crack_van | Lessons by walkwithheroes (PG-13)

This be Dave, and she'll be driving your Doctor Who recs this month. While I lean mostly toward het ships, mainly Doctor/Rose, I like ambiguous plotlines and interesting concepts and characterizations that have to work diligently to be believable (if only within the story's own verse). Oh, and futurefic/AU.

Fandom: DOCTOR WHO
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Author on LJ:

walkwithheroes
Author Website: fanfiction tag
Why this must be read:

For all it's a story of his children, this fic is a fascinating look at a broken and mistaken Doctor. Lessons is a sidelong glance at a slowly fading ficcing taboo: incest. It's not a salacious Weasley or Winchester fic but a quiet study on family, abandonment, and heritage. And strangely, oddly, this story of not-about-the-Doctor-at-all seems, to me, to document his descent into madness (and Rose's progression into enabler). I always finish reading feeling dissatisfied with the way things progress and, ultimately, end, but I'm dissatisfied in a way that consistence characterization makes one feel: it doesn't seem out of place what happened in the fic.

By the end of the story, we're really questioning what the Doctor's taught his son, what Rose allows, and what is learned wrong or right by the children. Some grammar & cannon issues (Time "Lady"/the Doctor isn't half human, which is debatable in itself), but definitely worth it if only for the discussion it brings up -- discussion centered largely on the Doctor & would-he-or-wouldn't-he & how he raises the children.

Lessons