LOST, NOOOO
THE FINALE
WHAT
Black-shirt man is Smokey, Smokey is non-Locke ("you found your loophole"), dead Locke is dead as a doornail, OHSHIT BEN NO DON'T DO THAT, Smokey has been trying to kill Jacob for ages, "the Island" may or may not have its own consciousness - all the "will of the Island" stuff has been either J or S, Jacob may or may not be dead (could pull a Jesus). Seems like the faceoff between Jacob and Smokey has been favoring Jacob for a long time, but now Smokey's pulled into a late lead. Who healed Baby Ben in the Temple, Jacob or Smokey? Ben doesn't even know. Maybe it was Jacob. THAT would be interesting.
Day-um, Lost.
Poor Ben. I feel really bad for him now. I mean, I've felt bad for him before, but it was always tempered by the fact that he's a mass-murdering megalomaniac who can take care of himself, so he didn't need mine or anyone's pity. But now I actually pity him and it really seems like he's become helpless against the manipulations of others. Real Locke, had he come back to life, may have been furious with Ben and tried to kill him - but that would have been less cruel, to be honest, than what SmokeyLocke has been doing to him.
I called Locke not actually being resurrected, but I didn't call his body being in the box until they did that tracking shot over the lid of the box - even though they didn't show what was inside at that moment, that was the exact same shot as the one over the lid of Locke's coffin in L.A.
Terry O'Quinn has a very strange job. He can now officially say that his character has been killed off... but he's still just hangin' around. Being dead.
I'm still not even sure who the major character death was. There were supposed to be two offed-for-real, Charlie-like deaths: "one major and one majorish." The majorish was definitely Daniel. He is undoubtedly dead, we even got the old standby symbolism of dying with his eyes open, as many, many characters have on Lost. :( The major, though? I was under the impression that their definition of "major" was that an original cast member would die. But then, Juliet has been on for longer than the freighter people and has had more flashbacks, so she could be considered as major as Ben, who was introduced in the same general arc, and Ben is definitely MAJOR, despite not being an original cast member. So... they were never very clear about who the death was. It could have been Locke: even though he was killed ages ago, we've been thinking he was alive ever since then, but this episode contained the big revelation that he's been dead the whole time. Does that count? Because his is the only dead-as-a-doornail death I saw in this episode. Then there's Sayid: a gut shot seemed to kill Daniel in about 15 seconds flat, but I guess Sayid's guts are made of stronger stuff? He was still bleeding all over the van when we last saw him, and no one seemed to think he would make it, but hey, Losties have survived worse (lookin' at you, harpooned!Mikahil and spine-knifed!Naomi). And then there's Juliet (JULIEEEEEET, NOOOOO), the BEST FEMALE CHARACTER ON THE SHOW DAMN IT NOW THERE'S NO ONE TO MITIGATE THE DISASTER THAT IS KATE, who.... uh. Well. Blew up a nuclear bomb right next to her head. Which seems pretty final, except for the fact that, A) yes, that counts as her definite death, but it is also the definite death of everyone else on the island, because hello, H-BOMB, or B) she was still alive - if Daniel's theory was correct, the bomb would cause the time loop to be broken or some shit - so technically no one died because the show never happened, or C) if the bomb kicks the Losties forward into the few-chah, why wouldn't it kick forward everyone who was still alive? Unless it's only kicking forward the people who Jacob visited in the past and touched - is that a hint as to who lives and who isn't under Jacob's protection? Juliet's flashback was the only one without a visit from Jacob, so I guess she hasn't been granted the superpower to survive cast cullings like everyone else he visited.
There are just too many contingencies to say for sure what the hell happened in that episode. As much as I don't want it to be true, the realist in me expects that Juliet was the death the spoilers were talking about; she won't be kicked to the future. Which is just NOT FAIR. Someone needs to shoot Kate SO BAD, and Sawyer needed to beat Jack's skull in with that tree branch. I am seething over the fact that they killed off the best female character they've EVER had on the show, and as much as I like the guys, it really is a sausage-fest. Are there even any women left? Rose is content to hang out being a cancer-free hippie with Bernard, Kate doesn't even count as a human being much less a woman (DEAD TO ME), Claire is chillin' with Smokey in the land of the undead (DEAD FOR REAL), all the other chicks are looong dead (not that I ever missed you, Shannon and Ana-Lucia - plz stay dead), Sun is still alive but being extremely useless (she hasn't done anything but ask expository questions since decking Ben with a paddle that one time - what happened to your motivation, Sun?). Strangely, I am beginning to like Ilana. I hope she sticks around. Her breathy voice irritated me when she first showed up seeming like Ana-Lucia V2.0, being mysterious and useless, but she grew on me as they integrated her more into the mystery. And this last episode has really grabbed me: what happened with the bandages on her face? How does she know Jacob? Basically, what the hell? Answers, I need them!
So. Perception. I've heard some really interesting theories flying around, especially this season, about how some of the small inconsistencies may actually be a subtle clue to the viewers that whatever we see on the screen is what the character currently in charge of the POV is seeing, regardless of whether or not it's true. And there have been several instances to support that, the most glaring of which was the magically non-fatal bullet to the heart that Sayid shot at Baby Ben. At the end of He's Our You, Sayid clearly shoot BB Ben directly in the left side of his chest. In the first few minutes of the next episode, Jin finds BB Ben and rolls him over, only to see a gunshot wound in the right side of his chest - on the other side of his hoodie zipper and everything. The implication being that Sayid saw what he wanted to see - some part of him that still had reservations about killing a child made him miss, and made him too horrified and ashamed to stick around and put a couple more holes in Ben's head to confirm the kill (like a good assassin would), but because he wanted so badly to kill Ben, in his rage and delirium he SAW a fatal gunshot wound. Seeing that the first shot was enough to kill, Sayid felt justified in running away from the scene as soon as possible, so he wouldn't have to keep looking at what he'd done. But of course his perception was skewed because his mind was in an altered state - Jin saw the nonfatal wound, the real wound, because Jin was seeing clearly at the time. So that's one example. Last night I noticed a couple more small things that might be chalked up to the perception theory, including one tiny inconsistency: that when Jacob calls out to Jack, from Jack's POV, he's holding out two candy bars. Because it makes sense that someone would use the vending machine for himself and get both the bar Jack wanted and a new one, right? But when the shot switches to Jacob's POV, he's only holding out one bar. Because Jacob got the bar Jack ordered out of the machine without making noise, without getting one for himself, because the entire point of the contact was to attract Jack's attention and touch his hand, conveying some sort of protection onto Jack. So Jack saw what he wanted to see: a logical reason for a stranger to make contact with him, a reason for the contact to be normal, random, not premeditated or focused specifically on Jack. And Jacob saw the reality: Jacob's focused intention towards making contact with Jack alone.
I like the perception theory, and while I don't think it's an explanation for the whole show, I do think it's a reasonable explanation for some small inconsistencies. It's a neat little visual cue that helps the viewers understand the motivations and mindsets of the characters in certain situations.
Quitting about Lost. I could go on, but I'll spare you.
It's about that time again - beginning of summer means time to start crafting, sewing and planning costumes for this fall's DragonCon. :D As usual I have way too many options, but here's what I'm looking at for this year:
I dearly love this costume and the book it's from, so I want to wear it again even though I wore it one year and NO ONE, out of 45K+ people, got what it was. Alas. But you know what, screw you guys, Sabriel is the coolest.
As usual, when trying to come up with a new costume to do, one of the first things I think is, "Can I do something from X show/book/whatever I'm currently obsessed with?" That's how I ended up with hellhound-chewtoy!Dean for Halloween, which is still a viable costume, but I don't think a flannel shirt and work boots are gonna happen in Atlanta in August, kthx. So, of course, I decided to do a pretty easy and imminently recognizable costume from Lost (I would have gone for something a little more suited to how I look IRL, but unless I wore a Dharma jumpsuit, Lost doesn't have that many recognizable costumes, just ordinary clothes):
All I need is an orange polo shirt, I have everything else. I get to use my mad stage makeup skills to recreate Benry's ever-evolving series of lumps, cuts and bruises on his face. Poor Michael Emerson, never a single day out of the makeup chair, always drenched in fake blood. At least Jack got more drenched in blood than Ben did in the finale. XD
My only sewing-heavy costume plan is this:
It's a random woman of Rohan from Lord of the Rings. All three female friends of mine who are going to D*Con with me in the fall are going to be other women of LotR, so we'll be a matching set. kiyou_hime is going to be an Entwife, cantatedomino is going to be either white dress or shieldmaiden Eowyn, and Lizzie is thinking about being Goldberry. I just love the look of the Rohirrim costumes and they seemed the easiest to make, so I'm going with that. Plus, I already have a brown cloak (made for the Fremen costume that never got done) and some Celtic-looking cloak clasps.
Those are the three FOR SURE costumes I'm making/taking.
I thought about this:
Because I love Donna to death and I love her outfit in this episode. But I did a little research and determined that no matter how I went about it, unless I spontaneously became a master beader and embroiderer and spent my every waking hour beading and embroidering a dress myself (no thanks), this costume would be prohibitively expensive to make or buy. So no.
And I only just got asked if I wanted to do a pair of Crowley and Aziraphale costumes with newtypeblue. It's a possibility, since that's more of an out-of-closet costume. I have a light-colored suit jacket from my Light (Death Note) costume, and I'll need khakis for the Henry Gale costume anyway. Or I think I could find a sweater-vest in the house to wear over a white button-down shirt. Either way. And I could carry a Bible or something. It's infinitely alterable because there's never been an official visual version of Aziraphale, only the book version.
My hair is just going to be inappropriate and I'm not going to do anything about it. For Henry and Aziraphale I'll just have it pulled back or clipped up. I partially wanted to do Donna because she's a redhead... but oh well. I don't want to do any of her costumes other than the flapper dress because they're too bland without a group to go with. I don't like wearing plainclothes costumes unless they're with a group or very recognizable on their own, like Henry Gale. If I'm going to a convention, I'm damn well going to be a no-holds-barred nerd and wear semi-medieval stuff like Sabriel and the Rohirrim outfit, or go ahead and do something as specific (if uncomfortable) as the Crow or Vash. I want to wear things I can't get away with wearing in everyday life.
I have so many ready-made costumes I could repeat, I really need to stop making new ones... but I just love costuming so much! I still have Scully, Hige, Vash, the Crow, Death (Sandman), Dean, Lady Door, Light, Witch Hunter Robin, Arthur Dent and probably a few others I'm forgetting all packed away in my room... so many conventions, so little money. :(
That's enough rambling for now. I have finish reading the Appendices to Lord of the Rings, which, strangely enough, I had never read before now. Bad fan, bad. No soup for you.
julieeeeeeeeeeeet,
-rave
ETA: I just remembered that I do have a khaki jumpsuit that I bought at Walls a few years ago because I thought that surely it could come in handy some day. (It was $2!) So the Dharma member costume is definitely a possibility. And I got Dad a Hydra station patch for a Christmas stocking-stuffer one year, so I could borrow that. :D
WHAT
Black-shirt man is Smokey, Smokey is non-Locke ("you found your loophole"), dead Locke is dead as a doornail, OHSHIT BEN NO DON'T DO THAT, Smokey has been trying to kill Jacob for ages, "the Island" may or may not have its own consciousness - all the "will of the Island" stuff has been either J or S, Jacob may or may not be dead (could pull a Jesus). Seems like the faceoff between Jacob and Smokey has been favoring Jacob for a long time, but now Smokey's pulled into a late lead. Who healed Baby Ben in the Temple, Jacob or Smokey? Ben doesn't even know. Maybe it was Jacob. THAT would be interesting.
Day-um, Lost.
Poor Ben. I feel really bad for him now. I mean, I've felt bad for him before, but it was always tempered by the fact that he's a mass-murdering megalomaniac who can take care of himself, so he didn't need mine or anyone's pity. But now I actually pity him and it really seems like he's become helpless against the manipulations of others. Real Locke, had he come back to life, may have been furious with Ben and tried to kill him - but that would have been less cruel, to be honest, than what SmokeyLocke has been doing to him.
I called Locke not actually being resurrected, but I didn't call his body being in the box until they did that tracking shot over the lid of the box - even though they didn't show what was inside at that moment, that was the exact same shot as the one over the lid of Locke's coffin in L.A.
Terry O'Quinn has a very strange job. He can now officially say that his character has been killed off... but he's still just hangin' around. Being dead.
I'm still not even sure who the major character death was. There were supposed to be two offed-for-real, Charlie-like deaths: "one major and one majorish." The majorish was definitely Daniel. He is undoubtedly dead, we even got the old standby symbolism of dying with his eyes open, as many, many characters have on Lost. :( The major, though? I was under the impression that their definition of "major" was that an original cast member would die. But then, Juliet has been on for longer than the freighter people and has had more flashbacks, so she could be considered as major as Ben, who was introduced in the same general arc, and Ben is definitely MAJOR, despite not being an original cast member. So... they were never very clear about who the death was. It could have been Locke: even though he was killed ages ago, we've been thinking he was alive ever since then, but this episode contained the big revelation that he's been dead the whole time. Does that count? Because his is the only dead-as-a-doornail death I saw in this episode. Then there's Sayid: a gut shot seemed to kill Daniel in about 15 seconds flat, but I guess Sayid's guts are made of stronger stuff? He was still bleeding all over the van when we last saw him, and no one seemed to think he would make it, but hey, Losties have survived worse (lookin' at you, harpooned!Mikahil and spine-knifed!Naomi). And then there's Juliet (JULIEEEEEET, NOOOOO), the BEST FEMALE CHARACTER ON THE SHOW DAMN IT NOW THERE'S NO ONE TO MITIGATE THE DISASTER THAT IS KATE, who.... uh. Well. Blew up a nuclear bomb right next to her head. Which seems pretty final, except for the fact that, A) yes, that counts as her definite death, but it is also the definite death of everyone else on the island, because hello, H-BOMB, or B) she was still alive - if Daniel's theory was correct, the bomb would cause the time loop to be broken or some shit - so technically no one died because the show never happened, or C) if the bomb kicks the Losties forward into the few-chah, why wouldn't it kick forward everyone who was still alive? Unless it's only kicking forward the people who Jacob visited in the past and touched - is that a hint as to who lives and who isn't under Jacob's protection? Juliet's flashback was the only one without a visit from Jacob, so I guess she hasn't been granted the superpower to survive cast cullings like everyone else he visited.
There are just too many contingencies to say for sure what the hell happened in that episode. As much as I don't want it to be true, the realist in me expects that Juliet was the death the spoilers were talking about; she won't be kicked to the future. Which is just NOT FAIR. Someone needs to shoot Kate SO BAD, and Sawyer needed to beat Jack's skull in with that tree branch. I am seething over the fact that they killed off the best female character they've EVER had on the show, and as much as I like the guys, it really is a sausage-fest. Are there even any women left? Rose is content to hang out being a cancer-free hippie with Bernard, Kate doesn't even count as a human being much less a woman (DEAD TO ME), Claire is chillin' with Smokey in the land of the undead (DEAD FOR REAL), all the other chicks are looong dead (not that I ever missed you, Shannon and Ana-Lucia - plz stay dead), Sun is still alive but being extremely useless (she hasn't done anything but ask expository questions since decking Ben with a paddle that one time - what happened to your motivation, Sun?). Strangely, I am beginning to like Ilana. I hope she sticks around. Her breathy voice irritated me when she first showed up seeming like Ana-Lucia V2.0, being mysterious and useless, but she grew on me as they integrated her more into the mystery. And this last episode has really grabbed me: what happened with the bandages on her face? How does she know Jacob? Basically, what the hell? Answers, I need them!
So. Perception. I've heard some really interesting theories flying around, especially this season, about how some of the small inconsistencies may actually be a subtle clue to the viewers that whatever we see on the screen is what the character currently in charge of the POV is seeing, regardless of whether or not it's true. And there have been several instances to support that, the most glaring of which was the magically non-fatal bullet to the heart that Sayid shot at Baby Ben. At the end of He's Our You, Sayid clearly shoot BB Ben directly in the left side of his chest. In the first few minutes of the next episode, Jin finds BB Ben and rolls him over, only to see a gunshot wound in the right side of his chest - on the other side of his hoodie zipper and everything. The implication being that Sayid saw what he wanted to see - some part of him that still had reservations about killing a child made him miss, and made him too horrified and ashamed to stick around and put a couple more holes in Ben's head to confirm the kill (like a good assassin would), but because he wanted so badly to kill Ben, in his rage and delirium he SAW a fatal gunshot wound. Seeing that the first shot was enough to kill, Sayid felt justified in running away from the scene as soon as possible, so he wouldn't have to keep looking at what he'd done. But of course his perception was skewed because his mind was in an altered state - Jin saw the nonfatal wound, the real wound, because Jin was seeing clearly at the time. So that's one example. Last night I noticed a couple more small things that might be chalked up to the perception theory, including one tiny inconsistency: that when Jacob calls out to Jack, from Jack's POV, he's holding out two candy bars. Because it makes sense that someone would use the vending machine for himself and get both the bar Jack wanted and a new one, right? But when the shot switches to Jacob's POV, he's only holding out one bar. Because Jacob got the bar Jack ordered out of the machine without making noise, without getting one for himself, because the entire point of the contact was to attract Jack's attention and touch his hand, conveying some sort of protection onto Jack. So Jack saw what he wanted to see: a logical reason for a stranger to make contact with him, a reason for the contact to be normal, random, not premeditated or focused specifically on Jack. And Jacob saw the reality: Jacob's focused intention towards making contact with Jack alone.
I like the perception theory, and while I don't think it's an explanation for the whole show, I do think it's a reasonable explanation for some small inconsistencies. It's a neat little visual cue that helps the viewers understand the motivations and mindsets of the characters in certain situations.
Quitting about Lost. I could go on, but I'll spare you.
It's about that time again - beginning of summer means time to start crafting, sewing and planning costumes for this fall's DragonCon. :D As usual I have way too many options, but here's what I'm looking at for this year:
I dearly love this costume and the book it's from, so I want to wear it again even though I wore it one year and NO ONE, out of 45K+ people, got what it was. Alas. But you know what, screw you guys, Sabriel is the coolest.
As usual, when trying to come up with a new costume to do, one of the first things I think is, "Can I do something from X show/book/whatever I'm currently obsessed with?" That's how I ended up with hellhound-chewtoy!Dean for Halloween, which is still a viable costume, but I don't think a flannel shirt and work boots are gonna happen in Atlanta in August, kthx. So, of course, I decided to do a pretty easy and imminently recognizable costume from Lost (I would have gone for something a little more suited to how I look IRL, but unless I wore a Dharma jumpsuit, Lost doesn't have that many recognizable costumes, just ordinary clothes):
All I need is an orange polo shirt, I have everything else. I get to use my mad stage makeup skills to recreate Benry's ever-evolving series of lumps, cuts and bruises on his face. Poor Michael Emerson, never a single day out of the makeup chair, always drenched in fake blood. At least Jack got more drenched in blood than Ben did in the finale. XD
My only sewing-heavy costume plan is this:
It's a random woman of Rohan from Lord of the Rings. All three female friends of mine who are going to D*Con with me in the fall are going to be other women of LotR, so we'll be a matching set. kiyou_hime is going to be an Entwife, cantatedomino is going to be either white dress or shieldmaiden Eowyn, and Lizzie is thinking about being Goldberry. I just love the look of the Rohirrim costumes and they seemed the easiest to make, so I'm going with that. Plus, I already have a brown cloak (made for the Fremen costume that never got done) and some Celtic-looking cloak clasps.
Those are the three FOR SURE costumes I'm making/taking.
I thought about this:
Because I love Donna to death and I love her outfit in this episode. But I did a little research and determined that no matter how I went about it, unless I spontaneously became a master beader and embroiderer and spent my every waking hour beading and embroidering a dress myself (no thanks), this costume would be prohibitively expensive to make or buy. So no.
And I only just got asked if I wanted to do a pair of Crowley and Aziraphale costumes with newtypeblue. It's a possibility, since that's more of an out-of-closet costume. I have a light-colored suit jacket from my Light (Death Note) costume, and I'll need khakis for the Henry Gale costume anyway. Or I think I could find a sweater-vest in the house to wear over a white button-down shirt. Either way. And I could carry a Bible or something. It's infinitely alterable because there's never been an official visual version of Aziraphale, only the book version.
My hair is just going to be inappropriate and I'm not going to do anything about it. For Henry and Aziraphale I'll just have it pulled back or clipped up. I partially wanted to do Donna because she's a redhead... but oh well. I don't want to do any of her costumes other than the flapper dress because they're too bland without a group to go with. I don't like wearing plainclothes costumes unless they're with a group or very recognizable on their own, like Henry Gale. If I'm going to a convention, I'm damn well going to be a no-holds-barred nerd and wear semi-medieval stuff like Sabriel and the Rohirrim outfit, or go ahead and do something as specific (if uncomfortable) as the Crow or Vash. I want to wear things I can't get away with wearing in everyday life.
I have so many ready-made costumes I could repeat, I really need to stop making new ones... but I just love costuming so much! I still have Scully, Hige, Vash, the Crow, Death (Sandman), Dean, Lady Door, Light, Witch Hunter Robin, Arthur Dent and probably a few others I'm forgetting all packed away in my room... so many conventions, so little money. :(
That's enough rambling for now. I have finish reading the Appendices to Lord of the Rings, which, strangely enough, I had never read before now. Bad fan, bad. No soup for you.
julieeeeeeeeeeeet,
-rave
ETA: I just remembered that I do have a khaki jumpsuit that I bought at Walls a few years ago because I thought that surely it could come in handy some day. (It was $2!) So the Dharma member costume is definitely a possibility. And I got Dad a Hydra station patch for a Christmas stocking-stuffer one year, so I could borrow that. :D