xf_book_club | Story 199: "Dance Card" by Sab (Sabine)

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Story 199: "Dance Card" by Sab (Sabine)

After reading "Five Things That Never Happened to Dana Scully" last week, it seems appropriate that this week's offering is also about a "road not taken." Since three members separately expressed some interest in reading it, and because Sabine is an accomplished and entertaining writer, "Dance Card" is now on our dance card.

SUMMARY: The road not taken.
NOTE: This is a true story, sorta. I mean, it happened to me, not Scully, but I figured I'd plug her in to the game and see how she played it out. So that's where it stops being a true story, but those little snowy highways and dogwoods and mistakes do exist, ten, fifteen years later. Oh, and in answer to your question, yes, I did write another story with another guy Scully meets named Paul. It's a good all-purpose name; whatcha gonna do? Album and book publication dates verified with Borders.com, Amazon.com, and Cdnow.com, so they should all be correct. German translations c/o Altavista's Babelfish; let me know if they got it wrong. All "chalking" quotes copyright J. Wilson Kello, with whom I spent four years of college chalking. He is not Paul.

That will all make sense after you read the story, I promise. "Dance Card" has two sequels: "What Happened After That" and "Moonshine," which could be subtitled "What Happened After What Happened After That." The links are all to Gossamer under "Sabine" if the links get broken; the first and third are also at Fugues Fiction Archive. Discussion on any and all of the three is welcome. Sab is

iamsab here and Sab at AO3, but alas, these stories have never been re-posted to either location.

Leave feedback, leave suggestions, and come back for discussion, which is still ongoing for the last two fics we read, by the way. You guys are awesome.

Read "Dance Card".

Read "What Happened After That".

Read "Moonshine".

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Whatdoyoumeanyoufoundtherecipe?? You found the recipe and YOU DIDN'T TELL ME!

Oh, never mind. I'll make do with Trader Joe's carat cake.

Caffeine and painkillers are giving me the go-ahead to say: I disagree with everyone. I am the opposite, that is, of Wendelah. You people, honestly! Scully wouldn't do this, wouldn't say that, I can't see her with midnight vodka yearning for a passive-aggressive narcissist. She's too goody-two-shoes for collegiate rebellion, she's only sticking with Mulder because her boss told her to. I paraphrase, of course.

It's almost as though you all have such a fixed notion of Scully, for your own psychological/aesthetic purposes, that you've put her into a complicated cage. You are entitled to do so, of course. But it seems very reductive. Sabine admitted to self-insertion but I do not feel that her Scully is in any way an embarrassment. Yes, she might very well have acted out a bit in college and yes, she might have fallen hard for someone who epitomized the very opposite of a responsible Navy man. Just because she got herself clean, straight, and obedient in med school doesn't mean it couldn't have happened. We have all quoted "extreme possibilities" endlessly but you give our characters specific backstories that almost function like straitjackets.

I remember the multiuniverse "Tikkun Olum" in which a Mulder was abducted and turned into a highly neurotic wife-murderer. I remember Scully killing babies in "The Mill." I remember a Mulder who sleeps with Marita and a Scully who sleeps with Krycek and a Mulder and Scully who perform sexually as part of a religious ritual. I remember a Mulder who has a dominatrix mistress. I remember a Scully who falls apart at the reappearance of an old mentor/lover. Oh--that was canon. Didn't believe that one.

I guess my point is one I've tried to make before: be careful what you disapprove of, because you're disavowing someone's creativity and may be cramping your own. Keep the hailing channels open. We have a limited number of characters in this fandom to, well, play with, and you don't want to limit their ability to delight, scare, surprise us.

Well, I've said several paragraphs too much. Just two points. Not fair to compare Sabine with Kel. When Kel is on her game she has virtually no equal. Second: what about Mulder? Is he also scandalously out of character? Just wondering.

Third: forgive big mouth. Fourth: why wouldn't Mulder shingle a roof? He's big, strong, and obedient to mom-figures.

I just found the recipe last night but I haven't tried it yet. The photo looks exactly how I pictured them. I'll send you the link directly. Sheesh.

I guess my point is one I've tried to make before: be careful what you disapprove of, because you're disavowing someone's creativity and may be cramping your own. Keep the hailing channels open. We have a limited number of characters in this fandom to, well, play with, and you don't want to limit their ability to delight, scare, surprise us.

I didn't disapprove of Sabine having written this story. I gave a factual account of its content. So did Sabine, in her author's note, as you recall. The point is, she knew exactly what she was doing, and she had every right to exert her creativity in whatever direction she wanted to go. But just as the writer doesn't owe her readers specific content, readers are not obliged to approve of everything an author creates. I gave my opinion of this story as fanfiction. I don't feel obliged to love any sex scenes, no matter how well-written, especially if the story that proceeds the sex doesn't convince me it would happen. I remain unconvinced by Sabine, and by your argument as well.

You are right. This is an original, technically very well-done piece by a talented writer whose work I respect; I tried to acknowledge as much in my comment. But if we aren't allowed to dislike a particular premise at this late date in the game just because the writer is gifted, or because we might discourage other writers, why are we discussing anything? This story and the others you referenced were written in the fandom's heyday. Most of those writers have long ago moved on to other fandoms or other pursuits. Sabine certainly did. Check her writing out at AO3. We aren't hemming her in, and I sincerely doubt anyone else is being kept from their creative destiny by our discussions either. If anything, I would think writers might be encouraged to know that at least in this closed canon fandom, there are still enthusiastic, if opinionated, readers, people with enough interest and balls to not only read these old stories but to discuss them, and to do it in the open, too, not under the protection of anonymity. I stand by my opinion, and I stand by my right to express it, and I stand by your right to disagree with me and everyone else here.

This is what we do at Le Book Club. I hope we're all having fun doing it. I know I am.

I think it is perfectly fair to compare two stories written in the same genre. Yes, Kel has no peer, but Sabine has just as much talent, I warrant. If Sab had wanted to write her story a different way, I have no doubt she'd have done so. She chose to write this one.

I'm going to start working on those Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Balls. Maybe I'll eat them for breakfast.

Oh, link, sorry. I can't make these. Send some.

Oh, of course I'm having fun. And part of my fun is acknowledging my aggravation. I still think the constant disapproval of characterization is a dead hand that represses various sorts of enjoyment. I want a wide-open Scully and a wide-open Mulder. (And what about him? Particularly in "Moonshine.")

You say "readers are not obliged to approve of everything an author creates." That phrase bothers me a bit.
They certainly aren't obliged to "like" anything, but what does approval have to do with a basically harmless piece of fiction like this? DC doesn't advocate for rape or anything. You are saying that one may freely disapprove of how another sees a character created by yet others. It seems very judgmental, almost legalistic. I think I disapprove of it. (Which is not to say I can or would stop it.)

They are human beings. Human beings make fools of themselves. Watching that is often fun. I don't identify so strongly with Scully that I can't see the absurdity of some of her behavior. When she crawled into bed with Waterston I was embarrassed. That was canon and downright stressful (although I admired the ep in many ways.) DC and its follow-ups were pure imaginative pleasure. But then I have a weakness for drunkfics and undercover (M as the boyfriend).

If I've offended I'm sorry. Which is, come to think of it, a real Rush Limbaugh apology. I'm especially sorry I didn't reference mushfromnewsies, because she admitted to fun.

Oh, about anonymity, Estella is not my real name. I doubt, too, that mushfromnewsies answers to that in real life. You are the one dangling in the wind.

I understand that. But still, posting under a long-standing fandom/internet pseudonym is not the same as posting anonymously in a forum where if you don't post that way, they'll delete your comment.

People can post as anons here if they choose, but I (and the other mods) have the right to keep their comments screened or to delete them, though so far we've only deleted spam.

That's because everyone here is nice people. (Yes, I know it's ungrammatical.)

Our members, watchers and lurkers are the best.

Damn! And here I was thinking I was mad, bad and dangerous to know. *sulks*

I want a wide-open Scully and a wide-open Mulder.

Are you suggesting there are no characterizations of Scully that you don’t like? No characterizations of Mulder that just don’t do it for you? I think past fanfic discussions would contradict that.

It's almost as though you all have such a fixed notion of Scully, for your own psychological/aesthetic purposes, that you've put her into a complicated cage. […] We have all quoted "extreme possibilities" endlessly but you give our characters specific backstories that almost function like straitjackets.

In saying this, you are disapproving of everyone else’s Mulders and Scullys. Apparently your opinion is the only one that is fair to the characters, and you propose to fully embrace any and all characterizations. Yet you don’t embrace ours? How does that work?

My appreciation of a character is not unconditional. If I changed Dana Scully around enough, she could be anyone. More relevantly, if I changed any character around enough, they would stop being themselves. And that’s true for ever character, in the eyes of every fan there is. Call it a fanonical invariant.

You say that you feel our opinions regarding the nature of Scully’s character are “very reductive”. But I don’t see the point in caring about anything if you don’t want to actually understand what it is you’re caring about. Now I know XF fanon fairly well. I’ve read a lot of fanfic and I generally remember what I read well enough. I know that fanon Scully - our Scully, the one we all share, the akashic Scully if you will *g* – is vast and amorphous and she has as many facets as have ever been dreamed up. But my Scully is not so very amorphous, in fact she’s quite shapely, though still with a bit of healthy leeway.

If I only got pleasure out of reading about my Scully, I would not be here and I would never have been here because 99 out of 100 stories would bore me or annoy me. But if I wasn’t interested in understanding my Scully more fully and completely, I also wouldn’t be here. So your accusation (it was one) that I’m somehow enslaving the character(s) is equally as baffling as your proposal that I ought not to have opinions about characterization lest I cripple creativity and repress enjoyment.

Frankly, the very thing that makes discussing fanfic so uniquely fun and stimulating is that within a particular fandom, every fic can be compared and contrasted in so many ways. Unlike original fiction, in which what’s there on the page is everything, with fanfiction what’s there on the page is like one mirror in a huge hall of mirrors, at the center of which is canon. Not formulating opinions about characterization would be like looking at the page and saying, this is all there is, it does not reflect anything at all.

Frankly, the very thing that makes discussing fanfic so uniquely fun and stimulating is that within a particular fandom, every fic can be compared and contrasted in so many ways. Unlike original fiction, in which what’s there on the page is everything, with fanfiction what’s there on the page is like one mirror in a huge hall of mirrors, at the center of which is canon. Not formulating opinions about characterization would be like looking at the page and saying, this is all there is, it does not reflect anything at all.

I agree with your comment 100%, from start to finish. The mirror in a huge hall of mirrors imagery is really striking, by the way.

If I only got pleasure out of reading about my Scully, I would not be here and I would never have been here because 99 out of 100 stories would bore me or annoy me.

We have some members here who do only get pleasure out of stories that faithfully recreate their idea of "canon Scully" and "canon Mulder" and canon in general. For the most part, they don't attempt stories that aren't strictly canon-compliant. Personally, I'm okay with that, although I admit I found it perplexing at first.

I also loved amyhit's hall of mirrors metaphor. It is beautiful, apart from anything else, and makes me think of the ending to Humbug. But it points up how really impossible-dream the characterization issue is in practical terms. Because canon in itself is a hall of mirrors.

I want a wide-open Scully and a wide-open Mulder.

Don't we all dear. *sniggers*

I believe the dirty-mind fairy blessed you in your bassinette.

But this isn't a story with a slight variation on what is commonly believed to be the characterization of Scully (and we all have our own slight variations that we find believable). Nor is it a story like Iolokus, where the characterization is skewed to fit the plot.

It's a story about the author, wherein the author has called herself "Dana Scully". I was told that by the author's note, and way the story was written bore this belief out.

I don't think Mulder is scandalously out of character because there's not really any hint of him in the story. He's a placeholder, that's all.

I love "all things". We're destined to disagree.

Nor is it a story like Iolokus, where the characterization is skewed to fit the plot.

That's an excellent point. Yet haven't some people suggested that Iolokus is about what Mulder and Scully would be like if the events depicted in the series as happening to them had actually happened? They would say the characterization came first, then the plot, rather than the other way around. But it is an extreme case, and plenty of people disliked that story for those extremes. (For the record, I finally reread it last fall and still found it as enthralling the second time through as the first.)

It's a story about the author, wherein the author has called herself "Dana Scully". I was told that by the author's note, and way the story was written bore this belief out.

We don't get Mulder's POV at all on these events until "Moonshine," when he does two uncharacteristic things: he gets drunk and then he talks to someone about his feelings for Scully. In "Dance Card," he's only there for real at the end when Scully looks up and sees him for who he is in her life. I like the ending to the story, I just don't see why it would lead to sex. In the followup story, he's only there to look great, wear a plaid scarf (does Mulder even own a scarf?) and have sex with her. Great sex, from the sound of it, but still. I liked the sex scene for the most part, I just didn't find it believable.

I love "all things". We're destined to disagree.

This may seem strange but my feelings about "All Things" vary from rewatch to rewatch. I can't seem to get a handle on that episode, but what I do know is that I don't believe it's the first time they slept together. If it was, I don't believe she'd have left before he was awake, just slip away without saying a word, which I think is strongly implied by how the scene is structured. I do remember the first time I saw it gasping in surprise at the sight of an unclothed Mulder, sprawled on his bed asleep. I don't think I've ever seen an icon of that scene, but someone should make one.

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Story 199: "Dance Card" by Sab (Sabine)

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I know this comment wasn't addressed to me, but oh well