#and also all the available cheeses have all given me deeply-rooted inferiority issues about my own skills

[limewence]

Hi! Was wondering if you had any dnf fic recs on ao3? :)

hi!! this is perfect timing actually, anon--i've been diving into the dnf tag as of late and i have so many new (and old!) faves to share under the cut :D

first off, i don't actually read a lot of irl/"canon" dnf? i know this is usually the most popular genre so i apologize in advance if this is what you were looking for </3 anyway what i consider to be the undisputed king of this particular strain is @netheritedream's hey there delilah songfic...this was Such an era, and sometimes i go back and reread hari's fic just to recapture the contact high of mid-jan dnf because nobody else has encompassed their dynamic as well as she did w this

in terms of lore aus, martyr wrapped in butcher paper by @aetherknit is the og god/king smp!dnf fic. one of my all-time favorite dnf pieces and one of my favorite pieces of writing EVER. isaiah knows how much i love this and since i've read it, i have never shut up about it.

another lore fic i think about Constantly is @boatstrats' an extant form of life, which is the thing that finally pushed me into caring about canon lore. dnf is more implied in this but (slight spoiler here) the motif of decay that boat uses is something that i continually embarrass myself about whenever we dm. definitely an incredible read!!!

a lot of my absolute faves are weird and slightly offbeat aus--case in point, guy.exe, again by isaiah (for maximum impact check out zin @taxolotl's incredible comic after you're done). this is a sci-fi au where george constructs dream's consciousness into a hologram and they work through their Issues

i've also really been enjoying Phosphors' ongoing dystopian/nosedive au!! this is quite unsettling and definitely leans more toward the "fiction" part of fanfiction, which never feels tiresome. they have such a subtle and detail-oriented writing style too and i'm incredibly excited for the next chapter <33

if sci-fi's not your jam then you might like this 500 days of summer au by squigly!! perfectly toes the line between funny and quietly pathetic in a reaaaallly cool way and it's such a clever subversion of the manic pixie dream girl trope

i've also always always adored @dontrollthedicesideblog's super smash bros commentator au. dice is such a pro at dialogue and getting a reader situated in a new world and this is just lovely, heartwarming, and all round hilarious <33

last but not least, your hands were warm (though you came in from the cold) by @didntstand is so...... okay so it's a roommates/housemates au, after george returns from a long trip abroad. really nails the unspooling of a complicated relationship and i revisit this one all the time.

i genuinely consider all of these to be beautiful works of fiction and they all come from writers i really admire so once you're done with the fics here i REALLY recommend you check out everything else on their profiles <333 ty for asking and happy reading!!