#*puts all these files back

[arkangelo-7]

I hc that after Bruce’s infamous spine-breaking fight with Bane, all the Batkids pitch in and get Bruce one of those super bougie gamer chairs for the Bat-Computer. Like this thing is all leather, it’s got cup holders and LED lights, and that bad boy swivels smoother than butter.

It’s also bright fucking red. Robin red.

[mattodore]

12 p.m.

[titenoute]

Meme redraw OG Rayman prefers to choose kindness whenever he can...

V.2 :

But sometimes, you gotta send a message.

[kyurochurro]

i redrew this shot from pretty woman with mulder and scully!! thought it would be cute to see them in a nice scene like this hehe :D

[loubetcha]

hi <3 like that wetwired post right now I am thinking about s6 angst and how it wasn’t really about Diana, not really, but about every lie Mulder has ever told her and Scully’s greatest fears. We know that Scully fears that Mulder will choose his quest over her; Wetwired tells us that her greatest fear is him allying himself with the people who were responsible for her abduction and her sister’s death— that he is lying to her. And in one fell swoop, with his callousness, he manages to confirm all of these.

It’s only her faith in him that keeps them together. Agh.

OUCH????

but you’re so right it wasn’t about jealousy or neglect it was about that by putting his trust in someone else who was exceedingly untrustworthy, it ultimately felt like the trust they held so close was shattered. “sleeping with the enemy” so to speak doesn’t imply jealousy on those who see it, but betrayal.

[bitternace]

WHY ARE YOU SO EVIL!!! /POS. ATTACKING YOU.

Xemnas and Xigbar for 37 if that number hasn't been done? If it has, how about 74?

no puedo pedirle lo eterno a un simple mortal // ay, todo lo que he hecho por ti.

[ID: a mostly black and white drawing with a purple overlay of xigbar and xemnas shown from the hip up on the left side of the image. the background is black and has some diagonal lines with a bit of transparency on the right side. the shadows are harsh, with only a bit of light falling on their faces.

they stand before each other turned to the audience. xigbar, holds the handle and the middle of No Name before him, head tilted down as he looks to the audience. xemnas stands a full head taller behind xigbar, his left hand held some distance below the bladed tip of No Name, his left eye is covered by his fringe.

xemnas visible eye is painted ochre with a white pupil, while xigbar's eye is white and gold. The eyes on no name's handle and the gazing eye on the blade are a vibrant cyan. the caption reads the spanish lyrics "i can't ask a simple mortal for a forever" and "oh, everything i've done for you." /End ID.]

close-up under keep reading.

[sysig]

If anyone knows anything about Wordpad file recovery - my diary for the last two years is only displaying NULLs when I open it, both in Wordpad and Notepad++, but in the preview when I search for it I can see the first couple lines, and it's shows up in a search for a keyword I know I don't have in any other file

Is there a temp file I can get into? I don't care about formatting, I just don't want to lose two years of ideas and thoughts...

[sp-growingpains]

i saw yours tags in that stan post about alcoholism and i have to agree as someone who not only has family that are such, but also had friends that were as well. it’s scary. there have been times where i was scared of both those family members and friends. and to see stan’s being treated as a way for “angst” breaks my heart. he obviously uses it to cope because he has no other outlet, no other ways of dealing with stress and it sucks. also addictive personalities are a REAL THING and can be 100% serious if not treated, which is 90% what stan has as well…i wish this fandom would take that seriously. i really do. because it can end badly for him and offers if not taken as such. which is why i want to see more of stan recovering. taking the time to do so. be proud of it. that feels so much more rewarding to me! ( btw, i’m happy you managed to get help, you’re going to do great <3 )

TW: ALCOHOLISM, SEXUAL ASSAULT, MENTAL HEALTH - Once again, do not read further if you're not okay or you don't have the mental health for it! Okay?

Forgive me now if all my points don't come across correctly or if it feels like I'm rambling? For something like this, I should have written it out, proof read it, and then edited it. But it's all off the hip and a collection of thoughts I've had since I've gotten it.

We good? Okay...let's go!

Hey friend. I have not been ignoring this ask! I kinda wanted to hoard it like a little goblin in my inbox because, honestly? I am so very touched by it.

It is things like this that make me want to continue to talk about it. Trigger warnings are important for things like this, but it's also so very important to talk about it. When you it out there like this, people connect and come together.

And ya know? If it takes these little cartoon assholes to do it. That's fine. Do what works for you and brings you closer to other people.

Because really you know what saved me? Community.

It was other people. It was my therapist. It was a group of individuals who were fighting the same battle - or had. It was my friends and people who loved me.

It was shit like this. Things that got me out of my head! Obsession and addiction is a real thing and like all things in the world, moderation.

You can do it. You can learn discipline. You can move forward. You can overcome it and be better.

The scary thing about alcoholism is that most of the time, its a different experience for each person. It didn't start out as a problem for me. It started off as a few beers with some friends. Then it turned into a few beers every Friday and that started the slippery slope into drinking every weekend.

It's not always falling over yourself, throwing up on yourself, blacking out. I wanna make that clear. Mine was. Mine was also spending money I didn't have - money I could have put away for today.

When Stan was using it as a way to get out of his head and get through the day, that was one of the rare moments I felt heard. And it kinda scared me. I love that episode, but I struggle to get through it because it hits close. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT?!

It's the end of the episode that one no one talks about! How he realized that he didn't need it to get through life! That people around him helped him get out of it! That experiencing new things in life and focusing up on hobbies helped him see color again. Life is scary. It's sometimes very lonely. It's hard.

I've seen some people talk about how Kyle was a horrible friend in that episode. Just like in Raisins when Stan was going through it. Just like in Guitar Queer-o when they had their fight. Once more into Freemium isn't free.

Look, in my opinion, that's the scariest fucking thing about addiction. I fully believe, from the bottom of my heart, no one is beyond saving from that. But those are MY ideals! There may be people who are just like me and feel the same. I would do anything for my best friend, and the people around me.

But you know what? I don't fucking blame Kyle or Stan for the outcome of those episodes. Because it's not Kyle's job to "fix" his best friend. In every episode, he does try! He tries to be a friend, and I'm gonna give Kyle some major props here, he calls him out on it!

When I was still an alcoholic, no one called me out for it. Why would they? They didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. They saw Ashe as this goofball who could pound back a bottle of whiskey and be "fine" the next day. They didn't know I was already thinking about my next drink and how amazing that felt, despite the splitting headache.

I liked me better when I drank. I liked the Ashe that I was. She was loose. He was funny. They weren't caught up in the fear of saying stupid and not being able to recover from it.

But I hated who I was the next day. I hated that I didn't take my life seriously. That I felt like no one would like me if I wasn't putting away as many cans of beer as possible.

That's incredibly sad and lonely. It felt like the only person who understood me was the bottle, and that wasn't the case. I just couldn't see it, and neither could the people I still call my best friends or my ex-fiancé.

I wish I had a Kyle then. Maybe things would have gotten better faster. I don't know.

I have heard so many real stories from other people. Lived it through watching family. It runs on both sides of my family, and because of that, I was able to come out the other side better. Like I said earlier, it's different for everyone. That's what makes people so wonderful. So fantastic.

No, the fact that we suffer or struggle - but who we are after. Your experience is not mine. I can sympathize. I can relate. But I'm not you.

So I tell my story. I talk about these portrayals in media. I try to be careful with my writing and my art because of it. Because if it changes just one person, it it helps just ONE individual; then I've done my job.

You gotta walk to get better. If you can't walk; you crawl. And if you can't crawl, you find someone to carry you.

Because you wanna know something that's so heart warming from that stupid fucking show about dicks and butts? Is that Kyle and Stan are always friends again. Kyle always welcomes Stan back. Stan learns more about his mental health, he learns how to regulate these desires! That's wonderful! That's so fucking wonderful.

I want that. I want to bring a media or a platform where people can feel that way too! I wanna be there for you, welcoming you back! I want a day where you can come out of any situation, having learned and become better for it. That you have a home, someone you feel safe with, and that you're alive!

Anon; I'm proud of you too! I am so very proud of you! You don't have to respond just please, please keep going. I know it's scary living through it, experiencing it, being around it.

Let me make this perfectly clear again. Those ideals and the way I feel are MINE. You owe nothing to people who hurt you. Nothing to people who would use this substance to harm and do unspeakable things! At the end of the day, you gotta live with you. Protect yourself, love yourself, and surround yourself with those who want to live with you, too!

I have been on the other end of a man who liked whiskey and four year olds a little too much. I have been on the other end of a mother who would rather spend her money on vodka and cigarettes instead of worrying about feeding her children. I have been on the other of the very real slippery slope of addiction. I walk on the other side of PTSD, Depression, Mania, and being Bi-Polar.

They do not define you. They are you, sure. But that is not all you are.

Your past with alcohol, your present with alcohol, your future with alcohol - that is not all you are. You are so many different shades of blues. And I love you.

[ethos-labrador]

me: okay cool so minecraft stores your skins digitally now so it should be easy to find and download my skin to edit it

minecraft launcher: good news! we made everything more user friendly so you don't have to hunt down the folder we store your skin in anymore to change it :)

me: okay but i can still get to that folder right

minecraft launcher: :)

me: or at least let me download the file that *I* put there, right

minecraft launcher: :)

[smok3inm1rrors]

yes you were cooler in college, get over it

[toelessbastard]

will prolly try backing up my art to bsky ngl does anyone know if they have a queue function over there

[lemon-wedges]

.....

[ookaookaooka]

i just spent ages looking for the post, i swear i posted about it when i broke my beloved fish plate like a year ago, but now he's finally back together! i just have to wait a week or so for the resin to cure , and then i can go in and wipe away the excess gold. even though the process was frustrating and VERY time-consuming and i lost motivation halfway through and let it sit on the shelf unfinished for like 14 months, i'm glad i went to the trouble of learning how to actually kintsugi it with resin and gold instead of rushing it with epoxy and mica powder.

the before pics (freshly broken and after the initial gluing):

[heartbreakprincewille]

Okay, I was just thinking about a legal justice plotline in S3(meaning Wilhelm and Simon essentially having legal proceedings against August) and I don't think that we will get this in S3 at all but it's really really interesting to think about nevertheless.

Because usually in queer stories, coming out solves all the problems like a magical, fix-it-all solution and the mains live happily ever after. But YR heavily leans on realism and even if the S2 ending is an ambiguous but fitting ending for a queer show (sort of a coming out montage), it does not work for this show.

It has been repeatedly said by the cast and crew that Wilhelm's problem is not being queer, it's being a prince. The systemic traditions weighing on a person who can't even grieve his own brother without being shoved into empty traditions and a PR machiavelli. A person who cannot even fall in love with another person without a thousand worries crossing his mind in every move. A person who tried to confide in his own cousin but his privacy got shattered in front of the whole world instead. It's not that Wilhelm being queer itself is a problem. Instead the domino effect it would bring to people around him is the problem. And that's why it was such a task for Wilhelm to get his mother on board for the idea of a relationship with Simon- because everyone (and it includes Kristina) will try to enforce the heteronormative narrative again and again on him, pretending like his feelings don't matter because in the end, it's easier for them. It's easier for them to live in their centuries-old metaphorical gilded cages and try to enforce the traditions on the royal family itself because the monarchists and the rich (old AND new) thrive under the "stability" the monarchy provides to their social stature and their bulging pockets. Even August's motivations towards the crown are two-fold: he's not only in a constant want of power, but he is also a firm believer in continuing traditions and he directly benefits from the monarchy running as it is. And having the power in his hands will let him ensure that his own estates and rich-people solidarity is never threatened again.

But Wilhelm emerges as an anomaly in the system- he will not tie himself down to hollow traditions. And it threatens everyone's stability, which leads to the denial- and the swirling wave of change calms down. But then Wilhelm starts refusing all the traditions and eventually retracts the denial- and the wave hits all of them like a storm.

And Wilhelm trying to seek justice through the legal machinery is not only very poetic (a prince trying to seek fairness in a democratic system because the monarchy inevitably fails him), but it will also rock the boats of so many people. They will finally get to understand that rich and powerful people also have consequences for their actions and their safety nets can blow away no matter how much money they throw away to keep themselves afloat.

I can understand one argument that August is also young and maybe legal consequences will be a bit extreme for him. But, like, any other common person will be blown apart by the system despite being innocent, why is he any exception? If human lives have equal value, why their actions should be treated differently? I would still like August to have a chance at a realization of the severity of his actions rather than facing legal consequences, but I also do want him to face the legal mechanism or atleast face the fear of having legal consequences for his actions. These two things can co-exist. Simon can easily be torn apart because of the whole dealing thing, and no one would come and save his ass for it. It's the biasness for me.

Overthrowing the monarchy or letting August have a redemption arc is just not possible in a single 6-episode season. It will simply be unnatural to the progression of the story. However, atleast in my head, Wilhelm and Simon seeking justice through a legal system can bring the consequences into action without the added labour of scrapping away a deeply rooted institution or changing the way a person's psyche works.

[rathologic]

hey i just watched andy north's patho2 mod video and i have to ask what inspired the creation of smooth grief? i need to know all about him

(also you managed to get his dialogue to match the games writing so well!)

Thank you! It's always great to see a smooth grief appreciator...

In 2020 I was playing patho2 on a bootcamped ~2014 MacBook Air which got maybe 5 FPS on a good, clear day. Naturally it had a lot of issues running the game (entering buildings took minutes of real world time in the door cutscene; I could frequently just sprint through walls before they loaded), and it sometimes used low-detail models in dialogue screens. For example, here's an andrey that scared me enough to use faceapp to put a smile on him:

This kind of thing happening in-game gave me the idea of manually blurring images of Grief's face to make him smooth, based on the assertion that Grief would have the roughest skin out of the Pathologic cast. Smooth Grief was born on June 14, 2020 with this photo:

After that, I posted Smooth Grief edits occasionally under the tag #smooth grief sunday. The well of "unique images of Bad Grief" dried up after about two years, but I'm hoping they'll return as Pathologic 3 content is released.

When I figured out how to make installable texture/dialogue edits for p2, Smooth Grief was the only thing I genuinely wanted to implement into the game, so he got his own lore-compliant mod 🙂 which you can download and install on your Pathologic 2 for the low price of 0.

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 5 "the field where i died" thoughts

i’m back. i’m back and i’m intrigued. because i'm reading the episode description, and if we get more mulder ex lore here, which the episode description makes it sound like we will, i am… not sure how i will feel on the subject. the term “reincarnation” makes it sound like whoever it was… died. did an ex of his die? and that is a lot of mulder marked by pain and suffering. and maybe i’m getting ahead of myself. but the writers KNOW we want our agents to smooch, so focusing on an ex might make me, the viewer, feel weird. i just need to get all these thoughts out in writing before we begin.

how is he gonna tell if someone is a reincarnated lover? or am i misunderstanding this entirely. 

only one way to find out

author’s note: oh my gosh…… nothing could have prepared me for this. at all. here i was thinking it was ex lore time, but it was past life time, and there are TEARS in my eyes.

(serious author's note: i ask for some grace in this episode recap. there may be some things i word poorly. i am familiar with the terminology used to describe DID, and did my best, but acknowledge that i may have come up short. please understand that this is intended to capture my live reactions to what i was seeing for the very first time. at times here, there are no reactions, just a sort of a nebulous recapping of what i saw because i was feeling So Many Things. so this one might be messy, and i hope that is okay. i don't understand what i am feeling, but i am feeling a Lot of it, and humbly ask for your patience in my clumsy wording as well as some helpful discussion on what just went down)

let us begin, i type as i sniff up some tears

we open with mulder in a field… is he reciting poetry? and looking very sad. 

wait, is he not actually reciting poetry and he just talks like that? while holding two pictures of old timey people. i’d guess civil war era.

okay. so now we jump right to the intro. that was quick. i’m still processing what we just saw because we were really dropped into that one with no context whatsoever.

federal agents break into a temple in tennessee. they’re looking for illegal firearms! and a guy named ephesian.

but mulder sees a window… and he is staring at it… walking out the door as if led by some sort of spiritual quest while scully yells his name and wonders wtf he’s doing. he is not responding to her at all, but she’s chasing after him because she is a good friend.

so he’s hearing things while scully is pulling her gun out, and it does appear that he found a trapdoor!

he busts in, and slaps some poison out of the hand of a woman who was taking sips, and then grabs the dude who i assume is the cult leader. whew… that was close

now they’re at some sort of meeting, listening to tapes, and skinner is here!!! hiiii skinner. everybody say hi skinner!

so, someone on the tape seems to be whistleblowing on this cult- the seven stars or something- saying that the leader is hurting children and stockpiling weapons. mulder looks incredibly pensive during all of this.

oh! someone refers to mulder as “our man spooky”, which is kind of hilarious, while complaining that the reports were weak. scully leans in and asks yeah, how did he know that? while the men are fighting.

and skinner yells KNOCK IT OFF!!!! because the folks at the compound were somehow able to hide all the evidence before they got there, and now they’re forced to hold ephesian and “his wives” on “BS charges”. so now the agents MUST find evidence of firearms and who the informant was NOW because they will try to get an arraignment fast.

woah. no pressure.

skinner comes over talk to mulder and scully- they must look into this ephesian fellow's claims of supernatural abilities. scully says he can use the book of revelations to manipulate his followers, but seems to suspect no real powers. 

they to talk to this ephesian fellow, who says he knew for 9 centuries that scully was coming, and starts going on about the bible, quoting stuff. very scary behavior.

mulder comes in with the fact check. jesus said that at smyrna, not about some church in tennessee! (his knowledge…. it always impresses me)

this dude is being super creepy, telling them to put aside their investigation “for your own souls”, because soon all unfaithful shall “be destroyed by God’s mighty men”. so this is some pretty standard cult rhetoric here. if you've studied religions, you've heard this one many times. it seems that ephesian thinks he and his people shall be the ones doing this violence. a tight zoom in on mulder’s troubled face as he quotes more scripture.

they have 6 wives to question, and mulder says to start with one in particular. interesting… i wonder why that one. is it because she was the one they caught ephesian with in the hidden area... or something more?

her name is melissa, and she says she’s 25 as she smokes a cigarette and dodges their questions. she’s been at the compound and married to ephesian for a year. 

mulder asks if it troubles her that ephesian has so many other wives, and she just recites scripture instead of answering. so scully comes in with the “i’d have a tough time if my husband had so many children with other women”. this seems to begin to get her to crack, as she tears up.

wait... it’s so wrong to hear scully call someone else, who isn't her sister, melissa :(

melissa she doesn’t have any children with ephesian yet... because he has to wait for God to tell him that the right soul is ready to be reincarnated, which is why his children are the most sacred members of the temple. naturally, of course /s

things get quiet when they ask if he had been hurting the children until melissa starts talking with a very different voice and set of mannerisms, and she no longer replies to the name melissa. so scully scrawls “multiple personality” in her loopy handwriting and passes it over to mulder. oh! is this sydney?

(at this point, i shall begin to refer to sydney with he/him pronouns, as this is what mulder does. normally i would stick to my journalistic integrity and keep reporting the things i wrote down incorrectly while watching the episode, but i'm trying to be very respectful- i hope you understand)

but mulder writes back to scully no, this is not a multiple personality case, it's a past life case! his handwriting is very blocky. to prove his point, he asks sydney who the current president is, and he responds that it is harry truman. ah. so, he's a few years off.

mulder claims that “somehow he just knew” sydney was melissa's past life, which doesn’t reveal a lot, but his eyes are very soulful and i want to hold his hand.

skinner says they need to find something to get this case moving forward, and mulder is like dude, we found sydney, the voice matched! i would agree with his judgement that this in fact a sizeable discovery.

mulder is saying that what they have seen matches the criteria of DID in the DSM4 (woah, need to look up when we switched to 5), but scully is saying that some people don’t even think it exists as a condition, and skinner thinks it could be a trap to buy more time for ephesian. so no one is in agreement here.

but mulder is going into his psychology expert mode and is making a very compelling case that this is an example of DID, particularly in the fact that sydney emerged when the topic of child abuse came up, which fulfilled the protector role. scully wants to know more before giving any sort of diagnosis, but she doesn't seem opposed to the hypothesis.

(skinner seems to fumble over which pronouns to use for each personality here)

skinner says to go ahead and take her back to the compound and see if it gets any results in prompting memories that could be useful to the investigation, but scully is mad at mulder! he didn’t even have the courage to tell skinner he thinks they're dealing with past lives here! mulder, who is usually so brave!!

he mumbles that skinner wouldn’t believe him. which is true.

woah, i don’t know how to interpret this line here, so i’ll just write it down for further analysis:

“i don’t believe that you feel responsible for those 50 lives. or melissa reidel. you are only responsible to yourself, mulder”

(is she saying he doesn’t care about those 50 people?? is she saying he has an ulterior motive? is she calling him a liar, and that he is using this case to gain support for his supernatural ideas?? is she calling him selfish? or is she trying to tell him that he can only be responsible for himself and control his own actions, that he cannot place the burden of saving everyone upon his shoulders? is she berating or reassuring him or both? does she think he isn't serious about the lives in danger?)

i can’t figure it out, but he gets up and leaves. (after watching the episode, i still can't figure it out- what did you think?)

so they take melissa back to the temple, and scully asks her to recall the painful memories so they can keep herself and others safe. it is very tense as she walks into a bedroom and sees many photos on the wall of ephesian and his wives. she knocks some of them over and starts crying.

scully still looks furious with mulder. it's as if she thinks his desire for supernatural entities to be proven comes ahead of his desire to save actual lives, and it's recalling her comparison to ahab during the conversation on the rock. she must feel that there is no time for this, that they need to get concrete answers right away or horrible things will happen; perhaps she thinks he isn't focused, is being fanciful. and i understand the pressure of a ticking clock, but after so long, this rift between them, it doesn't feel right.

oh my goodness, we see some horrific artwork on the wall by the kids at the temple. woah. shoutout to the set design team.

melissa is in the playroom sobbing, but asks why she is being called melissa. scully asks what she should call her, and that is how we meet lily. but lily isn’t there for very long before sydney comes back, saying to “leave the kid alone”. mulder says they can all be safe if they just are told where the guns are. then melissa seems to come back, and she goes back out the window where mulder was staring earlier!!! what does this window know?!?

and the score here is really pretty as she walks outside, scully following behind her. mulder is clearly unwell, though, and scully asks what is wrong, which he ignores and walks past her. typical him.

a new alter of melissa's seems to front, now with a southern accent, saying the guns are in a bunker. but… it’s the civil war she’s talking about. she was a nurse, looking for someone who was staying in tennessee. and she found that someone here, dead. then she was hidden in a bunker while the battle raged above her. it is very horrific, what she is describing.

she clarifies that she was there in november 1863, then turns to mulder and says “as were you”. he doesn’t seem shocked by this, but scully is, as this new southern belle proclaims “this is the field where i watched you die” OH!

(mulder, a confederate in a past life… this is deeply unfortunate)

mulder is trying to make a phone call to a hypnotist while they drive melissa back to the police station, but scully figures out he’s trying to do past life regression on her and says not to. and that her life is in shreds, and that is too much for her to handle. i hate to say it, but i agree with her. melissa has been through so much, and with such a tight deadline, i don't know if they have time for such a journey.

OH! mulder is angry. his voice is all growly as he yells “YOU WERE THERE, SCULLY! you saw it, you heard it, why can’t you feel it?” oh my gosh… the way he slammed his hand on the wheel... why can't she see it, it seems so obvious to him... how infuriating it must be...

scully asks why ephesian is a paranoid sociopath for claiming to be in greece years ago, but he isn’t for claiming to have died in that field……. damn…….

(idk what’s going on here between them exactly but i’m stressed. they are stressing me out)

(at this point, we begin a sequence in which i am so enraptured with what is going on, i have no reactions to all of the things i am seeing, and just recount them to you, with occasional interjections of "oh my god"- but i think if you've seen the episode, you get why it had this effect on me)

so they do get a therapist, who is talking to melissa. she begins to answer the therapist's questions about seeing anything upsetting at the compound, talking about a woman named elizabeth and her son scott, who came to live in the temple. and ephesian took the son away. but ephesian caught his mother visiting her son, and “the mighty men” beat her, which brings melissa to tears as she recounts this. and he hit the boy, calling him garbage, beating him.

scully looks very stressed in the background to hear all of this, but sydney is now fronting at this point, saying to leave melissa alone, and that the guns are in the bunkers… somewhere. where they are is a mystery, though.

scully leans down to mulder and says that maybe there is a map somewhere, but mulder says she knows where to find them. and at this she says “mulder…” in a very breathy fashion and i still can’t quite articulate what is going on between them…. but he’s going in.

he says it’s me, melissa, and asks her to go back to the field. “your eyes may have changed shade, but it cannot color the soul behind them”, she says. that they are only to meet in passing in this life. and she misses him. he just stared and stares, before his head falls into his hands

scully is trying to explain to him that this is a product of melissa's illness, and she can’t give any specifics- no names or locations, and they don’t have time to do this, because ephesian’s arraignment is in two hours.

“wouldn’t you, scully? wouldn’t anybody?” <- oh my god…. is he compelled by a terrible sense of duty or by his own curiosity? is she scared to watch him go down this path he cannot return from?

okay, so now he is going back into his past lives. this sequence is almost entirely a close up of his face, for minutes on end, which adds to the intensity. he's really panting as he remembers. “ghetto streets. shattered glass. bodies of the dead. a jewish woman. poland.” oh my god…… 

he says that he is samantha’s mother in this life; “in this life, she is my son”

his father is dead, and… HIS FATHER IS SCULLY? WHAT? i didn’t see that coming. she’s troubled by this, all of this, not just learning he believes her soul to have been his father before.

but he says that his father is waiting now for their souls to come back together, different, but always together, again and again, to learn.

and he is crying. he can’t go to his father. a gestapo man is there, and he is cancer man; “evil returns as evil, but love… souls mate eternal”. and his wife is melissa, who is taken away to the camps. and he’s crying, and scully is watching with great concern.

now, he’s rising above the field, near the bunker. and his sergeant is also dead, and “he is scully”, and we cut to her face of increasing sadness. sarah holds him, who is melissa. she is sarah kavanaugh, and he is sullivan biddle. she doesn’t know that he’s waiting for her, that they will live again. 

scully tries to ask if he sees any bunkers, but he keeps saying his soul is tired, and he wants to rest.

and this is devastating. it was if i was the one undergoing the hypnosis here. i couldn't look away, i couldn't react, i was so entirely absorbed and confused and busy feeling things.

scully is consulting a map in the town records to try and find this bunker where the weapons are stored, and then she looks up the names he mentioned. sure enough, they are in the county records. then she reaches for some photos, where she finds one of sullivan and sarah. 

a lot of things are being processed in her brain, so we might need to give her a minute. i think we can see some long-held systems of belief being challenged in her mind.

but she brings him back the photos of their past lives, even as she is telling him that ephesian is going to be released soon. why would she do this? to comfort him? to validate him without using words?

oh my god, mulder just called her “dana”. wait. hold on. oh my god, hold on.

“dana, if, um… early in the four years we’ve been working together… an event occurred that suggested or somebody told you that… we’d been friends together in other lifetimes- always- wouldn’t it have changed some of the ways we looked at one another?”

“even if i knew for certain, i wouldn’t change a day”

WAUGHHHHHHHH (ripping my clothes off in grief) WAOUGHHHHHH wouavhhhghhhh……… she wouldn’t change a day….

(and what event was it that he is referring to? is there a certain one...? am i forgetting something from early s1...? damn you, my obsessive note-taking impulses, for not kicking into gear until s2...)

“well… maybe that flukeman thing, i could have lived without that just fine” HDHJSNSME he smiles as she leaves….

(i had to google what that even was because i was like ??? but the flukeman was the season 2 sewer baby!!! for those of you who are going into this whole thing blind and also don't know what the fandom calls stuff! i think to me he was "baby sewer mermaid" or something along those lines... but now we know)

so now he and melissa are in the room together, trying to recall. she says she wants to believe (!!!), and he’s rubbing her hand, but ephesian comes in, saying it’s time to leave. so she rips the photo in half and leaves crying. 

does he know he was supposed to love her? is he mourning that he hasn't? is he wondering if he has time to?

mulder gets up, and leans his head against the wall. scully comes in to say that they are still searching for more bunkers as the temple people return to their home. there is a deep sense of grief.

ephesian seems suspicious. 

mulder is talking to skinner, saying that those in the temple believe that the FBI are the devil’s army, prophesied to be defeated by the armies of god. but ephesian must not really believe that, because he hid the weapons. mulder emphasizes that he may “deny himself”.

back at the compound, all the members are being called to worship. the music is getting scary, and guns are being pulled out. 

scully looks up some bible verses and realizes that ephesian is calling his members to the end of times, which gives skinner the go ahead to launch a raid.

back at the compound, the poison is being distributed to the members of the temple. and a few are shooting at the agents outside, and mulder and scully pull up as the sipping of the poison begins inside. 

NO! mulder puts his hands up and begins to walk into the compound!!!!! WHAT IS HE DOING!!! scully shouts out that he is dead. as we see inside there are piles and piles of bodies, including melissa.

but wait! is she still alive???? she’s getting up!!! 

but no! ephesian is still there watching her. giving her poison to take. mulder is running in as fast as he can, trying to figure out what is going on. and he finds the room full of the bodies while gregorian chanting is in the background. 

he finds melissa, with no pulse, holding onto the photo she had torn. 

scully sees him touching her arm, raising his eyes and crying. 

we end where we began, with him in the field, holding the pictures of his and melissa’s past lives. 

end episode. 

what…..

first thoughts: i don’t quite know what to make of this, but i can tell it is going to tear me apart for the rest of my life.

second and third thoughts are also variations of my first thought.

i feel so sad? to know that mulder has (or thinks he has) lived these horrific past lives, and that he is reunited with the same people over and over again, to learn and lose them. and that scully was there with all of them- but so was melissa, and he said that soulmates are eternal, so if that is true he lost his for this life. and he said he was so tired, so tired... how can he escape the eternal cycle of samsara?

and scully, watching all of this- what did she mean when she said that he wasn't responsible for anything but himself? was it an insult? was she begging him? what was she feeling when she heard him talk about her being there in his past? was she trying to hurt him in their conversation in the car? will they ever actually be able to see eye to eye? does she believe him? can she? how does hearing all of this shake her own faith?

can you have many soulmates that come with you again and again, just in different forms? so would his soulmates be scully, and his mother and father and sister, and this melissa figure? and what are the implications of losing a soulmate in this world? is that a life of feeling that something is missing, until death? do they shuffle roles, but come again and again? is that comforting or horrific? are we to believe him?

and that terrible, terrible ending, him finding the bodies... how are we supposed to interpret that? just more grief on top of already endless grief? or are we supposed to see the poetry moment as an answer to a question that provides relief, even if it is bittersweet?

why did he want to know so badly? was he driven by duty to save? duty to find the Truth? duty to protect his loved ones and seek cosmic answers? are these separate things, or are they all intertwined in him?

i'm... really going to have to think this one over. i would really appreciate hearing your thoughts, as well. i wish i had a solid interpretation. it was very serious and sad, and it was bittersweet but filled with grief. i once again echo my earlier request for fluff. but how do you go back to the way things were once he says she was with him in every life? how does scully rationalize that? what are they to each other?

i'm pondering. it feels like something has shifted. and you can't go back now, even if i can't pinpoint what it is that changed.

i want to go back to daydreaming about apple cider dates. but it feels like you can't, you know? huh.