Family Dinners: Sibling Elements in the M/S Relationship aka A Side of Bill, a Bottle of Mulder, and a Little Sam/Scully Pudding

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Title:	Family Dinners: Sibling Elements in the M/S Relationship aka A Side of Bill, a Bottle of Mulder, and a Little Sam/Scully Pudding
Creator:	Fialka
Date(s):	1999
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:
External Links:	Family Dinners - Fialka, Archived version
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Family Dinners: Sibling Elements in the M/S Relationship aka A Side of Bill, a Bottle of Mulder, and a Little Sam/Scully Pudding is by Fialka.

It was part of a series and was was first posted to The Annotated X-Files Study Guide and is at Fialka's Candybox.. The author comments that: "Many of these essays first appeared as discussions on OBSSE, Scullyfic and/or ATXA."

"This essay originally appeared as part of a long...um, VERY long...dissertation posted on the OBSSE mailing list. I have divided that essay into its two constituent parts. The other half deals mainly with a philosophical discussion of the death of Melissa Scully and can be found at Melissa Meditations."

Later, it was reposted:

Sadly, when the old NBCI server went the way of so many really cool, free things on the net, I never could find another free site with enough space to house the whole Study Guide, and it didn't get enough traffic to warrant paying for 250mb on a server somewhere. Not to mention, I no longer have as much time on my hands as I did back then, so like the UFOs...well, it is another UFO. Some of it still appears to be here, if you can wade your way through all the advertising on FortuneCity. I sure won't be insulted if you don't. These essays are from the original site, and appear here unchanged. Unlinked titles got abducted by aliens somewhere along the way. If you find them wandering dazed by the side of the road, could you be so kind as to send them home?

Excerpts

Now, we've all seen the many familial parallels between Scully and Mulder. They've both lost their fathers (who were both named William) under sudden - albeit very different - circumstances. Both had lifelong doubts about that father's pride in them. (Ana/BW/PC showed us that at least that far along, Scully still had those doubts - her gut level reaction to Mulder's death and her suspension being 'Dad would be so ashamed of me.'). Both have lost their sisters and both feel that their actions have contributed in some way to that loss and the subsequent rupture in their families. (The rupture in the Scully family has been less dramatic, but at least in terms of Our Heroes and their closeness to their mothers, Season 6 shows it to be equally pronounced - we saw neither.) But now let us go back to the yin/yang, the opposing balance. According to whichever birthdate for Sam you choose (Conduit or Paper Clip) she and Scully are still roughly the same age. Mulder is about the same age as Bill Jr. Certainly these similarities carry themselves over into M&S's relationship.

As Bill and Dana's relationship is stuck in adolescence, Mulder's relationship to Samantha was arrested at an even earlier stage. However much Bill Scully has idealised the memory of his sister as as child, she did grow up to challenge him. Samantha will be forever be eight years old. Mulder no longer sees that he probably thought she was a pain in the ass most of the time. As each year passes his love for her can only become more pure, more noble, more mythic. As each year passes he forgets the real little girl whose final act was to kick him and call him buttmunch, and remembers only the stylised Samantha, suspended in space, drifting away while he stands and watches, helpless.

I always got the feeling that if Scully walked into Mulder's arms he would take her without a second thought, but I have never been quite sure if she would take him. Certainly she is more confused about her feelings for him, and more frightened by the strength of them. Now Mulder seems to have lost his sexual attraction to her, just when Scully was beginning to accept hers to him. His reaction to Padgett could be construed to be that of a jealous lover, but it seemed to me more like an older brother who wants to protect his stubborn little sister from a man he believes will only hurt her. (In other words, it looked a lot like Bill's reaction to Mulder.)