Please read Oyster. You can look up the Club discussion near the beginning. Wendy was brilliant. (That's it for suckup, W.)
Thanks, babe. I used to be smart, didn't I? What the hell happened?
I admire Jordan, too, if only for taking on this challenge. The time constraints, the posting requirements, all of the elements that had to be included. No, thank you. I guess the group cohesion thing must have worked okay. I wish the story had held up as well.
I've read this a couple of times now. It's not always easy to tease out exactly what's happening and when because of the multiple points of view and the shifting time-line. The story begins October 18 with Scully down in Memphis, Tennessee investigating four mysterious deaths. She's with a fellow forensic pathologist, Tom Hagen, who gets injured partly because he's stupid and showing off and partly because there is an evil intelligence in the bones he's displaying to Scully, just like there's an intelligence in the black oil, waiting to infect and take over its victims. But we don't know any of that yet, we just think the guy is a klutz who's coming on to Scully.
Then Scully gets a phone call. Mulder's being released. She leaves. Well alrighty then, I mean heck, we didn't even know he was in prison, let alone why or for how long.
In the next chapter, we get switched to a Scully dream sequence. No date stamp but we do get to find out it's post-Mulder's release. Scully wakes up from the dream enough to remind herself to call Mulder in the morning. The dream is way creepy and since this is a Halloween story, it must have supernatural overtones. It's a vision! Scully doesn't know that so she turns over and goes back to sleep.
Chapter three moves us way ahead in the time line--thirteen days later--to Halloween day. Scully is driving to Mulder's residence. We get some details, nicely conveyed through a flash-back scene to Skinner's office three years earlier. A lesser writer would have resorted to an internal monologue info dump but she gets us right into the scene. Then we're back into the near past, with the Lonegunmen sitting in Scully's livingroom drinking tea and discussing why Mulder won't come back to the FBI, to the X-Files. Whatever. Then Scully is back in the car, driving to Mulder's place. As a reader, I am feeling a bit of psychic whip-lash, but at least we know the whys and wherefores of Mulder's imprisonment, and their estrangement. I do believe he would refuse to see her if he thought it was putting her in danger. And, I do believe she would wait for him, the full ten years if need be, carrying on in his place, playing Penelope to his Odysseus. This is a more passive version of her than I'd prefer, but at least she does keep investigating. I don't know why she had to do it without a partner or why she was taken off the X-Files in the first place, if she wasn't implicated in the fire or the disappearance of Gibson Praise. Leaving her on the X-files, pairing up Scully and Fowley--now that would have been an interesting mix. I agree, EC, Jordan doesn't write Diana well, and I can't imagine Diana fainting, ever.
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winterfish
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Date: 2011-11-04 04:26 pm (UTC)Thanks, babe. I used to be smart, didn't I? What the hell happened?
I admire Jordan, too, if only for taking on this challenge. The time constraints, the posting requirements, all of the elements that had to be included. No, thank you. I guess the group cohesion thing must have worked okay. I wish the story had held up as well.
I've read this a couple of times now. It's not always easy to tease out exactly what's happening and when because of the multiple points of view and the shifting time-line. The story begins October 18 with Scully down in Memphis, Tennessee investigating four mysterious deaths. She's with a fellow forensic pathologist, Tom Hagen, who gets injured partly because he's stupid and showing off and partly because there is an evil intelligence in the bones he's displaying to Scully, just like there's an intelligence in the black oil, waiting to infect and take over its victims. But we don't know any of that yet, we just think the guy is a klutz who's coming on to Scully.
Then Scully gets a phone call. Mulder's being released. She leaves. Well alrighty then, I mean heck, we didn't even know he was in prison, let alone why or for how long.
In the next chapter, we get switched to a Scully dream sequence. No date stamp but we do get to find out it's post-Mulder's release. Scully wakes up from the dream enough to remind herself to call Mulder in the morning. The dream is way creepy and since this is a Halloween story, it must have supernatural overtones. It's a vision! Scully doesn't know that so she turns over and goes back to sleep.
Chapter three moves us way ahead in the time line--thirteen days later--to Halloween day. Scully is driving to Mulder's residence. We get some details, nicely conveyed through a flash-back scene to Skinner's office three years earlier. A lesser writer would have resorted to an internal monologue info dump but she gets us right into the scene. Then we're back into the near past, with the Lonegunmen sitting in Scully's livingroom drinking tea and discussing why Mulder won't come back to the FBI, to the X-Files. Whatever. Then Scully is back in the car, driving to Mulder's place. As a reader, I am feeling a bit of psychic whip-lash, but at least we know the whys and wherefores of Mulder's imprisonment, and their estrangement. I do believe he would refuse to see her if he thought it was putting her in danger. And, I do believe she would wait for him, the full ten years if need be, carrying on in his place, playing Penelope to his Odysseus. This is a more passive version of her than I'd prefer, but at least she does keep investigating. I don't know why she had to do it without a partner or why she was taken off the X-Files in the first place, if she wasn't implicated in the fire or the disappearance of Gibson Praise. Leaving her on the X-files, pairing up Scully and Fowley--now that would have been an interesting mix. I agree, EC, Jordan doesn't write Diana well, and I can't imagine Diana fainting, ever.