The X Files [Picspam]
Okies, so I wanted to jump on the picspam bandwagon and give it a go, so here is my first picspam. I chose to do The X Files episode "Milagro" because I ADORE this entire episode. It is so beautifully written, and acted. So, here is my ode to Milagro...=]
Scully: I road up on the elevator with someone. Someone from next door, I think.
Mulder: Young guy?
Scully: Yeah.
Mulder: New neighbour, why?
Scully: You met him?
Mulder: Briefly, yeah. He’s a writer.
Scully: What’s he write?
Mulder: He didn't say.
Mulder: Absent another theory, how else do we account for the impossible extraction of this man’s heart?
Scully: I don’t know. I have no idea.
Mulder: I mean, we have no evidence, no MO to speak of. This could be the perfect crime.
Scully: Well crime is only as perfect as the man or the mind that commits it. Even if it were perfect, even if he made not one mistake, there’s still his motive. You find the motive and you find the murderer.
Pagett: Her prompt mind ran through the Golconda of possibilities. Was this trinket from the killer? Was there a message contained it its equivocal symbolism? Was he a religious fanatic who had, in haste, licked the envelope, leaving the telltale DNA that would begin his unravelling? She had a condign certainty the killer was a male, and now as she held the cold metal at her fingertips, she imagined him doing the same, trying to picture his face. It would be a plain face, an average face, a face people would be prone to trust. She knew this inherently, being naturally trusting herself. But the image she conjured up was no better than the useless sketch composites that littered her files. Preconsiously, she knew this wasn’t her strength as an investigator. She was a marshal of cold facts, quick to organise, connect, shuffle, reorder and synthesise the relative hard values into discrete categories. Imprecision would only invite sexist criticism that she was soft, malleable, not up to her male counterparts. Even now, as she pushed an arrant strand of Titian hair behind her ear, she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess. To be thought of as a simply beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable. But she was beautiful. Fatally, stunningly prepossessing. Yet the respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart, to let it open, to let someone in.
Pagett: I'm a writer. That's what I do, imagine how people behave. I have to admit I've noticed you. I do that... Notice people. I saw that you wear a gold cross around your neck so I was taking a chance with the painting-- explaining something you may have already known. I saw Georgetown parking permits on your car dating from 1993 and a government-exempt sticker that lets you park anywhere you like. You don't live in this area but as a federal employee, you have reason to frequent it. You're fit, with muscular calves so you must exercise or run. There's a popular running route right nearby that you might use at lunch or after work. You'd have noticed this church in passing and though parking is always a problem in this part of town your special privileges would make it easy to visit … not as a place of worship but because you have an appreciation for architecture and the arts... and while the grandeur is what you'd take away from your visit … this painting's religious symbolism would have left a subconscious impression jogged by the gift you received this morning.
Scully: That was from you?
Pagett: I have to admit to a secret attraction. I'm sorry I didn't include a note explaining that but you didn't know me then.
Scully: Yeah, and I don't know you now and I don't care to.
Pagett: I see this is making you uncomfortable and I'm sorry. It's just that I'm taken with you. That never happens to me. We're alike that way.
Pagett: But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions Special Agent Dana Scully had herself become... simply aroused. All morning the stranger's unsolicited compliments had played on the dampened strings of her instrument until the middle "C" of consciousness was struck square and resonant. She was flattered. His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and the investigators and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances. She felt an involuntary flush and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence. But the images came perforce and she let them play, let them flood in like savory, or more a sugary confection from her adolescence when her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial. 'Ache,' 'pang,' 'prick,' 'twinge', how ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioral pathology now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire. The stranger had looked her in the eye and knew her more completely than she knew herself. She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal. Had the stranger unleashed in her what was already there or only helped her discover a landscape she, by necessity, blinded herself to? What would her partner think of her
Pagett: I live in my head.
Scully: Writing your books?
Pagett: Yes.
Scully: Anything I’d know?
Pagett: No. They're all failures... Except the one I'm working on now. I think I'm getting it right.
Scully: Why now, all of a sudden?
Pagett: Best not to question it. See? You are curious about me.
Scully: Well, you lead a curious life.
Pagett: It's not so different from yours I imagine-- lonely.
Scully: Loneliness is a choice.
Scully: How is it you think you know me so well, Mr. Padgett?
Pagett: I'm writing about you.
Scully: Right. Since when?
Pagett: Since I first noticed you. You live in my old neighbourhood.
Scully: And you moved into this building by coincidence?
Pagett: No.
Scully: You moved here because of me?
Pagett: There wasn't anything available in your building and it's not like you spent a lot of time at home. I-I should've said something but I just couldn't get it all down fast enough. To really write someone, I have to be in their head. I have to know them more completely than they know themselves.
Scully: This is all about me?
Pagett: Well, you’re an important part.
Scully: May I read it?
Pagett: It's not finished. I can't tell you how helpful it is having you here-- being able to talk with you like this. Would you sit and stay a minute?
Scully: You don't have anywhere to sit.
Scully: Mulder!
Mulder: Scully.
Scully: You alright?
Scully: Yes. Mulder, what are you doing?
Mulder: Putting this man under arrest.
Scully: Grief squeezed at her eggshell heart like it might break into a thousand pieces its contents running like broken promises into the hollow places his love used to fill. How could she know this pain would end? That love, unlike matter or energy, was in endless supply in the universe... A germ which grows from nothingness which cannot be eradicated even from the darkest of hearts. If she had known this-- and who could say she would believe it?-- She would not have chanced to remain at his sad grave until such an hour so that she might not have to learn the second truth before the first: that to have love was to carry a vessel that could be lost or stolen or worse, spilled blood-red on the ground. And that love was not immutable and could become hate as day becomes night as life becomes death.
Mulder: Mr. Padgett... you can go. We apologize for our mistake. You're free to finish your book.
Pagett: Thank you. I made a mistake myself.
Mulder: What’s that Mr. Pagett?
Pagett: In my book I wrote that Agent Scully falls in love, but that’s obviously impossible. Agent Scully is already in love.
Mulder: What do you think you're doing?
Pagett: Destroying my book.
Mulder: Destroying evidence, you mean. Let me see what you wrote.
Pagett: I’ll tell you. He kills her.
Screencaps courtesy of X Files Archive & ChrisNu.
Feel free to join/watch my graphics community @ coffeestop_x
Also posted at: xf_daily, gillian_daily & xfiles.
Scully: I road up on the elevator with someone. Someone from next door, I think.
Mulder: Young guy?
Scully: Yeah.
Mulder: New neighbour, why?
Scully: You met him?
Mulder: Briefly, yeah. He’s a writer.
Scully: What’s he write?
Mulder: He didn't say.
Mulder: Absent another theory, how else do we account for the impossible extraction of this man’s heart?
Scully: I don’t know. I have no idea.
Mulder: I mean, we have no evidence, no MO to speak of. This could be the perfect crime.
Scully: Well crime is only as perfect as the man or the mind that commits it. Even if it were perfect, even if he made not one mistake, there’s still his motive. You find the motive and you find the murderer.
Pagett: Her prompt mind ran through the Golconda of possibilities. Was this trinket from the killer? Was there a message contained it its equivocal symbolism? Was he a religious fanatic who had, in haste, licked the envelope, leaving the telltale DNA that would begin his unravelling? She had a condign certainty the killer was a male, and now as she held the cold metal at her fingertips, she imagined him doing the same, trying to picture his face. It would be a plain face, an average face, a face people would be prone to trust. She knew this inherently, being naturally trusting herself. But the image she conjured up was no better than the useless sketch composites that littered her files. Preconsiously, she knew this wasn’t her strength as an investigator. She was a marshal of cold facts, quick to organise, connect, shuffle, reorder and synthesise the relative hard values into discrete categories. Imprecision would only invite sexist criticism that she was soft, malleable, not up to her male counterparts. Even now, as she pushed an arrant strand of Titian hair behind her ear, she worried her partner would know instinctively what she could only guess. To be thought of as a simply beautiful woman was bridling, unthinkable. But she was beautiful. Fatally, stunningly prepossessing. Yet the respect she commanded only deepened the yearnings of her heart, to let it open, to let someone in.
Pagett: I'm a writer. That's what I do, imagine how people behave. I have to admit I've noticed you. I do that... Notice people. I saw that you wear a gold cross around your neck so I was taking a chance with the painting-- explaining something you may have already known. I saw Georgetown parking permits on your car dating from 1993 and a government-exempt sticker that lets you park anywhere you like. You don't live in this area but as a federal employee, you have reason to frequent it. You're fit, with muscular calves so you must exercise or run. There's a popular running route right nearby that you might use at lunch or after work. You'd have noticed this church in passing and though parking is always a problem in this part of town your special privileges would make it easy to visit … not as a place of worship but because you have an appreciation for architecture and the arts... and while the grandeur is what you'd take away from your visit … this painting's religious symbolism would have left a subconscious impression jogged by the gift you received this morning.
Scully: That was from you?
Pagett: I have to admit to a secret attraction. I'm sorry I didn't include a note explaining that but you didn't know me then.
Scully: Yeah, and I don't know you now and I don't care to.
Pagett: I see this is making you uncomfortable and I'm sorry. It's just that I'm taken with you. That never happens to me. We're alike that way.
Pagett: But if she'd predictably aroused her sly partner's suspicions Special Agent Dana Scully had herself become... simply aroused. All morning the stranger's unsolicited compliments had played on the dampened strings of her instrument until the middle "C" of consciousness was struck square and resonant. She was flattered. His words had presented her a pretty picture of herself quite unlike the practiced mask of uprightness that mirrored back to her from the medical examiners and the investigators and all the lawmen who dared no such utterances. She felt an involuntary flush and rebuked herself for the girlish indulgence. But the images came perforce and she let them play, let them flood in like savory, or more a sugary confection from her adolescence when her senses were new and ungoverned by fear and self-denial. 'Ache,' 'pang,' 'prick,' 'twinge', how ironic the Victorian vocabulary of behavioral pathology now so perfectly described the palpations of her own desire. The stranger had looked her in the eye and knew her more completely than she knew herself. She felt wild, feral, guilty as a criminal. Had the stranger unleashed in her what was already there or only helped her discover a landscape she, by necessity, blinded herself to? What would her partner think of her
Pagett: I live in my head.
Scully: Writing your books?
Pagett: Yes.
Scully: Anything I’d know?
Pagett: No. They're all failures... Except the one I'm working on now. I think I'm getting it right.
Scully: Why now, all of a sudden?
Pagett: Best not to question it. See? You are curious about me.
Scully: Well, you lead a curious life.
Pagett: It's not so different from yours I imagine-- lonely.
Scully: Loneliness is a choice.
Scully: How is it you think you know me so well, Mr. Padgett?
Pagett: I'm writing about you.
Scully: Right. Since when?
Pagett: Since I first noticed you. You live in my old neighbourhood.
Scully: And you moved into this building by coincidence?
Pagett: No.
Scully: You moved here because of me?
Pagett: There wasn't anything available in your building and it's not like you spent a lot of time at home. I-I should've said something but I just couldn't get it all down fast enough. To really write someone, I have to be in their head. I have to know them more completely than they know themselves.
Scully: This is all about me?
Pagett: Well, you’re an important part.
Scully: May I read it?
Pagett: It's not finished. I can't tell you how helpful it is having you here-- being able to talk with you like this. Would you sit and stay a minute?
Scully: You don't have anywhere to sit.
Scully: Mulder!
Mulder: Scully.
Scully: You alright?
Scully: Yes. Mulder, what are you doing?
Mulder: Putting this man under arrest.
Scully: Grief squeezed at her eggshell heart like it might break into a thousand pieces its contents running like broken promises into the hollow places his love used to fill. How could she know this pain would end? That love, unlike matter or energy, was in endless supply in the universe... A germ which grows from nothingness which cannot be eradicated even from the darkest of hearts. If she had known this-- and who could say she would believe it?-- She would not have chanced to remain at his sad grave until such an hour so that she might not have to learn the second truth before the first: that to have love was to carry a vessel that could be lost or stolen or worse, spilled blood-red on the ground. And that love was not immutable and could become hate as day becomes night as life becomes death.
Mulder: Mr. Padgett... you can go. We apologize for our mistake. You're free to finish your book.
Pagett: Thank you. I made a mistake myself.
Mulder: What’s that Mr. Pagett?
Pagett: In my book I wrote that Agent Scully falls in love, but that’s obviously impossible. Agent Scully is already in love.
Mulder: What do you think you're doing?
Pagett: Destroying my book.
Mulder: Destroying evidence, you mean. Let me see what you wrote.
Pagett: I’ll tell you. He kills her.
Screencaps courtesy of X Files Archive & ChrisNu.
Feel free to join/watch my graphics community @ coffeestop_x
Also posted at: xf_daily, gillian_daily & xfiles.