Story 211: “In the Bleak” by Teanna

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Our next fic is a relatively short colonization apocafic. To my knowledge, Teanna is a largely unknown author in the XF fandom. She only ever wrote three short XF fics, but her writing is spare, intelligent, sharply observant, and poetic without being wordy. She unflinchingly explores the characters and how they cope with fear, grief, and failure. I should definitely warn everyone that this story is, as the title suggests, bleak. Teanna warns readers that it’s "not a happy story," but at the risk of spoiling everyone, I should probably warn you that major character death is strongly implied and death in general is pretty ubiquitous in this story. This is the apocalypse portrayed with more grim realism than usual.

I hope some of you will read it anyway. There’s plenty in this fic to discuss, and I think summertime is probably the best time to read it, so that those of us who are particularly susceptible to gut-wrenching fanfic can shake off the darkness with a healthy dose of sunlight afterwards.

Read In the Bleak.

Comments

[wendelah1]

I'm not sold on the characterizations either. I can well believe Scully might be exhausted and not be in the mood for sex, but "slapping his hands away"? However, I'm not willing to criticize Mulder for wanting the comfort of sex. If it's the end of the world as we know it, I'd certainly want to make love to the person who'd shared my life for so long and who now shared my bed. People can feel more hurt about rejection like that in the middle of a crisis than they might otherwise. Because now time is short and they may not get another chance. That's not whining.That's just human.

Doggett in no way resembled the man we saw on screen. If he was an original character, he wasn't a believable one. Really, there were so many loose ends in this fic, it just made me irritable. None of the mysteries get solved. She just dumps her characters together in this situation without bothering to explain how they got there. There wasn't enough detail to make me believe in what was happening or care about the outcome. Maybe we were supposed to be so grossed out by the imagery that we didn't notice how thin the plot was. I didn't buy the roving bands of evil children motif either. Children are the most vulnerable members of a population. Why would they survive? If their parents died of plague, they'd be dead too. But I guess she wanted a reason for us to be suspicious of Doggett and having him shoot kids was the best she could come up with. Meh.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

To clarify my position on Mulder, the wording that she slaps his hands away "most nights" annoys me, because it suggests that he's touching her without permission or invitation all or almost all nights, and she's almost always slapping him away, and he doesn't get it. I mean, Mulder's an intelligent person, it seems like he would take this as a sign that they need to talk. 99% of your advances being rejected should suggest that there's something going on other than Scully deliberately being mean to him (which is the tone I get from his POV).

The combination of her slapping him away (yeah, I don't buy that she'd do that either) and the immediate sentence that follows, which is about his sexual fantasies about her, bothers me. It feels petty and somehow threatening, like he's getting back at her by fantasizing about her. This fantasy version of Scully can't refuse him.

Of course, in that paragraph I'm not sure if I'm supposed to understand that Mulder at some point stops making advances ("so he keeps his hands to himself"), or if this is ongoing, every night.

Were the roaming bands of evil children real? Or was that something Doggett or local folklore made up? By the end of the story, I don't really know whether Doggett's truly a bad guy here.

[wendelah1]

We don't know much by the end of this story, do we? Maybe if amyhit gets a chance to weigh in here she can give us her interpretation of the facts.

You're right, I can't tell if he's making moves on her every night or if he tried a few times was rebuffed and now he keeps his hands to himself . I'm inclined to the latter, in which case, I can't blame Mulder for having sexual fantasies. Sometimes fantasies of something better than grim reality are all that keeps you going, and like dreams, they aren't something you choose, are they? I think of (and experience, I should clarify) fantasies as waking dreams.