Round Three Reviews - Part Two
Today's Featured Stories Include:
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Winnowing by karenor
Category: 10.5, Dark, Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: 10.5, Rose
Rating: Adult
Details: One-shot, post-JE, some angst.
Why It Rocks:
What makes the duplicate Tenth Doctor so interesting?
I’ve often asked myself that, because I find him fascinating, and in the hands of an author of Karenor’s talent, his story is nearly intoxicating in its layers and facets. And there comes a time, if you’re the sort to think about these things, when you have to decide just exactly who you think the duplicate Doctor is. Is he the same man, the same Doctor we already know? Or is he different, a copy, something Other?
While defending him to those who find him to be copy or a consolation prize, I’ve often quite vehemently defended him as being the same Doctor. After all, that’s what both of them say while on the beach, and I have to take them at their word. But while discussing him with others, I’ve also noted that I find him so interesting precisely because he is different. He’s not an exact duplicate-he’s human, for one. And that has to change his perspective, at the very least.
So which is it? Is he a cheap knock-off copy or is he the same, just as good as, or perhaps even better? And what of the other Doctor, the original? Is he a horrible coward for shoving Rose and his double out of the TARDIS doors and then fleeing, or did he give them both the gift of a life together, at enormous personal cost to himself?
In Winnowing, Karenor answers, “Yes.”
Rose tried desperately to separate the two of them, while, at the same time, he was trying to convince her that he was the same man, the man she fell in love with. Despite this conundrum, Rose still knew him better than anyone, and trying to hide his thoughts from her was generally futile. They’d held an easy truce since they’d been tossed into this life together, and never had anything but the tiniest rows, each trying to preserve the comfort they found in one another. But there was only so long that could last.
The story opens with the Doctor and Rose in bed (hence the hard R rating-sex plays some important roles in this fic). There’s something so sad and raw about a quarrel that occurs just after two people have made love. It casts the entire relationship, both physical and emotional, in to doubt. And doubt is a big part of Rose’s problem here. For the Doctor’s part, he can’t stop thinking about the other Doctor, and feeling guilty for having what his duplicate doesn’t have.
Karenor takes full advantage of this particularly vulnerable moment to explore all of the various ways that the events of Journey’s End can be interpreted. Rose is understandably still quite angry with the other Doctor, and only keeps that anger from bubbling over to her relationship with the human Doctor by trying desperately to make him out to be a very different man from the Time Lord. But if he’s a different man, can she still love him? She needs him to be different, but she’s also terrified of the implications of him actually being so.
The Doctor is vulnerable, hopelessly in love just as he ever was before he split in to two men, and needing Rose to see him as the same person whom she met in the basement of Henrick’s. It’s really an impossible situation, because if he is that man, then Rose has good reason to be angry at him as well.
There are no easy answers.
“I’m the Doctor. Your Doctor, that Doctor. The Ninth, the Tenth, the Tenth and a half, and all the ones before.”
“I know that.”
“Let me finish,” he gently chided. “I’m all those, and I’m the one you fell in love with. He said I was different, but, barring a few choice expressions I seem to have picked up from Donna, here’s the only way that I am: I am not going to leave you. Not for your own good, not for anyone’s.”
And there it was-what they hadn’t said earlier. She’d couched it all in anger at his guilt, but the crux of it was all this time that he’d been wanting her to believe he was the same man-and that was exactly what she’d been afraid to believe.
And there’s also makeup sex. Since the story begins with a rather angsty shag, it feels right that it end with rain-soaked makeup sex in the back of a car (don’t try this at home, kids). The circle feels complete, with some progress made in their relationship in between. There’s no moment where everything is magically made all better just by one word or one kiss, but the way forward is uncovered, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Karenor’s writing style is lovely, fluid, but not show-offy or flowery. She writes sex with an eye towards the emotion, not the physical play-by-play, and it feels like proper lovemaking between two flawed but ultimately honest, good people. Her dialogue reads as real and true, and it does feel like a more grown-up Rose and a more human Doctor, despite how little we get to know either of those two characters in canon.
Winnowing attempts, as many of us have done, to simultaneously explore and soothe the hurts of where canon has brought the Doctor/Rose relationship, and for me it very much succeeds. I hope others will find it thought-provoking and an enjoyable read (and also a wee bit hot as well).
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Five children that weren't...and one that was by amand_r
Category: Het Pairings; Dark/Angst
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Cast of thousands, but the main pairings are Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness/Captain John Hart, Donna Noble/OMCs, with background Toshiko Sato/Thomas Brockless and Owen Harper/Katie
Rating: PG-13
Details: One-shot. Even though listed under and primarily about Torchwood, it requires some knowledge of Doctor Who canon through "Journey's End" (which Torchwood fans probably watched, anyway, since Jack, Gwen, and Ianto were in it).
Why It Rocks:
Disclaimer: The author of the review nominated this story.
I originally found this fic through halfamoon, the fourteen day challenge celebrating female characters in fandom that occurs each February, but it was written for Day Four of 14valentines. While its topic of reproductive rights and motherhood could have come off as preachy, the author avoids that by making the issues so personal, since she relates them through their effect on characters we know and love.
The author compares and contrasts differing ideas of parenthood and desires for family amongst six vignettes:
There are those couples who want children but cannot have them, like Ten II/Rose and Donna and her OMC husbands. The metacrisis screwed with more than Donna's brain--and she can't even know what's happening to her, making her story the more tragic of these two.
Analogously, there's Toshiko, an individual woman, who would have loved a family and, especially, a child, if circumstances had been different and she had had more time. I adore that, to prevent this fic from crossing the line into melodrama, amand_r punctuates the story with humor, like Jack feeling that he has to ask if he's the father of Tosh's baby, despite them never having sex (which, admittedly, wouldn't be the strangest thing that's ever happened to Jack), or Owen whining about the Hub becoming a nursery but genuinely happy for Tosh after the birth. I also liked that Jack understands the desire for family enough not to fire Tosh from her high-risk job. Most importantly, this story show how and why Tosh would have made a *great* mother--being a "single mother" has nothing to do with it. (Um, as you've probably figured out by now, Tosh's story is my favorite.)
Similarly, there's Owen/Katie, who were also cheated by time, because Katie was pregnant when she died. Jack and Suzie decide not to tell Owen. I'm not sure if this was the right choice or their choice to make, but it's a situation where there is no obvious "right" choice, just a stab in the dark as to which is the least bad out of two awful possibilities.
Conversely, there's the pairing who didn't want a child but could have had one--Jack/John. I admire that the author had the nerve to write about a male character who has an abortion--unlike every other MPREG out there where a guy is totally OK with walking around knocked up and giving birth. There's little doubt it was the right choice--does anyone *really* want to consider what kind of parents Jack and John would have been?
As a counterpoint to all of the above, only Jenny gets to want her child and have it, too. At first, I kind of wanted to smack Jenny, even though she's done nothing wrong to anyone. In a weird way, I was jealous of the ease by which she becomes a mother, for the sake of the other characters. However, with a fully grown daughter, so much like herself, and without the time to develop a "normal" parent/child relationship, the story hints that Jenny may discover that what she wished for isn't quite what she wanted.
I'm glad that cot_reviews exists, because this story deserves to be read and recced everywhere. I think it's my favorite Torchwood fan fiction story ever, because it made me think about so much more than just what was immediately on the page.
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Show N Tell by sinecure
Category: WIP
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Rose
Rating: Adult liek woah
Details: Part 1 of a promised 2-parter, PWP, Ten/Rose first-time and very naughty.
Why It Rocks:
I’ve occasionally described this fic to people as the smut so hot I couldn’t even read it in one go, and that’s the honest truth, friends. This is part one of a promised two-parter, and I hold out hope that we do get the second part soon. However, as it is PWP in the best possible way, there’s no harm in reading part one even if part two isn’t ever posted.
There’s so many Doctors and Roses in our fanfic Whoniverse, but the Doctor and Rose we find here are two of my favourites: Rose is young, nubile, horny, and traveling around the universe having adventures with an impossibly charming and attractive man. The Doctor, on the other hand, seems sexually aloof, just-a-friend, seemingly completely unaware of how his companion is feeling. He’s a little bit alien, which I know is a weird thing to say about a character who is, in fact, actually an alien, but we don’t always get a Doctor like this in our smut.
But enough about him, because actually this is a solo affair for Rose for quite some time. Must confess, I love masturbation in fic if it’s done well. Is that a completely bizarre thing to say? Ah well, there it is. I’m reviewing porn, I have no shame, whatever. We find Rose in a hotel, and learn that she’s been quite neglecting taking care of herself vis-à-vis these feelings for the Doctor, because being on the TARDIS is a bit like being at your mum and dad’s house, isn’t it? She’s afraid he’d hear her, or sense it somehow, and that’s a mortifying thought.
So she takes advantage of being somewhere where she can relax and deal constructively with some of the tension she’s been feeling. I can almost feel those crisp, cozy hotel sheets.
Stretching languidly, her toes curled up as a naughty thrill coursed through her, thoughts drifting toward the man who'd put her in this condition in the first place.
I really like the images of her just kind of finally relaxing. I remember what it was like to be a teenager and to be best mates with a guy who you were actually hopelessly in love with. It’s stressful, and I imagine even more so when you have to constantly save the world as well.
Rose solo is hot, and her fantasies of the Doctor involve him wearing his glasses, which I very much approve of. But then the Doctor shows up, barges in, doesn’t knock, and she panics.
"Don't you know how to knock?" she snapped, praying like never before that he hadn't seen anything. But she knew, even as she mentally mumbled words to gods and goddesses, that he had, oh, god, he had. There was no way he could've missed her lying completely starkers on the bed, hands between her legs. "If you don't mind...?" she continued when he only stared back at her.
The Doctor, however, has some other ideas. Sinecure manages to make him outrageously dominant and sexy while still retaining an air of the alien. He’s a bit clinical, a little clueless about how to confront the emotional element that comes along with human sexuality, but he’s not asking either. He’s got an agenda and he’s quite determined to tick all the boxes.
There’s a lot of sexy shenanigans and I won’t get in to a play-by-play, but one thing I do really like is Rose’s POV. She’s unsure of some things, she’s taken aback by some of the things the Doctor says and does, she talks back to him, even while she wants him desperately. And she’s not instantly in to every single thing the Doctor does or wants her to do. He’s clearly got some fantasies he’s working out with her, and sometimes with our lovers we just sort of go along with things that aren’t necessarily mind-blowing in and of themselves but are special anyway because it’s what our beloved wants.
Also: he he keeps his specs on the whole time. I’m just sayin’.
“Show N Tell” is PWP of a very filthy and explicit nature. Not for the faint of heart, but most definitely recommended for those who like a bit of dom!Doctor and who aren’t afraid to get full details along with their smut.
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Time Has Set Its Maggot by cyus
Category: Ianto Jones, Genfic, Ficlet
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto Jones
Rating: PG-13/Teen
Details: A one-shot that delves into Ianto's mysterious past.
Why it Rocks:
Ianto Jones is a little bit like sushi. You either love him or you don't. And if you love him, you tend to love him hard - and if you hate him, he makes you a little bit ill. The thing about him in canon is that we really don't know a lot. We know a lot about Jack. We know enough about Owen, about Tosh, about Gwen - but Ianto seems to begin, on a really fundamental level, when he meets Jack.
The thing that's always attracted me to the character (and I'm a love him so hard fan, for the record), is that he's implacable - deceptively shallow in order to hide an inner self that is dark, and deep. And in this wonderful fic by Cyus, he takes you to the origins of Ianto - Cardiff, before he returns to work for Jack. This is a Ianto that's working at Torchwood in London, living in a flat with Lisa. This is before Ianto acquires his obvious demons, and this is a fic that shows you the harsh life underneath.
What's really striking me, even in hindsight, about this fic, is the true gritty nature of the reality Cyus is painting for us. The author begins the fic with Ianto smoking a fag, and having a conversation with some of the boys he grew up with - and he tells the story of the conversation, of Ianto's boyhood friends insinuating that Ianto thinks he's too good for Cardiff, the author unleashes these little moments of … almost poetry.
The city of Cardiff is a character in this story. It's the antagonist, actually, rather than the boys Ianto grew up with - it is the harsh demon that shaped them into the beings they became - men that beat their wives and live on meager pay, and men that can't see that Ianto has risen above all that.
The author takes great pains to show the audience the baser nature of Cardiff Ianto, versus London Ianto. In London, he dresses in suits. In Cardiff, he wears jeans and smokes fags. In London, he lives with Lisa in a decorated apartment. In Cardiff, he's visiting his mum and talking smack with acquaintances. He's a more primitive being in Cardiff, and that has echoes back to Ianto of Countrycide or Ianto in Cyberwoman. This is a real characterization of Ianto.
There's a rhythm when the Welsh speak - a musicality to their dialect and to their word choice that's hard to capture. And it's so brilliant in this - harsh with Ianto's friends, subdued in Ianto. It's superb and almost delicious in points.
To be entirely fair, I feel like I should warn some of my lighter-hearted reader friends that this isn't the fic for you. Its beauty is in its heaviness, in the weight that it carries in the rhythm of the words. Still, for passages like this one:
Ianto shrugs. "Still down in Bute Park?"
Cardiff gives you its babies with a tenner for a blowjob. Cheap alcohol made it easier, and there were always girls to fuck afterwards, eyes rolling with the vodka and the drugs. Numb, in abandoned houses and in cemeteries, they drank and fucked and made Cardiff bearable with something morphing into human interaction at times.
Rhod recoils, lips thin and hard. "Have families now."
Ianto shakes his head, throws away his cigarette, and steps on it. He imagines the sizzle, a bit of spark to resemble life. Girls call the police at three in the morning and go back at five, apologies on their lips and tear tracks down their cheeks while the babies are crying next-door, or die. Families in Splott keep their curtains and mouths shut, even if the whole street knew who you brought home and fucked in the other room.
It's well worth a read. Enjoy the characterization of Cardiff and the insight into Ianto. Chew this fic over, because it only gets better with time.
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Little White Lie of Omission by A Moment In Subtext Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Martha Jones, Dark/Angst
Fandom; New Who
Characters: Martha Jones, Jack Harkness, one other whose identity would be a spoiler for the fic
Rating: All Ages
Details: Ficlet, two short chapters (under 1500 words in total), complete.
Why It Rocks:
Sometimes large-scale disasters are so large-scale that we can’t comprehend them. One million dead; ten thousand planets on fire; two thousand square miles reduced to barren wasteland. What does it mean? The true cost, in terms of lives destroyed and years or even decades of devastation to come, is often beyond our ability to understand.
This is, of course, why journalists are taught to go for the individual stories as well as the big picture: to give readers faces to focus on and personal situations to grasp, to help put that larger story into a context we can understand; to help us relate to what’s going on. And, of course, because a story full of rich detail is always more interesting than a set of numbers.
This is exactly why Little White Lie of Omission is such a great story. It’s only something over 900 words, but it gives us that human touch we need to comprehend the enormity of disaster on a much wider scale. In the Season 3 finale, Martha Jones walked the Earth for the Doctor, telling stories about him to help him overcome the Master’s telepathic grip on the planet. We’re not told much about what happened during this time, though we know that much of the Earth was destroyed and Japan was completely wiped out. There have been many stories - and even one official novel - which have filled in the gap of that missing year, some of which have done so in very detailed, very hard-hitting ways. Here’s where I confess that I had to stop reading one long Year that Never Was fic because it was just too hard-hitting for me.
This story doesn’t sugar-coat the Year. In fact, it begins with a very hard-hitting passage:
...they all know what happened in Japan. It was a slaughter.
But they weren't there. They hadn't spent long, sleepless nights huddled in red painted houses, trying to drown out the screams of people dying just outside the window. They didn't hear the Toclofane's childish, gleeful laughter just inches above their heads while they clung to the ground, blood splattering onto their bodies as the monsters spun through the air, shaking it off like dogs coming in from the rain. They hadn't walked through those empty streets for days while the smell of death and rot filled the air like smog, looking for just one other living person. They hadn't seen the sky, just after the Toclofane left, all the blood condensing in the air, a red haze that had never quite faded, not even in her mind.
But Little White Lie of Omission isn’t about the destruction. It’s about something more profound than that. Martha has a secret. It’s something she hasn’t told anyone, and there’s only one other person - assuming he remembers - who knows. In Japan, in the middle of the nightmarish devastation, she met a woman, a mother, carrying a baby. The mother was minutes from death. She pushed her baby into Martha’s arms, and then died on the street.
Soldiers, emergency workers and others who deal with death on a daily basis will say that after a while they become inured to it. Not immune, but untouched, in a way. It’s what they have to do to survive. You can’t weep for every life lost, and you can’t save everyone. After a while, and possibly long before Martha reached Japan, she had no doubt got to that stage of being hardened to it. After all, how could she possibly keep going otherwise?
But, even among those inured to it, there comes a time, and a situation, when it’s an atrocity too far, or a single person’s need breaks through those barriers. For one soldier friend of mine, it was an incident in the Bosnian war. For Martha, it was this woman and her tiny, malnourished baby. Martha takes the baby and brings her to safety - by using Jack’s Vortex manipulator to jump more than two decades into the past, to give the baby to someone who could take care of her. With the Paradox Machine in operation, she tells herself, it’s safe.
By chance, she meets Jack - the Jack of that time-period, who doesn’t know her, but who responds to someone in need of help just as Martha responded to the appeal of the dying Japanese woman.
"Let me take her," Jack said after a moment of consideration. "I'll find her a safe home. I promise."
"Why would you do that? You don't even know me, yeah?"
Jack lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it, then tapped the face of the wristwatch. "Someday, I'll trust you with this. That's good enough for me, right now. Alright?"
Who is the baby? Does that even matter? If it does, you’ll find out by reading the story. What’s much more important, I think, is what A Moment In Subtext is reminding us of here.
Just someone. Please. Not the whole town. Just save someone.
That’s Martha’s secret. She saved someone.
And that is both profound and terrifying.
I’ve been dipping into A Moment In Subtext’s stories on the Teaspoon for quite a while, and it’s a delight to see one of them nominated this time around. She’s written some wonderful crack, but also deep, thought-provoking stories like this one, deliberately short and intended to leave readers thinking. If you haven’t read anything by her before (and you’ll find her collection here), I very much recommend that you start with this story. You won’t regret it. You might even want to vote for it. I do.
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Valiant Tales by RobinC (lindenharp) Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Series, Other Characters, Genfic
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Various
Rating: Teen, mostly
Details: A series of 29 drabbles, all about the various personnel aboard the Valiant during the Year that Never Was.
Why It Rocks:
Disclaimer: This fic was nominated by the reviewer.
Pictures are worth a thousand words, they say. A drabble, carefully crafted, lovingly phrased, can tell an entire life within 100 words.
That's what makes Valiant Tales such an incredible feat. We have 29 individual drabbles, each depicting a different person aboard the Valiant during the Year that Never Was, at the end of Doctor Who's Season Three. And these aren't tales cenetered on the Doctor, or the Master, or even the Jones family - in fact, those characters hardly ever appear, except in the background. No, these tales are about the ones we don't see on screen - the cook, the engineer, the shuttle pilot.
The wonderful thing about fanfiction is that it gives us the opportunity to really examine the lives left unspoken on the screen. And within a hundred words, Robin has given each of these 29 characters what is the emotional impact of an hour-long episode. But more than that - she's created not just her own world, but their world aboard the Valiant, when the Master was out to destroy not just their lives, but the lives of everyone else. The story of the people aboard the Valiant (and told in the 29 drabbles), is every bit the story of personal triumph over adversity. Each of the characters had a reason to be on the Valiant when the Master took it over - but each has a reason they're still alive now. Each has found a way to cope with the suffering that they've seen go on below.
I decide which mills must overproduce; which workers are transferred across the world...I manage small deceptions. Redirected shipments of rice. Disappearing truckloads of blankets. Guards’ medicine going to an orphanage.
--The Accountant's Tale
The thing is - not everyone on the Valiant is a good guy - some of them are just as twisted and black as the Master. Some of them are downright chilling - as though you've bathed in a boiling pot of hatred. (The Guard's Tale is definitely one that will make your blood run cold, as is The Aide's Tale:
Without this job, I couldn’t afford my brother’s gap year. He’s chosen Kyoto. The Master says that Brazil is more interesting, but Jamie loves Japan, and I love my little brother.
--The Aide's Tale.)
But Robin has a way of making us see their side: the Slave's Tale is a great example of this. It starts with the bare-bones facts about one of the workers, who was taken into slavery at the age of twelve, his/her entire family killed. But later:
I rejoiced when the Master's soldiers took everyone as slaves. They brought two of us to work in the laundry. We eat good food. Our overseer is strict, but he never beats us. I hope the Master lives forever, so I never return to Earth.
--The Slave's Tale
We all know that the Master is not a nice guy - that this Slave is just as much a slave as he/she was before joining the Valiant. And yet - we understand him. The Master might not have taken him out of slavery, but he did punish those who enslaved him and treated him badly. Here, the slave is fed, clothed, housed, cared for. The differences between his life before and his life after - so radically different, that his reasoning regarding the Master makes sense.
And you wonder, just a bit, what happens to him after. Where does he go? And what does he think, when the Master is shot and killed? Where will his loyalties lie?
I wonder if I’ll ever get off this ship.
I wonder who I’ll be.
--The Second Cameraman's Tale
As the stories progress, we begin to see a pattern. It's not just individual stories so much anymore, but as the grouping of people, helping each other out. The people aboard the Valiant, though they may have started as strangers or even on different socio-economic scales, have become a family.
Friends risking death for small kindnesses. Giovanni and Etienne cooked a Valentine’s dinner with food Sam Yellowtail “liberated” from Special Supplies. Savanna did my hair; and silent, ghostly Meghan drifted into Hydroponics, returning with a crumpled fistful of violets.
--The Maid's Tale
I get favors in return. Coffee. New socks. The best was from a shuttle guard: a square foot of turf from the runway median. I water it regularly. Saturdays, I trim it with scissors.
--The Mechanic's Tale
I think my favorite tale is for the French Ambassador. In a wealth of tales which can very frequently make me cry (and both of the two I've quoted directly above cause me to catch my breath), this one for some reason speaks to the experience as a whole. The Ambassador - Etienne, we learn later - is able to take a step back and look at not only who he was, but who he is. In a year in which there was no rationality to be found - Etienne somehow managed to pinpoint the lesson to be learned. The people aboard the Valiant started the year full of ideals and ideas - they started the year believing themselves to be serving the greater good. But in the end, the greatest good they found - was in each other. It was not the Valiant's hull or decks that provided them support. It was the family they created amongst themselves that kept their spirits alive.
“Why am I here?” The simple answer: President Winters invited me. The philosophical answer: perhaps to learn the difference between humiliation and humility.
--The Ambassador's Tale
There might have been a hundred or more aboard the Valiant. The ship could not have been run on the strength of 29 people alone.
I keep telling these people that I'm busy. I have a long WIP to finish. But they insist on barging in and telling me their stories.
--A/N
Robin, for our sake, I hope they never stop.
In short, vote for Valiant Tales. It's 2,900 words, each one speaking for thousands. It's the story before, the story during, and the unspoken story after. It's everything wonderful and horrible about life encased in a drabble, time after time after time, and it's the largest, most ambitious, and absolutely successful project I've seen in the Whoniverse to date. It is worth every moment of reading, and it more than completely deserves your vote.
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Today's Reviews were written by:
papilio_luna: Winnowing; Show N Tell
gwynevere1: Five Children That Weren't...
ladychi: Time Has Set Its Maggot
wendymr: Little White Lie of Omission
azriona: Valiant Tales
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Winnowing by karenor
Category: 10.5, Dark, Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: 10.5, Rose
Rating: Adult
Details: One-shot, post-JE, some angst.
Why It Rocks:
What makes the duplicate Tenth Doctor so interesting?
I’ve often asked myself that, because I find him fascinating, and in the hands of an author of Karenor’s talent, his story is nearly intoxicating in its layers and facets. And there comes a time, if you’re the sort to think about these things, when you have to decide just exactly who you think the duplicate Doctor is. Is he the same man, the same Doctor we already know? Or is he different, a copy, something Other?
While defending him to those who find him to be copy or a consolation prize, I’ve often quite vehemently defended him as being the same Doctor. After all, that’s what both of them say while on the beach, and I have to take them at their word. But while discussing him with others, I’ve also noted that I find him so interesting precisely because he is different. He’s not an exact duplicate-he’s human, for one. And that has to change his perspective, at the very least.
So which is it? Is he a cheap knock-off copy or is he the same, just as good as, or perhaps even better? And what of the other Doctor, the original? Is he a horrible coward for shoving Rose and his double out of the TARDIS doors and then fleeing, or did he give them both the gift of a life together, at enormous personal cost to himself?
In Winnowing, Karenor answers, “Yes.”
Rose tried desperately to separate the two of them, while, at the same time, he was trying to convince her that he was the same man, the man she fell in love with. Despite this conundrum, Rose still knew him better than anyone, and trying to hide his thoughts from her was generally futile. They’d held an easy truce since they’d been tossed into this life together, and never had anything but the tiniest rows, each trying to preserve the comfort they found in one another. But there was only so long that could last.
The story opens with the Doctor and Rose in bed (hence the hard R rating-sex plays some important roles in this fic). There’s something so sad and raw about a quarrel that occurs just after two people have made love. It casts the entire relationship, both physical and emotional, in to doubt. And doubt is a big part of Rose’s problem here. For the Doctor’s part, he can’t stop thinking about the other Doctor, and feeling guilty for having what his duplicate doesn’t have.
Karenor takes full advantage of this particularly vulnerable moment to explore all of the various ways that the events of Journey’s End can be interpreted. Rose is understandably still quite angry with the other Doctor, and only keeps that anger from bubbling over to her relationship with the human Doctor by trying desperately to make him out to be a very different man from the Time Lord. But if he’s a different man, can she still love him? She needs him to be different, but she’s also terrified of the implications of him actually being so.
The Doctor is vulnerable, hopelessly in love just as he ever was before he split in to two men, and needing Rose to see him as the same person whom she met in the basement of Henrick’s. It’s really an impossible situation, because if he is that man, then Rose has good reason to be angry at him as well.
There are no easy answers.
“I’m the Doctor. Your Doctor, that Doctor. The Ninth, the Tenth, the Tenth and a half, and all the ones before.”
“I know that.”
“Let me finish,” he gently chided. “I’m all those, and I’m the one you fell in love with. He said I was different, but, barring a few choice expressions I seem to have picked up from Donna, here’s the only way that I am: I am not going to leave you. Not for your own good, not for anyone’s.”
And there it was-what they hadn’t said earlier. She’d couched it all in anger at his guilt, but the crux of it was all this time that he’d been wanting her to believe he was the same man-and that was exactly what she’d been afraid to believe.
And there’s also makeup sex. Since the story begins with a rather angsty shag, it feels right that it end with rain-soaked makeup sex in the back of a car (don’t try this at home, kids). The circle feels complete, with some progress made in their relationship in between. There’s no moment where everything is magically made all better just by one word or one kiss, but the way forward is uncovered, there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
Karenor’s writing style is lovely, fluid, but not show-offy or flowery. She writes sex with an eye towards the emotion, not the physical play-by-play, and it feels like proper lovemaking between two flawed but ultimately honest, good people. Her dialogue reads as real and true, and it does feel like a more grown-up Rose and a more human Doctor, despite how little we get to know either of those two characters in canon.
Winnowing attempts, as many of us have done, to simultaneously explore and soothe the hurts of where canon has brought the Doctor/Rose relationship, and for me it very much succeeds. I hope others will find it thought-provoking and an enjoyable read (and also a wee bit hot as well).
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Five children that weren't...and one that was by amand_r
Category: Het Pairings; Dark/Angst
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Cast of thousands, but the main pairings are Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness/Captain John Hart, Donna Noble/OMCs, with background Toshiko Sato/Thomas Brockless and Owen Harper/Katie
Rating: PG-13
Details: One-shot. Even though listed under and primarily about Torchwood, it requires some knowledge of Doctor Who canon through "Journey's End" (which Torchwood fans probably watched, anyway, since Jack, Gwen, and Ianto were in it).
Why It Rocks:
Disclaimer: The author of the review nominated this story.
I originally found this fic through halfamoon, the fourteen day challenge celebrating female characters in fandom that occurs each February, but it was written for Day Four of 14valentines. While its topic of reproductive rights and motherhood could have come off as preachy, the author avoids that by making the issues so personal, since she relates them through their effect on characters we know and love.
The author compares and contrasts differing ideas of parenthood and desires for family amongst six vignettes:
There are those couples who want children but cannot have them, like Ten II/Rose and Donna and her OMC husbands. The metacrisis screwed with more than Donna's brain--and she can't even know what's happening to her, making her story the more tragic of these two.
Analogously, there's Toshiko, an individual woman, who would have loved a family and, especially, a child, if circumstances had been different and she had had more time. I adore that, to prevent this fic from crossing the line into melodrama, amand_r punctuates the story with humor, like Jack feeling that he has to ask if he's the father of Tosh's baby, despite them never having sex (which, admittedly, wouldn't be the strangest thing that's ever happened to Jack), or Owen whining about the Hub becoming a nursery but genuinely happy for Tosh after the birth. I also liked that Jack understands the desire for family enough not to fire Tosh from her high-risk job. Most importantly, this story show how and why Tosh would have made a *great* mother--being a "single mother" has nothing to do with it. (Um, as you've probably figured out by now, Tosh's story is my favorite.)
Similarly, there's Owen/Katie, who were also cheated by time, because Katie was pregnant when she died. Jack and Suzie decide not to tell Owen. I'm not sure if this was the right choice or their choice to make, but it's a situation where there is no obvious "right" choice, just a stab in the dark as to which is the least bad out of two awful possibilities.
Conversely, there's the pairing who didn't want a child but could have had one--Jack/John. I admire that the author had the nerve to write about a male character who has an abortion--unlike every other MPREG out there where a guy is totally OK with walking around knocked up and giving birth. There's little doubt it was the right choice--does anyone *really* want to consider what kind of parents Jack and John would have been?
As a counterpoint to all of the above, only Jenny gets to want her child and have it, too. At first, I kind of wanted to smack Jenny, even though she's done nothing wrong to anyone. In a weird way, I was jealous of the ease by which she becomes a mother, for the sake of the other characters. However, with a fully grown daughter, so much like herself, and without the time to develop a "normal" parent/child relationship, the story hints that Jenny may discover that what she wished for isn't quite what she wanted.
I'm glad that cot_reviews exists, because this story deserves to be read and recced everywhere. I think it's my favorite Torchwood fan fiction story ever, because it made me think about so much more than just what was immediately on the page.
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Show N Tell by sinecure
Category: WIP
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Rose
Rating: Adult liek woah
Details: Part 1 of a promised 2-parter, PWP, Ten/Rose first-time and very naughty.
Why It Rocks:
I’ve occasionally described this fic to people as the smut so hot I couldn’t even read it in one go, and that’s the honest truth, friends. This is part one of a promised two-parter, and I hold out hope that we do get the second part soon. However, as it is PWP in the best possible way, there’s no harm in reading part one even if part two isn’t ever posted.
There’s so many Doctors and Roses in our fanfic Whoniverse, but the Doctor and Rose we find here are two of my favourites: Rose is young, nubile, horny, and traveling around the universe having adventures with an impossibly charming and attractive man. The Doctor, on the other hand, seems sexually aloof, just-a-friend, seemingly completely unaware of how his companion is feeling. He’s a little bit alien, which I know is a weird thing to say about a character who is, in fact, actually an alien, but we don’t always get a Doctor like this in our smut.
But enough about him, because actually this is a solo affair for Rose for quite some time. Must confess, I love masturbation in fic if it’s done well. Is that a completely bizarre thing to say? Ah well, there it is. I’m reviewing porn, I have no shame, whatever. We find Rose in a hotel, and learn that she’s been quite neglecting taking care of herself vis-à-vis these feelings for the Doctor, because being on the TARDIS is a bit like being at your mum and dad’s house, isn’t it? She’s afraid he’d hear her, or sense it somehow, and that’s a mortifying thought.
So she takes advantage of being somewhere where she can relax and deal constructively with some of the tension she’s been feeling. I can almost feel those crisp, cozy hotel sheets.
Stretching languidly, her toes curled up as a naughty thrill coursed through her, thoughts drifting toward the man who'd put her in this condition in the first place.
I really like the images of her just kind of finally relaxing. I remember what it was like to be a teenager and to be best mates with a guy who you were actually hopelessly in love with. It’s stressful, and I imagine even more so when you have to constantly save the world as well.
Rose solo is hot, and her fantasies of the Doctor involve him wearing his glasses, which I very much approve of. But then the Doctor shows up, barges in, doesn’t knock, and she panics.
"Don't you know how to knock?" she snapped, praying like never before that he hadn't seen anything. But she knew, even as she mentally mumbled words to gods and goddesses, that he had, oh, god, he had. There was no way he could've missed her lying completely starkers on the bed, hands between her legs. "If you don't mind...?" she continued when he only stared back at her.
The Doctor, however, has some other ideas. Sinecure manages to make him outrageously dominant and sexy while still retaining an air of the alien. He’s a bit clinical, a little clueless about how to confront the emotional element that comes along with human sexuality, but he’s not asking either. He’s got an agenda and he’s quite determined to tick all the boxes.
There’s a lot of sexy shenanigans and I won’t get in to a play-by-play, but one thing I do really like is Rose’s POV. She’s unsure of some things, she’s taken aback by some of the things the Doctor says and does, she talks back to him, even while she wants him desperately. And she’s not instantly in to every single thing the Doctor does or wants her to do. He’s clearly got some fantasies he’s working out with her, and sometimes with our lovers we just sort of go along with things that aren’t necessarily mind-blowing in and of themselves but are special anyway because it’s what our beloved wants.
Also: he he keeps his specs on the whole time. I’m just sayin’.
“Show N Tell” is PWP of a very filthy and explicit nature. Not for the faint of heart, but most definitely recommended for those who like a bit of dom!Doctor and who aren’t afraid to get full details along with their smut.
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Time Has Set Its Maggot by cyus
Category: Ianto Jones, Genfic, Ficlet
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto Jones
Rating: PG-13/Teen
Details: A one-shot that delves into Ianto's mysterious past.
Why it Rocks:
Ianto Jones is a little bit like sushi. You either love him or you don't. And if you love him, you tend to love him hard - and if you hate him, he makes you a little bit ill. The thing about him in canon is that we really don't know a lot. We know a lot about Jack. We know enough about Owen, about Tosh, about Gwen - but Ianto seems to begin, on a really fundamental level, when he meets Jack.
The thing that's always attracted me to the character (and I'm a love him so hard fan, for the record), is that he's implacable - deceptively shallow in order to hide an inner self that is dark, and deep. And in this wonderful fic by Cyus, he takes you to the origins of Ianto - Cardiff, before he returns to work for Jack. This is a Ianto that's working at Torchwood in London, living in a flat with Lisa. This is before Ianto acquires his obvious demons, and this is a fic that shows you the harsh life underneath.
What's really striking me, even in hindsight, about this fic, is the true gritty nature of the reality Cyus is painting for us. The author begins the fic with Ianto smoking a fag, and having a conversation with some of the boys he grew up with - and he tells the story of the conversation, of Ianto's boyhood friends insinuating that Ianto thinks he's too good for Cardiff, the author unleashes these little moments of … almost poetry.
The city of Cardiff is a character in this story. It's the antagonist, actually, rather than the boys Ianto grew up with - it is the harsh demon that shaped them into the beings they became - men that beat their wives and live on meager pay, and men that can't see that Ianto has risen above all that.
The author takes great pains to show the audience the baser nature of Cardiff Ianto, versus London Ianto. In London, he dresses in suits. In Cardiff, he wears jeans and smokes fags. In London, he lives with Lisa in a decorated apartment. In Cardiff, he's visiting his mum and talking smack with acquaintances. He's a more primitive being in Cardiff, and that has echoes back to Ianto of Countrycide or Ianto in Cyberwoman. This is a real characterization of Ianto.
There's a rhythm when the Welsh speak - a musicality to their dialect and to their word choice that's hard to capture. And it's so brilliant in this - harsh with Ianto's friends, subdued in Ianto. It's superb and almost delicious in points.
To be entirely fair, I feel like I should warn some of my lighter-hearted reader friends that this isn't the fic for you. Its beauty is in its heaviness, in the weight that it carries in the rhythm of the words. Still, for passages like this one:
Ianto shrugs. "Still down in Bute Park?"
Cardiff gives you its babies with a tenner for a blowjob. Cheap alcohol made it easier, and there were always girls to fuck afterwards, eyes rolling with the vodka and the drugs. Numb, in abandoned houses and in cemeteries, they drank and fucked and made Cardiff bearable with something morphing into human interaction at times.
Rhod recoils, lips thin and hard. "Have families now."
Ianto shakes his head, throws away his cigarette, and steps on it. He imagines the sizzle, a bit of spark to resemble life. Girls call the police at three in the morning and go back at five, apologies on their lips and tear tracks down their cheeks while the babies are crying next-door, or die. Families in Splott keep their curtains and mouths shut, even if the whole street knew who you brought home and fucked in the other room.
It's well worth a read. Enjoy the characterization of Cardiff and the insight into Ianto. Chew this fic over, because it only gets better with time.
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Little White Lie of Omission by A Moment In Subtext Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: Martha Jones, Dark/Angst
Fandom; New Who
Characters: Martha Jones, Jack Harkness, one other whose identity would be a spoiler for the fic
Rating: All Ages
Details: Ficlet, two short chapters (under 1500 words in total), complete.
Why It Rocks:
Sometimes large-scale disasters are so large-scale that we can’t comprehend them. One million dead; ten thousand planets on fire; two thousand square miles reduced to barren wasteland. What does it mean? The true cost, in terms of lives destroyed and years or even decades of devastation to come, is often beyond our ability to understand.
This is, of course, why journalists are taught to go for the individual stories as well as the big picture: to give readers faces to focus on and personal situations to grasp, to help put that larger story into a context we can understand; to help us relate to what’s going on. And, of course, because a story full of rich detail is always more interesting than a set of numbers.
This is exactly why Little White Lie of Omission is such a great story. It’s only something over 900 words, but it gives us that human touch we need to comprehend the enormity of disaster on a much wider scale. In the Season 3 finale, Martha Jones walked the Earth for the Doctor, telling stories about him to help him overcome the Master’s telepathic grip on the planet. We’re not told much about what happened during this time, though we know that much of the Earth was destroyed and Japan was completely wiped out. There have been many stories - and even one official novel - which have filled in the gap of that missing year, some of which have done so in very detailed, very hard-hitting ways. Here’s where I confess that I had to stop reading one long Year that Never Was fic because it was just too hard-hitting for me.
This story doesn’t sugar-coat the Year. In fact, it begins with a very hard-hitting passage:
...they all know what happened in Japan. It was a slaughter.
But they weren't there. They hadn't spent long, sleepless nights huddled in red painted houses, trying to drown out the screams of people dying just outside the window. They didn't hear the Toclofane's childish, gleeful laughter just inches above their heads while they clung to the ground, blood splattering onto their bodies as the monsters spun through the air, shaking it off like dogs coming in from the rain. They hadn't walked through those empty streets for days while the smell of death and rot filled the air like smog, looking for just one other living person. They hadn't seen the sky, just after the Toclofane left, all the blood condensing in the air, a red haze that had never quite faded, not even in her mind.
But Little White Lie of Omission isn’t about the destruction. It’s about something more profound than that. Martha has a secret. It’s something she hasn’t told anyone, and there’s only one other person - assuming he remembers - who knows. In Japan, in the middle of the nightmarish devastation, she met a woman, a mother, carrying a baby. The mother was minutes from death. She pushed her baby into Martha’s arms, and then died on the street.
Soldiers, emergency workers and others who deal with death on a daily basis will say that after a while they become inured to it. Not immune, but untouched, in a way. It’s what they have to do to survive. You can’t weep for every life lost, and you can’t save everyone. After a while, and possibly long before Martha reached Japan, she had no doubt got to that stage of being hardened to it. After all, how could she possibly keep going otherwise?
But, even among those inured to it, there comes a time, and a situation, when it’s an atrocity too far, or a single person’s need breaks through those barriers. For one soldier friend of mine, it was an incident in the Bosnian war. For Martha, it was this woman and her tiny, malnourished baby. Martha takes the baby and brings her to safety - by using Jack’s Vortex manipulator to jump more than two decades into the past, to give the baby to someone who could take care of her. With the Paradox Machine in operation, she tells herself, it’s safe.
By chance, she meets Jack - the Jack of that time-period, who doesn’t know her, but who responds to someone in need of help just as Martha responded to the appeal of the dying Japanese woman.
"Let me take her," Jack said after a moment of consideration. "I'll find her a safe home. I promise."
"Why would you do that? You don't even know me, yeah?"
Jack lifted her hand to his lips, kissed it, then tapped the face of the wristwatch. "Someday, I'll trust you with this. That's good enough for me, right now. Alright?"
Who is the baby? Does that even matter? If it does, you’ll find out by reading the story. What’s much more important, I think, is what A Moment In Subtext is reminding us of here.
Just someone. Please. Not the whole town. Just save someone.
That’s Martha’s secret. She saved someone.
And that is both profound and terrifying.
I’ve been dipping into A Moment In Subtext’s stories on the Teaspoon for quite a while, and it’s a delight to see one of them nominated this time around. She’s written some wonderful crack, but also deep, thought-provoking stories like this one, deliberately short and intended to leave readers thinking. If you haven’t read anything by her before (and you’ll find her collection here), I very much recommend that you start with this story. You won’t regret it. You might even want to vote for it. I do.
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Valiant Tales by RobinC (lindenharp) Link goes to Teaspoon
Categories: Series, Other Characters, Genfic
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Various
Rating: Teen, mostly
Details: A series of 29 drabbles, all about the various personnel aboard the Valiant during the Year that Never Was.
Why It Rocks:
Disclaimer: This fic was nominated by the reviewer.
Pictures are worth a thousand words, they say. A drabble, carefully crafted, lovingly phrased, can tell an entire life within 100 words.
That's what makes Valiant Tales such an incredible feat. We have 29 individual drabbles, each depicting a different person aboard the Valiant during the Year that Never Was, at the end of Doctor Who's Season Three. And these aren't tales cenetered on the Doctor, or the Master, or even the Jones family - in fact, those characters hardly ever appear, except in the background. No, these tales are about the ones we don't see on screen - the cook, the engineer, the shuttle pilot.
The wonderful thing about fanfiction is that it gives us the opportunity to really examine the lives left unspoken on the screen. And within a hundred words, Robin has given each of these 29 characters what is the emotional impact of an hour-long episode. But more than that - she's created not just her own world, but their world aboard the Valiant, when the Master was out to destroy not just their lives, but the lives of everyone else. The story of the people aboard the Valiant (and told in the 29 drabbles), is every bit the story of personal triumph over adversity. Each of the characters had a reason to be on the Valiant when the Master took it over - but each has a reason they're still alive now. Each has found a way to cope with the suffering that they've seen go on below.
I decide which mills must overproduce; which workers are transferred across the world...I manage small deceptions. Redirected shipments of rice. Disappearing truckloads of blankets. Guards’ medicine going to an orphanage.
--The Accountant's Tale
The thing is - not everyone on the Valiant is a good guy - some of them are just as twisted and black as the Master. Some of them are downright chilling - as though you've bathed in a boiling pot of hatred. (The Guard's Tale is definitely one that will make your blood run cold, as is The Aide's Tale:
Without this job, I couldn’t afford my brother’s gap year. He’s chosen Kyoto. The Master says that Brazil is more interesting, but Jamie loves Japan, and I love my little brother.
--The Aide's Tale.)
But Robin has a way of making us see their side: the Slave's Tale is a great example of this. It starts with the bare-bones facts about one of the workers, who was taken into slavery at the age of twelve, his/her entire family killed. But later:
I rejoiced when the Master's soldiers took everyone as slaves. They brought two of us to work in the laundry. We eat good food. Our overseer is strict, but he never beats us. I hope the Master lives forever, so I never return to Earth.
--The Slave's Tale
We all know that the Master is not a nice guy - that this Slave is just as much a slave as he/she was before joining the Valiant. And yet - we understand him. The Master might not have taken him out of slavery, but he did punish those who enslaved him and treated him badly. Here, the slave is fed, clothed, housed, cared for. The differences between his life before and his life after - so radically different, that his reasoning regarding the Master makes sense.
And you wonder, just a bit, what happens to him after. Where does he go? And what does he think, when the Master is shot and killed? Where will his loyalties lie?
I wonder if I’ll ever get off this ship.
I wonder who I’ll be.
--The Second Cameraman's Tale
As the stories progress, we begin to see a pattern. It's not just individual stories so much anymore, but as the grouping of people, helping each other out. The people aboard the Valiant, though they may have started as strangers or even on different socio-economic scales, have become a family.
Friends risking death for small kindnesses. Giovanni and Etienne cooked a Valentine’s dinner with food Sam Yellowtail “liberated” from Special Supplies. Savanna did my hair; and silent, ghostly Meghan drifted into Hydroponics, returning with a crumpled fistful of violets.
--The Maid's Tale
I get favors in return. Coffee. New socks. The best was from a shuttle guard: a square foot of turf from the runway median. I water it regularly. Saturdays, I trim it with scissors.
--The Mechanic's Tale
I think my favorite tale is for the French Ambassador. In a wealth of tales which can very frequently make me cry (and both of the two I've quoted directly above cause me to catch my breath), this one for some reason speaks to the experience as a whole. The Ambassador - Etienne, we learn later - is able to take a step back and look at not only who he was, but who he is. In a year in which there was no rationality to be found - Etienne somehow managed to pinpoint the lesson to be learned. The people aboard the Valiant started the year full of ideals and ideas - they started the year believing themselves to be serving the greater good. But in the end, the greatest good they found - was in each other. It was not the Valiant's hull or decks that provided them support. It was the family they created amongst themselves that kept their spirits alive.
“Why am I here?” The simple answer: President Winters invited me. The philosophical answer: perhaps to learn the difference between humiliation and humility.
--The Ambassador's Tale
There might have been a hundred or more aboard the Valiant. The ship could not have been run on the strength of 29 people alone.
I keep telling these people that I'm busy. I have a long WIP to finish. But they insist on barging in and telling me their stories.
--A/N
Robin, for our sake, I hope they never stop.
In short, vote for Valiant Tales. It's 2,900 words, each one speaking for thousands. It's the story before, the story during, and the unspoken story after. It's everything wonderful and horrible about life encased in a drabble, time after time after time, and it's the largest, most ambitious, and absolutely successful project I've seen in the Whoniverse to date. It is worth every moment of reading, and it more than completely deserves your vote.
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Today's Reviews were written by:
papilio_luna: Winnowing; Show N Tell
gwynevere1: Five Children That Weren't...
ladychi: Time Has Set Its Maggot
wendymr: Little White Lie of Omission
azriona: Valiant Tales