Thank you for your response!! And the responses of other people! I think you're very correct about this!!
I've spent like the past half hour.... maybe a full hour trying to figure this out. And I think the thing that really stumped me is that the journal really contradicts itself. Ford says at the beginning of journal 3 that he'd known bill for 2 years. BUT, in his timeline, it says he "discovered his muse" in 1981, which would have been, what, the same year he was writing that??? And you KNOW over a year elapses during journal 1, because they go from june, to august, to july. Confusing as fuck, man.
And @ranieridettorre in the comments of this post linked THIS timeline someone made:
Which I am VERY thankful for. The visual is preventing me from tearing my hair out rn. AND THEY DO!!!! Mention at the bottom!! The contradiction with when ford met bill!! So I'm starting to think I'm putting more thought into this than alex i swear XDDD
My fanfic comic thingie is going to focus on the descent from friends-lovers (don't know if I'll delve into the subsequent madness), so my main concern was how much time elapsed of them being friends, and when that was interrupted (karaoke) and how much time elapsed from that moment, to when fiddleford arrived. And judging by what people are saying + the books, NOT MUCH!! Ford would have fucked around with bill, and then fiddleford would have arrived a month and a half later. Then, ford would be canoodling with bill under fidds nose for what, half a year ish? I was hoping for more time for ford+bill to live out their weird human+demon romance thing. And you can't interpret June 15th (karaoke) as being from the previous year, because he starts journal 3 on June 18th.
Ahhh well, I will make do. I think I have a.... decent vibe for how this shit works. I don't think this interferes with what I've written thus far, actually. At least not much. I'm actually kind of surprised XD