"The Time Capsule" is about as far away from "canon" (whatever the hell that means) as you can get without entering "Depth Takes A Holiday" territory (allow me to press the irony of the fact that DTAH is an episode of the show, and therefore indisputably canon). Which, per se, isn't a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. Certainly not in this case. And it's a great idea, on the surface at least: fourteen current LHS victims plus Trent have to write a story, which are then dug up fifty years later by and studied by a year eleven history class (whose students are named after various fic authors --- nice touch). Said students are aided by Li's surveillance tapes... apparently, her successor got rid of the cameras (!) but not what they recorded (okay, that I can believe)...

The intro to this does a reasonable job of juggling comedy and serious setup, and then it's into the story that Jane presumably wrote, and we basically... well, not crash and burn, but certainly spin out on the chicane. This doesn't feel like anyone's interpretation of Jane writing here, it's played too straight and seriously, we open with a pile of exposition we don't need to hear, and certainly not this. It's an interesting idea, Daria never having met Jane, which is presumably why Cincgreen used it for his fanfic contest... but any of that contests' entrants make for a better fic than this. I guess it's decent SF (is that the preferred abbreviation these days?) but it never really gets off the ground in terms of plot or reader interest.

Thankfully, spinning out on the first curve in a 70-lap race rarely rules a driver out completely and Mr Brown has, oh, about fifteen more chapters to make up for it, four of them released as of this writing. Next up is Brittany. Specifically, the Brittany we saw kicking arse in "The Daria Hunter". This is gripping from the start, spy-movie (well, TV show, technically) action mixed with quick, clever little jokes. I could get used to this, anyone up for writing a prequel or three? And there's a believable explanation for it all, assuming you enjoyed "The Manchurian Candidate".

Story number three is called "Screams in the Night", the literary stylings of Tiffany Blum-Deckler, and the good news is you can really imagine Tiffany having written this (after Daria grammar-checked it), or reading it out to you in that is-she-stoned-or-what? voice of hers. As heard in "It Happened One Nut" or CB's "Teacher's Pests". Needless to say, I didn't make the distance. Interesting discussion of the character afterwards, though. Then we see Kevin's... set of words. Again, something the character could have writte--- dictated, with all that entails. But Steve adds colour commentary this time. You will laugh.

Number five is Sandi's, or rather, Sandi's basic plot as written by Ted. Not much to say about this, except it's (/me makes like a drooling fanboy... well, more than usual) good. And, last of all (released before I got this review finished) there's Upchuck's work. And you can't help but wonder about, looking back on the way previous chapters (Jane's excepted) have matched that Steve must be an fic author of, as they say, considerable talent. Which is why it's so goddamn frustrating when he goes out of his way to be mediocre. "Oh, Brother..." is in many ways your generic bad-family-Mar(t)y-S(t)u(e) story, told with decent grammar (putting it ahead of nine out of every ten MS stories) but not much finesse, largely to back up Steve's (credible enough) interpretations of Charles's character. "Snooze alert" is a little harsh, but I wouldn't be reading much more of Upchuck's work (though I'm sure LAD would love it). Oh, and backing up an interp is fine, but the story itself went on too long, (see above re: talented author writing badly) and I didn't buy into Daria's "acceptance speech" at the end.