#been exposed to this show since literally infancy but it was also my first experience with online fandom

[sapphorror]

This is a message I both sincerely endorse and have been madly giggling about like a lunatic for the last five minutes.

Real talk I don't think Jhonen actually cares all that much what we do—he just doesn't want to personally engage with it, which is fair enough (a guy is allowed to have boundaries) + his personality in general is exactly as weird and abrasive as you'd expect from someone who came up with Invader goddamn Zim and lord knows you cannot take anything this man has ever said seriously/at face value. I can't prove it, obviously, nor would I even really care to, and granted I try to assume the best possible intent from people on principle, but it would strike me as especially ridiculous for him of all people to have a stick up his ass about it.

Because!! The underlying ethos of Invader Zim has always been about doing what you want, not giving a single fuck what anyone thinks, and going that much harder each and every time someone tries to stop you. I mean, it's an intentionally outrageous grotesque black comedy aired on Nickelodeon in 2001, centered on a kid who is routinely vilified for his refusal to conform and the literal spacebug personification of Jhonen's own stubborn audacity. If there is one thing I greatly admire about Vasquez across the board it's his integrity to his own vision and his absolute refusal to participate on anything but his own fickle terms. So either he's at peace with the fandom doing the same (away from him), or he's the world's biggest hypocrite, which would be his loss.

That all being said, I am also a little bit evil and 100% here to poke fun at the man regardless. Again, if there's another takeaway to be gained from Invader Zim, it's to never take yourself or anyone else too seriously.

When your own fandom is your mortal enemy?? for some reason???? 

[celestialsoft]

⤻   *       GREETINGS AND HELLO !!!! :   IT IS I   ,   ADMIN EDIE !    HERE ONCE AGAIN HERE TO POST AN INTRO  :~))))  

this time i’m here to introduce you to my tenderhearted wee bab of an angel who clears my skin and grows by crops tBH, FRANK KANGDAE LONGBOTTOM, my lionhearted boi who deserves e v e r y t h i n g ( literally ; empty out your pockets and give EVERYTHING u have to frankleface longbooty—— he . deserves . it . all . !!!!! ) if you’d like to plot, please like this post or hmu in my im’s & without further ado —— here’s frank ! pls love him

⤻   *       APPLICATION   —— !

* ╰    ( KIM YOUNGKYUN )┋have you met ( FRANKLIN KANGDAE LONGBOTTOM ) ? ( he ) reminds me of ( deep loneliness and deep kindness grown in equal parts —— and he speaks, so overcome with love, that i forget we are at war. he grew up hanging lanterns on hilltops to make sure the moon could see at night ; and practiced catching droplets of rain with his lips —— because even the clouds deserved a little romance. ' i infinitesimal being, drunk with the great starry void ' —— tenderhearted boy , luminescent boy : boy frightened , boy destroyed. unravelled by kindness ; compassion consumed —— on the precipice of supernova , he burns brightest in the darkest hour. he looks to me as if he were a man forged entirely of tenderness and the sun ; yet he is the sweet nocturne that plays despite how the beginning of the end has begun ). a ( twenty-one ) year old ( tenth ) year ( gryffindor ), the ( paladin ) is known to be ( + tenderhearted & + clement ), yet ( — oversolicitous & — pensive ). that explains why they’re majoring in ( healing ). rumour has it, ( frank ) is siding with ( the order ) in the solemn war that blazes beyond the castle walls. ( edie, 22, aedt, she/her )

⤻   *       ABOUT FRANK  ——   !!

ahhhhh, frank longbottom —— where do i even start ????? if there’s just one thing that you should absolutely know about frank longbottom, it is that he is a gosh darn heckin’ angel. his heart is ??? so ??? genuinely pure ??? just thinking about it makes me want to tear up tbh

frank is the kind of boy who will charge straight into the carnage and chaos of the whomping willow to save a cat. he’s the kind of boy who hangs out by the edge of the black lake, worried that the giant squid is feeling lonely. he’s the kind of boy who sees the potential for good in everyone & everything, and is genuinely confused and appalled by acts of unkindness and malice when they occur. he chooses the path of benevolence, always, and he wants to keep everyone he loves safe so he carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and feels like it is up to him, & him alone, to SAVE THE WORLD and make it a better place. i repeat for you my fronds : frank longbottom gosh darn heckin’ angel. but my god, is he a broken one.

⤻   *       BACKGROUND   ——   !!

frank was born into a sacred 28 pureblood family who cared very little for blood purity, but a whole lot for social justice & fighting for what is right. thomas and augusta longbottom first met at the ministry of magic, where their ‘ left-wing ’ progressive ideas about wizard / muggle / magical creature relations brought them together. their love brought frank longbottom into the world ; a child who was, from an early age, exposed to concepts of in/equality, systematic oppression, privilege, biased public policy, and injustice through his parents.

under the steady & tireless virtuous guidance of his mother and father, frank longbottom bloomed from infancy into childhood with a strong sense of egalitarianism & selflessness that most children only learned well into adolescence, and he had an awareness of the injustices of the world that many people did not gain even well into adulthood. yet despite his parent’s rather strict & heavy hand in discipline, there was always a remarkable air of benevolence and incorruptibility about frank that refused to be befouled.

nevertheless, frank was a terribly lonely child. he was homeschooled by a thoroughly screened, left-wing half-blood governess, and she was just about his only connection to the outside world. it goes without saying that sacred 28 pureblood socialising events & parties were off-limits and out of the question for frank, and since the longbottoms lived in suburban muggle england, frank was always too scared to socialise with many of the children in his neighbourhood, fearful that he would accidentally expose his magical lineage & incur terrible consequences for his folly. shut away in a house of absolute virtue and morality, frank longbottom was a victim of utter loneliness & never got to experience the world his parents adamantly taught and trained him to save … until his letter from hogwarts arrived, that is.

⤻   *       HOGWARTS   ——   !!

frank was a heckin’ confusing four-way house hat stall during his sorting. the hat sensed the resolute loyalty and benevolence of hufflepuff in him, the love and respect for knowledge and learning of ravenclaw in him & the tenacity and ambition to achieve his goals of slytherin in him, but ultimately, the sorting hat settled on “ GRYFFINDOR ! ”, declaring its choice with a booming roar. above all, the sorting hat sensed frank to be brave —— willing ( & desperate, even ) to fight for what is right. it’s a shame that frank, to this day, doesn’t seem to see this bravery in himself. but by the warm beacon of the gryffindor common room fireplace, under the twinkling candlelights of the great hall, and at the top of the astronomy tower ( the stars and galaxies at the reach of his very own fingertips ), frank, at hogwarts has grown to be exactly the kind of person his parents have always wanted him to be : stalwartly true ; combatting hate with kindness, and enveloping cruelty with warmth. he loves deeply and vastly, and he honestly radiates this other-worldy quality of brightness ??? he’s the light in the dark, and oh how he shines. 

however —— the fact that he’s already grown into someone that his parents are proud of doesn’t stop frank from still wanting to be better, and wanting to save the world. what frank doesn’t realise is that he can hardly save the world if he can’t first save himself. he’s constantly emotionally and physically exhausted ; spending every moment of his time helping those around him and making sure to change to the world one kind act at a time. slowly but surely, frank’s bleeding heart and compulsion for kindness is coming to the point of being harmful to his own health and wellbeing. 

so yeah … … . though frank is falling apart, he never lets this show & he really tries to never make this anyone else’s problem. through the haze of responsibility and moral duty that has always clouded frank’s life, there’s still a profound tenderness and warmth about him ; and among all his advocations and efforts towards justice & peacetime, it’s difficult to discern just how deeply scared, lost, and confused the boy is in a world that refuses to cease changing right before his very eyes ; an inevitable war upon the horizon. 

⤻   *       LITTLE HEADCANONS   ——   !!

frank has always been V MAGICALLY GIFTED. he showed his first signs of magic when he was just one and a half, when he had a terrible nightmare & woke up screaming in the middle of the night. instead of waiting for his parents to come and calm him down though, frank simply closed his eyes & focused on his breathing. when his parents stumbled into the room ; sleep hazy in their eyes, they could hardly believe what they saw : the entire room, covered in flowers and lush foliage —— something that frank had somehow conjured up to keep himself calm ( b/c untamed childhood magic be CRAZY ). frank is now able to command wandless magic, which is a GODSEND tbh b/c he’s such a sleep-deprived mess & he loses his wand c o n s t a n t l y istG

being a sacred 28 pureblood with quite advanced magical abilities, frank has always been in high demand for pureblood partnership through an arranged marriage. his parents, have always hastily shot down offers ( bc they aren’t all up in that pureblooded nonsense ! ), but that hasn’t stopped pureblooded parents from reaching out anyway :/ yIKEs :/// 

frank is part of the slug club ,,,,,,,,,,,,, and like ,,,,,,,,,,,,,, every single other club / extracurricular. baby longbottom is an OVERACHIEVER EXTRAORDINAIRE —— YA BOI DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO CHILL. it’s not that frank is driven by any sort of particular ambition and self-interest, though ?? rather, frank’s heavy involvement in every aspect of school life stems from the aforementioned incredible pressure of his parent’s expectations ; frank applying himself to every possible aspect of school life and extracurriculars in the hopes that he will make them proud

frank has so little chill that he’s actually started sleepwalking … yikes ????? it probably doesn’t help that frank is involved in almost every sport club tbH, & he is also gryffindor quidditch team’s seeker. the thing is that he could never give any sport up. sport is so cathartic for frankie my boi, because it helps him forget his worries & his responsibilities. while he’s playing sport he is just a body —— he is pulsing blood, deep breaths & he is free.

⤻   *       OTHER FUN FACTS / GENERAL SUMMARY DOT POINTS ABOUT FRANKLEFACE LONGBOOTY   ——   !!

THE MOST CLEAN CUT KID OF THE YEAR AWARD GOES TO : frank longbottom, OFC. innuendo is lost on the kid ( he is v v v lost every time someone uses the word ‘ wand ’ as double entendre ), and has only consumed alcohol once in his life —— and even then, it was by accident ( it was in a spiked cherry berry trifle at an end of year christmas party back in first year ). 

LATELY, THOUGH, frank has taken up smoking. he does it in secret ; one cigarette every night in the astronomy tower, or by the black lake. if anyone ever found out about this frank would be MORTIFIED & would legitimately probably DIE of shame, so ………….. *coughs* someone pls walk in on him smoking one day. 

it’s so strange, because frank is incredibly in touch with the real travesties and injustices of the world, but in many ways he’s completely naive and lacking in real life experience. he is such an experientially sheltered kiddo, someone pls take him out and get him RAGING DRUNK bc he needs to chill out tbH

#mumfriend

takes literally 15 minutes out of each of his days to have a few conversations with a few of hogwarts’ cats ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, what a loser ??

gets excited when people ask him for help with their homework ( hELP ME ???? )

excels at all his subjects, but has a particular soft-spot for astronomy, herbology and care of magical creatures :’)

LOVES KNITTING —— stress knits a lot . he’d like to just knit the entire world up into a snug lil blanket and keep it safe and warm 

wants to single handedly save the world

did i mention ????? babe is a gosh dark heckin’ angel

in the mirror of erised, frank would see all his friends and family happy and smiling —— but he wouldn’t even be in the frame. mY HEART BREAKS OVER THIS HEADCANON TBH

frank has a cat named alexis de tocqueville 

i’ve run out of things to dot point & this is probably WAY TOO LONG ALREADY ANYWAY ??? so i’ll stop :o :o :o but please come and interact with my son ?!!!!!!??!? i love yall peace out

[itsbeenawhile7]

The absolution of Dana Scully in the aftermath of My Struggle IV: one pissed off fan’s grand manifesto

–also known as, “what in actual hell happened to Chris Carter?”

If you have not already read through this interview, courtesy of Avi Quijada and XFN, I am going to need you to start there first.

And listen: before anyone goes there, I am not analyzing the fuck out of this to excuse Chris Carter for the disastrous finale he just served up to us. Rather, it’s that there are a lot of us who are products of the Scully Effect in one way or another, and we’d like to feel good about her legacy.  We deserve to figure out a way to clean up this mess you left us with.

Some people write fanfic.  Me?  I do this.  Get some hot chocolate and pull up a comfy chair.

Rant rating: R, for language and possibly some implied violence against Chris Carter

Content warning: I mean…you saw MSIV, right? 

Did MSIV actually destroy Dana Scully for all of us forever?  Nah.  We just witnessed the apex of a once skilled writer complete his own demise.  We just witnessed a writer who got in way over his head, who was trying to articulate extremely complex, controversial ideas and concepts, and doing so in about the most tone deaf way anyone ever possibly could. Having read his interview with Avi Quijada, I now think it is absolutely fair to say that Chris Carter actually did have at least some idea about what the right motivations for his characters were.  But in a writing decision that will baffle me and the rest of the world forever, he did not heed the warnings of those around him, and convinced himself that his audience would be able to infer absolutely everything of import to his story, and that we didn’t need to see any of that stuff actually fleshed out on screen.  Sure, fine, whatever, Chris. Challenge accepted, here we go.

Let’s review. In the space of a scant few ridiculous hours occurring over the course of MSIV, Scully found out all of the following:

the child she thought was conceived miraculously with her partner was not, in fact, created as a the result of that union

she was medically raped and violated in order for William to be brought forth into the world

the being that she has conceived of as their son for 18 years is barely human: he is a shape-shifting, unstable lab creation, who is far, far more dangerous than any of the many forces that have been out to destroy him

William was created specifically by that fucking bastard Carl, and for whatever purpose Per Manum previously served in this universe, Dana Scully and the rest of us ostensibly should now assume it was to obtain fertilized embryos for the CSM to screw around with and deploy when she made the biggest fucking mistake of her life going off with him in En Ami

she is somehow pregnant right now, at age 54 (because Chris is apparently fascinated by perimenopause? or some shit like that?), after having not gotten miraculously pregnant at any point before in her extensive sexual history with Mulder

William directly and repeatedly said to both of his parents of genetic origin that he does not want to be protected, and that he wants them to let him go [quick break here: sorry, Chris, but there is no way that the CSM is the literal genetic father here, because Scully had a fucking AMNIO in season 8, and therefore you will neverrrrrrrrr convince any of us that this could ever possibly be the case]

And in the midst of all of this, Skinner is killed (maybe), her now compromised friend Monica Reyes is killed (maybe), her partner witnesses the murder of their son (maybe), and her partner kills his father (maybe), after having himself killed or witnessed the killing of dozens of New Syndicate operatives (definitely, because: exploding entrails!!!).

Two things stand out to me. Number one: this level of emotional trauma and upheaval is far, far too much for anyone to even be capable of putting up a coherent verbal response to in its immediate aftermath. Number two, to reiterate points Gillian Anderson and Avi Quijada both made directly to Chris: this “grand vision” or “Big Idea” of his should have had an entire season or two’s worth of episodes behind it if it was ever going to stand a chance in hell at working.  I do not believe that the simple act of making these specific storytelling choices is in and of itself the problem, no matter how I might personally feel about it. The X-Files has been telling us a story involving horrifying genetic, physical, and reproductive assaults on its characters since 1995.  We just, y’know, occasionally used to think about the aftermath of those atrocities in scripts and on camera, in episodes like One Breath, Memento Mori, or the Emily arc.  What is abso-fucking-lutely a BIG problem, though, is if your reproductive horror show is executed as poorly as it was written in MSIV. Full stop. 

I will argue until I am blue in the face, though, that Dana Scully is not destroyed by this ending, no matter how poorly written it was. Chris Carter simply didn’t let this character actually do any of what she should have been doing with this ON SCREEN, where we could see her.  We now know for a fact that Chris was aware that he was leaving all of this off screen, so what I want to know is…why?  No, really.  I really want to know the answer, here.  Why on Earth didn’t you show us, Chris?  Hell, you could have even gotten this done with one, or two, or six additional bloated voiceover monologues, since most of what went down in MSIV wasn’t articulated *~anywhere at all~* outside of post-mortem press conversations. (Exhibit A: the entire Monica Reyes sub-plot.)

As a parent myself, I cannot even fathom what it would be like to find out that your child was capable of doing horrific, terrible, inhumane things. That’s also a pretty relevant–if extremely uncomfortable–concept right now, one that could have been grappled with in an era in which we are beginning to finally engage with mental health, gun control, and domestic terrorism in very public forums.  We are made to understand thanks to Avi, that Chris Carter apparently loves using The X-Files to ask us tough questions that don’t always have answers.  So…why the hell didn’t he do it here?  I mean, come ON!  What does it mean to be the parent, biological or otherwise, of a child capable of these horrors?  I’m not saying that any of us have to like it, but as written in MSIV, William is a sociopath.  William is not a human being.  William is not anyone’s child anymore, and William is for damn sure not something capable of being protected.  William can only destroy, because that is exactly what Fucking Carl (trademark pending) made him for. Whether in the Supersoldier sense, or in the New Syndicate global-contagion-let’s-wipe-out-humanity sense, we have been told that the CSM made him to be nothing more than a tool to help execute his own post-apocalyptic needs.

So after 18 years, Scully suddenly and very traumatically has to process that William was an experiment gone wrong (or right, I suppose, if you go talk to Carl). After 18 years, this is the William we’ve got. Can you even imagine how much worse it might have been for Scully if she had actually been there the whole time, watching this happen?  William had a good childhood, he was raised by good people, and he still turned into a sociopath, and he tells us so himself.  Was Scully ever a parent to what William ultimately turned out to be?  That’s…actually a pretty damn good question, in this context. 

And the answer to that question,  according to Chris, is that Scully was the mother of the idea of William, the mother of the idea of a child who was miraculously created out of nothing more than love.  She was the mother to the ideas and imaginings that she had about William for 18 long years.  She was that mother during her pregnancy, she was that mother during his infancy, and she was that mother when circumstances erroneously convinced her to put him up for adoption, in a move that we were told was to try to give him the best life she thought she couldn’t ever possibly give to him.  She was that mother in Ghouli, pouring her whole heart and soul into the idea of her son William in that heartbreaking morgue scene. So, no, I don’t think it means that she instantaneously stopped loving that idea of her son, when the shit hits the fan in MSIV.  But it does mean that she understands that her idea of William hasn’t ever been the right one: the “truth we both know" was actually a horrific lie.  “William…was an idea, created in a laboratory…” is true in this universe, for better or for worse.  Dissecting what that means for Scully, just this one single solitary point alone, should have been granted an entire episode, not 10 seconds on a pier. 

“Scully, he was our son! He was our son!”

He was.

He was their son. For 18 years, they both believed that he was their son. I don’t think anything Scully stutters and stumbles to explain to Mulder in this moment suggests that she doesn’t actually believe that, or grieve for that. It mostly indicates that Chris Carter has no idea how to write this magnitude of dropped psychological bomb. I think he does know his own limitations, which is why it all happens off screen.  Thanks only to Gillian Anderson’s acting, it does appear as though we are witnessing a confused, traumatized Scully here, one who has been exposed to so much death and destruction immediately proceeding this moment that she can’t even find the way forward.  Gillian Anderson, thankfully, fills in the cavernous script hole, and gives us a Scully who doesn’t know how to begin to explain what she has been forced to understand to a now very visibly fracturing Mulder. 

This is not a mother suddenly throwing away her decades of love for a child just because she is getting a “do over” baby. And the only reason we even had to consider whether or not that was the case at all, is solely because of the steaming pile of inadequate shit dialogue that was written for her.

Let’s step back now and consider Mulder, and how his presence impacts Scully’s reaction. Mulder, who shocks the hell out of all of us when he says, “if I am not a father, then what am I?” in MSIV. We have gone an exorbitant amount of time watching this man, who devoted his life to finding his lost sister, seemingly refuse to engage in the same manner with his own lost son.  So, we could take this as an example of even more what-the-actual-Carter-fuckery-are-we-doing-now, OR we could choose to listen to what Chris tells Avi, and believe him when he says this is the hidden motivation that’s been driving Mulder all these years.  You know, off screen.  Because this isn’t at all yet another concept that needed its own entire episode to explore.  Exploding entrails, bitches!

Or, how about we also revisit a much better writer’s take on all of this? Let’s pick up adoptive father James Wong’s narrative, because he actually kind of gets how this kind of thing might work.  In Ghouli, Mulder tells us that we’ve had no idea about his state of mind on any of this. Not ever.  And we can infer that that was intentional on Mulder’s part. He’s doing it because he thinks it is what he needs to do for Scully’s benefit. There is no possible way that Fox-Freaking-Mulder, you punks, didn’t have some ridiculously big feelings about all of this. He’s been presented on screen to us as having sublimated his feelings on the matter since he found out about William’s adoption in The Truth. He wasn’t there to make the choice, and whatever resentment or sadness he may feel about what Scully did, he is swallowing it for her.  He’s standing right beside her, he’s just listening.  That’s his choice.

Also courtesy of James Wong: we know that Mulder has outright lied to Scully about his feelings about William in the past.  In Founder’s Mutation, he tells Scully that he’s had to put it all behind him.  James Wong does what a writer should do to communicate a character’s motivations, by actually showing us that Mulder has lied to all of us at the end of the episode, and letting us see Mulder’s dreams about what parenting William could have been. 

So yes, I am going to take Chris at his word that these really are Mulder’s feelings in MSIV, even though he failed to articulate those motivations appropriately on screen.  Look, many of us have been complaining for years that Mulder’s seeming non-response to his lost son seemed wildly inconsistent with everything we know of his character.  I will take the bone Chris has so generously offered us here as an attempt to rectify all of that.  I think coming into peripheral contact with William in Ghouli began to dismantle Mulder’s carefully constructed walls of sublimation, and by the time he actually gets his hands on him in MSIV, the flood gates have opened and cannot be closed again.

I have no trouble at all buying the narrative that the idea of being a father has quiescently been the single thing holding Mulder together for almost two decades.  Look, I am absolutely here for that.  I think most hard core X-Files fans are absolutely here for that, too.  We know Mulder pretty damn well at this point, and we know that the loss of his sister shaped him forever.  You even made him bring it up in IWTB after years of dormancy.  So, yeah, I don’t have any trouble believing that through it all, while on the run, while locked away and adrift in the Unremarkable House for years, and when ultimately left by a very lost Scully who couldn’t bear north anymore, that this broken man from a broken family did indeed secretly cling to the idea of being a father.  That for all of his failings and losses, he wanted to believe that he had at least had a part in making this miraculous child he dreams is out there.  That he could believe that William was, in fact, living an idyllic childhood, the kind of childhood that he himself never got to have.  For so damn long, Mulder wanted to believe all of that. Yes, Chris, for fuck’s sake, I BUY that, okay? As obnoxious and stupid as that written line is, having now heard it for the 4,000th time, this concept is right on for Fox Mulder.

[Another aside: that line is the one and only moment that David Duchovny loses me in MSIV. But OMG, as an actor who has had to say this ridiculous line every which way to Sunday? I can’t say that I blame him. No one actually talks this way!  There is no actual right way to play it without making all of us want to crawl into a hole and die.] 

Okay.  So Mulder watches his son die. The ideas and dreams that he has carried beneath the surface this whole time die along with him.  Scully sees all of this happening to Mulder, and based on what the Wongverse has established, she has probably not ever seen it look like this for him.  So, what we are getting here is that for this one instance, we are seeing Scully put her own feelings about William second to Mulder’s feelings about William.  Every other moment between them thus far has been Mulder putting his own feelings second to Scully’s feelings about William, right?  I do believe that Chris Carter is daft enough to think that Scully got “her turn” in Ghouli, and so in MSIV, there’s no problem at all if we only get “Mulder’s turn.“  (And apparently, we also have time for Ford Mustang’s turn.) That all plays into the nonsensical words coming out of Scully’s mouth at the end of MSIV. Scully can’t find the words to speak to the guilt and pain she is trying to absolve Mulder of.  How could anyone?

Listen to Gillian’s work, actually giving us some damn meaning here:

“William…William was–”

William was.

Ultimately, here’s MY truth: I hate how the William narrative turned out. I have hated every single moment of the William narrative beyond the end of season 8.  Existence absolutely could have ended the series in the way in which these characters deserved to have their hero journeys end.  And you know, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if I found out that Chris Carter secretly hates that this ending got away from him, too.  I mean, look, we know Chris is a lying liar who is lying in all of the press he is doing right now, as he tries to convince the world that this has been The Grand Plan All Along.  Never mind that this plan is contradicted by his own press prior to 2018, never mind that it is contradicted by all of the other writers and producers who worked on the William story at the time it was conceived, and never mind that it is contradicted by the simple reality that every zig and zag in the X-Files universe beyond season 7 is really the result of never knowing if David or Gillian were going to participate in the story anymore going forward.  So, I’m sorry, but bull-fucking-shit that you had any of this in your head when William B. Davis wrote En Ami, Chris. Why not just admit that handling The X-Files was kind of impossible when one or both leads were maybe not going to be involved in telling the story anymore?  We would all completely understand that, Chris, no one would ever in a million years question that.  Of course you might wind up losing your narrative thread under those business circumstances. We aren’t blind to how the entertainment industry works. 

I mean, there was never any hesitation on Chris Carter’s part to explain why all things had the intimations of a sex scene, not for one minute ever, so don’t try to tell us now that he just kept a lid on the truth about what role En Ami was actually fucking serving in this story for 18 whole years. Sorry, bro, I am not buying it.  When you really think about it, how can Chris Carter possibly not know that he blew it years ago with William’s narrative?  It is precisely the impossibility of navigating the logistics of telling a story far beyond the boundaries set by the involvement of the real people making it that drive showrunners like Vince Gilligan to give themselves a finite amount of time to tell it.  Chris (or the Fox network, or whoever you want to blame) didn’t do that, and therefore he wound up giving up at least 4 other possible endings to The X-Files over to the uncertainty of actors continuing to involve themselves in this project.  I really do wonder if that’s why he went down this particular path of turning William into a monster, and I wonder if that is why he seemingly worked so hard over the course of his Struggles to try to strip Mulder and Scully’s ties to him. Because this really wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen.

And so now here we are, hitting the do over button with a new pregnancy.  I have no doubt that this guy thinks that he actually could hit the reset button just like that, and magically get back to the original poetic justice that these characters were given in their 2001 ending.  He probably thinks that the fans would see this as a gift, even! I mean, shippers were heard, amirite?  But even the idea of ending with a pregnancy, now many many many years too late, isn’t ultimately the real problem. All together, one more time for the folks in the back of the classroom: the problem is, and will always be, piss poor execution. You could hand this exact story to a Penumbra, or a syntax6, or an Aloysia Virgata, and I have no doubt it could be told in a beautiful (if utterly soul-crushingly painful) way.

So, fine. You want this to be the narrative, Chris? Fine. I will fill in the Grand Canyon of plot holes that you left us. The fandom will follow your stupid bread crumbs, and we will imbue them with the motivations and meaning you claim to have been driven by, but inexplicably chose not to write into any of your recent scripts.  William was. Fox Mulder and Dana Scully have been letting him go, piece by piece, for 18 years.  He was not meant to be.  He was, ultimately, not ever theirs, even though he was created from genetic pieces of them. (Fight me, Chris, you can have that CSM created him, but FUCK NO WE ALL DRAW THE LINE AT CARL’S SPERM!)  We can even give this bleak, wasted moodscape a soundtrack, if you want, in the form of a song you chose 10 years ago for them yourself: I will fire up UNKLE’s “Broken” right here, right now.  

And OKAY Chris, I will even follow you down the rabbit hole of this new pregnancy, and I will take it in the spirit of the way I want to believe you intended it: as a way to desperately claw our way back towards getting the ending Existence gave these characters, the ending that was supposed to be their just rewards for all the nightmares they have lived through.  Scully and Mulder are alive, they are a family, they are going to get to finally have a real human child, okay, fine, it’s fiiiiiiiiiine. I will go ahead and imagine that Scully, somewhere a few exquisite and bittersweet heartbeats down the road from the pier, is running away from the FBI and blowing up the motherfucking car (the Mustang, please).  Scully is going to row a damn boat to an island paradise on her babymoon with Mulder, her vibrator, and a blobfish.  You once wanted all of that to be the post-script for your characters, Chris. You lost the thread. I get it, I really do. 

Look, I’m not a gifted writer or a gifted storyteller. I’m a Scully Effect scientist working in medicine, and I’m an overanalyzer at heart.  My creative outlets skew in an entirely different direction.  I am a woman, though, and I am a mother, and people with life experiences just like mine might possibly have had the perspective that could have saved your story, Chris, if only you would’ve consented to hear us out.

If I had been given the chance to help figure out how to crawl out of the William mess created by all those years of renewal-or-not uncertainty, here’s what I might have suggested to you, Chris: let’s make William a savior, not a monster.  Let’s make William an empath with the power to heal others.  Let’s reference Scully’s alien DNA, her chip, Mulder’s season 7 alien artifact brain shit, and let’s say that all of that came together and allowed for the possibility of superhuman recombinant DNA magic once those two people came together.  Let’s give William the ability to read his biological parents’ minds and hearts from afar, but have it be a benevolent thing, and not a painfully torturous apocalyptic thing. Let’s have William come back to Mulder and Scully having harnessed his powers for good, after the New Syndicate killed his adoptive parents as part of a failed attempt to take him out of the picture. Let’s give some concrete evidence that William’s adoption did, for a time, keep him safe, to absolve Scully of that guilt.  Let’s have him tell Mulder that he saw all of the same dreams about building rockets, and father-son TV nights and talk.  Let’s end the New Syndicate’s plans by letting Scully have some motherfucking agency, y'know?  Remember?  Let’s let her do it all like she used to in the glory days, and go be the scientist that she is. Let’s have Scully save the world, by distilling out some saving grace compound from William’s superhuman blood, or stem cells, or whatever the fuck you want to ask Anne Simon to give you, to fight against the New Syndicate’s planned viral apocalypse.  Let’s have Mulder and William vanquish CSM together; these two sons taking out this toxic, villainous “father” that’s been hovering over this whole show, and let’s have them reclaim the narrative of fathers and sons as something that is good, and positive, and right.

Where’s the writer?  I want to speak to the writer!

In the end, Chris, you didn’t do Dana Scully any justice on screen at all.  But your inadequate words don’t get to be the last words on the subject of Dana Scully, nor do they get to define what she means to us. You can’t ruin her, Chris.  She belongs to us now.  We’ll take care of her. We’ll give her the ending she deserves.

[thegoditwasbuiltfor]

Homeschooling

I first became a parent 16 years ago, in 2004.  When I was considering all the avenues available to benefit my parental style, I had briefly considered homeschooling, among other decisions such as only feeding my baby non-packaged foods I had prepared myself and using cloth diapers.  Like most parents, I was ambitious and wanted the best for my baby, and I was willing to jump through incredibly tiny, flaming hoops to make that happen.  However, as I went week by week, month by month with my eldest child through the stages of infancy, I quickly realized that some decisions, unlike others, were big steps in completely different directions, and many of these choices were unnecessarily exorbitant.

Lo and behold, I didn’t feed my baby only non-packaged foods (and I couldn’t have even if I wanted to; she didn’t particularly prefer my homemade foods to the ones that came in jars and boxes), I didn’t use cloth diapers, and I decided early on that homeschooling was for parents who had the privilege of staying home, which I did not.  It wasn’t that I considered any of those choices impossible to make happen, or even that I didn’t consider myself one of “those” kinds of parents--I did, and I do.  But the truth is, some things were just too difficult to make happen, and in some cases would have been detrimental to my finances and daily routine.  Long story short, I made the less-popular choice to favour my time and money.  Go ahead and call me an asshole.

For almost a decade, and two more kids later, the basic system of frugality and time-saving I had created for my family’s day-to-day life was working efficiently, like a well-oiled machine.  The kids had a routine that included going to daycare, before-and-after, and/or school.  And for the duration of the decade, my kids excelled in school, easily bringing home A’s and B’s without much trouble.  I can probably count on one hand the number of times I had to sit down and help a kid with homework.

So in 2013, when we were planning my son, I had no reason to think that my system wouldn’t continue to be effective for a further decade.  And when my son was born the following year, I had given less than 10 seconds thought to how his education would begin and end, because public schooling had always worked for us.  I returned to work within the year of his birth (and quit shortly after), I had a great time jumping from one daycare to another, including the part where I had to sue a provider.  By the time my son was in a comfortable childcare facility, the only question left was which of the many schools in the neighbourhood he would attend.

In the end, I let old habits take over.  I made an appointment at the school my eldest daughter had attended to have my son enrolled.  I vividly remember sitting him down at a table full of legos right outside the office as I filled out the paperwork.  I was handed a flyer for a Kindergarten “Meet and Greet” which was held a few weeks later, and we went on our way.  We met with the Kindergarten teacher and several other parents of school-aged children who would be starting at the same time as my boy.  The evening was a success, but of course my system had predictably ensured me of that.

When it was time to start school, my son was nervous (and so was I, does that ever get any easier?), but he marched in like the big boy that he is and didn’t even shed a tear.  He had a great day, and couldn’t wait to go back.  By the end of the week, he was praising his teacher as the greatest human being on Earth.  By the end of the month, half of the kids in his class were his “best friends” and he was thrilled, overall, with his experience.  By the time parent-teacher meetings rolled around in November, he was quite comfortable and knew his way around the place like he had been there his whole life.  His teacher had nothing but good things to tell me about his progress and behaviour.  All was well, as I had always expected it to be.

It was 2019, and we were home over Christmas break, enjoying some much-needed family time and we briefly discussed an illness sweeping through China.  Boy, were we in for a treat.

When school resumed, all went back to normal, and for 2 months, we had no issues.  Sometime before the new year, things were going so smoothly we had even added both swimming on Tuesdays, and Karate on Thursdays to our schedule.  In January, thinking I was ahead of the curve, I signed my son up for two more activities: Soccer in the spring, and Karate Camp over March break.

By February, as everyone in North America already knows, the proverbial shit had hit the fan: SARS-CoV-2 had reached us and was beginning to spread.  It’s spread began slowly, and I had not yet registered the thought that it was coming for Canada.  We went ahead with our daily lives like nothing had changed.  So I remember the confusion and general disbelief in March as the school had sent out letters stating that the government was considering a provincial shutdown of schools just ahead of Spring Break.  Teachers scrambled to put together take-home packages of work, and even though a date was set as the “last day” of school, mid-way through the week, less than half of the kids were showing up, and my son was one of only two students to attend over those last few days.  

I spoke with the other mom and we both agreed to keep our kids home over the remaining days, since no one else would be there, and I went back to the school the next day to pick up a work package.  At that time, the thought of homeschooling my son for a couple of extra weeks felt like child’s play.  I had no issue going over simple words and math, reading, and playing games for a while.  

Eventually Spring Break simply became the end of the school year, children did not reattend at all for the remainder of the year, and some teachers had put together remote learning programs.  Since my son was in Kindergarten, I wasn’t terribly worried about it, I figured everything would be back to normal by the following school year.  For the second time in my carefully-cultivated plan, I was wrong.

We spent our summer in the usual way: trips to the beach, birthdays, playdates, and camping.  We were being cautious and avoided spending time with too many people, but at that time the numbers were still very low.  Back then, everything was still open, people were still coming and going without issue and the spread of Covid simply didn’t exist in my province.  We wore masks and socially distanced when we went out, but the threat of catching the virus was minimal, we had fewer than 10 cases province-wide and no deaths.  And those numbers had held for several months.

By August 2020, our numbers had climbed exponentially and there was no going back.  It was then that my husband spoke to us about being extra careful.  He encouraged me to do as much of my shopping as possible online, and to simply avoid leaving the house at all.  It became clear that we could no longer see our friends, go to the park, have a shopping day at the mall, or even go in-store to buy groceries.  My son and I were shut in, isolated from everyone, and quite suddenly it was like our world had gone dark.  In the coming months, we couldn’t even visit with family, we cancelled Halloween and Christmas, and New years.  But before even those things, the biggest change in both our lives was the sudden realization that he would not be returning to school at all.

August brought not only high numbers of infection, but also the seemingly unavoidable fact that I would be homeschooling my son.  The numbers were getting higher, but the Government of Canada was already tired of shelling out the CERB payment and it was becoming clear that businesses were expected to reopen and children were expected to return to school as if nothing was wrong.  Though the Government was preaching safety, their reopening plan felt very flawed, and by this point I was terrified of anyone in my family getting sick.  I didn’t want to expose my little boy to a virus that would almost certainly kill him, being an asthmatic child, and having a history of being sickly.

I contacted the school in the final weeks of August to ask them what their options were, regarding Covid, and if, like other schools, they were offering some sort of remote learning.  The school informed us that remote learning was reserved for children who were ill and had a doctor’s note, but since I was not leaving the house to get said note, we would not be able to provide this.  I simply decided the best course of action would be to prepare for homeschooling.  I had no idea how to do this, since I had decided some 15 years previous to simply not do it, and I didn’t have a clue where to begin.  Searching up as much information as I could, I found out that registering your child with the government as “homeschooled” was a good first step, so I did that.  I also researched some programs online that would offer curriculum-based education and some books for children in my son’s grade.  

I learned that there is virtually no support, outside of the odd website here and there with a handful of basic assignments or worksheets, for parents who homeschool.  The curriculum was confusing and I had no friends who homeshooled so I didn’t have anyone to ask.  There was no simple answer.  I literally went into this with very little planning, and no idea what the hell I was doing.  I bought a workbook on Amazon and paid for a couple of programs.  At the time, I felt like I had done everything in my power to prepare my son for a successful grade 1 year, and initially still believed that we would return to school within a couple of months.  The “flatten the curve” ideal was nice, and I clung to it, like a drowning person to a life preserver.  For a third time, I was wrong.

By December, we were already running out of work to do, I was out hundreds of dollars for paper, ink, supplies, books, and programs, and I was hitting a wall.  The holidays put me in a terrible place, mentally and emotionally, and I crashed.  I had a breakdown and struggled to hold on to the motivation to continue teaching my son at home.  Though we were still spending the week doing schoolwork, it really felt like we spent most of our days distracted, watching TV, going for short walks, and playing video games.  Lunch break had stretched over those few months from 30 minutes into several hours, some days, and often I would just declare the day dead, and give up.  My son’s motivation was also waning, despite his young age, he simply didn’t have much interest in writing a journal entry or playing one of the learning games I was shelling out a monthly fee for.  

At one point, I decided we would take a month off to enjoy a nice long break, and hit the books hard when we came back.  Our recommencing was soft and bleak, to no surprise.  Even though the work was interesting and full of information, the book was colourful and fun, even though I added a mandatory “Hump Day, Fun Day” each week where we would do a craft or have a scavenger hunt, even though my son’s work was good and showed he was learning--we were just tired.  We were tired of staying home, we were tired of never seeing any of our friends or family, we were tired of just doing the same crap over and over again everyday.  It had become monotonous and exhausting for either of us to keep it up.

By February, we had become resigned to our task and were doing the work involved, and were maybe feeling a bit better, but we weren’t any more enthusiastic about it.  We had finished most of the workbook and were practically spending the whole day reading.  The truth is, my son already has most of the grade 1 skills laid out in the curriculum, so teaching him really wasn’t even difficult.  But by this point, I had accepted that homeschooling, while possible, was not my skillset and I had no intention of continuing this into 2022.  As an old dog, learning this new trick was too difficult.  Even with Covid raging, as it still is now, in March, I have made the difficult decision to go back to an almost-normal life.

Discussing this with my son proved frightening to him, but I told him that the cases in our country really don’t show a lot of little kids getting terribly sick and that I really didn’t think it was a risk for him.  I also decided that part of the issue is the fact that I have never been well-suited to being a stay at home mom, which I have now been doing against my better judgement for most of 7 years.  My son is very attached to me, and I love that, but it was time for him to discover other people and places a while ago, and realizing that Covid is deterring him (and myself) from living a normal life has been a big pill to swallow.  While I still have a great appreciation and understanding of how dangerous this virus is, I decided that my son is returning to school for grade 2 in the fall, and I will be returning to work.  

In the meantime, we are taking small steps to increase our exposure to the world.  We have been isolated for so long that even a simple walk around the block sometimes has us feeling stuffy and unwell the next day, and we have to retrain our immune systems not to overreact to everything outside of our house.  We have resumed seeing one friend and several family members, despite restrictions.  I’m sure some people will consider this inappropriate, and I understand that.  But after everything that has happened over the following year, including several deadly events and a case of Covid for my 87 year old grandmother (whom I could not see or even speak to), I am not losing anymore time with my family.  I am not jumping in with both feet and eyes closed, I am taking careful steps to ensure safety and I am being cautious, still wearing a mask and socially distancing.  But I have decided that this life of loneliness is not okay long-term for me or my son, and I have no intention of living like a hermit crab for the rest of my life, and my son having no friends or outside connections going into his next years of life.  Sorry, but not sorry.

For the first few months, the constant stream of news on my television promised “we will get through this,” and “we will flatten the curve.”  But I have come to the realization that Covid is here to stay.  We didn’t follow the protocols (worldwide) quickly enough to eradicate this illness, and as a result there is no “going back to normal”, we have to accept that this is our “new normal”, as has been stated almost constantly, but I don’t know that everyone is really on the same page as to what that means.  I still see and hear people talking about “when things go back to normal” as if the “new normal” is temporary.  I’m not here writing this shit to convince anyone else, just stating that I am personally decided that I have to go ahead in my own life, and allow my son to go ahead in his, armed with the idea that things will never be like they were before, and that trying to fight this the way we were doing, by literally never seeing anyone or going anywhere, was a great solution for a while and now it’s not.

In closing, I am hopeful of my future, I have plans I want to put into action and I am hoping we are not going to be permanently inconvenienced by Covid, but ultimately, I can’t wait to start living my life again, even with the mask and sanitizer glued to me at all times.  I intend to enjoy the rest of this year, even in small amounts, and I hope everyone else stays safe and does the same.  Understanding that Covid will not be gone anytime soon, even with this vaccine, we have to learn to live in this new life.

[finlantian]

Hei folks!

I’m Tian, the last of the Canadians in Finland this summer. I’m living in the lovely countryside in a beautiful town called Jokioinen (literally River Village), working at the Luonnonvarakeskus (Luke for short) – Natural Resources of Finland. I’ll tell you about my job later, but first! Let me show you my crib for the past 2.5 months!

Jokioinen is quite small, so I’m actually staying at a fellow researcher’s house. They have a 5 acre backyard where they plant fruit trees and veggies, alongside beautiful flowerbeds that double as nests for local birds. What surprised me the most is the in-house sauna!  I knew coming into Finland that there’s a sauna for everyone, but “knowing” and “experiencing” are two very different things. I can’t imagine taking a shower now, without the warmth of a sauna after!

Jokioinen is named after Loimijoki, the river that runs from a lake near Forssa, through the centre of Jokioinen, all the way out to the west coast of Finland. It goes from my house all the way to my work place, so theoretically I could take a boat to work and save myself the 10 minute bike ride, but exercise is good for me. I think.

Speaking of work, I’m a research trainee at Luke. I worked on two very exciting projects, which I will explain in excruciating detail because scientific communication is important and I think they’re super cool.

Project #1: MicroRNA from cow milk exosomes!

Before the weird words turn you off from reading further, just bear with me. Do you drink milk? How about yogurt? Can’t live without cheese right, whether it’s on pizza, in a sandwich, or just by itself? Then you have also ingested milk exosomes. Don’t worry, they’re not harmful (we think)! Exosomes are very tiny envelopes full of information that your cells release to each other. It’s one of the ways your cells communicate with each other, and MicroRNAs are the “information” packets within the exosome envelopes.

MicroRNAs are very, very, tiny instructions that can influence your genetic expression. They can turn off genes that tells the cell to grow, which is great for  stopping cancerous tumours from becoming larger. They can also promote cell growth by inhibiting the genetic inhibitors. It all depends on what microRNA it is, and where it’s being sent to. Since the exosome has to travel between hazardous environments to reach their targets (your body is very dangerous to random stuff), they are made to be tough and unbreakable so that their precious cargo remains safe until they reach the destination.

Now you may wonder, what does this have to do with milk? Exosomes mainly function as cell-to-cell communication, but recently it has been speculated to also have animal-to-animal functions. In particular, from a mother cow to its baby, after birth. Milk is foremost a nutritious substance meant to encourage the calf’s growth, and exosomes containing intact microRNAs have been found in milk and related dairy products. The implication is that the mother is helping the baby with regulating its gene expression. Of course, the “how” of the process is still being hotly debated. Are the exosomal dairy microRNAs truly functional in regulating gene expression in calves in the amount that they regularly consume? We don’t know, and that’s what I set out to find out. I had the job to confirm that we can extract exosomes from frozen raw milk, and then extract microRNA from those exosomes for further processing.

Obviously the research is still in its infancy, but the implications of it could be huge. Are there specific cells that uptake dairy exosomes in calves? Which genes does the miRNA inhibit, why, and to what function? More importantly, does this genetic regulation extend to humans? If so, to what effect? Positive? Negative? WHO KNOWS, NOT ME. Side note: Is it safe to consume dairy products right now? Yes, I don’t see why not. Humankind is so reliant on the cattle-human relationship that we evolved new ways of withstanding lactose intolerance, we’ll be fine consuming a tiny bit of milk a day.

tl;dr: I did basic lab work to extract miRNA from milk.

Project #2: Global Network for the Development and Maintenance of Nutrition-related Strategies for Mitigation of Methane and Nitrous Oxide Emissions from Ruminant Livestock

This project has a ridiculously long name that I didn’t even learn of until my last day of work. The general gist of it is much simpler: how to keep a cow making the same amount of milk, while eating the same (or less) amount of food, but fart less?

See, cows have this funny process where they ferment the food they eat in an additional organ called the rumen. The rumen contains lots of beneficial bacteria that helps the cow digest its food and make it into product, like milk or meat. Unfortunately, the large amount of greenhouse gases (i.e. farts) the cows produce are often a by-product of the bacteria. Some bacteria combos work better than other bacteria combos in the food:product:waste(farting gas) ratio, so we’re trying to figure out how we can make cows have the identical rumen bacteria community for maximum efficiency ratio. Since the rumen gets colonised by bacteria quite early on in a calf’s life, we needed newborns to be a blank slate. As in all scientific experiments, one must have control groups. It’s quite difficult to control bacterial exposure in a non-sterile environment like a barn + placenta, so the best control is having a twin being exposed to the same thing.

In other words, I helped multiple cows give birth to twin babies. Then I feed one of them bacteria from a cow with a good efficiency ratio, and identify bacteria by extracting DNA from their poop (and other stuff).

The birthing process for this pair of twins was relatively easy. I arrived at 6am on the second day of my barn shift, fed the already-born calves, cleaned cow pens, and lounged around the coffee room.

Around 9:45 somebody noticed something coming out of the cow and called the rest of us over. 9:55am, the first calf’s head + upper limbs came through. 3o minutes later, her sister plops right out as well. All in all, very smooth, zero stress, easy birth. I got the firstborn’s birth on tape, and I got to name the twins, so they’re quite special in my eyes.

It’ll be a long time before we know the results of this study. For one thing, calculating the dairy output of these calves would require waiting for them to mature (1-2 years), be pregnant (9.5 months), and give birth. For the male calves, once they mature we’ll be looking at their weight and how much gas they output for the amount they eat. In the meantime, there’s the 3x/week focal samples and oral swabs to be collected and analysed, as well as blood samples once a week. Not to mention the 4x/day feedings that gets pretty complicated once the number of calves reached 12 in the barn, with many on separate diet plans. Lots of things to do both at the barn and the lab, even after I’m gone! Here’s a link about the project, if you’re interested.

In all, I’ve had an amazing experience in the countryside. I love my job, plus I got to reconnect with nature, get a handle on animal handling, and sauna almost every day. I’ve always thought of myself as a city girl, but this summer has taught me that I can definitely enjoy the quiet, quaint, country life. Just give me a sauna and a garden, and I’ll be set. Thanks Finland, and I hope to see you again!