#maybe one day i’ll get better

[merlins-strawberriesandroses]

POV you’ve informed the Queen and the Court’s Sorcerer of something and they very clearly know something that they’re not letting on

[the-bi-space-ace]

Okay I’m going to talk about cutting off Crosshair’s hand because while I know plenty of people see a lot of symbolism in it and think it was a good decision I have things to say about it.

I have CPTSD which has a lot of different symptoms. One of them is trembling or shaking. There’s a lot of complexities tied up in it but I’m not going to go into more detail because it’s not a fun thing to talk about.

What I liked about Crosshair’s trauma was that it impacted him not only mentally and emotionally but also physically. It’s very representative of what it’s actually like dealing with symptoms from something like PTSD and CPTSD (there are differences between these two that I won’t go into rn). I loved that we got to see a physical symptom of something psychological. It’s so rare that it’s handled well. Because yeah meditation and safety will help, certainly, but oftentimes it’s not the end all be all. I’m safe. I’m protected. I take care of my mental well being. But I still have symptoms that say the opposite. Because it’s not as simple as ‘no longer in the bad situation therefore the symptoms will stop’. I’ve made my peace that it’s lifelong and, honestly, Crosshair’s symptoms would be lifelong as well.

Cutting off his hand…

Here’s the thing.

The show really makes it seem like cutting off his hand is something he needed to move forward. He needed to be rid of the symptom because it was a physical reminder and it was holding him back from moving on. Cutting off the hand means no more shaking which means he’s healed. No more shaking hand=no more trauma. He can finally move on with his life.

And to that I say ouch.

There’s been plenty of times my symptoms are inconvenient to myself or others. Times when I wish I could just make it stop. Times when I’m terrified that it’s holding me back and I’m screwed up and that’s all I’ll ever be: broken. There are plenty of times I know people wish i could just knock it off and get over it and cut it out but that’s not how it works. Like I said. I’ve made peace with this thing that’ll be with me forever.

It was refreshing to see him try to adapt to dealing with it instead of ignoring it or trying to get rid of the part of him that was hurting. I loved that. It was such a freeing thing to see. Someone who will live with the hurt and the symptoms and it doesn’t make him any less. It just makes him have to do life a little different.

I hate that they cut off his hand. I hate that it wasn’t handled with any sort of nuance or delicacy. And I hate that this thing that made me so proud of him, so proud to share something with him, just got cut off for… what? Shock? To ‘fix’ him?

If we had gotten more time with the loss of his hand maybe I’d feel differently. Hell, I’d love to see how Crosshair adapts to losing his hand, see how he learns to accommodate. It would give him and Echo something to bond over and talk about, finding healing with each other. I think this could’ve been done well. I’d still be on the fence about it but I would’ve held my breath and saw how it played out.

I fully expect people to roll their eyes at me here. I expect that people will say that I just don’t get it or that this isn’t what they intended. I’m sure this isn’t what they intended. At least I hope it isn’t. But what they intended doesn’t change how insensitively this was handled after a whole season of him unpacking his hurt and trying to learn to adapt to it. No one reacted to it, not even Crosshair, and we got no unpacking of what happened. I’m not happy with this but it is what it is I guess.

[rradical]

my one and only sad contribution to transformers one

[friendlyengie]

Obsessing over the dynamic of Spy using Decoy as a distraction bc it’s like he saves him a lot .,., smiles

This ask makes me feel very strongly. Assholes with just enough time to save that damn clown.

[misiahasahardname]

some of the sillies!!

(unfortunately i cannot fit the kadie drawing i also did D: )

[flowercrowngods]

ronance yearning hours

Mornings like this are becoming Nancy’s favourite thing, with the rising sun painting the room in golden light that always, always lands on Robin, who usually sleeps long past sunrise when she can. Nancy lets her; there’s nowhere for her to go anyway on this slow Saturday morning in Steve’s house, and the boys will only wake in an hour or so.

Nancy has taken to using that time to watch the picture of absolute serenity that is a sleeping Robin, with her cheek smushed into the pillow and her hair falling over her face in a way that never fails to make Nancy smile.

It also never fails to make her fingers twitch, itching to reach out and brush that hair behind her ear and see if her cheek is as smooth to the touch as it looks.

It gets stronger, this urge, with every slow Saturday morning that she wakes in the same bed as her. The journalist inside her wants to find a better word for it, a stronger one, to avoid repetition and ensure clarity. But all the words are big and carry implications for which Nancy is not yet ready.

She refuses to call it longing, this need inside her to touch and linger. She refuses to call it yearning, the way she looks forward to Friday nights at Steve’s with Robin and Eddie, or the way it fills her chest with excitement and giddiness just to think about sharing a bed and waking next to her and watching as all the things that overwhelm Robin on a daily basis are held off for at least another hour yet.

What’s in a word? she’ll scoff when it comes to interviews and articles and hours of agonising over sentence structure and synonyms.

But it’s on mornings like this that she realises that some words require bravery and tenderness rather than simple contemplation and calculation. Some words take time.

Beside her, Robin sighs quietly in her sleep, and Nancy shuffles closer. Because if she can’t be brave with words yet, not even with herself, she can at least be closer.

Using the momentum of a moment unguarded, her right hand comes up before she can stop it, finding a home on Robin’s cheek as she slowly, reverently brushes the hair out of her face and behind her ear. Her touch is light, fingertips ghosting over soft, warm skin — and feeling that softness upon her touch, she wonders if falling in love with Robin would be just as soft, just as gentle; just as warm.

Not a second later, Nancy pulls her hand away as if burned, her heart racing in her chest as if it were signalling her to run, you should be running, i’m racing like you’re running for your life before you’re caught and found out. Nancy balls her hand into a fist and scoots further back on the bed, feeling a heaviness inside her chest that has only been there for a few of these mornings. A fear. A panic.

Because terrible things happen when Nancy Wheeler wonders about love and touch and tenderness. And worse things still, because it’s not supposed to be like this. Not with Robin.

So she stays on her side of the bed, watching the sun dance along Robin’s skin, her hand still warm, the ghost touch of Robin’s soft cheek still present. And she watches, hand cradled to her chest to stop herself from reaching out again. She watches and wonders if maybe she should start using bigger words, because the pit in her chest is growing larger with every passing second and she needs something to fill it.

~*~

It happens again the next week. And the week after that. It seems like the first time broke something in Nancy, or maybe it came alive, but either way she can’t really stop reaching for Robin now. And her repertoire of words is growing with each Saturday morning, too. Longing, aching, yearning — they are classics. But there’s basking, too. Hoping, wishing, and imagining. God, does she imagine.

She imagines Robin’s lips turning up into a smile with Nancy’s hand on her cheek, she imagines her hand coming up to capture Nancy’s and just holding it. Or an image that makes her heart race again: kisses brushed to her knuckles. Or her lips.

She imagines, and she wishes, and she longs. But there’s also belonging. In fact, there’s a whole novel Nancy feels she could write in those early morning hours. A thousand pages dedicated to all the words that exist around Robin Buckley. Words that live inside Nancy; that part is important.

Four weeks have passed and the feelings have only grown stronger, developed more words that will forever remain between her and the morning sun. And Nancy can’t stop herself from trailing the back of her finger along smooth, warm skin, the touch too light to disturb the sleeping beauty.

Sleeping Beauty, who stills and stiffens minutely, but Nancy is too mesmerised to notice until it’s too late.

“You’ve gotta stop this,” Robin whispers, her voice hoarse from sleep, and Nancy’s heart leaps out of her chest in panic and embarrassment.

“Sorry,” she whispers, pulling her hand back toward her chest. She’ll explain. Robin had something on her face that Nancy brushed away, that’s all. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s—

“Or I’ll fall madly in love with you if you don’t.”

Oh. Oh?

Oh.

Nancy swallows as her thesaurus dissolves and all words escape her. She blinks. Robin’s eyes are still closed but there’s a shadow of a smile on her lips, dimpling the skin that Nancy caressed just seconds ago.

There is the chance to just ignore that this ever happened, with Robin not looking at her, not making this moment real yet, on the brink of sleep and wakefulness. All she’ll have to do is wait. It’s the best chance she’s ever going to get, to forget about all this and get over it. Over her. Over whatever she has been building inside herself under the light of the rising sun over the past weeks.

All she’d have to do is remain still and silent and wait for Robin to fall back asleep.

But there was something about big words and bravery, and even though her thesaurus has left her and the thousand pages of things to feel, to say, to do, to think around Robin have torn themselves up because they were bleak and bland and not enough, Nancy feels brave on this particular morning.

Because the world hasn’t ended yet in all those weeks that she’s been thinking about Robin. In fact, the world has stopped ending since she started seeing Robin for who she is. And in a world where bravery is not about surviving, it is always about love.

And maybe that’s what she feels, maybe that’s what she wants, what she allows herself to want when she lays her hand on Robin’s cheek to caress the softest skin and gently comb back the strands of hair that are threatening to fall back over her face again. Her beautiful face that’s pulling up into a smile now — and Nancy is not imagining it. In fact, she’s smiling, too. She’s smiling so wide that a tiny little laugh bubbles past her lips.

Robin scoots closer, eyes squinting open now, as if to make sure this is real. As if she’s feeling the same. As if she meant it, what she said just now.

Nancy swallows thickly when Robin tucks her head under her chin, her body curling into Nancy’s, finding one of her hands to hold it. She still feels too raw, too vulnerable, and she wants to ask. Wants to be sure. Wants it to be real.

“Five more minutes,” Robin says, already on her way back to a deep sleep. “And then we’ll talk about this. I’ll tell you all about this girl I like. Think she might like me back. And she’s so warm.” She buries a little deeper into her side to chase that warmth that is now filling her whole body.

And Nancy gasps out a laugh this time, a tiny one, gentle and tender and all those words that are slowly coming back to her now that Robin is curled into her side and holding her hand. Her free hand comes up to comb through Robin’s hair in steady motions to lull her back into a slumber.

“Sleep,“ she breathes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Robin hums, cuddling impossibly closer, and Nancy feels herself drifting off again, too. With a smile on her face. For the first time in years.

[angelmush]

went to the state fair yesterday and tried so so much good food !!! my favorite things were the pickle lemonade (literally my favorite drink ever since i first tried it a couple weeks ago) and the fried pickles and the roasted corn. feeling like a true midwesterner after that :-)

[justa-sadjellyfish]

OMG GUESS WHO LEARNED TO PLAY SHOW ME YOUR HANDS ON PIANO🔥🔥🔥

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s5 episode 16 thoughts

are we sat for some REAL scully and mulder time?? some classic case action?? will mulder eat sunflower seeds and scully do an autopsy?? we must begin to find out.

(well, i found out. and i diagnose this episode with lacking in scully)

this episode really didn’t do anything for me, which is often the case when scully does not feature prominently. it’s like, if she’s not going to be on the screen, why are we here? to just watch a bunch of random other stuff? absolutely not. this is the mulder AND scully show. frankly, they’re more like two halves of a whole than separate people. unless the writers have cooked up a specific and intentional solo episode, focusing just on mulder rarely works! 

mulder, you are my special boy, but it is also clear that you are the writer’s special boy, and that does kinda piss me off, because i believe that being a special boy is a gender neutral activity

anyway.

we begin in delaware, where someone, later revealed to be named marty, is walking up some stairs. she lights a cigarette on the stove (which seems dangerous) and then receives some spooky visions of a man being stabbed. which is not great. 

the cops find the stabbed guy in a motel with marty hiding behind the curtain!! she’s covered in blood. and blind. they make a big point of this.

is this gonna be like, diversity win! the killer is blind! or did she start to sit down for a smoke in front of the TV and then get teleported to the scene? 

scully tells us that the deceased, named little monster (put your paws up!) is a drug dealer that used children in his dealings. wow. he sounds like an awful guy. do not disgrace the little monster name.

(just now, as i edit my notes, realizing how funny it is we get scully saying “little monster”… scully lady gaga fan confirmed?! she bent time and space to stream disease)

mulder points out he has the same pair of pants as the dead drug dealer. classic mulder.

marty glenn was found at the scene of the crime. she has been blind since birth and has an extensive rap sheet. how could she bleed a man out with surgical precision, you ask? idk, maybe she’s just that good

LMAOOO this guy who is here from the case, detective pennock, is convinced marty has a sixth sense, which i am sure mulder is not used to hearing. he must have been relieved.

bahaha when they come to visit her, marty clarifies that it’s not magic that lets her know it’s detective pennock, it’s his trash cologne. read him for filth.

she asks who is with him, though. when mulder introduces himself she asks “and the lady?” so she is very perceptive. or perhaps she can see things in other ways…? supernaturally?

ohhh, she asks mulder what he’s staring at and he says “an innocent woman… i hope” now what is afoot here…

(i should have known. mulder and that Need to save people who often don’t even want his help)

scully is asking her questions. ohh, marty’s a real firecracker. marty yells out to “stinky”, the detective, who is watching through a one way mirror!! she says she fed the murder weapon to her seeing eye dog. so marty’s got jokes, i see.

mulder is intentionally provoking her, trying to point out that she was doing an awful job cleaning up at the murder site, and clearly she couldn’t have done the whole killing thing, because she is BLIND, so why don’t you just tell us who did it so we can go out and get ‘em?

will this provoke her into revealing her hand?

she slaps his cup of water away and tells him to go to hell! so i guess this did not have its intended effect 

mulder thinks she’s honed all her senses around her blindness, and that she is trying to project an image of confidence. but he doesn’t think that she killed the little monster, even if she won’t explain herself and somehow knew there was only one stab wound. ohhh, do you think she’s covering for some kid that the drug dealer worked with going in there and taking care of business on their own??

(damn. would have been cool if that was what happened. kids killing drug dealers is so rarely a plot point in media. together we can change this)

scully is going to the crime scene with detective pennock while mulder is staying behind to “investigate something”. nooo, don’t separate! you’ll make me sad :(

(the agents separating either leads to soul-crushing angst or an incredibly boring episode)

marty’s taking a polygraph, but she wants to skip the baseline questions and get to the good stuff. and while i do not believe in polygraphs, i can imagine that if they DID do anything of use, skipping the calibration stage would be a bad idea. she denies all involvement with the murder. hmmm. it seems she’s lying about having no reason to know little monster, though.

mulder writes “did you see the murder?” on a piece of legal paper (i like his handwriting!) and shows it to the man operating the test, who reacts like he’s pulling some sick joke. but marty says “why don’t you just ask me yourself?”. and again the polygraph machine says she is lying when she says no!!!

mulder calls to share this news and LMAOOOO thank god scully said what i have been thinking for 5 seasons now: “would you like me to remind you why polygraphs are inadmissible in court?” <- truly a woman of science and reason!! my beloved scully!!

ohhhhh, she tells mulder to give her a call when he figures it out… and then finds bloody gloves tucked into the place where you put used shaving blades at the crime scene!

(having a special place where you put used shaving blades is absolutely CRAZY, btw. i feel like that is just asking for a disaster. but i guess that leaving them in the trash would do the same thing! oh, a glimpse into a world i was glad to not be around for…)

marty is seeing more terrifying visions of a woman in a bar in great danger!!! she’s calling out for a phone. she calls and tells some bartender about a guy hitting on a redhead at the end of the bar!!! and he’s right there!!!! the woman is able to escape because she tells him to leave her alone!!! and that she’s watching him!!!

damn… does she know this guy??

they are giving her the gloves found in the razor slot, saying her prints are already all over them!!

mulder points out she hasn’t applied for any benefits, which leads scully to wonder if she is lying about being blind! hmm…

i also love “okay, so by your reasoning, the killer took off with the murder weapon but not the gloves, leaving marty to come in, go straight to the gloves and hide them in the one place that nobody would easily think to find them” (he nods) “i think that’s the most accurate scenario available to us right now”

-said while looking deeply into scully’s eyes… yeah <3 king of facts and logic /s

the guy who was hitting on the woman at the bar is trying to sell little monster’s drugs!!!

now they’re testing marty to learn if she is really blind, and while the answer is yes, her pupils dilate at one point, when she happens to be seeing the visions. mulder goes in to ask what she sees, but is interrupted by detective pennock!! the DA is saying he won’t try her without a murder weapon, and to let her go. 

she’s checking out and mulder watches her go. scully says there are two kinds of blood on the gloves, and she’s sending them to the lab!!! shoutout to the lab. an unsung hero.

meanwhile, the murderer is assaulting the redhead, and marty sees the visions. she yells that she needs to get to spring street and then walks into traffic trying to get there!!! a man guides her there. shoutout to that guy for real because she was going to get hit by a car. 

she’s trying to find anything on spring street, and she finds the poor woman’s body in the dumpster!! and now her prints are all over her body!!

marty comes back to the police office to say she killed them both with the blood on her hands!!

does she think this will make the visions stop??

time to deploy mulder. he lights her cigarette, and says he likes and admire her. he thinks she tried to stop the murders, but didn’t get there in time. and she needs to help them stop him before he- whoever he is- kills again. he says he won’t let her plead guilty!! oh, mulder’s need to save everybody……

the murderer is on the phone, and the person who was going to buy drugs from him says he won’t do it; someone is clearly gunning for him, and he does not want to get involved. some old girlfriend called him to warn against dealing with him?!? the killer is trying to convince phone man to go through with the deal, but he is getting mad. 

mulder is going over the files, when detective pennock walks in saying she signed the confession. claiming to have killed them for drugs, and she even knows where to find them! she leads them to the murderer’s drugs!

mulder doesn’t buy it at all.

“you are one skeptical guy, agent mulder!” <- LMAO he was shocked by that. been called a lot of things in his life, but not skeptical lmaooo

scully’s calling! neither of the blood types on the glove match marty’s!!! she didn’t do it!!!

the dealer guy just watched them take the drugs… 

mulder’s back. you can’t get away from him. he sits next to marty in her cell. he says he knows who she’s protecting!! “you’re protecting the man who murdered your mother” <- HUH???

she died from a single stab wound to the right kidney!! just like the others!!!

but she never met her mother?? somehow she was pregnant with marty when it happened but died?? and they were able to save marty?? how is that possible?? you know what! i’m not going to worry about it.

so the blood flow interruption caused her blindness… and maybe during that time she gained a connection between herself and the killer where she sees through his eyes. and that doesn’t make her responsible. her being in jail won’t accomplish anything. he tells her they’ll find him with or without her help. 

this is pretty crazy world building to just dump on us at this point

they take her somewhere else in cuffs, but she’s receiving another vision!!! one of herself!!! the killer must be near!!! he is!! he’s watching her get loaded into the car!!

off to a women’s detention center. where mulder is already there!!! she’s being released because she is no longer a suspect. 

they found the guy!!! charles!!! it was his blood on the glove!

OH SHIT HE’S HER FATHER??? that was their connection??? she’s crying upon hearing this :(

detective pennock will not pursue aiding and abetting charges IF she agrees to help them find the guy. ooooo… she agrees. on the condition that she will be protected until he is caught. 

wait, why is mulder talking into a walkie talkie hot? what the hell. don’t worry about that actually.

scully is here too, listening to this explanation. “well, if all this is true, let’s go get him” <- that’s the spirit!!! who cares if the spiritual nonsense is real, we have crime to solve!

but he doesn’t think the killer will be in there…

detective pennock is in marty’s room while she packs, saying she doesn’t need to bring everything. but she says it’s too late!! he’s already here!!

she knocks pennock out with a tea kettle and steals his gun!!! go get him!!

mulder and scully are rushing back to her place. the killer is here!! he is approaching her!!!

OHHH SHE STANDS UP!!! “i hate the way you see me” and BLAM!! shot right in the head!!!

pennock is locking her up, saying she did this one. they watch as she is walked away.

mulder comes to visit, offering his hand through the cell. she says all she sees now is the sea, near where her father slash the killer used to live. 

“well, you’re lucky he wasn’t a fan of the ice capades”, he says, once again referring to something i know nothing about.

(i looked it up and it’s a traveling ice skating show. why does bro hate the ice skaters so much! anyway, i threw wikipedia $15 for always being there for me like a best friend. and i still want to read an ice skating fic so you didn’t persuade me you’d look bad out on the rink, mulder)

okay, so final thoughts: while this was a semi-interesting episode with an attempt to pull on my heartstrings, and a noble one at that, there was barely any scully at all. and this is essential to my enjoyment of an episode.

also, the lore reveal that her mother was murdered and her dad was the killer, and in the process of somehow killing her mother but not her, they formed a psychic connection, was just too sudden for me. it felt weird and abrupt and like it wasn’t hinted to at all, and then it was supposed to make perfect sense. it did not. 

listen, every season has a few flop episodes, and maybe that’s what we’re dealing with here. so far though, i think s5 has had the highest bangers to flops ratio, which is to say that most of the episodes have been very good, so we are due a less interesting one here or there.

but you know what would make them more interesting? scully <3

anyway, as always, tell me what you think! was this episode also just meh for you, or did you love it? or hate it? know any fun facts? any interesting memories from when you watched it the first time? please do share!

[tartagliove]

okay I am embarrassed to admit this but after doing that Sae coloring and seeing so many mutuals Sae posting recently has made me soooo 👀 about him…..

[emily-mooon]

Damn.

Pose

[littlerainbowsheltie]

Moon plays the villain

the others just play along

and are going to throw him away when they’re done

alright. Cool

[deus-ex-mona]

merry crisis guys!!!!

[ysabelmystic]

Day 8 in a row I am never doing this again

Compassion fatigue is real. I am not a good person. I am an active danger to my most vulnerable patients. I need to go home.

[swaghaver69]

i feel a heavy pressure like someone is sitting on my chest making it so i can’t breathe whenever i think about how every single structure in society and social conditioning makes it so that women have no choice but to inevitably end up with a male and it is pushed so hard as the only possible viable option and it feels choking and inescapable (personal rambling vent in tags)

[amorcie]

I think I figured out a system name :-)