Lost is over. Now what?

The Lost finale was last night. And it wasn’t just the season finale, it was the series finale. Like, the end. It’s done.

Wait, what happens now?

Okay, I’ll admit that I didn’t watch all of this season until literally friday night. I had twelve episodes to get through. Friday night I watched three, saturday morning I watched two, and saturday night I watched six. Sunday morning I watched the last one before the finale. I was on my own personal Lost marathon. And I feel like I should have been having an entire 6-season rewatch for the last 2 months or so, but in those last 2.5 hours, it all came back. I didn’t need to go back and watch 6 of the greatest seasons of television, because along with the characters, I remembered. I won’t try and explain anything, because it’s far too complicated to understand the depth of the story that Lindelof and Cuse put forth all those years ago, but the finale was beautiful. It was exactly how it should have been.

I cried. A lot. I cried the night before when Jin and Sun died together, I cried during the finale when Charlie remembered Claire, and Juliet remembered Sawyer, and when Jack passed the torch to Hurley. And at the end when Jack was dying, for the good ten minutes. No, really, I’m pretty sure Jack stumbled around the Island dying for the last ten minutes of the show, after we all finally found out what the Island actually was.

Some people are probably still unsatisfied with the ending, because there were still questioned unanswered, but did they really think that they could answer everything question without being incredibly campy and ridiculous? Cause some things don’t even matter anymore, so why try and resolve them. The only things that were resolved were part of the whole story to begin with.

[EDIT] I figured that the Island was purgatory all along, but I was wrong. All the symbolism and plot that went into finishing out this great story astounded me. It was so much deeper than just purgatory. The Island was real. They were really there. The last scene exemplified that with the footprints on the beach by the crash site. The Island happened. I read this article earlier, and it explains it pretty well. The crash actually happened, they were actually on the Island, but they died. They all died. This alternate universe that we’ve been seeing all season with Sawyer and Miles as cops and Jack and Juliet married, that was the dream. The dream that they were living in this millisecond between death and actually moving on. Apparently in the Tibetan belief of bardos, once awareness is freed from the body, it creates its own reality as one would experience in a dream. This dream occurs in various phases (bardos) in ways both wonderful and terrifying – that was the dream. The dream that they were trapped in that they had to move on from.

My mom was watching the last bit of the recap with me and was like, “did we always know that Jack’s dad’s name was Christian?”

“Yeah, mom.”

“Good lord, I could have figured it out a long time ago if I’d known that.”

“Yeah, I know mom.”

I’m not a religious person, but I think I’m a person of faith. I believe in things. No specific things, but things. And what I loved so much about Lost is that it made you ask so many questions – not just about the show, but about yourself. I mean, in a time where shitty shows like The Bachelor and Private Practice – ones that involve no thought whatsoever, shallow and useless, we had Lost. They had these series of notes from viewers in between the recap last night, and one very aptly said, “who says TV fries your brain?”

Here are a couple more that especially touched me.
“Our minds may tell us that it’s over, but our hearts will forever remain on the Island.”
“The world is full of smoke monsters. There is a smoke monster in all of us.”
“I lost 6 years to you, and I don’t want them back.”
“Why does this have to end?”
“I’ll miss you, Freckles.”
“Thanks some much for an amazing six years.”
“To all the Losties out there, may the love of this show unite us forever. Goodbye, LOST. Thanks for the memories.”
“You were ridiculously awesome at keeping me addicted to confusion.”
“May as well sell the TV! Nothing can compare. Thanks for 6 amazing seasons.”

I’m just sad I didn’t get to watch the finale with anyone else. I literally got home last night at 12:30 and had to eat dinner and help my mom with something for work before I watched the 2.5 hour finale. Well, with fast-forwarding through the commercials. But I didn’t get to bed until 3:30. So I got less than 5 hours of sleep. Or less. Depending on how long it actually took me to get to sleep. I woke up with a sore throat, headache and puffy eyes. Good job, Abby. Now I’m gonna be sick for Sasquatch. Time to take way too much Vitamin C. Not that Lost got me sick, it just got me hella tired for today. I’m going to bed at midnight. And that’s that.

But I know some people are probably reading this thinking that I’m ridiculous. I am. But am I ashamed for loving Lost? No. It’s a show that made you think. And sure, it’s completely fictional, but it’s just like when you finish reading a great novel, or a great series of novels. I guarantee that if you read all 7 of the Harry Potter novels, you cried at the end. Unless you’re, like, heartless or something. And I cried at the end of Lost not because everyone died, but because it was over. I mean, you can’t really write a show to take its place, because nothing will live up to it. It’s not like a sitcom or medical melodrama, or a cop show or reality show. Serial dramas don’t follow a formula, and that’s what I loved about Lost. I literally had no idea what was going on half the time, let a lone what was going to happen next. It was a show that you had to actively watch. Like reading a book, but with a wonderful score and really attractive male leads.

And it’s different when serials end, because when series end, we know that in the universe within the series, life still goes on. It’s just that the story is no longer being told in episodes. When serials are over, they’re over. The story is over. It’s really the end. And in Lost’s case, it was all of their end.

When I read that article I linked to earlier, one point that she made hit me.

“If you live together, you won’t die alone.”

I can’t explain why it poked at my brain so much, but it was kind of wonderful. The Oceanic 815 passengers had to find each other so that they could leave together. I swear to God Jacob and Christian explained the entire reason they were there.

In the last few moments of the finale, I had the perfect sense of deja vu. There Jack was, dying in the middle of the bamboo reeds, and Vincent comes to sit with him so he won’t die a lone. And then the camera comes in on Jack’s eye closing. The series started with Jack’s eye opening and Vincent barking after the plane crash.

God this show was fucking amazing.

Goodnight, Jack. Goodbye, Lost. It was nice knowing you.
❤ Abby

P.S. Another excerpt from Jezebel's article. I want to live my life like this.
“Because a part of the shared human experience—which is basically what the entire show boiled down to—is that we want to leave our mark, so that people know that we’d been here. (I mean, that was the point of all the different shit, like the statue, and hieroglyphs and the empty Dharma barracks. They were all just footprints of the people who had been on the Island before.) And a large part of that, of leaving a footprint, or a mark, is to establish a basic need: To know that we matter.”

it was so jokes

This post is a day too late, but it was super late when I was getting to bed. But then again, it’s almost 2 am right now. But who needs sleep? NOT ME! Hell, it’s layout weekend. I bet Sarah, Alexis and Lana aren’t sleeping right now. So I don’t need to either!

Plus, I went and saw Iron Man 2 tonight, and it was AWESOME.

But that’s not the point of this post!

Last night was w00tstock. Wil Wheaton, Adam Savage, Paul and Storm, MC Frontalot, Loading Ready Run, Stepto, Molly Lewis, and…wait, what’s this? HANK GREEN!

Yes, it is a Hank Green!

But I’ll get to that later.

I’ve never been in a bigger gathering of awesome nerds in my life. It was funny, because it was a COMPLETELY different crowd than I’ve ever been in at any venues in Seattle. Normally I’m surrounded by 18-year-old fangirls and hipsters. But then again, nerds don’t usually leave their house unless they have to. And this was one of those times.

I sat down next to this girl and her dad. I didn’t say anything but “hi” right off the bat, but I soon learned that I’d been seated next to another legitimate nerdfighter. When Wil Wheaton came out on stage and announced all the people, the girl to my right cheered the loudest at Hank’s name. Another nerdfighter? Awesome! I thought to myself. Eventually I found out that her name was Katelyn, and she was from Monroe. She complimented my “I Are Scientists” tee shirt, as did several other people throughout the night, which felt pretty cool. But Katelyn told me that Hank was the main reason that she drove down from Monroe that night. And we both kind of sang along to Anglerfish, which was so jokes. I wasn’t expecting to find anyone else there, because no one responded to my posts at the Ning, but it was all fine in the end.

But I won’t jump ahead.

Wil Wheaton is so cool. Like, so cool. Throughout the night, we had ceiling cat staring at us from the projector desktop.

This ceiling cat. He was on the desktop of the laptop controlling the videos and introductions for each act. At one point the screen saver came on and everyone started laughing.

Wil said several times throughout the night when the audience laughed at EXTRA obscure nerdy references, “I love you guys.” And he made several Doctor Who references, my favorite being how he called the theater he first saw Rocky Horror in “Tardis-like.”

“It seemed bigger on the inside.” Hehe.

Speaking of that, Wil told us a story about the first time he saw Rocky, and how he lost his Rocky virginity. And Paul and Storm provided the soundtrack for that story. It was adorable.

Molly Lewis also played last night, 4 songs I believe, the last one being “Conjunction Junction” with Jason Finn from the Presidents of the United States of America. I got lots of video of her, but I haven’t uploaded it to Youtube yet. Once I do, I’ll add it here. It was funny, because when I heard about who was going to be at w00tstock, I was like, “hey, Molly Lewis opened for Chris Hardwick last month!” She was pretty cool, with her Wikipedia breakup song and another one about how she wants to have Stephen Fry’s babies.

So I’m not going to explain the entire show, because that would be really long, because it was a good 3.5 hours of awesome geeky nerdiness. The intermission came and I went to see what kinda merch I could get. I ended up getting a w00tstock tee shirt, which came with a poster. The girl at the merch table was one of the people who complimented me on my WAS shirt.

I can’t remember if Stepto was before or after the intermission, but Stephen Toulouse, the director of Xbox Live, came out and gave a “sermon,” if you will, about all the douchebags on Xbox live. It was the story of the aptly named “p00nhun+er” and his asshole gaming ways and vulgar video feed. I don’t have an Xbox, but I’m guessing that it’s a common problem. Two of the members of Loading Ready Runs stood next to Stepto in brown hooded robes, and there was a giant ancient-looking book that he read from.

“Be thou not a dick,” he said. Guaranteed that bit got some of the biggest laughs. Because even if you don’t play Xbox live, you understand the internet assholes. It’s the whole freaking internet, and there are bound to be dickbags.

Now onto the best – well, most anticipated – part of the night. Wil, I think Wil introduced him, got up on stage and mentioned something about Youtube and DFTBA records, and Katelyn and I cheered madly.

I’m pretty sure at that point in the night, he did. I doubt that the most people were there to see Hank, but the people who were there to see him were quite possibly the loudest. I only got video of “Quarks,” because I saw my LOW BATTERY signal, and didn’t want it to die if I was going to take a picture with Hank afterwards. Idiotically enough, I forgot to get a picture with Hank at the end, but what I got was so much better. After my marvelous filming, Hank played “A Song About An Anglerfish” and “What Would Captain Picard Do?” And Hank mentioned how weird it was to be playing the latter song in a room with Wil Wheaton (most famously known as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek: TNG, if you don’t know). It was so cool sitting there with Katelyn singing along to Anglerfish and being completely enthralled by one of my favorite Youtubers. I couldn’t stop smiling. In fact, I couldn’t really stop smiling the whole night, except for the sudden “ouch” faces I made when Adam Savage showed us extra special footage of an upcoming episode of Mythbusters. I gotta tell you, it’s gonna be SO GOOD.

In fact, Adam did bust the myth that Jamie isn’t intentionally funny. He told us about this interview with Billy Bob Thornton, who said something like sleeping with Angelina Jolie is like fucking a couch. And Jamie said, according to Adam, “If my couch looked like Angelina Jolie, I’d fuck it.”

And just picture those words coming out of THIS FACE.

Jamie doesn’t try to be funny. HE JUST IS.

After Adam’s hilarious stories about latex jumpsuits, drunken treadmills and Jamie’s junk, there was one final song from Paul and Storm, about Pirates. What made it so great was that when the audience was cued, we’d answer with a resounding “ARRRRHHH.” But say they asked us a question like, “what was your favorite science fiction film?” “STARRR WARRRRS.”
“Who was your favorite character?”
“ARRRTOOODEETOOO.”
“Who was your least favorite character?”
“JAARRRR JARRRR!”
Apparently most of the crowd was very hateful toward Jar Jar Binks.
And the song went on like that for about ten minutes.
“Who’s your favorite host of the Tonight Show?”
“CAAARRRRSON!”
And this was perfect. Wil Wheaton answered that question with, “Conan O’Brien!”

It made me smile. Like I wasn’t already smiling, right?

So at the end of the show, I went and got my tee shirt, went to pee chatted with Katelyn for a bit, thinking that the line was to have everyone – including Hank – sign something. After I got at the end of the line, cause I wasn’t about to cut in front of people, I saw that Katelyn had already gone to the lobby floor and was talking with Hank. I ran around the long line, too impatient to stand in line for that long, even if it was Adam Savage and Wil Wheaton. But at that point it wasn’t even them in the lobby signing things. It was Paul and Storm.

I walked over to Hank and Katherine, who were talking with Molly Lewis at the time, and another girl walked up next to be and had him sign something. I said hello, introduced myself, and right then and there Hank gave me a hug! Like, I didn’t even say anything but my name, and I was in Hank’s hug bucket! I must say, he’s way tall in person. You don’t really get to see on Youtube, because he and John are always sitting down, and they’re in a tiny video screen. I told Hank how excited I was to be there, and that I wasn’t going to go, until I heard that he was going to be a part of w00tstock. Totally true. And then in seeing his large black Sharpie, it hit me!

“Could you sign my bag? I’m gonna try and turn it into a thing, where I get really cool people to sign it!”
“Who do you have so far?”
“Chris Hardwick.”
“Is that a cat, with a gun?”
“Yes, it’s a gun-wielding cougar.” I didn’t bother trying to explain it, because no one but us Sci-Cavers would really get it. Actually Markas pointed that out to me today.
“That bag is so indie.”
“Yeah, but unless you get the reference!”
“No one will get the reference. That’s why it’s so indie.”
“But that’s not a bad thing. I didn’t spend $40 on it at Urban Outfitters!”
“That makes it even more indie!”

Anyway, so I had Hank sign my bag (he has beautiful handwriting, btw) and I thanked him profusely for coming to Seattle on this glorious night of geek and awesome. As I walked back to my car, I literally wanted to skip. Seriously. But it was about 11:30 on a friday night on 2nd street, and I could have easily been accosted if I started skipping. But once I did get to my car at the garage 4 blocks over, I did squee quite a bit sitting in the driver’s seat. And I did all the way home. I texted Adrian while I was driving, which is a terrible idea, but I had to tell someone, and no one else in my contact list would understand my excitement. And it was damn exciting, damnit!

I’m in Hank’s hug bucket now!

Look!

Okay, I’m done.

❤ Abby