Shark Jumping 101: What LG15 is STILL doing wrong

[wintermute]

because that is the way shows work. There is inspiration, but its not like its a HUGE puzzle we need to define

I think LG15 itself was originally meant to be the ARG, not CiW or OpA or anything else... So yeah, I think there are clues in some of the videos that we're supposed to figure out. But I also think that the clues don't need figured out for us to enjoy watching in a more passive role. So basically, I think both sides of this are correct

'mute

[Macabea13]

Yay! More arguments against nameless people.

Uh-oh...seems you and I have conflicting Pet Peeves. I think arguments can be theoretical, and don't like it when it gets too personal.....it bothers me when people think they have to personalize everything.....but I suppose we all do it sometimes.

In any case, I did not mean to annoy you by any means....and would be happy to clarify my thoughts if I was too theoretical....I thought it was pretty obvious what I was talking about, but then we all think people understand us better than they do.

[cynicalsphinx12]

Normally I wouldn't make a new thread on the same topic as an older one, but feast your eyes on the last response to that selfsame thread:

Clearly, my old thread was a little outdated. After all, it was writen during the frustrating post-run-away, pre-jonas dry spell where we got nothing but the same thing (bree being silly, Daniel grumping) for weeks on end. The situation has, since then, changed.

So here's the new thread. And some new topics to discuss.

First off, Bree's father's death was a sloppy job. The quick-camera jostling, the shot, the screaming, the get-away, the moody tribute following it, everything was so perfectly dramatic it was cliche. Sorry, but it was.

Too bad it took a murder to make it happen: there's a reason why "shooting a main character" is the most overused season-finale stunt a series can pull: it instantly creates DRAMA, which should be a good thing, but it's such a staple that it's almost impossible to infuse the event with any originality.

Considerably fewer complaints then before, but here is my words again, peps. New and improved thread.

I think no matter how many times people say they despise the countless number of cliches they run into, they subconsiously or regrettable can't live without them. These formulas are tried and true, tested through time, if they work and we enjoy them why not go through with them. Try not thinking about them and sitting back and enjoying the amazing mystery surrounding lonelygirl15.

Originality is dead.

[EliCash]

Uh-oh...seems you and I have conflicting Pet Peeves. I think arguments can be theoretical, and don't like it when it gets too personal.....it bothers me when people think they have to personalize everything.....but I suppose we all do it sometimes.

In any case, I did not mean to annoy you by any means....and would be happy to clarify my thoughts if I was too theoretical....I thought it was pretty obvious what I was talking about, but then we all think people understand us better than they do.

Well there's the difference. I love a good argument, and I love to make it personal. Back on topic, can anybody actually defend the ridiculous complaints that started off this thread? I can only find one that is somewhat defendable.

[robtomorrow]

Killthesmiley,

I'm sorry but your answers are either just stating what things are, I already said I know those things, not how they fit into the plot.

Or else you are repeating some of the speculation. Not what has been revealed in the videos.

Or else you are dismissing things as unimportant, if they are unimportant then why were they put into the story in the first place, other than to fuel speculation, and that is my point, too many elements are added to fuel speculation without any rhyme or reason of how they fit into the plot.

but you have to take them for what they are, and understand that THAT is Ihow they fit into the plot. Nothing more.
There isn't any hidden clues in most of the things we've been looking at. They are what they are. nothing more.

I will try a different approach to explain my point,

I listed as one of my questions,

Why was her "father" doing research on ribozymes?

Yours Answer was,

It was his job....come on why do we have to think it was a clue??? Because someone on the forum said so....jeez if that was the case we'de be hear forever on video 1

This is one of the questions you seem to be dismissing as unimportant, I do not think it is important "because someone on the forum said so", nor do I think it is necessarily important at all, the point is, if you read the posts in the forum on this video, or the comments on the main page, ribozymes and it's implications to the plot were discussed and debated for pages and pages, people discussing whether Bree is genetically engineered, people posting links to web pages, "experts" explaining what ribozymes are, and on and on and on.

My contention is that this is deliberate on the part of the creators, they had Bree say her father was "doing research on ribozymes" for precisely that reason, because they expected and wanted it to fuel the kind of speculation that it did.

It is a formula that they have developed, starting with the photo on the wall of Aleister Crowley, someone noticed it, as they hoped they would and it fueled a huge amount of intrigue and speculation, and they have been using that formula ever since. It was what made LG15 as popular as it is.

Is this a problem? I don't know, I sympathize with those who say that you have to take it for what it is, on the other hand I also empathize with those who hope that "everything will be revealed in the end", that all the diverse pieces will fit together somehow in a coherent whole.

[Macabea13]

I think no matter how many times people say they despise the countless number of cliches they run into, they subconsiously or regrettable can't live without them.
Originality is dead.

Excellent point, and something I happen to believe as well. But then I am not as bothered by predictibility as I am by the reversals. I tend to agree with Killthesmiley ( naming names just for you Eli) that we over intellectualize some of the things in the videos, but you have to admit there are some things that have no reason being there if they are not clues.....(ie the strange tags, or the flash cards pointing to CrowleyMas in whatever video that was.)

I do understand that there are references to popular culture that are likely to be there to keep the videos fresh.....I also think that there are some references to time/date which may be what some of the movies are about...Did Jonas go to see Rocky just to let us know that the episode wasn't filmed months ago? It keeps it current....

But, I still don't like the reversals....I am not sure if this is defendable or not....but then again I have no idea when EliCash is joking..

edit: okay it took me so long to get back to the computer that I missed Robot's post.......I wanted to say that I agree iwth him....ribosomes....c'mon that is a pretty random reference. Does it mean that Bree is smart, or was placed with someone smart? I dunno, but it could have more meaning and I for one like to hope that it does......I think that it's kind of like real life, you have to figure out what is coincidence and what is part of a pattern.....

ps. got a very nice pm from Milo (creator) and he was very clear stating that they look at all the posts, and consider them all valuable.

[EliCash]

Did Jonas go to see Rocky just to let us know that the episode wasn't filmed months ago?

My guess was that Jonas just likes boxing (and movies).

Actually, that makes no sense whatsoever. "Rocky Balboa" must be an anagram for "a blocky boar!" Yessss. Another mystery solved...

"After all, what does the director do? He conveys what he thinks he has seen. But, good Lord, the meaning of reality, living as we do enclosed in ourselves, isn't always clear to us. We could discuss for hours an episode or even an object found on the street. And the same thing is true of a filmed episode or object. Except that I never ask explanations from what I see in real life, but with a film I ask the director. But the director is only a man. Very often I cannot give an explanation because I see only images, and images are what I transfer to the screen. Very often these images have no explanation, no raison d'etre beyond themselves."

-Michelangelo Antonioni

[Tennafox]

Hey didn't read all that way thru... You all know that gemma's dead.. OpAphids last vid showed braille at the beginning and it spelled RIP GEMMA... ??

[SharpI]

Back on topic, can anybody actually defend the ridiculous complaints that started off this thread? I can only find one that is somewhat defendable.

I decline to call them ridiculous, but I agree that they do all seem like mere complaints. The injections/Epogen/ceremony plotline moves slowly, but it does move, with Bree talking about thousands of candidates in "Hiding In The Bathroom." Which we figured must be true (you don't need boxes and boxes of the stuff just for Bree) but now we have confirmation. And as for the complaint that Epogen has different effects than Bree showed, that would just seem to hint that the stuff is labeled Epogen, but isn't actually.

And so on. Seems to me I've read "LG15 has jumped the shark" by various people since August. But to truly jump a shark, you need to have run out of ideas. I don't think lack of ideas is a problem for LG15. I think their current problem boils down to: the Order plotline calls for action, and they can't afford to do much action. Their bread-and-butter is a single character facing a stationary cam, and that's just hard to make satisfying when you have cult people out there gunning people.

[curiousGeorge]

I think their current problem boils down to: the Order plotline calls for action, and they can't afford to do much action. Their bread-and-butter is a single character facing a stationary cam, and that's just hard to make satisfying when you have cult people out there gunning people.

You nailed it. It's not really anymore complicated than that.

I, surprisingly, have no suggestions (or complaints) at this time. They'll just have to see if they can make it work. The Cast is still great though!

[DreamerM]

Hey guys, resurrecting old, probably out of date topics for the win!

Eli: Well-done parody, congrats!

If there is a universal theme I have gotten from Lonelygirl....it's that they LOVE the sensationalism.

Mixing the mundane (teenage girl's video blog about life, food, boy problems) with the sublime (cults, rituals, medical experiments, kidnappings, conspiracies) has all the makings of a winning combination. But how to properly mix the two?

Answer: with a great deal of care. Keep stressing the preternatural (sp?) elements and people will get lost. Ignore them and focus on the daily life and you risk establishing your own plot as an unimportant afterthought.

The point is made that shark jumping happens when the show's producers/writers run out of ideas. Well, that is half right. Clearly a dearth of ideas is not the problem here: in fact if anything the opposite is true. I love this series. I still do. But I swear sometimes I think the Creators stand outside holding up signs that say "WILL CREATE RANDOM PLOT POINTS FOR FOOD."

We simply have too many of them. We need to resolve some. Answers create dozens more questions and draw viewers further into the world you are trying to create.

We finally found out what drugs bree was on: great! The FANS researched the drug (the sister of it's inventor is actually a member of this site!) and discovered that it implied Bree was being prepaired for a blood-letting ceremony.

Keyword: the FANS did all this. Daniel apparently learned the name and forgot all about it. It was never mentioned or speculated over. Bree never addressed the implications it made about the nature of that Ceremony (and the subsequent cutting up that might have ensued).

In a way, the research into the nature of the drug was wasted time on our part: we went looking for the truth (even me) hoping it would give further insight into the story, and the story, since then, has gone on like it never happened.

Life at the Casa Jonas: Bree wanders directionless and shuts people out. Jonas and Daniel bond over manly games of foosball. If anything changes, it's impossible to tell. I think bree and daniel's non-hook-up was a double-take on the part of the writers:

"Hey, let's make people think they slept together and see what kind of reaction that gets. Oh they didn't like it, let's have Bree say the whole thing never happened."

I have to say though, that fake-out was the most set-up we've gotten for Daniel the Dejected to go out looking for some other female with fewer issues and subsequently get himself kidnapped/whatever has happened to him.

Yeh, I think the vanishing is another of the Motel-Hopping chains. We haven't really learned anything, and the suspense is killing people. But this series is all about suspense. Thing is, action has to happen sometimes for the suspense to be worth it, and this action is underwhelming.

Why is it underwhelming? Because I've gotten used to the pattern by now: Daniel will, eventually, come back and we won't learn anything much about what happened to him. Instead we will get some random clues and will get to research and put them together ourselves while the characters move on to other things.

It's unwise in any fiction to do your audiences thinking for them. But you do need to at least predict the connections they will make and, in turn, make sure those insights mean something substantial. This is how you reward people for actually thinking about your work.

Miles in my last thread stated that they do, in fact know where the story is going. Which is good, because sometimes I get the feeling that they are just flinging spigetti at a wall and seeing what sticks.

Dreamer out.

[SharpI]

It's unwise in any fiction to do your audiences thinking for them. But you do need to at least predict the connections they will make and, in turn, make sure those insights mean something substantial. This is how you reward people for actually thinking about your work.

Well said. The reward we've worked up to: we get fan insights recognized on occasion (I loved Daniel's "slurpee" line). But Dreamer, you're right on that it would be nice to see some sign that the Creators understand what we don't like and try to avoid it.

I don't think anyone liked that in "Cowboy" Jonas and Bree drive for hours to get to a remote cabin to look for Daniel, then promptly turn around and drive home without bothering to check to see if he's there. It's one thing for them to waste their own time, but they wasted ours too.

[gogo]

These are all very interesting points. I responded to a thoughtful post about the logic of the vlog format. It is pretty long, so I didn't want to repost it here. However, if I were replying to these ideas, I am sure I would share the same ideas as I did here:
http://www.lonelygirl15.com/forum/viewt ... 117#187117

My main points about the clues are as follows:

Thank you CG, for your remarks. They allowed me to consider some of the elements that keep me involved as a viewer.

I would agree with your assessment of the elements of mystery, CG. It seems that “clue-finding,” speculation and assessment of potential clues seems to have become a significant part of the fan culture on this board. While I will not dismiss the way anyone else engages with these videos, I will say that I rarely propose theories or seek clues anymore. For me, the process feels rather futile. It could be that I am a viewer who needs closure of smaller, earlier issues, so I can note the patterns or themes that emerge. Therefore, for me, extending energy to focus on issues and ideas that could be “shots in the dark” is just no fun. I am still waiting for some resolution to come from summer and early fall “clues.” (Before someone accuses me of wanting the characters to turn to the camera and ramble off the significance of Crowley, etc., understand that I am not looking for that at all.) I would also agree with CG when he states that the writers are facing a different way to tell this story, so it must be challenging to satisfy all aspect of viewer culture when creating these videos.

There are many people who find seeking out clues and researching these ideas to be an engaging practice with opportunities for socializing on the boards with others. I am happy for them, and I am glad that they have found a fun way to participate with the series. However for me, it is just too frustrating to see pages and pages of discussion on ideas that seemingly will never be resolved. Working so hard in vain is nothing that appeals to me. Even when people seem to get close to figuring something out, it seems that in the next video, a whole new set of potential “clues” come along to create more and more pages of discussion. I am not saying that there is anything wrong with this, but it is not satisfying for me. (As a disclaimer, I do not feel as anyone has any obligation to satisfy me personally.) I have found ways to engage with this story in ways that satisfy me.

I have positive things to say in my whole post, so if you feel that these excerpts are negative in general, please scan through the original post in its entirety (if you have time to read my too-long essay). It loses much taken out of context.

gogo

[SharpI]

<snip> It seems that “clue-finding,” speculation and assessment of potential clues seems to have become a significant part of the fan culture on this board. While I will not dismiss the way anyone else engages with these videos, I will say that I rarely propose theories or seek clues anymore. For me, the process feels rather futile. <snip>

Well said, gogo. This is the thing that I wish the Creators would change: that they would come to closure on some things that matter to the fans. They don't have to close things in a video (which is expensive), they have other, cheaper resources that they way underutilize - such as in-character chat.

An example: fans have noticed the heart drawn on Jonas' car window, and want to know who drew it. Now, like as not, in real life that heart was drawn by the actors fooling around between shots or by the owner of the car they're borrowing. But now it's in LG15 and fans are curious: who drew it? Jonas or Bree? NBSB has asked Bree about it in in-character chat. In vain, I'm thinking: as we all know, the Creators typically never answer questions like this.

Well, I wish they would. I wish the characters themselves would actually get on the boards once in a while and say some things that matter. I think if they did, LG15 would be less futile, more engaging to gogo, and to me, and to the many fans that ransack the videos for clues, for the reasons that gogo mentioned.

[DreamerM]

I agree with gogo as well:

The ARG, the fan-interaction, unofficial spinoff videos and independent clue hunting are all fine and dandy, but there's really no point if the issues are never going to be resolved or addressed ever again.

It's like they are afraid people will get mad and stop watching if it turns out thier pet theory was incorrect, so in order to include all ideas, they don't ever exclude any of them.

I don't mind being wrong if it makes the story deeper. The constant lack-off resolution really gets old.