Rerun Request: "Oyster" by Jordan

[wendelah1]

This is a rerun, posted at the request of estella_c, who loves it and wasn't a member when we discussed it back in 2008. I love it too, and think it's well-worth revisiting.

Like all great western religious stories, "Oyster" takes place in the desert, in the modern day stand-in for Sodom and Gomorrah, Los Vegas, a land of waking dreams, endless heat and unquenchable thirsts. In her author's notes, Jordan states emphatically that "THIS FIC IS REQUIEM FREE." This is rather misleading; in actuality, "Oyster" is a re-envisioning of the end of season seven, and to a limited extent, season eight. The parallels are multiple and striking. In both stories, there are deaths and multiple abductions. There is an investigation in which Skinner, Scully and, of course, Mulder are all major players. To say any more would spoil the story for new readers. While "Requiem" inspired a lot of fanfic, "Oyster" is one the best stories ever written for The X-Files fandom. I recommend it without reservation.

Read "Oyster". You can also find this story on her author's page at Gossamer. Please come back and let us know what you think.

Comments

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

This is a challenging one. And so many ways to start.

Earthy: Jordan adores Skinner. How to get him into bed with Scully without betraying Mulder and grossing out the msr contingent? Alien intervention!

Practical: This tale could be viewed by the salacious as a three-way. How to raise the tone? Literary style! Fortunately, Jordan's style, while literary, never seems to me simply decorative or showoffy. There are so many things a talented earthling like this writer can do that leave the rest of us both stunned and satiated.

Responsible: Jordan does not write smut biscuits. Therefore, we have here a real x-file, one of course never to be written up, and a second case about casino fraud and murder that we don't care a lot about but is a minor delight in its brisk resolution.

Okay, I'm abandoning the Cyrano riff. (Wendy said I had to talk; oh the pressure!) I'll go on record that Oyster is a great fanfic, one probably of the top three, maybe four, wait, oh hell I don't believe in numbering art anyhow. This is art.

The secret of the style is that it is consistent; we are immediately placed in an enchanted pocket environment, observed from without by an unidentified narrator. We (and it) watch Mulder and Scully eating oysters and listen to them discuss Proust. This is not Carter country. We learn that Scully really digs Mulder. We learn that Skinner digs Scully. The atmosphere is heavy with humidity and human desire for both money and sex. The temperature fluctuates, constantly reminding us of our bodies as the silken language titillates our minds.

Mulder disappears. He has, as he manages to hint through a fellow abductee, been kidnapped from reality. Unlike the other victims--the poor, dead maid, the maddened Tracy and John--he can deal with that. One leg in, one out, he balances and retains his identity. In one of many dream-hallucinations, Skinner sees "Mulder in the projection booth." He wants to return to Scully and make love to her. Skinner wants him to return and make love to Scully. Skinner also wants to make love to Scully. It all works out.

Someone said that no one ever really dies in science fiction. And we can surmise that everyone gets laid in The X-Files, as if fanfic hadn't informed us already. Oyster, however, is special.

Oh: in the original version on Jordan's site (?) there were some fabulous illustrations. As for the Dark Man, yes, he appears in Dark City (great flic) and also in the Buffy ep "Hush," which is the best thing they ever did. And Stephen King. EVERYTHING is somewhere in Stephen King.

I suspect Los Vegas in inherently surreal. Tim Powers did wonderful things with it.

[mogster495.livejournal.com]

Earthy. Yes that is a great way of describing it. It was very earthy, and Las Vegas is a great setting for earthy tones. The contrast between the city and the desert surroundings does a good job of emphasizing the earthiness.

[wendelah1]

Huh. I would say this story is the opposite of earthy. The sex scene is transcendent.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

Actually, I didn't mean that the story is itself earthy. I meant that the (frivolously) intended purpose of pulling off (oh, dear) a threeway is earthy and enters into the creative challenge. Although I can't be sure that was Jordan's overriding purpose. It probably wasn't, given how wonderfully moving the event was managed, as if the writer had entered some kind of trance.

Still, Jordan was a Skinner groupie.

[wendelah1]

You covered so much. What is there left for me to say?

This story is one of my favorites, too. Strangely, it's the only one of hers that I would consider rereading. I don't like her Skinner/Scully fics, the stories she's famous for, at all (the sex is tedious, for one thing). Anyway, thank you for suggesting it as a rerun.

Since I know the story already, and didn't have to puzzle my way through it, the religious symbolism seemed even more blatant this time around. It works. Jordan pretty much spells it all out at the end so I guess I don't have to.

Jordan sets Mulder apart from Scully, even from the rest of humanity, very early on in the story. I wish the ending hadn't been so ambiguous. Generally I don't like stories where Scully ends up with anyone but Mulder, even if Mulder is pulling the strings. And I hate stories with miracle babies, too, hence my distaste for everything past Requiem. But this story is more like religious allegory than fanfic, so it pulls me along. I dislike threesomes, too, yet I'm crying by the end of this. Miracle baby, Skinner/Scully, three in a bed, having the most boring PIV sex imaginable: it's a story that shouldn't work for me at all-- yet it does.