X-Files Book Club

This week we have a short fic with a long title. The aurthor calls it penance for some "MSR atrocities" she wrote (under an undivulged pen name) when the show was in its early years. The fic itself is MSR, but what drew me to it was that it feels different from what I'd come to expect of MSR. It's set in season 4, sometime after 'Memento Mori,' and is essentially a spare but introspective study of Scully and her relationship with Mulder as they both attempt to come to terms with the reality and the potential outcome of her illness.

Relativistic Gravitation and Celestial Mechanics by LM

Side note: wendelah1 and I were unable to find this fic archived anywhere and we could not get in touch with the author, but I had a copy of the fic saved so we decided to archive it on Fugues in the Key of X. If anyone knows the author or knows how to contact her, please let us know so that we can properly ask her permission to archive her fic. If asked to remove it from the archive, of course we will comply with the author's wishes.

Gosh, look at that startlingly large number in the heading! It appears that our little (but oh-so-tenacious) community has reached its two-hundredth fic.



Cheers everyone!

I must say, I’ve been adoring you guys’ recommendations even more than usual lately. There have been a few fics I am particularly fond of come up, including a very recent rec by littlegreen42, which I am going to pounce on immediately like a cat on a jubilant grasshopper. It was written in the pre/post IWTB era, making it relatively new by this fandom’s standards. It’s short – but with an endearingly long title – and the prose has an idiosyncratic sort of poetry about it. Ultimately, I think the author herself sums it up best when she says, These are not all the ways and whys and hows Mulder loves Scully, just some. In reverse.

Read a weatherman to know which way the wind blows by zauberer_sirin

It's a good thing we just got finished with an apocafic, because this year we're going to have two fics for Christmas and they're both sweet and generally happy little stories. Everyone is welcome to comment on both, or only one, in either order, at any time.

The first one is an AU season 9-ish fic in which Mulder and Scully spend Christmas together with their infant son. It's also probably the most homey, domestic fic I'm ever going to rec. *g* But don't let my Scrooge impression scare you off. It's nice, and there's an interesting little twist to Mulder and Scully's world, amidst all the domestic bliss.

Epiphany by Maybe Amanda

In the second fic, Mulder and Scully spend Christmas Eve stranded while on the road. It's set in any one of the early/mid seasons, and it's nothing complicated, just a sweetly romantic little vignette.

How to Fly by Oracle

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and seasonal well wishes to all who don't.

Because the book club has been such a ghost town recently, wendelah1 and I were considering going on a brief hiatus. Then I mentioned I'd been thinking about rereading "Khyber vs. Season Seven," and Wendelah suggested we read it here, rather than going on hiatus. So for the next month we're going to be kicking back, relishing the end of summer, sipping imaginary iced tea (or real iced tea (it could be love)), and reading KvsS7 at a pace that is decidedly not breakneck.

For those of you who don't know, KvsS7 is a series of ten stories written by Khyber, the majority of which are set in S7. Most of these stories are vignettes, though there are a couple of longer fics, and they all take place in the same slightly alternate universe. Khyber's aim was (among other things) to craft a retelling of S7 by replacing some episodes and adding onto others, so that in theory a reader could watch S7, intersperse it with his KvsS7 instalments, and wind up with a finished product that functioned as a successful alternate outcome for the season (and perhaps for the entire series). Sadly he never finished the KvsS7 project, but even unfinished the KvsS7 stories are complex, intelligent, and often strikingly intense. They feature a Mulder and Scully who are in character yet subtly different from canon, and a story universe that is written with a level of stunning realism TXF rarely attempted to achieve.

We're going to start with the vignettes "Collapsar" and "Weret-Hekau," which are post eps for Millennium and Theef. In approximately five days we'll post again, and continue to post at about that pace until we've covered all ten fics. This does not mean discussion on the previously posted fics must stop, it's just for the sake of organization.

KvsS7 was a weighty concept and a remarkable project, and the resulting fics are sometimes lovely, sometimes horrifying, and often breathtaking. I hope you'll give this fic universe a try, and tell us your thoughts and opinions. This is definitely the sort of fanfic to provoke thoughts and opinions.


1. Collapsar (post Millennium)

2. Weret-Hekau (post Theef)


ETA: I just now realized we actually have covered "Collapsar" here before, about two years ago, as some readers may remember. I even participated in the discussion. Memory fail, amyhit. I'm not going to link you to that discussion, since we're going to be reading the whole thing through this time, and I think it would be nice to get some fresh comments, if we can, without anyone feeling daunted by the prospect of repeating something someone else said back in 2009. However, I'm sure anyone who is interested will be able to find the post in question with a few clicks of a mouse.