History WMG / TheLangoliers

[[WMG: The Langoliers eat AcceptableTargets in their eyes.]]

Note how quickly they home in on Toomy and the plane when they arrive. Yes, they're eating everything along the way, but they take a special side-trip to munch on Toomy and the airport where he'd been, and then try to take out the plane.

* It could be possible that they're attracted to Toomy not because he's from an active timeline, but because he was winding down like everything else there, but to a major degree more than the others.

[[WMG: Toomy's father genuinely knew about the Langoliers, but he only knew half the story.]]
Every legend starts with a grain of truth. Toomy Sr. might have known about these creatures that ate the past (by some means; this ''is'' the King-verse, after all), but he interpreted that to mean they ate up people who wasted time. Keep moving forward in time, don't get left behind, and they won't eat you up.

[[WMG: Toomy Sr. did this before.]]

* The problem with this is that if Toomy Sr. did something like this before, he would know that simply wasting time isn't a problem. Nor is it a metaphoric "stuck in the past" that is a problem. It is getting stuck literally in the past, which doesn't happen unless some freak accident occurs. There is ProperlyParanoid and then there is the [[AbusiveParents abusive parenting]] instigating MindRape ForTheEvulz that Toomy Sr. does.
* Then again, how many of Our Intrepid Heroes are going to be necessarily completely mentally stable [[GoMadFromTheRevelation now that they know what happens to the past]]? Different people cope in different ways, and it's plausible that Toomy Sr.'s brain broke more than most.

* "Why, then," I hear you asking, "are the langoliers so similar to what Toomy ''pere'' told Toomy ''fils'' they were?" Well...

Toomy's mind is, and has long been, utterly consumed by his terror of the langoliers, a condition only intensified by his sudden and unaccustomed lack of control over his circumstances. While everyone's increasingly afraid of the thing they sense coming, Toomy is the only one who ''knows'' exactly what's coming for him. He knows it with every fiber of his being, beyond any possibility of doubt. So that's the form it takes.
* In which case, both Dinah and Toomy might have an even larger role in the escape than the narration explicitly gives them. Dinah's shown to be perceptive in ways that most people, including the rest of the passengers, aren't; she's the first not only to sense what's coming, but to grasp the nature of the threat it presents. She's in and out of Toomy's head throughout the story, and she's present when Toomy talks about the langoliers and how terrified he was of his father, who told him about them.\\
If the ClockRoaches were ''only'' ClockRoaches, why would she imagine that using Toomy to bait them away from the plane would work? But if she could tell that Toomy's terror had pressed its shape onto them, she'd know that they'd chase him first if he were running away, and thus that he'd make an effective decoy. The story's clear on the point that she ''did'' know that; she tells Nick not to kill Toomy, because, she says, ''they need him''. Had Nick [[MercyKill finished him off]] instead of leaving him alive to act as bait, the langoliers would've headed straight for the plane, and no one would have made it out. And, had Toomy and his head full of crazy not been along from the start, the langoliers wouldn't have ''been'' langoliers; the final collapse of reality would instead have taken some form not so amenable to distraction, and no one would have made it out.

* Ladies and gentlemen, I think this theory has just achieved Lovecraftian levels of cosmic paranoia.

* Perhaps they rush to eat time travelers in order to prevent the kind of disaster seen in 11/22/63.

* Given King's propensity for CanonWelding, this would make a surprising amount of sense. ''Literature/DoctorSleep'' establishes a few things about the Shining that would actually reinforce this theory, particularly its propensity to manifest most strongly in children around the ages of ten through thirteen - in other words, Dinah's age.

* Given King's propensity for CanonWelding, this would make a surprising amount of sense. ''Literature/DoctorSleep'' establishes a few things about the Shining that would actually reinforce this theory, particularly its propensity to manifest most strongly in children around the ages of ten through thirteen - in other words, Dinah's age.
[[WMG: The awakened passengers were actually [[Film/{{Millennium}} sent into the future]].]]

[[WMG: Dinah has the [[Literature/TheShining Shining]].]]

* Of course, the only reason any of this is really in question in anyone's mind is because the film, by nature, [[AdaptationInducedPlotHole has a hard time conveying any of it]]. The novella, with the benefit of a narrator who tells the reader more about what's going on than the characters in the story can know, [[AllThereInTheManual doesn't suffer such structural problems]].

If the ClockRoaches were ''only'' ClockRoaches, why would she imagine that using Toomy to bait them away from the plane would work? But if she could tell that Toomy's terror had pressed its shape onto them, she'd know that they'd chase him first if he were running away, and thus that he'd make an effective decoy. The story's clear on the point that she ''did'' know that; she tells Nick not to kill Toomy, because, she says, ''they need him''. Had Nick [[MercyKill finished him off]] instead of leaving him alive to act as bait, the langoliers would've headed straight for the plane, and no one would have made it out. And, had Toomy and his head full of crazy not been along from the start, the langoliers wouldn't have ''been'' langoliers; the final collapse of reality would instead have taken some form not so amenable to distraction, and no one would have made it out.

Lacking a vehicle of their own, or arms in which to carry sleeping ones, there's no way they can possibly travel through the rip unconsious.

Toomy's mind is, and has long been, utterly consumed by his terror of the langoliers, a condition only intensified by his sudden and unaccustomed lack of control over the circumstances. While everyone's increasingly afraid of the thing they sense coming, Toomy is the only one who ''knows'' exactly what's coming for him. He knows it with every fiber of his being, beyond any possibility of doubt. So that's the form it takes.

[[WMG: the "must be asleep" condition is meant to keep the Langoliers out of the present]]

[[WMG: Toomy's father genuinely knew about the Langoliers, but he only knew half the story.]]
Every legend starts with a grain of truth. Toomy Sr. might have known about these creatures that ate the past (by some means; this ''is'' the King-verse, after all), but he interpreted that to mean they ate up people who wasted time. Keep moving forward in time, don't get left behind, and they won't eat you up.

How else would he know about the Langoliers. He seemed genuinely scared for young Craig's life rather than simply delusional. Who knows, he and a couple friends have probably went back in time, and witnessed it barely escaping with their lives. His warped mind from the experience led him to believe that they constantly follow those that stay still until the active timeline becomes dead past.

* Then again, how many of Our Intrepid Heroes are going to be necessarily completely mentally stable [[GoMadFromTheRevelation now that they know what happens to the past]]? Different people cope in different ways, and it's plausible that Toomy Sr.'s brain broke more than most.

** [[http://weknowmemes.com/2011/10/well-i-guess-thats-that/ Welp]].