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crack_van2004-02-17 09:32 pm
coffeeandink.livejournal.com) wrote in crack_van2004-02-17 09:32 pm
Entry tags:
"Iolokus" by Mustang Sally and Rivka T. (NC-17)
Fandom: THE X FILES
Pairing: Mulder/Scully
Author on LJ:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mustangsally78 and rivkat
Author Website: http://www.disenchantedkingdom.com
Why this must be read:
The month is half over, so it must be time for me to introduce myself. (Would you believe I just like to start in media res?) Hi, I'm your February reccer for The X Files. I wasn't sure, starting, whether to go for a mixture of genres or just to stick to my favorites, which are mostly MSR; whether to recommend the obscure or rush to get in the classic. But glancing through the recommendations so far indicates that one reader's classic is another reader's undiscovered adventure; so I'm using the excuse to recommend the Ones Everybody's Read in my little corner of Internet fandom -- with some slightly more unusual stories thrown in.
That means I'll be recommending a lot of MSR, tending towards the dark rather than the sweet; a lot of mytharc-inflected casefiles; and mostly seasons 1-7. But maybe a few other things, just for variety.
That brings me to the Iolokus series. It was the first fan fiction I ever read. This was a good thing, more or less. It's an epic four-part series (with a brief epilogue) that goes AU in the fifth season, some time after "Emily," and deals with issues canon never touched: Iolokus is the island on which Medea killed her children, and "Iolokus" starts off as the story of Scully's murderous maternal rage at having her reproductive choices, like so much else of her life, taken out of her control. The story is the dark underbelly of canon, with characters more damaged and more damaging and more full of lust and rage than we ever saw on the screen. It's told in sexy, sardonic, hard-boiled, sometimes purple style, Raymond Chandler with the heat turned up and the imagery and the plot and the sex never-ending. This story parodies every MSR cliché in the book -- and makes a workable serious plot out of them, not to mention roughhousing the mytharc into some semblance of sense.
Iolokus
Pairing: Mulder/Scully
Author on LJ:
mustangsally78 and rivkatAuthor Website: http://www.disenchantedkingdom.com
Why this must be read:
The month is half over, so it must be time for me to introduce myself. (Would you believe I just like to start in media res?) Hi, I'm your February reccer for The X Files. I wasn't sure, starting, whether to go for a mixture of genres or just to stick to my favorites, which are mostly MSR; whether to recommend the obscure or rush to get in the classic. But glancing through the recommendations so far indicates that one reader's classic is another reader's undiscovered adventure; so I'm using the excuse to recommend the Ones Everybody's Read in my little corner of Internet fandom -- with some slightly more unusual stories thrown in.
That means I'll be recommending a lot of MSR, tending towards the dark rather than the sweet; a lot of mytharc-inflected casefiles; and mostly seasons 1-7. But maybe a few other things, just for variety.
That brings me to the Iolokus series. It was the first fan fiction I ever read. This was a good thing, more or less. It's an epic four-part series (with a brief epilogue) that goes AU in the fifth season, some time after "Emily," and deals with issues canon never touched: Iolokus is the island on which Medea killed her children, and "Iolokus" starts off as the story of Scully's murderous maternal rage at having her reproductive choices, like so much else of her life, taken out of her control. The story is the dark underbelly of canon, with characters more damaged and more damaging and more full of lust and rage than we ever saw on the screen. It's told in sexy, sardonic, hard-boiled, sometimes purple style, Raymond Chandler with the heat turned up and the imagery and the plot and the sex never-ending. This story parodies every MSR cliché in the book -- and makes a workable serious plot out of them, not to mention roughhousing the mytharc into some semblance of sense.
The Lost Weekend, as I like to call it, followed. That's when I learned what it's like to be Mulder, living with the omnipresent knowledge that you have, very recently, screwed up in a very major way. Every minute was as dark and rich and sweet as fine chocolate, made both bitter and better by my knowledge that Mulder and I understood what was happening in very different ways. This is the vortex of self-knowledge that I've discovered: I got an extra kick out of my emotional distance in the face of Mulder's obvious commitment, and then an dose of guilt for being so cruel, and then the guilt fed the sexual pleasure. It was really quite a wonderful thing to find out about myself, and someday I'll have to thank Mulder for it.
Iolokus