Chronicle X Interview with Revely

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

Some Excerpts

Everyone knows that the show has so many holes and lapses that it practically begs for resolution, but it's more than that. I loved the characters. Mulder and Scully lend themselves to fiction in a way that is rare. They're both inherently quiet, I think, and that leaves room for all kinds of interpretation. Facets of their characters just keep unfolding and huge things keep happening to them - they're caught up in a mobius strip of fate and catastrophe and longing. They fascinated me from the second I saw them, and once I found the ten thousand worlds of fanfic I was hooked.

The long answer: You know, sometimes I'm convinced that CC and TPTB don't give two hoots for their main characters. It's disillusioning and irritating and okay, so maybe I have high expectations brought on at times by the slow burn of hormones coursing through this old gal, but I ask you: STAR PEOPLE? After seven years, I'm probably a little more invested in these characters than what is strictly healthy, I admit, but there's a flippant "what the hell!" attitude from CC et al sometimes that really burns me up.

Here's the thing - a compelling writer of fanfic can make me believe almost *any* characterization. We have the opportunity to mess around with canon and move back and forth through the seasons at our leisure. If I want to write a story tomorrow where Scully is ultra-skeptical, then I can set the story in the first season and nobody will question my decision. If the show's writers decide to give me that same character in season 8, that's a different story. They're obligated to give me a Scully and Mulder that at least resembles the character they wrote the week before. If they decide tomorrow to write that Mulder has been crazy since Amor Fati, that he's responsible for a slew of serial murders that supposedly take place in season 7¼, well, I'm not going to buy it. The actors didn't play it that way, the mood and indicators weren't there, and it just plain isn't going to work. 1013 has a bad habit of trying to get themselves out of sticky situations by retracting and reworking their plot history, and it's not only bad narrative form, it's unfair to the characters and the fans.

The short answer: character continuity. <g>

(And I still don't buy the Walk-Ins/Star People, damnit.)

You know the first thing that comes to mind when I think of those two? The old phrase "still waters run deep." I don't know why, actually. <g> I actually don't see Mulder and Scully as being that different. Their details are seemingly the opposite, but their beliefs are essentially the same. I don't have any trouble weighing in on the idea that Mulder and Scully need one another. None at all, and I don't think it makes them any less tough or adult to suggest that they do. I'm an adult and there are several people I need. At the same time, what I love most about their relationship is the sense of awe and fear, and the fact that they're lousy at getting past their own relationship hang-ups. I don't think either of them are comfortable with needing each other as much as they do, and that makes them very real to me. The idea that they would have a horrible time moving on without one another has become, over the years, a sort of ridiculed fanfic cliché, but I still subscribe to this theory. Mulder and Scully love one another. I think it's both as simple and as complex as that. I consider the physical aspect of their relationship to be a given at this point - whether its actually happened or not. It just feels inevitable. At the same time, I can't help laughing at the fics where sex ends up "curing" M&S's relationship. I don't find the relationship to be that stifled, in all honesty, but let's face it, these two aren't the best communicators. I think they've held things back from one another party because that's their natures, and partly because it was in the best interest of their work. They saw one another all the time. Anyone who has ever spent huge chunks of the day with their best beloved knows that one of the most important graces you can cultivate is the art of keeping your mouth shut. At the same time, when a relationship like theirs morphs into intimacy there are things that you're going to need to say, and it's the horrible screw-up potential of this that makes them so damn interesting. <g> I'm fascinated by the xenophobic little world that they've created for themselves. Neither one of them seems scarred by their lack of contact with other human beings - they're enough for one another. They have an intense, mutual and exclusive relationship that seems to line up with every definition of "soul mate" that I've ever heard and corny or no, that's how I read them. I look at their relationship on screen or on paper and I say, "aww, I want one like *that*."

Finally a question I might be able to answer in less than three hundred words! The first fanfic I read was Meredith's "Heaven in Hell's Despair." I was living in London and my friend emailed me at work one day and said, "you have got to check this out." It was the link to Meredith's page, and I wandered over at lunch, fell in, and didn't come up for air for about a year. It blew me away that there were people out there who saw Mulder and Scully as being more than friends. You have to understand that I wasn't involved in internet fandom at all at the time, and my friend Mec and I sort of secretly believed that we were the only two people in the world who thought those two should be together. At the time, her father was sending us videotapes of the eps as they aired in the US, and we'd get the tape (with one episode on it), about every Thursday, and sit down on her futon with the rabbit, a bottle of wine, a Dairy Milk the size of a houseboat and watch. Just a few weeks before we discovered fic, he'd sent us Memento Mori, and I remember we sat on the floor of her flat, smack in front of the television, pillows in our mouths, clutching one another, rocking back and forth and whimpering like autistic savants. At the end, when Scully was coming out of Penny's room, Mec removed her fist from her mouth and said, somewhat hysterically, "I swear to God, if he doesn't hug her I am never watching again!" So it goes without saying, of course, that fanfiction was a revelation to us. For those first months, we used to call each other up on the phone and read great lines to one another. She's still the only person I can read smut to aloud without picturing my mother clutching at her chest and hyperventilating. The night that we discovered fanfic I sat on the phone with her for over an hour while she read Karen Rasch's "The Return" series to me. The phone in my flat was out on the third floor landing and the lights were timed to go off after you'd had just enough time to make it to the light switch on the next floor, so for countless evenings that year I sat on the stairs in the dark and watched the stories behind my eyes. What is funny about my introduction to fic is that for the longest time I simply went from author's web page to author's web page. I didn't know about any of the archives. As a result, I got stuck on a fabulous circuit tour of the best writers and stories out there. It wasn't until a few weeks into my reading orgy that I found out not everyone was a gifted writer. <g> I stumbled onto Gossamer, picked a story at random, stopped at about the third sentence and thought, "okay, THAT's not gonna work. Geez."

Damnit. 531 words.

Sigh. Oh the pressure of having to appear either sophisticated or honest. <g> Truth: Feedback is thrilling, awe inspiring, never-quite-expected evidence that my stories do not exist in the void I sometimes fear they do. When I started writing and got my first beta comments back from Jill and Barbara D. I thought that *was* feedback. Later, when letters starting appearing from people I didn't know you could have scraped me off the floor with a spoon. I feel kind of insanely fond of everyone who has ever sent me feedback, I do, but that's not why I write. I've formed some great friendships with people who sent me critical feedback, and alternately, even the kindest letter won't help me feel better about a piece I'm not satisfied with. That sounds quite healthy, doesn't it? Of course, you should have seen the keening spectacle I made of myself when Deja.com lost my folders a month ago. Ha! <eg>