The Dream Team ongoing The Dream Team AUTHOR: ohchen 
LEAD: As of yet unrevealed
GENRE; SETTING: action, romance; fantasy
CHAPTERS: 24, as of 19/09/2015
READER INFORMATION: Subscribers Only  

In a world where Shapeshifters and Skinwalkers are the norm and Defective are filth, Geum JinJu thinks she's got it pretty bad. And she does – the Defective slum of Jaedue isn't exactly the nicest place to grow up. Throw in a hormonal wasteland of a high school, a gangly best friend who spends his spare time fraternising with the enemy and family of rats as unwelcome boarders underneath her home, and you have what JinJu would accuractely describe as hell.

She's really just waiting on a change.

Meanwhile, on the other side of town (or the royal palace of Indion, whatever floats your boat), Crown Prince Kim Jongin is in somewhat of a predicament. His father is declaring war upon a country of farmers, failing to realise that it's all in cold blood. Meanwhile, demons are laying waste to the desert of Defluo – and Jongin needs to find a solution, quickly, before they begin to consume the world.

They say cooperation is key, but how do you cooperate when you've been taught to hate one another? You learn. Fast.

Dream team: assemble!

thoughts To be completely honest, I hesitated to recommend this (in part because of the way my inner critic responded to some aspects of it). I ended up doing so because I think it's a worthwhile read rather than because I particularly loved it. I think it's considered something of a fandom classic among I-ELFs, though I'm not really part of that community, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

PLOT: First up, I will say this: I cannot for the life of me understand why this story is not more popular. If this particular critique is too long for you to read, then take it on the basis of multiple people recommending it here, 8.5 stars, the new certified favourite mark and me giving you a TL;DR in orange of you should read this because the characters are fantastic and the plot is intriguing and the pacing is great and the writing is good and why do only 235 people know about this story? It has a kickass OC, humour, adventure, action, seeds of romance beginning to creep in, dynamic characters, and an interesting fantasy set up along with a need-to-save-the-world! plot. I am an absolute er for stories like this. (Incidentally, if you know any more, please do recommend them.)

Granted, it would be nice to have a more solid knowledge/reason for why the Skinwalkers and Shapeshifters hate each other so much, and I'm still not totally convinced by the king thinking that the Issians are a bunch of vengeful voodoo insurgents (I mean, the reasoning's there, but it just doesn't feel quite as solid as it could), but it otherwise delivers, and the concept of Shapeshifters and Skinwalkers is nicely done. A bunch of demons are wreaking havoc in the desert and set to destroy the world within a couple of years if something's not done about them. Jongin knows that his father's past reasoning with and has a brainwave during a boring lecture when Luhan persuades him to create a dream fantasy football team that a combination of Shapeshifters (of which he is one) and Skinwalkers in the past has been invincible. The problem is, the rifts are too deep and they're very unlikely to work together.

That is, until Zitao shows up and terrifies a combined bunch of Jongin's Shapeshifter friends and Skinwalkers who do not look set to get on at all into getting on a minibus so they can set out to save the world.

I'm still not entirely sure how normal humans (or Defectives) Chanyeol and JinJu are going to factor into this, but I'm looking forward to seeing how that pans out.

Oh, and then there's Ky