*whispers In Scully’s Ear* Chupacabra

Watching the first season of The X-Files and seeing all of these supernaturally menaced women is giving me a burning need for Normal Women Characters Who Can Just Deal With Supernatural Shit. Like suburban moms who know how to throw salt at ghosts.

Fr like let the stoic old man cry like a baby

unless they specifically asked, you don’t get to tell a fanfic writer you think they mischaracterized the character by the way. because the second someone writes a fanfic about a character, that character becomes the writer’s own version of the character. canon is only a suggestion, but whether or not an author will follow it / how much of canon an author will take is entirely up to them. you don’t get to stick your nose in their world and tell them “hey this is not to my liking therefore I think you’re doing it wrong” when you can simply leave quietly and move on to something else you may enjoy

Anyway. Suffice it to say that I identify strongly with Scully for a whole lot of personality, mental health, and neurodivergence reasons (and yes, as someone on that spectrum, Scully reads way more that way to me than Mulder at any given point), and that is exactly why I don't think Scully is this beautiful little angel martyr who never did anything wrong in her life ever.

In many ways her lack of communication + big emotional outbursts + contradictory impulses and lies about what she wants are the main reason she's stuck in a situation where Mulder keeps hurting her, her family keeps hurting her, and she keeps ending up with less than what she wants.

if you don't say what you want and need, don't set any boundaries, blow up with 'people ask too much of you' or you get overwhelmed (without at any point saying you're getting overwhelmed or that the stress is getting to you or that you're not getting what you're hoping for from the people around you) and then lie and deflect when asked what's wrong and what you do want, then yeah, you're not going to get what you want because absolutely no one knows what you're 'hinting' about or trying to make happen. what's more people will end up treating you like an emotionally fragile bomb to diffuse, who might decide to trash the whole relationship if asked to modify your behavior, instead of someone who can deal with a conversation about wants and needs in a two way exchange.

That kind of avoidant-hostile behavior makes a lot of no-win situations that you created for yourself, and then the other person conveniently takes the blame for both of you a lot of the time.

So yeah, seeing a lot of myself in Scully is exactly why I sometimes say i think Mulder can do better and why I don't think he put them in the acrimonious, tense relationship they were in in much of s4, s5 and s6. Sure, he got fed up and started snarking back and distancing himself as the holding pattern wore on and Scully kept up a pattern of extreme neediness and avoidance-with-prejudice. But he wasn't 'pushing her away' or 'punishing her' or 'being consumed by guilt,' it reads as him responding to her surprisingly consistent pattern of on screen behavior, which. I'd bet that if someone's playing emotional yo-yo with you, you'd get snappish and withdrawn, too.

And yes, ultimately I don't think they can stay apart. And yes part of me wants to see Mulder always forgive Scully for her behavior because it's a comforting fantasy for me. But it's also a cathartic fantasy for me to see him make her confront and deal with the consequences of her mind games sometimes because it's a way to help me make sense of the times people I cared about have cut me out of their lives "for no reason."

And no it isn't 'more equal and fair' to erase her flaws and always let her off the hook.

how to say "I love you" in x-files [151/?] ⤷ 2.18 — “Fearful Symmetry”

The X-Files illustration

The original art is in my shop: https://www.ebay.com/usr/justmadart

The X-Files, “The Red and the Black” behind the scenes featuring:

Gillian Anderson taking a phone break

Tom Braidwood in his job as assistant director, not in his role as Frohike

Jaap Broeker in his job as David Duchovny’s stand-in, not in his role as the Stupendous Yappi

"Closure" was good actually because Samantha was not a symbol or a mission or an idea. She was a girl. And that girl is gone. There is no body, no meaning, paradoxically, no closure to be found. It's meaningless because it's real. It is real because it is meaningless.

The X-Files | S2 | Humbug

I can imagine a drugged Mulder seeing this billboard and begging Scully to take him to one

The X-Files Kitsunegari | 5.08