#not a bad episode at all! in fact i think it was a GOOD episode!

[sillyguycrowe]

Do I hear Ticci Toby has Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) headcanons??? Fr I think he would. It lines up with him and your headcanon so well.

This is a bit long so I'm gonna put most of this under a cut!

The intense emotions, and spiteful/sharp comments when emotional, saying shit you regret later. I feel that so much with my BPD.

It's quite a challenge to deal with, and your partner will get the shit end of it at least every now and then as you try and better yourself. It's not easy and it's not fun, and doesn't make for good company.

Since Toby's never had any sort of help, he's gone so long in this unhealthy pattern and it just compacted and got worse and worse.

I bet he wouldn't be a physical danger at all, but if he got upset at all he'd have no way of managing his emotions and take it out on the people around him. He'd use triggers against you and bring up things you hadn't even thought of to attack you. He doesn't "converse" when he's angry, he just explodes. He yells, he curses, and his words BITE.

And somehow when it's over, he goes back to being Toby again. He's apologetic and upset at the things he did and said, and tries to make it up to you the best he can. Unfortunately without knowing how to help himself, he remains the same. And there's nothing anyone can do about it until he wants the help genuinely.

Notes on BPD I want to add:

It does not make you a bad person, I would call myself a great person, who sometimes does/says shitty things due to the inability to handle stress and the fact I have 0 or 100 and no in between.

It does not necessarily make you a violent person. At worst I throw things against walls, but I have never been a physical danger to another person even in the midst of a BPD split.

It's got both genetic and environmental factors. Some people are more prone to BPD genetically, but environment growing up can cause the personality disorder too.

When I am in a BPD episode I am not in my "sane mind". A person with BPD may say/do things to hurt the other person because they feel hurt, or they may use triggers against you even when they're upset. These are not things the BPD person would necessarily do, want to do, or think is okay in their "sane mind". Without help managing their condition it feels hopeless to stop yourself. This is not to say people with BPD are crazy or insane. They're not. It just happens to be a disorder which clouds your judgement severely.

BPD is not curable, but you can work your way to not being diagnosable for it anymore. This means the symptoms go down so much and cause less and less negative effect that it's essentially just... shrunk, for lack of a better term. Into something that looks normal, and something that looks like normal-people-without-BPD emotions.

Being in a relationship with Toby is toxic.

Hear me out.

Toby is not a terrible person, depending on how you see it really. He does kill people and probably to the victims families, he's the worst person on the planet but don't go into a relationship with a killer thinking it's all sunshine and rainbows.

I know some people in the fandom don't like realistic scenarios and that's totally okay if you don't. For me personally, I love a bit of a horror aspect behind it though.

Toby never received therapy nor any kind of help, so I could only imagine a relationship with him would be like stepping around egg shells. Lowkey feel like Toby is a little misogynistic too?

I know some ppl are gonna hate me for these HCs LMAO

But even though he doesn't want to admit it, he does have traits of his shitty fathers behaviour in his personality and despite being a bad person already; it adds on top of that.

THAT BEING SAID -

Toby would not physically abuse you. NEVER.

But when you argue with him, would he bring up your insecurities and become a really spiteful, shitty person? Yeah.

Of course, he would then regret it.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

First of all. I LOVE this show. However... WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH JUN???? I can't decide from one scene to the next if he's helping Thame and Po or if he's trying to drive a wedge between them. And if he's trying to keep them apart, WHY?????

Let's set aside the fact that the show is called THAMEPO and they will end up together no matter what. What's his angle? Cause I think the show wants us to think he likes Po. I mean, c'mon?!

What was this? I hate this with a passion. Because not only do I hate love triangles, but what I hate even more is when those triangles have two good friends in them. So it's bad all around. Please do not do this to me, show! I don't want to root against the couple, and I don't want to root against the friendship, so this is a nightmare. And what makes it even worse, is that I don't even know if Jun likes Po.

Honestly, I don't think he does. I think there's something else going on, but at this point to think that Jun is helping them strains credulity. Because in this episode, he did nothing but keep them apart as much as possible. And keep himself close to Po in the process. So yeah, although I love this show, I am frustrated as hell.

Anyway, I continue to adore Thame. He's so smitten it's ridiculous. 'You only sent me four photos?' He's taking the meaning of whipped to a whole new level. And the way he keeps checking in with Po to make sure he knows he's also a priority is peak romance. And that ending... I just can't. They make me all giddy and soft and all I can do is scream.

[kys02]

Hey Tumblr!!

So, I’ve noticed something in episode 3 for a while now, and I feel like we haven’t talked about it enough ;)

The moment during “therapy” with Zooble, where Kane start glitching, and the space around him glitches too. What is this? What if Zooble hadn’t stopped him? Would the circus have disappeared? Would it have vanished? And what would have happened to the characters?

I don’t want to make any theories, I just want to lay out the facts because I don’t want to make false assumptions. All my theories are based on verified facts which I trust. ( at least, I hope so )

But I don’t think it’s the “void” like in the pilot when Pomni opens the door with the label “exit”. In one moment, we see the background simply disappear and turn into black. (Or was that just an animator’s think? idk)

Either way, there would have been at least a few seconds of the void during the glitching if that was the case, but that’s not shown (trust me, I rewatched that moment from every angle I could).

This moment is also suspicious because Kane started glitching after seemingly being triggered by something human. Like, excuse me? But I don’t believe a normal AI would randomly say: “Making adventures is my art! It’s all I exist to do! All I’m… good at. …w-what you’re saying could imply that I’m bad at the only thing I’m good at.” (And then the glitching starts)

What’s the Detroit Become Human reference?Where androids also break their programming in a similar way.

Those are just my thoughts. What do ya think? I’d love to hear your opinions!

[coraniaid]

Anyway, I do think you can preserve almost all of the core of Faith's arc in Season 3 and still present Giles in a much more favorable light than canon with only a very few minor tweaks.

At some point, in one of the early season episodes that Faith doesn't otherwise appear in -- Band Candy, say -- in a scene featuring just Buffy and Giles together, have Buffy comment on Faith's absence, wonder out loud if being alone in her motel room is good for her, and have Giles say something to the effect of "Perhaps you're right to be concerned, but we must respect Faith's wishes. In fact I offered to arrange for more salubrious lodgings when it became clear she would be staying with us for a while, but she assured me she was quite all right where she is." Because, look, of course if an older man she didn't really know offered to set Faith up with a nicer place to stay for free she was going to say no. Of course that doesn't mean she's actually happy living in a motel in the bad part of town, and of course she's still impressed when the Mayor gets her an apartment and clearly doesn't want anything from her in return (or, at least, he's only looking for wholesome family-friendly murder and torture and treason, not what she'd expect him to want). But at least this way we can point to evidence Giles actually tried to do the right thing. The thing that he explicitly volunteered to do.

In Helpless, when Buffy complains about Faith being "off on one of her unannounced walkabouts", don't have Giles -- who at this very moment is not interested in training Buffy but instead setting her up for the events of Cruciamentum -- remark snidely that "Faith is not interested in proper training", but instead explicitly link back to the events of Revelations. Have him remind Buffy that Faith took Mrs Post's betrayal very badly and say that he's deliberately letting her take a break from training for a bit because he thinks it will give her some time to recover emotionally. And, again, Giles wouldn't be right to think this -- Faith would be better off if she was spending time with other people -- but at least we'd get less of an impression that, after Post arrived, Giles decided he was done being Faith's temporary replacement Watcher and that he didn't really care what happened to her afterwards (even after Post was exposed as a fraud).

The key things you need to have happen in Consequences are (a) Faith lies to Giles and says Buffy killed Finch; (b) Giles talks to Buffy privately and they both acknowledge that actually Faith killed Finch; (c) Wesley overhears this conversation and calls in the Council to take Faith back to England. You don't actually need Giles to suggest he was only pretending to be on Faith's side to humor her; you don't need him to be so skeptical when Buffy talks about helping Faith. You could instead have Giles remind Buffy that he himself killed somebody by accident when he was not much older than Faith, and have him say that he pretended to believe her simply because -- knowing what she had to be going through -- he thought it would be better to humor her than provoke a confrontation. Rather than just have him dismiss her as "unstable" and "unwilling to accept responsibility", make the parallels with Giles's own backstory explicit. "In Faith's shoes, I would be -- I was -- unstable. Unpredictable. I needed time to accept responsibility." When Buffy suggests she could talk to her, rather than just sigh and look skeptical, Giles could apolgetically reference his own role in the Cruciamentum a few episodes earlier, and use that as a reason why Faith might not be willing to trust him yet. Instead of just ... nobody suggesting Giles talk to her, even when agreeing that perhaps somebody other than Buffy should.

And really, none of what Buffy and Giles plan at this point really even matters, because all we need to happen next is for Xander to admit that he slept with Faith and that he assumes this means they have "a connection", Buffy and Willow to react to that, and then for Xander to decide to go talk to her alone to prove his point. And then we proceed as before to Faith attacking him, Angel coming to the rescue, and then the rest of the episode as normal (including with Faith going off to tell the Mayor she heard he had a job opening).

In fact arguably I think this version of events actually works better, because after Consequences (and before the reveal in Enemies) the show actually does proceed on the basis that Giles is willing to help Faith and supervize her post-manslaughter evaluation and recovery. It has to, because if he insists she's a lost cause and can't be trusted from the beginning there's no Enemies and no chance for her to betray Buffy and the gang. So there wasn't really any actual story-driven need for Giles to seem so reluctant about trying to help Faith in the first place, was there?

I mean, in the actual show I think nobody knew at the time what Faith's arc was going to be, and that era of the show wasn't quite as dedicated to continuity as it would be later and didn't like throwing in so many references to past episodes. And the show never actually does take Giles's role in the Cruciamentum seriously after Helpless, or have Giles mention Randall's death after season 2 (Ted is the last time he's mentioned, right?). But in hindsight I think something like this -- even if it couldn't have happened -- would better balance the actual story that you want to tell about Faith with the goal of having Giles seem rather more admirable and sympathetic than his treatment of Faith ends up making him look.

[hexedwinchester]

Supernatural S05E14 My Bloody Valentine

Sometimes I forget (just like the later seasons show runners) Supernatural is a horror show and the opening scene of the couple eating each other out (get your minds Outta the gutter) is a testament of that

and they never did another valentine's day episode again? Why?!!

interesting this is a Ben Edlund episode and one of the few Edlund episodes that I liked

tell me it's not just me and the Enochian spells sound really funny

Dean stop staring at that cupid's junk

the boys' faces throughout the cupid interaction are hilarious 😂

Sam's switch to demon!blood Sam when he spots the briefcase demon is so hot

After Death, Famine is the next best horseman in my opinion. His sickly appearance, the creepy mannerisms and the harsh, cold truth that he serves on a silver platter is really good

Dean to Cas: what are you, a ham-burglar? 😂😂

yo Dean girls! How has this dialogue not made it into your top ten list?

Sam looking so ashamed admitting his hunger for demon blood 😭 😔

okaaaayyy.. it may sound weird but there's something incredibly hot about seeing Sam suck on demon blood directly from the source. Supernatural playing the blood kink angle too well

Dean to a distracted Cas: Hey, Happy Meal 😂

Hunger doesn't just come from the body, it comes from the soul. So profound ❤️

I think this is as close to soul touching experience as it gets for Dean

Sammy looking like an alpha lion who just munched on zebras in the wild with blood drying on his snout. Meanwhile Famine: no one lays a finger on this sweet little boy. Famine is a Sam girl just like us

How did I miss this? Sam is an exception for hunger's effect just like he was for the croat's virus

I'm surprised the fandom doesn't talk about how strong Sam really is. He held out for so long before giving into his hunger, resisted Famine's offer in the flesh to take demon blood, then exorcised 5 demons simultaneously and also extracted all the demon souls Famine had consumed. Go Sammy!

i just noticed that anytime Sam is shown using his psychic powers to full ability, they always layer those scenes with his rapid heartbeat. I kinda love that effect

after Sam defeats the horseman, I hate the look that Dean has on his face. As if Sam is some sort of a freak he doesn't know what to do with. I hate that. Sam saved everyone which came at a heavy price of the damage done to his body by the effects of demon blood withdrawal and everyone still looks at him like some threat!

It's so sad isn't it? Sam saved everyone from Famine but still paid the price for it by being locked up in the panic room. Kinda parallel to him saving the world in S5 only to be locked up with Lucifer

Sam, screaming, moaning and suffering alone in the panic room, meanwhile Cas: that's not him in there. Well, fuck you Cas! What do you know about Sam or demon blood detox? Sam isn't possessed so yeah it is in fact him in there suffering, begging to be helped. So you can get the fuck out of here!

You know i thought Sam's cold turkey in When the Levee Breaks was bad but when i blocked out Dean and Cas in this scene for a minute, oh my god, this beats it. It really is painful. You can just hear Sam begging through the detox but the audio leaves so much more for a twisted imagination. It starts with Sam asking for help, calling out to Dean, then he calls for Cas. All the while he is in pain, moaning and screaming. But that's not the worst part. The worst is when Cas says "Sam just needs to get it out of his system" but really, in the background you can hear him sob miserably begging "please, please" to Dean to help him. And what does Dean do? Leaves for "some fresh air". Why don't you choke on "some fresh air" Dean? And while you are at it, please take Cas along because he is useless!

This gif of Jensen from My Bloody Valentine is hot and I couldn't help myself! So enjoy 😊

[colleybri]

Brilliant! Yes, I was brooding about your 2022 post as I have of course been mulling over this for a while, so great to read the update!

First of all, there’s one line which is incorrect in the closed captions… and I watched episode 3 tonight on the steelbook where the sound is crisp and clear, and replayed it too … so I’m pretty sure about this (?). Bix doesn’t say “ I don’t think many people know him” - I believe she says “I don’t think many people know” (no “him”) … ie. that Cassian was born on Kenari, as that’s what they’re talking about . Hugely ironic considering that she told Timm exactly that fact. Oh, Bix. Obviously seemed like a good idea at the time. (it’s one of a few irritating mistakes with the closed captions - there’s another one from Clem in episode 12) Anyway, as you say - it’s a lie either way. With Cassian himself also having apparently used it liberally as a sob-story seduction spiel, more Ferrixians know about Kenari than should . 

I always assumed that Bix never told Luthen anything about her personal relationship with Cassian, and that this explains their conversation in episode 3 AND the fact that Luthen doesn’t anticipate him trying to rescue her in Ep 12 (if he even knows she’s been captured at all). Furthermore, I think a similar reticence explains why Dedra sees Bix as a “ witness” rather than a “ hostage” and she doesn’t anticipate a rescue attempt either. In short, I think Bix has done a fantastic job of lying to Luthen and there’s deception of some kind with Dedra too . With the latter, it might be a case of Dedra’s a lack of empathy or inability to pick up on the signals, or perhaps Bix was literally mentally strong enough not to mention a personal connection. But I think it’s just as likely that Dedra just does not ask that kind of question, even when Bix would be unable to answer with anything but the truth. It’s crucial for the plot that neither character make the connection or Cassian would be caught/killed/prevented from rescuing Bix.

Cassian also heads straight to Bix’s when he comes back to Ferrix in the finale. Cinta must be getting bored watching Maarva’s place - Luthen definitely didn’t know that Cassian would instead be trying to make amends for that total fuck-up of a scene in Ep 7 (and presumably, I don’t know, watch the funeral from Bix’s yard? What would he even be planning to do after that ? Would he join the rebellion at all if he hadn’t seen Luthen?? Anyway – not questions for here! ) So yes, I have of course done a fic which features Luthen’s “Oh shit, I really should have seen all this before now!” epiphany about Bix and Cassian’s closeness, and his own potentially deadly screw up on the back of that … and I’m so intrigued as to what that first conversation on the Fondor must have included - because Bix is presumably now a huge danger to Luthen. She wasn’t before, because she didn’t trace back. But now that she has been tortured so extensively (assuming she recovers) she’s going to know that her sketchy Buyer IS the man the ISB want and will do anything to find. She knows that Luthen is Axis. Yikes. 

What I love about all this is that Luthen, far from being the menacingly omniscient character he first appears, basically got all of his information about Cassian from hacking official documents (prison record, census) and his conversations with Bix. Where, as you know, she’s lied at least some of the time… or perhaps more accurately, left certain information out.

You could say that it was to protect Cassian, but you could also say it was a bit of denial about the strength of her feelings. Or quite a bit of both. Maybe some slight bitterness too, although I think perhaps that’s too strong a word. Despite all the shit they’ve been through romantically, Cass is still a very close childhood friend and the bond of trust and loyalty runs deep.

Edit - just to add that Bix is quite capable of lying to Cassian too about how much she told Luthen. She feels guilty, she feels bad. She’ll want to protect herself. At the very least, she never tells him about her slip with telling Timm.

Poe being left unattended with Andor again.

While in the shower contemplating a plot point for a potential fic I worked out some of my most enduring Andor puzzles which as it turns out are intricately interwoven: i.e. the question of why Bix isn’t a loose end worth a late night visit from Cinta and being disappeared into those retention ponds out in the wasteland, with a side of bafflement at “I don’t think many people know him” when the him is the son of a woman who seems to be something of a pillar of the community, with a side of how did Luthen never stop and consider Cassian might try and break Bix out of the hotel instead of taking it upon himself to thwack stormtroopers with Maarva’s brick when we all know Brasso can do it better.

But I’ve figured it out.

The clues are in the lines:

“Do you trust him?”

and

“I know Bix has her game”

and

“Either you’re an Imperial spy, you’re fronting for the person I really want to speak to…”

Bix has been lying her ass off the entire time about the fact that Cassian is anyone more than some sketchy dude who occasionally turns up who has something to sell (don’t we all?).

Maybe she’s giving the impression of a less personal relationship because Luthen is sketch as fuck and she doesn’t trust him; maybe she was just royally pissed at Cassian the time Luthen turned up and was like “Hey this is as good haul how’d you get it” and she was like “idk just some sketchy asshole who scams his way around Ferrix and once in a while I decide to humor/pity him and buy his shit” and Luthen was like hey sounds like Skeen I could use another one on this suicide mission now that I think about it.

And then Luthen wonders who else knows he’s from Kenari and she’s all “Ahh fuck me well I’m stuck in the lie now it probably doesn’t matter that Kenari is the community bicycle’s weirdly depressing but weirdly effective pity pickup line” so “Um well not many people know him” because he’s a sketchy asshole who scams his way around Ferrix and nothing else no sir.

And at the end of the day, the real trouble with Bix being a loose end is from a direction Luthen never seems to even see coming: tying the timing of Cassian’s disappearance and return to Aldhani.

Because even if Cassian popped back home for a spell, why the fuck would he drop in on the woman who sometimes humors/pities him and buys the shit he steals?

And why the fuck would that sketchy asshole risk taking on another garrison to sneak her out when he could be bashing stormtroopers heads in with his dead mother’s bricked ashes?

Unfortunately, I have now entirely forgotten whatever plot point I was on the verge of cracking.

[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.

[transmascutena]

the poor little meow meow-ifictation of saionji in this fandom has got to stop i can't take it any more

[hermitcraftx]

The problem with a lot of traffic life interpretations in my opinion is they don't understand character foils or don't employ them in their writing. Grian-Martyn and Scar-Ren are genuinely pretty good character foils for a series that is not really scripted or planned out like a book is. I could go on and on about how they parallel each other and the similarities between them. Even the smaller details between the four usually match up

leaving the rant in the tags so I don't have a huge block of text again ueueue

[kissingarthurclaus]

More official/proper ref of my Metalocalypse s/i 💖🫶💖🫶💖 I needed another milf for the books, I'm obsessed with it guys!

Like I said before she's the manager for @hotrodharts and @1980ssunflower and does a kickass job of it! She's meant to be something of a parallel to Charles whom she has THICK sexual tension with and possibly a mysterious past history with? :0 oooooo~ either way she's very fond of the boys, especially Toki, and in my dreams they see the both of them as parental figures 😊

EDIT: original meme by @tarraerae on Twitter 🫶

Flat colors!

Taglist ♡: @crushes-georg @changeling-selfship @me-myself-and-my-fos @tiny-cloud-of-flowers @sunstar-of-the-north @dearly-beeloved @adoredbyalatus @squips-ship @cherry-bomb-ships

[ithacanradio]

"do you miss kissing?" is a bonkers line to say to your newly acquired ghost friend as you're dying of hypothermia ily charles rowland

[laniidae-passerine]

catch me laughing in the club awkwardly because this season has a 19 year old blonde female companion from London, a space travelling left of law brunette queer boy who flirts heavily with the doctor, absolutely zero writers of colour and no mention of sensitivity readers…….and next season the new companion is a woman of colour. uh oh!

[dent-de-leon]

tiny little widomauk moment I do so love and want to see animated--when Caleb asks Molly if his fortunes are real, and when Beau and Jester both try to interject with their very strong feelings on the matter, Caleb just says, "I am asking Mollymauk--"

[rist-ix]

https://www.tumblr.com/rist-ix/749015401700229120 not you reblogging this when you ship bloom with the man who murdered her family 😭

Bloom's into ppl who slay! Hope this helps :3

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

I'm starting Mission to Zyxx Season 5 now, and I have feelings about that.

First, it generally scares me when people hype anything up at all because there is no guarantee that anyone values the exact same thing I do to the same degree. Even if I trust the creators of a thing to value something and try to do right by it, that doesn't always necessarily mean it will be successful, especially if that involves doing something wildly different than what made it good in the first place (I have been burned this way before). I guess I'm just hoping they continue the format of goofy improv shenanigans for the majority of it with something more planned and emotional in the finale if they want, like they've been doing all along. I'd think they would, and I've heard nothing bad about the ending, but I guess it still makes me nervous because I'm so close to the end and I want it so badly to stick the landing. I'm setting my expectations on the floor so I can be surprised instead of disappointed, but honestly, I don't need it to be better, I just need it to be on par with the rest.

Second, and more briefly, I'm happy it's (hopefully) ending before it has a chance to decline. I am so on board with that philosophy. But on the other hand, finishing a thing that I really, really like and knowing there's not another one out there gives me a special kind of heartache. Like, I know there will be other good media, and stuff that's good and unique in other ways, but I know for a fact that there are no other podcasts out there that have the same mix of a balance of off-the-wall improv and structured narrative, quality comedy, fantastical sci-fi setting and loveable characters, and high quality production. There are other things out there with many of those qualities, but nothing that checks every one of those boxes. It's a lightning-in-a-bottle thing that very much feels like the right people had to be in the right place at the right time to do it. Attempts to do it again would feel hollow because it had to be born out of necessity and passion and the talents of the people involved, so if you switch out the people it loses the reasons it's great, and if the same people tried to do it again it'd feel tired. That makes me so, so grateful it exists, but also so, so sad that it doesn't, and I'm 80% of the way done. When it's over, it's over.

Anyway. Now that that's all out there, I'm just gonna finish listening and have fun. Wish me luck.

[cinammonelles]

On a scale of 1-10 how bad an idea is it to (re)watch the only childhood anime that made me bawl my eyes out within 2 episodes