visual logs: mulder & scully — 008 of 189
1.08. ice / pt. ii
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This was the scene that made go "ohhhh I see"
occasionally subtle
Stranger Things
noise dept.

tannertan36
Cosimo Galluzzi
styofa doing anything
Misplaced Lens Cap
d e v o n

JBB: An Artblog!
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Monterey Bay Aquarium
dirt enthusiast
todays bird
trying on a metaphor

Kaledo Art
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"

No title available
will byers stan first human second

JVL

seen from Malaysia
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seen from Vietnam
seen from Jordan
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seen from United States
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@solia-dreams
visual logs: mulder & scully — 008 of 189
1.08. ice / pt. ii
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This was the scene that made go "ohhhh I see"
#he wants to believe
see one of the many many reasons that pusher works so well is because the entire episode is framed as this battle of wits between modell and mulder, the gutsy megalomaniac versus the tortured genius, but the final, horrifying showdown, the russian roulette scene, isn't a confrontation between the two of them at all. the most critical battle of the whole episode isn't modell v mulder, no matter how much modell wants us to think it is. it's modell v scully. which is the perfect encapsulation of the whole series: mulder is the frontline, the one people target because he is the one seen as a serious threat, but when you actually get down to it, the one holding together their quest for the truth isn't him at all
Whistleblower on Reddit rage-blogs about how the food delivery company he worked for as a developer is ripping customers AND drivers off.
Main post screenshotted here in case it gets yanked; the whole thread is worth a read.
Posted January 2026.
They De-Tumblrized Ms. Frizzle
@transfagsculine
#how do yall whitewash a white woman
why would you leave this in the tags lmao
Allow me to explain:
Everyone dropping this pic
And talking about how the new frizz her is her niece, allow me to do a direct side by side instead
These are STILL not the same woman. Where is the icon fashion, the earrings (the chameleon, which might be in the new show idk I haven't watched it), the prominent hooked nose, the broader shoulders, the volume to her hair, the LIFE IN HER EYES
This frizzle looks like she's been called into the school board for inappropriate behavior and dress one too many times and has been broken.
Also others have said it before me but I couldn't find it in the scroll backs but they whitewashed all the kids too. They same face syndromed everyone to either be easier to draw or be more ambiguous so as not to offend or both or something, and it just makes me sad
Fuck it I did the digging cause I'm still mad
And that’s not even to mention what they did to the bus itself.
The old bus had a personality and life and fun and now it’s just… a bus.
HOW DO Y’ALL WHITEWASH A BUS?!
It's gives "anti abortion Jehova's Witness cartoon" now
Vector puppet animation and a shocking drop off in investment in kidvid is largely at fault, but international marketing is also to blame.
What's important to remember is that the whitewashy approach to character design in kidvid is a backslide.
Representation in cartoons had generally been on an upswing since the 1980s, even though efforts were often minimal, clumsy, or badly executed. Diversity helped sell action figures in the lucrative US/Canadian market and it was recognized as a prosocial value on the production side.
"Prosocial messages" are a major part of kidvid TV pitches and development, nearly every show has specific prosocial lessons the narrative themes are intended to work around, even if its an action-figure ad. These range from sincere expressions of the creator's intent (Gargoyles, OG Magic Schoolbus, OG He-Man (no, for real)) to the entertainment equivalent of carbon credits.
Slight aside. Actual ink-and-paint animation tended to lock characters down into more distinct tones because there were only so many standard paint colors. Which is why Kwame from Captain Planet, Roadblock from GI-Joe, and Tim from OG magic schoolbus all use essentially the same pantone.
Ralphie gets skinny because not only fatphobia, but I suspect because he would need slightly different rigging and would add just a teensy bit to the budget adjusting his animations when they could just copy-paste from one of the other identically built kids. If they need to put them all in spacesuits or diving suits or whatever, they just make the one body and slap the heads on, eazy-pezy.
Decals on the schoolbus mean they have to be tracked, they have to use different versions of the bus in flipped shots, same with Mrs. Frizzle's clothing patterns. Wouldn't want to spend time flipping Ralphie's "R' around.
And with the marketing for everything now being global, there's an impulse to average everything down to appeal to all markets to a general degree. Making stories oversimple makes them easy to translate. Humor varies culture to culture, keep it slapstick or quick quips that can be localized easily. Everything that makes the Chinese censor boards happy also makes US reactionaries less likely to kick up a protest, the incentive is to keep everything:
ALSO: These characters have the same face. They probably use the same eye and mouth parts for character animations.
It's all to do it as cheap and broadly appealing as possible, as determined by business weirdos who know nothing about art and care nothing about kids, and they're more than willing to leverage racism (or just ignore that its happening) for the promise of a tenth of a percent more profit.
And what's galling is that this kind of animation software doesn't have to make crap. It can be used to make amazing stuff and still be vastly cheaper than traditional hand-drawn, but the same quality at 60% of the cost is never going to beat 1/2 the quality at 5% of the cost for the money-men.
The path of least resistance rolls over a lot of people.
Reblogging for "the path of least resistance rolls over a lot of people"
Reblogging because I don't want to forget to show this thread to everyone in RL when I attend my school reunion of other nineties kids later this year
that’s it that’s the whole show in one gif
Feeling seen ♥️
more dana scully in s4
Scully's hair peaks for me in S4
X-Files fans, help me out! I'm writing a 5+1things and I need episode names where Mulder runs off and leaves Scully behind in any way, between S2 and S4. I already have him racing ahead of her in the Pilot for S1 and ditching her in the hotel room in Detour for S5, but need 3 more to guide my rewatching this week while I polish off the creative writing component of my PhD, which is literally in X-Files fanfiction.
So this request is quite literally for (social) science. Thank you xx
Gentle reminder that very little fandom labor is automated, because I think people forget that a lot.
That blog with a tagging system you love? A person curates those tags by hand.
That rec blog with a great organization scheme and pretty graphics? Someone designed and implemented that organization scheme and made those graphics.
That network that posts a cool variety of stuff? People track down all that variety and queue it by hand, and other people made all the individual pieces.
That post with umpteen links to helpful resources, and information about them? Someone gathered those links, researched the sources, wrote up the information about them.
That graphic about fandom statistics? Someone compiled those statistics, analyzed them, organized them, figured out a useful way to convey the information to others, and made the post.
That event that you think looks neat? Someone wrote the rules, created the blogs and Discords, designed the graphics, did their best to promo the event so it'd succeed.
None of this was done automatically. None of it just appears whole out of the internet ether.
I think everyone realizes that fic writing and fanart creation are work, and at least some folks have got it through their heads that gif creation and graphics and moodboards take effort, and meta is usually respected for the effort that goes into it, at least as far as I've seen, but I feel like a lot of people don't really get how much labor goes into curation, too.
If people are creating resources, curating content, organizing the creations of others, gathering information, and doing other fandom activities that aren't necessarily the direct action of creation, they're doing a lot of fandom labor, and it's often largely unrecognized.
Celebrate fan work!
To folks doing this kind of labor: I see you, and I thank you. You are the backbones of our fandoms and I love you.
Thank you to everyone awesome who keeps the lights on around here ✨️
Controversial takes
the thing about mulder and scully is that they are so lonely and codependent that the other is fulfilling every possible role for them. like they aren’t ‘just’ coworkers but they still are coworkers and they are best friends and soulmates and lovers and siblings and he’s her dad and she’s his mom and they are each others allies and each others rivals and he’s her prophet but she’s his religion and she’s his right arm man and he’s her silly rabbit and they get on each others nerves and they love each other more than breathing. it’s alllll there
"He's her prophet but she's his religion"
Gazing yet not gazing at Agent Scully
Scully in episode 1: I don't really agree with Mulder on anything, but he seems earnest and like a nice enough guy. I think he honestly just needs a friend.
Scully in episode 2: Mulder, my new best friend, has been captured by the US Army, so I will now commit several Class-A felonies and enter into an armed hostage situation to get him back.
And it escalates from there
"I hate AI. It’s the world’s most expensive and energy-intensive plagiarism machine. I think there’s a very high possibility that this is all a bunch of horseshit. It’s basically a bunch of centibillionaires whose greatest life goal is to become the world’s first trillionaires. I think they’re selling a bag of vapor." - Vince Gilligan
Preach
I am actually so serious I think it really messes with a childs creativity and joy to tell them to never make a mary sue OC. Like that unbridaled form of joy where you make a self insert OC who super cool and everyone loves them and they have every superpower in the world SHOULD be something a kid makes, it nourishes their ability to create things for fun and not be stifled by "oh but what if my character is too overpowered and cringey...". whatever
You know what?
I'm gonna add to this.
It stifles adult's creativity too.
Don't put restrictions on people's creativity.
That Mary-Sue OC you made as a child? That's a template for a well rounded character. Develop that shit. Flesh them out. Make them even better. Figure out what superpowers they really need and what ones are just extra. Let the character grow with you.
But you won't have that template to work off of if you were told not to make it.
Also, let people have power fantasies. Let that bullied isolated kid have an OC who's super powerful and surrounded by friends.
Let people tell stories, for fuck's sake.
I love this, and as I'm sitting at my keyboard procrastinating typing out the Introduction for my literal PhD in Fanfiction Studies and Creative Writing Pedagogy, I'm going to add to this too:
Let little girls, fans of colour, differently abled, neurodiverse and fans identifying as LGBTQIA+ write themselves as powerful, beloved, admired and important. Fandom is such a wonderful place but it's subject to many of the same flaws we import from the inherently white, cishet, classist, capitalist patriarchies we hail from in RL, where those same fans are reminded regularly, both implicitly and directly, that they are not really any of these things. How many of us are guilty of complaining that there aren't enough women and diverse identities in positions of power in the Real World, only to read a Mary-Sue fic and roll our eyes at the implausibility of it?
I'm not saying we are to blame for that reaction - just that we've been taught to think that way, and we can change it when we know better.
Don't flame that little girl for writing herself as captain of the Enterprise. Don't scoff at the non-binary fan with limited English trying their best in a foreign language to represent themselves as Wednesday Addams' new best friend, paramour of all other characters and undercover royalty. Don't laugh, don't look away. Build them up. Believe. Let them write, let them imagine that world, and maybe take a minute to tell them all the things they are doing right with their storytelling. You can never know the impact your kind words can have in an early writer.
If we don't believe, soon they won't either, and they'll grow into yet another generation of sensitive adults simultaneously shaking their heads at the state of the world and at Mary-Sues in fanfiction.
And really, haven't we all seen that there are much worse realities than one where Mary-Sues are in power? Maybe that's what the patriarchy is afraid of...
Believe in Mary-Sue
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