#x-files

There’s no X-Files without Gillian Anderson as Scully, but that doesn’t mean Chris Carter won’t do it anyway if given the chance. As the result of having anxiety, I’ve been tortured into envisioning what awful plot lines he might actually attempt. In doing so, I’ve also thrown canon away like William in the river and “the truth we both know”. May I be wrong about everything!

Scully dies:

1)      In childbirth.

2)      On the way to the hospital because some asshole runs a red light.

3)      Or in some other way that’s recycled from how we’ve seen pregnant women die dramatically on TV 100x before.

4)      Because the cancer returns and she doesn’t treat it because she’s pregnant and doesn’t want to harm the baby.

5)      Or the cancer returns shortly after the baby is born and kills her just because.

6)      Or the cancer returns because CSM’s death somehow triggers the chip in her neck to cause the cancer, therefore allowing him to continue to fuck with Scully’s body even from beyond the grave.

***The baby girl survives all of the above scenarios***

Scully gets abducted:

1)      Because abductees everywhere are being taken again for a reason that’s unclear so why the fuck not.

2)      Because the UFO on the bridge was not just a vision.

3)      Because she decides after all that she is a mother to William and when she goes to him, his super soldier ass gets her swiped by the aliens.

When Mulder is left to parent alone: 

1)      He bumbles through single fatherhood in one episode that relies on sexist tropes about men not knowing what to do with babies.

2)      He gives single fatherhood the one-episode shot, then he ends up hiring a woman to be his nanny. She’s not a professional nanny, just someone he encounters in public who gives him a tip on soothing a fussy baby. And she just so happens to need a job! He hires her even though she seems too nice to be true and/or is mysterious AF. Oh, and she’s pretty and 35 tops.

3)      The nanny, who of course says she knows what it’s like to lose someone, gets him to open up over the pain of losing the mother of his child and comforts his broken heart. Also, Mulder does his signature ugly, open-mouthed cry, and ends up hugging her. This sets her up as a potential love interest and we want to gut ourselves with a fishing knife.

4)      Mulder exchanges an onscreen kiss with the nanny in the cruelest twist of onscreen irony ever and even though we swore we would never watch The X-Files without Scully, we tune in on this particular occasion because we heard this was going to happen and we are compelled to suffer. When the nanny says she knows she could never take the place of Scully, we actually do gut ourselves with a fishing knife.

“Lonely” William returns:

1)      Claiming he wants a relationship with Mulder, his not-dad, half-brother

2)      But he kidnaps his baby sister instead.

3)      Because his sister also has alien DNA and this makes him feel connected to her.

4)      Or because he suddenly gives a shit about family and decides he’s the only one who could understand/protect a child with alien DNA.

5)      Or because he decides she was the wanted child and feels jealous.

6)      Or because now he’s completely evil, tired of being pursued by the bad guys, and thinks he can offer her up his sister in his place.

This is what is keeping me up at night.

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?

peppernights:

peppernights:

the amount of msr baby/pregnancy/post msiv fics i’ve read in the past week is honestly embarassing

okay here are some of the fics i’ve read up to now (as asked by @sandrafranova)

angsty/birth of the msr baby

proelium (post finale msr + baby + willam)

finding a way (part one/part two)

morning sickness (post msiv)

also on ao3

unlimited future (post msiv)

it’s a brand new day

at long last (mulder and scully go home post msiv)

their struggle

my struggle iv post ep

there was more but you might want to consider tracking @scuilysmuider/@today-in-fic/@storybycorey/@edierone/@lyndsaybones/@baronessblixen/@how-i-met-your-mulder/@tasha-vick because they all write or reblog fics!

Classified photos alternate angles

classified picture

dangerousdykes:

me: [finds a scratch i don’t remember getting]
me: [the x-files original 1993 opening theme.mp3]