Sentinel 101

Sentinel Fanfiction
Title:	Sentinel 101
Author(s):	Susan Foster
Date(s):	1999 or before
Length:	15,825 words
Genre:	Sentinels and Guides are Known AU
Fandom:	The Sentinel
External Links:	Sentinel 101 at AO3 Sentinel 101 at the author's website (Wayback Machine link)
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Sentinel 101 is a Sentinel story by Susan Foster. It is the first story in The GDP Series.

It was published in the zine Susan's Sentinel Stories #1 and is online.

Excerpt

Simon saw the GDP personnel arrive and focused on the small figure between them. This was going to be Jim's guide? This kid, barely five foot nine, dark brown hair touching his shoulders and falling into his eyes, nothing but a hippy punk? His nose wrinkled as the too thin body was dragged past him and he smelled the stench of old sweat and new fear. The kid had not bathed in days. There was no way he wanted this person near his friend.

Before he could say anything, Amy took it out of his hands. "Thank you for coming so fast, Senior Guard Wilson, we do have something of an emergency. We have a sentinel nearing critical zone out; he needs a guide and he has apparently formed a tentative connection with this person."

Wilson sneered, "He's still a handful, ma'am. We need more time to discipline him."

Captain Mason nodded, and cut in, "We'll put Sandburg to him now and see if they bond. I know he's a flight risk, but from what I understand, Ellison is more than capable of keeping him in line."

2006 Reactions and Reviews at Crack Van

When this story was recced at Crack Van, it generated an interesting exchange among fans regarding shared universes, negative feedback and manners, personal tastes, and what constitutes slash. Some of these comments are below:

Imagine a universe in which Sentinels are valued for their abilities and feared for their protective, sometimes savage, instincts. To allow Sentinels to remain sane and function in society they are bonded with empathic guides, who become their property. The GDP, Guide Development Project, is a corrupt agency with full authority to find, train, and control empaths.

Blair is an empath who tried to hide his abilities in order to keep his freedom. Jim Ellison is a late-blooming Sentinel who is repulsed by the idea of owning and being dependent on another human being. But Blair is captured, first by psychotic Sentinel Alex Barnes and then by the GDP, who label him rogue and set out to break him. When Jim goes into a life-threatening crisis, the two are thrown together.

The GDP series, along with the associated Learning Curve, Dark Guide, and Dark Sentinel series, are very popular in Sentinel fandom. Nevertheless, I have been uncertain about reccing them. Susan's writing is often rushed and sloppy, riddled with poor grammar, plot holes, and typos (especially when first posted - the older stories have been mostly cleaned up). But she tells such gripping and emotional stories that readers overlook the flaws. The concepts in these stories have inspired many other authors as well, spawning a whole sub-universe of Sentinel fiction. I think it is a good idea for the interested reader to start here, at the beginning.

PS. While classified as Gen the bonding scenes are sensual enough to satisfy many slash fans. Enjoy :-)

-- the_hobbet's recommendation at crack_van, March 2006

[ariss_tenoh]
Isn't there a slash version of this story by a different author? I seem to remember reading it.

[the_hobbet]
There have been other authors who took the concepts in Susan's stories and ran with them. I'm sure there are multiple slash versions but I don't know their names/authors.

[Anonymous]
Susan Foster? BLECH!!!

[the_hobbet]
LOL, I know where you are coming from. To be honest, I stopped reading after awhile. I just couldn't take the sloppiness. Most authors improve with experience. She just seemed to get more rushed and careless. But I recced the series because in spite of the flaws it is significant in the fandom, and I did enjoy the earlier stories.

["A different anonymous"]
Because her concept was so interesting, I was willing to forgive a lot in this series. But I lost patience a couple of years ago, when the "this is not slash" disclaimers started appearing in all caps. If you're going to write "bonding" scenes with your naked male characters twined around each other, screaming in ecstacy, just admit that you're writing slash and get on with it.

["First anonymouse"]
What she said.

[the_hobbet]
Though I have reservations about Susan Foster's writing, I applaud her willingness to share her universe and her concepts with other writers. The Sentinel fandom is richer for it.

[patk]
While it's certainly everybodies right to like or dislike a story for whatever reasons, I find it highly impolite and disrespectful to the person recommending here to express an opinion in a way like the first anonymous comment does. It's even more impolite to do it anonymously, in my opinion.

It's been a while since I read anything in Susan Foster's GDP series. Initially, I found the concept interesting but in the long run I couldn't handle the way she portrayed Blair. It was just not the guy I liked to see and was used to see from the show, not even if thrown into such a world.

Yes, I agree with finding Susan's "bonding scenes" suspiciously close to slash. Okay, in my view it *is* slash - despite Susan insisting upon it's not.

I mean, if an author really doesn't want to give the impression of a slash-scene, he or she should probably avoid terms and descriptions that will likely remind a lot of readers of sex-scenes.

Aside from that, this AU-concept sparked a lot of other stories that play with the idea of a world, where sentinels and guides are known, some of them handling the matter better than Susan does. Again, my opinion, you (generic) might see this different.

From this view it's true, Susan's work made an impact on the AU-side of TS-fanfiction that goes beyond the question whether one likes her stories or not.

[bluebrocade]
While it's certainly everybodies right to like or dislike a story for whatever reasons, I find it highly impolite and disrespectful to the person recommending here to express an opinion in a way like the first anonymous comment does. It's even more impolite to do it anonymously, in my opinion.
I agree!! Why can't people feel free to share their dissenting opinions without being anonymous jerks about it? I'm reccing TS this month and the same thing happened to me. I wonder if it's the same anonymouse.