Grey Areas

That is one of the things that annoyed me the most about the X-files. That everything was so black and white. That there was no redemption. There was no potentional for returning back to what some would call the 'good' side. Krycek has always seemed a character who is very grey to me, he skirts the edges. He just had no idea how to make things work. He could have been so much more, but CC stuck him firmly in the evil category and that was that.

In the real world nothing is that simple, people are all very grey. We do good things and bad, individually and society as a whole. No one is perfect. Mulder certainly never was on the show. Some of the things he's done would have landed his ass in jail if anyone ever found out. Hell, he witnessed Mr. X kill several people in various episodes and just walked away. Never reported it, because he was his informant. That somehow made X immune to the law? That is called accesory after the fact. Mulder would have gone to jail if anyone ever found out. He isn't the knight in white armor, he has his very grey moments. Of selectively forgetting that he is a law officer and the laws he swore to protect and uphold.

The funny thing is Mulder forgave his father, or something, for pretty much letting them take Samantha. I mean he had to know when they were going to be taking people, there had to be a deadline to decide. He and the mrs. conveniently leave the house that very night. Coincidence? I don't think so. Mulder forgave him for all the shit he did. I mean he found out a small part of what he was involved in during the ep The Travelers. (Pre-X-files days) Yet, he forgave that old fucker. Who probably abused him, just from Fox's reactions to the old bastard. The man was no saint, he quit the Consortium only when they wanted a member of his family, nothing else had really tweaked his conscious all that much before then. Hell, he let that guy in Travelers go, so he could kill alot more people, in the hope the truth would be found out. It would have been better to shot him and saved lives. The man was not a high moralist, even if he did advocate a vaccine. Mulder forgave him or something. He flipped every now and then to the point I really had no idea sometimes. It made no sense either. People can hold grudges against their parents forever. Blame them up to wazoo, dead or alive. He probably should have been pissed the old bastard died before spilling his guts more than anything. Instead I think they transfered that anger onto Krycek.<sheesh>

I'm going to jump fandoms here to relate something. In the Highlander fandom my favorite character was Methos. Due to the very fact that he was such a grey character. His age is roughly 5000, but he isn't sure. That is just how far back he remembers. In that time he has done a great deal of things. For a thousand years he was a member of a group of maurauders, The Four Horsemen, and called himself Death. He raped, pillaged, plundered, looted, lied, stole, and murdered his way across continents with his 'Brothers'. He did that for a thousand years. Yet, for the three thousands since he has been a relatively good man, a doctor at one point even. He isn't death any longer. I always wondered what happened to him in those thousand or more years he was alive before he became death. What attrocities he saw that turned him into that. He wasn't that before and isn't now, so what the hell did he go through that made him that. He is a man who has looked his dark side in the face, became it, embraced it. Above any one he knows who he is, knows exactly what power lies within himself. He made Duncan see people are redeemable and that nothing was black or white, as he thought. That the world was different than that. Duncan was always such a goody, goody idiot before that. Never saw the other side of things. Methos was a big slap in the head as to how the world works.

Methos often seems cynical, but it more that he has just been there and done just about eveything. He was probably as idealistic as Duncan in his early years, after seeing that crushed to dust it was probably a piece of the catalyst that changed him. He is an evolved character, was when they introduced him. Chameleon like and always never quite what you expect.

I wish they could have done something like that on the X-files, instead of playing with these childish views of good vs. evil. That there is never any middle ground, no room for change or to learn. No one ever given a chance to redeem themselves, no one wanting to really switch sides. Just that view of everyone out for themselves, no one caring about others. Even the principle characters were often selfish to a fault at times. I had always hoped to see evolution and change in them. Change due to the circumstances they saw. Mulder stayed the same though, through crisises he was still the naive little boy. Or maybe that was CC. I still remember those scenes in Sixth Extinction where it is like DD trying to calm this bratty little kid that is CC down. Telling him that he won't leave, CC seems child-like to me. A kid who doesn't get why the world doesn't work like he thinks it should. Why people demand consistency in story telling. I think of my nephew trying to tell a story, all starts and stops. Not making much sense and no real point, contradictions as he tries to organize his thoughts. (He's only 5.) CC sounds like a kid who never grew up, pouting because the adults want the stories to make sense and be consistent. Heaven forbid.

I think what disappoints me the most is the potential of the show that it never lived up to. Nothing was ever truly revealed, the viewers might have seen it along with Mulder, but no one else on the show ever did. He never came away with a shred of evidence. Hell, people who see UFO's flying past their houses get better proof than he did and he was one so up close and personal it nearly killed him. He never even got Scully to believe. No proof. CC and cronies never answered a damn thing adequately about the consortium. It's all still this big "HUH?!?"

About which part to take and what to leave out. I saw if you are writing a story take what makes sense for it and leave the rest. If you can't make it fit, toss it. Let the readers know in the header you've disregarded stuff if you want to make it easier on them. Just keep what you want and push the remainder off to the side. Just like CC did. If he can do it, so can we. Fuck it. Don't try to make sense of all of it, or make it consistent within canon. Not possible. Take what does make sense and piece it together. The rest...consider it pieces of another puzzle that got mixed in there and don't belong maybe. Whatever works for you, I say.

Clio