Other People

Fanfiction
Title:	Other People
Author(s):	Dawn Pares
Date(s):	1999
Length:	3955 words
Genre(s):
Fandom(s):	The X-Files
Relationship(s):
External Links:	online here
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Other People is an X-Files story by Dawn Pares.

Reactions and Reviews

This is another story that's stayed with me over the years. It's a version of "Monday" as told from the point-of-view of Pam Driscoll rather than any of the XF regulars. In Other People by Dawn Pares, we get glimpses of the XF world from the outside, and we see the many other paths where Pam's desperation has taken her. Powerful, stark writing here, with a strong character voice and images that are hard to shake.

"Monday" is the sixth-season X-Files episode about the repeating day. Everyone in it is trapped in a time loop, over and over and over again, and only one woman is aware of it. Pam watches this day, over and over and over again, with all its death, destruction, and grief; stuck in that day, she never gets to heal, to forget, to hope. "Other People" is Pam's story.

Ah, one of my favorite stories EVER -- and about one of my favorites episodes. It's also one of those that encouraged me to write XFfic from secondary- and tertiary-characters' POV, because it made me see that their sideways perspective could shed a very different light on the XF universe as a whole. Damn, I love this story. Thanks for reccing it.

I love this story, always have. I love Pam Driscoll following the various people from the bank, trying to determine who might hold the key to halting the time loop. Love that she examines every possibility except for herself, because it's clear she always thinks of herself last:

He asked me out and I said yes, because I could tell that he wanted me more than I wanted to say no.

I also really appreciated the theme of missed (human) connections that runs throughout the fic. Mulder and Scully and their lonely separate lives. Bernard loves Pam but Pam loves Skinner. Skinner pines for lost Mulder and Scully. Marianne had never met Irene's parents, and now she never will.

It's a fascinating, imaginative little fic, filled with keenly observed detail.

I love how she observes not only each of the other characters but also their relationships to each other, most obviously with Skinner who clearly values them dearly and laments not being able prove himself to them, particularly Scully. Skinner's character has always tried to be on the side of the greater good but often doesn't manage to live up to his own ideals. Mulder has faith in him, Scully trusts no one.

I love stories told from the point of view of someone other than the major characters. This had a real melancholy feeling to it, and a sense of futility, which I think fits well with the episode.

We always try to tell a story that makes the world make sense, even when it's impossible. And we always make ourselves the center of the drama--but in this case, she was right.

"And I love stories told from the point of view of someone other than the major characters. This had a real melancholy feeling to it, and a sense of futility, which I think fits well with the episode."

I do, too. I particularly love Kel's stories in that genre, but really, it's my favorite next to casefiles, of course.

She captured the mood of the episode and made it feel more real than the teleplay, which was playing it for laughs much of the time.

I never know how to feel about Pam. Monday is one of my favorite episodes, and I have given a great deal of thought to her character. Pares really captured her nature in my opinion. Pam was strong and willing to do what it took, but she was also very cowardly and scared. I sometimes wonder if she knew what she needed to do and tried to do something where she could live.

I enjoyed the broken details about the secondary characters. She has known most of the people in the bank intimately, but she cares so little about most of them that she can't remember their names. She seems so indifferent, and I wonder if that's her personality or what living in 'Monday' has done to her. I think it may be her personality considering how she started dating Bernard. She just goes with the flow of things, and maybe that is why it took so long for her to end it.

"I stopped bringing alcohol because my headaches were getting too bad, and every day the same hangover". That's a pretty sweet detail.

The story's tone was pretty melancholy, but it worked and I liked it. Like the episode, 'Other People' really made me feel for the Pam character.

Pam did come off as a sort of defeatist outsider in the show, but being trapped in this surreal time-warp would send her into an extended state of shock. Her feelings are deadened because reality has literally become a trap, and although she takes a cautious interest in those who are trapped with her she cannot help them and absorbs the horror they all feel. It's a zero sum life, and really not even that--just a weird, unnatural, hamster-wheel existence. She is probably already half crazy. But the courage to end it comes slowly, as it would for most of us.

This is the kind of angst I can only stand in short pieces that are cleverly written. Fortunately, Other People is both.

I thought the actress was very fine, and it adds to the aforementioned melancholy that we know she later succumbed to cancer.

“Other People” is from Pam’s POV and continues the story after the building blows up. I love that Pares gives her a voice and a last name—she’s the heroine of the story, after all. This fic is my head canon for the episode.