This was inspired by a separate post of people discussing how it had to've been a year in that other place since Jay's watch battery died. I'd like to argue that the year timeline is actually a bit of an average? it could in fact be much, much longer. (Special thanks to @imsogayyippee, this post is entirely thanks to the small convo I had with them-)
Before we begin, I'd like to say that first off this is my first post on Tumblr so if things are fucky-wucky that's why. Apologies in advance!
First off, I wanna say that I'm going to be keeping this theory laser-focused on the chronological/timeline aspects of Rosswood itself, I don't know if the place they ended up in was The Ark or the Otherworld or something else entirely. I'll toss some ideas at the bottom of the post relating to other things.
This theory began in my head at the eleven minute mark of Rosswood: Part 4 with Jay mentioning it is (again) 10:31 P.M, making it three days since they'd arrived at the hospital ruins. Some important things to keep in mind here are:
>Jay holding the flashlight up to the watch
>The design of the watch itself
This is important because we can discern that this isn't a smartwatch but rather a digital watch with no backlit display. This is important because while I myself am not able to figure out the exact model of watch (tried to do so myself, it is genuinely impossible to discern and if we assume the watch itself is being used for its intended purpose IRL then the wristband could've been replaced.
But how does this tell us they were in the other place for a really long time, Anorak? You fu-
Traditional digital watches last so long because they're often
> Totally offline devices with no internet capability, they are 'dumb'watches.
> Have a non-backlit display that also only ever updates itself when it needs to (i.e when the time is changing, the stopwatch is being used, etc.)
>Utilize lithium ion batteries (from a quick Amazon search the most common one is the CR2016 button cell style batteries)
The battery life of a digital watch can still very wildly however, so what's the range? Well, uh-
And we know based on how well prepared they were for only one day's worth of shooting that they had plenty of batteries and SD cards for filming, staying the night, etc (They even brought food and water that was immediately lost).
Assuming that Jay's watch had at least half its battery life we're looking at a possible range of six months to five years out to ten if its anywhere in between.
I could be wrong. Maybe Jay's watch battery was extremely low, or perhaps it ended up damaged as a result of Jay stumbling through the dark and hitting it on something/falling over. But it does make an already bleak storyline even more hopeless.
Nothing to taste or see, hearing the same noise over and over again.
Nothing but the rotting stench of a decaying building and the surrounding forest trapped in a cosmic snowglobe.
Additional notes:
We can safely assume that the scraping noise we hear throughout the video-series was the camera being dragged repeatedly after End-Jay sets it down and wanders out into the dark (if we're being flowery, maybe the camera itself was quite literally being dragged through time WHEEZE)
Alex likely either hit his head on one of the many, many pipes, electrical lights, etc. or (if we approach it as a reference to the Stigmata sequence from the original series), bashes his own head in to kill himself because he could no longer endure the loneliness and torture of being trapped at Rosswood. Considering his habit of wandering off on his own as well as the still present aggression and headstrong nature we see Alex possessing in Rosswood, both are likely (the latter concept feels fitting since Alex absolutely would spite whatever entity is hunting them and keeping them trapped by going out in whatever way he so chose).