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unremarkablehouse · 2 months

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Let’s Eat

I love that there’s this ongoing bit in The X Files where Scully will see pick food when most people would be turned off by it.

The cows have been treated with some mysterious growth hormones and there’s a vegetarian cult, let’s eat ribs Mulder!

Killer cockroaches? No, just chocolates that fell on the floor. Why would Scully eat floor chocolate though?! 5 second rule I guess.

Scully’s just found out the chickens are being fed ground up chicken remains and the plant had several citations, so how about fried chicken for dinner?

Nothing like picking your pizza topping from the stomach contents of a corpse.

After experiencing bee induced Mulder interruptus you think Scully would be put off by bee products.

I don’t know if I got all of them, but I love that Mulder just goes along with it.

#Txf meta #the x files #msr #dana scully #fox mulder #txf #x files #scully cookbook

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carefulfears · 1 year

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rewatching early txf and seeing mulder and scully when they are so young and so enamored with each other is so heavy…they are so excited to have met each other and they are going to go through so much together…they are going to lose their entire families together. they are going to lose time and autonomy and health together. they are going to live together and die together and nearly die together and never die together. they are going to have and lose a child together, and see that loss in each other for the rest of their lives. they are going to look to each other anyway, for everything, and say things like “i’m always happy to see you” and “always happy to find a reason” even at their most distant and estranged. she doesn’t know it then, but running out into the rain after him in bellefleur will be the end of the life that she imagined for herself. she doesn’t know it then, but it will lead to the loss of her safety and her family and her career and her children. and when she does know all of those things, she says “i would do it all over again.” she says “i wouldn’t change a day.” she says “i don’t begrudge you any of those things.” she says “i want to remember how it all was.” and if she could do it all over again, she would still chase him into the rain and laugh when he said that aliens were summoning the kids to the forest and ask him where they were going next and follow to wherever the answer was. because they would rather do this life together than do any other apart.

#ignore her she has a cold #anyway that’s why you should watch the revival #even tho it is not good #because they made it #and they are still so fond of each other 25 years later #they don’t resent each other for anything because they’re so glad to know each other #and it’s so sad and so lovely at the same time #msr #txf #txf meta #kae meta

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agent-troi · 2 months

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scully and mulder's dynamic visibly changes after the onset of the season of secret sex

i've been thinking about how dd and ga deliberately played season 7 like mulder and scully were sleeping together, and i think there's solid evidence of that in the differences in how scully reacts to mulder appearing to show interest in another woman before and after the season of secret sex begins (i'm using millennium as the before/after divider bc i think that's what dd and ga decided, but this is based on my vague memory of a reddit comment about it which is how i first learned that the season of secret sex was a thing)

so overall there's an undercurrent of insecurity, borne of scully's uncertainty regarding precisely how mulder feels about her and what her place is in the hierarchy of things that are important to him in his life, that exists in the pre-millennium incidents and is glaringly absent post-millennium:

before millennium:

(i'm not gonna include phoebe/fire here bc i don't think scully's awareness of her feelings had yet risen to the point where she'd be truly jealous, i'd characterize her in that ep as largely protective of mulder and unwilling to let him deal with phoebe's games alone. it also helps that he's clearly not happy phoebe is back in his life again, unlike his much more positive reaction to diana)

war of the coprophages- the second scully finds out about bambi, she immediately hops in her car and drives up to miller's grove to join mulder, bc letting him investigate cockroaches alone was fine but god forbid he spend quality time investigating an x-file with an attractive female scientist who isn't herself- that's their thing!!

syzygy- to be fair the planetary alignment situation was exacerbating her- and mulder's- behavior here, but her jealousy of and hostility to detective white were still real, even if she would've been able to rein in her emotions better under normal circumstances.

diana fowley arc- i think this speaks for itself, lol

alpha- this is an interesting period in their relationship: after most of the diana shit is over, but before the tension between them is fully resolved (a process which to me begins with milagro/the unnatural and ends with amor fati, but that would be its own post lol).

other than introducing himself to karin as "fox" (maybe as a way to appeal to her preference for canids lol) and thus implicitly giving her permission to call him by his first name (which she proceeds to do throughout the episode), mulder doesn't seem to show much in the way of attraction to her.

even when he touches her hand to move the mouse, he's more interested in what's on the screen than in paying attention to her:

karin, however, is visibly affected by the contact, a fact which scully immediately notices:

later in the car, they have this convo, the last line of which is so heavily laden with diana subtext it's not even funny:

scully's reaction to karin is similar to her reaction to phoebe in that she's motivated mainly by wanting to protect mulder from his own naive, trusting nature, and from someone she believes is seeking to take advantage of it, rather than being motivated primarily by jealousy and defensiveness. she doesn't really believe that karin is a genuine threat to her relationship with mulder, but with diana still fresh in her memory she can't afford to not be vigilant. hence why she confronts karin alone later:

here scully demonstrates that she somewhat empathizes with karin (mulder is also someone who challenges her, makes her feel fulfilled and happy and alive). karin's response indicates that she has correctly deduced the basis of scully's dislike/distrust of her, and also acknowledges scully is the dominant one as it relates to the territory (mulder) that they are sparring over.

scully looks away at karin's "feminine wiles" comment, revealing the nagging insecurity about her place in mulder's life that diana's arrival exacerbated and that will continue to plague her until amor fati.

after millennium:

rush- when mulder looks back at chastity in the hallway, scully's reaction is to possessively grab mulder's sleeve and pull him away into the interrogation room:

and his response is to laugh and say "what?" like he doesn't know he belongs to her and only her.

keep in mind this happens just before they interrogate tony reed, and right after they finish interrogating him this shit happens:

i already made a post last week about how insanely flirty they are in this episode, but this scene!!

she's pouting and giving him big doe eyes and playing with his tie!! at work!! in public!! she feels comfortable staking her territory in such an obvious way (also playful rather than hostile) bc she's not longer insecure about her place in his life!! i can never be normal about this i'm sorry ssdfgksdgsjdkfhkjsdf

first person shooter- when mulder checks out jade blue afterglow as she's leaving, he leans so far over in such an obvious, exaggerated way, almost as if he's deliberately trying to get a rise out of scully, but all she does is raise her eyebrows at him and lean over to block his view (while smirking):

and then he says he's "feeling the great need to blast the crap out of something", an almost direct quote of scully's line from their convo in the autopsy room right before they went down to the station:

and her response is to SMILE at him!!

pre-millennium scully would absolutely not have reacted this way in this situation. just like in rush, the insecurity that previously haunted scully whenever mulder seemed to be close to or interested in another woman is utterly absent here. they're joking and teasing and enjoying each other's company like they've always done, but there's a different dimension to it now. pre-millennium mulder would never have made a show of checking out another woman like that right in front of scully (unless a planetary alignment is affecting his behavior ofc lol), and pre-millennium scully would never have found it amusing.

(side note: people were debating on twitter a while back about whether this scene was ooc for mulder, and tbh i'm not sure what my own opinion is bc to me the whole episode has an air of... unreality? idk but it gives me similar vibes to post-modern prometheus, like maybe it's real or maybe it's just someone telling a story or it's somewhere in between, and it's also got that same unserious feel idk how else to describe it)

anyway, back to my main point, which is: dd and ga are damn good actors in the way they were able to subtly telegraph this shift in mulder and scully's dynamic. one might be able to argue that the insane flirting throughout season 7 isn't by itself evidence of the season of secret sex bc on some level they've always been like that, but to me these specific interactions provide important clues that the nature of their relationship has changed.

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deathsbestgirl · 3 months

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i love that ~lock them in a room until they talk~ trope and how that just. would not actually work with mulder & scully. like cotr in quagmire, the last scene in never again, detour!! they're basically always locked in a room together and they don't ~really talk. there are attempts, but their miscommunication is off the charts. they choose silence. scully will compare mulder to ahab and make any excuse to work with him. mulder will tell scully about samantha and quote her thesis. but say something clearly and directly? never. they can save each other in the craziest ways, die for each other. but they can't just say anything. it's hidden in theories, debates, banter, innuendos, philosophy, questions. even in existence, it's "the truth we both know." in the revival, the real difference in their communication is that they understand the way other reveals something vulnerable. in plus one, it takes mulder a few tries to get scully to say what she means in a way he can interpret. "oh that's what you mean." she can ask him to hold her, but she can't say she's afraid of losing him again.

#mulder and scully #the x files #txf meta #idk what i'm on about #but i'll call it meta #mine #my meta

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capablebee · 3 months

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“The Gift” is so annoying to me because they had Mulder back on set and in front of the camera but not with Scully (there isn’t enough scenes with them together with Scully season 9 hair TM) , criminal!

I mean look at her 👁️👁️😍🤌

#txf #msr #txf meta #kinda

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that--funny--feeling · 2 months

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CSM and how the lies destroyed the Mulder family: a headcanon

I have a complicated and maybe personal image of CSM that to me makes more sense than whatever they tried to do with his character (since they changed minds so many times).

The focal points of his character are his envy, obsession with control and inability to love.

I think he really envied what Mulder Sr. had with his family, even before Fox and Samantha were born. He had a wife who loved him and above all he did his same job (more or less) but that hadn't turned him evil or selfless. I like to think of William Mulder Sr. as a decent and kind person, at least when he was younger.

Obviously, his life wasn't perfect and he and Teena probably fought a lot because of the secrecy of his work. I think that was the real first struggle about the truth that the Mulder family had (1°). Bill couldn't be honest with his wife about what he was doing and that created a distance. CSM may have taken advantage of this situation, growing closer to Teena maybe while Bill wasn't there for her.

Deep down in the headcanon tunnel from now on, I like to think Teena and CSM didn't have an affair but just a one night thing. Teena probably never forgave herself for that night and never told Bill about it (2°). Bill never asked, but understood what happened (3°).

At this point, CSM wants to have a relationship with her, but she refuses him and just wants to forget what happened. He's insistent and she starts hating him.

Soon after, Teena and Bill's relationship gets better and Fox comes into this world. Now. I'm not sure what to believe (pun intended) on CSM's being his father. Because, in this logic, he could but so could Bill. Surely CSM thought to be Fox's father and thought to have rights on him, no matter what Teena could say about it.

CSM marries Cassandra, they have Jeffrey, he tries to have what Mulder Sr. has but doesn't work. He can't love. His wife starts hating him, his son is a delusion for him. In the meanwhile, Samantha Mulder is born.

When the time of the abductions is closer, Bill and Teena get to choose which one of their children to "sacrifice" (4°). They painfully indicate Fox, because he's older and stronger, but CSM don't even give them the luxury of the choice. Fox is his son, so Samantha will go. That's the moment where the Mulder family irremediably shutters. Teena divorces Bill and Fox will never know anything about this from his family (5°).

Maybe after the abductees' return, CSM goes to Teena, offering her a possible life with him (this could be why he took Samantha and she wasn't returned). She doesn't believe him and swears to never talk to him again.

Samantha starts living with CSM, he has now what Mulder Sr. had, but again, he can't love. She understands that he constantly lies to her and hates him, so she quickly becames useless to him and he uses her for experiments.

His fixation on the Mulders keeps going, because he thinks Fox is his son, but above all because he likes him as a person. He challenges him, has a goal, a conviction, doesn't care what the others think about him. Maybe he thinks they are similar and that's why he sometimes protects him. But again, he doesn't know what love is, so if there's something more important, he's ready to sacrifice him.

He thinks he knows Mulder and tries to get him on his side more than once, but he fails. Mulder was loved and is loved, he knows what love means, he's kind and decent, even more than his father William.

He thinks he knows Scully because of his own past, but he understands nothing about her or their relationship, because it's the complete opposite of what he's ever experienced. ("You'd die for Mulder but you won't allow yourself to love him" he says to Scully in En Ami, while they're already in a relationship.) And he lies, lies, lies, the thing that made him advance in his life. At the cost of love.

What could really have saved the Mulder family, was the truth, that will become Fox's reason of life. If Teena told Bill about her moment of weekness, if he ever asked her instead of acting like nothing ever happened, there could have been hope. Hope to forgive, to go on. But what they did was the opposite, letting Fox enter in these net of lies. Hiding everything from him "for his own good". But that's not what he wanted and accepted ("The truth will save you, Scully. I think it'll save both of us").

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cecilysass · 10 months

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Scully the ice queen?

I often see people talking about the “ice queen” trope in XF fanfic from the 90s as an example of fanon becoming ubiquitous in fanfic. If you don't know what I'm talking about, this is it in a nutshell: basically, fanfic in the 1990s began to make reference to Scully as a perceived “ice queen,” both at work and in her personal life, meaning that she didn’t express her emotions, that she was repressed and cold. And then that became a thing, a standard trope that other fanfic writers drew on.

My theory is that the “ice queen” / Scully association didn’t actually come from specific works of fic or from specific individuals. I also don’t think it necessarily originated in fic and then crossed over into fan perceptions of Scully. I think it’s easy for 21st century fans to get the causal arrows mixed up on this because we're missing some historical context. I believe many viewers in the 1990s—not just fanfic writers—actually interpreted Scully differently than viewers now because they interpreted female characters differently. I think people in the 1990s were simply much more likely to interpret women serious about their professional lives as “ice queens.” Especially if their professional lives involved science.

Consider the below female scientist (P.K. Newby) writing about her graduate school experience in the 1990s.

Of course this still happens today, and of course it didn’t always happen in the 1990s. But I think it’s important that this impacted actual women living their lives in the same time period, because it’s reasonable that this also affected TV audiences’ perception of a character.

I give you this message from the Usenet discussion group alt.tv.x-files, the first season of the show, from before the fanfic Usenet group was even created. This user characterizes Scully as an “ice queen,” claiming to notice a change after Darkness Falls, and even associating it with her skepticism specifically.

(This is me showing you the whole message with the date, then showing you parts close up because it's so tiny. I'm very dedicated.)

So in this (very early online fandom) conversation, we have a fan who already read her as an “ice queen” on their own without the filter of fanfic to sway them.

Now please don’t get me wrong. Fanfic definitely took hold of the Scully / ice queen thing and ran with it. There are many examples in the Usenet group during the 1990s of people asking, “Hey, which episode was Scully called ‘ice queen’ again? and people saying, ‘Oh never, ha, that’s just a fanfic thing.’” It was a well-established trope by at least 1997. See below.

I just want people to consider that it didn’t have to be one writer, one fic, or one incident that led to the popularization of this piece of fanon. This would have been something people understood right away because it already was culturally out there in the interpretation of the character and in associations with professional women. And like the person asking the question in the above message infers, it probably did come organically from several people at once.

That said, some 1990s fans actively questioned it, observing it didn’t seem to fit with their interpretation of the show.

Notice that in the below conversation, Scully as ice queen is mixed up in perceptions of GA as ice queen, too.

(Side note: I mean, you can totally get where that person was coming from, right? Gillian Anderson was TOTALLY giving repressed, cold, virginal saint in 1997.)

As a prolific reader of fanfic, old and new, I think it’s also important to add this: it seems to me that fanfic writers more often made “Ice Queen” a hurtful nickname that Scully was called by other people (like Mulder being called “Spooky”), not an actual characterization of her personality. And actually, especially given her mostly-male workplace, this seems not unrealistic in the 1990s? Some fanfic writers may even have been writing from experience. (At least, I think I'm right in saying that tendency was true. I'd be curious to know if other readers of old fanfic think Scully herself is characterized as an "ice queen" more often than I'm saying.)

I’m an Old Person. I’m ashamed to admit that in the same time period, I had a high school friend who always studied really hard in school and prioritized grades over social life, and sometimes we jokingly called her an “ice queen.” There was no male equivalent term. So unfortunately, I know this was most definitely a thing outside of Scully and the XF fandom. Fortunately, it does seem to be something we see less of in the 2020s. (At least I think?) I just want to point it out because it’s one of those things you could think was just a little fanon quirk concerning this character or this show when really I do think it’s about gender perceptions overall.

Very interested to know, though, if others think I'm wrong.

(actual Ice queen)

#the x files #ice queen #dana scully #gillian anderson #90s culture #xfiles fanfic #tropes #x files meta #txf meta #fanon

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thatfragilecapricorn30 · 10 months

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thoughts while rewatching triangle:

mulder is straight bonkers for just sailing the bermuda triangle looking for a ghost ship.

scully's queen anne counterpart is dancing with an older man, no surprise there lol.

scully running around the fbi unhinged, trying to save mulder's ass, is my favorite thing ever. the people in the hallways and elevators all look like they've seen this many times before.

never thought scully had sexual tension with skinner or spender, but i kinda felt it in this ep! (weird to say)

the continuous takes are just so cool.

"because you're the only one who can save this ship" - yeah she is!

mulder and scully running through the hallways holding hands, my beloved.

scully waited a long time before hitting mulder during that kiss. don't blame her though!

skinner just throwing the flowers on the side table lmao.

"but you believed me" -- love the parallel to folie a deux. i feel like i could write an essay on this - scully is the skeptic, but she believes in mulder in any timeline.

and of course, hearing mulder say "i love you" to scully still makes me so happy.

#i liked this episode a lot more than i remember!#still can't believe this was written and directed by CC #it's like he got one excellent episode a season #and then we know how the rest turned out #triangle #the x files #txf meta #my.txf #msr #fox mulder #dana scully #txf

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alexa-crowe · 1 year

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it’s kind of painful to think about how much Mulder wanted to be a father, though. it seems like such a natural desire for him, wanting to create a familial unit through which he could be a better parent than his were to him, and heal the eternally suffering child within him. he never thought about it before scully because he’d never met anyone who could pull him from his wallowing ways enough to think about himself in a wholly positive light before her. “but you saved me.” it’s not until scully takes up space in his life and loves him with no limits, no dues, no catches, day in and day out for years on end that he learns to love himself, too. they declare it to each other in no uncertain terms in ftf. bolstered by that, healthier for it, he’s happier - season six and season seven. the real message of the fake domesticity in the dreamlands, arcadia, and the sixth extinctions is that he only wants it with scully, underscored by them living together in iwtb. he’s fine with domesticity, loves it, even. he treats emily like a daughter - beating a man for abusing her like he beat up duane barry after scully was taken, doggedly pursuing any lead and only returning to scully once he’s triumphant, picking emily up without question even though scully could do it just fine (like yeah a three year old is heavy but have you seen her guns? so fine). it doesn’t occur to him that scully will push him away because it’s obvious to him that they’re equally invested in the kid, will be equally devastated by her death. he implicitly understands that while he’ll never experience the suffering that is knowing your ability to have kids was taken away from you, he will never have kids if they’re not with scully - so they will never have kids. he’s saying goodbye to his daughter, too. “maybe she was meant for [your love], too.” but he means our love. and it makes me want to break stuff that the writers looked at their own character with childhood trauma that destroyed his family and thought he wouldn’t want to build a better one. of course he says yes when scully asks him to do in vitro, of course he’s excited for the baby, of course the baby is his, of course he fits in perfectly to their little family. of course of course of course. it’s not just scully’s wish, it’s his, too.

#txf #txf meta

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endless-formsmostbeautiful · 3 months

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Squeeze / Ascension

I have a theory that Scully may have left her necklace in Duane Barry's car intentionally during her abduction. I had previously assumed that she lost it unintentionally during a struggle or during the trip, but while I was rewatching I noticed a parallel between this scene in Ascension and another in Squeeze.

In Squeeze, Tooms surreptitiously steals Scully's pendant when Mulder and Scully investigate his lair without either of them noticing his presence. Later, while staking out the lair, Mulder sees the necklace, recognises it, and correctly surmises that Tooms has marked her to be his next victim.

Later, in Duane Barry and Ascension, Scully is abducted by Duane Barry, who transports her to Skyland Mountain in the hopes that she will be abducted in his place. Scully would have known that Mulder would do everything in his power to try to find her, so I think it is reasonable to suppose that Scully may have wanted to leave some talisman behind in Barry's car to signify that he was on the right track. Scully would likely have remembered that Mulder recognised her pendant in Squeeze and would (correctly) assume that he would find her cross necklace in Barry's car and realise that she had been there and that she was still alive.

#the x files #txf meta #I am really getting into the abduction arc right now.#my writing

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unremarkablehouse · 3 months

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We all talk about the neck rubbing scene in Ice, but I think we need to appreciate Scully crash tackling Bear after he smashes the glass over Mulder’s head. This little 5ft flying squirrel gets filled with Mamma Bear strength and taking down a large man with psychosis after he attacks her Mulder.

I also love that Mulder is always impressed/grateful/proud whenever Scully takes someone down. He doesn’t pout and act emasculated, he is just like ‘that’s my partner…’

#txf #the x files #msr #fox mulder #dana scully #txf meta #I love that Scully apprehends more suspects than Mulder #tiny fists of fury #Mulder’s heart eyes are so big when he’s cuffing Bear

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queeenpersephone · 1 year

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‘the truth is out there... but so are lies’ is honestly, to me, the most impactful moment of the entire x files series, and definitely the most impactful in terms of the quest. because mulder wants to believe so badly - he’d trust anyone, listen to anyone, follow any lead - though ‘you make me a whole person’ is a romantic overture, it also represents how mulder is only half of the investigative team. he wants the truth by searching for the truth. scully, on the other hand, tries to find the truth by searching for the lie. the lies that mulder has been told, the lies of everyone who isn’t mulder, the one person she trusts. the government’s lies. diana’s lies. and the way he stops, listens to her, and says ‘thank you’ before doing what he’s going to do anyways? i think you could read that response as flippant, but to me it’s genuine. he says thank you because he’s not going to change. his stubbornness and willingness to believe in spite of everything and everyone against him is his best and worst trait. he’s going to do what he does, especially this early in the series, no matter what scully says. but he’s going to listen. he’s going to thank her for looking for deception, because it’s not just discovering the truth that will move them forward - it’s also discovering the lies.

narratively, i love that scully says this in s1. i think this is something that it takes the whole original series to really sink in for mulder. that the more they search, the more murky things are instead of clearer. you can sink your entire life into this impenetrable mask of truths and lies. but the truths and lies out there might be bigger but will never be as meaningful, as mulder finally realizes in s8, as the truth they both know. anyways tldr frank spotniz was right

#this is rambly but i'm just thinking today #scully x mulder #msr #the x files #meta #msr meta #txf meta #liv speaks

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agent-troi · 7 months

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the first line of mulder's opening monologue in colony is actually so important:

"i have lived with a fragile faith built on the ether of vague memories from an experience that I can neither prove nor explain."

this is IT guys!! this is the crux of the whole show, of the whole dynamic between mulder and scully.

mulder wants to believe, but it doesn't come naturally or easily to him, the foundation being so fragile, as he puts it. his seeming naivete, his eagerness to believe just about anything, all of it stems from a deep insecurity that actually none of it is real, that all of his efforts and sacrifices have been in service to the illusion that one day he will see his sister again.

it's the opposite for scully. she is a believer, naturally, but she's afraid to face the inherent loss of control in believing in things beyond science, beyond reason. the possibility of these things being real frightens her as much as the possibility of them not being real frightens mulder.

the only way either of them can find the strength to overcome their respective fears is through each other. only when mulder's belief falters can scully find the strength to give in to hers, and only when scully fails to doubt can mulder afford to scrutinize the world through the lens of skepticism. they balance each other, make each other whole.

at the end of endgame, mulder tells scully he's found "something i thought i'd lost. faith to keep looking." that's exactly what they give each other!! faith and hope and companionship and love in a world that continually threatens to deprive them of those things❤️

#i had a moment guys i'm sorry #i just finished my ivf wip and i'm feeling emotional #also this two parter is up next in my rewatch #it's so good and i'm so excited about it #i'm ready to have Feelings #x files #txf s2 #colony #endgame #fox mulder #dana scully #mulder x scully #msr #txf meta #txf thoughts #txf mytharc

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deathsbestgirl · 5 months

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god. the thing about mulder & scully's conversations in never again, is they're having two conversations at once. and sometimes they understand that, and sometimes they don't.

scully starts by asking him why she doesn't have a desk. and mulder tells her he always thought 'that was her area.' which disappoints her. because they're not on the same page. if she had a desk & a nameplate, the x files would really be hers too. that's hard for mulder to accept because a big part of him believes she shouldn't be there. not because she hasn't earned it or doesn't deserve it, hasn't proved herself, or that she doesn't really care about the x files. or actually, yes because of those things. she has dedicated herself and lost so much, she believes in him and the work, and he can't trap her down there with him. she's supposed to move up & move on, have that normal life she sometimes thinks she wants and mulder believes she wants.

but to scully, it's like there's no room for her. she's a visitor. she doesn't have evidence of her value, to the x files or to mulder.

then he gives her the assignment, acts like her superior instead of her partner. he tells her she was just assigned and this is his life. "and it's become mine."

now mulder's insecurities come out. part of him wants her to move on, but he can't let go of her either. she's made him a whole person.

then he tells her 'maybe it's good we get some time apart' and he doesn't tell her where she's going and he knows she'll go to philadelphia. i think he kind of expects to hear from her. but he's on vacation and she's working. 'at least she's there to keep an eye on things.'

and she's bothered again when he doesn't trust her judgement. it leads her to more questioning & doubts.

in the beginning, she took him at his word. she believed him and she thought she understood. she followed him, and chose him over & over again. not just the work, she chose mulder.

when she was on her deathbed after the abduction, ahab didn't convince her to live. mulder did. she had the strength of his beliefs. in irresistible, she trusts mulder with her life. but she has to be strong for him, she can't be vulnerable. she doesn't want to be someone he needs to protect, someone he'd destroy himself for.

at the end of never again, mulder is angry & petty and he doesn't seem to get it. but i think he understands when he goes to say "yes but it's become mine." it's their work. it's their life. they belong to each other.

but he didn't say it. they both know now, but they maintain the silence.

in leonard betts, i think you can tell mulder understood more than he did at the beginning of never again. he barely voices his theory, let's her say what he's thinking. when she asks for his help, he gives it. he tries to make her laugh. in the end, he validates her. she did good work!! be proud!!

scully's fear & disquiet at the end bring us to her strength & clarity at the beginning of memento mori. mulder's validation becomes him bringing her flowers at the hospital, learning he's the only one she's called. scully held her strength to tell him the facts, so carefully of her fatal diagnosis. his questions lead them to the x files, the other women abductees they met before.

mulder bolsters her, because she isn't as strong as she appears and she has always drawn on his strength, his beliefs.

they maintained silence, but through the cancer arc, they're forced to face exactly what they are to each other, as they continue leaving it unsaid. yet they become so physical, they go further for each other than they have in the past.

in detour, scully tries again. she's not dying anymore. she's in remission, she survived and she's ready. but mulder runs into the woods chasing an x file, and we see scully settle into painful acceptance. she can't be mad. everything's different but it's still the same.

#the x files #mulder and scully #dana scully #fox mulder #txf meta #never again #leonard betts #memento mori #cancer arc #detour

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bakedbakermom · 6 months

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can you tell use more stories of what it was like waiting/watching the x files when it was on air?>:)

i was late to the fandom - i stumbled across the episode Humbug during the hiatus between s6-s7 and was HOOKED. i was also, unfortunately, 13 at the time, and not allowed to use the internet nearly as much as i wanted. so i can't tell you about what the fandom was like before 1999.

HOWEVER i can tell you that the end of s7 was a nail biter, and the summer between 7 and 8 was filled with an unprecedented surge in fanfic as we all tried to imagine what season 8 would bring. (i wrote one that i may return to at some point, it was very apocalyptic.) there were a LOT of angry fans when robert patrick was announced as joining the cast, to the point where many of us felt like scully hitting him with water in Within was meant to be a catharsis for US.

what i miss most about those days, however, is how creative and connected the fandom was. there were web hosts out there like angelfire and geocities where anyone could make their own completely free website about whatever they wanted, with a simple wysiwyg interface (what you see is what you get, aka drag and drop) so even the most tech-illiterate among us could make something cool - and if you knew html (or had lissaexplains bookmarked) you could make something truly spectacular.

there would be surges of new fic and fanart after every episode (some more than others lol). you would find screencaps and videos on napster from those who had better tech than you. being 13 with a strict 10pm bedtime and no computer of my own, i couldn't hop on the forums after the episode like i wanted; instead i'd have to wait until monday afternoon after school to catch up on all the hot goss and new content, and i had NO irl friends who watched the show until high school (literally day one a girl named jenn spotted xf art on my binder and we were friends immediately). so you can imagine that by the time 3:00 rolled around i was positively VIBRATING with the need to talk about it.

there was one official forum and dozens of fan-made offshoots (walter's wenches, for example, started as a sub-board on the main forum and then became its own group) that felt like small towns. you could follow individuals or threads and get notifications for posts and updates. this was before social media, so it was all as anonymous as you wanted it to be.

i met several penpals on the official board that i stayed in touch with for years after the series ended and the board was shut down. one of them was a collector of xf memorabilia up in canada from whom i was able to buy several tapes of hard-to-find episodes (if you missed one, you had to hope for a rerun or a marathon) and merch (xf barbies my beloved) as well as extras like interviews and music videos and the celebrity deathmatch segment etc.

i miss late 90s/early 00s fandom so much.

youtube

also i was in catholic school and learned more about sex through fic than my school's pitiful sex ed would ever begin to touch on (did you know the penis goes in the vagina? because they never said that. did you know women can orgasm? because they never said that. etc)

#txf meta #fandom lore #fandom culture #txf fandom

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figureofdismay · 9 days

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i rag on CC and his 'platonic brother sister samantha coded' approach to MSR, and yet! Scully is so Little Sister Coded about Mulder and her relationship with him Specifically and it is extremely important to both her character and their dynamic. It's very very important that she was the middle kid and the youngest girl and the target of teasing and bossing from Billy and Miss, and she wanted so badly to be included with Billy and Charlie instead of always being the nerdy tomboy tag-along that she couldn't help being because even though she's stubborn and hearty and clever and pragmatic, she's so tenderhearted deep down, full of empathy and outrage at injustice, and also eternally precise,which was always going to leave her on the outside of any rambunctious cool boy or cool girl group.

It's not mentioned anywhere in canon but i always assumed that Bill Jr. and Melissa were closest in age and closer to each other than to the younger two growing up, because 3 and 4 years is a noticeable gap at formative ages. Dana never quite fit in with the older two, the more socially successful and outgoing and assertive Scullys, you get the sense that she was trying to keep up with them while also trying to rebel against them, nerdy little conscience to assertive, successful Billy and naive, half-unwilling protege to popular, mysterious Melissa, and ending up on a drastically different path than both of them in the end. And then there's the mysterious Charlie, who she isn't close enough to, despite him being her little sibling and Dana being a natural protector and caretaker, to show up in her life through the duration of the narrative. The four kids would have mainly had each other growing up on the move, but even then she didn't fully fit in.

Interestingly, the age gap between Mulder and Samantha is probably nearly the same as Dana and Billy. So there are some parallels there, familiar sensations, except with Mulder, she's included in the special club of two instead of being on the outside. And Mulder has traded the naturally contentious relationship he had with Samantha as a kid for a fairy-tale reenactment of a new tag along partnership that includes some friction but none of the festering resentment between siblings in a deeply unhappy house. He ditches her from time to time in the name of 'protection' but in the day to day, he doesn't leave her trotting along trying to keep up and made to feel like her viewpoint is silly and annoying. Despite her independence, she even lets Mulder be protective of her -- far more than anyone else in her life -- like an ideal little sister figure, because that's mutual with Mulder too, and part of an idealized dynamic that she was close to but never part of growing up, as either the younger or the older part.

Scully always to go along with her figure of adventure, never wants to be left behind to catch up or be left out, doesn't want to be seen as too little or not game enough or annoying. And except for certain Syndicate related circumstances, Mulder doesn't just put up with this, he delights in it, always having his partner and playmate who wants to go along for the ride -- even when they're supremely fed up with each other.

Of course they aren't actually siblings, they're unrelated adults with undeniable chemistry and the lines quickly blur even further. But It's a bickering, codependent, pseudo familial, pseudo connubial melange of a dynamic, and it is actually easy to see how Scully could end up making assumptions about her and Mulder's relationship as being best-friendly-fraternal or as them filling particular vacant roles in each other's lives in a way that's convenient but not significant. Because those pseudo familial roles are actually part of their dynamic, even when it also involves romantic entanglement.

#dana scully #character theory: scully #msr #fic: nothing to pack #txf #txf meta

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