Janeway of 9

(Bonus-- DUCHOVNY But those are just quirks, those aren't character. You can say "sunflower seeds" and "porn" till you're blue in the face, but in the end it's about an attitude. They could have made Mulder interested in gay porn. It all would've worked for me.)

MULDER'S SINGULAR SEXUAL EXPRESSION

September 1998: "No," says DD. "There was never going to be a sex scene between them in the film. Because that would have betrayed everything the series said about them. They find refuge in their shared obsessions, the fact that they’re alone against the rest of the world and they have to rely on each other to keep their knowledge alive. That type of secretive association is what people find sexy about the relationship. The sexual energy comes from what is not spoken between them. They only have each other to trust, and their work comes first.

"Mulder doesn’t get off on Scully sexually - that’s not what attracts him to her[.] He doesn’t want to f-k her; he wants her understanding. He listens to her and needs her scepticism to keep his head screwed on straight - at least as straight as possible. And as the series has evolved, she’s become more the believer, while he’s grown more dubious about the aliens."

June 1998: WHEN I TELL David Duchovny that I feel like Mulder, he cackles. "Let me give you hints on how to be Mulder. Never put batteries in your tape recorder. Lose your tape recorder. Get your hands on a script and lose it. Trust all the wrong people. And alienate as many people as you can, so they don't talk to you again."

Do you detect a bit of mockery? Duchovny recognizes what Fox Mulder is: a repressed workaholic who sleeps on the sofa, watches porn, calls phone-sex lines, and is fated to die of autoerotic asphyxiation--oh, and whose only recent kiss came from a guy who may have killed his father and sister. Duchovny thinks Mulder is a bit of a fool. If he could take Mulder aside, here's what Duchovny would say...: "f-k that girl. Look at the way she's looking at you. Are you blind? Why do you think her mouth is always open?"

But he does, indeed, have desire for Scully--

July 5, 2008: Speaking to FHM about his on-screen persona Mulder kissing Gillian’s character Scully he apparently said they had kissed many times over the years.

“It’s been many years of kissing and it’s not been a chore at all, at least not for Mulder. I guess you should ask Scully,” David is reported to have said.

July 2008: DUCHOVNY: At the heart of [I Want to Believe] is this relationship between Mulder and Scully, which is like a real adult relationship; two people trying to figure out their relationship while they’re doing their job, which just happens to be a very heightened reality of a job, you know. And so if you think about any other movie, all other movies, like, in this genre, there’s never an actual relationship in them. There’s never actual – it’s usually a loner. If it’s a couple, it’s kind of rudimentary, you know, meet.

June 17, 2016: Duchovny: What exists in the writing... is that these two people are true partners and they complete one another intellectually and emotionally. Chris always used to say that Mulder and Scully were one person when they were together… by which, I assume he meant they were Chris Carter. I do think that’s very romantic, when you have a man and a woman treating each other as equals. And not just as equals, but as necessary components of one another. Without the other, they fall as people, as entities, as investigators. It’s highly romantic and yet not sexual, though there’s a lot of tension.

December 20, 2017: Though the two remain apart, fans can take heart: Their romance is actively discussed. “So much of their relationship is unspoken,” Duchovny says. “What’s so vital and strong about the show is the partnership between the two of them, beyond the labels. Whether they’re physically together or not, they are always together in some sense.”

Commentary on"Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster": [Mulder peeps into Scully's motel room. DD, GA laugh.]

DD: Ooh! [GA: Oh!] Now we're talkin'!

[Mulder backs away, closes his eyes.]

DD: Aw. C'mon Mulder. You know you want to.

GA: You can do better than that! [Both laugh.]

A CANONICAL EXPLANATION FOR MULDER'S CHOICES

During the OG series, the reason behind Mulder's hesitance was his survivor's guilt (post here)--

December 12, 1998: DUCHOVNY: I think his pain comes from the fact that he feels he could have protected his sister but didn't. She was taken from him when he was 12 and she was eight, and he's come to realize that she was abducted by aliens-at least he thinks so-and that he might have been able to stop it in some way. Then, during the journey we've had for the past five years, he found out that he was the one who was supposed to have been taken and not his sister, so there's a lot of survivor guilt going on. He can't enjoy himself. He can't rest until he's sure they've done everything to find the girl he let go....

DUCHOVNY: Right. He doesn't appear to have any interests outside that. We've never seen him in a bed; he sleeps on his couch. He watches pornography. He doesn't have sexual relations, except once, with a vampire. He cannot have joy until somebody else does. As soon as he starts to have joy he feels guilty.

Which, I believe, had to be reinvented after Amor Fati and Millennium (and especially Closure.) To varying degrees of success.

CONCLUSION

Bonus: DD and GA Knew Mulder and Scully Were Endgame from Day One

MSR: Necessary Components and "Playing to" the Audience (Since Day One)

DD and GA on Mulder and Scully's "Marriage" and Breakup

Thanks for reading~