Story 171 and 172: "Collapsar" and "Weret-Hekau" by Khyber

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Because the book club has been such a ghost town recently, wendelah1 and I were considering going on a brief hiatus. Then I mentioned I'd been thinking about rereading "Khyber vs. Season Seven," and Wendelah suggested we read it here, rather than going on hiatus. So for the next month we're going to be kicking back, relishing the end of summer, sipping imaginary iced tea (or real iced tea (it could be love)), and reading KvsS7 at a pace that is decidedly not breakneck.

For those of you who don't know, KvsS7 is a series of ten stories written by Khyber, the majority of which are set in S7. Most of these stories are vignettes, though there are a couple of longer fics, and they all take place in the same slightly alternate universe. Khyber's aim was (among other things) to craft a retelling of S7 by replacing some episodes and adding onto others, so that in theory a reader could watch S7, intersperse it with his KvsS7 instalments, and wind up with a finished product that functioned as a successful alternate outcome for the season (and perhaps for the entire series). Sadly he never finished the KvsS7 project, but even unfinished the KvsS7 stories are complex, intelligent, and often strikingly intense. They feature a Mulder and Scully who are in character yet subtly different from canon, and a story universe that is written with a level of stunning realism TXF rarely attempted to achieve.

We're going to start with the vignettes "Collapsar" and "Weret-Hekau," which are post eps for Millennium and Theef. In approximately five days we'll post again, and continue to post at about that pace until we've covered all ten fics. This does not mean discussion on the previously posted fics must stop, it's just for the sake of organization.

KvsS7 was a weighty concept and a remarkable project, and the resulting fics are sometimes lovely, sometimes horrifying, and often breathtaking. I hope you'll give this fic universe a try, and tell us your thoughts and opinions. This is definitely the sort of fanfic to provoke thoughts and opinions.


1. Collapsar (post Millennium)

2. Weret-Hekau (post Theef)


ETA: I just now realized we actually have covered "Collapsar" here before, about two years ago, as some readers may remember. I even participated in the discussion. Memory fail, amyhit. I'm not going to link you to that discussion, since we're going to be reading the whole thing through this time, and I think it would be nice to get some fresh comments, if we can, without anyone feeling daunted by the prospect of repeating something someone else said back in 2009. However, I'm sure anyone who is interested will be able to find the post in question with a few clicks of a mouse.

Comments

1. Collapsar

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

The first of the KvsS7 stories is actually my least favorite. It's only in the last page or so that the story stops feeling like it's lurching aimlessly, and starts to gel for me at all, and even then - if I had read Collapsar first, which I did not - it may not have been enough to have brought me back for more. However, it is something I generally like about Khyber's fanfic, over all, that it doesn't always sell itself that well. It's realistic and intelligent writing, and part of that comes from the fact that it's not always perfectly clear, or concise, or structured. I'm not sure whether Khyber expected readers to have the patience to wait and put things together, or if he just didn't care whether people were sold on the fic or not.

But anyway, what I find most interesting about Collapsar is that it works for me in the context of this universe, but it wouldn't work for me if this were the canon XF universe.

"If there is anything between us... more between us, it doesn't
happen because it's New Year's Eve." Her voice stumbles over
itself slightly, faster than she would normally speak. "It doesn't
happen when we're nearly dead. It doesn't happen when you think
'gee, I should kiss Scully'. It doesn't happen when there's nothing
else more interesting going on."

In a universe where they've been sexually intimate with each other for years, in the dark, desperate way we later learn of - but also haven't been intimate with each other recently - for Mulder to just decide all on his own to suddenly breach the divide again and commit them both, with nothing more than this weak little gesture, would be a foolish mistake.

Yet I actually quite like the New Year’s kiss as it stands in canon. It could've been handled better, but it isn't bad. In canon it functions as more of a symbolic gesture than an actual kiss. It's a way of taking a step, establishing the possibility for the kind of intimacy they've so long denied themselves, without putting any more pressure on the issue.

In canon, the smallness of the gesture makes it respectful. In the KvsS7 universe the smallness of the gesture makes it seem somewhat disrespectful, dismissive of what's between them.

"Scully," he says. It's the voice to the tenth power, sounding
as though he's come from full moon woods with blood on his hands
and a year with the wolves.

Favorite line of the fic. I do wish Khyber would've indulged his poetic streak more. I do like that he focused on plot and action and things outwardly apparent more than most authors who show poetic inclinations are wont to do. But my favorite parts of his fics are almost always when the writing gets this way - poetry electrified.

Re: 1. Collapsar

[wendelah1]

I had a different opinion three years ago but I have to say, I'm feeling bad for Mulder this time around. In the interim, I guess I've spent more time in his head as a writer and I have to say I think she's being pretty hard on him here. I guess this Scully is consistent with the internal canon of KvS7 but I think she's being pretty damn difficult. And maybe that's who she is here, and in canon. I don't see her this way and I can't write her this way, that's for sure.

I just watched Millennium. It's not a cheesy gesture, it's a simple, closed mouth, tentative, sweet little kiss. It's not committing them to anything. It's not even very sexy, at least not the way I read it. It seems affectionate. I remember reading this scene the first time around, and thinking, oh, so they've had sex before, oh, okay. But now I can't give her a pass on that either.

So what is her problem? Is it that Mulder didn't get close enough to dying this time around to justify her wanting to jump his bones? I don't think Khyber likes Agent Scully very much here, not until the very end, when he reveals just how fucked up she really is. She claims she loves Mulder but she's not acting in a very loving way, is she? The guy has a sling on. He's in pain. He's on drugs for that pain and she shows up at his door and starts haranguing him, and for what? And then she kisses him, for real, just to taunt him! Finally, by the end she realizes she crossed a line. You don't treat a friend like that, let alone a wounded partner. If this is really how people saw her while the series was on, I can see why some people were pissed off at her every week.

Re: 1. Collapsar

[write-out.livejournal.com]

I think this is exactly why the story doesn't work for me.

Re: 1. Collapsar

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

It's not a cheesy gesture, it's a simple, closed mouth, tentative, sweet little kiss. It's not committing them to anything. It's not even very sexy, at least not the way I read it. It seems affectionate.

Yeah, but you really can't judge her reaction in this universe using canon as a baseline. Change one thing and you change everything, however profoundly or slightly. Their relationship is not now, and has long since diverged from MSR as we know it in canon. It's similar enough that it's compellingly recognizable, but it's still different in a pretty fundamental way.

So what is her problem?

I think it's expressed pretty clearly in this passage:

"You do not get to do this, Mulder. You are not allowed
to decide how this is going to happen. Not like everything else."

"What do you mean?"

"This has never been an equal partnership, Mulder. The where, the
what, the when, it's always been up to you. "

And in this passage:

I've cleaned blood off you, I've cleaned puke off you, I've fucking
shot you, I've fucked you and not just once, you think you can just pull
out the Times Square ball and suddenly my knees will go weak? Are you
just saving me for a spare moment, after all this time? No! Damn you! I
am not going to apologise for not playing along when that's all you
think I am worth. I'd be less pissed at you if you had just pulled
out a ring.

In this universe there is no clear, uncrossed line or even a semi-clear territory between their sexual and romantic feelings for each other and their professional relationship. Sex is something desperate and consuming between them, but afterwards they 'turn away from each other to get dressed', and they don't talk about it. Sex has long been something charged, almost terrible between them (even when it's also what they need). So for Mulder to suddenly pull a "cheesy, office-party move" on Scully, completely out of the blue, like he can just decide to "go with the moment," when that's a decision that concerns both of them...well, I can absolutely see Mulder doing this kind of thing, but I can also understand why Scully reacts how she does. He's broken the unspoken, torturous but self-preservationist rules they've been living by for years. Years.

And then she kisses him, for real, just to taunt him!

But it's not just to taunt him at all. Hence the reason why she breaks off the kiss (despite how much "the bad things in her" what her to keep going), and she apologizes immediately:

"Mulder, Mulder, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, that's... I'm not
helping... that's not what I meant...

She kisses him, in part, because he's "called her bluff". She tells him, in a less than effective manner, what her problem with the kiss is, and he asks her (in a deliberately alluring tone) how she'd like such an encounter to go. She doesn't know what to say, because it's pretty freaking complicated between them, so she kisses him, as if to show him how, but also because she is off balance that night, and she wants him. Only she has to fight very, very hard to keep from falling back into the same fuck-and-compartmentalize pattern they've always followed:

I know he wants to put his good arm around me, pull me in so our
bodies press together. His bare chest will touch me, and his
fingers will brush on the skin of my lower back where my top is
pulled up. If those things happen I'm doomed, and this dark night
goes down with the others.

As I see it, what Scully wants is something good between them. Something sweet and tender and not born entirely of unhealthy codependency, but also something that is mindful of their past - that doesn't seem dismissive of their relationship, though it's been dark and consuming. And whatever's between them, if it's to be good, has to be entered into by both of them equally. Neither one can just decide to start without the other.

Re: 1. Collapsar

[wendelah1]

Good theories, and for all I know that may be what Khyber was going for, but that's not how I see this story, or how I see their relationship, in this universe or any universe, really. I just watched Millennium two days ago. This story doesn't work with it. He can add whatever the heck he wants, but this story still doesn't work with that episode, doesn't flow out of that episode.

Neither one can just decide to start without the other.

In my experience, someone always makes the first move. YMMV.

Re: 1. Collapsar

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Hi, me here. I never did understand Scully's anger entirely, but I would say it has to do with frustration. Maybe just simple sexual frustration. Maybe the sadness of knowing that a normal New Year's Eve date is something they'll never have. She just kind of loses it. People do, even Agent Doctor S. But the story itself is a little too complicated for me. I'm not sure it ever can be fully explicated, which is a cowardly way of saying you're both right. This is one way collapsar goes, between these two. Incidentally, so far as canon is concerned, I remember the selling of the "New Year's kiss" and the fever of the fans. I think that bloodless little smooch was Chris Carter's typical way of reducing the ship to a tease rather than a complex and acknowledged reality. It was his curse, that ship, and he went down with it. But people like Khyber--is there anyone like Khyber?--gave it the importance the actors at the very least deserved.

Re: 1. Collapsar

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I remember the selling of the "New Year's kiss" and the fever of the fans. I think that bloodless little smooch was Chris Carter's typical way of reducing the ship to a tease rather than a complex and acknowledged reality.

I have to say, I think you're right about that. I knew from the beginning that there would be a New Year's kiss in S7, and that it would be brief and sweet and, yes, bloodless, so I never had any other expectations, and the way I conceptualized it in my mind made it feel right. (I did this with the help of much fanfic, naturally. *g*)

But if I'd been watching the show at the time, and waiting and hoping that the ship would develop, I know I would have been very upset with that dismissive little stunt CC turned it into. Scully's-reaction-in-Collapsar levels of upset, at least.

It was his curse, that ship, and he went down with it.

This. Is. So. Wonderful.

RE: Re: 1. Collapsar

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

Yes yes yes! I was watching back then, and oh yeah they hype was enormous. HUGE. And then CC pulled his little flick of the wrist stunt (like always, there was huge hype over the kiss in the Bermuda Triangle episode too) and left the rabid fans dangling. Again.

And yeah, this:
It was his curse, that ship, and he went down with it.

So so good. I like the darkness of Collapsar. I also like Amyhit's examination of it. I haven't read KvsS7 yet but I'm sure looking forward to it!