200 Members!

[wendelah1]

Today, on 10/13, we hit 200 members, 263 watchers, and I have no idea how many lurkers. Usually when communities hit a milestone, the mod offers up special treats to celebrate, but I'm afraid I have no such thing. I make bad icons, I can't write comment fic.

Recently at The X-Files Lost and Found Board, a community I mostly lurk at, someone suggested people tell their favorite quote from a fanfic. I thought it was a cool idea, so I'd thought I'd try to start it up here.

Mine is from "Synesthesia" by haphazard method, which you can read at Gossamer.

"I searched forever. Like a madman. And all I found was that a Ph.D and years of investigative training were completely useless. One day you simply reappeared in the hospital. The only thing I could do was sit by your bed and hope beyond reason that you heard me or felt me, and that you would come back to me."

Long story short, this is the quote that inspired me to start writing fanfiction.

Your turn.

Comments

[leucocrystal]

Cliched choice, I know, which is why I'm getting it in early. I don't even care if it's a cliche; "Parabiosis" was the first full XF fic I remember reading, and it had me from the beginning with this:

"Rough day, Mulder?" Fox Mulder had quixotic theories, dark eyes, and he was six feet of long warm bones in the bed. She had been making a fool of herself over him for years, staying in a ridiculous job because Mulder was tall and mumbly and had once tried to make her drink sardine juice.

Runner-up (from "Bed" by onpaperfirst):

“Go to sleep.” He looked sweet and crazy. She wanted him to fall into a dark, dreamless sleep, because without it, his relentless thoughts demanded expression and his mouth and tongue wouldn’t oblige. She wanted to take her fingers and press the worry lines out of his face.

Oh, fanfic. I miss the days when I had the time to really immerse myself in you for hours and hours, I really do.

[ktds.livejournal.com]

From Ash by cofax:

Scully returned on a day when the sun rose in fire and set in smoke.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I have so many. I used to keep a notebook with pieces and phrases I really liked--but I've moved so many times since then I don't know what happened to the book.

From Unfinished Universe by Revely:

She's wrong, he thinks as he follows her, D is not for duty, it's for devotion. Devotion turns duty to ash.


And from Tempest by Missy Pennington:

"Fleabie. She was his girlfrin once, but there was a fire inna
hotel and I hate her."

It's been years since I read that story, but that line never fails to make me smile.

[kukkaseksi.livejournal.com]

His palms cradled her head; and then, as if he held the most fragile piece of glass in the world, he turned it first to the left and then the right. She wasn't fragile. She was positive that he understood that. She had proven her strength over and over again, in a hundred thousand different ways over the years. And she'd never let him forget it, either. But for that one moment, while they were alone, she would be as fragile as he needed her to be.

From Cheapened Things by MD1016

There are other quotes I love just as much - if not more, maybe - but in 1999 I read this story aloud into a tape recorder and sent the cassette to a fellow X-Files fan in Finland. Said fan is now my wife, so it holds a lot of significance for me. This quote in particular from that story has always stayed with me.

[wendelah1]

There are other quotes I love just as much - if not more, maybe - but in 1999 I read this story aloud into a tape recorder and sent the cassette to a fellow X-Files fan in Finland. Said fan is now my wife, so it holds a lot of significance for me. This quote in particular from that story has always stayed with me.

Beautiful. Romance leading to romance, wooing her with fanfiction. <3

"Cheapened Things" was on my "to discuss" list at one point. I do not know what happened.

[maybe-amanda.livejournal.com]

From RivkaT's "Wireless":

He had to slow this down. Every instant would be one more
reason to have lived so long and suffered so much. Every minute
would be worth a year's further struggle.

[wendelah1]

Quoting "Parabiosis" a fangirl cliché? Well, maybe just a little, since I know of at least two fans who embedded quotes on their icons. <3

Hey, it's a quotable story, full of set pieces.

How about a quote of Mulder describing Scully? I like this one:

He could hear the shower running, knew the bathroom door was unlocked.
He was forever dealing with Scully naked in other rooms, Scully
shopping for clothes, Scully communing with herself in bathrooms,
Scully kicking off the covers just a wall away. She unbuttoned this or
that, discarded her shoes, reached in her bra for one reason or
another. She fixed his tie and messed up his desk, breathed in his
ear, stuck her fork in his dessert. She called him with her dreams but
never her nightmares. She licked the corner of her mouth, a gesture of
thought. She bought herself flowers. She ate brewer's yeast and royal
jelly and all sorts of weird crap, but coffee was bad for you and she
was a caffeine freak, eternally poisoned and running on nerves. She
was a fast draw, a dead shot, a basilisk eye through the sights. The
wisdom in her eyes was a thousand years old, and she didn't even
believe in reincarnation.

Oh, fanfic. I miss the days when I had the time to really immerse myself in you for hours and hours, I really do.

We miss you, too. Thanks for commenting.

[wendelah1]

"Ash." Yes. Yes. Yes. A great first line.

I love that story so much I wrote DVD commentary for it. The penultimate line is a killer, too.

Every word in that story is so layered with meaning and subtext and emotion. Yet, it's so short, I could practically post it in a comment.

[wendelah1]

"Wireless".

That entire story is quotable.

God, another fic with a killer ending. We should have read it as part of the "first-time" series, she said with an evil cackle.

Whoops. Edited for typo.

[tiger-bay.livejournal.com]

There are so many great sentences that I can't think of any profound ones. But when I stumbled on fan fiction a couple of years ago I couldn't believe myself...I had no idea that such a thing even existed. At first, having come across some stories by accident, I had difficulty staying on my chair I was hooting with laughter that much. But then I read Parabiosis and it all changed...a sample of that lyrical writing has already been quoted so I will take mine from "Black Hole Season" which I read shortly after that. The final line literally made my toes curl - and I knew I was hooked:

"...and I tilt her chin and kiss her briefly and she smiles because the world hasn't ended but
it moves, oh, it moves."

and just to make you feel that you are there with them on the sidewalk outside the nightclub:

"She tips her head back, wryly amused. They stand toe to toe, their hands in their coat pockets, eyeing each other in challenge. Prickly Scully -she gives love a run for its money with her fuck-me clothes and her fuck-you demeanor. Yet at times she makes him feel that he is finally getting something right in his life."

Happy, happy days when there was still all those great stories still to read!

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Yes, I am abusing the invitation to post favorite lines by posting a bajillion of them. But seriously, how can one help it? I already had to forbid myself from posting any by Penumbra. If I chose one, I would've had to choose a hundred. JET was very nearly in the same boat. And to quote Khyber i'd have had to quote the entire fic just to give the quote its due context. *wrings hands* SO MANY WONDERFUL FICS.


From Instructions by tree:

"They are laughing in the rain in a cemetery in the middle of the night. She is drowning in the wind and the water and her own belief. For once it feels good to let go the lines, the wheel. She's no sailor.

The night's stars are masked and offer no direction; the sky is dark as deep water. In the glow of the flashlight her partner's eyes are the color of cool shallows. They shine with more than reflected light.

"Come on," he says. "Let's get out of here."

She thinks of the pole star, celestial navigation. She swims."



From Miles to Go Before I Sleep by bravenewcentury:

"But the bright, quiet winter morning doesn't seem like the time for things she says and does every day of her life. Mulder's face is as changed as the world around them, like a book falling open.

She pulls the door closed behind her and scoops a handful of snow from the hood of their car as she passes. A bird has been there before her, leaving footprints in hasty, scattered ellipses, circling twice, three times before the little stutter of snow that signals takeoff. It's a cipher she's starting to read."



From Confirmation by Bonetree:

"There in the temple she'd felt this, something turning, a piece clicking into place. Somewhere in Mulder's talk before she'd fallen asleep, about all the choices leading to a moment like a stone in a stream, before she'd woken and gone to him, she'd understood.

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to say that what she'd seen on the dying man's face on the cross -- the knowing about choices, his choice that was never a choice - was the same as the expression on the statue of the Buddha, serene in his red smoke room, hidden in his dark, golden recess.

It was what she'd seen on Mulder's face as he'd looked at her from the bed, the look he'd held her with as she'd stood beside him, silent, and undressed."



From Lines by JET:

"Scully's palms are mapped with lines he has not yet memorized. He needs to do that, he thinks, leaning into her touch. It is a very important thing to learn.

"You want anything? Some water?"

"Everything I can't have." He is matter-of-fact and logical. At another time, she might be proud of him.

She must not be listening. "You didn't eat much earlier. Maybe you'd want an apple, a snack. There's one in the car."

"No," he assures, not touching her. He needs to go back to his own room now. She probably wants to go to sleep, is just being nice out of duty.

"Anything?" she asks again more quietly, still stroking his hair, and he realizes how close their bodies really are, how few inches hover between them.

His eyes do not escape hers. He very carefully cups her jaw in his hand and traces her soft, dream-warm mouth with his thumb. He does not leave a mark. Oh, he thinks, oh. Yes, he thinks, there is something I want. Yes."

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Said fan is now my wife, so it holds a lot of significance for me.

how cool is that! i love that our fandom is/was so rife with this kind of interpersonal connection.

[wendelah1]

SO MANY WONDERFUL FICS.

I KNOW!

We are blessed. There are not too many fandoms with the variety and scope of XF fanfic. This is unique, in my experience, the blessing and curse of having such a loose canon. But then, Mulder and Scully are unique, too.

[wendelah1]

Devotion turns duty to ash. Wow.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I didn't think I'd be able to do the necessary research to post here--I take my fanfic very seriously indeed (g)-- but you mentioned Tree's "Alchemy" and I remembered this:

"You. You're mine. They gave you to me and I'm not giving you back. I don't quite know what to do with you, but I'm not giving you back."

Mulder's inner voice being territorial. I quite like territorial.

[wendelah1]

Mulder's inner voice being territorial. I quite like territorial.

I love that story. I like Mulder when he's being territorial about Scully. Kind of. Somehow this leads me to think of "All the Lies that Were My Life."

"Maybe I wouldn't be such a cunt if you weren't
trying to control every fucking move I make.

That's such a great line.

Well, you can't argue me down, you can't buy
me, and you sure as hell can't fuck me into
submission."

This is good, too.

"What are you talking about Scully? What is it
you think I want?"

"You want to own me. Body. Soul. Mind. All
of me. You want me to submit to you. You
don't want to have a doubt in your mind.
That's why you keep making all these power
plays, Mulder. Hell, you want to tie me up and
come on my face, slap me around a little,
maybe."

That was when I realized what she was doing.
She was getting her spare cuffs out of her
dresser and handing them to me.

This was insane. Clearly, inarguably insane.

And my cock got so hard so fast that I swear it
could have pushed Scully to the bed all by
itself.

It must say something about my sense of humor but I find this fic funny rather than dark.

[luffing.livejournal.com]

I love that story. It's my go-to re-read when I want to immerse myself in amazing use of language. I'd read anything that author writes, fanfic or no.

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Synesthesia was great, thanks for that! Now I have to read the stories everyone else quoted from. Why oh why did I miss out on the halcyon days of this reading group? There was so much awesome in here!
Wish I could come up with a serious fave fanfic quote right off the bat, but for sheer cheek the lines from The Fate of All Things Rare and Beautiful (or some similar title) by Scarlet Baldy and Aloysia Virgata (oh lord going off dim memory here and butchering names) where Mulder bitches about Scully and her issues with pizza, followed closely with comments about the merits of a good fast fork (in Chinese food) were outstanding. Also autocorrect hates me

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Damn that link to Wireless no longer works. I'll see if it's on gossamer or AO3

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. That Wireless. So so disturbing but so good.