Story 144: "Heaven" by bugs

[wendelah1]

"Heaven" by bugsfic packs a lot of story into a very small space.

CATEGORY: V, A
SPOILERS: Through the end of season 7.
RATING: PG-13 for slightly disturbing imagery
SUMMARY: Scully begins a search.

"Heaven" through the wonder of the Wayback Machine but also available at Gossamer. And maybe here at her journal?

Comments

[tiger-bay.livejournal.com]

Well, I think I am stuck for words. This is the type of story that makes me feel entirely inadequate as I have not a clue what it is about. I am presuming childbirth, but don't get the insects, nor the spiders, nor the S7 timeline. So am presuming it is metaphorical for something else.

I am not sure if protocol requires us not to say anything about a story unless we have something positive to say about it - at least straight off the bat as it were - but I would struggle. This nightmarish scenario, the overblown description of pain and virtual torture, the murkiness of the meaning, the confusion about what is actually happening just make me lose patience ultimately.

So am really looking forward to someone (Amyhit?) explaining it all to me. So that I can feel like a dunce. So that I might actually appreciate it properly.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

So am really looking forward to someone (Amyhit?) explaining it all to me. So that I might actually appreciate it properly.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Tiger.

My interpretation:

What I get from it is that Scully is giving birth - which we don't know at first, because she's hallucinating/dreaming. She's hallucinating that her quest to find Mulder has taken her back to one of the horrific situations she's been in in the past. There are interwoven elements of both her first abduction, such as the bright white place ("The space is glowing with cool light. There are no shadows or windows or dust.") and the superovulation process ("My abdomen expands and hardens, the skin tightening to a drum.") There are also elements of her second abduction in FTF, such as the cold ("My skin is a pattern of ice crystals, ready to shatter."), the tank they keep her in ("The shadows take on a glow like glass."), and the feeling of something foreign gestating inside of her ("Low in my torso, I feel a similar chewing motion. Something wants out.").

In the hallucination she continues to attempt to find Mulder, with increasing desperation and fear. She seems to feel that he is near, but she's either frozen on the table ("Someone is breathing close to me but I can't turn my head to see if it's him.") or trapped in the pod ("The shadows take on a glow like glass. In the reflection, I see a human form. Is it him?") and can't get to him. Finally she hallucinates that she and the figure she things might be Mulder (but who seems just as likely to be a relfection of herself) both "give birth", greusomely, to alien creatures.

Afterwards, she thinks she's ruptured and dying until her mother calls to her and settles her new born baby in her arms ("A weight returns to my belly, this time on the outside.") The fog of hallucination clears as she recognizes her son.

What she says to her mother - "I found him, Mom. I found him." - seems to indicate that her hallucination when mixed with the pain of childbirth has brought her some kind of closure; she feels that Mulder has been brought back to her, reborn in the form of a son.

My feelings about the fic:

It's really not my cup of tea. I admit, I like it a bit more now that I've gone through it and sorted it out in my head a bit. But I still don't like it. This is not my kind of symbolism, not my kind of imagery, not my kind of angst, not my kind of grit, not even my kind of closure.

I like the idea that Scully, having been through all she's been through, would have some deep-seated fear of childbirth, of sharing her body with another. It's an interesting idea that the pain of child birth would temporarily take her to a very dark place of reliving past traumas. I even like the idea that in giving birth to her and Mulder's child she would feel that she had preserved some part of him, and that for once something good and pure had come from all the horror.

I just don't like the way Bugs writes those ideas. I agree completely with Tiger --

This nightmarish scenario, the overblown description of pain and virtual torture, the murkiness of the meaning, the confusion about what is actually happening just make me lose patience ultimately.

Some writers are of the mind that the only way to capture the truth of certain realities is to write ugliness. I'm very rarely of that mind myself. I think there's almost always a way to convey horror beautifully if you want to find it, and that by conveying it beautifully it will ultimately have a more profound effect on the reader, because they'll welcome the emotion it invokes rather than blocking it out as being needlessly perverse. Bugs seems to have chosen to write a vile, nightmarish scenario as vile and nightmarishly as possible. I think her fic is probably successful in having about the effect she wanted it to have on the reader. I suspect she wanted it to be rather squick inducing, followed by simple relief that the squick-inducing had stopped. That does nothing for me personally, though.

[wendelah1]

Some writers are of the mind that the only way to capture the truth of certain realities is to write ugliness. I'm very rarely of that mind myself. I think there's almost always a way to convey horror beautifully if you want to find it, and that by conveying it beautifully it will ultimately have a more profound effect on the reader, because they'll welcome the emotion it invokes rather than blocking it out as being needlessly perverse. Bugs seems to have chosen to write a vile, nightmarish scenario as vile and nightmarishly as possible.

This story had a hallucinatory aura to it but I don't think vile and nightmarish really cut it for me.

This story took me to a familiar place, the stage of childbirth euphemistically known as "transition." Childbirth is unbelievably painful, and it can take you to a very dark place before you come out on the other side. This story seemed honest and factual about that. Adding to that horror show Scully's dual traumas, losing Mulder and medical rape, makes it hard for me to see how to prettify this for the reader, let alone why a writer would want to.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Well, maybe 'vile' was a little harsh. What was happening was vile, but that's not to say the writing itself was vile. It was the epitome of nightmarish, though. I'm rarely a fan of the hallucinatory. It feels like a short cut to me, like the author has decided to skip the stage where she builds a connection with the reader and leads them deftly into a state of mind, and has decided to simply jab at their buttons instead.

hard for me to see how to prettify this for the reader, let alone why a writer would want to.

For me it's not about 'prettifying,' but about making it more poignant and less crude.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I often don't really "get it" with bugs's fic, I admit. I can see that techinically this is written well, that the imagery is very effective--and it definitely evokes feeling in me. But I don't really have any clue as to the purpose of the entirety of the story--I thought (as amyhit mentioned above) that the "found him" was supposed to refer to Mulder--but because this part of the writing is confusing for me, it doesn't really have much emotional impact on me.

It's not a particularly enjoyable read, but then again I don't think that was ever intended. It's supposed to make us uncomfortable, I think--even disoriented, like Scully herself.

That said, I like stories that make me think and puzzle it out a little, and I enjoyed that about "Heaven".

[write-out.livejournal.com]

I agree. It's not a fun read but it did stay with me.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I think it helped me to appreciate this fic a little bit more when I realized it was written after Requiem but before S8 began, a point in time where anything could happen. Nobody knew how the show was going to handle things (or fail to handle them) so even the tone of the fic was entirely flexible. No one knew if S8 was going to be a horror fest or a gooey family love-in (admittedly unlikely). Bugs was just theorizing, spinning one possible idea of what the future might hold.

Admittedly you could say this for all fic, but I think when a fic is being written in direct response to a canonical revelation, and before the fic writer has anything to go on, it changes the dynamic between writer, content, and audience quite distinctly. Especially where The X-Files is concerned, the writers tended to make very dramatic moves that had even the most stoic viewers thinking the sky was falling, and then they'd downplay things significantly after the gap. Considering where Requiem left things, it's not unreasonable that fic writers prophesied S8 would be gruesome and full of anguish.

[wendelah1]

Like most of the rest of the series, it was gruesome and full of anguish, wasn't it?

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

What, S8? I found it very wishy-washy. It had gruesome and anguishing moments, but more than ever the writers seemed to neglect any sense of meaningful development in exchange for one more MoTW.

Though I guess I could say that I get a similar (though not identical) sense of "trying too hard" from this fic as I get from S8, when S8 actually bothered to try. Ultimately Heaven feels like it's jerking me around. The dream sequence was over the top, and then the revelation that Scully was giving birth (which I began to suspect around the end of the first half) felt clunky.