#the only difference I see between high republic and the prequels is the republic itself | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

brachiosaurus-on · 3 years

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Brachio, friend! Hello! How are you?

I know you are reading the High Republic books, and I have to wonder, has any of it given you the impression the Jedi of that time have a significantly different experience from the Jedi of the late Republic? I hear a lot of people implying that lately, but I don't quite buy it, and so I figured I would consult you.

Mon, friend! Hello! I'm well, thanks! How are you? I hope you don’t mind that I turned this answer into a bit of a rambling meta.

So, the short answer is no. Their experiences are a little bit different due to the circumstances outside of the Order being different, but I wouldn’t say that their experiences are significantly different until the Clone Wars start. The philosophy and culture within the Order is the same, and I can easily see the characters trading places or recognizing each other as Jedi. The biggest difference is the fashion.

I think that this perception may come from big differences in how they are presented.

The scope of the story is different. High Republic gives us a broad scope through several points of view; the Prequel Trilogy gives us a narrow scope through only a few points of view. The Prequel Trilogy only includes what’s relevant to either the fall of the Republic or Anakin’s fall (which eventually become intertwined themselves), and has a small cast of characters. High Republic has many concurrent and overlapping plots and subplots with twice as many main characters. The scope and focus of the stories are very, very different. You may have heard that High Republic suffers from having too many characters, which is valid, but the upside is that we get a very full picture of what’s going on around the galaxy.

The audience’s perspective is different. High Republic is told from the perspectives of Jedi who love the Order and enjoy the lifestyle. The Prequel Trilogy is told largely from the point of view of Anakin, who does not find the lifestyle fulfilling.

The structure of the story is different. The prequels are very plot driven and most of the story happens during important events; we see limited exposition, resolution, and downtime between major events. High Republic spends a lot of time in characters’ heads before, between, during, and after important events. There’s a much fuller picture of what these characters are going through and how they’re reacting to it.

The explanations of Jedi philosophy and internal workings of the Order are different. High Republic is very direct about explaining Jedi philosophy and internal workings, taking time to elaborate for the audience. The films primarily use Yoda to explain Jedi philosophy; Yoda does not elaborate and is intentionally indirect to encourage the audience to think for themselves. The films show some internal workings but are rarely explicit.

It’s also worth mentioning that the trilogies show us more ideal Jedi because they’re establishing & introducing the audience to what the Jedi actually are and using narrative foils for Anakin’s story. Because High Republic doesn’t have this burden, they have more freedom to write more relatable characters (slutty Elzar rights) with more common flaws.

Scope

In High Republic, the story is about the Jedi working with the Republic, all of the Republic. We spend time with everyone, and I mean everyone: not just the main characters, but the side characters, and the background characters too; the worldbuilding is very detailed. We see plenty of Jedi with differing skillsets, opinions, experiences, and the story gives the audience breathing room to get to know them. They have many moments that are irrelevant to the plot, but tell us more about the characters themselves. We bounce between several Jedi Masters, who each play a different role in the Order, several knights who each have a different experience, and several padawans who are at different stages in their training. We have a broad view of the Order. We also get into the heads of the Chancellor, the Nihil, different politicians, diplomats, civilians, scientists, business people, reporters, an event coordinator, I could go on; aside from the Nihil, characters outside the Order are working with the Jedi and operating in good faith. We also know that the heroes are in a game that they can win, we know that both the Order and the Republic survive this era.

The Prequel Trilogy gave us the same huge galaxy and world building, but we saw most of it in the background. It’s extremely focused on the plot and Anakin’s character; if it’s not relevant to the fall of the Republic or Anakin’s fall, it’s not included. Even some things that were very relevant to the fall of the Republic were cut in favor of things more relevant to Anakin. Because it’s mostly about him and we don’t get the perspectives of other Jedi very often, we have a narrow view of the Order. We only spend time with Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon, Mace, and Yoda even though there are plenty of diverse Jedi in the background that we never meet. We see diversity within the Order, we know other Jedi are doing other things in other places, but we don’t interact with them until Order 66, when they become relevant to the story. We rarely meet other characters outside of their interactions with the main characters. The outside perspectives we see are Sith Lords, Padmé, other politicians, the Naboo, the Kaminoans, bounty hunters, crime lords, and a few civilians. Most of the characters outside the Order are working against the Jedi or operating in bad faith. We also know that the heroes are playing an unwinnable game, the Order and the Republic will not survive this story.

Perspective

In High Republic the audience is spending a lot of time with the Order and mostly seeing things from the Order’s point of view; we bounce between several different Jedi who all find the lifestyle fulfilling in different ways and the story is about all of them. The primary viewpoint characters have a broad, positive, perspective of the Order. When we’re reading from Elzar’s point of view we see his satisfaction when he uses the Force, how much he cares about others, how much he gets wrapped up in his own issues; when we’re reading from Stellan’s point of view, we see how much he loves teaching, how much he relaxes when he gets a chance to teach, how much he loves Elzar, how much he cares about the Order, how he wants to help; with Bell, we see how much he loves his master, we see him grieving, we see him reach these milestones where he figures out what it means to be a Jedi and how it frees him from his pain. The main characters actively participate in the Order’s community. Even when the characters are frustrated or upset with the Order or other Jedi, we know that they still love them because we’re in their heads and we get the characters’ full train of thought.

In the Late Republic, the story is told mostly from Anakin’s point of view. We see his frustration with the Order, his longing to be with Padmé, his desire for more power, his love overshadowed by his attachment. We see Anakin’s respect for the Order clouded by his disillusion (spurred on by a Sith Lord) and we don’t see him look outside his own perspective. We see him finding the lifestyle unfulfilling and not committing to it. The primary viewpoint character has a narrow, negative perspective of the Order. Another big thing is that Anakin is a Jedi who didn’t grow up in the Order and doesn’t have that inherent trust in the community, so we the audience don’t have complete trust in the Order. We see more of Anakin’s point of view than we do of Obi-Wan and Yoda who do reflect a positive experience. In the films, we’re in the room with the characters, not in their heads. We have to deduce what they’re thinking and how they’re feeling; we do not have the characters’ full train of thought.

Structure

The High Republic books have much more spread out pacing. There’s more exposition and we’re already familiar with the characters before they’re thrown through the narrative and then we spend more time with them afterwards. We get their reactions to major events and we see them struggle through recovery. The Jedi in High Republic have time to catch their breath, they are not moving from crisis to crisis the way the Order is in the Late Republic, and we are shown the time in between crises.

The prequel trilogy jumps right into the plot. We’re introduced to the characters briefly and we get to know them as they move through the plot. We don’t see much aftermath of major events, and we don’t see the process they go through to recover. They move from crisis to crisis and we do not see the time in between.

Here’s a summary of the different structures: High Republic shows us Reath, Bell, and Stellan all grieve in different ways and come to terms with their grief, but the prequel trilogy shows us neither Obi-Wan nor Anakin coming to terms with their grief over similar losses.

Explanation

The High Republic authors explain the philosophy of the Jedi more explicitly within their stories; they’re very direct. They also elaborate on what they’re saying for the benefit of the audience. I speculate that they do this to clear up some misunderstandings...

In the films, George Lucas prioritized concision and used Yoda to inform the audience; Yoda speaks in riddles to encourage the audience to think about what he’s saying. He speaks indirectly and without elaboration.

If you don’t have a background knowledge of Buddhism (or at least mindfulness), it’s not terribly difficult to misinterpret the prequel trilogy because there’s so little explanation. It’s also a little difficult to balance that within a film and there’s more room to do it in the novels.

Internal Differences within the Order

The most significant internal difference is the fashion: High Republic Jedi have fancy formal robes in addition to their day to day robes. My personal headcanon for why this is different is that as time went on and the golden age faded, the Jedi became busier, and didn’t have as much time for the fashion anymore (which is tragic, I love the concept art for their fancy robes) and by the time of the prequels we see it only in the Temple Guards, or the Order decided to dress less extravagantly to show greater humility.

We get descriptions of different career paths within the Order. This is probably where it seems most different from the Jedi in the Late Republic, but I don’t see any incompatibility. There’s nothing in the prequel trilogy or TCW to contradict the existence of these career paths, and in fact I’d say there’s evidence to support their existence. I’ll write a separate post about these because it’ll make more sense with examples and this is already quite long.

There are some other things that are different, but based on external factors. There’s one line about how Jedi don’t get killed in the field often, masters aren’t killed leaving a padawan behind, that it’s just not something that happens. I think it’s supposed to tell us about the time period, but then it happens at least 3 times, so I personally take it with a grain of salt. There’s one bit about how lightsaber dueling is primarily exercise because no one else carries a lightsaber and no Jedi would ever fight another (apparently Anakin missed that memo) but this is consistent with the culture shown in the prequel trilogy when they’re blindsided by Dooku’s betrayal.

#sorry i was not terribly concise #but i wanted to give you a full answer #the only difference I see between high republic and the prequels is the republic itself #also the sith that's a biggie #can you tell that i'm a feral jedi gremlin #meta #brachio's meta #high republic #prequels #jedi order #jedi #prequel trilogy #star wars #novels #brachio answers

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chiss-ticism · 3 years

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Hmm... having finished The Book of Boba Fett, I've done some more reflecting on the state Star Wars has found itself in and felt the need to ramble a bit. Rant, if you'd allow it. For fear of being lumped into a group of people that I'm not apart of, I also feel the need to preface that I only got into Star Wars a few months ago and am not one of the older fans upset about the loss of the Legends content from a few years back. Nor am I someone who prefers the prequels on account of having grown up with them. That's because of the Clone Wars. With the notable exception of the Knights of the Old Republic duology (+ the Old Republic MMO), I'm only vaguely aware of that which was lost - meaning that my opinions haven't been swayed from that front.

While I can't quite yet comment on the High Republic, and how that content has or hasn't been affected by the Sequels, I can't help but feel as if the Sequels have, collectively, dragged the rest of the canon content down into a middling pit of mediocrity that Disney is still trying to drag itself out of with the content that they're currently producing. Their insistence on making their trilogy *make sense*, as opposed to having done that in the movies themselves, has trapped us in a miasma of cameos and semi-serviceable worldbuilding. I'm of the opinion that, as an someone who obviously hasn't attended a single board meeting, it feels as if they spent too much money on the movies themselves, the theme park, and the fact that they were able to get so many of the original trilogies' actors to reprise their roles to just up and scrap everything so they're doing what they can to produce easily digestibleble content for the masses to mindlessly consume, as opposed to taking any steps in doing something that feels genuinely fresh and new (which isn't to knock Mando or BoBF, I enjoy watching them - they just feel, idk, more hollow than some of the stuff that came before. I don't find myself reflecting on them as much as I did with the Prequels/TCW or even Rebels- as much as I'm prone to judging the latter for feeling tonally inconsistent with the rest of the series)

It feels as if we've traded worthwhile storytelling for an endless stream of merchandise and crossovers that only serve to promote their other projects, and it's honestly enough to make me question whether or not I was ever really into Star Wars or just the idea of Star Wars.

An aside: I do acknowledge that a lot of earlier content was also made with the express purpose of selling merchandise - the difference between the two, at least how I see it, is that there was actually something of worth there if you peeled back the thick smog of corporate product pushing.

#anti sequel trilogy #star wars criticism #pat rambles into the void

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the-dragongirl · 4 years

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Hello tumblr. I have returned from a long period of inactivity, because I must bring the good word to the corner of the Star Wars fandom that used to be my main fannish home: there is a new era of Star Wars canon that was made just for our taste. It is called the High Republic.

WHAT IS THE HIGH REPUBLIC?

The High Republic is an giant multi-media project being carried out by the Lucasfilm story group to create a brand new era of Star Wars canon. It is set a few hundred years before the prequel era (so, a long time after the Old Republic era), in a period of peace and stability within the Republic. It currently includes several English language adult novels, a YA novel, two serialized comics, a manga, some short stories, and some short video blurbs published on facebook and youtube. A TV show for Disney+ has also been announced, but is a few years off. This project is unique in Star Wars, in that all of the different parts are being written together by one writing team, and are coordinated to tell a cohesive story. Also, what has been announced is just the beginning – they have stated that there will be three different sections of the High Republic, and everything we have had announced so far is just part one. As a note: this is an era for which there was NO pre-existing canon in Legends, so it is totally new territory.

OKAY, THAT’S NICE, BUT WHY SHOULD I BOTHER TO CHECK IT OUT?

There are SO many reasons why the High Republic is worth your time to explore. I will try to outline some of them here below the cut (without any significant spoilers).

IT IS A LOVE LETTER TO THE JEDI

This is the era for everyone who loves the Jedi and wants to understand how they got to the point they did in the prequel era. It shows Jedi at their best: saving people, working together, being completely in tune with the Force (in so many beautiful and original ways), demonstrating creativity and flexibility and being rewarded for it, actually thinking through the ethics of things like the mind trick, and DEALING with their emotions rather than repressing them. It shows us how the rigid Jedi culture was saw in the prequels was a corruption of something that was originally healthy and uplifting. Jedi in this era are allowed to be flawed, and to grow, and have a community that supports them in doing so. This is the Jedi culture so many of us created as fix it fic for the prequel era, but made canon.

IT IS AN ERA OF HOPE

There are some serious problems in the High Republic Era. Without spoilers, the era opens with a terrible humanitarian crisis, laid over the Republic equivalent of the New Deal from US history. We see a lot of examples of people doing their best to be good to each other, and working for a more just and kind galaxy. They acknowledge that things are not perfect, but people from many different backgrounds (Jedi, politicians, farmers, pilots, business people) work together to try and make things better. I don’t know about you all, but with the darkness we see in the world today, I NEED some of that optimism in my escapist media. The High Republic provides that.

IT WILL GIVE YOU FEELINGS

The existing material so far is structured to really let you emotionally invest in the characters and their struggles. Unlike with many eras of Star Wars canon, characterization is not sacrificed for the sake of plot (though never fear, there is PLENTY of plot). That means there is huge scope for empathy. I’m not going to lie; I cried within the first three chapters of Light of the Jedi, as did several other people I know. It is POIGNANT in a way that feels truly genuine.

IT IS FUN

The writing team understands that, in the end, Star Wars is space fantasy. If your space fantasy is nothing but serious, gritty grimdark, it becomes pretentious and unbearable. So, for all that there is some heavy content in the High Republic (VERY heavy content – the Nihil should really have their own content warning), it has many moments of levity that keep it from taking itself too seriously. For example, the High Republic made Jedi bodice rippers canon. Also, characters like Geode exist (yes, that rock there is a CHARACTER). The result is something which honors the spirit of Star Wars, and keeps you engaged without being tedious or ridiculously depressing.

THE WRITING TEAM HAS DIVERSE PERSPECTIVES

The main writing team consists of five people: Justina Ireland, Claudia Gray, Charles Soule, Daniel José Older, and Cavan Scott. You will note that includes two people of color, two women, and one out Queer person (in fact, one of the writers is all three of those things). This is a far cry from the white-cis-straight-man-dominated writing teams we have seen in the past. And when they bring in other people to the project, they make a point of looking for perspectives that aren’t represented on their team – for example, the manga is being co-written between Justina Ireland and Japanese writer Shima Shinya, and Ireland has stated in interviews that Shinya is taking the lead on the writing.

IT VALUES MEANINGFUL REPRESENTATION

That diverse writing team means a cast that looks WAY more like the real world than any other era of Star Wars we’ve seen, in terms of representation. There are multiple characters of color, who are both heroes and central to the story. There are at least five canonical queer characters to date (a MLM couple, an Ace character, and two NB character). [EDIT: Thank you @legok9 for letting me know about the NB characters]. Among binary gendered characters, there is a very even balance of men and women. The writing team has also stated that they will be incorporating more representation of disability in the works to come. And the story is so much better for it – representation is included here BECAUSE it makes for more creative, believable, and original storytelling.

IT IS ACCESSIBLE

Because of the multiple formats, and the fact that it doesn’t rely on you knowing any prior lore, the High Republic offers many avenues to engage for people with all kinds of needs. Know nothing about Star Wars canon and feel intimidated about catching up? The canon is all new in this era anyway, so you’re fine. Can’t handle flashing lights? No problem – the little bit of video content that exists is totally free from the strobing effects that caused seizure and sensory issues. Need purely audio content? You can still have a full experience of the High Republic with the gorgeously sound-scaped audiobooks. Don’t have the attention span for books or long movies? Then the comics are your friend.

THERE IS SOMETHING FOR ALL

Between the books aimed towards adults and teens (and their respective audiobooks), the kids books, the comics, the manga, the short stories, AND the eventual TV show on Disney+, there is going to be content in the High Republic that suits most audiences. And that is just what has been announced so far – there is still more to come for phases II and III. This isn’t Star Wars written towards one group or demographic – it is Star Wars for everyone.

DID I MENTION THE FANCY JEDI UNIFORMS?

Because cosplayers and fanartists? This is the era for you. We are getting Jedi in silks with elaborate gold embroidery. Jedi with jewelry other decorative elements. Even the practical field uniforms have tooled and embossed leather. If you want to draw or make Jedi that have some of that that sweet LoTR-esque high fantasy aesthetic, the High Republic has your back. (Not going to lie – I am ALREADY imagining the time travel AUs. Put Obi-Wan in fancy clothes!)

OKAY, YOU’VE SOLD ME. WHERE SHOULD I START?

I strongly recommend everyone looking to get into the High Republic (who is old enough to be on Tumblr) start with Light of the Jedi by Charles Soule. I alternated between the physical book and the audio book, and found it delightful in both formats. After that, you have a lot of options. You can read or listen to the audio book of the YA novel A Test of Courage by Justina Ireland. You can check out the currently running Star Wars: The High Republic comic from Marvel, or the Star Wars: The High Republic Adventures comic from IDW. Or you can skip straight to Into the Dark by Claudia Gray. Honestly, there is no wrong order to try out most of the High Republic.

IN CONLUSION

The High Republic is Star Wars written for people who DON’T want Star Wars to be a good ‘ol boys club for salty white dudes who don’t want to see anything but more of Luke Skywalker. It offers broad representation, and optimistic narrative, and whole bunch of awesome Jedi content. If you are someone who fell in love with Jedi in the prequel era, the High Republic will give you more of what you loved. And if you are totally new to Star Wars? The High Republic is here for you too.

So, go check it. And then go write fic for it (please, there are only, like, 14 fics on AO3, I am dying).

#star wars #the high republic #jedi #long post #recs #book recs #representation #seriously I cannot recommend this highly enough #everything about the high republic is so very tailored to what I love about star wars in general and Jedi specifically #also...sorry I had been absent here #I swear I still love you all #I just have limited interaction spoons these days and spend most of them on costuming stuff

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earth16comicswire · 3 years

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Administrator Sly Moore conspires against Darth Vader

Administrator Sly Moore has been in Emperor Palpatine’s inner circle when he was still Chancellor of the Galactic Republic. A cunning political figure hailing from the planet Umbara and who is Force-Sensitive, Moore is dangerous, possibly much more so than the Emperor’s other right-hand person, Grand Vizier Mas Amedda.

When Darth Vader was punished by Emperor Palpatine for his side quest of finding out more information about his son, Luke Skywalker, Moore was one of the allies the Emperor ordered to eliminate the former Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. After Ochi of Bestoon, a Sith assassin, thought that he had defeated Vader on the volcanic planet of Mustafar, the Administrator felt that she had to pick up the pieces due to knowing that Vader could not be kept down that easily. After Vader got off Mustafar with Ochi as his prisoner, Moore was on board a Star Destroyer pursuing Vader and sending an entire fleet of TIE Fighters after him. However, the Sith quickly defeated the TIEs thanks to his skills as a pilot, his abilities in the Force, and a giant space creature enroute to the planet Exegol.

After she, Vader, and Ochi witness the Emperor’s true power and his plans involving Exegol, Moore also witnesses the Emperor’s armored enforcer being restored. However, this has the administrator concerned and by the end of “Darth Vader no.13,” she is revealed to have conspired with IG-88 and a secret group of followers to finally kill Vader.

Warning Spoilers Ahead

“Star Wars: Darth Vader no. 14” begins on the Imperial throne world of Coruscant where two Imperial cadets are in awe at how Darth Vader survived his ordeal on Mustafar by just being held together by Separatist droid parts. They comment that Vader is basically unstoppable. As Vader strides triumphantly with his new right hand man Ochi of Bestoon at his side, Administrator Sly Moore is not at all impressed.

Seeing her disappointment, Emperor Palpatine instigates jealousy within the Umbaran when he asks if she is satisfied with Vader being restored to full function and health. Sly admits that she failed to defeat Vader which the Emperor agrees and then chuckles as he walks away from her. To make matters worse, as the Umbara follows the Emperor, Grand Vizier Mas Amedda tells her that she is needed at the Prescreen Department. Moore quickly learns that due to her failure, she has been demoted to Sub-administrator. The Umbaran looks on as Amedda and Palpatine take the turbolift toward the Imperial Palace. Several Imperial officers and stormtroopers look on at the now Sub-administrator Moore.

As I continue to read this series, I continue to praise Greg Pak as one of the many writers who knows how to write Star Wars along with Charles Soule. In this issue, the story’s main focus is on Sly Moore and the ongoing battle for supremacy within the Emperor’s inner circle. The inner conflict within the Galactic Empire is nothing new in Star Wars. We have seen plenty of Imperials conspire against each other or their allies. For example, there have been several past stories where the Grand Moff Tarkin has traded blows with Darth Vader. In addition, there have been previous comic issues where the Emperor has sent potential new enforcers or apprentices to kill Vader so that he can replace him. Furthermore, there have been other stories in the Star Wars Legends lore, like “Shadows of the Empire, '' where Vader has deep animosity for the Emperor’s ally and leader of the Black Sun criminal syndicate, the Falleen Prince Xizor. In this latest “Vader” issue, Paks narration and dialogue between the characters are a reminder of how the Sith operate with each other and their allies. I also feel that Pak’s inclusion of the subtle infighting within the Emperor’s inner circle is a reminder of the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis with Wise.

While toiling away at the Prescreen Department with two Imperial officers, the now Sub-administrator Moore discovers that a high-ranking Imperial has been given an invitation to attend the auction of the carbonite frozen Han Solo from Crimson Dawn. Moore also hears the name “Skywalker” and sees this as a potential opportunity to enact revenge on Darth Vader.

Moore begins to put her plan into motion by heading to the repair block where Vader was fully restored back in “Darth Vader no. 12” so that she can get the schematics on his machine-infused anatomy. Mas Amedda catches her and the two discuss their roles within the Emperor’s inner circle and how they serve the Sith and do not have the power to “indulge in their pleasures.” Sly being sly tells Amedda to pretend that he did not catch her while she, unbeknownst to the Grand Vizier, creates a holodisk containing the schematics on Vader’s anatomy.

It is here that we learn how bounty hunter assassin droid IG-88 was able to track down Vader and temporarily have the upper hand on him during their fight in the last issue. It was Moore and her fellow conspirators who provided the assassin droid and his army of droids with the disk.

Toward the end of the comic, we are left off at the part where IG-88 meets with Moore and her followers. The droid tries to terminate his bounty contract since Vader defeated him during their last encounter. Much to Moore’s horror, Vader sneaks behind IG-88 and slices the droid with his crimson-colored lightsaber. Moore and her followers flee from the Sith Lord while they try to kill him. Moore also tries using the same mechanism IG-88 used to defeat Vader but ultimately, Vader overpowers her.

With no choice and admitting defeat, the Umbaran bargains with Vader by mentioning the Crimson Dawn invitation to the auction of Han Solo and also how Luke (who would not be far behind to rescue the smuggler) could potentially kill Vader. Sly makes a promise with the Sith Lord to purchase Solo for Vader so that the Sith could not only take Solo but also potentially fight Luke. The two come to a compromise on the plan. However, at the auction, things go south when Jabba the Hutt and his fellow Hutt, Bokku (who has allied with Vader) outbid Sly. The administrator is puzzled as to why Bokku, who is allied with Vader, is bidding against her. Ochi responds that it is the Hutt’s way to humiliate her and himself which in turn would expose her weakness to the Emperor.The assassin further explains that although Sly was very power with uniting her allies to defeat Vader, the Sith Lord is too powerful to let that happen. The end of this issue leaves off toward where “War of the Bounty Hunters no. 2” ended but with Vader inviting himself to the auction by force choking several Crimson Dawn guards.

As I mentioned before, the character of Administrator Sly Moore is very dangerous and shrewd. Greg Pak brought this character to life. Before the “Vader” comic, Moore was just a character who stood on the sidelines with a brooding expression in the “Star Wars” prequel films. Pak’s take on Sly Moore is a high ranking Imperial official who is an opportunist and a quick study. She is willing to do whatever it takes when an opening presents itself to execute her plan. She also is no push over when it comes to executing that plan by mentioning Luke Skywalker being the only person who could kill Vader and take his place. This shows that she is as much of a manipulator as the Emperor. In the end of the day, it doesn't matter who dies in the fight between Vader and Luke (who she may or may not know are father and son). One way or another, whoever dies, she would probably go for the killing bow.

I also like the direction Vader is going in this arc also. Yes, he knows that Luke is his son however, it seems that the Emperor wants to use that in order for him to have one less Skywalker to worry about. The Emperor is hell bent on manipulating Vader to kill Luke or vice versa since having an enforcer strong in the Force would serve his agenda. Especially if the Emperor was able to seduce someone as powerful as Anakin to the Dark Side. It will be interesting to see if Vader really is set on killing Luke or if this is just a ruse to get the Emperor off his scent of his own plans which involve having his son rule at his side.

The art by Raffaele Lenco and the coloring by Jason Keith played just as huge of a role as Pak’s writing did in bringing Sly Moore to life. The drawings of Sly Moore show the stark differences between her time as administrator in the Galactic Republic to her time as administrator for the Empire. When she was administrator for the Republic, she was wearing a silver, or lighter, gown while under the Empire, she was wearing an all black short trench coat with black slacks and boots. In addition to her clothing, Moore’s facial features are further darkened and chiseled, possibly to show her age throughout the 23-years she has been in service to Palpatine. But I also think that those additional lines and shading on her face make her far more brooding than she did in the prequel films.

Overall, the “War of the Bounty Hunters” arc has been the blockbuster of the summer that has rocked the Skywalker Saga in the Disney era. There hasn’t been such an arc since the Shadows of the Empire that has changed the landscape and expanded the Star Wars Universe. With the inclusion of Han Solo’s ex girlfriend Qi’ra, from “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” pulling the strings by gathering all entities in the galaxy, there is no way that it would be a “Star Wars” blockbuster without Darth Vader. Greg Pak’s post “Empire Strikes Back” Vader is ruthless, determined, and cold-blooded. From what I read, he knows that he cannot take on the Emperor alone but he also knows that Luke could very well defeat him. With that, Vader has no choice but to kill Luke or at least defeat him enough so that he could have one less potentially powerful enemy to worry about. Or, as I mentioned before, Vader is likely playing possum and secretly wants to have Luke at his side (which he actually does) so that they can overthrow the Emperor.

“Star Wars: Darth Vader no.14” is now out wherever comic books are sold.

Writer: Greg Pak

Artist: Raffaele Ienco

Colorist: Jason Keith

Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagnna

Publisher: Marvel Synopsis: “The Blade Behind the Curtain" For decades, no figure has stood as close to theEmperor with so much mystery surrounding her. Who is theUmbaran? What is her role within the Empire and in the War of the Bounty Hunters? And what happens when she emerges from the darkness to challenge Darth Vaderhimself? Featuring an unprecedented look at the inner workings of the Emperor inner circle – and the return of IG-88!

#star wars #war of the bounty hunters #darth vader #marvel

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lowcountry-gothic · 3 years

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It always annoys me when people talk about Star Wars as if bringing balance to the Force means an equal amount of light side and dark side users. Like, no. That is not a thoughtful way of interacting with the films’ ideas. The Force arises out of all life in the galaxy (logically probably the universe, but that word never seems to be used), so clearly life is valued and meaningful to the Force. The light side values all life, while the dark side does not. It thinks nothing of torture, murder, and gratuitous violence on one hand, and on the other hand seeks an individualistic eternal life which is itself more a mocking of true life (which necessarily includes death, a natural aspect of all life). So to say we need the dark side in order to bring the Force into balance, just...doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. The dark side is a corruption of the Force. It twists the power of the Force in order to use it, if you really think about it, against the interests of the Force itself. (I can’t give any citations on this, but I have also heard that this perspective fits how Lucas himself thinks of the Force.)

Sure, violence and killing are a part of life, too. Predators exist, and their needs are part of the larger web of the Force just as much as the needs of any other living thing. But there’s a difference between the violence of killing in order to eat, and therefore survive, and violence in order to seek power or revenge, as the dark side encourages.

An even deeper and wiser view of the dark side, I think, is found in one of the recent High Republic novels, (which, by the way, are very good) when one of the Jedi tells his new apprentice this:

‘The darkness is as much a part of the Force as the light. The Order thinks it can bisect the Force so neatly—as though the primal living energy of all existence were a thing to be sliced and served.’

Reath took a moment to consider this. ‘Doesn’t that separation keep us safe?’

‘Does it?’ Master Cohmac said. ‘Or does the divide only make the darkness darker, more dangerous, than it ever would have been in a state of nature?’

(From Into the Dark by Claudia Gray.)

This may seem like it contradicts everything I was saying above abut the dark side being an unnatural corruption of the Force, but I don’t think it does. It’s much subtler than that.

The way I see it, Master Cohmac here is critiquing the very dualism which separates light and dark, and is arguing for a more integrated (and much more mystical) view of the Force. In this view, the Force is analogous to a conscious, living being. It has a shadow side which it must integrate, just as we as humans grow wiser and more healthy by integrating our shadows rather than denying them and projecting them onto others. Our shadows—like the dark side of the Force—only become dangerous and unhealthy when they are suppressed. What we resist, persists. What we demonize, we give more energy to and ultimately make stronger. The dark side only becomes an unnatural corruption of the Force, as we see it in the Star Wars films, when it is cast out by the light; when the qualities that give rise to it—fear, anger, attachment, etc.—are denied and vilified.

The Jedi, Master Cohmac seems to imply in the passage quoted above, are in one sense partially culpable for this, a perspective I think the Star Wars films actually support. We see in the prequels how blind and ineffective and morally compromising the Jedi have become (fighting the Republic’s wars rather than being peacemakers), and Luke himself in The Last Jedi, while wrongly believing the Jedi need to end, correctly identifies the order’s hubris and many weaknesses.

None of which is to say that the Jedi are wrong for fighting the Empire or the First Order, or even the Sith. These manifestations of the dark side really are unnatural, anti-life, even anti-Force corruptions of the Force’s own power. But to say that is not the same thing as saying that the darkness in the Force is evil, dangerous, and must be rejected in and of itself. Rather, the Empire, First Order, and Sith are what happens when it is rejected. What we resist persists, until it grows into an unnatural and cancerous form.

I hope this is where the story goes in the future, if more Star Wars films are ever made: an exploration of how darkness and light can be integrated. This seems like a very wise, healthy, and very human direction for the saga to go in, and seems to reflect the trajectory the story has already been taking (based on the above-mentioned critiques of the Jedi—all parts of Star Wars as a text, not just my interpretations—and the quote from the Claudia Gray novel). Integration, to me, would be something you could truly call bringing balance to the Force, which I don’t think has honestly ever happened in any of the films so far, prophecy or no prophecy.

#text #mine #star wars #the force #dualism #mysticism #claudia gray #cohmac vitus

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sterling-silvers · 4 years

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Star Wars: The High Republic Informal Review

These are my initial thoughts and minutely biased opinion/review of the High Republic.

My basis is primarily founded on the first two issues of the High Republic comic book – written by Cavan Scott – along with a secondary basis, from a secondhand account of the book Light of the Jedi, written by Charles Soule. It is a secondary account because I don’t read books; I am not a book man. My friend loves to read books and he graciously gets on Discord with me basically every day and together we dissect and discern what’s going on in this new period of the galaxy. This evaluation will mainly concentrate on the book portion and while not all encompassing, will give you a significant gist of how I’m feeling about High Republic. Also, there will be SPOILERS – you have been warned.

Overall, the book seems to have a strong first third, gets into a lull in the second third, and somewhat recovers in the last third but, arguably not as strong as that first third. The strengths of the book are definitely world building, the focus on Starlight Beacon, and finally, the introduction to all the new (old) Jedi; the Jedi are the best thing about the book. Plot wise, the book centers on and around Starlight Beacon with hyperspace being the driving force of the conflict.

Starlight Beacon is akin to an amalgam of air traffic control, a mutli-cultural embassy, a Jedi Temple, and a bazaar. At this point, it housed the largest number of Jedi outside of Coruscant and used signals to guide travelers during their interplanetary journeys. It was made in response to the Great Disaster – a hyperspace tragedy that caused starships all across the galaxy to be abruptly launched out of hyperspace leading to several moons in the Trymant system, including Korbatal, to be destroyed. Beacon exists to better calibrate for, identity, and curtail these new anomalies as astromech droids are a rarity in this period of time.

Around the same time, a marauder group – called the Nihil – have found a way to board and raid ships while they are in hyperspace using hyperspace channels termed Paths. Through the use of devices - called Path Engines - Nihil ships are to make short-burst hyperspace jumps, allowing them to appear and disappear in a flash during battle. Their raids have led to deaths, including that of Jedi Jora Malli - a Togruta Jedi Master that sees the Force as a force – always in competition with itself. She was also very close friends with Sskeer; a Trandoshan Jedi Master that lost an am during the raids.

In accordance with that last point, hyperspace will be somewhat of the crux contention to fans (and really science fiction enthusiast in general) as this is not how hyperspace has generally been established to work in Star Wars yet, is the lynch pin in how conflicts happen. This even follies with the newly established way hyperspace works in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker but, I digress…

I knew there were going to be some major plot holes in this super prequel series but, my best hope was that they wouldn’t be too gaping. Just knowing that this application exists, changes many aspects of space travel and what characters going forward should know about it. Canon mechanics aside, Charles Soule makes it clear why was given this duty; he has blatant skill for writing not only characters but, also taking the extra steps of having the individualized power of the character be an extension of them. He did this very well during his run in Uncanny Inhumans and he’s not disappointing here either (he’s had plenty of practice in the Star Wars realm already with books like Star Wars, Poe Dameron, and The Rise of Kylo Ren).

There are a multitude of Jedi brought in, which complements the time period and era of it being the High Republic but, the real asset of the book is Soule taking the needed time to give the reader a look at how each Jedi interprets the Force in their own way. Moreover, the pairings of different Jedi serve as accompaniments to each other in very noteworthy ways.

Jedi Master Loden Greatstorm, sees the Force as an ocean.

His Padawan, Bell Zettifar sees it as a flame – sometimes a raging inferno, sometimes glinting ember. (This is very fascination as usual flames are a motif associated with the Sith yet, here is Bell - a shining example of a Jedi - interpreting fire in a positive light. I also like how view of the Force allowed him to synch with his charhound, Ember).

Wookie Padawan Burryaga Agaburry, perceives it has a tree attached to a leaf of equal size.

Vernestra Rwoh, the one of the youngest Jedi Knight in the order, sees it as a river.

Reath Silas, see it as a spider web – strong in some spots, weak in others.

Elzar Mann, views it as an endless, bottomless sea which was impossible to be used up, not matter for what purpose or however many times it was called upon. (I’m curious to see if there will be a differentiation between how Mann sees the force when compared to Greatstorm; an ocean is deeper than that of a sea.)

Finally, Jedi Master Avar Kriss, hears the Force as a symphony – moreover, she can connect with minds of other Jedi and is able see how other see how they see the Force.

Hot take but, the character of Kriss feels like a Kathleen Kennedy character as Kennedy been prone to interject White, third wave feminism (if you’re not intersectional then you’re not a “feminist” to me) into Star Wars. One of her signatures is to take a White human female and make her the either the main character or a key figure in the narrative. Avar Kriss, a White blonde-haired human woman, is literally depicted as “the brightest, most noble example of Jedi-hood” so, I’m keeping a keen eye on her – doesn’t help that she just got assigned Marshall to Starlight Beacon but, if it’s any consolation (more like mitigation), she was the SECOND pick as the first died.

Ultimately, if you are able to get the major hurdle that is hyperspace Paths, this is a competent and enjoyable start. Soule even goes as far to add some interesting and even practical – yet lore breaking – devices in this age: he’s made a new (old) space ship called “Vectors” that are powered/steered by Force sensitive people with the lightsaber being the key to active it (even cooler, the hub takes the color of the lightsaber that activates it).

That’s a great idea and makes sense within the universe as whole yet, collapses on itself when you remember what time period, we’re in – the past, so why was this not built upon in the future? It definitely feels like the books are 85% of the story while the comics (more on them in a later post) are – at their prime peak – a mere “intrinsic 15%”. The best part for me has been the characters; hopefully, the plot will come along to accent them justly. Arguably though, the best characters – that of Loden and Bell – should be depicted in the comics based on their gravitating dynamics and instant attachment with readers.

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smokeybrand · 3 years

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Smokey brand Reviews: Force Sensitivities

I love Star Wars. I have since i was a kid. It just missed the Trinity of my Childhood, Spider-Man, Godzilla, and Transformers, by inches but i hold it in high regard. I’d say that it’s only a step behind the big three, along with the Alien franchise. I enjoy both franchises for a lot of the same reasons; Expansive lore, impeccable world building, and fantastic characters. I have a strong emotional connections to all things a galaxy far, far, away so the past few years have been difficult to witness. Under the “guidance” of Kathleen Kennedy, i watched my space wizards and cyborg warlocks, decline considerably. I saw all that creativity and inspired storytelling fall by the wayside in favor of identity politics and ego driven agenda.

Then, The Mandalorian dropped and everything changed. There’s been an infusion of quality, a resurgence of the creative, and one of the things to come out of this brand new inspiration is Star War: Visions. Visions is an anthology series of original stories, created by some of the top anime studios in Japan. That, alone, is enough to pique my interests. I love anime and the world Lucas created, lends itself to the medium almost effortlessly. It finally released yesterday and i was able to check out all of them, twice. Is this thing everything i dreamed of? Kind of? Sometimes?

The Duel

The first of the shorts presented and easily the most visually striking. This thing is a CG animation, usually kind of wonky but not so much with this short. I’m more a fan of traditional cell animation but Kamikaze Douga does a fantastic job with the new computer flavor. That expertise is put on full display with this Kurosawa inspired epic, an irony not lost on me. Old Kurosawa films like Yojimbo and Seven Samurai were direct inspirations for Star Wars so seeing it come full circle like this, is very rewarding. Overall, i liked this entry. It’s a great introduction for the anthology and delivers a strong viewing experience.

Tatooine Rhapsody

True to it’s anthology nature, the very next episode delivers something completely different than the last. This entry, made by Studio Colorado, is traditional animation with a heavy, heavy, influence from Leiji Matsumoto. One can definitely make the argument that this is what Interstella 9999 would look like if i had a Star Wars skin and i wouldn’t fight you about it. That’s kind of the art direction being leaned into with this short, that Captain Harlock/Galaxy Express 9999 look. I’m a sucker for that classic aesthetic so i kind of loved it. Didn’t care for the music but seeing a stylized Boba Fett was a real treat. This one is the most original of the anthology, so far from the overall Star Wars theme, and i think that hurts it some. As it’s own thing, though? Fantastic.

The Twins

This one is top tier for me and not just because it’s the first entry from Trigger. This one is good. It’s the first to really nail that more kinetic feel of the prequel lightsaber duels and, if you know anything about Studio Trigger, of course it would. These people gave us Kill la Kill and Brand New Animal. In fact, the overall look of this thing has shades of both Dead Leaves, Gurren Lagann and Promare all over it. It reminds me a great deal of the conflict between the Solo twins in legends. This thing is beautifully animated and tells it’s story with with skill. That said, it’s to one of my favorites. I love Trigger but this one, i think, doesn’t really live up to the Star Wars standard. Still, there is a lot of cool sh*t in here. Kyber powered Sith armor is something to behold, for sure.

The Village Bride

This one is the one for me. I f*cking LOVED this entry. I think it’s the nest of the lot for a lot of reasons. This thing feels the most like a Lucas or Filoni entry into the franchise. It delivers u to an alien world where we get to see the people interact with their surroundings. It delivers a personal conflict juxtaposed against a very real, very, worldly danger. It grounds us with great characters and does so with a beautifully rendered style. For me, The Village Bride is everything i want in a Star Wars story and i need to see more of these characters, more of this world, more of F, herself. She’s f*cking amazing! The Lady Jedi does some sh*t with her lightsaber that left me in awe. Kinema Citrus animated this one in the style of Katanagatari and it really works for this style of narrative.

The Ninth Jedi

This one is real special. It feels right at home in a Clone Wars narrative or something from the Old Republic. I adore the look of this one. Its one of my favorites, after The Village Bride and Lop and Ocho, but is far more action oriented than those to. This one focuses on lightsaber duels and delivers the best of the anthology, in my opinion. This f*cking thing goes hard to deliver that visceral, aggressive, fancifal style you see in the Prequel films but completely stylized in this wonderfully fluid animation. The overall narrative is pretty simple but loaded with potential and i hope we get a continuation in the inevitable second season of Visions. Production IG really did their thing with this entry and i really hope it becomes something more.

T0-B1

If Astro Boy took place on Tatooine, you’d have T0-B1. This thing really leans into Tezuka’s style and is all the better for it. I can’t say i really enjoyed the overall narrative but the look of this thing really stays with you. It’s incredibly distinct from everything in this anthology mostly because you don’t see the Tezuka style all too often nowadays but this entry definitely has more heart than most of it’s contemporaries. I was surprised by how much emotion was packed into this little cartoon and can definitely recommend it on the strength of that, alone. While not one of my favorites, i can definitely appreciate what Science SARU delivered.

The Elder

I didn’t like this one. The pacing was too slow and the characters were forgettable. I kind of hated the overall aesthetic and the narrative told was one we’ve seen from this universe a few times. That said, it has a dope ass lightsaber duel toward the end. That’s really the only good aspect of this short, in my opinion. Interestingly enough, this is the second entry from Trigger which makes it incredibly disappointing because they usually kill it. They did not kill it with this one. Not at all.

Lop and Ocho

This one was my second favorite of all nine shorts. It is the most “anime” of the lot and really leans into that genre with gusto. It also feels a lot like Star Wars as far as narrative is concerned. Similar to The Twins, this is a story of forced sensitive sibling, clashing over ideals, told through the crossing of their blades. It’s definitely interesting to watch, especially considering our heroine is an anthropomorphic bunny, something you don’t see too often in the Star Wars universe. I really enjoyed Lop and hopes she garners enough popularity to explore her character further in either a second season of Visions or an actual series dedicated to her personal journey. Geno Studio really impressed with this one.

Akakiri

This one might be the weakest of the lot, until you realize what you’re watching. All of these stories focused on Jedi and their perspective on the world but Science SARU went in a different direction. This is the story of how a Jedi falls. It’s an amazingly emotional watch once that revelation is delivered, putting everything before into perspective. It’s deftly told and works, for the most part, but i feel like this one needed an extra few minutes to develop fully. Still, as the booked to a rather excellent anthology, Akakiri does it’s job well.

The Verdict

This thing is pure Star Wars. It's everything that made Lucas' magnum opus fantastic. Some of these entries hit harder than others, my favorite being The Village Bride, but the overall content in this anthology is f*cking spectacular. I love the different animation styles and how these bite sized stories are told. Some of them take a great many liberties with he world rules whole others are fantastic homages to the genres that make up the Star Wars skeleton. Visions is work of love and passion. These shorts are made with care and not only revere the franchise which came before, but really lay the ground work for potential future exploration, which is what Star Wars has always been about. I still think Mando is the best thing to come out of Favreu's era, so far, but Visions is something very special and is a fantastic example of what can be coming next. If you love Star Wars, you'll love this show. If you left the fandom over Kennedy and her polarizing rhetoric, Visions is a great point to jump back in. Star Wars: Visions is f*cking exceptional and everyone should check it out if they can.

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jedi-order-apologist · 4 years

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I’m ... so confused by the force, like light side vs dark side. Is it like each side has powers the other side can’t access? What if you were force-sensitive and decided to be neither jedi nor sith, would you have access to both sides of the force? In rise of skywalker when rey heals the giant worm snake thing, and when she heals kylos stab wound, and when kylo quite literally brings her back from the dead, isn’t that a dark side power? (1/?)

And who decides whether or not you’re a jedi or sith? With the jedi I know you have to join the Order but what if you were simply a force user who only drew from the light side? Kylo was evil as fuck but he wasn’t a sith, is that because he just decided he didn’t want to be one? And also why did he act like a completely different person once he turned good? It’s not like he was possessed by a ghost of the dark side or anything, his intentions just changed from bad to good (2/?)

And how does he even “turn” good? Like we see that he’s remorseful after talking to Han but does the force just go “oh he seems sad, I guess he can have access to the light side then”? The same goes for Anakin’s redemption, he’s evil for half his life and suddenly has a change of heart and dies like 30 seconds later and who decides it’s good enough for him to come back to the light side? Oh god the more I type the more confused I get (3/4)

But I am so sorry for bombarding you like this & of course you don’t have to answer all these questions or even this ask at all, I just wanted to get it out, and if there’s supplementary material like comics or video games or tv shows that explain it further then I am extra sorry for rambling at you instead of looking for answers in them LOL (4/4)

Outside of game mechanics, there aren’t really “light side” and “dark side” powers. It’s about the mindset that you approach and use the Force with, not static qualities or powersets. The dark side is about selfishness and other associated ills - cruelty, suffering, fear, greed, etc, but more specifically, not about those things themselves but rather about letting those things drive your actions. I see falling to the dark side as something rooted in defeatism, where one gives up resisting the temptation to give into those things - the Sith take it a step further and don’t just give up resisting temptation, but actively seek those things to make everything worse. The “light side” (though it’s not actually referred to as such in the first six films) is about being committed to resisting those darker impulses and temptations - sometimes you slip up but you only fall when you give up and stop striving to be good/selfless as much as you can. People are not “light” or “dark”, but rather, they resist the dark or else they give into it. The language that the characters use when talking about the fallen is not “they are dark” but “they were seduced by it, consumed by it”. It’s a philosophical concept present within everyone that they have to contend with, not an attribute or even truly an alignment.

Or, to borrow my explanation from the last time I complained about the concept of grey Jedi:

Think of it as though you’re in a river with a powerful current, and there’s a high cliff and a waterfall downstream. You can’t get out of the river (because the river is the Force, and it’s everywhere. I suppose you can cut yourself off from the Force, and that’d be kind of like getting out of the river, but it’s not something most people do). You can swim against the current or you can swim with it, but if you don’t swim at all, you’ll still be swept downstream and over the waterfall (i.e. falling to the darkside). Staying in place isn’t grey, because you’ll still have to be swimming against the current to achieve that, and for the Jedi at least, it’s about staying away from the waterfall downstream, not reaching some defined place upstream. Even if you don’t advance, you haven’t been swept downstream and over the waterfall. Even if you slip back a little, as long as you keep swimming, you still haven’t been swept downstream. Only when you give up will you get swept away and fall down the waterfall. If it doesn’t kill you, it’s going to be hell to get back up it, if you can even convince yourself that you want to. It might be freezing and miserable at the foot of the waterfall, and as long as you were swimming up top the water was warm, but what’s the point in climbing back up if you think you’re just going to get swept back down again? Maybe if you dive deeper into the lake at the foot of the waterfall, as cold and miserable as it is, you’ll find something to make being down here worthwhile? You won’t, of course. At best you’ll just get used to the cold.

So there isn’t a sustainable middle ground between “light” and “dark”, because there isn’t a way to be suspended in the middle of the waterfall. And there definitely isn’t a way to be both at the top in the river and at the bottom in the lake at the same time. The ones who are “redeemed” are the ones who managed to pull themselves out of that destructive, defeatist mindset and climb back up the cliff - it’s not simply a matter of flipping a switch, and had they lived, they would’ve had to have kept doing the work of swimming against the current just like everyone else, and probably would’ve had a lot more difficulty with it than those who had never fallen over the waterfall in the first place.

But you definitely can be a Force-user who isn’t a Jedi or a Sith. You’ll still be subject to the way that the Force works, so you’re either giving into the dark side or resisting it, but the Jedi are a unique culture with their own traditions, values, beliefs, way of teaching, expectations etc, etc, as well as (at least during the prequels) a defined role that is granted specific jurisdiction under the authority of the Republic government. It’s definitely possible to still believe in resisting temptation to evil and not be in that role, and not follow those traditions or consider yourself part of that culture or organization. And the Sith differ from other darksiders in that they believe in actively seeking and embracing this selfishness - basically, they don’t just give up swimming against the current, they start swimming with it and dive right off the waterfall. They seek power, and power alone, for power’s sake. The dark side does have a way of sliding everyone in its grasp towards that in the end, because power promises an easy way out - very tempting to those stuck in a defeatist mindset - but for the Sith it’s not just a consequence, but the goal itself.

#discussion #on the force #on the dark side #on the sith #on jedi as a culture #Anonymous

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travllingbunny · 4 years

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The 100: 7x08 Anaconda

The mini-rewatch of season 7 that @jeanie205 and me did during this mini-hiatus is finished, and with that, I’m going to finally post my reviews of 7x08 and 7x09, hopefully before the show returns.

I’m tempted to start talking about the opening scene without any introduction, just like the episode itself started with no “Previously on” and no cold open (the latter, I believe, for the first time since season 1, when the show still did not have any opening titles).. but I’m going to still say a few general things before going into details under the cut.

When it was first announced that an episode of The 100′s final season would be the backdoor pilot for a prequel show, that info was met with a lot of hostility (to the effect of “why waste a full episode on new characters instead of those we know”), which didn’t surprise me much. What did surprise me was that people mostly seemed to expect the episode to be 100% set in the past and unrelated to anything from season 7 - which, as far as I know, is not how backdoor pilots normally work, they still have to fit within the season they’re a part of. The structure of the episode is more in line with what I expected - while most of the episode is set in the past, the framing device is a scene of Clarke confronting Bill Cadogan in the Stone Room on Bardo, and the long flashback is both setting up a possible prequel, and revealing things relevant to the plot of season 7. The biggest connecting points are the Anomaly Stone on Earth, the importance of the Flame for Cadogan and the Disciples, and Cadogan himself, who is clearly not going to be a character in the prequel except possibly in flashbacks, but who is one of the main antagonists of season 7. The episode works as a backdoor pilot but is also interesting as a part of the backstory of The 100.

I really enjoyed the episode - and as it turns out, I enjoyed it even more on rewatch, when I could stop and soak in all the new info and details - and I hope the prequel does picked up, as it has a lot of potential to be interesting, though there is one big concern I have about it. More about that at the end of this post under “Prequel speculation”.

So no Previously on this time (unsurprisingly), no cold open - and we get a brand new version of the opening titles - since this episode technically fully takes place on Bardo, these opening titles start with the Bardo Stone Room and end with another shot of the Stone Room we haven’t seen before in the OT, one with the Stone. The Stone Room is where they begin and end, just like the episode itself. And just like Clarke and the rest of her group have been stuck in this Stone Room for 4 episodes.

But I actually don’t mind it in this episode. At least Clarke is in the focus of these few minutes we spend in the present, and I really like these few minutes. We start with an expanded version of Clarke's response to the news of Bellamy's "death", with slow motion, distorted angles and close-ups of Clarke’s face showing shock and grief and numbness (and I’m going to post another screenshot of that, because I want to savor the moments when the show focuses on characters’ grief before going back to the action - and not just the type of grief that results in going off the rails and murdering people.) We also see Raven on the verge of tears, and Miller choking a little - the other two people who have been Bellamy’s friends for a long time. Clarke being Clarke, she picks herself up the moment she sees someone else in pain (Raven) and focuses on honoring Bellamy’s memory, just as Bellamy did in 4x13 when he believed Clarke was dead, and tells Raven they need to save Octavia and Echo: “We do this for him. We do this for our family” - acknowledging that saving them is something of particular importance as they were people important to Bellamy, and also including them in the “family”, as the term these people use to describe their group and the bonds that have formed over time. (Family is bond closer and less close than friendship. You can be someone’s friend and their family, but you can also be a part of someone’s family without necessarily having developed a friendship with that person, due to the overall bonds and loyalty.)

Then we get the first meeting between Clarke and probably the season’s main antagonist, Bill Cadogan, who comes to another wrong conclusion when he thinks she recognized him because she has the Flame (and, he hopes, Callie’s memories), when it's actually from a video Jaha showed her.

Gabriel has another moment where he helps Clarke (as when he covered for her in 5x13) and silently communicates with her to let her know that the Disciples believe she still has the Flame, so she could keep up that pretense. These two work well as a team.

The bulk of the episode is the flashback framed as Bill telling a story to Clarke - though we don’t actually see the flashback from his POV, and he doesn’t even appear in many of the scenes. In fact, it is almost all from Callie’s POV, and some of it from Reese’s.

And we get back to Clarke and the Stone Room in the end, with the shocking “twist” of Clarke and the Nakara group seeing Octavia, Echo and Diyoza as Disciples. Shocking for them, not for us - we know they had no choice.

Clarke saying “You killed my best friend!” has caused some pointless (but in this fandom, expected) drama, where some fans saw that as “confirmation” that Bellarke is and will remain completely ‘platonic” - even though that makes no sense. What did anyone expect her to call him? My boyfriend? He wasn’t that. The man I love? My soulmate? Someone expected her to say that to an enemy she’s never met before, in front of a bunch of her friends and other people? Very unlikely, even if he hadn’t still been Echo’s boyfriend when he “died”. Some thought “Bellamy” or “him” would have been better, but what would that mean to Cadogan? He’s never met her and knows nothing about her, and she was trying to make it clear how much Bellamy meant to her. If anything, the fact that she’s singled him out as her best friend is a big progress from their usual habit of never defining their relationship to each other - except for Clarke including Bellamy in the collective designation of her “friends” or “family”.

I love the way the Chromatics cover of Neil Young’s “Into the Black” was used in the ending montage - so I made two gifsets about the use of the song for the Cadogan family scenes, and for the scene with Clarke:

https://travllingbunny.tumblr.com/post/623186143096307712/its-better-to-burn-out-than-to-fade-away-the

https://travllingbunny.tumblr.com/post/623186346138370048/its-better-to-burn-out-than-it-is-to-rust-the

Flashback

This is our second look at the world pre-apocalypse - after the brief scene of Josephine’s memory in 6x07, where we saw Josephine and her friend in the diner. But that scene took place several years before the apocalypse (depending on how much time was needed to get from Earth to Sanctum on Eligius 3, which did not have damaged engines as Eligius 4 did after the uprising), since Josephine and her family and the rest of Mission Team Alpha were already on Sanctum 7 years before the apocalypse. And Josephine and her friend were far less interested in the current events than Callie or August, so we only got a few outside references, including the magazine covers which showed that Diyoza’s capture was the main national news, and that Becca was already very high profile and on the cover of a technology/science magazine.

This, however, is the very day of the apocalypse. In the first scene - Callie Cadogan and her friend Lucy in Callie’s and her mother’s home, after participating in a protest as parts of environmentalist group with the familiar name Tree Crew - we get lots of info about just how crappy this world was even before ALIE started a nuclear apocalypse, through various news items on TV (see this post) - and it is like 2020, only taken to the 10th degree:

natural disasters as a result of global warming (a deathly heath wave is mentioned), new diseases (Coronavirus “Russian Ankovirus” outbreak), economic inequality (one of the news is that measures aimed at poverty relief haven’t met with support in Congress), internment camps in USA, anti-government protests in the USA that end up with riot police beating up protestors, together with technological developments, such as the first orbiting hotel (I wonder if anyone was already using it - if they were, there would be more survivors in space, but it doesn’t seem this ever became a part of the Ark), or the first brain transplant. a medical development which begs some ethical questions (since I’m pretty sure that a person with a functioning brain is still alive... I cant think of several different scenarios, disturbing to various degrees).

The world’s population has risen to 11 billion - I guess that’s why ALIE thought there were “too many people” (but her reasoning was as flawed as Thanos’ - instead of killing people, how about increasing or just better redistributing resources?).

It’s also confirmed that a Wallace was the POTUS at the time, meaning that the President and the administration went to the underground bunker at Mount Weather to survive the apocalypse (after which, as we know, they did the North Korean thing where they nominally live in a republic but their leaders are really hereditary).

Callie calls the US regime at the time “fascistic”, echoing how Diyoza characterized it in season 5.

Callie,her friend Lucy and August were all members of the environmentalist group Tree Crew (who already had the same symbol we later see Trikru the clan using), apparently declared illegal or terrorist or something by the Wallace administration.

Callie and Grace Cadogan also used to be members of the Second Dawn cult, led by her father Bill, together with her brother Reese. August also used to be a member. Possibly as a child of some other members.

Becca Franko - described as “tech tycoon” and “reclusive billionaire” - had not been seen in public for a year, since she went to her Polaris space station (to work on the Flame, as we know), a year after she created the first ALIE (and quickly realized ALIE had a fatal flaw). She also owned her own network.

One other piece of info about this world: they had holograms as a means of communication.

Something that was not in the news and not known to the public: it seems that quite a few people were “in the know” about the fact that a nuclear apocalypse may happen (whether they suspected it would be ALIE, or thought there would be a nuclear war) - and even had a code word for it, “Anaconda”. Bill Cadogan was one of the people who knew it. The POTUS and his administration obviously had enough time to evacuate. It’s mentioned that a lot of people immediately started trying to get to the bunkers.

Cadogan and Becca did not personally know each other before the apocalypse, but he apparently had “friends” in many of the space stations. This explains how she knew where the real Second Dawn bunker was located. But whoever these “friends” were, they clearly did not pass on that knowledge to the future generations on the Ark, since even Jaha, who researched Second Dawn, was only able to find public info - articles, Cadogan’s biography - and didn’t even know where the decoy bunker was, let alone the real one.

The most important thing the backdoor pilot needs to do, of course, is introduce compelling, interesting characters. It did pretty well in that regard - Callie is a likable protagonist, and the fact that the antagonists - Bill and Reese Cadogan - are her father and brother, gives more emotional resonance by putting family relationships at the center. The new characters have some similarities to the main characters from The 100, but are at the same time different enough.

The comparison between Callie and Clarke is the most obvious. Oddly enough, Jason tried to draw a difference between them by saying Callie is focused on saving “everyone” rather than “her people” - which makes me scratch my head, unless he means that Callie will always remain absolutely the same through the prequel show, since Clarke also started off by wanting to save everyone - and that was her driving motive for a long time, until the plot kept putting her in situations where she had to choose between her friends and family and strangers, where the latter would often be aggressors attacking her people. What strikes me as the biggest difference i- not just between Callie and Clarke but between all these prequel characters and the main characters of The 100 - is their background and the world they have grown up in. Clarke and Callie are both “princesses” - from the privileged background, but in Clarke’s case, it’s privileged relative to the majority of other people from the Ark, like the Blakes or Raven (which meant things like, nicer living quarters, opportunity to watch recordings of old soccer matches as entertainment, probably less worry about not getting the medicine you need), but in comparison with the way the most of the viewers live... definitely not. The world Clarke was born in is a post-apocalyptic world of scarce resources and constant fight for survival, and even her happy (by those standards)’ life in that world ends a year before the Pilot, when her father is executed and she has spent a year in solitary confinement, expecting to be executed herself - before she’ and 99 teenagers are sent to Earth as “expendable”. On the other hand, Callie, Reese, August, Tristan and others grew up in a world similar to our own. There are, of course, many people in our world who also have to fight for their own day-to-day survival every day, but the Cadogans are rich, and the rest of the Second Dawn members and their families are no doubt not far off. This is Callie’s house:

Some of these middle-class and upper middle-class kids are rebellious, idealistic and optimistic and worry about the fate of the world, like Callie, Lucy and August. On the other hand, there’s Reese, whose driving motivation is to impress his father and gain his love. He’s a rich boy with daddy issues, but he’s also a victim of emotional abuse - maybe physical, too (if we take into account a cut scene showing a training session where his father injures him, under the explanation of making him tougher or whatever). Callie and Reese are only the second sibling dynamic we see explored on the show (I’m not counting Emori and Otan, since the latter appeared very shortly), and this dynamic - a sibling rivalry between a rebellious girl who is her father’s favorite even while she opposes and rejects him, and her jealous brother who wants to impress his father - is completely different from the Blakes. (It reminds me a bit of Gamora amd Nebula - and I’ve just realized this is the second time in this review I’ve referenced MCU.)

Watching this family dynamic, I was reminded of another family that paralleled and contrasted the Griffins: the Lightbournes. Particularly when Grace called Bill a narcissist with psychopathic tendencies and he was entertained by that, In the flashback in 6x02. Simone called Russell a megalomaniac - but that was really said as a cute joke, as the Lightbournes were happily married, and Simone was just as bad as Russell, and even more ruthless than him. But in both cases, we have destructive rich white guy megalomaniacs who made themselves into gods, and want to bring back their dead daughters. Daughters are both extremely intelligent, brilliant and charismatic, but completely different in personality. (The mothers, while all very different, seem all to have been medical professionals - I’m not sure about Grace, but Callie does mention learning how to stitch a wound from her.) Callie sees that her father is an a-hole and rejects his values, and is an idealist and altruist who wants to do the right thing and save people (while Josephine was a selfish narcissist). Her mother Grace is somewhere in between, as she also left Second Dawn and doesn’t fully agree with Bill - but will often go along with him, and tries to keep peace between the other family members, and thinks their family needs to “set an example”. With the Griffins, we had an idealistic, altruistic father and a daughter with similar characteristics, who adored him and misses him after losing him, and a mother who was similarly concerned with helping others, and the conflicts between them were about how to go about these solutions. With the Lightbourne, we had the evil version of the Griffins, and the Cadogans have a more complicated dynamic. Callie is more comparable to Clarke, and Bill to Russell.

But one aspect in which Bill Cadogan is much worse than Russell is - where Russell loved his family, maybe a bit too much, considering what he did to bring them back, Bill loves himself and his “savior” role more than anything. Maybe his love for Callie comes close - and I get the impression that one of the main reasons he loves her is because he respects her and she challenges him - but it is still not his main motive. He is ready to punish his ex-wife for disobeying him by leaving her to die. Reese is an a-hole, but it’s hard not to feel sorry for him when he thinks for a moment that his father is worried for him (when Bill runs up to Reese, who's injured) but Bill immediately shows that all he cares about is getting the Flame, so he can get the final code for the Anomaly.

Another issue is, of course, that Callie, Reese and Grace are POC, but I don’t know if race - or sexuality, or gender - will ever be raised as an issue on the prequel show itself - or if the world pre-apocalypse and right after it is supposed to be as post-race, post-sexuality, post-gender as the current timeline of The 100 is. On The 100, for instance, Thelonius and Wells Jaha being black or Clarke being bisexual or a woman, were not issues that affected their status - only class issues existed; if the pre-apocalypse society was different, then the show could explore Callie, Reese and Grace being very privileged in terms of class and status in SD as Cadogan’s family, and lack of privilege in other respects.

I’m not sure I fully buy the way Callie easily goes along with her mother and leaves her best friend to die. It seems to go against the rest of her characterization. But maybe it shows that she still wasn’t a full-blown rebel at this point, in spite of participating in the protests against the government and in spite of rebelling against her father - maybe she still wasn’t able to really rebel against her mother, too.

Interesting line - as Callie stitches Lucy's injuries, Lucy says: "I don't want to be scarred for life" - which may be foreshadowing for Callie being scarred and haunted by the fact she left Lucy to die? Unless Lucy turns out to somehow be alive - but worse for wear. Which would again haunt Callie, too.

I guess Callie’s failure to at least try harder is supposed to be what drives her to try and save other people, after she learns that there was still room and resources for almost 100 more people in the bunker - and when she sees August fighting tooth and nail to save his girlfriend, when she is barred from the bunker because she’s not “Level 12″. August is clearly a character the show is setting us up to like - these scenes are reminiscent of Bellamy fighting to open the door for his sister, and his name evokes the Blakes (Octavia was named after Octavian August’s sister)..

(Sidenote: Callie mentions a high suicide rate (20 suicides in the last 6 months, twice as many attempts) - and this is something that would realistically happen in such a dire situation. It’s a bit unrealistic that it apparently never happened with Wonkru.)

The SciFi plot points relevant to the overall plot make an appearance when we see the Anomaly Stone on Earth, which Bill found in Machu Picchu and brought to the bunker (and we get an explanation why he didn’t use it right after the apocalypse but spent two years in the bunker instead - he didn’t know how to activate it - not being able to find the last two symbols)... and when, two years later, Becca Franko arrives from Polaris in her pod, as we saw in 3x07, with Nightblood as the cure against radiation she’s about to offer everyone, and the Flame in her head.

A few words about how I feel about Becca. While she is here positioned in opposition to Bill Cadogan - who is definitely a megalomaniac a-hole and a villain - I can’t see her as a pure unambiguous and unproblematic good guy we should stan, as Callie stans her. For starters, Becca is also a megalomaniac - she calls her second AI “the Flame”, comparing herself to Prometheus! (But she makes me think of Dr Frankenstein, and the full title of Mary Shelley’s novel was Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus.) She is, of course, as a genius scientist, a lot more capable and competent than Cadogan,but she also has a huge savior complex (only she is focused on the idea of her AI being the savior, rather than herself), and is also another big capitalist - a “tech tycoon” who owns her own space station and her own network (and was so powerful and politically relevant that the Chinese and the Russian space station were refusing to join the rest of the stations until the US station destroyed Polaris - Becca was apparently seen as a rival strong enough to challenge the US government?). She worked for a big corporation (Eligius) which colonized other planets and used people - prisoners - as “expendable” work force that can be left to die if necessary. And knowing that she had Nightblood developed more than 7 years before the apocalypse, and that she was worried about what ALIE could do - I wonder why she didn’t offer Nightblood as the solution for a potential apocalypse before it happened, rather than isolating herself on Polaris to work on the Flame. That was one questionable decision - another one was putting the people on Polaris in danger and letting them die, so she could get the Flame to Earth. I could be more understanding of this decision if I could embrace the idea of the Flame as more important than anything, the one thing needed to save the world, as Becca believed it was. But her idea of a sole savior who will help everyone after being enhanced through an AI is something I find pretty questionable and a bit disturbing in general. To be fair the Flame definitely did fulfill its role once and help a person with a good mind use it to save the world - Clarke in season 3. But that was one time, to save the world from ALIE. This, however, doesn’t really justify passing the Flame on and on and giving people political power with it - even without knowing how distorted her initial idea would become in the Grounder society, surely anyone can see the potential for tyranny there? And Becca was aware that 1) the Flame could also make a bad person become even worse and powerful (as it has with Sheidheda) and 2) someone like Bill could use it to destroy the world, according to Becca herself. Seems like a way too big a risk to take.

There are apparently 744 different Anomaly symbols, which means an “infinite” number of combinations, according to Becca (err, not really; it’s a really, really huge number, but it’s not “infinite”, which bugged me a little, since I wouldn’t expect a scientist, especially one who uses the Infinity symbol as her logo, to use the word “infinity” as an exaggeration).

Becca manages to activate the Stone, not because of any scientific knowledge she has, but because the Flame, apparently, gives her enhanced hearing - allowing her to hear the sounds of the Stone, where each sound stands for a symbol. (Dogs can apparently also hear those rather unpleasant sounds.) Everything in this episode makes it clear that it is the Flame itself that Bill needs to find the code, it's always been about that. (Him thinking Callie is in there is just a bonus - emotional connection.) The Flame had no one's memories/spirit in this episode before Becca died, and Becca made it clear to Callie that it’s all about the Flame itself. If the Disciples knew Clarke didn’t have the Flame anymore, they wouldn’t need Madi or Sheidheda - it’s not about the memories, not even Becca’s., it’s that piece of plastic that's buried on Sanctum, if it can still work. (Or maybe they need Picasso :p.)

The most mysterious moment and the biggest question of the episode is - where (when?) did Becca go and what did she see when she activated the Stone the second time and when she and Callie saw the white light coming from the Anomaly? This is different from the green light we see when the Anomaly takes you to other planets. The white light is probably connected to transcendence and/or the Judgment Day that Becca said she saw - which Cadogan, with his typical arrogance, believes he is ready for. but Becca believes no one is.

"It wasn't to open the bridge to another world, it was to remake this one" - this line would make me think that our protagonists are meant to rebuild the Earth - but at this point, I find it hard to see how this could happen over in just 7 episodes, with how the current storylines are going. So maybe they’ll focus on rebuilding Sanctum, after all.

For opposing Bill’s plans, Becca is locked up for 5 days, tied to a pipe (geez!) and, guessing what’s about to happen, she explains the Flame to Callie and tells her to take it and never allow Cadogan to have it, as she believes he could destroy the world with it. (Another often asked question was how the Flame survived Becca’s burning - we learn that it can and that it’s programmed to save itself.)

Becca is burned by Second Dawn Disciples led by Reese Cadogan, presumably at his dad’s orders. Which maybe was supposed to evoke the popular idea of “burning a witch”, but the historical fact that burning at the stake was the traditional punishment for heresy fits even better. There’s been speculation that the memory we saw in 5x10 was his - but that’s incorrect: Madi experienced that memory, she felt being burned, screamed and yelled what Becca was yelling, and we saw it from her POV - the Second Dawn members that were around her and herself reflected in their helmets.

Another memory we saw from Madi, the one we saw her draw in 7x09 (and which I initially mistook seems to be a memory of Becca or other people going into the Anomaly) seems to actually be a memory of the moment when Becca first interacted with the Anomaly Stone and talked about it with the other people in the room - Bill, Grace, Callie and Reese. In other words, every one of the Flame memories from this period may be Becca’s - we have no evidence that would help us learn who else took the Flame after her death. It could be any of the characters who stayed on Earth - Bill is the only one who definitely has never gotten his hands on it.

Retcons and Easter Eggs

I’ve always thought that the world-building, especially when it comes to the Grounder society and culture, was the weakest part of the show. Jason obviously followed some of the common tropes of post-apocalyptic fiction when it comes to the portrayal of Grounders, but didn’t think things through - and at some point, probably realized and/or heard/read all the criticism of the show and thought: “This really doesn’t make any sense”, came up with the Second Dawn backstory, and eventually came up with this expanded backstory, which gives many new explanations. Even though we still don’t have the answer to the biggest question: how a society made of bunch of modern people, survivors, could deteriorate into a tribal society with a medieval level of technological development and lack of knowledge about science and the past culture and history - over a few decades. I guess we need to see the prequel for that, but there are some ideas how it could have happened. I liked most of the retcons in this episode, such as:

Trigedaslang was devised by Callie as a child. The idea of a new language developing naturally over less than 100 years never made sense. (The “it’s a pidgin” explanation never worked either - as Trig apparently developed without the influence of any other language or necessity to communicate with people who don’t speak English. It’s just distorted/changed English.) The only reasonable explanation was always that it was an artificial language - we just didn’t know when it was made.

Finally we get an explanation about the fact that Grounders originated from the Second Dawn survivors and were influenced by their mottoes (”From the ashes, we will rise”), but at the same time, worship Becca as “Pramheda” and make their leaders take the Flame - in spite of the fact that Cadogan and Becca were rivals and that the latter was burned by the Second Dawn members.

The fact that two factions already exist - Callie’s (adores Becca, wants to save as many people as possible by using Nightblood, clearly trusts in science) and Reese’s (Second Dawn true believer, burned Becca, needs the Flame for other purposes) may start to explain how things started going wrong and the society fractured.

Speaking of which, the Conclave seems to have originated from Reese Cadogan’s obsession with the fights his father made him have with him and his sister, and his dumbass idea of using a duel to determine who gets the Flame. This is a better explanation than “it is after an apocalypse, so they just started having death tournaments for reasons”. Callie, on the other hand, is much more pragmatic and doesn’t seem to care much about tournaments as a way to prove oneself - because she doesn’t need to, so she does the Indiana Jones/Harrison Ford thing and just pulls the gun and shoots him in the shoulder. One of my favorite moments in this episode.

“Tree Crew” gets the award as the least expected and funniest new piece of info/retcon, though that begs the question of how the other clans got their names. I’ve joked that Ice Nation were a group of ice hockey fans... but for all I know, maybe that’s true! :D Or maybe the “Trikru” name was later misinterpreted as something to do with living in the woods, so the other clans started having names like “Boat people” or “Shallow Valley people”.

August made up the term Nightblood.

"You must choose wisely" comes from something Becca said to Callie, about choosing the person to give the Flame to. Too bad that later Commanders didn’t know it meant “find the most qualified person” and instead got the weird idea that it meant making a bunch of kids fight each other and that one of them winning somehow means the dead Commander’s spirit “chose” their successor.

One thing that definitely makes a lot more sense now is the Grounder’s bizarre fashion sense, I can easily see a bunch of 21st century upper middle class/rich teenagers thinking it would be super cool to wear warpaint, tattoos and dreadlocks (even if you’re as white as the original Sheidheda), and some later Commander going: “I want to wear a crown! No, you know what would be cool? That thing Indian women wear on their foreheads? You know that thing? I could wear that!”

Easter Egg: Callie was reading Ovid’s “Metamorphosis” at home just before the news of the nuclear apocalypse came - the same book that Niylah gave as a gift to Octavia not long after they went into the bunker (5x02). And maybe it is literally the same book - they sure weren’t printing any new books and someone had to bring that book initially to the Second Dawn bunker during the first apocalypse. In 5x02, it was symbolic of Octavia’s transformation into Blodreina. Here, it may be symbolic of Callie becoming a leader, or the transformation of the entire society.

But some other retcons don’t work well:

The Flame’s abilities have been retconed so many times, but this is the first time we learn that it enhances the Commanders’ senses - which is a big plot point, as it allowed Becca to hear the sounds of the Stone. We have never heard about that before or seen any indication that Lexa or S5/6 Madi had any enhanced sight or Matt Murdock-like super-hearing.

So why was Becca called the Commander aka Heda? I don’t mean the fact that she was never one - Callie could have decided to call her the first Commander as an homage. But why that term? The flashback in 3x07 made it look like it was because Becca was wearing a suit with the word “Commander” (because she took the actual Commander’s suit before she left Polaris) - but since everyone knew who she was, why would that make them start calling her Commander?

Prequel speculation

There’s a lot of reasons why I’d like to see the prequel picked up. Firstly, because Callie is a likable and charismatic protagonist. Reese could be an interesting antagonist as he is her brother - and while he has been a grade A a-hole so far, there’s room there for character development, especially with his relationship with his sister, backstory of abuse by their father and the probability that he’ll understand at some point that he won’t be able to get the Flame to his dad even if he gets it. There’s also the fact that their mother will need saving at the start of the new show (if it gets picked up), and certainly a lot of other possibilities for family drama. And we’d probably also see Callie change and be faced with difficult and morally ambiguous situations that test her, much as we’ve seen with Clarke over the seasons.

Several other things mentioned by Jason in his interviews sound quite exciting:

Lost-style flashbacks to the characters’ lives pre-apocalypse: I’d love this. It would present a contrast before and after the apocalypse, and flesh out characters, and let us learn more about things like, what the Battle of San Francisco was, which wars was Diyoza in, more about Diyoza’s role as a freedom fighter/terrorist... can we get more Diyoza backstory?

the possibility of seeing the origins of the Ark and ancestors of our main characters like Clarke, Bellamy and Octavia (and we know we would see the ancestors of these characters, Jason mentioned that - the guy clearly does know what the fandom likes and wants), immediately doubled my interest. I just hope there’s a good idea how to do that without 1) the two stories looking completely disconnected (it seems this won’t be the case as Jason mentioned that Callie’s people will have to go to space to make more Nightblood and this will allow crossovers) and 2) with a good explanation how the people on the Ark, 97 years later, did not know about the survivors on the ground, about the Earth being survivable, or about the Nightblood, which had been used by Eligius years before. The line "Dad had friends on more than one space station. They already know we're here" also begs for an explanation.

on the ground, we’ll see Callie and co. looking for more survivors (after all, there were more bunkers and other shelters) and offering them Nightblood as a “cure” - which could lead to a lot of interesting situations (and potentially pretty current commentary, if there are people who refuse it)... On the other hand, this could also lead to some more moral dilemmas when they run out of the Nightblood shots (they have 2,000 at the moment, and again, Jason has indicated that they will run out of NB and will have to create more).

Some of the big questions include - who becomes the actual first Commander? How does the society develop from there? When and how is the Anomaly Stone deactivated on Earth, and where is it now? How does Becca’s knowledge eventually get lost? We’ve heard it’s because the data got corrupted/deteriorated over time, but it’s a little too convenient that even Madi still had Becca’s memories, but the scientific and technological all other knowledge was gone during the following 95 years.

I have some ideas how it could go. A lot of people (including, obviously, Bill himself in-universe) wonder if Callie became a Commander and would like to see her be the first Commander. But Callie is the first Flamekeeper, and I don’t see her going “I’m the best and most qualified person, I should have it”. This doesn’t preclude the possibility - she may finally take it for similar reasons Clarke did in season 3, because she has to in order to do something important and there are no other candidates around. But that would be too optimistic an option. Maybe Reese manages to get his hands on the Flame, but Callie or August or someone from her faction manages to disconnect the Stone so he wouldn’t be able to get it to Bill? Or maybe someone else - say, Tristan, who so far can be summed up as “that while guy a-hole who hangs out with Reese” - managed to get his hands on it and then make himself Commander? If people like Tristan or Reese become the Commander, that would work better in terms of explaining how things went so wrong with the Grounder society.

There have been speculations if these characters are ancestors of this or that character we know. Maybe Tristan is an ancestor of this Tristan from season 1 (the guy who was sent to ‘slaughter’ the 100 and was killed by Kane in 2x01)? People are often named after their grandparents, sometimes even after their parents, or celebrated ancestors - names can get passed on like that, and Tristan isn’t exactly the most common name. Or, if Tristan manages to become a Commander - that would make it a popular name.

In any case, the prequel needs to provide a convincing explanation how the society of these survivors and their descendants went from what we see in this episode to the Grounder society we know. But this is my big concern about the prequel - and it’s the problem that many prequels have: however they get there, we know how things turn out; we know it all somehow goes wrong, and that not only will the antagonist fail in their initial goal (getting the Flame to Bill), but the protagonist, Callie, will ultimately fail in her attempts to create a better society. Instead, the Grounder society will descend into tribalism, worship of violence, and constant wars between a bunch of clans, the Flame won’t be given to the person chosen as most qualified but will be fought over by a bunch of children selected on the basis of “special blood” (as Nightblood becomes rarer over time) and forced to kill each other, and most of Becca’s knowledge will be forgotten, as Grounders become technologically underdeveloped and unable to really defend themselves from the Mountain Men, who will learn about them in a few decades and start using them as blood supply.

On the other hand, knowing that the protagonists will fail and that everything will go wrong is often the case with prequels (e.g. regardless of their quality, Star Wars prequels were certainly watched by many people), or, for that matter, with some period dramas (e.g. Babylon Berlin, which I love - set in the Weimar Republic, which means that we know all the time while watching the show that things will go horribly wrong on the level of the society). Sometimes that sense of doom doesn’t turn me off as viewer and actually makes the story more compelling in a way. But that would certainly be a difference from The 100 - no matter how dark, we can still hope things will turn out well and a good solution will be found. Or maybe everything will go even worse. We don’t know how things turn out with the humanity in general. In this prequel, we would know.

Body count for this episode: in the present day, no one. in the flashbacks... over 10 billion people.

Rating: 9/10

#the 100 #the 100 7x08 #anaconda #the 100 backdoor pilot #the 100 prequel #callie cadogan #calliope cadogan #clarke griffin #bill cadogan #becca franko #reese cadogan #grace cadogan #becca pramheda #the anomaly

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jbk405 · 4 years

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The worst retcons in Star Wars

While I’m riding high on the finale to Star Wars: The Clone Wars (No I am not crying....I cried it all out last night) I have decided to compile a list of the worst retcons to the Star Wars franchise.

Why? I dunno, I’m a crotchety old nerd who likes to complain about decades-old stories. Do I need another reason?

In no particular order:

Making Emperor Palpatine a Sith

It’s been 21 years since The Phantom Menace came out, so for an entire generation of nerds he’s always been “Darth Sidious”, but we old-timers remember that for the 22 years before that there was no connection between the Emperor and the Sith. The term “Sith” itself was present from the earliest iterations of the first film and was used in some promotional materials and tie-ins and toys, but it was solely connected to Darth Vader as a Dark Lord of the Sith. The Expanded Universe built a specific philosophy and history around the Sith as a concept, not just as a catch-all term for darksider, and that history explicitly didn’t include the Emperor. There was even hate and schism between the Sith and some other Dark Side philosophies, and even those who didn’t use the Force at all. In The Truce at Bakura, an EU novel that began the day after Return of the Jedi, an Imperial governor initially dismisses the Rebels’ claims that the Emperor is dead as propaganda until they say that Vader is the one who killed him. That he believes, and even says how foolish it was for the Emperor to have trusted a Sith.

Even without going into what Dark Side philosophy the Emperor did follow, having Vader as a Sith and the Emperor not helped flesh out the universe by showing that even amongst the totalitarian despots there were different factions. Just like Hitler and Mussolini each had their own brands of Fascism, they can work together while still being distinct.

Introducing the concept of the Chosen One

People often forget that Darth Vader wasn’t the main antagonist of the original Star Wars film, Grand Moff Tarkin was. Vader filled the role described as “The Dragon”, the enforcer and primary legman, and the threat they had to bypass so that they could destroy the real threat. He was a lackey. A cool lackey absolutely, who grew into the primary antagonist in The Empire Strikes Back, but still a lackey. And despite how cool and badass he is (And don’t get me wrong, he is a fantastic character and one of the best villains in history) there’s nothing “special” about him within the context of the Jedi and Force users in general. He does not have any significant advantage over Obi-Wan Kenobi in their duel and is obviously completely unprepared for Kenobi to become One with the Force at his loss (And it is debatable if he even “won” at all given Kenobi’s deliberate self-sacrifice). When he and Luke duel in ESB he definitely has the upper hand throughout their entire fight, but only as somebody with more experience and training, not because he is Magically Superior. By the time of ROTJ Luke has even surpassed him despite only three years of experience.

In the Original Trilogy Vader is portrayed as a dangerous, powerful, and skilled opponent, but never as somebody POWERFUL. Never as somebody whose strength or control over the Force is legendary, who is heralded in prophecy. Yoda performs feats with the Force that Vader never comes close to equaling.

To go back and say that actually his affinity the Force is the greatest that the Jedi have ever seen, even greater than Yoda himself (BTW, I’m including the midi-chlorians under this header) makes no sense. To say that he was the Emperor’s #2, helping run the entire Empire right from the moment of its founding, contradicts the original film itself where he was lower on the chain of command.

Darth Vader, and by proxy Anakin Skywalker, was a good enough character without trying to shill his background all to hell.

The impending threat of the Yuuzhan Vong

I’ll be upfront, I never liked the stories with the Yuuzhan Vong in and of themselves (When they started coming in is right about when I stopped reading new EU material). The New Jedi Order just didn’t grab my attention. But what really riled me up was the way the EU tried to backfill the Vong into the franchise history by saying that the entire rise of the Galactic Empire was to prepare for their arrival. That Palpatine knew they were coming, and since the Republic would have been incapable of standing against them he took over so that the galaxy could present a strong, unified front against them.

This is something I actually see a lot of in fiction, and it pisses me off each time: The evil despot actually had noble goals because they knew of an even greater threat and they needed to take control in order to deal with it, because a dictatorship gets things done. You even see this in real life when people try to say that for all Hitler’s faults you have to respect that he made Germany a powerhouse that was this close to conquering the world, and that Mussolini made the trains run on time. Not only are these examples patently false (Nazi Germany never was “this” close to winning the war, and the trains never did run on time in Italy), but they come with the tacit endorsement that maybe their evilness would be worth it for the benefits.

The Galactic Empire explicitly wasn’t a Super Efficient Society. We saw time and again how wasteful the Empire was with its resources as it squandered them on inefficient superweapon after superweapon, how it laid waste to planet after planet for the purposes of propaganda. The Empire was so inefficient that it was able to be toppled by a ragtag band of rebels who had nowhere near the resources, population, wealth, or control it had. If the Empire couldn’t even defeat the Rebellion, just how was it supposed to stand against the Vong? And if the explanation is that the Emperor had been seduced by his own ambition and forgotten his original “noble” goals, why would other characters who knew the truth have gone along with his wanton oppression even after his death?

Trying to give the Empire a “reason” for existing was self-contradictory and borderline offensive.

Having the Clones fight for the Republic

I’m very much in two minds over this one, because as bad as the original retcon was other creators have managed to turn it into genius (Looking at you Clone Wars and The Clone Wars). But I’m nothing if not petty, so...

The Clone Wars were one of the eras that had not been discussed in great detail in the EU before the Prequels came out, instead only being vaguely alluded to. George Lucas was already talking about making more movies and they didn’t want to contradict what was to come. But even with only those vague allusions, it was established that the Clones were the bad guys. The Clonemasters were regarded monsters who unleashed hordes upon the Republic like a swarm of locusts or a plague. The Clones themselves were often unstable, and regarded by the populace as soulless duplicates overwhelming the galaxy. The clones were held in such fear by the populace that Mara Jade -- an Old Empire loyalist (Sort-of) -- decided to switch from passively assisting the New Republic because her boss told her to to actively assisting them at the thought of the Empire starting the Clone Wars again.

Even the name of the conflict implies that the Clones were the enemy: People don’t name a war after their own soldiers. The Droid War, Separatist Secession, Clone & Droid Conflict, Jedi Aggression, etc. all would have made more sense for the war as depicted.

Getting into philosophy, the idea of cloning soldiers expressly for war is morally abhorrent. It’s mass slavery. And I am far from the first person to point this out, but that aspect is not even mentioned in the Prequel films. The Jedi accepting this clone army is repugnant, and some people have used this to show that the Jedi Order was already corrupt at the time of the rise of the Empire, but this wasn’t explored at all in the films that introduced the clones as the Grand Army of the Republic.

Getting into just simple common sense...HOW FUCKING DENSE DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO JUST ACCEPT A MYSTERIOUS ARMY THAT APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE?!?!

That makes no sense. It never made sense. The idea that nobody in the Republic, from the government to the military to the populace at large, questioned the very existence of the clone army....it was too much. The exploration of just how ridiculous this is made for great fodder in The Clone Wars, but only because they had to paper over the GIANT GAPING CHASMS that the concept created.

Making the Jedi a cult

In the old EU, the Jedi of the Old Republic were described as allowed to have families, even being encouraged to do so. They were allowed to pursue lives and interests and careers outside of the order itself, and didn’t need to forsake who they used to be. The Jedi Council didn’t have legal authority over the lives of its members, and didn’t try to mandate personal lifestyle.

People started training in their teens when they were old enough to at least understand the concept, and if they were taken as children it was in unusual extraneous circumstances.

While there were Jedi customs, and Jedi Codes, and they had rules and regulations to follow, but they addressed how they should act as Jedi. They didn’t care what kind of clothing you wore.

Starting with The Phantom Menace, Jedi were taken at such young ages to begin their training that they could not give any consent to their enlistment, nor were they offered any alternatives when they had grown up and may be able to decide for themselves. They are indoctrinated into a singular Jedi philosophy, not allowed to even debate the dogma of the Council without ostracism, let alone actually defy it. The Jedi Council unilaterally makes decisions for the entire Order galaxy-wide without any apparent method for dissent or appeal, or any devolution of authority.

Taking (Abducting) children as infants, not allowing them any contact with their families, mandating an isolated ascetic existence...the Jedi Order became a cult.

That’s a cult, plain and simple.

These changes didn’t make the Jedi “complex”, didn’t make the conflict “shades of grey”, they’re just creepy and nonsensical.

#Star Wars #Retroactive Continuity #Retcons #Original Trilogy #Expanded Universe #Prequel Trilogy #Clone Wars #The Clone Wars #Sith #Jedi #Jedi Order #Clone Army #Yuuzhan Vong #Cult

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absolxguardian · 4 years

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In Which I Hit the Concept of Force Dyads With a Hammer Until They Work (A canon complaint fix)

Here’s my canon complaint fix-it for one part of TROS- the Force Dyads and Kylo Ren’s redemption. This is a Watsonian explanation for that part of the film that should make canon more enjoyable for people with similar tastes in stories to me. This reinterpretation is anti-Bendemption, agrees with Kreia regarding the Cosmic Force (“I hate the Force, I hate that it seems to have a will, that it would control us to achieve some measure of balance when countless lives are lost”), and features tropes I’m a fan of. It accepts every detail canon has given us and uses them as a sandbox to (in my opinion) make a better version of the story. Except for the R/ylo kiss at the end. That’s just flat out ignored, since doing so doesn’t require a massive restructuring of the film. If this isn’t the kind of thing you’d like, then keep scrolling. As for everyone else, let’s begin.

Rather than structuring this post by following the film and jumping back to explain the changes, I’ve structured it in an order that introduces concepts as they build off each other until we get to the actual fixing.. I’d also like to thank my mom for assuming that the only way Kylo Ren could be “redeemed” was through possession and therefore planting the seed of this idea.

If there’s evidence for an idea, I’ll include it. Otherwise if I plainly state a new fact, it’s just my headcanon.

I. BALANCE

I think part of the reason why actually understanding the Force is hard, resulting in both fans and authors talking themselves into circles is that there are actually multiple forms of balance regarding the Force.

1. Natural Balance

“Breathe,” [Luke] said. “Just breathe. Now reach out with your feelings. What do you see?” [....] [Rey’s] first impression was life—life all around her. She could sense herself, and the Caretakers pottering about near the huts, but there was so much more than that. She felt the presence of flowers and grasses and shrubs. Birds and insects and fish, and creatures too tiny for the eye to see. Her awareness of all of it seemed to crowd her senses, plunging her into something so deep and intense that for a moment she thought she might drown in it, only to realize that was impossible, because she was a part of that life. But there was death, too—and decay. Dead flesh and vegetable matter, sinking into soil that hid bones and dry sticks from bygone seasons of the island. She shrank from this new awareness, but sensed almost immediately that there was nothing to fear. From the death and decay sprang new life, nourished by what had come before. She could feel the warmth of the suns—not just on her face but on the rocks and the surface of the ceaseless tumble of the water. And cold, too, which surrounded the dark places where the roots of the island and the seafloor were revealed as one and the same. There was peace—mother porgs with their eggs, sheltered and safe in warm hollows—but also violence that left behind broken nests and shattered shells. And all that her senses showed her had been but a moment. That moment was but one of trillions, part of a never-ending cycle that had begun eons before she was born and would go on for eons after she was dead. And it was itself part of something vastly larger, so enormous that her mind couldn’t grasp it, an immensity even the stars were but the tiniest portion of. -The Last Jedi Novelization

Natural balance is the Living Force is ecological balance. It’s the food chain properly aligned. It’s rotation cropping. It’s the cycles of life and death that exist on a planet. The cycles, that while they may result in short term destruction, are better for all life forms in the long run. It’s the connection between all living things, and the expression of the Living Force. It is also homeostasis, the balance inside us that we need to exist. The tested machine that most bodies are.

This isn’t a balance for sapient beings. There is nothing immoral about a predator who kills its prey. It is immoral to commit murder. The only reason the Empire disrupted this balance was because of their rampant exploitation and destruction of environments such as Lothal. It is an unforgiving balance, but the basis of all life.

Dume is an expression and protector of this balance. He wanted the Empire gone because that was the only way Lothal, and many other planets, could have their Natural Balance.

2. Personal Balance

“But you’re finding the balance, without even meaning to. You’re finding the place that’s level.” On the desk was a clear glass filled halfway with milk. [Maz] picked it up and showed it to him. “Do you see where the surface lies? If I tip the glass to the left, the surface tips high to the left and low to the right. And the reverse, when I tip it the other way. But if I hold it still—even if I swish it a little first, like this!—you watch, and it’ll…settle. It soon finds its level. Its balance. You’re doing the very same thing, though I’m sure you couldn’t explain it if I tried to force you.” [...] The room went white, and then it went black, and [Karr] fluttered his eyes trying to find the balance. He pictured the glass half full of milk. He imagined it sloshing around, back and forth, light to dark and back again. He thought of the surface, level and smooth. [...] Finding a place in the middle. Finding his balance. -Force Collector

This is the balance characters mean when they talk about finding your balance. It’s emotional balance, and balance between the Force and Not The Force. It’s the puesdo-zen thing. It’s what Jedi meditate to achieve.

It’s less of a balance between things, and more like the balance on a tightrope. Or the balance that Tiffany Aching must learn in the Discworld series to cast spells. Tiffany has to be balanced in the world and let magic flow through her without controlling it, just directing it. She must be like the fulcrum of a scale.

In the case of the Force, if you lose your balance you fall into the Dark Side- something I see as More Force. But if you are careful, you can play among the edges. The equivalent of going faster on the tightrope and using the disruption of the line. To continue this metaphor, the Jedi Order we see in the Republic is the equivalent of when you are so concerned about keeping balance that you don’t move down the tightrope itself.

It’s also the balance one needs in their personal life to remain healthy. These first two types of balance are also ones that find expression in our own world. When the Jedi give good psychological advice, like accepting what can’t be changed, considered thought about the greater good, and moving on from the dead- what they’re advocating promotes Personal Balance

3. Cosmic Balance

Kreia: “I hate the Force, I hate that it seems to have a will, that it would control us to achieve some measure of balance when countless lives are lost” -Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords

“Let’s say I do,” Rael answered. “Let’s say I believe that someday there’s going to be perfect balance in the Force, thanks to some kinda ‘Chosen One.’ Did you ever really think about what that would mean, Qui-Gon? It would mean the darkness would be just as strong as the light. So it doesn’t matter what we do, because in the end, hey, it’s a tie! It doesn’t matter which side we choose.” -Master and Apprentice

I’m not considering Rael as a reliable narrator, but his speech expresses a common idea a lot of fans have regarding balance in the Force, so it seemed like a good opener. While Kreia’s famous line is basically the philosophy that I’m following here.

When characters talk about “bringing balance to the Force”, they’re talking about Cosmic Balance. So how am I defining it? There are two scenarios that bring about balance- when neither a dark side or a light side organization controls the galaxy or when a dark side and a light side organization are of similar power levels. So during the prequel era? Force is unbalanced. It’s too stagnant. During the reign of the Empire? Likewise unbalanced. The number of light and dark side users may be roughly similar, but the Sith control the galactic government while hunting the Jedi. Between the OT and the ST? Actually balanced. No Force order exerts a large amount of influence on the galaxy. Something like the setting for Star Wars The Old Republic where both the Sith and Jedi have their own powerful states? Also balanced.

So why? Well I haven’t entirely decided on a reason. This definition of balance comes from the Cosmic Force, which while not evil, isn’t good either. It has some purpose beyond the understanding mortals. But that’s the cosmic dance that the galaxy keeps getting thrown into without concern for any kind of morality. It’s just it’s nature. The nature of an eldritch being. That’s the will of the Force. It seems fitting that not even me, the author, knows why that is its nature.

II. THE CHOSEN ONE PROPHECY “A Chosen One shall come, born of no father, and through him will ultimate balance in the Force be restored.” -An ancient Jedi prophecy (Master and Apprentice)

The Father, to Anakin: “And now you see who you truly are. Only the Chosen One could tame both of my children.” -The Clone Wars (S3E15 Overlords)

This is what we know of the Chosen One prophecy. There have been different readings of it, but I think now that we have the actual text of the prophecy and the fact that Anakin was able to control both of the Ones, it has to be him.

So how does he do so? Well during the PT there are two seperate conflicts from which balance can come from. The first is the conflict between the Ones, pure unadulterated expressions of the Force (more on that later). And then the galactic conflict, on a less reality shattering scale.

Anakin brings balance to both of those conflicts through destruction. By the end of the Mortis arc, all of the Ones are dead- with Ahsoka carrying the spirit of The Daughter. And he eventually balances the galactic conflict by creating a scenario with both a diminished Sith and Jedi order.

As part of the fact that the Cosmic Force is so far removed from us, it doesn’t care about how the galaxy is actually being ruled. If the Empire wasn’t led by dark side users, then there would still be Cosmic Balance.

Shortly after Vader yeets Palpatine, the Cosmic Force falls “asleep.” This has to happen after the party on Endor, because Force Ghosts are expressions of the Cosmic Force (that’s why you shouldn’t trust them), so it obviously isn’t a binary flicking of a switch.

That aspect of the Force—the Jedi had called it the living Force—was ceaseless and ever-renewing. But the Jedi had spoken of another aspect—the Cosmic Force. It had an awareness, and a purpose, and a will. A will that had been silent, dormant after the demise of the Sith, only to wake once again during Luke’s exile. A will that Luke finally allowed himself to acknowledge once again. -The Last Jedi Novelization

So achieving balance through destruction of the expression of both the Light and the Dark wipes the slate clean to begin again. This current story- this current cycle, is over. The Chosen One prophecy has been fulfilled, and so now the Cosmic Force must slumber until the stage is once again set.

IV. THE ONES

The Father: “You cannot imagine what it is to have such love for your children, and realize they could tear the very fabric of the universe. [...] A family in balance, the light and the dark. Day with night. Destruction replaced by creation. [...] Too much dark or light would be the undoing of life as you understand it.” -The Clone Wars (S3E15 Overlords)

But before we can move onto the last cycle, I need to expand on the Ones. The Son and The Daughter are pure expressions of the Force- all of it: Cosmic, Living, and in between. Their conflict also expresses Personal Balance on an external stage. They leave such big imprints in the Force that they can disrupt the Personal and Natural Balances of the galaxy itself, which is The Father’s worry.

They are also somehow related to time and The World Between Worlds. Since they’re part of the Cosmic Force, which is partially time neutral (From a Certain Point of View stories Master and Apprentice and Time of Death), that makes sense.

Sometimes they go dormant and exist purely in the Cosmic Force. Other times they embody themselves inside mortal beings. What we see in the Mortis arc is when they embody themselves in the physical world without a mortal shell. That is when they’re at the most powerful. When they are in equally matched conflict, Cosmic Balance is achieved.

The Father was once a Chosen One. When he was mortal, the Son and Daughter battled openly in the physical world, leaving destruction in their wake. As the Chosen One, he could control them. By fully embracing his full potential, he became a Force-God, but one whose power could wane and wouldn’t be reborn in the same way as his metaphorical children. That’s how he can say he’s dying in the Mortis arc. He exiled the three of them to Mortis, so the children could carry out their conflict separate from the galaxy and stay in balance.

He’s what Anakin could have become if he remained on Mortis instead of killing the incarnations of the Ones. Except Anakin never would have. Force prophecies are like prophecies in Greek mythology, they always come true, just rarely how you’d expect. The Cosmic Force uses visions, prophecies, and even Force Ghosts to manipulate people to fulfill their goals. People still have free will, but it’s basically impossible to outsmart a being who can already see the impact of all of its actions and plan accordingly. It only gives prophecies and visions in the precise way that will make them become self fulfilling, to carry out its unknowable goals.

Ahsoka is an embodiment of the Daughter, but that’s a divergence from the cycle. She doesn’t have a Son to compliment her. Without knowing what Ahsoka does after Rebels, I can’t write how the Cosmic Force accounts for this aberration.

Ahsoka doesn’t understand her divine importance the way The Daughter did, but even The Daughter wasn’t plugged into the Cosmic Force’s actual will. Nothing, no embodiment of the Force, ever is. Ahsoka has powers beyond her understanding and control, but she used them to influence the World Between Worlds to save her.

V. AND THUS, THE STORY

Kylo Ren sensed her before he saw her. As he flew his TIE whisper along the flat desert, she was a bright presence in his mind, practically glowing with determination and ferocity. Something odd pulled at his chest. It was the same feeling he’d had when he’d faced his father for the last time, when he’d made the decision to kill Han Solo. You had to kill the past, yes, but you had to kill the light, too, to fully claim the darkness. He finally understood. Han Solo was his past. But Rey was his light. That’s why Kylo was still in agony. That’s why he couldn’t shake the memory of his father’s hand against his cheek, of those eyes full of love and understanding. Kylo hadn’t yet destroyed his light. Maybe the Emperor was right. She needed to die. That, or he needed to kill the light in her. -The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

So now that we’ve set up all the concepts, we can get to the actual fixing of the Dyads. If you couldn’t guess from what I’ve been focusing on, being Force Dyads actually just means that Rey is the embodiment of The Daughter and Kylo Ren The embodiment of the Son. While to us, TROS is the end of the Skywalker saga, to the Cosmic Force, the previous cycle involved Anakin and went from before the PT to ROTJ. A new cycle begins for the Force at TFA.

That’s why Kylo is obsessed with Rey, either killing her (and returning the Daughter to domancy) or by turning her to the Dark Side. That is how he must express the conflict of The Ones.

The standard definition of a dyad is something made up of two parts. Not a matched pair, but a single entity. That’s what The Ones are. If one of their mortal embodiments turned the other to their side, that aspect of The Ones would have reached out and overpowered the other.

There is one line in the novelization that’s doesn’t quite work with this reading:

[Palpatine] tried to create a dyad with Anakin, as his master had tried to create one with him. The Rule of Two, a Master always in desperate search of a yet more powerful apprentice, was a pale imitation, an unworthy but necessary successor to the older, purer doctrine of the Dyad. -The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

But don’t worry! I do have an explanation! Palpatine’s just an unreliable narrator. Some previous Sith had gleaned something about the actual dyad system and interpreted incorrectly from there. He can sense that Kylo and Rey make a true Dyad together, but he has no idea what that entails.

So when did Kylo and Rey become the Son and Daughter? Well this wouldn’t be much of an anti-Bendemption reading if he was forced to the Dark Side by the Son. We know that the Force woke up when Kylo Ren fell (A will that had been silent, dormant after the demise of the Sith, only to wake once again during Luke’s exile), but that’s just the Force getting ready because now a new cycle is beginning.

Kylo and Rey become embodiments of the Ones right when TFA began. That’s how everyone is talking about some aspect of the Cosmic Force being awake then, even when it supposedly woke up six years ago.

The Force chose who would act out the roles of the Ones, fighting each other, deciding the fate of the galaxy, and one of their eventual destruction by who was in the most suitable situation at the time. Kylo and Rey both already had high levels of potential in the Force and their own destinies. They were also both in the right place to come into conflict and were aligned to the right sides. So they were chosen, for the extent of any amount of chronology you can put onto the Cosmic Force.

What happened to Ahsoka to free up the Daughter’s spirit? I don’t know. TROS already implied that she’s dead with her showing up as the one of the past Jedi, but I don’t like confronting that idea. Maybe she surrendered the spirit? Or an embodiment of the Cosmic Force took it from her? Maybe she lost it when the Force fell asleep anyway? But the fact she was likewise once an avatar of the Daughter is why Rey can hear her voice. Because she wasn’t a Jedi when she died, her rejecting the Order is pretty important to the arc. And Rey wasn’t channeling all the light side users that came before her, just Jedi. And Ahsoka because of their connection, whether or not our favorite Togruta is still alive then.

So that is how Rey and Kylo are connected, and why they each have the unwavering belief that they can turn the other. They could just kill the other, but that would be a less satisfying end to the conflict. If they, as people, could beat the other in a battle of wills and push out the other One, that’s a more satisfactory ending. Hence:

With this realization came another certainty, even more gut wrenching: [Kylo] was relieved he hadn’t killed [Rey].

-The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

Basically every kind of R/ylo-y sounding piece of narration is explained because they have a different kind of connection between each other. It’s less soulmates and more Gannandorf vs Link. Which is why it entails Kylo torturing Rey and her friends.

Speaking of her friends, Finn is even more heavily implied to be Force sensitive in the novelization than he already was. And he has this piece of narration:

No one quite understood [Finn’s] single-minded devotion to Rey, except maybe Leia. Even Rose—though she accepted it—thought it was a bit strange. But it wasn’t strange at all. Rey was Finn’s friend, yes, but she was also important. He sensed it. It was that same undeniable feeling he’d told Jannah about. If anything happened to Rey, the Resistance didn’t stand a chance.

-The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

Finn already gives me the vibe that he’d be a Jedi Consular in the old Legends system, so it fits that he can vaguely sense Rey’s importance in the Force.

Now, up until that scene in TROS, Rey and Kylo aren’t being possessed by The Ones. The only influence it is having on their thoughts is that it connects them together and causes Rey to believe that there is still hope for Kylo after his many many second chances.

When Leia sacrifices herself to distract Kylo, that’s what she’s intending to do. Leia still loves Kylo, she can’t help herself. But she isn’t the kind of person who gets consumed by personal concerns. So she plans to use her misguided love for good, to distract Kylo in the right moment so that Rey could kill him.

And Rey almost does. But she’s influenced by the spirit of the Daughter. So she heals Kylo, but that’s not all she’s doing. As she’s channeling her life energy into Kylo, she’s also channeling her will and the spirit of The Daughter. With that, Rey unknowingly possesses Kylo Ren and forces him back to the Light Side.

When Kylo has his vision of Han, that’s his brain representing this new influence on him. Rey doesn’t have direct control over Kylo. She doesn’t even have any idea that this happened, but she forces Kylo’s goals to align with hers.

[Ben] blasted them easily, one shot for every kill. Not long ago, he would have taken pleasure in this, but now he had only one consuming desire: Help Rey.

-The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

And now it is time for the Cosmic Force to lie! Basically, everything that Luke tells Rey at Ach-To is actually the Cosmic Force using his consciousness (see the post I linked earlier about how connected Force Ghosts are to the Cosmic Force). I feel like one of the Cosmic Force’s motivations has to be making sure that the only way to cheat death is through becoming a Force Ghost. This works with how George says that the only way to truly transcend the need to die is to let go and become a Force Ghost. All Must Eventually Return To It. A dark side shade like the Nightsister’s magicks or the Enchantress’ spirit in The Mighty Chewbacca in The Forest of Fear is ok. But Palpatine survived by mastering the whole “consciousness transfer into the clone” power he had in legends:

His body was dead, an empty vessel, long before it found the bottom of the shaft, and his mind jolted to new awareness in a new body—a painful one, a temporary one.

-The Rise of Skywalker Noveliation

And that’s not allowed. So the Cosmic Force wants Palpatine permanently destroyed, even if it means this cycle lasted only two years. So that’s why “Luke” says something like this:

Rey said, “I gave him some of my life. In that moment I would have given him all of it…died if I had to.” “Your compassion saved him,” said Luke.

-The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

And everything else he says in the film itself. When Rey says she would have spent all of her life energy to save Kylo, that’s just because she had an instinct to keep pushing her essence into Kylo Ren. She wasn’t aware that was because she was defeating The Son in a battle of wills.

And speaking of Force Healing, this entire extra story also fixes how Kylo Ren was able to revive Rey from being entirely dead. Because with all the stuff George said about becoming a Force ghost being the only way to transcend death, any very powerful Force User being able to bring someone else back from the dead by sacrificing their own life feels like way too low of a power requirement. There’s only been one other character resurrected in such a way, and that was Ahsoka using The Daughter’s spirit. So Rey’s subconscious reaches out and uses Kylo Ren’s life force to come back to life, and to subsume the entirety of The Ones in a Light Side aligned form.

Is that ethical? Debatable. But theme wise, this story is more in the realm of old myths where things Just Happen, directed by beings too unknowable for things like human morality.

Now other than the thing we’re all ignoring, there are two last pieces of narration from Rey in the novelization that doesn’t work with this reading, so let’s address them.

[Ben] acknowledged her, and Rey’s lips parted in surprise. It felt different now. The connection was…right. Good. Like coming home. Ben was similarly stunned, and together, they wasted a precious moment reveling in this new sharing. This is how it should have been all along. A true dyad.

-The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

The girl who had felt alone for all those years on Jakku had been part of a dyad the whole time. And just when [Rey had] discovered that precious connection, that incredible oneness, it was ripped away.

-The Rise of Skywalker Novelization

This is actually just Rey misunderstanding a different feeling- being drunk on Light Side power. We have a general understanding about what being overwhelmed by the Dark Side is like, but without exceptional means it’s impossible to have one’s Personal Balance disrupted by the Light Side. That’s falling off our metaphorical tightrope, but into the air above you.

The Light Side often feels like coming home, like warmth, like connection, and like certainty in purpose. So while someone overwhelmed by the Dark Side feels drunk on power, what I just outlined is what someone overwhelmed by the Light Side feels. Also Mind Tricks are already a Light Side power, so it makes sense the most extreme form of it leads to a Light Side high.

So Rey leaves Exegol, incredibly powerful in the Force and the Cosmic Balance once more gone. Perhaps the galaxy will receive another generation, or even more, of peace. But one day, the cycle shall begin again- as the Cosmic Force demands.

So that’s it. I hope you now feel better about the dyads and Bendemption if you previously disliked that part of TROS. AU fix-it fics aren’t really my thing, and I prefer trying to fix thing up from a Watsonian, rather than Doylist perspective. If anyone has anything from the New EU that seems to contradict what I’ve written, please let me know so I can properly address it. If you have anything to add to this idea, such as why the Cosmic Force wants these cycles, please contribute. And if someone wants to make fanworks based on this idea, I’d love that so much.

#sw #star wars #tros #the rise of skywalker #anti-reylo #my writings

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inquisitorhotpants · 7 years

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A Comparison of the Republic & Imperial Militaries

Background Information:

-- The Republic military had no conscription. This is going to result in lower numbers (ex: the total strength of the US military is only 0.4% of the US population, and it’s estimated that the total number of current service personnel and veterans only comprises 7% of the total population).

-- While the ideological war drives the Jedi and Sith, the ideology hasn’t permeated the Republic the way it has the Empire (by dint of the Sith running the Empire and the continual reminder that the Republic has attempted total destruction of the Sith - and thus, by extension, all who follow them - more than once). This will also effect numbers.

-- We are presented with numerous canon examples, from KotOR to the prequel trilogy, of how the Republic is easily lulled into a false sense of security, and how they have no wish to get their hands dirty (see: the Jedi waiting when the Mandalorians attacked, see also: the “Grand” army of the Republic). Thus, that fire and the pugnacious spirit that tends to permeate the Empire is not present to such an extent in the Republic.

-- Corollary to this, there is a conversation between Canderous and Carth in KotOR where Canderous talks about how the Republic had more people, more vehicles, the Jedi, everything, and they still only won due to one Jedi general’s brilliant tactics, and one Jedi general’s WMD, basically, over Malachor V. The Republic isn’t known for their warfighting skill. (See also: the Grand Army of the Republic, who had to be created from birth to be effective soldiers.) This is by no means the only conversation; Canderous points out the ways the Republic fell on their faces numerous times in that game.

-- Per canon information, the Republic army was poorly funded and had consequent recruitment problems. Also with this, it’s written that the Army and the Navy don’t even have the same pay scales, which really makes me wonder what’s going on with the Republic because why on earth would you not pay your military the same, on a comparable pay chart?

Numbers!

So this involves quite a bit of calculation. Dropped under a cut to save dashboards.

One quick note: For simplicity’s sake, as this is meant to be a general look at military strengths on both sides of the galaxy, I am not accounting for wartime casualties. Frankly, it would only hurt the Republic, because they got roundly stomped in the Great Galactic War.

Empire

So per my population post, the total number of non-Force sensitives in the Empire is 15,999,216,000,000,000. To extrapolate out the total number of military personnel, we have to establish a few things:

The normal length of service in the Imperial military, barring a medical discharge, is 35 years, with the maximum being 40 years. This makes our average age range 18-62, accounting for enlistees directly out of school and officers who don’t begin their careers until after their university studies are complete.

To figure out the percentage that that would be for the total population, I used the world census data, averaged the rounded total for ages 18-62, and calculated the percent that is of the world population, giving me 57%. Sounds good, let’s use it.

57% of 15,999,216,000,000,000 is 9,119,553,100,000,000, which would be the total Imperial military strength, counting both front line active duty and reserve/home guard.

Obviously, not everyone is going to be front line active duty. Prior to the Great Galactic War, active duty consisted of 30% of the total military force, or 2,735,865,900,000,000. These are the folks on starships, at posts away from their home worlds, basically anything that isn’t “staying at home and waiting for a call-up”. It’s easier and less economically taxing to not field a massive active duty army when you aren’t actually fighting a war. You can train people at home.

Once the Great Galactic War started, 45% of the total military force were active duty, bringing the wartime total to 4,103,798,900,000,000. (And given that it was started by the Empire, once can reasonably assume that the plans for this force increase were in the works for some time.)

After the Great Galactic War, once they’d conclusively stomped the shit out of the Republic, there is a forces drawdown, though not to pre-war levels, in anticipation of the Republic retaliating. Post-Treaty strength is 37%, giving us an active duty military force post-Treaty of 3,374,234,600,000,000.

Imperial Summary:

Total military strength: 9,119,553,100,000,000

Pre-war active duty strength: 2,735,865,900,000,000 (30%)

Wartime active duty strength: 4,103,798,900,000,000 (45%)

Post-war active duty strength: 3,374,234,600,000,000 (37%)

Republic

The Republic population is 64,000,000,000,000,000. Using this methodology once again, and this time targeting the lowest end of the spectrum (because as we see in SWTOR - remember the quest to rat out the padawans? - the Jedi are very much not keen on relationships and attachment, etc etc etc), this gives us a total of:

19,200,000,000 Force sensitives of all magnitudes 63,999,981,000,000,000 non-Force sensitives

As noted above, the Republic has no conscription, and they also have enlistment/retention issues, which lead to drastically lower numbers.

It’s doubtful the length of service in the Republic military is as long as it is in the Empire, and tours are not lifetime hitches. Thus, the average age range for Republic service is 18 to 50, accounting for new enlistees at 18 and officers who didn’t begin their tour until after university. A “lifer” serves 25 years, instead of 30.

Using the same methodology as the Empire to calculate what percentage of the total non-Force sensitive population is military age, we arrive at 30,080,000,000,000,000 eligible-age people.

I’m estimating high for service in the rest of this, honestly. As I noted above, the military in the US only makes up 0.4% of our current population. Where there is no conscription or mandatory service, numbers are low. But estimating at the general rate for a number of non-conscript militaries in the world (most less than half of 1%) would have left the Republic, honestly, completely conquered and the whole galactic outlook of SWTOR would have been vastly different, so here we are.

Using this information as a guide (and absorbing the civilian DOD employees currently on the US military pay scale for simplicity’s sake), the Republic military is usually comprised of 61% active duty and 39% reserves.

Pre-war, the total force strength is 6% of the population, or 1,804,800,000,000,000, with the division between active duty and reserve being the aforementioned 61/39, giving us:

Active duty: 1,100,928,000,000,000

Reserve: 703,872,000,000,000

During the war, they get a boost in enlistment and other shady methods of “recruitment” as detailed in the Wookieepedia article. Total force strength during the Great Galactic War is 9%, or 2,707,200,000,000,000. The division between active duty and reserve at this time was 81/19, which will then account for the Sacking of Coruscant (not enough people left to guard it). This gives us:

Active duty: 2,192,832,000,000,000

Reserve: 514,368,000,000,000

Post-war levels drop, though not as low as they were pre-war, as the Republic of course expects the Empire to do something shady and underhanded at any moment. The total post-war strength is 7%, or 2,105,600,000,000,000. I personally believe after the Sacking they’d pull more people onto reserves/home guard, but then that wouldn’t account for how the Empire gets steamrolled by a much smaller force 12 years later. Anyway, the percentage allocation I’m working with post-Sacking is 70/30, giving us:

Active duty: 1,473,920,000,000,000

Reserve: 631,680,000,000,000

Republic Summary:

Pre-war active duty strength: 1,100,928,000,000,000

Wartime active duty strength: 2,192,832,000,000,000

Post-war active duty strength: 1,473,920,000,000,000

Final Summation

Pre-War Imperial active duty: 2,735,865,900,000,000 Republic active duty: 1,100,928,000,000,000

Wartime Imperial active duty: 4,103,798,900,000,000 Republic active duty: 2,192,832,000,000,000

Post-War Imperial active duty: 3,374,234,600,000,000 Republic active duty: 1,473,920,000,000,000

It is not surprising that the Republic lost the war, nor that Coruscant was sacked. We are never shown strategic sense on the part of the Republic, not once. Tactical acumen is hardly ever mentioned in context with the Republic, an entity that has demonstrated more than once that it lacks either the manpower or backbone to defend itself.

Had Revan - by canon accounts a tactical genius - deigned to finish taking over the Republic, she (you will pry fem!Revan from my cold dead hands) could have done so. But of course, thus the running off to Dromund Kaas to personally confront the Emperor (a tactically fucking asinine move), because you have to get rid of her somehow.

Conversely, we are told over and over about Imperial leaders and military figures who are tactical geniuses, who are highly intelligent, who have made their lives about warfighting. And yet somehow ... they never show this. The Empire has to go from conquering force to ass-backward bumblefucks in the space of 12 years, because the Republic has to win.

To be frank, it’s 100% bullshit how the Empire gets steamrolled throughout SWTOR. It doesn’t work numerically, it doesn’t work tactically - the Republic loses more than one WMD (that’s the whole point of the first chapter of the Jedi Knight storyline!) and got their asses beat in the Great Galactic War, and yet somehow, suddenly they’re amazing strategists that beat the Empire back at every turn? - and it’s pretty poor storytelling in my opinion because the net result is “lol Republic wins” in the face of all evidence to the contrary.

#swtor #number crunching #even on a war of attrition #the republic would lose #all those slogs we get #balmorra #hoth #don't get me started on fuckin corellia #but anyway #here's the military matchup #because why not

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dreadedloreenkid · 7 years

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I want to know all of the star wars asks, but I don't think you'd appreciate them all at once... so 1-10? or all, I don't mind :)

@ct-hardcase also asked me for some of these, so here goes. Sorry it’s late! Long post, so it’s under the cut.

1. Favourite Star Wars movie? (Episode 1-R1)Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

2. Favourite Star Wars era? Rise Of The Empire, but I’ve recently been getting into the Empire (19BBY-0ABY) a lot.

3 Favourite Star Wars trilogy? (Originals, Prequels, Sequels)Look, I love them all, but I’ll have to say Prequels, even though it’s pretty even, because I have a lot of nostalgic memories attached to them.

4. Jedi or Sith? I think Sith, from the point of view that I love learning about them and their history and doctrines. The Jedi are super interesting too, especially when delve deep into the political aspect of the Order. Idk, they’re both interesting in different ways.

5. Empire or Rebellion?Well, if you’d asked me this a few years ago I would have said Empire without hesitation, but now that I know and care more about the Galactic Civil War era, I have to say Rebellion.

6. Bounty Hunter or Clone/Strom/First order Trooper? CLONE TROOPERS!

7. Rebels or Clone wars? Clone Wars

8. Favourite Star Wars book?I must confess, I haven’t read many Star Wars books; of those I have, I’d probably say Aftermath: Empire’s End?

9. Favourite Star Wars Comic? I’ve never actually read any of the comics

10. Favourite Star Wars game? Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (the original from 2005, obviously). What an iconic game. I wish I still had a working PS2 to play it on, because I will never ever be bored of it. Empire At War is a close second, I really wish they had done a Clone Wars era edition of it.

11. Top 5 favourite female Jedi?Ahsoka Tano (who is not a Jedi anymoer and I strongly support that decision)Shaak TiAayla SecuraRey SkywalkerDepa Bilaba

12. Top 5 favourite male Jedi?Obi-Wan KenobiLuke SkywalkerQui-gon JinnKit FistoPlo Koon,

13. Top 5 favourite Bounty Hunters?Jango FettAsajj VentressJas EmariEmboBoba Fett

14. Top 5 favourite Sith?Darth MaulDarth SidiousAsajj VentressDarth VaderDarth Bane

15. Top 5 favourite Droids? Individual droids: -Mister Bones-C1-10P-R2-D2-General Kalani-C-3POModels: -OOM-Series Battle Droid-P-Series Droideka-HMP Droid Gunship-Vulture Droid-OG-9 Homing Spider Droid

16. Top 5 favourite Troopers? Fives (ARC-5555) Rex (CT-7567) Keeli Tup (CT-5385)Gregor (CC-5576-39)

7. Top 5 favourite Senators? Padmé AmidalaMon MothmaBail OrganaRiyo ChuchiLeia Organa (NR)

18. Top 5 favourite Republic/Rebellion shipsVenator-Class Star Destroyer (GR)LAAT/i Gunship (GR)ARC-170 Starfighter (GR)T65-B X-Wing Starfighter (RA/NR) Mon Calamari Star Cruiser (RA/NR)

19. Top 5 favourite Separatist/Imperial shipsRecusant-Class Light Destroyer (CIS)Imperial I-Class Star Destroyer (GI)TIE-series Starfighters (GI)Lucrehulk-Class Battleship (CIS)Providence-Class Star Dreadnought (CIS)

20. Top 5 favourite planets? NabooGeonosisCoruscantKashyyykMandalore

21. Where would you live in the Star Wars universe?Naboo, no question

22. Who would you be in the Star Wars universe?In terms of occupation, I think I’d be happy as a public official on Naboo tbh, nothing too fancy, but high enough to go travelling as part of diplomatic entourages.

23. What ship would you own?I think I would like to own nice Naboo yacht, something like what Padme had at the start of Episode II; otherwise, something reliable and reasonably comfortable, like a Corellian light freighter or similar. A customised Sheathipede class shuttle or Lambda class shuttle would be nice too.

24. What Droid would you own?I’m not sure that I’d own a droid, but I guess they’re useful so probably an astromech or a repurposed OOM-series or B1 battledroid.

25. Would you have a team, or would you work alone? Well, ideally I’d love to have a team of friends that I could trust and keep me company.

26. If you where a Jedi, would you be a Knight or a Master?I think I’d be a Knight. My disdain for the Council and their dogmatic doctrines would make them disinclined to grant me the rank of master, I should think.

27. If you where a Jedi Master, would you have a Padawan?Maybe? I doubt it, but alternatively I might be able to give them a better, more honest and open view of the galaxy than a more orthodox master.

28. If you where a Sith, would you be the Master or Apprentice? Oh, the apprentice for sure. I don’t have it in me to be a Sith master; I wouldn’t be a very good Sith. I mean, I can see myself using the Dark Side maybe, but I would never subscribe to the Sith Creed or doctrines.

29. If you where a Sith Lord, would you have an Apprentice?No, given that the Rule Of Two dictates that the apprentice only becomes master by killing theirs.

30. Married, in a relationship, or single? Well, it’d be lovely to have a hubby or two, but you know, that’s down to the circumstances. I wouldn’t actively avoid or search for relationships, though.

31. Top 5 favourite species?GeonosiansZabrakWookiesTwi’leksMon Cala

32. What species would you be? Probably human tbh.

33. What species is your type? Uhhhhh………that’s an interesting question. Do Mandalorians count as a species? But that’s just because of Jango and the clones. Maybe Nautolans?

34. Who would your best friend be?I don’t know, I’ve never thought about this sort of thing.

35. Would you customise your ship? Someone who I trust, because I’m not very good at mechanics and engine things. If I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t customise at all.

36. Would you customise your Droid? Again, someone I trust and who knows their stuff.

37. What colour skin/eyes would you have?I really have no idea. Given I haven’t even thought about being a different species, I think I’ll have to pass on this one.

38. If male, beard or no beard?Beard if I can. Love facial hair.

39. 1 lightsaber, 2 lightsabers, double lightsaber, or 2 double lightsabers?Look, I’d love to go for double lightsabre (sabrestaff), but I would probably end up killing myself with it, so I think in reality I would keep it safe with a single sabre.

40. What colour would your lightsaber(s) be?BLUE! Even though in Legends canon (and possibly current canon?) blue represents a warrior, someone who about taking action, whilst green represents thinking and analysing (which is more me). I’ve also been told by online quizzes that I should have orange, but no thanks.

41. If you’re a Bounty Hunter, what armour would you have? Phase 1 Clone armour with kama, pauldron, and all that jazz.

42. Would you customise your armour? Definitely. Gotta look snazzy.

43. What colour scheme would your armour/robes be? I’m not sure. I think white, green, and blue would look good. Although, I might go for white, purple, and black.

44. If you where a Droid, what Droid would you be? I mean, I’d like to be something intelligent but also powerful and capable of looking after itself. Maybe a super tactical droid?45. What colour would your droid self be? Purple, blue, yellow…those sorts of colours I guess.

46. Pod racing or ship racing? I don’t have a death wish, so ship racing.

47. Space battle or ground battle?? Ooh, that’s a tough question. In Star Wars there are lots of cool things about both, but I’ll go with space, because I think my naval strategy would be a little better than my surface strategy, and it’s easier to escape if it all goes tits up.

48. Would you have survived order 66?Almost certainly not.

49. Where would you go after order 66? Probably a small, peaceful world on the edge of the known regions (if I could find one)

50. What would you do after order 66? Probably just hide, maybe try to resist if I encountered a rebel cell. I think these are the sorts of things that people always say “well, this is what I would have done”, but noone really knows exactly how they’ll react until they’re actually in these situations.

51. Do you have any Star Wars Pop Vinyls?Yes! I have a Queen Amidala one.

52. Do you have any Star Wars collections?I have a lot of Star Wars Lego.

53. Do you have any Star Wars art? I have some BTS prints from Episode V and Episode VI, otherwise no.

54. Do you create any Star Wars art?Nope, can’t draw at all, never really been interested that much in the visual arts. I used to try to copy the technical drawings in Incredible Cross Sections when I was a kid though.

55. Do you like/read any Legends/non canon stuff? I loved the young Boba Fett books (the ones that took place between Episodes II and III), and I loved the storyline of Battlefront II until Disney decanonised it. There’s also a lot of non-canon information in Incredible Cross Sections that was super fascinating. Having said this, I still support the decision to redo the EU canon and clean it up, because imo there was way too much crap in the EU that was just plain rubbish.

56. Top 5 favourite Legends character? I’m sorry, I don’t know enough for this.

57. Who is your Star Wars role model? It has to be Padmé Amidala. She is resilient, skillful, intelligent, principled, and compassionate. When I was a kid I used to pretend to be her.

58. Top 5 saddest Star Wars deaths? The entire Order 66 sequence in ROTSFivesSatine KryzePadmé AmidalaHan Solo

59. If you could bring any Star Wars character back to life who would it be? Padmé Amidala

60. If you found out the Star Wars universe was real, would you move there or stay here? Stay here, obviously. Have you watched Star Wars?! Sith, pirates, bounty hunters, crime lords, totalitarian regimes, corporations that have official political representation and own entire planet systems?! I think I’ll stay put, thanks.

61. On a scale of 1-10 (1 being very little, 10 being an absolute know it all) how well do you know the Star Wars universe? 8.5, maybe a 9?

I hope those answers were satisfactory! Thanks for the asks!

#star wars #ask #ct-hardcase #puffandproud

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