I actually did do other things today. But this was what I wanted to be doing.



Some of this is new. Some of this has been posted elsewhere. But today it's all in one place, in one rearranged lump. I've tried to reduce the sheer hideous volume of typos but no guarantees, okay?

All Standard YMMV Disclaimers Apply.

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There has to be some place to start, right? I was culling old photographs over the weekend and I found a batch from early 1994, when nature dumped seventeen or so inches of snow on my corner of the world and effectively stranded life for a week (not to mention wrecking havoc with my graduation plans) -- and I thought of this last night, snow piled everywhere, heaps and smears and dunes of it, layers of powder and ice like brick and mortar, snow without end, amen; and how it didn't seem like there would ever be a path out of the neighborhood, a way back to movement or warmth, and how beautiful it was anyway, and how I didn't really care that my car spun out in the cul de sac and that I couldn't find my boots.


A world transformed is so much more fun to use as a queendom than boring old everyday life. Give me a playground, a sprawling, glittering field, an endless road of imagination. Walk me away from traffic jams and taxes and data entry. Take me out to the ballgame, show me earth from above. Dazzle me. Make my toes tingle.


Eight years, since I began with "The Host" in autumn of 1994. At least eight road trips. 201 or so episodes. One movie. One handmade and raffle-won Scully doll (with tattoo!). Innumerable friendships with wondrous women on four continents and in at least eight countries. Nineteen stories (so far) plus several snippetfics and 155-word exercises written. God-only-knows how many stories consumed. Countless fits of laughter, phone calls, letters, squeals, hugs, support, sweetness, snarkiness, seriousness, inspiration; and the best collection of store-bought (how else would I satisfy my comic-bookstore-adoring geekish longings for stuff?) and homemade memorabilia, including stickers, shrines, and alienbubblemen, any girl could wish or. A bunch of lists, for fandoms and commentary and newsgroups and acquaintances -- a bunch of lists, but only one Scullyfic, where the best of all possible outcomes always, in the end, triumphs. Kindness and eclairs, a very good combination.


Here's a place to start:

"Is this seat taken?"

"No. But I should warn you, I'm experiencing violent impulses."

"Well, I'm armed, so I'll take my chances."


Indeed. My mother, of all people, my mother who to this day could not tell you what's dream and what's hallucination and what's real in episodes like "Amor Fati" or "Field Trip," my mother, ladies and gentlemen, she of the plausible (and opposable) thumbs, my mother, on advice from our handyman, said to me one autumnish Friday when I was a college freshman, 'There's this show I think you might like.'

I'll take my chances.


So I was wandering through my local Walgreen's last Saturday looking for the new TV Guides (yes, I know). They didn't have them, but it's Walgreen's -- I am constantly intrigued by Walgreen's. They have so much weird crap. The OTC cold medication selection alone is a wonder. (Who are the people purchasing 666 cough syrup?) I was giving serious consideration to a pair of shoes* they had for sell when Sting's "If I Ever Lose My Faith in You" came on the sound system.

[* Probably any pair of shoes that costs less than $10 is going to lead me immediately down the poisonous primrose path of fashion faux-pas, right?]

Betsy Dodd, she of the genius videos, put this song on one of her CD compilations, of course. Strangely, when the song was actually a hit, it was one of the few Sting tunes that did nothing for me. (Perhaps I was still bitter about the demise of the Police.) Now it's one of my all-time favorite songs, inextricably linked to Mulder and Scully, and hearing it at Walgreen's...

Talk about halting in your tracks.

There was this little hiccup in my chest and I thought, "Oh my gosh, it's almost over."

Back in January, when the end was announced, I remember saying that by May I might be a basket case. Well, it's May. I could quite conceivably be a basket case about several things this month, but somehow this isn't one of them.

This was different. This is different.

This was more like, It's almost over, but not. It's almost over, but now I can go back to the beginning and start from Here. It's almost over, and look what I got in return.

There's that line in 'Parabiosis': I grew up. I didn't walk away from you. I didn't make it be your fault.

I've tried other shows, and I've tried to see what smart people see in other shows, but the fact is that my adoring TXF has nothing to do with other people's smarts. It's just me sitting on the living room floor thinking that flukemen are nasty and gory and I Can't Believe They're Showing This on Network TV, and check it out, Chernobyl referencing at the end, and shadows, and Bet Me They're Not Crushing on Each Other in a Big Way, bad hair, flapping trenchcoats, secretive friendships and all.

And this is the story I chose, not because Ford told me to, not because Entertainment Weekly prompted me along, not even because there were all these fabulous people out there I had yet to meet or bonus stories to read or official keychains to purchase. Elusive luck, fate, Bermuda Triangle intersection. I remember saying once, years ago, that GA and DD gave Scully and Mulder personalities, and Scully and Mulder gave each other hearts, which means CC didn't do jack shit -- but I think I was wrong. He put pen to paper and no matter what he intended, no matter how it ends, he started it. And I'm the only one who stops it for me.

To quote my favorite CSM line, that's why I'll win.


(Here's something else I wrote back in January, with some editing for good measure. I tried to go back to a blank slate, or at least not repeat myself quite so much, but my brain said tttthpt to that. Stupid brain.)


Other places to start...

I've been trying for several hours now to distill coherently what I'll be taking home as souvenirs once this long journey through TXF is over*. [* Well, not over, over. Once May ends, I mean.]

There are the obvious things, like treasured friendships with astounding women. The fact that I've met so many wonderful people. Sometimes brilliant fanfiction. Sharpened lit crit skills (finally, an application for all that literary interpretation I've suffered in college). An improved vocabulary (obfuscate! exsanguinate!). Fanfiction: manna.

I've had the express honor of beta reading for a handful of hideously talented writers. I've had the express honor of being beta'd by an equally talented group. I've read fanfic while stuck in traffic, while on hold, while waiting for food to be served, while parties and funerals took place in the foreground; I've read fanfic the way I used to listen to music in the basement, as a lifeline, as temporary salvation. As joy.

And isn't that the grooviest vibe I would've never thought of on my own. An extension cord, another way of seeing it, a choose-your-own adventure. Infinite possibility and words like pearls on a string. Putty, pliable, good for plugging up holes and stretching out a moment; or changing fate. (Plus, smut!) Plus, transformation.


I know who Mark Snow is, thank God. This is not unimportant if you're me, who learned to drive for the express purpose of being able to simultaneously listen to music and go real fast down windy little country backroads with starlight and thunderheads vying for the distant horizon. I remember my breath stuttering out when Mulder saw the lights from a ship rising up through the grimy windows of the coal mine -- Mulder whose father had died in his arms, a last respite perhaps for a dusty old man, instead of just a bloody pinched out life with sour alcoholic guilt and a forsaken future, the father who gave up his own biological child, not to mention his soul, to the enemy, to death, to cowardice. Mulder shaking off fever and well-intentioned gunshots from good-aim partners, Mulder who was a pawn, a crusader, an arrogant piece of work, as loyal and true a friend as you could deserve, and who had recently been, among other things, an Indian salad.

And Scully, who'd stared down the barrel of a gun to menace her boss, who threw around bullets with the sort of aim that always meant something, who believed her best friend was still alive not necessarily because she was imbued with dream imagery or even grim denial but simply, it seemed, because she felt he was still alive; she acted like she'd know if she wasn't. Scully, who was mindful of grief, who would lose a sister, who would make a deal, who wanted answers and saw her own file, with notations and tissue samples, minutes before a slew of small tiptoeing whozits or whatzits would bump past her on their way to the bright end of a murky tunnel -- Scully who always missed the ship, for whom, for years, aliens would remain little more than shadows on her frightened subconscious, dark blots on dreams and scaly deformations trapped in ice.

The ship rose and rose, and the music sounded like something that was being beamed back from the moon, all empty blueblack coldness and weightlessness, mirrors refracting breath.

I might have missed that. I'm so glad I didn't.


There was Pittsburgh, on the floor in a musty townhouse, all us kids hyped up on sugar and sleeplessness, and my friend's father and brother having a borderline-offensive argument over Scully's appeal ("It's her lips, yep"/"No, dad, it's _the whole package_") and the agent herself, all frantic eyes and sublimated pain, looks around Betsy Hagopian's house while, on cue, every woman in the living room lifts a vial with a chip rattling inside, softly.

Oh, I thought. Oh my.

And Allentown to boot, which got a mighty cheer from the steadfast Pennsylvanians.


There had been too many x-rays already by the time "Momento Mori" aired, and I was tired and not really paying attention, but then Mulder was rushing back into the hospital and Scully wasn't in her bed and the nurse didn't know where she was. And Mulder said, "Well, who the hell does know?" and his voice almost broke on the words and it was thunderbolt city, baby, a thousand volts of terror cracking on linoleum, and I thought, Wait, wait, I had it all wrong before, I believed the press junkets and the magazine interviews, and Scully came out of Betsy's room, pale and bruised and said I'm coming back, I'm not going to let this beat me, and for good measure, like I wasn't already a total puddle of schmoop, there was an embrace and a forehead kiss and that look in their eyes, that ache and faith and insurmountable devotion, and I thought, 'Just try to tell me this isn't a love story, you glorious bastards. Just try.'


Remember when it seemed like everyone thought John Shiban was the antichrist? Or not even that impressive. More like one of Satan's dumb gas station minions, some guy who couldn't pass the GED or tie his own sneakers. But he snuck in there and pulled back a couple of Mulder's fingers, took him to his knees, cut off contact with Scully, contaminated money, invented the Gimp and reminded me that conspiracy theorists got nothin' on government sponsored terrorism, and my friend Jeremy said afterwards, "Whoa, I thought they were going to slice off his ear for a minute there." We agreed it was for the best that our intrepid heroes retained their ability to hear one another, even if learning to listen was a very long lesson.


Motel room, southern Kentucky, night before a funeral. Mulder dancing in his underwear, leaving crappy tips and maneuvering domestic hellishness a la Area 51 but not before Scully talks about exiting the vehicle. (Subliminal message, my man: she meant, With you.) Scully getting her feathers ruffled, her butt slapped and her mood seriously annoyed even before the whole bee pollen lecture and a 7-11 run gone bad. Laughter, they say, is the best medicine, even when it's a funeral the next day and medicine seems somehow beside the point.

Maybe not medicine. Maybe more like, a balm, a strong cup of coffee, a dense novel, one more trip to the farm, a quiet hillside, an uproar in the shower, a giggle behind closed doors, a minute, just a minute, of normal.


I've been to Boston (dark chocolate and raspberry birthday cake and Mulder disappearing in a beam of white light, Scully as bleached as her sheets with a tear slipping down her face), Memphis, St. Louis, Portland, and Potosi, not to mention exotic La Grande and Port Townsend. I've thrown down poetry in the beer aisle at a midwest-urban grocery store. I've seen the world's largest pair of men's underwear. I've seen the Pops, the Montreal Ballet, 'The House of Mirth.' It's all TXF's fault.


Which was worse, the sound of her voice when she found him in a field -- "He needs help" -- all desperation and lunacy and collapse, or the look on Doggett's face -- pure hatred, pure rage, and so composed about it, so ready to do anything to avenge -- as the amber vial slipped deliciously from Krycek's fingers? What I mean was, which was better? Which made me spring from my seat more quickly? Ha, those who know me are thinking, "She moved quickly?" But it's true. It was all about the windsprints. Of course, there was also a woman placing a small child in his father's arms for the first time, and that brief moment of right, of fairy tale endings and promises more powerful than monsters.


And loss. And making the hardest choices. And learning to fight again. And friendship. And hope.


Let me tell you about orange jumpsuits and calm, too calm, words, and the insidious use of someone's first name. Fierceness, and his mouth on hers and poor, poor Skinner looking away awkwardly. I gave away our son, she said, and it wasn't thoughtless, it wasn't harm, it was a wish, a prayer, please let this not have been the worst thing ever, please don't hate me. Trials and kicks to the stomach and the date set three days before their child's twelfth Christmas with the kindly buffalo people, a death sentence and a cavalcade of witnesses, spirits uncrushed, a pull back from the edge, the hot desert, adobe crumbling. The Dead Philosopher's Contingent making another appearance with new members! That old twisted menace, pervasive as smoke and cancer, finally all glaring, wretched, unmasked, unwavering evil put down.

Some kind of justice. Some kind of peace. A motel room, and rain.

A place to start.


Nine cycles of seasons. There were detachable siblings, telemarketing bugs and red-eyed tree dwellers, dead babies, seraphim triplets, ashes in the ocean, goat suckers, sinister corn, viral bees, crazy dolls, devil babies, wiggy dollhouses, train-hoppings, bodies in mass graves, Monday on a continuous loop. Plum nutty AIs, pus-filled boils, man-eating mud, sycophant half-brothers, bucktoothed vampires, pigment eaters, tumor eaters, liver eaters, brain eaters, yum! Cackling body art, plummeting planes, dog politics, ELF waves, seasonal ghosts, giant carnivorous mushrooms, the attack(s) of the manbat, lessons on how to run in high heels, the Jebus slug, reincarnation via regurgitation, exploding rigs, lizardmen, flukemen, mothmen, drilled skulls, family flashbacks, flyboys, cryptic email, arctic worms, Jersey devils, Eden clones, checker playing cha-cha-ing gods, haunted bowling alleys, nasal lobotomists, mad hatters. Seawater subways, suicide attempts, ghost ships, fat sucking vamps, full circle to find the truth, cockroaches, teenagers, gargoyles, authors, shrieking succubi, Jeremiah Smiths, paranoia paranoia everybody's coming to get me, children's creations, birth, death, parallel universes, Mexican amnesia, prisons, monkey pee, jungle flashbacks, warfare, abductions, ascensions, cell phone messages. Volcanic spores, strength of belief, cow-cult control groups, skipped generation insanity, shapeshifter genderbenders, turncoats, tough calls, dead poochies, veterans, geeks, rainy Kansas, nanobots, spoonings, time backwards on a spiderweb, military tribunals, Cher dancing with the farm boy mutant, virtual Brady Bunch, and fire, lots of pretty, pretty fire.


And love.


The X-Files helped teach me, once and for all, the enormous power of a story.


Last April I sat in a room with 45 or so other women while we watched videos of episode clips montaged and set to music, and at one point I looked up and saw on each face, if only briefly, what must be one of the greatest feelings ever: transcendence. I watched people fall in love.

I fell in love too, with TXF's universe of shadows and starlight, grief and redemption, vengeance and reverence, spirits, fear, trust and truth. With monsters and menace, things that go bump in the night, things that crawl along the walls and slither through the sewers. Conspiracies and syndicates and factions, with global proportions and looming doom and hero quests. Things that trudge through the sea or drop from the sky, green or gray or militarized. Dripping forests and hospital rooms and shitty motels; rented cars and lonesome apartments; churches, benches, rocks in lakes. Mulder's couch and Scully's cross.

And I fell in love with TXF's characters, almost all of them, human or mostly so, because they did the hard things, because they fell and stayed down or got back up and fought the good fight, because they didn't take no, didn't stay away forever, didn't apologize, or said they were sorry in just the nicest ways, because they exemplified the funny creatures we aliens in our mortal shells are or hope to be: contradictory, disconnected, wounded, manipulative, malevolent, lost, lonely, betrayed, unreliable, despondent, broken; silly, snarky, geeky; exasperating, enigmatic, intelligent; smart, scared, surviving, strong, sexy; admirable, professional, powerful; decent, honest, down to earth, head in clouds, full of feeling; hopeful, forgivable, faithful; partnered, pair-bonded, compassionate, curious, complicated, risk-taking, breathtaking, believing, brave, miraculous, reborn, redeemed, real.

Because the ones I wanted to be most didn't give up, at least not for very long. They tried to make the right decisions, tried to do as much as they could, and tried to protect what was important. They held onto to each other as hard as they could, despite scars, because of good hearts, and with both hands.

I've learned more than I can possibly say. I've gained more than I could have possibly earned. Whatever I paid for TXF, it was a bargain, it was an astonishment, it was a blessing.

So I repeat, with all sincerity, with all adoration, from my unsnowy nook this breezy May day: What will I be taking home? Guys, guys, I am home.