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

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.