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

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Title:	NOTE: This post is untitled. The title here on Fanlore is a line from the essay.
Creator:	jeviltwin
Date(s):	May 20, 2002
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:
External Links:	The X-Files helped teach me, once and for all, the enormous power of a story (once public, now purged and deleted)
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This essay is untitled and is by jeviltwin.

The title of the essay here on Fanlore was chosen by the editor creating the Fanlore page. It is a line from the essay that they thought was a good summary.

The essay, posted just as the final episode of the show aired, discusses the fan's journey with watching The X-Files and how it spoke to them.

The essay starts off with some off-topic subjects, and then moves into another piece the fan wrote January 2002.

Excerpts

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.

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

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.