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onimiman · 3 months

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You know, I haven't watched this episode, I haven't watched this show, not GoT or any of those books BUT I just want to let it be known that I'm glad you're watching a show you're loving. Because speaking as someone going through The Acolyte and The Boys, it's nice to know that there is still quality TV in this day and age.

House of the Dragon s2e4

Amazing episode. The writers from ep2 must have come back because the dialogue is ON POINT.

Aegon and Rhaenys were stand out performances, but everyone else was very good too (except Alys, she feels out of place).

Daemon's stuck in Harrenhal, haunted by his personal demons and having weird dreams and visions. That part really felt like he was existing in some other plane. He accomplished nothing so he doesn't even write to Dragonstone with any updates.

Daemon advising the young Oscar Tully to smother his grandfather and take over as the lord WTF that was so unhinged. Is kinslaying a disease and he wants to spread the virus? If he makes everyone else a kinslayer, will his guilt lessen?

I can't believe Daemon took a drink from a suspicious woman and just drank it without any question. And then he blanks out for hours and regains consciousness in the middle of a council. What was he doing when he was out of it?

The Blackwood guy is the kid who killed a Bracken during Rhaenyra's tour in s1. I don't trust him.

Aegon was great, the scenes with the council not listening to him, not needing him, Aemond mocking him in Valyrian, Alicent telling him he is there to do nothing. It all just accumulates, until the realization that he was never meant to rule, but to be a figurehead, a puppet. The feeling of helplessness, uselessness which drives him to go into battle and prove his worth. If he fights like conqueror, maybe they will finally listen.

I love that Aegon questioned Larys Strong about Harrenhal, that he cared about taking the central castle to spread and cement his rule. No one else did.

It's interesting how Rhaenys was similarly not listened to at Rhaenyra's council. I was thinking that she also maybe wanted to get some respect for going into battle. Though it wasn't a main reason, her situation was way more complicated, she had many motivations. The most logical reason was that her dragon had the actual battle experience unlike others on Rhaenyra's side. And I think she felt responsible for Lucerys' death.

Aegon and Rhaenyra again being opposites. One isn't listened by his own council, the other's council can't do anything without their queen there. One goes into battle against the advice, the other listens to the advice and doesn't go. One mocked then betrayed by his heir, the other questioned but protected by her heir.

Finally more Jace!!! The one who respects his mother even if she's reckless and he worries about her safety. It's good to see how he grows into his role as the heir, when Rhaenyra finally tells him about the prophecy, it felt monumental. He is the real heir now. That's what makes one the heir - the passing of the secret known only to the king. This is what Aegon, Aemond and Daemon lack.

The battle sequence was amazing, I had to rewatch it. Aegon messing up Cole's plan, Aemond taking advantage of the situation to backstab his brother, Vhagar being a cunning war machine, Meleys showing experience, agility and grit during the fight and almost pulling off a win against 2 opponents, if not for the ambush. Rheanys coming back to finish the job, I was rooting so hard for her. Vhagar crushing the soldiers on Green side underfoot. Meleys' last look at Rhaenys before she dies and Rhaenys falls. Cole being knocked out by Vhagar's passing then barely preventing Aemond mercy(?) killing Aegon. Sunfyre curled up protectively around Aegon's body. WOW just wow

How ironic that Aemond became the backstabbing second son that lusts for the throne. That is exactly what Otto thought of Daemon for years and yet Daemon never betrayed Viserys, stayed loyal to him to the end and protected his wishes for Rhaenyra to rule. Otto and Alicent raised Aemond to become who they feared the most.

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onimiman · 3 months

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What's especially funny is that that crucifix in the first picture wouldn't be allowed in any secular school in the U.S. or Canada, so the fact that that's there, showcasing that secularism isn't really part of Polish culture is interesting.

breaking bad polish au again I forgot to post it there…

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onimiman · 3 months

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I’m back

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onimiman · 3 months

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Prequel Jedi ladies 🥰

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onimiman · 3 months

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Sure is, but if one considers it a giant otter...

Then again, didn't Han have to fight the otter with his hands cuffed behind him?

Anyway here's famous smuggler and Rebellion war hero Han Solo fighting an otter.

This is real. This is not a sh*tpost or fanart. Han Solo straight up tried to deck a giant otter.

This is from 1995. Crazy to think about what used to be canon in this franchise.

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onimiman · 4 months

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine "Past Tense, Pt. 1"

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onimiman · 4 months

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Why Hadn't This Been Expanded On Later? (Jacen Solo Post)

"[I]n the same way that the Yuuzhan Vong had left vestiges of themselves and their exotic savagery on Coruscant and a host of other worlds, the war itself had opened wounds that were long in healing, leaving scars that refused to fade. Chewbacca was one of those; Anakin, the Solos' youngest son who had seemed destined to live forever, another.

"Years later Jacen's death had reawakened all the anguish.

"Jacen, who in a real sense had come closest to understanding the Yuuzhan Vong and had looked to the Force for a peaceful resolution to the war. Only to fall . . . to die and merge with the Force rather than disappear into it. Or was he, as Han sometimes liked to believe, merely exiled, as the Yuuzhan Vong had been to the sentient world of Zonama Sekot, and advancing toward redemption?"

-page 336 of the paperback edition of Star Wars: Millennium Falcon by James Luceno.

In the wake of my posting of Jacen Solo's transcendental battle against Onimi at the end of The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force, I was reminded of the small hope provided by Luceno's standalone novel about the most famous YT-1300 wherein Jacen Solo could have been finding a way to somehow atone for his out-of-character atrocities as Darth Caedus during Legacy of the Force from the Netherworld of the Force. Indeed, toward the end of the Millennium Falcon novel, Jacen's spirit helps save Allana from mortal peril.

Then, in Fate of the Jedi: Abyss by Troy Denning, Jacen/Caedus states himself to be toiling away in eternal damnation.

. . .

WTF, Troy Denning?! On top of your bullshit of thoroughly ruining Jacen as a character and making Luke Skywalker into a benevolent dictator who is the only one capable of shepherding the Jedi Order because everyone else there is effectively a child, you just had to put the steaming Hershey's kiss of a cherry on top of all that by having Jacen be in a state of damnation with no hope of redemption out of it? It means no one can learn or grow away from the dogma provided by Luke Skywalker's Jedi Order, because if they do, they're simply no better than a dark sider, and cannot seek penance even in the Netherworld of the Force. From a man as politically liberal as Troy Denning, this is one of the most religiously litigious views that I have ever seen. Too bad, Mr. Luceno! That hope you provided for us?Dashed like a rotten tomato against a brick wall!

Fuck, at times, even after not having read Legacy of the Force or Fate of the Jedi in years, I swear that those books were written as propaganda espousing the views of a clone Luke Skywalker who had taken over the Jedi Order sometime following The Unifying Force and which were made to deliberately make Jacen Solo, the Jedi who had found a deep meaning in the Force, probably moreso than any Force-user to date, look like a bad guy by attributing clone Luke's actions as Jacen's.

#star wars #millennium falcon #jacen solo #star wars legends

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onimiman · 4 months

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In Honor of Star Wars' 47th Anniversary

Today, 47 years ago, Star Wars, now known as Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope, was released in cinemas and became a cultural phenomenon that has withstood the test of time as well as innumerable subsequent projects that have ranged from great, such as The Empire Strikes Back, to the not-so-great, such as The Last Jedi. And in honor of that anniversary (even if it's not that special, as its 50th would go on to be), I decided it would be great to exhibit one of the climactic scenes from one of the best SW novels ever written, The New Jedi Order: The Unifying Force by James Luceno.

"On the bridge of the vessel whose every component answered to him, Onimi sent a blur of objects racing for Jacen, beginning with the carved idols that flanked Jaina: cloaked Yun-Harla, many-armed Yun-Yammka, thousand-eyed Yun-Shuno, and the rest. But Jacen stood firm. Not wanting to risk hurting Jaina inadvertently by deflecting the objects, he pulled everything into a whirling cloud, as if in orbit around him. Beyond the cloud, he was dimly aware that a transparency had formed above the console, and that constellations of stars were winking into existence, smeared in places by the explosive exchanges among the hundreds of warships battling at the edge of Coruscant's envelope.

"Jacen's steadfast defense infuriated Onimi. Reaching deeper into himself, the Supreme Overlord used his telekinetic powers to create cracks in the bulkheads and ceiling, hoping to add chunks of unrooted yorik coral to his conjured storm. But as fast as the fissures formed, Jacen repaired them, and those chunks that were torn away he ordered the vessel to cement in place.

"Mismatched eyes opened wide in disbelief, Onimi charged, his feet moving so rapidly that he might have been gliding across the deck.

"Though crippled by the deformations that had resultedfrom poorly healed enhancement surgeries and the consequences of experimental escalations, the former shaper was still taller than Jacen and pound for pound more powerful. But the struggle had nothing to do with size and less to do with brute strength. Onimi's true potency lay in his abilities to amplify the electric current that flowed through his body, or--like Vergere--to call on his refined metabolism to fashion molecules and compounds, and deliver them through his curving yellow fingernails, his single fang, his blood, sweat, saliva, and breath. But where Vergere had learned to produce emollients and healing tears, Onimi was capable of producing a brew of fast-acting and deadly toxins. Compared to the former shaper's mastery of Yuuzhan Vong bioscience, Vergere had been a mere adept.

"He flew at Jacen with hands upraised and mouth ajar. Jacen lifted his hands in defense and he and Onimi met with blinding discharges of electrical energy that entangled both of them in a flashing web. Their hands interlocked, they whirled from one side of the bridge to the other in a kind of mad pirouette, caroming off the coarse bulkheads and smooth instrumentation. Jaina sent her twin what reinforcement she could summon, but he told her to conserve her strength.

"The transmutated secretions from Onimi's palms and fingertips sent hallucinogens through Jacen's skin and capillaries, and coursing through his bloodstream. Onimi's paralyzing fang struck repeatedly for Jacen's temples and neck. Poison wafted on his forced sighs and rode within the croplets of his frothing saliva.

"But the Jacen that the Supreme Overlord had in his taloned grip was not there. Where once Jacen had been unable to find Onimi through the Force, now it was Onimi who couldn't find Jacen. What he found istead was formless, supple, and fathomless--an infinite emptiness, but as serene as a wind toppling trees to encourage new growth.

"A being of light, Jacen was drawing into himself all of Onimi's lethal compounds, neutralizing them and casting them out as sweat, tears, and exhalations.

"He understood at last why he had failed to catch Anakin's lightsaber when Luke had tossed it to him: he was never meant to catch it, because he had become the lightsaber.

"He had attained the ability to cut through any resistance in himself; to sever the bonds of preconception; to open a gaping hole into a reality more expansive than any he had ever dared imagine; to heal. As his grandfather had done, he had broken through the apparent opposites that concealed the absolute nature of the Force, and found his way into an unseen unity that existed beyond the seeming separateness of the world. For a moment all the cosmic tumblers had clicked into place, and light and dark sides became something he could balance within himself, without having to remain on one side or the other. The consciousness that was Jacen Solo was strewn across the vast spectrum of life energy. He had passed beyond choice and consequence, good and evil, light and dark, life and death.

"All that had required of Jacen was complete surrender--a technique once mastered by the Jedi Order but at some point misplaced; transposed to an emphasis on individual achievement, which had opened a way to arrogance.

"In that the path was available to any who chose to seek and follow it, Jacen understood that the discovery was really a rediscovery. Indeed, the ur-Yuuzhan Vong had adhered to it when they had lived in symbiosis with Yuuzhan'tar. In that dim protohistorical time, they had been group-minded, living in a world where the boundaries between self and other were permeable. By cutting that bond they had isolated themselves from the Force. They had deluded themselves into thinking that they were worshiping life, when in fact they were worshiping the only route to symbiosis left to them, which was death.

"Jacen realized that, in a sense, he had paraphrased Onimi. He had passed beyond the tradition of the Jedi Order into a more embracing reality. But instead of attempting to steal the authority of the gods, or to become a god, he had finally allowed himself to merge with the Force in its entirety and become a conduit for its raw power, which flowed through him like the thundering headwaters of a great river. The conjoining of the Force and his Vongsense enabled him to render himself small enough to follow Onimi wherever he went or attempted to hide; to counter Onimi's every action, and merge with his living vessel on a molecular level.

"Jacen ended their spinning, bringing them to a halt in the center of the bridge, where he continued to parry Onimi's strikes. The Supreme Overlord's lolling eye fixed him with a gimlet stare.

"Gradually Onimi began to understand, as well. He grasped that Jacen wasn't defending himself so much as using Onimi's own strengths against him. Jacen was fighting without fighting; drawing Onimi deeper into the struggle by demanding more of Onimi's indigenous toxins, to the point that he couldn't keep up. Jacen was the vacuum, the dovin basal singularity into which Onimi was being sucked. Jacen had become the dismantling void that was drawing Onimi into a slender thread, attenuating him to the point of infinite smallness.

"Onimi's self-deformed face began to change. His arteries pulsed and his veins bulged from beneath his pale skin.

"Onimi fought with everything that remained in him, but Jacen could not be overwhelmed. As a pure conduit of the Force, he was incapable of taking missteps or making wrong moves. He stood not at the edge of the tilting ecliptic of his vision, but at the center, as a fulcrum. The weight that would disturb the balance was Onimi, but to Jacen, that weight was no longer of sufficient mass to make a difference.

"The Force encased Jacen like a whirlwind, moving deep into the darkness the Yuuzhan Vong had brought to the galaxy, and gathering it and sending it up the spout into the funnel cloud, where it was transformed and dispersed.

"Onimi was becoming more insubstantial by the moment.

"Jacen continued to stand firm, righting the world.

"He had become so powerful as to be dangerous to his own galaxy, for he could see clearly the temptations of the dark side and the desire to force one's will on others--to so completely dominate that all life would kowtow to him.

"He purged his mind of all pride and evil intent and entered a moment of unadulterated bliss, where he seemed to have unlocked the very secrets of existence.

"He knew that he would never again be able to reach this exalted state, and at once that he would spend the rest of his life trying."

--from pages 468-472 of the hardcover edition of this book.

This scene might be one of my favorite moments in the entire Star Wars franchise; it is up there with Luke Skywalker's confrontation against Darth Vader and Darth Sidious aboard the second Death Star. It is the culmination of everything that the character of Jacen Solo had endured throughout the entirety of The New Jedi Order; for all of the pain and sacrifice that he, his family, and friends had endured throughout the Yuuzhan Vong War, he had emerged a stronger character, growing, like the shadowmoth that Vergere had compared him to in Traitor, from the uncertain, hesitant warrior-philosopher to a being of pure, unadulterated Force-energy for the sole purpose of banishing the evil that the Vong had wrought to the galaxy, as represented, and led, by Onimi.

And having reread that section and writing it down word for word, I had been struck by just how truly awful Jacen's character assassination following this book was. From his opening scene in the prologue of Dark Nest I: The Joiner King to his death in Legacy of the Force: Invincible, to even his appearances as a ghost beyond shadows in Fate of the Jedi: Abyss and Apocalypse, it had seemed as if Troy Denning had gone out of his way to undo everything that James Luceno had done in creating this beautiful, artistically done (to quote Grand Admiral Thrawn in The Last Command), and for what? To create a villain in Darth Caedus who was not only a mere shadow of either Vader of Sidious, but also a weak villain in himself who had only lived as long as he did thanks to horrendous writing from not only Denning, but also Karen Traviss and, to a slightly lesser extent, the late Aaron Allston. Moreover, in assassinating Jacen to the extent that he did, effectively made the Jedi Order into a weak organization who cannot seem to function without Luke Skywalker at its helm as a benevolent dictator. So, thanks, Mr. Denning, for not only ruining Jacen's character development, but also for ruining Luke Skywalker himself, more than even what Rian Johnson did in TLJ.

I know it is quite melancholic to end this post like that; I just wanted to remark that, for me, Star Wars, as a franchise, ended chronologically with The Unifying Force, and that, as well as virtually the rest of The New Jedi Order, was more brilliant storytelling than anything Disney had given us (and that includes Andor, which I liked).

Happy Real Star Wars Day, and, of course, may the Force be with you!

#star wars #the new jedi order #the unifying force #jacen solo

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