#txf csm

[obscurumstar]

[ecclesiasticallatin]

mad that csm has such great taste in dresses but damn scully looks incredible

[squibo]

[obscurumstar]

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[obscurumstar]

If you aren’t turning your favs into ponies or warrior cats what are you even doing

[amazalina]

csm and failed authorship in en ami

For all the disgust I felt watching it, I actually find En Ami kind of brilliant if you squint. I really do NOT like the way Scully ends up having compassion for the man or whatever, (i don’t care for the creepy self-insert fanfic ya know) but the rest of it was interesting. There’s a distinct way CSM sees himself that was hinted at in Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man: he’s a failed author. He likes to see himself as the hero, but also as the mastermind in the shadows who can pull the strings and make anything happen. The author and the hero. In En Ami, I feel like that’s exactly what he is playing at. He’s obsessed with his so called ‘legacy’. As was stated at one point during the show (I can’t remember when that was), ‘these men don’t have names’. Not having a name is pretty significant in terms of what it is your social existence is reduced to. You don’t exist. And without an exterior self that people can interact with, you are very much exposed to oblivion. And CSM knows he won’t be remembered even though he feels he actively participated in shaping the world everyone takes for granted. Or if he is remembered, it will not be for his good heart or anything like that.  

His obsession with legacy is directly linked to his obsession with control. It’s the same reason why he’d like to be an accomplished author and fancies himself an artist in that respect. Being an author means you shape a world, that you know how to use the power of words. And that you control almost everything that happens in the realm you created. CSM has a hard time separating his desires from reality, which is contradictory in and of itself because he suffers from knowing that he cannot escape the life he’s chosen. He is very conscious of the fact that he will be alone forever. Still, instead of resigning himself to living that reality he chose for himself – because of his overwhelming desire of control and power – he acts on desires he knows are unachievable. And is extremely abusive in the process. Which is why En Ami si very hard to watch. The way he behaves with Scully is disgusting, and I won’t even acknowledge the CSM paternity thing because it’s ridiculous and it’s not exactly relevant to my point here. The point is CSM is abusive in almost every possible way and I kind of felt sick watching the episode. But it also makes sense for his character in terms of writing. He doesn’t necessarily think of her as, you know, an actual person. People seem to be characters to him; they serve a distinct purpose that he gets to decide for himself. The boy with cancer is the bait, the element that gets the plot into motion. Scully is the main character or at least the second one, but instead of accompanying Mulder like he wanted her to at first, he wants her to accompany him. To show loyalty to him, and the only way she can do that is break the bond she has with Mulder at least momentarily. CSM desperately wants for Mulder’s journey to get him to where he is himself. I think part of that is because of his obsession with legacy, but it’s also because it validates him as both a hero and an author. As an author, he would have managed to get Mulder to do anything he wanted. As a hero, the Mulder hero confirms that a hero’s trajectory is to become an author like CSM. But CSM is a failed author, and his character escapes him over and over again. He wants to imagine he ‘created’ Mulder, but he fails to understand him, or to control his actions, because the dark hero trope doesn’t completely fit Mulder.  The sidekick CSM wants to believe he created, Scully, has backfired and gotten Mulder to a much better place than where he started at. That’s good for the Mulder hero we imagine as an audience, but not for CSM’s Mulder hero. As a result, he can’t accept to live vicariously through Mulder, and he has to get his sidekick to pick him over Mulder. Which of course she can’t really do because it goes against her very character, whose essence is deeply tied with Mulder’s. And so he has to manipulate her, pull the strings, and aim very precisely to hit her in the exact spots that will make her act the way he wants her to act. He makes himself the hero once again. But he is a lonely hero, and can’t find a satisfying resolution for himself, whereas Mulder and Scully have already built something for themselves (and by themselves, not responding to anyone’s plans for them!). They’ve built themselves this bubble of theirs that won’t pop, and that is something CSM is aware of, and that he likes to use for his own profit, but that still escapes them completely. Even though Scully has to betray Mulder – and it’s not even a textbook betrayal, it just feels like it because he wasn’t involved in that particular journey, because he wasn’t included – her one concern at the end is for them to reconcile. She searches his eyes; she feels his frustration and disappointment. And for all the frustration he feels, he still reassures her, and accompanies her for the rest of her journey. He also knows what she means whatever she says: saying she wants him to know that she is fine while not wanting to speak directly to him is obviously code for I’m not fine. They know each other the way no author or imagined author can. They escape authorship.