omnifiglot - Tumblr blog

[omnifiglot]

Things have certainly taken a turn for the interesting as The Boi Situation goes critical.

I get a feeling we haven’t heard the last of the Boi Situation. And that Merula is about to come down with a serious case of it.

[omnifiglot]

Everyone appreciates Mr. Boi’s ambition.

[omnifiglot]

Um, Trash, you don’t seem to be terribly familiar with Hogwarts ...

[omnifiglot]

Perhaps the hardest thing about RPing Trash Boi is just how insufferably smug he looks in every class where the teachers (save Snape) lavish him with praise. He’s going to do his best to BioWare Romance Merula, but I almost dread the day he inevitably succeeds. The smug grin will be unbearable.

[omnifiglot]

Well, she’s writing Trash Boi letters. That’s a start! Merula and Trash Boi are meant to be. Gonna make this BioWare-esque romance a thing even if it kills Trash Boi.

We all have our parts to play, Trash Boi.

[omnifiglot]

Trash Boi, by the way, was sorted into Ravenclaw.

And then he got a neat hat.

By the way, I don’t know if this game had BioWare style romances in mind, but Trash Boi is 100% going to prioritize romancing Evil Girl as much as possible.

[omnifiglot]

We delve a bit more into the Boi family drama

[omnifiglot]

So I’ve kind of stepped away from the online Star Wars fandom of late because of all the vitriol ... just ... everywhere.

I’m a massive fan and always will be (I survived the era with the space monkey lizards wielding snake staves and the unholy trinity of Dash Rendar, Corran Horn, and Kyle Katarn, so this is nothing).

But to work up the energy to be on Tumblr at all these days means I kind of have to tune Star Wars out for a while.

So let us turn briefly to the adventures of Trash Boi, Hogwarts first year.

[omnifiglot]

And bear in mind “dinosaurs” was also under “Star Wars Wishes” só like, grains of salt

Project Luminous Details

Tales from the white board

Okay all. Some things gleaned from the white board:

“10k BBY” — I don’t know that this will be 10,000 years before A New Hope, and of course this is still a brainstorming session and they probably wouldn’t allow anything really juicy be filmed here, knowing us Star Wars fans would absolutely look at that, but bear that in mind

“Old Republic” and then “Sith Empire” under “Star Wars Wishes” ... this may well be the Sith Empire storyline of SWTOR. My Revan post earlier today maaaaaay still be relevant.

Of course, again, brainstorm session on a white board for a camera. But this shows that they’re at least thinking about these things. And they did talk about a single long, pre-planned out story (looking at you, TRoS) spanning multiple books, generations, media ... I’m pretty stoked.

[omnifiglot]

Project Luminous Details

Tales from the white board

Okay all. Some things gleaned from the white board:

“10k BBY” — I don’t know that this will be 10,000 years before A New Hope, and of course this is still a brainstorming session and they probably wouldn’t allow anything really juicy be filmed here, knowing us Star Wars fans would absolutely look at that, but bear that in mind

“Old Republic” and then “Sith Empire” under “Star Wars Wishes” ... this may well be the Sith Empire storyline of SWTOR. My Revan post earlier today maaaaaay still be relevant.

Of course, again, brainstorm session on a white board for a camera. But this shows that they’re at least thinking about these things. And they did talk about a single long, pre-planned out story (looking at you, TRoS) spanning multiple books, generations, media ... I’m pretty stoked.

[omnifiglot]

It does beg the question, though, now that I’m seeing it in an actual physical, grippable form: how am I supposed to actually hold that??

So, Hasbro releases this one day ahead of Disney’s planned release of info about Project Luminous.

Now, I may be looking too much into this, jumping to conclusions, being a silly fool, etc, but I do note Hasbro’s Black Series is licensed by Disney Lucasfilm. Guess we’ll find out later today if there’s a connection to Project Luminous?

[omnifiglot]

So, Hasbro releases this one day ahead of Disney’s planned release of info about Project Luminous.

Now, I may be looking too much into this, jumping to conclusions, being a silly fool, etc, but I do note Hasbro’s Black Series is licensed by Disney Lucasfilm. Guess we’ll find out later today if there’s a connection to Project Luminous?

[omnifiglot]

I vastly appreciate the nit-picking :)

In a real world sense, I’ve been happy to see that the overall fandom is so invested that discussions like these can even happen.

My take is kind of ... okay, I’ve followed Star Wars since forever and it’s been fascinating to see the concept of a Sith philosophy developing beyond the very little we see and hear from the OT as EU creators, sometimes with and often without the direct input from Lucas, fleshed out the universe. As I recall, it wasn’t really till KOTOR that we got an in-depth or even semi-sympathetic view of the Sith—though I may totes be wrong there because my engagement with the EU was largely video games (I can’t remember, actually, if it was Dark Forces that was my intro to the EU or Darksaber by Kevin J Anderson).

That said, after the Disney canon erased the EU, I’m not completely sure how much of that still holds—TRoS Visual Dictionary tells us that Revan et al are canon, but we have very few canon details about the Old Republic era—so I’m wondering if maybe our concept of Sith beliefs isn’t reflected as much in canon anymore. I haven’t read many of the comics (only the Rise of Kylo Ren thus far—it’s a pricey habit for a poor fool like me), admittedly, so I’m not sure if they go into more detail there. But from what we’ve seen, where we do have Korriban/Moraband and Malachor, I’m thinking ... well, there is some basis for a sprawling Sith civilization, though I don’t know what philosophical underpinnings it leans on, or if Bane’s Rule of Two was based on the same reasons laid out in the Legends book series, or how many of the Malachor inhabitants were Force users vs. regular folks ...

A thought I’ve been mulling for a while is that the Sith might be something like a real-world mystery religion. The true philosophy of the Sith could be hidden behind increasingly secretive rites, with a simplified and seductive doctrine (eg the promise of immortality) for the masses and then increasingly selective echelons of the increasingly devoted where more is revealed at each level. So many folks may not be fully aware of what they’re getting into, unaware that they’re being used as tools. And as the ambition and arrogance increases with each echelon, the less chance they’ll rebel—more likely they’ll dig in deeper to try to rise to the top and claim that power for themselves. Some evidence this may be the case: there seem to be certain privileges associated with those who get closer and closer to the rank of Sith Lord, like owning a Wayfinder to Exegol. There were only two, one for Vader and one for Palpatine. And the vast resources available to Palpatine in The Phantom Menace, knowing that the Republic believes the Sith to have been extinct for a millennium at that point, suggest there is some kind of secret resource network, and there has been an unbroken line of Sith since that time, probably. Unless maybe it was just Palpatine using his conniving abilities as a Senator to use the equivalent of offshore accounts and money laundering. That’s definitely possible too ... but somehow they also had access to kyber, since no Sith pretender or Lord ever seems to want for a red lightsaber. Just a thought.

I think the Acolytes of the Beyond started out as a group of Vader fanboys and girls but at some point got absorbed into the Sith Eternal—only basis I have for this is, admittedly, that Ochi is listed as being affiliated with both groups. The Knights of Ren ... I think they also got absorbed into the Sith Eternal, come to think of it—we’d really benefit from more info on this, but in TRoS, assuming Ben didn’t communicate to them that he’d been Bendeemed, it’s not obvious to me why they didn’t follow his lead rather than attacking him, as he was the Master of the KoR. Or why they were on Exegol in the first place ... it could be they knew he’d left them and tracked him down there, but they could also have been there to guard the ceremony. I’m not sure either way ... need more info, I suppose ...

As for how many people lived on Exegol ... well, the Visual Dictionary tells us that the population is unknown, but I’m super excited about the rumored Exegol film that may be in the works. Perhaps that plus the rumored High Republic project will shed some much-needed light on the matter ...

I’M CACKLING. All hail the hobbit king

[omnifiglot]

Okay, now, the Rule of Two, as I understand it, applied only to Sith Lords—but just as there are followers of Jedi and Force religions who aren’t (or are only slightly) force sensitive or Jedi themselves, the Sith religion always had adherents beyond the Sith Lords. We’ve seen other Sith cultists or adherents to some degree, like Vaneé (old dude in Rogue One)

and Verys Hydan from Rebels, the Acolytes of the Beyond from the Aftermath trilogy (Ochi from TRoS was one of these), Yupe Tashu, and presumably others. As I understand this, the Sith Lords (only two at a time) are kind of like the Popes of the Sith cult, where the rest are like the rank and file members. And there were always secret pretenders to the role of Sith Lord as the apprentice constantly sought to kill and replace the Master, as we see in The Clone Wars with Dooku’s apprentices, Asaaj Ventress and Savage Opress (who has to go down in Star Wars history as having the dumbest possible name). And of course the Sith maintained a group of Force-adept enforcers in the form of the Inquisitorius, and we see Darth Sidious allow Maul to live at the end of Clone Wars (we’ll see how that goes in the upcoming season tho!), aware that he is no longer a valid Sith Lord but still serving Sidious.

Moraband/Korriban is still the homeworld of the Sith—Exegol is described as the “hidden world” of the Sith, not their homeworld, in that its location kept it hidden from the Republic by all the junk that necessitated a wayfinder to navigate to it.

Just pointing out that there is precedent for Sith cultists, and that part of TRoS wasn’t the part I had a problem with—that was all laid out in the Aftermath trilogy and in other media, and the hidden Sith cult has long been one of my favorite guilty pleasures of the Star Wars universe—so much as the fact that you had to have read all that extra material to immediately make sense of it. It kind of broke the cardinal rule of making the films as accessible as possible to the broadest coalition of fans, worse even than having Maul show up at the end of Solo. It made the pacing super wonky and at times unintentionally hilarious (Poe’s awkward sigh ... “somehow Palpatine is back” ... there was no way to make that scene not slightly funny). And above all, I wanted me some surviving Ben Solo.

I’M CACKLING. All hail the hobbit king

[omnifiglot]

Almost as if having the Force makes someone inherently ridiculously more powerful than people who don’t have the Force, which is why the Empire and First Order feel so threatened by Force users not under their control ...

Ten year old boy winning a pod race and blowing up a Droid control ship on his first star fighter flight, goes on to become the Chosen One who literally has a higher midichlorian count than Yoda and who rivals Mace Windu and Yoda in lightsaber skills and becomes the youngest Jedi Council member in history ... fine

Nineteen year old making a literally blind shot and destroying the Death Star when dozens of more skilled and experienced pilots are shot down, just a few years later manages to hold off and beat Darth Vader when Cal and Second Sister and Cera and Ahsoka and others who had received top notch Jedi training, some with decades of such training, all readily and sometimes instantly fall to him ... cool

Nineteen year old girl barely able to fly a ship and do some mind tricks and beat a half-trained fallen Jedi ... WUT

[omnifiglot]

More of my cathartic Dracula rewrite

“Are you even sure this Count Dracula exists?” Mina asked, leaning against the wall, arms folded.

Jon’s continued packing lost not one calorie of enthusiasm.

“I’ve received several correspondences from the man directly.”

“You know, anyone can write a letter and sign it however they like.”

“Mina, the man is royalty!”

“Look,” Mina offered, going to Jon’s desk. She scribbled a note out on the stationary and presented it to Jon. “Here’s a letter from Grand Duchess Flibunarachnis of Denmark.”

“Mina, please,” Jon said with a dismissive wave. “The Count’s handwriting was significantly better than that.”

Mina stalked out of the room, angry but not defeated. She set to work.

In addition to another letter from Count Dracula, the post on the following morning brought salutations, all written in exceedingly fine hand on expensive stationary, from Queen Victoria, Queen Catherine of Russia, an unnamed prince of the Kingdom of Nigeria, the American President James Buchanan, Oberon of the Fairy Realm, and Father Christmas, all promising lucrative real estate opportunities.

“Have you seen these?” Jonathan burst excitedly from the parlor, all these letters clutched in hand.

“No,” Mina offered.

“My dear, it seems our business with the Count has drawn the right sort of attention. We shall be rolling in our fortunes for years to come!”

“Didn’t you say you were top of your class?” she asked, dumbfounded. “At Oxford?”

“Yes indeed! Summa cum laude of the Official Certified University-by-Mail Course of Study offered by a Mr. Magistrar Honestfellow who introduced himself to me by letter. Now, that was some fine handwriting, let me tell you.”

“I’ve no doubt,” Mina mumbled.

[omnifiglot]

So in the realization that, after the millionth Dracula adaptation that I despise, I actually just dislike the source material itself, I’ve begun a cathartic parody of the source material. To let out these repressed feelings in a more constructive way.

“But you haven’t eaten the whole time I’ve been here!” Jonathan protested.

The count smiled, baring his impressive teeth, and leaned forward.

“Think of the worst thing you can possibly imagine that I’ve been eating.”

“Okay,” Jonathan said after considering for a moment.

“I’ve been eating that while you weren’t looking.”

Jonathan fainted.