Round Three Reviews - Part 19
Today's Featured Stories Include:
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Bright Star by eponymous_rose Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: First Doctor
Fandom: Classic Who
Characters: Barbara Wright, Harry Sullivan, Ian Chesterton, Luke Smith, Sarah Jane Smith, Susan Foreman, First Doctor, Third Doctor
Rating: Teen
Details: Action/Adventure, Character Study, Drama, Het, Humour, Missing Scene, Romance
Why It Rocks:
It's the Classic Who version of Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead without the life-devouring shadows; a beautiful, non-linear (timey-wimey) love story that criss-crosses the Whoniverse in a manner guaranteed to gladden the heart and tickle the funny bone of anyone who loves all aspects of the Whoniverse. It's also named for, and quotes from, John Keats' Last Sonnet.
Confession time: though I love Classic Who as well as New Who, I'm still not very familiar with the First Doctor - I started watching Doctor Who during the era of Four and Sarah Jane, and although I've caught up with huge swathes of the Third Doctor's era, I'm still behind on the First and Second Doctors (not helped, of course, by the BBC's destruction of many of the stories from the early years of the show). However, of the handful of First Doctor stories I've seen, most have featured Barbara and Ian, so I'm quite aware of them. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are teachers at Coal Hill School in London, where their pupil Susan Foreman causes them some concern by her, at times, outlandish behaviour and the weird gaps in her knowledge. One day they follow her home, to a junkyard owned by I M Foreman, where she disappears inside an abandoned Police Public Call Box. The two teachers, obviously rather worried, investigate, and find their pupil talking to her grandfather who, after a short conversation, kidnaps them (largely as punishment for being 'nosey' - in his view), and takes them travelling aboard his Time and Space Machine for a series of wild and wonderful adventures.
Sarah Jane Smith is a young investigative journalist who infiltrates a top-secret research facility by posing as her aunt Lavinia Smith, a famous virologist (The Time Warrior). Encountering the Doctor, he quickly sees through her deception, but he doesn't give her away to the authorities. The Time Lord is there, along with members of UNIT, to investigate the mysterious disappearances of scientists working at the facility. Sarah Jane sneaks aboard the TARDIS as the Doctor prepares to follow the trial of a newly-disappeared scientist through Time, and she gets caught up in the events that follow on from their arrival in the Middle Ages. Although she never formally joins UNIT, Sarah Jane works with its staff and the Doctor on a number of investigations, and when the Third Doctor's exile is lifted and he has regenerated into the Fourth she travels with him for some time in the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane eventually stops travelling with the Doctor when he's recalled to Gallifrey and he's unable to take her with him owing to Gallifrey's exclusionary policies (Hand of Fear). Thirty years pass before she encounters the Doctor again, by now in his tenth incarnation and travelling with Rose Tyler, and after he disappears out of her life again she finds herself caught up in the events surrounding the attempted invasion of Earth by the Bane (SJA: Invasion of the Bane), after which she adopts as her son the 'prototype' human created by the Bane, and she names him Luke.
Bright Star opens with Luke Smith appearing out of nowhere in Ian Chesterton's 1963 classroom, startling him so badly that he falls off his chair, after which Luke delivers a somewhat cryptic thank you message from his mother Sarah Jane Smith, whom Ian has never heard of. Luke tells him that he's come via matter transfer through a localised time-eddy - none of which makes any sense to Ian but he felt a chill, similar to the one he got, sometimes, when Susan Foreman answered a question with utter nonsense, but nonsense that held such certainty, such conviction.
At this point we realise that Ian and Barbara have yet to travel with the Doctor aboard the TARDIS, or to meet Sarah Jane Smith (Luke explains that Mr. Smith's attempts at refining it to such a precise distance cuts down the temporal accuracy. - Mr Smith is Sarah Jane's alien computer). Luke shrugs the matter off as somewhat inconsequential, and Ian eventually forgets the matter - until he and Barbara encounter Sarah Jane in Old London, in 5063:
"What do you mean, shouldn't it be busier?" he added, adopting a hurt expression. "It's not as though we have a point of reference. For all we know, this is a ghost town."
"Funny sort of ghost town that has well-stocked shops," said a new voice, and Ian and Barbara exchanged glances before turning - in a situation like this, no matter how ordinary the surroundings, it was always prudent to expect the odd tentacular monstrosity lurking in the shadows.
Instead of a tentacled monster, however, they find a perfectly normal looking young woman who has her arms full of peculiar machinery - which, it just so happens, will save their lives as the Old Londoners are in the habit of flooding the Thames regularly - and Ian and Barbara are right in the path of the impending flood. As he watches Sarah Jane fiddling with the machinery - she's preparing to set up a force field to protect them from the river, he can't help putting a question to the young woman:
"You know the Doctor?" Ian blurted, and immediately felt silly for asking - but a part of him wondered if there was a chance that there were other wandering time travellers abducting people right, left, and centre.
This story is full of similar little touches of humour amidst the timey-wimey to-and-fro of the meetings between Sarah Jane, Ian and Barbara (with a cameo from Harry Sullivan, the Naval Lieutenant who serves as UNIT's Medical Officer during the Fourth Doctor's era) during which Sarah Jane saves Ian's and Barbara's lives on more than one occasion. Eventually Ian and Barbara make it back home to Earth, get married, and have a son, and then one day they meet a young woman named Sarah Jane Smith, who's about to inveigle her way into a top secret research establishment by pretending to be her aunt Lavinia - and the story has come around in a circle to Sarah Jane's first meeting with Ian and Barbara.
Vote for this fic because it's clever, humorous, joyful and romantic; the characters' voices are all absolutely spot-on, and the Doctor's brief cameos are an added bonus.
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The next two fics are part of the Chaosverse.
The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe by earlgreytea68
Category: Tenth Doctor, Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Rose, OCs
Rating: All Ages
Details: The Doctor of the Chaosverse bonds with his daughter Athena, learning that she’s much more capable in a crisis than he realized. Three parts, approximately 9300 words.
Why it Rocks:
Like many readers, I make an exception and read kidfic when it’s written by earlgreytea68. By now, she’s created a rich AU in which the Doctor and Rose manage to juggle TARDIS life with children. “The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe” is set when their middle child, Athena, is eight, making Brem about ten years old.
The Doctor has decided that Athena, who is fond of pink frilly things, lacks the toughness she’ll need to survive out in the world. After a hilarious exchange in which his wife and daughters gang up on him, it is decided that Athena will join the Girl Scouts in America (instead of the Girl Guides in the UK), primarily because of the cookies biscuits, but that if she has to go camping, the Doctor has to go camping too. As in all the Chaosverse stories, one of the strengths in this one is the dialogue. If I quoted everything that makes me laugh, this review would be very long indeed. Here’s a sampling:
“Athena has a very good point,” Rose pointed out. “It’s unfair to make Athena go camping unless you’re going to go camping yourself.”
“Exactly,” said Athena.
“So there,” added Fortuna.
The Doctor had noticed that the females of the ship tended to band together this way. “I…camp all the time!”
“Really?” asked Rose. “When have you camped?”
“Yeah?” said Athena.
“Yeah?” added Fortuna.
“I…Well…This is practically camping, don’t you think?”
“You think this is camping? Living on a ship that does all your laundry for you?” said Rose.
As the Doctor takes Athena to her first Girl Scout meeting, he realizes that he doesn’t spend much one-on-one time with his daughter. The interactions between them are delightfully sweet, and the author always makes the Doctor sound perfectly in-character, even though he’s living a much different life than the one we see on-screen.
The stories in this universe are rarely just fluff. The seminal work in the Chaosverse reworked the events of “Doomsday” so that when Rose got trapped in another universe, she was separated from her children as well as from the Doctor. The trauma they all experienced infuses who they are, and crops up sometimes when you least expect it, like when the Doctor is dropping Athena off at her first Brownie meeting.
There were times, thought the Doctor, when he could almost convince himself that Rose abruptly disappearing, all those years ago, had not traumatized his children for life. And then he would sense Brem’s rising panic if his mother was even five minutes late at a rendezvous point, or Athena’s tremulous fear now, as she turned to him.
But did I mention that the family banter in this story is hilarious?
“Someday you’re going to have daughters,” the Doctor told [Brem]. “And on that day, I am going to laugh and laugh.”
“Having sisters is quite enough for me. I will not be having daughters or getting married or any folderol like that. We have more than enough girls on this ship,” responded Brem.
“Maybe you can marry a man,” said Fortuna. “Like Uncle Jack.”
Eventually, Athena’s Brownie troop (which had mostly been doing art projects much to the Doctor’s consternation) does go camping, and the Doctor goes as a chaperone. Of course, things don’t go as planned, but the author manages to lull you into thinking that maybe the Doctor is just being paranoid and contrary because he doesn’t want to be camping. Even if you expected this outcome, the tension created by the author is palpable. In a lesser author’s hands, the danger in this fic would be treated just as lightly as the fluffy part of the story, but with earlgreytea68, I can feel the Doctor’s terror when Athena is in danger. As many things as he’s had to endure, few things can be worse than losing one of his own children. But he does learn an important lesson from the experience: that his daughter was already tough and capable in the crisis.
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Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses by earlgreytea68
Category: Other Characters, AU, Novel
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Original characters mostly, one of whom is the son of the Doctor & Rose Tyler, who do make an appearance now and then
Rating: R
Details: 26 chapters, and the latest longer chaptered fic in the Chaosverse, the first of which was reviewed in Round One, and another installment reviewed above.
Why It Rocks:
There are no end of kid!fics in the Whoniverse. Particularly once the fangirls realized that the Doctor was alone, alone, last of the Time Lords!
Heaven forbid David Tennant look lonesome, particularly when in love with Rose Tyler, and therefore, kid!fic was born. Pretty much literally. However, there are kidfics, and then there are kidfics. And I have always ascertained that the Chaosverse is one of the best.
Chaos in College (as it's most commonly known) is one of the latest chaptered fics in the 'verse. It centers on the Doctor's and Rose's son, Brem, as he heads off to college - something of a oddity in itself, as none of the children have attended school a day in their lives. To call Chaos in College a kidfic, therefore, would be something of an anachronism, because there's nothing "kid" about it. Brem is 18 years old, and very like his father - which is to say, he believes the entire fate of the world (and his family in particular) rests on his shoulders. He's young and naive without being stupid, he's incredibly intelligent without being street-smart, and he's well-behaved enough that he's going to do what his parents think is best (such as attend an Earth college for a year) but he's still going to use his sonic screwdriver to make the dorm room fridge bigger on the inside.
“Right,” said Dad, turning to him. “So here’s what you need to know.” He waved his hands around. “This is the biggest adventure you’ll ever have, living this life, day after day. So promise me you’ll enjoy it. Promise you won’t worry about us, that you’ll just enjoy this.”
What makes Chaos in College a bit different from other fics in the Whoniverse is that it's not focused on the Doctor or Rose - in fact, they appear very little in the story. They're not the focus - Brem is, but that only serves to make the fic more interesting for it. We basically have a young man dealing with all the difficulties of being away from home for the first time. That he's a Time Lord - well, that mostly comes second, because Brem mostly sticks to his father's orders. He lives the slow path - he even might enjoy bits of it.
He attends the beer-soaked parties on campus, gets drunk (once, off about half a sip of beer), fails Spanish, somehow stumbles into a job writing for the school newspaper, doesn't tell his parents or sisters everything about his life, and all the while, he's avoiding desperately the single, solitary truth in his life: he's not human. He's something else. He might be living a human life for a bit, just as his mum wishes...but it's mostly a game. But even if Brem is good at forgetting he's not human, he's constantly reminded by the presence of Owtvfa - a group solely made up of the extra-terrestial students. Brem wants nothing to do with them, but they're on his perimeter constantly - tracking, watching, and waiting.
He thought he was being silly. Owtvfa made him uneasy, but there was no reason for them to stalk him, really. Even if he was an unusual species they couldn’t place, why should they develop an obsession about him?
Brem is so good at forgetting he's not entirely human, sometimes, that he goes and makes the second biggest human mistake of all: he falls in love. And here's where things get interesting.
Brem's never been in love before, you see - and I'm not counting the six-year-old who defended him on the playground in London and was the object of much childish Gallifreyan love poetry. It's funny to watch Brem be in love with Kate - because we might have always suspected that the son was like his father, but we get to see it in action. It's almost like watching a repeat of the Doctor and Rose, as they stumble through and make mistakes with each other and have misunderstandings and fight and make up. Kate, actually, is almost more like Rose than Brem is like the Doctor, and she picks up on how to treat Brem extremely quickly:
Part of that weird otherworldliness that surrounded Brem, that he’d honestly had no idea when a kiss would be welcome. And she suspected that’s what had them stalled at kissing. Brem, she thought, just had to be told things. She had meant it, those weeks earlier, when she had asked to skip the panicking part of things. It wasn’t that she minded his endearing tendency to panic-it was part of what made him Brem, and so impossibly cute-it was that, every once in a while, she just wanted to…Well. To put it bluntly but not untruthfully, she really wanted to have sex with him. And if she waited for Brem to make a move, she’d be waiting a long time, she knew.
The second biggest, yes. Because you see.....the biggest mistake is not falling in love with Kate. The biggest mistake is that Brem, in listening to his parents, actually does forget that at the end of the day, he's a Time Lord. And I don't mean that he forgets about the Vortex, how to use his sonic screwdriver, or that he's got two hearts and a respiratory bypass. No, he forgets that sometimes, being a Time Lord means life, for the humans around him, becomes just a bit more complicated. Brem has a year of being almost human - it's a year he'll be able to carry with him for all thirteen of his regenerations, long past the time when his college classmates have gone on with their lives, died, withered into dust.
Brem, like his classmates, is taking his first steps on his own, away from his family. They'll define both him and the life he leads. But what Brem forgets - and is forced to remember in an explosive conclusion - is that his life much, much longer - and more fantastic - and unbelievable - and full of wonder - than any life he could pretend to have.
In short, vote for Chaos in College. It's a bone-tickling, spine-straightening, roller-coaster ride. If you remember college, this will tickle you just right; if you don't remember college, you'll wish you had. It's a brilliant look at an entirely original character in the Whoniverse, let alone the Chaosverse, and for being the utterly brilliant continuation of a much beloved series, entirely deserves your vote.
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Well, Tomorrow We'll Wake Up Entwined in Red Tape by paperclipbitch
Category: Jack Harkness
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Suzie
Rating: PG-13
Details: One-shot in five parts (it being a Five Times fic), Jack/Suzie, pre-series.
Why It Rocks:
We only had two episodes with Suzie Costello; this has both its good and bad points. On the bad side, it's much less canon that we have of her - less experience with her voice, less time learning about how she'd react to things.
On the good however, it's that we have less canon to work with. Which is absolute gold to fanfic writers, because it means they're not tied down to pesky things like details. Ha! Details!
Paperclipbitch has taken Suzie's character and run with it - fully admitting that she's ignoring some of the details we do know (such as the length of Suzie's service with Torchwood), and used the details we do to fill out Suzie's admittedly short bursts on screen into a rich and complete character.
“You really are endearingly unethical,” Suzie remarks, sipping a cup of tea and keeping intent eyes on their co-workers.
“What does that make you?” Jack asks.
Suzie shrugs. “Ruthless?” she suggests.
We start with the hiring of Suzie - after Tosh, hence the slight warping of Suzie's length of time with Torchwood, but really, not a big whoop in the grand scheme of things - and proceed to see five times Jack has utterly failed to impress her. Because of course Jack is trying to impress her. Or sleep with her. Really, I think he'd take either option, but one is generally going to lead to the other.
It's not that Suzie is a difficult one to be impressed. It's only that she seems to keep herself above the rest of them. We never see Suzie joking with Tosh; we never see her going at anything less than full-performance. Suzie is completely addicted to Torchwood - to the point that Jack can't remember when she last slept, or went home.
Jack, clearly, is impressed by Suzie. Nothing seems to rattle her, he observes, and perhaps this is what really spurs him on to try to seduce her. Certainly, the fact that Yvonne Hartman dislikes Suzie is a point in her favor as well.
Yvonne doesn’t like Suzie being quite so enigmatic; she seems to be constructing this big paranoid theory that Suzie is plotting to bring the entire Torchwood organisation crashing down around their ears.
Ah, irony.
What's most interesting about the characterization of Suzie doesn't go unnoticed - it's that Suzie is a great deal like Jack. They're both driven, neither really has much of a social life, and they're both absolutely ruthless and unethical.
"It’s what you do,” Suzie explains patiently, tone just the wrong side of patronising, “You employ emotionally damaged people, then you fuck with them, then you fuck them. It’s your incredibly professional way of running this place.”
“You’re starting to sound like Yvonne,” Jack tells her.
The thing is - Suzie might be like Jack, but Jack isn't like Suzie. Despite the things that Suzie and Jack get up to - like using a bit of alien tech in order to force Tosh to get some sleep, or playing Russian roulette with Retcon - somehow, Suzie doesn't become sympathetic. Jack is unethical sometimes, yes, but we know that he's got a bigger picture in mind. He's the sort who will sacrifice the one in order to save the many.
But Suzie - she doesn't seem to go for a higher power, she's ruthless because it gets her to where she wants to be. She'll use some alien tech on Tosh not because she wants to help Tosh - but because if Tosh doesn't get some sleep, she'll die anyway, so what does it matter if the device backfires and kills her?
He doesn’t say we’re far too alike, when you get down to it, because that isn’t a compliment; it’s damnation.
It's isn't that Jack doesn't like for anyone to be like him - I think, in some ways, he finds the fact that Suzie exists something of a comfort. But Jack doesn't see his longevity at this point to be something in his favor. Handy, yes, particularly given that he's still waiting for the Doctor. But in the long run - Jack is just as able, if not especially willing, to say goodbye to Suzie as he was "hello". And it's that final scene that makes this worth reading. Jack's attachment to, and disillusionment from, his team is only smoke. It remains to be seen, however, if unlike Suzie, you will go on being unimpressed.
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Converging Coincidences by gnossienne_nr1
Category: Crackfic
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Donna
Rating: All Ages
Details: The Doctor and Donna accidentally get married. Twice. Prepare for some in-character laughs, in just 1200 words.
Why It Rocks:
I laughed out loud.
Oh. You want more?
This is a fic for every fan of the fourth season. Whether you ship Doctor/Donna, Doctor/Rose, Doctor/Banana Peels (in my opinion, just not enough good Doctor/Banana Peel fic out there).
A fic mostly in dialogue with minimum description, it reads just like a montage on film - of the couple of times the Doctor and Donna accidentally marry each other. As with any story involving these two that's not drenching in angst, as long as the dialogue is in-character, it's going to be funny. And this fic is no exception.
The fic is only 1200 words, but it doesn't pull any punches. From alien sex pollen to a meeting with Captain Jack Harkness, the Doctor and Donna just keep finding themselves shoved together.
"That's nice," the Doctor says as colourful flower petals rain over them.
Donna smiles cheerily. "A party! Just for us! I wish more people would be this grateful when we save their arses. Usually with you there are just pointy sticks and a lot of running."
The Doctor looks around at the people gathering around them. There is something about the situation that's nagging him, something about it he should know...
"Actually," he says, "it seems to be some kind of dyad ceremony..." His eyes widen as realization hits. "Oh."
"Oh, what?" Donna's smile is rapidly turning into a scowl.
"Well."
"If the next sentence coming out of your mouth contains the word 'married'," Donna says and glares at him. "I'm gonna kick you in the shins."
The Doctor opens his mouth, considers Donna's words and then closes it again.
Its simple style makes for great storytelling, and the concise writing is perfect for letting your imagination run wild. I guarantee you won't have a hard time imagining Catherine Tate and David Tennant saying all of the lines.
As a candidate for crackfic, it suits the category well in that its humor is spot-on, but it's not quite as off-the-wall as one would expect in the category. Still, it's funny. It's deliciously in-character. It's downright fun. Give it a read - I think you'll like it, and maybe it will earn your vote!
s
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Kallisti by jessalrynn Link goes to ff.net
Category: Classic Fic
Fandom: New Who
Rating: Mature
Characters: 10th Doctor, Rose Tyler
Details: 25 chapters plus epilogue; complete fic that's part adventure, part shippy goodness, part original character fun... part pure awesome.
Why It Rocks:
Reviewing jessalrynn is like being handed - I don't know. Nora Roberts. “Here, review this. Come up with an original thought.” Ha, yeah right. She's established, she's well-known... and she's good.
I was a little bit intimidated.
And then I settled in to read, and I mean, really read Kallisti, a twenty-five chapter plus epilogue fic that features the Doctor and Rose on a planet where I think they would both really thrive - and suddenly coming up with something to say wasn't hard at all.
The Discordians worship Chaos - they revel in the senseless and abandon order. In this setting, jessalrynn plays with absurd dialogue, a complicated plot and a love story that will surprise you with its mix of traditional fandom staples and surprising twists.
The Doctor initially doesn't want to land on Malaclypse, a planet turned upside-down, but neither (a nearly naked) Rose nor the TARDIS will let him change his mind, and so they set off, into a word where the Doctor must wear a dog collar, and where everything is honestly not quite as it seems.
Unprepared for this fic, I was a little bit taken aback by some of the plays on words and the sense of humor, but like every other good little Xanth (reviewer's note: Xanth is a series of novels by Piers Anthony that relies upon wordplay and pun to drive the plot) fangirl, I quickly adjusted and enjoyed myself. Like Anthony, jessalrynn gives you time to appreciate the absurdity of the world she's writing, like in the following passage:
"A greeting to you!" the Doctor said happily. "I was wondering what season we've arrived in. We're travelers - or maybe it's more we're..."
"Cabbage?" said the young man, curiously.
"No, thank you," said Rose, politely.
"He wants to know if we are cabbage, Rose," the Doctor said in that bright, chipper tone that usually meant he was thinking how silly she was. "Not if we want some."
"No, definitely not cabbage," Rose assured her audience. "Flower yes, me anyway, but he's a nut, not a cabbage."
"I wouldn't tell anyone," suggested the girl. "Some of them might be squirrels, you know?"
Then she jumps into the real plot. The Doctor and Rose attend a party where they discover the Doctor looks exactly like the Polyfather, the ruler figure on the planet.
As you can imagine, things only get more complicated from there. Not only does the Doctor look exactly like the Polyfather, he looks exactly like the Polyfather's twin brother.
When the Doctor gets kidnapped, jessalrynn introduces a tired-and-true fandom trope: the mental link. It's amusing rather than overly romantic, so while it's not usually my thing in longer stories (as always, I'll forgive almost anything in smut), it worked well as a plot point for me. Rose challenges the kidnappers to a singing contest, of course. And wins.
Yeah, this fic is kind of awesome.
But it's more than just the silliness I love. In between plotty moments and great dialogue, jessalrynn takes time to build the developing relationship between the Doctor and Rose, giving them beats that are intimate without being sexual, and still are completely them.
She settled into the big, round bed, snickering a bit about the size, and lay on her side, waiting for him. He curled up next to her, trying for off-putting at the same time as friendly calm. "I am a bit tired," he confessed.
"S'all that running about you do. Mucks with your biological clock, I bet, and you Time Lords probably have a worse one than we mere humans do." She turned on to her back then, and froze.
"What is it?" he asked, and rolled over and looked up.
They both burst into peals of laughter at the sight of their own reflections. Then, as suddenly as it started, the laughter stopped. The picture they made was quite breath-taking, and he couldn't really laugh at a thing of beauty, even if it included his own reflection.
Above him, the mirror Rose's hand reached out, and he felt her hand thread into his own and smiled. He turned to his side and looked at her, wanting to tell her everything. She had turned too, as he had, and was looking into his eyes. He squeezed her hand tight and raised it to his lips, then closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep.
I won't deny that this is a fic for shippers - other fans might find it too focused on the pairing, although the plot is intriguing, as well. It's twisty and turny - and I don't want to give too much away because I want you to go out and read the fic! But it involves a war, a good case of mistaken identity, and lots of thrills and spills.
If you're in the mood for something humorous, light-hearted, but with a good heart of its own - if you're in the mood for a Doctor/Rose fic that's plotty and vaguely reminiscent of series two of New Who - then this is the fic for you.
jessalrynn is well known for her epics, and there's a reason. I don't think this fic will disappoint you, if you choose to dedicate the time to reading it. It certainly didn't disappoint me.
Go vote for Kallisti. It will surprise you. It will scare you and warm your heart. It is well worth the read.
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Today's Reviews were written by:
persiflage_1: Bright Star
unfolded73: The Girl Scout Guide...
azriona: Chaos in College; Well, Tomorrow We'll Wake Up Entwined in Red Tape
ladychi: Converging Coincidences; Kallisti
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Bright Star by eponymous_rose Link goes to Teaspoon
Category: First Doctor
Fandom: Classic Who
Characters: Barbara Wright, Harry Sullivan, Ian Chesterton, Luke Smith, Sarah Jane Smith, Susan Foreman, First Doctor, Third Doctor
Rating: Teen
Details: Action/Adventure, Character Study, Drama, Het, Humour, Missing Scene, Romance
Why It Rocks:
It's the Classic Who version of Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead without the life-devouring shadows; a beautiful, non-linear (timey-wimey) love story that criss-crosses the Whoniverse in a manner guaranteed to gladden the heart and tickle the funny bone of anyone who loves all aspects of the Whoniverse. It's also named for, and quotes from, John Keats' Last Sonnet.
Confession time: though I love Classic Who as well as New Who, I'm still not very familiar with the First Doctor - I started watching Doctor Who during the era of Four and Sarah Jane, and although I've caught up with huge swathes of the Third Doctor's era, I'm still behind on the First and Second Doctors (not helped, of course, by the BBC's destruction of many of the stories from the early years of the show). However, of the handful of First Doctor stories I've seen, most have featured Barbara and Ian, so I'm quite aware of them. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are teachers at Coal Hill School in London, where their pupil Susan Foreman causes them some concern by her, at times, outlandish behaviour and the weird gaps in her knowledge. One day they follow her home, to a junkyard owned by I M Foreman, where she disappears inside an abandoned Police Public Call Box. The two teachers, obviously rather worried, investigate, and find their pupil talking to her grandfather who, after a short conversation, kidnaps them (largely as punishment for being 'nosey' - in his view), and takes them travelling aboard his Time and Space Machine for a series of wild and wonderful adventures.
Sarah Jane Smith is a young investigative journalist who infiltrates a top-secret research facility by posing as her aunt Lavinia Smith, a famous virologist (The Time Warrior). Encountering the Doctor, he quickly sees through her deception, but he doesn't give her away to the authorities. The Time Lord is there, along with members of UNIT, to investigate the mysterious disappearances of scientists working at the facility. Sarah Jane sneaks aboard the TARDIS as the Doctor prepares to follow the trial of a newly-disappeared scientist through Time, and she gets caught up in the events that follow on from their arrival in the Middle Ages. Although she never formally joins UNIT, Sarah Jane works with its staff and the Doctor on a number of investigations, and when the Third Doctor's exile is lifted and he has regenerated into the Fourth she travels with him for some time in the TARDIS.
Sarah Jane eventually stops travelling with the Doctor when he's recalled to Gallifrey and he's unable to take her with him owing to Gallifrey's exclusionary policies (Hand of Fear). Thirty years pass before she encounters the Doctor again, by now in his tenth incarnation and travelling with Rose Tyler, and after he disappears out of her life again she finds herself caught up in the events surrounding the attempted invasion of Earth by the Bane (SJA: Invasion of the Bane), after which she adopts as her son the 'prototype' human created by the Bane, and she names him Luke.
Bright Star opens with Luke Smith appearing out of nowhere in Ian Chesterton's 1963 classroom, startling him so badly that he falls off his chair, after which Luke delivers a somewhat cryptic thank you message from his mother Sarah Jane Smith, whom Ian has never heard of. Luke tells him that he's come via matter transfer through a localised time-eddy - none of which makes any sense to Ian but he felt a chill, similar to the one he got, sometimes, when Susan Foreman answered a question with utter nonsense, but nonsense that held such certainty, such conviction.
At this point we realise that Ian and Barbara have yet to travel with the Doctor aboard the TARDIS, or to meet Sarah Jane Smith (Luke explains that Mr. Smith's attempts at refining it to such a precise distance cuts down the temporal accuracy. - Mr Smith is Sarah Jane's alien computer). Luke shrugs the matter off as somewhat inconsequential, and Ian eventually forgets the matter - until he and Barbara encounter Sarah Jane in Old London, in 5063:
"What do you mean, shouldn't it be busier?" he added, adopting a hurt expression. "It's not as though we have a point of reference. For all we know, this is a ghost town."
"Funny sort of ghost town that has well-stocked shops," said a new voice, and Ian and Barbara exchanged glances before turning - in a situation like this, no matter how ordinary the surroundings, it was always prudent to expect the odd tentacular monstrosity lurking in the shadows.
Instead of a tentacled monster, however, they find a perfectly normal looking young woman who has her arms full of peculiar machinery - which, it just so happens, will save their lives as the Old Londoners are in the habit of flooding the Thames regularly - and Ian and Barbara are right in the path of the impending flood. As he watches Sarah Jane fiddling with the machinery - she's preparing to set up a force field to protect them from the river, he can't help putting a question to the young woman:
"You know the Doctor?" Ian blurted, and immediately felt silly for asking - but a part of him wondered if there was a chance that there were other wandering time travellers abducting people right, left, and centre.
This story is full of similar little touches of humour amidst the timey-wimey to-and-fro of the meetings between Sarah Jane, Ian and Barbara (with a cameo from Harry Sullivan, the Naval Lieutenant who serves as UNIT's Medical Officer during the Fourth Doctor's era) during which Sarah Jane saves Ian's and Barbara's lives on more than one occasion. Eventually Ian and Barbara make it back home to Earth, get married, and have a son, and then one day they meet a young woman named Sarah Jane Smith, who's about to inveigle her way into a top secret research establishment by pretending to be her aunt Lavinia - and the story has come around in a circle to Sarah Jane's first meeting with Ian and Barbara.
Vote for this fic because it's clever, humorous, joyful and romantic; the characters' voices are all absolutely spot-on, and the Doctor's brief cameos are an added bonus.
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The next two fics are part of the Chaosverse.
The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe by earlgreytea68
Category: Tenth Doctor, Ficlet
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Rose, OCs
Rating: All Ages
Details: The Doctor of the Chaosverse bonds with his daughter Athena, learning that she’s much more capable in a crisis than he realized. Three parts, approximately 9300 words.
Why it Rocks:
Like many readers, I make an exception and read kidfic when it’s written by earlgreytea68. By now, she’s created a rich AU in which the Doctor and Rose manage to juggle TARDIS life with children. “The Girl Scout Guide to Saving the Universe” is set when their middle child, Athena, is eight, making Brem about ten years old.
The Doctor has decided that Athena, who is fond of pink frilly things, lacks the toughness she’ll need to survive out in the world. After a hilarious exchange in which his wife and daughters gang up on him, it is decided that Athena will join the Girl Scouts in America (instead of the Girl Guides in the UK), primarily because of the cookies biscuits, but that if she has to go camping, the Doctor has to go camping too. As in all the Chaosverse stories, one of the strengths in this one is the dialogue. If I quoted everything that makes me laugh, this review would be very long indeed. Here’s a sampling:
“Athena has a very good point,” Rose pointed out. “It’s unfair to make Athena go camping unless you’re going to go camping yourself.”
“Exactly,” said Athena.
“So there,” added Fortuna.
The Doctor had noticed that the females of the ship tended to band together this way. “I…camp all the time!”
“Really?” asked Rose. “When have you camped?”
“Yeah?” said Athena.
“Yeah?” added Fortuna.
“I…Well…This is practically camping, don’t you think?”
“You think this is camping? Living on a ship that does all your laundry for you?” said Rose.
As the Doctor takes Athena to her first Girl Scout meeting, he realizes that he doesn’t spend much one-on-one time with his daughter. The interactions between them are delightfully sweet, and the author always makes the Doctor sound perfectly in-character, even though he’s living a much different life than the one we see on-screen.
The stories in this universe are rarely just fluff. The seminal work in the Chaosverse reworked the events of “Doomsday” so that when Rose got trapped in another universe, she was separated from her children as well as from the Doctor. The trauma they all experienced infuses who they are, and crops up sometimes when you least expect it, like when the Doctor is dropping Athena off at her first Brownie meeting.
There were times, thought the Doctor, when he could almost convince himself that Rose abruptly disappearing, all those years ago, had not traumatized his children for life. And then he would sense Brem’s rising panic if his mother was even five minutes late at a rendezvous point, or Athena’s tremulous fear now, as she turned to him.
But did I mention that the family banter in this story is hilarious?
“Someday you’re going to have daughters,” the Doctor told [Brem]. “And on that day, I am going to laugh and laugh.”
“Having sisters is quite enough for me. I will not be having daughters or getting married or any folderol like that. We have more than enough girls on this ship,” responded Brem.
“Maybe you can marry a man,” said Fortuna. “Like Uncle Jack.”
Eventually, Athena’s Brownie troop (which had mostly been doing art projects much to the Doctor’s consternation) does go camping, and the Doctor goes as a chaperone. Of course, things don’t go as planned, but the author manages to lull you into thinking that maybe the Doctor is just being paranoid and contrary because he doesn’t want to be camping. Even if you expected this outcome, the tension created by the author is palpable. In a lesser author’s hands, the danger in this fic would be treated just as lightly as the fluffy part of the story, but with earlgreytea68, I can feel the Doctor’s terror when Athena is in danger. As many things as he’s had to endure, few things can be worse than losing one of his own children. But he does learn an important lesson from the experience: that his daughter was already tough and capable in the crisis.
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Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses by earlgreytea68
Category: Other Characters, AU, Novel
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Original characters mostly, one of whom is the son of the Doctor & Rose Tyler, who do make an appearance now and then
Rating: R
Details: 26 chapters, and the latest longer chaptered fic in the Chaosverse, the first of which was reviewed in Round One, and another installment reviewed above.
Why It Rocks:
There are no end of kid!fics in the Whoniverse. Particularly once the fangirls realized that the Doctor was alone, alone, last of the Time Lords!
Heaven forbid David Tennant look lonesome, particularly when in love with Rose Tyler, and therefore, kid!fic was born. Pretty much literally. However, there are kidfics, and then there are kidfics. And I have always ascertained that the Chaosverse is one of the best.
Chaos in College (as it's most commonly known) is one of the latest chaptered fics in the 'verse. It centers on the Doctor's and Rose's son, Brem, as he heads off to college - something of a oddity in itself, as none of the children have attended school a day in their lives. To call Chaos in College a kidfic, therefore, would be something of an anachronism, because there's nothing "kid" about it. Brem is 18 years old, and very like his father - which is to say, he believes the entire fate of the world (and his family in particular) rests on his shoulders. He's young and naive without being stupid, he's incredibly intelligent without being street-smart, and he's well-behaved enough that he's going to do what his parents think is best (such as attend an Earth college for a year) but he's still going to use his sonic screwdriver to make the dorm room fridge bigger on the inside.
“Right,” said Dad, turning to him. “So here’s what you need to know.” He waved his hands around. “This is the biggest adventure you’ll ever have, living this life, day after day. So promise me you’ll enjoy it. Promise you won’t worry about us, that you’ll just enjoy this.”
What makes Chaos in College a bit different from other fics in the Whoniverse is that it's not focused on the Doctor or Rose - in fact, they appear very little in the story. They're not the focus - Brem is, but that only serves to make the fic more interesting for it. We basically have a young man dealing with all the difficulties of being away from home for the first time. That he's a Time Lord - well, that mostly comes second, because Brem mostly sticks to his father's orders. He lives the slow path - he even might enjoy bits of it.
He attends the beer-soaked parties on campus, gets drunk (once, off about half a sip of beer), fails Spanish, somehow stumbles into a job writing for the school newspaper, doesn't tell his parents or sisters everything about his life, and all the while, he's avoiding desperately the single, solitary truth in his life: he's not human. He's something else. He might be living a human life for a bit, just as his mum wishes...but it's mostly a game. But even if Brem is good at forgetting he's not human, he's constantly reminded by the presence of Owtvfa - a group solely made up of the extra-terrestial students. Brem wants nothing to do with them, but they're on his perimeter constantly - tracking, watching, and waiting.
He thought he was being silly. Owtvfa made him uneasy, but there was no reason for them to stalk him, really. Even if he was an unusual species they couldn’t place, why should they develop an obsession about him?
Brem is so good at forgetting he's not entirely human, sometimes, that he goes and makes the second biggest human mistake of all: he falls in love. And here's where things get interesting.
Brem's never been in love before, you see - and I'm not counting the six-year-old who defended him on the playground in London and was the object of much childish Gallifreyan love poetry. It's funny to watch Brem be in love with Kate - because we might have always suspected that the son was like his father, but we get to see it in action. It's almost like watching a repeat of the Doctor and Rose, as they stumble through and make mistakes with each other and have misunderstandings and fight and make up. Kate, actually, is almost more like Rose than Brem is like the Doctor, and she picks up on how to treat Brem extremely quickly:
Part of that weird otherworldliness that surrounded Brem, that he’d honestly had no idea when a kiss would be welcome. And she suspected that’s what had them stalled at kissing. Brem, she thought, just had to be told things. She had meant it, those weeks earlier, when she had asked to skip the panicking part of things. It wasn’t that she minded his endearing tendency to panic-it was part of what made him Brem, and so impossibly cute-it was that, every once in a while, she just wanted to…Well. To put it bluntly but not untruthfully, she really wanted to have sex with him. And if she waited for Brem to make a move, she’d be waiting a long time, she knew.
The second biggest, yes. Because you see.....the biggest mistake is not falling in love with Kate. The biggest mistake is that Brem, in listening to his parents, actually does forget that at the end of the day, he's a Time Lord. And I don't mean that he forgets about the Vortex, how to use his sonic screwdriver, or that he's got two hearts and a respiratory bypass. No, he forgets that sometimes, being a Time Lord means life, for the humans around him, becomes just a bit more complicated. Brem has a year of being almost human - it's a year he'll be able to carry with him for all thirteen of his regenerations, long past the time when his college classmates have gone on with their lives, died, withered into dust.
Brem, like his classmates, is taking his first steps on his own, away from his family. They'll define both him and the life he leads. But what Brem forgets - and is forced to remember in an explosive conclusion - is that his life much, much longer - and more fantastic - and unbelievable - and full of wonder - than any life he could pretend to have.
In short, vote for Chaos in College. It's a bone-tickling, spine-straightening, roller-coaster ride. If you remember college, this will tickle you just right; if you don't remember college, you'll wish you had. It's a brilliant look at an entirely original character in the Whoniverse, let alone the Chaosverse, and for being the utterly brilliant continuation of a much beloved series, entirely deserves your vote.
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Well, Tomorrow We'll Wake Up Entwined in Red Tape by paperclipbitch
Category: Jack Harkness
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Suzie
Rating: PG-13
Details: One-shot in five parts (it being a Five Times fic), Jack/Suzie, pre-series.
Why It Rocks:
We only had two episodes with Suzie Costello; this has both its good and bad points. On the bad side, it's much less canon that we have of her - less experience with her voice, less time learning about how she'd react to things.
On the good however, it's that we have less canon to work with. Which is absolute gold to fanfic writers, because it means they're not tied down to pesky things like details. Ha! Details!
Paperclipbitch has taken Suzie's character and run with it - fully admitting that she's ignoring some of the details we do know (such as the length of Suzie's service with Torchwood), and used the details we do to fill out Suzie's admittedly short bursts on screen into a rich and complete character.
“You really are endearingly unethical,” Suzie remarks, sipping a cup of tea and keeping intent eyes on their co-workers.
“What does that make you?” Jack asks.
Suzie shrugs. “Ruthless?” she suggests.
We start with the hiring of Suzie - after Tosh, hence the slight warping of Suzie's length of time with Torchwood, but really, not a big whoop in the grand scheme of things - and proceed to see five times Jack has utterly failed to impress her. Because of course Jack is trying to impress her. Or sleep with her. Really, I think he'd take either option, but one is generally going to lead to the other.
It's not that Suzie is a difficult one to be impressed. It's only that she seems to keep herself above the rest of them. We never see Suzie joking with Tosh; we never see her going at anything less than full-performance. Suzie is completely addicted to Torchwood - to the point that Jack can't remember when she last slept, or went home.
Jack, clearly, is impressed by Suzie. Nothing seems to rattle her, he observes, and perhaps this is what really spurs him on to try to seduce her. Certainly, the fact that Yvonne Hartman dislikes Suzie is a point in her favor as well.
Yvonne doesn’t like Suzie being quite so enigmatic; she seems to be constructing this big paranoid theory that Suzie is plotting to bring the entire Torchwood organisation crashing down around their ears.
Ah, irony.
What's most interesting about the characterization of Suzie doesn't go unnoticed - it's that Suzie is a great deal like Jack. They're both driven, neither really has much of a social life, and they're both absolutely ruthless and unethical.
"It’s what you do,” Suzie explains patiently, tone just the wrong side of patronising, “You employ emotionally damaged people, then you fuck with them, then you fuck them. It’s your incredibly professional way of running this place.”
“You’re starting to sound like Yvonne,” Jack tells her.
The thing is - Suzie might be like Jack, but Jack isn't like Suzie. Despite the things that Suzie and Jack get up to - like using a bit of alien tech in order to force Tosh to get some sleep, or playing Russian roulette with Retcon - somehow, Suzie doesn't become sympathetic. Jack is unethical sometimes, yes, but we know that he's got a bigger picture in mind. He's the sort who will sacrifice the one in order to save the many.
But Suzie - she doesn't seem to go for a higher power, she's ruthless because it gets her to where she wants to be. She'll use some alien tech on Tosh not because she wants to help Tosh - but because if Tosh doesn't get some sleep, she'll die anyway, so what does it matter if the device backfires and kills her?
He doesn’t say we’re far too alike, when you get down to it, because that isn’t a compliment; it’s damnation.
It's isn't that Jack doesn't like for anyone to be like him - I think, in some ways, he finds the fact that Suzie exists something of a comfort. But Jack doesn't see his longevity at this point to be something in his favor. Handy, yes, particularly given that he's still waiting for the Doctor. But in the long run - Jack is just as able, if not especially willing, to say goodbye to Suzie as he was "hello". And it's that final scene that makes this worth reading. Jack's attachment to, and disillusionment from, his team is only smoke. It remains to be seen, however, if unlike Suzie, you will go on being unimpressed.
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Converging Coincidences by gnossienne_nr1
Category: Crackfic
Fandom: New Who
Characters: Ten, Donna
Rating: All Ages
Details: The Doctor and Donna accidentally get married. Twice. Prepare for some in-character laughs, in just 1200 words.
Why It Rocks:
I laughed out loud.
Oh. You want more?
This is a fic for every fan of the fourth season. Whether you ship Doctor/Donna, Doctor/Rose, Doctor/Banana Peels (in my opinion, just not enough good Doctor/Banana Peel fic out there).
A fic mostly in dialogue with minimum description, it reads just like a montage on film - of the couple of times the Doctor and Donna accidentally marry each other. As with any story involving these two that's not drenching in angst, as long as the dialogue is in-character, it's going to be funny. And this fic is no exception.
The fic is only 1200 words, but it doesn't pull any punches. From alien sex pollen to a meeting with Captain Jack Harkness, the Doctor and Donna just keep finding themselves shoved together.
"That's nice," the Doctor says as colourful flower petals rain over them.
Donna smiles cheerily. "A party! Just for us! I wish more people would be this grateful when we save their arses. Usually with you there are just pointy sticks and a lot of running."
The Doctor looks around at the people gathering around them. There is something about the situation that's nagging him, something about it he should know...
"Actually," he says, "it seems to be some kind of dyad ceremony..." His eyes widen as realization hits. "Oh."
"Oh, what?" Donna's smile is rapidly turning into a scowl.
"Well."
"If the next sentence coming out of your mouth contains the word 'married'," Donna says and glares at him. "I'm gonna kick you in the shins."
The Doctor opens his mouth, considers Donna's words and then closes it again.
Its simple style makes for great storytelling, and the concise writing is perfect for letting your imagination run wild. I guarantee you won't have a hard time imagining Catherine Tate and David Tennant saying all of the lines.
As a candidate for crackfic, it suits the category well in that its humor is spot-on, but it's not quite as off-the-wall as one would expect in the category. Still, it's funny. It's deliciously in-character. It's downright fun. Give it a read - I think you'll like it, and maybe it will earn your vote!
s
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Kallisti by jessalrynn Link goes to ff.net
Category: Classic Fic
Fandom: New Who
Rating: Mature
Characters: 10th Doctor, Rose Tyler
Details: 25 chapters plus epilogue; complete fic that's part adventure, part shippy goodness, part original character fun... part pure awesome.
Why It Rocks:
Reviewing jessalrynn is like being handed - I don't know. Nora Roberts. “Here, review this. Come up with an original thought.” Ha, yeah right. She's established, she's well-known... and she's good.
I was a little bit intimidated.
And then I settled in to read, and I mean, really read Kallisti, a twenty-five chapter plus epilogue fic that features the Doctor and Rose on a planet where I think they would both really thrive - and suddenly coming up with something to say wasn't hard at all.
The Discordians worship Chaos - they revel in the senseless and abandon order. In this setting, jessalrynn plays with absurd dialogue, a complicated plot and a love story that will surprise you with its mix of traditional fandom staples and surprising twists.
The Doctor initially doesn't want to land on Malaclypse, a planet turned upside-down, but neither (a nearly naked) Rose nor the TARDIS will let him change his mind, and so they set off, into a word where the Doctor must wear a dog collar, and where everything is honestly not quite as it seems.
Unprepared for this fic, I was a little bit taken aback by some of the plays on words and the sense of humor, but like every other good little Xanth (reviewer's note: Xanth is a series of novels by Piers Anthony that relies upon wordplay and pun to drive the plot) fangirl, I quickly adjusted and enjoyed myself. Like Anthony, jessalrynn gives you time to appreciate the absurdity of the world she's writing, like in the following passage:
"A greeting to you!" the Doctor said happily. "I was wondering what season we've arrived in. We're travelers - or maybe it's more we're..."
"Cabbage?" said the young man, curiously.
"No, thank you," said Rose, politely.
"He wants to know if we are cabbage, Rose," the Doctor said in that bright, chipper tone that usually meant he was thinking how silly she was. "Not if we want some."
"No, definitely not cabbage," Rose assured her audience. "Flower yes, me anyway, but he's a nut, not a cabbage."
"I wouldn't tell anyone," suggested the girl. "Some of them might be squirrels, you know?"
Then she jumps into the real plot. The Doctor and Rose attend a party where they discover the Doctor looks exactly like the Polyfather, the ruler figure on the planet.
As you can imagine, things only get more complicated from there. Not only does the Doctor look exactly like the Polyfather, he looks exactly like the Polyfather's twin brother.
When the Doctor gets kidnapped, jessalrynn introduces a tired-and-true fandom trope: the mental link. It's amusing rather than overly romantic, so while it's not usually my thing in longer stories (as always, I'll forgive almost anything in smut), it worked well as a plot point for me. Rose challenges the kidnappers to a singing contest, of course. And wins.
Yeah, this fic is kind of awesome.
But it's more than just the silliness I love. In between plotty moments and great dialogue, jessalrynn takes time to build the developing relationship between the Doctor and Rose, giving them beats that are intimate without being sexual, and still are completely them.
She settled into the big, round bed, snickering a bit about the size, and lay on her side, waiting for him. He curled up next to her, trying for off-putting at the same time as friendly calm. "I am a bit tired," he confessed.
"S'all that running about you do. Mucks with your biological clock, I bet, and you Time Lords probably have a worse one than we mere humans do." She turned on to her back then, and froze.
"What is it?" he asked, and rolled over and looked up.
They both burst into peals of laughter at the sight of their own reflections. Then, as suddenly as it started, the laughter stopped. The picture they made was quite breath-taking, and he couldn't really laugh at a thing of beauty, even if it included his own reflection.
Above him, the mirror Rose's hand reached out, and he felt her hand thread into his own and smiled. He turned to his side and looked at her, wanting to tell her everything. She had turned too, as he had, and was looking into his eyes. He squeezed her hand tight and raised it to his lips, then closed his eyes and forced himself to sleep.
I won't deny that this is a fic for shippers - other fans might find it too focused on the pairing, although the plot is intriguing, as well. It's twisty and turny - and I don't want to give too much away because I want you to go out and read the fic! But it involves a war, a good case of mistaken identity, and lots of thrills and spills.
If you're in the mood for something humorous, light-hearted, but with a good heart of its own - if you're in the mood for a Doctor/Rose fic that's plotty and vaguely reminiscent of series two of New Who - then this is the fic for you.
jessalrynn is well known for her epics, and there's a reason. I don't think this fic will disappoint you, if you choose to dedicate the time to reading it. It certainly didn't disappoint me.
Go vote for Kallisti. It will surprise you. It will scare you and warm your heart. It is well worth the read.
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Today's Reviews were written by:
persiflage_1: Bright Star
unfolded73: The Girl Scout Guide...
azriona: Chaos in College; Well, Tomorrow We'll Wake Up Entwined in Red Tape
ladychi: Converging Coincidences; Kallisti