I wanna know why is c the top speed. Is it a property of the vacuum or something?
It is the property of the spacetime. That was the main discovery of the Special Relativity: that we all live in the SpaceTime, and separate space and time do not play any role in the reality. The spacetime interval is the underlying unified notion behind our usual space distances and time periods, and it has a boundary between space-like and time-like values. This boundary looks like a cone, and it is called the light cone, and the slope of its side depicts the top speed. Coincidentally, this speed turned out to be the speed of light - no deep sense behind that coincidence. But after that, the usual term for this speed became "the speed of light", which is a bit unfair and diverting from its physical essence.
Since every physical phenomenon takes place in the spacetime, every physical law is affected by the Special Relativity: we have to substitute distances and times by spacetime intervals. Thus,
becomes a property of everything: of light and other waves, of photons and other particles, of the electromagnetic field and other fields, of vacuum and non-vacuum states, and so on. But choosing any particular case from this list diminishes the significance of
It is a really all-pervading quantity, describing the nature of the spacetime itself.
At what point does this whole business of motion backwards in t starts for a photon and why?
It is hard to describe briefly. I suggest you reading some GR textbook (actually, first you need an SR textbook), for example, these two:
Taylor, Wheeler: Spacetime Physics. (an SR textbook, freshman level)
Misner, Thorne, Wheeler: Gravitation. (a GR textbook, senior student level at least)
Also, how does a photon interacts with gravity. What is the mechanism involved in that?
It is just the same quantum interaction as the interaction of electrons with light (and electric and magnetic field). The vertices are similar:
For the deeper explanations, please read:
Feynman: QED, The Strange Theory of Light and Matter (popular level), or any QFT textbook.
Feynman, Morinigo, Wagner: Feynman Lectures on Gravitation. (an application of the QFT approach to the gravitation, senior student level at least)
How come nothing can escape a black hole, but gravity waves do??
Gravitational waves
do not escape a black hole. Gravitation is not the same thing as gravitational waves. A black hole does have a static gravitation. But if something inside the black hole would emit gravitational waves, they would not escape the event horizon. If someone talks about gravitational waves emitted by a black hole, that means the black hole is moving as a whole, and thus gravitational waves are created, as they would be created by any moving gravitating body. This whole process takes place outside the event horizon.