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Lost
Interesting thing I've noticed about myself ... of all the indignities, cruelties and horrors that antagonists can perpetuate upon good guys in fiction, psychological manipulation, and the mental powerlessness that goes along with it, is probably the one that has the most powerful, visceral effect on me. I noticed this reading ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kodiak_bear's "It's Always Autumn..." story, too. If you want to really twist the knife in me, and most particularly if you want to give me the urge to see the bad guys DIE HORRIBLY SCREAMING IN PAIN, have them manipulate the protagonists' emotions. A prisoner who is forced to hold *themselves* hostage is probably the be-all and end-all of my scale of mental anguish. You know, it's not a conscious or logical thing, and if you asked me what I thought was the worst form of torture a human could experience, I'd answer immediately, "Having to witness harm being done to a loved one." But on TV, movies, etc., the one that gets that immediate stomach-twisting reaction from me is precisely this sort of psychological tyrrany.
And we're not talking a *good* kind of stomach-twisting, either. It's difficult for me to watch. I really don't like watching physical torture, either, but I can stomach it. This, though ... it kind of makes me sick.
Not that I didn't like the episode. This was certainly a fanservice-y episode ... and equal opportunity too! Something for every taste ... half-naked Sawyer bleeding and strapped to a table; Kate stripping off her shirt; Jack in emotional torment, between having to listen to Sawyer's torture and then having to precide over the death of yet another patient ...
I'm still really nervous about how the whole Jack/Sawyer/Kate dynamic is going to play out over the course of this season. Of all the characters on the show, those are probably the three that I like the best, and whose interactions are most interesting to me. Yet ... I really *don't* like the hoary old love-triangle plot, and I'm really *not* rooting for Kate to get together with either one of them. (Actually, it would be quite hilarious if Kate takes up with somebody else while Jack and Sawyer are posturing over her. "Oh, I forgot to mention I've been shacking up with Hurley for the last six months ... seeya!") I like the nascent friendships (or really, with Kate and Jack, not so nascent) between all three of them, and I'd hate to see a big ol' monkey wrench thrown into it, which I suspect is what's gonna happen this season, much as it did last season. I'm starting to wish this show would spend more time building things up and less time tearing them down. I don't *like* seeing characters constantly at each other's throats, not seriously anyway. Call me a big softie, but I get a lot of emotional catharsis out of reconciliation, cooperation and caring. The Lost characters are often just a little too ... isolated for me, maybe. There's a lot of crying, screaming, woobie eyes and melodrama, but at the end of the day, the gulf between them is still just as wide as it was before all of that.
kodiak_bear's "It's Always Autumn..." story, too. If you want to really twist the knife in me, and most particularly if you want to give me the urge to see the bad guys DIE HORRIBLY SCREAMING IN PAIN, have them manipulate the protagonists' emotions. A prisoner who is forced to hold *themselves* hostage is probably the be-all and end-all of my scale of mental anguish. You know, it's not a conscious or logical thing, and if you asked me what I thought was the worst form of torture a human could experience, I'd answer immediately, "Having to witness harm being done to a loved one." But on TV, movies, etc., the one that gets that immediate stomach-twisting reaction from me is precisely this sort of psychological tyrrany.And we're not talking a *good* kind of stomach-twisting, either. It's difficult for me to watch. I really don't like watching physical torture, either, but I can stomach it. This, though ... it kind of makes me sick.
Not that I didn't like the episode. This was certainly a fanservice-y episode ... and equal opportunity too! Something for every taste ... half-naked Sawyer bleeding and strapped to a table; Kate stripping off her shirt; Jack in emotional torment, between having to listen to Sawyer's torture and then having to precide over the death of yet another patient ...
I'm still really nervous about how the whole Jack/Sawyer/Kate dynamic is going to play out over the course of this season. Of all the characters on the show, those are probably the three that I like the best, and whose interactions are most interesting to me. Yet ... I really *don't* like the hoary old love-triangle plot, and I'm really *not* rooting for Kate to get together with either one of them. (Actually, it would be quite hilarious if Kate takes up with somebody else while Jack and Sawyer are posturing over her. "Oh, I forgot to mention I've been shacking up with Hurley for the last six months ... seeya!") I like the nascent friendships (or really, with Kate and Jack, not so nascent) between all three of them, and I'd hate to see a big ol' monkey wrench thrown into it, which I suspect is what's gonna happen this season, much as it did last season. I'm starting to wish this show would spend more time building things up and less time tearing them down. I don't *like* seeing characters constantly at each other's throats, not seriously anyway. Call me a big softie, but I get a lot of emotional catharsis out of reconciliation, cooperation and caring. The Lost characters are often just a little too ... isolated for me, maybe. There's a lot of crying, screaming, woobie eyes and melodrama, but at the end of the day, the gulf between them is still just as wide as it was before all of that.