#please baby there’s still time

[moonamite]

Ohh my most favorite boy please wear your glasses (-> Does not wear her glasses)

Uh ignore the manifesto in tags-

[letmetellyouaboutmyfeels]

I am incredibly serious right now when I beg you all, please, and if you have Twitter or Tiktok or whatever to please spread the word: click on an author's profile on Ao3.

You want to know if an author has written more? Want to know if they're still writing? Want to see more from them? Want to know if they've written a trope or kink or sex scenario you enjoy?

Click on their name. And look at their profile.

I cannot tell you how many times in the last six months someone has read a new or newer fic of mine and said they (a new reader who has read nothing else I've done) "can't wait to see what you do next!" I've written 50+ fics and over a million words already.

"I don't know if you're still writing..." click on my profile. I am. I literally wrote a 128k+ fic for that ship last month.

"Would you ever do X?" "Please do Y!" I already did. Click on my name and look at my works.

Archive of our Own is a library. It's an archive. Not social media. It is your responsibility to fight back against the laziness that corporate algorithms have trained into you.

Click my author name. Just click it. Just click it.

Before you demand more, or ask if a writer will do XYZ, or wonder if the author still writing, or anything - click on their profile. Click on the author's profile.

I'm not trying to be mean or condescending or anything like that. I'm just exhausted. It's disheartening and frustrating to repeat myself ad nauseam, because someone couldn't take thirty seconds to do the tiniest bit of work to see if I've written lately, if I've written more for their ship, or scan my works to see if I've written what they're asking for. Please. Please. I'm begging.

Click the author's name, and explore before you ask.

[twptwp]

A major change to the past

[courfee]

“Regulus would be proud of us,” James whispered quietly to no one in particular, still gripping onto the painting like a life raft. 

— Tender Curiosities, Baby!  @otrtbs

[katanosabedibujar]

The exes!1!1!

This took me two sleepless nights... please spread prohibitedwish 😭

[scatterbrainedbot]

Hello :D

You're so cool

Anyway have you thought that in your rat sons au Splinter might outlive the boys?

You're very cool :D love your stuff dude

(tw for some blood, light gore, implied overdose (kinda??))

hi copper!!! this is a fantastic question!

so obviously typical irl rats have far shorter lifespans than the average irl tortoise. according to google (yes, be awed by my spectacularly in-depth wealth of research) the average pet rat lives between 2-4 years ish, and the oldest on record lived to be about 7. meanwhile, an African spurred tortoise (Splinter's species) averages more around a 50ish year lifespan in captivity, tho is suspected to possibly exceed 75 or more in the wild.

Now, the mutation does give us a lot of wiggle room for playing with these numbers. For the rat sons boys, id say their natural lifespan probably clocks in at about 45-55 years old? definitely not old by human standards, but not young young either. (though, its also important to note that the boys were exposed to the mutagen just days after being born.)

For Splinter, meanwhile, aging is slightly more complicated. He lived the vast majority of his life as a regular normal African spurred tortoise (well, non-mutated at least. there were perhaps some shenanigans of a more mystical variety going on before he was mutated, but thats a separate matter) He was about 70ish i think? when the boys were born and they were all exposed to the mutagen. so he is already distinctly an old man turtle papa. id guess he'd probably still have another eh lets say 25-30 years after his mutation. he could probably push it a little farther even with some mystic nonsense, but when push comes to shove id say his 'natural' post-mutation lifespan would put his death like a solid decade or two before his sons.

of course, the tricky part of the matter is that theres no way for Splinter to know any of this. theres no way for him to know how the mutation affected them all, or if it even affected them all in the same way. especially since the boys dont show many physical signs of mutation for the first few years, and just kinda look like normal rats, (albeit with a more human sort of intelligence) — what sort of health standard do you hold them to? what if they simply dont show external signs of sickness or old age anymore? how do you actually know if something is wrong?

for a while there Splinter is very worried that one of his babies will just essentially reach the end of their normal rat lifespan, fall and not get up again.

so mostly, he just tries to live in the moment, enjoying whatever time he does have with his little ones, taking each day as a gift <3

still,

that fear

never

really

goes

away.....

[thirdeyeblue]

“Nine would have treated Martha better than Ten did”

I need to talk about this argument that never seems to stop circulating.

Note: Not a venomous/anti post. There’s more than enough of that across fandom spaces as is, and this is supposed to be a place for ✨sweet, blissful escapism✨

When making this argument, people seem to envision a scenario in which Nine never met Rose.

While I can appreciate a good hypothetical, recognizing Rose's significance to the Doctor (Nine and Ten) is essential to understanding why things with Martha played out the way they did in the first place.

In the third series, the Doctor is grieving. This grief is deliberately threaded into nearly every script, whether spoken aloud or not (and these are just a few examples):

He's burning in Rose’s wake the entire time Martha travels with him, which is why it’s so frequently called upon: It’s 100% deliberate in framing his grief. He grieved as Nine too, of course— having been fresh on the heels of the Time War — but then he met Rose, which changed everything.

Back then, he was still a rude, traumatized pain in the ass, but we watch Rose soften more of those jagged edges with every episode as they grow closer; as he lets his guard down and forms a deep connection with her.

He falls in love (against his better judgment) and it's game over.

And yes: provided S1E1 had been titled 'Martha', one can realistically assume things might have unfolded similarly to how they did with Rose. However, it wouldn’t have been that way just because the Doctor was Nine and “Nine was different” — it would be because he wasn’t already in love with someone else. The same can't be said for the start of S3.

Think of it like this: if Rose AND Martha had been in that cellar — if Nine had taken both of them along with him in S1 — we’d eventually be looking at the most melodramatic love triangle ever, what with him living in close quarters with two brilliant, gorgeous, compassionate young women... But Doctor Who is plenty “soap opera” as is with just one woman in the TARDIS.

(I certainly wouldn’t object to reading that fic, though)

Now, regarding the unrequited elephant in the room…

His inability to be romantic with Martha isn’t because he thinks her lesser, nor is it for lack of compatibility. It isn't because Rose is any better than her. It certainly isn’t just because he’s Ten.

It’s really only for one reason, which can't be denied — and now I’m a broken record:

He is still in love with Rose.

(cut from a tenrosedaily gif)

Nine is Ten, and Ten is only such a mess in S3 because he’s just lost the love of his life. Martha merely got caught in the crosshairs of a volatile Time Lord in mourning, and yes — it sucks. Absolutely.

But it also feels dismissive to chalk Ten and Martha’s relationship up to little more than some sort of mindless dance of pining, jealousy, and toxicity.

Ten trusted Martha with his life over and over again — and hers, with him. He constantly praised her brilliance, happily carting her around time and space with no intention of letting her go. In the BBC’s extended universe of novels/comics/cartoons/etc, there’s so much depth to their relationship: love and trust and trauma and sacrifice. They had their own special bond as mates, their own complexities — so it’s a bummer that it's forever overshadowed by the other things.

I’m not denying that there was a lot of stuff that sucked/was for sure toxic about Ten's S3 behavior, but so many of the things I've seen him catching flak for can be directly attributed to being A Clueless Fucking Alien Idiot (not a trait that’s unique to Ten) — as well as his flat-out obliviousness to Martha’s feelings.

So yes, I agree: if Rose never existed, he would have treated Martha differently as Nine. He also would have treated her differently as Ten. Certainly.

But Rose did exist, and when discussing canon, it matters.

“He tells me that he absolutely, 100% loves Rose... He tells me how my daughter; my wonderful, beautiful, clever little girl saved him from himself before… And he says that’s all because of me! I made her into the Rose Tyler that saved him.”

-Jackie Tyler, Flight Into Hull!

Martha got the short end of the stick in S3. She came round at the wrong place and time, but that doesn't mean it was all bad. It doesn't mean the Doctor didn’t adore her. It certainly doesn't mean the time they spent together was wasted or worthless. They were brilliant!

Sure, he could be a twat, but let it be known that he was a twat with Rose as well, both as Nine and Ten. I’m sure Tentoo can be plenty infuriating, too. So while I'll defend Ten (and Tentoo) into the ground forever and ever and ever, I'll concede that he's fucked up.

The Doctor is a certified Pain In The Ass. It’s one of the things I love so much about this character — dynamics.

But never forget that Martha was goddamn tough as nails and overcame every bit of it. She moved on with her life, and the Doctor moved on with his. One can only pray that, when they inevitably drag her back onto the show (which feels inevitable if I'm honest), we see at once that she's been living her best life for all these years.

[triglycercule]

sleep deprived dust can't recognize what's dream and what's real when he goes in and out of consciousness so i think dust is allowed to be incredibly reckless when he's awake but thinks he's in a dream. he will kill whoever passes by him (or attempt to. for him it's an instict to shoot bones anyways.) he will drink 4 bottles of alcohol just because he thinks its just a lucid dream. have incredibly loud conversations with phantom paps because he's asleep so nobody will hear him talk. or just have loud ass breakdowns because again he thinks he's asleep!!! nobody's gonna know what he gets up to in his dreams. and until someone (probably phantom paps) tells him that he's not asleep and this is reality he won't realize until he's done something really reckless

horror is seconds away from exploding dust's skull open with his magic while dust is trying to strangle him and FINALLY phantom paps tells him he's awake and dust snaps out of it. killer is walking around the house with bones sticking out of him like pins on a sewing pattern (casually too. another day in the life for him) and he just asks dust what that was about. dust just gets off of horror and shrugs his shoulders with an idk. and then walks away. this is the 6th time its happened this month

[a-most-beloved-fool]

by the way, what the fuck is up with DS9 ep The Begotten? The one with the changeling baby and Dr. Mora. Because, to me, it felt like the intended 'moral' of the episode was, "actually you should forgive your abusers if they're your parental figure because actually they just wanted what was best for you and therefore shouldn't be held responsible for Literally Torturing You when you were too young to know anything. And besides, how can you not forgive them when they're so sad about you being no-contact with them? Can't you see that they love you?? Aren't you being cruel for refusing to forgive them for their mistakes?"

Also, this all happened when our first introduction to Dr. Mora involved Odo literally dissociating and becoming violent because he was caused So Much Distress by the presence of the man who tortured him (which they also handled pretty poorly, imo). And then they want you to forgive him, and Odo to forgive him?

Excuse me??? That's fucked up??? I'm not crazy for reading it that way, am I?? Other people see this too??

Like, Mora abused Odo. Full stop. It wasn't even corporal punishment - which, may I remind you, unequivocally does not help kids, there have been STUDIES - it was. fuckin. tossing Odo into a Pain Machine in order to make him angry enough to leave or lash out. When Odo was too young and gooey to know or understand why he was in pain, just that he was. And then used him as entertainment for the Cardassian soldiers.

This is Not forgiveness territory. In no way does it make sense for Odo to forgive that man, and if he does, it should be framed as a horror story. It is a horror story.

They seem to paint the episode as some sort of feel-good flick?? The conclusion appears to be a ✧compromise✧ between Odo's and Mora's respective parenting philosophies, where Mora is like, 'I see, being Nice to children does help them, when used alongside Physical Pain', and Odo is like, 'I now forgive you for causing me Physical Pain when I was naught but goo because I, too, am causing pain to this. literal infant goo child. and I find it satisfying, or something. because abuse is fun i guess when it causes the goo to react'.

So, you're telling me that the resolution to this abusive parental relationship. Is by illustrating for us the cycle of abuse. And this is a good thing? Is that what I'm getting here?

What the fuck? No, really, what the FUCK. My first watch I spent the whole episode literally gritting my teeth I was so mad. There is not a single character who engenders more violent rage in me than Dr. Mora, entirely because of how DS9 handled that episode. Like holy hell. What the fuck.

[chernychnyi]

good news are we're not giving the youngest kitten away! he stays. bad news are everything else.

[turrondeluxe]

How old do you think the turtle tots are in the comics/art you've shown? (like, roughly, how it's their development)

will probably be a bit long because of pics so!

^ a few weeks after being mutated (basically still newborns, very small)

^ Around 6-7 months! Can be seen crawling around the house

^ Roughly around 8 months old (already starting to string together syllables)

^ Around 3 years old! (Yi is VERY smart for her age)

^ Around 4 years old!

^ extra silly fun fact! they started purring being only a few days old!

[potatobugz]

buddy is surrounded by horrible horrible adults like at all times and it is deeply stressing to me. not to baby him, i do think he is easily mislead but he is not stupid. but also like. can he be given a moment to breathe actually. can he not be manipulated for one second. please put him in a normal social situation with regular teenagers his age please im begging you

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s3 episode 23 thoughts

the previous episode was SO good. but, it is true, i was distracted by the dog. it was SUCH!! a perfect episode. EXCEPT for that one thing. so i hope that today, i can face this episode with a clear head, free of judgement based on the fate of little dogs.

well, boy, i did face this episode with a clear mind, and wow. wowza. another AMAZING ep... and i will keep the angst from this episode in my heart forever and bottle it and take a nice long swig when i need my msr feels, which is basically always. wow. an exclamation point doesn't even feel APPROPRIATE, it just needs to hang in the air for a bit. (wiping tears away) wow....

let us go back to yesterday's notes, which shall commence below:

reading the episode description... so this one features murders linked to a device that alters television signals… huh. man, too many people i know don’t even have cable anymore. this simply would not work in the modern era. imagine if hulu or tubi or something made you kill people though lmao that would be silly to imagine.

we open with a guy digging a hole in the woods. always a promising start. seems he’s in an orchard of some sort? and the music is very very creepy. 

okay, so just as you suspect, this dude is burying a dead guy. sometimes your gut instinct is correct and tropes are not meant to be subverted. but the dude who is burying him says “your killing days are OVER” so is this actually a justice arc??? hmm. it is not clear. man, it would be hard to dig a hole like that.

shovel murder man is at home washing the blood off. but then someone else approaches him and he kills THAT GUY TOO WITH THE SHOVEL?? huh? what is going on. 

police at da guy’s house. everyone has the same face as the dude he just killed??? so they tase him. and then the faces go back to their REAL faces. now what is going on here!!!!!!!!!!

as the real faces return, the man realizes he killed someone named sarah!!! and he seems sooo upset by the fact that he killed sarah!!!! poor sarah :(

so does the tv make you see other people’s faces on the bodies of random people….? omg that’s insidious...

we now shift to a different scene, one where mulder is sitting in his car at 2 am. doing what???? waiting for some guy!!! he was waiting TWO HOURS for this guy!!! who is this guy...? it's giving blind date/drug deal.

the man who enters his car gives him a newspaper clipping about the murders we just saw. and mulder came here after getting AN ANONYMOUS EMAIL in the middle of the night??? this is crazy because literally so many people want him dead and this would have been a very easy way to accomplish that goal. wow. seriously, no self-preservation instincts on this guy.

mystery man says he has no obligation to explain what is going on, but if mulder walks away from it, more people will die. so no pressure!! xx

cutscene to a hospital, where mulder is watching our murderer through glass, while scully comes in saying that she is sorry she is late, but “the beltway was a parking lot”. beltway refers to interstate 495! thank you wikipedia i love your services!

murderer is named joseph. and he claims to have been killing the same guy over and over again, and that he wouldn’t die. which seems pretty awful.

OH! and the week before, in the same town, a babysitter attacked the kids she was watching because she thought they were WOLVES??? omg that is horrific??

they’re talking to the physician, dr. stroman, who says perhaps this was provoked by amphetamine abuse. then joseph starts SCREAMING. he sees a guy on the TV- miriskovic- sorry y’all idk my post-soviet history 💔 (update: i googled it, i don't even think that guy was real because all the results are links to wikis on this specific episode... reveals how little i truly know)

anyway, seeing that guy's face on the TV seems to have triggered the screaming situation. does he have trauma from the country he used to live in and seeing references to it makes these things happen…? that would be a wild episode. put me in the writer's room and let me cook.

scully quickly picks up on the fact that this case is Weird, and mulder admits it came from some random guy, which makes her suspicious. but they go to the crime scene, and, like always, he lifts the crime scene tape up over her head, and it’s very charming despite the lack of sensibility in going down this whole rabbit hole.

the minute they get in, they hear screaming and a gunshot! but it’s just some kids watching TV??? eating popcorn in a crime scene??? LMAO WHAT?

mulder kicks them out and scruffs one of the boy’s heads... ohhhh he needs to be a father so bad huh... like i have been saying this since s1 he just has a Need to tease and spoil children. well, we can unpack that another time. there's crime afoot.

so he watches the tv and it starts to go all static-y because a guy outside is fixing the wires. scully finds a TON of tapes and they’re just shelves and shelves of cable TV shows!!!

“there must be hundreds of videos here”, she says, to which he asks “anything good?” <- idk why this made me giggle. it sounded like he was gonna put one in and chill for a bit lmao

scully starts to wonder if seeing the cable news, like joseph had recorded, was what triggered his episode back at the hospital. ooooh! a theory!!! 

cut to mulder watching a tape in the bed of his motel, making an absolute pile of sunflower seeds- this dude is gonna attract mice or something someday omfg- and also he has a cola which is peak american culture. LMAOOOO he has a HUGE pile of tapes on the floor i’m crying... my type A self could NOT deal with him!

he says he watched 36 hours of bernard shaw and bobbi batista and is now also ready to kill someone as scully welcomes him into her room, which also has cola but is much more nicely organized! she found something weird on the tapes from late april, each a night when he committed a murder 

AND WHY DID MULDER GET ALL COZIED UP ON HER COUCH?????? hooooooly fuck i have never seen such a baby girl of a man

OMFG??? all the reports from the murder nights feature that miriskovic guy!!!

so did seeing violence make him violent? mulder says no, and that theory assumes that “americans are just empty vessels, ready to be filled with any idea or image that’s fed to them like a bunch of pavlov dogs, and go out and act on it” oh if only this man could see the news lately……… insert ben affleck smoking a cigarette image here to describe the things we see in our current age. mulder you would not believe.

he’s really bashing her theory, but she’s saying maybe he was high and seeing these things sent him on a spiral- makes sense to me

he is leaving to go get some sleep (after admitting he can’t explain what is going on!!! which always endears me) but scully says she is going to watch the rest of the tapes… a herculean task for our girl

middle of the night and it’s still tape time for scully, but she hears the phone ringing. she hears mulder having a conversation. and he says “no, she doesn’t” which is weird… that is suspicious… what doesn't she...

scully chews her ice which is so funny because me too sometimes. she has chewed all of her ice and must fetch more. and get a cola ofc!!! nothing more american than a cold soda iktr!

but she sees mulder in his car??? lighting up with cig man???? HUH??? and handing over a tape? omfg this is crazy. i assume she is hallucinating though, because no way….

cutscene to a lady named helene watching “the price is nice” (lmaooo) and washing some dishes. but the soap in the dishes starts to look funny- and everything is glitching around her!!! she sees a man outside in a hammock… kissing a woman!!! and oh, she is furious!! she gets her SHOTGUN?? this has escalated very fast. and we hear some shooting!!!

scully is still very visibly disturbed. mulder is reporting the murder, but she seems like a shell of herself. she checks the ash tray in the car, and there is no ash… she notices the car has been moved and he says he got a paper…. why do you ask…. “nothing. it’s nothing” OHHH THIS IS JUICY

so the crime scene has a very bloody hammock. and a dead man, who the wife claims he saw in the hammock with a blonde. but the only other creature at the scene was a dog!!!

OH!!! the hammock man wasn’t even helene's HUSBAND??? this really is LAYERED!! she killed the NEIGHBOR thinking it was her husband, who wasn’t even in town!!!!!! how do you mess this up so badly?

despite the fact that scully is clearly suspicious of mulder, she is sharing the umbrella with him in their usual fashion, and the sense of tension this produces is delicious 

they go to investigate the crime scene and mulder finds some sort of bike and immediately climbs upon it while proclaiming that television does NOT cause violence (LMAOOO HE IS SO WEIRD i need him.) 

they find a bunch more tapes and AGAIN the same guy is messing with the cables outside while they're investigating!!!! mulder is in chase mode!!!! but he cannot chase this dude in the van!!! no man, even a track star such as him, can outrun a van carrying secrets!

scully is trying to fast forward the TV and she looks out to see mulder climbing the pole…. average day for a man like him. he finds a weird cable scrambler in there. she wants to send it to the crime lab, but he says he’ll do the analysis, and she should go interview helene the murderer. OH... she is so suspicious, she just wants to go home…. scully :((( mulder is deeply confused as to why she is being so weird 

so he takes the thingy to the lone gunmen, who say it looks like it’s used for blocking premium cable channels, which i didn’t even know was a thing, you learn so much with this show. but it doesn’t block anything!!! HOWEVER, if you compare a tv with the machine and one without it, the one with the machine is slightly different. hmm...

“you know how television works?” “yeah, you click it on, you have a picture” <- the man who said that line went to oxford btw

it seems that this cable blocker thingy is adding some sort of frequency, but they can’t tell what… hmm.

mulder on the road. scully calls and only asks “where are you” in this very flat and creepy tone and OH i’m scared!!!!

he tries to explain that there is some sort of signal being introduced to the tv- he even says she might be right about the tv inducing violence theory! but she isn’t answering… she hears a clicking, like they're being listened to, and she says he never went to the detective…. let’s wait and talk on a landline, he says.

despite being in his car many miles away, he can tell that there is something very wrong with scully. he says don’t go anywhere, he’ll be right there, and redials after she hangs up. it's very much echoing when she said something similar to him in his crazed gargoyle quest.

but she is so scared, she rips the phone out of the wall and takes it apart!!!! and then the lamp too, and the table. she is checking everything for any sort of bugs!

holy hell, we have never seen her like this before... but i’m actually gagged because she is usually relatively stoic and seeing her paranoid is so different, but it also feels very natural??? she is acting her ass off here as she rips up everything in this motel room. big shoutout to GA, i love your work.

and the static that set in helene's vision earlier is setting in hers now!!! she hears a car pull up and drops to the floor…. she hears a man say “she’s in here” and a pounding on the door. 

OMFG someone tries to open the door and she FIRES 4 SHOTS RIGHT AWAY??? but it’s mulder!!!!

(author's note: i was thinking after i finished the episode, and we know that she is a good shot- remember how she hit just the right angle to knock mulder out but not kill him at the end of s2? so she is either SO out of it that she cannot even aim straight, or there is a tiny tiny tiny part of her that still thinks that mulder isn't worth killing. please mull over which option brings you greater angst)

he’s coming in with his gun and his hair is blowing in the wind and he can’t FIND HER!!!!! it was really very dramatic. hair blowing in the wind has this effect.

cutscene to scully’s mom’s house, and we see a picture of young scully on the table... AWW stop she’s so cuuuute and one of missy as well 😭😭😭

OH! it’s mulder on the phone calling mrs. scully in the middle of the night!!! NOOOO he has to tell her that he doesn’t know where she is :( NOOOO poor mrs. scully has gone through too much. he feels SO bad breaking this news, that he even apologizes for hanging up right away, something he never ever does. he must be in deeeep distress to do such a thing.

and why does he hang up?? because SKINNER IS HERE!!! he’s leading a manhunt for scully, and mulder is saying she shouldn’t be hunted like a convict… but skinner says dude SHE FIRED FOUR ROUNDS AT YOU AND SOME RANDOM GUY last night!!!!

despite this, mulder insists that he can get her to listen to him if they just keep her safe; she’s suffering from some sort of paranoid psychosis. skinner is being quite patient as he tries to explain that the video tapes made her do it. skinner says well... you better find her before these guys do.

GASP!!! he’s putting up the x on his window! and doing that thing where he bounces his basketball because he cannot relax!!! stop i'm emotional!!!!!

the lone gunmen call to say they found something on the tape…. and it induces electrical activity…. MIND CONTROL???

but why wasn’t he effected?

! MULDER LORE REVEAL ! HE’S RED-GREEN COLORBLIND???? THIS IS AN INSANE LORE DROP TO GIVE NEARLY 4 SEASONS IN??????

wait, is this just for plot purposes, or is DD actually colorblind and they decided to roll with it? because now i’m gonna be looking at all the red-ish things we see on screen (like his tie he is grabbing to emphasize his point) and wonder, can he see that? how does this impact his tie selection process....

okay that really threw me off guard. man, i was getting to think we'd never get another lore reveal, which is a shame because i quite like formatting those facts in that way. good to know we could get more at anytime!

he gets a phone call from maryland state police. the lone gunmen ask if she’s okay and he says no, he has to go and ID the body. WHAT!!!! WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!! he is trying to keep composed. holy fuck………..

(heavy breathing as i grab your shoulder and squeeze) hey man. hey. he was trying so hard to be strong.

so he pulls up to the morgue and stops before he gets out of the car, and holds his head above the wheel STOP I’LL CRY???? i’ll cry… what are they putting him through??? losing her again……..

(i mean i have SEEN gifs of scully in seasons past this one, so i know she's gonna pull through, but HE doesn't know that, and must be reliving the worst days of his life AGAIN, and aughhhhh!)

but the mystery guy from the start of the episode that give him the info on the muders pulls up and says get in right now!!!!!! mulder is furious, he says he’s busy. in a shocking display of insensitivity, mystery man says he does not give a fuck. mulder is yelling that this is all his fault. mystery man says “they” are destroying the evidence, and they’ll finish it by tomorrow if he keeps searching for her, but he kicks the door shut and ignores him.

(omg…. he loves her enough to break him out of his bloodhound mode… the dogged ahab-like quest for answers and revenge… i’m getting flashbacks to his conversation with missy in one breath…….. realizing he needs to put the ones he loves before his need for revenge sometimes..... wow)

so he walks into the morgue, and the dude in there says they found a body nude and shot in the forehead.

he closes his eyes to try and brace himself before taking a peek, to prepare to see her lifeless, probably reliving those many hours by her bedside when she was in the hospital, trying to imagine her shot in the forehead, the scully he knows and loves with her dry humor and her teasing smile and caffeine dependency, the her that is so full of life, lifeless…

but it isn’t her. PHEW!

despite this being good news that he has to share- she's not dead! her mother isn’t answering her phone…. so he goes to her house. and i'm thinking, oh my gosh, did she do something rash in her grief?

but mrs. scully answers the door and claims dana isn’t here. he bursts in and says he needs to see her right now. omg, he saw right through her lies.

(also, it always feels weird to refer to her as dana, but moving on)

NO!!!! she has him at gunpoint and says he’s here to kill him!!! poor guy looks so flabbergasted… and her mom is trying to get her to please put down the gun, and he’s trying to explain what is going on!!! he is so singularly locked into her…. 

“he’s lied to me from the beginning. he’s never trusted me” “scully, you are the only one i trust” AUGHHHHH (rips my clothes off of my body in biblical levels of grief) 

“you’re one of the people who abducted me” AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH (rips off not only my clothing but also my hair as i experience emotions that rival what job from the bible went through)

she’s CRYING, and saying he killed her sister while her mom gets between him and the gun… and she’s saying she knows she’s safe here, that’s why she came here, and to put the gun down. and she falls into her mother’s arms sobbing. 

WHAAAAAAAAT. and he had to watch all that… oh my scully oh my goodness my poor scully…

timeskip a little bit. he shows up to the hospital where scully is with her mother, and mockingly puts his hands up in surrender, because he is so STUPID and he always has to make a joke, and i love him so terribly, so so so terribly, because he loves HER.

she's laying in the bed, and he shuts off the tv and asks how she’s feeling. she says she is ASHAMED- as if being a victim of mind control was a personal failing. scully, i want to yell, you have NO REASON to be ashamed, let me take all the shame from you and carry it elsewhere. she says it was like the world was turned upside down.

and he makes ANOTHER stupid joke about the world being out to get him, and now she knows how he feels-

before leaning in and explaining how joseph, the first murderer on this case, became convinced he was killing the bosnian war criminal who people called “the modern hitler”, which was especially important to him because both of his parents survived the holocaust. hence his line about the killing days being over!!!

and helene was scared her husband would cheat on her. so somehow the TV signal turned their worst fears into a living nightmare. 

OHHHH HER WORST NIGHTMARE IS HIM BETRAYING HER. HIM BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR HER GOING MISSING AND LOSING HER AUTONOMY AND MEMORIES... wails into my shirt. 

(this reminds me of that episode in s2- irresistible- when we learn her biggest fear is that humans are capable of terrible horrific things and grasping to trust despite that knowledge. we’re seeing that again right here. how uncertainty seeps in)

THEY CALL HIM THE CANCER MAN!!! wow very official canon recognition of the name (yeah it’s happened before but it happened again so that is cool) anyway she says she saw him giving cancer man the tapes and reporting.

he says that maybe cancer man was behind this, but then he whispers “why don’t you try and get some rest?�� and there is something in me that melts so entirely as he leaves her to sleep.

(perhaps it is the fact that hurt/comfort and whump are my favorite tropes. because is there anything more intimate than letting someone see you at your most vulnerable, and them choosing to love you at it? is there any feeling more cutting than seeing your loved one suffer and knowing you’d stop the world for an instant of their relief? the terrible desperation of both parties, the wordless connection upon recovery, someone being the last thing you see before everything fades to black and then the first person you see when you return... yeah. it’s cathartic. but also it makes me want to yell and cry. pls give me all the hurt/comfort content)

so the doctor found high serotonin levels in her that maybe can be associated with mania, but now they’re back to normal. he asks if someone in her situation would be diagnosed with amphetamine abuse, and she says no. then he quickly calls the hospital where joseph is staying… what is he cooking in there…

he wants to talk to joseph's doctor, dr. stroman, who left behind only a number from the motel…. and he had JUST checked out…. so he’s going through his stuff. and asking about his calls. and he DOES find a cigarette in his room but a lot of people smoke so… try not to jump to conclusions juni… but the cigarettes mean one thing in this show!!! was this innocent-looking doctor behind such a cruel experiment?!

he calls and has the last number the doctor called get checked from the folks at the lab… so he goes to visit the place of residence and creepy music is playing. the dude from the cable company we saw before rolls up!!! he walks right inside the house, so mulder peeks inside. it seems the people in the house set up a trap of some sort, as they are talking about “him” showing up at 7.

he bursts in after hearing gunshots and both of the men in there are dead!!! shot in the head!!!!

who is there... but X???? X says he HAD to kill those men- he just hoped mulder would get them first. and oh, mulder is YELLING AT X!!! he is letting him HAVE IT!!! he says he is a coward, he was too scared to unveil the situation with the mind control TV murders himself….. he says X NEVER risks his own life, but he sure does make him risk mulder and scully’s.

OH! he is holding X at gunpoint. all X is saying is that he failed, and that mulder needs him. so he walks out, confident he won't pull the trigger. and he doesn't. 

WHAT! i need to kind of just let that sit for a second. i need to figure out this X fellow, but i get the sense i never will…. he failed… because he chose to try and save scully…….

cutscene to skinner’s office, where mulder is giving him a report. and scully walks in and says that dr. stroman DIED IN 1978!!! when skinner asks about the killer, mulder jumps in and says he remains unknown… oh, skinner is def gonna pick up on that….

so now we see X in a random back alley. getting into a car…. WITH CANCER MAN?????? X REPORTS TO CANCER MAN??? he asks if he has completed his work, and X reports that he has cleaned out all the personnel, everything is removed, but mulder still has a device. and mulder’s source has been eliminated. but the source’s source remains unknown. oh, he’s def lying through his teeth.

OOOOOOH this episode was SO good.

oh man, my brain is racing in a bunch of different directions. scully breaking down and sobbing into her mother’s arms…. scully convinced that mulder is a traitor, that he did those terrible things to her…. mulder so scared that she was gone, bouncing his basketball, getting a call from the police department that he had to go identify her… choosing her, even in what he thought was death, over following the Truth… the sick and twisted relationship he has with X, and X with Cancer Man, and Cancer Man with the world… it’s making me think of how mulder broke into his house that one time, was going to kill him over what he did to scully, and cancer man had the nerve to say he liked mulder… OOOH my brain is just racing racing racing. 

poor scully… how scared she was, how horrified afterward… 

other things that are on my mind, in no particular order: the bond between scully and her mother; mulder being all babygirl on that couch; mulder hopping on that bicycle and picking up some random doll from the murder victim's house; how haunting scully's voice was when she asked him over the phone where he was; their cola drinking; mrs. scully trusting mulder no matter what; how he tried to cover the grief in his voice when he told the lone gunmen he had to go identify her body; how he kicked the door shut of the mystery man, damning the investigation to pay his respects; how his head hovered above the wheel of the car before he got out to do that; how X uses and uses him to no clear end, and what is HE doing reporting to cig man, and what was that random doctor doing conducted fucked up experiments on random people; and scully's miraculously bad aim; mulder's conviction he could talk sense into her (spoiler: he could not); her shame at being convinced he had been the one who abducted her; how terrifying that must have been; and his stupid jokes when he walked into her hospital room, with the sincerity he tries so hard to outrun and outfox breaking through in his whispered why don't you get some rest?

so needless to say, i see why this one is a fan-favorite. this is certainly one i will be revisiting in the future when i need something strong. i have a million things to think over that will stick with me Forever, and i am in no rush to move on from this. in fact, i took these notes yesterday, but in the process of editing them tonight, i have decided i am not ready for the season finale and will have to save it for tomorrow because i'm still feeling So Many Things. so stay tuned to see how that goes, because whew!

[fisheito]

dante can swim, right? theres' no wauy the Royal Solarian Staff would let their king go his whole life not knowing such a lifesaving skill JUst cuz it's a desert doesn't mean there aren't pools!!! he has to know they HAD to have taught him there's no way he's stepping on a cruise ship surrounded by water while UNable to swim what if he falls in?!? he's not gonna float that's furr sure look at his muscle density and lack of fat the man's gonna sink like cement

[sanshinexx]

Family portrait with the Dad Bad Batch

[katanosabedibujar]

The exes!1!1!

This took me two sleepless nights... please spread prohibitedwish 😭