#jewish mulder

[fmluder24]

Someone Worked Hard On This: Thoughts on Fandom Etiquette and Criticizing Problematic Fan Work

This is a very long post. There is a TLDR at the bottom.

I posted about a TikTok edit I had seen recently and mentioned another in the tags that was set to the Taylor Swift song “Timeless.” Someone replied that I shouldn’t talk that way about fan edits, because they take a lot of work and if I don’t like an edit I should just ignore it.

Here’s the thing. I cannot just forget about this edit because it was very well executed. And very hurtful. I have gone back and forth about whether or not to include the edit in this post, but I wouldn’t want to lead to some type of pile on on the creators TikTok page. Regardless, I think it is important to talk about how we balance current fandom etiquette with room for criticism and disagreement when fan creations perpetuate harmful ideas or tropes.

For some background about myself, I have been pretty heavily involved in fandom across a variety of fandoms and a variety of platforms for the last 15 years. Some fandoms are very self aware and open to critically evaluating the source material, other fandoms (Star Trek lmao) can be very obnoxiously up their own asses about their source material. Like everyone in the world, I come into fandom with all of my various identities and baggage, which inform how I engage with media and with the fandoms that come up around it. I write fic and I used to make a lot of edits, so I have some experience on the fan work creator end of things.

Back to The Edit, which is really just one example out of countless times someone in a fandom has created something that has intentionally or not harmed someone.

This edit took clips of Mulder and 1940s Scully interacting during the episode “Triangle” and set them to the following lyrics from the Taylor Swift song “Timeless.”

“even if we'd met

On a crowded street in 1944

And you were headed off to fight in the war

You still would've been mine

We would have been timeless.”

The edit then goes on to show clips from Season 9 showing the emails Mulder sends to Scully, set to lyrics about love letters. That part of the song is not the issue. It’s the lyrics about the 1940s that make me cringe.

I am not the first nor the last person to dislike those lines in the Taylor Swift song, as it shows a real trivialization of history. Taylor Swift isn’t unique in doing this. It is very common to see media created by white people, especially white people with pretty insulated and privileged lives, where the past is this beautiful transcendental playground, a beautiful oil painting to slide into for a few hours and not a place full of unimaginable suffering for anyone that wasn’t a super rich white man. In Swift’s song, World War II is the backdrop for her meet-cute, not one of the most bloody conflicts in human history, with a level of industrialized brutality worldwide that, if you really sit with it, is breathtaking.

One of the atrocities that comes to most people’s minds when you bring up the year 1944 is the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the topic most relevant to the problems I have with the edit, so that is the particular atrocity and insensitivity I as a Jew will be focusing on in this post. Of course, of course, there are many other historical atrocities experienced by other communities that are also routinely trivialized in fandom spaces and elsewhere. (The one that springs to mind for me immediately is the entire existence of plantation weddings, and those Interview with the Vampire cosplayers who got in major shit for creating content while on a tour at a plantation. To me, I find trivializing and romanticizing slavery and the suffering of Black enslaved people disgusting and I don’t support people who would do a wedding or cosplay at a place that should be a space for education and mourning.)

But forgive me for the purposes of this example if I focus on the Holocaust in the context of this edit. As stated, this problem isn’t unique to Taylor Swift so hopefully no Swifties come at me. The trivialization of World War II is also on peak display in the very X Files episode we are focusing on today— Season 6, Episode 3, “Triangle.”

In “Triangle,” Mulder goes looking for a ship lost in the Bermuda Triangle and winds up trapped in the 1940s on a cruise liner where Nazis are trying to find a scientist that is going to be essential for the development of the atomic bomb. This episode was an intentional homage to, of all things, the Alfred Hitchcock movie “Rope.” The movie is done in three shots and the episode is meant to look like it was shot in three shots, strategically edited to hide the edits. It’s a fun aesthetic goal, but it is just an aesthetic goal. It’s clear to me that the plot exists as a vehicle for the chance to edit an episode in that way. For me, the aesthetic choices a creator makes should forward the story they are setting out to tell, not the other way around. But “Triangle” is style over substance all the way down.

I have been talking at this point about the trivialization of World War II in the episode; now I will turn to the trivialization of the Holocaust. What most fans I have interacted with seem to see when they watch the episode is a fun time travel episode. I see a character that faces antisemitism on the regular, whose ambiguous Judaism (accused Judaism, more like) is frequently used to heighten the stakes in episodes like the one immediately prior to this one— “Drive.” I see that character played by a patrilineally Jewish actor, whose family left what is now Ukraine in 1918. I see someone who, had the twists of history twisted in a slightly different direction, would not have been born because of the Nazi villains that are beating the crap out of him in this episode. It takes privilege to not see that upon viewing this episode. But, I cannot blame people for missing it, because the episode was fundamentally written from a place that completely deracinates World War II, Nazis, and Jewish victims of Nazis. This all becomes the playground for the writers to have Mulder and Scully finally kiss. For me, the escapist fantasy doesn’t work because I cannot decontextualize the history.

This edit married the privileged escapist fantasy of “Triangle” with the privileged escapist fantasy of “Timeless.” In that way, and in the technical skill involved, it was truly a solid edit. But, the use of Duchovny, in both the fantasy of the edit and the fantasy of the episode, draws attention to the real world victims of the violence both pieces of media trivialize in ways that the creators likely did not intend. The privileged escapist fantasy then takes on additional bent, where it is not just the 1940s as the setting for a love story, but the 1940s as the setting for a Jewish person to be put in peril by literal Nazis. In my less charitable moments, I believe that is an unconscious feature—a fetishization— and not a bug for Carter and the fans alike.

This edit perpetuated the trivialization of World War II and the Holocaust present in both the source song and the source episode. What are we to do when fans create work that intentionally or not chooses to perpetuate something harmful? I do not think refusing to ever criticize something just because it was made by another fan and not the official creator is healthy. I say this all as someone who writes fanfic and used to do a lot of Star Trek fan edits and memes on TikTok. I understand the “gift economy” model of modern fandom, but some gifts should be criticized.

Where do we draw the line between criticizing something for being harmful and being nit picky towards people creating art in their free time? I don’t think it’s always an easy line. I’m not going to pretend I know the best way forward in every case. Refusing to give any room to criticism of fan works allows for shit from the source material to seep uncritically into what could be a community where we really transform the source material for the better. The general rule of thumb of not dragging down other fans is great, but it can easily be used to silence marginalized fans disagreeing with the fans from more dominant cultural groups.

TLDR— I watched an edit on TikTok that combined the worst parts of “Triangle” with the worst parts of “Timeless” and I think sometimes it’s healthy to dislike something another fan made. Taking the gift economy model to an extreme silences diverging points of view.

[leiascully]

Fic: who shall rest and who shall wander

980 words; post-revival; g for gentle; soft and Jewish

Mulder doesn't remember the last time he celebrated Rosh Hashanah.  He doesn't go to the synagogue, but he sits Gracie on the counter as he peels and cuts apples.  She kicks her little feet against the cabinets and he passes her apple slices.  Enough will make it into the cake.  He likes feeding his child.  She grows and thrives, all auburn curls and inquisitive green eyes, and it soothes just a little of the ache Emily left.  He never had the chance to nourish his other children.  If William - Jackson - survived or thrived, it wasn't on his account. But Grace's cheeks are round and her limbs are strong and he is so grateful he doesn't know what to do with all that he feels.

He could go to the synagogue.  He's sure there are any number of them in the greater DC area, maybe even a congregation that would take in a lapsed atheist whose memories of services flicker like a havdalah candle.  No doubt his therapist would tease out some thread woven deep into his consciousness: an image of his mother with her hand cupped over her eyes, the rich smell of challah and the taste of wine.  A moment of peace, a moment of fear; letters on a page he traced but could not read.  Maybe that's the root of his love for the mysterious and the unknowable.  

Gracie asks to get down.  When he complies, she scampers off with a basket of books to tuck herself into her favorite Gracie-sized chair, her own little rocker on the front porch.  It's a pretty day.  He watches her through the window as she flips through her books and chatters to herself.  It is a perfect moment, wholly beautiful.  Holy.  Beautiful.

He pulls out his phone and brings up a recording of the only prayer he can remember.  Avinu Malkeinu plays, tinny and thin, his phone's speakers not doing justice to the timbre of the singer's voice.  It is mournful, soaring.  The tune sounds familiar, as if it's been in his dreams or his bones all these years, half-remembered.  Something about sin, something about forgiveness: the same song he's sung all his life, transcribing himself into a minor key.  Mulder chops the apples small, tips them into a bowl with lemon and honey and cinnamon, leaves them to sit.  Let them soak in the sweetness.  He has been allowing himself the same luxury, these past few years.

For the first time, he opens a recipe for challah.  The dough is soft and sticky.  He calls Grace back in, gives her a blob of it, teaches her to knead as if he didn't learn it from a YouTube video five minutes ago.  Under her hands, it transforms into a mess that covers the counter, her face, and her hands.  But the dough in the mixer bowl becomes round and taut, a thing all its own.  He believes that it will grow and transform in the bright warmth of a sunbeam.  He believes that he has made something good and nourishing.  He believes that he can, now.  It took years.

They leave the dough to rise and he takes Gracie down to the creek.  They gather pebbles on the way.  He cups his hands to receive Gracie's selections, and she fills them.  There are enough pebbles for her to fling four little fistfuls, with a few left over for him.  They patter on the water.  Tiny fish flicker away.  He doesn't know what to say or how to explain it to Gracie, but he feels lighter, after.  L'dor v'dor: a small gift from the grandmother Grace will never meet.  He is free to rewrite his parents' legacy for her, to give her only the wheat and let the chaff blow away.  She will inherit a stranger world, but she has her mother's good sense.  He consoles himself with the notion that they did all they could to make sure there was any world for her at all.  When she gets tired, he hoists her onto his shoulders.  The tall grass in the field has gone from green to golden when he wasn't looking.  It shifts in the wind with a hissing like the sea, and Grace watches the horizon, beyond and beyond.  

When they get back to the house, he listens to Leonard Cohen.  They have been through fire and water, through high ordeal and common trial.  Gracie colors at the table.  Apple cake, in its nascent state, holds no interest for her since she isn't allowed to eat the batter, but she likes plunging her fist into the quivering mass of the challah dough.  It consumes her arm almost to the elbow; she laughs and makes a face and both things remind him so much of Scully that his heart squeezes.  The mixer whirs, whirling the cake batter together.  Mulder braids the challah the way he used to braid Samatha's hair and coils it into a round loaf.  He leaves it to rise again under its tea towel.  Good things take time.

The house smells amazing by the time Scully gets home.  The brisket emerges from the slow cooker in shreds, dripping jus.  Mulder serves it to his beautiful girls alongside a tangled wedge of potato kugel.  There's a kale salad for the adults, accented with more apples and some pickled beets, and peas for Grace, which she picks up one by one with her little plastic fork.   

"What did we learn today?" Mulder asks.

"Shana tova!" Grace declares through a mouthful of challah.  They didn't say the right words over it, but Mulder feels like he prayed.  The flames of the candles on the table are as steady as Scully's gaze, as steady as the warmth that blooms inside him.

"We're going to have a sweet year," Mulder promises, and that's a prayer too.  

Scully tilts her head.  She sips at her wine.  "I believe you," she says, and takes his hand.  

[figureofdismay]

i keep thinking about the lines from Vince Gilligan's Drive script, the antisemitic conspiracy theorist with the pressurized head demands to know if Mulder is Jewish and if Mulder is a Jewish name, and Mulder says, "Yes, I am, and no it's not," plus there's the fact that he was buried unembalmed, which made his resurrection possible in DeadAlive, plus DD's statement that he'd decided Mulder was Jewish and to play him that way unless told to do otherwise, so despite the messy parts of the Kaddish script and other culturally 'Christian Athist' Mulder moments in the writing (most likely because of how little cultural awareness there is about the difference in Christian vs Jewish theism that it bleeds through everywhere), I do think there was a conscious positioning of the Mulder character as Jewish Adjacent via his mother + complicated by his WASPy father's domination of the family...

But they wrote that without any specific research or much accommodation for the implications of keeping him tied up with alien conspiracy plots and eugenics plot. Yet! Mulder was always on the 'fighting it' side, and the power hoarding conspiracists were all signalled to be rich WASPy conservative men, all but one of whom were White.

Also early the 90s independent internet fringe conspiracy theorists, i.e. the Lone Gunmen, Max and others shown to be allied with Mulder, weren't the radical right wing fasch of the last 10-15 years, and in the context of the show don't carry the same strange implication of 'an ethnically Jewish person surrounding himself with conspiracy theorists' would in the present day. I do get the sense that they were radical left instead -- that doesn't necessarily leave out the antisemitism part, of course so it's not un-complicated, of course. (And though I suppose i should feel grateful that CC made Mulder's son a fish mutant and not a lizard mutant that's also not a particularly reassuring implication... but then again the Revival is a pretty different animal with different, less collaborative creative direction.)

Yes parts of this subtext do bother me a lot. The fact that they got 3/4rs of the way there in the writing but never once had Jewish Adjacent Mulder talk about the mental toll of sorting the wheat from the chaff, finding genuine abduction survivor and alien leads in amongst the mountains of antisemetic conspiracy bullshit on message boards or how he doesn't really ever know which contacts are going to meet him and decide he's the enemy because he 'looks Jewish'... it's both a missed opportunity and speaks to a lot of ignorance. It makes me pretty crazy. There are a lot of half gestures towards Mulder's Jewish background and then a lot of ugly coincidences and unfortunate implications because no one really thought about what that would mean in the context of The X-File's genre content and recurring themes. But also some of that uncomfortable feeling comes from the fact that there have been a lot of cultural shifts since the original run was on the air.

Like, i don't think he's culturally exactly anything, caught in the middle and mostly without. It's a story familiar to me and my mother because my grandmother was also a young Jewish woman who made a hasty love match (i.e. she got pregnant) with a WASPy goy from a rich industrialist family, and said family held the purse strings, so keeping his mother happy was everything -- which was true even after my grandparents divorced, because of complicated inheritance reasons. She assimilated and let my mother and her siblings be raised as Christmas and Passover celebrating 'nothing in particular' kids, who went to shul when visiting her parents and kept shabbos sometimes with the neighbors, but still broadly steeped in cultural Christianity and outside the community, because it was the 50s and 60s and she was a divorced mother in an upper middle class white area who had to be careful to keep social doors open to all of them. I figure Teena and Mulder had a pretty similar situation in the 60s and 70s, with the added complication of accidentally marrying into an actual WASPy conspiracy hub who could have you 'disposed of' for speaking out of turn.

I just... Jewish Mulder is deeply important to me as a character, it's the execution in practice that I find extremely frustrating. it's the half way there implications, partly intentional, partly accidental because it's apparent that no one educated themselves on the history some of the bigger themes beyond the surface familiar Scifi-Horror tropes. Actually getting there all the way and digging into it, or trying even 25% more to avoid the pitfalls around Mulder and Teena would have added a lot to the show. And would maybe even have insulated CC against (some of) the plot bungles in the Revival. Very frustrating all around. But at the same time, it is a scifi show, and the aliens and rich White conspirators are very literal in fact on the screen.

And what's more, Mulder's particular blend of faith and hope and contention and interrogation, his willingness to Keep Doing The Work no matter what, because it's worth it and it needs to be done in the hope for a better world... that is very Jewish to me at more than a surface level. For me that makes all the awkward implications worth it.

[therealsaintscully]

[singeart]

what if Mulder had a bar mitzvah as an adult and invited Scully <3 <3 <3

the kippah by itself bc i think it’s cute :)

[randomfoggytiger]

(Credit to @i-still-want--to-believe -- her edits here.)

I just noticed a parallel between Anne Frank's diary and Samantha Mulder's recovered journal.

Was it intentional? Because, if so... yeah, that's dark.

[mostunwantedfbi]

@handgiven liked for a sentence starter!

"So about the book of Revelations thing: how much of it is actually going to come to pass? Do you know?"

[cicadaboybat]

fox spooky transsexual mulder is my favorite reason to be autistic and watch all of xfiles from the beginning over again to comfort myself

[gingerteaonthetardis]

can i say something. i am so bored of the writers going it's a scully episode guys what do we do and then answering themselves with talk about her catholicism again of course. like it is the part of her character that interests me least and every time it comes up i wish i was learning something else about her instead of rehashing her religious guilt again

[sleepyscully]

When do you think Mulder and Scully first started dating?

this ask has been sitting in my ask box for over a year because when i got it simply couldn't answer it because i'm shit at remembering timelines. but now that i am getting along in my rewatch i think i have an answer

the short answer is: i think mulder and scully started dating in season 6

but this is the internet so you're gonna get the long answer as well

I think that during the season 4 cancer arc they both realize that they have feelings for each other

throughout season 5 they become aware that the other has feelings for each other but they don't address it. i think that explains a lot of the flirting and a lot of the awkwardness.

Then we have fight the future and i mean... their feelings for each other are basically an open secret now, one that they not necessarily talk about (yet) but they almost kissed for gods sake (or actually kissed if you believe the alternate version ;)

I've been trying to pinpoint the exact moment/episode where they started dating but it's haaard! (on that note i wanna add that i'm not sure they actually went out on dates, it doesn't seem like them. when i say they started dating i mean that some things developed that were more than friendship and that they maybe also talked about their feelings and everything)

however, i think i narrowed it down to a time between Triangle and Dreamland. Mulder's love confession at the end of triangle wasn't really successful but maybe mayyyybe it changed something in them. Also the kiss in triangle makes me believe that he wanted to kiss her AT LEAST ONCE in his life. On the other hand, that kiss could be interpreted as "i kissed you before and it was so good that i need to do it one last time before we might never see each other again"

Dreamland then we have the moment where Scully says "I'd kiss you if you weren't so damn ugly" and it gives me definite vibe of them being more than friends. I think that maybe they are not exclusive yet, or haven't talked about it but it was implied. I base that on Scully's reaction when he sees Fletcher flirting and hooking up with the assistant. Idk the whole ep, especially the evening in Mulder's apartment makes me believe that something happened between them.

Once we get to Rain King i am 100% sure they are dating even though they deny it to the others. They might not be sleeping with each other yet, because they seem to be very adamant about that but their relationship has definitely changed and i think they are exclusive by now.

anyways, that's my theory about their dating timeline!

thanks for asking :)

[deathsbestgirl]

txf fandom: we're all insane here

[fmluder24]

Here it is… the Chanukah fic I swore to myself I wouldn’t write. It is the first part of a series I am going to write with a Mulder or MSR fic for each holiday. Read at the link or below the cut.

Mulder and Scully light the menorah and spend the evening together.

(Sex is being implied through religious imagery. Do not read if that will offend you.)

It’s the third night of Hanukkah and Mulder, a napkin on his head for want of a yarmulke, stumbles clumsily through a transliterated blessing while Scully watches. It feels very odd to do something he hasn’t done since before Samantha went missing. Scully gives him a little round of applause. He bows self-deprecatingly and the napkin falls. Then he turns off the lights so they can sit on his couch and watch the four candle flames dance on the menorah on his desk, just by the window. It’s the first one he has owned, a gift from the woman sitting next to him.

He opens the box of sufganiyot, round and plump with a red bud of strawberry jam at their center, and holds one out for Scully. Rather than taking it from him, she slides her mouth around the dough, biting in as they make eye contact. When she pulls away there is jam on the corner of her mouth. He wipes it off with his thumb, gently sliding it between her lips for her to eagerly suck.

What happens next probably isn’t technically allowed. It being rabbinically sanctioned would be too good to be true. Sex might be a blessing, pleasing a woman may be a mitzvah, but it’s a mitzvah for a husband, not a colleague and a friend. It’s probably sacrilegious to do this by the light of the menorah instead of thinking about the Maccabees or oil or something like that. But tonight she is the miracle, the resiliency, the light that he wants to celebrate.

It’s not their first time, but it is the first time that they’ve really taken their time. Normally they have silent 2 AM quickies they never, ever speak of. This is the first time they both unclothe fully. Tonight she unfurls and he studies her by candlelight. He reads every inch of her, learns her. Knows her by eyes, by hands, by mouth. Blasphemous though it may be, he half remembers one of the only Talmud stories he knows. She, too, is Torah and he must learn.

The God he does not believe in has blessed him with an excellent teacher.

She starts humming at one point and he joins her, muttering in pseudo-prayer the version of the lyrics he has heard but never really listened to before now. Her whispered lyrics are a little different but the heart is the same as they intertwine by candlelight.

There's a blaze of light in every word

It doesn't matter which you heard

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah…

[freckleslikestars]

unfurl

"It was the right time. The right place. Peace had fallen." All Things ficlet

302 words, read here on AO3

Rain taps on the pane of his window, the occasional rumble of thunder or rush of a car churning through the wet street below. Across the bed, light scatters through the leaves of the tree blustering about outside, casting dancing shadows across her hand as it traces patterns up and down the bare shoulder beneath.

As the clock on his nightstand flicks over to five, she unfurls herself from his coiled embrace, slips from the musky warmth of his bedding into the cool air of his apartment. She finds her sweater and skirt with relative ease, but her bra and panties are more of a challenge to find, and she gives up on the search for her hose altogether.

His faucet leaks, a regular drip that syncopates with her heartbeat, a meditative rhythm that reminds her of him in a way: a constant. She thinks she should be panicking, that the raw ache between her legs should have her chest clenching with anxiety as she worries over the impending future and the potential that it will all blow up in their faces, but she’s eerily calm, settled, as if she knows, deep down, that they were waiting for the right time, and now they’re there, and everything’s going to be okay.

She leaves a note, short and sweet, loopy cursive telling him she’s gone home to shower, that she’ll get coffee and breakfast for them and see him in the office. She signs it with an S, and before she can second guess herself, she scrawls a little heart in the corner. She leaves it on her pillow, and presses a kiss to his temple, runs her fingers through hair that’s finally starting to grow out after his ordeal months ago.

It was the right time. The right place. Peace had fallen.

Tagging @today-in-fic

Send me one word prompts to get my creativity jump started

[figureofdismay]

random Jewish Mulder headcanon; they've never kept kosher, it was never even something to consider given his father and his WASP background, but Mulder has always felt like his grandmother and her side of the family maybe had a point about crustaceans being icky, they are basically sea bugs after all... which annoyed everyone in his circle growing up because he's from New England 😩

I enjoy the irony, that's all lol. The man hates, bugs remember

(and i also don't enjoy crustaceans mentally, aesthetically or texturally 😆)

[jessiesjaded]

seeing someone slander mulder as a toxic catholic man and i really really, really want to know if they're from an alternate universe where mulder was the fucked up catholic and scully was.... free.

[teiasviago]

completed the brainrot transformation (for now)