Lurker > GameStonk

#19. Sun-Hwa Kwon
<img src="https://home.adelphi.edu/~je16953/kim_l.jpg">

Man, LOST really did Sun dirty. After being one of the few characters who truly improved over the course of the first 4 seasons (by virtue of letting her communicate with other people), I was really starting to warm up to Sun. She was pretty well developed and, after she got pregnant, actually had some real stakes in the storyline. If she didn't get off the Island before the second trimester, she was toast. And then she does, and her husband is left behind. Compelling stuff!

And then seasons 5 and 6 come along, and no one really knew what to do with her. She was probably the only character other than Ben who had a legitimate reason to want to return to the Island, yet she is also one of the most reluctant to do so. And when she finally relents after learning Jin was still alive, we are treated to about 25 episodes (literally) of Sun wandering around doing the "Where's my husbundt?" meme, and kind of being there.

But then comes the part that I, and so many others, loathe perhaps more than any other in the show. She is finally reunited with Jin and shows him a picture of their baby, alive and well in the real world. Jin is overjoyed. Seems like a really good setup for a dramatic decision, right?

Well, no. Sun and Jin are killed off not one episode later in a slow and horrific manner. Sun is trapped, and despite dedicating a scene to their daughter, neither Sun nor Jin tell the other that their daughter needs a fucking parent--and they both choose to drown together instead of escaping. It is a mind-numbingly stupid twist that takes a multiseason arc and completely flushes it down the toilet. Sun's entire existence in the show becomes purposeless and ruins what otherwise could have been one of the few solid female characters.

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

This is where I was on the whole thing.

It was the most pointless addition so they could do an up their own ass happy ending that barely even made sense. Like none of it mattered. Any of it. So, so very stupid, and completely irrelevant to the rest of the series.

You could make an argument that the sideways reality connected to the actual show events when Desmond went into the light, but yeah it's still infuriating that they had no effect on the present-time situation.

Sideways were quite literally a waste of our time and were no materially different than a dream sequence

Trying to think about the appropriate character writeup to discuss the "flash sideways." I have a lot of thoughts on that as it is probably the most enraging aspect of the show for me.

WazzupGenius00 posted...

This piece just dropped, havent read it yet: an oral history of the finale.
https://www.vulture.com/amp/article/lost-series-finale-oral-history-the-end.html

ooh this looks interesting

#20. Danielle Rousseau
<img src="https://media.comicbook.com/2021/01/mira-furlan-1253528.jpeg">

Rousseau is naturally iconic for being the first one* to show us that the Flight 815 characters are not alone on the Island. For those watching in real-time (or going in blind), this is quite the revelation. It's hard to imagine in retrospect, but LOST really did start out as kind of a traditional castaway narrative: a bunch of strangers, each with unique pasts, crash land on an Island and must band together to survive. A pretty simple story--until we first hear that ominous French recording playing in a loop. That is, for me, where the show really became something more special and unique, so Rousseau will always have a place in my heart for the role she played there.

Outside of that initial reveal and back-and-forth with Sayid, however, Rousseau really doesn't bring a whole lot to the table. She appears here and there as the crazy jungle woman; and by the time her backstory is revealed, she is just one of many random people who found herself on the Island. Not that this is her fault, really, but it does go to show you how the writers bloated too much of the "mystery" elements where even someone as ostensibly interesting as Rousseau loses her unique intrigue by the end of the series.

*yes, technically we meet Ethan first, but we don't know he wasn't on the plane right away

Sunroof posted...

DNN will only double because I sold it.

What price did you buy and sell?

Sunroof posted...

Took a while to catch up to all these posts. GME and AMC revival?! Im sure I would have lost tens of thousands of dollars if I was here a few hours ago.

Anyway, Im still going to be away for a bit. Just wanted to drop by and check on things. And dont worry, I only lost 7% on DNN. I panic sold once I realized I had $90k instead of $70k in it. Havent done any trades since I last posted. Probably wont do any until things die down at work.

7% loss on 90 grand? Yeesh

Jesus Christ. These redditors have balls.

Quick @ExThaNemesis buy GME at the peak!

Lopen posted...

British Petroleum

I was saying buy 3/5/2021 calls for it (or Jan 2023 calls if you're feeling less adventurous, company should recover nicely in the next few years) a few times around the beginning of the month based on rising oil prices, OPEC meeting, and positive UK quarantine news being likely

I had a stack of 80 3/5 $23 calls for it. Have sold down to 47 of them at the moment taking profits/removing risk at varying points.

Currently up around 600% on them and have banked 3k profit. (11k unrealized profit right now, but think $26-$30 SP by March 3rd isn't out of the question so will keep holding a lot of them)

Nice man!

Yeah, I caught the tail end of the fandom speculation as I was binging on ABC.com (one of the first places you could legally stream!). I can only imagine the full extent of it.

What is this in reference to?

I really hope Moonroof is okay

I guess I am going to have to get used to these hourly 10% fluctuations with DNN, huh

PrivateBiscuit1 posted...

Am I crazy and remembering this timeline of events wrong? Because I swear that's how this played out in fan circles and then the writers.

I was not watching live until season 5 so I cannot confirm, but that is hilarious (and completely believable) if true.

The contrast between Richard's earlier appearances and his appearances after the writers decided he was immortal is so astoundingly different that he seems like an entirely different character.

hey man, I don't judge people based on their looks (except for hunk daddy Frank Lapidus ^_^)

#21. Richard Alpert
<img src="https://i.redd.it/sz258p55qxe11.jpg">

Let me post two descriptions of the same person to see if you can see if there is a correlation:

1. This character is the most transparent example of the writers making shit up as they go out of anyone on the show
2. This character fell more spots from my first watch-through to my second than anyone else on the list

Can you see how these statements are related? They both describe Richard/Ricardus, one of the quintessential examples of how full of shit the creators were/are, but also one of the coolest and most interesting presences on the show before you realize this fact. The first appearances of Richard imply that he's just a high-level Other--but a special one at that because we see him recruiting Juliet off of the Island. Now how did he get there?? A really great mystery. And soon we find out something else about Richard: he apparently never ages! Another feature that makes him one of the more fascinating people on the show.

But as we get deeper into season 5 and 6, we realize that the writers had absolutely no clue how to explain these events without completely throwing away all logical plausibility. Richard Alpert, nexus to omniscient Island God Jacob, seems absolutely bewildered and confused when Locke and co. begin time-traveling back and know who he is (despite the fact that he is fucking immortal and knows the Island is magical). Richard Alpert, all-knowing and all-seeing sage who is constantly visited by time-traveling bands of men and seems to fast-travel himself, can never seem to remember the fact that this happens to him all the time, and acts like a total idiot whenever it occurs again. And to attempt to make up for their half-assed character development, we are "treated" to one of the most boring episodes in the series, Ab Aeterno, in an unnecessary explanation of his backstory.

Richard, when left taciturn and shrouded in mystery, is a really amazing representative of the wonder of the Island (and the show), and is truly one of the best side characters we have. Ricardus, when fully fleshed out, is a confused dumbass who comes with more plot holes than your average Nolan movie.*

*I love Christopher Nolan and I jest for fun.

#22. Charles Widmore
<img src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EZYBehUW5c8/maxresdefault.jpg">

Ah, Widmore. On one hand, he is an amazing supervillain who exhumed hundreds of bodies to stage the Flight 815 crash. On the other hand, he is an incompetent boob who hires geologists to stage a military coup on a magic island. To say he is an inconsistent presence on LOST is an understatement.

At the end of the day, Widmore really just wants to regain control of the Island. And he is a pretty solid bad guy when that's all it is. But digging further, it becomes readily apparent that he is quite underdeveloped. Why exactly does he care about being the top boss on some primordial rock, especially when he is presumably a billionaire in the "real world"? We're given almost no backstory for him other than the fact that he was in the military, and later became the leader of the Hostiles. We know little about his desires, his motivations other than "me want Island again."

And you know what? It's serviceable enough. Like all too many characters on this list, he'd probably rank a tad higher if not for season 6, in which he comes to one of the most hilariously underwhelming and forgettable ends of anyone on the show, let alone one of the primary antagonists.

On the edge of my seat to see if Moonroof put on DNN limits

Read that as Redbox at first and was very perplexed

red sox 777 posted...

If he had a stop loss between $1.18 and $1.04, it would have triggered immediately at open....at $1.04.

oof

neonreaper posted...

I have like 2k DNN

:)

Lopen posted...

Also guarantee you Moonroof had a limit sell set for DNN and was ejected this morning

haha I was just thinking this

hopefully he didn't put on any limits and is just blissfully unaware

DNN is already closing in on even for the day after dropping 20%. This is making me feel pretty good about its resiliency.

wallmasterz posted...

Why are you guys so bullish on DNN? I might buy some

We are all a little late on their initial spike, but if their uranium mine is as promising as it sounds, this could easily reach its 2007 heights ($10) within a year or two.

red sox 777 posted...

Thanks to Jerome Powell for bailing out the market this morning.

I regret not posting "I bet you we close in the green today" >_<

I am currently profiting pretty heavily thanks to DNN bottoming exactly where I bought it

So it's just me and Lopen for DNN?

gg nuclear baby

relax everyone

also it looks like I am now the proud owner of DNN since it dipped below $1

@red_sox_777 you get in on this?

I'll do some more tomorrow

Hearts gonna be broken

Nanis23 posted...

Dear stock topic,

Today I died

Fuck you Nio

Why do you come here if you don't want to take anyone's advice?

Didn't XRP trading get banned on Coinbase? Doesn't sound like a very smart thing to get involved in.

CaptainOfCrush posted...

Airline stocks up noticeably today. People wanna vacay

lol UAL up 7 points after one of its planes fell apart mid-flight

I love this country!!

SquirtIe posted...

Please don't buy Ethereum and Bitcoin.

No.

ffmasterjose posted...

Jacob comes off staggeringly incompetent upon a second viewing. Like he didnt even tell Richard, his #2, about the Candidates or their importantance or well, anything really.

Yep, exactly. It seems like everything is chalked up to "well they have to make the decisions for themselves" but then he does virtually everything to ensure that they cannot escape their destiny. It's really inconsistent and half-assed.

Crypto correction time. If any late-comers want to get in, now is a good opportunity.

colliding posted...

Jacob sucks totally. Of all the characters who SHOULD have been a maguffin, it's this dude. I'm firmly of the mindset the show should've just been Ben v. Widmore and the supernatural stuff should've just been restricted to Hurley eps.

I am actually fine with the supernatural if they executed it correctly. I'll have more on that for the Man in Black...

#23. Dr. Pierre Chang
<img src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/qdhH7E095yE/maxresdefault.jpg">

And now we're reached what I will dub the Dr. Chang Fodder Line. This is the line that I drew when making the list that separates "characters I generally like" from "characters I dislike or don't matter to me." This is the first demarcation, as there will be another line that separates "the heavily flawed characters I still like" group from the "only characters I actually like" group (but more on that when the time comes).

Dr. Chang is really a nothing character in the first few seasons until we catch up with the Dharma folks in the 1970s timeline. Here we get a glimpse into a more developed character--an ostensibly cold and hardass scientist who cares more about his work than his family, whom we later learn actually does prioritize his family first. It's a pretty common trope, but they pull it off well enough where it doesn't bother me too much.

But that's really it for Dr. Chang. I neither like him nor dislike him. He serves his purpose as effectively as needed. He is truly a net-zero on the show, and thus he is my fodder line.

#24. Jacob
<img src="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/images/05/12/c1main.jacob.lost.jpg">

And alas, we get to the character who perhaps fell the most places in my rankings from my first watch-through to my second. Upon first viewing, I, like many others, saw Jacob as this ultra-intriguing, mysterious "final boss" of sorts who would explain all of the secrets of the Island. And like many, I was disappointed by the mishandling of his origin story and the unsatisfactory way things are left unresolved, but I never really attributed that to Jacob's character. Mark Pelligrino's performance was pretty great, and the journey of trying to uncover who Jacob is and what he's doing was a fun ride.

But then I watched LOST again, knowing how it all ends, and my perception of Jacob has shifted dramatically. I am not one of those people who needs every little plot point explained in detail--Twin Peaks is one of my all-time favorite shows, for fuck's sake. So the lack of resolution about many of the Island/Jacob mysteries isn't what irks me. What irks me is how full of shit and awful Jacob really is.

Despite being the "good" entity on the Island, Jacob is the driving force behind all of the death, destruction, and sadness that engulfs our main characters. In fact, if the twist at the end was that Jacob was actually the evil force all along, I would have been relatively pleased because all of his cumulative shittiness would have made a lot more sense!

But it's not only the fact that he's kind of a villain--complicated characters and gray areas are perfectly fine in a series like this. It's the fact that he is written as omnipotent yet impotent at the same time, willing his "candidates" to do his business for him in perhaps the most illogical manner imaginable. If he can see ten steps into the future, needing one character to discover something so that it starts a domino effect, why not just skip all of the interim steps? You and I know the answer to that (poor writing), but after watching this nonsense twice it just becomes frustrating filler. I may have placed him too high.

red sox 777 posted...

FVRR actually looks quite interesting. Has anyone here used them either to hire freelance work or to offer freelance services?

I have not but that valuation seems preposterous

Nanis, what are your investment goals? Are you trying to turn this $30k into a certain amount by a certain time, or do you just want your savings to be making safe, steady gains over time?

Underleveled posted...

8. Alex Rousseau

Wow, really? Alex is such a minor character that I didn't even consider her for the top half of the list, but to each his own!

Nanis23 posted...

Not a crypto person

What does that mean

Honest-to-God Nanis, get in on Ethereum. Even if the boom is at its peak right now (it's not), I am rather confident that its value will increase exponentially long-term since so much crypto runs through it.

Nanis23 posted...

I could live in a rent but I hate paying for temporary stuff like this (yes I know that probably no one will agree with this and I am not going to defend this, this is just my personal stance)

There is a common misconception that paying rent is "wasting money" because you're paying for something that isn't appreciating in value. However, depending on your location, buying a place and paying the taxes and upkeep costs will be the net equivalent or greater than paying rent unless you stay for many, many years.

In any case, get your money back in the market on lower-risk assets, be ready to hold long-term, and listen to the regulars in this topic.

colliding posted...

Back in the day, someone on some other message board I posted on said that Season 5 and 6 Locke makes more sense if that character is Mr. Eko instead. I personally agree but that's also me as a Locke fan trying to undo the show's character assassination of him.

I assume you mean assassination literally >_>

And that is an interesting idea that I kind of like. The whole faith angle they try with Eko is really half-baked because it ends so suddenly/stupidly.

#25. Mr. Eko
<img src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/4wyuJfi6ihc/maxresdefault.jpg">

This one might be the first placement on my list that pisses off a lot of people. But I'm sorry to say that Mr. Eko kind of sucks.

I find his backstory to be a little preposterous (at least by season 2 standards) and possibly shoehorned in to explain the heroin plane from season 1. And as a present-day character, what does he really offer to the show? He's aloof, has no real chemistry with anyone else that they tried to pair him with, and doesn't really do much beyond offering uninspired Christian symbolism to the plot. And like many of the other characters near the bottom, he's kind of just discarded once the writers realized that the actor was not coming back--leaving you with the sense that if he was never on the show to begin with, nothing would really be any different.

colliding posted...

Another reason they probably shouldn't have killed Charlie. I'm telling y'all the show really took a hit without him there. Charlie was annoying, but he was also one of the most sympathetic characters, and a whole bunch of characters suffered without him there to play off of (Claire and Hurley notably).

I 100% agree. Do we know if they wanted to kill him off or if the actor was done with the show full time?

#26. Alex Rousseau
<img src="https://i.redd.it/wgq58qd6b1411.jpg">
This one isn't going to be a very long write-up because Alex isn't a very developed character. Like Kate, she really exists solely to provide stakes and drama in the storyline. But unlike Kate, she is actually pretty effective at that; and unlike Kate even more, she isn't really supposed to be anything beyond that.

So that's Alex, whose existence is almost entirely to create her death scene with Ben/Keamy, which is... *ahem* ...executed...rather flawlessly.

#27. Claire Littleton
<img src="https://img.sharetv.com/shows/characters/large/lost.claire_littleton.jpg">

Claire is another one of those characters who went nowhere once her original plotline was resolved. Before giving birth, there was genuinely a lot of intrigue and mystery to Claire--the flashbacks to the psychic are actually some of the most effective and unnerving scenes in the show. Her relationship with Charlie, while inconsistent, featured some of the more iconic character-driven scenes in the series. But then it all kind of just...ends.

The apocalyptic warnings we are given about Aaron never actually manifest into anything, and therefore the writers never actually have use for her in the latter half of the series. Compounding this is Sun's pregnancy, so Claire is shuffled aside to the point that she's not even unique anymore. This all comes to a head in seasons 5 (where she is straight-up not on the show) and season 6 where she basically becomes a wildling and looks like a dirty and confused Jesse Plemons.

In all, another mismanaged female character who ranks near the top of the "what could have been" characters on the show.