Story 204: "El Quinto Sol" by Onemillionandnine

[wendelah1]

I'm feeling a wee bit obsessed with season seven at the moment. I already know what most people's favorite season seven story is (and don't get me wrong, I like "Parabiosis," too), but this one is mine.

Summary: An explanation of Mulder's sudden belief in "miracles." Arthur C. Clarke's second law in action. A bit of Mytharc in the guise of a case file. But in the end it's all about sex. Then again, what isn't?

I can't think of anything to add at the moment. The link is to her old site, now at reocities, but if you want to read an old-skool text file, the entire fic can be read or downloaded at onemillionnine's Author Page at Gossamer.

If anyone has suggestions, especially for season seven stories, feel free to leave them in the comments or the suggestion post. And good, bad, or indifferent, please let us know what you think.

Read "El Quinto Sol".

Comments

[marionravenwood.livejournal.com]

Hi!

I hope you don't mind my asking, but I've always found your M&S to be kind of mean and nasty (to each other, mostly, but also in general), and I was wondering a)if that's just me b)if not, is it intentional, and why. I think it's more apparent in this story because it's longer than most of your other work.

(I also find your writing really funny, so please don't hate me.)

[wendelah1]

Since we're all here to discuss the story, I'll interject a comment, if you don't mind.

I can't speak for the writer, but I think your characterizing M&S's behavior toward one another in this story as "mean and nasty" is overly simplistic. There's a lot of emotion in their interactions; she portrays them as feeling and sometimes displaying anger, frustration, sexual tension, arousal, and mutual admiration and love, to name but a few.

I'll have to look the story over again, but from my memory, it's in their internal monologues where most of the conflict is occurring. Scully is trying her best to talk herself out of wanting to have sex with Mulder. She really really wants to but is convinced it's a bad idea, so she's hating on him in her head to make him less attractive. Mulder has his own issues about Scully, ad infinitum. And then there is the Mysterious Brain Disease complicating his every move.

To me, the fun part of this story is watching how they resolve this dilemma. Without that tension between them, there is little or no conflict and the story line collapses.

Mulder: "You need us to have sex for a couple of hours to power a magic ritual? What a coincidence! I've been wanting to do that for seven years. Sound like a plan to you, Scully?"

Scully: (rolling her eyes) "There is no such thing as magic, Mulder, but I suppose it couldn't hurt and yes, it's about time we did the deed. Let's get it on."

I think her way is much better, much funnier, and really, if you think about it, much more like the Mulder and Scully we see in the episodes. Minus the mind-blowing sex part of course. Alas.

[marionravenwood.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm just not seeing the love?

[wendelah1]

But surely you do by the end? The ending is nothing less than transcendent.

The conflict between Mulder and Scully provides all of the comedy and the bulk of the plot, just as in Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" with Benedict and Beatrice. Just as in Shakespeare's play, OMaN's Mulder and Scully come together by the end, and their true love for one another is revealed to all in the story's climax, in M&S's case, quite literally.

Mulder and Scully spar verbally on the show and we have fun watching the sparks fly. There are some occasional moments of tenderness but they're usually kind of sappy and badly written: "you are my touchstone," "and you are mine." Yawn. That doesn't even sound like them.

I think OMaN's Mulder and Scully are fun and entertaining, and pretty much resemble the ones I have running around in my head.

It may be that you are reading fanfic in search of that elusive something and this story isn't it, which is fine.

[onemillionnine.livejournal.com]

I think there are several factors here, one being that I am somewhat acerbic by nature, another that many of the nastier bits are internal and thus never voiced aloud, also the show depicts the characters as having a certain amount of friction in their relationship, and for me the point of the show by then was to a large degree about two people whose worlds had shrunk to revolve around eachother in ways both good and bad.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I hope you don't mind my asking, but I've always found your M&S to be kind of mean and nasty (to each other, mostly, but also in general), and I was wondering a)if that's just me b)if not, is it intentional, and why.

I know what you mean, marionravenwood, and while what wendelah1 says is true – that most of their conflict is internal and unspoken – for me that just makes it harder to come to grips with. It is quite common for Scully and Mulder to be frustrated with each other in fics, but in EQS and in some of OMAN’s other fics, the thing that’s between them often feels troubled by much more than just frustration and trauma-related angst. There’s resentment, and sometimes a sense of disillusionment between them. There seems to be a lot of ugly feelings tangled up with the positive ones. And that’s fine, that’s one very valid way of depicting the M/S relationship, but I do sometimes find it hard to connect with. I want to draw away from the feelings harbored by this Mulder and Scully, not draw closer.

If this were a S6 fic I’d probably have a much easier time - in fact I think I might enjoy it quite a bit. But because it’s a S7 fic a part of me just shuts right off. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my S7 Mulder and Scully are basically Parabiosis Mulder and Scully. If you compare those characters to the characters in EQS it becomes pretty easy to see why I find their relationship in EQS unpleasantly murky.

[marionravenwood.livejournal.com]

Thank you, you expressed this much better than I did.