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Story Notes
All right. After all the doom and gloom my pals and I have perpetrated through our little babykilling pact, I decided it was time for something a little more cheerful. I thought about the best possible way for the events of "Requiem" to turn out, and the list was so long and ridiculously optimistic, I felt the only way to handle all those options was to make this a parody!fic. It got very silly indeed.
Then I decided, as a writer who had only recently committed to the worst-case scenario (multiple times), I would find it much more of a challenge to take the BEST-case scenario and make it work, logically and sensibly, without making it all gooey. We'll see how successful I was. Coming up: one actually happy ending, with lots of little loose ends tied up nice and neat.
For my inspiration, I have chosen the delightfully evil "Candide" by Voltaire. I've done things in this that would make him run and scream in Optimistic horror. Assuming he wasn't already dead at the time. (See below for more info on this.)
Herein: Romance, baby, recovered family, vindicated conspiracy theorists, turncoats gone good, re-grown limbs, loads of international publicity, and no more icky aliens. I can do it. Just breathe, Livia. Just breathe.
Abundant thanks to: Tara, EPur, Piglit, and my poor beleaguered Xochiluvr. Especially Mr. Livia, who has had to sit through vivid and enthusiastic descriptions of every section of a story he will never actually read. And multitudinous curried goates to YV.
Professional and referential thanks to Douglas Adams, Genndy Tartakovsky and William Goldman. They'll know why.
This story has been a labor of love for me. Well, that's only half true. It's been a labor of love-hate. It's extremely hard to write Scully in the first person and make it feel genuine. Add to that the absolute impossibility of a happy ending for ANYBODY on this show, and you'll understand what I faced in writing this. I hope you find it effective and sensible. And maybe just a little entertaining.
Well, enough that it made the months of work worthwhile. But I won't push it. ;-)
For the record: Writing Morris Fletcher was some of the best fun I've had in a while. We may see more from him in the future. Just think of the divinely talented Michael McKean, and hear his voice in your head, and Fletcher nearly writes himself. I <heart> him.
Sources For Which I Am Grateful: Deep Background, Tiny Dancer's Transcript Archive, United States Air Force, United States Marine Corps, U.S. Geological Survey, CNN.com, The Princess Bride, Ford Prefect, Dexter's Laboratory, and www.justtomatoes.com. Crunchy freeze-dried mango bits are VITAL to the editing process.
- LB
I've received a few notes from readers asking about the origin of my latest fic's title. So here 'tis.
First,
if you haven't read "Candide" by Voltaire, you must. It's short,
brilliant, and the entire story is **extremely sarcastic**. You can find
the full text here:
http://www.aip.de/People/DMeinert/Bibliothek/Voltaire/Candide/
How it relates to "Cunegund's Restoration, or, The Best of All Possible Worlds, Really":
In short, Cunegund was Candide's maiden fair. He suffered greatly. She suffered greatly. They suffered greatly. In fact, many of their experiences are almost X-Files canon. It's kinda...spooky. <g>
The point of the title was to restore to Cunegund (Scully) all that had been taken from her by the powers controlling the world. In "Candide" it was essentially fate, proclaiming mutely that (according to Dr. Pangloss' "metaphysico-theologo-cosmolonigology") the world we live in is the best of all possible worlds, regardless of how bad things get. In "Candide", they get MIGHTY bad. In TXF, TPTB (CC et al) make M&S suffer in a similar way, because, after all, TPTB think it's the best possible way for the show to be.
So...I was being snarky, too. Loads of parallels and the like.
Thanks to all who wrote and asked!
