Title: Once Upon
Author: thewritingbug
Rating: PG
Fandom: Alice
Pairing: Alice/Hatter
Category/genres: Drama, Romance, Pre-Series (character backstory, ftw!)
Length: Long (36,800 words)
Warnings: None
Author's Website / LJ name / Links:
At Fanfiction.Net
At the author’s LJ

Author's Summary: Once upon a time, there was a man called Hatter. Once upon a time, he had a story to tell.

Review: I’m a sucker for character backstory, and this one is done particularly well. This author goes to great pains to put together a past for Hatter that makes sense, coalescing beautifully over fifteen chapters to create a complete picture. It’s sensitive and creative and just GORGEOUS.

One critique I have is that I wish she’d spent just as much time exploring Hatter as he fell in love with Alice – we spend so much of this fic exploring who he was before he met her, and it would have been nice to re-explore the "original" story a little deeper with that new perspective. However, the conclusion definitely makes up for it, and on the whole it’s an extremely satisfying read. I’d recommend it to pretty much anyone. ^_^