NEED to know: when deciding to relapse txf and blog all the thoughts, what made you decide to pick season four episode twenty two out of all the options?
oh it wasn’t my first choice we also watched small potatoes and folie à deux. but u don’t choose the gateway drug it chooses u
ok but to follow up the reason it made me feel crazy is bc i think w distance it’s easy to forget how detailed & gestural & genuinely guided by tonal friction the x files actually is, like especially as someone who has spent a tremendous amount of time in its (in part so generative for the above reasons) fan spaces. like what do you MEAN scully is really crawling belly down on a bowling alley to bitch at mulder abt ghost scribbles and then bleeding onto a case file not 12 minutes later. the thing is you don’t even know to know she has cancer in this episode because nothing abt it would indicate conversation w the larger mytharc until that point. And the x files was just so great at that. so genuinely driven by good character sense and narrative ingenuity. even watching small potatoes it’s like well that’s not a story about a shapeshifting former tail having serial rapist so much as it’s a vehicle to let darin morgan show mulder he’s lame, which darin morgan was always already doing in his eps anyway. and elegy is a more soberly perfect example of this bc it is both surface shallow (case writing is not good, but also, tho not a bowman ep it looks excellent) & a sincerely complex deepening of scully’s character and relationship to mulder, thru the lens of an infectious carryover arc you might not have even thought was allowed to exist that week. the result is that there’s rly no such thing as a/b-plot in the conventional sense but nor is the relationship between the motw and the contiguous (mostly) characters between them one of content and frame. it’s constantly reorganizing itself in relation to the serialized formal expectations it not only inherits but actively constructs as habit and refrain. it projects a world!
Gotta appreciate how tone deaf Bill is in his self righteousness when he tells Mulder to leave work outside Scully's hospital room and to let her die with dignity. For one, Mulder has never been so casual with Scully that he'd simply let her die. Not when she was in a coma and they'd known each other for around a year, definitely not now. And two, not one person in that hospital thought they were just coworkers
GA Addresses Rumors, Once and For All
2007: On Journalist Bias (and DD)
This is, perhaps, my favorite Gillian response of all time.
TL;DR
"I know that no matter how nicely I request the end, it will, especially in this situation, be contorted to fit the snippy mood of the journalist."
"Did David and I hate each other? At times yes. [...] Do we hate each other now? Not in the least. [...] Do I imagine that when we do the film together we won't hate each other for a few hours during the filming? [...] But we will also love each other and laugh with each other and pull pranks on each other and bug each other like we did for nine years."
April 26, 2007:
THIS IS A BLOG - IT IS THE FIRST AND THE LAST
I want to address the recent confusion around whether or not I enjoyed working on the X-Files which seems to have stemmed from out-takes of interviews past present and future as far as I can work out. I don't even know where to begin but I need to keep it short and with my claws in.
My experience is that whether I am asked about the X-Files or not in an interview, details about the series and my previous comments about the series are included in the text.
If I am asked about the series, and I ask to not stay too long on the subject due to the fact that I am promoting something else, I am frequently made out to be moody/abrupt/rude/dismissive you name it. If I do talk about the series, which I recently did as it was blatantly clear that the interviewer did not like the film I was promoting, I try to make it light and fun and not repeat myself as even I am sick of hearing the same old yarn.
What usually happens is that they ask about the long hours - I say yes they were long - they say, but you have said that at times it was a living hell and I say, yes at times it was... it was insane and long and wet and all that but there were good times too - and then the interviewer says provocatively - as if I'm either an idiot for staying in the series under such conditions or an idiot for saying it was so challenging when clearly it wasn't because I stayed - why didn't you get out? And my response which is as much incredulity that someone who has written for years about the television industry has either never heard of a contract or has the shallowness to pretend he has never heard of a contract - I say, "are you kidding me?! when you go to network you sign a contract even before your last audition".....
So the dilemma, do I go on explaining the X-F contract/salary details - as if he really cares - all the while injecting positive quips about the show and how grateful I am, or do I cut it short because I really don't want to be in this conversation yet again even though I know that no matter how nicely I request the end, it will, especially in this situation, be contorted to fit the snippy mood of the journalist. None of this has much of anything to do with my experience on the series let alone me as a person.
The series went on for a long time - longer than any of us had anticipated or some of us had wished. It was the hardest work I will ever do in my life. I hope for the sake of my children and my sanity that I never have to work that hard again.
Did I hate it? At times yes.
Did I love it? At times yes.
Did I regret it or do I regret it now? Not for a second.
Did David and I hate each other? At times yes like any brother and sister, husband and wife, co-worker and co-worker forced to spend that much time together under such strenuous circumstances.
Do we hate each other now? Not in the least.
Do I imagine that when we do the film together we won't hate each other for a few hours during the filming? No. We will. Vehemently. As David waits patiently, again and again for the hair dryer to calm my frizzy hair between takes so it matches the beginning of the scene... he will undoubtedly be thinking "what... was I thinking agreeing to shoot with her f-ing frizzy hair again?"
But we will also love each other and laugh with each other and pull pranks on each other and bug each other like we did for nine years.
And that's that.
BONUS
And she was correct.
April 16, 2008:
Shock: What’s that like with David now that you’re not with each other 16 hours a day on a series?
Anderson: It’s great, but it was great then, too. This is like a sibling relationship and I never had siblings. I had brothers and sisters that started when I was 13, so I was out of the house and didn’t have that experience. There was always this love/hate – hate is too big of a word – but there was always something. It was a natural relationship over a period of time. Now we’ve grown up and we’re older, we’re more appreciative of the relationship period and the unique experience we had together and have an opportunity to continue that and foster it. We’ve always loved each other and we’re always going to be a battle sometimes.
Who woulda thought that shorter hours and a personal life away from work would engender better friendships?
Turns out she was cheekily quoting others’ comments–
July 1995:
GILLIAN ANDERSON REALLY CAN’T UNDERSTAND WHAT ALL THE FUSS IS ABOUT. OVERWORKED AND OVER HERE, SHE GIVES UP HER WORKING) HOLIDAY TO TRY TO CONVINCE DAVE GOLDER THAT AGENT SCULL IN THE X-FILES IS JUST ANOTHER HARD-WORKING GIRL. AND NOT SEXY AT ALL. OH NO…
“Thinking man’s crumpet? well, it’s more flattering than being a lobotomised man’s crumpet, I suppose…” Amazingly, Gillian Anderson doesn’t understand what people are going on about. A sex symbol? She? She can’t see it herself.
“I don’t particularly feel like a sex symbol,” she laughs. “But then somebody asked me the other day what it was like to work with a sex god like David Duchovny, and I can’t get that out of my head. Sex god?”
unfortunately I understand dana scully severely because if I were a twentysomething year old starting a new job in a creepy basement with pictures of bones and ufos all over the walls and my extraordinarily hot coworker immediately started yammering about extraterrestrials I would also have no choice but to tie my fate with his forevermore
mulder genuinely trying to convince the American legal system to convict eugene tooms for being a 100+ year old hibernating liver monster is truly one of his most mulder moments
In the great tradition of @gaycrouton (my favorite exchange organizer), I'm putting together a X Files Summer Exchange.
Details: Sign Up is between now and July 10th if you want to receive a fic gift. Add your details to the sign up sheet pick your summer themed prompt (there is a tab with some prompt suggestions, but feel free to write your own) and add any important notes to help your author (e.g 'no major character deaths', 'I like to see Mulder cry'... normal stuff). It works like Secret Santa, where once the sign up is closed you will receive a private message with your recipient and fic prompt.
July 11th I will individually send out the details for the exchange recipient and more detailed instructions.
Publish Date: August 9th
Length: No restrictions, but try to get to at least 600 words if it's a gift for someone.
Do you want to participate but don't want the pressure of a due date or writing a fic for someone else? No worries!
All summer themed x files stories are welcomed (and feel free to browse our prompts), just tag #TXFSummerExchange26 in Tumblr and link your story to our AO3 Collection any time AFTER August 9th.
How to use Musical Prompts: Song lyrics and melodies can be a fun challenge for writers and the idea is to use the song however it inspires you; whether it be using the themes of a song for your story, or even finding a way to incorporate the actual song into your fic.
Have an idea for an additional fic, no problem, feel free to write and tag additional Summer themed stories you come up with if you want.
perhaps it’s just because (tmi:) I was on my period at work today and feeling miserable about it, but I was thinking about Scully dealing with her period at work;
about her working for years in a male-dominated workplace, with a male partner, often ending up in strange places at strange times of day without her usual shops available, and i was thinking about all the precautions she would have had to have taken to deal with it quietly without mulder knowing.
because to be honest I doubt scully ever let mulder know when she was on her period. at least not before they were together.
because she’s a woman in the FBI, she doesn’t want to give anyone any more reason to think her emotional, or to disregard her, or to make jokes about ‘being on the rag’ etc.
and this isn’t to say I think mulder would ever dream of saying such things to scully, but I think, like her nosebleeds and her cancer symptoms, her period is something that Scully, (the fiercely private and independent individual that she is), would never think of telling mulder about. or anyone for that matter. (except perhaps missy. 🥲 that’s what sisters are for after all.)
but then I was thinking about the IVF arc. and how brutal that first period back at work after the IVF failed must have been.
And how, this time, Mulder would have known.
because of course he’d been paying attention to her cycle and her fertility appointments lined up in the calendar, hoping beyond all hope that he could give Scully what she so desperately wanted.
And so; on that day when he knew her period was due after she had told him the IVF had failed, even if he never said a word, and even if she never acknowledged it, I like to think he took extra special care of her that week.
that he brought her thai food, cut back on his more annoying banter, silently did an unusually large amount of overdue paperwork without being asked. and I like to think Scully noticed and was touched.
