Story 200: "a weatherman to know which way the wind blows" by zauberer_sirin

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Gosh, look at that startlingly large number in the heading! It appears that our little (but oh-so-tenacious) community has reached its two-hundredth fic.



Cheers everyone!

I must say, I’ve been adoring you guys’ recommendations even more than usual lately. There have been a few fics I am particularly fond of come up, including a very recent rec by littlegreen42, which I am going to pounce on immediately like a cat on a jubilant grasshopper. It was written in the pre/post IWTB era, making it relatively new by this fandom’s standards. It’s short – but with an endearingly long title – and the prose has an idiosyncratic sort of poetry about it. Ultimately, I think the author herself sums it up best when she says, These are not all the ways and whys and hows Mulder loves Scully, just some. In reverse.

Read a weatherman to know which way the wind blows by zauberer_sirin

Comments

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

3/3 - this really is a ridiculous amount of commentage

Section six (post pusher). Nnnggghhh. The whole fucking thing. God. Seriously, this might actually be my Pusher headcanon.* Okay, not really, but it’s definitely my Pusher headsmut!canon (which either exists or I’m officially making it up, because doesn’t everybody have a smutty version of the show they can lay right over top of the other version, like translucent, pornographic drafting paper? *coughs* No?)

*Although a small voice in the back of my mind cannot help saying, “How about you ask Scully how she feels about this idea of yours, Mulder, before starting in with the shoving her anywhere or the fucking her at all, okay?” But I’m gonna presume that it was meant to be tacitly understood that he would make sure she was into it too.

Also—

because this is one of those times (and Mulder has watched how those moments have grown so often and near that they are practically his whole life now) when he cannot afford to touch Scully for the fear he might never stop.

The brackets! The way it comes out in this stutter-shook jumble! The angsty, unbearable hotness of it all! (And apparently ‘stutter-shook’ is not an actual saying, just a line from a song, but darn it I’m using it anyway.)

No, he wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. You don’t get it! I don’t want her to die because I don’t want her to die!

Sure, he feels guilty, and if Scully dies the guilt would become sort of permanent, but if Scully dies, he wants to tell the world, guilt will be the least of his concerns.

Love this, love this, LOVE this. Also, I think it’s at least a little bit true. Of course Mulder felt guilty about failing to protect another important female in his life, but he also seemed to be genuinely at a loss without her. Plus, “the guilt would become sort of permanent” is just great.

All of section two (Ice). Again, guh, so hot.

-everything blown to pieces, months of denial and not my type and the first friend you’ve had in years, don’t fuck it up gone in a heartbeat because all he wants to do right now it put his mouth to the back of her neck and possibly never ever stop touching her.

God, I just—wow this is sexy. The rampant denial and guilt-ridden lust-management are so delicious. The mental image of S1 Mulder refusing to be hot for Scully because he already needs her too much is…*waves hands around inarticulately*

now he is going to have to deal with the knowledge (of what he is, of what he wants, of what she means), probably for the rest of his life. Or until she has the good sense of walking away. Which he’d say should be sooner than the rest of his life but in his line of work he wouldn’t bet on that either.

How is this so clever? That Mulder would say (or think) something like this with that deadpan pessimism of his is…it’s so distinctive of him, almost definitive of him.

But that night, coming back from Oregon, it’s the less alone he’s felt in years.

I’ve never really been sure how I feel about the last line of “Weatherman”. Obviously the adjective “less” does not agree with the rest of the sentence, yet the way “less alone” is put in italics, singled out, makes it seem like its own singular concept. “Less alone” becomes a sensation, something in the present, a continuing lessaloneness, while also inherently acknowledging the aloneness of his past. Whereas, if you write “least alone” you pin the meaning down. It’s not a sensation anymore. It’s a quantity (“least”) and a quality (“alone”). There’s not the same vitality in it – literally, there’s not the same living quality.

That said, it’s still a stumbling block, and four words from the end of a fic is not generally a good place to be tripping the reader up on odd grammar. So I don’t know if I like it or not.

It is memorable, though. I’ve thought that one fragment of a line – “it’s the less alone he’s felt in years – quite a few times to myself. It does feel quite strongly a certain way.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

re: the last line. It sticks with me, I think, because I don't like it. It's very jarringly incorrect to me, and I took that feeling with me away from the story.

It could have been "it's less alone than he's felt in years" and I wouldn't notice a difference in the emotive quality of the language.

[wendelah1]

Each time I've read the line, it's made me want to grit my teeth. That, and her eccentric use of punctuation made my second read-through of this story a much less pleasant experience than the first. I finally gave in and just started correcting the errors on my copy so I wouldn't have to look at them anymore.


It's very jarringly incorrect to me, and I took that feeling with me away from the story.

That's it exactly.

[wendelah1]

Section Six is my favorite of the sections. It's grittier and his emotions are less woobified, which is why I think it is the closest she comes to writing a Mulder I recognize.

because doesn’t everybody have a smutty version of the show they can lay right over top of the other version, like translucent, pornographic drafting paper? *coughs* No?

Ha ha ha ha! No. Although I freely admit this would come in handy at times.

because this is one of those times (and Mulder has watched how those moments have grown so often and near that they are practically his whole life now) when he cannot afford to touch Scully for the fear he might never stop.

Now, I took this to mean that he felt genuinely worried about loss of control in regards to his sexual feelings toward her, and that was brought to the forefront because of the events of "Pusher." Maybe I'll go back and reread that section.