The Mechanics and Time Of Storybrooke
By Manny F
Update:
Storybrooke, from my simple addition and subtraction and the clear clues left for us by the writers in the Pilot episode, came into existence on the same day Emma was born. Snow gives birth to Emma and minutes later Regina walks in to take possession of the infant Emma. Regina fails and unleashes the Dark Curse, at which point ALL in FairyTale land cross over to Storybrooke. Storybrooke is born.
Thus, Emma and Storybrooke share the same birth date. Emma drives into Storybrooke for the first time, with Henry, displaying DEC ’11 tags,…. that’s December, 2011 Massachusetts registration tags on her Volkswagen Beetle license plate (rear only). The writers show us this plate 2 or 3 times. The writers tell us, (I’ve lost count of how many times), that it is Emma’s 28th birthday!
Henry arrives that night in Boston claiming to be 10 years old. (sorry for being out of sequence, but the tags are the most important here) Henry asks Emma, “Ten years ago, did you give up a baby for adoption?” Now that’s twice the writers have told us that Henry is 10. Henry says it twice in the scene and Emma will confirm in several more episodes that she gave birth to Henry at the age of 18.
Let us review, shall we?… 2011(tags)- 28(bday yrs)= 1983. So Emma is born, to the day!. Emma and Storybrooke share the same birth date. So whatever the date was on that day in 1983. We know that Emma gave birth to Henry at 18 years of age, so… 1983 + 18 = 2001. So Henry is born in 2001. We know Henry is 10 years old. So… 2001 + 10 = 2011.
Now, in order for Henry to be 10 ON Emma’s 28th birthday, and the rest of the writer’s statements to remain truthful together,….Emma would have to have given birth to Henry ON her 18th birth date!…. One day later and Henry is still 9 yrs old on Emma’s 28th,…. One day sooner and Emma is giving birth as a 17 year old. Either way renders the writers statements as untrue. So the ONLY way that this can be is if Emma has Henry on her 18th birthday, in a Phoenix, Arizona jail. “Tallahassee” later confirms Henry’s birth in the year 2001 as well.
So, Storybrooke, Emma and Henry all share the same birthday. Emma and Storybrooke ?/?/1983, and Henry, same/same/2001. Easy right!?…. No theories, no arguments, “>_<" just plain, old,.... as President Clinton would say, "Arithmetic!!"
Let's review, shall we?...(lol) Storybrooke comes into existence in
1983 and is frozen in time. Which suggests that time never existed in Storybrooke, does it not? So when we say that Emma came to Storybrooke and "re-started" time, it's not exactly accurate is it? Emma came to Storybrooke and "started" time, would you agree?. Now, from here forward we have to apply logic and theorize what Storybrooke was like for 28 years before Emma's arrival.
I'm forced to believe, from the clues and statements left behind by the writers that Storybrooke came into existence, not only in the Fall of 1983, but, on one of these three dates. September 11th, 1983,..... October 9th, 1983, or...... what I believe Kitsis and Horowitz were forced to take! October 23rd, 1983. But, for now, let's put those dates on the back burner and get back to Storybrooke. We will visit those dates and reasons later.
In order for time to be frozen, a certain length of time needs to repeat, right? 0 to 0 would be stand still frozen....nobody moves!,...nothing moves, right? 0 to 24hrs would be a day, and then everything resets, so to speak, right?... An all day, normal day takes place and when you wake up in the morning you do the same thing all over again, like in "Groundhog Day", right?....
Well, the length of time that repeats in Storybrooke "HAS" to be a year long, with a reset occurring on it's annual Fall birth date, which I proved, with simple math above, Storybrooke shares with Emma and Henry, remember? A whole year beginning in Fall would allow Henry to get the education he has, thus far, without doing anything other than showing up for school.
It's genius! For a whole solid year, from Fall to Fall, everybody in Storybrooke goes about their day and business, oblivious. Henry goes to Kindergarten when he turns 5 in the Fall of 2006 and the following year Regina simply advances him herself to the next grade, class and teacher, assuring herself that Henry misses nothing as the school year naturally begins in Fall, which I might add, that if this reset, that must take place, in order for the statement, "frozen in time" to remain true, were to reset in any other season than Fall, Henry's school year and education would suffer time gaps and would not work.
A full year, Fall to Fall, also allows Henry to keep track of his birthday, which is in Fall, same as Emma's and the annual reset, which is Storybrooke's birthday as well. Every year the same kids go to the same grade, class, and teacher, except.... Henry! No one ages, except Henry!,.... No one advances in grade,....except Henry! You have to figure by fourth grade that Henry noticed that his friends from Kindergarten are not only still in Kindergarten, but are still 5 years old!,...And don't remember who he is the day after the reset.... which occurs annually on his birthday! Nobody at his school or in Storybrooke would remember who he was the day after the reset. Remember!,... I'm not writing FanFic here, logistically this is what Henry had to endure, or pretty close to it as he was not affected by the Dark Curse and aged normally.
Storybrooke, frozen in 1983, would not have needed deliveries, as there was no true consumption of goods that did not get reset annually, but was not cut off to the outside world if one was needed, before Emma's arrival. We know this because before Emma's arrival, Henry not only had a computer, but had an internet connection and made a purchase over the net for information about his birth mother, Emma, and apparently caught a Grey Hound Bus out of Storybrooke to Boston! Emma also had her belongings shipped directly to Mary Margret's apartment from Boston TO Storybrooke! So the outside world knew of Storybrooke long before Emma came to Storybrooke and started Time.
Under this theory of an annual reset, which must be, to keep the frozen in time statement true,... the people of Storybrooke have not really been here for 28 years. That is to say, they've not experienced a 28 year existence, physically. In reality, they've only been here for a year, but have repeated that same year 28 times, equating to 28 years of OUR time where you and I aged 28 years and they did not.
Even though they experience a years time, Fall of 1983 to the Fall of 1984, at the end of that year's time they're reset and returned to the Fall of 1983 and the exact point of where they crossed over, only to repeat it all again. It's also much easier to except that David didn't really lie in that hospital bed for 28 years, or that Ashley carried around that full pregnancy for 28 years, it was only a year's time physically for both, and then they were reset..... Except!, of course, for those few in Storybrooke who did experience all 28 years.
For 28 years Regina lived out her fantasy,... her Victory! Until Emma arrived and started Time. Now all bets are off. People are consuming supplies, time is marching forward with no reset in sight. That means real deliveries, real consumption and regular humans on a daily basis in and out of Storybrooke. Emma has started Time which means Storybrooke of Fall, 1983 begins to move forward!....right in line AND syncronized to the identical time and calendar of Fall 2011. Storybrooke will follow us side by side on the same calendar but in 1983, while being matched day for day in 2011.
The significance of Emma's 28th birthday was to use the repetitive nature of our calendar system, which repeats itself every 28 years. The writers have ingeniously chosen to use this method to track time, and to keep Henry from suffering from the "Walt Syndrome" from LOST.... note* They are also using our current lunar cycle as well.
The dates I promised to revisit, from up above, I'll have to explain in a second installment of the Mechanics of Storybrooke, as this one has reached it's limit.
P.S. I predict they will show us a scene that we ALL have already seen take place, and then it will hit you. What we figured back in the early first season seems to be exactly how it happened.
They did repeat the same year, over & over again, til Emma arrived and started time. But this will be the first week of the Dark Curse, so the only true history ever made in Storybrooke was this first year of the Dark Curse. Fall of 1983 to the Fall of 1984,... then they are reset, and do it all over again, 28 more times til Emma's arrival. Regina was the only one to know,...apart from Jefferson who could only watch from inside his house through a telescope,...AND The Blue Fairy, who I'm convinced had her memories all along and was August's go between connection on the outside, (meaning our world) and was probably the author of Henry's book, as the writers said that August was not the author last year. I believe Blue to be responsible for Henry coming to Storybrooke as well, through August.
But I thought I would remind of the original theory about Storybrooke we came up with back in 2011 as I believe we're going to get a confirmation on it.
