Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Three-Sentence Theory Challenge...

I got this idea from a poster on the fuselage.com. Can you express your theory of what's happening on Lost in three sentences or less? Aphorisms, metaphors, and analogies are welcome, run-on sentences are not. Here's my own attempt:

1) None of this was supposed to happen, but all of it must or "every single one of us is dead."

2) Both players, light and dark, must die to end the game for good.

3) Aaron and Ji-Yeon are the Omega Point.

42 comments:

Jonathan Gaskill said...

1) The Smoke Monster is the "man in black" opposed to Jacob.

2) Smokey introduced a Mobius loop into the timestream to kill Jacob, unwittingly saving the world in the process.

3) If the loop is removed from the timestream, the world will be destroyed as it would have been otherwise in 1977.

Melissa said...

How about in one song's lyrics?

In the immortal words of Doris Day:

Que sera, sera.
Whatever will be, will be.
The future's not ours to see.
Que sera, sera.
What will be, will be.

memphish said...

The battle is between free will meaning the things I choose to do or be makes a difference (Jacob's position) vs. a fatalistic approach that my choices don't matter things will end in humanity caused death no matter what (MIB's position.) The time loop will allow Jacob and the Man In Black(MIB) to test that theory by giving at a minimum the O6 and possibly everyone on 815 plus the other characters we've met a do-over opportunity. What Jack, etc. choses to do the second time around (which we'll see in Season 6) will determine if Jacob or MIB is right and then it will all end once and for all.

Daniel Koosed said...

1. Through the successful completion of his painful and rather circuitous journey toward faith, Jack has now proven himself worthy to take Locke's place as leader of the Others.

2. By detonating the hydrogen bomb, Juliet has actually caused the fertility problems that will plague the Island's inhabitants...

3. Bernard and Rose = Adam and Eve

Unknown said...

1) Life as we know it is a large ontological paradox, and It has continued to loop over and over and over for an extremely long period of "time".
2)Two beings (Jacob & MIB) existing outside of the paradox in a dimensional"bobble" (The Island) are battling the beliefs that things can change, (freewill), or that the end result will never change(fate).
3) LOST is the narrative of a critical point in the elaborate plans of both to orchestrate proofs of their beliefs.

KoreAmBear said...

What about Haikus (5-7-5)?

Tom and Arturo
Who would have thunk it, not I!
But is Jacob good?

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Hey, KoreAmBear, did you know many blogs use a Haikusday meme (or theme, or whatever) for their Tuesday's posts. Ding ding ding. You win.

1/We are witnessing the most recent loop that starts with Geronimo Jackson and ends with Taylor Hicks.

2/Jacob is both good and evil, same with the other dude.

3/We will never know how much our individual free will has been interefered with.

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Going back to Missy's musical comment:

1/Make Your Own Kind of Music
2/You All, Everybody
3/Shotgun Ellie, um, Shotgun Willie

erexere said...

23. God in ageless living mortal form picks a helluva great place to retire, but stirs protest from underworld extremist who won't rest until every last living soul is dead and eaten.

42. All of our existence, big bang and everything is nothing more than a tiny time loop within the Star Wars Universe.

108. Silly rabbit, trix are for kids.

Manny said...

Yin and Yang
Fate vs free will
In the end they all die

Greg Tramel said...

(1) it's all about the balance of x vs y

(2) jacob and mib (or whatever u want to call him) need to unite to save humanity

(3) the nephilim have been trying to help us achieve this since the beginning of man but the problem is some nephilim are tricksters so we are stuck in a loop

Anonymous said...

Some of this has happened before, some of it will happen again.

If Desmond is the Variable, Hurley may be the solution.

Life is a wheel.

[Waterland]

Greg Tramel said...

(1) kate is cute
(2) juliet is beautiful
(3) illana is hot

Anu said...

Humanity's progress and evolution is helped and hampered by two opposing sides.

Every generation sends its representatives (or are summoned) to the island for the game of enlightenment.

This time things are different, now the world is out of balance.

KoreAmBear said...

Greg, my unofficial power ranking of the women of LOST:

1) Naomi
2) Ellie 1954(come on she's not 17 in real life right?)
3) Sun
4) Shannon
5) Juliet
6) Ellie 1977
7) Nadia
8) Ilana
9) Sawyer's gf on the mainland
10) Kate
11) Claire
12) Rousseau 1988
13) Rose
14) Eloise 2007
15) Rousseau 2004

Capcom said...

Ilana was cute when she was Yves Adele Harlow on The Lone Gunmen. :-)

Greg Tramel said...

i miss shannon's legs, she wore that short short dress (or ,maybe it was a miniskirt)

you forgot charlotte, i miss her red hair and freckles

Greg Tramel said...

i would have been in the same predicament as sayid if illana stated talking to me in a bar

she's very seductive, koreambear i woud out her higher than naomi

Capcom said...

Heheh, remember when Sawyer said to Shannon, "You're in my sun, Sticks", meaning legs, and she said "What are sunsticks?" Or something to that effect. X-D

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

Well, this has devolved, but in a good way. Waiting for a rundown on the Island men from the ladies. Start your engines!

On another note, Richard said he had been to the Island three--ah, screw it. Let's have fun.

Big, is it OK if we do top three "looks" or what the hell ever. Juliet in the red blouse and barefoot. Sawyer in his LeFleur jumpsuit (yea, yea, call me amidextrious if you want), and Ellie when she was all wetted up in the tunnels.

So, in summary, not just the top three lookers, but what they were wearing to attain that look. And, yes, you can list Locke with that orange in his mouth or Charlie in the diaper commercial.

@Capcom, I'll hit your blog soon, had some writing to catch up with after the Indianapolis mess.

@KoreAmBear, I'm curious as to if you will list Tom and if so, what instance. Off-topic, I'd love to see M. C. Gainey on DANCING WITH THE STARS. Elizabeth Mitchell as well.

Capcom said...

Heheh, don't worry Wayne, I've been in shock from the finale and haven't written anything up yet on my Lost blog(s). Altho I am working on a Lost Science post now (in my head) on something that I posted on the last thread over here. In case that one's pretty much closed, here's a repost, it has to do with this week's Nova that you made sure I watched, and I'm glad that I did! (Warning long post)


I was looking up info on physicist Hugh Everett after seeing the Nova episode based on him this week, and I went down the various Wiki leads to the thought experiment on Quantum Suicide and found the following, that sounds a lot like Lost and particularly Michael and his misfiring gun. I know that's alot to read, but it's interesting. Most importantly, it gives TPTB a loophole of their own on how they said early on that Lost would not be SciFi, but actually seems to be. Perhaps TPTB have created a show which is just positing "thought experiments" like the quantum suicide, rather than actual hard SciFi. :o):

"For example, a man sits down before a gun, which is pointed at his head. This is no ordinary gun; i­t's rigged to a machine that measures the spin of a quantum particle. Each time the trigger is pulled, the spin of the quantum particle is measured. Depending on the measurement, the gun will either fire, or it won't. If the quantum particle is measured as spinning in a clockwise motion, the gun will fire. If the particle is spinning counterclockwise, the gun won't go off. There'll only be a click.

Nervously, the man takes a breath and pulls the trigger. The gun clicks. He pulls the trigger again. Click. And again: click. The man will continue to pull the trigger again and again with the same result: The gun won't fire. Although it's functioning properly and loaded with bullets, no matter how many times he pulls the trigger, the gun will never fire. He'll continue this process for eternity, becoming immortal.

Go back in time to the beginning of the experiment. The man pulls the trigger for the very first time, and the particle is now measured as spinning clockwise. The gun fires. The man is dead.

But, wait. The man already pulled the trigger the first time -- and an infinite amount of times following that -- and we already know the gun didn't fire. How can the man be dead? The man is unaware, but he's both alive and dead. Each time he pulls the trigger, the universe is split in two. It will continue to split, again and again, each time the trigger is pulled, and becoming quantum immortal. ­ This thought experiment is called 'quantum suicide'. It was first posed by then-Princeton University theorist Max Tegmark in 1997 (now on faculty at MIT). However, science fiction author Larry Niven originally proposed a fictional variant of quantum suicide in his short story "All The Myriad Ways" in which the protagonist final action in the story kills/fails to kill him in a myriad of alternate realities."

Anonymous said...

The real John Locke will be un-deaded, even though it would be way bolder to have baddie-in-a-skinsuit be Terry O'Quinn's only character from here to the end.

Capcom said...

Yes, let's hope that TO'Q will continue to play the MIB often, he's so much fun to watch. :-D

Greg Tramel said...

well done summary video

Greg Tramel said...

god help us all if Locke and Juliet are dead is dead

Capcom said...

Wow, that's great, tx GT for posting it. :-D

KoreAmBear said...

Ah, totally forgot about Charlotte! I'd say right after Ilana. Of course,Locke's gf Helen (Mrs. Bundy) looked pretty good too. Oh, what about Hurley's mom "what is this dead Pakastani doing on my couch?" Oh, and the tattoo girl that marked people in Thailand (Bai Ling). Whoa, she would be way up there too. I never thought she was attractive in her other movies but she definitely looked great in that Jack talk Thai (anyone got the reference?) episode. Darn, then you have Theresa and Theresa's sister. Oh, what about the two girls holding down the Looking Glass? What about Charlie's love interest whom he conned? This might take all summer.

Greg Tramel said...

OH YEAH, the looking glass girls, i remember 1 of them being WOW

Capcom said...

Right the LG chicks! They'd be high on the list for their Rambo-ette attitude. :o)

Yuk, Bai Ling? I thought that she looked very pretty in that Monkey King movie (the Lost Empire?) and in the Richard Gere movie (Red something), but too skanky in her Lost role. :-P Just IMNSHO tho.

OK, after I get back from an Irish concert that I'm going to in a minute, I'm going to have to post a list for the Lost dudes of my choice. :o)

Greg Tramel said...

i'm thinking godwin had a way with the ladies but what do i know, i had to ask coworker if jacob was cute or not, she said NO WAY!

dj said...

Rosie, dudes. The one who brought brownies. Quite a looker.

Capcom said...

I thought that Jacob was nice looking, he had that gentle country UK gentleman kind of look. But I don't know if he's Brit or not. Same look with Des.


For now, here's my 3-point list of what I get from Lost on a personal level...so far.

1) Live together, die...j/k, heheh.


#1) The redemption thing. Don't let the misfortune/mistakes in your past dictate your future. Just because you had a lousy start in Life, doesn't mean you can't have a great finish. Somewhere (a movie?) I saw/heard, "A man is more than just the mistakes he's made." Once all our flawed Losties got to the island, they (the smarter ones anyway) realized that they had a second chance to make themselves over if they wanted to. It's not easy (poor Sayid), but keep trying.

#2) Don't be artificially negative about Life, that's dumb and unproductive. And don't make excuses for why things can't work out. Juliet's "poor pitful me" attitude didn't work out too well for her back in The World. And Hurley figured this out when they found the DI van and he made his own thought-shift to the postive. Sayid has tried to follow this, but hasn't quite made it yet. If Life's not working, reboot and take a new direction, work out a contingency plan. From what we've seen thus far, it seems that's why the DI failed, they were completely inflexible in their thinking. That's a Zen thing (the bending reed in the wind), so the DI of all peeps should have known that! James and Juliet went with the flow, fitting into DI-ville, and they found happiness outside their original reality.

#3) Free will and Fate somehow seem intertwined to me. Even if your overall Destiny is actually fixed, you have the free will to make productive choices along the way to that end. I don't know how to explain how I feel that they could both exist concurrently, but it seems so far as if our Losties were destined to be a part of the island, but that also their fortunate or unfortunate choices seemed to determine how long it took them to get to their Destiny...or...how much pain or happiness they would experience along the way there.


P.S. I love your song choice, Missy! Sing it, Doris!

Capcom said...

Oh yeah, and #2 didn't work out too well for Jack either, with all his previous whining, inflexability, and subconscious self-loathing.

Anonymous said...

1. Ben is a liar because the island made him a liar; much like it cured Rose's cancer, and gave Richard the ability to be ageless.

2. All that has happened before will happen again.

3. John Locke is the Harbinger of Death. Much like Kara Thrace.

Lantz Dogg

lockerocks said...

Ladies turn:

1 - Charlie's the one you want to date

2 - Jack's the one you want to marry

3 - Sawyer's the one you sleep around with

Only fair, guys!

Oh, and I'm kind of disappointed that the show is coming down to such a basic moral plot line. I want some closure on our characters, hope they don't disappoint me there.

lockerocks said...

Ladies turn:

1 - Charlie's the one you want to date

2 - Jack's the one you want to marry

3 - Sawyer's the one you sleep around with

Only fair, guys!

Oh, and I'm kind of disappointed that the show is coming down to such a basic moral plot line. I want some closure on our characters, hope they don't disappoint me there.

Capcom said...

I agree with the plot turn, Lockerocks, but keep hope, TPTB have said recently that they want the story be ulitmately be about the people as well. As in, it's got to be a people story, for them to be happy. (paraphrased)

Dr. Deuce said...

1. Life sucks.

2. Then you die.

3. Unless you're on the Island,
where life will continue to suck.

KoreAmBear said...

Dr. Deuce FTW!

Unknown said...

1) OMG

2) WTF

3) Ha Ha Ha. Another Hurley line.

Capcom said...

X-D

synchrobrarian said...

VERY intresting ideas Big and you all everybody else, i'm still trying to mull it all over and wrap my brain around it along with these thoughts on Valis and the moebius loop An Island of Theories