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

[wendelah1]

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".

Comments

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Okay, okay, if you're going to get hypersemantic. Let me suggest something,a suggestion that is harmless and familiar to those who've checked the prereqs for Critic 101. How about those who state opinions, as all do, try to give reasons for these opinions. They could be from fanon or they could be a pointing out of sloppy, inconsistent writing, or they could be more personal: something happened to me once that made me really hate what she just did, although I guess she had a right, etc. We often do this, though not always, and I believe that It might inspire juicier conversation and honest evaluation. I'm not trying to throw my (increasing) weight around. It's a suggestion.

I tried to say that I find new perceptions of the characters as expressed through other characters--an example being a college buddy observing Scully as a wedding guest at an overelegant wedding--give me fresh thrills after too many years of reading about too few people. You might consider that a personal, not especially sexual, kink. Everyone has them. Come clean and share. We're not doing academic stuff here, though we borrow terms and sometimes pretend, but the more psychological investment the yeastier our talks could become.

And maybe we might consider why the Marysue immediately emerged and became famous. Fanfic! Not yet fully defined as to nature or purpose.

I don't have a dog in the fight. How can you say that? You know I'm a cat person. I'm not insisting on any approach, though I guess you took my "it's all personal" pretty seriously, possibly as a insult. Personal is not bad. This is fanfic, not a doctoral dissertation on mythical motifs in Fox television. We just might have more to discuss if we--unpack our first responses.

I bow to your further displeasure.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Intended as a response to Wendy. God.