a very simplified way of looking at the timeline

[mike12]

i don't know if this is true but it's what i believe anyway.

i don't think any single event triggered the beginning of the tangent universe.

"Artifacts provide the first sign that a Tangent
Universe has occurred."

artifacts do not trigger the tangent universe. I think the tangent universe starts simply because there is a glitch in the passing of time. if you want to go further, God, or a divine intervention chooses living receiver and shows him how to fix this fault in time, and to return things to normal. to donnie there is no artifact, he doesn't know verbatim that his goal is to get a jet engine through a portal. he simply follows directions.

donnie isn't supposed to live or die. he just ends up dying because he wakes up from what he thought was a dream and the last thing on his mind is a jet engine falling on him.

"the only physical evidence
buried within the Artifact itself, all that remains from
the lost world.

....Ancient myth tells us of the Mayan Warrior killed
by an Arrowhead that had fallen from a cliff, where
there was no Army, no enemy to be found. "

lastly, people in the primary universe have no clue that the artifact signifies that a tangent universe ever existed. they think it's an act of god. Indeed it is God's act of fixing a malfunction in time.

"their appearance on Earth seems to defy logical explanation. Divine Intervention is deemed the only logical conclusion for the appearance of the Artifact."

if you want a visual description of the timeline of the movie, tell me and i'll get my pen and paper ready.

[that guy]

Please do get out the pen and paper.

Other thoughts.

By most definitions, God is a perfect being and can do anything. So, why does he not just fix time to get rid of the tangent problem? Why did a perfect being create something with such a great imperfection?

Maybe God is unable to fix this problem he created and He then must depend on human help to reconcile the creation of tangent universes.

Maybe God temporarily suspends free will for The Manipulated but is unable (or unwilling) to suspend the choice of the Living Receiver. So, he uses The Manipulated to direct the Living Receiver to hopefully make the right choice in the end.

If God is merely unwilling to suspend choice for The Living Receiver, then The Living Receiver becomes the ultimate representative to prove the worthiness of the human race. And, Donnie, in true hero fashion, chooses to save us all. Quite the Jesus figure. Maybe there have been many "Jesus" over time that are the human saviors of the world.

At any given moment, time could become corrupted and anyone could become The Living Receiver or one of The Manipulated. Therefore, we never know when the decision to do the "right thing" may actually decide the fate of the Universe.

But, the movie is not entirely about saving the Universe. It is about believing that love can inspire humans to display that magical hero quality that exists within us all, despite all the evidence to the contrary, where we are willing to save the world even at our own peril.

Or something like that....hh

[thatsgross]

Mike, I like your post. It's always good when you can tie a theory back in with the book. I think that's where a lot of these complicated theories go wrong; if things got much more complicated, Roberta would have mentioned them in the book.

You're right in a way... Donnie doesn't have to live or die. It is not his death that's important. It's his CHOICE to die that is. He must realize that when everything goes back, he'll be in his room before the jet engine falls. His death is a result of the end of the tangent universe. He knows that's just how it is.

[mike12]

here's my sketch of the timeline of the movie.

www.geocities.com/redtwohundred/ddtime.jpg

Oct. 2 is the beginning and end of the Tangent Universe loop which lasts 28 days and 6 hours. The movie begins slightly before that and ends slightly after that.

'that guy' i hear what you're saying. all i wanted to do was give a clear structure of the events that happen in the movie. as for the meaning of it all, it has yet to be polished.

"We are told that these things occur for a reason." is the last line of the book.

maybe God did create the tangent universe. maybe he was trying to teach donnie something. this is where the "every living thing dies alone" comes into play as well as donnie's quest to find out if he is indeed alone. maybe God did intervene to show donnie something, and created a whole new temporary universe with only one clue left behind, the jet engine which in the primary universe makes no sense. that would be like waking up the next morning and finding your walls painted red. to YOU it doesn't mean anything, but it's the footprint of something that happened. God works in mysterious ways and does mysterious things.

[mike12]

P.S.
a line that touches a circle in only one point is called a tangent.