thinking about kevin growing up in the nest and having to learn defense mechanisms to literally survive but are now the main criticisms his teammates have against him. and no one (besides jean) really know the fully extent of what he went through bc of the public persona and brick wall of self preservation he had to put up.
like he’s an asshole perfectionist about exy bc it was literally beat into him since childhood. running in 16 hour days since who knows how young he was and deprived of food and sleep when a drill was not performed perfectly
the world saw him and riko as brothers but riko was never kind to him. he hated playing the role as second best but it’s how he could make it through each day with one less injury. he was on eggshells nearly every second of the day because he was almost never out of riko’s sight. he learned how how navigate every mood until riko became too unhinged to navigate and by then he was so trapped in his role that he couldn’t fight back from riko and he couldn’t let the team know that he wasn’t just number 2 but he was a pet to riko. he was a bitch to his teammates to distract from what riko was doing to him and jean but also from so much built up anger inside for the person he could not escape
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Mulder, Scully, and "sibling vibes"
So a few times lately I've remarked on the sibling energy I see in early Mulder & Scully, and I think perhaps it's misunderstood. I jokingly self-identified not long ago as "not a romo, not a noromo, but a secret third thing (delighted they ended up together but wishes the whole kiss kiss kiiiiiss! thing wasn't dominant forever and always)" This applies to all my fandoms fwiw. For me the friendships generally trump everything.
The other day I added this (among some other rambling) to one of @randomfoggytiger's excellent posts about Mulder and women:
To me, these two start out as best friends, almost a "sibling" relationship at first: Mulder has been looking for Samantha, "walking into that room" everyday for many more years of his life than he wasn't, and here comes this precocious, punchy little woman who says she's looking forward to being around him. She plays with him in the rain, she laughs at him, teases him and calls him "sucker", she listens to him and is eager to learn everything he can teach her. They squabble, but always stick together. She stands next to him with her little foot stuck stubbornly out to the side and her arms folded, or her little hands on her little hips, always exuding an attitude that's surprisingly large for her little body. When he looks at her it's at the top of her head. She's even the same age as Samantha. When she panics or gets scared she turns to him, and he wraps her in a blanket and tells her stories. I know it is often interpreted as flirting, but if you were to age them down, it could just as easily be a big brother who adores his little sister and a little sister who thinks her big brother hung the moon. My personal feeling is, it would be almost impossible for him not to notice commonalities between Scully and Samantha. Perhaps that's partly why he's so comfortable sharing Samantha's story with her.
To clarify, I don't think either saw the other as an actual or replacement sibling, and I don't see it as something that is remotely incompatible or icky regardless of where they ended up. Love's a lot of things and it can change and be all of it or none of it at once.
Not a person, but a pattern
Mulder and Scully were thrown together and immediately flung themselves about as far from home as you could get without crossing an ocean, at a time when there was no internet and a long distance phone call cost a million billion dollars (adjusted for inflation)(facetious). This is more than just long hours doing stakeouts or interviewing witnesses or writing profiles or joining sting operations or whatever it is that average partners (especially green-ass newbies from Quantico) might presumably be doing. They might as well have been at sea. They'd known each other for maybe a week and suddenly had to learn to not just work together but to live together, being each other's only company and support system, etc.
Watching the way they interact particularly during the pilot could be (and it seems almost always is) interpreted as crushes and flirting. I see that too, but I'm gonna toss that aside for a sec and ask you to imagine they are children, or at the very least that they're not looking to date (other people have written some very good posts about sex not being that important to them ever, or how they use it for self-flagellation (him) or rebellion (her) etc. And as fun as fanfic is, I agree with that take. For all their smouldering - both individually and together - they're remarkably sexless. But I digress. Just imagine that the search for a date or the possibility of sex is not part of the equation at this stage.)
They're both SO influenced and informed by the patterns they've been living all the way since childhood, as most of us are.
Scully is used to following strong male personalities, living to impress her dad, being a kid sister to a man who has strong opinions about how the world is or ought to be. She's extremely capable but very young for her long list of credentials (she's presumably gone from school to school to school without much lived experience), and they give her her very first field assignment with Fox Mulder. She's heard a lot about him. She's looking forward to working with him. This is probably nothing at all like what she expected when she went to Quantico, but she wants to distinguish herself so she'll go where she's asked and do her Very Best Job at it. But he immediately absconds with her and now she's doing something fun and new, and this man they've assigned her to is quirky and weird and possibly just bat-crap crazy, but in between it all he's incredibly intelligent and he's showing her the ropes and teaching her new things and she's just so excited to be here.
Mulder had to grow up way too fast, aged 12, and maybe suffered a sort of arrested development in that sense. He was once a big brother to a girl who was 8 years old and probably a bit of a brat, as precocious 8 year olds often are (I mean the first time we actually see her she called him a buttmunch and screamed in his face because she didn't get her way). They've sent him a partner who is a remarkable overachiever; she's a biophysicist and medical doctor, a Quantico graduate, and all under age 30. Her credentials include rewriting Einstein and her job responsibilities include "tattle tale". She's gonna challenge him at every turn, but she's green and earnest enough to want his to learn from his experience. She's following him and she's hanging on his every word and she's laughing at and with him. She asks a lot of questions and openly enjoys just being there with him, just being a part of it all.
Age them down 20 years and they could just be two kids playing in the woods and the rain. That doesn't mean they see their siblings in each other, but... to me, it doesn't not mean that either. It's patterns they've carried with them their whole lives. What I'm getting at is that that sort of sibling push-and-pull would be an extremely comfortable and familiar dynamic for them both to slip into, especially considering their isolation, and it's one which also lends itself to quick and easy affection. It's not the predominant feature of their friendship, but it's a starting place, and it ripples forward across time. (Imo it also informs the lack of romance for a number of years.)
The sibling vibes fade into the background after a few episodes (although I see shades of it popping up here and there through at least Darkness Falls), and it transforms into what becomes an easy, fast friendship, and then a deep, ride-or-die best friendship.
Of course, a twisted version of it is brutally resurrected and brought to the fore in season 2, and I think that more than anything is what scuppers a move out of denial or past anything apart from best friends until at least cancer arc, but that's a whole other post.
Thanks for readiiing 💕
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