User blog:AustinDR/Review: Stories and Tales from Dimension 63

Well, this was something. Now this story was written by Omega Ultra (someone that I do kind of know offhandedly myself) which is basically a "follow up" to "One of the Boys" in which what would happen if Lincoln were to switch places with his female counterpart? That's basically what happens in this story. To describe it....think of this fanfic as The Loud House meets Gravity Falls. Basically, an anomaly causes Linka and Lincoln to switch places leading to a lot of humorous situations. To make matters worse for Lincoln, he gets met by William Cryptos, a shady man who entrusts him with a fragment of a macguffin that if he were to gather all of the pieces of the macguffin, it could prevent the destruction of his universe. However, time is on the essence. With Cryptos, while I won't be giving much away as to his true identity, I will say that it was pretty obvious that he was inspired off of Bill Cipher, especially in one incident in which he took on the shape of a floating triangle. And the cryptograms at the end of the chapters make it more obvious.

There are several things that I liked about this story; for one, it was very creative. It took a simple slice-of-life show like the Loud House, and it actually made it something more that being a science fiction adventure with dimension jumping, references to other fanfics like Requiem and the infamous I Love My Brother fan comic, and several situations Lincoln finds himself in as Linka are genuinely hilarious. Can't say the same about Linka, though; without giving much away, there was an incident that happened about six years ago that caused the genderbent family to suffer which served partially as a motivation for Linka taking Lincoln's body without asking. Let's just say that when you reach the end of the story, you will grow to hate her. I can assure that. As for the official story, it is over, but there are some epilogues that the writer is wanting to do, so....yeah.

Anyway, another reason as to why I liked this fanfic was the way that the brothers were presented. As you know, I hated how Lincoln's brothers acted in "One of the Boys." They were stereotypical jerks with nary a redeeming factor, but here, the author actually takes his time to show how the boys have changed ever since the incident regarding their only sister. They are more likable here than they were in the actual episode. Heck, they actually end up getting along just nicely with Lincoln even more than they could with their own flesh and blood sister. Each one also had their own interesting little side story such as Lexx putting on a play in order to impress a young girl who looks like a spitting image of Lana. That, and Lynn Jr. (M) actually having an interest in ballet was also surprising. I couldn't perceive him actually doing that. Also, the scenes with Ron Andy and Lincoln (as Linka) were also very cute especially when Lincoln/Linka kisses Ron Andy once, and he's over the moon about it. Yeah, he does find out the truth later....but, Linka basically was playing him for a fool in the beginning. And then she resorts to trying to kill Lincoln just so she could completely take over his life. Yeah....

My only real complaint about the story, though is the fact that  I felt that the conflict was introduced too late into the story. Lincoln is supposed to be getting these fragments; if he doesn't his home dimension could end up being destroyed by anomalies. However, some of the earlier chapters basically are just about him hanging out with one of the brothers and how they try to be as supportive of the apparent changes in their only sister. Really, I understand scenes like these are meant to build bonds with the characters, but it kind of places the whole planet-sized crisis of Lincoln's dimension possibly getting destroyed on the standby. That's not even getting into how Dimension 63 ends up getting destroyed by he didn't gather all of the fragments in time. That, and some of the ideas in the story are slightly complicated. Definitely more convoluted than the type of fanfic you're into.

Overall, a pretty good story that changes the setting of the show into something pretty unique.