Story 242: "Skin" by Annie Sewell-Jennings

[discordantwords.livejournal.com]

I'm not much of an AU person. A lot of what drew me into the X Files was the dynamic between Mulder and Scully in their particular set of circumstances. That said, I've been hankering to revisit an AU that I remember reading and enjoying back when it was originally published. It may actually have been the first AU I ever read. I thought of it again recently and wondered how it would hold up to a reread all these years later.

"Skin" has a pretty standard set up. What if Scully caved to familial pressure and never joined the FBI? What if Mulder never reopened the X Files?

This story occasionally makes its way onto "classics" lists, although I don't see it recced as often as some other AUs. Possibly because it's very long, possibly because it's somewhat harder to find (it is not archived at Gossamer), or possibly because I've viewed it too fondly through the lens of nostalgia. The author is probably best known for "Erosion," which I have never read, but which has a reputation as one of the saddest MSR fics ever written.

This is a long one. Novel length, MSR.

SUMMARY: In a world where Mulder and Scully have never met, fate intervenes and brings two worlds colliding in the city of Charleston, as a vicious murderer reigns and a storm approaches.

Read Skin.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

This story is purely over-the top nostalgia for me. I carried it with me for hours, on floppy disk, when I travelled back to my childhood home, so I could continue reading it after my grandmother's funeral. The XFs was still on the air, the story was medicine to console. Even now, while I see all the flaws in the writing, I just think how grateful I was that another fan took so much time out of her life to write it, and that I had Mulder and Scully, in whatever form, with me during a bad time (I grew up in a rural area, nobody had internet back then).

[discordantwords.livejournal.com]

It's nostalgic for me, too. I think I'm more willing to cut it some slack because of that-- I can still very clearly recall the first time I read it. I was a starry-eyed teen back then, and it all seemed so terribly romantic; the southern setting, the burgeoning threat from the storm, the sense that Mulder and Scully were destined to know each other...

Although I do remember, even back then, finding the two realities annoying. It jarred me right out of the story.

Anyway, I find more and more that I am disappointed when I revisit something I loved back in the day, and this story is no exception. It's funny how tastes change.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I totally get the nostalgia factor, anon. I feel like a lot of what we are picking out as fandom cliches were not cliches at the time the story was written (or maybe are not cliches if you don't read a lot of fanfic, but I think everyone here does...).