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xf_book_clubI have no idea why ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
juliefortune isn't more widely recced or read. Her stories are professional caliber, not surprising given that she's a professional writer. She knows how to build suspense without wasting words, but just as on the series, there is a lot happening between the lines. Rarest of all, she writes stories with genuinely scary x-files at their center. Thanks to amyhit for reminding me of this excellent story.
Earlier this year when I recced this at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
crack_van, I had it taking place in season two, but I think now that I was wrong. "Falling Stars" actually takes place during season one, but I didn't figure this out until I'd re-watched "Eve," the episode it ties directly into.
The room is dark. A thin line of moonlight slices over an empty desk, cuts across a carpeted floor, stops abruptly, as if frightened, near a black corner. There are shapes in the darkness -- the humped back of a bed, the long reach of a couch -- but nothing moves except the lazy flashing of a red light near the door.
The red light blinks, like a sleepy eye, an instant before the telephone hums for attention. It goes neglected, and the red light blinks more rapidly, then brightens.
There is a man's voice in the room, disembodied and ghostly.
"This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a message."
The beep is long, shrill, painful. When it ends, there is another voice, a woman's, sharp and fast.
"Mulder, if you're there, call me back on my cell phone."
A click. The answering machine hums to itself for another few seconds and rewinds. The red light goes back to a slow, steady blink.
For a full minute, the room holds its silence, its darkness, its breath.
The door slams open, crashes loudly against the wall and bounces forward again, stopped by an outstretched hand still holding tight to a cellular phone. The hand searches for the light switch hiding coyly out of sight in the shadows.
The lights blaze on, erasing the shaft of moonlight, the red blink of the answering machine, revealing the woman who stands in the doorway. Special Agent Dana Scully holds an automatic pistol in the FBI-approved two-handed position and sweeps the room for a target. Finally, she relaxes.
Sounds of her light footsteps, muffled by the carpet, as she moves into the living room, then into the bedroom. She is methodical, quick, and practiced, but in the end she returns to the living room and examines the desk, gun still held forgotten in her right hand.
She touches the empty desktop with her fingertips, and for the first time since kicking the door open she seems uncertain of how to proceed.
Behind her, the red light stops blinking a second before the phone rings. She whirls and stares as Fox Mulder's voice enters the room again.
"This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a -- "
His voice is interrupted by a long electronic tone. The answering machine responds by whirring.
"You have sixteen messages," the machine says, in a too-precise voice. It starts the first message.
"Hi, Mulder, this is Scully -- "
Scully lunges for the phone, knocks it off the cradle and fumbles it to her ear. She shouts over her own voice.
"Mulder! Mulder, it's me. Where the hell are you?"
The answering machine stops in the middle of her message, chopping off her recorded voice with an electronic squeak. It clicks three times and begins to rewind.
She clutches the phone close, knuckles white around the receiver.
"Mulder?" she asks, and the uncertainty is as quiet and insidious in her voice as a shadow. "Are you there?"
After another few seconds she hangs up and stands there, eyes closed, one hand still touching the phone as if it might ring again.
It does not.
After a while, she turns the lights out, and the door closes quietly behind her.
The darkness is quiet, and breathless. Waiting.
The nomination post is open and awaiting your suggestions. I'd love to know what you thought of the story.
Read "Falling Stars".
Edit: here is a link to her old site, courtesy of the Internet Archive: Fanfiction for the Fearless.
juliefortune isn't more widely recced or read. Her stories are professional caliber, not surprising given that she's a professional writer. She knows how to build suspense without wasting words, but just as on the series, there is a lot happening between the lines. Rarest of all, she writes stories with genuinely scary x-files at their center. Thanks to amyhit for reminding me of this excellent story.Earlier this year when I recced this at
crack_van, I had it taking place in season two, but I think now that I was wrong. "Falling Stars" actually takes place during season one, but I didn't figure this out until I'd re-watched "Eve," the episode it ties directly into.The room is dark. A thin line of moonlight slices over an empty desk, cuts across a carpeted floor, stops abruptly, as if frightened, near a black corner. There are shapes in the darkness -- the humped back of a bed, the long reach of a couch -- but nothing moves except the lazy flashing of a red light near the door.
The red light blinks, like a sleepy eye, an instant before the telephone hums for attention. It goes neglected, and the red light blinks more rapidly, then brightens.
There is a man's voice in the room, disembodied and ghostly.
"This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a message."
The beep is long, shrill, painful. When it ends, there is another voice, a woman's, sharp and fast.
"Mulder, if you're there, call me back on my cell phone."
A click. The answering machine hums to itself for another few seconds and rewinds. The red light goes back to a slow, steady blink.
For a full minute, the room holds its silence, its darkness, its breath.
The door slams open, crashes loudly against the wall and bounces forward again, stopped by an outstretched hand still holding tight to a cellular phone. The hand searches for the light switch hiding coyly out of sight in the shadows.
The lights blaze on, erasing the shaft of moonlight, the red blink of the answering machine, revealing the woman who stands in the doorway. Special Agent Dana Scully holds an automatic pistol in the FBI-approved two-handed position and sweeps the room for a target. Finally, she relaxes.
Sounds of her light footsteps, muffled by the carpet, as she moves into the living room, then into the bedroom. She is methodical, quick, and practiced, but in the end she returns to the living room and examines the desk, gun still held forgotten in her right hand.
She touches the empty desktop with her fingertips, and for the first time since kicking the door open she seems uncertain of how to proceed.
Behind her, the red light stops blinking a second before the phone rings. She whirls and stares as Fox Mulder's voice enters the room again.
"This is Fox Mulder. Please leave a -- "
His voice is interrupted by a long electronic tone. The answering machine responds by whirring.
"You have sixteen messages," the machine says, in a too-precise voice. It starts the first message.
"Hi, Mulder, this is Scully -- "
Scully lunges for the phone, knocks it off the cradle and fumbles it to her ear. She shouts over her own voice.
"Mulder! Mulder, it's me. Where the hell are you?"
The answering machine stops in the middle of her message, chopping off her recorded voice with an electronic squeak. It clicks three times and begins to rewind.
She clutches the phone close, knuckles white around the receiver.
"Mulder?" she asks, and the uncertainty is as quiet and insidious in her voice as a shadow. "Are you there?"
After another few seconds she hangs up and stands there, eyes closed, one hand still touching the phone as if it might ring again.
It does not.
After a while, she turns the lights out, and the door closes quietly behind her.
The darkness is quiet, and breathless. Waiting.
The nomination post is open and awaiting your suggestions. I'd love to know what you thought of the story.
Read "Falling Stars".
Edit: here is a link to her old site, courtesy of the Internet Archive: Fanfiction for the Fearless.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 12:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 06:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-28 08:51 pm (UTC)I liked her interaction with Jesse as well.
For a short story, this had a lot going on.
Thanks for the rec.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-29 02:00 am (UTC)The fact that she also conveys the character's inner landscapes with equal efficiency and vividness is just - guh - I really love her, basically, is what I'm saying. she seems to know exactly how to mix descriptions of thoughts and feelings with descriptions of the scene, so that none of the details get muddled or block each other out. everything synthesizes into one striking impression.
Plus it doesn't hurt that her Mulder and Scully are really, really awesome. I think of them as being flinty. They get things done, they fight their battles expertly, they're very competent. And yet, at the end of the day, Julie doesn't neglect to write their vulnerability either. If I have one favorite thing about her fics it's that she always ends them with something that makes me feel like I've gone ten rounds with the characters and only just received the punch that decides the match. She lets Mulder and Scully throw themselves into the work and take a beating as if they hardly feel it. It's like as long as they can put themselves into the work they can stand anything - which I think is true of what we see in canon, but canon tends not to emphasize that it's what they do. Whereas Julie emphasizes it by giving us a glimpse of them after the action is over, when they have to step back into their lives and behave like normal human beings. And find they almost can't.
Reading Falling Stars, I was struck by the thought that if it were an actual episode it would've ended at the cemetary with Deep Throat (?) driving away in the black sedan. We wouldn't have gotten to see Scully return the drawing to Jesse, when we realize - as she does - how shaken she really is.
Because Julie gives us that, she is - IMO - one of the few fanfic writers in the fandom who manages to write fics that have a strong element of horror in them. They're not just spooky, exciting stories, they're psychologically brutal. I always end up being disturbed and frightened for Mulder and Scully by the time the fic is over (and Falling Stars basically goes easy on them, in comparison to some of Fortune's fics - The Voice of Experience in particular). Sure, they save each other, but at the cost of a certain amount of personal trauma which can't be undone.
I should probably be backing all of this up with examples, but really, the entire fic is one big example. It speaks for itself.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-30 04:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-31 07:07 pm (UTC)Eve is one of those good eps that tends to be forgotten because it doesn't go anywhere within the mytharc. Not only has no other writer made such creative use of it, I can't remember that anyone else has made use of it at all.
Why have I not read all of Fortune's stories? I remember "The Ghost of You" as being both horrific and pleasantly shippy, a very neat package.
I agree with everything amyhit said. Make a note.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-31 11:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 11:24 pm (UTC)It's a pity because I really, really enjoyed "Fata Morgana" and "Best Lies" and think she is a story writer of a superior class. But there we have it...
no subject
Date: 2010-11-02 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-06 03:22 am (UTC)despite my glowing review (or perhaps in addition to it) i also prefer Fata Morgana and The Best Lies to Falling Stars - if only slightly. one thing about Fallings Stars is that because it's S1 fic (and a casefile too) it basically earns a lot of extra points straight off. but then when i compare it, out of the fandom context of S1 fic, to just Julie's other fics, i realize i do like those other ones more.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-08 03:19 am (UTC)With that in mind, I can only think that for me this story doesn't really work on either level. It is too short for me to get involved in the story arc: I actually found some it quite confusing, when Mulder is visited by the Adam, (which Adam? who?), there wasn't enough about Jesse for me to care one way or another about him, and the main theme is resilient Scully rescuing tortured Mulder, perhaps a little cliched for me to take when it is practically the only theme development of the story (Jesse aside). As a 'portrait' of Mulder and Scully, again I don't feel anything differently to what I already do, except to feel a little queasy about Mulder's torture - and that's not new!
But as I said, on the good side, her setting of a scene is second to none: you are a fly on the wall of Mulder's apartment when Scully comes in and the phone rings, Mulder's thought train during his torture and after are vivid. But just not enough for me....
Long, long reply, sorry, I'm not sure if I have answered your question