Chronicle X Interview with Plausible Deniability

Interviews by Fans
Title:	Chronicle X Interview with Plausible Deniability
Interviewer:	uncredited
Interviewee:	Plausible Deniability
Date(s):	January 2000
Medium:	online
Fandom(s):	X-Files
External Links:	interview is here; copy
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Chronicle X Interview with Plausible Deniability was conducted in 2000 by the Chronicle X archive.

Some Excerpts

I should probably make up some dignified explanation about being inspired by the show's complex characterization or its important themes, but in fact I was hooked by the notion of having Mulder and Scully do each other.

I only get one thing? I'm tempted to say I'd add boinking, but after the last answer, everyone is going to think I'm some kind of sex maniac. Here's the most non-sexual answer I could come up with: now that it's the final season, I'd like to see the show fill in more blanks, provide more backstory. I want to know where Krycek comes from, and just what happened between CSM and Mulder's mother. I want to know more about Skinner's FBI career. I want to know about that wedding ring Mulder used to wear. And if they happened to work in a little boinking while they were at it, well, you wouldn't hear me complaining.

I steal them. I've already mentioned my friend and "The Carrot and the Stick." I stole "The Hit" from James Thurber, and "The Layover" from Ernest Hemingway. "Iced Tea" was a double steal, from James Thurber and from fanfic writer Romana Clef. Just to illustrate how many influences I steal from, I wrote a series about CSM, and each of the stories in it was inspired by a different source. I wrote the first story as a stand-alone, after I was working out one morning to Eighties music and the old Rick Springfield song "Jessie's Girl" put the idea in my head of being obsessed with a friend's woman. Then a poem by W. H. Auden made me want to write a sequel. Then feedback asked about certain facets of the characters -- more stealing. Finally I realized in a burst of clarity that CSM as I'd written him was the anti-me: someone with no roots and no real confidantes, someone whose life has been blighted by a terrible knowledge, the laconic loner who doesn't get to live the happy ending. After that it was easy to write the last couple of stories.

Extremely important. I appreciate all feedback. Like many writers, though, I'm most excited by feedback that lets me know that the reader "got" what I was trying to say. Leo Rosten wrote, "The writer wants to be understood much more than he wants to be respected or praised or even loved," and I believe that's true. Someone who sends feedback and says, "Hey, I liked your story" certainly has my gratitude, but someone who writes and says, "What you see as Mulder's loneliness, I see as an unswerving devotion to his quest" has my undying admiration. In the first instance I've been given a compliment, and in the second instance I've been told I'm dead wrong; yet it's the second that lets me know someone else understood what I was trying to convey. That's a terrific feeling for a writer. Some of my favorite people in the fanfiction community are those who write thoughtful, writer-affirming feedback. Of course, I don't want to discourage any readers from sending shorter feedback. I know not everyone has the time or the lit-crit tendencies to write detailed commentary. Believe me, just knowing that people are reading means a lot.

I have two favorite characters, I think: Mulder and CSM. I suppose I think of Mulder as my comic alter ego, and CSM as my tragic one.

Not many fans find CSM sympathetic, which is such a pity. The night I saw

"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" and discovered he was a frustrated writer, I thought, now there's a character with whom I can really identify. If you consider life from CSM's perspective, he's gotten a pretty raw deal. At some point in his youth, he must have found out all about the coming alien invasion -- how the date is set, how the world is coming to an end. He's been carrying that secret around with him for most of his life. Plus there are hints of a star-crossed love with Mulder's mother, and the loneliness of a life without a name.

Mulder, on the other hand, really seems to me to lend himself to comedy. I'm close to his age, and I come from a pretty reserved New England background myself, and I have even been known to indulge in a few of his weaknesses. It's an easy thing for me to step into his shoes. In fact, I'm always surprised when I hear of an author who doesn't relate most strongly to Mulder, just because I think Mulder's obsessive, impulsive personality is such a good match for the typical fanfiction writer's temperament.

LOL. No -- absolutely not. It's my dirty little secret. I have the sort of friends who, if they knew I was writing fiction about television characters for my own amusement, would view it as an eccentricity on the order of wearing a Spiderman costume to work every day. Besides, when you write stories in which your characters jerk off into paper bags and happily sleep with dead women, you don't want your mother reading them, believe me. There's only one person in my offline life who knows about my fanfic, and fortunately she grew inured to most of my faults long ago.