My timeline (in progress)

[Keb]

Well, they do keep giving us details that flesh stuff out. Every bit of evidence helps. It’s one reason I like the spreadsheet format I’m using, because I can add stuff or move stuff pretty simply when new data comes out.

What makes things tricky for me is the spaces between stuff. They often give us direct statements about how long it’s been since a given event (especially between conjoining episodes), but there are vast plains of unexplored time even within Snow’s lifetime. If we assume that she’s roughly Emma’s age (28 when the curse hits, then), and around 12 when she meets Regina, then there is a very long time when they’re either living together in relative harmony or Snow is on the run in the forest. It hinges on when Leopold dies as to which is longer–Snow looks to be at least 18 at that point, but could be several years older. Either way, that’s a minimum of sixish years that Regina is learning magic, being Leopold’s queen, and dealing with Snow as a stepdaughter. And she doesn’t go full-on Evil Queen until the point she kills Leopold (never mind when she actually accepts the moniker, or the fact that she’s fantasizing about strangling Snow before the wedding and says she should never have saved her from the horse even before that), at least that we can tell from what’s been shown so far.

That’s actually what I think is the weakest bit in my timeline atm. I’d love a little more detail that would shore that part up.

(There’s also a conflict with Maleficent’s statement about Snow’s age–the same age you were when you got married–and the creators saying that Snow and Emma are about the same age–unless Young Regina is also in her late 20s and not her late teens as she seems to be portrayed.)

[thelonebamf]

I would absolutely love some kind of compendium- maybe something written from the perspective of a character? Although that sometimes brings in the added fun (or frustration) of an unreliable narrator. (An example of that would be the upcoming Adventure Time book from the perspective of Hudson Aberdeen, the demon lord- who isn’t always the most truthful) If that was the case, it would probably have to be from Rumplestiltskin’s perspective, which would be super fun to read- but might not be entirely truthful as far as who was in the right or wrong regarding events. ^_^;;;

"Nothing is easier than to denounce the evildoer; nothing is more difficult than to understand him."

[Keb]

Started on my timeline and realized two things: One, if NeverLondon is our London, and Big Ben was built in 1858, Rumple and Neal are about a hundred years younger than I’ve got them. Two, Rumple killed Milah within six months of losing Bae…which means within a year of becoming the Dark One.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[RumplesGirl]

I don’t think we can use Earth years to determine FTL years. I don’t think it works that way. I think for FTL we have to say X-number of years before the Curse.

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[Keb]

Yes, which is what I’m doing, but there’s still a problem, because time -seems- to work the same in FTL and the Land without Magic. That’s what we saw when Emma and Snow were adventuring over there.

But there are still a lot of variables to fall into place. It just seems like if Rumple’s around 300 and Bae’s a couple hundred years old (the last actually said in the show), the timelines don’t match up neatly.

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[RumplesGirl]

I think time works the same but they don’t develop at the same rate. We are more developed than they were at the Curse. Is this what you mean?

*RG got 2 hours of sleep last night and isn’t quite sure what’s going on in the world anymore*

"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"

[MysteryKat25]

Well hmm. Bae said that he “should be a couple of hundred years old” had he not stopped somewhere in between like Neverland. He was born a couple centuries ago, travelled through TIME and space, landing in OtherLondon in the early 1900s, then going to NL where he presumably stayed til he decided to come to our world around 1991.

So hypothetically it still works. Cause by birthdate to now, he “should” be older, but he didn’t necessarily *spend* that same amount of time anywhere. He made a couple of stops along the way and apparently time-jumped pretty far, begging the question why did the portal send him to OtherLondon (and would it have done so if Rumple was still with him? If so, why would that destination have been in play?)

But this is a timeline issue so I think in answer to the timelines, everything still works, just sounds funny.

Keeper of Hook's Trenchcoat.

[Keb]

Well, I’m going with the relative times they’ve told us so far and I’ll fuss over the details when more data comes in. Anyway, updated with 221 events, and Milah’s death moved a few years earlier than my previous estimate.

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9NzNOek42VEZweVU/edit?usp=sharing

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Myril]

Again, impressed by the work, Keb. Passion for details. b^.^d

Getting slightly tired of fanwanking, as much fun as I have straining my mind to come up with explanations and discussing them. Wonder if they have a concept of time on the show. (warning, this might get longer) :ugeek:

K&H stated there is no time travel on OUaT. Now the interesting question for me is, what do they define as time travel?

They were writers and producers and the TV series Lost. I know Lost was full of time traveling, but it was rather confusing at times (didn’t watch it regularly myself, but am a regular reader of sites/magazines discussing science fiction). They traveled physical in time and with their consciousness in Lost, not to mention there were flashbacks and flashforwards, which are no time travel for the characters, but one can say a form of time travel for the audience, to confuse things sometimes even more for them. Well, thinking about time can give one headaches any time (wrote my master thesis about time-use and time-perception of students, and have been fascinated by our concepts and ideas of time since).

Common definition is, that time travel means people going from a certain point in their time back or forth to another point of time, and I add, without using as much time for their journey as has passed or will pass in normal time between these two moments. Without this clarification, that less time has passed to get from time point A to B than has passed in surrounding time frame, all of our lives would be time travel, just the normal movement in time forward would be. Backward is another thing, hypothetical one could move backwards in time in the same time, and that would not necessarily be defined as time travel, just living a normal time line the other way around, but many would call it time travel as well. So coming to this definition: Time travel is moving in time faster than normal, slower than normal or in a direction, that usually in our linear, normal time frame doesn’t happen. That would only exclude the normal movement from present to future in normal time and pretty much declare every other movement in time as time travel.

In other words: If the difference in departure time and arrival time as measured in the surrounding world is not the same as the duration of the journey, we can talk of time travel. As well a movement in time which is not linear (not progressing in one, forward direction) or not according to our normal movements in time could be called time travel. Note: time travel always defines in relation to something, the surrounding world and/or other people. I might not notice that my movement in time is different from any outer time frame unless I compare it.

Not so sure if that is how K&H are seeing it. They said, there is no time travel and that time is linear, but works differently in different places. here

Time is linear has at first not much to do with physical definitions of time but with philosophical and religious views on time. Linear means progessing in one direction, what normally is defined as progressing from past to present to future, with a beginning and a possible end, different from the idea of cyclical time, where events repeat after a while, although maybe in variations. Linear time is our dominant Western view and concept of time. It all started with a big bang. Additional we see time as something which can be measured, can be broken down into even units independend of our own individual perceptions. Time in physics is not per se linear. It was in the Newton mechanincs, when it still was seen as an independend factor being everywhere the same, but since then things have changed. What brings us not to a cyclical view of time but a non-linear view of time. In physics we now work with the notion, that time is related with space, so some talk of Spacetime. It is hypothetical possible, that for someone in place A two hours went by, while for someone traveling from A to B and back only one hour went by. More so time in physics is in theory not imperatively progressing in one direction but can progress in different directions. We experience or see time progress only in one direction though, so the concept of the Arrow of time was developed to explain this.

Have I lost you in time by now? 😉

I am suspecting that K&H see time travel as merely what H.G. Wells’ time machine would do, to travel back and forth in time, despite that having worked on Lost should provide them with different ideas. The possibility of a charater skipping an amount of time while traversing a portal, the barriers of time and space might not quite count as time traveling in their view. That time works differently, go by differently in different places doesn’t cause any kind of time traveling in that view, when someone moves betweens the realms.

The important part is, that on OUaT time goes into one direction, no one can go back and forth, although time might pass with different pace in different places. Time in Neverland for example might actually pass faster, thus Wendy felt like she had been there like days while for Bae back in Victorian London only a few hours, a night has passed. To compensate for time passing faster in Neverland biological aging is suspended as long as you are there. Different the Enchanted Forest. There it seems like time moves at the same pace as in our world – although that still is giving me headaches, wondering if our fairy tales existed first and they just accidentally lived parts of them, or if the people of the Enchanted Forest are the models for our fairy tales. Anyway, time passed the same way in the Enchanted Forest, they just lived in a different society, which because of magic had no need to develop science and machines as we did. That would mean: The first years of Regina and Snow White, Snow Whites childhood unfolded in the Enchanted Forest while in our world events like Vietnam War, First Moon Landing, Watergate, Coup d’Etat in Chile, Oil crisis, Iranian revolution made headlines, aka the 70s, although most of what we’ve seen in flasback so far, the escalation of things up to the wedding happened while we were in the early 80s.

Possible that the Enchanted Forest was in a different time frame before the curse, and that only with the curse it synchronized with the time frame of our world, so that Snow and Emma didn’t experience any time difference while being there in Post-cursed Enchanted Forest.

If time in Neverland moves faster, like what Wendy said suggests, Bae in his own perception might have spend hundred of years there, while just a few decades might have gone by in our world. So possible that what Bae told Emma, he would be hundred of years old, is based on his own perception, experience of time while being in Neverland (or near to it). If he had come to our world and stayed here he would have been just some decades, maybe 120-150 years old. Quite likely Neal never went to school in our world, so safe to assume he actually has not much of an idea of how much time passed here between Victorian London an present time.

Have K&H ever said something about the overall time frame? I am just wondering. We assume Rumple is about 300 years old, and as far as I know that is only based on an interview of Robert Carleyle. Don’t think that Robert made it up out of the blue, but isn’t it possible, Rumple is younger? Maybe we should forget a while about how old Rumple is and just concentrated on bringing events into the right (linear) order.

That Regina was able to grab the apple she offered Snow White in past Enchanted Forest in present Storybrooke by using Jeffersons hat and magic pretty much contradicts that there is no time travel. Unless, unless … unless the apple accidentally or because of fate got stuck and preserved in some rabbit hole until Regina grabbed it and they just didn’t show it. Or unless Regina didn’t actually conjure that very apple but an exact copy of it including sleeping curse, because the hat is able to materialize something that the user thinks of besides that it offers traveling to different realms. (There is not much I can’t find an explanation for).

Still open, if Bae landed in historical Victorian London or a fictional London. Neal told Emma this world was not his first stop, but well, Neal could have meant, not this world now and here, at this time, in this exact place, people not always talk all precise. 🙄

Or: Despite all efforts to keep track, the timeline in the writers room has become an obscure mess and they simply lost it. 😈

edit: Very much ignoring here that any form of (fictional) time travel will make your head explode when you start thinking about it for longer. 😆

¯\_(?????? ?)_/¯

[Keb]

I’ve been using Rumple’s age as one marker (with the curse as the other, and a few Land Without Magic dates that we’ve been given as a third) because besides the Blue Fairy, he’s the oldest known character and the events of his life are kind of the framework for the show. But yes, he could be significantly less than 300 years old–perhaps 200–I just think we don’t have enough data to assume otherwise right now, when we’ve been given that number. (Though I am thinking of adjusting the 300 to his age when Emma is 28 rather than when the curse is cast on my Timeline–it makes the gaps a generation smaller, at least.)

And yes, time travel always makes my head esplode. And the apple thing has been bugging me ever since season 2 started. I was okay with it in season one because Gold tells August something about “traveling through time and space” when Bae went through the portal. When FTL time and LWM time appeared to be synched up, it messed with my head. And now they’re telling us that not only does aging stop in NL (good, fine) but time also moves -faster- there?

Keeper of Belle's Gold magic, sand dollar, cloaks, purple FTL outfit, spell scroll, library key, copy of Romeo and Juliet, and cry-muffling pillow, Rumple's doll, overcoat, and strength, and The Timeline. My spreadsheet: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6r8CySCCWd9R0RUNm4xR3RhMEU/view?usp=sharing

[Author]

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