Here's another little scene that I wrote a while ago and was originally going to drop into a larger story, but life got in the way. It's only moderately out of date, rather than really out of date like it would be if I waited any longer.

If you can't guess what show the spoilers are for, then it probably doesn't matter:

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"So... wait. What?" Visionary asked, quite reasonably.

"The alternate reality where they never crashed onto the island was a kind of purgatory" Hallie explained. "Once they all met up again and realized they were dead, they were ready to move on to a somewhat heavy-handed heaven."

"But... all of the crazy stuff on the island wasn't purgatory?"

"No, that would have made too much sense" Fleabot suggested. "Apparently all the randomness on the island happened, but the stuff in the real world didn't."

"Oh" Visionary noted. "Um... but, then why was there a..."

"I'm just going to stop you there" Fleabot interrupted. "There wasn't a "why" to any of it. They made it up as they went along for years, then introduced one new mystery at the beginning of the last season and resolved that mystery in the finale so as to make it seem like they were giving answers, when it truth it was just simple misdirection."

The Regular blinked. "Is... is that legal?"

"Writing stories where you have no plan and no idea what the ending is supposed to be?" Fleabot asked. "You'd better hope so."

I watched about a season and a half of Lost (I got the first three seasons for Christmas two years ago) but the wife wasn't really interested and we stopped watching it.

Did they ever reveal what the big thing crashing around in the bushes was? I always hoped it would be revealed to be a dinosaur, but that's probably the 10 year old within me being hopeful. Dinosaurs are kind of like bacon; they make everything better.

~Hat~

I actually didn't see all that many episodes of the show myself. I remember watching the pilot episode from my hotel room when I was in Annapolis for the video game job interview. I got the job, and then didn't have cable for the first four or five months I lived out there, and few channels came in well, so I missed most of the first season. From then on, Id watch an episode here or there... Probably averaged about two a season, if that. So I really can't answer too many questions myself.

However, I gather from what I read that the big thing rustling the bushes turned out to be a polar bear, which was on a tropical island in order to make things more mysterious. (I think there was some explanation about scientists testing to see if they could survive in new environments or something...)