#holy FUCK THE VIBE

[saucy-mesothelioma]

OH HONEY THAT GLOW UP DID YA SO FUCKIN GOOD

YOU GO TORMENT THE WORLD QUEEN YOU DESERVE IT <3

[daddy-long-legssss]

words fail me at this time.

[x]

[daily-odile]

A certain someone made me play Pokemon Rejuvenation and a certain old man reminded me of a certain old woman

[lifemod17]

I AM SCREAMING!!!

[justpassingbyoursht]

Yknow when I first saw Chronos i couldn't quite take him seriously bc he's... he's a twink. who gave him that tiny tiny waist and those birthgiving hips? why is he built like that? i expected a giant or something, i mean the big 3 brothers are built ykno their father should be big muscly guy too right?? and then i realized he's got an hourglass shape and. 😶

my bad supergiant u are right. titan of time. hourglass. titan of time? hourglass. checks out ✓ he is hourglass shaped. an hourglass. ⌛that. that is him. titan of time alright. hourglass

but still that tiny waist

[ozymandian-hymn]

channeling my anxiety into this like feeding rocket fuel into a car (it blows up)

its finished, by the way (i say walking away from a burning wreck)

[shima-draws]

Ideal ending to WCI is Luffy seeing Sanji cry and then awakening his devil fruit and unlocking Gear Fifth out of sheer RAGE and saying the classic line of “Who made you cry, Sanji?! I’ll DESTROY THEM!!!” and then proceeding to go on a rampage and fucking absolutely EVERYBODY up including the Vinsmokes, Pudding, AND the Big Mom Pirates. Toss in the trope of came back wrong and Sanji can immediately tell something is not right about this Luffy, whose smile is too wide, whose eyes are too distant, who continues to beat upon his enemies long after they’re down, who seems to take a sick sort of pleasure in hurting others, who grins and giggles and tells Sanji he’ll obliterate anything that makes him cry. Eventually he starts to scare Sanji so bad that even Luffy notices his reaction, and immediately turns on himself because if HE’S the one making Sanji cry then he’ll just have to destroy himself too. And that’s when Sanji finally leaps into action and does whatever he can to reach Luffy—including kissing him. Luckily that was exactly what Luffy needed to snap out of it, and when he comes to the Whole Cake Chateau is in broken pieces, the Big Mom Pirates are battered beyond fighting and the Vinsmokes are nowhere to be seen. And softly, tiredly, he asks if they won, if he can bring Sanji home, and Sanji cries again and says yes, take me home to the Sunny, I want to go home with you.

Meanwhile the rest of the Strawhats are like

[slow-reader-reads-books]

Lesbingyuan au where it’s the normal set up of post extras Bingge dimension traveling into another universe to find his own Shen Yuan. Except the world he arrives in (and is stuck in, can’t opt out of this gender journey) is a slightly genderbent one.

(hidden under a read more bc this turned basically into a wonkily grammatically tensed mini-fic)

Our darling Peerless Cucumber is a 20 something self-proclaimed straight girl with untapped soft butch potential, and is currently recovering from the harrowing trauma of the sunk cost fallacy. She’s spent a lot of time spending money on, reading, and participating in the online fandom of Proud Immortal Demon Way, and she’s currently also dealing with the fact that all her hard work in making herself heard to Great Master Airplane was seemingly for nothing. You see, Shen Yuan had the brilliant idea to create an account that appeared to be a perfectly demographically targeted straight male fan of YY novels who could critique Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky as his fellow but also his better and be listened to and receive great accolades from all frequenters of Zhongdian Literature and be validated for her hate of his writing.

“Airplane’s stupid pen name is a dick joke, I guess I gotta make mine one too… Just to, you know, seem legit and like we have common ground.”

What this charade accomplished was very little, but Peerless Cucumber did become very infamous for three things. One, his nitpicking (“It’s hardly nitpicking if it harms the integrity of the whole story1!!”). Two: his Luo Binghe fanboying (“As a protagonist he’s clearly just a cut above the rest when it comes to soul and wit, the story just rarely ever shows it off”). And three: his skipping of the steamy scenes (“I highly doubt this near identical scenario that also happened twenty chapters back but with a different wife of the week with this exact same cliffside flower giving off the same aphrodisiac mist to Bingge and new wife below will now suddenly be of any plot consequence for the next arc. It didn’t last time either, SKIP!”).

His fervent online activity garnered him the reputation of being an Airplane anti-fan, but also the assumed personality of a submissive simp who hates the easily dominated women that populate Luo Bingge’s harem. 

“lol thats why he must like mingyan so much. she never let bingge push her down. cucumber-bro must want a girlfriend who’ll chain him up and whip him! hes a pervert just like the rest of us, just a worse type kek.” 

Shen Yuan, when looking at such reply comments, gets shiver-inducing flashbacks to when her meimei left her BL comics out for everyone and the Buddha to see. She accidentally witnessed frightening scenes of thin, long-limbed men pushing each other down, tying each other to beds and cracking whips on skin until they shed blood, tears and semen, the shou begging for the gong to stop and the gong never listening. 

Shen Yuan tries to put such things out of her mind if only to preserve in amber the precious, innocent image of her meimei she knows to be true, but also secondarily to focus on the insulted male pride she’s supposed to be feeling after being accused of being a wussy submissive deviant in bed. That sort of accusation requires an in-depth 10,000 character response in order to remain in character as a straight male YY novel connoisseur.

Shen Yuan, as Peerless Cucumber but also as her true self, was undoubtedly straight. Staying in character, Peerless Cucumber made sure to extol the beauty of characters like Liu Mingyan— “She’s an intelligent and cold beauty and is written with a clear and vivid personality! A true equal for our Bingge on the battlefield and in matters of the heart!” As well as occasionally Ning Yingying— “She’s not the boring choice, you all just don’t know the special value a loyal shijie character brings, even if she does lose 99% of her personality to that one singular trait…”

But don’t get it twisted! This is a part of her performance! In real life, logged off and touching grass and breathing fresh outdoor air, she’s your run-of-the-mill average girl who is just a part of the pack. 

Her goals in life are simply not ambitious, is all. If there was a competition with ten available spots to win, she’d have no qualms placing tenth and simply feel honored to have participated. If there are ten girls and nine of them bag a good boyfriend, Shen Yuan doesn’t mind being the tenth who gets unlucky. She’s just kind to her meimeis and jiejies like that! As if she’d take that away from them! They'd probably been wanted those boyfriends for a long time! 

Shen Yuan is hardly a sore loser, and she knows the great importance of girl code and female friendship.

So, Shen Yuan being the normal average and totally straight and cisgender girl that she is decides to wallow in her Airplane-induced misery by going to a con, donning her homemade Mobei-jun cosplay. She worked hours of her life learning how to sew just for this project to the point her family thought she was finally thinking about settling down and learning wifely skills. 

Unfortunately for her ignorant family she’s actually just investing in a really elaborate excuse to cross dress. Well, it’s not really crossdressing, it’s just cosplay! Cosplay is totally different and not about taking on the gender of a character, but their larger identity! She didn’t want to explain this to them, and internally felt afraid and hesitant about it, as if they’d view her as weird for wanting to do this, so she didn’t bother to try at all.

So, Shen Yuan in her 160 centimeter/5 foot 3 inch glory decked out in dark blues and blacks, fur lining the shoulders of her outfit for style points, and wearing a long white wig styled mostly loose but with a few thin braids, chances upon a particularly striking Luo Binghe cosplayer. Not just any Luo Binghe cosplayer, but the best one! He’s tall, must be over 180cm/6 foot but also svelte and willowy in surprising ways. His hair is long and flows down his back from a ponytail ornamented at the base with a thin metal guan. Parts of his cosplay seem very benign, but others seem meticulously crafted and exquisite in quality, especially that sword at his hip! Just looking at it intimidated her, yikes! Job well done, cosplayer!

This Luo Binghe also had the most beautiful and delicately boned face she’d ever seen, eyes dark and deep and highly reflective like that of a lake on a dark and starry night. The cosplayer’s voice was also deeply melodic and enchanting.

This cosplayer… is also a woman! Shen Yuan nodded to herself internally, yes that must be it! No man looks like this in reality, this is a fellow female sufferer of Proud Immortal Demon Way impersonating a fictional man for similar psychological reasons as her. A surge of female loyalty spawns in Shen Yuan’s chest, and she doesn't even bother resisting the urge to walk over and strike up a conversation with this Luo Binghe.

She spat out her name in quick order and immediately started on the topic of female character writing in the novel. The Luo Binghe cosplayer was looking at her quietly and with a heavy amount of gravity, ink-brush eyebrows sitting elegantly low above her eyes in attentive focus. What a good listener this lady is, Shen Yuan thought. She can’t remember when someone last listened to her this closely. She hypocritically chooses to not pay attention to that train of thought any further. “In a world like Proud Immortal Demon Way,” Shen Yuan began with slight smarm, “who would choose to be a woman? I certainly wouldn’t if I wanted to see the interesting parts of the world that drew me into the story in the first place. A male protagonist can explore it freely, but the female characters are all locked away in either the marriage bedroom or the highly isolated harem palaces. Great Master Airplane clearly didn’t eat enough walnuts as a child, he must have some sort of brain deficiency when it comes to writing proper characters— ” 

The tall Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly spoke up. “Choose?” “Hm? Yeah, I mean, in a world like that, there’s basically no choice, yeah? Gotta serve the narrative and readers and all. But the real world doesn’t have a narrative, we only have ourselves and each other to guide us. So we just do what we want, figure it out as we go. Like us two! We wanted to dress up as these male characters from this asinine story and attend this con and we figured out how to do it! We’re kindred spirits, you and I, we’re zhiyin!” “So when you leave this con, you will also choose to take this manner of dress off and wear something else?” “Obviously. Though, my go-to outfit is just a big t-shirt and sweatpants, or athletic shorts. This kind of thing is the extent of me dressing up.” Shen Yuan didn’t notice, but the Luo Binghe cosplayer’s eyes mildly glazed over in irritated confusion at the unfamiliar terms. Nor did she notice the slight expression of planning that developed in that gaze, as if they were imagining a future shopping expedition to find an outfit Shen Yuan would want to dress up in that wasn’t a facsimile of Luo Binghe’s right hand man.

“I… also want to leave this con and wear something else.” “The busyness getting to you, huh jiejie? You must have gotten here a lot earlier than I did, you poor thing. I guess this is it, it was nice talking to you—” “I don’t have any other clothes with me, and am unable to go back home. Can you help this poor one, jiejie?” “Jiejie—” Shen Yuan coughed. “Am I… wait you can’t go back home? Did your ride ditch you or something, aiyah what a scummy thing to do! I do have extra clothes on me, though I don’t think they’ll fit you. But let’s go find out. I guess if I have to take care of you like this, it does make me feel like a jiejie. Your height made me assume you were older than me, haha.”

Shen Yuan laughed, and the Luo Binghe cosplayer rapidly relaxed and took on an easy smile. “An innocent mistake. Jiejie must often be assumed to be younger than her actual age.” Shen Yuan hummed absent-mindedly. “Eh, not really. I’m only 22, and I think I look it. It’s you who looks like a jade immortal, uh, meimei.” She stuttered when she realized she hadn’t yet caught the other cosplayer’s name, and for some reason it felt weird to just call her Luo Binghe without her also LARPing along as Mobei-jun. Shen Yuan by this point had taken the tall meimei’s hand, it pale and slender much like the rest of her, and had been pulling her along towards the public bathroom to make use of her backpack’s change of clothes, walking along the wall to avoid foot traffic. However, the moment she had finished her sentence and called the other one meimei, the Luo Binghe cosplayer suddenly slammed her free hand on the wall and yanked hard on the one Shen Yuan was holding, pulling her in close to herself, caging her in from behind. Shen Yuan squeaked and found herself crowded against the wall. Her back was encased in a warm and dark heat and she could see above her that jade-white hand curled tightly in on itself, heel practically grinding against the wall. It looked like it was trembling slightly. An earth-shatteringly tight grip squeezed the fingers of her still held hand to the point of hurting slightly. Shen Yuan winced at the sensation.

Shen Yuan heard sharp, heavy breathing above her. Not knowing what to do nor quite what was going on, she squeezed back the hand that was keeping hers hostage and leaned back slightly. Comfort is what she’s doing this for, right? Feels like the reason she’s doing it. 

Shen Yuan felt the other cosplayer jolt behind her. After a tense beat, a forehead slowly dropped onto her shoulder. Shen Yuan was wearing fur along the top half of her outfit as a part of her Mobei-jun cosplay, but nonetheless she could feel the vague contour of the other’s nose through it, burrowing deeper into its warmth. Shen Yuan now felt awkward for only bothering with faux-fur for her cosplay. But with that face resting upon her shoulder and an odd sense of vulnerability wafting off of her, a sharp sense of broad awareness filled Shen Yuan's mind mysteriously. Her mind filled up with sensory information on the one behind her, naturally taking note of every detail with ease.

“Meimei…” the Luo Binghe cosplayer trailed off, muffled slightly by Shen Yuan’s cosplay, but also seemingly by her own emotions being stuck in her throat. “Can I really be jiejie’s meimei?” Shen Yuan didn’t really know what to do or how to respond, so she simply continued to lean her weight back onto the other. She then pulled on the elbow that led to the hand positioned above her until it was brought down far enough for her to grab properly. Shen Yuan took both hands in hers and placed them in front of her in a comfortable position. They were slightly cold, so she rubbed at them with her thumbs.

The Luo Binghe cosplayer picked her head up and looked down at the sight with watery eyes and a warbling lip. Both of her hands were cradled in that grip, gently held in front of the shorter’s stomach in a tender and intimate fashion. Their arms were bent parallel and their front and back slotted together in a way that, to the taller one, felt predestined.

“Can you, what kind of question is that, of course you can. But, I’d like to have your name too, if you don’t mind? Only calling you meimei sounds like I’m calling out to my real little sister.” Shen Yuan laughed and looked up over her shoulder nonchalantly. 

Somewhere in the distance, she can hear people giggling and snapping pictures of the two. She felt a twinge of embarrassment. Of course this moment looks compromising from the outside, they’re cosplaying Luo Binghe and Mobei-jun!

Shen Yuan was suddenly working very hard to maintain a cool poker face in front of her very tall and newly minted meimei.

Bringing up her real little sister and then suddenly being thrust into this type of self-aware of cringe violently and nonconsensually summoned forth invented images of a dog blooded BL scenario that wouldn’t be out of place in her real meimei’s leisure literature.

Fellow con goers, please have mercy on us two women and don't be thinking of what I'm thinking! We’re merely having a pure hearted, early friendship bonding moment! Skinship is very much common and normal between people like us, disregard the kabedon! Totally normal female friendship is blossoming here, get your homoerotic dog blood tropes out of our personal lives!

“This one is called… Qiu Bingbing.” Her voice hitched and quavered with some sort of ineffable, delicate emotion. “Bingbing, ah? Written with the same character as Binghe, meaning ice? And Qiu, is that with the character meaning the autumn season or the character meaning a grave mound?”

Qiu Bingbing hummed and nodded lethargically to the first question and spoke up for the second, hesitating slightly. “Qiu as in autumn.” “What a pretty name, “autumn ice”. You fit the bill of Luo Binghe perfectly, but with a name like that it’s nearly a pity to go by something else. You’re a miraculous find in a place like this, Bing-mei.” Shen Yuan complimented with abandon, eager to make her new friend feel good, and turned around. Still holding one hand, she impulsively took the chance Qiu Bingbing’s still bowed head offered and patted it softly.

She did that for a while, not paying attention to anything else. A euphoric smile opened on Qiu Bingbing’s lips. She was lost in the moment too. 

The rest of the world fell away. As long as Luo Binghe, no, as long as Qiu Bingbing can worm her way into every crevice of Shen Yuan, she’ll be fine. He before was always grasping at any semblance of peace and security only for it to slip through his grasp like sand, but she’s found it. She’ll nestle in and hibernate inside Shen Yuan’s veins and she’ll never let go. She will never.

“Let’s go get you those clothes. Good thing I like them oversized, they should be mildly presentable on you, even if they aren’t anything girly.”

“I can live without anything girly, anything of yours will do.”

“That’s good to hear, let’s go then.”

[dinoserious]

brother dubious

[nachosncheezies]

In defense of late-canon x files (including the revivals)

I was thinking about this poll after I commented on it, and I kinda want to be brave and say more.

Short answer to the poll's question before I go any further: If you're a new fan and a sensitive sort who thinks you'll struggle with your blorbos Really Going Through It and you really need a happy ending, I suggest you stop at the end of season 8. Do not pass go, do not look at spoilers. Disregard this post entirely, close the internet, and go look at something that makes you happy. (Also fuck every part of society that characterizes sensitivity as inherently weak and bad and some kind of personal failing, you are valid.)

That said, "quality" as a concept is entirely subjective, and the question of whether or not there's a decline in quality for any story is wholly subjective, too. In the case of x files? I'm not convinced there is a decline. I am going to be upfront that I haven't yet watched past season 8, though I am almost completely spoiled on events after that - and the reason I haven't watched yet is not because of how I know events are going to unfold, but simply because I don't want it to end!!! Ohh, the tension between "I CAN'T WAIT!!!" and "Nooo don't be over D:"

When I first came to txf fandom on tumblr and gradually became spoiled about what happens in late canon though, I was often left uncomfortable and tbh kinda queasy about it. As I said in my comment on the poll, the hate for especially the revival and IWTB, or to a lesser extent even seasons 8 & 9, is very well documented. But! There are other takes to be found here on tumblr if you figure out where to look, and my feelings have changed!

The thing is, I have yet to find myself in any fandom where there isn't a vocal subset of fans who dislike the story after a certain point. I am not joking when I say that no one hates the things they love as passionately as sci-fi and fantasy fans. In my experience, it often hinges on the extent to which a viewer has strong notions on where they would like the characters to end up. In particular with series where shipping is a dominant component for the bulk of a fandom, I have almost universally found that there comes some turning point in the story where "let them be happy you cowards" is the dominant view, and things that compromise the attainment of a degree of romantic stability and/or domesticity are, to many fans, annoying at best and despicable at worst. But! As one tagset on the linked poll said:

and I think for any fandom, that last tag especially is so so so important. (I think that's harder for people watching a weekly series live, bc you have so much time to analyze and speculate and dream before the next breadcrumb drops, but I digress.)

So why am I saying this and how do I apply it to x files? Well, I eventually found that there are also a subset of fans who find redeeming things right up to the very end and actually quite like the whole thing! The things that I had seen people rage and ventpost so much about honestly never quite sounded to me as "out of character" or "untrue to the story" etc as those same ventposts made them sound. And I've discovered I'm not the only one who felt that way. Do I love that the spooky squad had to go through all of those things? No, those poor guys D: Life is hard and they have been through so much trauma. But do those events and their choices make sense to me in light of everything that came before? Yes! And I honestly can't wait to see them fight to overcome those things, breaking, healing, always learning, always growing, always getting better.

So if you're wondering "where does it go wrong"... well, I'm a completionist, as many people who've answered that post are, but also my personal opinion is that I don't think it does go wrong. If you're new and interested in exploring why I've gone from "vaguely queasy" to "excited" about the whole thing, or want to maybe balance out the impressions you're getting about the later seasons before deciding whether or not you want to see the whole thing, I'll put a few blog names in the comments.

Final admission: even once I started feeling a little more confident in the possibility that "actually ok maybe I'm not crazy, maybe this all kind of is in character and does make sense", there was one big plot point that I was NOT looking forward to and I thought I would never be comfortable about. In hindsight, I think my discomfort came from the negative responses being SO seemingly universal that I hadn't stopped to let myself truly consider other possible interpretations on that point. (I mean my initial instinct when I first read about it was, why are we mad about this?? CSM is literally the most unreliable narrator in history???? it's obviously fake news?????? this must be either a fever dream someone's having or it's a misdirection ploy against whatever shadowy forces might still be lurking?????????????? but for whatever reason I guess I had halfway written that off.) Happily, just last month there's a new post-s11 novel out, and although reviews for the book as a whole are mixed, it seems to have laid the groundwork for resolving that plot issue in a way I think most fans would be broadly happy with. If you're interested in being spoiled about that and seeing how, I recommend searching #perihelion on @agent-troi who liveblogged reading it with receipts, scroll back chronological-style to the first post on the subject and see how it unfolded. (And never forget that Dana Katherine Scully is the queen of denial as a coping mechanism lol)

Everyone's mileage will vary. Each person can feel however they want! But for anyone new, I wanted you to know that the very many ventposts you might be seeing are not all there is to this show or its fandom. Some of us love it despite - or even because of - all the things that went "wrong". I think we just don't talk about it as much.

[infizero]

GUYS PREVIEW PAGES FOR GERALD'S JOURNAL JUST DROPPED AND WE'RE ACTUALLY GETTING TO SEE GERALD'S TWO SONS LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO

[perceivedclown]

girls if im staring at you in public it's because i've got a fucking problem. the problem is gay, i'm gay, also where did you get that outfit

[thirddagger]

Just watched Postmodern Prometheus and holy FUCK new favorite X Files episode I'm crying

[wolfboyvirus]

so,,,, just finished the edge of sleep (the series). holy shit. my mind is fucking boggled. i think it was a pleasant experience? honestly im just. i cant even process what the hell is going on.

[a-moth-called-mof]

OKAY I FINISHED THE FIRST EPISODE (?) OF WHITEPINE. GENUINELY ONE OF THE MOST PRETTY MINECRAFT SERIES IVE EVER SEEN?? THE CINEMATOGRAPHY IS SO GOOD??? THE FUCKING BUILDS AND THE ATMOSPHERE AND THE COLOUR GRADIENT? I LOVE C! IVORY (?) SO MUCH ALREADY?? You go funky autistic little gal full of mysteries

[jekyllnahyena]

some rebels au Riyo. that right one is her current wanted pic after the empire finally caught up on the appearance change. (or more like they think its her but arent sure because she's dead, right? she was definetely dead, what the fuck is going on-)