#I understand not liking the episode

[baronessblixen]

Saw your tags--

I can see why people do like it! There were just bits here and there that kept sucking me in then out of the story, so I never felt fully invested. It's not strictly the logic-- I love episodes that are way more inconsistent or incoherent ;)) -- but I felt that Mulder and Scully weren't Mulder and Scully, y'know? But that's the fun part of analysis, unwinding the objective from the subjective~.

My own beloved messes will never be pried from my hands, no matter how illogical or insane. XDDD

That's totally valid! Several people don't like it. For me it's probably my favorite episode from season 10.

Mulder and Scully really weren't quite Mulder and Scully in season 10. Which is really funny cause the David and Gillian interactions during that time were at all all-time high. We joked back then that we can't have both MSR and Gillovny 😂

[butchfalin]

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

[chloesimaginationthings]

Vanny mixed up FNAF Help wanted with Digital circus,,

[rogueshadeaux]

“I hate the script, the vault dwellers sound so cheesy—“ my Brother in Steel you realize that’s the point, right? They were bred to act like the physical embodiment of an HR e-mail. Did you not catch the memo that Vault-Tec put out regarding their experiment facilities?

[cairafea]

my favourite genre of seventeen is when they're straight up lying

ref:

[mwagneto]

turn left is literally the most insane episode ever written. yeah the main character would kill himself if he didn't meet his best friend and the UK government is like 2 bad days away from putting all non-english people into labour camps. also all your favourite characters died trying to do what little they could. wouldn't that be crazy? anyway time for the daleks again

[cuepickle]

If stranger things was a comic (and I was the artist)

[steakout-05]

in love with how Data runs across the screen back to his station like a fucking cryptid in episode 24

[egophiliac]

lostinthebookwithstitch.jpg

this is all I can muster right now, too busy having my brain absolutely melted by the September schedule, what is happening

[hellmandraws]

I accidentally got really into X-Men lately, and I'm not immune to... them. 🥺❤️

[desirableendings]

Goodbye to the one and only “comically inept Prince Hamlet for our pathetic times”

[crispywizardtale]

[vanpalmr]

YELLOWJACKETS | 1.03 | 2.07 |

[generichoneydew]

nuclear winters over guys. I'm only accepting nuclear spring. Bite me.

34/52

[buggachat]

i totally get how season 5 isn't everyone's cup of tea and that's totally fair and i understand!! however. i just can't relate because this is just so balls to the walls crazy that i am so endlessly entertained

lila stole all of the agreste lore from nathalie and also has been wearing a wig this entire time. felix snapped the entirety of earth away. chloe became the fucking mayor and then had an emotional breakdown sobbing alone when she lost it. kagami and felix having a random cringe (/positive) whirlwind romance like the two sheltered awkward teens they are. adrien and marinette kissing on the steps of a private jet in a dramatic emotional moment. ADRIEN had the coveted chat blanc nightmare in a sandboy adjacent akuma. adrien just is Cursed with endless nightmares now (and rose and juleka????) and lives in a sensory deprivation chamber. marinette knows all the senti lore now and was told via the most theater-kid interpretive perfomance art hallucination ever?????????

and i am LIVING for all of it. i am SO ENTERTAINED.

[fumifooms]

I don’t like minimizing the importance and gravity of Laios and Toshiro’s fight into just being a childish squabble, even if to a degree it is framed that way, because to both of them it has a lot of personal significance and emotional weight and runs very deep to their characters… The fight isn’t nothing it’s a LOT, they made up but it’s not something easy to express and to get over for either of them which makes it all the more meaningful! I’m on both sides but there very much are sides, there’s no "they’re both having a ball, Toshiro and Laios hand in hand yay" side to the fight, that comes after

The fight with Toshiro WAS very scary to Laios, almost existentially so, but it’s moreso the "I thought I’d made a friend!!" bit and my god. My god actually

Like it’s not "just" about oh his friend liking him less than he thought, THAT IS SO MUCH. It’s a bond he thought he had being a lie it’s all the time and moments spent together either being a lie from his perspective or marred now looking back. It’s not only being upset at Toshiro for lying but upset at himself that he’s so easy to fool, it’s being upset that there’s something so wrong with you that you can’t even tell if your "close buddy" even actually likes you or not, it’s like. Holding my head. He can’t trust his own vision of events that happened do you see. There’s always this film of distrust that it could be a lie that should be there when he interacts with people there’s always this sense of cloak and dagger to expect backstabs out of nowhere because you CAN’T see it coming you CAN’T you CAN’T there’s something about you which makes it impossible so you CAN’T-

He’s so scared of not being able to read people. He knows it’s a weak spot he has, he’s always known. All of these bits are centered around social expectations and betrayals, the assumption that he doesn’t belong either in society or with other humans.

And Laios’ level of awareness is actually sort of complex to analyze, but it’s there, there’s how out of him and Falin he was the one sensitive to the ~aura of hatred~ he felt from the townspeople, there’s of course his nightmares whispering to him about the mocking looks, and how yeah actually he realizes that his gold stripper coworker was taking advantage of him. There’s of course the Winged Lion speech about his trauma and how he fundamentally mistrusts/dislikes humans to some deep seated degree, this distrust that he still keeps under control always. There’s how pre-canon he often wanted to suggest eating monsters but never worked up the courage to bring it up with the others. There’s how he gets across as stoic when he isn’t being enthusiastic…… We don’t know how aware and wary he is exactly in the moment but we do know he has some anxiety around social stuff, and looking back he does notice and aughh augh, the sense you have to hide yourself to not get hurt and be on your guard and shit and.

When you don’t know what to look out for and when to look out for it, the general ‘common sense’ of not always trusting people or noticing when someone’s messing with you becomes hypervigilance in social settings

"Man they really know what you hate huh". Being socially unaware literally plagues him, he knows, he knows it so well.

It’s so quick that it’s almost hard to digest how literal and blatant Laios summoning his monster to crush all the people who’ve hurt him is. His literal go-to coping mechanism for comfort in his literal monster-induced emotionally intense nightmares, saving him by taking away the upsetting element (the humans)

"Monsters are his coping fantasy, where they can whisk him away from humanity, all the hurt it’s caused him and its arbitrary rules" with the subtlety of a brick. Monsters are his comfort safe zone "because they kill humans" yes but no it’s because he pits them as the guardians against humans who to him are in the role of the agressors. To him they represent freedom from the shackles of what it means to be part of humanity, a fundamentally social species