AnthonyHypertime

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Ahh. Good old Buffy. The Scoobies as friends, and family. Willow the cybergeek. Xander the sardonic protector of Buffy. An evil vampire threatening Buffy. Kristine Sutherland.

Wait, this is season six we're talking about? Well, hurrah!

Yes, it was gratifying to see some old school Buffy action last night. But, for some, it was even more gratifying the way Mutant Enemy left the door to whether Sunnydale was Buffy's delusion or reality open, and gave the viewer the reigns to interpret the actions. Remember when Buffy used to be ambigious? When Xander's lie could be debated, and equally on both sides? Ahh, those were the days.

So, just as Xander's lie was argued both ways waaaaay back in season two, which is reality? Buffy in the mental institution, or Buffy in Sunnydale?

Not to sound too much like a politician, but I'm going to go with both.

"What?" you say? "That's no kind of answer!" you say? "You suck!" you say? "Damn, them's some good cheese fries," you say? Well huzzuh! Let me explain. The truth lies in Hypertime.

Hypertime? Well, for those uninitiated in the realm of comicdom (and for shame, as you are missing out on some WONDERFUL stuff!), Hypertime is a concept created by comic rockstar and Hindu sex god Grant Morrison, writer of THE INVISIBLES (from which many ideas in the Matrix were flat out stolen, much to Morrison's chagrin), DOOM PATROL (where he managed to get the entire Charles Atlas company pissed at him enough to sue DC Comics for defamation of trademark), NEW X-MEN (currently out on the shelfs, and a trip to read), and, of course, JLA, the comic in which he created Hypertime.

So enough about the man, the myth, the legend. What the hell IS Hypertime? Well, it's a weird concept, and its merits have been discussed at length in comicdom, and I'm sure to screw up some part of the explanation, but here we go.

Imagine a cup. Place the cup upside-down. Encapsulated within the cup is "the multiverse." (Sheepy posted interesting stuff on the concepts behind the multiverse last night, but for now, we'll restrict outselves to the concept of the DC multiverse, in which multiple earths existed, each with their own set of the same characters. Thus, Earth-1 would have the modern Superman who wasn't married to Lois, Earth-2 had the Golden Age Superman who was, Earth-3 had Ultraman, an evil Superman, etc.) In the case we're talking about, the multiverse represents all the possibilities for the "Buffyverse."

Within the Buffy multiverse is contained at least five separate realities we've seen. We'll label them 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 (mostly because I'm sure I've already lost someone).

Buffy-1 is Sunnydale and Los Angeles as they stand within the canonical run of both Buffy and Angel. All the non-otherverse episodes have occurred within Buffy-1.

Buffy-2 is the world of "Normal Again." Vampires and demons don't exist. Rather, Sunnydale is a manifestation of Buffy's schizophrenia, an elaborate and comforting construct of her mind which has begun to break down.

Buffy-3 is the world of "The Wish." Buffy never came to Sunnydale. The Master rose and his minions (including Vamp-Xander and Vamp-Willow) rule the night.

Buffy-4 is the world of "Birthday," where Cordelia never saw Angel at the party in "City of...", and was instead discovered and exists as a gigantic television star. Wesley and Gunn fight evil, Angel is tormented by the visions, and Fred remains in Pylea. Oh, and Angel has finally come out of the closet, falling in love with Doyle and kissing him prior to Doyle's sacrifice in "Hero."

Buffy-5 is the world prior to Angel's deal with the Oracles in "I Will Remember You." Angel is human, and him and Buffy live together in Los Angeles (this is a logical progression from what would have happened had he not made the deal).

This is not, however, to be confused with alternate dimensions. Places such as Pylea, the Hell dimension Angel was sent to, and the Heaven dimension Buffy went to, as well as the demon dimesion Holtz jumped into with Connor, exist within another set of Buffy multiverse specificiations (don't worry, I'll explain later).

Now, back to the cup. Inside the cup, these four realities exist. Now, mentally (or physically) place a straight object through the cup, from one end to the other. That represents Buffy-1. The four-dimensional qualities (three-dimseional space plus time) of it remain static.

Now, place a bent straw through the cup, so that it touches the first straw in two places. That represents Buffy-3. The two places it intersects are "The Wish" and "Dopplegangland," respectively.

Place another straight straw, touching Buffy-1 in one place. That's "Birthday." Place a straw directly on Buffy-1, but that diverges off into its own course, and that's "I Will Remember You" (which is an offshoot of Buffy-1).

Finally, put a straw that zigzags in one point, and place it directly parallel to Buffy-1 so that it overlaps a few times down the road. The intersections, that's "Normal Again."

Okay. You we should have something that looks like an approximation of this:

(Note: The intersections only happen to Buffy-1, the other realities/timelines don't intersect each other. I just can't draw three-dimensionally with Paint.)

Now that you can visualize what's happening, what does it all mean? Well, the concept of Hypertime is that at these intersections, the separate realities merge, and are put directly on top of one another. Thus, parts of each reality remain, and what happens is an amalgamation of the two. Thus, Cordelia in both "The Wish" and "Birthday" remembers the world as it should be, as she remains partially linked to Buffy-1, while the world around her is Buffy-3 and Buffy-4, respectively. Only Angel remembers Buffy-5. And in "Normal Again," it's the constant overlapping of the two realities, with the Buffy of each merging, and being the only one to notice when one supercedes the other.

But, what about alternate dimensions? As I stated previously, alternate dimensions don't pertain to the Hypertime concept (although they do exist hand in hand). Pylea and the Hell/Heaven dimensions are not linked to the show through Hypertime. The Buffyverse has three weighted qualities - dimension, reality, and perception.

DIMENSION

There are a multitude of dimensions on the show, with at least five that I can think of right off the top of my head.

-Earth, where humans reside and where demons have begun to break into from the dimensions they were banished to in the ancient times.

-The Hell dimension Angel was imprisoned in after "Becoming."

-The Heaven dimension Buffy was apparently in after "The Gift."

-Pylea.

-The dimension to which Holtz absconded with Connor.

Not to mention the various dimensions that began to bleed into Earth after the awakening of the Key in "The Gift," and the apparent Hell dimension Glory ruled, which may or may not be the same as the aforementioned hell dimensions. Nonetheless, these dimensions, exist within the same hypertimeline.

One way to visualize alternate dimensions is the way postulated by Warren Ellis and Steven Grant in X-MAN, as a "ladder" of realities structured according to coherance, with the least coherant realities (the Hell dimensions) situated lower on the ladder than the more coherant realities (the Heaven dimensions) situated higher, and with dimensions such as Earth in the middle, as their coherance can be affected by outside forces (the dissolution of the walls between the dimensions, the weaker walls on places such as the Hellmouth, etc). Think of a spiral of Earths, only the bottom more sulferous and the top more ethereal. Within this ladder of Earths exists no twins, or, if twins, they're not different versions of one another (which doesn't gel with the DC concept, but we're adapting some of the ideas for the unique Buffyverse).

REALITY

Reality is what Hypertime affects, in that minor changes in decisions have a major affect on the reality. The same characters exist between alternate realities, and the aforementioned dimensions exist within each individual reality. One example would be a Hypertime where Glory wins, and the dissolution of the barriers between Hell and Earth occurs. The dissolved barriers allow the bottom rung of the hierarchy of dimensions to ascend, or, more likely, allows Earth to descend down the ladder, with realities bleeding together. In a Crisis-level event, Earth becomes one with the Hell-Earths, and they exist as one dimension, which exists as one possible Hypertime. Within different realities, the characters remain the same, but the motivations and histories differ.

Take the epic X-Men story, the Age of Apocolypse. Xavier's son, Legion, travels back in time to kill Magneto before Magneto and his father become enemies, thus allowing the future Xavier to show Legion the love he never had time for. However, he accidentally kills Xavier instead. At this point, the two histories diverge, but at the end of the story, history is put back into place. Since, however, some characters from the Age of Apocolypse jumped over to the Marvel universe proper, an effect like the aforementioned occurs:

Thus, for the universe proper, they remember nothing, but the refugees from the Age of Apocolypse remember nothing but their universe. Thus, the, say, "I Will Remember You" hypertimeline could eventually return to the Buffy-1 hypertimeline, and the two could merge, with, say, Buffy and Angel's child a refugee in a terribly confusing world.

Or, in a more chaos theory style alternate reality example, in the Jurassic era, a dinosaur steps on the flower, meaning a bug didn't get the nourishment it needs and dies, and thus one of the first mammals has less offspring, setting off a chain reaction that means the outcome of the 2000 Election was different. Read Bradbury's "The Sound of Thunder" for an example of this sort of Hypertimeline.

PERCEPTION

So what does perception have to do with it? Perception is what could be considered, in the Judeo-Christian sense, the mind and soul. The awareness of your surroundings. Hypertime is a serious of changed perceptions, whereas dimension skipping, ala Angel's Pylea jaunt, involved the entire body moving between dimensions. One of the most confusing parts of Hypertime are the relationships between dimensions, reality, and perception of those two factors.

So what does that all this gibberish mean for the show? Basically, that everything happened, and no actions are nullified. The world of "The Wish" still exists, with a new Slayer called and fighting evil (but sadly, a pile of dust where leather wearing Willow used to be *sob*). The world of "Birthday" still exists, with Cordelia as a huge star who presumably is helping Wesley and Gunn financially in their fight. And, most importantly, BOTH realities of "Normal Again" will continue on.

Which means, effectively, Buffy's decision to live in Buffy-1 destroyed the Buffy of Buffy-2, convincing that iteration to retreat into her fantasy world for good. Which is a kind of dark premise when you think about it. But that's not the only example of Hypertime's dark effects on Buffy.

Back when it was introduced, there was a big to-do about this amongst DC comics fans, because they believed that Hypertime would be used to undo the Crisis (in which the multiverse was condensed into a single universe) and to fix lazy writing.

Which brings me to my next point. The current season of Buffy HAS to exist in Hypertime. It's the only way to reconcile a few of the plot threads.

Take Spike. Spike acts differently in each episode, right? Well, that's because two different realities keep intersecting, with only Spike different in each. Thus, when you see good Spike, the reality of Buffy-6 (a world where Spike is just a big fluffy puppy with bad teeth) has superceded the reality of Buffy-1, where Spike is evil. Remember that jarring torpedoing of the interesting abuse of power storyline? Well, what happened was the reality of Buffy-7, where magic is a drug and addictive, collided with the reality of Buffy-1, where Willow was letting the power go to her head, superceding the good storyline for the terrible storyline.

Which, to me, is great, because somewhere, in some reality, that never happened, and season six of Buffy is the best ever!!!!! Yay! ;p

Seriously... I think that's what's going on. Joss, and most of the writers, are comics fans, and I'm sure he's familiar with the concept of Hypertime. Which means, of course, that fabled Buffy/Blade crossover could happen if Buffy and Blade's hypertimelines intersect.

Man, thinking of a good season six (and, hey, perhaps a Buffy-verse where Spike's a big pile of dust... ooh, I got a happy), I love Hypertime. It could mean the season is still salvagable once Buffy-6 and Buffy-7 STOP INTERSECTING WITH BUFFY-1!!!

I love Hypertime with almost as much of my heart as I f'ing HATE HATE HATE THE CRAP MY ROOMMATE IS REHEATING IN THE MICROWAVE! ARGH!

This has been a science-physics announcement from Anthony.

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