These stories! I will always love Dance Card because that's my college in the flashbacks -- I wish I still had the feedback I sent about it lo these many years ago. *waves at fellow alum iamsab, should she ever see this* (Also, funny now because I just used it in one of my stories, and people who recognized the setting professed to feeling...skeeved? disoriented? something...because it was too close and familiar. Which I think is a common reaction to reading fiction about a place you know very well.)
That said, these stories are disorienting in other ways. They're very much not my personal canon for Scully, and I think the author note to Dance Card pretty clearly encapsulates why: it's a self-insertion story. You could, I think, handwave Scully-in-the-past having a unique and different voice, but even Scully-in-the-present doesn't ping true to character. The story does hit the correct bullet points (Scully's emotional uncertainty about risking her heart with Mulder, or with anyone; how she thinks Mulder doesn't appreciate her), but there's too much of the author mixed up in how the story gets there.
Still, Sab's such an excellent writer, and I remember how refreshing and new these stories felt when they first came out -- I'd never read anything by her before and these felt like a new style, a new spin on some old fanfic tropes. The dialogue and inner monologues have some great energy, and the OCs jump right out -- I admire fic writers who can do OCs well, who can create new people I actually find myself intrigued by (especially when I was just looking for a nice first-time fic for two very specific someone elses!).
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winterfish
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Date: 2012-03-05 08:24 pm (UTC)That said, these stories are disorienting in other ways. They're very much not my personal canon for Scully, and I think the author note to Dance Card pretty clearly encapsulates why: it's a self-insertion story. You could, I think, handwave Scully-in-the-past having a unique and different voice, but even Scully-in-the-present doesn't ping true to character. The story does hit the correct bullet points (Scully's emotional uncertainty about risking her heart with Mulder, or with anyone; how she thinks Mulder doesn't appreciate her), but there's too much of the author mixed up in how the story gets there.
Still, Sab's such an excellent writer, and I remember how refreshing and new these stories felt when they first came out -- I'd never read anything by her before and these felt like a new style, a new spin on some old fanfic tropes. The dialogue and inner monologues have some great energy, and the OCs jump right out -- I admire fic writers who can do OCs well, who can create new people I actually find myself intrigued by (especially when I was just looking for a nice first-time fic for two very specific someone elses!).