No, the plot was both too concise and too loose. […] because both elements have equal weight, neither can come to the forefront as was needed. The plot is not fleshed out enough to be the main reason to read, but it's also too involved to make smut the main reason to read, if that even makes any sense
I very much agree with dryad on this one. And with littlegreen42 - whether she was thinking of another story when she made her comment or not.
This story really does feel “all over the place” to me. The way Mulder and Scully think and feel about each other has a heavy, messy, ill at ease quality that gives me a slightly sick feeling of disillusionment, yet the narrative swerves radically from that kind of darkness to “souls mating, minds blown” sex. Tao (as I understand it) is very much about peace and natural benevolence and being “at one” (well, as much as Tao can be narrowed down to being "about" anything), but the actual tone of the fic doesn’t seem to “match” with that concept at all. The OC’s are interesting in an exuberantly inventive way, but they lack the steady grounded quality that would make me A) care about them, and B) believe in them as more than a source for amusement and exposition.
And then there’s what dryad has already articulated so well about the strange split in the focus, which leaves the fic feeling unsettled on both levels. It’s a case of too much viscera and not enough skin or bones. Too much potentially interesting material without enough form to lend the material a cohesive and compelling shape.
And I don't want to suggest that the writing is poor
Neither do I. I do think this is one of OMAN’s crackiest and messiest fics, but even so it has quite a bit of good material in it. (And I must admit that I rather enjoy the first scene of the fic. Something about the blatant, almost coarse lust of Scully’s thoughts is quite titillating.)
And of course OMAN has several other fics that I admire much less conditionally. The strength of her writing did once get me to read (and enjoy) several hundred K of a TLG fic that had barely any Mulder and Scully in it at all; not the kind of fic I would usually be interested in.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
winterfish
no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 04:19 am (UTC)I very much agree with
This story really does feel “all over the place” to me. The way Mulder and Scully think and feel about each other has a heavy, messy, ill at ease quality that gives me a slightly sick feeling of disillusionment, yet the narrative swerves radically from that kind of darkness to “souls mating, minds blown” sex. Tao (as I understand it) is very much about peace and natural benevolence and being “at one” (well, as much as Tao can be narrowed down to being "about" anything), but the actual tone of the fic doesn’t seem to “match” with that concept at all. The OC’s are interesting in an exuberantly inventive way, but they lack the steady grounded quality that would make me A) care about them, and B) believe in them as more than a source for amusement and exposition.
And then there’s what dryad has already articulated so well about the strange split in the focus, which leaves the fic feeling unsettled on both levels. It’s a case of too much viscera and not enough skin or bones. Too much potentially interesting material without enough form to lend the material a cohesive and compelling shape.
And I don't want to suggest that the writing is poor
Neither do I. I do think this is one of OMAN’s crackiest and messiest fics, but even so it has quite a bit of good material in it. (And I must admit that I rather enjoy the first scene of the fic. Something about the blatant, almost coarse lust of Scully’s thoughts is quite titillating.)
And of course OMAN has several other fics that I admire much less conditionally. The strength of her writing did once get me to read (and enjoy) several hundred K of a TLG fic that had barely any Mulder and Scully in it at all; not the kind of fic I would usually be interested in.