mulder and scully are t4t
memes and the internet culture that inspired them
I make the rules of my memes, but they are all inspired by fandom culture. I have spent years honing my head canons of The X-Files, and while I can pretend they were all from my brilliantly large brain, that simply wouldn’t be true. I am a product of what I consume. Tumblr, twitter, meme pages on instagram, and more have shown me new ways to envision the world for the tradeoff that I would give them my time and advertising attention.1
In the experience that was 2014 tumblr, I learned about systems and false binaries alongside gifs of actors Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny kissing in unused behind the scenes footage. Crucially, I discovered disability activism and the fluidity of gender and sexuality, which most likely led me to Gender and Sexuality Studies partway through my college career.
Through this lens, I could finally find myself in the world. Despite cultural trends leaning toward more LGBTQ+ acceptance, queer content was rarely found outside of Netflix, which killed off their lesbian characters regularly at the time.2 As I scrolled through the world of Destiel and Superwholock3, I learned how to recognize myself (in some ways) in fiction too.
The X-Files, with its underdog main characters, can be spotted a mile away by the neurodivergent queer eye. Fox Mulder is portrayed as a misunderstood genius, which is (while problematic) a common autistic portrayal. He has a tendency to bother people in social interactions without knowing why. He’s an emotional loner with depressive tendencies, and he refuses to budge on what he thinks is right, even if his life is at risk.
Scully’s often using black-and-white thinking, which I am all too familiar with from my own ADHD. She also has a strong memory of most things, but seems to fixate on numbers, reciting the birth dates of U.S. presidents in a revival episode. Scully simply cannot seem to fit in despite the mask of professionalism she presents, and her words and actions appear harsh to colleagues.
Together, Mulder and Scully form a connection in their oddities. They are both known for their ability to speak at length about topics involving their passions. They maintain a complicated situationship based in flirtation, admiration, friendship, respect, and dedication. Mulder is continually gushing about Scully’s intelligence and beauty while on the clock, which is a lesbian experience as old as time. Scully is dominating in their relationship and plays with the lines of femininity, holding Mulder as he cries and threatening those who hurt him.
While the characters were not written to be such, Mulder and Scully express the culture of a lot more than the white cis hetero neurotypical characters they were designed to be. As years pass, this is the show I keep coming back to when seeking familiarity, which I most notably do through memes. In my memes, Mulder and Scully live as they do in my head: queerly, neurodivergently, and mentally ill. They live as they do in the fandom that sees the same signs I do. I see myself reflected in every tumblr post from someone who just started the show and realizes what I did years ago: Mulder is a lesbian, and MSR4 is T4T.
notes from the field report: things that have caught my eye recently
thinking about Imbolc, the celebration of the mid-point between Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, thanks to Literary Coven
they’re talking a buffy reboot without josh whedon, so i can’t help but be excited
feeling blessed that others care about mulder’s pierced ears
this meme format is so one level, but i love it
I’ll totally deal with the whole “social media owning me” thing later.
This PinkNews article from 2017 talks about the “Bury your gays” trope in television series at the time.
If you haven’t heard of these terms, I’m either much older than you or younger than you, but we will never know which. Self-proclaimed Tumblr historian Strange Aeons has a video on tumblr fandoms superwholock and Destiel here if you’d like to know more.
Mulder Scully Romance is their ship name from early internet fans.