Story #1: "Closed Colony, Special Stock" by Branwell

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

To get things rolling, I'll start by picking a story myself. Hopefully it will prompt some interesting discussion.

Closed Colony, Special Stock by Branwell

Rating: PG-13 for mild language, innuendo, disturbing
images and ideas.
Category: X, A, M/S Friendship
Casefile with Mytharc connection

Summary: A body is found in a top secret area on an Air
Force Base. No one knows the cause of death, or why the
dead woman was in a secured area. The Air Force officer in
charge makes a last ditch effort to prevent the project
from being closed down. He uses his clout to get the FBI to
send Mulder and Scully to investigate. Scully finds she
knows the right questions to ask--but how?

Please keep your comments polite, even if you don't like the story--the author may be reading. And please consider sending feedback to the author as well as commenting here.

Can you think of a story that you'd rather discuss? Nominate it.

Comments

[frey-at-last.livejournal.com]

This was a good story. In general I don't read a lot of casefiles that don't accomplish any M&S character development (heck, if I want that, I can watch the show ;) ), but this was still well written and had an interesting narrator.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Personally I'm also a big fan of the M&S dynamic, whether romantic or otherwise, but I wanted to choose a first story that everyone could identify with so I intentionally steered clear of anything that could be interpreted as "shippy." Having said that I do think there are some nice little details in this story, just that there are very subtle.

If you can think of a good character development story that you'd like to discuss next time, then recommend away! I wouldn't want to impose my preferences on everyone else.

[wendelah1]

This was written for virtual season 8, so I suppose this is AU from the outset. Mulder hasn't been abducted, so I am guessing they threw out Requiem altogether. I can play this game. I like Mulder/Scully partnership stories and I like casefiles so I guess I was predisposed to like this story.

Having it written from a first person point of view was an interesting choice. I think first person is hard to write well, but I think that it worked here. Initially, I thought this was just being told from a first person outsider viewpoint. The first clue for me, that this story was going to be a little bit different, was when the character started overhearing things, like those individual interviews in the closed office. Then the chewed lead pencils turn up in the desk of someone who doesn't bite on their pencils. Then the spirit's thoughts start bleeding into Scully's brain. That was a surprise, although maybe it shouldn't have been. Scully has exhibited signs of paranormal ability in the past, she has just always denied them.

"But they are involved, aren't they?" she responds. "I must
be having a hunch. You have hunches all the time."

"That's me, Scully. Not you. Sometimes my unconscious
solves a problem before I'm aware of the process."

"It's not always about you, Mulder," Scully says, directing
a severe look his way.

For a second he gets this sick expression. Then he
registers the little smile she can't quite suppress. He
gives a grimace that might be taken as a smile.

This is not an exchange that could have taken place in earlier seasons. This is as direct a reference to what I assume is a change in their level of intimacy as we are going to get in this story, however. The scene then goes on.

"Talk to me, Scully," he bursts out. "What does it feel
like? Can you trace a reasoning process or is it like a
voice in your head? Or just a feeling?"

Her smile disappears and she seems to be looking right at
me. But her eyes aren't focused. "It's like a voice from
another room. A door opens or closes and it's louder or
softer. Or maybe a radio station that fades in the hills
and gets strong again on flat land. It's coming from
outside of me. Mulder, is that how it was for you?"

Mulder's nods his head and then shakes it. "It was more
than one voice. There were thousands, as though everyone in
a football stadium was trying to get my attention. There
was no room left for MY thoughts. Are you sure you're all
right?"

"I'm fine," she says quickly. "No, really--I'm fine."

This sure seems like character development to me. Scully is having a paranormal experience and isn't denying it. She is telling Mulder the truth. What has happened to bring this about? It sure makes me want to go read the rest of VS8 to find out.

So we find out who the spirit is, and eventually who the murderer is as well. As soon as we find out that the Consortium is involved, the outcome is pretty much a given. There is a fire, the evidence is lost, and there is a cover-up. This is The X-Files, after all. But along the way, Branwell is able to give us a real character who lived and suffered at the hands of the evil scientists and their co-conspirators. Her thoughts about her fate, as she attempts to discover it, along with the agents, are by turns poignant and humorous. Some of them even add to our knowledge of our favorite duo, as in this sentence.

Even in the dark, Mulder finds the shortcut to Daddy's
house. It's not my doing; he remembers it. There's a
constant seething in Mulder's brain. It pushes me back,
like the wind holding a sailboat offshore.

I really like that description of Mulder's thought processes. It gives a unique but I think accurate assessment of how differently he thinks. Even the spirit world is impressed. I liked this story, and hope other people will give it a chance, despite its lack of overt MSR. This had all of the elements that I loved about the show. It was a lot of fun having a new episode to enjoy.

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Your opinion and mine are very close when it comes to this story--close enough that I felt I was plagiarizing you a bit while writing my comment. Ah well, I'm sure we'll differ soon enough.

Even in the dark, Mulder finds the shortcut to Daddy's
house. It's not my doing; he remembers it. There's a
constant seething in Mulder's brain. It pushes me back,
like the wind holding a sailboat offshore.

This bit really interested me too, although I'm not sure that I interpreted it as a compliment. I saw it as a way of saying that Mulder's brain is so busy and overactive, so wrapped up in his own speculations, that in a sense it's not capable of making room for possibilities that he hasn't already seized upon himself. Mulder is about making new hypotheses, even if he doesn't know much to start with; Scully, the scientist, is more about observing and seeing how the world works before passing judgment on it. So that makes her more open to these things, I guess? More passive? Or just more psychic? I don't know, really.

Glad that you liked it. I thought that you probably would!

[wendelah1]

I got an email response back from Branwell. She came over and read our comments, and was so happy to know people were enjoying her story. It's a Win-Win!

[emily-shore.livejournal.com]

Like frey_at_last, I usually read stories that are all about the Mulder and Scully character development. However, this is one of my very favorite supernatural-casefile stories. While it's set in season eight, and the character interaction bears that out, the plotline bears comforting similarities to a lot of season one episodes. You know, the government base, the hazy conspiracy, the way that all of the evidence is snatched away again at the end. The nostalgically predictable nature of the plot frees the reader up to pay attention to the things that are different.

One of the things that I really enjoyed about the story was the vividness of the original characters. From the very first sentences you know that they aren't ciphers... with a few choice details, the author builds them up into real, breathing people, with their relationships to one another detailed as well as their interactions with Mulder and Scully. (Another story that does this well is Neurotic Need for Validation (http://keyofx.cheesejoose.com/fiction_kel_neuroticneedforvalidation.txt) by Kel.) Little things like the way everyone calls the Colonel "the Birdman".

I love the subtle reveal of the narrator, who she is and what role she plays in the story. It was artfully done and offered us something that couldn't have been done in the series. (Well, on reflection I guess they did it in "Desperate Housewives," but maybe not this well.) Like wendelah1 says, having our narrator along for the ride really brings home the human toll of all these shadowy experiments that we are always hearing about. It is also a refreshing change from the fact that we usually know that anyone we see in the teaser is doomed to be out of the picture by the first act. It gives more agency to the victim, and particularly to this victim, given that in real life it seems that she was controlled and belittled by both father and husband.

The writing style is generally fairly simple--the narration suited to the character who is providing it. Having said that, there are some nice poetic touches that explore the nature of being a ghost and show that being dead might not be such a terrible fate after all.

I amuse myself by thinking my way to the roof of the car.
When I was alive, I had dreams of flying. Speeding through
the twilight with only the violet sky around me is almost
like that. There's no wind, or fear of falling. I'm
beginning to understand that I don't need things like cars,
and I don't have to pay attention to solid barriers, like
closed doors.

It's hard to get over the habit of being limited.

It's frightening to imagine an existence without limits. I
could expand to fill the sky--the universe. And nothing of
me would remain.

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

Like you, I enjoyed the narrator's musings about being dead. They stood out to me in particular since I wrote a post-col piece for an XF Lyric Wheel (Through Walls (http://www.bardsmaid.org/XF/thruwalls.htm)) that, while principally about Mulder trapped in a colonist holding pen, involves the ghost of Krycek. Writing K's part became an intriguing exercise because of his non-living status, and I'm really glad I was pressed to explore that.

I found this story to be well-done and engaging. While I enjoy the mysteries inherent in the XF universe, I often find case file fics to have less character development than I'm looking for, which would include this one (though that's just my personal preference and not a reflection on this story or the author.) However, I really did like the ghost-as-narrator, the gradual revelation of who the narrator was, and the fact that it wasn't one of those formulaic case files that seem only to be a set-up for MSR. And I liked that Scully was the one to have the premonitions this time. It's not common, but it's plausible and gives the realm of XF cases a nice, fresh spin.