#Bill Scully Sr.

[randomfoggytiger]

Dana Scully: a Fear of Death Rooted in Eternal Judgment

I think Scully's fear of death is rooted in a fear of judgment.

According to her faith, one either gets into Heaven or Hell (with a pit stop here or there to atone for their sins.) One would think that would be a comfort to the morally unbreakable Dana Scully.

But it isn't.

During her atheistic arc (Season 1 through early Season 2), Scully was determined to do her job and do it well. The paranoia of death didn't cling to her as it does in later seasons.... until Beyond the Sea. Her father's ghost visiting her right after his death and being channeled later through Luthor Lee Boggs, twice-- it takes its toll, unwinding the foundational principles of her life: that Death is final; and that there are no ghosts or psychics or even angels or demons, just sick men and women who abuse others through their superstitions. Scully chooses ignorance, reverting away from this new territory because "I'm afraid... I'm afraid to believe." The rest of Season 1, she didn't want to die, panicked in the face of it; but wasn't as paranoid as, again, later seasons.

Then One Breath happens: Scully experienced something she "couldn't find the words" to explain, even when facing death alongside Mulder in Dod Kalm. It's Scully who is fearless as their end approaches, reassuring Mulder he has nothing to fear based on that experience. Thus, One Breath began her agnostic arc-- where she believed, deep down, but was afraid to fully accept that belief (i.e., her shaken projections on Pfaster in Irresistible and her activated voodoo curse in Fresh Bones.) Death is a place of peace, hence why she denies it to Pfaster (we later learn in Orison.)

When we reach Season 3's Revelations, Scully's agnosticism turns to religious terror. "God is speaking, and no one is listening", she confesses to the priest-- what she means is, that God has been speaking to and judging me, and I've been failing. Thus, her paranoia of Death: not because of its finality (Season 1) or promise of peace (Season 2), but because it could find her at fault and deny her a blessed eternal life.

In Season 4, Scully doesn't want to "run back to God" in Gethsemane; but faces her fears once Death is inescapable in Redux II.

In Season 5, she battles with her religious fragility, struggling for peace after her daughter is stolen before her Christian burial (Emily) and after her spirit returns during a case with angels and demons. Scully may be more vulnerable to religious manipulation, but she is also more secure in her beliefs of a peaceful afterlife.

By Season 6, Scully continues to look upon Death as God's judgment: eternal reward or eternal torment. But then Tithonus happens: Fellig shakes Scully's convictions that eternity is a good thing, showing her the soul of an eternally tormented man... making her wonder if she is guaranteed a happy ending, after all.

This brings up to Season 7's Orison, where Scully stands in judgment of Pfaster and the "Reverend" Orison. When she murders Pfaster in cold blood, her doubts and criticisms rise up against her, brandishing her with the same immoral code-- thus, making her fear eternal condemnation from God: the end meted out to both convicts, or an immortal torment ala Alfred Fellig. This was an extremely crucial moment for her development as a character... and would have been given no resolution if not for Gillian's all things.

all things is the resolution to Scully's paranoia: "God talks back", she comes to terms with herself, and makes a final decision out of principle and not panic, out of assuredness and not anguish. Scully is secure; and she finds the stability to embrace her beliefs, religion, and faith as it should be: a source of rest, a refuge from fear.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[unremarkablehouse]

Do you think Scully’s dad would have liked Mulder and approved of their relationship?

At first, I thought he’d of been an ass like Bill Jr but if he saw the rampage he went on when Scully was returned in Season 2, I think that would have cemented him forever in his good graces.

I like to imagine an alternate universe where Ahab is alive and loves to tell Mulder spooky stories from the navy and his time at sea while Scully rolls her eyes and pokes fun at them. In kind, Mulder would tell him all about the adventures he and Scully went on in their different cases. In typical Mulder fashion he exaggerates some of the details and Scully is always the hero in every tale (which is consistent with the way he talks about her when she’s not in earshot).

There are people in this life that we form deep connections and understandings with and there’s nothing better when you see one of these people with a partner who truly sees and understand what makes your person so special.

[television-overload]

Curious what the X-Files fandom thinks about this:

[bakedbakermom]

working on my scully x alanis gifset for "perfect" and somehow every damn frame of bill scully sr in Beyond the Sea is involved. he's onscreen (alive) for barely a minute and yet it's ALL SO MUCH my poor baby scully needs a blanket and some cocoa and a fucking HUG

[figureofdismay]

Reasons why I wonder why Captain Scully chose to have his ashes scattered at Sea when he knew he had a whole family of mourners who would like to visit him. It's right here in his favorite book!

[that--funny--feeling]

CSM and how the lies destroyed the Mulder family: a headcanon

I have a complicated and maybe personal image of CSM that to me makes more sense than whatever they tried to do with his character (since they changed minds so many times).

The focal points of his character are his envy, obsession with control and inability to love.

I think he really envied what Mulder Sr. had with his family, even before Fox and Samantha were born. He had a wife who loved him and above all he did his same job (more or less) but that hadn't turned him evil or selfless. I like to think of William Mulder Sr. as a decent and kind person, at least when he was younger.

Obviously, his life wasn't perfect and he and Teena probably fought a lot because of the secrecy of his work. I think that was the real first struggle about the truth that the Mulder family had (1°). Bill couldn't be honest with his wife about what he was doing and that created a distance. CSM may have taken advantage of this situation, growing closer to Teena maybe while Bill wasn't there for her.

Deep down in the headcanon tunnel from now on, I like to think Teena and CSM didn't have an affair but just a one night thing. Teena probably never forgave herself for that night and never told Bill about it (2°). Bill never asked, but understood what happened (3°).

At this point, CSM wants to have a relationship with her, but she refuses him and just wants to forget what happened. He's insistent and she starts hating him.

Soon after, Teena and Bill's relationship gets better and Fox comes into this world. Now. I'm not sure what to believe (pun intended) on CSM's being his father. Because, in this logic, he could but so could Bill. Surely CSM thought to be Fox's father and thought to have rights on him, no matter what Teena could say about it.

CSM marries Cassandra, they have Jeffrey, he tries to have what Mulder Sr. has but doesn't work. He can't love. His wife starts hating him, his son is a delusion for him. In the meanwhile, Samantha Mulder is born.

When the time of the abductions is closer, Bill and Teena get to choose which one of their children to "sacrifice" (4°). They painfully indicate Fox, because he's older and stronger, but CSM don't even give them the luxury of the choice. Fox is his son, so Samantha will go. That's the moment where the Mulder family irremediably shutters. Teena divorces Bill and Fox will never know anything about this from his family (5°).

Maybe after the abductees' return, CSM goes to Teena, offering her a possible life with him (this could be why he took Samantha and she wasn't returned). She doesn't believe him and swears to never talk to him again.

Samantha starts living with CSM, he has now what Mulder Sr. had, but again, he can't love. She understands that he constantly lies to her and hates him, so she quickly becames useless to him and he uses her for experiments.

His fixation on the Mulders keeps going, because he thinks Fox is his son, but above all because he likes him as a person. He challenges him, has a goal, a conviction, doesn't care what the others think about him. Maybe he thinks they are similar and that's why he sometimes protects him. But again, he doesn't know what love is, so if there's something more important, he's ready to sacrifice him.

He thinks he knows Mulder and tries to get him on his side more than once, but he fails. Mulder was loved and is loved, he knows what love means, he's kind and decent, even more than his father William.

He thinks he knows Scully because of his own past, but he understands nothing about her or their relationship, because it's the complete opposite of what he's ever experienced. ("You'd die for Mulder but you won't allow yourself to love him" he says to Scully in En Ami, while they're already in a relationship.) And he lies, lies, lies, the thing that made him advance in his life. At the cost of love.

What could really have saved the Mulder family, was the truth, that will become Fox's reason of life. If Teena told Bill about her moment of weekness, if he ever asked her instead of acting like nothing ever happened, there could have been hope. Hope to forgive, to go on. But what they did was the opposite, letting Fox enter in these net of lies. Hiding everything from him "for his own good". But that's not what he wanted and accepted ("The truth will save you, Scully. I think it'll save both of us").

[scifigeneration]

An X-Files expert on the show’s enduring appeal – 30 years on

by Bethan Jones, Research Associate at the University of York

On September 10 1993 the pilot episode of The X-Files aired. Thirty years later to the day, I was at a convention centre in Minneapolis with 500 other fans and the show’s creator, Chris Carter, celebrating its legacy.

Ostensibly a show about aliens, The X-Files swiftly became part of the cultural lexicon and remains there to this day. In part its success was down to the chemistry of its two leads – David Duchovny, who played FBI Special Agent Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson, who played FBI Special Agent Dana Scully. After all, it was the X-Files fandom that invented the term “shipping” (rooting for characters to get together romantically).

But, as I argue in my new book, The Truth Is Still Out There: Thirty Years of The X-Files, what really made the series successful was its ability to tap into contemporary cultural moments and ask us to really think about the times we’re living in.

When the series began in 1993, the US was still grappling with the effects of Watergate and the Vietnam war, but concerns were also rising about the approaching millennium and the economic and cultural divisions within US society. It also coincided with Bill Clinton becoming president – marking the end of more than a decade of Republican leadership.

It’s little surprise that fears about immigration, globalisation, national identity and technology emerged and were adopted – and sometimes foreshadowed – by The X-Files’ writers. Several episodes throughout the first nine seasons dealt with artificial technology, for example, and Eve, an episode in season one about clones, came four years before the birth of Dolly the Sheep.

Critical theorist Douglas Kellner argued in 1994 that The X-Files “generated distrust toward established authority, representing institutions of government and the established order as highly flawed, even complicit in the worst crimes and evil imaginable”. Though I’d argue it was less that the show generated this distrust and more that it leveraged the growing number of reports about the government’s secretive activities to inspire its storylines.

As the public became more aware of the government’s role in – and surveillance of – public life, so too The X-Files considered the ways in which technology could be used as a means of control.

In the season three episode Wetwired, for example, a device attached to a telephone pole emits signals that tap into people’s paranoid delusions and lead them to kill. And in the season six episode, SR 819, a character’s circulatory system fails because he has been infected with nanotechnology controlled by a remote device belonging to a shadow government.

These themes reflected growing concerns about government agencies using technology to both spy on and influence the public.

The X-Files’ enduring appeal

During my X-Files research, carried out with viewers after a revival was announced in 2015, it became clear that the show has remained part of the cultural lexicon. As one fan explained: “The cultural context of conspiracy theories has changed since the beginning of X-Files. Nowadays, every pseudoscience documentary uses similar soundtrack and narrative.”

Of course, the X-Files didn’t invent conspiracy theories, but as one of the show’s writers and producers, Jim Wong, points out, it did “tap into something that was more or less hidden in the beginning when we were doing it”.

The focus on the rise of the alt-right, disinformation and fake news in seasons 10 and 11 seemed like a logical angle from which to approach the changing cultural context the revival came into. Carter and his co-writers dove straight in to what Guardian critic Mark Lawson calls “a new era of governmental paranoia and public scepticism”, fuelled by the 2008 financial crisis, the fall out of the war on terror and scores of political scandals.

Season 10 saw the introduction of a right-wing internet talk show host who argues that 9/11 was a “false flag operation” and that the mainstream liberal media lie to Americans about life, liberty and the right to bear arms. The parallels to conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones and Glenn Beck were obvious.

Carter’s incorporation of topics like surveillance, governments’ misuse of power and methods of social control meant that seasons ten and 11 were very much situated in the contemporary moment. This is perhaps most obvious in the season 11 episode, The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat, which deals with the disinformation of the Trump era head on. The episode’s protagonist, Dr. They, tells Mulder that “no one can tell the difference anymore between what’s real and what’s fake”.

While The X-Files’ search for the truth in the 1990s may have ultimately been a philosophical endeavour, in the 21st century it is a commentary on how emotion and belief can be more influential than objective facts.

Watching the show again while researching my book, I was struck by how it was dated predominantly by its lack of technology, rather than the ideas it expresses. In the second season episode Ascension, Mulder pulls a phone book off a shelf in his search for Scully – now we’d use Google. But in other aspects the show remains as relevant today as it was in the 1990s, encouraging us to think about the big questions relating to faith, authority and truth.

[numinousmysteries]

A Miracle, Perhaps

@eightnightsofmulder

@today-in-fic

Eight Nights of Mulder Day Five: Miracles

[on Ao3]

November 1994

Hanukkah falls early this year, beginning the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Mulder hasn’t mentioned anything about going to visit his mom so Scully isn’t surprised to see him in the office on Monday morning.

“How was your Thanksgiving?” he asks as she turns to hang her coat up.

“Fine,” she says, not wanting to elaborate.

In truth, it had been an awkward affair. She hadn’t realized how much her family’s congenial rapport depended on everyone being on their best behavior for her father. Without the captain to steer them, tensions flared. Thinking he’d be free of Bill Scully Sr.’s judgment, Charlie made his first appearance at his mother’s table in years with his long-term boyfriend Harry, only to face Bill Jr.’s wrath. This led to a very drunk Melissa “accidentally” knocking a full glass of red wine onto Bill’s shirt as she gestured wildly in her little brother’s defense. Once Charlie stormed off with Harry trailing behind him (apologizing to Maggie and thanking her for the food as quickly and quietly as he could) Bill turned his anger on Dana. He argued that by staying with the FBI even after her abduction she was only asking to get killed.

It all ended with Maggie retreating to her bedroom to cry, Melissa vomiting in the bathroom, Bill cursing into his whiskey at the table, and Dana silently washing dishes in the kitchen.

“Did you spend the holiday with your family?” she asks, coming to sit across from him at his desk.

Mulder shakes his head. “Nope. Frohike made his famous chicken wings, which is close enough to turkey for me.”

“What about Hanukkah? You celebrated with your mother last year,” she says, hesitating as she eases into new territory.

Two years into their partnership and they still do this awkward dance around each other when it comes to anything remotely personal. She’s more than partly to blame herself since she doesn’t willingly share much about her own life.

“‘Celebrate’ is a generous word,” Mulder says. “We didn’t exactly light the menorah and spin a dreidel around. My mom started taking her sleeping pills earlier and earlier each day until she was basically conking out after lunch. I don’t think she really likes having me around.”

“That can’t be true.”

Mulder shrugs. “I think I just remind her of Samantha. Or rather Samantha’s absence.”

“What about your father?” Scully says, trying to change the subject.

“It’s funny,” he says. “My dad’s family was Jewish and my mother only converted before they got married, but as long as I can remember he never wanted anything to do with religion. Besides, Hanukkah isn’t even a very significant holiday. It just happens to fall around Christmas so it’s gotten swept up in that all-American, gift-giving, capitalist fervor.”

“What’s the story again?” She’s familiar with the basics of the holiday but she knows Mulder likes weaving a tale for her, and she likes to listen as he does.

“Well, it all started with the rise of the Greek king Antiochus the fourth in the second century BCE. The Greeks had a mostly live-and-let-live attitude toward the Jews until then, but Antiochus wasn’t a big fan. He forbade Jews from practicing their religion and demanded they worship Greek gods instead. This all came to a head when Antiochus invaded Jerusalem, killing thousands of Jews and turning the Holy Temple into a shrine to Zeus. He also forced Jewish people to eat pork, which was strictly forbidden by the Torah, but now that I mention it, oddly puts me in the mood for bacon.”

Scully smiles but shakes her head at him.

“Anyway, a small group of Jews known as the Maccabees formed an army and managed to overpower the much larger Greek forces. They retook the temple and got rid of all the Greek idols but ran into a little problem when they went to rededicate it by lighting the menorah with pure olive oil. Because the Maccabees were soldiers returning from the battlefield, they themselves couldn’t produce pure oil until waiting seven days after having handled dead bodies. All the oil in the temple had been defiled by the Greeks except for one jug that supposedly only had enough to last for one night. But of course, as the legend goes, it ended up keeping the menorah lit for eight days, just in time for the Maccabees to start churning out their own oil. Since this all went down after the Torah was written, the only biblical allusion to the Hanukkah is actually in the New Testament when Jesus visits Jerusalem to observe the holiday—”

“—in the book of John,” Scully finishes his sentence.

“Someone paid attention in Sunday school,” he says, and she fights the feeling of a blush rising to her cheeks.

“Are you surprised?” she asks with a smile.

“Not at all,” he says, returning her grin. “Of course, some scholars consider the Maccabees to be religious fundamentalists who even killed fellow Jews they didn’t consider to be hardcore enough. And some versions of the story don’t include any reference to the so-called ‘miracle of oil,’ so who’s to say what really happened?”

“Mulder, you are willing to believe in claims of parasitic alien life forms, shape-shifting mutants, and widespread government conspiracies, but miracles don’t pass muster?” Scully asks, the corners of her lips creeping up into a smile.

He shifts in his chair, leaning forward, closer to her. “I recently witnessed one miracle that I believe in.”

“Which was?”

“Watching you go from the brink of death in that hospital bed a few months ago to sitting here and debating Talmudic wisdom with me right now. If that isn’t a miracle I don’t know what is.”

She instinctively pulls back, bracing her hands on the armrests of her chair. He doesn’t budge, keeping his eyes locked on her.

“Mulder, I can’t clarify what happened to me, why I was returned or why I recovered,” she says quietly, “but when I was unconscious in the hospital, I saw things that I believe can only be explained by the existence of a higher power.”

She hadn’t confessed this to Mulder before and she isn’t sure why. This is a man who believes in werewolves and time-traveling killers. Why is she scared to tell him about her own visions?

“What did you see?” He asks, softly, leaning in towards her.

“I saw my father. I saw my sister—and I saw you,” she says quietly. “But it wasn’t just seeing. I felt your presence.”

Mulder pauses for a beat, opening his lips to speak but not saying anything.

“Scully, I’ve heard about near-death experiences, people believing their seeing through a portal into the afterlife. But in nearly every case they can be explained by low-oxygen levels or misfiring neurons in the brain.”

“No, Mulder,” she says, looking down at her hands now. “I read my medical report. I never suffered from hypoxia or unusual neurological activity. There’s no scientific explanation for what happened.”

“So you think it was God?”

“I don’t know, Mulder,” her voice quavers. “But I can’t say for sure that it wasn’t.”

“Whatever it was, I’m glad you made it through.”

“Thank you,” she says, feeling the heat rising in her chest.

She doesn’t tell him that along with sensing his presence she felt something more—a fierce devotion bordering on love. Maybe he’s right and it was a miracle that brought her back to him. Or perhaps the miracle is whatever brought them together in the first place.

[nachosncheezies]

Would you mind reccing the stories you liked that deal with Scully being a little psychic? I love anything that deals with that

Hello anon! I didn't think anyone reads my tags, but here you are proving me wrong. :D I'm pretty new to XF fic so I don't have enough to do a comprehensive list but here's a few I recently found in quick succession:

Contact High by Penumbra

Look I won't beat around the bush - it's heavy on the porn, so if that's not your thing then maybe give it a miss. Set post-Field Trip, they've gone home but Scully's still under the influence (still telepathic), apparently moreso than him (which I'm interpreting as, she already was a little psychic so it's hitting her harder). It appears Mulder is unaware she's picking up what he's broadcasting, and he himself only hears some of her thoughts once he knows. Meanwhile our girl is receiving every explicit moment of her partner's sex dreams in vivid technicolor, from all the way across town, in enough detail that she's basically like "Look you tease, if I'm gonna have to see this shit I'm coming down there and you're gonna make good." Queue a lot of finally talking about and working through things, in various states of [un]dress. There's even some angst in there!

By Falling In And In by @aloysiavirgata

A post-Deadalive AU, set over a span of years. I suppose the psychic angle is more about William's powers, but… he couldn't connect unless there was something to connect to, ya know? Otherwise he'd just be out here broadcasting to everyone. And as you'll see in the second half, the way Scully reaches back is pretty intense, especially when there's trouble. This is such a good story. Highly recommended whether you're in to psychic Scully or not!!

Triptych by @iconicscullyoutfits

I'm human and like most of us, sometimes Diana Fowley makes me want to wrinkle my nose like I've hit a bad smell, or maybe throw something that'll make a nice thunk sound just to get it out. But this one is worth it. The psychic!Scully angle is more subtle here. She sees ghosts, senses death, etc. It's not the main focus of the story, but it's a nice thing in an already excellent fic. I wish I could say more but I literally couldn't put it down, so much so that I need to re-read it bc I'm pretty sure I was asleep for part of it. 🙈

Bonus - since I also remarked in my tags that I wondered what Bill Sr. thought of his girls' spooky powers. Across the Sea by CalifornianHousplant is a little piece in which Maggie muses a bit on precisely that. It's Mulder/Maggie, cancer arc.

If I come across or remember any others I'll reblog this and add them! Thank you for reaching out :D

[deathsbestgirl]

just want to be clear my hate of bill scully sr has very little to do with what we see of him. but i think i really do hate him. despite the end of beyond the sea and one breath.

[randomfoggytiger]

The Scully Family In-Depth (Part XIII): The Erosion of Scully’s Security, on Tape

Scully’s abduction is split into many mini arcs. Season 2 scratched the surface of her trauma with allusions to her and Mulder’s recovering stability (One Breath, Firewalker, Red Museum, Irresistible, Our Town, Anasazi); Season 3 taps into the loss of Scully’s family and innocence; Season 4 will dig deeper into her denial and loss of faith; Season 5 will twist her burgeoning confidence into a weapon against herself; Fight the Future will find her center; Season 6 will show her determination and growth; and Season 7 will shed the last of her self-consciousness with resolution. 

Each of these arcs showcase the impact of the wrongs done to her and the women (and people) by the Consortium, as well as her strength of character, righteous conviction, and unbreakable spirit and will. While Mulder initially crumbles under loss and heartache, Scully battles against it; and, once finally exhausted, leans against her partner for strength to move forward. Both of them fight hard in the coming years; and on the heels of Paper Clip, their reliance on each other is so unbreakable that Mulder and Scully never question their reciprocal loyalty, despite the allure of pretty faces or treachery of madness. The show may hinge on Mulder’s childhood trauma, but it takes equal (if not more) time to explore Scully’s pain and emotional turmoil properly-- which is fair and right.

EVIDENCE OF THINGS ONCE SEEN

Season 3 continues its focus on Scully’s losses, bookending the arc with the Syndicate and their video tapes, ala Nisei and Wetwired. 

OH, NISEI CAN YOU SEE IN THE CAR OF 731

Scully and Mulder get in trouble (again) when Mulder’s magazine alien autopsy video tape leads them straight to shifty activity and a suspicious Japanese diplomat. After further (officially discouraged) investigation, Scully stumbles upon a MUFON group where the women claim to know her. Here, the seeds are planted for her cancer arc in Memento Mori, complete with an introduction of Penny Northern.

One of the women asks Scully: “Did you have an unexplained event in your life last year? Were you missing for a period of time that can’t be accounted for?” 

This implies that Scully was part of the latest round of abductions; and that no one has been taken since their return last November (post here.)

“You may not remember-- you’ve only had one experience. Most of us here were taken many times.” 

“Taken where?” Scully asks. 

Their answer-- “The bright, white Place”-- unlocks a flash from her experiments. 

At her reaction, another member asserts, “You remember it, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” she responds, shakily. 

“There are men there, performing tests,” the member continues. 

“What men?” 

“They don’t reveal themselves. They take our memories away; but somehow, they start to seep back.” 

“Some may have come back to you, but they don’t make sense,” Penny adds; an unintentional foreshadowing to her and Scully’s interactions in Memento Mori. 

When asked if she knows about regression hypnosis, Scully looks down, closing her eyes and answering, “Yes.” This is the first of several reminders of Melissa's impact on Scully-- it was Missy, after all, who'd urged her into hypnosis therapy; and Scully who'd bailed from the session right before her sister’s death. 

“Have you ever considered it?” the women press; and Scully backs away from the subject as fast as she can, regaining her scientific skepticism in the face of their probing: “I’m sorry. I don’t think I’m ready to discuss this.” 

“You’re afraid to remember, aren’t you?” the member from before questions, moving closer to Scully in understanding. “It’s okay. We were all afraid at first.” 

Scully takes in the women seated around her-- all different ages and stages of life-- trying to fit herself into a group so disparate yet united under one common tragedy. She doesn’t yet know these women have prepared to fight for their freedom and lives; and will all, in a matter of months, die before her own battle against cancer begins. 

“I don’t know: when I opened that door and saw you standing there, it was like a revelation-- the image your face was so clear to me,” the first MUFON women expounds.

The dialogue here is filled with biblical language, likely on purpose: image and revelation hand-in-hand-- a nod, perhaps, to the fated and religious undertones Chris Carter often works into his scripts. Scully and Mulder are often painted with allegorical higher callings and fated purpose, creating a contradiction between the mytharc fate versus stand-alone freewill episodes. Scully, in this case, seems fated to be abducted and returned, to meet these dying women, and to get cancer; but she turns out to be the only one to beat this fate, and survive. This could play into my hypothesis on breaking the soulmate curse inflicted on her, Mulder, and Melissa Rydell in The Field Where I Died, (post here), or fall in line with fate ala the Navajo’s White Buffalo prophecy (post here.) I think that topic requires more in-depth discussion than would fit here; and suggest we press on with Season 3 for now. 

“But why is it I don’t remember you?” Scully prods, shaken. 

“All you remember in the beginning is the light,” Penny consoles. “And then sometimes the faces of the men that performed the tests.”

This triggers another memory Scully forgot-- the stomach air pump-- and she scrambles for a different explanation other than the simple truth. “How do you know you’re a not mistaking me for somebody else?” 

“You have the mark, don’t you?” the other MUFON woman says, drawing Scully’s attention and showing her the recent scar on the back of her neck. 

Scully closes her eyes again, fearfully. 

The women then show their extracted implants, proving their words as one. 

Afraid to believe, Scully tries to flee, (her go-to trauma response, post here): “I have to go. I just came--"

“--to see Betsy,” the women chime in. 

“Yes-- to see Besty Hagopian. Why are you all at her house? Where is she?” Scully raises her arms, surprised she hadn’t questioned this fact before. 

The MUFON spokeswoman and Penny then take her to Betsy’s oncology treatment center, explaining she is in "the advanced stages of full-body tumors"-- a different type of cancer than Scully had. 

“They’d been taking Betsy since she was in her teens,” Penny reveals. “This is what’s going to happen to all of us.” 

“What do you mean,” Scully softly questions. 

“I don’t know if you understand this or not, Dana,” the spokeswoman spells out, “but we’re all going to end up like Betsy." 

“We’re all dying,” Penny confirms, “because of what they do to us.”  

It’s especially heartbreaking because this scene confirms two things: 

Scully is the only MUFON woman to be abducted once-- confirming that she wasn’t an intended target, only collateral decided upon on Sleepless because her expertise; and only returned alive because of CSM’s intervention. Meaning she, unlike the MUFON women, was intended to die in captivity. It’s a testament to her knowledge and skill that Scully was such a threat to the Consortium so early on: still green; and barely on the field before being yanked off of it. 

The MUFON women never realized their chips were the cures to their cancers. Each woman still had their chips intact-- only Scully’s had been damaged due to Pendrell’s tampering-- and could, probably, have had them reinserted. But would they have done so? Would these women have wanted their chips reinserted, allowing nefarious abductive forces to easily find and recapture them for test after test after test? Regardless, they were never given the opportunity to choose. 

When Scully reunites with Mulder, she’s both stunned by her experience and stunned that Mulder isn't curious about her discoveries (at first):  

“Why is the door locked?"

“I’ve got something to show you.” 

“Do you have any idea where I’ve been?”

“Allentown.” 

“I went to go see those MUFON members to find out about that woman-- Betsy Hagopian?”

Now intrigued: “What’d you find?”  

“I found out that she’s dying.” Scully looks down-- an instinctive response when facing information that is personally implicative, “along with a lot of other women who claim to be dying, too. All of them who say they have these implanted in them,” she adds, handing over one of their chips to Mulder.   

When Scully adds, “It’s the same thing that I had removed from my own neck,” Mulder’s head immediately snaps up, worried; and he quickly asks, “But you’re fine, aren’t you, Scully?” 

“Am I?” she parries, seeking as much assurance from him as he is from her. “I don’t know, Mulder. They, they said that they know me, that they’ve seen me before.” 

It’s a trigger response Scully has when lacking security, latching onto Mulder or “other fathers” or illusory footholds when science offers little clear-cut answers for her-- i.e. Beyond the Sea, Fresh Bones, Never Again, all things, etc. Scully largely expunges all outward traces of this behavior from Season 4 onward, thinking she must become what her mother calls “the strong one” in the face of Mulder’s fragility post Herrenvolk, The Field Where I Died, Paper Hearts, and Memento Mori.

“They know things about me, about my disappearance,” she rambles, watching Mulder scrupulously zero in on the chip in hand. 

This interaction also shows a parallel aspect of Mulder’s: when Scully faces a personal crisis-- her panic over glowing bugs, her fears, her cancer, her daughter’s illness-- he puts up a front of strength, grounding her focus with logical, provable facts, even if (and when) he suspects the worst. 

“That is disturbing,” he quietly agrees. “But I don’t think you should freak out until we find out what this is.”

Scully is hindered from a clearer admittance when the phone rings; and the conversation takes a turn away from the MUFON trip. 

As Mulder fills in Scully on his findings about Dr. Ishimaru’s ghastly experiments, she recognizes one of the men in the faxed photo; but is dissuaded (“I don’t think so, not unless you’ve been in Japan in the last fifty years”-- which she was, in 1966. Post here.) Four of the doctors in the photo were recently murdered; but Scully isn’t yet ready to draw ties between their and the Nazis' experiments to alien-human hybrids; and neither have connected the dots between these inhuman experiments and her recent disappearance.  

When she begins to discredit his theory, Mulder cuts in reproachfully-- “Scully, after all you’ve seen”-- before softening-- “after all you’ve told me you’ve seen, tunnel filled with medical files, the beings moving past you, the implant in your neck-- why do you refuse to believe?” 

At Mulder’s question, Scully looks down to hide her fear, continuing the pattern of avoidance begun in Beyond the Sea and The Blessing Way. “Believing’s the easy part, Mulder,” she insists. “I just need more than you-- I need proof.” Proof allows her something to cling to when the foundations of her beliefs are shaken. Scully eventually comes to term with that realization, shifting away from strict reliance on proof as learns to trust her instincts (all things.) 

“You think that belief is easy?” he retorts, a window into his naturally cynical, pessimistic view of life. That cynicism is eventually addressed in Amor Fati, and fully (or mostly) resolved in Closure. 

Scully can’t rebut his statement; and with nothing else to say, she sighs and hangs her head. 

“Well, we have proof,” Mulder reassures, switching topics to comfortable ground and revealing his ace: a picture of a secret government train car. When asked where he got it, he discloses “From someone like you who wants proof.” Weighing the cost of his next words, he decides to mildly confront her once more. “Who’s also willing to believe.”

Scully remains silent, both aware she’s not ready to take that next step.

Scully takes the chip to Pendrell, who raves about its sophistication and other scary technological advancements (and coming off a tad creepy.) The full weight of the government using computer chips to possibly monitor their test subjects appalls Scully, spurring her to take a more active role in the current investigation. 

Back in the office, she reviews the video Mulder bought, realizing her recollection of Ishimaru stems from her abduction. 

After Mulder jumps on the train car, Scully is contacted by a Syndicate shadow man (for the second time) and reiterates the (half) truth sold to her: government experiments, yes; but not alien government experiments. “It all makes sense, Mulder-- Ishimaru Zama, he was using the secret railroad to conduct his tests across the country….”  

The conclusion of the Nisei and 731 mini arc is the deepening of Scully’s denial. Without Melissa there to push her, and with Mulder (who is supposed to fill-in for her sister, post here) focused on the bigger mystery, her abduction trauma is shoved aside and minimized. 

As we will learn in Piper Maru and Apocrypha, Scully has yet to make peace with her sister’s loss; and those open wounds spur her burning desire for revenge-- becoming more and more apparent the more turmoil is piled on her plate. 

STEERING THE SHIP OF MEMORIES

Scully’s childhood is the backbone for these two episodes, from the first conversation with A.D. Skinner to her reminiscence on the base with her father’s friend. 

Skinner calls Scully into his office, informing her that the investigation into Melissa Scully’s death has bellied up. Stung and indignant, she confronts the FBI’s obvious oversight and his placatory platitudes.  

“It’s strange,” she bites, furious tears in her eyes, “Men can blow up buildings; and they can be nowhere near the crime scene but we can piece together the evidence and convict them beyond a doubt. Our labs here can recreate out of the most microscopic detail the motivation and circumstance to almost any murder-- right down to a killer’s attitude towards his mother and if he was a bedwetter. But in the case of a woman-- my sister-- who was gunned down in cold blood in a well-lit apartment building by a shooter who left the weapon at the crime scene, we can’t even put together enough to keep anybody interested.” 

“I don’t think this has anything to do with interest,” Skinner begins. 

“If I may say so, Sir,” she cuts in, unwavering, “it has everything to do with interest. Just not yours. And not mine.”  

When Mulder asks after Scully’s mood, she deflects his concerns back to their newest case, later impressing him by recognizing a submerged North American P 51 Mustang aircraft. She explains: “It’s the shape of the canopy. I watched my father and brothers build World War II model planes as a kid.”  

As we know, little Dana Scully was a tomboy; but it’s interesting to learn which activities she did and didn’t think were worth her time-- the Dana who shot air guns but didn’t play baseball, who memorized plane models but didn’t build them; and who learned Latin in college and always loved The Exorcist. 

While pursuing a new lead, Scully momentarily relives a happy memory with her and Melissa playing on a familiar military base sidewalk. 

Young Dana is triumphantly swung around by an exuberant young Melissa, both overjoyed by her unbroken hopscotch; and modern Scully’s smile slips back and forth between the somber present and nostalgic past as she slowly drives on.

Meeting up with her father’s old colleague, she introduces herself with a delighted, self-conscious smile. “I’m Dana Scully-- I used to live three doors down. My father was Captain William Scully. I, I went to school with your son.” 

The past is a haven for Scully, even now (for now): a place to become at home and centered in. Her father died suddenly, with words unsaid; her sister died tragically, with justice delayed; but still they bring a smile to her face in reminiscence. But more than that, Scully beams with pride at meeting a man so like her father in age and familiarity-- her Starbuck nature bobs to the surface, putting her best foot forward in her efforts to please. 

“I’m sorry, my memory isn’t what it used to be,” Commander Johanson says, a mirror of Teena Mulder’s pretend amnesia (post here.) At first, he assumes-- or pretends to assume-- Scully is asking after his son; but when questioned about his past with the Piper Maru, he again pleads forgetfulness. 

“Say hello to your father for me,” the Commander suggests as they shake hands goodbye. 

“I wish I could,” Scully remarks, her smile dropping a shade and (again) looking down out of discomfort. “He’s passed away.” In response to his “I’m… very sorry,” she gives a tight-lipped smile and walks away without comment-- fleeing the moment (again) as quickly as possible.  

An interesting thing happens next: Commander Johanson changes his mind, having his visitor’s car pulled over so he can quietly fill her in on the coverup courtesy of CSM, Bill Mulder, and other Consortium men. Captain Scully’s death hit him hard: it connects him to Scully, the fact that they have both lost a loved one to the dead; and it itches and itches at Johanson, driving him from the house and after his friend’s daughter for atonement and peace.

Scully, when commanded to pull over by Johanson, immediately obeys, surprised but not suspicious. Loyalty to her father and his associates runs deep, even after three years, a murder, and a Conspiracy.  

“I can’t give your regards to my son, Scully,” Joe wobbles, addressing her by name not only for the first time but also as an equal. “He was killed in a training accident.” 

It’s here that Johanson passes on a statement that rings true as it sinks and settles into Scully’s mind: “We bury our dead alive, don’t we? We hear them everyday-- they talk to us, they haunt us, they beg us for meaning. Conscience. It’s just the voices of the dead, trying to save us....”

He tells her his tragic, paid-off history, concluding with: “Whatever killed them, I was allowed to live: to raise a family, to grow old. None of us ever got an explanation why.” 

Skinner is shot and Scully rushes to his side, bouncing from Mulder’s room to his while advocating for his interests. When he admits the shooting might be a coverup to permanently halt Melissa’s murder investigation, Scully flares up: “You’re saying that they closed down my sister’s case not because of lack of evidence but because they didn’t want us to catch the killer.” 

In the last twenty-four hours, Scully’s trust in her country’s higher ups has eroded so rapidly she now concludes, rightfully, that Melissa is disposable collateral in their latest coverup. 

Ignoring Skinner’s warning, she presses for more details, fuming over Krycek’s involvement.  

“Listen to me,” Skinner warns, “anger is not a luxury you can afford right now. If you’re angry, you’re gonna make a mistake-- and these people will take advantage of that. …Scully, if you can’t keep your head, it’s all right to step away.” 

“That’s exactly what they want.” Scully’s anger is fueling her thirst for vengeance, driving her to more dangerous potentialities.   

After returning on Mulder's hunch, she finds Skinner mid-relocation to another hospital; and quickly hops on the ambulance in time to counteract another attempt, intercepting the gunmen and forcing him to give her answers at gunpoint.  

“Are you Luis Cardinale! Are you the man that shot my sister! You shot my sister! TELL ME!” she screams over his pleas, weapon drawn with lethal intent. Her motions are erratic, aggressive, and unhinged, tears building as her voice climbs higher and higher. 

Cardinale bargains for his life and Scully wavers, hunched over her prey while an inner voice screams shoot him, shoot him repeatedly in her head. She is so unstable, so unsure, that she looks like her younger, greener self watching the fabric of her world fall apart in Luther Lee Boggs’s cell (post here.) But the cops appear, yelling at them both before she can decide; and, with one final struggle, she lowers the weapon in anguish and retrieves her FBI badge. 

Luis is toted away in handcuffs, leaving Scully alone with the equal horror of her loss of control and opportunity. 

She calls Mulder, confessing his instincts had been right and relating that they’d caught Melissa’s killer; but immediately cuts off his potential sympathy by turning his attention back to the mission. 

In the end, it’s all in vain: Scully and Mulder lose the salvaged UFO and Krycek, nullifying future leads for the case. Grateful to at least have Luis behind bars, she visits Melissa’s grave with flowers, taking a moment to commune in the language of the dead: with her conscience, in silence. 

Mulder arrives with a bouquet of his own; and she bites her lip, moved by his gesture and frustrated with her surfacing emotions. Pulling herself together, Scully smoothly stands, accepting his consideration and shoulder touch with a genuine though fleeting smile. 

“I was just thinking about what a man said to me. That the… that the dead speak to us from beyond the grave. That that’s what conscience is.” 

“It’s interesting. I never thought of it that way,” Mulder considers. 

“You know, I thought-- when we found him, this man that killed Melissa-- that, that when we brought him to justice, I would feel kind of closure. But the truth is, no court, no punishment is ever enough,” Scully confesses-- a follow-through to her Paper Clip closing line: “I’ve seen the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.”

And Scully is denied even that, having to listen to another victim of these men in power admit that justice was derailed, that Luis Cardinale was murdered in his cell before he could face trial. To Mulder, the end of Cardinale’s existence is a form of justice; but to Scully, it is a cruel circumvention of the system she believes in and fights for.  

“I think the dead are speaking to us, Mulder. Demanding justice. Maybe that man was right-- maybe we bury the dead alive.” 

Mulder considers this, too; and is silent. 

In this episode, the darkness infesting Scully’s life stained backwards to her childhood: her brother and father building WWII planes that were sunk by the Consortium, her father’s friend a bought-and-paid-for Syndicate witness, her hopscotching sister murdered by a hired gun. Those incidents may not have directly touched the Scullys’ lives as they were then, but the innocence she was able to escape to is no longer afforded to her without darker shadows crying out from the corners. 

HERE BE MONSTERS

Wetwired is the last straw. 

During her investigation into malevolent mass hysteria, Scully thoroughly watches each and every infected tape she and Mulder recover from the crime scene. Slowly, it eats away at her security, eroding the last shred of credibility the infested, corrupted system had to offer her: the valor of moral individuals. And the last moral individual she could trust-- the man in the trenches with her, who lost and fought and continues to fight for a brighter day-- was Mulder.

Hallucinating Mulder feeding intel to CSM, she spends the next morning, afternoon, and evening harboring heightening paranoia against her partner; and finally snaps when he ignores her command to stay away, shooting at him through the door of her ruined motel room and running away. 

Mulder calls Maggie after the sun is up and the investigation is already in full swing, having probably put it off until the last second in hopes of recovering Scully first. Maggie, still in bed at 6:01 AM, picks up the phone the phone, giving us an opportunity to scope out the family pictures displayed on her bedroom table.  

An interesting revelation: Melissa’s photo is placed most prominently, perhaps to honor her death; then Dana’s; then her and a mystery baby… which leaves one of her children off of the table.

My guess? Charlie is missing, as he is likely absent from his mother’s life at this point. If this is true, Maggie seems to use her photos as an indication of her children’s interest in her life, not as a showcase of her favorites.

How can we prove this?

Melissa is dead; but while her eldest daughter was alive, Maggie was constantly rubbed the wrong way by her insistent, unmoderated proclamations at the tensest moments (posts here and here.) Yet, her picture takes center-stage. 

Bill Scully is often the Scully child most likely to cater to her whims or speak in a language she understands (to be explored in Seasons 4 and 5.) Yet, his picture is placed at the back. We know he is often at sea during this period, pointing to infrequent contact between himself and his mother; and probably even less contact than that, because he would more likely call his wife Tara instead. 

Scully’s picture is of second “importance” on the table, despite Maggie’s reliance on and openness with her daughter (acting as her comforter in the following scene and calling her “the strong one” in Memento Mori.) There is often a loving side she reserves for her baby girl, sensing that Dana needs it more than Bill does, or Melissa did. 

Which leaves Charlie. Scully doesn’t mention him after Roland-- except for a slight mention in Piper Maru-- until Home (stating she babysat her nephew for the weekend.) Very little is known about Charlie other than the brief glimpse we see of him in Beyond the Sea (post here) and One Breath (post here); and it’s Maggie’s fond flashback of him we are privy to in the latter episode. So, what’s Charlie’s deal? Is he estranged by his own choice; or does Maggie keep him at arm’s length, only remembering him in childhood when he fit her expectations? 

From what we know of Maggie Scully thus far, it seems unlikely she would cut a child off for a personal decision they made-- in fact, her actions prove the opposite (i.e. reconciling Dana to Captain Scully in Beyond the Sea, putting up with Melissa’s New Age speeches, trusting a Navajo medicine man to watch over her dying daughter, and celebrating the anti-Church conceptions of both Bill’s and Dana’s sons.) It seems out-of-character for her to isolate the youngest Scully from her affection, no matter his choices. 

Or an alternate theory presents itself: the baby is an old picture of Maggie's only grandson-- the nephew Scully babysits in Home. That would mean only one of the two boys flanking Charlie in Beyond the Sea is biologically his... which makes an interesting other implication about his possibly older wife and her own son. Theories, theories.

“Mrs. Scully? Hi, it’s Fox Mulder.”

Maggie immediately knows something’s wrong, her voice dropping an octave. “What is it, what’s the matter?” 

“I was hoping that you’d heard from Dana,” Mulder responds. It would seem Mulder calls Scully “Dana” to Maggie, either for Mrs. Scully's comfort's sake or because he and she communicate so rarely he's yet to fully define his and Scully's partnership.

“No, something happened?”

“I’m not exactly sure there’s… there’s some confusion here.” Mulder hunches slightly, pursing his lips and looking down ashamedly-- a posture he's exhibited on a larger scale to his father (post here.) At Maggie’s “What do you mean ‘missing’?”, he stumbles over his words-- “Well, she ran off last night-- screws up his face, and beats at his thigh, anticipating a disappointed or angry reaction-- “We, we’re looking for her as best we can, but we are a little concerned.” 

Skinner arrives, and Mulder knows it’s time to go. “Look, Mrs. Scully, I hate to do this to you, but I’ve got to hang up on you right now.” 

“Fox, would you please just tell me what’s going on?” Maggie asks, respect and civility barely keeping her from demanding an immediate reply. 

“Hang by the phone, I’ll call you as soon as I know something,” he answers, disconnecting the call immediately after.

It’s only after hours of frantic search and heartache that it dawns on him where Scully might have gone. 

Where does Dana Scully run to feel safe whenever her life spirals out of control? Home.

Sure enough, Maggie opens her door strung out: jumpy and tense, unwilling to let Mulder in. 

“Is she here?” he asks, hopeful. 

“Uh, no,” she refutes.

“You haven’t been answering your phone,” Mulder prods, not unconvinced but still suspicious.

It’s Maggie’s exit-- “Well, I’ll call you when I hear from her, okay?”-- that gives her away, too smooth and too quick to slam the door in his face with a daughter missing for the second time. 

“I need to see her,” he insists in desperation; and when she still refuses, Mulder ignores her pleas and barges through, halting only when met with the barrel of Scully’s gun.

Maggie isn’t afraid, only scared for him: getting into his face as he carefully pushes past, then shutting the door behind him to prevent someone else from walking in.

“Dana, put down the gun!” Maggie shouts, only drawing Scully’s attention momentarily from Mulder. 

“I’m here to help you, Scully,” Mulder announces quietly.

“I told you, Mom-- he’s here to kill me,” she warns, quivering and shifting her stance for a surer shot. 

“I’m on your side, you know that,” he replies. 

“Put the gun down, Dana,” Maggie repeats, more calmly. 

Scully’s eyes, wide and panicked, lessen only slightly when they glance toward her mother, growing wilder when Mulder tries to advance. She warns him back while cocking the trigger.

Maggie, sensing Dana has reached the end of her rope, backs him up: “Dana, he’s telling you the truth.” 

“It’s not the truth, Mom,” Scully wobbles, betrayed. “He’s lied to me from the beginning. He never trusted me” Despite Mulder’s heartfelt, “Scully, you’re the only one I trust,” she rebukes, “You’re in on it. You’re one of them.” 

Pausing, she gears up for her most wrenching accusations: “You’re one of the ones that abducted me. You put that thing in my neck! You shot my sister!”   

“That’s not true, Dana,” Maggie repeats. 

“It is,” Scully insists, voice weakening in heartbreak. 

Maggie steps forward in spite of her daughter's escalating cries, beginning her attempts to talk Dana down.

“You trust me, don’t you? You know that I would never hurt you. That I would never let anybody hurt you.” 

Scully begins to sweat, wavering between fear for her life and belief in her mother. 

“That’s why you came here, isn’t it? You’re safe here. Put the gun down, Dana.” 

Scully slowly points it up and away, but doesn't relinquish it even as she collapses, sobbing, in her Maggie's arms. 

Later, Mulder joins both happy ladies in recovery, sticking up his arms in comedic effect for their (vague) amusement. 

Mrs. Scully, sensing they need space to reestablish their equilibrium, soon after leaves the room.  

“How are you feeling?” he asks.

And in expected Starbuck fashion, her first response is: “Ashamed.” He waits, letting her fill in the silence at her speed. “I was so sure, Mulder. I saw things, and I heard things. It was just like the world was turned upside down. Everybody was out to get me.”

“Now you know how I feel most of the time,” he jokes-- a balm of understanding. 

She smiles, continuing her train of thought with less discouragement. “I thought you were going to kill me.” 

“I’m not surprised,” he nods, leaning forward to summarize his theory on paranoid mind control: “...a virtual reality of their own worst nightmares.”  

“Like me thinking you were going to kill me.”

The knowledge that any action of his holds that much weight in Scully’s life is a fearful realization in itself; and Mulder tries to ward off the power of it (and the last twenty-four hours) by leaning on his shaking, folded hands. 

“I was so far gone, Mulder, I thought that you had gone to the other side.” 

Sinking further into his posture, he asks, “What do you mean?” 

“That Cancer Man-- the man that smokes all those cigarettes-- I was sure I saw the two of you sitting in your car in the motel parking lot. You were reporting to him. You handed him a video tape.” 

And while Mulder runs off to check out that lead, we conclude where we began: the video paus de deux, a rectangular reel that bookends the beginning and end of Scully’s media madness. 

CONCLUSION

Scully concludes her erosion arc with Mulder's steadfast loyalty, the one stable variable in her insane, topsy-turvy world. The past may be lost, the present may be shifting, and the future may be uncertain; but Mulder is her assurance.

Season 4 then shifts that upends that assurance by turning dependable into dependent.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

[alexa-crowe]

Saw your love language post-- I'd love to give into a completely fun and respectful debate about that because I think mine is the exact reverse!! :DDDDD I like to outsource my thoughts and make sure they're balanced and unbiased:

I saw the Pilot as Scully not seeking or giving love so much as being ruled by fear; and Mulder suspects that and talks her down like he's been trained to do (calm, reassuring, add personal details to build rapport, etc.) He truly came alive when Scully listened to his story, bringing out his emphatic passion for the "that's all that matters to me" line (paraphrase~.) Scully shows love with her family, too, but never physically-- Maggie reaches out, for instance, and Bill wants to but feels distanced. Scully instead affirms them constantly, reassures them, gives them smiles and a listening ear. When she needs to feel loved-- Never Again, All Souls, All Things-- what she wants is for Mulder to affirm her, her desires, and her needs... he misreads this often because for him to feel loved he needs physical affections (the end of Paper Hearts, Pusher, Amor Fati hallway, FTF hallway.) Words don't cut it with him: whenever Scully tries to affirm or back him up with words, he'll brush them all off if she ultimately disagrees with his theory: meanwhile, she has been able to restrain him by physically touching his arm or petting his hair or checking him over after nearly getting beaned by a cow.

I see Scully using physical affection ONLY with Mulder-- even with Emily she wasn't huggy or cuddly; she was gently coaxing and affirming and giving her space and affirming her need for security with the cross necklace. Mulder, meanwhile, scooped Emily up;, held her close, and was enveloping; and he touches Scully constantly and thinks that's enough-- he's showing his deep affection/love constantly, why doesn't she get it? That's why Never Again and All Things happened.

Am I off? Correct? I wanna know YOUR thoughts~ :)))

I mean, I see what you’re saying, but I think that is all very surface level (no disrespect, of course, haha).

Pilot: both Mulder and Scully are establishing trust with each other, and their gut unfiltered attempts are, for Scully, touch and, for Mulder, words of affirmation. Somewhat indirectly at this early stage, of course, but still ultimately those love languages. Additionally, while Mulder is telling Scully about Sam, she puts her hand on his arm—more unfiltered contact to communicate her trust/love.

Scully’s family is much more complicated because all of their interactions with each other reflect the reverberations of their father’s constant absences mingling with their personalities. Bill Sr. is a very words person, based on the fact that he was specifically withholding his praise for Scully that Maggie had to nudge him into saying in “Beyond the Sea”. And we know that Scully absolutely idolized him, so she tries to reflect his own love language back to him to be more in his image. (And the whole Scully family also seems very into acts of service as a display of good character—Scully joining the FBI because she believed in her ability to do good, Missy chasing after Mulder to make sure he allows himself to embrace his love/anguish for Scully in “One Breath,” Bill telling Mulder to leave Scully alone in “Redux II”. Maggie’s a bit of an outlier—but her acts of service are just more subtle, a lot like Missy’s.)

When it comes to Mulder and Scully flipping the script—she’s the believer and he’s the skeptic—in episodes like “All Souls” (especially the part where they almost touch foreheads), Mulder is looking for words of affirmation from her (that she’s okay and therefore still her and therefore their relationship is okay and therefore he’s okay), giving her a terrible attempt at words of affirmation (because he’s scared shitless), and attempting touch (to communicate his care and love for her). He only breaks out the touch later on because his words don’t seem to be working. (They’re both messes and so everything is very tangled up.)

In episodes like “Never Again” and “All Things,” I think any woman feeling what she’s feeling would want to be affirmed, regardless of primary love language. They enjoy receiving each other’s love languages—Scully getting Mulder’s words of affirmation in episodes like “Squeeze,” where he lets her know how important she is to him (in regards to the work... I see you, Mulder...), and in “Little Green Men,” where she runs her fingers through his hair. I think it’s also important to recognize that much of those needs Scully has (especially in “Never Again”) are sexual intimacies: she wants his affirmation, yes, but the root of it is that she wants that in the form of touch—sex with Mulder. She has difficulty communicating this to him because it’s a reality she hasn’t fully come to terms with. In love with Mulder? Yes. Having important sexual needs and fitting him into his place with regards to her daddy issues? No. Mulder misreads Scully in “Never Again” for reasons unrelated to their love languages entirely—it has to do with being socialized according to gender roles in the gender binary, not love language miscommunication.

Mulder feels loved simply when he is confident in Scully’s confidence in him, no matter how she communicates that. When she brings him to an anthropologist to aid in his case in “The Jersey Devil”. When she insists on working with him in the lab in “The Host”. The list goes on. And not every act is mapped directly to their love languages; some serve first as utility and secondly as communicating love—like Mulder wiping BBQ sauce from Scully’s face. Utility first: she has sauce on her face. Love second: caring about her. (Or rephrased: utility on the surface and love underneath.)

I don’t recall Mulder ever brushing Scully off when she’s trying to affirm him—she doesn’t affirm him with words often because they’re both very reserved people who tend to keep their love languages close, let alone each other’s love languages. Rare times when Scully actually affirms Mulder with words: “Tooms,” “The Truth,” “Herrenvolk,” “Home Again.” They are far and few between. Rare times when Mulder uses touch: “Beyond the Sea,” “One Breath,” “Firewalker,” “Paper Hearts,” “The Unnatural,” “Millennium,” “All Things,” “Home Again.” Both extremely small numbers of episodes compared to how many episodes there are. Scully always disagrees with his theory, so it doesn’t make sense to argue that he brushes her off so long as she does; if that were true, they would despise each other and she would’ve left the X-files very quickly.

Like I said before, Mulder and Scully are both very reserved people and reserve their love languages for each other (I talked about Scully’s family but Mulder’s is also fucked up so his interactions with his parents and Sam are also not a good source). Neither Mulder nor Scully used touch or words of affirmation in “Christmas Carol” or “Emily” outside of each other—not while Emily was alive, at least. It wasn’t until the end of the episode that Scully uses touch when she lays down next to Emily in her hospital bed, and when they have a conversation in which Mulder uses words of affirmation to assure Scully that the situation was not completely terrible.

So… Definitely the love languages the way I said, haha. Always fun to expound on meta!

[television-overload]

Kind of crazy how Mulder and Scully started the series with all their parents, and ended it with none. I feel like "dead parent" is such a common backstory to start with for TV show characters, but Mulder's were only estranged, and Scully's were happily married.

[lilydalexf]

I'm looking for a fic and wondering if you could help.

Its an AU where Scully and Mulder are doctors(I think mulder was a child psychologist). And they first meet at conference and spend a night together. It then skips to years later when Mulder becomes the new doctor where Scully works. Scully is now a single mother, and Emily is present when bill sr dies so Scully asks Mulder if Emily can be her patient. Theres a whole thing about them developing a relationship and who Emily's father might be.

This description sounds like Five Years and a Lifetime by @monikafilefan and @slippinmickeys. It is an AU with Emily and has the summary: Dana Scully is an award winning pediatrician who meets Fox Mulder, a gifted child psychologist at a medical conference where they spend one steamy night together. Five years later their worlds collide once again, forcing them to face the past that will change their future in ways neither could have possibly imagined.

[figureofdismay]

anyone know of any txf fics touching on the idea of Ahab/Bill Scully having also been tangentially linked to...... conspiracy things? or coverups? I feel like that old friend and neighbor from the base having information in piper maru/apocrypha took a step in that direction. as did the implication that Ahab advanced through the ranks with some alacrity if he was already a Captain in Scully's youth/adolescence -- i mean yes it could just be an extension of the Ahab nickname and/or the writer's room getting confused naval promotions, which. fair. the only reason i know anything about that is due to research i did in a past fandom, but I'm choosing to view it with this lens if you see what i mean. Also the fact that Scully is in those 'vaccination' records they found since before her abduction. I'm always unclear if that was meant to imply that 'everyone' was being indexed and filtered at that point or if it was meant to imply that Scully and possibly her family had been marked for the inclusion in the plot/conspiracy from well before her being linked to Mulder on the X-files assignment.

I just think it would be interesting to play with the idea that Bill Sr. did things or knew things or was actually in naval intelligence or something -- I remember from my time in aforementioned previous fandom with an ex naval intelligence officer turned criminal rogue character that they have their hands in more pies than most people think... at least in TV land. Obviously he's not directly involved the way the other father named Bill was but it would be interesting if he were wittingly or unwittingly involved in operations for the benefit of the syndicate people.

And it would be interesting if CSM/CGB put Scully onto the X-files with Mulder not to simply be an obstruction in his path and spy on him/take him down like they assume but because Ahab's service somehow put Scully in the net they cast for potential subjects/colonization survivors. That after CSM decided to move Diana under his personal control (take his son's girlfriend for himself) he offset that by pushing Scully at him in hopes that he'd be distracted and settle down with another intelligent, 'conspiracy-approved' woman/genetic line. (not bargaining on them both being obsessive workaholics.) And that maybe her abduction wasn't punishment for continuing to work on the files but was part of something that was already in motion whether or not she continued working with Mulder.

Plus, frankly, it would be really interesting to know what Bill Jr. was up to. To explore the idea that he was also involved in some tertiary way via his own service. In a thought experiment where Ahab was useful to the conspiracy and his 3rd child got selected for further use in early screening, what would be the chances that his 1st born son was totally passed over? Not high, right?

I don't believe this is literally canon or that the intention was really there, but you could definitely make a plot like this out of some of the pieces they gave us and I feel like it would be an interesting perspective on Scully's relationship to her family, and the maybe-inevitability of her involvement in all this, and her ability to establish agency in spite of it. And it's a way to sidestep the 'mulder was being punished with scully's abduction' baggage that the show does and doesn't believe.

I've been really thinking about this lately, but I can't offhand remember any fics or meta tackling mytharcy things from this direction....?

[slippinmickeys]

The wharf was humming with activity, smelling of the briny tang of big water that sunk into Scully’s skin and shored up her bones. Out towards the horizon, the Atlantic churned. She felt closer to her father already.

Bill stood on the deck above the plank in khaki, a silver leaf pinned to his collar. He was close to retirement and would never ascend to the rank of Bill Sr., which Scully assumed royally chapped his ass.

“Dana,” he murmured, as she stepped onto the ship, and he leaned down to give her a soft buss on the cheek. He nodded crisply at Mulder and turned on his heel, leading them through an endless maze of iron bulkheads into the belly of the ship. When he finally came to rest, they were on the threshold of the officers' mess.

“I want to remind you,” he said, only looking at Mulder. “That what we found is highly classified.”

“We have clearance, Bill,” Scully said, defending Mulder, as ever.

The Scully men were an untrusting, taciturn bunch, but Mulder had won over the Scully women with guile and charm and a faithfulness so absolute that even Tara would fuss over him with Bill standing right there in the room.

Mulder could only imagine the man’s face when Scully brought him home for Christmas the first time. He pictured Bill pacing in Margaret Scully’s living room, railing on about Mulder’s shortcomings, arms flailing, spittle flying — are the shades of Pemberley to be thus polluted — all while Scully’s mother sat quietly on the couch, hands folded calmly in her lap. She’d let him yell himself out then offer him a plate of ginger snaps.

The door to the mess swung open and they were met by a junior officer, armed, who insisted on checking their credentials. Scully was annoyed, but Mulder offered his up breezily, eyes already on the table in the center of the room.

The object that sat on it was not large, about half the size of a man, and oblong, covered in a matte black material that looked to be some kind of metal alloy. A man stood up behind it, the four bars on his shoulder revealing him to be the ship’s captain.

“Come in,” he said to the two agents. “And close the door.”