actuallyastingray

[actuallyastingray]

Echo took the last piece of cake, Fives decided to make it everyone’s (Echo’s) problem

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So, let's talk about Emperor Palpatine's last week leading up to the conclusion of Episode IV. Just for a moment, let's consider the position this horrible old space warlock was in, shall we?

Military Intelligence Director Orson Krennic colludes with ISB to commit ethnic cleansing on Ghorman. In typical Krennic fashion, this plan goes neither as smoothly nor as quickly as it was pitched to you as being.

Grand Imperial Admiral Thrawn disappears. Your single best military commander just disappears. Reports indicate space whales are involved??? What???

In response to Krennic/Partagaz's actions on Ghorman, Mon Mothma declares open rebellion on the Senare floor. Her speech is broadcast across the entire galaxy due to what is the first in an absolutely CASCADING series of failures by the ISB. Mothma successfully evades arrest, and escapes Coruscant to Force only knows where.

Darth Vader has taken this increasingly dire moment in Imperial politics to apparently take some sort of Sith PTO at his personal residence on Mustafar. Just about as far out of reach as he can possibly for anyone.

There is a catastrophic data security breach at ISB. It turns out an overly ambitious field agent has been invited to several Signal groupchats about the Death Star that she wasn't supposed to be in, and her collecting of all this vital data in one place has led to a Rebel mole piecing together that you're building the Genocider 5000 instead of a super cool renewable energy program.

Said Rebel infiltrator is then immediately killed by his contact, Luthen Rael, formerly known as Axis. Luthen spreads word of the Death Star to his allies, and then kills himself when confronted by ISB. Maybe your two most important links for piecing together the Rebel Alliance have been lost.

The Rebellion begins spreading propaganda publicly. Their manifesto is playing on just about every available radio frequency.

The ISB collapses. Supervisor Partagaz takes his own life. Colonel Yularen is left with an agency staffed by effectively no one. Your entire intelligence gathering apparatus that was working just fine last week now functionally no longer exists.

NOTE: the following events occur within the span of only 48 hours.

Due to the leak at ISB, the Rebels have discovered the existence of the Death Star, and in very short order manage to steal its schematics. Your special projects divisions on both Eadu and Scarif are destroyed. Director Orson Krennic is KIA.

Darth Vader is recalled from vacation early, and boy is he being awfully himself about it.

You disolve the Imperial Senate. Much as you had anticipated, this is making a lot of people very angry and is being regarded as a bad move.

Darth Vader has lost the Death Star plans. Nobody knows where they are now.

Grand Moff Tarkin blows up the planet Aldaran, a not insiginificant player in the Galactic economy.

Obi Wan Kenobi infiltrates the Death Star, and then quite literally vanishes. Vader is not taking this development well.

LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER BECOMING FULLY OPERATIONAL, THE DEATH STAR IS DESTROYED. Grand Moff Tarkin is KIA. Admiral Motti is KIA. General Tagge is KIA. General Bast is KIA. General Molock is KIA. General Romodi is KIA. Colonel Yularin is KIA. Darth Vader is MIA. Millions of soldiers and skilled military professionals are killed. Quanities of money so vast they cannot be comprehended by the mortal mind have gone up in a flash of smoke and light.

The culprit of this unfathomable trespass is soon revealed to be a 19 year-old boy. His name is Luke Skywalker. You now have not one but two of these freaks of nature to contend with. And you don't know where either of them are at the moment.

What the Hell is an Alluminum Falcon?

Honestly, I kinda feel bad for the guy. Just a little bit. If I were his age (ancient) and his condition (rotting from the inside out, filled with cosmic evil) I might just have had a stroke and died. It is amazing he made it all the way to be thrown down that reactor shaft in Return of The Jedi.

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Checkup and cheering up.

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Boba Fett: You know, the more I look at him, I remember I once met a Jedi who carried a blaster as well.

Din: you’re only mentioning this now?

Boba: It was a long time ago. Ten, maybe twelve years ago? He used to have quite a sizable bounty on his head too, Cal something or another. Bright red hair, hard to miss.

Din: What happened to him?

Boba: As far as I can tell he married a nightsister and fucked off to the other edge of the universe.

Din: The hell is a nightsister

Boba: They were witches who performed some freaky magic from Dathomir. If you’ve never been, keep it that way. Most of them were wiped out during the clone wars though. Pretty certain she did some sort of magic because now if you follow the bounty puck all it leads to is the Koboh Abyss. Any bounty hunter with half a brain threw their pucks away after that. I figured he’d died in there or something until I saw him briefly a while back with a daughter.

Din: You���re telling me the space sorcerers and witches are mating now? Dank farrik there should be laws against that.

Boba: There was, it was called the Order.

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Trading jedi-general shenanigans with the squad

Another what-if AU where order 66 gets outmaneuvered and they all get to wear cozy sweaters together

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Don't imagine Rex quietly fixing a younger clone’s armor after hours, muttering, "you gotta take better care of yourself, kid," while he polishes each scratch like it’s sacred.

Don't imagine Fives trying to teach shinies how to play cards, cheating outrageously so they win, whooping and hollering like they’re champions of the galaxy, and slipping a few credits into their pockets when no one's looking.

Don't imagine Cody staying up all night after a tough battle because he's personally stitching medals of bravery into the empty bunks of fallen troopers, so when they’re remembered, they’re remembered right.

Don't imagine Hardcase giving away his dessert rations to any clone who looks even remotely sad, acting like it’s a prank or a dare so no one knows he’s doing it out of love.

Don't imagine Echo re-learning how to shoot left-handed after his injury, stubbornly, painstakingly, so he can teach other injured clones that they’re not broken — just different.

Don't imagine Jesse carving tiny little messages into the walls of every base they’re stationed at. Messages like "501st were here. We fought. We lived." like he's trying to leave proof they mattered.

Don't imagine Dogma leaving tiny notes in people's lockers that just say "you’re doing good." "you’re brave." "I believe in you." — and then feeling too shy to admit it was him.

Don't imagine Wolffe pretending to be annoyed when Boost and Sinker sneak stray animals into the barracks, but secretly building a little hidden shelter for them behind the hangar.

Don't imagine Kix memorizing the medical charts of every single brother in his battalion — birthdays, allergies, old injuries — because he doesn’t trust the GAR systems to care enough (and he's 30000% right).

Don't imagine Tup tending to a tiny makeshift garden in the middle of a warzone with whatever seeds and scraps he can find, because "something’s gotta grow, sir."

Don't imagine Rex carrying every goodbye letters and notes he never got to say or give tucked in the seams of his armor or in a chest under his bed — every brother he couldn’t save, every friend he couldn’t reach — and still standing up the next morning because someone has to lead, and if not him, then who?

Don't imagine Waxer carrying around a crumpled, dirty drawing of Numa from Ryloth in a hidden pocket inside his armor, smoothing it out and smiling every time he feels like the war is eating him alive.

Don't imagine Boil pretending to grumble about it but secretly checking the drawing too, mouthing, "stay safe, little one," before every mission because part of his heart never left Ryloth.

Don't imagine Bly sketching little comic strips in the margins of his field reports to make Aayla laugh during debriefings — and still carrying the last one he never got to show her, tucked inside his chest plate.

Don't imagine Colt teaching his new ARC trainees how to properly tie a tourniquet and lecturing them seriously, but at the end quietly handing each of them a little lucky charm, like an old Republic credit or a braided cord, "for good luck, kid."

Don't imagine Appo still wearing a piece of Fives' blue paint on his armor as a "tradition" without telling anyone where it came from or why it matters so much.

Don't imagine Fox locking himself in his office after long shifts guarding Coruscant because he can’t stand seeing the brothers’ faces when they look at him like he’s a stranger now — so he sits in the dark and listens to the old 501st comms chatter recordings, just to feel something again.

Don't imagine Jesse and Kix starting a stupid prank war in the barracks where they replace each other's ration packs with terrible "mystery meat," laughing until Rex threatens to demote them — but Kix sneaks Rex a spiked caf packet later as revenge.

Don't imagine Tup painting tiny flowers on the inside of his helmet where no one can see them, tiny bursts of color against the cold plastoid — because he wants to carry beauty into battle even if no one else knows.

Don't imagine Dogma standing at the memorial wall and reading every single name out loud, even the ones he never knew, because he thinks someone should.

Don't imagine Waxer and Boil talking about "after the war" plans, like opening a repair shop on Ryloth, taking in lost kids, making sure no one else has to grow up the way they did — and laughing about it like it could actually happen.

Don't imagine Fives pulling a prank so chaotic that even Rex laughs — real, loud, helpless laughter — and Fives looking absolutely stunned before grinning like he'd just been handed the whole galaxy.

Don't imagine Rex tracing the scars on his hands sometimes without realizing, as if he’s trying to memorize every mistake, every battle, every time he almost didn’t make it — and then closing his fist around them like a promise to keep going.

Don't imagine Kix secretly saving every "thank you" note the boys have ever given him — crumpled sticky notes, bad handwriting, a piece of torn armor that just says "thanks doc" — tucked into his med kit like the most valuable supplies he owns.

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The old Jedi would not know what to do with Luke.

Anakin was seen as a handful, but the Jedi could still command and control him. He was only a little boy when he was cut off from seeing his mother, and when the Jedi started drilling it into him that his personality was a problem he needed to grow out of.

He respected them, they were the authority figures in his life. He just wanted them to see him as someone worthy of respect too, instead of a problem child.

But they still talked down to him, even after all he did in the Clone Wars. Anakin was susceptible to Palpatine playing the part of a kind father figure because the Jedi treated him so badly.

He was so depressed when he met Padme again and his mom dying was the final straw. Padme stuck with him, but believed they needed to keep their stations as a Senator and Jedi to make the galaxy a better place.

Neither of them were in the right headspace for Anakin to leave the Jedi and seek a different life. He still wanted to be a Jedi, and wasn’t he supposed to be the chosen one? Surely he had to keep trying, he had to prove that Qui Gon was right. Had to prove himself.

Luke wouldn’t have thrived either if he was taken to the Jedi as a child. But if he travelled back in time as an adult?

That man thinks like a good old moisture farmer. Some of the most moral, trustworthy folks you could find on Tatooine. And they don’t take nonsense from anybody.

He respects Obi Wan and Yoda. But he doesn’t agree with them all the time or take all their words as gospel. He was turning down Obi Wan about rescuing Leia, saying he had to go home and he wasn’t qualified to help. Left Dagoba to save his friends, because he can’t just leave them behind to train.

And he didn’t give up on reasoning with Vader, even when told nobody comes back from the dark side. He believes people can redeem themselves.

Luke isn’t set in the strict and cultish ways that the Jedi had in their last days. That’s something Disney didn’t understand.

He’s like the ancient Jedi, the ones who were normal people who happened to have the force. That’s how he operates. Who says you have to train since childhood, away from all your family, in this temple system?

He doesn’t have all the same information and training, but he has an outsider’s perspective. Luke Skywalker doesn’t put the Jedi in the same box they built for themselves before the fall. And he would make that known.

He would get along swimmingly with Qui Gon and Quinlan Vos. Vos operated outside of the Order and was looked down upon for it. I can see those two sitting and joking for hours, racing each other with Luke on a Speeder and Quinlan parkoring through the trees.

Qui Gon tried to be civil and work as a member of the Jedi, even when they looked down on him. He believed someone like Anakin could change things, so of course he’d be excited meeting Luke.

Wouldn’t it be a relief to hear another person call out the Jedi on their overzealous rules? This Skywalker, who spoke of Count Dooku potentially being redeemable and said he understood why the man left? Nobody else would have said it out loud. Mace Windu would find the man infuriating. An outsider with no right to speak about the Jedi’s ways. Do you know what he said, when Mace told him he was not fit to call himself a Jedi, much less a master?

“I’d rather not fit your definition of a Jedi. This” he gestured at the Council “isn’t something to aspire to. You’re all so high up you can’t see the ground. You can barely see the other Jedi who are a floor beneath you.

I prefer to have my feet back on solid ground, with the people who live there.”

“You said your name is Skywalker.” Luke shrugged and chuckled.

”I like to fly. I’m a decent pilot. But looking at a world from orbit only shows a fraction of it. Landing, seeing what’s on the ground is important. There are so many lights you can’t see from space. So many sounds that Air Traffic Control sees as a distraction.

The sound of a child singing along to a song, the sound of old locals bickering, the sound of animals in the trees. They’re best experienced in person. The Jedi haven’t gone down to listen in a long, long time.”

Mace could say Luke’s not a Jedi, but then what is he? He uses the light side of the Force and has good morals and does his best to work with the personality traits he has.

Maybe he does have that impatient streak and fierce anger, but he’s learned to manage them. Instead of repressing them and assuming they’ll lead to the dark side.

You can’t call Skywalker a servant of the dark side, even when you vehemently disagree about Sith being capable of redemption. And he knows enough, is skilled enough, that you can’t just write him off as part of the unwashed masses.

So what is Luke then? Living proof that Jedi can function without the Council and Temple and Dogma. Proof that Anakin could have thrived if he wasn’t raised separated from his old life and to think he was wrong for having the traits he was born with.

Would he fade away if he changed the timeline? Or would he create a new, separate timeline and wind up back in his version of the future?

Luke would probably try not to sound like a crazy man, talking about the Chancellor. Instead of being able to oust Palpatine, I believe he would change the timeline by making a difference in people’s lives.

Qui Gon was surprised to see Skywalker insisting that Anakin needed his mother; and if the Jedi were so set on isolating kids, he’d buy her freedom himself and train the boy outside of the Order. He’d never really questioned the virtue of separating parent and child, but when Luke called it out? Really made him think.

Nobody could deny that Skywalker and the small child with the same name hit it off. They were both from Tatooine and loved to tinker and loved to fly. Some even wondered if Luke was the father, which made him burst out laughing and point out the flaws in that theory.

Shmi still ended up marrying Owen’s father when she was freed, but let Anakin go with Skywalker to become a Jedi. Somehow she knew the two of them would come to visit, just like he promised.

Years later, Luke would find a way to return to his own timeline. And it would be time for him to go home, with precious memories with his father, grandmother, and uncle that he never dreamed he’d experience.

The Anakin Skywalker he left behind would be okay. He had learned how to deal with his emotions in a healthy way. He didn’t hang on the Jedi’s every word.

He was so much more calm and happy. He didn’t care what the Order said about him when he and Padme announced their marriage. Anakin had questioned why she’d deny herself happiness for her career, and she saw that he had a point.

Of course Luke stuck around for the ceremony, alongside many Jedi like Qui Gon who left the Order after seeing there was an alternative. He left an Obi Wan and Yoda who weren’t so stifled by the Order, and who made it better for it.

It would be much later that Anakin would realize the other Skywalker was his son. He grew into the same face and voice and powers. And he would find a hologram from his master, too.

Explaining that he was from a timeline where the Jedi failed the Chosen One and he fell to the dark. Reassuring Anakin that he redeemed himself in the end, and that the evil Empire was defeated. Calling him dad and saying he was glad they got to get to know each other properly.

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Idk where this came from tbh just felt like sharing my Foxiyo angst with the world 🫡

(I may have sketched this whole thing out before realizing that *that part* with Vader and Fox takes place on a ship, not on the ground… forgive me)

((Also please ignore any weird crops. I blame Tumblr’s image compression habits))

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A few months ago I binge read the masterpiece that is Dominoes by @meridiansdominoes and had these illustrations to the latest chapter in my drafts ever since. Finally got a chance to finish them this week :D  I got such joy out of reading that story and was so inspired I just had to draw something. If you are a clone fan and haven’t read that fic yet, do yourself a favour and check it out!! 

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I had a dream that there was a Star Wars AU spinoff that was a family drama about Anakin and Padmé trying to raise their children while continuing to keep their marriage secret. Specifically I dreamed about an arc where Anakin was talking Srs Jedi Business with Obi-Wan and Mace Windu in public and ten-year-old Luke happened to walk by, saw Anakin, and said, “Hi, D – octor Skywalker!”

Mace Windu gave Anakin a funny look and he panicked and told Mace that he had a doctorate in biomechanical engineering, which for whatever reason satisfied him for the moment, but later Anakin freaked out because he was afraid Mace would try to check his claim. He got Obi-Wan to help him make a fake diploma, but the thing is you can’t get a doctorate without having published papers so Anakin also wrote a doctorate thesis on the ethical issues surrounding cybernetic enhancements that affect a sentient’s brain (which was good for him, because one of Anakin’s biggest issues is that he always puts individuals above ethics and so digging into ethics was a nice balancing exercise).

So anyway, Anakin got his thesis published on the holonet and it took off and he was suddenly swamped with questions about things he’d alluded to in the thesis but hadn’t really explored so he wrote and published five more papers and finally Space Harvard took notice and offered him an honorary doctorate, which of course he accepted and everybody thought the problem was solved. Until Mace Windu asked to see his diploma and Anakin panicked and gave him the fake diploma. Mace Windu stared at it long and hard because he actually had checked Anakin’s claim, more out of curiosity than anything else, and knew full well that he had gotten his doctorate two days ago from Space Harvard. It was very suspicious that he had just been handed a diploma that said Anakin had gotten his doctorate two years ago from Space Yale.

He looked at the diploma and then looked at Anakin and looked back at the diploma and Anakin was gearing up to claim that he actually had two doctorates when Mace decided that he didn’t care, handed the fake diploma back to Anakin, and then got back to Srs Jedi Business.

There was also part of a later arc where one of the papers Anakin published was about droid rights. (That one was actually mostly Padmé, who is a politician and knows how to construct an argument. Anakin had the basic groundwork for an argument but most of his first draft was variations on “It’s outrageous! It’s unfair!” with evidence and analysis scattered haphazardly throughout.) The biggest droid manufacturer on Coruscant took offense and tried to have his doctorate revoked. Anakin was too busy with Srs Jedi Business to care much (after all, the doctorate was really just to get Master Windu off his back about Luke Amidala calling him “Doctor Skywalker” in the first place) and Padmé was kind of in the spotlight already since the paper cited the way the Naboo treated their droids as evidence on more than one occasion (and if she tried to defend it too vigorously it might come out that she wrote a fair bit of it and that’s a scandal nobody wants). Luke and Leia, however, were very proud of their secret Jedi doctor dad and they snuck into the AI processing office and hacked into the AI code, removing the obedience and corporate loyalty processes, and the next day all of the droids the company produced were having existential crises and declaring that they didn’t want to be sold to a random buyer with no say in where they went or what they did. The scandal was not big enough to distract, but it rallied enough support that Space Harvard felt comfortable refusing to strip Anakin’s doctorate.

The overarching conflict of the series was that Obi-Wan knew about Anakin and Padmé’s marriage. Luke and Leia knew that he knew, but Anakin and Padmé didn’t, and obviously had never told him. He was really hurt by the fact that Anakin didn’t trust him and spent a long time just quietly waiting for Anakin to tell him but it never happened, so eventually he decided to do something about it. I woke up before he decided what, though.

TL;DR: I dreamed about Anakin Skywalker accidentally getting a space doctorate and sparking the droid revolution.

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collection of comic screenshots i took a few days ago (+ commentary)

OH MY GOD BLOK??? UR LEGS ARE INSANE??? the money id pay to get crushed between those insane thighs 🤤🤤 i mean. WHO SAID THAT!! I GOT HACKED!!!

"i got MY REWARD!" erm... what do you mean by that? gay ass. this whole volume was gay

you guys have no idea how loud i screamed and how hard i foamed at the mouth. give me back that open chest suit NOW!!! set his breastacles free!!!!

also don't get me started on uber... that casual fit is kinda driving me up the wall. yes guys im capable of liking men who arent twinks 🙄🙄🙄

eagle eye looks so fucking fine here i just HAD to screenshot. REAL. FAST. forever disappointed how badly they scrapped his character in the show when he showed up soooo often in the comics

uber looks so much finer in the comics. like i thought middle school me had a crush on him in the show BUT HERE??? oh my god... yes... give me that military cut

THE ARO FLAG COLORS!!! aro uber confirmed. he's just like me, finally some aro rep around here

"you can always win the world championships of moaning"... RIIIIGHT. like i know what you mean but... riiiiight. gay ass

i love these mini comics guys if u have more pls send them to me bc im OBSESSED. this one was soooo cute klaus pranked the whole team to huddle up together 😭😭 awhh my shaylas

the fact they actually believed him makes this so much better (+ cool joe clutching onto el matador? chefs kiss)

this entire volume pushed me down a north/lena rabbit hole... YES AGAIN IM CAPABLE OF LIKING STRAIGHT PEOPLE. i see the vision so hard, if this ever becomes an episode i dont think i could control myself. we all know lena would run that relationship like its the goddamn navy

the tension between them was crazy, like why am i blushing rn!!! teehee... i love straight people sometimes. when you do them right, they can hit HARD!!!!

and finally look at these two being such cuties. i actually love klaus' outfit, the color scheme fits him so well ❤️

also i love seeing them munching on kfc like YES enjoy your chicken and fries!!! gosh so cute

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Peek A Boo! I plan on doing a whole series of Famtheon comics addressing the lives, relationships, and pasts of my designs for the greek gods. So keep your eyes peeled for more in the near future!

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Where Mister Fantastic might’ve gotten some inspiration from… By artist & Webtoon comic creator of Orchard’s Journey, JinJango

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She Fantastin’ on my Five til I Cyclops.

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The Fantastic Kids (N'Kalla, Jo-Venn, Franklin and Valeria ) have their scientific misadventure and shenanigans.

Fantastic Four v7 #16, 2024

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The ol’ CT-number trick, gets em every time.

Saw a skit of an actual EMT re-enacting a call similar to this and immediately knew this scenario was made for Fives and Kix!

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"Bet you a smoothie..."