“The Truth We Both Know”: Readerly Desire and Heteronarrative in The X-Files

In the final moments of “Existence,” the Season Eight Finale of The X-Files—and, for many fans, the end of the series itself—Mulder and Scully, at long last, shared a passionate kiss.  Set in the intimate scene of Scully’s bedroom, with a bassinet and mobile tucked in the background and newborn son cradled between them, this kiss confirmed what many fans, known on-line as “shippers,” had believed for a long time.  Mulder and Scully had sex.  Beyond offering new insight into the personal lives of the paranormal protagonists, this scene from “Existence,” coupled with earlier images of intimacy (including Mulder touching Scully’s pregnant belly and a baby shower held in Scully’s living room), is strikingly reminiscent of scenarios depicted in X-Files fan fiction.  What’s interesting is the timing. 

For years, series creator Chris Carter declared that Mulder and Scully would never become romantically involved.  For years, the series teased shippers and other fans with near-kisses, undercover marriages, and intimate gestures.  And, for years, fans have been writing stories in which such moments served as evidence of the Mulder/Scully romance (MSR).  While these early pieces of fan fiction undoubtedly reveal more about the viewers’ desires than those of the characters—as they clearly go against the grain of Carter’s canon—in the wake of Scully’s miraculous pregnancy, MSR fan fiction appears to predict rather than contradict what happened on our television screens on Sunday nights.  On one level, this similarity points to Ten Thirteen’s increasing attentiveness to fan interests and activities; indeed, the eighth season episode “Alone” went so far as to name a character, Agent Leyla Harrison, after a long-term fan who had recently passed away.  More importantly, a significant strain of fan fiction has worked to grapple with anxieties consistently present yet frequently suppressed on screen—anxieties surrounding gender, heterosexuality, and reproductive technologies.   And, as The X-Files neared the end of its nine-season television run, the show itself began to mobilize the same strategies of domestication in order to contain the subversive potential of its extreme possibilities.  As a result, this similarity underscores the significance of fan fiction as a vital—and gendered—locus of cultural debate.

The purpose of this analysis is neither to provide a thorough investigation of the psycho-social function of fan fiction nor to trace the images of reproduction that have governed The X-Files cultural imaginary since Season One; rather, I want to consider how fan writing offers a model for understanding a narrative trajectory already at work in the series; the tendency to use fan fiction as a space to rewrite the MSR has much to do with an attempt to negotiate cultural anxieties about gender and reproductive technologies that The X-Files canon systematically foregrounds and problematizes.  If we accept that television, as a cultural artifact, both shapes and reflects contemporary beliefs and concerns, one of the best avenues to investigate those concerns lies in fan responses to the primary texts.  While popular culture always contributes to what E. Ann Kaplan describes as “generalized fantasies,” the very purpose of fan fiction is to indulge those fantasies.  The rewriting that occurs in fan-based literature provides an outlet for the most troubling aspects of the canon and, in this way, reflects on the world presented in the show.  More than a voyeuristic or vicarious desire to see Mulder and Scully coupled, then, fan fiction provides a space to stage legitimate cultural analysis.  Why is it that fans desire to see Mulder and Scully romantically involved?  In what ways does this desire respond to the issues presented in the series itself?  Like Henry Jenkins, whose Textual Poachers offers a foundational discussion of fan culture and fan art, I come at this project as both a critic and a fan.  Because fan fiction is so fast-growing and wide-ranging—to date there are over 30,000 stories archived at The Gossamer Project, an online archive devoted exclusively to X-Files fiction—my discussion is necessarily limited and speculative.  Given the undeniable emphasis on the heterosexual romance plot—or heteronarrative—that emerges in “Existence,” however, it makes sense to isolate a group of texts that best offers answers to the questions about reproduction and gender that the show itself responds to and creates.  With this limitation in mind, “babyfic,” a subgenre of fan fiction that focuses on Mulder and Scully’s roles as parents, provides a useful starting point.

In a culture fraught with anxiety about reproductive technologies, single mothers by choice, and the so-called “decline” of the traditional family, The X-Files offers frightening insight into some of America’s worst fears.  Indeed, The X-Files first season followed on the heels of Dan Quayle’s infamous indictment of Murphy Brown, and the new series quickly took up cloning, genetic engineering, and illicit reproduction as central subjects.  At the center of this nexus is Special Agent Dana Scully, a woman who has chosen careers in two masculine fields (medicine and law enforcement) in place of family.  Even more tellingly, her career has cost her the possibility of domestic life, as her job at the FBI results in infertility, as she ironically reminds viewers in “Requiem,” the episode that reveals her unexplainable pregnancy.  Scully’s infertility, as loyal viewers know, resulted from a series of tests to which she was subjected during her abduction, tests connected to the Syndicate’s project of creating an alien-human hybrid through advanced reproductive technologies.  Significantly, however, Scully’s ultimate quest for maternity necessarily involves the use of these same kinds of reproductive technologies, as she and her partner eventually pursue in-vitro fertilization in the episode “Per Manum.”  In creating a back-story to account for Scully’s seemingly miraculous pregnancy in Season Eight, this episode highlights this uncanny co-implication of lawful and unlawful reproduction when Scully’s own doctor appears to be experimenting with alien fetuses.  Given these terrifying images of illicit reproduction, it makes sense that fans sketch alternate narratives of Mulder and Scully’s domestic bliss.  Much as the final scene in “Existence” seals the previous eight seasons with a heteronormative kiss on the lips, babyfic provides an instance of what Judith Roof, discussing reproductive anxiety, describes as “an attempt to assert a traditional narrative dynamic on phenomena that represent a breach” (192).  If narrative, as Roof explains, already tends to be informed by heterosexual logic—a metaphorical if not always literal joining of opposites for (re)productive ends—the explicit turn to the romance narrative in The X-Files is doubly hetero, underscoring the level of threat opened up by the primary text.  Fan fiction generally, and babyfic specifically, provides a valuable space to rework and render safe the reproductive nightmare inflicted on Scully by repositioning her as the object of a “normal” heterosexual dynamic.

Although fan fiction (or fanfic, as it’s called by its writers and readers) is not by definition romantic or erotic, it often tends to be in the case of The X-Files.  As Malinda Lo points out, “a review of the awards [given by other fans] shows that although MSR stories were written as early as 1995, MSR did not become the dominant category until sometimes in late 1996 or 1997” (n.p.).  Significantly, such timing corresponds with the increased threat to Scully’s reproductive capacity, as the 1996-1997 (fourth) season brings with it the news that her ova had been harvested as part of the same project that resulted in her cancer.  In its wake, MSR stories either add sex to the agents’ paranormal routine, or keep them in the bedroom for so long that cigarettes once again become symbolic of post-coital rapture, rather than government conspiracy.  While these romance narratives undoubtedly offer an outlet for the unrequited desires of fans, a stronger depiction of the MSR, found in babyfic, uses fan fiction to restore Scully’s procreative capacity as well.  Online archives at Gossamer and other sites indicate that this subgenre has been around almost since the inception of Files fanfic, long before the canon itself provided substantial evidence of the MSR.  These domesticated stories, of course, have shifted focus almost entirely away from the paranormal to concentrate on the overly normal and mundane.  In Jori Remington’s “Christopher Ryan Scully” series, for example, Dana and Fox actually discuss buying a minivan in bed.  And while Remington’s series situates this domestic relationship against the ubiquitous backdrop of government conspiracy and intrigue that has made the show a cult hit, other stories ignore the plot of The X-Files altogether.  The vignette “Birth: Ocean,” devoted to Scully giving birth at home in the presence of a midwife and doula, offers a case in point; in this story, “Spooky” Mulder has gone from the cynical, often morose, investigator we see on TV to a loving husband and supportive childbirth coach.  Although, as Lo contends, “married fic” tends to be “considered by many fans to be unrealistic and silly,” or, at worst, instances of “Mary Sue” characterization (when the characters are used merely as substitutes for the writer’s own interests and desires), I want to suggest that the specific rewriting that occurs in babyfic—with its emphasis on heterosexual romance and traditional family dynamics—provides a valuable exploration of anxieties and undercurrents present in The X-Files canon, having to do with unlawful reproduction, gender roles, and medical rape.  However “unrealistic and silly” these stories might be individually, when taken together they are suggestive of a cultural mood surrounding The X-Files and its fandom.  Moreover, the ideological work of this subgenre becomes more pressing when considered against the clear heterosexual trajectory of The X-Files itself.

For its first seven seasons, the series did everything possible to forestall the expected reproductive end, refusing to allow Mulder and Scully anything more than a chaste New Year’s Eve kiss and generally ignoring the time bomb of Scully’s broken biological clock.  The single episode (“Emily”) that depicts Scully as a mother ends with the death of the child and a clean-up job that removes the rest of Scully’s genetically engineered, alien-hybrid offspring.  Then, in what Susan Faludi would term a “pronatalist backlash,” the final seasons of The X-Files, like the fan fiction that immediately preceded it, work hard to reassert Scully’s threatened maternity.  But it is the fifth season episodes “Christmas Carol” and “Emily” that provide the crisis point in both these narrative arcs.  A disturbing episode to many fans, “Emily” has become the focus for many post-episode pieces of fan fiction, including the book-length work Iolokus.  Providing a striking amount of online discussion, Iolokus, written by award-winning fanfic writers MustangSally and RivkaT, works out a number of problems raised in “Emily.”  Its plot centers on the ramifications of genetic engineering and cloning, and it grapples with that reproductive anxiety within the domestic space of the newly established Mulder/Scully household.  In Iolokus, the sanctioned reproduction of the marriage plot polices the uncontrollable reproduction of cloning; as such, the novel demonstrates the way that MSR fan fiction negotiates problems raised in The X-Files canon and hints at the need for the MSR as the series comes to its end.  Not only does heterosexual reproduction assure viewers that all is okay, but in an inverted logic, Mulder and Scully can only be united because of the threats to the propagatory order; anti-reproductive tendencies ultimately operate in the service of assuring proper reproductive ends.

Written from a desire to resolve some of the issues raised in what they characterize as the radically unsatisfying “Christmas Carol”/”Emily” arc, MustangSally and RivkaT’s Iolokus series takes the genetic experimentation of the mythology arc as its central subject.  Called in to assist in a routine investigation, Mulder and Scully encounter a man, Jason, who could be Mulder’s identical twin.  They quickly learn that Mulder’s parents had more direct involvement in the Project than they once thought; in fact, Mulder himself is the product of a cloning experiment that produced nine other children.  With the exception of Emerson, the one who is Mulder’s “twin,” the other brothers all suffer from various degrees of sociopathic behavior.  The most deviant, George, is on a quest to kill the other brothers, and Mulder and Scully try desperately to save them.  Written mere months after the debates over Dolly and the real-life controversy surrounding cloning technology, the choice to equate genetic experimentation with pathological behavior hints strongly at the cultural concerns underlying Iolokus.  And if having Mulder be a genetically-engineered dectuplet isn’t enough to sketch this hyperbolic portrait of unlawful reproduction, the writers quickly introduce another twist to this reproductive nightmare.  Jason’s company, Roush—known in the canon as the biotechnology firm involved with the production of the vaccine for the alien virus—has continued its experimentation, with the help of Mulder’s long-missing sister, Samantha.  The products of these new experiments are gestating fetuses created from the ova harvested from Scully and other female abductees.  Upon learning of the experiments, Scully plans on ending them through any means necessary, including destroying the children.  When she arrives at one of Roush’s facilities, however, the clean-up effort has already begun, as evidenced by what appears to be infanticide.  One infant has survived, and genetic testing reveals her to be Mulder and Scully’s biological progeny.  Although the baby could, of course, be the product of Scully’s ovum and a sperm cell belonging to any one of Mulder’s “brothers,” she chooses to believe the child to be fathered by her partner out of psychological necessity.  In the alternative universe of Iolokus, heterosexual desire between Mulder and Scully becomes a way to ensure “proper” reproductive ends, to counter the illicit desire of Mulder’s sexually deviant and sociopathic siblings, as well as the unlawful reproductive ends of the Project.

From beginning to end, Iolokus traces Mulder and Scully’s attempt to police the acts of monstrous reproduction that abound in the world of The X-Files.  Taking “Emily” to its logical extreme, Iolokus allows Scully to restore her reproductive capacity and to revenge her medical rape.  After Scully effectively destroys Roush, setting fire to the laboratory in an act of renegade heroism and putting an end to the experiments involving her genetic material, she begins to reclaim her reproductive rights and put them to the proper filial end.  Whereas “Emily” merely explores the possibility of Scully’s becoming an adoptive parent, Iolokus makes good on that promise.  Scully brings the surviving infant, now named Miranda, back to Washington and goes on maternity leave to set up a home for her child.  A faithful heterocosm to the real world of The X-File, however, Iolokus presents numerous plot complications to the possibility of Mulder and Scully’s becoming domestically involved.  In the inverted logic of the series, Mulder and Scully pose a threat to the patriarchal order of the Syndicate, and both Mulder’s “brothers” George and Jason react to the threat of their union by trying to claim Scully for their own.  Raped by Jason who impersonates her lover, Mulder, Scully reacts by distancing herself, both physically and emotionally, from the latter.  Like the canon, Iolokus uses Scully’s body as a site of contestation over reproduction, a battle intimately connected with containing Mulder and Scully’s sexual life within the proper family narrative.

 Iolokus is perhaps an exemplary heteronarrative, taking heterosexual reproduction and obstacles to it as its central subject, and following the “proper” trajectory of the romance plot.  In order to undermine the Syndicate’s warped patriarchy, Mulder must reclaim his family name and pass it on to a child of his own, thus replacing his platonic partner with his pregnant bride.  Their union promises to put reproduction to its proper heterosexual end, symbolically overturning the challenge to human procreation posed by the Syndicate.  The lengthy fanfic dramatizes an attempt to overcome the obstacles and detours that stand in the way of Mulder and Scully’s living happily ever after, magnifying those obstacles tenfold with the cloning plot.  As Judith Roof explains in Come As You Are: Sexuality and Narrative, these detours or “perversions”—in this text, threats to heterosexual reproduction and family—serve as structural necessities in narrative (xxi).  And, much as Chris Carter understands the necessity of good timing in the narrative of television success, MustangSally and RivkaT know that Mulder and Scully can only come together at the end, and so they move, as Scully says, “two steps forward, three steps back.”  To understand the larger cultural function of Iolokus as an extension of the canon, however, it is important to consider it in light of the work of The X-Files mythology arc.

Over the course of the series, the Syndicate systematically manages to hide all evidence of its experimentation; viewers might remember what’s stored behind the walls of the Pentagon, but Mulder and Scully seem to suffer from selective amnesia.  The possibility always exists that the products of experiments involving ova of Scully (and the other abductees) are still “out there,” but each of the mythology episodes, as suggested in “Emily,” ends with the destruction of evidence and, thus, temporary closure.  Based on the larger organization of the show, which rotates between mytharcs and standalone episodes, questions raised in the mythology arc go unresolved for weeks or months at a time.  For fans, generally more interested in the backstory and characterizations than monsters in standalones, stories such as Iolokus provide a way to explore the larger consequences of the episode, particularly as it pertains to the MSR.  Fan fiction offers, as Jenkins explains, an outlet to create alternative endings, to write beyond the timeline offered in the original TV series.  According to Jenkins, “[S]ome of these approaches to fan writing actively expand textual boundaries, constructing histories or futures for the characters that go beyond the range of stories that could be told on television; others rework the program ideology . . . in order to make the texts speak to different perspectives” (176).  In other words, fan fiction provides an opportunity to make The X-Files into the narrative fans would like to see, rather than the narrative it is.  And that narrative is undeniable hetero.  As evidenced by Iolokus, fan fiction gives Mulder the ability to restore his family name and Scully the ability to reclaim her reproductive system; declared barren in “Christmas Carol,” she miraculously becomes able to conceive in many pieces of fan fiction, trading her badge and gun for diapers and midnight feedings.  Writers offer many explanations, likely and unlikely, but the result is inevitably the same; despite the conspiracy against their union, Mulder and Scully have the baby that Scully so desperately wants.  Iolokus, for all its angst and obstacles, is one such narrative.

In the midst of a bizarre custody battle to keep the genetically-engineered Miranda—Roush tries to pay off Scully’s brother Bill in an attempt to keep Miranda away from the dynamic duo—Scully finds herself pregnant with a child that is in all likelihood Mulder’s.  With the threat of the Mulder clones behind them, Scully and Mulder work towards resolving the custody suit and getting on with their proper propagatory lives.  The suit, of course, is merely one in a series of complications that defer the plot until the ideal end, when MustangSally and RivkaT provide readers with the satisfying union they want.  Mulder and Scully marry and live happily ever after, even if happiness is bought at a high price:  Miranda’s blood being used for testing at the Roush corporation.  A sequel, Syadiloh, picks up a few months later, as they prepare for the birth of the twins, which takes place, significantly, on the eve of the new millennium.  All in all, Iolokus yields a happy heteronarrative end, an end designed to restore order to the universe threatened by unauthorized reproductive experiments.  Iolokus not only answers questions raised in the canon about Scully’s medical rape, providing the satisfaction of knowledge, it also answers those questions in such a way that Mulder and Scully have some amount of agency, providing a way to quell the anxiety that the show raises regarding gender roles and reproduction.  By the end of Iolokus, the bad guys are dead, the dynamic duo has worked out their difficulties with cohabitation, and the family of five settle into domestic bliss.  And, while the wry humor and irony of Iolokus demonstrate a desire to work against the overly sentimental tendencies of most babyfic, the narrative structure operates much the same.  Initially the plot complication that brings the couple together—the threat of illegitimate reproduction—has been properly contained within the heterosexual romance narrative by the end.  In its faithfulness to the characterization, plot, and tone of the canon, Iolokus provides an ideal mirror in which to see the series’ end—from partners to parents, from filing cabinets to baby furniture.

Despite its implausible plot—even by X-Files standards of extreme possibilities—Iolokus provides a fantastic look into the nightmarish world of reproduction that the TV series turns into a weekly spectacle.  More provocatively, Iolokus utilizes the Syndicate’s experiments with genetic engineering and reproductive technology as the very rationale for Mulder and Scully’s marriage, even as their eventual coupling serves to police the Project.  Significantly, in this same vein, The X-Files utilizes Scully’s technologically-induced infertility as the catalyst for Mulder and Scully’s relationship, the product of which is a child who threatens the stability of the Project.  A sequence of flashbacks in “Per Manum” reveals that Scully asked Mulder to father a child she hopes to conceive through in-vitro fertilization.  Although the final flashback intimates that their attempts were unsuccessful, Mulder holds Scully tenderly and advises her to “never give up on a miracle.”  Indeed, the episode closes with a shot of Scully lying in a hospital bed, hand resting on her belly.  While Ten Thirteen Productions would never be so bold as to declare Mulder the father outright, the juxtaposition of these two scenes hints at the truth of the baby’s paternity.

The final arc of the season, “Essence” and “Existence”—which, for many fans, functions as the end of the series itself—returns to these questions about the nature of Scully’s pregnancy, as well as hints at the infant’s function within the larger mythology of the series.  As in the fan-produced Iolokus, Mulder and Scully’s budding family both threatens and is threatened by the Project; furthermore, the agents’ newly born domesticity provides the desired heterosexual end that viewers/readers require to make sense of the reproductive nightmare embodied in Scully’s pregnancy.  Picking up on the visual and narrative cues from “Per Manum,” “Essence,” which opens with a voiceover discussing reproduction in the age of genetic engineering, intimates that Scully’s baby is something other than the “normal” product of a romantic tryst between the X-Files partners.  As Mulder asks, “How did this child come to be? What set its heart beating? Is it the product of a union? Or the work of a divine hand? An answered prayer? A true miracle? Or is it a wonder of technology— the intervention of other hands? What do I tell this child about to be born? What do I tell Scully?  And what do I tell myself?”  Accompanying this monologue, the teaser incorporates two sets of reproductive images:  one features sperm cells swimming frantically toward an unfertilized ovum, the other depicts an egg being manipulated by artificial means; each set of images offers an origin story for the baby’s unexpected conception.  In this way, the episode as a whole shifts between cozy, domestic moments and scenes that threaten Scully’s long desired maternity, as dramatized though the character Lizzy Gill, a baby nurse (hired by Scully’s own mother), who happens to work for the Syndicate.  Gill characterizes Scully’s unborn child as “more human than human,” a child with no human frailties whom the latest brand of aliens, as well as government doctors, want desperately for their own purposes.  As a result, “Essence” ends with Scully’s going into hiding in order to give birth and protect her child from her enemies, human and alien alike.

Despite the alarming possibilities opened up in “Essence,” the eighth season of The X-Files ends with a kiss and a revelation about “the truth” of the infant’s conception.  In this way, the larger narrative of the series ultimately reaches a proper, heteronormative end, suggesting not only the presence but also the primacy of the MSR in terms of the cultural work of the series.  If Iolokus quells reader anxiety by using unauthorized reproduction as a means to bring Mulder and Scully together in domestic bliss, the series itself turns to heterosexual romance as a means to re-contain anxiety surrounding reproductive technology that the show opens up.  Although the show continued to a ninth season, the final moments of “Existence” is, within a narrative about Mulder and Scully, the end; although this end occurred largely for off-screen reasons—actor David Duchovny’s decision not to reprise his role as Mulder—it makes sense in terms of the on-screen narrative as well.  If the largest subtext of the series has been the romantic relationship between Mulder and Scully, a relationship never consummated on camera, that subtext has clearly come to its logical end, with Mulder and Scully kissing, their newborn son cradled between them.  Although “Essence” called into question viewer assumptions that the baby is the product of Mulder and Scully’s sexual relation, the dialogue in the last moment of “Existence” implies otherwise.  Scully says, “From the moment I became pregnant I feared the truth, about how and why, and I know that you feared it too.”  Mulder responds, “I think that what we feared were the possibilities.  The truth we both know,” and leans in to kiss his partner.  In this way, “the truth” that remained “out there” for eight long seasons, turns out to be the love between heroes that results in the miraculous birth of a child conceived to a woman once considered barren.  More than a comment on William’s parentage—the child is named, Scully says, after Mulder’s father—Mulder’s remark equates the baby with “the truth,” the quest, of the series as a whole.  Indeed, in the birth of the baby, both the narrative of the reproductive nightmare that is The X-Files and the narrative of Mulder and Scully’s romance, have come to a united end.

In the co-implication of these two narratives, both the fan-produced Iolokus and The X-Files series itself attempt to work through the horrific possibilities opened up by technological advancement.  Just as many insurance policies seek to regulate lifestyle choices by covering only those fertility services desired by married couples, fan fiction turns to heterosexual union as a way to overturn both Scully’s subversion of traditional gender roles and the Syndicate’s unnatural conceptions.  Likewise, in its choice to contain the nightmarish implications of William’s birth within the domestic sphere, the eighth season of The X-Files offers consolation not only to Scully, who wants desperately to believe her son is “normal,” but also to viewers who look to the MSR as the necessary outcome of the plot.  If a government conspiracy initially brings Mulder and Scully together, the product of their sexual union in both texts is a child with the power to bring the powers-that-be to justice.  As such, these instances of “babyfic” are pregnant with much more than the domestic desires of fans.  

Whereas fan fiction has been understood to be primarily about sex and subversive readings—as Jenkins’ work on female fans and “slash” suggests—babyfic, on the other hand, demonstrates the need to contain and work through the extreme possibilities of the canon.  The turn to heterosexual romance to underwrite the narrative of government conspiracy, which for many fans is the show’s defining trait, reveals the level of anxiety surrounding reproductive technology and medical experimentation.  The truth that Mulder and Scully know turns out to be the answer that viewers have been seeking all along.  And well after the ultimate end of The X-Files, fan fiction will undoubtedly continue to communicate readers’ most intimate desires and fears.

Robin Silbergleid

Department of English

Austin College

Sherman, TX 75090-4400

Works Cited

“Christmas Carol.”  Written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, Frank Spotnitz.  The X-Files. FOX. 7 Dec. 1997.

“Emily.”  Written by Vince Gilligan, John Shiban, and Frank Spotnitz. The X-Files. FOX. 14 Dec. 1997.

“Essence.”  Written by Chris Carter and Kim Manners. The X-Files. FOX. 13 May 2001.

“Existence.” Written by Chris Carter and Kim Manners.  The X-Files. FOX. 20 May 2001.

Kaplan, E. Ann.  Motherhood and Representation: The Mother in Popular Culture and Melodrama.  New York: Routledge, 1992.

Jenkins, Henry.  Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture.  New York: Routledge, 1992.

Jenrose. “Birth: Ocean.”  The Gossamer Project: The X-Files.  Fan Fiction Archive.

18 Dec. 1997 <http://www.gossamer.org>.

Lo, Malinda.  “Dana Scully Uncovered: X-Files Fan Fiction and the Posthuman Body.”  24 Dec. 2001 <http://www.stanford.edu/~mmlo/scully/dsu.htm>.

MustangSally and Rivka T. Iolokus. The Gossamer Project: The X-Files. Fan Fiction Archive. 1 March 1998 <http://www.gossamer.org>.

“Per Manum.” Written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz. The X-Files. FOX. 20 Feb. 2001.

Remington, Jori.  “Christopher Ryan Scully.” The Gossamer Project: The X-Files.  Fan Fiction Archive. 21 Jan. 1999 <http://www.gossamer.org>.

Roof, Judith. Come As You Are: Sexuality and Narrative. New York: Columbia, 1996.

——.  Reproductions of Reproduction: Imaging Symbolic Change.  New York:

     Routledge, 1996.