#you miss your mother? me too

[firstfullmoon]

Rachel Eliza Griffiths, “Good Mother”

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 7 thoughts

hmm. hmm. that is the sound if me pondering what i just watched.

(i understand that this episode was an analysis into mulder's self-destructive behaviors when faced with overwhelming grief, but. that does not mean i enjoyed vampire hookup time)

well. we shall start from the top!

i read that it was an episode about vampires which i thought was a weird narrative choice because. hello. scully still gone??? but then i remembered that i too ignored the main quest in skyrim to hunt some vampires and that i had no place to judge

(granted, my main quest wasn't finding scully though. might have given that a bit more priority than saving the whole world. because she IS my whole world)

we open with a guy that looks like joe biden meeting with an attractive young woman. they're making out in a hot tub and we just know someone is gonna get slurped upon. and woe, it be upon us! double vampire attack.

back in DC, mulder gets his old office back! it's covered in plastic. he takes some of it off. he adjusts his calendar from may to november, so we see how much time he and scully had been assigned to other tasks, which also has me wondering how she managed to get a new house that quick.

(also, this calendar is... scantily clad women posing next to tools such as hammers and saws. was this allowed? was this acceptable? was it normal? were the 90's a lawless wasteland and mulder an irreparable freak?)

well. scully is an x file now, and he puts her glasses and id into an evidence bag and closes the filing cabinet which was sooooo evil. but he can't bring himself to put her necklace away. oh man. oh he's gotta have it in case he finds her. he has to hold her close. i'm Fine this is Fine.

so. he goes out to california to deal with the joe biden looking fellow being murdered. and he is not wanted on the crime scene. we know this because someone greets him by saying "nobody called the bureau" and he says "well, they should have" and lifts up the tape to let himself in. because one thing about him is that he's gonna let himself into a place he isn't wanted.

he sees the writing of a bible verse in blood on the wall and says something about their grasp of biblical knowledge being "feeble and literal" and i was like okayyy need to have a theological discussion with him

he then scares the other guy who originally wanted to kick him out by reciting a LARGE amount of facts related to similar cases and it's very much giving photographic memory. got me thinking, have we ever seen this man forget something? (directions don't count. they're confusing. but everything else sticks in that man's brain)

he just needs one thing: a phone book. which he uses to call a blood bank and ask about a new guy. who must be the vampire who did this!

so he rolls up to the blood bank and i'm over here struggling because i do Not Do Blood, and i knew at this point this was gonna be a tough watch, but i didn't anticipate the non-blood related reasons why this would be true

anyway he's sniffing around the blood bank and he hears some slurping and wouldn't you know, this dude is tearing into a bag of the red stuff like it's a capri sun. somehow he gets him into custody, where the dude refuses to talk because the lights are on, and mulder comes in with a lamp he put a red filter over, because he was prepared for vampire interrogation.

the vampire is going on about how what he did isn't murder because it's not like animals hunting prey is murder which is. not the greatest approach in terms of legal defense. mulder tells the guard that the guy is delusional and it's best to play along, and he believed this to be true... until he, quite literally, burned to a crisp in the sunlight. and died.

he's talking to the coroner and rattling off a bunch of vampire facts and says he didn't believe in vampires which is so funny to me because like. why is that where you draw the line, my friend. not at bigfoot and definitely not at aliens. but man. vampires are just too out there for spooky mulder. until now!

the coroner has a very funny line: "you are really upsetting me... on several levels" which seems to be the general effect fox mulder has on people. and also because i felt the same way about his dumbass actions during this episode.

coroner finds a stamp on the dead body's hand, which seems to come from a nightclub. so naturally our fbi agent ends up there.

you often see posts saying that "(insert character here) should be at the club". i fear that this is not the case for fox mulder, but it's possible that it's his suit and tie that are throwing me off. he just doesn't seem like he belongs there. i ask myself, where should he be instead? perhaps some sort of star wars convention would suit him better. a book signing with some author he likes. idk, an interior decorating festival. not here.

i shall use my verbatim words to walk you through the next scene:

"pause. he's talking to a woman who was looking into a compact without a mirror. so. vampire suspect. and now why are they getting so close together. and getting a drink. okay now they're leaving to a new spot together? AFTER she admits to vampirism"

(here she did some stuff that required me to look away from my screen due to my Weak Constitution. but also it would have felt necessary to look away anyway because it was getting... charged)

she tries to get him to... suck on her finger... but he won't do it because aids. which is fair. i think that's a smart move, actually. it's just that getting flirty with a vampire he knows was involved with a ton of killings was such a stupid move, i don't know why it's now the braincells start to kick in.

that kills the vibe, though, so she gets another guy to take his place and things escalate.

mulder pulls in at a restaurant called ra. nice! the sun god! and he is... through a window, witnessing some more slurping action. he seems to want to intervene and save this poor soul being feasted upon...

but the poor soul is no poor soul at all! he comes out and decks mulder, and delivers this line with stunning conviction: "i don't know who you are, freak, but we're two consenting adults" and with this, he is forced to flee.

and yeah. it made me laugh. my expectations for the genre were subverted. he signed up for that shit! what he did not sign up for, however, was the next part, where he was killed by the other vampires.

cut to investigating the crime scene. mulder has brought along a forensic dentist, which is a job i had no idea you could go into. he needs to see about those bites, which are very human.

next they go to vampire woman's house. it's a very nice place. mulder... opens her oven. and sees a loaf of bread in there. and i'm thinking, man, i hope this doesn't go where i think it's going. baked goods... ovens... i never want a vampire pregnancy arc. but he cracks open the loaf and something red spills out and somehow, this to him means that she is gone and isn't coming back. he can read the signs of the bread. so add that to his resume. what did the bread tell you, my liege?

he seems to have stayed in her house, however, because he's there when she's back, and says he knows she was using the bread as a charm to ward off evil. because apparently that's an eastern european thing, blood bread to warn off evil. sound off if any eastern europeans in the chat wanna confirm or deny.

anyway. he's IN this woman he thinks is a vampire's HOUSE? what the hell. mulder seriously i need you to stop and think. like you should have stopped and done some thinking a while ago. honestly i'm not mad i'm just disappointed. and he's like "i want to save you come with me before they kill you" ohhh big tough man needs to save her huh. make him feel good inside. huh. certainly no ulterior motive here...

she's monologing about her horrible childhood and how sweet blood tastes. um girl. don't lie to him like that. i have busted my lip open before that stuff does NOT taste sweet and dangerous. it's like a penny with rust that you found in a parking lot.

it seems her vampiric origin story, if to be believed, is that things simply got too kinky. which is a new take on the genre.

(it's also about being caught in an abusive relationship and the damage that inflicts, but it seems abusive boyfriend came into vampirism at his kinky parties and things escalated from there. which. well. it blew the eyebrows clean off my head, to be fair)

at this point we see that he is WEARING SCULLY'S NECKLACE? he says something like "it's from someone i lost" and she says that she "hopes he finds her"

i did not like the undertones here and certainly not the overtones. because i knew where this was going. he was shaving in her bathroom. and let me tell you something: there is only ever a shaving scene in media because the writer needs a way to get some blood out of someone's body and into the real world. and man. i knew it was coming.

but what i didn't see coming was her SHAVING HIM??? girl. i am uncomfy. and she does, of course, cut him, and then they kiss. aggressively. terribly aggressively. can anyone answer what was going on in a satisfactory manner?

but the gag is: the original vampire- who burnt to a crisp in the jail cell, and was the abusive ex she spoke of- HE'S WATCHING THEM THROUGH THE WINDOW!

he breaks in and taunts the vampire woman about how he had to "wait for her to finish" and i was like cool. thank you SO much for that mental image i'm super happy with it. i definitely don't feel like i need a shower. but then he's going on about how he can't be killed.

here, at the tail end of the episode, we learn the rules of vampirism in this world: a vampire cannot be killed by a non-vampire. and a non-vampire BECOMES a vampire by consuming the blood of a believer and also taking a life. it is only here we realize that this woman is not an actual vampire yet, she just appropriates their culture by drinking blood unnecessarily.

mulder's still sleeping in her bed and she's like "you need to leave" and she stabs the wall to make her evil ex think she's killing him. but when they go to break out, mulder ties him up quite handily and he gets in the car to escape with vampire woman. until ANOTHER vampire woman jumps on the hood of their car. and main vampire woman knocks her out for a bit by running into her with said car, which is super effective.

mulder's leaving the place in shambles, his shirt still unbuttoned, wandering down the side of the hill. back at the house, now that we know the vampire rules, main vampire woman says she can finally kill the evil vampire ex. and he's like how!! you haven't had the blood of a believer or taken a life. so. she licks the blood off her hands (unclear if it's hers or mulders tbh) and says she'll take her own life. and drops a match after pouring gasoline.

so. that brings that to an end. and shabby looking mulder sits on a hill as he learns all four in the house died.

the episode ends with him playing with scully's necklace. which i don't even sort of feel like unpacking right now but maybe another time.

probably not, though, because i just didn't like this episode. and yeah, a lot of it comes down to me not wanting to see mulder hook up with people who aren't scully. can you blame me? is it so wrong to have preferences in this world?

but also, narrative wise- do you honestly see the guy fucking off to cali while scully's still missing to deal with an unrelated problem instead of devoting every hour of his life to finding her, like we saw him do in the last episode? you expect me to think he just puts it off for a lil while? the guy who, just last episode, pulled his gun on the ski lift operator to get to the top where she might be a little faster, and then choked his one and only suspect out of fury? you're thinking this is the guy that's gonna go soak up some west coast rays?

and yeah, he was obviously not himself through the episode- very cold and analytical- but c'mon. we all want to bang a vampire. he's not special. i just personally wouldn't do that if my friend were gone. like how is that gonna help the situation. be so for real. time and place!

and also the whole only learning the rules of being a vampire about 5 minutes before they need it to be plot relevant. that annoyed me too.

overall, mulder, like i said, i'm not mad, just disappointed.

let me know what you thought on this episode- i try to not be a hater, but i also understand that hating in small doses can be good for the soul. if it's a widely beloathed episode i'll feel better in my judgement as i join a long tradition of haters who have come before me.

[sieglinde-freud]

oh im obsessed with this actually… who ever wrote this one i am kissing u on the forehead and hugging you real tight… inigo is such a loverboy im kkkhhhhhhijnsdnfng

[thebirdandhersong]

Anyways

[faaun]

procrastination is starting to have its consequences finally

[hauntingblue]

Ace...?? they cloned my beautiful wife...

[starpros-sunshine]

Had a relatively okay day now my mother wrote my that my grandmother apparently died. Wow. Okay. Way to fuck up the evening I guess.

[shinakazami1]

Handsome Jack poem 4 - Longing

If this is what love feels like - I don't want it anymore I always long for something, but not for someone, to hug them after they're gone I never thought I would crave a lovely lazy night With you, no longer gone, just by my side What did I do to deserve all this? I never knew I would be born I only ever wished for you to see me for what I could become And now, all that's left are marks that won't get lost in time But your voice will be gone before I can look behind my back Had I sinned so much for you to go through such faith? Who cursed my past life for this one to go in flames? I won't let it burn me - I will make it my Rome to rebuild And you will be proud, proud of me, of what memories I will bring I miss you every day, but no one can ever know They will stain your image, take what you truly were Because they will never see the world like you had shown me before I will build it by myself though, because without you, I'm forever alone

Women, am i right

[caimitos]

saw a post about projecting your ethnicity onto a character and started missing vespa ilkay. so so bad

[meirimerens]

got the tldr of the vid that I'm Not Watching All That & somewhat amusing how the straw breaking the camel's back for people over James Somerton is his blatant and unashamed plagiarism (as it should be genuinely i don't think you can nor should recover from this) like he hasn't regurgitated for years vile, unempathetic, ahistorical and Purely Just Wrong information about gay history including about the fight for legal same-sex marriage in the US and the AIDS crisis. like an alarming amount of people truly heard his ass say "all the good fun funky artistic and radical gays died of aids and all those who were left were unfun stuck-up prudes and conservatives also the fight for legal same-sex marriage was an assimilationist ploy by the latter who just wanted big gay weddings" as if the gay men who survived the epidemic didn't literally lose lovers and friends and entire communities and long-term partners who they shared a life with and who were denied any crumb of this previous life at their death because there was no legal recognition for same-sex cohabitation and unions and their homophobic family could tear everything from the surviving partner thanks to this lack of recognition and let it slide.

some people out there were truly so eager to shit on the boring assimilationist prude gays who survived aids by being stuck-up prudes and who just wanted "big gay weddings" they made up in their minds to get mad at that they turned their brains off and let it slide. they could've used their smoothed-out brains for ONE minute & found out that surviving took 1) plain boring luck and 2) radical, loud, proud gay activists campaigning for safe/safer sex and the information campaigns they led, as well as the protests and demonstrations they undertook to make the government fucking care for once. and that legally-recognized unions [be they civil or religious] were a matter of survival for the partner left behind. some people out there truly let a business major with a turtleneck (possibly the definition of boring) passing himself off as cool and radical and an intellectual tell them homophobic bullshit. and did not blink. like OF COURSE this guy's gonna be a plagiarist. he needs to get his information from SOMEWHERE. because when he tries to formulate his own stuff it's complete fabrications or the frankensteining of multiple sources that he manages to misunderstand/misrepresent threefold over. trying to fit a knit sock over the foot with the inside out and wonder why that itches.

i know many people in his audience are likely very young and also likely american and as such did most of their growing up in a world where their country (1 out of 195. give or take.) had legalized gay marriage but i cannot even begin to describe 1) how Young legalized gay wedding is, even in ""the west"" and 2) how many. other countries there are. my country legalized same-sex marriage before the US did. i am not even 25 and i still remember the hordes of catholics marching down the streets chanting homophobic slogans, implying the only reason two mommies or two daddies would want to raise a child together is for nefarious, vile purposes. i still remember families having to drag their asses into court to argue that, yes, a woman who raised a child for its whole life with another woman she's in a long-term committed cohabitated relationship with should have the right to be considered a direct guardian even if she's not biologically related to the child, and spending thousands of bucks having to argue their case in court. this might be shocking to some, but there are countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. in others, not by death, but by imprisonment. in others, not by imprisonment, but by ""medical intervention"". in others, not by ""medical intervention" but by fines. and in some others still, you can be gay (yay!) but you still cannot get married or civil-unioned, and the very same shit that was discussed in the 80s is still discussed now. the right to stay a guardian of your partner's child if your partner dies or is ill, so the kid does not go into foster care. the right to inherit your partner's property according to married rights instead of having through long annoying time- and money-consuming legal processes. the right to arrange your partner's funeral or have a say in their medical choices if they're incapacitated instead of their (potentially homophobic) families.

like We Are Not There Yet. we are not in a world where any homosexual can truly, fully, wholeheartedly assimilate, whether you consider it a good thing or not. fun gay artists and boring uninteresting gay office workers die the same death that we all do. the one you don't wake from. and guess what. all types of homosexuals, regardless of which ones you pick and choose to be mad at, are affected by homophobic legislation. not just the ones you think should be spared because they're oh so fun. and oh so radical.

donate to the rainbow railroad org if you can. they help LGBT+ people escape state-sponsored violence. a singular nail on one of their members' hand does more activism and real-life good than any mfer making video essays could do in his entire life.

[martyrbat]

its so funny recognizing yourself in your parents and by funny i mean im going to be sick

[firstfullmoon]

I want to dedicate this poem to my son who I worry into a misshapen form of worry. And to worry itself, how it hangs like a blanket over the head of a horse. Why do they blanket the heads of horses standing by themselves alone in a field, not seeing, but snorting and roaming, their skins seeking each other’s aloneness? I have no idea. I have never owned a horse, though property is no giver of ideas. Forgive me, my mother has died, and I am trying to understand, so my son understands why his father’s saying nothing in the car, the yard, the table. My mother has died. Do you know? It’s like standing in a field, swallows carving flit and whir and hatch, then it’s like the field being gone. No one notices in the clumsy fog. Do you see there is no distance? She is not a thing. There are no figures for this grief, the air tastes of ground. Have you ever lost all context? I tack this poem to a telephone pole that survives drought, survives flood, though it is made of heat and water. The other day, walking across the room, my son looked at me like he was eyeing a sick planet, then put his arms around his weeping father, who can’t make it through a meal without weeping, as if holding a planet might heal it. I want to thank him, but only have this poem, a raft I’ve made from the skins of flayed horses I’ve filled with air. It floats between us. It is wrong he feels asked to wade the river, his love a busted hydrant on a forever sunny day.

— James Hoch, “Dedication”

[silvreflamess]

Rio! I have a random question about nesta as a girl who grew up overly pushed and forced into "feminine perfection" by her mom, how did she experience the realization that she couldnt fulfill those toxic expectations that her mom forced on her because of her own trauma and the what the cauldron did to her? Not me asking bc of my own mommy issues lmao sorry if you already talked abt this here! Also idk if i made any sense wiith this question in my head i did

euge my darling i could kiss you on the mouth. i've been sitting on this ask for like 2 weeks now because it's just so juicy and i've been wanting to do it (and nesta) justice in how i answer it with regards to my portrayal.

honestly? i don't think nesta HAS come to this realization. and i say this because i don’t think she is in a space mentally or emotionally to understand that those expectations ARE toxic. certainly not in a canon world LMAO but not really in my interpretation either. i think that the rotten roots that her mother dug into her at such a young age are so deep that it will likely take decades for nesta to really even understand just how badly she's been harmed. and the canon treatment she receives at the hands of the IC absolutely does not go far in mending the mindset she's been brainwashed into either.

i mean. people can talk about how prythian doesn't uphold the patriarchal ideals that the human world does because it's an entirely different culture and species but the fact of the matter is that that's just complete bogus. men rule prythian. and you can argue that amarantha was in charge and blah blah blah the human queens blah blah blah but the fact of the matter is, tamlin wasn't putting feyre down when he told her there weren't high ladies among the fae. he was simply stating a fact. viviane of winter court (arguably an incredible leader considering the winter court did not sway under amarantha's rule while kallias was under the mountain) was clearly slighted when rhysand made feyre the first high lady.

and don't even get me started on the treatment of illyrian women. the abuse that those young girls and women are subjected to by illyrian men (rhysand's people!) is very close to the treatment that nesta expects as someone who grew up knowing that her only fate, the only role she would fit into, was that of a submissive wife to ensure her family's care. that those women are being violated so horribly because it's "tradition" just further proves to her that safety is not an option. that freedom is not an option.

all that to say, nesta can't break out of those expectations because she doesn't have the tools or the knowledge to be able to do it. not even when she goes to live in the supposedly amazing world of the fae that her baby sister so dearly loves. she is forced into “fae ideals” which are not far off from what she’s already familiar with. she is “promised” (mated) to a man for the “good of her family” (the IC/rhys/feyre) whether she wants to be or not and “society” (the IC) expects her to stay quiet and accept it and do it beautifully and to stop being in pain so loudly. because that’s feminine perfection of course!

i think that. even if she DID realize this. she would be in deep denial. lune and i are giving nessian the story that they deserve, but trauma is trauma. and like i said it’s going to take a long time for nesta to uncover how badly she’s been hurt for so long. but even just uncovering it won’t “fix” or help her. there are so many layers to the way her mother’s expectations cut away at her (and continue and will continue to do so!).

i believe nesta knows her mother was cruel, but she wouldn’t believe she’s been harmed without reason. which is why, even realizing that the expectations foisted on her were terrible and she couldn’t meet them if she really tried, she would simply be devastated that she could fail so badly. because that’s all she does in her own eyes, you know? she failed her mother, she failed her sisters, she failed her father, she fails cassian, she fails herself. she wouldn't think, "gee i shouldn't have been treated like shit like that", she'd think, "wow i can't believe i became high fae and i still can't manage to take care of my fucking family". i think it would be a setback in her healing and she’d have to climb those stairs too.

[schweigfuerdich]

I don’t want to leave you

But I want out of this friendship so bad right now.

We can continue following each other

And send each other a meme a day

But I don’t want anything more.

Because you can’t give me what I need

So what you are able to give me

Hurts all the more

In the absence

of what you aren’t.

[skillzissuez]

Depression is all fun and games until your skipping school even though you’re weeks behind because you quite literally can’t get out of bed

[girlivealwaysbean]

okay ventpost time im bored and my period is late