The very first experience it has with the base crew is that they save it from people shooting at it, give it warm hugs, and kill the people trying to deatroy it. After that it attacks and impersonates an unknown (at the time) member of the crew. After that it gets surrounded by dogs who are angry but too scared to approach, then it changes, then it attacks the huskies, and only then does anyone in the base camp treat it with hostility.

The entire first act of the movie is devoted to establishing that they know each other with an Intimacy so deep they can anticipate one another's actions and attitudes. They have been in an isolated arctic base for months and months where they can barely leave the same building. They are in one another's personal space throughout the movie. It's a vital plot point that the Thing can immitate people down to memories and personality traits. It's a vital metaphorical point as well. It's so deeply and fundamentally superficial and factually incorrect to call them unfamiliar with each other that it implies total inattention to what is happening on screen.

The Thing is, at heart, not a movie about any singular decision or behavior creating a bad outcome. Baked into the 1982 movie is failure, death, entropy, inevitable loss. It's not a movie that's meant to have a right solution, or a right decision - but when someone comes at this very bleak story without a good grounding in horror, there's a kind of urge to treat it like a puzzle. If only they were closer. If only they communicated.

That's not meeting it where it's at, because it rests on a situation where none of those elements really exist. People acted the best they could in the circumstances with the tools and information they had - and it simply was not enough. Nearly everyone dies. Even with the ambiguous ending, whoever is human is going to die, because it's winter in Antarctica and he is hundreds of miles from anywhere with no shelter and no food and no transportation. That's the sort of horror it is, the idea that when faced with extinction humanity's best efforts won't succeed. Creating an interpretation where if we had "just" this or that is shying away from the bleakness. But at the same time, not facing up to the idea that some things really might not be solvable, that the worst can happen in spite of it all, is a necessary skill. Not one we need to indulge in constantly, but we should have that knowledge.

there's no way they aren't aware of each other. these spiders sense by vibration, you can't share a web with a pholcid and have them just not know about it, and they routinely swap positions in the web (ms. missing leg is often on the opposite side of ms. 8 legs that she was when last observed).

obviously i'm not mad about this, it's fascinating behavior and i feel so privileged to get to see it, but i have absolutely zero explanation for it. in my investigation so far i haven't been able to find any documented association between pholcids that isn't mating or motherhood or cannibalism. they're sedentary web hunters, they can't afford to share a capture web with another conspecific, and there are almost no flying insects in our bathroom (their web is in the corner of the ceiling out in the open, which is also kind of unusual for pholcids, they tend to prefer going below overhangs, and i suspect they'd actually have more success with a web on the floor bc we Do get crawlers like millipedes and carpet beetle larvae pretty frequently, but also we keep the bathroom dark 100% of the time even when in use bc of my photosensitivity so perhaps they've been tricked into thinking this is more secure than it is based on the light levels?), so i have no idea how they're getting enough prey for the both of them. surely they can't be sharing?? i haven't actually seen them capture anything in this web so far but obviously it's possible i've missed something, i only watch them when i'm in the bathroom.

i can't help but think eventually one of them is going to eat the other, which will be sad for me personally because i've grown quite fond of them but i do want at least one of them to live. and i just can't imagine they're getting much prey. should we try to capture a fly or something and tenderly feed it to them. well, 2 flies, i guess. i don't think pholcids would make ideal pets just bc they're relatively skittish and not very visual compared to salticids. but i do love them both and i want them to eat well.

ms 8 legs is still very skinny. i fear she hasn't had a meal in a while bc she's been skinny the whole time i've seen her. she's also attempting active hunting throughout the bathroom which pholcids (and other web hunters) usually don't do unless they're very hungry. i don't know why this is the case when she could just eat ms missing leg... surely it must be love? or some kind of judgment call based on their relative strength, they are araneophagous (even invading other webs to eat their owners!) so they definitely have the cognitive skills to make that call, but idk why ms missing leg would not simply eat the weaker pholcid! strongly considering bringing ms 8 legs some food by hand because i feel so bad for her and her stick-thin opisthosoma... she's so small! i don't know how long she can go without prey... looks like at least a week but many sedentary spiders can go much longer, it's just so odd to leave their web at all that i'm quite concerned given the frequency of the behavior, i have no idea how long it's been since her last meal

here is a lower quality picture from a couple days ago as proof of their relationship. they are so elegant, i love watching them move. the rotary probing in particular is really beautiful (lifting the long front legs above the silk, making little looping movements, coming to rest again when they hit a thread). their movement and exploration as tactile creatures is very familiar to me as a tactile creature myself