Round Three Reviews - Part Eight
Today's Featured Stories Include:
*
Left Behind by mihane-echo
Category: Doctor/Donna
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Donna in flashback
Rating: All Ages
Details: After “Journey’s End,” the Doctor finds something in Donna’s room which brings her painfully to mind. Approximately 4000 words.
Why it Rocks:
This story revolves around the intense sense memory that can be associated with smell, and anyone who has stumbled across an ex’s article of clothing knows how powerful that can be.
I absolutely adore the way this story starts, because it gives some hilarious and fitting descriptions of the state of the Doctor’s room on the TARDIS. There’s a little detail about the fact that his room is full of all sorts of lamps, including:
floating ones that he keeps bumping his head on but refuses to set to a higher levitation setting.
Something about that is so very Doctorish. Also, as one who expect, his room is full to bursting with electronics he’s been tinkering with, a fact that has puzzled all of his recent companions to one degree or another. Donna seemed to take it in stride though:
Donna had just gawped at the mess and then brought him his tea and settled down to read a book on his bed. She made a habit of making at least one snarky comment about the mess as she entered --"Do you think we'll ever see the floor again, Spaceman?"-- but after that it was just quality time in the comfortable almost-silence as he hammered and soniced, a jigger here and poke there and the occasional curse under his breath when he smashed, pinched or zapped his finger.
All this to lead in to the fact that the Doctor is looking for a blinky red device, and he can’t find it anywhere in his cluttered room. A hunt for it leads him into rooms all over the TARDIS, and the last place he wanders into is Donna’s bedroom, which he does with no small amount of trepidation. The discovery of one lonely perfume bottle leads him down the path of memory. The Doctor remembers Donna’s insistence that he take her home to get more of said perfume.
"Oi, sit up straight and start time-rotoring. I've gotta go home."
The scent of it, when Donna is in the room with him, gives him a sudden and surprising feeling of pleasure which he isn’t entirely prepared for, and he has to flee to the other side of the console to hide his reaction.
It was a subconscious connection, but automatic. It seemed as though every instance she had ever come close to him or hugged him was suddenly at the forefront of his mind; indeed, at that moment it felt like she was suddenly much closer
Back in the present, the smell of the perfume has the opposite effect, making him even more sad and miserable. He sinks onto Donna’s bed, missing her. He wants to be happy that he saved her life, but he can’t be.
The dialogue between the Doctor and Donna is in-character and funny, even as the story itself is sad. You can envision him going through this over and over again, as eventually all of his companions leave for one reason or another. This is a lovely, if depressing, portrait of Ten after the events of “Journey’s End” and of the relationship between the Doctor and Donna before he lost her.
*
Children of Time by iamshadow
Category:
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, River Song, Ten
Rating: G
Details: One-shot, spoilery for bits of DW S4 and TW S2.
Why It Rocks:
It's a very wide universe, you know. And time is seriously expansive. And with very, very, very few exceptions, the Doctor seems to have a thing for picking his companions from the 20th and 21st centuries.
With the notable exception of two: Jack Harkness. And River Song.
Both, incidentally, of the 51st century.
I'm just sayin'.
She’s born into a family that’s half what it used to be but still struggling to carry on, like a lightning-split tree. Her father’s ashes are sprinkled on the sands six months before she takes her first breath, and the brother closest to her in age is a ghost in their home whose name is never spoken.
Making River to be Jack's younger sister - which isn't giving it away, as a clever reader will figure it out in fairly short order - is a fairly interesting way to look at Jack from a different point of view. And that's exactly what Iamshadow gives us - a different view of Jack, as an older brother in mourning. River, born after the raid on the Boeshane where Jack lost his father and brother, sees the serious grimness in Jack as something to simply be accepted. She sees him as angry at the world.
What makes the fic curious is the ways that River is like Jack - and ways in which she is not. Jack runs away to join the Time Agency, but he seldom looks back, except to send his sister pebbles and geodes, and cryptic messages.
River leaves the Boeshane too, to become an archaeologist. And yet where Jack never looks back, River feels guilt for leaving her mother alone. Where Jack is angry at the world, River takes things as they come.
But what ties the siblings together most thoroughly is not their familial connection. We have a clue in the note that Jack sends his sister one day:
A couple of people knocked some sense into me. If I’m with them long enough, maybe they’ll even make me like myself again.
Traveling with the Doctor and Rose changed Jack, absolutely and irrevocably. Maybe they did make him like himself again, in the end. But it can't be argued that he was very much altered by his journeys with them.
And the same is true enough for River Song: by traveling with the Doctor, her life too is altered beyond recogniztion. We know what happened to Jack once he boarded the TARDIS - and we know what happened after.
“Welcome aboard the TARDIS, River Song,” he says, and his voice is gentle and warm, even if his eyes are strangely sad.
We don't know what happens when River boards the TARDIS - but we know what happens next. Because of their association with the Doctor, both Jack and River will, in some sense, live forever. Whether or not the Doctor ever realized that they were siblings to start with, they were certainly siblings in the end, and children of time in every sense of the word.
In short, vote for Children of Time. It's about the siblings you have and the siblings you should have had; it's about how life runs on far fewer than six degrees of separation. It has flies caught in amber and home movies flickering in the dark. It absolutely deserves your vote.
*
Artifact by nostalgia-lj Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Het Pairings, Romance
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, River (Four and Romana in flashback)
Rating: Teen
Details: River gives the Doctor something that brings him hope in this brilliant exploration of River and the Doctor seeing each other out of sequence. Approximately 2400 words.
Why it Rocks:
The story begins as River has summoned the Doctor to show him a stone found at an archaeological dig site. He immediately recognizes it, and it shocks him. We see in flashback a market, and the Doctor buying the stone for Romana, with her name inscribed on it in Gallifreyan. He knows that he never took her to the planet it was found on, and thus the implication is that she could be alive. He refuses to believe it.
"I can live, but I can't live with hope, not about this."
The dialogue really sparkles in this story, both between the Doctor and River and between the Doctor and Romana in the flashbacks. This little exchange, breaking the fourth wall a little bit, made me genuinely laugh at loud:
She put her hands on her hips. "I'm an archaeologist, I'm trained to find all the evidence."
"I've seen Bonekickers," he said, starting towards the excavation.
"Is that another reference to popular culture that I have no way of knowing about?"
"I've got it on DVD in the TARDIS, you can borrow it. It's terrible. It makes me feel a lot more plausible." He jumped down into a shallow trench.
And with Romana, the quick-witted repartee is a joy to read.
"Paris," the Doctor decided. "The Eiffel Tower, a nice walk along a riverbank. No aliens whatsoever."
"Apart from us."
"Naturally."
"And all the Humans."
"And the broccoli."
"So really rather a lot of aliens," said Romana, moving a stray strand of blonde hair from her face.
Gradually, as we see the Doctor and River in more scenes together, we see the Doctor recapturing the hope. He’s looking for Romana, not expecting to find her necessarily, but just the act of looking has improved his outlook. I had an easy time imagining these scenes occurring between what we have seen so far onscreen in “The Next Doctor” and “Planet of the Dead.”
"You look a lot happier than you were last time. Your last time, I mean. At least I think it was your last time."
"I think it's having someone to look for. Just knowing that she's out there, that I might find her someday, I don't feel so alone."
At the same time, the romantic relationship between the two of them is developing. It’s told sparingly, but there’s just enough to satisfy.
He liked the feel of River's skin. He'd told her that and she'd said it was just skin, but he did, he really did. She shifted against him, her head resting between his hearts, and he ran his fingertips across her arm.
There’s a twist at the end of this story that I don’t want to give away, but it’s both wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey and I loved it to bits. I thoroughly enjoyed this story; the characterization of River is excellent and it’s a very original plot idea.
*
Frost by The Doctors Dance Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Toshiko Sato, Fluff, Ficlet
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Owen
Rating: Teen
Details: Ficlet, 246 words, complete
Why It Rocks:
Unrequited love’s a bitch. It’s even worse when you work beside the object of your affection every day and half the time he doesn’t notice you’re even there, and the other half he treats you like something the cat dragged in. Tosh loves Owen, and not only does he not feel the same way about her, but it’s perfectly obvious that he thinks she’s barely worth his notice. And that’s when he’s not laughing at her behind her back.
You’d think that would be enough to make Tosh give up, but it’s not. Love does that to people: makes them hope in the face of evidence to the contrary that things might change. And why not? Stranger things have happened - and, as we know, Tosh did almost get what she wanted, in the end. Not her fault that Owen died, and then both of them died.
But I’m jumping ahead of myself here. In Frost, The Doctors Dance shows us one moment that could have happened, that might have contributed to Tosh gradually working her way under that icy coating Owen created for himself after his fiancée died so horribly. It’s winter, an unusually freezing and snowy day in Cardiff, and Tosh is heading home. Behind her, she hears Owen swearing at the cold and she turns to look for him.
Finding him looking peeved and walking away from the hub and car park, she called out to him. “Owen! Want a lift?”
Being Owen, he ignores her and walks on, but she drives after him and insists that he gets in:
“Owen, come on, you’re going to freeze.” He stopped walking and got into the car.
“Happy now?” he snarked.
Typically, of course, he can’t even thank her, or acknowledge that she’s doing him a favour; in fact, he behaves as if he’s the one doing her a favour.
A short car-ride and some soothing music later - and no conversation - Owen actually thanks Tosh for the lift. Music calming the savage beast? Owen feeling a bit of the Christmas spirit? Or is Tosh actually starting to get through to him at last? We don’t know. What Frost represents is one single sweet moment in the history of Tosh and Owen’s complicated relationship, and that’s its beauty. Simple, short and satisfying, and giving hope both to Tosh and the reader that maybe a thaw’s on its way.
Because all frost eventually melts. That’s the beauty of nature.
*
A Lot Can Happen in a Little by takethewords Posted on a community LJ
Category: Ninth Doctor
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Nine, Rose.
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot, post-Father's Day.
Why It Rocks:
This is the Doctor, then. Completely, hopelessly, stupidly adoring Rose Tyler.
There are some fics that you read, and by the end, you are completely wrapped in a small ball on your chair, staring in complete wonderment at the screen. Because the words that pop out at you are so intensely lyrical and beautiful that you literally cannot believe your eyes.
This is exactly that kind of fic.
The Doctor has taken Rose to Spain, and he's waiting for her to wake up, just as the sun rises over the ocean outside their hotel room. The action takes place over just a few minutes, but each second is wonderfully drawn. Every small detail of movement between the Doctor and Rose is carefully choreographed in a near-dance between them, as they move closer and closer together.
She's pulling on his arm, pulling him into her bed, into the warm spot where she lay sleeping just moments ago and his lungs are burning like he's swallowed all the water in the sea.
But the movement isn't just physical - it's mental, too. This is Rose, just after watching her father die - and it's clearly been on her mind.
Her voice is small, quiet but strong. "I know how it feels, now. Almost, anyhow." They both know what she means. It had been like watching his planet burn all over again, in her eyes that day on the street corner.
What I love about this fic - and yes, I do love it - is that TakeTheWords has Nine nailed. Ten is easy to write - Ten is bouncy and excitable and cheerful. Nine is usually seen as angsty - and of course he is here. But Take has picked up on something else, too - Nine, at the end of day, when Rose Tyler is concerned: he's just stupid.
Her touch makes him stupid again, fingertips branding through his jumper, so that you could probably make out the print of her hand on his chest. Just a mark of her claim to him, pointless because it's always written all over his face.
Because yes, the Doctor is stupid about Rose Tyler. That she loves him is evident to her, evident to us, evident to those around him. The only person who doesn't see it - is him.
The fic as a whole is marvelously well-written, and the language is a really good mix of exactly right and exactly unexpected (and still right). Saying that a room is filling quickly with sunshine heat is about as basic, and completely descriptive, as you can get for the moments after a sunrise, and one those of us who wake early recognize immediately. There are some minor grammatical errors (mostly a confusion of it's and its), but none of them detract from the utter beauty of the choices TakeTheWords has made. TakeTheWords has literally taken the words straight of my mouth for exactly how well she's used the language skills she clearly possesses.
I think my favorite part of the entire story is the last paragraph - which I can't post here, lest I give away the loveliest part of the story. But suffice to say this: for me, parts of Round One and Round Two were all about the Hunt for Smut for wiggiemomsi. I think Wig will be very pleased with what I have found here. It isn't smut, exactly - but it's easily one of the loveliest descriptions of the Doctor and Rose that I've seen.
In short, vote for A Lot Can Happen. It's a gorgeous inspection of the Doctor's character, and his feelings for himself and Rose. It's little and lyrical and lovely, and it's far greater than the sum of its parts. It's one of my favorite things about Round Three, and it absolutely deserves your vote.
*
Queen and Country by gracie_musica
Categories: Jack Harkness, Genfic, Ficlet
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: All Ages
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness, Queen Elizabeth II
Details: A 1600 word one-shot that explains Jack's link to the royal family.
Why it Rocks:
Around the world, Queen Elizabeth is an icon. She represents something bigger than herself, and yet she is, really, just a person. And one of the people that (if he actually existed) would be able to see that, would recall more than the monarch, is Captain Jack Harkness.
It's a fundamental truth, that I don't think about often, that Captain Jack was an immigrant to Britain - he came there to find the Doctor and stayed and served for decades. Still, there's got to be a reason that he stayed there. Obviously, he loves the people and the country, it's just that there aren't many fics that examine that angle.
Enter Queen and Country. It's one of those fics that you read, and then you think to yourself “oh, that was nice” and you go off to read something else, and something is nagging at the back of your brain, and you go back and you discover something that you missed about it. Not only is Captain Jack spot-on, Ianto has a brief appearance that's solid and the ending punchline is just perfect.
It's told in four flashes, four separate encounters with Elizabeth and her family, first when she was a princess and lastly after she's died. It's simple. It's beautiful in spots, and the writer writes with a real flair.
Picking just one section of this fic to quote and draw attention to was hard for me because it's not long, really, and I hardly want to ruin the ending for you.
Instead, I'll focus on the part that really captured my attention. It's from the very first vignette, and it sucked me in like a magnet.
"Captain," she called out. It was just loud enough to be heard, and he paused with one hand on the door. "You once said that you were protecting Britain for Queen and Country. Were you just quoting the charter?"
Jack turned to look at her. "I am a British citizen, your Majesty, despite my accent." He smiled a little. "But I meant what I said. As long as you walk upon this Earth, I will protect your country for you."
He was surprised to find that he meant it.
Like I said, the fic isn't long, but it's solid. Maybe it will do for you what it did for me and shift your entire thinking on the character of Jack Harkness. Maybe it won't. But I still think it's worth a read and deserves consideration for your vote.
*
Today's Reviews were written by:
unfolded73: Left Behind; Artifact
azriona: Children of Time; A Lot Can Happen in a Little
wendymr: Frost
ladychi: Queen and Country
*
Left Behind by mihane-echo
Category: Doctor/Donna
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Donna in flashback
Rating: All Ages
Details: After “Journey’s End,” the Doctor finds something in Donna’s room which brings her painfully to mind. Approximately 4000 words.
Why it Rocks:
This story revolves around the intense sense memory that can be associated with smell, and anyone who has stumbled across an ex’s article of clothing knows how powerful that can be.
I absolutely adore the way this story starts, because it gives some hilarious and fitting descriptions of the state of the Doctor’s room on the TARDIS. There’s a little detail about the fact that his room is full of all sorts of lamps, including:
floating ones that he keeps bumping his head on but refuses to set to a higher levitation setting.
Something about that is so very Doctorish. Also, as one who expect, his room is full to bursting with electronics he’s been tinkering with, a fact that has puzzled all of his recent companions to one degree or another. Donna seemed to take it in stride though:
Donna had just gawped at the mess and then brought him his tea and settled down to read a book on his bed. She made a habit of making at least one snarky comment about the mess as she entered --"Do you think we'll ever see the floor again, Spaceman?"-- but after that it was just quality time in the comfortable almost-silence as he hammered and soniced, a jigger here and poke there and the occasional curse under his breath when he smashed, pinched or zapped his finger.
All this to lead in to the fact that the Doctor is looking for a blinky red device, and he can’t find it anywhere in his cluttered room. A hunt for it leads him into rooms all over the TARDIS, and the last place he wanders into is Donna’s bedroom, which he does with no small amount of trepidation. The discovery of one lonely perfume bottle leads him down the path of memory. The Doctor remembers Donna’s insistence that he take her home to get more of said perfume.
"Oi, sit up straight and start time-rotoring. I've gotta go home."
The scent of it, when Donna is in the room with him, gives him a sudden and surprising feeling of pleasure which he isn’t entirely prepared for, and he has to flee to the other side of the console to hide his reaction.
It was a subconscious connection, but automatic. It seemed as though every instance she had ever come close to him or hugged him was suddenly at the forefront of his mind; indeed, at that moment it felt like she was suddenly much closer
Back in the present, the smell of the perfume has the opposite effect, making him even more sad and miserable. He sinks onto Donna’s bed, missing her. He wants to be happy that he saved her life, but he can’t be.
The dialogue between the Doctor and Donna is in-character and funny, even as the story itself is sad. You can envision him going through this over and over again, as eventually all of his companions leave for one reason or another. This is a lovely, if depressing, portrait of Ten after the events of “Journey’s End” and of the relationship between the Doctor and Donna before he lost her.
*
Children of Time by iamshadow
Category:
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, River Song, Ten
Rating: G
Details: One-shot, spoilery for bits of DW S4 and TW S2.
Why It Rocks:
It's a very wide universe, you know. And time is seriously expansive. And with very, very, very few exceptions, the Doctor seems to have a thing for picking his companions from the 20th and 21st centuries.
With the notable exception of two: Jack Harkness. And River Song.
Both, incidentally, of the 51st century.
I'm just sayin'.
She’s born into a family that’s half what it used to be but still struggling to carry on, like a lightning-split tree. Her father’s ashes are sprinkled on the sands six months before she takes her first breath, and the brother closest to her in age is a ghost in their home whose name is never spoken.
Making River to be Jack's younger sister - which isn't giving it away, as a clever reader will figure it out in fairly short order - is a fairly interesting way to look at Jack from a different point of view. And that's exactly what Iamshadow gives us - a different view of Jack, as an older brother in mourning. River, born after the raid on the Boeshane where Jack lost his father and brother, sees the serious grimness in Jack as something to simply be accepted. She sees him as angry at the world.
What makes the fic curious is the ways that River is like Jack - and ways in which she is not. Jack runs away to join the Time Agency, but he seldom looks back, except to send his sister pebbles and geodes, and cryptic messages.
River leaves the Boeshane too, to become an archaeologist. And yet where Jack never looks back, River feels guilt for leaving her mother alone. Where Jack is angry at the world, River takes things as they come.
But what ties the siblings together most thoroughly is not their familial connection. We have a clue in the note that Jack sends his sister one day:
A couple of people knocked some sense into me. If I’m with them long enough, maybe they’ll even make me like myself again.
Traveling with the Doctor and Rose changed Jack, absolutely and irrevocably. Maybe they did make him like himself again, in the end. But it can't be argued that he was very much altered by his journeys with them.
And the same is true enough for River Song: by traveling with the Doctor, her life too is altered beyond recogniztion. We know what happened to Jack once he boarded the TARDIS - and we know what happened after.
“Welcome aboard the TARDIS, River Song,” he says, and his voice is gentle and warm, even if his eyes are strangely sad.
We don't know what happens when River boards the TARDIS - but we know what happens next. Because of their association with the Doctor, both Jack and River will, in some sense, live forever. Whether or not the Doctor ever realized that they were siblings to start with, they were certainly siblings in the end, and children of time in every sense of the word.
In short, vote for Children of Time. It's about the siblings you have and the siblings you should have had; it's about how life runs on far fewer than six degrees of separation. It has flies caught in amber and home movies flickering in the dark. It absolutely deserves your vote.
*
Artifact by nostalgia-lj Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Het Pairings, Romance
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, River (Four and Romana in flashback)
Rating: Teen
Details: River gives the Doctor something that brings him hope in this brilliant exploration of River and the Doctor seeing each other out of sequence. Approximately 2400 words.
Why it Rocks:
The story begins as River has summoned the Doctor to show him a stone found at an archaeological dig site. He immediately recognizes it, and it shocks him. We see in flashback a market, and the Doctor buying the stone for Romana, with her name inscribed on it in Gallifreyan. He knows that he never took her to the planet it was found on, and thus the implication is that she could be alive. He refuses to believe it.
"I can live, but I can't live with hope, not about this."
The dialogue really sparkles in this story, both between the Doctor and River and between the Doctor and Romana in the flashbacks. This little exchange, breaking the fourth wall a little bit, made me genuinely laugh at loud:
She put her hands on her hips. "I'm an archaeologist, I'm trained to find all the evidence."
"I've seen Bonekickers," he said, starting towards the excavation.
"Is that another reference to popular culture that I have no way of knowing about?"
"I've got it on DVD in the TARDIS, you can borrow it. It's terrible. It makes me feel a lot more plausible." He jumped down into a shallow trench.
And with Romana, the quick-witted repartee is a joy to read.
"Paris," the Doctor decided. "The Eiffel Tower, a nice walk along a riverbank. No aliens whatsoever."
"Apart from us."
"Naturally."
"And all the Humans."
"And the broccoli."
"So really rather a lot of aliens," said Romana, moving a stray strand of blonde hair from her face.
Gradually, as we see the Doctor and River in more scenes together, we see the Doctor recapturing the hope. He’s looking for Romana, not expecting to find her necessarily, but just the act of looking has improved his outlook. I had an easy time imagining these scenes occurring between what we have seen so far onscreen in “The Next Doctor” and “Planet of the Dead.”
"You look a lot happier than you were last time. Your last time, I mean. At least I think it was your last time."
"I think it's having someone to look for. Just knowing that she's out there, that I might find her someday, I don't feel so alone."
At the same time, the romantic relationship between the two of them is developing. It’s told sparingly, but there’s just enough to satisfy.
He liked the feel of River's skin. He'd told her that and she'd said it was just skin, but he did, he really did. She shifted against him, her head resting between his hearts, and he ran his fingertips across her arm.
There’s a twist at the end of this story that I don’t want to give away, but it’s both wibbly-wobbly and timey-wimey and I loved it to bits. I thoroughly enjoyed this story; the characterization of River is excellent and it’s a very original plot idea.
*
Frost by The Doctors Dance Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Toshiko Sato, Fluff, Ficlet
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Owen
Rating: Teen
Details: Ficlet, 246 words, complete
Why It Rocks:
Unrequited love’s a bitch. It’s even worse when you work beside the object of your affection every day and half the time he doesn’t notice you’re even there, and the other half he treats you like something the cat dragged in. Tosh loves Owen, and not only does he not feel the same way about her, but it’s perfectly obvious that he thinks she’s barely worth his notice. And that’s when he’s not laughing at her behind her back.
You’d think that would be enough to make Tosh give up, but it’s not. Love does that to people: makes them hope in the face of evidence to the contrary that things might change. And why not? Stranger things have happened - and, as we know, Tosh did almost get what she wanted, in the end. Not her fault that Owen died, and then both of them died.
But I’m jumping ahead of myself here. In Frost, The Doctors Dance shows us one moment that could have happened, that might have contributed to Tosh gradually working her way under that icy coating Owen created for himself after his fiancée died so horribly. It’s winter, an unusually freezing and snowy day in Cardiff, and Tosh is heading home. Behind her, she hears Owen swearing at the cold and she turns to look for him.
Finding him looking peeved and walking away from the hub and car park, she called out to him. “Owen! Want a lift?”
Being Owen, he ignores her and walks on, but she drives after him and insists that he gets in:
“Owen, come on, you’re going to freeze.” He stopped walking and got into the car.
“Happy now?” he snarked.
Typically, of course, he can’t even thank her, or acknowledge that she’s doing him a favour; in fact, he behaves as if he’s the one doing her a favour.
A short car-ride and some soothing music later - and no conversation - Owen actually thanks Tosh for the lift. Music calming the savage beast? Owen feeling a bit of the Christmas spirit? Or is Tosh actually starting to get through to him at last? We don’t know. What Frost represents is one single sweet moment in the history of Tosh and Owen’s complicated relationship, and that’s its beauty. Simple, short and satisfying, and giving hope both to Tosh and the reader that maybe a thaw’s on its way.
Because all frost eventually melts. That’s the beauty of nature.
*
A Lot Can Happen in a Little by takethewords Posted on a community LJ
Category: Ninth Doctor
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Nine, Rose.
Rating: PG
Details: One-shot, post-Father's Day.
Why It Rocks:
This is the Doctor, then. Completely, hopelessly, stupidly adoring Rose Tyler.
There are some fics that you read, and by the end, you are completely wrapped in a small ball on your chair, staring in complete wonderment at the screen. Because the words that pop out at you are so intensely lyrical and beautiful that you literally cannot believe your eyes.
This is exactly that kind of fic.
The Doctor has taken Rose to Spain, and he's waiting for her to wake up, just as the sun rises over the ocean outside their hotel room. The action takes place over just a few minutes, but each second is wonderfully drawn. Every small detail of movement between the Doctor and Rose is carefully choreographed in a near-dance between them, as they move closer and closer together.
She's pulling on his arm, pulling him into her bed, into the warm spot where she lay sleeping just moments ago and his lungs are burning like he's swallowed all the water in the sea.
But the movement isn't just physical - it's mental, too. This is Rose, just after watching her father die - and it's clearly been on her mind.
Her voice is small, quiet but strong. "I know how it feels, now. Almost, anyhow." They both know what she means. It had been like watching his planet burn all over again, in her eyes that day on the street corner.
What I love about this fic - and yes, I do love it - is that TakeTheWords has Nine nailed. Ten is easy to write - Ten is bouncy and excitable and cheerful. Nine is usually seen as angsty - and of course he is here. But Take has picked up on something else, too - Nine, at the end of day, when Rose Tyler is concerned: he's just stupid.
Her touch makes him stupid again, fingertips branding through his jumper, so that you could probably make out the print of her hand on his chest. Just a mark of her claim to him, pointless because it's always written all over his face.
Because yes, the Doctor is stupid about Rose Tyler. That she loves him is evident to her, evident to us, evident to those around him. The only person who doesn't see it - is him.
The fic as a whole is marvelously well-written, and the language is a really good mix of exactly right and exactly unexpected (and still right). Saying that a room is filling quickly with sunshine heat is about as basic, and completely descriptive, as you can get for the moments after a sunrise, and one those of us who wake early recognize immediately. There are some minor grammatical errors (mostly a confusion of it's and its), but none of them detract from the utter beauty of the choices TakeTheWords has made. TakeTheWords has literally taken the words straight of my mouth for exactly how well she's used the language skills she clearly possesses.
I think my favorite part of the entire story is the last paragraph - which I can't post here, lest I give away the loveliest part of the story. But suffice to say this: for me, parts of Round One and Round Two were all about the Hunt for Smut for wiggiemomsi. I think Wig will be very pleased with what I have found here. It isn't smut, exactly - but it's easily one of the loveliest descriptions of the Doctor and Rose that I've seen.
In short, vote for A Lot Can Happen. It's a gorgeous inspection of the Doctor's character, and his feelings for himself and Rose. It's little and lyrical and lovely, and it's far greater than the sum of its parts. It's one of my favorite things about Round Three, and it absolutely deserves your vote.
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Queen and Country by gracie_musica
Categories: Jack Harkness, Genfic, Ficlet
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: All Ages
Characters: Captain Jack Harkness, Queen Elizabeth II
Details: A 1600 word one-shot that explains Jack's link to the royal family.
Why it Rocks:
Around the world, Queen Elizabeth is an icon. She represents something bigger than herself, and yet she is, really, just a person. And one of the people that (if he actually existed) would be able to see that, would recall more than the monarch, is Captain Jack Harkness.
It's a fundamental truth, that I don't think about often, that Captain Jack was an immigrant to Britain - he came there to find the Doctor and stayed and served for decades. Still, there's got to be a reason that he stayed there. Obviously, he loves the people and the country, it's just that there aren't many fics that examine that angle.
Enter Queen and Country. It's one of those fics that you read, and then you think to yourself “oh, that was nice” and you go off to read something else, and something is nagging at the back of your brain, and you go back and you discover something that you missed about it. Not only is Captain Jack spot-on, Ianto has a brief appearance that's solid and the ending punchline is just perfect.
It's told in four flashes, four separate encounters with Elizabeth and her family, first when she was a princess and lastly after she's died. It's simple. It's beautiful in spots, and the writer writes with a real flair.
Picking just one section of this fic to quote and draw attention to was hard for me because it's not long, really, and I hardly want to ruin the ending for you.
Instead, I'll focus on the part that really captured my attention. It's from the very first vignette, and it sucked me in like a magnet.
"Captain," she called out. It was just loud enough to be heard, and he paused with one hand on the door. "You once said that you were protecting Britain for Queen and Country. Were you just quoting the charter?"
Jack turned to look at her. "I am a British citizen, your Majesty, despite my accent." He smiled a little. "But I meant what I said. As long as you walk upon this Earth, I will protect your country for you."
He was surprised to find that he meant it.
Like I said, the fic isn't long, but it's solid. Maybe it will do for you what it did for me and shift your entire thinking on the character of Jack Harkness. Maybe it won't. But I still think it's worth a read and deserves consideration for your vote.
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Today's Reviews were written by:
unfolded73: Left Behind; Artifact
azriona: Children of Time; A Lot Can Happen in a Little
wendymr: Frost
ladychi: Queen and Country