Rainbow Sign

Fanfiction
Title:	Rainbow Sign
Author(s):	Vehemently
Date(s):	2009?
Length:
Genre(s):
Fandom(s):	The X-Files
Relationship(s):
External Links:	on Dreamwidth
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Rainbow Sign is an X-Files story by Vehemently.

Reactions and Reviews

Oh my goodness, I loved this. It's always such a treat for me to find a gem that I've never read before.

One Son was such a strange time for the Mulder/Scully dynamic. I liked how this story emphasized the personal distance between them, but still had them presenting a united front to others. They work well together, first and foremost, even when their personal lives are in shambles.

Not a word seemed out of place. In the face of unimaginable horror, Mulder and Scully are outwardly businesslike, matter-of-fact. This is what they do.

I love Vehemently's writing but somehow I'd missed this story. It fits into canon. Mulder and Scully both seem perfectly in character. The writer likes both characters, just the way the are. I am less keen on stories that have a not-so-hidden agenda: get them into bed together, turn them into each other's soul mates, turn the series into a romance novel, turn it into a sit-com. There is nothing wrong with that kind of fic; it's just not what I'm in the mood for lately. I'm in the mood for fic that extends canon. I want to read excellent genfic casefiles and x-files. I'm even okay with non-explicit MSR, as long as it's not the sole focus of the story.

I'm something of a sucker for post-eps. It goes back to my early days of watching the show when it first aired, taping everything on my VCR and immediately rushing to rewind and rewatch the important bits. There was always a sense of "more, I want more!" I like post-eps that actually expand on the episode a bit and don't just use the preceding events as a setup for Mulder and Scully to fall into bed. (Don't get me wrong-- I like those too, but it depends on the episode in question, and to me One Son was never gonna be the moment for those two.)

The Two Fathers/One Son arc was such a game-changer, and yet the events of that episode never really seem to come up again, which provides all manner of fodder for fic. Mulder and Scully wind up playing cutesy in Arcadia immediately afterwards, with absolutely no mention of the fact that the conspiracy as they know it is dead, and, more shocking to me, that Mulder gave up. He was ready to throw in the towel and line up with the people who got the world into this mess to begin with. Thank god Scully had more sense.

This story did a fine job of picking up the pieces, and I particularly liked the way Vehemently handled the M&S interactions. They don't bare their souls to each other. There is no harping on whether Scully is genuinely suspicious of Fowley or just jealous. There are no resolutions. All we see are Mulder and Scully, at yet another dark juncture in their lives, doing the work they do best. This sort of stark, matter-of-fact style would probably begin to grate on me in a longer piece, but for a post-ep like this I found it perfect.

In some ways, this story works as meta, or rather episode commentary, or well, a logical extrapolation of threads dropped or tangled in canon. It has me thinking about the episode tag as a "genre," and the role they play at different points in the life cycle of a fandom. This one is very well written & insightful, but requires relatively detailed recall of the episode in question and its series context in order to be most legible. This isn't necessarily a criticism, just an observation.

This is a tight, grim, well-managed story that did little for me. Everything was so very, very professional. But of course it sums up the messy context of the show and the way our guys handled it.

There were very strong moments. Jeff Spender's fatal shooting. (Mulder's despised brother. For an enriching compliment, I'd rec Kel's "Hollow Day.") And then Mulder's realization that Diana Fowley had eluded this holocaust after inviting him in. (Do I have that right?) He is agonized, but silent. The lightest moment was when M escaped a drunken conventioneer by claiming to be traveling to an actuarial meeting. Scully gives him credit.

I am not critical; this is a piece of fiction that confronts what the show never did confront. I thought it was good. But its tone was solid and dark and its activity moved in a straight, predictable line. And I'm a pretty hard sell on stories I can't dance to.

I did think the writing and characterization were good and it did make me want to read more of her work, so what gives, right? Sexiness and/or humor do often tip the balance for me too, but I'm almost afraid to try to pin it down better than that because I probably won't get it (whatever it is) exactly right and/or I'll end up contradicting myself. Just as there are stories that I really appreciate but don't love-love (like this one), there are also stories that I really like even while acknowledging that they are basically guilty pleasure stories.

It may have to do with my relatively recent discovery of and subsequent absorption into fanfic. I literally did not know it existed until about a year and a half ago. Since then, I have read an enormous amount of fic (I'm trying to catch up, people!) and re-watched not that many episodes. (Given some free time, I will usually choose to read rather than watch.) I did recently start rewatching from the very beginning, which has been fun but it's gonna take a looong while to get to one son :). But anyway, this means I have a whole lot of fic in my head and not as much canon. So, possibly I am just plain ill-equipped to like this story as much as I could/should/would.

Maybe you could make a quiz, of the sort: rate the following stories on a scale of 1-5, and then the output would be your (well, my) x-files fanfic type. Then we would know. just kidding.