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This week on LOST, a candidate is finally chosen, Smokey continues his murderous spree, and Sideways Desmond continues his creepy maneuvering. Share your thoughts on the episode and remaining predictions in the comments. But no spoilers for the finale!

This was the last episode before the finale. Reactions?

JILL: I liked it a lot better than last week’s. They’re finally getting around to answering some of the bigger questions (or at least kind of answering them). And I know everyone is mad about people getting killed, but I’m bloodthirsty — I like that they’re just offing dudes left and right.

SADY: I’m sorry, I can’t answer these worldly questions. I am too busy converting to Jacktheism. For yea, Jack is our redeemer; he guideth us through the valley; he stalketh us until we relenteth and doeth whatever he wanteth; for the Obvious Plot Cues did come to announce his ascendance, and lo, The Script did fulfill them. Jack hath transcended the world, and now guideth us… oh, what the fuck. Sun and Jin? And Sayid? And Eko, and Libby, and Juliet, and Daniel Faraday who was MY FAVORITE, and fuck, even CHARLIE who I DIDN’T REALLY LIKE, dead? FOR THIS???? Damn it. Don’t call an episode “What They Died For” unless you have a good reason as to what they, you know, died for. Because right now the reason is (a) a mystic light-hole, and (b) Jack, and I am NOT PLEASED WITH THAT AT ALL.

LAUREN: Meh. I think I’ve come to the realization that I wouldn’t have been able to sustain interest in this show for six years. Right out of the gate this was a great show about bigger issues, like post-9/11 life in the U.S., the fallacies of so-called utopias, the ethics (or lack thereof) of kidnapping and torture in the name of security, the limitations of reason and faith, but now that the central issues that began this show with so much promise have been stretched through the life of the show, we’re left with heavy-handed script machinations about, what? Light-holes of truth that must be protected, really? Really, LOST? Really?

I just… don’t care. Thank Baby Jesus for Netflix.

SALLY: I am… not sure how I feel about this episode. I think I liked it more than last week, but I can’t really figure out why… Actually, I know why! ANA LUCIA! YAAAAAY! Okay, that’s not the only reason, but an awesomely awesome part of it!

CARA: Well yeah, it was better than last week. But as the second to last episode in the series ever, it really needed to be better than “better than last week.”

Richard was swiftly done away with, using the same sensitivity granted to Lapidus. Thoughts?

CARA: I’ve developed a new theory about how they kill people on LOST. Not only are race and gender a factor — country of origin and number of languages spoken also count. Notice how Sayid, Sun, and Jin weren’t all just non-white, but also spoke English as a second language? Well, Richard was not just a Latino man, he was also from the Canary Islands and spoke two other languages, Spanish and Latin! He simply had to go.

So, my prediction is that Claire — who was nowhere to be found, this episode — will die next, as a woman and non-American. Then it’s Hurley, since he’s Latino and speaks Spanish. Next comes Miles, since he’s not white but only speaks English. Kate will go last, because she’s hot. Then, with all of those boring characters out of the way, Jack and Sawyer can appropriately do battle with Flocke and Ben! Hooray!

Less sarcastically: I’m pissed. Just like Sayid deserved better than an Artz exit, Richard deserved better than Monster Eats the Pilot.

JILL: Yeah, I agree that the important characters do deserve better deaths. I mean, compared to Richard, Sayid got great treatment! And they need to not just leave the white dudes. But should they start killing some more of the white guys, and we end up in the last half hour with like 3 people left, I’m ok with that. Kill ‘em all! Except Lapidus. Bring Lapidus back, please.

LAUREN: Richard died suddenly, yes, but Zoe was cut like a suckling pig and Widmore was downed without any remorse whatsoever. All three deaths in this episode were callous and brutal, so it seems to amp up the last few moments before the finale. I’m cool with our beloveds dying suddenly as long as they get their due in the finale. We’ll see if there’s a way for them to have a collective swan song for characters like Sayid, the Kwons, Charlie, et al, without resorting to a Rocky IV-style montage WHICH I AM CALLING RIGHT NOW.

SADY: I mean… Richard can’t die, though! Like, literally cannot do it. It’s been established multiple times. Are we even sure he’s dead?

CARA: We established that he can’t kill himself. That’s a different thing. I want Richard to be alive! But I also kept really wanting for Lapidus to come out of the water during the extended and pointless scene where the remaining Losties kept staring out at it. So.

SALLY: Yeah, ummm, I’m completely NOT okay with Richard just being offed like that. And how exactly did Miles get away? Or did he die off-screen? I’m almost more upset about the way they killed Richard than Sayid (almost, though not quite), simply because at least this season, Richard got a whole episode and he was quite likable whereas we were supposed to (maybe?? who knows anymore) not like/trust Sayid anymore since he was all smokified. You need to at least give these people meaningful deaths, LOST!

Ben has seemingly gone back to the dark side — he’s working with Smokey, willingly sacrificed Zoe, and personally killed Widmore. He’s also offering himself to work as Smokey’s hitman. Are we going to see yet another showdown between Jack and Ben?

CARA: I have to say, this actually made me really sad. I liked Ben better as a complex person, rather than someone who is just pure evil. Also, I was totally buying the redemption storyline, which makes me feel like a giant sucker! I’m still partially hoping that Ben has a trick up his sleeve, and he doesn’t have real plans to sacrifice our remaining Losties the way he did in Zoe and Widmore. But it’s looking unlikely to me.

Also, some “rules” those are, Ben! “You know I can’t kill you, Charles.” Except when I really feel like it! Bam!

SADY: Oh, Ben is playing Locke, all the way. They wouldn’t make a point of how great and nice and cuddly and good he is, in the alterna-world, if they had plans to just let him stab all the non-Jack characters to death in the finale.

CARA: I hope so! Though at the same time, Ben stabbing all of the other characters to death would be a pretty hilarious ending to the show, actually. Last frame is him wiping his knife off on his pants, turning around, and walking way. Cue black screen and BOOM!

LAUREN: Ben is conning Smokey, I think. He’s either Smokey’s greatest weapon, and a clever nod to our old manipulative Henry Gale, or is conning Smokey as an ally of the island. I don’t think Ben wants the island to himself, as Smokey promised, because the thing is wrecked and everyone he loved is gone thanks to it.

SALLY: I also think Ben has something up his sleeve, not necessarily because I don’t think he can’t suddenly go back to the dark side, but more because he ALWAYS has an agenda! Like, all the time! Even when we think he’s gotten what he wants! So if he suddenly doesn’t, I’d be really confused.

I also thought it was hilarious that he killed Widmore, mostly because Widmore has annoyed the crap out of me this season. And just like Ben to do it while he’s in the middle of some great confession.

CARA: Personally, I’m really, REALLY annoyed with the constant “your daughter’s life is my bargaining chip and also my revenge!” trope that the show keeps pulling out. I mean, clearly we’re supposed to view that as pretty evil, but I don’t think we’re supposed to see the misogyny behind it. Probably because the writers don’t. It’s like “haha, you killed my property daughter, so now your property daughter must die to even things out!” is a totally logical reaction.

But can we also just talk about Sideways Ben for a second? Because I have to say that the Ben/Rousseau romance is the greatest thing to happen all season. It seriously thrilled me.

SADY: Haha, yeah. At first I thought it was way too obvious, like my least favorite parts of the Sideways World sequence (like, they literally have Rousseau saying, “even if we have to kidnap you” and “you’re the closest thing she has to a father,” like we the viewers are just TOO TERMINALLY STUPID to remember the past six seasons of the show and get the irony) but when they started giving each other sexy glances? I was like, whoa! Hey! The two weirdest people on the show, getting together! I did not see that coming.

LAUREN: Yeah, I wonder, too — Ben is like the only one whose sideways life is totally kickass, so what if he decides Sideways is the way to be and goes all Fuck Team Jacob?

SALLY: I LOVE BENSSEAU, which is what I shall call them. I totally think he needs to ditch the island and somehow stay in Sideways World!

Off island, Desmond is still making sure that various Losties connect with each other, and Hurley seems to fully remember the other reality. Everyone also seems headed to the same concert/gala event. Where is this going?

JILL: They’re going to a concert put on by Miles’ father (whose name I can’t remember now, but you know, the Dharma guy). Which makes sense, since we learned he’s a composer or musician or something, right? I think this is heading toward the universes finally converging — once they’re all together, the hope is that they’ll all “see” the island, because the only one who seems to have it all figured out right now is Hurley. Although my prediction is that getting them all together will also mean, somehow, that the people on the island will be able to see their possible alternate lives in LA. And I think that’ll change Jack’s mind about being The One. And Faraday or Desmond will somehow figure out how to skip the island back in time or do whatever magical Ferngully/Bibley/sciencey thing they do and make it so that the plane lands and Bizarro LA ends up being Real LA. And maybe someone — maybe Kate, as I say below — will end up staying on the island instead of Jack.

But my theories are always wrong, so, if you’re making your own I would suggest repeating everything I just wrote and then saying, “And that is what is definitely not going to happen.”

LAUREN: They will all go to a concert, wherein Miles’ dad will play a classical cover of some Drive Shaft song so the production scene can put together a loving montage of best-of moments as the characters gain consciousness of both time lines. *cough*

SADY: I really love creepy-prophet/secret-agent Desmond. I get kind of bored with the character sometimes — I seem to have established that I like the characters no-one else likes, and don’t get the characters people love, when it comes to this show; Hurley is like the only dude on which we are all in agreement that he’s great — but he has really found a groove of creepy impressiveness that is working for me. Also: Kate’s reaction when she saw the dress! I don’t often have nice things to say about Evangeline Lilly, which is a shame, because it’s not like SHE wrote Kate to be so annoying, but when she held up the dress and noticed that it was (a) kinda skimpy, and (b) her size, she had this hilarious “UHHHHH YIKES?” face. And I laughed. Good job, Evangeline! You got me to like Kate, and all the writers had to do was get out of the way and make you not say any of their annoying, we-don’t-know-how-to-write-for-women-y words!

Oh, also: Ana-Lucia! I missed youuuuuu. I am going to continue my “disastrous LOST confessions” theme, actually, and tell you all that I always liked Ana-Lucia A LOT. Mostly because I really like Michelle Rodriguez. She’s so charismatic! I could just listen to her yell for hours! And, during Season 2, I DID.

SALLY: ANA LUCIA, I MISSED YOU AS WELL!

Oh, theories, so I’m guessing that they’ll all be in the same room and somehow the room will EXPLODE and then they’ll all be dead.

OR! Some combination of everyone else’s theories.

Also, if we could get Shannon and/or Eko to be at the concert too, that’d be fantabulous. Simply because I need closure and seeing them again and knowing what happens to them in Sideways World would be wonderful.

On the island, Jacob finds his replacement, and in the big shocker of the night, we find out that it’s Jack.

LAUREN: *dies of boredom*

CARA: Just when you think that LOST is out of twists and turns, they hit us with this shocker! Who could’ve guessed?

I also love that Jacob’s explanation to Sawyer’s perfectly reasonable question about why he thought it was okay to disrupt all their normal lives for the sake of a glowy light in the middle of an island is, “well, you were all miserable, anyway! Also, flawed!” And then everyone kind of looks at the ground guiltily, like “yeah, he has a point.” Because clearly having things kind of suck for them totally justifies Sayid, Sun, Jin, Charlie, Boone, Shannon, Ana Lucia, Michael, Libby, Locke, Eko and everyone else ALL BEING DEAD NOW.

SALLY: My guy pointed out that he hated this answer because, aren’t millions of other people also miserable, lonely and flawed? What makes these people especially miserable, lonely and flawed? It seems that, in the grand scheme of things, some of their lives weren’t all that awful.

CARA: Well, exactly. Picking people who are “flawed” doesn’t exactly narrow down the selection pool.

JILL: I did appreciate Sawyer’s God Complex joke when that happened. But now that it’s Jack taking over Jacob’s role in the second-to-last episode (SHOCKER!), I think one of two things are going to happen: (1) It’s not going to end up being Jack who stays as the caretaker of the island; or (2) No one stays on the island, and somehow they figure out a way to leave it or disappear it or whatever so that they all get to go home. I think it will come down to some sort of show-down between Jack and Locke, obviously, but the end end won’t be Jack staying. In fact, if someone does stay, I think it’s gotta be Kate. Because in Bizarro LA, everyone has a pretty decent life going — except Kate. I mean, Sayid is in jail too, but his overall circumstances aren’t the worst. And Sun is shot, but maybe will be ok? Kate is the only one who, in Bizarro LA, has the same kind of life that she had before coming to the island — flawed and pointless. Jack is a dad, though, and when the universes converge — and I think that they will — I don’t think he’ll agree to stay on the island and forgo a life with his son.

SADY: But I say unto you, Jill, it is not given to us to question the Assumption of Jack into godhood; Jack hath been selected from among us by The Writers, who do not giveth a fuck that he be the most loathed of all their creation. For the viewership did cry out to The Writers, “Kill him! Let his blood be shed on the ground!” And The Writers said, “No.” And the viewers did cry out, “we prefer Hurley! Let him be chosen to lead us!” And the writers said, “No.” And the viewers said, “You have brought among us great suffering; you have slain our women, and cast out from among us the people of color, exploding and/or drowning three in one episode, for which we have not ceased our mourning; your only gay character hath been a villain, who hath not even been in that many episodes; you have suffered smoke monsters, and fire, and sea, and Ana-Lucia, to lay waste to those we loved. And yet among us, Jack is still standing, though we have cried out unto you he is a douche. Why must this be so? Why is Jack chosen from among us to be the Messiah?” And The Writers said, “lo, he is a white dude. And those ALWAYS have to be the heroes, silly!” And the viewers did lose their faith in this show.

SALLY: As Jack got christened or whatever one would call such a ceremony, I actually starting thinking to myself “could there possibly be people out there, other than the writers, who actually still LIKE Jack as a character?” Because, most everyone I know finds Jack annoying, at the very least, or just plain hate him. But anyway, my second favorite moment of the night (Ana Lucia was my first, of course) was when Hurley was all shocked that everyone could see Jacob because he seemed equal parts hurt/useless and happy/relieved. Oh, Hurley, I love you so!

CARA: My thoughts during the “You’re like me, now” scene were: “You were already like each other. You’re both monster douchebags.” Then, it was, “You were already like each other. You both lack intellectual curiosity to astounding and terrifying degrees.” I mean, Jack was just like “uh huh, uh huh, magical light cave that I need to protect from the magical smoke column for as many centuries as I can before inevitably being killed, mhm, drink the magical lake water, anything else?” Like, what? At least mini-Jacob and mini-Esau asked what the damn light cave was! They weren’t told, but they had the sense to ask.

He also tells us why Kate was no longer a candidate: Because she became a mother. How many things did you smash?

JILL: I wanted to smash something for a minute, but then he was like, “It’s just a line in chalk on a cave.” Ok, so it’s meaningless?! Awesome. I at least liked that part of the answer.

CARA: I’m annoyed. First of all, I feel like they just made this up completely. Like: “Okay, we’ve got 7 last names, only 6 numbers. Oops, we forgot the girl! Hmm, what’s an explanation for why the girl isn’t one of the numbers? Oh, I KNOW! SOMETHING THAT APPLIES ONLY TO WOMEN!”

I mean, first of all, what does that even mean? Jacob didn’t feel the need to elaborate on why becoming a mother got you the chalk line. Is it because she had someone else to take care of? Because the candidates all had to be flawed, and everyone knows that mothers are on the Madonna side of the Madonna/Whore complex? Because being a mother is something only ladies do? I can’t find a way for it to not be offensive and misogynistic. Secondly, if becoming a mother crosses you off, then clearly Sun wasn’t the candidate either, and the candidates were all dudes! Also, being a father clearly doesn’t get you crossed off, as Sawyer has a kid (even if he ignores her), and one of the Kwons had to be in the running, so clearly Jin’s fatherhood doesn’t count, either.

LAUREN: This was a weirdly anti-mother way for the story to go, not just a sexist or even merely inconsistent explanation of motherhood on this island, especially considering the negative mother figures that the show has had, like Eloise and the ur-Mother, and the close-but-no-cigar, could’ve-been-but-died-first mothers. This show to date has erected numerous pedestals for mothers to perch on only to be knocked down. And it’s telling, too, that a show so obsessed with the concept of motherhood can be so dismissive of women in general — and mothers in particular — as agents in the story.

SADY: Yeah. We were meant to think that it was some Nice Dude Move on Jacob’s part — like, “oh, you have something to care for outside of the Island, now, so clearly my petty little Eternal Struggle for Life and Death should not take time away from that” — but it really didn’t work, considering that THIRTY SECONDS AGO Kate talked about JIN AND SUN BEING DEAD and TWENTY MINUTES BEFORE THAT she made note of the fact that they had A DAUGHTER, who Jin never even saw outside of The Manipulative Digital Camera of Charles Widmore. So, not only is it a little sexist (and rules out Sun as a candidate, for which: FUCK YOUUUUU, LOST) it doesn’t even make sense by the show’s own internal logic.

Oh, wait. We’re talking about Lost. Which has no internal logic, actually! So I guess we’re fine!

SALLY: I felt that him crossing off Kate because she became a mother has something to do with his own mother. Maybe he thought she’d start killing people or something in order to protect the island? Or maybe he thought that she’d pass her Godliness to her child which, apparently, is not cool because suddenly choice is important in this whereas, up to this point, it was totally Jacob’s random decision. So, yeah, totally anti-mother, totally still part of their incredibly offensive views, but I guess, in their minds, justified somehow?

It’s clear at this point that Jacob really cared about his mother, so maybe he sees other women as flawed because of her own flaws. I’m assuming she’s the only woman who was completely close with. I also wonder if that’s why women can’t have children on the island?? Because of his own need to not have history repeat itself??? I don’t know, that just came to me right now, so I’d have to ponder that some more. Or, you know, wait until LOST tells me, if they ever do.

Smokey wants to destroy the island, and wants Desmond to help him do it. Predictions as to how this will go down?

LAUREN: All we know here is that Desmond, as the failsafe, with his unnatural ability to resist the effects of electromagnetism, can be used as the last resort against Smokey if all the other candidates die. Right? Because I’m confused. Maybe Desmond will go diving into the light-hole or employ some other such mystical force against/for Smokey in order to save/destroy the island.

Although Ol’ Smokey is right: if any ass left on this island would want to destroy the island, it’s Desmond circa Season Two.

SALLY: I’m really annoyed about this part of the storyline because it was abandoned weeks ago and even in Widmore’s explanation, nothing is really explained. Yeah, he can resist electromagnetism – we knew that. What the hell does that have to do with anything?

And how, exactly, does Smokey figure Desmond will suddenly trust him after he pushed him down a well and sent Sayid to kill him? It amazes me how Smokey’s mind works…

And lastly, any other thoughts before the big finale on Sunday?

JILL: I am keeping a running list of questions in my head that I hope they answer. These include: (1) Walt. What the hell is up with Walt? (2) Polar bears. What the hell is up with all the polar bears? (3) North Africa. Why does Morocco/Tunisia seem to be the place people land when they get off the island? And what the hell was with Charlotte finding that Dharma/polar bear skeleton? (4) Why exactly is the island traveling through time again, and can we please get some Daniel Faraday up in here? (5) Why does Widmore care about the island again?

CARA: Yeah … I don’t think they’re answering any of that, actually? Ha. (Though I think the polar bear being in Tunisia means that at some point a polar bear moved the island. Which is weird! But … yeah.) My big question is about why pregnant women die on the island. That is something they spent a lot of time on, and which I absolutely demand an answer to. Because if they don’t have an answer for that, it basically means that they killed a whole bunch of women in the show’s mythology for no damn reason (and true, we didn’t know those women, but still), and secondly, that they basically just decided, “Hey, we need a story line for Sun this season! Hmm … well, she’s a woman. So we should make sure it has to do with woman things. Oh! I’ve got it! What if we make it so that Sun has the constant threat of inevitable death hanging over her head, just because she is a woman?” All with no greater point. But with all that said … I’m not really expecting an answer to that, either. It seems highly unlikely, at this point, and then I’m going to be pissed.

I don’t know, I feel like a huge party pooper. But at the beginning of the season, I was super, super sad that LOST was ending. Now, I’m just really, really sad that I’m not sad about the show ending, and just kind of relieved to have it over. I wanted this season to be a lot more than it has turned out to be. I wanted the characters I care about to be treated a lot more humanely than they have been. And I wanted the entire show to be about a whole lot more than a magical, glowing light that is never explained. I’m just disappointed, and while I still really hope that they somehow blow me away on Sunday, I’m not holding my breath.

LAUREN: Ditto, Cara, on feeling like a party pooper. And yet one final prediction, although none of my priors have come true: Jack will die and Kate will save the day. I really, really want Desmond to be my constant, and Kate to be my Ellen Ripley.

SALLY: Yeah, I’m kind of ready for this season to be over and REALLY hoping they can make up for this season in the finale.

Today my friend asked me, what was up with Dharma? Which made me realize that we never really did get any resolution on that… Why exactly were they on the island, how did they get there, etc.? I thought we had all of the Dharma answers when Eloise explained most of it, but then everything this season has me a bit confused on whether or not that’s true because, if so, shouldn’t there be some acknowledgment about that in this new Jacob storyline? Was it because Jacob summoned them as he supposedly did with a bunch of other people? If that’s the case, then why did he treat them differently than the “Others”? And, also, why did it seem like they actually knew more about the island than Jacob?? Did Jacob not realize that ever? They knew how the island moved, all the superpowers it held, etc. but it doesn’t seem Jacob’s ever been that interested in any of that which, if he’s trying to protect the island, wouldn’t he want to know how some of that might help his cause? I don’t understand!!!

I’d love the pregnant women thing to be answered because, if not, I’m going to stick with my theory above. I’d also like some sort of LOST-approved timeline to come out once the series is over because I’m really freaking confused about the sequence of some events over the years. I don’t really remember many of my other questions at this point…

SADY: For unto the viewers, there was given one last shred of hope, and they did cling to it with all their will and power. Was it not shown unto them, in the season premiere, that the Island had been consigned to the depths of the sea? And was it not told unto them by Smokey that he would lay waste to the Island, and deliver it unto oblivion? And could it not be, in this time of peril, that the protector of the Island might stay with it even unto its sinking? Could it not be true, thought the viewers unto themselves, that Jack would pass away as the Island itself, and there would be a new Heaven and a new Earth, with no cryface and no stalking, a world in which JACK WOULD FINALLY FUCKING DIE? And the Writers said, “ha. Probably not, though! But rest assured that, no matter what we deliver unto you, it shall be a disappointment.” So endeth the prophecy.

I’m getting to it late in the day, but it remains worthy of notice that today would have been Malcolm X’s 84th birthday. Renee has written a wonderful tribute to the great revolutionary, activist, and leader. Be sure to go check it out.

Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of police violence and gun violence.

Aiyana Stanley Jones was 7-years-old. On Sunday morning, she was asleep on the couch in her family’s home.

Aiyana is now dead. She is dead after the home was raided by police. Police, searching for a murder suspect, threw a flash grenade through the window around midnight. According to Aiyana’s father, it landed on the couch, setting Aiyana on fire. A police officer’s gun then went off, and shot Aiyana in the head or neck.

Aiyana was asleep on the living room sofa in her family’s apartment when Detroit police, searching for a homicide suspect, burst in and an officer’s gun went off, fatally striking the girl in the neck, family members said.

Her father, 25-year-old Charles Jones, told The Detroit News he had just gone to bed early Sunday after covering his daughter with her favorite blanket when he heard a flash grenade followed by a gunshot. When he rushed into the living room, he said, police forced him to lie on the ground, with his face in his daughter’s blood.

“I’ll never be the same. That’s my only daughter,” Jones told WXYZ-TV.

I don’t have the words. What words are there, for a little girl being killed in her own home, by the same people our society claims are supposed to protect her? What words are there, when a home that reportedly had toys outside and contained multiple children is violently raided in the middle of the night, without concern for their safety? What words are there, when this little girl was killed in front of her family, when her father was left unable to even try to help her, and forced to lay in her blood? What words are there, when a police officer’s lack of control over his own drawn weapon in a house full of children is referred to as an “accident” with a straight face? What words, when black citizens have to constantly fear systematic police brutality and violence, not only against themselves but also against their small children?

There are not words for that. Not sufficient words. Not words filled enough with rage and sorrow. Not words that can adequately honor her family’s pain. Not words that can bring Aiyana back or undo this horrific crime.

As Adrienne Maree Brown says in a gut-wrenching post:

there is no justice. not for aiyana stanley jones.

there is punishment, and perhaps accountability. someone to point towards, many people, a trail of blame, stories, mistakes and tears.

but there is no justice.

She goes on to write:

every thread i pick up in the story leads to more impossible questions.

why are police officers legally able to use military tactics on a house with children in it on a sunday morning…or any morning, on any house, with anyone in it?
why do the grieving faces of people on this street look so unsurprised?
and when 17-year-old Jerean Blake was killed Friday, wasn’t that equally devastating? did we do enough as a community at that moment?
do we know how to keep our children safe?
can we admit that we don’t know anything about how to be the kind of society where this could never happen?

to step back from the immediate events is to see what happens in communities who internalize the corporate military worldview that some people are expendable. the way we function as an economy that places profit first is that it’s normal for people in uniform to throw bombs into the home of civilians and shoot children.

an economy that valued people first could never justify those tactics.

I suggest you read her whole post. I certainly can’t say it better, nor can I say it from a position of such close proximity.

A vigil for Aiyana has already been held. Protests against the Detroit Police Department are currently in the works as I write this, and more memorials may also be in the process of being planned. If you have concrete information on any of these events, please leave it in the comments.

Spoilers below!

This week on LOST, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse decided that they wanted to alienate every last one their fans — and it worked! We vent our continued rage below. Feel free to express your own anger in the comments (or talk about other LOST things, if you feel like it), so long as you do so without spoilers for future episodes.

This week, I’m just going to jump right in. They killed off four main characters in one fell swoop; three of those characters had been with us since the very first episode, and all three of those original characters were also people of color. Discuss.

CARA: This was absolutely awful. And I don’t mean “awful” as in “tragic” or “made me feel sad.” I mean “awful” as in: this was not only lazy writing, it was also a huge betrayal of the characters and the fans. Sayid, both one of the major characters and one of the best characters on this show, was blown up half off screen. Lapidus’ death was treated as an equivalent of one of Widmore’s lackeys being shot down by Flocke. And Sun and Jin spent six years looking for each other, only to die a la that old couple in Titanic for no reason other than that it was SAD.

Oh, and did I mention that these were almost all of the characters of color we had left? That when they decided to kill of characters in bulk, when they decided that it was too much work to give their deaths as much time as they gave to Nikki and Paulo, or to Shannon, they decided to make it three major characters of color, including the very last woman of color, and one far less substantial white dude? Clearly some lives on the show are viewed as wholly expendable and disposable, even if they have been characters since the pilot six years ago, and lord knows that those lives aren’t Jack and Sawyer.

But fear not, remaining characters of color! Do you … make white people laugh? If so, you’re relatively safe! Rest easy, Hurley and Miles!

JILL: Ok, LOST. What the hell?! I mean, I get it that you’re going all Sopranos-style and just popping off characters left and right in the final three episodes. And you know what? I am actually ok with that! I didn’t expect that all of our original characters would last until the end anyway, and I’ve actually been championing offing more than a few of them. And while I was obviously crushed that they killed Sayid, at least he was kinda-sorta redeemed. Except, not really, and they didn’t explain his “sickness,” and all of a sudden he was better, maybe?, and he didn’t even get the Lost death music. Seriously, what? And Lapidus?! Lapiduuuuus! Fuck it, Dude, let’s go bowling.

Also, the Sun/Jin death was sad, but yes, felt contrived and Titanic-esque, and also why are they always speaking English to each other? I mean, great, your last words were in Korean, but shouldn’t you have been speaking that language to each other the whole time? Just asking. Maybe it’s because LOST fans have become too lazy to read subtitles? And so the writers hate us and want to kill off everyone we love? I didn’t even get teary-eyed, really, because it was so cheesy. Until Hurley cried. Then I felt a little pang in my cold, LOST-hardened heart.

Conclusion: We’re going to be left with Jack and John in the final episode. Everyone else is toast.

CARA: Yes, this is what I’m saying. I’ve expected a lot of characters to die. But I expected the to leave the show properly — the show has taken care with other major characters’ deaths, for the most part, and I trusted them to take care here. They didn’t.

LAUREN: Sigh. You guys already said what needed to be said, except that I need — I really, really need — to reiterate how disappointing it is to be a lady on this show: Dead so you can be a plot point in some dude’s story line, shot so you can be saved by some dude, left out of some dude’s plans, or martyred after you find your dude.

And hold up a second. Wasn’t Sayid “sick”?

CARA: I told you Desmond fixed him. You could tell throughout the entire episode that he was more or less back to his old self. He wasn’t emotionless in this episode. He actually cared about the fate of Claire, and tried to get her on the submarine, instead of being every man for himself. When talking about the bomb, he talked in his usual, excited, fast-paced tone that he uses when trying to fix something, not the evil monotone. And when looking at the bomb, there was definitely fear on his face, not apathy. He was not “sick” anymore, though it was never actually discussed.

But while on the topic, I have to add more. Obviously I care most about Sayid of all the characters who died, but I also think he objectively got the rawest deal here. Like Jill said, he didn’t even get the death music. He didn’t get a real death scene. Sun and Jin’s death was pretty bullshit, but at least they got a scene.

Lindelof tries to justify this by saying that Sayid’s death was meant to tell the audience that Sayid was really a good guy. The thing is, everyone knew that already. The only one who didn’t know was Sayid himself. That was the redemption he needed — not in anyone else’s eyes, but his own. And the fact that he didn’t get that specific redemption is what crushes me. I’ve said a million times that I could let go of Sayid, if only he got that, if only they did it right. I’m not angry and devastated because Sayid is dead — I’m angry and devastated because of how they killed him, because he was treated like an afterthought, because he was not given the ending he deserved.

SADY: Okay. Breathe, Sady. Breathe. They’re alive in the sideways world. They’re alive in the sideways world. They’re alive in the sideways world. They’ll come back as ghosts! They’ll…. oh, whatever. FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKKKKKK THISSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

Three-fifths of the people of color killed off! FULLY THREE-FIFTHS OF THEM! At once! The only female Candidate: DEAD! Finally, we figure out that LOST works LIKE A FUCKEN HORROR MOVIE, where the BROWN PEOPLE AND LADIES GOTTA DIE FIRST. And, like, yeah. It was so clearly because they’d stopped knowing how to write for ALL OF THEM a long time ago. Sun and Jin were reduced from complex characters to background decorations and freelance spouse-locators, and then, PRECISELY as soon as they found each other? Dead! Sayid got like the most PATHETIC fucking excuse for a plot line this season, and then they couldn’t even make that work in a convincing way, so they BLEW HIM THE FUCK UP.

And the thing is? Even when nobody was WRITING for them, basically, any more? Those characters were all way more interesting and charismatic than Kate or Jack, because the actors continually rose above the shitty material that was handed to them. What they get for that? What, say, Naveen Andrews gets for giving us a continually sympathetic and complex and coherent portrayal of a man, without even having very many lines or big emotional monologues, and basically selling the entire character with his eyes and reaction shots? What Yunjin Kim gives for turning every Asian-lady stereotype upside down with the sheer force of her will, and continually radiating strength and intelligence even when the writers reduced her to this silent husband-fixated other? What Daniel Dae Kim gets for convincingly appearing to speak fluent Korean, which he just barely speaks in actuality, in scenes with an acclaimed actress from Korea who speaks the language, AND sketching out an interesting, full-fleshed character while seriously not knowing what the fuck he was saying half the time, and creating great chemistry with this actress despite the fact that he could probably hardly understand what SHE was saying in the Korean scenes? What ALL of these actors get is, they get blown the fuck up and drowned so that we can focus on some white people with vastly inferior talent.

Oh, and Hurley. NEVER FORGET HURLEY. Although the writers fucking will. Jesus.

SALLY: Everything everyone else said, I’m almost too drained to say anything other than WTF… The Titanic ending for Jin and Sun bothered me, as it did everyone else, but I also just can’t believe that they’re both dead. They found each other, only to die? I thought they’d get at least a couple of episodes together, no???

And the Sayid thing is really, really pissing me off. I hear you, Cara, in saying that Desmond fixed him because that must be the only explanation here but could they, like, explain that? Or at least hint to it more heavily in the episode in which Sayid is finally all better and back to normal? That pissed me off even more than the way in which they killed him. Although, screw the sad death music, we didn’t even have time to process his death because then Lapidus gets killed off mere moments later with some annoying ass quip. I don’t even need the death music if we could at least have had that time to acknowledge the fact that he just killed himself to save everyone else. UGH! FUCK YOU LOST!

If Hurley dies next week, I might stop watching until this shit is over and just watch all of them on that last day. I can’t deal…

Any thoughts on where all of these deaths leave the theory — held by both Jack and fans — that Flocke cannot kill candidates directly?

CARA: I’m working on a theory using a combination of LOST reasoning and soap opera reasoning to work out how, exactly, Sayid is not really dead! You see, Sayid could not be killed by MIB, because he was a candidate! So against all odds, he’s totes fine, and just taking a leisurely swim back to the beach right now. Lapidus was allowed to die because he was not a candidate. And as for Kwon, the candidate was never Sun (this is the RAGE part of the theory) — and she was the one who was most directly killed by the blast, whereas the bomb did not kill Jin, and he instead actively chose to die.

This theory is not going as well as I had hoped.

JILL: Sayid is dead. Sorry Cara, it pains me too. I think Jack’s theory is right — Sayid wasn’t technically killed by the MIB, he was killed by Sawyer’s messing with the bomb (per Jack’s explanation). Ditto the Kwons.

CARA: Actually, I think this one is largely on Jack again. Maybe just because I hate Jack! But he’s the one who trusted MIB and “rescued” everyone from Smokey. Widmore actually was keeping them safe. And Jack decided to go all hero — and not pay attention to his backpack or where the C4 was (and yes, I’m perhaps being overly critical now, but when a guy you think is evil has a giant pack of C4, wouldn’t you at least try to keep your eye on it?) — and now they’re dead. Sawyer may in fact be largely to blame for pulling out the wires, but I think his decision to do that was a lot more reasonable than Jack’s “the evil smoke monster that my friends just escaped from wants me to help him regain access to them, that sounds like a great idea” call.

Whatever, I’m just all around bitter.

JILL: Ugh, but Sawyer. He is pissing me off almost as much as Jack at this point! He’s trying to play both sides and is like, “I have a plan,” but he never has a plan. And now he’s on a submarine with a bomb and he’s like, “I will just pull out these wires, what could go wrong?” He has not done anything worthwhile in like five episodes. He hasn’t even been giving out nicknames? Ugh, Sawyer.

SADY: Clearly, Sawyer has to be drained of all character too, for the same reason Kate was shot and Locke and Claire are evil and ALL BUT ONE OF THE BROWN CANDIDATES HAD TO FUCKEN DIE: To clear the way for more focus on Jack. Jack, who is going to be the sole fucking survivor. Jack, who took the occasion of the death of three of the show’s original cast members to wander off by himself and get a close-up on his most epic cryface yet, because as the show continually tries to make clear, the events of anyone else’s life or death are really only relevant insofar as they affect JACK’S FEELINGS. As made clear by Sayid, before he done gone and blowed himself up. UGH. I AM MADDER THAN I WAS DURING THE BATTLESTAR GALACTICA FINALE ABOUT GOD AND CAVEMEN. That “so, WHY did I watch this show EVER” feeling: it is strong within me! Too strong! It is TAKING OVER! I may turn into the Hulk!

SALLY: This episode made me mad because I normally like being right and I’ve said since the end of last season that this season was going to be man of faith vs. science with Jack being all faith-y/trust me and Sawyer being all questioning. I would have been fine with that if it wasn’t to serve as a way to make Jack even more God-like than they’ve done in the past. I mean, seriously, why would they have Sawyer shove Sayid aside – when they still have a few minutes to work it out – knowing full well that Sayid is the resident explosives expert? Sawyer wouldn’t do that, no matter how impatient he is. He has always trusted Sayid and I get that Sayid hasn’t been himself as of late, but he was thinking clearly at that moment which Sawyer would have realized. Patience and compassion might not be his strong suits, but Sawyer generally knows what’s up. Yet, he didn’t. What? I’m so confused about that, but mostly, annoyed.

Now back to what this show is really about: WHITE MEN. In the flashsideways, Jack had some sort-of medical and most definitely boundary-crossing interactions with Locke. Also, Locke has seen the original timeline.

LAUREN: Is it just me, or does LOST kind of promote and encourage stalking behavior?

CARA: This episode was pissing me off long before the deaths. Thanks, LOST, for more “disability means that you’re broken” and “disability is a punishment.” I don’t think you’d gotten that theme through clearly enough in six years, so I’m glad that you decided to emphasize it further. (s.e. smith has a whole lot more on this.)

JILL: At this point, I’ve basically given up on LOST being at all sensitive to issues like disability or gender, and I’m trying to enjoy it despite multiple fails. I mean, welcome to TV and popular culture, right? And I often do enjoy it! I just want them to knock off the plot failures (like the unresolved Sayid/illness thing, and the ongoing Claire/illness thing).

LAUREN: I’m halfway with you, Jill, re: pop culture blows/don’t be surprised, but on the other hand, LOST is one of those shows that bends over backwards to include and promote actors of color with detailed, fan-beloved story lines, and nevertheless manages to make a series by, for and about white men, and then — like Cara links to in the first Q/A — practically dismisses fans who want resolution or attention paid to these actors made beloved by their inclusion in said show. After awhile it’s a mindfuck. Remember, too, that LOST was initially a pretty sly, clever commentary on post-9/11 America. All that’s gone by the wayside.

JILL: Yeah, I totally hear that. They started out so well! And now, total failure. I think maybe I’m at the “acceptance” stage of grief? Perhaps they will redeem themselves by blowing up Jack? And/or giving us a Jack/Sawyer shirtless make-out scene before blowing up Jack? I would forgive them lots of ills if they did that. Although I also want them to stop making smart characters so stupid. Example A: Bizzaro LA Claire, who will apparently go anywhere with anyone as long as it is free?

But, Locke and Jack: I also don’t understand Jack’s obsession with “fixing” Locke. Although I did like the little role-reversal that they did there, where Jack was asking Locke to trust him and have faith, and Locke rebuffed him.

SADY: At least Jack stalks dudes AND ladies. Oh, no, wait, that is not actually any fucking better! Fuck this show. Fuck this show for giving me Jack, and fuck this show for taking away any interesting non-Jack material that made Jack bearable because at least he didn’t have ALL the screen time, and fuck this show for making me watch the rest of it knowing that if I ever get interested in anything other than Jack, that will be taken away for MORE TIME WITH JACK, and his JACK FEELINGS.

LAUREN: I still haven’t forgotten what you said about Jack last time, so don’t go trying to redeem yourself now, Sady.

SADY: Also, way to respect your doctor-patient confidentiality, Shephard! “I know you said you didn’t want me to do this thing, so I tracked down everyone in your life including your dentist, and talked to them about you, and our conversations about the thing. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU STILL DON’T WANT ME TO DO THE THING?!” Christ.

CARA: Can we get a note in here about Bernard, too? “Well, Dr. Shephard, you know I can’t break doctor-patient confidentiality … but, oh, what the hell, just a little bit can’t hurt, right?”

SALLY: Was I the only one completely annoyed at the fact that Bernard and Jack have that “wow, we were all on the plane together and now here we are…” moment and then just move on? Like, huh? I… don’t… understand… Did the writers have a holiday or something? Did they decide that instead of keeping things interesting each episode of the season and fully developing the story they’ve been working on for fucking YEARS, they’d just give us a series of episodes that were completely irrelevant, answered no questions, developed no characters (in fact, had people going against their characters), and they could just lay back until the last few episodes? I AM SO PISSED OFF!!!!

Oh, and as far as Jack having to fix Locke, at least that’s just Jack being Jack. Things you can count on in LOST: women dying and Jack wanting to fix everyone.

Claire was given a mysterious music box by Christian, and no one seems to know the significance. Theories?

LAUREN: It was empty, like her character development. OR it was an opportunity to hammer out yet another mirror-centric scene with two people to emphasize the importance of working together.

JILL: OR it contained a hairbrush, for use on the island.

LAUREN: Actually I’ve always wondered how they handle personal hygiene on this island.

ANYWAY I think the mirror scenes, which I think we’ve seen every episode this season, are important. Early in the season I think they indicated which characters were candidates, or which characters were gaining consciousness of the sideways world, but now later in the season our characters are peering into mirrors together. Why? The theory I like is at AV Club, where Noel suggests that the show is cluing us into the importance of the characters working as a team. He suggests that in this episode the reason there were so many failed plans was because of the candidates working for themselves, and as long as they are pursuing their own agendas their shit is going to fail. Thus, Islanders, remember THERE IS NO “I” IN “LOST.”

On island, we got further confirmation that Kate is no longer a candidate. Are we to simply assume that this is because she has boobs?

JILL: Basically, yes. Kate’s role at this point is to be an Influential Factor in some dude’s storyline. If she were a candidate she would have to have autonomy and her own shit going on, and, well… too hard. Bigger question: Is Kate going to die next episode from getting shot in the chest and then dragged through the ocean and then dumped on a beach?

LAUREN: I have a hard time believing that she wouldn’t, but then, I have an easy time believing in the likelihood of escaping a sinking submarine which exploded thanks to the hijinks of an immortal half-man/half-column-of-smoke with mommy issues. I don’t know why Kate isn’t a candidate, because her character hits every point all the other male candidates do. She’s someone with personal problems who is nevertheless capable of leadership and selflessness. Of the three remaining living candidates, she shares much in common except her gender. Soooooooo?

JILL: I think you answered your own question, there. But I don’t think they’ll kill Kate before the final episode. Why? Titties. LOST needs at least one hot lady to sustain the collective boners of the Male Viewing Audience, and, well, Kate is all that’s left when it comes to hotties (unless Claire decides to brush her hair).

SADY: I would not put it past this show to just kill a girl so that The Dudes (The Important Characters!) can have their very important love triangle problems resolved. Yeah, I think the show has basically never given us any reason to believe that it is interested in Kate aside from the issue of which dude will get to bone her. So, obviously, the Island isn’t interested either. For… some reason. We don’t need a reason! She’s a girl!

SALLY: But I don’t get it, are they never going to acknowledge that her name wasn’t crossed off on the other list? Was that just a mistake? Because that seems to be a really huge one.

Also, I really thought Kate was going to die in this episode and that thought actually made me really, really happy. 1) I’m beyond sick and tired of what they’ve reduced her character to, and 2) I thought that meant we’d only be left with Sun and that this would serve as confirmation that Sun MUST be the candidate because she’s fucking awesome. But then that didn’t happen. Damn it.

Any other thoughts?

JILL: I would like to know a few things. (1) Who is Jack’s ex-wife in Bizarro LA? I feel like that is going to be a BIG REVEAL. (2) When are they bringing back Mr. Eko?! (3) Why is anyone still wearing a bra on that island? Seriously, that shit is hot. (4) How much time has passed since Sayid left Desmond in that well? They’re all on the sub, and then Sayid is just like, “Oh, crap, yeah, Jack, remember Desmond? He’s in this well, you should probably go get him bro.” So… you were just going to leave him there, I guess? And hasn’t he been down in that well for like a week at this point? Doesn’t anyone need to eat/drink on this show?

CARA: I think Des has only been down the well like 2 days, actually. It feels like forever, but I don’t think it has been. I feel like Eko isn’t coming back, which is bullshit, because I’m pretty sure the actor said he wanted to? And I kind of feel like Jack’s ex-wife is nobody. Not Juliet, or Sarah, or Ana Lucia … just, you know, his ex-wife. At this point, whatever happens happens. I was previously holding onto faith that this would all make sense in the end. Any trust I had left in the producers and writing team, though, was pretty much shattered last night.

SADY: Here are my final thoughts: AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH. Also: Where is Miles? Don’t tell me, actually. DON’T TELL ME. Because I just know that, at some point, they are all just going to randomly stumble over the Corpse of Miles. And Jack will make a cryface, and then we’ll be done.

SALLY: Yeah, I would really like to see Team Richard back in action. Though now that they’re not even on the same island anymore, that seems unlikely which, seriously, would they just write them off the show without a death or explanation or anything???? I would hope not but, as Cara said, I’ve lost trust in these people. I don’t even really remember anymore what major questions I really wanted answered because I’m so frustrated at how the season is turning out. If this series finale doesn’t BLOW. MY. FUCKING. MIND., I will be so incredibly upset, I might stop watching t.v.

And, I think it really needs to be said, I feel this episode was extra emotional so that everyone would be too busy crying to realize how awful the season has been and how weak this episode really was. Don’t get me wrong, I cried too (seriously, Jin and Sun dying, fucking sad), but that doesn’t mean the episode wasn’t poorly written and just plain sloppy. If you don’t agree, just look back at some of the other powerful moments we’ve had and compare them to this one – Charlie’s death, Desmond & Penny’s reunion, shit, even Shannon’s death! That’s it, I’m getting angry again, I’ll stop now.

Today, May 1st, is Blogging Against Disablism Day. Blogging Against Disablism Day is hosted every year by Goldfish as an absolutely excellent blogswarm about ableism. (“Disablism” is synonymous with “ableism.” Disablisim is the term preferred in the U.K.; as someone from the U.S., I’m more comfortable with the term ableism, and that’s the one I’ll be using throughout the post.)

This here is a blog. And while others writing for Blogging Against Disablism Day can and will interpret the title of the event in a huge variety of ways and choose to write about a huge variety of topics and experiences, it strikes me that those words imply a perfect opportunity to address the subject of ableism in blogging communities, and in this blogging community specifically.

At Feministe, we’ve have had plenty of problems and committed many offenses with regards to ableism. As readers have educated us and as we’ve educated ourselves, we’ve made changes and attempted to do better. It’s certainly a work in progress; I harbor no illusions that Feministe is anywhere near a safe space for people with disabilities, and we are very far from perfect. One area that still needs a lot of work, and one which we have less control over than most, is our comment section, and the ableist language that tends to appear there.

Ableist language is language that is used to demean people with disabilities, or that is based on negative misconceptions about disability. Much of it is very, very deeply ingrained in our culture to the point where those of us who are unaffected by such language rarely notice it on our own. Ableist language matters for the same reason that sexist, racist, and homophobic language matters. Feminists tend to reject the word “pussy” as an insult, as it takes a word that is usually associated with women and uses it to imply that there is something bad, insulting, and demeaning about being a woman. Progressives tend to reject the word “gay” as an insult, as it takes a word that is used as a personal identifier by many people and suggests that to hold that identity is to be bad, pathetic, and/or laughable. We also reject racial slurs, as they use a position of privilege and capitalize on an ongoing history of oppression, dehumanization, and colonization to directly and purposely demean marginalized groups.

Similarly, we should reject ableist language, as it takes people’s identities and experiences and turns them into insults and jokes. And we should also reject ableist language because it involves direct slurs that represent a long history of marginalization and oppression, and wields them as weapons of privilege against those who do not have it.

In some ways, I think that our community has transitioned to non-ableist language relatively well. “Retarded” and “lame” are insults I very rarely see in our comment section, anymore; when they do appear, they’re usually from new commenters or trolls. It took a period of quite a few months, a lot of speaking out by moderators and commenters alike, and undoubtedly and sadly much harm done to readers with disabilities to get to that place. But I’m happy and proud to see that we’re there, now.

But other ableist language is an issue. And while not the only offenders, the terms I want to focus on are the ones I see the most frequently appear in our comment section: “crazy,” “insane,” and other similar terms that use language commonly associated with mental illness to indicate irrationality, unbelievability, ludicrousness, hilarious ignorance, and/or immorality.

These terms are a problem. They are terms that have been used to disparage people with mental illnesses for a very long time, to discredit them, to abuse them, and to protect those who abuse them. They are terms that are continually used in this way today. They are terms that, using their broadest definitions, could be used against me — someone who has struggled with depression more on than off since about age 13, has some PTSD issues, and probably has some other unspecified anxiety disorder. They are terms that, used very narrowly, are still used against good friends, some of the greatest writers I know, and folks who, whatever and whoever else they are, are still people. (For the record, words being reclaimed and used as self-identifiers are a VERY different matter.)

They are terms that do active harm when they are brandished, even when not used directly at the person who is being harmed. They are terms that still do harm, regardless of whether or not one specifically uses them to refer to mental illness, or whether or not one personally thinks that “the word doesn’t mean that, anymore.”

They are terms that you should probably stop using, if you use them. And they’re terms that I would like to be seen as unacceptable for use here, in this space. It would make this blog safer for a lot of people, and a more welcoming, less oppressive space. That’s the kind of space I would personally like this blog to be.

To be clear, I’m not saying that you’re a bad person if you’ve used these terms without knowing about their harmful impact. In fact, Feministe used to have a category called “Crazy Conservatives” (it was changed some time ago to Radical Right-Wingers). “Crazy” and “insane” are terms that I used to use rather liberally, before learning why my choice to do so was oppressive. I don’t write this post to make you feel bad; I write it because I don’t like seeing harm done in almost every single one of our comment threads. And causing harm is something that all people do, regardless of intent. But intent usually doesn’t matter a whole lot when harm is being done regardless.

And I think that if we are serious about holding a social justice stance that works to eventually eradicate privilege and create a world where all marginalized people are perceived as valuable and fully human, it’s our job, it’s our responsibility, and it should be our immediate desire to stop causing that harm ourselves once we know that we are in fact causing harm. No matter how defensive we feel, or how much we like the words in question. Both because it’s right, and because if those of us who purport to believe in social justice don’t act as though language, cultural narratives, and casual prejudice matter, how can we expect to convince anyone else that they do?

MOD NOTE: I understand that it’s likely this post will incite some defensiveness. But, as a general rule, we at least try to not let defenses of privilege take over threads. Today is Blogging Against Disabilism Day, so I find the idea of comments from abled folks who want to explain why something many people with disabilities find to be ableist isn’t really ableist to be in particularly atrocious taste. Those arguments have all been addressed in the various posts linked throughout this one, and in any case, you can have that conversation in about 99.9% of other places on the internet. This place isn’t going to be one of them, and comments which attempt to defend language that marginalized people have identified as actively harmful will be deleted.

Tomorrow is May Day, and Reform Immigration for America is marking the day by holding marches in support of progressive immigration reform all over the U.S. Tens of thousands of people are expected to march in almost 100 locations across the country:

On May Day, we’re telling the our elected leaders in Washington DC that we’re not going to wait any longer for them to act. They’ve made promises and pledges – now it’s time for them to keep them. Every day that they don’t pass comprehensive immigration reform, millions of families and communities suffer. Workers are exploited. Ordinary immigrants live in fear of raids. Families are torn apart.

Every day that our leaders don’t act, the dream that is America is tarnished. Our leaders can’t hide behind their rhetoric. It’s time for concrete action.

On May Day tens of thousands of people will attend hundreds of marches all across the country. We’ll stand together to show our leaders that we’re not going to wait any longer for them to fix our broken immigration system. All of us, immigrants and native-born citizens, will be united to show the world that this country needs comprehensive immigration reform now.

Click here to find a full list of the May 1st marches and see if there is one near you.

via abbyjean

This guest post is a part of the Feministe series on Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Hexy is an Australian sex worker and sex worker activist who blogs at hexpletive.com, a blog composed largely of rants.

Trigger Warning

You’ll all have to forgive me if this post is a little rambling. It’s taken a long time to write, and it’s changed form two or three times in the process.

Cara approached me to write a post for SAAM on sexual assault and sex workers. And my brain went “Whoaaa… ” and blanked on me a little. It’s hardly a simple subject, and there’s so many inter-related facets to approach. It’s not that the subject itself is difficult to write on; on the contrary, I could write for days and produce dozens of posts and never get off topic for longer than one of my characteristic segues. It’s that the subject is so huge, and I’ve been asked to write one post. ONE. A single post on a topic that affects (infects?) all levels of discourse and experience for sex workers, that’s more loaded with myths and misconceptions than any other facet of our lives and work, and that a LOT of non sex workers seem to have some firmly entrenched not-necessarily-accurate-but-difficult-to-change opinions on.

In fact, I’ve probably stepped on a few buttons and gotten a few people utilising their opinions. At least one person is probably thinking that I meant that the topic affects all level of experience for sex workers because we’ve all been sexually assaulted (NO!) or that it’s such a big issue because it happens all the time (NO!). And here I am all tied up in my previously mentioned problem: If I include all the things I want to mention and all the things I want to make sure I’ll clarify, this post will reach such new levels of TL;DR that anyone actually reaching the end will have a long wispy beard by the time they do so. I originally thought I’d do some sex worker sexual assault myth busting… you know, get a little snarky, bust out a few links, challenge some preconceptions and inevitably get into an argument with someone in the comment thread. I even surveyed some other sex workers to see what their most despised myths and misconceptions about sex work and sexual assault were, and let me tell you there is most definitely a rant or nine in there. The same bullshit myths kept coming up again and again, and a lot of sex workers are pissed off about them.

But as I tried to write the post, my brain kept veering away from the format I was trying to write in and towards Personal Narrative Land. The responses to so many of the myths kept bringing my brain back to a some personal experiences I had recently, and I realised that part of my writer’s block was my inability to view this topic without thinking about that experience and the issues surrounding it. So here goes. Personal Narrative Time.

I am a sex worker. I have been sexually assaulted, twice. The latter time was relatively recently, and during the period I have been doing sex work. It did not happen at work, and I was not raped by a client. Rather, the person who assaulted me was someone who had been a friend and consensual lover for quite some time. It’s something that should have been completely divorced from my work, and in my mind it was. While it was an incredibly traumatic event from which I have still not healed, the impact it had on my work, my feelings about my work, and my capacity to do my job was exactly the same for my sex work job and my non sex work job, and exactly the same as any other traumatic event would have had on my work. The summary? I was pretty fucked up. Sexual assault will do that to you. But not about my work.

You know what did connect the assault and my work for me? The response of my friends when I told them I had been assaulted. Every time a sympathetic face and a hand on my shoulder turned into the same damn question: “Did it happen at work?” The assumption, even coming from those who should know better, that I had been assaulted because I was a whore. That the person most likely to do that to me would of course be one of my clients, even though many of these people were otherwise extremely aware that most perpetrators are someone known to the victim and target them at a time of vulnerability. That time is not when I am working, in an environment with established boundaries, in a brothel with other workers around and aware of each other’s movements.

It was confronting, and awful, to realise that people I consider to be generally whore-friendly and specifically hexy-supportive had the same rubbish in their heads as everyone else. That those who could give the sex workers rights 101 Sex Work is Real Work spiel with the best of them and would leap into a raging bar argument with anyone who dared to spit out Sex Workers Expect To Be Raped or It’s Really Theft Of Services Hur Hur Hur would still leap to the conclusion that A Sex Worker Who Says They Have Been Raped Is Probably Talking About Work and/or a Client. Myths and misconceptions are us, yo.

Yeah, yeah, I know. We’ve all been here. The dude who ticks all the pro-feminist boxes but says something misogynistic one day that makes your jaw drop. The white anti-racist who still holds some pretty messed up views they don’t realise they haven’t questioned. The straight friend, or the non-disabled friend, or the cis* friend, or the… blah blah blah. I shouldn’t be so surprised by “non sex worker friend who thinks that a sex worker who has been raped was probably raped at work and/or by a client”. But I was, and those responses were a major factor in how I reacted to the assault, who I decided to tell about it from that point on and, yes, my feeling that I could not go to the police.

It’s hardly a secret that sex workers have a shitty time of it reporting sexual assault to the police. People in general have a shitty time of it reporting sexual assault to the police, for a range of reasons. And while I’ll keep most of my rant about the police out of this entry, the people making up the judicial system have (at best!) the same prejudices and bullshit ideas about sex workers as everyone else. Even if you’re lucky enough to be a sex worker working where I work (in NSW, Australia) where sex work is decriminalised and we do not the same fear of legal persecution for our work if we attempt to go to the police for help as those working where exchanging sex for money is a crime, that’s no guarantee of being treated well and taken seriously by the people who make up the legal system even when you DON’T add in whorephobia and stigmatising beliefs about sex workers.

And when you do?

You get shit like this.

Short version: Sex worker sees client, client could not come, client freaked out, ripped off condom and forces unprotected sex on worker.

From the linked article:

In his evidence, the sailor – who agreed his weight was more than double the woman’s – admitted using a “lock down manoeuvre” to pin her down to the bed when she said she wanted to stop.

He said he told her he was going to “finish”, but when she kicked him away, he backed off with his hands in the air.

When he demanded his money back, he said she started stomping and kicking like “a rodeo”.

“After so much of her screaming, I did muffle her mouth with my hand – I said, ‘Stop yelling,’” he told the court, adding he used “attitude” and raised his voice at her.

But after she started shouting ‘Stop!” and “Help!” he had realised what he was doing was wrong, and had later told police he thought his behaviour was “outrageous”.

… so of course he got off scot free.

You might not be able to see the connection between the first part of this entry and the second. You might be thinking “But hexy… I thought your point was that sex workers who are sexually assaulted AREN’T generally assaulted by clients?” And you’d be right. It was. It was also that when we’re sexually assaulted at all, it’s not taken seriously. It was that people who assault sex workers believe that sex workers are assaulted all the time. It was that the issue is so complex that I barely knew where to start this entry, and I certainly don’t know where to finish it.

It was that when I was assaulted, the factors that affected me most were the responses of my friends and this case. They were the factors that made my sex work status relevant to my assault in a way it should not have been.

It was about, at its heart, the fact that my only consistent response to Cara’s request to write a post about sexual assault awareness and sex workers was “Fuck. It’s FUCKED.” My capacity to write a witty, insightful, educational post deserted me, and that was all I could think of.

So here it is. Personal Narrative and all. And I suppose I can add a moral at the end: that if someone you know is a sex worker, and they tell you they’ve been sexually assaulted, don’t assume anything. Don’t say anything that rests on assumptions about how or why it might have happened. Don’t ask them to confirm anything… let them tell you what they want. Just like you would (and should) with a non sex worker.

—————————————————-

I couldn’t find a way to fit it into my rant, but we marked December 17th, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, with a protest against this decision. Sex workers and supporters. It rocked my world.

Recently, I wrote about a bill in Arizona that would require police to check the papers of those they “reasonably suspect” to be undocumented immigrants. Tragically, infuriatingly, and unforgivably, that bill has now passed both houses of the legislature and been signed by the governor.

A brief rundown of the law can be found here. Commendably, even the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police has openly opposed it (pdf), while the former police chief of a Phoenix suburb has condemned it as catastrophic. President Obama, too, has spoke out against the law, along with Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, though they didn’t go much further than calling it “misguided.” Others worry that the Arizona law could be used as a basis for similar legislation in other states.

It’s useless and cowardly to mince words here: this new law is racist as racist gets. It is without a doubt directly targeting Latin@s. And the arguments that it’s not are pathetic and disingenuous at best. Suspicion is not going to be primarily based on shoes or attire. A Latino man dressed in sneakers, jeans, and an old tee-shirt is indeed more likely to arouse “reasonable suspicion” than a Latino man in a business suit — but the fact that class may sometimes mitigate the effect for some Latin@s doesn’t change the facts that the effect is going to be felt almost entirely by Latin@s all the same, and that enforcement will be discriminatory. Enforcement based on race with a dash of class mixed in is not materially better than enforcement based entirely on race. And while the bill explicitly prohibits against profiling “solely” on race, it does leave the former entirely legal.

A lot of people have written a lot of really brilliant posts about the horrifying passage of this law. Field Negro has a great post, and you should definitely check out both Nezua’s post at the Unapologetic Mexican and Shark-Fu’s post at Angry Black Bitch. But my favorite post I’ve read so far is Problem Chylde’s post Arizona: All Latin@s Carry Papers or GTFO. She writes:

I don’t want to do a first they came chant. They’ve never stopped coming. They come through half-cocked racist philosophies; they come through brutal murders and attacks; they come in board rooms and conference rooms; they reduce humanity and need to numbers and ledgers. They won’t stop coming until we the people as a humane, peacemaking force make them never want to come again. Constant vigilance precludes passivity. When they come, and they always do, let them come knowing every step they take closer to fascism is a hazard to their power, their money, and their sense of morality.

We no longer wait for them to come. First we fight.

Go check out all of the linked posts in full (and feel free to leave more links in the comments, as there have been a lot of posts!).

I want to close this post with a list of actions you can take to combat this law. Sadly, most I’ve come across are little more than symbolic. But at least they’re something. Problem Chylde has a list:

Where do we go from here? There is a Facebook group to join, a petition to sign, a call to boycott Arizona and Arizona-based businesses, a list of organizations to check out, and badges you can use around the internet to show solidarity.

If you’ve got other ideas and actions, do let us know.

UPDATE: For more action items, see Kai’s comment.

MOD NOTE: Since this sadly came up last time, I need to say right now that I’m not going to entertain comments that try to argue that this law is not racist. I’m going to delete them. I have as much time and patience for those kinds of comments in this space as I would have for comments arguing a bill outlawing abortion is not misogynistic. The humanity and human rights of undocumented immigrants and of Latin@s are not any more up for discussion in a feminist space than the humanity and human rights of women, or any other marginalized group. I do not apologize for this, but maintain that it is necessary to a progressive space that is safer for all oppressed and marginalized people.

You may have heard of the recent murder of Amanda González-Andújar. A man has been taken into custody in connection with her murder, which is undoubtedly good news, but González-Andújar is still gone, and hers is sadly yet another name to add to this year’s Transgender Day of Remembrance list of the dead.

This Saturday, April 24, there will be both a memorial and vigil in NYC to honor and remember her.

For those who can’t read the flyer, it’s transcribed below the jump.

Vigil for Amanda González-Andújar
Saturday April 24, 2010

4:00pm – 5:00pm at
69-30 62nd Street
Queens, NY 11385
Take the M Train to Fresh Pond

On March 30, Amanda González-Andújar was brutally murdered, strangled to death in her Glendale Queens home. Come show your solidarity in remembrance of Amanda González-Andújar and celebrate the temporary victory of the capture of her murderer. Let us show that her memory will not be forgotten and that the impact of her death has been felt far and wide; that we will not rest until due justice has been done. There is still allot (sic) to do to keep our communities safe from violence and intolerance. We must defend our rights to live and express our gender identities to the fullest extent! Come join members of the GLBTSTGNCQ community and allies, her friends and family as we remember her beautiful life.

A religious vigil will be held in Amanda’s memory prior to the vigil at MCCNY Church (446 w 36th St between 9th and 10th aves) at 2:00pm, for members of the community who were unable to attender her funeral two weeks ago.

Go to the Facebook page for the event for more information.

Thanks to Robin for the head’s up.

Post has been edited to include the updated flyer.

Spoilers below!

This week on LOST, most of our Losties try to leave the island, while Jack just wants to stay. In the sideways world, our characters are finding themselves either drawn or forced together.

Check out our reactions below and leave your own in the comments, while remembering no spoilers for unaired episodes.

What did everyone think of the episode?

LAUREN: So many lost (ha) opportunities for our favorite characters to get offed! I expected Jack, Kate, Sun, Jin, Desmond, Sayid and/or Claire all to go up in pink mist at least once during this episode, but no! Which is fine, because this episode was great, but I don’t feel like the story is any closer to resolution than it was six weeks ago. Where is the bloodbath you promised me, Lost?

CARA: Meh, I seem to be going against the grain all over the place. I was pretty much the only one who liked last week’s episode, and now I think this one was pretty mediocre. Maybe I’m just bitter about the lack of resolution regarding Des. Oh, and that this is how they’re choosing to leave us right before they take the only break of the season, and we don’t get another new episode for two weeks.

JILL: Oh I loved last week’s episode — but this one was kind of pointless.

LAUREN: The more I yell at the TV the more I like the episode, and there was snark flying like bullets in my living room last night.

SALLY: I didn’t like this week’s episode much either, Cara. I liked that the sideways storyline moved so quickly rather than focusing on just one thing – made me feel like finally SOMETHING is going to happen. Other than that, I wasn’t particularly excited.

SADY: I have a theory! Here is my theory: The more exciting the promos are, the more boringer the episode is. Last week’s promos were so super-creepy! With like flashes and the eeeeevil Willy Wonka song and VIOLENCE and… oh, okay, we’re just shuffling people around into different teams? Again? For the 15th time this season? Super. NEXT WEEK: The Smoke Monster Does His Laundry, While Jack Makes Scrambled Eggs.

CARA: I’m slightly curious about the title. Is Jack the last recruit because he’s not a part of Sawyer’s group anymore? Is he the last recruit to Flocke’s team? Or is the last recruit someone else? Maybe it has something to do with the sideways world, and Hurley is the last recruit, because he’s the one character whose life hasn’t started to converge with our A team. That last one is admittedly unlikely, but still!

SALLY: I hadn’t even thought of the episode title… Maybe it’s because he’s the last one to become all faith-y? Cuz he was the man of science before. Or something?

As many of us had suspected, Smokey reveals that he was wandering around the island as Christian. Reactions?

LAUREN: Yawn. I’m super grumpy about the Lost phenomena wherein the writers feel it’s necessary to Drive! The! Point! Home! when most of the audience has like 95% confirmation on whatever question it is they’re contemplating. One of the intrinsic joys of a show like this, especially the kind of show that couldn’t exist as-is without the internet, is the endless, ongoing discussion and speculation about its secrets, thus MYSTERY is really important to the story’s legacy. There has to be something to debate for the show to be and remain great. So, I’m being grumpy? Because I resent having answers spoon-fed to me? Someone argue with me so I can be further entertained by Lost mysteries.

CARA: Will do! I liked having official confirmation of this. First of all, because while I thought that Smokey was Christian, lots of folks still thought he was Jacob. Secondly, because in the context of the show and the characters, it was logical! And finally, someone asked an obvious question that made sense! And showed an awareness and active memory of things that happened more than two episodes ago! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but thank you, Jack. Also, I was pretty annoyed at how they just dropped the entire Christian storyline this season. I’m starting to wonder if the actor just refused to come back, since we haven’t seen him at all? But it also kind of makes sense, because once Smokey could become Flocke, he didn’t need Christian anymore.

LAUREN: Right, but wasn’t most of this implied? See my complaints about FRANK M.F. LAPIDUS below.

SALLY: I liked that they mentioned it, although they really didn’t need to have Claire say it as well. Which also confused me because, when the heck did Claire find out she’s related to Jack? Wouldn’t that have been a more important point? (Assuming we don’t already know this and I simply forgot…)

SADY: Right. “So, this thing that we all thought was happening. Did it happen? Was it happening?” “Yes, that thing that you thought was happening did happen, and I caused it to happen, when it was happening!” “Okay. So it happened.” That was how the Locke/Christian mystery was solved. Meanwhile, Claire mysteriously knows about a WHOLE OTHER MYSTERY and it’s not even explained how she came up with that. Did Skull Baby tell her? DOES SKULL BABY HAVE PSYCHIC POWERS??? We don’t know!

SALLY: Tune in next time on LOST, where we answer questions you weren’t asking! Again!

Sayid is sent off to kill Desmond and tells Flocke that he did exactly that, despite it not being shown on camera. Desmond’s okay, right?

CARA: Okay! Here’s what happened: Desmond is really persuasive. We’ve seen this a bunch of times, and saw that he was starting to get to Sayid, even though he is not supposed to have any feelings! Sayid realized that he could not get Nadia back, only to have her know the things that he did to make it happen. So, he helped Desmond out of the well. Then, he went back to Flocke and told him that he killed Desmond, but really he’s going to double cross him in some kind of really awesome way that redeems his character. Quite possibly it will involve sacrificing his life. I don’t know! But Des is fine, and Sayid is no longer evil.

At least, this is what I’m telling myself, because 1) They could not have killed Desmond, my second favorite character, off camera, 2) They could not have Sayid, my favorite character, kill him, and 3) Sayid really needs to stop being evil and be redeemed somehow before this show is over.

LAUREN: I’m totally with you here. Sayid has always been cast as the killer with the heart of gold, and Desmond was banking on Sayid’s soft side to save himself, and interestingly, saves Sayid in the process.

I wonder, too, whether Claire is leaning toward a similar redemption, although in my dreams she chooses life with Skullbaby.

SALLY: The thing I found interesting about this was that Sayid’s “I don’t care, I have no heart” demeanor is, in some ways, very similar to Des’ new “I don’t care b/c I am the key to it all” demeanor. So I thought it was interesting that even though they both have this new uncharacteristic approach, it’s going in opposite directions, which I think is supposed to give us hope that Sayid can be brought back from the dark side. Which is to say that I agree with Cara’s theory on this, even if it doesn’t totally play out that way.

For Claire, I’m suddenly very confused about where they’re going with her character. She seems to have softened some in this episode, though I can’t tell if that’s because she’s going to have some sort of redemption, or because she’s calmer now that Flocke’s given her the okay to kill Kate. But then, she’s with Kate and doesn’t kill her, so maybe she doesn’t want to anymore? Claire, you confuse me!!

SADY: I was mostly just confused and frustrated by this one. Because Sawyer SAYS, right off the bat, that Sayid is a zombie. And we KNOW he has no feelings, because he TOLD US THAT. And then the whole key to getting to Sayid is… Sayid’s feelings? About Nadia specifically? Which he has, again, now, for whatever reason? FEELINGS OR NO FEELINGS, LOST! IN OR OUT! ZOMBIES OR NO MOTHERFUCKIN ZOMBIES. Is how I feel, about this.

Jack abandons Sawyer’s plan to leave the island, literally jumps ship, and is captured by Flocke. Flocke seems pleased to have him back. What’s his plan?

CARA: I just have to say that for the first time ever, I actually wanted Kate to go after Jack. All I can figure is that while both are insufferably boring, “I’m going to do the exact opposite of what you tell me to do” Kate is actually more interesting than “I’m going to do exactly what you tell me to do” Kate. And Sawyer is being a bossy jerk, no matter how good he looks in that purple shirt.

LAUREN: Can I point out that we haven’t seen Jack walk since the explosion? And also that the post-bombing sequence was very Forrest Gump?

SADY: You read my mind, Lauren. You read my mind like Skull Baby! Although, can I tell you, the two seconds in which I thought Jack had died, followed by the second in which I figured out that they weren’t ACTUALLY going to kill Jack because THEY NEVER WILL, were an operatic cycle of elation and despair. How great would it be if Jack just died out of nowhere, Arzt-style (now known as Ilana-style)? Just have him walking along the beach and abruptly blowing the fuck up, and I will have an animated GIF that I can watch for the rest of my days.

Off island, the storylines of all of our characters (minus Hurley) seem to be converging. Sawyer, Miles, Sayid, and Kate are all at or headed to the police station. Jack, Locke, Sun, Jin, and maybe Ben are all at the hospital. Claire and Desmond may or may not be still at the lawyer’s office. This has to be significant, right?

CARA: Desmond needs to stop being a nosy, off-island creeper. That’s all I have to say. He’s starting to act just a little bit too much like Jack, getting all up in everybody’s business. Quit it, Des. Also, I’d forgotten just how douchey Jack’s kid looked. He kind of looks even douchier than his dad. Brilliant casting, LOST. (And yes, I am the asshole who calls kids douches.)

LAUREN: Yeah, if I were pregnant alterna-Claire and this guy was following me all over LA, I would have run away screaming bloody murder. Between caving in to creepy Desmond and creepy Kate this season, someone needs to get Claire “The Gift of Fear.”

SALLY: Well, sideways Claire is also the one who was all “you held me hostage in a cab, but I’ll totes let you drive me to meet this couple and you can proceed to accompany me to the hospital as well, total stranger and criminal.”

SADY: Right. If a weird Scottish dude who just HAPPENED to be in the airport expressing interest in the contents of my uterus also just HAPPENED to run into me later to talk about my uterus-contents and just HAPPENED to walk all over the building with me and HAPPENED to be heading the same way I was and HAPPENED to not shut up after I’d conveyed through extensive body language that I did NOT WANT TO TALK about what I had in my uterus or what I was planning to do with it later, well: That building would later have to clean up a large Scottish mess on the floor, after I’d pushed him off the escalator to get his creepy ass out of my business. But also: The gang is getting back together! And only two of them have been shot/run over by Desmond’s car! Woo.

SALLY: I would like to see the rest of this play out without Desmond being creepy. Just saying.

When Sun saw Locke on the stretcher next to her, she started yelling “No …. No! It’s him! It’s him!” Uh, what? Did Sun remember something about the other reality, too?

CARA: To me, this was one of the most interesting moments of the episode. It was so random, and then wasn’t addressed again! I keep trying to think of some kind of interaction that Sun and Locke may have had on the plane or in the airport or something, and I’m coming up with nothing. My only guess is that the trauma of being shot somehow triggered her memory, and it was a memory of our current island happenings, where “Locke” is evil. Or, you know, one of those many other times that actual Locke was pretty scary and not exactly to be trusted.

SALLY: I was really annoyed that it wasn’t brought up again. I immediately thought “oh yay! Sun knows about the other timeline where Locke is Flocke! Stories coming together! Progress!” But then she just woke up, asked about the baby, and moved on.

LAUREN: The other Sun-related thing that was interesting was the realization that Locke didn’t have anything to do with her amnesia, or at least claims he didn’t. If this is true, why the hell did it take up Sun’s last three episodes, and if it’s not true, WTF? I feel like these two things are related, but I don’t know how or whether it matters.

SADY: I seriously think it was so that they didn’t have to give her any lines.

SALLY: I thought that scene was odd because it seemed like Flocke just didn’t get that she couldn’t speak English, because her reaction was basically an eye roll without rolling her eyes. But it wasn’t cleared up or anything, so it seemed really awkward. That was my take, anyway.

On island, Sun and Jin were FINALLY reunited! Awwwww!

LAUREN: Grumpy again! Did we wait two seasons for this?

CARA: I felt a little ripped off, too. I thought that Desmond and Penny got a much better reunion scene … even though we know Sun and Jin better, and even though they’d been apart just as long! It felt a little tacked on, and like the writers and director were kind of disinterested in it. Which is totally not cool. But at least maybe either of them can do something now that doesn’t involve looking for the other?

SADY: I knowwwwwwwwwww. Although, at this point, given my COLD HEARTLESS MONSTER feelings toward Des & Penny, I think I just hate love. Or maybe just how the show scripts love. Because all of the relationships on the show tend to, actually, be TERRIBLE, or at least unconvincing. (The reason I liked Sun and Jin was that, in their flashbacks, they actually did act like an actual happy couple sometimes — which mostly just had to do with the actors being so good at playing off each other, and nothing to do with the stuff they had to say, which was always either “I love you!” or “We are not getting along!” or, in far too many cases, “I am but the son of a fisherman!” This was also why I liked Sawyer and Juliet, because they just smiled at each other and talked about the laundry, like they were actually intimate adults and not overdramatic high school juniors.) And then, to show that characters love each other, they have them make these really literal declarations of it, like “I love you and will never leave you because we are so in love, and also, the emotions I feel for you are loving.” Like I, the Viewing Audience, have grown up on a planet without romantic relationships, and couldn’t recognize one if I saw it, so they have to be like, “kisses plus literal statementing equals positive human interaction.” And Sun and Jin got a case of the Literal-Declaration-Itis in that scene. But everyone else on the Internet seems to think it was really sweet? So, again, I think I just hate the sight of people loving each other. Especially if it is accompanied with swelling music and them running into each others’ arms like old movie characters. But I guess if I hadn’t seen a dude I loved for years, and had been looking for him all that time, “I love you” would be the first thing I’d say, too. And I’d kind of hurry it up, as I progressed across the beach/room/field of daisies/whatever to hug him. Just to get it out of the way, you know?

LAUREN: When they decided to have their reunion DIRECTLY BETWEEN THE BRAIN-MELTING PYLONS I was all yelling at the TV and screaming, out of fear that their reunion would be explosive, and because I didn’t know whether the producers would be so sick as to actually turn their brains into foam mid-embrace. Happily (sadly?) the pylons just happened to be deactivated.

CARA: I’m so relieved that I was not the only one who thought this! That would have gone down as the most fucked up moment in LOST history. Also, did you notice that Sun got her ability to speak English back? It was, like, the power of true love, or something! This was a totally valid reason to make Sun forget how to speak English in the first place! Also, it was totally sensible, because obviously seeing Jin would remind Sun of how to speak English, not, you know, their native language Korean, which they have always communicated in prior to now.

SALLY: ANNOYANCE! At that point, I really thought they were going to stick to her speaking Korean. I thought it’d make for a nice little switch of roles from all the other seasons in which Sun had to translate. But, alas, the writers let me down yet again. Nothing new, really.

SADY: FURTHER MYSTERIES! Because, I do believe, Sun has not seen Jin since WAY before he became fluent in English, and thus has no reason to know that he would not prefer her to speak their shared language which oh my God they have both been speaking their entire lives you’d think that would be what they communicated in most immediately and easily JESUS. But the first thing she says to him, which is pretty important, is in English. And then? When he starts speaking fluent English back to her? No surprise. I mean, even Richard’s dead wife noticed that he had learned English since they last met. Sun, not so much! So, again, a lady character suddenly knows something she has no reason to know. And, AGAIN, I blame Skull Baby.

LAUREN: I also noticed that Sun got her voice back during the reunion, because Frank Lapidus, King of Obvious, was all, “Looks like somebody get her voice back.” Thanks for rubbing my face in it, FRANK.

JILL: I’ll just throw it in here that Lapidus is my favorite character on this show. At this point he serves literally no purpose at all, he kind of just hangs around making totally obvious observations. And I happen to like weird old hippies.

SADY: Yeah, Frank is always just standing around saying things that everyone else knows. “Looks like we’re on a beach!” Thanks, Frank. But I like him, too, because it’s clear that he just couldn’t give a fuck if he tried. And also, at this point, can we address my FAVORITE part of the scene, which was: Jin’s expression as he was taken hostage for the eighth time this season, 0.5 seconds after reuniting with his wife? Because that cracked my shit up. Jin has seriously been held hostage by everyone on the show at this point, which is weird considering that he used to beat people up for a living — you’d think he’d be better at punching his way out of these situations, basically — and the way Daniel Dae Kim chose to express the character’s emotions, upon being held at gunpoint YET AGAIN, was amazing. Sun was cowering in terror, and meanwhile, Jin’s face was like blase with a side of irritated. It was like, “oh, for fucking real? I was going to get laid tonight, too!” THE BEST.

Widmore has backed out of his deal with Sawyer. Apparently Sawyer was the only one who didn’t see that coming. What’s Widmore have up his sleeve?

CARA: Okay, seriously, was I the only one who was a little dubious about Sawyer being like “WHAAAAAAAAAAAT? But I’m the only one who can make deals with people while having absolutely no intent on following through, and in fact having every intent to use the person to my own advantage! This can’t be happening!”

SADY: Hahaha. “But I, a known con man, made a deal with your shady and highly armed organization! In a dim room, with not so many folks around! WE HAD A VERBAL CONTRACT, CHARLES! I don’t understaaaaaaaand.”

LAUREN: All right, even though my prediction from “Happily Ever After” hasn’t been proven right/wrong yet, I’m going to put myself out there again and posit another ridiculous theory: Smokey needs all the candidates together to get off the island, and Widmore wants to prevent Smokey from getting off the island, thus Widmore is going to attempt to kill all the known candidates. Jack, then, is the ace in Smokey’s pocket.

SALLY: Even though I figured Widmore would back out, I can’t really understand why. Aside from Lauren’s present theory, what exactly does Widmore gain from kidnapping the LOSTies? Does he not need Jin anymore? Does he not need to verify that Jack is not there? If he wanted to kill them all, why didn’t he just throw those bombs over while he knew they were still on the big island? He also doesn’t seem very concerned about where Desmond is – like, why is that no longer important? So, while it was certainly being set up that way from the start, it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever…

LAUREN: You stump me, Sally.

CARA: Well Widmore was very concerned about Desmond at the beginning of the episode — that’s why he started blowing this up with his rockets. But what he wants with Sawyer’s group, I do not know. I’ve kind of given up wondering about the motivations of Smokey/Widmore/Jacob, at this point. We’ll know soon enough. Or we’ll know absolutely nothing, and Darlton will laugh in our faces. Either way.