Story 181: "The Waterskiers" by Khyber

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Well everyone (I'm not sure how numerous you are at the moment, but I'm going to be bold and say 'everyone'), we've reached the end of the road - the point where the narrative pavement turns to gravel turns to a beaten dirt path trailing off narrowly into the uncharted wilds of the great and sometimes terrible WIP territory.

By waybacking Khyber's website we get what seem to be conflicting accounts of what the future of KvsS7 was to be. In early 2008 there were five fics meant to follow "The Waterskiers," three of which were to be "full episodes" and two were to be vignettes (as seen here). This outline complies with Khyber's notes for "Amnesia" which he judged to be the "late beginning/early middle" of the story. Yet by late 2009 the titles of four of these five fics had vanished, and only the one titled "Parabola" remained. It was initially indicated to be planned as a vignette, but later seemed intended to have been a full episode.

In summary, the fate of the KvsS7 universe remains largely a mystery, and anyone participating in the comments thread should feel free to speculate on the future of the story, as well as share their thoughts about the fic itself.


TITLE: The Waterskiers (Mod note: You may have to c/p the URL, or find the fic on Gossamer.)
AUTHOR: Khyber
E-MAIL: khyber@khyberfic.net
DISTRIBUTION: Ephemeral, Gossamer, please ask for anywhere else.
RATING: R for mature content.
CATEGORIES: XR KEYWORDS: Withheld.
SPOILERS: Pbbblffft.
SUMMARY: Missing scenes... okay, a LOT of missing scenes... from "Hollywood AD."

Author's Notes: This story is part of "Khyber Versus Season Seven" and takes place during "Hollywood AD," specifically, following the end of the famous bathtub scene. The rest of the episode takes place a week or more after the end of this story.
Remember that the premiere of "The Lazarus Bowl," according to the episode, is "eighteen months later," sometime in late 2001.


Sadly the summer is over. That does, however, mean a return to something resembling a normal posting schedule at some point in the near future. Remember the old days (July) when a new week meant changing up the plot, style, and characterizations with an all new fic? Well those days are returning along with coats and scarves, so if you have any suggestions for fics you'd like to read this fall the recommendations page is always open.

Comments

ohai (3)

[still-khyber.livejournal.com]

The End

The only reason the VS7 "schedule" changed back in the day was that towards the end of the process I had outlines and anywhere from 3000 to 15000 words written on each of six full-length "episodes", but four of them were more or less standalone casefiles and there wasn't enough mytharc, CSM, Skinner, or Krycek in them to justify where I was going in the projected finale. I was having a hard time getting necessary narrative arc and character arc stuff to co-exist and didn't want to have episodes that existed purely as a crutch for a few scenes of character development (hi, Joss.) So I was going to try to figure out which two of those four would survive. All the stories couldn't make it because of the accelerating accumulation of nonessential internal canon; all of them would have been "too much."

Regarding the "quest" and the mythology. Amy, you are brilliant and read in tremendous depth, but have you, um, watched S7? There IS no quest anymore, that they or we know of-- it exits stage right towards the end of Amor Fati and doesn't come back until Requiem. We may be hoping that it comes back, but there's no evidence that it's going to. Mulder and Scully are not the heroes of a single narrative anymore, they are Scooby and Shaggy, or Kirk and Spock, bouncing from adventure to unrelated adventure.

And they don't care. Mulder goes through pretty complicated emotional gymnastics to dissociate Samantha's disappearance from his former quest in order to achieve some closure for himself. Scully may have uncovered the secret of alien biogenesis aaaaaand... nah, doesn't care, not once Mulder's head is safely bandaged up. Is this a flaw in the canon storytelling? Is this DD and GA running away with things as they apparently did in S7? Who knows. But it's there.

This leads to the massive internal contradiction of where I was going with the story arcs in that I had a really heavy meditation-cum-fable-cum-satire going about the nature and necessity of secrecy and conspiracy, morality versus utility versus good/evil dualism, the roles and interests of secret-keepers, and what constitutes virtue for them, as well as the runaway military/security/police-industrial complex that is more or less taking over the English-speaking world starting with the United States.

The thing was that the "heroes", or at least the protagonists, of that story are CSM and Skinner. The mytharc has not gone away, but in the absence of the Project, CSM is the only one left who actually knows the whole story about contact with atavistic aliens and their plans for colonization. Like it or not, *he's* the one who has to carry on the fight at this point in the story, and he will, because that's what he does. CSM long since walked away from any of the other distractions that would make him human. CSM is a terrible human being by any measure. But that doesn't mean he's not *right*. And this is why Skinner buys in. As we have seen in canon, he really is regretting his years of equivocating.

CSM wants Mulder and Scully to help him, simply because he's running out of options, but the question is, do they have any reason to? Why would they believe that he (and Skinner) are telling the truth, after all the lies he (and Skinner) have told? Especially when they have new investments in their lives?

The problem was that Mulder and Scully's journeys were not linking up with that story at all-- both of them, though in stories that may not have made the final cut, had pretty heavy personal spiritual experiences that did not necessarily lead them in the same place. Mulder was going to have a chat with Deep Throat, in the person of his six-year-old reincarnation. Deep Throat, I think in keeping with "Blessing Way", was actually rather ambiguous about the worth of missions and callings and such in the grand scheme of things, echoing Siduri and "Amor Fati" again.

Re: ohai (3)

[wendelah1]

The problem was that Mulder and Scully's journeys were not linking up with that story at all-- both of them, though in stories that may not have made the final cut, had pretty heavy personal spiritual experiences that did not necessarily lead them in the same place. Mulder was going to have a chat with Deep Throat, in the person of his six-year-old reincarnation. Deep Throat, I think in keeping with "Blessing Way", was actually rather ambiguous about the worth of missions and callings and such in the grand scheme of things, echoing Siduri and "Amor Fati" again.

Really. I can see why that wasn't going to make the cut. There's a lot of very questionable metaphysics going on there, so good choice to jettison that one. It doesn't fit in with the bigger political picture at all, the one that relates to Skinner and the Smoking Man.

But what about what happened to them in your big two part episode? They were abducted and experimented on and, and— people died. What was the point of all of that? What was The Smoking Man trying to get them to do, by convincing them to fly to Amsterdam? Would Mulder and Scully just forget about what happened to them and say, oh well. Really? Because I still want to know what was going on there and I wasn't the one who was kidnapped and drugged and brain-washed. I think Mulder and Scully would want to know too.

What I wanted to see you do by the end of this saga is answer that question, tie it together with the Skinner-CSM plot and have them somehow end up together, their commitment to fighting the future assured. They can keep having sex if you want. I don't honestly care about their personal lives or lack thereof. They're the heroes. Not Skinner and Not the Smoking Man. Jeez. They need to act like heroes, or in this universe, human beings are toast.