Just thought of an interesting detail from the big conversation between Locke and Desmond:

(spoilery, beware)

Desmond asks how long it’s been since the plane crashed, Locke says 44 days, Desmond reacts with a somewhat ambiguous facial expression that could be gobsmackery or could be something more subtle. “Why,” the audience is forced to ask, “would ‘44 days’ have some sort of obvious significance to HatchBastard?[1]”

The obvious surmisal is that it has something to do with the sickness that is assumed by Rousseau and HatchBastard to infect the entire island. (The at-least-assumption of infection is very much bolstered by the quarantine notice that was on the inside of the hatch.) But what? Is 44 days almost at or already beyond the presumed…what? The length of time it takes for the sickness to end in death, the latency period between infection and onset of symptoms, what?

And then today, having nothing to do but surf while carrying out my office hours, I happened to think about the above conundrum while also thinking about The Numbers. Specifically, I had been assuming that 44 days was beyond what HatchBastard assumed to be some sort of doomsday number re: the infection, and at the same time I happened to remember that the final Number in the sequence was 42.

So.

So. What if this (techno-organic?) “virus” has been designed as such that it presents specific symptoms/payloads at known intervals? In fact, what if the sickness Rousseau fears and HatchBastard has been innoculating himself against is supposed to do very specific (and presumably very bad) things on days 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42 after infection? If this is the case, what must be going through HatchBastard’s head as he sees people walking around with very much non-exploded heads on day 44?

I really do love this show, even despite the occassional dip into idiot suspense.

[1] Any other fans of both The Invisibles and Lost? If so, did any others of you start getting the feeling at the end of last season that Locke’s arc was looking like it might be a nifty ChessBastard’s Secret Origin thing?

First, and maybe most importantly: I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit. The first half hour or so I was thinking there was something potentially great unfolding onscreen; by about the two-thirds point I was thinking it would turn out to be serviceable, fairly pedestrian but containing enough clever dialogue to rate an unenthusiastic thumbs-up. Then one of the characters vomited and everything turned to shit.

Why am I grateful toward the film, then? Because it has eased a burden of guilt and given me something new and interesting to think about.

I have for some time now been troubled by the fact that I generally don’t care for genre fiction. I was afraid I had been corrupted by some sort of untenable snobbishness or unconsidered academic biases. I feared my distaste for genre works was intellectually dishonest, an unearned prejudice causing me to sniff inappropriately and miss out on a lot of pleasure.

After Serenity, though, I think I’ve got it: I dislike genre works because they are almost inevitably plot-driven. This is not in itself necessarily a bad thing, but an institutionalized concern for plot above all else appears to inevitably lead to casual acceptance, among both creators and fans, of arbitrariness.

Why did the zap gun reduce Lieutenant Redshirt to ashes in act one but only give Captain Dashing a lovely tan in act three? No reason, it’s arbitrary, the plot demands it. Why did it take papa three hours to cross town and miss his son’s fifth birthday party but only seven minutes to travel the same route when he had to rescue sonny from death at the hands of the Gang of Scoundrels? No reason, it’s arbitrary, the plot demands it. Why does Sheriff Whitehat casually assassinate minion after minion but spare the life of Big Bad, who then returns in act three to cause the Sheriff (who, in the meantime, has continued his habit of shooting BB’s underlings on sight) big trouble? No reason, it’s arbitrary, the plot demands it.

Lots of people like this kind of stuff, and that’s OK, but to me it tastes of garbage.

I started thinking along these lines while trying to figure out, late in the summer, why I just didn’t much like the series Firefly. It was full of very good, very attractive actors, it was liberally sprinkled with the expected Mutant Enemy with, its characters had verve and potentially interesting back-stories, and its world seemed fascinating. What’s not to love?

Arbitrariness, that’s what. River Tam was sometimes lucid, sometimes batshit insane. By itself, this would be a pretty interesting character trait. Unfortunately, her personality/rationality/mood changes just happened to shift in ways that would further the plot already under development. Why? Because the plot demanded it, that’s why.

There were other things like that in the series, I think, but that’s what stood out most to me and put me most off. It turns out Whedon was holding his honking big Hammer of Arbitrariness for Serenity

Spoilers below the cut:

(more…)

I’m surprised I’m so excited to see this movie, as I honestly wasn’t a big fan of the show. In fact, I tend to be totally sympathetic with the Fox execs who aired the train-robbery ep in place of the planned pilot; I even think they probably made the best decision, from the network’s standpoint, when they declined to order additional episodes.

Explanations of the above at this point would take longer than I have at this time, so I’ll leave it hanging. I will say this: The latter half of the already-produced episodes of Firefly did often veer toward very-goodness, but that quality was still patchy enough and inconsistent enough that I don’t share the fan opinion that Firefly would have necessarily developed into something as great as Buffy or Angel had it been given more time.

Because of all this, I honestly don’t have high hopes for the movie. But I’m still looking forward to seeing it, and that I can’t explain. (Well, I think Gina Torres might have something to do with it. The merest glimpse of her knocks my Kinsey-scale rating down a notch or two.)

–post redacted–

(Sorry, Pam.)

God, how I hate that phrase, pretending to profundity but in fact being just numpty-headed.

Construction paper doesn’t kill me, doesn’t even come close, but how the hell is it supposed to make me stronger? Ditto Sharpie pens, Legos, toenail clippers, and rice steamers.

Maybe in German it means something more like, “That which should kill me but doesn’t leaves me stronger.” That’s still bullshit. I lose my arm in a car wreck but am sewn up before I bleed to death, how am I left actually better off? I suffer unmedicated through a bout of colon cancer which goes into remission before I’m terminal, how is my permanently weakened and pained self left meaningfully stronger?

It’s a red flag for me, that phrase. Anybody who uses it automatically goes on my “watch this person closely and don’t ever leave my wallet unguarded around ‘em” list, is all it’s good for.

What a frustrating mixture of genuine and idiot suspense.

(genuine: “Something’s about to happen, and I’m not sure what it is, but it’s damned well going to be interesting.”

idiot: “They’re making it look like something bad might happen, but we all know damned well it won’t.”)

Genuine suspense: Good. Very good.

Idiot suspense: Annoying as hell.

It seemed nifty enough that I plan to be a regular viewer, at least for a couple months, but still there’s something about the ongoing-plot setup that bugs me in a vaguely political way.

I haven’t quite ironed it out, so I won’t be going into detail here, but something doesn’t seem quite right about it. It seems like, through its choice of Big Bads, it’s doing the Fight Club thing of positing that motherhood (read: Femininity) and capital-a Authority are the intertwined enemies of selfhood, and I just don’t thing that’s a fair reading of, well, anything.

I may come back to this after tonight’s episode. Watch the skies this space.

Looks like everyone’s favorite Fundie propaganda outlet has managed to rile up just enough people to get what was supposed to be an upcoming academic work on homosexuality dropped from publication.

I have to admit that the chapter summary that incensed the bluenoses does come off as more than a little skeevy. I’ll even go so far as to say that, unlike so many instances of calling wolf on this subject, the linked summary could be read in good faith as advocating a positive attitude toward pederasty. I’ll even say that the practice of adults making play-toys of 14-year-olds, regardless of gender, deserves its taboo status.

(I know that last sentence should be a no-brainer, but I’ve recently realized that some people really do see an absence of explicit disapproval as being a statement of approval for the thing in question. It’s weird and inexplicable, but it happens.)

That said, the only acceptable tonic to bad scholarship is good scholarship. Censure works; censorship destroys. If the irritating author’s findings are refutable, those offended must work to refute them; if the work cannot be refuted, those who are shocked and appalled should start reevaluting where they themselves stand. It ain’t pretty, but it’s the way advancement of knowledge works.

You know, the kind that’s practically rippling with intellect. One of those that are so saturated with wit that little beads of cleverness form on their skins. A glorious monster of a post, a textual symphony that will uplift as it devestates, that’s what I want to write.

Unfortunately, I haven’t anything to write about and anyway couldn’t pull off the glory if I had. Foo.

I’ve eaten handsful of nuts. Do you know how jam-packed with calories and fats nuts are?

And then there were the fun-size candy bars. Temptation increases exponentially with funnification. I caved. There was chocolate. There was nougat. There was guilt.