ardentpoppy

Latest Posts by ardentpoppy

Dana Scully 🥼🔬

Throwback to when I just finished watching the X-Files—for the first time—a few years ago and then immediately started up the first episode again...

Spooky Mulder? More like Pookie Mulder AMIRIGHT???

dana scully is stronger than any other person on this earth bc if I had to listen to mulder's stupid fucking theories every day of my job only for him to be RIGHT?? most of the time I would go insane

sometimes i remember that halfway through txf mulder and scully put a bunch of family planning books in the basement office and i start to feel feral in ways that are yet to be discovered by science

Imagine having been born in 1905... And all your life it doesn't fucking stop. The Great War, the Spanish Flu, and then you go out of your mind for 7 years. Everyone is traumatised and nothing matters. Then another crash. And then the rise of fascism, and the War to end all Wars didn't and it's 1945 and you're just about still there. You may have fought or ferried the boys from Dunkirk or sabotaged the Nazi occupiers or worked in the factories and put out fires during the Blitz and you're lucky to be alive, because not all your friends made it. But you are and finally, fucking finally, it stops. It stops. You are tough as nails and you can put that strength to work into building something and you do, and people have cars and can buy icecream and you have a pension fund and the kids have money of their own and no nightmares.

I want that for us. I so want that for us. I want to be the generation that has seen fucking everything and is like a MRSA bug and unfazed and when that Cheeto finally dies, I want us to. Plant the gardens and clean the seas because we can and we want to and we remember some joy, some time of trust even when it got broken and we can say to the 20 somethings "let us show you what we can build, how it can feel."

And maybe Gen beta will take it all for granted like the boomers did, but we can give Gen Z and Alpha some peace because we, and Gen Z and Alpha have seen the Dark Times and fuck that noise.

true life: my boyfriend believes in aliens and doesn’t understand the word No

X-Files S1E3

- pennywise?

- he has a snow globe of the globe?

- ew ew ew ew (I have a thing about hands creepily emerging from around an edge/corner)

- GILLIAN ANDERSON

- this guy screams douchebag

- defending Mulder right away, I see you Scully

- well she just lost her appetite

- well jokes on you douchebag. She wants to be Mrs. Spooky

- they're flirting your honour

- that flicker of a smile from Scully when Mulder's messing with douchebag

- go Scully, that's a bangin profile (see: my expertise from 15 years pf watching Criminal Minds)

- douchebag 2.0 sees her actually doing a good job and immediately has to put her down, screw you

- non-zero chance that the thing going bump in the night is actually Mulder

- it's in the industrial vents?? Creepy

- too early in the episode. There'll be shenanigans

- Mulder making it a point to tell Scully she was right and he was wrong

- polygraphs are a scam

- damn she pretty

- I love that Mulder says ' Scully's right' he can't stand this douchebag

- Scully reaffirming her position and standing up for Mulder, in front of Mulder I love to see it

- MULDER SMILED

- him opening up, him playing with the necklace, her looking at down at him playing with the necklace, her looking up nd giving him that look

- (screams)

- that's the crux of it all isn't it? She respects him and listens

- this is sorta reminding me of the Supernatural Bloody Mary episode. Genuinely scary and tense

- that shot of him emerging from the darkness was creepy

- Mulder being a cocky little shit, Scully using the rules to back him up. Worst Fucking Nightmare

- "the victim's" Dana Scully you have my heart

- damn she pretty

- he's been using the same name for 100 years? Idiot

- "and you're gonna be head of the Bureau by then" he loves her so much. Also you'll be preoccupied with a lot of other shit in 2023 guys

- rip to all those that experience motion sickness on the regular. I experienced it once on a plane ride, 0/10 do not recommend

- that is not how you look at a coworker guys

- 25? I thought it was every 30 years?

- "you'd go crazy right?" Mulder nodding, my poor wet cat loser

- hell of a monologue from that actor. Well done sir

- hey it's the the scene from the title sequence

- he collects trophies? This thing is a Serial Killer

- WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING THAT WITH YOUR BARE HANDS

- ok ngl that got an audible laugh outta me. I think that's the first time I've seen Mulder rattled

- see if it killed people as a way to feed itself, and that being the only how it can get sustenance, I'd have some sympathy. But it collects trophies, it goes out of its way to almost terrorise the victim before killing them. Nah this is a Serial Killer

- NOOOO STAY AWAY FROM SCULLY

- it doesn't take much to be decent. Genuinely it is so fucking easy not to be an asshole

- someone please punch this douchebag. I really really hope this spectacularly backfires on him and tanks his career

- Mulder run, Scully needs help

- ew ew ew

- FUCK SAKW THAT GOT ME

- teamwork makes the dream work

- a federal agent was attacked in her own home bc douchebag removed the surveillance team that was supposed to be watching the main suspect. Tank. His. Career

- happy the old man got closure. Brilliant acting, no happiness, just a weight-pff-shoulders resigned sort of relief, and then tears

- wait if the theory of mutant human is accurate, then this is the first episode not about an alien

- he's going to escape isn't he? Fuck

#lounging in a whorish manner

omg is the same image aoughhfhsh

I have a head canon that Mulder and Scully would have gotten married if only to have a legal claim to each other when hospitalized. Absolutely nothing romantic involved. They are separated on the grounds that they are not married in way too many medical situations and especially post his fake death, I think they would have wanted legal assurances

this shit looked so fun

The X-Files S1E2

- action sequence right of the bat, nice

- I think that guy messed up the count

- that rash is NASTY

- it's the meme music!!!!

- that is..... that is the shittiest, most low-budget ass title sequence I've ever seen I love it

- GILLIAN ANDERSON

- sir that is not how you approach a coworker

- "it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon Agent Mulder" these chuckleheads are flirting already

- (sorry I'm still thinking about that title sequence. It's oddly..... refreshing??)

- guy at the bar is sus

- ah yes, it was the Russians excuse

- don't corner people in the restroom. It's disgusting and violating and disgusting

- (like really, is anyone else tired of those highly specialised prestige TV intros? I'm getting worked up about something I didn't even realize was bothering me)

- Mulder gets in trouble bc he refuses to stop investigating..... and now he has tiny scary lady working with him. Worst Fucking Nightmare

- damn she pretty

- I refuse to believe this wet cat loser can coo- his phone is tapped!!! and he's being watched!!!

- HIS HAND ON HER BACK

- "the government is not above the law" HAHAAHAHAHHA (internal sobbing intensifies)

- that man is Gone (hope he gets better)

- alas some people deal with trauma by pretending it doesn't exist

- height difference

- SUCKER

- she's gonna have a damn awful crick in her neck

- oooh light show, also how many apple boxes is she standing on?

- spies? terrorists? nah stoned kids

- fed thosw dumbasses dinner and dropped them off at home? Mulder and Scully you have my heart

- Scully looks so cute when she's smiling her "you idiot" smile (that's what it's called now, no arguments)

- Roswell! Wasn't that also a show?

- Mulder's kinda gotta a point

- "Mulder you're crazy" no hesitation, none, love it

- please stop making women run in heels, also that smile. Why are you smiling like that at Mulder, Scully?

- 'came back wrong' is one of my favourite tropes, I love this

- it's not him. Clone? Brainwashing? Selective memory wipe?

- Mulder's kinda got a point again

- Mulder's got jokes

- Scully can't watch Mulder being hurt. Second episode, this is the second episode

- "something else?" She is so done with him

- this groundwork being laid as to how both their thought processes work is really well done

- Scully's face when she hears the car

- I can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing that the kids helped him. If a single camera caught them, they could be in serious trouble, I mean, look what they're doing to their own soldiers

- Scully misses the proof again

- no don't hurt the wet cat loser!!!

- they cut the phone lines didn't they?

- hey that actor that shows up in a lot of shows in bit parts. Get that paycheck sir

- so Mulder was right beat for beat. Experimental aircraft derived from UFO technology. The poor pilots were collateral damage

- reporter guy??? Dammit Scully left her gun

- he was the one in the car earlier! Also love it no hesitation from Scully

- get his ass Scully

- man those kids are so good. Came back to tell her about Mulder. I headcannon nothing bad ever happens to them and they live long happy lives

- they're wiping his memory

- wait the security guy wipes at his eye right after the scene Mulder is administered something in his eye (thematic parallel). Is this base keeping even it's own security on a tight memory leash? Sheesh

- Scully.... took an army security guy hostage.... to save Mulder..... in the second episode

- (screams)

- yeah he knows she'll shoot his ass. Keep cooperating asshole

- Mulder! What did they do to my boy?!

- shut up asshole

- dammit Mulder saw a UFO and they took that away from him. Y'all gonna catch these hands

- that poor woman

- I think Scully's scared, she can't quite look at Mulder for long

- she makes a point to mention in her report that she saw those weird lights too

- you walked all that way to conspicuously have that conversation in the middle of an empty football field??

- is this guy supposed to be the Deep Throat? As in THAT Deep Throat?

Sometimes you just gotta curl up and snuggle your giant ass into the lap of your teeny tiny miniature coworker

— Ursula K. Le Guin

screencap redraws bc it makes me feel sooo crazy insane when she kisses him on the forehead

mulder and scully thinking they're stranded in the middle of this lake when they're actually 5 feet away from shore and they flirt and talk about cannibalism and scully tells him how her dad used to read moby dick to her and she compares mulder to ahab and then mulder catches her off guard by QUOTING moby dick and she mouths the line along and and and

the x files is maybe the funniest show ever cause almost always if they do something crazy to mulder or scully in an episode they do roughly that same thing to the other at some point.

were you disappointed that mulder spent all of unusual suspects messing around with the gunmen but scully didn't get to? three of a kind.

angry that scully keeps getting kidnapped or held hostage like in irresistible and our town? kill switch and drive.

annoyed that mulder went crazy in pusher and pulled a gun on scully instead of the other way around? wetwired.

tired of only mulder's exes showing up in fire and the end and making scully jealous? lazarus and all things.

mad that mulder was the only one to be intensely invested in the cases in conduit and paper hearts? beyond the sea and all souls.

frustrated that mulder got to have an ill-advised affair with a murder suspect in 3 and scully didn't? never again.

wish it had been mulder obsessively calling scully while she ignored him in favour of the case in war of the coprophages? chinga.

feel it's unfair that one of mulder's relatives got shot in anasazi while scully's family were all perfectly healthy? the blessing way.

find it odd that only scully had a brain tumour throughout her cancer arc? the gift.

irritated that in duane barry, ascension, and one breath, only scully got abducted and experimented on by aliens, then returned with little to no explanation and stuck in a weird coma for a while? requiem, this is not happening, and deadalive.

i started watching the x files, dude this show is so insane one episode scully and mulder are trying to find some 100+ yr old serial killer and scully almost dies by said serial killer and then the next episode an elementary school boy is thought to be a threat to national security and then god is made into an aliens metaphor

she took his hand in hers and put it under her cheek :((((((

How do you do it Scully, how do you fight that urge not to climb your hot nerdy coworker like a god damn tree at any given chance like HOW GIRL?

she says this to mulder every chance she gets

Mulder, Scully, and the 5 Love Languages

(Credit to: @reduxfiles)

I find MSR-- romantic and noromo-- intriguing when viewed through the 5 Love Languages lens.

Mulder's love language: physical touch. Undoubtedly. His exes could betray him, his father could ice him out, his mother could slap him, his partner could snipe at him, but he will always, always reach out.

Scully's love language: acts of service. Starbuck to her Ahab, habitually acting on her abilities to bring justice to a world filled with villainy. She accepts physical affection, gifts, and one-on-one time with her close loved ones (even if sometimes accompanied by an upturned eyebrow); but the natural language of her devotion, platonic and romantic, is in her work ethic and steadfast loyalty.

The genius of this dynamic: Mulder and Scully don't communicate "normally" because they don't need to in order to share and receive love (largely.) Mulder feels loved without verbal confirmation as long as he's physically included. Scully, too, feels loved in silence as long as Mulder acknowledges her strengths as a doctor and scientist. Both don't exchange gifts frequently (Tempus Fugit), don't intentionally carve out quality time together (Small Potatoes, The Unnatural), don't regularly exchange words of affirmation (Fight the Future)-- and yet, they remain uncannily in sync.

The weakness of this dynamic: Mulder and Scully avoid intimate, personal, or revealing conversations in order to shrink from rejection. No "I appreciate you", no "I love you", no "I need you"-- instead, they code their allegiance in terms committed to the work: "Mulder, I wouldn't put myself on the line for anybody but you"/"You have to believe me... you're my one-in-five billion."

Why it succeeds: Mulder and Scully take their sweet time healing and working on themselves before canonically tackling a relationship. By weaving around words of affirmation, in-depth quality time, and personalized gifts, they are able to sustain plausible deniability as long as possible without feeling excluded, discarded, or used-- until it's time for a direct approach. As their partnership progresses, so, too, do the fundamentals. So, too, do their communication and expectations. So, too, do they.

how to say "I love you" in x-files [127/?] ⤷ 1.21 — “Tooms”

The reason why Scully and Mulder clicked so quickly and mesh so well as a pair is because they both posses a very natural, intense curiosity. It manifests in different ways, and in slightly different areas of interest, but the spirit is one in the same, and I think they recognize and love this in one another.

Scully is different, and so immediately endearing to Mulder, because she’s the first person to want to know what he thinks, and why he thinks the way he does, instead of writing him off outright. He's an interesting puzzle to her. Even if she’s steadfast in her constant disagreement, her curiosity itself is—in a way—an act of validation, respect, care.

Mulder is so immediately endearing to Scully because the way he thinks is unusual for their profession, and probably refreshing. He's anti-bureaucratic, emotionally sensitive, unapologetically strange. A "lone wolf" yet so open and easily taken by her. It turns out, his curiosity in the supernatural was born from something equally fascinating, and all too rare: his care for other people.

And love is a kind of curiosity… a deliberate interest, a constant desire to know…

THE X-FILES: (03x03), d.p.o.

life sucks but at least you didn't get divorced, attend the golden globes physically attached to your co-worker at hand and hip, win a golden globe, kiss your coworker on the mouth, forget to thank him in your speech, then have to stand by on stage while he wins a golden globe and emphatically remembers to thank you, which is exactly when you and the live tv camera realize you forgot. that's what it was like to be gillian anderson in 1997

I kind of hate even asking this question but I’m going to ask it anyway.

Why do you think CC decided to totally retcon the mythology in the revival? Do you think he was bored of it? Did he think it didn’t fit in with “modern times”?

I know the mythology was kind of a mess at the end but I don’t think it was so bad that it was beyond saving.

It’s just, when you watch the struggles and accept the retcon it makes the Orginal Series feel like a waste of time. I’ve also heard theories that the Struggle episodes are told by an “unreliable narrator” for example CSM is an unreliable narrator in MSIII, Jackson is unreliable in MSIV. That just sounds like a cop out. It all just gives me a headache honestly. 🙁

tl;dr: CC is interested in new ideas; and will always be willing to cast off old ones in pursuit of fresher perspectives. His passion for the latter mythology was born from Dr. Simon's and Dr. Fearon's last-minute theory; but when it got fan backlash, he pivoted the focus from his revitalized mythology to the abandoned William arc. However: because he was chasing tantalizing ideas rather than a focused conclusion, Carter completely fumbled in his attempts to close up old threads in order to start afresh.

A couple reasons:

CC and Spotnitz wrapped up the original mythology in Season 6 (One Son), deciding that it had both blossomed out of control and somehow come together. Mythology wrapped up, they then finished off the Samantha arc in Season 7 and began a new mytharc in Season 8. Season 8's Existence, according to Spotnitz, functioned as the end of the original X-Files as a whole--

Spotnitz: "And the series will be different, whoever comes back for it [Season 9]-if there is another year. We’re still working out what that final story is, but there are a couple of elements that we know are going to be in there. And those two elements close the chapter.”

and,

Spotnitz: Whatever I said, what I mean to say is that 8 years of the series will come to a close this May, regardless of whether there is an X-Files next season. I actually believe most of the important questions about the mythology have already been answered, believe it or not, and you will see some new ones asked in upcoming shows.

--leaving room for Season 9 to begin a new chapter for the show (one no longer centered on Mulder and Scully's evolving story, since it had been concluded.)

That... didn't work. So, IWTB's focus, years later, was on a MOTW instead, with the hope that it would succeed and become a stepping stone to a movie-mythology franchise series.

That didn't work, either. But CC never gave up hope for a 3rd movie.

Then 2015 rolled around and FOX approached him for a revival.

Carter: I had one question thrown out to me at a meeting. [Fox Television CEO] Dana Walden asked, “If there were another series, when do you think you could begin work on it?” It wasn’t an overture, more of a practical issue. That was before the show ever aired and they knew what the ratings would be. There’s been no conversation about doing more of these. With the ratings news, it’s hard to imagine that they wouldn’t come back to us.

I would love to do another movie. Especially coming off that second movie, which had such a heavy weight upon it: A summer-release, low-budget movie, with no promotion, in a crowded field of tentpole fare. I was asked to do so much with so little. And I tried! If we were to do another movie, it would need to be akin to the first movie, which I thought was a story worthy of the big screen. That said, I can’t imagine they won’t want to somehow figure out how to do this on TV.

CC didn't know where to take the show, and only signed on after being told the season would be short (and might give him a movie, which is what he really wanted.) It was Dr. Anne Simon that actually got him excited about the mytharc again: as she tells it,

"What was the Conspiracy? This [Struggle I and II] is the conspiracy. Now, did Chris know that this was the conspiracy [since the original show]? Obviously not-- because I told him what the conspiracy was. But he knew that there was a Conspiracy-- he just didn’t know what it was. But when I told him, when I gave him this idea [plot for MSI/II], he was just, ‘This is amazing’-- I mean, he was so happy. ‘I want more, I want more, I want more!’ And every time I sent him these pages, typed pages, he was just, he was extremely happy. I could tell how happy he was.”

(Dr. Anne Simon's an interesting rabbit hole to go down, btw. Gonna do a post on her contributions in the future.)

He redid the focus of the show in Season 10; and his writers and collaborators and even his actors-- David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, both-- thought it was a well-written season (I know....) But the fans did not.

So, CC made a statement after FOX confirmed S11: shippers had been heard-- there would be more MSR and William. So much so, he brought William back purposefully to give his arc a resolution.

And when that didn't work out-- when CC's 'perfect' ending was hated by fans (and famously, Gillian) for feeling more like a cop out than an address-and-move-forward conclusion, he felt slighted and misunderstood.

In short, Carter wasn't invested in his series anymore-- and, to be fair, neither were David and Gillian: all three (and Spotnitz) wanted to do movies instead. FOX said no; so, they took on Season 8 and 9. When the middling traction from S8 flopped in S9, CC deviated from the mytharc and did IWTB. That flubbed; and he let the matter rest for a few years (still hoping for more movies.) When FOX only agreed to do another series, he didn't know what to do with the mytharc. Then Dr. Anne Simon and Margaret Fearon gave him a direction-- and, yes, both worked on (and cosigned) the mytharc episodes-- and got him excited to do something new; and more of it. And we all saw what happened thereafter.

(Dr. Anne Simon also worked on the OG mytharc episodes, and has nothing but good things to say about them and the Revival. Again, a future rabbit hole.)

In conclusion: once CC's interest is engaged, he loses track of all else and devotes his aspirations to that one thing-- to the detriment of not only the whole picture (i.e. mythology) but also other equally important moving parts (i.e. Gillian's desire to move on.)

I could go on, but I think that's it for now.

the lowest it can possibly go is "severe" and that's only when he's busy doing something incredibly stupid