Someone on Reddit askes when people think Mulder and Scully fell in love every couple weeks or so, I swear. Each time, I repost my take, editing/fine-tuning/honing it. But since Reddit is...Reddit, I feel like it really belongs on my blog.
Ok, buckle up, fam, because we're about to go for a ride...
Depends on what we mean by fell (in love). They were both clearly attracted to and intrigued by one another from the jump.
I think Scully made the choice in Squeeze to follow her gut and her integrity and align with Mulder. I think in Jersey Devil, while trying to date, she internally compared "normal" to Mulder and normal paled in comparison, but she also saw how singularly focused/obsessed with his work he was as she tells her friend. Lazarus also shows us that she probably didn't want to fall for *another* agent who could never let go of the work/relax. But, I think by Tooms, she was hooked. Not "in love," but definitely catching feels deeply. By Little Green Men, she was clearly ride or die for Mulder, but again, not "in" love. I think she was acutely aware of her depth of feelings and kept them in check enough to not *allow herself to be "in" love* (coughCSMinEnAmicough). She fought that for a LONG time.
I also think the cancer arc had her rethink a lot of things, and consider dipping her toe in the water and be a little more casual with Mulder (Detour), but yet again he proves he's really not in a place to reciprocate/be able to step away from the work/to get out of the damn car. So, she continues to compartmentalize her feelings. We catch more glimpses of what she compartmentalizes in Terma, Small Potatoes, Triangle, Dreamland II, Rain King, Two Fathers/One Son (pick a Diana Fowley eps/Alpha jealousy moment) even Never Again to a point...but even when you get to Milagro when Padgett saw it and said it *directly to Mulder,* she seemed stunned for it to be called out so directly. I think it was that ep where she started to face it more directly and by The Unnatural, the very next ep, you see her being "lighter", more flirty. She's guarded still, but I think the Milagro-Unnatural transition is when it truly hit her that she is, indeed, *in* love with him, that he may actually be more emotionally available to reciprocate, and she couldn't really ignore it completely anymore. Mulder made it more okay to show it when he kissed her in Millennium and thus kicks off the Season of Secret Sex and flirty MS adorableness. That said, I think it took Mulder's closure with Samantha and her closure with Daniel to truly *allow herself *be* in* love with Mulder.
Now, Mulder? LBH, he's always been a selfish, myopic AH. He has his charms and would and did go to the ends of the Earth for Scully, but he is a different beast. He starts out thinking this little spy is out to get him and he's going to drive her away, but completely disarms him with her panicked vulnerability in the bathrobe scene in the Pilot mixed with her quick ability to see gaps in the file, make connections, read him completely when he's withholding, put the pieces together, and genuinely not just saying but working to find the truth. Now, you can clearly see from the moment they meet in the Pilot, the sparks are flying. There's clear intensity and attraction. He pushes but she pushes right back. Hell, in only eps 2 and 3, he's already flirty, intense, invading personal space, and territorial with her, not bothering to hide the attraction (assuming it will help unbalance her while he "makes her run" or at least disrupt her from being as effective of a "spy"). By Jersey Devil, he is already a little jealous and by Ice, he's realizing she might be worth the effort. By Lazarus, you can see twinges of jealousy again, but he's still in his own little world. In Tooms, she knocks him on his arse in tCitC. She floors him with that and he deflects in typical Mulder fashion. Man's got a lot of trauma and is completely unaccustomed to (possibly feeling undeserving of) unconditional devotion. He pulls back a little with the pushing/challenging antics from before.
He realizes by Little Green Men that he really relies on her, needs her. It's in Ascension he realizes just how deeply he cares for her, that he loves her. I will not say *in* love for him here either yet. I think he was obsessed with the work that he truly didn't even realize how much he cared for her until she was gone. But you'll notice any and all flirting after her return is way more serious. Don't get me wrong, it's still very flip/Mulderesque, but he's subdued, almost shy (not rly the word I'm looking for here but will do). He clearly also loves and needs her now, but after damn near losing himself from losing her, he's in self preservation mode with her. He doesn't know what to make of that and seems to really dismiss/compartmentalize the earlier attraction (much like Scully does) and begins to try to keep her at arm's length. It isn't until Never Again that he is forced to see her as a sexual, independent being again, not just Watson to his Sherlock, and that rattles him and makes him insanely jealous (and he acts like a giant AH when all these things come to a head at once lol).
Then Memento Mori hits and at once he's back to juggling the self preservation-arm's length version of his feelings and the desperate-Scully-protector version. He rides that, leaning toward the arm's length version through Redux II (jealously challenges this again in Small Potatoes). By Folie a Deux, he's given up the arm's length pretending a bit and openly admits to her how important she is, which sets up FTF, but not the myopic, work-obsessed ways, so he's really not ready to do anything about it.
That FTF hallway scene is where I think he truly realizes he's "in love" with her, but also by the end realizes "they" know it, too, and that he's a danger to her. So, he needs to bury it and push her away "you should get as far away from me as you can. I'm not gonna watch you die, Scully, because of some hollow personal cause of mine." That and he was pissed AF at her in The Beginning (grumbleCCgrumble).
But by Triangle, he wants her to know he loves her...and she dismisses him, whether she thinks he's delirious or w/e, she knows he's consistently shown he's not really in the right place to be serious. So, he pulls back to end-FTF- distance/denial-protects-Scully territory, compartmentalizes, and slow-burns it, as evidence by him not completely dismissing the whole Fowley thing (grumbleCCagaingrumble).
Then Milagro comes along and he is told point blank that Scully is already in love. Dude stares Mulder *down* while saying this, making his point clear. Such that by the very next episode, The Unnatural, he's willing to test some waters with Scully (flirty banter and cuddly batting practice). In Millennium, Mulder sees a chance to show her, again, how he feels/ let it come back to the surface where they both can have an opportunity to shrug it off if she's not receptive...but she is. And thus, the Season of Secret Sex ensues. That said, I think it took Closure/ Mulder "finding" Samantha to truly *allow himself to *be* in* love with Scully.
In summary, they were both attracted to each other from the moment the met in the Pilot, but that's merely attraction. Scully loved Mulder (Tooms-ish) before Mulder loved Scully (Ascension-ish). However, Mulder realized he was IN love with Scully (FTF-ish) before Scully realized she was IN love with Mulder (Milagro-ish). Finally, Mulder *allowed himself to be in love* with Scully (Closure-ish) before Scully *allowed herself to be in love* with Mulder (all things).
“scientists don’t want you know” is a phrase that always cracks me up because if you actually meet a scientist they will be shaking and crying like an overstimulated chihuahua with the need to let you know
Hot take aparently but I hate that so much of the txf fandom seem to see scully as like. Trapped in the x files by mulder? When, at least to me, that is very much not the case? Mulder kinda sees it that way sometimes, but its pretty clear to me that shes there willingly. She could have left at any time. If she wasn't also a little insane she probably would have. But shes there because she wants to be. Shes happy there.
Upon rewatching the show its literally the opposite. Mulder on several separate occasions is like "please leave the files you will get hurt and die" and everyone else is like "yes get put of the freak loser basement please girl" and scullys just like "no i will not leave i like the near death experiences and the freak loser"
Yeah, I don't understand this either. It's a very "Bill Scully" interpretation of the situation to think Scully is "trapped" in The X-Files by Mulder. Moreover, it takes away her autonomy in the decision. Then again, I still struggle with the undertone that whatever was done to her was *his* fault. I don't like that Skinner in One Breath told him that he's as much to blame for her condition as CSM. I get *why* he said it in that case, but it holds as the undertone for *every* trauma she endures, which is unfair and strips her of her own autonomy to choose her own path.
Today’s the day, fam: the unveiling of the 2026 MSR Bingo Challenge Card!
For a plain text version of the bingo card: MSR Bingo Challenge 2026
HOW TO PLAY
Simply pick a row, column, or diagonal line on the board and write stories for those squares.
You can write several short pieces or one longer story that combines multiple prompts.
The bingo element is meant as a fun challenge, but if you don’t want to write a fic with several prompts (or don’t have the time), no worries. Pick however many squares you’d like, in whatever combination suits your fancy!
*** I Want to Believe (Free Space): This is your chance to personalize the board! Maybe you want to include some domestic bliss in the Unremarkable House, explore an AU, or include a prompt not on the card. Do with it as you like! ***
POSTING:
Post finished fics to the AO3 Collection (please read through the Rules before posting).
Authors are encouraged to share their fics when they post to AO3 on their socials!
Fic submissions will remain open indefinitely, but to be included in the official Challenge Master Fic List post on the socials, your stories must be submitted to the AO3 collection by Sunday, 6/28.
Questions? Message me.
Happy writing!
its literally so funny to me that mulder believes in everything but god and Scully believes in god but nothing else
okay like on one hand i’d like to reply to this with some funny one-liner bc on a surface level it is funny... but due to the amount of time i’ve devoted to thinking about mulder and scully and what they believe and how they believe in it, i just can’t read this ask without wanting to argue with it.
mulder doesn’t believe in everything but god. he believes in many things that he thinks would make the world a more tolerable place, by sheer force of will. by trying incredibly hard, even though it doesn’t come naturally. he wants to believe in everything but god, because the concept of god doesn’t give him any feasible answers at all. the concept of god simply demands yet more blind faith, as well as acceptance of the things that have happened to you as fated to be so by god’s will.
he wants to believe in folklore, because that means that people before him have looked past the obvious successfully, that there’s a lineage of secret knowledge waiting to be uncovered. he wants to believe in monsters, because he’s spent years studying the very worst in man and holding out hope that there are things too evil for any man to do. he wants to believe in aliens, because that means a greater mystery behind what’s happened to him and countless others than monstrous men. but mulder doesn’t want to believe in god, because believing in god would mean that rebelling against the whims of fate is futile, because fate is all god’s plan.
scully doesn’t believe in god and nothing else. on the contrary, scully’s very nature is to believe, and to trust. i would say that it is her instinct to believe in everything, and i think that it’s very evident in the way she reacts when caught off guard. unlike mulder, believing isn’t a struggle for her: it’s her default state of being. she is trained in believing. she practices it, faith in god and belief in the methodology of medicine, of science. she has been raised to trust the process, trust the wheels of fate.
but that doesn’t mean she does trust in those things. she’s too smart for that. she understands the fallibility of the human mind, especially her own. because of her implicit ability to believe, she can move past the believing almost immediately and into the questioning, the explaining. she believes in a thing, and then she proceeds quickly through the scientific method of trying to disprove her own theory, trying to explain it in every other possible way. she believes from the start, but belief means nothing on its own. she needs proof to admit her belief out loud. she needs it to be fact, not just faith. and the surest way to prove something, she’s learned, is by ruling out every other possibility. and she does this with god, too, i know she does. she did it for years, and that’s why we see her cut off from her faith for awhile at the start of the show — because she couldn’t find a way to rule out other explanations for any given miracle. because there was no proof.
mulder wants to believe in things that make the world he lives in a kinder place, that make someone other than men the monsters. scully believes in everything, good or evil, but gives those beliefs no weight if she can’t prove them. once she eases up on that practice of needing to prove, she can trust her belief in god again. but mulder never has any space for that belief, useless as it is, until he wants to believe for her. relights her candle and extends her prayers through his own.
I hope he kissed her like this a million times. That she kissed him backwards with the same level of passion and devotion. Because they deserved better. They deserved to spend centuries basking in the love of one another.
Today’s the day, fam: the unveiling of the 2026 MSR Bingo Challenge Card!
For a plain text version of the bingo card: MSR Bingo Challenge 2026
HOW TO PLAY
Simply pick a row, column, or diagonal line on the board and write stories for those squares.
You can write several short pieces or one longer story that combines multiple prompts.
The bingo element is meant as a fun challenge, but if you don’t want to write a fic with several prompts (or don’t have the time), no worries. Pick however many squares you’d like, in whatever combination suits your fancy!
*** I Want to Believe (Free Space): This is your chance to personalize the board! Maybe you want to include some domestic bliss in the Unremarkable House, explore an AU, or include a prompt not on the card. Do with it as you like! ***
POSTING:
Post finished fics to the AO3 Collection (please read through the Rules before posting).
Authors are encouraged to share their fics when they post to AO3 on their socials!
Fic submissions will remain open indefinitely, but to be included in the official Challenge Master Fic List post on the socials, your stories must be submitted to the AO3 collection by Sunday, 6/28.
Questions? Message me.
Happy writing!
Some of our favorite quotes from Artemis ii so far:
"Copy. Moon joy."
"I have two Microsoft Outlooks, and neither one of those are working."
"Houston, if you could give me about 20 new superlatives in the mission summary for tomorrow that will help out my vocabulary a little bit, that would be great. Thank you."
“If you’ve ever seen the top of the spotlight of the top of the Luxor at night in Vegas, this looks like what it wants to be when it grows up.”
"To all of you down there on Earth... we love you, from the moon. See you on the other side."
"We just went sci fi.
"It is so great to see Earth again. To Asia, Africa, and Oceania: we are looking back at you. We hear you can look up and see the moon right now. We see you too."
"We will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other."
“It’s a bright spot on the moon, and we would like to call it Carroll.” (The name of Commander Reid Wiseman's late wife)
"Amaze amaze amaze."
"I said that we do not leave Earth, but we choose it. And that is true."
"Christina has been sleeping head down in the middle of the vehicle, kind of like a bat"
"It's really fun to be floatin' around, it just makes me feel like a little kid."
"Trust us, you look amazing, you look beautiful."
"'Homo Sapiens' is all of us, no matter where you're from or what you look like. We're all one people."
"We're going to power cycle the toilet from the ground."
"I'm proud to call myself the Space Plumber."
"We were all eagerly awaiting the chorus." (After Mission Control cut off Pink Pony Club early when waking up the crew)
"Copy heart. Copy bracelet." (In response to Wiseman giving his daughters heart hands and showing them the bracelets they made him that he was wearing)
“Welcome back. We are still here. They are in space.”
"Copy. Bubble wrap nominal."
"We have rediscovered the chocolate snacks."
“The truth is, the moon really is its own body in the universe. It's not just a poster in the sky that goes by, it is a real place."
“We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will drive rovers, we will do radio astronomy.”
"I've seen a lot of new perspectives, but my perspective has not changed because I launched with the perspective that there is enough for all." (After being asked if they had a new view on humankind.)
"On behalf of all Canadians, we wanted some reassurances of your preferences for maple syrup over Nutella on your pancakes."
"And we have a great view of the moon out window 2. Looks a little smaller than yesterday." (Reid), "Guess we'll have to go back :)" (Mission Control).
yousharknotpass
blakekathryn
stormborns
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