#Palpatine's shit budgeting skills

[drcalvin]

See now I want a story where the Empire just eats itself because their massive navy can no longer be paid and there aren't any more fresh worlds to invade – so no convenient enemies, no fresh resources to strip-mine

it's fucking crazy to me how high-ranking obi-wan is during tcw. letting this guy spearhead an ATTACK BATTALION is like handing dwight d eisenhower a rifle and a bangalore and letting him storm the beaches of normandy himself. absolutely batshit INSANE

[maulusque]

Fox sues Palpatine for child support- and custody- after parading Boba around for a solid month. He coaches Boba to cry at all the right times and drop sad little comments about how he thought he was going to have another dad.

Fox drops the lawsuit right at the height of what was later referred to as “baby boba craze” in the media. The lawsuit was for two things: sole custody, and child support. Fox and his lawyer, however, were very exact in their wording. The lawsuit was for sole custody “child and any siblings of child”- a common turn of phrase in Coruscanti divorce law, meant to cover potential children if one partner in a divorce was pregnant at the time, or if the child in question eventually multiplied into more children (several reptilian species are known to spontaneously perform mitosis up until sexual maturity), or any number of scenarios that might crop up in a cosmopolitan, multi-species and multi-cultural city such as Coruscant. The suit demanded child support from “party or parties heretofore holding partial or full custody”- again, the usual way of putting it in legal documents.

Fox wins the suit, hands-down. Social workers interviewed Palpatine and quickly determined that he knew jack shit about raising children. Maul may or may not have turned up in court and insinuated some pretty damning things about Palpatine’s child-rearing skills. Boba burst into tears in the courtroom the moment Palpatine walked in the room, and begged the judge not to make him live with the “mean raisin man”. 

Fox exits the courtroom with Boba in his arms (it’s always cuter to carry your kid, even if he’s thirteen and your back is going to make you regret this for a week), to flashing cameras and microphones shoved in his face. He answers questions, gives Boba $20 for a job well done, then goes home and takes a nap. Then the next day, he shows up in court again to demand the payments the Republic owes him for his brothers.

“What the fuck?” the judge says.

Turns out, nobody really thinks about the implications of exact legal wording when there’s a crying child in the room. Fox successfully argues that he now has full custody of both Boba AND all of Boba’s siblings- and, since he is the sole legal guardian of all of the clones, neither Palpatine, nor the Republic, nor the Kaminoans have any right to the clones. And not only that, since the Republic and Kaminoans previously had custody of the clones, they both now owe him child support, in addition to Palpatine. 

The Senate war committee collectively goes “oh shit”. Because they just lost their entire army in the Chancellor’s stupid divorce. It’s readily apparent that the legal ruling is airtight. The Senate quickly files a suit asking for visitation rights. Fox tells them to go to hell (on live TV, no less). Maybe just every other weekend? the Senate asks. We can probably make it work if we only fight the war every other weekend, right?

“Get fucked,” Commander Fox says, covering Boba’s ears for the cameras, before directing all payments be sent to Commander Colt, who will be coordinating care of all of Fox’s children, and who will hunt you down if you’re late on your payments. The Republic’s military budget is now legally able to be garnished for child support if they don’t pay up. Palpatine would be impressed if he weren’t scrambling to find better lawyers to protect his own assets when the divorce finally goes through. 

Cody is not sure how he feels about legally being Fox’s son, but he is absolutely sure how he feels about the Kaminoans owing child support, and that feeling is unmitigated glee. The rest of the Commanders- and Rex- give Fox unending shit about being an absent father and demand more “dad time”. Fox ends up broadcasting angrily-read bedtime stories to the entire GAR every night, just to get his dumbass brothers to quit sending him texts about taking them space-fishing. 

Your Foxtine posts are a GIFT, and specifically for how utterly insane it would be for everyone who is not Fox. The clones finding out via the divorce exploding in space twitter and having to follow the proceedings via space cosmo. And then space vogue finds out that the unholy union of the Chancellor's emercency powers, the Foxtine wedding and Fox's prenup, the clones are now legal citizens of the republic, that's a thing that is happening. Conflicting emotions for everyclone. Hilarity for us.

Fox gets a whole pile of bridesmaid-zillas, except for the divorce, instead of the wedding. Wolffe gets super invested in what outfits Fox wears to court and gets insanely nit-picky about whether the colors go together or not. Which is hard because his cybernetic eye doesn’t process color like regular human eyes do.

Bly is low-key devastated that Fox’s marriage didn’t work out and shows up drunk at his office one night and cries on Fox’s shoulder, telling him that he deserves to find love and that Palpatine doesn’t deserve him. Fox kinda wants to tell him that he is literally 0% emotionally invested in his own marriage and that his heart, if it exists, is most certainly not broken, but he doesn’t want to make it awkward so he just lets Bly do his thing.

Cody decides to throw Fox a bachelor party since the asshole got married IN SECRET

the event lasted a week, fourteen people went missing, one of Coruscant’s moons was fractured, and General Kenobi had to commission a new flagship. All in all, a pretty solid party. Cody remembers almost none of it.

After that Cody follows the proceedings avidly and has a 24/7 holonet news feed running on his HUD. He loves sharing the juicy headlines but he REFUSES to let Fox tell him anything because he doesn’t want “spoilers”

Rex offered to assassinate the Chancellor, and when Fox refused, insisted that Fox also sue for child support because “I’m the batch baby and I need supporting”

Thorn almost threw Wolffe out of a window over Wolffe’s choice of scarf for Fox to wear for a daytime talkshow interview

Thire has taken to calling around to every catering service on Coruscant and seeing how many he can talk into delivering free food to the Chancellor’s soon-to-be ex-husband’s workplace (the Guard has never eaten better)

Stone, as Fox’s second-in-command and “best clone” (Stone was not actually at the wedding, but he won’t let that stop him) starts giving interviews as well, and has made it a personal goal to never say a single true thing on camera. He is the source of at least 80% of the insane rumors surrounding Fox and the Chancellor circulating the holonet. 

Such rumors include:

-Commander Fox’s dick is bigger than Palpatine’s and that’s why they’re getting divorced

-Palpatine was actually already married to Mace Windu, and when Fox found out he cried

-Fox is actually richer than Palpatine

-Palpatine is actually broke and is fighting the divorce so hard because he doesn’t want his massive amount of debt to be made public

-Fox is actually the original Jango Fett, and he married Palpatine for “obvious reasons” (Stone refuses to elaborate on this)

-Fox has red hair

-Fox has blond hair

-Fox has no hair

-Palpatine has 5 dick piercings 

-Clone Marriage is illegal, but Clone Divorce is not

-Commander Fox was actually already married to Mace Windu, and when Palpatine found out he invaded Umbara

-Commander Fox once saved Palpatine’s life from an assassin by catching the blaster bolt with his bare hands, which is “just a thing we clones can do”

-Fox has photos of the chancellor in lingerie (unfortunately, this one is, in fact, true, but Stone doesn’t know that)

Stone maybe also develops a huge crush on Fox’s divorce lawyer, who is brilliant, sharp, has a moral compass defined entirely by who’s paying him, and great hair.

Tup makes baby eyes at Fox and mumbles about how he can’t afford shampoo and Fox immediately goes “and i’m SUEING the bastard for child support”

[reconstructwriter]

Palpatine laughed as Darth Vader, as Anakin Skywalker, made the same choice he has for over twenty years.

The Dark choice.

Luke Skywalker's head rolls. Palpatine demonstrates the power of his new Death Star on the rising Rebellion.

Like Skywalkers always have, they fall.

Palpatine wins. Palpatine finally has it all. He detonates the Imperial Palace with the announcement that he has a new Palace. One finally worthy of him. For good measure he finishes off the Senate building - a decrepit relic from a more disgusting time. Then, because he has the power, he adds all of Coruscant to the list.

No one stops him. No one can stop him. All the galaxy is his. All the universe is his.

Except...that becomes a problem.

Wars are expensive - armies and great air forces to ferry them and fight them. The Clone Wars deliberately designed to be so, the GAR as the finest army on one side, only the best for the Republic. The droid army as easily mass-produced and replaceable, until years stretched on and it wasn't. All this better broke the power of the Republic and the Separatists alike into easily-digestible bits for one man. Because in his Sith Empire, there was only room for one mega-corporation, one banking clan, one power:

Palpatine.

Then with the destruction of the Jedi, the end of the war, Palpatine had to do away with the war toys. A last political gesture to keep people from regretting his ascension to Emperor. A pithy gesture when he could absolve the debt of the Separatists and Republic alike - after all, he owned government and debt so why not forgive himself? And add all the more to work on his Death Star.

Until the day he stood on the second and superior version of such, above the last pitiful planet left to conquer, and strangled the fool who brought him an expense report. "I am the Emperor. I am the bank and the government. I declare my debt wiped away!"

"Yes...sir...Emperor, but that's not enou-arkk!"

It was not enough, for now the debt of money translated to a debt of food. All across his great empire ruined fields couldn't produce enough to feed everyone and ruined towns couldn't manufacture the crops and animals into food.

Palpatine did not need the Force to show him what would happen next. The poorest would starve first - the farmers and the factory workers, the cashiers and the cleaners. All those billions and trillions of oh so unimportant people who, nonetheless, were indispensable to keep society working. Once the food producers died, the rest would starve. Once the servants fell, the castle would fall. The King was always the last to die.

He was the Emperor. An absolute monarch. A total ruler as the Galaxy had never seen before. Things were bad, yes, but not irreversible. A word from him could yet turn this around. The smallest gesture could yet save his Empire.

But not without sacrifice. Of power.

From him.

"Let them starve!" he screeched.

Palpatine had spent his entire life hoarding power. He had sacrificed everything on the alter of power and spent a lifetime destroying every limitation - every chain - between himself and absolute power. He would survive this too. A dying Empire's misery and horror strengthened him. He was too powerful to die.

But no one can destroy consequences.

The Death Star was as massive a ship as had ever been built. Large enough to be its own planet, its own ecosystem, as independent as he could make it.

Which is not the same as fully independent. When one person goes into space, a thousand people must stay on the planet to ensure that one person lives. The Death Star very nearly flipped that equation around.

Nearly.

Long range communications went off-line first. Palpatine still ruled his Death Star but had no more connection to the rest of his Empire beyond the dark grey smog of hopelessness and desperation. Then the little things began breaking down. Several of those little things being the electronics running the water recycling system.

And the person maintaining that system had been the inconsequential fool ordered to bring him the expense report.

Putrid water backed up into the clean water. A good third of the Death Star fell ill. They had to land, but where could they? Even with the Dark Side, Palpatine saw no refuge, no place they could repair anything.

He had escape pods but nowhere to land. His new palace, his crowning achievement, had become a trap.

His tomb.

Palpatine was wrong about one thing. The king isn't always the last to die, to starve.

Those desperate enough who survived Sith Lightning and Vader's blade feasted one last time.

it's fucking crazy to me how high-ranking obi-wan is during tcw. letting this guy spearhead an ATTACK BATTALION is like handing dwight d eisenhower a rifle and a bangalore and letting him storm the beaches of normandy himself. absolutely batshit INSANE