Story 197: "Get Up Mulder" by Tesla

[wendelah1]

This story was nominated by write_out but it's one of my favorites now, too. Confession time: the first time I read it, I thought Mulder was being a little whiny. But I love him better now, so it's all good. Tesla's writing is smooth as silk and no one writes a better Mulder voice. Enjoy!

NEW: "Get Up, Mulder"
Author: Tesla
Rating: PG-13 for language
Keyword: MSR, spooning, post-movie

Summary: Mulder recalls the trip back

Spoilers: To "Fight the Future"

Mod note: It says "MSR" but I think it's noromo friendly.

Now I really need to give tesla321 her own tag. Seriously, is there anything of hers we haven't read? See, we do use the suggestions from our nomination post, so go suggest some more, please.

Read "Get Up, Mulder".

Comments

[wendelah1]

What I like best about this story is its structure. Though I didn't know for certain until the ending, this story isn't taking place during FTF at all. It's all taking place during an off-screen early season six case set sometime while Mulder and Scully were exiled from the X-Files, when they were on "fertilizer duty" for domestic terrorism. (In a post 9-11 world, that's no longer where FBI fuck-ups get posted. But anyway, that's where they are.)

Scully's telling him to get up now, but he's too warm and he's too tired. He'd rather think about the long trip home from Antarctica, despite the fear and the fatigue and the pain and the nightmares. There's something about that experience that he gravitates to when he's this unfiltered, when he has lost consciousness. Everything that happens in this story is being narrated to us by a man who is lying unconscious on a concrete floor after being cold-cocked by a faceless terrorist.

"Get up, Mulder" is the first line, almost the last line, and it's the Greek chorus of this play. As Nailbelle has pointed out, its repetition provides structure, by changing the scene; however, every time Scully says it, she's yelling to the unresponsive man lying on that concrete floor, whose concussed brain then spirals back to another memory of the trip home.

Just as M&S get away from the ship just in the nick of time, before it takes off and blows a huge hole in the Antarctic ice shelf, Mulder wakes up and gets up off the floor and out of the building just in time to escape being blown up by the bomb. (Just like they nearly got blown up in Dallas, back at the very beginning of FTF.) He saved her, she saves him. It's what they do. It's been a tough year and so I forgive Mulder's somewhat churlish reply, murmured under his breath as he's herded to the ambulance. It's his narrative so he gets the last word. "I'm up."

I didn't find one word of this story boring. I have some more thoughts but I need to get to sleep.

[littlegreen42.livejournal.com]

He saved her, she saves him. It's what they do.

Yes! This is what I love about The X-Files. :)

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Um, I have NO IDEA how my comment ended up posted twice, and now I can't delete it because there are replies on both posts.

I was having internet connectivity issues while attempting to post, but I checked to make sure it hadn't posted the first time I tried. I guess my computer wasn't showing the updated thread quite yet. Like I said, issues.

*cringes* Sorry to be obnoxious, everyone.

No worries

[wendelah1]

Are there comments to both? It looks like these comments are to my post not your duplicate. If you can't delete it, don't worry about it. It happens. The wonderful new commenting system makes it harder to keep track of what goes where.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Hooray! You figured it out! I thought there was something like this going on, but I thought I'd have to reread and didn't have the heart. It's really a clever, clever mode of storytelling.

I just have to do a rave on Tesla. For personal preference reasons I haven't read everything she's written--there's a Scully-hate factor that screwed things up for me at one point--but I would say that she is the sveltest, slickest, most economical stylist that every inhabited Xdom. She and Kel; they share the honors. Her prose is light and pleasurable to consume like whipped cream, but like the cream one whips it is thick and rich with implication. It is also, for the most part, good-tempered and funny. Even when she turned Mulder into a vampire.

As for Mulder being Mulder: of course he isn't. He's unconscious and wounded and in pain, and he's dreaming about being unconscious, wounded, and in pain. His lizard brain is recalling bits and pieces of his difficult history, each of which Scully stars in, and his attitude is compounded of aggravation, lust, and a profound desire for oblivion. He shamelessly refers to Scully's firm little ass *because he's unconscious, wounded, and in pain on a cold stone floor." It wouldn't be all that surprising if he fantasized a rape because she is really irritating him. Lizard brain. Cut the guy a break.

What actually comes through here is how much Mulder depends on Scully, how thoroughly he has accepted her partnership and cherishes her loyalty. That is what the repetition of "Get up, Mulder" signifies; she gets him going and brings him home.

[wendelah1]

Hooray! You figured it out! I thought there was something like this going on, but I thought I'd have to reread and didn't have the heart. It's really a clever, clever mode of storytelling.

Yes, it is truly stellar story-telling. Characterization woven tightly into the plot. Plot being revealed by characterization. Damn, she's good.

For personal preference reasons I haven't read everything she's written--there's a Scully-hate factor that screwed things up for me at one point...

That story was the first of hers I'd read. I didn't read anything else by her until Fic Talk. Someone there recced the story she co-wrote with Maybe Amanda. I read that, fell in love and promptly revised my assessment.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

It wouldn't be all that surprising if he fantasized a rape because she is really irritating him.

If you're a person capable of fantasizing about rape, then you're capable of fantasizing about rape. If you're a person who finds rape vile and repudiates it, then you would not be capable of fantasizing about rape. You could think about rape, but you could get no feeling of sexual arousal, in mind or in body, from it.

The "lizard brain" is not capable of rape. It lacks the capability to conceptualize rape. If, in theory, Mulder were truly operating on only his lizard brain, he would not have the intelligence to fantasize at all, let alone about a complex thing like rape. Essentially, he could only want and not want, or, more accurately, be attracted to or repelled from.

I know this is not exactly relevant to our discussion of the fic, but it certainly bears saying.

Even when she turned Mulder into a vampire.

Who did, Tesla? Was it Mulder/other? If not, then I gotta read this.

[wendelah1]

To me, there is a huge difference between having a "rape fantasy" and being capable of actual rape, or of wanting to be raped for that matter. I believe it is possible to be aroused by a rape fantasy and still believe the act of rape is vile.

One of the most powerful scenes in Syntax6's "Split the Lark" was about that very idea.

"You don't understand," he said, sounding miserable.

She stopped teasing. "Explain it to me," she said as she rubbed his arm. "Because I'm not hearing anything so far that would give me reason to doubt your good character."

Mulder would not look at her. "Well, for one thing, I've had this fantasy." Haltingly, he told her of an explicit scenario that started with an argument in the basement and moved to forceful sex up against the wall. "You said no," he told her quietly. "I didn't even care."

She leaned her cheek on his shoulder and hugged his arm. "It's a fantasy," she told him. "Fantasies aren't real. You know they're not."

"But after everything--"

"Mulder, I'm not afraid of you." She squeezed him again. "I'm not afraid of your fantasy, either."

"It doesn't make you sick?"

"No. It makes me want to get a file cabinet for my bedroom." He looked at her, and she smiled and cupped the side of his face. Her thumb grazed over his stubbly cheek. "Mulder, you're nothing like Gregory Watts. You never will be."

It's a little OT in this discussion, but I think that is an important distinction to make.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I disagree. I would argue that a person who can be aroused by a fantasy of raping someone does not truly feel that rape is vile, though they may know it is. Anyway, for my part, a Mulder who could have a sexual fantasy of raping someone is NOT a Mulder I want anything to do with.

And Mulder's fantasy in Split the Lark wasn't rape. There was a heavy D/s element to his fantasy, and it would not have been an appropriate fantasy for him to attempt to act out, but it wasn't rape. That was part of what made the way Syntax6 wrote the scene so brilliant. If his fantasy had been rape, I would've quite reading then and there, because I'm just not going to stand for that crap in a character I'm meant to respect and trust. Instead, the way the scene of his fantasy unfolded was dubious enough that Mulder came to feel it may as well have been a rape fantasy. Which is not the same thing at all.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I probably don't understand "lizard brain." I'm not at all scientific. But I think it safe to say that his superego is not functioning and his id is making a fool of himself. And I firmly believe that a "person who finds rape vile and repudiates it" could fantasize about it. You are aware, I'm sure, that women fantasize about rape a lot. Fantasy is not reality. That's why it's called fantasy.

The vampire story was called, IFRC, "There Is No Seven." I'm pretty sure it's at Gossamer. It's a crossover with Buffy, after which Tesla went that route exclusively .