Dana Scully Needs You

[ozmissage]

This is a pre-emptive post because I’m probably not going to be around tomorrow afternoon to properly monitor the goings on over at f_march_madness. But it’s looking like Dana Scully and Dean Winchester are going to be facing off and I want to get this out there now.

This isn’t about how great Dean Winchester is, this isn’t about how he cries the manliest of man tears or how he’s snarky and likes pie. He’s cool I’ll admit it.

But this is bigger than him. This is about respecting history. This is about realizing that without The X-Files there would be no Supernatural. This is about a tiny, red-headed FBI agent who stood by her partner even when she thought he was nuts, who killed monsters while wearing heels. This about an insanely intelligent, brilliant woman who made it okay for each and every one of us to be the gigantic nerds that we are.

This is about being ten years old and turning on the television week after week and seeing a competent, strong, badass of a woman perform autopsies without flinching, whip out her gun and face a baddie twice her size, and still make time to challenge her partner's craziness even when she knew it was going to be a thankless job. It’s about a woman who worked in a man’s world, existed in a man’s genre and owned every inch of it.

This is about Dana Scully.

 

Dean Winchester is a character, a good, interesting character but a character just the same. Dana Scully is an icon. I grew up watching this woman; I wanted to be this woman. If you didn’t spend your childhood running around the playground whipping out an imaginary FBI badge as you pretended to descend into a monster infested sewer, then I have to ask: what the hell can of childhood did you have?

Dana Scully changed my life. Every female character I’ve ever loved since then whether it be Juliet Burke or Hermione Granger or Willow Rosenberg is a direct descendent of Dana Scully. Sometimes when I'm feeling freaked out or scared or life is just getting too damn hard, I close my eyes and visualize Scully and I remember how she was fearless. How she faced alien abduction, cancer, and losing not one but two kids and kept going.

And yeah, maybe I’m just lame or overly sentimental. That doesn’t matter. Because there are hundreds of other girls with their own Dana Scully stories. Don’t believe me? Then check this out Scully Have I Loved:
 

In an entertainment world where women are disappearing from multiplexes, where men bulk up as superheroes while women don't eat but sip pink drinks, we need to remember that there was once a very short heroine who hunted monsters and talked about Einstein, who kicked ass and questioned her faith, who went to work with a man she loved but didn't rip his shirt off over lunch, who didn't want to believe, but opened herself nonetheless to possibility. We need Scully back, even for a moment.
--- Rebecca Traister 
 

We like to talk a lot about the lack of female representation in genre television. About how even in our community it’s all about the men (and usually the very worst kind.) But not so long ago there was Special Agent Dana Scully, fighting the good fight. Don’t forget her fandom. Don’t forget what she did for all of us.

More than that don’t vote for a guy who is on a show that is basically her show only instead of an awesome female character at it’s heart there’s another guy. Hell, there’s not a female character on the entire show that’s lasted for more than six episodes and that’s just not okay.

Vote for her because she’s proof that once upon a time genre television had room for stories about us. Vote for her because if you’ve ever enjoyed an episode of SPN it’s because Chris Carter left Kripke a roadmap. Vote for her because she deserves that much.

Vote Dana Scully, fandom. I want to believe...that we'll make the right choice.