Story 118: "Hard Times Come Again No More" by CazQ

[wendelah1]

Recently, I was asked to post another very fine IWTB prequel story here, but I'm posting this instead because in a very few days I expect you will not be able to read it anywhere on the internet, not unless I go ahead and create THE OUTLAW FANFICTION ARCHIVE, Where Unwanted Stories Go to Hide from Their Authors.

If you read my fandom journal,

Comments

[wendelah1]

God, I loved this story. I know the feeling of leaving IWTB with the sensation of something missing, not so much from the film itself (a whole other post), but from *me* and from my relationship with the characters (if that makes any sense and is not ridiculously dramatic). I'd been so excited about seeing my old friends again, and of course they were different, and I was different too...

No, it doesn't seem over-dramatic at all. In fact, I bet it was a common reaction, in fans from back in the day. A lot can happen in fifteen years.

By contrast, I didn't start watching the show until 2005, a few years after the series ended. Plus, I'm old. My life certainly changed from 1993 to 2008, but from 2005 to 2008, not so much.

What this story does is so well is articulate the complex feelings of love and loss that watching the film brought up for so many viewers, though perhaps not for the same reasons, through the point of view of Dana Scully. It's genius, really, is to have captured it in a way that creates this emotional feedback loop between the reader and the character. You feel her feelings with such intensity because they are your feelings, too.

Well, I did, anyway.

Slainte. Absent friends.

Yes.