Long Rambley *Unedited Stream of Consciousness* Stuff on Genre Stories, Endings, and Answers

[shipperx]

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Warning: Spoilers for BSG finale, very vague but possibly spoilerish LOST finale, Spoilers for Star Wars, and, oh hell, Buffy, Angel, Farscape, and the BtVS comics too So I've been thinking about the Lost finale (I know. But... I can't help it. Actually, I think it's a good sign that it's continued to intrigue me) and I've popped over to TWOP

Comments

[flake_sake]

I'm still pondering if I should watch Lost so I only skimmed parts od your post. I just wanted to throw in my two cents about endings.

I think to me it matters how much did the story toy with the questions it raised? Did it stylize them to be of great importance? Because if it did, then I want some kind of answer. Shows that focused on the questions would be BSG, B5, Neon Genesis Evangelion (an anime no one ever knows) and so on.
With star wars I never even asked myself were the force came from, hence the answer was quite superfluous and silly, but when the questions are at the center of the plot, I do like to have answers and they are the reasons why I'll always thing of B5 as way way better than BSG or NGE.

Buffy or Angel never focused so hard on the questions so I didn't mind that some of them were left open. It just wasn't all that important and I was happy that the emotional closure worked, but now with S8 that is running for 35 issues on unanswered questions now, I'll probably be very dissatisfied if those answers are bad (science or otherwise).

I think if you play on mystery to keep the viewer insterested you have to cash in at the end and better have good plan. If you don't have one, don't focus too much on it.

[shipperx]

I actually didn't give the twist in LOST in the post (though I think it probably could be guessed). It is mentioned in Rahirah's and my responses. And I'll hopefully respond to your post tomorrow. Have to head to bed right now. :)

[shipperx]

I think to me it matters how much did the story toy with the questions it raised? Did it stylize them to be of great importance? Because if it did, then I want some kind of answer.

I'm not going to lie and say that they didn't leave some significant plot threads dangling. I can think of three off hand that had no hard answer. But of those three, one doesn't bother me primarily because it hasn't been mentioned in years. It is, without a doubt, a dropped plot. However, I can pretty easily see how it would have worked into the ending had it not been dropped when the actor left/was let go. I can understand, with all the myriad of returning touchstones and long departed characters why this issue/character not being addressed irks people. That's legitimate, but since it was something that went away so long ago, I didn't have an urgent 'need to know.' It wasn't high on my priority list.

The second dropped plot is similar to the first. But, the truth is... I can kind of fanwank that one. Yes, it's fanwank. And if I had rewatched the episode that set the premise for it, I might consider it a shaky fanwank. But, I haven't rewatched that episode in years and the thread of it hasn't been mentioned in years, so with a fuzzy memory of the details I can fanwank it as misdirection and in that light, I can sorta consider it 'solved.' In the harsh light of day, I think it's a dropped plot thread, but if I look at it from a slightly different angle, I think it was obliquely addressed, though perhaps with a different answer than had been originally intended.

Third non-answer/big plot point, I actually think is really, really easily fanwanked. It's a rather deus ex machina answer, and I can see being irked by being handed a deus ex machina as an answer. But if you accept the deus ex machina that was offered, it's super easy to reach an answer to that question without any effort.

A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[shipperx]

Also, I think some questions are things I thought were answered. For example, "But they never explained why the numbers were on the hatch!" No. They didn't. They never said "The numbers were the serial number on the hatch because _____" However, they did tell us explicitly what the numbers represented. Knowing what the numbers meant was enough for me. I never thought about the mechanics of how or why they arrived as a serial number. To me, it's sort of like the question of "Why did the characters keep crossing paths?" Again, no one ever explicitly says "This is why..." But I absolutely think that the answer is obvious. I consider that question answered. I honestly do, to the point where I scratch my head wonder "What do you mean that wasn't answered?"

But not everyone sees it that way.

That's what I meant about different people walking away feeling like they were watching different shows. I've been similarly struck by discussions in Buffy fandom. It's easy to get into discussions with people and realize that we watched the exact same thing and drew entirely different conclusions. (Witness the kerfuffle last week about post-As You Were Spuffy. Different people saw that in some radically different ways).

Another example: All the Egyptian stuff that popped up in LOST. I've seen people say "But they never explained what it meant! How did any of that stuff get there?" Again, I wonder, "You really want an explanation?" I honestly, do not consider it unsolved. We've been told, explicitly, that the island is ancient. There is no question whatsoever that it goes back thousands (plural) of years and that time and time again people have been drawn to the island. Isn't that explanation enough?

As for "What did heiroglyphs mean?" We're given multiple examples of people grafting their own belief systems onto the mysteries of the island. What did the Egyptian stuff 'mean'? Well, for one thing, it's one of many examples of people grafting their own belief system onto the island. It's just that straight-forward. In that sense, an ancient Egyptian's rationalizations are irrelevant. Their answers wouldn't work for us and weren't the answer. They wouldn't 'solve' anything. Their 'meaning' was to show that these questions have been going on a very, very long time and the answers are somewhat mythological in nature. And... I kind of thought that was obvious for quite some time now. I'm a little shocked by people saying it wasn't explained.

But I think some of it goes back to the question of "what show were you watching?" The posters on TWOP saying that they weren't watching a show about mythology and philosophy are, I think, understandably unhappy. They really, really didn't get what they wanted. On the other hand, looking back at my own LJ posts on LOST, the posts that weren't "WTF?!" or 'squee!" or gleeful shadenfreude over Jack misery, were about mythology and philosophy. And, though I guessed many, many things wrong, I'm bit giddy that I may have read a few things right(true, they were thematic. But they were things!) The episode where I thought, 'This entire episode is about how myths are built! And how they're subjective!' I now think I read correctly.

I understand being upset with the kind of answer they gave. And being so for any number of reasons. But I do think there was a theme and that the ending fits that theme. I am happy with it, though I understand why others are less so.

That said, no way would something like "midichlorines!" have satisfied me. But, I realize mileage on this varies. Wildly.

Re: A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[flake_sake]

I have hard time judging if it would satisfy me. The examples you brought would be fine by me I guess, ok, island is ancient, some egyptians dropped by once. But it also depends on how much drama they made about the hyroglyphes and what they mean in the earlier series.

I don't know for example if I would have found BSG as bad as I did in the end, if they hadn't made such a fuzz about the opera house dream, or Starbuck, or head six/baltar. Especially for the last one they had tons of theories on the show and then went for the single most lamest sorry-we-forgot-to-plot-something-here answer. Everything would have been better than the angel solution.

I though the Midiwhatevers where stupid for two reasons, they explained nothing whatsoever and there never was an explanation for the force needed, it was magic, end of story.

On BSG there was a need for an explanation who the head people really were and at that point I really would have preferred a chip or some other less esoteric answer than the show gave.

I think pseudoscience and leaving things open/mythic are both not the optimal solution. The best thing is to start with something in mind and then play it for what it's worth and amaze with the answers, not with the question.
I really think B5 is the best example for that, where you have this time travel episode that makes no sense at all and then a season later, there's the other half of it and suddenly it all clicks together in brilliance. Stuff like that makes me squee and that's always what I hope for in mystery series. Those moments where past events are filled with meaning give me a lot of satisfaction.

Re: A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[shipperx]

I have hard time judging if it would satisfy me

From what you've said, I suspect that LOST maybe too sloppy to satisfy because I don't think it was tightly plotted,. In fact it's downright baroque. It piles on, and delights in mystifying. (Keeping with the art theme) it's expressionist instead of impressionist. In Impressionism, you can stand up close and only see dots, but when you step back you can see the picture whereas in expressionism, the object isn't to express objective reality at all but to evoke emotion and the sense of 'being alive.' If the finale put a fine point on anything, it's that Lost prioritized emotion.

And I do think BSG and Lost played with some of the same crayons. There is overlap but also great divergence. It's hard to discuss without getting into specifics but I can at least discuss the BSG part of it.

I freaking hated the angels in the BSG finale. It came from out of freaking nowhere. As I stated before, I had no problems with the mitochondrial Eve bit or even the whole 'jettison technology' bit that bothered some people. Those two aspects of the finale bothered me not at all, even though they did a lot of people. What I did have issues with in the BSG finale was its combination of implying an almost literally interventionist god doing lab experiments, setting up little pockets of life over and over, even though these 'angels' didn't do anything but expect humanity to just destroy itself again and again. Not only did it have heavy implication of an interventioned and -- darnit -- I can't help but think a somewhat sadistic god, but the series as a whole had a nihilistic view of humanity. People destroyed the whole freaking world over and over again. I didn't actually find much particularly redeemable in the BSG world, and that was long before the finale. I found BSG in general to be intellectually interesting. It had interesting concepts, but I think I mostly hated BSG's outlook. I found it almost misanthropic. And having this horrible, misanthropic view of humanity in conjunction with "oh, they're just gonna destroy this world too. Perhaps not... but probably." (which was the impression that I left with) and a god running the same experiments over and over again was about like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy revealing that the meaning of life is '42' and that the earth was nothing more than a giant computer run by mice working for all these years to generate that answer.

Basically, I didn't much care for the world in BSG's philosophy. :)

Re: A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[flake_sake]

I think my biggest hate factors in the finale where the three angels and of these, especially Starbuck, because I really liked the character.
I was very indifferent to Hera, just thinking that it was no worth the fuss they made around her.
And I thought the ditching tech idea was beyond stupid.

The whole history repeats itself story was fairly lame, also because it sucked in the details. It just didn't make sense with the cylons and later on with the cylons from the last cycle.

That the BSG god was such a sadist was the one little thing that redeemed the whole thing a bit for me and I wish they played a bit more on it. Had they played it as a Prometheus story where the humans at least attempt to break out of the lab, I might have loved it.

I wonder if they'll go into it more on Caprica. It's very believeable that the BSG god finds it totally awesome that teenagers blow themselves up for him.

Re: A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[probablecylon]

If they played on the idea that the 'BSG god was such a sadist', it would have had a man-behind-the-curtain 'see? here is the sadistic divinity!' declarativeness to it. Instead, you have a deus absconditis, into whom most people read their own fears or anger or aspiration. It's a part of the cylons' evolution (and by extension ours) to learn that the annihilation of the humans was not in fact God's intent.

Re: A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[shipperx]

That the BSG god was such a sadist was the one little thing that redeemed the whole thing a bit for me

See? Fandom differs. It's always amused me that so many BSG fans were so unhappy with the finale that they retroactively hate large chunks of the show when as much as I hate, hate the angels bit, I wasn't all that bothered by the finale. What I Strike>hated somewhat disgusted me (to the point that when that episode was over I swore to not give a shit about anything that happened on the show) was the episode where they found Earth and it was destroyed.

Conceptually I have no problem with it. It's even a neat idea... especially for a Twilight Zone episode. My problem with it was that having come after everything that had gone before, the colony turned Nazi death camp with terrorism (even though I actually rather liked that plot), the pronouncement that there wasn't enough genetic diversity for the BSG humans to continue to exist as a species, etc. That the episode where the twist was that they had found earth and it was barren because people had destroyed it had me throw up my hands and say that everything in the BSG-verse was pointless. It was a long slow trek towards extinction. The End.

For me, the series had basically ended right there.

The new Earth thing was improbable, but my only real surprise in the finale was the shocking realization that it wasn't going to be "rocks fall, everyone dies." I really went into the finale thinking that now they all die. And I was okay with that. Heck, almost looking forward to it.

My personal experience with BSG was that I found it quite intellectually intesting, but emotionally it left me dead cold. I rarely cared much. It never hit me in the solar plexus and made me feel much. It was all quite detached for me.

On the other hand, I watched most of Lost with fully brain disengaged. I was there for the roller-coaster ride. The few things that engaged me intellectually were philosophical in nature. So that they gave me highly, even baroquely, emotional conclusion with some bit philosophy worked satisfactorily for me. Having watched the show in that manner, I can accept that sort of conclusion. Had I watched it trying to solve things (I tried that with the X-Files. Never again! And I still effing love the X-Files, but trying to solve its mythology was pointless, and I found that out way late in the game). Anyway, had I actually watched trying to figure out all the 'clues,' I probably would have been far less satisfied.

It really does vary with 'what show were you watching?'

Re: A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[flake_sake]

Yeah it really does. When BSG started out I was completely in love with it, I found very emotionally engaging and thought it was extremely well plotted, but the longernd more convoluted suicidal and irrational it got the less I cared about the characters and by the end I was pretty much there for the plot alone and then that fell flat. Like you said about X-files, never again!

I think the mindset you watched lost in, is probably the best and if I'll ever watch it, I'll focus on the personal stuff too probably. It's muh easier if you know ahead that getting too involved into putting together clues is pointless.

Re: A slightly more spoilery expansion on the topic

[shipperx]

I have to say that it's one of the few shows where I wouldn't warn anyone away from shipping. Where shipping was concerned, LOST turned out to be a slut handing out big wet kisses. :)