Husband: "So you have your controversial fandom thing right now, but just so you know, I have my own. For instance, on the Costco Facebook group--"

everyone to scully, any time mulder wanders off somewhere:

All this because I’ve…because I didn’t get you a desk?

This parallel! ❤

in the hour or so it took me to draw this op turned reblogs off

made this ugly ass image during an ugly ass work meeting - you're welcome!

So what was going through Scully’s head when “Mulder” came over to her apartment with a bottle of wine in Small Potatoes?

y'all listen!!!! i've talked about this before but i maintain that this was just deeply embarrassing for her. like. dana scully is already a very embarrassing woman, we know this, it's fine, god still talks to her specifically, but i feel like small potatoes is like...the most embarrassing scully episode...through no fault of her own, obviously. but first of all, the way that she falls into it so quickly, and laps it up, but doesn't believe it. when she sees the wine bottle she literally asks, "who's that for?"

she asks what's going on, she asks if he's okay. she doesn't trust that he would want to just spend time with her without an excuse or a goal. (which...we know that it's not that he doesn't want to, it's more that he can't, but she doesn't feel that way. she wants to be wanted.)

her tone when he says "we never really talk much, do we?" and she answers "what do you mean like...really talk? no. no, we don't, mulder."

and they don't. you have to think of it in the context of never again, it hasn't been that long since philadelphia. in never again, she tried to talk to mulder about how she was feeling, albeit in a frustrated round-about way, and he blew her off. then she went away, met ed, and told him. the way she talks to "mulder" in small potatoes is closer to the way she talked to ed in the bar, just lighter and with more history.

season 4 is all about repression, and not saying what needs to be said, even when it might be your last chance. in the final scene of never again, the script notes: "if it were ever going to happen, it would be now," but that they maintain the silence. they maintain the silence, and then they're given a death sentence, a diagnosis. one that he "refuses to believe," so they maintain the silence more.

when who she thinks is mulder asks, "we never really talk much, do we?" it's not that they don't talk, that they aren't close, that they don't know each other. it's that they don't "really talk," like she says, in that quietly discontented way she answers "no, we don't."

it's in the way that she says "not everything is about you, mulder, this is my life." and the way that she asks if he's okay because he wants to spend friday night with her.

it's not that they "don't talk," or that they aren't best friends, or that they don't spend time together: it's that they don't get out of the car. they don't stop moving, not even long enough for her to be dying. it's that she feels like they don't talk, like so much remains unsaid in that maintained silence.

when he leans towards her, she sighs in surprise, but parts her lips. she's dying. she wants to be wanted. (the first thing she does after surviving, is show up at his door with wine.)

i call it embarrassing, but it's really just heartbreakingly sad. in the end, she sticks her hands in her pocket, stares at the floor, and tells him it's okay. maintains the silence.

You, drowning between my arms—stay.

—ocean vuong

isn't poetry fun and not at all ripping out our souls?

i feel like this guy would do numbers on tumblr

I love when Skinner and Scully team up because Scully only looks like the sane one when she's standing next to Mulder. When he's not there for comparison suddenly it becomes very clear that she's insane too (contempt of congress, etc)

And if given the choice between advancing my career by being blindly loyal to some faceless puppeteers pulling strings from the shadows, or to throw in with you two, make no mistake about it. I'd make the same decision every single damn time.

THE X FILES GIF MEME [1/4] DYNAMICS Mulder x Scully x Skinner

I’ve waited too long for this

1.01 | 3.11

Mulder and Stagnation, Scully and Autonomy

A bit I pulled from my next post on HTGSC:

“Where’s my partner?” 

Lyda sidesteps the question: “He believes in ghosts?”

“Yeah,” Scully unflinchingly responds. 

“You poor child. You must have an awfully small life, spending your Christmas Eve with him-- running around and chasing things you don’t even believe in.” 

Well that’s a perspective that Scully does and doesn’t hold: yes, Mulder’s single mindedness can be infuriating at times… but does she come across that way to him? It hits on that old, nagging insecurity: Phoebe Green and Bambi Berenbaum and Diana Fowley (and eventually Karin Berquist) can feed his theories and take her place and sneer at her skepticism; and Mulder will cling to their validation because he feels (she thinks) rejected by her. 

Does he feel rejected by her?  

Again: Mulder’s walls are his insecurity and terror that Scully will pack up and leave him one day; and Scully’s are that Mulder would be satisfied to rot in stagnation in his molding basement, rooting her down with him (an interesting foretelling of the episode Field Trip.) 

Her fear and equal confusion are twisted up with her warring belief and disbelief, too muddled for her to sift and resort her quaking emotions. 

“I can see it in your face, the fear," Lyda continues, "the conflicted yearnings. The subconscious desire to find fulfillment through another.” 

That part is true: Jack Willis to a degree, Mulder most definitely, and even more definitely Daniel Waterston. Scully eventually gravitates to Daniel because she feels unneeded by Mulder-- those doubts bleeding through since S1 into Never Again and into Milagro and finally concluding in All Things-- and her dutiful personality wants to be someone’s right hand man and the only twinkle in their eye. Mulder, for all his affectionate nature, forgets that Scully needs a moment after she loses her sister (talking about fate), her dog (moving on to his request), her rudder in the work (shuffling off to Graceland and giving her the wrong space) her Christmas Eve, and eventually her weekend. He almost loses her to men who need her to fix them-- Ed Jerse’s messed up life and crummy bar, Waterson’s damaged heart and broken relationships-- who have a way of crushing her rationality under the thumb of passion through obligation, who want to take the steering wheel of her life and turn it in their directions. It’s not until All Things that Scully realizes what Melissa meant by “life’s… just a path”: it’s one with a destination only you-- she-- can choose; and it causes her to fully take control of the reigns of her life and be at peace with her hands-off man Mulder. 

It took Scully forever to start a relationship with Mulder-- whether that’s The Unnatural or Millennium or All Things-- because she was ingrained in her habits, waiting for him to take control. But Mulder’s no Eddie van Blundht (no Ed Jerse, no Daniel Waterston); and they both realized it would take a miracle for him to do what his shapeshifter-self did. So: Scully, miraculously healed from cancer, reached out for another miracle… and Mulder completely missed it. This shifted her back into Starbuck mode; which led to her quiet reticence of S5 and her self-blame in FTF and her hints and thwarted hopes in S6. The relationship stagnated until Mulder got a clue-- in The Unnatural-- and it shifted irrevocably from there. 

just so you know how these campuses deal with actual antisemitism