Amal Nahurriyeh

Fox Mulder is not a man who makes mixtapes.

Prior to iTunes and the digital dominance of our musical lives, making a mixtape was hard damn work. I know this, because my dad has been making mixtapes my whole life, and they used to take, like, math and having lots of different pieces of technology and you had to sit there the whole time. I just can't see Mulder putting that much time and effort into it.

Plus, there's an weird sentimentality involved in making a mixtape. You're looking for a creative narrative thread, and frequently it revolves around the person you're making it for. Especially if you don't make them a lot, you have to find a way to create something consistent, something that captures the spirit in which you're making it. I don't see Mulder as wanting to draw on those sorts of creative skills, not for something as trivial-feeling as a mixtape.

So he just wouldn't. OK?

But let's say he did.

Let's say, oh, he decided he was going to make Scully a mixtape. For their anniversary, maybe.

("We have an anniversary?" she says when he slides it across the breakfast table. "Well, we have to, don't we?" "And now we celebrate it?" "I just thought...never mind." He sulks away with the dishes. She briefly contemplates gathering a blood sample--she's a normal doctor now, she can get it done fast--but puts the CD on for her commute, and listens to it on repeat for two weeks, until he gets in the car with her one time and it turns on automatically, and she shuts it off to try to forestall the gloating. She does not succeed.)

This is an attempt to telepathically read Mulder's musical preferences, through the admittedly limited framework of music I own. It's also an attempt to figure out, if he were so inclined as to make a mushy stupid romantic mixtape for his partner, what he'd put on it; that is, what would he want to obliquely tell her about his feelings? What sneaky things would he want to slide in there? I've done my best not to use songs I've used before on mixtapes, even where the Mulder in my head approved of them.

As my parenthetical ficlet above suggests, this is unremarkable-house era, though, actually, parts of it seem more s7 appropriate. Some bits of it are Caseyverse compatible, but it's not necessarily so. Anyway. Don't think too hard about it.

( 10 tracks: Bob Schneider, Joan Osborne, and others )

Download from mediafire here.

The second anniversary of going into Open Beta is coming up in a few weeks. This means it's almost time for three_weeks_for_dw, the annual festival where people post things only to DW and hold special celebretory events in DW comms.

During three_weeks_for_dw, I'll be crossposting all of my personal posts; however, I may also do DW-only things as part of the festival. (I'll post links on LJ if it's fic or things.)

However, I'm also the mod of philedom, the X-Files comm on DW, and I'm thinking of holding some kind of context/fandom appreciation challenge/something over the course of the three weeks, where we can do awesome/fun/silly things and enjoy ourselves. (You can see what we did last year here.)

If you're on DW, or even if you aren't, come on over to philedom and let me know if you're interested in playing during the festival. (If it's just gonna be me, flourish, and wendelah1, well, that's no fun.)

This barely deserves a header, being so short, but I'll do one for form's sake.


Title: All Bitter and Clean
Author: Amal Nahurriyeh
Summary: She decides quoting Dylan Thomas is a bit too much, even for her, even for now.
Pairing: Eh, none, I guess.
Rating: PG for sad.
Timeline/Spoilers: Immediately before the dinner party scene in Gethsemane.
Disclaimer: Intellectual property is a capitalist fiction designed to oppress the working fic-writer. That said, I don't own them either.

Notes: Written for mumblemutter's Video Killed the Radio Star challenge during three_weeks_for_dw. The inspiration video was The Mountain Goats' song This Year. (Thanks also to bravenewcentury for introducing me to The Mountain Goats.) Here is the video:



And here's the ficlet:

( She's here under duress, she thinks as she parks the car, as sure as if she had been tied up and clubbed. )