MSR-land

[basementcherub]

I'll watch most episodes of the x-files, the good like the bad, and mostly just be happy to be with Mulder and Scully for 44 minutes. These characters, man.

[wintersnails]

go on vacation. wear a tshirt for the first time in months. receive 50+ calls from the coworker you cruelly abandoned for two days. take a bath. deflect marriage proposal. eat a lobster. microwave evil doll. back to work

[stephenride]

[xf-fic-fix]

welcome to xf-fic-fix, where you can find the latest x-files fanfic! follow for recs, mention @xf-fic-fix to get your work reblogged, and be sure to tag #xf fic fix (or #xf-fic-fix, we're not picky) too!

individual authors can be searched by tag.

[rosenkranz-does-things]

awoo

[megdoesart]

Emerging from the depths of my unintentional creative hiatus to share some David Duchovny & Gillian Anderson art with you all...

[sanguinanshalos]

Reacting to the X-Files 2x08 "One Breath"

So far this season has been delivering BANGERS (we don't talk about *that* part of 2x07, please), and I love seeing my comfort character not having a single day of comfort (Dana Scully, the woman you're).

At first I was a bit skeptical with the whole abduction plotline but it's such a great twist storywise, it gives us a long-term plotline (I like that the episodes, especially in S1, are standalone, yet I missed a deeper development of some of these plotlines because they were intriguing) that I hope it's explored further because I need to know more about the Cigarette Smoking Man, the secret agency that's behind Mulder and Scully, and the consequences of Scully's abduction.

And it was so good to learn more about Scully's past and her family (her sister!!! please, I HOPE she appears again in the foreseeable future, I really liked her!!), so overall I loved this episode hehe

[intimacynerd]

So funny that by not wanting to turn Scully and Mulder's story into a romance, it became one of the best het romance stories ever

[basementcherub]

In the x-files season 8, there is a plotline about who is really the father of Scully's child (which in most unfortunately brought back in the revival) and it really pissed me off. I dislike it because it's not a kind of storyline that I like in the first place, but there is something sinister about it in this particular context.

We know Scully went to Mulder for IVF, that it failed, and that, in mid season 7, they started a sexual relationship. We have no reason to believe Scully somehow tries IVF again after he's gone (she had no more "chances") , and we don't really see Scully with anyone other than Mulder during the entire show. Jerse happened 3 years prior.

So, for us fans, this storyline boils down to: "She and Mulder created their miracle, or something, that Scully herself doesn't remember, happened to her, that resulted her in somehow getting pregnant against all odds."

If your drama is "who's the baby daddy?" maybe make sure that the only alternative isn't the violation of one's bodily autonomy ???

[alexconcerning]

mulder taking a full-force slap from his mother without even flinching was somehow one of the more psychologically devastating things i’ve seen on this show.

the fact that he just stood there and took it was concerning, heartbreaking, and unfortunately a little bit attractive. i hate it here.

[madubraga05]

I started watching The X-Files because of MRS premise and I loved the series. Was it the opposite for any of you? And, besides that, has anyone here followed the series from the beginning? If so, did you feel from the start that Mulder and Scully were something that had to happen, or did it develop gradually as TXF progressed?

[alexconcerning]

mulder, an agnostic man, asking scully and a priest to say hail marys for him because he has absolutely run out of options...

as a cradle catholic, i regret to inform everyone that this is unfortunately very attractive.

also, the fact they're at the point where they're perfectly happy just sitting together in silence?? inject that directly into my veins.

[retrospensiv]

I need Gillian Anderson and David duchovny in such ways that would cause a concern within my friends and family.

I have seen exactly 2 episodes of The X-Files.

[sinnerandafool]

I'm actually going insane after watching Bad Blood.

Outside of intense moments when emotions run higher than usual, we haven't been given much insight into how Mulder views Scully and Scully views Mulder, and more importantly, how they view themselves in the context of their weirdo situationship. So seeing so clearly how they interpret the actions of the other really drives the point home.

Mulder is every bit the sad wet towel of a man I knew him to be. In his mind he is a misunderstood genius, and he tries SO HARD to get approval from others, especially Scully because he views her as an authority but also an intermediate obstacle to his goals. He also sees her as a snarky, playful opponent for the sport of verbal and physical repartee which he loves so dearly. He remembers her exaggerated disinterest, and therefore betrays how he enjoys the challenge of her. (He also remembers her saying she "does it all for [him]" which is just insane, and implies that he feels a slight sense of guilt for dragging her into his personal mission. Christ almighty.)

Scully, on the other hand, sees herself as the long suffering martyr, a victim of Mulder's wacky exuberance. She remembers him as eccentric and careless. But she also sees herself defending him, explaining him to others. She knows she is the rational element to his esoteric nature.

The differing accounts of Sheriff Hartwell are interesting too. She remembers him suave, and in her memory Mulder gets a bit fed up with her flirting. She feels it, maybe even decides to twist the dagger a bit while recalling her story to Mulder. Meanwhile he takes every opportunity to disparage the Sheriff and make him look undesirable. Oh, many, many conclusions can be drawn from that.

That was seriously one of the best episodes of TV I've ever seen, I'm so glad I decided to watch this show finally!

[randomfoggytiger]

Hey 👋 just reading your All IVF Roads Lead Away from The Unnatural and to Millennium post, and I agree with the S6 timing for the IVF attempts. I never bought into the S7 timeline (I commented that on IG under a video and many people got upset) as the relationship shifted after Amor Fati. I won’t compare haircuts etc as we know this is all retcon

On the topic of retcon, what’s your theory on why CC / 1013 decided to add that IVF story in Per Manum?

I am not really sure how it adds to anything more, other than saying Scully’s pregnancy is a miracle and was deeply desired by both of them

The timelines on IVF / IVF process might have been butchered (and Mulder storing her ova in his pocket is a no-no but nvm), but I believe there was a deeper deliberate intention there, I never figured out what it was and I would love to hear your take on it.

Hey, luckily for everyone, Frank Spotnitz told us! :DDD

April 2001: The pivotal, if not confusing, mythology episode ‘Per Manum’ used flashbacks to establish the fact that, at some unspecified time in the past, Scully was trying to conceive a child through in vitro fertilization. (Per X-Files canon, Scully’s own abduction back in Season 2 left her barren.) The reasoning for bringing up the in vitro angle at all, Spotnitz explains, was twofold. “One is that [Scully’s infertility] was a thread of The X-Files’ mythology that had never been sewn up. Back in season 4, we saw Mulder with the harvested [ova] that they’d taken from Scully; but we’d never had an opportunity to address it until now. The other reason was that we have this bombshell with Scully’s pregnancy, but we have no emotional context for it. So it felt good to show the audience the back story for Scully and Mulder, leading up to this news that she was indeed pregnant.”

That's Spotnitz for you, always remembering and bringing back the dropped throughlines. For example: CC originally toyed with the idea of giving Maggie cancer in Season 4, but Frank (jointly with Shiban) recalled the MUFON women and presented Scully's cancer arc instead. (Spotnitz also thought up Scully's pregnancy as early as Season 5, which wasn't acted upon until he and CC closed the mytharc and plotted the road to Requiem.)

As an aside, the brain disease (I remain convinced) was a way to give Mulder a substantive subplot in DD's absence... and was butchered because there was nothing canonically to spring from (unlike the IVF arc-ish, which had its foundation in Season 4.) Contrast the unplanned nature of Mulder's health crisis (not a sign or symptom in Season 7) with the prominent arc of CSM's blatant decline (from Amor Fati-Requiem) and well.... Poorly done. A fact Spotnitz also acknowledged-- In the absence of pre-existing context for season 8’s dramatic surprises, the writers relied instead on flashbacks tailored to fit this year’s narrative. “Had I known there would be a season 8, I would have preferred to salt in all of the clues about these flashback episodes last season,” says Spotnitz of how he dealt retroactively with fitting in Mulder’s illness and Scully’s [pregnancy.] “But there really is no way to unravel these mysteries in my mind, and make use of David in the time that he was available to us, without having some flashback episodes.”

Anyway, hope that helps! And sorry for the delay!

[basementcherub]

I like to believe that maybe, just maybe, it's a way to tell the audience that Mulder was aware of Scully's wish/plan for a baby and was on board, to some extent? Over the course of the first half of season 8, we really have no way to know how Mulder would react to that announcement... early season Mulder would probably not know what to do with that (well, he would support Scully respectfully, most likely, but his role would be... hard to define), but now that we know that he supported her through IVF and was there for her when it failed, that changes things. I think the line about believing in a miracle is key here, because from our understanding, that's essentially what happened. Mulder believes it's not hopeless. They presumably had sex and she, miraculously, got pregnant. Mulder was on board.

[volpeantica]

“No, I don’t hate it.”

A small detail from a scene of “Dreamland II” I find intriguing is when Scully exposes Morris Fletcher as fake Mulder. Fletcher has just more or less dragged her onto the waterbed, and they are both lying next to each other looking at themselves in the mirror above.

“You hate it”, Fletcher/Mulder tells her, half question, half statement. There’s a significant little pause before she answers, in a pensive, (I find) somewhat sad tone: “No, I don’t hate it”. And this is revelatory, and I love it to bits, because it so cleverly done, both visually and how GA interprets it. What she sees in the reflection is something unreal (and that’s what we see in mirrors, an inverted, alternative world, a possible threshold, think of Alice’s Looking glass), a wish: Mulder and herself together, in a bed = as lovers. But what’s meaningful, it’s what we see and hear there as well: not Fletcher, as in all the other body-switch scenes, but Mulder, speaking with his own voice. We get to see her dream-wish too.

Then Fletcher turns around, rests his hand on his face and says, “You hate it”. Scully pauses, knowing it is Fletcher but choosing to look at the “Dreamland” up there for two more heartbeats. “No, I don’t hate it”, she says in that melancholy voice and means, I wish this were real, I wish it were you. Then sits up, slips back into reality (steels herself, I guess) and proceeds to unmask Fletcher.  

There is so much in this single sentence for me, it’s so subtly done and so precious to me that she reveals what she is longing for by saying it the way she does.

[basementcherub]

#That mirror shot of "Mulder" and Scully #kills me.

[basementcherub]

This morning, Linkedin sent me an email titled "The Consortium is hiring!"

About to start my Alex Krycek /Diana Fowley / Marita Covarrubias era?