#iolokus

[audiofanficpod]

Iolokus Crossover Event

Ending S3 with a supersized episode, controversy, & special guests!

Join @dinalit @eggshellheart, @slippinmickeys, @scullymakesmefeelautopsyturvy, @red2007, & guest @aloysiavirgata as we break down Iolokus by @rivkat & MustangSally.

[frostbitepandaaaaa]

Iolokus, Chapter 2

IN SUM: alright shit is getting real good and it also seems like the characterizations are evening out somewhat, especially with some added context. and holy shit the smut... *fans self*.

more under the cut. spoilers!

But I continued on like the good little soldier that I am, brave little Scully with her gun and her badge trotting loyally alongside Mulder into one half-assed mess after another. I didn't cry, I didn't mourn, I continued. I showered, did my hair, dressed, put on my make-up and drove to work each day where I felt like I was watching the rest of the world through the glass of an isolation chamber.

-- Iolokus, Chapter 2, rivkat & MustangSally

this is such a crushing, painful summation of Scully as a character. it also deftly sums up what her upbringing was probably like, with a naval officer as a father. told time and again to pick yourself up and brush it off and keep solidering on. even after losing, presumably, the only child she will ever know, she keeps on and it's just so fucking sad. it also kind of justifies some of her anger/resentment.

It was fairly obvious to even someone with his head as far up his ass as I do that Scully was up to something. She was making me itch as though my clothes were filled with fiberglass. I spilled my coffee, dropped files, knocked my hip on an open drawer and generally acted like a teenager while she sat with her La Giaconda smile over her laptop. This was the situation where I wanted to bash her head into a pulp and take carnal revenge on her unconscious body. It occurs to me now that I should have taken advantage of the situation when she was in a coma years ago.

I never claimed to be normal, but at least I'm self-aware enough to know that I am not. Self-aware enough to keep my thoughts at a fantasy level rather than acting them out. Most of the time, anyway.

-- Iolokus, Chapter 2, rivkat & MustangSally

what the fuck, mulder? like, see, it's paragraphs like this that just truly mystify me. every bit of this paragraph is so on point-- having his head up his ass, being so flustered by Scully's coldness that he is like a new born colt learning how to fucking walk. but then they whip out this violent fantasy and like... ideations of rape? am i interpreting that correctly? where the fuck did this animosity come from? this violent appetite? like it's just so fucking wild and bizarre and does not align with the Mulder i think i know. i'm gonna be honest, this alone made me stop reading for a full week, hence the long gap between posts.

BUT, i'm glad i came back.

How do I know they slept together? Oh, please. After all this time together, I just knew. It was in the way he'd sit in our office on the mornings after, just a little looser, a little more slumped. The guilty-gloating looks he'd give me, liquid eyes shifting like mercury then freezing at my subzero glare.

I'm confident that after l'affaire Goldstein he didn't go back to her. Each time we have a crisis, Mulder finds some new betrayal to work on me. In his infinite transparent soul, lies are just promises he found he couldn't keep. But his body, unlike his mind, is a temple; my temple. I've written my name on it in gunshots and stitches. I've traced runes above it and bound him with a handshake. This is the only thing I know: he didn't sleep with her after we got back from Massachusetts.

-- Iolokus, Chapter 2, rivkat & MustangSally

i have a hard time imagining Mulder fucking anyone but Scully, of course, but especially Marita. she's as radioactive as Chernobyl and though Mulder can be a bit of an idiot when it comes to women, i think he's smarter than that. but that last paragraph is simply lovely. "I've written my name on it in gunshots and stitches." yeah you have, Sculls, yeah you have.

I felt the cancer move in my head, smiling at him. Yes, it said, come and play. To me it whispered: Relax, Dana, all God's children gotta fuck. What will it be like to slip away in morphine and bedsores knowing that you never had him?

-- Iolokus, Chapter 2, rivkat & MustangSally

the idea of Scully feeling the tumor in her head move, like a fetus in the womb, makes me want to puke. i think it's supposed to be purely figurative (god, i hope so), but still. Yuck. BUT, she makes a good point with the last sentence. she thinks she's dying and soon she will pay for her life with misery. why not fuck your very fuckable partner whom you trust?

I was losing her. She was drifting away from me faster than the cancer had taken her. Damn, it was so fucking cruel, to have her back and healthy and now -- she was buying a ticket on the Disoriented Express. It's a nice trip, I suggest everyone take a ride at least once. Gives you some perspective. It was such a cosmic joke. The planets finally aligned correctly and for "one brief shining moment" we were together, a functioning unit in the field, and a couple in bed. Then it was gone. Had I imagined the whole thing?

The first moment she walked into my office years ago in her ugly suit with her too-earnest face and her frumpy haircut, I was a dead man. You could have dragged me around a beach house and called it "Weekend at Mulder's". From the beginning, I've had a thing about intelligent women. Smart is sexy. Phoebe and I had planned on getting married and raising our own little serial killers one day, and, like all intelligent women, in the end she did me a serious injury. When we parted she took a chunk of my heart and all my Clash records. So when little Dana Scully tiptoed into my hotel room with her mosquito bites, I could have come in my pants like a kid. But I declared her off-limits, spending the nights with the Video Vixens and shooting putty at the moon while I thought about the way her skin smelled. Truth to be told, I had the sinking suspicion that her sexual interest in me was less than zero, no pun intended. I also suspected that she didn't like me very much most of the time.

But--

But that night when she took me home, my brain still swirling like a Slurpee dispenser at the 7-11, I looked at her pale little face and it was the hotel room with the mosquito bites again. My tripping brain was transposing her then face with her now face and I heard crickets outside even though it was winter. She looked so sad and so delicate that I wanted to -- I wanted to open her up like a bag of fresh-ground coffee and inhale her. I wanted to bury my face in her hair and never come up for air again. I wanted her to save me.

-- Iolokus, Chapter 2, rivkat & MustangSally

here's the Mulder i know. just lost, completely hopeless over Scully. not self aware enough to know how much she actually wants/needs him. a man who knows how to fuck a woman properly (listen, we just KNOW, okay. [there's a line a little before this in Scully's POV where she muses that his skill in oral sex makes him worth his own weight in gold-- in that character trait we can agree on rivkat/MustanngSally]). a man who is just sad and selfish enough to want Scully to save him. it's lovely and perfect and made me strap back in.

I steered her towards Americas, the overpriced overgrown diner that sprawled across one corner of the once-classy main atrium. The maitre'd's expression indicated that he wasn't sure if my suit was good enough, but gave us a table anyway. What kind of a world do we live in when a maitre'd can't tell a real Hugo Boss from a knockoff?

-- Iolokus, Chapter 2, rivkat & MustangSally

i have nothing much to say, just that i thought this was very funny and a very 'niche' Mulder. he wears bad suits. that's just how it is.

anyway, i am actually more looking forward to the next chapter. the authors are doing a great job not only revving up the tension between Mulder and Scully, but in the casefile behind them. and i'm excited to see how Scully is going to exact her revenge, because she was woefully denied that in the show.

more later. xxx

[aloysiavirgata]

So in addition to reading shitty abstracts, I am also reading about the evolution of opsin genes in deep-ocean animals like the coelacanth. And all I can think of this:

“"Just because you have not heard of giant mutant gophers you deny their existence.  What of the Coelacanth?  Thought to be extinct until fishermen told a visiting paleontologist that they always got caught in their nets?  What about the giant white catfish that has been spotted in the Amazon River?“

@rivkat and @mustangsally78 - will you ever stop haunting me?

[lilydalexf]

Hi! So I’m a long time X-Files fan and fanfic junkie! I’ve been reading fic since original run as a kid. I’ve never read Iolokus despite its famous status bc have heard it’s really dark. I don’t mind violence at all but my shipper heart tends to hate Others stories or too much torture/sad ending on MSR front. What’s your review on this story if don’t mind? I really enjoy all your recs so thought I’d ask.

I don’t know how to properly give a review of the Iolokus series. I have too many thoughts! (And I have not read any story in the series in years so could not give enough detail to fully make any point, ha ha).

This fic is brilliant and is absolutely worth a read. It takes sharp, dark elements of Mulder and Scully and amplifies them in kinda cuckoo ways that somehow end up seeming in character. Even the parts that I didn’t exactly like I enjoyed reading because this story commits and is well written. For example, there have been heavy debates over the years about this fic’s sex scenes, at least in the first story in the series, and there is no right side (IMO). The series gets much lighter by its end.

Every fic is not for everybody, but the great thing is that if you don’t want to keep reading something, you don’t have to. And this story is one where you’ll know fairly quickly whether or not you want to swirl in its weird, angsty, wonderful world.

[contrivedcoincidences6]

Finally reading Iolokus (I’ve heard so much I wanted to be in the right state of mind). Unpopular opinion: I don’t like it. I’m about 3/4th of the way through the first installment and I disagree with every single thing about the characterization. It’s so well written and I’m invested in the plot but I just don’t like it.  The sex is hot though. Very. 

[aloysiavirgata]

You only know what I want you to

I know everything you don't want me to

Oh, your mouth is poison, your mouth is wine

You think your dreams are the same as mine

Oh, I don't love you, but I always will

I don't love you, but I always will

I always will

I wish you'd hold me when I turn my back

The less I give the more I get back

Oh, your hands can heal, your hands can bruise

I don't have a choice, but I still choose you

[red2007]

Literally read this laying in stirrups ay my local PP...

[audiofanficpod]

Finale Info!

In 3 weeks join the gals of @darkesttimelinestuff and a few special friends to discuss the controversial X-Files epic Iolokus. You don't want to miss this.If you've never read it:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Heed all warnings, she's a doozy.