The Art Of Writing Jacob/Esau

[hitlikehammers]

First and foremost, I have to thank tellshannon815 for inviting me to a lead discussion here again -- this time about yet another of my very favorite pairings, involving two of my very favorite characters: the almighty Jacob and his awesome brother, Smokey/Man In Black/Nameless Boy/Dr. Smoke/Esau. I’m going to mostly stick with Esau from here on out, though.

But

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[devilsduplicity]

5) Lost/Supernatural crossovers/fusion have so much potential, it's just plain ridiculous. I'd like to see more of it circling around the internet, actually. (And I'm totally gonna write a Lost/Supernatural/Stonehenge Apocalypse fic, because come on. Those shows can be crossed with anything.) I think that's the greatest thing about Lost -- it lets you think. It doesn't take the easy way out and reveal all the answers in a Deus Ex Machina manner. It makes you question. I've finished the series, and I'm still questioning. And yes, some of these things can be attributed to the writers being lazy and forgetting to resolve a specific problem, but, too, I also think Lost leaves a lot of it out there because it wants you to explore all the possibilities. If you have to use brainpower to solve a problem, then you become invested in it, concerned about the outcome. It becomes yours, and I think that's exactly what the writers have done -- made Lost ours.

6) Me? Once it's on the internet, it's fair game, my friend. We should just make a question pile, put 'em in a hat, and draw each one out to see who's writing what. (By which, I mean, if you've got ideas, then by all means write them down!)

7) Boone/Shannon, I loved the second I found out that they were siblings. But some people are okay with it because they're not blood related, yes? Jack/Claire was probably a mindfuck for the poor individuals who aren't into incest, and were writing this pairing before the big reveal. I think it's interesting, too, to see people's different opinions on these matters. I have a friend who's more okay with gay incest than heterosexual incest, based on the idea of reproduction.

8) Since my day job is secretarial by nature, I can just start writing gay porn during the lulls in the day! :D And yes, despite the fact that Lost revealed them to be two men of a human origin, there's no denying the fact that there is something rather mystical about them -- whether contrived, or simply born that way. This is where parallels between Lost and Supernatural come in handy, on the theorizing front. In Supernatural, they've got that big thing going on about bloodlines. Angels need a specific host from a specific bloodline that they can possess. What if Jacob and Esau were candidates for possession? What if Mother knew this? What if they've already been possessed by two opposing forces, and now the brothers wrestle for control of their own bodies, because they don't want to fight, they don't want to kill? There is so much to do, to think about, and so very little time.

9) You said "Theology Major" and the friend button clicked itself. Sorry.

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[hitlikehammers]

5.) For sure; when I finally lifted my self-imposed moratorium on participation in SPN fandom, I realized that I have a bit of a love affair with crossing these two fandoms. (For example, I have absolutely no intention of signing up for the SPN big bang with a crossover where John and Mary end up on the Island with the Dharma Initiative. I don't even have an outline for it or anything. At all... *whistles innocently*) Anyway; I wholeheartedly agree that one of Lost's crowning achievements, and most appealing aspects, was the way it invited the viewers to engage and critically evaluate and imagine and create on their own terms, within the context of the show as well as the larger mythology. It truly did allow us to invest in it and make the show and its characters our own, and I believe, from a more practical standpoint, that this very thing may have been what saved the show in its more... absurd moments, shall we say -- that ownership, and that reluctance of the invested audience to give up on something they now had a viable stake in, on that level.

7. It's very strange, because I never considered myself to have an actual proclivity for incest pairings, and I don't even know if it was a conscious thing, or if the incest was the reason or not, but I didn't ship Jack and Claire until I knew they were related. Maybe I just came to them late, but yeah. Shannon and Boone, though? Always a winner ;) And I've definitely heard that argument for slash incest versus het, yes -- and given the volume of gay incest versus straight incest fics I've run into, on the fandom end, it seems to hold up.

8.) I am jealous of your secretarial job; I left mine last month, and have no more time to read whilst being paid ;) And most certainly, that mystical element is crucial for them -- I do like thinking about them as human, to an extent, sometimes, but there's also something more to them at a vital level that really characterizes who and what they are. Also, the idea of Jacob and Esau being candidates themselves is brilliant. If you don't intend to do anything with that idea, might I borrow it if I ever (and that's a BIG 'if') write the aforementioned Lost/SPN crossover? Because Dean and Sam were going to be Dharma brats who were "candidates."

9.) You said all this stuff and the mutual friend button clicked itself, too. Perhaps we should report this clicking-itself phenomenon to LJ ;)