#if I wake up before tomorrow happens

[rt-closetcryptic]

Didn’t really have much planned to doodle for Valentine’s Day and I’m unsure if I’ll upload anything else this evening, but here we go!

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s4 episode 7 thoughts

my very first thoughts: a CANCER MAN episode??? are we gonna get some backstory?? some CSM lore?!?!? 

part of me is deeply curious, but part of me also wants agent time, so… hmm! i’m intrigued. my curiosity? it’s been piqued.

and the lone gunmen have been mentioned!!

author's note: woah... i was expecting a lot of things, but cancer man being a flop author was not one of them. it's kinda sad, but mostly just pathetic.

judgement aside, i actually really liked this episode. there are things i would change, but i thought it was super intriguing to see certain parts of what is hidden beyond the curtain, but never enough to fully satisfy you, which i do love about this show (even if it is occasionally infuriating). the multi-part structure was also an interesting and unique choice that worked well, but i do have some... questions on writing/character motives and if they were well-received. but you'll see what i mean in a bit.

a lot happened in this episode, which i shall begin to recount below!

OH! we open with a shakespeare quote!!! “for nothing can seem foul to those that win” oooookay i suppose that is relevant to our ciggy man. damn. couldn’t be me. a lot of things are foul to me. such as killing melissa. 

we see a rat! a rat! cute little critter. oh. cancer man arrives, and is less cute. he's looking at some broken windows… damn, why is s4 so dark? i keep having to turn my brightness up. it's annoying!!

his lighter says “trust no one” omg… he’s so weird. just an overall strange fellow. seriously, who gets a custom lighter that says that? way to draw attention to yourself while trying to Not Do That.

so he’s opening a suitcase…. WHAT!! he is somehow listening to a bunch of conversations, including the “not everything is a dark labyrinth of conspiracy” one, which means he must have had bugs in all of the rooms where mulder and scully chat!!! who has time to sort through all of that audio content to find the juicy stuff?? probably his freak interns that i KNOW he keeps scattering about

okay, so he’s listening to a conversation now between the lone gunmen and mulder. frohike is freaked tf out, but mulder says no one would kill him because “you’re just a little puppy dog”. aww. that's a cute thing to say.

GAG!! the lone gunmen put on a special audio filter to hide their conversation, and CSM just pressed a button to totally ignore it, and turns to the camera with a smirk. EW! EW! creepy man. ugh, i can’t believe i paused and had to look at that awful creepy smirk for more than a few milliseconds.

oh my goodness, scully is also here during this conversation between the lone gunmen and mulder that we are listening to via CSM's technologically aided eavesdropping. frohike is saying he found stuff about cancer man, while cancer man loads what looks like a SNIPER RIFLE, and aims it out the window??? “what did you find?” “possibly everything”

GASP! i’m hooked. i DO want to know possibly everything. 

(watching the intro and that scene where they burst in with the gun always gets me, but today it’s making me ache in my chest because of how beautiful they are. so feel free to psychoanalyze that)

frohike is describing trotsky’s assassination. this is an area of history i am weak in, so i am seated for my lesson. it is actually entirely unrelated to the plot at hand, and is just some frohike nerd lore, but that's cool, i like a dude who knows these things.

frohike says “he” (presumably CSM) appears on august 20th, 1940, in louisiana. and his father was a communist activist, executed for espionage before his son would walk!!! and his mother died of lung cancer before he could talk!

damn. tragic backstory for this fellow. he pretty much said "i know cigarettes killed my mom but i'm different"

he was sent to various orphanages where he spent his time reading and not making friends. then he went off the grid until a year and a half after the Bay Of Pigs. weird way of measuring time- before and after the Bay of Pigs

OH! we get more text… “part 1: things really did go well in Dealey Plaza” hmmm....

some army men are jogging, while another dude reads the manchurian candidate, saying he would rather read the worst novel ever written than the best movie ever made. he must not know about the novels that are out there… i assume this is cig man?

OH MY GOD! he’s talking to MR. MULDER! wait, wait that means….

! MULDER LORE REVEAL ! his first word was JFK

that is... actually really adorable. and will make his toddler stage difficult as he has to break certain news to baby mulder.

why do i get the feeling, from the shaky way CSM just set the photo of mr. mulder’s wife and child down, that he is fighting suppressed romantic feelings for his buddy like the cold war depends on it? hmm....

these fancy looking men want to talk to the guy i assume is cancer man. they ask if he was involved in any of the big events from the early 1960’s, which he denies. you know, assassinations and whatnot.

oh! when they ask if his father was executed as a spy, he says his only regret is that “i was too young to throw the switch myself” which is kind of a crazy thing to say. "yes i never knew my dad but i wish it was me that killed him" is a wild hill to die on. but i guess this is what the 60's did to people.

OH! he also denies a cigarette when offered, saying he never touches them. well. some things went down between then and now, i assume. and hopefully, we shall gain a glimpse into what changed.

this general dude is yapping about extraordinary men and i assume he is referring to himself. and his father. and young CSM, too, can be an extraordinary man! 

“communism is without a doubt the most heinous personification of evil mankind has ever confronted” <- said by a guy who likely fought the nazis, this is an absolutely crazy line... but again, i guess that shows how deep everyone was into the propaganda

they are offering baby CSM a very important job… so important, his army service will be erased… he needs to assassinate an american civilian, former naval pt-boat commander…

OH MY GOD, DID HE KILL JFK???

this is wild. how many different characters across various medias have been responsible for killing JFK? does anyone have a spreadsheet? if not, DM me and let’s make one 

so what is the reason in universe for why JFK had to kick the bucket….

because of the bay of pigs failure??

i get it was bad, but i didn’t think it was THAT bad. that makes no sense though timeline wise… they said bay of pigs was “last week”, but that was 1961, and obviously he didn’t get shot until 1963. so are we expected to believe that they waited 2 years to kill him? 2 years in which a lot of stuff happened? or is this some sort of factual oversight i’m supposed to ignore. or am i misunderstanding the episode structure. did i mishear/read a line?

(digs my claws in) you guys i cannot ignore a JFK anachronism i’m sorry

and now we're off to texas to witness the inevitable. this dude playing lee harvey oswald is lowkey cute, a thing i never thought i would have typed more than a few minutes ago. CSM yells at him about how smoking is BAD!

baby cancer man is talking to lee harvey oswald (another wild sentence), telling him he’ll see the president today. he calls baby cig man “mr. hunt” which i assume is a fake name… and he lies and says he loves the movies!! how simply do the falsehoods slip from his tongue!

ooooookay i see what is going on here. “mr. hunt” is a member of a cuban loyalty group telling lee harvey oswald to hide some weapons. a fall guy is being carefully crafted.

and lee gives him his cigarettes… the same cigarettes baby cig man scolded him for smoking…. omg…. foreshadowing

you know, in all my years studying history, i have never imagined what the inside of the book depository building looked like. and OMG! in googling to try and see if this was an accurate representation, i learned that dealey plaza is where he was shot! so i guess i’m good with JFK lore, but bad at geography. but that answers what the whole opening quote was about.

baby cig man is getting in a sewer to do some crime… very eugene tooms of him. he's getting his gun out in the sewer for a sneak attack…. while lee gets a root beer… and it seems umbrella man was giving a signal on when to shoot! fascinating.

(jackie’s outfit that day looked less fuzzy irl than it appears in this episode, so please take note of that wardrobe people)

nah, this is gonna make me feel bad for a FAKE lee harvey oswald…

and while JFK was dying, baby cig man stayed in that sewer the whole time… wow. i feel like someone should have taken a peek.

soooo realizing he is a patsy, lee shoots a cop. which is actually just far more incriminating than had he done anything else. then he goes to the movies. where the cops find him. and baby cig man was watching all of this…. he pulls out a cigarette and starts smoking. OMG was that his first?? to cope with the Guilt?? damn.

it’s a bit of a ludicrous story that makes me giggle when i consider the real-world implications, but i will take it for what it is.

but back to modern cig man, listening to all of this being explained. he says nothing, seeming to confirm the accuracy of what is being said.

“part 2: just down the road from graceland”

no, don’t tell me he killed ELVIS, too?!?!?

wait, i read that wrong. “just down the road aways from graceland” okay, not sure if that clears anything up. but we hear the voice of martin luther king jr.

no… don’t tell me he killed HIM, too…..

notably, this whole part is in black and white. cigarette man is tap tapping on his typewriter. he’s writing a book! “take a chance: a jack colquitt adventure” <- sounds boring 

he’s listening to MLK talk about Marxist revolutions… is baby cig man a closet commie? no, for it appears he is deeply upset by these words!

he’s still in black and white, at a meeting about MLK, talking about how some claim he wishes to wage war against white america. baby cig man says “wouldn’t you?”, and i begin to wonder if he is based, but these hopes are quickly dampened as he explains that MLK's existence and activism are no longer civil rights issues… because he said something about communism. bro. what. is this how people actually felt…?

(you read about the paranoia and the terror of the red scare, but seeing an attempt at putting it in context still makes you think damn, times were weird)

this council is now talking about how they can best discredit MLK, and we see a guy who is blamed for the “there is but one way out for you” letter, which baby cig man says is stupid. oh, he blamed the director of the FBI for that. damn!

cigarette man says we need another patsy, and to make it a white man, so “it” (referring to king’s assassination) looks racially motivated. and oh! he says he’ll do it himself.

“i have too much respect for the man” <- so you’re gonna be the one that kills him? bro… what. we don't usually kill the people we look up to where i come from.

so. cig man lights up as he stands outside a building where MLK speaks. 

AND HE PULLS OUT THE PHOTO OF BABY MULDER AND HIS MOM???? WHAT THE FUCK

(is this like a “he’s grieving because his work demands that he never has a family” kind of thing or a “he’s longing for the embrace of mr. mulder” kinda thing….? does he love mrs. mulder….? what is this….)

cancer man gives the dude he’s framing a couple hundred dollars. and then gets in the bushes behind where dr. king is staying. i'm still processing the photo reveal.

and bam.

wow, i feel that this is… weird. idk, the whole “this character killed JFK” thing has been going on for so long that it doesn’t really feel that shocking, but dr. king’s death is a tragedy in a different way, and i’m not sure that using it in fiction is like, super appropriate? um.

while i am unsure if i feel that using a civil rights leader's assassination in your alien story is something we should brush past, i do understand what the writers are attempting to do here, which is show how dedicated to the anti-communist cause cig man is, and how he'll stop at nothing to do what he deems needed, no matter how ugly or horrific. i recognize what they are trying to tell me.

LMAOOOO WAIT. place my moral pondering aside for a brief second. if you pause, you can read the rejection letter baby cig man gets for his book. “my advice? burn it!” <- DAMN that book must have been god awful 😭

oh god. now the TV is mentioning RFK… don’t tell me cig man did that, too…

(author's note: thankfully, he was not involved with the killing of this kennedy brother; no clear statement on whether or not he was responsible for ted's whole thing)

AND WHY was cig man putting that photo of mrs. and baby mulder in his drawer…?!?!

cig man seems to be almost crying while quoting aeschylus along with RFK on the tv, as he speaks about the grief of losing both his brother and MLK…. damn. am i supposed to feel bad for CSM? because i don’t. 

back to modern cancer man. we now enter “part 3, the most wonderful time of the year”.

jump to 1991. he has saddam hussein on the phone?? and tells him to call back. and some other dude is working on the oscar noms LMAO wait... i lowkey love the idea that the government controls those... need to think what that would imply for every single winner ever

AND he rigs the superbowl so the bills don’t win LMAO what is his beef with buffalo?! AND he rigged the olympic hockey game in ‘80?

we’re getting the impression he kinda controls everything. message received loud and clear.

OH! now they’re talking about mulder… “that ‘spooky’ kid”, is how they refer to him. and CSM says that mulder is his to keep an eye on. i'm sure that's part of his decades long plot, to keep mulder under his watchful eye and use him as a pawn in his schemes. also, gorbachev has just resigned. no more enemies to fight.

and CSM gives his men some presents for christmas. how thoughtful…..? 

his men invite him to come with them to virginia for a family get together. damn, they like this guy? it seems they honestly do!

he got them all ties…. very strange fellow he is.

okay, so he lied and said he had to go see family to escape the gathering. and then ominously walks outside mulder’s office door. dun dun DUN!

he has some mail… and opens it to see something that displeases him. THEN HE STARTS WRITING AGAIN!! it seems like auto fiction, when you write about yourself but pretend it’s happening to a character. damn. crazy coping mechanism. good to know that he is kinda a loser all around. 

so, some days he longs for a second chance. okay, yeah, we all do cancer man, and most of us didn’t kill JFK.

the phone rings. it’s DEEP THROAT! my old friend!! were they tight?!

it seems that on christmas eve of 1991 was when a weird alien spaceship arrived to earth. and the occupant is in “critical condition”. also, deep throat mentions the UFO he had claimed to see before in vietnam, so we know he wasn’t lying entirely about that.

they have this fleshy pink alien hooked up to life support, which has me wondering how alien life support works, and also how many types of aliens we are dealing with in this universe. but i’ve mentioned that before. still! worth mentioning again!

lore reveal that is unsettling... DEEP THROAT’S NAME IS RONALD???? 

idk, i was expecting something like abernathy or shackleton or cromswell!

deep throat gives cigarette man the gun to handle the alien situation- but CSM protests, saying that a “living EBE” could advance bill mulder’s project by decades!!! MR. MULDER MENTIONED?!? he'd be willing to break protocol to help his buddy out?!?

but no, deep throat recites the rules from the security council resolution, which makes him remember what they came here to do.

can you just… shoot an alien??? to kill it? well. you can shoot some of them to kill them, but not the kind that need the special neck stabbing device. okay, keeping track of all this, just seems like maybe all aliens would need something a bit cooler to vanquish them.

they’re fighting over killing an alien…. cig man doesn’t want to do it, so he tosses a coin. so he makes deep throat do it?!?! deep throat says that this is their new enemy. honestly, the sad little alien does not look like he can hurt you, but okay.

(i mean, do they really need the gun? he’s an alien on life support, just pull the plug)

oh…. cig man rips the bandage off his neck as deep throat climbs into some gear to… gas the alien? now what is the significance of this bandage that has been on his neck but ONLY for part three of the story?

that alien is creepy. deep throat really does shoot the damn thing. and cig man lights up while this goes down. is every cigarette one dude he killed….? damn. that’s like 5 packs a day….

“part 4: the x-files”

OOOO, info on scully being brought in!!!

OMG!!! we see parts of her thesis.

did we know she went to the university of maryland? well, i didnt, so that counts as a…

! SCULLY LORE REVEAL ! she graduated from the university of maryland in 1986!

(looking back, i realize this was all flashback stuff from the pilot. but i didn't KNOW at the time that this show would do such things to me, so i wasn't taking detailed notes! wow! how much has changed)

but it’s cancer man reading her thesis. stay away from her!

okay, now we’re back to one of the earliest times we ever saw scully, in her pilot episode fit. and was cig man actually there in the pilot? i think he was, right?

aww, we get to relive the “FBI’s most unwanted” moment through cancer man’s listening. it’s creepy, but still a heartwarming time.

back to the modern day- frohike is talking about how cancer man is “the most dangerous man alive”, because he believes these actions are all that life allows him, and he can never escape himself. damn. that’s deep.

and then back to the 1991 christmas eve scene… an editor loved CSM's book! he used the pen name “raul bloodworth”… have we heard that before? well, i’ll keep an eye out on various shelves. so he calls the number they gave him… he is desperate for validation… and he’s going on about how he wants the cover to look. there’s a cutting comment about “working with young authors”, and the publisher says he’ll have to “relinquish some control”. and cancer man is SO excited.

oh my gosh… wait, why am i lowkey emotional now? but that emotion is very specifically second hand embarrassment.

so he’s typing his RESIGNATION LETTER?? for the day the story gets published. for some reason he thinks that getting one story published = a life of steady income. HAH! if only.

he even takes a wistful look at his cigarettes and crushes them in his hand!!! wow, a time to begin again.

lmao i see a reference to darin morgan in the background magazines… do not think you are slick, props team!

CSM’s going to go pick up his story from a newspaper… and his story was published in a porno… and they changed his ending… 

this is NOT a good thing omg

and the newspaper salesman says that the magazine is garbage…

we just watched his dreams die in real time. and with the magazine, he buys another pack of cigarettes. damn. no chance for a new life, i guess. 

CSM’s now monologing about how life is like a box of chocolates (disappointing), and this is an interesting juxtaposition, because he is next to a man who is digging through garbage while he says all this, so clearly his material status could be a lot worse but it’s probably a mental prison, being rich and important and also sad.

Frohike clarifies that this CSM theory is based on a story he read, but he’s going to check with some hackers. as frohike walks out the door, cancer man mumbles that he can kill him whenever he pleases, but chooses not to do so today. 

woah… very different, but i actually really liked this episode!

i liked getting a peek into the mystical lore surrounding CSM, but also it wasn’t THAT much of a peek, you know? we know a few of the things he did, and that he did them in the name of fighting communism. i guess when he thought that communism was “defeated” they switched to aliens, but also aliens had to be there the whole time, because they did make the agreement about it after ww2. so he’s been up to a lot of stuff.

do i feel a little bad that he can’t get his writing published? yeah, but like i said in a “it’s cringey” kinda way, which i think was the intention. it’s funny that he has amassed all this power but is still a flop. 

like i said, i feel weird about the whole MLK thing. i think the coloring going black and white was to illustrate CSM's black and white thinking, about how you are either right or wrong, and to be wrong requires punishment, no matter what anyone else says on the matter. that was interesting.

hmm, i'm pondering. what will happen next to our smoky- well, i was going to say "our smoky friend", but we are not friends at all, are we? where will our tobacco-filled creep lead us?

i liked this one! it was really different from the traditional episode structure, so it felt special and nice. i liked getting an idea of his line of work and how he got involved with it and why, even if the killing post-Bay of Pigs thing was weird, but i GUESS it did bring the soviets and cuba closer together, so i GUESS if you thought anything that advanced communism had to be avenged, you would think that is a logical conclusion.

hmm, i can't afford to try and figure out who actually did it IRL! too much on my plate. it's an interesting theory... i shall have to give it a long contemplation.

[danielnelsen]

things aren’t going well with peach. while i think my dad’s very right to be concerned that she hasn’t eaten anything in nearly 60 hours (obviously i am too), im becoming increasingly concerned that she hasn’t slept at all in around 36 hours and prior to that she was under anaesthetic, which isn’t exactly restful, so it’s closer to 48 hrs

like dad took her back to the vet today and we’ve got injections for her painkillers now because she’s not eating, and also injections for fluids (because she doesn’t drink; she only gets water from her food), so the not eating is Bad but also kinda under management, but if she doesn’t sleep soon i’m extremely worried. dad was like ‘if she doesn’t eat by tomorrow afternoon we’ll take her back because the injections will run out’ but like. if she doesn’t sleep tonight we have GOT to take her back first thing in the morning so they can sedate her or something

[toytulini]

i have got to go to bed i have got to get stuff done

[lyrebirdswrites]

The evil demon in my head says I’m a terrible horrible no good very bad writer and I MUST NOT let it win. Even if this wip is not knocking anybody’s socks off right now I have to trust it will become good eventually!!! Just keep swimming!! Just keep swimming!!

[famewolf]

STOP. I'm getting choked up

[vulpinesaint]

NOOOOO I HAVE COME DOWN WITH ILLNESS

[yoojinluv]

[hepbaestus]

[phagodyke]

I will say while I've loved most of elden ring I'm really glad I'm down to just 2 more main boss fights (malenia + maliketh) before I start the endgame boss fights... whew 😮‍💨

[flufflecat]

Really not feelin it this week. Tag rant incoming

[dandyshucks]

crawls in here coughing and wheezing... everyone is so niceys to me.....

[steampoweredskeleton]

I'm aware this illness probably isn't COVID but it is the weirdest illness I've ever had

[thnksfrthmmrs]

[kalashtars]

[elytrafemme]

i'm starting to wonder if therapy is going to be productive because no matter what happens i'm probably going to experience this every night of my fucking life