pirate_anon

I’ve Mastered the Matrix:
William "Fox" Mulder

Fox Mulder is the protagonist of a TV series called The X-
Files, an FBI agent who works strange and paranormal cases with
his partner, Dana Scully. The slogan of the show is “I Want To
Believe.”

Even before William’s official appearance, Draven had an
interest in aliens, and seemed to truly believe that they existed
and interacted with humanity. In 1995, they claimed to be
working on “a thesis paper concerning crop circles and the
possibility of their being caused by extraterrestrial intelligence”
(1995 December 15). Alas, they put the cart before the horse,
stating that they are “looking for information to support my
ideas,” rather than trying to test and disprove their hypothesis,
which involves “hidden mathematical or data agenda” in the
fractal-ish appearance of recent crop circles. This will
characterize how they misuse science to this day.

The X-Files had already been on the air for a couple years
at that point, so it’s not impossible that William existed at this
time. That said, the first proof I can find for sure of William as an
individual are a few fetish stories from the Male/Male Spanking
Archive, dated a couple months after the Usenet blow-out, in
June 1999. William will reuse both the pen-name of Fox Mulder
and the associated email address for one of his later fanfics,
“Whispers In a White Room" (2001 October 8) a couple years
later.

The MMSA stories themselves are formulaic: Mulder
behaves badly and Skinner (his boss) disciplines him with a
lavishly-detailed spanking, for his own good, of course. Greg
House will later role-play a strikingly similar scene with his
"adopted son," but that's not until the next decade. Asides from
helping date William’s appearance, the stories have nothing else
of interest.

William disappears off my radar for the year 2000, but
returns in 2001 when he starts writing fanfiction for squidge.org
and the Basement. But these are vastly different in content and
tone from the MMSA stories; instead of pairing Mulder with his
boss, they all pair him with Scully (his work partner) or Alex
Krycek (his enemy). What's more, Krycek writes back on the
same sites, using the same screen-name and email address W had
on Usenet!

Yes, Draven's fiancée, like the many who will succeed her,
has a complementary fictional identity to Draven's own, and it
doesn’t seem to be mere role-play. In the author's notes of "Still
Life At Gunpoint," she says, "this is a true story, as told to me by
Alex Krycek himself. So there" (2002 June 3b). The disclaimer in
The Threat reads," AK [Alex Krycek] and FM [Fox Mulder]
belong to CC [Chris Colfer] -- that's the party line, anyway. I
don't believe it, myself" (2002 June 3a).

William is more forthright about the matter. In his fic, "A
Splinter In My Mind", he rants, "How can anyone even believe I
exist when my whole life has been touted, categorized,
commercialized, and exploited as a fiction? Let me tell you
something—David Duchovny doesn't keep the scars from those
stitches, or have nightmares about coming home to Bill Mulder at
fourteen" (2001 June 12). In "Desperate Letter from Mulder,"
William takes up Kurt’s Broken Messiah metaphor, comparing
himself to Christ on the cross, asking, "Can I be your Fox Mulder,
even with this situational crown of thorns?" and describes himself
as "busted and rejected and nowhere near the Fox Mulder that
ALL OF YOU are convinced I am" (2002 June 30).

Who is convinced that William is Fox Mulder? He
doesn't say. But these rants will also become a Draven trademark,
part of the grooming process. They take the sympathy that fans
feel for a fictional character and reattach it to themselves. By
claiming that he's more real than the fictional character he bases
his identity on, William suggests that he deserves more sympathy
than the original character. In fact, the fiction's very existence
contributes to his suffering! For certain fans who desperately
want to participate in the rehabilitation and nurture of their
favorite character, it proves very attractive, a sort of real life
hurt/comfort fic.

William uses drug use to add to his aura of suffering. He
mentions the drug habit in a fanfiction, but it’s clear that this
habit is not fictional; he mentions: “codeine, say, or maybe
heroin? Or maybe Jack Daniels and diazepam -make it a family
cocktail.” Obviously the heroin use was already in use back in
Kurt’s day, while in the future, John Constantine will talk about
taking codeine for his supposed lung cancer (2005, August 28)
and House will talk about taking “a Valium, three Vicodin, a
beer,” before going to bed (2006 June 13). These habits may not
have started with William, but he certainly helps to perpetuate
them.

W’s fictive identities will have a huge impact on Draven’s
relationship style forever after. Krycek is written as the dom to
William’s sub, a violent kinkster who fills William’s deepest,
darkest needs. But his role isn’t just sexual; Krycek seems to
fulfill a role analogous to Carl Jung’s idea of the Shadow, bringing
some sort of metaphysical balance to Draven’s soul. As William
says, “He is my dark side, my light half, the gray in between; my
brother,” his literal enemy turned into lover (2001, June 13). He
describes the violence as healing and cleansing: “Defilement in a
new and interesting way. Shame that tastes like redemption;
submission that is, and will forever be, exoneration.
Emancipation” (ibid).

He contrasts this to Dana Scully, who is “my light and my
love and my utter salvation,” and also his dutiful partner. How
does she feel about Krycek? “Scully knows [about] that. She
thinks it’s good for me.” It turns out that W is channeling not just
Krycek, but Dana as well (Draven, 2002 April 18). This is perhaps
the start of the Draven tradition of having each of their system
members in a triad with at least two headmates in a partner
system, with one playing the role of biggest fan second-in
-command and another playing the Jungian shadow dom who
ostensibly controls Draven's behavior (and is responsible for his
redemption). This very specific framework will be repeated over
and over again with subsequent partners, even now.

Draven’s plurality is still discussed in veiled terms. In
"Costumed", William dresses up as the Crow, has rough sex with
Krycek at gunpoint, and then commits murder/suicide (2002
May 29). The author's note reads, "this one is a fic, pieced
together from true events" so I'm left only with deeply
uncomfortable connotations. This fic was posted near the end of
their relationship, which makes it even worse.

W calls William NeoFox in “Come to Grief,” (2002 July 2)
and William uses the same name in "A Splinter In My Mind"
(2001 June 12) and "The Boys Inside, or the Death of Kolyai"
(2002 May 29a). The latter story gives an explanation for the
nickname; in it, William and Krycek go to kill someone, and the
whole thing is one long callback to The Matrix, from wardrobe
(William wears sunglasses in the dark, a long black coat, and lots
of leather straps) to the fight scene. William describes time
slowing down Matrix-style as, "together we slam into the knee-
high railing behind us and roll over it as one man, smooth and
slow and so like a movie." William also writes, "I feel as though all
my muscles, every inch of skin, is working like a hologram, a
projection. Like I'm not really here... like I've mastered the
Matrix. NeoFox."

Neo will not make his formal appearance until 2004,
roughly three years later, but the seeds are clearly already there.
And it’s telling, how William sees himself as the hero in the movie
of his own life, a life that is based on pop cultural fiction. Over
time, that blurring of fiction and reality will only become more
pronounced.

In September 2001, under the name Fox, William
publishes the piece of writing that got Kurt into such trouble on
Usenet, now using the title "REFORMATTING (Remaking the
Self)." The online magazine Chaos Theory publishes it in Issue
#14 (Greg Turpin, personal communication 3/2/2017); the article
has changed barely at all in the ensuing two and a half years.
Neo will later refer to the Fox name as "a semi-
pseudonym" and describe the time as "back when I was Thomas
Anderson," (2004 November 8b) which opens up all sorts of
questions as to whether he himself sees William as a real person,
or merely a false facade to be stripped off for the Neo identity.
No answer is forthcoming.

In April 2002, I find the first Wayback Machine capture
for William's paranormal investigations agency, Black Fox
Solutions (2002 April 18). It's run in Rumford, Maine, not far
from Farmington where Kurt grew up. William and W run it,
though she's listed under the name Dana. It is in fact a recreation
of the fictional Scully and Mulder’s workplace!

Black Fox Solutions assists in such things as “UFO
sightings, alien or entity abductions, psychic phenomena [...],
telekinesis [...], strange visitations, unusual or prophetic dreams,
spirit manifestations,” and so on, but I have no idea whether
Black Fox Solutions gets any business. The only other mention of
it that I can find is an April 4th Boston Phoenix article that
merely notes its existence (Wright, 2002).

Regardless, somewhere in the summer, it all falls apart.
W's fanfiction site vanishes (2002 August 19), and Black Fox
Solutions disappears, replaced by a blank page with the title
"Aeternum Investigations," Angel's first agency (2002 August 5).
But Angel was around before that.