The Lea Michele Situation Is Actually A Prime Example Of Why We Should Be Wary Of Performative Activism

whoever did this needs to get

a raise

fired

have you ever thought of 'Peggy Sue AU' for Animorphs/AU where the Animorphs wake up with their memories of the war intact but they're back at the beginning?

[For anyone else who—like me—never heard of it: Peggy Sue Got Married.]

The corners of Jake’s mouth are still pulled back into that dangerous smile.  Their little andalite fighter is rushing toward the Blade ship, full steam ahead, already gathering too much momentum to pull back now.  Marco’s gripping the console in front of him so hard his knuckles ache.  The modified Blade ship rushes at them with shocking speed, closing, closing—

And then…

Lights.  Noise!  Too much to make sense of.  They’re surrounded on all sides by cacophony.  Flashing, screaming.  Mayhem.  Marco’s halfway through trying to morph in panic when he realizes he can’t.  And then Jake grabs his arm.  Jake, who is about a foot shorter than Marco remembers him being.  Jake, who is baby-faced and wild-eyed.  Before Marco can say anything someone bumps him from behind.  He whips around, but Tobias is already shoving past him, heading deeper into the room.  The arcade.  The arcade at the mall that was destroyed over five years ago in the last days of the war.  And Jake and Tobias both look about thirteen.  Which means…

Jake calls out a warning, but Tobias ignores them, shoving through the crowd like he’s running for his life.  He’s headed for the far door where two familiar figures have just emerged: one small and short-haired, the other tall and blonde.

Rachel runs forward two steps.  She and Tobias slam into each other, babbling over one another with questions and exclamations and words on top of words.  Their first pause for breath and they’re kissing, desperately breathing each other’s air, grasping at each other as if they are drowning—or eating each other alive.  His hands drag themselves through her hair as if he wants to pull her even closer but cannot physically manage.  She crosses her arms over his back, devouring his mouth until they are one being.

“What the hell?” Marco says loudly, looking from mini-Jake to mini-Cassie to the four-armed Rachelntobias creature.  “Seriously.  What the hell.”

“So we rammed the Blade ship.”  Jake’s face is screwed up in thought.  It looks painful.  “And… and it created some kind of sario rip, and now…”

“Sario rips can’t bring people back from the dead,” Cassie says quietly.

Tobias extracts himself from Rachel and looks around as if only just remembering that there are other people present.  “She’s right.  And this has the Ellimist’s fingerprints all over it.”

Jake drags them all outside before they can say anything else weird within earshot of potential controllers (“hell of a battle, yeah?” Rachel’s saying.  “We won, right?”) and they emerge into the quiet of the warm California evening.  

“Whatever this is, we’ll figure it out,” Jake says.  “We will.  Let’s… let’s plant to meet at the Gardens tomorrow afternoon.  Get some morphs, figure out what to do next.”

“What to do next is to go rescue Ax,” Rachel says.  “Now.  If we’re all here, that means he’s stuck twenty thousand leagues under.  So let’s hit the Gardens now that it’s closed, get us some dolphin morphs, and have him back on land before midnight.”

“I think you’re forgetting.”  Tobias turns toward the construction site, expression grim.  “There’s something else we have to do first.”

When Elfangor’s ship lands, Cassie slips her hand into Jake’s.  He glances over at her, startled, and she starts to pull away until he gently squeezes her fingers and she stops.

“We know why you’re here,” Marco calls.  “We’re in, man.  The morphing, the killing, the nightmares, all of it.  God help us, we’re in.”

Elfangor stumbles—and Tobias catches him before he can fall.  He looks around at them all.  

“Current working theory is that the Ellimist’s messing with us.”  Tobias, with Rachel’s help, lowers him to the ground.  “But you and Mom have used the Time Matrix before, yeah?  So maybe we should just tell you that we’ve had this conversation before and hopefully you won’t think we’re nuts.”

Jake goes and finds the morphing cube as they continue talking.  One by one they press their hands against its sides.

“Come with us,” Tobias blurts out, staring desperately into Elfangor’s main eyes.  “Morph, escape.  We can hide you, keep you safe.  We did it with Ax—Aximili—for years—”

Elfangor asks sharply.  

“By any given definition of ‘all right,’ given this is Ax we’re talking about,” Marco says. “Retrieving his sorry butt from the bottom of the Pacific is our sad excuse for weekend plans.”

“I mean it,” Tobias says, as if neither of them spoke.  “Morph.  Come with us.  You don’t have to die here.”

Elfangor smiles sadly, the expression never reaching his stalk eyes.  

“But…”  Tobias gasps for air, tears thickening his voice.  “But you can’t just…”

Elfangor presses the flat of his his tail blade against Tobias’s forehead.  

He’s right.  There’s no more time for words.  Jake grabs Tobias’s left arm; Rachel grabs his right. They run. The five of them sprint (Tobias hesitating at first, but soon moving willingly) toward the far exit of the construction site.

They burst out the far side just as the Blade ship is descending upon the andalite fighter behind them.  For a moment they all stare at each other in shock. Then they hug, and wipe tears off their faces, and go home.

When Tom opens the front door of their house, Jake has already grabbed him in a hug before he thinks through what he’s doing. Stupid, stupid, he tells himself as he feels Temrash 114 jerk back in surprise.  It’s just… it’s been five years. No, it’s been eight.  Jake pulls himself away with a force of will. “I, uh, I got cut from the basketball team,” he mumbles, by way of explanation.

Marco walks past his dad, not bothering to say a word, and goes for the computer sitting on the desk by the door. He forgot how much technology advanced since the war, he thinks, staring at the boot-up screen and drumming his fingers on the mousepad. Eventually when he manages to log on, he starts entering the code that will allow the crappy internet signal to intercept yeerk messages. It takes all night for him to hack the Sharing’s internal servers, but it’s not like he was going to sleep anyway.

Tobias goes home with Rachel, although he’s forced to scramble awkwardly up the tree outside her house in order to slide through her window.  Once he’s inside she pulls him into her arms, and pulls them both onto the bed.  They whisper to each other about the things she missed during five years apart, all through the night.

“Cassie?” her dad says over dinner.  “What were you thinking just now?”  She smiles, and comes out with a lie.  Because there’s no telling them that she was watching her parents in awe, wondering if they were ever really this young.

The next day they assemble outside the Gardens.  The dolphin exhibit isn’t open for visitors for another two hours, so they wander: Marco to where Big Jim is kept, Rachel to the elephant exhibit, Cassie to the horse stalls, Tobias to the aviary.  Jake’s not actually stupid enough to wander into the tiger enclosure a second time, instead waiting until Cassie can create a diversion long enough for Rachel to morph and pick up the world’s angriest kitty in her trunk in order to carry it over for Jake to acquire.  When all’s said and done they still have time to kill, which is why Jake takes them all to the reptile house, Rachel leads the way to the polar bears, Tobias reluctantly points out the duck pond, and Cassie lets them into the owlery.  They never know what they might need—except that they kind of do know.

When they finally get the chance to acquire dolphin DNA (Jake asks about orcas, and wilts a little when Cassie points out that exhibit won’t be by for several more months), they all morph ducks and fly out to the shore right away.  It’s a Saturday, and they don’t have much time to waste.

“Anyone actually remember where the Dome ship was located, last time we found it?” Marco asks, as they pull off their outer clothes.

“I mean, I know the general direction we should be headed.”  Tobias shrugs.  “Let’s keep going that way for as long as we can, and hopefully—”

“We’ll run into another helpful whale, I’ll almost get eaten by sharks, Ax-man will blare out a distress signal that summons Visser Three, and it’ll take me two hours to get the taxxon guts out of my hair tonight?” Marco suggests cheerfully.

“Great plan,” Rachel says.  “Let’s do it.”

They’re all so much more adult now, Jake thinks with a touch of sadness, and it shows.  None of them allow themselves to get distracted by the dolphins’ playful euphoria, instead forming quickly into a tight pod as they head directly out to sea.  He catches at least two of the others—Cassie and Tobias, if he had to guess—watching the dolphin he knows to be Rachel as if expecting her to disappear at any time.  Rachel and Marco aren’t teasing each other the way they were last time, instead discussing whether to search in a grid or to start yelling for Ax once they get close.

Demorphing and then re-morphing in the water is surprisingly efficient.  It turns out that Marco remembers how to swim, even if his body is smaller and clumsier than he remembers, and of course Tobias being able to tread water as a human in between morphs makes the whole process much easier.  

Further proof that they’ve grown up: they’re approaching what Cassie thinks she remembers might be the right area (although she’s already offered eight or nine apologetic explanations that her memory’s not perfect) when they all “see” a sharp-edged shape approaching in their echolocation.  Jake doesn’t even have time to think a command before they’ve all already snapped into battle formation, fanning out behind Rachel at the head of their phalanx.  And then—

the shark says.

Jake calls back.  When there’s a collective burst of silent laughter, he says,

Their little group slides together with shocking speed, complete now in a way it hasn’t been in five years.  They continue teasing each other the whole way back to shore:

This time around the near-giddiness that infects the whole group, causing Rachel to try and knock Marco off course while Tobias dryly lists off all the things he’s not going to miss about being a bird and Cassie points out distant fish species with childlike awe, can’t be chalked up entirely to the dolphin morphs.  Still, Jake thinks, if anyone asked, that would be the excuse they’d give.

Nonetheless, when they all meet up in Cassie’s barn the following afternoon, they’re all business.  On the chalkboard where Cassie’s dad normally keeps track of his patients and their meds, the six of them start the most exhaustive list they can recall of everything they did in the war and whether or not it actually worked.  One whole side of the board is devoted to a list of people they want to bring into the war as soon as possible—James is at the top of the list, but Jara and Ket are directly below, whereas Arbron and Erek both have question marks next to their names.  There’s another section for people they want to keep out if at all possible, including their families but also celebrities like William Roger Tennant and Jeremy Jason McCole.

There’s one name none of them have mentioned so far, Rachel thinks.  One person whose presence, or absence, has been a festering sore at the center of this team since he first crawled into their lives.  She doesn’t have a solution for David.  Not yet.  But she will come up with one, she resolves.  Because that’s what she does for this team: she takes out the trash.

They spend almost an entire afternoon arguing (at one point Cassie’s mom comes out to offer them lemonade, terrifying them all before they remember that Ax is currently human and Tobias doesn’t exactly look suspicious) but at the end of it they have something approaching a plan.

“We’re going to do it right this time,” Jake says, grimly looking over the rough battle plan doodled across the far wall.  “No mistakes, no needless deaths—”

“Good luck with that,” Marco drawls.  “The rest of us, who are only human, are going to screw up plenty.  But hey, if we muck it up too badly, the Ellimist will probably just let us start over again, and again, and again…”

“We get the point,” Rachel says.  She watches Marco startle for the fourth or fifth time as he remembers that yeah, she’s alive.  (None of them have asked her what it was like being dead.  Which is good, because she doesn’t remember anything.  Maybe there’s nothing to remember.)

The following afternoon, Marco and Tobias and Ax work together to go through every inch of the construction site in a grid pattern, but they find no trace of the morphing cube.  They suspected that might happen.  David didn’t find that thing by accident.  And it didn’t survive the destruction of Elfangor’s fighter by chance, no matter what the Ellimist might claim.

They have a busy week.  Cassie and Tobias pull Mr. Tidwell aside, tell him outright that they know about Illim and the Yeerk Peace Movement, and set up a cautious line of communication.  Marco takes Ax with him to talk to Erek and the rest of the chee, dodging any questions about the pemalite crystal as they stoke his need to fight back.  Jake gives Rachel backup as she marches up to Mertil and Gafinilan’s front door, rings the bell, and (when Gafinilan answers) announces that she’s recruiting them both to fight and doesn’t care about any vecol nonsense when it’s all hands on deck on this planet.

Arbron is trickier.  They all admit to one another, when pressed, that they probably couldn’t pick out one taxxon from another in a lineup.  They’re also not sure how to get ahold of the rebellious taxxons without accidentally alerting the voluntary taxxon-controllers to their presence.  Jake tells them to keep thinking about it, but to worry about other problems in the interim.

Jara Hamee and Ket Halpak are also out of reach for the moment.  The problem there isn’t that the Animorphs don’t know how to find them; it’s that even all six of them aren’t necessarily enough to sit on two hork-bajir-controllers for three whole days as they wait for the yeerks to starve.  Waiting around for the Ellimist to help seems like a bad idea, since they’ve never been able to count on him to do anything.

On top of that, if they try and recruit James and Erica and the others without being able to offer them the power to morph… “They’ll laugh at us,” Marco says flatly.  “And then James will do that thing where he grabs you and throws you on the floor with, like, his pinky muscles, and then they’ll all laugh at us some more.  And then Collette will call security.”

Lacking other options, they decide to wait.  Wait for the Ellimist to make his move.  Wait for Crayak to make his.  Hope that, this time around, they get the chance to do it right.  In the meantime, there’s plenty of work to keep them busy.

The day before the governor of California is due to arrive at the local hospital for an unspecified treatment, a small-scale bomb at just the right power station shuts down the entire grid for that section of the city.  Rumors—which have no traceable origin, but seem to be all over—suggest that there’s going to be another attack, even bigger, on the governor when he arrives.  He cancels the visit.

“Hey Mom, you think we’d be able to visit Grandpa G this weekend?  We just haven’t seen him in a while, is all.  Could we do that, just for a day or two?”

Jeremy Jason McCole shuts the door of his dressing room, and gets about half a second into a scream of terror before a thing grabs him from behind and puts a part-human paw over his mouth. “You will not join the Sharing,” the creature sitting at his dressing table (it looks like a horribly mutated grizzly bear, one with blond hair) growls at him.  “You will cease all communication with them.  If you don’t, we’ll know.  And we will come for you.”  Jeremy Jason McCole bobs his head in frantic agreement, and the werewolf (oh Jesus, that’s a werewolf, he’s never seen one before but he knows what one would look like) releases him.  He collapses to the ground, gasping for air, and by the time he finally looks up both monsters are gone.

“Aunt Ellen?… Yeah, it’s Rachel.  Look, I had a weird experience earlier… And anyway, I wanted to make sure… Could you make sure Saddler’s always wearing a helmet, like, every time he bikes anywhere? … Yeah, Brooke and Justin should probably do the same.  I just don’t want… You’ll do that for me? You’ll make sure? … Oh, no reason… Thanks, you too.”

None of the other Animorphs ever find out about it, but Taylor’s parents receive an anonymous phone call telling them to check the wiring in their house.  The voice on the other end claims that there have been over a dozen house fires in properties made by the same developer, and that he can’t give out any more information for fear his employers will find out he leaked this information.  Tobias doesn’t know whether or not it works; he never bothers to find out.

“Ms. Robbinette, hi!  Mind if I call you Nora?”

“Yes, Marco.  Yes I do.”

“Sure thing.  Mrs. Robbinette, then.  That was a great class today, with those, uh, binomial quadratic functions and all.”

“I must say I had no idea you were paying so much attention.  Judging by the expression on your face, you spent the entire class either daydreaming or dozing off.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve heard it all before.”

“What?”

“I just mean, uh, from my dad!  Because he’s taught me a lot about the FOIL stuff.  See, my dad’s a great guy.  Really.  All that stuff about him stealing prescription meds and getting high off pain pills he doesn’t need, it’s… Okay, fine, that’s all true, but he’s really a nice person.  When he’s sober.  Which isn’t that often.”

“Marco, honey, is there a reason you’re telling me all of this?  If you’re having problems at home, then Mr. Chapman—”

“He’s thinking of asking you out!  My dad, that is.  Not sure why, since he’s already got two or three girlfriends he’s seeing.  Well, not sure if they’re girlfriends, but a lot of them come by and spend the night.  I don’t mind, not really, and I guess if you don’t mind him cheating on you all the time…”

“I’m not dating your father, Marco.  And I have no intention of doing so.”

“And that’s awesome.  Anyway, have a nice day!”

“But—”

“See you tomorrow.  Can’t wait to get started on factoring those second-order polynomials!”

Joe Bob Fenestre’s house, after the grounds are soaked in accelerant by several birds of prey that are illogically each carrying their own gas can, catches on fire.  It burns to the ground in less than an hour, although the fire is controlled enough that the entire household staff and even the guard dogs escape unharmed.  Web Access America goes offline for three hours in the ensuing chaos, leading Marco to compose a fifteen-line lament about how they’re going back to the dark ages.

They’re all so much less careful this time around, Jake thinks with weary concern.  It all just matters so little, even less than it did when they were first fighting.  He’s twenty-two years old, not thirteen; it’s annoying rather than panic-inducing to realize that he’s already been out over an hour past his parents’ curfew.  His mom’s attempts to ground him are somewhere between exasperating (because they’ll inconvenience him for an hour or two before he can sneak out again) and endearing (she’s just doing her best to be a responsible parent, he can see that now), but either way they don’t slow him down for long.  Still, at this rate—none of them doing any homework, most of them lying only halfheartedly to their families—something’s going to crack.  Much sooner than it did the first time.

Marco and Tobias are the ones who manage to get footage of William Roger Tennant grabbing one of his own cockatiels out of the air and throwing it at a wall, mostly by lurking in his bushes for several hours at a time with a long-range zoom camera that Ax helped them assemble from Radio Shack parts.  However, Rachel’s the one who walks them through the process of mailing the tape off to her dad, and of ensuring it will make the six o’clock news.  Contact Point gets cancelled (and good riddance, Marco insists) before the Sharing ever comes up in conversation.

“My parents would kill me if they knew about this,” Rachel mutters.  Somehow the gun—yes, that’s a freaking gun in the brown paper bag she’s holding gingerly—seems so much more awful than the dracon beams or even claws and teeth she’s used before.

“My parents would probably be fine with it, especially given what’s at stake.”  Marco lets out a high-pitched little laugh.  He’s rubbing at his arms as if he’s cold, even though it’s a perfectly mild night.

“Fine, then.”  Tobias smiles, although there’s no humor behind it.  “You want to be the one to…?”

Marco holds up both hands, taking a step back from the bag in Rachel’s hands.  “You know,” he says slyly, “If your parents knew about this, they’d probably give you a freaking medal.”

“Nuh-uh.”  Tobias crosses his arms.  “I went through all this trouble to steal some perfectly good ski masks.  I’ve done my part.”

“December sixth, right?”  Rachel cuts the boys off before they can bicker any more.  She’ll be the one to use the gun.  She’s done worse things before, and lived with herself afterwards.  Tom’s alive, and so is David.  An old man who would have had a heart attack in a TV studio is going to live another few boring years.  All things considered, she’s fine.

“I’m sure.”  Marco is now jumping up and down in place, jitters infecting his whole body.  “He brought it to school on a Monday, said he found it the night before.  I know it was the first Monday of December because we went on winter break just after…”  He coughs, clears his throat.  “It was December sixth.  I’m sure.”

“Let’s do it.”  Rachel pulls the mask over her own face, tosses the other one to Marco.  Crumpling the paper bag in her pocket, she adjusts her grip on the pistol.

David is walking home alone, having unwisely cut through the construction site to get from the mall to the suburbs exactly the way they used to do.  He freezes, putting up both hands, when Rachel steps out of the alleyway in front of him and points the gun at his head.  

“Give us the backpack, asshole,” Marco growls, stepping up behind her.  “Or we’ll blow your head off.”

David’s face is dead-white, but even Rachel can grudgingly admit that he shows an impressive amount of bravado when he says, “I’m a kid.  I have a couple textbooks and maybe three dollars—”

“Don’t care.”  Marco steps forward, arms crossed and stance squared in what is clearly an attempt to look bigger than he is.  “Give it up.”

Rachel thumbs the safety off the gun.  It’s not loaded, but she’s pretty sure even David isn’t stupid enough to test whether it is.

“Fine, fine.”  He swings it off his shoulder and tosses it at their feet.

“You got any more money in your pockets?” Rachel wants nothing more than to grab the bag and run for it, but she also knows they have to make this look like a real mugging.

Rolling his eyes, David shrugs out of his light jacket and tosses that at them too.  “Happy?”

“Get out of here,” Marco snaps.

Rachel’s heart is pounding so hard she feels the rush of blood throughout her entire body.  It’s not until they retreat back into the alleyway and pull the morphing cube out of the bottom of David’s bag that she finally feels her heartbeat start to slow.  “Yeah,” she breathes, “Jake’s not exactly going to be annoyed with us for long.”

That same week, the G7 summit scheduled for the conference center downtown gets cancelled after a bomb goes off in one of the hotel’s satellite buildings.  At least, everyone assumes it must be a bomb, because even the Secret Service agents don’t know of anything else that could cause that much destruction in that little time while leaving the surrounding areas untouched.  If they’d been from Sudan or the Central African Republic instead of California, they might have recognized the aftermath of a rhinoceros rampage when they saw one.

Two days later, a group of kids wanders into the long-term pediatric care ward of Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.  James takes almost as much convincing this time around as he did the first time—none of them have exactly become master persuaders in their old age—but once again he agrees after he sees what the morphing power can do.  Jake gives him the morphing cube for safekeeping, with instructions to use it as he sees fit.  Cassie, at least, suspects that James is going to have a couple hundred new Animorphs ready to go by the time they need his help again.

The EGS tower gets infiltrated by a large collection of cockroaches, and half an hour later the ground-based kandrona generator gets shut off.  Erek King talks them through the process of hammering a hole in the side and then pouring salt water into the crack.  The damage will look accidental, a product of wear and tear and improper maintenance, but it will also result in the core ceasing to put out its life-giving rays.  This time around the secrecy is a must, because this time around the Yeerk Empire doesn’t even know there are morph-capable agents on Earth at all.  At least, not yet.  It’s only a matter of time, Jake knows.  It’s only a matter of time.  And they have to use their advantage while they have it.

“This is cruel,” Cassie says.  “It’s cruel and it’s wrong and it’s inexcusable.”

“Do you have another way?” Marco demands.  “Another way that won’t result in even more people dying?”

She hunches her shoulders, crossing her arms over her chest where she leans against a post of one of the horse stalls.

“Seriously, though.”  Jake looks up at Cassie from where he’s sitting on a bale of hay on the floor.  “Do you?  Because I don’t know how to do this without killing so many of them that the rest don’t have the will to fight.”

It’s just the six of them, sitting around in a circle in Cassie’s barn.  Almost like old times, except for all of the ways it’s not.

For instance, Rachel thinks, it never occurred to them last time.  Because they never knew.  But they know now: yeerks are like slugs in most of the important ways.  Most importantly of all, if they dump salt in the yeerk pool…

Saddler did it one time when they were kids, mostly just because he thought it would gross her out since she was a girl.  He’d waited until the little brown slug had slithered up onto the front porch, and then he’d taken his mom’s salt shaker and…

And the result was more horrible than Rachel could have imagined.  She didn’t know in advance that it would stiffen like that, that the tiny body would convulse and shake.  That despite not making a sound the slug could put out such a visible scream of pain and bewilderment as its very skin peeled back from the pale muscle underneath.  That it would blister and deform as if it cooked alive from the inside.  She never found out how it ended; she’d stomped down as hard as she could, ground the body into the wood of the porch, and then she’d punched Saddler in the face so hard she’d blackened his eye.

There are three 25-pound bags of road salt leaning against the door frame of the barn.  Marco has already made four and a half jokes about how salt allegedly kills evil things in the old urban legends.

“We’ll warn the Yeerk Peace Movement in advance,” Jake says.  As if that will make it okay.

“Let’s do it.”  Rachel doesn’t know what else to say, if there even is anything else.

In the end it works.  God help them, it works.  They hit the yeerk pool during its peak hours—midafternoon on a Tuesday, when there are always Sharing full members’ meetings—and simply break down the door of the entrance in the closet of their school.  There are no Gleet Biofilters, since Visser Three doesn’t know there are “andalites” on this planet, so it’s no problem at all for the six of them, along with the twenty-three members of James’s team, to burst through the door.  They are mostly elephants or gorillas, creatures that can drag the huge bags of road salt with them, and they are in and out with vicious speed.

Over one hundred thirty-nine thousand yeerks die in the most horrible way imaginable in the span of about ten minutes.  Cassie thinks, sick to her stomach, that even flushing them into space would have been kinder.

The seventeen thousand-odd yeerks on the Pool ship are lucky, though they don’t know it.  They are the ones, along with the few surviving yeerks in the pool and the handful at known yeerk-owned locations like the community center, who see Jake’s message when it plays.  Jake is the one speaking into the camera, but Cassie and Marco were the ones who wrote most of the message.

Jake offers the remainder of the empire peace.  He holds up the morphing cube where the camcorder will pick it up, and explains that he is willing to offer its use to any yeerk who surrenders.  He tells them that he is as weary of fighting as he is sure many of them are, and that if they do not comply then he will slaughter every single one of them.  He lists names: hosts they know are infested, sub-vissers they can find and kill in an instant, plans from within the highest levels of the empire that prove he has insider knowledge.

The recording isn’t live.  Jake’s not there to see it play.  He, and the other Animorphs, are crowded into the Kings’ basement along with their terrified and confused families.

Well, not all the Animorphs, and not all their families.  Because Visser One was overseeing the construction of the underwater base that would prepare their troops for Leeran, as they expected she would be.  She also summoned the nearest Bug fighter and took off for command central the instant she got the news, as expected.

What Visser One couldn’t have expected is the second Bug fighter that rams into hers at top speed.  She doesn’t have time to expect the explosion that comes, or the crash that follows.  She certainly isn’t expecting the gorilla that comes wading through the wreckage toward her, or the young andalite who grabs the dracon beam off her belt before she can even think to reach for it.

Most surprising of all is the voice that says as enormous arms lift her and toss her over one black-furred shoulder.

He’s right, as it turns out.  Eva lives to see the end of the war a scant month after Visser One dies.  She sees things she never could have imagined: her own son planning battles before he’s old enough for his voice to change.  His best friend, no older, commanding armies hybridized from their own bandit force and the U.S. Military.  Humans and rebellious yeerks and even a handful of taxxons and hork-bajir working together to turn back the andalite force when it finally arrives to “help” with the after-battle cleanup.  Reconstruction.  Something almost like peace.

Marco asks.  He and Tobias and Ax are floating half a mile up from the area out in back of Cassie’s barn, blatantly spying as they watch her try and work up the gumption to ask Jake out.  So far her first two attempts have petered off into awkward stammering while Jake remains as clueless as ever; any minute now Rachel’s going to get exasperated enough to drag them together by force if she has to.  In the meantime, it’s better than daytime TV.

Rachel?> Tobias asks.  

Ax says, but he doesn’t sound that certain.

 Marco tilts around to look at him.  

Tobias says.  Rachel is now standing between Jake and Cassie, gesticulating wildly.  

Ax says.    He doesn’t seem particularly interested in the drama below; Marco suspects he’s just looking for every excuse to spend as much time as he can with the others.  The shuttle that will take Ax home to see his parents at long last will be leaving one week from now.  He’s been trying to talk Tobias into coming along to meet his grandparents, and Tobias has already shown signs of wavering.

Tobias says,

 Marco regrets the words as soon as he says them.   he adds quickly, trying to cover.  

 Ax is doing that thing where he’s being a little bit sardonic and a lot bit literal.

Marco decides.  so betting on it.>

had to be done 🤷

THE MANDALORIAN - A TIMELINE Assumptions this post will make: - It’s possible that they’ll throw out canon/contradict something that’s been established up to this point (I’m hoping not, as Dave Filoni is one of the main people who oversaw the creation of that canon, but it’s still a possibility!), especially as Favreau has mentioned that he wants to recanonize some Legends stuff, but for now we’re assuming canon is canon and they’re going to work with that.  This is a post that is focused on what canon and creators of canon have said! - Din Djarin is ~44 years old, as a reflection of Pedro Pascal’s age. - Out-of-universe, Star Wars’ timeline is referred to by BBY / ABY (Before the Battle of Yavin / After the Battle of Yavin) because that’s when the Death Star was blown up/the Rebellion battled the Empire over Yavin IV, which was because A New Hope was the central compass point as the very first SW movie.  However, this timeline will focus on The Mandalorian season 1 as Year 0, as I think that’ll make it clearer how everything relates to this show. THE TIMELINE SO FAR: 50 Years Ago - The Child (Baby Yoda) was born, Anakin Skywalker was born in the same year 41 Years Ago - The Phantom Menace ?? Years Ago - The Mandalorian Civil War.  There was an insurgency against Satine Kryze’s rule of Mandalore, which eventually required the intervention of the Republic, by sending two Jedi (Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi) to protect her, causing them to go on the run for a year.       Obi-Wan later describes this as, “An extended mission when I was younger. Master Qui-Gon and I spent a year on Mandalore protecting the Duchess from insurgents who had threatened her world. They sent bounty hunters after us. We were always on the run, living hand-to-mouth, never sure what the next day would bring. A civil war killed most of Satine’s people, hence her aversion to violence. When she returned, she took rebuilding her world alone.“  Whether he means that the people loyal to Satine were killed or nearly all of Mandalore was killed, it’s hard to say.  (Presumably the latter?)

31 Years Ago - Attack of the Clones, the Clone Wars begin, Kamino’s clone army is discovered, they become part of the Republic, which may tie into Dr. Pershing’s arm patch symbol likely being the Kamino emblem.

~31-28 Years Ago - The flashbacks we see in The Mandalorian are likely to take place during the Clone Wars, that the people were attacked by Separatists (hence the Super Battle Droids we see being used) and were rescued by Mandalorians, adopting Din Djarin as a Foundling, raising him in the Fighting Corps.   Din would have likely been around 10+ years old?        At least one of the Mandalorians in the flashback was wearing a Death Watch symbol, but it’s unclear how the politics of this were going, since they’re fighting Separatists in the flashback and it’s unclear precisely when Pre Vizsla joined with Dooku and the Separatists.  (Separatist alliances shifted all the time, so this isn’t hard to work with!)

~31-28 Years Ago - Death Watch, a Mandalorian splinter group, publicly arises as a protest against Satine’s pacifist ways and determination that Mandalore leave behind its warrior past.  They bomb targets in the city of Sundari and work with the Separatists to try to kill Duchess Kryze and put their own leader into place on Mandalore proper.       Pre Vizsla of Clan Vizsla is the governor of Concordia (a moon of Mandalore), voiced by Jon Favreau, secretly leads the Death Watch and reveals that he has the darksaber when he fights against Obi-Wan Kenobi after its revealed that Pre is part of Death Watch.  (Clan Vizsla is one of the most central Clans of Mandalore.)       They are not successful in their plot (to have the Republic Senate forcefully invade Mandalore under the threat of Death Watch/the rumor of Mandalore joining the Separatists) and remain neutral in the Clone Wars.       It’s also later revealed (a few months later/a season later) that Bo-Katan Kryze, Satine’s sister, is a lieutenant in Death Watch.

28 Years Ago - Darth Maul creates his own Shadow Collective (an alliance of various criminal organizations) by allying with Death Watch and taking over Mandalore.  Duchess Satine Kryze is murdered by Maul as part of his takeover of Mandalore/his revenge against Obi-Wan Kenobi, as well as Pre Vizsla is killed by Maul when they disagree over the direction/who is leading Mandalore.  Maul takes the darksaber. 28 Years Ago - Fenn Rau, as part of Skull Squadron of the Protectors (a group of Mandalorian royal guards), assisted the Jedi in the Clone Wars, including helping out in a fight with Jedi Master Depa Billaba and Padawan Caleb Dume (Kanan Jarrus). 28 Years Ago - The Clone Wars are nearing the end, the Siege of Mandalore happens at the same time as ROTS/Order 66, this is referenced as “The Night of a Thousand Tears” by Moff Gideon, “when gunships outfitted with similar ordnance (to the e-web cannon) laid waste to fields of Mandalorian recruits in the Night of a Thousand Tears”.  He doesn’t say who the gunships belonged to, if they were Republic gunships or Maul’s Shadow Collective gunships or something else.

     The Siege of Mandalore is basically:  Darth Maul has set himself up as leader of Mandalore, so Ahsoka Tano and a battalion of clones (including Captain Rex) lead a mission to retake the planet.  While they’re in the middle of this mission, Order 66 happens, where the clones’ inhibitor chips have them turning on the Jedi, including Ahsoka though she is no longer officially a Jedi. During/after this huge shitshow, Bo-Katan Kryze is appointed Regent of Mandalore. 28 Years Ago - Revenge of the Sith, the Republic fell, the Empire rose, the Jedi Order was genocided basically out of existence. 11 Years Ago - The Ghost crew discover Maul hiding out, who still has the darksaber, and they retrieve it.  Sabine Wren (of Clan Wren) briefly trains with it, but struggles to decide how to proceed with it and her contentious relationship with her family.     Fenn Rau (governor of Concord Dawn, as appointed by the Empire) explains the history behind the darksaber to Kanan Jarrus, that a thousand years ago (give or take) the first Mandalorian Jedi was named Tarre Vizsla who created it as his weapon, that it stayed with the Jedi until a few decades ago, Clan Vizsla stole into the Jedi Temple and took it back, as it was a symbol of House Vizsla and had the power to unite the Clans/Houses in the right hands.

10 Years Ago - Sabine Wren rallies her family into deciding to fight back against the Empire’s occupation of Mandalore and gives the darksaber to an initially reluctant Bo-Katan Kryze.  Leaders of several clans of Mandalore swear allegiance to her and they vow to fight the Empire, after many years of living under Imperial rule.

9 Years Ago - A New Hope, Alderaan was destroyed, the Death Star was destroyed, also the events of Rogue One happened. 6 Years Ago - The Empire Strikes Back 5 Years Ago - Return of the Jedi, the Second Death Star destroyed, Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader died, Yoda died, formation of the New Republic 4 Years Ago - The Battle of Jakku, which is the final giant battle between the New Republic and the Empire, where they officially lost (see: Star Wars Battlefront II for the story) 0 Years Ago - The Mandalorian, season 1 THINGS I’M NOT SURE WHERE TO PLACE ON THE TIMELINE: - Din and the other Mandalorians have cultural differences from the Mandalorians we’ve seen up to this point.  The tradition of being unable to take their helmet off, lest they cannot put it back on, doesn’t match up with what we see of Pre Vizsla in The Clone Wars, who was the leader of Death Watch, rather than Satine’s New Mandalorians who were pacifists.  This also strongly contrasts what we see of Bo-Katan Kryze (who was affiliated with Death Watch) and Sabine Wren (along with her family, who all took off/put on their helmets).  Is this a splinter group?  Is it different for people who were born Mandalorian vs Foundlings who must prove themselves? Something else? - Satine says that Jango Fett was not Mandalorian, but a regular bounty hunter and she didn’t know how he acquired the armor.  Out of universe, Pablo Hidalgo has supported this, but that was years ago and canon evolves over time.  Dave Filoni has also talked about how, as far back as Attack of the Clones, George Lucas intended for Jango to not actually be Mandalorian. THE BIG QUESTION MARKS: - Paz Vizla’s name is spelled without the “s” in the credits, is this a reference to the different spelling as used in SWTOR?  Or is it a typo?  Favreau has been re-canonizing some Legends things, but also the credits for Chapter 5 have “Tuskan Raider”, which is a typo of “Tusken”, so typos are a thing in the credits. - The Great Purge isn’t clearly set within the timeline yet.  It does not seem to be the same thing as the Siege of Mandalore or Order 66, because it’s too significantly tied to the Empire.  

      While the Empire was being created during those moments and it’s possible that Paz Vizla was referring to something that happened in the aftermath of the Siege of Mandalore, something big enough to referred to separately, it might also very well refer to something that happened after Bo-Katan Kryze received the darksaber and united Mandalore against the Empire, as we don’t know how that fight happened, and may little comments in The Mandalorian indicate that seeing Mandalorians is very rare these days.  Last we saw them, when Sabine talks about the Imperial Academy on Mandalore or when we see House Wren’s interaction with the other Clans, they don’t seem to be that rare.        Paz Vizla says, “Our strength was once in our numbers. Now we live in the shadows and only come above ground one at a time. Our world was shattered by the Empire, with whom this coward shares tables.”  and “These were cast in an Imperial smelter.  These are the spoils of the Great Purge.  The reason that we live hidden like sand rats.“   Unless they are a splinter group, Mandalorians didn’t live hidden away 10 years ago in the events of Rebels.

Dear Diary,

Today I cried for Susan Pevensie’s loss today.

Naruto's Great Shinobi Wars— aka, Masashi Kishimoto's fucked-up timeline

So. The Great Shinobi Wars are a mess and a half. 

Assuming that the ages given in the official databooks makes sense and that Kishimoto is consistent in his character design when it comes to indications of age (neither of which have proven to be reliable metrics but we gotta start SOMEWHERE), let’s work backwards.

It’s implied that the Third Great Shinobi War ends around the time that Minato became the Fourth Hokage, because of why Hiruzen stepped down: to take the blame of ending the unfruitful campaign and accepting the sunk cost rather than continuing to throw resources into pursuing the war further (which is what Danzo and presumably a fair number of people wanted). Therefore, the Third War had to have ended before Minato and Kushina died and  Naruto was born.

Okay, so Minato was probably the shortest-reigning Hokage of all time. Weird, but not that weird.

We also know that the Third Shinobi War only ended after Kirigakure kidnapped Rin and stuffed the Three-Tails inside her à la Trojan Horse, which occurs several months after the Kannabi Bridge mission featured in Kakashi Gaiden, which in turn takes place when Kakashi is 12. Considering he's listed as age 26 going on 27 in the events of Part One, this event must have happened about three years before Naruto was born.

But the war couldn't have ended before Itachi at age 4 was brought along by his father Fugaku to witness the carnage of a battlefield. Since he was 5 when Sasuke and Naruto were born, that means the Third Great Shinobi War didn’t end until after the 9th of June in the year before Naruto’s birth.

The real question is, how long did the war last?

With the new NARUTOP 99 one-shot, Naruto Gaiden: Whirlwind Within the Vortex, we get this one crucial panel.

Kakashi only met Gai once they enrolled into the Academy, and neither of these three kiddos have forehead protectors [hitai-ate] in this image. We know that Kakashi graduated from the Academy as a genin at the age of 5, and that Kakashi is 26 going on 27 in Part One of Naruto. Therefore, Whirlwind in the Vortex must take place around two decades before Part One.

That said, nowhere in this one-shot is it explicitly mentioned which war is being fought. We only know that the conflict involves Konoha and Iwa on opposite sides, which is true of the Third War, yes, but is by no means specifically unique to the Third War. Guess this scene needs to be tabled.

Okay, so what else happened during the Third War?

Ao steals a byakugan from a member of the Hyuga clan. Sasori was out there doing something— likely fighting a defensive front, going by his "Red Sands" [Akasuna] moniker. The Third Tsuchikage reluctantly accepts a peace treaty between Iwa and Konoha delivered by the senior Ino-Shika-Cho trio with the Fourth Kazekage supervising (because they're doing it along the border to the Land of Wind for some reason), with a major contributing factor to his decision being the retreat of a thousand Iwa-nin after Minato said "It's flashin' time" and Yellow-Flashed all over those guys a while before that. The Third Raikage was killed after fighting for three consecutive days in order to cover the retreat of his troops against a large force of an unknown nationality, but most likely either Konoha or Iwa, considering the geography and what little we know of political tensions between the villages. Some time before this, Minato encounters the then-future Fourth Raikage and Killer B and proves himself faster than the lightning cloak by out-speeding them using the Flying Thunder God.

Great. Fantastic. Doesn't tell us anything about when the Third War actually started. Does the wiki have anything?

Because of a decline in national power, the reign of the Five Great Shinobi Countries was crumbling. Along their borders, skirmishes with smaller nations broke out all the time. The prolonged conflicts gradually spread their flames far and wide, until at last it developed into an all-out war.

Fuck's sake, fine, let's also table that. What about the Second War?

Believe it or not, we actually have even less about this one. Sure, there are a lot of major players involved— the Ame orphans were found by the Legendary Sannin and eventually trained by Jiraiya, said Legendary Sannin got their moniker from fighting Hanzo, Hatake Sakumo probably earned his moniker as the "White Fang" and killed Sasori's parents during this time, Chiyo was having her poison-vs-cure production contest with Tsunade, Tsunade's lover Kato Dan died (likely fighting Iwa, based on the nature of his injury), and Tsunade's little brother Nawaki died. It's also highly likely that Kumo's attempt to kidnap Kushina happened around this time, seeing as Minato and Kushina were both Academy-age, aka no more than twelve years old.

And of course, we know fuck-all about everyone's ages at this time— except for Sasori.

This is Studio Pierrot's character reference sheet for the young Sasori that we see in the flashback after his parents have been killed. Now, I know this image isn't of great quality, but you know what his height is listed as? Either 115 cm or 118 cm. I'm willing to bet that Sasori was intended to be around 6 or 7 years old, here, i.e. 28 or 29 years before his appearance in Shippuden whereupon his age is listed as 35. Doing a bit of arithmetic reveals that this would have been 11 to 12 years before Naruto's birth. This lines up with Minato's age— he and Kushina were both still in the Academy when Kumo tried to kidnap Kushina, aka no more than 12 years old, and we know that Minato died when he was age 24.

Okay, so now we're getting somewhere! The Second Great Shinobi War ended at the earliest around a dozen years before Naruto's birth, and the Third Great Shinobi War ended about a year before that. How about the First War?

This is my favourite one to talk about, actually, because of the sheer chaos of it. This is the war in which the hidden villages realized they maybe shouldn't keep sending their leaders out onto the battlefield because you know what happened? So many fucking Kage died, and their militaries were left scrambling in the wake.

The Second Hokage, Senju Tobirama, is implied to have croaked last among all of the Kage who did die— killed by the Gold and Silver Brothers (or at least the platoon that the two were infamous for having led). Second Tsuchikage Muu assumes it was Tobirama who reanimated him and his three peers during that one scene during the Fourth Great Shinobi War, after all.

The Second Tsuchikage and Second Mizukage killed each other, which is weird if you consider how far away the Land of Earth and the Land of Water are from each other, but... eh.

The First Raikage died sometime before the failed attempt at a peace treaty between Kumo and Konoha, because it's the Second Raikage who's depicted next to Tobirama in this panel addressing that:

Likewise, the First Tsuchikage Ishikawa, First Mizukage Byakuren, and First Hokage Senju Hashirama must have all died prior to the above events. The only one who we don't know for sure died in this war is the First Kazekage Reto, but come on. Reto is listed to have been age 58 at the time of his death, and Kishimoto clearly drew him with those lines around his eyes that he tends to only give characters who are 30 or older. Considering all the other First Kage died in this war and the twenty years of peace that supposedly followed, I think we can say that Reto did as well.

The war's outbreak plunged the world into a chaos not seen since the end of the Warring States Period, for which reason there are very few records about the war. According to Ōnoki, the war was a result of countries and their hidden villages taking resources from other countries and other hidden villages; Madara Uchiha's demand that Iwagakure be subservient to Konohagakure is implied to be the first such example of this.

The first sentence from this excerpt implies that there was a period of peace following the founding of the hidden villages, before the First Great Shinobi War broke out.

Now we have our basic information! Wonderful! Let me toss together a basic timeline using this info and see what we can do about the gaps.

[Year 1]

Konohagakure is founded.

Because of course they were the first hidden village, right? At least, we're never given any indication that there was another before them that Madara and Hashirama were inspired by, so long as you ignore anime filler. The feudal lords [daimyo] of nearby nations would logically have felt threatened at this unity of what had once been splintered, scattered clans of shinobi, now working together for Fire's feudal lord and stronger for it, so the order for shinobi to unify is given out in other lands as well. It's very likely that the countries which ended up being part of the Five Great Nations were the first five to do so while the rest scrambled and lost land to this new, stronger system of fighting forces. We can also assume that Uzushio was another of the earlier ones, due to the formation of their allyship with Konoha under Uzumaki Ashina and Senju Hashirama's leaderships, respectively.

The Warring States era ends.

[Year 3]

The future Third Tsuchikage, Onoki, is born as the grandson of the First Tsuchikage, Ishikawa. His age is listed as 79 during Shippuden.

[Year 8]

[10] Chiyo (Sunagakure elder) is born. Her age is listed as 73 during Shippuden, but every single one of her appearances takes place before what would have been her birthday that year.

[Year 9]

[02] The future Third Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen, is born to the Sarutobi clan head Sarutobi Sasuke.

[Year 10]

[01] Ebizo (Sunagakure elder and Chiyo's younger brother) is born. His age is listed as 72 during Shippuden.

[Year 15]

Uchiha Madara (somewhere in his 30s, going off of the lines under his eyes) travels to Iwa to proclaim Konoha's superiority.  The then-future Second Tsuchikage Muu and his student Onoki (who is drawn to look around the same age as the Rookie Nine when they first graduate, ergo 12 is a reasonable estimate of age) fight Madara. This is based on both Onoki's flashback and Madara's recognition of Onoki as an established shinobi with a moniker, "Fence-Sitter", during the Fourth Great Shinobi War.

Uchiha Madara and Senju Hashirama (both in their 30s, both with the age-lines around their eyes) clash, seemingly killing Madara and creating the Valley of the End.

[Year 16] 

The first Five Kage Summit is held.

In attendance are First Hokage Senju Hashirama and Senju Tobirama from Konoha, First Kazekage Reto and Shamon from Suna, First Tsuchikage Ishikawa and Muu from Iwa, First Raikage A and… A from Kumo, and First Mizukage Byakuren and the unnamed future Third Mizukage from Kiri.

As a gesture of goodwill, Konoha divides the captured tailed beasts to the other nations, based on how much they’re willing to pay: the Three-Tails and Six-Tails to Kiri, the Four-Tails and Five-Tails to Iwa, the Two-tails and Eight-Tails to Kumo. The Nine-Tails is kept within Konoha. It's unknown what happened to the Seven-Tails and when or how it ended up with Takigakure.

Due to Suna having already captured the Ichibi on their own, the First Kazekage demands a plot of fertile land and thirty percent of the monetary value from what the other nations would pay instead of a tailed beast. This enrages several of the other attendees to the point of threatening war, which is not followed through on immediately but gives rise to high tensions between the five major hidden villages. 

Sometime around this period, a shinobi from Takigakure named Kakazu (in his 20s) is ordered to assassinate Hashirama but fails. His age in Shippuden is given as 91. I assume this attempt takes place while Madara is out of the picture for whatever reason due to his utter lack of mentioning the Uchiha, because we all know that dramatic bastard wouldn't not fight Kakuzu given the circumstance.

[Year 16≥]

The First Great Shinobi War begins.

We can extrapolate that at the very least, Konoha was fighting Kumo and Iwa was fighting Kiri. Due to the wiki calling this a war over resources and Suna's prior statements during the Five Kage Summit, they were most probably also involved, but to what degree and against who I can't say.

The First Tsuchikage Ishikawa is killed; Muu is instated as the Second Tsuchikage.

The First Mizukage Yamashiro Byakuren is killed; Hozuki Gengetsu is instated as the Second Mizukage.

The First Raikage is killed; A (the First Raikage’s aide during the first Five Kage Summit) is instated as the Second Raikage.

First Kazekage Reto (58) is assassinated by an unknown party for unknown reasons. Shamon is instated as the Second Kazekage. During his reign, Shamon funnels considerable funding into expanding and improving the Puppet Brigade in order to decrease the casualties of Suna's flesh-and-blood shinobi.

[Year 27]

[08] The future Fifth Hokage, Senju Tsunade, is born as the granddaughter of First Hokage Senju Hashirama.

[10] Orochimaru is born.

[11] Jiraiya is born.

[Year 29≥]

First Hokage Senju Hashirama dies to causes that are never revealed in canon. Senju Tobirama is instated as the Second Hokage. 

Second Hokage Tobirama and Second Raikage A meet to discuss a peace treaty, but are interrupted by a rebel Kumo faction led by the Gold and Silver Brothers. It's possible that the Second Raikage died during this event— he's really never mentioned chronologically after this point. I assume this meeting took place after Hashirama's death because the Fourth Raikage refers to Tobirama by his Kage title when describing these events in chapter 527 of the manga, but it's also possible that A only did so out of respect and not because Tobirama was actually Hokage at the time. Stick this event wherever in the timeline, I guess.

The Second Tsuchikage Muu (30≥) and Second Mizukage Hozuki (30≥) Gengetsu kill each other in battle. Onoki (20s) and the First Mizukage's unnamed aide from the first Five Kage Summit are instated as the Third Tsuchikage and the Third Mizukage, respectively.

The future Third Kazekage is born.

Roshi, the Four-Tails' jinchuuriki, is probably also born around this time, considering he appears as an adult while fighting Jiraiya and Minato during Naruto Gaiden: Whirlwind in the Vortex.

Second Hokage Tobirama (late 40s, maybe?) is killed. Sarutobi Hiruzen (20s) is instated as the Third Hokage.

[Year 30≤]

The First Great Shinobi War ends.

The Five Great Nations sign an armistice. Note that the First and Second Great Shinobi Wars have been stated by the wiki to reflect the First and Second World Wars from real life, and so does this armistice, which allows for twenty years of peace in accordance to the irl armistice.

Second Kazekage Shamon researches Tailed Beasts with the intent to gain mastery over the Shukaku. It's likely that no perfect jinchuuriki exists at this point in time.

[Year 38]

[03] The future Fourth Kazekage, Rasa, is born.

It's also likely that Pakura of the Scorch Release was also born around this time.  

[Year 40] Akimichi Choza, Yamanaka Inoichi, and Nara Shikaku are born in Konohagakure.

[Year 41] [01] The future Fourth Hokage, Namikaze Minato, is born.

[06] The future Fourth Raikage, A, is born as the oldest and only biological son of the Third Raikage, A.

[07] The eventual second jinchuuriki of the Nine-Tails, Uzumaki Kushina, is born.

[Year 43]

[05] Yashamaru is born. Here's a surprise: he and his sister Karura are canonically NOT twins, although it should be noted that he is the younger of the two.

[Year 45]

The Ame Orphans— Yahiko, Konan, and Uzumaki Nagato— are born. 

[Year 46] [05] The eventual jinchuuriki of the Eight-Tails, Killer B, is born.

[08] Namiashi Raidou is born.

[11] Sasori is born. Despite being listed as age 35 in Shippuden, his appearance occurs before his birthday that year, and so I have him as being born in Year 46 instead of Year 47.

Sometime between now and Kushina's succession of Mito as the Nine-Tails' jinchuuriki, Uzushiogakure falls. We know this because of Mito's dialogue with Kushina during a flashback from Naruto Gaiden: Whirlwind in the Vortex in which Mito says that the Uzumaki clan is scattered.

[Year 48]

[07] Shiranui Genma is born.

[Year 50]

The Second Great Shinobi War begins 

Many of the minor countries are ravaged as they become battlegrounds for the other Great Nations during this war. Uzushiogakure has already fallen at this point, even before the official beginning of this war, one of the inciting incidents.

We know that Suna and Konoha were fighting because of Chiyo and Tsunade's back-and-forth. By virtue of the country that Amegakure is located in being a major battleground, Suna and Konoha were also fighting Ame.

Konoha and Iwa were also implied to have been fighting, based on how fearfully those Iwa-nin were referring Konoha's White Fang, Hatake Sakumo, during the Kannabi Bridge Mission from the Third War. Presumably, Sakumo got that moniker during the Second War, seeing as he's likely around the same age as the Sannin and therefore would have been too young to fight in the First War.

The Ame Orphans become... well, orphans. Nagato's parents are specifically killed by Konoha-nin, who mistook them for combatants instead of civilians.

The Second Kazekage Shamon (50s) is assassinated sometime around this era. The unnamed Third Kazekage is instated.

[03] Ebisu is born.

[10] Sarutobi Asuma is born as one of the Third Hokage's two sons.

[11] The future second or third jinchuuriki of the Three-Tails, Nohara Rin, is born. Shizune is also born, as the niece of Tsunade's lover, Kato Dan.

[Year 51] 

[01] Maito Gai is born.

[02] Uchiha Obito is born.

[03] Morino Ibiki is born.

Namikaze Minato (10) graduates from the Shinobi Academy. Jiraiya becomes the jounin-sensei of Team 6, which is comprised of Minato, another male genin named Dekai, and a third ungendered and unnamed genin (who looks suspiciously like a member of the Uchiha clan).

[06] Yuhi Kurenai is born.

[05] The future Fifth Mizukage, Terumi Mei, is born.

[09] Hatake Kakashi is born as the son of the White Fang, Hatake Sakumo.

[Year 52]

Nagato (6) meets Yahiko and Konan (7).

Sasori's parents/Chiyo's son and daughter-in-law are killed by Hatake Sakumo.

[Year 53] 

Sasori (7) becomes a genin. 

Uzumaki Kushina (12) graduates from the Academy, and Kumogakure makes a failed attempt to kidnap Uzumaki Kushina. I'm putting this event here in the timeline because she has her forehead protector [hitai-ate] during this fiasco in the image below, and also because her shinobi identification number is #007310 compared to Minato's #006510, suggesting that she graduated after he did.

Orochimaru, Tsunade, and Jiraiya (25-26) gain their “Legendary Sannin” moniker through fighting— and being spared by— Hanzo of the Salamander in the minor country where Amegakure is located.

Nagato (7), Yahiko, and Konan (8) meet the Sannin. Jiraiya begins training them. I can only guess that Minato and the rest of Team 6 either got promoted to chunin and have thus officially disbanded or have been ditched for the time being??? We never get a chunin promotion age for Minato, but it isn't out of the realm of plausibility for a genius like him to have done so at or even before age 12. In fact, a lot of young Konoha-nin who have a record of wartime service got their chunin promotions very young (Genma at 13; Asuma at 12; Rin, Obito, and Gai at 11???).

[Year 54] 

Sasori (8) becomes a chunin. 

Maki, the eventual genin student of Pakura of the Scorch Release, is born.

[11] Gekko Hayate is born.

[Year 55]

[05] Umino Iruka is born.

[08] Yamato/Tenzo is born.

Jiraiya (28) leaves the country where Amegakure is located after three-ish years of covert ops and training Nagato, Yahiko, and Konan (10). The trio infiltrate Amagakure's shinobi system for further training and also networking to start creating Yahiko’s iteration of the Akatsuki, while Jiraiya returns to Konoha and reconnects with one of his old genin students, taking the future Fourth Hokage Namikaze Minato (14) as his apprentice. It's highly likely that Minato masters the Flying Thunder God technique around this time.

[Year 56]

[06] Utakata, the eventual jinchuuriki of the Six-Tails, is born.

The events of Naruto Gaiden: Whirlpool in the Vortex takes place. Told you we'd come back to this! Remember, Kakashi was born in Year 51, so by mid- to late-spring (considering the Japanese school year starts in the spring, not autumn), he should be familiar enough with Gai and Obito for this manga panel to be plausible.

Meaning Minato is 15 when he, Jiraiya, and the rest of Team 6 encounters Iwa's two jinchuuriki. Although they end up retreating, Minato becomes inspired by the Tailed Beast Bomb to create the Rasengan.

So now we know that this one-shot takes place during the Second War! But you know what's also implied to happen when Kakashi is age 5?

Yeah, Sakumo's thing.

Konoha's White Fang chooses to save his squad rather than complete a mission that he deems likely to fail, and upon his return, is ostracized for it. Sakumo commits seppuku in order to restore his (and by extension, Kakashi's) honor before his son even graduates from the Academy. And then—

The Second Great Shinobi War ends.

[Year 57] 

Hatake Kakashi (5, going on 6) graduates from the Academy in March.

[Year 58]

Kakashi (6, going on 7) gets promoted to chunin.

[Year 58≥] 

The Third Great Shinobi War begins. 

Essentially a continuation of the Second War, the Third seems almost like fighting for fighting’s sake. We once again have Konoha vs Iwa, Konoha vs Kumo, and Konoha vs Kiri. Sasori fighting a defensive front on his home soil (based off of his Red Sand moniker, i.e. enemy blood spilled on the sand) suggests conflict with either one of the minor countries, Iwa, and/or Konoha. I think there's a hint of Iwa vs Kumo, too, but I can't find a source for why my brain thinks that outside of speculation. If we go by an anime filler statement from Pakura during a flashback (episode 285), Suna was also fighting against Iwa and Kiri, which may explain how Suna and Konoha ended up as allies by the time of the events of Part One— the enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.

According to said filler, this should also be around the time that...

Pakura was sent on a mission to stop Iwagakure's plans during their feud with Suna. She successfully accomplished the mission and was hailed as a hero by the village.

Also, Namikaze Minato has an encounter with the future Fourth Raikage, A, and the jinchuuriki of the Eight Tails, Killer B some time early on in this war, presumably before Minato gets his genin team based on their absence in this scene. Minato's Flying Thunder God proves to be faster than A's lightning cloak in combat.

[Year 60]

[02] Hozuki Mangetsu is born as the older brother of Hozuki Suigetsu. I chose to place this event here in the timeline after working backwards from Mangetsu's youthful teenage appearance in his reanimated form from the Fourth War, which doesn't look to be more than 17 or 18 years old. We know that he had to have died after a long enough time to master multiple of Kiri's legendary swords and gain some international renown, but also before Suigetsu ended up as one of Orochimaru's test subjects (because Suigetsu knows that his brother is dead when straight out the gate of his first appearance in Shippuden). Narratively speaking, it would be pretty cool for his reanimated self to be the same age as Suigetsu is during Shippuden, or for him and Suigetsu to have a similar age gap compared to Itachi and Sasuke.

Ebisu (10), Gai (9), Rin (9), Obito (9), Asuma (9), and Kurenai (9) graduate from the Academy, based off of the info found in the databooks. I have no idea what Kakashi (8) has been doing in the meantime (fanon likes to say that he got taken on as an apprentice by someone, usually Minato but sometimes another jounin like Aburame Shibi), but it's only now that this iteration of Team Seven is formed. As for the chunin exams... ugh. We'll get to that in a bit.

[06] Itachi Uchiha is born.

Danzo sabotages the first iteration of the Akatsuki. Yahiko (15) dies. Hanzo of the Salamander is killed by Uzumaki Nagato (15).

[Year -]

Some time between Year 60 and Year 62, a genin team comprised of Gai (10), Genma (12-13), and Ebisu (11) are cornered on a mission by the Seven Swordsmen of Kirigakure: Munashi Jinpachi’s predecessor, Hozuki Mangetsu’s predecessor, Jinin Akebino, Kushimaru Kuriarare, Raiga Kurosuki, Jūzō Biwa, and Fuguki Suikazan. Gai’s father, Might Dai, buys time for the genin to escape and kills all but the last three listed swordsmen using the Eight Gates (in the anime, that is— in the manga, it's implied that he kills all but Fuguki Suikazan, who is the only one that we see chronologically after this point in time during one of Kisame's flashbacks).

[Year 62] 

Assuming this first of two chunin exams (recall how chapter 39 of the manga mentions that Konoha holds the Chunin Exams twice a year) is held before the summer, Genma (13), Gai (11), Obito (11) and Rin (11, going on 12) are promoted to chunin. However, this is NOT the chunin exams depicted in the flashback where Kishimoto forgot about his timeline, threw in a bunch of minor characters into the background willy-nilly, and made Kakashi a chunin. In fact, you could argue that any or all of the above-mentioned promotions were doled out for excellent performance in the field rather than during an exam, even, aka a field promotion, and nothing would be contradicting you.

Sasori (15) defects from Sunagakure and becomes a rogue ninja. I'm putting this event here in the timeline because Kankuro mentions (in chapter 251 of the manga) that it's been over twenty years since Sasori left. Therefore, the Third Kazekage (30s, based on the age-lines that are drawn around his eyes) is assassinated around now as well. Rasa (24) is instated as the Fourth Kazekage. 

[08] Temari is born as the only daughter to the Fourth Kazekage, Rasa (24).

The events of Naruto Shippūden the Movie: The Lost Tower occur at this point in the timeline, since it's stated to be 20 years in the past from Shippuden. Of course, this is a non-canon movie, so it's whatever, but I thought I'd toss this in here for funsies. If you're writing a Suna-centric story like I am, roundabout now would be a fun time to have Sunagakure destroy Roran :D

[Year 63]

[05] Deidara is born, based on his listed age during Shippuden being 19.

[06] Kaguya Kimimaro is born, based on his listed age during Part One of Naruto being 15.

Team Ino-Shika-Cho (23) delivers a request for a peace treaty to Iwa shinobi on the border to the Land of Wind. Rasa (26) shows up with a large force to facilitate the exchange. 

Kakashi (12) is promoted to jounin, and the Kannabi Bridge mission takes place while Minato slaughters enough Iwa-nin for the remainder of the once thousand-strong force to retreat.

[Year -]

The Third Raikage dies from chakra exhaustion after three continuous days of fighting in order to give his troops time to retreat. His son, A, is instated as the Fourth Raikage.

Sometime in between the Kannabi Bridge mission and Minato's inauguration, Rin (13) is kidnapped by Kiri-nin, has the Three-Tails sealed inside of her, and commits suicide via Kakashi's chidori through her chest.

[Year 64]

[05] Kankuro is born as the son of Fourth Kazekage Rasa. 

[06] Itachi turns four and is led by his father Fugaku to see a battlefield.

Due to outcry from either withdrawing from the war or agreeing to terms of a peace treaty (likely the one with Iwa from earlier, but also possibly an alliance treaty with Suna that we see from OG Naruto— you'll see why Kumo's not an option here in a bit) that are viewed as unfavourable by the public, Third Hokage Sarutobi Hiruzen voluntarily steps down from office. Namikaze Minato is instated as the Fourth Hokage.

[07] Hyuga Neji is born.

[11] Rock Lee is born.

The Third Great Shinobi War...

Well, it doesn't end so much as lose steam. This war was noted to be particularly bad in terms of casualties, so I wouldn't be surprised if there simply weren't enough able-bodied soldiers for a viable war effort at this point. However, it should be noted that Konoha and Kumo still have beef.

[Year 65]

[02] Hozuki Suigetsu is born.

[03] Ten Ten is born.

[05] Akimichi Chouji is born.

[06] Uzumaki Karin is born.

[07] Inuzuka Kiba and Uchiha Sasuke are born.

[09] Yamanaka Ino and Nara Shikamaru are born.

[10] Uzumaki Naruto is born. The Kyuubi is let loose on Konoha by a masked man. Fourth Hokage Namikaze Minato and Uzumaki Kushina die while sealing it away.

[12] Hyuga Hinata is born.

[Year 66]

[01] Gaara is born. His mother, Karura, dies. Aburame Shino is born.

[03] Sakura is born.

Sometime around this period, Fourth Kazekage Rasa sends Pakura of the Scorch Release to Kiri as an envoy for... reasons. It's implied that someone (Sunagakure's council, Wind Country's feudal lord, idk take your pick) isn't happy about the terms of the peace treaty that was signed between the Land of Wind and the Land of Water? Either way, Pakura is killed in an ambush by Kiri-nin and dies thinking that her village betrayed her. Suna promptly blames the death of their hero on Iwa, which could be one reason for the hostility in that one scene of a Suna-nin and Iwa-nin butting heads during the very start of the Fourth Great Shinobi War, just before Gaara gives his big speech.

Sorry, I know it's hard to tell here, but that's an Iwa-nin and Suna-nin talking smack here.

[Year 68]

[12] Neji receives the Caged Bird Seal on Hinata's third birthday. A peace treaty between Kumo and Konoha is also due to be signed that very night, only to give way to the events of the Hyuga Affair.

[Year 72]

Rasa orders Yashamaru (28-29) to test Gaara's control over the One-Tail. Gaara (6) accidentally contributes to his uncle's death, kinda? Suna seems like its economic situation takes a turn for the worse around this time (not that it was ever great), probably due in part to all the infrastructural damage caused by the One-Tail's rampaging.

[Year 78]

[03] The Rookie Nine graduate from the Academy (see: the Japanese school year ends in March).

[07] The first, second, and preliminary phases of the Chunin Exams take place.

[08] The final phase of the Chunin Exams takes place and is interrupted by Orochimaru's invasion of Konoha.

[Year 82]

Shippuden babyyyyy yeahhh (I am so done with this timeline).

Dormant Predators

2003 Personalities

Just saw a post by someone who was breaking down Donatello’s personality from the 2003 TV series.

I noticed that a lot of that post included complete sections from something written by crabapplered 14 years ago - and the original author was not credited.

So I thought that I would post a link to the original for anyone who would like to read about Donatello and his brothers. This piece has been like a bible to me for writing the Turtles!

TMNT Rant by crabapplered

Rottmnt!Casey Jones (Jr.) design is fantastic and here's why:

I'm sorry for ignoring the numerous asks actually requesting stuff for me to review, but I have to strike the iron while it's still hot.

Ok, so. Rottmnt has fantastic, 10/10 character designs. That's not something I discovered, it's something anyone with two eyes and a brain can figure out. In particular, the eponymous Turtles themselves have never been more interesting and distinct before this incarnation:

They are fantastic anthro designs, simultaneously easy to imagine as humans while feeling inseparable from their animal traits. And the crew managed to take this a step further with Casey by going in the complete opposite direction! Casey is not just a regular post-apocalyptic fashion kid, he is a reverse engineered turtle gijinka. It's not all that visible at first because the pieces of his attire are all pretty standard, admirably practical, and color-faded, but think about it! The green jumpsuit and shoes are the base "skin", the chest-plate is self-explanatory, and the cape is the turtle shell.

And of course, it's all made even more endearing by how he incorporates something from each of the 4 brothers. Leo is the most obvious influence because Casey is his direct protege; he adopted his eye markings in his mask, his color for the armor, and the diagonal fanny-pack -I wouldn't have complained if he used a belt, but the fanny-pack is the much better option because it's more realistic and practical for him to use that-.

Donny made his gadgets, so he wears his insignia on the cape -which also cleverly breaks the dullness of it without bulking the silhouette- and his shoulder pad is purple.

You get the sense that Casey never really met Raph in his original timeline, so he is only present in the red details and, lastly, Mikey is present in the adorably doodled knee-pads.

Lastly, his facial design is great. Now, I could follow that up with an actual argument about how it balances his more traditional lean hero physique with less conventionally attractive traits that actually convey a personality and a context for where he grew up, but actually, no, I'll just spam pics of him because he really does have Expressions™️ and I love him for that: