Abbey's FanFic

Daphne

A FanFiction for the film Some Like it Hot.

Film Overview

Jazz musicians Joe and Jerry witness a murder. They are seen by the murderers and fear for their lives. Needing to escape Chicago they dress in drag and join an all-female Jazz group headed to Florida, the only job available. Joe takes on the alter-ego “Josephine” and Jerry becomes “Daphne”.  After a lot of farce and trickery, Joe ends up with Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe) and Jerry, who takes his alter-ego a bit too seriously, ends up engaged to an old male billionaire.  When Jerry pulls off his wig in the final scene confessing “I’m a man”, the old billionaire delivers the famous closing line, “Well, nobody’s perfect.”

  My FanFiction starts before the movie begins.

Chicago

January 1st, 1929

  “Five!” a lone voice shouted, signalling the end of the year. “Four!” it continued. Those five last beats hung prickly on Jerry’s skin. How could the year be out already? “Two, one, Happy New Year!” everybody chimed, throwing back their scotch-filled coffee mugs. Chaos for a few seconds as everybody hugged and then they were back on.  Making hot noise for the girls in the line to dance to.

  What a place to ring in the New Year, thought Jerry. Spats Colombo’s underground club. From the outside it was a funeral parlour. But utter, “I’m here for Gran-ma's funeral” and one would be lead into the Toulouse Lautrec-style speakeasy. Jerry had seen a casket being carried in once. Turned out it was full of booze!

 As the drunken young patrons danced the New Year in Jerry glanced at the ‘pews reserved for the immediate family’. Spats Colombo, surrounded by his men, sat solemn and still, despite the commotion. Jerry didn’t expect to see him dance or anything, but still was surprised by the stoicism of the man.

His eyes were fixed on someone, and Jerry felt relieved he wasn’t that person. Enveloped by gangsters in snappy suits, the table made for an intimidating posse. He wore musky cologne that infused with the fragrance of whiskey and he held the most relentless fixed stare. Rub him wrongly and a nod to his men could have you dragged off to- Jerry didn’t want to know where.

Jerry tended to put his boss out of his mind though.. The bouncing bosoms in front of him were first-class distraction.

Joe would be dragging him to any place the ladies danced in their underwear anyway, but every day that he went to work there was chance of a police raid. The back-rent he owed was incentive enough to risk it.

He reflected on the odd jobs which punctuated 1928. There was Bacon’s Casino, innumerable one-night gigs. Nothing in his life was constant but his trusty bass fiddle. And Joe of course, damned Joe and his damned sax.

  

Maybe that was unfair, their friendship spanned years. They had their own language, the two of them. He only wished Joe would stay outta trouble. His constant tail chasing left them with hundreds of enemies. Disgruntled boyfriends were one thing; they could handle that.  Scorned women though, were something else. They were fiery those dames and Joe pissed them off so fast Jerry didn’t have a chance.

 “1929!” whispered Joe, smiling at the girls dancing in front of him.  “I tell you Jerry boy, we are living in the future!”

  “This wasn’t how I pictured my future” said Jerry, plucking quickly on his bass.

  “What could be better, we got jobs don’t we? And we got front row seats” he winked at

Evelyn.

“Yeah, and each of these broads are hasslin’ us for the money we owe ‘em” Jerry countered.

 

I suppose he’s right though, he thought. They were working at least. But this year would be different he vowed, making a secret New Year’s resolution. This year he would do something drastic.

 

Unable to supress a smile, he looked back at the girls; they didn’t have to worry like this. With those figures they could shimmy anywhere.

 Carbon clones, he thought to himself. The same red lips and black-rimmed eyes, the same boned corsets and feathers in their hair.

 

There was one exception. The star of the show and the gentlemen’s favourite. She was dressed the same as the others, she wore the same make-up, but Jerry had a feeling she earned more pay. While the others girls would sweat and ended up racoons backstage at curtain close, this girl seemed to float through her routines. This girl seemed to float through life.

Her name was Daphne and Jerry knew she had it easy. It was the way her eyes opened so widely, evoking a naivety that they all knew was put on. It tricked people into falling in love. She bounced and kicked in time with the others, but eyes were drawn to her, in the magic of the year’s first hour, as if she were dancing her own dance completely.

He wished he could have her, he wished he could hold her but more than anything he wished he could be her. Shaking her bottom to get what she wanted. Catching himself he restructured that thought. He wished his life could be that simple.

January 13^th 

Chicago Train Station

How do they walk in these things he wondered, as his legs wobbled? The balls of his feet were aching already, not to mention how odd his other balls felt. He felt certain everybody could see up his dress. The cold on his behind was something he’d never felt in public before.
 

Dressed in a furry second-hand overcoat, the most awkward panty-hose and glistening pumps, he did his best to amble along the pathway. They wouldn’t get away with this, he thought, in frenzy. He was sure his eyes gave away his manhood. He peered at Joe, sauntering beside him. What a laughable sight he thought to himself, but laughter refused to form in his throat.

Only two weeks ago they were celebrating New Years. In two weeks the joint had been raided, they had witnessed a murder and had signed up for an all-girl jazz group on its way to Florida.

Watching Spats Colombo kill Tooth-pick Charlie had to be the most nauseating moment of his life.  It was by the grace of God that they escaped with their lives.  Glancing down at his padded chest he remembered that ‘desperate times’ saying. 

The long black steam train which stretched out on his left was their only escape from this incredible madness.But wearing this junk almost made him forget that fact.

“It’s no use, we’re not going to get away with it Joe.”

 “The name’s Josephine and this was your idea in the first place!” Joe spat, but Jerry didn’t hear him. He was distracted by the blonde who sauntered passed them at that moment. There were no straight lines on her perfect body and her blonde hair appeared glow-in-the-dark. The “ladies” stared for a good 7 seconds. 

She was wrapped in black silk and carried a ukulele. 

 “Look at that! Look at the way she moves!  It looks just like Jell-O on springs! She must have some sort of built in motor” Jerry shimmied imitating.

 Already he envied her, ‘I bet she shakes her bottom through life too,’ he thought.  Only once before had he seen a woman of that calibre. 

Her hypnotizing allure broke Jerry’s heart, “I’m telling you Joe, it’s a whole different sex!”

But Spats was looking for them, he didn’t leave witnesses. Staying in Chicago meant almost certain death and Jerry reluctantly ambled along.

 “Are you the new girls?” Asked the women by the train

“Brand new!” squeaked Jerry, dryly.

But this was Jerry’s time. This was his drastic move. This was his chance to start a different life.

“I’m Josephine” said Joe in a high-pitched voice, casting an expectant eye in Jerry’s direction.

Jerryldene wasn’t right he thought. It wasn't the name of someone who floated through life. He looked at Sweet Sue, the band conductor and forced a grin, here goes nothing!

“I’m Daphne!”

 -The end-

David's Fanfic

PLEASE NOTE:
       1) It is based on Terry Pratchett's Thief Of Time, from his Discworld series. There's a link to the book in a comment at the bottom if you haven't read it and you want to get a little bit of context for this fic. 
       2) If you haven't read any of the Discworld books, the title of my fanfiction is a line from Thief of Time and refers to Death (the person, not the process). It's about ... a part of the story that I can't really explain well out of context. Sorry. And if you don't like/haven't experienced the quite strange, eclectic humour that characterises Pratchett's work ... this will probably be a disaster. :(
       3) Where the dialogue is in small caps and lacking speech marks, this is on purpose: Death's lines are shown in this way in the books because he does not, technically, speak; rather, his words appear in the listener's brain without bothering to inform the ears. And the same goes for Death of Rats (long story).
       4) There are footnotes (which go to the bottom of the page) so watch out for them.
And that's it. Enjoy! Or not, as the case may be.

And Then There Was One

The ironic part, thought Susan as she looked into the shadows of the library, is that not only is he totally devoid of imagination, he actually likes it that way. The encyclopaedias she understood, but…

“Grim Fairy Tales” she commanded with her best Granddaughter of Death voice, before ducking rapidly as a large, dusty projectile whistled out of the darkness at head height.

Picking herself up and flapping at the liberated dust particles as they danced around madly, she glared at the now slightly battered book. Fiction? Really? Fairytales? She opened it to a random page, and stared down the frustratingly normal illustrations like they had personally insulted her.

But why? Oh, yes, he’d said that it was the whole ‘end of the world’, ‘evil auditors and glass clock’ thing that made him dig this one out, but why did he have it in the first place?

She paused for a moment as the thought of Time first surfaced guiltily, and then angrily, in her brain. After all, he was the one that never visited, apart from occasionally manifesting in the stationery cupboard. It wasn't her fault. Of course, came a little voice from the back of her mind, maybe if you spent less time marking badly spelled essays and more time with people over age nine, you might actually have – it sniggered meaningfully – more Time.

“That is not the issue,” she said sharply.

squeak, a bony voice remarked slyly from a nearby shelf.

“What are you doing there? Go away. And anyway, it isn't. If he doesn’t want to visit, it’s hardly my fault.”

squeak, came the reply.

“Yes, I know he’s the personification of Time. That’s the point.” She shook her head, then grabbed Death of Rats by the robe and stared it in the skull, her hair sparking slightly. “The point is, which you would know had you been paying attention, is that my grandfather, who, in case you hadn’t noticed, happens to be Death himself–”

squeak, said Death of Rats helpfully.

Susan gave it a Look.

squeak?

“I was being sarcastic,” she said in a voice icy enough to make penguins reach for their jumpers. “Anyway, I was trying to figure out why an … anthropomorphic personification with the imagination of your average cobblestone has a library full of novels in his house.” 

Especially, she continued internally, when he can’t even get his skull around the idea of narrative plotline. Yes, the butler did it, the butler usually does it* , but it’s not the end of the book that matters, it’s how you get there … Gods, she thought, next I’ll be standing on street corners in garish knitwear, fundraising for the ‘Save the Rabid Flesh-Eating Cringer of Bhang-Bhang-Duc' Society^†. It’s not the destination, she mimicked, it’s the journey.

“Blasted new age harpies.” She smiled grimly, surveying the room and its myriad of gothic ebony bookshelves, each marked by subject. “They should try rattling their soup cans up here. Then they’d know about extinction…” She set off down one of the dark alleys in front of her, helpfully labeled ‘D: Death to Death ’, and brushed her eyes along the lines of long-undisturbed tomes.

She paused, not noticing the fine layer of pioneering dust motes that began relocating to her shoulders in search of adventure. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this strange fascination of his isn’t with the idea of fiction, per se, but with the content.

“So he’s trying to understand why humans are fascinated with death and … butlers?” No, that can’t be right; sure, there are a few murder mysteries in here: Agatha Crispy^‡, Inspector Horse Mysteries, even seventeen volumes of The Snapcase Assassination – the Untold Story (abridged), but not all of them are death-related. Or butler-related, for that matter.

She ran her finger up and down the spine of one of them, uncovering a faint, barely legible title etched in gold filigree: The Furtive Five.

Pulling it out quickly, and retreating from the dust eruption that resulted, she found some light and opened it.

squeak? inquired Death of Rats, but Susan didn’t notice. She flipped through the thin, well-worn pages quickly as a conversation echoed from the deep recesses of her memory.

“What’s up with the dog?” Little Susan wrinkled her nose in a frown. “Why do they always have a dog? And why does the dog always have to do all the work? All the children ever do is stand around, being completely useless.”

A skeletal voice answered from above: i’m not entirely sure. i prefer cats myself.

“And they were pretty stupid. You’ve got to be pretty stupid to fall down your own well.”

i quite agree, little one. did you remember the moral of the story?

She nodded earnestly. “Don’t talk to strangers, and always carry a poker.”

good girl.

“Susan? Susan? Are you alright?” A thin, wrinkled hand tapped her on the back. “What brings you here? I'm afraid the master's away,” said a thin, wrinkled voice. It paused briefly, adding “on business. I'm sure–”

“Albert,” interrupted Susan.

“Yes?”

“Why does Death have all these books? He doesn’t understand fiction.”

Albert looked around with a proprietorial air and replied: “The murder mysteries were a hobby of his for a while; professional interest, you might say. And the rest, well …” He grinned. “He had to have something to read to you, didn’t he? He’s your Grandfather, after all.”

He turned and rattled off slowly down the hallway, squeaking slightly.

The End

* This is an example of narrative causality, a surprisingly common phenomenon. A certain Dr. Funke once undertook a study on the subject, but shredded it by mistake just before its findings were released, bringing him discwide fame and coining the phrase ‘to funke it’.

† The Cringer is a very large, very unusual carnivorous plant, named for its unique habit of folding over double after every meal in an attack of conscience .

‡So named for her famous, and sadly tragic, fascination with arsonists.

Abbey's FanFic Reviews

Remembered for all Eternity

By SirRoberto

Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons

This brief piece is clearly the ramblings of a tired mind (that is confirmed in the disclaimer). Set in 2014, it outlines the deaths of physicists Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter. Though short, a major story is told. Protecting the world from the Large Hadron Collider, Leonard orders Raj, Howard and Sheldon to leave the room. Something (which I don’t understand) is going wrong. Raj and Howard leave but Sheldon stays. They hold onto each other as they die from an explosion, which would have wiped out humanity if it weren’t for them, (Again, I don’t understand the intricacies of the science).

Posthumously, Cooper finally wins a Nobel prize, and the ‘Cooper-Hofstadter Prize’ is created for sacrifices made in the name of science.

As inspired as this brief story is, it is an amateur piece rife  with grammatical errors and, repeatedly, the word ‘got’.  I will allow that it was written as a speech, so I wasn’t exactly expecting inspired literature, but this piece is weak. The strong plot is let down by its rambling style. Perhaps some further work with a clear mind could redeem this story. As it stands, I would not recommend to anyone.

Normality or a Lack Thereof, a Some Like it Hot FanFic

By Arixa23

The 1959 official poster

Opening with Osgood's famous “Well, nobody’s perfect” Arixa23 attempts to elaborate on one of the world's most beloved comedies, taking it into serious new territories. I had my reservations over the genre change and the warning of “a bit of queerness.”  To me this film never represented sexual freedom or revolutionary new ideas; it was always just a bit of satire. I may have to rethink some things.

Recounting the weeks following the final scene, the piece focuses on Jerry/Daphne’s sexual confusion. After weeks of awkwardness on board the Caledonia, Daphne, who is written as being an entirely different entity than Jerry, accepts herself for what she is, and kisses her fiancé passionately on the lips. It closes beautifully with “the bit of Daphne which is Jerry worries briefly about what this new development means and about what will happen in the future and all that. But the bit of Jerry which is Daphne, and she was always more sensible than he is anyway, knows not to worry about it. Things have a way of working out if you let them. Especially if your husband is a millionaire.”

Skeptical as I was of this story, I am left thinking of one of my favourite films in an entirely new light. Arixa23 picks up on things which I had always taken as satire, and explores the meaning beneath them. For example when Osgood inquires why Jerry is so quiet he explains “Well, I’ve always been kind of quiet I guess, Joe’s the outgoing one, I just tag along with him. It’s a bad habit really.” Osgood replies, crucially, “You know, when you were Josephine and Daphne it was the opposite.”

I worried that this piece would brazenly add 21^st century values to this 1929-set film, but it is handled with all the subtlety of Annie Proulx’s 1963-set Brokeback Mountain (less the graphic scenes). “There is one awkward time when Joe walks into Jerry’s bedroom without knocking and catches him in a pair of high heels[…] Joe almost punches him hard enough to break several of Jerry’s ribs, but ends up sighing and just saying ‘Jerry I don’t know what to do with you’ “

This intriguing piece left me thinking for hours afterward. I think it is safe to say that is exactly what the writer intended.

I Told You So

By Sparkswillflyforever

Felicity Huffman and Doug Savant

In this alternate reality piece Sparkswillflyforever attempts to explain how the separation between Tom and Lynette Scavo ‘should have’ been handled. Hearing Keith Urbans’ ‘I Told You So’ on the radio, Lynette realizes that Tom will inevitably fall back into her life and thus begins a shallow story with no real outcome. Filled with static and superficial internal monologue and 10 (count em) lines of Keith Urban lyrics; this story simply fails to take off.

Embarking on a mission to ignore him till he runs back to her, Mrs Scavo ends up(embarrassingly enough) sidling up to another man in a bar to whisper “Your place or mine?” Enraged, Tom pulls her aside spitting “Ever since we started this separation which is, by the way, just a separation, you've been going out of your way to show me just how over me you really are. Well guess what. I'm not over you. I want you back, and I won't stop telling you that until you take me back." It ends with the punch line, “Oh Tom, I told you so.”

Desperate Housewives is a vast pool of possibility for FF writers and I can see what the writer has attempted here, but she has forgotten the golden rule; for anything to progress on that show the characters must learn something. By writing such a vainglorious piece she renders the separation obsolete. The outcome is the same as on the show but it feels emptier. She gets him back but there is no real learning curve. Not to mention feeling physically embarrassed at some of the cliched dialogue.

I appreciate what the writer has attempted in this piece and I do believe that this storyline should be further explored in Fan Fiction, but this time, it didn’t work for me.

The book which started it all

June Twenty Third

By Starlett2010

This little story explores the later lives of, personal childhood faves, The Babysitters Club. It is seen from  Kristy's perspective.  The members, who vowed to stay friends forever, have, for the most part, gone their separate ways. After re-acquainting herself  with Mary-Ann and Claudia at a New Years celebration, university-aged Kristy arrives home filled with ideas of a reunion. She is reminded of her old friends and the pact they made as young teens and she wonders if she will see them again.

Opening in diary form and moving effortlessly into internal monologue, the former BSC president resigns herself to the fact that things will never be as they were.

This piece is incredibly moving. Having grown up on this series it appealed to me naturally, and it will appeal to all former BSC readers left wondering what happened to the gang. The nostalgia Kristy feels about the Babysitters Club mirrors the nostalgia I feel about the Babysitters club. This is a powerful piece.

It reinforces the idea of childhood as something golden and magical, something which can never be recaptured once gone.

Kristys’ voice carries with it more wisdom and irony than Ann M. Martin's tween character, but Kristys’ voice is nonetheless captured brilliantly.

Saddened as I was to see the group split, such an eclectic cast was doomed from the start. The realism and ultimate sadness of this piece is what makes it so effective and I couldn’t speak more highly of it.

Urban Jungle
By GatesThistle

Edward Norton and Brad Pitt

In this piece, the two male protagonists of Fight Club sit on a roof discussing which philosopher they would fight, given the chance. The narrator offers Nietzsche because he was an “insane motherfucker” but Tyler, who has more knowledge on the subject, answers "Henry David Thoreau" adding, “Fucking Hypocrite.”

 He quotes “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately. To front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived…"

Thoreau is a hypocrite, Tyler claims, because he never moved away from society, never gave anything up and thus was never enlightened. When the narrator points out that they too live near society, Tyler replies, "But we're hitting bottom, something Thoreau never dreamed of."

This fan-fiction is extremely well done as it easily continues the thread of the film. There was no obvious point, in terms of alternate plot, to this piece but it serves as believable filler and helps to develop both Tyler and the narrator's characters. I believed this piece whole-heartedly and the writer's style is very fluid and easy to read. It evokes the same atmosphere of the movie and presents the same sentiments.  Highly recommended reading.

David Brown's Fanfic reviews

From the TV series, with Stephen Fry as Jeeves

Jeeves and the Rat

By Merthergirl (Link here)

    This one-shot was a little gem. Based on the 'Jeeves and Wooster' series of books and short stories, it follows Jeeves as he tries to track down a troublesome rat in a brief yet very funny domestic scene.

   I had my reservations as to whether the unusual structure of the piece could work (click the link above to see what I mean), but it was an excellent example of not wasting a single word. It's very small at only 227 words but has the understated absurdity that is the key to the humour of Jeeves as a character, and the characteristic silly twist at the end. That quality, its brevity, is its greatest strength: it captures the timeless humour of P.G. Wodehouse' characters, but rephrases it into an unusually short, almost vignette-style piece that is simply a delight.

Agatha Christie (from her autobiography)

Interview in the Waiting Room

By Brightbear (Link here)

    Agatha Christie (pictured right) is the biggest selling novelist of all time. Ever. She has sold over two billion books so far, half of them in foreign languages. This is because all of her 66 detective novels have a breathtaking cleverness and intricacy of plot that relies on a build-up of seemingly insignificant details, motives, and interweaving plot lines that all come together at the finish to reveal who is really, actually, innocent, and who is - unbelievably - the murderer(s). All this is to say that Brightbear set the bar for herself perhaps a tad high in writing her own Miss Marple story, Interview in the Waiting Room.
     Brightbear's offering was excellent in some areas, such as her characterisation of Miss Marple (obviously her favourite Christie character). The inclusion of a spontaneous side-story about the local vicar in the middle of her statement was an inspired touch, and very characteristic of the original. However, while she was very well depicted, the other characters tended towards being either two-dimensional or caricatures.
     My main issue with this story though is that the plot - the best part of the real Christie stories - was a bit of a train-wreck. It used the old 'protagonist-as-the-villain' trick, which can be very effective, except that the protagonist (not Miss Marple, by the way) was so bland and boring that when he was revealed as the murderer, all I could think was 'So what?'. Also, the twist came right in the middle of the story, not at the end, rendering the last half unnecessary and a bit overdone.
     It certainly wasn't a disaster by any means, as Brightbear's offering drew me in with its excellent depiction of the famous female detective. Unfortunately, the real mystery is how they managed to take such a promising start and let it disintegrate into, well, nothing very much.

A portrait of the author, or at least his writing

Other Tales in Fantastica

By Elliot Pole (Link here)

    This is by far the most bizarre and messed up work of fiction I have ever read, and I can state with near-certainty that I will never see its like again. Based on The Neverending Story, Pole has tried to fill in some of the deliberate gaps in the original story, i.e. where a Fantastican creature, the Twee, actually came from. Or at least that would be true if any of the ridiculous number of absurd creatures in Other Tales, including the Twee, had any relationship at all to the original tale (or to anything else for that matter).
    I am somewhat at a loss as to how to describe this fanfic, but its sort of like having a series of unusually weird nightmares, writing down each of them in detail, and then taking the weirdest parts of each dream and amalgamating them in a random order to form a vague string of events with no bearing on anything, including each other. But weirder. The plot is ... there, just, but is completely insensible; the characters make Salvador Dali look square by comparison; even the setting changes so bewilderingly fast that trying to keep up is an exercise in futility. 
    It is fairly safe to say that whatever mind-altering substance Elliot Pole was taking while writing Other Tales in Fantastica (and may still be for all we know), it is almost certainly guaranteed to drive him completely insane at some point. Judging by what I have just read, I suspect it has already done so.

She did the Moist vignettes brilliantly 

Bacon Sandwiches and Other Stories

By Witchy Bee (Link here)

    Terry Pratchett is one of my all-time favourite authors for his wit, intriguing plot-lines, and above all, outstanding characterisation. So, my expectations were quite high. And, quite remarkably, they weren't the least bit disappointed.
     Each mini-drabble is given a one-word title that sums up the content of each, whether its an introspective musing by Vimes on the irritating mindset of criminals, a late-night conversation between Ponder and his possibly alive computer, Hex, or a brief vignette of Moist Von Lipwig questioning the Universe and his precise place in it. Some of them are not as good as others - Vimes in particular is not quite as well depicted as the rest of them are - but even then they are very good, while others (particularly Name, Being, and Victimless, although there are plenty more) are so excellent, so in keeping with the style and  voice of the original books that in some places I could have sworn that Sir Terry himself was writing.
     Something that stood out to me from a technical perspective was that despite the short nature of each mini-drabble, and the generally random order of them both chronologically and plot-wise, they are so succinct and well put that at no time do they lose any of their charm. Even though most of them do not raise any new ideas or experiment too much, they are all a pleasure to read, even - especially - for such a Pratchett fan as myself.

Brain the size of a planet ...

Don't Panic

By Mostly Harmless XLII (Link here)

    As you may have noticed, this is a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fanfic. The author here has chosen to put in his own version of events that occurred during one of the semi-intentional gaps in the original story, while Arthur was living on the planet Krikkit. This was a good idea. And if Mostly Harmless had paid more attention to the story and less attention to himself  it might have actually worked.
     The worst part about this fic is that it started out so brilliantly. Chapter 1 (of 19) was so good that I felt sure I had hit on another winner. There was humour, both absurd and subtle, and there was a reasonable amount of outside-the-box detail that held the quirky style of the original. Unfortunately, from the next chapter onwards it pretty much goes down the drain. Some turns of phrase I thought were excellent, but they were very few and very far between, and were outnumbered by the sheer number of issues, from the spelling of Krikkit (not Kricket, or any of the alternatives supplied by the author), to the immensely irritating 'scene change' labels, to the biggest problem of all, Marvin.
  Marvin the Paranoid Android, a.k.a. the Manically Depressed Robot, is one of the funniest characters in literature. But the Marvin in this version of events is just a shell, repeating the same lines over and over again like the galactic equivalent of a stuck record. And it wasn't just limited to him: the plot was nonexistent, the other characters just weren't very funny, and his constant clever-dick routine throughout the text only served to turn a bizarre work of fiction into a grab for attention.
    Considering how much he had to work with, it's a shame that he had to let his ego get in the way of telling a good story. Marvin's head wasn't the only one that was the size of a planet.

Troy Dykes's fanfic reiews

Wayward Souls (FFVIII)

Link here

Firstly, this is not the whole story, this is in fact a very detailed description of a short scene from the game. The feeling I got from reading this piece was exactly the same feeling I got all those years ago when I first witnessed this revelation. His cleverly picked choice of words fits the whole dramatic scene wonderfully. There is one thing to note, and that is the writer has clearly used his words to adapt it into his own fantasy. Perhaps even trying to disguise his hidden love for the character. Unfortunately, the real ending had a much different meaning than this fan had portrayed. I feel he wanted the audience to feel sympathy for something that shouldn’t.

The bet (LOST)

Link here

Really, an all around great read. The writer has captured the characters perfectly in their responses, quirky remarks and joking behaviours. After reading through this fanfic it is so easy to imagine everything happening. It's as though it was taken straight out of the original script. He managed to create a playful style between the two protagonists that we never saw in the real show. I never particularly liked Kate in the show, however, I enjoyed reading this side of her. Truly a brilliant writer.

Making a Plan

Link here

This little piece is taken from an episode that everyone wanted to see happen differently. The story was fine however it was rather cheesy. The writer captured both characters wonderfully, obviously spending a great deal of time rewriting the story to fit. Even though writing in a detailed manner, exactly going for what fans wanted to see in the show, there was no surprise to speak of. This didn’t help the writer as it is very contrary to the show’s style. After a strong period of building up to the end, all that followed was anticlimax. This fanfic was written well and kept in character. I just wish the writer had taken his own spin on an alternate ending. There was so much more that could have been said to make all the cheesiness in this fanfic more believable.

 

 

 

 

 

The Matrix: Reconstructed

Link here

Everyone has seen or at least heard of The Matrix. Written and Directed by none other than the Wachowskis. This is a take on the post-revelations world, cut and analysed to create a new turn on the original Trilogy. Besides creating new characters, new environments, the writer has successfully developed existing characters. With the original writers of The Matrix leaving so many core elements unexplained, this fanfic writer has taken the opportunity to expand on them. For instance, the Oracle in the original story was staged in an alternate universe, in this take, the Oracle is some sort of program that analyses and computes assumptions based on behaviours.

This was only the first chapter of many to follow by this writer, yet he has managed to capture the readers with such an intriguing start. I look forward to seeing how this ends.

Rutilus Viridis

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After reading through many Terminator Salvation fanfics, I came across this little gem and had to review. The writer stated that he got the idea after watching the film avatar. Its probably worth noting that the main character in this fanfic appears in both movies (also as one of the main characters). Originality comes to mind when reading through this fanfic, his profound use of words made the story that much more believable. The use of imagery was carefully selected, not over doing it as such, but giving the reader a true perception of what Marcus was experiencing.

"Kate's red hair seemed to absorb the light, creating a soft halo-esque glow. Her hand touched his chest, the tingle of warmth that spread across his skin made his breath hitch. If it weren't for the tingle of pain staring up in his chest, he would've sworn he was dead and looking at a real angel"

Im not much into Terminator fanfics, but this writer has definitely captured a seemingly insignificant scene, and transformed it in to a piece of poetry. well done.