A Moment in the Sun

Fanfiction
Title:	Moment in the Sun
Author(s):	prufrock's love
Date(s):	2000
Length:	652K
Genre(s):	het, AU
Fandom(s):	The X-Files
Relationship(s):
External Links:	part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5
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Moment in the Sun is an X-Files story by prufrock's love.

Reactions and Reviews

2009

It's a historical AU, which is a genre I find, conceptually, a bit absurd. And, honestly, the AU's premise (Mulder is a retired ballplayer! Scully is a snarky nurse!) does not sound like a good thing. I usually avoid fics like this, but I tried this one, as I was going through the site and saving some of the stories I like best from it....

There are four elements that really work for me in the story. First, the socio-historical texture of it. The 1950s setting is drawn in ways that make it seem entirely convincing, and there aren't deviations from that timeframe for the sake of plot or character.... What makes it so convincing is that you aren't watching what would happen if the Mulder, Scully, and auxilaries we know and love were plunked down in the 1950s; you're watching what would happen if the people we know had grown and developed within the landscape of the late Depression and World War II. (Imagine a half-Jewish Mulder liberating Dachau, or that the reason we don't know Charlie Scully is because he died at Pearl Harbor.)

While this was one of the highlights of the story, it lead to some moments of early cognative dissonance for me. Part of what I love about the universe of the X-Files is that neither Mulder nor Scully seem tied to dominant heteronormative conceptions of family life or sexual mores; in fact, traditional suburban family life is portrayed repeatedly as pathological (see Chimera or Arcadia, for instance). But the Mulder, especially, of Moment in the Sun is much more tied to narratives of convential family structure and to sexual convention. Of course he is; it's 1953. (In this light, Scully's reluctance around those norms is even more interesting, and I think entirely in character.) Although it threw me, because my Mulder and Scully are, you know, queer radicals who just don't know it, it really works. (Side note: the sex seemed very historically appropriate as well: it's not that what people are doing that's any different than now, it's now they think about it.)

The second element is idiosyncratic: I, like any New Yorker, am a sucker for geographical specificity. (See, for instance, the way that Fountains of Wayne's Sick Day has made them one of my favorite bands, merely for the line "Lead us not into Penn Station.") And the New York of this AU is really perfect--Mulder stuck in traffic on Jorelmon and avoiding shoppers from the Macy's on Livingston, that Will's a student at Packer, of of all places, hot dogs at Coney Island and skating at Wollman Rink. It conjures images so familiar to me that I simply love reading about them. (Especially because Brooklyn Heights doesn't look like it's aged a day since the 1920s, so I can literally picture it.) I don't know if Prufrock's a New Yorker, but, if not, she did her homework.

The third element, which I think is the clincher, is the mythology. Remember that the X-Files mythology extends back to the Roswell crash and the Nazi genetic experiments; by the time this story is set, the Consortium's activities should be in full swing. And they are: the reproductive experiments we know about are being duplicated in this time, with catastrophic effects for the characters we love (as exist in canon). This story is actually set in the X-Files universe; just forty years earlier. It's compelling for exactly that reason.

Finally, the characters. A ton of regulars show up, in obvious roles (the Mulder and Scully families are as expected, the Lone Gunmen are Mulder's agent, lawyer, and accountant, AD Skinner is Arthur Dales's boss, CSM smokes and is evil in the Plaza's bar, Phoebe Green as Mulder's more than a little insane ex-wife, Diana Fowley and her son, Gibson; Josh Exley even shows up for a few). Their transformations into sensical characters from the time period are excellent. I am also a total sucker for well-done kidfic, which this is--both Mulder and Scully have kids at the beginning of the story, and it's believable and heartbreaking and funny. The characterization of minor characters is beautiful, and Mulder and Scully, despite being transformed by their new time period, are themselves in recognizable ways.

In any case, it's a great story, I think--well-written, well-plotted, historically nuanced. I'd love to hear what you think of it--or of other fic that works for you despite the odd premise. I'm a sucker for pulling off the bizarre, really.

I'm on to part two of 'A Moment in the Sun' now and this one is much better [than Paracelsus ] - I recognise these guys! The way she's reworking the mytharc is really cool too, and even though I've never been to New York I can really feel the sense of place. This really does just feel like the series set a few decades earlier, rather than the bizarro-world of a lot of historical AUs....I think the main issue for me is that TXF is so incredibly context dependent. I mean, everyone and everything is so reliant on historical background anyway, but Mulder and Scully without that weird '90s diffused paranoia just isn't right. I think 'Moment' is working for me because I get a similar vibe about the 50s; the post-nuclear world and the Cold War and such (I honestly used to have creepy '50s nightmares after reading about nuclear warfare as a child). Whereas post-American Civil War? Uh, no. I also have masses of love for anything that really runs with Mulder's Jewishness....

Let me say that A Moment in the Sun was the clincher fic to me, the fic that got me from reading xf-fic for fun to getting into fandom in earnest. It actually, got me to love the show so much more. It has all the elements of what would constitute a fic I go back to over and over again (and I have, countless times until I can basically tell you what line is coming next). It has all the elements that fulfills my ultimate fic guilty pleasure - my favorite characters married, with children, in a family. And second of all, she really makes Mulder and Scully her own in this fic, unlike her other AUs, which I still enjoy. William and Emily are wonderfully believable as a spoiled teenager and a little girl who's vivacious despite her rehabilitating illness, and the Gunmen are given a much bigger role. I just love Frohike as Mulder's press agent, and want to pet Byers on the head. Moment in the Sun is really Pru at her best.

Everything you said about Moment in the Sun: YES, THAT. Except that I'm not normally a get-them-married type; it works here because of the 50s-vibe, which requires it. I like 'em shacked up in actual reality. *g* Also, Mulder proposing every ten minutes: THIS EXACTLY. That happens in my universe, too--Scully's just snarkier about turning him down.

The thing that does annoy me, just a little, is that Scully's fate as a doctor-in-training is left hanging. Now, I know she has obligations to her family, but Scully in my book, whatever day and age would do her damnedest to establish herself as Mulder's equal. But that's just my naive feminist heart, and it is a minor quibble.

I just love how Pru is able to create a snarky, gawky, dorky Mulder voice all the way through. My favorite proposal is the 'suave, 'if you get pregnant' proposal because BWAH I CAN TOTALLY SEE THAT HAPPENING. Pru gets Mulder's stubborn puppy dog nature like no other writer I know. In fact, I venture to say that Moment in the Sun actually helped me see Mulder differently when I watched the show, because previously I just dismissed him as a hopeless dreamer, who is yanno, such a man when it comes to him just leaving people behind for his own personal quest.

Either way, I'm so totally happy someone loves Moment as much as I do, for exactly the same reasons.

Pru is strange all-around. Like you say, her stories are so powerful. I don't always like them, but I can never stop reading. There's something seductively CRAZY about her AUs and her spin-off-from-canon stories, and I've had more fun reading them than most anything. Her writing, and her vision, is so distinctive that my sister and I have picked out some of the more glaring themes:

Scully is usually badly characterized. Sometimes you recognize her better than other times - but she's never quite the living and breathing Scully I know from the show and from the best Scully writers.

Scully ends up pregnant, in a coma, abducted, dead, traumatized, sexually frozen, exceedingly nubile, and have I mentioned pregnant. Now, "Mulder and Scully With KIDS!" is one of those fic things that I have a guilty taste for, but Pru has something like a fixation. They are magically fertile, and Mulder VERY appreciates his own virility.

Along these lines, I've come to think that her historical AUs are all experiments in sexual history - just what you touched on in Moment in the Sun. Her Civil War story (Paracelsus), her medieval story (Hiraeth) - and then her mytharcs always have it, too (the 13th Sign, The Golden Year). They're soaked in it, and it's always ballsy. The alternative-canon ones go something like: Mulder has been cuckolded! Scully gets raped! Scully has her period and Mulder obsesses over it! Scully has a stalker who wants Mulder! Mulder gets with someone who looks exactly like Scully! oh, and: a casefile with pornstars and snuff films!

If her Scully is weak, though, her Mulder is very strong. Very macho, somehow, and very obsessive, but very consistent and present. It's not surprising to me that, since Pru was so secretive, people thought she might be a man, or she might be a publishing author. (I use the feminine pronoun just because I decided.) Her writing isn't the most lyrical thing on the planet, but it's totally fearless, and her stories are confident where a lot of fic hedges along. There's just something arresting about these disturbing stories where all hell breaks loose and our characters always come out on the other end passionately in love and pumping out babies. it's kind of the anti-X-Files.

As I've been thinking more about Pru, it's been occurring to me that she really isn't writing fanfic in most cases. Moment in the Sun stands out in being so intricately canon-tied, despite the fact that it's a historical AU. But her Mulder and Scully are incredibly inconsistent from fic to fic. It's much closer to original fic than real fanfic that develops and develops and develops a relationship to original canon. I'm not sure if the Mulder is so consistent as you say; the Mulder of Cycles and the Mulder of, let's say, Negative Utopia, are pretty far apart, and not just because of what happens in the stories.

since Pru was so secretive, people thought she might be a man, or she might be a publishing author.

See, I'm not sure why "publishing author" would mean you have to hide--just get a fake email address! Not hard, even in the (later, at least) 90s! But, you know, I could see the man thing, somehow. Interesting to know what the talk was.

I think playing with the sexual/reproductive narrative in XF is one of the best things one can do--because it is there, but canon keeps forgetting it's there, so there's a lot to be done with it. Anyway, it's territory I keep coming back to myself, so I'm sympathetic to Pru's obsession.

2002

I know not everyone is enamored of historical AU, but I love it. As long as the characterizations are on target, I can buy just about any scenario. And pru's characters (not just Mulder and Scully, either) are so recognizable to the reader that it's easy to fall into the timeline of the story. In this case, it's the autumn of 1953 in New York City. Drawn with amazing dexterity, the sights and sounds come alive in the imagination. Mulder, to all outward appearances, is the typical aging athlete; and he himself has sometimes fallen prey to stereotypical behavior - drinking and womanizing with the best of them. But it's what's inside that counts - and with the help of a mysterious nurse named Dana Scully, he finally finds what he's looking for. Sweet without being sappy, this romance is one for the ages.

I know not everyone is enamored of historical AU, but I love it. As long as the characterizations are on target, I can buy just about any scenario. And pru's characters (not just Mulder and Scully, either) are so recognizable to the reader that it's easy to fall into the timeline of the story. In this case, it's the autumn of 1953 in New York City. Drawn with amazing dexterity, the sights and sounds come alive in the imagination. Mulder, to all outward appearances, is the typical aging athlete; and he himself has sometimes fallen prey to stereotypical behavior - drinking and womanizing with the best of them. But it's what's inside that counts - and with the help of a mysterious nurse named Dana Scully, he finally finds what he's looking for. Sweet without being sappy, this romance is one for the ages.

2015

The other noteworthy baseball-themed fic is prufrock love’s “A Moment in the Sun.” It’s another in her series of long, angst-filled historical AUs, except this one reworks the X-Files mytharc, setting it during the early fifties in New York City. Mulder is a major league ballplayer at the end of his career, divorced with a kid. Scully is an RN and a single parent, too. All of the usual suspects appear, including the Lonegunmen, who play his agent, his lawyer and his accountant. While this is not the kind of story I usually gravitate to, Amalnahurriyeh wrote such a compelling review that I had to give it a try. My bottom line: prufrock’s love knocks it out of the ballpark, as always. The link is to her Author’s page at Gossamer because it’s the most current version, but it’s still on her old site on reocities, too.

My understanding of prufrock’s love’s historical romances is that they are all about previous incarnations of Mulder and Scully; however, I have never been in a position to confirm this. I confess that I am not a fan of the genre so these fics are not huge favorites of mine, but they are very well done and wildly popular, especially “Paracelsus,” the novel set during the Civil War. Her take on the characters has nothing to do with Sullivan Biddle et al. I guess that means “Paracelsus” is her fixit fic for TFWID. “Paracelsus” is the second novel in the cycle. The first is “Hiraeth,” which is set in North Wales in 1215. The third is “A Moment in the Sun,” set in New York, New York in 1953, and it’s my favorite of the three.