rec: dread pirate roberts

[ionlylurkhere.livejournal.com]

Story: Dread Pirate Roberts
Author: biichan
Rating: Teen
Word count: 3000
Author's summary: If you fall in love with someone pretending to be someone else, are you in love with them or the person they're pretending to be? S3 AU.
Characters/Pairings: Martha/Romana, Seven, K9
Warnings: None

Recced because: For some reason, Martha seems to be the new school companion shipped with the most old school characters. And one of the popular femslash pairings for her (along with Martha/Ace, which I could easily have recced an entire week for by itself, to be completely honest) is with Romana. biichan's take on it (again from this year's dw_femslash ficathon) is lovely and does something very interestingly different: it's an alternate S3, with the alternateness coming from Romana having been the one to survive the Time War, not the Doctor. What follows from there is a really clever set of inversions of and counterpoints to canon, not just Martha's journey in S3 but all sorts of other bits as well. It's a succession of fantastic moments, by turns funny, heartwarming, heartbreaking and inducing pure punch-the-air fannish glee. A wonderful fic.

Comments

[nonelvis]

I added this to my list of future calufrax recs earlier this week! Obviously I have to remove it now, but it's a great story.

[ionlylurkhere.livejournal.com]

Hee! Sorry for depriving you of the pleasure of reccing it. It is amazing.

[biichan.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't have been half as good if you hadn't beta-read it for me :)

[ionlylurkhere.livejournal.com]

That is an abject lie, and I have the emails where you sent me stuff that was pretty identical to the final version to prove it. :p

[biichan.livejournal.com]

Well, you got my foul Americanism out. And you helped talk me through some of the times I was blocked. So. *sticks out tongue*

[clocketpatch]

I also added this to my list of future possible recs an instant after reading. Not only was this an enthralling read, but it got my little plotbunnies hopping and my little brain box ticking with all of its cleverness and questions.