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

[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. :)