I only got through it so fast by not actually thinking very much as I was doing it. I thought it would be fun to try to get down my initial reactions as I was reading the story, but in doing so I did say a number of things that weren't quite right or weren't very well analyzed. So now it's time to backtrack!
I don't believe that she found her own cure, not for the cancer that was rapidly growing within her nasopharynx.
You're right. I was emphasizing that idea in order to emphasize Scully's agency, and the idea that no one else had done it for her. She didn't find the cure, but she did win it for herself by her own attempts (that is, escaping along with the jelly). I guess I almost see her time in captivity as a sort of allegory for her "dark night of the soul" with cancer. I don't know why that is, and I can't articulate my feeling very well, but it is almost like the dark mirror version of the hospital and the chemotherapy and all the rest of it. The place where you live, but lose your soul.
One thing that I wonder is about the difference in the result between Scully surviving because of her own toughness (as in this story), and Scully surviving because of the efforts of others (as in the show and in the other story). You might think that it would make more sense for her to learn to trust based on the latter scenario and not the former. But perhaps Scully has to reach out from a position of strength?
Despite that fear, she chooses to try to create an intimate, loving relationship with him. Not dead yet? In the face of all that has happened, I think she is choosing to live.
Yes, I do think you're right. I suppose I was just withholding judgment, both because the story ends so quickly there and because sex in rivkat world is so rarely unequivocally healing or healthy. A good analogue here is the resolution of Tikkun Olam. I know that was too fast for a lot of people, and not a tangible enough improvement. It is clearly the style of this writer not to offer a long drawn-out resolution phase to the story (as compared with Arizona Highways, for example). She suggests the change of heart, and lets the reader fill in the rest. It is the change of heart that's the important bit, after all.
no subject
I only got through it so fast by not actually thinking very much as I was doing it. I thought it would be fun to try to get down my initial reactions as I was reading the story, but in doing so I did say a number of things that weren't quite right or weren't very well analyzed. So now it's time to backtrack!
I don't believe that she found her own cure, not for the cancer that was rapidly growing within her nasopharynx.
You're right. I was emphasizing that idea in order to emphasize Scully's agency, and the idea that no one else had done it for her. She didn't find the cure, but she did win it for herself by her own attempts (that is, escaping along with the jelly). I guess I almost see her time in captivity as a sort of allegory for her "dark night of the soul" with cancer. I don't know why that is, and I can't articulate my feeling very well, but it is almost like the dark mirror version of the hospital and the chemotherapy and all the rest of it. The place where you live, but lose your soul.
One thing that I wonder is about the difference in the result between Scully surviving because of her own toughness (as in this story), and Scully surviving because of the efforts of others (as in the show and in the other story). You might think that it would make more sense for her to learn to trust based on the latter scenario and not the former. But perhaps Scully has to reach out from a position of strength?
Despite that fear, she chooses to try to create an intimate, loving relationship with him. Not dead yet? In the face of all that has happened, I think she is choosing to live.
Yes, I do think you're right. I suppose I was just withholding judgment, both because the story ends so quickly there and because sex in