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

[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.

[wendelah1]

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.

The story made me uncomfortable, though for slightly different reasons. I do imagine Mulder and Scully as real people, I always imagine my characters as real people, which is why I have such a hard time reading stories that torture or humiliate them. This is apparently an uncommon reaction among readers, and even many writers, since they are writing the stories I have such an aversion to. What I felt after finishing this was a need to look over the stories I had written, and even some I have been planning, for unwarranted character abuse, although considering what happened to the characters in canon in season eight and beyond, there isn't much that's off the table, is there? I wonder if stories got more extreme after that or if it had the opposite effect, with writers wanting to make up to the characters for what had been done to them?

Mulder's really not into guys

Yeah right.

Yeah, nice dig at those of us who read and enjoy slash. Vampire lady and Phoebe aside, for many seasons, there is little evidence that Mulder is into anything except his videos and his 1-900 numbers. There is certainly nothing to contradict Mulder having an interest in men, too.

[leucocrystal]

I actually think, in a way (though this will obviously serve as a difference in opinion from the get-go), that this fic paints Mulder and Scully as more real than ever; they are out there in the universe (the same one we occupy and function in), and better yet, they know what we're up to. And they are of course, in turns, amused, very unamused, and exhausted by us. Considering the world of fanfic, I can't find this anything but clever.

I say this as someone who absolutely must see, even believe, the characters to be real in order to write them, and even to read them - but this is a state of mind, not a constant state of being, if that makes sense. It's something I can slip out of if, say, I end up finding myself reading a badfic, because Mulder and Scully, in my mind, really shouldn't have to exist in such universes. Good fic, however, makes them real again, and so on.

[wendelah1]

It is very clever. I think I am with amyhit in having trouble taking off my writer's cap and just being a reader who can let other writers play in our universe pretty freely, assuming they can write. I mean, this is not usually my issue at all. And I have no objection in theory to her writing anything she wants. It just that it makes me feel uncomfortable to read this; moreover, I think she means it to be uncomfortable, for both readers and writers, at least on some level.

Maybe you are just better than I am at compartmentalizing. Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe I should work on it.

[leucocrystal]

I think you're probably right re: Jess Mabe's intentions with the story. (She also wrote "The Other Man", right? Which also seemed to me to have very specific goals as to what the reader might feel while/after reading it.)

As to compartmentalizing, I'm not sure it's the best approach to life, but to reading and playing in fictional universes? I definitely think it has its merits. ;)