#Jedi Investigator

[david-talks-sw]

Dooku didn't leave because of the Jedi.

At least, if you're going by George Lucas' word.

In deleted scenes of Attack of the Clones, when we learn about Dooku's departure and his values, there's no mention of the Jedi or "the Jedi Order as an institution".

And every time Lucas refers to Dooku's disenchantment and reason for falling, he doesn't mention the Jedi.

"When you realize that Dooku is Darth Tyranus, it explains what Darth Sidious did after Darth Maul was killed: he seduced a Jedi who had become disenchanted with the Republic. He preyed on that disenchantment and converted him to the dark side, which is also a setup for what happens with Anakin." - Mythmaking: Behind the Scenes of Attack of the Clones, 2002

"[Dooku is] one of the few Jedi who became disenchanted with the Republic and left the order and he is leading a separatist movement." - Vanity Fair, 2002

"I wanted a more sophisticated kind of villain. Dooku’s disenchantment with the corruption in the Empire is actually valid. It’s all valid.  So, Chris plays it as, 'Is he really a villain or is he just someone who is disenchanted and trying to make things right?'" - Starlog Magazine #300, 2002

He probably meant the Republic/Senate in that last one, but you get the point. And you're seeing the pattern, right?

Dooku's problem isn't the Jedi, it's the Republic.

He's become disenchanted with a system that - according to Lucas' prologue in the 2004 book Shatterpoint - worked for 1,000 years...

"For a thousand years, the Old Republic prospered and grew under the wise rule of the Senate and the protection of the venerable Jedi Knights."

... but has been rendered ineffective because of 1) senators becoming corrupt and 2) corporations gaining political power.

"But as often happens when wealth and power grow beyond all reasonable proportion, an evil fueled by greed arose. The massive organs of commerce mushroomed in power, the Senate became corrupt, and an ambitious named Palpatine was voted Supreme Chancellor."

That's the message Dooku runs on, when he rallies the systems to form the Separatist Alliance.

"By promising an alternative to the corruption and greed that was rotting the Republic from within, Dooku was able to persuade thousands of star systems to secede from the Republic."

The Jedi aren't really a factor in his decision to leave.

Why would they be? Their political status isn't very high, they're virtually powerless, as illustrated by the film's narrative and stated repeatedly by Lucas.

On the contrary, as we already established in this post, Lucas full-on confirmed that Dooku actually carries the sympathies of most of the Jedi. Again:

Most Jedi agree with Dooku, ideologically.

As far as the Jedi are concerned, the politicians are effing up the Republic, and it sucks because the Jedi see this but aren't allowed to interfere in the political process. They have to resort to looking for loopholes in their mandates to actually get stuff done.

That's what that whole "she's a politician" scene is meant to hint at. In the commentary of Attack of the Clones, Lucas uses a similar turn of phrase as he does with Dooku.

"[This scene gives us] a chance to talk a little bit about politics and the Jedi’s disenchantment with the political process, due to the corruption and the ineffectiveness of the Senate." - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

Considering all this, it becomes clear that the intended narrative surrounding Dooku's decision to leave the Order is not:

"The Jedi are dogmatic and asleep at the wheel except for Dooku, who is ahead of the curb and sees the system is flawed, so he left."

It's actually:

"ALL Jedi see the system is flawed, Dooku's the only Jedi who decided to take it a step further and leave the Order so he can try to get into politics himself and change things."

That's why they hesitate to accuse him of murder.

That's why in an earlier draft of the Attack of the Clones script, by the end of the second act, Mace STILL has his doubts that Dooku would sign a treaty with the Trade Federation to attack the Republic.

As far as the Jedi are concerned, Dooku is out there fighting the good fight, making noise because whenever they try to protest it falls on deaf ears... until his betrayal on Geonosis.

After all, let's not get it twisted: the Dooku we're introduced to in the films and The Clone Wars, isn't really just Dooku anymore.

He's Darth Tyranus.

A point Lucas makes sure to highlight in his Shatterpoint prologue:

"Unbeknownst to most of his followers, Dooku was himself a Dark Lord of the Sith, acting in collusion with his master, Darth Sidious, who, over the years, had struck an unholy alliance with the greater forces of commerce and their private droid armies."

It's not about doing the selfless thing for Dooku, anymore. He's knowingly part of the problem.

He's all about ambition, now. His personal goals are things like overthrowing Sidious and becoming the most powerful Jedi.

"[Anakin's] ambition and his dialogue here is the same as Dooku’s. He says “I will become more powerful than every Jedi.” And you’ll hear later on Dooku will say “I have become more powerful than any Jedi.” [...] It is possible for a Jedi to want to become more powerful, and control things." - Attack of the Clones, Director’s Commentary, 2002

"If you put two Sith together, they try to get others to join them to get rid of the other Sith. [When revealing the truth to Obi-Wan], Dooku's ambition is really to get rid of Darth Sidious. He's trying to get Obi-Wan's assistance in that and help in that, so that he and Obi-Wan could overthrow Sidious and take over." - Attack of the Clones, Commentary Track 2, 2002

Y'know? Selfish things.

Dooku - like all other Sith, and like the very corporations and Senators he had sworn to destroy - is consumed by his own greed.

[flammabel]

Cal Kestis - Jedi Survivor 💎

[bereft-of-frogs]

so the 'Qimir/the Stranger is actually [ insert high republic character here ]' theories have started to escalate, Imri was one thing, today I saw someone suggest the Stranger is Cohmac and I laughed out loud.

But also sure. The Stranger is Cohmac. XD Why tf not. Except for all the, you know, 'humans don't live that long' and 'their descriptions and official character art do not match Manny Jacinto at all' 'it doesn't actually make sense' but people keep countering that with 'energy transfer' so I guess Qimir really could be anybody.

Wouldn't it be fucking hilarious if it was Azlin Rell. Fucking Azlin. That would be SO funny if he energy-transferred himself into Qimir to live another hundred extra years, to continue being the worst. It would be so funny. Absolutely no one else would find it funny but I would personally find it absolutely hilarious if 'scenic route guy' is Qimir

[agentartemus]

Art Final

Here is the final mini series for my art class. It had to correlate with my sustained investigation. My investigation is "How can I portray the peaceful aspects of isolation/aloneness via the realist style/methods?"

I figured why not include my boi Artemus in each one to tie them all together? Hope you enjoy!

Important persons taglist:

@bladesjulia29 @kebiinika @kdo16 @powdered-kneecaps @sutasaido @zealfruity

[crudemoon]

have we given this man his flowers yet?

ate her and the jedi up without leaving a crumb 😏

[pileofsith]

Jen June - Pau'an Inspector

Final attempt at the female Pau'an from the lost TCW episodes on Utapau. She's happy to see you, too.

[lightdancer1]

Y'know when I rewatched Attack of the Clones recently:

There's one scene that puts a lot of the 'so what did the Jedi Order do with the Tusken Massacre and what did it know and when did it do it and when did they know it' into a context usually left out. The Jedi view Anakin Skywalker as Paul Atr-er the Space Messiah, here to redeem the Galaxy from the evil Sith. There is an incident Yoda, of all people, senses and hears Qui-Gon's spirit shouting 'Anakin No!'

Literally nothing happens with that. Therapists or no therapists 'space Messiah did a massacre' should be a case of 'wait wait wait wait, hold it a minute' and examining both what happened there and why because space magic is at stake.

The Jedi Order didn't deserve the wholesale execution of Order 66 but the problem any fanfic has is that where Lucas can plot hole his works to Rise of Skywalker proportions and not have to think it through, a writer wanting to portray people in this universe as actual people DOES have to think this stuff through. There are two conclusions on this, one is that the Jedi are so firmly in head up ass territory dogma-wise that it just never occurred to them that their space Messiah committing a massacre could be a problem worth checking, which is the 'Jedi Order were bad as well as stupid', or that the Jedi Order elected for a decision on behalf of the Jedi Order, which is what recurs again with the Ahsoka Tano leaves the Jedi Order arc.

And this is without importing in 'religious organizations covering up crimes committed by members in the ranks' and the complete lack of curiosity on Sifo-Dyas randomly ordering an army out of nowhere and why and how all that happened. This is why the kindest view of the Jedi Order in the Prequels as actual humans and aliens is 'they were the Janissaries in the lead-in to the Auspicious Incident and utterly unsuited to the era that they actually lived in'. It's not a justification for murder to note that an organization holding to obsolete ideas will get Auspicious Incidented because the future slammed into them like a freight train.

Naturally I am working on a SW fanfic that basically deconstructs a lot of these premises and does so fairly ruthlessly.

[rubensmuse]

man hearing lana debate sith philosophy with the jedi she spends all of her time around would be really funny, cute, & thought-provoking if she wasn't written to do it like a reddit atheist

[thenookspace]

The Jedi high council are all masters in the art of restraint and composure but it gets a little rough when Commander Fox starts mentally throwing it back over the closed casket.

AU in which the chancellor dies in a freak (probably Zillo-beast related) accident. Everyone is attending his funeral and really, the Jedi are trying really hard to mourn but it’s incredibly difficult to when the entirety of the coruscant guard is apparently throwing a mental and spiritual party so loud in the Force Dathomir can feel it.

[sayitan]

the young scout was silent as he moved through the wilds of pandora, ears pinned flat against his skull and his fingers curled tightly around the notched arrow upon his bow. neteyam watched the slow patrol of the rda's escort as they picked their way over the hacked remnants of what had once been a wellspring visited by many a creature until the rda's arrival. now it was a toxic cesspool, polluted by their machines and waste.

neteyam's upper lip curled back into a soundless snarl. the patrol was small, smaller than it should have been so far from the rda's base of operations. a single mobility unit, two infantrymen and a lone figure clad in earthen browns. it felt like a trap . . . a lure, and yet neteyam's fingers itched to take action. he straightened, pulling his arrow taught and took aim.

in that moment, the air shifted. a gentle caress of a warm breeze traced up the length of the young warrior's arm and neteyam hesitated. a split second of doubt was long enough as neteyam watched the infantrymen turn their weapons on their robed guest and neteyam let his arrow fly. it slammed into one of the armed soldiers with expert precision, slicing right through him and pinning the man to a far tree by the sheer force. // @sorehsu ♡'d for a starter .

[guiltknight-gaming]

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor Episode 46: Investigate The Central Valley Faci...

[maidenvault]

It just bums me out how much of SW fandom clearly doesn’t appreciate the levels of magnificent bastardy that Palpatine achieved as a villain when they bitch about so much being the Jedi Order’s fault. As if the Jedi should have just looked harder under some couch cushions and then they would have found the solid evidence they could use to go after him and the Senate.

Palpatine was too smart for that! No Sith lord had ever aimed so high and achieved so much, and he only did it by playing a long game that started before Anakin was even born. People have to understand that when Dooku tells Obi-Wan that a Sith controls the Senate, that’s hard for him to believe because it is absolutely ridiculous and hard to believe! The Jedi don’t understand why the dark side clouds their awareness because the Sith have become masterful at hiding their presence, which was not the case throughout known history. It would truly be like hearing that Biden’s administration actually are all Satanists who traffic and eat children. Palpatine’s extremely powerful and cunning and unlike anything they’re used to dealing with, otherwise they might seriously consider that Sidious could have accomplished this without the Jedi having any idea. And where do you even begin investigating such a thing when it’s been covered up so well?

The Jedi were always gonna be outmatched against someone like Sidious because a Sith’s whole thing is amassing wealth, influence, and power, and Sidious was probably the best there ever was at it. The Jedi are the opposite, they’re not meant to have those things, and Sidious ended up with too much control of the government for them to have any real power to act. (Probably even if they had complete knowledge of everything, which they never did.) It makes sense that just a couple Sith can bring “imbalance” to the Force when you consider that the use of the dark side is inherently an imbalance of power and a destructive influence in the world this way.

You don’t have to scapegoat anyone else. Palpatine needed his apprentice and other pawns to move around but he really did almost all of it himself. He worked so hard and deserves the hate for his efforts, he really was that bad. :(

[combatbootsanddreams]

I want the Jedi temple to have a radio station. Like we know radio stations exist in star wars, we've seen them (ie: In the Rishi station episode) and I think the Jedi should have a local radio station with different Jedi news programs. Whats going on in the senate, new research the medic corps or educorps just came out with. There's a creche hour where the younglings get to write up and present their own stories. Investigative journalism! Fluff pieces about Jedi theater or music or something. Quiz games. There's a shout out every time someone makes it to the rank of knight or master.

When the war starts Jedi flip to the station to hear a reminder of home. Their clone commanders put it on to remind their Jedi to keep up hope, that this is what they're fighting for. The Jedi give the clones a news segment to talk about whatever they want. New trends, armor paint, weapon tips, they have a call in portion and it gets wild---they have to make a rule that you can't call in from an active battlefield.

The rebellion uses the same station numbers for their pirate radio.

[saphronethaleph]

Institutionalist

“Vader,” Palpatine said, his voice touched with silky menace. “What are you doing?”

“I am facilitating politics, my master,” Vader replied.

Palpatine looked at him, then up at the large poster Vader had just finished affixing to the wall of the Senate Chamber.

REMEMBER TO VOTE FOR THE NEXT EMPEROR, it said. REPORT ANY VOTER INTIMIDATION WHATSOEVER TO DARTH VADER, AND HE WILL KILL THE PERSON DOING IT.

“...you don’t think that’s a little paradoxical?” he asked.

“I am not telling people who to vote for,” Vader replied. “I am attempting to make sure the Senate vote is fair and free.”

“Vader…” Palpatine said, slowly. “I am the Emperor. The Senate is irrelevant.”

“You said the Jedi were a threat to the Republic,” Vader pointed out, in reply. “The Separatist Crisis is over. The Jedi are scattered and unable to intervene. It has been enough time that there should now be a new election. For Emperor.”

“That is not the law any more!” Palpatine retorted.

“Why not?” Vader asked. “Meaningful elections are important. Padme said so.”

Palpatine bit back his next reply, seething faintly.

Vader was usually easy to manipulate, but every so often one of those ideas about Padme got stuck in his head and he went from easy to utterly impossible. On that subject, he was immovable.

“Then… why the poster?” he asked.

“The vote should be fair and free,” Vader reiterated. “I will prevent voter intimidation.”

“...huh,” Bail said, a week later. “How did that happen?”

He was looking at the election results, which showed that seventy-four percent of the Senate had voted for him to be the next Emperor.

“I suspect Darth Vader was involved,” Mon replied. “His men ran an exhaustive investigation of the whole Senate over the last few weeks, then he killed everyone who’d taken their post through bribery or through falsified results.”

Bail clicked through to the details of the report, and winced.

The number of people who’d voted for him was about what he’d expected, the Senators who he could count on. The number of people who’d voted against him was… drastically smaller.

Then the door opened with a crash.

“Emperor,” Vader said. “It is time for you to take your position. The previous incumbent of your position was unwilling to vacate his post when the election results came in, but he has been dealt with.”

Bail blinked.

“...you killed Palpatine?” he asked.

“That is a good question,” Vader replied, somewhat quizzically. “I don’t know if it was my lightsaber or something else, but he has exploded and so he is certainly dead whether or not I was the one to kill him. I do not believe it is tradition, though.”

The Alderaanian senator swallowed, trying to hide his nerves.

“Are you going to kill everyone who looks at me funny?” he asked.

“No,” Vader replied. “Though I will kill anyone who tries to assassinate you. That is tradition.”

Mon and Bail exchanged glances.

“...would you actually have a problem if I tried to make things better for the galaxy?” Bail asked.

“You won the election,” Vader said, firmly, and apparently that was all that mattered.

[artemisdesari-blog]

In the vein of things that I want to write, don't have time to write right now, and don't want to forget either: timeloop Cody AU.

Cody makes it two weeks into his deployment before he's killed. It's not his fault, wrong place, wrong time. He wakes up on Kamino the morning Alpha Seventeen introduces him to his new general. He figures it's a weird dream, he knows he's been assigned to Kenobi and he looked him up. Two weeks in he feels the oddest sense of deja vu and takes a few steps to the left and narrowly avoids being skewered by a piece of an exploding LAAT/i. This time he makes it three months before he is killed and he wakes up on Kamino the morning he is due to meet Kenobi. And it keeps on happening. Cody dies and he wakes up at the start again. He tries to tell people, Seventeen doesn't listen, Kenobi finds it fascinating but doesn't have the time to look into it, General Yoda is concerned, but every time someone overhears and he ends up sent to decommissioning even over his general’s protests. So he keeps quiet, remembers as much as he can and saves as many brothers as he can. He can't save them all, sometimes saving one is what gets him killed and he could have gone for all eternity without knowing what getting eaten by a Rishi eel or being blown to pieces feels like. He does his best. He makes it to Utapau and Order 66 happens. It gets hazy after that, but when he surfaces from the influence of the chip he takes the only path out he can think of and wakes up on Kamino. Now it isn't just about making it to the end. It's about stopping himself from killing his Jedi, who he grows closer and closer to with every loop. It's about preventing genocide at the hands his people, only for them to be wiped out in return. He reaches Utapau without finding the answer too many times, ending things before he can take that unforgivable step. Then he hears about Fives and Tup, and Kix disappearing after Echo is recovered from the Techno Union. The next loop he gets to Fives first, gets all the information, and sends himself back to the beginning on Kamino so that can investigate and get the chips out of as many brothers as possible before the end in the hope that he can succeed and the Jedi and the clones.

Obviously, there are going to be massive Codywan vibes all through. I am incapable of not putting Codywan vibes into things at this point. It will involve Cody ferreting out all the little horrors and secrets, especially a couple of Anakin related ones, and the fallout of passing those on at the wrong time. We would have Obi-Wan catching weird Force vibes from Cody and Anakin getting more and more suspicious of the vibes and the feelings each loop. Obviously, eventually, things would be fixed, but only after many loops and shenanigans.

I just don't have the time to write it right now, but I also don't want it to languish forgotten. Maybe I'll come back to it, maybe I won't. But here it is.

[sunderwight]

SV Star Wars AU where Shen Yuan transmigrates into a proxy for Padme.

I know the Obikin vibes are really strong with Bingqiu, but hear me out:

Shen Qingqiu is the fourteen-year-old(?!?!) King Elect (?!?!?!) of Qing Jing, a planet from the Cang Qiong sector that has been facing issues with the Trade Federation and has petitioned the Jedi Order for help.

"Shen Qingqiu" is also a role played by several similar-looking fourteen-year-old boys, except where Padme and her handmaids were all from more or less the same background, most of the servants conscripted for the Shen Qingqiu role are downtrodden slaves basically cast as expendable bodyguards, whose main advantage in this deal is that after Shen Qingqiu finishes his term as King then they get to go free.

Meaning, Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu are both expendable body doubles for the "real" Shen Qingqiu (in this case, Qiu Jianluo going by his royal name, with the "qiu" being deliberate rather than accidental).

Additional fun possibility: Qiu Jianluo has actually been dead since the trouble with the Trade Federation first escalated, and Shen Yuan and Shen Jiu have basically been Weekend At Bernie's-ing him because there's no time to elect a new king and if the Trade Federation's blockade isn't broken, everyone's immediate prospects are extremely bleak (and the odds of the Shens being sent to some prison camp instead of granted their freedom is very high).

Another additional fun possibility: the Trade Federation didn't actually kill Qiu Jianluo, Shen Jiu did, so not only do they have to maintain the charade, they also have to look for opportunities to drop Qiu Jianluo's corpse down a reactor core or something and make it look like he's died during the conflict in order to prevent any investigations that will look into pesky things like "time of death" or "how many stab wounds there are".

In the midst of all this, of course, there is the main plot of PIDW/SW, wherein Shen Qingqiu was originally one of several antagonists to excessively bully and dismay Jedi prodigy and future Chosen One Luo Binghe, a poor slave boy living on an ice planet and trying to win enough money via dangerous pod races to buy medicine for his dying mother. Featuring also young Jedi knights Liu Qingge and Yue Qi (the latter of whom seems to have some history with Shen Jiu...?), admittedly kickass Sith apprentice Mobei Jun, a certain future Chancellor from the Huan Hua sector, and sentient Sith holocron Meng Mo. And Airplane, probably as an up-and-coming member of the Jedi AgriCorps who basically has Count Dooku's plot duties (turn traitor and get killed) but is somehow also thoroughly entangled with Mobei Jun.