Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT

Passage of time in QC...

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eschaton:
In the current weekly comic thread, somebody cited a post Jeph made three years ago about the ages of the different characters.  I was surprised, because despite their being eight years of development at that point, all of the characters were still the same age as the start of the comic.  E.g. Marten is still 24 or 25 (never been said), Dora is still 26, etc.  This means in the entire are of the comic to that point that presumably only a year of in-comic time (or less) had gone past.  In a sense this isn't surprising.  AFAIK there was only one time that Jeph skipped time ahead - during Marten and Dora's relationship.  Which was probably a good choice, because given the pacing of the comic if it only skips forward a day or two at a time, they wouldn't have had anything resembling a long-term relationship.  It also puts the development of characters into perspective - people are going through incredibly huge changes in only a year's time!

The question remains though - what is actually happening regarding time in QC.  I note a couple of things:

1.  No one (IIRC) has had a birthday during the strip.  This would seem to say that people are actually pepetually at their current age, Simpsons like.  However, characters (most recently Tai) have graduated from college in strip, which would seem to suggest people are still achieving milestones.

2.  Early on in the thread, Marten is explicitly shown with a yearbook from HS with 1998 on it.  This would seem to imply that QC remains about a decade in the past compared to us.  However, people have Iphones and the like, which seems to suggest it's somehow become contemporary.  Unless having iphones and the like is just part of the weird futuretech that the QCverse has access to. 

Anyway, I was wondering if anyone else had more ideas regarding this.

Half Empty Coffee Cup:
I find it fascinating how the strip seems to Dorian Gray it without it being noticeable. That said, I think a birthday arc might be interesting.

Also, there was one point at which the seasons switched sort of suddenly. Someone might have quietly had a birthday in that period.

Is it cold in here?:
Hannelore had a birthday.

Some previous work on this topic:
http://questionablecontent.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline
http://forums.questionablecontent.net/index.php/topic,17911.0.html
http://forums.questionablecontent.net/index.php/topic,21689.0.html

BenRG:
With sequential art, the passage of time is always inconsistent. A major event can turn a single night into months of strips whilst the action can then jump weeks or even months to take up the action with the next significant event.

There has been one winter in Northampton shown that I'm aware of; at the most, I suspect that the duration of the strip has been between six to twelve months from strip #0001, with me leaning towards the upper end of that scale.

Half Empty Coffee Cup:
There's no reason that it can't be up to around 15-18 months. Early-mid spring in #0001 is a possibility, since the seasons weren't really given attention until winter rolled on in, and the strip is somewhere in mid- to late-summer. Could be fall, even. The wiki timeline put a "long jump" after it notes "mid summer"

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