I found myself nodding along with this as I feel like I could say the same about a lot of my own XF fic- that it seems to come around to being All About Mulder more often than I'd really like
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I am firmly a Scullyist, but I agree that the nature of XF means that it is difficult to write canon-friendly fic without Mulder being a huge part of it. And that doesn't really bother me, because the show is about them both, and when it isn't, it suffers.
Interestingly, for me, I prefer to write Scully, but I do find it smoother to make sure my Mulder is in character.
Fascinating thoughts. I agree with many of them, I'd say, although I think I decided I was a Mulderist (very narrowly) pretty early on in my fic-writing career. Which is somewhat odd, because I just realized now that my first-ever fic was from Scully's POV and didn't have all that much Mulder in it!
I found this a very interesting read, and given I was reading it in work (oops) and couldn't reply until I got home (stupid internet filters) I have a lot of thoughts. They might not make sense.
I (like bravenewcentury found myself nodding along to this. My PhD is looking at how gender is portrayed in TXF and XF fanfiction, focussing very much on Scully (slightly OT: this post covers pretty much what I want to talk about in my PhD and reminded me to ask you if you'd mind being one of the authors I interview in greater detail than the questionnaire I'll be posting to various comms); I identify as a feminist (I'm also giving a paper on gender and relationships in Buffy and Twilight); and I love the fact that I can use fanfic to give female characters more agency and authority. But I am very much a Mulderist. If it's possible to have a favourite character in a pair where one almost can't exist without the other, Mulder is mine. So in that sense I think we're coming at this from a similar point of view
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I'd also argue that The Keeping of Secrets works to establish a greater depth of backstory for both Ellen and Margaret Scully. Rather than being tools to move the story along or stock female characters for Scully to interact with, they become people themselves. Ok, you could argue that they both exist mainly in domestic environments, which are traditionally female, but still - better they exist in those environments with a backstory and an identity than not. And that relates to your MoF author's note:
So I wanted to alter this story, and the way to alter it was, quite simply, to make it a story about daughters. A story about Maggie watching her little girl go off to war; a story about fighting aliens and watching Dora the Explorer; a story about a daughter willing to rend the fabric of time and space to fix things.I think that you do that with the bulk of XF fic you write. While it may not be possible to rule Mulder out of the equation, you do make women more prominent, more real characters than the writers did
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I am firmly a Scullyist, but I agree that the nature of XF means that it is difficult to write canon-friendly fic without Mulder being a huge part of it. And that doesn't really bother me, because the show is about them both, and when it isn't, it suffers.
Interestingly, for me, I prefer to write Scully, but I do find it smoother to make sure my Mulder is in character.
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Anyway, I enjoyed reading this.
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I found this a very interesting read, and given I was reading it in work (oops) and couldn't reply until I got home (stupid internet filters) I have a lot of thoughts. They might not make sense.
I (like bravenewcentury found myself nodding along to this. My PhD is looking at how gender is portrayed in TXF and XF fanfiction, focussing very much on Scully (slightly OT: this post covers pretty much what I want to talk about in my PhD and reminded me to ask you if you'd mind being one of the authors I interview in greater detail than the questionnaire I'll be posting to various comms); I identify as a feminist (I'm also giving a paper on gender and relationships in Buffy and Twilight); and I love the fact that I can use fanfic to give female characters more agency and authority. But I am very much a Mulderist. If it's possible to have a favourite character in a pair where one almost can't exist without the other, Mulder is mine. So in that sense I think we're coming at this from a similar point of view ( ... )
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So I wanted to alter this story, and the way to alter it was, quite simply, to make it a story about daughters. A story about Maggie watching her little girl go off to war; a story about fighting aliens and watching Dora the Explorer; a story about a daughter willing to rend the fabric of time and space to fix things.I think that you do that with the bulk of XF fic you write. While it may not be possible to rule Mulder out of the equation, you do make women more prominent, more real characters than the writers did ( ... )
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