#Rebels spoilers

[stealingpotatoes]

more ahsoka episode 5 crap <3

(commission info // kofi support!)

[damage-ko]

Hey Filoni...

[liatorii]

AU where Kanan comes back as a Loth wolf. That’s it, that the post.

Click read more if you dare:

[is-that-sand-in-my-waffles]

Me: "Maul is such a deeply tragic character. The circumstances of his life did not allow room for love of any sort. He only knows pain and how to inflict it upon others. His Sisyphean quest for vengeance led to nothing but misery and loss. The only moment of peace he had was as he lay dying in the arms of his enemy."

Also me: "TOP 10 TIMES THIS WEEK MAUL WAS THE GALAXY'S MOST CRINGEFAIL LOSER"

[rarecollectibles]

me rewatching rebels (i know exactly what happens)

[mayhaps-a-blog]

I know we’re all wondering when, exactly, Thrawn picked up an entire reconstructed hallway from the Lothal Temple.

The theory I usually see is that Palpatine told him to do it so he could do the whole “tempt Ezra with his past family” thing, but I have a funnier idea.

Thrawn just did that.

He stopped by this cool, awesome temple they were excavating, got called away before he could really get to analyzing the whole thing, and was like, “You know what? Fine. But I’m taking this hallway. Clear out a cargo bay, list it as one of my art projects, this is mine now. Bye.”

Then the Temple sunk, and I’m sure Palpatine was very disappointed, but Thrawn - who needed to get back into his good graces, fast, after Treason - pointed out that he’d saved an entire hallway. Perhaps the Emperor would find that of use?

And the Emperor decided that actually, that was perfect. But he’s putting a squad of Royal Guards on it. It’s his now. Thanks, Thrawn, once again your weird art hobby is somehow useful, you strange, strange man.

[pbandjeveryday]

Remember on Atollon when Bendu said he saw Thrawn’s defeat? “Many arms surrounding you in a cold embrace”?

We know this comes true in the rebels finale, but how cool would it be if his ultimate defeat also holds true to this prophecy? In a different way, hopefully (it would be a bit boring to do the purgill again), but whether it’s in the Ahsoka series or a Mandoverse movie or whenever they decide to end his story, it would be so cool to see the prophecy reach through his entire life.

[stealingpotatoes]

What if Jacen only filed himself fangies like a vampire?

idk how i managed to make this into kanera family stuff but

[honeyed-pines]

— “𝑖 𝑤𝑖𝑠ℎ 𝑖 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢.”

— “𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑑 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑠𝑒𝑒 𝑚𝑒.”

screen cap redraw of……. That Scene

[is-that-sand-in-my-waffles]

The fact that we'll never see the entire Ghost crew together again......Dave I'm in your walls why did you do this......

[yen-stanning]

Me whenever Hondo shows up in Rebels

[stoat-party]

How long were Thrawn and Ezra floating through space together?

What was the aftermath like? Thrawn isn’t the type to try and kill a teenager after the battle’s over but he’s TICKED and he already shot Ezra in the back.

(Imagine Ezra casually deflects the blasterfire until he stops lol)(does he even have his lightsaber with him i forget)

If they were there for longer than a week I think Thrawn probably told Ezra a lot about art. I know his crew also got carried away but the idea that he only has Ezra there to infodump to just kills me. They probably also discussed how Sabine and Hera are the coolest (since Thrawn can’t stop complimenting them in the show).

Anyway, I hope Ezra comes back in one of the upcoming shows and treats Thrawn like a weird former roommate he didn’t like but ended up getting along with through sheer proximity. And he knows way too much about art.

[ohnoohdeer]

I hadn't thought this through. We're at end of season 2 and I still haven't accidentally spilled the beans to them. With each passing day it gets harder and harder. I can't keep turning the conversation to live action Chopper or Sabine's new look every time they're starting to suspect 😭

[cross-my-heartt]

Sabine vs Thrawn or the gifted character problem

I’m going to be honest here, I did not enjoy Sabine in Rebels. More than that, I actually found her arc pretty subpar.

For the longest time the only intrigue around her were the alluded hang ups with her family only for it to turn out that her family does in fact love her very much and was quickly and easily persuaded to support her.

Sabine’s only flaw was a mistake she made when she was too young to be held accountable for it - she succeeded too hard, realized she was wrong early on and simply needed to succeed even harder to fix that mistake and move on.

As a ‘gifted kid’ with burnout syndrome all of this felt… really hollow.

But then I thought that maybe I was being unfair to Sabine. Because I really like Thrawn and Thrawn and Sabine are two characters who essentially have the same problem: they’re just too good at what they do.

Except that when you look at how they were handled, they couldn’t be more different. Because while Sabine only suffered the consequences of her competence once, Zahn took every single way Thrawn’s talents could affect his life and literally pummeled him with that.

(as usual, spoilers ahead)

For starters Thrawn’s skills make him as many enemies as they give him allies. He’s ridiculed, hated, envied, alienated and even villainized for them. People are ferociously determined to take him down, either because they believe he’s a threat or because he sows jealousy and contempt everywhere he goes, upstaging people left and right without even meaning to.

The connections he has that work to protect him sometimes paint him as unfairly privileged. All of this has real consequences when you see characters become irrational for how antagonistic they are towards him (I’m looking at you Roscu). 

Even the people close to him aren’t immune from it. Thrass, for all the wholesomeness of their relationship, was himself once brought to a point where he ground his teeth every time Thrawn opened his mouth.

People’s attitudes aside, Thrawn has weaknesses that balance out his skills. Even more so, they are weaknesses he can never compensate for with his brilliance.

He’s politically inept, making him a target to both his allies and enemies. His ignorance is exploited by others, not just in his home world but in the Empire by people like Tarkin and Pryce who call on him to do their dirty work – requests he essentially can’t deny because these people are his political buffers.

He’s socially challenged. Emotionally constipated. Confused and uncomfortable in social situations, insecure about it despite the overwhelming confidence he shows in his career (a career that ironically drags him deeper and deeper into the politics he’s so poor at handling).

There are only two people he’s ever had a decent emotional connection to and one of them died in an accident Thrawn was involved in (something that if he doesn’t blame himself for, others already do) while the other is far away, cut off from him because his own actions cornered him into being exiled from his home, regardless of what control he had in determining the circumstances of that exile.

And no I’m not talking about Eli. Thrawn and Eli aren’t friends, Eli says so himself. Why? Because at the end of the day Thrawn’s relationships are hindered by his skills. His oddities make it hard for him to connect with people and his talents act as a barrier because Thrawn was Eli’s superior first, his mentor second and his friend, if at all, third.

His quirks affect not just his relationships but the way he sees people as well – he confesses once to seeing others as assets first and people second. And that puts every single noble goal he’s had into question. Is Thrawn really concerned about loss of life or is he just concerned with results? We can’t be sure and probably neither can he.

So what does that say about his relationship with Eli? With Faro? With Thalias?

And what does that say about their relationships to him? Because for all that those around him admire and value him it often feels like they themselves see him more as an asset than a person. And oh the irony of that.

Sure he inspires respect and loyalty but do the people around him care about him or about what he can do. The things he could achieve; the people he can save.

What about his morals then? What happens to a character who’s so consistently successful? Well, maybe they become dangerous. Overconfident. Self-righteous.

Thrawn’s morals have been spiraling for a while, they spiral so far that they dig him into a hole it’s doubtful he’ll ever dig himself out of. Because of his moral views he ends up as Palpatine’s tool, making up more and more convoluted excuses for why he does the things he does.

His plans are as solid as sand castles – one piece out of place and the whole thing falls down (cough Atollon cough) and yet he consistently puts people close to him in danger, believing against all odds that he’ll once again be successful. Only that isn’t always the case.

But I’ll stop this ramble here and get to the actual point I’m trying to make.

Which is that all of this, literally all of this, somehow connects to Thrawn’s ‘gifts’. Zahn gave Thrawn extraordinary abilities but to balance that out he made those gifts a bump, a curse if you will, in every other aspect of Thrawn’s life: emotional, interpersonal, moral, political.

TLDR, there are implications to being a gifted kid/adult/character. And where Sabine’s arc fails, I think, is limiting those implications to a onetime event or some inconsequential insecurity. If you’re going to make a character who’s so outstandingly competent in one area, that should affect at least one other aspect of their life (if not all as we see with Thrawn which makes sense given the sheer scale of his talent).

None of this is helped by the fact that this is yet another female character who’s only held back by her self-doubt and just has to realize how amazing she is to keep being amazing.

And I get it, impostor syndrome is a thing. When people’s expectations outweigh your belief in yourself it can really suck. But even then I have to ask myself, where did Sabine’s insecurities come from?

What aspect of her life was affected by her being so good at what she does? What did she sacrifice for the sake of meeting expectations? How did that affect her relationships?

The answer is, it didn’t. Sabine is good at everything she does, likes everything she does and is loved by everyone around her. Aside from some minor trust issues and teenage temper tantrums, her social life is hunky dory. Her moral compass is flawless and all she needed to do was believe in herself.

All of this is really disappointing because I’m tired of female characters being denied actual meaningful flaws.

So all the more kudos to Zahn for giving us not just tons of female characters but also female characters you want to hit with a chair (again, looking at you Roscu. Bonus points for Roscu actually because her flaw was being way too idiotically confident and petty as opposed to insecure).

Sabine is a virtuous, charismatic, multi-talented child prodigy. Which makes her pretty hard to relate to even if you know what being a gifted kid means. She has the skills but none of the drawbacks.

Thrawn is an emotionally constipated, insecure yet disastrously overconfident character with honorable goals and a morally corrupt resolve. Who both dehumanizes others and is dehumanized himself, lonely yet surrounded by people that gravitate towards him because of his gifts, both ruthless and kind, praised and loathed, practical and cold yet passionate, brilliant yet naïve, invincible and vulnerable, thorough and reckless. All contradictions that somehow make perfect sense. And there’s so much to relate to in that convoluted mess.

And I get it, Zahn had six huge books to develop (canon) Thrawn’s character but I think that even the tiniest fraction of that could have been implemented for Sabine and her character would have been all the better for it.

Anyway, this is just how I see things. I know people may disagree with me on this.

[mandomaya]

Is it just me who finds the grief after the death of a character worse than the actual death of the character? I'm talking about Tech & Kanan specifically. They were both some of my favourite characters in Star Wars EVER and for them to sacrifice themselves, I was bawling my eyes out 😭 but for me, what made it worse, was seeing how broken their loved ones were. Seeing Omega break down at the realisation that Tech is dead. Ezra not knowing what to do without the guidance of his best friend. Wrecker not even being able to comfort Omega over the strength of his own emotions. Hera regretting keeping her feelings from Kanan and holding on to the last piece of him so dearly. THAT'S what breaks me.

[humanmorph]

i didn't know MAUL was there my friend MAUL?