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[Darkbluerabbit]

A day by day breakdown of QC, with analysis of continuity gaps and clues from the dialogue. 


Day 1:   1-8
Day 2:   9-24
Day 3:   25-27
Day 4:   28-41
Day 5:   42-48
      <these gaps mean we don't know if the new day follows immediately after the comic prior.
Day 6:  49-55    
      
Day 7:   56-67      
Day 8:   68-80         
Day 9:   81-99   
Day 10:   100-118          
Day 11: 119-139         
Day 12:   140-163      
Day 13:   164-185       
Day 14:   186-213
Day 15:   214-236
Day 16:   237-269
Day 17: 270-309      
Day 18:   310-350
            
Day 19:   351-383
Day 20: 384-395
Day 21:   396-417
Day 22: 418-430
Day 23:   431-463
Day 24:   464-509
Day 25:   510-534
Day 26:   535-569
Day 27:   570-580
Day 28: 589-605
Day 29: 606-622
Day 30: 623-647
Day 31: 648-686
Day 32: 687-722
Day 33: 723-750
      
Day 34: 751-763
Day 35: 764-786
Day 36: 787-806
Day 37: 807-833 
Day 38: 834-848
Day 39: 849-878
Day 40: 879-897
Day 41: 898-912
Day 42:   913-927
Day 43:   928-951
Day 44: 952-970
Day 45: 971-988
Day 46: 989- Present


                   
During comic 49-99 (about), shirt changes are the only real indicator of a day passing.  I am making guesses. Days could have passed between "days" comic wise, but I wouldn't think too many.  Faye is baking Marten a cake, which probably means she still feels like his guest.  Marten's conversation his boss also suggests that a lot happened in a few short days.

In 288, Dora says Faye's been staying with Marten for months, even though by following the strips I've observed maybe 20 days,with things like "yesterday" indicating that only a night has passed...I suppose we will trust Jeph on this one.

Between 350 and 351, a day or two could go by unobserved.  Again, probably not a week or anything, because Faye's "I'm going to be nicer" revelation is still fresh.

It is indeed seven comic days between Marten's mom showing up and Marten going back to work. 

Possible break between 750 and 751.  Can't be too long though.  Penny's still the "new girl."

-----------------------------
I said I would post this a while ago, but I got sidetracked in my archive reading by midterms and stuff.  I do have a life, I swear. 

It's only been about a week since we've seen Steve, comic wise.  He's probably just spending a lot of time (i.e. getting his bone on) with Meena. 

[muteKi]

Pretty damn impressive, if not a little creepy.

[Music Inside]

If I'm not mistaken, Faye's needed new glasses a total of twice in the comic. It takes at least a few months for your vision to weaken to a point to where you need a new prescription. I also remember reading that Jeph said the total time of the comic was around six months. I think we're just not supposed to read into it too much and just let the comic be a comic.

[Renalia]

Well, Faye needed new glasses at least once because they were broken. When Marten used his insurance to get her glasses, she had broken them, and used her old prescription for them.

[onefish]

Excellent. Thanks for this. I mean, I don't know if I'll ever have any reason to look at this table again, but I'm glad someone went through and figured it out.

[the-artful-dodger-rodger]

wow alot of shit has happen in 46 days, can you image what can happen a year in the qc-verse.

[Rocketman]

Damn, I was working on this same thing.

[Music Inside]

Well, Faye needed new glasses at least once because they were broken. When Marten used his insurance to get her glasses, she had broken them, and used her old prescription for them.

That's true. Maybe the prescription was getting bad already and since Marten got them, they couldn't improve until she actually went in and got said prescription.

I smell loophole!

[Darkbluerabbit]

Seriously guys, get out more. No offense or anything.

Considering that a good percentage of this list was compiled after I came home from somewhere drunk, I can safely say that my "getting out" was not an issue. 

I am a very accurate drunk typist. 

[fallax]

We could go through the archive and try and punch out how many days have passed in the comic.

We could just accept what Jeph says, because its his comic and he can make every strip equal a year in QC time if he wants.

Or we could just roll with it because, you know, its just a webcomic and not something we have to scrutinize down to the last detail 

[Jeff7]

Seriously guys, get out more. No offense or anything.

Ironically, you have a higher post count than anyone else in this thread thus far. 

[Darkbluerabbit]

A few people in the forums (I could not say where) have said that they'd like to see a list like this.  I wanted to re-read the archives and I was curious, so I figured, why not? 

It's done.  I posted it because some people said they'd like to see it.  Obviously, Jeph is the only one who can really say what goes on in his comic.

There is no point in saying "OMG it's just a comic" or accusing me of undermining Jeph's word or something. 

Considering that this is a forum for discussing a comic, everyone here is a little more invested in this than just reading it.

Let's face it, everyone's got a little geek in them.   

[StMonkey]

If I were a tad more conscious after playing videogames all day, I would have made a sincere comment asking if you would like some more geek in you. Luckily, this is not the case.

[muteKi]

 That officially tops the list of pick up lines ever. And I admit that it barely squeaks past "I wish you were my problem set so that you'd be hard and I could you on my desk."

[iNeedanadult]

Or, "If I were an enzyme, I'd be DNA helicase so I could unzip your genes."

[qiZzer]

hey its a tad geeky maybe creepy but i have to say im impressed nice use of logic.
But that means its taken over three years for 46 days man i thought my days were long

[Darkbluerabbit]

If I were a tad more conscious after playing videogames all day, I would have made a sincere comment asking if you would like some more geek in you. Luckily, this is not the case.

Yep, I had that coming.

Math and science pick up lines are way better than music ones.  "I'm a fermata, hold me" is just weak.

come back to I Like Fish. We will love you.

Tempting.  Very tempting.

[JReynolds]

In the "Department of Perhaps Reading Too Much Into Background Decorations",

Jeph has given us a clue as to when "now" is in the QC-verse. In today's comic (1025), the calendar on the wall shows that we are in a month with 30 days that starts on a Tuesday. From January of 2003 to December 2007, the months that fit these parameters are:
     April 2003
     June 2004
     November 2005

Judging from comics 1005 and 1008 (where Dora and Faye were shown wearing light windbreakers), it could be either April or a warm November
Of course, the joke could be on us. On Dark Blue Rabbit's excellent list, there could be a space between 1024 and 1025. At the moment, we don't know how much time has passed between 1024 and 1025. Is it the same day? Have weeks / months gone by? Is Jeph flashbacking us? Is "now" in the QC-verse not in the 2003-2007 range?

Thought I'd pass my detective work on and let you guys judge.

[tomart]

Seriously guys, get out more. No offense or anything.

Good one!

I'd like to know the timing too, but the loophole is:  it can always be longer than we figure.
We can deduce the minimum time there needs to be between specific consecutive comics, from clues and dialog, etc, [not withstanding parallel story arcs that can be happening simultaneously] but all too often there could be more hours and/or days in these gaps, and there's no way to account for them. Unless Jeph gave us clocks, calendars, etc ....and it mattered.

[JReynolds]

You're absolutely right! Knowing exactly when things are happening and the duration between days isn't important. The fact that this comic is enjoyable IS important. Thanks, Jeph! Keep up the good work.

[SleeperCylon]

Pretty damn impressive, if not a little creepy.

Hey, if you have enough free time on your hands to do a day by day analysis of what's going on in a webcomic, then that's probably the least creepy thing you could possibly do with it.

I always tend to assume in webcomics that time generally flows according to real time unless stated otherwise.  Especially since in most webcomics, holidays happen around the time they happen in real life.  So I would probably assume those gaps are pretty long.

Heh, in my comic I had the characters go off into space, then come back to earth later, two months strip time, two years real time.  I intend to do something really cheesy to rectify this.

"Oh no, Earth just passed through a space time vortex where time sped up for earth and nowhere else!"  "What year is it on Earth now?"  "It's...January 2008!"

[vgaer]

I don't know if you're still updating, but you're outdated...

Day 46: 989-1009

Day 47: 1010-1024

Day 48: 1025-1048

Day 49: 1049-present

[Jab]

I do love lists like that, though. Makes you realize just how many times Jeph wrote 'meanwhile, that same day'-type stuff that had the same people still hanging around the coffee place. I prefer to think in the 'it's been several months' timeframe, with stuff like "yesterday we did that thing" just being stuff that Jeph casually wrote down for timeframes without thinking that it would be easy for people to dogpile all the days together to make a logical timeline out of it. Remember the "Marten & Dora met twenty days ago" topic?

Just replace 'yesterday' with 'a few days ago' every time you read it and you'll be much happier . Don't let Jeph's minor mistake in pacing his comic give you a false impression in the strip's timeline. Though it's his own fault for pulling stuff like "Marten's vacation is now over.... 200 strips after I started it", thus making everyone realize that he extends the time of his comic like that. For an 'everyday life' strip, it's fairly unusual, but you learn to live with it. Compare that to Something Positive, which is real-time, so that when you don't see a character for a year (like Jhim tends to do), he ACTUALLY HASN'T DONE ANYTHING FOR A YEAR.

[cwoolard]

I don't know if you're still updating, but you're outdated...

[...]

Day 49: 1049-present

And just to be completist, Day 50 starts with 1080...

[Jirel]

I'm pleased to see this.  I just got through re-reading the entire strip (over the past 4 days, one of which was spent at home, sick) and I was wondering about the amount of time that had passed.

[Rocketman]

Heh, in my comic I had the characters go off into space, then come back to earth later, two months strip time, two years real time.  I intend to do something really cheesy to rectify this.

"Oh no, Earth just passed through a space time vortex where time sped up for earth and nowhere else!"  "What year is it on Earth now?"  "It's...January 2008!"

If they were going near lightspeed, then that's what would happen, no time-warp for Earth required.

[Michael Nehora]

I'm impressed with the time and thought put into this exercise.  It's good that Darkbluerabbit emphasized that the discrete days listed here are not all consecutive days, because for the entire comic to have taken place over only ~50 consecutive days would stretch credibility far past the breaking point.

To give an example, "The Talk" storyline apparently takes place on the 24th identifiable day.  However, it's extremely unlikely that Marten and Faye had known each other, and shared an apartment, for only 24 straight days at that point.  For Faye to come out with,  "I like you Marten, and I know you like me, but we can't be a couple and here's why..." after only three weeks plus change, would seriously be jumping the gun.  Marten and Faye aren't 13-year-olds at an eight-week sleepover camp where, due to the limited time spent together there's a tendency for relationships to progress much faster and take on much more proportional significance than a relationship between two twenty-somethings with adult responsibilities and no inherent time limit after which they might not see each other again.  Also, the following day, in strip 511, Dora says to her,  "Why the hell did you string him along for so long if you were just gonna let him down in the end?!"  Twenty-four consecutive days is not "so long."  I think of Marten and Faye as having been friends and roomies for a good few months before "The Talk."  That would allow realistically for the build-up of sexual/romantic tension and repeated debates with one's self over whether to say anything to the other.

So as long as we remember that important qualifying factor, I think this list o' days is helpful.

[Nodaisho]

Comic 127 has faye offering money for rent, which suggests she had been there a while.

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=127

[Spluff]

I'm guessing that Jeph's just illustrating the interesting parts of their lives - this means that he's probably skipped many days along the way. I mean, who the hell wants to sit and watch the characters going about their dull daily routines without anything happening. Not me, that's for sure.

[zKonz]

I think Jeph is going to post a comic where Martin wakes up, looks at Billy S Preston and Ted Theodore Logan, and says, "Dudes, I just had the most excellent dream."  Ya know, the way the Matrix trilogy should have ended.

[plasticshovel]

i'd have to agree with spluff.  also, just to be technical, hair growth.  someone pointed out in another thread that by this chart sven and faye have only known each other a month, but sven has at least 2 or three months of hair growth since their first meeting.  http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=329

[Switchblade]

honestly, I don't think it matters. the progress of the plot seems timed more to coincide with the rate of posting than any kind of "real-time"-ness.

Sure, it seems that these people live their lives at a hummingbird-like intensity if you break it down, but if you don't the pacing fits just fine.

Leave well enough alone, I say.

[Doug S. Machina]

That explains the "Logan's Run" question: everyone lives such accelerated lives that they're dead by 34. So that's why everyone's young and attractive.

[Alphalpha]

Young and attractive?

[Doug S. Machina]

This used to work before #1000, where Jimbo was the only exception, even in crowd scenes. I knew there were too many holes in it now, but just ignored for the amusement.

[Vanguard]

I honestly don't think time-passed in this matters. It's all for the characters.

[Scruffy]

Cool...
This has passed through my mind a few times, kinda wondering.
But I can't help but think more time has passed than this. Course then, i haven't done the legwork you have.

[Vanguard]

Cool...
This has passed through my mind a few times, kinda wondering.
But I can't help but think more time has passed than this. Course then, i haven't done the legwork you have.

Technically, much more time has passed then a month and a half. Common sense should come into play by now, there ARE time breaks. Just like when you're watching a movie, you don't need to see a "one day later" or "three hours later" (good example: Just watched "Vacancy." The woman falls asleep), to figure out that some time has indeed, passed.

[Red Leader]

Pretty damn impressive, if not a little creepy.

Yeah... 

[Surgoshan]

Perhaps if you're in trig together, or maybe you see each other three days a week because you're taking comparative religion, or maybe you work in accounts receivable and she's in legal... perhaps then three weeks is lightning speed to go from "We just met!" to "We need to talk about my father's suicide and why that means I can't date."*  But that's not what this is. 

Faye met Marten, and he seemed nice enough for her to ask to crash on his couch when her apartment burned down.  Maybe she only intended it to last a day or two while she found a new place, but Marten was so pliant and completely non-threatening that she settled in.  After nearly two weeks she's offering to pay the rent.

In the mean time they're hanging out all the time.  They wake up together, he goes to work, then he stops by her job, following which they go home together, then go to sleep at the same time.  Sure, there are other people around most of that time, but they're still always together.  They've been living together for (at least) two and a half weeks when they get a new apartment, then another week on top of that by the time they have the talk.

Three weeks of non-stop, 24/7 tension?  That would be unbearable. 

Think about this.  The first date determines if there will be a second date.  The second date determines if there will be a third date.  The third date determines his place or hers***.  And that's after seeing someone only occasionally (accts-rcvble/legal situation) or just meeting at the park.  In Marty/Faye's situation, three weeks is actually reasonable for that conversation.  And Dora's comment that she strung him along for a long time?  Well, I'm going to play the "weeks of tension" card, again.

For those of you who have had roommates you hated, how long did it take for you and your roommate to have a fight?  When you're in close quarters, you really cannot avoid each other.  If there's any sort of tension below the surface, it's always right there staring at you like a hungry cat and you're still in bed and wake up, dammit!****

So, yeah, Marty's had a rough month.  He moved, lost his job, got a girlfriend, joined a band.  All in, at least, 7 weeks.  I can really see that without needing huge gaps.

*  There are girls** out there who are kind enough to dump all their emotional baggage on you after the first date.  Some wait until just after sex, when escape is more awkward.

** I don't know about guys.  I've never dated guys.  And I don't have baggage; I just have cats.

***  Rule of thumb.  Some don't wait that long.

****  This analogy brought to you by a tubby cat who thinks a half-empty food bowl is a travesty in need of immediate correction.


PS:  Sorry, I'm sorta new, so Hi!  I wanted to join solely to say this, but it turns out I got drunk, joined, and posted a year and a half ago.  Go figger.

[bunnyThor]

Now is this list of days set in stone? By that I mean are there references that demand that one day follows the next? I know that some things must be sequential days, e.g., the sequence where Marten goes from The Talk to hooking up with Dora has to be three sequential days, because Faye yells at Dora about it, but are there other story arcs where there isn't specific references to day following day?

I just find it hard to believe that Marten didn't know Faye or Dora or Hanners less than 2 months ago, comic time. 

[Surgoshan]

It's pretty much set in stone.  A single day is easily determined based on clothes.  Sequential days are based either on clothes (slept in last night, then change, whether on or off camera), on references in comic (to "yesterday"), or on plot necessity (like Faye and Marten the morning after The Talk).

The gaps indicate where clothes were changed and there's no indication of how much time has passed.

[Border Reiver]

There is a strip in which Dora referred to the couple of months that Faye had been sleeping on Marten's couch. 

[bunnyThor]

That could just be hyperbole too.

Really the gaps at 350/351 and 750/751 could both be extended out for a month or two each.

The first gap would seem to be constrained by Faye decision to start acting nicer, but we all know how long a person can sit on their good intentions before acting.

The second gap seems to be constrained by Pen-Pen still being referred to as the New Girl, but that sort of employee hazing can go on for months as well. I worked at a place where "The New Guy" was still called "The New Guy" even after working there a year *and* with newer people being hired. It was always so much fun to hear him moan with despair every time we called him that, that there was no way we were ever going to stop. 

So if you really wanted to, you could stick a couple months of "nothing exciting happened" in each of those gaps, and QC time would be a much more believable 6 months rather than the credulity-bending 50+ days it otherwise seems to be.

[teh_Shannon]

Day 50: 1049-1059
Day 51: 1060-1079
Day 52: 1080-present

[Blackcat Moebius]

That could just be hyperbole too.

Really the gaps at 350/351 and 750/751 could both be extended out for a month or two each.

The first gap would seem to be constrained by Faye decision to start acting nicer, but we all know how long a person can sit on their good intentions before acting.

Ummm... problem.  350 is the end of the day where they see the new apartment, and are told they can move in next week.
351 is the start of the day where they plan to move stuff the next day.

So that gap's not more than a week.

[Thorbard]

Can move in doesn't mean they will move in straight away.

Also an interesting thought:

Marten never seems to wear the same shirt twice, doesn't that imply that either a. he has a huge number or b. there are more days than we know about and perhaps that two strips with the same shirt aren't necessarily the same day...

Obviously doesn't work in every case.

[the-artful-dodger-rodger]

wow 52 days since Faye met Marten, she got laid.

[bicostp]

Remember Marten has needed two haircuts since the strip started, so we can guess between 6 and 10 weeks passed between those comics. (That's about the average time people typically go between trims, right?) It's been about half the difference between the two since the second ([857 - 203] / 2), so that might be about another 3 to 5 weeks. Just by this, it's been almost 4 months since the day including #203. Overall, my best guess would be about 6 or 7 months as of Friday.

This doesn't take strips 1 - 202 into account, since the art changed so much that it's hard to determine how long it was since the cut before the comic picked up.

I picked that for the comparison because it's about the most reliable "real time" analogue I've seen in the comic so far.

Note: This is all strip ID derived; I haven't referenced it to the disturbingly thorough list of known days.

[Econoline]

I have this theory, I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I think that since QC is set in an alternate universe with AnthroPCs, space stations, no bad weather in Massachusetts, etc., there is also something different about the spacetime continuum. Something involving stasis fields which can slow, speed up, disrupt or stop the flow of time locally, probably by different amounts depending on whether it's between 2 panels of the same strip or between 2 strips on different days. And then of course when there's a guest strip a portal opens into another alterrnate universe and closes again when Jeph gets back.

Of course since the characters are living in this environment, they aren't aware of anything special happening and that's why they never comment on this particular aspect of their universe (except of course for Hannelore's comment on her birthday about having been in stasis for a time--maybe she wasn't just fucking with Faye??)

Anyway, that's my theory; I think it makes as much sense as anything else that's been said about the QC timeline. I'm still working on it, so feel free to discuss it and help me work out the details.

P.S. How many smileys would be the appropriate amount for this post?