#cannot pick just one

[corpsentry]

pick your battles

[randomfoggytiger]

These and many, many more (Tumblr cut me short):

@agent-troi's Bloom - Chapter 1

@aloysiavirgata's A Heart of Star and The Water Is Wide

@amplifyme's Quonochontaug and Light Don't Sleep

Anonymous's Emergency Autopsy

 astronaught's Haze

@baronessblixen's Whispered Words, New Day Has Come, Never Cold With You By My Side Dreams Are Made Of This, Name Calling, Five Minutes

 catsndogs's All Creatures

@cecilysass's Not Orpheus, Not Eurydice and All the Dead Mulders (and Pause-- can't link because Tumblr limits)

@crossedbeams's Misty Blue

Davd Stoddard-Hunt's XFVCU-fic - Pret' Near Midnight

FabulousMonster's Hoop Dreams and Hair Wars

@fbismostunwanted1158's Nurse Mulder and The Fall, X-Files Style

@firstofoctober's Pulling the Thread/Five Wishes

@frostbitepandaaaaa's Four Days AU

@gaycrouton's Her Own Gesthemane

Jamie Greco's Truth or Dare/Truth AND Dare, Scarlet, Five Months Lost, Breathing

JenAndrews's Skyland Mountain (AU) and Rainbow Umbrella (MSIV)/Snow Boots

Jenna Tooms/misslucyjane's An Acceptable Level of Happiness and Shooting Star

JET's Small Lives Awake

Jill Selby's Poised for a Fall (because I tie it to @annablume, who introduced it to me... if my trash memory remembers correctly)

Joyce's Revenant/The Ghost in the Dark

Karen Rasch's By the Wind Grieved

Keleka's Gray Ghosts

Livia Balaban's "Cunegund's Restoration (or, The Best of All Possible Worlds, Really) (1/2)"/"(2/2)"

LuvTheBeez's Snow/Equanimity

Maria Nicole's Bridge

@mchalowitz's chain reaction

@melforbes's seaglass blue (because I've lived it, to a less harrowing degree) and true minds

@monikafilefan's Pre-IWTB at the unremarkable house, Mulder

@muldertxf's Cheap Motels and Headaches

@onpaperfirst's Home, Home and Honey Hi

@palepinkpores's Solo

@pilotinthestars's a green nursery

prufrockslove's Hiraeth

Revely's The Unfinished Universe

RoseThornhill's Cookie Monster and Spooky Mulder: The Revenge/Alice is a Punk Rocker

saltringangell's the time it would take (to fix my heart)

@sixhours's Morning Sickness

@slippinmickeys's Mulder being there when Scully gives birth, NOT INSPIRED BY ACTUAL EVENTS, North of Zero/More North of Zero

snow_and_rain's Bill and me

Sukie Tawdry's The Way Things Are (1/2)"/"(2/2)"

@teethnbone's The Ansted Graft

touchstoneaf's Amor Fati: The Fated Love

@welsharcher's Toothpaste (she wrote it for me!)

@wexleresque's stars

All of @sigritandtheelves's S8 or post S8 AUs (Ground, Headcanon: Scully’s first Mother’s Day, Off Limits, A 2004 AU, Advent to name a few)

(I have to tear myself away from short fics/writers because the list would never end; but I'll begin and end with: every. single. one. of baronessblixen's and melforbes's and @ghostbustermelanieking's and @o6666666's and @enigmaticdrblockhead's and @mappingthexfiles's and @settle-down-frohike's and welsharcher's fics. Can't describe in words how much their work is now coded into my DNA. Must reads also include previous authors listed and @scenes-in-between and @storybycorey and @suitablyaggrieved and @leiascully and @dreamingofscully and @msrafterdark and @writingwell and @danascullysjournal and @numinousmysteries and @television-overload, and @thescullyphile and @swinging-stars-from-satellites and @two-microscopes and @sharpestasp and @ragnarockz and @invidiosa and @spidey-is-tired and @thursdayinspace and @ellivia and @skelavender and @pennyserenade and @careful-fears and @mollybecameanengineer and many, many more.)

Recommendations for X-files Fics?

I've read a lot of the newer ones from Ao3, but I heard that the x-files fandom is a little special with sites predating Ao3 and fanfiction.com.

So what are the must read fics? What are your all time favourites, you know, the ones you've saved to re-read later. I'm a baby-phile what have I missed?

Some of my re-reads

Unbroken by Fox_sync

Felix Felicis by misslilli

More Than A Feeling by SisterSpooky1013

Goshen by Bonetree (Todesfuge)

Universal Invariants by Syntax6

[formulanni]

Sponsors as The Devil:

This card represents being seduced by the material world and physical pleasures. Also living in fear, domination and bondage, being caged by an overabundance of luxury, discretion should be used in personal and business matters.

Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil

Tag list: @st-leclerc @rubywingsracing @saviour-of-lord @three-days-time @the-wall-is-my-goal @albonoooo @ch3rubd0lls @brawngp2009

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Welcome to the Dungeons of Fear and Hunger.

[amphibianaday]

day 1821 - half a decade!

redraw of day 1, 364, and 1000, but with a twist - now it's also my frogsona :D

for now i'll be taking a (maybe permanent) break for at least the rest of the year! see you in 2025!

previous versions for comparison below!

[shima-draws]

I’m still so mentally ill over the whole Luffy refusing to eat unless it’s Sanji’s food thing. Like. We KNOW how fucking feral over food Luffy is. He loves food and loves eating so much that he steals it off other people’s plates and out of their hands and is so impatient when it comes to meals that he’ll literally try and sneak into the kitchen to mooch before it’s ready. Or he’ll try to break into the refrigerator. I know Sanji mentioned putting a lock on it at some point bc Luffy literally wiped it clean. He will not hesitate to eat other people’s portions or literally an entire meal meant for a whole ship of people! He’s unbelievably selfish when it comes to food and that’s just SUCH a central part of his character that it’s become almost endearing. Even in Totto Land Luffy didn’t think for a second before devouring everything in sight, including an entire fucking HOUSE, regardless of the consequences or the people it might affect. Homie did not care!! He’s food driven first and foremost!!!

Until Sanji leaves him. Until he decides that eating—something that he loves and brings him comfort—isn’t WORTH it unless it’s Sanji’s food he’s eating. It’s been shown that Luffy has zero self restraint when it comes to food so the fact that he was SURROUNDED by food on all sides on a food themed island and utterly refused to partake in any of that? Even though he hates being hungry and will always make eating a priority over pretty much anything else?? The amount of willpower it must have taken for him to sit there and purposefully let himself starve, for SANJI. Even when food was offered to him conveniently (in the form of syrup rain) he stubbornly rejected that. Because it wasn’t Sanji’s food. Because it wasn’t Sanji who made it, who always puts so much thought and care into the food he makes, who always indulges Luffy and prepares extra because he knows how much Luffy eats and how much he loves to eat. Luffy literally took one of the most defining traits he has and tossed it out the window. For Sanji. I’m going to fucking blow up

[peace-hunter]

tfone au where OP is created as the last of the primes but way after them, a sparkling born at what were thought to be the last days of the war against the quintessons, the beginning of a new generation of peace after eons of war. a child meant to be loved and raised knowing nothing of war nor sacrifice.

he's kept mostly out of the spotlight by his siblings, who don't wish to expose him to everyone's optics so young, and want to wait until the war is done and over to properly introduce him to their people.

except of course the primes are betrayed and murdered by sentinel, the war is lost and everyone who knows and cared for the truth is either banished or outright killed in order to suppress it.

and the high guard, the ones the primes trusted the most, the ones that were supposed to protect them, the ones who failed in their most important duty, have to make a choice. to take the last prime, their last hope, with them to the surface, a hostile environment where there's little to no supplies and where they'll be hunted down by both sentinel and the quintessons as the biggest threat to their regimen.

or hide him in plain sight. place him where sentinel won't think to look for him. one more sparkling among many. and hope it will be enough to keep him alive. pray to primus that he'll protect his last child long enough for them to come back for him when it's safer (even if most of them have already lost their faith on him when he allowed the rest of his children to be massacred like that)

they almost lose their resolve when they realize they will have to take the little one's cog away in order to make him blend in with the rest of the newborns (and oh do they burn with murderous intent when they see what sentinel has done to their people but it's not the time yet-) but in the end they decide an impaired little prime is better than a dead one.

and so in the chaos of thirteen dead primes and a sudden energon crisis, a little sparkling who very few mechs really knew about and even fewer had seen completely vanishes. and in the depths of iacon a mech in charge of a new batch of newborns scratches their helm in confusion as they realize they must have miscounted the first time.

optimus prime is quietly erased from any official records by sentinel, written off as dead when they find a sparkling's frame mangled beyond recognition after an attack on the base of those rebels that insist on being a thorn on his side. killing the sparkling hadn't been precisely in his plans, he probably could've found some use for it after all, but he's not particularly upset about it either.

and orion pax grows up with an ache on his spark that tells him he's missing something far more important than a t-cog and dreams of gentle and loving hands, cradling him against the frames of mechs he cannot recall the faces of.

[kuroo-hitsuji]

Made it with an hour to spare 😎

Read right to left bc i Always end up with everyone facing the Worst direction for drawing their hair so i had to fix that--

This is so dumb sjshsshgd happy birthday Mephisto get surprise objectified i guess???

[blue-mood-blue]

I’ve grown to appreciate the aus where Shen Yuan enters the story as “Shen Yuan” - same name, probably similar face, generally able to interact with PIDW as himself and change the story through his added presence. I like the sense of “if only you’d been here, things might have been better the first time around” of it all.

And I was thinking, it’s a funny coincidence in that scenario that someone named Shen Yuan gets put into… another Shen Yuan. What are the chances? What a weird twist of fate that Airplane would pick out the name that his most dedicated critic could slip into seamlessly.

What about a version where it’s not coincidence at all?

Airplane goes to school with a kid named Shen Yuan. He’s prickly and hard to approach and a little intense, but Airplane is persistent. In fairness, Airplane is relentless - and maybe it’s a good thing that they end up being friends, because they’re a little too much for anyone else to handle. They balance each other out. They’re the “weird kids” in class and they’re okay with that, because even when they don’t have any words for it, they know they’re not like their classmates, not really. That’s okay; they don’t want to be.

Recesses and breaks are consumed with the elaborate stories that Airplane wants to tell, and all the holes Shen Yuan pokes into them. It’s not mean-spirited, though, even though Shen Yuan isn’t the kind to temper his words. It’s passionate. He cares about those stories the way Airplane cares about them, and it can’t be mistaken for anything else when they lean together conspiratorially across the lunchroom table. They’ve both got notebooks filled with details and characters and monsters. Shen Yuan’s practically got a whole bestiary sketched out in wobbly childhood attempts at art, entries fervently scrawled beside them. Airplane prattles out plots nonstop, always with the promise of shining eyes and being asked “what happens next?”

They come up with a whole world together. Airplane’s going to write about it someday. Shen Yuan is going to read every word.

Shen Yuan misses school. Shen Yuan starts missing school a lot.

Airplane goes to the hospital room instead. He doesn’t think to worry, because Shen Yuan is okay - that’s what he says. He looks okay, and he’s a kid, and it doesn’t feel real that anything bad should happen to a kid. He doesn’t think to worry. He doesn’t think to say goodbye.

It’s one of the older Shen brothers who catches him on the way up to the room one day, in the hallway just outside - snaps at him to go the fuck home, and when Airplane hesitates, pushes him into the elevator and tells him not to come back. “Tells” is a generous way to describe the way the words come out - a growl, a hiss, the sound an animal would make when a hand got too close to a wound.

(It’s not fair to name a villain after him, even if the name never really comes up in the story. He wasn’t trying to be mean. He’d lost a brother minutes before, and he was getting his brother’s friend out of the way so he didn’t have to… see. It isn’t fair, but then, none of it is fair.)

Death feels very real after that.

The notebooks get shoved into a closet, and it’s not until Airplane’s moving out and one falls on him from a high shelf that he thinks about it again. He’s written things, lots of things, but nothing as ambitious as this - nothing as important. It could be good, he considers. He’d promised. Shen Yuan wanted to read it.

The problem was that no one else does, not for a long time, not until Airplane has whittled himself and his art into a corner and into such an unfamiliar shape that he has to wonder how it’s still his own face he sees in the mirror. He has to eat. He has to pay rent. Shen Yuan would yell at him, but Shen Yuan isn’t there to yell at him, and who cares. Who cares if it could have been better? The people who actually are here love it, and it’s paying his bills, and sometimes stories don’t go the way they’re supposed to and the world is fucking unfair. It doesn’t matter.

(It does. But he shoves that thought away along with styrofoam cups and soda bottles to the bottom of a garbage bag.)

Authors are not gods and their power is limited, but Airplane exercises just a sliver of what he’s been granted and gifts an inconsequential sort of immortality. He thinks about making him a rogue cultivator, maybe the kind that goes around documenting beasts and compiling his findings. He thinks about making him someone too powerful for death to touch, or too important to threaten, but when Airplane looks at the world he crafted and everything that’s become of it, it feels like the kindest thing he can do for Shen Yuan is a childhood where he’s loved, and a death that’s peaceful. What does it say about that world, that he’d kill off his best friend too early again instead of making him live there?

(The best writing he ever does is the only, shining moment of humanity that his scum villain ever displays: a lament about death that comes too early, about a brother gone too soon. The commenters praise him. The commenters flatter over how real the emotions feel. The commenters don’t get any response from Airplane on that chapter.)

Death is incredibly real when it comes for him too early, too, still hovering over his keyboard with the story technically finished and incredibly incomplete. Airplane could tell himself that’s because the written version can never be the version in the writer’s head, always shifting and with every possibility still on the table, but he knows better than that. The System knows better than that, with its condescending message about “improving” his writing and “closing plot holes” and “achieving his original vision”...

…and he’s a child again. He’s a child in his own story, he’s Shang Qinghua now without the benefit yet of a peak or cultivation or anything, and maybe he’s a little bitter, and a little scared, and…

And Shen Yuan - with longer hair, with robes, with a couple of older kids watching him from across the street, but undeniably the prickly little boy who used to sit down imperiously across from him and tell him everything that was wrong with the chuck of writing that had been handed to him last period, but with that smile that said he was only invested because he knew it could be better and they were going to make it better - marches up to him with a fire in his eyes and a frown that warns of a coming tirade.

“You told it wrong,” is the first thing he says.

Shang Qinghua wants to ask how him how he’s here, how this is possible, or maybe laugh because, yeah - yeah, Shen Yuan has no goddamn idea how wrong he got absolutely everything.

(Shang Qinghua wants to say “I missed you” and “why did you leave so soon” but he’s here now. He’s right here.)

“I know,” he says instead. ��I’m sorry. It all kind of… spiraled out of control.”

Shen Yuan frowns, but then it dissipates the way it always does, and his eyes shine with ideas the way they always used to. “That’s okay,” he relents, grabbing for his hand. “We’ll fix it. We’ll make it what it was supposed to be.”

[zelkam]

— the untamed (2019), episode 31

[sketchy-tour]

He has!!! ARIVED!!!!!

He's here he's here he's here!!!!!! Safe and sound!!! We sat down and did some coloring together!!!!

And also made sure he met his new neighbors! Had a nice chat with my childhood stuffed animal! Asking all about what his new home is like. And of course, he had to meet Boober Fraggle!

Watched some Winnie the Pooh together! I think he really liked it. I hope he felt warm and welcomed in my home. A nice and cozy first day here!

[dufferpuffer]

Just a reminder that Albus Dumbledore did not raise Harry as a pig for slaughter. That was never his intent - and never his desire.

He was doing his best to keep him alive the entire time. He found out eventually that Harry would HAVE to die in order to kill the horcrux in his head - and keeping Harry alive was having an eyeglass for Voldemort to see through... but he kept him. Why...?

Because he didn't want him to die. He was willing to throw away the well being of everyone to find a solution that would keep him alive.

“I cared about you too much,” said Dumbledore simply. “I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act. ... ... What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands."

OotP pg 838/839

(Love how that last line insinuates he never thought he would have someone in his life he cared for this much. Someone he was willing to forgo logic and his morals for. Someone who would make him willingly weak and vulnerable to mistakes.)

Albus is not a warm man. He has never had much experience with love. He has faced hardships, over and over, and learned that one must remain detached in order to be logical and responsible.

But it was his attachment to Harry, his love - that protected him, his sacrifice that let him be the boy who lived a second time. He could have sacrificed Harry like a pig for slaughter... but instead he risked everything so Harry could be the pig that got away. He probably shouldn't have. He probably should have just killed him.

[bumblingbabooshka]

Star Trek comedy gag where Sarek is explaining to Spock why Vulcan parents cannot be as close to their children as humans are meanwhile Tuvok’s in the background buying his children two large fries (to share amongst them) on their way back from the park because they all got good grades this year - not perfect, but progress is always to be commended. 

[al-luviec]

something simple to try to get out of art block (it didn't work)

[givemearmstopraywith]

i don't know how to explain this without it getting taken in bad faith but people need to apply the same energy and fervour for decolonization they have for israel to canada, the us, and australia