I Started Watching The X Files On This Day 2 Years Ago, So Here's Some Experiments With Style/composition

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

'never again' but instead of ed jersey scully goes on a date with a woman who also has an evil tattoo that makes her go insane and kill people <3

scully deserves some hot lesbian sex as a treat

(mulder is still jealous and a bit of a dick bc of that but then they kiss and make out up and everything's fine)

Day 4 of Criminal Minds Evolution Week!

Here's everything we know about season 18 so far:

The season is going to be focused on JJ and Tara

The official plot summary for the season is "six months after fellow inmates attacked the notorious Sicarius Killer aka Elias Voit, leading his restless followers on the dark web to begin wreaking havoc all over the country. In order to stop this nefarious group from killing more innocents, the BAU is forced to once again work in concert with an increasingly unpredictable Voit, who of course has his own agenda"

The episodes are called: 'Swimmer's Calculus', 'The Zookeeper', 'Time to Say Goodbye', 'I'm Fine, It's Fine. Everything is Fine', 'The Brutal Man', 'Hell is Empty...', 'All the Devils are Here', 'Tara', 'CollateRal', 'The Disciple'

Episode 1 will air on May 8th and the episodes will continue to air weekly after that (according to TVLine)

The summary for episode 1 is "when bodies wash up ashore in Maryland, autopsies reveal a new threat". The summary for episode 2 is "Voit awakens from his coma, the BAU discovers a dormant Network killer"

Sandy Jareau (JJ's mom), Henry Lamontagne, and Vincent Orlov (Voit's lawyer) are all confirmed to be returning (either through photos from set or through interviews with Erica Messer)

Two new characters, Dr. Ochoa played by Aimee Garcia and an unknown character played by Linda Lavin

Dr. Ochoa is "one of the country's leading neuropsychiatrists who is assigned to help a high-profile patient recover from his injury-induced brain trauma [who] clashes with Alvez, who believes in a more aggressive approach than her gentle approach"

Spencer Reid will be returning for a cameo. It will be for a major life event and fans will be happy about the reason why he returns according to Erica Messer and Paget Brewster

This season will be more about standalone cases rather than one overarching storyline (but the unsubs will still be connected through Voit's network)

Scenes for s18 have been filmed at a cemetary, JJ's house, and a hospital

Voit is going to be more vulnerable this season and we're going to see a different side of him

At the beginning of the season, Rossi is being investigated by internal affairs for Voit's attack

Here's a list of all the promo photos organized by episode!

my stuff

top of mind: my fic rec list (my curated / categorized list of fics I love, which I actively add to all the time) me @ AO3 (because not everything is on Tumblr) my fic on Tumblr (but not everything is on Tumblr) oh yeah me on Gossamer (I was but a child) meta: Sexualizing Scully (in Never Again and the whole series) Me on 3 (Mulder's Depressed Vampire Sex) Penultimate Partner Episode Analysis: Season 3-7 Why the XF isn't Really About Watergate Why The End is an Underappreciated Critical MSR Episode Scully the Ice Queen Trope

themed fic recs: Rain King fic recs for Valentine's Day Biogenesis / Sixth Extinction / Amor Fati fic recs Spooky Fic Recs for Tricks and Treats (Halloween) Undercover Mulder Smolder: Pine Bluff Variant fic recs Mulder-centric fic for Mulder's birthday Season 1 /Early Season 2 Fics W/ No Spoilers Outsider POV fic recs 3 fic recs Milagro fic recs for Valentine's Day DeadAlive / Three Words fic recs

Funniest x files moment is the jersey devil episode when scully goes on a date and it doesn't go well and she has a character development moment about weighing how much she wants a normal life and relationship vs being dedicated to her career and the x files. And then it cuts to mulder looking intently at a drawing of a bigfoot with boobs

i lied, put your clothes back on, we’re actually going to talk about how brennan and hodgins are best friends and how they’re one of the most underrated pairings in the show despite being buried alive together, and hodgins being brennan’s counterpart in every au the show has done and them knowing each other from the main cast the longest and enjoying little pieces of each other that the others think are odd

Sometimes I think about how and why some people had such a *bad* reaction to the end of Steven Universe, specifically in regards to the Diamonds living.

Even though they no longer are causing harm to others and are able to actually undo some of their previous harm by living, some folks reacted as though this ending was somehow morally suspect. Morally bankrupt, even.

And I think it might be because so many of us were raised on a very specific kind of kids media trope:

They all fall to their deaths.

Disney loves chucking their bad guys off cliffs. And it makes sense- in a moral framework where villains *must* be punished (regardless of whether their death will actually prevent further harm or not), but killing of any kind is morally bad for the hero, the narrative must find a way to kill the villain without the protagonists doing a murder.

It's a moral assumption that a person can *deserve* to die, that it is cosmically just for them to die, that them dying is evidence that the story itself is morally good and correct. Scar *deserves* to die, but it would be bad for Simba to kill him. So....cliff. (edit: yes, cliff then hyenas. But cliff first. Lol.)

Steven Universe, whatever else it's faults, took a step back and said "but if killing people is bad, then people dying is bad", and instead of dropping White Diamond off a cliff, asked "what would actual *restorative*, not punitive, justice look like? What would actual reparations mean here? If the goal is to heal, not just to punish, how do we handle those who have done harm?" And then did that.

Which I think is interesting, and that there was pushback against it is interesting.

It also reminds me of the folks who get very weird about Aang not killing Ozai at the end of Avatar. And like, Ozai still gets chucked in prison, so it doesn't even push back on our cultural ideas of punitive justice *that much.* and still, I've seen people get real mad that the child monk who is the last survivor of a genocide that wiped out his entire pacifist culture didn't do a murder.

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.

Love these guys what was going on with their old photoshoots