Story 187: "Relic of Tough Weather" by Jesemie's Evil Twin

[amyhit]

For Thanksgiving three years ago wendelah1 posted JET's widely loved holiday fic, "Small Lives Awake." It happens to be the first fic I ever commented on, here at the book club, which makes me feel rather delighted to have the privilege of posting my own choice of Thanksgiving fics this year, this one also by JET

Comments

[lightlack]

Heeee you totally posted JETfic just to see if I was paying attention! I know your tricks!

[amyhit]

Why hello, A. Fancy seeing you here!

You know what I love about this fic (besides everything)? I love that it's S7 fic that is also S4 fic, and covertly it's Dod Kalm fic, as an extra little tricky suprise snuck in.

Also, wow, this is one of my favorite of all the Mulders. In fact, as much as I love the Mulder of "Small Lives Awake," I love this Mulder just as much. He's basically the most compassionate - and yet not mushy - Mulder ever. This is one of the few fics (...wait...could it be the only XF fic?) that makes me cry for characters I don't know at all and have no prior (or future) investment in. Mulder's neighbors, I mean. And I feel for them because JET's Mulder feels for them. Not in that annoying, "my pain, let me show you it" way. But it comes through in the writing so viscerally (for me). Because he knows what it's like to swallowed up by that kind of yawning hopelessness. He remembers, from the dark days of S4.

Which then makes the tentative new character growth of early S7 all the more wonderful.

[lightlack]

This is just to say that I will respond to this soon, particularly now that I've read the story twice and am probably going to go read it again right now --

[wendelah1]

I like this story-okay

[infinitlight]

I'm wondering if we're meant to imply something from or just to think about Mulder's own relationship with his father. There's a ton of father-discussion and father-imagery in this short story, including troubled father-child relationships. It definitely makes me think about Mulder and his father, although I'm not sure if it leaves me with any insights.

[wendelah1]

Maybe we are. From what I see on the page, I can't tell what her intentions were except to get to the happy ending

[amyhit]

I just don't know. I mean, one minute he's baking a pie and telling himself he's not missing Scully (um, right)

But I think the "um, right" is what we're supposed to think. We're not meant to believe him.

There must be a kind of emotional logic to this story, with the dream and the memories and the pumpkin pie and the cancer arc and Mulder's own latest brush with death, but I don't understand why this year of all years Mulder would decide to bake a pie and why he'd decide to take it to her and well, why any of it really.I addressed some of this in my comments below, but I feel like I've been kind of antisocial by just posting my own comments and not replying to anybody else's so

[hazel75]

I love this -- to me, it's kind of a ghost season, a could-have-been. It's late, and I'll add more tomorrow -- I'm just glad you posted this one as I thought I had read all of JET's stuff, and I hadn't run into this one before.

[maria_37_ann]

I love this short little fic. I always cringe when I hear holiday fic (I'll have to check out Small Lives Awake now) because I haven't run into any that really works until this fic. I did have to read it twice to follow the shift from dream to memory to past to present because she jumps so immediately between them without much warning, but I loved it

[infinitlight]

I think this story is a good example of creating characters that the audience cares about in a small amount of words. I found the introduced characters involving and touching, too.

[infinitlight]

I like the way JET writes, although I usually need a few readthroughs to follow everything. The language in this story is beautiful, poetic but never weighed down. I did find I needed time and space to read it and concentrate on it.

I really liked the repeated themes of reflection and giving thanks. And these lines:

Mrs. Pater laughs cautiously, sorrowfully. Mulder wonders what it costs her - what it has cost her - to say these things, to witness and survive their small realities.

What it costs to witness and survive reality is such an XF theme, I think.

"Pater" means father, doesn't it? There's a theme here about fatherhood, as well--Mulder seeing Scully's father; Mariam's relationship with her father (which we only hear about secondhand: we never meet either character). There's also the obvious theme of the ships and water, and Scully being the one who draws the harbor, who's a child of the sea, making sense of it all.