Calufrax

Story: Feedback
Author: ClocketPatch
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 2,918
Author's Summary: Explosion. The packed clod of ice smashed into the side of Amelia's head. It didn’t break off into powder like a proper snowball. It thudded against the ground beside her, shattering just as another ice ball hit.
Characters/Pairings: Amy Pond, Rory Williams, The Doctor (11th)
Warnings: Some fairly close-to-the-bone discussion of Amy's childhood traumas

Recced because: If you've been paying any attention to the comm at all, you will know by now that Clocketpatch is a very safe bet indeed when it comes to finding some fic that will consider interesting angles using interesting prose stylings and interesting choice of language. Fic worth reading, in other words. My main reason, however, for giving this author another rec on the comm so soon after her last one is that this story is, not to put too fine a point on it, really good - which surely should be reason enough?

Cast your minds back, as I asked you to do the other day, not to the heady days of 2008 and The Dark Knight, but rather back to 2010 and Series 5 of new Doctor Who. I think one of the things that sold me, and a lot of other fans, on the idea of Amy Pond as a companion was the very real sense given in The Eleventh Hour and some of the subsequent episodes that our Amy, she wasn't quite..."normal". How could she be, after the raggedy Doctor and his blue box had so impinged upon her life at such an early stage? And for a lot of people who don't consider themselves quite "normal" (and who of us is, really?), that was a cool and aspirational thing, even if it was one of the several cool things from S5 that Steven Moffat still hasn't quite followed through on (although there is still the 50th Anniversary special, he says, hopefully, perhaps delusionally).

The thing is, though, just what kind of childhood trauma did that glib line about biting "three psychiatrists", or the very real sense that Amy is regarded as a Leadworth "local character" by the likes of Mrs Victor Meldrew, what did that conceal? And this fic takes that idea head-on, and pulls few punches. It is raw, thought-provoking, somewhat disturbing stuff. And the amazing thing is that that (which would provide sufficient material for an entire fanfic in itself for most of us) is only this fic's opening section. It goes on very rapidly to set up an actual storyline, a real science-fictional predicament and then to pull back and remind us that what is really important is Amy and Rory and the Doctor, this Team TARDIS, undoubtedly one of the very best in the entire run of the new series to date, and their complex, not always easy, three-way relationship.

It's an indication of what a good fic this is that, quite in spite of the devastating insight into Amy's character and just what price she paid by encountering the Doctor all those years ago, its actual highlight is the lovely Doctor-Rory-Amy interactions with all of their nuances, reminding us that as cool as Clara is (and she's very cool indeed, imho), we lost a lot when we lost the Ponds.

I know I say this a lot, but I mean it: go over to the Teaspoon, read the fic, tell the author how awesome you thought it was. :)

( An Extract )

Story: Ten Times the Doctor Hates the Daleks
Author: Derek Metaltron
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 2,871
Author's Summary: Across ten incarnations the Doctor has faced a enemy who has cost him friends and allies, planets and stars, his very home world. They are the Daleks, and these are ten tales of how he has learnt to hate them.
Characters/Pairings: The Doctors (1st to 10th), various companions and supporting characters, Davros and the Daleks
Warnings: None

Recced because: I'll admit to something of a fannish obsession with the Daleks. Not so much the Daleks as we see them most of the time on screen, but the idea of the Daleks. Because it really is a great concept, and a fantastically horrible one when you really think about it. Which I have, probably a bit too much. The thing about the Daleks, however, while I obviously reject vehemently the idea current in fandom that it's possible to see them too often in the series, is that they rarely live up to the power of the concept in their TV outings. Often they fill a role that could be played by any generic aliens and/or robots with a bit of a search-and-replace on the script. And that, I often find, is where good fanfic comes in.

Whether the Daleks obsess the rest of you as much as they do me or not (I suspect not, in most cases!), they do occupy a unique place in the history of Doctor Who, both in-universe and in terms of the lifespan of the series itself. They're the original Who monsters, and still the benchmark against which new pretenders are measured. Even the Cybermen, probably the second most iconic Who monsters, were originally an attempt to find "the next Daleks". And in story terms, the Doctor already had an ultimate archenemy - he knew it and perhaps more importantly they knew it - long before the Master ever showed up and started telling people to obey him. I'll be very disappointed if they don't play a prominent role in the 50th Anniversary story.

And this excellent fic meditates upon that idea, the pivotal and perhaps unique role the Daleks have played in the Doctors lives, through examining the way the Doctor reacts to them. I don't think it's unwarranted to talk, as the fic does, about the Doctor hating the Daleks. Look at Nine's spitting fury in the new series episode Dalek for Exhibit A. We perhaps don't like to think as fans about the Doctor hating anybody, he's meant to be better than that and to hold himself to a higher standard - and the fic explores that as well. As much as the Doctor has been subjected again and again to the Daleks' ingrained evil, their murderous and destructive deeds again and again, he still doubts that giving in to hating them, and doing to them what that implies, is something he should be doing. It's the same moral dilemma posed by the famous scene from Genesis - does he have that right? Does feeling for them what they feel for him make him as bad as they are? This fic examines that idea through the eyes of all ten Doctors extant at the time it was written, and comes back to that essential truth about the Doctor and his relationship with his greatest enemies. As much as they've done, and as much as he's seen of that, as much pain as they've caused him, at the end he is better than they are, in moral terms, so he'll always have that doubt, and always hold back, and end up always having to fight them again.

It's a fic I really like, anyway. Please go and read it, and please leave some words for the author.

( A Sample )

Story: They Say
Author: Lyricwritesprose
Rating: All Ages
Word Count: 744
Author's Summary: The oppressed rely on whispers.
Characters/Pairings: None, directly.
Warnings: Some references to slavery and the violence and brutality involved in same. Nothing graphic, however.

Recced because: Another author who has become no stranger to these pages in recent months and years, and there's a reason for that. If you ask me (and seeing as you're reading my rec post, in some sense you already have), Lyricwritesprose is one of the very best new Whofic writers to emerge onto the scene in the past few years, maintaining a consistently high standard of interesting fics with things to say about Doctor Who, its characters and universe that are worth thinking about. This fic is no exception.

There's a wariness among some Who fans regarding what I've heard referred to as the fetishising of the Doctor. The tendency, perhaps, to invest him with godlike or superheroic status over and above that of an extremely clever and resourceful adventurer in time and space. Probably the prime example in many of these fans' minds would be the moment in Forest of the Dead - "Look me up." I think the point is that the Doctor shouldn't be able to rely on the power of his reputation alone in confrontations with powerful enemies - and I think it's an opinion Stephen Moffat has at least paid lip service to in the idea of making the Eleventh Doctor "anonymous" again and portray him as deliberately trying to lower his profile in the universe, even if this was perhaps not executed perfectly in practice.

This fic deals in these sorts of areas, takes them head on, and paints a brilliantly thoughtful and original picture of the, for want of a better term, Whoniverse and what it must be like to exist in it. This is a dangerous cosmos, the author makes clear, perhaps more dangerous than the series itself occasionally remembers, filled with conflict and oppression and evil. And yet, quite literally its saving grace, it has the Doctor. And this isn't the Doctor as some sort of lionised godlike superhero - his personality and indeed existence are immaterial. This is about the footprint the Doctor leaves, the effect his actions have upon the universe he exists in and the lives of the people living in it, and the hope that footprint provides for all of the others out there in the darkness, regardless of whether they know how or why it exists. It is, quite simply, lovely stuff, the kind of thing I really relish in a good fanfic.

I would characterise this as a companion piece to the author's other story "Invisible Road", which was also recently recced on the comm. That's more than worth your reading time as well. If I were you, I would go and read both of them right now and leave appropriate words of encouragement for the author.

( A Taste )

Well, here I am, your reccer for...well, the next two weeks, owing to the slight change in the rules here on the comm. Exciting stuff. Once again I will make the by now traditional observation that it doesn't seem like that long since I was last reccing here, but in fact it turns out it was ages. Anyway, hopefully this will be as fun for all of you as it is going to be for me. :)

Story: Agony
Author: Jesht
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 462
Author's Summary: Every time he wakes, he remembers.
Characters/Pairings: I think that would be telling.
Warnings: Some quite gruesome and unpleasant violence is referred to explicitly, if not described graphically, so exercise caution.

Recced because: Well, I can't promise you that this fic is going to be a happy, fluffy light-hearted reading experience (well, probably not - I suppose that sort of depends on how you roll on an individual basis). It's called "Agony" and, well, like they say, it does what it says on the tin. Of course, that doesn't mean that you won't admire the author's skill and come away with a worthwhile reading experience. This is a story about pain, and the different kinds of pain it is possible to feel, and how somebody's character can respond to it and be shaped by it. I think one of the things good fanfic can do, along with the best of the various officially licenced spinoff media, is really show new sides to characters who would probably never get the chance to show them on the television screen.

I've been a bit coy in not naming the fic's p.o.v. (and indeed only) character in the summary above, because I really do think that this story will work even better for you if you just click the link above and plunge in and read it "cold". I think when you get to the end and realise whose inner monologue you have been reading (although you will probably work it out before you get to the end), not only will it all make a lot of sense, but it will also get you thinking about the sidelight cast on this character and their thought processes and persona by the author here, and maybe understand a little bit more about this character we might think, as fans, that we know so well already. And maybe we'll go away feeling a little sorry for a character that we would ordinarily find it difficult to have any sympathy for, while simultaneously being even more appalled by them than we are already. This is the sort of thing that I always admire greatly when a fanfic manages to pull it off, and it's a big part of my reason for reccing this fic here.

Jesht is an author who has written too few fics, I think, and it seems that I have only discovered her/his work a good few years after s/he stopped archiving stories on the Teaspoon. Which is a shame, really. So I would urge all of you to get over there, read this story and leave suitable words for the author hopefully to read, because you never know, sometimes a bit of encouragement is all it takes.

( A Sample )