when scully interrupts herself mid sentence in the haunted house to say “MULDER” because he’s not listening to her scripted critique of ghost stories like she listened to his scripted ghost story. and then later she takes a breath mid sentence like she’s rushing through a prepared speech. they interact in slide show presentations ❤️ 

maybe the most insane part of beyond the sea is scully seeing boggs as mulder when he says "you're the one that believed me." brutal to hear those words out of mulder's mouth after he almost bled out on a gurney, to see him in a prison jumpsuit and chains like one or both of them is at fault, after the death of her dad already came to her in the form of a vision! she linked her own belief with a serial killer and it took her four years to shake it off. it started a cycle not broken until demons, when scully saw mulder in his orange prison jumpsuit for real and exonerated him as a murder suspect. and immediately after that she found belief again

it's so cool how the thematic overlap in season 6 makes its best episodes better. it puts them in conversation with one another. we know monday is another season 6 episode that uses resets and memory wipes to confront mulder and scully’s anxiety about their relationship, but I watched it last night and realized it’s also part of the pattern of season 6 episodes that present mulder and scully with a relationship that’s a dark mirror of theirs, like how the ghosts stole christmas or dreamland, but much more bleak. pam can’t escape a bad relationship despite trying everything, over and over and over; her relationship is constant death. meanwhile mulder and scully are given life; they get to forget their worst days and start over. monday is the only episode where I take scully's immortality literally, just for fun, but even on a metaphorical level (which is how I take it all other times) monday expands the scope of "how do I die" "you don't" from just scully to scully-and-mulder.

but then the question is what saves them. it’s not really like how the ghosts and dreamland, where they’re saved by knowing each other and listening to each other; they still do both here, but it almost feels incidental compared to pam, who’s actually driving the story. mulder and scully talk about changing fate, but I've never been convinced that's really what the episode is about — on a visceral level, fate wins, and it’s horrifying and catastrophic and anonymizing. pam dies to save people who will never remember exactly what her death meant. the only hope in the episode is for mulder and scully, who get to keep living, and they don’t even know what that means. they don’t know they just got proof that their relationship is immortal and can’t die. that feels less like changing fate and more like fate. in the big picture, the idea is that they might be fated, but they still have to choose it. but in monday the choice isn’t theirs. the season is so submerged in their heads, it’s all in their heads, but then there’s this episode that pulls back and puts them in context of all these people around them whose lives are affecting theirs, and it’s a jolt. they don’t always bury their dead alive. sometimes they don’t even know them

that time when toads fell from the sky.

okay. when the x-files writers talked about not having a show bible, they weren't talking about not keeping track of what had already happened on the show. they clearly didn't do that either. but what they meant was that they didn't start the show with a long list of rules they would never break. that's good! that's why the x-files is a good show. they didn't limit themselves. source: I was in the room when they talked about this at that panel. read some of my press babe

i’m rewatching bad blood (cause it’s my absolute favorite) in honor of the anniversary. if you’re still doing the thoughts on xf episodes i would LOVE yours!

the best smash cut to credits of any episode of television ever. the x-files turned its own theme song into comedy!! vince gilligan’s mind. I also love the layers to bad blood: what we’re seeing is not how it happened, and it’s not even exactly how mulder and scully remember it happening. it’s how mulder and scully are telling the story to each other. they’re trying to get under each other’s skin a little bit.

which is funny when you think about the fact that the killer is a vampire who wanted to be more of a stereotype. ronnie wants to fit a mold because he thinks he’s supposed to. meanwhile you’ve got mulder and scully telling each other stories about how they fit into these ridiculous boxes, and the stories aren’t exactly true for them either. I think on top of all the playfulness of bad blood it winds up being a sweet tribute to the fact that mulder and scully are more than the stories told about them, or the stories they tell themselves. and they’re still in denial about that last part. but they’re having fun.

Messages of support and strength from Rafah, Palestine to the US student movement.

thoughts on roadrunners and beyond the sea?

roadrunners: logically I get the problem with the x-files inflicting more body horror on scully while she’s pregnant, but I really love roadrunners. it’s the most an x-files episode has ever stressed me out, because what roadrunners taps into so well is the way everything feels more dangerous without mulder there. it’s more unsettling for the audience (our trust that scully and mulder will save each other every time has been violated, so anything can happen), and obviously scully is not only in more danger without him but also deliberately putting herself in more danger because he’s not there. she’s taking risks because she’s trying to be mulder, and that’s what he’d do, but also because she doesn’t have as much to lose without him. it’s heavy. and this is the episode that tipped me from liking doggett to loving him, specifically the “hey!” followed by the punch, which is so charmingly to-the-point. he’s got good instincts, and he doesn’t let scully off easy.

I think roadrunners works as a great short story; the cold open evokes shirley jackson’s the lottery, obviously, but the way the town closes in on scully is suffocating in a way that feels to me like some of the best twilight zone episodes. I love a good story about someone very slowly realizing she’s trapped. the creepy details, like the bible study looking at scully through the window, pile up well. and thematically I like the way roadrunners plays scully’s isolation (literal and emotional) against the idea of becoming part of something “greater than you are.” giving herself over to mulder’s cause was her choice, and the horror of roadrunners is that this is not. this isn’t her religion, literally or metaphorically. the idea behind the cult is basically that dedicating yourself to a belief system is a form of voluntary self-flagellation, which dovetails really tragically with the way scully is essentially looking for punishment out of devotion to mulder. and she finds it. this is why the body horror works for me; it’s a physical manifestation of scully’s feeling, at some level, that her body isn’t worth what it carries.

beyond the sea: a showcase for gillian anderson, obviously, and a definitive episode in terms of mulder and scully’s characterization, especially scully’s. beyond the sea makes clear what I think the show was already saying in subtler ways from the start: mulder and scully have each got something of the other in them, which is one of my favorite things about this show. nothing that looks simple really is. you can’t have mulder without scully, but also, you can’t have honest belief without honest doubt. that’s the point scully is making at the end, too. she admits she’s afraid to believe. she understands that believing may look easy or childlike, but it’s actually terrifying to open up your whole worldview like that. I love that she’s able to simultaneously tell mulder that she thinks he’s brave and to basically say, surprisingly early on, “wait for me.”

it’s also interesting that it’s juxtaposed against the purity of scully’s own belief in her father (she knows what he wanted to tell her, because he was her father) and to a certain extent in mulder too (she’s already vouched for his whole soul to boggs). so we already see that scully is not only capable of belief but that the x-files’ most simple faith is in relationships, in love. that’s what makes sense when the rest doesn’t.

okay here's an x-files argument. it's fair to say mulder is always right, because that's the way the writers talked about it. (source: frank spotnitz gave a talk at my office in 2015 and said the writers realized early on that mulder always had to be right and scully had to be wrong because the alternative was too depressing.) it was a guiding principle of the show. sure you could "well actually" every declarative statement about the x-files to the point where it's impossible to see the big picture, but then you're losing the way the contradictions bump into the big picture and make the show feel alive. it's the spirit of the thing. people aren't reading brian phillips' "in the dark" enough anymore

okay here's an x-files argument. it's fair to say mulder is always right, because that's the way the writers talked about it. (source: frank spotnitz gave a talk at my office in 2015 and said the writers realized early on that mulder always had to be right and scully had to be wrong because the alternative was too depressing.) it was a guiding principle of the show. sure you could "well actually" every declarative statement about the x-files to the point where it's impossible to see the big picture, but then you're losing the way the contradictions bump into the big picture and make the show feel alive. it's the spirit of the thing. people aren't reading brian phillips' "in the dark" enough anymore

you know when you're terrified of something you don't even know is actually happening but it just. makes you freeze & retreat, the instinct to protect yourself when it might not even be necessary?

Rob Bowman, The X-Files: Fight the Future (1999 DVD audio commentary) // The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998)

txf + text posts (15/?)

idk guys. have you listened to/read the things txf writers have said?? i think a lot of what we notice is intentional. whether they decided to go back & use something because it worked for an idea, or even if they didn't think about certain things as deeply as we do...writing is often very intentional. just because we think something could have been better or should be more explicit....doesn't mean they felt the same.

i'm here saying again txf writers don't treat their audience like they're stupid, they expect that we can read between the lines & make connections & identify unreliable narrators etc etc.

these are still the best mulder and scully ive drawn

my favorite thing about the x-files is that i never really know what is happening. even when we see meetings of all the old-ass white men and they explain exactly what is happening, I don't know.

the characters say stuff all the time and sometimes things happen, then no complete conclusion is every truly reached.

the whole show is an unreliable narrator. and it is such a unique flavor. so tasty.

hey guys. tell me the crazy things mulder did that make you LOVE him