A Short Story About Love in Fringe Titles and Glyphs

1/18/2013

What Lies Below the surface of monsters and cold science? The broken Heart of a Father and his frailty Of Human Action to Arrive at the decision of using a Portal to Fracture and Betray two worlds. Welcome to Westfield...I mean Fringe...where you can visit, but leaving is an entirely different matter. It will never let you go.
When Fringe premiered it was a New Day in the Old Town. It was something different, completely unexpected, and never The Same Old Story. We were introduced to a Dream cast of incredible actors and their amazing characters: Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) and the Bishop boys, Peter (Joshua Jackson) and Walter (John Noble), the lovely Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole), Phillip Broyles (Lance Reddick), who became more than just a boss, and the enigmatic Nina Sharp (Blair Brown).
The mysterious Observers made an impression, none more so than with those who would protect us: August, September (Michael Cerveris), and Michael the Empath, a.k.a. Anomaly XB-6783746. And there are so many other great characters, good and bad, we have since let go of: Lincoln, Etta, and Charlie, a trio most important to us; William "Belly" Bell, the unseen manipulator, and David Robert Jones, the charismatic bioterrorist; brave Simon, little Henry, sweet Ella, Rachel, Gene, and all the Cortexiphan kids, such as Nick Lane and Cameron James (Subject 9).
It was the end of normal and An Origin Story of absolute beauty that we felt Bound to watch. In Absentia of much else on at the time, Fringe flicked a Switch, a sort of Reset in our minds, and we could appreciate great television again. Since then Those We've Left Behind, the shows with little of substance or The Human Kind, became so much filler, nothing of consequence, to us Neither Here Nor There.
The Arrival of Fringe was The Cure for boredom. It Unearthed the passion we'd once had for TV, whose Burial we'd thought long since passed. Fringe seemed from the start like an old friend, someone we'd known forever. Start watching and you'll feel like you're Back to Where You've Never Been. Every Friday became a Night of Desirable Objects, and it often kept us up past Midnight thinking about the possibilities, The Dreamscape of sleep far away.
Fringe is not A Short Story About Love but a long and twisty one. Every year this beautiful little show that could gave us a new start, Reborn like a phoenix; not from the ashes of ruin, but from the bonds of love. Fringe broke out of The Box early on, always changing, never reaching The Plateau, relentlessly topping itself to Tower over the television landscape. We seemed Fated for each other, The Abducted masses of feverish fans Taken from the Pilot. Our fascination would soon Mutate into something far stronger. In Return for our dedication we got an amazing, unprecedented, ever-evolving story, one where there is Nothing as it Seems.
The Equation of The Transformation of a casual viewer to a Fringie is our Ability to recognize the Vision and potential of what we're seeing + the preternaturally talented John Noble fascinating us in an episode like Snakehead + the forgiveness symbolized in a White Tulip. It's a very simple equation. Some of us even felt Saved when the only thing that could make us forget our troubles, our Bad Dreams and make us smile was Fringe. In retrospect, the decision to watch Fringe was The No-Brainer of our lives, the Agent of change in what we would tolerate from TV from then on.
There's More Than One of Everything is a phrase that applies not only to events in the story but the structure of the show itself. Every season it's a little different from before but still the same Fringe. As it's always changing and growing, we've never had the sense of Deja Vu we get from far less creative shows. We've never felt like their Marionette, "just a puppet on a lonely string," emotions manipulated and left to feel an emptiness instead of admiration for what they have accomplished. The Reveal of the big Secret was astonishing, and the emotions were real.
So much happened here. Lysergic Acid Diethylamide was taken - as were Brown Betty and Black Blotter - and opened a Window into a Hidden universe. When The Man from the Other Side appeared on the Bridge there was no turning back. They came over here to recon, observe, mark, and destroy (ROMAD). We went Over There on Five-Twenty-Ten to get someone back and things were never the same. Fringe was going places no other show had dreamt of, an emotionally-charged ride of unimagined consequences.
Whether for you it was In Which We Meet Mr. Jones, Dream Logic, Earthling, Johari Window, Olivia. in the Lab. with the Revolver, Amber 31422, 6955 kHz, Entrada, Os, or The Last Sam Weiss, there was a moment when you said to yourself "I can't ever let this go." It was different for each one of us. But for each it brought out our Inner Child, full of delight and wonder, while at other times it destroyed us, in the process becoming our favorite show on Earth, the only one we've had Reciprocity with, where the creators have been as grateful to us as we are to them.
There are many points of entry. Even if you feel lost at first, the performances and stories are captivating. 6B was not just any apartment number, but one where a couple in two universes were separated through chance and found each other again. One Night in October we wondered "Do Shapeshifters Dream of Electric Sheep?" And when an unintended Breach by little Olive from Jacksonville, our precious Subject 13, set a Power Hungry man on the right path to Avenge a terrible loss, another piece of the puzzle fell into place.
The Bishop Revival showed the significance of the seahorse, one of Eight glyphs, Codes for the loyal viewer that gave us words relating to the episode, such as Aeger, Avian, Peters, Weiss, and Multi. And Amber was more than the Weapon we thought it was, becoming a defensive measure and a means to preserve. It's a wonderful way to add more depth for fans: not just pictures between commercials, but symbols placed in the show itself.
The Bullet That Saved the World was not the first Wound, and neither was Letters of Transit. There was so much heartache before, but we never Split, never parted ways, because it was incredibly well-written and made us truly feel. We learned that The Boy Must Live. We went Through the Looking Glass and What Walter Found There was a Child who would be very important. And this final season the team would Hatch a plan to save the world one final time...as did we.
Fringe felt destined to fail from the start. It was complex and beautiful, demanded too much attention from those without a bit of patience, but it was a Stowaway in the Hearts of the loyal, and nothing could Erode our passion for it. At some point, any lingering Doubt from years of conditioning by other shows was gone, and we had complete confidence that the creators knew what they were doing. What we doubted was the dedication of Fox. Their talk of not being in the business of losing money set an Alert off in our minds, but most of us had no idea what to do besides complain. Ratings did not remotely reflect the quality, two statistics that were World's Apart. Individuals went Rogue, fighting the network with words and all the Cells of their being, but they were disorganized.
But fans were not Alone in the World. We had each other. We had blogs and podcasts, Ari Margolis and his wonderful cast videos and trailers, and Joel Wyman, our lovely showrunner. Then Fringenuity, born out of the minds of a few creative and hard-working fans, our own Transilience Thought Unifier Model-11 of sorts, put their Grey Matters together and found a way to Alter the seemingly inevitable future. Faith was not enough to keep Fringe Alive. We had to Fight the inevitable. We would Unite our Powers and say "No More!" We'd Adapt to our new situation. With one big effort, we'd regroup to Concentrate and Ask Again using hashtags to trend on Twitter on a regular basis.
Fears of our incredible show forced into a March of Death ignited the fandom, making each of us An Enemy of Fate, seeking an ending of Grace and Everything in it's Right Place. Just as we found the crack in the darkness of The Northwest Passage, we became like The Firefly, inner lights illuminating the ratings chasm. We brought a Surge of enthusiasm every Friday to show our support. We needed try to save it, because of the Novation (still not sure how to use that word) this series brought to the television landscape.
Yet late in season 4, after filming was wrapped, it would Appear that Fringe would not survive cancellation. We were Still, holding our breath after all we had done and could only wait. Fringe may be on the Limbus of television, not even a blip on most people's radar, but it's front and center for us. It Repatterned our lives. So, many of us became more than just an Observer. We each decided not to be a Wallflower and stood up for something beautiful and meaningful. We Unleashed the devotion of millions to save our show and created our own Fringe Event. Entertainment magazine articles in an alternate world could have read "Fandom Unites to Cross the Blight of the TV landscape."
We all had a Sense of ownership, and we used that to our advantage. We made sure our Energy and passion could no longer be ignored. At some point we no longer felt like The Ghost Network, invisible to Fox. We had succeeded. Our collective Voice was heard, there was a Quake in the industry, and together we ushered in a Brave New World in the way Fox looked at ratings. For once the network became The Enemy of My Enemy - of our enemy - the Nielsens. We learned that they Loved Fringe and they were willing to listen. We didn't Plead. We didn't try to Guilt them. We showed them that we were there always and the best decision they could ever make would be to give Fringe the ending it deserved. We Forced Perspective to Shift, and the Anger we have felt for so many past disappointments subsided into gratefulness.
The struggle is now over. Fringe got the season it needed to complete its story. We will never Purge the Memory of what it took to get here. And now that it's over there is a feeling of Liberty. We are now free to do other things again. Oh, who are we kidding? We'll never let Fringe go. We held a Mirror up to our lives and tried to be A Better Human Being. We were better just for watching. Hopefully, we will not all go to our Grave regretting The Road Not Taken. It's Safe to say I wouldn't Trade a second.
Fringe will go down in history as the most underrated yet most beautiful science fiction story and achieve Immortality, Making Angels out of the actors, writers, and crew in whom we had so much Trust. But the Bloodline will not end here. It's not The End of All Things in the Fringe universe. It may feel like The Day We Died for a while, but it will be Living on in us forever. We have the boxed sets to Escape to when it starts to feel too distant. There are official books coming, like September's Notebook. Aimee Long (Fringenuity link), The Recordist of our history, is even working on a fan book, putting Quill to paper (or just typing it up more likely), with The Consultant being all of those who participate. If she finished at 6:02 AM EST one day, it would be a cool coincidence.
Now we are at the Close, but if we wish really hard, maybe we will get to revisit this gorgeous world sometime in the Future in a new adventure. Our love will not Decay. Our Momentum Deferred only until we meet again.

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