. Still read them now. And I want to share some of the ones that I still think about, read, and indulge in when I can’t fall asleep. Maybe you’ll like them too. Most of these will be Yu-Gi-Oh!, Death Note, or k-pop but, even if you’re not into these fandoms, all of these works are still incredible stories.

Origin of Symmetry by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu) | Yu-Gi-Oh!

Basically, this is a cyberpunk story with everything lovely that cyberpunk stories have to offer—semi legible lingo, intergalactic war, seedy surroundings and the feeling that you're in a fantastical Hong Kong only found in Wong Kar Wai or Ghost in the Shell, and corporate/abbreviated names that make the world otherworldly but believable. You really don’t need to be a Yugioh stan to enjoy this story but it’s better if you do.

It’s written in an intentionally fragmentary way to simulate the experience of trauma. The point of view character in this is a veteran and the fragmentary style creates all these feelings of terror, nostalgia, and adrenaline. The plot is: a nihilistic veteran turned secret spy is tracking down an anarchist. Most of the story is a slow, calculated, and glitchy chase. When they come together, they have to create something resembling order together. This is a love story and it’s not overtly political but you feel the heavy weight of ideologies clashing (or slashing?) when going through this. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.


EXCERPT: Honda cuts in before Jounouchi can begin another story. “I heard from old Arthur a few days ago,” he says. “Remember that huge explosion on Gamma-gamma-twenty—killed some minor treasury official? It’s official: Bakura was behind it.”

“Took them long enough,” Jounouchi says, incredulous. “Who the hell else could have done it?”

Bakura is a faceless specter to most, but for the past three years he has been a suspect behind a handful of high-profile attacks and assassinations across the Coalition. YG0 in its quiet pocket of space is in little danger, but elsewhere across the galaxy the heads of state tremble and double their guard. During a six-month lull it was thought he had been killed, but last January the attacks resumed, growing in frequency—always singular assassinations, always at the edge of Coalition territory, always creeping inward.

Bakura’s motives are totally unknown. The analysts have made him out to be a Marxist, a socialist, an anarchist, a fascist, a fundamentalist, a separatist, a communist, a terrorist, a torusist, a pirate, an anti-colonist—at the very least, a madman.

“I think I’ve met him, actually,” Ryou says.

There is a pause.

“What?” Anzu and Yuugi exclaim, almost in unison. Anzu goes on. “How? No way!”

Jounouchi laughs. “No, definitely no way,” he says. “I can’t believe that.”

Ryou shrugs. He says, mildly, “I think I shot him down—during the war. You know." He toys with his bowl and waits for them to chuckle and move on, Ha ha, very funny, Ryou—

Anzu and Honda are looking at him, almost warily. Jounouchi’s laughter has taken on a nervous tinge. “Shit, man,” he says, wide-eyed. “Every time I see you, you’re so sweet and quiet. I forget what a scary fucker you really are.”

Snap by bluetent (mimei) | DBSK/TVXQ

This fic is no longer available online but I have a PDF if anyone wants to email me for it. Mimei is now a Youtube celebrity and deleted her fandom livejournal. This makes me sad because she’s the only writer I’ve ever been able to find who has written Guniw Tool fanfiction.

The best thing about this fic is that it’s such an enjoyable but meta exploration of idol culture. The whole story is framed as a game that all the characters either decide to or are emotionally coerced into, like the kind that idols might play on a variety show or something. When they start playing the game, they stop being able to tell what is real and what is in the game. What this fic is about is the blurry line between real and fake when you live literal lives as self exploiting images within late stage capitalism.

None of this analysis reads flat. Every single character in this story is self reproducing both his idol imagery and his meta strategy towards authenticity. Some do it in self destructive ways that aren’t melodramatic, some do it in manipulative ways, some are theory focused, some prioritize the performance of life, and other prioritize a life lived for performance’s sake. If you’re interested at all in meta narratives around idol culture, READ THIS FANFIC.


EXCERPT: “What was that?” Changmin asks, looking around the corner.

“Inanimate objects. Great confidants. Also, if you're looking to practice pick-up lines-”

“I'm not,” Changmin says, with a big, fake, indulgent smile.

“Just wait. A good pick-up line works better wonders than any dumb card trick.” “You're just jealous Junsu can do magic.”

“Not at all. Junsu can be all the clown he wants. I cry, he tells jokes and shuffles cards. We're a veritable sideshow!”

“Hyung, I realise you're joking but it's in very bad taste,” Changmin says, flatly.

“Just getting it out of my system. Sorry.” Yoochun pulls Changmin to him and to his bedroom door. He taps out Beethoven's Fifth. “Hey Jaejoongie-hyung, open up babe, you gotta see the bruises I got from falling for you.”

There is no reply.

“I lost my virginity, hyung. Can I have yours?” Changmin shudders pointedly.

“C'mon, did you hear that? You're breakin' my heart, baby.”

Still nothing.

“C'mon princess, or I'll break out the TKD. I've already broken one door in this place and I'm really very past caring about the consequences.”

“Okay,” Jaejoong says, voice faint and hollow. Changmin and Yoochun wait as Jaejoong moves around and opens the door.

Nights by youremyqueen | Death Note

Basically, Death Note is a story about the tension between a world produced by technology and the world where people have bodies, right? The anonymity of Kira and L are both about online pseudonymity and Kira is about fears around online surveillance. What Death Note does is it uses a supernatural element to transform these fears into a personal story about two people who are endlessly trying to manipulate each other.

Night is a story that just allows you to engage in that manipulation, chapter after chapter, on and on. It’s a love story between two people who are trying to read each other, anticipate each other’s moves, and confirm or deny their own beliefs about one another. Every confession is coded, every seemingly spontaneous action really isn’t, the characters use their own trauma against one another, and never, ever, ever do they reveal their true personalities. The only way they reveal their true personalities is through their endurance of the fucked up relationship dynamic they’re in chapter after chapter. The only question that makes the characters vulnerable is the question of whether they’re still trying to kill each other but they always, always, manage to skirt around direct questions.

L is written really, really well here. He’s written to be computer-like, as he is, but completely poetic in his own dry way. Misa is written in an incredible and gut wrenching way as well. And Beyond Birthday is credibly terrifying and yet endearing as he should be.


EXCERPT: "I'm going to tell you a story," he says. "You're always asking about me, about my history, so I'm going to tell you."

That had certainly not been what Light had been expecting, but he doesn't interrupt. He's too shell-shocked to come up with words suitably eloquent enough to explain how fucking furious he is.

L clears his throat, a keen, unreadable look in his eye. "My mother died during childbirth and I spent my early years in a children's poor house in a small town in England," he begins, and Light clenches his teeth. "I went to work picking oakum when I was nine and - "

"That's Oliver Twist," he says, barely restraining an eye-roll. A part of him wants to laugh, and maybe he would if his gut wasn't aching and his head didn't feel as if it had been put on backwards.

"Oh," L says. "You're right. I do get he and I confused sometimes. Let's see." He tugs on his lip with an errant finger. "In truth, I was raised by my older sister and her husband. He was a blacksmith and I apprenticed for him until I came into a good deal of money from a - "

Light turns his snort into a cough. "Great Expectations," he says, realizing that L is, for lack of a better word, teasing him. "Why all the Dickens?"

"You'd prefer something else? Ahem. 'It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of good - '"

There's a grim sort of hilarity to the situation, Light grabbed from his bed, tied to a chair on an abandoned floor all so that L could quote Pride and Prejudice at him. In the first place, he knows for a fact that L isn't overly fond of Austen - "More of a Bronte sort," he'd told him, during one of their late nights - and in the second, there doesn't seem to be any point to it, other than to shake him up. L may be unreasonable, but he's not incompetent. He has to have a purpose.

Perhaps to bore him to death.

Maybe Light will look back on this moment with fond amusement after L is dead, but it's hard to muster any sort of good feeling toward him while tasting his own blood in his mouth.

"Are we going to play 'guess L's favorite books' all day," he snaps, "or can you throw me in a cell and be done with it?"

He doesn't actually expect L to incarcerate him, and throws it down as an option just to completely rule it out. After all, L's plan is surely to shake him up as much as possible. He's not going to do something that he thinks Light will expect, but Light knows enough by now to expect anything. L is not above anything.

"Then what is the difference between you and Kira?" Light has asked, before.

Among other things, at least Kira has some fucking decorum.

Distant Sun by Flamika | Death Note

This is another fanfic that has ceased to exist on the internet that I have saved and you’ll need to email me and ask for it if you want to read it. There are Chinese translation of this still up in scattered pieces but the original has been taken down.

This is a background fic for Mello. I’ve always loved Mello because, in fandom, he’s the characters who I see most consistently written as non-binary for some reason. Distant Sun, apart from being a background fic, is really about friendship. You get this incredible hit of nostalgia around the middle of the fic when Mello and Matt start teaming up again and the reason you do is because the bits about their childhood are written so well and convincingly. Mello is endlessly relatable because he’s a kid without memories or homes and the fic makes you feel like he’s desperately looking for a home in a person. And, because this fic is canon universe and you already know what happens in Death Note, you already know that it all has a tragic ending.


EXCERPT: "Hey," he greeted.

"I like your boots," Mello said. "I had a pair like that a couple of years ago."

"I guess you like the pointier ones now," Matt observed, reaching out and lifting the hem of Mello's leather pant leg. "You gonna kill someone with those, or do you just like them 'cause they make you look taller?"

"They're good for kicking people when they're down," Mello replied around a mouthful of chocolate.

Matt made a noncommittal noise and procured a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, drawing a slim white cylinder out with his lips. With his other hand, he pulled out a lighter and flicked it once, the flame burning strongly despite the windy night. The glow from the fire played over the fine bones of his attractive face, his roguish good looks only accented by the mess of brown hair that hung over his eyes.

"You over yourself now?" Mello asked dryly.

"You know me--I'm too lazy to hold a grudge," Matt replied calmly, the end of his cigarette flaring cherry red as he pulled in smoke. "You wanna go up to my pad?"

Mello climbed off the car, noticing for the first time that Matt was taller than he was. "How do you know I haven't already been in there?"

Matt let out a humorless chuckle. "Trust me, M. I'd know if you'd been anywhere near my things."

The Hinterland Doctrine by Halfpromise | Death Note

The author describes this story as “Japanese Psycho in Westminister.” Basically, Light is as antisocial and psychotic as Christian Bale’s character in American Psycho but he’s a politician. The plot is basically the same as House of Cards: power hungry politician does whatever is necessary to get to a place of extreme power. As Halfpromise also writes, “I like my politicians to be completely corrupt, high as kites, misogynistic, bigoted and promiscuous. Well, I imagine them to be like that and then turn the volume up to eleven.” This is a story about politics but devoid of any political truth. Obviously, it’s a premise that works extremely well for Death Note.

Light and L are completely convincing here because they’re terrible people. The politics in this story is all about images, about psychopathy, about psychoanalysis, and about seeming like the perfect, idealistic, young candidate to save the world while L does all the dirty work. It’s a story that doesn’t really have an ending and doesn’t really need one. Somehow, the universe is enough.


EXCERPT: "So what about the inquiry?" I say. "It's only for show."

Jeevas laughs again. His throat is completely shot. "You do know that Lawliet is heading it?" He leans across the table towards me. I lower my head and blow the tail-end of smoke into his gormless face.

"Yeah. And?"

"He's a rottweiler. He interviewed me for a job with his law firm once and he tore me apart. Since my résumé is pretty damn perfect, what do you think he's going to do to you? Well, I'll tell you. He will twist your testicles off and make earrings out of them. In public. So, are you looking forward to that? I am. I might even try to turn up just to see it happen."

"I've seen your résumé and it's anything but perfect. I know that you're very impressed by the master's degree your daddy bought for you, and it might look ok on paper, but obviously he met you and saw right through it. You have to make an impression in person, otherwise you're fucked if you want a real job."

"So you think that you'll do so much better?" he asks.

"Of course I will." I can't help but laugh at the idea that I won't. It's an impossibility. "I was head of the national debate team and we won the championship three years in a row. I graduated and they've lost every year since. What does that tell you?"

"It tells me that you're good at bitching but not much else. But he's as gay as a handbag full of rainbows, so he'll probably like you, Light, since you're so pretty!" He reaches forward and I dodge his pincer-like fingers which are trying to pinch at my face.

"Piss off, Jeevas," I tell him, but this only seems to calm him into an insufferable smugness as he settles back against his chair.

"How's Misa?"

"Fine."

Misa and Jeevas are having an affair. I know this because I saw him run out of my apartment and into one of the lifts with his trousers around his ankles one night when I arrived home. I'd bring it up, but the railway contract is at a critical point of negotiations and I don't need to be involved in any scandal, no matter how minor, unless I can control it. I've also fucked Jeevas' fiancee, Naomi, a few times, so to dredge up my supposed injured pride would probably bring that up as well. Everyone, including Jeevas, knows about it, since Naomi blurted it out in a drink induced wave of lunacy during a party dinner and cannot keep her fucking mouth shut. Political incest of this nature is acceptable as long as it's not blatant and no one talks about it. In politics, you can't be accused of hypocrisy, because that's tantamount to death. While no crime is certain to count you out of the benches, it could hold you up.

anything by labasu | Yu-Gi-Oh! and Death Note

There isn't a single fic that I can pull out from labasu's work that I think is better than all of the rest so I'm just going to have to recommend everything they've ever written instead. Well, actually, that's not true. That Twin Peaks!AU Death Note one-shot they wrote where they manage to condense David Lynch's mundane universe into anime poeticism is amazing. But then there's also that Hannibal!AU where Light is a real serial killer and L is still a detective. But, oh, then there's that high school!AU tendership where Ryou is a creepy teen and Bakura is a delinquent.

The thing is, labasu's stories are so fandom immersive and specific that you really can't enjoy them unless you're well versed in the canon already. But if you are a fan of either Death Note or Yugioh, then all of their works are going to play with all of your assumptions and make you look at everything you thought you knew about your fandom three times.


EXCERPT: Black-and-white zigzags coat the laminate floors Light skids on, streaks of binary moralities slipping from his vision when he glances below. The faster he runs, the louder L’s screams get.

He’s been in this hallway before. Yes, he has. A smiling man is here, singing about death and justice. His face is blue. When Light passes him by, the man whispers every bad thing he’s ever done into Light’s ear, and Light pukes, last year’s bento lunch dribbling down his shirt. He runs faster. The bullets inside him are laughing.

Chintzy stage curtains start telling him Kira is closer. They are red tonight and hide every wall from him, making him feel like he’ll be trapped backstage forever.

Strobe lights start to go off, and Light sees flashes of a face he doesn’t know coming closer with every exposure. Melted flesh then dark then blonde hair then dark then blue eyes then dark, dark, dark.

(He is righteous. He is going to get out of here.)

He makes a turn, steps over a corpse, and enters a room.

A crow swoops from above, scratching someone else’s name on his face.

Misa’s torso is here, corset crippled and lolita lepered. Her chest leers at him, swaying to a heavy metal song Light can’t hear anymore. It tells him to go fuck himself in pig latin.

“yrros os m’I,” Light says.

Aurum Musivum by Echinoderma | Yu-Gi-Oh!

U K I Y O by Sharleena | BTS

This is the only fanfic on this list that I’ve read only really recently, since I only started liking BTS, like, last week. But I got really into it! The story is well crafted and you never predict what is coming. It keeps you on the edge of your seat. This is also the most sexual story on this list. I usually like stories that have sexual tension and skim over the actually explicit parts but the sex in this story had a lot of plot in them.

This story is about whorephobia and sex work. It forces all of these really vulnerable feelings into you about sexuality, exploitation, and class. The entire thing is told from Yoongi’s viewpoint and he’s framed into the role of the one who is questioning whether he is buying sex or not. This means that the character who is a sex worker is impenetrable both mentally and emotionally so you have to work much harder to feel out the complete picture of what is going on within their dynamic. There’s an added component of intergenerational trauma that follows you around the whole story but the ways in which this trauma of Yoongi’s headspace collides with the other characters is unexpected. Any happiness you feel in this story is highly debased, like you know that it’s wrong.

I won’t give away the ending since part of the fun in reading this is it’s amazing plot but I will say that there’s a sense of nihilism in the ending that pulls you out of the genre. There’s a scene where the main characters are talking about aesthetics where you realize that they’re behaving in a super meta way, like they’re choosing to change the genre of their own story. This means that, the ending basically pulls you right back to the beginning again, and vice versa.


EXCERPT: “How much?” he asks, Namjoon takes a very long and deep breath, almost as if he's bracing himself.

Namjoon rarely gets nervous. So Yoongi isn't liking this situation. He wasn't liking it at the beginning either, but now that he's seen how nervous and, quite frankly, pissed off Namjoon is, Yoongi is fearing the situation.

“This person managed to break in one of our warehouses.”

“How much, Namjoon.”

Namjoon swallows and licks his lips nervously. “Twenty kilograms.”

Yoongi's brain processes the new information and he does some quick maths. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes and he takes one out, then he gets his lighter from the pocket of his jacket.

Yoongi lights up the cigarette and he takes a long drag, letting the smoke settle in his lungs for a few seconds before he breathes out the lungful.

“Pure kilos?” Yoongi asks, Namjoon nods stiffly. “So you're telling me I lost 3 billion won? Give and take?”

Namjoon clicks his tongue and nods once again.

boxers or panties? by sleepish/unlearned | DBSK/TVXQ