God The Cinematography Of The Early Seasons Are So Gorgeous

Look, I know The X-Files wasn’t intended to be binged the way we can now. I get it. But can we talk about how much funnier it makes it that Scully is seeing a woman floating on a ceiling with her own eyes one episode and that like two episodes later she’s back to acting like Mulder’s some weirdo for believing in aliens?? Girl is compartmentalizing and gaslighting herself at the speed of light

[Image: “i just realized that annabeth was probably trying to get to her aunt when she ran away. luke was from connecticut, right? which is a a couple hours south of boston. so when he and thalia found her she was probably trying to get north to find her aunt and cousin. she was looking for magnus.”]

Source: tiktok @leonardodevieve

when mulder comes back from his abduction and sees scully pregnant, his first instinctive reaction is to feel betrayed and hurt because goddamnit they were finally ready, finally so open to explore all that they could be. they were so close to having it all…

but then he understood: he had died! he had died and she hadn’t and she had moved on, she had to. she was right to do so, of course. he always knew he held her back and maybe she had finally learned that too. and now he was back and already sucking her back in, making her spend all the hours at the hospital by his side, not eating not sleeping. and all because she pitied him, pitied the story the scars on his body told and nothing more. he saw it in her eyes.

so he pulled back, he pushed her away the best he could (which was never much but oh gosh he tried). he was cold to her and as confused and conflicted as he felt he thought it was for the best, it was for her.

and scully tried to understand him. after all he had died! he had died and she hadn’t and she knew better than anyone what trauma like that can do to your mind, right?

she thought he didn’t want to hurt her feelings by asking for space to process it all and so she tried to not suffocate him. she gave him time and space. she checked in with him but didn’t press when he didn’t answer. she shielded him from most things from the office. she brushed off his apathy like it didn’t hurt like a motherfucker if she was being honest. she thought it was for the best, it was for him.

but theres just so much a girl can take and a disaster was just around the corner waiting to happen. the breakdown was inevitable.

it happens in one of the many nights she went to his place to check on him and got hit with his usual ‘i’m fine’ crap. she finally snapped.

“mulder stop! just stop! you have no right to do this to me and you know why? because you know exactly how i felt when you were gone, don’t you? when every second feels like an hour and every hour feels like a year. when another day passes and all you can feel when you lay your head in your pillow at night is fear and anguish and failure”

her storm takes him by surprise and he just stands there, sunken stomach and aghast. of course he knew what it felt like. he knew he could never forget the pain of the days she wasn’t with him.

“but you know what you didn’t have to see? my dead body dumped in a field. I had to see that. Did you even consider this for a second?” the rage and hurt in her eyes pierces him, her voice growing louder as she went on “I had to cry over you and beg for it to be a lie. I had to make all the arrangements for your funeral because I needed the closure of a final goodbye. I held your hand for hours till I tricked my mind it was warm again and Skinner had to physically drag me away from you. I dumped the dirt over your casket. I got anxious to go to sleep in hopes i could see you in my dreams only to have recurring nightmares about your body turning into a hard corpse crushing me. I had to go to work every damn day just to keep my mind occupied when i didn’t even know if someone really had my back because i was only ever certain with you. I had to think like you and see things only you ever saw just to make your absence a little less painful"

at this point she was shouting, angrily wiping the tears from her eyes. he made no effort to do the same to his own, eyes fixed on hers. the truth hit him like daggers. she was right, he hadn’t thought about any of that because it was unbearable and he knew if the roles were reversed he wouldn’t have taken half of what she did - he would have ended up committed somewhere or lying next to her seven feet underground.

“I had to curse God over and over asking how could he be so cruel and I had to beg for forgiveness when He showed me all of his mercy and He gave you back to me. I have to swallow the urge to spend every second by your side because i’m scared that when i close the door you will disappear again. Goddamnit Mulder! You have no right to shut me out now! Not after everything!”

His legs finally decided to work again and he crossed the room in a stride, picking her up in the first real, raw, embrace since he returned. she buried her face completely into his chest, craving her nails on his back, bringing him impossibly close. he wallowed his sorrows and begged for forgiveness in her ear. he held her face gently with both his hands, lifting her chin up to urgently kiss her forehead, her eye lids, her cheeks, her tears, the tip of her nose. her lips. and he promised he would never leave again.

they both knew it was a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep, but, for now, it was enough. in that moment, the true mulder, her mulder, was back to her.

Crying sobbing rolling on the floor

MSR & Hand Holding

THE X FILES (1993-2018)

I genuinely love anthropologists so much

At the start of one of my many attempts at uni (we're no joke on number seven) I took an anthropology class because it seemed cool. This was at the absolute height of the popularity of Bones so the first lecture was literally standing room only, fire hazard levels of packed.

So the professor comes in and I cannot express enough how much this man was actually round, not tall, greying, balding, and literally wearing a three-piece tweed suit with a little red bow tie. He was the most perfect human being I've ever met.

Anyway the look on his face when he saw an actually packed lecture theatre was one of sheer unbridled glee. Natural, right? His dinky little subject is suddenly unbelievably popular.

Which gave him the perfect opportunity to talk about pissing for a solid hour. Because that was his specialist subject. Comparative urination etiquette.

This man who was the Platonic ideal of a humanities professor stood there and talked enthusiastically about piss to a packed to the rafters lecture theatre full of bright-eyed first years, and as this was a Monday morning it was almost certainly many people's first ever university lecture of their whole life. His eyes were glittering with joy the whole hour. He was having the time of his life.

There were absolutely no questions at the end of the lecture. He, apparently having fully understood what he was doing, clearly expected this and instructed us to have a lovely day and wished us good luck on our higher education journey.

You could sit anywhere you wanted in the lecture theatre the next week and the lecture was intro to methods in anthropology.

I don't think I could ever love a man more than I still love him.

So far my favorite thing about the X-Files is that they stablish pretty early on that Mulder will break into, trespass or infiltrate government-adjacent and military facilities, he will get caught doing it, and then Scully will have to go and get him like "yes, he did something illegal, but he's just a silly little guy" as if Mulder's her annoying-but-harmless dog who got into someone's trash and not a grown ass man trying to expose government secrets.

And at first, both the viewer and said government agents who caught Mulder sneaking around will be under the impression that Scully is the reasonable, levelheaded rule-follower in this dynamic, but the show is quick to point out that if someone does refuse to hand Mulder back she is more than willing to highjack a car and hold another officer at gunpoint in a hostage situation, she would just prefer to ask politely and avoid the hassle.

Dying right now

it’s a beautiful day… paget wore a jemily t-shirt to the season 19 table read

Angelic Antiques (4/18/22)

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Indulgences or something…