Story 76: "Negative Utopia" by prufrock's love

[wendelah1]

Since the last story just wasn't enough of a downer for me, I decided to bring bring out the big guns. For real angst, nothing beats a post-colonization story by prufrock's love. This is almost certainly her darkest post-col. "Negative Utopia" is a novel, it's MSR, everybody/other, and NC-17, so underage readers turn back now. This story is not for

Comments

[jessie_venna]

I love his stories. I read them a long time ago, so can't really post a comment about that one. Should read it again. But I remember how great they all were (are).

[estella_c]

Her, her, I'm pretty sure.

I read or at least skimmed this one, and it's a beaut, though kind of...hard...to...process. (Go for the ellipses, right Wendy?) I look forward to reading it again, though it will take time.

[wendelah1]

When in doubt, elipse...at least that's what I've always thought.

I always thought her, too, though more because fandom is so female, than because of anything about the writing.

[estella_c]

I'm pretty sure that the gender question was resolved in the olden days of fandom, though I can't quote proofs. In any case, I'm not relying on womanly prose style or any of that shit.

[petite0red0head]

So I just read Arizona Highways for the first time and was in a funk because I thought I have read the best fic ever and that anything else would pale in comparison. (And yes that is the best fic ever but Negative Utopia does not pale in comparison.) First it is a delight to read because it is well written. That is a huge consideration in fan fiction. I don't really know why I liked this story I almost gave it a miss because I don't like post colonization and I don't like M/O, S/O stories. But I am so glad I read it

[wendelah1]

You should go read everything else she has written, since you liked this. She's a great writer, one of our best. I just realized that her stuff is not at Gossamer. I'll put a link to her website in the entry.

"Arizona Highways" is an amazing novel, but there are others. Try "Iolokus" by RivkaT and Mustang Sally, and "Sokol" by Khyber. Both are long and just as brilliant as Fialka's fic.

[petite0red0head]

Thanks for the recs. I am reading Iolokus. I like to read a little each day and slowly digest longer fics. Although with AH I could not stop myself. I plunged in at full speed. I will finish Iolokus and yes I am enjoying it but I find the Mulder/Scully characters like Mad Magazine caricatures of Mulder and Scully. Mulder seems to be writen from a feminist view of men, and yes in the show Mulder and Scully do hurtful things to each other. Mulder more deliberately and Scully more as an act of shutting him out but they way they are using each other in Iolokus I find difficult to believe. Frankly (and maybe this is more of a personal over identification) I don't think Scully would use sex and certainly not sex with Mulder as she is so far in the story. Again it isn't to say I'm not enjoying it I just don't accept it on the same level or in the same way I do my very favorite fics.

[sixpences]

I'm not sure I would call this 'dark'... more like 'blacker than CGB Spender's tar-stained soul

[petite0red0head]

I agree this Scully does not seem like the Scully I know from the show or from other fics. I just took it as Scully transformed by the why the world is now. More interested in observing and not investing in what is going on. This could have been made more obvious though. When she is coming to terms with Mulder being with other women and she doesn't judge because it is what he had to do she could have remembered the professionally polished agent who was wildly jealous over any woman she thought Mulder might have an eye for, make the contrast in Before and After even more striking.

[sixpences]

I agree that this is clearly a traumatised Scully, but she just seemed so blank at times that I just could not believe it. To draw a comparison that the author herself invites, Offred in The Handmaid's Tale suffers in an equally debasing and horrifying dystopian society, but retains her agency and an internal rebellion against her situation. We see that Gilead is awful in part because of what it does to this woman.

But in 'Negative Utopia' Scully barely seems to register that there is something wrong about this new world- she just acquiesces to it with barely any inward resistance, let alone outward, which I just cannot see Scully actually doing- particularly when it seemed clear to me that she does have the opportunity to wield at least a little social power as a community's doctor.

[petite0red0head]

Again I do agree that this is not the Scully we are all familiar with, and yes perhaps it would have been a more interesting choice to have her fight against this world she is in but I found her acceptance heartbreaking. And frankly I did not find the Mulder to be the one we all know. He was unbelievably stoic and quiet and yes I know he had to be. It created more uncertainty for Scully and showed us just how far apart they had become. I also think that more could have been made over the fact that he was raped. That is pretty huge and not really gone into. In terms of what it did to him and him healing.

[amyhit]

I've always waffled with how I felt about Prufrock's Love's fanfic. on the one hand, I loved 'Flesh and Blood'. on the other, I loathed 'Cycles'. 'Paracelsus was intriguing, but despite its initial charm and its decent writing, ultimately it felt like reading nothing more than a historical romance novel. I'd seen Negative Utopia rec’d elsewhere before and always opted out of reading it, figuring, how dark and sensitive to the subject matter could it be, written by someone who seemed to specialize in writing romance? as it turns out - it could be very, very dark and excellent.

I don't quite know what to say about this fic. I love it. overall, I think it is sublime. but I also have a few big problems with it. as petite0red0head said, I felt like mulder's part was a bit wishy washy. I understood what an impossibly hard decision he was attempting to make, and that he would have been driven to the brink of insanity with uncertainty and mental torment, but I felt like his state of anguish would have been obvious even if the text hadn't actually put his

[petite0red0head]

I love that the boy is just referred to as a good boy. I know it is small but it is so perfect for this story. That is all there is to say and that is enough. It keeps the feeling of this world where everything has gone back to primordial basics that now good it the ultimate positive quality a person can embody.

[wendelah1]

I think Mulder is a pretty great guy, though not quite as great a guy as you (and nearly everyone else in this fandom) seem to think he is. After all, in "Paper Hearts," he used the authority of his status as an agent with the FBI to check a mass murderer/pedophile out of prison to pursue his personal agenda. When he thought the end was at hand, in "One Son", he was ready to go with Diana and the CSM to El Rico Air Force Base.

MULDER: Because there's nothing to be done. And at some point, you just have to accept that the only way those you love are going to survive is if you give up.If it wasn't for Scully, he would have been a crispy critter, just like the rest of the Syndicate. Even in his dream in "Amor Fati," he willingly throws in the towel, marries Diana, while the world collapses around him. In his dream, it's Scully who tells him, that this isn't real, that this isn't for him. "Get up and fight." She really is his touchstone, and without her by his side, I don't have that much confidence that he would do "the right thing" by

[leucocrystal]

This is an argument I can actually see both sides of, though it's clear I don't see the same Mulder that you do (or the same Scully, for that matter). I'd argue that Paper Hearts illustrates his selfishness because of his actions, but also his will to do right. That line, "It is somebody, though," hinges everything, I feel. Yes, he uses his credentials to pursue the case to the end, and his most driving force behind that action is to find out whether the final victim was Samantha, but I don't believe that's the only driving force, or even the ultimate one. Whether or not it's Samantha, it is someone, and Mulder needs to know who. I suppose I just believe in (and see on-screen) the Mulder who's showcased in Oubliette; who's about both trying to break his own cycle of victimhood, and to save the victim who is a stranger (and whose motivations aren't always so simple as going back to his sister, and nothing else

[amyhit]

as to scully's parts of the story, what bravenewcentury said is interesting to me: I also wasn't entirely convinced by Scully in this. Obviously she'd been traumatized by the events she'd been through, but the whole way through she felt... absent. just a bit too disconnected from the Scully I see in canon. I've found this with other fics by Prufrock's Love actually, which is a shame as I think her Mulder is rather better. It just felt like Scully was blankly observing her own life.i agree with this, mostly, i think, and yet somehow in this particular fic the distance - the blankness - of scully seems fairly believable to me. It was her way of showing strength, being impassive - internally inflexible, but externally flexible to her circumstances. she does it in canon all the time. her simply 'observing' her own life did bother me though. it made sense to a point, that she would simply learn to subsist under the radaar, and that her ability to subsist would prove her strength, but i feel like Pru took that a little too far. i wanted to see her kick

[wendelah1]

i loved the sense of time and expanse that we get with this description. the apocalypse really feels global, enormous, pervasive, and now, so does mulder. it is a return to the ancient times, when myth and legend shaped belief so thoroughly that anything could be true and so much is assumed to be. the harsh grandeur of mythology is stunning, and i think this fic is startlingly in touch with that dynamic.

I agree, this helps convey just how bad the post-col existence really was. I haven't read "The Stand" but compared to "Negative Utopia," the denizens of Brave New World and A Handmaiden's Tale have it pretty easy. I think the novels are mentioned purposefully, as a point of comparison, for both the characters and the readers. Definitely, this story could have been longer. I would have happily read another 500k of her dark vision.