Story 167: "Waiting" by Kipler

[amyhit]

Kipler did most of her fic writing between 1995 and 1997, placing her solidly among the early era X-Files fanfic writers, though she didn't write Strangers and the Strange Dead - arguably her most widely recced story - until 2000

Comments

[write_out]

I've been such a slackass here lately and I know I've missed some good discussion that I need to catch up on.

For all of the fic I've read, I've surprisingly (to me) not read anything by Kipler, so I started with Strangers and the Strange Dead even though that's not the current story. Wow...that ending hit me sort of like the twist in The Other Man by Jess Mabe. Was that discussed here? I will have to read what you all said at the time.

So, Waiting? I LOVE this. I'm still processing it, so forgive this shallow comment. I'll write more once my thoughts settle down some. I just didn't want to let another story pass by without participating, so consider this a placeholder and a reminder to myself that I need to come back.

[infinitlight]

"Strangers and the Strange Dead" is in my top five fanfics of all time :). I wasn't here to discuss it when it was posted (although I remember participating in some indepth discussion on--I think? the Glass Onion list, years ago). It's such a great story.

[infinitlight]

"Waiting" is amazing. I love the way Kipler writes--clear and visual and yet poetic. There's a truthfulness to the emotion, too, that I think is rare. You can really feel what the characters are feeling, and it doesn't feel forced or uncomfortable.

"Waiting" covers some pretty ambitious themes of death and dying. I usually find stories like this hard to read, but there's a real journey here; it's not just written to make readers sad. It's really thoughtful and beautiful.

And I am pretty picky about characterizing Scully. I think she is just perfect here--puzzling out the medical mystery and working with the kids (like in her sub-storyline in I Want To Believe (obviously written years after "Waiting")). I love her voice coming through in the story. Scully's inner voice is precise and poetic (see her journal entries), just the way Kipler writes her.

[amyhit]

I really have no idea what to say about this fic. I love it, so naturally articulation goes and fails me. There's nothing about Waiting that I don't like, so explaining why I like specific aspects of the fic is difficult.

Kipler's writing is a spell, a pall, with each new scene and every sentence like another thread drawing me further off the 'garden path'. The mood of Waiting is beautifully consistent from beginning to end, but it deepens and thickens with time, as each new aspect of what's happening is revealed. And because it's written first person, it allows Scully's characterization to contribute largely to the tone and mood of the piece, and vice versa.

In the beginning there is a stoic precision about the writing, and about Scully's character. She observes the other people in the waiting room, gives us details to identify them, and determines her place in the order of things. But as times goes on, that precision matters less and less.

I have made myself a path through other places, and I route it slowly, to kill the

[amyhit]

For a short time after I first read Waiting, I had a different idea of what happens at the end of the fic. I thought maybe Scully had "become a dream" - in other words, that she'd lost the plot and that she now experienced Mulder as the more real of the two of them

[infinitlight]

I had assumed that Scully dies at the end, and that Mulder appearing is a hallucination or him coming to lead her into an afterlife. I thought this because in the scene before last, she refers to dreaming out of existence, and becoming more transparent--essentially leaving "this" world behind.

I have a pretty limited imagination, though--it hadn't occurred to me that Mulder might actually be alive.

One line at the end I wondered about was:

I'm surprised that it's Mulder, that he has waited at the door, that he is dressed in clothes I have never seen.

I thought the reference to his clothes was interesting--this leads the thought, of course, that Scully knows every item of clothing he owns :). But why would she note that he's wearing different clothes? I wondered if it could be a biblical allegory--that having died, he's been reclothed by God.

[amyhit]

it hadn't occurred to me that Mulder might actually be alive.

I think because we read this fic so long after it was intended to be read, we were probably experiencing it much differently, and expecting different things from it. I was, anyway.

Reading it now, it seems like the fic is AU from beginning to end, so I was quick to accept that Mulder was really dead. After all, it's an AU scenario so why shouldn't he really be dead if the fic says he is? But when Waiting was written it wasn't AU. It was likely intended to serve as a possible bridge between S4 and S5: "This is how we resolve the seeming fact that Mulder is dead and Scully is dying, with the other, unavoidable fact that neither one of them can actually die because we need them back next season."

I don't know for sure whether that's what she intended, of course, but that's what it feels like to me. Writing a bridge doesn't, however, preclude the possibility that she wanted to leave the ending somewhat ambiguous. I wish I could ask her.

I had assumed that Scully dies at

[write_out]

Well, I think you two pretty much covered it. I loved Waiting so much but am having a hard time articulating just what it is that drew me in.

I read it to mean that Mulder is alive in the end (I'm a sucker for a happy ending, even if I have to create my own where none truly exists), but infinitlight's idea that they are both dead is very intriguing and made me go back and reread the story. I can see that, but I chose to read it that Mulder is alive and has come back to Scully. See? Sucker.

Thanks for reccing this one, though- it's so good to have 'new' authors to check out.

[amyhit]

I loved Waiting so much but am having a hard time articulating just what it is that drew me in.\

I know just what you mean. There are some fics that make me feel anything I say about them will be blather, and this is one of them.

but I chose to read it that Mulder is alive and has come back to Scully. See? Sucker.

When I realized that was probably the case, I had this weird dual reaction of feeling a little disappointed I wouldn't get my eerie ending, and seriously relieved because I'm not sure I could handle any other ending, really. So I don't think you're a sucker at all.

Thanks for reccing this one, though

s'what we're here for. *g*