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

[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.