the only normal person in the world

TOP 5 MSR MISCOMMUNICATIONS i am so glad tumblr brought us together this RULES. i'm going to try to stick to one-off moments or episode arcs because i think a lot of their wider issues can be very succinctly summarized in some of the smaller snafus. when txf does character work well it does it well.

yes but it's become mine. i'm cliche but correct

absolutely everything going on in elegy demons and gethsemane. what a triple header. she keeps showing up to work terminally ill because she loves the job, yes, but she also thinks that her dying will disappoint him professionally. they're afraid of the same thing except they aren't because she is also petrified of what will happen to him when she's gone. all of his actions in demons are almost completely motivated by his guilt and rage and grief over what's happening to her, but neither of them really realize it. he ditches her in gethsemane because he doesn't want any of it to be real. and then none of it is real and it's the worst thing that's ever happened to them. it's all his fault. there was nothing he could have done. she's going to find a way to save herself. there is no way to save herself. he keeps the gun loaded on the coffee table. it was always going to end like this

i've talked about how much i love the line in ftf where mulder tells scully that their reassignment is a punishment for him and not for her before. but it's SUCH an underrated one. mulder is trying to reassure her that she didn't do anything wrong and she hears it as dismissal. it hits almost doubly hard in ftf because about an hour later into the movie mulder finally, for the first time in the entire series, actually realizes the problem and verbally communicates what he means...

...which scully then STILL completely misinterprets, as evidenced by the moment in the beginning when she says "you told me that my science kept you honest." which is not even what he said. he said that SHE kept him honest. but she is so fucking scared and it is so much easier to pretend than to face the truth

you're making this personal is like. i HATE it. i don't think it's one of my top 5 per se and i think scully was completely in the right and should have gotten to set something on fire about it. but it's so INTERESTING. because mulder just totally does not understand why diana is a problem for scully. as far as he's concerned, he's told her how he feels about her MULTIPLE times, and these feelings are so strong that diana doesn't even factor. and he TOLD her this (right?) so she KNOWS this. so there is absolutely no reason for her to be jealous of diana, so it's irrational that she's not looking at this objectively. right? RIGHT? (wrong, mulder! wrong)

THE X-FILES | 2x04 'SLEEPLESS'

+bonus:

hiii *adds you to my collection of trapped tumblr users* picking only five is such a hard choice, but I shall try!

- the entirety of Little Green Men, even though they spend the majority of this episode apart, is codependency 101. Scully's students call her spooky and she's immediately like hm I need to go find my coworker right away. Smoking man using Scully's bloodhound skills to find Mulder. "Before, I could only trust myself. now, I can only trust you, and they've taken you away from me". this:

everyone has that one coworker whose presence saves their life I'm sure.

- intimacy through codependency

stealing your coworker's car keys so she'd spend Christmas eve ghost hunting with you. said coworker later coming over on Christmas night and admitting she actually wanted to hunt ghosts with you rather than spend time with her family.

- Mulder trading (what he believes to be) his sister for Scully's life. I feel like this was such a pivotal moment for them. the choise was Impossible to begin with, but he still makes it, choosing his coworker of barely two years over a sister who'd been missing for 22 years. and he knows full well that Scully, martyr extraordinaire, wouldn't have let him make that choice, and he still tells his father that he did the right thing.

- "I'm only half dead" and doubling down as if in pain after seeing scully in the ICU almost like it's him who's dying on that hospital bed. that's skipping codependency and going straight to sharing internal organs

- them following each other to the end of the earth is a must at least once per season, but Fight the Future takes the cake I think. lemme just fly to Antarctica real quick to rescue my coworker while sporting a head wound, so she could later cradle my near-lifeless body, protecting me from frostbite, as the camera pans out so it looks like we're the only two people in the world.