Story 251: "Your Platonic Relationship: An Owner's Manual" by Nanda

[wendelah1]

I'm still going back through the older comments at the nomination post. Way back when, someone nominated "Syncopation" by Lilla Vaughan, which I wasn't that crazy about to be frank. I don't remember why. But then I remembered she'd written this fic, which I do like a lot

Comments

[amyhit]

But so nice, amyhit, to hear your learned voice again.

Thank you! It's nice to hear yours, too!

This is meta? It is simply a boring FBI outing with a glaze of sexual frustration.

But that's what's meta about it. Because how many XF fics could be summed up almost exactly that way? Strip out a few details, and I've probably read a couple hundred XF fics that could be summed up "There is a case. Mulder and Scully investigate. Weird things happen, but not in a lot of detail because UST is more fun. The end."

Admittedly, YPR is less of an exploration of fanon than a parody-esque reflection of fanon. But then I've always thought parody was inherently kind of meta, because in order to create a working parody dynamic you have to understand the dynamics of the original. Well, in theory you do, anyway.

To my mind, the writer has made a basic mistake. She has tried to combine her notion with a not-particularly-interesting casefile.

I'm being terribly contrary today, but I must say that I actually favored the casefile aspect of YPR. I agree that the case wasn't, as a plot in and of itself, particularly interesting, but then I always did like those sort of half-formed casefiles a lot. I guess because I always did like the intimate little moments best - the moments where they were just Mulder and Scully Investigating Something.

[wendelah1]

I guess because I always did like the intimate little moments best - the moments where they were just Mulder and Scully Investigating Something.

Mulder and Scully Investigating Something. That's our show. That's what I love, too.