X-Files Book Club

ARGH!!!

I couldn`t get through The Watching Wall, I haven`t made it through Gutless despite my best effort, and I intensely dislike this story (which I beta`d).

Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!

From:

wendelah1

Look! I found a friend for your aliens! "We Come in Peace!"

We're really failing you lately. I was going to post "Fathoms Five" but I was feeling too depressed. Then I was going to have

estella_c post it but I decided I was even too depressed for that. So I decided to post "Melancholia." Go figure.

It must have been hard to beta something you disliked so much. Can you elaborate a little on what the problems were for you?

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We're really failing you lately.

You are not failing me. I am just failing.

From:

heartequals.livejournal.com

I'm not finished with this yet, but I'm really curious what other people think of Mulder's internal monologue. I can't decide what I think of it. I'm not usually a fan of being privy to someone's thoughts but parts of this ring really, hysterically true for me. idk.

From:

wendelah1

I think Jeylan really gets Mulder, so the internal monologues do ring true for me, as well, as long as they stick to poetry and life and flowers and graveyards. The problem is she doesn't get Scully at all, so whenever Mulder's thoughts turn to his one true love, it starts to sound off.

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She intensely dislikes Scully. Hates might be more to the point.

From:

wendelah1

Okay. That's the problem in a nutshell. I don't know why someone who hates Scully would even want to write MSR.

So come on. What on earth did you say to her about this? Did she tone it down at all?

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As I recall (this was a long time ago) she went off on me about how I didn't *see* the real true Mulder, (not the one on the TV but the real one who lived in real reality, or the ether, or something) and how I'd been blinded by all those Scully apologists who could not see that Mulder settled for Scully-the-frigid-shrew because he had no choice in the matter - Chris and Co. wouldn't give him any nice girls to play with!!!!!!!

After that, it got weird. :D

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whenever Mulder's thoughts turn to his one true love, it starts to sound off.

She intensely dislikes Scully. Hates might be more to the point.

in the bulk of my main comment i said that i felt like mulder was two people. now i'm thinking that perhaps Jeylan's hatred of scully has a lot to do with that divide i feel in his characterizations. on the one hand he's this gorgeously perceptive, caring person who thinks about dead family members and truth and singularity of being. and on the other hand he is (IMO) almost boorish. very selfish, certainly. it's like jeylan is taking out her dislike of scully through mulder without even meaning to. she's written an "it's all for you, mulder" story, even though she clearly tried her damndest to write something tender and romantic.

maybe_amanda, do you know why jeylan bothered to write M/S stories at all, hating scully as it sounds like she did? or is that not appropriate fic-talk? i'm just trying to understand the 'headspace' of the fic.

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Okay so...(consider this yoru two-cents warning)

over the years, I've done a lot of beta, and some of that has been for people who dislike Mulder and for people who dislike Scully. And the reason that some, if not all of them, write - or attempt to write - MSR is because that's what sells. (Some eventually moved on to writing slash, ostensibly because that gives then an opportunity to show their favourite in a *more equal* relationship, a theory I don't buy even a teeny tiny bit, but I digress). But as we've noted, you can often feel the antipathy for either Mulder or Scully in a lot of these stories, and a writer has to be more than just good with a turn of phrase to make it work.

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And the reason that some, if not all of them, write - or attempt to write - MSR is because that's what sells.

wow. *feels terribly naive* clearly i have heard that people do this sort of thing, but...but they really do it? and Jeylan is quite a good writer, too, which is worse. whenever i think of people who "write what sells" i think of people who write the textual equivalent of no-name-brand-fruitloops (colored cardboard). the idea of someone "writing what sells" and actually putting enough of themselves into it that what they write isn't lifeless is kind of troubling.

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Well, writing what sells in fandom means you care about the community interaction and your place in it. Writers that everyone reads and loves get more power (when power is the ability to convince people to read you/interact with you/heed your advice if you ever give it), but they also get more comments (and comments are the only sure consequence of that power--everything else is hit and miss); and comments, in the end, it's just community interaction. I find people willing to put themselves into work they don't exactly love for it weirdly endearing.

From:

estella-c.livejournal.com

Did I rec this? That was me? Okay.

There are things I like about Melancholia and things I don't. I'm concerned about explaining the latter without being called out for getting extra-textual and irrelevant.

This fic is a real change of pace, first, lushly romantic in a deliberately old-fashioned way, and that is--in leucocrystal's word--endearing. Multiple spring flowers, an abandoned book and graveyard evoking the past, two soon-to-be-lovers hanging out and eying each other. Mulder seems to be in a down mood about ever, ever making love to Scully, but that passes when he finally makes his desperate move. The sex is both soulful and erotic and actually just edgy enough to hold your attention firmly and leave you...unsettled.

Incidentally, Jeylan can write. No question about it. The woman has talent. Talent is the base line and then there's, well, agenda.

When I first read this I did feel an oddness in the characterization, though not enough to bother me. The oddness becomes focused, now that I (and most others) have heard about Jeylan's negative attitude toward Scully. Jeylan was more than a Mulderist; she was an anti-Scullyist. And I doubt that she would argue with that description.

As I've so often heard other's say about other fics, I just didn't recognize this Scully. Meaninglessly argumentative to begin with, then distracted by her imaginary residence-rehab, she doesn't seem at all the empathetic and bright person Gillian Anderson played. Mulder talks a lot about Scully's "typical" attitudes and behavior without convincing me that he really understands her at all. He's in love with her, all right, and he sure thinks she's pretty with the sun on her hair and all, and he solves his melancholy problem by jumping her bones. (The first thing he does is thrust his hand between her legs. That's pretty exciting. He does it several times--three?--and that was at least once too often.)

What is Scully doing all this time. What is she thinking? We don't actually know. She's enigmatically watching and waiting and straightening her poppy wreath and just generally, according to our restless narrator, giving off please-conform-and-be-sensible vibrations. Scully was, of course, the conforming and sensible memeber of the partnership. But I think Jeylan has pushed her into a passive parody of herself.

This makes Mulder's rough and determined approach to making love--to *force* Scully to react--a little squicky. It appears that she enjoys herself, she says so before she goes off to neaten up, but I get the feeling that we are meant to sympathize with Mulder's frustration, even at the very end, in having fallen in love with such a blank and self-absorbed individual.

Nope, Jeylan doesn't like Scully and finally did dispose of her fictionally and introduce Mulder to gay culture. ("The woman turned him gay.") So we part ways. Because I like Scully.

One last ironic point. We've talked a bit about poetic prose here, pro and con, without ever defining it. This story is *really* poetic, with whole passages from PB Shelley and others. That I liked. (Though not for every day.)

From:

wendelah1

Yes, you wanted to discuss this and I have the email to prove it.

I think this is a very fair review. I agree with everything you said about the story and Jeylan's antagonistic attitude toward Scully (and toward Gillian Anderson, too, apparently). I really admire her writing, but her characterization of Scully is beyond off.

The sex scenes are problematic. Aren't they always in Jeylan's MSR fic? You get carried away by her passionate, lyrical writing, but the truth is, if someone actually grabbed my crotch during a first kiss, he'd get told to stop it, if he didn't get slapped. I don't think that's a real smooth move, and I don't see Mulder doing it or Scully putting up with it if he did.

I think Jeylan sees this love affair as an unequal yoking, to use some old-fashioned language. If only she could have seen and written Scully as clearly and with as much insight as she does Mulder, she would have been one of the greats.

Here's a crazy idea: someone needs to remix this and tell it from Scully's point of view. Any takers?

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I love love love this fic's prose.

That said, I think you nailed it with the squicky thing--I can't like Mulder like this. There are many many moments were he sounds true to me, but I end up liking Scully, as unsympathetically and un-Scully as she's drawn (and that makes me sad--and makes me think there are tons of stuff going inside her that we're not getting that actually explain her behaviour), because I just can't help thinking he's being asshole-ish and that I don't get at all why he's in love with her. Is it because she's beautiful? He's always sad when describing one of what he says are her typical attitudes...

This fic makes me think that you will always be alone because people cannot understand each-other at all, and only connect but fleetingly. I wonder when it was posted--canon timing wise, and if it fits with their relationship at the time?

From:

wendelah1

I love this story's prose, too. I'm seduced by it. I end up liking Scully, too, despite how unsympathetically she's been written (take that, Jeylan!).

I also got very plugged into the last lines where Mulder is feeling alone, because even the person he loves and who loves him back doesn't understand him. I felt that way, all the time when I was growing up, so that sense of alienation feels familiar, and she writes that beautifully. What I think Jeylan has missed the boat on to some extent, in her portrayal of Special Snowflake Mulder, is that the alienation is not anyone's fault and that the distancing is to a great extent, self-protective. She is a much better stylist than she is a student of human nature.

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I like both poetic and more simple prose, but poetic prose done well is just so gorgeous. I mean, I should be really annoyed with this fic, because character bashing in general gets my hackles up like nothing else, but I'm all O_O oh pretty.

That last feeling really got me*, too, because it resonated a lot with me and what I usually feel about the people around me. All the same, that's not how I see them usually (they have their moments, of course), which is why I can't help wondering if it's just a consequence of her really hating Scully, or if it was written at a particularly place in canon when it was a common interpretation of the true nature of their relationship.

*Particularly, because I can only rarely verbalize a general feeling a story gave me, and that last part made it clear consciously for me that it was about alienation.

From:

leucocrystal

Yeah... pretty much this. I'd add more, but I really do think you and

amyhit covered it all.

The most I remember about the first time I read this fic was how odd the whole thing felt to me, and how I thought I might like it (and I did take the necessary moment to bookmark it), but wasn't completely sure (hence my tagging it with "cracked" when I did so). It does have beautiful language, but there was something about it that just seemed so bizarre to me now. Now that I'm reading others' thoughts, it seems much clearer to me why that was.

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My opinion upon first read, a year and a half ago:

There is something about Jeylan's style that is kind of psychidelic and bizarre. Even so, there is also a loveliness to the way she describes things, blurring together sensations and emotions like watercolor. This fic is romantic in a sort of classic sense, but it isn't terribly schmoopy, which I like.

My opinion now: (certain parts bolded because, yeah, this is long, and i'm trying to help people find parts that are more to-the-point than others)

in hindsight, while i appreciate the uniqueness of the style this fic was written in, and part of the time i feel like Jeylan's mulder characterization is really wonderful, there's just too much that's off here and the more i look at it the more the off parts grow. things are off about scully, definitely, but also off about mulder, and that's something i find almost more offensive in the long run.

Jeylan's scully is a shrew, she really is. a beautiful shrew. she criticizes and hassels and pries into everything including but not exclusively mulder -- which would be perfectly tolerable if she also possessed the other traits that canon scully possesses: insight and patience and more underlying compassion than four people ought to have. but instead jeylan so often seems to be writing only the reserved and critical aspects of scully - not even recognizing the inherent justification for those aspects of her. mulder thinks longingly of the scully who first walked into the x-files office, and i find myself wondering if he even loves scully as she actually exists. he thinks he does, but he's longing for who he wants her to be, even while it is everything they've gone through together - everything they are to each other - that has evolved her into the scully who is there with him.

there are things that jeylan gets right about scully. i like the emphasis that jeylan places on scully's desire to 'fix' things, because i think that's true of her. her anxiety tends to stem from a desire for things to be "right". for scully there is safety in "rightness". but that one thing does not a characterization make.

mulder, on the other hand, spends much of this fic not realizing he is being selfish, insensitive, critical, and basically a chump. ironically, these are all the things he is seeing in scully. hey buddy, hypocritical much?

the way mulder is characterized in this fic it's as if he were two people. the mulder on the surface is sensitive and compassionate. he spends all his time philosophizing and reading poetry and feeling sad for just ebout everyone - wanting to transcend all the mundanity and the crap and just be free to be loving to scully and be loved in return. ya-da-ya-da-ya-da. upon first read i bought into this characterization of him big time. i dont, for the record, think that this mulder is faking his sensitivity or his desire to be loving. i believe he genuinely wants that. frankly, i think he's mainly too immature to realize how poorly he's managing it.

the other aspect of this mulder characterization is that he is passive-aggressively selfish, critical, and insensitive - particularly towards scully. he guiltlessly ignores her very serious accusation that he "messes with people's minds" in order to think about how great her ass is. he man-handles her (grabbing her by the waist to help her when she hasn't asked him to), then he makes a crack about how she is uncomfortable with him doing so because she "wants a man". he spends the entire fic thinking about all the things that scully's missing because she lacks innate sensitivity to the universe, and bemoaning how at odds he feels because she doesn't "get it". only to finally just decide that "now is the time" for him to make a move. because clearly it's his choice to make. the writing pays lip service to the fact that mulder is doing something that for mulder and scully counts as "extremely intrusive" by having mulder think that if scully slaps him he'll cope with it. as if his action is only going to burden him if it doesn't work out.

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contd...

the entire time i was reading the fic, my sense of the "wrongness" of the mulder/scully dynamic grew. for the first half i was decidedly on the fic's side. the writing is pretty and unique. that goes a long way with me. and when mulder is by himself, or when he's only thinking about how beautiful scully is, his characterizations really works. but i was already not feeling very great about the fic's tone, when suddenly...--the sexy tiems started:

He was going to take this woman. Now. *Now.* He was going to fuck her, make love to her, make her cry out, make her toes curl and her head toss. He was going to bury himself in her warmth, and her wetness, and let his whole soul revel in it, in this shuddery on-ness, and awakeness, and aliveness -- this fleeting instant, this incalculable, extraordinary, fugitive fragment of LIFE -- stolen as it was out of the jaws of the earthen ponderous inertia of Time. This fragment of heaven -- This --

"Stop!" she said again, more distinctly.

Mulder slowed. He breathed a shaky breath.

"I don't want to stop," he said stubbornly.

hi, i'm OFFENDED. first of all, i am offended by this characterization of mulder - a mulder who thinks "I am going to take this woman and give her perfect sex". i don't have a problem with sex scenes in which the characters become voracious, half-unstrung. in fact, wow, hot. but this is not to be mistaken with that. here mulder isn't voraciously caught up in his passionate hunger. no, he wants to establish his sexual prowess. he wants to MAKE her enjoy it. it's not about them being together, it's about what he can do to MAKE it good for them. he wants to MAKE the moment perfect. her pleasure is about vindicating him. but secondly, i am offended by this fic's chauvinistic rubbish that has the nerve to disguise its mulder as some kind of "altruistic sexual and spiritual messiah".

"Happy, Scully? You like that?" He searched her eyes.

"You -- you have no idea," she whispered. "I -- I -- Mulder,
I --"

Tenderly he touched her lips; rediscovered himself in her eyes.
Amazed himself with touching her like this, and looking into her
eyes like this.

"You trying to tell me you love me, Scully?"

She nodded.

wow, that middle line would be really gorgeous and intimate in the context of a different fic with different characterizations. but has anyone noticed that the translation of this scene is as follows?:

Mulder: i strongly suspect i am a sex god.

Scully: mulder, you are a sex god! also, i-- i--

Mulder: i know intimacy is hard for you, scully, so let me just force you to your point, which is that you love me, right? good, that's what i thought.

if the context of the fic were different i might find it plausible that mulder was simply trying to make the situation easier for scully by taking the pressure off of her. in The Cannibal King and the Dusty Maid by Pan Gamble and Slippin' Mickeys, mulder says, "I love you," and then he looks at scully and she looks back and he says calmly, "you love me to." And it's gorgeous.

But this is Melancholia. the tone of this fic is, "oh scully, you can stop stammering now, i know you love me."

which i suppose ought to be unsurprising, considering that the underlying message of the fic up until that point seems to be, "Oh scully, you can stop ____ anytime. i love you."

From:

wendelah1

Mulder: i strongly suspect i am a sex god.

Scully: mulder, you are a sex god! also, i-- i--

Mulder: i know intimacy is hard for you, scully, so let me just force you to your point, which is that you love me, right? good, that's what i thought.

I laughed at this. Well. Jeylan writes a very toppy Mulder. She clearly feels that Scully is too bossy, doesn't deserve him, and needs to be put in her place.

The weird thing is the sex itself is really pretty hot, (although the attitudes behind it are not), despite that the characters admittedly don't seem like themselves. Maybe I should not be confessing this but I like the sex scene in "A Bitter Taste on the Tongue", too. It definitely crosses the line into somewhat coercive sex, especially once the handcuffs come out.

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The weird thing is the sex itself is really pretty hot, (although the attitudes behind it are not), despite that the characters admittedly don't seem like themselves.

yes, it is weird. and i do agree, it is pretty hot. presuming i can block out how much i don't like these characterizations and their attitudes, of course. i'll have to reread A Bitter Taste on the Tongue. i remember thinking it was deliciously disturbing when i read it, but for some reason it didn't leave a lasting impression.

It definitely crosses the line into somewhat coercive sex, especially once the handcuffs come out.

coercive sex in (fan)fiction is such a fascinating area, as i see it. i'm the sort of person who has a definite kink for a very specific kind of coercive sex. i suspect that i will find Jane's fic rather suits my tastes. basically both the characters and the writer have to be very clear on the fact that it's coercive - power lines are being stuggled with here and everybody knows it. if a power struggle is happening and both characters are "into" the struggle, absolutely, wow, it can really sizzle. unfortunately, a lot of coercive sex doesn't see itself as coercive sex (my my, how art does immitate life). and as soon as a scene (particularly a first-time scene) becomes "i want this and you don't and i'm trying to convince you that you do want it the way i want it," that's basically repulsive (to me). i definitely got hints of that repulsive kind of coercive in Melancholia, though nothing really substantial in this case.

This fic makes me think that you will always be alone because people cannot understand each-other at all, and only connect but fleetingly.

me too,

hlbr, me too. and i really dislike that. if i want to get that kind of depressing realism in which people's relationships are shoddy and the characters would probably be better off alone, then i'll read classic literature. Anna Karenina does the trick nicely. when i read about mulder and scully, however, i want to see them as people who are stronger and whose lives are genuinely better (on the whole, at least) when they're together.

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