Story 196: "The Lure of the Fox" by Caroline O'Callaghan

[wendelah1]

This week's story was nominated by badforthefish. Go Fish!

The Lure of the Fox
By Caroline O'Callaghan
Rating: NC-17 I suppose, but it's nothing too bad (not sure what she means by that...I guess we'll have to wait and see.)
Classification: Mulder/Scully Romance. Mulder and Scully pursue a serial killer who calls himself 'The Fox

Comments

[badforthefish]

The Annex has the whole story in one big text file, it may even be a revised version. I notice a "but" had been removed from the first paragraph.

Y'know, I started re-reading this story this morning and my heart sank because I *really* should have re-read it before nominating it, rather than go ahead on a "hey, I remember I quite enjoyed that" feeling.

If I were to read this story now...well chances are, I simply wouldn't. First because the writing is poor and full of typos. "aern't" instead of "aren't" "site" instead of "sight" including my all time favourite pet peeve "your" instead of "you're". Argghhh, how on Earth did I forget about that?

Second because the characters are way OOC. M&S would never bicker in front of someone else, let alone law enforcement, while on a case for one. I let you find the other many examples of stuff our Moose and Squirrel would just not do or say, God knows there are in this story in abundance.

Third because this writer does the newbie mistake of spelling out every emotional state of the characters which is something I find terribly clumsy and annoying nowadays.

So why on earth did I rec something that is so flawed and clumsy? Why did I like it in the first place?

Well, for my defence I will say that, first of all it's an old fic, which I must have read circa 1998, and it stuck in my head because it was different from the long mushy romances that reigned in the fanfic world back then. It wasn't Paula Graves' 12 Rites of Separation, it wasn't about Scully wearing green silk dresses and going to candle lit dinner with Mulder.

Second I guess I was a far less fussy reader back then and managed to overlook stuff like poor writing that would send me running now. Again the pickings were slim back then, you used to put up with poor grammar if the story kept you interested.

Third, the story intrigued me because Scully's cancer was a part of it, but the story didn't revolve entirely around it like most cancer arc fic were doing at the time - and this struck me as interesting. In a way LoTF was an inspiration when I started putting down the building blocks for "Common Fate".

Fourth, it is an adventure with all kinds of guilty pleasure tropes such as M&S Go Camping, Scully In Shorts and White Tank Top, Mulder's Butt Admiration, Jealous!Scully, Everybody Falls in Love With the Secret Squirrel and Let's Give Some Sexual Healing To The Dying Redhead.

Heck, it's badly written but it's fun and some of the banter is kinda sweet. "D' you want a divorce Scully?" "Until death do us part Mulder."

Did I mention the erratic punctuation too? I suspect this was written sans beta.

Anyway, if you can't read this until the end I won't hold it against you. I think the quality is too poor to be deserving of what we usually discuss in the book club.

Why is it, though, that there are so few great adventures written by talented writers? I mean M&S go back in prehistoric times sounds like a fun ride, but why do we end up with people like Aka Jake writing it?

I guess that's why I loved Life During Wartime: it was the best of both world. But it took several writers to pull it off.

[estella_c]

Don't feel bad, Fish. I think we've all had the experience of reccing something we wish we hadn't.

Anyhow, I've been saying for a while that examining a failed fic *can* be as interesting as analyzing a good one. Why was it popular? (You sort of answered that.) What does it provide for a fan that a fic like ESF or FF does not. Sometimes literature is not quite what we're after. Particularly in fanfic, riddled as it is with shipping.

You get to talk about fictional quality and also about fan psychology.

Of course a good copy-edit does prevent frustration.

[badforthefish]

Eh, thanks. I'll be more careful next time. It wouldn't matter so much if it was short, as it is, I feel kinda bad you lot are going to have to suffer through pages after pages of the damn thing.

Fanfic is like food. Sometimes you enjoy a delicate well balanced meal but sometimes you can go for junk food. And again, it's not like we had a lot of choice back in the days.

[wendelah1]

Thanks for telling me that the link wasn't to a complete version.

Yeah, I agree that sometimes dissecting a flawed story can be more interesting than discussing a really good one. I have to work this weekend; in fact, I have to go get dressed for work now, so I won't have much to say until next week.

"Life During Wartime" is an exceptional story, one we aren't likely to see the likes of again in this fandom and probably not the best point of comparison. Maybe "Arcadia"? Is that the one that has camping in it? Or maybe "Camping"? Which is a parody, right?

[badforthefish]

Thanks for telling me that the link wasn't to a complete version.

My bad hon', the fredfarm.com one was the link I gave in the nomination post. I hadn't noticed it was truncated.

I haven't read "Arcadia" or "Camping". I'll have a look for them.

[wendelah1]

It said on the header at Gossamer that it was a parody; however, it was written in 1995 so I wonder how much fic was even around to parody? For what it's worth, I thought Oklahoma was a parody and it was completely serious.

[wendelah1]

I just can't see Scully referring to herself as a "pathetic nerd," even in her private thoughts. Maybe when she was a teenager she might think that. Maybe. But this just felt unrealistic to me. Also, why would Scully worry that a guy who's dedicated his life to proving the existence of extraterrestrials, and who hangs out with a trio of computer geeks, would think she's a "pathetic nerd"?

LOL

Yeah, I think Scully has a better sense of her value as a person as well as her attractiveness to men than that.

The most OOC thing to me was how much time they spent thinking about how attractive the other person was. They've been working together for four years. Surely they've worked this out already. Maybe you have to write as well as Tesla to pull this kind of thing off.

Is Mulder an exaggerated version of Mulder? He's clumsily written, that's for sure. He seems rude in an immature way, maybe, rather than a Mulderish way?

Many things about this fic are making me think it might have been written by someone who's fairly young, or at least not an accomplished writer. The poor punctuation and spelling mistakes tell us it wasn't beta-read.

[wendelah1]

The story has many promising elements, but as you (and the rest of the group) have already pointed out, the writing is really clunky. I read/skimmed through the entire first section and it did surprise me in a couple of places. Maybe I should have seen it coming but I was not expecting the good sheriff to make a pass at Scully. I was also not expecting the Consortium to be involved in this case, so that was an interesting twist to the plot.

I agree that AKA J's time-travel story was a little over the top but I liked Abaddon's Reign.