Polishing Shoes
| Sentinel Fanfiction | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Polishing Shoes |
| Author(s): | T. Verano |
| Date(s): | 22 September 2006 |
| Length: | 13,733 words |
| Genre: | gen, hurt/comfort, angst and humor |
| Fandom: | The Sentinel |
| External Links: | online here |
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Polishing Shoes is a Sentinel story by T. Verano. It won the Short Story (Gen) category at the 2008 Light My Fire Awards. A podfic is available here. A follow-up fic by laurie_ky is Discerning the Magi's Gift.
Summary:
The first Christmas. Quantum physics, coffee and occasional minor heartburn.
Reactions and Reviews
I should preface this by saying that I *love* T. Verano's gen fic and this story sat in my possible recs folder for a long time, because I really *wanted* to rec it. Unfortunately...Here's the thing: this fic is about 25% Blair angsting, 50% Blair hurting, and 25% Blair being comforted. While I love all of those things in the right ratios, I really need there to be at least as much comfort as hurt in my fic. In fact, I won't complain at all if a fic ends up having *all* of the hurt be pre-story and thus be entirely comfort. This means that, in the case of Polishing Shoes, I left the story feeling unsatisfied, because there just wasn't enough comfort to make up for all of the hurt. Plus, the last line kind of bothered me. It would have been funny (as was the intention) if Blair had been fully recovered, but as it was it kind of pained me, because I didn't feel that Blair had been sufficiently built back up that I could laugh at him getting another smack.
Short version: too much hurt, not enough comfort. Still a good read:) [1]
This lovely story is an account of Blair and Jim's first Christmas together - well, not-Christmas, really. See, Jim likes his peace and quiet at the holidays, and Blair figures the best present he can give him is to clear out a few days. No problem, right? Except when everything goes horribly wrong... As in most of her stories, T. has Blair's voice down perfectly, both internal and external. And there's no mystery as to why this story won Best Gen Short Story for 2008 in the LMFAs.[2]
References
- ^ jane_elliot. Polishing Shoes by T. Verano, Archived version at Epic Rants. Posted 5 June 2008.
- ^ Polishing Shoes by T. Verano (G), Archived version at Crack Van. Posted 21 October 2011.