#I'm starting to say too much lol

[tangents-within-tangents]

Thinking about the song "Ship in Port" by Radical Face and clones

Thinking about the line "Farewell to the chains we were born into" and what that can mean for the clones

Thinking about how "But I have always stayed in place/Under that old illusion that it's safe" could equally describe Hunter, Echo, and (s1+2) Crosshair's complete opposite approaches to the Empire and post-war life.

The way Crosshair clings to his identity as a soldier of the Empire

And Echo as a soldier of the Republic

But Hunter puts his identity as a soldier behind him

Crosshair fights for the Empire to gain purpose

Echo fights against the Empire to save his brothers

And Hunter decides the Empire is too strong to even try to oppose

"A ship in port is a safer one"

"but it's not the reason it was made"

"So forgive me if I wander off"

"And forgive me more if I just stay"

Thinking about what The Bad Batch could have been if it had more fully explored the differences between those ideologies

(Thinking about what The Bad Batch could have been if it had dedicated more screen time to the 'reg' clones within the Empire and the underground network's fight to free them , instead of just sidelining Echo and Rex for a hypothetical clone rebellion show we might never get)

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[samanthamulder]

THE X-FILES (1993-2018)

SEASON FIVE — What do you hope to find? I mean, in the end.

[bestiarum]

[myreia]

— v. raison d'être

It was never going to last. They knew it from the beginning, all of them. Their time in the First was temporary, fleeting. For some, that would have been enough to give pause, to keep distance. For them, it made these moments all the more precious—even when it was difficult, even when it was unfair. Ryne knows they are both proud of her. That will never change, even when they live in separate worlds. It is a bittersweet thing to say goodbye, to close one chapter and begin the next. But change is necessary, a fundamental aspect of life. There is no sense in clinging to the past when the future—with all its countless possibilities—lies ahead. There is no looking back. Only forwards.

[yujeong]

Time was at a standstill. Vegas was holding his breath without noticing, and continued to hold it when he did - he was afraid of what would happen if he exhaled loudly enough to draw attention to himself. His gaze was shifting between Pete and the man who was standing before them in the doorway, blocking their entrance. Vegas had never seen him before, but even so, he recognized Pete in him enough to know who he was. A dangerous aura surrounded him. There was an edge to his presence that Vegas would only come across people of certain circles. He was a fighter. A muay khao. Pete's father. Shame coursed through Vegas' body, smearing his skin, settling in his lungs, rendering him speechless. I thought he was dead, he wanted to tell Pete if he could. He wanted to scream at him, I thought you killed him. Pete was the one who broke the stillness. As if awakened by something, he took a half-step back and made a motion with his arms, almost raising them to his chest, but not quite. In an instant, Pete reverted into the pet Vegas had been keeping at the safehouse, bound by handcuffs and afraid of his belt hitting flesh and drawing blood. A lump formed in Vegas' throat. "Have you stopped practicing? Your form is off." The uncanny similarities between Pete and his father appearance-wise didn't mean a thing when it came to their voices. Vegas shivered. Was this what Pete would sound like in a few decades? (Were these the condescending words he'd choose to spew? Was Pete going to embody his father? Was Vegas embodying his?) "What are you doing here?" Pete whispered. "They let me out for a few days, so I came here to collect some money. Imagine my surprise when I found out my offspring left the job someone found him worthy enough of doing to... do what exactly? Yaai didn't want to tell me." He crossed his arms, waiting for an answer. Vegas didn't know what he was allowed to say. If he was allowed to say anything at all. "It's none of your business." "I'd say it very much is my business, as well as yaai's business who was dependent on the money you were making being some rich asshole's human shield." A choked sound scratched Vegas' throat. He didn't like getting reminded of Pete being the main family's bodyguard, even though he stopped being one mere months ago. Especially like this. That was the first time Pete's father stopped looking at his son and turned his head to look at Vegas. For a moment, there seemed to be recognition in his eyes. Did he know who Vegas was? Did he care? A snort came out of his mouth. He leaned on the door. "Oh, I see how it is." He laughed, scratched his neck. "I never expected you to whore yourself out for money. Tell me, is it preferable to the path I carved out for you?" Vegas could sense the disgust in his voice. He could also see it on Pete's face. He was too astonished to share it, but not enough to be unable to speak. "Khun, there has been some misunderstanding-" "Don't bother. I can recognize a faggot when I see one." Pete's movements were too fast for Vegas to stop him. A direct jab to the nose; his father fell like a pack of cards, groaning like a wounded animal. Surprisingly, no blood - Pete held back. Vegas didn't know what to think about that. "That was a pathetic attack, even for you." "Get up." "We're not in the ring, son." Pete growled. Vegas could see his hands trembling as he was keeping them in the air, maintaining an offensive stance. "That never stopped you before." "You were too young to understand what I was doing back then. What I was preparing you for." Pete was silent. "The world isn't kind. It'll fuck you over one way or another." He got up, spat on the ground. "You still haven't learned a thing. You're too old to afford being naive." He turned around, and without sparing a look at Pete again, said: "Now get the fuck out of my house." (For @musictooth, whose posts about Pete's father have reignited my passion for this specific concept and for @wretchedamaranth, whose comments on my writing are always lovely and precious ❤️)

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I know we skirt around and sometimes talk about the ~trauma~ of it all, but I think seeing how loudly Taylor and Travis support each other on main (while still carving out a private life together) really starts to illuminate to an even clearer degree how many of Taylor's choices and actions were a response to all of ~that~ in the last decade or so (and particularly since 2016).

Again, which is not to say it's all bad, and many of them were choices she needed to make at the time for her own health and I'm sure there are some things from the time period she's continued to keep with her, but it's just really striking that she's, like, in full bloom now. And as a lot of people here are saying, she's probably more like herself these days than she'd been in the last decade. It's getting to the point (at least for me) that sometimes I can't even imagine her the way she was in the last few years because she just seems soooooo much more comfortable in her own skin. Which is silly, because that was as much her as the person she is now, she is an amalgamation of all those parts of her (just like any other person is).

But you just see *how much* she just loves so freely -- not just romantically but in everything she does -- and it's even sadder to think about how she felt like she had to slice off all these parts of her and like she had to accept a certain way of living (and being loved) in order to survive and have a life of her own.

I'm just really happy for her that she seems to be healing every passing day and is just embracing everything coming her way.

ok gonna word vomit more in the tags

[naivety]

okay i need feedback from the autism mentall illness website um. this is going to read like an AITA post. brother vs half-sister (who are currently my dependents do to their own individual disabilities + ptsd/depression) spat i will skim the details on but i'm worried my sister will discount my take since i'm not autistic myself so. am i crazy to call it ableist to look at an autistic person (23) who is clearly going through it dealing w long term depression, a world that doesn't give a shit abt him, unemployment, very self-isolated and burnt out barely leaving his room because the world is an ableist dumpster fire with zero opportunities for him, and then bring up childhood abuse he's suffered and his diagnosis as reasonable factors on top of this to worry he'll [checks notes] abuse my cat just to hurt me or even worse have a breakdown and kill me and his other sibling in a violent episode, a train of thought i probably wouldn't even be having were he not [checks notes] mad at me for the first time in my life?

like i don't have any other read on this kind of fear-based characterization other than ableism. like those are very real things in his life but she never points out any current violent behavior, of which there are none, only the one (1) instance of him lashing out when he was like 14 and Officially Diagnosed Low Empathy she thinks is a concern and Hateful Looks toward her since he stopped getting along with her, that's it. i tried explaining to her why i, someone who's lived w him his entire life, can vouch for how unlikely he is to do anything like that, especially when it's again not based on anything he's actually currently doing except for isolating in a way that is much more indicative of him potentially being a danger to himself than anyone else, and being cold towards her specifically, and i thought she had let it go, but when i brought it up off-hand in a conversation tangentially related, she continued to defend and justify her Concern about the potential directions his behavior could lead to because [checks notes] other people in similar situations have lashed out and killed their entire families according to. true crime books or videos she's watched on youtube as far as i'm aware. ignoring the fact that her and i have had the same or Worse childhood abuse and have acted similarly isolated in the past, or for her literally just as currently as him, and she's not expressed any worry past or present about either of us doing anything like that, in my opinion obviously because i haven't cut her off due to our differences like he decided to. like am i big sibling biased because this is pissing me off so bad.

[moregraceful]

max and i are closing in on launching [redacted sports rpf charity fest] and i am once again pondering how do i write "experience with writing form emails and manipulating google forms in ways no one has dreamed of" in a cover letter without saying "i did it for the rpf grind"...like there's no way unless everyone in this microsoft teams meeting gets really cool about a bunch of stuff really quickly. you know

[toonagi]

learning to draw sonic characters for. reasons

they're so hard for me to draw their proportions are so different from how i draw anthros so i have to fight my own muscle memory ;-; this is my first somewhat successful attempt out of... a few (read: too many)

[kaidanalenkosprmanager]

THE BEST OF SHENKO 1/?

The end of the world has a way of reminding you of all the things you forgot to say do. Mass Effect: Legendary Edition (2021)

[feline-evil]

Dick or no dick confirmation Pickles was always going to be trans to me anyways; if he's swingin' somethin that's phallo babes, if he's not then his t-dick fat. What's not to get.

[overly-verbose]

A little update; I've gone absolutely bonkers with writing between panicked revisions for Exams™ and thus can announce that Part 8 is gonna be around 16~k words (most likey somewhat above 16k tbh)

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ 🎶

( (;; o o) ??? )

[bambiraptorx]

Aight I've heard the whole "the normal amount of pain is zero" thing but like how much pain is the normal amount after relatively strenuous and/or unusual activity? Like when you're doing stuff you wouldn't necessarily normally do and you're not used to it? By that I mean being on your feet for four to five hours lol I have no idea how people work eight-hour shifts at my job

[telesodalite]

Sort of a ramble, sort of me just writing my thoughts out while I'm stuck with writer's block, but I keep thinking about how Fulcrum was in stasis for roughly 3 million years??

Like, that's a long time, even for Cybertronians. Not a really long time, not an entire lifespan. But still, it's a large chunk of a normal lifespan just gone. Poof.

One second you're crawling across the pockmarked terrain of an alien planet, surrounded by the sound of gunfire, and the shouting and screaming before and after each earth shuddering impact of another k-con hitting the ground. And then it's quiet. You're not there anymore. You're drifting somewhere between not alive and just asleep. Preserved somewhere in the background of a doomed body, ignored by time and space, still here, but also not.

And then there's sound. Not gunfire. Not shouting or screaming. Not the sounds that'll haunt you till your dying days, your own death sentence pounding in your head. No. Just voices, talking, standing out against a silent, dead world. Wondering. Joking. Bickering. Familiar. Just, not familiar to you. And you're awake. Pulled back from the nothingness you've been frozen in, consciousness tugged forwards with the yank of a fuel pump and the nearness of life.

These two moments are roughly 3 million years apart, but only minutes, maybe even seconds, to him. From a hectic harrowing battlefield, to an old silent graveyard in one blink.

How long did it take to really sink in? I mean, he seems to just roll with it. He doesn't seem particularly bothered. But like, what happened outside of what we see? How did he really feel?

Also, his body aged without him. While his mind preserved itself, freezing him as he was right then, his body was left to weather Clemency for all those years. No wonder it crumbled to dust when he jumped off the world sweeper. It's probably a miracle of some kind that it didn't just fall apart each time someone leaned on him.

And even after they rebuild him, give him a better, newer body. His spark, it's casing, all the irreplaceable core bits that make up their inner bodies, it aged in the time without him. Does he feel it? Does it make his body even more foreign to him?

Then he's also a technician with information that's 3 million years out of date. Lucky him that the scavengers probably weren't working with top of the line material. But still it's gotta be weird when faced with anything brand new, because a lot can change and progress in 3 million years, and now some of the knowledge he once prided himself in is obsolete.

Besides those things, his view of the galaxy, of the war, of their kind, of other kinds, is one of the few things actually pointed out when it comes to him being stuck in the past. So, how often were his old views challenged? Facts of life he held close proved to no longer true? There's 3 million years worth of new science, new beliefs, new words, new terms, new views.

And sure, some of it can be familiar, because they're an ever evolving kind, and they have patterns, core beliefs, repeating behaviors, but a lot of it's gonna be unfamiliar at the same time, because it's 3 million years worth of catch up, it's not like missing last week's trend.

In a way, it makes him a living relic of a bygone era for Decepticons. It would've been really interesting to have had that explored a little more.

[buttercup-art]

hey