Jeff wrote:the_reverend wrote:
one lingering question that i hope to never have answered because i want to ponder it for eternity...if everyone in the Sideways world were the souls of the dead in OUR world, then who or what was David?
If you keep with that faulty premise, you will surely ponder that question for all time. I don't believe it's so that everyone in Sideways are souls of our world's dead.
I think one of the things that makes the entire mythology of LOST interesting is that the Sideways world, like the Island, is a puzzle of sorts. The Sideways world is a puzzle because it's a fabrication created by the souls of our world. The purpose of that fabrication is to give souls the set pieces and the resources they need to come to terms with their lives and let go. David wasn't anybody. I mean, maybe he was some real kid who needed to find a father who would open up to him, but it's just as likely that he was a mental creation of Jack's just to help him come to terms with his own relationship with his father. ("Christian Shepard?
Seriously?")
Remember, Side-Locke flat-out told Side-Jack, "You don't have a son."
So yeah, it's a game. LOST has been about games all along, from backgammon to golf to table tennis to I Never to Senet to the game of the Island. Sideways world was just another game with different rules than real-world rules or Island rules.
well, like i said, i DO want to ponder it for a long time. if it's just THEIR private purgatory, then who was "real" there? was Helen just a construct to help Locke? was Arzt close enough to anyone to actually be gathered there? were Keamy and Omar really there, and if you're an evil dick in Purgatory how fucked are you when you get killed there?
like i said...i like that there were no definitive answers about that. the ambiguity and ability to interpret and think about it are one of the treasures of this show for me.
and if you ever call one of my premises faulty again, i'll cut you!
acrouch wrote:If that's Boone's ideal community in the afterlife, he must not have had much else going on.
dude was running his mom's wedding company and pining for his step sister. i think it was pretty clear he didn't have much else going on before.
majcher wrote:the_reverend wrote:yeah, i really didn't need to see a montage of things going awry in the real world...i took them at the word that if the light goes out and the Island sinks, badness ensues. the fact that that was averted is, to my mind, a good thing. i didn't need to see the effects to believe that anymore than i'd need to see the initial stages of radioactive fallout to know that a character defusing a bomb is a GOOD thing.
That's because everybody is familiar with what happens when a bomb goes off. Things go boom, people die, shit gets fucked up. And if we care about the character defusing (or near) the bomb, yay, tension. (Contrast with a generic robot drone defusing a bomb out in the middle of nowhere. Who cares?) This is also why the Locke/Desmond/Rose/Bernard thing was a great moment; we've seen Smokey kill with his bare hands and slit throats, and we like R/B a lot, so, yay, tension. (Except we probably already knew that Desmond was going to be like, yeah, sure, whatever, but...)
With the light, we have no idea, except that someone who is thoroughly unreliable (a character? or the writers?) has said that "Bad Things happen" if it goes out. How? What? Just give us a tiny taste, bring us on board just a little. But, we've got nothing but the word of someone that may or may not know what they're talking about, with nothing to show us one way or the other. Like, take what happened to Sayid, say explicitly that's what happens when you lose the Light, you get all zombied out and casually evil, and let us extrapolate. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to have some kind of internal logic and effect on characters that we like to make us care. Maybe I just lack faith, but so many things felt so arbitrary throughout that you just kind of throw your hands up and go, okay, whatever, guys. Let us know when you're done shuffling all the pieces around randomly and decide to give us a story.
i guess some of it does come down to faith, whether you choose to believe in the consequences or not. i like the ambiguity of what happens when the light goes out (reality unravels? everyone drops dead? your soul dies and you just give in and start watching Two and a Half Men because nothing else is on? all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body blowing apart?), and i believe the characters who say "it would be bad." so i don't need to see the end result to believe it needs stopping. though personally i drew the conclusion you did, their souls die and they become zombified like Sayid (or like Sayid believed he was because everyone kept telling him he was).
in the short term, if you don't believe there was some cosmic catastrophe tied to it, then just think of it as Jack saving Desmond, Hurley, Ben, Rose, Bernard, any remaining Others and most importantly Vincent from being crushed and/or drowned.
Asaf wrote:the_reverend wrote:yeah, i really didn't need to see a montage of things going awry in the real world...i took them at the word that if the light goes out and the Island sinks, badness ensues. the fact that that was averted is, to my mind, a good thing. i didn't need to see the effects to believe that anymore than i'd need to see the initial stages of radioactive fallout to know that a character defusing a bomb is a GOOD thing.
Actually, I'm not sure that I'm on board with that. I know defusing a bomb is a good thing, because I have a frame of reference for the effects of a bomb. I do not have a frame of reference of the island starting to shake and all, especially when:
a) There has been a litany of things where people are still not sure of whether they were good or bad actions or good or bad consequences. Jack has been involved with most of them. We didn't know whether the list was a good or bad thing. I guess we now know it is good. Do we know that the island sinking is a good or bad thing? No, we don't, especially when:
b) The island is sunk in the sideways world and they seem to all be doing okay. Maybe the island should be sunk. Instead, the island is saved with Hurley now being the man in protection of the light, except that:
c) MiB/Smokey is dead. Who is he protecting the light from? Is there someone else who is going to take the place of MiB, the way someone took Jacob's place?
This is one of many questions that are the fabric of everything the mythology was built on that in a way tarnishes it for me. The island was so important, now I am not sure why.
well, we saw that the Source had a protector before MIB became Smokey, so while i think he was the most immediate threat at that time, his being dead doesn't remove the need for its protection. like the Mother said, men come and try to take more of it and that poses the risk of putting it out for good. so...
a) we saw that Jack was wrong about sending Desmond down there, but it was a necessary wrong to make Smokey vulnerable enough to take him out. we've seen this as a running theme, that wrong action taken can still lead to positive and even necessary results. Locke stops pushing the button, but it leads to having to use the failsafe thus stabilizing the energy. the Ajira flight allows Smokey to take Locke's form and finish off Jacob, but it also brings the Candidates back together to stop him. i think this follows along that path as well.
b) the Sideways world is a purgatory-like construct, so the same rules don't apply. the Island being sunk there isn't the same as it being sunk in the real world. my theory is that it's there because they know, subconsciously, that it SHOULD be there (which is why familiar landmarks still exist...foot of the statue, the barracks, etc.). but it lies beneath the waves because it's not an active part of that realm. at least that's my read on it.
c) ...um, i guess i already covered this at the beginning. lol!
Sweetness Prevails.
-the Reverend
