#All things

[randomfoggytiger]

Dana Scully: a Fear of Death Rooted in Eternal Judgment

I think Scully's fear of death is rooted in a fear of judgment.

According to her faith, one either gets into Heaven or Hell (with a pit stop here or there to atone for their sins.) One would think that would be a comfort to the morally unbreakable Dana Scully.

But it isn't.

During her atheistic arc (Season 1 through early Season 2), Scully was determined to do her job and do it well. The paranoia of death didn't cling to her as it does in later seasons.... until Beyond the Sea. Her father's ghost visiting her right after his death and being channeled later through Luthor Lee Boggs, twice-- it takes its toll, unwinding the foundational principles of her life: that Death is final; and that there are no ghosts or psychics or even angels or demons, just sick men and women who abuse others through their superstitions. Scully chooses ignorance, reverting away from this new territory because "I'm afraid... I'm afraid to believe." The rest of Season 1, she didn't want to die, panicked in the face of it; but wasn't as paranoid as, again, later seasons.

Then One Breath happens: Scully experienced something she "couldn't find the words" to explain, even when facing death alongside Mulder in Dod Kalm. It's Scully who is fearless as their end approaches, reassuring Mulder he has nothing to fear based on that experience. Thus, One Breath began her agnostic arc-- where she believed, deep down, but was afraid to fully accept that belief (i.e., her shaken projections on Pfaster in Irresistible and her activated voodoo curse in Fresh Bones.) Death is a place of peace, hence why she denies it to Pfaster (we later learn in Orison.)

When we reach Season 3's Revelations, Scully's agnosticism turns to religious terror. "God is speaking, and no one is listening", she confesses to the priest-- what she means is, that God has been speaking to and judging me, and I've been failing. Thus, her paranoia of Death: not because of its finality (Season 1) or promise of peace (Season 2), but because it could find her at fault and deny her a blessed eternal life.

In Season 4, Scully doesn't want to "run back to God" in Gethsemane; but faces her fears once Death is inescapable in Redux II.

In Season 5, she battles with her religious fragility, struggling for peace after her daughter is stolen before her Christian burial (Emily) and after her spirit returns during a case with angels and demons. Scully may be more vulnerable to religious manipulation, but she is also more secure in her beliefs of a peaceful afterlife.

By Season 6, Scully continues to look upon Death as God's judgment: eternal reward or eternal torment. But then Tithonus happens: Fellig shakes Scully's convictions that eternity is a good thing, showing her the soul of an eternally tormented man... making her wonder if she is guaranteed a happy ending, after all.

This brings up to Season 7's Orison, where Scully stands in judgment of Pfaster and the "Reverend" Orison. When she murders Pfaster in cold blood, her doubts and criticisms rise up against her, brandishing her with the same immoral code-- thus, making her fear eternal condemnation from God: the end meted out to both convicts, or an immortal torment ala Alfred Fellig. This was an extremely crucial moment for her development as a character... and would have been given no resolution if not for Gillian's all things.

all things is the resolution to Scully's paranoia: "God talks back", she comes to terms with herself, and makes a final decision out of principle and not panic, out of assuredness and not anguish. Scully is secure; and she finds the stability to embrace her beliefs, religion, and faith as it should be: a source of rest, a refuge from fear.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

#txf #xf meta #meta #xfiles #x-files #the x files #Scully #S1 #S2 #S3 #S4 #S5 #S6 #S7 #Beyond the Sea #One Breath #Irresistible #Fresh Bones #Revelations #Never Again #Gethsemane #Redux II #Emily #All Souls #Tithonus #Orison #all things #Mulder #Bill Scully Sr. #Emily Sims

[television-overload]

Something about the peace and quiet of the last few minutes of the "before" in Mulder and Scully's relationship... of seeing them moments before they take that step.

Neither of them probably know what's about to happen. They're just so soft and sweet and comfortable together, and the sweet babies have no idea that everything will change overnight.

Mulder certainly doesn't expect her to wake up and find him. He just takes in the little moments after she falls asleep, and you can so clearly see how much he loves her. He looks at her lips, like he wishes he could kiss her, probably having no idea that very soon, he will.

And the next morning is peaceful too. Rainy, dark, quiet. Mulder is sleeping like a baby, because FINALLY they've taken a step forward. And it's so natural too, I know it is.

All Things, the episode that you are.

#i'm an all things truther #i just feel like scully had to work through all that before they could move forward #and it was written in a way that seems like that's how it was intended to be #anyway #im emo about them again #txf #x files #msr #fox mulder #dana scully #all things

[bakedbakermom]

txf + text posts (14/?)

#wow it's been a whole month since i made one of these! #txf #txf gifset #txfedit #txf edit #txf + text posts #liwl makes a gif #fight the future #detour #amor fati #herrenvolk #never again #fire #emily #all things #txf s1 #txf s4 #txf s5 #txf s7

[alexa-crowe]

THE X-FILES 7.17 | “all things”

#txfedit #dailytxf #xfilesnet #userveronika #tusersahar #userars #dana scully #fox mulder #txf s7 #all things #msr #mulder x scully #scully x mulder #mine #xf #xfiles #the x-files #txf #x files #x-files #the x files #thexfiles #thex-files

[agent-troi]

scully at the end of never again: there’s no escape from mulder😔

scully at the end of all things: there’s no escape from mulder!!🥰

#something something knowing your fate vs accepting it #x files #never again #all things #fox mulder #dana scully #mulder x scully #msr

[drchucktingle]

dr tingle, your dedication to writing books for all demographics is very commendable and appreciated! however, given the infinite variety of human experience, it would be pretty understandable if there was one or two you haven't gotten to yet! is this something you keep in mind? a to-do list of sorts that you keep and/or add to if someone brings up a possibility you haven't thought of? i notice no askers on tumblr have stumped you yet though.

chuck will never write a tingler about a natural disaster where buds are hurt or similar tragedy no matter how lucrative this idea might seem (i talk about this here where i explain why i did not write a covid tingler). i will also not write a tingler sexualizing a real ladybuck in the news because they get that enough as it is.

THOSE TOPICS ASIDE, the plan is to write a tingler for ever single thing that exists. this is my goal, we will see if chuck can make it

#all things #love is real #existence

[notnotafangirl]

Dana Scully took one look at this goofy ass in his Stonehenge Rocks hat and said time to end this 7 year drought and fuck this man silly. And you know what? She was so valid for that.

#txf #dana scully #fox mulder #the x files #msr #msr moments that altered my brain chemistry #all things #txf 7

[wiirocku]

Romans 8:28 (ESV) - And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.

#Romans 8:28 #know #who #love God #all things #work #together #good #called #according #to His purpose

[aloysiavirgata]

Think maybe Mulder knew Stella from his time in England? 👀

“Hello, Mulder,” she says, in her silk and sandpaper voice. “Fancy meeting you here.”

As though he hasn’t met her here before, as though his subconscious hadn’t sent him this way for her Hitchcock hair and her Hepburn timbre. He hasn’t worn the Stonehenge Rocks hat, thank goodness.

“How long has it been?” he asks, over Phoebe and Diana and Scully - Scully, like a bruise whose tenderness he keeps testing with a finger. He knows, nearly to the month, how long it’s been.

But he asks.

“Back over a year and in and out of weeks and through a day,” Stella murmurs. She sips at the rock glass with her mouth like a damask rose. Blouse the color of old blood.

“‘Til he came to the place where the wild things are,” Mulder finishes, dreamy and wistful for the past and the future.

Stella makes a liquid sound. “You look good, Fox. Phoebe still misses you. Phoebe will always miss you.”

“I’m sure her aim’s getting better,” Mulder says.

Stella laughs into the sweet blackberry dark, the fiery gold of her drink. “I heard about your partner,” she says. “She desperately in love with you yet, Fox? Phoebe said she was quite devoted already a few years back, but you know how Phoebe is. A bit histrionic.”

He coughs a little. “We parted badly last time, Phoebe and I.”

“I heard,” Stella says. “Even I know better than to fuck victims, for heaven’s sake.”

She raises her brows for punctuation. Her eyes cooler than Scully’s, more calculating, however big and blue.

Mulder shakes his head. Good old Stella. He knows perfectly well she’d never get away with being so outspoken if she didn’t look like she does. The fact that Stella is perfectly aware of this pleases him. He knows his own Halo Effect as well, has exploited it shamelessly. Stella, like him, is a survivor.

“I’ve missed you too.” She winks for the fun of it. Mulder wonders how many poor bastards are desperately in love with Stella. He thinks Phoebe might have been, at a time.

“No you haven’t,” he says warmly. She is playful, but always honest.

“No, I haven’t.” she admits. “But I do now that I remember…aspects of you.” She makes a lazy circle with her tongue against the inside of her sculpted cheek.

Jesus, Stella! He blushes.

“I heard your partner is a doctor though,” Stella muses, swirling her ice. “I suppose she knows all the fun bits.”

“We haven’t…Phoebe doesn’t…” Mulder shakes his head again.

“Oh. Well. You around tonight?” she asks, direct as ever.

He is, he technically is, and he doesn’t have what it takes to say no to Stella or yes to his longing for his partner.

“Stella…” he says, low, hardening, remembering the sinuous machinery of her body, the way she left him both deeply satisfied and profoundly alone.

She gets to her feet, Detective Gibson, nudges his thighs apart with hers.

Mulder puts his hands at her hips, their roundness always surprising in such a small woman. She is pressed between his knees like a plucked flower. He touches her, draws her close. She smells like good breeding and warm silk and forgetting.

“What is it, Stella?” he murmurs. Remembers the constellation of freckles along her sternum, the taut vellum of her belly.

A whiff of her skin when she leans forward, a kiss of her platinum hair on his cheek. She presses her mouth to his, darts her tongue against his lips. Stella, Stella, this is what he needs to avoid the hard choices at home. Stella like an Akhal-Teke, lean and golden and rare. Riding her for miles.

“Go home,” she murmurs, her sweet, peaty breath in his mouth. “You’re absolutely useless, darling.”

He is stung. “Stella, I-“

“Let’s not spoil the memories, hmm?” she says. “Go tell her.”

“I don’t -“

Stella’s immaculate finger at his mouth.

She leaves cash at the bar, saunters out from between his legs without ever looking back.

#xf fanfic #xfiles fanfic #bbc the fall #stella gibson #fox mulder #phoebe green #prompt #all things

[carefulfears]

the end of all things and scully coming home to sit on mulder’s couch drinking tea and tell him all about her adventure being reunited with the professor she had an affair with when she was young and her spiritual journey speaking to god and “i once considered spending my whole life with this man…what i would have missed…” yeah, that’s really the whole thing. the choices that are made to lead you to where you’re supposed to be, not being able to imagine not having what you chose. love as free will winning out over fate etc etc

#‘is scully too good for mulder’ well no but also #what would she have missed? #txf.txt #all things

[precedex-files]

They get protected health information ALL THE TIME! Whether it’s related to a case or not. The law passed in 1996. Scully should’ve never been able to know about Daniel Waterson. But when have pesky things like laws and rules ever stopped our dynamic duo? Never! 😂

P.S. kudos to all you gif makers, I just tried to make one and it was a total fail. It’s easier to cut a fan vid.

#the x files #x files #fox mulder #dana scully #all things

[randomfoggytiger]

X-Files: An Avoidance Shared by Two

Was reading this beautiful post and had some thoughts.

**Note**: Will ghost edit later~

In light of the Attachment styles posited by @agent-troi, it makes sense why Scully and Mulder developed their unspoken so early on.

If Mulder is Anxious-Avoidant, then it makes sense why he sidesteps voicing his needs and especially his wants, fearing rejection from his support system (parents, girlfriends, friends, partners, etc.)

If Scully is Secure-Avoidant, then it makes sense why she is able to balance a strong sense of self with the need for reciprocal affection and an inability to show her "weakness" or reliance on another person.

But because she's an intelligent woman, Scully would've realized Mulder communicates more efficiently with his hands and eye contact than with his words. Physical touch doesn't seem to be a problem from as early on as the Pilot; but keeping close proximity to her partner in strained moments that crack her "strength" is more of a challenge (ex. Irresistible, Memento Mori, Elegy, A Christmas Carol, Emily, etc.)

Despite Mulder being her priority since Tooms, it took Scully seven years to resolve her avoidant issues, making peace with her ability to pick the right choice (a fear stemming back to the rabbit she'd rescued and accidentally killed) and truly embracing life for what it was.

And because he's an intelligent man, Mulder would've realized Scully needs to hear reciprocal affection from time to time (or else, like you said, she jumps to Never Again and FTF and All Things conclusions.) Most of his compliments early on were spoken to the wind (E.B.E.'s "I think it's remotely plausible someone might think you're hot") or to other people (Irresistible "pretty woman" and Syzygy's "rigid in a wonderful way", etc.) Never Again was the shakeup that caused Mulder to start making more advances towards Scully (as opposed to Home's rapid withdrawal when she angled his banter more seriously) progressing from "I knew you would tell me if I was making a mistake" to "You're my one in five billion" to "You kept me honest, made me a whole person" to, finally, "You are my constant, my touchstone."

Despite Scully being his priority since One Breath, it took Mulder four years to realize he could lose Scully and begin to dig deep and work hard to prove that he not only wanted but needed her. The real change happened over six years in-- "another life, another world"-- and culminated in an act of impulsive courage that led to their no-excuses-left-to-give kiss in Millennium.

(And isn't it interesting that both of their psychological pivots happened after getting a glimpse of what their life "could have been", i.e. Amor Fati and All Things respectively?)

Lastly, I think both of them recognized the Avoidant nature of the other: Scully had patience when Mulder ran off to the next big mystery instead of wanting a "normal" life with her (The Jersey Devil, bits in War of the Coprophages, Quagmire, Home, Detour, Dreamland, Arcadia, etc.); and Mulder didn't expect but learned to understand whenever Scully pushed him out of her personal walls (the slow build from Beyond the Sea to Never Again, Leonard Betts, Memento Mori, Elegy, Gethsemane, Emily, etc.)

(Sidenote: This dynamic would be yet another layer to their behavior in Never Again: Scully needed affirmation; but Mulder, having never seen or expected this side from her, thought she was gearing up to abandon him. By the end it's all cleared up... but neither is content with their separate but parallel awakenings (my thoughts on the script here, in-depth meta here, and in-depth Typing post here.)

Conclusion?

Not much at this point, but I think the confident takeaway would be that-- really-- Mulder and Scully grew into their own with each other.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

#txf #xf meta #Mulder #Scully #Avoidance Shared by Two #Attachment Styles #loved reading her thoughts #that unspoken #Secure-Avoidant #Anxious-Avoidant #thoughts #meta #xfiles #x-files #the x files #S4 #Never Again #S7 #Amor Fati #All Things #mine

[deathsbestgirl]

jersey devil + all things: twitter edition

#the x files #dana scully #mulder and scully #the jersey devil #all things #txf quotes #never again #mine #sometimes i say things

[bakedbakermom]

dana scully x jagged little pill

empty bottles x "not the doctor" (track 11/12)

"Mind the empty bottle with the holes along the bottom" (a lyric that took me 25 years to understand)

So many of Scully's love interests are empty bottles: men looking to her to fill their needs, to perform a role, while doing nothing to fix those things in themselves they're asking her to tend to. To Padgett she is character to be controlled and adored, so long as she never steps outside the narrative he has written in his own head about her. To Ed Jerse she is someone to hold him together when the rest of his life is falling apart. To Daniel she is a memory, a dream, an ideal that can never be met because ultimately the past can never be recreated and she will again never be the same person she was back then. To Jack she is a way to bring back the thrill of his youth, the fresh young cadet on the brink of adventure while he is mostly resigned to teaching the next generation.

Rather than see her as a whole, complete, and complex person, they reduce her to these archetypes in order to make themselves feel less empty. No wonder Mulder - who worships her in all her varied shades, and in fact begs to be let in to those parts of her that she has learned to hide and suppress - is a breath of fresh air.

(Not pictured: Sheriff Hartwell, as funny as it would have been to include him for the line "I don't want to be your food or the light from the fridge on your face at midnight," because he was really only ever a joke between them. LMK if you'd like a bonus gif of that lol.)

#also fuck you daniel only mulder gets to stroke her cheek that way!!! #txf #msr #scully x alanis #dana scully #alanis morissette #not the doctor #liwl makes a gif #txfedit #txf edit #txf gifset #txf fanart #my fanart #txf s1 #txf s4 #txf s6 #txf s7 #milagro #never again #all things #lazarus #je souhaite #hollywood a.d. #that lazarus one almost killed me holy shit who was doing lighting and color grading on set that day!? #dailytxf #Spotify

[alexa-crowe]

THE X-FILES 4.10 | "Paper Hearts" 7.17 | "all things"

#txfedit #dailytxf #xfilesnet #userveronika #userars #tusersahar #usermakilah #mine #msr #dana scully #fox mulder #txf #the x-files #the x files #xf #xfiles #x-files #x files #all things #paper hearts #txf s4 #txf s7 #the xfiles #thexfiles #thex files #tw: flashing

[whovianderson]

Mulder and Scully are each other’s only “right choice”… the universe aligns just so that they can be together…

#I love gillian anderson’s mind #I’m actually a mess #pip watches txf for the first time and goes insane #the x files #all things #7x17