linkspam: lost writers' guide, ffx feels

[queenlua]

So I was cleaning out the many (many, many) random documents I have lying around on my computer, and stumbled on the Lost Writers' Guide, which appears to have been targeted toward the show's staff writers shortly after the show's inception, and is super-interesting, especially if you're even a bit familiar with Lost.

Particularly lulzy/interesting highlights:

• "If we do it right, the 'paranormal' will always be coupled with a logical explanation to remind the audience that this is the real world." AHAHAHAHA such lies


• They mention that the first words they wrote on their little writers' whiteboard was "CHARACTER FIRST," which makes me feel vaguely vindicated. A lost of Lost fans back in the day seemed to get really into the plot, obsessing over figuring stuff out via Lostpedia, etc etc, which always puzzled me, since it seemed so damn obvious to me that it was really a character show and the plot was beside the point (also, the plot was incoherent and awful by about halfway through season three, but yeah).


• Originally Shannon was supposed to get hooked up with Sawyer??? What. Also, Boone was supposed to be schizophrenic, and Charlie was supposed to become, like, Jack's second-hand-man. I'd love to be a fly-on-the-wall when these decisions were changed, but they're pretty fun to reverse-engineer anyway—Charlie's dynamic as devoted-boyfriend-to-Claire was much more endearing than having him be a stooge of Jack, Shannon/Sawyer probably would've pushed Sawyer from "intriguing antihero" to "legit asshole with bitch girlfriend," etc.


• They make the cute observation that, because they have such a large cast, they can do up to 78 different combinations of scenes between just two characters, which is a very pretty observation, and also probably a large part of what I like about Fire Emblem fic :P

Also, Leigh Alexander wrote a really nice bit about replaying FFX a couple weeks ago, and I meant to post it earlier but here it is now. It vaguely wants to make me fic something about it; the whole "Tidus trampling all over their rituals and being inadvertently obnoxious" thing isn't examined enough in-game, yo.

Comments

[queenlua]

2556, to be precise. pretty good mental mathing :P