Space Girl
When I first saw it, I was 20 years old and living in my first apartment in downtown Portland. The TV was the old-fashioned kind with the dial and it only got a few channels. I was in transitional housing to get off the streets, and the TV came with the apartment. That summer I had watched the Fox channel exclusively.
Its airing caught me off guard. I had spent that spring watching what I believed to be the best show of all time, a little short-lived anthology show called Tribeca where every episode was like a mini-movie about different people's lives, and each episode intersected at one restaurant in Tribeca, NYC. It was a 7-episode gem that nobody knew about. I was sad it was cancelled, and I had no idea what was about to take its place in my heart.
And then I saw it: THE X-FILES TRAILER. Aliens. Abduction. Mystery. ALIENS. See, I was a HUGE alien buff. I've believed in their existence since 1990 when I was a hippie staying in Laguna Beach, CA and I met someone who was convinced he witnessed a crashed spaceship on the beach and a government coverup happening in real time in that town. He said he had video to prove it, but I never saw it.
When the X-Files trailer first aired I was probably watching The Simpsons. I was alone in my apartment and the minute I saw Mulder and Scully investigating alien conspiracies on my old, crappy TV, I was hooked. I was a die-hard X-Phile before the show even began. I was one of the first people telling others to watch it, before people really knew about it. I watched it when I could over the years (I didn't always have a television), and I used the theme music as my outgoing voicemail on my phone for a long time. This was my show, my identity. I watched it even to the bitter end, even when Mulder and Scully weren't on it anymore.
I call The X-Files my first fandom, though I didn't spend time on message boards. I was a member of an X-Files Livejournal community, and I still have a Scully user pic with the text "spacegirl" on there. Scully will always be one of my favorite fictional feminist icons.
The X-Files will always be in my heart, even when they add stupid episodes in season 10 and fuck it up and even when I can't finish the reboot because YOU FUCKED IT UP CHRIS CARTER. But that is a story for another day.
Its airing caught me off guard. I had spent that spring watching what I believed to be the best show of all time, a little short-lived anthology show called Tribeca where every episode was like a mini-movie about different people's lives, and each episode intersected at one restaurant in Tribeca, NYC. It was a 7-episode gem that nobody knew about. I was sad it was cancelled, and I had no idea what was about to take its place in my heart.
And then I saw it: THE X-FILES TRAILER. Aliens. Abduction. Mystery. ALIENS. See, I was a HUGE alien buff. I've believed in their existence since 1990 when I was a hippie staying in Laguna Beach, CA and I met someone who was convinced he witnessed a crashed spaceship on the beach and a government coverup happening in real time in that town. He said he had video to prove it, but I never saw it.
When the X-Files trailer first aired I was probably watching The Simpsons. I was alone in my apartment and the minute I saw Mulder and Scully investigating alien conspiracies on my old, crappy TV, I was hooked. I was a die-hard X-Phile before the show even began. I was one of the first people telling others to watch it, before people really knew about it. I watched it when I could over the years (I didn't always have a television), and I used the theme music as my outgoing voicemail on my phone for a long time. This was my show, my identity. I watched it even to the bitter end, even when Mulder and Scully weren't on it anymore.
I call The X-Files my first fandom, though I didn't spend time on message boards. I was a member of an X-Files Livejournal community, and I still have a Scully user pic with the text "spacegirl" on there. Scully will always be one of my favorite fictional feminist icons.
The X-Files will always be in my heart, even when they add stupid episodes in season 10 and fuck it up and even when I can't finish the reboot because YOU FUCKED IT UP CHRIS CARTER. But that is a story for another day.