Story 183: "All the Children Are Insane" by MustangSally

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

In 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

mustangsally78 is still around; sending feedback never hurts. And as always, our recommendations thread is over here.

Comments

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

"Nothing, nothing, nothing" indeed. It just occurred to me that this touches the nihilism at the heart of the show.

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.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I love meta fan-winks.

I love drunkfics.

You are right about the temporary nihilism. And you are not too serious. I am simply far less serious. Which I (and others) must live with.

Incidentally, I seem to have devolved into one of those who don't actually groove on the sex scenes. I prefer the introductory lust.