Cancer Arc Denial x "Mary Jane" (Track 9/12)

The Cancer Arc is a well I come back to again and again. Personally I think it was the best mytharc the show ever did--tense, emotional, heartbreaking, hopeful... It has everything!

My heart truly breaks for Scully in this arc. She's "always been the strong one," and faced with the looming inevitability of her own mortality, she retreats as deep as she can into denial until it's nearly too late. I went with a darker, grittier motif for these, inspired by the Never Again gif I made for the first "You Oughta Know" set (and used almost the exact same frames for the Never Again gif in this set). I will forever be proud of the way her eyes overlap in the last gif.

To quote the genius.com lyrics page: "Throughout the song she paints the picture of a character who has lost enthusiasm for living, withdrawn from the world, and is ... denying herself the freedom to cry in order appear a certain way that is very different to how she genuinely feels to the objective observer. She is also portrayed as a person making risky choices about their lifestyle to their own detriment and not thinking clearly about the consequences of these decisions before making them."

And boy if that ain't Cancer Arc Scully to a T.