#Shameless Timeline

[theliliesofwatersedge]

Desperately trying to figure out the shameless timeline... (s1 -s4)

Even the writers admitted that they didn't plan a timeline for the show, they just stuck it together and went with it. So this is pretty much just me sinking my own titanic by trying to figure out the timeline of this damn show.

Wish me luck...

Okay, so season 1 of Shameless is set during either 2010 or 2011 (it was released in early 2011 so most of the filming would have commenced during 2010). As far as we know Fiona is 21, Lip is 16 or 17, Ian is 15, Debbie is probably 10, Carl is 9 and Liam is 1 to 2 years old.

Season 2 of Shameless is set during the summer break, so no one ages that much. I don't know how it works in America, but where I'm from our summer breaks last just over a month, so I will assume season 2 is throughout 2 to 3 months -which implies that its still 2011.

Season 3 is where the timeline really starts to become a pain in the ass.

My personal bet is that season 3 is set around a year and a half after season 1. Lip graduates this season, so he has to be 17 or 18 while I'm fairly sure Ian is 16 turning 17. It's difficult with Ian because his age is implied to be 17 for 3 seasons in a row, so I can only imagine that he was 16 for the first half of the season and sometime following Cascading Failures (we don't talk about that episode) he turned 17 (Probably right before running away to the army). This would also imply that Fiona is 22, Debbie is 11, Carl is 10 and Liam is 3.

In season 4, I think it's safe to assume it has been two years since season 1. In season 1, Ian was 15 and in season 4, his age is referenced as 17 multiple times.

This would also make sense because this is the season where Debbie starts experimenting with makeup more and trying to act more grown-up, so she would probably be 12 turning 13 or just turned 13.

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

i doubt anyone will see this and care, but i found another time the shameless writer’s math was wrong and now i need to post about it.

in season 1, it begins late 2010 and ends early 2011. ian gallagher was born may 9, 1996 (which is canon and can be further proved in 1x10 when it says that he was concieved in the summer) which would make him 14 at the start (going on 15 at the end)

but by the time that season 1 ends, ian’s affair with kash is over

and in season 3 ian says he was fifteen with kash- but he wasn’t, he was 14- and this can again, be proven by how monica and clayton did pcp and fucked in the summer of ‘95

anyway their math is always off and i could make a long post about it and i probably will😭

[you-are-so-much-better-than-that]

Alternative Timeline

So as of yesterday I have been on Tumblr for a YEAR! A WHOLE YEAR being a part of this beautiful wonderful incredible community that we have all built. And it has changed my entire life. I’ve made friends who I hope will be in my life long after we’ve forgotten about these characters and this universe (will we ever though…?). I have crafted and written and collaborated. I have participated in a zine and cobbled together a couple of drabbles. I’ve had so much fun being your unofficial Keeper of the Shameless Timeline, trying to make some kind of sense of season 1 and, more recently, working alongside some of my favourite artists and people to build a whole ass calendar! It’s been the most wonderful year and I’m looking forward to the next! I’m not done doin this thing yet! 

Also, I know I haven’t been active these last couple of months, but I’ve noticed that there are a bunch of new people around these parts. I just wanted to say HI! HELLO! WELCOME!! I’m so glad you’re here! I see you all liking the things people are making and I know everyone appreciates the like, but I’m just gonna ask you to also hit that rb button! People are out here making things! For you! To enjoy! For free! Art and gif sets and fic! They take so much time, and it's so easy to show your appreciation! Just a couple of buttons! You don’t even have to go nuts in the tags (although we love that kind of unhinged behaviour around here). And if you wanna say hi to us, make some friends, I highly encourage it. It was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

Ok I’ll shut up now. Let’s talk timeline!

I have tried my best to follow the logic, though sometimes there is none, and follow the clues, no matter how few! And I have tried to do it with as little bias as possible.

HOWEVER!

You guys, I have a confession to make.

There is a possible other timeline that season one could follow.

I do not like it! But, I am here to give you, my precious timeline enthusiasts, the truth! Even if it hurts me. Even if it makes no sense (because it often doesn’t. JW doesn’t believe in time). Even if it takes away the possibility of a Christmas bang and a New Year’s bang, which, truly, would be a tragedy and is the main reason I refuse to follow this other timeline.

Under the cut you will find the second possible timeline. You decide which you prefer, and tell me why! I need well-formed arguments for or against please!

Thank you all for being here with me this year. It hasn’t been an easy one, but you all have made it just a little bit better. I love you all!

Alternative Timeline

Episode 1: Remains the same at November 15, 2010. There is a calendar. Fiona points at it. No disputes here!

Episode 2: This is where it all could change. Bear with me. There is a possibility that this episode might have taken place on January 28, 2011, over two months after the first episode. Here’s why: Frank gets his cheque the last Friday of the month. In both November and December, the last Friday is a holiday, so this acts with the assumption that this is now January and it’s been 2 months since the first episode. I don’t love this idea because nowhere else in this season do they make such a massive time jump.  A few weeks, maybe, but not two months. This also then changes the entire timeline. No Christmas/New Year’s bang, either. What do you guys think?

Episode 3: As this episode starts the Thursday following the previous episode when Tony Takes Fiona to his award ceremony, it leaves Tony’s deflowering to have taken place on February 4.

Episode 4: If I follow the logic of my original calendar which has episode 4 on the same weekend as episode 3, then this means this episode alternatively takes place on February 6th. This actually works quite well with an upcoming event in episode 6. 

Episode 5: I worked a little backwards here. I had to place episode 6 on February 16th, so the only date episode 5 could take place was February 12th-13th, meaning Kev and Vee got married on February 13th in this alternate timeline.

Episode 6: At the beginning of this episode, Carl hands Fiona a note from last Friday and it is now Wednesday. I initially made the assumption that it is Wednesday Dec 15th, however, in this alternative timeline, I’m placing this episode on February 16th. And there is evidence of this date. If you zoom in quite a bit, it’s got a date on it, February 11, 2011, the Friday before February 16th.  But I hate this timeline because it just doesn’t make sense! There is a calendar change in episode 8, two episodes from now! It goes from December to January in that episode. I can get that the calendar is unreliable, but if they’re gonna change it, why change it to the wrong month?? No. I refuse. But anyway. There is evidence.

This now leaves us three weeks to squeeze in the Bangiversary, Slim Jims, and two episodes of Monica before we get to the last two episodes, which we know for a fact take place on March 18-20th, same as the original timeline. Here is the only way this would work:

Episode 7:  Episode 7 would be on February 18th-19th, making Ian and Mickey’s Bangiversary February 19th, getting rid of the possibility of a Christmas and New Year’s bang. Also, speeding up their entire first bit of their young relationship. We just went from a possible two months of secret fucking before Mickey was arrested to a mere two weeks? No! I don’t like it!!

Episode 8: This puts SlimJims and Milkovich-Ian Sandwich on February 25th-27th.

Episode 9: Frank would call Monica on March 5th and, she’d would show up around March 6th. That same night, Mickey is arrested. 

Episode 10: On March 7th, Ian finds out he’s not Frank’s son and Monica abandons her children again.

Episodes 11 & 12: Remain the same. We know they take place on the Friday-Sunday after St. Patrick’s day.

I will admit, there is an elegance to the end here with the Karen storyline. In the original timeline, if she goes to the ball with her dad on February 21st, and then goes emo child on March 18th, about three weeks later. That doesn’t really fit, either. However, I could be convinced to move the entire Monica saga down so that it all happens in March instead of February. This could work actually. (Yes you are reading me figuring this out in real time, folks!)

WAIT!!! WHAT IF we have an alternative-alternative timeline?? And it looks like this:

We ignore the weird Carl teacher’s note thing from episode 6, and we keep episodes 1-8 the same as is in the original timeline, giving us the very, very important Christmas and New Year’s bang as well as more than two weeks of secret fucking, while episodes 9-12 look more like this second timeline, making the Karen storyline make more sense. Oh I think I like this!

Here are some visuals:

OG Timeline:

Timeline 2.0

Timeline 3.0

WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK?? Does anyone have opinions? Do we still care?? Did we ever…?

There you have it folks! Season One all tied up in…a really messy Gordian knot. I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I have! On to season two! (I promise I won’t take a whole year this time!)

[gallavich-headcanon]

"he got so used to being with Ian that he drove himself crazy in those 5 days alone" What do you mean 5 days? Mickey was only in prison for 5 days without Ian?

I could go into heavy detail… and I will. I will go into heavy detail

I don’t know if it was exactly 5 days but it’s more than a day and less than a week. What are my sources, you ask? Let me show you the timeline:

Ian had to meet his PO on the day he got out of prison

After the meeting with Paula he gets his Sparky uniform and gets to work

That Night he has his welcome home party. We see him get ready for work the next episode and Mickey trying to escape prison again. It’s not clear how many days it took for him to get released.

Then we see the reunion of these cute soulmates 🖤

By the time Ian gets his first weekly paycheck, Mickey is already out and working at the mall because Ian goes straight to him to bitch about Paula.

I know I sound a bit insane but it was research for a fic I’m writing 😅 anyways thank you for the ask anon!

[wyfy-meltdown]

It's mentioned that in every timeline Sayaka contracts and becomes a magical girl, she becomes Oktavia.

I think this says a lot about Sayaka's mental state. Even if Hitomi doesn't confess to Kyousuke, even if Sayaka and Kyousuke were to date, Sayaka would still become Oktavia.

Maybe it's a case of regretting what she wished for, or falling out of love with Kyousuke, or that her relationship with Kyousuke didn't work out how she had wanted it to. Regardless, something always goes wrong when she makes her wish; and I find that very fascinating.

UPDATE: Sincerely unhappy with how this original post came out (too much focus on Kyousuke which reduces Sayaka's character in a way I don't like); please go to the reblog version.

[softpine]

i like how we all collectively agreed that covid does not exist in any of our sims stories

[irishskeptic]

I saw a post I can’t find anymore a while ago by @thebigqueer where she said that she thought Piper had real feelings for Jason, and not Compulsory Heterosexuality/ mind manipulation by Hera, and to be deathly honest, I agree.

[wrinkly-fucking-qtip]

RIP Mickey in México, you would've loved Ojitos Lindos and Un Verano Sin Tí by Bad Bunny and cried yourself through it.

I'm really in my Mickey-learning-hispanic-culture feelings and I'm 🤏🏻 to making a Hispanic Mickey playlist to feed my indulgence.

I just imagine him at the beach, the album is literally a summer album, and the song named after the album is so good. And him wanting to go to the beach but suffering the heartache, ugh.

[vigilskeep]

do you guys think the gang ever sat sebastian down when he joined the team and told him anders merrill and potentially hawke were mages or did they just. start doing that.

[mishervellous]

@shamelesscreatorsnetwork

side characters | Sheila Jackson (2/4)

[gallawitchxx]

🖤 barber!mickey & (not so) shaggy!ian 🖤

here's the 50th installment for this week's @galladrabbles prompt: "the song that makes me think of you" by @sully-999

catch up/read in full HERE -- updates weekly! [ read scenes one & two in their entirety ON AO3 ]

- - - - -

Ian’s radiant, the sun’s halo encircling him like an angel.

Time bends again, this time for Mickey.

A kitchen of granite and stainless steel. 

Ian stands at the counter, a paring knife in hand, humming a familiar tune. The melody is just out of reach, but Mickey knows it’s theirs.

He smiles, coming up behind him and wrapping his arms around his waist. “That one again?” 

Ian nods. “Course. It’s the song that makes me think of you…” He twists slightly, pressing a kiss to Mickey’s temple.

“Fucking softie…”

They’ve got everything ahead of them. 

“La comida está lista, Mikhailo!”

[super-secret-clown-corner]

i found the lifesteal fanfiction (my ace ass still can't comprehend relationships and how they form lmfao i'm living in some wild qpr fantasy of my own creation)

[m4ndysk4nkovich]

people who genuinely believe franny is matty’s child irritate the SHIT out of me

[hayscodings]

do we know what month it is in s4 when yevgeny is born

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

It's helpful for my own sanity to pretend that each season of Shameless (US) is actually an AU of (or concurrent to) the season before.

Why is Franny having her 5th birthday in the Summer of Season 11 when she was born in the Winter of Season 6? Why is Ian 17 for 3 years only to grow 3 years in 2 seasons? Why is Liam a baby for 4 seasons until suddenly shooting up by 7 years in a 5 year period? Mickey's 19 when he's arrested but he's one year older than Ian (who's still 17)? Yev is 6-months-old at the end of season 5 (even though Mickey is 17 when he's conceived) and then 2 at the start of season 6? Mickey knows how to spell 'Ian Gallagher' he has done so before onscreen (and there is no possible way he wouldn't)? What can I do to make sense of all these dropped storylines and disappearing characters? Where did this previously established smart character misplace their brain? How come all the Gallaghers' suffer such severe amnesia? Does Frank have 9 lives? Did Carl just get his girlfriend murdered!?!?! I'm fairly sure you're 20 Debs, that's not 10 months older than 17!?

All these questions can be answered if you accept that you're watching 8 or so alternative universes of the Gallagher family. Although, I'm sure the writers are purposely placing continuity errors by the end to mess with their audience because they know it drives us (me) crazy.

[doctorbrown]

MCFLY JULY ‘24 ⸺ 「 17 / 31 * DAVE'S NIGHT OFF 」

March 3, 1986, Twin Pines Timeline(β)

Five months since Marty’s sudden disappearance. 

Linda doesn’t even have to pretend she doesn’t know exactly where she’ll find Dave when he’s not at home. If he’s not working, busting his ass taking whatever job that pays so he can keep funnelling it into the supplies to stock this cursed garage, he’s hunched over on the couch, buried up to his brain in papers that may as well be written in Greek for all he can read them. 

It’s the same place he spends most of his free time these days; surrounded by ghosts and a couple of Mom’s swiped bottles of vodka.

Not like she notices when a couple of them go missing. 

Dave once said he could hear Marty in here. Like he was still alive. Still here, because Marty’s not dead. He’s somewhere, God-only-knows, but he’s not dead because they only found one body in that parking lot and Marty had to be there because he was Doctor Brown’s fucking shadow—but since Marty’s body wasn’t there, just that truck and that poor dog—Einstein or Edison or whatever; some dead scientist—lying next to the body, according to the cops, that meant someone must have kidnapped him.

They're faint echoes, Linda, he'd said, three-quarters deep into a bottle, but he sounds happy.  

It sounds like bullshit, but it's far more than anything they have at the moment.

And it means, regardless of however tightly she has to wring her own heart to get even a single drop of hope out of it, there's a chance Marty is still alive. 

“How long have you been here today?” Dave pretends not to hear her. Or maybe he wilfully ignores her. Once, she knew how to tell. “Dave, face it. T—”  

“Shut the fuck up, Linda,” Dave snaps, and it takes every ounce of her resolve not to march up to him and slap him in the face for that. 

It’s grief that made him an asshole. It isn’t him. It has a way of burrowing into the deepest, most vulnerable parts of a person and poisoning them from the inside out until they were but shadows of their former selves. 

It’s already hollowed her out, stuffed her full of ice and made a cold, heartless bitch out of her until she was numb to the world. She figured that out when her mother’s broken sobs didn't spear her through the heart like they used to. As if it was her fault.

Why weren't you nicer to him that night?

That shouldn’t be an excuse. But she lets it be for Dave’s sake, and her own, because maybe, as fucking crazy as it sounds, they’ll just find that one in a million breakthrough scattered in the ramblings of a dead man. 

Who apparently claims he learned to leap through time. 

Some good that did him if it was true. He’s buried in Oak Park Cemetery, looking like Swiss cheese. Wasn’t time-travel supposed to help prevent exactly that?  

Maybe it could have saved Marty.  

Maybe it’s exactly what stole Marty away from them.  

“They’re going to tear this place down, Dave. In two weeks! T-w-o. And they’re not going to stop the bulldozers because you’re glued to that fucking couch. What good are you going to be dead? Do you know what that’s going to do to Mom?” She puts her hands on her hips and might have inwardly shuddered at how much she sounded like Mom if she had the energy.  

With Marty gone, she didn’t expect to be an older sister again. 

After a long, tense silence, she finally sighs. She didn’t come here to fight. “Did you eat anything today?” He’s swimming in his T-shirts now; they’re all but falling off his shoulders.  

Dave huffs, dragging his fingers through his shaggy hair. “Jen left about twenty minutes ago; she’s grabbing Chinese. You know, that place...where...”

Yeah. I know.

“I gave her some money. Then we’re gonna go back to this.” He spreads his arms, gesturing to the mess of paperwork that makes just as much sense as it did four and a half months ago.

“Are you staying?”

Linda says yes because a part of her, too, is trapped within these four walls.