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.

absolutely obsessed with how people who love clara oswald talk about her

and they're right <3

clara oswald + “high infidelity” by taylor swift

“he is the closest person to me in this whole world. he is the man i will always forgive, always trust. the one man i would never, ever lie to.”

in the low lamp light i was free, heaven and hell were words to me.

—hozier

he LITERALLY came back from the dead for her and i'll never get over that. also these lyrics were made for them i'm sending hozier my therapy bills. jesus christ.

3

My Redbubble

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

All Souls//5x17

i still think about tlat!james

The Scene from the x files pilot, as seen on my 1999 crt tv :)

scully, “war of the coprophages” (s3e12)

*pretends I didn’t already drew this exact scene years ago*

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness //The X-Files, 1x17

so fringe really is about a father who couldn't bear his son's death

so fringe really is about a father who couldn't bear his son's death

mulder will do shit like call scully from jail and be like hi I got arrested trying to catch homeless bigfoot in an alleyway. I know you’re a six hour drive away but can you come pick me up. and scullys problem is that she will come pick him up eventually

Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, Chen Chen

you wouldn’t have lasted an hour in the asylum where they raised me