#SW!Cosmo Posts

[lilythecattt]

*On the Mains Room Floor… Cosmo, Glisten, and Dandy have a talk.

[🍫]: “What do we do about these Magic Asks?… Do you think deleting them would go badly?”

…

[🌈]: “…We don’t even know how it works, and Connie is still speaking Old English…”

[🪞]: “How about.. we delete Dandy’s Ask first, and see if it still affects him?”

*Cosmo hesitates.

[🍫]: “Are you sure we should…?”

[🌈]: “…Only if Cosmo’s the one to delete it.”

*They both stare at Cosmo…

[🪞]: “I mean, we could just let them sit in the bottom of the Askbox… Your choice, Cosmo.”

[🍫]: “I’ll.. think about it.”

[elpurata-victim]

Voice call doodles, i lovee taking requests from friends

[thenamesblurrito]

May we see O-3 with your coswave pairing?please and thank you ouo

did two of these since Soundwave doesn't have a mouth and also i've already made adult designs for Frumbles

Soundwave deigns to show Cosmos the stars for a few stolen moments and Cosmos thanks him with a surprise kiss. for once, Soundwave is still and quiet not from his internal bickering stalemate, but from shock

much, much later, after [major spoilers] upends the world and gives the twins some time to figure out who they are without being Soundwave, it's still easy to lose track of time with Cosmos. she still looks at the stars with the same wonder that's so encouraging to be around, and now maybe they can return the favor

[lollo-sw-br]

The Super Wings Hall of Fame is easier to get into than you might think.

Contributed by: @dudaw2008

The Hall of Fame is the highest level a Super Wing can reach, but unfortunately, within the series, it is not something that is considered "difficult" to enter, we were presented with something that anyone, could you come in.

In my opinion, the Super Wings Hall of Fame should not give a Super Wings this important title just because he completed 300 Missions. It should be something much more difficult and challenging, because that way, it would be something that a common Super Wing would not be able to do, giving them more respect and notoriety, as if"Ok, this SW is really powerful, it did something that no one else did so easily".

For me, a legendary SW should be that SW who marked the team's history, someone who, in addition to being powerful and respected, changed the team's history in a way that no one else could have done so easily.

I'm going to show you how the justification should actually be for certain Super Wings to be in the hall, not just for completing 300 missions, because in my opinion, 300 missions are "easy" to achieve, even for those who are not in the main team, but who do missions outside the team, as a theory that I will post later, but I will give ubrev But I will give a brief spoiler.

In this case, these Super Wings that are not part of the main team, are completing missions outside the team, and these missions are also counted, that is, there is no justification for that 300 Missions are enough for this Super Wing to be considered a legendary Super Wing. For me, this justification is irrelevant and not in line with the size of the Hall of Fame. Not consistent with its importance and notoriety for the team as a whole.

Plausible justifications for why these LSWs would actually be in the Super Wings Hall of Fame

Now let's get to the explosive justifications for why every Super Wing should be in the hall and not just for the generic 300 Missions

Tino: The strongest and most resilient

Considered the first Legendary Super Wing, considered to this day, the strongest Super Wings of all generations of the team, being a Super Wing ahead of its time to this day, In addition to having extraordinary brute strengt, furthermore, he was the first SW to communicate with several species of animals, preceding Bello or even Bucky., Tino also holds his importance as one of the First Super Wings of all subsequent generations, being revered for his endurance and strength. Furthermore, it has withstood freezing for over billions of years.

Grand Albert: The wisest and most powerful time traveler

Considered the wisest of the entire team, Grand Albert, as we saw in the series, is highly respected not only for his title but also for his time as a team member, experience and wisdom. But I say, that he was considered a legendary super Wing due to the fact that he is, in my humble opinion, the first super Wings to surpass space-time through his time portal, called "The Door to Before" being able to travel not in the continuous time, like Traver or Storm, but in space time as was shown in episode 15 and 16 of the second season. Being considered the greatest, the first and most powerful Time traveler of all generations of Super Wings.

Jett: The fastest and the one that reaches the speed of light

In addition to being the leader of the current generation of Super Wings, opening doors for the team's modernity, he is considered the fastest Super Wing of all generations, Being the only super Wings to surpass the speed of sound and light, preceding Tony, the bullet train introduced in the sixth season, also in the feature film released in 2023, it was shown that the jet's speed was so dangerous that he could not use it more than twice at its maximum full.In other words, the speed that Jett possesses is not only a speed that surpasses that of other super Wings but also surpasses that of the cosmos itself, as we saw in episode 19 of the second season.Where he was able to reach a high-speed meteor that wanted to destroy Cuba, and this in turn was not the first time that he ended up doing this feat, In other subsequent seasons and in the feature film, Jett also did this same feat without much difficulty just by activating his full speed.

Final Notes

Now everyone understands why the Hall of Fame, within the framework of the sixth season, is something considered "easy" to enter, but if they used this justification it would be more consistent with the size and the importance that the Hall of Fame has within the cartoon.

Note: Please don't judge my spelling mistakes, I'm still learning English.

[scarlet--wiccan]

I’d love to see a mother-sons team up. Leave mags out of it I’m sick of his ass

Would be a nice callback to the whole “children of nexus beings are extra super special” from way back when

Yeah, I'm not particularly enthusiastic about Max showing up, especially after the finale of SW&Q. It'd be one thing if it was like, the whole family coming together, but I'm definitely more interested in the boys showing up for their mom and I think it'd make a lot more sense in context. Tammetta recently posted a sneak peak of Tommy in an upcoming issue, but it's not this week's.

I assume that you're thinking of this scene, from Avengers Forever (1998) #8. Evidently, Immortus and the Time-Keepers believed that because Wanda is a Nexus, her children would be so powerful as to potentially "rock to cosmos itself." I feel like this actually fits really well with the Griever's concern about Wanda (and Pietro) becoming the Ultimate Nexus-- it's not that they're going to necessarily ascend to god-like omnipotence, it's just that they have the potential to upset the natural order of things and alter the pre-destined timeline. Obviously, that's a big deal, and it does imply a great deal of power, but it's more about circumstantial actions and consequences. This allows the characters to remain more grounded in the present by removing the looming inevitability that they'll Become God, somehow. I think Billy's whole Demiurge thing would benefit from the same treatment, and tracing the line from Avengers Forever to Scarlet Witch (2024) would be a great way to tie that together.

[lilythecaattt]

(A pile of not-so-random Shelly’s World AU Lore bc yes :3)

When you want to ramble about something, but don’t have something to ramble about, but suddenly have an idea as you’re typing:

(Click below if you wanna be psychically whiplashed by my wall of text over my silly AU’s version of Dandy :3)

HELLO UNFORTUNATE SOUL, I will now give you just as you signed up for:

So.. Dandy, the goober I love and hate equally for his shop, and for the fandoms pressure to hate him…

…But let’s ignore all that for a second:

(!POSSIBLE TW!: Wall of text, Aka an Essay, Misspellings, AU nonsense, Cring, Very slightly-hinted Moonflower, Trauma, *Maybe* body horror?… Yeye 😎)

(^Take the tags with salt, and concern. You will be just as surprised as me which of these is a joke and which isn’t. Hahah…)

This mostly talks about the other Mains, and less of Sprout or Cosmo… They’re still mentioned. BUT THIS IS DANDY-CENTRIC. With some Astro & Shelly too.

Also this might be like, a 15-20-ish minute read? Not sure…

But if you need writing ideas? Maybe this can inspire you?

Now, let’s get straight into some (hopefully brief) detail on this specific Shelly’s World AU: Shelly has her own Show, because Gardenview was renovated before Dandy was even reintroduced—BUT that does not mean he wasn’t.. around, in some shape or form.

The totally-very-secret SW!Dandicus Dancifer Lore… Or at least what I’ve taped together:

What does that mean?: He kind of just watched from a distance, for a while, at least. He never showed himself to the other Toons, and mostly stayed in the lower, more abandoned parts of the Centre. *At first, anyways… This is the past of the AU, but not the far past.*

Blah blah blah… Dandy is caught sneaking around with Astro one day, Vee notices Dandy’s not-very-good “disguise”, and the Toons find out because Vee is a nosey *bot* with a love for yapping with (some specific) other Toons. Also Vee HATED him at that time—as all the Toons knew were rumors on what happened with Dandy. (Most of them were bad)

Shelly, Sprout and Cosmo stayed neutral, kind of ignoring it… But Vee kept pressing them to not ignore it, so they started getting annoyed by her. (Them ignoring her, lead her to become a bit desperate for attention, so she started bothering Shelly and Astro all the more) (Suddenly that “LOOK AT ME” popup has another meaning… ;-;)

Once Astro and Dandy had realized the secret was out, one of the people in charge of the Toons offered to reintroduce Dandy, since it wasn’t very safe to ignore that he’d been wandering unmaintained parts of the Centre… After Astro pushed Dandy a bit, Dandy agreed, and he was reintroduced. The other Toons were told what was found out during investigations and questioning. So basically they (“they” as in, the people working there or whatever) interrogated Dandy, and anyone else they could, to figure out what had happened with ✨Delilah✨ behind the scenes. (In secret, Astro and Shelly were also questioned…)

So yeah they heard Dandy was manipulated (mostly via threats) by Delilah, but most Toons didn’t care for the extra information… Either because they still believed Dandy was the bad guy, or because they believed the opposite to begin with.

For a long time, Dandy stayed closed-off to the other Mains—Aside from Astro, because Astro was actually the one keeping him sane despite the loneliness in the basement lower-parts of the Centre—but a few Toons still went to talk with him. (Those being more the ones neutral about the “controversy”—such as Boxten, Connie, and also Finn.)

So.. with almost everyone hating Dandy, what could have possibly happened to make that change?:

✨CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!✨ Yippee hurray everything is fine now because Dandy apologized for being horrible—

…Dang, knowing I’m gonna post this makes me nervous… Even though people prob would have stopped reading if they weren’t interested.

Put on Dandy’s theoretically-existent shoes: Everybody hate you, or is scared of you. They go silent when you walk in a room.

You only have one close friend, and this crazy robot girl is getting far too clingy with them. What do you do?

You start pushing back, of course! And who would be the priority target, for being one of the biggest haters? Well yes, Vee, but also; Shrimpo. Now, why Shrimpo? Because the minute he genuinely cares to try and destroy someone, even a Toon as seemingly-‘dumb’ as him can (try) and do a lot of damage. (*COUGH COUGH* Looey and the thumbtacks *COUGH*)

Now, if you’ve read my Sprout RP Blog’s Bio, you may know about the Cloned Toons—or, “Cousins” as the Toons are told to call them. Well, some of those Cloned-Toons also have a fierce hatred for Dandy. One of them, being a Glisten Clone.

Long story short: Dandy gets into a gossip-wars with a Glisten clone trying to ruin each others already nonexistent reputations, while simultaneously trying to avoid being dunked or drowned in weed-killed by Shrimpo.

Humorous comedy for Cartoon characters, nothing that serious, right?.. Wrong. Because Astro catches Dandy trying to flippin’ kidnap both of them on a whim to get “revenge” and gets mad at all of them because the whole thing only stressed Astro out.

Astro turns out to be the one snitching on them, all three of them get in trouble, and Astro locks himself in a room because Toons were gossiping about him and asking him things that they thought were true. (They assumed Astro was a traitor, who helped Dandy in secret, and that’s why he was so quiet… Or that he was helping Dandy by giving him ideas to “take revenge” on the Toons that hated him… Idk smth like that.)

It had gone on for a little over a month before Astro got them in trouble for it.

Afterwards, Astro locked himself in his room. So Dandy ended up becoming roomates with Shelly. (…because he used to be roommate’s with Astro, since the other Mains didn’t want him around them… but with the drama, having him there only stressed Astro out more.)

Also Dandy was grounded for like, a month in the corner of Shelly’s Room, because of the fighting with other Toons.

As for how Shelly felt about this?:

Well surprisingly, while nervous at first, she saw how Pebble (who was staying in her room, even after Dandy had been reintroduced) wasn’t bothered by Dandy, even after what happened. Trusting Pebble’s instincts, she started talking with Dandy sometimes, and convinced him to try and make it up to other Toons once he was ungrounded. (Shelly is also the reason Dandy started journaling more :>)

While it took a while, he started to slowly build trust again with other Toons. He and the Glisten Clone made a silent-agreement to not bother each other, and Shrimpo… Is Shrimpo and didn’t really change that much.

As for Vee?

Dandy used her connection with Brightney to slowly start getting her to at least tolerate his presence. Later, while being maintained, her Handler noticed some programming that was messing up Vee making her overreact a bit to things, and fixed it. THOUGH her extreme reactions weren’t only because of that…

Eventually she started talking with Dandy a bit, rather than having him approach her. After one evening having a long talk in the Greenhouse, she started to be less harsh towards Dandy… From there, even other Toons were surprised by how her view of Dandy changed.

But then… WHAT ABOUT SPROUT SEEDLY?

Well Cosmo was always pretty chill with Dandy, even having given Dandy some ideas to get the other Toons to trust him. Sprout wouldn’t talk much with Dandy for a while, but would encourage him to continue trying to make things right with the other Toons.

It wasn’t until later that he heard from Vee a bit about what really happened with Dandy… He later had his own talk with the flower after hearing about it.

Pretty much, with all the Toons (especially the Mains), one at a time they slowly grew to not be that bothered by him. None of what they saw or heard during that time in the past, was who he really was…

(*Edit: Or was it?)

What about Deli-

HECK NAWH I AINT GETTING INTO HER IVE BEEN WRITING FOR AN HOUR

What about Astroke?

Dandy eventually started slipping letters under his door, talking about things.. how Shelly suggested him to make things right… And Astro one day slipped a letter back under the door when Dandy went to give him one. From there they slowly started having whole conversations through notes, and… Well, the rest is history. Astro eventually started leaving his room again, and surprisingly the other Toons were really happy about that.

HEHEHE YOU’VE READ THIS FAR BETTER FOLLOW MY ACCOUNT LOL… Person that hopefully exists. AHEM ANYWAY-

Friendship! Everything is good and chill now!… They’re friends again, what other problem could possibly exist?…

…Dear reader—this is the tip of the Iceberg. (Please help me I’ve been taken PRISONER BY THIS-

Thank you for reading!

I could write whole stories on these ideas! So many points in Time I could write about!… AHH BUT I DOUBT IF ANYONE WOULD EVEN READ IT!

But hey, the point in writing something you’re passionate about—is for you. Isn’t it? You can share with your friends, share it online, no one has to look at it—heck, maybe that’s for the better—but there’s no point writing if it’s only for someone else.

Again, if anyone sees my ✨echoing into the void,✨ thank you for reading. I hope this gives you ideas for your own works, at the very least! :D

[lilythecattt]

[🍫]: “Feels like I haven’t seen Sprout all day…”

[datastate]

void: you rank the people in the battalion based on their appearance??

cosmos: shut up 783

void:

void: as commander, i can confirm we don’t even have 650 clones in this battalion

[cloud8doesstuff]

LET THE SWORD AND SHIELD FANART GRAVY TRAIN COMMENCE!!!1!

Even before i got to play Sw/Sh, I knew Olenna would be my fave lmao.

Gigantamax Garbodor was hard to position in the BG...;-;

[sunlightera]

i got distracted three times just trying to find this post to reblog it and write all this stuff out but . okay i found it

so like. c/ss is very . insane and codependent. ss is possessive and jealous and cosmo is enraptured with him at very first sight and cares about very little else (outside of his passion for Mechanical Things, which ties into the whole mess) outside of enabling and encouraging him. ss encourages and in fact manipulates cosmo into being insane about him bc he recognizes the value of having a pocket mechanic (although he does come to regret this later on. like. morally. probably when he realizes that cosmo feels a Lot of Genuine Emotions for him which he reciprocates). this being said, only ss is allowed to be mean to HIS human. anyone else who does it is immediately on his shitlist . this again started out as something he did to make cosmo feel special that became genuine over time

with ko, the relationship is a LOT different. cosmos obsessive tendencies are not fed into and so wholly dont develop in an unhealthy way like above. they can be described as "friends with benefits". they have a mutual interest in each others cultures and cosmo fulfills his role as kos assistant very well, especially with the event of bd's passing, after which they become closer. i would eventually call what they are... romantic-lite. diet lovers. if you get it you get it

and w sw, cosmo is i think on his most even keel. i think a lot of sws practicality and logic based approach really rubs off on him through mirroring if they spend enough time together. his wealth of curiosity remains wholly unchanged and i think sw would like having someone to listen to his ideas and attempt to understand them. cosmo i think generally comes off as naive and perhaps a bit airheaded because of his buoyant upbeat personality, but his innate understanding of not just the "medical field" but broadly How Things Work is something sw would also find useful, who comes to appreciate him as Much Smarter Than He Generally Comes Across (<- they both think this is a compliment). as for the nature of their relationship . well. they dont know either. its not relevant. theyve explored each others bodies in a scientific fashion or whatever

ive been thinking a lot abt the different dynamics cosmo has w starscream/knock out/shockwave mayhaps i'll write a little post abt them all soon or whatever

[gffa]

Oh no.  So, because I’ve been bouncing from hyperfixation to hyperfixation, I’ve been trying to keep half of them quiet, but it’s literally about six or seven different fandoms that I’ve been reading fic for--and the thing you have to understand is that for about the last five years, I haven’t read any fic other than just the one fandom.  I kept collecting fic for later, but I only ever just kept reading Star Wars fic, that’s all my heart wanted. I’m still kind of marveling that I’m reading non-SW fic again, much less in the quantities I’ve been going through, much less in literally half a dozen fandoms at once.  Batfam, Trigun, Kuroko no Basuke, One Piece, Genshin Impact, Raven Cycle, Haikyuu... and then I picked up a few FF7 fics, though, I haven’t had time to start them.  It’s been kind of A Lot. But then one post from the Cosmos movie and I’m like OH SHIT I NEED SOME POST-STARS USAMAMO FIC RIGHT NOW and I am currently about eight tabs deep into looking for fic and, like, this is my very longest running fandom, I have stuck with Sailor Moon longer than anything else, in that I have never left it even for a day, but I don’t read much fic and now I DESPERATELY NEED POST-STARS FIC, this can’t be good for me.

[deathstars]

Have you posted any of your lightsaber color mythology here?? Because I saw your shmi post and am so intrigued i need more

!!!! no i haven't posted about it (much) on here because it kind of snowballed from my other project on lightsaber colors and their meanings. my idea was like...what if the first ancient Force Users, or the manifestations of certain ideas/cycles/energies in the Force (similar to the Celestials, but expanded) were worshipped by the proto-Jedi and early Jedi as deities, and the myths were reminiscent of the relationships we see manifest between different colors of sabers and in the stories of sw itself? what if the skywalkers are Like That because they are reincarnations/vessels for these ancient beings/energies who manifested in them?

i'm hugely inspired by real world mythologies, and how similar stories repeat across human experiences in ancient myths and religions. and that in conjunction with how i view the saber colors and what they represent in sw (such as the green to blue to green lineage cycle, the balance of complementary saber colors, the trials each saber faces based on their personalities), as well as the relationships between different colors of saber and how their personalities interact, and the "it's like poetry it rhymes" part of sw i adore, i started piecing together a collective set of mythos for the ancient Jedi (that also echoes in other cultures in sw, like Mando mythology and Tatooinian religion). for an example, in my mind, the Green lightsaber is the manifestation of the Living Force, while Magenta is the manifestation of the Unifying Force, so what if they were connected to the ancient energies of Time (the wheel of death and rebirth) and Space (the endless well of the cosmos), and they are the first, and the other colors stem from them, etc etc

if you ever want to ask me more about it i would love you forever. i am still shaking out the structures of it, but i am having so much fun, i love you worldbuilding, i love you ficitional mythologies and religions.

[soundwavereporting]

Do you think that idw Rumble and Frenzy resent Megatron/Soundwave in some way because they had to be reformatted? Would love to know what you think of their relationship with SW is post-war.

TAKE TWO

tl;dr, yes, I think they probably do (especially Soundwave) and I wish that had been explored in the comic!

The only time I can remember offhand Rumble and Frenzy ever explicitly acknowledging their relationship with Soundwave is in the OP comic, where one of them essentially tells Cosmos ‘we used to like [Soundwave] BEFORE he started hanging out with Autobots’, and weirdly, Cosmos doesn’t seem to take it that personally--they even call him ‘Cosmey’--which leads me to believe it’s Soundwave’s new alliance with Optimus that they’re bitter about (and rightfully so!), and Cosmos has picked up on that.

Of course there might be times in Phase 1 that I’m forgetting about, but most of the time, it’s the birds or Ravage who are hyping up Soundwave or actually talking to him. Rumble and Frenzy barely get a mention in Soundwave’s first flashback issue, and iirc they don’t show up in his flashbacks during the OP comic. Soundwave’s only real interaction with them during phase 1 is during that very ‘‘‘interesting’‘ time when Frenzy was ‘crazy’, but that was thankfully short lived, and a lot of Frenzy’s tendencies towards hearing too much/overstimulation were passed on to Soundwave when phase 2 started, anyway. But from that, Soundwave did care about Frenzy.

The only other indication of their relationship is during the Prowlstator arc, and even that’s up to interpretation: when everyone gets reformatted, that would’ve been the perfect time for Rumble and Frenzy to get new, non-cassette bodies if they were so inclined. Having two extra full-sized soldiers could only have helped the attempted takeover but for whatever reason, they ended up staying with Soundwave, and later in the series they pull the same ‘all the cassettes hide in Soundwave and then pull a sneak attack’ that they did in Megatron: Origin.

From the start of Phase 1 to the end of Phase 3, both Soundwave and Optimus’s close friends/officers/coworkers/support systems radically change (or in Soundwave’s change, just get whittled down); While Ratbat and Bumblebee both die and Ravage, Rodimus, and Ratchet go over to MTMTE/LL, Jazz, Prowl, Rumble, and Frenzy all end up leaving distancing themselves specifically because of decisions Optimus and Soundwave make, respectively.

And it’s the similarities between Jazz + Rumble & Frenzy that really get me! This all goes down in within a few issues! We get more insight into Jazz’s motives than Rumble and Frenzy, but I think it’s safe to assume the twins’ motives for not staying close with Soundwave are similar enough to why Jazz didn’t go back to Optimus, albeit in a far more blasè manner (”We’re trying to be good but it’s hard.”)

EDIT: having reread the issue in question, they did go back to Sanctuary, then promptly started taking weapons from the station and selling them on Earth, which almost makes it funnier because I absolutely refuse to believe Soundwave was so oblivious he didn’t know that was happening. Looking at this from the POV of Soundwave being an Optimus stan, he knew and didn’t care, because Earth was gonna become a part of the Council of Worlds. From the POV of Soundwave not being an Optimus stan......maybe he hoped it’d sabotage Earth’s acceptance into the Council somehow?

EDIT 2: having now checked the wiki, they were doing this before and after the junkion arc, but tbh my point still stands. 

Plus--finding Rumble and Frenzy on Earth--a place populated by beings Soundwave has to actually focus to hear--should’ve been easy, if Soundwave felt so inclined to go to them and stop the gunrunning. But he didn’t--aside from plot reasons, it’s likely he knew how they felt and was giving them space. I find it hard to believe that the colonists didn’t tell OP what happened between them and Jazz. Like Soundwave, Optimus leaves Jazz and doesn’t seek him out until they happen to meet up later in the series. 

I also can’t help but think about the fact that Rumble and Frenzy are probably the ones who’ve known Megatron + stuck with him the longest! Impactor went to the Autobots, Terminus...happened. The Constructicons were with him almost as long, and they explicitly wanted to go! I imagine maybe Rumble and Frenzy wanted to go as well, and like Prowl, Soundwave was like ‘no way’. Maybe that was the start of the end for them, and him joining up with Optimus was just the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Essentially, I think they didn’t like it at first, got used to it--enough to want to stick around with Soundwave & the other cassettes (even when they had the chance to get reformatted!), but once Soundwave changed, they decided to split.

[bedlamsbard]

For the writer meme - #18?

Oh no, I just answered this one with a lot of different responses -- let's see if I can think of something I didn't mention there that's probably really obscure by normal person standards. (Academic, right, so I have no idea what's actually obscure anymore.)

So the Asgardian cosmology that's referenced in both Morning and Yonderverse, but is more plot-relevant in Morning, is totally invented by me, it's not based on anything in canon, but all of the names are from actual Norse mythology. Mimameid, the Cosmos Tree that passes through all the realms (a.k.a. the quantum realm), Ginnungagap, the great void, are both from mythology. I kind of had a breakthrough in figuring out how Asgardians conceptualize their cosmology because my natural inclination when worldbuilding anything is water metaphors (there's some of this in my SW fic), but for an Asgardian it's going to be in trees, because of Yggdrasil the World Tree.

Almost every Asgardian name, place name, mythological background, etc., as well as most but not all of the Nine Realms names are all also from Norse mythology, including Idavoll and Gimle in New Asgard, any new characters (like Ullr and Forseti in New Asgard), institutions or groups like the ulfhednar, places like Urdarbrunnr, the names of Laufey's wives and their individual castles (this hasn't come up yet because it's from a Morning chapter that hasn't been posted yet), what Asgardians swear by (Hati and Skol, Garmr, Surtr -- distinct from the Surtur that appears in the film). None of that's taken 1:1 from mythology, but I'm like filtering it through how the MCU does its worldbuilding and uses mythology, with the idea that like, when we're getting it today as we understand it, it's multiple degrees removed from Asgard. It's not supposed to be accurate to quote-unquote real mythology.

And because I'm a classical historian, I really wanted to logic out how some of that Asgardian worldbuilding, history, etc. interacted with ours, because per canon, Loki and Thor, for example, are really young and they post-date the earliest appearances of proto-Norse mythology (for lack of a better world). So out of all of these, the most obscure thing I looked up would probably be the proto-Germanic gods referred to in classical texts like Tacitus with the idea that they were Asgardians or Vanir who had come to Earth to fuck around in the Bronze Age or Iron Age and later got syncretized with the younger Asgardians that we now think of as the Norse mythological pantheon, who are the characters that appear in the MCU. In other words, Baduhenna was in fact Hela.

[intermundia]

Mr. Will, I saw that post about the burden of wanting to talk about SW all the time and now I’m curious…please will you tell me your favorite bit of obscure Star Wars lore that someone who hasn’t delved extensively into extra-canonical materials probably doesn’t know?!? 💜

Obscure lore, yes! I would love to talk about that! While reading the Star Wars Archives (1977-1983), I found this page of notes from a story meeting on 11/28/77 in the section 'Bring back Ben' and right before the invention of the role to be filled by Yoda—"Some of the force came from 'Tales of Power', Carlos Castaneda."

And I was like—who the fuck is Carlos Castaneda? Because you hear all the time about all the mythology research Lucas did, all the time with Campbell, etc., but I'd never seen this name anywhere else. So I looked him up. He's a California "anthropologist," a contemporary of Lucas, and oddly fascinating:

Starting with The Teachings of Don Juan in 1968, Castaneda wrote a series of books that purport to describe training in shamanism that he received under the tutelage of a supposed Yaqui "Man of Knowledge" named don Juan Matus. Doubts about the veracity of Castaneda's work existed from their original publication. There is belief among many that Castenda's books are works of fiction, and that it is unlikely that don Juan Matus existed. (Wikipedia)

His first person anthropology about time spent with a Mexican shaman reads like fiction, because it is fiction. An excellent survey of his sources is found here:

Lama Govinda's Fringe Tibetan Buddhism

Brinton's Paper On 'Nagualism'

Frank Waters Book of the Hopi

California Indian Anthropology Texts - especially those known to have been reviewed by CC

Wasson's works on Mushrooms

Eliade's works on Shamanism

Furst's works and lectures on Shamanism

Harner's works and lectures on Shamanism

Myerhoff's works on Shamanism and her contacts with Ramon Medina

UCLA Professor Garfinkel

Wittgenstein

So, we have this very California early-mid 70's New Age philosophy cocktail that was being presented as anthropology (I wish it were still so easy to fraud your way into a degree lmao). George Lucas was on UCLA campus as a graduate student making films at approximately the same time Castaneda was faking his way to this anthropology Ph.D., so when I say they are contemporaries, I mean I'm pretty sure they literally could have been walking around campus at the same time.

ANYWAY, so what if the Force is based on some fringe fake-Mexican-shamanism? So what? Well, first and foremost, Castaneda's books were very popular, and he uses the term "Sorcerer" very frequently, so when Ben Kenobi is called that in a New Hope, hip audiences in the 70's might have been clued in about what to expect. The idea of superhuman abilities rooted in flowing energy, the interplay of teacher and apprentice, and the sorcerer as a warrior (sounds pretty Jedi yeah?) —

A Man of Knowledge Was a Warrior: “The existence of a man of knowledge was an unceasing struggle, and the idea that he was a warrior, leading a warrior’s life, provided one with the means for achieving emotional stability. The idea of a man at war encompassed four concepts: (1) a man of knowledge had to have respect; (2) he had to have fear; (3) he had to be wide-awake; (4) he had to be self-confident. Hence, to be a warrior was a form of self-discipline which emphasized individual accomplishment; yet it was a stand in which personal interests were reduced to a minimum, as in most instances personal interest was incompatible with the rigor needed to perform any predetermined, obligatory act” (TDJ, 157).

Like................. it's even got the aspect of reducing personal interests and attachment to gain the rigor of discipline necessary to do what must be done as a sorcerer. But beyond the idea of a Jedi as a sorcerer/warrior, it's the metaphysics that kill me. Let's look further at this famous Yoda quote:

"My ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is." — Listen, "ally" is a term from Castaneda, though he uses it about psychadelic drugs. Audiences in the early 80s would probably know that, too.

“An ally will make you see and understand things about which no human being could possibly enlighten you… It is neither a guardian nor a spirit. It is an aid… a power capable of carrying a man beyond the boundaries of himself. This is how an ally can reveal matters no human being could” (The Teachings of Don Juan 24-25).

“The manipulation of an ally had two aspects: (1) an ally was a vehicle; (2) an ally was a helper. An ally was a vehicle in the sense that it served to transport a sorcerer into the realm of non ordinary reality… To be a helper meant that an ally, after serving a sorcerer as a vehicle, was again usable as an aid or a guide to assist him in achieving whatever goal he had in mind in going to the realm of nonordinary reality” (TDJ 164-65).

"Life creates it and makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we…not this crude matter." — The division of the Force into flowing animate and inanimate energy is in Castaneda, as is the concept of luminosity.

“Don Juan said that the energetic fact which was the cornerstone of the cognition of the shamans of ancient Mexico was that every nuance of the cosmos is an expression of energy. From their plateau of seeing energy directly, those shamans arrived at the energetic fact that the entire cosmos is composed of twin forces which are opposite and complementary to each other at the same time. They called those two forces animate energy and inanimate energy. They saw that inaninmate energy has no awareness. Awareness, for shamans, is a vibrating condition of animate energy.” (TDJ, xv)

“To perceive energy directly allowed the sorcery of don Juan’s lineage to see human beings as conglomerates of energy fields that have the appearance of luminous balls… the entire cosmos is made of luminous filaments that extend themselves infinitely” (TDJ, xvi-xvii).

I could go on and on and discuss all of Castaneda's writings on detachment and the warrior's life and the awareness of death, but I think that would be a whole other thing. Honestly this subject is too much for a tumblr post. I just thought it was interesting. People always give Lucas both grief and credit for bastardizing philosophical traditions himself, but I would say it's more fair to say that he was more working off of a cheat sheet done by others in California in the 70s. There must have been something in the water lmao

[dokiu]

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