I hope you don't mind my asking, but I've always found your M&S to be kind of mean and nasty (to each other, mostly, but also in general), and I was wondering a)if that's just me b)if not, is it intentional, and why.

I know what you mean, marionravenwood, and while what wendelah1 says is true – that most of their conflict is internal and unspoken – for me that just makes it harder to come to grips with. It is quite common for Scully and Mulder to be frustrated with each other in fics, but in EQS and in some of OMAN’s other fics, the thing that’s between them often feels troubled by much more than just frustration and trauma-related angst. There’s resentment, and sometimes a sense of disillusionment between them. There seems to be a lot of ugly feelings tangled up with the positive ones. And that’s fine, that’s one very valid way of depicting the M/S relationship, but I do sometimes find it hard to connect with. I want to draw away from the feelings harbored by this Mulder and Scully, not draw closer.

If this were a S6 fic I’d probably have a much easier time - in fact I think I might enjoy it quite a bit. But because it’s a S7 fic a part of me just shuts right off. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: my S7 Mulder and Scully are basically Parabiosis Mulder and Scully. If you compare those characters to the characters in EQS it becomes pretty easy to see why I find their relationship in EQS unpleasantly murky.