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aestivalis) wrote2023-05-19 09:50 pm
aestivalis) wrote2023-05-19 09:50 pm
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Michael's Right to Remain Wrong
I was looking at track names from the LOST OST, as I often use OST tracks or episode titles when choosing keywords for my icons. Although there is probably some risk of spoilers and I ergo shouldn't go reading too closely, it turns out that the LOST soundtrack has some remarkable track names. Some personal highlights include 'World's Worst Landscaping', 'Jintimidating Bernard', 'Early Mourning Mystery' (what a title!), 'Death Springs Eternal', 'Sayid After Dentist' (??), and 'Kate Flashes Jack' (?!?!). I love how tasteless some of them are as well. 'Boonearal' and 'Shannonigans' are honestly outrageous. 'Just Another Day On The Beach' as the first track for the episode 'The Other 48 Days' is disgusting behaviour.
So, did you know I have been watching extremely current and trendy hit television series LOST? When it was first airing in the UK back in mumble mumble fucking 2004 I was in college and still living at home. My mother and I watched series one together! Then I started university, and being away from home sort of changed the experience and I idled out early on in season two. It just wasn't the same without mather!
However, it is now 2023 and I live over 3000 miles away from my family (oops). Life in Canada has been and continues to be very wonderful! But fits of homesick melancholy inevitably occur, and one such incident led me to picking up LOST once more. And now here I am, two seasons completed and... god, what, four to go? This is so much television. I do not usually watch live-action television! I don't even watch that much animation, honestly! I could be playing so many video games and yet here I am, letting JJ bastard Abrams take me on another wild ride that I'm sure is going to end in a whimper instead of a bang.
I say that with no particular knowledge of how LOST ends except for a vague sense that it was unpopular at the time. That could mean anything from 'none of the mysteries are solved, the budget disappears, and vincent the dog is killed on-screen', to 'kate ends up with X instead of Y so show bad'. Like, I have no idea. But I do have much suspicion when it comes to Mr. Abrams, and yet here I am. Running this risk. Opening my heart to the madness.
Two seasons down, there's a lot I could say! To try and help that along a bit, the first thing I've done is complete a Character Sorter. Now I can scientifically saymichael is my favourite how I feel about each character in relation to each other! Head below the cut to see more of this perfect flawless system and discover who my favourite character is!
Not the most high-quality image in the world, but I trust you will forgive me. And look! Michael is actually joint favourite! I also love... Son of Michael! And honestly it really is true, I remembered going in that I really enjoyed the simple power of Michael and Walt's storyline, but even so I couldn't quite have guessed how much they would end up eclipsing everything else for me personally. WHICH HAS WORKED OUT SUPER GREAT, yeah.
I wonder if we're going to revisit the mysteries that surround Walt in particular. The Others sure did want him right up until they super didn't. Are we going to learn more about that? What tests were they making him do? What was that room he was afraid to go back to? What did they mean when they probed Michael about things like Walt 'appearing in different places' or whatever? We know Walt has some unspecified Powers, but what are they? Is it incidental to the island, or related? Did the Others want him because of this "special" quality, and if so, what changed their minds? What made Walt too much for them to deal with? Also good for you, Walt, make them regret it baby.
But yeah, I don't know if Michael and/or Walt even show up again in the future. My tiny peeking at the OST would suggest we're going to hear at least something more of Michael, but one of the few long-term "spoilers" I knew going in is that Walt's young actor ages too fast for the timeframe of the show and he's subsequently written out. That would track with current events, so maybe we really do just never see them again, or perhaps only see them in cameo island visions or somesuch. My precious ones :( gone forever :(
I love me a good coward. I love me a character doing wretched things for wretched reasons. I love it when they know what they're doing is wrong and they hate it and hate themselves for it but they have no other choice (perceived or otherwise). I love guilt. I loved seeing Michael's face when characters around him were grieving, I loved it even more when characters were relieved and happy to see him and he knew better. Him reuniting with Sun and Jin was *chef's kiss*, and when he told them that Libby and Ana Lucia had been murdered I knew that poor bastard had cement running in his veins. Just that sick awful leaden feeling of being so far along that there's no other way left but forward. michael has never made a mistake in his life.
BUT HEY, back to the list! Putting aside Michael and Walt, we can see I have a lot left to look forward to. Such as my third favourite character *squints* uh, Danielle Rousseau. ah.
So that one kind of snuck up on me, but I love her. She's a mess, she's a dervish of grief and loneliness and suspicion, and she and sayid should maybe have done a couple of kisses by now, idk, I'm just saying ever since she tortured him and drugged him that time it's seemed like a good idea to me.
Aaaand then it's Jin and Sun making a weird Locke and Eko sandwich, apparently. Locke and Eko are a pair of weirdos, they belong together. And after that it's Riona's husband!
Jack's a character I seem to remember being pretty negative towards as a younger teen, very much dismissing him as the prototypical Hero Protagonist Guy and just not really having much time for him. Now that I'm revisiting, though, he's so so much messier than I remembered? Trying to help people becomes this severely maladaptive behaviour when you put it in Jack's hands. He can't let anything go. And he's kind of petty, and jealous? He's controllingly overprotective around Kate in a way that actually feels like an intended character flaw rather than someone's awkward idea of what male-female romance should look like? He's a mess! You're a mess, Jack. You're not quite as much of a mess as ur father, but you're a damn mess all the same. Good work, lad. Keep it up.
Everybody on the list who's numbered 28 is a character who I haven't met yet (or have forgotten? but hopefully haven't met yet). Charles Widmore has been in one flashback scene with Desmond so he gets the dubious 27th slot, but maybe we'll see more of him? A bit appalling that Tom Friendly ("that's the fake beard guy, right?") and Penny Widmore ("Desmond's love interest from his flashback who picked up the phone at the end of season two, huh") both placed higher than Sawyer. Also sad that poor Libby ended up below Sawyer, but she really just didn't work for me unfortunately. She has a lot of the same issues that I have with Hurley's character, but much much less screentime to devote to other aspects of her character and thus help me move beyond them.
She also feels like one of several female characters who became romantically involved with a male character just to fairly promptly killed off in order to motivate said male character. This is a pretty uncharitable read of Sayid/Shannon, to be fair, but they do seem to be part of a pattern. Sawyer/Ana Lucia felt most egregious, mostly because she banged him to get his gun (WHICH HE SOMEHOW DIDN'T SEE COMING??) but he still talked to Jack afterwards saying "you're the closest thing I have to a friend now she's gone" and it's like? my guy? you didn't like each other? you had sex one time, about five hours ago?? Show you can't trick me into suddenly thinking they were close and poor Sawyer is having a Sad Time now. He's allowed to be generically bummed out about someone he knows dying! You don't have to pretend they had an extra special connection because they boinked in close proximity to her death!
Or honestly, just play it that way and be done with it. It would make sense for him to feel weird and uncomfortable that they had angry jungle sex a few hours before she was murdered (with the gun she took from you after said jungle sex, even!). It makes a lot of sense to feel all kinds of weird after something like that! Why gloss over the perfectly valid reasons for Sawyer to have a particular reaction and instead have him lamenting his only friend dying. They didn't! like! each other!
I have spent too long talking about this. ANYWAY, LOST, you have fewer female characters than male characters as it is, please retain some for the next while. Also please do not introduce any more female characters, hook them up with current male characters, and then kill them off. Please especially do not do this with fucking Sawyer, I am begging you. I do not like his chances of ever going up in my estimations if you do this thing. (But we are likely fairly safe from that, because Jack/Kate/Sawyer has to continue being a thing.)
If you want to know more detailed feelings about any other characters and their placement on the list, please just ask! There is too much to say and I am hideous at structuring journal entries, so this is currently just a blathering mess. Like, I should probably talk about... the plot! Best or worst episodes! Theories! Hopes for the future! Which one of those 28th place characters is "Henry Gale", because I presume he's one of them and probably not Naomi or Juliet but all power to him if he is!
I also have a lot of thoughts about the show as a product of 2004, and how that relates to things like September 11 2001 and the subsequent War on Terror, but that's a whooole other conversation. It really is an interesting encapsulation of that particular era in culture, though! And on a similar but also wildly different note, we're probably going to have a season impacted by the 2007 writer's strike! How very topical! I remember the season of House that was similarly impacted and how you could really see how one particular plotline was super condensed as a result. I wonder if LOST will have something similar. I look forward to finding out!
For now, though, this is a long messy disjointed journal entry and I really want to go to bed, so I think I will wrap it here for now. WILL I RETURN WITH MORE THOUGHTS? Who knows! I still haven't finished talking about the fucking Ardyn DLC for crying out loud. I can not be trusted with anything.
So, did you know I have been watching extremely current and trendy hit television series LOST? When it was first airing in the UK back in mumble mumble fucking 2004 I was in college and still living at home. My mother and I watched series one together! Then I started university, and being away from home sort of changed the experience and I idled out early on in season two. It just wasn't the same without mather!
However, it is now 2023 and I live over 3000 miles away from my family (oops). Life in Canada has been and continues to be very wonderful! But fits of homesick melancholy inevitably occur, and one such incident led me to picking up LOST once more. And now here I am, two seasons completed and... god, what, four to go? This is so much television. I do not usually watch live-action television! I don't even watch that much animation, honestly! I could be playing so many video games and yet here I am, letting JJ bastard Abrams take me on another wild ride that I'm sure is going to end in a whimper instead of a bang.
I say that with no particular knowledge of how LOST ends except for a vague sense that it was unpopular at the time. That could mean anything from 'none of the mysteries are solved, the budget disappears, and vincent the dog is killed on-screen', to 'kate ends up with X instead of Y so show bad'. Like, I have no idea. But I do have much suspicion when it comes to Mr. Abrams, and yet here I am. Running this risk. Opening my heart to the madness.
Two seasons down, there's a lot I could say! To try and help that along a bit, the first thing I've done is complete a Character Sorter. Now I can scientifically say
Not the most high-quality image in the world, but I trust you will forgive me. And look! Michael is actually joint favourite! I also love... Son of Michael! And honestly it really is true, I remembered going in that I really enjoyed the simple power of Michael and Walt's storyline, but even so I couldn't quite have guessed how much they would end up eclipsing everything else for me personally. WHICH HAS WORKED OUT SUPER GREAT, yeah.
I wonder if we're going to revisit the mysteries that surround Walt in particular. The Others sure did want him right up until they super didn't. Are we going to learn more about that? What tests were they making him do? What was that room he was afraid to go back to? What did they mean when they probed Michael about things like Walt 'appearing in different places' or whatever? We know Walt has some unspecified Powers, but what are they? Is it incidental to the island, or related? Did the Others want him because of this "special" quality, and if so, what changed their minds? What made Walt too much for them to deal with? Also good for you, Walt, make them regret it baby.
But yeah, I don't know if Michael and/or Walt even show up again in the future. My tiny peeking at the OST would suggest we're going to hear at least something more of Michael, but one of the few long-term "spoilers" I knew going in is that Walt's young actor ages too fast for the timeframe of the show and he's subsequently written out. That would track with current events, so maybe we really do just never see them again, or perhaps only see them in cameo island visions or somesuch. My precious ones :( gone forever :(
I love me a good coward. I love me a character doing wretched things for wretched reasons. I love it when they know what they're doing is wrong and they hate it and hate themselves for it but they have no other choice (perceived or otherwise). I love guilt. I loved seeing Michael's face when characters around him were grieving, I loved it even more when characters were relieved and happy to see him and he knew better. Him reuniting with Sun and Jin was *chef's kiss*, and when he told them that Libby and Ana Lucia had been murdered I knew that poor bastard had cement running in his veins. Just that sick awful leaden feeling of being so far along that there's no other way left but forward. michael has never made a mistake in his life.
BUT HEY, back to the list! Putting aside Michael and Walt, we can see I have a lot left to look forward to. Such as my third favourite character *squints* uh, Danielle Rousseau. ah.
So that one kind of snuck up on me, but I love her. She's a mess, she's a dervish of grief and loneliness and suspicion, and she and sayid should maybe have done a couple of kisses by now, idk, I'm just saying ever since she tortured him and drugged him that time it's seemed like a good idea to me.
Aaaand then it's Jin and Sun making a weird Locke and Eko sandwich, apparently. Locke and Eko are a pair of weirdos, they belong together. And after that it's Riona's husband!
Jack's a character I seem to remember being pretty negative towards as a younger teen, very much dismissing him as the prototypical Hero Protagonist Guy and just not really having much time for him. Now that I'm revisiting, though, he's so so much messier than I remembered? Trying to help people becomes this severely maladaptive behaviour when you put it in Jack's hands. He can't let anything go. And he's kind of petty, and jealous? He's controllingly overprotective around Kate in a way that actually feels like an intended character flaw rather than someone's awkward idea of what male-female romance should look like? He's a mess! You're a mess, Jack. You're not quite as much of a mess as ur father, but you're a damn mess all the same. Good work, lad. Keep it up.
Everybody on the list who's numbered 28 is a character who I haven't met yet (or have forgotten? but hopefully haven't met yet). Charles Widmore has been in one flashback scene with Desmond so he gets the dubious 27th slot, but maybe we'll see more of him? A bit appalling that Tom Friendly ("that's the fake beard guy, right?") and Penny Widmore ("Desmond's love interest from his flashback who picked up the phone at the end of season two, huh") both placed higher than Sawyer. Also sad that poor Libby ended up below Sawyer, but she really just didn't work for me unfortunately. She has a lot of the same issues that I have with Hurley's character, but much much less screentime to devote to other aspects of her character and thus help me move beyond them.
She also feels like one of several female characters who became romantically involved with a male character just to fairly promptly killed off in order to motivate said male character. This is a pretty uncharitable read of Sayid/Shannon, to be fair, but they do seem to be part of a pattern. Sawyer/Ana Lucia felt most egregious, mostly because she banged him to get his gun (WHICH HE SOMEHOW DIDN'T SEE COMING??) but he still talked to Jack afterwards saying "you're the closest thing I have to a friend now she's gone" and it's like? my guy? you didn't like each other? you had sex one time, about five hours ago?? Show you can't trick me into suddenly thinking they were close and poor Sawyer is having a Sad Time now. He's allowed to be generically bummed out about someone he knows dying! You don't have to pretend they had an extra special connection because they boinked in close proximity to her death!
Or honestly, just play it that way and be done with it. It would make sense for him to feel weird and uncomfortable that they had angry jungle sex a few hours before she was murdered (with the gun she took from you after said jungle sex, even!). It makes a lot of sense to feel all kinds of weird after something like that! Why gloss over the perfectly valid reasons for Sawyer to have a particular reaction and instead have him lamenting his only friend dying. They didn't! like! each other!
I have spent too long talking about this. ANYWAY, LOST, you have fewer female characters than male characters as it is, please retain some for the next while. Also please do not introduce any more female characters, hook them up with current male characters, and then kill them off. Please especially do not do this with fucking Sawyer, I am begging you. I do not like his chances of ever going up in my estimations if you do this thing. (But we are likely fairly safe from that, because Jack/Kate/Sawyer has to continue being a thing.)
If you want to know more detailed feelings about any other characters and their placement on the list, please just ask! There is too much to say and I am hideous at structuring journal entries, so this is currently just a blathering mess. Like, I should probably talk about... the plot! Best or worst episodes! Theories! Hopes for the future! Which one of those 28th place characters is "Henry Gale", because I presume he's one of them and probably not Naomi or Juliet but all power to him if he is!
I also have a lot of thoughts about the show as a product of 2004, and how that relates to things like September 11 2001 and the subsequent War on Terror, but that's a whooole other conversation. It really is an interesting encapsulation of that particular era in culture, though! And on a similar but also wildly different note, we're probably going to have a season impacted by the 2007 writer's strike! How very topical! I remember the season of House that was similarly impacted and how you could really see how one particular plotline was super condensed as a result. I wonder if LOST will have something similar. I look forward to finding out!
For now, though, this is a long messy disjointed journal entry and I really want to go to bed, so I think I will wrap it here for now. WILL I RETURN WITH MORE THOUGHTS? Who knows! I still haven't finished talking about the fucking Ardyn DLC for crying out loud. I can not be trusted with anything.
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puts sawyer in the bin for you
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And you didn't even mention 'World's Worst Beach Party' or 'All's Forgiven... Except Charlie'! And 'Through the Locke-ing Glass', holy shit, I'm so pissed off. 'Benundrum'. 'C4-titude'. 'Sawyer Jones and the Temple of Boom'. I need to stop looking at these.
holy shit, I've just realised what the context must be for 'Kate Flashes Jack' and I am losing it
Rad detail about the score I just learnt, from a Hollywood Reporter article I'm not linking to because it contains spoilers: 'parts of the percussion sections of the Lost score were created using actual wreckage from the Oceanic airplane, salvaged after filming the pilot.'
OKAY, TIME TO READ PAST THE FIRST PARAGRAPH OF YOUR ENTRY
I remembered going in that I really enjoyed the simple power of Michael and Walt's storyline, but even so I couldn't quite have guessed how much they would end up eclipsing everything else for me personally. WHICH HAS WORKED OUT SUPER GREAT, yeah.
Oh noooooo! I never appreciated quite how fortunate I was to fixate on a character who was pretty much guaranteed to, you know, remain in the show.
I love guilt. I loved seeing Michael's face when characters around him were grieving, I loved it even more when characters were relieved and happy to see him and he knew better.
This was all agonising and great. I love this entire paragraph.
she and sayid should maybe have done a couple of kisses by now, idk
FUN FACT: the original script for 'Solitary' actually does call for Danielle to kiss Sayid while she has him strapped down, after Sayid tells her he lost Nadia:
ON ROUSSEAU, looking at him with empathy as her eyes well up. She reaches over and brushes her hand against his cheek [...] Then, inexplicably, she bends down and kisses him on the lips. Sayid reacts with wary surprise, as she sits up.
The actual filmed episode just replaces this with a lot of weird facestroking, which is also pretty good.
And after that it's Riona's husband!
I was so excited to see my husband (oh God no no no no don't marry me to him) in single digits. SCORE. He's such a mess and I love him.
he still talked to Jack afterwards saying "you're the closest thing I have to a friend now she's gone"
He actually says he's telling Jack they had sex 'because you're about the closest thing I've got to a friend, Doc, and because she's gone,' if that helps! I was reading it as 'she's dead, so I need to talk to a friend' rather than 'she's dead, so you're the next person down on the friendship list'.
Side note: I read 'he still talked to Jack afterwards saying "you're the closest thing I have to a friend now she's gone" and it's like? my guy? you didn't like each other? you had sex one time, about five hours ago??' and my mind briefly screeched to a halt to go 'Sawyer and Jack had sex??'
Your sad Michael icon is excellent, by the way, and I love how evocative the description is.
I really enjoyed this entire entry! (holy shit why is this comment so long)
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holy shit, I've just realised what the context must be for 'Kate Flashes Jack' and I am losing it
WHAT DOES THIS MEEEEAN.... some day. some day, I will know.
Also that detail about using wreckage for percussion is fantastic, I honestly love that!
I need to find a new character to fixate on, but honestly I have no idea who would even be a contender. I love Jin and Sun but I don't know if they've got anything very pressing for me to be entranced by. Pregnancy, even crazy pregnancy on a crazy magic island, isn't something I naturally relate to. Mr. Eko is weird and delightful, but also very difficult to get a complete read on as a character. Do like him, though... Honestly, though, it'll probably just be Rousseau. Gonna be constantly waiting for her next appearance, quietly vibrating in my seat every time something rustles in the jungle. (That's gonna be a lot of vibrating.)
I am VERY happy with this script detail you have provided! I think I prefer the weird facestroking if we're being completely honest. Chances are if they had done a kiss I would be much less into it. Instead we have the weird vague promise of a kiss that hasn't come to fruition. Who wouldn't prefer that?
I was so excited to see my husband (oh God no no no no don't marry me to him) in single digits.
SO I JUST FINISHED WATCHING S3E1 and my god, your favourite is a fucking disaster. In this journal entry I called Jack a mess but "not quite as much of a mess as ur father". NOPE, WRONG. Sorry Jack, but you're much messier. What an absolute disaster. Also I have no particular attachment to Daddy Shepshep, but I'm kind of heartbroken that Jack disrupted his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and attacked him and he fell off the wagon immediately afterwards. Like, I'm not sitting here hating Jack forever or anything, but I'm surprised to discover how devastated I am for Daddy Shepshep's sake. Addiction ain't no joke, baybee!
Absolutely infuriated at your completely accurate correction of my understanding of Sawyer and Jack's conversation post-Ana Lucia. I wasted so much energy and time in this journal entry on a misconception! There are so many other things I could have used all that indignant energy on!
Like, for example, how fucked it is that the Others made Kate wear that fucking sundress? I thought we were going somewhere way darker when they had her dress in such a particular outfit and told her "he's waiting", kjhkjds. Fortunately that is one direction this show has yet to go in! sweats uncomfortably...
ANYWAY, thank you for the long long comment! I will continue my very slow watch, and will continue to keep you informed!
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I support you and your tendency to fixate on characters who have a habit of vanishing for long stretches of episodes at a time. You're a stronger person than me.
SO I JUST FINISHED WATCHING S3E1 and my god, your favourite is a fucking disaster.
ONE OF MY FAVOURITE BITS OF BACKSTORY, what the fuck is wrong with this guy ♥
Jack disrupted his Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and attacked him and he fell off the wagon immediately afterwards.
Oh, man, somehow this hadn't occurred to me. Jack must blame himself for his father's death on so many different levels.
Like, for example, how fucked it is that the Others made Kate wear that fucking sundress? I thought we were going somewhere way darker when they had her dress in such a particular outfit and told her "he's waiting", kjhkjds.
IT WAS SO ALARMING. And then they made her do manual labour! In a sundress! Let the poor woman wear practical clothes!
Fortunately that is one direction this show has yet to go in! sweats uncomfortably...
I never really consciously thought about it, but Lost doesn't have anywhere near the level of sexual violence I'd have predicted from its air date and premise. I think the closest we get is Sawyer making Kate kiss him for information.