Happy Lost Day! Almost There...

Ok, the thought struck me today, but it just seems silly to me: what if, when Ben moves the Island, it sort of becomes "the present" to everyone there - Dharma, Others, Losties, Tailies, Black Rockers, Ancient Others, Whisperers, etc. At some point, it would pull out of that craziness, but it would sort of account for the always-in-the-present nature of the promos we've been seeing.
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Ugh. It's just going to be nuts. Nothing to do now but wait.

I was tempted to have a Lost party, I've done them in the past for 24 (complete with 24 ouncers) and other shows but I just can't stand that there is always someone there who doesn't know the show and either talking the entire time or is asking everyone who is that, what's their deal, etc.

To get ready for S5, my fiance and I have spent the last month or so re-watching the whole series online. We came up with two new ideas after watching it for the 2nd time. The first is that the Black Rock got to be in the middle of the island because someone moved the island once and it materialized right underneath it. The second is that Charles Widdmore was the captain of the Black Rock (he's got a painting of it in his office and was seen bidding on the diary of a black rock shipman) and doesn't age like Richard.

"just how long has the Island been inhabited anyway?"
In the low thousands of years (say, 2 to 4 thousand). No guarantee it was continuously inhabited though...
"What happened to the Island when Ben pushed the wheel at the end of last season?"
The Island and everyone on it traveled X (decades? hundreds?) of years into the past (so presumably there are two Islands then).
Now, I've heard some people argue that The Island doesn't travel in time, as much as the FDW mechanism serves as an anchor, and everyone on The Island travels back in time, landing on The Island in an earlier era (i.e. there is only one Island in existence at any time). My argument against this is if it was just the people on The Island, as opposed to The Island as a whole, that traveled in time, then The Island would still exist in the O6 time period (but empty). Unless events in the past by the Island-Losties caused the entire Island to be destroyed, such that in the O6 "present" the Island then ceases to exist as a result, rather than being moved. Hmm....
"What's the difference between the two phenomena?"
Different sources - Desmond's mental time traveling is a result of the "electromagnetic shell" around The Island; moving the Island is a result of fiddling with the FDW.
(Unless the previous question is answered via the "anchor" idea - the Islanders traveled to the Island in the past, rather than the Island itself moving, in which case we could have the same phenomena: in this case the anchor is literally Desmond's mind, and his 2004 consciousness moved back to the anchor (his grey matter mind) in the past.)
"But is that actually true?"
Not enough info. We don't know if Ms. Hawking's statements were just to get Desmond (and others) in the correct positions or if the universe is self-correcting, 12 Monkeys style, and your attempts to change the past just directly lead to what you wanted to avoid. I will point out that we did not see Claire get on a helicopter with an infant Aaron, and am therefore discounting anything Ms. Hawking has said until I get good reason not to.
"Whose side is Ben Linus on now?"
His own. Remember, Ben was rather ticked to be kicked off The Island (though, again, "Jacob" (if he exists in any way) had little to do with the matter). But I feel that, after Ben finds out how badly Locke pooched things on his watch, he will want to go back mostly for his own needs (to show that he's the superior one who should be leading). Problem being for Ben that there's no guarantee the "people" giving him advice are actually on "The Island"'s side...

@James -- as per tradition, I will be enjoying Lost with friends as we drink bourbon and eat steak at the (newly re-located) Chaddogg Hatch/Condo.
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@iheller -- I gotta believe you are correct. The Black Rock was VERY far inland, and movement of the island (in time and/or space) caused the ship to be shipwrecked there. I believe similar things happened to cause polar bears to inhabit the island, and/or Yemi's plane.
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As for the Whispers, I'm wondering if they (along with Jacob, perhaps) are some type of time displacement phenomenon -- you hear them when you're in the same space as people from another time who have joined the island in your current time, but you cannot see them because doing so would destroy the time-space continuum. In other words, the whispers are actually perhaps the leftover Losties "seeing" something happen in the island's past and being there for it, but not able to intervene or be seen because they are actually from a much later time.

@Tom Shaw -- I agree that there can only be one physical island, but believe that it moves thru time and space, and thus can have greater or fewer inhabitants depending on "when" it is in the timeline. Because matter is "finite" (i.e. you cannot create matter), when the inhabitants of the island at a certain time "jump" in time, their consciousnesses experience the jump but their physical bodies do not. Thus, if Sawyer et al jump back in time (before they were there), they can "experience" the island and see past inhabitants/events, but not participate in them until they "crash" again in that timeline (at which point their consciousnesses are "rebooted" to include the events they experienced albeit without physical matter).
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The Losties thus become "the whispers" in a past version of the island. Heard but not seen, witnessing events happen that they cannot participate in.
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Where does this lead?
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To the conclusion that, at some point, Christian Shepard was on the island while alive. And THAT is why he appears to Jack, and in the cabin as Jacob, etc. With his body there (but dead) he can "appear"....
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Crazy theory?

Maybe the island goes forward in time from 2004 to 2007. That way the on-island and off-island storylines would be happening concurrently (no flashbacks or flash-forwards). Maybe that's why Locke has to be dead off island? To be in two places at the same time? Or not? This makes my head hurt.

Here's the interesting thing about Christian Shepherd that doesn't get much thought: he appears to Jack in his suit, the last thing Jack saw him wear; he appears to Claire scruffy and in the last clothes Claire saw him wear. It seems like, while Christian is a core part of Island voodoo (he can speak on Jacob's behalf), he's still a reflection of the person he is approaching. We've heard Frank Duckett's voice in the whispers around Sawyer. Whatever the deal is with the Island voodoo, it sure seems to drudge up people's inner demons.
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I still hold that the Island moved to the future, appeared when Ben did, and Locke and Daniel used other space-time sensitive areas (possibly just like the FDW, but not necessarily) to travel through time and/or space to get to places we've seen them. I suspect Locke uses more than one of these locations, because he appears to go back in time on the Island itself, based on the previews.
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On that note, some of the images we see in the previews would be explained by the Island disappearing into sort of an Island purgatory, where everything is in the present. (I'm being intentionally vague about the previews, because I know some folks avoid them, while I obsess over them for details )
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What if the Whisperers are Ms. Hawking's people?

@sunnysbud - I think Locke traveled back in time and off the Island (see my previous post), and the reason he used a fake name was because the John Locke we've watched in flashbacks for 4 seasons is living his normal live. If he went by John Locke in his new, past off-Island life, questions would arise when John Locke died on Oceanic 815, with eerily similar pictures to post-time-travel John Locke
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Hey, I didn't say it would make much sense.
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My favorite part about right now is that in 5 hours, we're all going to be laughing at how ridiculous all of our theories were.

Wow, happy LOST day x 5 to you too! I've been counting the hours. . .I'm so excited! Oh and wish Mrs Tuned in Happy Birthday for me!

This. Is. Blowing. My. Mind.

Here's my theory: http://dowdblog.wordpress.com