Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Pre-Kerth Story Reviews--January 2006,

as per K-Con's request :

** THIS STORY REVIEW PROJECT IS NOT AFFILIATED TO THE KERTH AWARDS. **

Here's the first review. Maybe there should be an award for the first story uploaded in the new year?

Let us know if you have any concern with the 'shape' of this first review and please do add your reviews!

c.

#1: Fear by Déjà Vu – 144kb
PG-13

Archive descriptor: Suffering with amnesia, Clark has been held captive for eleven years. His life is about to make a huge turn around. A rewrite of "The Pilot."

type of story - alt beginning

This is quite a dark beginning for Clark Kent and, at times, a very dramatic story as he struggles with his demons. It contains a bit of Clark torture, which I'm guessing some readers will enjoy. (You know who you are<g>) Quite an imaginative plot. One of the intriguing things about it is the addition of a new 'power' to Clark's abilities, one which turns out to be both a blessing and a curse. One of the mysteries is to find out how he developed this power. This is a story of a journey, from horror to the pain and tenderness of rediscovery, with a lovely ending. This is perhaps the most evil Lex I've read. Also a strong Lois who helps a very wounded Clark on his way.

Selected quotes:
"Not from him...Not from him." Clark took a breath. "He always finds a weakness. I have a weakness. *You* have a weakness...*Everyone* does. He'll find it, and he can do *anything* to get what he wants. And he always does in the end."
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" Lois was quickly out the door, leaving Clark staring at it with a dazed expression. Man. He was a pushover."
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" The name reverberated in Martha's head. She hadn't heard that
name in so long...

She trembled, grasping for her husband's hand underneath the
table. He took her hand and gave it a firm squeeze. "Does he have
a last name?" Martha inquired, her breath catching in her throat."
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Possible Kerth Categories: Mid-length, Episode Adaptation, Drama, Relationship, Elseworlds, New Author.
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(review by cc malo)

I don't have another review but that was fantastic, Carol! Really made me want to read the story.

Yvonne

Nice review, Carol. And good idea to start a new thread with the reviews actually in the first post. I'll change the title of the other thread so that it's just a description of the project itself.

Grocery List - 2Kb
by Mary Potts
A grocery list??? Seriously??? Well, yeah, kind of.

Reviewed by: Darcy (DSDragon)

I hesitate to call this a vignette, because most of the story is taken up by a list instead of prose or dialogue. But, as in the case of many Lists Purportedly Made by Lois, this list is not your average list.

It begins with a request that Clark pick up a few things at the store, and ends with a surprise for Clark. Overall, the fic is refreshingly original, and the list, with it’s Patented Lois Babble (I especially like her rant about milk—although I have to say, “blech!” to her preference for low-fat, as I’m one of those people who refuse to sacrifice taste for health), is more interesting than any shopping list I’ve come up with has ever been.

Possible Kerth categories:
• Best Super Short
• Best Waffy Short (due to the last paragraph)
• Possible new category: Most Original Idea for a Fic Plot

Five Crossovers That Never Happened to Lois and Clark - 7Kb
by Marcus L. Rowland
Five 100-word Drabbles crossing Lois and Clark with Men in Black, The Night Stalker, Dead Like Me, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Warning, one of these crossovers involves character death.

Reviewed by: Darcy (DSDragon)

Having been a fan of three of the five serieses which were crossed-over in this collection, I can really see the correlations, and why a more in-depth cross-over would never happen. The author includes short summaries about the relevant parts of the other serieses, so that any reader not familiar with a certain one will be able to understand the drabble written about it.

Possible Kerth categories: (moved up so that those who don't wish spoilers can see the categories without looking at the end of the post)
• Best Super Short
• Best Comedy
• Best Alternate Universe/Elseworlds Story
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The Men in Black cross-over was spot-on, and after I read the DS9 cross-over, I could see why the author believed baby Kal-El’s ship would never have made it off of Krypton. I’ve never seen Night Stalker, but the idea that people could mistake Lex for Superman is pretty funny, considering they look nothing alike, especially in build.

I’ve never seen Dead Like Me either, but the summary at the bottom helped after I’d read the story again and realized that the characters were constantly following Lois around, waiting for her to die so they could take her soul.

I had honestly forgotten about Faith’s relationship with Robin Wood in the seventh season of Buffy, so the “Conversation in a Metropolis Parking Lot” confused me until I’d read the ever-so-helpful summaries. But once I had, I got—and telling people Superman was gay so that Faith will be less inclined to pursue him is classic Lois.

Escaping Trask - 8Kb
by Richard Frantz, Jr.
Here's a different way for Clark to escape Trask, just when Trask thinks he has everything figured out.

Reviewed by: Darcy (DSDragon)

Possible Kerth categories: (moved up so that those who don't wish spoilers can see the categories without looking at the end of the post)
• Best Super Short
• Best Revelation Story
• Best Episode Adaptation
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At first, when the men “in black suits, with dark sunglasses and earpieces showing” burst in the door, I thought this was a Men in Black cross-over. But then, I realized that the earpieces didn’t fit. They are really Secret Service, and the President himself has come to rescue Clark and the others from Jason Trask in this alternate ending to “Green, Green Glow of Home.”

The facts about Clark’s naturalization and citizenship quoted by the president (“He naturalized under the Reagan administration! And before that he had refugee status since the Ford administration.”) make Clark a little younger than he is in the series. The Ford administration was from 1974-1977, but Clark was found—a refugee of Krypton—in 1966.

But this does nothing to detract from the overall entertainment of the story itself. I especially love Clark’s round-about proposal to Lois, and Lois’s acceptance, which is anything but circumspect.

Would this be considered a surprise ending and this therefore a spoiler?

LabRat

Yikes. Both you and Carol thought that particular sentence would be too spoiler-y, so I re-worded.

There are also spoilers in my other reviews, but I'm not sure how I could leave them out without reducing the reviews to a mere sentence or two.

No worries. It's easy to miss that you're including a spoiler. Half the time it's only something you notice when someone else points it out.

In the case of future reviews, I think ensuring that a review is spoiler free would be the main priority. We don't want to spoil stories for those who haven't yet read them.

It's a shame this forum doesn't have one of those handy codes where you can block out text in a post and if someone wants to read it they click on it. Otherwise, it's blank.

I think perhaps such reviews should include a spoiler warning. But be careful - it's often difficult to make sure the warning is big enough on forum posts to ensure it covers the text when someone clicks on the thread. Testing it out to make sure would probably be a good idea.

LabRat

What about making spoilers a gray color, so that they blend into the forums? Then, people who don't mind the spoilers can highlight the text to see it--no, wait, there's no way to do that here either. Bummer. *adds spoiler space to reviews above*

Just Watchin' TV - 10Kb
Potts, Mary
Four kids...One remote...things may get just a tad ugly.

The “Anti-Tank Warning” at the beginning of this fic immediately drew me in--just the warning itself was funny. And despite its sugary-sweetness, I loved how some of the dialogue on the different television channels sometimes made a weird kind of sense when they were put together.

Possible Kerth categories:
• Best Super Short
• Best Waffy Story
• Best Comedy
• Best Alternate Universe/Elseworlds Story
• Best Original/Supporting Character

This is my penultimate review for January stories.

Far From Home - 29Kb
Jensguy
Thanks to a hot tip, Lois and Clark are trapped in a strange new world where they meet new friends and dangerous foes. How will they get home? A Lois and Clark/Harry Potter crossover.

Lots of WHAMS in this fic, and not just in the L&C world. The author has set the story some time after “Tempus Fugitive,” but it starts before “Tempus Anyone?” By the time Lois and Clark get back to Metropolis, “Meet John Doe” has come and gone. Likewise, it is about 1997 in the Harry Potter universe.

It is interesting to note that Hermione uses a lumos solem charm (the author didn’t name the charm, this reviewer is just also an HP fan), apparently to re-charge Clark after he and Lois land in the Forbidden Forest in the middle of Hogwarts winter.

Possible Kerth categories:
• Best Short Story
• Best Revelation Story
• Best Alternate Universe/Elseworlds Story

Okay, here's my last review for January! Sure, Carol did one for this story already, but I wanted to do one too.

Fear - 144Kb
Deja Vu
Suffering with amnesia, Clark has been held captive for eleven years. His life is about to make a huge turn around. A rewrite of "The Pilot."

This isn’t the Clark Kent and Lois Lane that we’re used to—but then again, neither is the background behind this story.

Clark has been the victim of an evil plot that spans more than a decade. Taken from Smallville when he was eighteen, Clark’s memories were forcibly taken from him. Lex Luthor, purportedly Clark’s savior, keeps him by his side as his super-powered enforcer, taking cruel advantage of Clark’s good nature.

“He...he *helped* me. I should be happy he *helped me*." The young voice disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and he spoke with anger, the words he spoke sounding like ones he had heard before. "But I'm an ungrateful wretch. I *deserve* to be punished. *He* is my master," Clark tells Lois when she asks why he doesn’t leave Luthor.

Possible Kerth categories:
• Best Mid-Length Story
• Best Revelation Story
• Best Episode Adaptation
• Best Tearjerker
• Best Drama
• Best Alternate Universe/Elseworlds Story