Well, they are poetic and somehow inexpressibly sad and vulnerable. As if we have tried to suck the life right out of them for our own self-gratification - like torture. Somewhere there are the REAL Mulder and Scully and nothing that CC nor all of us put together can truly break into little pieces, but my God, how we have tried.
I'd never really thought of it this way. Or maybe I had, but I feel the opposite.
In my eyes works of fiction are like the Velveteen Rabbit - that toy that wants to be real, and can only be real when a child loves it so dearly that it's threadbare and its eye buttons are loose and its fur's all rubbed off. And a big part of what I think is so valuable about fandom is that it allows us to be that child. We don't have to worry about doing damage or being selfish or having insane fantasies. We can love Mulder and Scully in whatever exuberant, unselfconscious ways we want, and we don't have to worry that we're 'doing it wrong', because we're doing what we're meant to do, what comes naturally, and without us they'd be nothing. Which isn't to say I believe we're to thank for them (not for all of any one version of them).
We came because they were there - not the other way around. But then they became because we were there. So it's a symbiotic relationship.
As I see it, if there's anything real about them it's because we love them. We love them more for the effigies of them, and our/their effigies also stand as proof of our love. some of them are hackjobs, and some of them are astoundingly beautiful, but at the end of the day I feel like (almost) all our Scullys and our Mulders are pieces of the real them.
I don't disagree that there is something painful about Punk's fics - especially Our Scullys - a feeling of vulnerability. I just don't percieve her fics as sad or violent in nature. I think it's that what we did with our Mulders and Scullys we were doing to ourselves, through a filter. With them it's more than empathy. It's me, it's my own desire to be loved, hurt, challenged, ditched, puzzled, amazed, fucked, saved, changed.
And with that I conclude that I actually like these fics more than I thought I did. *eyeroll*
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2011-02-03 04:26 am (UTC)I'd never really thought of it this way. Or maybe I had, but I feel the opposite.
In my eyes works of fiction are like the Velveteen Rabbit - that toy that wants to be real, and can only be real when a child loves it so dearly that it's threadbare and its eye buttons are loose and its fur's all rubbed off. And a big part of what I think is so valuable about fandom is that it allows us to be that child. We don't have to worry about doing damage or being selfish or having insane fantasies. We can love Mulder and Scully in whatever exuberant, unselfconscious ways we want, and we don't have to worry that we're 'doing it wrong', because we're doing what we're meant to do, what comes naturally, and without us they'd be nothing. Which isn't to say I believe we're to thank for them (not for all of any one version of them).
We came because they were there - not the other way around. But then they became because we were there. So it's a symbiotic relationship.
As I see it, if there's anything real about them it's because we love them. We love them more for the effigies of them, and our/their effigies also stand as proof of our love. some of them are hackjobs, and some of them are astoundingly beautiful, but at the end of the day I feel like (almost) all our Scullys and our Mulders are pieces of the real them.
I don't disagree that there is something painful about Punk's fics - especially Our Scullys - a feeling of vulnerability. I just don't percieve her fics as sad or violent in nature. I think it's that what we did with our Mulders and Scullys we were doing to ourselves, through a filter. With them it's more than empathy. It's me, it's my own desire to be loved, hurt, challenged, ditched, puzzled, amazed, fucked, saved, changed.
And with that I conclude that I actually like these fics more than I thought I did. *eyeroll*