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xf_book_clubAfter the considerable word count of our last fic, now seems like a good time to take a bit of a breather with a nice short read. This week's fic was recommended by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lightlack. It takes place sometime not too long after the events of "Christmas Carol" and "Emily" when Mulder and Scully end up back in San Diego on a case. The fic is focused on Scully and how she is coping with recent developments, the turn her life has taken, what it all means for her, and where Mulder fits in amongst all the chaos and wreckage.
Living with the Dreaming Body by Punk Maneuverability
Send feedback, give us your recommendations, and please do come back for the discussion.
lightlack. It takes place sometime not too long after the events of "Christmas Carol" and "Emily" when Mulder and Scully end up back in San Diego on a case. The fic is focused on Scully and how she is coping with recent developments, the turn her life has taken, what it all means for her, and where Mulder fits in amongst all the chaos and wreckage. Living with the Dreaming Body by Punk Maneuverability
Send feedback, give us your recommendations, and please do come back for the discussion.
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Date: 2012-04-21 02:51 am (UTC)It's just so perfect and gorgeous.
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Date: 2012-04-27 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-27 01:37 pm (UTC)its dreams like she knew her own. He was her parity bit, her decoder
ring, the only language she understood anymore. His palm was warm
on her back and she imagined his touch glowed red against her skin like
a Kirlian rainbow in the shape of his hand.
Sighing, she curled herself around him where he sat next to her,
creating some mystical symbol formed with the two of them, with her
skepticism and his wonder and all the things that were shared in the
space between them.
"Scully," he whispered.
"I can't have children."
"I know," he said, and it seemed his heart was breaking in his voice.
"It's okay," she said, because she wanted it to be okay. She was tired of
living under its weight, tired of pretending this hadn't happened to her.
She wanted it spoken, understood between them so they could put it to
rest. She could not have children. She could not have his children.
He touched her cheek. "It's not okay."
As an infertile woman who's only child was conceived through IVF, and who just found out she'll never have another child (by any means), this passage just really resonated with me. And, also, it's perfect.
Dryad, posting from work!
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Date: 2012-04-21 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-27 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-21 01:44 pm (UTC)its dreams like she knew her own. He was her parity bit, her decoder
ring, the only language she understood anymore. His palm was warm
on her back and she imagined his touch glowed red against her skin like
a Kirlian rainbow in the shape of his hand.
Ah, what a wonderful little story. So emotional, yet restrained and not overly sentimental. It's been a while since I read this, but I love it as much now as I did the first time.
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Date: 2012-04-27 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-27 12:47 am (UTC)Anyway, I love the contrast of dreaming and awake, how they sort of bleed over. And this paragraph:
In this dream, Mulder touched her. She never remembered it while
awake, but at night, deep in the electricity of her subconscious, he laid
his hand between her breasts and told her he could feel her heart. She
wanted him to stay there forever, so that at least one of them could be
sure of her humanity. But then his hand slid lower, and she could finally
feel her heart beating and so broadened her idea of forever to include
this, to include everything.
And all of this bit:
Jack Yang never even knew her name, but she knew how much his
heart weighed. She knew the last thing he'd eaten, his final body weight
and length, the size and shape of the white scar on his knee, the exact
color of his lungs.
Just, lovely.
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Date: 2012-04-27 01:32 am (UTC)I like the first passage you quoted very much. Punk seems to be implying that Scully is working through her feelings about Mulder in her dreams.
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Date: 2012-04-27 06:29 am (UTC)Anyway, I love the contrast of dreaming and awake, how they sort of bleed over.
Me too. And I like that the style of the writing is so matter of fact, even while Scully is stuck in the confusion of it all. I mean I love strange, poetic, fever dream type writing as much as anybody, but the fact that this fic manages to keep from going that route while still getting across how partially dislocated from reality Scully has been feeling is quite good.
Grumpy Noromo Checking In (better late than never)
Date: 2012-04-27 02:52 am (UTC)I love Punk's writing. She uses language to shape graceful, flowing sentences, and there many passages in this story to quote as examples. The comments before this one covered some of them.
But I like some of her simpler stuff, too. In the opening paragraph, I like this description of Mulder:
He radiated his special brand of flat, nervous concern.
Which leads into this line:
"It's in San Diego," he said, quiet and careful.
Simple stuff but lovely. Just enough description, just the right words. Her Scully in this beginning section is just right, too.
Things start to go awry for me in the next section.
She'd known she couldn't have children even before Mulder had told her. Her periods were reluctant and unreliable, as if her body was unwilling to give up any more blood. She'd gone to the doctor, fearing worse things than infertility. She'd left fearing infertility.
Okay. So did she know she was unable to have children or did she fear it? Because those two states of being are not the same thing.
It made her wonder what else Mulder knew that she didn't. She was upset, but she understood.
It made her "wonder"? She was "upset"? She "understood"? Huh. Myself, I was outraged on her behalf and so I wanted a little more emotion from her about this deception. Scully is self-contained but when she is angry at you, she lets you have it. I think she should have been more pissed off at Mulder at some point in this story. Many writers have dealt with this conflict far more effectively.
No one wanted to tell a woman she would never be a mother.
For pity's sake, she lets him off the hook completely. Punk lets him off the hook. I don't believe this is how it would work out between them. As far as canon is concerned, she seemed pretty pissed off at him in the flashback in "Per Manum." This part doesn't work for me at all.
The structure is interesting, a little artsy but I'm okay with that. As
This business she has of Scully waking up, not sure of where she is, not being sure what's a dream and what's really happening. No way. That's absurd. She knows where she is, she knows the difference between being awake and asleep. Yeah okay it represents the conflict between her unconscious desires and oh whatever. That's a metaphor taken too far. If she's really that disoriented, maybe she needs to take a leave of absence.
Since I am late to the party, everyone else has already quoted the stuff I would have quoted; my favorite was the bit about the decoder ring that
I think this must be a season six or seven story, not season five, because she says at one point that "After seven years she was only beginning to understand Mulder." I feel the same way, oddly enough.
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Date: 2012-04-27 07:24 am (UTC)I think the implication is that she left the doctor’s office fearing infertility and had to wait for the results that would tell her for sure.
I wanted a little more emotion from her about this deception.
I was not happy with Mulder about this either, but he never deceived her. He did not divulge important information to her, but that’s very different. If she’d asked, “Mulder, am I infertile?” and he’d said no, that would’ve been deception. As it was, the only difference it could’ve made that he didn’t tell her was that she might have lived a little bit longer without the knowledge of what she’d lost. I still feel strongly that Mulder did the wrong thing by not telling her, but I don’t find it unbelievable that she would have forgiven him, seeing as he clearly meant to do the right thing, and was mainly guilty of being unable to further crush the morale of a woman fighting a virulent form of cancer. Plus, in this fic Scully knew about her infertility before Mulder finally told her, which was bound to make the revelation less of a blow.
This business she has of Scully waking up, not sure of where she is, not being sure what's a dream and what's really happening. No way. That's absurd.
I don’t find it absurd at all. Considering the way she’s seemingly living out of a suitcase in a different state every week, that she goes through more trauma in a month than most people go through in their entire lives, that she seems to be having a bit of an identity crisis, and that she’s clearly exhausted beyond belief, it doesn’t seem like a stretch that she might wake up in the middle of the night and not remember what city she’s in. And it’s not as though she’s walking around all day wondering if she’s really awake. She has one brief moment, immediately after Mulder woke her from a night full of disorienting dreams, when Mulder says something in a funny way and she thinks she might be dreaming. If I had to go from unconscious to thinking about a case in five seconds, I would be momentarily discombobulated too.
The fic also says, she often suffered from moments of deja vu, of forgetting what was real and what was dreamed.
It’s not that she can’t tell reality while it’s happening, it’s that she sometimes gets pieces of her recent dreams shuffled into her memories. That doesn’t seem overly odd to me.
I think this must be a season six or seven story, not season five, because she says at one point that "After seven years she was only
Yeah, that confuses me. This fic seems to imply that what happened in San Diego is relatively fresh – fresh enough that they haven’t had occasion to go back since, and fresh enough that Mulder is worried about even telling her that’s where they’the case is. There’s no way I could see this being a S7 story – not a chance. I guess I can see it being a S6 story, though it would have to be a late S6 story for them to be back on the X-Files. I guess if you go by the early 1992 date stamp on the pilot, then the second half of S6 is seven years after the pilot. Personally, I do not go by the 1992 date stamp, but fandom seems to be pretty divided on that one, so I guess maybe Punk does.
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Date: 2012-04-27 08:02 am (UTC)Besides that issue, my basic problem with this story is that it was a little dull. I am not interested in or convinced by the romance in this case. I realize I am a hard sell on that point and that the story was written for shippers. So be it.
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Date: 2012-04-27 10:30 am (UTC)the definition of "decieve" is, "to cause to believe what is not true." Mulder does not cause Scully to believe what is not true, he merely does not enlighten her to a certain truth she has a right to know. it is factually incorrect to say that he deceives her.
He took a vial of her ova--evidence I might add--did who knows what with it--and told her nothing until she mentioned she was seeing a fertility specialist, which happened several years later. [...] This story doesn't help me to understand that at all and I think is a failure on Punk's part that she doesn't address it, at least not to my satisfaction.
Hmm. I suppose in part I agree with you, though I don't think it's Punk's failure at all. I think she was merely sticking to canon. Canon blatantly overlooked Mulder's actions, either because the writers were being deliberately mysogynistic (I doubt it), or because they were just that pathetically out-to-lunch when it came to understanding the ethics of female autonomy and reproductivity (much more likely). It's not a fan's job to try to make better a canonical misstep so enormous it simply cannot be made better. As far as I'm concerned there is no believable explanation for why Mulder had kept Scully's ova without telling her that could make it seem at all okay. Therefore, the only thing to do is lay the misstep entirely at the feel of the writers, and ignore it as best as possible. Which Punk does, very effectively I might add.
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Date: 2012-04-27 05:32 pm (UTC)Hmm. I suppose in part I agree with you, though I don't think it's Punk's failure at all. I think she was merely sticking to canon. Canon blatantly overlooked Mulder's actions... It's not a fan's job to try to make better a canonical misstep so enormous it simply cannot be made better. As far as I'm concerned there is no believable explanation for why Mulder had kept Scully's ova without telling her that could make it seem at all okay.
She's not sticking to canon. In canon, they weren't in a romantic, sexual relationship, not at this point in the series anyway. I think Punk intends the dreaming sequences to show the way Scully is reconciled to what Mulder did and what happened to her. But I still don't find that part at all convincing.
I don't need her in this story to explain why Mulder did what he did. I accept his explanation: he did it to protect her. It doesn't excuse it or change how I as a fan (and a fanfic writer) see his actions, but it is what it is. What I need from a writer who elects to put them together as a couple during this problematic time frame is some explanation of how she got there emotionally.
Obviously, for everyone else here, this story works fine. For someone who is as plugged into the injustice and cruelty of the abduction/Emily/William arc (because I see it as all of a piece, and it all had happened when Punk posted this story in 2003) as I am, it doesn't work. At all. I can't put that aside. I can't ignore it.
And I don't believe Scully could either, not in the way this story describes. Unlike
I agree with you, this doesn't feel like season seven MSR to me. If Scully hadn't mentioned seven years, I would not have believed this story took place as late as that. The dreaming (instead of menstruating) and mental confusion make more sense in season five, right after Emily dies. Instead of Mulder protecting her from the information, she dreams to protect herself. Instead of feeling anger and betrayal, she dreams. It works a little better set during that period, especially since she's thinking of the sand dream from that episode. But that's five years they've been together not seven, even if you use the March 1992 date from the pilot. Maybe Punk just made a mistake. It happens.
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Date: 2012-04-28 02:24 am (UTC)Hmm, no, I don’t think I’d call it a betrayal of trust, but I would probably call it a breach. It wasn’t treacherous (the word google seems to closest link with betrayal). It was something that created a break in trust.
I think Punk intends the dreaming sequences to show the way Scully is reconciled to what Mulder did and what happened to her.
I don’t think the dreams sequences are about Scully reconciling herself with what Mulder did at all. I’d say she’s basically past that before the fic even begins. I only see the dreams as being about Scully reconciling herself with what happened to her, and about her relationship with Mulder in a broader sense –their partnership is consuming, taking up their lives, while their bond is subsuming, encompassing.
You may as well skip this next bit, Wendelah, since you say you’re not interested in why Mulder did what he did, but I need to amend my most recent comment. I decided I’d better go read the transcript for Per Manum, because I realized that I barely remembered the episode at all, having only seen it once, going on five years ago. Now that I’ve read it, I want to considerably soften my statement about how unforgivable Mulder was not to tell her about having found her ova. In the episode Mulder is given only three lines of explanation:
I-I took them directly to a specialist who would tell me if they were okay.
Scully, you were deathly ill, and I... I couldn't bear to give you another piece of bad news.
The doctor said that the ova weren't viable.
Going by this explanation, I find his actions forgivable just as I find his not telling her that she’s infertile forgivable. Wrong, certainly, but understandable. I’d forgotten than Mulder took the ova directly to a specialist to find out if they were viable, and had discovered they were not. All I remembered about it when I was writing my last comment was that he kept them at the end of Momento Mori and did god knows what with them. I was under the impression that they were viable. If they had been declared viable, then it would have been utterly unforgivable that he hadn’t told her immediately that he had them, and helped her make sure she was guaranteed legal possession of them. But as they were unviable, and as Scully was deathly ill, of course he couldn’t bring himself to tell her. In his place, I doubt I could either. What if he’d told her she was infertile and that he’d found her (now inviable) ova in a lab for creating hybrids and clones, and consequentially she’d lost the will to continue fighting for her life? He read her journal, he saw how close she already was to accepting her fate, he had good reason to fear that more bad news would defeat her resolve.
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Date: 2012-04-28 03:10 am (UTC)If her doctors had discovered while working her up for her cancer that she was infertile, do you believe they had the right to withhold that information? If they didn't have the moral and legal right, certainly Mulder didn't. It doesn't matter whether the ova were or weren't viable, they were still evidence of what was done to her. Finding the truth about what was done to her and the other Mufon women was what kept her on the X-Files. She wanted justice, not protection. Instead of continuing to pursue the evidence, Mulder suppressed it to "protect her" and that was both morally and legally wrong.
I don't think we are going to come to a resolution here. Please don't take this as being critical of you or your argument or anyone participating here, but for personal reasons, this discussion is causing me emotional distress, so I am no longer going to comment.
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Date: 2012-04-27 11:12 am (UTC)That said, in my waking life I'm not regularly in charge of a scalpel or a firearm, and Scully is of both.
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Date: 2012-04-27 06:17 am (UTC)I've always thought that Punk M's writing has a curious kind of neutrality about it. It's not pronouncedly emotional, nor is it pronouncedly intellectual, nor is it pronouncedly distinctive stylistically. It's not intensely angsty, humorous, shippy, or witty. It's a bit of everything, and that itself is what's distinctive about it, that evenness of tone and character. I like intensity in a fic, but I like this too; it's honest.
I also think that this fic captures Scully’s character (at this time in canon) very well. I’m always looking for examples of fics that get her POV particularly right, because I for me it’s a fairly uncommon occurrence. There are plenty of writers who write a Scully POV that’s passable, enjoyable, or even distinctly strong. But LWTDB characterizes her in a way that feels very accurate to me. It doesn’t seem to be trying to pull more out of her than what’s there, or emphasize specific traits which the author favors (which is something that almost everyone who writes fanfic does, I think, to one extent or another). My first impulse is to describe the tone of LWTDB (the tone of Scully’s experience) as being a bit blunted, but I don’t think that’s actually the case. The tone is perceptive and in that way it’s quite sharp, but it’s mainly focusing on stating the facts of what Scully is experiencing. She is going through a process of acknowledging things to herself, getting through them, seeking acceptance without seeking catharsis per se. I like that, especially because I think Scully’s a bit of an opposite to Mulder in that way. Mulder always seems to be seeking some kind of cathartic moment or revelation.
"It's okay," she said, because she wanted it to be okay. She was tired of
living under its weight, tired of pretending this hadn't happened to her.
She wanted it spoken, understood between them so they could put it to
rest.
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Date: 2012-04-27 06:11 pm (UTC)I think that is a really good description of her writing style. She's one of the most talented writers in fandom.
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Date: 2012-04-27 06:17 am (UTC)Mulder is also very well characterized, even though I feel like I’m seeing him through a window in this fic. Scully’s POV seems to contain the story, and even when she’s thinking about mulder, she seems to be thinking about him with a bit of a disconnect between her observations and the feelings they invoke.
"We've got a new case," Mulder said, leaning against her desk. He
radiated his special brand of flat, nervous concern.
"I hate to disappoint you," Mulder said. "I know you had your heart set
on werewolves."
I love both these lines. Also, I love that he guesses “BITE ME” instead of “BILL ME” during Wheel of Fortune. That’s so him, and the thing is, I can’t decide whether I think he guessed wrong on purpose.
Favorite lines include:
"We've got a dead body asking for us," Mulder said, and it was strange
enough that she didn't understand what he was saying and thought she
might still be dreaming in some motel bed in a state she couldn't
remember, but he was touching her arm. Mulder never touched her in
her dreams.
Because it’s the opposite of every sexy, romantic fanfic trope, and I like the way it’s both mundane and poignant at the same time; what it must feel like to love someone and dream about them but never dream about their touch – even Scully’s subconscious is professional and disinclined to cross any lines.
She knew this man, and was relieved she wouldn't have to
introduce herself to him ever again. She didn't know what she'd say.
I actually like that this fic focusses on Scully struggling with an identity crisis, rather than on the trauma itself. It’s different, a bit unexpected, giving the fic a bit of an up-on-the-down-beat feeling.
Wearing tennis shoes instead of high heels, she barely came
up to his shoulder and she hated being near him when he was so tall.
He was hard to talk to, and look at, and believe in.
An example of a line that starts off predictable and then smoothly leads to something I wasn’t expecting. I’ve read dozens of fanfics that talk about how Mulder’s height makes Scully feel about herself, but I’m not sure I’ve read one that addresses what Mulder’s height makes her feel about him.
She wanted him to stay there forever, so that at least one of them
could be sure of her humanity. But then his hand slid lower, and she
could finally feel her heart beating and so broadened her idea of forever
to include this, to include everything.
I’m not 100% clear on how to interpret this, but it’s dream-think, so it’s good that it’s a bit unclear, and I think I understand the basic meaning - the dream sensation of expanding the way you’ve conceptualized the amorphous structure of your dream. In this case, Scully’s acceptance that their relationship is more than what it has been strictly defined as, that it has no boundary, and maybe that can be okay.
There are many fics I prefer to this one. At no point does LWTDB leave me feeling particularly struck or overcome by feeling or emotion. It doesn’t make me feel giddy or dazed or aching or aggrieved. But it’s thoughtful and well written, even in tone, the characters feel distinctly mature, and I suspect it’s a fic that would hold up well if I were to reread it in several years.
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Date: 2012-04-27 11:29 am (UTC)The way she sleeps is one of the character points given to us repeatedly in the show, after all. Dreaming and bodies of water are related metaphors, sometimes interchangeable. She is Starbuck after all. She has a pretty deep relationship with the sea.
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Date: 2012-04-27 05:49 pm (UTC)The story works fine for everyone else. Your points are well-taken, especially about her relationship to the sea and sleep and dreaming.
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Date: 2012-04-27 02:20 pm (UTC)I should chime in on some of the contested issues. I don't find Scully's lack of anger at Mulder terribly hard to understand. I realize he performed incorrectly here, but he was trying to protect her, and I am old enough to see male protection as a comfortable thing. She has to come to terms with her loss, and nobody else can do it for her. As for the "fearing" of infertility, I think I get that. Now that she is sure of her condition (I believe there are fannish arguments that absolute sureness wouldn't be possible: another subject) she fears *living* with it. She fears her identity as a woman who cannot bear, a state of being that many consider pitiable and that she does not welcome. Further adjustment is necessary. But "it will be okay."
I loved the care with which the story slipped in and out of dreams. I personally can say that I have distant memories that I *cannot* identify as being real or dreamed. I don't think this is unusual, and it has gotten us in something of a societal quandary on the issue of child abuse.
I love the sex scenes, because they weren't.
Welcome back!
Date: 2012-04-27 06:04 pm (UTC)You say that you don't find Scully's lack of anger at Mulder terribly hard to understand because you "are old enough to see male protection as a comfortable thing." You have said this (or something similar) on multiple occasions here, and I believe you. But the point is Scully isn't of that generation. She was born in 1964. And Scully of all people would not see Mulder's protecting her as comforting.
Would Scully, acting as a federal agent carrying a loaded weapon, and assigned to a case, allow herself to wander about confused as to whether she is awake or asleep? It's well-written but I still don't find it credible.
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Date: 2012-04-27 07:18 pm (UTC)I don't believe that Scully didn't know whether she was awake or not. A moment's waking confusion is not the same thing as carrying out professional duties.
I respect your recusal. You are the strongest Scullyist I know.
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Date: 2012-04-28 03:19 am (UTC)Ha!
it is an interior story, an emotional adjustment story, all about what one character is thinking/feeling with very little action or dialogue in support. There are thousands of these and most are bad. Punk did it right.
I agree. And for me a big part of what makes this story work is that it starts near the end of Scully’s ‘emotional adjustment’. I don’t think Scully is working on any new conflicts in LWTDB. They seem to be things she’s been coming to terms with for some time already. It’s like punctuated evolution: the story picks up quite unobtrusively just a short time before a punctuated leap. It’s not that Scully goes from zero to sex-with-mulder in seven pages and a thousand words, it’s that she’s already mostly there when the story starts.
I am old enough to see male protection as a comfortable thing. She has to come to terms with her loss, and nobody else can do it for her.
I’m sure it will come as no surprise that I am not comfortable with “male protection”. As a concept it make me feel angry and a little ill (mainly because what male society has often meant when it says “protection” is something akin to “possession”). However, protection can also be genuine. There are times when it may be needed, times when it may be helpful, and times when it may be wrongly given but is at least understandable. I think in Mulder’s case what he does is wrong, but understandable.
And I do agree with you that nobody but Scully can come to terms with her loss. LWTDB seems to be written accordingly. Mulder tries to express his anger on her behalf, insisting that “it’s not okay” but Scully simply says “This is my body. It will be okay.” It’s a matter of Scully’s feelings, Scully’s body, Scully’s life, and I like that Mulder doesn’t have a bigger part in it. It’s just not about him, or what he thinks, or his pain – even if it is on her behalf.
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Date: 2012-04-27 06:28 pm (UTC)I hope I haven't been too horrible. If so, I apologize.
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Date: 2012-04-27 08:37 pm (UTC)I just love that. It's serious and snappy and darkly funny all at the same time. And this fic has a lot of those lines -- when my attention starts to wander, there'll suddenly be some lovely articulate moment that brings me right back into the story, into her particular manifestation of Scully.
I think this is my favourite: "She knew this man, and was relieved she wouldn't have to introduce herself to him ever again. She didn't know what she'd say."
I had never thought of it quite that way before I read this phrase, but I understood it immediately. The relief of never having to un-know the people we love, even if they go away. I may not remember what I did or said in the beginning that made someone decide to be my friend, but I don't have to remember because regardless of what I did or didn't do, we're here now, ensconced in our friendship, and thank God. The intensity of the Mulder-Scully pair-bond makes it feel even more true.
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Date: 2012-04-28 03:57 am (UTC)I like this line too. It has the quality of being meta commentary (in the sense that as fans we are aware Mulder tends to call Scully Dana in moments of distress and we have our own feelings about that, which the fic is addressing) but it doesn't break the fourth wall, because it's believably something that Scully herself would actually reflect on.
Also, I have to snicker at our distinctly different readings of this line:
She knew this man, and was relieved she wouldn't have to introduce herself to him ever again. She didn't know what she'd say.
You: love! closeness! knowing people!
Me: identity crisis!
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Date: 2012-04-28 04:51 am (UTC)I dunno. I'm a softie. :P
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Date: 2012-04-28 06:27 am (UTC)