#my struggle iv

carrie11:

carrie11:

I was hoping I’d wake up with a bit more clarity about this episode. But alas, I’m still just sad, confused, angry & wishing it didn’t exist.

12+ hours out & I’ve had some time to digest this.

I can live with the pregnancy storyline (though it’s absurd & a copout). I can live with the demise of Monica & Skinner (though it makes me sad). And I can live with William being CSM’s son (though it disgusts me). But I CANNOT get past that Scully would dismiss her son so easily. It ranks up there with the William episode - Scully would not believe she couldn’t protect her son & give him up without a fight. It’s so out of character, and so inane.

And what frustrates me even more than it being out of character is that it tarnishes some really good moments in previous episodes. I’m going to have a hard time watching the closing scene in Existence without thinking “he’s not really a miracle”. Or watch Home Again & listen to Scully express her fear that she doesn’t want to treat her son like trash, when that’s exactly what she did here. Or watch Plus One and not think that the whole conversation in bed was just a plot device to get us to this ending. Or watch all of Ghouli without thinking this love for William doesn’t matter because once the truth is revealed, he’s no longer a relevant part of their lives.

I’m disappointed & sad that Scully’s (and by extension, Gillian’s) last scene was written with such insensitivity & stupidity. It’s not honoring the beloved character, or the brilliant actress.

This might sound dumb, but does Scully think William is gone as in “ran off” or gone as in “dead”? Because I assumed she thought he was dead. Which is why her reaction stunned me. Because if I knew that Scully knew he was alive and was asking Mulder to honor William’s request to be left alone, I could accept her reaction much more. But I cannot accept that Scully would otherwise be able to get over his death so quickly regardless of who his father was or who raised him. Because she carried him, bore him, nursed him, took care of him for a year, and then agonized for 18 years over losing him. There’s no way she was suddenly like, “I was never his mother”. She would be grieving in a different way than what we saw. Something I did like, though, was the role reversal with Mulder as the grieving parent. That he saw a large part of his identity as a father. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a male character say something like, “What am I if I am not a father?” This is usually something written for women to say. So I like that the sexist stereotype was broken. And I’m happy Mulder and Scully will have another child. With a shorter car chase, maybe we could’ve gotten more from Scully clarifying that she was actually heartbroken or knew he was going to okay.

If it ends the way I read that it ends, I’m going to have to riot. Given what it supposedly is, it’s actually a great ending if there was a Season 12, because of what viewers know that Mulder & Scully do not. But given this is it, it’s awful. I wanted a HAPPY ending!!!! Also, I’m 99.9% sure that we don’t get a kiss.

So Karen Nielsen, the writer of Nothing Lasts Forever, gave a thumbs up to my tweet in which I mentioned the parallels between what Mulder said to Scully in the church and what he said in Requiem. I asked if this was coincidence or a deliberate allusion. Because it if is an allusion, it is significant because Requiem was the episode where Scully learned she was pregnant. However, she did not respond to the question, and I cannot assume the thumbs up meant a confirmation that it was an allusion. She might have been giving a thumbs up to me saying that I loved the episode. However, if the similarities in the dialogue were merely a coincidence, it would be easy enough to say so. But to not respond makes me wonder if she’s dodging an answer because of how it points to the pregnancy spoiler. If she didn’t know how similar it was to Requiem, she might not want to admit to being unaware of the similarities to a very significant episode. But also I know she got feedback from long timers, so I cannot imagine no one mentioned it. (Although somehow long timers failed to tell Ben Van Allen, who wrote Familiar, that Emily was the name of name of Scully’s daughter and to suggest another name). Thoughts?

foxmulders:

Summary: The porch lights are on. That’s the first thing he notices. | post-msiv, angst & eventually an improbable infant | part 1/4

in spring

—

Eventually, he runs out of clean clothes.

It’s stupid really. He is terrible at doing his laundry. Terrible at sitting in the warm orange plastic chairs at the laundromat, all fluorescent, the doughy scent of warm sheets burning like smoke. Terrible at paying the knock-off Zoltar with spare change and pocket lint and waiting to feel big.

Last time he went, he turned his last white shirt red. Last time he went, the penny prophet told him it was out of fortunes. Come again later. He’s gotten good at taking invitations to say as warnings to go. Come again later. He didn’t.

Plus, the Bay stays cold and gets colder. He’s been hanging around Chesapeake for a month or two. Living in the sea air, the salt, because nothing else does. March brought the freeze and April held it between its dull teeth, wrung it out into a humid little spring.

For a while, he’d considered California. He’s never seen it. But its far from the coast he’s been circling, and it turns out a couple thousand is only a lot of money if you’re buying video games, or had a Bar Mitzvah, or are seventeen and stupid and so alone that your girlfriend thinking you’re cool, fanning bills, sounds like salvation. It’s only a lot of money if someone else is keeping you alive. He’s worn into his last pair of jeans. Stealing is easy but exhausting. Everything he owns smells like dust and brine.

So. He’s never really had a lot of options. He just liked to think so. It’s not like murder is really a marketable skill. At one shit motel, he gives his name as Henry Hill. At another, Bickle. Durden. And when he’s not feeling like a complete asshat: Luke Skywalker. No one ever blinks. Anonymity clings; he curls up in it.

Mid-April. He drives one last stolen car with a hand out the window, and as he moves into Virginia the air stops smelling like the Bay’s primordial preserves.

It takes him three miles past the state lines to realize the new smell is dirt and rain. The dead come alive. In spring, things rise again. Glory, glory, hallelujah.

The radio plays static and snatches of song.

Keep reading

The dialogue between Mulder and Scully is great in this story, little jokes and barbs as evidence of two people who very much adore each other.

Title:Meg
Author: Apostrophic (@mappingthexfiles)
Summary:He had lived with grief long enough to learn you did not ignore happiness whenever it came. Two scenes, one before and one after a tiny someone makes three. Post-season 11. I’m coining the tag “no angst, just love.”
Length: 3,741 words
Classification:Post-episode/series
Rating: General Audiences
Spoilers: My Struggle IV
Favorite line: More often than not, though, he’d say something ridiculous, like, “Oh my God, Scully, that’s so hot, come here,” because then she would laugh or give him a shove or put a pillow over his face, but then return from the bathroom to curl up against him, resting her head and her belly like he was her pillow, and he’d try to recall something else in his life that made him feel more necessary than that.

Read the story!