#lutherford

[film-book]

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THE CROWN: Season 6 Part 2 TV Show Trailer: The Award-winning Series' Conclusion Begins on December 14 [Netflix] https://film-book.com/the-crown-season-6-part-2-tv-show-trailer-the-award-winning-series-conclusion-begins-on-december-14-netflix/?feed_id=102259&_unique_id=656b3d3140f1a

[lovecharged]

random starter for @tkachukmatthew

"ah fuck," the box falls to the ground and the contents spills out down the stairs. this would be just his luck; making a fool of himself and breaking his possessions on the stairs of the new apartment block he's moving into. a wince follows when he spots, but by no mean stares at, a presence. "shit - sorry...i'll pick it all up as quickly as he can..." and he does just that, crouching down to collect the items (and the remnants of broken items) off the ground as quickly as he can muster. the last thing he wants is to make a name for himself as 'that asshole' on his first day in the residence if he can help it.

[sweetsunrayssr]

Gordon’s Gift

Warning: spoilers until 4x08, theory, keep handkerchiefs nearby

In Gordon’s Shrine, the Garage, I already stipulated how the Garage is Gordon’s shrine that he tried to rebuild with Joe since S1 in part I. To summarize, their cooperation only worked within a garage setting. Gordon and his relationship with Joe breaks down in basements or doesn’t get off the ground. And when he tries to build similar inspirational working relationships in the garage (or garage like setting) with others or by himself it fizzles quickly. I also stipulated that the origin of the garage shrine for Gordon rooted back to his youth, and how Gordon’s insistence on keeping his bro-mance with Joe exclusive and keep out Cameron self-sabotages his business and his friendship with Joe.

ROOT TRIANGLE

Basically the shrine building keeps happening in a character’s arc like an iteration of earlier versions, and is deeply rooted for each of them in their youth or childhood: a parent, sibling or even a childhood sweetheart who either is beyond their reach through death, irreparable damage, or just not the right person. This Freudian take is also reflected in the Pilgrim as a “kid”.

The unsalvageable root of Gordon’s garage shrine is his relationship with his brother Henry, Henry’s high school sweetheart Jules, and his father’s auto shop.  After learning about his disease in 2x05, and unable to reveal it to Donna, Gordon seeks someone to unburden and ends up calling his brother Henry to relate his wish to visit him in California with Joanie and Haley. Even during the telephone conversation, we already get a hint of a fraught sibling relationship between Gordon and Henry.

While Henry initially acts empathic and helpful during the visit, the next day he sends Gordon and his two daughters out of the house late at night, immediately suspecting Gordon slept with his ex-girlfriend Jules. The only reason that Henry was empathic to Gordon was in the hope that Gordon could convince their father not to sell the auto shop.

Off-screen, Gordon learned over the phone with his father that Henry is an alcoholic, chased customers away and leveraged the autoshop over the “past three years”. Meanwhile, Henry tends to spend half of his time in Jules’ bar, drinking. This is not dissimilar to Joe screwing around with post-its for three years in the basement.

Along with the callous, impulsive manner in which Henry sends two children of 6 and 8 out in the night over Jules, while Henry himself is long married with children, suggests that Henry never really got over Jules and that he long resents Gordon for his failures in life. These brothers were not just estranged, but likely had a severe falling out around the time that Gordon left for Berkeley. Jules seems to have been in the middle of that, both in the past as well as the present.

Jules is a single mother of a 12-year old son R.J. she loves and regards as her anchor. Gordon apparently never knew about this and thus he has not seen or heard about Jules since at least ’72-‘73, when he would have been 19 and studying at Berkeley. The father doesn’t have to be Henry, but it is possible. She talks in disdain and pity about Henry, denying she wants to get back with him, and yet she later admits to narc over Henry.  A part of her cannot let go of Henry, and her sleeping with Gordon is some twisted form to return to the past.

Whether Gordon was envious of Jules choosing Henry over Gordon back in High School or how Henry’s affections for Jules may have stood in the way of Gordon having his brother all to himself is unclear, imho. Likely it was a mix of both. Being the younger brother, Gordon likely looked up to Henry, but simultaneously may have envied him for Henry was the sports guy and “handsome one”, and Gordon relied on his wit to impress people and girls. Jules and Katie have physical similarities as body type, so Jules may have been Gordon’s type.

We don’t need the exact particulars, but it should be clear that Gordon, Henry and Jules have a triangulation connection where they play chess with one another, not just in ’85 during Gordon’s visit, but in the years before Gordon left for Berkeley. While Gordon moved on to Donna, San Francisco and Dallas, Jules and Henry never actually moved on at all, even though Henry married another woman. The fact that it can go so wrong within a day in ‘85, as the three of them use each other in dysfunctional ways, is a sign that it is actually a rote pattern between them.

The triangle of Gordon, Joe and Cameron shows a lot of similarities, except the fact that Gordon never appeared to be attracted to Cameron in any way (she is not his type). What it all comes down to is that Joe “replaces” the broken brother bond for Gordon. Note how I do not say that Joe “surrogates” for Henry. Joe is the “brother” that his actual brother Henry could never have been for Gordon. Joe trumps Henry. In fact, he does not seek out Henry in S2, until his one-time-deal with Joe at Westgroup is done, as if Henry is the “surrogate” to Joe.

PLAYING CHESS

The failed youth triangle of Gordon, Henry and Jules  explains his almost immediate antagonistic position towards Cameron from the get-go in S1. Despite Joe having proven himself to be manipulative and untrustworthy and Cameron only being a 22 year old college drop-out, he searches for evidence against Cameron, wanting Joe to get rid of her once the BIOS is written. When he learns that Joe is considering Cam’s OS idea, he tells her coders that she’s sleeping with Joe.  He uses her to play Joe emotionally into putting up the money for Comdex ’83. And intends to use Joe’s feelings for her by threatening to send her to jail to make Joe agree to the original shipping date, even though Cameron has left . Donna calls this “the chess game you three play with each other,” to Cameron.

Chessboards are a recurring décor item throughout the series, in quite telling scenes about having control, such as when Joe seduces Travis at Mrs. Lutherford’s in 1X03. Joe pushes Travis onto a table with a chessboard and sends the pieces flying. Cameron’s top of S1 with the squares that reappears in S4 is a chess board. Joe tests and figures out how Cam and Mutiny tried to deceive him about UNIX with a chess game. And Haley plays chess against herself. Different story, but having a similar analogue on how people use each other like chess pieces, check out the Musical Chess of ’86, from which you probably know Murray’s song, “One Night in Bangkok”.

In S1 Joe, Gordon and Cameron play as dysfunctional a chess game as the games played between Gordon, Jules and Henry in 2x06. The final season, ten years later, we finally have an iteration where these three have an opportunity to relate in a non-dysfunctional way. Cameron played a key part in reconciling Gordon and Joe, in Joe keeping urls for the past three years, planting the seed that leads to Joe’s web indexing idea and a business model where Joe and Gordon are not just business partners in name, but truly work together harmoniously. Gordon may not be playing pool table with his brother Henry, but he would not have been playing pool together with his chosen “brother” Joe, without Cam’s nudges. (Note: the left gif is what we see before the camera pans out to show us Gordon and Henry talking over beer in Jules’ bar)

And yet, Gordon’s initial reaction to Joe and Cameron is once more antagonistic, and attempts to verbally step into Joe’s personal life again. Unlike S1, he does not take further direct personal destructive actions though. He does draw the line at Cameron’s presence at Comet, even though they’re hiring and her career is down the dumps, eventually leading to her choice to writing the algorithm for the competition Rover. This logically has its backlash in the personal relationship between Joe and Cameron, Comet and bubbles over into Gordon’s personal life as Haley is uncomfortable around Katie. S1 Joe, Gordon and Cameron would have been unable to handle this graciously, resulting into a broken down triangle as much as the one between Gordon, Henry and Jules. In S4 they’re all more mature. They’re still flawed and make mistakes, but are far better equipped in dealing with it, and moving past it.

And so at the start of 4x06 we have a reconciliation conversation between Gordon and Cameron over her helping Bos with the algorithm for Rover. Initially Gordon jokes about Cam’s professional crisis and disbeliefs her aversion to tech. But her insistence and claim she doesn’t dream in code anymore ends with Gordon staring at her thoughtfully for quite a while, before Joe calls for their attention that they’re ready to do the rocket launching. The length of that stare built a feeling of expectation that there would be some follow-up to this from Gordon, and yet we never seemed to have one.

Gordon seems overall inspired during the launch as he stares up at his rocket, as if he gets to be the visionary for once. While initially reluctant and deaf about Joe’s hints about Haley, Gordon gets it when he visits Corn Dog. He has his own visionary idea, based on Donna’s marketing information. He uses Joe, in a positive and honest way, to patch his relationship with Haley. He fixes the AC. He accepts the idea of a re-design as part of a re-launch. He has a stable relationship with Katie in which he is genuinely happy. His daughters like her too. He has a good co-parenting friendship with Donna. And the moment of his death is one of beautiful peace and recognition of Donna as the love of his life.

It thus seems odd that he did nothing to help fix Cameron’s career, especially in light of the fact that Gordon admitted his part in the events that led to Bos’s heart attack, and their unconditional friendship. Surely, Gordon was able to recognize his contribution to the threat in Joe’s and Cameron’s relationship at the start of 4x05? Surely, Gordon could recognize his pre-S1 and S2 issues being mirrored in Cameron’s life. He mentioned the Symphonic to her, as well as “having too much time on her hands” and how it leads to trouble. Hell, he was 32 himself in S2 when he was professionally adrift.

THE GIFT

I propose that Gordon did in fact did something for Cameron. Sometime after the rocket launching, Cameron finally checks her emails on Joe’s computer, for the first time since about half a year. Her inbox is full of emails by either Tom, Alexa and Gavin from Atari, and one email giving her a link to a fansite “The Howe of it all”: http://www.thehoweofitall.com/

The link was not sent to her by either of the people mentioned, but by “Haley” via her Comet mail address.  The show give us the impression that Haley must have discovered the fan website, sent a link to Cameron, but that Alexa built it since her emails to contact Cameron went unanswered. Cameron at least seems to assume as much.

But the way Alexa talks of Pilgrim hardly convinces me that she ever reached the higher levels. If she did, she may have used backdoors into the code, and only saw the imagery, without realizing the metaphors behind it. She only talks of world building, while of course figuring out that the Pilgrim is a kid is the spiritual gaming reward. Alexa does not seem to get the spirituality nor soul of the game, but is purely focused on the world and graphics containing the puzzles (even the level 0 world contains fake puzzles). And while she dispassionately praises Cam’s work as “great”, it sounds empty. None of her words about Pilgrim at their first private meeting, or the bots in the trailer and the hike match with the tone of praise of the fan site. No wonder that Cameron is confused by Alexa: she thinks this woman understands her.

The most glaring oddity about the fan site are the pictures. The site shows one of the pictures that Tom took in S2 of the Mutiny staff. It is however not the picture that Cam, Tom and Bos chose to use for the Mutiny ad in Byte. (In the S2 gifs of 2x04 below, the left one is the picture scene used for the website, while the right one ended up in Byte as an ad.) You may have noticed this discrepancy while watching 4x06, or when visiting the “Howe of it all” website, but relegated it as the show’s prop department’s choice, and just thought it was cool to see those pictures.

In-world it makes little sense for Alexa to have gotten her hands on those. Those pictures were not digital, but physically developed from Tom’s negatives and not in the public domain at all, not in Byte, never on Mutiny’s interface. Heck, Mutiny’s interface is non-existent and the reason why the creator of the fan site used a playnet gif instead of Mutiny. Alexa could only get such a picture from the person who kept them.

The Polaroid of Cameron in the Cardiff basement while working on the BIOS is even more startling. Polaroids are unique pictures without a negative. And in 4x08, we see Gordon was in possession of exactly that Polaroid when Cameron rummages through the pictures. More, since the Polaroid of Donna was taken in their Dallas kitchen and of Gordon in his garage, the Polaroid camera was in possession of the Clark’s to begin with.

This Polaroid of Cameron is the direct evidence that Gordon made the Cameron Howe fan site and had Haley send the link to Cameron via email, or Gordon used Haley’s email address for it. Alexa had nothing to do with that site at all. It was Gordon’s gift to Cameron to boost her career confidence. (Yes, I know, your eyes are prickling and your throat thick digesting this, no?).

Hence, the pictures on the website aren’t errors or deviations by the production prop department. They are deliberately chosen by the prop departments as clues and hints to the in-story fan site creator: Gordon.

What a beautiful gift that site is if created by Gordon: Gordon calls Space Bike his favorite game, publically recognizes her work on the Giant (which he did not do at Comdex ’83), memorializes Mutiny and gives her sole credit for the founding of it, and calls for a publication of Pilgrim by Atari, providing a public hint to a level of the game that reveals he figured it out (like Donna did) and shows those gamers who loathed it for fools.

Finally, @paceofbase  alerted me about a strange date for the email in Cam’s inbox about the fan site: it says Saturday 20th of August 1994. The prop department certainly looked it up, because 20th of August 1994 was indeed a Saturday. Except the last emails with a month on the screen say March. Haley’s failing tests at school (it’s not summer holiday), and her biology re-do test says 11th of April 1994. Curt Cobain died on the 5th of April 1994. We discussed with each other whether the datestamp for the email about the fansite was a massive production error or something else.

Gordon though has enough code knowledge to fiddle with the server date, and thus make it look like he sent an email “from the future”. So, the date again is not a prop error, but a deliberate in-world “mistake” smuggled in by Gordon to hint to Cameron that she still has a future in tech.

Joe tried to play it, but lost himself in the puzzles, and likely never played it anymore as he tries to understand Cameron up-close and personal instead. At least he figured out the Airstream game. We saw Donna finish it on screen. The game was her sole safe way to make “contact”. But Gordon never said a word about the game on screen, though Cameron gave it to him and he visited the testing room to warn her to be considerate of Joe’s feelings for her. Whether Gordon figured it out by himself or Donna revealed some of the tricks and hints to Gordon is not that important. But of the four, aside from Cameron, Gordon was the actual fellow “gamer” and connected with her via “games”. 

4x08’s final scene also confirmed that Gordon can be sneaky and secretive, in contrast to his usual blabbing and shooting his mouth. Donna thinks he never jumped from that quarry cliff into the lake, but he did, and he never told anyone.

An oddity in all of 4x08 is how the camera pans from the dinner table to his “office” in the house and lingers for a while on an old wooden writing desk and file closet, presumably something Gordon has of his grandmother. Bos making his chili is reminiscent to Gordon making his grandmother’s stew in S1 for his daughters, one of the moments where Gordon bonds with his daughters as father, contrasting the 4x08 flashback scenes of him walking out on Donna and baby Joanie when Joanie starts to cry. Donna brings up how this and that in the house are keepsakes from Gordon’s grandmother. So, what is interesting about this old-timer desk? Well, it is free from tech. It’s a writing desk, not a computer desk. And thus can be seen as a link to Cam’s exclamation of being done with tech.  

CONCLUSION

Gordon’s Gift gave Cameron enough confidence to start working again and thereby he resolves his part in sending Cameron away from Comet in the first half of S4. By publically acknowledging her contribution to the Giant, he helped her to see the soul back in the machine, as she is fooling around with self-learning AI. His gift attempts to strip the pair Joe & Cameron of side-issues that distract from the most important ones about building a life together: house, children or not, etc.

These are differing wishes that can only be resolved between themselves and for themselves. As long as they don’t have the answers through each other whether they want a life together, despite the differences, they will cling to one another based on the past like prisoners, like Henry and Jules still do.

[thedasshole]

DA Halloween

Day Four: Till Death Us Do Part

Half-Light

Varric gets caught up in some financial difficulties while at Skyhold and tries to sell a story of the Inquisitor and Cullen to the vampire-werewolf-love-triangle literary market. When Isolde finds Cassandra’s copy, all hell very quickly comes loose...

Turns out I probably should be doing coursework but I could not resist a cheap Twilight parody (sorry for breaking the no-sparkly-Cullen rule, @dahalloween ...)

“VARRIC!!”

Skyhold all but shook under Isolde’s fury. Tracking her dwarf companion down finally at a table in the Herald’s Rest, Isolde threw down the gauntlet - that was if the gauntlet was a freshly-published hardback novel.

“What - is - this?” Every face in the inn was turned to them, but Isolde only had eyes for her friend before her, who was cringing beneath the sheer anger in her glare.

“A mistake,” was the best reason Varric could come up with.

The Iron Bull and the Chargers, already sat at their usual spot in the inn, were first on the scene, settling Isolde into a chair and fetching her a rather hearty tankard of ale.

Dorian was next to arrive, having been with Isolde when she had found that - That… Nevermind. He had struggled to keep up with her in her furious stampede and arrived breathless at the Rest, albeit without a hair out of place.

Fee, Isolde’s supposed bodyguard, had spent the morning fast asleep in the back of a wagon. She had largely missed the commotion, slouching in as normal for her breakfast-lunch combo. She was taken aback to find her twin in a state, red-faced and white-knuckled, shooting death glares at sheepish Varric.

Cassandra was last to arrive. She was in no way out of breath, but her face paled to an eerie-white when she spotted the tome sitting on the table before her.

“Oh…” was all she had to say on the matter.

“Let me just-” Varric began, but he was interrupted by a curious Fee.

“What’s that?” she said, leaning down. Before Isolde could stop her, Fee had snatched the book up and was studying the cover. “Is that…?” she went to ask, a sly grin spreading over her face.

“Yes, that is me,” Isolde said, coolly, through gritted teeth.

Fee shrugged, dumped the book back down on the table.

“Doesn’t look much like you,” was her conclusion on the matter.

It looked enough like Isolde Trevelyan for the others to see the likeness. The book’s protagonist stood amid a forest, staring moodily outwards beneath a mass of red curls. On either side of her were two men, both topless, both caught as if in mid-fight with the poor protagonist caught between them. Both men did not look much different - blond, handsome, well-built - almost like…

“Does Cullen know about this?” the Iron Bull was next to pick up the book. He thumbed through it, almost lazily.

“... Not that I know of…” Varric said.

“Why?” Isolde asked, fury turning to disgust.

Varric visibly cringed.

“I was running low on funds,” he admitted, “and writer’s block was stopping me from writing anything good. My publisher reckoned if I targeted an existing market…”

“But why me and…?” Isolde glanced again at the book cover, “and Cullen Clone One and Cullen Clone Two.”

“They’re not clones!” All eyes turned to Cassandra, who blanched again under the sudden scrutiny. “They are twin brothers, separated at birth: Sullen von Lutherford and Mullen Mac Ruthhan.”

“Sullen and Mullen?!” Isolde all but roared.

“It says here Sullen’s a thousand year old vampire,” the Iron Bull pointed out, “but then Chapter Thirteen you have Ysolde celebrating Mullen’s twentieth birthday party.” It was his turn to fall under the scrutiny of the others. “What? I’m a fast reader.”

“Ysolde?!” Isolde roared again.

“I was in a rush!” Varric said, ignoring Isolde’s outburst. “I didn’t think the readers would be paying attention to little details like that…”

“I noticed,” Cassandra pointed out. “It ruined the fantasy of it all.” (“Noted,” said Varric; “Ysolde?!” screamed Isolde). “Also, Sullen’s powers. He reads minds, but not Ysolde’s. Only Ysolde’s?”

“Not much there to read,” Fee laughed, earning herself a sharp elbow in the ribs from her sister. “Ow.”

“Yeah,” Varric said, “it adds to her whole allure.” (“Am I not alluring enough?!”)

“Am I in it?” Fee wheezed.

“There’s a Bee,” Dorian said, peering over the Iron Bull’s shoulder as he flicked through. “Her drained corpse is found in Chapter Five.”

Isolde’s opinion of the book improved by the tiniest of fractions after that.

“And Mullen,” Cassandra continued, “he enjoys being a werewolf, but Ysolde would sooner turn into a vampire than a werewolf? A life of blood magic instead of getting to live a normal life raising pups with Mullen? What has Sullen got that Mullen hasn’t?”

“Cheekbones,” was Dorian’s take on the Sullen-Mullen debate. He looked again at the cover.

The Iron Bull snorted suddenly, quickly handing the book to Dorian, before dissolving into a fit of belly-laughs.

“He sparkles? Sullen sparkles?” he just about managed to spit out between laughs, clutching his sides. “What blood mage chooses to sparkle?!”

“What lycanthrope can change at any point in the moon cycle?” Dorian shook his head, wearily.

Cassandra knew the answer to that.

“Mullen was born with his powers, he was not bitten,” she retorted, hotly. “He uses his powers for good! I-” Her cheeks darkened then when she caught Varric smirking at her.

“Team Mullen?” he asked.

“Maybe…” Cassandra grumbled.

Dorian shook his head.

“Give me a sensitive blood-drinker any day over a dog. Team Sullen!”

“No teams!” Isolde stood up then, knocking her chair back in the process. She slammed her fist hard against the table. “There’s no Ysolde, no Mullen, no Sullen! There’s just me and Cullen and what we do is no one’s business but our own, understood?” She shot that last remark at Varric.

“Understood,” he said. “I’d offer to make things right by putting some of the proceeds towards castle renovations only, well…”

“What?”

“Turns out the market was full anyway. My publisher’s pulping what she can get a hold of. She’ll find a way to make up for the losses. I’m sticking to thriller from here on out.”

Cassandra groaned.

“But the ending!” she said. “Who does Ysolde pick?”

Varric shrugged.

“I never thought that far ahead,” he admitted.

It was then that one of the love interests (or, well, both of the love interests rolled into one) poked his head around the tavern door.

“Everything alright?” Cullen asked, looking over his flummoxed companions, all crowded around a table. “I heard shouting...”

Without a word, Isolde stood up and crossed the short distance to the door. She slipped her arms around his middle and buried her flushed face against his chest. Taken aback, but not willing to argue with a good thing, Cullen returned the hug. He missed the short, whispered “Team Cullen” remark.

“She must pick one of them,” Cassandra continued.

Varric snorted softly, watching Cullen and Isolde embrace by the door.

“She doesn’t pick either of them,” he said, finally. “She goes for the third brother, a regular human guy, Cullen.”

Cassandra pulled a face.

“Swords and Shields was better,” was her final conclusion, but not before threatening each person around the table to dare breathe a word of any of this. She left them then, returning back to the training yard, but not before she reclaimed her copy of Half-light from Dorian and the Iron Bull.

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

We R Who We R: Cameron and Donna get ‘Close to the Metal’ (but not as close as we’d like) or, a H&CF recap

In "FUD" Gordon uses the expression 'close to the metal' like it's the engineering equivalent of 'in the trenches' or 'in the field': working without the safe or ideal conditions of a classroom or training, in the 'real world'. If we extend the metaphor from "High Plains Hardware" of hardware as human beings' hardwired behavior, we can guess that the metal we really get close to in this ep is how our characters behave when they believe themselves to be in a real crisis. We see J*e set a fake crisis in motion only to lose control of the entire thing, Bos call in a violent, physical attack on J*e in response to the havoc he's wrought, and Gordon ultimately rely on and use his wife to get through it. More to the point, we see Cameron panic and just  barely pull herself back from the edge of a meltdown, and we watch Donna save the day, only to realize that the day never really needed saving, and that she'll need to let her husband take all the credit for it anyway.

Just two days out from finally finishing The BIOS Code That Nearly Destroyed Her Life, Cameron is devastated when a random unplugging of her computer by a custodian (who later is fired, more collateral damage, thx J*e) seemingly wipes out all her work, which of course she hasn't saved recently. Everyone freaks out, presumably because they need to rush to market and hopefully turn a profit from this entire debacle. Donna, conveniently a specialist in data storage, does not make Cameron feel any better. Donna asks some basic questions, Cameron lashes out at her, denigrating her whole '80s Lady Who Can Have It All!' vibe, and Donna responds in kind by insulting Cameron for sleeping with J*e, and calling her limited sense of self-esteem (or, sense of self, even?) for what it is. Cameron rushes up to the roof to what is never actually described as an actual panic attack, a spectacularly effective example of showing rather than telling.

Cameron's arc in this episode, which is really more of a circle, is sad and hard to watch. At the end of the previous episode we saw her crashing at J*e's apartment because she needed some kind of human contact, but "Close to the Metal" seems to be about how alone she is. She's understandably in tears when her only connection to other people -- her code -- disappears. She makes a genuine effort at a sort of connection or professional camaraderie by offering to look after Donna and Gordon's kids while Donna retrieves her code, but then Haley and Joanie accidentally tell her that Gordon called her 'trash'.

It's telling and kind of gutting that Cameron could've done something to Gordon's office or to his or Donna's car, but that she goes to their home instead. She looks so strange in their house, and uncharacteristically menacing; she does not belong there, and she knows it. Intent on somehow corrupting what looks like the Clarks' warm, safe, happy home, Cameron is about to spray paint something on their living room wall when Brian (aka fake Matthew McConaughey) interrupts her, shotgun in hand. I'm not exactly sure what happens during this exchange -- does his pettiness about being fired and completely real shit talk about Donna 'the career woman' and Gordon the genius and the PC project they've invested themselves in clarify Cameron's loyalties for her? -- but either way, Cameron resists the impulse to lash out at Donna and the rest of the Clarks again.

When she sees Donna again, Cameron acts like a child (meaning, an adult with real emotional maturity/growth issues) who feels guilty and ashamed of her behavior. She makes a point of saying "I'm sorry" when Donna tells her that she scared her daughters, and of saying "Thank you" when Donna says she saved 93.6 percent of her code. She tries to apologize for how she spoke to Donna, who doesn't let her, and she's speechless when Donna compliments her work, as if she's genuinely unaccustomed to such kindness. When Donna encourages her to go home and rest, Cameron jokes that she has to get that remaining 6.4 percent of her code, because she can't say 'I don't really have anywhere to go'. By the end of the exchange, she seems ready to burst into tears. She seems resigned to not having any kind of home, to not having much of anything but her own brilliance and a guy who wants to use it. The final scene in this episode is of Cameron carefully saving her work, and then finally inhaling a sandwich J*e brought her earlier. It's all she's got at this point, but she's probably worked with less.

What's soul crushing for Cameron, though, seems a lot like another day in Donna's life of Cleaning Up Men's Messes. Donna is reasonably unimpressed by Cameron's failure to save her work, but she's a professional so instead of being a jerk about it, she focuses on the problem in front of her, and solves it. She skips a half day at her own job and spins a disk by hand for who even knows how many hours to reassemble the weeks of BIOS code Cameron wrote? (Filed under: Sounds Romantic Even Though I Don't Quite Know How It Actually Worked.) Donna can't take credit for this accomplishment because there's a journalist there, and because she was supposed to be at her own job while she was doing all of this. So once again, Gordon (and J*e, and the rest of the men on Cardiff's PC team) get to own her skill, ingenuity, and hard work.

While they're off talking to the journalist, Donna figures out that J*e 'engineered this whole thing' for 'a little publicity,' and after the implications of this sink in for her, she confronts him. But she seems less upset over how her own day was wasted, and more worried about how they're all stuck with him, particularly Cameron. Donna maybe recognizes that this plan really depended on throwing Cameron under the proverbial bus. It depended, specifically, on Cameron's lax control-S habits (no one could've done this to Donna, who would've pulled a floppy disk out of her top drawer and said 'I have another copy here, we're good'), and on J*e's willingness to intentionally use what he knows about Cameron in a way that will hurt her (and I'll say it again, NO, NOT ROMANTIC, just fvcked up, don't start). Donna is rightly concerned that Gordon will get M*cMillaned, though she's also aware that Cameron is a lot more vulnerable as a woman, subordinate, and one of J*e's sex partners.

When they get home, Donna hesitates, but then tells Gordon that the BIOS crisis was completely faked, against J*e's manipulative 'advice' to keep it a secret. I think we're supposed to be surprised when Gordon says, "Did it work?" instead of responding with shock and outrage, but lol, I wasn't. Donna doesn't seem surprised either, just mildly disgusted, and exhausted, after yet another day in a misogynist industry and world where woman can only be victimized basket cases and competent killjoys, and never get to be the heroes they really are.

Stray bytes:

My guess is that 'close to the metal' is a thing engineers really say, even though it sounds like a thing the Chrises would make up if they made things like that up. It's just slightly corny in a way that sounds authentic, amirite?

I could probably write an entire essay on how Cameron is unexpectedly good with kids because she's emotionally a kid herself in a lot of ways, some good, and some bad

I feel for Bos, and I will never be here for J*e, BUT: if you think about it, J*e gets his ass beat for real for having sex with another man. NOT COOL, SHOW. Even if Bos doesn't actually know that and wasn't motivated by that specific aspect of the whole LouLu Lutherford fiasco.

Also Donna's reward for saving Cameron's BIOS and playing into this whole PR stunt is getting put on probation at work. Really, Hunt? Okay.

"We R Who We R": the early oughts were a strange time where serial abuser producers gave us party jams and artists like Ke$ha, but at least we eventually got Kesha out of it. (Because again: victimized basket cases and competent killjoys.)

[rollercoaster59]

Got lighter 16 and lutherford brick... hair cut..

[i-cant-escape-forever-blog]

Songs You Wished You have listened sooner:  a. Stomach It - Crywolf ft Eden. b. End credits - Eden c. Falling in Reverse - Eden d. Gold -Eden  e. Drugs - Eden f. Feelings fade -Gnash  g. Good as Gold -  Greyson Chance  h. Rock + Roll - Eden i. Forever // over - Eden. j. Love; not wrong (brave) - Eden h. Sex - Eden k. Bloom later - Jesse Lutherford. l. Fumes - Eden m. XO - Eden

[lovecharged]

closed starter for @thefvrious

"the funniest thing happened to me last night...so much so, i'm starting to think karma is in fact real."

[lovecharged]

new muses to add / develop:

whitney o'childs | taylor swift fc. thirty three. cis woman. she / her. bisexual. stand-up comic. wren's older sister.

camila ortiz | selena gomez fc. thirty. cis woman. she / her. bisexual. private criminal investigator / documentarian. drake's younger sister.

cedar aldridge | tom glynn carney fc. twenty eight. cis man. he / him. bisexual. wizard / magic world lawyer. (from a wealthy morally grey family. inspired by draco malfoy).

francis 'frankie' lutherford | nicholas galitzine fc. twenty eight. cis man. he / him. gay. tiktoker / make-up artist / drag queen.

lola 'lolita' carmichael | mimi keene fc. twenty five. cis woman. she / her. bisexual. camp counsellor / adventure leader.

perry hatt | david tennant fc. fifty five (apperance wise). occupation may vary. vampire. non-binary. he / they. bisexual/polyamorous. so-called and self professed ‘patriarch’ though everyone knows who’s really in charge. has lived so long he’s lost count of the years. can come across as incredibly dismissive, but when he cares - he cares hard. will change people if he deems it necessary. has changed plenty of people throughout the years, always tries to take good care of them. only a very select few make it into his family, though. aggie’s husband (loosely), mickey and angela’s adoptive father.

agatha 'aggie’ hatt | rachel mcadams fc. forty seven (appearance wise). occupation may vary. vampire/witch. cis woman. she / her. bisexual/polyamorous. a hippy and proud, almost got burnt at the stake a few times, but perry saved her from that. she’s saved him more times, however. hasn’t changed many people, only angela - she’d have died otherwise, and been unable to protect herself from the chaos around her. motherly, kind, but venomous when you get on her bad side. perry’s wife (loosely), mickey and angela’s adoptive mother.

michael 'mickey’ hatt | nicholas galitzine fc. twenty eight (appearance wise). occupation may vary. vampire. cis man. he / him. bisexual (and possessive). changed during a battle in world war two, by his subsequent adoptive father, he hadn’t been sure how he felt about survivng the way he had first, a term he used so loosely at first. now he appreciates it and is very close to his father. didn’t have much of a family before the war, was excited to join to find a semblance of one and he did, just not in the capacity he expected. loves to live, and makes the most of it. he takes everything on. craves attention, craves love, loves hard and toxically. perry and aggie’s adoptive son. angela’s adoptive brother.

angela 'angie’ hatt | rachel sennott fc. twenty six (appearance wise). occupation may vary. cis woman. she / her. bisexual. changed in the sixties after she’d tried to escape a cult she’d recently joined. fortunately aggie found her, and found it impossible to save her without changing her into a vampire. a hippy much like her mother. ran away from home at fifteen so they are the only parents she’s ever cared about. away with the fairies more often than not and never, ever wears a bra. has changed a few lovers, though she’s lost tabs on them. perry and aggie’s adoptive daughter. mickey’s adoptive sister.

mila huáng | havana rose liu fc. twenty six. cis woman. she / her. bisexual. bakery owner / witch.

daniella riggin | phoebe dynevor fc. twenty seven. cis woman. she / her. aspiring politician. devon's twin.

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

I wanna be a problem: Cameron and Donna Question Their Limitations in "High Plains Hardware"

"High Plains Hardware" is the manufacturer's name on the shovel Donna uses to kill an ailing bird at the end of this episode, but there's the obvious wordplay with electronic hardware, which 'is forever', according to Donna and Gordon, and the less obvious reference to metaphoric 'hardwiring,' as in a human being's 'hardwired' behavior or personality quirks. This episode takes our core cast out of the environments and positions we've seen them in to show us how similarly they ultimately behave in different settings.

It's been a week since the drama of the IBM raid, and Cardiff Electric's p.c. project and its players have found their respective quotidian rhythms of coder's block, hardware design brainstorming, chasing and bickering over funding, and unflagging support and unending domestic labor. Let's just get the guys out of the way first: Gordon is suddenly in charge, J*e is pressed to be a team player, and Bos is forced to work with J*e. Gordon rises to the occasion at work, pursuing his ideas and firing his Matthew McConaughey-esque naysaying neighbor, but then as always forces Donna to do more than her share at home. J*e is savvy enough to fall in line, but when he responds poorly to a potential investor (who, to be fair, did seem like a terrible fit for the project), he slips right back into his Hoe MacVillain suit and eventually resorts to fvcking the investor's boyfriend in her study to truly ruin the deal. Bos gets in some deal-ruining of his own earlier in the episode, but, he at least tries to put Cardiff and company loyalty (and, uh, survival) first, only to once again be thwarted by J*e's antics.

While all of this is happening, Donna is going about her life, or trying to. We see her at her job for the first time, reporting to her supervisor, the extremely Texan Hunt Whitmarsh. She's "identified the bugs in the PCBs," but she's noticed that the bigger issue is that the keyboard bounces. She has a possible fix for it, but Hunt's not interested: "But that's not our purview? Right?" he patronizes her. It sounds like it's not the first time he's had to say this to her. Idea quashed, he moves on to small talk, asking about Donna's parents, and she can't do much but respond in kind, asking how his wife is. We find out that they went to high school and were even in band together! Hunt pays her an clunky compliment, about how everyone knew Donna didn't quite fit in back then, but that he knew she was just 'marking time, waiting for something better to come along'. Weird as it is, Donna seems to appreciate the effort and the attention.

But then, she's not getting much of either at home. When we see her at the Clark residence later, with her mom, the first thing we hear the as-of-yet unnamed Susan Emerson say is, "Nothing like a bubble bath to make you forget life's little traumas!" "Works for me," Donna grimaces while cleaning her kitchen, though do we really believe Donna has done anything so indulgent lately? (No, we don't.) Their conversation seems relaxed, but when her mother casually brings up Gordon's sensitivity about his in-laws' money and gifts, and Gordon's long hours at the office and Gordon's not being Hunt (who they haven't even seen at the club!), Donna is visibly agitated and resigned. It's not the first time she's heard any of this, either. When her mother asks her how work is only to start talking about Hunt, it's the second time we see someone interrupt Donna and keep her from making herself heard. And we see her get cut off a third time at the end of the episode when she asks Gordon to kill the bird, and he refuses, forcing her to go do it herself, Donna's apparent lot in life. I get it, he's an engineer, he thinks like you, but you can do better, girl.

As always, Cameron is dealing with the opposite of what Donna's dealing with: plenty of professional responsibility, a huge, juicy problem to solve all by herself, and few limitations or parameters. Cameron's whole Anton Newcombe-type reclusive genius who sleeps in the recording studio thing is starting to work against her though, and she's so in her head that she resorts to voluntarily tidying her desk (hashtag: MAYDAY!). The paycheck she finds is the perfect excuse to take a real break and 'go outside' as the young people on tumblr say. She meets some punks in a literal alley, and because she's Cameron, she's getting them all a hotel room to party in after five whole minutes with them.

Except that Cameron doesn't really party with them? She seems only slightly more comfortable with people her own age than with her coworkers, standing against the wall and self-consciously watching everyone drink and dance rather than joining them. Cameron is revealed to be genuinely socially awkward, unlike her new punk friends who apparently choose to not work and to not dress or behave as expected, but interact comfortably with her from when they first meet her. It's not a front, or costume, or contradictory punk politics with Cameron; she really doesn't fit in anywhere, and probably wouldn't even if she really tried. (How Mackenzie Davis hasn't been recognized for how real and visceral she makes Cameron and her physical alienation from everything around her, I truly cannot understand.) And she does try, going so far as to let one of her new punk acquaintances give her the beginning of a stick and poke tattoo (of the Black Flag logo, which I will be screaming about for approximately the rest of time) before she panics and runs into the bathroom only 1 (of 4) bars in, and then sneaks out of the hotel room.

Because she's better at and more comfortable with one-on-one interactions, Cameron's run in with Bos in the middle of the episode is more successful. Bos advises her and holds her accountable for her behavior, without judging her for her social gracelessness. She resists at first, but she seems to connect with him, and even kindly if clumsily reassures him that computers are complicated, and that it's okay that basic coding language doesn't yet make sense to him. Bos is genuine with her, having no reason to be anything else, and she responds to it. In that moment, she appears to begin to invest emotionally in Cardiff and the p.c. project, and it's not entirely surprising when she shows up at J*e's apartment at the end of the episode, looking for more 'one-on-one interaction', with the one person she can realistically get it from at this point. You can also do better, girl. *Sigh*

Or, can she? Cameron and Donna seem deep in their respective ruts and social positions, the outsider living off whatever she can scavenge (including but not limited to bowling shoes, twinkies, and sporadic non-relationship sexual intercourse) and the long-suffering and endlessly, silently adaptable wife and professional. Worse, their lives seem structured to keep them confined to those roles. But both of them are beginning to feel the limitations on their lives, and are looking for ways around those limits. By the end of the episode, Cameron and Donna both want more; it's a start.

Stray bytes:

This ep feels like a very long day, which must be intentional. It actually takes place over two days, though.

The scenes at LouLu Lutherford's feel the longest, which also must be intentional. Even better is how they contrast with the hotel punx scenes.

The discussion of  the first U.S. women in space feels meta, even if indirectly? J*e isn't impressed by it because the Soviets already did it. "It's a gimmick." I.e., it is obviously inauthentic and ahistorical. Thanks for letting us know how you feel about Strong Women Characters™, show.

J*e having gay sex = cooooooool; gay sex having no purpose other than anti-hero villainy = NOT SO MUCH. 

The show puts a lot of distance between Cameron and J*e for most of this episode, which is an uncomfortable continuation of the weirdness between them in the previous episode, but again, that’s its own post.

“She took my soda....” And you took your wife’s idea and passed it off as your own, Gordon, LMAO