Back to the slideshow example
Pic A - fade in for say 0.5s, then show that pic for 3 seconds.
Pic B - fade in for 0.5s, then show for 10 seconds ( its a really nice picture! )
Pic C - face in for 0.5s, then show for X seconds ...
The Pic A's 3 second display duration (not tween duration) actually goes in the line adding the tween for pic B
tl.to(a, {opacity:1, duration:0.5})
tl.to(b, {opacity:1, duration:0.5, delay:3s}; // delay B for 3 seconds to in effect show pic A for 3 seconds...
Trivial example be trivial of course (and exactly the same with "+=3") - but as you can see the data for the 3 second delay logically belongs to pic A but we using it when adding the tween for B. B needs to know about A.
If we were building up from an array/list
[{pic:A, showFor:3}, {pic:B, showFor:10}, {pic:C ...]