Story 258: "SN 1572" by prufrock's love

[wendelah1]

I'd been thinking about posting this so when it was nominated by an anonymous lurker, I decided to go ahead. It's a major new work by a talented writer. Dear Anon, thanks for the suggestion. I hope you will join the discussion.

Title: SN 1572
Author: prufrock's love
Email: prufrockslove@yahoo.com
Rating: NC-17
Classification: Novel, Post-colonization, Angst, Dark MSR, Other
Summary: After colonization and Earth's devastation, Scully remains in one of the few safe, walled colonies, remembering the past and praying for some future with Mulder. Whatever the hell Mulder has become.
Author's Note: A reworking of Negative Utopia

This fic follows the general outline of "Negative Utopia," which we read many years ago. If you want to see that discussion, here it is, along with a working link to the story: Story 76: "Negative Utopia" by prufrock's love. The changes to her earlier fic are more than substantial enough to warrant the re-titling. I loved "Negative Utopia," and, to be honest, I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this fic. I am happy to report "SN 1572" is also an excellent story, though not without its flaws.

Read SN 1572.

After you've read the story, please come back and let us know what you think. The nomination post is always open for your suggestions.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hello hello! I hope its okay to leave a comment, I’ve never been a part of this reading group. I have known of its existence, and ages ago would pop on for a story recommendation here or there… and I am pleasantly surprised to see it still up and running! I used to love reading x-files fanfiction years ago, but only now has my interest re-sparked with the upcoming new series. I’m pretty out of the loop and have no idea who the good authors are anymore.

I’d never read anything by prufrock’s love, and I usually don’t care for post-colonization or post-apocolyptic stories, but thought what the heck, I’ll give it a go. I was surprised that it immediately held my interest in a way other stories have failed to. Clearly, the writing was quite intelligent, which ticks the first criteria box. As was mentioned in earlier comments, everybody has different versions of Mulder and Scully, different head-canon, and different interests in terms of story focus, plot and theme. What I’m most interested in is their relationship, particularly their friendship, and their transition from platonic to romantic around about the 7-year mark. Plot for me is really secondary.

Because it revolved quite generally around my personal story interests, I was intrigued to see, in a pretty realistic rendering, what would happen to these two characters when pushed to the absolute extremes of duress, trauma, loss, vulnerability and desperation, and how (if?) their relationship would endure. And how the characters themselves would endure, would change.

The versions of the characters in the flashback scenes did not entirely match my personal versions of them, but it was pretty close. What I didn’t buy was their easy sexual banter, particularly in the scenes set around season 4 (Scully telling Mulder the worst part of dying of cancer would be being flat-chested, Mulder commenting she had a ‘great rack and a great ass’ etc…) or even in the season 7 scene after the New Years kiss, Scully showing him a box of tampons. I certainly didn’t buy the timeline of the in-vitro attempts, (for me, Season 6 is way too early) and again their easy sexual banter, Mulder joking extensively about buying her a vibrator for Christmas etc… for me this is all very out of character.

But the ways they looked at one another, their friendship, respect and affection, protectiveness, that all rang true. As did Scully’s voice, the way her thoughts and insights were continually shaped and informed by her science, logic and intelligence, and the things she denied herself. I’m a bit of a sap for the two of them loving each other, and the scene where Mulder looks up at the star, and gives a speech about how she’s his best friend, she hasn’t precluded a romantic future with him, and it’s not ridiculous for him to want to protect her... man did that make my heart go pit-a-pat! Also the bit about how the universe didn’t want them on opposite sides of the couch.

So given the ‘real world’ the author established was relatively in-sync with how I see it, I was equally as interested to see how the characters would change when that world fell away into bleakness and violence and desperation. That post-apocalyptic landscape was constructed, for me, very thoroughly and realistically, and was populated with characters that felt very 3-dimensional.

continued...