Primal Sympathy

Fanfiction
Title:	Primal Sympathy
Author(s):	Lydia Bower
Date(s):	1990s
Length:
Genre:	cancer arc, MSR
Fandom:	The X-Files
External Links:	online here and here
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Primal Sympathy is an X-Files story by Lydia Bower.

Summary

"In order to find a cure for Scully's cancer, Mulder fakes his own death without her knowledge. Once reunited, they embark on a journey of discovery that may end up costing them their lives."

dust jacket

Reactions and Reviews

After browsing thru many, many sites one story kept cacthing my eye in the recommendations..

So the first fan fic I read was " Primal Sympathy" by Lydia Bower..

And its still a favorite :0)

Is there anyone left in the fic world who hasn't read this story? Probably not. And what could I possibly say that hasn't already been said? Not much, I guess. So let me give you a reason to *re-read* it, okay? Hmm... maybe I could say that this is my favorite Lydia Bower story, one that I read at least three times a year. Maybe I could say that this is, IMO, the best cancer-arc fic ever written. The scene where Scully punches Mulder is certainly worth reading again. Or the one scene with George's POV where you just have to smile along with him... or the scene with an uncertain Mulder in nothing but sweaty running shorts... Skinner at his lock-jawed, but tender best.... If there's one fic that deserves to be called a classic, this is it. Absolutely perfect. Lose yourself in it once again.

Set post-Gethsemane, I read this fic while it was coming out as a WIP during the summer hiatus before season 5 began. The PTB were making us wait until November for the new season, so several very talented authors took up the challenge of arriving at their own conclusion as to how Scully’s cancer, which had recently metastasized, could possibly be cured, as well as how viewers were supposed to reconcile the idea of Mulder’s “suicide” with the fact that he wasn’t likely to actually be dead. Lydia Bower’s tale is, in my mind, one of the best (if not the best) of these stories.

This story is not the nice and neat rewind we got with Redux, where Scully knew all along that Mulder had faked his death. Lydia took the despair that Gillian projected on screen and interpreted that to mean that Scully was unaware of Mulder’s plans (and in this story, Mulder’s plan is a lot more carefully thought out and plausible than him breaking into the pentagon on a whim). She also depicts the ramifications of these decisions in all their hear-rending, angry turmoil. Although this is an MSR fic (with some damn fine smut), as Lydia says on her web page, “These stories are not the "hearts and flowers" type. I much prefer to write Mulder and Scully as the flawed, less-than-perfect human beings they are.” And they are so much better that way

Read it because it’s a well plotted resolution to a story arc that badly deserved proper resolution. Read it because Lydia’s characterizations (especially of Mulder) are dead on. Read it because it’s just a damn fine story.

As I always do, when I am having trouble with a work of fan fiction, I re-watched the episodes that it referenced, "Gethsemane" and "Demons." There were so many disturbing elements in this story that I decided I needed to try to put myself back in time to when these episodes first aired, to try to have a better sense of the atmosphere from whence they were created.

In "Demons," Mulder's state of mind has been established as desperately reckless. He hardly seems capable of managing his own life, let alone putting into play the sort of conspiracy, involving months of planning, that Bower describes in her story. I also have a difficult time believing that he could even consider permitting the creation of a sacrificial clone of himself, for the purpose of this plot. Whether the clone was capable of complex thought or not, he walked into the apartment, he had nerves, he could feel pain. He could suffer. This was a murder and Mulder would have known that. So would Scully. I believe she would have been repulsed by the act and would not have hesitated to let Mulder know this. Despite her alienation from the Church, which is established in "Gethsemane," Scully still has a strict moral code and I do not believe she could so easily accept embryonic stem cell treatment, even to save her own life. Both Scully and Mulder are idealists; these actions seem far too pragmatic to be consistent with their characters as I understand them.

I would have cut the sex scene by half at least, or even eliminated it altogether. It strains credibility to suggest that a woman who just had just been released from the hospital, only to undergo an experimental cancer treatment that had her nearly comatose, would have any interest in sex, let alone sex four times in one night. I know this is a convention of this genre, but as a nurse who has actually cared for cancer patients, and as the wife of a cancer survivor, this sort of unreality disturbs me. I never like perfect first time sex scenes anyway, with their swooning, simultaneous climaxes, but this was one of the most unbelievable I have ever encountered.

So what did I like about this story? I like the poem. I like the idea that Mulder might have unconsciously left it out for Scully to discover. I thought that Scully's emotional state after Mulder's death was well-written and convincing. I like that she knocked him out cold when he came unannounced to her apartment.(Go, Scully!) I liked having Skinner as Mulder's co-conspirator, although, I thought the Alpha male posturing between the two men over Scully was silly. I thought this was an interesting, though highly flawed, attempt to create a plausible scenario behind the events of "Gethsemane." Re-watching the penultimate scene of the episode, of Mulder sitting in his apartment, playing the old tape of the UFO conference, tears streaming down his face, left this reader to conclude that this story failed to account for the events of canon, especially the emotional unraveling of Fox Mulder over the worsening illness of Dana Scully, his partner and his closest friend.

So, what are your thoughts? This seems like quite a controversial story to me, given the killing of the clone and the stem-cell research. Consistent with canon, inconsistent? Does it matter?

This one didn't really work for me, either. I am disappointed, because I was ridiculously excited by the idea of Alpha male posturing over Scully. (What can I say, it's a guilty pleasure...)

My general conclusion is that when reading stories, style matters to me a lot more than anything else. I found the writing way too choppy, not engaging enough, and it just didn't pull me in. Same thing that happened with another story a few weeks back--I don't remember the title but that was one of your favorites.

When this story begins, it is very close to events as they are described in canon. From what you've said in your review, I gather than the eventual divergences are pretty dramatic. But to start with I felt that the story didn't give us much insight into the characters beyond what we could gather onscreen, so I didn't feel that it was necessarily adding much value to the events of "Gethsemane."

Probably, to be fair, I should have read all the way through it. I would like to be able to debate the character and plot points that are clearly brought up in this story. But to be honest it just didn't pull me in that much.

So, even the thought of the alpha male posturing to come didn't spurn you on until the end? Drat! I thought the style was, as finistere described "Five Years and One Night," typical of the fan fiction of its day. This was written even earlier, back in 1997, I believe, during the hiatus between Gethsemane and Redux. It's vintage. In any case, the style didn't bother me, and I nearly always feel the need to read to the end of a story. I love it when I find a work of fan fiction with style I can admire and even learn from, but it isn't my highest priority. My reading is very plot-driven, and this had an interesting, if imperfect, plot line. I can easily imagine myself back in the day, becoming obsessed with reading the next chapter, as I have on occasion, with Syntax6's serial novels for example, or, more recently, Anjou's latest. That doesn't mean I won't be disappointed by the end, as I certainly was with this story. As I think I mentioned back in my journal, this story was enormously popular, and I think there was even a group of fans who named themselves "The Primal Screamers." Heck, for all I know, there could still be some Screamers out there. (Waves at them from the viewpoint of history.)

My conclusion is that the story fails because it doesn't sustain the ambiguity--both in plot terms and in moral terms--of the original episode. You would think that it actually introduced more ambiguity, given the addition of all of the genetics-related issues. But there are quite a few things that don't bother the characters nearly as much as they ought to.

• The creation and murder of Mulder's clone.

• The use of fetal tissue--and Scully's fetal tissue at that--as a cure for her cancer. (After the revelation of this, we have an abortive romantic scene between Mulder and Scully, and so the issue of whether or not she's going to allow the drug to be used never really comes up.)

• The fact that Scully is the mother of the Crawfords.

Beyond this, we have some character-based issues that didn't ring quite right to me. Scully was entirely right to object to Mulder and Skinner playing God on her behalf and without her knowledge. This bit seemed entirely true to form.

I didn't get very far with this one at all, I'm afraid. I started reading in good faith, but the writing didn't grab me and I found myself skimming paragraphs of dialogue and description waiting for plot points. And then I made the mistake of coming over here and reading this comment by you and I just thought 'nope, don't want to read any more' - Mulder creates and murders a clone of himself? Scully is OK with this? - Nope. Do not want. That's so wildly out of character (and sickening to boot) that I don't have any interest in reading it. And I'm not thrilled at the prospect of unrealistic four-times-in-one-night-and-multiple-orgasms-a-plenty sex with a recent cancer survivor either. I probably should have give this one more of a fair try, but life is short and there's too much good fic out there I'd rather be reading. I'd love to know why this one is such a fan favourite. I guess back in the day people were just desperate for any explanation to the Season 4 cliffhanger. I can understand that I guess. But if I was reading this then I'd be hoping like hell it hadn't correctly predicted where the show was heading.

Yes, I found it disturbing because the author didn't take into account the ramifications of these acts during the story. It is one thing to have your characters do wildly OOC things during a story. But, if you do that you need to follow through. I think Mulder would have been shaken to his core by the act of murdering his clone. I think Scully would have been horrified. I think this would have had a major impact on their relationship and I don't think they would have been jumping into bed together while they sorted this messy situation out, either. I don't think she would have been fan-girling his behavior and swooning over being taken care of by her hero. Yuck! These objections did not seem to occur to the fans of this story, however. There was a lot of off-stage tidying up at the end, which always bothers me, too. By comparison, the treatment of Scully's sexuality during the cancer arc is so tender and realistic in Syntax6's Isometry.

I've always been a fan of Lydia Bower's stories, and when I found this story I became an even bigger fan. This story, like her others, has a great plot to go along with the romance. In this story, Mulder goes to great lengths to get a cure for Scully's cancer....the whole thing is wonderful. I stayed up late just to reread it!