It's too quiet around here, folks.
I just finished reading this next story, nominated by
infinitlight. It's a carefully researched casefile, a very good one, if a little on the graphic side for me. (Damn. Why am I such a light-weight?) As it unfolds, it gets better and better, and has memorable climax and denouement. I'm classifying this as gen fic, Teen-for
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Comments 14
He sat at his desk with his fingers laced together, peering over the rims of his glasses at Scully. In that pose, he looked rather like a disapproving high school teacher, she thought.
Purrrr...
Ahem. Onward.
"I am such a bleeding-heart loser," he said, and bowed his head as if in defeat.
Aw, Mulder, that's why we love you!
After gazing at it a moment, he dug out the case containing his reading glasses from his jacket pocket. Adorable ( ... )
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"... but the story as a whole was a good one. Creepy, funny at times, and full of the early season charm of these two people. I think it would've made a good episode."
Well-said.
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Fan fiction is pretty cool because there is not a great need for exposition. The reader (usually) already has a lot of background knowledge, and lengthy character descriptions and observations are not necessary. I think this story could be trimmed a lot and still retain what's important.
That being said, 'Fragile’ is a very interesting and thorough story. I enjoyed it even if I skimmed some paragraphs.
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I've always liked this fic. I'm interested in what makes a casefile story work. I think it's important to have a case/mystery/bad guy character that is compelling, but for me it's just as important to learn something about the characters we already know, to see how this individual case affects them, or to feel their voices throughout. I liked the story of the killer and the nod toward Mulder as profiler. (I want to say Ophelia was a Thomas Harris fan, but I can't remember how I know that--maybe I sent feedback back in the day. I think Fragile definitely has an early Thomas Harris vibe. She mentions John Douglas's memoirs in her author's notes, heh. His books do seem to be the fanfic writer's guide to serial killers. (They're also wildly popular with Criminal Minds fanfic writers, but admittedly that's a show about profiling and in which characters are loosely based on Douglas and his coworkers in the early days of profiling.))
I liked this line and thought it was a good summary of the story:
Scully smiled ( ... )
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I'm interested in what makes a casefile story work. I think it's important to have a case/mystery/bad guy character that is compelling, but for me it's just as important to learn something about the characters we already know, to see how this individual case affects them, or to feel their voices throughout. I liked the story of the killer and the nod toward Mulder as profiler. (I want to say Ophelia was a Thomas Harris fan, but I can't remember how I know that--maybe I sent feedback back in the day. I think Fragile definitely has an early Thomas Harris vibe. She mentions John Douglas's memoirs in her author's notes, heh. His books do seem to be the fanfic writer's guide to serial killers. (They're also wildly popular with Criminal Minds fanfic writers, but admittedly that's a show about profiling and in which characters are loosely based on Douglas and his coworkers in ( ... )
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Me too. I'm trying to think why that is, and the best I can come up with is that those sections seem to gel more, maybe because they're not trying to do as much- so we get this pure, deeply creepy focalization through this twisted mind, while the other sections are trying to handle all the layers of Mulder's and Scully's characterization, relationship, dialogue, and the unfolding of the investigation. (Plus things (like the frequent references to particular episodes) that date it & sometimes feel clunky.) There's this wonderfully-crafted plot, with a well-drawn setting, good details, good dialogue, and for the most part it moves along really well, but sometimes it gets weighed down by things that might better be trimmed, like redundant-feeling explanations of what's going on in Mulder's or Scully's head. The Thomas sections aren't carrying that weight.
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That explains a lot, actually.
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Although there is wit in the author's commentaries I feel that the banter seems a bit, what?, maybe *raw.* It's probably a result of taking the ship so for granted after twenty years or whatever, but when Mulder gets funny here I just can't hear sly DD saying it. "I've gotten lucky already...."Not that way." "Alt.sex.FBI.redheads." Keeping his knowledge of French secret from "the French people'? It all sounds pretty high-school awkward. However, when M tells S that ( ... )
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Some of the banter was a little immature sounding. Gosh, if banter isn't the hardest thing to write for them. They are so smart and so witty on the show. Not all of us measure up to Kel.
This was indeed a well-plotted casefile, up to Syntax6 standards in my book, minus the MSR that's practically mandatory now.
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Here you go: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Oklahoma
On the series most of the time when Mulder is working, he's intense, he's focused, he's obsessed but he's completely functional.There is nothing in canon--except "Grotesque," which is only one episode, to support their fanon yet it was taken as gospel for a long, long time. It was a very popular story that influenced characterization in fic.
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