#Rebels critical

[animazi]

I’ve been rewatching rebels recently, and do forgive me for being a bit critical, I am very aware that a lot of this comes from my own comparative lack of interest in the uh. Rebels. As opposed to the tcw ladderinos who are there

but the way the show pivots from haha funny silly adventures to malachor is honestly ridiculously quick and for me at least felt really out of left field. + I honestly don’t like ahsokas arc that much? In theory I’m down for it, but in practise I was left wondering where the meat of it was. Seeing ahsoka (and rex) begin to put together that vader is anakin before the big reveal would have been really interesting, and would have made her arc and her general presence + the impact and suspense for malachor so much better. I know why they didn’t do this - ahsoka isn’t the main character - but I think in that case don’t introduce vader as your looming big bad for the early seasons; maybe at most have him make some camos and a few fight scenes, but he is kinda irrelevant to the Rebels? He’s not their former master turned Sith Lord, kanan pretty clearly doesn’t feel more anger towards him than he did to the clones, aside from as a representative of the empire, vader doesn’t have the same meaning to them, and it just doesn’t quite click.

(edit: I do know that what maul says in tcw siege of mandalore + general force bs is enough for ahsoka to put two and two together and get vader , but I still think there is a lot of emotional stuff there (esp with rex involved!) that really feels like it should have been explored better. (+ I am a believer that unless something is specifically set up as a sequel you should be able to watch/read it without having seen the connected works) - I don’t think it’s inconceivable that ahsoka figures anakin is vader without a lot of effort, but showing her putting the pieces together and either rejecting or becoming more sure of her conclusion would have made malachor not only hit harder, and her arc feel less like a hanger on from tcw)

anyway. Please don’t shoot me I still think rebels is mostly really good (I don’t like the world between worlds stuff, but that’s personal, and I didn’t like mortis either) and this lil rant thing was mostly prompted by me getting really bored in ep20 and then checking how many were left and being genuinely shocked ghat it was twilight of the apprentice already. This is all obviously just my own thoughts.

[bibwak]

redid a piece I never finished in 2019, original below the cut

I gave up on the original pretty quickly because I discovered that casein is even more of a nightmare for portraits than gouache. I didn't save the original reference, unfortunately, so I had to cobble together several images of people during twilight to get a grasp of the lighting.

[undead-knick-knack]

[crowwowo]

my bbg light of my life gem of my eye(s) Fjord Stone

[iftheresaproblem-whatever]

STAR WARS REBELS + LEGEND OF VOX MACHINA CROSSOVER

I love both of these shows and this scene works perfectly for the boys. 😄

Big thank you to my good friend and collab partner @hayesflint for providing the sprites for me to edit. 💜

@thehonorableones

[ruvi-muffin]

It is So Important to me that essek has a religious upbringing devoid of meaningful love and connection (except his bother), gets recruited into a cult; and Indirectly, bc of this, he meets the queerest group of ppl he's ever met and feels friendship for the first time in his life, propelling him to change trajectory so drastically he's now on the run, has presumably no contact w his famly (except, again maybe his brother) and has to live a secret life Again, but at least this time he has a family that loves him.

It's just so important ;; the most character of all time, truly a man of the people (🏳️‍🌈!!)

[bikananjarrus]

the way that, if you took away her armor and the two or three lines referencing it, you would literally never know that sabine was a mandalorian in the ahsoka show. filoni completely stripped her of her culture (and personality) and never gave her a meaningful scene talking about the destruction of mandalore or her family. all in favor of giving her a bad and poorly executed padawan storyline, because apparently a character can’t be interesting unless they’re a jedi

[star-dust-wars]

We have to talk about one of those most chilling deaths in all of Star Wars (other than that one clone who got cut in half)

This is Sumar from Rebels. Sumar was a part of the Lothal Rebellion. (He's also voiced by Liam O'Brien for those who love Critical Role like me ❤️)

He worked in an Imperial factory and purposely sabotaged many of their equipment, so it would all practically self-destruct if any of it ever reached full power.

When Thrawn suspected him, he MADE Sumar test his own equipment that he manufactured. Thrawn made him test the equipment to its breaking point. It was about to explode, and Sumar wanted to stop, claiming that something was wrong, but Thrawn insisted that the demonstration wasn't over.

Sumar was killed by his own creation in such a brutal scene for a KIDS show! And Ezra, who had known Sumar since he was a kid, was forced to watch it happen, or else his cover would've been blown.

[copalcetic]

Every time I think about it, I’m struck by the parallel beats in Kallus’s and Crosshair’s redemption arcs.

Spent a season chasing the heroes.

Forced to work together with the heroes after being abandoned by the Empire, then refused to leave with the heroes even though that meant being stuck on a deserted rock with no way off and no Imperial rescue incoming.

Risked everything to get a message out to the heroes once captured after defecting, only to have that message ironically be what doomed the heroes.

Retired to an isolated, idyllic planet for a happily ever after.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s Star Wars. It’s like poetry. It rhymes.

But my favorite part is despite all of that, if they ever met, they’d probably hate each other.

Kallus: After all that, you just . . . left? You didn’t stay to join the fight? Crosshair: Nope. Kallus: Your guilt for your past actions didn’t make you feel compelled to spend years giving your all for the cause? Crosshair: Nope. Kallus: You weren’t driven by a need for absolution? Crosshair: I shot Hemlock. It was very absolving.

[antianakin]

I'd love more exploration of Rex perhaps feeling like he got kind-of the short end of the stick in terms of Jedi. He LIKES Ahsoka, for sure, she's got a spirit he admires and she's tenacious and it's hard not to care for her. And Anakin is, well, powerful for sure and friendly enough, so for a while Rex thinks he came out pretty well with his Jedi.

But then he starts meeting other Jedi or working alongside other Jedi and he realizes how much more competent other Jedi often are, especially the more experienced ones. And while Anakin is friendly enough, he's seen a lot of the other clones have MUCH closer relationships to their Jedi and certainly none of THEM ask their captains or commanders to lie to superior officers about secret relationships or unsanctioned missions. He's a little surprised once when he notices pretty much every other Jedi remembers that the clones can't always keep up with the Jedi and will unhesitatingly adjust their battle strategy to accommodate it. He sees the way other young Padawans are being taught to do something similar, to really consider the lives of the clones when they're in battle as the higher priority rather than the success of the mission.

And Rex starts wondering what his life might be like if he had ended up with a different Jedi. He loves his men, he's proud of the work they do most of the time, and he doesn't DISLIKE the Jedi he ended up with, but sometimes he's kind-of jealous of some of his brothers and wishes he'd gotten their Jedi instead.

[tarisilmarwen]

Sabine choosing to frequently pick the Jedi choice of action in Rebels is not in fact evidence that it was always in the cards for her to become a Jedi in Ahsoka.

And it's especially not evidence that she was intended to be Force Sensitive.

Sorry, no, that still has established worldbuilding rules that the writing for Ahsoka just barreled over in favor of the story Filoni wanted to tell with his preferred blorbo, no matter how ill suited other characters were for the roles.

[bibwak]

I need him and Astrid to bicker so much that everyone assumes they're divorced

[godempworm]

Well, that explains a lot a man who only a handful of episodes of Rebels believes he’s the most knowledgeable on Rebel characters

And here’s the link to the article

[revvethasmythh]

it's actually so funny and telling that the champion of the strife emperor is working with the volition and opposing the imperium. RIP to bane, I know you love a good imperium, a hot conquest, sexy war and subjugation and tyranny. alas this time the conquest, war, subjugation, and tyranny will KILL YOU, and so here we are. working with freedom fighters, of all things. oh how the mighty fall

[luckydcooking]

Blocking your loyal fans on twitter who simply wanted to know what's the status of their HH playbill merch because it has been several months since they had brought it for $70 something dollars only to end up blocking those said fans. You're on thin ice, Vivpoop. Don't act surprise if those cult members of yours call you out or start losing followers, or worse get you in trouble with the authorities.

[thatoneidiotyoulovesomuch]

I think one of Ever After High's biggest problems is the lack of characters and/or the lack of commitment to the rebel and royals tension. (Also this is coming from someone who has only really watched what's on Netflix. I have seen everything but I have just watched the Netflix specials wayyyyy more)

But what I mean by that is there will be moments when our main characters will be really hostile towards each other. Like during Legacy Day when all the royals were booing at Raven for not signing the book. Or the cafeteria fight after Legacy Day. Which makes a ton of sense for the plot of EAH. However, there are also a lot of moments when the rebels and royals are friendly with each other. That doesn't make a ton of sense when compared with the two instances I mentioned earlier. An example of this would be in Briar's Study Party, where they are all studying and dancing together. I just think it's strange. Also I'm not really thinking about Apple in all of this. She feels like a special case. I'm more so thinking about Briar, Ashlynn, Dexter, Blondie, Daring.

So I think in order to remedy this there are two options. Maybe even three. I'm also going to be focus on the royals more in this because I think my problems really lie with them.

Option 1: add more side characters that are the hostile ones during scenes like Legacy Day and the cafeteria fight. (Specifically royals) That way, our main characters like Brair and Ashlynn don't seem fake when interacting with characters like Raven, Maddie or Cedar outside of the scenes.

Option 2: make the royal characters specifically be mean/rude/hostile whatever to the rebels all the time. Some ways I would incorporate it into scenes already present in the show would be: when Apple and Raven are going to find a new mirror (which they go to all royals) have the royals they go to be curt with Raven. Or the look on their faces turns into a frown whenever they see her. So we can keep up the rebel vs royal and make it seem more believable.

Option 3: make the royal vs rebel tension a complete facade. A facade they only keep up around teachers or their parents. I guess one could potentially make an argument that this is kinda what the show is doing already, but not really. Because you have characters like Blondie who does everything to be consider a royal or Apple's whole thing she's got going on. It's obvious that the tension is truly there, especially with scenes like the cafeteria fight who would they have been pretending for? There were no teachers or parents there. They genuinely were fighting. So in order to make if feel like a facade I would have a scene where characters admit that they don't feel any hostility towards the other side but feel as though they need to act like they do. That would explain scenes like the booing at Legacy Day. And if you put some teachers in the cafeteria when the fight happened, it would also make more sense. But just to make it a little more interesting I would have scenes with the rebels feelings being hurt. Like Raven feeling absolutely awful after Legacy Day and refusing to talk to Dexter afterward because he was booing too. Also this pretending would primarily fall with the royals because I feel like it benefits them the most but we can have some scenes were the rebels do it too.

But those are my thoughts on that. I've always thought the characters' relationship was weird. Ever since I was a little kid. Also this is not a complaint about the show. I love this show so so so so much. It's one of my favorites ever.