wendelah1, leucocrystal -- both of you have really taken off with this conversation and made some really good arguments/points on both sides.
zellie, when you originally brought up the difficulty you had with mulder going to his abduction in Requiem, and said you didn;t think he would ever have gone had he known of scully's pregnancy, i admit i was genuinely stumped. you had me. i KNEW what i felt/believed to be true, but when i tried to fit it together i wasn't sure that i wasn't wrong about him knowing. but then Wen came along and said this:
What he is feeling both in the episode and in the story, when he steps toward the gathering of abductees in the clearing, I believe, is resignation. That this is his Fate, his destiny, and he is going forward, with hope and courage, into his future, whatever it may hold for him.
that pretty much sums it up. and i think there is a sense of his wonder, that it has come to this, after all, which makes it appear that he is eager to go aboard, when really it's something else - fate, in a sense, destiny, and the understanding of destiny in the moment that it begins to become reality.
also, this, which is at the very heart of why everything after S7 in canon makes my insides hurt:
They aren't talking but then talking never was their strong suit, was it?
because everyone is always saying that they weren't talking and that it was eating them up inside, or just confusing them all the more (however you want to put it - it is a common argument in canon & in fanfic) yet it seems to me that the way mulder and scully have learned to cope with all of the horrific and complicated situations they face is by not talking. they come to their own terms, and there is a question as to whether they somehow sense exactly how they must adapt in order to fit with the other, or if the natural product of their adaptation simply fits well with the other's. either way, over the years they seem to fare remarkable well without directly addressing many of the problems that plague them.
"Mulder's condescending to Scully because she's pregnant" didn't fly with me.
no, no - the part where i said i felt mulder was being condescending was the part where he thought she was leaving the x-files to go have 'a normal life'. and then he says that at one time she had understood that wasn't going to be possible for either of them, but it seems she's forgotten.
i did disapprove of how this fic (and canon) seemed to have mulder behaving in regards to scully's pregnancy. but i don't think he wasn't condescending to her about the pregnancy - just - in the case of this fic - about her sense of loyalty to the work, and about her understanding of the situation.
finally, wendelah1, almost everything you've said in this comments thread seems very true, about this fic and about the characters in canon. a week ago i wouldn't have known why i felt so distanced from all of it. but at this point i realize it's because as of S7 i pretty much stop paying any attention to canon, as it pertains to characterization. i may follow the events that happen on the screen, but i then rework the implications of those events entirely.
so yes, i think this fic does a wonderful job of enriching canon. my qualms with it are entirely my own, and are not it's problem in the least.
hastily joining the conversation late
zellie, when you originally brought up the difficulty you had with mulder going to his abduction in Requiem, and said you didn;t think he would ever have gone had he known of scully's pregnancy, i admit i was genuinely stumped. you had me. i KNEW what i felt/believed to be true, but when i tried to fit it together i wasn't sure that i wasn't wrong about him knowing. but then Wen came along and said this:
What he is feeling both in the episode and in the story, when he steps toward the gathering of abductees in the clearing, I believe, is resignation. That this is his Fate, his destiny, and he is going forward, with hope and courage, into his future, whatever it may hold for him.
that pretty much sums it up. and i think there is a sense of his wonder, that it has come to this, after all, which makes it appear that he is eager to go aboard, when really it's something else - fate, in a sense, destiny, and the understanding of destiny in the moment that it begins to become reality.
also, this, which is at the very heart of why everything after S7 in canon makes my insides hurt:
They aren't talking but then talking never was their strong suit, was it?
because everyone is always saying that they weren't talking and that it was eating them up inside, or just confusing them all the more (however you want to put it - it is a common argument in canon & in fanfic) yet it seems to me that the way mulder and scully have learned to cope with all of the horrific and complicated situations they face is by not talking. they come to their own terms, and there is a question as to whether they somehow sense exactly how they must adapt in order to fit with the other, or if the natural product of their adaptation simply fits well with the other's. either way, over the years they seem to fare remarkable well without directly addressing many of the problems that plague them.
"Mulder's condescending to Scully because she's pregnant" didn't fly with me.
no, no - the part where i said i felt mulder was being condescending was the part where he thought she was leaving the x-files to go have 'a normal life'. and then he says that at one time she had understood that wasn't going to be possible for either of them, but it seems she's forgotten.
i did disapprove of how this fic (and canon) seemed to have mulder behaving in regards to scully's pregnancy. but i don't think he wasn't condescending to her about the pregnancy - just - in the case of this fic - about her sense of loyalty to the work, and about her understanding of the situation.
finally,
so yes, i think this fic does a wonderful job of enriching canon. my qualms with it are entirely my own, and are not it's problem in the least.