"Life During Wartime" by cofax, Fialka, Maria Nicole, and Marasmus [Discussion Post Two]

[wendelah1]

Despite the ongoing DDoS problems, I'd say discussion has been going well so far.

As before, post comments on specific sections with the title of the story on the subject line. If someone has already commented on the story you want to discuss, please help us by commenting in that thread, too. Post general comments anywhere you like.

The stories get more painful from here, but damn, what an engrossing read this series is. Wow. I'd remembered it was good but I'd almost forgotten just how scary and how heartbreaking this gets. The writing is concise yet vivid, with a cinematic quality to it. It feels like there's not a word wasted; it just pulls you in, then pulls you under.

Life During Wartime

9. Whose Frail Warmth

10. Cheating the God of Fire

11. Breakdown

12. Fimbulwinter

13. The Unfathomable Distance of Stars

14. Gonna Be Different This Time

Comments

quick note

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I've made a few LDW icons and put them up over here (http://amyhit.livejournal.com/89263.html), should anyone be interested.

[write-out.livejournal.com]

I've started reading but I won't be able to finish or really seriously comment on anything until after Thursday (stupid real life is being stupid). I'm sort of dreading all of the sad stuff I know lies ahead, but given how excellent the series has been up to this point, I can't wait to see how it all plays out.

#8 Getting Used to Gunfire

[wendelah1]

I'm posting comments about "Getting Used to Gunfire" here because to me it feels very connected to the next story, "Whose Frail Warmth." It's told from Maggie Scully's pov and this is where the plot really gets rolling. It's useful to have a narrator who doesn't know what's going on, who can ask the questions the reader might want to know. We also get to observe Mulder and Scully from the vantage point of someone who isn't particularly sympathetic to their close partnership and states as much right up front. From Maggie, we get a clear picture of just how alienated from her family Scully has become due to her work on the X-files. Maggie also gets assigned the role of the skeptic, which frees Scully from that unenviable job. She gets a little testy with her daughter for not giving her the whole truth and then doesn't want to believe it when she does.

One of the things I love about this series is how alienated everyone is, how traumatized they become by the events unfolding around them. You can see the seeds of the eventual estrangement between Mulder and Scully beginning here in this conversation about the movie "Braveheart."

"Heroes don't run away, Scully." They're not talking about the movie. They haven't been for a while, I guess.

"You're such a romantic, Mulder. I think you need another definition of hero. Running isn't cowardice when the only other option is death."

"You think not?" His voice is dark. I open my eyes a fraction. There is no fear they'll notice me; their attention is entirely focused on each other.

"No. Running is surviving, and that's the best we can do right now." Dana slips her fingers through his where they grip the steering wheel. She drops her voice to a whisper again, a promise of sorts. "We're still alive."

We will hear variations on this same theme as the story continues. Survival versus heroism. Ensuring the survival of a few more fortunate individuals weighed against the possibly saving the lives of millions. How do you choose, assuming you even get to make a choice.

Re: #8 Getting Used to Gunfire

[wendelah1]

I need to say something about the ending of this story, too. Cofax is again using Maggie Scully's point of view to show us Mulder and Scully.

When Mrs. Scully wakes up in the truck feeling filthy and wanting a shower, she decides to change her clothes. What she sees next changes her mind.

I peer through the window into the back, and then decide to wait for a while: the back of the truck is occupied.

Mulder has shoved the trunks, bags, and assorted supplies to either side, and has made a nest in the bed of the truck. He is on his back, his head pillowed awkwardly on Bill's old duffel bag. Dana lies almost entirely on top of him, her cheek on his chest. They are covered by one of the sleeping bags and an ugly purple and yellow afghan I pulled off the bed in the guest room. His arms are wrapped around her, keeping her in place, and his eyes are wide open, staring at the darkening sky, where the stars are slowly coming into view.

The intimacy of that moment must have been startling, at least it was for me. I don't picture them as having spent a night in one another's arms, not at this point in the series. It makes my throat catch a little.

The final lines are foreboding.

The road is dark and bumpy, lit only by the headlights of the big truck. Trees and road signs rise up suddenly in the sidewash of the high-beams, and drop just as quickly astern. We are in North Carolina now, I think. There are no lights anywhere. It is overcast and there are no stars.

That's fine with me.

I don't want to see the stars any more.

The language is somber and measured and the imagery spare, matching Maggie's darkening mood.

#9 Whose Frail Warmth: spoilers

[wendelah1]

"Whose Frail Warmth" is the linchpin of the series for me. It's the most emotionally resonant story in part because I can so easily identify with the demands of caring for the sick and dying. The death of Maggie Scully is heart-breaking because she's Scully mother; otherwise, frankly, I don't find myself terribly invested in her, on screen or in fic. Scully is worn down in this story by the physical, emotional and mental demands of the work she is doing. But Scully is strong. The death of her mother is what nearly breaks her.

Some of the little details of this apocalypse worry me; for example, no one having a vehicle that works except for Mulder and Scully. It seems like out of a population of 1,500 people in a rural area of the South, someone should have an old truck without an electronic ignition sitting around their side yard and the know-how to get it running again. The overall time line has started to confuse me, too. In "Getting Used to Gunfire," there is a time stamp of December, 1999. But this story is labeled as taking place in the end of November. Those are small things and I'm probably only aware of them because I'm looking at the story so closely.

This one feels bigger.

Abruptly, she straightened in her seat and started to look through the piles of paper on her desk. "Which is why you don't need to feel guilty for leaving. You and Mulder and Maggie have done more for us, for strangers, than most of the people in this town have done for each other."

My mom comes from a small town in North Carolina near the Virginia border, and that's just not how I see this going down. Women would not be fighting over the last orange at the grocery store, for one thing because they have good manners and upbringing and they wouldn't want to shame their families, but also because so many would have a whole pantry of canned food they'd put up themselves back in the summertime. The rest of her speech sounds about right though.

"Yes, fine. It was--most of my patients today weren't from sickness. One came in with bruises and a broken ulna. She's a repeat patient, comes in about once a month or so after her husband beats her up. . . A man came in with an STD that he didn't want to tell his wife about. You'd think the end of the world would be dramatic, but it's all so small and sordid instead."

Maybe the doctor is just plain worn out.

I'm also not understanding where the need for distributing those germ-laden blankets would have arisen. Except for Mulder and Scully and Maggie, these people aren't refugees. They have blankets and quilts and and winter coats. They have beds to sleep in at home. I guess it makes sense for the sick to be centrally located at the high school gym given the lack of transportation, but how did they transport the patients there and why then do they nearly run down Dr. Claire out walking in the dark to see a patient?

Okay, so I'm nit-picking. It's what I do. Overall, what they do get right is more important than what they don't. The small town of Heniston, Tennessee as a microcosm of the rest of humanity feels right. Just like the illness acts like TB on steroid, this apocalypse feels like everything is breaking down much faster than anyone would have imagined, in part because the usual channels of aid have been compromised by the enemy within. Whatever the vector of transmission, the military intentionally infecting the population with not one but a carefully sequenced series of genetically engineered plagues is an ingenious and believable plot device. In an X-Files apocalypse, trust no one.

Maggie's death. You know it's coming. You know it's inevitable because of the structure of the story, beginning as it does with the scene at the gravesite. My favorite part of the story is its structure. Love it. Love that they can still keep the reader mesmerized even though the outcome is foretold. You simply feel compelled to read on to know how it happened and that allows the rest of the story to matter so much more than if it had been told in a more linear fashion. Really brilliant story-telling, that.

Re: #9 Whose Frail Warmth: spoilers

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I am falling ridiculously behind on reading these.

I love the poem "And Yet The Books", and recognized the title from that. There's a running theme in these stories of the things that make humanity memorable--books, music, art. Mulder reading Kafka. And listening to the Brandenburg Concertos as a counterpoint and an elegy to everything happening around them.

"And God, despite everything, it was beautiful"

I understand that feeling of music giving a point of focus in the midst of overwhelming emotion.

I'm sure a lot of the story details are getting lost on me here, I'm starting to forget plot points as I go along.

Re: #9 Whose Frail Warmth: spoilers

[wendelah1]

There's a running theme in these stories of the things that make humanity memorable--books, music, art. Mulder reading Kafka. And listening to the Brandenburg Concertos as a counterpoint and an elegy to everything happening around them.

That's a nice detail to point out; I'll be on the look-out for that.

I'm sure a lot of the story details are getting lost on me here, I'm starting to forget plot points as I go along.

I think the plot itself is fairly linear but there is so much detail and so many characters that it does feel pretty overwhelming the first time and even the second time through. This is my third reading, but then I am the mod.

I think they focus on the main plot of Mulder and Scully's journey from here on in with only one more side trip (The Unfathomable Distance of Stars) until the ending. As Cofax explained in her comment on the last discussion, they dropped a couple of plot threads, which I'll discuss when I post about "Gonna Be Different This Time."

Re: #9 Whose Frail Warmth: spoilers

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

There was a summary at the start of Fimbulwinter, so I could run through everything in my head again. Yay! :)

Re: #9 Whose Frail Warmth: spoilers

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

My husband feels that great music is the closest we get to heaven. So hearing it as an accompaniment to surviving in a man-made hell is very poignant. (I wish there were more words to describe that specific kind of soul-sadness. Poignant is overused, and you know, French.)

#11 Breakdown

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I love this little psuedo-drabble. It serves like a semicolon, creating a break between part 10 and 12, but using that break in order to make the transition feel more natural. The shift in gears comes at what would otherwise seem like an odd time. As a reader I've gotten used to them being on the go by this point, so the idea of them getting somewhere creates a dynamic shift that I think could have been problematic if Breakdown hadn't served to prepare me in advance.

Plus, not that this is all that obscure or anything, but I love the double meaning of the title. It's the vehicle that's broken down, but the last sentence makes it chillingly clear that Mulder and Scully are a hair's breadth from utter breakdown themselves. The title and the last line turn the fic into something more than just a fragment of plot that otherwise wouldn't have the weight to stand as its own segment. They make Breakdown ominous and poignant in its own right.

Re: #11 Breakdown

[wendelah1]

I love this little psuedo-drabble. It serves like a semicolon, creating a break between part 10 and 12, but using that break in order to make the transition feel more natural. The shift in gears comes at what would otherwise seem like an odd time. As a reader I've gotten used to them being on the go by this point, so the idea of them getting somewhere creates a dynamic shift that I think could have been problematic if Breakdown hadn't served to prepare me in advance.

Pseudo-drabble. Heh.

I like it, too. I think it does create a little space for the rest of the story. As we saw in "Cheating the God of Fire," they have been broken down by the events they've been witness to, and that in no small part the rest of the story is about how that plays out for them personally and professionally.

Fimbulwinter

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

This is something I've been thinking about Life During Wartime in general: aside from being a post-colonization story, it's a story with good characterization, solid writing, "hearable" dialogue. I'd recommend it as a good example of XF fiction, whether or not someone was interested in post-col, or mytharc-related stories at all.

I was feeling overwhelmed, but I think I got a lot of clarity back in this story. Even though there's a bunch of new characters added and more added to the story, it's simply told and the detail is telling but kind of implied, more than at the foreground. It has a really visual feel for me. Like a movie, more than a story. And I love Frohike and I love stories that treat him as more than comic relief.

Slightly OT: I found a great Lone Gunmen video using the song "Life During Wartime", here:

http://fv-poster.dreamwidth.org/11675.html

Not connected to this story, but cool.

Again, we have the characters finding and collecting books; in this story there's Jane Austen, astrophysics textbooks, Shakespeare, Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and Lord of the Rings. Again, pieces of the old world that they're trying to bring with them.

I like Mulder's suspicion and frustration with what's going on. I think in similar stories, this point would be the arrival back to a kind of civilization, and the characters feeling like everything's going to be all right. Mulder doesn't trust anyone (ha), and we know it's with good reason.

Re: Fimbulwinter

[write-out.livejournal.com]

Damn, but this is hard to digest, which is one reason why I've been dragging my feet on catching up here. The deep rift between M/S and overall end of the world angst is tough to read and forces me out of my usual fic comfort zone (not that I always read happy stuff, but this is so intense), but that's a good thing, right?

I agree with infinitlight about how good it is to see Frohike (and the rest of the Gunmen) as more than just comedic filler.

It's a sign of how well written this is that I keep reading even as each scene grows grimmer and more depressing. The plot is so tight and well paced and the introduction of new characters (Linda, Jack) fits in seamlessly.

Re: Fimbulwinter

[wendelah1]

I agree with infinitlight about how good it is to see Frohike (and the rest of the Gunmen) as more than just comedic filler.

I'll third that. They are fully realized characters here, with their own interesting subplots, too.

Re: Fimbulwinter

[wendelah1]

I love that vid. Thanks for the link.

The Unfathomable Distance of Stars

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I have a special feeling about this story because it deals with the Samantha who appeared in the diner and ran from Mulder in panic. That's the Samantha who should have been honored as a real person, but CC dispensed with her quite dishonestly.

Imagine being drugged for your whole life, and having the courage to kick it just as the world ends. Imagine the double sense of panic, the yearning combined with the undeniable end of things. Samantha is a true sacrificial lamb, though to no merciful god.

And imagine living out the rituals of an affectionate marriage, bearing children, yet sensing that your mate had been more or less assigned to be your caregiver. Does Jason love Samantha? Yes, as two victimized human beings will love each other in intense circumstances; they are both human, their flesh is warm, they know each other better than any others. But they have been cheated of an honest human history. They never had romantic love, they never had a genuine argument, they never got a divorce. All they have are two sons that they now know will die.

I haven't had the time to contribute much to this conversation, and I apologize. But it's also true that I don't at present have the psychic energy to deal with the sadness.

Re: The Unfathomable Distance of Stars

[wendelah1]

And imagine living out the rituals of an affectionate marriage, bearing children, yet sensing that your mate had been more or less assigned to be your caregiver. Does Jason love Samantha? Yes, as two victimized human beings will love each other in intense circumstances; they are both human, their flesh is warm, they know each other better than any others. But they have been cheated of an honest human history. They never had romantic love, they never had a genuine argument, they never got a divorce. All they have are two sons that they now know will die.

That paragraph took my breath away.

[memories-child.livejournal.com]

I knew I'd forgotten to do something and that was comment on this post. I'm very glad you guys decided to do this series. I'd heard of it but never read it and now I'm very glad I did. The characterisation is excellent and I love the angst (of course I love the angst). I was really pleased the Gunmen were used as more than comic relief and I loved how much we got to see of Frohike. I won't deny that there were tears in my eyes at his death (and a bit before then, given the inevitability of it). I liked getting other characters' points of view, though there were a couple of things that confused me/I wanted more of: Samantha. I really wanted to see more of her. I loved what we had but I was disappointed that was it. Given the lack of Samantha-centric spirits in fandom I really wanted more here; and how did Langly and the girl whose name I've forgotten die? I'm guessing that's one of the plot points that was dropped, but it struck me as totally out of the blue and quite upset me! I don't think I missed any fics but if I did please point me in the right direction.

I'm sure there was more I wanted to say but I read the series in one go after the first post so I'm sure I've forgotten half of it.

Wow

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

How did I never read this/these? All quibbles or issues aside, just wow. I kind of love how brutal it is. Would love to hear or have heard/read more about the dropped plot threads in the comments. Again, so good. So much grit and bitter. So good. I liked the OCs far more than I generally do!

Re: Wow

[wendelah1]

It is still the best colonization fic the fandom produced. All of the characters are exceptionally well drawn--when I first read it, I had no idea who any of the canon characters were.