#halt and catch fire s4 feels

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

FEMSLASH FEBRUARY 2024 #11: In which Cameron invites Donna to visit

[CN: food/meal mentions] [CN: major character death reference/spoilers for s4 of Halt and Catch Fire] . .

Their new normal, through some miracle, had come to include Donna and Haley coming over to have dinner with Cameron and J0e on a regular basis. Cameron looked forward to it, and she also thought often about how it literally took Gordon dying for her and Donna to become friends again. She felt terribly guilty about this, and wished that she could apologize to Gordon for having taken them all for granted for so long. She also worried that it wouldn’t last, that these dinners would eventually taper off and then stop completely, and that Donna would drift out of her life. She didn’t know how to express this fear, or who to talk to about it.

In early August, J0e threw himself into learning how to use a grill, and then invited Haley and Donna over for grilled vegetables and steaks. They arrived at 7pm on the dot, as always, and Cameron went down to the front door to let them in. When she opened the door, there they both stood, drinks and dessert in hand. Haley was wearing her usual men’s section pants, undershirt, and patterned button down, and Donna, who seemed to be glowing, was wearing a dressy-looking wool knit tank top and linen shorts.

During their regular awkward-but-sincere greeting hug, Cameron felt Donna’s bicep. “Jesus, you look great,” she blurted out. “Did a new Jane Fonda aerobics tape come out or something?”

Donna chuckled, and Haley wryly said, “It’s probably all the swimming.”

“Oh,” Cameron said, feeling slightly embarrassed.

They all had their usual surreal-but-genuine dinner conversation as they ate. Updates on Comet, recent pop culture happenings, current events, the occasional Silicon Valley rumor, all spoken about as if things were normal, as if they didn’t all still feel Gordon’s absence keenly. They joked and they laughed and they didn’t say how strange it felt, they just kept at it as best they could. And after they finished the entree, Cameron, as always, got up to clear their plates, and said, ‘No, no, sit, I’ve got it’ when J0e offered to help, and then waited for Donna to come and join her in the kitchen while she pretended to wash the dishes.

Their kitchen conversations had been awkward at first, but had become more comfortable surprisingly quickly. Donna came into the kitchen that night and said, “So…how you doing?”

Cameron smiled reflexively as she pulled a bottle of seltzer out of the refrigerator. Closing the door behind her and turning back to Donna, she said, “Hanging in there….” She saw that Donna had her glass in her hand, and asked, “Refill?”

Donna handed the glass over. “If you would be so kind.”

Cameron took the cap off the seltzer, put it on the counter and then took Donna’s glass. “You look like you’re doing a lot better than just hanging in there.”

As Cameron poured the seltzer, Donna beamed. “Well, thank you. I try.”

Cameron offered the glass back to Donna. She opened her mouth to say something, then hesitated, and then after Donna took the glass back, she said, “You definitely, you know. You seem better than you did that day that you came out to my trailer.”

Donna had just sat down at the kitchen table. She sat up straight, suddenly, but didn’t say anything.

“I mean, I was worried,” Cameron added. She refilled her own glass, and then she screwed the cap back onto the seltzer bottle, and went back to the refrigerator, grateful for a reason to not look directly at Donna. “I wanted to make sure you were okay back then, but, I don’t know. I didn’t know if I should bother you.”

She lingered by the refrigerator, and then she said, “I’m sorry, really, about, you know, Rover. God, all of that seems like a different life, but also, it doesn’t, and either way, I shouldn’t have gotten involved —“

“It’s okay,” Donna smiled glumly.

“Really?” Cameron asked. She took a step toward the table.

“It was almost nice. I saw your code, and it was like working with you again.” She paused, and then admitted, “I never stopped missing that. I never stopped missing you.” She looked away, and then said, “I guess, I just didn’t realize how much I missed you until that day I had to go see you.”

Cameron frowned. It felt like there was something Donna wasn’t saying, was hiding. “It’s usually like that, right? It doesn’t really hit you, until it does.”

Donna’s shoulders sagged sadly. “I didn’t want that to be over. But, it is over,” she said. “And that’s okay.”

It didn’t look like it was okay with Donna. Cameron felt, oddly, as if she had had this conversation before, but didn’t know why, or how to articulate how it felt.

Donna picked up her glass and held it up. “Mutiny was here.”

Cameron raised her glass, and said it back, “Mutiny was here.”

Without breaking eye contact, they both drank. Afterwards, Donna gave her another one of those sad, resigned smiles.

It occurred to Cameron that she’d had a version of this conversation with J0e. Cameron wondered if this was mere coincidence.

She put her glass down on the kitchen table, and sat across from Donna. Desperate to change the subject, said, “I haven’t been out there in a while. At my trailer I mean. I would, but, J0e hates being out there, and, I don’t really feel like I can leave him.” She stopped short of asking, ‘What does it mean when you want to be with someone, but being with them feels like being in a trap?’

As if she could hear Cameron’s thoughts, Donna said, “Well, that’s what being in a relationship is like, sometimes. It won’t always be like that, though.”

Cameron felt like this general wisdom didn’t apply to her situation. “Yeah. I hope you’re right.”

Encouragingly, Donna said, “It will pass.” She took a sip of her seltzer, and then she said, “You’ll be able to go back out to your property and live as a recluse most of the time before you know it.”

Cameron leaned back in her chair, and relaxed slightly. “I am kind of a recluse, huh?”

“There are worse things,” Donna said.

Abruptly, without thinking it through, Cameron asked, “You wanna come visit me out there? When I’m able to live out at my property again?” Donna looked surprised. “No paperwork,” Cameron added quickly, “no work stuff at all. Just a social visit. We can sit out by my fire pit.”

Donna thought about it for a second, and then smiled. “Yeah, sure. Count me in.”

[goodobservationshirley]

I haven’t watched Halt and Catch Fire in quite a while, but seeing that gif set of Cam and the kids warmed my heart, especially the one where she hugs them in the grocery store. It just really drove home how important they were to each other that the kids ran, not walked but ran, to hug her and she immediately opened her arms. I mean Cam is not the most physically affectionate (I always think of that awkward hug Donna gave her, which may be unfair since she was holding a tomato slice, but she just looked so startled and unsure of how to act) but she so clearly also missed those kids. I miss that show!

i have many feelings about cam and the kids and the divorces

cam was actually living with them and then one day she wasn't! i often wondered if they ever resented their mother for it. my personal headcanon is that donna was so obviously miserable that they couldn't bring themselves to add to it. but i also think it would have made it very difficult for them to talk to their parents about missing her

in s4 we actually get little glimpses of the girls' awareness of how much the cam/donna separation is still affecting everyone. it's joanie taking one look at cam at the party and immediately understanding that she's looking for (and trying to avoid) donna. it's haley being like 'don't worry, mom. cam liked your project' before immediately noping out of the conversation because cam is definitely not a name casually mentioned in this house

anyway, cam will never be a mom but these kids are definitely her kids

[luxe-pauvre]

JUNE 2021

Read:

The Synchronicity of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung

Scientists Analysed 24,000 Chess Matches to Understand Cognition

It’s not necessarily deluded to feel in control when you’re not

Time Flows Toward Order

Zoom and gloom

How to Stop Feeling Crushed for Time

How to Build Trust in Covid-19 Vaccines

Am I disabled?

How to plan a research project

Altered states can help us save face death with serenity and levity

Are people with dark personality traits more likely to succeed?

The body as mediator

America, the exceptional?

The Impossibility of Memory

Contemplating the End of Physics

How To Think For Yourself

You’re only As Good As Your Worst Day

How Science Beat The Virus

The Human Brain Project Hasn’t Lived Up to Its Promise

Playing Go with Darwin

On the moral obligation to stop shit-stirring

Make Me a Cold and Pitiless Goddess

The Internet of Beefs

How the Slowest Computer Programs Illuminate Math’s Fundamental Limits

How Does Anyone Stay Healthy in a World Full of Germs?

Over Time, Buddhism and Science Agree

A World Without Email by Cal Newport

Elastic: The Power of Flexible Thinking by Leonard Mlodinow

From Bacteria to Bach and Back by Daniel C. Dennett

Watched:

How To Escape Your Limitations*

A Tour of the Dark Side of Human Nature with Malcolm Gladwell

What Happened to the Public Good? Michael Sandel on the Tyranny of Meritocracy

When Shakespeare Got Cool

The Movies That Inspired Knives Out

What Portrait of a Lady on Fire Tells Us About “the Gaze”

How David Fincher Uses Pop Music

Why The Shining Is Terrifying

The naked lady that changed the rules of art

Pan’s Labyrinth: Disobedient Fairy Tale

Have We Grown Out of Gossip Girl?

Bauhaus design is everywhere, but its roots are political

Edvard Munch: What A Cigarette Means

Art That Was Never Finished

Having a Coke with Frank O’Hara

Women at Her Toilette (1875/80)

Who’s Afraid of Modern Art: Vandalism, Video Games, and Fascism**

Why you think you’re right - even if you’re wrong

Halt and Catch Fire (S1)

Rear Window

To Catch a Thief

The Handmaid’s Tale (S4)

Listened to:

Solar Power by Lorde

The Devil by BANKS

brutal by Olivia Rodrigo

Higher Power by Coldplay

Went to:

Life on a Knife’s Edge - A Brain Surgeon’s Reflections on Life, Loss and Survival

UCL Brain Cancer Seminar Series

What David Hume Teaches Us about Being Human and Living Well

Pandora’s Jar -  Women in the Greek Myths

The self-assembling brain: how neural networks grow smarter

The Hidden Geometry of Absolutely Everything

Angela Saini in conversation with Julia Gillard

Effortless - How to Make It Easier to Do What Matters

The New Neurosciences of Mental Illness and the Origins of Human Emotion

How Confidence Works - The New Science of Self-Belief

COVID-19: science communication and public trust

Gaia @ Old Royal Naval College

Why Our Brains Make Habits Stick

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

I would love for you to talk more indepth about the montage. To me it feels so off and weird. Almost like a parody? So many scenes in it are "funny" moments that just don't make sense in the context of an emotional overview of the road so far... (Like all the scenes where Dean is eating, Donna with donut dust on her face, Sam getting hit during the game show.) I don't know. Isn't the montage supposed to make me nostalgic, teary-eyed? This one definitely doesn't do it for me!

Here I am! Yes, I absolutely agree. The montage is Weird(TM). It’s kind of a tone rollercoaster. It’s very full of funny/silly moments, with some serious moments smacked in. And it definitely looks like... there’s something about it.

For an easier consultation I will reference the gifs I have made of the montage sequence here.

[Gif 1] It starts pretty much like I’d expect a Supernatural goodbye montage to start. The two brothers meeting for the first time in the pilot, a reminder of their childhood with John, their banter still from the pilot, a couple moments of them driving in the car in the first seasons, Dean saving Lucas in 1x03 which is the first Dean-heavy episode and also an extremely symbolic moment for Dean’s entire journey - just think at how Lucas as a mirror was still relevent during the “drowning” Michael possession arc. Everything feels normal so far. We’re starting from the beginning! Now--

[Gif 2] Interesting and weird choices start here. Them pretending to be high school teachers from After School Special 4x13 - actually a very iconic moment for the fandom, remember that post of Dean in shorts from that episode that you had to reblog when it came on your dash? (Actually I’m not sure if I ever reblogged it lol.) Dean celebrating getting young again from The Curious Case of Dean Winchester 5x07 (and Jensen showing off his agility). The two of them showing their FBI badges to Jesse Turner’s biological mother in 5x06. Dean mowing the lawn of Mary’s house in the Djinn dream and immediately after Jess and Sam kissing also in the Djinn dream, from What Is And What Should Never Be 2x20. Then Dean after killing the witch when he was under the memory loss spell, in Regarding Dean 12x11. Sam happy when they celebrate Christmas in A Very Supernatural Christmas 3x08. Them being “lucky” under the effect of the rabbit’s foot in Bad Day At Black Rock 3x03. Sam also happy in Baby 11x04.

Again the present, then the montage starts again with the water-related ghost from Red Sky At Morning 3x06, a Bela episode, and then Bela herself from her first episode, 3x03 again.

What do these moments have in common? Not all of them, but for many of them I’d say reality being manipulated. The Djinn dream, the rabbit foot, Dean’s aging, the Antichrist... and it’s not over yet. Also, them pretending to be teachers, agents etc - not “real”.

[Gif 3] The tone suddenly gets more serious and relevant to current events: Chuck in The Monster at the End of This Book 4x18 (eh). Death in Two Minutes to Midnight 5x21 (the first appearance of Death, while now we’ve had Billie’s last and a very short-lived new one), and then two major moments from Lazarus Rising - Dean emerging from the grave and finding the handprint on his shoulder. Crowley’s first episode, Abandon All Hope 5x10. Zachariah’s death in Point Of No Return 5x18. Anna from The Song Remains The Same 5x13, where she is the antagonist having been brainwashed successfully by heaven. Michael burning and Sam jumping in the cage with Michael in 5x22, then another moment from 4x01 (the brothers hugging after reuniting). A moment from The French Mistake 6x15 (reality fuckery again!). Sam in Frontierland 6x18.

[Gif 4] Reality fuckery continues with Becky marrying Sam in 7x08. Funnily enough, this is the peak of Becky’s obsessive behavior which she went to therapy for and grew away of - it definitely emphasizes how far Becky has come. Donna’s first appeance in 9x13. That iconic shot of Dean in Bloodlust 2x03 because he’s pretty. Charlie’s first appearance in 7x20 while she dances to Walking On Sunshine (relevant?), Kevin’s first appearance in 7x21 when he becomes a prophet (lots of firsts). Abaddon’s first appearance in As Time Goes By 8x12. Then there’s the first appearance of the bunker, in the next episode, a couple shots in fact. Then more 4x01, Ruby pretending to mistake Dean for the pizza man (eh). Then more present...

This section seems to be mostly “first appearances” - including Ruby’s s4 meatsuit, i.e. Genevieve’s first appearance.

[Gif 5] We suddenly jump to more recent events with Kelly and Jack in heaven in Byzanthium 4x08. Jack’s iconic hello from 4x16 Don’t Go In The Woods. Dean teaching Jack how to drive in 14x07 Unhuman Nature. But then we suddenly go from Jack things to something completely different on the surface: two consecutive moments from Changing Channels 5x08, including the iconic Nutcracker scene, and Sully from Just My Imagination. We are actually back to the previous theme: reality fuckery. Gabriel’s episode was about placing them in “television shows”, Sully, while real, is literally a child’s “imaginary friend”. And then... a moment from the cartoon part of Scoobynatural! It doesn’t get more reality fuckery than that. Oh, wait! Charlie and Dorothy going to Oz in 9x04. That’s a pretty strong contender. Dean being hit in the face by a fairy in 6x09 - also about a realm Dean briefly went to. And, in case we felt like we hadn’t gotten enough 4x01 yet, Pamela’s first appearance (her last, albeit a hallucination, was about the whole “How come you only want what you can't have?” thing).

[Gif 6] We continue again with a mixture of firsts and weird things. Ellen’s first appearance in 2x02, Dean and Cas in 4x18 (we saw Chuck from that episode earlier), Jody’s first appearance in 5x15 Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid. Rufus in 6x04 Weekend At Bobby’s (not his first but a good episode...), Garth in 9x12 Sharp Teeth (not his first but the first in which he is a werewolf and is married... relevant to recent lamp events??), Missouri in 1x09 (her first appearance).

Then Gabriel from 13x21 Beat The Devil (an episode where he plays a trick on Lucifer) and Rowena from the same scene (in fact a scene where they’re flirting).  Then Eileen coming back to life in 15x06 and smiling at Sam. Jo flirting with Dean in 2x02 - her first appearance, again. Funnily enough, she had been introduced as a love interest, but ended up being repurposed as a sisterly figure. Tempted to say it’s relevant in an ironic way. Mary in 14x11 Damaged Goods, when Dean has a goodbye mother-son moment with her. Amara in 11x09 Oh Brother Where Art Thou when she was looking for her brother. Then Lucifer in two different vessels (12x07 Rock Never Dies and 12x21, when Lucifer regains control over the vessel).

Then Metatron doing the find a wife make babies speech to Cas in 8x23! Relevant??? Dun dun dun. Then Ketch for some reason (the first episode where we see his face, 12x08 LOTUS).

[Gif 7] Then Jo/Anael in 13x13, another first appearance. (I cropped these horribly I should have cut them when the present happens lol.)

Sandwiched between two shots from the present, Dean Sam Mary and John having dinner together in 14x13 Lebanon.

Then we start again with Dean riding Larry in 12x11, Dean and Cas dressed as cowboys in 13x06 (mini pattern here...), Asmodeus with the archangel blade in 13x13 (insert meta about Asmodeus in Christian lore here), and the really intriguing “Intermission” shot from the play in 10x05.

[Gif 8] To continue a certain pattern we might be tempted to see, Dean eating piecake from 14x06 Optimism (an episode about a distorted version of romantic love), then Dean eating noodles from 10x13 Halt & Catch Fire (the ghost is a husband that passes on thanks to his wife). Dean after his dentistry session with Garth in 15x10. Meg from 6x10 Caged Heat (the episode with the pizza man porn). Dean and Sam investigating in 4x12 Criss Angel Is a Douchebag (an episode about growing old poorly). Crowley in 10x16 Paint It Black (that episode). Dean playing that game in 14x17 Game Night (the episode Cas calls for God, and when Mary dies - the one playing the game was God...). Sam and Dean getting out of the car in 13x05 when they visit the traumatized kid (peak mourning Dean episode...). Then we go into reality fuckery territory again with 14x15 Peace of Mind, Sam under the psychic’s control and Cas disgruntled about it.

[Gif 9] Mick Davies from 12x16 Ladies Drink Free, when he learnt a lesson about monsters. Dean geeking out about the Hatchet Man - so heavy with mirror significances - in 14x04 Mint Condition. Belphegor - Jack’s dark mirror - in 15x03 The Rupture, the break-up episode. Donna’s first episode again, this time Dean and she eating donuts. Dean, Sam and Mary hugging in 12x22 after the confrontation in Mary’s head. Kaia in 13x09 The Bad Place, when Jack uses her to find the way to where Mary is (Mary pattern?). Claire&co rescuing Jody and Donna in 13x10 Wayward Sisters. Dean in 1944 dresses as a sailor in 11x14 The Vessel. Baby nyooming in 15x11 The Gamblers...

Aaand more Changing Channels, the genital herpes ad. It’s almost like reality fuckery is a theme. Followed by Sam drinking the anti-cold concoction at Garth’s in 15x10 and the two of them outside the monster fighting pit in the same episode. Then Cas, Dean, Sam and Jack on a video call with Ketch in 14x09 The Spear when they talk about the egg to trap Michael.

[Gif 10] We stay in the same episode with the four of them heading to Michael. Then the four of them celebrating Jack’s return to life (after Cas’ deal with the Empty). More present, and then the iconic “we’ve got work to do” [trunk closes] moment from the pilot.

So: some of these moments seem like genuine moments you’ll want to put in a montage, but there’s a weird predominance of characters smiling and looking happy or goofy. It’s kind of... not exactly representative of the show as a whole, you know? There are moments that fit as, you know, iconic steps in the story, but surprisingly few, and many moments you’d expect to be in a “final” montage are blatantly not there. Several moments with, let’s put it like this, suspicious meta connotations. Moments that, well, we don’t know what happens in the finale yet, but smell like they might be relevant to future developments. (Metatron’s speech to newly human Cas anyone?)

What really strikes me is the amount of moments connected to reality being manipulated or distorted in some way. Lots of Changing Channels, fantasy elements of various kinds (the Djinn dream, Scoobynatural, Oz, the imaginary friend Becky’s wedding to Sam, the fairy, ...), them acquiring luck (s3) or losing it (s15), and so on. It’s almost like the sequence is telling us something...

Thoughts?

[locke-writes]

Noah’s Watchlist

Here’s the list of what I’m watching. Some items on this list will be added to The Fandoms List in the future but please let me know if there’s something on here that you’d request for as some shows/movies I might not be considering adding.

Feel free to provide any recommendations!

Updated: Jul 9, 2023

Currently Watching:

Criminal Minds (S7:E1) - Rewatch

Malcolm In the Middle (S6:E1) - Rewatch

Boy Meets World (S1:E6) - Rewatch

Animaniacs (S1:E2) - Rewatch

Naruto (S1:E3)

Doug (S1:E4) - Rewatch

Normal People (S1:E5)

Sense8 (S1:E1) - Rewatch

X Files (S3:E9)

A Series of Unfortunate Events (S3E3)

Misfits (S2:E5)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (S3:E20)

All That (S2:E3) - Rewatch

The Powerpuff Girls (S1:E5) - Rewatch

Modern Family (S4: E12)

It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia (S1:E5) - Rewatch

Recently Watched (Films)

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (2021)

The Rescuers (1977) - Rewatch

Mars Needs Moms (2011)

Shrek (2001) - Rewatch

Shrek 2 (2004) - Rewatch

Audible (2021)

Beauty and the Beast (1991) - Rewatch

New In Town (2009)

That Thing You Do! (1996)

Sliding Doors (1998) - Rewatch

Primal Fear (1996) - Rewatch

Palm Springs (2020)

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

Robin Hood (1979) - Rewatch

Girlfriend’s Day (2017)

The Great Mouse Detective (1986) - Rewatch

Aladdin (1992) - Rewatch

Chicken Run (2000) - Rewatch

Pocahontas (1995) - Rewatch

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) - Rewatch

Inheritance (2020)

A Man Called Otto (2022)

Sleeping Beauty (1956) - Rewatch

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) - Rewatch

How to Lose A Guy in Ten Days (2003) - Rewatch

Vincent (1982) - Rewatch

Begin Again (2013) - Rewatch

Paddington (2014)

The Sword in the Stone (1963) - Rewatch

La La Land (2016)

WarGames (1983)

Six Days Seven Nights (1998)

Big Top Pee-Wee (1988) - Rewatch

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) - Rewatch

Anastasia (1997) - Rewatch

Hugo (2011) - Rewatch

Ant-Man (2015) - Rewatch

Music From Another Room (1998)

Cyrus (2010)

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

Pete’s Dragon (1977) - Rewatch

The Little Mermaid (1989)

Big Night (1996)

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 (2010) - Rewatch

The Lovely Bones (2009)

District 9 (2009) - Rewatch

Pinocchio (1940) - Rewatch

The African Lion (1955)

Una (2016)

Punch (2022) - Rewatch

Hercules (1997) - Rewatch

eXistenZ (1999) - Rewatch

I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007) - Rewatch

A King in New York (1957)

Evil Angels (1988)

The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) - Rewatch

My Brilliant Career (1979)

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) - Rewatch

Dazed and Confused (1993) - Rewatch

La Cage aux Folles (1978)

Davy Crockett and the River Pirates (1956)

The Black Cauldron (1985) - Rewatch

Lisztomania (1975)

Upcoming:

Lucifer

The Witcher

Atypical

Sex Education

Spider Man: Into the Spider-verse - Rewatch

Halt & Catch Fire - Rewatch

The Old Guard

Nurse Jackie

Dead to Me

The Punisher

Merlin - Rewatch

Daredevil

I Am Not Okay With This

Happy

The Magicians

Never Have I Ever

Twin Peaks

The Guild

Jane the Virgin

The Politician

The Night Shift - Rewatch

Jessica Jones

Booksmart - Rewatch

I, Frankenstein - Rewatch

The Great

M*A*S*H - Rewatch

Fresh Off the Boat

Little Fires Everywhere

Single Parents

Sabrina the Teenage Witch - Rewatch

Superstore

Blue Bloods

Black-ish

Law & Order SVU - Rewatch

Atlanta

Adventure Time

Looking For Alaska

Preacher

Killing Eve

Fargo (FX) - Rewatch

The Orville

The Three Musketeers (1993) - Rewatch

Newsies (1992) - Rewatch

The Mandalorian

Big Mouth

Mr Robot

Bridgerton

Gothika (Rewatch)

A Monster Calls

After Life

Blood of Zeus

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

A Million Little Things

The Rookie

Black Adder

The Mighty Boosh

ER

10 Things I Hate About You (Rewatch)

The Mighty Ducks

Gargoyles

That’s So Raven (Rewatch)

Even Stevens (Rewatch)

Wandavision

Falcon & The Winter Soldier

Loki

9-1-1

9-1-1: Lone Star

Young Frankenstein (Rewatch) - Suggestion

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother - Suggestion

NBC Hannibal - Rewatch

Suicide Squad - Rewatch

The Suicide Squad

Trollhunters

Django Unchained

Hunter x Hunter

Pinky and the Brain - Rewatch

Chowder - Rewatch

Take Shelter

The House That Jack Built

Willy’s Wonderland

The United States of Tara

Party Down

Firefly

Midnight Mass - Rewatch

The Faculty (Rewatch) - Suggestion

Hawkeye

Legion (FX)

Encanto - Suggestion

Yellowstone - Suggestion

Maya and the Three - Suggestion

This Is Us

The Sandman

Being Human (US) - Rewatch

[lookupatthesky]

2018 Goals - April

Hi tumblr! April was a fun and busy month. I fell in love, thus ending my brief experience with Tinder and with seeing multiple people casually (something I am so not meant for, she says, already having asked the boyfriend to live with her after three weeks). I was extremely busy at work, in part because I kept missing work to do various other things, and in part because I am awesome and everyone needs me. Weather was horrendous but it’s bound to pick up now, right? It’s gonna be May.

Yearly goals are: Cook two new recipes a month. Check! Boyfriend is on a gluten-free diet, which is his only black spot on an otherwise perfect boyfriend material card, so I made some gluten-free blondies that were pretty good and some gluten-free breakfasts because apparently all I eat for breakfast are carbs and carbs. I also made a couple of new recipes for this fundraising thing we do at the choir where we sell dessert (Nutella Banana Bread Bites, Cake Mix Cookie Bars).

Do something every week with friends or alone (no boyfriends or people I’m hooking up with) to strengthen friendships and become more emotionally independant. I played D&D, did social things with the choir, networked after a work event, went to see a TREMENDOUS play with a friend, went to see a boring play with my family, went to the book fair, and hung out with my family a lot (for sad reasons like people dying or being dead for ten years, but still). All while dating three people for the first half of the month and being head over heels for one of the three in the second half. Not bad. (Boyfriend has said that he loved me for how independant I am, and I am still happily reeling.)

Read 111 books. 32/111. Am late.

Watch 12 movies. Still at 2/12.

Write two yuletide fics and another outside of the exchange. Still nope.

April goals were: Home: Call a plumber to get my hot showers back. All right, so I didn’t, BUT, I fixed my bathroom sink all on my own!!! It was clogged but I figured I’d just ask the plumber to look at it when he came for the shower, but then I said that no, I was woman, hear me roar, so I got a YouTube video and got down on my knees and fixed that shit. It was disgusting and magnificent.

TV: Halt & Catch Fire S3? Finish Rumeurs? I did neither. I started rewatching Fringe with the boyfriend; I fell asleep during every single episode. On the evenings I spent alone, I generally did chores. It was a busy month.

Money: Stay on budget (including groceries). I so didn’t?? I busted the grocery budget, the restaurant budget, and the “other dumb things” budget. But everything is still peachy money-wise, so I lack incentive a bit.

Parenting: Play at least one board game a week with Marianne. I don’t think this happened, though we played once or twice. (She wasn’t super into playing, so whatever.) I spent a lot more time reading to her, though. And in general I’m very happy with the amount of time we’ve spent together this month, cuddling and talking. God, she’s the best part of my life.

Evolve: This wasn’t on the original planning, but I applied for a new job and I figured this should be in here.

May goals are: Personal: Meditate ten minutes every day. I need to be better at taking things slow, living in the moment, all of that stuff. I get in my head so much, it’s in the way of my enjoyment of life, and I like joy a lot. Home: Call for quotes on lawn-mowing and figure out if I want to do it on my own or not. Spring clean the yard. Money: Figure out what to do with the basement now that my renter is gone. TV: It feels dumb to add a TV goal when I don’t feel like it, so I won’t, but I’ll probably finish Rumeurs S4 and/or Fringe S1.

Enjoy those May flowers, everyone!

[simplyrali]

The ending of Halt and catch fire

This is going to be long so bear with me.

I intentionally waited more than a month to write my opinion on the ending of Halt and catch fire, I wanted to see if I would feel differently after some time and thinking. Although at first it seemed like the show ended on a positive note, something kept bugging me and I was left unsatisfied with what they presented us. I was strangely disappointed and confused because a lot of the actions of our characters didn’t make sense with their personal growth until that moment. 

First, I think two of the main characters were written OOC in the finale – Cameron and Joe. Let me explain. In 4x09 and 4x10 they made Joe do and react to things the way Joe from season 1 would have done. He was obsessed with work (Comet), was quite demanding, needy and it was made to look like he used Cameron for her talent and business connections. He even tried to bribe her with Centipede (something Season 1 Joe would have done). After their break up and his fight with Haley he leaves town. Again something the old Joe would have done, not the Joe who in season 4 found out that people were the ones who mattered, the connection. He loved Haley like daughter, why would he leave her when she just lost her father, her sister went away and he knows that she struggles with her sexuality? I don't get why he couldn't have been a teacher in SF and remained in at least Haley's life. But once more he burned everything to the ground. He was portrayed like the bad abusive guy in a relationship that lashed out because his partner didn’t want kids, at least not in that moment of their life. While earlier Joe showed he could be quite supportive, understanding and patient. Being sad doesn’t necessitate being an asshole. And leveraging your love life to help your business is a shitty thing to do.  All of his personal growth just… evaporated in thin air in the last couple of hours.

On the other hand, we were led to believe that Cameron was independent emotionally evolved woman at the end. But was she? Her trailer arc certainly didn’t make me believe that, I thought she matured after the end of last season. And then later after her separation with Joe and the thing with Alexa not working,  we saw her being just as confused about life as she was in S1. After being in marriage for SEVEN years it looked like she learned absolutely nothing about relationships. In season 2x09 she said “what if we just hold on to each other instead of chasing what each of us wanted separately and obsessively…”, in 4x09 she blindly chased AGAIN  work .Also she was supposed to be strong and independent (words of CC ) but in 4x10 we saw her as needy lost soul searching for something to hold on to while everything around her collapsed. And her reaching out to Donna was an act of desperation. I find it hard to believe she’d be so thrilled to jump into business with someone who sunken her company and lied to her face, mind the fact that she didn’t see Donna in the last three years at all. So in that time her trust in her ex-partner magically restored? I liked that they repaired their friendship in 4x08, that brought closure for both of them,  but I dread the fact that they might end up working together.

The Joe-Cameron relationship this season made me feel like schizophrenic. They were written as soul mates. I was rooting for them, I really was. Cameron finally confessed her love, something we waited 4 years for, and Joe imagined  their future together. What happened at the end confused me, and not their actual break up but the fact that neither of them fought for that relationship, which btw was moving the entire show. These two destroyed lives, marriages and businesses to get to each other and when that finally happens they break up  with “oh, okay” … it was so anticlimactic and disappointing, the whole situation seemed unrealistic. If you love that person and imagine building a home together and one day maybe even children, you don’t let them walk out the door without even discussion( Keep in mind the fact that the Chrises were even thinking to make Cameron pregnant). Also the whole season they very carefully avoided working together and then BOOM they’re working together. For me it felt like the writers  wanted to reference 1x01 and ” the thing that get you to the thing” that just inserted unnecessary drama. That break up was pointless, it didn’t lead to anything positive – Joe didn’t get his children (some may argue that with his choice of carrier, but having children and teaching them are two very different things! ) and Cameron could have worked with Donna without ruining her romantic relationship, after all one doesn’t exclude the other. I’m tired of this running away when things get tough, after 10 years I thought they were past that. It would have been more challenging and interesting to write a scenario where they stay together. 

When they killed Gordon in 4x07 I thought that was the perfect excuse to bring everyone together. And that happened in 4x08 (absolute TV brilliance) and I was so damn happy. Now I feel like Gordon’s death was meaningless. Wasn’t this whole season about connection?

Now, my opinion for the female duo working together again. I am in the minority that wasn’t thrilled by that idea. First of all, I hated that at the end Donna turned out to be the big winner. Her relationship with the main trio never felt organic to me. I liked Donna the first two seasons, in the third I started to see her true colors and in fourth I openly hated her. Throughout the whole series she chased only her self interest and never really cared much for anyone else. At the end they presented her as the idea woman when nothing really original ever came out of her mouth, maybe Community, but even that was born out of one of Cam’s ideas. Making her the big winner was undeserved, especially given the fact that she never owned up to her mistakes. So, no, I don’t want to see her working with Cameron mainly because I think she’ll use and manipulate her again, especially after  we saw in S4 that she turned into a business  shark and how cold she can be to achieve her goals.

Joe’s ending felt very… random to me. Seriously, tarot reading?!  We didn’t need to see a sign on his door to understand that he finally became human, all of his actions in the fourth season proved that. I think I might have bought it if they didn’t show him being so destructive (business and personal life) the last time we see him, therefore he learned nothing from his experience. Even if he is better off outside the tech world, what they’d showed us in 4x09 only proves that Joe would be a terrible teacher, with all of his pushing and mood swings. I didn’t buy his ending at all. How can you teach humanities when you couldn’t sustain the meaningful relationships in your life? In one of his interviews Christopher Cantwell said that from the very beginning they established Joe as a guy you can never trust, why the hell then anyone would entrust their children to such person? No wonder why Lee Pace fought with the writers on the finale, what they’ve done to him didn’t seem fair at all and it didn’t feel true to his character. The actor did a magnificent job with Joe and at the finish line they’ve turned him into a punching bag and send him in the sidelines. But, hey, they put a few photos on his desk to make it look better.

I am a woman and I’m all about girl power, but before being feminist I am humanist. What this show gave us at the end was some twisted feminism. In order to let the girls shine, the writers literally killed one of the main males and sent the second one to the other end of the country.  Joe was continuously punished throughout the series and Donna was redeemed right away, when in fact her sins were bigger and more. 

Joe Macmillan, the true heart of the show, deserved more! Life is not a bedtime story but what they did with the guy was simply cruel.

In my mind 4x08 was the true finale. In my opinion 4x09 and 4x10 were a product of someone’s effort to please the critics and it obviously worked – banish the bad guy and reward the poor underappreciated woman. And if you watched the finale as a stand alone episode I can see how it could be appealing, but it is not a stand alone episode. In its effort to deliver strong meaningful message, it actually managed to cripple two of the main characters so it could sprinkle fairy dust on the feminism that it tried to show. Don’t get me wrong the idea was beautiful, but it wasn’t executed the right way. Halt always showed the strength of its female leads in a very subtle way and it never made me question their qualities, so I found it unnecessary to have that spelled out for us for 50 minutes (Honestly the party speech and the way that Donna made fun of Trip in the office were a little too much for me). The Chrises admitted that to the very last moment they didn’t know how the story would end and sadly it showed. They wanted so badly to top 4x08 that at the end they simply didn’t know what to do with the characters. I feel like the final result was a loud cry for media attention and approval.

I guess something good may come out of all of this publicity at the end, the show may find bigger audience because it is truly amazing. Again, that’s personal opinion and I’m in the minority here but the finale just felt off to me. The good news is that they managed to leave it with an open ending so we can imagine what happens next. Right now I’m holding on to this recursion thing for dear life because I refuse to believe that Joe Macmillan will spend the rest of his life alone surrounded by memories and a bunch of teenagers.  

[sweetsunrayssr]

Cameron’s Pilgrim

Spoiler warning S4 Halt and Catch Fire, until 4X05

I’ve read recaps and comments about Cameron’s choices , words and actions, and I would like to contrast it with my understanding of what 4x05 “Nowhere Man” revealed.

The first half of S4 we are kept much in the dark about what’s going on with Cameron. We just mostly know how it appears to Joe, Bos and Gordon. Joe thinks she’s searching for something out there, to reinvent herself. Gordon - the outdoor man who loves camping - calls it 2 giants living on a timble. Bos jokes about space bikes. Nobody takes it seriously, just like Donna didn’t take Cam seriously and thought of her as an impulsive child in S3, but it turned out that junior had married, bought a house and had worked on a better solution than credit cards even.  And the reveal about Cam’s game Pilgrim in 4x05 suggests that Cam knows why she bought the land, the airstream and why she wants Joe to make love to her there. Cameron is the sole person who is not “searching”. Instead, she wants her loved ones and especially Joe to find and understand her. If Joe was the mystery man throughout the seasons, Cameron was the mystery woman.

From her conversation with Bos in S1, we know that Cameron always had communication issues, especially when it involves her feelings. It’s not something she will just grow out of. Discovering the program language Basic helped her find a language to communicate. She’s a coder and thus her language, communication and actions are coded.  More, especially the S1 episode where she pitches her OS idea to Joe as wanting to make people fall in love with the machine, while holding a toy up, it becomes rapidly clear that toys and games are her tools of connection and communication. It is how she reaches out to people and reveals something about herself.

Cameron is at odds with Gordon for 2 seasons, until they start to play Nintendo together.

Bos rarely understands her games, but he tries (love that moment when he asks the coder monkeys to help him get out of the damned cave), and he knows the games she develops tend to be about her.

Donna and Cameron have a stellar working-friend relationship, but the misunderstandings begin to heap up once Donna’s chat pushes Cameron’s games out of Mutiny, until eventually Donna pushes Cameron herself out of Mutiny.

Her relationship with Tom hits off while they play a physical shooter game and work together on making a virtual/digital version of it.

The particular scene where she pitches the OS idea to Joe while holding the puppet in S1 is Cameron actually revealing that she wants to make him fall in love with her, or how she can fall in love with him.

Joe is rewarded with a passionate night with her at Comdex 90 (and unbeknownst to him at the time her heart), when he figured out the lighter game.

When viewers and her friends and lover regard her airstream as a childish game, they not only sell her short, but expect Cameron to just grow out of her communication handicap. She will always need these tools. She is not immature, or lost to herself. She is trying to show and communicate something. Her heartbreak and disappointment over nobody figuring out her message via her Pilgrim game, not even Joe, is not so much about professional failure but her failure to communicate her soul, heart and vision adequately. Cecil commenting that not even he can explain her coding work to connect his rudimentary code to her solution and it is at another level entirely emphasizes this.

Her isolation in the airstream is a physical manifestation of Cameron’s communicative isolation. But it does not mean she has stopped trying to communicate the same message she put into Pilgrim. Instead of making a “new digital game”, she uses an entirely different medium: Cameron uses material tools and physically tangible items. So, when Joe told her to move on from the Pilgrim failure and make a new game out of nothing, Cameron actually took his advice. She just did it with real world items, like a builder, which is quite unprecedented for her, way out of her comfort zone.

And she picked these new tools for Joe. He took the step in S3 to learn BASIC code, telling her that even if he might never be great at it, he is not unteachable. He loves HTTP and HTML because it’s such an elegant, simple code that almost anyone can learn and use to make something out of nothing.

Joe’s personal coding of expressing himself isn’t programming code though, but metaphors: the browser is a stadium or a doorway and HTTP is the roseta stone.

Simple, real world, physical items. He is a physical guy:

swinging bats to hit for the fences and breaking the bat when he feels betrayed by his father.

Hitting a car with a sledge hammer to turn her on and show her he’s a prime specimen in great shape

Using a low voltage live current to turn her on

Using torches to shoot for the stars and dispel a hurricane

Immolating a shipment of empty, soulless portable computers (after Gordon tried to compliment Joe that the Giant was like him)

He wins her heart with lighters

He betrays his passion, his love and need for her at Comdex 90 in a very physical way

He waits for her for years in a basement, where they used to have sex

Her message hasn’t changed. She’s very much trying to use Joe’s metaphorical language, initially in Pilgrim, because she was 5000 miles away from him, and when that fails she uses the physical world to show him those metaphors. Pilgrim and the airstream are Cameron’s mixtape for Joe.

Let us look at the evidence of my claims above, and I’ll start with Pilgrim and what Donna discovers about it:

Joe says he was once on TV as a “pilgrim” over the phone reconnection. And thus overall Joe is the intended “pilgrim” in Cameron’s game.

The pilgrim is a blue man. Joe started out at IBM, called Big Blue, and IBM men usually wore blue suits.

Donna clicks the “key” item in the menu when she starts the game. In other words, the path and the discovery is a crucial “key” to understanding the game and consequentially Cameron.

The avatar reaches an area with what looks like flames in the air. I’ve read recaps and reviews who think those orange-brown things flying in the air are broken pieces of the puzzle, but I’ve watched every previous image of the game and it has nothing to do with the puzzle. I think the things flying in the air that the avatar eventually climbs are meant to be “flames”. In other words, they are a different version of the lighters that Joe and Cameron play around with at Comdex 90 where their relationship and passion was “rekindled”.

Gordon is feeding his journals to the flames

PJ Harvey’s lyrics

The series title “Halt and Catch Fire”

The avatar hits some type of invisible “airstream”, taking it off balance.

The avatar must climb upwards into the sky or towards the stars where the airstream and flames were, not walk forward towards a future which is just another crappy version of the present to Cam.

There’s a flash of light and the pilgrim reappears at this empty space of light (star level). Only Joe’s arc has had a similar scene happening in S3, what I think of as a “rebirth” scene.

We see a shooting star landing on an island or continent with a 2D image of the avatar stamped on it. This is the place where the pilgrim gets to actually play the game. And it is highly likely related to the Shangri-La (magical land) concept that Joe wrote a letter about to both Gordon and Cameron. Only Gordon confirmed in S2 that he read the letter. Cam refrained to answer Joe about it. The map and land though suggests that Cameron read the letter.

Then 8 crystals or starlight emanating shards appear (”jewels”). Each acts as a “doorway” to a partition of the island/continent, and immediately transports (like Star Trek) the avatar into that piece of the map. Cameron called the airstream a “jewel” to sweep Joe off his feet into a magical land.

The doorway that Donna chose to transport with landed her in the SW of the island, and a Japanese winter garden with a shrine in the middle of Tokyo (you can see dark skyscrapers in the background), emanating warm welcoming light and surrounding torches. The only person Cameron mentioned a shrine in a spiritual sense to was Joe.

Cameron herself says it’s not just a game you play, but a game you live.

All evidence points to the pilgrim meant to be Joe, rather than Cameron. The island and continent represents Cameron herself. Unlike what some reviewers claim, Cameron doesn’t need to be put together or fixed, since the continent is whole already. What she needs and desires is for her pilgrim to explore her completely. And her comment about the game being something you live suggests the game is meant to represent life or a lifetime exploration. In a romantic sense Pilgrim is Cam’s proposal to Joe, not unlike Gordon’s decoder engagement ring for Donna.

There is the addition that even if the pilgrim misses the clue to climb the flames, but instead stays on ground zero, getting himself distracted by picking up treasures and completing puzzles, he gets transported back to the beginning, to try again and find the airstream of flames. Cameron drops that hint to Joe when he calls her up about the game. If this is about Joe, as I claim it is, then Cameron is trying to say she’ll wait for him until he figures it out. She’s not going anyplace else.

At an instinctual level, Joe does get that the game Pilgrim is a means of connection between them. He plays it and calls her up when he gets sent back to the “start”. And when she mentions how beautiful the moon is in San Jose, Joe looks at the Pilgrim avatar on his screen and decides to spend the night with her in San Jose. He understood the indirect invitation then.

But nobody gets the game and it gets pulled from publication. Cam says dejected that even Joe doesn’t like her game, while he reassures her he hasn’t finished the game yet. As he then also advises her to “move on” and keep making other games, she retreats to be by herself. If of course, the game represents the lifetime she imagines for herself with Joe, he unwittingly disappoints her by mentioning “finishing the game” and “moving on”. What we have here thematically is “lost in translation”, which is of course a book and movie set in Japan. Joe assumes things about her and the game that are erroneous, including the belief she forgot and stopped caring about them while making this game, as he claims during his camping with Gordon in the season opener. Notice how that tent is beautifully lit in the darkness like a beacon in that camping scene, and just a material iteration of the warmly lit shrine in the Japanese garden in Pilgrim in 4x05.

After playing “doom” and Gordon telling her that the purpose of the game “is not to get killed”, she returns and “unpacks” by throwing her Japanese past with Tom in the bins, doing what Joe asked her to do, but in her own way. And after that she buys the bike, messes around with hardware, rides around the country. Gordon and Bos later make the link to it being a materialization of the “space bike”. Space Bike was a game about Cameron’s values and talents: she can make herself big or small, befitting the environment (proportion), sense of humor, sense of self, decency and the latter leads to common sense. But the bad-ass chick on the Space Bike is homeless and unbound, forever traveling from one planet to the next, only requiring drinks and a shower. Instead of doing it virtually, Cameron now tries to materialize this.

While she rides her Space Bike she discovers a plot of beautiful land with a sign that says “If you lived here you’d be home now”. And come on, it’s a very beautiful piece of land in that discovery shot, has a fairytale or magical quality to it. And the sign has three key words: live, home, and now (instead of the future). Whatever she eventually would end up building there for a house, it has the ideal potential to be whatever Joe and Cam could want it to be. Think of the scene between Joe and Ryan in S3 in the basement of Macmillan Utility where Joe intends to set up the local network connected to NSFNET. So, she buys the land, but instead of hiring an architect and immediately get contractors to build something on it, she pretty  much leaves it in its ideal state of a blank slate full of potential. Is that wrong? Of course not. She shouldn’t be deciding what the permanent form ought to be by herself. Joe should be part of its creation, so that their mutual vision can be part of the walls and lay-out. On top of that, even if Joe has asked her to move in with him, she’s still not officially divorced and they haven’t discussed the form of their relationship, nor said “I love you.”

It’s actually surprising a little that Joe doesn’t totally get that or hates it out there. He did hike up to the Observatory in Texas once via scenic route at the end of S1 a decade before that, walking into Sarah’s life. He’s a stargazer, right? And yet at the start of S4 he can’t see the moon from his home, blocked by a hill. Also, with that wool sweater and her long auburn hair in this phase of S4, Cam reminds somewhat of Sarah.

Anyway, instead of building a house all by herself on the plot, Cam buys the airstream. To the owner who sells it to her, with Joe standing right there, Cam explains it’s a temporary solution, before something “permanent” can be “built” there. We are introduced to the onthologist in the same episode who stipulates how one word can have different meanings, using “bark” as an example. The word “airstream” can be an airstream trailer, but it is also a change in the air caused by heat as it does in the game Pilgrim. Cam reveals she used to play in the airstream with her friend in her youth, and Joe asks her what she’d play in it then. “Airstream,” she answers. Here is Cam’s second hint to Joe how he can play the Pilgrim game. Oh, and she calls it “perfect”, which was the word of understanding between Joe and Ryan.

As they try the bed out, Joe asks her why she wants him to consider the AOL money. And she replies it would give him more time spend time with her, mentions “human touch”. He asks her whether the long trailer means she’s moving out, to which she immediately replies, “No,” and clarifies, “She’s trying to buy this jewel to sweep him away to a magical land”. This is her third game hint: the jewels, sweeping him into the air, and a magical land.

She takes the trailer out there, builds a hearth and puts up some lights in the air that have the form of “flames”. This is Cam’s 4th hint. Watch her face of disappointment when neither Bos, Gordon or Joe take much notice of it.

These are not just all hints. They are her material recreation of Pilgrim. And here follows the clue that Pilgrim was created for Joe and her fantasy of the two of them while stuck, isolated in a doomed marriage at the other side of the world:  she’s all happy when Joe promises he wouldn’t want to miss out on his first night with her in that honeymoon bed, but she is near to tears when Joe fell asleep on her.

Instead of Joe actually visiting the airstream to find her and be with her there, even if just for a night and make love to her there, we’ve seen two other character seek her out at the airstream: Bos and Tom. Bos goes out there to help her out with her plumbing and tells her he’s proud of her getting out of her comfort zone. She discovers his compass, and he reveals his money trouble, and she is the sole person who helps him out, on the condition it’s a one-time gift. Tom goes out there to get the divorce papers signed, gifts her the solution to the noise mystery in their apartment back in Japan and she apologizes to him for the pain she put him through and says her goodbye to him.

So, Joe… Why is he blind and tonedeaf to what she’s actually trying to do out there in her “space trailer”. Basically he’s doing the same thing the Japanese did with their shrine – rebuilding the original process.

Team up with Gordon and bring Cameron into the business

Connect with Cameron in the basement, which in the past was the first location both in the bar and at Cardiff where they had their first sexual encounters. It’s where he waits for her for 4 years. The basement at Westgroup is also where he had the time-sharing idea, to then team-up with Gordon and eventually have a “hands-on” business relationship with Mutiny and Cameron. The number of first downloads of the bugged browser “loadstar” is after all 69, which is a quite famous number for sexual position.

Give her a key to his apartment to come over whenever she wants and needs to

We as viewers can empathize with Joe trying to recreate the environment and circumstances that brought them together originally as well as how frustrating it is for him to have Cameron refuse to step into business with him, while she shares his bed. Joe Macmillan isn’t the manipulative cutthroat anymore that he was in S1 and so he naturally believes that if he works with Cameron this time, now that they have reconnected, they could pull it off. His work is his life and he wants and hopes to include Cameron in that. He tangibly looks forward to working with her again, since the S3 finale. She’s his muse after all.

But she steadfastly refuses this, and Joe clearly doesn’t know what to do with it. For a big part that is because this is how he goes about it with anyone he connects with and can be himself, by working with them – Simon, Gordon, Cameron, Haley. He even tries that angle with Joanie. It’s so fundamental to him to have a working relationship with the people he admires or tries to include, that he expresses how clueless he is where his relationship with Cam is going to Gordon, in a subtextual manner in 4x05. He asked her to help him with Comet, she refused and fled to the airstream, he smashes the wok, goes all S1 Joe on Gordon the next day until Gordon orders him to take a fresh breath of air. Then when he comes back with a newly bought wok (while Cam is opening a box with a wok she bought too), Gordon mentions that Cam is on the phone line. Joe says he doesn’t even know which problem he’s trying to solve. How he was in the basement for 3 years (aka waiting for Cam to choose him over Tom and come back into his life), he finally has his arms around “it” (Cam again), but now he can’t see it anymore. As Gordon asks Joe whether they’re talking about the future here again, Joe says he should call Cam again. Gordon then asks him about whether Joe saw this (Comet) ten years ago in Gordon’s garage. To which Joe explains it was not about where it would end up, but knowing the feeling of working together. He could envision how it would feel to work with Gordon, and we can infer how Joe envisioned that working with Cam would turn him on completely. He does not know what it would be like to share a life with Cam without working together. That is why he says he has been beyond patient with her. He’s been waiting for her to show up at Comet one day and agree to be part of the team, and to prove to her she can trust him as a business partner.

Meanwhile he’s also insecure and unsure about Tom. His gut always told him to never regard Tom as a true rival to the intensity that Joe and Cam had even when separated in S2, nor in S3. Where Joe is a grown man, Tom looks like a kid, and conservative to boot too. He very much regarded Tom as Cam’s mistake like he mistakenly sought a replacement in Sarah, and the night at Comdex 90 and the www project would make her see “the light”. But it didn’t turn out as he expected it would. Cam did the decent thing – stick to the marriage - with the man he believes is wrong for her. We can see how afraid he is of what she wants to tell him that is so urgent she asked him to pull over the car, when she reveals she saw Tom that day. Joe sags his head and closes his eyes. It’s as if he fears that Tom and her reconciled. After all, Cam stuck with Tom outwardly in the way Sarah didn’t stick with Joe. The “facts” seem to prove to Joe that his gut was wrong about it all.

Basically, Joe is afraid to lose her and too afraid to upset her or have an actual fight with her. And when that first fight occurred, he doesn’t know what will come next.

But none of the facts are what they seem. It turns out that his gut about Cameron’s feelings for him trumping those for Tom was correct. It turns out that she waited for Tom to leave her voluntarily, that she loves Joe, and thus that she wanted to be with him since 90 as much as he wanted her to be with him. If he was miserable in the basement, she was miserable in an apartment in Tokyo, handcuffed by guilt to a husband (which is what the Stephen King book Geralds’s Game is a horror version parallel to) she wanted to leave, while denying happiness to herself. (incidentally Gerald’s Game has a “space cowboy” in it, but he’s a necrophiliac serial killer).

This sort of unhappiness though has its impact in the present, just in a different way than assumed. She’s not unhappy that Tom left her, has another woman or having a baby. But what is important to recognize is that Cameron basically denied herself almost completely for the last 4 years, and adapted herself to fit the needs and wants of Tom. Anyone who stayed too long in an unhappy match, denying their own wants and needs, will recognize that once free from such a relationship, one is bound to be very reluctant to move into what looks like a complete life of a new partner: Joe’s home, Joe’s work, Joe’s friends, Joe’s colleagues, Joe’s business partners. It doesn’t matter that Joe allows her to be who she is, endeavors to stimulate to do the things she loves or does not oppose her from doing her own thing even if he’s not a fan of it. She needs her own turf, see the people that Joe might regard as business rivals. It’s not enough for him to make room for her into his established life, and quite unhealthy for her to fit and mold herself to his.

It should be “their life”, and that is why it’s so important that he too needs to let go of his own comfort zone and try to immerse himself into this nowhere plot of land and airstream, and try to imagine what they could built together out there with “steel and concrete and building blocks”.  I don’t think her intent is to fit and lock him into the airstream, but to “play airstream” where they can brainstorm and fantasize what type of life they want to build together, while she “plays house” in his apartment simultaneously. And if he does that, she might even surprise him how much she’s willing to compromise.

When he asked her over breakfast in 4x02 whether she knows what she wants, she looks up and stares at “him”. When he tells her over the phone he wants to know her in his life, she makes a little silent fist of victory. And by 4x05 she tells him she loves him.  

So, unlike others, I disagree that Cam should just quit her “games”, “grow up” and “move in” with Joe. Joe should not move into the trailer, but he should “play” and discover her there.

ETA: I’m not saying that Cam and Joe shouldn’t compromize. The “airstream” does not represent a permanent home, not even for Cam. What I’m saying is that a) Joe makes the error to regard it as Joe’s home vs trailer b) while Cam herself regards it as Joe’s home AND trailer to build a foundation and discover together what their life together might be like. She does live in his home too. Even people who know each other intimately, the worst and the best, for a decade, but wanting or hoping to establish a lifelong commitment for the first time after all that time, still need game-room to play around with ideas. 3x09, 4x02 phonecall and breakfast were perhaps their first three proper dates. 

[troublescout]

Halt & Catch Fire premiere thoughts...

I know no one follows me for this, but I need to share…

I love that CalNect is inhabiting Mutiny’s old space. Miss the old woodwork though.

I get CalNect is a play on “California” and “connect”, but I’m not a fan. It’s awkward in the mouth. Cardiff, Mutiny, Parallax, even MacMillian Utility had more poetry.

only AGGEK is worse, but at least they acknowledge it.

on the other hand, I love Pilgrim. Too bad it’s doomed.

how on earth did Cameron convince Tom she should still work directly with Joe after revealing the affair?? 5000 miles or not, connection is connection. That had to hurt.

Joe and Gordon being BFF and camping!! ⛺️  (It was the straw that broke the Donna/Gordon back.)

Flashback to season 1 garage. Misty watercolor memories.

Ozzie.

Hawaiian names.

I love how this show weaves in real tech innovation like AOL, Mosaic and the live coffee pot.

“Ryan,” and Joe’s subsequent face.

Donna’s watch is so ominous. Love it.

Cameron bringing beer and chips to Gordon’s Blue Man Group blowout. So clueless and sweet. 

Gordon seems so happy and healthy and it makes me terribly nervous for the future…

“with AOL coming to town, all of this seems overly optimistic.” So do we think Diane and Bos know Gordon is working on borrowed time? I feel like they wouldn’t be quite as critical if they did…

“The Cameron Howe.” That’s right Joanie, no Howe-Rendon in my mind either.

After 4 years of radio silence with everyone (except maybe Gordon?) I’m so happy to hear that Cameron’s been in contact with Gordon, Joanie, Haley?, Joe, and Bos for the past 3 years in some capacity or another.

MacKenzie’s gorgeous line reading of “You’re mad at me,” with that happy birthday song tinkling in the background. Perfection.

Still can’t get behind Chris Lowell even in wordless cameo. He’s just not my bag.

“Someday you will ache like I ache.” ☹️ I just want Donna and Cam to hug it out.

Cam’s “Battle mode?” face. 😏

Gordon and Cam playing Mario makes me almost as happy as Logan Echolls and Heather Button playing Mario, and that’s saying something.

“by myself for 3 years!” Lee’s hair really is awful, but it perfectly captures where Joe’s at in his self imposed exile.

“A website of websites!” Joe gets so excited about things and it’s frustratingly engrossing.

Gordon giving Cam a talking to and trying to keep his besties from imploding each other is so endearing. Also, that hug. 💗

I’m glad Gordon and Donna haven’t let each other go. I still root for them.

“And Cameron loves to shit out rainbows to distract from her asshole behavior.” “Wow.” Priceless.

I love how Donna steers her team, but doesn’t hand them the idea. She’s so sneaky!

Tom left her! Man oh man, how did these dummies last 7 years!! Answer: Tokyo

“Divorced?” Cam jumps to that so quickly. And Joe’s not slow on the follow up.

“It all feels like this weird dream.” To me too, Cam. To me too.

Cam and Joe talking about how much they love baths just makes me picture them trying to take one together and the inevitable lanky limb tangle that would ensue. Extremities everywhere! 🛁

The way Cam cradles the phone/Joe’s voice before she falls asleep.

JOE DIDN’T HANG UP!! Never going to be over it. Ever.

“Well, I bet you were one of the only babies with a chiseled jawline.” “No, there was one other kid, but we fought to the death.” Bwahahaha

I like Tanya. I hope she gets what’s hers in the end.

Haley is adorable. And the actress looks so much like Scoot, but with Kerry’s perfect skin. Great casting.

I love that Gordon was talking to yet another one of his daughters in a car when she bursts out crying. All Clark’s (and ex-Clark’s) cry in cars apparently.

“I think it involved gangs.” The whole Fresh Prince exchange was just PERFECT.

“Got all those flaws taken care of.” I really wonder if we’ll ever meet Cam’s mom. I’m so curious, but don’t want Cam to get hurt.

“This big, fat, bald baby just sloshing around a manatee’s tummy.” John is in rare form here.

(Cameron trying to parse out her thoughts.) “I never thought about you as the kind of guy that needed more.” (Joe looks befuddled and mildly injured.) “Alright.” This exchange is so strange and inconclusive and I think it’s really intriguing.

The camera angle and Lee’s hands during “huge and imposing” are so lovely.

I feel like kids will definitely come into play again before this story is through…

I’m so happy that Joe and Cam are back on good terms. I love them as a couple, but more than anything, when all is said and done, I just want the core 5 to be friends. They all love each other so much. They should have each other.

“Drill down.” What a tool.

“Put my goddamn face through his goddamn fist.” Oh, Gordon. The impending doom looms…

Oh Bos, what did you do? 😣  I know you’re feeling out of place in the world, but you’re only supposed to risk financial destitution on your brain trust of geniuses. Not real-estate yahoos! 

Gordon calling Haley ‘Bug’ is the cutest.

Scoot’s line reading of “That pony is dressed like a little pink cowboy,” is also the cutest.

“And not to ruin the moment, but I really, really gotta piss.” Made the moment.

Joe staring at Pilgrim Cameron staring at the sky when he can’t stare at actual Cameron staring at the sky. 

The return of Cameron in a red sweater. All the S1 feels… 

“So, do you know what you think want?” Well, if that ain’t a loaded question. I don’t think she really does, but I hope for both their sakes she’s careful with Joe no matter what. She’s got most of the power for the moment. I’m rooting for them and they’re so fragile with each other. I’m really excited to see them happy though! Even if just for a little while. I want all my yokels happy!!

I can still hardly believe we were gifted a final season. I’m so unendingly excited for everything to come (even the inevitable pain).

Things I’m particularly looking forward to… 

Cam and Joe looking like dumb puppies in love.

Scenes with the OG3, Joe and Haley, Cameron and Joanie, Gordon and Joe BFFing some more, Cam and Donna getting back to BFFing, Cam and Bos, Donna and Joe (an underrated and underutilized dynamic if you ask me).

That camping scene from the preview with Bos, Joe, Cam, and Gordon all chilling. Just add in Donna and my happiness would be complete.

Things I’m not looking forward to…

Gordon’s inescapable health decline.

GIFs I would make if I could make gifs…

A parallel of Gordon telling Joe (S2) and Cam (S4) to move on with their lives and the corresponding hugs.

A parallel of Cameron telling Joe how much she admires his talents (S3E9) and Joe telling Cameron how much he admires hers (S4E1).

[aquamirage]

i can’t believe i’m making a rec post about halt and catch fire

but here is my long rec post for halt and catch fire, a show you and I both forgot existed, because it’s fucking fantastic. but you can skip s1, just read the wikipedia summaries

1. halt and catch fire is about nerds in the 80′s and early 90′s doing nerdy computer shit, like inventing the internet or whatever. that’s fine, and something something nuanced discussion of human connectivity and watching competent people do their jobs and a really good depiction of what it feels like to make something from beginning to end

2. what if really good about the show though, is that it is about four intense people who keep drifting apart and coming back together over and over and over, both because they inspire each other to be their best and worst selves in work and life and also because they loooooove each other in a variety of different and interesting ways

3. s2 semi-resets the show to be about cameron howe, a punk game designer with bad anxiety and an inability to play nice with others (WHO YOU MAY REMEMBER AS YORKIE FROM SAN JUNIPERO!!!!!) and donna clark, an extremely level-headed engineer and mom who has the ability to get things done and Handle cameron but who is also kind of wily and at times doesn’t know what her own best interest is, and the online gaming company they found together in texas. 

the rest of the show follows suit in this, although s3 and s4 are both resets in their own way. cameron and donna’s relationship is.......guys, it’s incredible. i do not ship them AT ALL. (???) they are first and foremost creative collaborators and business partners, but also each other’s anchors and important to each other in a way their romantic relationships are not in a way i don’t think i’ve ever seen and can’t really explain. they TALK to each other in a way that’s very unique, there is such a pure specificity to their relationship not often allowed to two women, and it’s hard to talk more about it without spoiling anything major but it’s lot to handle emotionally

4. i spent some time here talking about out other two: joe and gordon, but it took up too much space to say only one thing, which is they were both the absolute worst, and now they’re both great, and it happened so gradually i didn’t even notice 

5. I think it does a better job than many shows I’ve watched at these things and more: people having careers that are important to them, friendships and partnerships that are unspoken in that they are really those things, the slow, unsteady way people change over the years while still remaining themselves but also sometimes burning down their own lives, living with a long-term chronic illness that varies in how well it lets you function, being really passionate about something kind of meaningless ultimately, sharing an office with a bunch of odd people, the internet as a thing that’s good and cool, the way one ruined relationship in your life can define the rest of it even as you try not to let it, people who were the worst becoming great, every action having some kind of consequence 

it packs about two seasons worth of plot into each season, while still doing things like having an entire episode about hanging out with your new friend playing super mario, maintaining an incredible pace, and almost every narrative decision feels earned and inevitable. i talked mostly about the characters here but it’s heavily plot-driven and exciting while being about “boring” things. it’s not for everyone, i don’t know that i’d recommend it to everyone, and lee pace especially is very Lee Pace, but it’s great television. there’s one more season left airing as we speak let’s go

[paceofbase]

I feel like we should all sign a petition to force AMC to release Halt and Catch Fire on an amazing full series blu-ray set once S4 is over. I want that bad boy displayed proudly in my living room okay

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

Mood: still overjoyed that Cameron Howe got the happy ending she wanted and deserved <3 <3 <3

Everything is terrible and horrifically frightening, but, reminder for anyone who could use it that Cameron Howe didn’t end up with a man who never fully accepted her as she is and who would’ve burdened her with giving up his dreams of fatherhood (even if unintentionally) to be with her after emotionally abusing her and then repeatedly intruding on her life

Instead, she found family and home with Bos, Donna (and also Haley and Joanie), people who see her clearly, and who were willing to let her go when she thought that was what she needed to do. And she got her best friend and last and best partner back, after Donna finally owned a lot of her baggage and mistakes.

[handmade-haven]

So I have just bingwatched the first half of Halt and Catch Fire S4.  There are so many  thoughts whirling in my mind, maybe I will write them down tomorrow. As to my emotions, I feel angry at some characters for behaving stupidly: Gordon is being stupid, Boz is being stupid, Cameron is being stupid (and I am mad that she hurt Comet project but at least she feels guilty and confessed). Yeah, I know that is what makes drama. And I prefer this anger to indiffence that filled with me during S2 and S3. But still. As for Donna: not only did my opinion not change, it is completely cemented now: she is just despisable.

And I feel pity for Joe.

There are things that  I liked and overall these 5 episodes are more interesting than S2 and S3 combined. However,  the first  season was superb and I was so upset that screenwriters ruined this cool series with S2 and S3. Now they seem to redeem themselves but it can't save the series as a whole for me. 

[tgaoe]

Andy’s 2017 Television Report

I love watching good TV. I still feel there’s a stigma associated with watching as much as I do, but I’m trying to own it. I love TV. I would much rather watch an old West Wing ep than go on a hike or do basically anything outdoorsy. So there that is. And here is an exhaustive list of everything I watched this year.

Not Enough Time and/or Motivation to Watch/Finish Ranked by Level of Intention to Watch/Finish

10. The Vietnam War 9. Godless 8. The Young Pope S1 7. The Handmaid’s Tale S1 6. Search Party S2 5. Rick & Morty S3 4. Halt and Catch Fire S4 3. You’re the Worst S4 2. Better Things S2 1. Broad City S4

Disappointing/Bad The Americans S5 Starts strong, has some nice character development, but the main story was inconsequential and frustrating, as were several side stories.

Preacher S2 Has cool moments and I still love the three leads, but the main plot left me cold. Not even close to as good as the debut season.

Sherlock S4 Stupid and infuriating.

Seasons I Liked, Ranked by Favoritism 32 Curb Your Enthusiasm S8 Same old show, wearing a little thin but still enjoyable.

31 I Love Dick Obtuse, intentionally discomfiting, wonderfully acted; Kathryn Hahn is a goddess.

30 Stranger Things S2 A fun time and not much more, which is fine.

29 Veep S6 Somehow exactly the same cruel, cynical show despite a somewhat significant premise shift.

28 Silicon Valley S4 More of the same. Not sure how much longer this show can sustain the whole “awkward tech bros overcoming impossible odds” premise. Hoping for some risks next season.

27 Vice Principals S2 A hilarious, surprisingly emotional comedy that will always be stuck in the shadow of its predecessor.

26 Love S2 Rock solid cast, writing with a nice balance of comedy, drama, and romance.

25 Bojack Horseman S4 I like this show less than everyone else who likes it, feels like. Still, no other televised depiction of depression rings truer, and remains funny without making light of serious mental illness.

24 Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp Manic, inspired inanity.

23 Brooklyn Nine Nine S4/S5 Comfort food. Love everyone on the show. Every episode is the same and always will be and who cares.

22 Legion S1 In a year that hadn’t also included Twin Peaks: the Return, this would have ranked much higher for its crazy formalist experimentation, dazzling visual style, and sustained weirdness. Wish it had been more character-focused, and I hated the coda. Almost dreading season two.

21 Easy S2 Warm, human, real. Love the whole notion of a serialized anthology.

20 GLOW S1 Spending time with these characters just feels great, even when they’re behaving awfully. It’s the kind of show the predictability of which is a positive.

19 Big Little Lies S1 Reese Witherspoon projectile vomits pure green goop in this show. It rules.

18 Crashing S1 You love Pete or you don’t. I love him, have for years. The show is just more Pete.

17 The Good Place S1/S2 Quite possibly the most imaginative, innovate half-hour sitcom of all time; inspires equal investment in the characters and the ever-expanding mythology and mysteries, which is quite a feat.

16 Top of the Lake: China Girl Full review.

15 Fargo S3 By far the weakest season of the show, yet still one of the year’s best. Willfully disgusting and perhaps a bit too writerly, the last few episodes redeem some early rambling and formlessness. Ewan McGregor was not great in his role(s), and Carrie Coon’s performance was done a disservice by her appearing here and in The Leftovers simultaneously. But Mary Elizabeth Winstead and David Thewlis kill.

14 Ozark S1 Every 2-3 episodes contain enough plot for a full season of most other shows. It is wild. Characters at once inhabit archetypes and subvert them. I love how the main means of circumventing trouble is simply telling the truth.

13 One Mississippi S2 The best pure romance story on TV this year.

12 Future Man S1 Starts rough, slowly gets great. Consummately derivative sci-fi comedy. Couldn’t love it more.

11 Mindhunter S1 Spent most of the season deciding whether Jonathan Groff is terrible or magnificent here. Landed on magnificent, for the way he oscillates between ego states in response to story turns, negotiating his perceptions of both the concept of deviance and his sense of his own masculinity.

10 Dear White People S1 The number of characters this show balances is a miracle, and how it engenders empathy for all parties while maintaining its slick, ultracool visual style and exploring sensitive themes with the utmost nuance.

9 Mr. Robot S3 A vast improvement after the letdown of season two. Takes some weird risks that attempt retrofit current events into the show’s 2015 setting, and while not all of them work, the ones that do pay off massively. Plot mechanics are secondary to atmosphere, character, and theme. The cast is great as ever, and this year Bobby Cannavale joins the fray, which is never a bad idea.

8 Insecure S2 Continues to use top-notch production values and writing to explore lifestyles and perspectives previously ghettoized on TV, relegated to peripheral channels and the lowest of low budgets. Issa Rae’s performance is reliably loveable despite her character’s constant questionable decisions, but Yvonne Orji truly makes the show. Somebody cast her and Tiffany Haddish in something together asap.

7 Better Call Saul S3 Slow, methodical, pulpy, consistent. Another solid season of intricate, character-driven puzzle-piece storytelling.

6 American Vandal S1 The funniest entertainment of any type I consumed all year, and surprisingly thematically resonant as it progresses toward its conclusion.

5 Master of None S2 As funny, romantic, and charming as its creator. Tackles some surprisingly heavy subjects, has gained significant poignancy after cultural shifts that came later in the year.

4 The Deuce S1 An even seedier iteration of David Simon’s expansive storytelling style than The Wire, the period details of this show are casually perfect; unshowy and lived in. The Deuce convinced me that James Franco is one of our greatest living actors, on the level of someone like De Niro in his prime. Franco plays twins, and though they look and sound exactly alike, his slightly varied physicality always makes it clear who each is.

3 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel S1 Such fun. A romantically stylized 1950s New York period piece starring a woman who should be, and might yet become, our biggest movie star. Nicely balances light comedy and light drama. Watching feels like cuddling up in a warm blanket.

2 Twin Peaks: the Return Mystifying, hilarious, infuriating, horrifying, wonderful.

1 The Leftovers S3 Not just the best season of television this year, but one of the greatest of all time. I have never been more satisfied by a finale. I refuse to write more lest I spoil anything. If you have not watched this show, watch it. The first season is flawed and difficult. The second is perfect, and so is the third. If this show’s premise even remotely appeals to you, watch it.

Favorite Episodes 12 “Amber Waves” The Americans S5E1 Bold start to an ultimately weak season. Features a ten-minute sequence during which a group of characters silently and methodically dig a hole, and somehow it is almost impossibly dramatic and exciting to watch. Here’s hoping the show picks up again for its final season next year.

11 “Chicanery” Better Call Saul S3E5 A courtroom episode rife with familial drama and series history exploited to maximum effect.

10 “Prodigal Daughter” Easy S2E6 A small, deeply humanist story of a high school girl discovering what she values, and how she wants to manifest those values. Lovely.

9 “Chapter V” Dear White People S1E5 Builds tension to a fever pitch using dialogue, editing, and camera techniques  downright orchestral. Directed by Barry Jenkins, of Moonlight fame.

8 “Part 8” Twin Peaks: the Return Several professional writers called this David’s Lynch’s Tree of Life, and I can’t describe it more succinctly than that. Lynch traces the origin of evil in his universe in a way no person who ever lived would except him.

7 “Who Rules the Land of Denial?” Fargo S3E8 For the bowling alley scene alone.

6 “eps3.4_runtime-err0r.r00” Mr. Robot S3E5 A bravura, (faked) single-take episode that brilliantly uses transit time to build tension.

5 “eps3.7_dont-delete-me.ko” Mr. Robot S3E8 The opposite of bravura; Elliot walks around with a young boy for most of the episode, and it is even more kinetic and exciting than the one with the single take.

4 “Amarsi Un Po'”/“Buona Notte” Master of None S2E9/E10 Heartbreaking. Aziz Ansari’s tribute to the Before Trilogy, and, let’s be honest, the Elevator arc from Louie, is brutal in its exposure of emotional truth. The chemistry between the leads makes the whole thing work.

3 “Part 18” Twin Peaks: the Return The finale. Mystifying, infuriating, horrifying, wonderful. Decidedly not hilarious.

2 “Thanksgiving” Master of None S2E8 A deeply-moving short film exposing a type of hardship so specific that I’d never seen it depicted before. The ways Ansari marks the passage of time throughout this story… just astounding.

1 “The Book of Nora” The Leftovers S3E8 Perfect. There is a monologue here with more story and gravitas than entire seasons of other shows, great ones. Watch The Leftovers.

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

The way Donna gently says “...that’s good” when Cameron says she might visit her mom

Like if you agree/reblog if you’re (still) quietly weeping

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

Shout out to all of the Halt and Catch Fire fans who are feeling *uplifted and AFFIRMED* by the series finale!

And to those of you who are feeling disappointed that your OTP was not affirmed/made canon/endgame: trust that we know how terrible it feels to have a representation of yourself and your most important personal relationships be tossed aside and invalidated like that. We empathize, or I certainly can!