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Tags: fanfic: in progress tv: the x-files tv: californication art: icons lj: memes tv: vmars
Published : 1 year, 9 months ago (Mon, 15 Oct 2007 04:58:16 PDT)
Searched: fanfic: in progress
http://leucocrystal.livejournal.com/170810.html 1 links
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I don't know what came over me this evening; all I know is it was something undeniable. Something difficult and marvelous; a welcome, old, weathered friend who had not shadowed the doorstep of my mind in many long months.
I don't know if I am "a writer", really. I have been putting pen to paper (and now fingers to keys) for as long as I was able to hold one in my hands, and I was reading at age three, before I was even enrolled in school. I wrote a 300-page book the summer that I was seven that will never again see the light of day (mainly because I am fully aware of how absolutely horrible and ridiculous it is).
But I'm not going to pretend that I can offer any more talent than I have, which I remain convinced is very little, because I've never had even the illusion of any real confidence in anything I manage to create (and this applies to my artwork, too). I use semicolons far too often, and am prone to rather convoluted run-on sentences. I'm often too verbose for my own good, and can get caught up in the words while losing sight of my intended meaning.
Still... tonight, for hours now, I have been writing. The episode of Californication I've promised to many of you (and its three-part mirror) uploaded to my server space, along with four accompanying songs, and all the while, I wrote. I know I promised something else to those of you following this journal tonight, but as I said, I just couldn't seem to staunch the inspiration. It's been a rare visitor to me this year, and far be it from me to turn it away at the door.
I will not pretend to be particularly skilled, but I do know one thing: people, occasionally if I am lucky, seem to enjoy the words I choose to share, and how my brain strings them together. I often go internally crazy for hours (days, even) over whether I will ever air them out for others to read, because when it comes to confidence in my own work.... that's something I've never had much of, and it is tentative at best, and nonexistent at worst. I guarantee you I will angst about this post for hours and hours (and probably even lose sleep over this) once I let it fly into cyberspace, because... that's just what I do. No sense in breaking a well-established routine, right?
I opened up the Update page with every intention, tonight, of working on that promised post -- unforgivably late though it most certainly is by this point -- for Californication 1x09, but that is not the show that arrested my mind tonight. I am talking, of course, about The X-Files, and the 22,055 (and growing, counting) words I have been squirreling away and agonizing over for months now. They sit dutifully in a perfectly innocent-looking Works file on my external hard drive, waiting patiently for me to take them out and toy with them again, until I inevitably frustrate myself, save my progress, and exit the program before I drive myself insane. (Abandon all vestiges of sanity, ye who sit at this laptop.)
Of all things, a meme, a silly little trend spreading across LJ as they tend to do, is what gave me the final push to post this, if you can believe it. I'd feel self-conscious and ridiculous about this, too, but frankly I'm too occupied by anxiety over what I've typed up tonight to give that much thought. (You know the one; the post parts from unfinished/unposted fic you're currently working on meme, which I think I likely stole from either ![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) herowlness or surrexi.) "Currently working on" is a generous label, as the first fic has been in the works since last winter, and God only knows when I first began letting XF-thoughts flow freely onto my computer screen...
So, if you're a Veronica Mars fan (former or current I suppose), or an X-Files fan, there are excerpts from only two fic within, written for those two fandoms. They are rather meaty chunks, however, and the one for XF in particular is rather... daunting. I will deeply regret sharing so much of it by tomorrow morning, I am absolutely positive, but for the moment it feels like the right thing to do. I'm sure I'll bash my head into the coffee table for this later.
ONE.
Working Title: Worlds Apart
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Last Modified: 7/25/07 (begun sometime in Winter '06)
Current Word Count: 13,968
Likely date of completion: Whenever the hell all the residual bitterness finally dies (see also: fuck if I know).
Short Summary: Futurefic (previously untraveled ground for me), meant to be a sort of final goodbye to the show, I suppose. The "Where in the World is Veronica Mars?" challenge (from one of the many poor VM fic communities that has since been abandoned, I believe) inspired me to pluck Logan out of Neptune, California and shove him smack into Switzerland several years past the events of the complete clusterfuck disaster that was S3, because (a) he's more than rich enough to travel abroad, and (b) it is a place near and dear to me, and they say to write what you know. Veronica tracks him down, naturally, with half a mind to make amends (or pick at old scars, depending on her mood).
- - - - - - - - - -
Logan is used to suicidal thoughts. Well, not so much suicidal thoughts, as much as he always used to assume he'd die young.
Mainly he'd entertain it as a distinct possibility whenever he'd done something he knew he was going to pay through the nose for later, thanks to his father's stellar parenting skills, or when he'd gotten drunk enough to start waxing existential about the meaning of life, and whether there really was one at all.
Of course, then Lilly had to go and get her brains bashed in with an ashtray, and suddenly the option was gone. Almost like, out of the four of them, only one was allowed to have their flame snuffed out so early, and no one had burned quite as brightly as Lilly had.
Even when she was long dead, trapped by gaudy, glistening crime scene tape, splattered out against cold cement and spread starkly white out beside the inky black of the pool water... Even then, all the red around that gaping head wound seemed to ignite the image of who she had been into smoky memories and empty ashes.
Lilly died, and Logan finally had to decide what the hell to do with his life, if he was actually going to give in and live it.
Now he's lying in bed, nearly ten years later and half the world away, and Veronica has left him for the — he takes a few seconds to update his mental tally, because he really is just that masochistic — fifth time, and somewhere out there, or maybe nowhere at all, Lilly is laughing her fabulous ass off.
Their memories of her may be filtering through their fingers like sand, but Lilly will always have the last laugh, because her curtain fell first.
- - - - - - - - - -
It's short, I know, especially when cut away from such a large whole. I figure the crazy-ass length of the other I'm about to share more than makes up for it (unless you're not an XF fan, in which case... tough luck).
So, that brings us to the X-Files portion, which as I already warned you is much, much larger. It is also constructed in a completely different manner, because the entire fic itself is basically a collection of vignettes, for lack of a better term. I have a rather bizarre idea in mind for tying them all together in the end (take a moment to pity poor elapses, because she is the most likely to fall victim to my attempts to articulate this crazy idea), but for the moment, they remain simply that: some post-ep vignettes, and other gap-fillers. Whatever episode each section pertains to, I'll make a note of on the right-hand margin, which will hopefully help those of you familiar with canon to piece this nutty puzzle together. (Hey, at least it's in chronological order!)
I wrote so much tonight, I still can't quite believe it. Admittedly there's not much dialogue to speak of (HAR HAR), but that's sort of my intent with this huge undertaking -- we hear so much spoken on the show, but how far can we see into their heads? I'm much more interested in what we don't see and hear with any immediate certainty, so there's a prevalence of narrative, I guess. Or at least, that's my excuse (not sure whether it's valid). But it seems that Mulder and Scully just waltzed right on into my brain tonight, perched themselves on the edge of my frontal lobe, and kept nagging at me until the words came out. I don't even know, you guys. This is how I write -- it just sort of... happens.
I have been in vast love with this show for years, but I have never allowed myself to explore its vast material as a writer before because frankly, the depth of the gaps we have been allowed to fill frightens me. We can fall in love with thousands of stories that carry us in an infinite number of directions -- this show was the first to truly exercise my mind, as no other has ever done before (nor since). With that in mind, if you read everything below? You are a far braver soul than I.
TWO.
Working Title: Close At Hand
Fandom: The X-Files
Last Modified: tonight (begun sometime... this Spring?)
Current Word Count: 22,195 (see also: INSANITY)
Likely date of completion: I wish I could tell you. It's a project close to my heart, though, and I am absolutely determined to at least finish it, if nothing else.
Short Summary: Like I already mentioned, a series of vignettes from the series (and yes, I do have some idea how I want to string them together, but for the moment they remain separate). The fic in its entirety works all the way from pre-series to "The Truth," but I've selected six sections to share with you for now (which I'm sure is MORE than enough, Jesus).
- - - - - - - - - -
(PRE-SERIES, introduction)
Once, when Mulder was young (before that doorway full of light and questions had swallowed his sister up forever) he thought he'd seen a mermaid. He'd been surprised by it, not really trusting his eyes, for this was before he ever really believed in giant blood-sucking worms or little grey men; before he really believed in anything out of the ordinary for a gangly little boy with wide, curious green eyes.
They were at the sea for the first time in his young life — not a lake or a river, but Blue Shutters Beach by the summer house in Quonochontaug — and he was drawn to the apparently ceaseless cycle of the surf and the tides, which never quieted down like the waters of lakes after sundown, but which seemed to go on without end. He sat on the smooth sand (so unlike the cold, dark rocks he'd grown accustomed to by the lakeside) and stared out at the curling tendrils of seafoam and weed spilling across the shore. Up, up, and away, at the gulls veering in hungry circles in the sky, and tried to see the edge of the horizon line where the pink and orange clouds seemed to push out past forever.
He felt rather than heard little Samantha wander up beside him, seeming small at his side even though she still stood while he remained cross-legged on the ground at her feet. She was eight (she'll be gone soon) and her hair was the longest it had ever been (the longest it may ever be, he will think later), and he looked up at her and tugged on a strand of chestnut brown that floated before his face on the salty breeze, because he's her older brother, and it's the obnoxious thing to do.
"Fox," she sneered at him, drawing out the vowel purposefully as she pinched her round, freckled face into a frown. He grimaced in kind at the way she said it, as though his name (he) is some silly joke, even though she's the younger one — a scrawny little girl he can outwit and outrun — and it's not supposed to bother him.
(If Scully were ever to ask him why he told her not to call him by his first name, it would be this: it never really mattered how much teasing it afforded him in his life — which was plenty — but how Samantha would say it; how it is the very last thing he could ever remember her saying before blinding light and jumbled memories that he can't (will never) make sense of took her away from him. Somehow, when Scully says it, he hears his loss (their losses) in the cadence of her voice, and hers alone. Perhaps because she's the only one who says it with any true understanding of him behind it; not even his own mother says "Fox" that way.)
The sun was setting, and when he thinks back on this moment twenty or more years from now, he will remember precisely how he had pointed to where the newest set of waves was curling and tumbling violently into surf a hundred yards away; how they had watched a silvery tail flicker among the chaotic mass of foam and blue-green, brother and sister together on the sand, caught in the moment.
"Don't be stupid," she'd said when he told her what he'd seen, as though she was the older one, and knew everything. "That was a porpoise."
"You don't even know what a porpoise is," he shot back, yanking on her hair again as gusts of wind continued to blow it about in pieces out of her long braids. He had found an old, lonely volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica in a bookshop on the island and given it to her for her last birthday, but was already regretting how she had started to talk like she'd read the whole thing (which she hadn't). He'd kept it hidden in a stack of books in his room before he'd given it to her — though to be fair, he talked like he'd read everything, too (which, in that room at least, he had).
"Do so," she pouted, twisting away from him until her smooth, dark locks slipped through his fingers like water, cuffing him across the head with her bony elbow. Mulder rolled his eyes exaggeratedly, and rolled his shoulders too, because he knew how the affected superiority of age annoyed her. "It's like a dolphin, but not."
She sounded annoyed with him, but sat down close (like always) until their knees knocked together, and she looked where he was looking, as though she wanted to see everything that he saw. She did not find what she (he) was looking for, and looked up at Mulder, and then back out to sea again, as though she had time to wait with him and find it (which she does not).
Samantha was still young enough to grow tired, on hot summer days like those along with the late-setting sun, but their mother remained engrossed in a paperback novel and ignored them from her place far across the sand, hidden behind her umbrella. Mulder sat very still as his little sister leaned sleepily against his lanky shoulder, yawning widely; as he took on her added weight without a word.
He thought she was sleeping when he quietly said, "She looked like you, a little." (Dark and fleeting and just out of reach. Blink and you'll miss her.) Samantha sighed and let her eyes droop fully shut, listening to her wild, puzzling brother breathing and the sounds of the sea. Neither of them can know that he has just laid the foundation for the seemingly endless quest of his life that lies ahead; the life without her in it.
He will think of setting suns and flashes of silvery scales, now and again, when the empty space beside him grows heavier than she ever was in life, and he will believe.
- - - - -
(4X22 ELEGY, gap-filler)
Mulder has a slightly wounded look to him now, all the time. It weighs on Scully's conscience almost as much as it seems to weigh on him all over, so that his shoulders appear to be constantly slightly slouched. He's never stood up entirely straight around her (just another example of how Mulder is considerate of the ways in which she is different from him) in order to fill a space closer to her eye level, but it's more noticeable now than ever. On her angrier days — when she imagines she can almost feel the cells of the tumor growing and pulsing beneath the bridge of her nose — she almost wants to shove him right in the center of his back like the harping schoolmarm everyone grumbles about behind their hands, and shout something stupid and unforgivably mean to startle his posture into behaving. Something she would regret instantly and forever; something like, "Stand up straight you idiot, we're not both dying!"
But maybe, she thinks (on the more disheartening days, when she wakes up to a pillowcase soaked with blood and Mulder's aching eyes seem to slice right through her to the bone), maybe we are.
- - - - -
(5X08 KITSUNEGARI, post-ep)
He remains very still, and yet her own hands haven't stopped shaking. Stop me, Mulder, she wants to say. Anchor me, steady me, make me feel right again. This is entirely the wrong time for her needier side to rear its ugly head, but she cannot help it. This is how they respond to each other, for better or worse; they echo everything back to one another, stronger each time, in some form of parabolic codependency that can just as easily build them up as it can break them down. She amuses him, he delights her (though she rarely allows herself to show it). She aggravates him, he infuriates her. She alienates him, he pushes her away. And yet, ultimately, she has an irrevocable need for him, and he is absolutely desperate for her.
She realizes vaguely that she's been locking the joints in her legs too tightly for several stiff minutes by now — and that, coupled with the complete lack of inner balance that's been plaguing her all day, has her feeling almost faint. She's standing before her very first autopsy bay all over again, weak-kneed and light-headed, unsure of both herself and where to begin dissecting this terrifyingly complex man sitting before her. She gives in to her exhaustion at last; dropping down to sit heavily on the table across from him, scattering old magazines across its weathered surface, her knees knocking slightly against the insides of his.
He lifts his head from his hands at last, staring up at her from where he still leans low on the couch, trying to sink further into the worn leather. She is at a loss, but she can't stay still another moment, so she reaches blindly toward him on instinct alone and takes his hands and presses them to her sides, comforting them both with the gesture. The familiar touch and exchange of warmth between them is a rare sanctuary, and she lets herself take solace in it with him.
"Scully," he says, his unsteady voice breaking on her name, frighteningly contrary to the sure and solid pressure of his thumbs as he unconsciously strokes them against her in lazy, soothing patterns. She shakes her head at him and tugs him closer to her still, until he gives in to her silent request at last. She leans toward him as he does to her, and wraps her arms around his strong shoulders as his hands slide in answer from where they bracket her ribcage to spread across her back. He presses his face into the soft fabric of her blouse, his head pillowed against her abdomen as she cups one hand against the back of his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair, running the other in a soothing path across his spine. Sometimes, there's simply nothing right to say.
She feels the tension draining slowly out of him, and can feel her own muscles relaxing in kind. She hadn't known, coming here, what she intended to do or say, but for the moment she can't imagine anything else that could have fixed this bloody mess of residual fear and regret. She lets herself take brief comfort in this unconscious fulfillment of intent. For just these few moments, however long they'll stretch at this late hour, she'll allow herself to take solace in the familiar, strong jump of the pulse in his neck where she can feel it beat steadily against her fingertips. Over the years, she's gotten used to Mulder somehow drawing out the right responses and actions in her when they both need it most, without either of them expecting or questioning it.
He takes a deep, shuddering breath and holds her closer, more tightly to him and she fists her hands into his shirt in answer. At these times, Scully knows, the non-verbal communication serves them best, and she could not let go of him now if she tried.
"It's over now," she whispers, so softly she's not even sure he can hear her, cocooned in her arms like this, but she says the words again and again, regardless. Maybe, she thinks, just maybe, if she repeats the phrase enough times, they'll both believe it. She rests her head atop his, closing her eyes against his soft, haphazardly mussed hair, and she knows — when she finally feels the gentle pressure of his lips against her stomach through her shirt — that one way or another, the words got through.
- - - - -
(7X05 MILLENIUM, post-ep)
Unbidden, hundreds of images flash across his mind's eye, almost as though he is about to die. Which is a rather stupid response, but in moments of sudden, blind panic, Mulder often takes profoundly stupid actions (including, but certainly not limited to: jumping off of bridges onto speeding trains, throwing cell phones at vampires, stealing his partner's car keys, and taking leaps of faith, quite literally, into the sea smack in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle).
In the span of a mere second or two, he sees Scully walking beside him through some unnamed, untamed forest… Scully shivering by him on a rock in the middle of a lake… Scully singing to him, his head cradled in her lap in the middle of yet another God-forsaken stretch of wilderness… Scully standing, silhouetted like some petite heroine standing at attention in a hotel service elevator, gun drawn and fire in her eyes, coming to save him from some predestined fate involving a homicidal bellhop, a butcher knife, and a poorly placed (coconut cream? lemon merengue? banana cream?) pie.
He feels her too, in the phantom sensation of a thousand gathered moments of precious sense memory; her fingers hesitantly touching his face... her small hand nestled inside his or her arms holding him close... her surprising strength holding him up when he has none of his own left... her exceptional, stubborn mind connected to his, the two of them buried deep underground and unintentionally tripping on the same gigantic subterranean mushroom. He sees her face; the depth of her marine eyes, wide and challenging beneath that expressive brow... her sharp, small nose and eternally pursed, full lips... her strong chin and jaw, and her fiery red hair framing it all. What a magnificent picture she makes.
Deep down he's still a selfish, cowardly man, and he can't risk losing it all, not even now. He won't let her go.
- - - - -
(7X07 ORISON, post-ep)
In all this time, it's not that they've learned to listen, but rather how to listen, to one another. Mulder seems determined to temper all the nervous kinetic energy bottled up in his frame when he recognizes the seriousness of Scully's fears. And though he is ultimately a skeptic when it comes to religion, he listens intently to her claims all the same. "Go back to hell!" she had screamed from where she was bound on the floor, angry shards of glass mixing with her blood and sweat as she struggled with Pfaster yet again, like a woman possessed. Mulder doesn't dare interrupt as she makes the ultimately futile attempt to describe the reasons behind her frantic phrasing and desperate actions. There is still that little catch of mental disconnect, like a hiccup between them when it comes to God; this he knows.
"Even if I don't believe, I listen," he says to her once she's talked herself into doubt, his voice rough and quiet in the darkness of his bedroom and from the lateness of the hour. Scully is slightly startled, having thought she had lulled him to sleep.
"Always?" she asks, half-asleep herself and full of honest curiosity. If the answer is the affirmative, she'll have to give him more credit. Mulder, when confronted with things he cannot understand, is an ironic mirror of herself in many ways; impatient, anxious, and ultimately supremely stubborn. She feels his chin descend upon the crown of her head as he nods, his slight stubble catching on the errant red strands of her flyaway hair.
"I learned that from you."
Scully hooks her leg across his long thigh as she curls up against the warmth of his body, bringing the sheet along with her to wrap around them both, and allows herself her own moment to listen. It's a far more indulgent goal than his noble one; after all, the steady thrum of his heart beneath her ear may have become her favorite sound.
- - - - -
(7X22 REQUIEM, post-ep)
I can see the ship in my mind's eye, she thinks; the shadow of a barely-there memory buried in ice, snow, and well-coated denial of truth and any more dangerous belief than she'd dared allow herself. It slips away into the clouds, back to where it fled when it took my love away from me. A massive mechanical mastery of technology and more knowledge than they can strive to comprehend (had her toes really touched that Grail once, through a fine shroud of West African sand and sea?) may have stolen him away, but it is her heart that will bring him back to her.
She knows this in the way she imagines the mermaids of Mulder's fertile imagination knew their siren songs would drown the sailors they called out to from the waves, sinister and selfish in their misleading beauty. It calls to her during all these long months, from where he had stolen it away from her stubborn vessel so many years before. Just as she had known long ago — with only the stretch of desolate desert and scorched sand between them, then — if it were to simply stop... she would just know. She is not afraid now, because she feels the weight of the beating of the heart he had given to her in return pulsing through her veins, as natural and inevitable as every breath she takes in his absence.
Open up, sky, she entreats the yawning expanse of stars above her, and give him back to me.
- - - - - - - - - -
This is insanity, I know. I just pray (Agnostic though I may be) that you guys don't hate any of this. I will be complete a basket case later today, I'm sure.
I suppose what I want to know most is... do you recognize these characters, as I hope that I do? The problem with being overly cerebral (as I tend to be when it comes to writing, among other things) is that keeping them trapped in my head for too long works well just as often as it doesn't. Can you follow my words, or, one better: do they evoke any sort of feeling in you? These are the things I try for, but I have no clue whether I've managed to succeed. These are just bits and pieces of the whole, naturally, but I think they should give you some idea of the big picture.
Oh, and in case any nitpickers are curious as to why Mulder and Scully are in bed together, as early as post-"Orison"? That's because, on my more optimistic/romantic days, I subscribe fully to dtissagirl's MSR Theory. And yet, I also remain one of the (very) few who actually enjoys that none of us really know for sure when it started. ;)
That's all I've got. I'm still in a pretty deep state of shock -- both that I managed to write as much as I did tonight, and that I actually dared to put it... out there. Gahhh, I need to stop thinking for an hour (or twelve).
In things unrelated to writing, the episode upload I've kept you guys waiting on for far too long will be up, God-willing, sometime tomorrow (um... today). I may couple it together with 1x10, if I run out of motivation or time, though... I'll just have to see what happens. I don't have work or school today to distract me (oh, priorities), and I will be shying away from the contents of my Inbox like a person with a severe phobia of Gmail, because -- like every time I ever share writing on the Net -- I will be absolutely terrified of what it holds.
By all means, feel free to lambaste me, especially if you truly feel the ire is deserved, but... try to be gentle? Clearly I'm more devastating to my own motivation than harsh remarks from anyone else could ever be, if I haven't made that obvious yet.
Oh hey, I won first place in an XF icontest! I feel silly and a little proud about that; I can't even remember the last time I participated in such a community. Go me? At least that's a little positive reinforcement -- posting this entry took anything else confident right out of me like a hammer to the knees.
(Heh, this mood theme pic couldn't be more appropriate. Wow. I am actually debating flocking this post, that's how paranoid I am. BREATHE, ZELLIE. For fuck's sake.) |
