For Real?

I was in the middle of composing this really meaningful, thoughtful post when I took a break to surf the internet and I found this:




WHAT is this?? They are making another X-Files movie. Why doesn't anyone tell me ANYTHING?

I spent many years watching the X-Files. I watched it when it was just starting to catch on and they were doing cool stuff like finding viruses in the Antarctic. I watched it when it was really popular and they started doing those ridiculously silly alien plots. (Believe it or not, up to a certain point the alien abduction was actually rather compelling drama.) I watched all the boring shows and all the soapy shows and all the really, really, brilliant shows that made me wish, with everything I had, that I could someday be that good, that inventive a writer. There are episodes of this show that are better than 90% of the novels I've read. You can watch them over and over and the writing stays sublime.

That's all well and good, and Mulder was all well and good, but the really cool thing about this show was always Scully. She was brainy, and beautiful, and redheaded, but she was also short, pedantic, lonely, always working, usually humorless, and dressed in off-the-rack suits. In short, she was something like an actual woman.

I wanted to be Scully. The same way lots of young women a few years later wanted to be Buffy, I suppose. But Scully showed all of us brainy girls that being brainy didn't have to be the handicap we thought it was. You could be brainy, and be cool with it, and be you, and if most of the world wasn't up to that... well, maybe you'd be a little lonely. But at least you'd be you. And maybe you'd get to meet aliens and David Duchovny, maybe in that order.

It'll be good to see Scully again. I'll be watching.