for the meta challenge at thequillstation part II: Do No Harm
And this would be the episode which is NOT my favorite but the most influential on my writing and more than anything, MY SHIP. My poor, doomed ship. *sigh* So that's meta wherein I ramble on said ship, why I'll love Jack forever, why nothing will break my heart as much as this freaking episode does and trying to blatantly ignore the whole Claire-is-giving-birth part of the equation, not because I don't like Claire but because I'm not rational.
Point is: Do No Harm is not my favorite episode. Is a hell of an objectively good episode, of course, but it is not my favorite, guess what. But, I need to meta about it because there is no other episode of Lost which gets out of me the reaction that Do No Harm gets, because I reference it in half of my fic, because it’s the reason for which I’ll always be on Team Jack whatever happens and because while it shows everything about how lucky I get, it’s my ship’s episode. It has good stuff, not bad stuff because there isn’t and then extremely ugly stuff which I will always hate, but anyway. Let’s go in order, shall we?
What I won’t ever like about it: just a few words here, but I will always, always hate the writers for having Claire’s delivery while Boone died. Not that it doesn’t have emotional value (aaah, when babies weren’t overplayed…) and that it isn’t touching. It has and it is and the scene was wonderfully shot for once. But it makes me have horrible reactions. I re-watched it before doing this meta and I swear that when they cut from Boone telling Jack not to be sorry to Kate telling Claire to push I yelled at the screen. Also, Kate looking at Charlie completely surprised with what, Jack is NOT coming?! when she had seen how things were up there surely helped my Kate dislike, but whatever. I don’t care about that part if not for the fact that Charlie was awesome and Jin wonderful and that’s it, so I’m not spending any more time about it. It’s not what matters to me in that episode.
Also, I deny, deny and deny until they say it clearly that there’s ANY link whatsoever between Boone dying and Aaron being born. The only reason/destiny crap I accept is that Boone’s death saved Desmond because he would have killed himself if Locke hadn’t banged on that door, but I refuse to subscribe to that other theory. For my mental sake at least.
Let’s rather talk about how freaking tragically heartbreakingly beautiful the rest is? Because while it hurts like hell and I suffer every second of it, I also realize that considering also how things have gone for other dead people in there, Boone couldn’t have gotten a better episode. Even if… ouch, masochism.
About the flashbacks: the first time I watched it, I hated them. Mainly, I was pissed because Boone was the one dying and Jack was the one getting the flashbacks, but then again, I completely changed idea about them. While I’d have rather had a Boone flash, I’m perfectly content with it the way it is and if someone else had to have it, then Jack is the one I’d have wanted. And he was so not complaining here. About the actual content of the flashbacks? Well, if you don’t care about Jack I guess you could find them annoying, but they’re extremely interesting. First reason (and shipper reason): it’s obvious that they’re making a Boone-Sarah parallel. I mean, he’s there trying like hell to save Boone, who is in desperate conditions, on the island and he’s marrying the woman he fixed in the flashback (who, as she said, no one thought could get fixed and Jack did, so desperate conditions indeed). Easy as pie. Surely they didn’t want people to see slash into it but hey, I shipped them from before and they throw this at me, I surely won’t say no. That said, it’s a perfect, perfect sum of what Jack is. I realize that he might come off as annoying or anything, but in those flashbacks there’s everything you need to know about Jack. You see how deeply he cares for people and how deeply committed he is to anything he does; you can see that maybe he did have some good moments with his father (even if that doesn’t stop me from thinking that Christian ranks high in the bad fathers department), you can see how much of himself he invests in relationships and you also see that he has absolutely no fantasy (the vows) but that he always, always means what he does/says and it’s not always in his best interests rather than others’ best interests. Because come on, he might have said just a couple of sentences and Sarah might have written beautiful vows instead, but his rang more true and heartfelt than hers did. And you can see quite the tragedy in it since he says that she fixed him and not the contrary, which as we all know is kinda not true, but still, this brings us to the next salient point. That Jack has a compulsive need to fix people (and someone should really try to fix him a bit in turn IMHO and for good, but that’s not the point).
Which brings us to me blathering about my ship. Because that’s the point, of this episode and of shipping Jack/Boone at all.
Now, the reason for which I ship Jack/Boone is that I think that those two would have been totally healthy and perfect for each other. Why? First of all, they’re two completely helpless cases of emotional mindfucking. I think Boone has spent his life suffering from emotional mindfuck from someone, being Shannon or Locke or whoever, while if I start talking about Jack and his dad I’d end the day after tomorrow. Just watch All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues to see what I mean for emotional mindfuck. Which would bring them not to mindfuck each other for a change, and that was reason number one. Reason number two: Jack can’t let go, is deeply committed and compulsively fixes people, Boone is the one people always let go of (Shannon and Locke again), desperately wants attention, totally needs fixing and I think he’d be as committed. Then I could go into the whole hero worship thing but this isn’t the place for a thorough Jack/Boone shipper manifesto. Reasons up there are for me enough to say they’d be a good match and healthy for each other. And that’s where Do No Harm comes and where the only reason I don’t spend the episode squeeing in shipper delight but rather crying my eyes out is that Boone is dying.
The point is, look at what Jack does. Alright, he can’t let go, and alright, he’s committed, and alright, he’s a doctor; but he completely goes beyond his duties here. I’d say even as far as breaking the Do No Harm oath, since he’s clearly overstepping that boundary here, not that I say he shouldn’t have. And while he can be a stubborn arrogant jerk at times, here? Here he breaks my heart almost as much as Boone does. Jack promises him he will fix him and does anything stop him from it until Boone lets him go? No, and that’s why I will always love Jack no matter what. He tires himself out, he gives him his own blood, he does practically everything he can and more and also, he tells Sun not to tell him what he can’t do. Which in that context is music to my ears. Because in the episode before, Locke had told Boone exactly the same thing and well, of course no one told him what he couldn’t do and look what happened; here Jack says not to tell him what he can’t do and he does it because he wants Boone to live. And be still my heart. (I won’t go deep into all the actual details like Boone actually reacting only when Jack says something, but there’s that too.)
Then, let’s talk about another thing: Jack doesn’t let go until he’s told and therefore he doesn’t give up on Boone. And he’s the only person on the island who doesn’t. Shannon gave up on him in Sydney for all I’m concerned and Locke gave up on him when he lied to Jack (I don’t want to say the plane even if I could) and they both did when he was alive/alright/fine/how do you want to call it, while Jack not only does not give up on him and wouldn’t have if he wasn’t told otherwise, but he also does not give up on him in a moment where there was just so much he could do. Then it’d be just Boone’s luck that when he finds someone who wouldn’t he has to die, of course. Jack’s stubbornness here was something I was completely craving to see. He was the only one who didn’t even take the option of Boone dying into account (he always says he’s not going to die even when it’s clear he will) and I swear, even if I didn’t ship them he’d have had me just for that. Because when your favourite character is basically the one no one gives a damn about, seeing Jack going close to move mountains for him was so touching and heartbreaking and gratifying that well, that was it.
I don’t give a damn if at one point it was clear that he was just being quixotic and that he couldn’t have done anything; he kept on trying to come up with something and for me it wasn’t enough, it was more than enough. Then it might have been also some pretty fucking good acting, but I swear, there’s that moment in the middle when Boone is half-conscious and Jack is over there looking at him like half of the job is done and he’s out of danger (while he’s pouring his blood too by the way) which is enough to make me want to go and cry for one hour. And last thing about this particular issue, there were a lot of people around the tent in that episode. The red shirts, Hurley, Charlie, Kate and Sun especially (oh, Sun. I think I really, really started to love her fiercely in this episode), Michael too; but when he dies, only Jack is there. Shannon isn’t there, Locke isn’t there, Jack is there and it makes even more sense if you consider that he was the only one who had stuck. Right, fine, also because he was the doctor but Sun could have easily had been on the scene, she had been there for most of the episode, and she wasn’t. Call it the death of a ship, but I guess I had it better than a lot of others.
Now, about Boone: well, only thing I can say is that he just breaks my heart even moreso than Jack does. Fine, he’s there dying which isn’t exactly the best occasion for character development, but look at how he dies. And I don’t mean when he’s out of it, I mean the two times when he’s conscious. The first is important for plot devices because it’s when he tells Jack about the plane and the hatch, therefore that Locke lied, therefore setting things for what was to come, but the second one when he tells Jack to let him go is perfect because it proves just everything that there is to prove about Boone. Every time I read pathetic/without personality/useless that’s the scene I’d show. Because I mean, the man is twenty-two years old (he’s practically my age for fuck’s sake), he had a life in front of him and nonetheless when he realizes it’s all for nothing he is the one asking Jack to let him die (no one ever convinces me that Jack was ever going to give up on him) and because he knows that Jack can’t let go (and for all I’m concerned, I think he knows because Boone himself doesn’t know how to let go either and it takes one to know one). And I think it takes a lot of guts to ask for such a thing, especially when you’re just being told you do have a best chance. (Also, I always choke when Jack says that it’s their best chance, not Boone’s best chance, like they were in it together.) It takes bravery and dignity to do such a thing and no one can go tell me someone who dies like this is pathetic. Also, the writers were especially cruel because if there’s one thing about Boone that makes me hurt even more here is that he doesn’t even get to say the famous last words and the sentence ends in the beginning (and of course they were for Shannon, who of course wasn’t there like she never was there for him much). I think the only time I came close to feel this miserable while watching Lost was when Charlie died, but nothing will ever top it. This episode drains me, damn.
Also, just to say something about how freaking good the writing is here, the other point about how tragic this whole thing is? Shannon. Because Shannon here… well, I never felt that much empathy for her until the following episode, but here there’s a perfect sum of the whole Boone/Shannon dynamic. He’s dying and she’s having the romantic picnic with Sayid; he asks for her and no one can find her because no one knows where they are and she also tells Sayid she doesn’t love him the way he loved her, which is true indeed and nothing to say about it, but in that context when you know what’s happening to him is just a blow. It’s like she knows he will always be there anyway, and well, look at her in the end. I think she never really understood how much he mattered to her until he died and then she probably felt even worse because not only she wasn’t there, but she also was on a date. I guess they hit the target if they made me want to feel for Shannon because I completely did. Another thing that I always liked about Do No Harm which might be marginal is actually Sawyer. Apart from having the only fun line of the episode, not only he gave Kate all the alcohol, but he had also offered to come with her, which he didn’t exactly have to do since it wasn’t like he and Boone were ever close, all the contrary. Then of course she told him no, pity because I’d have loved to see what he’d have done if he had gone, but whatever. It just showed a waay nicer side of him and in S1 he wasn’t exactly an angel or anything, and especially with the inhalers story I guess Boone wasn’t his favorite person.
And then, well, the point is that I always end up here. There’s the whole shipper angle, because while one can ship Jack/Boone without a problem even not taking Do No Harm into account, if you do take it into account, even if not necessarily having Boone dying, it takes a whole other meaning. It just shows how far Jack would go for Boone and sort of proves my point about why I’d ship them; without Do No Harm they’re a good/plausible ship, but then if it was just because of that Jack would be just one person I like to pair Boone with and my OTP could very well be also Boone/Charlie because I think they’d be totally good for each other for a whole number of other different reasons. But Do No Harm makes them my OTP and that’s the end of the story.
I always end up here if I reference Boone dying and I take it into account if I write him when he’s dead. It’s the episode that finally showed me that Shannon did care and that we could be good friends (we exactly weren’t in the beginning). And more than anything, it was the episode which changed my alliances for good.
Before Do No Harm I liked Jack alright, but he was more a low top ten character than a top five, while Locke was definitely top five material. Well, Jack had won me over to his side at minute one when he told Boone he was going to save him and I think he went into top four at a very, very fast speed. Do No Harm is half of the reason for which I won’t ever make fun of Jack’s crying because really, at one point I was having his exact same reactions whatever he did. I never, ever loved him more for his stubbornness and his fixing compulsion. And then, well, I never really changed idea. I know that Jack can be unlikable, arrogant, stubborn, annoying, a jerk, that he yells and bosses people around and that he cries too much, but sincerely? I don’t care because when it came to what mattered most to me he didn’t let me down for a second and for how much they can write him inconsistently (*glares at Darlton*) he always made sense to me and never let me down as Locke did (and as Sawyer did in the Long Con and as a lot of other Lost characters did) even when I didn’t agree with him. It’s not that I just can’t not like him, it’s that I don’t have the option to dislike him because whenever I do (mainly if he’s around Kate) I just flash back to this episode and whatever he does, I can forgive it. I know, I’m hopeless.
It was also when I stopped trusting Locke even if I can’t exactly manage to be done professionally with our friend John but that’s another story. And the whole Jack thing also comes into play when I write fic because most of what I know about Jack, I know from here. Some from Daddy Issues and the rest is more or less a variation on the theme, but this is the episode I channel Jack from, mostly, just as Deus Ex Machina is the one I channel Boone from when Shannon isn’t the picture. And the one I channel my OTP from, but that went unsaid. And the only one where I actually liked Christian apart from 5x05, which is pretty much the achievement. The one where I really started loving Sun and where Jin definitely took a lot of points with me, too. And well, the one I will always both love and hate in the same way I guess and the only one which I will always have to take into account no matter what.
Point is: Do No Harm is not my favorite episode. Is a hell of an objectively good episode, of course, but it is not my favorite, guess what. But, I need to meta about it because there is no other episode of Lost which gets out of me the reaction that Do No Harm gets, because I reference it in half of my fic, because it’s the reason for which I’ll always be on Team Jack whatever happens and because while it shows everything about how lucky I get, it’s my ship’s episode. It has good stuff, not bad stuff because there isn’t and then extremely ugly stuff which I will always hate, but anyway. Let’s go in order, shall we?
What I won’t ever like about it: just a few words here, but I will always, always hate the writers for having Claire’s delivery while Boone died. Not that it doesn’t have emotional value (aaah, when babies weren’t overplayed…) and that it isn’t touching. It has and it is and the scene was wonderfully shot for once. But it makes me have horrible reactions. I re-watched it before doing this meta and I swear that when they cut from Boone telling Jack not to be sorry to Kate telling Claire to push I yelled at the screen. Also, Kate looking at Charlie completely surprised with what, Jack is NOT coming?! when she had seen how things were up there surely helped my Kate dislike, but whatever. I don’t care about that part if not for the fact that Charlie was awesome and Jin wonderful and that’s it, so I’m not spending any more time about it. It’s not what matters to me in that episode.
Also, I deny, deny and deny until they say it clearly that there’s ANY link whatsoever between Boone dying and Aaron being born. The only reason/destiny crap I accept is that Boone’s death saved Desmond because he would have killed himself if Locke hadn’t banged on that door, but I refuse to subscribe to that other theory. For my mental sake at least.
Let’s rather talk about how freaking tragically heartbreakingly beautiful the rest is? Because while it hurts like hell and I suffer every second of it, I also realize that considering also how things have gone for other dead people in there, Boone couldn’t have gotten a better episode. Even if… ouch, masochism.
About the flashbacks: the first time I watched it, I hated them. Mainly, I was pissed because Boone was the one dying and Jack was the one getting the flashbacks, but then again, I completely changed idea about them. While I’d have rather had a Boone flash, I’m perfectly content with it the way it is and if someone else had to have it, then Jack is the one I’d have wanted. And he was so not complaining here. About the actual content of the flashbacks? Well, if you don’t care about Jack I guess you could find them annoying, but they’re extremely interesting. First reason (and shipper reason): it’s obvious that they’re making a Boone-Sarah parallel. I mean, he’s there trying like hell to save Boone, who is in desperate conditions, on the island and he’s marrying the woman he fixed in the flashback (who, as she said, no one thought could get fixed and Jack did, so desperate conditions indeed). Easy as pie. Surely they didn’t want people to see slash into it but hey, I shipped them from before and they throw this at me, I surely won’t say no. That said, it’s a perfect, perfect sum of what Jack is. I realize that he might come off as annoying or anything, but in those flashbacks there’s everything you need to know about Jack. You see how deeply he cares for people and how deeply committed he is to anything he does; you can see that maybe he did have some good moments with his father (even if that doesn’t stop me from thinking that Christian ranks high in the bad fathers department), you can see how much of himself he invests in relationships and you also see that he has absolutely no fantasy (the vows) but that he always, always means what he does/says and it’s not always in his best interests rather than others’ best interests. Because come on, he might have said just a couple of sentences and Sarah might have written beautiful vows instead, but his rang more true and heartfelt than hers did. And you can see quite the tragedy in it since he says that she fixed him and not the contrary, which as we all know is kinda not true, but still, this brings us to the next salient point. That Jack has a compulsive need to fix people (and someone should really try to fix him a bit in turn IMHO and for good, but that’s not the point).
Which brings us to me blathering about my ship. Because that’s the point, of this episode and of shipping Jack/Boone at all.
Now, the reason for which I ship Jack/Boone is that I think that those two would have been totally healthy and perfect for each other. Why? First of all, they’re two completely helpless cases of emotional mindfucking. I think Boone has spent his life suffering from emotional mindfuck from someone, being Shannon or Locke or whoever, while if I start talking about Jack and his dad I’d end the day after tomorrow. Just watch All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues to see what I mean for emotional mindfuck. Which would bring them not to mindfuck each other for a change, and that was reason number one. Reason number two: Jack can’t let go, is deeply committed and compulsively fixes people, Boone is the one people always let go of (Shannon and Locke again), desperately wants attention, totally needs fixing and I think he’d be as committed. Then I could go into the whole hero worship thing but this isn’t the place for a thorough Jack/Boone shipper manifesto. Reasons up there are for me enough to say they’d be a good match and healthy for each other. And that’s where Do No Harm comes and where the only reason I don’t spend the episode squeeing in shipper delight but rather crying my eyes out is that Boone is dying.
The point is, look at what Jack does. Alright, he can’t let go, and alright, he’s committed, and alright, he’s a doctor; but he completely goes beyond his duties here. I’d say even as far as breaking the Do No Harm oath, since he’s clearly overstepping that boundary here, not that I say he shouldn’t have. And while he can be a stubborn arrogant jerk at times, here? Here he breaks my heart almost as much as Boone does. Jack promises him he will fix him and does anything stop him from it until Boone lets him go? No, and that’s why I will always love Jack no matter what. He tires himself out, he gives him his own blood, he does practically everything he can and more and also, he tells Sun not to tell him what he can’t do. Which in that context is music to my ears. Because in the episode before, Locke had told Boone exactly the same thing and well, of course no one told him what he couldn’t do and look what happened; here Jack says not to tell him what he can’t do and he does it because he wants Boone to live. And be still my heart. (I won’t go deep into all the actual details like Boone actually reacting only when Jack says something, but there’s that too.)
Then, let’s talk about another thing: Jack doesn’t let go until he’s told and therefore he doesn’t give up on Boone. And he’s the only person on the island who doesn’t. Shannon gave up on him in Sydney for all I’m concerned and Locke gave up on him when he lied to Jack (I don’t want to say the plane even if I could) and they both did when he was alive/alright/fine/how do you want to call it, while Jack not only does not give up on him and wouldn’t have if he wasn’t told otherwise, but he also does not give up on him in a moment where there was just so much he could do. Then it’d be just Boone’s luck that when he finds someone who wouldn’t he has to die, of course. Jack’s stubbornness here was something I was completely craving to see. He was the only one who didn’t even take the option of Boone dying into account (he always says he’s not going to die even when it’s clear he will) and I swear, even if I didn’t ship them he’d have had me just for that. Because when your favourite character is basically the one no one gives a damn about, seeing Jack going close to move mountains for him was so touching and heartbreaking and gratifying that well, that was it.
I don’t give a damn if at one point it was clear that he was just being quixotic and that he couldn’t have done anything; he kept on trying to come up with something and for me it wasn’t enough, it was more than enough. Then it might have been also some pretty fucking good acting, but I swear, there’s that moment in the middle when Boone is half-conscious and Jack is over there looking at him like half of the job is done and he’s out of danger (while he’s pouring his blood too by the way) which is enough to make me want to go and cry for one hour. And last thing about this particular issue, there were a lot of people around the tent in that episode. The red shirts, Hurley, Charlie, Kate and Sun especially (oh, Sun. I think I really, really started to love her fiercely in this episode), Michael too; but when he dies, only Jack is there. Shannon isn’t there, Locke isn’t there, Jack is there and it makes even more sense if you consider that he was the only one who had stuck. Right, fine, also because he was the doctor but Sun could have easily had been on the scene, she had been there for most of the episode, and she wasn’t. Call it the death of a ship, but I guess I had it better than a lot of others.
Now, about Boone: well, only thing I can say is that he just breaks my heart even moreso than Jack does. Fine, he’s there dying which isn’t exactly the best occasion for character development, but look at how he dies. And I don’t mean when he’s out of it, I mean the two times when he’s conscious. The first is important for plot devices because it’s when he tells Jack about the plane and the hatch, therefore that Locke lied, therefore setting things for what was to come, but the second one when he tells Jack to let him go is perfect because it proves just everything that there is to prove about Boone. Every time I read pathetic/without personality/useless that’s the scene I’d show. Because I mean, the man is twenty-two years old (he’s practically my age for fuck’s sake), he had a life in front of him and nonetheless when he realizes it’s all for nothing he is the one asking Jack to let him die (no one ever convinces me that Jack was ever going to give up on him) and because he knows that Jack can’t let go (and for all I’m concerned, I think he knows because Boone himself doesn’t know how to let go either and it takes one to know one). And I think it takes a lot of guts to ask for such a thing, especially when you’re just being told you do have a best chance. (Also, I always choke when Jack says that it’s their best chance, not Boone’s best chance, like they were in it together.) It takes bravery and dignity to do such a thing and no one can go tell me someone who dies like this is pathetic. Also, the writers were especially cruel because if there’s one thing about Boone that makes me hurt even more here is that he doesn’t even get to say the famous last words and the sentence ends in the beginning (and of course they were for Shannon, who of course wasn’t there like she never was there for him much). I think the only time I came close to feel this miserable while watching Lost was when Charlie died, but nothing will ever top it. This episode drains me, damn.
Also, just to say something about how freaking good the writing is here, the other point about how tragic this whole thing is? Shannon. Because Shannon here… well, I never felt that much empathy for her until the following episode, but here there’s a perfect sum of the whole Boone/Shannon dynamic. He’s dying and she’s having the romantic picnic with Sayid; he asks for her and no one can find her because no one knows where they are and she also tells Sayid she doesn’t love him the way he loved her, which is true indeed and nothing to say about it, but in that context when you know what’s happening to him is just a blow. It’s like she knows he will always be there anyway, and well, look at her in the end. I think she never really understood how much he mattered to her until he died and then she probably felt even worse because not only she wasn’t there, but she also was on a date. I guess they hit the target if they made me want to feel for Shannon because I completely did. Another thing that I always liked about Do No Harm which might be marginal is actually Sawyer. Apart from having the only fun line of the episode, not only he gave Kate all the alcohol, but he had also offered to come with her, which he didn’t exactly have to do since it wasn’t like he and Boone were ever close, all the contrary. Then of course she told him no, pity because I’d have loved to see what he’d have done if he had gone, but whatever. It just showed a waay nicer side of him and in S1 he wasn’t exactly an angel or anything, and especially with the inhalers story I guess Boone wasn’t his favorite person.
And then, well, the point is that I always end up here. There’s the whole shipper angle, because while one can ship Jack/Boone without a problem even not taking Do No Harm into account, if you do take it into account, even if not necessarily having Boone dying, it takes a whole other meaning. It just shows how far Jack would go for Boone and sort of proves my point about why I’d ship them; without Do No Harm they’re a good/plausible ship, but then if it was just because of that Jack would be just one person I like to pair Boone with and my OTP could very well be also Boone/Charlie because I think they’d be totally good for each other for a whole number of other different reasons. But Do No Harm makes them my OTP and that’s the end of the story.
I always end up here if I reference Boone dying and I take it into account if I write him when he’s dead. It’s the episode that finally showed me that Shannon did care and that we could be good friends (we exactly weren’t in the beginning). And more than anything, it was the episode which changed my alliances for good.
Before Do No Harm I liked Jack alright, but he was more a low top ten character than a top five, while Locke was definitely top five material. Well, Jack had won me over to his side at minute one when he told Boone he was going to save him and I think he went into top four at a very, very fast speed. Do No Harm is half of the reason for which I won’t ever make fun of Jack’s crying because really, at one point I was having his exact same reactions whatever he did. I never, ever loved him more for his stubbornness and his fixing compulsion. And then, well, I never really changed idea. I know that Jack can be unlikable, arrogant, stubborn, annoying, a jerk, that he yells and bosses people around and that he cries too much, but sincerely? I don’t care because when it came to what mattered most to me he didn’t let me down for a second and for how much they can write him inconsistently (*glares at Darlton*) he always made sense to me and never let me down as Locke did (and as Sawyer did in the Long Con and as a lot of other Lost characters did) even when I didn’t agree with him. It’s not that I just can’t not like him, it’s that I don’t have the option to dislike him because whenever I do (mainly if he’s around Kate) I just flash back to this episode and whatever he does, I can forgive it. I know, I’m hopeless.
It was also when I stopped trusting Locke even if I can’t exactly manage to be done professionally with our friend John but that’s another story. And the whole Jack thing also comes into play when I write fic because most of what I know about Jack, I know from here. Some from Daddy Issues and the rest is more or less a variation on the theme, but this is the episode I channel Jack from, mostly, just as Deus Ex Machina is the one I channel Boone from when Shannon isn’t the picture. And the one I channel my OTP from, but that went unsaid. And the only one where I actually liked Christian apart from 5x05, which is pretty much the achievement. The one where I really started loving Sun and where Jin definitely took a lot of points with me, too. And well, the one I will always both love and hate in the same way I guess and the only one which I will always have to take into account no matter what.