Rapturous Rhapsody
114.9k Views 3235 Favorites 106 Chapters 2 Chapters/Week 797 Readers
4.4 (67 ratings)
Synopsis
Would you take the deal? Live your wildest fantasies at the cost of orchestrating the most significant prison break ever conceived? Spanning six worlds, millions of years, and more violence than you can shake a stick at. Everyone wants freedom. Everyone. So... Sign here. No hard feelings. Just Company Policy. (WC/Soulsborne/Superheroes, shaken not stirred, with a twist of madness)
Genre
ActionAdultAdventureComedyFanfictionFantasyHaremMatureRomanceDC Comics Elden Ring Marvel Comics Soulsborne worm- Readingdangerously’s random ramblings on Rapturous Rhapsody2 hours ago
- Epilogue – Life and FreedomApr 12, 2024
- DeathApr 6, 2024
- HeartbreakMar 30, 2024
- LonelinessMar 23, 2024
- OppressionMar 16, 2024
- Dream 7Mar 9, 2024
- Dream 6Mar 2, 2024
- Dream 5Feb 24, 2024
- SS (A) – To The PyreFeb 17, 2024
- SS (A) – Cat Scratch FeverFeb 10, 2024
- SS – Buying TimeFeb 2, 2024
- Dream 4Jan 27, 2024
- Dream 3Jan 20, 2024
- Dream 2Jan 13, 2024
Table of Contents
User Stats
- 605 reading
- 121 plan to read
- 29 completed
- 15 paused
- 27 dropped
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This is hands down one of the best fanfictions out there and probably the best waifu catalog fanfiction.
The character depth is crazy good, and has some great emotional pulls in the series. Mikael is a great protagonist, and the women in this story are also amazing. One thing in a lot of fanfictions is they just completely f**k up characters and totally change personalities and viewpoints because they don't really understand the characters. This, however, has never been an issue with this series.
If you haven't give it a try, it is great.
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So, it's a bit complicated. It is a very bad Waifu Catalog story. However:
If you like an adventure, with plenty of exploring, experiencing the story and the sights and people of the world, making a difference, interactions, and good fanfiction, read volume 1, the prologue.
If you don't, skip it and read volume 2 because it completely invalidates and makes worthless the whole of volume 1. Volume 2 is a jarring shift in tone and character, into a harem romcom feat. Beta harem protagonist. Literally (for a couple chaps) spineless. Really. He abandoned most of his character from vol 1 and folds in fron of his women on the one thing he shouldn't.
Writing quality: 5/5
It's written very well; concisely, the chapters are long without walls of text, and everything makes sense.
Worldbuilding: 4/5
It's fanfiction, so all of the work is already done, but it's applied skillfully. The (important part of the) story follows mostly the plot of Soulsborne games, interpreting it and expanding on in some places, and it was well done. Bloodborne got skipped mostly, but it kinda makes sense, story-wise, as MC was rushing.
Characters: 4/5
The character interactions were a large part of the story, a lot of it being just interactions between the waifus stuck on the island, with no Mikael in sight. Which wasn't terrible in truth, the dialogue, relationships, pasttimes, were all were written, organic, and realistic enough. The characters were - eh, mostly faithful to the originals, as far as I knew.
Mikeal wasn't a terrible protagonist. He bitches a lot, being angsty is a constant part of his character throughout the whole volume 1. I don't count it as a con, however, because it makes sense given his situation. Some of his motivations and the reasons behind rejecting the waifus are revealed gradually, and make sense given the stupid restrictions on him and his Dragon Element. And in this moment, we go into the bad.
The Bad
Without this, I'd rate this as a solid 4/5. Has its issues, it's certainly an, interpretation, of the WC. But volume 1, up until the final boss fight of Bloodborne (Gherman + Flora), ignoring how the Catalog was applied, was a great adventure story that made you want to know what happens next, how does the protagonist free himself, with plenty twists and turns, and nostalgia for any Soulsborne fan. But from the moment he summoned Emma the final time, it dropped hard. Spoilers, duh!
So, one of the key problems MC faces is being stuck in a chain of Soulsborne games, which is bad because he has no defenses, and his Elements are Freedom and Life. So being stuck is a special kind of hell. Later on we learn that the bodies he occupies (Chosen Undead, Ashen One, the Good Hunter) are just avatars. But not until the epilogue. Even in volume 2, he uses avatars, as his dragon body just, sleeps around most of the time. The problem is, and the reason he wanted to drop his waifus, pushed them away, and gave a Command, was because as part of screwing him over, everyone can control his avatars. So, for the whole of volume 1, MC was terrified of, and hated, his waifus finding out and giving him orders, because he had to obey them absolutely. That's how Emma for example went insane, she ordered him to "sit still and let her in (to his mind) ". Or when Diana doomed him to thousands of years of suffering in the First Flame, when she unknowingly ordered him to not go hollow. Of course, MC doesn't yet know they're just avatars, and they can't order his true body - the dragon, but he doesn't have access to it for a long time, and barely uses it when he does, so it's a moot point. Anyway, his fears are perfectly justifiable. His waifus are unbound (which, to be fair, he chose), but he, for all intents and purposes, is.
Problems start to accumulate. Because he cannot reasonably trust his waifus, he also doesn't bind his companions in the Soulsborne worlds, or sends them to the island and doesn't risk interacting. As such, he loses Melina, the first "waifu" he actually falls in love with (and isn't forced to love like the initial 10). He gets her back, but it wasn't certain. The finish is bull, no other way to put it. He doesn't learn to trust them, no character development in this direction, no. He is forced, to trust Emma to get his true body to wake up. If this isn't just a twisted way to torment him, I don't know what it is. It's not him choosing to trust even one of them, nor them working to gain his trust, or any variation of this. No, he is forced to go against his feelings, his nature, and previous experiences with them, and order Emma to do to him the one thing he feared and hated from the bottom of his being.
All of it is him being screwed over by his patron and the Company over picking a DLC option. In an interlude flashback he is told the specifics, that he didn't have to go through with it, he'd have been ignored. However, Death picked him, to eventually mark her and let her ascend a Tier. She picked him because of his elements, and not choosing any bindings. So it's pretty damn twisted of her to not give him the same treatment.
Still, he eventually wakes up, good times? LOL nope. All the character development gets thrown out of the window, the problems, mistrust, actual spine from a whole long volume? The author handwaves it away in the span of a single chapter. Gone completely. His love and accaptance is a handwave supposedly because as a Great One, he loves humanity. But over the span of one chapter, he goes from a volume-long attitude of "I love them, and I hate it because it's forced and I don't want to be controlled" to "ours is a mad love bUt wE'Re FaMilY". For some reason he frees them of the Command Seal forbidding them from ordering him (reasonable, since anything remotely resembling an order, is counted as one), and the waifus know how his feelings about being enslaved, and the gesture of trust he gave. The moment he shows up? Yoruchi gives him an order. And when she's understandably scolded (which was a very tame reaction), Mikael defends her. Really. Just a cherry on top of the cake. And the whole development wasn't even necessary, because the Soulsborne adventure was exactly what he wanted. It'd have been a better story without being forced to love, obey, and "trust" the waifus, just an adventure throughout the worlds, with all the ups and downs and people and sights and loot.
My recommendation, just read the volume one, SKIP the moment he summons the waifu in the burning Hunter's Dream, SKIP most of the Epilogue, and only finish up with the final segment of it, where he goes to his home, his room, and reunites with Spoilers.
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Wow, I didn't expect much because I didn't like to read fanfic. In fact, this is probably the 4th or 5th fanfic I've read, and it's the first fic that combines many series, some of which I have little or no knowledge about (DC, Marvel, Fate, Bleach, Worm, and this catalogue stuff).
But I'm hooked after reading the first few chapters. It's several levels above many stories on this site. I don't even know how to properly review or compare it because this is the first time I've read this kind of story.
TL;DR: It's good, read it
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A Masterpiece. Not only the best as a fanfic out there but one of the best stories I have read. It is truly a crime that this so underrated. It deserves attention. A lot.
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This is one of those reads that I've kept on the backburner for quite a while, for whenever I run out of what I normally focus my time on. I finally picked it up, more or less, to determine if I should clear it from my list after so long.
That was three days ago.
I have now run out of tea, and I have never been so upset with myself for procrastinating.
The quality of writing, planning, and level of depth in the characters has absolutely blown me out of the water. This isn't a hacked together wish-fulfillment power fantasy jumping from scene to scene, it's a complex story with incredibly human actors and presented with clarity and direction. You get invested in the struggles of your favorite characters, the tension always feels present where it should, and I am consistently amazed at how the plot comes together at the end of various arcs. There is zero drop in quality between the books, which I was concerned about, merely a change in tone and goals, neither of which have impeded the author's ability to weave such an interesting story.
Some things to note, before you read:
The first book is a pain-train for the MC. Awful things happen to him, the action is well done, there are sweet and sad moments, but where it shines is in character development. That isn't to say that the other elements of a typical Grimdark romp aren't there, or done incredibly well, but it isn't the focus. If you want a story about a horrendous struggle that breaks the 'hero' into a spiral of egomaniacal villainy, you won't get all of what you want. The horrendous struggle is there, the limits are tested and pushed, the MC fails and makes mistakes, nor is he a 'hero'. But this is a story focusing more about overcoming those obstacles rather than being driven by them.
The second thing I will mention is that this is a terrible 'Waifu Catalogue' story, and the story wouldn't be as incredible if it had been. If you are going into this as a reader expecting a consentually-dubious power-filled s*x romp, you will not get that. There is 18+ material, but even that is stuffed full with all kinds of character insight, relationship fulfillment, emotional development, etcetera. Not to say that the material is badly written or falls flat, because that wouldn't be true by any means. Merely that it isn't empty filler.
All-in-all, I lack the words to properly convey just how fun this has been for me to read. My honest hope is that by writing this, less people skip over it as I had.
Additionally, for anybody else joining the church of the floof-dragon, welcome and bra-men.
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