I Think I Adopted A "Dana Scully Avoidance Compulsion" Headcanon As An Automatic, Relatable Thing Because

I think I adopted a "Dana Scully avoidance compulsion" headcanon as an automatic, relatable thing because it felt natural to me in the context, but in trying to articulate it, I do also think that the evidence is there. Sort of backwards evidence but still.

It's many things, like scully bringing in the jersey devil (that one was sort of as a joke but still) and the 'vampires' that turned out to be the eves. It's her being scared of the mechinations and sinister events during the pilot, with the famous bug bite scene and having to be removed to use a totally neutral voice stance when she found the connection to Billy Miles. It's in her believing in Boggs and Bruckman and Kevin Crowder and Gibson Praise. There's even a moment in Little Green Men I had never noticed before because I'm usually distracted by their very insane reunion, where Scully sees the poor dead man and realizes that Mulder actually has been right in the middle of the mytharc activities again, and asks if it's 'them' again, looking terrified, when it turns out to be military helicopters. She does believe. In a lot, almost all of it at least the way the character is initially structured.

And she is afraid. But I don't think it's 'i'm afraid to believe' in the sense of fearing foolishness or disappointment. Not even a matter of fearing the things exactly, because she can cope when it's unfolding in some sort of wild emergent situation. But. This part is hard to articulate if you don't have OCD (though if you do, I'm sorry and I'm sure you understand lol). But there are things you can't talk about. It's not 'allowed.' it's too personal or it's like saying it will make it real or make it happen to you again, or because admitting what you want might make other bad things happen to you, or because talking about the scary things that have power over you might draw them to you, or you might discover spontaneously that bad things had happened to you in the past but you forgot about it completely and if you look in the direction of the secret cabinet of powerful, charged, scary things that you can't talk about or think about, more of them might come out at you than you can deal with. And it will be your fault because you touched that live wire or drew that attention to yourself. You might even have to do extra things or say extra denials or take extra care in other outward aspects of your life so that these things can't get you.

Of course in the real world, none of these fears and rituals and avoidance compulsions are true. They aren't based in fact.

But Scully is actually shown to have some levels of extra perception, right from the first season with BtS and Lazarus. And she lives in a world where monsters and aliens are real. So while these powerful compulsions might just be based in anxiety and magical thinking, they also might not. And for her to be able to figure out which avoidances are based in what, she would have to be a lot more willing to push through and examine it than she is.

I think that's part of why believer Scully can work in canon, and a watsonian explanation for why she's the most open about it in s8 and 9. She's already in a catastrophic state, and everything is already set in motion, it doesn't matter what evil or fate she accidentally calls up because it's all happening anyway and all the perfectionist rituals have fallen away because the crisis there and she doesn't have the energy or the willpower left beyond survival and coping however she can. Which was probably on some levels a relief, but mostly was foreign and exhausting.

(I also think this is why I have so much trouble with the 2nd movie and revival Scully. Say what you will about the overall quality of the end of the original run and it's mostly all fair, but I do think that they had thoroughly deconstructed Scully in a way that mostly stayed in character -- save of course for those 2 big things that were decided by certain production realities -- and brought her through that crisis of reality shift and being forced to let go of those patterns that felt like they were keeping her safe but in the end Didn't Work. The ending is bittersweet because for all they've lost, they have gained a measure of freedom on an emotional and personal level that they didn't have before. And then the Late Canon picked up some pieces of Scully from old days without trying to remember what was under the surface and tried to stick them back on and push her back into the old pigeon hole she was stuck in before.

The thing is that I can appreciate cyclic storytelling, or leat helical storytelling filled with parallels. But I don't like a reset button, and after everything she went through to learn, using one on Scully doesn't seem fair.)