When the UST RSTs, Or, Some naively hopeful thoughts before Season 8 begins

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Title:	When the UST RSTs, Or, Some naively hopeful thoughts before Season 8 begins
Creator:	Fialka
Date(s):	2000
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:
External Links:	When the UST RSTs - Fialka, Archived version
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When the UST RSTs, Or, Some naively hopeful thoughts before Season 8 begins is by Fialka. This essay discusses whether or not the sexual tension between Scully and Mulder has been resolved.

It was part of a series. The author comments that: "Many of these essays first appeared as discussions on OBSSE, Scullyfic and/or ATXA."

The essay was first posted to The Annotated X-Files Study Guide and is at Fialka's Candybox.

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

Believe it or not, considering the sort of fanfiction I write, I have never wanted to see Mulder and Scully's 'first time on screen. That would immediately write it in stone. I've always liked the fact that the 'big moment' happens for all of us in any way we want it to happen -- or not at all. At this point, I don't think they could remotely do justice to the years of imagining it ourselves. And I don't want *my* first time wiped away by a half-assed PGTV effort to please everyone. It'll be like the movie Not!Kiss, which pleased me not at all. I like the way things happened this year -- as if someone fiinally stopped stopping the actors from putting their own spin on things. I prefer them reading a sexual relationship into the lines, rather than having CC write it there (whoah! flying pigs!) I prefer having room to interpret. When Scully plays with Mulder's tie and growls 'Do it for me,' I can imagine anything from her making a spectacular recovery of sexual self-esteem -- enough to start throwing innuendo at Mulder the way he's always done it to her -- to both of them knowing it *will* happen, though not when, to hot monkey lurve taking place during the opening credits. I like that. Oh, who the hell am I fooling? Yeah, okay, I want one shot of them in bed, curled up asleep like satisfied little kittens, and no silk jammies either. That would make me very happy. Okay? There. I admitted it. Now -- <Fi stuffs her drooling shipper back into the closet>

<Fi sticks her no-romo gnome back out in the garden of LaLaLand> -- yes, I guess some kind of absolute confirmation would be good at this point, so we can all just Get the F*ck On With It. Sigh. And apparently someone did, because now, having never had sex, Scully is pregnant. So...if we believe that this is Mulder's little sprog, do we consider the UST resolved, never to reappear? We have no proof, having never seen them actually do/say/indicate anything to that effect. Then again, why should we assume that sexual tension is forever resolved by proof that biblical knowledge has been had? In my <erumph> experience, sexual tension occurs whenever one or both partners want sex and can't have it. Like in the middle of an investigation. Sure, there's a difference between the life-size 'will we or won't we' and the night-size version, but the latter has all sorts of fun and yummy USTy possibilities too. Does knowing that they have slept together, at least once, change the held breath that accompanies a surreptitious touch of the hand? Would the tiny gesture at the end of Pusher not still reek with meaning, perhaps even more so now that they know what it is to truly touch? Have we not always reacted to these because they were physical affirmations of a feeling neither could find adequate words to express? With the stakes even higher now, with the need to hide the truth from everyone, not just themselves, what would change about that?

Of course most of us will go with the obvious interpretation, but it is -- even now I suppose -- still possible to say that they're fully united in 'the quest' and that's all. (I think it's pretty hard to say they haven't had sex after that smile at the end of Requiem, but...) Whether our personal take is 'so' or 'so not', what's important from the viewer's standpoint is that those little touches were full of meaning again, that we had something to decipher. To me, that's what the show needed to revitalise itself, not new characters or idiotic mytharse twists. And it should be left like that -- up to the actors to give us clues to interpret where the relationship is, full sail or on the rocks. The RST, if it is RST, should occupy the interstices, just like the UST did for years. I think that would have been a truly fascinating thing to watch over a normal season. Too bad we ain't gonna get a normal season. And I'm going to stop right there about that.