I was thinking the fact that the hill people didn’t like the Tribe was a major factor. When the Hill Folk got the news, they didn’t pass it on to the Tribe, nor did they tell the Wingdingers about the Tribe’s existence. Probably even told them that no one lived down there.
So from the GQ thread, it appears an empty Mediterranean probably would be largely uninhabitable. Temperatures in the deepest parts might be as high as 176F. I suppose you could handwave that away by saying that during the comic the planet was in a cold/ice age or something, making the Mediterranean Pit more temperate. Or that the Tribe lived in some less-deep area at the margin.
Very neat. Probably the closest thing we’ll ever get to an XKCD movie.
So I read a few pages of the epically long thread on “Time” over at the xkcd forums and…
Wow! There are a lot of folks over there who got overly invested in this whole thing and are now in mourning. It’s kind of scary.
I haveto think Randall didn’t realize how fanatic some people were going to get about Time. Unless I’m missing something (certainly possible) it was ultimately not all that interesting or meaningful, except possibly as an exercise in playing with the web comic format.
I did find that xkcd forum thread rather useful for providing the latest image (while the story was still ongoing); for providing some analysis of where and when the story was taking place (their conclusions, as I mentioned before: the end of a second Mediterrean Salinary crisis 13K years into the future, as the Atlantic was beginning to refill the sea); and for translating the really hard to read Castle Scholar’s black/dark grey text. It also demostrated that animated gifs and message board avatars should not mix.
I kind of agree that the story resolution seemed rather rushed (no pun intended) and a bit pat, after that rather long build-up “journey of discovery”. It was like Randall was tired of it, when he really could have had some great fun - your tribal homeland is about to get flooded out under 100s of meters of water with-in (as somebody mentioned the Castle scholar saying) a few days? So ride it out on a makeshift raft. Wow.
Well, it is what it is…
Nailed it.
Ultimately, it’s a webcomic, and as much as Randall builds our expectations, it’s not always going to be meaningful. In fact, most of the time it’s not going to be meaningful.
This particular comic, however, did something new and generated over 500 posts here and thousands elsewhere discussing it. And besides, I’ve never before seen a webcomic with over 3,000 frames. That alone makes it pretty interesting.
[quote=“Gary “Wombat” Robson, post:507, topic:653901”]
Ultimately, it’s a webcomic, … In fact, most of the time it’s not going to be meaningful.
[/QUOTE]
Disagree.
The setup always screamed meaningful, from frame 1.
The title alone plays to one of the most incredibly abstract mysteries of science – Time. The main audience for the comic is obviously primarily people with an interest base heavily weighted to the sciences.
The alt-text “Wait for it” is basically a big tease ostensibly promising something worthwhile. A payoff. Monroe knows how his readership will delve, analyze, pick apart every tidbit of information. It’s not like the main schtick of the strip isn’t to have discussion and debate about the motive and meaning of each individual offering.
It was interesting, on this I agree.
I, for one, don’t mind it ending this way. They’ve completed one journey of discovery–at exactly the right time, I might add–and now they’re embarking on another one. They could adopt the mongoose motto: “Run and find out!” To me, that’s a happy ending.
I would have preferred a bit more closure on the idea that the sea has stopped rising, which didn’t seem very clear. Overall, it was quite a nice ride, and i’m sad to see it end.
It’s a metaphor. For catastrophic events. There’s a earth killer meteor on the way and we all need to ride a space raft to Mars.
Personally, what impressed me was that not only was an author was able to communicate an exact date for his story, thousands of years in the future, plus at least one important detail about intervening events, with just a few wordless images… But his readership was also able to receive and interpret that communication.
Sure, but the other 3000 frames were kind of pointless.
Exactly - it’s about “finding out”.
Oddly, I think the strip would have been improved by a longer sea journey (even with nothing happening), which would have balanced the land journey earlier. I also agree that confirmation that the sea had stopped rising at the end would have provided a little more closure. Still, all in all a good exploration of the medium and an engrossing tale, as I said above.
I think of it as the counterpart of his other unusual-format comic, actually titled “Click-and-drag” but I like to think of it as “Space”
My thoughts exactly. Kudos to Randall for writing and delivering a full, complete story in a medium that rarely allows it.
BTW Randall did a blog post about “Time” here. The short answer why he ended it is it got to be too much work which is understandable.
I like the t-shirts idea, but instead of changing shirts every hour, we should get several thousand people to each wear a shirt of a different strip and form a parade.
So in the blog post, Randall says that the future language can be decoded; has that been done? (I’ve grown a little afraid of wandering off into the xkcd forum thread on my own…)