Story 182: "Up the Ladder" by rivkat

[wendelah1]

Fall is here, though you'd never know it by the temperatures in SoCal. I read "Up the Ladder" in 2007, when I was new to the fandom. It's novella length, at 30,000+ words, but wow, it is a fast read. I would have pegged the word count at half that or less. It was originally posted in 1997. Yep. This is old-school fanfiction at its best.

Summary: Marita comes through for Mulder, giving him what he wants most. But twenty-five years haven't brought as many changes as he might have thought, and her gift might be more dangerous than anything he's faced to date. And what's up with those bees? A potpourri of Conspiracy elements with many old favorites present. Note: Almost everything here about bees is actually true, except for the parts that are just paranoia.

"Up the Ladder"

The link is to AO3, where you can easily leave feedback for our author, but you can read this at her website or at Gossamer if you prefer. Leave your suggestions at the nomination post. And don't forget to let us know what you think.

Comments

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Anything by RivaT is aces with me, and my opinion of this bravely conceived adventure is very high. I like the dry distance with which she regards her characters,

This.

I've always really liked RivkaT's fanfic, even though she's a looong way from my usual taste, and it has a lot to do with that, as you say, dry distance. Her writing is dark but not mirthless, exploratory but direct, and provocative but never entirely outrageous. Her stories are comprised of these striking and cinematic leaps of imagination, and then the matter of how to get canon to bend to those imaginings, in a way that will be pleasing, if unnerving, to the reader. This is something she seems to have a particular skill in doing.

It's just an impression, but I feel that the ship and the remarkable bee-and-alien casefile strive against each other a little.

Yes, I think you're right. I like the over all M/S dynamic in UTL, but whenever the fic does something that caters directly to the development of their relationship, it feels a bit tacked on.

But as you say, this is an old school fic. Things which seem clunky today often had a lot more novelty in early 1997. I tend to think of everything written before 1998 as being "first wave XF fanfic", and in that sense the fic writers who were producing during that time were pioneers. They were making our future fanon for us.