what happened, happened

Trying to piece together the "reality" of something like LOST, or like the plot of Alan Wake, strikes me a bit like trying to figure out whether Shakespeare wrote himself into Hamlet, or whether John Shade's dead daughter is the narrator of Pale Fire.

We can play those games all day long, and they can be fun, but in the end they don't have any bearing on our lives. To ask whether or not the events of LOST, or Alan Wake, actually happened is to ask an incomprehensible question because 1) they're fictional constructs and did not actually happen and 2) we watched it and responded to it, so it must have happened. Therefore they simultaneously happened and did not happen.

Let us not ask incomprehensible questions, especially of human constructs, which will offer us no ultimate Answers (which people seem to want from a show like LOST).

Let us rather ask, first, what emotional effect the work had on us. We must start there. We can play games later, but let us be honest about how we responded emotionally to the work.