I love you. Let's gather firewood.

Baby come on, we'll be a long time gone, that's time enough for sleep.

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:22:37 GMT

Do you sometimes read a fic and find yourself completely riveted, thinking, "This is what I would have written if I could have written it"? I'm not talking about the dismissive declaration of, I always wanted to be a writer/doctor/astronaut, in which the unavoidable implication is, Oh, I could do that if I really wanted to. What I mean is, do you ever find in a fic, not just the confluence of another person's belief's about the characters with your own beliefs, but a recognition of how you think; something of a world view, really. That the way the author approaches meaning is familiar, almost the way your own voice is familiar? And it has nothing to do with usurping credit or patting yourself on the back by proxy (not to say you can't do the latter, should you want to *g*). It's about the feeling of being at one with something that is not your own.

I hope this is something other people feel. It's a very intimate thing in my experience, and it's always invaluable when it happens. It's also one of the things that I find I can experience within the context of fanfiction but that I rarely, if ever, find in the reading of original fiction.

A few weeks ago wendelah1 posted Yellow Balloon by Zyllah in xf_book_club. It's become my favorite S8 vignette - exquisite, subtle, brave, wrenching. This afternoon I remembered Wen having mentioned that it was a shame the author had only written two X-Files stories. So I went to read the second one. Click the pic if you'd like to do the same. It's about 14K, it won't take long.

It's late S7 - low key and gorgeous and thinkish, and Mulder and Scully are all carefully tangled up in themselves and each other, and I'm so in love with it (plus, Jabberwocks!) I really don't want to mince this one up to post a fragment, so no snippet-accompaniment this time.

Care to share one of your own "This Fic is What My Brain is Like On the Inside" fics with me?

The One With the Tear-Away Pants.

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 06:28:01 GMT

And I quote:

FIC: He made one last attempt at stalling her, trying to make her think rationally. "But Scully, don't you want our first time to be special? Filled with love and tenderness and, well, maybe in a not-so-public place?"

ME: AHAHAHAHAHAHA! AHAHA! HA! HA, HA. HA.

What's even better? This fic was written in such a way that I really can't tell how serious the writer is. They might not be joking at all. It's a jokey sort of fic, but it's not outright satire, and the writer also uses the term (oh god, it actually pains me to type this) "love tunnel", and seems pretty serious about it. So yeah. Laughter.

***

Also, I bought The Book. Which book? THIS BOOK. My reasonably affluent relatives sent me birthday money belatedly and I managed to dash out and purchase it before my common sense could take over and convince me that $72.00 for one book is being frivolous to the point of insanity. I now own it, and you know what? NO BUYER'S REMORSE FOR ME, I'VE GOT A BAJILLION PAGES OF MULDER AND SCULLY IN HIGH-GLOSS, HIGH-RESOLUTION GORGEOUSNESS AND I'M FUCKING THRILLED ABOUT IT!

I love that full page shot of them in the FTF hallway. I think it's probably not from an actual take, but maybe from one of the times when they kept the camera rolling and just tried to get oriented and take the scene again without cutting. I'm pretty sure they do that, and I'm pretty sure that's what this picture is, because Scully is in the foreground, sort of looking off at a slight angle, not quite at the camera, and she still looks very much like she's Scully not Gillian, and Mulder is in the background, but he's facing the other way so all you can see is the back of his head. It's just this perfect encapsulation of a moment that is, creatively speaking, half formed. It has one foot in the fictional world and one foot in the world of 'Creating A Motion Picture' and both of those worlds are familiar to us, but oh so foreign, too.

Does everyone who buys the book get cue cards from the same episode? Mine were from The Host.

Poll: have you ever been so embarrassed you actually whimpered?

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:09:10 GMT

The embarrassment of rereading your own old, melodramatic, out of character fanfic?

Like getting drunk and storming across town in the middle of the night to make a desperate pass at the object of your obsession. Being strangely unable to stop cutting him* off with proclamations of your ardor every time he tries to talk. Then throwing up on him, just as your voice is getting really shrill on that one final 'but I love you!'

The embarrassment of having someone beta your old, melodramatic, out of character fanfic?

Like his best female friend - who has become your friend by proxy - coming to your house the next day and finding you with vomit still in your hair. She has come to return your purse, which you left at his house last night. You ask her in because you both know she's 'heard about what happened'. You cry and can't stop yourself from asking her if she thinks you ever had a chance with him at all. She is very nice not to mention that you are wearing his shirt. The one he says went missing months ago.

It's actually this bad. But then it's also kind of freeing, because after you've confronted that fic and exposed it to the light, you realize it's actually nothing like this at all. Unless your beta reader is mean and tells you Mulder and Scully are going to memorize your fic to quote for laughs at FBI functions. My betas have been lovely.

If anyone'd like to share their own squirming, cringing, hiding-under-cushions, scrunching-their-eyes-closed-tightly, emitting-high-pitched-noises-of-discomfort type responses to their past works of fanfic (or even original writing), please feel free to do so. I'm not looking for you to pity my neurotic behavior, but if you can relate, well, the more the merrier, right?

*male pronoun usage for convenience only.
+ Random Factoid: that guy I'm quoting, Douglas Engelbart, invented the computer mouse.

Frey says 'oblique' is the word. Me? Oh, I'll drink to that.

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 03:03:19 GMT

**Warning for reminiscing about the angst of days gone by.
**Also, a little bit of current angst.

"I don't care if it's honest, if it's fun," said Big Red.
"I don't care if it's fun, if it's real," said Kym.
"I don't even care if it's real," said Debbie. Not everyone knew what she meant.
-- Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Some time in 2003 I wrote roughly half the first draft of a BtVS fic. This was to be a fill-in-the-blanks for the Alternate Universe that was established in the Season 3 episode The Wish. The scenario provided by canon was, “A world in which Buffy Summers never comes to Sunnydale.”

My ‘plan’ was to pick up with Buffy in LA on the day she received her ‘calling’, which is an event that can be seen via flashback in a Season 2 episode. Then follow her through the death of her first watcher, the burning down of the Hemery High School gymnasium, her subsequent expulsion, her parent’s divorce, her brief stay in a mental healthy institution (all of which being canon) – then diverge – have her mother decide to move elsewhere, not Sunnydale. Isolate Buffy from her rightful life, see what happens, and eventually have her show up in Sunnydale, hardened and jaded and otherwise rather worse for wear, as happens in The Wish.

After all this time, mainly what I think when I consider this fic is, That’s a pretty great idea. I ought to write that one day. Because I feel like I never did. What I did write was something decidedly more sinister.

It was the first piece of fanfic I’d ever written (discounting all of the filking I’d done in a ‘drawerfic’ capacity). I was 15 at this time. When I quite writing after roughly a month’s work, I was up to at least 25,000 words. I can't remember putting any effort into all this writing. I simply sat down and began typing, quickly sliding under a kind of numb thrall, emerging when I was beckoned back into the external world by my mother calling up the stairs, or else not until I’d exhausted myself with the project. When I was at it, I didn’t take time to spell properly or even consider punctuation.

The writing that emerges from this thrall is drugged, delirious, nearly unintelligible. It is clear that I was viciously preoccupied with delving – using Buffy’s character – into every kind of pain, torment, cruelty and desperation I could conceive of. With a masochistic kind of relish for the darkness of the subject matter, I wrote torture, murder, and rape. I wrote parent abandonment, substance abuse, anorexia, and self-injury (veiling these last issues thinly with a claim that “Buffy” had become too numb for self-preservation). I also wrote casual sexuality, used largely as a form of self-punishment, and the prospect of femslash, which “Buffy” resisted, though not entirely.

Reading back over all of this now, it is fascinating, but it is also disturbing in the extreme. It was written during the two years I was actively trying to become Buffy Summers. I did everything I could: plucked my eyebrows, cut my hair, made my own wardrobe, took martial arts classes, practiced her expressions, memorized her lines. People I didn’t know told me I looked like Sarah Michelle Gellar. Even my anorexia was strongly fed by my belief that if there were less of me, there would be less that wasn’t her.

Meanwhile, in the writing, I did not neglect “Buffy’s” world, though one would’ve expected me to. The fic is heavy with references to canon. Echoes of the canonical universe torment “Buffy” constantly, driving her to the brink of insanity, like whispers in her ear, like someone walking over her grave – indications of the life she should be living but isn’t. Strange, I find it, that with such knowledge and attention paid to her world, the character herself is unrecognizable. I wrote her like an angry, starving, homeless cat – violated and grungy, yet still heroic and - of course - unquestionably beautiful.

I think what this suggests about my emotional and mental state at the time is reasonably clear. However, on a deeper level, the very style of the writing has become as thought-provoking as its content. Looking back on this fic I marvel at the sheer word volume, and how unconscious I was that the process was any more complicated than I was making it. Research was an unheard of concept. Technical merit was unimportant. All subject matter, no matter how heavy, was presumed to be justified and realistically handled. Betraying the character through OOC writing was a concept far, far to complex (and perhaps too irrational) for it to ever even occur as a possibility. Criticism, if it was to come, was not important. And I wasn’t ashamed to anticipate the praise I would receive for my story – when I posted it – when it was finished.

Thinking about this, there are several things that are apparent.

1. My writing style has always been, by its very nature, oblique. It has the lack of polish of the racing mind, the shameless, indelicate intentions of the racing mind. To a reader, it is as if only half the story is being told, and the part that is, is out of order. Six years ago I wrote oblique prose without any consciousness of the process, or how it related to me.

2. Only lately I’ve been waking up from dreams in which the world comes apart, starting with meaning. In my dreams, ‘cup’ means ‘old dog’, and the presence of an old dog means ‘turn to your left’ and left isn’t really a direction, but an emotion, and that emotion is ‘fear’. There’s a cup so I’d better run, but which direction? What a strange implement that old dog is, what a shape - what’s going on - I can’t move because left isn’t a direction, and if left isn’t a direction then right means ‘sly’ and backwards is nowhere, just a nose, I think it’s a nose, and that old dog has water spilling out over the rim in fear or was it wet no fearwasawetdogwetcuprunleftohgod. So the world comes apart, and I wake up reeling with senselessness, and it takes five seconds, ten, for me to recall and to trust again the ordered world, the world of commonly held symbols, which is what we know as ‘real’.

3. My writing has become far less oblique than it once was. Harsh fragments once left unable to be connected, even with the most basic understanding of their intended meaning, are now shaped fragments with fine filaments of connectivity stretched between them. The level of care and focus it takes for me to manage these fragments and filaments is beyond what I would call difficulty. It is something like pain, and also like fear. The frustration I have with myself in attempting such delicacy is both painful and fear inducing. For me, writing was once comparable to the self help and harm of blood-letting. It is now akin to surgery, complete with an obligation to complete the thing with sutures.

4. I barely write at all anymore, not like I used to. And god, I can’t begin to say how afraid I am that I was better off before - as I was - clumsy, and writing. Clumsy, and unconcerned, and un-self-aware; when I didn’t hesitate, and tore myself to ribbons in my writing, but I wrote thousands of words at a sitting, and I believed I could tell the story I wanted to tell, and I never woke up in the mornings having lost the plot in my sleep.

***

More and more I'm finding that, for me, the single most beneficial thing I can learn is the ability to accept existence as reality. All these symbols and ideals and ideas are icing on the cake.

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 06:59:52 GMT

Run-Ins with Fanfic in the Past 24 Hours:

My Father (we are idly discussing shipping tropes): One of these days Scully is going to decide to make some extre money and join a hotline.

Me: ...um...

My Father: What?

Me: ...someone's...already...done...that... . And the Red Shoe Diaries crossover, too.

My Father: They have?! (amused) And you've read this.

Me (lying through my teeth): No, no-- but these things do have synopses, you know.

***

I was checking out a archive for German fanfic when my eyes caught these words in one of the fics: Jetzt! Endlich, endlich!

I was about to back click, but pause, having my suspicions. Then I catch another line further down: Ja!, oh ja, Scully hatte ja so recht:

Me, suspiciously: Okay, is this porn?!

***

Also, apparently this >> Akte X << means The X-Files in German. I was rather proud of myself for intuiting that with the first link I tried.

***

THERE IS A WEBSITE FOR THE JEBUSLUG! WORSHIPPING THE JEBUSLUG!
(There is also an entire filking archive.)

***

Archive Note: Not Close Enough by Lysandra (MSR, Angst! Ooh, the angst! Ooh, the season three angst! It's enough to make me break out into smut! Er ... song. (NC-17)

Me: I WILL NOT BE SEDUCED BY THE PROMISE OF A BISCUIT! DO NOT BE RIDICULOUS! NO, WAIT, STOP! Please stop...? Fine, but I'm not going to read you until I'm done doing normal-people things -- so there!

*

Anyway, that's-- that's what I did today, pretty much.

How's it going to get there, Mulder, thumb down a dromedary?

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:35:28 GMT

Prologue

I very much feel there are things (situations) that can be written about in fanfic, which visually should be left to the imagination. I've been hesitant to post this sketch for that reason. I can only say that when I drew it I meant nothing but respect for the characters. I was drawing a situation in which they happened to be naked, not drawing a situation because they were naked.

The Scene:

"Our mummy has gone to Albuquerque."

"Mulder..." she growls and sighs. His arms around her slippery body
ride out the upheaval. She speaks with exasperated precision. "A
cadaver stuffed with natron reanimates and locomotes its way to New
Mexico. How's it going to get there, Mulder, thumb down a dromedary?"

The mirror he wedged over the faucets is fogged, but in a water
streak he can partially see her face, her eyes heavy-lidded, color in her
cheeks. His dark head is above hers, his arms are crossed beneath her
chin. She turns her head and idly licks a drop of bath water from his
shoulder.

This isn't real, he thinks.

This cannot possibly be happening.

Notes: The first time a recs page turned me on to Parabiosis, I quite reading after the first scene because I wasn't really interesting in reading that much RST in one go. I thought the whole fic would go on chronologically from the first scene. You know what they say about assumptions. They keep you from reading really good fanfic.

Fanart Notes: I drew this forever ago. Almost two years ago now, I think. It feels very separate from me. It actually turned out far better than I was expecting it to at the time. If there's one thing I'd like to change it's to have Mulder's attention drawn downwards more. I do kind of love how when I was adjusting the brightness and contrast after uploading this the eraser smudges showed up a sort of scuffed pinkish color. It actually didn't look like that on the page, but I liked the effect so I kept it.

Yuck. Again. Still.

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 01:01:29 GMT

I know this is pointless and unpleasant, but sometimes when something bothers you, talking about it helps. Or so I've heard.

There is a big difference between sympathy and support. I, like many, have been finding it disturbing that there are so many people who appear to want Polanski released. Does that mean they want him freed of all charges? If this were still a matter of sympathy I would feel as I did before. Sympathy is not an action in and of itself. It is possible to sympathize with a person even as you willfully put a noose around their neck (to be rather extreme about it). I understood it when his friends and colleagues sympathized with him, regardless of his actions. I don't think the prevalence of such automatic sympathy is healthy for society as a whole, but we do have a tendency to be sympathetic outside the bounds of reason and sense-- we all do, not just celebrities. However, to argue for both the freedom and the freeing of a rapist is an action, and a harmful one. People are in fact supporting him. Why?

This case keeps provoking consideration. I'm a little ashamed for talking about it (twice now), as though an outside observer such as myself can express anything more than a largely uneducated opinion. However, the whole case has gotten under my skin a bit, and I find myself trying to come to my own terms while - fortunately quite apart from me - the case comes to its.

All the individuals who's names are on that list? I still respect them as artists, and I don't see any reason not to. But as considerate and reasonable people, I suddenly have doubts of them, where before I'd never thought of it one way or the other.

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 03:10:44 GMT

David Gray, will you please come and, just, um, maybe have coffee with me some time? His new album, Draw the Line is out, and it is unspeakably lovely. Perhaps not quite as unspeakably lovely as Slow Motion, but considering that Slow Motion is my favorite album in existence, I figure I can stand it if his new one is only 95% as good, ballpark figure. I've been listening to Jackdaw and Kathleen all afternoon.

Also, today I woke up to Richard Dawkins on CBC radio, talking about such delightful things as evolution, biology, and atheism. I have come to the realization that my entire outlook would likely be much better if I could make this a common occurrence. He was delightfully well spoken, and very polite. He did not sound frustrated in the least, which was a relief since well-spoken frustrated atheists are quite common. I thought he might be a bit of a brute about it, too, considering he did title his book The God Delusion. He didn't clam up in interview, but he wasn't the least bit arrogant either. There was an anecdote about autopsying a certain nerve in a giraffe's neck that was fascinating (and made me think of Scully and the elephant). Dawkins and the interviewer also had a moment regarding consciousness, in which he declared he felt he possessed it, and knew it as being a certain way, and because she seemed to be not unlike himself, he felt alright about assuming her conscious as well. And this could also be said of his dog. I felt very flattered there for a moment, the interviewer said affably. I want to go to this strange and wonderful place where accidentally insulting someone is rightly and thoroughly difficult. *sigh* I'm definitely keeping my radio tuned to CBC anyway.

Sat, 03 Oct 2009 03:57:29 GMT

STARGATE UNIVERSE

Not bad at all. One of the pitfalls, I feel, of BSG having been such a stupendous show, and having garnered such respect, is that it upped the bar to an almost hopeless height for new aspiring science fiction television programs. They can't all be BSG, but because BSG proved that such wonderful storytelling is possible, we began to have a much more critical view of science fiction. Campy and fun went 'out' and profound and intelligent came 'in'. This is how I saw it, anyway. So I find Stargate Universe (so far) to be refreshing in that it's not trying to be out and out brilliant, but it's not content to languish in the footprint of its predecessors either. The writing is sharper and leaner, and the camera work is hipper and prettier than SG-1 and Atlantis, but it still feels like a Stargate program. It doesn't divorce itself completely from its roots. It doesn't feel like a space program that's trying to prove to its audience that "space programs are cool, and cool people like them, we swear!" Tonight's pilot was simply two hours of interesting plot, and the introduction of characters that, while slightly dull (some of them) to my immediate judgment, have a really good chance of enduring and becoming much beloved.

Eli Wallace was an excellent 'lampshade' characters, humorously but naturally pointing out all of the Stargate universe oddities that have always seems kind of a stretch of the imagination to the uninitiated, but have never been commented upon.

And Dr. Rush.

Oh, Dr. Rush. You and I are going to get along famously, I can just tell.

More (positivity) Regarding the Porn Battle

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 02:09:53 GMT

I think the distaste I was feeling towards the Porn Battle was based on a lack of fanfic that was anything but porn. A writer who can manage to write a story in so few words is impressive. I've always perceived a drabble, ideally, to be similar to a story, in that it is attempting to formulate a structure for itself - to follow an outline of dramatic rise and fall, though more loosely and with less detail than a fully fledged story would incorporate. But there are some drabbles that are, well, invertebrate. They have no structure whatsoever. I don't think it was the smut that was getting to me. I love biscuits. I could consume a whole tray of them. But there is a difference between a smut biscuit and a smut...glob.

That said, the Porn Battle seems to have been a lot better these last two days. The novelty of the first one's worn entirely off, but then I was very new to LJ when the first one happened, so it makes sense that it seemed novel to me then. There have been a couple of really great pieces, and, above that, the overall quality of the fics seems to have gone up. Fics like the angry and sexy "Rumors" by soft_thrills, and the sexy and gentle "Balm in Gilead" by aloysiavirgata are what a really great porn battle runs on. They're succinct but complicated, with implications that stretch far out beyond their humble word counts - true drabbles. amalnahurryeh's fic "Taxi Ride" is a very fine smut biscuit with an edge, and though it's something of a fully fledged stand alone fic, it is perfect in tone for a porn battle - sexy and fun and kind of brazen, but not lacking in a slight sense of the underlying seriousness of the characters. scooly42's drawing, 'Supply Closet' was both delightfully cheeky and well within the bounds of good taste -- thoroughly evocative of ten different fanfic scenarios, without being overly demonstrative. Then there's bravenewcentury's fic "The Even-Numbered Pages Are the Past". The conflict for me, here, is that calling such a fic 'porn' seems so utterly absurd that it takes my brain a moment to know what to do with the fic when read in the context of a porn battle. But no matter how incongruous a porn battle is as a backdrop, a fic like this one - even just a drabble - when spurred into words by a porn battle, will never fail to make the entire porn battle seem worthwhile in my mind.

Oh Boy.

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:28:29 GMT

1. I saw JOHN KRASINSKI (the guy who apparently plays Jim something-or-other on The Office) on Conan last night. Tall, lanky man, fast talking, very witty but in that kind, knowing, "I was shy and awkward in high school" way, where you sense there's a brain behind the wit. I love that-- people who listen closely and observe very well, and then they respond, so that they seem very kind and smart, because their response is to the specifics of the situation and not to some preconceived notion of what they ought to say. Yeah, in all of ten minutes John charmed me. Thoroughly. I think I've been more hormonal that usual lately. Actually, I normally notice these things. I guess when you spend 95% of your life feeling like your endocrine system got an order that you wanted your hormonal cocktail 'virgin', you tend to notice even the slightest inclination towards sexuality. It's nice.

2. SIMON BAKER. Oh, dear god, Simon Baker. TV Guide Magazine named him The Sexiest Man on TV. The thrall his character Patrick Jane has over me is ridiculous. JS introduced me to The Mentalist (which is nothing great in itself), and to Patrick Jane. After three episodes I emailed her thus: i'm trying to think of a delicate, articulate way to suggest the carnality of my impulses towards Patrick Jane. Even my father acknowledges he's sexy. I'd never said anything of the like, because I rarely do, and I'm cooking dinner, and a Mentalist rerun is on, and from the other room my father says, "Okay, he's sexy, right? I mean, even I have to admit he's sexy." Admittedly, the first five or six episodes were the ones in which he was written best-- the creators influence I suspect. Then, when he was nominated for a Best Actor Emmy, the small New Westminster media rag commented, "Why he's nominated is unclear. We want into Simon Baker's pants. That doesn't mean he's Emmy material". Usually I would object to this sort of talk. And I do object to the spirit it was in. Simon Baker does a fine job with the character. Even so...OHGODYES it's true. I wonder how the show will stand up to it's second season. Not well, I'm predicting, despite it's popularity.

3. GILBERT BLYTHE. I'm two thirds of the way through Anne of Green Gables and I barely know anything about Gilbert Blythe and he's still such a little charmer. If I hadn't read the synopses for the rest of Montgomery's books, I would be feeling very conflicted, because I already ship Anne and Gilbert, and they're only kids. But apparently they marry and have five children so...that raven has galoshes. I'm frankly astounded by the natural, earnest tropiness of the Anne/Gilbert relationship so far. It's awesome because when Montgomery was doing it, tropes as we think of them weren't even a twinkle. But Anne's denial that she has any interest in Gilbert of any kind is so vehement and sincere, and his immediate interest in her is so quietly inexhaustible, and she is constantly beginning to talk about him and catching herself halfway through saying his name. And when a flower drops off her costume in a play, HE PICKS IT UP AND KEEPS IT. Montgomery, you win with the shipping. Seriously, you win. You've got me, you've got everybody, I think. tree, I admit, I was wrong in my assumption that AoGG would be boring. I'm liking it quite well, and above that, it's clearly something I'll be glad to have in my mental library in the future. It is timeless, isn't it? besides all of this, Anne Shirley has won me over. She really is the heart, lungs and brain of the story, and I don't want to belittle her by not talking about her, but this is my indulgent journal post that is about members of the male gender.

4. JACK KEROUAC...is on my sweatshirt today. Well, you know, a drawing of him is. Neither Sal Paradise nor Dean Moriarty, nor Kerouac himself are particularly swoon-worthy to me. In fact, I find their lifestyle a little off putting. But On the Road is a classic, and for good reason, and I've been enjoying the fact that I have recently found myself a big smock-sized sweater with such a froogy dude on it. Now I can be pretentiously literary and have everybody know about it.

Yes, that's right, I'm posting about boys. Men and a boy, actually, but still. I know, WTF?

Contention Regarding Recent Events, Big and Small

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 04:39:55 GMT

1. The other evening in conversation, my father compared Scully to Kali, goddess of the bone yard, goddess of fertility, a force of annihilation, a redeemer of the universe. I refrained from announcing that I've been trying to incorporate this idea into fanfic for easily two years now.

2. I've decided that my biggest problem with House is that the writes created such an exquisite character in House, and now they constantly occupy themselves with trying to create characters who can out-rationalize him. This never works, and if they want to force it to work, they must lessen the integrity of House to do it. House, as I see him, is wholly a rational being. Rationality comprises much of the fabric of him and his experience of the world. Everything he does makes sense once it is unraveled, even when the outcome that results from his 'problem solving' is not a desirable one. The people around him are the ones who must cope with their inability to see the rationality of his actions - the rationality that will stave off catastrophe again and again. I have also realized that the reason I actually approved of House's relationship (such as it was) with The Married Woman in the season premier, is because she was not written and someone trying to out-rationalize him. She was not directly trying to do anything. And in her stasis she was solely responsive to each moment as it came. She was employing the ultimate ethics, without contrivance or prejudice. She appeared to be an entity replete with kindness, yet she was also an adulteress with a young child-- not only were her actions not morally based, they did not appear to even take morality into account. And for that reason House really couldn't have manipulated her had he wanted to, because everything she did was simply the best thing she could see to do on the whole. But the writers went and pissed me off by suggesting that it was House, in turn, who did not understand what his relationship with this woman had been. She'd 'gotten through to him' -- as if it works that way. Don't make me laugh, writers. House is the one who would have understood, as it evolved, exactly the relationship that was between them. So yes, I didn't watch House this week. Because why?

3. It could just be me (I do seem to be feeling contentious today) but this time around the Porn Battle has really sucked. The turn out was meager, which was to be expected, since it really hasn't been long since the last one, but besides that, I couldn't bring myself to more than scan most of those fics. There are exceptions, of course. I can think of at least three pieces that I thoroughly enjoyed. However the sheer difference in quality between how good the good fics were and how bad the bad, made me feel they deserved to be posted somewhere that would really show them off, and the Porn Battle wasn't doing it. I'm not blaming anyone or even acknowledging the idea of 'fault'. We are all here for our own enjoyment. It's not as though we have responsibilities to make things happen a certain way. Still, it's all a bit disappointing.

4. David Duchovny did look very good on Jimmy Kimmel last night. His live interviews always make me nervous. He's clearly very intelligent, and he's really quite well spoken and funny, but there's a sense, almost, of derision he exudes. I feel like the majority of it isn't haughtiness on his part, but actually defensiveness, even wariness. And being the guy who's known far and wide for having a sex addiction cannot have made him any less wary, particularly of live interviews in which ambushes are common. Whenever I seem him in an interview I do see very clearly where much of Mulder's character comes from - that insularity, someone who is at once immovable and all too sensitive.

5. The Roman Polanski rape case is...complicated. More complicated than both sides are largely making it out to be, I feel. I absolutely feel that he ought to have born his due punishment for what he has done. And I am in favor of his having to bear that punishment now that it's come to a head, perhaps even with added sentence for fleeing the first time. It was also made much clearer thirty years ago, when this was all going on the first time, that the situation is complicated in the extreme. I would personally like to see the girl's parents, who encouraged both Polanski and their daughter into having sexual relations, receive their due punishment. And in my mind that punishment ought to be as high as Polanski's. Above all, it bothers me that one can hardly hope for anything resembling justice to come out of this terrible mess now. It is unlikely that after so long, and with so much fanfare, the relevant facts of the case will remain clear, cohesive, and unbesmirched. They do not need besmirching - they need hearing, considering, and applying to the situation with unbiased patience and an eye to justice - for both the victim and the offender. Because justice is not something that is done to someone. Justice is not a call for blood. Rape is ugly, no matter what. Wrong was done. A girl is a victim. Even if she has stated that she has 'forgiven' her rapist and does not want to press charges, she is still a victim, there was still a crime, and there is still a criminal responsible for that crime. Polanski. Besides all of this, we don't know all the relevant information, and we won't, ever. Hollywood is full of people who spent months on movie sets with Polanski. They feel that they understand him. Perhaps they are emotionally taken in, or perhaps they have been privy to things the public has not been. Either way their defense of him is also very complicated, and our rancor towards them feels out of place.

Rain King, and the Line that Rains on My Parade

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:13:05 GMT

I'm bored, I have nothing to post, and I'm feeling geeky. So! Random question! What does everyone think about Scully's line in 'Rain King'? (you already know the one I'm talking about, don't you!)

Scully to Sheila: Well, it seems to me that the best relationships-- the ones that last-- are frequently the ones that are rooted in friendship. You know, one day you look at the person and you see something more than you did the night before. Like a switch has been flicked somewhere. And the person who was just a friend is... suddenly the only person you can ever imagine yourself with.

It annoys me to no end. Admitting that in advance is probably going to bias the sort of response I get, but it would just feel like I was baiting people if I didn't admit to disliking it strongly, straight off. The only way I can tolerate this line is by reminding myself repeatedly that Scully isn't necessarily talking about anyone but Sheila and Holman. She could be, she seems to be, but she might not be. *wrings hands maniacally* I laugh at your implied meanings, and substitute my own, less obnoxious meanings!

Even if you strongly disagree with me, and adore this line, I'd still be interested in hearing opinions.

I pulled apart your coat, looking for you.

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:57:06 GMT

Written of Marie Curie, after the death of her husband. They, together, discovered radium. He, having become mysteriously ill (effects of exposure), then died suddenly, stepping off a curb, being hit by a vehicle.

The longer we lived together, the more
I loved you. Day after day
I poured something purer
into basins and jars. I watched you
bent over your table like a jeweller,
setting things that can't be seen. The joy
of concentration, the elements
love precipitates to. By then our hands
never stopped moving, our skin
was wool, long gloves eating us
to the bone. We opened the door to
the aurora borealis, to icebergs, to distant
mountains lining the shelves.
The blue residue that clings like scent,
fogs everything with its breath.
At night, at work, we sat as if
under stars. The glowing distillation
of time.

You laughed when I marked cookbooks
with the same care as notes in the lab
but for me it was the same: the same
details of love - dissolving, filtering, collecting
until truth is so small it fits
on the tongue. My body sore from standing
in the yard, stirring. Or from stretching
under you.

and later in the same poem:

Everything we touch
burns away, whether we give ourselves
or not, the same April day spreads to thinness,
the same winter afternoon
thickens to dark. I was thirty-eight years old.
Every time a door opened
I expected you. For months I hid your clothes
stiff with blood.

and later in the same poem:

Nothing warms like motion,
speed in our thighs.

I can only find you
by looking deeper, that's how love
leads us into the world.

My hands burn
all the time.

Oh, Anne Michaels. One of these days I'm going to find a few words with enough impact to begin to tell you how wonderful your writing is, how stunning, how important. I said Eliot was my favorite by far. What I should have said was: my favorite, yes, but also there's you.

for cancer, for fire, for the end of the world.

Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:46:31 GMT

Second to Your Work

The Scene:

He looks forever past her, over her head, at the marginal worlds that
she cannot see and he cannot attain.

"I realize that everything comes second to your work," someone says.
It is Scully, but she's not sure she wants to take credit for the
words, especially after she sees his face. But it's true - everything
and everyone come second to the first woman in his life, Samantha.

Later she will remember it in clips of sidewalk, shoes, an angle of
lamp or wainscoting, his shoulder and arm, and the front of his shirt,
into which she weeps. The crying feels too good to stop, even as she
distantly registers that she is sobbing drunkenly and self-piteously
all over her best friend. At some future point she will know utter
humiliation. She had more control when she was dying. When he was
dying. This is complete surrender to the deepest fears - that she will
lose him, that she loves him more than is right or healthy. That this
thing between them will never be allowed to culminate.

They wait for her cab on the sidewalk and he pulls her inside his
jacket and holds her tightly. He seems unable to speak.

Notes: I've always been enormously sensitive to fics in which Scully shows herself so vulnerable, because they are almost always enormously intrusive to the character, and they are rarely fair to her in return. Yet the way I see the character, I feel this fic is an exception to that norm. There is no sense (to the reader) of indulgence here-- it isn't catering to the stereotype of the histrionic woman, prepared for catharsis and even cherishing a reason to hope that her suitor will allay her worst fears once given the chance. If there's one thing Scully isn't it's histrionic, and I don't perceive that there was any intent in this scene to get a rise out of Mulder of any kind. The expressing of dis-ease, on a most basic level, does not mean there is an expectation that things will change-- it's merely the need to express.

For me, thinking back, the reason I was so fascinated by how this scene was written was because of all the things that aren't said, either by the characters or by the narrative. The release of the moment is precisely that: release. Unlike the over simplified and often tawdry patching up and straightening out of wires - which occurs frequently in fanfic whenever an emotional scene is had - here any communication that happens, happens on a much more intimate level. There is a brief instance of speech like a groundswell, almost eloquent, if not for the fact that it plays the continuation of a conversation they haven't outwardly been having. And then, in lue of further communication, all conscious comportment simply drops away. From what we are told, nothing more is said. If I were to be doing an analysis of fanfic as a sort of apocrypha, I would say there are interesting similarities and dissimilarities between this scene and the closing scene of Never Again. What is there to say that isn't already understood? Anything that is unclear at this point, I think, cannot be clarified by any known means.

As to the fanart, well, frankly, I quite like this one. Perhaps Scully should have had her back to Mulder's chest instead, I wasn't sure. And being that it's midwinter, Mulder would surely have been wearing his long coat (which I didn't have the confidence to attempt). But looking back I can see that I was beginning to understand fabric a little bit better by this point, and - I don't know - it's just quite a nice image when taken on it's own, I think.

Distracting Fanfic Squee!

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:09:01 GMT

What is surprisingly difficult, you ask?

Reading synopses/recommendations for fanfic without actually reading said fanfic. I had about ten additional pages opened up, to be read when I was finished cross referencing fanfic recs pages (it's a geocities thing), when I finally just had to give up and close some of them.

I LOVE SYNOPSES.

I particularly love the really silly sounding ones that are totally trying to sell me porn with a thin, icing-like layer of plot. Why am I so easily sold? I don't have any interest whatsoever in the smutty romance section at the book store, or the library. I find actual porn laughable. No, I mean, I actually start laughing when I see it. Yet when it comes to fanfic, intellectually vapid smut biscuits that make liberal use of every trope ~~in the book~~ on tvtropes.org, are totally irresistible. The stakeout fic, it is seducing me! The one-bed fic has upstaged the one-room fic in vying for my attention! The under-cover fic has leaped on my brain and taken it out at the knees. There is a struggle carrying on in the gutter (for 'gutter', see: pituitary)!

Other amusing things in Ficland today?

There are not one but two fics named PB&J Syndrome. If ever there was proof that fandom is (adorably) INSANE, it is here that I rest my case.

I also came across this summary at Gossamer earlier: An author's fantasies of near-encounters with the star of the show. What is really awesome is that I bet half of you are already thinking exactly what I surmised before I even checked the posting info: Yup, this story was posted in 1995.

If it were written today we would just call this RPF with a definite Marysuing bent. But in 1995, ah, no, it had no name, and thus it was sent off to Gossamer, and accepted, as X-Files fanfic. It seems so much more embarrassing and bizarre when the author puts it this way, though, doesn't it?

I smile, of course...

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 05:57:02 GMT

Preview:

I took my screen caps from ladymanson's beautiful website, Shadow of Reflection.
Quotes are from Leonard Cohen's poem 'Song', T.S. Eliot's poem 'Portrait of a Lady', and Neruda's 'Sonnet 55'. The minced sections I have used, when more intact, are under the cut:

Cohen:
And my my bronze name
touch always her thousand fingers
grow brighter with her weeping
until I am fixed like a galaxy
and memorized
in her secret and fragile skies.

Eliot:
Now that lilacs are in bloom
She has a bowl of lilacs in her room
And twists one in his fingers while she talks.
"Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands";
(Slowly twisting the lilac stalks)
"You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see."
I smile, of course,
And go on drinking tea.

Neruda:
Sorrow rises and falls, comes near with its deep spoons,
and no one can live without this endless motion;
without it there would be no birth, no roof, no fence.
It happens: we have to account for it.

" I love you! But we only have fourteen hours to save the world!"

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 01:59:26 GMT

Space Princess Scully!

Notes: *CACKLES* This is only the most loosely based on a segment from Para-. I was scrolling for more images to draw, and the idea of Scully as a 'space princess' presented itself to me, and I was feeling frivolous, and, well...ahem. Okay, seriously, I think I actually turned into a fanboy for a period of time, with this as the result. And honestly, I'm not sorry. IT WAS SO FUN. I don't think this is so much 'space princess' as some kind of space/mythos hybridization. Yeah, did I mention it was FUN? Her legs aren't really that freakishly out of proportion, if you discount the six-inch heels, are they? *smirk*

In televisionland, classic television is the only television - you've noticed that too, right?

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 05:33:00 GMT

Can I bring myself to use the term 'ded of lulz' in direct application to myself? Perhaps not, but I'm pretty close to ded.

I am most definitely NOT one of the people who wanted to see Mulder and Scully on Fringe. I am not, in fact, one of the people who has more than a tentative tolerance for Fringe. But the Season Premier was on, and there'd been all that speculation about maybe an appearance, and I thought I'd watch it, just to ENRAGE myself if the cross over actually occurred.

And two minutes in, for half a second, the camera pans across an apartment crime scene and HEY! HEYHEYHEY! IT'S THAT SCENE FROM 'DREAMLAND'! Playing on the television in the apartment. Seriously. I have not laughed that spontaneously and that loudly in - oh - years.

Now that I appreciate. Thanks, Fringe, for respecting our show as the classic television phenomenon that it is.

(For the record, I sure hope that crossover didn't actually happen later in the episode, because I stopped watching shortly after the Dreamland TV appearance. Fingers crossed.)

Asleep In Perfect Blue Buildings

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 02:15:33 GMT

Temperate journal country. Cut for economy of space.

This afternoon it was already dim in the apartment, particularly in the room where I sleep, with three sheets draped over the large window, overlapping in squares. Winter approaches, heralded from a far distance by the changing of the light over these rainy PM hours. I wake late, and wander into the kitchen to scrounge up some cookies for lunch, mumbling thanks to Mr. Cristie in my head. I set the cookies on the coffee table in a wobbly tower. I eat slowly, calmly. It doesn't matter.

Today the cafe is noisy enough to provide a mumbling constancy of sound, and the world beyond the windows is dismal and gray-- comforting. Water beads down from the eves. The rain that falls here is the dim and mysterious rain that fell on Mulder and Scully's coats, that made those coats a necessity: two shivering actors, pretending they're somewhere in America. I forget that sometimes.

The small trees the city has seen fit to plant along the sidewalk look prepared to be thus weighted down. So am I.

Last night I said to my father, on one of our evening walks, "My weight's low. It's because I've been sick, partially, but all the same, I'm not sure it's healthy." In the fresh air, with my legs moving me forward and bright headlights moving past, I felt healthy-- clear headed. "It concerns me," I said, "because it could be tied to a larger issue. My mother has hypothyroidism, and my grandmother. There's a metabolic element there. And depression. There's always that to consider." I was speaking in earnest - whatever's going on with me, it's nothing I've dealt with before.

"You should think about going in, getting it checked out," my father said once we were home again, unwinding our scarves.

"Yeah, I probably should," I said. I thought idly that I'm still quite young - perhaps young enough for a parent to tell me what to do without it being absurd. What if he were to say to me, I've got the number for the clinic. You can make an appointment tomorrow? No, he would never have said that. For us it would've been absurd. If I were fifteen, if I were ten, he would still have been standing in the front hall, shrugging out of his coat, suggesting I 'think about it'.

Today I feel quiet and calm, even with the cappuccino maker making it's mechanistic raging sounds nearby. Even with the dismal rain outside, blowing in through the open angle of the door each time a customer enters the shop. Yesterday I felt buoyant. I bought a box of cookies. I ate them out of the bag as I carried them home. I looked up through the beginning drizzle of today's rain at my apartment window as I passed beneath it, thinking that life is a very good thing, so long as there are moments with cookies. So long as one can bound from a curb over a rivulet of gutter rain. So long as songs have lyrics that bend the listener like a coat hanger-- stiff and tender to the change. So long as stories are told.

The day before, I doubt I could have told you one good thing.

The word 'mean' can be used to denote poverty. The word 'rich' does not necessarily denote monetary wealth. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to neutralize the dissonance between internal existence and external. How can I say, "life is good, so long as there are cookies", and feel it is true, and then say, "I must find a job, I must not carry on like this, I must move forward"? How can one manage with any grace, when we are already so rich, and our behavior is so mean?

As though binding myself to that which I dread is the answer.

As though I believe in 'forward'.

Sing patience, patience, Only still have patience

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:59:53 GMT

The Fanart

A Penguin on His Father's Feet

The Scene:

Soon she's rolling quick dough on the kitchen counter, William beside her, hanging on to her jeans with one fist. A tray of perfectly browned cookies is cooling next to a floured blob of dough. She sprinkles powdered sugar on the hot cookies and causes more mess than intended, snowing William with sugar by mistake. Startled, he steps backward onto Mulder's shoes, grabs Mulder's hand, looks up at him as he's steadied like a penguin on his father's feet.

--Scenes for Quiescence by JET

The Notes:

This, for me, is one of those 'perfect fics'. It's kind of a rip off on my part, actually, because I can't really think of how to approach speaking about it, other than to start crying, and well, that's not really communicative of adoration. Or much else. It was one of the first X-Files fics I ever read, so it has been in my head a long while now, yet it is still...exquisitely dear.

As to the drawing, well, I kind of like this one. It's sweet. Not sweet like the fic, not so full of motion and emotion and a sense of the fullness of a moment, but still sweet. I did not do a very good job drawing Mulder. For some reason I couldn't figure out how skull shape changed when a person looked down, and how the hair would look. And maybe William is too old here. I've barely spent any time at all around children, so I'm not sure how big they grow, and how fast. But I was quite pleased with how he turned out, nonetheless.

i think this is what pain feels like!!!

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:08:53 GMT

the pain in my throat - i just need to know, can someone remove it for me? take the whole throat if need be, i'm willing to be very lenient here. but the pain? it must stop.

will someone rec painkiller fic for me? anything at all. something fun is probably best. because i'm probably not going to be able to actually focus on anything for the rest of today. Sorry leonard cohn, your poetry will have to wait for tomorrow's scrutiny. my bet? even when my powers of poetic assessment return, you probably still won't be a woman yet.

no, this fic does not actually need to kill pain.

(and here i almost went into a reverie about, oh, how cool it would be if fanfic could be applied topically, and then i realized the porny place that whole train of thought was off to and, yeah, anyway... non-topically applicable fic would be just dandy, and much appreciated.

Give Me Rossignol or Give Me Head

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 02:37:54 GMT

Homilies on Skiing

bigger.

The Scene:

Mulder should have known once he dragged her out on the dance floor
that she'd be in demand. He didn't like the looks of all these other
guys, men who put their arms around her as if they had the faintest
hope of understanding what she was all about. This one here, this guy
kept making Scully smile with whatever he was saying and he had his
arms around her and the back of his shirt said 'Give Me Rossignol or
Give Me Head'.

The Notes:

I could go on about The Party Scene in Parabiosis for hours. Seriously, give me a hard copy and a highlighter and a cup of coffee and I really could go on for hours. But I won't. I love the party scene. It is intelligent, unique, atmospheric beyond belief, and I never would have believed that anyone could write Mulder and Scully attending a wild party (and actually engaging in partying activities!) without it seeming like Fantasy!Fic.

As to the art: I almost didn't post it because I don't agree with the entire attitude of the piece anymore. It looks fine, but the attitude is wrong. Originally it was a deliberate choice for me to draw The Rossignol Guy as being a total beefcake character. I did it to A. make Mulder's torture all the more acute, B. let Scully dance with someone who was traditionally what would be considered attractive, and C. show that Scully was dancing with someone whom she would not consider attractive - I mean, look at the guy-- He's barely learned to stand erect! And I tried to draw Scully's body language so that to Mulder it might appear she was interested in the dancing, but a less biased observer can see that she is actually stepping back from Rossignol Guy, and that she might actually be a bit uncomfortable.

Still, somewhere in the year and a half since I drew this, I decided that (even intoxicated) Scully would physically probably be more closed off to this guy - particularly if he looked as he does.

Atom: from Ancient Greek ἄτομος (“‘indivisible’”) from ἀ- (“‘not’”) + τέμνω (“‘I cut'")

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:42:11 GMT

Notes to Cover My Bottom: Those of you who were involved in the IWTB discussion yesterday, please don’t feel you must get involved today. I’ve been trying to pull this post together - for my own satisfaction - for over a year now. The ratio of gibberish to articulation is still rather high, but it’s a start. If you are allergic to excessive earnestness, pretension, repetition, quotation, metaphor, simile, or emphasis, you can still get your money back at the door. It's a long ramble ahead. There's probably a shorter route you can take - maybe something back in Albuquerque.

littlegreen42 and leucocrystal were talking in my comments thread yesterday, so today I'll be quoting you both quite a bit.

TO BEGIN at a bit of a distance so as to get a run at the heart of the matter, estella_c said: For–though I truly love Mulder and Scully both–I believe them to be flexible fictional characters. leucocrystal agreed.

Sudden I was shocked to realize that my absolute flexibility about the characters for the first six seasons becomes nearly equal inflexibility, right around the point of Biogenesis. Indeed, of all the fanfic I decidedly dislike, most of it comes from S7.

Why?

Because at a certain point, under a certain degree of force both external and internal, utter integrity is necessary for survival. Integrity of character. The characters are akin to submersibles, and they've gone so deep, now, that it is necessary for there to be no weak places in their hulls, or else they will never withstand what they must withstand.

It's what I’ve only just been discussing with leucocrystal: it's about the characters 'growing up', essentially. What I mean is that they grow together, they gain perspective, become not just intelligent but sage, they fill out, yet they also slim down to the bare essentials, character-wise. There’s a snippet of poetry I’ve used with them before, which reads,

I come to you as the crow flies,
As the pain grows polished, perfect.

It’s not the smartest description of them, mid S7, but it does fit with how I feel it must have been for them as they inexorably transformed themselves; and not through a desire to change, or through a conscious knowledge of how to go about it, but through necessity. It is fontanelles closing and tectonic plates shifting (doesn’t there seem to be a sense of pain about these things, even in their goodness?) There is a form of perfection about the way that sort of change happens - a perfection which is evident only in that it happens at all.

There’s also a maxim used in alchemy: “That which is Above is like that which is Below.”

It applies nicely to Mulder and Scully, who are the same people at the end of S7 as they are at the end of S6, yet they understand in a way that is ineffably different from all that came before. And, as we know from looking back at ourselves as children who would cry for want of lollipops: with perspective and understanding comes equanimity. Also comes a degree of power - though with Mulder and Scully I suspect this power is internalized, harboured within each of them, perhaps for future external use when circumstance demands it.

Anyway, I can't remember which philosopher originally said, "That which I can understand, I can also accept," but it is at the heart of what changes for Mulder and Scully: a complete acceptance of how things are. Not that they accept their probable doom or are complacent with their circumstances, but they are mindful of the truth of their lives - their paths - both taken and untaken. Scully disentangles herself from Daniel. Mulder frees the Genie. He could have anything -- but he goes back to his dim apartment and has a beer with Scully, and is happy.

Admittedly this character transmutation continues on after Requiem, perhaps even becoming warped and intensified by the trauma of seasons 8 & 9. All the same, I believe it happens.

And because I believe all of this of Mulder and Scully, and because I believe such a change in perception is irrevocable, I require a fic to reflect that. I also require canon to reflect that, which it frequently does not. Granted, canon’s attitude towards Mulder and Scully essentially means that I am wrong (if such a thing can be declared). Certainly, I am attributing a breadth of wisdom to the characters that the series never expressly declares they have. Maybe I read Siddhartha at too young an age and it gave me a bias towards the importance of internal balance.

So be it.

The series merely implies that, at the end of 'The Truth', they are strong, intelligent, kind individuals who have been victimized and put off again and again, and who may or may not continue fighting their fight. You could even say that the series finale insinuates they don't know who they are at all: they've just left their old lives behind - it would make sense to think they were feeling fairly baffled. I just don't believe that people who have 'groked' their own reality as Mulder and Scully have need much to know exactly who they are. It's intrinsic and instinctual to know. And, in consequence of that knowing, everything that isn't essential to them has become acutely unnecessary. This, as a way of life, is what I would call 'naturally occurring asceticism', or 'frugality'. It's not a practice done for a spiritual end, but the side effect of a kind of realized state.

I could add that the Scribner-Bantam dictionary lists 'frugality' as being one of the core behaviors inherent to wisdom.

For me, in Requiem, when Mulder says to Scully that perhaps the price of their work has been too high, it never seemed to me that they would have 'gotten out', even without his abduction putting the kibosh on happiness. I saw it as Mulder spinning a revery: "Scully, what if we just..." He probably believed he was serious at the time, or was testing to see how it would sound if he simply said it out loud, which is part of why Scully is tearful. Because it’s much, much too late to start worrying about cost. They are who they are, and yes, that auditor was right in a way. Only, he was right in saying that their ‘vision’ has been too broad, because they’ve seen too much now – too much to ever narrow their vision or stop looking.

The bravery of Scully saying: "Let’s go waste some money,” is something I find very profound. Not unlike Leonard Cohn saying: “I guess you go for nothing if you really want to go that far.”

Additionally, because of this spareness and focus Mulder and Scully share, it makes no sense that one of them leaving the other is even an option - at least in their minds. He is the one other living being in her life that is not a distant bystander by this point. He is her only touchstone, and she is his. Without each other they would go mad from being completely adrift in a world of people who are unaware of the awful truth. Yes, "a wise man listens to fools and says nothing," ( a tenet that was aslo under-recognized in the latter seasons) but knowing what they know, how many days can you survive on nothing but conversations with bystanders - "no, keep the pennies," and, "hold the elevator” - before it breaks you?

So all of the waffling and fretting in IWTB was completely ridiculous to me. If littlegreen42 is right in thinking Scully was saying she was leaving Mulder, that would be no less ridiculous than saying to your lungs: "I don't agree with what you're doing; we'll have to part ways."

If leucocrystal is right in thinking Scully was merely expressing her lack of faith, that's sort of like saying to your lungs: "I don't have faith in the way you're working. Can you work some other way?" If your lungs are working as they always have, then what the hell are you doing trying to change them? If your lungs aren’t working the same as they always have, I don’t think expressing concern is the immediate action best taken. If you have reason to be that worried about them, maybe you should just shoot them like you did the last time they were acting up -- oh, wait, now we're talking about Mulder and Scully again.

This brings us back to The Big Problem 'twixt me and The Dread Movie: namely, that I believe something about the characters that the series didn't expressly tell us about them. (Who doesn't?) Because of that, my argument that the movie is OOC will always be tenuous at best.

Frankly, I need them to be wise before all else. I need them to understand who they are, now, and what has fallen to them to be done. Mulder and Scully are naive in the beginning, and that is endearing and poignant, because you just know they're going to lose that quality; naivety is going to get pulled out of them by the roots, and you can't protect them. But if they continue to be naive, either purposefully or by their nature, that's so much worse, because it makes a mockery of them.

To me Mulder and Scully have become people who are hardwired to fight the future and for the future. They cannot back down. They no longer know how. Submission is a muscle that has atrophied in them. Even when they are exhausted, rubbed raw by loss, by abrasion with the world they have been expelled from, by the incontrovertible fact that they need each other so completely, and by the weight of knowing it - even when they are screaming in anger or ecstasy - there must be a part of them that is tending to the future, preparing, trying to find a way to fight harder, better, longer. Or simply trying to find it in themselves to stay standing now, if that's what it comes down to. There’s this, which puts it the hard way:

I declare it's better if we're useful
I declare it's best to leave when possible
Never having had your fingerprints taken

This is integrity
This is what innocence has come to

And there’s this, which expresses that there is beauty, too, in it being this way for them:

The place
where your soul is–
always, they say,
near to a wound.

So when I read a piece of fanfic that portrays Mulder and Scully bothering with trifles*, not because trifles are a part of physical life, but because the trifles supposedly matter? that throws me off completely. It suggests the characters do not have perspective. They have not 'grown up'.

leucocrystal said: I liked seeing them ... forced to deal with themselves as a unit as they stand now (i.e. two people out in the world, not two FBI partners).

But to me Mulder and Scully are elemental - atomic; uncuttables. They aren't, in their own minds, ex-FBI, or 'professionals' or 'ex-professionals'; they are Mulder&Scully&TheFight. They are their purpose. How does that change when they leave DC?

This is why IWTB hurt so very much. Because they concerned themselves with trifles - things that would have been serious and horrifying to people who had not understood the big picture deeply, but were small things over all. They fought over issues I had perceived them to be long past fighting over. They fought against situational things I believed they had long since accepted about themselves and each other and the nature of their work. They seemed to have settled into some measure of domesticity. Granted this domesticity was chafing on them a bit. Yet my Mulder and Scully never would have considered settling into such a homestead to begin with. It would have been undesirable for them to do so. They may well have set up a home base (or several) but it would not have been a house with any baubles in it. It would have been a stronghold, a forge, a keep.

Eliot, in The Waste Land, says:

Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed

That is PTSD, that is the bare, ancient horror of it. I felt, at the end of the series, that the horror and the wonder of Mulder and Scully’s story is that what had been done to them, and what they had done with themselves, had damaged them irreparably, but it had also made them. As I said in the original post, sometimes hardship turns people into something 'other' - something that is not quite 'human' as we traditionally recognize 'human' to be. These are the individuals who become immortal. Because the intimate reality of their experience is out of our reach, they become our legends.

From Night, by Elie Wiesel: "One day when I was able to get up, I decided to look at myself in the mirror on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror a corpse was contemplating me. The look in his eyes as he gazed at me has never left me."

So when that_khyber says**: The thing that I thought was excellent was that you didn't see them sliding back into their old selves. The suits are gone, never to come back, maybe dead under the floorboards., that is strange to hear, and very far from what I had (previous to IWTB) believed whole heartedly about the nature of the characters. (It is also a clever aside to HtGSC;)

I had believed, watching the series finale, the work had become as much a part of them as their own skeletons. They had internalized it, become it. Their suits - those dry-cleaned cutout shapes of wool and polyester that acted as both facades and declarations of their identity for so long - have been shed mainly because they have ceased to preform a useful function. And, as I have undoubtedly said one too many times already, that which is superfluous is almost anathema to the warrior/hero/survivor mentality.

Finally, to tie all this back into the previous post: they are going to die doing this - not because it is morally right that they give themselves as a sacrifice, or noble, or heroic - not for some reason of zealous commitment to the cause - all of these things are secondary. No, they are going to die doing this because they love the world, they love each other, and to give anything less than everything to save that which they love would be madness unthinkable. If they live it will be fortune that preserves them - the wheel of the sky, revolving in their favor.

*Please note that when I say that Mulder and Scully wouldn't bother with trifles, the operative word is 'bother'. To smell the fresh dusty rain and feel joy is not silly, or 'unenlightened' or OOC, as far as I can see. Scully may still shave her legs, in order to feel human, to remember that she is human and female. But any effort expended that is not to a valued purpose, or for the sake of one's own pleasure is silly, ultimately.

**I want to make it clear that that_khyber's fanfiction is some of the very best in the fandom, in my eyes, and that any disagreement I’ve voiced with him is fundamentally irrelevant in that regard. As far as I’m concerned, his Mulder and Scully are magnificent, and they are heroes, in the truest and most unnerving sense.

Such A Pure Force

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 06:11:57 GMT

Warning: this seems like a very delicate subject to me. I don't consider my post to be morbid, but many people may. I was moved by some poetry, and surprised a bit, and what follows is my outward consideration of that. If you're feeling emotionally susceptible, don't read this I guess.

Pablo Neruda says in one of his many sonnets, "When I die I want your hands on my eyes."

There are moments when I am nearly halted, thinking, Oh no, no, not this... But they are moments only, and my small real force, resisting, does not change it. Mulder and Scully have always been these people to me. The people who laughed in a graveyard, storm-drunk on intrigue and not knowing what was good for them, even then; knowing only what was. Soaked to the bones when from nowhere, from the sky or the blood, understanding came, and it went even deeper than bones. If it had come from the sky there ought to have been the smell of cinders and ozone after - the mark of such a monumental occurrence. It must have been from the blood then, the brain.

It was that understanding, which, when it is whole, is perhaps the only thing a person will watch themselves lose everything for.

And anyway, when the fate of the world is at stake, I kind of think the buy-in is set permanently at a price of "all you've got."

Because of this, and because of everything, Mulder and Scully have always been, to me, not just people who would die, but people who were going to die, fighting and in love. I've never said it before, that I believe they are going to die. I couldn't say how, or when it will be. Only that for me this is how the story goes, and no other way. This is no tale of Tolkien's and there is no haven to set sail for, no misty gray ocean of eternity for those who have proven themselves, and lost themselves, and become something 'other'. It is, nonetheless, a war story.

"If a shark stops swimming, it dies. Don't stop swimming, Mr. Mulder."

Horace said, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. That it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But that isn't it, not exactly.

So I read Neruda - Neruda who also says, "I will die kissing your crazy cold mouth," and I don't think about how, exactly, or narrow anything down; there's a bullet, or a blow, or the virus again - cancer growing slowly, the cold winter coming on - the world turned mean and dark - the horizon becoming a far distance for an abandoned car running on fumes and a bum engine. Sometimes I think of how it is, inside the moment, the crisis just when it comes, the noise of a body alive, and then silence. And before all of that, of course there are thoughts -- of dirty clothes and bunkers underground, roots above the heads of humanity and under boots that have been scavenged, that are the wrong size for feet; ersatz coffee at first, to keep warm, and then strong amateur liquor, to keep warm, mostly, and for the pain. And then one day, our heroes - one or both - in the wrong place at the wrong time - an accident; or the right place, the perfect place, the perfect time - a sacrifice. A small victory, a large one, or else there's no victory but that they kept fighting.

Dulce et decorum est pro amor mori. Only this. That they loved so much. That it was enough to keep fighting. And there is Neruda, too, saying in death, "I want to feel the softness that changed my destiny."