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i want to talk about John Locke
if you're not familiar with John Locke, he's one of the [pro]{an?}tagonists of LOST played by Terry O'Quinn, and he has been one of my favorite characters of all time
What I've realize is that Locke's character arc is about the stories we tell ourselves *about* ourselves. He responds with fury when anyone else tries to dictate his story.
He refers to himself as a man of faith. He's told, at a young age, that he is going to be special. He builds his life around that idea. That one day, he has a destiny. An Ultimate Purpose. That he *matters*.
Crashing on the island for Locke is confirmation of that. One of the reveals early on is that Locke was paralyzed from the waist down prior to the crash. The Island gave him back the use of his legs. And who wouldn't see that as anything short of a miracle? A sign. Destiny.
In the end (yeah fuckin spoilers this show has been over a decade) we find out that, because of time fuckery, Locke told a story about himself to someone in the past, and as a result that person tells Locke he is special. Locke literally sets out his own path.
And we all do that in our lives, in big ways or small ways. We tell ourselves stories about what we're supposed to do, what we've done... what the things we've done mean about who we are, and how we should act moving forward.
I think we also figure out (some of us later than others) that we don't have clean temporal loops, we don't actually have these stories. Destiny and fate are either fixed or random and either way even if we crash on a chaos magic fuck island, and life is never that easy.
At the very end, we get a scene where Ben tell John he was special, and what I read from his reaction is the look of a man who knows he wasn't, but knows what it's like to believe in those things.
I'll take it a personal turn now and reveal that for a long time in my early twenties Locke was essentially a surrogate father figure for me. I'd love to say Homestuck was *the* defining piece of media for my twenties, I think the truth is that in a lot of ways Locke is instead.
Specifically this scene, in which Locke explains that while he could help a moth escape its cocoon with his knife his intervention would weaken it and it wouldn't survive.
(cw: drugs, addiction, Locke cleaning an animal)
(cw: drugs, addiction, Locke cleaning an animal)
I internalized this scene hard. I internalized Locke's arc hard, without knowing it. And when you internalize stories you tell yourself too hard, when you conflate the struggles of fiction or a fiction with personal progress, your brain can get fucky.
I love Locke, and I will never not love Locke. But stories are not real. Stories are what we do as a species to help each other understand each other. We look inward, and we express what we see in a way we hope other people can understand.
If there's anything I want to unlearn from my storydad John Locke, it's his desperate seeking for meaning, whatever the cost.
friendly reminder, past john, that that is not a good look.
friendly reminder, past john, that that is not a good look.
What I do want to learn this time around is his faith and his hope. Even if he had too much and for the wrong reasons, I think one of the lessons of Lost is that those things give you strength, and there is no arguing that Locke is one of the strongest characters in Lost.
In conclusion, I think it's time to watch Lost again.
