What time?

[teinisydan.livejournal.com]

Hey! I'm sorry because I know this is illigal here because I'm not searching for a fic but I really need to know something.

I'm writing one fic and I need some information to it. Can somebody tell me what time of the year (month would be nice because I know we don't know the exact dates) these happened:

- B and J met
- J left his home and moved to Deb
- Prom
- J met Ian
- episode 308

FOUND: Thank you so much for the info! You guys were fast!

Comments

[elvenfixation.livejournal.com]

That's the kind of thing that drives people crazy when they try to come up with a timeline...

I think there are two possible timelines based on this. 1. The election was held in November of 2002 and it was a general election. (In which case you ignore given for Jason Kemp's murder.)

or 2. It's spring of 2003 and the election Pittsburgh is having is only a local election, which would happen sometime in spring. Dumpster boy was killed a year ago, in which case Justin and Ethan were together for several more months than just the summer of 2002.

[gundamnook.livejournal.com]

I found the date mention in the Ad. Dumpster Boy was killed on April 11th, 2002.

I believe most mayorial elections are a local thing and not part of the November election. I know I didn't vote for my city's mayor in November.

I guess at this point in the series, any date will do. Most fans are not picky about dates since the timeline is so messed up as it is! XD

[elvenfixation.livejournal.com]

...the date for Jason Kemp's murder is one I usually try to avoid putting into the timeline (along with season-5 Ted talking about Pride 2002 when telling Emmett about Troy the jerk. He meant Pride 2001, and in my mind the character got the date mixed up which people do in real life).

Anyway, if you try to build any sorf of timeline around the date Brian gives in his ad it throws everything else off...it just doesn't fit even just in relation to season 2.

Kemp was killed in episode 210, if that was in April there's not much time in which to fit the rest of the season into the other facts we know, which I think you'd want to fit in more than one date mentioned much later.

...the wedding, Justin working for The Sap, Rage, the birthday fiasco and Justin's week in Vermont would all have to happen in a couple of weeks and even then you end up with Spring Break in May. I know sometimes it comes earlier and sometimes later in the year, but I've never heard of it coming that late.

So yeah...even for qaf the date in that ad can't be reconciled. We know Brian doesn't lie, but maybe Brian the ad man was just trying to make his ad sound more dramatic.

[teinisydan.livejournal.com]

When did Justin leave Brian? Was it in April-May?

[edom56.livejournal.com]

I've always figured it was before the first anniversary of the prom, but then again that's just guess work.

[elvenfixation.livejournal.com]

That's one everyone is free to imagine...

Early in season 3, in the scene where Justin goes to see Craig trying to get some help with his tuition, he tells him something like, "...now that I've finished my first year..." of college.

So that must have been early summer, and if it had been a few weeks since he left Brian, he left around the anniversary of the Prom, but it could have been before or after.

[gundamnook.livejournal.com]

Just pick a date. Nobody is really going to question it. :)

[teinisydan.livejournal.com]

I'm really pedantic with these :D.

[elvenfixation.livejournal.com]

I've literally been trying to come up with a timeline for years, but it still hasn't worked.

I experimented with two different alternate theories once to force the timeline to work out. I tried to ignore what is commonly accepted about B/J meeting in early fall and tried to do a timeline with them meeting in January 2001.

I also did one where I ignored the fact the show premiered in the fall of 2000, and I moved everything up to have them meet in fall of 2001. Neither idea really worked; they ended up throwing other major events off.

[gundamnook.livejournal.com]

I always thought the ending of Season 2 and all of Season 3 just didn't make sense timeline wise. That's why I kinda gave up trying to figure anything out. And because of that Mel seems like she was pregnant for way more than 9 months. I heard it was around 14 months! XDD

[elvenfixation.livejournal.com]

I've always thought the real reason for the screwy timeline and inconsistencies in some of the dialogue, is the way shows are sometimes run on cable with several months and up to a year on hiatus before they come back.

I think the writers simply wrote it in their real time and never considered the time elapsed for the characters. Like they were writing an episode in 2004, but the show had already been off for a year, so it was still 2003 for the characters...that's why the Liberty Ride sign says "Liberty Ride 2004, but Mel's baby was supposed to be born in 2003...

[gaedhal.livejournal.com]

The real reason was the schedule of filming, from fall to late spring in Toronto. We used to joke that Pittsburgh was the land of no summer because by the time they started filming it was almost always already cold -- see poor Peter running around at the fairy gathering -- the poor guy was FREEZING! The same with 501 -- all those naked guys supposedly were in California, but they were actually outside in Toronto and it was about 40 degrees.

The timeline doesn't jive, so my suggestion is to create your own for your fics -- fics are non-canon anyway, so when even canon doesn't make sense, no one is going to knock you for it!

[gaedhal.livejournal.com]

Except that date doesn't jive with the rest of Season 2.

It occurs in 210, which is late fall or early winter -- the lesbian wedding and then Brian appearing in Michael and Ben's bed (211 & 212 is certainly winter and not after April). Then Justin's second birthday (and Ben's party) which is supposedly in March, is 216 -- well AFTER the murder of Dumpster Boy, so it can't be April 2002, unless Episode 210 takes place BEFORE 216. If it's April 2001, then that's BEFORE Justin was bashed -- another impossibility.

See? It just doesn't follow no matter how hard you try. And we've tried for the past nine years.

But then Mel was pregnant longer than an elephant, so...

[elvenfixation.livejournal.com]

Exactly...a lot of the timeline doesn't make sense, but the one about the murder being in April makes less sense than almost anything else. (Except of course the almost 2 year pregnancy.)