Title: In the Hands of an Angry Terminator + Mother is the Name for God [Sequel]
Author: JMHthe3rd

Rating: M
Genre: Posted as Angst, but more like Drama/Action/Mystery
DLP Category: Terminator/Other
Pairing: John/Cameron/...Allison?
Status: Finished. Both stories.

Summary: Continues from Episode 'Earthlings Welcome Here' of T:SCC and quickly spins off into its own story, creating a vast backstory, canon of characters, and insights into the Terminator universe that would make James Cameron jealous.

It starts off somewhat meandering, building up its cast of characters, storylines, and backstory, all while exploring the nature of human/machine interactions, be it love, pity, or friendship - if there is any of this. Somewhat cynical at times, especially of the pairing, and features a weaker, more realistic and teenage John than most Terminator stories. He's not a Commando (though his mother seems to be) but does follow his own path, separating from his mother early on.

The story does show him growing, however, and he does occasionally shoot and protect himself - especially as the story goes on. Instead of being physically powerful, he's more clever than canon, and uses Cameron and other Terminators to his benefit.

Everyone gets a fair share of attention in the story, as it's not exclusively John-centric, though it is the majority focus.

I give it a 5/5 - the writing starts of pretty well, and only gets better. By the time the second story comes around, we're seeing novel quality writing, and little nuances in his prose that makes it especially enjoyable. The story itself is breathtaking in imagination and depth. The sheer amount of thoughts that had to have gone into the story is in itself impressive. What can come can only be better.

This story was derided early on for having a 'pussy' John, which is somewhat true if you expect him to be a one man army. The enemies in this story are more organized, more powerful than in the show, and simply going commando on them would be suicide. There are some moments where I thought he could have 'manned up' a bit, but in retrospect it's nothing that really bothers me.

1/2

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4809923/1/In_the_Hands_of_an_Angry_Machine

2/2:

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5370634/1/Mother_is_the_Name_for_God

This was named once or twice in the All the Other Kids were into Nintendo, but I didn't see it posted by itself. As good as that story is, this one's far superior in both quality and story.

 

I read the first one as a chunk at one point and am half following the second one. It has its problems with John and Sarah being lame/crazy at times, but has a pretty cool time war cosmology to somewhat offset that.

The multiple interacting discrete futures is an interesting angle, and I found myself interested when first reading if only for the novelty of a story trying to come to logical conclusions about the state of affairs inside of a time war (Will reality eventually "converge" in the limit where the sum of the current and all previous futures perpetuates itself, or will it just spiral completely out of control? Who knows!).

Some characters are a little bit 1D, and it looks better on some of them than others. Jessie is sorta cool from a psychotic bitch standpoint, but that comes hand in hand with some Sarah-bashing which I found kinda annoying. It's got Jameron coming out of its ears in middlingly angsty fashion, as would be expected. The best characterization imo is that of the Terminator 3rd column (Weaver & co), especially some stuff in the second story which is explaining a lot of the wtf involved with that.

All and all I'd give it a 4/5 for being a wonky TSCC fic, with some annoying parts and some good parts.

 

I read this and have been following it for a while now and it gets a 5/5 from me. Cameron's character is just :awesome. Amerison summed it up quite nicely.

 

The opening of chapter 13 is one of the most intelligent ones I've read in any fandom yet.

Loving this story. It should get a lot more press.

 

This was surprisingly good. The author noticeably improved over the course of the story. He has a good handle on the issues with falling in love with a machine, and isn't blind to the problems of the John/Cameron relationship like a typical shipper [in any fandom] would be.

My personal problem with the story is that John Connor was written too close to canon. It seems strange to criticise a fanfic author for keeping their main character in character, but I don't like emo John in TSCC, and that carries through here. The author does do a good job in furthering John's emotional growth and setting him on the path to maturity and adulthood, so I can't complain much.

Props to JMHthe3rd for writing a good TSCC story. They only other one I liked was Nintendo.