Skin (X-Files story)

Fanfiction
Title:	Skin
Author(s):	Annie Sewell-Jennings
Date(s):	2000 or before
Length:	956K
Genre:	MSR, AU, Profiler!Mulder
Fandom:	The X-Files
External Links:
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Skin is an X-Files MSR story by Annie Sewell-Jennings.

Summaries

A fan looking for this story in 2001 wrote: "I am trying to find a story about M/S set in the Carolinas in an A/U. She is working as a coroner and he a profiler working under the guy from Grotesque... There is a murder case and a hurricane....she lives in a yellow house...

It was recced at xf book club in 2014 with this introduction: "I'm not much of an AU person. A lot of what drew me into the X Files was the dynamic between Mulder and Scully in their particular set of circumstances. That said, I've been hankering to revisit an AU that I remember reading and enjoying back when it was originally published. It may actually have been the first AU I ever read. I thought of it again recently and wondered how it would hold up to a reread all these years later.

"Skin" has a pretty standard set up. What if Scully caved to familial pressure and never joined the FBI? What if Mulder never reopened the X Files?

This story occasionally makes its way onto "classics" lists, although I don't see it recced as often as some other AUs. Possibly because it's very long, possibly because it's somewhat harder to find (it is not archived at Gossamer), or possibly because I've viewed it too fondly through the lens of nostalgia. The author is probably best known for "Erosion," which I have never read, but which has a reputation as one of the saddest MSR fics ever written.

This is a long one. Novel length, MSR."

Reactions and Reviews

Alternate universe story. This was recced to me by Jerbs, who is also picky like me when it comes to fanfic, and is WONDERFUL. What if there was an alternate universe where Mulder never left the VCU and Scully lived in South Carolina as the city's coroner? What if their "other lives" in the "other universe" started coming back to them in dreams? This is a REALLY long fic - 37 chapters - but I stayed up all night just to finish it.

In a world where Mulder and Scully have never met, fate intervenes and brings two worlds colliding in the city of Charleston, as a vicious murderer reigns and a storm approaches. It's pure poetry and a must-read. Beautiful.

Even if I didn't have an intimate knowledge of the story's setting, I still would have pounced on it as soon as Annie posted. Because come on, it's *Annie* -- an author who writes visceral, gorgeous work that often leaves me gasping with its power. (Her sense of humor is equally capable of making me gasp with laughter. ;-) Here she surpasses herself with sheer craftsmanship and imagination -- it's the kind of novel you should curl up with over the long summer days, letting yourself be woven into the tale and carried along as it builds to its stunning climax. Even if you already think so, it bears repeating: Annie's one of the best writers we've got out there.

The prologue is terrible. If "Skin" hadn't been posted here, I'd never get past the first paragraph.

Too many adjectives. My first impression is that this isn't badly written, per say, but it is certainly overwritten. I feel like I'm drowning in a sea of descriptions. A cerulean, bejeweled sea.

I think the most interesting depictions of profiler!Mulder combine the dark, draining, depressing aspect of the whole business with the rush he gets from his own proficiency at it. Like, the fact that he enjoys it is part of why he also hates it sometimes. Conflict and such!

And plus there's the fact that while he abandoned the BSU for the bigger picture of the X-Files - actually searching for his sister rather than proxies - I often like stories where he takes a profiler "vacation" later on, because solving a mystery that's actually solveable is a relief of sorts, even if the findings are grim.

Of course in this story we have an X-less Mulder, but I still take the view that Mulder doesn't unilaterally hate profiling - his demons/passion/quest just led him elsewhere.

I mean, for all of his self deprecation and voluntary isolation, I think the man does enjoy being competent, in and of itself. He's got I securities, yes, but he's also arrogant - and not without cause.

(Also, I would like to state that I don't think tropes and tropiness are inherently bad - although perhaps individual ones might be - and creative interpretations and combinations of tropes are how genres grow, evolve and play with revel in themselves.)

Okay, not sure I'm making sense anymore, so I'll stop!

I am halfway through, and I am having trouble too. As I said elsewhere, I have no problem with long, and I tend to like au msr. But. There are just too many words for the amount of content. Lots and lots of descriptive language. I have never read so many adjectives in one place that mean red/brown/blue/hazel in the context of hair and eyes. I guess all this description is supposed to help create atmosphere...the storm, the romance, the weird cross-over with their "other" lives, but it's just overdone.

This story is purely over-the top nostalgia for me. I carried it with me for hours, on floppy disk, when I travelled back to my childhood home, so I could continue reading it after my grandmother's funeral. The XFs was still on the air, the story was medicine to console. Even now, while I see all the flaws in the writing, I just think how grateful I was that another fan took so much time out of her life to write it, and that I had Mulder and Scully, in whatever form, with me during a bad time (I grew up in a rural area, nobody had internet back then).

It's nostalgic for me, too. I think I'm more willing to cut it some slack because of that-- I can still very clearly recall the first time I read it. I was a starry-eyed teen back then, and it all seemed so terribly romantic; the southern setting, the burgeoning threat from the storm, the sense that Mulder and Scully were destined to know each other...

Although I do remember, even back then, finding the two realities annoying. It jarred me right out of the story.

Anyway, I find more and more that I am disappointed when I revisit something I loved back in the day, and this story is no exception. It's funny how tastes change.

I totally get the nostalgia factor, anon. I feel like a lot of what we are picking out as fandom cliches were not cliches at the time the story was written (or maybe are not cliches if you don't read a lot of fanfic, but I think everyone here does...) I think I'm probably among the readers here who are more appreciative (tolerant? :) of very descriptive prose. Those in purple glass houses, etc. But I found this really long and with a lot of superfluous story.

I did like the casefile and maybe would have enjoyed it more without the background of the characters being in an alternate universe to the show. The serial killer was interesting although I'm not the hugest fan of profiler Mulder (honestly, he just seems like a smug asshole. He corrects a police officer who says that a child brought a blanket over for a victim because they didn't want her to get cold by saying that no, the child brought the blanket to cover the victim's body because she was naked and when the police officer wonders how he knows that he says "I know how children work" (seriously, Mulder, do you? Is it even relevant to the story other than to make you seem like an overbearing douche? I guess that's the cliche of profilers though)).

I thought it was funny that given wendelah1 and femmenerd's discussion of Scully's name that the only person who refers to her by her first name is the serial killer.

I thought the story moved way faster in the last third, although I skimmed all the sex scenes after the first one and most of the dream sequences, otherwise I'd still be reading this sucker next year. I think I was kind of burned out by the last few chapters though so I didn't really enjoy the story about the storm.

I have no right contributing a comment because I haven't read Skin even once, although I did start it a long time ago. I remember Scully of the lovely red hair almost wrecking her bike staring at Mulder of the lovely dark eyes. So I'm pretty sure I know why I stopped. When you actually hope the heroine crashes her bicycle it's best to retreat to a different fic and chill. I hate overwriting. I think it's bad writing. I shouldn't feel hostility for the writer, but at my age I hate wasting time and am presently involved in a 900 page SF epic which is barely earning its way (The Hyperion Cantos, if you care.) I'm betting Skin could easily have been cut in half by a beta. That's what editors are for, people!

Temper tantrum over. It is important, though, for even an amateur, just-learning kind of fictioneer to weigh words carefully. Test and examine each one as you go. It's a difficult way to write (some prefer to do it in rewrite) but you owe it even to a loyal beta not to waste precious hours of recreational time.

Someone mentioned Scully referring to herself as "Scully." It reminded me of a totally awful fic in which Scully's hair is referred to as "luscious," "titian," lots of forgotten but complimentary adjectives. By--wait for it--Scully herself!

I am owning my inner brat.