New Story Poll

Best of Intentions has concluded, and now it is time to choose a new story to take its place in the rotation. There are quite a few possibilities to choose from, as the Idea-Pile has gotten pretty big over the past year, to the point that I can't fit all of them in a single poll, so I've narrowed things down to the top ten, which feel like they have the most potential.

However, there will be a small change to this poll compared to prior polls -- I will select the winner from the top three choices. This is entirely because, while I've done my best to build up a backlog for the snippets, there are some that have a cushier backlog than others. And, frankly, there are a lot of strong contenders, and some of them I'm more excited to write than others.

Going Native: Rewritten (DBZ/DC) -- Tarble, second son of King Vegeta of the Saiyan Race, was born a disappointment, dissowned, and promptly thrown off a cliff into the wilds below. A fact that doesn't bother him any as he fully intends to get out of dodge before Frieza death balls the entire planet and the savage saiyan race on it. All he needs to do is bide his time to make it off the planet. Something made infinitely more complicated as he grows attached to his fellow abandoned children left to the Wilds to either die or grow strong enough to be called Saiyan warriors.

The rewrite will be pretty different from its predecessor to avoid the curse that kills all rewrites. And it won't be half a million words before we arrive Earthside for the DC side of the crossover. This story in particular has a special place in my heart because it's the story that convinced me to keep writing, and it's never sat well with me that it was left incomplete.

The Greatest Stage (One Piece/WH 30k) -- Reborn as the second Primarch, Portgas Rayleigh, crashlands on Dawn Island and is promptly adopted by Luffy and his brothers. A childhood is cut short by the looming Great Crusade, forcing Rayleigh on a path of conquest as he attempts to conquer the world before the Emperor of Mankind's arrival.

This is a pretty weird crossover, won't lie, but one that works surprisingly well when you start connecting the dots. There would be a pretty solid stay in One Piece of around 30-40 chapters as Rayleigh builds up his OP inspired empire. From there, it would follow the Grand Crusade across the galaxy, meeting his brothers, and trying to avoid the fate that would lead to the state of the Imperium of 40k.

Path of Creation (Naruto) -- Reborn in the world as Naruto as a knock-off Sukuna Ryomen expy, an SI tries to make sense of his apparent bloodline ability, Aritist Release, which allows him to paint with his chakra. It's not an easy life between dodging Danzo plots, Zetsu plots, and plain old ninja plots in an Elemental Nations that's eerily reminiscent of China's Warring States era, where the war train has no brakes. But, if he doesn't die young, either by assassination or by one of Rock Lee's training exercises, he'll find himself a player of the game rather than just another pawn.

Naruto is one of those settings I've always wanted to return to, as it was one of the first I ever wrote in. I feel like I could tell a decently long story, roughly 60-80 chapters or thereabouts. There would be some AU elements, but the cause of those elements would be revealed in story. Additionally, I don't plan to take any elements from Boruto, so no aliens of any kind.

Risk It All: Rewrite (Young Justice/Xianxia) -- Ren Song lived a pretty mundane, ordinary life. He got average grades, had a handful of friends, and lived with his dad and his step-mom in Metropolis. Only for it all to come crashing down the day when Chinese wizard ninjas broke into his house, kidnapped his Dad, and informed him he is a failed result of a ten-thousand-year wizard eugenics program. Taking refuge with the heroes, placed in a probably very illegal heroic black ops team, Ren is determined to not only just rescue his father but to set the world of Cultivation on fire like the dumpster that it is.

This is another rewrite of a commissioned story that I ended up dropping a while ago due to DC burnout. That, and at the time, I used cultivation elements to break from the rails of canon without really fleshing out those elements, so the story kinda petered out. In the rewrite, I have a much better grasp on those cultivation elements, and while they would be more prevalent, I do intend the story to be more DC with cultivation elements rather than a cultivation story set in Young Justice.

Ghastly Adventures (Pokémon SI) -- Blair Wytch woke up dead in the middle of a field just outside of Pewter City with only a Mimikyu to greet him in a brand new world. With an affinity for Ghost Pokemon, Blair is on a quest to complete the gym circuit, dodge the family of the body he finds himself inhabiting, and avenge a murder that's not entirely his.

This story was a bit out of my usual wheelhouse when I started it. I didn't know much about pokemon, and there was just a lot of general information I felt like I was missing, so it felt like I was constantly having to rewrite sections of chapters to make them not contradict type matches or background lore. I'm more familiar with it now, so this story is one I would like to pick back up again.

Rebel Path (Cyberpunk 2077/Mass Effect) -- L died a legend. With the power of the Inspired Inventor, he tore down the whole galaxy with his swan song -- unmaking the megacorporations of Earth, fracturing the Citadel and their Council races, and more than a hundred years later, the galaxy is just starting to get its footing back. Yet, on the horizon, there is a looming threat that requires a deeply divided galaxy to unite in the hope of survival.

A sequel to Never Fade Away, one of my completed stories. This one has been in the works for a while, as it would explore the aftermath of L's actions in NFA. The galaxy has undergone a hard reset and a reshuffle, now filled with technology from multiple other settings. I think this story would be a bit shorter than NFA. Maybe in the ballpark of 50-60 chapters to cover everything that I would want.

Conquest (DBZ/Multicross) -- A XXXXL-sized galaxy has turned into a madhouse with nearly every conceivable setting placed inside of that galaxy a thousand years ago. Empires that had once spread across their own galaxies, such as Star Wars, Dune, or Star Trek, have been shattered while other worlds linger in obscurity, unchanged except for the fact that the stars above were different. Galick, a low-class Saiyan warrior, is charged to reform the Saiyan empire out of the pieces lesser settings, binding them together in the name of survival in a galaxy that has gone mad.

I wrote this story as a distraction over the course of like two weeks, but it proved surprisingly popular when I posted it to QQ. I would label this a straight-up power-fantasy story. Galick will be challenged, but it's going to be a lot of him winning and banging his way through the galaxy to repopulate the Saiyan race.

Broken Kaleidoscope (Multicross: Dune) -- Artorias thought he had it bad being reborn on Salusa Secundus had been bad enough, but when the universe goes mad, transporting every conceivable setting into the same XXXXL-sized galaxy, he learned the hard way that things could always get worse. While the Padishah Empire struggles to hold itself together, the planet of Arrakis becomes more important than ever as the Empire, House Harkonnen, House Atredies, and the Fremen all fight over it to decide the future.

This is a companion piece to Conquest. Whereas Conquest is an unapologetic power fantasy, Kaleidoscope is a more serious take on the same idea, and at the very start of the Displacement, compared to a thousand years in Conquest. It would follow the struggle first for the Golden Throne of the Padishah Empire, and then the struggle for survival, as a bunch of humans are woefully under-equipped to share the same galaxy as Saiyans, Viltrumites, demons, and gods.

Duality (Jujutsu Kaisen/DC) -- Yuji Itadori thought that eating Sukuna's finger and becoming the vessel of the most powerful sorcerer of the Heian Era would be the weirdest thing that would ever happen to him. But, after Sukuna ripped out his heart, apparently killing them both, waking up in DC just in time for an alien invasion definitely took the cake.

This is a story that I really just like the idea of, to be honest. Yuji and Sukuna are just oil and water forced to coexist in the same body, and in DC comics, they are in a world that rewards both of their mentalities. Yuji is at the very start of his jujutsu journey while Sukuna only has three fingers' worth of his strength in a world that vastly outpowers the world of JJK, forcing the pair to cooperate in ways that they both find deeply unpleasant.

The Diadochi (Historical: Alexander IV SI) -- Alexander the Great died in Babylon, leaving behind a young heir and an empire that was being carved up by some of the best generals of the era. Taking the crown seems like a far-off dream to Alexander IV, much less uplifting humanity. It'll take everything he has just to survive another day, dodging assassins, surviving borderline insane political plots, and building a faction of his own in an empire that, if they didn't want him dead for the sake of petty ambitions, then they especially wanted him dead for being half Greek and half Persian.

The Diadochi Wars are one of my favorite periods in history because it's just a madhouse that makes Game of Thrones look dull. The story will focus on Alexander's rise to power within his empire, working with and against his fellow Diadochi as he seeks to claim what is his by rights. The story would be about 30-40 chapters, focusing on the struggle among the Diadochi.