#but it's still good to ponder

[feathered-serpents]

I’ve said before that my mom, while pretty okay with queer stuff overall, sometimes has trouble grasping that straight actors can play non-straight characters. And seeing her go through this with David Tennant as Crowley has sure been something

I think the funniest thing my mom ever said in her scandalization that David Tennant was playing (I know not technically but in her mind) a gay man was when I told her Crowley was in love with Aziraphale and she straight up responded

“No that can’t be true! Crowley did things with women that proved he was straight!”

And I am still. Trying to solve the mystery of what the fuck she meant by that because I can only remember Crowley having three meaningful interactions with women in the show

One he put in a catatonic trance

One he hit with his car

One was possessed by Aziraphale

[betweenblackberrybranches]

Enjoy the Guys™️

Left to right Callisto, Achilles and Altair, my three dca OCs who are all big of heart but dumb of ass😔 good luck y/n

And here another version without the foreground shading and frame

[gayspock]

i love it when a tv show has lows that are so low you're so ashamed to ever show it to anyone ever but then highs that melt your brain a bit, like, "good fucking god, this is genuinely such an astounding piece of craftmanship... my perception of the medium, and perhaps of myself, has been challenged/changed in 40 minutes" but you cant even express that to ppl without feeling like youre fucking deranged bc my god the lows .....

[formerprincewille]

Something that really sets Wille and Simon apart from other queer ships is that when we say their love language is physical touch, IT REALLY IS PHYSICAL TOUCH. And I’m not speaking of just sex. Over the course of the show, the amount of touching between them is astronomical. And that’s really something rarely seen in queer media. There may be moments here or there, but often times there’s a lack of physical contact unless it’s for “the plot”. Wille and Simon feel like a real couple in the way they’re always physically reaching out for each other.

[ministarfruit]

salt outfit swap

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s3 episode 4 thoughts

here we are!!! i actually turned off auto caps on my phone for this; that’s how serious this blog is getting. don't worry, i'll probably remember to turn it back on before i send an important email.

i haven’t seen an ep in a few days and i feel like it has been 80 years. the last episode wasn’t the greatest, so our time apart feels even longer.

this episode is about a guy named clyde. clyde bruckman is a hell of a name. i’m expecting a real cowboy. a guy who knows his way around a horse. he probably spits chew in a certain fashion. we shall see if i’m correct.

(editor's note: op found that clyde was not a cowboy, but something just as special... a friend <3)

we open with a man reading a magazine article on predictions, written by a celebrity psychic. we later learn that this fellow doing the reading is, in fact, clyde bruckman. and elvis being dead but buddy holly being alive has got to be one of the greatest theories i’ve ever heard. i WILL incorporate this into my belief system.

allegedly, buddy holly is going to open at a big music festival. and this is how i learn that lollapalooza was a thing even before chappell roan visited... but we all know that when she steps on that stage in a few short weeks it will blow anything secretly alive buddy holly could have cooked up in his wildest dreams. "the night the music died" <- crazy thing to say about a time before miss roan was even born. anyway...

bruckman ran into someone in the street. feels like a chekov’s gun moment but who knows.

hint: it was!

now the clumsy man is at the psychic. and he says he saw his own future and he seem himself doing things that are “out of character”. now that's suspicious~

OH??? clumsy man just killed the fortune teller and says she should have seen this coming. HUH???? clumsy murder man needs to be punished …our psychics deserve federal protection. 

we are at the scene of a murder. a different murder, because this one did NOT take place in the psychic's room. “they say the eyes capture the last thing a murder victim sees” “so what do they say about the entrails?” “yuck” LMAO i giggled a little….

they’re talking about some guy in vague terms, that he’s “unorthodox” and “a kook”, and then mulder walks in and it looks like they’re talking about him but the investigator says “who the hell are you” HAHAHA that got me as well

so the murderer left behind the eyeballs and scully says that they made a profile for the killer and i’m thinking yaaaaay they worked together <3 i love that spooky mulder, the well-established profiling expert, is willing to collaborate. but with her only.

and also the house is filled with porcelain dolls 

mulder knowing the professional name for the people who read tea leaves… unfortunately i love him so bad.

THEN the real star of the show rolls up. it’s the psychic from the cover of the magazine we saw clyde reading earlier. CROWDED w paparazzi. he's got a vague european accent going on here. hold up is that jon favreau in the background. i received no clarification on if that was him or not.

psychic is describing a guy who could be literally anyone “white man with facial hair… or not” “tattoo somewhere on his body” wow king of specifics. it's like he's in the room with us. /s

the agents are watching him do this and share a glance and i want it on a poster it’s sooo cute <3

celebrity psychic says he lost the vision from negative energy and then gets right up in the agent’s faces. they handle it pretty well, all things considered. because i would be telling him to back tf up. 

he asks mulder to LEAVE!!!! he has been diagnosed with negative energy. she leans in and says “i can’t take you anywhere” LMAOOOO so he stands outside and then the psychic says that skeptics like mulder make him sick. yeah i laughed!!! so what!

description of our guy: “white male, 17-34, with or without a beard, maybe a tattoo, who is impotent” <- wow.

back to the clyde cam. he's selling insurance. telling some guy that he is going to die in a car crash. well this is an effective life insurance sales policy. or not, because he doesn’t close the deal!! sure would have worked on me.

back home, he takes out some moldy cabbage that looks like a guy’s head into the trash. takes out his neighbor’s trash as well, and sees a vision of the dog eating her remains. (sabrina brier voice) oh!!!

(wait i just realized i reference that video all the time and have never cited my sources. if you are unfamiliar with the legendary "oh!" moment please click here)

back to the plot at hand.

clyde asks if his neighbor has enough dog food. thoughtful man. BUT he sees a body in the trash!

this episode is making me giggle <- don't remember what prompted that note but it was true.

clyde, who reported the murder, says that he knew the eyes were cut out, but she was found face down... so. how do you know that. site your sources. “well it just figures”, he says, and it absolutely, and i cannot emphasize this enough, does not

they bring him to… a murder scene. dun dun dun!

he thinks they're pranking him and asks to see their identification again (sees mulder’s badge) “i’m supposed to believe that’s a real name?” yeah get him again for me.

he sees blood at the crime scene and throws up which... yeah. that’s pretty messed up. he emerges from throwing up and starts saying and doing the same things as the earlier psychic. but then he starts getting... a bit more specific. allegedly, the woman was having sex with the killer before she met her end.

“well then, what’s wrong?” “sometimes, it just seems that everyone’s having sex except for me” LMAOOOOOOOOO clyde you are too real

scully looks soooo confused and i love it

all of a sudden, he sees one of the many dolls as a bloated corpse head, and announces where they’ll find the body then… hands the doll to mulder. which is not the first time we have seen him holding a doll. it is an interesting visual. what are they trying to tell us??

scully isn’t buying it. why does clyde know all this stuff? “i don’t believe he’s the killer”, says mulder, and she responds with, “i don’t believe he’s psychic” yeah that’s the dynamic i love. and she is sooooo pretty. 

mulder goes to the dude’s house and he knows exactly what is going on. but then clyde seems shocked it's him so we are getting mixed messages here.

he asks mulder if he wants to know how he’s going to die, and mulder says yes after stuttering a little and i’m like WOAH where is this going… but clyde responds with “no you don’t”, which, okay yeah, i don’t think i could handle that either

(he goes on to try and sell mulder insurance)

clyde says the future is inevitable. or if he does get involved… what if there is the whole butterfly effect thing? and then he immediately agrees to going along with the investigation. king of not having an answer. the indecisive representation we deserve.

mulder you’re so pretttttyy... look at him watching clyde touch some brass frogs and base conclusions off of them.

scully arrived at the door as mulder has his head FLAT ON THE TABLE lmaoooo 

so, it appears that clyde can ONLY tell how people are going to die. nothing else. now is that useful to this investigation? it's arguable. maybe they can find an angle.

clyde says that the scrap of fabric he’s holding comes from mulder’s new york knick’s t shirt (which was a thing that happened in 1x13 when he was testing that other psychic!!!! ohhhh i remember! do not think i forgot!! and i was confused as to why he would have a knick’s shirt if he was from new england... perhaps he knows no loyalty to geography when it comes to sport)

but mulder denies that it is his shirt anyway, so.

they found keychains on the bodies, and clyde is going on about all the personal information of whoever owned said keychains. it turns out he just sold the guy an insurance policy a few months ago lmaooo... but he knows he was murdered! the death power strikes again.

scully is driving. clyde is in the passenger seat. mulder is sticking his head in between them, asking how he receives his psychic transmissions. it's funny. he wants to know how being a psychic works! so is it like, visions, or dreams or something?

he then implies that mulder will die by autoerotic asphyxiation <- HELLO????? he looks at scully after receiving this news. as if she can possibly defend him against such an accusation.

they’re in the forest looking for a body and clyde explains he knew “the big bopper” was going to die.

scully says she doesn’t believe in that stuff, and even if she did, she wouldn’t believe that story. damn, just really going for his throat, huh. he seems to believe her indignation is over the fact that he liked the big bopper better than buddy holly and he defends himself.

they try to get the car out and mulder’s suit gets all dirty (this is sad to me, a mulder suit enjoyer) but gasp!!! the car is RIGHT OVER THE BODY. that has to be bad for finding evidence. so he did know exactly where it was!!!!

they have a thread from the scene, and have presented it to clyde. “but don’t you have crime labs that analyze these things for you?” he asks scully “yes. yes we do” (pointed glare at mulder) LMAOOOO but he says it takes time!!! and they still haven't analyzed the other thread. so please please please just give your powers a go.

he doesn’t want to help out, but mulder says he wants some insurance. on the fiber, not actual life insurance :( clyde was so excited to tell him the benefits of general mutual!!!

clyde is describing mulder being stalked by the killer sometime in the future, and all of a sudden scully’s up and asking him for more details like she believes it. awww. it’s sweet in a way. does she believe in psychics? no. is she still gonna take detailed notes when one says mulder is in any slight danger? yeah. and don't worry about that seeming to contradict her belief system. she is complicated beyond simple characterizations of skeptic or believer.

he seems to think that the killer will slit mulder’s throat at the investigation, but he doesn’t want to tell him. he DOES tell him that he will step on a pie before whatever happens to him, happens to him.

thank you to the subtitles for clarifying that clyde was imitating johnny carson because they reference would have been lost on me. i know, i’m uncultured, i’m sorry. i’ll google it though. okay, as i thought, he was a late night host. see? we get an exchange of knowledge on this blog, i learn about johnny carson's way of pronouncing the word "killer" and you can use sabrina brier's "oh" in conversation now.

it seems the killer sent clyde a letter saying he’ll kill him. and he’ll be dead before they can get him help :( noooo i like mr bruckman!!! :(

back to the killer. he’s getting a tarot reading and says he’s looking for a guy he’s gonna kill. the man doing the tarot reading smiles nervously, because what do you say in such a situation.

they seem to have bought clyde a pie after his earlier ramblings on the subject, and he kindly asks scully if she wants some, but she denies because she must study background checks instead of relying upon visions. he asks if she is jealous. a good banter between them.

back at the tarot place, the reader mentions a woman. MAYBE A REDHEAD...? stay away from her…

clyde is going on about seeing himself in bed with scully. HELLO??? “it’s just a very special moment neither of us will ever forget” huh. laughs nervously. what the fuck. is she gonna find him dead or do we need to call HR.

(cries editing this, now that i know how the episode ends)

it seems the tarot card guy is about to get murdered. but back at the hotel room with clyde and scully, they’re playing cards and she’s talking about moby dick and macbeth misinterpreting prophecies...

but despite the denial, SHE ASKS HIM HOW SHE DIES??? he says “you don’t” and that is exactly what i like to hear <3

she seemed really serious about it too, like she didn’t want to admit that she was curious, initially deflecting. oh best believe i WILL psychoanalyze that.

LMAOOO okay so this is the episode where mulder says the “chantilly lace” line and she makes that face. he's referring to another thread found at a murder scene, but i saw it in a gif and i have been thinking about it since then.

she slaps his chest with the file and says good luck as he goes to babysit the old man psychic. it was very affectionate. do it again.

mulder is in bed. it’s sleepover time with the old man. “you’re not one of those people that turns everything into a sexual symbol, are you?”, clyde asks, seemingly self-conscious about revealing his recurring dream. mulder says no, but i’m unconvinced.

anyway, he talks about seeing himself dead, and how his body fades away. we see a cgi decomposing body and it’s quite gnarly. maybe it's clay? and all his skin faded away and he becomes bones. kinda gross tbh. but he says he feels at peace.

there’s been another murder, so another guy is gonna babysit our clyde, and i’m thinking noooo don’t trust this other guy!!

scully says she feels bad, that clyde has convinced himself he is a psychic and it’s taken all the joy out of his life :(

okay, the guy babysitting him seems to be telling him jokes. clyde says he won’t die of lung cancer so he lights up. and i'm thinking, buddy, he did not rule out emphysema.

hang on. that is a lighter we have seen before. in the hands of old lady who shall be eaten by dogs. now is this a mass produced object or are we about to witness the end of clyde!!!!

“don’t open that door for anybody”, says the babysitter, and clyde then immediately proceeds to do so. and who is it knocking but the psychic killer delivering their room service!!!

killer is asking clyde why he does these things and it’s “because you’re a homicidal maniac” well that would explain it! and then he stabs the babysitter. but clyde has delayed his fate by telling the murder he doesn’t kill him now. seems he believes him. clever thinking.

scully realizes that the killer is the bellhop at the hotel after seeing some more lace. which mulder describes as “woman’s intuition” yea <3

back at the hotel. mulder is in the kitchen. he sees the killer with the knife. it is all going down as clyde described it. now if there really is a pie do NOT BE DISTRACTED. OH there is a pie. and he knows he has to turn around, so he turns THE OTHER WAY. noooo!!!!!

they get in a struggle!!! mulder’s bleeding, and scully gets off the elevator just in time. she shoots the murderer. no hesitation on taking a life, she will kill a motherfucker for mulder. i love that about her. 

and scully only got there because she took the wrong elevator!!! more pondering on the meaning of fate!!!!!

i love when one of these bitches is on the floor in pain and the other comes over and comforts them. i think i need that in my life just once. it would heal me.

but the question is: where is bruckman?

they go to find him and they only find a dog tied to the door?? and a letter to scully. it’s the dog from before, the neighbor's pet. the letter from clyde says to take care of his neighbor's remains. and he asks if she wants a dog, and that you can’t blame him for the dog’s actions. so they go into the room.

BUT IT IS BRUCKMAN THAT IS DEAD IN THERE. it looks he took pills and suffocated himself. scully looks so so so so so sad.

AND OMG!!! SHE IS HOLDING HIS HAND WHILE HE IS IN BED AND CRYING. JUST LIKE HE SAID WOULD HAPPEN. WAIT THIS IS SO SAD. 

so that must be why he say a head in a bag at the start of the episode, it was his own death... and the killer was right, he did get to clyde before he was caught, he just didn't attack him. huh. funny how prophecies play out.

cutscene to her on the couch WITH THE DOG IN HER LAP. and an ad from the earlier eastern european psychic is on the tv. she throws the phone at him.

A DOG!!! a dog. okay, a lot to think about, but first and foremost we have scully with a dog <3 and it sits in her lap while she watches TV. and it MAY have tasted human flesh, which i feel is a hard thing to get past, but clearly she has done it. she has done the emotional labor of knowing that fuzzball knows what human meat feels like. and she has faith that this dog will not do the same to her. that is an awful lot of trust for a new dog. but we do know she loves animals. so perhaps she trusts the puppy.

i always pictured her with a big ol mutt from the pound. but a little dog can be just as good of a friend. and it WAS a rescue. that is important!

okay. back to the episode at hand, dog aside. even though it is a BIG deal to me and i'm honestly being so brave by not going on a monologue about what scully having a dog means to me. this episode was definitely comedic, and like the earlier comedic episode, i liked it a lot! but the ending made me so sad :( it was a pretty abrupt tone shift. 

still. the episode was SO good. i kept pausing every few seconds to write things down because they made me laugh or otherwise intrigued me (thinking of scully playing cards and explaining macbeth. or chantilly lace line. or "i can't take you anywhere". i will try not to think of mulder's potential death by choking himself for my own sanity)

and i liked clyde a lot. we get a lot of one time characters who we will never see again and so it’s good when those characters make an impact in the short amount of time we share with them. 

and i’m always gonna take a light-hearted episode, as light-hearted as a show where serial killing is a daily occurrence can be. it does go to show though that there wasn’t always a consistent tone throughout the story. and i do find that interesting. i am part of a generation where we typically get 6 hour long episodes of a tv show per season, and they’re so condensed there is very little time for exploration with genre or tone. in general, i have loathed this about modern television; the death of the filler episode has been lamented by people far more eloquent than myself.

the only thing i dislike about this format- doing a silly episode- is that if the next episode ends up being really dark it’s like, woah man, the whimsy, where did it go? last season we got humbug, which was SO fresh and funny, and then within the first 3 minutes of the next episode, a baby was killed by a train. so i lowkey got whiplash. but then again, i watched those episodes back to back, so maybe having a week between them seeing them air as they hit TV would have softened the blow. feel free to chime in with your theories on the nature of genre and how pacing of episode viewing effects that experience.

overall, a very good episode. i rank it up with humbug as one of my favorites, which is again funny, because i love the extreme angst and the silly. i paused to take so many notes because i liked so many things that i think i should someday rewatch it again and get a smoother experience haha

[skitskatdacat63]

Tradition vs Modernity vs Comradery

+ context & lore:

In the first drawing, Fernando is wearing a capote de paseo, which is what bullfighters wear before the match begins, as seen below:

In the second, Seb is shouting the very familiar "Olé" which is shouted by the crowd to praise the matador. He's a little brat, so of course he's yelling it for himself, but he did get many 💐

The third(which was a random sketch I had that I didn't think I'd finish tonight, so ignore if its messy) has very important context to me. Before going to the final act and killing the bull, matadors dedicate their montera(hat)(and symbolically: their kill) to a a specific person in the audience(or just the public as a whole.) Seb and Fernando are finally in the same color! Seb is bowing!!! And Fernando is honoring Seb!!!! Also ignore that I drew Seb's post-retirement hair. Though, maybe this drawing is supposed to represent Fernando making a dedication to his now-gone rival 😔(Seb: stop telling people im dead!)

Now, some more lore :D

So I talked about this in my last matador post but I'll expand more. I think it's very funny to characterize Fernando in this au as this fun-hating traditionalist. Because you have to understand; he's only this way when it comes to Seb. Because you absolutely KNOW he was doing silly, unserious shit back when he was younger. But absolutely god forbid Seb do anything silly.

It's very ironic because there literally is a part in the third act of a bull fight where it's basically encouraged to be a bit silly. This is a tad morbid, but basically right before they deliver the killing blow, some show their mastery over the bull by doing some superfluous action(ex. kissing the bull, kneeling in front of the bull.) There's some guy who literally would lean on the bull and mime taking a call. But anyways, Seb would def do this. I've not been able to draw it exactly how I want, but he would bend down and do his little bull horn symbol and mime charging at the bull. (Fernando, trying to make up reasons to hate Seb: oh my god, look at this blatant disrespect, look how he is disrespecting the bull, I cannot believe how rude this boy is!)

Also there's something to be said about how the matador shows mastery over the bull by kissing it or bowing to it...and Seb is technically the bull in this au and Fernando is the matador. There's just this unfortunate level of weird power inbalance that still lingers even though their rivalry is over and can't be affected anymore. There was no succinct answer about who truly was better because Seb was forced out of it. So there's always gonna be this level of "is he just pitying me? Is he just mocking me? Is he just patronizing me?" on Seb's part whenever Fernando praises him or makes dedications to him. And Fernando's always going to be haunted by the fact that there's no answer to who is truly better because he'll never know if Seb had reached his full potential or not. Anyways, they also have nasty sex while wearing their costumes and do weird bull/matador roleplay :)

[poorlittleyaoyao]

A thing about trying to plot out QS canon-divergence fixit where the marriage is averted is that the obvious solution to “she was already pregnant before they knew the truth” is, well, end the pregnancy. The wider world doesn’t seem to know that she’d conceived prior to marriage, so can’t be more than a month or so along as of the wedding for it to be plausible. People have been inducing abortion in dire circumstances despite physical risk and moral stigma throughout history. QS has magic at her disposal and the means to remove herself from society unnoticed during the recovery period, and even if it’s taboo, is it more taboo than incest?

[henrybelly]

honestly when i tried to figure out why some fans are so mad at ivypool these days i was looking through avos and. the scene where ivypool apologises to twigpaw for not supporting sending a patrol for skyclan is genuinely very sweet??

i actually saw someone characterize this as "ivypool forcing twigpaw to forgive her". is it crack you smoke. is that what you smoke. you smoke crack?

[ryansjane]

another thing I loved about not me (yes I'm still unpacking my feelings about not me in 2024 that's how dense the show is) is that it's one of the rare thai shows that allowed its characters to be angry, especially sean. usually thai dramas always have their characters "be the bigger person", even when they're constantly unfairly mistreated they just take it & keep being nice. but sean is ANGRY. all the time. it makes him vindictive, violent and aggressive. and he's allowed to have this very human feeling due to his generally very horrible life and hold onto it until he decides to heal & let go of it. I swear it's so rare to see a thai character be truly angry, for good reasons or not, and 1) still have him be a hero of the story & 2) allowing him to manifest this anger on screen in the very real disproportionate ways that true anger causes on people in real life. I think thai dramas are excellent at depicting different emotions, from the most basic to the most complex, however anger is one that was left on the side, perhaps bc it's not in line with buddhist beliefs and the notion of karma. however, sean's anger is one of my favorite things about him. it's what makes him the most real character I've seen in my opinion, bc he does have this uglier emotion and shows it, just like I've been angry & nasty, and just like everybody else has. in conclusion, not me keeps being the best show ever created & I would die for sean bawongittacha 🫶

[aldermos]

One question, besides Surgamy and Whispangle, who do you ship Sonic?

hii

so i spent a bit thinking about this simply because i was a hardcore multi-shipper in the past 😭 , those sonic YT amv/edits with Katy Perry E.T. or Skillet really carried my childhood i wont lie 💀

i kinda mellowed out though, i really only truly love a couple pairs; but I still like and respect a toooon of other ships (just not proship yk)

my main pairs aside from whispangle/surgamy tho are blazamy, sonadow, silvamy, infidget, and shadilver 😋

[mommyashtoreth]

Do you think if goomens the book had been published juuuust a little bit later, Crowley would have been on the CD train instead of cassettes? CDs started to pick up a bit later in the 90s, and they stayed popular for like 20 years. I think people still tend to depict showcrowley as favoring cassettes, but I'm not sure that's in line with how he's characterized, at least in My head. If he WERE the type of person to be like Retro in a Cool way, it's all about vinyl now. Aziraphale would still use cassettes because they're shit

[ineffablefool]

How the hell is all this acrylic paint that I bought for a class I signed up for in 2004 (not a typo) still wet?

[lynxfrost13]

I genuinely wonder about Ariane and the Itous friendship they’re such a delightful little trio of outcast weirdo kids to me

[verflares]

always feel a lil guilty when i get kudos or comments on my fics because i appreciate them sooo much and looking back on my own work makes me feel so proud.. but at the same time the truth is that writing is so hard always and forever 💔