apocalypsos | (no subject)

Okay, look. I'd try to soften this down, but ... well, I'm not feeling very coherent about this subject right now. Just keep in mind that I love you all lots before I start, all right? *gives you a good cuddle for prep, 'cause you'll need it*

After Ana-Lucia appeared, everybody went all nuts like, "God, she's such a horrible bitch! She keeps beating up Sawyer! She's all tough and horrible! And look, she just shot Shannon! I don't even like Shannon, but what an awful character!" And there a few of us were, sitting off to the side saying, "Dude, what do you expect? If they dropped any more clues that these people have had it waaaaay worse than the Lostaways, we'd be waist deep in clue anvils."

I mean, it's not like I don't get why people wouldn't like her. I imagine that by Day 48, I'd want to kill her, too, if I were a Tailaway. You know, when I wasn't grateful at her for trying to save our collective asses.

Do I sound bitter? Well, okay, yeah, I feel a little bitter. It's been tough liking Ana-Lucia since she was introduced, because the majority of Lost fans think she's a stone-cold bitch just for the fun of it. Or at least that's the impression I've gotten from a lot of people I've seen. I can't remember one person saying before this week, "Well, I realize the Tailaways have been through a lot, and have had it ten times worse, and nearly all of them have died or been abducted by the Others, but why does she have to be so mean?

And let's not even start discussing why it's completely terrible for her to hit Sawyer, but I haven't seen one person call Mr. Eko on whacking all three of our guys over the heads with a tree branch bigger than both of my wrists put together. So he can hit the Lostaways but she can't because it makes her a bitch. (It's the same reason I got pissed when Sawyer got lauded by fans for acting like an asshole, but the same behavior got Shannon dumped into the "most hated character" bin a lot. This fandom will tear female characters to shreds for the same shit the male characters can pull off, and while the female characters on this show are not written as well as they should be a lot of time ... bitch, please. I have a lot of problems with the show itself, but that's the one thing I truly dislike about Lost fandom. The double standards in this fandom piss me right the hell off.)

Also, she's hit Sawyer and next week she's going after Sayid. Yes, it's awful. Whyever would she hit the ~~very, very pretty~~ big men who come at her or threaten her?

Oh, and God forbid they should leave Sawyer behind when he passes out. It's a perfectly good idea to carry along dead weight when people are in the jungle chasing and trying to KILL YOU.

Again ... bitter? Moi?

Yes, I am. I'm loads bitter. I'm sorry, but ... yeah.

(In a Katred tangent, I can't believe we've been off watching Kate bat her eyelashes at anything in boxers and cry over a toy airplane when we could have been watching Ana-Lucia. It would just be me and three or four other people who don't completely hate her watching THAT show, but still.)

Like I said, I understand where people are coming from, I do. And I'm not trying to start a fight. People like whom they want to like, and I understand that the same way I manage to wrap my brain around the fact that there are people who like Kate. I think she's a vast pile of suck, but to each his own. It's not the dislike that bugs me (okay, it is a little of the dislike, because this is honestly the closest on the island we've gotten to a Sarah Connor replica, with the exception of Danielle, who's only three or four hot showers away from being pretty much a Sarah clone with a French accent), it's the dislike about why she's being a bitch. Because ... hello? *points* That's why she's a bitch.

Look, I have respect for not liking Ana-Lucia. Don't like her. I'm not asking anybody to. But after tonight, I just don't get how anyone cannot understand how she got to the point that she's at when she shoots Shannon. I'm just asking people to understand where she's coming from when she hits Sawyer's injured shoulder and bosses everybody around. As far as the Tailaways can tell, until they can see better proof, Jin, Michael and Sawyer are all members of the Others or at the very least under suspicion. (For God's sake, Sawyer has a gunshot wound and Jin is wearing a handcuff -- would YOU trust them?) Compared to what the Tailaways have gone through, the Lostaways have been having a fucking picnic. All those arguments I made last season about how they needed to train more people to fish and hunt and maybe build some shelters seem stupid now, because the Tailaways have had it a million times worse.

They haven't been off getting laid and eating fake peanut butter and kissing Sawyer and playing golf. They've been dying, for Christ's sake. They've been hunted.

And of course the Others would start with the infiltration of the Tailaways. There are fewer of them, and it's easier to take a little over twenty than it is to take down nearly fifty. Goodwin's words -- "They were good people" -- are pretty frightening, too. That could go two ways -- they're either good people in general (which would explain on the other side of the island why only Claire and Walt have been abducted so far -- she has no real deep dark secrets unless you count the adoption, and Walt is just a child, bratty though he can be at times) or that they're good FOR something. He said that thing about the guys that they took the first night being big guys, strong guys, and maybe that's why they were taken. I'm not sure if I believe that, since Nathan wasn't abducted and he looked pretty healthy to me.

I'm leaning more towards it being a combination of both. And here's the thing that gets me about Walt and Claire's disappearances. Claire came back after her abduction with no memory of where she had been or anything after the crash. And Walt (who Harold Perrineau has said in an interview somewhere definitely has powers) has been appearing at least to Shannon, and presumably that last time to Sayid. (I've seen people say it was a dream and Sayid faked seeing him to pacify Shannon, which ... yeah, safe to say I don't believe that.) So let's look at the progression:

-- You get taken by the Others.
-- They do something to you, and you forget everything after you get to the island. (And possibly from before the island, and your long-term memory comes back first after a separation.)
-- You stay with the Others and don't willingly leave anytime soon. (It certainly appears that way, since both Goodwin and Ethan seemed to have spent a lot of time on that island beforehand.)

I'm not sure anymore of this preternaturally strong stuff about Ethan, since I'm starting to think it would have been an easier explanation for more of the Others to just hide in the jungle and help him carry Charlie and Claire away. Not that I don't think he was at his physical peak -- say what you will about the Others and their state of mind, but their bodies appear to be in perfect condition. You know, aside from the hygiene.

I don't think Claire escaped anymore so much as she made a wrong turn away from her "new tribe" (if you want to put it that way) and ended up running right into the Lostaways again. Maybe it's some sort of shot they give you to forget, or something else ... I don't know. But I think that as long as you're with them for the first part of the transition, whatever the transition is, you don't even remember there ARE other people on the island, just this new "family" of yours. After a while, it's ingrained in you, and you become like Goodwin and Ethan -- all gung-ho about the joy of being with the Others like joining a strangely successful cult.

Going back to Walt, I think if that theory were correct, he's still in the middle of the transition phase, whatever it is. And while I'm not sure that he's doing it consciously or not (he's never overtly made anything happen on his own, like forcing something to happen and knowing he was doing it, so I think he may be succumbing), I do believe that he's broadcasting these signals to the Lostaways to try and help them. He's only got one connection to the Lostaways through Vincent, and through Vincent, he can get to Shannon, like a game of Hot Potato. This is what makes me think part of him is doing this on purpose, because if he were going for the closest link to him subconsciously, he'd go through Michael, who as far as he knows is still out in the middle of the ocean and hasn't been seeing him.

Is it a stretch? Well, yeah, but that's what half of theorizing about this shit involves, right? ;)

In happier news ... BERNARD!!! I love him. Let's make Bernard and Rose the show mascots. Rose can be all maternal and sweet and Bernard can trail after her like a lovesick puppy and I will LOVE IT ALL HARDCORE. I need to write Bernard/Rose fanfic yesterday. I just need to catch up on everything we know about them so far. (The only time I have ever slightly not liked Yunjin Kim was in a recent interview -- I think with E!'s Kristin -- where she said that the fans really want Sun and Jin to reunite because they're the only married couple on the island, and I love those crazy kids, but NONONO. BERNARD/ROSE!!! Squee! Also, I wanted to punch one of the local morning DJs in the face the morning after "Everybody Loves Hugo" because He Who Claims To Be A HUUUUGE Lost Fan said on the radio that Rose had never been on the show before and "now the castaways have a black woman washing their laundry." Catch up, fucker, and stop being so freakin' stupid. GRRR.)