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Star Wars is an interesting (not saying successful, mind you, just interesting) story to examine with consideration of disability portrayal. I could talk at length about Vader, Luke, or even Grievous, but of course, you know me.

I’m here to yap about Sifo-Dyas.

Cut for meta essay discussion of disability and mental illness and representation

Sifo-Dyas is a particularly intriguing character to look at through this lens. He is a rare thing in the saga: a Jedi who is portrayed outright as living with a disability (and/or mental illness).

This is not a case of a hero whose hand is cut off and then it’s never mentioned again because sci-fi tech has effectively "solved" it with a fantasy-perfect accessibility device. Neither is he relegated to tokenism or moved to the sidelines to play quest giver. Uncommonly, Sifo-Dyas's symptoms are realistic and have severe consequences, while he’s also simultaneously depicted as an active Jedi Master with tremendous power and responsibilities, both in universe and in his narrative role to deliver the plot setup for the entire prequels. 

First off, can we even call the depiction of his visions disability-coded? Without applying real world diagnoses to fictional characters, I think we can summarize that he:

has severe neurological events which routinely place him in physical danger (he collapses midfight in the middle of a battlefield, his post-Knighting travel with Lene is contextualized - by Lene herself I believe - as care)

has devastating chronic symptoms (Lene's account of often finding him curled up in a ball in his quarters weeping), that have a meaningful impact on both his relationships and the work that he wants to do. 

the threat of being not believed, and even institutionalized, are ever-present specters looming in his story. While this is in the context of fictional psychic abilities, it’s hard to read scenes, where, for example, Lene Kostana worries about a teen Sifo-Dyas being taken away from her training and locked away in the Citadel, without a chilling real-world echo with how some disabilities and mental illnesses are, or have historically been, treated.  

At the same time, we could argue that Sifo-Dyas is one of the characters who exhibits the most agency in the (pre)prequels. His narrative role is as the guy who peers behind the curtain, who sees the plot and tries to change it. From trying to save Protobranch when he was sixteen, to the attempt to flood the Order with Jedi in his Seeker days, to the inevitable clone army, Sifo-Dyas is personally, actively, deliberately engaging with the plot. While his visions have consequences and other characters are visibly aware of their impact on his life, he still progresses from Knight to Master. He seems to have sat on the Jedi High Council for a number of years and is going on active missions well after that. In the Living Force novel, Mace Windu implies that the Council’s entire ability to see the future has been compromised by Sifo-Dyas’s death. 

I got to thinking about this because I made myself sad about the cover story of Sifo-Dyas's "death on Felucia." The version of events the Council had for years before they uncovered the shuttle/Dooku connection near the end of the Clone wars.

On overview, it's such a bitterly believable story. A guy who publicly struggled his whole life with a debilitating, unpredictable power becomes increasingly destabilized, loses his job as a Seeker, and gets eventually kicked off or "resigns" from the Council after a big disagreement with them. Shortly afterward, he loses control of a tribal conflict on a mission and is killed. Off-screen funeral. Lightsaber doesn't make it back to the Temple. How much did assumptions of spiraling mental instability after a lifetime of living with with a debilitating condition impact how willing people were to believe a version of what happened to him?

Of course, the real reason Sifo-Dyas’s death isn’t properly investigated at the time is not because it’s meant to be a parallel to real life stories where police treat cases of missing people with mental health differently, but because there’s a massive coverup by the Sith, notably the Sith running the very Senate that sent Sifo-Dyas to his actual doomed mission instead of Felucia. (I’m very dubious of the Jedi Order treating Sifo-Dyas badly specifically because of his visions - the implications come only from Dooku who has AMPLE reasons to be an unreliable narrator about them, but that’s a whole different post.) 

I have serious doubts about most of this being intentional, considered representation. So much of Star Wars theorycraft boils down to piecing inconsistencies into order, and Sifo-Dyas, the bastard child of a typo and half-scrapped first drafts, is a masterpiece of the kind of storytelling that creates these cracks. The contradictions in the character – chronically debilitated by his visions but a powerful, actionable high council member – could very well be not thoughtfully-considered representation, but an oversight that actually turned out in a really interesting way. 

Still, I feel like, intentionally or not, those undercurrents remain important and a huge part of Sifo-Dyas's story - to the reader. To me, specifically, the person writing this essay, because I happen to live with mental illness and can relate to (some very small parts of) Sifo-Dyas’s life. Because like every other human being, I look to stories and want to see my experiences and make meaning. I think this is why representation hits so close to the nerve in Star Wars. It brings us back to being the wide-eyed nine year old, seeing the cool space wizard with the beautiful sword on screen for the first time, and that instinctive little kid feeling: that could be me, I want to play too. 

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79’s Clone Bar

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Ahsoka held her breath, one hand gripping her lightsaber as it thrummed loudly, the other pressed against the chest of the pinned commander below her. His breaths were shallow, constantly aware of the lightsaber held up to his neck. She won't hurt Fox, she knows she won't, but still, something lingers in the back of her mind.

"Please," she tried again, desperation lacing into each word. "I-" She tensed more as the barrel of the blaster pressed harder against her torso, and thought quickly for something, anything, to convince the soldier. "Captain Rex can vouch for me— You two are brothers, right? You're close?"

She couldn't see his face, and his body was rigid yet unreadable, but in the force… His presence felt strained, taut, as she spoke, when before it was an eerie calm. Ahsoka knew she was grasping at straws, and honestly had been snooping through Rex's datapad where she briefly saw Commander Fox's name, hidden at the bottom of his contacts. She recalled eavesdropping, once, in the makeshift breakroom on the Resolute, where Rex and some of the officers of the 501st were talking and the topic of the Coruscant Guard came up. Rex had shook his head, sorrow etched deep in the lines of his face, and said, "We were close once." He never brought up Fox again.

After several moments of tense silence where Ahsoka was planning to kark it all and bolt(or worse), the harsh pressure against her stomach eased.

"You understand how bad this looks for you, right?" Fox's voice was low, terse.

Ahsoka couldn't answer, letting out a sharp exhale as she sat next to him, back pressed against the control center. She clicked her saber off, kept it in an iron grip, unable to let it go and wary of the Guard commander, despite his unsaid truce. Ahsoka brought her legs up to her chest and rested her head on her knees. The anxiety of it all was catching up to her in a rush of nausea and it squashed any relief she may have felt.

Fox shifted next to her, slouching a bit, and Ahsoka heard static, the kind she heard from Commander Cody when he sighed so softly his helmet mic barely caught it.

"I can't help you," he continued, voice stilted, and Ahsoka thought she was going to vomit. "You're on your own… Your absence will be noticed soon."

Ahsoka swallowed thickly. "But you're helping me right now."

Fox shook his head. "I'm committing treason," He corrected, his voice grave and he seemed to slouch further, his helmet dipping as he stared at the blaster he held in his lap. "I'm not going to abandon my post while—"

The swoosh of the sliding door had both of them jerking up, Ahsoka's lightsaber humming to life. The doorway showed a direct line of sight to where they sat below the control centers and the shocktrooper that entered froze, one foot in the room.

"Commander—" he barely managed to utter when a stun bolt hit him square in the chest. The clone dropped in a clatter of limp armour and Ahsoka hysterically thought of the stringed puppets street performers used.

The padawan turned to Fox, his blaster was raised, thankfully not at her this time. If his presence in the force was strained before, it was like a band on the verge of snapping now. "I think you're helping me," Ahsoka tried for gentle, she still felt sick.

It snapped.

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i am suddenly a huge commander fox fan

oops

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Hello fox and Cody lovers I gift you a silly comic. Fox does put it on his belt to wear around the dome. Palps hates it. That is all

( @dukeoftheblackstar and @blueberry-ry ur replies combined)

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Coruscant Guard Massiffs

The Clone Wars 5.18 | The Jedi Who Knew Too Much

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Coruscant Guard Sniper

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what else to do with your free time other than make some cookies of the guys ™️ with the bestie

closeups also Ahsoka and two grogus

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one by one

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I made a clone wars timeline to combine all of canon and legends into one cohesive and somewhat manageable timeline, mainly for fanfic and ttrpg purposes but I thought people might like it, it has a full workout of the galactic standard calendar and has precise(ish) dates for events (mainly republic commando) but I want as many people as possible to be able to see it and hopefully enjoy it

You can find it here:

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Star Wars Calendars

Hey, I warned you I was into stuff like this. There was some discussion on in-universe calendarization on the message boards at theforce.net. Basically, if you lived in the SW universe, what year would it be? Here's a summary of calendars, either in the past or in current use: Calendar #1: Republic calendar Uses 25,000 BBY as its zero point, to correspond with the establishment of the Republic. Honestly, I've never actually seen this calendar being used in SW literature, but it seems logical that this would have existed at some point. Calendar #2: Sidereal Period Uses 5,689 BBY as its zero point. Reader Pfluegermeister reminded me of this calendar, which is only referenced once, in the 1970s Star Wars Sunday newspaper comic strips by Russ Manning. In the comic, a supercomputer named Mistress Mnemos speaks the line, "Luke Skywalker... File: ZC-1905-FT, Section: OC-6492, Human: 10th Degree, Born: Sidereal Era, AS-5670... of Master and Mistress Tan Skywalker." Putting aside "Tan Skywalker" for a sec, this sets the zero point at 5,689 BBY, but raises the question of what would have occurred during that year to start the Sidereal Period. (Wish I'd remembered this in time for the New Essential Chronology.) Calendar #3: Ruusan Reformations Uses 1,000 BBY as its zero point, which helps explain the references in the prequels to the Republic existing for "a thousand years" (as opposed to 25,000 years). This calendar originated in HoloNet News (but isn't actually used by HoloNet News...see below). Calendar #4: Great Re-Synchronization Uses 35 BBY as its zero point. This is the in-universe dating system used by HoloNet News (and before that, West End Games' Galaxywide NewsNets). I think Zahn's Pre-Empire dates correspond to this, but it's been a while. This date originated with an old timeline in the 2nd edition of the Guide to the Star Wars Universe that placed the end of the Clone Wars at 35 BBY. Since that date is no longer valid, HoloNet News retconned it into the "Great Re-Synchronization." Years that occur prior to the establishment of this event are referrred to by the abbreviation "BrS" (for "Before Re-Synchronization) under the rules of this system. Calendar #5: Battle of Yavin Uses 0 BBY (i.e. Star Wars: A New Hope) as its zero point. This is the most widely-used timeline since it's easy to grasp. It is also apparently used in-universe, if the Essential Chronology is any guide. There are really only two timelines being used in current practice: #4 (which I'll call the Fanboy Timeline) and #5. #4 is almost like a secret code and will continue to be used in fannish sources like HoloNet News, but the smart money is on #5, since that's the one that everyone (particularly SW authors and licensees) will gravitate toward. Almost forgot: there are two distinct "year" calendars: Year Calendar #1: 10-month year This was introduced by West End Games, apparently in an effort to make SW seem more "spacey." It causes lots of problems in figuring out where to place events separated by months, since Lucasfilm doesn't really use it, and new authors generally have no idea it was ever introduced. Year Calendar #2: 12-month year This is exactly like our calendar here on earth. The smart money is on this calendar, because it allows LFL to place events without having to calculate the result.

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Before VFX:

After VFX:

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🌄 - 1

part 2

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Commander Wolffe vs. Ventress

S05x19: To Catch a Jedi

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Can I get a yeeeah boiii for best clone Captain Rex?

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Coruscant Guard Troopers in The Bad Batch

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luke knowing the exact number of lives he took when blowing up the death star.

he was 19 💔