Story 159: "Pandora's Box" by Rachel Anton

[amyhit]

I'd like to offer a salute of solidarity to all you LDW survivors who showed up, read your hearts out, and hopefully had your say. It's fics like Life During Wartime that make our fandom exceptional, and it's participation that makes the book club fun. We manage to have both, and that's pretty awesome.

For our next rec, wendelah1 and I though a change was

Comments

[amyhit]

Honestly, I think I've just skimmed over the questionable bits in the past and not given them more thought.

Word. I was trying to figure out how I'd read this the first time without noticing at least half the things that bothered me this time. I'm not a skim reader, but maybe I was skimming that day.

Another possible explanation: I think when I first read this I didn't notice how problematic it was because I was too busy wanting to cover my head with something out of mortification. The embarrassment factor of this fic is SO HIGH that when I first read it I distinctly recall not being able to think much of anything beyond, "OH. MY. GOD." In the past, I'm pretty sure I've said that I don't like embarrassment fic, but I think I might have been wrong. The thing about embarrassment fic - Pandora's Box being case in point - is that if it's embarrassing enough, the mortification basically shorts out my analytical brain - the part that is usually so active that it prevents me from really getting into a smutty fic.

I took Scully's comment in the end that it was all Mulder to mean more than just the physical aspect- that it was their emotional connection in combination with some really good sex that finally worked for her and not just that Mulder is some sort of sex god

I think you're right, but that doesn't change the inherent implication that Mulder is to thank for thawing Scully out*. Scully says, "I think it was you Mulder. Just you." She also says, "I dunno what you did Mulder but it was the right thing I guess."

For the first quote, I can read it to be Scully assuaging Mulder's worry that it's the candy machine that's to thank - kindly bolstering up his self-esteem. (I might add that this would be easier to appreciate if the Mulder of Pandora's Box seemed in any need of a boost in the sexual self-confidence department.) But the second quote clearly has Scully excluding herself as an active part of her own sexual fulfillment. She could just as easily have said, "I don't know what we did, Mulder, but it was the right thing." Just like in the first quote she could have just as easily said, "It wasn't the candy machine, Mulder, it was being with you." Or, "It wasn't the candy machine, Mulder, it was us. Just us."

*thawing Scully out - connotation mine. But it does stand to be mentioned that for a long time "frigid" was the standard technical term used to describe women who didn't experience sexual pleasure as they were "supposed to". This ties in to what Wendelah1 has already mentioned about "Pandora's Box playing into and perpetuating the myth about women and orgasm. Personally I think love (and lust) has a great deal to do with arousal - physical arousal as well as psychological - so I don't have a problem with Pandora's Box implying that Scully reached orgasm with Mulder when she couldn't/didn't with other men. But I don't think this fic pays adequate respect to the issue either.