Edwin did not read a little ghost girl for filth in the very beginning of the very first episode for trying to pretend that the age she died at had any bearing whatsoever on her actual current level of maturity and capability just for you guys to turn around and use "he died at 16!!!" to vilify the Cat King and Catwin shippers btw
Pac: Calma, right? Just so calma, calma, calma. Wait, what does this button do? [Gifts Fit a dandelion, pretending like he doesn't know]
Fit: OH, what? For me? Where did you find this?
Pac: You know, I just found it right next to a bush! [Laughs]
Fit: Oh, wow! No, thank you, obrigado, I love it! This is great.
Pac: You're welcome! De nada, de nada.
Fit: You know what? I love it so much, I'm gonna eat it.
Pac: [Laughing] Wait, what? Can you eat flowers here?
Fit: Yeah, that's right! Here, try it!
Pac: I want to try it. [Takes the dandelion Fit gave him] Ok, thank you. How can I eat those? Do I– oh. [He eats it] Mmm! Almost better- like Pão De Queijo.
no no you guys don't get it. the x files cancer arc was, excuse the pun, a fucking white whale of a tv plotline that would not have worked nearly as well on literally any other show. it was a complete hail mary. the writers' room nearly didn't make it happen because they were worried it would fall too deeply into soap opera territory. and on any other show, it would! but the x files is about four key things: mistrust in the government, faith in both science and the otherworldly, building a life around trauma, and the fine line between love and codependency. it is the only show where the entirety of this situation- a government experiment on an unwilling young catholic leads to a terminal illness that is counteracted by a literal scientific miracle in the eleventh hour due to her partner's refusal to accept her impending death- could both happen at all and happen well. none of the themes in the cancer arc were new to txf at all. they'd all been lurking, to some extent, in the background since the pilot. the cancer arc wasn't merely milking a left-field catastrophe for the drama, it shoved the overarching themes of the show to the front and said look. look what these people are to each other. look how impossible it is to face the darkness alone. regardless of when the plotline was conceived, it was always going to happen. it was the only way the story could have ever gone. they were always doomed from the beginning
Fox tags along on a smuggling bust one (1) time and subsequently wishes he’d never been decanted.
Well, he’s arrested the perp a lot more than just one time, actually, but that very first tackle into a chokehold and electrocuffs more than sufficed to turn the fates against him - the fates, and Cody, the insufferable twat. They’re not actually even batchmates, the lot of them, and going by numbers Fox was decanted long before them (long as in seconds or minutes, no one actually knows), but Seventeen put them all in a training room together and then stupid kriffing Kote looked him up and down, nodded, and hasn’t stopped calling him vod’ika since.
“Why is one of the Republic’s most wanted criminals asking to speak to you, vod’ika?”, Cody asks, without any preamble, almost making Fox cut the holocall on principle. He would, if General Kenobi wasn’t right there next to the little shit. “And why do I not like his tone?”
Fox has to resist the urge to close his eyes and scream, making do with a deep sigh instead. Force curse the day Cody decided to adopt-nap him, and Wolffe following suit immediately. “Weequay, shifty eyes, stupid fucking pirate bandana?”
Cody’s eyes narrow suspiciously, and Kenobi’s eyebrows raise simultaneously. It’s more than a little creepy.
Fox rolls his eyes so hard he sees stars. “Tell him he can go space himself, unless he wants me to do it for him. And then tell him that if he sends me fuzzy fucking socks again I might just hunt him down and do it anyways.”
Past the slide of the door, Thorn’s unmistakable cackle reaches Fox. And Cody, going by the narrowing of his eyes. “Don’t tell him that, ori’vod, he’s probably into that”, Thorn calls out, gleefully, and Force Fox really should’ve kept this to himself in the first place.
He would’ve, actually, but the constant stream of strange presents into Guard headquarters is hard to miss. It was Alderaanian chocolates, last week, which Fox pawned off on the Shinies. A box from a store with a blacked out label before that, which he launched out the window with burning ears before Thire could get a closer look at it.
“Actually”, Thorn continues, happily, “I don’t think it matters much if you do tell him anything - it’s not like the Commander has been the most graceful courtée, and that hasn’t done anything to discourage our favorite smuggler.”
“Marshall Commander”, Fox hisses, because he’s a pissy bitch, and then, because all professionalism has gone out the window anyways, “This is why Stone is my favourite.”
Thorn’s wounded gasp is lost over Kenobi’s thoughtful hum, and Cody’s patented I’m-going-to-do-something-incredibly-stupid-and-you-can’t-stop-me glare. “That would explain why we have Hondo Ohnaka accosting our troopers about your flavour preferences concerning fruit candies. But the one asking to speak to you is Cad Bane, Marshall Commander.”
The string of curses Fox lets out at that is loud enough to have Mauler stick his head in the com room to ask if everything is alright, and Thorn roll on the floor with howling laughter.
Force curse the day he ever slapped electrocuffs on Hondo Ohnaka, and double-curse the one he threw Cad Bane to the floor with a scissor leg takedown.
anyway remember when FCG lied to FRIDA and said the Changebringer had told him they'd be together for a long time. just one of approximately three thousand scenes which hurts real bad now i guess
I finally finished reading the fourth volume of svsss in full, and thing is--the first time through I only read the bingqiu content because I was ravenous for more of their happy ending.
Turns out that was a perilous mistake.
Because I started reading the airplane extras. And I swear to god. MXTX is trying to kill me
What do you MEAN demon lord Binghe was sitting on his big fucking throne. All stoic and forbidding. Surrounded by his demon generals who don't know shit about human courtship. Asking them what he should do, fully demoralized by constant rejections from sqq, only to have airplane tell him to act more pathetic and needy. Which is already hysterically funny and insane, UNTIL LBH'S RESPONSE IS THIS, KILLING ME INSTANTLY:
LUO BINGHE. WHY DOES HE SAY IT LIKE: "I already tried that, didn't work--nothing works :/ not mean, not maidenly, not housewife, not spicy, not capable disciple. Is doubling down on clingy really all it will take? What's a born hater with only one love in his life to do????"
The dichotomy of him sitting there like 'how can I reach the unfathomable depths of shizun's heart?' A HEART HE'S ALREADY WON OVER, MIND and then in the Holy Mausoleum solving the puzzle without blinking and being like 'oh yeah you just have to hit the acupoints, no sweat.' Literally the comedy writes itself I'm so--
How am I supposed to be normal about this. MXTX understands the juicy quintessential queer joy of a person with the world's power at their fingertips wishing only for love. Willing to do anything to earn that love, when unbeknownst to them it's already been freely given. Totally not screaming and yelling and clawing at the walls
And that's not even touching airplane's uproarious account of events. The way he's like 'lol what's next, lbh and sqq are best friends now? smfh' only to see lbh TACKLE SQQ LOVINGLY. FOR SQQ TO BE BASHFUL ABOUT IT BUT SO SO FOND OF THE LITTLE SCAMP. This when we've been experiencing sqq's constant inner monologue of 'I'm so cool and so dignified about my role, truly the epitome of propriety and poser-level fortitude.' Meanwhile, in their universe:
Airplane constantly flaming???? Sqq and lbh in his observations????? His absolute bewilderment and confusion????? Legendary. No notes every single second of this shit was hilarious.
Airplane's comment that sqq + older adolescent lbh traveling together was just watching a couple in their honeymoon phase. OR the fact that lbh is exceedingly petty and refuses to share their food in the wake of airplane's interruption of their time together, until sqq relents sheepishly and insists airplane eat what's left (ONLY AFTER PLACATING LBH WITH MORE FOOD FROM HIS PLATE, SOBBING)
Watching airplane salivate over Mobei-Jun and acting like that's totally normal behavior. Finding out mbj and airplane got together first. Finding out sqq encouraged airplane. LIKE THIS. WHILE HE IS STILL IN DENIAL ABOUT HIS OWN FEELINGS:
Mobei-jun clearly thinking their arrangement is a forever thing, heartbroken his human abandoned him with all the hapless fury of a scorned wife swept away by false promises of fidelity. Airplane writing demons to be the type to beat up their crush lovingly and still unable to connect the dots about mbj's feelings. Mbj letting him go and respecting his wishes, only relenting when there's indication airplane was poorly processing his own feelings and didn't actually want to leave. Mbj caring for him and listening to him as soon as airplane voices what he needs directly and with clarity. None of these gays are functional and it's everything to me
Unrelated, but I physically can't hold this information in anymore:
I'm still reeling from younger lbh having his sexual awakening from the image of sqq wrapped in the immortal binding cables. Condemn me as you like he was so, so real for that.
And no I will not be taking any comments about how luo bingge couldn't bear to see luo binghe cherished in ways he never got to have and all the haunting implications of that. I will also not be taking any comments about luo binghe's instinct to look for sqq in that alternate universe, only to be shaken to the very core to be unable to find his shizun anywhere. The unspeakable and latent horror of his relentless mind likely piecing together what happened, but unable to say it; to suspect what is true, and live with the harrowing confusion of his double's actions. To blame himself, to assume that he had let his anger get the better of him in that world and result in unspeakable folly...
I also refuse to talk about how heartrending it is to hear Tianlang-jun weakly say "In the end, I really can't bring myself to hate humans." The implication that the foolishness of that hope and bright-eyed fondness--the very thing that put him through such unspeakable agony--couldn't be beaten out of him entirely. To discover that his faith in Su Xiyan hadn't been misplaced, to the contrary: his beloved hadn't scorned him at all, but rather fought to the miserable end to protect the fruition of their genuine feelings of love when she couldn't protect tlj or herself.
How MXTX has sqq deliberately draw parallels between their situation and that of ygy+sj and tlj+sx; desperately wishing it might not be too late for them. The concept of breaking cycles of abuse and harm pervasive throughout the newly devised story, how it evolves for the better only when love takes the place of power, pride, and domination. How the moment sqq chooses vulnerability instead of saving face, the genre shifts to the so-called "cringe" girly genre where most if not every character is more fulfilled, more true to themselves. How the "male-oriented" former genre was aimlessly sensationalized and sexualized, how it was a sustained performance of aspirational toxic masculinity. How men objectify other men without end. All of the unspoken gendered implications that come with that.
Anyways. Going to go put my head in a sandbox and try to process everything I just witnessed because even a second reading is not enough to find a modicum of closure.