I Don't Trust Myself.
Now that I've finished Lost and no longer have to fear spoilers, I thought I'd poke around the fandom. It turns out it's tragically difficult to explore Lost fandom without running into people talking about how much they hate my favourite character!
I mean, yes, my favourite character is Jack Shephard, so I can't blame them, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
To clarify, some of you have mentioned a dislike for Jack in my post comments, and I don't mind that at all! I like you guys, so I'm interested in your opinions, and my post comments are a place for discussion; you are welcome to comment here going 'well, to be fair, Jack is a bit shit'. It just gets a bit wearing when I'm, say, looking for nice gifsets of Jack crying (here's one, courtesy of lightcommasticks on tumblr) and I have to navigate all these strangers talking about how much they hate him.
Which is their right, even if it's bad for my heart! It doesn't really have any consequence more dire than me aggressively loving him more in response. Although that's pretty dire, because I already love Jack Shephard more than anyone really should.
I recently spotted a fuck-marry-kill poll about Jack on Tumblr on which 'kill' had fifty percent of the votes (as of 76 votes; 'fuck' has 33%, 'marry' 17%). My favourite character is so tragically unpopular that 'kill' gets the majority vote on a fuck-marry-kill poll, and very nearly an absolute majority, even when there are no other characters to choose between.
I realise I may seem like a hypocrite for being wounded that people want to kill Jack, considering that, y'know, I've written a fic in which he's stabbed to death by someone he cares about. But that fic came from a place of love! (It really did, Jack, I promise. There's a distinct difference between being killed in fanfiction by an author who hates you and being killed in fanfiction by an author who loves you. Stop looking at me like that.)
'Kill' is at least better than 'marry', which is the worst possible option when it comes to Jack Shephard. The man's a disaster. He is absolutely going to torpedo your relationship by obsessing over whether you're secretly sleeping with his father. I love him, but marrying him would very clearly be an atrocious mistake. (Again, Jack, I'm going to need you to stop looking at me like that.)
It's not like I see anything in Jack that the Jack haters don't, really, beyond possibly finding him more interesting. If you asked both me and someone who hated Jack to write individual assessments of his character, we'd probably hit on similar points. I might be slightly more generous, and I'd probably be more enthusiastic about being asked, but the main difference is that their assessment would end with 'he's kind of awful!' and mine would end with 'he's kind of awful ♥'.
In any case, the show has a lot of focus on my favourite, so I can't resent the fandom too much for preferring to focus on different characters. For all Jack's flaws, I feel Lost loves him as much as I do, which I appreciate. Both Lost and Person of Interest have flawed, messy characters who have made mistakes or done terrible things, but they're treated with compassion by the narrative, they're given the opportunity to do better, they're treated as deserving of love and they're able to find people who love them. It's a theme I find very compelling.
When I saw her on Thursday, RD showed me this Lost trailer she remembered seeing before it came to UK television. Who came up with this? Why are they dancing sexily in formal wear around the wreckage of their plane? I don't know, but it's great.
I wonder how I'd have experienced Lost if I'd watched it when it first came out. Would I have liked different characters; would I have shipped different things? Would I have written fanfiction and, if so, what would it have been about?
Maybe I'd still have ended up fixated on Jack. Lost started up around the time I was falling in love with James Sunderland, so I certainly wasn't above looking at an absolute trash fire of a character and going 'that's my trash fire'.
What's the point of this post? 'I have bad taste in characters and I'm mildly sad that the fandom as a whole has better taste than me', I suppose. Very important bulletin. I'm sure you're all glad you read this journal.
I mean, yes, my favourite character is Jack Shephard, so I can't blame them, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.
To clarify, some of you have mentioned a dislike for Jack in my post comments, and I don't mind that at all! I like you guys, so I'm interested in your opinions, and my post comments are a place for discussion; you are welcome to comment here going 'well, to be fair, Jack is a bit shit'. It just gets a bit wearing when I'm, say, looking for nice gifsets of Jack crying (here's one, courtesy of lightcommasticks on tumblr) and I have to navigate all these strangers talking about how much they hate him.
Which is their right, even if it's bad for my heart! It doesn't really have any consequence more dire than me aggressively loving him more in response. Although that's pretty dire, because I already love Jack Shephard more than anyone really should.
I recently spotted a fuck-marry-kill poll about Jack on Tumblr on which 'kill' had fifty percent of the votes (as of 76 votes; 'fuck' has 33%, 'marry' 17%). My favourite character is so tragically unpopular that 'kill' gets the majority vote on a fuck-marry-kill poll, and very nearly an absolute majority, even when there are no other characters to choose between.
I realise I may seem like a hypocrite for being wounded that people want to kill Jack, considering that, y'know, I've written a fic in which he's stabbed to death by someone he cares about. But that fic came from a place of love! (It really did, Jack, I promise. There's a distinct difference between being killed in fanfiction by an author who hates you and being killed in fanfiction by an author who loves you. Stop looking at me like that.)
'Kill' is at least better than 'marry', which is the worst possible option when it comes to Jack Shephard. The man's a disaster. He is absolutely going to torpedo your relationship by obsessing over whether you're secretly sleeping with his father. I love him, but marrying him would very clearly be an atrocious mistake. (Again, Jack, I'm going to need you to stop looking at me like that.)
It's not like I see anything in Jack that the Jack haters don't, really, beyond possibly finding him more interesting. If you asked both me and someone who hated Jack to write individual assessments of his character, we'd probably hit on similar points. I might be slightly more generous, and I'd probably be more enthusiastic about being asked, but the main difference is that their assessment would end with 'he's kind of awful!' and mine would end with 'he's kind of awful ♥'.
In any case, the show has a lot of focus on my favourite, so I can't resent the fandom too much for preferring to focus on different characters. For all Jack's flaws, I feel Lost loves him as much as I do, which I appreciate. Both Lost and Person of Interest have flawed, messy characters who have made mistakes or done terrible things, but they're treated with compassion by the narrative, they're given the opportunity to do better, they're treated as deserving of love and they're able to find people who love them. It's a theme I find very compelling.
When I saw her on Thursday, RD showed me this Lost trailer she remembered seeing before it came to UK television. Who came up with this? Why are they dancing sexily in formal wear around the wreckage of their plane? I don't know, but it's great.
I wonder how I'd have experienced Lost if I'd watched it when it first came out. Would I have liked different characters; would I have shipped different things? Would I have written fanfiction and, if so, what would it have been about?
Maybe I'd still have ended up fixated on Jack. Lost started up around the time I was falling in love with James Sunderland, so I certainly wasn't above looking at an absolute trash fire of a character and going 'that's my trash fire'.
What's the point of this post? 'I have bad taste in characters and I'm mildly sad that the fandom as a whole has better taste than me', I suppose. Very important bulletin. I'm sure you're all glad you read this journal.