those damn time skips

[on:]

I need this info for my fan fic seris:

How much time did they loose in the time skips? i really have no idea.

at first i estimated about two years, because first they tried those failure plans (1 month?), and for fry and leela to get married they would have to date first (6-8 months), then it would take many months to make the gravity pump (10 months?), the arguous task of installing it (several weeks), and whatever else i can think of, i just rounded it to two years and left it at that, until

i saw tenage mutant leela's hutrdles, there farnsworth is like 161 years old! last i checked the series left off at about 3004, which they most likely counted out the time skips because nobody remembers, so he shoule be 154 of maybe 155 according to my guesstimate 157-158. but 161 would mean they lost about 6-7 years in time skips! that is insane! everyone would have to look way older or is that just me...

please clarify for me, this is really important that i get some of these numbers right.

GHT

[Reply #1 on:]

Didn't he say he's not 150 but 160? I don't remember. Anyway, the time-skips got longer and longer, at first they were a few hours, later they were years.

[Reply #2 on:]

In "A Clone of My Own" (2ACV10) Farnsworth tell the PE crew he's actually 160. "Teenage Mutant Leela's Hurddles" is 4ACV09, so Farnsworth being 161 in TMLH's completely within reason.

I don't know how long the timeskips in "Time Keeps On Slipping" were (Leela could've been so swooned over Fry's message they married a few weeks later (not likely, but still possible)).

Furthermore "Roswell That Ends Well", 5 episodes later, take place on September 21st 3002, while "A Tale Of Two Santas", 11 episodes earlier, take place in december 3001.

I don't think they lost much time, if any at all. Maybe the implosion of the chroniton-vortex somehow reset time, meaning they ended up missing no time at all. Hey, it worked on Star Trek. 

[Reply #3 on:]

he was 150 in a clone of my own, and in a big piece of garbage. also, the time skips were irregular, if what you said was true, then there wouldn't be one where after kissing leela the is a skip and the wedding flowers are jammed down his thoat. they are only regulated with the funny, and i didn't find much of it funny especially the wedding, devorce, and letter part.

however in the begining the Fry lovenasium also ccalled a time shelter where she sees it time skips and next thing you know she is leaveing angry and fry has a black eye. that was amusing, so was that emmy thing, [skip] actress addiced to drugs, [skip] acresses suicide. that was also mildly amusing, but all in all, i really would have liked the episode if it wasn't the greatest revert of them all.

you know the golden rule with a show like futurama is that everything is set back the way it was in the begining, this keep writers from makeing a story progress past the anicdotal references to past events in a few episodes, thus leaving their options open for the next episode.

i being a fan fiction writter know that once you start the story will end, it has to, you know how it shall end, and must work ther. whether it be a stand alone love tale of a giga series like "universe of malace" or my "going insane" series. if you keep continuality down your option always remain open to you, but you story is never rivitin with the age old how will they get out of this one? line that keep you waiting for the next one. unlike some fan fics, i intend to finish mine before summer vacation, although at the rate they get put up that may not be possibe.

was i going on and on back there? oh well...


GHT

[Reply #4 on:]

He was not 150 in a clone of my own.

He says that he's been lying, he's not 150 but he's actually 160.

[Reply #5 on:]

He said that so the age patrol would take him away for good, he had nothing left to live for, his inventions were crap, his clone wanted to be something other than a scientist, and he was old and senile.

who wouldn't just want to die in that situation? well, i wouldn't want to die, but that is not the point.

his lie is the lie about how he lied so they would take his shrivled old ass to the near death sphere. 

[Reply #6 on:]

Oh for fucks sake! Stop reading too much into everything, he says "I lied about my age", don't read it as something else, take it at face value!

[Reply #7 on:]

But why would he tell his crew this, if it weren't the truth? What purpuse would that serve?

[Reply #8 on:]

Aslate, that was totally uncalled for.

teral, i have no idea! he is old and senile, what do you think?

[Reply #9 on:]

 

Originally posted by getak2003:
Aslate, that was totally uncalled for.

teral, i have no idea! he is old and senile, what do you think?

I don't think so. Why would the Futurama writers write something so stupid and pointless into an episode for no reason?
 

Matt Groening
I know, lets make them all think Farnsworth is 160, and then confuse them all and actually make him 150!

(Ok, that last bit was going a bit far)

[Reply #10 on:]

That he's 160.

Being 150, and planning to commit suicide by telling the Sunset Squad he were 160 doesn't sound like the mind of a senile to me.

[Reply #11 on:]

How could there be a standard "time lost," anyway?  If you noticed, all the time skips were localized, individual events.

[Reply #12 on:]

getak2003, you are wrong again, i enjoy following you around correcting you.  Farnsworth is 160 when he creates his clone.  The sunset squad wouldn't take him away if he was only 150.  Simply his statement that he was 160 wouldnt be enough to convince the Sunset Squad to take him away.

[Reply #13 on:]

Farnsworth is 10 years older than he originally said. In "A Clone of My Own", we found out that he is actually 160. It would not be in character for the Professor to lie about being 160 when he really was 150. Besides, if he wanted to kill himself, he had plenty of inventions in the basement. A guy like him would just set off a doomsday device or something; I dunno.
As to the timeskips: no actual time was lost. As Nixorbo pointed out, they were all isolated events. I really don't want to get into quantum mechanics here, but you could think of the events going on during the timeskips as having happened in parallel "pocket" universes, taking only an instant in "actual time". Here's a rough diagram of what I mean:
= : "actual" time
- : "pocket" time
. : disregard (only there for formatting)

Code: [Select]

====\/============
      |\--
      /.....\
      \----/

[Reply #14 on:]

What?

They were skipping ahead, for them time goes by fast, and they have no memory, they still age, everyone else is going at normal speed.

also i thought the skips affected the entire universe.

And, so what, maybe my reference to the professor's age is wrong, sue me. but that is not the point, to them they lost time, and were farther ahead than they thought they should be.

They still lost time, even if only they were the affected one's.

[Reply #15 on:]

maybe its a continuity error, the professor is 161+

[Reply #16 on:]

Did you watch the episode?

"Why should we have to pay for old people?  ::blink:: I deserve free money!"

"New talent Wendy ::blink:: 5 Grammys  ::blink:: found dead in her bathtub."

[Reply #17 on:]

Yeah, i saw it, hated it, i'm a shipper, that is what i hate.

Like is said, isolated, i think, but they still age do they not?

now back to topic, how long do you think that they were skippin (trippin)? how many years of their lives do they not remember?

I NEED THIS! it is really necessary for part ten. i is for a really shippy realization part, you will like it when it comes out, if you are a shipper, or just hated time keeps on slipping for it's crappy unjust ending...

I like to correct the injustices made in futurama in my stories, and i have a huge steaming batch to take care of when it comes to that damn episode, i also have a solution to those damn worms. they said they would be back for a reason......

not that i am hinting at anything though....


GHT

[Reply #18 on:]

Hey, I'm a shipper, and I absolutely loved that episode. The ending may have been "unjust", but the fact that it got to you is proof that it wasn't crappy. A crappy ending is one that has no effect on the audience. (Granted, I'm not a huge fan of happy endings, but my point remains valid.)
Now then, how many years passed is a difficult question to answer, since time did not skip uniformally thoughout the entire Universe. For example, those two kids who became old guys in a time skip lived 60-70 years in the same amount of time as everyone around them lived a few seconds. I don't think that the characters in question here (Fry and Leela, I assume) lost that much time there - a year or so, maximum. The marriage could have taken less than a month to go through, and the divorce obviously followed immediately afterward. There's no real way of telling how much time was lost there, though. As for how much time was spent preparing the gravitational ray for use, it couldn't have been more than a few months. They DID have the finest(?) minds in the Universe working on that thing.
Try not to think too deeply into it. I'm going to cite my favorite Matt Groening quote here: "It's a cartoon." It's your fanfic, so you get to decide how much time they lost. It doesn't have to be consistant with the show; there are fanfics out there that assume that Leela is an alien from another planet. Are those fanfics "wrong", because we found out Leela's true origins in "Leela's Homeworld"? Of course not. They're fanfics.
Oh, and on a final note: be careful when "righting the injustices" of the show. Bad things happen for a reason. Just because something was "unfair" to the characters (such as Leela not seeing Fry's messege in the stars) doesn't mean it was a bad thing to do on the writers' part. As a writer, you should learn to be a cruel bastard. Just because you love a character doesn't mean you shouldn't torment said character liberally. (In fact, the more you love a character, the more you should enjoy torturing and abusing him/her!)

[Reply #19 on:]

that's true. every story idea i have come up with involves lots of unhappiness and its always directed at Leela who is my fav character. The characters i don't like i don't even think about.

[Reply #20 on:]

OHHHH, trust me, i will have pleanty of unhappyness to go around in parts:

 nine (fry snaps in another dimension), more in ten (evil dies hard, new member of crew messes them up),

some in 12 (They screw so much for a damn good reason, and cheating)

SUPER AMMOUNTS toward leela in 13 (total breakdown, near suicide, thinks she is going insane, the works)

maybe there will be a happy ending in 14, if i feel like it.....and only I have that call.

Some juicy forshadowing to drive you crazy..

GHT