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I think it's funny that the integrity of the timeline required Eloise to shop around at probably over a dozen stores to find the EXACT notebook that she got in '77. She was probably like "poo poo, the stitching looks the same but what if I'm wrong and destroy the universe?"
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Jun 23, 2010 21:02
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euphronius posted:So the notebook is a time travel paradox? I guess what I'm saying is that it really throws that "Aww man Daniel yelled at his mom when she really does love him" scene in the Oxford café into a new light when you work out that Eloise never really had any choice in the matter.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:06
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Also the notebook is different from the compass because the compass has no beginning point
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Jun 23, 2010 21:11
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FrensaGeran posted:I think it's funny that the integrity of the timeline required Eloise to shop around at probably over a dozen stores to find the EXACT notebook that she got in '77. She was probably like "poo poo, the stitching looks the same but what if I'm wrong and destroy the universe?" Most notebooks - especially really nice journals like that probably have company information and "copyright" dates. probably not too difficult to track down.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:12
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Right the compass is a time travel paradox. I was just wondering if the notebook was too.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:12
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euphronius posted:Right the compass is a time travel paradox. Yeah, the compass is the confusing one. 1950s Locke shows up and gives Richard the compass 2000s Richard finds Locke and gives him the compass It's possible that Richard had the compass before this, so when 1950s Locke gives him a compass he then has 2 compasses, Compass A and Compass A2. Locke gives him Compass A2 When Richard finds Locke in 2000, he gives him Compass A (which then becomes A2 when he brings it back to give to Richard). He carries Compass A2 with him after this. So the compass loops around once (existing in the same timeframe simultaneously, with one copy 50 years older than the other) and exits the loop. FrensaGeran posted:I think it's funny that the integrity of the timeline required Eloise to shop around at probably over a dozen stores to find the EXACT notebook that she got in '77. She was probably like "poo poo, the stitching looks the same but what if I'm wrong and destroy the universe?" Or she would just go to a store to buy a notebook like the one he will have had in 1950 and it would just happen to be the exact same one, serial # and all.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:22
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geeves posted:Most notebooks - especially really nice journals like that probably have company information and "copyright" dates. probably not too difficult to track down. But you need the exact notebook. If a stitch is different, the entire fabric of the universe will collapse in on itself, which isn't pleasant to experience. No differences can be allowed. The Saddest Robot posted:Or she would just go to a store to buy a notebook like the one he will have had in 1950 and it would just happen to be the exact same one, serial # and all. This is possible too. What if she just walked into a store, blindfolded herself, and said "Okay, whatever notebook I pick up first is the notebook I am writing the message on, putting in the box, and giving to Daniel." And the universe will have no choice but to put the notebook on the right shelf.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:25
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FrensaGeran posted:But you need the exact notebook. If a stitch is different, the entire fabric of the universe will collapse in on itself, which isn't pleasant to experience. No differences can be allowed. Are you being funny, or is this a real point you are trying to make.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:26
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FrensaGeran posted:I think it's funny that the integrity of the timeline required Eloise to shop around at probably over a dozen stores to find the EXACT notebook that she got in '77 Umm, no she didn't. Because no matter what she bought, it would end up being the notebook she picked up off Faraday's corpse. What happened, happened.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:27
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So that notebook is existing twice at the same time? well I guess that is ok because other things, like Miles, existed twice at the same time.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:28
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That makes no sense Loose. She had to make a conscious choice to pick the exact notebook, and how she went about that is a topic of serious concern. SERIOUS.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:29
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euphronius posted:So that notebook is existing twice at the same time? Yup. The notebook exists twice at the same time, one of them being a future version of itself. FrensaGeran posted:That makes no sense Loose. She had to make a conscious choice to pick the exact notebook, and how she went about that is a topic of serious concern. SERIOUS. Going by the idea of Course Correction and What Happened Happened, even if she made a conscious effort to get a different notebook with a different serial number something would happen to cause the 'right' one to end up in her hands. Like the cashier would accidentally spill her water on it, go grab another one from the shelf which would be the 'correct' one. Some punk would nab her purse as she leaves the store.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:34
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The Saddest Robot posted:Going by the idea of Course Correction and What Happened Happened, even if she made a conscious effort to get a different notebook with a different serial number something would happen to cause the 'right' one to end up in her hands. Like the cashier would accidentally spill her water on it, go grab another one from the shelf which would be the 'correct' one. Some punk would nab her purse as she leaves the store. Consider a different example, one similar to Eloise picking the notebook and writing the message. Shortly after the Smoke Monster took Locke's form and rejoined the Others, he made a conscious choice to essentially fulfill prophesy. He took Richard out to the jungle, made a conscious choice to tell him to give the Locke that was about to appear next to the plane (with a gunshot wound in his leg) a compass, take the bullet out of him, and give him an instruction (you have to die, John) that would later help inspire his attempted suicide, and eventual death. The Smoke Monster fulfilled something that he remembered from John Locke's memory, completely independently of "course corrections" providence. There was nothing "course correction" could do to force that situation. Someone had to make it, the Smoke Monster. Now with Eloise, she had to make a conscious choice to give Daniel the book, the exact book, with the exact message. No "course correction" could force her hand to that pen, and to that page. Now to answer someone saying if I'm taking this seriously. No. It's a thought experiment. I'm not criticizing Lost at all.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:42
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FrensaGeran posted:But you need the exact notebook. If a stitch is different, the entire fabric of the universe will collapse in on itself, which isn't pleasant to experience. No differences can be allowed. Let's just make it easy and say that it was a limited edition and had a serial number of some sort since it used some rare wood from an endangered tree from the Amazon - black market journal-type stuff. The Saddest Robot posted:Yup. The notebook exists twice at the same time, one of them being a future version of itself. I hope the journals don't see each other by accident.
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Jun 23, 2010 21:44
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Seaniqua posted:Rules must be followed. "How is a raven like a writing desk?" she asked. Um, I dunno, LOL!
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Jun 23, 2010 22:06
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aniero posted:Also, in regards to Dave, I was looking on LOSTpedia and found this interesting little tidbit: I just watched "Dave" again. Not only does that explanation suck, it's impossible, lazy, and unnecessary. Hurley saw Dave standing a foot from the survivors, but no else saw him like they would MIB. poo poo, even at the end of the episode Libby confirms that Hurley was holding an imaginary slipper. You know what's a better explanation for Dave appearing on the island? If Dave is exactly the same thing he was off the island: an imaginary person inside Hurley's head that he uses to punish himself. I don't know how helpful that encyclopedia will be. Based on this example, it might just end up creating more plot holes and questions. Maybe Lostpedia just misstated Bennett. I'm going to listen to the interview they pulled that from. EvilTobaccoExec fucked around with this message at 23:09 on Jun 23, 2010 |
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Jun 23, 2010 23:07
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:I just watched "Dave" again. Not only does that explanation suck, it's impossible, lazy, and unnecessary. Hurley saw Dave standing a foot from the survivors, but no else saw him like they would MIB. poo poo, even at the end of the episode Libby confirms that Hurley was holding an imaginary slipper. Though, everyone else in that scene was distracted by the food pallet. It wasn't like the future scenes that we saw between Hurley and dead people where he was unambiguously seeing something that no-one else could. Plenty of people and things have vanished into thin air on Lost; living, dead, hallucinatory, it doesn't matter, the jungle is a great environment for hiding things quickly. Even Libby's recollection of not seeing the slipper wasn't definite, she just didn't think she had seen it. I don't know what Dave was, one way or the other, and it's one of the well-played aspects of Lost that we have two (or more) perfectly viable explanations for the same event. birdlaw fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 01:50
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I think MIB can appear to only one person, and no one else will see him. There are tons of examples in the early seasons of one character seeing something freaky, someone else looks, and it's not there. Regarding Eloise, forget the guy in the red shoes (which is a huge strike against the notebook theory I think), consider the little con Eloise tries to run on Desmond. She somehow gets herself to the very antique store that Desmond will be looking for rings at (but not intending to buy!), and get herself behind the counter of said antique store. Maybe she or Widmore own it, but still - that's quite a lot of cracker jack timing and preperation. But she gets completely flustered the moment Desmond goes off script - does she know Desmond is time traveling from the island? Or does she believe this is Desmond's normal life, and she is playing her part in that moment (just like Jacob was steering and influencing characters in the past)? I have a hard time believing Daniel knew all these details (the very store/day/time Desmond would be thinking about window shopping for a ring!) and subsequently wrote them down in his notebook. A far simpler explanation - since we've seen it directly with Desmond - is she got EM'd, her mind tripped through time (just like the eponymous rat), she saw all kinds of things, and has been working ever since to make sure those things come to pass. For whatever reason. There's nothing in the show that I can recall that even hints Eloise got EM'd - unless you count her standing around the nuke. And we did see her get Daniel's notebook, and we do know it contains some info about Desmond, and also assuming tons of information about time travel. Perhaps she was able to reproduce Daniel's results, on herself?
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Jun 24, 2010 01:56
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redshirt posted:There's nothing in the show that I can recall that even hints Eloise got EM'd - unless you count her standing around the nuke. And we did see her get Daniel's notebook, and we do know it contains some info about Desmond, and also assuming tons of information about time travel. Her son was doing research into time travel for consciousness. His lab rat was named Eloise. Desmond, when going back in time, was told to tell Faraday, "I know about Eloise." Maybe the comment was about an accident with his mother, and not what he had done with the rat. 
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Jun 24, 2010 02:19
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The Saddest Robot posted:No, it starts to exist when it's produced in a notebook factory in china or taiwan. But even if the journal is not in a time loop, some of the information in the journal could be. IE, Eloise telling Daniel about things that he adds to the journal. The stuff about Desmond and the man in the red shoes could be one of those things.
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Jun 24, 2010 09:44
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FrensaGeran posted:But you need the exact notebook. If a stitch is different, the entire fabric of the universe will collapse in on itself, which isn't pleasant to experience. No differences can be allowed. I think you guys take WHH too exactly. We've seen that course correction can allow for some variation, as long as the overall outcome is the same. This is why it's possible that Sayid didn't always shoot Ben, but he still wound up becoming the leader of the Others anyway which would explain why original timeline Ben didn't recognize him.
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Jun 24, 2010 09:49
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Gianthogweed posted:I think you guys take WHH too exactly. We've seen that course correction can allow for some variation, as long as the overall outcome is the same. This is why it's possible that Sayid didn't always shoot Ben, but he still wound up becoming the leader of the Others anyway which would explain why original timeline Ben didn't recognize him. I always assumed that original timeline Ben DID recognize him, recognized all of them in fact, which gave him a huge leg up in dealing with these people he'd been waiting to show up all his life. The "making something happen by trying to change the past so it DOESN'T happen" is a pretty common trope in science fiction, and a powerful one. Sayid tried to kill Ben to prevent him from growing up to be a huge rear end in a top hat, but ended up causing him to grow up in that fashion in the first place. The 815ers blew up a nuclear bomb to prevent the Incident, and ended up causing it (something which they recognized as a possibility before they did it). press for porn fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 10:09
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Gianthogweed posted:I think you guys take WHH too exactly. We've seen that course correction can allow for some variation, as long as the overall outcome is the same. This is why it's possible that Sayid didn't always shoot Ben, but he still wound up becoming the leader of the Others anyway which would explain why original timeline Ben didn't recognize him. Yeah; good job Frensa.
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Jun 24, 2010 10:20
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Why hasn't everyone ignored gianthogweed yet? There is only the one timeline. Jesus.
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Jun 24, 2010 10:50
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Dan knocked on the hatch door in the past and then Desmond remembered it in the present. I'm pretty sure something changed.
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Jun 24, 2010 12:27
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redshirt posted:There's nothing in the show that I can recall that even hints Eloise got EM'd...
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Jun 24, 2010 12:28
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Unkempt posted:Dan knocked on the hatch door in the past and then Desmond remembered it in the present. I'm pretty sure something changed. So that doesn't really fit.
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Jun 24, 2010 12:53
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redshirt posted:But she gets completely flustered the moment Desmond goes off script - does she know Desmond is time traveling from the island? Or does she believe this is Desmond's normal life, and she is playing her part in that moment (just like Jacob was steering and influencing characters in the past)? See also: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
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Jun 24, 2010 13:23
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Lost reminds me of a trading card game. Each series of cards/season they take a bunch of stuff from the last series/season and say "Yea that card is no good anymore, change the rule on that card, this series will have even better cards that make the previous ones stupid and obsolete."
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Jun 24, 2010 15:26
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I think that the real storyline that they knew the outcome the whole time was the Locke arc. I just rewatched There's No Place Like Home Pt. 1, and when Locke is in the Cabin with Christian and says, "I'm here. . .because I was chosen to be" and Christian replies "That's absolutely right" you can really feel that he's playing Smokey from within Christian, as he was chosen to be the loophole. Maybe I'm just retroactively feeling that, since John Terry may have not even known that's what he was doing, but I gotta believe that's what the writers were going for.
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Jun 24, 2010 16:46
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Why can't we assume Eloise was working under either Jacob's or MiB's orders when she met with Desmond and knew everything? You don't really need time travel to explain one of those two knowing about man in the red shoes and telling the information to Eloise to help keep Desmond on track. I'd say she was more likely working for Jacob, since he seems to have an easier time talking to people off island, and would seem to have more of a reason wanting to keep Desmond and the universe on track. Perhaps she even could communicate with him directly from the Lamp Post. Still, I'd say there's a possibility Eloise was actually communicating with MiB for large portions of the series. I still insist that almost everything she told the Oceanic 6 about going back to the island made absolutely no sense, and the only way to explain it is that she was knowingly or unknowingly working for MiB who made a series of elaborate rules about going back to just to finish his super grand master plan. It's never been entirely clear if MiB can communicate off-island. Jack saw Christian off-island right when a smoke alarm was going off, and Kate saw Claire briefly. Both sightings seemed to influence their coming back to the island, conveniently necessary for MiB's plan. Still, even if MiB can't communicate directly off-island (since he does seem to insist he's really stuck there), there's no reason to think she's not working off instructions from Richard which he thought were from Jacob. Or perhaps MiB visited her as she was leaving the island and give her this elaborate set of instructions. Maybe Widmore and Eloise were knowingly MiB-worshippers because they were angry they got kicked off the island (explaining why Bram told Miles he was playing for the wrong team).
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Jun 24, 2010 16:46
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Unkempt posted:Dan knocked on the hatch door in the past and then Desmond remembered it in the present. I'm pretty sure something changed. The rules don't apply to Desmond though. I don't think that would have worked with anyone else but him. mancalamania posted:Why can't we assume Eloise was working under either Jacob's or MiB's orders when she met with Desmond and knew everything? You don't really need time travel to explain one of those two knowing about man in the red shoes and telling the information to Eloise to help keep Desmond on track. I really wish they had spent more time with Eloise and Widmore in series 6. Despite being the mother of Widmore's son Eloise always seemed to be portrayed as having her own agenda separate from his, even back in the day when they were both others on the island and he was her leader. She seemed to be uninvolved with the whole Ben/Widmore feud, and neither Ben nor Widmore seemed to mind. I guess mysterious characters can seem a lot less cool when you explain them, but I don't think it would have ruined things to cut some of the duller flashsideways stuff out and replace it with some flashbacks showing some Widmore and Eloise stuff.
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Jun 24, 2010 17:39
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I would have loved to see Hawking in the aftermath of the bomb not working, realizing that so much of what Daniel calculated was just plain wrong and joining up with DHARMA, initially to confront the crew in Ann Arbor who convinced Dan that his plan had merit then... Man when that encyclopedia comes out I am probably going to start writing some severely non-ironic fan fiction where my self insert character becomes the new lead guitarist of Driveshaft who is also a time traveling karate master/best friends with Frank.
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Jun 24, 2010 17:59
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Damon Lindelof, you smarmy bastard.Damon Lindelof posted:I found the ending of Isner/Mahut satisfying, but wish they had answered more questions.
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Jun 24, 2010 18:26
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marktheando posted:The rules don't apply to Desmond though. I don't think that would have worked with anyone else but him. Plus it only seemed like direct cause and effect because the two scenes were right next to one another in the narrative. Desmond may have just conveniently remembered that event three years later because of a random dream unlocking some old memory. The idea that the timeline changed when Daniel talked to Desmond is pretty silly. For Daniel it was only a few hours since the Oceanic 6 left the island; when Desmond remembered, it was three years since they left. If it was really the timeline that changed, it seems that Desmond would've remembered a few hours after leaving the island. I also still think that when Daniel called Desmond "special" in that scene, he just meant that he wasn't jumping through time while the others were, and thus he was special because he'd eventually leave the island and be able to save them.
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Jun 24, 2010 20:08
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Fickle Fascination posted:I don't know what Dave was, one way or the other, and it's one of the well-played aspects of Lost that we have two (or more) perfectly viable explanations for the same event. The problem is that they're not "perfectly viable". At one extreme we have an Occam's Razor explanation that fits perfectly, and the other extreme requires shoehorning in off-screen rewrites and abilities. Dave being the MIB requires some completely unnecessary leaps for little purpose whatsoever. It's a lot more reasonable for Island-Dave to be the exact same thing as Hospital-Dave, the same manifestation that Hurley uses to punish himself. It's far more convoluted and unreasonable for Hospital-Dave to be different from Island-Dave, who is actually MIB using an unmentioned ability to manifest himself as people's imaginary friends without even having to scan them first so he can... convince the fat guy to kill himself? EvilTobaccoExec fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 20:57
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EvilTobaccoExec posted:The problem is that they're not "perfectly viable". At one extreme we have an Occam's Razor explanation that fits perfectly, and the other extreme requires shoehorning in off-screen rewrites and abilities. Dave being the MIB requires some completely unnecessary leaps for little purpose whatsoever. It's a lot more reasonable for Island-Dave to be the exact same thing as Hospital-Dave, the same manifestation that Hurley uses to punish himself. It's far more convoluted and unreasonable for Hospital-Dave to be different from Island-Dave, who is actually MIB using an unmentioned ability to manifest himself as people's imaginary friends without even having to scan them first so he can... convince the fat guy to kill himself? Well we know MIB loves loving with the candidates and messing with their heads. Why else would he spend so much time chasing around the candidates and scaring them when we know he couldn't kill them? As a candidate, Hurley presumably couldn't actually kill himself, but it was certainly in Smokey's interest to distract Hurley from the island mysteries by making him think he was insane. Also Dave trying to convince Hurley that he is dreaming is kind of similar to when Smokey tried to convince Richard he was in hell.
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Jun 24, 2010 21:43
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marktheando posted:Well we know MIB loves loving with the candidates and messing with their heads. Why else would he spend so much time chasing around the candidates and scaring them when we know he couldn't kill them? As a candidate, Hurley presumably couldn't actually kill himself, but it was certainly in Smokey's interest to distract Hurley from the island mysteries by making him think he was insane. And that's so much more convoluted and unnecessary than "Dave was just Dave"
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Jun 24, 2010 22:00
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I suppose you are right that Dave being a hallucination both times is the more likely explanation. But it's pretty difficult to decide what is and isn't a hallucination when there are ghosts and shape shifting monsters everywhere. I still like the ghost off island, monster on island explanation. Bonus third interpretation- Dave was a ghost both on and off the island. He tried to get Hurley to kill himself because he is also Libby's dead husband David.
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Jun 24, 2010 22:06
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For a lot of "answers" on this show, it's not that hard to extrapolate or take it at face value. However there are a lot of things in the setup of the mythology where I found myself a little pissed for not getting an answer, either because they left us hanging, or because they introduced something deliberately weird without ever intending on revisiting it. Combining a couple things from previous posts, and adding a little more to it, I came up with an explanation for Lost that I, personally, can live with; whether people agree with me or not. Some of you might, some might not, but this is the one for me.
So there it is, the one single key to Lost: Nobody knows what the hell is going on. Bonk fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jun 24, 2010 |
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Jun 24, 2010 22:14
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