"It Could Be Sweet": Optimism and Pessimism in X-Files Fanfic
This is the first in an occasional series of essays that will examine themes in X-Files fanfic, aiming both to draw attention to good stories and to shed light on the genre of fanfiction more generally...
One of the most important features of fanfic is the way in which it offers the viewer and the writer a chance to make right the things that they perceive as being wrong in the series... and, just as often, to make wrong some of the things that have gone right. Both fluff and angst are perennially popular genres, holding down opposite ends of the optimism/pessimism spectrum. They are also perennial sources of fanfic cliches. After all, there are only so many ways to reward or torture your characters... aren't there?
Anyone who reads X-Files fanfic will have encountered more "Mulder and Scully married with children" stories than they can count. Similarly, they will have encountered character death, rape, cancer, and so many other varieties of ScullyAngst and MulderTorture that they all start to look the same after a while. It's enough to make you want to swear off the whole genre. In the hands of a skilled writer, though, stories that explore the extreme possibilities of optimism and pessimism can operate on deeper levels, offering valuable meta-commentary both on the series and on the fanfiction and the fannish discourse surrounding it.
I'm going to start by comparing a couple of far-out stories about 'first contact': "Cunegund's Restoration, or, The Best of All Possible Worlds, Really" by Livia Balaban and "Contact Ironic" by Peregrin Anna. As the title suggests, "Cunegund's Restoration" is an intentional riff on the idea of the writing the ultimate optimistic ending. As the author explains in her notes:
I thought about the best possible way for the events of "Requiem" to turn out, and the list was so long and ridiculously optimistic, I felt the only way to handle all those options was to make this a parody!fic. It got very silly indeed. Then I decided, as a writer who had only recently committed to the worst-case scenario (multiple times), I would find it much more of a challenge to take the BEST-case scenario and make it work, logically and sensibly, without making it all gooey...
This story has been a labor of love for me. Well, that's only half true. It's been a labor of love-hate. It's extremely hard to write Scully in the first person and make it feel genuine. Add to that the absolute impossibility of a happy ending for ANYBODY on this show, and you'll understand what I faced in writing this.
The opening scene shows us a recently-returned Mulder, a pregnant Scully, Mrs. Scully, Melissa Scully and her husband, a recovered and still-twelve Samantha Mulder, and Alex Krycek all happily sitting down to breakfast together. This is optimism-as-writing-challenge, and the fact that the story manages to transcend parody is a truly remarkable achievement. It's very much set in the here-and-now, as the story summary demonstrates:
Despite the "hard news" angle taken by his correspondent Christiane Amanpour, CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno finally got to the point and asked the question everybody had been silently asking themselves. "So, Agent Mulder, how did the spacecraft handle?"
What makes it so unique is that it offers a globally happy ending, not just for Mulder and Scully alone, but for all the people whose paths they've crossed over the years, and for all the people who have given their lives, willingly and knowingly or not, for the cause of Truth. Because of this, maybe it's just the tiniest bit sad. However happily the series ends (and we know it really can't), we know that in the real world Mulder and Scully can't give back what others have lost. "And many who die deserve life," says Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, as a warning. "Can you give it to them?" Thus, while this is a wonderfully satisfying story to read, with a Time Magazine cover and all, it has an inevitably elegiac tone to it. By showing us what can never happen, it throws the darkness of the series into sharp relief, and makes the shadows seem even deeper.
Given the setup of "Contact Ironic," you could be forgiven for thinking that this is another best-possible-case scenario:
Mulder's truth appeared in the skies over Quonochontaug, Rhode Island, in the form of a gleaming, silvery-black starship that looked like a bigger, sleeker, classier version of the Stealth bomber. The hurriedly-snapped-and-faxed pictures Skinner showed me would have made my partner... drool.
The alien spaceship hovers over Mrs. Mulder's house, broadcasting one simple message: "Where is the one who wants to believe?" And Scully, still reeling from Mulder's apparent suicide in 'Gethsemane,' assumes that she knows how the story is going to go:
To be honest, I half expected *him* to be there, too. He'd saunter up to me and drawl, "Oh, hi Scully, I wasn't really dead, it was just an elaborate fake designed to fool the conspirators and make you feel guilty, but this is just too big to miss." I was ready for it.
But no, this is the pessimistic version. To be more accurate, it's partly pessimistic. The aliens are benevolent, they cure disease on earth (including Scully's cancer), and they bring peace to mankind. There's only one thing missing: Mulder. Scully is left failing to benefit from the new perspective offered by humanity's saviours, unable to let go of her resentment of Mulder for abandoning her. The truth is out there, but we as readers are left wondering whether that was what we really wanted after all.
***
Now I turn to comparing two stories that focus on the idea of a funeral for Mulder... "All of His Funerals" by Punk Manuverability and "Undone" by August. What is so intriguing is the contrast: the story that offers a sense of hope, however feeble, is the one where Scully has buried Mulder over and over again; the story that offers only hopelessness is the one where Mulder and Scully have finally come together, and where Mulder has not yet died.
"Undone" is an extended reflection by Scully on the life of quiet desperation that she and Mulder lead, and on the normality that she will never know:
We live in days measured out by funerals, sickness, running and exhaustion. We sleep through nights in cars or motels or planes or each other's couches. We miss holidays, celebrations. We work on New Years Eve, we forget Christmas.
She and Mulder may have come together in the end, but she knows only too well that this togetherness is transitory and that loss is inevitable. So the story ends with Scully contemplating a funeral that has not yet happened:
It will end one day, I suppose. He will be shot, or lost, or I will. I will stand at his funeral, or he at mine and it will be measured out in slow time with the sun lapping at our faces.
And he will have to go on, or I will. Wondering exactly how to do it because we've always fallen into each other. Wondering how much more we can lose. Wondering whether we've lost it all.
In "All of His Funerals," the idea of standing at Mulder's grave holds no terror for Scully. She has done it before, and she knows that she will do it again. There is pain in this story too, the pain of waiting and wondering whether this time her partner's death will be for real. Even so, there is a lyrical optimism at the center of this story, an optimism that echoes the idea of the resurrection, and Scully's religious faith, while never actually alluding to it:
He is dead again. He has his plot of land. I visit it like a pilgrim. I ignore the looks when I lean over to put a sunflower on his grave.
He knows why. That is all that matters.
These people don't know anything about waiting. They plant their coffins, and the grass grows back over them. I plant coffins, and they grow. I am successful at this. I grow and harvest death. What I plant does not stay dead.
I am a farmer.
I love the image of Scully as an angel of life, not death, waiting for Mulder to bloom again. It has a beauty that makes the pain worthwhile.
***
In my essay "Only Connect", I explored the evolution of Scully as a character in season four, and the way in which the traumas that she's suffered have caused her to grow ever harder, more guarded, and more detached from her own emotions and from the emotions of those around her. "Wheel of Fortune" by Raphaelle explores the same ideas in fictional form. The author explains her inspiration:
I was reading Sarah Stegall's review of "Anasazi," and came across "...will Scully's continued commitment to the...mind-set of the FBI bureaucracy turn her in the hatchet man Cancerman has become?" This, in combination with references from several places that Mulder is becoming, or is like, his father, inspired this story.
Her story is a deeply pessimistic telling of how a future Mulder and Scully, in different ways, have both been broken by their pursuit and discovery of the truth. I would dearly have loved to see the ideas in this story developed a little more fully, but perhaps a glimpse of this future is enough, a cautionary tale about the effects of learning the truth.
***
Finally, I offer you a story that the author says was written as Valentine's Day fluff, "It Could Be Sweet" by Wen. And sweet it is, a charming candyfloss-textured tale about Mulder wooing Scully with candy hearts:
On the first day he left a pastel pink candy heart on her desk, and the words Be Mine wrapped around her heart like a satin ribbon and tugged tight. Be Mine. Too late...
On the second day he left a pastel blue candy heart on her desk, and she was afraid that the little white letters URZ 4-EVER would either make her cry or smile until she wouldn't know what to do with him...
On the third day he left a pale white candy heart on her desk. I love you.
Would it happen this way? Who knows. We wish it would, and the author does a good job of convincing us that it could. The sense of fantasy is palpable in the story, but there's something balanced about it. Perhaps I'm reading meanings into something that holds no more meaning than a candy heart does, but the last sentences pull me out of the story just a little, and make me reflect:
She had no idea how they would end up and where, but she kissed the side of his mouth and licked the not-too-sweet syrup from the sides of his lips while he laughed a tiny Mulder laugh, nuzzling her face sticky, and she thought, It could be sweet, like this. It could be sweet.
We, as readers, know that what we're reading is fantasy. Still, through fanfiction, we can dream, and speculate, and gain just a little perspective. Like Scully, we know that it could be sweet.
One of the most important features of fanfic is the way in which it offers the viewer and the writer a chance to make right the things that they perceive as being wrong in the series... and, just as often, to make wrong some of the things that have gone right. Both fluff and angst are perennially popular genres, holding down opposite ends of the optimism/pessimism spectrum. They are also perennial sources of fanfic cliches. After all, there are only so many ways to reward or torture your characters... aren't there?
Anyone who reads X-Files fanfic will have encountered more "Mulder and Scully married with children" stories than they can count. Similarly, they will have encountered character death, rape, cancer, and so many other varieties of ScullyAngst and MulderTorture that they all start to look the same after a while. It's enough to make you want to swear off the whole genre. In the hands of a skilled writer, though, stories that explore the extreme possibilities of optimism and pessimism can operate on deeper levels, offering valuable meta-commentary both on the series and on the fanfiction and the fannish discourse surrounding it.
I'm going to start by comparing a couple of far-out stories about 'first contact': "Cunegund's Restoration, or, The Best of All Possible Worlds, Really" by Livia Balaban and "Contact Ironic" by Peregrin Anna. As the title suggests, "Cunegund's Restoration" is an intentional riff on the idea of the writing the ultimate optimistic ending. As the author explains in her notes:
I thought about the best possible way for the events of "Requiem" to turn out, and the list was so long and ridiculously optimistic, I felt the only way to handle all those options was to make this a parody!fic. It got very silly indeed. Then I decided, as a writer who had only recently committed to the worst-case scenario (multiple times), I would find it much more of a challenge to take the BEST-case scenario and make it work, logically and sensibly, without making it all gooey...
This story has been a labor of love for me. Well, that's only half true. It's been a labor of love-hate. It's extremely hard to write Scully in the first person and make it feel genuine. Add to that the absolute impossibility of a happy ending for ANYBODY on this show, and you'll understand what I faced in writing this.
The opening scene shows us a recently-returned Mulder, a pregnant Scully, Mrs. Scully, Melissa Scully and her husband, a recovered and still-twelve Samantha Mulder, and Alex Krycek all happily sitting down to breakfast together. This is optimism-as-writing-challenge, and the fact that the story manages to transcend parody is a truly remarkable achievement. It's very much set in the here-and-now, as the story summary demonstrates:
Despite the "hard news" angle taken by his correspondent Christiane Amanpour, CNN Washington Bureau Chief Frank Sesno finally got to the point and asked the question everybody had been silently asking themselves. "So, Agent Mulder, how did the spacecraft handle?"
What makes it so unique is that it offers a globally happy ending, not just for Mulder and Scully alone, but for all the people whose paths they've crossed over the years, and for all the people who have given their lives, willingly and knowingly or not, for the cause of Truth. Because of this, maybe it's just the tiniest bit sad. However happily the series ends (and we know it really can't), we know that in the real world Mulder and Scully can't give back what others have lost. "And many who die deserve life," says Gandalf in Lord of the Rings, as a warning. "Can you give it to them?" Thus, while this is a wonderfully satisfying story to read, with a Time Magazine cover and all, it has an inevitably elegiac tone to it. By showing us what can never happen, it throws the darkness of the series into sharp relief, and makes the shadows seem even deeper.
Given the setup of "Contact Ironic," you could be forgiven for thinking that this is another best-possible-case scenario:
Mulder's truth appeared in the skies over Quonochontaug, Rhode Island, in the form of a gleaming, silvery-black starship that looked like a bigger, sleeker, classier version of the Stealth bomber. The hurriedly-snapped-and-faxed pictures Skinner showed me would have made my partner... drool.
The alien spaceship hovers over Mrs. Mulder's house, broadcasting one simple message: "Where is the one who wants to believe?" And Scully, still reeling from Mulder's apparent suicide in 'Gethsemane,' assumes that she knows how the story is going to go:
To be honest, I half expected *him* to be there, too. He'd saunter up to me and drawl, "Oh, hi Scully, I wasn't really dead, it was just an elaborate fake designed to fool the conspirators and make you feel guilty, but this is just too big to miss." I was ready for it.
But no, this is the pessimistic version. To be more accurate, it's partly pessimistic. The aliens are benevolent, they cure disease on earth (including Scully's cancer), and they bring peace to mankind. There's only one thing missing: Mulder. Scully is left failing to benefit from the new perspective offered by humanity's saviours, unable to let go of her resentment of Mulder for abandoning her. The truth is out there, but we as readers are left wondering whether that was what we really wanted after all.
***
Now I turn to comparing two stories that focus on the idea of a funeral for Mulder... "All of His Funerals" by Punk Manuverability and "Undone" by August. What is so intriguing is the contrast: the story that offers a sense of hope, however feeble, is the one where Scully has buried Mulder over and over again; the story that offers only hopelessness is the one where Mulder and Scully have finally come together, and where Mulder has not yet died.
"Undone" is an extended reflection by Scully on the life of quiet desperation that she and Mulder lead, and on the normality that she will never know:
We live in days measured out by funerals, sickness, running and exhaustion. We sleep through nights in cars or motels or planes or each other's couches. We miss holidays, celebrations. We work on New Years Eve, we forget Christmas.
She and Mulder may have come together in the end, but she knows only too well that this togetherness is transitory and that loss is inevitable. So the story ends with Scully contemplating a funeral that has not yet happened:
It will end one day, I suppose. He will be shot, or lost, or I will. I will stand at his funeral, or he at mine and it will be measured out in slow time with the sun lapping at our faces.
And he will have to go on, or I will. Wondering exactly how to do it because we've always fallen into each other. Wondering how much more we can lose. Wondering whether we've lost it all.
In "All of His Funerals," the idea of standing at Mulder's grave holds no terror for Scully. She has done it before, and she knows that she will do it again. There is pain in this story too, the pain of waiting and wondering whether this time her partner's death will be for real. Even so, there is a lyrical optimism at the center of this story, an optimism that echoes the idea of the resurrection, and Scully's religious faith, while never actually alluding to it:
He is dead again. He has his plot of land. I visit it like a pilgrim. I ignore the looks when I lean over to put a sunflower on his grave.
He knows why. That is all that matters.
These people don't know anything about waiting. They plant their coffins, and the grass grows back over them. I plant coffins, and they grow. I am successful at this. I grow and harvest death. What I plant does not stay dead.
I am a farmer.
I love the image of Scully as an angel of life, not death, waiting for Mulder to bloom again. It has a beauty that makes the pain worthwhile.
***
In my essay "Only Connect", I explored the evolution of Scully as a character in season four, and the way in which the traumas that she's suffered have caused her to grow ever harder, more guarded, and more detached from her own emotions and from the emotions of those around her. "Wheel of Fortune" by Raphaelle explores the same ideas in fictional form. The author explains her inspiration:
I was reading Sarah Stegall's review of "Anasazi," and came across "...will Scully's continued commitment to the...mind-set of the FBI bureaucracy turn her in the hatchet man Cancerman has become?" This, in combination with references from several places that Mulder is becoming, or is like, his father, inspired this story.
Her story is a deeply pessimistic telling of how a future Mulder and Scully, in different ways, have both been broken by their pursuit and discovery of the truth. I would dearly have loved to see the ideas in this story developed a little more fully, but perhaps a glimpse of this future is enough, a cautionary tale about the effects of learning the truth.
***
Finally, I offer you a story that the author says was written as Valentine's Day fluff, "It Could Be Sweet" by Wen. And sweet it is, a charming candyfloss-textured tale about Mulder wooing Scully with candy hearts:
On the first day he left a pastel pink candy heart on her desk, and the words Be Mine wrapped around her heart like a satin ribbon and tugged tight. Be Mine. Too late...
On the second day he left a pastel blue candy heart on her desk, and she was afraid that the little white letters URZ 4-EVER would either make her cry or smile until she wouldn't know what to do with him...
On the third day he left a pale white candy heart on her desk. I love you.
Would it happen this way? Who knows. We wish it would, and the author does a good job of convincing us that it could. The sense of fantasy is palpable in the story, but there's something balanced about it. Perhaps I'm reading meanings into something that holds no more meaning than a candy heart does, but the last sentences pull me out of the story just a little, and make me reflect:
She had no idea how they would end up and where, but she kissed the side of his mouth and licked the not-too-sweet syrup from the sides of his lips while he laughed a tiny Mulder laugh, nuzzling her face sticky, and she thought, It could be sweet, like this. It could be sweet.
We, as readers, know that what we're reading is fantasy. Still, through fanfiction, we can dream, and speculate, and gain just a little perspective. Like Scully, we know that it could be sweet.