Earlier this morning we had a few WFTB tweeps had a Twittersation about Season 5 stuff. Click more to read the tweets, and comment in the comments. All comments are welcome, except spam which will be placed where there is gnashing of teeth.
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Tag Archives: Lost
RFC – LOST Shipping lanes
For all you non-nerds, RFC means Request For Comment.
Which leads me to a confession. I’m a 41 year old father of four. I have degrees in Computer Science (B.S.) and Information Technology Management (M.S.). I spent nine years in the Navy. With that back ground, I’m an expert at acronyms. I totally get those.
My problem is, I have two teenage daughters (okay, really one is 12, but still she ACTS all teenagerey) that are starting down the path to adulthood. Since starting WFTB I’ve noticed a few of my followers are of the same species of my daughters (teenaged girls). I’ve also noticed that they talk with a weird coded language at times and I need help. Please my role as a respected father is in your hands!
I need a crash course on Shipping, and by that I mean relationshipping. Namely how this whole shipping referencing works. You know, so I can be down with it, when I banter with my girls.
I get some references (Jate = Jack + Kate), but is there a rule or do you just make it up? Conventions? Does the male come first? (Sake = Sawyer + Kate??!)
If I try that with Jin and Sun: Ji(n) + (Su)n = Jin
That’s not really unique, should it be Jiun?
Rose and Bernard (Ronard? Bese? Bernase?)
What about Sawyer and Juliette? Sawette? Julyer?
Jack and Juliette? Jatte? Julck?
*sigh*
Help me out here folks, quick! Summer is here, and I’ll be spending time on the road with my daughters and I’ve gotta be able to relate!
Help me out in the comments.
Disclaimer: The above was written by a member of Team Edward – don’t hate.
John Locke black, white, or just an easy pawn
As part of the re-watching experience, one of the fascinating things to examine is the role of John Locke in the epic battle being waged. In the first few episodes, John Locke is portrayed as a mystical guru that is in tune with the island. He saves Jack from certain death falling off a cliff, coaches him towards leadership of the survivors. He sees Charlie’s battle with heroin addiction, and gives an impassioned speech about how the struggle makes one stronger like a moth coming out of a cocoon. Then we see a darker side of Locke, encouraging Sayid to torture Sawyer, indicting Sawyer as the saboteur of Sayid’s triangulation experiment.
Re-watching just shows how morally ambiguous they have portrayed Locke from the beginning. The episode Walkabout is revealing. Locke’s pre-island paralysis is hidden in plain site for all of the flashbacks, his ability to walk miraculous, his determination to become the hunter of the group fulfilling his preparation for a walkabout. The lead up to the final memorial scene is interesting. Just a few hours before, John Locke came face to face with the smoke monster. Then Jack sees his father disappear into a clearing, and after chasing after the white rabbit, finds Locke emerge from the brush covered with blood, hauling a dead boar.
There are several theories on the role of Locke, who is influencing him? How early? Is he dead from the beginning? Was he scanned by Smokie but allowed to live? Did he die from the first encounter and is possessed by Esau?
Here is a place to discuss and talk about the role/character of Locke. I think he is the key, not only in the struggle between Blackshirt(Esau) and Jacob. Let’s hear your theories.
The Twitter conversation that sparked this post is below the fold.
Lost in LOST
If you’ve read my blog at all in the last week, you’ll know I’m embarked on the ambitious project of re-watching all of the LOST episodes to date before the beginning of Season 6. So, please excuse me if I get a little (my daughter would say more than a little) obsessed with the topic of LOST.
The show itself is masterfully produced, the themes a seemingly endless maze of twisty little passages all the same. Going back to the beginning and re-watching it my thoughts return to what might be the best starting point for a potential möbius strip through time:
BLACKIE: I don’t have to ask. You brought them here. Still trying to prove me wrong, aren’t you?
JACOB: You are wrong.
BLACKIE: Am I? They come. They fight. They destroy. They corrupt. It always ends the same.
JACOB: It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.
This is the struggle where our beloved Oceanic survivors were plunged. I view this series through my series of lenses, part geek, part pop-culturist, part husband, part father… However, the over arching filter is that of my faith, and the more I watch the early episodes, the more I’m reminded of a passage from the bible:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. – Ephesians 6:12 (NIV)
We have been viewing the continuing drama from the eyes of men, and have allowed the hidden battle of two mystical opponents to be obscured by the characters we’ve grown to love. A struggle summed up by John Locke while explaining a game of backgammon to Walt in the series pilot.
LOCKE: Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Archeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand years old. That’s older than Jesus Christ.
WALT: Did they have dice and stuff?
LOCKE: [nods] Mhhm. But theirs weren’t made of plastic. Their dice were made of bones.
WALT: Cool.
LOCKE: Two players. Two sides. One is light … one is dark.
Seeing the characters from the beginning with that perspective shines new light on everything. Our characters, are they nothing more than pawns played against each other in an unseen game, where chance, choices are played along with strategy and foresight on behalf of higher powers? Is Locke’s guru like wisdom, as we observe early in the first season could colored by influences of one side versus the other? Do the manipulations of the various factions in the struggle effect the different passengers on the flight, and start to ripple outwards as we’re introduced to more of the inhabitants of the island?
Those questions along with others are worthy of inspection as we’re introduced again to Rousseau and Ethan, the mysterious, nameless whispers in the jungle, the shrouded others that plot against those plopped on the island by the coincidental fluke in the crash of Oceanic flight 815.
I’ll use this space to ramble more as I worry these thoughts in the back of my mind.
Namaste.
LOST_WFTB White Rabbit s1e5 Live Tweet
LOST_WFTB S1E5 White Rabbit Transcript (read from bottom up)
SO, What’s the POINT of LOST_WFTB?
Good question! Thanks, for asking it.
The point of LOST_WFTB is, of course to watch all of ABC’s stellar drama LOST from the very beginning. However, I’ve come to see a few more points that this group is fulfilling.
The next best thing to watching LOST, is talking about LOST. I won’t go into how much productivity gets lost on the morning after a show, because I think the relationships formed between fans is pretty important. All the blogs, message board, wikis, podcasts, and vlogs both by major media outlets (Doc Jensen’s Weekly EW column for instance) and by blogging hobbiest (me. and many many others in the long tail), testify there is something more to the experience of LOST than simply watching.
So that’s was the genus of the group, the beginning of the live tweets, (and oh, btw, did I mention the facebook group?) was to find ways to connect re-watching with fans, the normal people that watch the show.
Now, I need to walk down another point. Providing an opportunity for potential LOSTians to get connected. You know, those poor people that either haven’t watched, or got distracted along the way (I’m looking at YOU Season 3.) and want to get re-engaged in the LOST experience.
So, here I’m gonna put it in your hands. I’m re-watching (emphasis on the RE) all of LOST, and I’ve seen every episode, so my Live Tweets are gonna be a minefield for first time viewers. The challenge is to have one of you (looking at you @DieCer) to step up and have some kind of event to re-hash episode with first time watchers, or those distracted along the way. I’ll provide whatever help I can, and I promise to behave if I attend one of your events and not spoil everything.
As always the comments are open for you to tell me where I got it wrong.
Namaste.
LOST loses another viewer to CSI.
The Statue
Taweret or Sobek or combination of many? (I vote many/composite)
UPDATE: Aha! moment.
(disclaimer: probably too much analysis of this easter egg.)
Okay so what IF the statue is Taweret. I can live with that, with her linkage to fertility and the current lack thereof on the Island (and her current state of being… well she’s only a foot now)
What is Jacob embodies Sobek? From the wiki:
On occasion, later, rather than having a crocodile back, she was seen as having a separate, small crocodile resting on her back, which was thus interpreted as Sobek, the crocodile-god, and said to be her consort.
Why the quibble? Well because I really like this description of Sobek, vis-a-vis my pet theories of Jacob and his qualities (which admittedly could be all wrong).
Sobek’s ambiguous nature led some Egyptians to believe that he was a repairer of evil that had been done, rather than a force for good in itself, for example, going to Duat to restore damage done to the dead as a result of their form of death. He was also said to call on suitable gods and goddesses required for protecting people in situation, effectively having a more distant role, nudging things along, rather than taking an active part
bolding mine?
UPDATE teh second:
So presuming Taweret as statue and Jacob as Sobek analog, where does that put our friend black shirt. If he is the embodiment of Smokey (perhaps black shirt was actually a manifestation of Smokey, hmmm…) then where does his fit in this egyptian mythical love triangle. Back to the wiki entry for Taweret we read:
When paired with another deity, she became the demon-wife of Apep, the original god of evil. Since Apep was viewed as residing below the horizon, and only present at night, evil during the day then was envisaged as being a result of Taweret’s malfeasance
…
As the hippopotamus was associated with the Nile, these more positive ideas of Taweret allowed her to be seen as a goddess of the annual flooding of the Nile and the bountiful harvest that it brought. Ultimately, although only a household deity, since she was still considered the consort of Apep, Taweret was seen as one who protected against evil by restraining it.
Okay, so who is Apep?
In Egyptian mythology, Apep (also spelled Apepi, and Aapep, or Apophis in Greek) was an evil demon, the deification of darkness and chaos (isfet in Egyptian), and thus opponent of light and Ma’at (order/truth), whose existence was believed from the Middle Kingdom onwards.
…
As the personification of all that was evil, Apep was seen as a giant snake, crocodile, serpent, or in later years, in a few cases, as a dragon, leading to titles such as Serpent from the Nile, and Evil lizard.
As they say in the blogs, read the whole thing… So White/Jacob/Sobek vs. Black/Smokey/Apep vying for the affections of The Island/Taweret.
So what do you think, a grand unification theory of LOSTiness proportions or epic FAIL?
LOST – Watching from the Beginning
Okay, the final installment of season 5 Lost was awesome. I LOVED the opening scene with the dialog between Jacob and HeWhoShallNotBeNamed (Esau/Smokey/Blackshirt/Man #2).
I loved the final words between Ben and Jacob:
Ben, “What about me?”
Jacob, “What about you?”
The white flash can mean anything (like every other season finale we know nothing)
So instead of troubling myself on predictions and such. I’m going to review the whole series.
I did the math, 101 episodes roughly 260 days before season six kicks off. That’s an episode about every other day.
If you’ve been following me (@jstueve) on twitter, like @ccollinsmith, @ASHATL and others, this is old news. But if you’re just picking this up, or want to pitch in, I’ll keep this place as a holder.
We’ve loosely decided to to watch an episode every 48 hours. That might change as we go, but it does allow for wriggle room along the way. So for now here is the initial few episodes to watch.
This past weekend watch the pilot (S1E01-E02) not too late to catch up, its just two hours long, and still a wonderful two hours of television.
The schedule for the next couple of episodes are as follows:
- Today: S1E03 – Tabula Rasa
- Wednesday (May 29th) – Walkabout
I’ll post more blog posts about the schedule as we go along. Feel free to register and follow along, post theories, thoughts observations. Join us on Twitter with the hashtag #WFTB.
UPDATE: I hear that SciFi channel is re-airing season 1 episodes this week in the evening (@Yelwrose) so that might be a good place to get some episodes re-DVRd. Grab the box sets, or other alternative ways of getting the episodes and watch with us.
Lost – Crackpot Theories
We’re in la-la land in lost theorizing here. I think its important to separate two entities: Jacob and Island. Similar to the hieroglyph when Ben was being judged, there was a figure (Jacob) and the Smoke Monster (Island) always intertwined with each other.
The Island == Smokey boils down to this, the island can manifest itself as a projection after initial scan by cerebus/smokey. Locke was scanned, as was Eko and Ben. Eko’s projection was his brother Yemi, and Ben’s was his daughter Alex. Locke’s projection has been hidden from the viewers, but could be Christian. Weak point in this theory is Christian has been projected to other people besides Jack/Locke (also Sun and Frank). But I think the idea that Cerebus/Smokey is tied to an ancient manifestation of ‘The Island’ holds up through all episodes.
Jacob seems to be separate entity from the Island, and in my mind boils down to three possiblities: Jack, Locke, or no one.
Jacob::Jack – similar names, an interesting destiny if Jack ends up being at the bottom of all the time manipulation. If Jacob/Island have some mystical ties, then a manifestation of Christian makes a bit of sense, its Jacob using his significant person (i.e. Yemi, Alex) to project to important people to keep them on the past. Loopy, but not off the map with regards to Lost. At some point we need to be Jack back far enough in time to fill this role. The upcoming incident could toss Jack back far enough in time to be there to influence Richard in 1954. If the incident happens (and we know something happens pre-1980) tossing someone backwards could be the equal/opposite reaction to get people back in they’re correct time. Also those around Jacob are also those close to Jack: Christian and Claire. Could Rose and Bernard also be collected and protected by Jacob? (okay putting on the breaks here)
Jacob::Locke – The age long mystical connection of Locke with the Island has always been because Locke is Jacob. The moving of the pieces last episode could end up putting Locke in the same location as Jack’s emergent Hydrogen bomb, and the effects of the Incident could just as well pull Locke back in time distant enough to become Jacob in the past. This would be so Lostian to have present day Locke confronting himself in this seasons finale, and mirroring the foreshadowing of Locke uncloaking next to the fire. It’s a cliché for certain, so it might be one big writer head fake to go down this rabbit hole.
Jacob::No one – This one is emergent in my mind after last night’s episode and the collusion between Richard and Ben. Remember Richard was Ben’s first connection to the Others/Hostiles. Also Richard played the ‘Jacob’ card with Charles Widmore more than once in the past. So this requires Richard to be back far enough in time (Black Rock Sailor) to tap into the island’s healing power and survive long enough to always have an influence over various power brokers on the island over time. Which I could foresee as a couple of Richard-centric episodes that track this manipulation with Ben coming alongside Richard and playing ‘the Man Behind the Curtain’ (an old Ben centric episode that just BEGS to be rewatched now).
I find that its important to match theories against how the writers/producers have told the story up til now, the time-shifting has always been a part of the storytelling, so to have it cease at the end of this season would be uncharacteristic. So I think we’ll get even more intertwined into the time shifting story, and maybe this finale will break off some of the characters that are chaff to the main storyline. I don’t think the ‘plane landing safely in Los Angeles’ angle is going to play out.