Ambiguity Ambivalence

I finished The Leftovers and I got Lost burned again by the same dude. Although credit/blame should go to the original writer on staff and a whole host of writers who had their own pet ideas about the series. 

The finale post-mortum is here - www.vulture.com/2017/06/leftov…

That said, I liked the character ideas and the fact it seems everyone wasn't dead all along. Probably.

Here is my thing and why this episode irked me. I don't mind ambiguity. I end several stories with it intentionally. What I don't like is where it isn't in service of the character.

I quite enjoyed the religious turnings and wonderings of the series. How do you comfort yourself in a crazy world especially when two percent of the world just inexplicably vanishes? Can you parse it with science or supernatural means? 

The problem is though that it is taken as a thing that actually happens. So as a creator you need to know the reality of the event. Explaining weird stuff is not the issue, bothering to have weird shit have a reason which you keep to yourself is necessary. 

The Leftovers kinda has an explanation but it is couched in themes of lying throughout the episode so you dunno. The spinning top is still spinning. Etc. But my problem is actually this...they even say it in the piece...Damon Lindelof likes stories where viewers are twenty minutes behind things. 

Fuck that. I feel like it had to be Stephen King or another on writing book which put it well and it is this...if your readers are too far ahead of you or too far behind then you lose them.

This finale lost me because it was trying to be overly clever with its ending. Lady wants to go through a weird machine to see her vanished kids. She gets it and it is a sequence like Eleanor Anne Arroway from Contact. And Contact is the template for exactly what should happen next...

Instead, we get what mission control went through in that movie. Except right as the ball is about to drop in Contact, we cut to Ellie ten years later.

She is writing a book with long gray hair. There isn't really a fully romantic love interest in Contact. Just a friend but he stops by and doesn't remember her and the story is in full wtf mode.

So that is basically how the finale spent most of its time. The funny thing is Damon Lindelof is not fully to blame. He was well willing to go off the edge definitely. He was gonna give this explorer logic-minded woman her 13 hours of static to support her claims she went somewhere.

Both characters claim they went somewhere. To another place. Nora to a parallel universe where the two percent people lost were the only ones who remained. Like a bifurcated set of two universe. Ellie to the hub and seeing her father's form in communication with aliens. It was what they both needed but you see it with Ellie but not with Nora. 

My problem is the mystery of the journey is not enough. We lay on...is this even a real place because her love seems to not remember her. Alternate universe? Altered timeline? Afterlife? Her love went there a few times and then blew it up. Long story.

But the point is those twenty minutes we are behind are an abject hinderance to the point. We need to be accomplices on the character's journey. 

It is why time jumping Abby in the next part terrifies me. Readers need continuity of connection with a character. My plan is to use past Abby along with a sense of familarity to help bridge the reader between the events thry were at to where I want to take them.

It is why my once idea to finish Abby with older Abby recounting her stories to children in a library is a cute one but one best rejected. Obstacles between the storyteller and the listener never work. Oh? Is this a real thing? Should I care about any of this? Why is this happening? What is that thing? You should not be overthinking when you should be feeling a moment. An epilogue needs to be like a breath released not one tightening up. 

So fuck the ending to The Leftovers despite some quality direction and writing. It messed up in the way it was not supposed to. It cut me off from the emotion of the characters at the wrong moment.

Now, I do have to reflect on some ambiguous choices I made for stories. 

There are a few that stick out. Puzzle Box. The virtual characters that are inhabited are alive and I like to think everyone will get help and everyone will be okay. The mystery of Our House was that they were inside a world version of the House and the door at the end is the exit and what lies beyond is a way out. It felt very metaphorical for me. Being stuck to a single house as your world, growing up and seeing the possibilities of a wider world opened to you. Beyond that door is the world.

With Angie, the ghost was probably in the mirror but seeing a scary thing blunts how scary it can be so I left it out.

If anyone has any ambiguous stuff they would like clarified, just asked. Just venting about a week that took me on a ride with an unfulfilling finish.

Also my car needs fixing. Life is otherwise about the same. Dad getting rehab. 

And 1 Million Kiriban Not Long Off! I don't even know what to think but thank you so much for sticking around through the last lean year or so as I try to figure my shit out. I wish I could offer something up for anyone who screencaps it. Maybe I can think of something. It's a lot of numbers. 

All my love!