Live and Don't Die

hullo, Lizz~

apologies for how short this review is going to be--life's got me in a twist so my brain is very scattered as of currently--but i'll try my best to be helpful!

i'm not super-familiar with Doctor Who--i've seen half of the first season--but i do know that the doctor regenerates quite often, so maybe that's something to go by at least. the exasperation of the narrator comes across pretty neatly, but the statements ['the Doctor is dying' + 'Damn it the Doctor...'] are so matter-of-fact that it tinges the entire poem with this light, quirky bitterness. you start with this fact; you end with this fact, and it ties the piece together quite nicely. what i understood was:
- that the poem talks about how anticlimactic certain plot elements can be,
- as well as the recurrent deaths of minor characters to evoke emotional responses from audiences.

and in doing this it actually probes into a deeper topic--that is, the importance of side characters, who are more often than not better fleshed-out or more likeable than the main characters/have the potential to be better fleshed-out. i think the best example for this is in the line: '...Benton who we don't pay nearly enough'. [in passing--it ought to be *whom.]

in terms of voice, i think this is excellent. i do feel, though, that the voice does not get across as well when you read the poem in one go--in fact, the range of emotions came across more strongly when i broke the poem down and reread it. while i appreciate how the lack of punctuation are playing with stream-of-consciousness and lending the narrative the air of a rant, do consider breaking this up a little? it's a lot to take in at once, especially when it runs along with no pauses for the reader to catch a breath!

there is some repetition--i'm not sure how i feel about this--but it does cause the writing to flag. 'lasted the longest', 'stayed a bit...' makes the piece feel monotone and slurred simultaneously. play with this a bit? it's quite an interesting piece, one that i feel has value both as a death count for the fandom and also touches a more three-dimensional topic: the media. pretty meta. i like it.

keep writing! keep it up!

hoped this helped, if a little~

~pomp x

Well, I never have gotten into Doctor Who, but I know enough about it that this more or less made sense to me. I particularly loved the first three lines and the last three lines, the last three lines the most: they were humorous and just sounded like someone who's kind of exasperated like "ugh, the Doctor's dying AGAIN oh fine just get it over with already" which is a funny reaction to death.

(Even though I know it's just because he regenerates.)

(It's kind of like when Sam and Dean die on Supernatural and you just know they're going to come back to life so at this point you just roll your eyes and wait it out. It's only tragic when someone else dies.)

I think it's kind of interesting you chose to do this as a poem, because it's just kind of a list of fandom stuff, specifically the Doctors' various companions. I'm not sure how I feel about that. It's fine as just a funny fandom poem, I guess, but definitely the strongest parts were the first and last lines. Although I could just be saying that because I haven't seen more than a couple episodes of Doctor Who, so you might be able to ignore that.

I was going to suggest cutting down the middle, because it just reads like a long, dry list of companions and their various fates, but since I don't watch the show I won't get into that. Instead I'll say that the first and last lines make it sound like the poem is going to be more about the Doctor and his regenerations, but then the middle bits are all about the companions and don't always relate them to the Doctor's regenerations. I guess what I'm saying is I'm not sure what the point is supposed to be.

Hello LadyLizzLovelace! Kara here for a (hopefully) quick review!

Give me your soul.

With that aside, I'm not the best at poetry but here we go!

Bold = grammar and flow issues.
Italics = suggestions and overall
Strikethrough = remove
Underline = krazy Kara komments.

This review courtesy of

Heya, Liz! Casanova here to do a review for you!

Anyway, I'll just do a quick overall summary for this and let you nitpick what I'm talking about. I'll be reviewing this as poetry although it says other, so I hope you don't mind.

Anyway, overall I can tell that this is a fandom poem. And I honestly hate fandoms, but I think besides the style and a few nitpicks this is pretty decent. Anyway, the style isn't a preference of mine. There's the regular line spacing between each line, and it's really long. I see a thousand works like this every day and honestly sometimes they can get boring. Anyway, the next thing.
The next thing is some of your lines are cut offs. What I mean by this is they randomly seem to cut off, because they're too short in length.Your lasts line, And die again, doesn't have this problem. But, this being said, I do think that you handled this well.
The next nitpick is the lack of style and flow. It's continuous and besides it being based off of a fandom tv show I find that it seems to lack a bit of direction. Prune this and nurture this and I think that you might have decent poem on your hands.

Anyway, that's all I have to say on this one and I hope it helped.

Keep on doing what you're doing and keep on keeping on

your battle partner, Crowley

I like the idea behind this, but it felt very choppy reading it. A lot of the phrasing is awkward, for example:

"Benton remained through the Fourth regeneration."

This line feels very removed from the situation, where most of the work is rather emotional and casual. The tone overall seems to flip-flop between the emotional and the cut-and-dry.


It seems like this is from the point of view of the viewer of the show, but the Doctor's "death" and regeneration as referred to in the beginning should not be a huge surprise, especially as the companions referred to spread over many different incarnations of the Doctor.

Overall, it could use some polish, but I like the perspective it looks at.

Sounds nice. Though I didn't get most of the wording. You see, the only punctuations I've seen is a question mark and a comma. I even mistook it for a poem before rereading, or maybe it's in the wrong category (?) I hope it didn't sound bad when I said that. I won't intend to hurt people. I honestly think it should be written in a slightly different manner, and having quotation marks added.