My Pygmalion Complex

[penumbra23]

This perfectly describes why I write X-Files fanfic:

'And I am a writer, writer of fictions
I am the heart that you call home
And I've written pages upon pages
Trying to rid you from my bones'

The Decemberists - The Engine Driver

Someday I will have rid Mulder and Scully from my bones. It will be a happy/devastating day. A blessing in disguise. Very sad

Comments

[aloysiavirgata]

What a fantastic post! I couldn't agree with you more. I have no idea what it is about the characters that speaks to me so. They just do. And, like you, one day I know it will be over. And that it will be terribly bittersweet.

[penumbra23]

I have no idea what it is about the characters that speaks to me so.

Isn't it odd how you get into their grips? I don't ever want it to be over. The Mulder-Scully rollercoaster is the highest, fastest loop-the-loop I've ever been on.

[aloysiavirgata]

I don't either! At one point I thought it was all done, actually. Fandom and I parted ways after The Truth. But about a year ago I accidentally stumbled over a vid at YouTube and fwooosh! I was sucked back in. I didn't even know they were making a a second movie until then.

I secretly hope to one day make my grandchildren watch Bad Blood and Pusher. The VirgataKids are already being quietly indoctrinated at 2 and 4.

[leiascully]

Those lines exactly are what hooked me on The Decembrists.

I pick up mannerisms from characters. I cross my arms left over right because Mulder and Scully do. Ah, fictions.

[penumbra23]

I live for The Decemberists.

I pick up mannerisms from characters. I cross my arms left over right because Mulder and Scully do. Ah, fictions.

Amazing - I've never noticed that about their arm-crossing. I know I dress like Scully and do the eyebrow thing, and, hey, what do you know: I have a penchant for intellectual, platonic relationships with brilliant men. And so, the fiction segues into real life.

[onpaperfirst]

Even when I started, I had this feeling there were a certain number of stories about them I had to tell. I don't know what that number is, or what they'll all be, but I do know that it's finite. Which is, as you say, very bittersweet.

They're not easy to write, but they are. They exist, so they very firmly tell you if you're making them do the right things. I guess that could be frustrating, that narrow path of would or wouldn't, but it's more purely fun than anything else I write. They just do what they do, and I get to embellish on that wildly.

Sometimes I worry that I love them too much.

[whalelines]

This fits rather nicely with that bittersweet conversation we were just having the other day, S.

I think part of why they're lodged so deeply is because they just take you by surprise. One day you're casually checking out this show cos it's on and you're flipping channels; the next, your bones just ache with love for these people who you've seen at their most vulnerable and their strongest, and you realise you love them like your own flesh and blood. I feel like I've grown up with them, that they've made me a better person in a lot of ways. They've certainly made me smarter, or at least appear so-- after all, did you know anyone else as a teenager who could expound upon the topic of transorbital lobotomies? Scully was like a goddess to me, and taking bits and pieces from her, my peers were somewhat awed by me, too, because of what I knew

[penumbra23]

Oh, wow - I too know that I have a finite number of stories that M&S need me to tell, and that when it's done, it's done, and they'll cast me off. It's almost like a possession, like being a medium through whom voices speak.

They exist, so they very firmly tell you if you're making them do the right things.

Exactly! When I'm writing them I believe utterly and fully that they exist. And that there are only certain ways that they bend. The channels are proscribed, but the variations infinite. I sort of stand back and see what they're going to do. And it's never a boring moment, with those two.

Sometimes I worry that I love them too much.

I'm glad you said that. You seem to experience a lot of this the same way I do. I think that the way we all love them is something more to do with paying allegiance to a noble ideal.

[scapegracing]

You don't know me, but I've been reading your work for years and years. And I had to comment here because I've been thinking about this so much recently. It's such a compelling thing; the way the story of these two fictional people holds meaning

[penumbra23]

Hi. I imagine the same thing will happen to me - not so much 'getting over' Mulder and Scully as moving on to something else. I hope it won't happen to me for awhile yet! I think, as you said, that their story holds too much meaning for me at the moment. It will have to take a much larger truth to tear me away.

[whalelines]

I've always been attracted to fiction, and have sort of defined my life by it, though certainly much more when I was younger than now. Or maybe I just change those fictions by which I live much less now.

I suppose my very first defining fiction was "Little Women"; I was obsessed-- my friend Megan and I used to use our typewriters to write letters back and forth to one another in "old English", and they all read something along the lines of "Oh, I do hope you will come to the park after class, it would make me ever so happy!". I think I've told you this story before, but my first poem I remember writing was based on Beth's death in that book, and it affected me profoundly. I used to listen to the score and cry in my bed at night over how sad it was and how much I wished the March sisters were MY sisters.

This is the kind of childhood I led!

Anyhow, my early teenage years were much the same. I had a brief love affair with Star Trek: Voyager and another with Sylvia Plath (but who didn't?) and a very long, seemingly never-ending

[penumbra23]

As it stands it just solidifies my standing as a bit of a weirdo.

Well, then, we'll be weirdos together!

My sisters and I played the March sisters a fair amount (I always got to be Jo!) I know I've always lived inside my head. In short, I cannot imagine my life without fiction. Some people live without it, but I can't. Maybe it's safer than reality.

[whalelines]

I'm still waiting for you to unearth Miss Lavish's novel!

[penumbra23]

Wench! Do you suppose it'll hold up to Twilight?