#we weren't looking to be found

[mulders-too-large-shirt]

s2 episode 7 "3" thoughts

hmm. hmm. that is the sound if me pondering what i just watched.

(i understand that this episode was an analysis into mulder's self-destructive behaviors when faced with overwhelming grief, but. that does not mean i enjoyed vampire hookup time)

well. we shall start from the top!

i read that it was an episode about vampires which i thought was a weird narrative choice because. hello. scully still gone??? but then i remembered that i too ignored the main quest in skyrim to hunt some vampires and that i had no place to judge

(granted, my main quest wasn't finding scully though. might have given that a bit more priority than saving the whole world. because she IS my whole world)

we open with a guy that looks like joe biden meeting with an attractive young woman. they're making out in a hot tub and we just know someone is gonna get slurped upon. and woe, it be upon us! double vampire attack.

back in DC, mulder gets his old office back! it's covered in plastic. he takes some of it off. he adjusts his calendar from may to november, so we see how much time he and scully had been assigned to other tasks, which also has me wondering how she managed to get a new house that quick.

(also, this calendar is... scantily clad women posing next to tools such as hammers and saws. was this allowed? was this acceptable? was it normal? were the 90's a lawless wasteland and mulder an irreparable freak?)

well. scully is an x file now, and he puts her glasses and id into an evidence bag and closes the filing cabinet which was sooooo evil. but he can't bring himself to put her necklace away. oh man. oh he's gotta have it in case he finds her. he has to hold her close. i'm Fine this is Fine.

so. he goes out to california to deal with the joe biden looking fellow being murdered. and he is not wanted on the crime scene. we know this because someone greets him by saying "nobody called the bureau" and he says "well, they should have" and lifts up the tape to let himself in. because one thing about him is that he's gonna let himself into a place he isn't wanted.

he sees the writing of a bible verse in blood on the wall and says something about their grasp of biblical knowledge being "feeble and literal" and i was like okayyy need to have a theological discussion with him

he then scares the other guy who originally wanted to kick him out by reciting a LARGE amount of facts related to similar cases and it's very much giving photographic memory. got me thinking, have we ever seen this man forget something? (directions don't count. they're confusing. but everything else sticks in that man's brain)

he just needs one thing: a phone book. which he uses to call a blood bank and ask about a new guy. who must be the vampire who did this!

so he rolls up to the blood bank and i'm over here struggling because i do Not Do Blood, and i knew at this point this was gonna be a tough watch, but i didn't anticipate the non-blood related reasons why this would be true

anyway he's sniffing around the blood bank and he hears some slurping and wouldn't you know, this dude is tearing into a bag of the red stuff like it's a capri sun. somehow he gets him into custody, where the dude refuses to talk because the lights are on, and mulder comes in with a lamp he put a red filter over, because he was prepared for vampire interrogation.

the vampire is going on about how what he did isn't murder because it's not like animals hunting prey is murder which is. not the greatest approach in terms of legal defense. mulder tells the guard that the guy is delusional and it's best to play along, and he believed this to be true... until he, quite literally, burned to a crisp in the sunlight. and died.

he's talking to the coroner and rattling off a bunch of vampire facts and says he didn't believe in vampires which is so funny to me because like. why is that where you draw the line, my friend. not at bigfoot and definitely not at aliens. but man. vampires are just too out there for spooky mulder. until now!

the coroner has a very funny line: "you are really upsetting me... on several levels" which seems to be the general effect fox mulder has on people. and also because i felt the same way about his dumbass actions during this episode.

coroner finds a stamp on the dead body's hand, which seems to come from a nightclub. so naturally our fbi agent ends up there.

you often see posts saying that "(insert character here) should be at the club". i fear that this is not the case for fox mulder, but it's possible that it's his suit and tie that are throwing me off. he just doesn't seem like he belongs there. i ask myself, where should he be instead? perhaps some sort of star wars convention would suit him better. a book signing with some author he likes. idk, an interior decorating festival. not here.

i shall use my verbatim words to walk you through the next scene:

"pause. he's talking to a woman who was looking into a compact without a mirror. so. vampire suspect. and now why are they getting so close together. and getting a drink. okay now they're leaving to a new spot together? AFTER she admits to vampirism"

(here she did some stuff that required me to look away from my screen due to my Weak Constitution. but also it would have felt necessary to look away anyway because it was getting... charged)

she tries to get him to... suck on her finger... but he won't do it because aids. which is fair. i think that's a smart move, actually. it's just that getting flirty with a vampire he knows was involved with a ton of killings was such a stupid move, i don't know why it's now the braincells start to kick in.

that kills the vibe, though, so she gets another guy to take his place and things escalate.

mulder pulls in at a restaurant called ra. nice! the sun god! and he is... through a window, witnessing some more slurping action. he seems to want to intervene and save this poor soul being feasted upon...

but the poor soul is no poor soul at all! he comes out and decks mulder, and delivers this line with stunning conviction: "i don't know who you are, freak, but we're two consenting adults" and with this, he is forced to flee.

and yeah. it made me laugh. my expectations for the genre were subverted. he signed up for that shit! what he did not sign up for, however, was the next part, where he was killed by the other vampires.

cut to investigating the crime scene. mulder has brought along a forensic dentist, which is a job i had no idea you could go into. he needs to see about those bites, which are very human.

next they go to vampire woman's house. it's a very nice place. mulder... opens her oven. and sees a loaf of bread in there. and i'm thinking, man, i hope this doesn't go where i think it's going. baked goods... ovens... i never want a vampire pregnancy arc. but he cracks open the loaf and something red spills out and somehow, this to him means that she is gone and isn't coming back. he can read the signs of the bread. so add that to his resume. what did the bread tell you, my liege?

he seems to have stayed in her house, however, because he's there when she's back, and says he knows she was using the bread as a charm to ward off evil. because apparently that's an eastern european thing, blood bread to warn off evil. sound off if any eastern europeans in the chat wanna confirm or deny.

anyway. he's IN this woman he thinks is a vampire's HOUSE? what the hell. mulder seriously i need you to stop and think. like you should have stopped and done some thinking a while ago. honestly i'm not mad i'm just disappointed. and he's like "i want to save you come with me before they kill you" ohhh big tough man needs to save her huh. make him feel good inside. huh. certainly no ulterior motive here...

she's monologing about her horrible childhood and how sweet blood tastes. um girl. don't lie to him like that. i have busted my lip open before that stuff does NOT taste sweet and dangerous. it's like a penny with rust that you found in a parking lot.

it seems her vampiric origin story, if to be believed, is that things simply got too kinky. which is a new take on the genre.

(it's also about being caught in an abusive relationship and the damage that inflicts, but it seems abusive boyfriend came into vampirism at his kinky parties and things escalated from there. which. well. it blew the eyebrows clean off my head, to be fair)

at this point we see that he is WEARING SCULLY'S NECKLACE? he says something like "it's from someone i lost" and she says that she "hopes he finds her"

i did not like the undertones here and certainly not the overtones. because i knew where this was going. he was shaving in her bathroom. and let me tell you something: there is only ever a shaving scene in media because the writer needs a way to get some blood out of someone's body and into the real world. and man. i knew it was coming.

but what i didn't see coming was her SHAVING HIM??? girl. i am uncomfy. and she does, of course, cut him, and then they kiss. aggressively. terribly aggressively. can anyone answer what was going on in a satisfactory manner?

but the gag is: the original vampire- who burnt to a crisp in the jail cell, and was the abusive ex she spoke of- HE'S WATCHING THEM THROUGH THE WINDOW!

he breaks in and taunts the vampire woman about how he had to "wait for her to finish" and i was like cool. thank you SO much for that mental image i'm super happy with it. i definitely don't feel like i need a shower. but then he's going on about how he can't be killed.

here, at the tail end of the episode, we learn the rules of vampirism in this world: a vampire cannot be killed by a non-vampire. and a non-vampire BECOMES a vampire by consuming the blood of a believer and also taking a life. it is only here we realize that this woman is not an actual vampire yet, she just appropriates their culture by drinking blood unnecessarily.

mulder's still sleeping in her bed and she's like "you need to leave" and she stabs the wall to make her evil ex think she's killing him. but when they go to break out, mulder ties him up quite handily and he gets in the car to escape with vampire woman. until ANOTHER vampire woman jumps on the hood of their car. and main vampire woman knocks her out for a bit by running into her with said car, which is super effective.

mulder's leaving the place in shambles, his shirt still unbuttoned, wandering down the side of the hill. back at the house, now that we know the vampire rules, main vampire woman says she can finally kill the evil vampire ex. and he's like how!! you haven't had the blood of a believer or taken a life. so. she licks the blood off her hands (unclear if it's hers or mulders tbh) and says she'll take her own life. and drops a match after pouring gasoline.

so. that brings that to an end. and shabby looking mulder sits on a hill as he learns all four in the house died.

the episode ends with him playing with scully's necklace. which i don't even sort of feel like unpacking right now but maybe another time.

probably not, though, because i just didn't like this episode. and yeah, a lot of it comes down to me not wanting to see mulder hook up with people who aren't scully. can you blame me? is it so wrong to have preferences in this world?

but also, narrative wise- do you honestly see the guy fucking off to cali while scully's still missing to deal with an unrelated problem instead of devoting every hour of his life to finding her, like we saw him do in the last episode? you expect me to think he just puts it off for a lil while? the guy who, just last episode, pulled his gun on the ski lift operator to get to the top where she might be a little faster, and then choked his one and only suspect out of fury? you're thinking this is the guy that's gonna go soak up some west coast rays?

and yeah, he was obviously not himself through the episode- very cold and analytical- but c'mon. we all want to bang a vampire. he's not special. i just personally wouldn't do that if my friend were gone. like how is that gonna help the situation. be so for real. time and place!

and also the whole only learning the rules of being a vampire about 5 minutes before they need it to be plot relevant. that annoyed me too.

overall, mulder, like i said, i'm not mad, just disappointed.

let me know what you thought on this episode- i try to not be a hater, but i also understand that hating in small doses can be good for the soul. if it's a widely beloathed episode i'll feel better in my judgement as i join a long tradition of haters who have come before me.

[dawnthefluffyduck]

New game interest unlocked

(crow in bottom right belongs to @patchwork-crow-writes)

[noirandchocolate]

Ya-ha-ha! You found us!!

I kept forgetting to post these so now I will do so while I'm thinking of it. Here's Bast's (@purpledemoncat) and my Korok Girl outfits from Renaissance Faire last month!

I knit the ponchos, she made the masks (BAST post a picture of your mask I just realized you cannot really see it in these photos!), and we had a good time! I even got a little hip purse shaped like leaves, lol. It rained on us and we had to ditch our berries but it was still very fun.

My poncho is Tricandia by Beyenbergerin Design and Bast's is Spindleshanks by MMario, both on Ravelry and both very fun to make!

[teathattast]

I am ever-willing if you're ready for it

And we're gonna fly someday

We're gonna find our "something real"

Saw you and I knew that I was headed for it

And I'm headed fast now babe

We're still those wild kids in the dark

'Cause you light fire to my heart

You light fire to my heart

[britneyshakespeare]

she snorts cocaine at dinner parties in beverley hills

she goes to church every sunday and has a repressed sapphic crush on her best friend

nevertheless they are as close as can be

[seaofreverie]

My best haul ever possibly ‼️‼️‼️

[nexus-nebulae]

suddenly realising that a decent amount of our system's dysfunctions might be due to OCD 😭😭😭

[iamnotlookingidonotseeit]

fascinating revelations out of my dad's professional coaching of the whole family today

my mom scored astonishingly high on empathy and caring for a woman who seemed to find it next to impossible to express that to me

my dad has done an insane amount of work to be so warm and personable considering that his natural inclination is towards strong reserve rooted in anxiety (just like me!!)

my sister shocked - SHOCKED 🙄 - to learn that she scores almost zero in empathy AND very high on manipulation

actually shocking reveal that my sister always knew she was my mom's favorite. like I kind of assumed she was mean to both of us but apparently most of the biting comments were for me

[idk-what-to-put-here-123]

I've actually had a really good day today for a change

[florida3exclamationpoints]

Can I speak my truth. Why was Disney World's merch so underwhelming

[jheselbraum]

Nintendo is stupid here's my new better timeline:

Skyward Sword

Legend of Zelda

Adventure of Link

Minish Cap

Four Sourds

and it's sequel Four Swords Adventures

A Link to the Past

Link's Awakening (edited, whoops)

A Link Between Worlds

Ocarina of Time

The Hero is Defeated Timeline: Oracle games and Triforce Heroes that's it.

Child Timeline: Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess, as usual, easy peasy, for once no notes Nintendo

Adult Timeline: Wind Waker, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks once again pretty easy, no notes

11. Breath of the Wild 12. Tears of the Kingdom

[yangsrose]

going zip lining and having the cute instructor not only make conversation with me during the wait times but also having to straddle me while trying to catch me after getting to one of the platforms was not on my trip bucket list

[tyrantisterror]

When I was 3 years old I went to a preschool that had this little green crocheted crocodile finger puppet that was my absolute favorite toy to play with of all time. I named her Chelsea, because Chelsea starts with C and crocodile starts with C and more often than not wild animals in fiction aimed at kids have names that start with the same first letter as their species. I played with Chelsea every day, because she was my favorite toy, and because the other kids weren't really interested in her, and also because I eventually started to hide her in a special secret spot in the room so no one else would find her before I did. She was so beloved by me that when I graduated from preschool, my teachers gave Chelsea to me permanently, because it was clear no one else would ever love that little crochet crocodile as much as me anyway (in part because I hid her). They waited a few weeks after I graduated before doing it, too, and sent Chelsea with some post cards as if the crocodile had been on a whirlwind "travel the world" vacation before deciding to come live with me.

And Chelsea remained my favorite toy all through my childhood. There were others I loved nearly as much, like my Imperial Godzilla and the big red T.rex from the first Jurassic Park toy line and my tiny knockoff plush Charmander, but Chelsea always held the place of honor in my heart. She was my absolute favorite toy.

I kept a lot of my favorite toys through adolescence, even if social pressure eventually got me to give away a lot of them (and some, y'know, broke). That's obviously not surprising to you if you've followed my blog, since I still collect toys into my adulthood. But it's important to note because while I know I made a conscious effort to never throw out Chelsea every time I pared down my collection... at some point, she went missing.

I became aware of it when I graduated from high school. I was feeling really emotional about leaving that stage of my life and, y'know, becoming an adult and shit, and in that state I decided to find Chelsea to reassure myself that I hadn't entirely left childhood behind. But Chelsea wasn't there. No matter how hard I looked, I could not find Chelsea anywhere.

And that was, like, devastating, because the only explanation was that somehow, at some point, I had accidentally tossed her out with some other "childhood junk" while trying to grow up and be responsible in my teen years. I had literally thrown away my childhood in a careless attempt to be more grown up.

Of course I knew she was just a toy - nothing more than some yarn twisted together in the loose shape of a crocodile, lifeless and soul-less and more or less worthless in the objective light of day. But she was also Chelsea, my best friend since i was three, my stalwart little pal, a source of comfort for most of my life at that point, and I had just... tossed her out! Like garbage! What kind of person was I becoming if I could do that to my best friend?

I was very visibly distraught, and my mom noticed. Being very crafty, she tried to find the pattern for Chelsea so she could crochet me a new one. The problem is, she had no idea where to find said pattern. She checked all her books of crochet patterns, and when that failed she tried the internet, but no matter how hard she looked, she found nothing.

So my mom found the next best thing.

The original Chelsea was a tiny finger puppet, and I had "met" her when I was three. Well, I was eighteen now - shouldn't Chelsea have grown too? And as has been established, this crocodile was fond of whirlwind vacations. My mom found a pattern that looked as much like Chelsea as possible while also being a much bigger crocodile, and gifted her to me before I left for college - to show that while we can't stop the flow of time or how it changes us, that doesn't mean we have to leave it behind.

And yeah, I decided to believe it. That's Chelsea now. Yeah, I know that in reality it's a completely different set of yarn made by my mom rather than... whoever it was that crocheted the original Chelsea, but then, Chelsea was never really the yarn. She was the feelings I put into the yarn, you know? So that's Chelsea, all grown up, and still my most prized toy.

...

Flash forward... Jesus, eighteen years, holy shit. A few weeks ago I saw a post trying to identify a different crochet crocodile pattern, and thinking it was cute, I decided to try and look for it on ebay and etsy, just to see if maybe I could find it. I didn't, but do you know what I found instead?

A very familiar crochet crocodile finger puppet. An intensely familiar one, you might say. Of course I bought it. And of course I asked the seller if, perhaps, they might have the pattern for it or know where it came from (they did not, alas). And after a few days, she showed up at my house.

She's not Chelsea, obviously. For one thing, she's far too clean and fresh looking - Chelsea was very well loved, and looked the part, while this crocodile finger puppet has definitely not endured years upon years of a child's affection. And, more importantly, she's not Chelsea because we've already established that Chelsea grew up into a bigger crochet crocodile. This has to be Chelsea's younger sister, Cici.

And if I could find another of Chelsea's kind after all these years, then maybe, with a bit of luck, I might find the pattern for her, and be able to make more of them. Fill the world with Chelseas.

[valiantwolf]

not to be dramatic but i'm big annoyed i can't actually edit my layout or pages, but i also absolutely do not want to have to go find and edit an entirely new layout just to make things work again

[dcxdpdabbles]

Danny wakes up in a cage in the Batcave as a human and thinks to himself “well that’s not a good sign.”

Big bad bat encountered him in the caves near the Batcave by finding him half dunked in the Lazarus pits under Gotham during a routine check. He put the boy in a cage as a precaution, but was otherwise planning on investigating then returning him to his rightful place.

Danny does not know that.

He proceeds to search his pockets (phase his hand into his body disguised as reaching into his pockets) and pulls out a tool kit, systematically disassembles, exits, then reassembles the cage.

And walks out.

Now the bats are hunting the streets for this engineering escape artist while Danny is just hanging out at a newsstand reading up on the universe Clockwork had sent him to check out.

"Woah! What happened here?" Duke gasps from the staircase. He is wearing his school uniform, but upon checking his backpack, he realizes his chemistry textbook is missing, likely somewhere in the Batcave after his latest monitor duty.

He had been multitasking by shooting out questions to the rest of the bats as they patrolled. Due to an injured wrist, Duke had been benched from his regular day shift (Jason offered to cover for him), and watching screens had been the only way Bruce had been willing to let him participate.

That quickly became boring, however, since Oracle was much faster than he was, and Duke had a tough time focusing on screens. He's never been one to enjoy too much screen time - he didn't have the attention span for it.

This meant that Duke had not been in the cave for the past three nights, after he struck a deal with Bruce to let him catch up on some much-needed rest instead, provided he could continue his civilian work during the day.

Imagine his surprise to find the Batcave in disarray, with almost everything taken apart, piece by piece, including the Batcomputer and the dinosaur. Bruce, Damian, Dick, Jason, Tim, and Cass were currently attempting to gather the pieces and reassemble everything, which seemed hard given all the little pieces that had shattered about.

"Some kid with a screwdriver," Jason grunted, holding up various nails towards the light. In front of the anti-hero were five distinct piles of nails and bolts, each separated by type and size, which he carefully sorted from a large bucket.

"What?"

Tim looked up from a mountain of wires, some of which were dropped over his shoulders, around his head, and a few were entangled with his leg, as he tried to untangle everything. He looked as crazed as he did the year he decided he was going to put up all the Christmas lights by himself, only to realize how large Wayne Manor really was. "Two nights ago, we found a civilian unconscious in cave sector T-Y13. He was practically radioactive with Lazarus pits water, so Bruce had the bright idea to put him in a cage as a precaution. The civillain woke up while Bruce was away so he couldn't explain that he was not kidnapped, realized he was in a cage, and deassimbled it with a tool set he pulled from his ass-"

"Tim. Laugauge" Dick scolds, leanign over metal tubes to cover Damian's ears. The twelve-year-old huffs, but doesn't shake off Dick's hands as he stares at a different buckets of lightbults, sorting them like Jason was doing to the nails.

It was a little darker than what Duke was used to.

"-And then, he decided to reassemble the cage once he was out." Tim continued as if he weren't interrupted, nodding his head to the only part of the cave that looked normal. The contamination unit seemed to shine in the untouched spotlights. "Then the civilian had the bright idea to take apart everything in the cave. He systematically disassembled everything and mixed up the pieces. The only things he left alone were the railings!"

"It's pretty impressive," Bruce praises. He was checking over technology boards with a critical eye. A headlight strapped to his forehead shines brightly on the pieces as he smiles. "I wonder where he is now."

"If he has any brains, he's probably applying for a position with a pit crew in NASCAR," Cass laughs, picking up different boards of metal. "He took the whole place apart in less than twenty minutes."

"He even got the Batpens" Dick sighs. "Why was he so passive-aggressive about pulling out the pen's springs?"

"If I woke up in a cage, after unfair imprisonment, I would also cause my captors as much grief as possible," Damain comments casually. "We are lucky he decided to leave nothing harmful behind."

"He just took everything else!" Steph's voice calls out from a dark patch of the cave. Duke knows it's in the direction of the showers and the changing room. "Does anyone see any shower heads over there? The kid took them off every shower!

"I have one!" Cass calls back, holding up an item in her hand. "Are any pipes missing? There are five long metal cylinders that I can't figure out what they are for."

"No, he left the pipes along, but I think he took the mirrors and the door."

"Which door?" Bruce yells back. There is a moment of silence before Steph replies.

"All of them! "

"Of course. That's what these ones are for." Jason says in an Ah-ha voice, holding up a few black bolts. "They're the ones from the shower heads!"

Duke stares, then sighs. He lets his backpack slide off his shoulders, landing on the stairs with a thump. Looks like he's calling in sick to school again.

Rolling up his sleeves, he moves over to Cass and helps her lift the long cylinders she had mentioned. "Do we know anything about this civilian?"

"Before he took the Batcomputer apart, we were able to get that he wasn't in any of the local government records. He isn't from Gotham or this state." Bruce says while carefully placing pieces back on a large computer board with a pair of tweezers. "My guess, he's not going to be in any system, either."

"Why?"

Bruce looks up, his eyes shining. "His DNA matched eighty-five percent with Themyscira's genetic make-up. No proof of cloning either. We may just have a genius male Themysciran on our hands."

Duke didn't like how excited Bruce sounded when he made that statement. He opens his mouth to snap, "You can't adopt him, Bruce!"

It's validating that his voice wasn't the only one that said it, but that it echoed by literally everyone else in the cave. Bruce purses his lips but doesn't agree or disagree with the accusation as he turns back to his computer board.

Duke hears him mutter under his breath, but he's too far away to figure out what he said.

"How long do you think this will take us to put back together?" He asks Cass as they compare metal pieces- he's holding a triangle-looking thing that he can't figure out where it came from.

She kicks aside a circular metal slate, raising a brow at him, then nodding her head toward the left side of the cave. Duke turns to look in the direction of the third Robin, who was wiggling around.

"What are you!?" Tim screams at a blue wire, shaking it like he was strangling someone's neck. Somehow, in the time Duke looked away from him, Tim had his right arm tied to his left knee, with a red wire thread running through his shirt, and his right leg was no longer visible because the rest of the wire pile had consumed it.

"Oh, so it's going to be a few hours," Duke sighs as Cass nods sadly.

"Does anyone have any eyes on the light switches?" Dick yells out. "Damian and I almost have all the pieces to turn the lights back on."

"Oh gods -He took the lockers!" Steph screams in angst. "I had a snack stash in there!"

[britishchick09]

i guess the sale was too epic! ;D