I'm back and I'm sorry I left you hanging. I'll comment and then post something else.
Stories about amnesia, stories where a character's memories are lost inevitably draw me in, especially if they result in calling into question the MSR status quo. I loved "Fugue", and "The 13th Sign." I loved dtg's "Dreamcatcher." Even "Sense Memory" has a little of that element. It's emotional catnip for me.
So, again, it's well-written, and I think what the author has done with having us question every memory Scully relates is interesting. I don't love the story, though, because, basically, it bummed me out. It's terrible that Scully knows she cannot trust her memories, especially her memories of Mulder. And, I'm grumpy when things are bad beyond repair between M&S (even if it's in un-trustworthy memories). The story is definitely dark, and I'm not sure where I see any relief from that. I'm not getting it from the obvious place (I at least won't spoil that at this point in the discussion), but maybe I'm not looking from the correct angle. (This is what I meant when I said I got hung up on the memory thing.)
This is how I can tell I'm not a shipper in the conventional sense of the word. I get bummed and impatient about bad writing, especially when the fic been recced everywhere.
But enough about me.
Whether she is having true memories of Mulder's reaction to her pregnancy and the birth of their son or if she's filling in the gaps in her memory with inventions from her subconscious, her feelings about things between them couldn't have been good. If they'd been good, presumably her subconscious would be supplying her with more pleasant half-truths. Better lies. I think she felt emotionally abandoned by him even before he disappeared from her life.
Or maybe she's emotionally distanced herself from a loss so painful it can't be faced head-on by telling herself another kind of lie. "You didn't really lose him because you never had him in the first place."
There's a lot of ambivalence here, even about her son's resemblance to Mulder.
My son thinks he lives a whole secret life outside of me. He thinks I don’t know about what he and Joyce do in the pine grove by the amphitheater, about the picture of his father he keeps in a drawer, about his various sorties outside the perimeter fence. His rashness and his secrecy are hauntingly familiar to me. I wonder if somehow I raised him this way, so that I wouldn’t forget what it was like.
I guess for me the light in the darkness comes from Scully's strength of purpose in the face of so much loss and suffering.
But now, They come up against my nature. For fourteen years it has been in the interest of my nature to stay here and make sure that my son grew to adulthood. He is an adult now, much as I hate to admit it. The proof is growing in Joyce’s womb. And now there is another child that I must protect, a world I must save. And so, I put on my coat and walk out into the rain.
She's going to try to save her grandchild, with the help of a plumber. I have no doubt but that she will succeed, or die trying. Reading about this sort of resilience, seeing Scully's willingness to persevere against the odds doesn't make me feel depressed at all.
Mulder told me that the Torah says if you kill one person, you kill a whole world because you have also killed that person’s children and his children’s children and so on. And, if you save one person, you save a whole world.
I have only been trying to keep my child alive. I have only been trying to save a world.
no subject
Stories about amnesia, stories where a character's memories are lost inevitably draw me in, especially if they result in calling into question the MSR status quo. I loved "Fugue", and "The 13th Sign." I loved dtg's "Dreamcatcher." Even "Sense Memory" has a little of that element. It's emotional catnip for me.
So, again, it's well-written, and I think what the author has done with having us question every memory Scully relates is interesting. I don't love the story, though, because, basically, it bummed me out. It's terrible that Scully knows she cannot trust her memories, especially her memories of Mulder. And, I'm grumpy when things are bad beyond repair between M&S (even if it's in un-trustworthy memories). The story is definitely dark, and I'm not sure where I see any relief from that. I'm not getting it from the obvious place (I at least won't spoil that at this point in the discussion), but maybe I'm not looking from the correct angle. (This is what I meant when I said I got hung up on the memory thing.)
This is how I can tell I'm not a shipper in the conventional sense of the word. I get bummed and impatient about bad writing, especially when the fic been recced everywhere.
But enough about me.
Whether she is having true memories of Mulder's reaction to her pregnancy and the birth of their son or if she's filling in the gaps in her memory with inventions from her subconscious, her feelings about things between them couldn't have been good. If they'd been good, presumably her subconscious would be supplying her with more pleasant half-truths. Better lies. I think she felt emotionally abandoned by him even before he disappeared from her life.
Or maybe she's emotionally distanced herself from a loss so painful it can't be faced head-on by telling herself another kind of lie. "You didn't really lose him because you never had him in the first place."
There's a lot of ambivalence here, even about her son's resemblance to Mulder.
My son thinks he lives a whole secret life outside of me. He thinks I don’t know about what he and Joyce do in the pine grove by the amphitheater, about the picture of his father he keeps in a drawer, about his various sorties outside the perimeter fence. His rashness and his secrecy are hauntingly familiar to me. I wonder if somehow I raised him this way, so that I wouldn’t forget what it was like.
I guess for me the light in the darkness comes from Scully's strength of purpose in the face of so much loss and suffering.
But now, They come up against my nature. For fourteen years it has been in the interest of my nature to stay here and make sure that my son grew to adulthood. He is an adult now, much as I hate to admit it. The proof is growing in Joyce’s womb. And now there is another child that I must protect, a world I must save. And so, I put on my coat and walk out into the rain.
She's going to try to save her grandchild, with the help of a plumber. I have no doubt but that she will succeed, or die trying. Reading about this sort of resilience, seeing Scully's willingness to persevere against the odds doesn't make me feel depressed at all.
Mulder told me that the Torah says if you kill one person, you kill a whole world because you have also killed that person’s children and his children’s children and so on. And, if you save one person, you save a whole world.
I have only been trying to keep my child alive. I have only been trying to save a world.
This quote speaks to me, too.