Reviewer: Miranda Fave Signed [Report This]
Date: 31 Mar 2014 22:33 Title: McCoy - age eight

Ok, I kinda knew this was going to be a hard hitting story from previous tales and pieces. But God it really was.

Lenny raced for the water’s edge as well, Mrs. Tatum matching him stride for stride.  The two stopped in the ankle-deep water.  Lenny felt the sand being sucked out from underneath his feet as a spent wave rushed past, struggling to return to the depths from whence it came.

You see this is. This is grief. This is tragedy. This is your world, what you perceived as normal, sucked away, pulled out from under your feet. You remain rooted to where you are, but life as you know it crumbles, shifts, disappears ss relentless waves pummel, lap and flow around you. Things change. Things take a new shape. Things ... I don't know, you just end up like the vivid imagery of Lenny and Mrs Tatum, gripping a hold of someone and hold on to the skin of the world because reality is spinning out on you.

Devastating beautiful writing Lil back dog. Wonderfully evocative and ever so clever chosen descriptions and pictures weaved by your words. Just as in the previous chapter where the sprinting through a cornfield becomes a perfect description and renders it in cinematic quality in terms of vividness, you likewise paint the young boys playing, the beach scene, the horror of the moment, the horror of the moment playing out interminably over the day as hope is lost and grief steals in but they remain fixed in their spot. The tide retreats around them, the tide comes back and laps their feet. The heat of the day falls away but truthfully it stole out of them at the moment of the scream. Just aching images created in my head. Wonderful, wonderful writing.

Author's Response:

Thank you, MF.  This was so hard to write, on so many levels, but is an integral part of who McCoy is in my fanon.  And this is the second time young Lenny's world is sucked out from under him--as his father became more self-absorbed, that aspect of his life disappeared as well.  In my fanon, Lenny faces several more trials, but this is by far the worst, and haunts him well into adulthood.

Thank you again for kind words for a piece that was difficult--both for the reader and the author...

Reviewer: M C Pehrson Signed [Report This]
Date: 30 Mar 2014 00:02 Title: McCoy - age eight

Well, I found the chapters on my own. Didn't realize they'd be added into your challenge story.

A tragic day, indeed, for young McCoy and Mrs. Tatum. I'm glad he didn't swim out there, too. What a loss that would have been for Trekdom. I can see why this experience would made him want to save lives. 

Author's Response:

But the fact that he chose that moment to come in from the water haunts him for many years, and contributes significantly to the survivor's guilt he experiences.  IMHO, this is just one of the many events in his young life that solidified McCoy's desire to become a doctor, and contributes to his need to hide behind a gruff exterior and avoid getting close to anyone again, and thus being hurt again.  Fortunately, there were some friendships he just couldn't dismiss.

Reviewer: jespah Signed [Report This]
Date: 29 Mar 2014 18:09 Title: McCoy - age eight

Man oh man that's hard to read.

Author's Response:

It was even tougher to write, but goes a long way to explaining the pain I saw below the surface in the TOS McCoy.

Reviewer: FalseBill Signed [Report This]
Date: 27 Mar 2014 21:25 Title: Spock - age ten

Well LBD as always you’ve found young Spock inner voice and have done your usual top job of showing how this man who will become a living legend, start out as a youngster who does know how to please both of his parents different views.

You give him, dare I say it a logical reasons to flee the family house and a place to go where he wouldn’t be found. Both Amanda and Sarek reasons for a domestic argument on Spock were well based in their characters viewpoints and how they consciously and unconsciously express they’re pain and worry for Spock future is interesting.

That was a very cunning use of the story challenge line, so well done might I add it was a good example of the true words-smith that you are LBD. For that story flow past and I never notice the prose or words themselves but only the (repressed) emotion of the story.

Author's Response:

Thank you, kindly, good sir.  And thanks for the inspiration.  This challenge you dreamt up sparked three shorts for me, and the additional two chapters/stories are up now.

Reviewer: Miranda Fave Signed [Report This]
Date: 26 Mar 2014 00:25 Title: Spock - age ten

Well I am a sucker for Lil black dog Spock story. However, I also love anything to do with the planet Vulcan itself and as a setting that part explores the nature of the Vulcans itself. Spock's walk into the L'langon Mountains speaks volumes for Spock. He seeks out isolation because he is isolated, alienated and alone. He seeks solitude to form his thoughts, to seek his balance and centre. He gets 'lost' in the mountains, seeking absence from the world of Vulcan, of his family, the expectations, demands, hopes, fears and dreams placed upon him, in order to find his own way home.

He puts things on him. It is his own way. He seeks to find an answer for himself. He seeks to find the path, the balance required between his two halves. For himself. He cannot truly embrace and live as his father wound want. Nor can he allow himself what his mother's heritage might ask of him - I doubt Amanda would seek that of Spock, knowing it would pain him, but clearly her own anguish is clear to see and she reads the Vulcans all too well to know that they too feel their pains and angonies too.

We don't hear Spock speak in all of this. Instead, I think we are treated to his thought processes and as to be expected, they are fascinating. Super job Lil black dog.

Author's Response:

Thanks, as always MF, for being able to clearly see my vision.  An intelligent and adept reader, as opposed to competent writing I'm sure. :-)

Reviewer: jespah Signed [Report This]
Date: 23 Mar 2014 18:32 Title: Spock - age ten

Man oh man he's got a tough row to hoe. And you're right, that he would end up in a position where he couldn't possibly please everyone - and also give himself some respite and some measure of relief. I think this is why you and I both write Sybok as a family rebel - not just because it works with canon, but also because this is so damned hard that Sybok, if he knows about this at all, and if he feels any sympathy for his brother at all, feels the need to reject the whole thing and yell, "No más! No más!"

Author's Response:

Exactly.  Spock's painful, isolated childhood was only hinted at in the series (neither Vulcan nor human, at home nowhere, except Starfleet).  My goal is to delve deeper into that, and to understand what this intelligent, sensitive boy must have been feeling, and the causes that ultimately drove him away from his family and the planet of his birth.