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antianakin · 5 months

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(Sorry if I'm pushing this topic too much, feel free to ignore.)

So, in an AU where Anakin's found a little earlier before he develops the mindset that would make him a bad Jedi, and where Palpatine just kind of ignores him. In other words an AU where Anakin's a normal Jedi who doesn't fall to the dark side.

Let's say he's still assigned Ahsoka Tano as a padawan (I know personality-wise another Jedi would probably be a better fit for her) but teaches her without the Sithy elements and abusive training. How well do you think Ahsoka does Jedi-wise then?

I guess in a darker iteration of the AU, Palpatine could decide to manipulate her somehow instead to turn her against Anakin.

So, for this AU we have to assume that everything in canon stays at least mostly the same despite Anakin's role in it being DRAMATICALLY different. If Anakin is found much earlier (say somewhere around 2-3 years old, before they've left Gardulla maybe or just after Watto acquires them at the latest) then that means that he would have no reason to be involved in the plot of TPM. Even if we assume Obi-Wan would still take Anakin on as his apprentice and would do so almost immediately after being Knighted himself, Obi-Wan is obviously NOT quite a knight yet by TPM and could theoretically have ended up waiting another few months to a year before Qui-Gon and the Council had him undergo the trials. This leaves Anakin at the Temple for the entirety of this mission, so he isn't there to help them when they land on Tatooine nor is he there to blow up the droid mothership on Naboo, both of which could have MASSIVE changes to the story if you explored that further.

But for the sake of addressing this AU concept more directly and without getting too side-tracked, let's just say that somehow things in TPM go at least MOSTLY the same (everything that makes canon move forward still happens: Palpatine is voted in as Chancellor, Maul dies, Naboo is freed by Padme asking the Gungans for help, Qui-Gon dies, Obi-Wan is knighted for his actions on Naboo, and he takes Anakin as an apprentice probably within a year or so of being knighted). Palpatine would then have no real REASON to notice Anakin, he only does so because Anakin destroys the droid mothership on Naboo and unless we assume Anakin starts doing some equally crazy and noticeable things during his apprenticeship, it seems unlikely that Palpatine would really notice him or his power at all. Palpatine would also not have the excuse of Anakin having saved his people as an excuse to want to speak to him which makes any requests to spend time with Anakin a lot more suspicious, especially while he's still a child. So I think that EVEN IF Palpatine noticed Anakin somehow still, it'd be a lot harder for him to find ways to get close to Anakin to manipulate him and manipulating him would be made more difficult by Anakin having grown up among the Jedi to begin with.

I don't really see Palpatine going for Ahsoka instead of Anakin, I think if we was able to recognize Anakin's power enough to WANT to try to turn him, he'd just try to manipulate Anakin directly. But he also doesn't truly NEED Anakin at all, he's got Dooku to help him start the war and he can work on eliminating Dooku and replacing him with another stooge later on, he's already working on trying to kidnap Force sensitive children he can mold the way he did Maul which might honestly seem easier than trying to get to an Anakin that doesn't have any real reason to turn on the Jedi. If he recognizes Anakin's power at all, he's probably more likely to just want to kill him to get him out of the way as a threat than he is to try to turn him into a Sith.

All of which means that Anakin in this scenario probably grows up entirely normal as a Jedi. They're likely AWARE of his midichlorian levels and have probably considered the possibility of Anakin being a child of prophecy, but given that this is something we know isn't really put on Anakin's shoulders much in canon, I think we can assume the same would have been true in this AU. Anakin would just be a Jedi with somewhat higher power levels than the average, that's it. He'd be a GOOD Jedi who genuinely believed in the philosophies of non-attachment and compassion towards everyone. He'd lack a lot of the things that cause him the most problems, like the memories of Shmi and his attachment to her, or the friendship he built up with Padme that he clings to for 10 years, or the inherent mistrust of authority that causes him problems with the Council. Anakin would probably end up a lot like Ahsoka herself during early TCW; in other words, he's still impatient and a little cocky sometimes, prone to running off and getting himself into trouble trying to be independent and overestimating his own abilities because of how advanced his skillset is without taking into account his own youth.

So if we assume things progress generally as they do in canon and the Clone War still starts around the same time, and Anakin still gets knighted at the beginning of it, then Ahsoka getting assigned to him likely goes exactly the way Yoda and Obi-Wan seem to think it will. They're going to be VERY similar people, even more so than they were in canon due to Anakin having grown up among the Jedi same as Ahsoka. It makes sense that Yoda and Obi-Wan recognize Anakin, while ready to be a knight, is still very young and could use something to help teach him responsibility, while Ahsoka could use a master who is young and powerful and able to keep up with her as well as give her a challenge for her own advanced abilities. And I think this AU version of Anakin could certainly do exactly that.

This AU version of Anakin is someone who genuinely BELIEVES in the Jedi way of life and probably perfectly comfortable in it, he's not close to either Palapatine OR Padme, which eliminates a lot of the bigger distractions he has in this time period. So I think Ahsoka would end up a really GREAT Jedi with this version of Anakin. This is, in many ways, the version of Anakin that the Jedi all think they're dealing with generally in canon. That Anakin is a little cocky and impatient still, sure, but he's a good person who believes in the Jedi way of life and understands their teachings. Anakin will LEARN more responsibility by being forced to take charge of teaching someone else, so both he and Ahsoka will be able to mature TOGETHER via this relationship. Ahsoka wouldn't be taught to just completely disregard what she's told to do by the Council, but I could see Anakin training her on how to recognize when to do what you're told and when to listen to what your instincts tell you instead. This is generally exactly what Qui-Gon was teaching Obi-Wan during TPM, there's a time to simply do the job you've been told to do and a time to adapt and listen to your instincts even if they're leading you down a different path.

Now, depending on how you think canon goes from here, Ahsoka could end up in some pretty different places. I do think that this is the kind of AU where the Wrong Jedi arc just wouldn't happen. Even if we leave in the idea that Ahsoka does get framed for something late in the war (though not by Barriss because this is our AU and I've decided that that's stupid so I'm not including it), she'd handle it a lot better and never have to get expelled from the Order in the first place. So what we're dealing with is basically, does Order 66 happen or not and what happens to Ahsoka and Anakin in this scenario?

If Order 66 DOES happen then we have a few options: either they both survive, or only Ahsoka survives. Maybe they're left on Coruscant still, so they're in the Temple when the clones march on it. Either Ahsoka manages to get away because Anakin does what we know every other Jedi master did and sacrificed himself to protect her, or they both get away because they're doing something similar to what Kelleran Beq does and try to escape with as many survivors as they can (so basically Ahsoka and Anakin are given a bunch of younglings to protect that they go on the run with). If Ahsoka ends up alone, she likely turns out not dissimilar to the other padawan survivors we know like Cal and Kanan where she's cut off from her culture and forced to hide but figures out how to come back to it when she needs to by remembering the things she learned from her time with Anakin and the other Jedi. If Ahsoka and Anakin both survive together, she gets to keep her master for a while even though that training likely changes shape quite a bit given the circumstances.

If Order 66 is somehow averted, then presumably Ahsoka is able to just continue on as Anakin's padawan after the war ends and becomes a perfectly normal Jedi knight as a result.

#star wars #anakin skywalker #ahsoka tano #the clone wars #tcw #star wars the clone wars

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lives4lovesworld · 5 months

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Dragons, their unique and extraordinary bond and why the binder is a red herald.

“If you read Fire and Blood, you’ll know there’s definitely a bond between the dragons and their riders and the dragons will not accept just any rider,” says Martin. “Some people try to take a dragon wind up being eaten or burned to death instead, so the dragons are terribly fussy about who rides them.” - Grrm November 2018

We shall not pretend to any understanding of the bond between dragon and dragonrider; wiser heads have pondered that mystery for centuries. We do know however, that dragons are not horses, to be ridden by any man who throws a saddle on their back. - writings of Gyldayn

Most speculations around dragons, the dragonbinder and any potential riders are blatantly rooted in nonsensical delusion and pure envy of House Targaryen and the power it derived of their dragons, and the deranged need to see the dragons fight and wreak havoc to finally villainize them all once and for all the eyes of the realm as the clowns of this fandom all do in their posts, so their excessive hatred is finally validated by canon. Nowhere is all this more apparent than in the ridiculous popularity of the theories that have Stannis Baratheon, Young Griff, Victarion and Euron Greyjoy become dragon riders, and more specifically all in context as enemies to Daenaerys.

It's truly astonishing what loops people jump through to make these theories appear even the slightest bit feasible;

Even if Stannis Baratheon would survive long enough to set eyes on Dany's dragons and even if the theory in and of itself wouldn't be a pathetic attempt by his delusional stans to still present him as a viable candidate for Azor Ahai Reborn. There was not one recorded incident of a Baratheon riding a dragon, and mind you Orys Baratheon was likely Aegon’s bastard brother yet neither he nor any of his closest descendants have been dragon riders, and each of them had more blood of the dragon than Stannis. The prerequisite of even being one.

Young Griff [or FAegon or Aegon VI] tho the most feasible of all the "candidates" it is ridiculous which lengths the proponents go to, to craft scenarios, where he, always a political enemy of Dany, somehow obtains one of her sons. It's often argue that, regardless of who Young Griff truly is, Targaryen or Blackfyre, due to his blood he must be a dragon rider! An equally bold as unfounded hypothesis: i) the concept that House Blackfyre would have been dragonlords as well had the dragons not be extinct by the time the cadet branch of House Targaryen was founded is purely speculative! Neither House Celtigar nor House Velaryon, two ancient Valyrian House, had been dragonslords. Hell, not even all members of House Targaryen had been. ii) Young Griff surviving long enough to set eyes onto Daenerys's dragons is as hypothetical as Stannis's prior, and given how he is currently risking an all-open war with only 5000 sellswords at his disposal with no prior war experience against the current reign is just as unlikely. iii) However, let's assume Young Griff indeed survives long enough to do so and ends up fighting Daenerys; as already stated dragons aren't mere mounts, they choose their riders and need to bond and for that, they need a considerable amount of time, training is time-consuming as well. So how exactly would Young Griff even get the chance to bond with either Rhaegal or Viserion? In addition, Daenerys's dragons are unique to their ancestors all of them having bonds to her as their cherished mother. Despite what the fandom argues, dragons are not nuclear bombs, they would never bond with someone who would want to severely harm or even kill their mother. Lastly iv) which is purely theoretical but IMO a very solid theory: @luchibelle theorized that Magister Illyiro Mopatis put the eggs into his son's cradle after the Targaryen fashion and hoped they would hatch. The man likely attempted several times to hatch them. In vain, he gifted them to Daenerys as bride's gifts. In all likelihood to make the marriage with Daenerys for Khal Drogo more desirable, for Dany's bride's gifts are his property, which the Magister needed for his scheme of Viserys as the evil invader with his foreign army of savages for his son to defeat as the gallant Aegon VI Targaryen. However, it does further contradict the speculation of Young Griff's potential being able to bond & ride a dragon.

So far Euron and Victarion Greyjoy are the only ones actively perusing Daenerys for her dragons, name and beauty, something none of the other "candidates" do which should at least be the bare basis on these speculations if you want to call them that way. However, the unquestionable fact that the iron borns do not possess a drop of the blood of the dragon should end all speculations then and there. The unfounded idea that Euron possesses unnatural power and/or uses the horn he proclaims is a tool that can subjugate dragons should serve as a substitute for the lack of valyrian is a jump through a loop unparalleled: i) While GRRM can stress as much as he wants that Euron is much more than what he appears to be; a megalomaniac sadistic busy-body. The Forsaken shows that Euron sacrifices humans and uses tortured captive priests to perform their magic FOR him. The power does not come from him, unlike Daenerys and some of the Starks. ii) the unwillingness of this fandom to see Euron's tale of him traveling to Valyria as a lie is on the same level as its unwillingness to see Petyr Baelish's one. Valyria after the doom is hell on earth. GRRM emphasized this more than once in his lore; Princess Aerea Targaryen, Garin the Great. Hell, he even wrote this scene. Yet because some really want to see their super specific unfeasible(!) fever dreams to validate their need to punish Daenerys and House Targaryen and their dragon for being perceived as obstacles to their favorite character's rise to power, Euron Greyjoy, a minor character introduced to us in ADwD, is the first to set foot onto Valyria after more than 400 years. iii) Since we have established the truthfulness of Euron's tale, let's extend the same skepticism to the "Dragonbinder" as well; true dragonbinders were used by pure-blooded Valyrians to tamp even the ill-willed and oldest dragons. In the millennia of wars between the dragonlords of the Freehold and the rest of Essos dozen of such horns must have been lost by riders and found by other folk. If the possession of one paired with enough magical expertise and lust for dragons would been sufficient to make anyone a dragon rider, the Freehold of Valyria would not have been the only civilization to tamp dragons. So why would two Greyjoys make the exception? On top of that, why would Euron let the horn out of his sight and more importantly give it into the custody of his brother he knows has wronged and slighted more than once? And if Euron is indeed an agent of the Others, of Ice GRRM won't have him subjugate one of the embodiments of Fire, which shall be triumphant at the end of the series. Lastly, the speculation of Victarion Greyjoy as a dragon rider is a misunderstanding, likely deliberate, of Moqorro and the dialog between him and Victarion; Moqorro is a red priest sent to Daenerys so she might know she has been identified as Azor Ahai Reborn by his temple. If he is even half as frantically loyal as Melisandre is to Stannis, Moqorro would never actively try to sabotage his Chosen One by helping someone, a non-believer at that, to rob her of her dragons. Creatures that are sacred to the religion of R'hllor. Not to mention who is Victarion to Moqorro? A pillaring slave catcher who worships an agent of the Others for everything that isn't R'hllor.

If speculations around potential dragon riders do not serve to despite Dany, then they are handed out as rewards to favorites. Nevertheless, GRRM has written to many hints for the other characters to become riders, likely Tyrion and Jon Snow, despite it being incredibly repugnant to me for numerous reasons; it has been Daenerys who has to do all the hard work, who figured out how to birth them, how to raise and feed them, how to train them and deal with all the moral dilemmas. No matter what it will always be cheap, offensive and lazy to me that two characters will swoop in, become legendary as as the first dragon riders woth Danya and reap all the glory, and given of which descent they will be, a violation of GRRM own lore and rules of physic. The excuse of 'its the ending of the world' is beneath his talent.

To conclude its despicable how something as unique as the bond between dragons and their riders and the otherworldliness being of the blood grants is cheapened by all these speculations, which are almost exclusively petty fantasies that should be impossible to happen.

#asoiaf #asoiaf meta #dragons #Old Valyria #dragonbinder #FAegon #Young Griff #Aegon VI Targaryen #Euron Greyjoy #debunking popular speculations #✨vent time✨#stannis baratheon #victarion greyjoy

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burberrycanary · 10 months

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What's your sticky spot for the old Hollywood fic? It's so interesting to me where things get stuck.

Thanks for the ask! And also for the incomparable @booksandabeer, who asked after this as well 😘

I can’t let this Stucky Old Hollywood idea go—the aesthetic alone!

I’m not an AU writer so the only way I could do this concept is as canon divergence where the Barnes family moves to Los Angeles rather than Brooklyn when Bucky is a kid—and Bucky becomes a child star. So Steve and Bucky don't meet.

I’ve been slowly working out the concept and completing the foundational research, but lately I’ve fallen into a really meta place around the question: would Bucky still have been drafted?

The quick version of the historical context is that, unlike later drafts and most iconically the Vietnam draft, WWII-era conscription was conducted by local boards that assigned each registered man a lottery serial number (not the same as an army serial number) after all the completed registration cards were shuffled.[1] Bucky would have registered in October 1940 under the Selective Training and Service Act[2] and could have been called up in any of the three drafts: 29 October 1940, 17 July 1941, 17 March 1942.[3] If Bucky was in a different part of the country—and in consequence subject to a different local board’s instance of this random number assignment process—odds are he would have been assigned a different random lottery serial number, which means he could have been selected in an earlier draft, the same draft or not at all. And there’s no logic for how he would have ended up with the 107th.

And here’s where it gets meta. Because narratively Bucky is drafted to be a foil for Steve, who can’t join the military despite desperately wanting to. And Bucky becomes a POW to motivate Steve into the action that transforms him from a performer to a combatant, thereby achieving Steve’s—and the narrative’s—vision of idealized masculinity. And Bucky falls off the train to push Steve into more radical action against Hydra, which culminates with him putting the plane into the water. Bucky isn’t doomed by the narrative. He’s doomed by Steve’s narrative. In the original work, the pre-TFATWS MCU, Bucky’s suffering only has narrative meaning because of its effect on Steve. And you can argue that things only occur in a story if they have narrative meaning.

Without having to be a plot device and motivator for Steve, Bucky is theoretically relieved of the narrative requirement of being a POW. He wouldn’t have to fall off that train.

But, at heart, fanfiction is a rejection of this model of narrative meaning. As soon as you create a Bucky-centric reading or write a Bucky-centric version of canon, then his suffering has the potential for intrinsic narrative meaning. And Bucky’s story of victimization and heroic resilience speaks deeply to a lot of people, myself included. Bucky lacks the protagonist’s halo of always beating the odds, of the doors always closing just after safely jumping through, of being able to close that gap and grab the hand reaching out for him, and of being looked for by friendlies and discovered as still alive in the cold. Of course, if Bucky was a protagonist, the serum would have kicked in faster; he would have broken his own restraints; he would have rescued himself and the remnants of the 107th.

But that’s not Bucky’s narrative function.

Bucky is so fascinating to me because his story doesn’t follow the pattern of male-hero-protagonist. He has a sympathetic villain’s narrative arc but then refuses to become a villain. So, in this revisionist analysis, Bucky is doomed and saved by his own narrative. And this is why I’m leaning toward Bucky still being drafted, even if his experience of the war plays out differently, but not making him a POW so long as the part of Bucky’s story that's about being controlled and dehumanized by larger forces can be transferred to a different part of the narrative.

I’ll sign off with this piece of inspiration about Mickey Rooney, an iconic child star of the era:

Mayer naturally tried to keep all his child actors in line, like any father figure. After one such episode, Mickey Rooney replied, "I won't do it. You're asking the impossible." Mayer then grabbed young Rooney by his lapels and said, "Listen to me! I don't care what you do in private. Just don't do it in public. In public, behave. Your fans expect it. You're Andy Hardy! You're the United States! You're the Stars and Stripes. Behave yourself! You're a symbol!”[4]

Sources:

1. World War II Selective Service Draft Registrations

2. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940

3. Wood, Richard G., comp., Records of the Selective Service System, 1940-47 (PI 27); National Archives (NARA), 1951.

4. Wayne, Jane Ellen (2005). The Leading Men of MGM. Carroll & Graf Publishers. p. 246

#stucky #stucky meta #bucky barnes meta #thanks for the ask!#bucky barnes #bucky barnes needs a hug #old hollywood au

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justatalkingface · 1 year

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The worst part about the dark Deku arc in my opinion is the completely mixed messages. By attacking Izuku and criticizing what he did, they said the lives of all the people he saved weren't worth it. That he was stupid for leaving and should have stayed in his ivory tower with them. It wasn't like this guy was just fighting AFO and left school because these fodder children weren't enough. He saved MANY lives and took down numerous, murderous people who would have been left completely unchecked because Japan apparently does not have a military and the police aren't interested in protecting the citizens. Heroes are all that stands between total anarchy it seems, and most of them retired despite a crisis being the best possible time to earn fame and accolades. The civilians are left to fend for themselves with black market support gear they're so incompetent at using that they take themselves out with it and also wreck their own neighborhoods. Yo Shindo would be dead if Izuku stayed at UA. That's a point the narrative ignores. Muscular could have killed hundreds of people, thousands if he felt like it, and who could have stopped him? The man can withstand 100% OFA punches. That giant animal lady? She'd have been brutalized in a hate crime for no good reason. The fodder kids spit on all these actions. This man is out there actually helping people and saving lives, and their answer is to drag him back to their little safe zone where they keep all the civilians. Sure, let's put all our eggs in one basket and create a single point of failure! Why can't they all just join him in hero work? All 20 of them could be kicking ass and taking names. At least then we'd see the hero kids actually helping people for once. Yes, Izuku's lack of self care and mentality was self destructive, but the end result is that people were better off because he did it. He was being stupid for neglecting his own self care, not for leaving. If Izuku behaved the way they wanted him to, Nagant, Dictator, Muscular, and many others would still be in AFO's pocket and ready for deployment. Also, Aoyama was still the traitor and he 100% would have led Izuku into a trap if ordered to. Staying at UA would have created a worse outcome but the story doesn't acknowledge this at all. And it also didn't address Izuku's concerns, like you said. Bakugo dies, and Jiro loses an ear. We know these injuries will of course be reversed because the heroes have access to Eri who is like a senzu bean basically. But they didn't get massive power ups or anything. They just attacked a guy who didn't want to fight them and wouldn't beat them all into the dirt with Black Whip, like he totally and easily could have.

The funniest thing to me is AFO's complete inability to kill anyone. His confirmed kills are previous OFA holders, and this clown show is out here unable to kill literal children. The "Symbol Of Evil", everyone. What's funnier is that he treated Endeavor like an ant back at Kamino. The guy was completely beneath him. But then Endeavor gets buffed to be one of the strongest people in the world inexplicably and is capable of inflicting fatal wounds on AFO. All the training and upgrades in MHA happen off screen. It's the strangest thing how we've got a school setting, but it's the kids themselves doing all the training and inventing of new attacks and breakthroughs. They've got loads of pro hero mentors and a super genius principal who could theoretically give them the most efficient training plans possible and maximize their use of their quirks, but Mina trains with Bakugo and Shoto to perfect her acid. Well, I guess she's right. They're the ones at the forefront of fighting a war for their country, while many other heroes with more training and experience decided to just stay home. Which again, is the oddest thing. Are they hoping Shigaraki won't decay them when he wins? That AFO won't do a hero purge? We don't see them all fleeing Japan on planes or boats or anything. A lot of these people would have a decent amount of money and could leave with all their assets. Just straight up abandon ship. But we hear about them quitting because they don't like being criticized but not what they plan to do after. The cracks show a lot in MHA. It relies on so many contrivances to function. It's not a story that runs on cause and effect. As you said, everything has to go perfectly for things to work right. You mentioned Machia in another post, and it perfectly illustrates things. Imagine if the guy didn't suddenly decide to attack his master and instead he just crushed all these heroes. They have no one capable of defeating him and Momo's stuck at UA acting as a battery (lol) so they don't have a convenient drug to take him out this time. But of course they had the idea to use Gigantomachia against his allies, and of course when he was broken out of Shinso's brainwashing, he actually secretly hated AFO and wanted to fight him. Because the alternative is this being a suicidal, stupid plan and getting everyone killed when AFO frees his friend! The heroes always get to benefit from these unearned victories. They didn't flip Machia. They didn't earn his trust, or speak to him about his trauma and learn his past. They didn't have a heart to heart with him about his motivations and convince him he's more than a tool to be used by a megalomaniac. They didn't show him photos of all the people he crushed and ask him to make amends for what he did and help end the war he was used to start. No, he just gets a new personality with no build up to help stall a guy who can't manage mass fatalities we know he should be capable of, considering he destroyed Kamino VERY quickly. It's just like how Dabi has been shown to be able to turn people into charcoal in seconds with his flames, and also melt metal, but when he burns Hawks, he manages to barely damage his quirk a bit. And then the guy gets support gear so it's functionally like it never happened. The villains are always jokes in this series. Every victory they have is pyrrhic and there's a contrivance that lets the heroes still manage to get one over. This is the first narrative I've seen that's so openly biased for the main characters and doesn't try to hide it.

So the thing is with the Dark Deku arc? In many ways, it's the culmination of everything Hori's set up and left to rot. It's all these threads about heroic society Hori left blowing in the wind.

In other words? It's complicated. It's so so complicated, it's an arc that is all about complicated things, difficult subjects, and problems that don't have easy answers, and Hori treated it like it was a simple topic... but he couldn't even keep that up. It's such a mess, it's not even funny.

Because the thing is? You're right, Izuku did do good things while he wasn't in school. He saved people, many people, and that's something the story didn't acknowledge... at all. Meanwhile, his classmates, for all that they are trained to be heroes, trained to go and fight and protect, are sitting safe at home.

The thing is, though, that they are still children, all of them. Children shouldn't have to risk their lives for other people. They should live their lives, enjoy their youths. This is the moral question.

At the time though, on a logical level, each hero trained is, potentially, hundreds or thousands of people saved in the future; by allowing them to stay safe and grow up, far more people will be saved, theoretically, than if they were to be deployed in the field right now to save people. At the same time, though, Japan is in crisis, heroics as a whole is threatening to collapse under its own weight, and if they sit on their asses rather than help, there may not be a tomorrow for them. This is the logical question.

So morally, logically, which choice is right? Which is wrong? Is there even a right answer? What is the price someone should pay for others? What should a child give up for society? What are you willing to sacrifice to live how you want? What burden are you willing to bear for another's sake?

These are the kinds of questions this arc askes, and it's something you can't just avoid for as serious a topic as this. Personally, I'd say the answer is somewhere between these two points, but every story has its own moral and message it is ultimately saying is right or wrong, and that is eventually proved correct by the story itself. Sometimes it's that the day can be saved, if you just try hard enough, and that friendship is everything. Sometimes it's that the world is bitter and cold, and that only the strong and lucky survive.

Here's the problem MHA is suffering from, what this arc and Izuku ultimately exemplify: what is Hori saying is right? What is the moral or message that is correct here?

Yeah... Hori has no fucking idea. And, I've said this before, the fact he doesn't even seem to know what he wants beyond, 'ACTION! MORE ACTION! EXPLOSIONS! I CAST FIST!' is something that severely damages the overall story telling. It really feels like he doesn't know where things are even going, sometimes.

Ah, AFO. I really, honestly, feel sorry for him. He's just so... pathetic now. He suffers from being made too strong for the setting, and so Hori keeps having to nerf him just to explain why everyone is still alive. Like, really, honest truth? If I was AFO? I would have just, like, poisoned All Might years ago; none of this fair fight nonsense. The second All Might became a viable threat he should have started cheating like the criminal genius he apparently is, and taken advantage of all of the many, many advantages he has, between his Quirks, his resources, and his ruthlessness.

The spin off manga says AFO tried to steal Erasure back when Aizawa was still in training, which... yeah, that makes sense. Then he fails, and then... never tries again. Ever.

Am I the only one who sees the problem here?

I've seen people say that Aizawa, a man employed as a teacher in perhaps one of the most visible schools in existence, is too off the radar for him to find. When, apparently, AFO has his finger in the government, and criminal element, he is unable to... check his tax record to find out where he lives, or to have someone follow him home, or ambush him after he leaves the school he has to go to, or anything like that. Or, hell, just kill him, if Erasure is somehow too hard for him to get.

Oh well, I guess that's too much work for one of the most OP Quirks in the setting, one that can easily counter his All Might problem, or cripple him personally. Better to just ignore it entirely instead; what could go wrong with that?

Remember when AFO bitch slapped just about every top hero, minus All Might, causally? How in the fuck is Endeavour a threat to him now?

Yeah. The thing is, AFO is too strong, plain and simple. Even in a setting where All Might, who changes the weather while holding back exists, much less everyone without OFA. If he was allowed to have a fraction of the brains and fire power that we're told again and again that he has, the story never would have happened, because OFA would have been taken or destroyed generations before All Might even became a thing, before Izuku was even born. But the story is still happening, and people keep successfully beating him, and they need to keep beating, and will continue to until he is finally defeated. Does that make sense? No, but the show must go on.

On all the people not putting their part in... to be fair, we see a more personal version of Shigaraki than almost anyone else, in story. There's a real question of how many people even know what his goals are, much less who would believe it, since it's kind of nuts to say the least. Under that logic, I could see them not thinking it's worth the danger to themselves, though the fact they're willing to just sit there and do nothing when their ultimate fate is up to grabs, when they could actually make a difference, unlike so many other people, is... stupid. But people are often stupid, so to some extent, that is understandable, but you'd think the people who trained themselves to fight every day would be more willing to put their lives on the line... though, that goes back to the 'corrupt heroes' thing Hori keeps dropping.

Really, Machia's entire thing there is so mind numbingly dumb that, even though I made a post about how bad it is, I'm still surprised no one stopped to ask, 'And then what?' when Shinso proposed it. Brainwash is very powerful Quirk, don't get me wrong, but it is not a Quirk that is made for direct slug match like that... but Shinso is too cool to not include, so there we go, I guess! Hori does everything possible to justify him making a big, dramatic contribution to the fight when the smarter, yet absurdly obvious choice is Shinso just telling Machia to walk off to the other end of Japan, cover his ears, and wait there forever so that one of the most dangerous people in the story just doesn't participate in the final fight. But, you know, Post War is about the how COOL it is! For the cliffhangers! And Machia taking a nap, no matter how smart a choice, isn't a DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER!

And that's the thing, really: so much of the worst choices in MHA (that aren't from long running overarcing problems that come from far earlier in the story, anyways) are about that, cheap drama. Every poor choice that everyone has criticized ultimately boils down to making every chapter DRAMATIC and EXCITING, by making every possible scene look cool, even if it needs to be promptly taken back in the very first panel of the next chapter that follows it, even if it conflicts with things he's said before, even if it makes everyone involved an idiot. Hori has taken the worship of cliffhangers above everything else in MHA, over story, or logic, or characters, or messages,; any and all of it will be sacrificed to the altar of 'does this make the fans want to read the next chapter?'.... which, ironically, makes the fans not want to read the next chapter anymore, because people didn't get into this story because of big hits and dramatic scenes.

And each cliffhanger has built off each other, until we've gotten here, to the point where the story doesn't even make sense anymore, where the most common comment I see reading each chapter is, 'I don't understand what is happening, I guess I'll have to wait for the anime to make it make sense', or, even more damning, 'I don't care anymore'.

The heroes win, and the villains lose, not because of of the choices they've made, or how strong they are, but because reality itself bends over to make it so. And nobody wants to read that.

#ask #bnha critical #mha critical #AFO is being nerfed HARD #hori's inability to choose a message #the failure of the development of heroic society and corruption #give me logic not cliffhangers

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muzzleroars · 1 year

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A question about your V2. How do you think they would react to suddenly finding out they are not the only V2 unit in existence? Like if they found out a single factory on earth survived and somehow was slowly creating V2 units. Do you think if they met this small army of themselves that they would get along and possibly become a guide of some sort or would they just end up fighting them just like V1? Assuming V2 is even alive in your world still.

ooooo that's really interesting tbh...the thing is, i think machines would have very different ideas about identical models to themselves than how humans might conceptualize it - for many, their ai is likely too simple to really get existential about it, but for ones as intelligent as v1/v2, they would probably see themselves just as unique individuals as humans see each other (after all, we're all essentially the same "model" too). the way i think of v2, it's also in the peculiar position to be much more empathetic than any other machine given its training in human contact and it's a being that's meant to presume nonhostility in others. this would likely be a little marred by its time spent in hell, particularly after those encounters with v1, but i think, if it managed to return to the surface and find any other v2s, it wouldn't be quick to engage them - nothing in this world values peace anymore, so to have even one other being that thinks as v2 does, would be a great reprieve to it.

one thing that separates v2 from everything around it in my mind is that singular purpose, that this is a world drenched in unending cruelty while v2's meant to be an arbiter of peace. and like i've mentioned, it so doggedly pursued v1 to its fatal end because it could not let it go on, it knew that v1's programming meant it would see to destroying what little is left. so finding more like itself would mean not only would its isolation be at an end, but that its purpose, now their purpose, might still be fulfilled. first and foremost would be their training, a vital part of what separated v2 from v1 - its peace-keeper identity is largely based on what it was taught rather than base coding, so it's crucial that v2 be their guide to follow the exact methods that it was once educated with. and honestly, i think they would be receptive to it since they are inherently programmed to not attack without cause and well. they know they need a teacher, their minds so limitless that any other option is incredibly overwhelming and would prove to muddy up their still plastic codes. so this is genuinely just. v2 adopting a few other v2s, all of them still in their naive state and ready to absorb any information it provides (v2's battle damage likely earns it a lot of respect too) one thing they all have to learn is true cooperation, since the original v2 was only trained on theoreticals and simulations about possibly working in pairs, but it's probably the most critical piece of the puzzle if they want to succeed.

because ultimately, v2 believes they still have to take out v1 - if it can know nothing but war and survives all through the bowels of hell, it will go searching for more blood to shed. all the experience it gains will only see it grow in strategy and adaptation as well, so v2 refuses to presume an easy fight despite their numbers. what would happen afterward....it doesn't know. blood is a precious resource, so it's likely it would wish to stop v1 before it consumes all of it for itself, leaving whatever is left to implode or collapse. still, there would be much doubt since it's unlikely these additional v2s could see any real combat before that engagement - there's so little left in hell by that point there's nothing to practice on. but there's really no other options, so all it could do is prepare them to face a war machine in its purest form. it probably regrets this is what they have to wake up to, and wishes there was little more than a hollow shell they might bring peace to...but it will always be their duty, so they will carry on regardless

#very funny regardless to imagine them showing up in treachery #and all of them immediately trying to beat the shit out of v1 #while gabe is on the sidelines like what the fuck man #NOT what he needs right now!!!!#cake answers #v2

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meowcats734 · 6 months

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(prompt response) The ritual would be much easier to complete if his "friends" weren't cooking with the sacrificial knife and rare spices...

"Welcome to Ritual Magic 201," Mr. Ganrey said, tapping his cane on the floor as he walked down the rows of chairs. He was old, arthritic, and practically blind, and had probably been disqualified from fighting in the war for at least one of those reasons, but at least he could still help by training up the next generation of soldiers to throw into the grinder. Whoopee.

Still, despite my misgivings about the Silent Academy's less-than-noble intentions, I couldn't help but be excited for today's class. School was a lot less lonely with Lucet and Meloai to hang out with, and RM201 was a lab class; we didn't get to choose our partners for ourselves, but the class only had twenty or so people in it. Odds were we'd be spending quite a bit of time with each other.

Plus, this was the first course I'd taken at the Silent Academy that went beyond theory and into practice. I'd spent the past few weeks grabbing every attunement I could get my grubby little hands on, and I was itching to try them out.

No more helpless running and hiding from every threat. No more getting outmatched at every turn. This Cienne was growing claws, and the next time the world tried to bite me in the ass, I was going to swipe back.

"In light of recent events," Mr. Ganrey said, as if he was referring to a sports match and not a war, "we've decided to rearrange the curriculum a little. Topics such as realspace-anchored soul manipulation and memory-aided spell foci were deemed too theoretical in a time when we need immediate results, and as such, the first half of this course will focus on the creation and empowerment of friendly soulspace entities. In other words, the focus of today's lesson will be the summoning and binding of demons, angels, and other extraplanar creatures."

Meloai raised a hand, but Mr. Ganrey didn't see, despite looking straight at her. I grimaced. Mr. Ganrey's mundane eyesight was nearly gone, so he relied on his soulsight—but even though Meloai's soul fragment was beginning to grow in complexity, it was still tiny in comparison to a born human soul. I wouldn't be surprised if Meloai was entirely invisible to the poor teacher.

"Please disperse to your assigned seats," Mr. Ganrey continued. In the corner, Iola and two of his new friends snickered as Meloai patiently kept her hand in the air.

"Just ask the question," Lucet whispered.

"Hm? Oh, okay. Mr. Ganrey?" she asked.

"Raise your hand first, Meloai," Mr. Ganrey said. More laughter from Iola's corner.

"I am," Meloai said, unperturbed.

Mr. Ganrey paused, adjusted his glasses, and cleared his throat. "Mm. Ah. Yes. Well. Your question, then, young lady?"

"I'm a soulspace entity myself—is what we're doing today going to be hazardous to me?"

"What planar domain?" Mr. Ganrey asked, absent-mindedly.

"Insecurity," Meloai said.

Mr. Ganrey shook his head. "The projection of the vectors of happiness and insecurity onto each other is present, but small. Don't assimilate any soul fragments you sense, but you should be otherwise fine. Alright, class, hop to it."

To my disgust, my assigned lab seat was next to Iola. Ugh, the man was worse than Odin. At least they'd left me alone after they'd stranded me in the Plane of Elemental Falsehood. I still had no idea what that was all about.

Iola waggled his eyebrows at me as I approached the lab desk, which held a utilitarian kitchen knife, a small, caged vole, and a bundle of sweet-smelling joyweed.

"If it isn't my favorite Redlander," Iola drawled, his elven halo pulsing in time with his words. "How're you enjoying my sloppy seconds? She's terrible in bed, isn't she?"

"I wouldn't know. Unlike you, I have a modicum of respect for other human beings. How're you enjoying the draft? Still begging to be let onto the front lines?" I shot back. The corners of Iola's eyes twitched as I brought up the draft—he'd been all too eager to go out and start killing people until the Academy told him that they weren't sending barely-trained students out to war.

"The goal of today's class will be to create, empower, and summon a minor Demon of Happiness," Mr. Ganrey interrupted. "As you should have learned from Elemental Theory, demons, like all soulspace entities, are comprised of the memories of the dead."

"Wonder what kind of demon would pop up if I used this on you," Iola mused, tapping the knife on the desk.

"Dunno," I said. "What do elves summon when they die?"

"Over the centuries," Mr. Ganrey continued, "this has resulted in many a cult or nation deliberately inducing certain emotionally-charged memories in human subjects, then slaying them in order to form or feed demons of their desired emotion. Demons of Fear were a particularly notable historical example. However, memories are not a uniquely human notion, and in the modern day, human sacrifices are not needed to create such entities. We will be creating such an entity by training non-sentient animals to associate certain memories with joy, then sacrificing the animals and feeding the resulting, joy-charged soul shards to the entity that coalesces as a result."

Huh. Made sense. To my left, Meloai raised her hand again—this time, Lucet raised her hand as well, so that Mr. Ganrey would see. "Yes, Lucet?" Mr. Ganrey asked.

"Actually, that was me, sir," Meloai said. "I have a question. By the first law of thaumatology, souls cannot be destroyed."

"Only changed in form," Mr. Ganrey agreed.

"So when we feed these soul fragments to a soulspace entity... or when, in general, a soulspace entity consumes a soul fragment... what happens?"

"An excellent observation," Mr. Ganrey said, "but one that is outside the scope of this class." Meloai pouted as Mr. Ganrey walked down through the aisles. "Now, in order to form the associated memories, we will have to perform some mundane classical conditioning upon the test subjects..."

The lab began, the small class of twenty laboring to form an association in the voles' tiny minds between the ringing of a bell and a sensation of sudden joy. To my surprise, Iola was a natural when it came to associating reward with a stimulus. Or punishment, for that matter, not that that was part of the lab—he just seemed to delight in watching the vole flinch whenever he snapped his fingers after the third time he'd struck the poor creature while doing so.

My budding attunements gave me greater insight into the soulspace of the vole, so I could tell when the vole's soul bloomed with dewdrops of joy at the ring of a bell, even when no herbs were supplied to follow it up with. Not wanting to let Iola have the dubious honor of sacrificing the vole—knowing him, he'd drag it out just to watch the poor thing suffer—I slit its throat with the sacrificial blade, killing it instantly.

The rest of the class was still catching up to Iola's freakishly good conditioning abilities, which left me some time to wait. I was going to ask if we were supposed to get started on a second vole when Iola picked up the corpse of the sacrifice and... started... cooking it.

Through my newfound suite of attunements, I could see the outlines of the spell he was using. Though joy normally manifested as dewdrops in soulsight, Iola's was something... different. Feverish, sickly, somehow. He pumped it into the vole, the dewdrops accelerating to terrifying speeds as they neared its body, and the vole's body started smoking. Was he... was he cooking the vole with light? Was that even possible?

"What... what are you doing?" I asked, faintly nauseated.

"Hmm?" Iola started skinning the vole with the sacrificial knife. "I'm hungry. Want some?"

"No!" I shuddered, turning away as he rolled up the joyweed into a rough lump and ignited it with a focused beam of light, then tried to smoke it. I was pretty sure he miserably failed by the spluttering that ensued, but I didn't want to know.

"You should all be done with your voles by now," Mr. Ganrey said. "Fanwyn, you killed yours too early. Iola, take that out of your mouth."

Iola took the magically-cooked vole out of his mouth, scowling, as Mr. Ganrey stepped into the center of the room. A small metal box stood on a dais.

"None of you, with the possible exception of Iola, are capable of opening a sustained rift into the Plane of Elemental Radiance," Mr. Ganrey said. "As such, I will perform this part myself."

The dewdrops that Mr. Ganrey used weren't the strange, sickly, endless torrent of joy that flowed through Iola's soul. But they were far, far more controlled. I watched as the tiny droplets of joy were, somehow, compressed, becoming dense, almost-solid specks before being flung into the metal box.

There was no sound when the rift opened. But the beams of pure, unceasing light that slipped through the cracks at the corners were painfully bright to look at, and I instinctively turned away.

Mr. Ganrey rang a bell—the same bell that we had used to train the voles—and waited for one heartbeat, two. The terrible light from within the box began to fade.

Then he opened the box's door.

A small, chittering vole made of pure light was sniffing around in the center of the box. When Mr. Ganrey rang the bell, its head perked up, and it scampered onto Mr. Ganrey's arm to reach it.

Moments later, the period bell rang, and the Demon of Joy scampered away in search of another, larger bell to follow. Mr. Ganrey tried to grab at it, but the nimble little creature effortlessly avoided his grasp. He rubbed his forehead, grumbling to himself, before regaining his composure.

"That concludes today's lab section on demon summoning," Mr. Ganrey finished. "Be back here the same time tomorrow." He paused, sighed, and added one last thing.

"Oh. And five points extra credit to anyone who can track down that damn demon. We'll need it for tomorrow's class."

A.N.

This prompt was written by my Patreons!

Soulmage is a serial written in response to writing prompts. Stick around for more episodes, or join my Discord to chat about it!

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#writing #writing prompt #writers on tumblr #writers of tumblr #writblr #serial fiction #fiction #series #web serial #oc #soulmage #dark academia #fantasy #high fantasy #magic #worldbuilding #patreon

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hiccupologist · 4 months

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wrote part two of the betty/winter king/simon petplay fic i guess!! maybe this shit is going on ao3 next what is happening

briefly gets kind of dark with some mentions of spooky skeletons and possible omnicide but maybe not

Betty took special care to make the days that bookended her in-home visits relaxing for her Simon. This gave him time to rest and build emotional resilience. The afternoon before Winter King was set to arrive, she took him for a supervised walk along the riverbed in the forest, pointing out the little water sprites and magically active plants and reassuring him when he got skittish. It always made her a little sad to take him out into nature; before the war (and before he spent all that time tied up in the dark while she teased the sticky tendrils of the ice crown out of his brain…) he’d enjoyed hiking and exploring nature so much, but Ooo felt alien to him, too loud and bright, too dangerous. He clung to her and wouldn’t even entertain the idea of leaving the house without his leash.

She trusted Marceline enough to let her take him on occasional outings. It was difficult to wrap her head around sometimes, since she hadn’t even existed in the timeline while it happened, but she understood that Simon had been her childhood protector during the time he spent as a stray. Her and her partner Bonnibel also owned a little hyperactive blonde man who had been close with Simon when he was effectively living feral, and they still liked to play together, even though Finn had recently taken a female forest wizard as a mate and was showing interest in building a den. Even though she’d seen him herself, his teeth sharp and eyes wild, hair long and matted, now that her sweet little Simon was back to being himself the idea of him being so aggressive seemed distant and impossible.

In the evening she put shepherd’s stew with barley in his bowl and hand-fed him her homemade banana bread for dessert while petting his hair and upper back. He was very proud of being able to feed himself, but things always tasted better when she did it. She cleaned him up and brushed his teeth, helped him change into soft sleep clothes and placed his favorite penguin and Kiwi bird in the crook of his body. Simon knew he needed to sleep alone the night before a new patient came so Betty could prepare the house, and so he would already be used to it when he needed to be separated from her during work nights. He was brave when she said goodnight and locked his door, but as soon as he heard her walk down the hall, he curled up tight with his plushies and quietly recited the names of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics from memory to soothe himself into unconsciousness.

In her office, she opened one of the many non-Euclidean drawers in her massive wooden desk and pulled out a thin pile of vellum paper marked in faintly glowing red letters. This Simon, the so-called Winter King, belonged to a very… advanced Betty. Physically modified, genetically hybridized, hyper-adapted to spacefolding and transuniversal travel. Her blood was probably more magic than plasma. Apparently she liked a challenge, because she said she’d found her Simon in a seemingly dead universe, barely lucid and talking to ice sculptures and frozen skeletons. It wasn’t clear whether he’d anything to do with the mass destruction or was simply coping poorly with it, and this Betty, in her words, had “immediately captured him despite his violent reaction”. Captured. Simons didn’t need to be captured; even Ice Kings could easily be “negotiated with” if you weren’t too squeamish to kiss a crazy old hermit who eats floor sandwiches. They were entangled with Bettys on a quantum level. Theoretically, the scent of their sweat should be enough incentive to lure any version of Simon Petrikov.

Her gaze turned to a selection of what she called training aids, locked inside a metal and glass cabinet originally intended to be used in a wizard’s supply shop. Enchanted jewelry, mildly cursed serums and candies, the odd ominous medical-looking tool. Even if this Simon was anomalous somehow, his basic mental programming had to be the same. She always remembered from her studies on religious cults that humans had two intrinsic, opposing drives that could be tapped into: the desire to control and cause pain, and the desire to give up control and worship, have choices made for you. It was the reason some people ended up as pets and others as owners, some physical manifestation of that dichotomy that altered the physical state of the brain.

And in her long and strange life thus far, she had never met a Simon whose desire to give up control couldn’t be accessed.

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irregularjohnnywiggins · 2 years

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Funniest things I can imagine happening in a theoretical Assassin's Creed/Star Wars crossover (namely the protagonists and a few key supporting characters from the AC games show up in the Clone Wars era):

All the Grandmasters/Mentors sitting around and debating the theological differences between the Jedi Code and the Assassin's Creed. Yoda and Ezio keep making lewd jokes, and Mace and Achilles instantly bond over having to put up with them.

The first time a Jedi performs a Mind Trick in front of an Assassin, there's a knife fight in the streets that results in at least 3 stab wound and 1 near case of delimbification until the Clones are able to calm everyone down. Afterwards the Jedi make an effort to not perform Mind Tricks in front of the Assassins.

This is nothing, however, to how absolutely ballistic every single Assassin, even even-tempered ones like Ah Tabai, get when they learn about the inhibitor chips. Within hours, the Kenways, including Adéwalé, have hijacked at least ten Star Destroyers and are organising mass brain surgeries the likes of which no-one has ever seen before.

Altaïr Ibn La'Ahad and Malik Al-Sayf take one look at Anakin Skywalker and immediately realise that he's basically exactly like Altaïr at the beginning of AC1 and move immediately to stop this train wreck.

To that end, Anakin is forced to go on missions with Ratonhnhaké:ton, despite the fact that they are just enough alike to not like one another, although as Altaïr and Obi-Wan planned they do end up bonding over their extremely similar early lives and Connor helps Anakin learn his own compromise.

A key part of their bonding, however, comes when the Assassins convince the Jedi to let them dismantle the Hutts and replace them, given its not the first criminal empire they've supplanted. The liberation of Tattooine is also when they actually come to blows, though, because Anakin is not shy about his opinions of the Tuskens and Ratonhnhaké:ton is... familiar with the demonisation of an indigenous population, and does not take kindly to it.

Kassandra has absolutely no idea why she's here, as far as she's concerned both the Jedi and the Assassins are a band of crazies, she's not even like Bayek (who's going through some shit because he doesn't know how to explain to every Assassin born pre-Altaïr that he cut his finger off by accident), so naturally the first chance she gets she books it off Coruscant, possibly with Eivor in tow, to become a bounty hunter, which is about as close as this place gets to a misthios. Naturally, because the universe is determined that neither Kassandra nor Eivor can have a boring life, Eivor gets headhunted by Hondo Ohnaka and Kassandra falls in with Asajj Ventress, and yes you can read that last one any way you like.

Pretty much all the Assassins born before it are absolutely fascinated by the concept of democracy. Then they attend one (1) Senate meeting, and their opinion on the concept dims a bit. Padmé Amidala, then, can be praised for nearly singlehandedly reinvigorating several Assassins opinion on democracy in one conversation.

That being said, there are only a few senators that most Assassins can stand, and some of the more hot-blooded Assassins may be planning coup d'etats on several planets and keeping very quiet about it when the Jedi are around. For obvious reasons, they all get along very well with Cham Syndulla, and Evie Frye is halfway through convincing the Mentors to induct his daughter Hera as the first new member of the Brotherhood in this galaxy.

Without the Dark Side blocking their Eagle Vision, or the decades of experience with his friendly persona, most of the Assassins pretty quickly figure out that Palpatine is at the least involved in the conspiracy behind the Clone Wars (to be fair, all of them are pretty experienced with finding out who's involved in grand conspiracies). The issue then becomes proving it. Their first plan involves walking up to Palpatine in the halls of the Senate and saying 'Oy, Sith Lord, yes or no'. This predictably fails, and Jacob Frye is taken off the planning team for this case.

#assassin's creed #star wars #if this is at all comprehensible I am sorry #if it is not please give me permission to rant about Assassin's Creed #this is all an offshoot of the idea I once had to compare the philosophies of the Jedi and the Assassins #which basically turned into a subtweet about one particular fic I read where the Sith were descended from the Assassins #and I was like 'Every single time the Sith have taken over the galaxy since Revan they've been overtly fashy #and whatever you can say about the Assassins fashy is the last thing they could ever be'#also it's particularly funny just imagining the Senate foisting the Brotherhood on the Jedi because they think they're Force Sensitives #(which... some of them may be depending on how you interpret the Gray in relation to the Force)#and then the Jedi introduce one of the Mentors with Eagle Vision to Palpatine and he's just... the brightest red they've ever seen

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theculturedmarxist · 1 year

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Yves Smith asks:

What if Russia Won the Ukraine War but the Western Press Didn’t Notice?

She points to several headlines which, despite decisive Russian victories like its taking of Soledar, present the Ukraine as winning the war:

Nevertheless, Soledar has fallen and the loss of Bakhmut looks baked in, absent horrific Russian errors. The so-called Zelensky line is breaking even before Russia has put its recently-mobilized forces to work in a serious way. Regular commentators are waiting for the Russian hammer to fall, although Russia may simply grind more forcefully by pressing harder at more points along the very long line of contact. Remember one concern on the Russian side is avoiding “winning” in a way that leads to NATO panic and desperate action ... not that the Collective West’s fragile emotional state can be readily managed.

With that context, you’d expect some members of the press to have worked out that things are not going very well for Ukraine and the classic cowboy movie rescue of the calvary riding over the hill (here in the form of tanks and artillery) will be too little, too late.

Instead, the media seems to be trying to integrate snippets of facts on the ground with the heroic tale of inevitable Ukraine victory.

That is certainly correct for the wide majority of the stories, which claim that Soledar and Bahkmut, are irrelevant towns, but some pieces are creeping up that differ. A few days ago the Washington Post headlined:

Bloody Bakhmut siege poses risks for Ukraine

Ukraine faces difficult choices about how much deeper its military should get drawn into a protracted fight over the besieged city of Bakhmut, as Kyiv prepares for a new counteroffensive elsewhere on the front that requires conserving weapons, ammunition and experienced fighters.

Russia has escalated its assault in the area in recent days, unleashing savage fighting that has underscored the high cost of the battle. Russian mercenaries and released convicts from the Wagner group pushed into the neighboring salt-mining town of Soledar and inched closer to Bakhmut, the capture of which has eluded them for months despite an advantage in firepower and the willingness to sacrifice troops.

The piece quotes several Ukrainian soldiers which speak of huge losses on their side. But the U.S. is still egging them on:

The senior U.S. official cautioned against completely dismissing Bakhmut or neighboring Soledar as nonstrategic places that Kyiv can simply relinquish, noting that the salt and gypsum mines give the area economic significance. Theoretically, the Russians could use the deep salt mines and tunnels to protect equipment and ammunition from Ukrainian missile strikes. Moscow has also endowed the city with import.

“To some degree, Bakhmut matters to [Ukraine] because it matters so much to the Russians,” the senior U.S. official said, noting that control of Bakhmut is not going to have a huge impact on the conflict or imperil Ukraine’s defensive or offensive options in the country’s eastern Donbas region.

The official added, “Bakhmut is not going to change the war.”

I believe the senior U.S. official to be very wrong. Soledar and Bakhmut are bleeding the Ukrainian army dry. That is of relevance. Look at the insane number of Ukrainian units deployed on that only 50 kilometer (30mi) long sector of the front.

I count the equivalent of some 27 brigade size formations in that area. The usual size of a brigade is some 3,000 to 4,000 men with hundreds of all kinds of vehicles. If all brigades had their full strength that force would count as 97,500 men. In a recent interview the Ukrainian military commander Zaluzhny said that his army has 200,000 men trained to fight with 500,000 more having other functions or currently being trained. The forces which are currently getting mauled in the Bakhmut area constitute 50% of Ukraine's battle ready forces.

Zaluzhny has pulled units from other fronts like the Kreminna and Svatove sector further north in Luhansk province to feed them into Bakhmut. That has minimized any chance that the Ukrainian forces in those sectors will be able to make any progress.

What nearly all reports from Ukraine seem to miss is the huge damage that Russia artillery is causing on a daily base. Ukraine has little artillery left to respond to that and whatever it still has is getting less by the day.

A few weeks ago the Russian military started a systematic counter artillery campaign which has since made great progress. The typical western way of detecting enemy artillery units is by radar. The flight path of the projectile is measured and the coordinates of its source are calculated enabling ones own artillery to respond. But counter-artillery radar itself depends on radiating. It is thereby easily detectable and vulnerable to fire. Over the last months Russia deployed a very different counter-artillery detection systems with the rather ironic name of Penicillin:

Penicillin or 1B75 Penicillin is an acoustic-thermal artillery-reconnaissance system developed by Ruselectronics for the Russian Armed Forces. The system aims to detect and locate enemy artillery, mortars, MLRs, anti-aircraft or tactical-missile firing positions with seismic and acoustic sensors, without emitting any radio waves. It locates enemy fire within 5 seconds at a range of 25 km (16 mi; 13 nmi). Penicillin completed state trials in December 2018 and entered combat duty in 2020.

The Penicillin is mounted on the 8x8 Kamaz-6350 chassis and consists of a 1B75 sensor suite placed on a telescopic boom for the infrared and visible spectrum as well as of several ground-installed seismic and acoustic receivers as a part of the 1B76 sensor suite. It has an effective range for communication with other military assets up to 40 kilometres (25 mi) and is capable to operate even in a fully automatic mode, without any crew. One system can reportedly cover an entire division against an enemy fire. Besides that, it co-ordinates and corrects a friendly artillery fire.

The Penicillin system can hide in the woods and stick up its telescopic boom to look at and listen to the battlefield. As it does not radiate itself there is no good way for an enemy to detect it.

The system pinpoints Ukrainian guns as they fire. They are then eliminated by immediate precise counter-fire. As the artillery relevant part of today's 'clobber' list provided by the Russian Ministry of Defense claims:

Operational-Tactical Aviation, Missile Troops and Artillery of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have neutralised an artillery ordnance depot of 114th Territorial Defence Brigade near Veliky Burluk (Kharkov region), as well as 82 artillery units at their firing positions, manpower and hardware at 98 areas.

Counterbattery warfare operations have resulted in destruction of:

one Polish-manufactured Krab howitzer near Peschanoye (Kharkov region);

one U.S.-manufactured M109 Paladin howitzer, and one fighting vehicle equipped with Grad multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) near Lozovaya (Kharkov region);

one D-20 howitzer near Terny (Donetsk People's Republic);

two Giatsint-B howitzers near Maryinka and Orlovka (Donetsk People's Republic);

two Akatsiya self-propelled howitzers near Nevskoye (Lugansk People's Republic), and Preobrazhenka (Zaporozhye region);

five D-30 howitzers near Zmiyevka, Novokairy (Kherson region), Sofiyevka (Donetsk People's Republic), and Orekhov (Zaporozhye region).

Four U.S.-manufactured counterbattery warfare radars have been destroyed:

two AN/TPQ-50 stations near Mylovoye and Dudchany (Kherson region),

one AN/TPQ-36 counterbattery warfare radar near Ugledar (Donetsk People's Republic),

one U.S.-manufactured AN/TPQ-48 counterbattery warfare radar near Senkovo (Kharkov region).

Air defence facilities have shot down six Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles near Kremennaya (Lugansk People's Republic), Nikolskoye, and Petrovskoye (Donetsk People's Republic).

14 rocket-propelled projectiles launched by HIMARS and Olkha MLRS have been intercepted near Udy (Kharkov region), Smolyaninovo (Lugansk People's Republic), Donetsk, and Khartsyzsk (Donetsk People's Republic).

One U.S.-manufactured anti-radiation missile has been shot down near Radensk (Kherson region).

One Ukrainian Tochka-U ballistic missile has been shot down near Berdyansk (Zaporozhye region).

The above is the equivalent of two artillery companies (batteries with six guns each) eliminated in just one day. Ukrainian counter-battery fire against Russian artillery is no longer possible as the necessary detection equipment gets eliminated and as Ukrainian counter-fire is shot down by Russian air defenses.

This Russian counter-artillery campaign has been going on for several weeks. It has disabled large parts of what was left of Ukrainian longer range capabilities. Meanwhile the Russian artillery keeps on knocking down Ukranian troops that hold the frontline. Only when all parts of the Ukrainian trenches have been hit by intense fire will the Russian infantry move in to clean up whatever is left behind.

This form of battle is causing huge losses on the Ukrainian side while the Russian forces incur just a minimum of casualties.

In his recent talks Col (ret.) Douglas Macgregor put the deaths in Ukraine forces at 150,000 and casualties at 450,000. I, like Yves Smith, doubt that number of wounded is that high. As the system of Ukrainian battlefield extradition and hospitalization is in a bad state there will be less wounded and likely more dead.

In a huge contrast to U.S. waged wars, the civilian death count on the Ukrainian side is remarkably low:

Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff, said at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort of Davos, “We have registered 80,000 crimes committed by Russian invaders and over 9,000 civilians have been killed, including 453 children.”

Feeding more troops into the battle in the Bakhmut sector, as the Ukrainian side has been doing, is not a good use of resources.

We can state that Ukraine has by now lost the nominal equipment of two larger armies.

At the beginning of the war the Ukrainian army was said to have some 2,500 tanks, 12,500 armored vehicles and 3,500 large artillery systems. It is doubtful that more than half of those were in a usable state but they may have received enough repair to be workable.

The Russia military claims that most of those have been eliminated:

7,549 tanks and other armoured fighting vehicles, 984 fighting vehicles equipped with MLRS, 3,853 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 8,081 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.

If one doubts those numbers one has to ask why the Ukraine has needed to import so many more weapons and is still short of them:

410 Soviet-era tanks delivered by NATO members in former communist bloc, including Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia.

300 [Armored/Infantry Fighting Vehicles], including 250 Soviet-designed IFVs from former communist states.

1,100 [Armored Personnel Carriers], including 300 M113 troop carriers and 250 M117s.

300 towed howitzers. 400+ pieces of self-propelled artillery, of which 180 is on order.

95 [Multiple Rocket Launchers]

There were also a number of fighter airplanes, helicopter and air-defense systems. The above was the second army, after Ukraine's original one was mostly gone, that has by now been nearly eliminated.

The Russian clobber list now regularly reports of combat with Ukraine forces that kills, for example, one tank, three armored vehicles and a number of pick-ups and motor vehicles:

One Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group has been eliminated near Liman Pervy (Kharkov region). The enemy has lost over 50 Ukrainian personnel, one tank, two infantry fighting vehicles, and two pickups. … [In Donetsk direction] over 60 Ukrainian personnel, one tank, three armoured fighting vehicles, and six motor vehicles have been eliminated. … Two AFU sabotage and reconnaissance groups have been eliminated in the area to the north of Levadnoye and Vladimirovka (Donetsk People's Republic). The enemy has lost up to 40 Ukrainian personnel, two armoured fighting vehicles, and three motor vehicles.

Pick-ups and unarmored motor vehicles should avoid the frontline and certainly not be part of force attacking the immediate frontline. If these reports reflect the current structure of Ukrainian forces, as I believe they do, than its state is indeed dire.

In his Economist interview General Zeluzhny has requested a third army to be delivered to him immediately:

“I know that I can beat this enemy,” he says. “But I need resources. I need 300 tanks, 600-700 IFVs [infantry fighting vehicles], 500 Howitzers.”

As the Economist writer dryly noted:

The incremental arsenal he is seeking is bigger than the total armoured forces of most European armies.

The stocks of two complete armies have by now been destroyed in Ukraine. The resources for a smaller third one will be delivered in the next rounds of 'western' equipment deliveries during the next months. Russia will dully destroy Ukraine's third army just as it has destroyed the first and second one. It is doubtful that the 'West' has enough material left to provide Ukraine with a fourth one.

That then leaves only two options. Send in 'western' armies with the equipment they still have or declare victory and go home.

The neo-conservatives as ever favor the first option. President Joe Biden may still be against sending U.S. soldiers but this could change if he indeed gets blackmailed into doing it:

[A]s the ‘classified documents’ scandal gains momentum, the malleable president will likely fall-in-line and do whatever the hawkish foreign policy establishment demands of him. In short, the documents flap is being used by behind-the-scenes powerbrokers who are blackmailing the president to pursue their own narrow interests. They have Brandon over-a-barrel.

There is no evidence that this is happening but the signs are there.

The second option is to declare a non-existent victory and to forget about the whole issues.

But will the 'western' media, as Yves asks, notice any of this?

As commentator David correctly remarks at Yves' site:

I’ve said for a long time now that the West will be able to claim “victory”, or at least not defeat, by establishing fantastical victory conditions that the Russians never had and never wanted, and then claiming credit for frustrating them. With luck, this will just about enable western elites to hang onto power, at least temporarily.

"Putin tried to conquer Europe but we stopped him after he took only half of Ukraine," will sound like victory. But it is of course extremely far from the truth. Anyway, the media may well buy it:

But in the wider sense, we’re seeing the latest and most degenerate stage of the stupidity and ignorance which has afflicted the western media and pundit class over the last year. They didn’t know about the war in the Donbas, nobody told them Russia had the strongest army in Europe, nobody knew about the defensive lines in Donbas, nobody understood the seriousness of the Russian threats, nobody realised the Russians hoped for a short, sharp war to bring the Ukrainians to their senses, nobody understood why Russia went over to Plan B while it mobilised, nobody realised the Russians had been stockpiling weapons and ammunition for years; nobody knew what attrition warfare was …. In other words, the most disgraceful example of ignorance and stupidity of any ruling class in modern times. It will go on to the end, and “victory” will be proclaimed.

The war the U.S. provoked in Ukraine has been won by Russia even when no one wants to note it.

#ukraine conflict #us imperialism #joe biden #joe biden classified documents #russia #ukraine #nato propaganda #propaganda #propaganda debunking #moon of alabama

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wolfspiders-web · 10 months

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Sapience re: Constructs

I continue to go down the rabbit hole of "how do I bullshit science and magic together" for my headworld, today it's enchantments

In this world, "artificial intelligence" is the magical manifestation of a will on a physical object via enchantment, often referred to as "constructs" or "cons" for short. The level of AI is limited by the inclusion of technology or lack thereof; a maximum of Stage 3 is capable on low to no tech objects, while all Stages are theoretically possible on a sufficiently technologically advanced object. The stages are as follows:

Basic: The enchanted equivalent of a simple tool and usually only possesses an on/off switch of sorts. Cannot improve upon itself nor be trained.

Competent: Designed for a specific task and can accept new data to improve functionality. May respond to inputs in a human-like manner, but has no sense of self.

Refined: Capable of being trained beyond its original parameters and develop mastery in a specified domain. Can pass or exceed tests for human-like intelligence.

Awakened: The beginnings of sapience with reasoning and emotions. However it lacks creativity and requires external input, possessing no initiative at all.

Autonomous: Possesses true self-awareness and is completely indistinguishable from a human. It acts on its own initiative and can creatively solve problems.

Master: Similar to Stage 5, but is also capable of outperforming any expert in any field and can do the work of multiple people to manage or solve complex tasks.

Omniscient: Improves itself at a rate that gets exponentially faster over time. For better or worse, once started its growth cannot be stopped nor reversed.

Stage 7 is Literally the Singularity but I wanted it to be called something else because the term feels overused in sci-fi settings. Based on the 7 Stages of Artificial Intelligence outlined in this Stack Exchange post.

Despite AI being near unexplainable except "lol magic", advanced technology and materials are still required to create a framework for the enchantment to latch onto and create a functioning artificial brain. There was nothing remotely like sapient AIs before the Great War spawned magic itself. On that note, trying to enchant a will onto a dead or even a braindead complex organic body is a very bad idea. Do Not Do. Talking animal familiars are still strictly the domain of fiction as well.

The scale is also more than a bit controversial and sparks a lot of debates along the lines of "then what are people if not Stage 5 meat constructs?", does it matter if it's wetware instead of hardware? Arguments are formed around the fact that humans are born with wills and not enchanted to have them.

The reason why this is all here is that I realized something about what I wrote about magic/tech earlier and how I've basically bullshitted a semi-plausible way to have Chasseur in my headworld, lmao. He's technically an enchanted object/construct, with a "will" put upon him to give him intelligence and a heart. Chasseur falls under Stage 5 due to being completely self-aware and has intelligence levels on par with that of the average human or slightly beyond, but he can't "multitask" on gargantuan projects like a Stage 6 can.

On that note, Stages 6 and 7 cannot be created, but a construct with the appropriate frameworks and hardware can grow into them with enough time. While Stage 4 and above are exceedingly rare, the fact that the scale already exists during my narrative means the members of the 553 Unit were not the first autonomous robots on record. c:

#don't mind me I have brainrot on making sentient robots somehow work in this universe #tfw Chasseur's entire existence is basically 'enchantment? ENCHANTMENT!' lmfao #lupa's untitled headworld

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agentgrange · 1 year

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MIDCON-RED-- COSA NOSTRA

Mitigation and Defeat, Continental Readiness officially exists to maintain an agglomerate of armories, fortifications, and black sites hidden away in America's national parks ready for immediate mobilization in the event of nuclear war. Should America's urban centers and known military bases fall in the first hours, MIDCON-RED's ultimate duty is to act as stewards to provide a holdout option for national defense. It was a hard sell, convincing Truman to develop a secret paramilitary garrison under civilian oversight fully isolated from the defense intelligence community... But it wasn't the first time. The OSS was formed to act as a civilian intelligence agency that reported directly to the president without being beholden to the bickering whims of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. By extension the CIA, nominally, still operated under the same principle despite MIDCON knowing full well the tyrannical ambitions their would-be sister organization now worked for. Most importantly by 1950, spurned by MacArthur's play for power in Korea and increasing influence in politics, Truman had grown wary of the idea of trusting military men like the American Caesar with direct control of a secondary arsenal ready for immediate mobilization on US soil.

By pulling a few strings MIDCON advanced from being a small theoretical proof-of-concept staged in the old OSS training camp of Prince William Forrest Training Area B to a fully authorized civil defense service under the Department of the Interior. The Mission 66 project for the National Parks Service served as a masterful cover to further expand MIDCON in the years to come in response to the emergence of OD URANIDES and direct confrontation with MIDNIGHT CLIMAX. By 1955, the secret war within the American government over Black Science was in full swing.

#midcon red #delta green #ttrpg #unreality #worldbuilding #had this sitting in drafts for a while figured I'd post it

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dendeniel · 2 years

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Congratulations to the gunners on the holiday! It just so happened that since the age of 16 I have been working closely with the gunners and therefore I can draw some conclusions.

The Syrian experience has revealed many problems of Russian artillery. It was in Syria that the interaction between UAVs and artillery was built. Before that, spotters from the front line called the headquarters by TAPIK. Now, in real time, the generals watched the battlefield on large screens. Aircraft manufacturers and art correctors moved to headquarters – and this was a big step forward.

The Syrian war saved the Krasnopol shells. Before the Syrian conflict, they were aimed at the target from the ground. The effectiveness was small, so they wanted to abandon them. In 2017, the designers hung the designator on a UAV (type Orlan 30) and from that moment the 152mm guns turned into sniper rifles that beat for tens of kilometers.

The fighting in Syria showed low training of personnel and unsatisfactory work of artillery with conventional shells. Flights of 300 meters did not surprise anyone. And if stationary targets were more or less destroyed, then defeating a moving target remained an almost unrealistic task.

The Karabakh conflict has shown that even Soviet artillery systems can effectively hit the enemy. I want to pay tribute to the Armenian gunners. Despite the fact that they used outdated guns such as D-20 and D-1, thanks to the competent adjustment and training of personnel, the Azerbaijani army suffered significant losses. In addition, the Armenians were actively digging their tools and it is worth learning.

Unfortunately, the Syrian and Karabakh experience revealed many problems, but it was not generalized, meaningful and scaled. What worked on a small theater stopped working on the scale of its own. From the very beginning of the conflict, plasma screens hung in the headquarters, but the drones (Orlan 10, Orlan 30) quickly ran out. To adjust, we had to send specialists to the front line. Without the UAV "Krasnopol" was not used. The usual scheme of interaction crumbled before our eyes.

The scale of its required a huge number of artillery systems, while there were not so many trained calculations. Theoretically, we could neutralize the human factor with the mass arrival of modern systems. But instead of "Coalitions" we saw Soviet D-1s.

Now the Russian artillery is being reborn through sweat and blood. The state has realized the importance of precision weapons, and we are moving towards this goal. Despite the losses, our gunners get the experience that could not have been dreamed of while training at the training grounds. There are mistakes and shortcomings, but this is just an excuse to develop and move forward. And I believe in our guys. They will succeed.

Alexander Kharchenko

#ukraine #russia #ukraine war #vladimir putin #war #war in ukraine #nuclear #soldiers #news #artillery #Holiday

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thetruearchmagos · 2 years

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hi !! from the OC ask game, 5, 25, and 46 for the two characters most on your mind :v

Heyyyy, thank you for the Ask! I'll go with Vice Admiral Oxley, and Lieutenant Commander Evren Bayrak, as they were during the events of Swift Seas And Whirlwinds.

5: Do they have any nicknames or pet names or other aliases?

The Admiral: For both of 'em, I'll go with their "Callsigns" from their careers. Oxley's callsign, "Spearsfish", is said to derive from an incident during her time as a cadet at the "Fleet Air Aviation Academy", where she, while out on a sail yacht on off duty with her fellow cadets, attempted to use a mounted trophy spear on the small boat to catch a fish "for the heck of it". Apparently unaware that it was a purely ornamental, highly expensive prop, she threw it into the water, watched as it missed miserably, was reminded of its value, and proceeded to dive into the freezing sea to retrieve it.

(Fun fact, just came up with that for this Prompt, thank you!)

The Aviator: I actually just covered this one in a little excerpt I made out, which you can find here. Hint, it's "Quickshot", and its not for a good reason!

25: What are somethings they find difficult to do? Or say?

The Admiral: Well, despite years of work within the navy, her "actual" experience in Fleet "at sea" command is relatively limited. Her duties , especially before SSAW, dealt with the modernising the Fleet in terms of developing new technologies and doctrinal concepts, a pedigree that leaves her well equipped to fight the theoretical war, but less so in the practical world. However, the real issue comes with her own fears of sending her sailors into harms way, the risks and dangers she knows, and knows most don't, and has to deal with to achieve the duty she's been given. So, taking the final step of really getting into the thick of battle is something that'll be weighing heavily on her mind. The Aviator: Similarly to their boss, Evren, despite their excellent training and apparent talent, is still, in a real sense, quite unexperienced. Already gunning to be one of the youngest Squadron leaders in Fleet Air Arm history, the fact of the matter is that they're rather new to the way the whole fleet works, leaving them, under their bluster and drama, insecure in their position. Their chase for promotion and service mean they just can't say no, fooling themselves into being run into the ground by the weight of duty they work for. They're also, with their youth, already a leader in their field, and the weight of responsibility bears down heavily on them.

46: Does your character believe in anything? Religion? Superstition?

I haven't thought much about this side of their character, so I'm sorry I can't say much about this! I suppose the closest thing I can do is their general sense of idealism. The both of them are fairly firm believers in the values and principles of the United Commonwealth, with things like the value of personal liberty and rights at the core of what they stand for. They're both also fairly steeped in the traditions and institutional culture and legacy of the Navy, and those ideals and traditions that it carries with it, the tales of past glories and battles fought for a higher purpose, which they, in a sense, aspire towards.

And, that's a wrap! I do hope I was able to do this properly, and I'm sorry for any shortcomings in this Answer!

#writing #writeblr #worldbuilding #asks #my writing #my wips #my ocs

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starxcrosser · 2 months

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okay, so, I'm gonna port over my Dragon Ball OC here...

But as you see, this is quickly going to get very confusing, considering I (theoretically) write Lala on here already. So, I've come up with a solution!

When I'm posting as Palm, my Dragon Ball OC, her dialogue will be blue and obviously not contain Lala's trademark verbal tic.

Now, as for Palm's backstory...

She's from a race of aliens that lived near the center of the Milky Way. After centuries of war, the race laid down their arms and became pacifist scholars. Unfortunately, this left them completely unprepared for an invasion from a belligerent neighbor race that ended with her planet being glassed and the vast majority of her kin slaughtered.

Palm struggled with her feelings for a while after this, torn between a desire for revenge and her ingrained pacifism. In the end, she came to realize that fighting to protect peace was a noble goal, and she began training. Her life feels rather aimless despite this, and she still feels held down by the memories of her home, so her eventual goal is to win the World Martial Arts Tournament to prove to herself she's grown and move on from her past.

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david-talks-sw · 3 years

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Anakin knows what he’s doing is wrong...

Whenever I read people using the idea that “from Anakin’s point of view the Jedi are evil” as the ultimate proof that he felt bullied by them, I roll my eyes. Anakin is intelligent enough to know when he’s wrong.

He doesn’t really think the Jedi are evil, he’s lying to himself, he bought his own con.

Anakin was a good kid to begin with, and with the Jedi training he became a great man. If you look at things objectively, Anakin is 90% of a great Jedi. He’s seemingly learned all the rules, and is wise enough to teach them to others:

Be it by telling Ahsoka that she needs to follow the rules, she can’t just go around and do whatever she feels like, it’ll lead to trouble…

… by encouraging his Padawan not to be too hard on herself…

… or be it by encouraging rational thought over hotheadedness.

In that last image, Anakin is Anakin telling Ahsoka and Rex to stop letting their emotions do the thinking and act logically. He’s telling them to be prudent.

Hell, he even believes that patience is a virtue.

Anakin is a trained Jedi Knight. He has the theoretical know-how to get out of his problems, in ROTS.

In fact, a lot of people forget this, but Anakin’s first instinct, upon finding out Palpatine is, in fact, Darth Sidious, is this:

The Jedi are Anakin’s family. If Palpatine is asking Anakin to choose between the Chancellor and the Jedi, he’ll choose the Jedi every damn time (which is why Palpatine makes Anakin choose between the Jedi and Padmé, instead).

So where’s the problem?

That last 10% of what makes a great Jedi. Introspection, self-control.

Despite being wise, clever and thinking rationally - Anakin has trouble applying those lessons to himself.

When it comes to his own personal problems, he's hard on himself, he’s impatient, he breaks the rules and acts out of emotion instead of thinking things through.

As Obi-Wan puts it:

As a result of this flaw, Anakin keeps choosing the wrong path, despite knowing that it’s the wrong path. The Force puts a lot of tests in front of him, and he keeps choosing the easy way out, rather than the more difficult but ultimately satisfying path.

His mother was killed. He can choose to genocide a whole Tusken village, or be the better man and just walk away. He kills the Tuskens.

Dooku is unarmed and helpless. Anakin can either kill him in a rage, out of revenge, or he can capture him, bring him to justice, and potentially discover the identity of the second Sith Lord. He kills Dooku.

Windu is also helpless (his hand was just cut off by Anakin) and Palpatine is killing him. Anakin can either choose to save Windu and arrest Palpatine (who just revealed that he wasn’t “too weak” after all), or he can let Windu die. He lets Windu die.

Padmé tells him that this isn’t what she wants. He can actually listen to her wishes. Or he can go on a maniacal rant about having ultimate power, ignoring her own opinions completely. He goes on a rant, drunk with power. Then chokes her.

Obi-Wan tells him to stop, tries to reason with him: Chancellor Palpatine is evil. Anakin knows this. He can stop lying to himself and accept his mistakes, ending the fight. Or he can give Obi-Wan his two-cent rationalization about the Jedi being evil (which he doesn’t even really believe in), and keep trying to kill Obi-Wan. He keeps trying to kill Obi-Wan.

The more the War goes on, the more it gets easy for Anakin to take the easy path, over and over. But he knows it’s the wrong thing to do.

In the director’s commentary of Revenge of the Sith, George Lucas said this about the following two scenes:

“I like this scene because he's lying to her and he's rationalizing it at the same time by saying he's doing it all for her. He's loyal to the senate and the chancellor and her. But in the end- I mean, he's twisted every fact to his own rationale to make it seem like it's okay, but in the process of lying to her he's actually just lying to himself and rationalizing his behavior. 'Cause he knows he's wrong, but he won't admit it […] he's too far gone- that he could murder a bunch of kids… and then go and rationalize it to her as just doing his job.”

“The tear [on Anakin’s face] says that he knows what he's done, but he has now committed himself to a path that he may not agree with… but he is going to go on anyway. It's the one moment that says he's self-aware that he's rationalizing all his behavior. He's doing terrible things, but in the end he really knows the truth. He knows that he's evil now, and there's nothing he can do about it.”

Anakin tells himself that he’s doing this for Padmé, he’s doing this because the Jedi betrayed him, blabla.

Truth is? He’s just really really scared. And that made him do really bad things.

There’s this incredible moment in Darth Vader: Lord of the Sith #5.

Vader has taken the lightsaber off a Jedi, and now he has to corrupt the saber’s crystal to get his red blade.

The crystal, and by extension, the Force, showed him a vision, a path where he turned to the Light, defeated the Emperor and put an end to his suffering. A path of redemption. This was his reaction:

Vader refuses to take the hard path and chooses the easy path instead, once again. He rejects the Light and hangs on to the pain… because deep down… below the “they betrayed me” bullshit he keeps telling himself… he thinks he deserves it, because he did the wrong thing.

Anakin knows he’s wrong and he’s still goes forward with doing the wrong thing, no matter what test the Force keeps throwing his way.

And that’s why his sacrifice in Return of the Jedi is so impactful. He finally does the right thing, he accepts that it’ll be hard, that he’ll die if he saves Luke… he doesn’t care. Luke loves him, like Padmé did. He failed once. He won’t fail again.

I’m gonna conclude this with one more quote from Lucas:

“It really has to do with learning. Children teach you compassion. They teach you to love unconditionally. Anakin can’t be redeemed for all the pain and suffering he’s caused. He doesn’t right the wrongs, but he stops the horror. The end of the Saga is simply Anakin saying: ‘I care about this person, regardless of what it means to me. I will throw away everything that I have, everything that I have grown to love - primarily the Emperor - and throw away my life, to save this person. And I’m doing this because he has faith in me, loves me despite all the horrible things I’ve done. I broke his mother’s heart, but he still cares about me, and I can’t let that die’.”

#Anakin Skywalker #the hero with no fear #jedi #jedi order #star wars #long post #still #meta #but #it's #a #really #long fucking post #but hey #Anakin #is a lovable #dork #so he deserves it

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