#╰ * juliet : meta ⧽

[hartanddoe]

Van and Tai's whole relationship is so Romeo + Juliet - tragic star crossed lovers and all that. Even the (near death) by poison/toxic gas, being unconscious and then Van dying via dagger only to be discovered moments too late to save her. I guess within this comparison Melissa would be Tybalt, Simone is Rosaline, Misty is the Nurse obviously and teen Van is The Chorus, summarizing the tragic tale. There's also the speed at which they go from dating again in the adult timeline to Taissa calling Van her wife - all within the span of a few days.

When Van went to the doctor I did notice it was shot similarly to the fish tank scene from the *1996* film Romeo + Juliet but assumed at most it was a nod to Vans love for 90s cinema but with the addition of the Hamlet poster behind Van in the cavefume classroom and her tragic, violent death (caused by a feud she wasn't really involved in but got swept up in anyway) and the use of the song "exit music for a film" by Radiohead which was on the soundtrack of R+J as well -I now believe this scene was foreshadowing for all the cinephiles like Van herself, that she was unfortunately doomed, and that Tai will most likely be the next Yellowjacket to die.

For never was a story of more woe, than this of Taissa and her Van ya know

[sscullysglasses]

as much as i love lafleur as an episode, ill never get over how that’s the only episode we get of the dharma years. like yes ok i get it. its incredible how much they’re able to convey in a single episode. but we had a season of flash forwards showing the oceanic six off island and how their lives crumbled without each other. i so wish we’d even had one more on island episode leading into kate, jack, hurley, and sayid’s return. it would have been so juicy to get a deeper juxtaposition between the oceanic six and the time travelers. bc they were both living lies!!! AND YET the implied found family, sawyer’s growth as a leader, and suliet is so so so rich in comparison. especially when you consider that they were also experiencing hauntings from the island and their circumstances. like miles living alongside his parents (and being around for his birth!!), juliet with a younger ben, and the looming date of sawyer’s parents’ deaths. and the difference between the island haunting the oceanic six and the time travelers is that they’d be going through these things together. they’d be living a lie in dharmaville to their community but not to one another. and that’s how they’re able to be so settled and happy regardless of the circumstances.

[demontobee]

Nightingales and Romeo and Juliet in Good Omens S2E6

I’ve been thinking about the many symbolisms of the nightingale since the end of S1, but especially since the whole “That’s the point. No nightingales” conversation between Crowley and Aziraphale at the end of S2. Nightingales feature in a lot of literary texts symbolizing a whole bunch of things, but I found this particularly interesting:  

In Romeo and Juliet (you know, the play where two star-crossed lovers from rivalling families try to overcome all boundaries in the name of love), there is a scene (Act 3, Scene 5) where Romeo and Juliet have a conversation (or a little row/misunderstanding) about nightingales and larks. It is the night/morning after their secret marriage (!) and Romeo has to leave before the morning comes. Otherwise he will be in great danger as he might get caught by Juliet’s relatives. Juliet, who does not want him to leave yet, argues that the bird that they hear singing outside the window is a nightingale. Since nightingales sing by night, she hopes that this will convince Romeo that it is still night and thus make him stay a bit longer. Romeo, on the other hand, is convinced that it is a lark, a bird of dawn, that is singing, which would mean that he has to leave soon. When Romeo suddenly states that he does not care if he will be killed or not and that he wants to stay with Juliet, Juliet caves in and explains that the bird they hear is actually a lark and that Romeo has to flee.

So, a few things to point out here:

It is the night after their “secret marriage”

The nightingale is a night bird whose song indicates darkness and a world asleep, which protects forbidden love from being found out

Juliet does not want to face the harsh reality of the day approaching, which is why she tries to convince Romeo that they are hearing a nightingale while, in fact, a lark is singing, indicating danger

When her lover unexpectedly declares that he wants to stay with her, even at the risk of losing his own life, she tells the truth  in an attempt to usher him out to save his life

Okay, back to Good Omens:

It is the morning after The Dance™ (you know, the one Aziraphale organized only to be able to make a move on Crowley and dance with him; the one during which Crowley tried to open Aziraphale’s eyes to the dangerous situation they were in while Aziraphale refused to give up on his little fantasy-bubble of love and romance). Aziraphale tries to convince Crowley to go back to heaven with him. We don’t know exactly what went on in the conversation between him and the Metatron, but there was probably some threat involved, which means Aziraphale thinks that they will both be safe(r) in heaven. In a way, he is the Juliet in the situation, trying to make his Romeo stay/come with him by convincing him that the nightingale is still singing – that they can still be safe that way. Like the night before, he does not (or at least does not seem to) realize the danger they are in and will be in and that heaven will never let them be “an us”. He does not want to part with Crowley. Crowley, on the other hand, knows exactly that going to heaven is not an option for him and he understands that they are in danger. His statement, “that’s the point. No nightingales,” means that the protection of the metaphorical night, the indifference of heaven and hell concerning their situationship, is over, and that they can either flee together or have to part. Aziraphale, judging by his expression, seems to understand what Crowley is implying here. This seems to be where his parallels with Juliet end, since he does not agree with Crowley in the end. However, there is a version of events that would make his actions similar to Juliet’s in the end: Assuming that Aziraphale knows that one of the two options to keep Crowley safe(r) is out since he knows that Crowley will never agree to going back to heaven, his only other option is to ensure Crowley leaves without him (and without the impression that he needs to save Aziraphale and their relationship). He does this by driving him out if the bookshop.

In any case, the nightingale seems to symbolize the temporary safety of their forbidden love, and Crowley’s statement at the end signals the end of this precious period, and that they must part (for now).

[taweretsdagger]

"he walks among us, but is not one of us:" lost's tragic, (probably) autistic doctors

have been thinking about jack, juliet, and their relationship so much lately, inspired by so much good jack analysis from @eponine119 and @lost-inanotherlife, as well as @youmovedthenachos' discussion of viewing jack as autistic. the more i think about it the more i see this for both him and juliet.

i also think there are some specific differences in how the two behave which can be (at least partially) explained by how autism manifests/is interpreted depending on gender presentation and socialization, but in this post i'll stay focused on their similarities since i can already tell it's gonna be a long one!

both characters similarly display the following signs of autism: strong internal sense of justice (and disregard for social/institutional norms in favor of this), hyperfocus/competence in areas of interest, and a persistent sense of social isolation.

one of the reasons jack and juliet's relationship is so intriguing to me is that they project these traits onto each other, turning the other into a receptacle for the things they want for themselves but cannot bring about on their own. it's a tense, often unpleasant dynamic to watch--somewhat like two mirrors eerily reflecting back and forth into infinity. but the mutual understanding and mutual desire to heal beneath the surface of this tension keeps me hooked and rooting for them.

i'll start off by discussing two of these traits together (hyper-focus/competence and sense of justice/disregard for norms), since i think these are shown most clearly through their lives pre-island, while their social isolation is primarily shown to us on-island.

jack and juliet are doctors who are miraculously gifted in their respective fields, accomplishing medical feats which should be impossible. both sarah and rachel are in seemingly unrecoverable physical conditions which are reversed through jack and juliet's interventions, against all odds. ben and richard also become aware of juliet's prowess as a doctor/researcher due to her success impregnating a male field mouse.

we learn from juliet that jack graduated med school a year early, and i tend to believe that juliet might have done the same (or graduated college early/skipped a grade/etc.), considering that finishing med school at age 26 would leave her only 4 years before being recruited to the island in 2001.

so, we have two people who are near-prodigal in one specific area, but whose lives outside their work are something of a mess. they struggle with personal relationships, struggle to feel confident and secure in their abilities, and are easily influenced by nefarious actors (christian for jack, ed for juliet) who take advantage of their skill and their trusting nature. these dynamics definitely contribute to their sense of isolation/lack of belonging, which i'll come back to in a bit.

both of them also blur (at minimum) the doctor-patient relationship with personal relationships and interact with institutional rules as an afterthought, prioritizing what they personally feel is the right thing to do. juliet steals lab supplies on rachel's behalf (likely for months on end), while jack waffles on whether to turn in his father for operating while drunk, only deciding to do so once he learns that the patient who died as a result was pregnant.

it's a common misconception that the "autistic sense of justice" is part and parcel with a universally-keen moral compass, but in reality this "justice" gets doled out based on whatever specific biases the person possesses. jack's case illustrates this especially clearly; rather than turning in christian right away (because operating under the influence = immoral), he needs a reason to act which aligns with his personal moral code, which certainly has a good bit of misogyny baked into it.

ok, let's move to on-island, and discuss jack and juliet's social isolation and desire to belong, which relates to the title of this post (the translation of jack's tattoos, though n.b. that he does say this is "not what they mean").

it's common for autistic people to feel "alien" in the presence of other humans, and there's research showing that allistic people experience an uncanny valley effect within seconds of meeting an autistic person, due to micro-differences in behavior which are not picked up on consciously. this effect can also contribute to autistic people being susceptible to abuse, since abusers will quickly clock these traits and seek to use them to their advantage.

we are shown the relevance of jack's tattoo translation largely in the context of his (often reluctant) leadership position among the survivors, but it's interesting that juliet also describes in a therapy session with harper that the attention she receives from their society makes her feel isolated. it's significant to me as well that harper immediately interprets this discomfort as juliet being self-important/arrogant. this sort of misunderstanding is a common experience in autistic women in particular, and distinguishes her position among the others from jack's position among the survivors (again, more on this another time).

formation of societies/communities and what makes someone "one of them" vs. "one of us" is a recurring theme throughout the show, and i think that part of why jack defends juliet so adamantly to the survivors is due to the kinship he feels in their shared desire to belong and their incapability of experiencing this belonging. of course, this is tied up with the affection he feels for juliet due to her resemblance to sarah, as well as his stubborn (again, largely misogynistic) desire to "fix" or "save" her like he did sarah.

really, these motivations go hand in hand, and i'd argue that much of jack's compulsion to save juliet is a sign of the projection i described earlier. jack grew up lonely and abused, seemingly without any allies around the way juliet had an ally in rachel. correctly or not, he sees himself in juliet, and yearns to save her the way he wishes he himself had been saved.

jack's plan a = him and juliet escaping the island (and the forces oppressing them both) on the galaga, which is... ahem... foiled by locke (who--you guessed it! serves as a foil to both characters... in disparate ways... that can be viewed as a, uhh... foil-within-a-foil... buuuut that's another post for another day).

a tough break to be sure, but jack's hero complex perseveres. plan b = bringing juliet back to the beach camp, the place where jack kind-of-sort-of belongs, but not quite. this poses a new challenge, a new opportunity for projection. if jack can successfully integrate juliet--an other--into the survivors' camp and bring about belonging for her, then maybe he himself can finally feel that belonging, too.

another plot point worth mentioning here is the "pre-plan a" plan, or juliet's plea for jack to kill ben during surgery. i honestly have a tough time parsing out her exact motivations here (GOD i love juliet's villain era <3), but this can be read as a type of projection as well. juliet cannot save herself from ben, but she can project her desire to be saved onto jack, who has the specific skills needed to botch a complicated spinal surgery without anyone being the wiser.

to close out, we'll discuss the dynamic present in the survivors' camp at the end of season 3. this is one of my favorite stretches of episodes in the show, in part due to the brief gasp we get of jack's positive character growth before things begin to devolve for him at the start of season 4. i think the success he finds in his quest to secure belonging for juliet is a huge part of this growth being possible.

after juliet comes clean about ben's plot, the camaraderie jack waxed poetic about in his "live together, die alone" speech is finally realized. the survivors have managed to correctly assess an outsider as a threat and win her over into defecting from her previous loyalties. (in classic LOST fashion this all happens pretty messily, but regardless, it shows that the survivors have established a true, functional community.) as a result, jack feels more comfortable than ever stepping into the leadership role he's been grappling with for months.

with juliet at his side, he leads the group in mounting a defense against the others and evacuating the beach. we even see him willing to let go of his possessiveness over kate while still expressing his love for her, as he literally ascends to the radio tower. his people--his society, the place where he finally belongs, and, significantly, where juliet belongs--are right beside him.

from there, two things happen which topple us into the next phase of jack and juliet's relationship: first, juliet lies to jack about a gun cache so jack will let her and sawyer return to the beach (a descent, if you will, and i think it's significant that this is the first time we see sawyer and juliet interact amicably), and second, our old foil-friend locke comes out of the woodwork yet again--this time to kill naomi.

at this point, the differences between jack and juliet start to manifest, and from here on out their relationship will be dominated by these differences. they will continue to project their traits onto each other the way they did their similarities; however, rather than this projection culminating in a sense of shared belonging and communal purpose like it did in season 3, it turns more adversarial/destructive and contributes in part to both characters' tragic ends.

so, apart from their initial difficulty experiencing belonging, what do jack and juliet's relationship and on-island experiences have to do with autism? well, another hallmark of autism is a weak internal sense of self. many autistic people struggle to name their emotions, physical sensations, desires, etc., and instead rely on external inputs to identify these. in my view, this is the purpose jack and juliet's relationship serves for them--it beings about a "necessary other," through whom they can identify their own wants and needs.

when jack and juliet meet, they are both locked (LOCKED?) into roles they want out of (jack, literally, as a prisoner, with juliet as a captor trapped under ben's influence). both are desperate for someone to save, or for someone to save them. maybe a little of both. i wouldn't say they find healing in each other, exactly, but i think their relationship is a catalyst for what healing and growth they are able to find elsewhere, despite it also catalyzing their demise.

[o-wild-west-wind]

y’all out here saying Izzy’s death made no narrative sense because it’s a comedy show clearly haven’t seen the Shakespeare post…I’m sorry I really am but death immunity only applies to the romantic leads the genre has not changed babes

(I don’t mean this to be patronizing, but genuinely: critically analyzing and engaging with art is a skill, and an important one. it’s a tool that will help you in the real world, for real current events. use this as practice not to take everything at face value. sad art does not equal bad art!)

[lost-inanotherlife]

What's on the TV?

Part ONE

As you know, I've gone totally INSANE after watching this scene. I can't stop thinking about it, it doesn't want to let me go so I'm gonna make it everybody's problem and I'll start yapping about it.

First, however, let me make two things clear:

1. I secretly don't give full credit to the writers for having written this great scene because I don't think they wrote it having in mind what EYE have in mind. The way I see it, the writers wrote this scene specifically to start priming Juliet for self-sacrifice and I'm NOT okay with that. What I mean is that for the writers Juliet is not a subject in this scene, she has "value" as a character only because she supports Sawyer's story. Why do I know this? Because you can't write a female character like Juliet (a woman abucted and taken as prisoner for years) talking about how "playing house" time is over for her and Sawyer because she watched... Jack and Kate coming out of Jack's house? Jack and Kate? Of "Jack and Kate Who Tried Played House and Failed Sooooo Badly" fame? The same Jack and Kate who are actively faking their identies and performing being someone else both literally and metaphorically (these two are not mentally okay but more on this later)? More importantly, we're talking about the same Kate who "played house" with Kevin by playing Monica? Juliet KNOWS what performing looks like, what it means, how it feels. And Kate KNOWS it as well. They have been performing for so, sooooo long. But the writers clearly don't know what this means, otherwise they would've shown us that they feel at least guilty about the misogyny in the storyline they've decided to carry on (the love triangle/square). I know they're in bad faith because what's missing here is the mirror-scene where Kate spies on Juliet and Sawyer from her house. This would tell me that what's at stake here is not the love of a man but the illusion of safety, of "making it work", the illusion of "the right choice": "I could've left but I didn't, I ended up trapping myself here but it was for the best, wasn't it?". Except, it was NOT. It's still very bittersweet and sexist but AT LEAST this would show that the writers know as well. Alas, that's not the case.

2. Having said that, the scene is still great and I still have to credit them for its greatness because this is what happens when your story has solid foundations. And LOST's got them so even when they fuck up their own characters it's still worth watching. This doesn't excuse the misogyny, let's all be clear, but I just want to say that the characters are still compelling enough for us to keep watching. And that's because of what was done with them before.

So, let's start.

"What's on the TV?" is a decidedly loaded thing to say in the context of LOST season 5. Let's see why.

First of all, TVs in the Dharma initiative are not for fun, okay? They're used to spy on people, to betray people (Juliet in "The Cost of Living" will always be famous to me), to manipulate people, to control people. In other words, TVs are weapons. And what do these TVs show? Well, I'd say that in a meta-way they show some sort of reality TV programme, aka people watching people doing things. But, you see, the thing is that reality TV is not really "reality TV": there's always a filter in the form of the authors, the cuts, the editing etc. You never really see "reality TV" because... it's still TV, it's still performance.

So "What's on the TV?" also indicates "what are you watching?" or "what fiction/performance/accurately created programme to cater to your desires to sell you stuff are you watching?". To put it simply: what are they selling and what are you buying?

Juliet watching "TV" then means that Juliet is buying into the fantasy Jack and Kate are performing. I can't stress enough the fact that she cannot know that that is a fantasy because she doesn't have the same bigger picture that we, the audience of the "real" TV have, but Kate and Jack are as much performing as she is. So Juliet watching Kate and Jack is not Juliet watching TV but it's Juliet watching herself into a mirror. While Juliet locked herself in to "play house", Kate has locked herself out to do the same thing (and I could draw a paralle with Juliet and Jack as the Heroes but I won't because I want to talk about Juliet and Kate, full stop).

So Kate coming back to the island and acting as the snake in the Garden of Eden and "ruin" Juliet and Sawyer's little play-pretend doesn't actually make that much sense now. Unfortunately, Juliet was her own snake when she bought into the illusion that she could indeed "play house" on the island and that would be enough for her. Please notice that I'm not saying that she's at fault, but I am saying that Juliet's relationship with being in life-long captivity is never really explored.

On a narrative level, it actually makes sense that she cannot leave the island because she has formed a morbid Stockholm syndrome-type of bond with it. This is interesting. This is character with nuances and a complex, rich and controversial interiority. I mean, before getting abducted, Juliet was still working under her own ex-husband, ffs! She still has his surname! This was a huge part of her character back in season 3! There is so much talk about Jack as "Man of Science" but what about Juliet as "Woman of Science"? She first-hand knows what it means to live and work in an enviroment that doesn't respect her, that actually debases her. I mean, this was the reason she LEFT and followed Richard!!! Because she's an extremely intelligent woman who was taken for granted and whose labor was EXPLOITED by her ex-husband! But she was also the woman who did experiments on the sly! She knows how to play the game! It doesn't mean the game is fair because it's not, the game is very much rigged, but it does mean that there's so much more to Juliet "playing house" than her love for a man. Performance for Juliet is also a weapon. Just like the TVs are. In this light, Juliet using the TV in S3 to reveal her "real" self and tell Jack about her plan to murder Ben is sooooo much more delicious, isn't it?

[cto10121]

Me: [bouncing around in the straitjacket] The problem with the interpretation of R&J being a play about teenage rebellion is that most of the teens in the play don’t actually rebel. Tybalt embraces the feud’s machismo fully, Mercutio is also willing and even eager to fight when the urge strikes him, and even Benvolio gets involved—if just to stop the fighting; otherwise, he does nothing. Every single one of them, even R&J, accept the feud, as a reality at least, and none of them express any desire to change their families’ minds. Only R&J actually do rebel against their families and Verona’s culture of violence and machismo. But they don’t rebel because they themselves believe the feud is wrong (although it’s reasonable to assume so, based on canonical evidence). They rebel because they love each other and want to be together. You almost get the impression that if they had the option of being together but the feud still existing...they would probably choose it. Or at least be sorely tempted. So that’s why I dislike adaptations and stagings that try to go all “youths rule and adults drool!!1!” and dress the characters in this countercultural punk and rock clothing. Verona’s youths are not countercultural; they are products of their cultures, and that’s part of the tragedy.

Therapist: You’re talking about R&J for once instead of the musical. What a breakthrough—

Me: And that’s why the Hungarian version’s punk Gothic aesthetic is not my favorite. Because even in the musical, the youths accept the feud. They just participate in it in their own way different from their parents’—

Therapist: Goddammit

[kimbapisnotsushi]

i LOVE the conversation that hinata, kindaichi, and kunimi have right before they all separate at the end of the training camp because that shit had to be soooo validating for kindaichi. like, it's obvious he spent a long fucking time wondering and aching and doubting his actions — even after he told kageyama not to apologize and he wouldn't either, even after he swore to win and to defeat him and move forward — and i get the feeling it was tearing kindaichi up on the inside more than he let on. had it been the right choice to make? had kageyama actually deserved it? was it something kindaichi was allowed to regret? couldn't there have been any other path than the one that hurt them both?

did they ever stand a chance at being something better?

(and i think, probably, that part of the problem lies in the not knowing. in the what-ifs of it all. in the "maybe this, maybe that". that's the biggest draw of kageyama's, kunimi's, and kindaichi's relationship: how far could they have gone if they had actually understood each other? what would they have looked like if kageyama had grown roots instead of taking to the sky?

anyways. let's keep going.)

the thing is, it isn't easy hurting someone you care for. even if it's just a little bit of hurt and a little bit of care. kindaichi might have claimed the opposite in the beginning, but he makes it so, so clear. he did care. he does care. he wouldn't have asked hinata about kageyama otherwise. but i think maybe he didn't know if he had the right to, not after what he did. he had his own burden to bear just as much as kageyama did.

but then kunimi tells him "you did the best you could at that time" and hinata tells him "it's normal to stand your ground and fight", and that's all kindaichi needs to hear to feel like a storm breaking apart — that he hadn't had a choice, that the odds were up against them, that he had some right and kageyama had some wrong and the only thing they could do now was face each other with their heads held high and be everything to each other they never were, and then, maybe someday, they'll get to play volleyball together again.

[incorrect-star-allies]

Dedede: I can’t go.

Meta Knight: I know how that feels.

Dedede, with his head wedged between a fence: No really, I’m stuck.

[willgrahams-dog]

the “i’m not fortune’s fool; i’m yours” line gets misinterpreted to no end and i wanted to go over that + offer my interpretation.

the original line it's referencing comes from act 3, scene 1 of romeo and juliet, after romeo kills tybalt to avenge mercutio:

tybalt falls benvolio: romeo, away, begone! the citizens are up, and tybalt slain. sound not amazed. the prince will doom thee death if thou art taken. hence, be gone, away. romeo: o, i am fortune's fool!

here, romeo is remarking on his bad luck after being doomed by fate (and more broadly, the narrative). to atone for tybalt's murder, romeo has to leave verona— and thereby juliet— on pain of death.

had circumstances been different, romeo and juliet could have had a happy, normal life together. it was fortune that kept them apart, not a lack of love. fortune would have them on opposite sides.

will's arc, however, was set into motion because of hannibal. he was manipulated into killing gjh and eventually randall tier. then in season 3b, after will found a semblance of stability with molly, hannibal “returned” to will, leading him to kill again.

if will hadn't met hannibal, he would have had a chance at an outwardly normal life. his relationship with molly was an attempt to reclaim that life from hannibal— to save himself from hannibal's perception of him and the fear that that perception was correct.

so is this line romantic? i guess, if you want it to be. hannibal's manipulation of will did come in part from a place of love ("no one can be fully aware of another human being unless we love them. by that love, we see potential in our beloved. through that love, we allow our beloved to see their potential. expressing that love, our beloved's potential comes true. i love you, will") but it also deprived will of the normalcy that i think on some level, he craved almost as much as he did understanding. to hannibal, that normalcy was never a tangible thing, but to will the lie had value. he was playing house with molly and wally the same way he was with hannibal and abigail in early s1.

but this line is not a proclamation of love, it’s an announcement of blame. will blames hannibal for the loss of the life he could have had before hannibal or with molly (which parallels romeo's banishment from verona) and it's not until the finale that we actually see him choose hannibal.

there’s a frankly baffling number of people who hear that the line is from romeo and juliet and go “that’s so romantic” without taking the time to understand it, and i think ignoring any depth to hannibal beyond “toxic yaoi” does a disservice to the genius of the show.

(disclaimer: if you think i am arguing against shipping hannigram, read the post again. i’m not pissing on the poor)

tldr: will is saying that bad luck didn’t fuck him over, hannibal did

[worrynoodle]

I was thinking about "No nightingales." again.

I believe someone's made a post about this before, if you have it please share it with me I'd love to read it again!

When Crowley says there are no nightingales, he's saying their evening is over. The four years they've had together; peaceful, precious, and fragile; are now coming to an end. The nightingales have stopped singing, and Heaven's watchful eye is back on them. That it was Aziraphale's decision and their privacy, their evening romance, has to be over.

Maybe that's why the kiss is so powerful. Because he kisses him even though the nightingales have stopped singing. Risking everything.

And maybe that's why 'I forgive you' hurts that much more. Because Aziraphale is rejecting him (or at least that's how it seems).

[stuckasmain]

Hadestown and cyclical stories stuck in the brain after watching West side story the other night and thinking about how Romeo and Juliet have a similar story. Not only of doomed lovers but of being told a thousand times, names and body’s change but the love remains.

It’s been asked before but do you think, just maybe they’re a little tired? Or is it enough to replay the sweet, private moments knowing you’ll get them again?

Anyway- They get a double date out of the fucking narrative with Orpheus and Eurydice. No retellings for two years they’re at the beach!!!👏

[taweretsdagger]

jack's need to find the answer vs. juliet's need to look over the edge

lost's tragic, (probably) autistic doctors, part three

alright gang, let's put some analysis weight behind the word "tragic" in this series title :')

in part one, we discussed several similarities between jack and juliet through the lens of some autistic traits, and in part two we discussed how gender presentation/societal expectations could cause other autistic traits to show up differently in the two characters.

i don't have much more autism-specific analysis to add here, but will reiterate two points i brought up in parts one and two as they'll also be useful for understanding how these characters reach their respective tragic ends:

the metaphor of viewing jack and juliet's relationship like two mirrors facing each other

jack and juliet's shared desire/struggle to find belonging

so, first off: titles. the title of this installment, the title of this series. the title of "doctor." this is an essential title for both jack and juliet, and i do mean "essential" quite literally. this title drives not only their careers, but their personalities, their strengths and weaknesses, their problem-solving approaches, and so on.

their very essence is encapsulated in this title, but in the end, that doesn't tell us much about them on its own. we use the term "doctor" to refer to all manner of career pathways and advanced degrees. in her infinite wisdom, juliet makes this point clear when she counters being referred to as a doctor by saying "[she's] really more of a researcher."

so what's the difference, between a (medical) doctor and a researcher? despite all the possible implications of referring to someone with the title of doctor, i'd imagine most people would think of a medical doctor when i use that word. so let's look to the dictionary to understand the former.

while the definition of "doctor" sounds a bit nefarious...

(verb) change the content or appearance of (a document or picture) in order to deceive; falsify.

...we can apply a more neutral connotation to understand this profession as one of diagnosing, and ultimately fixing. making right.

sound like anyone we know?

meanwhile, research takes a different mindset. every null hypothesis you prove false leads to several new alternative hypotheses. you're never really done, because there isn't "one answer" in research. it takes keen observation, and intellectual stamina/humility, and a willingness to try. a willingness to ask "why," rather than to solely insist on understanding "how."

in part two, i discussed juliet's pattern of impulsive behavior (such as chugging the juice richard gives her at the airport) in the context of autistic meltdowns. i also think this tendency is what makes her such a good researcher. while on the surface juliet might seem like an obvious "woman of science," she is clearly willing and able to take things on faith. this also differentiates her from jack as a character; despite their many similarities, juliet does not possess jack's need to understand or identify the answer.

in fact, in the flashback scene we get of juliet as a child in the season five finale, she makes the opposite claim very explicitly:

"i don't want to understand!"

as two of my favorite juliet understanders (hehe) (@lost-inanotherlife and @ginawankenobi) have pointed out, there is also a gendered/self-deprecating element to the way juliet's career is introduced to us. being a surgeon isn't "superior" to being a researcher; both are necessary roles in the medical sciences and come with their own difficulties. but more societal reverence is generally ascribed to the practice of surgery, and it's a role people might be more likely to associate with traits like leadership and strength, at least as compared to the slower, quieter, messier practice of research.

"i'm not a leader, mr. alpert; i'm a mess."

we left off part two with juliet just having displayed some excellent leadership skills... notably, while performing surgery on jack. by the end of season four, we'll see jack finally getting rescued (with only five of his people with him), and juliet missing out on yet another chance to escape the island. we see jack failing to live up to the promise he made her, and we already know that this failure (among other things) is going to drive him into a deep depression within a few years.

meanwhile, juliet gets a new life on the island, making good on the bad hand she got dealt. she has friends, a job free from the baggage of her traumatic experiences with ed and ben, and, as i mentioned in part two, it seems likely that as sawyer ascends to a position of leadership within the dharma initiative, juliet would operate as his advisor and confidant (like many women do with their male, leader partners in societies where women cannot occupy leadership positions themselves, which seems to be the case for dharma). she has experience living in the barracks and an insider's understanding of the "hostiles," both of which would constitute valuable insight for dharma's head of security.

as discussed in part one, jack's projection of his desire to belong onto juliet is ultimately what enables his (woefully brief) "golden age" as the crash survivors' leader at the end of season three. however, juliet's ability to find belonging and esteem within dharma is not reliant on jack or any projection of her own issues onto him. AND, jack is absolutely Going Through It back in the real world, once more projecting his desire to return to the island ONTO juliet as a sort of remix of his need to save her (which of course, is really jack's need to save himself). but this time, juliet doesn't need or want saving. our two mirrors are out of balance. when they reunite, that imbalance presents as tension that has nowhere to climb but up.

as soon as the gang returns, juliet clocks where things are going. this is shown largely to us through the scene in which she's watching jack and kate out the window and sawyer asks her "what's on TV?"

i won't spend too much time discussing the significance of this scene overall, but would be remiss not to reference this incredible series for those who yearn to sink their teeth into it as much as i do.

for the purposes of this post, what's most crucial in understanding this scene is putting it in context of our mirror metaphor. if our two mirrors are out of balance, maybe all the "meat" of the light and energy that was previously bouncing back and forth between them is starting to coalesce within jack, giving juliet an opportunity to become a spectator to a dynamic in which she used to be a more active participant. (also, what is a television but a "black mirror?")

before long, this tension crashes in the form of our first jack/juliet collision, when she confronts him after he refuses to help save ben and calls out the hypocrisy and projection in his stated reasons for returning to the island.

okay, now let's move on to the bomb :')

the period between the scene of juliet's confrontation of jack and the moment when she decides she's going to help him detonate the hydrogen bomb is difficult to analyze, since like most people i really didn't appreciate the return of a love triangle with kate. three years have passed, and these are grown adults. it's just really difficult for me to buy as a viewer, and the lost writers themselves have admitted it wasn't their best moment. but i'm going to give the canon events as much credence as i can within the analytical framework we've established in this series.

juliet is insecure, and prone to self-destruction when things are getting out of hand. we know this. we also know that she can see the beginning of the end of the life she and sawyer have built in dharma. rather than her next "meltdown" coming about specifically due to her jealousy of kate, i think it's more likely a result of losing so much control and agency so quickly. i think she's also engaging in a fair bit of projection/externalization of that loss of control onto sawyer, sort of like her own version of what jack did when he externalized his fear of the appendectomy onto kate in season four.

daniel is the physicist in the group, but his reasoning for detonating the bomb really has nothing to do with science at all. instead, his "variable" theory is wound up entirely in his grief over losing charlotte. but i imagine in part based on the credibility of his expertise, jack is able to latch onto the idea of the bomb as a "scientific" solution to all his problems. hit the reset button, and try again. simple enough! for juliet though, i don't think precise reasoning and rational defense of the bomb as a solution is a necessary part of her decision equation. it's another moment of her self-destructive impulsivity colliding with the island's forces and will, just like when she chugged the juice.

once juliet changes her mind about the bomb, our mirrors appear to be back in sync. however, the tension is still there, and still plenty dangerous--even explosive. *especially* when you enter a hydrogen bomb into the equation (even just the core). at least one of them is going to have to die in the process; there's just way too much potential energy and it's resonating between them too rapidly.

two things are particularly interesting to me about how the incident itself plays out: for one, juliet is DRAGGED over the edge of the swan abyss, but in the end she DECIDES to let go of sawyer's hand and let herself fall. and then when she wakes up underground later, she DECIDES to detonate the bomb herself.

for those first few dragging moments, all her morbid curiosity comes back to haunt her, and i'm sure she saw every juice-chugging-adjacent moment of her life flashed before her eyes. but she still accepts her fate, and still uses the last remnants of her physical strength to see through their mission to the bitter end.

secondly, jack ends up having to take the bomb detonation on faith. he drops it down the chasm, but everything that happens after that is out of his hands. he had no idea whether it had detonated on impact, and would have had no idea that their fate was left up to juliet if she hadn't lived long enough to tell sawyer what happened.

jack begins the experiment with the bomb, but juliet becomes the catalyst necessary to finish it. in doing so, she also becomes the catalyst of jack's transformation from a man of science into a man of faith, since he HAS to let go of her. he failed to save her multiple times, and then he got her killed. that's that. there's nothing he can do to change it. and at the same time, he's lost his second mirror. he can't project onto juliet, he can't project onto kate, he can't project onto anyone. he has to embody all the energy that once had been shared--however unevenly--and i'd argue that this is a key element in jack learning that he does, indeed, have what it takes. that's a lot to hold, maybe more than he's ever tried to hold before.

(one thing about juliet, she had what it took. imo, you don't smash a hydrogen bomb with a fucking rock if you don't have what it takes.)

jack doesn't die during the incident, but in a way he's been dead ever since he got up on that bridge. in part, the bomb was another manifestation of his suicidality. the cataclysm of juliet's demise gives jack a reason to stay alive, at least long enough to accept the role as the island's protector, kill the man in black (with a crucial assist from kate), and halt the island's destruction. he ends up underground just like juliet, doomed just like juliet, but his experience of that doom couldn't be more different. he's laughing, bathed in incandescent light, and learning something new about himself.

and the parallel differences don't end there: juliet dies in sawyer's arms, comforted by the belonging she craved for so long and finally found, even if only for a short while. meanwhile, jack dies alone (well, almost... thank god for vincent <3). both of them go out looking content, but their contentedness is sad to us for disparate reasons.

so, we could call all of season six a last gasp gifted to jack by juliet, but within that series of events there's another, subtler last gasp for which he has her to thank.

to close this series out, let's talk about our beloved appendectomy, one more time.

all things considered, jack's a pretty lucky duck. he gets a life-saving 2-for-1 on this surgery. REALLY not a bad deal, for a procedure performed on the beach by torchlight, by someone who's "really more of a researcher."

not only does juliet save jack's life by performing the surgery itself in season four, but the absence of jack's appendix is what allows him to survive long enough after being stabbed by the man in black to save the island (and, therefore, the world). otherwise, he would've bled out too quickly, and everything would've fallen into ruin.

that pesky little vestigial organ almost killed our hero twice, and both close calls are staved off by the surgical skills of a woman who doesn't even totally consider herself a doctor, let alone a leader! i mean, talk about misplaced insecurity! when they meet up in that church i very much hope that jack took the opportunity to tell juliet how much of a hero she was in her own right, and how little he could've accomplished without her expertise and determination. and in case he didn't, I'M gonna do a little projecting of my own and beam that message into the universe for juliet to pick up on!!!

thank you so so much for reading along everyone! :) i hope you enjoyed this extended look into the minds and lives of two very fucked-up people who are very destined to be divorced from one another <33

(speaking of, let me tag in what i consider the spiritual successor to this series, or @obsessivedaydreamer's jack/juliet flash-sideways fic, "Across Our Great Divide." a true masterpiece, and very necessary reading to understand our repo divorcees!!!!)

[sleazyjanet]

one thing i find so funny in the lost fandom is all the people going like "why did this character not remember this time travelling other character?" likely because you usually don't expect someone to time travel, for one. and also because memory is not a kind mistress

like, ben is likely not going to remember juliet (except subconsciously, if anything) because 24 years passed between when he was 12 and seeing a 30+ years old juliet, and when he was 36 meeting a... also 30+ years old juliet, and while she stayed more or less the same, admittedly, it's been 24 years for him. very likely for him to have forgotten

it's the same with danielle meeting jin in the present timeline of s1/2 etc. like no! she's not going to remember a man she saw for like thirty consecutive minutes and who then disappeared before her eyes. arguably, given her lack of sanity, it's likely she even thought she hallucinated him

and on a similar note, yeah, likely danielle didn't remember BEN from the night he stole alex because, well, it was dark, she was half-asleep and it was a traumatising enough event that she likely repressed it, while simultaneously clinging to it

[rapha-reads]

I tried to resist the urge but at the end of the day ranting about Romeo and Juliet is my most favourite thing to do, and ranting about vampires is also in my top 10 regular hobbies, so...

Louis, Lestat, Armand and Balthasar, or, a R&J x IWTV unplanned rant.

Under the "read more" because it got long.

Balthasar is introduced in the play as "Romeo's man", often modernised in various adaptations as his valet or his page. The footnote in The Arden Shakespeare 2012 edition states that:

"Shakespeare introduced the name for the part in the play, though it is not, of course, his invention. The name, which is also found in Comedy Of Errors, Merchant of Venice and Much Ado, occurs only once in the text of R&J, even though the character speaks nearly 30 lines in the final act."

Three things from that only: it's a common enough name, at least in Shakespearian texts, that the character could be switched for another one; he's so inconsequential that he barely even managed to make his name known ; yet despite his apparent unimportance, his role at the end is extremely crucial in closing in the tragedy.

What lines does Balthasar speaks and whom does he speak to throughout the play?

Man waits until Act III scene 1 to make his entrance. Given his function as Romeo's man, you'd think he'd be a bit more present before that point, but no, Balthy waits until everything's gone bad to arrive like "Grandma, it's me".

Romeo asks him "How doth my Juliet? That I ask again, / For nothing can be ill if she is well." The beginning of his answer could lead you to think that he's about to lie so that Romeo can still be "all well", but, naaaah, sike, he's here to deliver news and he's going to do his job. And the way he does it doesn't leave any details to the imagination:

"Then she is well and nothing can be ill. Her body sleeps in Capel's monument, And her immortal soul part with angels lives. I saw her laid low in her kindred's vault, And presently took post to tell it to you. O, pardon me for bringing these ill news, Since you did leave it for my office, sir."

"Her immortal soul"... We'll come back to that point when we'll get to the vampires. Interesting to note that he says he saw with his own eyes Jules' laid down in the Capulet's tomb, but there's no indication in the text prior to that line that he really did. Some stage adaptations have Balthasar lurking around as Capulet and Cie put her in it, most movies totally ignore Balthasar's entire role - which I will come back to in the second part too. In a way, one could think that Balthy didn't see anything, he just heard the news like any other Veronese people, and didn't wait for more information or even actual confirmation and hurried on ("took post") to tell his master. Which, he does say it himself, that's his job, to keep Romeo informed of the going-ons of Verona in general and Juliet in particular. But, man, what are your sources, actually? Whose your informant? What authenticity does your information have, except from "source: myself"?

And then homeboy has the audacity to tell a desperate and ready to commit all kinds of violence Romeo to "have patience. / Your looks are pale and wild, and do import / Some misadventure." You think?? After this we lose track of Balthy while Romeo goes soliloquising looking for his cuppa poison. ... I don't want to tell you how to do your job, Balthy, but aren't you supposed to always follow your master closely...? How are you losing him so easily? Well, to be fair to him, Romeo does send him to "hire those horses", but that's a really thin excuse.

Balthasar reappears then in the Comedy of Situations that is "everybody and their mothers come visit Juliet's body" (you know, Warm Bodies did have a point; the zombies and necrophilia jokes do write themselves). First he enters with Romeo, and then for once shows some working brain cells when Romeo tells him to peace out and he tells himself "For all the same, I'll hide me hereabout. / His looks I fear, and his intents I doubt." Yes, thank you Balthy, maybe stay inside the crypt itself... Nope, okay, I don't know where he hid but Paris "14yo is perfectly acceptable to marry when I'm 30" Escalus makes his own appearance unbothered and unstopped. Great scouting skills there. Granted, he was the first on the scene actually, but if Balthy really hid close by, he should have witnessed the altercation and maaaaybe stop it. But no. I think he's having a drink with Paris' page. Current body count: 3 (yeah, Juliet's not dead yet, for those following).

Then Friar Laurence arrives on the scene. Oh, hello, Friar My-Ideas-Will-Definitely-Work-Trust-Me-Bro. Balthy emerges from the shadows (from where? Who knows, not me and certainly not Willie the Bard himself; homeboy was lurking, planning the best moment to reappear to create maximum chaos I guess). Their discussion goes something like this:

Laurie: who're you? Balthy: come on bro, you know me. Laurie: oh, hey Balth, so nice to see you? But what the heck are you doing here? Balthy: yeah I'm here with Romeo that fail emo lord lol. Laurie: Romeo? Whaaaat? How long has he been here? Balthy: eeh, 30 minutes? Maybe 45? Dunno but it's been a while. Laurie: Jesus fucking H Christ, okay, let's get into the fucking crypt. Balthy: no thanks, without me. I told Romeo I was leaving and if he sees me still here he's going to break my neck. Laurie: ugh, fine, you coward. I'll go alone and I'm not even afraid. Actually I lied I'm scared out of my mind but I'm better than you so nah! I'm going in. Balthy, walking away: oh yeah, another thing, I was napping, ahem, keeping watch, and I think I dreamed, I mean, hallucinated Romeo killing another dude. But I don't think that's real. Anyway, hasta la vista, losers! [Exit] (sadly not pursued by a bear)

I paraphrased, naturally. And... That's Balthasar's last lines. So to recap: he's supposedly Romeo's man, hence, by his job's function, supposed to always be with him and protect him; he only appears at the end of the story to make sure that no one else can get to Romeo first and maybe tell him about Laurence's plot. He always says he's going to keep an eye on Romeo, or tries to get him to stop, but actually never does anything. Literally, by his own admission, while he's supposed to make sure Romeo doesn't do anything drastic visiting Juliet's tomb, he took a nap: "As I did sleep under this yew tree here"! And the only two people he speaks to are Romeo, whose sole purpose at this point is to die, and Friar Laurence, whose role is to fake-kill Juliet, which leads to both of them dying.

Given all of those elements, one could then consider Balthasar's role in the play as an agent of Death. Death being a character in Her own right in the play, according to some readings (I admit, the idea of Death being the one pulling the strings as Fate would do is something I very much like but is very much inspired by the French musical).

So. Balthasar, agent of Death, purposefully or accidentally, but undeniably, leading the main character to his own death and carefully not stopping nor even interacting with characters who could stop the final act.

And that's who Louis-as-Lestat compares HIMSELF to. Yeah, Louis calls himself Balthasar, let that sink in. So, spoiler alert for those like me who haven't read the books, but Armand later on is going to lie and tell Louis that Lestat died in the fire that burned down the theatre, lie that Louis will totally believe and that will certainly influence the decades of his relationship with Armand. We know Louis is absolutely not over Lestat, we know Lestat is weak at this point, and wants to scare Louis but also get him back, and we know Armand is a lying liar who lies and twist the truth to better serves him. And we know Armand was jilted by Lestat and while he (genuinely?) loves Louis, he's also bitter that Louis got what he himself couldn't get. We also know that Louis is extremely conflicted by his vampiric nature, that he's a stone cold killer but he's also constantly trying to get away from it, that he hates himself and all vampires but also hates humans and all of humanity. We know Louis feels immense guilt at what he thinks is Lestat's murder, and that this guilt is weighing on him enought hat he conjures up a mental Lestat to follow him around and sass, bitch, moan, comment and critique for him.

So, why is it interesting that Dreamstat calls Louis a Balthasar?

Let's go back to two points already evoked earlier. Balthasar makes a point of mentioning Juliet's immortal soul - in the text, it's evident enough, they're Catholics, Heaven, Hell, bla bla bla. Transposed to the idea of vampires, it does lead one to question first if vampires have souls, secondly, what are the limits of immortality. It links to Louis' questioning of his faith, the morals that he fiercely defends but abandons rather quickly when they don't suit him anymore, and his survivor's guilt vis-à-vis his brother first and Lestat secondly.

The second thing is the way Balthasar is generally erased from the known Romeo and Juliet narrative. From an intradiegetic POV, Louis could mean it as "I'm Balthasar because this story is not my story, I barely even appear, only at the very end, and even then, I'm not important, and I certainly do not want to be the focus of attention" (which could also be linked to the coven complaining that Louis hunts sloppily and will expose them all, and that's actually a point in the Death's emissary column, huh). From an extradiegetic POV, the writers might have chosen to compare Louis to Balthasar because in most screen adaptations, the first part of his role is given to Benvolio (announcing Juliet's death) and the second part (talking with Laurie) is totally erased. Which means that people who haven't read the play (or have but aren't totally obsessed with it *cough cough*) and only know the story through the movies or the musical, would have NO idea who Balthasar is. And that's what Louis tries to be: a nobody, a Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde, unimportant, invisible, unknown. The way Balthasar is for everybody. Quasi inexisting.

And the final part of the parallel, and that one is definitely extradiegetic, is that Louis brings Death wherever he goes (although maybe in a way, after Lestat and the woman vampire in Romania, Louis thinks that of himself too, but let's not go there just yet). His arrival in Paris is what disturbs the equilibrium of the coven, makes Armand questions what he's doing here and how long he can keep going like this, drives Claudia even more away from him, and intensifies the resentment and inner conflicts of the coven. Which will all lead to the theatre burning dow, the coven dying, Claudia dying, Lestat presumed dead and 70 years of toxic married Loumand. Unintentionally, the way Balthasar seemingly unintentionally too, doesn't protect Romeo, which leads to not only his and Juliet's but also Tybalt and Mercutio's deaths (and Paris too). Unintenionally, but who's pulling Balthasar's strings, Death, Fate itself? Who's pulling Louis' strings? Armand? Lestat? Or is he such an unreliable narrator that he's passing himself as a victim of circumstances while the reality is that he's fully aware of what he's doing...? To be determined.

If you've made it to here, thank you so much and don't hesitate to tell me what you think! You can find my Tybalt/Mercutio fic here, and my essay on adaptations of Tybalt and Mercutio on screen here.

[greenqueenhightower]

Ok but Juliet’s quotation in Romeo & Juliet:

“My only love sprung from my only hate/ Too early seen unknown, and known too late!”

is so Alicent-coded