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ruddiger posted:I choose to believe the guy’s story about Mulder eating pie is 100% the gods honest truth. As was Mulder's reaction to seeing the body.  YEE!
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Feb 21, 2024 00:30
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Man, I'm so tempted to go back and rewatch that episode - and it's only been two weeks! It was so good, haha  Are there any other eps like that? I do like that style of episode, where it's chock-full of unreliable narrators, giving their recollection of events (or a tweaked version, if it suits their agenda). It's such a good recipe for hijinks
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Feb 29, 2024 02:56
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Major Isoor posted:Man, I'm so tempted to go back and rewatch that episode - and it's only been two weeks! It was so good, haha S5e12 Bad Blood was a classic unreliable narrator episode.
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Feb 29, 2024 03:11
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MrMojok posted:S5e12 Bad Blood was a classic unreliable narrator episode. Excellent! Looking forward to it
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Feb 29, 2024 03:24
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We just watched that on the weekend, and somehow I always forget that Brent Butt is in it as well as Luke Wilson and Ham from The Sandlot
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Feb 29, 2024 04:04
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First of all, if the family of Ronnie Strickland does indeed decide to sue the FBI for, I think the figure is $446 million, then you and I both will most certainly be co-defendants!
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Feb 29, 2024 07:33
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Oh! Also, s7e12 X-Cops has elements of this.
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Feb 29, 2024 07:35
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I visited Vancouver for the first time recently, in Duchovny's defence it does rain a lot.
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Feb 29, 2024 08:14
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I guess now it is official that ryan coogler is doing an x files reboot...
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Feb 29, 2024 08:26
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Assuming it actually happens, I'll at least give it a shot. But I just don't have a lot of faith in it working in today's world. Any conspiracy talk is either going to come across as right-wing lunacy or they'll pivot too far the other way and be like "aliens are doing this but don't worry, the politicians you like aren't involved!". And as much as I love the monster of the week episodes, I dunno if you could really call a show "The X-Files" if that's all it is.
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Feb 29, 2024 16:02
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The weirdly apolitical nature of conspiracy on the old show is impossible to recapture for sure. There were barely any politicians on the show at all, and the one senator who appears says nothing about his positions or interests other than that he thinks aliens are real.
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Feb 29, 2024 18:12
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I will say, it is tantalizing, the prospect of the show’s writers at the peak of their powers tackling something like Qanon but doing some clever twist on it (like the conspiracy is real but in a completely different way than Qnuts believe, like all their white hats are actually black hats) the way they did with the McMartin School situation and Satanic Panic with the Die Hand Die Verletz episode. But it would be almost impossible to thread that needle in this climate without loving it up massively or having all the wrong people take it all the wrong ways (like the X Files version would somehow become the new canon of Qanon).
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Feb 29, 2024 18:33
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The modern day republicans 100% would join the alien invasion plan and the democrats would do nothing to stop it.
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Feb 29, 2024 19:13
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Zwabu posted:I will say, it is tantalizing, the prospect of the show’s writers at the peak of their powers tackling something like Qanon but doing some clever twist on it (like the conspiracy is real but in a completely different way than Qnuts believe, like all their white hats are actually black hats) the way they did with the McMartin School situation and Satanic Panic with the Die Hand Die Verletz episode. But it would be almost impossible to thread that needle in this climate without loving it up massively or having all the wrong people take it all the wrong ways (like the X Files version would somehow become the new canon of Qanon). I mean, Q and Chris Carter both explicitly cited Behold a Pale Horse, the mutual DNA is already there. Though I think the various congressional UAP hearings and Republicans trying to grab onto that for a bit would have made for an interesting X-Files episode. I would love to see Darin Morgan’s take on the Epstein conspiracy theories, if we’re going to choose one classic series person to tackle a modern conspiracy.
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Feb 29, 2024 19:18
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I've said this before, but I can think of several recent examples of this kind of thing working effectively. Mostly in the podcast scene, where you've got stuff like The Magnus Protocols and Torchwood, but on television you've got Evil, Debris, BrainDead and even The Good Fight (which is ostensibly a sexy lawyer show). Some comics too, like that James Tynion one whose name I can't remember because I thought it was boring. I don't think all of these are super successful stories, but they're not obviously bankrupt. You can *easily* do subversive, leftist takes on this material. You've got cop coverups, climate coverups, the mental illness crisis, the housing crisis, the neoliberal hollowing of public institutions, manipulation of the news, microtargeted ads, the balkanization of social spaces, search engine decay, gerrymandering, hostile architecture, online scammers, silicon valley scammers, blockchain, climate bunkers, etc. Just shove some uncanny element in there and boom, you've got a classic X-Files plot. Zwabu posted:But it would be almost impossible to thread that needle in this climate without loving it up massively or having all the wrong people take it all the wrong ways (like the X Files version would somehow become the new canon of Qanon). Like, honestly, not to be hostile here but who cares about these people. You can't litigate your show around a bunch of crazy people who are gonna grasp at straws regardless. Flat Earthers aren't Flat Earthers because of science. White Squall is also the basis of a lot of Q myth, and it's just a slightly lovely Ridley Scott film about dudes vs a hurricane. These guys have a narrative and they'll make anything fit.
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Feb 29, 2024 23:33
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They pulled the idea of the red pill from a movie by trans women that’s about becoming aware of injustice and banding together with black people to fight the white establishment, and maybe also realizing you’re trans. They distort things to fit their emotional needs. It’s not like the Lone Gunmen pilot predicting 9/11 but with government-controlled remote-control airplanes made any difference to the truther movement, because they don’t get their ideas from outside anyway.
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Mar 1, 2024 00:36
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IMO the single biggest problem here is that they have little chance of catching the lightning-in-a-bottle magic the show found in the 90s between Anderson and Duchovny. That is what made it work, for me. They can try, and it’s an interesting casting decision, and all. But what they stumbled into with those two was special. And I don’t mean that in a “shipping” way. I don’t think a reboot is necessarily a bad idea, I just see a lot of ways it could not work, fall flat. But if they do pull it off, I’ll be right here posting about it with all of you.
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Mar 1, 2024 01:12
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I anticipate an interesting-yet-flawed first season, a mostly bad second season (due to them overcompensating in some ways, taking focus of the actually good bits), followed by a third season that finally starts hitting its stride and gets good... riiight before the show is cancelled due to the first couple of seasons losing viewers 
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Mar 1, 2024 03:04
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I honestly think the best option is for them to make it a completely different thing in a universe where folklore and aliens are real, rather than trying to do like a 1 to 1 type of reboot. Dont do like a will they wont they partners with a begrudging but supportive boss and a mysterious, except now its the vaping man.
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Mar 1, 2024 03:34
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I AM GRANDO posted:The weirdly apolitical nature of conspiracy on the old show is impossible to recapture for sure. There were barely any politicians on the show at all, and the one senator who appears says nothing about his positions or interests other than that he thinks aliens are real. I didn't believe much of it, but I was very much into conspiracy theory poo poo in the 90s. As a casual fan of such things who mostly read books and browsed some stuff on the early net, the racism and conservatism was always there - much of the 90s conspiratorial zeitgeist is just Cold War stories with the Commies and Hippies replaced with aliens/Illuminati and the MIC - but it was much more in the background. There was a right lean to it, for sure, but I don't think conspiracy theories and Forteana were the domain of the fash the way they are today and honestly increasingly were since the aughts. The X-Files is, in my estimation, unironically one of the greatest works of Americana and a work that captures the vibe of its zeitgeist like few others do. You cannot replicate or reproduce the X-Files for this reason. It is inextricably tied to a time and place that no longer exists except in memory. Unless you are doing a reboot that is likewise set in the 90s, it simply cannot and will not work. It wont be the X-Files. You can do a spiritual successor, sure, but it must be different. The cultural milieu that made the apolitical X-Files possible no longer exists. How do you do a show about conspiracy theories and Forteana in a time when flat earthers are a powerful constituency in a major political party? You can't. Like we all know a Mulder these days, and he's no longer a spooky fun weirdo. He's a loving fascist Trump supporter. EDIT: Also to be fair I'm sure some of the political bent of the stuff flew over my head as a kid in the 90s. But I mean, I am Jewish and was pretty good at picking up on antiseitism even then, so yeah. It was definitely more subdued than it is now. RoboChrist 9000 fucked around with this message at 03:47 on Mar 1, 2024 |
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Mar 1, 2024 03:41
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I think I noted that earlier that Mulder isn’t really a conspiracy theorist - more just a dude who hangs out in those circles because of a quasi-ironic interest in conspiracy culture. The present-day equivalent would be, like, if people in the GBS Trump LOL Thread posting “piss tape is real” and making jokes about Qanon stumbled onto some entirely different conspiracies that are simultaneously weirder and more banal. It’s a bit trickier because there’s much less fun conspiracy ‘lore’ to subvert nowadays. Like, Greys and Bigfoot were evoked, in the first half of X-Files, before being presented as fake - distorted perceptions of what were mainly just lepers and homeless people. I’m not sure what the equivalent would be today.
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Mar 1, 2024 16:13
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Atkins diet.
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Mar 1, 2024 16:18
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Mulder and Scully Hunt slender man Uncover a cabal of baby eating stem cell users Find the physical location of the liminal spaces building Meet Leroy Jenkins
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Mar 2, 2024 17:27
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ruddiger posted:Mulder and Scully Zack Parsons would have been a great X-Files writing room member back in the day. Wonder what he's up to now. Ryan Coogler, get him on board!
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Mar 2, 2024 18:19
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9-11 and the Iraq War debacle bascially collapsed the whole e "all powerful deep state machinations" vibe that characterized the mid-90s, plus the advent of the cellphone cameras did as much to change the Zeitgest as anything else. In the mid-90s it was within the realm of "believeable" (in a loose sense) that powerful government agencies were conspiring and shaping world events - and could easily cover up the "truth" about ruby ridge or whatever. Conspiracies are a bit more prevalent now in the discourse, but the "chemtrails and county clubs" streak has always been present on the right flank and the "capitalist cabal runs everything" mentality on the left. The biggest change is probably that no one believes in state capacity to the same extent as before.
Dante fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Mar 2, 2024 |
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Mar 2, 2024 18:47
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I hope in the new X-Files they cover Slenderman and mention "Something Awful Dot Com"
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Mar 2, 2024 19:09
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joepinetree posted:Dont do like a will they wont they partners with a begrudging but supportive boss and a mysterious, except now its the vaping man. “Don’t lie to me, Skinner. I know you were meeting with The Vaping Man. Your office reeks of Dragon Banana Berry!”
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Mar 2, 2024 19:30
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egon_beeblebrox posted:I hope in the new X-Files they cover Slenderman and mention "Something Awful Dot Com" I hope they go with "Something Is Awful Dot Com"
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Mar 2, 2024 21:08
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You know Mulder would have been prolifically shitposting under the SpookyPunter account since the site began.
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Mar 2, 2024 21:18
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And his avatar would be his picture. Just like when Max Fenig recognized him because while Mulder used a pseudonym Max had seen his picture in the nicap paper
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Mar 3, 2024 01:07
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egon_beeblebrox posted:I hope in the new X-Files they cover Slenderman and mention "Something Awful Dot Com" Making New Mulder a creepypasta enthusiast might be the next closest equivalent, but it’s not a precise analogy because of course nobody actually believes that poo poo (aside from, like, dumbassed tweens). In the Duane Barry story, one of the hostages voices her support of him - her sincere belief that Barry genuinely was abducted by aliens. A crucial part of X-Files is the background of conspiracy culture as this rockstar hacker counter-culture that’s gaining ground in the mainstream. However, it’s simultaneously pretty clear (and even more explicit later on) that Barry has actually just been brainwashed into some kind of Manchurian Candidate by the smoky man. The beliefs of conspiracy theorists are always, consistently wrong in some way. When the show actually works, it’s presenting this dialectical synthesis of the ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’, where reality itself is so weird that we don’t actually need recourse to ghosts or aliens (or alien ghosts). The overarching thesis of the show is that Americans are seeing poo poo because America is hosed up in ways that are difficult to convey with language. The writers helpfully list the causes: Vietnam, Watergate, Tuskegee experiments, etc. We also see the obverse in episodes with a ‘failed’ synthesis - those where characters end up doubling down on mystical explanations that don’t fully make sense. The episode Die Hand is 100% about child abuse and the aftermath, but they can’t confront the topic directly - so Satan appears with a magic snake to provide a mythic explanation for why these people are killing themselves and eachother. In this view, the satanic panic was wrong not because it was a fiction, but because it wasn’t a good enough fiction to provide adequate ‘cognitive mapping’ to make sense of the traumatic events. The main victim of the abuse commits suicide because her belief in the traditional satanic panic narrative only compounds her feelings of terror and helplessness. Literally-existing Satan wasn’t involved in the abuse. (That leads to the actual central ambiguity of the show: is all the ‘mytharc’ stuff the actual truth in the diegesis, or just a useful narrative that keeps Mulder functional?) In any case, this doesn’t work the same if you replace Satan and Bigfoot with The Babadook and SCP-Whatever. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Mar 4, 2024 |
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Mar 4, 2024 00:54
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The overarching thesis of the show is that Americans are seeing poo poo because America is hosed up in ways that are difficult to convey with language.
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Mar 4, 2024 01:24
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:The overarching thesis of the show is that Americans are seeing poo poo because America is hosed up in ways that are difficult to convey with language. The writers helpfully list the causes: Vietnam, Watergate, Tuskegee experiments, etc. MKULTRA was such a stereotypically X-Filesy concept it actually took me years to bother looking up to see if it was real. I always lumped it in with other cool-sounding codeword conspiracies like Majestic-12 and the Philadelphia Experiment.
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Mar 5, 2024 21:41
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Just finished Ice in S1. That whole episode was a colossal waste of loving time lol. both for me, and the plot/characters. they tried to do the ol twilight zone Will The Real Alien Please Stand Up but did it in the dumbest way possible e: and the episode reviews online seem to be overwhelmingly positive for it. maybe i'm the stupid one barnold fucked around with this message at 18:08 on Mar 17, 2024 |
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Mar 17, 2024 04:50
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Oh yeah, a couple of days ago I watched the episode that focuses on cancer man's past/introduction to his current role, involving killing JFK and MLK. (Is it just me, or did the Red Dwarf JFK self-assassination time travel episode spring to mind, during that segment? "It'll drive the conspiracy nuts crazy!" ) It was a perfectly fine episode overall, but man, I absolutely loved the bit where he went overboard with having his hopes and dreams of being an author fulfilled! It was obviously going to blow up on him, but drat, seeing him get so hyped and let down by that magazine was so good It doesn't top the smoking alien/Lord Kinbote ep, obviously, but that moment was definitely a series highlight for me, hahahbarnold posted:Just finished Ice in S1. That whole episode was a colossal waste of loving time lol. both for me, and the plot/characters. they tried to do the ol twilight zone Will The Real Alien Please Stand Up but did it in the dumbest way possible Yeah, I get where you're coming from. Personally, I didn't mind it since I kinda like the general "stuck in a shithole, figuring out how to get out safely" episodes, like the killer firefly one. Kinda makes me wonder about how running something like that in Delta Green would pan out, really
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Apr 9, 2024 03:09
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I'm sorry but the Bills joke always cracks me up.
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Apr 9, 2024 10:41
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Ice is good but I always preferred Darkness Falls from later in S1 for a similar vibe.
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Apr 10, 2024 14:06
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It's a format they love ("Firewalker" in season 2 is easily the most blatant "Ice" retread), and turning out an episode a week I can't blame them for sticking to a formula they're good at... even when the movies they're ripping off are pretty obvious.
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Apr 10, 2024 16:27
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