fine-nephrit

[fine-nephrit]

🥏 Fic Rec #96: "Cleanse" by MonikaFileFan

Hot smut plus angst that hits just right, yummy yum. Today’s rec zeroes in on one jealous, hurting Mulder involved in some /Other action. It doesn’t just deliver on the steam (and wow, does it deliver), it also nails Mulder’s emotional state with pitch-perfect characterization for him and the supporting cast alike, making every moment feel authentic.

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🥏 on AO3

author: @monikafilefan length: short, 2000+ words season: pre-series, and season 4, post-4x13 Never Again pairing(s): Mulder/Other(s), background M/S UST tags: smut, angst, jealousy, crossover rating: explicit/NC-17

Tagging @today-in-fic

[fine-nephrit]

🥏 Fic Rec #95: "impressions, first through fifth" by softnow

I’m a sucker for the early M/S dynamic right from the very beginning. This little fic captures how Mulder sees Scully from the moment they meet through season 1, with wonderful Scully character work and a sensitive, spot-on Mulder voice. The prose is a thing of beauty, light, fluid, and delicate. A mesmerizing read!

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🥏 on AO3

author: @softnow length: short, 1000+ words season: season 1 pairing(s): M/S UST tags: vignette, light jealousy, Mulder-POV rating: G

Tagging @today-in-fic

[fine-nephrit]

great symmetry between mulder and scully in unruhe. mulder wants to understand academically the horror that scully feels intuitively. sometimes i see people treat it like an indictment against mulder that he has the luxury of being curious about violence against women, but it isn't; it's what saves her. he balances her out by trying to make sense of what she accepts as fundamentally irrational. which actually means unruhe moves like an episode about scully's faith

[fine-nephrit]

Season 3 episode 4 of the X-Files is one of the most tightly-written pieces of television I’ve seen in a very long time. The killer is interesting and unpredictable, even though the episode tells us what’s going to happen in advance. The dialogue is clever and punchy, and the consistent flow of jokes throughout the episode compliments the sadness we see in Clyde’s life (and in his end). Clyde is such a good foil for both Mulder and Scully. He’s got the knowledge Mulder craves with none of the curiosity, and his attitude toward death reflects the detachment that Scully has had to build over the course of her career, especially after losing two members of her family. The episode is perfectly paced and has a very satisfying narrative arc that delivers on all of its promises. And beyond the writing, the performances are fantastic, and so are the sets. I love Clyde’s plain apartment and the frilly pastel decor of the first crime scene. Every single aspect of this episode was stellar, and it is without a doubt my favorite so far.

[fine-nephrit]

Currently pacing in my apartment after watching “Never Again” (s4e13). Something I’ve been thinking about a lot through seasons 3 & 4 is how frustrating it must be for Scully to always be in the passenger seat. I don’t think Mulder has really recognized how much more freedom he has than her. The freedom not only to pursue his interests, but the freedom to make mistakes. Scully’s job is to be calm and calculated so that Mulder can be reckless. If Mulder is a dog that the FBI is desperately trying to keep on a leash, Scully is the leash, being pulled taut on both sides. She is given no room for error. For as much as Mulder is an outsider, so is Scully — maybe even moreso. Scully is a woman in a man’s world. She is constantly talked over and lectured and overlooked. She doesn’t even get her own fucking desk. So it was good to see her exert her own will, follow her own impulses, in “Never Again.” It’s the first episode where I really felt like we were seeing Dana — just Dana — and not Scully.

[fine-nephrit]

Fan fic recs

I’ve got so many on my iPad but I’ve read both Arizona Highways and Dr Scully’s School for Exceptional Boys in the last two days and I need recs that will match these for length, quality and characterisation, please.

[fine-nephrit]

It’s kind of funny, because the fics that I love the most in the XF fandom are so restrained in a way.  The line from Parabiosis about them wordlessly, without looking, passing a cigarette between them always sticks with me.  @foxmulders and @teethnbone and @onpaperfirst and @aloysiavirgata and even Prufrock’s Love in Paracelsus all capture that too, that kind of pressed-under-glass breathlessness where so much of the communication is unspoken or oblique and everything is held back until the moment that it breaks the dam.  

But I also love fics like Iolokus (thanks @mustangsally78 and @rivkat) and the Khyber fics I just read that showcase how truly weird and fucked up our sweet baby agents are.  

So I guess just put them in the crucible: either they come out refined as all fuck or so cracked you can see every place the light shines through.

[fine-nephrit]

Do you have a top 10 txf fics? (It can't be yours tho)

This is a hard, hard one to answer. I could probably spend an entire day trying to figure this out so I’ll just go off the top of my head.

1. Mustang Sally and RivkaT - Iolokus Saga (of course)

2. Lisby - Vestigy

3. Meredith - A Show of Strength

4. Jane St. Clair - Half a Word Away

5. @annakovsky - To Carthage Then I Came

6. @icedteainthebag - Blood and Chocolate

7. Plausible Deniability - The Carrot & The Stick/The Clockwatcher (sorry, I can’t choose)

8. @scienceandmysticism - First Person Narrative

9. CiCi Lean - Goober and the Czar

10. Nascent - Theory and Practice

[fine-nephrit]

Dana Scully really disproves the idea that a character has to be flawed to be interesting. Like, on paper she’s a total MarySue: She’s a FBI agent, who’s also a medical doctor, and a super scientist, and also she’s immortal(?). She’s intelligent, and brave, and virtuous, and kind, and beautiful, and also a crack shot, and also she can drive a boat, and do magic tricks, and also God talks to her specifically. She basically has no character flaws, and yet she’s totally fascinating; I would literally watch an episode that was just her running errands.

I guess her main character flaw is that she enables Mulder.

[fine-nephrit]

Top 5 xf fics at the moment?

Ah fuck

1. The Other Man by Jess Mabe is just fucked. It’s beautiful though, and you won’t ever really look at the episode Deep Throat the same way again.

2. Blood Orange by @syntax6 is great when I’m in the mood for an upsetting casefile

3. Omens by @lepus-arcticus is fantastic and I just wish I’d been here as it was being posted.

4. Right now I can’t get the first part of Three Iterations of a Birth by @spookydarlablack out of my head. It’s a true testament to her ability to write that I really wish I could get it out of my head

5. Ceremony by @darwin-xf is always going to be on this list. It will never not be on this list. It features a Mulder who really sees Scully in a way we never get to see on the series, sees what she’s been through and what she needs.

Shoutout to Contact High by Penumbra. And this fic I found on ao3 the other day by threeguesses.

Sorry about the lack of links, I’m on mobile, but if you look these up you will find them!

[fine-nephrit]

So I’m new to the x files and I’m trying to find a good list of must read fics/ in particular fics where they are pre couple flirty like S5/6? Just fluffy. Any suggestions?

Hi anon and welcome to the nut house. You’ve landed here at a time where, if the fic were UFOs, even Scully would see it. There is a current Christmas challenge at @thexmasfileschallenge where the fluff is almost suffocating. There is @today-in-fic keeping all manner of wayward stories in order, like the Skinner of the fic writing community. And there is @i-dont-wanna-wrestle and her fic lists that would put Mulder’s eidetic memory to shame.

I am rubbish at remembering fic names/authors unless they are the ones that have made a super huge impression on me: so I always rec Iolokus by Mustang Sally and RivkaT, the Secret World series by Bonetree, all of Penumbra, Amal Nahurriyeh, Prufrock’s Love and @syntax6 stories. But these are not flirty/fluffy recs, they’re angsty, casefiles, traumatising and all utterly brilliant.

I have a heap of flirty fluff on my AO3 page but I can never remember what my stories are called! You can find my work here.

There are a ton of writers on here who write the most awesome flirty fic but if I start to list them I’ll miss someone out! So I’m going to ask for people to rec their own works for you. SIGNAL BOOST FOR FIC WRITERS: IF YOU CAN HELP THIS NEW PHILE OUT PLEASE DO!

[fine-nephrit]

1/2: Hi! Just caught and really appreciating your commentary/review of Mystphile/Syntax/Iolokus. Have you done more of these for XF fic, and if so, were they tagged? (I see you tag ur X-Files content, but then it brings up ALL ur XF content, rather than separating out by XF Meta, or XF Fic Commentary/Review, etc) I LOVE fic reviews. But these days it’s more common to get a sentence or two on a fic. I've literally gone back through WebArchive for rec sites from original run, as well as the

2/2: old XF Book Club run by Wendelah, and then take good reviews/comments and put them together with the story so that when I read a story, I can also read their reviews and think more on things! So, when I saw your more-than-2-sentence commentary on 3 different stories I’ve read, I was VERY excited!! Tell me there’s more! BTW, also enjoy your general commentary on show/David/Gillian, etc! Trying to figure out how to find it all within your account!

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Thank you for your kind words! :)

Unfortunately I don’t have metas/reviews on other fics, but you make me interested in doing more.

There are various reasons I love certain stories even if the characterizations aren’t necessarily consistent for Mulder and Scully. I’m more forgiving if I understand what the writer was aiming for and if I believe they executed it well.

For instance, The Games We Play by Winter Song. The “epilogue” doesn’t work for me I guess due to expectations. Everything else up to that point is really captivating. I know some are put off by Mulder and Scully singing and stuff, but personally, it adds a layer to their oddball dynamic and how they’re viewed by others.

What intrigues me most is the anger: Scully’s breaking point and Mulder’s instant realization and empathy behind Scully’s behavior. I’ve always said if The X-Files had been on a different network (and had a different show runner), it would’ve been a darker show. The main characters have so much unexplored grief and trauma. They are each other’s safe place and the shadow government violates that in a subtle, but major way in this fic, which Scully gets the message loud and clear.

Why Winter Song also does well in her fics is explore how other governmental agencies see Mulder and Scully. Either the fandom focuses the colleagues thinking they’re fucking or completely ignoring them, however, Mulder and Scully have been involved and get into way too much shit for there not to be any intrigue behind them. I believe they are the reason I explore this idea as frequently as I have recently.

I haven’t read everything Syntax6 has written, but I do think everything she writes is gold regardless. She wrote a fic called Split the Lark that was really thought provoking. If you haven’t read this fic, I should warn you that the fic deals with rape of a main character. I literally haven’t read it in years, but if I ever revisit this I believe the quality of the fic will only rise, IMO.

Personally, I haven’t read many recent fics due to poor time management and impatience. Truth be told, despite there still be quality fics out there, it’s also hard for my to read current fics. I have an issue with the characterization and perception of mainly Mulder in these stories. As mentioned earlier, doing something different with the characters aren’t the problem, but Mulder either lacks a backbone or is an asshole in a way that is inconsistent with his character. Some writers have ambitious goals except they care about the idea and not the execution. 

The stories themselves at times lack teeth. Good ideas without the boldness. Or something is missing.

This isn’t to say that current stories are bad. I know some stories released during the show were bad as well. However, I also don’t think current stories don’t have the same highs as the original run.

To be clearer, this is all my personal taste. Some most likely disagree with me and that's perfectly valid. And its likely I’ve forgotten some really good fics released post original run.

There’s Seven Days in May, which is a prequel and it’s original story. The fic makes me sad, but it does challenge me in a way that makes me uncomfortable in a good way. I believe this was written by Prufrock’s Love--that might be wrong. These two fics are something I’d be open to revisiting unlike her other fics, which aren’t bad I just don’t like post colonization fics. She also has another fic, I think its her, where the break down of Mulder and Scully’s relationship deeply bothered me. I got why it got there, but it felt unfair to one of the characters (and was acknowledged as embarrassing in the fic) and I’m unsure if this was discussed during the story.

Arizona Highways felt satisfying to me, but I can’t recall a lot about the fic.

Hope you enjoyed the response!

P.S. I’m a lazy tagger. lol

[fine-nephrit]

@gladlybeyondanyxperience replied to your post “@gladlybeyondanyxperience replied to your post “@albanyparkavenue …”

What is sanitized fanfic? (Very real question. I don’t read fic in any other fandoms. ) I figure people should write what the want , tag it so readers know what they are getting into and then peopke either read it or don’t.

This fandom (and a ton of other fandoms) used to be full of really edgy fics.  I mean, look at Iolokus.  It’s one of the most popular XF fics maybe of all time and it’s full of rough sex, rape/non-con, torture, and the darkest possible sides of our agents.  I never see any Mulder!torture fics anymore and that used to be a huge part of the genre.  Ever since the Great and Terrible Livejournal Strikethrough (where someone got a bunch of porn communities taken down claiming they were promoting underage sex/pedophilia) and FF.net taking down all their porn, there’s been a big “purity” movement in a lot of the major fandoms, trying to get things taken down because they don’t like them.  You see a lot of this in the backlash against AO3 - because they will host anything, people get mad and say the whole site should be taken down.

Absolutely everything should be tagged.  I try to give content warnings for my fic.  And I don’t personally write a lot of stuff that’s super edgy, I don’t think, but it certainly gave dimension to the fandom experience.  Fanfic used to be where you could find some of the weirdest, most experimental, most disturbing stories, and now that side is mostly gone, or if anyone does write something that colors outside the lines, people complain and try to get it taken down. 

[fine-nephrit]

i need another soul-devouring fanfic to ward off imminent depression. preference is for novel-length idiots-to-lovers, featuring heavy angst with a happy ending and especially if scully gets to keep a baby (but not iolokus, that's toooooo much at this moment in time, ty)

[fine-nephrit]

The thing about Mulder and Scully is. Everyone shipped it. The fans shipped it. The writers and producers shipped it. The actors shipped it. Characters on the show, including Mulder and Scully themselves, shipped it. People who DIDN'T EVEN WATCH THE SHOW shipped it. Friends would see my XF posters and be like, "Hey did those two fuck yet?"

And They Didn't For Seven Years and We Didn't Even Know For Eight.

[fine-nephrit]

we can all agree that Scully tends to be more jealous, but remember that one time a creepy writer dude wrote a self-insert romance novel about Scully, and Mulder stole his mail, arrested him with no solid evidence, and installed a secret camera to spy on him

[fine-nephrit]

XF Fanfic Writers Who Went On To Professional Writing Careers

Clearly these are just the folks I know.

Johanna Schaffhaussen (@syntax6) - She wrote fanfic as Syntax6 and is now a crime novelist. Check out her fanfic (very, very good casefiles). Check out her novels.

Claudia Gray (@claudiagray) - I don’t hear XF fandom bringing her name up as much, but I heard her talk once and even mention her background in fanfic. She wrote XF fic as Amy Vincent and now does paranormal YA romance / Star Wars novels as Claudia Gray. (Side note: CC said in a podcast interview last year that an author who had written Star Wars novels approached him with an idea for an XF novel, and he liked it and approved it. I really hoped it might be her, but I never heard more.) Check out her fanfic. Check out her Wikipedia page. Check out her novels.

Laura Bontrager (@writingwell) - I mentioned her recently because @randomfoggytiger is such a fan! She wrote XF fanfic as RocketMan, and she's gone on to write romance / mystery novels. Check out her fanfic. Check out her novels.

Sonny Whitelaw - She wrote as Spider and became an ecothriller / speculative fiction author. She apparently also teaches classes at the New Zealand Writers' College. Check out her fanfic. Check out her Wikipedia page. Check out her novels.

Y'all, I bet there are more. There are probably anonymous authors we'll never know. But add to the list if you know some. Including yourself, obviously.