Where Things Get All Soul Mate-y
Apr. 7th, 2010 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shipperxNo, I'm not talking the Bangel!Boinkfest, because I do not care. (ETA: Although now that I've brought it up, I did mention on a Bangel!Boinkfest thread that I'd post the link to an old essay someone wrote on How to Write a Sex Scene that I always thought was quite good. [/eta])
Anyway, I was thinking of Lost's "Happily Ever After" episode last night (yes. The episode title really was "Happily Ever After") and why Lost's vast array of starcrossed soul mate-yness doesn't bother me. It's usually the sort of thing that causes me to grind my teeth.
I think the reason that the AU soul mate/ true loves don't bother me is that they don't feel like they are pre-ordained by fate. In fact, they all seem to be in defiance of fate. It was like Keamy telling Sun (or was it Jin) a couple of weeks ago "some people aren't meant to be together". The starcrossed loves of Lost seem to be fate telling couples "you are impossible." With the creation of the AU, of characters own free will, they're metaphorically screaming back, "We're possible!"
The AU soulmates don't really feel to me like their love is coming from demigods on high. It's that in Lost!Prime these people fell in love and lost each other. The love was real, Jacob's/Smokey's fate was against them. Lost!Prime is screwing everyone royally. The recap episode of last season's finale had the subtitle people saying that Juliet's death-defying act with the bomb was an act of pure free will. The Sideways AU is the world the Lostees created in defiance of fate, and if in the AU they still feel that love, it feels to me as if it's in defiance of fate that has worked (in Lost's case, literally) to keep them apart.
Can We Blame It On Kaluza-Klein?
Now, regarding Lost, the timeline stuff gives me headaches (in a fun kind of way). The show needs to clarify a bit, though, because I don't think they've made it at all clear where the AU and the Sideways split from one another... or that they ever actually split at all. (Most theories concerning alternate universes don't actually work like that or mean exactly that. I'm enough of a science geek to be fascinated by that sort of thing. Seriously, put Michio Kaku, Brian Greene or discussions about Stephen Hawking on tv and chances are pretty good that I'll watch.)
But for all the math and science, this is about fiction and I find myself thinking of the late Michael Crichton's novel "Timeline" (heh. Quite the comedown from actual science but there you go) and I vaguely remember his having a physicist (mathematician?) character describe alternate universes as being like foam. They are each bubbles that press against one another but can only touch, not intersect. To intersect would only make a bigger bubble. (Or I guess in that theory they could also split up like amoeba's or something. It makes visual sense to me at any rate even if it is a broken metaphor). Anyway, I'm wondering whether Lost!Prime and the Sideways share a timeline at all (as opposed to simply divergent ones. It's possible they diverge, but I don't know that it's a given). I'm wondering whether the bomb simply pinched off the Lost!Prime timeline into its own bubble universe with its own self-fulfilling timeline... sort of like Eloise Hawking sending Faraday back in time knowing what would happen to him in the past, or Locke telling Richard Locke's own future. Locke knew the 'future' because that was where he was from. It was self-fulfilling. I'm wondering whether Jacob-interference, or Lostee timetravel or a nuclear bomb locked Lost!Prime into it's own self-fulfilling loop. We know for certain that the Lostee's time travelled in Lost!Prime (Sun saw the photo. Zoe has Jin's map). I don't think we know that time traveling Lostees have anything to do with AU timeline. In fact, we've had hints (what with Ben's father and Miles's father) that perhaps they aren't. I try not to overanalyze (stop laughing) and come up with "JossTeam Darlton are god" theories, but I don't actually think that in their time loopy show that they're so sloppy as to forget little details like who is dead and a nuclear bomb. :)
Headache again. That always seems to happen when trying to figure out things with Lost. :)
On other topics: New Dresden novel! Whee! Audbile already has JM's audio reading of it for download. I'm so used to hearing Marsters narrate Dresden that even when I read Dresden novels, Harry's voice is always JM's to me. Anyway, new Dresden. Squee!
On fanfic topic: Finished editing Chapter 5 of Arriving Somewhere Not Here and am half-way through editing Chapter 6 (still have work to do on Buffy POV) . Hey, that's actual progress. Glacial, but progress. :)
Anyway, I was thinking of Lost's "Happily Ever After" episode last night (yes. The episode title really was "Happily Ever After") and why Lost's vast array of starcrossed soul mate-yness doesn't bother me. It's usually the sort of thing that causes me to grind my teeth.
I think the reason that the AU soul mate/ true loves don't bother me is that they don't feel like they are pre-ordained by fate. In fact, they all seem to be in defiance of fate. It was like Keamy telling Sun (or was it Jin) a couple of weeks ago "some people aren't meant to be together". The starcrossed loves of Lost seem to be fate telling couples "you are impossible." With the creation of the AU, of characters own free will, they're metaphorically screaming back, "We're possible!"
The AU soulmates don't really feel to me like their love is coming from demigods on high. It's that in Lost!Prime these people fell in love and lost each other. The love was real, Jacob's/Smokey's fate was against them. Lost!Prime is screwing everyone royally. The recap episode of last season's finale had the subtitle people saying that Juliet's death-defying act with the bomb was an act of pure free will. The Sideways AU is the world the Lostees created in defiance of fate, and if in the AU they still feel that love, it feels to me as if it's in defiance of fate that has worked (in Lost's case, literally) to keep them apart.
Can We Blame It On Kaluza-Klein?
"By now you should be convinced that our universe may have additional curled-up dimensions; certainly, so long as they are small enough, nothing rules them out. But extra dimensions may strike you as an artifice..." ~ The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene
Now, regarding Lost, the timeline stuff gives me headaches (in a fun kind of way). The show needs to clarify a bit, though, because I don't think they've made it at all clear where the AU and the Sideways split from one another... or that they ever actually split at all. (Most theories concerning alternate universes don't actually work like that or mean exactly that. I'm enough of a science geek to be fascinated by that sort of thing. Seriously, put Michio Kaku, Brian Greene or discussions about Stephen Hawking on tv and chances are pretty good that I'll watch.)
"God does not play dice" ~Albert Einstein
"Not only does God play dice, but he sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen {...} All the evidence shows that God was actually quite a gambler, and the universe is a great casino..." ~ Stephen Hawking
But for all the math and science, this is about fiction and I find myself thinking of the late Michael Crichton's novel "Timeline" (heh. Quite the comedown from actual science but there you go) and I vaguely remember his having a physicist (mathematician?) character describe alternate universes as being like foam. They are each bubbles that press against one another but can only touch, not intersect. To intersect would only make a bigger bubble. (Or I guess in that theory they could also split up like amoeba's or something. It makes visual sense to me at any rate even if it is a broken metaphor). Anyway, I'm wondering whether Lost!Prime and the Sideways share a timeline at all (as opposed to simply divergent ones. It's possible they diverge, but I don't know that it's a given). I'm wondering whether the bomb simply pinched off the Lost!Prime timeline into its own bubble universe with its own self-fulfilling timeline... sort of like Eloise Hawking sending Faraday back in time knowing what would happen to him in the past, or Locke telling Richard Locke's own future. Locke knew the 'future' because that was where he was from. It was self-fulfilling. I'm wondering whether Jacob-interference, or Lostee timetravel or a nuclear bomb locked Lost!Prime into it's own self-fulfilling loop. We know for certain that the Lostee's time travelled in Lost!Prime (Sun saw the photo. Zoe has Jin's map). I don't think we know that time traveling Lostees have anything to do with AU timeline. In fact, we've had hints (what with Ben's father and Miles's father) that perhaps they aren't. I try not to overanalyze (stop laughing) and come up with "
Headache again. That always seems to happen when trying to figure out things with Lost. :)
On other topics: New Dresden novel! Whee! Audbile already has JM's audio reading of it for download. I'm so used to hearing Marsters narrate Dresden that even when I read Dresden novels, Harry's voice is always JM's to me. Anyway, new Dresden. Squee!
On fanfic topic: Finished editing Chapter 5 of Arriving Somewhere Not Here and am half-way through editing Chapter 6 (still have work to do on Buffy POV) . Hey, that's actual progress. Glacial, but progress. :)
