Story 77: "Dirty Water" by Naraht

[wendelah1]

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"

Comments

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

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

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.

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

[wendelah1]

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.

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

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

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)

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

[wendelah1]

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.

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

[wendelah1]

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

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

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

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.