Story 270: "Finding Rokovoko" by prufrock's love

[wendelah1]

"Queequeg was a native of Rokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are."
— Moby-Dick; or The Whale, by Herman Melville

Fanfiction, both reading it and writing it, has been off my radar entirely these past few months. You can easily guess why. I even forgot the xf_book_club's anniversary date. Sorry about that.

But since I've been in bed with a cold this week and in need of amusement, I decided to see if there was anything new to read. You haven't checked the fic forum at Haven in months, my brain chimed in helpfully. That's true. Okay. I'll do that.

Since I struck gold, I decided to bypass the nomination queue. Lo and behold: prufrock's love has posted a new story! Like so much of her best work, it's an AU, but this is not a historical. This X-Files universe stays fairly close to canon, though with a more realistic take on the cancer arc.

"Finding Rokovoko" is a spooky horror story set in the fourth season, beginning right after "Never Again." The casefile/X-file feels just like an episode of the series, complete with classic Mulder/Scully banter and a myth-arc related plot. Also, perfect title is perfect. You'll see what I mean.

Read Finding Rokovoko.

If you're in the mood for holiday-themed fic, you might check out maybe_amanda's daily posts at Haven.

Please come back and let us know what you think. Remember, the nomination post is always open for suggestions.

Comments

[mosinging1986.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank you! I need to read this ASAP.

Real life has also imploded for me lately, and there's no end in sight. A new PL story is a great gift!

[wendelah1]

Isn't it a wonderful gift?

I hope RL eases up for you sooner rather than later.

[mosinging1986.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

[keslei]

Damn it. I've been trying to be good and not read fanfic until I finish the last bit of my thesis, but a new prufrock's love fic may prove to be too tempting...

[wendelah1]

It's a fast read. You will not regret it.

[mcparrot.livejournal.com]

Trying to read on my Kindle tablet but the formatting is weird. Anyone else having trouble?

[wendelah1]

Sorry you're having issues. I don't use a Kindle tablet. The formatting looks fine on my aged HP desktop and my Asus laptop. You could ask mimic117 about it. She is hosting prufrock's love's newer fic until Gossamer begins accepting stories again. Her email is mimic1172 at gmail etc.

[mcparrot.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I'll try emailing Mimic.
Edited to say, actually, I opened it on my computer, stripped the formatting and pasted it into a document. That worked.

[ikielove.livejournal.com]

I loved it. Mulder's just right

[wendelah1]

No one writes a better Mulder than prufrock's love. This younger version of Mulder is less cynical than the character from her stories set post-series but that seems right to me.

Her stories remind me of why I fell in love with the characters and the series.

[zinnia03.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed this story very much, as I do most Prufrock stories. I was, I admit, a little leery of the "horror" description, but it's not Friday the 13th/Halloween type of horror, but a more realistic (and maybe therefore in some ways even more horrible) than those types. It reminded me a bit of reading Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" which remains one of my favorites in the genre. Things are simply not what they seem.

More specifically, the dialogue between M&S sounds like an episode to me, in the best way. P's Mulder always seems slightly in awe of Scully, even when he's ticked off or annoyed with her.

I devoured this story when it first came out so now I need to go back and give it a more careful read.

BTW, if anyone is having trouble loading it on their Kindle, what I did was save the story as a text file in Word, and then emailed it to my Kindle account and it worked fine.

[zinnia03.livejournal.com]

I just tried to post something and LJ timed out on me. Curses! Of course, the original post was much better than this one :-).

I'm not generally a fan of horror in the Friday the 13th/Halloween vein, so when I saw that tag I was a bit worried. I shouldn't have been - I found this story to be well-crafted and not just the jump out and slash type scary. It reminded me in some ways of Peter Straub's Ghost Story, which is one of my favorites -- that sense of oppressive, impeding doom which pervades the story.

I loved the dialogue between Mulder and Scully, it sounded just like a really good MOTW episode to me. P's Mulder always seems slightly in awe of Scully, even when he's ticked off or frustrated with her.

I devoured this story quickly when it first came out but now I need to go back and give it a slower read.

BTW, if you have a Kindle and are having trouble downloading it: I had to copy and paste into Word and then email it to my Kindle account. I couldn't download the story to my desktop properly but the copy/paste method worked fine.

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

So excited to read a new one, and better yet that it's season 4 (good cancer arc fics are a guilty pleasure of mine, everything is so... honed somehow)! Wheee! I'll comment when I finish. Real love from has been dumping some awful on me for the past couple months so yeah, new fic like this is a treat for sure.

[bmerb.livejournal.com]

OMG this was awesome. So much disturbingly good fun. Just the right kind of horror, I cannot say how much I loved the road that led to nowhere, the creepy giggles and little hands, the deja vu (or whatever PL called it), and how smoothly the story integrates later canon into this AU world (Mulder's dream) and changes other bits of later canon (the chip) to meld into this universe. And yes, the dialogue is right spanking on, particularly Scully's scientific and medical spouting, and pretty much all Mulder characterization. Oh so good! The time warp, the tie in to the Eves, to Victor Klemperer, and the creepy as all hell ghoulish haunting and time warping... *sigh* satisfied customer.

[keslei]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love the way prufrock's love writes Mulder. I also enjoyed the weirdness and creepiness of this story, with the road outside of space and time (I've driven middle-of-nowhere roads in the Florida Everglades area and they're pretty much the perfect setting for this sort of isolation scary story), and the asylum with all its various horrors (I'm not sure if the ghosts or the Adams were more disturbing, honestly). And although I sometimes get annoyed by stories with Mulder saving an incapacitated Scully, I liked this one, probably because up until the last bit in the asylum, Scully is still poking holes in Mulder's theories about squallies and figuring out what happened to the children and basically playing her usual role as the voice of science and reason.

[keslei]

More specifically, the dialogue between M&S sounds like an episode to me, in the best way. P's Mulder always seems slightly in awe of Scully, even when he's ticked off or annoyed with her.

I didn't realize it until you pointed it out, but this is so true, and one of the reasons I love her characterization of Mulder so much. And this time around, her Scully was pretty spot on too.

I was, I admit, a little leery of the "horror" description, but it's not Friday the 13th/Halloween type of horror, but a more realistic (and maybe therefore in some ways even more horrible) than those types.

I rarely read horror, but this story was the kind of creepy that I like. I think you're right about about it being more horrible due to its realism, though. I also think that having the story set in a middle-of-nowhere asylum allowed readers' imaginations to fill in the mental picture to the fullest horrific extent - we've all seen shows or movies with a creepy haunted asylum and we can take the descriptions we're given and envision whatever we find most frightening following Mulder through the asylum...