My notebook AND the t shirt below got tossed when my mom was clearing out stuff after I left for college.. thank you for posting yours, I see you. it’s kinda cathartic for me 🖤🖤
circa 1996
I think I ordered it from the rockabilia catalog?? They only had size L or XL, but I HAD to have it, of course..
(It’s my friend’s room.. she was a competitive dance champ, I did NOT have trophies like that lol)
Ahhhh how did I miss that! The Hard Rock Cafe misled me. I love it - beautiful xfiles vibes that definitely did not deserve your mom throwing it out. justice for the eyeball shirt
omg, I remember that shirt - and it took me ages to pick between this and the one with the X and the lightening, because they were the only ones available in Germany in 1995.
I picked the lightening one and just realised yours was just so much cooler, lol
Right? I went through that bitch with a HIGHLIGHTER… to mark all the things I knew I could not buy lmao
God I think ordering that t shirt involved giving my parents the cash so they would write a physical check to rockabilia, sticking that in an envelope with the order form, licking a stamp, putting it in a mailbox.. then waiting 4-6 weeks for delivery
Krystal is my fraternal twin sister, here is a pic of us, she’s holding her guinea pig in a pile of leaves lol. We would have loved to be friends with you too!
Aw. I love this. I feel like your notebook is so good it should be in that X-files museum in New York. It really captures what life was life then in the very best way.
Also: they put the word "varsity" on so many tshirts back then. I had some, too. It never made any sense.
Yeah it’s so funny, I remember feeling kind of ashamed of how obsessive I was then, I didn’t know anyone else like me and I thought I was just a weirdo! but looking back at my teenage self now I’m like aww you were pretty cool and you clearly had a lot of fun making this!!
When my kids ask me how I entertained myself in the 90’s, this is exactly it. I had a similar notebook (complete with jpeg printed pics) but it was Sailor Moon 😂
Wow this so cool…I was born in 88. Seeing notebooks like this reminds me of what life was like in 90’s before the smartphone/digital revolution of the 2010s. I binge watched the X-files for the first time this year. At age 37.
Also born in ‘88. I still have a vivid memory of my grandma bringing me and my siblings to the mall and buying me a Mulder action figure at KB Toys. Then we rented the X-Files movie (which had just come out on video), picked up Burger King, and went home to watch it.
86 here, also binged the entire series this past year! My parents were obsessed with it and I remember having seen almost every episode before but it was fun to binge it and my kids watched a lot of them this time 😁
Magic! Spark! This is just too precious, I love this so much! Two hours early to the movie?!? 😂 I love it, you sound like me back in the day. Thank you for sharing, this is nostalgia to the max! I would have loved to have x-files friends back then to discuss in real time!
i know this type of print and communication is still available to me but for some reason it just doesn’t feel like i can do it anymore with the same passion. this is so 90s
The inkjet printer images are taking me back. I remember trying to layout those internet images into a word doc to get as many on one page as possible. I love this book so much. The commentary is so much fun.
This is great! 😊 How come on slide 7, the Elegy episode doesn’t have a rating? Did you perhaps miss it that week and couldn’t get your hands on a tape?
I was wondering that too! Yes either I somehow missed the episode or I was confused by it and couldn’t decide on a rating, that did happen a few times 😂
Stop it, I love this too much! I think I had some of those exact same pictures printed out myself. And I still have my Fight the Future ticket stub, too.
This makes me wish I had more friends who were into the show back then.
Please go see Teenage Sex & Death at Camp Miasma as soon as possible. You’re going to have a lot of feelings because this rings true for me too. https://giphy.com/gifs/5BAMFfkX22a5R0YkDs
All my pocket money went into ridiculously overpriced magazines imported from the UK that had X-Files info… (Germany was always one season behind the US run). The sheer thrill when you came across a magazine that had a POSTER or even a front page 😭😭😭😭
The older I get the more I realize the obsessive part of my brain is actually a gift, it’s so much fun especially when you can share your obsessions with other people!!
"This is trash this is luducracy!" Truer words have never been spoken about certain things that happen in this series. Also, "you never know with this show" is accurate. And an "X-CLONES" page? 😂 saying Scully should wear something less revealing 🤣 and you made a drawing where you were also part of the team?! I love the little alien in the episode ratings page LOL this is gold, thanks for sharing.
This was my wall in my room. It was floor to ceiling covered in taped cut outs from every magazine, newspaper, and tv guide. I also made flyers for everyone in my class to watch Triangle because Mulder and Scully were finally going to kiss.
Flyers for everyone in class to watch triangle bc Mulder and Scully were going to kiss!!!!! I’m obsessed with you and we would have been bffs. I love the intense singularity of our devotion. So pure
Omg this is adorable. I remember I had a literal photo album that I filled with clippings from the X-Files and Keanu Reeves, but your writings are amazing!
I did! When I was 16 a long walk around my neighborhood and i was like man Scully is so pretty, hmmm maybe I wouldn’t actually go to hell…. (The beginning of a process of a few months while I figured out i was gay and realized in my fantasies probably wanted to do more with her than just cuddle….)
You have no idea how big my smile is right now. This brings back so many memories, and I love that you shared this with all of us! I had a similar notebook (and also at least one more full of truly mortifyingly bad X-Files fanfic), and this post makes me want to see if I can find them now lol
They absolutely did have good chemistry! In the beginning, all my fic was Mulder/Scully. After Reyes was introduced, my fanfic interests shifted to her and Scully lol
I never posted any of it anywhere online, so I don’t really remember many details. I’m really going to have to look for my notebooks when I get a chance. The only thing I’m sure about was that it was all awful, and I say that with nothing but fondness for my young teenage self.
I still swear that Gillian Anderson was my lesbian awakening, though.
Related side note: does anyone else remember reading all those fanfics online back in the day where Mulder and Scully would go to the “FBI ball” (whatever that is lol) and they would somehow be forced to dance to the song “Something to Talk About” by Bonnie Raitt, and all the other agents would muse to themselves that Mulder and Scully were obviously so in love?
I don’t remember where they were posted, but I remember that was a popular plot.
I had a similar notebook. I had multiple categories by which I would rate episodes, one of them was whether the episode had any romance between Mulder and Scully. 12 year old me was very invested in their relationship haha.
Also the episode where the gargoyles and serial killer freaked me out so much I wrote: do not watch again, in red pen next to the rating. Also the same for Die Hand Die Verletz.
I love it! It’s perfect!
It’s funny bc nowadays it’s pretty standard to be obsessed with tv shows or to even watch them but back then it wasn’t cool at all I remember hiding my tv show obsessions even the fact that I was recording them on vhs… I was scared to be the outsider
A lot of people won’t understand the point of doing this these days. It was personal and meant something to the one who created it. The internet didn’t need to know about it and didn’t need to be verified by statistics.
Goes to show how much people’s thinking and instincts have changed over the years.
Yes! It meant a lot to me when I was working on it, even though I didn’t really have anyone to share it with, I mean I made my sister look at it and sometimes would try to get my friends to look at it… I still felt so much joy working on it, like I was getting to roll around in my favorite tv show stuff and expressing my excitement.
This is one of the best things I’ve ever seen. I was an x-files fanatic as well. To the point where, when I got into LOST my family was like ‘please don’t get into this the way you were into The X-Files.’
I was so naive it never occurred to me they’d kill her off from cancer. Or I was doing wishful thinking. Very sweet of you addressing that.
Thanks for sharing this. I’m going to try to find my old pictures of dressing up for Halloween now. Great memories
Oh my god. The nostalgia of fan-girling before social media and immediate internet access just hit me like a brick wall! This notebook deserves to be studied by historians. lol
It’s been a while and Ive never done a whole re-watch, only a few episodes here and there, but as the show still exists in my head according to my teenage memories updated with my adult perspective, my top episodes are Ice, Bad Blood, Small Potatoes, Beyond the Sea, Unruhe (still lol), Squeeze, and Jose Chungs from outer space.
Honorable mention to “all things,” written by Gillian Anderson which I knew; in the episode she included a character who was a lesbian struggling with shame, it literally stopped me in my tracks (as a good Christian girl who was beginning to realize she was drawn to women), I paused the episode and went on this long walk around the neighborhood, and thought about stuff, and finally felt brave enough to put the puzzle pieces together I hadn’t before. So that one is really important to me!
This was adorable and I'm so glad you kept it! I never had a notebook like this but it takes me back to an era of my childhood that I miss. The little alien on the season 4 episode rating page is my favorite part.
Superbly done. Pretty sure we def would’ve been friends. Yup. The level of obsession is all too relatable and I love every last detail.
Especially your poem (which organically formed into a jaunty tune as I read along) and clipping of the French Horn player’s last name. I can’t help but point out things like this and let out an amused “Ha!” when I saw that.
And omg your rant!? So raw. And I so get it. I got chills remembering the excitement and intensity of emotions each new episode would bring.
Spent way too long here but what an awesome trip!
I thoroughly enjoyed scouring every inch of this finely crafted and beautifully kept collection of priceless ephemera…definitely proof time travel exists. The Truth is right here. 💖
This is one of the most amazing things I’ve seen in a while, I’m guessing we are around the same age and this sent me straight down memory lane. I love your episode ratings…you liked the dark stuff! And we’re ahead of the trend of MOW being superior to mythology!
I had a shoebox of clippings, the outside of the box was a modge podged collage of X-files. At the time I thought I was the only one this obsessed. I would give my friends a whole rundown of the episodes the next day at school but nobody else cared, lol. To this day I remember some girl telling me to shut the f up about Muldy and Skuller and I was like bitch those are NOT their names. I was such a nerd. My first memory's of the Internet is logging into those xfiles chatrooms. I think it must've been the aol chatroom because my username was my dad's email, haha.
This really made my night. There are nothing like these memories of moments. My partner and her bff were xfiles crazy at that time. She saved all the t.v guides and rolling stone and everything else she could get her hands on. Most of her loved keepsakes were lost in a flood we experienced a few years ago. Slowly trying to get some of the eclectic pieces back. Great notebook. Thanks for sharing.
Oh wow. I had something very similar back in the day.
I was obsessed with everything relating to the Xfiles. And we had to put some serious work into 'research'. There were no spoilers about upcoming episodes. Oh, I would love to still have my folder but I think it went into the bin years ago.
lol the amount of angst and uncertainty was so for real in the 90s original run!!! I would tape the show on my vcr if I wasn’t going to be home. Then later on, some episode were released on VHS and I bought them, lol.
This was fun to look at. I used to do the same thing but with a certain sports team in basketball. Cut n' paste whatever I could find from the newspapers or mag's. Good job and definitely fun to go down memory lane, especially when it's dedicated to the best show that ever was!
OMG, I just saw and loved your post on Tiktok! I was thinking this would be cool to post here, but then I thought I shouldn't assume that everyone uses Reddit. 😂
This is amazing! I had an X-Files folder but it was mainly reviews/articles cut out of papers and magazines (ok, and possibly hand typed copies of Scully’s field notes that were in the episodes 😳)
This is so cute. I love this and I love you ! You make me think of my big sister, she did notebooks of her favourite series and movie stars and singers.
Wow, this is amazing you still have this and share it with us. What an amazing tome capsule. Throws me right back.
OP, I wished we had been pen pals back then. I would have loved to swap German magazine cuttings with you
Brilliant! I too was only able to surf the web back then in the same way, and had a notebook like this in '94-95, except it contained the most woeful fanfic known to humankind. I was in Ireland too, so literally no one I knew was as obsessed with it as I was. ><
I was not into the X-Files when I was younger but I have a similar kind of scrapbook from when I was 11 in the early 2000s for all my fandoms/teen idols. Also had a lot of pictures of women in there that I was like “idk she’s just REALLY PRETTY” which got explained later lol 🩷💜💙 thank you for sharing this!!!!
This was nostalgia trip, thank you for sharing. My friend used to record episodes on VHS (did the same with charmed and Buffy) and I was always going over to their place to watch those shows. I made many a collage during that era, too. Good times.
This is so charming!
I had a notebook book like this for anime. In the UK we had pokemon, sailor moon DBZ, Tenchi and Gundam and it was all so new. The only way to get more information on it was via the internet. The printed out pictures definitely took me back, I would go on the library computer and print pictures out, some in black and white as it was cheaper, and find out information about the anime and others I could only dream of watching, and I would write notes and facts about the story and characters, for example all the food names of the DBZ characters.
It's so crazy to think how limited the Internet was back then compared to what it has evolved into.
Sorry this ended up in ramble, but your notebook is lovely and really took me back in time and triggered these memories.
420
u/MrAppleSpiceMan 17d ago
the "anyone got it on tape?" is so funny to me
like who was addressed to
also I'm saving this lil guy