and just refuse to use it because you're afraid you might, I don't know, actually engage emotionally with another human being
Bwah! OTOH, if *your* first name was Fox...
You know, there was a time I could answer your porn question in detail, complete with dialogue and episode names (yes, I was one of those kinds of fans). But as the icon says, we really were *a lot* younger then.
Um... Short answer: Mulder's porn was implied to be normal on the surface but twisted underneath, much like the man himself.
Loooong answer: Early on there was one ep where Mulder was shown reading a magazine with a centerfold in it in the office -- he showed the centerfold to Scully and was excited... because the model claimed she'd been abducted by aliens. I think Scully made a crack about boobs and zero gravity.
I think there were also references to Mulder's subscription to Celebrity Skin (I have no idea -- that's a standard porn mag, right?) so he definitely read what appeared to be generic porn magazines. He also apparently called phone sex lines, where he actually used a first name. (Marty. Because that's so much better than Fox.)
But it was implied that Mulder's main source of porn was X-rated movies -- early on there were a lot of videotape sight gags. In a later ep, when Mulder was stressed because he'd switched bodies with another character (yes, XF *was* the show where fannish cliches showed up right on the screen), they showed that the only way he could fall asleep was in front of porn on a television screen.
The early eps mostly had wink/nod throwaway bits between M&S and between Mulder and Frohike (one of the Lone Gunmen), who apparently was in line to inherit Mulder's porn collection when he was inevitably disappeared by the Men in Black.
What kind of kink Mulder was feeding was never articulated, though Darin Morgan wrote jokes about Mulder's um, proclivities in 2 eps, both pretty clever, but then, that was DM. In "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," Clyde, who was psychic, but only about how people were going to die, made a reference to Mulder and autoerotic asphyxiation. They played it so a) you weren't entirely sure he was actually talking about Mulder and b) you couldn't tell if Clyde had guessed right. The whole sequence was pretty hilarious though.
In "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space,'" during a voiceover at the end where Jose Chung talks about how alone we all are, there was a clip of Mulder lying in bed watching television with the covers up to his chest. As the camera pans over him he puts his hand under the covers and then as the camera pans to the TV, you see it's showing footage of a Yeti sighting. Heh. (This was also the first time anyone had seen Mulder in a bed -- up to that point it appeared he slept only on his couch. In front of the television and VCR.)
I honestly don't think there was a character-driven consensus about the kind of porn Mulder got off on. They seemed to mainly use it to reinforce his isolation (and stave off any whiff that he might be omg *gay* because he didn't date or make what appeared to be any serious passes at Scully -- though he did make them, and one could argue they *were* serious but meant not to be taken seriously). Mulder changed a lot over the course of the series though, and possibly in consequence, the whole porn thing showed up much less frequently later on.
Oddly, I can't think of another television lead character who was that upfront canon-wise about being an habitual porn consumer. Maybe it could only happen during the Clinton years.
The sad thing is, this could have been even more tl;dr
Bwah! OTOH, if *your* first name was Fox...
You know, there was a time I could answer your porn question in detail, complete with dialogue and episode names (yes, I was one of those kinds of fans). But as the icon says, we really were *a lot* younger then.
Um... Short answer: Mulder's porn was implied to be normal on the surface but twisted underneath, much like the man himself.
Loooong answer: Early on there was one ep where Mulder was shown reading a magazine with a centerfold in it in the office -- he showed the centerfold to Scully and was excited... because the model claimed she'd been abducted by aliens. I think Scully made a crack about boobs and zero gravity.
I think there were also references to Mulder's subscription to Celebrity Skin (I have no idea -- that's a standard porn mag, right?) so he definitely read what appeared to be generic porn magazines. He also apparently called phone sex lines, where he actually used a first name. (Marty. Because that's so much better than Fox.)
But it was implied that Mulder's main source of porn was X-rated movies -- early on there were a lot of videotape sight gags. In a later ep, when Mulder was stressed because he'd switched bodies with another character (yes, XF *was* the show where fannish cliches showed up right on the screen), they showed that the only way he could fall asleep was in front of porn on a television screen.
The early eps mostly had wink/nod throwaway bits between M&S and between Mulder and Frohike (one of the Lone Gunmen), who apparently was in line to inherit Mulder's porn collection when he was inevitably disappeared by the Men in Black.
What kind of kink Mulder was feeding was never articulated, though Darin Morgan wrote jokes about Mulder's um, proclivities in 2 eps, both pretty clever, but then, that was DM. In "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose," Clyde, who was psychic, but only about how people were going to die, made a reference to Mulder and autoerotic asphyxiation. They played it so a) you weren't entirely sure he was actually talking about Mulder and b) you couldn't tell if Clyde had guessed right. The whole sequence was pretty hilarious though.
In "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space,'" during a voiceover at the end where Jose Chung talks about how alone we all are, there was a clip of Mulder lying in bed watching television with the covers up to his chest. As the camera pans over him he puts his hand under the covers and then as the camera pans to the TV, you see it's showing footage of a Yeti sighting. Heh. (This was also the first time anyone had seen Mulder in a bed -- up to that point it appeared he slept only on his couch. In front of the television and VCR.)
I honestly don't think there was a character-driven consensus about the kind of porn Mulder got off on. They seemed to mainly use it to reinforce his isolation (and stave off any whiff that he might be omg *gay* because he didn't date or make what appeared to be any serious passes at Scully -- though he did make them, and one could argue they *were* serious but meant not to be taken seriously). Mulder changed a lot over the course of the series though, and possibly in consequence, the whole porn thing showed up much less frequently later on.
Oddly, I can't think of another television lead character who was that upfront canon-wise about being an habitual porn consumer.
Maybe it could only happen during the Clinton years.