#this started off shaky

[ennaih]

Every Film I Watch In 2023:

129. Atlantis: Milo's Return (2003)

[nyxi-pixie]

pre caitvi sex being cait leaving vi open to make her own choice to get jinx out is so important actually. she could have left guards there but she knew what vi was going to do and she lets her do it. last time she made the first move and it was a way to convince vi everything was fine, but this time she just lets vi choose her own way, and it ends with vi taking comfort from her closeness entirely of her own accord.

[diamond-rozie]

*standing menacingly at the door* i made u something

anyways lol. i had a lot of school work and was really busy freaking out and stress studying for a singular test that was 4 questions and would be over in like an hour and then i proceeded to cry about it in my car for various reasons.

but yk what that means!

time for our irregular and unscheduled update of

Gotham Academy's Mentorship Program

this episode featuring a fan favorite: Duke Thomas (aka The Signal - but thats kind of irrelevant for this)

you were supposed to read that like it was from a '90s sitcom and the off screen crowd cheers rly loudly.

some house keeping updates: this scene happens in the beginning of the school year (going by the american system should be september) danny meets damian (and upsurges tim on the same day) around midterm which is around october and then the stuff with jason and damian's drawing happens around december. i kinda accidentally burned the irl timeline for anything dc first scene so now im just gonna do whatever i want.

anyways with out further ado:

table of contents

scene 04: after school activities for normal kids

Duke stood around the corner of the classroom awkwardly, wondering if he had made the right call. Sure the bats and the birds had a plethora of hands on deck any time, but most of them specialized as night time heros. Not to say that they were incompetent or anything, they were some of the most skilled and innovative people Duke had ever had the pleasure of meeting. Sure if anything happened, they could handle it, at least until Duke could slip away and show up as the Signal- Alfred and Bruce had assured him so much. But Duke couldn’t slip the guilt of busying away more of his time to after school activities when he could be patrolling or studying instead, 

But Duke had wanted to do something outside of those things, which was specifically why he had made the difficult decision to join a few clubs and after school activities. He could use a break from being surrounded by people who worked the vigilante life-style just to remember how to be a normal civilian. Let himself take a break from constantly be consumed by one case or another, one disaster or another, not being able to do enough no matter how much he tried or how much time he spent patrolling. 

Duke needed to feel grounded, like his feet were on the ground and he could press the brakes and smell the fragrance of life. Even if the fragrance was a forgotten pile of dog s-

“Alright,” The instructor for their culinary club started with a weird German accent that sounded really fake. “I am Herman. You can call me Chef or Chef Herman or just Chef. I will not bore you all with the boring introductions, and let's head right into the cooking, yes. On this paper here I made the partners for all of you to cook with for the rest of the year. If you have problem with it then quit.” 

This Herman guy seemed like quite the character, and was definitely not helping any of Duke’s previous anxieties. Many of Duke’s clubmates seem to think so too, sending their friends various looks. But no one spoke out, and instead shuffled to the front to look at the singular sheet of paper that would assign them their partners. Duke finally made it to the front and saw that he was paired with a Daniel Fenton at Station 7. 

Crossing his fingers that Daniel had at least only a half-rotten personality, Duke made his way over to station 7. The station was already prepped with an assortment of ingredients and cooking equipment. Duke had already set his stuff down claiming the seat closer to the exit (in case) when a lanky kid comes over, “Uh, your Duke Thomas?” He asks hesitantly looking back at the front counter the partner assignment sheet was. 

It took Duke an awkward second longer to realize that this kid was probably his partner. “Oh yeah I am.” He laughed apologetically, “You must be Daniel.” 

“Danny’s fine.” The boy smiled, absentmindedly brushing his messy black hair out of his face, his glacier blue looking at the equipment. Duke couldn’t help but feel like there was something off about Danny. Not in Gotham’s usual psycho-maniac-out-to-terrorizer-the-city-and-kill-innocent-people kind of off, more in a he’s not in sync with the rest of the world off. While Chef Herman explained the general structure of various types of kitchen and kitchen hierarchy that Duke was already familiar with, Duke tried to get a read on him. 

Weird did not mean threat, after all many of the Justice League- heck even the local Wayne/Batclan were pretty weird- and they (usually) didn’t mean any harm. It wouldn’t be fair of Duke to jump the horse like that. 

Deciding he should try to be friendly with him, Duke leaned over, “Is it just me or is Chef Herman’s accent totally fake?” he whispered. 

“Oh, Ancients,” Anciets? “I thought I was just going insane.” Danny sighed in relief with a small chuckle. There was a moment of silence between the two of them where no one said anything for longer than socially acceptable and Duke debated using his powers to see if he could find a clue or something. That seemed kinda invasive, though. 

When the Chef had started instructions on making today's recipe, Chocolate Chip Cookies, Danny helped Duke measure out the ingredients. “So,” Danny tried again, “What are you in for?” 

“What am I…” Duke repeated confused, 

Danny chuckled awkwardly, “Like why you joined the club.” 

Duke seriously needed to get his head in the present; this was getting embarrassing. “Oh.” He nodded in understanding, “I’ve always liked cooking,” Duke shrugged, “When I was little my parents and I would always cook together, and it was always one of my favorite things to do. And I’ve kinda always liked it, but I fell off of it for a while with school and stuff,” emphasis on the stuff “I thought joining a club could help me get back into it and get away from… everything.” That was a little more candid than Duke had planned on being with someone he had met quite literally a few minutes ago, but it felt good to have that out of his chest. The pleasant memories of his parents swimming in his mind. Mixing the dry ingredients, “Sorry that was kind of a lot.” Duke laughed genuinely this time. 

“Dude, no it’s actually so cool that you like to cook.” Danny said admiration was easy on his face, and Duke couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed. 

“What about you, then?” 

“Ugh,” He groaned jokingly, “You can’t seriously be asking for my lame ass reason after you pulled out the flashbacks.” Danny whined, letting the oven preheat like Chef told them to. 

“C’mon, it’s only fair.” Duke played along, already ahead of the other groups. 

Danny sighed, “Promise you won’t laugh.” 

“Okay, it can’t be that bad.” Duke could already feel the smile cracking on his face. 

“It is.” Danny drawlled, “So I live in the dorms right, and I got to pull some strings and room with one of my friends from back home this year. And well, let’s just say my family has a bit of a reputation for causing problems, and the kitchen definitely wasn’t an exception. One time my dad tried to make some soup for my mom because she got sick.” Duke nodded approvingly, that was a sweet gesture, “It was all fun and games until the bomb squad had to show up and long story short we had to move.” 

“You’re joking.” Duke gaped at the bizarre story, but at Danny’s solemn expression, Duke couldn’t help but be appalled, “A bomb squad over soup.”

“My parents were never really heavy on lab safety,” Danny added, as if that explained everything, “But I burn one pot of water and maybe make a few extra-crispy eggs, and suddenly its all ‘Danny you’re not allowed in the kitchen unless you start taking actual classes’ and ‘Danny that's a biohazard’.” 

“You burned a pot of water.” Duke echoed, Danny nodded innocently, “Water doesn’t burn.”

“Well, maybe you’re just not trying hard enough.” Danny sneered, trying to crack an egg on the corner of the bowl only for all the shell to fall in the bowl and the yolk on the counter. 

“Somehow, I don’t think that’s true.” Duke said, taking the bowl from him and expertly cracking an egg single handedly. Danny looked on in awe. “You said you live in the dorms?” Duke asked easily. 

“Oh yeah, all of the non-local scholarship kids have to.” 

Before Duke could respond, a girl from the station in front of them whips her head around, “You said you’re here on a scholarship?” She asked almost oppressively. 

Danny just as taken aback as Duke felt, “Uh, yeah.” 

“Me, too. Have you heard anything about the Mentorship Program here? Apparently we all have to join.” The girl’s partner was looking between Duke and Danny confused, but returned to their cooking uninterested. 

“Oh, yeah. They make us all join.” Danny nodded. 

“I heard from some of the older kids, that no one actually gets picked for that. It’s just like a weird formality thing.” The girl spoke animatedly, “What department are you in?” 

“Applied physics and engineering design.” The oven beeps that it was ready but no one moved. 

The girl seemed to deflate that answer, “Oh, I’m doing culinary science.” And with that solid conclusionary statement, she turned around and got back to her work station. 

Danny blinked, processing what just happened and slowly turning to look at Duke for proof that just happened. But the second the both of them met each other’s eyes, they burst into a fit of silent laughter. 

Bent vunuralably over the table, trying to catch their breath, they were accosted by Chef Hermon. “The two of you are having a comedy club, not a cooking club.” Chef crossed his arms at the edge of the table. Duke was pretty sure he was trying to sold them, but the fake accent was making it hard to tell. 

Danny cleared his throat and striated up, “Sorry, Sir.” He apologized quickly. 

“Chef.” Hermon peered at them, his hat looking comically large and lopsided on his head now that Duke was getting a closer look. 

“Sorry, Chef.” Duke amended, trying to keep his cool. 

“Yes, finish cooking your cookies.” He nodded satisfied, leaving their station. 

“Okay so,” Duke tried to recount what the last thing they did was, but one look at Danny trying desperately to hold in his laugh had ruined all of Duke’s efforts as well. Barely managing to get their cookies in the oven, over Chef’s fake german accent and floppy oversized chef’s hat. 

“So scholarship for applied physics and engineering design, huh.” Duke recounted from earlier, impressed. 

“Yeah…” Danny trailed off embarrassed, “It sounds kinda snotty.” 

“Dude. That’s literally one of the hardest departments to get into, and the scholarship is no sneeze either. There’s no doubt you worked your butt off to get that.” Duke assured Danny as they sat in their stools waiting for the cookies to finish. 

“Thanks,” Danny smiled sheepishly. They sat in a much more comfortable silence now before Danny spoke again, “What grade are you in by the way?” 

“I’m in 10th. General studies for now, but I was thinking of doing medicine. You?” 

“I could totally see you as a hot-shot doctor.” Danny nodded approvingly, “11th. Technically, I’m your upperclassman then.” 

“Technically?” Duke asked.

“I mean, how old are you?” 

“15.” Duke supplied confused. 

“Me too. I skipped a grade in elementary school, so we’re actually the same age.” Danny explained, sheepishly. 

“Dude, you're actually way smart.” Duke gaped in awe. 

“Hey medicine isn’t a day walk either.” Danny nudged his arm playfully, “I’m glad the mentorship thing is just for show, though. Now that we’re upperclassmen, y’know. I would not want my hands full with some random rich kid.” 

Duke laughed, “Yeah, that definitely sounds like a lot of work.” 

Easily unfolding the conversation into various topics and interests Duke found that he didn’t mind that the cookies were burnt. Or that Danny was definitely weird. But in a good way. Duke was glad they met and would get to hang out and cook with their weird not-German Chef every week. And if Danny and Duke exchanged numbers and planned to hangout outside of club activities, then well who was going to stop them.

[triglycercule]

all i have been able to think about today is that silly little knife game where you stab the spots between your fingers and try not to hurt yourself and how that silly little game is SO horrorkiller. i cant explain it it bothers me so much that i cant explain it but it just does its so them

they play it when theyre bored. because when in doubt bodily mutilation and the risk of hurt and pain is always an appealing one. and when i mean they i just mean killer because horror wouldn't wanna just hurt himself on the fly like that for funsies. he likes to see others hurt because hahaha FINALLY some damn entertainment!!! but hurting himself???? nononnno hes already got enough body pain as it is oh and killer has already grabbed his hand and started playing (and now horror can't back out because killer's got him sucked in the game)

they sing the silly little song. horror has all his fingers the knife goes chop chop chop if killer misses the spaces in between horror's fingers will come off! and they are both enraptured and both captured in this childishly morbid game. it's so anticipatory because they both know its all up to killer to decide if horror gets hurt. hes more than precise enough to keep the game going for hours long without ever hitting horror but would he want to keep it going for that long? horror doesn't know how long killer would want to wait before getting to see him react to getting hurt

and killer does eventually do it even after theyre sung the song over and over countless times and tried different harmonies and finally killer decides to end this little song and dance and stab into horror's hand. maybe he decides to do a finger. maybe the palm if he really wants to piss horror up. its sudden its surprising and GODDAMN is it painful!!!! horror's trying not to show it but with all the sweat and the way his fingers are twitching killer can see that it hurts him. it's a bit amusing :3

and then horror grabs the knife from killer and they do it all over again but this time horror's the one doing the stabbing. he's not as precise as killer. he hits him a lot more than killer hit him but goddamn it he is in PAIN and wants to let it out because hes annoying and irritated and goddamnit would killer just stop looking at him with that blank smile while he's bleeding out from his hand???? yeah horror's pissy

horror's annoyed and trying to get some form of petty revenge on killer (he likes it when he finally manages to get that stupid smile to falter just a little bit) and killer's watching horror desperately try not to just stab the knife through his oh so very exposed soul that he could very easily hurt if he really wanted to hurt killer. anyways the game finally ends when either one or both of them get bored! but thats fine!!! killer will get bored again and horror will end up escalating it to a messier point than it was before and the only thing that'll get hurt is the surface that they use to stab between fingers. oh and eachother of course :p

[batfossil-fr]

I’ve been really thinking of reopening my art shop soon… I’ve been taking some practice doodles (hence all the posting lately) while I shake off my rust and I’m finding things I enjoy working on again. I miss trying my hand at more dragons/OCs and colors. my shop’s so broken rn lmao but that’s a problem for a later date it’s just nice getting back into art

[mochiwrites]

*shaking and crying* can people please stop demanding fic updates from me (இ﹏இ`｡) i want the update just as much as you do

[sirenofthegreenbanks]

i know that ep12 with its sunbathing scene at the market place is known as one of the most romantic scenes in the show and i dearly love it too BUT HAVE U EVER LAID EYES UPON THE RIVER SCENE AT THE START OF EP12 BECAUSE AAAA

[ladydisofdurin]

Gotham citizens would crowdfund an assassination to kill the joker i just know it

[copia]

attempting to make he is one of the few piano pieces i learn from beginning to end and don't get bored of halfway through. this is an accountability post

[recovering-vamp]

[hewhobreathesfire]

I am so incredibly anxious and for what

[lokh]

this is just my experience but since you mentioned it in the tags on your last ask- I've been on and off testosterone for a year timespan ish for a long time now, and my anxiety is definitely different depending on whether or not I am on T.

On T I feel like I get more heart palpitations, hyperventilating, and chest pains, but without T I have more like stomach symptoms crying and feelings of dread. also my fingers hurt.

so it is a possibility if entirely anecdotal

i believe it

[quirktwerp]

i come crawling out of my little hole, scroll for ten minutes, then hide away again for months until the cycle repeats itself.

[warningsine]

I think if you watch the show from the beginning, you can feel it morphing from what it starts as into what it ultimately becomes,” Christopher C. Rogers says of Halt and Catch Fire, the drama he cocreated with Christopher Cantwell that returns for its fourth and final season this Saturday on AMC. “The sense of having lived with these characters has let them become real for four seasons. I think the beautiful thing about the fourth season is, we know these guys now.”

On the eve of its home stretch, Halt and Catch Fire has long since outgrown the “copycat prestige turned groundbreaking television” narrative it’s been saddled with since 2015, when the period drama returned for Year 2 with a new setting, a reshuffled ensemble, and a reconsidered sensibility. As Rogers points out, we’ve now had years to steep ourselves in the fully realized version of Halt: the story of messy, stubborn, ultimately sympathetic adults stumbling their way toward a changed world.

In 2017, Halt’s success no longer comes with caveats. The story of the modern tech industry’s beginnings, told through the personal and professional lives of four hopelessly complicated people, is one of the best shows on television, full stop. No, you don’t have to watch the first season—but you should watch the next three, or else you’re missing out on a prime example of what happens when TV’s potential for long-term, character-driven storytelling is taken full advantage of. Yet knowing where Halt started is essential to understanding how far it’s come.

Rewatching parts of the first season a few weeks ago, I was struck by how the early episodes’ weakest points have, over time, developed into the series’ greatest strengths. When Halt started, the show was criticized (or, as the ratings showed, simply overlooked) for how closely its setup hewed to an obvious template, made all the more obvious by the originator of that template still airing new episodes on the same network. Halt’s pilot aired exactly a week after Mad Men’s midseason finale, even inheriting its prime, Sunday-night time slot. Its antihero, Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), was a blazer-clad, sports-car-driving, Gordon Gekko’d version of Don Draper. The other principals felt similarly typecast: rebellious programming prodigy Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis); dweeby engineer Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy); Gordon’s wife, Donna (Kerry Bishé), equally knowledgeable but saddled with the additional burden of work-life balance. Nuances in all four archetypes emerged over the course of the season, but their first impressions didn’t offer much of an incentive to stick around.

Three years later, those of us who kept the faith have watched Halt’s core four endure nearly a decade’s worth of cross-country moves, accidental epiphanies, overnight successes, failed business ventures, marriage, infidelity, divorce, and depression. More importantly, we’ve borne witness to the changes those seismic events have wrought on the people directly involved in them. The Halt cast of today feels impossible to pigeonhole the way earlier versions of it easily could be, and were. With time and care, they’ve deepened into some of the most layered, believable people on TV. And along with them, Halt has evolved from one of Mad Men’s many imitators into its only worthy successor, a workplace drama that gives the work epic stakes by driving home what it means to those doing it.

Halt and Catch Fire is ostensibly about the computer industry, and key moments in that field’s early history have frequently dictated when and where the action takes place. That strategy has led the show into something like benevolent mission creep over the years, expanding from a relatively unknown chapter in tech’s early history to a mini-history unto itself, made manageable by its specificity. It’s a trajectory that was all but impossible for both viewers and the creators themselves to predict from Halt’s initial episodes. “When you sell a pilot, they go, ‘Do you know where this will go?,’ and you smile as big as you can and you say, ‘Absolutely!’ But deep inside, you really don’t know. And thank God that sometimes those initial ideas we had about where it would go proved to not be the case,” Rogers reflects. “Halt and Catch Fire for us, both personally and what you see on screen, has been the story of learning to listen to your show and let it become what it wants to be, not what you thought it was going to be.”

The series opens in 1983, with Joe and his team competing directly against IBM, building computers on Texas’s “Silicon Prairie.” By Season 4, it’s the early ’90s, and the gang has (mostly) relocated to Silicon Valley, where they’ve scattered across the booming tech landscape. After an abortive partnership in upstart gaming company Mutiny, Cameron and Donna have parted ways, with time only exaggerating the already marked differences between them: Donna, the pragmatic businesswoman, has become a high-powered VC partner, while Cameron, the principled creative, has become a reclusive game designer based out of Tokyo. Joe and Gordon, meanwhile, have a more successful company of their own, though Gordon does most of the heavy lifting while Joe remains literally stuck in the basement, hung up on a wallowing project (an early browser) that’s a not-so-subtle metaphor for his unrequited passion for Cameron, who’s married.

Rogers and Cantwell frame Halt’s significant time jumps, which total seven years over just a handful of episodes in seasons 3 and 4, as a matter of following their material. “We realized that, while the web was created in 1990,” where Season 3 left off after starting in 1986, “it wasn’t until the release of Mosaic, this browser, the precursor to Netscape, in ’93 that things started to take off on the web,” Cantwell explains. “We did discuss having the characters just continue to sit in the house and play with HTML code, but we thought maybe that was too avant-garde and that we’d be swinging above our weight class if we tried to do something like that.”

Instead, Season 4 opens with a brilliant montage that shows the three-year interim from Gordon’s point of view, bearing witness to Joe’s frustration and stasis even as he builds a business from the ground up. “We thought a way to differentiate the time jumps was to have the characters really feel like they’re waiting, because they would be,” Cantwell says. “So it was a fun way to approach the season—to isolate them and see them really drumming their fingers on the desk, waiting for their lives to change, and the rest of the world waiting for the World Wide Web to come to fruition.”

A side effect of following tech’s IRL timeline is how much ground the story is able to cover. Conveying seven years’ worth of life experiences in just a few hours of TV is an enormous challenge: If too much in the protagonists’ circumstances stays the same, the show’s reality starts to ring false; if too much changes, we risk losing our connection to people and places we no longer recognize. But Halt seizes the opportunity to take its characters further than it likely could have had the show confined itself to a more limited time frame.

Take Cameron, who we meet as a punky, arrogant college dropout only to see her grow into a much more mellow 30-something—still an uncompromising visionary, but one who’s been humbled by the disappointment of seeing of her ideas collide with practical obstacles. “It’s interesting for Cameron, who has always been labeled a genius and a prodigy from a very early age and has always been so confident and so self-assured in her amazing abilities, to suddenly be full of self-doubt,” Cantwell notes. “We’re seeing a real change and shift in the character as she matures. It’s a lot of those anxieties that all of us are familiar with once we reach adulthood and realize that we don’t know shit about shit.”

Cameron’s story line this season, in which a poorly received game forces her to question her own judgment for the first time, is a perfect example of what Halt does best: finding situations and conflicts that unlock a character’s hidden depths, forcing them to adapt while keeping their core motivations intact.

No character has changed more drastically, or benefited more from that change, than Joe MacMillan. Perhaps the smartest move Halt has made has been incorporating outside criticisms of Joe into the show. To other characters, Joe’s bluster and rash, destructive grand gestures don’t make him a genius asshole, in the ends-justify-the-means vein of a classical antihero; they just make him an asshole. But after spending Season 2 isolated from the rest of the cast in de facto purgatory and half of Season 3 as a full-blown villain, Joe has been successfully rehabilitated into the fold, partly because the show has given his actions serious consequences and partly because it’s given him the time to absorb and recover from them. “Joe is somebody that has been put through the wringer by everyone on the show, and last year,” when Joe’s latest bit of corporate subterfuge directly led to his protégé’s suicide, “was probably the roughest one yet for him,” Rogers notes. “I’d like to think we played fair with how that would change a person.”

Seven years later, Joe is still visibly shattered; it’s easier for the audience to forgive him because he so clearly hasn’t forgiven himself.

Halt deals with the difficulty of change as well as its inevitability: When Joe gets his hands on a new idea, essentially a preliminary version of Google, he flips right back into executive mode, throwing himself into the project and practically bullying prospective colleagues into joining him. (“You push people, Joe,” Gordon tells him. “Whether they’re ready for it or not.”) In many ways, it’s Season 1 all over again, but with the acute awareness both on- and off-screen that this is history threatening to repeat itself. Or, as Rogers puts it: “We find Joe returning to some of the dynamics we’ve seen before on this show that didn’t work and seeing if maybe now is the right time—if the changes that these 10 years have brought upon them as people have fixed those edges and smoothed them to the point where this time, they can reach their arms out farther. I think Joe is actively engaged in that, and has a little more perspective, but: Do people really change? Some of that stuff dies hard.”

Halt’s foursome has now been in a dizzying variety of combinations, both romantic and platonic. Gordon and Donna were unhappily married, then amicably divorced, and are now direct competitors in the nascent search-engine space. Cameron and Donna were acquaintances, then work spouses, and are now isolated and weathering the storm of tech’s institutional sexism on their own. Joe and Cameron were a tempestuous couple, then bitter enemies, and are now tentatively entering into an actual adult relationship.

Over time, though, certain constants and steady alignments have emerged among the four central players. Cameron and Joe have their differences—she creates; he sells other people’s creations—but they’re both dreamers at heart, constantly chasing the future and skipping over trivial details. Gordon and Donna may not be together anymore, but they’re both workhorses, picking up their more high-minded collaborators’ logistical slack. It’s in these tensions that the show’s personal and professional strands collide, with questions about how to run a business (or, on a much grander scale, how to build the future) growing inextricable from ones about how to live your life.

“You want them to be happy … and I think they struggle with realizing in the final season, that it’s not just about the next thing,” Cantwell says. “They’re all looking at the possible next thing, as they’ve always been looking for the past 10 years and over the duration of the series, and starting to question if the cycle of reinvention and innovation and finding the new idea is really the cure-all that they thought it was at the beginning of our story. That’s a big, existential question that they’re all wrestling with in the final season of the show.”

“It’s always been a show about having the right idea at the right time, and our characters’ failure to do that at certain moments,” Rogers adds. “That’s usually true in the business story, but I think it can also be true in the personal story.” This attempt at a relationship is only Joe and Cameron’s latest, and it remains to be seen whether conditions are finally right for things to work out this time around; Gordon and Donna figured out their issues only after they split up—though, as some excellent sparring scenes remind us, just because a divorce is amicable doesn’t mean it’s conflict-free.

In a way, it’s essential for Halt to work so well as personal drama because we already know how the the tech side of it ends. While the Halt crew lives in a world where Silicon Valley is a wide-open landscape, we live in a world where Google exists, and neither Joe MacMillan nor Donna Clark created it. Sometimes, Halt addresses this fact head-on; Cameron is dismayed to see gaming drift inexorably toward ultra-gory first-person shooters and away from the cerebral journeys she loves. But when I ask Cantwell whether the show has some tragic undertones, he pushes back: “I think there’s something interesting in American culture where we have a very black-and-white view of the term ‘loser,’” he observes. “We know that our characters are not going to be the ones with the Wikipedia articles written about them, but what’s fun about our story is, we can somehow still get excited about their excitement, because they’re in the fog of war and they don’t know what’s coming. I think there’s a beautiful parallel to their personal lives, and a person’s personal searches as well. We just don’t know, and as much as you think you know where it’s headed, you don’t.”

Halt and Catch Fire may be a show about tech, but it’s a show that uses tech first and foremost as a backdrop to and conduit for its characters’ universal struggles. You don’t need to understand ISPs or search algorithms to understand the impulse to perfect something before someone else gets there first, or see the difficulty in negotiating boundaries with an ex. As fitting as the Mad Men comparisons may be, Halt’s characters don’t speak in grand metaphors for the soul of America. They’re speaking as people, and in terms it’s possible for anyone to engage with. “Every season of this show has been a little less about technology, on the pie graph of what it’s about,” Rogers says. “That’s to its benefit.”

[sunbedo]

Having a reorganizing/arranging day for my collection, wanted to show some of my favorite art from cards that ive gotten recently :3

[spotsupstuff]

I feel so bad for zephyr, what are some of her happiest memories? Would it be first meeting the members of her local group? I assume they would be built after her, was she excited about them being built or was she not informed at all?

she wouldn't be very... Present. most likely hadn't managed to be there for every Iterator when they first came online. she is very removed from most of her group because she's unable to stick in the chats for too long with all the damage and her endless attempts to conserve herself as much as possible, so her interactions with others outside of the Anemoi (and this one guy called Orion's Pathway) are extremely limited

Boreas, though, ever the life-saver, updates her on any new Iterator projects being build, how are the already existing ones doing- see she is kind of hard to cheer up and as a rule she never really laughs, but oh hearing about successes of others always manages to make her happy. that has been a thing for her since day one!

so Boreas would make a list of the Eo group's achievements with Euros and Orion's help and he'd read them out for her during their routine calls. those calls are probably one of her happiest memories, since she got so much serotonin and motivation out of hearing about her family (n also just in general- their start might've been rocky but Zeph n B really really love each other [platonically ofc])

they might not Know her, only be aware that their senior is called Abet Zephyr and her appearances are strangely rare, but she loves them all. if she hadn't, it wouldn't be called Mission Self-preservation. it'd be way more revenge focused. her number one priority is the safety of her family even if she doesn't know them personally. she puts them above her anger, physical and emotional trauma cuz she just fuckin loves them that much

her other happy memories include some stuff with Sparrows! after Zephyr allows her opinion about the Ancients develop, she finds herself glad whenever Sparrows would show up to do some more repairs and spend some time with the old humidifier. jgklsdmclk just like with a grandma, Sparrows would show her some stuff on her phone/Mechanic's watch and Zeph would be confused about it but she gets to spend the time with someone she likes so it's okay

along with Euros on a call the three of them would sing folk songs from Sparrows' home with Boreas usually listening in, very rarely joining in

Zephyr wasn't given overseers until Sparrows showed up for the first time, too, so when she synced with the eyes and took a peak outside for the first time in her life, that was... that stuck with her as a strong memory, too. can't exactly say it was a Happy memory, but only cuz there was so much happening in her emotionally in that moment that simplifying it to a singular one wouldn't really represent it right

here's her lighting up while Boreas tells her about positive recent events of the group

her antennas are broken- that's why they are always down like that- but Dammit she is Happy we Gotta wiggle 'em at least a wee bit