Bubblegum Crisis/Fanfic Recs

Proof that the remaining 10% is worth dying for here:

These are recommendations made by Tropers for Bubblegum Crisis Fan Fics, all of which have to be signed to stay on the page. Feel free to add a fanfic of your own to the list, but remember to use the template found here.

Do warn when a fanfic may head into romantic or non-canon territory. Some people just don't like it, and as we all know, Shipping is Serious Business. You may also want to note whether the fic is based on the classic BGC OVA series, or the 1998 Continuity Reboot TV series, Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040.

You can also add to the current recommendations if you want. Refrain from posting Conversation in the Main Page though; that goes in the discussion page.

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Authors, Websites and Archives

Raven's Garage

• Established by Andy Skuse and taking its name from a location in the original OVA, Raven's Garage is loaded with resources. These range from links to BGC Games to real-world boomer development, to character art, a BGC A-to-Z, a map of MegaTokyo and a Did-you-Know list. Current home of the Bubblegum Crisis Fanfiction Guide which was originally compiled by Craig Wigda. While some of the links have since broken, there are still some interesting old gems to be found here. Each entry is accompanied both with a synopsis and a short review of the story. Some author comments are also included. Well worth checking out.

The Works of Amanda Stair (Alternate site at Fanfic.net)

• Recommended by User:Looney Toons, Dartz-IRL
• Some of the best original BGC Continuation Fic on the Net. All of it is in the same continuity, making her work essentially one single epic saga. Especially recommended is The Next Generation, in which Priss's teenaged daughter Yumeko ends up joining a re-activated Knight Sabers in the face of a new wave of depredations by GENOM and its boomers. Especially noteworthy for her spot-on characterization of the Sabers in their late thirties, nearly twenty years after the events of the OVAs. Fair warning: Amanda's vision of the BGC world is true to the original, meaning that people get hurt and die, and not everyone gets a happy ending, especially the main characters. Yumeko-chan in particular racks up an injury tally which rivals that of Bert van Vliet (see Bubblegum Zone, below). Darkish but not truly black, as there is hope still shining.
  • Dartz-IRL: Still nibbling away at this one myself. I like the way everyone's moved on from 2032, yet are still themselves at the same time.

Drunkard's Walk II: Robot's Rules of Order by Robert M. Schroeck

• Recommended by Bluemage
• Synopsis: A professional metahuman crimefighter (read: "superhero") was thrown from his world while fighting evil, and now seeks to return home. His first attempt lands him in MegaTokyo, a few years after the end of the series. While trying to find a way to move on, he clashes with the Knight Sabers, fights rogue buma, befriends a perky young news reporter, and stumbles upon one of the darkest secrets of GENOM. Part of the greater Drunkard's Walk metaseries.
• Comments: Part of a multi-book series currently under development, this fic blends aspects of self-insert and crossover. The main character, Doug Sangnoir (aka Looney Toons), was the author's favorite character in a Villains and Vigilantes campaign. Doug's character is deep, unique, and fun to observe: he makes mistakes (and is not a Sue by any means), has a well-developed backstory, and tends to make fairly obscure pop-culture references. The character fits in well, stylistically, with the BGC world: Doug's talent is that listening to different songs gives him different superpowers, from creating a camera out of thin air to firing lightning bolts. As such, the "soundtrack" of this fic is appropriately broad and varied. (And would fill three CDs if you were to compile it.) Highly recommended for the top-notch writing, pop-culture connections, deep characters, and sheer fun of reading it.

General Fics

Stories focused on the family and the friendly relationships of the cast. Plot-focused stories or light day-in-the-life stories. Pretty much anything that isn't focused on romance.

Bubblegum Cross by Andy Skuse

• Recommended by Alemann
• Synopsis: It is the year 2038. The Knight Sabers have existed peacefully in obscurity, ever since the AD Police finally shut down Genom, the boomer manufacturer who also dealt globally in corruption and greed. Their 5 year hiatus is about to be disturbed, as a long-lost relative drops into Sylia Stingray's life, and explains why her data cartridge has the number "2" on it.

Black Hunter ^[dead link] (gzip file), by Ping Lin.

• Recommended by SuddenFrost
• Synopsis (from the Bubblegum Crisis Fan Fiction Guide): Not all boomers have to look human, and not all boomers are made by Genom. Someone has made a new boomer and appears to be testing it in Megatokyo. And who could be better test subjects than the AD Police and the Knight Sabers.

Bubblegum Crusade by Glenn Hough.

• Recommended by antagonist
• Synopsis: As Largo rises again, the Knight Sabers find themselves becoming more than mercenaries. Manipulated by a mysterious man who has sold his soul to God, Sylia must lead a crusade for the future of human and boomer alike.
• Comments: I'll be up front: this fic is deeply, DEEPLY flawed. Weird formatting, downright odd but consistent misspellings, and the first 100 pages are a synopsis of the most relevant parts of Crisis/Crash; that's just the beginning. And yet, despite everything, it is also deeply, DEEPLY awesome. You can't go wrong with a fic where the climax involves a war between a city full of Largo-dominated boomers and an army of 33-S Knight Sabers. Incorporates the events of Black Hunter, possibly with the author's permission, possibly not.

A Killer's Heart by Ryan Xavier.

• Recommended by antagonist
• Synopsis: This takes place after the OVA except for the first scenes, and according to the author, 'Crash did not HAPPEN!' What if Genom operated a line of assassin boomers based on the 33-S model to hunt down rogue boomers? What if one of them had decided to abandon his post and go rogue himself during a critical moment? We only heard the machine gun fire, we never saw who nailed whom.
• Comments: This one was among the first BGC fics I read back in the day. It's currently unfinished, but the author emailed me recently, stating he hadn't abandoned it, though he seems to be very busy with Real Life. The fic is pretty graphic, and the Original Character has a really foul mouth paired with a gleefully sadistic streak. I highly recommend it.

Reprisals by SSG Michael B Jackson.

• Recommended by Yumeko-chan
• Synopsis: Just after the events of "Scoop Chase", the Knight Sabers are murdered at Raven's Garage. A year later, one of them, with the help of a crow, comes back for revenge. A Crow/BGC crossover.
• Comments: I have never seen The Crow but it is still a story I enjoyed a lot. Nene a lot of times seems OOC but then again, if you were murdered, you might be in a bad mood too.
  • antagonist: It's been a while since I last read this one, but from what I remember, I found it to be thoroughly enjoyable, just like the rest of this author's BGC fics.

Into The Shadows by Jeanne Hedge and Andy Skuse

• Recommended by Nightelf, Dartz-IRL
• Synopsis: The story of how the Knight Sabers were formed, including Sylia's decision to form a vigilante group, the recruiting of the other members, and their training and formation into what would eventually become the Knight Sabers.
• Comments: This feels like an "official" BGC prequel would feel—the characters (such as Priss and Nene) are still a little raw yet, but are on their way to becoming the close-knit family they'd eventually form.
  • Dartz-IRL: Nicely written, showing how a group dynamic can build, through teething troubles. First person perspective really draws into the story, with perspective jumps really working to good effect, to give each characters opinions and feelings.

Yearnings by Innpchan

• Recommended by antagonist
• Synopsis: The events during "Moonlight Rambler" (OAV 5) and "Red Eyes" (OAV 6) have left their mark on Priss. Now that the fighting is done, how will she deal with the repercussions of the death of friends?
• Comments: This short story was completed in 1995, and describes one possible way events could have gone post-Largo. According to the author, it takes place a few days after OAV 6 and some weeks before OAV 7 ("Double Vision"). Priss and Leon do get together, but it is anything but romantic or "shippy". There is a brief scene with explicit sexual material and harsh language, but it's not really a full-on lemon/hentai fic. The story isn't about the sex, the sex is just what the events of the story lead to. This is one of my early (and still) favorites, which I recommend for the excellent writing and characterizations.

Neo No Armor Against Fate by Shawn Hagen

• Recommended by The Fifth Horseman
• Synopsis: BGC 2034 continues the BGC story after the events of "Scoop Chase". Enemies and friends, old and new, all coming together, and nothing will ever be the same when it is all over. Rating for mature subject matter.
• Comments: One of the older Epics, still very, very good.
  • SuddenFrost: At its core it's an excellent example of how a Villain Sue (Brian J. Mason with his mind downloaded into a 33-S sexaroid) can be done successfully. Probably the best ever depiction of how Genom actually works, why the Knight Sabers can never really defeat them, and what being a Corrupt Corporate Executive is like.
  • The Fifth Horseman: Massive and well written, with a few interesting ideas added to the mix. The ending shows possibility of a sequel—though one doesn't seem to have been ever written.

Southern Cross ^[dead link] (gzip file) by Bernard & Johan Khoo

• Recommended by SuddenFrost
• Synopsis: Set between OAVs 4 and 5, the death of Daley's former partner on the Genaros space station sends the Knight Sabers from Antarctica to Singapore in pursuit of a duplicated Kill Sat controller.
• Comments: A globetrotting plot with great character moments and action, all in only 144 KB!

A Wild and Untamed Thing... by Robert M. Schroeck

• Recommended by antagonist
• Synopsis: Nene talks Linna into coming with her to see one of her favorite shows -- The Rocky Horror Picture Show to be precise—but somehow Saber business always seems to interrupt just when things start getting interesting.
• Comments: This is a fun story that reveals a bit about each of the Knight Sabers, especially Nene and Sylia. Familiarity with Rocky might help with the mental imagery, but I don't think it's required (the written description is well done). No deep thinking is necessary, just sit back and enjoy.
• antagonist: While I did see the end coming, it still made me laugh. And I like how this fic pictured Sylia as something other than an ice queen.

A Life Revisited by n1ght3lf

• Recommended by Dartz-IRL
• Synopsis: BGC 2032 Years after the dissolution of the Knight Sabers, its surviving members come together to mourn the loss of a friend and to make sense of the life they once had.
• Comments: A different future for the Knight Sabers. Notable for its good characterizations, and intelligent plot. It's character driven, not being all about explosions and death, and the final act of revenge itself only takes up a short part of a fic.

Self-Insertion

What it says on the tin.

The Bubblegum Zone by Bert van Vliet (AU). (Link)

• Recommended by Dartz-IRL, User:Looney Toons
• Synopsis: Through forces unknown, a Canadian university student finds himself transported to MegaTokyo in the year 2032. Hooking up with the Knight Sabers, as you do, Bert comes to learn that donning a hardsuit isn't quite what it's cracked up to be... For one thing, you can and will be hurt.
• Comments: In Progress, and has been since 1995. Be prepared to do a lot of reading, later chapters can get over a megabyte in size. At first it came come across as a little Gary Stu but as the story gathers pace, especially towards the later half, it really picks itself up by its bootstraps. The story really has its best moments once it gets past the original OVA and starts adding its own material.
  • User:Looney Toons: This is a fic set in the original BGC, and it's a classic among BGC self-inserts. Highly recommended.

Bubblegum Crisis: The Iron Age by Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

• Recommended by User:Looney Toons
• Synopsis: Billionaire net.journalist Benjamin Stark and his personal physician/bodyguard Megazone go to MegaTokyo to investigate a mysterious urban legend—the Knight Sabers. But before they're even in the city they get confirmation that the legend is real... and Stark finds himself up to his neck in their private war.
• Comments: A Continuity Reboot of a long-abandoned EPU project called (Gryphon and Zoner Get) Hopelessly Lost, BGC:TIA is a classic EPU self-insert, although fifteen years later Gryphon has greater skill to draw on and more twists to throw at readers, including mixing and matching elements from both classic BGC and Tokyo 2040. The addition of Iron Man to the blend, in a manner that is both true to the source but completely unexpected, turns what was once a comedy series into something more akin to a near-future technothriller. Although far from complete at only three installments, it's definitely worth a read.

Twisted Path 3: Twisted Path -- Another Bubble Started by Twister (Brief crossover with Ranma 1/2 near the end)

• Recommended by User:Looney Toons
• Synopsis: Godlike Marty Stu character enters the Bubblegum Crisis universe early in the series, and despite some of his powers going wonky as a result of unexplained local conditions, intervenes in the course of the plot with both good and bad results.
• Comments: Twister is the defining self-insert character of late-90s anime fanfiction, and is so gleefully over-the-top that either you loathe him with a hatred that burns like the pits of hell, or you hang on for the ride laughing all the way. The BGC installment of Twisted Path hits almost all the usual cliches of an SI in that world except for joining the Knight Sabers right away—it is probably the Trope Codifier, if not the Trope Maker, for BGC self-inserts. Despite Twister's barely-average writing skill, it is surprisingly entertaining and throws more than a few Crowning Moments of Awesome at the reader. It is also important as a fanfic, in that it had a direct influence on several later insert and insert-styled fics: A Wolf In Crisis includes explicit shout outs to it, the BGC segment of Legion's Quest takes place in the BGC timeline that Twister visited, and the fourth installment of TP explicitly crosses over with Bubblegum Zone .

A Wolf In Crisis by Barry Cadwgan

• Recommended by User:Looney Toons
• Synopsis: A magical accident throws a Wolf shaman from a Shadowrun universe into the world of Bubblegum Crisis. He goes to ground, figures out what happened to him, and begins to adapt... and in the process crosses paths with the Knight Sabers. He joins their fight, though not as a Saber, and his presence causes other changes as well... Could magic be awakening in his new world just as it did in his old?
• Comments: A Dead Fic, incomplete and untouched since 1997, although scene fragments at the end of the third part suggest where Cadwgan was planning on taking it. Cadwgan deftly avoids many of the cliches of the BGC insert character while exploring new (for the time) territory in his plot. Fenris, the shaman, is an intriguing, complicated character whose very realistic reactions and responses to the world he's in take this story completely out of insert territory and into something else entirely. Angua, his familiar, was a fan favorite while Cadwgan was still writing, and can still charm a first-time reader. Be warned, though, that Cadwgan is Australian, and his "Seattlite" shadowrunners fling Aussie slang around as often as they do Shadowrun jargon; the effect is both amusing and distracting.

Yours Truly, 2032 by Dartz-IRL. (Alternate version at FFN)

• Recommended by User:Looney Toons
• Synopsis: An anime fan drives a motorcycle through a space/time crossrip and into the BGC world, just in time to interfere in the assassination of Irene Chang. He promptly dies messily in the ensuing car chase. Reincarnated (thanks to Sylia) in a basic 33-S boomer chassis, Our Hero has to adapt to life in Mega-Tokyo, deal with the philosophical ramifications of being a boomer, and stay alive long enough to make a difference. Some excellent slice-of-life scenes and slowly ramping up the action level.
  • It didn't quite die as much as descended to development hell. The author is posting some of the work in progress chapter 7 in alt.fan.bgcrisis Usenet group or on The Fanfiction Forum^[1] every now and then, most recently in February 2012.

Three Knights by Bert van Vliet, Craig Reed and Amanda Stair (Archive copy at oocities.org)

• Recommended by User:Looney Toons
• Synopsis: Some dark power is setting in motion the destruction of the universe, and the first step in that process is the destruction of a group of women who could prevent the disaster—the Knight Sabers. To protect them, the godlike Guardian Ishmael calls together three agents from three other timelines, the fifth Sabers of their respective teams, to protect the Knight Sabers from an equally godlike enemy. But can SkyKnight, ShadowKnight and RavenKnight work together without killing each other and still achieve their goal?
• Comments: Possibly a first in fanfiction, an Intercontinuity Crossover of self-inserts. With the kind of talent there is contributing to this story, there's no way it wouldn't be incredibly well-written. Much of this story is character-driven to counterpoint the need to follow the main plot of the series, and how! Just because Ishmael is godlike doesn't mean he can't make mistakes, and given some of the personality conflicts between these three, assembling them into a team may be one of them. This is a borderline Dead Fic, though, as only three of apparently four planned parts have been written, and it hasn't been updated since February 2007. Even so, a wonderful piece of work worth looking at.
  • antagonist: Actually, it's still being worked on. As a matter of fact, part 4 is almost done, but one author's contributions are still missing. Well, and it'll have more than four parts when it's finished.

Bubblegum Avatar by Craig "TrboTurtle" Reed

• Recommended by User:Looney Toons, Dartz-IRL
• Synopsis: A Power That Is needs a sucker... um, agent to balance a Bubblegum Crisis timeline that has been inadvertently contaminated with a damaged Largo from another timeline. He chooses anime fan Craig Reed for the standard ineffable divine reasons and drops him into the lap of Sylia Stingray, along with a complete collection of Bubblegum Crisis DVDs and fanfiction. Now Craig has to undergo the full paranoid scrutiny of the Knight Sabers and a basic training that makes the Marines look positively slack, before he finally finds himself in a hardsuit. And the series proper hasn't even started yet.
• Comments: One of the newer generation of BGC SI fics, Bubblegum Avatar draws heavily on its predecessors and demonstrates a sly Genre Savviness and a wicked sense of fun. Look for a few shout outs to previous fics (Sylia apparently becomes a fan of at least one earlier series, judging by her choice of aliases for Craig to use). Well-written and a great read; its only flaw is that Reed hasn't written anything new for it since 2004.
  • Dartz-IRL: I like the characterisation in this one, the interaction of Craig with the Sabers...his homesickness at first, their suspicions of him. And Sylia's response to Bubblegum Pink.

Shipping Fics

Stories focused on the romantic relationships between the cast.

Bubblegum Pink: Raging Fires (gzip file) by Kris Overstreet and Larry Mann (Warning: Lemon. Oh man, is it lemon.)

• Recommended by Looney Toons, Dartz-IRL
• Pairing(s): Everybody/Everybody
• Synopsis: "There it is! Smut, pure and simple, straight from the 8th dimension by way of Planet Ten!" Ahem. When Mackie's nanophage-modified nervous system triggers an uncontrollable hormonal overdrive, Sylia knows from her own experience that his rampaging libido must be sated or he will die.
• Comments: The single most infamous lemon story in the history of anime fanfiction, to the point that BGC Usenet groups react instinctively with the acronym "DYO!" (short for "Damn you, Overstreet!") to any mention of it — or anything even vaguely like it. (Which isn't really fair, since no one ever gets on Larry Mann's case for his half of the writing.) Little more than a massive orgy precipitated by the flimsiest of excuses extrapolated from canon material, and everyone is hugely out of character as much for humorous purposes as for sexual. Most don't seem to realize it, but Bubblegum Pink is as much a spoof of over-the-top Porn Without Plot fics as it is one itself.
  • Dartz-IRL: Once you read this fic, you will never be able to buy a packet of LIDL's frozen sweetlings with a straight face again.
    • antagonist: (Sweetling) :P

Scars ^[dead link] (gzip file) by She-Hulk

• Recommended by Op Megs, antagonist
• Pairing(s): Priss/Sylia
• Synopsis: Sequel to another story wherein Sylia and Priss become romantically involved, the follow up reveals a dirty little secret Sylia has been hiding: the body of Sylvie. With the scarcest hints of the possibility of repairing her, Priss looks to Sylia to manage a miracle. Sylia thus must manage pleasing the woman she cares about most while simultaneously knowing she may be bringing back someone who could replace her...
• Comments: Far, far better than the somewhat soap-opera-y summary sounds. If you can accept the concept of Priss and Sylia in a romantic relationship(and this fic got me thinking about it to the point of acknowledging they may be better suited for each other than Priss and Leon), then that's all you need to enjoy this. The main focus is on Sylia and Priss, obviously, but Nene and Linna do get some scenes, primarily Nene. Worth a look.

If I Fall... by She-Hulk

• Recommended by antagonist
• Pairing(s): Priss/Sylia
• Synopsis: A Boomer infects Priss's hardsuit with a virus, causing it to fire on Sylia and severely injuring her. After Sylia recovers, she sees that Priss is consumed with guilt over not activating the self-destruct in time and must bring Priss back from the edge.
• Comments: A much shorter, standalone Hurt/Comfort Fic featuring She-Hulk's intriguing characterizations of Priss and Sylia.

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