Story 191: "At Your Feet, His Emblems Fall" by M. Sebasky

[wendelah1]

I thought it would be good to start the New Year off on a cheery note. This is a post-ep for "This Is Not Happening," told from Frohike's point of view. Yeah, it's pretty sad, but at least now we know Mulder wasn't dead. I think I said in an earlier post that it takes talent to pull off first person pov. She has talent. This story works, and works

Comments

[amyhit]

Other things:

The last scene of the fic is a point of conflict for me. I love the image of Scully sleeping on Mulder’s couch, and pulling her gun on Frohike in the dark, and as I’ve said, I like the part about Mulder’s suit. I like the way Frohike’s narrative finally crosses paths with Scully’s. It’s strange to be seeing Scully’s grief from such an external and limited POV, and to an extent it works for me.

But somewhere in the scene it starts to feel wrong. I think it’s that Frohike starts to feel terribly intrusive, and I begin to wish he would just show himself out, but he doesn’t.

I like that Scully asks him whether he thinks Jeremiah Smith could have saved Mulder, but in my version of this story, they would have had this terrible, hard exchange, and then she would have given Frohike a suit, and he would have left, and stood outside her door in the middle of the night, feeling like he’d just immerged from a black hole of grief, knowing that Scully was still in there, and that he’d only taken a small amount of the grief with him - the rest was hers.

The last couple of paragraphs of this fic really bother me. The emotional dynamic feels wrong, and the focus feels wrong to me.

To sum it up, I’d say Sebasky is a good writer, and I admire her attempt with this fic, but ultimately there’s too much of it that’s not to my liking. Her Frohike voice is distinctive and believable, but I find her reflections on Skinner and Doggett somewhat of off-target, and I don’t like the way Frohike and Scully end up sharing their grief. Subjectively, it bugs me. My personal bias against S8 undoubtedly also contributes to my discomfort with this fic. The tone and characterizations of this fic feel very compliant with S8, which to some readers would be in its favour, but for me is a mark against it.

Now I have to go reread "Bitter Algebra," which I think is probably cofax's variation on the idea behind this fic.

[wendelah1]

I think Woman's Work is the story you are thinking of. Bitter Algebra was written as a response to it.

[amyhit]

Hmm, maybe she didn't write her own version of this idea then. I presumed she had, given Sebasky's remark about having borrowed the idea from her, but the only other TINH fic I can think of by cofax is "Paying the Ferryman," though I'm not sure what idea it could share in common with AYFHEF. I presumed "Bitter Algebra" was it, and that Frohike was the common element.

[wendelah1]

No, I think you are right. Cofax references this story in the author's notes to Paying the Ferryman. I think what they have in common is that they are both post-eps for the same episode.

I just printed out this story to answer your comments. Back in a bit.

Okay. I think I really need to watch the episodes this references. It is a post-ep, after all. Back in a few hours, then.

OT:

This so pisses me off. I can't even edit my comments here unless I put the community in my own style, bypassing LJ's stupid changes to the comment form.

Re: Other Things

[wendelah1]

A couple of left-over thoughts first.

Comparing road rage to the anger of having a loved one taken away? Not a good comparison.

Not a good comparison, I agree, and not one I'd make under ordinary circumstances. But Frohike isn't censuring his thoughts here, or writing for an audience, he's just talking or thinking aloud. He's not thinking, "oh that's not exactly right is it? What metaphor should I use instead?" It's spontaneous and colloquial, not literary, which is how he should sound.

I also think it describes well how the feeling hit him, as an abrupt transition from grief to anger over the unfairness of it all. Bottom line, it sounded like Frohike to me.

I like that Scully asks him whether he thinks Jeremiah Smith could have saved Mulder, but in my version of this story, they would have had this terrible, hard exchange, and then she would have given Frohike a suit, and he would have left, and stood outside her door in the middle of the night, feeling like he’d just immerged from a black hole of grief, knowing that Scully was still in there, and that he’d only taken a small amount of the grief with him - the rest was hers.

I'd love to read your take on this story. Maybe eventually, you'll write it and post it?

EC likes your ending better, and I agree, it is more elegant, especially visually (I can see it perfectly in my mind's eye-you are so good at that), but much darker, too. God.

But I prefer Sebasky's ending, of Scully getting to fall apart with Frohike, who loved Mulder, who knew him, who had supported him. Mulder trusted him, without reservation, and Mulder wouldn't have wanted Scully to be alone. It's a comforting contrast to the image we saw of Scully in Mulder's apartment on the verge of tears, which we had to watch earlier that season. Wearing that same damn green sweater, too, the one she was wearing in "All Things."

I agree, the suits thing she did was brilliant. Very effective imagery, all of those empty suits lined up in the closet. Scully's numbed-out responses. It all worked extremely well.

Maybe we should read "Paying the Ferryman"? You know how I love to compare and contrast. Or just discuss here? Or move on to something else?