A Discovery Has Been Made

Hey all, Jawa here. Long time no see, right?

Anyway, I’ve been hard at work on my final stories for the site, Bag and Crink(le) Strike Back, and The Tragic Fall of Anakin Skyfolder, both for Origami Yoda: Revisited.

This post concerns the latter of the two, and some research I was doing for it. The prologue takes place at the second Fun Night from the very first book, and so I was planning on including the flyer for it in my story. This is where the shocking discoveries occurred. Before I explain, here is the Fun Night flyer:

At first glance, you may just think that it seems like any ordinary middle school event flyer…until you read the date of Friday, May 4th.

I thought that this could just be a reference to Star Wars Day, however I wanted to see if May the 4th really fell on a Friday in 2010.

It did not.

So I decided to find the closest years in proximity of 2010 that had May 4th on a Friday, and those happened to be 2007 and 2012. Considering that 2012 was in the future, I decided to go with 2007.

The first date of May 4th lined up with the book, so next I had to test the date of the first Fun Night, which was on Friday, April 6th. Turns out, it matches up as well. So at this point I was pretty sure that the first book takes place in Spring of 2007, however there was one more thing that I needed to check.

The most pivotal part of the original book is the McQuarrie gang learning about The Twist by Chubby Checker. The song came out in 1960, so that obviously is not an issue. What I needed to check is how Harvey mentions that he knows the song. He says that he recognizes it because it appears on the soundtrack for Spider-Man 3, which released in 2007, so I needed to find the actual day it released to make sure that it still lined up with everything else.

Spider-Man 3 was released on May 4th, 2007. The exact same day as the second Fun Night. At first I thought this threw the theory out the window, as Harvey couldn’t have seen the film beforehand to know about the song. But then I realized that the soundtrack actually came out on May 1st, 2007, three days before the Fun Night. We can also assume that the track listings were posted online before this point, so there is pretty much enough evidence to confirm that Harvey could’ve known about The Twist after all.

So if we’re going off the dates from the flyers, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda takes place from April 6th, 2007 through May 4th, 2007. That’s just 29 days!

It makes sense that the book lines up with these dates in real life as well, since Tom most likely wrote the book or at the very least came up with the idea for Origami Yoda around 2007, given that Qwikpick and Stonewall Hinkleman were published in 2007 and 2009 respectively.

As for the rest of the series, we know they came out from 2011-2014. Even though it took five years total for the series to be completed, in universe the entire saga actually takes place just over the course of one year! The first book starts in the McQuarrie gang’s sixth grade spring semester, and Pickletine ends in their seventh grade spring semester. So the series canonically takes place from April 2007 through May 2008. 

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Technically, there are two issues with this theory: In the series, The Grand Inquistor and “Robo-Legs” Maul are both mentioned. This couldn’t be possible, since both characters were created after 2008, when the story supposedly ends.

Turns out the 2012 dates also match up with both Fun Nights, so technically the series could take place from 2012-2013, allowing for both characters to be mentioned canonically. This would also make Harvey around six or seven years old when Spider-Man 3 was released to theaters. My first memory of a film was the fourth Indiana Jones, which I saw when I was seven, so there is reason to believe that Harvey could have the same memory but with Spider-Man instead.

I think both theories are acceptable, but as I’m writing this, I find the 2012 dates to be more believable, as the only problem is that the book was published two years before that. But if we’re talking strictly in universe, I think it makes more sense. In the end, this is just a rant about a fictional middle-grade book series, and you can choose which dates you think are correct.

Also if the story took place in 2012-2013, the McQuarrie gang would be my age, having been born around 2000-2001, as opposed to 1995-1996 if we go with the 2007 dates. As I grew up with the series, personally I find it more fun to pick the later dates, but going by publication date it could very well be 2007. One last fun fact before I go is that right now the McQuarrie gang would either be 20-21 or 26-27, depending on the dates. Pretty interesting, at least for me.

Anyway, that’s all I have for you today. I hope you all enjoyed my little rant, and I look forward to you guys reading my final stories as well as everyone else’s when they come out before The Archive.

May the folds be with you, always.
– Jawa

Addendum from the desk of SF Noah, supporting the 2012-2013 theory:

1. At the beginning of Princess Labelmaker, Sara is wearing a shirt with the Doctor Who logo on it. It could just be that she is a nerd and knows about Doctor Who for some reason, but placing it around 2013 makes much more sense as the Doctor Who 50th was airing at year, meaning it was at a worldwide peak in popularity. Sara likely became a fan around that time, explaining why she never wore the shirt before then.

2. At the end of the Pickletine in the ‘where are they now’ section, The Skateboarding Brat is wearing a t-shirt with Chopper from Rebels on it. Rebels first aired in 2014 but the characters were revealed in 2013, so it’s likely that the Brat saw Chopper and liked him so much that he made the shirt according to the T-shirt directions in Art2-D2.

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