Story 104: "Genius" by Kipler

[wendelah1]

Back when I was still having a normal life, I took on a number of Geocities-related projects. One is to recreate The Spooky Awards Archive, complete with working links, but minus the hideous graphics. Even before the demise of Geocities, the links had all gone dead on the old site. I did finish 1995 and put it up at Dreamwidth. Now that I am back working on that project, I thought it might be fun to read some of the stories that won awards back in the day. Believe it or not, some of them still hold up very well.

"Genius" is vintage Kipler, well-written, with believable season two-three Mulder/Scully interaction. It's genfic, which was more common then than now, or so I've heard, but in any case seems perfectly appropriate to me for the time period. The story is a case file/x-file, told from Scully's POV, involving a child abduction. Since it's not been that long since her own abduction, I think it's fair to say that Scully is a little creeped-out by this investigation. We all know how Mulder is with child abduction cases.

"Genius" won the 1995 Second Place award for "Most Carteresque," which I suppose is short-hand for the story that most resembles the show itself. Since I liked the show best back in the first few seasons, I was eager to see what a fine fanfiction writer could come up with that could fit seamlessly into the series canon. Kipler does not disappoint.


Kipler's old site went down when AOL Hometown closed, so the link is to her site, way-backed.

Genius
Kipler-waybacked

If anyone is still in touch with her, please let her know we are discussing her story. Please leave suggestions for next time at the nomination post.

Comments

[flourish.livejournal.com]

I don't believe that I had ever read that particular story, but I agree - very Carteresque. In fact, it makes me want to see if that park actually exists. I'm having a lot of fun visiting the sites of my favorite X-files fanfics - I went to Acadia last summer, having recently moved to the East Coast, and I really enjoyed getting to see it.

As for its gen-ness, it's gen, but it's - Carteresque gen. I mean, if it were an episode, you can imagine both shippers and noromos reading their own ideas into it.

[wendelah1]

In fact, it makes me want to see if that park actually exists. I'm having a lot of fun visiting the sites of my favorite X-files fanfics - I went to Acadia last summer, having recently moved to the East Coast, and I really enjoyed getting to see it.

When I was visiting back East several summers ago, we drove to Rhode Island to visit Quonochontaug. It was nothing as I'd imagined it, but then how could it be?

As for its gen-ness, it's gen, but it's - Carteresque gen. I mean, if it were an episode, you can imagine both shippers and noromos reading their own ideas into it.

Ha ha! "Carteresque gen." I love it.

When I was googling for the story, to see if I could figure out its original posting date (I couldn't--apparently the old alt.tv.xfiles.creative site is no longer searchable.), I ran into the story on a couple of rec sites. Both thought it might of made a good episode and I would have to agree.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

You know, until I moved to the East coast, I never realized how weird it was that Mulder was born in Chilmark and had a summer house at Quonochontaug, and that fanon is that he's Jewish. I just had no idea how totally disjointed that account of Mulder is. Well - I can buy that his family's Jewish but passing as Gentile; and I can buy that he grew up in Chilmark - but not with a summer home at Quonochontaug! Or that he lived in Quonochontaug, and then had a summer house in Chilmark, but that's not how canon goes...

Anyway, I can't believe I didn't say this earlier: Last summer I was sailing, and we anchored in Menemsha, which is the harbor next to Chilmark. It was absolutely nothing like I had imagined it would be, but totally charming (well, duh, Martha's Vineyard) and I could imagine Mulder growing up there. I really wish I'd thought to reread "Aquinnah" on that trip.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

(Also, this got hella off topic. Sorry, guys, will try to reduce my meanderings. Unfortunately, X-files fanfic is so tied in with so many of my personal memories that I occasionally have a hard time sticking to the point, which is: I really enjoyed the story! :P)

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Personally, I think the meanderings on this board are as much fun as the on-topics. I mean, this *is* a hobby.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Well, that's a relief! ;) (New member, can you tell? Still feeling out the norms...)

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

As Wendy is due to say any minute now, stick around. (She'll probably say it more graciously.)

Incidentally, if you haven't check out Kipler's Shipper's Guide, please do so. It is the purest, brightest gold.

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Haha, I know it well. I actually have been on the outskirts of X-files fandom since... 1997? 1998? Far before I had any excuse for being such a little kid wandering around X-files fandom, anyway. :P

[wendelah1]

Meanderings are fine here. Norms? Do we have norms? Welcome to xf_book_club.

Since you are the first to finish the story, I need to ask this. I was wondering if you were having trouble figuring out when this story took place. I know it has to be in summer 1995. It can't be summer 1994, because Scully is missing, and this is after her abduction. But isn't summer 1995 one of Mulder's dead periods? I am so confused. Maybe writers weren't so obsessed with the timeline and continuity back then?

[flourish.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I've gotten so used to the norms of Harry Potter fandom ("Canon? What canon?") that I didn't even notice that it was weirdly placed in the timeline. Now that you point it out, I have no idea.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

This is quite a good story, attentively put together, with good original characters (likable or believable--maybe the word is "trustable") and a botanical fictional footnote to remind us of Scully the Scientist. As shippers gained group confidence they came to expect a hit of romance, if not sex, in their adventures. But whether or not Kipler predated that she held herself to some extent above it, crafting a gentle examination of the Mulder and Scully relationship that reminds us that they are caring and--at least in Scully's case--worried friends.

And I'm thinking that, no matter how hot and bold the sex later entered the fic picture, it did and does mean nothing without that friendship.

The final scene, with Mulder playing piano duet with the mysteriously altered child, is moving and satisfying but also a little confusing. Are readers to assume that some kind of woodland group consciousness also played with his brain cells? Or am I being over-literal?

I think fantastic fiction sometimes bumps into "literature" at this point. Is it Symbolic, or did it really happen?

[wendelah1]

The final scene, with Mulder playing piano duet with the mysteriously altered child, is moving and satisfying but also a little confusing. Are readers to assume that some kind of woodland group consciousness also played with his brain cells? Or am I being over-literal?

No, but Mulder's life was altered by his sister's abduction much in the same way that Sarah's has been through her mysterious interaction with the woodland being. He felt set apart by the event, just as she does by her experiences and her special knowledge. And I think it is safe to say that Mulder was a highly gifted child, who would have grown up feeling somewhat different from his peers even if he had had a "normal" childhood. But would he have become an FBI agent, let alone found and begun investigating the X-Files?

She should have understood. She knew his mind - the keenness of it, the depth. But she only knew what he could show her. All those years ago, after the choice had been taken from him, he had invented himself. He had narrowed the focus of this thoughts - for his family's sake, for Samantha's. How old had he been? Twelve? Thirteen?

But before that, he had been eleven. He had stood where Sarah stood now, and Nathan. His mind had whirled with new thoughts, new ideas. He had watched his ideas falter as they collided against the minds of others. He had let himself become separate. And somewhere, sometime, he had sat like this, blind on a piano stool, and felt music falling from his fingers.

She should have understood. He had tried to tell her.

"Samantha didn't play the piano. She couldn't do trigonometry."

No, not Samantha. Samantha was only a backdrop to the things Mulder saw in Sarah, the things she let him remember.

So maybe he is remembering what it was like to be an ordinary highly gifted eleven-year-old boy, on the cusp of adolescence, before everything in his life is changed. I think you might be onto to something about the consciousness-transforming forest entity thing being symbolic; the story works for me on both levels.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I think you're right; actually, I'm sure you are. I just found the resolution of the story a bit over-subtle. Maybe it was Mulder playing the piano, of which we've never had a hint in canon (have we?). It's described as "rough" and "unpolished," but I think it would realistically sound bad enough to screw up the mood she's trying to achieve.

No matter. It's a nice story. Now I'll just burrow underground with my neighbor the groundhog and wait out this vicious winter. The descriptions of sticky summer heat were quite refreshing!

[wendelah1]

Maybe it was Mulder playing the piano, of which we've never had a hint in canon (have we?). It's described as "rough" and "unpolished," but I think it would realistically sound bad enough to screw up the mood she's trying to achieve.

Too subtle? So what, you knew what she was getting at but you thought she didn't say it clearly enough? Yes, I think you are right, Mulder playing piano might be fanon rather than canon, although as fanon goes, I vastly prefer it as an invention to the one where Mulder's mother popped Valium and his father beat him up regularly.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

i'm a little late to this shindig, but i finally got to reading this fic, and was, like the rest of you, very pleased with it. it's atmospheric, and intellectual, and also seems to be a very sensitive story. by that i mean it seems keyed in to all kinds of undertones and currents - whether it be the sensuous heat, the rife unknowable way the forest is described, the reverence with which mulder and scully stand before sarah's mural and recall Lasceaux, the unspoken integral innocence of sarah herself, or the way that scully ponders her partner, with care, and with some definite hesitancy.

my favorite fics - if they are going to have a plot - tend to be a little bit more dramatic than this, and a little less sparing. that sparing element, for me, is a great deal of what makes this fic seem so tremendously Carteresque: it brushes against such enormous issues - both of character and of the paranormal. it taps them, sounding them out, but doesn't really dive right in, or plunge the characters in. rather, it hangs back. we learn what we can about what is occurring by looking in from the outside.

in the case of this fic, i really like that. if all fics were like this fic, naturally, i'd get a trifle bored, anxious for some drive, some sheer intensity. but all fics are not like this. in fact, so few fics manage to take up such a straight-shooting, mindful air that i find myself extremely grateful when i come across a fic like this one. i very much like what estella_c says about this fic - that it is trustable.

not only did this fic manage to fit wonderfully in with the tone of S2-3, i think it played out like a particularly well told weekly episode. it had the clear focus, steady pace, and reverence for the wise and the mysterious that the series had when it was at it's best, but sometimes lacked when it was not at its best.

i really liked the way sarah and mulder were compared. i found that a very resonant and intriguing dynamic, especially as it was noted by a confused scully, from the outside. my sense of empathy for mulder was heightened by it being filtered through scully. i was particularly surprised to find that i didn't mind scully being a bit slow to catch on to what mulder was seeing in sarah.

usually i find it extremely grating when i know/suspect something in a story before the character(s) do. i end up feeling like the character's intelligence and their perceptivity are being deliberately stunted by the writer because the story demands it. canon is as guilty of this as fanfic. but in this case i didn't mind at all.

"I mean, she's complete inside herself. She loves us, and she knows we love her. But she doesn't need us. It's as if she decided, after that horrible mess back in California, that she'd had enough. She's separate. She's her own country. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yes," murmured Scully. "I think I do."

as a reader, at that point (which is also one of my favorite lines) i thought, "oh, how wonderful! kipler isn't going to parallel sarah and samantha; she's going to parallel mulder and sarah!" and from that point on the fic had kind of won me over big time. but i also found it extremely believable that scully didn't realize what mulder was essentially seeing in sarah until the end. scully has to work to always be on the level, even when mulder's not being very forthcoming - a fact which is apparent in this fic, without it being overly dramatic. it makes sense that, already on edge, she would automatically jump to fearing 'the worst' - fearing that mulder was projecting his sister's abduction onto the case. after all, isn't that the number one matter that is ever at hand for him? she can't see the forest for the trees (pun noted), in this case, and rather than judge her harshly for it, i felt heightened empathy for her. confusion is such a staple of her life, she is constantly struggling to apply reason and logic to each troubling new situation, and i was very glad that kipler paid her that due; that just because she doesn't always understand what's going on doesn't mean she gives herself licence to stop trying.

No one is ever too late to comment

[wendelah1]

but i also found it extremely believable that scully didn't realize what mulder was essentially seeing in sarah until the end. scully has to work to always be on the level, even when mulder's not being very forthcoming - a fact which is apparent in this fic, without it being overly dramatic. it makes sense that, already on edge, she would automatically jump to fearing 'the worst' - fearing that mulder was projecting his sister's abduction onto the case. after all, isn't that the number one matter that is ever at hand for him? she can't see the forest for the trees (pun noted), in this case, and rather than judge her harshly for it, i felt heightened empathy for her. confusion is such a staple of her life, she is constantly struggling to apply reason and logic to each troubling new situation, and i was very glad that kipler paid her that due; that just because she doesn't always understand what's going on doesn't mean she gives herself licence to stop trying.

Kipler's clear-sighted empathy for her characters informs and shapes every scene. Scully can't stop trying to apply reason and logic to every situation, because it's integral to her character. Rather than make her look like an idiot for having the bad luck to be living in a universe that keeps making her wrong for standing up for science, Kipler makes her position sympathetic, even understandable. No one comes off as the bad guy in this, there is no villain; in the end, there is just something new to understand, something miraculous, a mystery for science to try to unravel. What elevates the story out of the MOTW category into something rarer is that scene at the end, with Mulder playing the piano and Scully looking on, as she comprehends at last what drew Mulder to the case, and to Sarah.

Re: No one is ever too late to comment

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

What elevates the story out of the MOTW category into something rarer is that scene at the end, with Mulder playing the piano and Scully looking on, as she comprehends at last what drew Mulder to the case, and to Sarah.

yes, i agree. it was definitely a fic that started off good but mild, and built on itself right up until the end. i really love it when a writer manages to do that. it's subtle and feels very natural and poignant, without really seeming to try.

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

read this some time ago and really enjoyed it. very very season 2/3, good case, interesting premise, tension, character development and exploration. Just one question: what IS gen fic??

[wendelah1]

There are several working definitions in fandom. This article from TV Tropes covers the ground pretty well: Gen Fic.

I guess to me, gen fic is fic that isn't focused on a romantic pairing or relationship, is plot-driven, and doesn't have sex scenes, either implied or explicit. It's okay for a romantic relationship/pairing to be in the background (especially if it's canon) as long as it isn't the focus of the story.