The X Files Hits Different When Watching It With My Family

it might just be because im sleep deprived from jetlag rn but this r/relationship_advice post is making me cry actual tears of laughter. i read the post at first and was like yeah pretty standard whatever but im nosey so i clicked on the drawing op linked and i was not mentally prepared for it. putting it under a read more so you can get the same experience as i did

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God I hate how normalized not being in control of your own devices has become. My phone updates in the middle of the night without asking me shit or getting my consent for anything and its like "Oh hi I'm your new AI, please enjoy this forced overlay that you can't exit out of until you go through my tutorial"

"Great fuck you, I would like to uninstall you" "Oh I'm sorry you can't uninstall me! I'm a core system application and if you uninstall me your phone won't function correctly despite the fact that I did not exist yesterday and your phone worked fine" "....." "You can disable parts of my functionality but I will always be here and I will pop up notifications asking you to re-enable me unless you figure out how to disable those too! Then I will still show up in a different color at the top of your settings application telling you that you need to 'fix" a 'problem' with your phone, that problem being that I am disabled. Does that help?"

Like, you know what I can do on my desktop? "sudo pacman -Rdd linux" , this will just fucking remove the entire linux kernel. Fundamentally breaking my computer until I boot up a live disk and chroot in and reinstall it or whatever, and the computer will go "Are you sure (y/n)" or whatever and i'm like "y" and it will just go "Ok you got it boss"

But its mine, I get to do what I want with it. I control the computer, the computer does not control me. I refuse to cede control to my phone or anything else. The thing is a lot of people will joke that like "Oh I love just letting the machine tell me what to do, I don't know what I'm doing, it knows best" or whatever but the thing you have to realize is that when you say that you are abstracting away that "the phone" or whatever is not some value neutral logic driven robot like from sci-fi, it is a collection of the the capitalistic and fascistic desires of the tech oligarch fuckwits that are burning the world to the ground right now. You aren't submitting to the phone, you are submitting to Musk, Bezos, Nadella, Pichai, Cook and all those other evil bastards.

Fuck them, fuck their little AI toys, and fuck this.

me romanticizing any mind-numbing task i have to do at work by acting like it's one of those narrated field report scenes

Fic: I Can See You (Up Against A Wall With Me) (M, MSR)

1500 words; M for sexual situations; Skinner goes out to a bar and catches his supervisory agents consorting, because that's what my beloved @brenayla wanted for her birthday (tw: alcohol) also available on AO3

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I was out at a bar. I do that sometimes, go to bars. Not as often as you’d think. Too many people in this town can recognize a fed. Maybe it’s the shoes. I get noticed. Somebody wants to buy me a drink. Eventually, they ask for a favor. Might take a few dates, but it’s inevitable. To tell you the truth, I’m tired of it.

But every now and then, I still go to a bar. Otherwise it’s lonely office to lonely apartment, maybe a stop at the gym. I try to tell myself doesn’t bother me. Tonight I made some pasta and a salad, pretended I was enjoying a glass of cheap wine. But then there wasn’t anything on tv to distract me from the silence. Eventually I put on some jeans and a t-shirt and my least-fed-like sneakers. I was looking for company who wouldn’t understand what a GS-14 was. Not so easy to find around here.

This bar was on the edge of DC, far from Capitol Hill and all the federal buildings around it. It was a little dive-y, but fuck it, I was looking for a good time, not a constant companion. I ordered a rum and Coke. Not the most dignified drink, but I wasn’t there because I was dignified. Besides, they remind me of drinking with my buddies in the Army. I can only have a couple before the less-enjoyable memories start creeping in, but they’re a nice start to my night. I’d just settled in, leaning on the bar, when I heard a woman laugh.

I’d heard that laugh before. Not often, granted. She hadn’t had much to laugh about the last few years. But it was unmistakable. I tried not to turn and look, but then I heard it again, and the pull of it was irresistible. It bubbled up in her, the laugh, like she was the first person to discover joy. Clean and pure and contagious, like a baby’s laugh. And there was his laugh, a rumbly chuckle that harmonized with her high-pitched giggle. Her honest-to-God giggle. There was no other word for it.

I scanned the place casually, pretending not to. They weren’t at the tables. They weren’t in the booths. I didn’t see them anywhere, until—a glint in the short dark hallway that led to the bathrooms. Red hair. She was pressed up against the wall, looking up at him while he leaned over her. Damn if I hadn’t seen the same look on their faces before somehow in every meeting, even when they were sitting five feet away from each other in separate chairs. My field agents. Mulder and Scully.

Huh. I’d wondered for years if they were together. Maybe they had been, maybe not. They’d had that kind of way about them since day one. This was less ambiguous: in the shadows, in a bar, his arm against the wall beside her head as he tilted toward her. She tipped her head up toward him, a crystal-clear invitation. Hell, I almost ran over there and kissed her. But she wasn’t looking at me. Mulder took his sweet time closing the gap between them, but then they were kissing, in a leisurely way that suggested this was far from their first time.

Lust hit me like a punch to the gut. The way they kissed: you could feel the hunger in it from across the room. She nipped at his lower lip and he grinned. She reached out and hooked her finger through the belt loop of his jeans, pulling him closer. Her back arched as he pressed against her. He said something, his mouth skidding across her cheek to her ear. She laughed again, throatier, huskier. Aroused. Asking. He kissed her again, deeper, and it looked like a promise. His arm slipped around her waist and locked her body against his.

Fuck. I hadn’t gotten laid in way too long. I had to stop watching them. It was creating an uncomfortable situation for me in more ways than one. But after every swallow of rum and Coke, I glanced back and then away again. I couldn’t help myself. They were attractive people, that was just a fact. I’d spent too many years with them not to know that. It occurred to me that I knew what their sweat smelled like. For some reason, that didn’t help my situation. I could almost feel the friction of denim on denim, could almost smell the worn leather of his jacket and the citrusy shampoo she used to rinse away the funk of the morgue.

They might not even make it back to whichever one of their apartment was tonight’s destination. They might shift sideways until they tumbled into the bathroom. He might pick her up and fuck her against the creaky metal partition between the stalls. She might slip her fingers under his waistband right there, coolly competent, and jerk him off in the hall while he whispered promises about what he was going to do for her later, how he was going to worship her with his body. Mulder was the type, all that brooding romantic shit. He probably ate pussy like it was his religion. And I had no doubt Scully could give as good as she got. I’d known a few Catholic girls in my day.

Scully moaned. I swear I heard it from across the bar. Mulder had his hand in her hair, his other arm still around her waist. She was clutching his jacket like her knees were too wobbly to hold her up. Their kisses were faster now, a little sloppy. Six years of restraint, abandoned. I mean, goddamn, I’d seen them make a handshake look like a hard fuck. I could only imagine what they were actually getting up to in the bedroom. Or the bar bathroom. Or, and I don’t know why this hadn’t occurred to me before, their isolated basement office.

I was in trouble. I was never going to be able to look at either of them again, or go down to the basement office. It was going to smell like sex in there, regardless of what had actually happened. I could imagine what had happened, over and over, probably for the past few month. Actually, I couldn’t stop imagining it. It was a fucking shame they were my subordinates. A real fucking shame. As in, a shame I couldn’t fuck them, or at least watch.

My glass was empty. I glanced down. No way I was getting up. I tapped on the bar for another. I needed to at least shift myself somewhere less obvious. I was sitting right under a light, which was no doubt illuminating my big bald head like a full moon. The only thing I had going for me was that they were so wrapped up in each other, they didn’t seem likely to notice anyone else.

I glanced back over. Mulder had both hands under Scully’s ass. I could see his fingers flexing, kneading her ass through her jeans, maybe lifting her and spreading her cheeks so she could anticipate the way she’d open for him later. She had both arms twined around his neck, her hands in his hair. She was tonguefucking his mouth. It was all I could do not to groan into my glass. I was hard as a rock, throbbing with jealous need. I slurped the ice out of my drink and crunched it to distract myself. My hand and I were going to have a brief encounter after this, maybe in the same damn bar bathroom. Maybe another solo rendezvous when I got home, unless I found someone willing to go with me. But fuck, there was no way I’d last long enough unless I found some quick relief.

When I looked over again, they were gone. The back alley exit was still swinging closed, Scully’s laugh drifting through it one last time. At least I wouldn’t be jerking myself off in the stall next to them while they were fucking, although on second thought, that had a certain tawdry appeal. Either way, the night was over. I drained my glass and slapped a 20 on the bar to cover my tab. There were other bars in this neighborhood. Maybe I’d find a date there. This bar belonged to Mulder and Scully now. I’d never be able to come here without seeing them kissing in the shadows. Kissing and touching and moaning and that was either an unproductive line of thought or a way too productive one, depending in your point of view.

Monday was going to be damn interesting. At least I might get some money out of the office pool to cover the next lonely night out.

what is even the point of bookmarking a work you don’t like??? I don’t bookmark often but it’s always to come back to something that was special or exceptional to me in some way. If I don’t like it I’m not saying anything, I just assume I wasn’t the target audience and leave. 🙄🥸

That’s how I assumed bookmarks worked too until I started getting “6/10 not long enough :/” in the bookmarks on my fics in the last 2-3 years and then people on r/ao3 told me to shut up and be grateful readers even read my fic.

how to say "I love you" in x-files [151/?] ⤷ 2.18 — “Fearful Symmetry”

horror sub-genres: medical

how to say "I love you" in x-files [136/?] ⤷ 2.09 — "Firewalker"