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mulders-too-large-shirt · 12 days

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s4 episode 5 thoughts

i’m back. i’m back and i’m intrigued. because i'm reading the episode description, and if we get more mulder ex lore here, which the episode description makes it sound like we will, i am… not sure how i will feel on the subject. the term “reincarnation” makes it sound like whoever it was… died. did an ex of his die? and that is a lot of mulder marked by pain and suffering. and maybe i’m getting ahead of myself. but the writers KNOW we want our agents to smooch, so focusing on an ex might make me, the viewer, feel weird. i just need to get all these thoughts out in writing before we begin.

how is he gonna tell if someone is a reincarnated lover? or am i misunderstanding this entirely.

only one way to find out

author’s note: oh my gosh…… nothing could have prepared me for this. at all. here i was thinking it was ex lore time, but it was past life time, and there are TEARS in my eyes.

(serious author's note: i ask for some grace in this episode recap. there may be some things i word poorly. i am familiar with the terminology used to describe DID, and did my best, but acknowledge that i may have come up short. please understand that this is intended to capture my live reactions to what i was seeing for the very first time. at times here, there are no reactions, just a sort of a nebulous recapping of what i saw because i was feeling So Many Things. so this one might be messy, and i hope that is okay. i don't understand what i am feeling, but i am feeling a Lot of it, and humbly ask for your patience in my clumsy wording as well as some helpful discussion on what just went down)

let us begin, i type as i sniff up some tears

we open with mulder in a field… is he reciting poetry? and looking very sad.

wait, is he not actually reciting poetry and he just talks like that? while holding two pictures of old timey people. i’d guess civil war era.

okay. so now we jump right to the intro. that was quick. i’m still processing what we just saw because we were really dropped into that one with no context whatsoever.

federal agents break into a temple in tennessee. they’re looking for illegal firearms! and a guy named ephesian.

but mulder sees a window… and he is staring at it… walking out the door as if led by some sort of spiritual quest while scully yells his name and wonders wtf he’s doing. he is not responding to her at all, but she’s chasing after him because she is a good friend.

so he’s hearing things while scully is pulling her gun out, and it does appear that he found a trapdoor!

he busts in, and slaps some poison out of the hand of a woman who was taking sips, and then grabs the dude who i assume is the cult leader. whew… that was close

now they’re at some sort of meeting, listening to tapes, and skinner is here!!! hiiii skinner. everybody say hi skinner!

so, someone on the tape seems to be whistleblowing on this cult- the seven stars or something- saying that the leader is hurting children and stockpiling weapons. mulder looks incredibly pensive during all of this.

oh! someone refers to mulder as “our man spooky”, which is kind of hilarious, while complaining that the reports were weak. scully leans in and asks yeah, how did he know that? while the men are fighting.

and skinner yells KNOCK IT OFF!!!! because the folks at the compound were somehow able to hide all the evidence before they got there, and now they’re forced to hold ephesian and “his wives” on “BS charges”. so now the agents MUST find evidence of firearms and who the informant was NOW because they will try to get an arraignment fast.

woah. no pressure.

skinner comes over talk to mulder and scully- they must look into this ephesian fellow's claims of supernatural abilities. scully says he can use the book of revelations to manipulate his followers, but seems to suspect no real powers.

they to talk to this ephesian fellow, who says he knew for 9 centuries that scully was coming, and starts going on about the bible, quoting stuff. very scary behavior.

mulder comes in with the fact check. jesus said that at smyrna, not about some church in tennessee! (his knowledge…. it always impresses me)

this dude is being super creepy, telling them to put aside their investigation “for your own souls”, because soon all unfaithful shall “be destroyed by God’s mighty men”. so this is some pretty standard cult rhetoric here. if you've studied religions, you've heard this one many times. it seems that ephesian thinks he and his people shall be the ones doing this violence. a tight zoom in on mulder’s troubled face as he quotes more scripture.

they have 6 wives to question, and mulder says to start with one in particular. interesting… i wonder why that one. is it because she was the one they caught ephesian with in the hidden area... or something more?

her name is melissa, and she says she’s 25 as she smokes a cigarette and dodges their questions. she’s been at the compound and married to ephesian for a year.

mulder asks if it troubles her that ephesian has so many other wives, and she just recites scripture instead of answering. so scully comes in with the “i’d have a tough time if my husband had so many children with other women”. this seems to begin to get her to crack, as she tears up.

wait... it’s so wrong to hear scully call someone else, who isn't her sister, melissa :(

melissa she doesn’t have any children with ephesian yet... because he has to wait for God to tell him that the right soul is ready to be reincarnated, which is why his children are the most sacred members of the temple. naturally, of course /s

things get quiet when they ask if he had been hurting the children until melissa starts talking with a very different voice and set of mannerisms, and she no longer replies to the name melissa. so scully scrawls “multiple personality” in her loopy handwriting and passes it over to mulder. oh! is this sydney?

(at this point, i shall begin to refer to sydney with he/him pronouns, as this is what mulder does. normally i would stick to my journalistic integrity and keep reporting the things i wrote down incorrectly while watching the episode, but i'm trying to be very respectful- i hope you understand)

but mulder writes back to scully no, this is not a multiple personality case, it's a past life case! his handwriting is very blocky. to prove his point, he asks sydney who the current president is, and he responds that it is harry truman. ah. so, he's a few years off.

mulder claims that “somehow he just knew” sydney was melissa's past life, which doesn’t reveal a lot, but his eyes are very soulful and i want to hold his hand.

skinner says they need to find something to get this case moving forward, and mulder is like dude, we found sydney, the voice matched! i would agree with his judgement that this in fact a sizeable discovery.

mulder is saying that what they have seen matches the criteria of DID in the DSM4 (woah, need to look up when we switched to 5), but scully is saying that some people don’t even think it exists as a condition, and skinner thinks it could be a trap to buy more time for ephesian. so no one is in agreement here.

but mulder is going into his psychology expert mode and is making a very compelling case that this is an example of DID, particularly in the fact that sydney emerged when the topic of child abuse came up, which fulfilled the protector role. scully wants to know more before giving any sort of diagnosis, but she doesn't seem opposed to the hypothesis.

(skinner seems to fumble over which pronouns to use for each personality here)

skinner says to go ahead and take her back to the compound and see if it gets any results in prompting memories that could be useful to the investigation, but scully is mad at mulder! he didn’t even have the courage to tell skinner he thinks they're dealing with past lives here! mulder, who is usually so brave!!

he mumbles that skinner wouldn’t believe him. which is true.

woah, i don’t know how to interpret this line here, so i’ll just write it down for further analysis:

“i don’t believe that you feel responsible for those 50 lives. or melissa reidel. you are only responsible to yourself, mulder”

(is she saying he doesn’t care about those 50 people?? is she saying he has an ulterior motive? is she calling him a liar, and that he is using this case to gain support for his supernatural ideas?? is she calling him selfish? or is she trying to tell him that he can only be responsible for himself and control his own actions, that he cannot place the burden of saving everyone upon his shoulders? is she berating or reassuring him or both? does she think he isn't serious about the lives in danger?)

i can’t figure it out, but he gets up and leaves. (after watching the episode, i still can't figure it out- what did you think?)

so they take melissa back to the temple, and scully asks her to recall the painful memories so they can keep herself and others safe. it is very tense as she walks into a bedroom and sees many photos on the wall of ephesian and his wives. she knocks some of them over and starts crying.

scully still looks furious with mulder. it's as if she thinks his desire for supernatural entities to be proven comes ahead of his desire to save actual lives, and it's recalling her comparison to ahab during the conversation on the rock. she must feel that there is no time for this, that they need to get concrete answers right away or horrible things will happen; perhaps she thinks he isn't focused, is being fanciful. and i understand the pressure of a ticking clock, but after so long, this rift between them, it doesn't feel right.

oh my goodness, we see some horrific artwork on the wall by the kids at the temple. woah. shoutout to the set design team.

melissa is in the playroom sobbing, but asks why she is being called melissa. scully asks what she should call her, and that is how we meet lily. but lily isn’t there for very long before sydney comes back, saying to “leave the kid alone”. mulder says they can all be safe if they just are told where the guns are. then melissa seems to come back, and she goes back out the window where mulder was staring earlier!!! what does this window know?!?

and the score here is really pretty as she walks outside, scully following behind her. mulder is clearly unwell, though, and scully asks what is wrong, which he ignores and walks past her. typical him.

a new alter of melissa's seems to front, now with a southern accent, saying the guns are in a bunker. but… it’s the civil war she’s talking about. she was a nurse, looking for someone who was staying in tennessee. and she found that someone here, dead. then she was hidden in a bunker while the battle raged above her. it is very horrific, what she is describing.

she clarifies that she was there in november 1863, then turns to mulder and says “as were you”. he doesn’t seem shocked by this, but scully is, as this new southern belle proclaims “this is the field where i watched you die” OH!

(mulder, a confederate in a past life… this is deeply unfortunate)

mulder is trying to make a phone call to a hypnotist while they drive melissa back to the police station, but scully figures out he’s trying to do past life regression on her and says not to. and that her life is in shreds, and that is too much for her to handle. i hate to say it, but i agree with her. melissa has been through so much, and with such a tight deadline, i don't know if they have time for such a journey.

OH! mulder is angry. his voice is all growly as he yells “YOU WERE THERE, SCULLY! you saw it, you heard it, why can’t you feel it?” oh my gosh… the way he slammed his hand on the wheel... why can't she see it, it seems so obvious to him... how infuriating it must be...

scully asks why ephesian is a paranoid sociopath for claiming to be in greece years ago, but he isn’t for claiming to have died in that field……. damn…….

(idk what’s going on here between them exactly but i’m stressed. they are stressing me out)

(at this point, we begin a sequence in which i am so enraptured with what is going on, i have no reactions to all of the things i am seeing, and just recount them to you, with occasional interjections of "oh my god"- but i think if you've seen the episode, you get why it had this effect on me)

so they do get a therapist, who is talking to melissa. she begins to answer the therapist's questions about seeing anything upsetting at the compound, talking about a woman named elizabeth and her son scott, who came to live in the temple. and ephesian took the son away. but ephesian caught his mother visiting her son, and “the mighty men” beat her, which brings melissa to tears as she recounts this. and he hit the boy, calling him garbage, beating him.

scully looks very stressed in the background to hear all of this, but sydney is now fronting at this point, saying to leave melissa alone, and that the guns are in the bunkers… somewhere. where they are is a mystery, though.

scully leans down to mulder and says that maybe there is a map somewhere, but mulder says she knows where to find them. and at this she says “mulder…” in a very breathy fashion and i still can’t quite articulate what is going on between them…. but he’s going in.

he says it’s me, melissa, and asks her to go back to the field. “your eyes may have changed shade, but it cannot color the soul behind them”, she says. that they are only to meet in passing in this life. and she misses him. he just stared and stares, before his head falls into his hands

scully is trying to explain to him that this is a product of melissa's illness, and she can’t give any specifics- no names or locations, and they don’t have time to do this, because ephesian’s arraignment is in two hours.

“wouldn’t you, scully? wouldn’t anybody?” <- oh my god…. is he compelled by a terrible sense of duty or by his own curiosity? is she scared to watch him go down this path he cannot return from?

okay, so now he is going back into his past lives. this sequence is almost entirely a close up of his face, for minutes on end, which adds to the intensity. he's really panting as he remembers. “ghetto streets. shattered glass. bodies of the dead. a jewish woman. poland.” oh my god……

he says that he is samantha’s mother in this life; “in this life, she is my son”

his father is dead, and… HIS FATHER IS SCULLY? WHAT? i didn’t see that coming. she’s troubled by this, all of this, not just learning he believes her soul to have been his father before.

but he says that his father is waiting now for their souls to come back together, different, but always together, again and again, to learn.

and he is crying. he can’t go to his father. a gestapo man is there, and he is cancer man; “evil returns as evil, but love… souls mate eternal”. and his wife is melissa, who is taken away to the camps. and he’s crying, and scully is watching with great concern.

now, he’s rising above the field, near the bunker. and his sergeant is also dead, and “he is scully”, and we cut to her face of increasing sadness. sarah holds him, who is melissa. she is sarah kavanaugh, and he is sullivan biddle. she doesn’t know that he’s waiting for her, that they will live again.

scully tries to ask if he sees any bunkers, but he keeps saying his soul is tired, and he wants to rest.

and this is devastating. it was if i was the one undergoing the hypnosis here. i couldn't look away, i couldn't react, i was so entirely absorbed and confused and busy feeling things.

scully is consulting a map in the town records to try and find this bunker where the weapons are stored, and then she looks up the names he mentioned. sure enough, they are in the county records. then she reaches for some photos, where she finds one of sullivan and sarah.

a lot of things are being processed in her brain, so we might need to give her a minute. i think we can see some long-held systems of belief being challenged in her mind.

but she brings him back the photos of their past lives, even as she is telling him that ephesian is going to be released soon. why would she do this? to comfort him? to validate him without using words?

oh my god, mulder just called her “dana”. wait. hold on. oh my god, hold on.

“dana, if, um… early in the four years we’ve been working together… an event occurred that suggested or somebody told you that… we’d been friends together in other lifetimes- always- wouldn’t it have changed some of the ways we looked at one another?”

“even if i knew for certain, i wouldn’t change a day”

WAUGHHHHHHHH (ripping my clothes off in grief) WAOUGHHHHHH wouavhhhghhhh……… she wouldn’t change a day….

(and what event was it that he is referring to? is there a certain one...? am i forgetting something from early s1...? damn you, my obsessive note-taking impulses, for not kicking into gear until s2...)

“well… maybe that flukeman thing, i could have lived without that just fine” HDHJSNSME he smiles as she leaves….

(i had to google what that even was because i was like ??? but the flukeman was the season 2 sewer baby!!! for those of you who are going into this whole thing blind and also don't know what the fandom calls stuff! i think to me he was "baby sewer mermaid" or something along those lines... but now we know)

so now he and melissa are in the room together, trying to recall. she says she wants to believe (!!!), and he’s rubbing her hand, but ephesian comes in, saying it’s time to leave. so she rips the photo in half and leaves crying.

does he know he was supposed to love her? is he mourning that he hasn't? is he wondering if he has time to?

mulder gets up, and leans his head against the wall. scully comes in to say that they are still searching for more bunkers as the temple people return to their home. there is a deep sense of grief.

ephesian seems suspicious.

mulder is talking to skinner, saying that those in the temple believe that the FBI are the devil’s army, prophesied to be defeated by the armies of god. but ephesian must not really believe that, because he hid the weapons. mulder emphasizes that he may “deny himself”.

back at the compound, all the members are being called to worship. the music is getting scary, and guns are being pulled out.

scully looks up some bible verses and realizes that ephesian is calling his members to the end of times, which gives skinner the go ahead to launch a raid.

back at the compound, the poison is being distributed to the members of the temple. and a few are shooting at the agents outside, and mulder and scully pull up as the sipping of the poison begins inside.

NO! mulder puts his hands up and begins to walk into the compound!!!!! WHAT IS HE DOING!!! scully shouts out that he is dead. as we see inside there are piles and piles of bodies, including melissa.

but wait! is she still alive???? she’s getting up!!!

but no! ephesian is still there watching her. giving her poison to take. mulder is running in as fast as he can, trying to figure out what is going on. and he finds the room full of the bodies while gregorian chanting is in the background.

he finds melissa, with no pulse, holding onto the photo she had torn.

scully sees him touching her arm, raising his eyes and crying.

we end where we began, with him in the field, holding the pictures of his and melissa’s past lives.

end episode.

what…..

first thoughts: i don’t quite know what to make of this, but i can tell it is going to tear me apart for the rest of my life.

second and third thoughts are also variations of my first thought.

i feel so sad? to know that mulder has (or thinks he has) lived these horrific past lives, and that he is reunited with the same people over and over again, to learn and lose them. and that scully was there with all of them- but so was melissa, and he said that soulmates are eternal, so if that is true he lost his for this life. and he said he was so tired, so tired... how can he escape the eternal cycle of samsara?

and scully, watching all of this- what did she mean when she said that he wasn't responsible for anything but himself? was it an insult? was she begging him? what was she feeling when she heard him talk about her being there in his past? was she trying to hurt him in their conversation in the car? will they ever actually be able to see eye to eye? does she believe him? can she? how does hearing all of this shake her own faith?

can you have many soulmates that come with you again and again, just in different forms? so would his soulmates be scully, and his mother and father and sister, and this melissa figure? and what are the implications of losing a soulmate in this world? is that a life of feeling that something is missing, until death? do they shuffle roles, but come again and again? is that comforting or horrific? are we to believe him?

and that terrible, terrible ending, him finding the bodies... how are we supposed to interpret that? just more grief on top of already endless grief? or are we supposed to see the poetry moment as an answer to a question that provides relief, even if it is bittersweet?

why did he want to know so badly? was he driven by duty to save? duty to find the Truth? duty to protect his loved ones and seek cosmic answers? are these separate things, or are they all intertwined in him?

i'm... really going to have to think this one over. i would really appreciate hearing your thoughts, as well. i wish i had a solid interpretation. it was very serious and sad, and it was bittersweet but filled with grief. i once again echo my earlier request for fluff. but how do you go back to the way things were once he says she was with him in every life? how does scully rationalize that? what are they to each other?

i'm pondering. it feels like something has shifted. and you can't go back now, even if i can't pinpoint what it is that changed.

i want to go back to daydreaming about apple cider dates. but it feels like you can't, you know? huh.

#this one was A Lot for me #i am not sure i would rewatch this recreationally because it was so much grief #and i am grateful for the character analysis but also i don't know what to do with it #i just have ALL THESE FEELINGS and i don't know WHERE TO PUT THEM #so yes i ask every episode for interpretations/thoughts/feelings/reactions #but for this one i am BEGGING on my knees. pls share yours.#it feels like something has changed forever and can never go back and i almost wish it could #what am i feeling? anyone wanna tell me?#maybe this is one of those things you need longer than 24 hours to comprehend #if you have struggled with what this episode means and came to your own answer lmk because it feels like a koan #IT'S JUST A SHOW i tell myself as i try to decode the meaning of life IT'S JUST A SHOW #but i want them to be happy and it so rarely happens!#is that so wrong... for a girl to want her favorite characters to be happy... no it is not #halloween episode now. show me silly costumes. i need some levity #juni's x files liveblog #txf #the x files

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destinysbounty · 2 years

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I was gonna put this headcanon in a fic but i probably will never write it so instead im gonna share with all of you. Do with this idea as you wish

The fact that Pixal just up and built herself a new body in season 7 suggests she could have done it at any time, but chose not to. And i refuse to believe Zane and Borg didnt at least offer to give her a body - Zane admitted he preferred having her physical, im sure he at least suggested rebuilding her at one point. As he said in season 8, "The choice has always been yours, Pixal." Which leads me to believe she was the determining factor in her own reconstruction. She chose to stay in Zane's head, and Id like to think her reasons for doing so are similar to her reasons for hiding her identity as Samurai X: self-imposed guilt.

Let me explain.

Think of it like this. Pixal was built to assist, right? Even from the beginning of their relationship, she has been put in several positions of saving, protecting, and looking after Zane. Their first bonding moments involved her repairing him and later rescuing him from a junkyard metal shredder. Just as Zane has an integral need to protect built into the core of his existence, so too does Pixal have an integral need to assist.

When Zane gave her half his heart, he seriously disadvantaged himself in combat. Not only that, but it was his heart being unable to withstand the Golden Power that killed him in the end. Im sure there was at least some small part of Pixal that blamed herself for this. Not just because she might see this as a failure to uphold her reason for existence (helping people) - but also bc maybe if he'd had his whole heart during that fight, maybe if she'd just given it back to him, he might have had a fighting chance. It would have only marginally improved his chances of survival, but that small .003% probability increase is enough to make her blame herself. A probability that small is statistically irrelevant, but she cant help using it as an excuse to blame herself - or perhaps, to give her a rationalization for her survivor's guilt. Because the heart inside her, powering her, is the same heart Zane could have used to defend himself against the Golden Power, and the feeling of it inside her is unbearable.

Then Zane comes back, and she gets scrapped. And Zane forgets everything, and his mind is in shambles, and she has to help him piece himself back together again.

She blames herself for this, blames herself for his death and for the scrambled state of his memories that came as a consequence. So she figures, she caused this, so its her responsibility to help him fix his broken mind. Its her responsibility to assist.

So she stays in his head, where she can hold his memories together and keep his mind from falling apart. She insists she prefers it this way, likes being close to him, but deep down she longs for her physical freedom and hates herself for wanting more than she deserves.

Then Borg is kidnapped. And Zane is nonresponsive. And she has a choice. So she chooses to rebuild herself and leave Zane behind.

And...she feels good. Free. She's...happy about it.

But shes also deeply ashamed. Thinks she doesnt deserve to enjoy the experience of leaving Zane's head. He needs her, she's less useful to him outside his headset...and yet here she is, being Samurai X, having the absolute time of her life. She loves it, and she hates herself for loving it so much.

So out of shame, she tells no one. Shes worried theyll be just as disappointed in her as she is in herself.

And Zane...well, maybe theres a reason the Ninjigma didnt become a problem until after Pixal left his headset. Maybe she was the only thing holding him together, and the moment she left, all his memories started spiraling out of control. Maybe the events of Decoded turned out to be for the best, and allowed Zane to sort through and finish repairing his memories on his own, without relying on Pixal for help.

When Pixal reunites with Zane, shes worried he'll be upset. "Was i more...useful...inside the computer?" But to her surprise and delight, he prefers her in whatever form makes her happiest, not whatever form makes her most useful.

And Pixal, backed by the support of Zane and their friends, flourishes in her new role as Samurai X - not just in an assistive capacity, but exploring and embracing her interests in engineering and tinkering. Things are good, for a while.

But then Zane ends up in the Never Realm. And he comes home, and she learns what happened. She hears what Vex did, how she sabotaged his memories and twisted his own sense of self against him.

Once more, she blames herself. Begins to believe that maybe if she had still been in his headset, she could have prevented all that suffering.

Anyway, Pixal with survivors guilt and a raging hero complex my BELOVED

#a lot of fics place the blame on zane for never bothering to build her a body #but! let! pixal! have! agency! over! her! own! existence!#i think pixal deserves some agency over her life. as a treat #ninjago #pixal borg #pixal ninjago #pixane #ninjago decoded #ns3 #ns8 #ns11 #destiny post

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itsqueenshroom · 7 months

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someone on tiktok made an edit of vash and knives to decode by paramore and I have not been the fucking same since I saw it. how have we never looked at the lyrics and connected the dots. helloooooo.

help me I’ve fallen and I can’t get up-

#shroom.txt #trigun #trigun stampede #vash the stampede #millions knives #SEE I TOLD YOU THE TWILIGHT SOUNDTRACK CHANGED THE TRAGECTORY OF MY WHOLE LIFE #I cannot hear decode without thinking of how god damn tragic these two are #marred by the same trauma and taking entirely different route dealing with it #or not dealing with it if you’re vash #and how the refusal to yield to the other has destroyed the relationship they once had together #I THINK ABOUT THEM ALL THE TIME #EPISODE 12 OF TRISTAMP AND THE LAST PART OF THEIR FIGHT RUINED ME #TRIMAX RUINED ME #alright so anyway

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flame-cat · 2 months

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the possibilities are endless!!!! (collapses on the ground)

#in the life #my art #pheo doodles #no u dont get context. figure it out motherfucker #my vague cave wall scribblings are my message to the universe #decode it or die #sth #sonic the hedgehog #sonic au

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charmbb · 5 months

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Something that's been scratching my brain is like

Who's talking to Ralph in this scene? I know Johnny is calling out to Ralph to check on him bc he sees him fall, but I have no clue what this sentence says.

Is it Zimforth or is Johnny saying something??

#IDEK #i think its johnny?#Im not good at decoding #life eater #life eater game

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dance-in-my-storm · 3 months

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#personal #relationships #love #life #lyrics #quotes #quote #song #music #song lyrics #spotify lyrics #spotify music #spotify #paramore #decode #heartbreak #sad #mad

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sandiegokpop · 2 years

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Just Jookyun behavior

#i..can't decode their connection lol i just know it brightens my life #never change #monsta x #jooheon #i.m #jookyun #mx suggestive love #i bet joo kisses him on the lips when no ones around lolol #min says no but i think he can get kyun if he does it fast enough #jookyun love is a specific brand of love #jealous af #last gif not mine #lips

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bookgeekgrrl · 6 months

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My media this week (10-16 Mar 2024)

📚 STUFF I READ 📚

🥰 Art Thief, Heart Thief (odetteandodile) - 58K, stucky white collar inspired AU - enjoyed how author took the WC set up (fbi art agent, criminal consultant) and made it theirs & perfect for stucky

💖💖 +195K of shorter fic so shout out to these I really loved 💖💖

Midlife Crisis (profoundalpacakitten) - MCU: stucky, 7K - reread, forever fave - the quiet, piercing, understated tenderness in this fic is unmatched

Progredi (justanotherStonyfan) - MCU: shrunkyclunks, 37K - the next installment in the fabulous Honey Honey series

Pistachios and Rose Water (goldsaffron) - The Old Guard: kaysanova, 15K - J&N spend 10 years putting down roots, building a home & collecting a found family as Nicky learns to express his love through food

Consensual Catfishing (foresthearts) - Stranger Things: steddie, 32K - modern AU, told via social media - delightful story! adored these characters & their voices and using all different sorts of SM to tell it. brilliant idea, adeptly executed. the art is also pretty great

they're going to send us to prison for jerks (greatunironic) - Stranger Things: steddie, 16K - another really fun modern steddie with a strong social media AU premise

Os Impurum (the_deep_magic) - The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth: Marcus Flavius Aquila/Esca Mac CunovalMarcus/Esca, 18K - solidly good fic about marcus/esca post canon, esp marcus discovering some new things about himself 😉

📺 STUFF I WATCHED 📺

Ghosts (US) - s3, e5

Game Changer - s6, e3

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "For the Hoard!" (s7, e15)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Treachery at Gramercy" (s7, e16)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Two Sides of the Same Coin (Part 1)" (s7, e17)

D20: The Unsleeping City: Chapter II - "Two Sides of the Same Coin (Part 2)" (s7, e18)

D20: Adventuring Party - s3, e12-16

Um, Actually - s9, e2

D20: Fantasy High: Junior Year - "Cursed Out" (s21, e10)

D20: Adventuring Party - "Cool Ranch Communion" (s16, e10)

D20: Tiny Heist - "Big Little Crimes" (s4, e1)

D20: Tiny Heist - "Chicanery at Shoeby's Casino" (s4, e2)

D20: Tiny Heist - "Scheming and Scoring Fairy Dust" (s4, e3)

Agatha Christie's Marple - "The Secret of Chimneys" (s5, e2) [shout out to @leupagus for this rec; they were not wrong about the acting choices made here 🤩]

🎧 PODCASTS 🎧

Worlds Beyond Number: Fireside - Fireside Chat for WWW ep001 The Open Door

What Next: TBD - Instagram’s Pedophile Problem

Desert Island Discs - Cillian Murphy, actor

WikiHole - Lenny Kravitz (with Paul F. Tompkins, Drew Tarver, and Heléne Yorke)

This Cultural Life - Andrew Scott

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Our 2024 Oscars Recap

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Grave of XYZ

Vibe Check - Hey, Sis: featuring Morgan Parker

WikiHole with D'Arcy Carden - Fear of Dolphins (with Kumail Nanjiani, Emily Gordon, and Jonah Ray)

The Allusionist - 190. Craters

WikiHole with D'Arcy Carden - Tetris (with Adam Pally, Jon Gabrus and Blair Socci)

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - The Lighthouse Keeper

⭐ Vibe Check - A Special Conversation with Afeef Nessouli

Short Wave - What We Know About Long COVID, From Brain Fog to Fatigue

⭐ Decoder Ring - Why Stylists Rule the Red Carpet

⭐ 99% Invisible #573 - Toyetic

You Are Good - My Best Friend's Wedding w. Sam Sanders

If Books Could Kill - Lean In

The Atlas Obscura Podcast - Law of the Tongue

Imaginary Worlds - The Nine Lives of Red Dwarf

Today, Explained - Lip gloss, gum, and the Pill

Dear Prudence - My Ex Had Sex With My Brother. Help!

What Next: TBD - Is TikTok Cooked This Time?

Short Wave - Are We On The Brink Of A Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough?

Pop Culture Happy Hour - Love Lies Bleeding And What's Making Us Happy

Endless Thread - The Music Man, Part 1

Welcome to Night Vale #244 - A Multiplicity of Kevin

Today, Explained - Hollywood’s still not back

99% Invisible - The Power Broker #03: David Sims

Off Menu - Ep 233: Frankie Boyle (Live in Glasgow)

⭐ Hit Parade - Gotcha Covered Edition

🎶 MUSIC 🎶

The Donnas

Smooth Rockabilly

Respect: '60s Iconic Women

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