reopening the basement office
case number x-001
setting the scene
It was 1993 when we met the agents who took us on a journey through the unknown. The X-Files’ ratings started slow, but I’ve met fans who watched from the pilot. Others found the show in 1996, as it catapulted its way into an international phenomenon. On fandom internet, I talk to people who started watching it last year, last month, and even yesterday, 31 years after its inception.
It all begins in the early minutes of the pilot. Following Dana Scully, our familiarly plucky know-it-all young agent, into a basement office, the camera pans to Fox Mulder, an unequivocally attractive man with a curious response to a new coworker in his space. He is, more than anything, an outcast weirdo, surpassing filters and social conventions to tell a woman he just met that he read and liked her undergraduate thesis on Einstein. In this initial interaction, Scully’s facade drops. We are now understanding Scully’s initial air of intelligence as a mask for her own discomfort with convention. Two weirdos, flung out of space.
queer imaginings
It wasn’t until 2014 that I clicked play on The X-Files on an HP laptop in my family home basement. It was early into my netflix streaming experience, and I was filled with such neurodivergent delight at binge-watching that as I finished the first episode, I shoved my laptop aside on the couch to jump up and dance excitedly to the empty room. I was an isolated teenager with only tumblr to keep me company, and I had found a treasure among the trash of adolescence.
I couldn’t stop thinking about these two characters, and rather than keep it in my head, I opened my beloved tumblr.com. I found photo and gifsets of the cinematography of the show, as well as text posts discussing random scenes I had yet to watch. Perhaps most importantly, I discovered tumblr blog thexfiles. Don’t be fooled by this handle—this is not the official fox account, but instead a young lesbian named Katie who holds an intensely admirable love for the show.
In the space surrounding this account, I discovered a large lesbian obsession with Fox Mulder that I shared as soon as I saw his bespectacled face and suspicious gaze. I was discovering my own queerness when I started the show, and despite knowing I wasn’t interested in men, I loved Mulder immediately. Blogs claimed him as their son, which I found myself also doing as I imagined patting this sad boy character on the head and sending him to school with a box lunch.
As I grow older, what intrigues me most about The X-Files is the queer following of the show that dates back to its origins. The most common iteration is Mulder/Krycek slash fanfiction, but what about my former tumblr community of Fox Mulder lesbians? My connection to this show as a young lesbian didn’t seem exactly incidental.
meme-making and meaning making
After years away from my hyperfixation, I created the @sculder.and.mully instagram account to combine my passions—comedy, being gay, and The X-Files. It was initially an idea my partner and I had to jumpstart our podcast by the same name. While we quickly found ourselves busier than we planned (I promise we still have podcasting in the works), we did have fun making memes about this silly little show.
I fell in love quickly with using meme-making as a creative outlet for my own X-Files canon, and I am overjoyed when other people relate to it. Most invigorating to me was the ability to collaborate with others and discover their cosmology of this universe. What appears most on my instagram comments is a shared understanding of these characters as queer, trans, and autistic. As I’ve expanded to sharing on twitter and tumblr (once again), that mutual feeling that these characters share these marginalized yet often joyful experiences also expands. I see t4t X-Files content so wonderfully often lately within the fandom, and I hope to continue to see it grow.
expect the unexpected
I do have some concrete plans for this space, including sharing more memes, playlists, and some of my other X-Files related projects. I’m currently working on a poetry chapbook that combines exploration of personal trauma with X-Files episode themes. I’m also digging through the archives of old GeoCities fan sites and the incredible fanart and forums from shippers past.
I will update bi-weekly with free content around my process with meme-ing and my other projects. However, this space will adapt as I adapt, and I am excited to see where it goes.
One of my other priorities in this space is to continue to connect with other queer and neurodivergent fans of the show, so I humbly ask for your feedback on what you’d like to see from this space. I will send out a survey in the next week, so stay tuned, and trustno1.