Ruugerion

1) I would like to state for the record that even after 20+ years I am still unable to watch "Sleeping in Light" without crying. More specifically, I discovered today that it is enough for me to watch a Youtube reaction to SiL and I will still start crying when that music hits.

edit: Great, and now I'm getting a lump in my throat just thinking about the upcoming animated movie.


2) I had an urge the other day to rewatch the second revival season of The X-Files because I'd never rewatched it, and then I watched one episode and remembered what they did to Reyes and became so angry that I couldn't continue. *shakes fist at Christ Carter*

This is something that I've been thinking about for years now, and I finally managed to write it down during my no-social-media month: namely, some meta about how in my mind I see fandoms not just as communities of people, but as literal cities.

It has been so since about 15 years ago when I first entered the X-Files fandom. I finished the show about a year after the finale had aired, and was excited to find some fannish content. But when I trawled through the websites and forums and such, I remember thinking that it was like walking around in a post-apocalyptic city that had been evacuated in a rush. There were virtual seasons that had been started and then abandoned. Archives and mailing lists that had been thriving just a few months earlier, and now suddenly weren't. The infrastructure for a huge megafandom was still there, untouched, but all the people were gone. The only place of activity was Haven, but that was only for MSR shippers, so I didn't even try to go there. I had a brief but pleasant stay in the Doggett/Reyes and Robert Patrick parts of the fandom, which still had some life, until they too became abandoned.

I had a similar feeling when I joined the Buffy fandom a few years later. Buffyverse was still quite a lively place in 2005, with new communities being created and more fic than a newbie could read in one sitting. But there were signs that it had been once been something much bigger. It was a very much a divided city, with different shippers and fans of various characters mostly keeping away from each other. You never asked why, but you hears whispers of terrible ship wars and warnings of places that had been so badly poisoned that no-one who entered came back. I spent some of my happiest years in the Spike parts of the town, on the edge of Spuffy district, and still think of it fondly even though these days I usually only visit the Buffy-Is-My-Woobie street.

I have no idea what kind of a city Doctor Who fandom is, because I'm sitting here at the top of the Peter Capaldi Tower, looking down and thinking "Yeah, not going there."

Ancient and oft-rebooted megafandoms like Sherlock Holmes or Star Trek are not just a single city but rather vast, sprawling city states that are sometimes divided by lovely little brooks and sometimes by barbed wire and landmines. They have the old, established (but also a bit rundown) villages like ACD and TOS, and the more hip and trendy areas like Sherlock and Disco. Most people have a home in one area, although they might commute to other parts of the city, and some people never stray away from their own block, hardly even aware of the huge city around them.

The cities can also appear out of nowhere. One day there's nothing but a huge empty plot of land and the next day there's Inception or Teen Wolf or Night Vale. Sometimes they last, and become proper cities, but often they lack proper foundations and disappear just as quickly as they appeared, leaving behind just a few tents and the steeple of a church tower peeking from the ground.

And of course, not all fandoms are cities. The Mentalist was not a city, although by all right it should have been. It had all the makings of a city, and the foundations had already been laid out, but it just never happened. So being in The Mentalist fandom was like walking down a quiet road on a foggy day, looking for a city that you refuse to believe does not exist.

Sometimes another person emerges from the fog and asks: "Do you know where The Mentalist fandom is?"

"No idea," you say, "I thought it would be here, but I haven't found it."

So you walk together for a while and talk about how awesome Cho is and maybe argue a bit about whether or not "Blue Birds" was the best episode ever or the worst episode ever. Until one day you turn to say something to them and they're gone, distracted by the bright lights of MCU or NCIS. And you're left alone in the mist again.

Babylon 5 is also not a city. It is a desert, with ancient ruins that suggest that once, very long time ago, it was the home of something magnificent. But it's not a scary place, so you find yourself a nice shelter beneath some crumbled wall and light a fire.

Suddenly you realise that there's someone standing next to you.

"Don't mind me," they say, "I just wanted to ask if you've watched that bit yet."

"No, I just started," you reply.

"Oh, okay then. Do you mind if I just stand here? And watch?"

One by one, more people arrive, until your campfire is surrounded. "Just wait until you reach the end of this season" someone will say, or "I knew you'd like that character", but mostly they just stand there. Silent. Watching you.

Finally you finish the show. Some people sit down, and start asking you questions and giving you fic recs, while others leave, having just stopped by to watch you on their way to some city.

"What now?" you ask the others as you watch the dying embers of your fire.

"Look," someone says, and points towards the horizon.

There's a faint flash of light, like a campfire being lit. Without a word, everyone stands up and heads towards it.

You follow them, hoping to find a new B5 newbie to watch.

Okay, let's move on to the good stuff and a proper OTP (of sorts) from one of my main fandoms. The X-Files and I had a falling out somewhere around season 6, but my love was rekindled when Mulder - who had been turned into a chartícature of himself at this point - was replaced by Doggett. I liked the dynamic between him and Scully (I might write about them later), but what really made me love the show again was Reyes (who is my woobie). I just absolutely loved "Audrey Pauley" and "4-D", which were basically the mirrors of each other (in AP, Reyes is in a coma and Doggett is trying to save her, and in ¤D Doggett is paralyzed, and it's Reyes' turn to try to save him).



What I like about them is that when they were introduced, they'd already been friends for several years, and as a result there wasn't any unnecessary opposites-learning-to-work-together drama. Doggett is the no-nonsense ex-marine and Reyes the whale-song-loving weirdo who makes Mulder look like a skeptic, but they both respected each other and knew how to use their differences to their benefit. And I loved how low-key their romance was - the culmination was handholding in "Sunshine Days"! :D

In related news, can you guess how much do I hate what the rebooted seasons did to Reyes? So much. So, so much.

Anyway, this is the first ship this February that I've actually properly written fic about:

Veritas (1354 words)
Summary: Doggett and Reyes on the run after "The Truth".

Things That Fall from the Sky (2522 words)
Summary: Reyes has been feeling strangely restless.

Winter Dreams (3015 words)
Summary: Reyes after the world has ended. A post-colonization ghost story.
(this one is jossed, so very jossed, and also not very good, but I still like the story)

Virtue of Fools (757 words)
Summary: A lonely night at the basement office. Set just before "Audrey Pauley".

(I have also written two other DRR fics, but they are so old and terrible that I won't link them, haha)

And then I wanted to give you some recs for fics written by people better than me, but alas the Pinboard guy decided that those of us who were still using Delicious don't need our bookmarks anymore, so all my old recs are just one long html-file of untagged links that I need to go through and clean before I can find anything there. But I do have one rec that I can easily find because it's one of my absolute favourite fics in any fandom ever, and the one fic that's probably been most influential on my own writing style:

A Spanish Fairytale (1437 words) by anr
Summary: This is the first day of the rest of their lives. This is everything.

(p.s. Do you remember the time before smushnames when we used to call ships things like MSR, DSR and DRR, and fans were divited into noromos, shippers, drippers, dippers and skippers? Good times.)

(also, when I checked Youtube to see if there were any good clips or vids I could add to this post, one of the top hits was the only vid I've ever made, which I had posted on Youtube 12 years ago and had forgotten about it. The image quality was solid 2003-era, so I immediately went and set it to private :D I really should remake it one day, because the basic idea in it wa pretty solid)

A question to those of you who actually paid attention during the mythology episodes of X-Files season 11 instead of just seething in rage about what they did to Reyes:

Was there any mention of what happened to Doggett and why he wans't with Reyes?

Because I may or may not be thinking of writing a fix-it fic...

(I just realised I never wrote reaction posts to S11, so while I'm here, I'll just say that I thought it was much better than S10, but it never felt like The X-Files and I felt like both DD and GA were phoning it in. "The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat" was brilliant, but even that felt more like a an episode of Millennium than XF - you could have switched Mulder and Scully with Frank Black and nothing would have changed)

And in related news, I made the mistake of following a link to The Mary Sue (which I usually avoid because it's an epitome of the worst kind of commercialized click-bait feminism that I loathe), saw this headline, and had to turn off my computer and put away my phone to stop myself from tweeting "Fuck you, @TheMarySue".



Because turns out my opinions about "Empty Places" haven't changed and my reaction to people calling Buffy selfish is still this:



(it's funny, I have do have a few male characters that I feel very protective about as well, but it's only Buffy and Reyes that make me go all stabby)

So, The X-Files will be back, with a 10 episode season this time. Which is for some reason still called 'event series'. I just rewatched season 10 and, well, the best thing I can say about it is that watching it right after "The Truth" made it seem much better. It still wasn't *that* good, and I'm still angry at what they did to Reyes, but... I just can't quit you, The X-Files. Four times you've betrayed me now, but I keep coming back.

(also, I'm kinda curious if they're just going to retcon everything *again*, should it turn out that they can't get the "new Mulder and Scully" back for some reason)

I was also recently thinking about Buffy's 20th anniversary (which I never posted about because I was in an X-Files headspace thanks to the rewatch), and the fact that the reason why we do have new seasons of XF is because of The X-Files 20th anniversary. I'm not sure if I'd want it or not, but I can't help wondering if the sudden renewed interest in Buffy recently might lead to a similar rebirth for Buffy as well...?

(who am I kidding, of course I'd want it if Sarah Michelle Gellar came back)

So... are we supposed to read this tweet by David Duchovny as confirmation that they really are going forward with season 11 of The X-Files, or is he just messing with everyone...?

Happy Birthday, Gillian. If you see Dana, tell her Fox says she might wanna polish up the ol' badge soon-ish. Love, D

— David Duchovny (@davidduchovny) August 9, 2016

(in case you can't see the embedded tweet, I reads "Happy Birthday, Gillian. If you see Dana, tell her Fox says she might wanna polish up the ol' badge soon-ish. Love, D")

And damn it, even with all the issues I had with the new series, I just can't help being excited. The revival was the fourth time that the show has disappointed me in such scale that would make me quit any other show, but I just keep going back...<sup>1

1</sup> The previous times were seasons 6-7, "The Truth" and I Want to Believe

Crap. I just realised that now's the last chance to finish the gazillion post-"The Truth" fics that have been lingering in my WIP folder for over a decade before they're (possibly) jossed by the new series.

Are there even people who still read Doggett/Reyes?

I just saw on Tumblr this picture that Glen Morgan posted on Twitter and was again filled with The X-Files nostalgia (Like I have been a lot lately).

And then I realised that it was *Glen Morgan* who posted that! Glen Morgan! Glen Morgan is producing the new X-Files series! Praise the Jebuslug, it might not suck after all!

(ILU CC, I really do, but you're not a very good writer)

And then I went to IMDb to make sure that it wasn't just some joke and that he really was involved. And the other producers were James Wong and Darin Morgan! All my favourites!

And then I noticed that ( casting spoiler )

edit to add: Speaking of the writers, I know a lot of people had been hoping for Vince Gilligan to return because of Breaking Bad, but he was never on my wishlist because though he did write some great episodes (such as "Monday", "John Doe", "Je Souhaite", "X-Cops", and "Sunshine Days" (...shut up! I really liked that episode!)), most of his episodes never really felt like The X-Files, not in a way that episodes like "Little Green Men" or "Humbug". Plus he also wrote *a lot* of clunkers - as much as I loved the Jebuslug, it wasn't ecatly the highpoint of the series...

Ahem. So it's possible that I might be starting to get a bit too excited about the new series...

It's official: There will be a six-episode X-Files miniseries starring DD and GA.

I think we all agree that this could be either the best thing ever or a total disaster, but what do you actually wish that would happen in it (or not)? Because I just realised that since the death of the Lone Gunmen was apparently retconned in the comics, they could be back too! And obviously I'd be ecstatic if Doggett and Reyes made an appearance.

Okay, so I don't ship Mulder and Scully and I don't have any opinion about the blind items about David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson possibly hooking up, but I just found out on Tumblr that they did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit, and ( OMG so cute )

Go read the AMA, there's seriously good stuff there.

QUESTION: If you guys could switch bodies for a week, what would you do?
Gillian Anderson: I would masturbate in a red speedo.