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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2946 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 21, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I've always felt the way Mulder describes it in War of the Coprophages on the X-files about most insects that are big enough to fully make out their body parts. Zooming accomplishes the same effect.

Mulder: No, no, no. I’m not afraid of them. I hate them. One day, back when I was a kid, I was climbing this tree when I noticed this leaf walking towards me. It took forever for me to realize that it was no leaf.

Scully: A praying mantis?

Mulder: Yeah, I had a praying mantis epiphany and as a result, I screamed. And not, not a girlie scream, but the scream of someone being confronted by some before unknown monster that had no right existing on the same planet I inhabited. ... The mysteries of the natural world were revealed to me that day but instead of being astounded I was repulsed.

I never watched the King Kong remake in theaters, but I caught some of it at some point at a friend's house. Specifically, the dark crevasse with the giant insects.

Years later, there was a copy handy, and I thought, "It couldn't really have been that bad, could it? It's a film, you're a man, it's just an experience like any other... let's give it another try." So I gave it another try.

Nope.

Upon a brief search I realize I recall this episode but not this dialogue. However, I do enjoy the mental image of Mulder needing to clarify the nature of the scream, lest Scully get the ick from his childhood memory—for not even a relatively stoic female FBI agent is immune from the ick. Observant as she is, Scully caught on though, as her next line was: "Mulder... are you sure it wasn't a girly scream?"

Fortunately, Bambi Berenbaum saved the day with her preselection services, overriding any ick induced by triggering Scully's sense of female mate-choice copying.

That being said, I can't relate to Mulder's mantis bigotry. I'm fairly size agnostic when it comes to insects. Stumbling upon a praying mantis IRL would strike me as much more cool than gross or creepy. In contrast, I'd get grossed out by a cockroach of any size, slightly enraged by a mosquito, with a fly somewhere in between. Maybe I'm just an insect racist who hates black and brown insect bodies.

Yeah. It's a "kill it with fire and nuke the entire site from orbit just to be sure" type of feeling.

I have no problem with closeup photos of plants, eyes, amphibians or lizards but as soon as it's insects or arachnids (and probably some arthropods), I nope the hell out.

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