(no subject)
Back in January, a friend told me that the charity Cancer Gets Lost had a project for the 20th anniversary of Lost this year where they were soliciting essays about what Lost had meant to fans. I ended up writing something, and submitted, and was accepted.
They had asked that the essays not be published anywhere, but they also said that they would provide contributor's copies and then reneged on that, so I just waited til the auction was over and purchasers received the books so they would get the opportunity at the first read. Also, my essay is about you guys so I wanted to post it. Even though it feels really personal and that makes me feel very nervous.
The Place We Made
As a TV show, Lost itself - the characters, the twists - was an iconic, groundbreaking masterpiece.
Lost’s role in my life in inextricable from the friendships I formed with other fans, not once but twice. People who were like me, but also came from incredibly diverse backgrounds and experiences; who were decades older and younger; who lived halfway across the world or just up the road, all brought together by one thing we had in common. The island.
Writing has always been an important part of my life, and the way I’ve always engaged with media that I love has been through fanfiction. In 2004, around the time Lost premiered, I gave up on writing. I’d been trying to get published as an original fiction author for half my life, with nothing but rejection letters to show for it, and it was too hard to try any more, so I decided to quit.
But Lost captured my imagination. It didn’t take long for the characters to start having conversations in my head, weaving their way into plots. I started writing again.
In those days, a lot of fannish activity took place on Livejournal. It was a diary, but also a place to write reviews, react, have conversations - and read and write fanfic. I will never forget making my first Lost friend. She left a comment on one of my stories, and I left a comment on one of hers, and then we decided to be friends.
More friends followed. Within our group, close friendships formed that went beyond discussion and stories about our shared obsession.
About a year later, I met Allie, on Livejournal, through fanfiction. We clicked. Allie became my best friend, in real life, not only online. We talked almost every day, not just about Sawyer’s hair or what might be in the hatch, but our real lives, and our real problems and joys.
A lot of the best things in my life, Allie had a hand in. Which means that ultimately, they trace back to Lost.
I spent fourteen years with my other best friend, my cat, partly inspired by Allie and her eight cats. She called my cat her niece, as though we were sisters.
Allie found the small publisher that accepted my first novel, and she bought the champagne when the contract was signed. She encouraged me to write the next novel, which was also published (and might have been slightly Lost-inspired).
After awhile, hanging out online didn’t seem like enough. Allie invited a group of our Lost friends to get together in person, ten or so amazing women from all walks of life meeting up in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains. We spent plenty of time sitting around talking and writing. A day spent sightseeing at the Biltmore Mansion seemed to launch a thousand fic ideas.
Of course, we watched Lost, viewing the newest episode as it aired, crying together as we watched Charlie write “Not Penny’s Boat” on his hand, sacrificing himself.
We ended up calling that the Great Fangirl Gathering, and two more large gatherings were held in the years that followed. Smaller meet-ups also happened, wherever the roads of life took us all. Our friend Lou would host anyone willing to visit her beloved Quebec; a trip to Disneyland included dinner in LA with my first Lost friend; four of us met up in Portland to see Blake Bashoff (Karl) in the touring company of Spring Awakening.
The day of Lost’s finale, anticipating the start of the episode and the ending of that journey, in Livejournal posts everyone reflected on what the series had meant to us. It had become more than a show, more than an obsession, more than a way of life on our Wednesday nights and through the long hiatuses. It was about the people we met because of Lost and the relationships we formed. I wasn’t the only one who cried that day, wondering what would come next.
It was a beautiful surprise to find this echoed in the finale itself, that controversial ending where ultimately the series wasn’t about the island or the plot twists, not really, it was about the people and the relationships between the characters.
After Lost ended, the fandom slowed down. Our meeting place on Livejournal eroded, and most people moved on from the show, though many of us stayed in touch.
Allie and I remained good friends, though there were rough patches along the way. We watched other shows together, though it wasn’t quite the same. We both kept writing. She gave me advice I didn’t want to listen to, as I wrote two more failed novels that were rejected by my publisher. She started working on the book of her dreams, the one she was sure would lead to satisfying her dream of getting published herself.
Then Allie died.
I mostly lost touch with our old friends group after that. It was too hard to go on Facebook, to see her children, her husband, her family there.
I didn’t write anything for five years.
Life went on, as it does.
In January 2020, it became apparent that my mom’s memory problems were beyond those of normal aging. I made an emergency trip to go see her, to get power of attorney, to try to get things sorted out.
On the plane ride back, I started thinking about Lost. I thought about Sawyer, my favorite character, and I thought about the only time Sawyer was truly happy, which was when he was with Juliet.
I hadn’t watched anything Lost since it ended, but when I got home, I watched “LaFleur.” To see Sawyer happy, again, just for a little while.
And it helped.
So I didn’t stop there. I watched the rest of season five. My season six DVD set had never been opened. Ten years later, I finally unwrapped it and watched it again for the first time. Once it was finished, I watched season four, then three, then two, then one, moving back in time to the beginning, still thinking that at some point I would have had enough and stop.
Instead, when I finished season one, I went ahead and watched the entire series again, this time in the right order.
I was in love with Lost again.
The island gave me something else to think about. In the midst of navigating the changes to my family, in between my mother’s obsessively constant phone calls, I could daydream about the island.
Very quickly, the words came back to me, inspired by the characters I’d always loved, given new insight and perspective with the passage of time. I started writing again. It wasn’t enough to sit and watch. I needed to create something, to fill in the moments that had gone unexplored in canon. I could write about Sawyer and Juliet and everyone else being happy, and in that, I could be happy.
Posting fanfic for a show that ended ten years ago can be a little lonely. It felt a little like sending stories out into the void, uncertain whether anyone else was still out there. Even finding some readers on AO3 and trading comments, there wasn’t a community the way Livejournal had been.
I missed having people to share these rediscoveries with. As I rewatched, I went back to initial reaction posts and re-read comments and even old emails, to see what had stood out then compared to now, and revisit those conversations. Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like if Allie was still around, if I could send her links to videos with silly old interviews, or press photos, and drag her back in too. It made me miss my friend, and our community of fans.
But then things started to happen. I wasn’t the only person revisiting the island in the 2020s.
Two of my oldest friends from Livejournal rewatched, and came back, rediscovering not only the show but writing again, the same way I had. At the same time, new fans began to appear, watching for the first time as young adults or revisiting their childhood favorite years later with new perspective. It happened again. A new community began to form around love of Lost.
It turned into a Lost renaissance.
New writers and readers were drawn to fanfic, providing an audience, a reason to be creative, and inspiration. Tumblr became the new hangout, trading memes and discoveries. It’s not the same, but it doesn’t have to be -- twenty years have gone by. In ask boxes and private messages and chat platforms, real friendships formed, again.
I see my new friends finding each other. I love the idea that they could find their best friends, the people who they talk to every day, who inspire them, who may eventually change the path of their lives, the way the people I met while Lost was airing changed mine.
They inspire me, too. Two of my new friends read my old, out of print, published novel. They encouraged me to start thinking about it, again - writing original fiction and pursuing that long-abandoned dream.
There is a magic to the island. Some of it was recorded on film, words and performances that created the characters we love in their unique world. But the real magic is what happened after that, in living rooms and offices and the electronic glow of virtual spaces, bringing together people who otherwise never would have met. Gathering in, as Christian said to Jack, a place that we all made, together.
(end)
They had asked that the essays not be published anywhere, but they also said that they would provide contributor's copies and then reneged on that, so I just waited til the auction was over and purchasers received the books so they would get the opportunity at the first read. Also, my essay is about you guys so I wanted to post it. Even though it feels really personal and that makes me feel very nervous.
The Place We Made
As a TV show, Lost itself - the characters, the twists - was an iconic, groundbreaking masterpiece.
Lost’s role in my life in inextricable from the friendships I formed with other fans, not once but twice. People who were like me, but also came from incredibly diverse backgrounds and experiences; who were decades older and younger; who lived halfway across the world or just up the road, all brought together by one thing we had in common. The island.
Writing has always been an important part of my life, and the way I’ve always engaged with media that I love has been through fanfiction. In 2004, around the time Lost premiered, I gave up on writing. I’d been trying to get published as an original fiction author for half my life, with nothing but rejection letters to show for it, and it was too hard to try any more, so I decided to quit.
But Lost captured my imagination. It didn’t take long for the characters to start having conversations in my head, weaving their way into plots. I started writing again.
In those days, a lot of fannish activity took place on Livejournal. It was a diary, but also a place to write reviews, react, have conversations - and read and write fanfic. I will never forget making my first Lost friend. She left a comment on one of my stories, and I left a comment on one of hers, and then we decided to be friends.
More friends followed. Within our group, close friendships formed that went beyond discussion and stories about our shared obsession.
About a year later, I met Allie, on Livejournal, through fanfiction. We clicked. Allie became my best friend, in real life, not only online. We talked almost every day, not just about Sawyer’s hair or what might be in the hatch, but our real lives, and our real problems and joys.
A lot of the best things in my life, Allie had a hand in. Which means that ultimately, they trace back to Lost.
I spent fourteen years with my other best friend, my cat, partly inspired by Allie and her eight cats. She called my cat her niece, as though we were sisters.
Allie found the small publisher that accepted my first novel, and she bought the champagne when the contract was signed. She encouraged me to write the next novel, which was also published (and might have been slightly Lost-inspired).
After awhile, hanging out online didn’t seem like enough. Allie invited a group of our Lost friends to get together in person, ten or so amazing women from all walks of life meeting up in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains. We spent plenty of time sitting around talking and writing. A day spent sightseeing at the Biltmore Mansion seemed to launch a thousand fic ideas.
Of course, we watched Lost, viewing the newest episode as it aired, crying together as we watched Charlie write “Not Penny’s Boat” on his hand, sacrificing himself.
We ended up calling that the Great Fangirl Gathering, and two more large gatherings were held in the years that followed. Smaller meet-ups also happened, wherever the roads of life took us all. Our friend Lou would host anyone willing to visit her beloved Quebec; a trip to Disneyland included dinner in LA with my first Lost friend; four of us met up in Portland to see Blake Bashoff (Karl) in the touring company of Spring Awakening.
The day of Lost’s finale, anticipating the start of the episode and the ending of that journey, in Livejournal posts everyone reflected on what the series had meant to us. It had become more than a show, more than an obsession, more than a way of life on our Wednesday nights and through the long hiatuses. It was about the people we met because of Lost and the relationships we formed. I wasn’t the only one who cried that day, wondering what would come next.
It was a beautiful surprise to find this echoed in the finale itself, that controversial ending where ultimately the series wasn’t about the island or the plot twists, not really, it was about the people and the relationships between the characters.
After Lost ended, the fandom slowed down. Our meeting place on Livejournal eroded, and most people moved on from the show, though many of us stayed in touch.
Allie and I remained good friends, though there were rough patches along the way. We watched other shows together, though it wasn’t quite the same. We both kept writing. She gave me advice I didn’t want to listen to, as I wrote two more failed novels that were rejected by my publisher. She started working on the book of her dreams, the one she was sure would lead to satisfying her dream of getting published herself.
Then Allie died.
I mostly lost touch with our old friends group after that. It was too hard to go on Facebook, to see her children, her husband, her family there.
I didn’t write anything for five years.
Life went on, as it does.
In January 2020, it became apparent that my mom’s memory problems were beyond those of normal aging. I made an emergency trip to go see her, to get power of attorney, to try to get things sorted out.
On the plane ride back, I started thinking about Lost. I thought about Sawyer, my favorite character, and I thought about the only time Sawyer was truly happy, which was when he was with Juliet.
I hadn’t watched anything Lost since it ended, but when I got home, I watched “LaFleur.” To see Sawyer happy, again, just for a little while.
And it helped.
So I didn’t stop there. I watched the rest of season five. My season six DVD set had never been opened. Ten years later, I finally unwrapped it and watched it again for the first time. Once it was finished, I watched season four, then three, then two, then one, moving back in time to the beginning, still thinking that at some point I would have had enough and stop.
Instead, when I finished season one, I went ahead and watched the entire series again, this time in the right order.
I was in love with Lost again.
The island gave me something else to think about. In the midst of navigating the changes to my family, in between my mother’s obsessively constant phone calls, I could daydream about the island.
Very quickly, the words came back to me, inspired by the characters I’d always loved, given new insight and perspective with the passage of time. I started writing again. It wasn’t enough to sit and watch. I needed to create something, to fill in the moments that had gone unexplored in canon. I could write about Sawyer and Juliet and everyone else being happy, and in that, I could be happy.
Posting fanfic for a show that ended ten years ago can be a little lonely. It felt a little like sending stories out into the void, uncertain whether anyone else was still out there. Even finding some readers on AO3 and trading comments, there wasn’t a community the way Livejournal had been.
I missed having people to share these rediscoveries with. As I rewatched, I went back to initial reaction posts and re-read comments and even old emails, to see what had stood out then compared to now, and revisit those conversations. Sometimes I wondered what it would have been like if Allie was still around, if I could send her links to videos with silly old interviews, or press photos, and drag her back in too. It made me miss my friend, and our community of fans.
But then things started to happen. I wasn’t the only person revisiting the island in the 2020s.
Two of my oldest friends from Livejournal rewatched, and came back, rediscovering not only the show but writing again, the same way I had. At the same time, new fans began to appear, watching for the first time as young adults or revisiting their childhood favorite years later with new perspective. It happened again. A new community began to form around love of Lost.
It turned into a Lost renaissance.
New writers and readers were drawn to fanfic, providing an audience, a reason to be creative, and inspiration. Tumblr became the new hangout, trading memes and discoveries. It’s not the same, but it doesn’t have to be -- twenty years have gone by. In ask boxes and private messages and chat platforms, real friendships formed, again.
I see my new friends finding each other. I love the idea that they could find their best friends, the people who they talk to every day, who inspire them, who may eventually change the path of their lives, the way the people I met while Lost was airing changed mine.
They inspire me, too. Two of my new friends read my old, out of print, published novel. They encouraged me to start thinking about it, again - writing original fiction and pursuing that long-abandoned dream.
There is a magic to the island. Some of it was recorded on film, words and performances that created the characters we love in their unique world. But the real magic is what happened after that, in living rooms and offices and the electronic glow of virtual spaces, bringing together people who otherwise never would have met. Gathering in, as Christian said to Jack, a place that we all made, together.
(end)