Story 110: "Gutless" by Magdeleine

[wendelah1]

Yep, this is the one with the talking parrot, a pretty good casefile, and Scully having "Mulder Awareness Days." The author refers to the latter as Uber-UST in her summary. I think the term "parrotfic," not to be confused with parrotfic, might have originated here. "I mean why read babyfic when you can read parrotfic, right?" Truer words were never spoken, er, written, Autumn. There is a talking parrot in a Syntax6 story that I bet is a little shout-out to "Gutless." At least, I think it is a parrot.

If you don't find this to your taste, try "Bonemeal," which is a very different kind of story. You can find it on her author's page at Gossamer, along with "Gutless" broken into smaller bites. "Bonemeal" deserves its own discussion, but it's so short, I doubt we'll ever do it formally. If anyone knows if this writer changed fandoms, has a different email address, and is perchance still around somewhere, please let us know. Thanks to an anonymouse, you can go leave Magdeleine comments on her story at Archive of Our Own. You can read her fic for The Office there, too.

This story was suggested by amyhit as being one that would generate discussion. I guess it's time to read it and find out.

"Gutless"

Upcoming attractions: "Fathoms Five" by Penumbra, "Melancholia" by Jeylan, and "This House is Burning" by Tesla. If you don't like those, you can always go post your own suggestions at the nominations post.

Comments

Re: just in case anyone is as big a geek as i am...

[riddledfate.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for linking to her site! I'm heading over there to find more of her stories, because this one was simply amazing! Her characterizations and the casefile are A++, plus there's lots of humor and the UST is just delicious. Mulder awareness days.. oh poor Scully, I've often wondered how she did to resist that, haha. It's always a pleasure to find stories like this, so thanks for the rec! :)

Re: just in case anyone is as big a geek as i am...

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Gutless was pretty much Magdeleines coup de grace, i think. her other fics are, sadly, not like this one. Wendelah's right, though. Bonemeal is really good, in a completely different way than Gutless is good.

the UST is just delicious.

nnnggghhh. i know. i am a tremendous sucker for UST, and i don't think i've ever read UST quite the way this fic does UST. i'm trying to figure out how i'm going to talk about the fic without having my entire commentary unravel into "OMG THE UST!!!"