Story 98: "Untitled Random Case File #4664" by Jess Mabe

[wendelah1]

Continuing my unofficial boycott of all things serious, I bring you something different, courtesy of a timely nomination by infinitlight. This metafic by Jess Mabe is clever, funny, and offers some interesting observations about writing fan fiction. She rates the fic "R" for Raunchy "but no actual sex was harmed in the making of this story." Damn, even her liner notes make me laugh.

Although the author has left the fandom, and has no working email address, at least none that I am aware of, we would love to know what you think of her story. Please leave us suggestions for next time, too. Humor is especially appreciated by the management at this time.


Untitled Random Case File #4664

Comments

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought about this fic for a while before we started discussing Malus Genius, and I got to thinking about fics I'd liked that were mostly humorous (I don't think I've ever liked a fanfic that was played completely for laughs (1)--part of the fun of Untitled Case File is the more serious snark just below the surface).

One of the things I like so much about fanfic (and I think we talked about this in the Iolokus discussion) is the glimpse into writers' imaginations. The sky is the limit in fanfic--want Mulder and Scully to get married, have lots of tiny babies and go shopping for curtains? Just write it and it's real. Want them tortured and to psychologically have to pick their way back to health? Want them to open that connecting door between hotel rooms? Want them to get in a spaceship and fly through the galaxy? All you have to do is pick up a pen and it happens. And what's truly amazing to me is that so many people have done it, for no payment and just for fun. People think up stories that would never have crossed my mind (the once-ubiquitous "FBI formal dance" stories spring to mind) and things that I would have loved to see on the show (post-colonization), and things I daydreamed about myself while waiting in line or procrastinating on writing essays (casefiles, mostly. I don't have a very good imagination (and a pretty low sense of romance, I suspect), which is part of why I love to read. Other people will imagine for me).

Fanfic (when I'm in a good mood :) teaches me how powerful stories are. The sky is the goddamn limit, if you'll excuse my French, and it excites me and delights me and takes me to new places. Kickass.

So the reason I liked this story is because it draws out so much of what fanfic writers like to do. It feels like we are right there with Jess, writing the story, meeting M & S, and yeah, wincing at the way we, as fandom, have treated them :). (I love this:

Mulder glared at me.

"Oh wonderful," he said. "Another cancer case. Can't you people just leave it alone?".)

Untitled Case File reads like a very much smartened-up version of the kind of thing I'd make up in my own head, only funnier and, you know, done by someone who can write. I can't resist stories that mess around with format and style, that don't follow the conventions everyone else is taking. Even when stories like this don't work for me, I respect the writer for trying to do something new and exciting.

I like irreverancy and even parody of the show, when it's done right, and I think this fic toes that line very well. The time-tags (also mocking fanfiction writing), Mulder's rambling and Jess (the character)'s monologue, "the obligatory sickly redneck who can't
act".

(1) As soon as I wrote this down I remembered a deliberately bad fic that I found really funny, but I can't remember the title of it, just a few lines.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I think that "Unfinished Case File #4664" is the metafic of all metafics, just wonderful, and very hard to describe. So if I seem to ramble hysterically, please forgive.

This is a universe in which Mulder and Scully are both characters in a tv show *and* actual breathing people who must, presumably, be kept occupied and amused in the interstices of the foregoing. They depend on writers who exist in *our* world--Jess Mabe being one, and blessings on whatever career she is now pursuing--but also in theirs, where flukemen, sexual predation by enemies, and now cancer-conferring mutants also reside.

The set-up gives me shivers of Pirandellian delight.

In this complicated reality Mulder and Scully are stars, and they exhibit star behavior. Narcissistic and demanding, they also show the psychic wear of human beings who have been pushed and shoved by their fans into many torments and indignities. Once presumably innocent, they have been turned into sexual playthings and made to enjoy it. Manipulated, they now manipulate.

In my experience this is a unique idea, and Jess has plunked herself spang in the middle of it. No passive-aggressive MarySue, she appears under her real name and reveals her own story ambitions and secret fantasies. This is, of course, what all fic writers do, though somewhat less overtly.

There are numerous bits of sly series commentary on the way. I especially liked the elevator operator/writer who admitted to not watching the show. And the luxurious living arrangements and good weather, which all-powerful Jess can control with, at most, a fast rewrite. Though she soon realizes that her role in this scenario is less than goddess-like.

Probably some would be unhappy with this cynical view of our heroes. But everyone knows I'm a sucker for a laugh. And "Unfinished Case File" is absolutely rollicking, as well as being the most hardheaded view of fandom this side of Livia Balaban's "M. Luder: King of 'Set Troopers' Fanfic."

[sixpences.livejournal.com]

I found this to be a pretty peculiar read- maybe it's because I haven't been reading huge amounts of XF fic recently, but I didn't find it that funny, and even the bits I did find amusing were rather gauche. Mostly it just made me feel profoundly uncomfortable.

Maybe it is ridiculous, but I can't write anything unless I feel very strongly that the characters are real people, or as close to real as possible, and in trying to find out their stories and thoughts and feelings I have to take the same kind of care that I do when dealing with real people at my voluntary job. Jess's fic is obviously satirical but it just made me cringe to think about writing in this way- to treat Mulder and Scully like sockpuppets to be reshaped from hand to hand (or rather, keyboard to keyboard). Treating real people like that when you're trying to coax a story from them is damaging and deeply immoral, and just I can't help but transfer most of my reaction to that over to fictional characters.

Jess is a great writer, and I'm aware my feelings about this story are based more than anything on my personal experience, but I am unlikely to re-read this one, I think.

Also,

Mulder's really not into guys

Yeah right.