Story 140: "Our Mulders" and "Our Scullys" by Punk Maneuverability

[wendelah1]

Fourteen stories in 28 days. Are you ready?

Our first selection is the perfect way to start our mini-fic marathon. "Our Mulders" was nominated by littlegreen42. Written way back in 1997, it is the first in a group of short-short stories Punk came to name the "Ours" series. "And in changing them, we made them ours." I see it as a love-letter to Fox Mulder and to fan-fiction writers for The X-Files.

"Our Mulders"

Posted two years later, "Our Scullys" is a little darker, a little more painful to read, at least for me, and surprisingly prescient, given the ending of the series.

"Our Scullys"

The links are to Archive of Our Own, where you can read the rest of the series, and everything else Punk has written, too.

Comments

[bardsmaid.livejournal.com]

One of the most insightful commentaries anywhere on the characters... but especially on the fic authors who write them. Btw, Punk also wrote a third in this series, Our Kryceks (http://www.squidge.org/ratales/ourkryceks.html), which is darker yet than 'Our Scullys', but every bit as on-target.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize Our Scullys was written so much later. I've long assumed the whole of them were written around the same time. But last night when I reread them I definitely noticed, as Wen says, that Our Scullys is darker in tone, and now that I realize it was written significantly later than Our Mulder I understand why.

The 'Our' series is what I would call commemorative meta, and it's some of the best commemorative meta I've read. Punk was an avid fanfic writer, so it's fair to say she intimately knew what she was talking about when she spoke of 'our characters'. She wasn't speaking with the cool knowledge of an observer, but with the passionate understanding of a participant, and I think that comes through in the writing.

That said, I feel I'm less appreciative of these fics than most readers. They feel sentimental to me, though I guess they're supposed to. They're the kind of thing I like more when it's been a while since I read them and what remains is the basic impression they left me with.

But now that I realize Our Mulders was written in mid 1997 I have to say that Punk had some pretty excellent insights into fandom. It's easy for me, thirteen years later, to be underwhelmed by this kind of commemorative fiction, because by this point fandom is a well known entity. But in '97 the internet was still in the early stages of its big bang, and fandom must have seemed like the most incredible phenomenon. The intensity of it and the novelty of it must have been unbelievable. I take it for granted that canon is only the beginning, and that every character is just the template for potentially infinite versions of them - for 'our versions' of them. Thus, I take 'Our Mulders' and 'Our Scullys' a little bit for granted too. But these fics are a snapshot from the past, and the fact that what they're describing seems obvious to me now is really what makes them so prescient, and so just plain cool.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

amyhit, you've learned the value of paying mind to history. History moves fast now, and is hard to catch hold of. But the twenty-year history of The X-Files and its fandom is our psychic property to understand and treasure.

Maybe it's important. Who knows? Television viewers and their shows have already been influenced in ways we can't unpack for a while. (Unpack: academese. Not my favorite language, but occasionally on point.)

It was an "incredible phenomenon." I remember passing a billboard with an ENORMOUS Mulder and Scully and thinking "I thought this was my secret."

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

amyhit, bless her, told me to repost this in the proper thread. Thanks, amyhit.


I've always loved these delectable vignettes. They are reverent without being mindless, they luxuriate in the glorious vicarious feelings of fandom without overlooking its undeniable absurdity. They truly read like poetry. Not, like Milton, to explain God's ways to man. More to explain the way human beings create their own complex and contradictory images of the sacred.

They are Punk poetry.

Onward to Krycek.


They may seem sentimental, now that I think of it, but some of us will always think of fandom as a more than technological miracle.

[maybe-amanda.livejournal.com]

(For the sake of full disclosure, I should state that I want to be Punk when I grow up, and have for about, I don;t know, 15 years, so...)

Meta can be tricky. Sometimes it sounds so preachy. Sometimes it sound so self-congratulatory. In Punk's hands, it just works. It's not pseudo-intellectual or pretentious. It's just honest. And yes, I agree with everything she said, cuz you know, been there, done that.

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

I love to read stories about the writing of stories, so these really appealed to me. I really liked the Krycek one, too--I think the meta works particularly well in that story because of how wildly fanfic!Krycek varies.

I've also always appreciated the way fanfic (really good fanfic, mostly, but sometimes ordinary or badfic will strike a chord too) makes the canon seem bigger, better, more important, more us. I like it when fanfic writers take fandom seriously, is I guess what I mean.

There are a ton of lines I liked in each of them, but damn:

We bought him a drink in New Orleans and he told us a story about the end of the world.

[infrared4.livejournal.com]

I hadn't come across these, and I thought I'd read pretty much everything by Punk Manouverability! I also found "Our Scullys" more painful to read, and sad, but then Scully is the lynch-pin of the X-Files for me, without her, or if she had been a different character, I doubt I would have fallen for Mulder in the same way.

[write-out.livejournal.com]

It's been a long time since I've read these and they're just as excellent as I remember, so I had to go back and read "Our Kryceks" and "Our Skinners" as well. I agree with estella_c when she says these read like poetry. They really do. They're funny, dark, happy, sad, wistful little stories and they make me happy to be a part of this fandom.

I'm glad these were selected and now I want to go back and reread some of my favorite fic.

misc. favorite lines

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I agree with write_out, the Our series makes me want to go back and reread fics. That's kind of my favorite things about them, actually. Especially when Punk writes a line and you're pretty sure you know what fic she was thinking of when she wrote it.

Um, favorites lines? I feel like we should share.

For Our Mulders:

we fed his fish -- Because that's just such a fan thing, our love of his fish. It's so particular to fanon.

When we got tired of guns and basements and lost sisters and fear, we put him in fairy tales, in World Wars, in bars, in adolescence, in the margins of our notebooks. -- This is one of those "Spot the Fanfic!" lines. Plus, I love that the focus swings around like a camera, first on what we wrote, then on something so personal as where we wrote it.

He was Mulder, and we found things in him that Chris Carter hadn't put there. We're not even sure if one of us could have done it. -- TXF is such an example of a story come to life. So much of what was wonderful about it felt like serendipity, or synchronicity, and I love how Punk captures that - that almost spooky sense that maybe the story was developing itself, if anyone was.

We gave him our Scullys. -- Okay, not going to tear up. But seriously, I feel so proud to be a shipper at this line.


For Our Scullys:

We made her beautiful because we loved her. -- This, for me, taps right into my inner little girl, who's between eight and twelve. The one who basically worships Scully on a sublingual level, and fantasizes about her in the same was as that little girl fantasizes about her idealized version of herself. It's bookended by the line near the end: We pulled at her to fill our spaces.

She was the other woman. -- I have no experience with feeling this, and I stay far away from fics that treat her this way, but I like that Punk brings up this faction of the fandom too.

We made her a martyr, a Judas. We wrapped her crucifix around her neck and pulled until she saw angels. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women... -- Ooh, creepy. What's unnerving about this is how much I get it - that impulsive desire to see her stricken, and then to feel all the more fiercely for her because of what she's suffered and endured. Just because I think CC and co. did a poor (insensitive) job of it, doesn't mean I don't understand what it is to have a taste for her pain. And I'd say that's a pretty common theme. Just look at Iolokus, as an obvious example. Ostensibly it was written because Scully had been mistreated by TPTB. But if all we wanted for her was justice, there'd be much less convoluted and torturous ways to have written that story - no, the torture was part of the deal.

We took her away from her routine, dressed her up and sent her to parties. She stood against the wall, not wanting to dance. We fixed her up on blind dates. She politely sipped her wine. -- I love how just plain Scully this line is, and the idea that she is resistant to our otherworldly influence in roughly the same way she's resistant to the influence of the characters who populate her world. It makes me think of Milagro and what the writers were saying there.

She said, "I'm fine." -- Classic.

[tiger-bay.livejournal.com]

I can't tell you how much I love these metas. I remember reading them a couple of years ago when I had only just discovered the world of fanfic and they didn't really make sense then.

But now! Well, they are poetic and somehow inexpressibly sad and vulnerable. As if we have tried to suck the life right out of them for our own self-gratification - like torture. Somewhere there are the REAL Mulder and Scully and nothing that CC nor all of us put together can truly break into little pieces, but my God, how we have tried. But, pinch me, they aren't real after all and this, ultimately, is what they are - just a bunch of yearning and dreams.

Still, I feel a difference between our mulders and our scullys. I may be imagining it, but I felt quite strongly that whereas Mulder truly is a near blank page upon which we have hung all our romantic, sadistic, thrill-seeking, adventurous ideals, Scully has a shape and a form and a character that none of our attempts to influence can really affect. She remains, truly, her own entity over and above how we try to make her: We started to hate her. She was stubborn and proud and we couldn't change her. She wouldn't let us. Whereas with Mulder it seems as if we are are drawing him, it is we determining his place in our lives : He always struck when we were too tired to find paper, too lazy to try. Then he slipped away, making us curse our own decision to ignore him.

By "we" of course I mean authors, not those of us who just feed off it, but we are all of us in this together.

That's my take anyway. Loved them, loved them, "Our Kryceks" too and I couldn't really care less about what I said above, it is just a fantastic bit of writing and deserves an award from all of us. Thank you so much for reminding us of it.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Well, they are poetic and somehow inexpressibly sad and vulnerable. As if we have tried to suck the life right out of them for our own self-gratification - like torture. Somewhere there are the REAL Mulder and Scully and nothing that CC nor all of us put together can truly break into little pieces, but my God, how we have tried.

I'd never really thought of it this way. Or maybe I had, but I feel the opposite.

In my eyes works of fiction are like the Velveteen Rabbit - that toy that wants to be real, and can only be real when a child loves it so dearly that it's threadbare and its eye buttons are loose and its fur's all rubbed off. And a big part of what I think is so valuable about fandom is that it allows us to be that child. We don't have to worry about doing damage or being selfish or having insane fantasies. We can love Mulder and Scully in whatever exuberant, unselfconscious ways we want, and we don't have to worry that we're 'doing it wrong', because we're doing what we're meant to do, what comes naturally, and without us they'd be nothing. Which isn't to say I believe we're to thank for them (not for all of any one version of them).

We came because they were there - not the other way around. But then they became because we were there. So it's a symbiotic relationship.

As I see it, if there's anything real about them it's because we love them. We love them more for the effigies of them, and our/their effigies also stand as proof of our love. some of them are hackjobs, and some of them are astoundingly beautiful, but at the end of the day I feel like (almost) all our Scullys and our Mulders are pieces of the real them.

I don't disagree that there is something painful about Punk's fics - especially Our Scullys - a feeling of vulnerability. I just don't percieve her fics as sad or violent in nature. I think it's that what we did with our Mulders and Scullys we were doing to ourselves, through a filter. With them it's more than empathy. It's me, it's my own desire to be loved, hurt, challenged, ditched, puzzled, amazed, fucked, saved, changed.

And with that I conclude that I actually like these fics more than I thought I did. *eyeroll*

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I agree that Scully seems to have more shape and form of her own, though. She's painted with sharper, darker strokes - but also fewers strokes, I think. it makes her very durable.

However, we should probably get some Mulderist's opinions on the matter. They might feel differently. littlegreen42! Come tell us your somewhat Muldercentric opinion on the matter! And leucocrystal, I don't suppose you're lurking around here, are you?

[littlegreen42.livejournal.com]

littlegreen42! Come tell us your somewhat Muldercentric opinion on the matter!

Well, if you insist. ;)

Um, I don't know if this is completely related to what you and tiger_bay are saying, but I think it is (even though I'm probably understanding this in a different sort of way), so bear with me here...

There's a lot of reference to, for lack of a better term, Mulder!Torture in Our Mulders (i.e. "We placed him on a pedestal and then gently and lovingly tipped it over...just to watch it fall" and "We knocked him on his ass until he started crying then wrapped him up in a blanket before he could start to complain about the cold."). In Our Scullys all the stuff about her getting hurt seems tied in with canon, rather than something done to the character by fic authors. I mean, there is discussion about how fic authors make her "a victim," but there's a sense that nothing is really added that wasn't on the show. Now, it is true that Mulder went through all kinds of crap in canon, and that's probably where the tendency to hurt the poor guy in fic comes from, but I feel like authors often go beyond this. With Scully, I haven't really seen the same kind of thing.

The thought I had about all of this was: it's almost like fic authors and readers are feeling through Mulder -- like, there's this level of catharsis with him that you don't see with Scully, and I think that's tied up with the fact that Mulder, for all his outward stoicism, is the more emotional character. Now, I could be wrong about this; there may be many people who experience catharsis on the same level through Scully. It might just be because I identify more strongly with Mulder that I see things this way. But I think there is good reason to believe that Mulder, in all his emotionality, might be more receptive to any feelings that we might want to project onto him.

[tiger-bay.livejournal.com]

In Our Scullys all the stuff about her getting hurt seems tied in with canon, rather than something done to the character by fic authors. I mean, there is discussion about how fic authors make her "a victim," but there's a sense that nothing is really added that wasn't on the show. Now, it is true that Mulder went through all kinds of crap in canon, and that's probably where the tendency to hurt the poor guy in fic comes from, but I feel like authors often go beyond this. With Scully, I haven't really seen the same kind of thing.

Exactly! You have found the words to say what I completely failed to do last night...it is exactly what I meant

and

The thought I had about all of this was: it's almost like fic authors and readers are feeling through Mulder -- like, there's this level of catharsis with him that you don't see with Scully, and I think that's tied up with the fact that Mulder, for all his outward stoicism, is the more emotional character.

I think this is a really interesting point because my feeling too is that in fanfic world Mulder can be weak, vulnerable, needy, pathetic etc. etc. and it is absorbed and accepted whereas the same manifestations in Scully tend to draw outrage from readers. I don't think canon is the only reason that this is the case (because I don't think the show does posit Scully as a stronger, more resilient character than Mulder), it must also partly be due to the fact that most of us are women so however Mulderist we might be, part of us still identifies with a woman - so we want her to be strong and capable at least partially reflecting our own ideals of womanhood and who we would like to be.

But that's over-analyzing I think, isn't it? And a little simplistic too.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Yes, I also agree with littlegreen42 about the differences between MulderTorture and Scully Torture. The distinction is even evident in the fact that we have the term MulderTorture in the first place, and there isn't really a Scully equivalent.

there may be many people who experience catharsis on the same level through Scully. It might just be because I identify more strongly with Mulder that I see things this way. But I think there is good reason to believe that Mulder, in all his emotionality, might be more receptive to any feelings that we might want to project onto him.

I definitely experience catharsis more strongly through Scully. Part of that is, as tiger_bay has said, simply because she is a woman. But it isn't just that. In Our Mulders Punk says Mulder "taught us about ourselves." In Our Scullys Punk says "we pulled at her to fill our spaces." They're both ways of saying approximately the same thing, but in Our Scullys there's more urgency, more of an imperative. That's how I feel. I feel through Mulder too, but with him it's more like something I tap into, and not something that seems to come immediately and directly from myself.

And for me, contrary to littlegreen's point (while I think it is no less true for many), it's the closeness I feel with Scully that makes me more particular about how she is depicted. If they describe her 'wrong' it's more like they're describing me wrong. It's easier for me to see Mulder as a 'tool' (pun and freudianism both intended and not intended *g*) than it is for me to see Scully as one. I think this confirms part of what tiger_bay was positing above.

[littlegreen42.livejournal.com]

That's interesting that you don't want Scully described "wrong" because you identify with her, because I also get offended about her being described incorrectly, but I don't feel like I identify with her. But I think I do, on some level. She is probably a lot like me in that she's more logical and cerebral than a woman is "supposed" to be, and it can be very refreshing to have that represented in the popular media.

I was going to say something about how maybe Mulder's more malleable aspects come from the fact that he's not as "rigid" as Scully, but when I thought about it, I realized that he is rigid. He's just as locked into his ideas that "the paranormal is at work and I will hear no different!" as Scully is about science and rationality. In fact, I might even go a little farther than that and claim that Mulder's more rigid. I feel like Scully's more open to considering other ideas than we give her credit for. But Mulder remains stuck in his own way of thinking pretty much throughout the entire series. Maybe the impulse to see Scully as rigid is two-fold: 1. as a woman, we expect her to be more "open," so that when she shows any indication of rigidity, we might see it more strongly than it appears, and 2. Scully's attributes are in some ways stereotypically "male" in nature, and men are supposed to be more stable and unemotional, and thus more "rigid." So, in short, there is some sexism at work here.

Wow, did I ever ramble! But this is an interesting discussion. :)

[littlegreen42.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with your idea that we might not want to see Scully as "weak, vulnerable, needy, pathetic etc" because as women we want her to be "strong and capable," which may be how we want to see ourselves. That wouldn't have occurred to me immediately, but it sounds right. I wonder if there were more male fans, we'd see the opposite, with people being okay with Scully being emotional and vulnerable, but not so with Mulder.

[tiger-bay.livejournal.com]

I don't know really but my instinct is to say that it doesn't work like that, but perhaps for different reasons. Think of the Scully of Khyber and Justin Glass and Stephen (err...can't remember his surname) and others: they are generally kick-ass hard Scully's, resilient and kind and bright and totally capable, more-or-less how we generally like her. But then there's a male fantasy thing about tough women isn't there? Angelina Jolie is after all pure male drool material.

Plus I read in New Scientist last week that apparently tears are a physical turn-off due to their chemical composition. Men, apparently, really just do not LIKE women's tears! Still, it would be great to have some male input into all of this but I guess fantasizing and daydreaming were unlikely to be helpful on the great mammoth hunts of yore. They are genetically incapacitated for this type of discussion...

That's my stereo-typing done for the evening. I'm off to read the next great story, can it be AS GOOD?

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

Plus I read in New Scientist last week that apparently tears are a physical turn-off due to their chemical composition. Men, apparently, really just do not LIKE women's tears!

Hey, I read that too! Isn't it weird? (and really depressing)

As to how men like their Scullys and Mulders, I think it would be nearly impossible to say, because the men who write fanfic are such a small (and probably atypical) percentage of the gender.

My theory is that the primary difference between how men experience stories and how women do is that most men aren't nearly so interested in the characters in the first place. So long as the characters are functional - they move a good plot along without tripping it up - they're sufficient.

A woman might say: "Mulder's sister was taken when he was a kid. He thinks she was abducted by aliens. He's trying to find her." (the emphasis is on Mulder, his life, his thoughts, and the fact that he's trying)
A man might say: "Mulder's sister was abducted by aliens so now he's trying to find her." (less personal, more story oriented)

(I'm just generalizing, obviously. And yes, if you can't tell, I think the majority of men are pretty poor at appreciating fiction. But they don't seem to know what they're missing, so it works out well. And I'm pretty poor at appreciating sports. *shrugs*)

We've gotten pretty far off topic here.

[wendelah1]

Plus I read in New Scientist last week that apparently tears are a physical turn-off due to their chemical composition. Men, apparently, really just do not LIKE women's tears!

Hey, I read that too! Isn't it weird? (and really depressing)

Would you feel better if you found out men were turned on by women's tears?

My theory is that the primary difference between how men experience stories and how women do is that most men aren't nearly so interested in the characters in the first place. So long as the characters are functional - they move a good plot along without tripping it up - they're sufficient.

I don't know. I can think of a few male writers who seemed interested in their characters. Tolstoy. Dostoevsky. Chekhov. Dickens. SHAKESPEARE. Even a few Americans, no doubt.

The majority of people are pretty poor at appreciating fiction, by which I assume you mean literature. I know men and women in pretty equal numbers who love good writing.

I agree that there are not enough men writing fanfiction to give us useful data, but I think both Khyber and Justin Glasser wrote pretty true-to-canon versions of Scully, don't you? I also think their writing is way, way above the standard of most fanfiction.

I think fanfiction is by nature pretty character-driven.

Re: We've gotten pretty far off topic here.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I can think of a few male writers who seemed interested in their characters. Tolstoy. Dostoevsky. Chekhov. Dickens. SHAKESPEARE.

I said the difference between how men and women view fiction, not how authors and nonauthors view it. And I said 'most' men, not all - the same way I would say most people have an IQ between 90 and 110. And I said I thought the men who do write fanfic are probably atypical of their gender (in more ways than just that they write fanfic).

The majority of people are pretty poor at appreciating fiction

I don't think the majority of men are poor at understanding fiction. But I think that women are much more prone to enjoying it in an intense, personal, strongly empathetic way.

[tiger-bay.livejournal.com]

No, not violent, definitely not, just sad in a way.

I think I was being a little melodramatic when I wrote last night and I don't really disagree with you but this is what I mean

We love them more for the effigies of them, and our/their effigies also stand as proof of our love. some of them are hackjobs, and some of them are astoundingly beautiful, but at the end of the day I feel like (almost) all our Scullys and our Mulders are pieces of the real them.

It's the glaring reminder that M & S don't really exist outside the characters we make them. Their 'truest' selves, I guess, are what CC made and although this doesn't make them 'real' at least they can still be this after everyone has had their piece of them.

This is pathetic, I know, OF COURSE they aren't real - it's just a little disconcerting to be made so aware of it, howsoever lovingly.

It sounds like I don't like the writing, but I DO, honestly, I love it!

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

It sounds like I don't like the writing, but I DO, honestly, I love it!

I believe you. Of course I believe you! You wouldn't be HERE if you didn't.

This is pathetic, I know, OF COURSE they aren't real

It is disconcerting, I know what you mean. My solution is in having an extremely nonpragmatic concept of 'reality'. *g*

last thought

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I'm not normally a what-would-David-think kind of girl, but it occurs to me that, were DD accidentally to run across these bits of meta, he'd be fascinated.