halfamoon | fic recs: achieving personhood (Reply)

Two of my favorite fics about women and self-identity, from back when dinosaurs ruled the earth:

Thank You For Not Smoking by hth.
SUMMARY: Mulder has his Smoking Man, but what about Scully? We've come a long way, baby.... NC-17, Scully/f, X-Files/Pretender crossover.
This fic was something of a revelation for me back in the day, because while I'd always liked Scully on the show, I had never before seen her as truly, er, smoking hot. And what makes the fic hot for me, isn't just the hot, nicely edgy femme-sex it works its way to, it was the way it was *about* Dana Scully -- about who she was, would be, wanted to be. It's what the X-Files attempted to do later on with Scully and her sexuality and her need to be herself -- a person, not a placeholder for same defined by Mulder or the X-Files or her tragedies -- they did not do as good a job. In this story, Dana Scully became real to me in a way that outlasted the series itself. Miss Parker too, in a way, although my connection to the Pretender series was far more tenuous. Here is Scully working her way through the x-file of her current existence -- ekeing out her space in a world so completely filled by Mulder's vision, ego, neediness, actions, even his love -- that it's almost smothering. And of course, Mulder isn't the only one to lay claim to Scully's raison d'etre. This is an amazing fic -- rich and smokey and lush and female. It has stayed in my memory long after much of the series has faded away.

Anywhere But Here by sarah t.
Summary: Dawn takes a field trip and has educational fun
Another favorite story from fandoms past. The thing about Dawn Summers is that her very being is a great concrete metaphor for the search for identity and the need for self-definition. Sure, Dawn can be 'the Key', Buffy's sister, the Girl Who Lived, a bratty teen and metatextually, a wryly subversive twist on storytelling device -- but who *is* she? What can she be that is not defined by others? In this story, she finds a role model in the queer, amoral sorcerer Ethan Rayne. Their adventure together shows her not what to be, but how important it is to define yourself for yourself, in a world where others are all too willing to judge you by how well (or poorly) you fit their expectations.