ext_20969 (
amyhit.livejournal.com) wrote in
xf_book_club2011-10-16 04:40 pm
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Entry tags:
- au,
- msr,
- nc-17,
- post episode,
- season 5
Story 183: "All the Children Are Insane" by MustangSally
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.
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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in general
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
no subject
Re: in general
Yes, absolutely. I was thinking about this in relation to "Fight the Future," which isn't a bad movie when compared IWTB, but it doesn't address in a meaningful way what happened at the end of season five. Mulder and Scully seem way too blasé--or something--about the loss of the X-Files down there in Texas.
Edited to say this: the more we discuss this story, the more I see the how well the mood of the story matches up both with "The End" and the end of season five. The sex scene still depresses the hell of of me, and maybe it's meant to, but the raw emotion behind it still works. I think Scully here is in shock, she's self-medicating to numb the pain, as is Mulder. They aren't thinking clearly, they don't want to think at all. There is a capitulation to the moment which isn't characteristic of either of them, but which seems possible, if not probable, given enough stress and I think the fire is just the tipping point.
I still want a longer story.
I think Scully in "Iolokus" is in a very different psychological state of mind. I don't know how to explain it or define it but she is.