The Best Lies (X-Files story by Julie Fortune)

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Fanfiction
Title: The Best Lies
Author(s): Julie Fortune
Date(s):
Length: 31,000 words
Genre(s):
Fandom(s): The X-Files
Relationship(s):
External Links: The Best Lies (text), Archived version
The Best Lies by Julie Fortune (cover page), Archived version

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The Best Lies is an X-Files story by Julie Fortune.

Reactions and Reviews

2015

The final two of my faves feel a little out of place, just because they're such relatively small fics, next to the previous fandom giants. I'm also a bit unsure about choosing The Best Lies over Fata Morgana as my favorite of Julie Fortune's fics, given that the latter is almost certainly the stronger-written and more substantial story. But I'm choosing The Best Lies, because it's so deliciously vivid in my mind. It lacks the length and complexity to be an episode, yet it has all the narrative punch to be a movie. Plus, the last scene is perfect, and beautifully captures the kind of painful, almost horrible UST I'm such a fan of - the complexity of Mulder and Scully's feelings for each other, and their feelings about themselves, and their interdependency which borders on unhealthy but also keeps them going. On a separate note, I think of Julie Fortune as something of a stylistic sibling to Syntax6. Her fics are never as long and never as complex, but otherwise they're quite similar: strong, gripping plots; vivid, cinematographic prose; strong, capable M&S characterizations; and UST that's often more painful than it is sweet.[1]

Mulder faces a serial killer he locked up again. Fortune was exposed long ago as a professional writer, and you can tell by the quality of her work. While this casefile isn't really an X-File per-se (nothing supernatural about it), it's a very well constructed short story. The suspense, the atmosphere and the characterization reminds of me Thomas Harris' Silence of The Lambs. And the UST bittersweet ending is absolutely beautiful and heartfelt.[2]

2017

Who doesn’t love a good profiler!Mulder story, with a heaping side helping of Scully in peril? That’s exactly what today’s rec has in store, Philes, and we can’t believe we are just now reccing it to you all.

Throw in a couple of really excellent original characters, a backstory that makes your heart break, and a seriously creepy serial killer antagonist that rivals some of the best men-as-monsters we ever saw during the series, and you’ve got one hell of an excellent casefile.

Happy reading! [3]

References