This is an interesting question that I have been pondering for a couple of days and I am not sure I have the answer. I have just gone to her website and read all her stories again (except for Best Lies which I ran out of time for) and noticed that this story is by far her shortest and most succint. Maybe that is the key. As I said before, this story felt like a vignette to me, a snapshot in time, one which didn't make me think too much about anything at all and left me not feeling that I had any new insight or feeling. IMHO good stories are either a 'cracking good read', you are on a roller-coaster of a journey, so that even if you don't get any particularly memorable insight, you are carried away by the events and the interaction between the characters. Or they are portraits, pictures painted by individual authors which even when they don't match your view of the characters, help you to consider them in a different light. The best, best stories, of course, are those that do both and without thinking to deeply about it I would say that all the classics of fanfic (in fact of all story-telling) fulfil that criteria.
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
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winterfish
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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