xf_book_club | Story 77: "Dirty Water" by Naraht

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Story 77: "Dirty Water" by Naraht

This week's selection, nominated by

amyhit, is set in an AU where Fox Mulder was abducted instead of his sister. Samantha Mulder goes to Oxford, gets recruited by the FBI, and finds the X-Files. In "Dirty Water," we meet up with Special Agent Samantha Mulder and her partner, Special Agent Dana Scully, in Boston, where they have gone to investigate the reappearance of J. Edgar Hoover's secret files. In the course of the investigation, Samantha finds out more about her family's history than she wanted to know. In "Such Devoted Sisters," also set in the same universe, Dana has invited Samantha to spend Thanksgiving with her family. I enjoyed both stories and keep hoping Naraht will give us more of this fascinating AU. I believe "Such Devoted Sisters" is first chronologically in this series.

Please give the writer some feedback, then come back for the discussion. You can leave suggestions for next time in our nomination post.

"Such Devoted Sisters"

"Dirty Water"

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Let’s assume that these fic, on second reading, are even better than on first.

emily_shore’s sensitivity, her delicacy, attention to detail and her broad sweeping influence, I can hardly find fault in. Artistically, I can scarcely praise her writing well enough.

What I’m really interested in now is the science of it, so to speak. What I mean is: in every word and every line of this fic there is a prevailing feeling that Emily was conducting an experiment. This universe, to me, feels like one part cartography, one part elemental analysis: Emily’s work has been to understand something by traversing it as well as by splitting it open. It feels like an excavation of one possible universe more than the synthesis of a desired one. An exploration of a series of interlinked ‘what-ifs?’ with no other pressing agenda but to follow the concatenation of answers. “What if Mulder was taken instead,” is obviously not where the questions stop, and I LOVE that Emily doesn’t try to simplify it thus.

This fic poses a very similar question (in a very different way) to the one posed by Jess in her story The Other Man: Who is Scully if Mulder isn’t Mulder? More expansively, what is happening here, in the broadest sense?

What I find immediately telling about this universe is that I instantly latch onto sam and scully and I like them being together. Together how? Well, I’m not sure how - just together. They have an almost sickening magnetism about them, compelling them to form a unit. I mean ‘sickening’ in that I can feel the tug in my gut while I read and it’s not a comfortable feeling. The reason scully and sam’s relationship is strange to me is because I am vehemently anti scully/other. But scully and sam have somehow circumvented my scully/other repulsion. Now perhaps this is merely because they are not expressly attracted to each other sexually.

mainly, though, I think it’s because Emily makes it impossible to distinguish where Mulder ends and Samantha begins. The forces of Nature vs. Nurture and of Fate vs. Chance are steady and inexorable in this universe (as they are in any universe, of course, but in this universe we can see them at work because we have a basis for comparison, i.e. canon)

By nature Sam is Sam and Mulder - wherever he is - is Mulder. But by nurture, Sam’s been through many of the events that made Mulder who he was, and if he were to be found in emily’s universe, he would be less Mulder than Sam is now. By chance Sam has met Scully. By fate, the person in emily’s universe who is most like our Mulder has met the person who is most like our Scully.

What I grapple with in this story is: Who is Samantha? Is she, essentially, Mulder? Or isn’t she? Is she acting of her own free will or is The Universe essentially using her as a cypher for an entity that it needs to bear (‘mulder’). And part of what makes Emily’s writing so brilliant and so unflinchingly honest, I feel, is that she pushes Sam to embody both ‘our mulder’ and her own unique entity, even while, emotionally I really don’t want her to. I want Sam to BE mulder pure and simple so that I don’t have to grapple with losing mulder (or with losing ‘my scully’ either).

It’s a brilliant bit of writing, it’s a tangle, and the effect is frighteningly poignant.

There would seem to be a positively EPIC ‘gender and gender roles’ discussion this fic is prompting, but again, I have a problem with brevity, so for now I’m going to hold off and see if someone else can’t maybe get a word in edgewise. *grin*

I agree with you

amyhit, that as far as they go, these fics are well-done. Naraht is writes fine, graceful prose and uses language with subtlety and nuance. She creates a plausible version of Samantha Mulder, and I felt quite drawn in by this AU. My problem with this alternative universe is that, finally, it isn't a universe. On second reading for me, it still feels incomplete.

Of course, I want a lot more back story, for example, how long have they been partners? Is Melissa dead? What season are we in here? How close are Dana and Sam, anyway?

--from my original comment on Such Devoted Sisters.

But leaving that aside, since it seems clear that for now we aren't getting any answers from the author, what do we have to go on? Who is Dana Scully in this universe? Who is Sam Mulder" And what the heck is this story about anyway?

I'm going to discuss "Such Devoted Sisters," as it is much shorter and more focused on character.

The story opens with a confrontation between Bill Mulder and Scully (or Dana, as she is called in this universe, an important distinction, but we'll come back to that later) about her FBI partner's sexuality. Bill Mulder thinks Sam Mulder is a lesbian.

That is almost certainly the case, or Naraht wouldn't have put it in the story, right? This story has to be about Scully's reaction to being told that her partner might be gay, and might even be romantically interested in her. Because that is what Bill's implying, right? Why would he care otherwise?

Dana's reaction is pretty typically Scully. Denial. After all, she protests to Bill, Sam has had boyfriends, she's dated men in the past. Well, but Dana, it is possible to have dated men and still be a lesbian, isn't it? Obviously, in this universe, Scully still doesn't have much of a life outside of work, since she didn't invite her boyfriend or bring her husband to Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe in his usual subtle way, that is the other point that Bill is trying to make here to his sister. Neither of you have a life outside of work, and why is that exactly?

I have to admit, as a noromo, I don't care if Scully is a lesbian, in or out of canon. Is that the question is being asked in this story? Maybe, or maybe not.

Scully doesn't want to discuss any of this with Sam, that much is clear. Just as in canon, this Scully is far more comfortable with facts than she is with emotions. She does her best to deflect Sam's questions about her conversation with Bill. She feels resentful of Sam's invasion into her privacy, and it is also clear that this isn't the first time she has felt that way toward her persistently nosy partner.

In canon, Fox Mulder asserts his possessiveness toward his Scully by invading her physical space: touching her, leaning in toward her, guiding her through the fucking doorways everywhere they go.

Samantha tries to do the same thing with her Scully, but with less success, using emotional intimacy. She wants to get inside Dana's head, and that is the one place that Dana isn't going to let her go. In canon, Fox Mulder creates emotional distance by insisting on last names, although in rare moments of emotional intimacy, he sometimes forgets and calls her Dana, just as his sister does as a matter of course in this AU.

Later that night, Dana is trying to get ready for sleep while Sam sits on the edge of the high four-poster bed, observing her keenly. As a child Dana got used to chasing her siblings out of the room that she and Melissa shared when she wanted some privacy, but she hasn't yet been able to train Sam--who grew up as an only child--out of wandering into her room whenever she wants to talk.

She's given up on her physical privacy, but she is damned if she will let Sam in any farther than she absolutely has to.

Edited 2009-03-30 00:57 (UTC)

"Dana, what happened after dinner?"

Fresh-faced, Dana turns to her partner, her makeup removed and hair pulled back. "What do you mean, what happened? You were there."

"You know what I mean," says Sam with exaggerated patience. "You and Bill. You were out there talking when I was helping with the dishes."

"Sam, I..."

"I love the fact that you still think I don't notice these things."

Dana has her hand poised over her tub of face cream, but she's not going to be able to put it on until Sam is done. "I don't see any point to involving you in my family issues," she says defensively. "It wouldn't be productive, and it wouldn't solve anything."

And it's none of your business, she nearly adds, but bites her tongue.

She want to keep some distance, but she doesn't want to hurt Sam. She does anyway, inadvertently, when she replies that Bill doesn't need a reason to give his sister a hard time, that's just the way brothers are.

There definitely is a delicate emotional dance being done here. Samantha does seem to want more than her Dana Scully is willing to give her, at least for now. Maybe she just wants a deeper friendship; that would not be an unusual thing for a woman to feel toward a friend. Maybe she wants more than friendship.

"You still haven't told me what you were talking about," Sam replies after a moment's pause. She is expert at deflecting the occasional probe that Dana tentatively extends into her own psyche.

"And I'm not going to."

Sam's shrug is eloquent, a work of art in itself. "OK. You win. I guess it's bedtime, then. You Scullys sure do get up early."

As she slopes out of the room, it's obvious that this is a ploy. Even the curve of her long, pajama-clad back says that she's just waiting for Dana to relent, to call her back and explain everything. But Dana, Dana knows what's good for her, and she's not budging.

There is much more than could be said about these stories. In a way, I haven't even scratched the surface of the gender issues and the identity issues Naraht's fic raises. But as a reader, I still feel frustrated by her lack of follow through with this scenario. Until/unless more is written, I think I always will.

I have to admit, as a noromo, I don't care if Scully is a lesbian, in or out of canon. Is that the question is being asked in this story?

CC has said that (to him) scully is straight. (Not that I’m saying his word is law, because I don’t feel that it is)

The reason why questioning scully’s orientation is so important to me in this fic is because it feels like the central tangle around which the entire AU is strung. In naraht’s universe I actually see scully as being, for all intents and purposes, straight as well - as she ought to be, if (and only if) we are to believe in what biochemistry tells us about how preferences are formed in the brain. Accept it would seem she is attracted to Sam. I would guess that naraht probably wanted us to speculate and didn’t want us to know for sure (good plan), so all I can do is voice my perceptions that, despite being by nature straight, Sam - the altered variable in this equation - has trumped nature. The universe has been altered. Thus, when I read these fics I feel startling as if scully were stranded in this alternate world - locked in a stalemate with circumstance - a catch 22 of her own perception of how things are and who she is. She can’t be attracted to sam because she feels she isn’t attracted to women. Sam can’t be a woman because she’s attracted to sam. Round it goes.

Mulder is the unattainable ‘answer’ to the riddle the AU is posing. He’s the pea in the bed of the princess, so to speak. His reality, his absence from this reality, keeps naraht’s AU constantly shifting, deliciously unsettled. (It’s also an interesting and meta way to add poignancy to his absence, more than just relying on the fact that sam is searching for him)

She wants to get inside Dana's head, and that is the one place that Dana isn't going to let her go. In canon, Fox Mulder creates emotional distance by insisting on last names

parts of this I agree with and parts I don’t. I’m not sure I can articulate it... I suppose I can start by saying that to me, mulder uses last names not so much to keep them distant, but to keep other people out of their cohesive unit. Other intimates call them by their first names, so by keeping things ‘professional’ they are exempt from having to consider potential messier relationships. They are suddenly free to become closer to each other without blurring any lines that ‘shouldn’t’ be blurred. As long as he calls her scully he can tell himself he’s within the parameters of a professional relationship, even if he isn’t.

Sam calling scully ‘dana’ is painful to me - and fascinating - because it's an example of how scully’s firm systems of order that we see in canon have been removed and replaced by something much more malleable - the F/F relationship. Sam calls her ‘dana’ and thereby opens up their dynamic a crack. She makes it necessary for them to relate on a personal basis. The very fact that sam is at scully’s house having dinner supports this theory that sam and scully have a more ‘personal’ relationship than mulder and scully do. Because of this personal element, Scully has to try all the harder to stick to her guard because she has no implicit guidelines to go by. All of the ‘shouldn’ts’ and ‘can’ts’ and ‘don’ts’ that she can apply to mulder don’t apply very well to sam, simply because A. sam is not a man, and B. scully has no reason to treat sam as though sam has any ‘intentions’ with her. As you said:

Maybe she just wants a deeper friendship; that would not be an unusual thing for a woman to feel toward a friend.

perhaps scully feels as though, reasonably, she should be open to sam (more than she would be to mulder) because their relationship seems to be 'friendly'. Unlike you,

wendelah1, I don’t think sam pries into scully’s mind any more than mulder does, I simply think sam is in a better position and has more leverage to actually get in.

But Dana, Dana knows what's good for her, and she's not budging.

the reason I love the last line of SDS so much is because, with a lurch, it quietly solidifies everything that scully has been feeling and denying. The last line establishes outright, a feeling of ‘shouldn’t’, of ‘can’t’, of ‘don’t’. By irrevocably stirring up question of her relationship with sam in scully’s mind, it brings a sense of ‘mulderiness’ back into the universe that will not stop causing ripples.

They are suddenly free to become closer to each other without blurring any lines that ‘shouldn’t’ be blurred. As long as he calls her scully he can tell himself he’s within the parameters of a professional relationship, even if he isn’t.

I still think he initially insisted on last names to create professional distance, from a pretty coworker that he may or may not have been attracted to. I think it's rather wonderful how respectful Mulder is of Scully, how he allows her the distance she needs, even when he wants more, as even I believe he does, much sooner than she wants it. That's why in Momento Mori, when he gets a chance to get into her head by reading her journal, he can't resist.

I know MSR people resist the idea that Scully is identified in Mulder's mind with his sister, and is an emotional substitute for her. But how could he not feel something like that, especially after she is abducted and then returned. I think there is much more going on under the surface than conventional romantic feelings between Mulder and Scully, in part because of that tension. This is an element that is missing between Sam and Dana. Sam can't feel that quasi-incestuous attraction for her Dana, she's the wrong gender-type. I don't believe the reader can know what is there influencing the attraction because Naraht hasn't really shown us much.

As I always feel a little bit overprotective of Scully (one of the perils of over-identification), both reading fic and watching the show, I felt rather irritated by both Bill and Sam in this story. Back off, I hear myself thinking. Just let it be. I don't see any sign here so far that Scully is physically attracted to Sam, except perhaps that last line, where she is noticing "the curve of her long, pajama-clad back." And even in the long run, pushing Scully faster than she is ready to go is not going to get a potential lover very far. There are so many barriers to that in canon, even leaving aside Scully's evident heterosexuality. Her religion is very strongly disapproving of homosexuality, for one thing. In this universe, I think it's more likely she'd end up with Skinner, who fits her "attraction to strong men" profile. Whatever she might eventually be to Dana, Sam is never going to be that.

you said:

Whatever she might eventually be to Dana, Sam is never going to be that.

and above a ways:

My problem with this alternative universe is that, finally, it isn't a universe. On second reading for me, it still feels incomplete.

i think these two issues are interconnected (in my reading of the fic, anyway). while it is, naturally, incomplete, i don't feel as though this universe is in any way insufficient in the information and detail it supplies us with in the reading. it feels, to me, all the more real for some of its vagueness. and i do feel as though there is at least the potential to have 'that' relationship develop between sam and scully. i think my feeling might differ from yours in the way that we each approach an AU scenario. when i approach an AU i don't approach it with a tabula rasa, blank slate mindset. i don't tend to look upon an AU as an entirely independent universe. i most often regard the new universe as a template that has been laid over the canonical universe - like tracing paper, say. the writer (playing god, in a sense) tries to write a universe that hangs together integrally and doesn't devolve into nonsense or transform back into the canonical universe. but the canonical universe has a metaphysical presence that asserts itself into the AU, making it difficult/impossible to maintain an integral AU that is independent of the canonical universe.

because i approach an AU with the preexisting structure of canon in mind as a skeleton, so to speak, i don't feel that i need very much information about the AU in order for it to hold together.

I know MSR people resist the idea that Scully is identified in Mulder's mind with his sister, and is an emotional substitute for her.

you won't get any arguments from me. i agree with you here, right down to the 'quasi-incestuous' angle. (as an aside, have you read August's 'Absolute Zero'? it has a section in it that described that sister-substitute dynamic beautifully, if briefly)

I understand why you might approach some AUs like that. Syntax6's Universal Invariants is an AU that changes one element to see what happens as a result. Definitely, in it, canon is overlaid or breaking through. You said it better.

But to take a major character out, and put another major character in, who is incidentally a different sex, that's just a whole other ballgame to me, which is why I feel like Naraht has violated her contract with the reader to some extent. I truly expected her to write much, much more in this universe. It has amazing potential.

I love the idea of Scully with Skinner. Scully with Sam, not so much, but maybe my heterosexual privilege is showing here. In any case, I still contend we just don't know much about SamandScully, not from this story, not enough to do much more than speculate. I also think it would be a less interesting story were it to turn into femslash, but, hello, noromo in the house. One of the things I liked about this universe was the possibility of it being and staying gen fic. We need more gen fic in XF. Dammit.

And no, haven't read Absolute Zero, I will do so at first opportunity.

I also think it would be a less interesting story were it to turn into femslash, but, hello, noromo in the house. One of the things I liked about this universe was the possibility of it being and staying gen fic.

oh goodness, yes. I in no way want to have the scully/sam relationship (whatever it may be) explained to me or spelled out or placed in a box/circle/shapeofyourchoosing. in fact, part of what i found so novel about TXF to begin with, and have continued to cherish now that i realize how rare it is, is that the canonical telling of the story was, for so long, a nearly gen story. shippers often seem to move towards the idea that because the romanti-sexual aspect of the M/S relationship was eventually (vaguely) established, the show itself was always definitively romanti-sexual towards mulder and scully. i don't see that as the case. for years it was entirely up to the individual viewer to decide what they thought was 'going on' in that respect.

and actually, something that draws me to naraht's fic universe is its similar gen aspect. it takes what is indefinite and complex and runs so deep between mulder and scully and seems to derive potency from that. the sam/scully dynamic seems preternatural, founded in something under the surface that the characters themselves can't know about.

"I don't think I know what to make of you, Sam," she says finally.

The right answer. Sam smiles and squares her shoulders, shaking off the memories. "That makes three of us. I don't know what to make of me either."

then again, i've always seen gen as an invitation to speculate. in this fic it feels to me like all but a dare to speculate, and i find that delicious.

You know, I think we should skip over the rest of this and talk about "Dirty Water." Maybe I should have started with it, but the sexual orientation stuff in "Sisters" derailed me. I'll reread it this afternoon and we can dissect it, if you want. There is also some weird gender-bending stuff happening in "Dirty Water" that I'd like to discuss, and then there is the whole issue of Teena Mulder being Jewish, and a Holocaust survivor at that, as well as the other big revelation from the files.

Oh, and I'm not getting comment notification in email, but I'll keep checking back when I get back from my errands.

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Story 77: "Dirty Water" by Naraht

What happens when the universe had an identity crisis? Damn good fanfic.

Dana knows what's good for her.

Dana knows what's good for her, Part Two.

Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.

Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.

Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.

Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.

Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.

Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.

Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.

Re: Still Not Quite a Gender Discussion, But We're Getting There.