in hopes of relieving myself from thesis stress:
CAVEAT: i have been planning this since the start of LOST 5 - a short-stab summary of ALL that's happened including the time warps. but, to no avail because there are so many factors that play around it. finally, now, i get the time to do this, simply because i felt like my geekbloodcell count shot up the charts by the end of episode 4. game, game...
so, time travel. first of all allow me to cite two stories that involve two aspects of time travel: neurological time travel, and time paradox. neurological time travel is easy - it was first manifested through the seizures of Desmond. it's when time travel occurs only in the mind but the body stays put in the current timeline. NTT (close kami eh) reminds me of ashton kutcher's character in butterfly effect. his nose bleeds when he is reminded of the past through a journal. he goes back in time. tries to fix some things. and when he wakes up... kaboom. everything has changed. butterfly effect.
time paradox on the other hand, occurs when a person travels back in time, and then changes something, creates a ripple effect, and changes everything. the reason why the word paradox is juxtaposed with time is because a certain incongruity happened - much like Metal Gear Solid 3's concept of time paradox. MGS3 as some might know was an epic prequel to MGS1, 2, and 4. it was simple. if you die, the screen won't flash you with the deathly game over sequence - instead, simply, it says "TIME PARADOX." why? because the rest of the MGS's you've played won't come about if you played MGS3 out right. time paradox is when you fuck up the past because of time travel, and then the whole future is bound to change.
now let's move on to LOST. it's clear that time paradox has been cancelled out in the equation. the survivors can only watch over the time-travelling patterns of the island. wait, wait... patterns? let's recall what Daniel Faraday said about the island travelling through time:
"Think of the island as a record, spinning on a turntable. Only now, the record is skipping."
and from hereon i shall correct myself - there is NO pattern in the island's time-traveling phenomena, instead, there are random spurts of "nosebleed moments" when the survivors experience a flash of light from heaven, then psssshhhhh! times have changed, and the recurring question still stays the same: WHEN are we? i'm thinking that the nosebleed incidents are simply side-effects of physical time-travel, instead of the concussions standing as effects of NTT. NTT's so much more complicated. let's leave Desmond to that, and everyone else to physical time travel.
with all of this in mind there are a lot of questions to be answered. i recently read an amazing article about lost time travel here, and one of the simplest yet unresolved mysteries posted was this: does richard alpert have 2 compasses? let me explain in a small cause-effect theoretical framework what happened:
island: present locke, present richard ---> island's timeline gets fucked up because ben moves the island ---> locke and richard get transported to the past. they meet there, and richard gives him a compass and says "on the next flash, give this to me," something to that effect. ---> flash happens. locke ends up in the 50's where a younger richard is present. ---> richard does not know locke - but locke gives him the compass anyway.
now, wait a minute. why the heck would richard take the compass from this bald stranger? what the --- hey, of course, the island's worst cop-out was very useful - 3 words that will get you out of any trouble in the island -- "Jacob sent me."
going back to the compasses. i'd like to think, hypothetically, that there is only one compass traveling through the sands of time. because the compass, pretty much, is like a microcosm of anything and everything traveling through time in the island. are there two sawyers every time sawyer travels? y'knowhutamean. :))
to understand the science of the island's time travel, it was, simply put by Dr. Marvin Candle of the DHARMA initiative, a display of the power of "exotic matter." now, to quote from the earlier article...
Such matter would have "formed when the Earth was young, and then floated into outer space," Kaku says, "and therefore there's none left on Earth." However, it may have been possible for a pocket of the matter to become accidentally trapped underground. Physicists theorize that exotic matter could have antigravitational properties (so it would fall up) or it would have negative energy (absorbing energy around it, possibly making it implosive). And if it were to have antigravitational properties, it wouldn't want to stay on Earth either; instead, it would rocket into space-violently. "It would be quite dangerous to people who encounter it," says Kaku.
now, let the games begin. here's when i start guessing why the "record" is "skipping" continuously.
1. jacob sends the island back and forth through time like a yoyo. for fun. you know, like what he did with the cabin.
2. bermuda triangle-ish conspiracy theories. someday soon, sawyer will meet his true gangsta idol - 2pac, in the island, sippin' hennesy, screamin "thug til i die," before i pass out.
3. because an asian is in the island with two brits and an american, they just had to fuck it up really bad. come on, hollywood, you're better than racial discrimination.
4. it was all a dream. (if this were true, i will be the president of the WE HATE JJ ABRAMS facebook group. mark my word. wait, this is impossible, i love jj abrams.)
5. they weren't really time-traveling. apparently, the survivors were taken captive by a new DHARMA initiative... and they got brainwashed, Alex deLarge style.
end of LOST ramble. hee. :D
so, time travel. first of all allow me to cite two stories that involve two aspects of time travel: neurological time travel, and time paradox. neurological time travel is easy - it was first manifested through the seizures of Desmond. it's when time travel occurs only in the mind but the body stays put in the current timeline. NTT (close kami eh) reminds me of ashton kutcher's character in butterfly effect. his nose bleeds when he is reminded of the past through a journal. he goes back in time. tries to fix some things. and when he wakes up... kaboom. everything has changed. butterfly effect.
time paradox on the other hand, occurs when a person travels back in time, and then changes something, creates a ripple effect, and changes everything. the reason why the word paradox is juxtaposed with time is because a certain incongruity happened - much like Metal Gear Solid 3's concept of time paradox. MGS3 as some might know was an epic prequel to MGS1, 2, and 4. it was simple. if you die, the screen won't flash you with the deathly game over sequence - instead, simply, it says "TIME PARADOX." why? because the rest of the MGS's you've played won't come about if you played MGS3 out right. time paradox is when you fuck up the past because of time travel, and then the whole future is bound to change.
now let's move on to LOST. it's clear that time paradox has been cancelled out in the equation. the survivors can only watch over the time-travelling patterns of the island. wait, wait... patterns? let's recall what Daniel Faraday said about the island travelling through time:
"Think of the island as a record, spinning on a turntable. Only now, the record is skipping."
and from hereon i shall correct myself - there is NO pattern in the island's time-traveling phenomena, instead, there are random spurts of "nosebleed moments" when the survivors experience a flash of light from heaven, then psssshhhhh! times have changed, and the recurring question still stays the same: WHEN are we? i'm thinking that the nosebleed incidents are simply side-effects of physical time-travel, instead of the concussions standing as effects of NTT. NTT's so much more complicated. let's leave Desmond to that, and everyone else to physical time travel.
with all of this in mind there are a lot of questions to be answered. i recently read an amazing article about lost time travel here, and one of the simplest yet unresolved mysteries posted was this: does richard alpert have 2 compasses? let me explain in a small cause-effect theoretical framework what happened:
island: present locke, present richard ---> island's timeline gets fucked up because ben moves the island ---> locke and richard get transported to the past. they meet there, and richard gives him a compass and says "on the next flash, give this to me," something to that effect. ---> flash happens. locke ends up in the 50's where a younger richard is present. ---> richard does not know locke - but locke gives him the compass anyway.
now, wait a minute. why the heck would richard take the compass from this bald stranger? what the --- hey, of course, the island's worst cop-out was very useful - 3 words that will get you out of any trouble in the island -- "Jacob sent me."
going back to the compasses. i'd like to think, hypothetically, that there is only one compass traveling through the sands of time. because the compass, pretty much, is like a microcosm of anything and everything traveling through time in the island. are there two sawyers every time sawyer travels? y'knowhutamean. :))
to understand the science of the island's time travel, it was, simply put by Dr. Marvin Candle of the DHARMA initiative, a display of the power of "exotic matter." now, to quote from the earlier article...
Such matter would have "formed when the Earth was young, and then floated into outer space," Kaku says, "and therefore there's none left on Earth." However, it may have been possible for a pocket of the matter to become accidentally trapped underground. Physicists theorize that exotic matter could have antigravitational properties (so it would fall up) or it would have negative energy (absorbing energy around it, possibly making it implosive). And if it were to have antigravitational properties, it wouldn't want to stay on Earth either; instead, it would rocket into space-violently. "It would be quite dangerous to people who encounter it," says Kaku.
now, let the games begin. here's when i start guessing why the "record" is "skipping" continuously.
1. jacob sends the island back and forth through time like a yoyo. for fun. you know, like what he did with the cabin.
2. bermuda triangle-ish conspiracy theories. someday soon, sawyer will meet his true gangsta idol - 2pac, in the island, sippin' hennesy, screamin "thug til i die," before i pass out.
3. because an asian is in the island with two brits and an american, they just had to fuck it up really bad. come on, hollywood, you're better than racial discrimination.
4. it was all a dream. (if this were true, i will be the president of the WE HATE JJ ABRAMS facebook group. mark my word. wait, this is impossible, i love jj abrams.)
5. they weren't really time-traveling. apparently, the survivors were taken captive by a new DHARMA initiative... and they got brainwashed, Alex deLarge style.
end of LOST ramble. hee. :D