#absolutely wild. just imagine

[barksbog]

what if i spent all of yesterday preparing for opening custom plush commissions...

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Flower Empowered.

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[ragweed-babey]

[fish-o-cola]

The sequence of Essek trying and failing to teleport Bells Hells to Eiselcross like four times in a row was hilarious, but may I propose:

Several days earlier: a very cold and frustrated Ludinus Da'leth stranded somewhere frozen and barren after accidentally teleporting himself straight into a snowdrift for the fifth time.

No one is immune to being made to look like a fool by the wild magic of Aeor

[taxinealkaloids]

horrible children who are. so so mean to each other

[littlecrittereli]

I’m gonna need to come up with a name for this AU eventually

But consider: The Creature Power Belt

Aka the precursor to the power suit and original prototype of the vest. It only provides the most prominent creature powers and is wayyy more prone to malfunctions.

Of course Aviva would never give Chris her old unstable technology…. Which is why he took it without asking

[adrift-in-thyme]

Obsessed with Four being slightly maniacal about his powers

[shirajellyfish]

Expectation vs reality

You are a new employee at the Pizzaplex. According to the job description, you basically just have to monitor the daycare animatronic for malfunctions and that's it. Maybe occasionally do the odd thing the animatronic can't, like confiscating any weapons (and by 'weapons' it's clear they mean things like fake toy guns, maybe a pocketknife), but other than that it seems like you're just going to be sitting there while getting paid a suspiciously high amount. This is going to be great.

You go through the training videos and marvel at the capabilities of this animatronic. The way it's able to perfectly blend genuine love for the children with untiring robotic perfection. The energetic Sun mode, the calming Moon mode, the endless amount of situations they can handle with ease. Everything a team of childcare professionals could dream of knowing is all programmed in. This animatronic is a work of art, and overseeing it… no, working with him is going to be an honor.

It's your first day on the job after training completes. You open the door and hear SCREAMING SO MUCH SCREAMING

The children are yelling and screaming as they run around like feral animals. A little girl screams as another child pulls her hair. Two ten year olds are screaming about if Charizard could win a fight against Goku. And Sun, Sun is screaming. He's covered in paint and dirt and greasy handprints. Two children are pouring glitter glue directly onto him while three more hold his arms down, clinging with a frightening tenacity. The Sun, he screams.

You rush over and shoo the children away. Sun immediately lunges at you, gripping your shoulders.

"LIGHTS ON. LIGHTS. ON!!"

"Wha-"

"KEEP THE LIGHTS ON, NEWBIE, OR EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM WILL DIE."

"What??"

"EVERYONE. ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE HERE. WILL DIE. KEEP THE LIGHTS ON. ON."

Sun then skips away in a jarringly merry fashion. He ignores the complete disaster state the play area is in, as well as the still wet glue covering him from head to toe, in favor of re-stacking a pile of toy noisemakers. Every time he finishes stacking them, a giggling toddler knocks the whole thing over again. Sun begins stacking again in an infinite loop.

The hourly pay makes sense now.

[softmangoes]

my favorite ivory wraith headcanon that i have is that after every time it lures you to its lair during each blood moon, it slips a piece of lake glass into your palm. they're small, frosted by the tide, and they feel so nice when your fingertips smooth over them. the wraith cannot touch you once the dawn breaks the sky, but they're so lovely when the morning light hits them. they're like gems, like something precious, like droplets suspended in time.

in the end, they are nothing else but a memento: a simple reminder that your dreams of its adoration were never dreams to begin with.

[hotasfahrenheit]

this is definitely in the top combinations of people i would love to be a fly on the wall for when they hang out

[shatterdome-underscore]

I know we're all collectively sold on "Sparrow takes a d100 of psychic damage when oakworthy happens" but have we considered Jodie or Scam taking one look at Normal and telling their son, who is half chaos deity and also the prince of hell, "you know you could do better, right?"

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 23 thoughts

we’re back!! and i appreciate the TW in advance about the sensitive content in this episode from a few followers. thank you very much for the warning! 🙏

but i’m excited to see what is going on today, and i’m sure it’ll be a doozy. let us read the episode description... now how do these agents keep getting involved in crimes that they didn’t commit??

must be CSM. i suspect him always. saves time.

(author's note post episode: woah.... so much happened... i have many questions... and i love mulder and scully very very very much <3)

anyway! let us begin!

okay, yes, i recall after watching the last episode, the beginning of this one started playing, and it was super creepy, and here we are again. very blurry, and it looks like stuff is on fire and warped.

yes, the garbled voices and samantha yelling to mulder as i had accidentally previewed before….. everything is flashing and weird sounding… i do not care for this.

despite being a grown man, when mulder looks in the mirror he sees himself as a child. must be a fever dream. 

they see their parents fighting??? mrs. mulder is saying something about “her baby”….

cutscene to a sweaty mulder on the floor!!! and not on the bed.

A BED?! where is he?? this is not his home!!

and his white shirt is covered in BLOOD??? he doesn’t seem to realize this at first!!!!

so he calls scully!!!! at 4:50 on the morning!!! awww poor girl was dead asleep... but she wakes up <3

he’s in a motel room in rhode island?!?!?!? he doesn’t know how tf he got there and whose blood is on him!!!!!

didn't he spend time in rhode island as a kid...

oh i’m invested…….. how does a guy get in this situation…. and what is scully going to do about it?????

whose blood is it!!!!

(cheering at gillian anderson in the intro)

NOW WHO PUT MY BOY IN THIS SITUATION!!!!!

at 6:15 AM scully is pulling into the rhode island motel. THAT is EFFICIENT!!! oh i know she was flooring it to get there so quickly. also it’s april now btw

she is, indeed, going very fast. 

his motel door is open…..  and the shower is running…. she’s yelling to him

(something very domestic about yelling to someone while they’re in the shower; it makes my heart melt a lil)

but what is less domestic is when he mumbles that he “can’t get warm”, and when she pulls the curtain open he’s curled up, shivering as he sits in steaming hot water!!! 

oh sopping wet poor meow meow…. what has been done to you???

she quickly deduces that he is in shock (medical doctor moment!!!) and turns off the water. she tells him to get dry and gets a blanket, and he emerges with just a towel wrapped around his waist, which is a shocking display of vulnerability- but we can unpack that later 

she’s absolutely shifting into doctor mode (perhaps my favorite mode of hers) as she asks him if he feels nauseous or dizzy and wraps him in a blanket, looking into his eyes, tilting his chin to glance at every angle of his face 

oh shit this is SERIOUS. she pulled out the “track my finger” and “do you know what day it is”, like this is going DOWN. i mean i KNEW it was going down with the bloody shirt and the curled up grown man in the shower. but a doctor is not playing around when they ask you what day it is.

the last thing remembers was talking to her on friday!!! and it’s sunday!!! and he was in his apartment!!! so how tf did he get here???

but he packed a change of clothes… or maybe someone ELSE did?? is it a red herring?? did someone kidnap him???

she quickly finds his gun and TWO ROUNDS HAVE BEEN FIRED???? WHAT!!!

(okay, i knew that was going to happen because i read the episode description, but it’s still wild!!!)

he doesn’t remember anything at all… and she sits down to explain he needs to go to the hospital now

“possibly the early stages of encephalitis”, she says, and oh man, i don’t even want to google that 

(but i did. eugh...)

“if this is an aneurysm, it can drop you in a second” <- she is telling him to listen tf up and GO TO A HOSPITAL NOOOOOOOOOW!!!

OHHHH HE FINDS SOMEONE NAMED AMY’S KEYS!!! WHO IS AMY?????

so he drove here and checked into the motel on saturday…. and there is a car is filled with blood in the parking lot!!!!! with a registration citing amy and david.

oh my GOD he won’t go to the hospital DUDE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK??? YOU COULD LITERALLY DIE AT ANY SECOND, WHAT GOOD ARE YOU GOING TO BE IN AN INVESTIGATION WHERE YOU’RE BARELY EVEN THERE??? WHY DON’T YOU THINK SCULLY CAN HANDLE IT ON HER OWN?? GODDAMN IT, LET HER TAKE CARE OF IT, I’M SICK OF YOUR BULLSHIT, YOU ARE JUST GOING TO BE A HINDRANCE TO ANY PROPER INVESTIGATION, YOU PISS ME OFF.

okay.

there are tons of photos with faces cut out??? carefully cut out by some guy who is dripping blood onto them. which is... unpleasant.

ohhhh they show up at amy and david’s house and the housekeeper doesn’t know where they are… this is not an auspicious sign. he asks to look at a painting?? maybe he went to the place in the painting before???

he knows this house… but he doesn’t know why. it’s the house amy grew up in and it’s ALL SHE PAINTS???? which is absolutely wild. they go into a room where she’s painted it over and over and over countless times. i mean, i appreciate, having a muse but this was just next level dedication.

it’s near his old summer house!!!! see, i knew rhode island would be relevant. 

scully is driving him around in his big leather jacket. they find the house, which is very much falling apart, BUT HE WINCES AND GRABS HIS HEAD!!!! OH GOD!!!

he’s getting visions from childhood of his parents screaming about orders, and it not just being him, and YOUNG CSM (!!!) it must be from when they learned samantha was going to be taken as insurance that his father wouldn't expose the project, and it caused his parents to divorce 

he wakes up on the ground with scully over him (ohhhhh…….) and she carefully props him up. and it was “some kind of clonic event” 

my heart does flips when she is doctoring. but don't worry about that.

“i feel… really… good right now” <- LMAOOOOO actually the funniest possible thing you could say after such an event happening 

but he proceeds ahead with investigating the house

ohhh the score is spooooky and suspenseful… oh my god, scully finds someone with a gunshot wound in her heart!!!!!!!!!!! it must be amy!!! and her husband who is dead nearby!!!!!

then who tf was the guy cutting out the pictures!!!!

the cops have arrived, and they want to speak to mulder, but scully says she refuses “to believe that you had any part in this” (and that’s what a bestie is for)

the detective is clearly not believing that the first time mulder saw the victims was when he walked into their house with their keys that he somehow had. which yeah. okay, it does look bad. but listen. sometimes things look bad that aren’t in reality.

scully refuses to let them take him down to the station!!! he is getting his ass to the hospital NOW!! even if the police take him, okay??? he is going there.

YEAH, YOU TELL THEM!!!!!

and scully wants to take a look at the bodies. she tells mulder do NOT say anything else to the cops. somehow i don’t think he will follow this advice.

scully has her doctorly gear on and oh. she’s snipping something from amy’s head. oh god. hole. in her head. not from gun. whewwww.

NASTY. NASTY BAD. shoutout props team, i repeat as my grounding mantra. do you think the actors ever gagged filming this stuff?

that was a lot. she wants two examinations on her and to know WHY they died. 

head. hole. not good. 

mulder has a bandage on his arm indicating he must have been discharged from the hospital, and his he's laying his head on the table as detective curtis brings him a paper bag. mulder looks very sad.

at first i thought the detective was bringing him lunch, which would be a surprisingly thoughtful gesture, and perhaps indicate a shred of humanity in him. but no. he says that what is in the bag reveals that mulder knew the victims AND that they were shot execution style with his weapon!!!

it’s his bloody shirt… the bloody shirt from before. with both of the victim's blood on it!!! 

oh man… he explains that he does not remember but then he gets read his miranda rights…. NOOOOOOOOOO MY BOY

he has his hands cuffed and is in the bright orange jumpsuit :( free him!!!

but scully comes in and says she’s going to get him out of there!!!! “you’re a doctor, not a lawyer, scully” <- mulder, heed my words: do not doubt her power.

wow… times have changed. scully had to explain what ketamine was to detective curtis. because it was in amy’s blood. had it aired today, we would not need such a disclaimer.

he's baffled because ketamine is a veterinary drug and hey, mulder? why the hell do you know that.

(ohhhh, he probably learned it in mind school back in oxford. i was wondering if he was the kind of rich where he had horses, and therefore knew about their treatments)

detective curtis sucks. they find k in mulder and he doesn’t even give a damn. rude as hell.

(he does that gesture with his head that means “let’s talk away from the others”) "scully, you don’t have to do this” <- LIKE SHE WOULD EVER *NOT* DO THIS???? AND JUST LET HIM SIT IN JAIL????

ohhhhh she straight up tells the detective that he’s jailing an innocent man…. read him for filth!!!!!!

WAIT!!! one of the other cops is the one who was cutting out all of the photos!!!!

he pulls out a gun and fires?? hey man. what's going on.

it takes medical scully .5 seconds to determine that he is dead. and this guy also has that mark on his head that amy had!!!

this officer, now deceased, had become a joke for believing in aliens and other such creatures. scully says that the cutting himself out of the photos speaks to mental illness… and she finds a magazine of abductees with amy on the cover!!!

so both amy and this other officer had a deep puncture wound that went to their brain, and she thinks that they knew each other…

mulder is writhing about on the prison floor, while he recalls CSM and his father arguing, and fleeing to find samantha. and he remembers his mother beating on his father’s chest, yelling “not samantha, not samantha”…. then he shakes on the bars and screams for the guard!!!!!!!

he spent all night demanding to talk to scully!!!! and he just recently shut up!!!! wow!!! that's determination!!!

he’s sitting in the prison cell… “i heard you didn’t get much sleep”, she says when she walks in.

and this make me so emotional. she wants him to be okay SO badly, and they do this thing where they act like everything is totally fine and chill when things couldn’t be worse, and it makes me teary. they're trying to preserve normalcy, but doing so with a grin as if to say, what even is normal anymore? it's part of their whole "saying so much with so little" th

he says he did not kill those people, and she believes him, and she’s gathered enough proof to support that. OKAY DETECTIVE!!!!!

the blood splatter on the shirt doesn’t match the point of entry of the bullets!! so then how did the blood get on there????

scully theory time: amy believed she was an abductee, and perhaps she had contacted mulder. and her repeated house paintings were evidence of the treatment she was undergoing. 

she believes they were suffering from “waxman-geschwind syndrome” (i love that she knows this <3), which leads to vivid dreams 

it is also called dostoyevsky syndrome because he had it!!! fun facts with scully <3

but now he needs to know why he was there and why he didn’t stop the violence with amy and david, because he’s mulder and of course everything is his fault. but also, i don’t blame him, because i would feel the same way if i learned something horrific happened in my presence and i could not recall it.

she has arranged for his arraignment, and scully parks haphazardly in the parking lot of the psychologist’s office where amy was receiving treatment. and they find his car!! covered in dust!!

they go to speak with dr. goldstein, who says he hasn’t met mulder before. 

dr. goldstein uses light and sound to access repressed memories, which sounds evil. “it’s unconventional but it’s not invasive” <- girl what would the FDA say?!?!?

(this show relies an awful lot on repressed memories. how do you even know if you have any of those?)

the doctor insists that he is very ethical and seems deeply offended at their implications that what he does is morally unsound, but scully looks deep into his eyes and said “i know what you do”…. ohhh girl what do you know!!!

OH!! mulder remembers coming here WITH amy!!! so the doctor totally lied to their faces. and scully says he GAVE amy and mulder the ketamine, and whatever else he did started the blackouts and seizures

see, this is interesting, because now we know that ketamine can be useful in medical treatment of mental illness, but clearly dr. goldstein was just playing mad scientist.

she asks why tf he would undergo those treatments, but bam!!! more mulder doubled over in pain, recalling his parents fighting. he falls to his knees

“i’m fine” “no, i’m not going to take that for an answer. you do not belong at work. you need to be somewhere where you can be monitored” <- YES TELL HIM!!!!!!! stop messing around!!!

(everyone cheered)

the height difference here is super visible and it looks almost like a foot between their heads and it’s soooo <3

“you are a danger to yourself and a danger to me” <- OHHHH yes. convince him to do it for your sake if he won't do it for himself.

OHHHH BUT HE DOESN’T WANT THE SYMPTOMS TO STOP!!! he says he’s remembering what happened after his sister was taken away!!

well, maybe we can remember from a hospital bed?

he asks for the car keys and she keeps refusing, and just when i think she’s going to give in and let him have them, she says they can go to his mom's house, “but i’m driving” and that’s right queen you do NOT let that man behind a wheel!!!!!

off to his mother’s house

surprise mulder visit!!! he is barreling right in. she seemed so happy to see him... but this changes.

“you’ve kept things from me, you’ve kept secrets from me” ohhh she asks scully wtf is wrong with him…

HE SAYS THAT TAKING SAMANTHA WASN’T THEIR CHOICE??? he wants to know what happened that night and he doesn’t want scully to hear…. damn, that’s crazy 

so they go in a room and he ACCUSES HIS MOM OF CHEATING ON HIS DAD WITH CSM??? okay, so i thought i was seeing hints of this in the past, but like. they could have just been friends, so i didn’t think that much of it. clearly there was some sort of fondness, the genre of which is yet to be determined.

he’s saying that she betrayed their family to do so, and she SLAPS HIM ACROSS THE FACE!!!

“who is my father?” “what do you want, to kill him again?” <- OH MY FUCKING GOD????

(this is absolutely WILD because we know how much of a momma's boy he is, how he hugs her and tucks her in bed and kisses her forehead and has doted on her ever since her stroke; to hear him say all of this is deeply shocking and indicative of how unwell he is)

she says she won’t answer any more questions and he’s bleeding from the forehead…. 

he snuck out and took the car??????? LEAVING SCULLY IN HIS MOM’S HOUSE?????

what are they supposed to talk about!!!!!!!!

he rolls up to dr. goldstein's office and asks what he did to him. 

“i did nothing wrong” “you put a HOLE in my HEAD” <- medical malpractice lawsuit is loading, but that line delivery killed me

turns out he put a hole in his head to electrically stimulate his brain?? and mulder says to do it again???

absolutely nothing should ever touch your brain imo, but what do i know?

he shoots mulder up with some k and lays him down, straps him into a contraption and turns it on. 

it seems he remembers his mother being choked?? but you can’t tell by who because everything is so distorted. WHO HURT HER??

now goldstein is strapping him down even more, and putting ANOTHER HOLE IN HIS BRAIN (!!!), and it’s reminding me of that terrible drill from scully’s abduction that kept inching closer and closer

when a ton of cops show up to arrest goldstein!!! he leaves behind a bloody seat, but no mulder??? where did he go!!!!!

scully is here now too and goldstein wouldn’t snitch so scully is off to question him. 

HOLY FUCK he won’t answer so she straight up GRABS HIM!!!!! until he says mulder said he was going to “exorcise his demons” 

(she was wild for that one but also entirely understandable. you don't lay hands on him around her and walk away unscathed)

SO HE GOES BACK TO RHODE ISLAND??? where the events of that particular evening that keep being replayed again and again in his head went down.

the house is surrounded by cops, and she explains that the officers must NOT SHOOT, and he needs immediate medical care, and she is going in, so watch tf out.

it’s so so so quiet as she walks in…. she starts to yell his name and he says “leave me alone, scully” (he's out of his mind but could still recognize her voice... something touching there)

she opens the door and he’s in some kind of trance??!

WHAT THE FUCK HE HAS HIS GUN????? near his mouth. oh no. oh no oh no oh no.

(the hallucination cgi that gets cut between these very serious scenes almost makes me giggle)

he turns the gun on scully and says “GO AWAY” oh my fucking god…

“are you going to shoot me, mulder? is that how much this means to you?” (he nods)

he’s not himself he’s not himself he’s not himself he’s not-

she tries to tell him that he’s on powerful drugs, and he doesn’t even know if those memories are his, and this isn’t the way to the Truth, and put down the gun, but then he FIRES TWO SHOTS???

the police are rushing in, and he is still firing!!!!!!!!

he shot them all into the window?? or wall or something??? and he slumps over

and she rests her body on him oh my GOD. oh my GOD.

the vulnerability there of her shielding him with her whole body while he relives his worst memories (that may or may not have actually happened) in a hallucinogenic haze....... her need to heal him... and his need to protect her coming through even though moments before he was ready to kill her......... hold on. we need to think on it.

we end with a scully episode wrap up, which i feel we haven't gotten in a while. she says he was cleared of wrongdoing, but he still has no recollection of what went down that night. and his seizures have subsided. 

“but i’m concerned that this experience will have a lasting effect. agent mulder undertook this treatment hoping to lay claim to his past- that by retrieving memories lost to him, he might finally understand the path he’s on. but if that knowledge remains elusive, and if it’s only by knowing where he’s been that he can hope to understand where he’s going, then i fear agent mulder may lose his course, and the truths he’s seeking from his childhood will continue to evade him… driving him more dangerously forward in impossible pursuit”

(fade to black)

SO WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT.

hold on. there are a MILLION things to unpack here.

this episode really solidified to the utterly batshit lengths he is willing to go to try and reach the truth, to the point beyond self-destruction into like, self nuclear annihilation. like we just need to let that sink in for a second. holy fuck. i mean i KNEW he was haunted and i knew he was tortured and i knew he was going to devote every minute of his life to getting the Truth, but the recklessness with which he does so reached new heights here. he let some guy give him DRUGS and drill into his BRAIN. what the actual fuck bro.

also, what actually happened?? who actually killed those people and put him in their bloody shirt?? it’s left entirely ambiguous. beyond the visuals of CSM, there are no other clues. did the victims end their own lives with his gun after remembering stuff they had suppressed from dr. goldstein’s brain tickler??? or was he poorly framed? and if so by who and how and why??

and also. he thinks his dad might not be his dad???? can you IMAGINE him knowing that it is CSM’s blood in his veins??? holy FUCK bro. his mother seemed DEEPLY offended so i don’t feel like that is actually the case but you never know with these things. i'm going to assume those were the drugs talking because we know how much he loves his momma, but for that chilling thought to even enter his head, god, the turmoil and self-loathing it must have produced.

and scully… this was a mulder episode, but it also really was her episode. her doctoring, her sleuthing- she gets him out of trouble that someone worked overtime to get him into by discounting all of the evidence carefully constructed against him- her putting her foot down and saying get to the hospital, i'm not going to stand by and let this keep happening, and then putting herself in front of the gun for him, risking it all to try and bring him back from the brink. her covering him with her own body, holding him down, being there for him as he witnessed his demons dancing in from of him.

her grabbing goldstein by the neck, saying she will not lose anything else, not after so much has been taken from her; dammit she’ll grab what she has left and sink her claws in, and help who gets between her and her loved ones, be it a shitty detective or a grand murder conspiracy, because she’ll calculate the most efficient way to tear everything to the ground and then hold steady in the ruins

wow. need to sleep on this one for sure. it went absolutely CRAZY. but again, s4! it’s so dark! where is the laughter??

so, what do i think after approximately 24 hours have passed since i watched this episode? i enjoyed it! my mutual phoebe pointed out how scully is the one who is in charge here, which is a big change from her loss of autonomy that characterizes the rest of the season. and i have to agree. it felt good to watch her in her element, be it solving crime or diagnosing niche psychological conditions or putting her life on the line for mulder. again, it was centered on his demons, but were these not also scully's demons? watching someone she loves lose who they are under the influence of something that cannot be controlled? and the realization that he was desperate enough to consider such a thing an option in the first place? watching her best friend suffer- is that not also a form of torture?

it was nice to see him tortured for a change. it's been a while! and it's so interesting to watch.

so i liked the episode, but i probably wouldn't get down with a casual rewatch. again, a bit too heavy for kicking my feet up and relaxing. but i thought it was very interesting, a fascinating look into both of their characters, and as a whump addict i am deeply pleased.

[sonicskullsalt]

so, was I expected to know that Robbie Daymond recently was in Germany to hike near Cologne and was in awe of the fairytale forests, or was I supposed to watch 4sd to hear about this

[nexus-nebulae]

every day i wish that Rats SMP was a cartoon bc it would make the greatest show ever i think

[green-tea-lemonade]

Your solnep gives me life <3

give power!!! give life!!!

a powerhouse of a duo!!!

[joshuamj]

also i watch The Wild Robot the other day and oh my god 11/10, absolutely beautiful in every sense of the word, would cry again 👍