Story 193: "Sore Luck at the Luxor" by Rivkat (Anubis)

[wendelah1]

This week's theme is Under the Covers Undercover. Yeah, I made that one up, but it does pretty much sum up this week's selection. Mulder and Scully are in Las Vegas, posing as a couple (duh!) to get dirt on some scumbag mafia type. This was originally posted under the moniker "Anubis," who it turns out was a small group of fanfiction writers who

Comments

[flourish]

One of my favorite fics!

[estella_c]

Mine too!

Hey, isn't Stephanie Plum's boyfriend named Joe Morelli? Probably a cousin. (Janet Evanovich's books.)

[badforthefish]

Funny you should say that I just finished "One For the Money" this morning. (I'd read a few of them before but diecided to start from sractch.) And if anybody says the words 'Katherine Heigl' there's gonna be grievious bodily harm.

Hmmmm...Morelli.

Off to re-read this fic now.

[estella_c]

Yeah, I'm thinking that Katherine was a bad choice for Stephanie. Who would work? Zooey Deschanel?

[sothcweden]

One of my favorite authors! Rivkat, that is. *off to read*

[wendelah1]

She's a favorite of mine, too.

[infinitlight]

Cute. I love Vegas (along with themed hotel rooms and neon lights. Tacky is not really in my vocabulary) and liked the feel of the story.

rivkat always writes lines that have me trying to decide if I love them unreservedly or hate them. His mouth taking hers "like Sherman marching through Georgia", for one. It's definitely vivid.

It's also very distinctive. I wonder how many people suspected who the author really was.

There are also lines that immediately strike me as perfect, like:

He had, reluctantly, come to the conclusion that Scully had simply decided not to know how he felt, the same way she'd decided not to know about colonization.

[wendelah1]

Sorry, I hope I didn't offend when I called the Luxor tacky. Would cheesy have been a better choice? My first fandom was Stargate SG-1, where the pyramids really were landing strips for spaceships, so tacky is pretty much canon. Clearly, I have a high tolerance for tackiness in my source material... I wonder if anyone has written SG-1 fic where the Luxor was built primarily to serve as a landing strip/headquarters for the coming invasion, and was owned by the aliens? Probably. Fandom that size-stands to reason everything's been written, kind of like with our fandom.

rivkat always writes lines that have me trying to decide if I love them unreservedly or hate them. His mouth taking hers "like Sherman marching through Georgia", for one. It's definitely vivid.Yeah, there are a lot of lines like that in the sex scene in particular, but I think overall it works. The tone is right for this story: humorous and a little over-the-top

[infinitlight]

No, tacky's a good word. Cheesy's a good word too. It's all good.

I've never watched any SG1, but didn't it and SGA fandom have a lot of cracky fic? I think the paperclip AU I read once was SGA. (The characters were literally paperclips.)

I swear the writing style (and music choice) of "From Here" sounds really familiar, but I can't put my finger on who it reminds me of.

[wendelah1]

've never watched any SG1, but didn't it and SGA fandom have a lot of cracky fic? I think the paperclip AU I read once was SGA. (The characters were literally paperclips.)

Yes. I think you could say those fandoms brought crack to a new level of crackiness. Paperclips? Missed that one.

Unfortunately I don't know most of the writers of that era well enough to pick them out of a line-up. I want to say M. Sebasky wrote "Falling Down in Four Acts" but that's probably wrong.

[estella_c]

I had thought I would be the first commenter, and I had a great first line invented: "Well, might as well get the tumbrils rolling on this one..." The French Revolution, get it? Because I thought a lot of people might hate it. (Go ahead, explain some more

We are still in fun mode

[wendelah1]

That's an interesting choice to compare but I'll play. "Sore Luck at the Luxor" is a little short of 12,000 words. Contact High is over 16,000, and having just reread it, I feel confident that it could have benefited from some judicious editing. The sex scenes seemed interminable

[estella_c]

I don't think I'd argue with any of this--and thanks for correcting me on the lengths; just *love* being corrected--and I suspect CH could use a trim. It's been a long time since I read it, but I remember being kind of entranced during the second part, with the sex. (The story itself starts strong and suspenseful and then, with Scully's meltdown, kind of enters onto a plateau.) That part of it didn't strike me as oversweet. It was more as if the two of them had entered into a magical union, were inhabiting a timeless place where their souls could at last communicate. Doesn't sound like me, does it? But Penumbra's way with words is capable of casting a spell.

And I'm CRAZY about Sore Luck. I think what I was trying to say is: how wonderful that we have two such terrific writers writing about the same thing and they're so distinctive. It's proof that Chris Carter, damn him, had something unique going there for a while. And further proof is that a lot of television to this day imitates The X-Files and tips him a homage.

[estella_c]

Oh, I *like* the altered states trope (can't we ever talk about Good Vibrations?) and by power transfer I meant that Mulder was controlling things in CH and Scully was in SLATL.

[badforthefish]

I'm late I'm late....Gaaahd, I feel like Alice's white Rabbit. Am only halfway through this story. Morpheus knocked me out with a baseball bat pretty much every day this week, so I haven't managed to give this story the attention it deserves.

So far the one thing that struck me is how...I'm trying to find a word more suitable than 'bitchy', hmmm...sarcastic? Hard edged? Scully is in this fic, until I remember that the person who wrote it is responsible for one half of Iolokus. And it does bear some of the OTT-ness of good old Iol' - an abundance of vivid, intricate metaphors that teeter on the thin line between being spot on or so distracting they get in the way of the narrative flow.

This said, I sure loved this one: "Mulder was always focused, like a ray of sun through a magnifying glass. Whatever target he found would soon burst into flames."

This sums up Mulder's intensity so perfectly. -----> iz jealous.