#txf s8

[teiasviago]

It was my last chance...

THE X-FILES 8.13 | "Per Manum"

[bakedbakermom]

txf+text posts (18/??)

[sentientsky]

the first time we saw them touch vs. the last time (as of season 8)

i’m goingto run into a brick wall brb !!!!

[scullee]

the x-files + text posts 1/?

[projectorthus]

Wasn’t happy with this one which is why I didn’t post it at the time but I’m a firm believer in sharing art you’re not happy with.

Anyways here’s doodles from season 8 episode 12, Medusa.

[mulderrrrrrr]

post-abduction mulder saying “yeah but in that show the people were married, we just work together” hurt me deeply like idk maybe the whole alien abduction debacle made him forget about that one time he made the population of the world dissapear and still looked for scully ??? hello mulder and scully were many things but just partners was never one of them

[azure-firecracker]

More TXF Science: What am I in for?

[loubetcha]

okay i just watched s8e3 and genuinely can someone give me an insightful analysis of why mulder never got scully a desk because i’m actually kind of at a loss on this one. is it something to do with abandonment? or rather that he needs her by his side at all times and not even a desk apart? does he not want to subject scully to that commitment? i can’t crack it.

[deathsbestgirl]

i absolutely adore doggett because the first thing he does is piss scully off, because he had to make sure she didn't know anything about where mulder was. and he's hesitant to trust or believe her through within & without. but then he sees scully thrown into a wall, shoot someone who looks like a person she tried to protect & trusts, and uncontrollably break down & let him hold her.

and from that moment, he decided to follow her, protect her. he was always going to do his damnedest to find mulder but she gave him another reason. right off the bat (lol) in patience, he was defending her and poking holes in her crazy theory and then he found an article about a human bat !!! she was so raw & vulnerable, trying to be mulder & feeling completely inadequate and doggett tried so hard not to dismiss her, to validate her.

i just can't not love this man when he loves scully so similarly to the way she loved mulder in the beginning. he's another man with a hole in his heart & life, where his son used to be. and who is he if he's a father without his son?

[agent-troi]

ok so i was looking at screenshots from This Is Not Happening for fic reasons, and:

Scully staring up at the night sky looking for Mulder

vs:

Mulder staring up at the night sky looking for Scully

(i edited this post bc i figured out how to turn up the brightness on the first pic lol)

[that--funny--feeling]

Why Existence is the perfect conclusion to TXF: my take on S8

William's storyline is the last X-File of the season (of the entire serie for some) and I think that it contains the essence of the show and the characters and that's why S8 should have been the last one in my opinion.

This analysis will aim to examine both positive and negative factors of S8. I'll try to do my best, but this is also a very personal meta. I ask you to hang on with me, if you can.

S8 overall impressions

I concluded S8 one week ago now and I had time to reflect with a cool head. I still think this is the worst season of the show (if we don't include 9 to 11 and I'm not going to talk about them here and I'd like to keep ignoring them :D ). Mulder's absence heavy influences the season obviously, the atmosphere is tragic and dramatic. It's a bit of a shock for the fans, since the light and fun air we had in season 6 and especially 7. Even though I liked Doggett and Reyes and I'm glad they joined the team, the mytharc episodes were way more then usual and as usual not handled well (starting with Within/Without), also some episodes were really just bad (Badlaa) and other make suffer Scully again and again uselessly (Roadrunners). How many times can Scully be afraid to have a miscarriage? She's pregnant and alone ffs, she had enough. All the fixation on her baby and people who wanted to hurt him or both of them really made me sick at some point.

Mulder's return makes things better, if we ignore his OOC behaviour in Three Words. I get his PTSD and feeling out of place in a world that went on without him. And I expected him to be territorial about the X-Files with Doggett, but he talks to Scully like he resents she's moving out of work because of her pregnancy. He'd be the first one to explode with joy for her (for them both), finding out she's going to have a baby. I'm glad he behaves normally from Empedocles on. Mulder's resurrection in This is not happening/Deadalive is a bit all over the place (they think he's dead but in the end he's not but meanwhile they buried him for three months? And then they need a vaccine for him to not turn into an aline but in the end they don't? O-ok. What's going to think Maggie Scully about all of this? Poor soul) but ok, let's go on.

Scully's pregnancy

Through all the season, we don't exactly know what to think about Scully's pregnancy. She wasn't supposed to have children after her abduction. Then Mulder tells her he found the vial with some of her ova. She takes them to Dr. Parenti and he says she has a chance. We also find out Dr. Parenti seems to be involved in aliens' experiments. In the end IVF doesn't work. So it seems whatever he tried to do with her, he failed, but the question remains: how is possibile for Scully to be pregnant?

Even Mulder doesn't know what to think. And I don't think his confusion is about the who's the daddy stupid topic, but about how it was possibile for her to carry a child in the first place. He's worried someone is using her again and she will suffer again. I don't think he has doubts that, experiments aside, he's the only one that can be the father of that baby. And even though he wasn't the biological one, he'd accept the role as the father all the same.

Aside from that, I think this baby is the first chance in Mulder and Scully's life to find their own normalcy, to start a life aside from work, to step aside from their save-the-world-responsabilities. They suffered enough for a lifetime afterall.

Getting out of the damn car

Mulder isn't in the FBI anymore. Scully is in maternity leave but she's not sure she'll be back. The X-Files were hard to leave behind for both of them, but they realized they would reach an end of the road sooner or later. And the end is now. We see a switch from Mulder's moment of closure about Samantha. He feels free and lighter, the atmosphere in S7 is fun and playful. As I tried to show in my fanvid, I think not only Scully, but Mulder too seeks a simpler life (maybe normalcy wasn't the right term. Neither Mulder nor Scully were ever proper afterall). At the end of S7 they both are getting there:

But even before Mulder's abduction, there's always the dilemma: Mulder's personal quest may be over, but what about looking for the Truth? Unmask the corrupt government and its secrets? This quest is maybe endless and both Mulder and Scully know about it.

Will the duty always be before the personal happiness?

Doggett & Reyes

Here they come, a skeptic and a believer again, to achieve the needed balance. I liked how the writers didn't try to replace Mulder with a similar character. Doggett is way different: he's an old school policeman, he seems reliable and tough. The sheriffs respect him and don't go as far away as possible from him like it happens with some other spooky and weird guy. He has male friends and does manly things. But he's also lonely and he's lost somebody he deeply cared for because of something he can't explain. So he's drawn to the X-Files in more ways than one.

Reyes always smiles and that made me fall for her. She's a breath of fresh air in a dark and melancholic season. She doesn't know well Scully, but she's ready to help, because she trusts Doggett and that's enough for her. She respects Mulder even before knowing him, because Scully does and that's enough for her. She's ready to do everything for a cause that she cares for and her amazement and sense of justice really reminded me of the feeling of the first season.

I adore how Scully and Doggett's trust is built case after case, I love how Scully sees something of herself in him (his need to find practical proofs and his stubborness on not believing the fantastic) and viceversa (Doggett is protective of her and her child because he doesn't want her to go through what happened to him). I love how Scully likes Reyes from day one, because she's fun and weird and she reminds her of her dead sister (this really warms my heart).

I love how Mulder obviously is territorial about his department with Doggett but then starts to respect and trust him enough with the X-Files. I love how Mulder sees how spontaneous and stubborn Reyes is and says she'd be useful in the X-Files.

The way both Mulder and Scully pass the baton to them really does things to me. Because maybe the quest to the truth really is infinite, but they understand they can find people honest and passionate about that just like them. And after all these years, they can rest, knowing that someone is still out there fighting.

William

As I anticipated, many things are said about this baby. He may be an hybrid by the aliens, he may be a supersoldier by the army, he may even be a real miracle by God. But I like to think it's none of these things.

William is really the union of Mulder and Scully. When the IVF fails, Mudler says:

Mulder, the furthest man from religion, says it to Scully, because that's what he does best: he believes. He never gives up no matter what (he neither did when Scully had cancer). He knows she needs to hear it and he needs it too. He's ready to believe in a miracle for her.

I don't think William is a miracle in the christian sense. I think he's a miracle, because it's the most improbable but plausible thing that could happen in a sea of paranormal possibilities. What if there was a 1% chance for Scully to become pregnant in a conventional way and they fell in that 1%? He's the essence of both their genetics and their points of view. What if he is just a normal boy?

Because it's theirs, their baby, their miracle. And if I have to choose what to believe, I want to believe that.

The end.

My TXF posts and videos.

[teiasviago]

Dana Scully + 🤰

[bakedbakermom]

there are many many things about s8 that piss me off but top of the list today is

WHY THE FUCK DID SCULLY AGREE TO GIVE BIRTH IN THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOWHERE

s8 robbed her of her agency again and again but this feels like The Most Egregious incident.

she is a medical doctor. she has had reproductive health and fertility issues. she has had a VERY high risk pregnancy including MULTIPLE hospitalizations and a partial abruption. at her age she is considered "high risk" even without all of these issues.

there is no way. NO WAY. that dana motherfucking scully agrees to this insane plan. she would not risk her life. she would not risk her child's life. i do not believe for one moment that giving birth in a hospital is more risky than giving birth in a ghost town with no running water, with her only help being someone with no medical or childbirth experience, no matter how many "supah soldjahs" are after them. have you ever met a maternity ward nurse? knowle rurorjuror would be lucky if he got the chance to run.

this plan was fucking stupid. it was out of character. every last word of it is bullshit and i refuse to accept it. if there had been even a single mother in the writers' room (or a father who paid even half attention) this never would have happened.

[nachosncheezies]

the x files season 8 ficlet, 500 words, angst (with a happy ending)

A counterpart to my other piece which pondered the question, "If the brain disease was real, why might Mulder have hidden it?" - here's an exercise on the opposite side of the coin: "If the brain disease was a fabrication, how might Scully have dealt with it?"

Note: I often treat The Brain Disease as something that was real because I love the angst of it, but I can read canon either way. On this opposite side of things, I considered attempting a who and how for the fabrication of the alleged disease, but doing that adequately felt like it would take more plotting than I wanted to try to smash into a 500-word exercise, and 500 words was my aim. As with the other, take this as a riff on canon or a divergence as it suits you.

There were rumors, a man claims, and it’s a trick. Less than a trick - a joke, and they the butts of their own poor wit, because seven years on and they still underestimate the depth of commitment, of integrity, and yes, of love that makes their quintessential Mulder-Scullyness. This man is either one of them, or he is a rube and too covetous of the solve to see it. The water to his face is less satisfying than it would be to spit in the smoking man's eye, or a punch to his serpent-poet face, but it scratches at something similar.

He’s dying: it must be a joke; a lie. The medical records - alleged - they could garner a laugh. The headstone, though. The stone has given her pause. She has stood beside it before. She reads every page.

How far would he go? She thinks of his mother; of his father and hers, of her sister. She thinks of Samantha. A faceless body on his floor. A hole in his head, six more in a wall. A gulag, a railcar. A hangar. For a moment, improbably, she thinks of Diana. 

She refutes the what-ifs. Doesn't hear them in the thin morning light, in the empty space at her back, the cold porcelain echoes of her own body doubled over and retching. She doesn’t feel those embers of anger, the sting of betrayal. She doesn’t fight, because fighting implies a problem, and their problems are in their past. She will not regain him to lose him again.

She is not vulnerable. She would have known.

Los Angeles, Chicago, the perfectly unremarkable highways of oh-so-many states: she was called to these places, but not to a neurologist's. She will not succumb.

He’s been thoughtful, evaluating cases for their worthiness before whisking her away from her monographs, her mother, her quiet creature comforts. They have found their balance. There is no bargaining to be done. Denial is not denial if it is true.

They have each learned to be themselves. They are each other, too. 

~

She stands by that stone again, and he was the last.

~

He was not the last.

She is the mother, enigmatic; modern-day Mary with toes dipped in a blood-boiled sea and her hand on a metal bible. She is the collateral; she was relatively happy. She has paid attention to the signs, and they have said a lot, a lot, a lot. She is Starbuck, she is a medical doctor, she is Scully, so-named. She is not vulnerable.

Then a call from a hospital, We're trying to reach Dana Scully; we have you listed as an emergency contact.

She is vulnerable. She is.

~

His abdomen moves as with breath; his skin dry but warm. She lays her head down. Her ear lands on his chest, and Holy Saint Anthony, gentlest of Saints. There is a heartbeat; Who are you? A lie, a lie, his beautiful mind is untouched, and the gratitude of my heart will ever be Yours.

[x-files-scripts]

The X-Files - “Three Words”

Written by Chris Carter & Frank Spotnitz

April 3, 2001 (GOLD)

Scully sees that Mulder is deeply troubled despite his humor...

Mulder’s homecoming...

Deleted scene:

[projectorthus]

Post season 8 episode 15.

Sent to Krycek of course.