#Rebel fleet

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Rogue One (2016) directed by Gareth Edwards

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Star Wars: X-Wing - Rogue Squadron #28 (Masquerade #1 of 4) Cover Art by John Nadeau

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MC75 Star Cruiser

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Star Wars: Rebellion #15 by Dustin Weaver

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Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)

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Night drop of sketches with Eli Vanto.

In addition to the canonical appearance, I sketched a version of the “commodore” from my Eleventh Fleet AU.

Because we need MORE bearded Eli'van'to, otherwise only Karyn with a cape :3

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thrawn hand motions.

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Mitth’raw’nuruodo

[mintelsa]

I hath returned after taking a break from the Hellsite™️

we love a rare pair and i LOVE Vah’nya/Ezra it’s so good dude

[2stepadmiral]

Been listening to the Thrawn trilogy again recently, and it brings to mind some of the shortcomings of how Thrawn has been portrayed in the Disney Canon.

To be clear, I’m not saying that Thrawn in the Disney Canon has been badly done, or that his character is out of whack, or even that he hasn’t been portrayed as intelligent, let alone, strategically, brilliant. The real problem with his portrayal narrows down to two specific aspects. Number one: his lack of competent subordinates, and number two: his lack of situations where his strategic genius can really be displayed.

On the first problem, Thrawn was introduced in Heir to the Empire with his second in command being Captain Pellaeon. Throughout the trilogy, they are given a clear Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson dynamic. This works on many levels, offering the reader Pellaeon as a stand-in for the reader, having him ask questions about and work out for himself the admiral’s actions and thought process. This provides an organic way to explain Thrawn’s plans, his analysis of problems, and demonstrate his character and brilliance without relying on monologue or use forced exposition. The dynamic is sort of re-created with Jorj Car’dass and Kinman Doriana in the novel outbound flight, with both characters filling the Watson role to some degree.

In rebels, Thrawn has no competent subordinate to do this with. He either has some random, incompetent officer of the week who we don’t see again for a while, a recurring incompetent officer who we’ve seen before, and will likely see again, Ruhk, in very brief instances which gives no means of understanding Thrawn’s character or intellect, or Governor Price, who is decidedly not a military officer and has a very distinctive flavor of incompetence related to her political nature. With most of these characters, the grand Admiral doesn’t waste time breaking down his analysis of the rebel plan or gives a few hints that go completely over their heads. There is one occasion where this dynamic works in his favor, specifically when the idiot captain wasn’t picking up on the fact that they had captured Hera while Thrawn dropped increasingly obvious hints as to who she was. this made for a dramatic and pretty well done revelation as to how intelligent he was, but it only worked the one time. Moving forward, he continued having a deal with these idiots subordinates, which gave no opportunity for him to really stretch his strategic muscles in that same Sherlock/Watson dynamic. The one episode featuring Colonel Yularen was an exception, as the Colonel’s competence gave Thrawn a good partner to work with and demonstrate this dynamic with, but very briefly and only this one time. The rest of the time, he’s working with idiots that don’t provide this kind of competence for him to play off of.

In Ahsoka, Thrawn gets captain Enoch and Morgan Elsbeth, and both characters have an air of competence that should have translated to the Sherlock/Watson dynamic, but Enoch literally never questions anything Thrawn orders him to do, making him completely useless for this dynamic, and Morgan has the dynamic only in a few brief scenes, scenes where the situation makes it difficult for Thrawn to really stretch his chops.

The second problem stems from the situations that Dave is putting him in. Thrawn is a military and strategic genius, who thrives in situations where it is straight up one fleet fighting another fleet, both in large scale campaigns unfolding over a period of months as well as individual battles. He can identify an enemies likely tactics through understanding of his enemies psyche, and understanding he gains through careful study of artwork, artwork that can be created by or simply enjoyed by individuals or entire cultures/species. He can use this understanding to carefully craft strategies against enemy factions and commanders, and he can do this in the heat of an impromptu battle, or in the context of carefully laid out campaigns put together in whatever time frame he required. The entire Thrawn trilogy puts both of these abilities on display, introducing him by immediately crafting the perfect battle plan against a suddenly appearing New Republic task force in the first chapter of the first book, and then later consistently crafting one brilliant plan after another that builds on each other like a series of chess moves.

Now, the thing is, it’s pretty easy for a strategist to show his competence in a theater of war against affection of close to equal strength, such as the Empire and the New Republic in this timeframe of five years after Endor. It’s difficult to show the same kind of cunning and brilliance when the context is in all powerful galaxy spanning Empire trying to track down and eliminate a number of small rebel cells instead of going toe to toe with an enemy fraction of equal strength. As such, it makes sense that Thrawn was sort of out of his element in rebels. Even so, he was never really given an opportunity to demonstrate his strategic brilliance, simply because the circumstances of this timeframe made that impossible. They could show him being just barely one step ahead of the rebels as they try to escape his ship, or the factory he was inspecting, or a trap he had laid the plans for and entrusted to a less competent officer, but the effect of this makes him seem simply competent instead of brilliant. When they could show him engage in a proper battle, the sheer volume of resources, personnel, and fire power at his disposal, makes his victory pretty much certain when his enemies are a ragtag group of rebels, with significantly fewer fighters, warships that are significantly weaker and older, and transports that are completely unarmed. This lineup makes any real strategy to defeat the enemy, excessive, and unnecessary, and really difficult to show. That’s why the only two real battles he engages in (Atollon and the attack on the Lothal factory) do nothing to display the grand admirals intelligence. He wins by default based on his overwhelming firepower and resources, not based on a specifically tailored strategy for that particular situation with that particular commander.

In Ahsoka, they touch on his strategic brilliance and tendency to read his opponents, but because his overall goal here was simply to escape, and buying time rather than actually destroying his opponent was all he really needed, it doesn’t come off as brilliant and it doesn’t give him an opportunity to really show off his intelligence. In the final episode of Ahsoka, they could have had a five minute scene when Thrawn returns to the galaxy and meets a new Republic task force, and then proceeds to utterly annihilate the force, despite having only a single damaged Star Destroyer at his disposal.

I remember reading recently that when adding Thrawn to rebels, the biggest challenge was creating situations where he would be involved, but it wouldn’t be his fault that the empire lost. My response to that is simply, then why not have the rebels lose every now and then? Why not have them barely fail to acquire their goal simply because the Grand Admiral was distantly involved, or have them fail outright every now and then because he outthought them at every turn? Maybe have an episode or an arc where they try to help Senator Garm Bel Iblis (who I am very sore about his exclusion from rebel specifically and Disney Canon in general) defect from the Empire and escape Corellia, but due to Thrawn intervening at the last second, the senator’s family is killed.

Point being, I believe that Canon Thrawn is just as intelligent and strategically brilliant as expanded universe Thrawn, he just hasn’t been given situations where he can thrive and truly demonstrate that ability.

[searchsystem]

Milk / The Rebel Fleet / Website / 2024

[better-call-mau1]

Tell me I’m not onto something here…

[perfectharmonyloveschaos]

"Sometimes we have to do what's right regardless of our personal feelings."

Hmm...

Ahsoka tells a rebellious young woman that she can't put the safety of the man who is her closest companion, fellow Rebel, and who she is clearly in love with, over the mission...

Where have I heard that before?

Oh.

"To protect your unit, to protect Ezra... you must stop your search for Kanan and go into hiding."

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ahhh fuck connected to the wrong damn printer (╬▔皿▔)╯

CMYK belongs to @homicidalfantrolls

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Star Wars: Action Fleet - X-Wing Packaging Art by Ralph McQuarrie

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