mavlabajuri

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in my head the star wars equivalent of tswift is some human woman named tay’lor spiff or something and her stans are losing their minds over theories that she’s secretly a jedi singing about the horrors of war, even though she’s from a neutral system that hasn’t seen so much as a moral panic in 50 years

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Behind the scenes of Star Wars, Tunisia 1976

(X)

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I've finally figured out an argument that convinces coding tech-bros that AI art is bad.

Got into a discussion today (actually a discussion, we were both very reasonable and calm even through I felt like committing violence) with a tech-bro-coded lady who claimed that people use AI in coding all the time so she didn't see why it mattered if people used AI in art.

Obviously I repressed the surge of violence because that would accomplish nothing. Plus, this lady is very articulate, the type who makes claims and you sit there thinking no that's wrong it must be but she said it so well you're kind of just waffling going but, no, wait-- so I knew I had to get this right if I was gonna come out of this unscathed.

The usual arguments about it being about the soul of it and creation fell flat, in fact she was adamant that anyone who believed that was in fact looking down at coding as an art form as she insisted it is. Which, sure, you can totally express yourself through coding. There's a lot more nuance as to the differences but clearly I was not going to win this one.

The other people I was with (literally 8 people anti-ai against her, but you can't change the mind of someone who doesn't want to listen and she just kept accusing us of devaluing coding as an art) took over for I kid you not 15 minutes while I tried desperately to come up with a clear and articulate way to explain the difference to her. They tried so many reasonable arguments, coding being for a function ("what, art doesn't serve a function?") coding being many discrete building blocks that you put together differently, and the AI simply provides the blocks and you put it together yourself ("isn't that what prompt building is") that it's bad for the environment ("but not if it's used for capitalism, hm?" "Yeah literally that's how capitalism works it doesn't care about the environment" she didn't like that response)

But I finally got it.

And the answer is: It's not about what you do, it's about what you claim to be.

Imagine that someone asks an AI to write a code and, by some miracle, it works perfectly without them having to tweak it---which is great because they couldn't tell you what a single solitary thing in that code means.

Now imagine this person, with their code that they don't know how it works, goes and applies to be a coder somewhere, presenting this AI code as proof that they're qualified.

Should they be hired?

She was horrified, of course. Of course they shouldn't be. They're not qualified. They can't actually code, and even if by some miracle they did have an AI successfully write a flawless code for every issue they came across that wouldn't be their code, you could hire any shmuck on the street to do that, no reason to pay someone like they're creating something.

When actual engineers use AI what they do is get some kind of base, which they then go though and check for problems and then if they find any they fix them, and add on to the base code with their own knowledge instead of just trying different prompt after prompt until they randomly come across one that works.

People who generate code like this don't usually call themselves engineers. They're people who needed a bit of code and didn't have the knowledge to generate it, and so used a resource.

And there you go. There are people who have none of the skills of artists, they don't practice, they don't create for themselves. When they feed the prompt to the AI they then don't just use the resulting image as a reference point for their own personal masterpiece, and if they don't like it they don't have the skills to change it---they simply try another prompt, and do that until they get something they like.

These people are calling themselves artists.

Not only that, these people are bringing the AI generated thing to interviews, and they are getting hired, leaving people who slave over their craft out of the job.

And that is the difference, for the tech bros who think AI art isn't a big deal.

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we're working on 15 new Joker movies. we're working on 40 new Star Wars movies. we've got 57 distinct LotR spinoff shows coming soon to 57 different streaming services. we're expanding the Gumbyverse

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That One About the Temple Clones AU

Here's an underexplored and juicy plot point in the prequels that I can't stop thinking about! Because Sifo-Dyas was killed so early in the new canon timeline of the creation of the clones, with Dooku impersonating him to handle the subsequent details, we don’t even know exactly what he intended the clone army to be.

I think there’s even an argument to be made that Sifo-Dyas intended the clones to be culturally Jedi. Raised and trained in the Jedi Temple(s), learning Jedi skills and ways of life, growing up in a shared community alongside the Jedi. The clones serving not as an emergency button to hit in case of war, but as a support to the overstretched, under resourced Jedi Order in an increasingly violent, chaotic galaxy, one that might prevent the war he foresaw from ever even happening.

To begin, I’ll briefly touch on the galactic situation immediately before The Phantom Menace. Time and time again, we’re given a picture of the Jedi Order that is being stretched to its limit. All across the galaxy, Jedi temples such as the ones we see operating in the High Republic era in the Acolyte, are being shut down because the Jedi just can’t staff them. The novel The Living Force, set immediately before TPM, deals with the repercussions of these shut downs for the people living in those sectors - destabilization, a vacuum where the power hungry and corrupt can come into the space left and make life awful for the people. Problems arise, these systems go to the Republic for help, the Republic can't help due to bureaucratic red tape and lack of Jedi resources, and this creates more bad feelings about the Jedi and a great environment to grow the Separatist cause.

"I always heard so much about the Jedi. I never saw one, but they told me that was because you saved people -- and then you left!" - The Living Force

Enter Sifo-Dyas. As a member of the Jedi Council in this era, he would have overseen dozens of these painful but unavoidable closures. More, he was trained by Lene Kostana, a High Republic era Jedi, who remembered the golden age of the Jedi, all of these Jedi outposts, temples, and cultural centers being open and thriving, and surely filled her Padawan’s head with these stories. When Sifo-Dyas foresaw a coming cataclysmic war that would destroy the Jedi Order, it's not hard to see where he might have made a connection between the pervasive problem that was a lack of Jedi resources, and the galaxy falling further into darkness. In fact, it's exactly what happens in the prequels with a little push from the Sith.

The Living Force novel tells us outright that Sifo-Dyas’s original plan before deciding on the clones was to use his role as a Jedi Seeker to fill the Jedi Order with as many new Jedi as possible to counter the coming threats:

“(Sifo-Dyas) was always in a big damn hurry. Like the Republic would end if he didn’t swell the ranks.” - The Living Force 

Wow, Even Piell, that line aged like milk, buddy!

 Ki-Adi Mundi frowned. “Indeed, sometimes those he brought to us were not even viable candidates.”  - The Living Force 

So, Sifo-Dyas was originally trying to bring as many kids into the Order as possible, and didn’t particularly care if they were very Force sensitive. An intriguing detail, when considering how closely he might have imagined the non-Force-sensitive clones to work in Jedi roles.

Interestingly, he didn’t actually abandon that “swell the ranks” plan - he got his ass fired, so he couldn’t bring any more Jedi in the conventional way. Sifo-Dyas is in a desperate situation here, he feels he's running out of time, and he needs to get as many people into the Jedi Order as quickly as possible. I think you might see where I'm going with this.

“The future should remain unseen, but unfortunately, Sifo-Dyas has little choice in the matter.”  -Lene Kostana, Dooku Jedi Lost

We know he arranged the initial order for the clones, but not how he intended to use them, or saw their role, or even if he would have agreed with Jango as the DNA donor, since that part came in from Dooku.  If Sifo-Dyas, lifelong Jedi and true believer in the Order, was creating something to help defend his people in their darkest hour, it stands to reason that he might look within his own culture for their training, instead of outside of it.

Did he see them as a secret weapon, a surprise help in the hour of greatest need, as they would ultimately function as on Geonosis? Or did he envision the clones being raised with Jedi involvement on every level of their development, growing into keepers of the peace to fill those hundreds of empty temples and outposts and restabilize a galaxy sliding toward darkness?

I think an important clue that supports the latter argument is that as Sifo-Dyas is literally falling out of the sky to his death, he is busy trying to get a message to the Council that he ordered the clones via a recording: 

I've seen a vision of the future that I feel warrants an army. You've disagreed with me, but I felt I had no choice. Therefore I have ordered one: a clone army from the Kaminoans. Something must be done, and I made that decision. - Sifo-Dyas, Force Collector

He's hardly trying to keep the (currently embryonic!) clones a secret here. He seems to think he's done his part and the Council has no choice but to take it from there, and follow through with his unmentioned plan. He has delivered the needed personnel. And bear in mind, Sifo-Dyas did not expect his death to be a 10 year old mystery. He seems to have spent his very last breaths protecting Sillman and therefore leaving a witness to everything that happened. His last words are literally “Come find me!” 

These are not the actions of a man who has set his plan into perfect motion and a magic army will appear just at the right time in ten years. This is a man who is facing his unexpected death and realizing that he needs to tell the Council, who disagreed with him but he clearly still trusts, what he did because he won't be there to handle the details himself. It's almost poignant.

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I worried about making this post at all because I’m not actually interested in blorbo apologism. Sifo-Dyas’s story is much more interesting if he is a good man forced to go to desperate, awful lengths to keep the apocalypse from happening. Whatever he intended the clones to be, it ended in Order 66; in a way, it doesn't even matter.  And yet, I think there’s something compelling there too, and I think canon gives us just enough - at least make an argument for a culturally-Jedi clone army what-if.

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two swords

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corries are knights confirmed. tysm rex

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boy who's never seen a large body of water before + insane force abilities = a very tired obi-wan

(donation doodles! // tip jar)

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“Satine always took care to present herself with dignity, wearing colors that reminded one of rich foliage and adopting floral-inspired hairstyles that she wore like a crown. It was not vanity. It was strategy. Her appearance was designed to remind her people that their world had been one of lush forests and jewel-colored lakes before war turned Mandalore into a desert.”

- “Kenobi’s Shadow,” The Clone Wars: Stories of Light and Dark

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It’s just a much more interesting idea to me that there are so many clone troopers in the galaxy they could populate a country and essentially do, that they’re basically their own people who developed their own culture, they don’t need to be Mandalorian in any meaningful way. They’re never portrayed that way in main canon except with the smallest of evidence (Rex’s helmet design or whatever) and it drives me kind of nuts.

Jango Fett sure as shit did not think of the clones as Mandalorian or give a crap about them. You know who gives a crap? Each other. They decided they’re more than an army, they’re the only family they have. It’s a practically universal clone thing that they call each other brothers even though they’re technically not and that’s part of their specific culture.

Going by names they chose for themselves or earned instead of their numbers is part of their culture. So are words like “shiny” and “bucket.” They paint designs on their armor and commonly have identifying tattoos as part of their culture.

In main canon we do see that clones generally think of themselves as Kaminoan humans. Like so many SW species the Kaminoans are simplistically treated in canon as being practically synonymous with the profession they’re known for, cloning, which I think kind of resolves the confusion about how the destruction of Tipoca City and the cloning facilities in TBB is later discussed as a genocidal destruction of the whole species and their home. It really drives home that Kamino isn’t really Kamino without them. They’re the reason those places were built and the vast majority of the people on that world were clones. It’s not a great home to come from but it was a place mostly specific to them where they had each other, the only home they actually knew growing up, unlike the Republic they fought for or Mandalore.

tl;dr who cares about deadbeat dad Jango and whatever “culture” he passed onto the clones.

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they really gave us a female lead in a star wars movie & made her kind and good and angry and powerful and complex & then spent the next 2 movies revolving almost her entire storyline around a white male war criminal who abused her, abused her friends, abused her family. all the while validating all the people who romanticized gaslighting and torture. for fan service lmao 

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i wonder if the clones found comfort when it rained.

standing guard in a rainstorm, hearing the soft *pishhhh* as it hammers down around them. closing their eyes and imagining, just for a moment, that they're a cadet back on kamino. their batch is all together, and nothing bad has happened to any of them. no loss, no scars, just chatting late at night and dreaming about fighting for their republic.

i wonder if they hated it.

the rain reminds them of something they'll never have again, and maybe never truly had: a home. the rain reminds them of the icy kaminoans, the scorns from bounty hunters hired to train them. the rain is loud and unpleasant and cold, just like kamino had been.

the rain sounds like home, feels like brotherhood, tastes like loss, smells like death. the rain looks familiar, and inviting, but it's frigid and sharp.

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I cannot get over the "my dick is bigger than yours" joke they put into this episode??? And of course it's Fives who makes it, who else would??

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Colored sketch of Jaster Mereel

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Im a little mead tispsy rn but Im up thinking about jedi/mandalorian parallels. Theyre ancient enemies. One has foundlings, the other has younglings (both taken in from their original families). Both are in a sense warrior cultures with great power, but one is focused on nonviolence sometimes to the point of apathy and cruelty, and in the other, you kill for your family. The fucking darksaber (antithesis to the jedi weapon) dictates the ruler of mandalorians. The way the jedi are called knights but the mandos are the ones with suits of armor. The star wars universe never canonically delves into any of this and it keeps me up at night.

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Aayla Secura

First of the Redesigns - suggested by @jayofolympus