#a war on two fronts

[spacemagicandlaserswords]

The Clone Wars 5.02 ‘A War on Two Fronts' Reaction

Rex what on earth are you wearing?! Look what they did to my boy.

Naw, he’s got jaig eyes on the front of his chest plate. I’d love to know the story behind Rex getting his jaig eyes.

Ok, who thought it was a good idea to give Rex a jetpack?

Gymnast Rex! Look at him being all flexible and flipping about like a Jedi. Also, his little grunts/old man noises during this. 

Rex, you did not need to backflip off the tank. Sir, you are showing off again.

Ahahahahah omg, it’s an absolute 'blink and you’ll miss it' moment but after Rex leaps off the tank and just before the shot changes, you can see him brush off his shoulder. Sir, you are definitely showing off. You utter dork. I love him so much.

“We must not train terrorists.” Well, that’s going to come back and bite everyone in the arse.

Rex sounding like a drill sergeant there while they’re training the rebels. Also, hello to that jawline.

So this is where we meet Saw Gerrera. Great.

Pitting two young girls against each other over the affections of some teenage boy. How original. I thought something written in 2012 would be better than this but that’s probably looking back with far too rose tinted glasses. Or the awful goggles Rex was wearing.

Rex’s outfit would’ve been so good without those bloody googles. We were robbed.

Just paused it and the hat and earmuffs aren’t great either. And why is he wearing long socks with the pants tucked into them? Is that an aerial or view thingy on his right earmuff? What is the random patch under the long sleeved shirt on his right bicep? Are the blotches supposed to be a camouflage pattern? Ok, I revise my opinion. This entire outfit is trash. Burn it with fire.

Where on earth did Rex get this abomination of an outfit anyway? Does the 501st just have a random closet full of awful civvies clothes? Ahahah, it’s a disguise box isn’t it. 

Ok I’m now analysing Rex’s outfit way too much but oh well, here we are. What are the random pouches attached to his belt for? Why have pockets on your pants if they’re not holding anything? Now that I look at it, the chest plate really doesn’t seem to be covering a great deal. Why are you wearing 2 layers Rex? Unless the underneath layer is his blacks, then it makes more sense. And what are the holsters for your DC-17s attached to? They’re sitting on his hips but the belt is around his waist and they don’t look like they’re connected. Are they just magically connected to his person? Do ARCs just come out of training with their holsters glued to their hips? I have so many notes about this outfit.

Tangentially related outfit notes: Why does Ahsoka have to wander about in a) a boob tube and then b) a skin tight outfit with cutouts, yet Rex and all the guys are fully covered in loose clothing. Oh wait, I know why.

Ah, so Steela was the voice of reason. Of course, it’s the young girl that has to keep the arrogant, hot headed male in check. This is painfully dated, and probably explains why Saw went completely off the rails after her death.

Really not impressed with Saw. He’s arrogant, dismissive and hot-headed. That line from Steela about how he fashions himself as their leader even though no one elected him does not bode well either.

So many Jedi cloaks in this episode! I love the return of their ridiculously obvious and completely unsubtle “disguises”. 

Lmao at Obi-Wan and Anakin at the end having their serious Jedi conversation while pretending to be subtle in their cloaks. No one is falling for that boys.

“I am hopeful, Anakin. Hopeful.” How mysteriously Jedi of you Obi-Wan.

Oh, this is the planet that The Bad Batch went to in ‘Aftermath’. I thought Onderon felt familiar. It’s decidedly weird sometimes watching The Clone Wars after watching The Bad Batch. There’s a lot of moments that I didn’t understand the significance of and thus completely missed out on. Like the return of Rex in ‘Battle Scars’, Cody in ‘The Solitary Clone’ and Gregor (who I still haven’t met in TCW yet) in ‘War-Mantle’. Things like understanding exactly who Cut and Suu were in ‘Cut and Run’ and the importance of their history in TCW, especially with Rex. Even Trace and Rafa are characters from TCW, though I’ve yet to meet them either. And then there’s moments like this where a planet that is completely new at the time of this TCW episode being broadcast is familiar to me because of the backwards way I’ve watched everything. I’m definitely going to have to rewatch The Bad Batch at some point once I’ve watched all of TCW, Rebels and Tales of the Jedi to fully understand and get all the moments and references. 

Lmao of course they have the two characters that were fighting team up at the end and use the same training exercise they failed at earlier to defeat the droids. I know it’s an “animated kids TV show” and sometimes you can really tell. And yet there’s also commentary in here about the folly of an external (essentially) military force training insurgents/rebels from another planet country and the consequences there of. Hmmmmmmm, I wonder what on earth that could be referring to. Hmmmm.

I still cannot believe Rex’s outfit. The ribbing in the group chat is going to be even worse than after the Zygerrian armour. 

[refreshdaemon]

A good introduction to new non-Republic affiliated rebels touches on complicated real world politics and offers interesting new tensions as our protagonists teach Onderon rebels how to fight droids.

[cid5]

Wehrmacht solider and his cup of coffee on the Eastern Front.

[flutesolo]

disney is so fucking stupid there’s no way in hell that luke ‘daddy issues’ skywalker would see din ‘father of all time’ djarin in a situation that parallels to the first and only time he saw his own fathers face and not immediately fall to his knees from longing

[zaana]

Their welcome-back hug would start happy and end in crying

[theworldatwar]

Soviet soldiers use a ruined building for cover as they attempt to defend Stalingrad -1942

[serpentface]

What’s the architecture/layout of old Bur, how do modern people perceive the ruins?

The city in its peak was very large and spread over both shoreline and a network of small islands. These islands comprised a waterfront district connected by a network of bridges and canals, where a large portion of its non-agricultural lower class lived.

It had a fairly well organized and efficient freshwater+sanitation system across most of its span (the canal district had less effective plumbing largely due to logistical difficulties, most of its wastewater was instead flushed by rain powered cisterns). The water system was powered by the Hsuke river and made fresh water readily accessible throughout the majority of the city (though few homes had direct freshwater plumbing). It had several major public baths, and the homes of the wealthiest members of society had their own private bathing pools.

In this part of the world, it is broadly regarded as once being one of the most beautiful cities to have ever existed. It was particularly noted for its water gardens (still a fixture of present day Burri culture) which were absolute marvels of engineering for that period, with the majority of these being entirely artificial and supported by its network of aqueducts. These hosted thousands of ornamental plants, fish, and fowl, as well as fruiting trees and shrubs. They were treated as a public work meant to benefit all citizens, and existed throughout the city.

The palace in particular was noted as impressive, in part for its architecture but mainly for its gardens. These hosted 'exotic' plants and a menagerie of animals from across the empire's territory, and existed in part as a symbol of the state's power and reach. It was a trend for emperors to bring in the fiercest animal from each conquered province to the grounds, with the an-nechoi being the beast of choice from the lands across the sea to the east, with one (Probably erroneously) cited as killing thirty servants in the process of moving it into the gardens.

The palace was located within the temple district. This district housed over a hundred shrines to the various lesser deities of the pantheon, and temple complexes to the seven chief deities (the firstborn gods who created the world, all other gods were later descendants). Old Burri temples were Kinda similar in shape to a ziggurat, though had an accessible interior space and a central tower which housed the shrine. At this time, the chief gods were believed to physically inhabit their temples. Each god had its own high priest permitted to attend to their shrine, with the emperor being the high priest to Inanariya (king of the gods) and the only person permitted to directly commune with this deity. The foundations to these temples are relatively intact in the present day, though none of the towers remain (collapsed in earthquakes with no one to rebuild them).

The city was heavily fortified, having one external wall surrounding most of its length, and an internal wall surrounding the palace/temple district (which doubled as a fortress).

---

The period of sea level rise began with a 500ish year period of mostly gradual increase, which occurred slowly enough that most infrastructure could adapt very easily and the problem went unnoticed by most (the city of Bur experienced most of its Growth during this time). It then culminated with about a century of (relatively) rapid rise, which is the direct cause of the city's abandonment.

The canals flooding had always been a problem during storms, but this began to occur with notable frequency, alongside the water level as a whole rising quickly enough to be noticed on an immediate human timespan. The canal district was maintained for a while by rerouting some of its waterways and building up barriers, but it was the first part of the city to be abandoned. Things got more serious when the mainland parts of the city grew increasingly impacted by storm surges that never seemed to fully retract, and major parts of its surrounding farmland were hit by surges and tidal waves, and rendered too saline to remain arable.

The actual single biggest cataclysm was the collapse of the city's mainland sewage system. It was built with flood canals as a failsafe, but these were built to withstand heavy rain rather than an encroaching ocean. Storm surges would cause large segments of the city to be flooded with sewage (including some of the freshwater plumbing), and serious disease outbreaks would follow.

These issues were enabled/exacerbated by earthquakes (the region is geologically active and this isn't unusual) that further damaged and mingled the sewage and freshwater systems. One earthquake and its subsequent tidal wave was a turning point, and the resulting breakdown of (already strained) infrastructure rendered a large swath of the city uninhabitable in the space of about a week. This also just caused immediate damage to much of the city's architecture/walls, and collapsed the tower of the temple to Inanariya (never a good sign). This is when the full exodus began, first with people flocking to un-flooded parts of its city and farmlands, and those who could afford it fully relocating to other cities/towns.

All of this issues were compounded by the 1st Burri Empire already being in a period of collapse at this time. This was largely a matter of simple overextension. Its borders were constantly under attack by rival states/its victims, sometimes with great success. Bur's own population had burgeoned well past what the imperial core land could sustain, and its cities relied predominantly on extraction of foreign grain/goods to feed their people. It lost most of its eastern land holdings in a fairly rapid timespan (overextended with wars at multiple fronts), which caused frequent famines in its core.

This put pressure on its final emperors to invest in increasingly desperate expansionist projects, while attempting to keep up public morale with lavish public works and objectively stupid vanity projects. The attempt to excavate a canal at the Viper seaway's 'tail' (one of the few eastern regions it retained secure control of at that point) was in part a desperate act to revive its economy by opening up/monopolizing a new trade system. The amount of money and manpower sunk into this ultimately doomed project was followed by Bur being fully ousted from its eastern holdings, and was one of the final straws in its collapse.

People in the city of Bur proper were dealing with the double front of starvation and their homes + streets + immediate water supply being flooded with seawater and literal human feces. These issues impacted the lower classes first and most severely, but ultimately transcended class boundaries. Famine grew more and more rampant, not only with the loss of the colonial holdings that supported the population but of farmland in the imperial core- much of the city of Bur's immediate farmlands were unproductive due to repeat inundation with saltwater during surges, and the farmland along the Yamage river to the north was rapidly being captured and pillaged by the Hsem (historical enemies, a nomadic group with a khait warrior culture from further west).

All this was fucking unlivable in of itself, but also had very obvious implications in the context of Burri emperors also being high priests and the chief intermediary between the gods and the people. Not only was the government failing to sustain its citizens to begin with, but signs of divine disapproval were deeply apparent.

So the last days of the 1st Burri empire were a chaotic period of civil unrest, most acute in and around city of Bur proper. This involved near-constant peasant revolts and several attempted coups. The last Burri emperor (of the First empire) ultimately fled the capital of Bur and reestablished in Titenegal, declaring it the new capital. This was then sacked by the Hsem within a year and after that it was fucking Joever.

The city of Bur was functionally abandoned by this point. People still Lived There and there were several attempts to set up a new government, all of which failed in the short term. After the collapse was complete, its inhabitants were mostly just peasants who built up new homes further inland and sustained themselves on the remaining farmland. Few people lived permanently in the city proper due to all of its intact infrastructure being effectively non-functional without the governmental bodies/human labor to sustain it.

---

It should also be noted that it was Extremely not just Bur that was flooded, the sea level rise was worldwide (resulting from a collapsing ice sheet) and almost Every coastal city during this period experienced the same issue. Bur's demise was just notably dramatic in that it was once the most heavily populated human city that has Ever Existed, and directly correlated with the fall of the empire it hosted.

The flooding was fairly gradual, but it's been 7 centuries since the first Burri empire's collapse and the fall of its capital city, and many contemporary records were lost to the immediate chaos and to the large span of time since. Cultural memory tends to reframe the flood VERY rapid on a human scale, many of the stories describe the city being swallowed in a single wave as an act of divine punishment (the popular notion at the time that the last emperors deeply displeased and shamed the gods has stuck into the narrative, often exaggerated into stories of them being horrifically debauched blasphemers guilty of the worst disgraces imaginable). Even more conservative accounts tend to imagine the totality of the destruction taking place over the span of about a year (merging the memories of the immediate earthquake devastation with more gradual elements of its slow flooding). People widely believe that most of its residents drowned in the city's cataclysmic demise, and that the ruins are now Extremely haunted.

The state of the flooding is not 'completely under the sea' and you can still walk/wade through most of the inland ruins (the canal district is effectively submerged, with most structures that Would be above the water level having collapsed against the strain). As such, some people Do Live Here. These people are mostly smugglers and pirates using the ruins as a hideout, and/or opportunistic hunters and fishermen who won't let ghosts stop them. Entering the city ruins is currently forbidden (largely Because of the criminal nature of basically every motive to go here (even hunting, which is considered poaching)), but enforcement of this rule/active patrols to prevent entry are inconsistent.

The majority of Old Bur's inhabitants are animals. The un-flooded parts of the city and its gardens are now a host to a thriving community of native plants and animals (and a few descendants of escaped non-native zoo animals/ornamental plants that adapted well to the conditions).

The egret shown here is a foreign species originally brought as an ornamental bird. In the centuries since its first import, it has become widespread and occurs on both sides of the Mouth seaway. It can hunt in both freshwater and saline environments, and a very large population lives permanently in the ruins of Old Bur.

Its common name is the ghost egret. Contemporary Burri folklore holds that the ghost egrets of Old Bur are literal ghosts, carrying the souls of those who died in the cataclysmic floods.

[feroluce]

I love the fact that the Silvermane Guards are essentially just a very devoted "We Love Gepard Landau" fanclub, and I desperately need for all of them to get into ship wars about it behind their Captain's back. The soldiers are all split into several factions:

Some of them ship him with Sampo 🛡💣 (enemies to lovers/hateship enjoyers; this does not necessarily mean they like Sampo- in fact it's more like most of them want to sic their Captain on him skzjsmdm)

Some of them ship him with Bronya 👑🛡 (knight and princess trope enjoyers and also a sorta-kinda "that is our mom and dad" type of deal; this faction gets riled up and ridiculously hypes Gepard up to Bronya every time she comes down to the frontlines mskdkxmd)

Some of them ship him with the trailblazer 🛡💫 (the smallest and newest faction, but steadily gaining!)

Some of them ship him with Pela ❄🛡 (workplace romance enjoyers; Gepard once charged out into the Fragmentum alone to save Pela from an expedition gone horribly wrong, and when this faction saw Gepard carrying Pela back princess style they threw a whole party)

Some of them ship him with Dunn 🛡🗡 (also workplace romance; Dunn is very flattered by this because yeah wrong Landau, but wow, the troops really think he's good enough to woo the Captain, what an honor)

And some of them ship themselves with the Captain 🛡❤ (yumejoshi enjoyers; this faction throws a massive group effort every Valentine's Day and are also all very supportive of each other)

The final faction is an odd one, because they're defined not by who they ship their beloved Captain Gepard with, but rather by who they don't ship him with. Their name is generally shortened to the A.B.S. Group- Anybody BUT Sampo 🚫💣 DKSZJJSMSOZ

[midnight--sadness]

just saw the worst take of all time on tiktok......... like fork found in kitchen i know but good god 😑

the idiots on that app are always like "🤓wElL tHe GaMeS hAvE bEeN hApPeNiNg SiNcE tHe 80s🤓" to justify gihun being idiotic to think he could stop them

u dumb bitch GIHUN DOESNT KNOW THAT!!!!

WHY WOULD HE ASSUME THESE FUCKASS GAMES HAVE BEEN HAPPENING FOR DECADES????

HE LITERALLY ONLY FOUND THEY WEREN'T A ONE-TIME THING WHEN HE SAW THE SALESMAN IN THE SUBWAY AGAIN!!!!

ARE YOU BRAINLESS??? ARE YOU A CLOWN??? ARE YOU DEVOID OF BASIC EMPATHY???

[illuminatedquill]

this is how that episode went right

(Sabezra fanart meme courtesy of @jedi-nurse)

[elder-millennial-of-zion]

So if this is actually about Hamas, why are they bombing Lebanon right now?

You mean why is Hezbollah bombing Israel and displacing 80,000 Israelis from their homes?

[hyunpic]

HYUNJIN: stay, just do as you are doing now, you're doing well [lovestay piano credit]

[cid5]

Soviet soldiers crouched in a trench as a Russian T34 tank passes over them during the Battle of Kursk, 1943.

[redbean-nom]

design for Adult Omega

[theworldatwar]

A Soviet soldier hides in the ruins of a house awaiting any signs of the enemy - Stalingrad 1942

[wylldebee]

The Mage-Templar War should've had a much larger focus in Inquisition instead of being shoved into comics/books change my mind