#txf closure

[that--funny--feeling]

You should rest, Mulder is Scully's way to say I'm here for you and I love you.

Sleep dreprived Mulder and worried Scully investigating Samantha's abduction through the seasons.

The X Files 4x10 // 7x11

[bisexualfbiagents]

You know when I was a kid, I had this ritual. I closed my eyes before I walked into my room, cause I thought that one day when I opened them my sister would be there. Just lying in bed, like nothing ever happened. You know I'm still walking into that room, everyday of my life.

THE X FILES GIF MEME [2/8] CHARACTERS Samantha Mulder

[bakedbakermom]

txf + text posts (15/?)

[nefertitisfjordd]

"Oh, yay. A seance. I haven’t done that since high school." "Maybe afterwards we can play postman and spin the bottle."

[whovianderson]

Why does Fox Mulder mean so much to me?

Trigger warnings: discussions of trauma, abuse, cancer, suicide, depression

Fox Mulder is so much more than a character to me. Never have I seen the inner workings of my mind represented in the way that I do in him. I feel like we understand each other, like we function the same way in this world.

Not to state the obvious, but Mulder is traumatised. Samantha’s disappearance changed his brain chemistry, and in turn, his life. As someone who has complex PTSD as a result of relationship abuse, I relate to this more than I can say. In ‘Oubliette’, Mulder’s desperation to change the course of events was out of fear of a repeat of what happened to Samantha. In this, I see myself trying to ensure that nothing like what I experienced happens again, both because of its effects on the other person, and on me. Of course, I've had to learn the hard way that I am ultimately powerless to control what happens to others. The difficulties I’ve had coming to terms with that are portrayed perfectly by Mulder's distress when he realised that Lucy had sacrificed herself for Amy, despite his best efforts. There's also a sense of inevitability and inescapability from the cycle of trauma when such things keep happening that is deeply harrowing.

In ‘Demons’, Mulder’s fear of not knowing something traumatic that happened reminded me of what I have been grappling with for years. As well as trauma from a past relationship, my sister has further traumatised me due to her severe mental health problems. It would trigger my own too much for me to know everything that is happening to her, but the unknown is worse for me, because I can't process it. My traumatised mind jumps to the worst case scenario. Thus, once again, Mulder’s reaction to being left in the dark felt like I was looking in a mirror. The sympathetic way in which his behaviour in this episode was written shows how no reaction can be considered disproportionate when it's because you're traumatised, and that is beyond validating for me. The depiction of flashbacks here also felt painfully accurate.

In ‘Memento Mori’, I recognised a lot of Mulder’s emotions due to my own experiences of life-threatening illness in people I love. Little did I know how much harder ‘Redux’ would hit! In ‘Redux’, Mulder believes he is responsible for Scully’s cancer and impending death. I know firsthand what it’s like to hold yourself responsible for someone else’s life, what it feels like to believe that you are killing somebody. I was continually shown that I couldn’t save the very person who told me I had to, because she kept getting sicker. As a result, other people’s suffering has become synonymous with my own personal failure and the consequent guilt in my mind. I would rather be failed by somebody else than have failed myself. This means that exactly like Mulder, on the verge of suicide in this episode, I would rather be the one who dies than feel so crushingly guilty. While horrible to witness, I have never seen the mental deterioration of a character who has assumed responsibility for another’s life so accurately portrayed, and that makes me feel more understood than ever before.

The entire premise of ‘The X-Files’ is that Mulder refuses to come to terms with his sister’s disappearance. His constant search for an alternative explanation, no matter how far-fetched, is what drives his character from the beginning. As an audience, we can see how that’s a form of denial, as can characters like Scully. Scully says “if it’s only by knowing where he’s been that he can hope to understand where he’s going, then I fear Agent Mulder may lose his course”. I haven’t finished the show yet, but having watched seven seasons, I am confident when I say that the crux of its development is that Mulder comes to understand “where he’s going”, without relying on “where he’s been”. As someone with a past that they quite frankly would rather die than relive, it brings me so much hope to think that I don’t have to dwell on it, that like Mulder learns to over the course of the show, I can live my life free of its shackles. That’s why ‘Closure’ is such a significant episode. However much one tries, it is impossible to explain away trauma - it happened, and one simply has to come to terms with its incomprehensible injustice. That is exactly what Mulder does here. It’s ironically titled, because there is no closure when it comes to the past, but he shows that personal growth isn’t dependent on getting that closure. Instead, he is of his own volition able to let go of the coping mechanism that has driven him up to this point: his belief that Samantha was abducted. Engaging in various types of therapy, including EMDR, to overcome my own coping mechanisms in response to my trauma is the scariest thing I have ever had to do (and that’s saying something). Seeing not only that journey represented onscreen, but shown coming to fruition, means everything.

Mulder’s trauma should incline him to be distrustful of everyone, as his ‘trust no one’ catchphrase would suggest. He evidently knows this, and yet he wants to believe in other people’s integrity so much so that it overrides the fear, and he trusts them anyway. He will take people at their word, whether that be about UFO sightings or something else. He chooses to see the good in everybody, despite having every reason not to, because, in his words, “if you don’t start trusting someone, you don’t stand a chance”. This attitude is possibly the aspect of my own personality about which I am most insecure. I used to hate myself so much for it that I wouldn’t open up to anyone at all in an effort to change who I was. I suppose I hated acting against what my experiences had shown to be true: that I could ‘trust no one’. Since meeting Mulder, though, I have thought of him every single time I begin to hate myself for being this way. This soothes me more than I can possibly describe. He makes me feel like it’s okay to be like me, or should I say, like us. Me wanting to believe in other people is not the detestable thing I had always viewed it as. I don’t think I would be able to carry on if it weren’t for his presence in this part my life. I cannot overstate his impact on me here.

Part of the reason for both me and Mulder being so trusting of others is because we do not trust ourselves. Deep down, he is insecure about whether his belief in Samantha’s abduction is credible, and so he relies on others to evidence it. For me, I do not treat my experiences as legitimate, and so I need other people’s responses to give me the validation that I cannot find within myself.

If it weren’t already obvious, I am autistic. My predisposition to trust, taking things at face value, is one manifestation of my autism. That’s not to say it’s the same for every autistic person, of course, but for me and for Mulder, I believe it is. In general, he is one of the most clearly autistic-coded characters I have ever encountered. He is ostracised by his peers and written off as ‘spooky’ for being different, something that many of us go through. Maybe, like it is for me, that’s part of the reason why he trusts people right off the bat: he wants to get the rejection that he’s used to facing out of the way before he puts in any effort. Or maybe he’s just a bad judge of what is and isn’t appropriate in a social context, again very much a trait of autism. And that’s not to mention his devotion to the X-Files and to Scully. Him surrendering every part of himself to them is exactly how I relate to the world, because all-or-nothing thinking is a huge way in which my autism functions. I was actually only diagnosed with autism two years ago, and having representation, implied or otherwise, in a character as alike to me as Mulder has helped me settle into my new identity.

It would be remiss not to further explore the fact that Mulder wouldn’t be Mulder without Scully. In the pilot, he tells Scully about his theory because he desperately wants someone on his side. She ends up not being the person he thinks he wants, but the person he actually needs. Without her, he wouldn’t have made it to the place he does in ‘Closure’; she challenges the beliefs he uses to cope, but most importantly, she loves him through it. Scully shows Mulder how genuine love can be when you’re not just being told what you want to hear, and as a result, she becomes the only person whom he can truly rely upon. The most important similarity between me and Mulder is of course that I too am in love with Scully! Scully is an incredible character who I would love to write more about in her own right, but I don’t feel as personally connected to her as I do to Mulder. I guess I’ll just say that I hope that I, and every other Mulder out there, find our Scully. People like us have so much love to give. We love so much and so deeply that people who return our love in full are almost impossible to find. One in five billion, you could say.

I cannot wait to get to know different facets of my all-time favourite character as I finish watching ‘The X-Files’. I know he will only become more important to me, especially since I know he ends up struggling with depression like I do. I hope I’ve demonstrated in writing this how beyond grateful I am to have been introduced to him, someone who is practically more me than I am! The fandom is a wonderful place to be, but in writing this, I also aim to remind myself how much the show and Mulder’s character mean to me personally.

Like Mulder, I am constantly moving, driven by the thought that “I wouldn’t know what I’d be missing”. But every once in a while, something comes along that makes me want to stay with it forever. And ‘The X-Files’, specifically the character of Fox Mulder, is one of them.

[pookie-mulder]

The X-Files mythology is like:

The plot thickens.

It thickens again.

Even thicker.

Now the plot is so thick, it’s a solid piece of matter, yet it still somehow gets even thicker.

Pretty soon it thickens so much that it becomes denser than a neutron star, then collapses under the weight of its own thickness and becomes a black hole, pulling the show’s viewers into it and never letting them escape.

Yet somehow it’s still full of holes?

[randomfoggytiger]

He's fine, he's free.

[deep-sea-gigantinism]

thinking about the end of the samantha arc and how for me at least it ultimately lost meaning after being dragged on for so long. there were so many missed opportunities because if they had resolved it earlier, maybe sometime after missy was killed, it could’ve sent mulder into that existential “i’m done with the x files” spiral at a more appropriate point. scully could’ve tried to tell him that she lost a sister too to these people and that it’s all the more reason to not let melissa and samantha die in vain, but ultimately mulder is stuck like this—and then scully gets sick, and now he has a reason for opening these cases again. now belief is all he has. from that point on he would’ve had reasons to believe other than finding his sister, and i think it would have carried him farther in the show

[koschei-the-ginger]

When the episode gives us an answer that's neither too good or too bad but it's final and we can now all move on ig

[agent-troi]

Eight Nights of Mulder, Day 6: Dreidel

Summary: While going through his mother’s things after her death, Mulder finds an old family heirloom.

@eightnightsofmulder @today-in-fic

ao3 link

He was surprised she kept it. The Mulders hadn’t properly celebrated Hanukkah, much less observed any Jewish traditions, for years. Not since Samantha was taken, and it had been sporadic even before that. 

Samantha had loved to play dreidel, mainly because she happened to win most of the time. Their last Hanukkah, he’d put his foot down and refused to play with her, having grown bored of how simple and repetitive it was. She screeched at him and stomped her foot, saying he’d regret being so mean to her.

Well, as it turned out, he sure as hell did.

Sighing, Mulder tossed the dreidel back in the box, where it made a dull thud as it bounced off the base of the menorah. That was another thing he hadn’t seen in a while. He wondered if anyone would ever see it again.

I’m the last. There’s no one left for me to pass on these traditions to. No one to pass on anything to.

The boy from his dream appeared in his mind’s eye, sitting cross-legged on the floor as he spun the little top around. “Come on, Dad, play with me!”

Pondering the dreidel, he smiled.

Don’t give up.

[television-overload]

Me rewatching the clip of Mulder finding Samantha after digging into the episode for the fic I'm working on:

For real I'm sitting here crying. I didn't cry this much at any point while watching the series through the first time. I have a feeling someday when I rewatch it I'll be a mess. Because now you can analyze every minute detail, facial expression, etc. with the knowledge of what happens before AND after

[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").

[soufflegirl]

The X-Files: Max (4x18) // Closure (7x11)

[x-files-scripts]

The X-Files - “Closure”

Written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz

December 8, 1999 (GOLD)

Trimmed scene:

Trimmed lines from Samantha’s diary:

Tears come as Mulder embraces Samantha and is finally free...

[cock-holliday]

[backintimeforstuff]

Listen. I love Sein und Zeit and Closure as much as the next person. But as I'm cursed with being British I constantly mishear Amber Lynn LaPierre's name as if they're saying Anne Boleyn and I simply cannot keep it to myself anymore. It's driving me crazy. Mulder turns round and does this whole dramatic speech and my brain is filled with mental images of him finding the body of the Queen of England from 1533 - 1536 instead of a little girl in California. I literally cannot do anything about it. I don't think I can make it stop. This is what happens when you spend 18 years getting indoctrinated with Tudor history at school.