#mulder depression

[thursdayinspace]

Albert Camus - State of Siege

i'm so sorry. we know she's gonna be okay!!

[emilyscully]

I can feel it gettin' near // Like flashlights comin' down the way

Mitski - "I'm Your Man"

[fishfingersandjellybabies]

I just started a rewatch of xfiles from the very beginning and goddamn has making shows changed. They just dont make them as fun and well lit and needlessly SEXY as they did in the 90/s.

[carefulfears]

thoughts on revival mulder pretending his name is bob at starbucks because he’s tired of explaining he is named after an animal ?

i just think he is a cute old man.

i actually wrote a whole thing based on this once skjdfh but he is CUTE!!! my favorite thing about it is the way scully teases him ("fox doesn't exist in coffee shops") but she genuinely looks like she's gonna melt looking at him. she just adores him so bad, 25 years in even the silly little things still get to her.

and i've always really loved these small eccentricities that mulder's characterization was so rich with, i love how those types of things matured and developed as the series continued

[kandronarays]

Enemies to lovers will never be as good as the far superior lovers to enemies. Bonus points if they make it everyone’s problem.

[closetdbisexual]

everyone be nice to her

[danascullysjournal]

Tw: loss and suicide attempt.

This is not for the weak, but… it’s good. It’s so, so good, and honestly it deals with how much Scully has fought and lost. And how he fights for her, on her behalf when she hurts so much and just can’t. This is canon for me now. Bless them both. 💔

[pennyserenade]

every time i think about mulder and scully breaking up because he got depressed i want to sob. at first i really hated that, and thought it was stupid. i still do sometimes but i don’t know, i guess i understand the thought behind it more than i did before. no matter how bad it got, scully always had mulder: steadfast, myopic, painfully and naively earnest. defeated sometimes, sure, but he had a mission, a need. it revitalized him every time they tried to knock him on his ass and it kept him going. but then he had nothing, no mission, no resources, just a series of bad mistakes and a picture of the little sister he could not save tacked to his door. maybe once that was a beacon of light, but eventually it just served to haunt him.

scully, god bless her, probably reminded him of how much they did not have: she had her job, became the doctor she was always meant to be. the thing he prevented her from being. she had her purpose, worked long hours and then came home to their unremarkable house. it’s no easy thing to be isolated the way mulder was. long stretches of time where all he had was time to think and think and think. the internet isn’t good for mulder. his beautiful mind, occupied by too much, and his body listless still.

it couldn’t have been easy for scully. it must’ve felt like a betrayal. she had been there for mulder through everything. everything. i don’t think she hates him or faults him for the things that had happened. it’s not in scully’s nature to feel bitter towards him like that, because she understands better than anyone the cruel nature of fate. she chose him, chose that path, and while she probably certainly wished it went a hell of a lot different, i don’t think she would ever pin that on him. but i do think, when he pulled back, stopped responding and paying attention and caring altogether, i think scully probably couldn’t help but grow angry. he was leaving her alone with it all, the way he never had before. that must’ve been scary and isolating and it was unfair of him. it seems that he probably wasn’t so receptive of her diagnosis either, which must’ve felt like another fuck you. not only was he leaving her alone, but he was purposefully shutting her out. what had been their shared mission became singular and it’s so so hard to stay in a too silent home.

how surprisingly betrayed she must’ve felt, to end up in the place mulder grew up. andifferent place, sure, but the same old story: her just like teena mulder, one kid gone and a wide, gaping wound full of grief; and mulder, just like bill: shut off, unable to bear the hard truths of his life’s work. he couldn’t blame her for leaving. he wouldn’t. he had left it once too

[itsb3anbug]

guess who just watched s2 ep6 of x files???? 😊😊😊 i hate this stupid show and i hate the government and i hate aliens 😭😭😭😭😭😭

[mulderscully]

immortal scully theory my detested. and you know why i hate it so much? because there is so much evidence for it.

[croc-odette]

m/f ships are so interesting because even if the actual canon relationship is complex or loving or engaging, there are still people who gleefully engage with it by shoving it back into roles and boxes. women get inevitably relegated to soft, curvy bodies, to pregnant domestic weary partners, to 'bitchy nags' who just need to be manhandled and harassed into being compliant and girlish. the men are rude and 'joking' and pushy and get mad at the drop of a hat and ultimately in control. what is the point of the original canon if you are still frantically trying to make it swallow the sitcom misogyny and patriarchy pill. SEEK HELP

[caffeinosis]

Scully is an absolute dick in Oubliette :/

[anders-hawke]

Your reply to that person was so incredibly harmful. The assumptions you made about them over a tag was disgusting. you can’t begin to understand a whole entire human being through a tag and it’s absolutely repulsive what you said. YOU are terrifying. Literally log off tumblr for a bit and get some air before you hurt someone.

lol you’re defending someone who doesn’t even need defending. besides that, i was speaking as someone who has suffered from depression before. you don’t get to override my experiences. you get some air. don’t bother sending another ask, i’ll just block you. i only replied to this one for entertainment. ^-^

[pagannatural]

2.07 The Usual Suspects

-Sam being interrogated about Dean is so so good because we get to see Sam being told that his brother is a scumbag criminal and the way he reacts by rolling his eyes like he’s heard this before. It’s almost like seeing a teenage version of Sam. The detective keeps telling him to throw Dean under the bus and the whole time he’s just giving attitude and plotting how to help Dean and work the case. He keeps looking out the window. Some of his reactions are raw and some are fake and some are both and his mind is running through his options assessing what to do and how to get out of this.

When confronted with the cliff notes on his and Dean’s life, Sam runs the gamut of emotion from sad and grief-stricken about Jessica to defending Dean and acting all scandalized to being a smartass, to whatever the hell this is when she says “it’s not your fault he’s your brother, we can’t pick our family”

The double meaning here. The not meeting her eyes, the tension on his face, the disdain. It’s giving Bitch don’t I fucking know it, yet I would choose him a thousand times and every time I would be a little bit miserable. “It’s not your fault he’s your brother, we can’t pick our [soul mates]” is probably what God tells him in his most comforting dreams.

-So the detective’s theory is what? That after a shared sordid serial killer childhood Sam escaped the life and then Dean murdered Sam’s girlfriend in a house fire to lure him back in and make him his crime wife?

Because I mean yeah I would read that AU. That fits their vibe pretty nicely.

-She says “Dean’s a bad guy….his life is over, yours doesn’t have to be” and Sam looks at her like that’s the dumbest thing he has ever heard.

She doesn’t know that they become sickly and depressed when they’re apart like a pair of bonded sewer kittens.

When she tells him he can get on with his life and Dean’s as good as gone you can almost see him tuning her out and calculating how to lie about this.

-Sam starts on his cover story, using his trademark Sweet-Innocent face. He relies on his charms and on appearing helpless to manipulate people into doing what he wants. He would’ve learned to do this when he was a child as a survival skill, and I can just imagine how well this complemented Dean’s tough but earnest seduction thing. Acting sweet and helpless when you’re actually savvy and resourceful is a trope commonly used in female characters. These traits (innocence, sweetness, feigned helplessness) are associated with women gaining/utilizing agency in the ways available to them.

Because narratively, Sam is the girl. It’s stuff like this, plus the way he’s depicted as Dean’s tempting damsel in distress in other episodes. It increases the sexual tension between Sam and Dean when they rely on these archetypes because we know what it means when two leads are masculine and feminine, when they need each other and the plot hinges on their conflict. It means they’re the love interests.

-Dean makes a joke about Sam being Scully, and Sam’s like I’m not Scully you’re Scully, and Dean says “No I’m Mulder. You’re a red headed woman.” Really spelling it out.

Dean is smirking and making prolonged eye contact and just— he’s flirting. There’s a Bruce Springsteen song titled “Red Headed Woman” about how “it takes a red headed woman to get a dirty job done.” I have no idea if this is what Dean’s referencing or if it’s just a Scully reference but it’s a very specific thing to say and Sam is brunette. The song is very suggestive.

-Dean HATES waiting around while Sam works. Within seconds he becomes insufferable and has to leave to go do something, flirting with Sam again on his way out.

-“Sam’s story matches Dean’s to the last detail” they didn’t even SEE each other before talking to police! They’re just so connected that they tell the same exact story. Then they both work on the case in their separate interrogation rooms using different methods and arrive at the same conclusion at the same time. They also make the same joke about their public defender.

-I keep seeing this post about who knew Dean better, Sam or Castiel, and I just want to point out that these two are so in sync they can essentially read each others minds.

-We have an outsider perspective on their lives and relationship a few times this episode, and the detectives comment more than once on how weirdly connected the brothers are. Like, Dean communicates to Sam via movie reference to escape and Sam is already all over that, he’s been assessing how to climb out the window since his first scene.

-Dean tells the detective to go to Sam so that Sam can save her life, giving her their info on “how we find each other when we’re separated.” That’s very practical. It’s also true that when they aren’t together they are obsessed with finding each other and making sure they know exactly where the other is at all times. They must have felt so untethered when Sam was at Stanford. I’m imagining Sam going on a little trip over spring break and feeling like he’s forgetting something really important and starting to panic only to realize it’s just that Dean won’t know where he is.

[danascullysjournal]

Chrysalis

An X-Files Fanfic.  Post S9.

TW: Loss of a child, depression, suicidal thoughts.  

____________________

The darkness in the motel room enveloped them both as they lay down, exhausted from a routine of running that they had grown accustomed to.  It was comforting on some nights.  Most nights it only served to magnify their isolation.  

Tonight, it was the latter. 

Their lives were a juxtaposition now, safe with one another, but fugitives in every other sense of the word.  Completing each other, yet empty without William.  

There were pieces that were not just misplaced, but stolen.  

Those wounds stayed raw.  

Dana Scully bandaged them both the best she could, but her training was of flesh and bone, stitches and scar tissue, medication to stave off the searing pain.  Grossly unqualified for the patient before her, she prayed silently for a breakthrough.  Anything to help a man whose soul was eclipsed.  

The date for colonization had come.  And gone. 

And now… the man in her bed was not the same.  He turned his body restlessly from his back to his side, unable to hold back the thoughts, the anger that clouded his mind.  It had been the same each night for a week, or more.  He was spiraling into darkness, ever deeper.

“Scully.  I was certain… I told you.  I told you.  I know what I saw.  And now…. If knowing that, and stopping that-  if, if that wasn’t what I’m supposed to do, what I’m here for… then what?”  In the dim light from the window, Mulder’s eyes stared through her.  

Scully let his words dissipate into the silence of the dark, cheap motel room. Nothing she added could comfort, she knew.   This sort of wound… only he could heal.  It pained her to accept her impotence, watching her love turn inward, breaking himself down.  She draped her arm over his neck protectively, pulling him close to her under the bedspread. 

“I don’t know what to do now.”  Mulder’s voice was small.  “I thought I was, I dunno, meant for that.  That sounds so stupid… but I did.  I really did.  I thought that made all of... this, all I went through, all we went through mean something.  And I was wrong.  Just… wrong.   And now what?” 

Scully closed her eyes, softly touching her forehead to his.  The whiplash of life changing was a sting she knew well.   

“You remember I was assigned to debunk your work?  I knew it.  So did you.  But that didn’t work out so well, did it?”

“Does it matter?  Does any of it matter, since the entire thing was a lie?  Since what Samantha died for, what you gave William away for, since all of that was a damn lie?” 

That wound.   She grimaced.  She would bleed herself dry if it meant William was hers again, and he knew it.  Biting her lip, she tried to compose her emotions, well aware that he didn’t intend the shame he inflicted.  He was just broken.  As broken as she was.

“Sorry, Scully.”  His mumble was followed by a ragged breath.  He sniffled.  “I’m sorry.  It just all feels so meaningless.” 

She nodded against his forehead.  It did, some days.  

“Sometimes… I don’t think there won’t be a meaning we can see.  That’s not the point.  I think sometimes, there isn’t a point, not in the sense you’re looking for.”  She sighed and kissed his worried brow. 

Mulder remained silent for a long moment.  She knew there was a war waging within him, a battle between hope and futility.  Carrying on, or ending it. 

“I just wanted the truth, Scully.  And what they gave me was a lie.”

“If the truth you chased was true- if the colonization happened- if it had torn us apart… would it have been worth it?”  She waited for a reply, knowing he couldn’t give one.  He wouldn’t say yes, but he couldn’t bring himself to say no.  It pained her, knowing that part of him would have seen the end of the world- the end of them- as a victory, a confirmation of worth.  “Mulder, maybe there wasn’t a point before, except finding each other, and surviving.  Maybe this is a chance.  A beginning.” 

“To what?”

Silence.

To what?   She wished she knew.  How desperately she wanted purpose, a meaning to cling to after so much had been stripped from her.  From them.  Everything she thought they had worked for, survived for, had unraveled and left her in a vague, empty plane of existence.  Their work on the X-Files, their parenthood, their purposes… all that was before had ended, and all that was to come had not yet begun.  She was waiting in a void with him, trying to pull him above the darkness while she was drowning alongside him.

She let out a deep sigh.  She was as tired of crumbling into nothing as he was.  The silence and darkness took hold, as it did every night.   The tick of his watch on the bedside table marked the seconds.  Each one snapped, louder than the last.  

Time gone… gone… gone…

“You know something, Mulder?”

“Hm.”

“Caterpillars don’t know what is happening either.”

His face stared at her, contorted by confusion.

“They follow what is preprogrammed in their DNA, Mulder.  They act on instinct that is woven into them.  But they don’t know what is happening when they make their chrysalis.”

Mulder huffed and wiped his eyes.  “I’m not following, Doctor.  You want to be an entomologist?”

She smiled faintly and kissed his forehead, her fingers stroking his hair.  “It’s fascinating, actually.  They wrap themselves up, and they dissolve…”  How often she had felt that.  A feeling of slowly diminishing.  Losing herself.   “Hormones are activated inside the chrysalis, and disassemble almost the entire organism from the inside out…  The pieces are still there, but all, well, digested, to an extent, except for respiratory tubes… imagine how terrifying that would be, to be completely broken down, and rearranged…  It’s a good thing they aren’t sentient.”

“Hm.  That you know of.”

She considered, then hummed agreement.  “Yes.  That I know of.  But the point is, they don’t stay nothing.   And they don’t go back to being crawling insects.  They emerge later, with wings, and a purpose.  It doesn’t mean that what they were before was worthless.  It’s just… different.”

Mulder rolled onto his back, staring up through the darkness to the ceiling.

“Okay…  but we are sentient, Scully.”

“Yeah.  We are.”

“Breaking down to nothing.  It hurts.”

Scully nodded, her fingers finding and clasping his.  “It does.”

The bed creaked as Mulder turned to face her again.  He pulled her hand up, pressing his lips to her knuckles. 

“I love you, Scully.”

She felt her throat begin to constrict, the sting of tears in her nostrils.  It had been a long time since he had said those words with his heart.  A long time of running, of hiding… of wondering if she had made the right choices as her life disassembled itself along the trail of entropy that he chased… and she dutifully followed.  

But this time… this time, she could have sworn there was some meaning behind his words.  She let out a shuddered breath.

“Scully?  I’m sorry.”  He pushed himself up on one elbow, grasping her hand tightly to his chest.  “I’m sorry for everything.  I don’t want to give up… I did, I do, but I don’t.  I sound crazy.”  Tears glistened on his cheeks, caught in days old stubble.  He was rocking slightly back and forth, an unconscious attempt to soothe the cacophony in his brain.  “It’s all so much.”

“It is.”  Her reply was choked.  He was right.  It was almost too much.

“I’m scared, Scully.”

“Me too.”

She sat up to join him, wrapping herself around him, enveloping them both in the motel blankets.  It was a shield to protect against their fears as much as it was against the cold.  The silence settled in once more, soft and secure around them instead of between them.  

“Scully, I want to find out, together.”  

“Find out?” 

She startled as he moved to wrap his arms around her, then softened, melting into his embrace.  She hadn’t realized, as she had paced the days, as she had nurtured and healed to the best of her abilities, how starved she had been.

“I want to find out what we will be.  After, you know.  After this… change.  I know… I know what I thought was true.  And what we were.  You and me.”  His fingers rubbed her back.  “I miss us.  I miss William.”  His voice broke.   His body shuddered around her, wracked by silent sobs.  

Scully clutched his chest tightly.  Her tears wet the t-shirt fabric above his heart.

They clung desperately to one another, letting go a torrent of anger, bitterness, and emptiness.  It was a release they had both desperately needed for months.  Their bodies shook in unison, mourning what was.  What could not be recovered.   After what felt like hours, the wells were dry.  There was nothing left to offer up, and had there been, it would have done no more good than the hundreds of tears cried before.

Mulder pulled back, wiping his eyes and nose on his shirt sleeve, stroking her head softly.  

“This isn’t what I had planned for us.  For you.”  He sniffled, and took a deep breath, trying to compose himself.

“I know, Mulder.  It’s okay.”  

She kissed his chest, where her tears were.  Where his heart was.  Where, she hoped, he still held her, even in the midst of the darkness.  He loosened his grasp on her shoulders and looked back up to the black ceiling.

“One thing is good about being sentient, Scully.”

A quick laugh escaped her lips.  She shook her head.  “Only one?”

He shrugged.  

“Alright, let’s hear it.” 

Wiping her eyes, Scully lay back down, spent.  Mulder followed her lead, pulling her close to his body, and tucking the blankets tightly around them both.  Softly, he kissed her forehead.

“I do know that we are changing together.  And I want that, with you.  I can look at this, at us, and… well, I’m scared.  And… and sad.  But I know we are doing this together, and that’s what I want, Scully.  You and me.  Together.”

“Me too, Mulder.”  Her whisper was tear-stained.

Mulder bent his head and kissed her cheek, snuggling them both further into the blankets.  Scully smiled, the first genuine smile in months.  It felt good.

“I love you, Mulder.”

“I’m so damn lucky you do.  I love you too.  So much.”  He nuzzled her with his stubble-dotted chin, and she wriggled and laughed, trying in vain to escape.  “That’s another thing, Scully.  If caterpillars aren’t sentient, they can’t love, can they?”

“I… I suppose not.  Not in the sense that we understand it.”

“Hm.  But we can.”  He kissed her again.  

Scully felt herself melting into him, content.  Loved.  Whole, in a sense that she had not felt in a very long time.  Wrapped tightly together, they slept.  Two caterpillars in a single chrysalis, dissolving.  Rearranging.  Waiting.  

____________________

Tagging @today-in-fic

[cecilysass]

Mulder’s Depressed Vampire Sex: Me on 3

You know, I like the episode 3. I mean, not the casefile part of 3, which is whatever whatever, but the important part: the blood fetishist lady has her way with Mulder and then he cries.

I definitely loathed the episode back when the show was airing. Back then it seemed like it was intentionally hostile to the ship—like going out of its way to be hostile, having Kristen tell Mulder shit like “I can tell you’re missing someone, but attention please: just a friend. Definitely not more!!!” I honestly kind of felt like she was looking out of the screen directly at me when she said it.

But looking back, knowing that MSR was endgame (and that fans kinda took over the narrative anyway), I definitely see the episode totally differently.

From a Mulder character arc point of view, this episode is all about him being a sad, sad boy. It is all about his depression, his hopelessness, his grief for Scully. It’s also about his drive to try to save women and girls in order to save himself. And he so often seems to fail at this when it is someone he cares about (or even when it is someone he has a fleeting connection with, like Kristen). And that’s so, so devastating for him. In that sense, this episode is a really desperate expression of his grief and frustration.

The HIV/AIDS angle to this ep is super important, too, so we have to make sure we’re getting into the full 1994 mindset on this. Mulder says in alarm to Kristen back in the club, when she’s playing fast and loose with blood: “AIDS. Aren’t you afraid?” (To which she responds that she wants to die.) Mulder knows that HIV transmission through sharing fluids is no joke in 1994 (it probably really shouldn’t be now either, but that’s not today’s lecture). Yet later, when Kristen is shaving him and he’s nicked, he allows this to be the catalyst for sex, even as he makes attempts to stop her from tasting his blood.

So his choice to have sex with Kristen is depicted as reckless, with someone who has been shown being careless about HIV. And he is doing it not just because he is turned on, but because he is being intentionally reckless with himself, clearly knowing the consequences. He shows concern for her, yes, but he’s also self destructive. He wants to fuck the hot vampire, but he also wants to fuck with death.

In other words, there’s a difference between what the episode tells us about Mulder’s relationship to Scully and what it shows us. And what the episode shows us about their relationship is that Scully is central enough in his life that everything is fundamentally affected by her abduction. He’s broken. He’s visibly depressed. He makes decisions that risk his job and his life. All the while he is actually choosing to wear her cross: a symbol that traditionally wards off vampires, as Kristen observes, but also keeps Scully’s presence in his mind constantly and in every frame of the episode he's in. And the episode ends with him looking like a hero in a romance novel mournfully casting his eyes to the hills clutching her cross in his hand.

None of this obviously communicates “I miss my work friend,” right? No objective observer would see this and say, “ah, he clearly is missing someone—most likely a friend, I would say.” But probably that’s exactly why they included Kristen’s “just a friend” line. They knew his grief in this episode was reading very powerfully, and they didn’t want it to seem overtly romantic.

I also feel like it’s kind of significant that the only time we actually see Mulder have confirmed sex with someone (besides Scully later) is when he’s depressed and Scully is gone. Linking his grief for Scully to his very-rarely-seen acting out on sexual desire like this also seems kind of psychologically sus to me, but I don’t know, I read a lot of fanfic.

Speaking of which, I did a little fanfic search for 3. And unless I am missing obvious fics (always a possibility), it was kind of difficult. Partly because this is a stupidly hard episode to look in search engines for. (No one should ever name episodes after numbers, although this one I will forgive because it’s from 1994 and they couldn’t have fully understood about Google and AO3.)

But also I just think there hasn’t been a ton of 3 fanfic, probably because this episode isn’t very well-liked. And listen, I get that Scully isn’t in it, which is often unappealing for writers, and there is Mulder/other, which people don’t like. But I feel like there are a lot of possibilities for story ideas here that don’t necessarily take place during the events of the episode. Like: how does it affect them later? Personally I like fics where Mulder and Scully discuss the events of the episode long after (actually I wrote one, which I included in my recs because I’m not that cool). I also think Mulder’s angst and depression has a lot of ways it could go—not to mention it’s the last canonically confirmed time he has sex before like 2000 or something. And it seems like AU takes on what happened to Kristen could be interesting. So what I'm saying is: maybe try writing 3 fics.

3 Fanfic Recs

Three is a Crowd - wendelah1 Mulder has sex with Kristen but can’t stop thinking of Scully.

Analgesic- settledownfrohike Mulder has sex with Kristen but can’t stop being a self-loathing, self-destructive mess. And thinking of Scully.

The Woman In His Heart - Spangle This shorter piece frames Mulder’s time with Kristen as a revelation about his feelings. Angsty and nicely observed. A 2005 Spooky winner, evidently.

False Dawn - emmbright A sharply etched portrait of how Mulder moves through his life between 3 and One Breath. For me this fills in the blanks perfectly.

Dreams - Characteristically_Exuberant This is actually a (great) post-ep for Field Trip, and the events of 3 aren’t the main focus of the fic. But I like how this author discusses what happened with Mulder in that episode and contextualizes it for both agents.

We’re Not Here To Get Involved In Personal Problems - cecily_sass This is mine, also not really a 3 post-ep; it’s an X-Cops post-ep. I feel a little silly including it. But I had them discuss the events of 3 in this fic in a way that sort of lays out my own thesis of the episode, and I thought, hey, it’s my list. Mulder and Scully walk to a gas station in Willow Park in Los Angeles the morning after X-Cops; they discuss plenty.

Any others? I feel like I probably missed some.