Introduction to my X-Files© Stories

I had enjoyed the first two seasons of the X-Files immensely, with the multi-faceted stories of the First Season and the long arc of the Second. The trilogy of episodes ending the Second Season and beginning the Third presented a wealth of possibilities for the series to develop. Since the writers and producers had given us some of the best television I'd ever seen at that point, I expected the show to really take off after Paperclip. (I felt the same way after the first seven episodes of Twin Peaks, and remember what happened there!)

However, something in the creative engine at 1013 stalled after Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose. The Third Season had some real treats in store for us: War of the Coprophages, Pusher, Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space', and to a lesser extent, Grotesque and Avatar. (All these are in my very humble opinion, which you can get a greater sense of if you read my episode reviews.) Whether Chris Carter was spending more time on the preparations of Millenium or the writers were beginning to run low on new ideas or David Duchovny was ready to move on, I couldn't tell. All I could see was a mytharc that had lost its forward momentum (and was beginning to contradict itself) or monsters that were, to be frank, retools from the First Season.

The fan-fiction I read addressed some of my concerns with the loss of drive in the series. But most were taken up with Mulder-Scully romances or were long Mulder-centric angst pieces. While there were many wonderful works produced as a result, none dealt to extent I had hoped with the potentialities of the Trilogy that 1013 seemed to be pointedly ignoring. So, without realizing initially that such was my intent, I embarked upon writing this alternate universe. It would, to the best of my creative abilities, expand on the themes and character issues presented in Anasazi, The Blessing Way, and Paperclip.

In this universe, you can expect to find:

1. Intertwined Conspiracy and monster stories: I loved this about the First Season and Second Seasons. The Consortium's interference with Mulder's and Scully's work was not limited to cases involving the possibility of aliens. Mulder would go to Deep Throat for help with any investigation (Ghost in the Machine, Young at Heart). X would be involved in cases that exposed government mis-deeds (Sleepless, Fresh Bones, Soft Light). The dark forces opposing the X-team would step in and quash an investigation if they so chose (Tooms, F. Emasculata).

   So it goes in my stories. In the first, Sins of the Fathers, Mulder and Scully find, keep, and publish evidence dating back to the origins of the Organization that so bedevils their investigations. As a result, the old men you met in The Blessing Way are forever meddling with Mulder and Scully and their families. Why, you might ask, don't they just send out a hit man to do them in? In the second, Xibalba, they do. But, by the third, Twelfth Night, the Consortium is having problems of its own (read it and you'll find out). The fifth, Passages in Memory, initiates a game of cat and mouse, move and countermove, between the expanded X-team and the American representatives of the Organization.

2. An attempt to address unusual subjects, or old subjects in a new way, for their horror or science fiction potential: We had this in the first two seasons, with Squeeze-Tooms, Shadows (a ghost story and a murder mystery and a beyond the grave connection that wasn't a romance), Fire, Genderbender, Lazarus, The Host, 3 (a nifty vampire story, regardless of the Mulder-Kristen Kilar flap), or Irresistible (Donnie Phaster gave me the creeps because there are real serial killers like him out there as you read this.), among others.

   So it goes in my stories. There are ghosts of Maya kings (Xibalba), Celtic deities wandering among the homeless and powerful in Washington, DC (Twelfth Night), wolf demons (Rustic Suite), prophetic visions (Sins of the Fathers, Twelfth Night, Rustic Suite), silicon eating bacteria (Archaea), or alternate human origins (Zurvan), all for your reading pleasure.

3. Two serious, intelligent lead characters with their own strengths, weaknesses, abilities, and internal conflicts: Mulder was (in the first two seasons) a deeply intuitive thinker who was very in touch with his emotions. He was also a very good field agent who could lead up investigations when the situation required (Lazarus, Irresistible). Scully was a hard-scrabble, no- nonsense agent who relied on reason and evidence to make her case (Squeeze, Ice, Dod Kalm). They also had their own frailties. Both, for different reasons, had trouble making long-term connections with others on a personal level.

   The episodes I enjoyed the most are those where each of their viewpoints and character developments are balanced. Conduit (First Season) and Oubliette (Third Season) both dealt with Mulder's Samantha obsession. In Conduit, Scully defends Mulder to Blevins, is supportive as he struggles with the case, and seeks to understand him further by listening to his hypnotic regression tapes. In Oubliette, she does none of these things. I much prefer the First Season episode to the Third. Or consider the two role reversal stories 1013 has done. For many reasons, Beyond the Sea (First Season) was a riveting, totally involving episode. We saw Mulder the successful profiler acting as a logical skeptic because he understood Luther Lee Boggs. In Revelations (Third Season) we have no idea why Mulder chooses not to believe Kevin Kryder. That is the episode's greatest failing.

   Similarly, I try to provide parallel developments for both the lead characters in my stories. The first three have as a unifying arc Mulder and his relationship with his Mother. At the same time, Scully comes to recognize the importance of her own logical, rational viewpoint, even after finding irrefutable proof that Mulder's ideas are correct. While The Dana Scully Trilogy has as its unifying arc Scully's problems with her brothers, Mulder also grows in his self-confidence and leadership abilities while running a larger X-Files section. As they work through the ramifications of what happened to Scully during her abduction, they discover what happened to Samantha and her current whereabouts.

4. A law enforcement partnership between two professionals: In the first two seasons, Mulder often made unexpected connections that solved their cases. But, almost as often, Scully built up evidence until they found an answer (Fire always comes to mind here.). They have serious, life-threatening (thanks to the Consortium) business to attend to and investigations that go to the heart of many of our most cherished beliefs. Between his intuition and her logic, when they worked together on a case, they made a great investigative team.

   The "Rift" that I saw as very real in the early Third Season bothered me, not because I want to see a sexual relationship between Mulder and Scully. As I explain below, I don't want man+woman=sex, at all, ever. Instead, it struck me as unmotivated by anything within the episodes themselves and as a dangerous development for two people who really only have each other to rely upon. Now, there may indeed be a romantic liaison between Mulder and Scully in the later seasons of the series. This is, after all, television, where ratings are the name of the game. But, given the somewhat desultory manner in which character developments have been handled by 1013 in the past (here one episode, gone the next), it won't be anything like what some of the better 'shipper fan-fic authors have already given us.

   In my stories, I attempt to come to grips with the fact that a law enforcement partnership is a personal relationship like none other. More than a merely collegial association, having much in common with a battlefield comradeship, it is a bond resonant with meanings and connections that can last a lifetime. But, like any relationship, it will flourish when nourished, wither when ignored. Mulder and Scully pay attention to the health of their partnership until it develops into a deep-rooted friendship. An unattached man and a single woman will, no doubt, have occasional 'what if?' thoughts regarding each other, especially given the amount of time these two spend together. But, I think of Mulder as too obsessed with his Quest and Scully too career-oriented to have serious romantic entanglements with anyone, let alone with each other.

What you will not find in these stories:

1. Mulder-Scully romance: Sorry, I have to say that first to clear the air. I'm not a 'relationshipper' in that I don't see Mulder and Scully as 'soul-mates' or meant for each other or in love but don't realize it. The many fan-fiction authors who do feel this way have provided us with some beloved stories. I mean no denigration towards their outlook on Mulder and Scully simply because I don't share it.

   I'm not your classic NoRomo either in that I don't have a Mulder- centric view of the X-Files. Once again, I have nothing but respect for that group of fan-fic authors. They also have given us wonderful, deeply involving tales that probe the darkness in Mulder. But, for me, Scully and Mulder are equally important to the stories I want to tell.

   If I had to put a label on how I handle the Mulder-Scully relationship, I would have to call myself a partnershipper. In their partnership, they already have a rich emotional connection through the experiences they have shared and the difficulties they have overcome.

   Just as a long-overdue follow-on, I've discovered something about how words shift their meaning. It seems, in the years since I wrote this (Nov. 1997), that 'partnershipper' has been appropriated and given a meaning I didn't intend. To wit, a 'partnershipper' is now someone who thinks it's okay if M&S have sex, as long as the intellectual partnership remains the foremost element of their relationship. That's certainly not how I feel about the characters, and I've come to feel this more strongly as the show has drifted further and further into stupidity.

   So, to restate explicitly: I handle the Mulder-Scully relationship in my stories as an intellectual partnership between two equals. One is an intuitive, empathic profiler with a dry, quirky wit who cares about what happens to other people. The other is a logical, professional Agent and Doctor intensely dedicated to justice and devoted to using the Scientific Method to uncover the truth about the cases they investigate. The nexus their different viewpoints (intuitive-believer and rational-skeptic) create is the crucible in which truth is forged. They enjoy working their cases, and they enjoy working them with each other. They're colleagues in that they respect each other's opinions and friends in that each wants the other to be physically and emotionally well and content that each has taken the best path his/her life can.

   No one needs to tell me I'm out of step with how the show handles the two characters. I'm perfectly well-aware of that fact. It's why I started this parallel universe in the first place.

2. Mulder doing medicine; Scully doing psychology: I hate it when, in fan-fiction or on the show, one of the agents is written as stupid so the other looks smart. Mulder doesn't have all the answers and neither does Scully. I absolutely loathe it when Scully is written spending her time standing around denying the perfectly obvious because the writers won't do a little research or give Gillian Anderson more than a few token lines. I also get a little tired of Scully having to rescue Mulder all the time. Granted, she's done it often enough in the show (Anasazi being one of my all-time favorite Scully rescues Mulder stories), but the man's survived plenty.

   I don't do it. If they use their separate viewpoints to work for solutions together, they will find meaningful answers. So, in my stories, you will see Mulder making odd connections that help propel investigations forward. You will see Scully using her background in both pathology and physics to advance their cases. But most importantly, you will see them listening to each other, even when they argue (and they do argue in my stories) because they genuinely respect each other and value the other's viewpoint.

3. The Cigarette-Smoking Man as Mulder's father: Bill Mulder was a perfectly delicious character. He was once in control of much power, forced to sacrifice his family, and broken as a result. To just ignore the thematic possibilities examining Mulder's disfunctional childhood offers in favor of innuendo regarding Mulder's Mother is silly.

   I don't do it. Bill Mulder is very much a presence, perhaps the driving force, in both Fox and Caroline Mulder's lives. I chose Caroline as Mrs. Mulder's first name back when I started Sins of the Fathers because it's a great name for a dignified, white- haired lady. I'm sticking with it, regardless of the six or seven selections Carter throws out to us fans over the years. He, after all, pointedly ignores Rebecca Toolan's choice of Elizabeth for her.

4. Marita Corruvabaitas: If I spelled it wrong, I don't care. She's a useless blonde femme fatale, a wooden cartoon brought to us courtesy of a bunch of writers who don't want to think anymore. It's too bad. After creating a fatherly, world-weary Deep Throat or the intense and ambiguous Mister X, the UNBlonder is just an insult.

   The Fourth Season hasn't happened in my stories because this is an alternate universe. (See, I told you it was a good thing!) There are a wealth of 'within the Consortium' machinations to be written that don't involve women sashaying around in hip-high skirts or old men assassinating each other's mistresses. Beginning in Twelfth Night, you can read some that I have chosen to explore.

5. Explicit sex, over-use of strong language, or excessive, lovingly detailed violence: For thousands of years, we have somehow managed to tell each other stories without descending to those depths (most of the time).

   Ever hear of Titus Andronicus? I thought you hadn't. It's one of the Bard's (much) lesser plays, with a brutal rape, on-stage executions, dismemberment (the lead character cuts his own arm off!) and other assorted acts of mayhem. In short, it sounds like your standard action-adventure flick of the eighties and nineties. Hamlet it ain't (pardon the colloquialism). The tragedy of the melancholy Dane had its own share of blood-letting. But, the characters and the intrigue are what made and have kept this play alive for centuries, not the somewhat farcical bodies stacked up at the end.

   For a more modern example, consider Hitchcock's original Psycho. He shocks and saddens you with Marion Crane's death because he's spent the first half of the film letting you develop a sense of who she is. We find out why she's running, what she's done, and he gives her a moment of redemption before he kills her off. In short, he makes us care about her. Simply raising the body count with multiple randy teenagers and dousing the camera with blood as most of the succeeding slasher films do doesn't carry the same impact as the loss of one well-drawn character.

   I'm not writing to be published here, I'm writing to tell a multi- faceted epic with not one, but two heroic characters. There is some language, some violence, but only as much as the tales require. There are sexual relationships between secondary characters in my stories, but I leave the deed itself to your well-trained imagination. Most of my stories are rated PG simply because the subject matter is too complex for most young children to comprehend.

If you, the reader, are under seventeen, check with your parents before you dive into the two R stories. Sins of the Fathers is rated R because it begins with a severe beating that Mulder and Scully suffer (but nobody loses any limbs). Zurvan is rated R for a non-explicit homosexual relationship.

The G ans PG-rated Lise Meitner stories are either post-episode shorts written during the Fourth Season or an attempt to explore ideas I have had. They don't relate to the three trilogies in any way. But, if you want to know who I consider the Cigarette-Smoking Man could be, you might want to check out Faustus Mulder.

If I haven't driven you off with all this, start with Sins of the Fathers and enjoy. I'll update this introduction periodically as more of the epic is finished.