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

[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.