Story 210: "Sans Merci" by Brighid
As I'm not a big fan of the fantasy genre, I was leery of trying this story by Brighid. But I'm glad I did, and I think you will be, too. It's season four, a genfic X-file, with no specific spoilers. She also lists two keywords: Mulder & Faery. Her summary: Mulder falls down the rabbit hole. Well, that's one way to put it. The author rated it PG-13
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I’m really not sure what to say about this fic. Um. Honestly? I rolled my eyes so violently, so many times while reading this that I’m surprised they didn’t get stuck that way. There’s really no way for me to soften my opinion on this one. I found it silly, annoying, badly written, and boring in equal measures.
Um. Okay.
Admittedly, I’m a hard sell on hardcore, genre-style fantasy stories in the XF fandom (although I distinctly remember enjoying The Magician, for all that it was kind of silly). I’m also going to be a hard sell on stories without Scully (though there are some I’ve really enjoyed - Vehicle and Tenor, for example).
But the thing about this fic was that it didn’t even do genre-style fantasy well. In fact, it epitomized everything I’ve ever considered silly and unappealing about fantasy. The prose was purple, the emotions and concepts were OTT, and the fantasy elements were piled on with less than zero subtlety.
As to this being a story without Scully, it was my least favorite kind of sans-scully story as well, in that it cut her out of the action for no apparent reason. It was like some bizarro universe where Scully was important to Mulder but not to “us”. By that I mean, we got throw-away stereotypical mentions of her character to fulfill the minimum Scully requirement imposed by her existence in canon, while ultimately her character was thoroughly marginalized.
When I was not violently rolling my eyes, I was trying, in utter bafflement, to figure out why I should be the least bit interested in this weakly imagined, poorly written “Trickster” character, or his interactions with Mulder (who I thought was also blandly, melodramatically characterized), or why Scully was being made to sit this one out. Because the writing was so poor, I was honestly surprised when it was revealed that the “trickster” was meant to be Krycek all along, but it did explain a lot about Scully’s curious absence, and the weird feeling I kept having that I was supposed to - somehow, magically, without the author doing any actual work - care about everything the trickster did and said.
Additionally, I found the fic’s utter adoration of Mulder to be heavy handed and insensible. In my opinion it’s generally ridiculous to spend an entire fic having your OCs refer to your protagonist as “Hero”. I do believe that Mulder is a hero, but the surest way to make your character seem like an obnoxious tool is to refer to him as such, over and over and over again, with a capital ‘H’ for god’s sake! I mean, they know his actual NAME! It’s like Character propaganda or something! “Hail the conquering savior.” There is no reason for them to call Mulder “Hero” 55 times in 24 pages, except that apparently we’re supposed to get all tingly upon hearing him defined as such.
Mulder and Scully work so hard, risking their necks, week in and week out to protect and serve humanity. IT’S ENOUGH ALREADY. But now Mulder is chosen by some kind of fantasy hero scout to save the entire world in one single night, by doing nothing more clever than anyone with half a brain would do? And for this, the entire world owes him its existence, as do all the unseen beasties of another dimension, all because Krycek and The Fates (and the author) decided Mulder was Just That Special?
Not to mention the mountains of manpain that get trotted out in an attempt to add depth and dimension to all the Mulder-veneration that this fic is basically made out of. Are you not quite buying how very Special and Heroic Mulder is? Here, have some manpain! Because watching him suffer (in a generic but cruel fashion) the endless torments of not saving everybody who’s ever been in danger should be all the convincing we need that there’s nobody on earth more qualified to Save Everything than Mulder is. Nobody’s paid the price like he has paid the price; with great power comes great responsibility, and so on, ad nauseam.
But I did like this:
"Save it. I'll do it. If all it requires is a willingness to die in the attempt, then maybe I am your man."
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