#this show has gotten me more engaged with fandom than I haven been in years

[buckitweride]

Buddie primed me to watch this show. Seeing the gifs of The Gay Firefighter Show on my dash for years was the perfect foundation.

And then when Tommy kissed Buck?? LORDDD I couldn’t believe it. These showrunners made a fan favorite character canonically bisexual after 6 seasons?? On NETWORK TV no less????? It was over for me at that point. I knew I had to watch.

I binged seasons 1 through 8a ungodly fast (for me). I was rooting for buddie so hard out the gate- I could see why they were so beloved. But in the back of my mind, I was cataloguing all the little things we learned about Tommy in those early seasons. His flaws- he was highly susceptible to peer pressure and group think. He treated Chim and others extremely unfairly. He said and did bigoted things. But also- his good traits too. He could learn from his bad behavior and change his ways. He was very loyal- remember when Chim called him to bring that plane full of water and save the 118 in those early seasons? And we didn’t even see him on screen for that episode. He came through at the drop of a hat for Chim back then, and did it again during the cruise scenes in season 7.

I did not anticipate just how intensely I would become fond of and relate to Tommy when we began seeing more of him. I love how he treated Buck in the beginning. Cautious with Buck and himself right out the gate. But caring. Protective. Doting. Showered Buck in compliments and acts of service. Treated him better than any on screen partner ever had before.

I didn’t think it was possible after 6 seasons of intensely rooting for buddie for me to be just as happy at the thought of Buck with someone else. Tommy Kinard is truly That Bitch. I love how season 8 is going. The breakup made me love Tommy even more- he clearly fell for Buck harder than he expected and let self preservation win out as he tried to retreat. Only to jump at the first opportunity to get Buck back, without knowing yet if Buck really returned his feelings but taking the risk anyway 😭😭 someone stab me

Regardless, I just wanna end this ramble with saying how much I love Buddie and ship Buddie and will continue to love and ship it no matter what happens. Because a ship doesn’t need to be canon to be enjoyable.

But what we are seeing on our screen with Buck and Tommy?? It’s so important. It’s fantastic representation. It’s incredibly satisfying back and forth that scratches an itch while continually filling us with more anticipation. It’s everything and I cannot wait to see more 🤗

[lilydalexf]

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Audrey Roget

Audrey Roget has 10 fics at Gossamer, with some different ones at AO3, fanfiction.net, and her website. You might know her from her very good fics or as part of Musea, a collective that all wrote fic and posted X-Files fic recs. I’ve recced some of my favorites of her stories here before, including Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas and The Shirt. Big thanks to Audrey for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? A little, yes. Not so much by folks who were around in those days. I sometimes go hunting for beloved stories from the early years, both those I read and loved, and those I never got around to. I am always delighted to hear that later generations of fans have stumbled across my stuff, especially since I haven’t posted anything new in a number of years. It’s fantastic that both years-long fans and new ones are out there continuing to rec fic from all eras, and to maintain archives for fans yet-to-be born. What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? It may sound corny, but the main thing I think of, and the thing that has ultimately been most valuable and lasting, has been the friendships. The feeling of having found a tribe – not just of TXF fans, but of other people who could be as enthusiastically engaged as I was (if not more so) with fictional stories and characters – was mind-blowing. Since I was a kid, I had often mulled over the books/movies/TV I loved and speculated internally about what happened off the page or off-screen, or created new stories for characters in my head. But, except for an elementary school phase where I and my two BFFs regularly played Charlie’s Angels, I hadn’t engaged in that kind of gleeful immersion in a fictional world with others until TXF fandom. My involvement in fandom followed pretty quickly from getting hooked on the show, so for me, it’s all one big ball of experiences. Even as my interest in/involvement in fandom has waxed and waned over the years, I’ve been lucky to remain friends with wonderful people who I originally connected with as fellow fans.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

My initial entrée to the fandom was through fanfiction. I didn’t get interested in the show until mid-season 5. Around the same time, I read an article in a zine called Might (co-founded by Dave Eggers) about this thing called fanfiction that people would write and publish online. At first I thought it was satire or a joke – the fic cited involved Wilma Flintstone and a polished sabre tooth, as I recall – but then realized this was an actual thing. So I figured that a show then at the peak of pop culture must have fanfiction, and I went looking. Early on, I scrolled atxc on a daily basis and downloaded stories. But I didn’t engage in discussions about the show on Usenet, since I only knew how to access it with my Earthlink email client, and I didn’t want to post using my real name.

Later, I set up a pseud address with Yahoo and subscribed to a couple of email fanfic/discussion lists, and stayed subscribed to those for years. There was also a period in there somewhere – of maybe only a year or so, when I think about it – when I’d often nerd out into the wee hours with other fans via IM chat groups. That was around the time the small writers’ collective Musea was founded, and we were active for several years after the show’s initial run. In the early aughts, I followed many authors to LiveJournal and eventually set up my own account and stayed involved in fandom that way, until it mostly dispersed as well. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? In a word: Chemistry. I had casually watched a couple of episodes during the first four seasons, but I’m not a huge sci-fi/horror fan at heart, and the story lines didn’t immediately grab me. But I happened to tune into The Red and the Black in 1998, and BOOM. For the first time, the intense layers of emotion and attraction between Mulder and Scully really struck me – and then of course, upon further viewing, I realized it was unmissable, an essential element in the fabric of the show. As a wise woman once said, a switch had been flicked. Mulder and Scully’s magnetism was like nothing I’d ever seen, and though I eventually came to appreciate the storytelling, humor, production values, and other components that made the series so successful, watching those characters interact has always been what kept me coming back. Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? I was part of a list-serv discussion group for The West Wing for a while, which was a fun melding of character and plot analysis with political discussion. Later, I got into the House, MD fandom, again mostly as a fanfic reader/writer. I was finding that other fandoms, unlike TXF, were more dispersed, the networks of people structured more loosely, if at all. There were fanfic and discussion communities on LiveJournal, and fanfiction.net was the other main hub for posting and reading, but if there was anything centralized like Gossamer, Ephemeral, or the Haven, I never found it. Within all those fan communities, as in TXF, there were partisans for various characters and pairings, and flame wars erupted over plot developments that outraged this faction or that. One main difference was that those other shows had larger, ensemble casts and more varied subplots. So on one hand, there was more opportunity to explore back stories and multiple perspectives. In House MD in particular, there were several entrenched rival shipper camps, which were about equally grounded in canon, rather than TXF’s central ship. I was less into TWW fic, but my impression was that readers were less militant about their pairing preferences than TXF or House fans. Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

I was deeply fascinated by Greg House for several years. (And the love-hate chemistry between him and Lisa Cuddy was a strong draw for me.) House MD came early in a wave of TV shows centered on anti-heroes, and Hugh Laurie brought amazing complexity and thoughtfulness to the character.

Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (The Americans) are a lethal pair of antiheroes. The inherent moral conflict of a sympathetic narrative from their POVs, and the global political conflict they embody was TV catnip for me. The internal struggles at the hearts of those characters were so exquisitely written and performed, they completely fascinate me.

The West Wing felt so much like a show created specifically for me. I’m especially fond of story arcs and scenes that centered on CJ Cregg, Charlie Young, and Josh Lyman. Though I loved Martin Sheen’s human portrayal of Jed Bartlet, the fact that he was the President always made him a little untouchable in my mind. But CJ, Charlie, and Josh were basically hard-working functionaries who were ambitious and idealistic and funny and flawed, and they spoke to me. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I do continue to think about Mulder and Scully and watch episodes somewhat often. I’ll sometimes run a favorite episode as background when I want something comforting on. I read TXF fic pretty regularly, which can inspire me to go back and watch a particular episode or story arc I haven’t thought about in years. Just recently, I started listening to The X-Files Diaries podcast (@XFDPodcast, @admiralty-xfd), and that’s a fun dive into the characters, and how other fans react to and interpret episodes.

Every once in a while, a TV show or movie – and more particularly, the characters – will grab my attention and make me curious about how fanfic writers have interpreted the original material. Random example, I saw Singin’ in the Rain for the first time in a theatre a couple of years ago, and the chemistry of the three leads sent me to AO3 as soon as I got home. I also loved the first season of Mercy Street and found some well-done stories in that fandom. I usually peruse the Yuletide gifts every year and have been amazed by the sheer variety, creativity and cheekiness of the output. There are a bunch of other shows I’ve followed faithfully, and sought out fanfic – Broadchurch, The Killing, Agents of SHIELD, Elementary, The Good Wife. Although I’ve found some well-written stuff in those fandoms, I’ve rarely gotten the same charge from them as reading TXF fic. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

syntax6 (@syntax6) – Universal Invariants/Laws of Motion. I’d also shout out to syn’s Hunter fics, too – well worth reading even for those who have never seen or particularly loved the show itself.

JET – I re-read Small Lives Awake every year around Thanksgiving time. Other annual holiday re-reads: Revely’s The Dreaming Sea and Jordan’s Through the Fire (both set at Halloween).

Amal Nahurriyeh’s Casey universe – the rare post-col fic that felt hopeful, made extra intriguing by a kick-ass original character. [Lilydale note: the series starts with Machines of Freedom and has lots of additional fics and snippets.]

Prufrock’s Love – Finding Rokovoko was genuinely terrifying and tender.

melforbes (@melforbes) – Seaglass Blue is a recent favorite, lyrical and bittersweet.

These are just a few (apologies to those that didn’t come to mind immediately). Fortunately for readers, there’s an astonishing number of authors who have written in TXF fandom whom you can depend on for a good yarn, insightful character study, and/or ingenious “fixes” where 1013 went awry.

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Probably the two set in my own (former) backyard of Southern California: Enivrez-vous and Ravenous. I’d first read the Baudelaire poem that was the source of the former’s title back in university days, so I was tickled to be able to use a few lines as an epigraph. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? It’s not out of the realm possibility. I’d meant for “Three Times Dana Scully Didn’t Go to San Diego for Christmas” to be followed up with “And One Time She Did.” In fact, the idea for that never-finished story was what inspired “Three Times” in the first place. I have a couple of scenes sketched out and – unusually for me – even know exactly how to end it. Every year, November rolls around, and I think I should finish and post it…maybe in 2021?

Where do you get ideas for stories? Sometimes it’s from my environment. “Enivrez-vous” and “Ravenous” describe places that I’m fond of, that made me want to place Mulder and Scully there. “What Not to Wear” has that element too – I set it in Memphis as a tribute to a great trip there with a sister Musean. But WNTW was also inspired by a kink challenge in a years-ago LiveJournal thread, so sometimes ideas come from fandom discussions or even other fanfics. In the House MD fandom, a fic by another writer made me want to continue the story, and the author kindly allowed an authorized sequel. What's the story behind your pen name? I wanted my pseudonym to sound like it could be a real person’s name – or at least, maybe like a romance writer’s pen name – rather than an online handle. I also wanted to use a slightly obscure fictional character, to amuse anyone in the know. I had long had a bit of an obsession with Whit Stillman’s 1990s film trilogy, which started with Metropolitan; the 3rd installment, Last Days of Disco, came out the same year I started down the TXF rabbit hole: 1998. The central heroine of Metropolitan – who is mentioned in or makes a cameo in the other two – is Audrey Rouget, a lover of Austen and, eventually, a book editor. I altered the spelling of the last name as a nod to every writer’s companion, Roget’s Thesaurus. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? I have a few close friends – from outside TXF fandom – who know that I’ve written fanfic. I don’t know if they know my pseud; if they do, or if they’ve ready any of the fic, they haven’t said so to me. They are fannish sorts themselves, but not really TXF fans. A smattering of other friends and family members know or could intuit that I’ve been a fangrl on some level for years. My boss, whom I’ve known for about 3 years, recently mentioned off-handedly that she was really obsessed with TXF “back in the day,” and I am DYING to know if she got involved in fandom, but don’t think I’ll ever work up the courage to ask.

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? Most of the X-Files stuff continues to be generously and steadfastly archived by Forte at The Basement Office. The House MD stories and some TXF things are at fanfiction.net; same for AO3. If ever post anything new, it will probably go to TBO and AO3. I really ought to get it all together in one place, one of these days…

(Posted by Lilydale on April 6, 2021)

[itsclydebitches]

It'll forever grind my gears that Ozpin has been shitting on Ozpin's methods when they casually mentioned that THEY WORKED FOR OVER A MILLENNIA!! Has that been retconned??

Here I assume we mean “everyone else” as opposed to “Ozpin” (though given his self-loathing Ozpin probably does shit on Ozpin’s methods XD). I don’t know that I’d personally use the term “retcon” here though. Just because I associate that with very specific information that is then contradicted in an equally specific way. Like you said this character was a Senior and then, because you wanted them to stick around, they’re suddenly a Sophomore now let’s hope no one notices that (they will). Or it’s an unintended - and usually unavoidable - impact of introducing new information as the story progresses. Like The Next Generation creating the Cardassians and announcing that the Federation has been at war with them for years. It makes you reconsider everything that came before this episode like, “Where? Was that war??” 

Something that RWBY has definitely rectonned has been aura. That began as a completely passive ability. Jaune got his unlocked and then boom, he’s done. From then on out minor injuries heal themselves and he’s able to withstand the same amount of damage as his peers. Then suddenly in Volume 5 aura was made to be active. Oscar had to consciously turn it on and off when that had never been a requirement before. Now, it’s clear that this was just a cheap way of showing how weak he supposedly was. “Oh look, Oscar doesn’t know to engage his aura so he takes a punch full in the face. What a rookie.” This didn’t exist before that scene and, notably, it had no impact later. By the time the Haven battle rolls around - just days later? - aura is back to being a passive thing that no one needs to worry about. Even the newbie character is able to fight Lionheart, a school headmaster, really, really well without once forgetting to keep his aura up or being unable to maintain it. That retcon existed solely for the three minute scene of, “Look how much Oscar needs to learn” and then his inadequacy was pretty much erased too with “Okay we want him to be a badass fighter now. Watching someone fail is boring.” 

Ozpin’s situation... is more complicated. Because, to my recollection, we haven’t gotten a scene denying the previous info that these methods worked and worked really well. That understanding is also primarily inferred from the world building rather than us being told that explicitly by characters. Certain individuals in the RWBY fandom love to remind me that not everything needs to be explicit (“It’s show not tell”) and this is a perfect example of where I did draw pretty obvious conclusions based on information the story provided implicitly. We see everything associated with this “extraordinary time of peace,” we hear constantly about how Ozpin has a finger in every pie, so... surely that includes everything good too? Despite failing to make Ozpin a morally gray character, RWBY insisted heavily post-Volume 3 that Ozpin has basically been controlling the whole world. He’s supposedly so powerful that he pulls the strings of whole councils and can talk individuals (like Pyrrha) into doing things they’d never choose for themselves (/s). He made himself a god and then maintained that view of himself, even if he looks like a kindly headmaster now. Don’t be fooled by that goodie-goodie demeanor, he’s the puppet-master behind it all.. but every time this comes up it’s only in relation to bad things, more specifically bad things that the story has shown us are outside of Ozpin’s control (Pyrrha choosing to fight Cinder against Ozpin’s orders, Lionheart betraying him, Salem being immortal, etc.) No one ever admits, “Well if we really blame Ozpin for the state of the world then I guess we also have to ‘blame’ him for growing up in a relatively safe Remnant with excellent education and measures in place to keep the evil grimm queen from destroying us all.” It’s less of a retcon and more just the writing/characters straight up ignoring pieces of information and being hypocritical about others. We haven’t retroactively insisted, “Ozpin has been around a thousand years and the world became a bleak, horrible place as a result” completely contrasting what we saw in Volumes 1-3. That world building still exists, no one has denied it exists... they’re just not acknowledging that it exists either. The only time Ozpin is a powerful manipulator controlling the world is when someone dislikes something about that world. If it’s a good thing... no need to give credit. Even when the good thing is something the show demonstrated Ozpin worked for and the bad thing is something he never could have stopped and/or the very thing he told everyone not to do. 

Basically: