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]

I posted there, but I was totally, totally benign. You'd never recognize me. I finally urged people to praise good fic, because nasty putdowns were meaningless unless you actually had something fine to champion. The personal insults were gag-inducing.

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

I found out about fanfic_hate a few years ago. And I went through the posts with horrified fascination. It confirmed a few things I suspected and helped me do a couple of F-List cuts without regrets. Of course I don't mean to condone personal insults, but I have a different cultural approach to these things than you lot - where personal insults are really not the end of the world. If a nasty piece of work has been taking advantage of the fandom relative anonimity to piss off fellow fans time and time again, and if this happens to go out in the open, I'm not going to point an outraged finger. There might not be a fire, but there sure as hell is enough smoke for making me stay well out of range.

Fictalk...oooh, wouldn't touch that last thread with a ten foot pole. Seriously though, I'm sorry I found out about this place so late because I always felt we needed a place to be able to criticize fics without having the "You're So Mean" brigade use you for target practice. Which is why I'm very grateful for the freedom of speech we have here in the book club.

I thought the Wicked Witches gave a lot of good pointers, but the stories they chose to pick on were too easy targets. It was like kicking a puppy.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

The early X Witches went after fandom big names though. I think that's what got everyone's attention.

The most recent lineup at their site was mostly lesser-respected fics and authors. With the possible exception of Tantric. Was Tantric respected?

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

If you're talking about the Char Chaffin story, no. Well, not be me and significant others.