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

[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.