Comments | xf_book_club: Story 78: "The Flexible Concept of Tomorrow" by finisterre

wendelah1 in xf_book_club

Story 78: "The Flexible Concept of Tomorrow" by finisterre

Apr 04, 2009 17:10

This week I am posting a wonderful The X-Files/Dr.Who cross-over story by finisterre,"The Flexible Concept of Tomorrow." finisterre is the fic journal of the artist formerly known as Marasmus. She left our fandom, and came to LJ, I suppose, with the big fandom migration from the usenet groups. From what I can tell, she had virtually stopped posting her fic writing.

I ( Read more... )

post series, cross-over, msr

Comments 25

memento1 April 6 2009, 06:03:00 UTC

Wow. Okay, d*mn it, I cried. I did. And it gave me an honest-to-god thrill of happiness to realize the end was not "the end" foreshadowed throughout.

His chest starts to ache, as though something is swelling in there, threatening to crawl up into his throat and seal off the air supply. He’s almost at the door of the hidden timeship before he recognizes that feeling for what it is: immense happiness at seeing her one last time, and suffocating grief for exactly the same reason.

This bit really, really got me. For its perfect description of that feeling we have all experienced, and which I know I read fanfic in order to recreate.

And to balance that, the bit that made me smile the most:

"You’re saying that if I sleep, I alter the course of history?" he says, tentatively.

"Yes!" she says, brightening and pointing at him with both hands in triumph. "You’ve got it."

"That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard."

wendelah1 April 6 2009, 21:20:39 UTC

This bit really, really got me. For its perfect description of that feeling we have all experienced, and which I know I read fanfic in order to recreate.

That scene made me weep. Man, just thinking about it brings the tears. Because we do all know what it is like to love someone that much, and we all know what it feels like to lose them forever.

And it gave me an honest-to-god thrill of happiness to realize the end was not "the end" foreshadowed throughout.

Yes. I felt joyful. It was brilliantly done.

sixpences April 6 2009, 14:47:31 UTC

Wow. I must say, I was slightly apprehensive at the idea of an XF/Who crossover, mainly because the universes don't really mesh in my mind- apart from that I see them as, respectively, basically pessimistic with a glimmer of redemption, and basically hopeful with dark patches, they're two very different kinds of sci-fi. I can easily imagine Who crossed over with, say, Star Trek, because they share the same kind of exploratory motif, whereas XF is a more 'defensive' kind of story.

However, somehow this story still really worked for me. I think it was partly because Mulder's interactions were almost entirely with Donna (there are way too many [insert character here] meets the Doctor!!!1! fics in the world), and there was a real human connection there. They're both, on a very basic level, two people looking for something more in the universe (in a way which Rose and Martha weren't, much as I love them).

Also I have so much love for finisterre for giving Donna a much better fate than she was allowed by the series. I don't pay my TV license for ( ... )

wendelah1 April 6 2009, 21:26:02 UTC

They're both, on a very basic level, two people looking for something more in the universe (in a way which Rose and Martha weren't, much as I love them).

That seems a very apt description, which makes the ending even more poignant, I think.

It was pretty devastating reading about what happened to Donna, so I can only imagine what it was like to watch it.

estella_c April 6 2009, 18:50:51 UTC

What a lovely story. I think Pauline Kael wrote--back when film was hip--that she loved the *idea* of movie musicals but couldn't find many excellent examples. That's me with crossovers. All the great characters should be able to meet in the Greatcharacter Universe. But it doesn't usually happen so wonderfully as here. Plus, finisterre actually mastered the time travel puzzle so we could thrill to the clever interlockings without being distracted from what is actually a touching love story ( ... )

emily_shore April 6 2009, 21:52:08 UTC

And I'm glad to get a glimpse of Mulder in England. Given that he's an Oxford man, there's very little of that in fic.

And it's usually done soooooooo badly. I seek out Mulder-in-Oxford fic whenever I feel like a masochistic thrill.

estella_c April 7 2009, 00:02:26 UTC

You might try Jame Lumley's Dead of Winter, written by an actual English person. It's at MaybeAmanda's Raiders of the Lost Fanfic site.

emily_shore April 7 2009, 00:09:15 UTC

I've read and enjoyed it. Even more important than the fact that she's an actual English person, in my view, is the fact that she studied at Oxford. (I'm not English myself but I am an Oxonian.)

Thread 5

amyhit April 7 2009, 06:09:12 UTC

strangely, while i agree with most of what everyone has expressed here in technicality, this one just...i couldn't get past the crossover aspect. I know that the writing is good. if nothing else, i know that it is because when Donna isn't there, and the focus spins and shifts back into focus on mulder and scully alone, my heart flushes and i feel what finisterre is driving at with this story. at least i think i do, to an extent. and there are these lines:

It’s not until five years later, when he decides that Scully doesn’t dance enough and waltzes her round the kitchen to songs from the radio, that he recognizes the music from the phone again - "Hey Ya" - and has the thrill of knowing for sure that he met honest to god *time travellers*.

where i can read it and go, okay! beautiful! donna is simply a reoccurring MoTW! she's well written, complex, yet unobtrusive to the integral structure of TXF as i see it. finesterre's writing is heavy with undertones and half-spoken details, and it's just very sensitive to everything ( ... )

wendelah1 April 7 2009, 07:37:53 UTC

Actually, I really like cross-overs, especially when they are this well done. Nothing popped for me, except the story. I'm pretty distant emotionally from Dr. Who, as I only watched the old series, never the new, but I didn't have any trouble integrating Donna into Mulder's world, maybe because in this story Mulder was so open to the extreme possibilities, just as he always is.

I think I've read nearly every cross-over I can get my hands on in nearly every fandom I read fic for. A few are great, a few more are okay, many others not so good. This one is amazingly well-done.

raaaambling. amyhit April 7 2009, 08:54:31 UTC

the structure, as i'm fairly certain i recall someone else pointing out, is brilliant, truly. she seems to build the fic in a circle, of sorts, telling you bits from all different places and all different head-spaces (so that they seem to almost be 'moving in different directions'(i'm not sure how to say it better?) until eventually all those fragments coalesce to form one complete picture.

again with the circle imagery for me, jeez. i have to go get a new stick. *grin*

I think I've read nearly every cross-over I can get my hands on in nearly every fandom I read fic for.yeah, whereas i tend to avoid them, as i guess my above post makes abundantly obvious. it's not the fic's fualt or the author's, of course - i do know that. but i pretty much always finish the fic feeling as though "my" story has been in some way violated. in this particular fic, the more effort finisterre puts into writing donna well, the more i want to shove her aside. and she does write her well, as far as i can see. i love donna's attitude. she just seems so ( ... )

sixpences April 7 2009, 17:09:43 UTC

Actually, I think I agree with you a fair bit vis-a-vis crossovers; as I said above, I can't make TXF and the Whoverse mesh in my mind at all. They are just too different on so many levels, both in the details of the universes, and the underlying cultural and social assumptions of each. I definitely agree that if you think about the implications of the story too much it all comes to bits.

I think I managed to enjoy it still simply because the basic character connection was powerful enough to enable me to suspend my disbelief (which to be honest is often what happens to me watching both DW and XF). It was definitely uncomfortable at times, when my brain started to go 'but... but...!', and it continues to niggle me slightly, but I think what made me enjoy it overall was that it did manage to make me forget my objections, for the most part.

estella_c April 7 2009, 18:02:38 UTC

Having said that I like crossovers, I suppose I should admit that I don't at this point know much about the Dr. Who canon--never met Donna before--so the jarring lack of universe-agreement that others might inevitably feel didn't impinge. Mulder and Donna are both bright, eccentric, harried, universal-ly burdened heroes with an assumed analogous relationship to their jobs. It works for me. The story is powered, I think, by *relationship*. Here are two people who, against extraordinary mathematical odds, can understand each other ( ... )