#need to figure out how to write donna and like plot stuff. barely but still. plot stuff

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

im gonna start biting things

[bisexualterror]

noor: i'm very curious, very interested, bc like i haven't started the series it's on my to-see list 👀 and what little i read was hargreeves oc's who got paired with a sibling and that kinda weirded me out of watching it yet 😬 absorbs light hmm she's her own lil sun? her siblings lil sun? 🥺

nova: i love her, gimme more witches stories on the tvd verse khsjdjfb i can't wait to see her when the plot really starts to kick in, another win for the bennett coven who the actual series didn't seem to give a sh*t about 😤 and i saw an ask about sheila living i could cry hhhHHhHh all the adults dying, someone give this kids therapy 😶

marsilia: i lover her already, it's the first time i see a zabini oc, pls spare more mars lore 🤲 ksjsjdjf also love the nickname, mars, it's cute 💖 we also get to see more about blaise as character too! ALSO you know that whole can't remember if it was canon or fanon blaise's mom being a "black widow" or a this totally fanon mafia donna so yes can't wait to see this zabini family 😌 aAnNdD oh. my. stars. my brain just caught up she's gonna be same year with astoria, luna and ginny KSHDJSKDHD

altheia: omg 🥺🥺🥺 a doctor who oc 💖 who isn't linked with the doctor from the beginning kaksksldj like i love him but give me more oc's with their own backgrounds who don't immediately drop everything to be with him and stuff pls & tenk u 😔 lsjhskfif i thot u were gonna say theia IS missy's childe omg who is she? are her family or/and the master's important to be arranging marriages to each other? or will that be just a gallifreyan thing? what happens to her when looking into the untempered schism? how does she fare during the war? will she live to be around during the new who timeline orrrr?? ajlajshdofn sorry it's just omg 😭

OOOok sdndskjd so

noor: that’s vv fair, it’s probably because of the whole allison and luther sibling thing is canon in the show, they don’t do anything really romantic imo, it doesn’t go anywhere and honestly it seems like they just latched onto each other platonically as kids and might have misinterpreted as romantic cause they were isolated from other kids and didn’t have anyone other than each other n their other siblings??? anyway that’s how i watched it, but i 100% understand why it would put you off. but still i love these chaotic siblings svm and YES omg her siblings sun 😭😭

nova: mood, it’s part of why i created her, i love witches so much :D also ME TOO, i wanna write season three so BADly, i have so many plans for her you’re hopefully gonna love. and yeah, honestly i could rant on the injustice they gave the bennett coven but the one i hated the most was that most of them were used by other people and to further the plot and then died 😔 ND tell me about it!! we never saw bonnie’s home life but we can all take a guess and say that grams was the one who was there for her and ELENA LOST TWO SETS OF PARENTS AND THEN ALARIC FOR A BIT.  they need milk, cookies and therapy. (but also like bitch, me too tf)

marsilia: 

djsjkjlkds ok so the main reason why i created marsilia was because i wanted to write more on blaise’s mom but lol i just had to make an oc too. there was def rumors in canon i THink of her killing all of her husbands cause they kept dying without any explanation and i wanna have fun with that, so yeah, thats gonna be fun :D also YES, i honestly just wanted to not have to rewrite every book/movie so i had her a year younger than blaise lisjlksjs but yes, she’s gonna be friends with both greengrass sisters, luna and eventually ginny (though she has a rocky start with everyone but luna XD)

altheia:  i love him too, A LOt, like so much, but yeah.....i prefer to know who my ocs are outside of their SO, esp with characters like the doctor, who can kinda be all encompassing. kjhkjdhkhsd thats what i thought it was gonna sound like after i wrote it LMAO but ye theia stays on gallifrey with her daughter when the master and the doctor leave. (damn did i just give ANOther oc my abandonment issues??)

just for a few decades so her daughter, cosima, can finish her education and then al says peace out, leaves in the dead of night to steal a tardis and travels with her daughter on her own for a few more decades that will probably pass by in like two chapters.

cosima is an odd mix of her parents, very intelligent and sweet but also super scary when angry skljslakjaslk their families are kind of important, at least they think so, but also it’s just a thing i wrote that’s normal for gallifrey.

ok so it’s kind in the WORks cause i need to figure out the side affects and the HOW part but when baby altheia looks into the schism, an alternate older version of herself, fresh from war, gets dragged into her conscience. IWONDEr WHO IT Was THAT DID THat? (it was the time lords, breaking their rules so they could groom altheia to help them in the war)

she has.... a rough time in the war, looses pretty much all of her family (cosima is ok though!!), might bring her brother abacus back cause i... can’t bare to kill him off permanently...  she WILL before around new who, i haven’t finished watching the classics so this is how i have her arks planned out:

first i’m gonna focus on gallifrey era for maybe 25 chapters and then i’m going to do like maybe four adventures of her with her daughter spanning those decades, the war i’m going to skip completely other then how she gets out of it, and then she’ll... be alone for half a chapter before reuniting with the ninth doctor (he thinks she’s dead... ) and from there i’ll probably just write her into the episodes i want, skipping some that i don’t want to rewrite, and stop whenever i get tired i guess (i do have an end in mind i just don’t know which season it’s gonna be in) cause i doubt this show is ever gonna end lsjalkLMAO

[bulletdove]

if u could change anything about aoaf what would u change?

AAAA this is such a good ask, thank you, i spent Way Too Fucking Long on this

(disclaimer: i don’t exactly support RPF, but i think it’s fine to consume it critically. it’s part of fandom, whether we like it or not. and fandom is an area of academic interest for me, so... you can’t understand something without researching it. yeehaw.) 

so here’s AOAF: the extended cut. ideally part of a critical edition, because i have academic aspirations.

AOAF stands on its own really well as original fiction, because it didn’t get into heavy speculation and based itself off of “what if”. but the plot was more emotionally loaded than the characters were, i think? (so as far as RPF goes, it’s not that scandalous or ethically dubious.). extended cut would be an Original Fiction type of deal, the same basis as the original one but taking the characters in a different direction and obviously renaming them

the ship plot was good, but that’s extremely Fic (which is a draw of the genre, but also seriously limits the development of non-romantic relationships) so that’d be changed. more family interactions in the present that aren’t for the sole purpose of advancing the ghostf*cking plot, flashbacks to frank and his mom and frank and ray and frank and dewees. other friends hanging out, getting to know mikey. (i need to do a reread, but ray and bob and co. weren’t really that memorable...)

higher stakes. the kidnapping scene fell flat because you knew nothing was going to happen, mikey couldn’t die because he’s mikey, all that stuff. higher stakes for the dead character, too - i need to do a reread, but plausible risk of permadeath would help intensify things.

mikey subplot is of utmost importance. barely anybody who writes RPF seems to know what to do with him as a “character” - since his public persona is/was awkward, super quiet, but still super well-liked? and nobody really wants to figure out the why and how for a minor character, since he always ends up being a minor character - but i’d like some in-depth exploration. bringing out the parallels and differences between him and frank, the dead kid and the maybe-dying kid (assuming heightened stakes), and having them hang out more, is something i’d really like.

i’d have mikey and frank be friends, but also butt heads a lot and rub each other the wrong way - mikey’s a kid and he’s terrified of dying, doesn’t want his mom and gerard and his friends back home to go on without him, wants to explore this freaky town that feels like it’s breathing down his neck [it’s creepy, but he has a good feeling about it], wants to get the chance to be a kid again but also doesn’t want to die before he has the chance to grow up, and keeps having these freaky dreams about a marching band dressed in black. frank has (mostly) made his peace with being dead, thinks his family and friends have moved on without him and been pretty okay, wanted to get the fuck out and grow up but not sell out (gay punk rights), and he knows everything about this shithole and hates that it kind of feels like home. he’s a perpetual kid who knows he can’t grow up until he leaves; mikey’s too grown up already but he’s younger and moodier and both more and less at peace with life and death. they have a lot in common, but they can seriously butt heads.

i’d give mikey a heightened awareness of the supernatural, more mobility (definitely an ill-advised wander through the woods or three), and have him and frank have weird effects on each other.

i liked the sense of weird-hazy-small town that exists out of time, and not wanting to be there but also not really being able to leave (in different ways - frank’s literally trapped, the ways are just waiting and don’t know how long they’ll be stuck there, and their estimates keep changing.) deliberately developing that by having the teenage characters thinking about college and stuff or mrs. way thinking about plans for when they move away again and finding that those plans don’t feel pressing, that they might end up there forever, and maybe that might be liveable? (there’s definitely something wrong with that town, and it’s not just frank) good shit, more emotional depth, frank freaks out but they don’t know he’s a ghost at that point and don’t get it, fuck yeah

a more complicated plotline. more subplots. i think bringing in a different mystery than frank would make it more of a traditionally Literary work, and bring out unexplored dimensions in the characters and the worldbuilding. this time maybe it’d be donna? things around town are pretty strange, the police department is definitely corrupt, her kids keep vanishing in and out of the woods and not telling her the whole truth, gothic etc etc. haven’t thought that part out very much, tbh.

more character depth and development for gerard - AOAF would be the perfect time for him, a depressed kid with a sick brother and dead ghostfriend, to get really fucked up about life and death and his relationship to them, and stop feeling like an early death is some kind of romantic inevitability and realize oh god he really doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want mikey to die it’s not fair, frank being a ghost is cool on the surface but really it’s just awful, and is it really fair for him to be dreaming about his plans for after he graduates when frank is trapped here forever, and mikey might be too? (could bring this in in the kidnapping bit, idk. and some late-night chats with donna.)

more explanation of Why Frank Is The Way He Is. more flashbacks, more backstory, more insight into how he has seriously mixed feelings about his undeath and is trying to be okay with being trapped in the woods forever but really fucking isn’t but also feels like him and the water washing over his bones run at the same frequency - it’s part of him, but he wants more. more detail about that part.

ray and frank interactions. frank looking in on ray’s family, years later.

frank exploring more of the town than the woods - he has to have stood at the edge of the woods and stared as far as he could, he must have been curious, he must have wanted to know what was going on. he gets out of the woods, runs around town, is proud of it for changing and getting kinda-sorta-better? in parts? but hates it for moving on without him. 

better ghost mechanics - i really disliked how it felt so easy and handwaved. blegh. the tree-phone was cute tho...  (frank would gain mobility in degrees, not all at once, i think. and there would be side effects. more thought needed.)

the epilogue/sequel/whatever was cute, i wouldn’t change that except to make gerard’s eventual successful career a bit more ambiguous - and maybe mikey would die instead of your suggestion of gerard dying, i think that could work maybe. might be between the main plot and the epilogue, though.

showing more of frank’s unlife, and more of the other ghosts - absolute must. mikey spends a weekend at home, sneaks out, sees a dog in the woods that isn’t there, dreams about guitar lessons. 

i swear there was other stuff that i talked about with you but i don’t remember... i didn’t mean to make this a whole Manifesto but i’m trying to get everything in in detail sfdklkfsdl rip

slower development of the romance plot, slower realization that frank is a ghost (but less over-the-top oblivious gerard), more developed main and side characters, more side characters (this story was a dudefest! where are the girls.), making the ending feel less contrived (all of their friends are suddenly there, and everything is okay? it needed a more drawn-out conclusion)

this wasn’t supposed to be this long, or take this much time >.

[haltandcatchfiretothemax]

Mystery and Misery: "I/O" and Cameron and Donna's roles therein (or, a sort of/inverse H&CF recap)

The first thing I noticed when I put on the pilot of Halt and Catch Fire for this dedicated rewatch is that it’s long for an hour of network television, at 47 minutes. It didn't feel long though, probably because it doesn't waste a single frame or second, and thusly manages to cover a lot of ground. Rather than merely setting up the premise of the show it effectively establishes it, including the characters, most of their relationships and dynamics, and their relationships to the places and locations in the show; there is nothing tentative or conveniently ambiguous about it. It is an incredibly ambitious introductory hour of television, which is appropriate for a show about what turns out to be a group of very ambitious individuals.

The second thing I noticed is that "I/O" feels more like a movie than a television episode, and that if it were a bit longer, it probably could be. I don't know if it would be possible or worthwhile to make a two hour movie about the entire process of designing the Giant, but I think it could work as a feature film about facing off against IBM (though not necessarily an interesting one, but either way, the pensive legal drama about one young male lawyer's ethical struggle is a thing, is it not?). All you'd really have to do is draw out and really dramatize all the IBM/deposition stuff -- and fill in all the 'missing' scenes of Cameron and Donna that are curiously absent.

Based on the rest of the series but against my better judgment, I'm going to give the showrunners the benefit of the doubt and say that Cameron and Donna appear sparingly in the pilot for good reason. It's easy to read their limited presence as a quiet commentary on how both fictional and real women are frequently sidelined in television and in life, and as a set up meant to surprise the viewer with how essential they both quickly become to the plot, though just writing this out makes it feel overdone. (And if I remember right, a lot of critics and recappers weren't feeling it either.) But it makes sense if you look at Cameron and Donna's roles in "I/O" separately.

Cameron appears in the opening scenes of the pilot, and then returns at the end of it. This is partly because she's still four hours away from the action for most of the show, but the show could have cut back to her life at school -- it doesn't. When we do see her again, getting (physically) thrown out of an arcade, you get the sense that this isn't because her life as a student is typical or easily guessed at; the arcade fight suggests pretty strongly that she hasn't been hanging out on the quad with her friends or planning parties with her sorority sisters. Her absence cultivates genuine mystery and a dark but not so much sinister as sad gut feeling around everything we don't know about this strange, aggressive girl. It might not read for 'normal' viewers, but real life 'strange' girls, orphans, throwaways, gay and trans feminine women, disabled, cr*zy, and especially non-white otherwise marginalized social misfits will understand that people like Cameron are hidden from view because their experiences are not positive or 'normal' by mainstream society's standards, and are not understood or valued. Cameron isn't in most of the first episode because she is truly Unknowable, and literally doesn't fit in with the rest of our characters.

The opposite seems to be true of Donna, who appears here and there in the pilot, but only in scenes with Gordon. This episode doesn't cut to Donna or her life outside of Gordon, either, and she seemingly only pops up to 'nag' Gordon, if by 'nagging' one means dragging Gordon back to the present and/or reality. We get a real sense of what their marriage really feels like, but mostly of what it feels like for Gordon, who unsurprisingly seems to think he's the main character in his marriage. We eventually learn that Donna doesn't seem like she's getting drinks with friends after work or lunching with her sorority sisters either, but by contrast, her daily life isn't shown because it is entirely 'normal', an iteration of womanhood, marriage and working motherhood, based around constantly and silently performing an incredible amount of domestic and emotional labor so taken for granted that it's invisible. Cameron's life is hidden from view, while Donna is practically erased and redrawn as a mean, miserable wife right in front of us.

Until we get our emotional climax toward the end of the pilot, and Gordon realizes that Donna has been right all along. After 30+ minutes of J*e, Gordon, the weird dance they do at Cardiff, and the consummation of their relationship via their illicit 3-day weekend of successful reverse engineering, Donna comes home to a tidy living room, where Gordon is happily engaging with their two young daughters. Thinking that this is the result when Gordon is allowed to pursue his dream, Donna tells him, "Whatever you're dreaming of, build it, I know you can make it great," and Gordon tells her what she's needed to hear, and what he's needed to say, which is simply that their family is more important to him than a pc clone. They make a deal that Donna thinks will make her happy: she will fully support Gordon's pursuit of this project so long as he prioritizes her and the girls.

In the following scenes, Cameron is convinced to drop out of school, move to Dallas, and write the BIOS code for this project. She is both guileless and completely unbeguiled by J*e and his slick charm, but has no immunity when he switches over to warm, not overly paternal approval, and tells her, "See? Now you're thinking like a professional." You can see his manipulation start to finally work on her after he says this, and the way her eyes and face go from tough to perilously vulnerable here is quietly devastating. She finally arrives at Cardiff Electric, where she integrates swiftly into the action around the hasty legitimization of the presently illegal Cardiff pc project, even if she still doesn't exactly blend in. Cameron is immediately taken into a solo meeting (deposition?) with Cardiff's lawyer, where she quickly catches onto and gets on board with the deceptive legal maneuvering that this whole thing is apparently going to require.

As Cameron answers Barry the lawyer's questions and allows him to coach her into saying that no, she has not ever attempted to disassemble or reverse engineer any products manufactured by IBM, we hear his voice over Donna's last scene of the episode, in which she goes out into her garage and gazes at several tables' worth of evidence of the illegal reverse engineering Gordon did just days prior. We unexpectedly cut to her, gazing at various hardware with concern, or is it envy? She's in the garage where Gordon and J*e really bonded over the very laborious process of figuring out an IBM boot code (…or something? And probably other stuff I don't actually know about? sorry), by herself. She's too late, either to stop it or get in on it.

But, she's there, finally, and so is Cameron. Their positions haven't changed much (yet); Cameron is still a true and genuinely unknown quantity and outsider, and Donna is still a long-suffering wife, mother, and some kind of employee at Texas Instruments. But now, we can see them, at least.

Other notes:

I blog for the people who had no idea that "i/o" is short for input/output and had to google it (which I did when I rewatched s1 early last year). No judgment, friends.

The focus on J*e and Gordon feels how I remember it feeling: like a very intentionally hollow version of Mad Men, where J*e's 'charm' and speechfying are barely tolerated by the people most affected by him. Literally everyone sees through him, and we see them see through him.

The thing though, and what makes this series resonate with me personally, is that seeing through someone isn't always enough to protect you from them. Gordon and Cameron are both smarter than Joe, but they both desperately need to be seen by someone, and so his attention works powerfully on them. Donna and Bos are both savvier than J*e, but they’re caught off guard by him, and unprepared to even try to anticipate his calculations.

Still, Gordon recognizes that J*e's enthusiasm is one of the few authentic things about him. He relates to it, and defends him when Donna (not unreasonably?!) identifies J*e's showing up at the movie theater as "cr*zy" ("He's just keyed up, is all")

J*e's whole shtick feels especially and deliciously phony when compared to the visceral and organic-feeling air/stormcloud of 'WHO IS SHE???' that Cameron generates when she's literally just sitting and doing nothing.

NB: there is obviously nothing wrong with having sorority sisters! Just saying that Cameron and Donna are really friendless, and that it’s painfully real. Cameron doesn’t have enough chill for them, Donna doesn’t have the time, and they probably both have trouble relating to other people who aren’t engineers.

My favorite non-Donna/Cameron scene is the sales call-lunch thing. "I'm not going to apologize for caring about your business" is J*e's "I'm not here to tell you about Jesus" moment, but the whole thing, his whole "pitch” where he is so clearly talking to Gordon -- "You can be more; you want to be more, don't you?" -- is like some kind of next level, Don Draper-meets-Tyler Durden shit. Good thing Cameron will be there to keep them from turning into fascists.

The title "Mystery and Misery" is taken from a song/band I love too much to not link to, even if they have nothing to do with any of this.