the grotesckque

It's a barren feeling to write, and 'publish' and not have it go out to my kin for whom I write, or 'kith', as I suppose you are: you, you Phile, reading this.

I know you wouldn't abandon me, but I made an attempt to abandon you, and it's fine, I'm fine out here in the cold world, muddling along, alone as ever, getting shit done, I'm fine, I'm fine, and naturally still writing, and getting away from the X-Files in content, bleak and lame as that sounds.

But one thing I often like to do with writing is take the energy of disparate things and rub them together. In this way I still play along the edges of XF. And to this end, I wrote an XF-adjacent novella called 'Butcherback Argosy'. It's set in 1975. I wrote it, I realize now, for you, but also for the world. It bestrides two worlds. Many of you, whether parents or not, will recognize in it the various things we all endure as artists or as the cultish obsessionists we definitely all are. To that end it is certainly another of my mash notes to the fandom I will love all my days.

So, in the spirit of full disclosure - all the X-Files fiction I’ve ever written, as memory serves. And some thoughts on how this fine fandom has taught me to write. 

Starbuck (circa 1998)

I’m not kidding, this is really embarrassing, absolute beginner stuff, but we all start somewhere and it’s interesting in an evolutionary sense. I found these on  Zuffy’s X-Files Homepage.

Without The Bee  -  I couldn’t bring myself to look at this one. That title says it all. 

Agents of Change: Return from Antarctica  -  Obsessions—the Scott Expedition and the X-Files—collide. Rough early days, but probably with hints of potential. A legit turkey of a title! 

Penumbra 1998 - 2009

(I’m not going to bother with Gossamer links.) Learning the ropes as I went. Oblivious to so, oh so many things. Rickety, untrained writing, but mindlessly in love with creatively inspired by the churlish charms of our two razzle-dazzle creatures of the night. 

Contact High  -  The last line was plagiarized, pure and simple, from one of Gerald Durrell’s books about his childhood in Corfu. It’s bothered me ever since, so the big thing I took from this experience: by all means steal the rhythm of something, but at least change a word or two. 

Vespers  -  Very stoned ramblings. Inspired by John Leonard’s X-Files essay in The Nation that I’d managed to extract off a microfiche in a university library. I have a soft spot for this fic, probably because Khyber picked it very analytically apart, which was like having Jonathan Galassi or someone suddenly pay attention to you. He introduced me to ‘show, don’t tell’, a paralyzing concept if ever there was one, which I yet only fitfully grasp.

Black Hole Season  -  Still breakin’ all the rules. This one was hugely popular, and amidst all the ballyhoo, Punk Maneuverability emailed me and quietly said: ‘Please pick a POV and a tense and stick with it’—vastly important advice that I was probably too full of myself to heed. This one won a Spooky award, one of the greatest moments of my life that I had to keep completely to myself (therein lies the painful crux of fanfiction.)

Parabiosis  -  I was eating cereal and flipping through the dictionary, and there it was: parabiosis. Who knows what it means. I didn’t have a computer, and was working in the mountains, so I wrote the whole thing out on paper several times, unimaginable now. It flowed through my brain as I scrambled through the woods in the evenings. Nothing will ever be that easy again.

Honeymoon Video  -  Promising title, not much there.

The Cretan Paradox  -  Americana. JET sent me an ear of corn from a corn maze, because she’s thoughtful like that. 

Free Beer Night at the Astrodome  -  Cut years ago in despair out of Heuvelmans’; I think part of it went back in. 

Fathoms Five  -  In one of Gerald Durrell’s books about his childhood in Corfu, his brother steps in a swamp and says that his shoe is ‘full of fathoms five’, so that’s where I got that Shakespearean misquote. I resisted writing this for a long time, but it would creep into my mind as I was falling asleep. I think this is a pretty good story, but it could have used one more draft, so since then, I’ve resolved never to rush to post. Events of this year kind of date this story now. However, it’s rather pleasant to read about a careless, joint-passing, COVID-free 2020.

Fathoms Five Outtakes and gag reels - Sorry about the glitchy old site and bad font.

A random smut biscuit  -  Uncharacteristic, I know!

Octopods  - I loved this one, but it never fit in anywhere.

∩dsᴉpɐᴉsᴉnɯ -  Very flawed, because it was written and posted under a fund-raiser time crunch. I really should overhaul it. The X-Files was ending and I was so depressed when I wrote it, and that’s an unfortunate tincture to saddle a story with. 

The Inscrutable Pair  -  How The X-Files taught me to embrace ambiguity. Goreyesque nonsense à la Gashlycrumb Tinies that also troubles itself to rip off Eliot and Homer. 

(7-Year Cold-Turkey Hiatus From the X-Files)

Gave away DVDs, got some perspective, did a little growing up, tried and failed to write a screenplay, two novels, etc. Then they put The X-Files on Netflix. One lonely night, I thought: what could it hurt to watch Darkness Falls? 44 minutes later, with shaking hands, going for the hard stuff—Redux II. Lol, the hard stuff of ancient philes. 

The Mythopoeic*  2016  - 

Heuvelmans’ On the Track - The nearly suicidal heartbreak that surrounds this story—it was the first X-Files fic I got bogged down in and couldn’t finish, and it left me with a huge mental stigma—sweetens its completion. Under its shadow I tried to become a Real Writer, without success. Give things time, I learned. Just keep working hard. The initial failure of this story taught me stuff that I now wouldn’t trade for anything. 

*I came back just intending to hang out with Philes, and didn’t want to make a big deal, and had no intention of posting fic, so I gave little thought to the name. But, characteristically ostentatious name, check. Still keepin’ it real, pure and self-taught, a bit closer to what Chuck Palahniuk calls a ‘kitchen-table MFA’. Check.

[ vid ] Bumpin’ on Sunset

Author: @thegrotesckque​. 

Music: “Bumpin’ on Sunset” by Wes Montgomery.

In which Scully becomes a Consortium doctor, and Mulder moves heaven and earth.

This is a long (81K) MSR story, many years in the making, a bit of a wild ride, but (me being me) you can count on that ending dissolving into fluff.

Well. Here’s that inevitably maudlin moment where I’m overwhelmed by affection for this helluva fandom and all those who wander in’t.

tagging @leiascully and @leucocrystal for essential lockdown tough love beta

@lilydalexf for being the kindest, hardest-working Phile ever

@teethnbone for wildstyling subways with me

@onpaperfirst for hilarity and putting ‘Spook Cops’ on our horizon

@thegrotesckque for just basically existing

@mustangsally78  because you’re the bomb, babe, and herewith a reverential quote from your groundbreaking fic that changed my drifty young life forever.

Ah fuck

1. The Other Man by Jess Mabe is just fucked. It’s beautiful though, and you won’t ever really look at the episode Deep Throat the same way again.

2. Blood Orange by @syntax6 is great when I’m in the mood for an upsetting casefile

3. Omens by @lepus-arcticus is fantastic and I just wish I’d been here as it was being posted.

4. Right now I can’t get the first part of Three Iterations of a Birth by @spookydarlablack out of my head. It’s a true testament to her ability to write that I really wish I could get it out of my head

5. Ceremony by @darwin-xf is always going to be on this list. It will never not be on this list. It features a Mulder who really sees Scully in a way we never get to see on the series, sees what she’s been through and what she needs.

Shoutout to Contact High by Penumbra. And this fic I found on ao3 the other day by threeguesses.