#but nah txf was always too busy sucking mulder's dick

[julystorms]

🔥 the X-files (I realize I forgot to include a topic last time so sorry about that)

{send me a 🔥 for some salt!} include a topic if you can!

The attitude within The X-Files fandom that codependency is romantic as fuck and super duper healthy is honestly revolting in its persistence and its omnipresence. It is literally everywhere.

It’s incredibly interesting to think and write about, absolutely, but it is one of the reasons I ended up gravitating toward focusing my shipping goggles on Doggett and Reyes, instead. There are some issues in their relationship, too, don’t get me wrong...but at least I don’t have to deal with tens of thousands of fanfics glorifying and romanticizing “they only have one another to depend on.” I’m sure I would have if the series had continued for another few seasons, but luckily it ended ha ha S10? it never happened and so the pairing was able to avoid the bulk of that.

I mean, this is just my personal beef with the series, but I really wanted Doggett and Reyes’s presence to dispel the whole “Mulder and Scully can only trust each other” shebang. Season 8 was starting to move toward that, with Scully telling Mulder that Doggett was a good person who was worth his time, but everything kind of went downhill from there. It could have been a great defining moment for the series to have Mulder and Scully struggling to trust and believe in Doggett, and through him, Reyes as well. 

But nah. The series catapulted itself off a cliff at the end of S9, and S10 which definitely never happened made it worse. (I am so bitter about Reyes being turned into an idiot villain character. So. Bitter.)

It really just set us right back to the middle of the series again, where Mulder and Scully can’t trust anyone in the world but themselves. And like, everyone romanticizes the shit out of it, but can you imagine being either one of these characters? Their only romantic option is the other because they’ll never be able to tell the truth or communicate fully with a human being who exists outside of the tiny world they both inhabit.

Don’t get me wrong; I certainly wasn’t shipping Doggett with Scully or Reyes with Mulder. What I wanted from Reyes and Doggett’s presence on the show was honesty and trust between Mulder & Scully and other people, proof that they were not alone/the only people in the world willing to do The Right Thing, and proof that they would still choose one another if there were others who inhabited the same headspace they did.

What we got from later seasons of TXF was a sad desperate attempt for a connection between Mulder and Scully, but what we should have had was MORE than that. I wanted to see Mulder and Scully being afraid to drag other people into their bullshit world. Scully doesn’t trust Doggett at all, but we never really get to see an internal struggle where she’s like: “I need to get rid of him because he deserves better than the kind of life I’ve resigned myself to.” This kind of attitude is never really leveled at Reyes, either, but for the love of God, it should have been!! She gets dragged into some serious bullshit at the whims of others and neither she nor Doggett are ever informed of the price they’ll have to pay until it’s too late.

Look, the way the series revolves around Mulder has always pissed me off, but the end of S9 was the biggest pile of horseshit I’ve ever seen in my entire life. We’re supposed to believe that Doggett and Reyes are going to put their lives and careers on the line for Mulder...? Bitch, please. If TXF wasn’t so busy sucking Mulder’s dick all of the time, maybe we could have seen some process there--how these characters who barely know Mulder come to the decision that breaking him out of prison when he’s on death row is a great fuckin’ idea. I MEAN A LOT IS AT STAKE WHEN YOU BREAK INTO A MILITARY PRISON LMAO. This isn’t something you do on a whim--and Doggett, especially, isn’t impulsive.

It’d be one thing if Scully was in there breaking Mulder out with them, but no, she wasn’t. Doggett goes into the prison with Skinner to break him out, risks his life and his career and his freedom to do this shit for someone who...we’ve barely seen him interact with?

Granted, I’m a writer so I can extrapolate a helluva lot and determine for myself why Doggett would risk everything for Mulder of all people, but hell, I shouldn’t have to do that.

(Bonus unpopular opinion: I bought into Kersh helping out in the “This is the Right Thing To Be Doing” sense.)

Anyway, the fans love that mid-series “the characters can’t trust or rely on anyone but each other” vibe, because they think it’s romantic.

The reality, though, is that it’s depressing and terrifying.

It’s awful to only be able to trust one person with everything; to have no other friends and no other serious relationships aside from this person you work with is scary??? I can’t even begin to describe how terrible Scully must feel sometimes, having lost a lot of good relationships over her inability to communicate honestly with her own family--all of whom love and care about her (yes, even Bill)!! But fandom in general is too busy being wrapped up in how “romantic” the whole “it’s you and me vs. the world” thing is to care. They conveniently only explore the romantic concepts instead of, you know, the shitty horrible aspects of it.

But you can’t have one without the other.

I mean, Mulder and Scully have been through hell together in the years they’ve known each other, but it’d be cool if their trauma wasn’t consistently used as romantic shipping fodder we’re supposed to ‘ooh’ and ‘aww’ over. Especially when the series showed us that Mulder and Scully aren’t the only people in the entire world who are willing to risk themselves to do the right thing.