Who Owns Scully?

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Title:	Who Owns Scully?
Creator:	Fialka
Date(s):	October 1999
Medium:	online
Fandom:	The X-Files
Topic:
External Links:	Who Owns Scully? - Fialka, Archived version
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Who Owns Scully? is by Fialka.

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

Who owns Dana Scully? I do. I mean that. <ducking trout and other objects flying across the Atlantic and two continents> No really. In a sense, we each own Scully, because we have each invested parts of ourselves in her. We all have our own private, personal, individual vision of Scully - some quite off canon (judging by some of the fanfic I've read <g>), but mostly quite on, although we tweak different aspects of her personality based on our differing concurrences. For example, I'm sure that Catholic women have a slightly different relationship to Scully than I have, because they understand that facet of her on an experiential level, which I don't.

I think there is also a general agreement that certain non-canonical portrayals of Scully in fanfic -- for example, Iolokus!Scully -- do have their basis in the truth of who we've agreed Scully is, whether or not we like that particular playing up of certain aspects of her personality. In other words, however distorted Iolokus!Scully appears to be, I think we would all agree that it is a version of *Scully* and not some other character entirely. The same can be said of Iolokus!Mulder. In truth, M&S have taken on a larger life via fanfic, to the point where there is often some confusion about 1013 canon vs fic canon. At this point, there are so many fan-generated stories out there that certain fanfic ideas have become more canonical than anything from the series because they've not only been repeated more often, but with more consistency.

There is a collectively created idea of Scully which has as much to do with the actress's physicality (small, red hair, etc) as the combination of writers' visions that make up her available range of actions and her basic personality. Fanfic writers have elaborated on this, and IMHO, the best fics are the ones where a recognisably canonical Mulder and Scully are allowed to do things the canon does not allow -- and that includes more than simply having sex (with each other or anyone else). Whether MSR can be considered to elaborate on canon or must be considered alternate universe is another question, and maybe not one for this particular list.