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

[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.