Story 16: "Confirmation" by Bonetree

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Our first selection for short story week was nominated by lsugaralmond. It's an all things vignette.

TITLE: Confirmation
AUTHOR: Bonetree
CATEGORY: Vignette, missing scene
RATING: NC-17
DISCLAIMER: These are not my characters. No profit is being made and no infringement is intended.
SUMMARY: Choices, wings and all things.

Comments

[wendelah1]

I don't know if this is going to make any sense, as it is 5 AM here, and I forgot to go to bed.

I do like this very much, for Bonetree's artful use of language and the sense of realism she tries to bring to this story. I like the little repetition of the phrase "The Buddha did not smile" with "Mulder did not smile." I like the pairing of the rocking motion of prayer with the rhythmic movements of love-making. She tried to bring the images from Scully's visionary experience of the temple into the description of their lovemaking and while I like the idea of it, I don't find this convincing somehow.

I don't agree with her characterization of Scully as having never understood the word sacred. At least after her experience of having survived her cancer, Scully is portrayed as having religious faith. Before that, she believed that she was meant to save Kevin, the boy with stigmatic wounds. She believed that Emily was speaking to her somehow, in the scene in "All Souls." where she let the last little crippled girl be taken by the archangel. These seem like spiritual experiences to me. I am sure that Scully would see them as having elements of the sacred.

Also, I don't think that people who are having a visionary experience are capable of thinking so much while they are having it. It just takes you over and you lose your Self. It isn't very conducive to explanation with words. Her bringing together in Scully's mind the figure of Christ, "intricate sculpture of a man dying on a cross," and the Buddha from the temple, and then Mulder making love to Scully reluctantly, even sacrificially, is very poetic. I am trying but I just don't believe it.

She wanted to tell him. She wanted to say that
what she'd seen on the dying man's face
on the cross -- the knowing about choices, his
choice that was never a choice - was the
same as the expression on the statue of the
Buddha, serene in his red smoke room, hidden
in his dark, golden recess.

It was what she'd seen on Mulder's face as he'd
looked at her from the bed, the look he'd
held her with as she'd stood beside him,
silent, and undressed.

The look on Christ's face is one of acceptance of God's will, even in the face of suffering. The Buddha is serene because of his acceptance that life is suffering. This is not the same thing, to my mind. And how can Mulder's face be both serene and full of regret? Who is regretting what here, exactly?

Is Scully thinking Mulder is suffering emotional pain over the decision to have sex with her? Is Bonetree? Or has he painfully accepted and surrendered himself to his sexual encounter with Scully? The phrase "in some bars of the light" implies a sort of cage or prison. Why would he be so reluctant? Why does Scully believe "it would never happen again?" This sex scene is seeming less transcendent the more I think about it. Maybe Bonetree means us to realize this isn't great sex or even good sex. I do believe that Scully would have a hard time just being in her body, without analyzing it all while it was happening.

I do like that it leaves everything up in the air, because despite the whole everything happens for a reason theme, "All Things" left many questions about the Mulder/Scully relationship unanswered. Trying to tie together Scully's Catholicism with the vision in the temple with what we all presumed was a missing sex scene happening in the bedroom was not an easy task. This story was more successful than most, but not entirely so for this reader.

That look of serene resignation she describes is what I saw on Mulder's face as he entered the circle of light with the other abductees at the end of Requiem.

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

And how can Mulder's face be both serene and full of regret?

I stumbled over this, too. It seems a contradiction in terms, and beyond that I can't picture Mulder regretfully having sex with Scully. To me, his reaction to finally coming to this point would be one of, well, characteristic exuberance. :-)

That said, I liked the fact that she took a more original (and thematically tied-in) direction with this story rather than echoing the approach seen in so many post-*all things fic.

[wendelah1]

I can't picture Mulder regretfully having sex with Scully either.

I liked the fact that she took a more original (and thematically tied-in) direction with this story rather than echoing the approach seen in so many post-*all things fic.

I agree, this was very close to the mood and themes of the episode. Bonetree deserves much credit for making that difficult choice and making it work as well as she does.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

The more I talk about writing with people, the more I realize how important mood and literary style are to me as a reader. This story worked so well for me as a story that I guess I was willing to look past the fact that Scully wasn't quite the same Scully she was in the series. Or perhaps simply willing to analyze how she was different and which one I responded to more. (Answer: this one. Something never rang quite right to me in the more "religious" episodes.)

I confess to being equally baffled by what exactly was happening towards the end of the story. In a sense I like being baffled. I know there are some stories that I pick up and turn over in my mind from time to time, trying to figure out what a particular phrase or last paragraph really meant. Sometimes it's just bad writing. But those are the ones that stay with me.

When it comes to this particular story, I don't know that I thought it was bad sex or that it meant it would never happen again. What I took from it is that intimacy is complicated, that we don't always have the feelings that we feel we ought to have, or feelings that our partners understand. Who knows what Mulder was regretting? The suffering that he had inflicted on Scully and his family over the years? The fact that he had waited so long? The fact that they were still distant from one another even though they were together? I don't know. Maybe all of these.

What the story is about, I think, is knowing that all the choices you make in life involve suffering and regret sometimes, accepting the fact, and going on making those choices anyway. It's that bittersweetness of life and I think the story captures it beautifully.

[wendelah1]

What the story is about, I think, is knowing that all the choices you make in life involve suffering and regret sometimes, accepting the fact, and going on making those choices anyway. It's that bittersweetness of life and I think the story captures it beautifully.

This is an excellent synopsis of the story. Life does contain both the bitter and the sweet, but as an eternal optimist, I prefer to spin mine toward the sweet. As a result, I am much more forgiving of the stories that make me smile and laugh, than the stories that make me think. The more I thought about this story, the less I enjoyed it. But your analysis made me like it a little bit more.