Stark wrote:We're treating this thread as spoilered right?
So, one thing I didn't get, was why Joey suddenly got to live, if River was removed? Also, why did the young John not like olives, but he did later?
It's kind of hard to explain and some parts of the story are probably open to interpretation. From what I remember, this is how I understand it. His desire to go to the moon was really a desire to re-unite with River(which becomes clear when you see the flashback to their first meeting). That desire was tied to some guilt and regret over the hardship in their marriage and guilt and regret over the manner of her death, which are all things that were tied to him forgetting the first night they met, the loss of that memory being tied to the aftereffects of his brother's death. It's all sort of connected.
Also, Rosalene didn't feel that it was possible to fulfill his desire to re-unite with River, instead she decided to fulfill his literal desire, to go the moon, in order to fulfill their contract. His brother being alive helped keep him motivated to fulfill that goal of joining NASA and going to the moon, and River not being in his life kept him from getting distracted from that goal. So she removed River from his memories and added new memories of his brother living(though she did this with the hope that his love for River would somehow re-introduce her into the new memory timeline she created for him)
I think you could also argue that removing the memory of him meeting River, would essentially rewrite the timeline of his memories, meaning his brother wouldn't have died. It's that whole idea of changing one thing in a time line and having other events play out completely differently as a result
The olive thing I interpreted as John's way, perhaps subconsciously, of remembering his brother. That's why he started liking olives, the way his brother used to
Re-reading my post I realize it probably sounds pretty confusing
