Hi I saw in your pinned post that you've read over 1,000 TMNT fics. Do you have a few really good ones you would recommend?
(don't feel any pressure to respond if you don't want to)
Oh boy this is...quite an ask. Especially bc fanfic recs are so personal? What I think is a good fic will be vastly different from other people. I have a really high angst tolerance, so please double check tags with these. Also keep in mind that I mainly read donnie-centric fics.
Here are my personal favorites! My hand slipped and I have more than just a few to recommend...what can I say there are so many good fics.
CRACK BUT READS LIKE CANON
Back To School by Em_H | 10,965 [FINISHED]
Donnie enrolls in April’s school and tries to juggle his packed schedule. A shrek play is included. Do I need to say more?
☆ In Volvunt: a RotTMNT Fanfiction ☆ by kittylittersmoothie | 27,082 [FINISHED]
In which the rest of the bros continuously try and fail to rick roll donnie. A war is started, alliances are made, betrayals occur, this is a hilarious feel good fic. It’s very in line with the show tonal wise and the dialogue is very rise
Mikey's Jam-Packed, Guaranteed to Get Donnie's Memory Back, Friendship Tour! By Eyse | 92,972 [ON-GOING]
Donnie wakes up with no memory of anyone including himself. Que his brothers trying to find ways to get his memory back. Has some of the most wacky adventures and scenarios I’ve ever encountered in a rise fic. Feels like you’re reading the actual show
YOU WILL BE EMOTIONALLY DESTROYED
Quiet Your Mind by daedelweiss | 18,081 [FINISHED]
Fusion Au with the disaster twins set in the bad future timeline. I don’t cry. This one made me cry. Bittersweet ending.
Telepathy (of a Twin Variety) by vosian_nightmare | 24,423 [FINISHED]
My personal favorite twin telepathy fic. Character study on the disaster twins.
Something Borrowed, Something Blue by Cass_Phoenix | 31,963 [FINISHED]
A Donnie from an alternate reality kidnaps Leo. Or is he bringing him home? This one will fuck with your mind. One of my bookmark notes is “Reality existentialism”
Firefight by remrose | 94,480 [ON-GOING]
What if donnie gets trapped in the prison dimension with leo? I’m usually not a fan of changing plot points in the rise movie or suicidal leo, but this fic is the exception. It is VERY well written and has some of the best exchanges between the disaster twins. You WILL be scared for the characters and your heart WILL be crushed. Proud to say I was here for this fic since chapter 1 bc that NEVER happens with me
THE CROSSOVERS
Familiar Places, Foreign Faces by Petra4President | 36,434 [ON-GOING]
Rise/2012 Crossover Fic. The Rise Donnie & 2012 Raph fic I didn’t ask for (I read this before watching 2012) but didn’t realize I NEEDED. Donnie gets sent to the 2012 universe and must find a way home.
A Tale of Spirits by unorthodoxx | 168,344 [ON-GOING]
Rise/Avatar the Last Airbender AU. This one is pretty popular so I won't say anything else except its really good.
I WOULD BOOK BIND THESE
All I have to say about these fics is that they’re REALLY good and BOOK WORTHY
Monsters Among Us by DanzinoraSwitch | 86,136 [FINISHED]
Violet Hues and Holy Blue by SibillaScribbles08 | 115,752 [FINISHED]
I May Be Invisible, but I Still Look Good by Dandy | 124,862 [FINISHED]
MY PERSONAL COMFORT FICS
Things will never be the same (but that's okay) by Petra4President | 14,493 [FINISHED]
Post movie aftermath fic that focuses on the changes created by the events of the movie. Idk what specifically has me rereading this occasionally, but its really well written and a little different than most aftermath fics I've read.
Corrupted Upgrade by Dandy | 25,898 [FINISHED]
Donnie Villain AU with a twist. He really gives off megamind vibes. DO NOT BE FOOLED. THERE’S A REASON EVERYONE IS OUT OF CHARACTER IN THE BEGINNING. I almost slept on this fic and it became one of my favorites. It’s the type of fic that I can read over and over and over.
Turning Purple by Lizardstuff | 48,123 [ON-GOING]
Donnie slowly gets more and more sick post rise movie and the rest of the characters must find out what’s wrong and find a cure. THIS ONE’S FOR YOU, MEDICAL NERDS. Author has done research and any inaccuracies have gone over this EMT’s head. I reread this one every chapter update and every time I’m haunted by “the blueberry french toast paragraph” No I will not explain further, go read it.
MY TOP FIC RECOMMENDATION
Spider's Web with Strings Attached by CurlySwirly | 125,661 [ON-GOING]
Donnie and Leo get kidnapped and are forced to fight in the battle nexus. This is my pick for the most well written fanfic and most in canon characterization with ALL the characters. You will HEAR the characters not just through the dialogue but also through the writing itself. As the reader, you will be beaten down and have your heart crushed mercilessly which makes the pay off the most rewarding, satisfying experience that I've personally ever felt with a fanfic. This fic lives in my head rent free and I think about it at least once a day. It is my all time favorite rise fic and I highly recommend it.
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who wants zombie au writing. don't answer that ur getting it anyway (1.6k words)
His shoes knock against the old flooring of the house, wood creaking under rubber soles that slide over the woodgrain. He drags them a bit, lifts his limbs up no more than he strictly has to, and they lead him to the nearest sittable surface.
The couch is old and dusty and has likely gone untouched for months, much like everything else nowadays, so he watches the thin cloud of dust billow off the cushions largely with disinterest. He collapses into the fabric heavily, feels the whole thing scoot back an inch and hit the wall behind him. The sound echoes, carried by lifeless rooms, while he unceremoniously drops his backpack to the floor by his feet.
The breath he lets out is slow and methodical and born of pent up muscles, aimed at the ceiling where he rests his neck against the back of the couch and relaxes every limb one by one. It’s a process he forces himself through, if only to rid the constant ache beneath his skin.
Slow, sweeping footsteps meander around the room in front of him, and Ritsu angles his gaze down from his craned back position to look at his brother. He wanders, like he so often does—seemingly aimless, but there’s something procedural about it that he’s convinced he just hasn’t figured out yet.
Shigeo’s empty eyes crawl along the hearth of the fireplace, explosions of ash sprayed out across the red brick. His head tilts up to trace his attention around the angular lines of the television, hung on the wall and screen grey with dust. He flits back and forth between the roundness of the bricked mantle and the sharp edges of the screen, like he’s taking notes.
Shigeo paws the television. Four lines of muck are cleared. The zombie blinks, paws at it again with dusty, curious fingers. Ritsu watches him make a mess of the television screen in silence, blinking tiredly.
He almost closes his eyes, but he fights against the urge and moves his fingers down his lap to reach for his bag. His middle hooks around the loop at the top and he lugs it up and into his lap, where he unzips it and peers into the shadowy contents.
Ritsu fishes out the water bottles. He finds the one with the messy R scribbled along the cap in sharpie and takes a big swig of it. It’s warm going down, constantly insulated in a bag of old, sweaty clothes. He feels like he can taste the odor in it, but it clears the grain in his throat from stomping all over dirt roads today, so he’s still grateful.
He holds out the one labeled S to Shigeo. “Thirsty?”
Shigeo looks at him from where he’s crouched down to the floor now, inspecting the soot along the hearth. Unfortunately, he sees handprints in the black already, and when his brother reaches a hand out to take it, his palm is covered in soot.
He lets him have his fun and settles his own bottle back in the mess of tangled clothes and rolls of bandages. Ritsu rakes his fingers through their stock with no real purpose—he knows exactly what’s in here, and none of it is useful.
They’d been searching all day; Ritsu doesn’t really know how far they’d walked, but it had to be a lot of miles. In and out of stores, up and down empty houses, weaving between warehouses—they didn’t really stop for a break. Not when Ritsu can hear Shigeo’s stomach from here and he himself has shaking hands. They can’t afford a break.
Nothing, though. Not a single goddamn thing worth taking. A settlement must have come through here long ago and swept the highway. They’re in the countryside, where houses are spaced out acres from each other and there’s entire cow pastures between properties. And yet every house they’d seen and entered provided nothing.
Ritsu stares into the negative space in his bag where there should be supplies. His stomach cramps and if he smells another whiff of that godawful sweaty, bloody sweatshirt he still carries, he’s going to throw up bile.
He leans away from the open pouch, eyes wandering to his brother who draws… something into the soot of the hearth. His water bottle sits on the floor, abandoned and still unscrewed. Ritsu leans forward with great effort and a grunt, leaning over his bag to grab at the top of it.
It takes him two tries to get Shigeo’s attention, and one more for an answer on where the cap is. It’s then placed in his palm, covered in soot and also saliva. Ritsu swallows down the nausea that rolls up his throat and wipes it off with his frankly already disgusting sleeve, and screws it back on.
He leans back again, succumbing to the urge to let his eyes rest, and he listens to the very subtle swipe of his brother’s hands across brick. There’s birds outside, chirping, and even though it’s still very much a common occurrence, Ritsu cannot help but feel nostalgic about it.
If he ignores the awful hum of silence, and the distinct lack of an electric thrum throughout the walls, and the fact that this is a stranger’s couch and not his, he can almost imagine normalcy. He can almost say this feels like those quiet moments after school, when he settles on the couch and scrolls through his phone in a house that only holds him and his brother because their parents simply aren’t home yet.
He can almost hear the creak of wood from Shigeo walking around his room upstairs. He can almost tap his fingers on the couch cushions to the pattern of his brother making his way down the steps. He can almost hear the fridge opening, and the sound of milk being poured into glass.
Almost. But Ritsu listens to sharp silence instead, and he tries not to think too hard.
He drifts for a while, feels himself truly sink into the couch and let the cushions claim him, and he thinks about nothings because if he doesn’t, then he’ll lose it. He carefully sifts through the nothingness of his mind, through the passing thoughts that have no bearing, and he focuses on that, on the lack of substance. His head is too full of things that have too much substance.
He misses boredom. He tells himself he misses boredom—the complete insubstantiality of it—because if he lets himself think of what he really misses, it’ll drive him insane.
The cushions move, and Ritsu peels his eyes open and lets himself get pulled from liminal mindspace. The cotton in his head recedes, and he blinks, and then he’s swiveling his head to look at his brother who sits in the cushion right next to him.
His hands and the cuffs of his hoodie are smothered in black. Shigeo sits hunched, gaze still wandering even when there’s not much decoration in this house to look at. He studies the off-white walls, the chips in the paint, the holes drilled in where there maybe used to be photos hung.
Ritsu gazes at him quietly, chest instinctively rising and falling to match his brother’s rhythm. He watches the expansion there, under his hoodie, in the subtlety of the folds and the way they warp over the movement. It’s slightly quicker than what he’s used to, but Ritsu knows his brother’s heart rate is much slower. He’s felt it before. He’s listened to it before, with his ear against a chest.
Ritsu’s attention moves to his eyes, and the heavy bags underneath them, and the paleness of his pupils and the ghostlight of him underneath that. He stares into them, looks for stray, familiar thoughts that might enter his head. Looks for old memories that might shine through in the form of recognition when he sees furniture layouts, and candy wrappers, and ads for soda.
Ritsu looks for it all the time, that glint of familiarity. And he finds it, sometimes. And really, he thinks that’s keeping him going more than food ever will.
Shigeo turns his head, and looks at him. Sometimes, when his brother looks at him, there’s not much there. No substance, no anything. And Ritsu finds it a bit evil that he craves silence in his own head, and yet noise in Shigeo’s, and often times it is the other way around.
His brother looks at him now, though, with that comforting recognition. That growth of the pupils, that softening of the hard edges of his face where unknown stressors have gotten to him. Ritsu wonders what zombies get stressed out. He figures it’s the same deal with humans, considering they’re largely alike.
Ritsu wonders if Shigeo knows he’s sick. He wishes he could ask him. He wishes for a lot of things. Silence in his own head is one of them.
Ritsu swivels his head away and stares at the ceiling, if only to force the thoughts to pause. He studies the popcorn ridges above them, traces the peaks with his gaze. It calms him, gives him something to focus on. He looks for patterns in the shadows they make.
Shigeo shifts next to him. And then he shimmies down, settles into the cushions, and plops his head right down on Ritsu’s shoulder.
Static roars in his mind and his heart stammers. Ritsu swallows the lump in his throat but that just makes it bigger, so he clamps his mouth shut and breathes carefully through his nose.
The tears cut through the grime on his face. He plops his own head down against his brother’s, and lives in the noise.
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