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xf_book_clubIn The X-Files fandom there are debatably no two authors more closely associated in the minds of fanfic readers than RivkaT, the author of our last fic, and MustangSally, who are indelibly linked by their co-authorship of "Iolokus". Which is why this week we're going to be reading "All the Children Are Insane," perhaps MustangSally's most widely read solo fic.
It's a vignette set in the summer after S5, with sex, angst, and the burnt-office base notes of existential crisis. The posting date stamp on "All The Children Are Insane" is June 18th 1998, just one day before Fight the Future hit theaters. To me the writing has always hummed with the captured tension of that summer, the fever pitch of fannish excitement and anxiety.
All the Children Are Insane
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mustangsally78 is still around; sending feedback never hurts. And as always, our recommendations thread is over here.
It's a vignette set in the summer after S5, with sex, angst, and the burnt-office base notes of existential crisis. The posting date stamp on "All The Children Are Insane" is June 18th 1998, just one day before Fight the Future hit theaters. To me the writing has always hummed with the captured tension of that summer, the fever pitch of fannish excitement and anxiety.
All the Children Are Insane
mustangsally78 is still around; sending feedback never hurts. And as always, our recommendations thread is over here.
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Date: 2011-10-16 11:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-17 05:08 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2011-10-17 10:24 am (UTC)This said once you accept this raw, merciless portrayal, you will begin to see that at the core lies something that *is* essentially all Scully.
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Date: 2011-10-17 10:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 03:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-18 05:42 pm (UTC)This Scully has a mighty bee in her bonnet - an angry, crude inner voice that swears like a sailor. She's pretty remote from the soft spoken, compassionate woman from the show who only swears in time of crisis.
This is indeed Iolokus Scully's twin on a bad, kick in the balls, day.
But if you accept this OTT portrayal then you can sit back and enjoy the ride. And there's a lot to enjoy in this fic. It is extremely well written and the descriptions sparkle like fireworks, branding images vividly in your head. Mulder feels more or less 'right' to me. The paper bag comment was pretty insensitive, but this is not something I would put past him.
Sometimes it gets a bit much, the metaphors and simile arrive at machine gun pace to the point of ruining the overall effect. Less is more. It feels that sometimes the writer is trying to cram too many things at once, maybe to maintain the sense of urgency, but for the reader this is akin to sensory overload. Of course this could be just me, I like words in the stories I read to have room to breathe and expand to their full potential. I have a similar issue with Penumbra's Parabiosis.
This food is just a a tad too rich for my taste.
And yet, there's a lot to love in this ATCAI. It's so rare to read smut that doesn't make you want to burst out laughing or cringe or roll your eyes. And nobody writes smut as evocativelly as MustangSally (and RivkaT)do IMO. The only thing that didn't work for me was Scully saying "Don't screw around and fuck me" which I SO can't hear coming out of Scully's mouth. Not like this at any rate.
Anyway. This was a beautiful line:
Her throat has precisely the same arch as a well-thrown curve ball.
This was damn hot:
Hot breath stirs the delicate
cilia inside my head and sends the short hairs on the back of my neck
into attack mode.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing," she says in a voice that would not
have been out of place on a 900 number.
Underneath it all she is a swan, white and lithe against the black water of the sofa
Okay this is a bit overkill, but can't you just see Scully lying naked on the couch so perfectly with this image? Because I can.
There are many other lines I could quote that worked extremely well, but it would take too long.
IIRC the term "slow motion pornography" was declared one of the hottest line of fanfiction of all time, by my fellow UK Philes back in the days.
I'm not saying that everything works in the sex scenes. All that Everest stuff with Sherpas kinda kill the impact of the moment and could have done with a good trim - as many other lines could have, but it's a whole lot more hits than misses.
And the ending is incredibly bittersweet. I'm not ready
Voila.
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Date: 2011-10-22 01:51 am (UTC)Oh well. I did start rereading Iolokus on the plane coming home and thought it was great. Better than I'd remembered, even. I just finished part three.
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Date: 2011-10-20 12:54 am (UTC)There are lots of great lines and moments here, but I think my favorites outside of the actual smut are these:
"What's the matter?"
"I can't get it in."
It hits me that this is perhaps the funniest thing that I have ever said
in my life and I start to laugh the laugh of a drunk. Scully's disgust
melts after a moment and I realize that she is grinning at me through her
streaked face.
"You should have taken it out to dinner first, bought it a few drinks,
whispered sweet nothings in its ear."
"What are sweet nothings?"
Her hand grabs the arm of my sodden jacket and pulls me down so my ear is
scant millimeters away from her face. Hot breath stirs the delicate
cilia inside my head and sends the short hairs on the back of my neck
into attack mode.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing," she says in a voice that would not
have been out of place on a 900 number.
I can totally see that scene in my head.
This has always been one of my smutty, dark favorites. It's not even remotely a sappy story, but I still sense an undercurrent of love and bottom line, Mulder and Scully feel authentic to me.
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Date: 2011-10-22 02:22 pm (UTC)Any idea why that might be? Because neither character matches up very well with canon!Scully. (Neither of the Mulders do either but since no one here seems inclined to bring that up, I guess I won't either. Oh wait. I just did. Oops.)
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Date: 2017-01-01 11:43 pm (UTC)"What's the matter?"
"I can't get it in."
It hits me that this is perhaps the funniest thing that I have ever said
in my life and I start to laugh the laugh of a drunk. Scully's disgust
melts after a moment and I realize that she is grinning at me through her
streaked face.
"You should have taken it out to dinner first, bought it a few drinks,
whispered sweet nothings in its ear."
"What are sweet nothings?"
Her hand grabs the arm of my sodden jacket and pulls me down so my ear is
scant millimeters away from her face. Hot breath stirs the delicate
cilia inside my head and sends the short hairs on the back of my neck
into attack mode.
"Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing," she says in a voice that would not
have been out of place on a 900 number.
That's also one of my seriously favorite lines from smutty fanfic ever. I too can totally see it, and the bit about Mulder suddenly finding that line of his as hilarious actually struck me exactly the same given the circumstances. Like laugh out loud funny.
Also noticed a lot of repetition that I assume must have been on purpose, with a word repeated 2-3x in a few sentences... interesting
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Date: 2011-10-20 10:52 pm (UTC)Mustang Sally's stories--I also love the lighter and earlier "Diamonds and Rust" and "An Everlasting Kiss"--introduced me to fanfic I really got. I want happy endings but I love bad language and rough sex. And how could we get two overtrained fibbies to that point? Booze. More booze. Everyone off the hook and into the abyss.
For some reason a tough-talking Scully has never bothered me. And this sexual encounter, a matter of lowered inhibitions, comfort, but mainly overdue lust, is perfectly to my taste. I do realize, on the reread, that it's kind of a careless story. It's made up of genius lines ("And the great ship split in half and sank into the North Atlantic") and lines that could have used an editor's smoothing hand ("...her teeth scoring the sides of my throat, my shoulders, and her nails nip into the jumping muscles in my ass"). MA is not waiting for editors. She's bound for the Big O.
I actually think the carelessness is in a kind of keeping with the crazy transgressiveness that marked the work of this writer and her frequent partner. They were the break-outs, the outliers, the ones who insisted and demonstrated that pornography without exciting language was pornography without excitement.
I agree that the exaggerated images bump into each other, and that the humor and the serious shipsex ("The great ship") sometimes argue. It's careless language and careless sex. But it sure as hell worked then, and in my opinion it still works.
Incidentally, I could have sworn that there is another ending version somewhere that mentions the hangover fairy. Can anyone recall?
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Date: 2011-10-22 01:37 am (UTC)But the problem is that when I woke up it was all going to be the same, the happiness fairy was not going to come along and sprinkle happy-ending dust all over everything and make it all go away. Instead, I was going to get a visit from the hangover fairy.
I don't have a problem with the characterizations or the language. I don't care for the plot, however, and the sex scene seemed silly. As you know, I feel exactly the opposite about most stories featuring drunken sex. This one didn't take it too seriously, which was a relief. It just does nothing for me. Scully's "nothing nothing nothing" doesn't do it for me either. Sex is ineffable, isn't it? I'm glad you liked it.
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Date: 2011-10-22 11:37 pm (UTC)I love this. I hadn't really thought of it that way, and I doubt that MS meant it that way, but all the same, it's fitting. Except I don't think it has to be touching on the nihilism at the heart of the show, so much as the temporary nihilism at the hearts of Mulder and Scully on this one night.
And the great ship split in half and sank into the North Atlantic
That line was supposed to be meta, right? if so, then it bugs me more than it amuses me. I've never been a fan of the meta fan-wink. I guess I'm just too serious to like having that fourth wall broken.
the humor and the serious shipsex ("The great ship") sometimes argue.
Yeah, this is tough for me to get over. The only reason it doesn't completely turn me off is because the characters are drunk. Drunk brains are swampwater brains - mechanical mixtures of thought become solutions. I find it kind of a turn off in this fic, unlike in many drunkfics, but it's believably written, and their circumstances exempt them from pretty much all upholding of decorum.
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Date: 2011-10-24 07:21 pm (UTC)Ooooh, what a pretty thing to say. Can you expand on that?
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Date: 2011-10-25 01:48 am (UTC)EC, I am a little confused by that statement, leaving aside the "nothing, nothing, nothing," as I think that we can agree it's just a little bit of cute dialogue, which I would be surprised to find had a philosophical underpinning.
But I would like to know what you meant by "the nihilism at the heart of the show"? Because I don't see anything nihilistic about the series in theme or philosophy or anything really. "Seinfeld" is nihilistic. To me, "The X-Files" has a clear moral center. No need to answer this, by the way, I'm just thinking out loud, but if you do feel like discussing it, I'd love to know your definition of the term and how it applies to "The X-Files."
Edited for grammar fail. Also punctuation. I try. I do.
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Date: 2011-10-21 02:54 am (UTC)The metaphors do get a bit much - the Sherpa line was fine for me actually - it was just the right amount of humor for me. One example of one that did not work for me was "I am shaking like a paint mixer at Home Depot" I think the product placement feel to that line threw me off. :-P
The sex scene is a little silly, but it also doesn't take itself quite so seriously. There are a few tropes, but it also feels fairly tongue in cheek.
Also one of the first few lines threw me on the identity of Scully was: "I feel like I'm back in 'Nam." It reads like they meant to start with Skinner, changed their mind and then never changed the line - it could also be tongue in cheek I suppose, but it was a bit too jarring for me for that.
I love a lot of the language and lyricism the most.
Examples:
"I read too much.
"I think too much.
"I talk entirely too much.
"I do nothing."
and I also like:
"Maybe she can't smile anymore, maybe they took that away from her too. They took her future, and now they've taken mine, but you can't weigh oocytes with paper files - it isn't a fair trade."
Plus the pace of the story is a lot of fun, it surges ahead quickly, which for me allows the metaphors to fall quickly without too much thought and analysis. The second read reminded me of a few that stuck out by the first read was smoother.
I also like that Mulder and Scully feel as though they are seething and hardened in this. I did not catch this story back in the day, but it's exactly the kind of raging that I wanted after The End. The stunned silence in the episode is lovely too, but I wanted the rougher part of the mourning, and this fits the bill quite nicely.
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Date: 2011-10-22 01:22 am (UTC)I don't have a problem with her characterizations exactly but I don't normally enjoy stories where the characters get drunk and have sex. Since that is the plot, it doesn't leave me much to comment on that's positive that hasn't already been mentioned. The lines you quoted are great, the ending is great. The sex did seem silly but I feel that way about most sex scenes in fanfic and profic.
The line about "'Nam" takes me out of the narrative every damn time I read it. I'm glad it wasn't just me. I love the idea that this started out as Skinner/Mulder and morphed into MSR. That story would have been hilarious and hot and no, I do not ship them at all.
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Date: 2011-10-24 07:31 pm (UTC)The stunned silence in the episode is lovely too, but I wanted the rougher part of the mourning, and this fits the bill quite nicely.
Interesting, I guess it's a long time since I watched this ep. I guess I forgot what a big deal the burning of their offices was, and how much grief it brought. I guess the seething and harsh inner voices make nore sense if you bear this in mind.
about scully
Date: 2011-10-22 11:10 pm (UTC)I am definitely not wild about this Scully characterization. If she were simply darker and more cynical than canon Scully (a la Iolokus) it would be fine. I think what strikes me as totally off about this Scully is that she actually comes off as gruff and even a bit crass. And I am just never, ever going to buy a crass Scully.
They don't brief you on the etiquette of female macho when you join up with the Bureau.
Maybe this is a part of the problem, this idea of Scully as someone who is, or is trying to be 'macho'. That's just not Scully to me.
I think the only part of the first section, before the POV change, that I like, is Scully thinking that at by having limes in her vodka tonic at least she's getting some vitamin C.
In the last section, the remainder of her POV, I still have trouble with how she's written. The urgency of the sex scene is hot, and I like the fact that it's hard and fast, and that Scully comes at a touch, because I think that's in keeping with the situation. Mulder says, Jesus, who would have thought that she was wired this tight? But of course they're both 'wound this tight'; they've both spent the last five years in relentless pursuit of answers and closure they never get, denied satisfaction, and now the evidence of all their efforts has been destroyed. It's the tension of existential crisis, but in an instant they switch to sexual crisis, like a train switching tracks without slowing down.
But like
about mulder's section
Date: 2011-10-22 11:11 pm (UTC)Oblivious to my dark thoughts, Scully taps along next to me, playing Ganymede to my Cassio. Or whoever. The 12th Night brain cells are not responding to anything coming from the server.
I have to Wiki this. I Like it a lot, just by the sound of it, but I'm not really sure what it means.
I find it adorable that Mulder and Scully are both walking the walk of the severely inebriated, but that Scully pulls it off better because she's shorter and therefore her wobbling is not as apparent.
They took her future, and now they've taken mine, but you can't weigh oocytes with paper files - it isn't a fair trade.
Can we all just pretend that it's canon Mulder thinking this line? Because man, about half of my issues with Mulder could be alleviated seriously by his simple acknowledgment of this. In fact, this entire paragraph is great. There are still tape marks on Mulder's window, and he claims you can't break down a door as many times as his has been, without having lingering lock issues. There's a theme here: damage, trauma, the marks left behind, the long-term effects of present wounds and actions. Chalk this up as my favorite paragraph of the fic.
Mulder then proceeds to think in a series of really awesome metaphors/similes:
Her throat has precisely the same arch as a well-thrown curve ball.
Underneath it all she is a swan, white and lithe against the black water of the sofa
The fur between her legs feels like a wet rabbit skin against my thigh, and I reach down between the white lines of her thighs to where she is wetter than the rain and hot as spilled blood.
I think MS may overdo it a bit with the literary devices, and some of them do kind of break the mood (if you want your sex scene to be hot, it's never a good idea to have the guy thinking of himself as a baboon, because then the reader will think of him as a baboon, and that will effectively render him repulsive, at least momentarily), but most of them are pretty great. I particularly like the animalistic theme, with Mulder likening Scully to a swan, and then a rabbit, and Scully likening Mulder to a cat with a mouse when he bites her neck in orgasm.
My second favorite part of ATCAI, and the most memorable moment, for me, is the one
Re: about mulder's section
Date: 2011-10-22 11:45 pm (UTC)There are three different plays in the quote: Ganymede is from "As You Like It," Cassio from "Othello" and "Twelfth Night" is the title of "Twelfth Night." Unless I'm missing something, I think it's just further proof of Mulder's inebriation and Mustang Sally's love for language and literature.
Re: in general
Date: 2011-10-22 11:29 pm (UTC)I can value this story for what it is: an artifact of a particular time in XF fandom. I like certain lines. I don't think it's badly written, quite the contrary. But as a whole, I admit it does disappoint me. I'd never read it again, that's for certain. Maybe it would have worked better for me if it had had a plot of its own, if it had been part of a larger whole, as opposed to being what it is and what it was clearly intended to be: a short, first-time msr, a drunk-fic post-ep for "The End." Reading your analysis (excellent as always, by the way) reminds me of how off-kilter I am in how I see fic and how non-mainstream my fannish opinions (and my own writing) are as a consequence. It's a comeuppance and probably one I deserve.
You must have deleted your comment at the same moment I replied to it.
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Date: 2011-10-22 11:16 pm (UTC)I've always considered The X-Files a show with three essential elements - Mulder, Scully, and The Work - each of which being of equal importance. The season finale for S5 was the first (and only) season to destroy one of those elements. Yes, Mulder had seemed to be dead at the end of S2, and at the end of S4, but most people knew rationally that he wasn't really gone. The End destroyed The Work in a permanent way. There was real and monumental loss, which is how it should have been portrayed, for more than just thirty seconds at the end of S5.
Ultimately it's that feeling of existential crisis, shock and haplessness and the suppressed violence of their desperation, that I value in this fic. And the fact that it was written that summer, before FTF, is very important to my enjoyment of the fic. It's a piece of X-Fileana, something penned at a precise moment in x-files history, when the past and the future had both been razed to the ground, and once again nothing was certain, everything was forced into transition, and anything was possible.
Re: in general
Date: 2011-10-22 11:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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From:Hindsight is 20/20
Date: 2011-10-25 03:16 am (UTC)OUCH!
In retrospect, AfCaI seems *so* purple and for that I am heartily sorry! I wish I could plead that I was young when I wrote it - but I was about 31 when I wrote it. I might have been drunk, I wrote a lot of fic when I was drunk back in the day, but I don't recall being shitfaced when I wrote that one. I was often crocked when I was working on Iolokus! What I did intend was a very rough and angry Scully*. I never could understand how serene she could be while all these horrible things were happening to her and around her. I know I would have been seethingly angry the whole time. I did intend it to be sordid and ugly - my initial image was sex on the sofa with one foot dragging on the floor and it just being ugly and sordid.
Both Rivka and I set out to intentionally subvert many of the tropes that were endemic in the fandom at the time - saintly Scully, damaged Mulder (anorexic, cutting, masochistic, whatever) e - and the drunken sex being another. Drunken sex was right up there with the shared hotel room.
Seriously, I think I wrote AtCaI over a day or two without a serious beta and it was never structurally sound enough to handle this much examination! It was all about exciting and enraging people and it was fun to write and fun to put the cat among the pigeons as the case may be!
Strangely enough, I saw someone mention Sherlock in the comments and that made me laugh - I'd been playing with an idea of writing a girl!Watson fic and realized that it was just the XFiles and I'd done that already.
But thank all of you for still giving a shit about something that was written so long ago with so little thought. I'm feeling the love here!
*and the swearing like a sailor part was my Mary Sue talking!
Re: Hindsight is 20/20
Date: 2011-10-25 04:23 am (UTC)Seriously, I think I wrote AtCaI over a day or two without a serious beta and it was never structurally sound enough to handle this much examination!
Well, but why not? How else are we to learn about the writing if we don't analyze and discuss it? I'm not trying to embarrass anyone, let alone you. I believe I speak for the majority here when I say we idolize you and worship the ground you walk on. You were trying to create excitement and you did back then, and look! You still are, after all of this time. I think you have to count this as a winner, warts and all.
As
Strangely enough, I saw someone mention Sherlock in the comments and that made me laugh - I'd been playing with an idea of writing a girl!Watson fic and realized that it was just the XFiles and I'd done that already.
Now, I love "Sherlock BBC" but I don't see how you can compare Mulder and Scully with Sherlock and girl!Watson. These pairings have pretty different dynamics and agendas and universes. Go ahead. Play with it. Write it. I'll read it, and I bet I'll be standing in line.
But thank all of you for still giving a shit about something that was written so long ago with so little thought. I'm feeling the love here!
Yes, yes indeed. Now you're on the right track. Love is all around. <3
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