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Happy Cody Day!!! @codyday2224

Don't let any of his troopers see but... Cody's made a friend 🧡

#cody

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Happy Cody day!

#cody

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ケイナンはヘラ達のことをいつも見守ってくれているはずだよね🥹💚

#kanan #hera #kanera

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@theneutralmime

Oh man, Qui-Gon is one of my faves, in part because I think he's an amazingly complex character despite how little screen time he actually has.

I don't think Qui-Gon ever explicitly says that he doesn't think Obi-Wan is ready for the trials. I could be wrong, and people can correct me if this is a specific quote that he has in TPM, but what I remember is him making the quick correction to Obi-Wan about focusing on the here and now in their first scene and then telling him that he still has much to learn during their conversation on Coruscant. For the first scene, regardless of whether he thinks Obi-Wan is ready for the trials for not, Obi-Wan is still his student RIGHT NOW and so it is his duty to make corrections and guide Obi-Wan on the right path until that is no longer true. For the second scene, it's entirely possible to recognize that Obi-Wan is ready to take the trials AND that he has more to learn at the same time. I'm sure this is true for basically EVERY new Knight, because they'd all be fairly young still at this point, at the beginnings of their journey as a Jedi still, not the end. And even if you make it to being a Master, it never means you stop having things to learn. Yoda has an entire test during the Force Ghost arc about how you ALWAYS have more to learn, no matter how old you get. So I don't think that either of these moments would explicitly mean that Qui-Gon thinks Obi-Wan isn't ready for the trails before he makes that declaration to the Council.

But the other thing I think could be true as well is that, while Obi-Wan probably IS ready to face the trials, Qui-Gon might not have been thinking about it within that immediate of a timeframe. He might've been planning on a few more months, maybe a year or so, to just finish things off a little with Obi-Wan. It doesn't mean he doesn't think Obi-Wan is ready, but just that he would've chosen to finish Obi-Wan's apprenticeship differently had he had the choice. But when Anakin comes into the picture, he believes so wholeheartedly in Anakin being the Chosen One that he is willing to sacrifice that time with Obi-Wan in order to ensure Anakin gets the training he needs. Obi-Wan will not SUFFER for losing those few months, he's ready enough that he'll be fine regardless and can continue to learn what he needs to learn as a Knight. Anakin, however, COULD suffer from not being allowed to have ANY training and Qui-Gon is being put in a position where either HE trains Anakin or NOBODY DOES.

This was NOT what Qui-Gon wanted, there's zero indication that Qui-Gon was aiming to be Anakin's master at any point before this moment, that he wanted the glory of being the Chosen One's master or whatever. Qui-Gon seems BAFFLED that the Council isn't just letting Anakin join, which indicates to me that he was expecting to just leave Anakin with the rest of the kids his age and move on from there. MAYBE he'd take Anakin as a Padawan after Obi-Wan's apprenticeship had finished, but I don't think that's something he was genuinely even thinking about yet and he certainly wasn't anticipating being put in a position where he had to choose between the two. So Qui-Gon's two scenes with Obi-Wan where he is still treating Obi-Wan like a student with things to learn could easily be an indication that Qui-Gon is just not quite planning on ending the apprenticeship yet even though Obi-Wan is ready to move forward.

Of course Qui-Gon says he's proud of Obi-Wan, I don't know that that was truly ever in question. Obi-Wan is caught by SURPRISE by Qui-Gon's choice in the Council chamber and he definitely takes it a little personally because Qui-Gon is absolutely dropping him unexpectedly to take on another Padawan, but Obi-Wan's apology later indicates that he recognizes that Qui-Gon's choice WASN'T PERSONAL. It wasn't an indication of a lack of care on Qui-Gon's part or even real favoritism towards Anakin, but just that Qui-Gon was forced to make a choice and Anakin needed him more than Obi-Wan did. But Obi-Wan recognizing that mistake and apologizing to Qui-Gon for it shows that Qui-Gon wasn't wrong and Obi-Wan IS just as ready as Qui-Gon said he was, which is why he says he believes Obi-Wan is wiser than he is and that he'll make a great Jedi Knight.

And Qui-Gon thinking Obi-Wan has more to learn or giving a quick gentle correction doesn't mean he ISN'T proud of Obi-Wan, either. Like I said earlier, the Jedi generally recognize that everyone will always have more to learn, you never STOP learning. In the scene where he says Obi-Wan has more to learn, he puts his hand on Obi-Wan's shoulder, which is a pretty obvious show of affection. Qui-Gon's faith in the Force (and his interpretation of it) isn't necessarily something he can teach Obi-Wan, it's something Obi-Wan will have to learn FOR HIMSELF. And aside from that quick correction about focusing on the here and now, we constantly see Qui-Gon trusting Obi-Wan. He leaves Obi-Wan on his own with the Naboo (which at the time would've included the Queen, so he's trusting Obi-Wan with protecting the Queen AND with being the Queen's primarily Jedi advisor), he trusts Obi-Wan's judgment about where to land the ship, and he lets Obi-Wan step forward to make a point to Boss Nass. There's so many moments where you can see how much responsibility Qui-Gon trusts Obi-Wan with, something I don't think he'd do if he WASN'T proud of Obi-Wan in general.

So yeah, Qui-Gon's proud of Obi-Wan, he thinks Obi-Wan is ready to become a Knight, he thinks Obi-Wan is wise and will be a GREAT Knight. And he ALSO thinks Obi-Wan has more to learn because OF COURSE HE DOES. Obi-Wan is 25 years old, he's got SO MUCH life ahead of him. These things don't contradict for me, I think Qui-Gon is perfectly capable of believing all of them at once, and I think it's possible for them to all be TRUE at once.

#qui-gon #obi-wan

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mace is trying to grasp what makes playing tea party so cute and the answer is baby wan, but I don’t think he’s ready to admit that yet.

#mace #obi-wan

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anti-jedi side of fandom loooove to be aphobic like they just spout off bullshit at the drop of a hat with zero awareness or critical thought

saw a post describing jedi survivor’s story and like a quarter of it was devoted to how Cal rebels against the ‘failures’ of the Order and stops ‘repressing what makes him human’ since that’s what the Order taught him to do, of course! 🙄

which first of all

IF YOU DESCRIBE ROMANTIC INTEREST AS WHAT MAKES A PERSON HUMAN YOU ARE BEING APHOBIC. fullstop. forgoing romance or sex, whether because of orientation or a matter of choice, is not inherently repressive or inhuman.

and i’m certain that’s what they were referring to, because Cal’s relationship with Merrin is the only thing that could be construed as going against the ways of the Jedi Order.

…other than his blatant quest for vengeance and near-Fall after the deaths on Jedha.

but somehow, i don’t think that’s what they meant by Cal rejecting the Order’s dogma! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

so here’s a good time for the reminder that jedi do not teach ‘repression.’ They are allowed sex and encouraged to love others, even their enemies. They don’t get married and they don’t have kids because they don’t do attachments, and they don’t make commitment that they couldn’t realistically keep while serving the Republic and the Force above all else.

SECONDLY

that’s not what the story is about. not even a subplot. Cal has a single line about the jedi ‘not being right about everything’ and yeah it’s in regards to his potential relationship with Merrin. But is breaking from the traditions of the Order a theme/subplot?

no! wanna know how i know?

literally hours after he says this he’s betrayed by Bode, his brother in arms and (until then unknown) fellow jedi, and what was Bode’s justification again? oh that’s right, he doesn’t want vulnerable refugees and rebels on Tanalorr because he won’t accept even the smallest risk towards his daughter. IN OTHER WORDS HIS ATTACHMENT. Bode was attached to his wife and daughter and was willing to give up everyone on the Secret Path and murder Cordova*** in cold blood because his wife got murdered by the empire and he was so afraid of the same happening to Kata that he was willing to sacrifice everyone else. No thought for their loved ones. their spouses and siblings and children. Nope. just Kata. That’s not even getting into the work he did and people he got killed for the ISB before also betraying them!

like Bode is The warning against attachment. willing to trap Kata in isolation against her own wishes. saying screw the rest of the galaxy. unable to notice when his own actions nearly get his beloved daughter killed. He’s so aware of his choices too, unlike Anakin who was unhinged by the end.

god i love Bode. a more grounded and…relatable(?) realistic(?) look at what attachments can lead a person to do. as opposed to choking to death the person you just created an empire to save anakin lmao

***and speaking of Cordova and Cere. Their whole storyline is about rebuilding an archive of the order’s knowledge and culture. and the tragedy is *The Empire’s* violent repression of their way of life and the destruction of that accumulated knowledge.

the Order didn’t repress their members ffs

#jedi survivior #jedi #pro jedi

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The thing about the fall of the Jedi Order is that it showed that the good guys sometimes suffer quite devastating defeats by the bad guys, but they always get back on their feet again.

But there is this quite rigid mentality that insists, since "good always wins over evil," if they good guy suffers defeat, it’s because they wasn’t truly good - there was fundamentally wrong with them that prevented them to achieve total, pure goodness that the bad guys can never even touch, let alone deceive or defeat in a battle. It sets unreasonable and unrealistic expectations: if you have the ability to be deceived, to be defeated, you are not a normal human being, but you are "flawed" i.e. there's something to correct about yourself and if you don't do it, then if you are deceived and defeated, then it's your fault.

#jedi

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*enables you* what happened with TLJ 👃

After all these years I still can't properly find words to explain how deeply betrayed I felt after the credits rolled and I shuffled out of the movie theater with everybody else. There was a TON of hype surrounding this movie, an absolute fuckton. I only saw positive reviews about it, the cast, the director, the plot. I got excited to see where Rian Johnson & Co. would take the ST.

The only remotely negative comment I saw before watching the movie was a fandom blog saying they didn't like what happened to Poe. Since this blog was about racism in fandom, I knew something was off. That was my only warning.

And y'know, it was like, five minutes in? Ten minutes? And Poe makes a "Yo mama" joke at Hux? I used to go into movies with an open mind and spent days gathering my thoughts about them because I was always slow to react, slow to gather my thoughts into coherent strings of words. It's how I enjoyed Michael Bay productions and JJ Abrams' love affair with lens flare. I never got actively angry with a movie I was watching, and I was fucking angry by the time the movie ended. I still remember texting a friend while standing out in front of the theater because I was so confused. The response to TLJ was so positive so why did I come out of the movie so frustrated and confused and dissatisfied with the whole thing?

It's been years and we all know how this movie divided the Star Wars fandom and just... broke Fandom Spaces in a way I never expected. We all know what TLJ did and didn't do, and how TROS provided the final nail in the coffin that was the ST experiment. But back then, all I saw was positive commentary about the themes and messages of TLJ, how it portrayed failure and the dangers of putting someone like Luke Skywalker on a pedestal, how the Force was female, how... important it was to see Poe get characterized as a hotheaded hotshot who needed to be demoted, slapped around, and stunned in order to learn some kind of lesson, how important it was to see Finn lose everything he gained in TFA so that he could relearn how not to be selfish or something while starring in a fucking incredibly tone-deaf B plot, how Rey... I'm not sure exactly what because she didn't need training anyway and then spent most of her time trying to bring Ben Swolo back to the light????? Rose was so promising as someone who grew up under the FO's thumb but she and Kelly were fucking abandoned by Disney so I don't know if Rose existing was actually a good idea if it meant giving Kelly unending trauma. Mark slipped up by calling Luke "Jake" and expressing his displeasure in front of cameras, and I was so fucking baffled and alienated by his character after knowing how his story ended in ROTJ that I couldn't connect with whatever lessons I and he are supposed to be learning. JJ set up Snoke like a mystery box and Rian just yeeted him off without so much as a fucking explanation so what was the point of that? Hux was a fucking joke. Phasma was barely there. The only character that Rian cared about was fucking Kylo Ren and Adam says years later that he was never supposed to get a redemption arc anyway.

Like, this was the movie everyone hyped up? This was the movie that didn't answer any questions left unasked by TFA and didn't bother to move forward with character development for any of the known characters? I spent money watching a slow space chase that ended on a planet made of salt and killed off Luke for Reasons? Am I stupid? Am I dumb? Am I a peasant incapable of understanding the masterpiece Rian directed, this so-called Best Star Wars Movie Since ESB?

But I couldn't say anything. I couldn't be dogpiled for hating such a empowering movie for women, a diverse and inclusive movie that had the likes of John and Kelly and Oscar. I couldn't be lumped in with the Star Wars dudebros with their raging misogynistic and racist takes on the movie, the cast, Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm, Disney, etc. I couldn't be seen as one of them just because I didn't like a movie that I should like, I'm supposed to like. So I sat in silence, read meta, witnessed the fucking catastrophic explosion around some wild ass AO3 fandom essays written by a racist OG member of OTW, saw hate piled on black and bipoc fans, saw r*ylo fans come for John and John clap back at them, just saw an absolute fuckton of hate, and so by the time TROS came around I just... checked out. There was no way JJ could salvage what Rian had done and I was right. TROS was a corporate-run soulless garbage end to the Sequel Trilogy, but it ended just as The Mandalorian finished its first season and regained a lot of good will with this small story about a lonely Mandalorian bounty hunter who encountered a Force-sensitive Baby Yoda.

And then TBOBF/Season 3 of the Mando Show happened, just like how TLJ happened. All the promise, all the unanswered questions of the previous movie/season, all fucking dropped or provided with the worst, most unsatisfying answer. I'm sure others have found better answers and can live with what Star Wars gave us, but I haven't been able to. TLJ came out years and years ago, and I am still so bitter today. I'm still so bitter because TFA had such an incredibly compelling setup with such promising characters, and then TLJ Did That.

I got so heated while writing this. I'm still so mad. I'm still so bitter. I bury my head so deep in the sandbox I built for myself so that I don't have to think how Disney is twisting and contorting all these Mando'verse shows so that they all eventually lead to the ST, their precious hot potato child that just... didn't have to end the way they did if they actually had a fucking plan and fucking stuck the landing. I'll give the MCU this - their Phase 1? They fucking stuck the landing. I fell off the train tracks and haven't really watched the MCU since Captain Marvel, but at least they had a fucking plan and didn't fucking derail themselves like Disney did with the Sequel Trilogy.

I could be nice to people who like this movie but I'm not going to be. They can be nice on their own blogs.

Man, I can't even watch Knives Out or Glass Onion because my blood starts boiling. Just. TLJ did a lot to ruin what I hoped would be a positive and creative connection with Star Wars, and it took the Mando Show and the 2 minutes where Din and Luke locked eyes on the Imperial light cruiser to bring me back.

I'm gonna stop before I get way too heated for sleep.

#st #tlj #finn #poe #rian johnson critical #st critical #tlj critical #anti reylo #reylo critical #kylo ren critical

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#obi-wan

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Is Mandalore Important?

So I recently saw a post that had a Star Wars time travel fix-it proposal, where the time traveler (a “sane Darth Vader,” though I’m not quite sure what that means) decided upon ending up decades in the past that “fixing the galaxy demands fixing the Mandalorian sector first.”

And I’m still trying to process that?

Like, it would be one thing if it was a case of “Lots of terrible stuff has happened to Mandalore, so as long as I’m back in time I’ll deal with it.”  Or, “I can’t deal with the Sith until Palpatine takes over from his Sith Master, so I have a few decades to wait and might as well do something useful in the meantime.”  

But where does this idea come from that fixing the galaxy “demands” fixing Mandalore?

Mandalore is just such a… non-entity… on galactic politics.  Ever since they started focusing more on civil wars than wars of conquests, they aren’t exactly major power-brokers anymore.  

Now this prompt goes on to talk about Jaster, so presumably this is someone using Legends and far fonder of True Mandalorians than New Mandalorians.  So time-traveling Darth Vader takes out Death Watch, which presumably prevents the civil war that brings Satine to power.  So now we have no Death Watch and a mercenary captain on the throne instead of a pacifist Duchess, but what does that accomplish?  

Obi-Wan doesn’t become friends with Satine or spend any time on Mandalore.  Death Watch doesn’t find and rescue Maul and Savage, so they don’t take over Mandalore.  Much as I’d love Maul to die ignominiously in space, neither of those actually seem of galactic importance.

Presumably Jango wouldn’t disappear off to Kamino to be the clone progenitor, but that would hardly stop Dooku, he’d just find choice number 2.  A clone army of Bossks?  Sugis?  Cads?  It wouldn’t ultimately change anything.  

Okay, Mandalore would be armed, but I doubt they’d be part of the Republic under Jaster any more than under Satine.  So maybe if the Republic paid them enough they’d join the Clone War as “honorable” mercenaries on the Republic side, or maybe since the Banking Clans are pretty much Separatist the CIS would outbid the Republic and they’d end up supporting the droids.  They’re still a single sector recovering from centuries of wars and Palpatine is still playing both sides; I doubt it would actually tip the balance.  Maybe if Jaster managed to convince every system that tried to join Satine in neutrality to instead join the war, and all of them did, all on the same side, that would have an impact, but again, unless you take out Palpatine, in which case a whole bunch of other stuff also falls apart, I find it hard to believe it’ll be galaxy-shaking.

Am I missing something obvious?

I’m pretty sure the entire prequel trilogy happened without anyone mentioning Mandalore at all.  If Lucas can write an entire trilogy about why and how the Republic fell and Mandalore doesn’t come up at all, that would seem to imply that the Mandalore sector’s problems weren’t actually a foundational cause of the Republic’s fall - and their solution therefore wouldn’t solve the Republic’s problems, either.

So again, Death Watch did plenty of nasty stuff and deserve to be ended.  And it’s just fine to say “I want to write stories about the groups I like.”  

But even if Mandalore is well-liked among fans, that doesn’t make it important, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t actually mean that  “fixing the galaxy demands fixing the Mandalorian sector first.”

(Now, if this is all a method of showcasing that even if Darth Vader might be sane again, Anakin has never actually had any skills in critical thinking and so he in fact doesn’t understand what is required to fix the galaxy, or perhaps interprets fixing the galaxy as becoming the next Darth Revan and leading an army of Mandalorians to conquer everyone and bring them under his Empire’s control rather than Palpatine’s, that could actually be a pretty cool story starter.)

#mando critical

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"This thing's about three times as expensive as any one of us"

"And it's gonna have an even worse warranty if you mess this up."

MAINTENANCE AND DECK TROOPERS HELL YEAH!!

#clones

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art by Chris Trevas/// Mhairi McFarlane, You Had Me At Hello/Holding On by Shane/ Lang Leaf, Twin Flames/ first eye drawing by Alice X. Zhang/ second eye close up art by Tony Pro/ The Song of Achilles/ to speak of precious evenings by littlekaracan/ battlefront ll stills/ Hamilton the Musical, who lives, who dies, who tells your story/mark z. danielewski, house of leaves/ 5000 letters/ Bastille, the Anchor/ fyodor dostoyevsky, the brothers karamazov/ Kote Darasuum/ Vode An/ street art/ The Arcadian Wind, envy green/ Margaret Atwood, There are better ways of doing this/ Power Politics Emily Dickinson, In this short life that only lasts an hour/ Maggie Smith, First Fall/ Carl Friedrich Lessing, "The Hermit" (art) + November by Margaret Atwood/ Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire/ The Bad Batch s2EP03 screenshot of Cody/ Alan Stephan Foster, "The Fall" (art) + poem by @erdarieldraws

a gift for my codywan besties cilly, tea, kasey, aixa and lauren🫶

#cody #obi-wan #codywan

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"I blame Red Riding Hood's Mom!"

"Obi-Wan was a parent surrogate for Anakin, but was terrible at it. He tried to instruct Anakin in the austere, objective Jedi way, but didn’t notice that Anakin did not have a foundation of humanity on which a conscience and good decision-making are based. Obi-Wan looked on Anakin as a brother... but Anakin needed a father. And there was no father. [The Prequel Jedi] unprepared to deal with, to guide, someone who was deeply mired in that world." - Aaron Allston, Star Wars Insider #145, 2013

"Obi-Wan trains Anakin, at first, out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon, not because he cares about him. [...] He's a brother to Anakin, eventually, but he's not a father figure. That's a failing for Anakin. He doesn't have the family that he needs." - Dave Filoni, Disney Gallery: Mandalorian, “Legacy” 2020

"Anakin— yeah he ultimately makes the choice to turn to the Dark Side… but he has not, like… all of the systemic support that someone should have - when they experience trauma at the ages that he has experienced trauma - like, he has none of that, there." - Mike Chen, Star Wars Explained, 2022

The above statements are provably inaccurate, but hey it's a take that can be had. Sure. There's always more that could've been done.

Thing is, Anakin's story is one about personal responsibility. Per George Lucas, the core message of Star Wars, as a whole, is about you - dear viewer aged 6 to 12 who are starting to think for themselves - learning to be more selfless than selfish, more compassionate than greedy.

Anakin's story shows what happens when you don't do that.

Blaming the Jedi Order/Obi-Wan for what happened to Anakin is the same as arguing:

"Red Riding Hood getting eaten by the Wolf is her Mom's fault! What was she thinking, sending a child out to wander alone?! Of course she got eaten by a Wolf, she a kid, she don't know better!"

You can argue that. You can argue that Red Riding Hood's Mom should've gone with her to see Grandma. But that's not the point of the story, the point is "kids, don't try to take the quick/easy path because it's usually dangerous, and don't talk to strangers."

And I've yet to meet someone who would unironically blame Red Riding Hood's Mom. Because it's obvious that doing so would miss the point entirely.

Yet we do have a big chunk of the fandom whose takeaway from the Prequels is that Anakin's fall is on the Jedi's shoulders, even though that also misses the point.

That only indicates, to me, that what it's really about is...

For one generation, coping with a dislike of the Prequels. Trying to make them make sense and coming up with a headcanon that makes them "good," and nuanced.

For the younger audiences (first the one the Prequels were meant for but now also the Disney-era one), it's just them reciting what they've seen in the movies... which have been recontextualized and retconned through media written by people coming from that previous generation listed in point 1.

#jedi #pro jedi #obi-wan #anakin

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@theneutralmime

Based on your example I'm going to assume you mean "fix it" as in a happy fix-it AU and not "fix it" as in how I would make the movie better.

Doing a fix-it where the actual fix has to happen within the plot of AOTC is harder than it seems. TPM and ROTS are a lot easier because they're the beginning and end of the story so one small change can make a really large difference, but AOTC is the middle of the story so it's a little harder to make changes that really make a difference.

I dunno, I mean, they could've sent more Jedi off to fight Dooku when he tries to run from Geonosis which could've overwhelmed him enough to be defeated which would have garnered them an early prisoner of war AND kept the Death Star plans from Palpatine. Obi-Wan and Anakin also could've just brought in more of those clones who were on the transport with them which might've helped to distract Dooku long enough for him to be defeated. They mention that capturing/killing Dooku might even stop the entire war from happening because it removes the guy who's primarily going to be RUNNING IT from the Separatist side. Dooku's already revealed a small piece of information to Obi-Wan that they could attempt to pressure Dooku into revealing more about, potentially. The main problem with capturing Dooku here is that it's pretty easy for Palpatine to find a way to free him, he's clearly got plenty of resources he can try to reach out to on the Separatist side, he can just hire Cad Bane if he needs to or something like that.

Maybe Obi-Wan doesn't lose the fight against Jango on Kamino and captures Jango so they can interrogate him about everything HE knows which could potentially lead to not just the revelation of Dooku and the droid army and the planned war, but also maybe the trap that is the clones. It's possible that Dooku and Palpatine do what they can to remove Jango from play either by finding a way to assassinate him before he can reveal what he knows or freeing him (personally I feel like they'd just try to kill him, he's not useful enough to expend the effort to free him when it's easier to kill him). I imagine Jango would be willing to exchange information for protection from Dooku at the very least. Maybe. He's ruthless and entirely without morals if we go strictly by the movie version of him, but he doesn't seem like a complete idiot either and can probably recognize that Dooku isn't going to save him and is very likely to try to kill him now that he's been captured.

It's possible that you could try to go for an AU where, instead of following Jango, Obi-Wan stays on Kamino to investigate that, but then he's kind-of making the same mistake Anakin does in this film by abandoning the mission he's SUPPOSED to be on in favor of something he decides is more important. Obi-Wan's mission is to find and apprehend Padme's assassin and while it's pretty clear Jango was INVOLVED in the assassination attempt on Coruscant, it's also pretty clear that it goes deeper than that and THAT'S what Obi-Wan chooses to pursue. He makes his report about the clones to the Council and then leaves uncovering that particular mystery to them rather than continuing to investigate himself and letting Padme's killer go free. As far as Obi-Wan is aware in that moment, they can always come back to Kamino to investigate the situation with the clones, but they may never get another chance to figure out who is behind these attempts on Padme's life and who hired Jango in the first place. And by the time they DO figure that out, it's too late and the war has basically started and the Jedi no longer really have much time to investigate anything.

By AOTC, the "fix it" relies less on someone making a different choice and more on who the good guys can capture who will provide the most relevant information to prevent a war from starting and expose the true perpetrators. Dooku can reveal Palpatine in a way Jango cannot, but Jango is more likely to make a deal and reveal what he DOES know and he seems to know enough that it could really make a difference. At the very least I think Jango would be able to reveal that this war is a sham, that the same people are running both sides of the war, and that the clones are a trap, all of which should be able to do enough damage to the Sith plot to keep something like Order 66 from happening and ultimately still lead to Palpatine's exposure and defeat.

#aotc #obi-wan #dooku #jango

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Anyway, I'm choosing to go hard on bird-lover Rex for my personal headcanon now. He came up with that particular symbol for his helmet because he noticed some native Kaminoan birds of prey diving for fish in the water and they had yellow feathers on their heads and they looked SO COOL and he did research on them and got super into learning about other kinds of birds as well, but he'll always have a special place in his heart for that little Kaminoan bird which is why he designed his armor after them, to represent their ferocity and resourcefulness that he hopes to replicate as a soldier.

Rex doesn't talk about his birdwatching in professional settings much, but he is absolutely the kind of person who keeps a little journal of the different birds in the galaxy he could see, both common and rare, and checks them off when he can. That's actually what the tallies on his helmet are for, too, sometimes he doesn't have access to his journal but he can make a mark on his helmet with something usually to remind himself of it. He's also the person who always sends the blurriest fucking pictures of birds into the groupchat like "Look at this insanely cool bird I saw!" and it's impossible to figure out what bird it even is because the picture is so bad.

#rex

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I had a man, he was long and tall

He moved his body like a cannonball

(can’t get the idea of Poe singing folk songs for Finn out of my head)

#poe #finn #finnpoe #stormpilot

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You know what's something I wished fanon/fanfic/etc explored? The idea of clones, basically traveling the galaxy because of the war not only having their own traditions, but also picking up stuff and being taught things by various people they encounter. Not even necessarily like a culture/tradition. A planet's local militia taught a trooper how to weave grass during a long night waiting for orders.

Of course he brought this to his friends and now the whole battalion makes things from grass or leaves or thread. It's calming, it's fun, they experiment with materials.

The clones who've developed their own culture (not Mandalorian) but also enjoying learning and participating. Let them be happy and want to explore things beyond their DNA donors world. (I also enjoy the idea of them getting to relax and join in on fun, normal activities).

And the idea of different units having different traditions while also sharing them when they're deployed together is fun.

The idea of mindfulness being picked up from Jedi general's and everyone having a unique spin, either copying meditation or meditating while cleaning equipment.

Also I want people to appreciate the clones as their own people.

Yeah, I hardly EVER see the clones depicted as this really interesting mish mash of cultures due to potentially picking up a bunch of shit from civilian populations they meet and then just passing it around their own battalion which could then make it out to the GAR as a whole.

Weaving baskets is a cute one, it could also be something as simple as picking up new spices every time they land somewhere and so their food is this wild fusion cuisine of spices and maybe fruits/dried meats/nuts from all over the galaxy because they just pick up stuff that goes to the kitchens and the clones doing the cooking in the kitchens use whatever they've got available to try to make new dishes. And they end up perhaps getting really good at figuring out how to combine these different ingredients that, on paper, seem like they absolutely should NOT go well together and yet somehow they make it work. And so clone cuisine becomes its own completely unique thing. You could even compare it to Jedi cuisine where they probably end up combining things a lot themselves, but the Jedi would theoretically often have had more access to resources and time to learn whole dishes than the clones do so it's more that the Jedi prepare different specific dishes from a lot of cultures as opposed to the more fusion-style cuisine the clones have come up with.

Or games, it'd be so cute to have the clones picking up all these different sort-of idle games from different civilian children they meet, like gffa versions of hopscotch or hackey sack, maybe card games that aren't sabacc or board games that aren't dejarik but are more specific to this one planet or culture. Maybe the clones start coming up with their OWN card games as they go because they start getting bored of the few that they know and start getting creative from there.

And of course things like different styles of visual art like painting and tattooing and hair styles that they might pick up on and incorporate into their own style that either becomes very popular among the clones on its own or ends up sort-of hybridized and become its own unique clone specific spin on the artform rather than a direct imitation. Writing would be really cool, too, that they pick up things like novels or journals from different cultures and some of the clones start writing creatively and become really prolific among the GAR (and maybe the Jedi too) for their stories. Similar to before, they might start off sort-of imitating styles they see from other cultures, specific kinds of poetry or tropes, but then branch out and put their own spin on it or start combining different things they've learned from various cultures.

Some clones might end up sticking closer to one specific culture they've connected or that just matches their personal taste really well, while others embrace the fusion more, and everything in-between.

And of course we can bring the Jedi into it more, too, and have the Jedi constantly working to introduce the clones to more things, maybe things THEY know and love from various cultures that they think the clones would find fun or interesting. And not just that person's "birth culture" like Ahsoka teaching people about Togruta culture, but things from OTHER CULTURES that they themselves have experimented with and liked. Maybe Ahsoka has a Mon Cal skincare routine she fucking swears by, or a Zabrak meat dish that's her absolute favorite hands down because of how tender they cook it, or her favorite book is actually Rodian because she particularly loves Rodian romance novels. And she introduces the clones to THESE things as well because why wouldn't she? The Jedi have a smorgasbord of options available to them and their culture encourages learning and connecting as much as possible, something I imagine they'd do their best to pass on to the clones in any way available to them.

And of course the Jedi, as some of the only people really out there with the clones and interacting with them regularly, get to be the first to BENEFIT from the hybridization that the clones utilize and get to see more about how these different cultures they've learned and appreciated for so long can be combined in such new and different ways to create something entirely unique and beautiful, so they get to enjoy these things all over again and it's AWESOME! New favorite noodle dish that combined fish from Glee Anselm and spices from Pantora and noodles from Chandrila, new favorite poem that has elements of Naboo and Ryloth in it, new knitted scarf that combined a knitting style from Lothal and a pattern from Shili.

And I've been going more for physical material things so far like food and stuff, but you can include things like slang they pick up from other cultures or maybe rituals of some kind they saw someone do that they asked about and got permission to participate in that they continue to practice afterwards because it's nice and calming.

The interesting part about the clones is that they don't have a "birth" culture to go back to. They were raised in a very sterile environment where everything they were exposed to was something very specific and aimed towards a certain goal. So they might have a favorite fighting move from the ones they were taught on Kamino or a favorite ship to fly of the ones they were taught to use for war, but it would be SO incredibly limited to what the Kaminoans wanted them to learn and not intended to become something the clones really connected to culturally. The Kaminoans themselves clearly HAVE a culture of sorts, they seem to share a style of fashion at least and probably an architectural style, but this isn't something that was passed on to the clones or that they would've been allowed to ever really participate in (beyond maintenance to the buildings, but they wouldn't have gotten a say in things like paint colors or additions to the building for cosmetic reasons, etc). And of course I don't think canon supports the idea that the clones really had a lot of connection to Mando culture and certainly nothing that supports the concept that they would consider it their "birth" culture. Jango barely seems to have passed any sort of Mando heritage on to BOBA, so it seems INCREDIBLY unlikely he'd have passed anything significant on to the clones he DIDN'T consider his son. And the Mando trainers are a legends thing these days, and were never canon anyway, so their exposure to Mando culture would be even more limited than their exposure to Kaminoan culture quite honestly.

All of which means the clones don't really have a firm basis of a birth culture from which to start on and then sort-of experiment out from. They're almost entirely open to whatever they discover or are introduced to in terms of culture. They're not Mando, they're not Kaminoan, they're their OWN THING and they can literally incorporate just about anything and everything into the culture they choose to build and that's SUCH a cool thing to look at and to explore and I don't know if I've really seen that much of it in fics. Especially via the Jedi who are their own massively multi-cultural society and can take the opportunity to really widen the clones' horizons in so many ways.

#clones #clone trooper culture #jedi #pro jedi #anti mandoclone #mandoclone critical