Interview with Jess M.
by Nicola Simpson

Part Two

Where do you get your ideas?

Hmmm... I'll start with Darla. I met Darla when I wrote "Mutual" and she sent me a very persuasive email pointing out exactly what should happen, and where, in Mutual 5. Well, I never wrote Mutual 5, but I did write "The Last Crusade" using her suggestions. We've developed a hell of a friendship over the last year. She's been to my house, twice, and Tom and I are headed to Japan next year to visit her while she's teaching there. She still gives me ideas and inspirations.

Tom requested a fic once, and "Bombardier Boy" came from it. He also inspired "Poconos" with an idea for a case file. He was none-too-thrilled with the smutty results, however, as the very thought of our intrepid heroes getting down to the nasty makes him want to scream. He thought "Bombardier Boy" was too relationshippy, and I thought it was the cleanest thing I've ever written, hands down.

Mostly, however, ideas come from something I saw on TV, or read in a magazine. Discovery Channel is fabulous for ideas. Both "Tempo" and "Grand Seven" came from Discovery shows. Small things trigger me and send me out in search of info. I wrote "The 36th" out of one moment of explanation from the marvelous documentary "The Cruise". A little moment of Jewish lore and I'm thinking: That sounds like Mulder! Oh no! A story!

Post-eps are obvious, but they work in different ways. "Here" was an obvious, fill-in-the-blanks for "all things". "Reality Check" and "Amor Fati Redux" came more from my frustration with some stupidity on the show and a need to "fix" it.

And then there are the little ones (and occasional big one) that just spring out of nowhere. I have no idea where "Mutual" and its follow-ups came from. My lusty imagination, I suppose. Same with things like "Butt, Montana" and "Addendum 35d". Just a need for smut, I suppose...

I have absolutely no idea, to be honest. I don't dislike Elvis, but I don't like him either. He always struck me as rather pathetic. But I think some part of Mulder likes to believe in him, and it's the same part of his character that appeals to me. The hopeless and foolish romantic. So sometimes I like to give him what he craves.

Well, all humor is grossly subjective. Call it the "Something About Mary" syndrome. I went to see it with my husband and my best friend. My husband thought it was the worst thing he'd ever seen and spent about ten minutes in the bathroom right in the middle of the show thinking: "will they notice if I just don't come back?" I thought it was mildly amusing. My best friend laughed so hard she practically choked to death on her popcorn. It's always astonishing to me how something that I find hysterically funny in my own work won't get a whisper of feedback, but a line that I never even noticed gets fifty letters quoting it back to me with smiley faces afterward. I love those moments, don't get me wrong, but they're always a surprise. I honestly thought that no one would even read "Untitled Case File" (I mostly avoid labeling something primarily as "Humor" for that very reason) and even then I didn't think people would like it. It's by far the most successful thing I've ever written, judging by feedback, so that just shows you how much I know about my own writing.

I have to admit that I'm a much more sarcastic writer than I am into slapstick. I have written slapstick, of course. The scene where Mulder flies off the revolving bed in "Poconos" springs to mind, but I think it sticks with me because it's unusual for me to write a scene where the characters are doing something that's physically funny. I'm much more into the snide comments and sarcastic witticisms, and the XF lends itself perfectly to that, because much of the show's humor is in that vein.

One of the key things in writing humor is knowing when a situation is funny, and when it isn't. Nothing kills the mood of a piece faster than Mulder throwing off some cheap remark in the middle of a sex scene set, say, immediately after "Memento Mori". "Never Again" Scully doesn't find sex funny. "Bad Blood" Scully does. It's all about timing. Since I rarely write pure PWP pieces, I just go with what the rest of the piece is telling me to do. "The Airport" has funny moments before, during and after the sex scene because despite the portentousness of their first time, we all know that they would never, ever do it in the booth of the Chicago O'Hare Airport Chili’s restaurant. So it's okay to be funny, because the whole piece is a throwaway, a fantasy. No one is laughing during the sex scene I wrote for "Ship Building" because the whole arc of the story is deadly serious.

Well, at least with humor and romance (because this is something altogether different from humor and smut) I think this is because love generally manages to obliterate our ability to laugh at ourselves, which in turn makes us enormously funny to other people. Mulder and Scully in love are funny precisely because they are foolish and sweet. And because love does this to everyone, at some point or another, we identify with it when it happens to fictional characters we care about. I think Mulder is particularly amusing when he's in love. There's a goofy, shaggy quality about him when he's trying to suck up to Scully that's easy to capitalize on. Scully gets very serious and self-absorbed, which is also great material. And they're both so unbelievably blind to each other. I'm not sure every set of fictional characters is like this. I can't imagine writing hysterically funny fanfic about Captain Picard and Beverly Crusher's first time, for instance, though I probably would have tried if I'd known it existed at the time. Now I'm sure I'll get multiple e-mails from people who've written very funny ST:TNG stories.

Smut and humor work well because sex is a truly embarrassing, ridiculous thing, and reading about it is even crazier. Some small part of our brain kicks in during the smuttiest bits and whispers: "What the hell are you doing? This is porn, porn!" At least mine does. And that's funny to me, and indicative of the way we, as rational animals, tend to approach sex. Humor diffuses the intensely personal and confessional nature of sex and lets us relax enough to enjoy it, even if all were doing is reading about it.

Simply, I try to make things funny without costing the characters their dignity. I'm not a fan of humor that saps the characters, that debases them and makes them small. Sometimes I find myself wincing when reading other fic because Mulder (more often than not, though Scully is sometimes a victim too) is portrayed as this bumbling fool for comedy, someone Scully would laugh at, rather than love. Sex makes you vulnerable, and neither of these characters like to be vulnerable. So I try to give them moments of self-effacing humor where they realize, much to their horror, that they are about to become completely intimate with someone they're madly in love with and desperate to impress. We all know that moment where we're suddenly aware of just how... squidgy and easily embarrassing sex can be. But I also let them love each other in their wonderful, dramatic and passionate way. Too much humor robs the situation of any reality, too little and you've got these stone-faced statues fornicating. Even in my more serious stories, I try to make sex a wondrous, exciting and loving thing, because I think that's how the characters have been presented to us.

In my own, non-XF work, that's how I write sex. We all have enough bad, stupid, angry, pitiful and manipulative sex in our own lives. I don't particularly want to read about it. I don't write stories where the characters are having wild sex in totally unrealistic ways, either. I want it to feel real, even when the setting (an airport bar) isn't somewhere you'd expect.

I've read a lot of stories where Mulder and Scully have angry, bitter sex, with no humor or even affection. I think that's completely out of character. Even in the worst of times, they're able to laugh at each other and to some extent, themselves. Call it their defense mechanism, whatever, but I don't believe stories where the agenda behind Mulder and Scully's sex is some sort of mutual disgust and self-loathing.

Still, there's no magic formula for this. I can't tell you *how* I write humorously. My general observation has been that we're all capable of being amusing. Learning to write for your audience, not for yourself, is an important part of the process, I think. I used to write stories for my best friend, and she liked them to be funny. One of the things I learned is that not everyone will laugh at everything I think is hysterical. But someone, at some point, will laugh at some of it. To be honest, I don't see how people can avoid writing funny stories about Mulder and Scully. "Bad Blood" has got to be one of the funniest hours of television I've ever seen. I like long, angst-ridden pieces, but balance is good, and the XF has always understood that. I guess I just figure I'm writing in character, most of the time.

Well, I think you have to balance it carefully, but there's a far greater danger in writing solely for something *you* want. I guess I should clarify what I mean.

By "writing for yourself" I don't mean writing something you like or enjoy, because you should always be doing that. I mean ignoring the needs of the reader in order to satisfy some desire of your own. Maybe you want to write the next Great American Novel. Maybe you want to sound really clever. Maybe you want to punish your lead actor for contract disputes so you write an entire episode where the sole purpose is to beat the living crap out of the man. Whatever. What happens in those situations is that you lose control of the story. Take "Hollywood AD" as a perfect example of this. I loved "The Unnatural", but HAD was as serious a piece of narcissistic writing as I've ever seen produced. It was all about David, from start to finish, and consequently, had no cohesion, no bearing on the characters and about thirty different plots going on at once with no resolution for any of them. Because in the end, that episode was written as a way for David to air his personal grudges and in-jokes. "The Unnatural", on the other hand, was carefully tuned to what Mulder and the show itself are all about, while also talking about baseball, love, race, and identity. It was, first and foremost, an XF episode, not a diary written for an audience of one.

Absolutely. I find I do that all the time, to be honest. I include in-jokes and fanfic cliches without even thinking about it, knowing my audience will "get" it. Then I send the story to a friend who isn't a regular watcher of the show and I have to include 2 pages of explanation.

But yes, it can get even clique-ier than that, with in-jokes about other writers and Scullyfic jokes and etc. That's the risk with a group as tightly knit as XF fans are. There are tons of us, but only a handful are vocal and out and about. We forget that not everyone knows everything that goes on within a list, particularly a private one.

Mind you, this is also somewhat liberating, I find. I love being able to just dive into a story without considering the "backstory" for the characters. I know you all know Scully's an FBI Agent. I don't have to tell you in the first paragraph.

Writing for your readers is something all together different. It's more about writing for the sheer joy of telling a story. I love the immediate gratification of feedback on my stories, I love that connection to my readers. I'm always wondering: "will this make people laugh? Will it offend them? Will they believe it?" I don't write to make myself feel clever, because then I'd come off as pretentious. I don't write to feel better about my writing, because at this point, I'd better be reasonably confident or I shouldn't post it in public. I write because it's this glorious thing, this connection to other people and because it gives people joy. And I think that's reflected in the story. I write things I want other people to read.

I thought about this question a lot, and I honestly don't think I ever have, really. I've always been so turned-off by what I perceive to be "selfish" writing, that I may even be over-sensitive to the whole idea. Maybe I end up trying too hard, sometimes. But even when I was a kid, writing stories for my best friend to read about Duran Duran, I was thinking: "will Camille like this? Will it make her laugh?" That's still what I'm doing.

That doesn't mean that if I wanted to write a story where Mulder died a terrible death and Scully went on to marry Doggett, I wouldn't do it. I'd just spend the entire time wondering neurotically if anyone would actually read it, and trying to come up with ways to make it okay for everyone.

Ooo, well. Look at it this way: Sexual tension is the foreplay. Smut is the act itself. You can just do the deed, so to speak, but isn't it way, way better with a little foreplay beforehand?

Sexual tension drives the XF, obviously. But it also drives stories, and acts almost as a mini-plot within itself. We all know, reading an MSR, what's going to happen. It's like reading Jane Eyre. We all know she's going to get together with Rochester (sorry, should I have marked that as a spoiler?), but it's the build-up to getting there that makes it so damn good.

I love to write sexual tension. It's like I'm having a conversation with the audience. We know what's going on, we know where it's leading, but the characters don't necessarily know. You're letting the audience in on a secret, and that makes reading more fun. It's all about restraint, about letting it out bit by bit. Often I'll write a scene in a story that's dripping with UST, or at least I hope it is, and I'll go back five minutes later and cut out half the lines for being too fast, too obvious. It's like a striptease. You don't want to just rip your clothes off. You want to take things off little by little, showing only a bit of skin here and there until... wow, there's the whole tamale. It makes the pay-off that much more memorable. And sexual tension is almost always verbal, conversations. Sometimes it's about glances and touches, but the best kind is spoken. The sexiest thing I've ever seen on the show is the infamous Iced Tea conversation. It makes "Agent Scully is already in love" sound lame and flat. Yeah, we know that, idiot. Show, don't tell.

Smut is all about the visual, the textural, the sensual. Too much conversation starts to sound forced, unless it's done for comedy. Smut is about finding another word for the female vagina that doesn't sound icky or offensive. Smut is thinking: "can I make them do that on the couch, or would they fall off?" It's much less fun to write, I find and much less glamorous. It's like being a flight attendant: you look perky, but your feet are killing you. I'd much rather write UST, leading to MSR. I like a good climax as much as the next person, after all. But the UST is more fun to write.

Well, I think there's always an element of PornStar in them both. That's why we like them. I mean, c'mon, do FBI agents really look that good? Probably not. But I know what you mean. And I'm glad you thought it was sexy.

Again, I think it goes back to vulnerability. Masturbation appeals to me as a subject for smut because it's so self-centered and self-referential and I can really see them both (particularly Mulder) using it as a crutch to keep them from having to experience the fears that are inherent in any personal relationship. They don't want to expose themselves to the other person.

Which is the perfect metaphorical set-up for a fic. Scully masturbates to avoid showing her sexual self to Mulder, Mulder sees it anyway, they deal with the aftermath. That's why the "caught in the act" set-up is so popular. Masturbation is us at our most selfish and sensual and uninhibited. Then when you throw in another person and the "exposure" of this side of ourselves, it makes for great drama. I think what makes "Mutual", at least the first one, so sexy is that Mulder knows this. Mulder sees that Scully has exposed too much of herself, emotionally more than physically, and rather than try to verbally reassure her that hey, he loves her too (which she'd never actually believe), he puts himself out there in the same... position.

And a naked Mulder stroking himself is just too damn hot. Metaphorical, schmorical, that's what I was really writing toward.

No, not really. I know there are fifteen year-olds who read fic. But I think we forget what teens are like, and the amount of sexual stuff being thrown at them every day. If the worst they read is a representation of two people who love and respect each other having blissful sex, then whoopdeedoo. I don't see that as a bad thing. They aren't reading rape fic, or BDSM or whatever (at least, not very often on our lists). Regular old vanilla sex isn't going to shock any of them, or be something they've never heard of. And I think kids old enough to really get into the XF are probably old enough to handle loving sex. A bit more maturity may be needed for the Krycek/Marita stuff, but I don't write that, so...

The only thing I worry about is that we could be setting kids up for unrealistic expectations of what sex is really like, particularly girls, who get terrible messages from society on their sexuality to begin with. I worry that if their first time isn't mind-blowing and followed by thirty-six consecutive orgasms, they'll think they've failed somehow. I'm exaggerating, but I really do worry about that sometimes. Am I accurately representing sex in my stories? No. No one's got a headache, the dog isn't off barfing in the corner, the phone isn't ringing, work didn't suck, kids aren't screaming... I just hope kids realize that real life makes sex infinitely more complicated. Maybe the mere sight of Mulder's glorious manhood can bring Scully to orgasm the first time, but after she's seen the glorious manhood every morning for six years, she's going to need something more. Maybe they could pull out those videos he doesn't own.

Well, I doubt they're excluding a younger audience. If kids want to read it, they will. I think you're limiting yourself in that there are adults who don't want to read it, and won't. They're more likely to avoid smut purposefully than most kids. But then, if all you write are case-files, or Slash or any specific genre, you're limiting your audience.

Is this a bad thing? Not unless you're addicted to feedback. People should write what appeals to them and what they're comfortable with. If all you read is smut, but all you write are case-files, you can't blame other people for being the same way.

There's room for all of it, I hope.

A little of both, I think. It must be hard to be a noromo anymore. And let’s face it, smut gets more feedback, generally, and authors who write for a while figure that out.

I don't worry about it as I write, and I hope most other people don't either. But yeah, the number of plain ol' case files and UST seems to have dropped dramatically. It's a little more difficult now that Scully's preggers, I suppose.

Ooo, jeeze, that's the toughie. I'd like to think that Requiem could turn out well. Mulder's abduction makes sense, seeing the whole contract thing with David. I don't have a problem with a Mulder-lite season. I don't even have a problem with Scully being pregnant. I think it's well within the realms of possibility on the show, and God knows, they've ignored continuity before, so they don't even have to explain how the hell it happened if they don't want to.

Though I admit to being of the camp that would like to see the actual, um, conception re-enacted, in color, with blooper reels afterward.

As for the show itself... I worry more about the fact that after years of bitching and moaning everyone seems to be suddenly "reinvested" with this steady influx of cash. This is a bad, bad reason to keep doing something that doesn't inspire you creatively. I can't really blame David for taking the cash and opting out, since he's (assumedly, talk to me in a year) actually getting the hell out of Dodge at the end of the season, but I blame Gillian and Chris for hanging on for a Season 9 just to get more moolah than Dave. That's a ridiculous reason. None of these people *need* money. They made millions acting or producing the movie alone. If they've established these ridiculous life-styles, that's their problem. Why drag down what may be, let's face it, their only legacy with them? I can see both Gillian and Dave going on to make good films, particularly Gillian. But I can also see them never making anything good again. Does money make up for producing two crappy extra years of the show? I don't know. I get a serious "I'd trade my soul to make as much as my co-star" vibe going on right now and I don't like it, at all. It's all very well to prance around claiming that Mulder doesn't matter, and I'm glad they can delude themselves so well. But it ain't gonna make me watch Season 9 if they kill Mulder off, or do something stupid, no way, no how.

Here's the only scenario I would buy: Mulder returns from "space" injured in some fundamental way. Scully has the kid. Mulder stays home for a year to recover and raise the sprog. Scully runs around solving things with Doggett, receiving the occasional e-mail from "Mulder" at home. That's Season 9. At the end of that year, Scully "quits" to be with Mulder, they go on to make movies galore (and not *that* kind, Mulder), and Doggett et al continue with the show if they have the ratings and cohones to do so. Otherwise, I'm outta there.

As for fic... I can see a confirmation of the relationship, assuming that's what CC intends to imply, killing off a whole lot of "first time" fic. Maybe authors will ignore the canon. Maybe they'll go back to say, Season 5 to start the fornication. I don't know. But that's a major part of fan fic, and I can see it really dying off. And without Mulder permanently, they've lost most of this community. It may be gradual, but it will happen. And that's what Fox and CC and co. don't understand about fanfic. It fuels a continued interest in the show well above and beyond what a viewer would normally have. Without this community, I doubt the XF would still be on the air, to be honest.

I think there will always be fanfic for the XF. People still write fanfic for the original Star Trek series, for heaven's sake, and nothing on Earth is as ridiculous today as William Shatner in his girdle.

That said, I can't really see myself writing this stuff forever. At some point I'll lose interest, or move on. I might keep going if there are movies, but I don't know. I feel like real life is just going to intrude at some point and take over.

We hope it doesn’t happen anytime soon. Thanks, Jess, for a really illuminating conversation!

Check out Jess’s work here!