that--funny--feeling

[that--funny--feeling]

the chances of them ever figuring out the normal distance two people generally stand from each other is below zero and i wouldn't want them to either

#txf

[that--funny--feeling]

seeing two mutuals who have the same interest but aren’t in the same circles is like. i want to coordinate a play date

[that--funny--feeling]

I don’t remember where this story was from but it was about how the writers older brother died when he was young and years later had a son who, had never met the brother had the same mannerisms as him. Ok I think I remember the key words were “my son drinks from the water fountain like my brother” or something

#words

[that--funny--feeling]

I like to think that Kaz is sort of like Wylan's and Jesper's cat. Like they hear some small noise downstairs at 3 AM, and they'll roll their eyes and say "It's Kaz again".

One day Wylan leaves the house and screams in terror because Kaz is casually chilling on the roof. "For a better view on my targets," he says. What targets does he mean? No idea. How did he get up there? No one knows. Can he get down on his own? No. Will he climb up again tomorrow? Absolutely.

He comes by- uninvited!- just to eat their food, and when they ask him to stop, he gives the "You told me to take better care of myself!" response. Oh, and he pushes things off tables, just to be an asshole. Once Kaz is more comfortable and has learned to trust his friends and be vulnerable around them, they randomly find him napping in strange places of the house as if he pays rent.

When he's sick or hurt, he hides and hisses when approached.

Sometimes he kidnaps people that annoy or threaten Wylan and Jesper and drops them at their doorsteps. As gifts ❤

The final straw is when one day Wylan and Jesper plan to take a romantic bath together, and when they enter the bathroom- surprise!- Kaz is already in the bathtub with a glass of brandy in his hand, having the audacity to look scandalized and be like "Can you KNOCK?!"

It has come to the point where he's their mean, murderous, asshole roommate who just eats all their food and breaks all their locks constantly lol

#soc

[that--funny--feeling]

mulder will do shit like call scully from jail and be like hi I got arrested trying to catch homeless bigfoot in an alleyway. I know you’re a six hour drive away but can you come pick me up. and scullys problem is that she will come pick him up eventually

#txf

[that--funny--feeling]

me every day without fail: I'll do [chore] when I get home

me when I get home:

#literally

[that--funny--feeling]

#txf

[that--funny--feeling]

the inexorable corruption of power and the question of: was it fate? or was it the individual choices of ten people, twenty--a thousand people's individual choices crushed into sediment over multiple centuries?

is that what we call fate? just stories.

beginnings are such delicate times.

#dune

[that--funny--feeling]

Frohike when Mulder and Scully have a slight disagreement

#txf

[that--funny--feeling]

Bit of hurt/comfort after 731 ❤️

#txf fanart #mulder x scully #txf

[that--funny--feeling]

i think of this ProZD video constantly its always so fucking funny

[that--funny--feeling]

Dana Scully and Relationships: Initial Commitment and Cyclical Self-Doubt

I've often struggled with the two sides of Dana Scully-- her desire to be "first" in her partners' eyes and her fear to become too close to another person-- finding the oft explored aspect of her withdrawal and distance in fic to not quite align with my perspective of her in canon. Both things can be true at once, I don't deny: the degree to which they are, however, stumped me.

Today, the balance finally fell into place, I think.

Scully's Successful Dating Life

Scully had multiple partners before she met Mulder-- Marcus, in high school; Daniel Waterston, in college; Jack Willis, in Quantico-- and seemed to, very early on, push back against Mulder's version of a normal life. Beyond the Sea started to amplify her insecurities, but it wasn't until A Christmas Carol that this dichotomy-- a desire to go her own way but an inability to lean solely on her own council-- was minutely explored.

Obviously, Scully was able to have healthy relationships in her past, and even left Daniel after she discovered his duplicity. And although Ethan was written out of the series and Marcus was but a footnote in Small Potatoes, the pattern persisted with Rob in The Jersey Devil and Jack in Lazarus.

I believe Scully's problem is not in starting romantic relationships-- that's Mulder's issue, I posit-- but in ignoring her self-doubt long enough to keep them.

Self-Esteem and Walking Away

The complications in Scully's relationships stemmed back to her father and how she tied his praise and admiration into her self-esteem (Beyond the Sea, a deleted scene in The Blessing Way, Never Again, etc.), which in turn stemmed back to her shaken belief in herself after the deaths of the rabbit and the snake in her childhood. Scully believes her personal choices lead to dire consequences: as much as she acts on her own council and tries to stand by her decisions, she's ingrained self-doubt into her self-esteem, her relationships, and even her religion.

We see that pattern on a microscale in Detour through The End: Scully was ready to take her and Mulder's relationship to the next level, and even broke her usual routine of waiting for the pursuer by becoming one herself. And even after Mulder breezed out of the motel (whether by accident or intent), she still subtly brought up the possibility again in the woods. Mulder, however, was taken aback, trying to steer them away from a serious conversation with humor. Scully took the hint and let the matter drop; but this dismissal morphed from gentle deflection to outright rejection in her eyes after the devastation of The End (hence her actions in Fight the Future.)

When Scully makes a decision, she intends to act on it and tells others her plan; when they push back, she doubts and wavers; and when someone else she trusts gives her a boost, she takes their hand and leaps forward: all this stems from someone else's perception of her, be it her father, her sister, her partner, etc. In light of this, it took Captain Scully to make Scully proud of her ability to achieve, it took Melissa Scully to prod Scully forward on her own personal path, it took Mulder to push Scully to see the truth about the world around her, and it took herself to show Scully the acceptance she craved had to come from within, not without.

The men in Scully's life that were the hardest to leave were tied directly to herself: Ed Jerse (post here) and Daniel Waterston were Scully's cyclical self-sacrificial nature and self-doubt, and Mulder was the expression of every part of who Scully is. It might have been against Scully's nature to have a one-night stand before Never Again, but not to willingly want and have a man in her bed, in her space, in her life (as told in Lazarus and all things.) The End and Fight the Future proved this: Scully, thinking she held Mulder back, blamed herself and prepared to walk away from his life, only turning back when Mulder yelled the truth at her in his hallway. Seeing the confirmation in her partner's eyes (as in Small Potatoes and later in Millennium), she willingly prepared for him to kiss her; then stuck unwaveringly by his side (despite the jealousy and anger at Diana Fowley in Season 6) until-- and after-- One Son drew an unflinching line in the sand.

Working Towards Wholeness and the Season of Secret Sex

The journey of Mulder and Scully's relationship-- why it took nearly seven years-- was a two-fold issue.

Mulder's self-doubt bloomed from a fear of committing to anything lest it fall apart (ala Pheobe Green and Diana Fowley) and ruin his chances of righting the "wrongs" he committed in his childhood. He could banter about uber Scullys but still wedged a chair under the broken lock separating his and Scully's room. Hand and glove with that tendency was his misinterpretations or active avoidance of Scully's hints at a "normal" life for most of their partnership. After he was forced to either confess his feelings or lose his partner in Fight the Future, Mulder and Scully spent Season 6 riding around with love sitting between them; but, again, it wasn't until he experienced "another life, another world" in Amor Fati that Mulder chipped away at his hesitancy and finally moved them both forward in Millennium.

Thus began the season of secret sex, as exemplified by their open flirtation, pouting, tie-twirling, ogling, and comfortable ease. And thus began the reoccurring cycle of Scully's self-doubt.

Scully's set back was an entirely different beast. Her commitment to Mulder began in earnest in Season 1's Tooms, sticking by his side unfailingly year after year. Although proclamations, actions, and relationships come easy for Scully-- just as switching from medical school to the FBI to field agent had been-- her self-doubt rears its ugly head after she's committed to a course or action, questioning her gut feeling for the FBI in A Christmas Carol, questioning if her father would be proud of her in Beyond the Sea and The Blessing Way, and questioning her choice to pick the work (read: Mulder) over a normal life in Never Again and all things. After the events of Millennium, Sein und Zeit, and Closure-- when Mulder changed their relationship, found his truth, but didn't change his patterns-- she almost withdrew completely, assuming Mulder treated her as a beast of burden instead of a fully-fledged woman whose ups, downs, and sideways should have understood after seven years. In that moment, Scully second-guessed her ability to make the right choice; and Daniel-- a man so consumed with her that he thought of little else the past ten years-- seemed a safer bet.

For Mulder, self-doubt stymies his decisions and actions. For Scully, self-doubt kicks in after her decisions and actions: Scully has to drop out of medical school and apply to the FBI before she reconsiders, Scully has to stay by Mulder's side for years before looking down other paths, Scully has to commit to the next stage of her and Mulder's relationship before wondering if she'd made the right choice.

all things was to Scully what Amor Fati and Closure were to Mulder: reconciliation with herself that exceeded her preconceived notions and capabilities, an ability to distinguish between what truly made her happy and what were the false voices that could lead her astray. And while Mulder was chasing crop circles and God was speaking back, Scully planted her feet firmly on the truth: each choice and its consequences brought her here; and here was, indeed, where she wanted to be.

Conclusion

So, while I don't buy the perspective that Scully would immediately withdraw from Mulder's advances and talk herself out of a relationship before it's even begun, I do believe that accepting and acting on her impulses-- no matter how cautiously or carefully-- would, in the long-term, begin to pluck at her insecurities.

And while Millennium pushed Mulder and Scully into the season of secret sex, it wasn't until Closure and all things that they were set free.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

#txf #txf meta #mulder x scully

[that--funny--feeling]

#dune

[that--funny--feeling]

how to find literally any post on a blog in seconds (on desktop)

there are so many posts about ~tumblr is so broken, you can’t find any post on your own blog, it’s impossible, bluhrblub~

I am here to tell you otherwise! it is in fact INCREDIBLY easy to find a post on a blog if you’re on desktop/browser and you know what you’re doing:

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant. every single post, every single time. in chronological order starting with the most recent post. note: it will not find #croissants or that time you made the typo #croidnssants. for a tag with multiple words, it’s just /tagged/my-croissant and it will show you everything with the exact phrase #my croissant

url.tumblr.com/tagged/croissant/chrono will bring up EVERY post on the blog tagged with the exact phrase #croissant, but it will show them in reverse order with the oldest first 

url.tumblr.com/search/croissant isn’t as perfect at finding everything, but it’s generally loads better than the search on mobile. it will find a good array of posts that have the word croissant in them somewhere. could be in the body of the post (op captioned it “look at my croissant”) or in the tags (#man I want a croissant). it won’t necessarily find EVERYTHING like /tagged/ does, but I find it’s still more reliable than search on mobile. you can sometimes even find posts by a specific user by searching their url. also, unlike whatever random assortment tumblr mobile pulls up, it will still show them in a more logically chronological order

url.tumblr.com/day/2020/11/05 will show you every post on the blog from november 5th, 2020, in case you’re taking a break from croissants to look for destiel election memes 

url.tumblr.com/archive/ is search paradise. easily go to a particular month and see all posts as thumbnails! search by post type! search by tags but as thumbnails now

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio will show you every audio post on your blog (you can also filter by other post types). sometimes a little imperfect if you’re looking for a video when the op embedded the video in a text post instead of posting as a video post, etc

url.tumblr.com/archive/tagged/croissant will show you EVERY post on the blog tagged with the specific and exact phrase #croissant, but it will show you them in the archive thumbnail view divided by months. very useful if you’re looking for a specific picture of a croissant that was reblogged 6 months ago and want to be able to scan for it quickly 

url.tumblr.com/archive/filter-by/audio/tagged/croissant will show you every audio post tagged with the specific phrase #croissant (you can also filter by photo or text instead, because I don’t know why you have audio posts tagged croissant) 

the tag system on desktop tumblr is GENUINELY amazing for searching within a specific blog! 

caveat: this assumes a person HAS a desktop theme (or “custom theme”) enabled. a “custom theme” is url.tumblr.com, as opposed to tumblr.com/url. I’ve heard you have to opt-into the former now, when it used to be the default, so not everyone HAS a custom theme where you can use all those neat url tricks. 

if the person doesn’t have a “custom theme” enabled, you’re beholden to the search bar. still, I’ve found the search bar on tumblr.com/url is WAY more reliable than search on mobile. for starters, it tends to bring posts up in a sensible order, instead of dredging up random posts from 2013 before anything else

if you’re on mobile, I’m sorry. godspeed and good luck finding anything. (my one tip is that if you’re able to click ON a tag rather than go through the search bar, you’ll have better luck. if your mutual has recently reblogged a post tagged #croissant, you can click #croissant and it’ll bring up everything tagged #croissant just like /tagged/croissant. but if there’s no readily available tag to click on, you have to rely on the mobile search bar and its weird bizarre whims) 

#useful

[that--funny--feeling]

Having completely normal thoughts about Dune Part Two.

#literally #dune

[that--funny--feeling]

house atreides, doomed by the narrative?

#dune

[that--funny--feeling]

"I'm perfectly happy with my friendship with Scully"

SIR, ONE MOVIE AGO YOU TRIED TO KISS HER THEN YOU KISSED HER PAST VERSION THEN YOU SAID YOU LOVED HER

#txf #mulder x scully