#<- (clone)

[thetimetraveler24]

Clone Wars playing the imperial march every time Anakin is mildly inconvenienced will never not make me laugh.

[stealingpotatoes]

and all four of them are wrong!

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[stellanslashgeode]

Okay, so. Star Wars has all these concepts that weirdo New Left boomer George Lucas tosses in there but because of storyteller limitations it would kill the plot to fully explain them all, so later writers have to come in for the spin-off materials and bat clean-up to fully explain all this crazy crap. And I would like to talk about something that made me actively angry at first, but which I now adore. And that is the Naboo.

So much about Naboo culture is infuriating from a logical standpoint. They have a queen, okay. A constitutionally elected queen? Weird, okay. Don't know why they'd do that but... She's FOURTEEN? Excuse me? Is it a ceremonial thing or, oh no it's not? Legit head of state? Why does she dress like that? Why does she talk like that? I'm so tired.

Here's the explainer. Let me go cook.

There's this joke in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the last living human goes back in time and finds out humans aren't actually from Earth, but an alien culture that tricked all the middle managers, pedantic weirdos, and other infuriating folk into getting in a space arc which they gave the wrong evacuation coordinates to simply get rid of them. The Naboo are like this but they're all artists and poets and hippies, but like classy ones. They fled their home planet during a war and crash landed on Naboo, then did a colonism to the Gungans because, hey, they were fleeing a war and it was do or die. This spiritual rot in their creation story is later rectified by Padmé. But it's super important to their cultural psychology. They're hippies, but will subjugate if needed. They are "peaceful" but I guarantee you every single one of them has a tiny extremely shiny pistol up their sleeve and they will draw down on you if backed against a wall.

The scene that I think says it all is at the end of Phantom Menace when Padmé is surrounded by Nute Gunray and his droids, they've got her dead to rights, but Sabé her double creates a distraction so the queen can make it to her throne. This one piece of furniture is the Naboo in a nutshell. It's richly carved with artistic details, it has two seats to the side so the queen's handmaidens can read the lips of people in the back of the room and use hand signals to communicate with the queen while she can remain focused mostly on who is speaking to her. It is hundreds of years old. And it has a secret compartment in the armrest that is FULL OF GUNS. Layers of artistic opulence hiding their true intentions.

The Naboo were created to be backwards compatible with Princess Leia. They're compassionate pacifists, but they will shot you if needed.

Why do they elect teenage royalty? It's a little creepy. It's giving "age of consent is emotional maturity". It makes no sense.

The explanation they give outsiders is they want youthful idealism untainted by cynicism. What they don't tell you is that they take kids with stated interest in politics and put them in an advanced highly competitive Leadership Academy which is like Model UN mixed with Battle Royale. Well, they don't kill each other but it's intense. It's like what the clones went though just all diplomacy training and tea ceremonies all the time. Which is crazy but so Naboo.

Oh, and all the delegates for the royalty election run using pseudonyms for security. Imagine voting for the head of state but you can't run a background check. It's so crazy.

Why does Padmé dress like that? Well, fashion is one of Naboo's major industries so it's like she's wearing the entire Fall line catalog at once. To advertise not only the talent of her people, but to show how much they favor her. BUT that dress has multiple layers of padding and resin armor. And aforementioned spots for those little silver blasters. And it breaks up her silhouette making her harder to shoot. And it's so elaborate you pay more attention to the crazy dress and not if the person wearing it is really the queen or a decoy. Everything about Naboo is like this.

Queen Amidala has that weird accent while Padmé does not. Because all her handmaidens helped create the accent together so they all can imitate it. It's like if you gave girls at a rowdy sleepover the job of federal counterintelligence. That's what they came up with.

The handmaidens wear colorful identical clothes so you can't tell them apart, hoods to partially conceal their identity, and they don't wear the queen's fancy makeup. So one of them can be the queen and spy on people in the audience. Because the Naboo don't trust shit for shit.

Their public face is so silly to hide all the truly weird shit they do behind the scenes.

They use their reputation as artist hippies to conceal multiple layers of subterfuge and disguise their methods of self defense and assuage their paranoia due to wartime trauma and their disturbing colonial past. All of them are completely off their rocker even by Star Wars standards. And I love them so much. They put on a show so everyone thinks they have them figured out but what they have going on is far more weirder and more sinister than meets the eye. You know how catty, neurotic, and competitive art school students stereotypically are? Yeah, planet art student. Love them!

There you go, @charmwasjess

[duchess-of-mandalore]

I didn’t change anything. This is what happened.

[timmydraker]

Tim, holding something behind his back: don’t be mad.

Bruce, already getting mad: I won’t get mad, you can always talk to me. What’s going on?

Tim, revealing a swaddled baby: I messed up when cloning Kon and accidently spilt my DNA into it and now I have a clone baby with my dead situationship.

Bruce, flabbergasted: ..???

Bruce: why were you cloning- when did you start datin- I’m a grandpa?! No, go back, how did you ‘accidently’ spill DNA aren’t you paranoid too????

Tim, who may or may not have been crying over one of the clones and accidently cut his lip trying not to sob and got blood into a test chamber: that’s not important.

Bruce, hyperventilating: why is it so small????

Tim: cause she’s only two months old.

Bruce; I understand that, but even an average two month old should be-…

Bruce: two.

Bruce: you said two months.

Tim: you said you wouldn’t get mad.

Bruce: you hid a baby for TWO MONTHS?!

Tim: I WAS PANICKING LEAVE ME ALONE!

Bruce: IVE BEEN A GRANDPA FOR TWO MONTHS AND YOU DIDNT TELL ME?!

Tim: WELL! I don’t know I’m seventeen, what did you expect?

Bruce, actively loosing brain cells: if you can clone your dead boyfriend-

Tim: we never actually started dating-

Bruce: -then you can tell your father you had a baby.

Tim: …

Tim: I’m not exactly sure what stage of being an adult I am, I started a little young I think.

Tim: but I am a mother now so don’t you dare yell at me.

Bruce: …

Tim: …

Bruce: …

Bruce: … can I hold her?

Tim, grinning in victory: wash your hands first and then you can.

LATER:

Bruce: why is she a girl if you and Kon are both male?

Tim: are you questioning my baby’s gender??? That’s so homophobic, gay men can raise girls.

Bruce: you know damn well I didn’t mean-

[human-rocket]

…meanwhile it’s something Anakin can fix in like 5 minutes

[ahsoka-its-all-of-us]

This screams clones to me

[starwarsfangirl]

[saggitary]

There is no greater bond than the one between a person and the fictional character they’ve written 50k+ words about

[kelstares]

jedi master tano and grand master kenobi

[mmeiram]

funny thing, the senator danced with a jedi all night during the senate ball.... they must be really good friends.

[fretsaffron]

i wish they stayed happy

[stealingpotatoes]

Have you ever considered a character role-swap AU for either the Clone Wars era or the Rebels era?

i drew a sith padme ages ago and more recently did that cal-trilla swap au, but let's make MORE of one!!!

(commission info // tip jar!)

[secretly-a-trekkie]

commander, the kitty wants pets.

[specialagentartemis]

Scenario: a sample of your DNA was taken, popped into a cell, and cloned into a baby, gestated in a sci-fi artificial womb vat. The first time you or anyone in your family meets this baby is after it has already been born out of said vat. You can hold the newborn if you want, it's up to you, but it is a living breathing baby that was cloned from your DNA and is genetically identical to you.

I love clone philosophy. Give me all your philosophy of clones