Stories 179-180: "The Fall of Our Summer" and "Poems" by Khyber

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

We're back into the angst, this week, with a couple of vignettes that fill in some of the blanks the previous fics have hinted at about Mulder and Scully's past assignations, and the days of their early relationship. First up is "The Fall of Our Summer", a post ep for Drive, which Kyber originally posted to xf_is_love in 2009. Second we have "Poems", a post ep for Wetwired, and the second to last instalment in the KvsS7 universe.


The Fall of Our Summer

Poems


Only one more KvsS7 fic to go. Hopefully you've been fascinated, intrigued, or otherwise drawn in by the story so far, and you'll tune in five (or so) days from now, to reach the end of the road with us.

Comments

Poems 2/2

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

The thing about KvsS7 is that I find it interesting enough that by this point in the story I like vignettes like Poems because I enjoy puzzling out the timeline and filling in a few of the gaps in the narrative. It's not something you get to do with fanfic very often, because usually fanfic is told in a fairly linear way, and even if the fic is AU, the point of divergence from canon comes during the fic, so there's no real mystery to it, nothing that needs to be filled in.

From what I can tell, Poems is something of a post ep for not just Wetwired, but also for Hell Money and Grotesque. There are no particular lines of Poems that I love, but it provides connective tissue for the timeline in a way I find intriguing and, for the most part, very well done.

The one thing I do question about this universe is a couple of the fic's date stamps. It's May 2, 1996, and Scully's in the hospital because of what happened in Wetwired. Except Wetwired didn't air until May 10th. Episode air dates don't necessarily always correspond with the date it's supposed to be in the story, so I could let that go pretty easily. However, in Coyote Luck there was an even more baffling instance of this. It's supposedly April 29, 1995 when Scully gets the call to tell her that her car has been found and it's totalled. Except that Paper Clip, the corresponding episode, took place after Anasazi, and Anasazi didn't air until late May. A time discrepancy of a few days is normal, but in Khyber's fic there seems to be nearly a month's discrepancy between the story timeline and the air date timeline. I'm not sure why that is.

More confusing, however, is this fic's brief missing scene from Grotesque:

"You can't do that Mulder. You can't just..."

"What? I can't work alone? Profiling's not a team sport."

The voice she responds with is one he knows only from the times they
steal.

"That's not what I mean and you...fine. Fine."

My confusion is that Coyote Luck leads us to believe that Mulder and Scully had sex once during Paper Clip, and then immediately after that Mulder said he thought having a relationship would be a bad idea, so they didn't. Something Mulder says in Home From the War makes it soud as though they didn't have sex again until the "we're alive" incident following Pusher:

"Do you remember how we got together?" His voice sounds rough, as if emerging from a beating. "Not when Melissa died. After."

Yet in Poems the line The voice she responds with is one he knows only from the times they steal ('times' plural) makes it sound as though they have been together between Paper Clip and Grotesque, which aired several episodes before Pusher.

I suppose one could say I'm over thinking this, but IMO a great deal of the point of KvsS7 seems to be to create an AU scenario that works, that holds together. Khyber's writing is abstruse enough that a few flaws can make it unintelligable. There's a puzzle and then there's a mess, and the two aren't all that far apart - the show itself is a testament to that.

Re: Poems 2/2

[wendelah1]

The date stamp discrepancies are probably just simple mistakes. I admit I'm perplexed about the sex stuff, too. It does seem like there are a couple of different versions of their early romance floating around here. Maybe there were a couple of different versions in his head and he didn't quite get them reconciled before they were posted?

According to Nitpicker's Guide, Hell Money possibly took place during August of 1996, but I think his reasoning is faulty. But Wetwired is date stamped April 27-May 10 1996. Anasazi is April 9-16, 1995, The Blessing Way April 18, and presumably the events of Paper Clip take place soon after. Farrano says late April 1995.

I'm not sure if that made things better or worse.

Re: Poems 2/2

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Could you link me to this Nitpicker's Guide? I don't know if I've seen it before. Your date stamps clear some of this up, anyway. Up until now I've tended to just go by the episode airdate and figure the episode happened somewhere around then. In this show, that's not the most accurate way to judge things.

Re: Poems 2/2

[wendelah1]

Sure thing. The Nitpicker's Guide for X-Philes only goes through season four, unfortunately, but it is both useful and fun. My husband found it for me in a used bookstore.