#and andor.. I mean we all know the ending of that story.

[storm3326]

finished watching ahsoka and andor recently. I love them so much..

[gffa]

With the confirmation of The Acolyte not getting a second season, I can't say I'm surprised, the numbers for that show were really bad given what its budgets was, like I kept an eye on The Acolyte's numbers and they were really, really down across the board (Ahsoka's numbers aren't super great either but that's getting its second season because it's Filoni's pet show, I suspect), like set aside all the other complicated stuff, whether it was good or bad, how much of the fandom's reaction was pretty heinous and racist, it just was not getting the numbers it needed and it's making me wonder about how all of these shows are not doing well. Mando is doing all right, OWK did all right, Andor's doing okay, but none of these shows are setting anything on fire anymore (ratings-wise, that is), what would it take to create something that takes off again?

I strongly suspect that The Mandalorian only took off because of Favreau, who really does know how to make something really good and fun in the beginning. Filoni gets a lot of credit for that show, but I'd be willing to put ten dollars on the table that Favreau was driving the vast majority of the success of that series. And that makes me wonder about the future of these shows, because I don't think Filoni is strong enough to really carry a show on his own, most of his best work is when he has a strong partner actively working with him or when he was working under Lucas.

And the creators they bring in to create these shows aren't setting anything on fire, either. Yeah, the sequels made a billion dollars for each movie, but I think it's pretty telling that we're not getting comics or books or games about those characters anymore, the way we did for the prequels characters for more than a decade after they came out. Yeah, Tony Gilroy and Deborah Chow had shows that did solidly well, but they're not anything that Star Wars can build future content off of, they're already backstories for other movies themselves. And I don't think Skeleton Crew is going to light anything on fire, either.

Lucasfilm just doesn't seem to know what to do with Star Wars TV and movies. They had some really good early success with their projects, but almost everything ultimately fizzled out after a few years or ended really badly, and it feels like the only thing that's really hitting with audiences are more Clone Wars-era content and The High Republic novels and maybe still The Mandalorian.

Honestly, if I were Lucasfilm, I'd cut out the live action shows and go back to animation and think long and hard about setting up a new movie series. I think, with the right creative team (and not just who they think is a big name to write/direct), they could have a great trilogy with The Old Republic era stuff, because they have got to expand beyond the PT/OT and the Skywalkers, especially since the sequels put a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths about how Luke, Leia, and Han's stories ended.

(I mean, in my ideal world, we'd get an animated series set in between TPM and AOTC or set like 30 years pre-TPM and getting to see the backstories for characters like Mace and Plo and Shaak and Luminara and Yarael, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.)

[david-talks-sw]

I got a good feeling about "The Acolyte"

Not even kidding. Like, I've spoken before about why I'm wary of it.

George Lucas' Star Wars is something that intentionally has black and white morality, rather than shades of gray. Those movies are meant for kids and projecting a "gray" morality onto them then proclaiming it was George's vision all along is doing so in bad faith.

The narrative of the Prequels doesn't frame the Prequel Jedi in as negative a light as Leslye Headland, Dave Filoni, etc etc do.

See here for more details, but bottom line: yeah, a show that has a darksider as the underdog is bound to demonize the Jedi (who are the actual underdogs in the Prequels), and obviously that rubs me the wrong way.

BUT.

The trailer looks fucking cool. It really really does.

And more importantly? I've done some research... and Leslye Headland is ticking a lot of good boxes, in my book.

1. The Acolyte won't be a 10-hour movie.

I've criticized Disney Plus shows before, explaining that a big source for most of their issues is that these series are being structured as "long movies" rather than, y'know, actual shows.

But in this interview with Collider, Headland addresses that: it'll be a series. Not a long movie that you need to watch across four weeks.

Thank God. You have no idea how much that comforts me. Finally a showrunner who's, y'know, actually running a show.

And this goes hand in hand with what she told IGN, here, about how she's going about building suspense.

Yes! Exactly! That's how it's supposed to be!

Like, compare this to Baylan Skoll's storyline in Ahsoka.

In no possible way was that emotionally-fulfilling. For 8 episodes we had no idea what he was after, and the season ended where we still don't know. What does he want? What is he after? Your guess is as good as mine, it's something Mortis-related.

So yeah. Maybe getting the Emmy-nominated trained screenwriter on board to run this was a good idea.

2. Maybe the Jedi will not be as demonized as I originally thought.

Don't get me wrong. 80% of what she says about the Jedi makes me cringe. It's the typical fan's interpretation and y'all know I disagree with that interpretation.

It's painful to see her refer to the Jedi as an institution (not how the Prequels' narrative frames them) and to see her frame "Balance" in the "oh there's so many of them and just two Sith, that means the Force is out of balance" meaning... but at least she acknowledges the Jedi are a benevolent institution.

They're not an "elitist force hiding in their ivory tower" as others have described the Jedi.

Moreover, there'll be a variety of Jedi POVs, many personalities.

Yord Fandar, is described as a strictly by-the-book Jedi Knight and guardian from the Jedi Temple, is an overachiever and a rule follower.

The question now becomes: will the narrative frame him as "your typical Jedi" or is it just this one guy? I'm hoping it's the latter.

I also like how her reasoning goes re: Jedi drawing their lightsabers.

Which explains the hand-to-hand combat seen in the trailer.

This teenager is coming at Carrie-Ann Moss with a dagger, of course the Jedi won't draw her saber.

3. She's a fan of Star Wars... but a screenwriter first.

You can tell in the interviews she's a fan. She's using words like "BBY" and "EU" casually. In the above-linked interviews she's bringing up the Nightsisters, Timothy Zahn, The Clone Wars, she mentions she has a tattoo of Ralph McQuarrie's concept art of Leia, the High Republic books, etc.

She's done her homework. She's a fan.

But the vibe I'm getting from these interviews is that she's weaving in these various lore-elements in a more organic way, rather than in the "fan-servicey" way Dave Filoni has been doing in his shows.

The references and Easter Eggs will be there, but the narrative won't bend over itself just so you can get it. Crafting a good story comes first, and Andor is a beautiful illustration of why this is true.

Which is why I was never bothered about one of the writers never having watched Star Wars before getting the job. You need those fresh eyes when you're tackling something of this scale.

That makes sense to me. Maybe it's because of my own screenwriting experience, but yeah. That out-of-the box perspective is precious.

And like, obviously, that writer watched the films eventually, but for some reason everyone who bitched about Headland omitted that detail and opted for a more bad faith interpretation.

Hm. Wonder why.

Maybe it's the same reason that months ago this clipped audio circulated socials without context, in which she debates whether Star Wars only came from George Lucas and only Lucas is the key.

The FULL context of that interview reveals that she's actually:

debating the "autheur director" myth and positing that it was achieved by a collective of excellent filmmakers and craftspeople that George was skilled and smart enough to recruit...

the studios now think it's a simple as hiring one guy and throwing money at him, because they have no idea what the fuck they're talking about. See Napoleon (2023) for example.

Yes, she also does a jab to the Prequels, which speaks to the generation of fans she's a part of... but overall she's giving Lucas props whilst also stating an ideological difference, that's it!

George is a proponent of the "autheur" theory, Leslye isn't.

However, guess what, in like half the talks George gave post-selling Star Wars? He's giving shoutouts to everyone who helped make the first film, even remembering their names.

So I'm not even sure he'd vehemently disagree with Leslye, in fact they'd prolly have a conversation about it and immediately bitch about how stupid studio executives are :D

But that's not as incendiary, is it? Again, the more I do the research, the more it feels like the reason most of these influencers are hating on her is purely sexist.

I mean, on IGN she's even acknowledging that she does plan on taking stock of fan reactions for Season 2.

It's not a guarantee that she'll incorporate the feedback, but at least that's more consideration than, say, JJ Abrams or Rian Johnson gave the fandom.

She's even bringing the moral ambiguity that the Gray Jedi-loving edge-lords love so much.

"No, she's a woke feminist! Anything she does is evil! Eww, girls!"

🙄

Needless to say... I'm gonna give it a shot.

I think it's gonna be a good show, I think it's gonna be a solid story.

I'm crossing my fingers that they won't as biased against the Jedi as it seems they'll be. Even if they are... if it's still an enjoyable experience, I'll gloss over it.

As @gffa states in this post:

Worst case? It's not a story from George. I can dismiss it from my headcanon without a moment's hesitation :D

[bberry005]

yeah yeah i know i usually post silly little anecdotes about the bad batch but how about some real analysis?

people have said it before but truly the only way for this show to have a message and meaning in the end is for it to have a happy (if not that then bittersweet) ending.

the whole point of the show is family, specifically clone force 99/the bad batch as a family. the show literally starts with them accepting omega into their family. throughout the show, this theme of family is repeated. them helping hera syndulla rescue her parents. them helping rex rescue their fellow clones because they're all brothers. phee introducing them to her family on pabu.

star wars has always had a message of love and family, but more often than not, that ends in tragedy. we're all hoping the bad batch will give us that ending where they're all reunited. they'll rescue omega/all escape tantiss in some way, tech will be revealed as cx-2 (i'm a supporter of this theory and for this post i'm going to assume he is cx-2), and they're able to all go and be TOGETHER as a family. what they do after that doesn't matter. they just need to be together.

i can see any of them sacrificing themselves in the finale, but the whole point should be that they're not ALLOWED to. not when they're this close. not when they're a family again. not when crosshair is back. not when they learn tech is alive. not when omega is safe. whoever (likely hunter or echo) tries to sacrifice themselves needs to be held back. because family is the point. because they're not letting ANYONE else pull a plan 99.

the bad batch show might be ending, but it shouldn't be the end of them as a squad. they HAVE to live. because family is the point, because they protect each other, because they're allowed that quiet life of not being soldiers and that time to heal and to join the rebellion if they want to. but if hunter, wrecker, crosshair, and echo die, and tech is either not cx-2 or they can't save him, and omega stays in tantiss forever, it destroys their whole theme that they've spent the whole show developing.

tragic endings and stories are star wars specialty (the prequels, the clone wars, rogue one, andor, hell even rebels and solo to an extent). the bad batch has potential to show us that there is that other central theme of star wars: hope. there's hope for our main characters and that they'll be the ones who show us that not every hero who fights for the rebellion/the republic just faces tragedy. there's hope that omega can grow up in peace. there's hope that hunter can have his quiet life away from being a soldier. there's hope that echo can keep fighting for what he believes in, that crosshair can heal, that tech will live, that wrecker will see all his brothers again.

basically, star wars give us a happy ending to this story of family and hope. we deserve it, the characters deserve it, and the story deserves it.

[marvel-starwarsfangirl]

"The Bad Batch" S3 Review- Spoilers

Alright guys, we made it. After 3 years of this lovely show, it has finally come to an end. I definitely plan on doing a review of the entire show and see where it fits with the other big animated shows. However, that will come after my Crosshair Character Study. For now, let's focus on S3. Like Season 2, I'd definitely say it's a solid 8.5/10 for me. Although, S2 might still be my favorite. I honestly think Rebels might be the only show that has a 9/10 final season for me. Look, I loved CW and Siege of Mandalore is phenomenal, but that Ahsoka arc was not it. The final season of TBB has so much I absolutely loved and so much I wished it handled better. So, let's jump right into it!

This season felt so different for me and I definitely know why. The story is much more plot driven than the first two. In the first two seasons, the Batch were more worried about survival and kinda just went on adventures all around the galaxy. The Empire really didn't know where they were so the stakes weren't as high. Crosshair himself was stuck in the Empire meaning he didn't focus on the Batch as much until they crossed paths with him.

S3, however, sees the Batch and Omega specifically being hunted relentlessly. They need to figure out what's going on or else they will never be free. This shift from the Batch galavanting around the galaxy to a more plot driven narrative does change things up. Looking back, I think the creative team just needed more time. S3 has so much going for it and there just isn't time to flesh out the ideas to their fullest potential. That being said, I am overall satisfied with everything they pulled off, especially Crosshair. This show has solidified him as one of my top 3 favorite SW characters and fave clone. He's so well-written and I adore him.

What I loved:

The atmosphere this season was so dark and I loved it. There was a maturity to the ideas and threat level that I honestly really appreciated. Just like Andor, TBB really demonstrates just how monstrous the Empire is. There is nothing that Palpatine won't do in order to achieve total domination and subjugation of the entire galaxy for all eternity. And Hemlock is right there beside him. That man's passion for his craft knows no bounds; it doesn't matter who's strapped to his table. It's so horrifying to think how Tantiss is probably just one of the many, many inhumane and monstrous things the Empire has running. TBB, like Andor, is peak Empire imo. If there was any doubt that this monstrosity could last as long as it did, these two shows erase it.

I also really loved the character relationships, particularly Omega and Crosshair. Their bond is so beautiful and reminiscent of ones I see in my own life. There's nothing Crosshair wouldn't do for her and it fits really neatly with who he is as a person. Omega brings out the best in him, just as she does all her brothers. This season really emphasized how much Omega's brothers have influenced her. Their lessons really come into play by the end of the season. To see her grow from a naive young girl into a mature (but still childish) teenager/pre-teen was beautiful.

Crosshair this season was everything to me. I could be here for hours talking about him. I was beyond thrilled with how they handled him. He has changed so much and this season highlights that growth in every way. Crosshair remains to be the best written character and nothing about him felt OOC. I loved his dynamics with the Batch and Omega. (The hugs were perfect)! I loved how his struggle was something he worked on the entire season; it wasn't just one and done. I love how the themes of trust were woven so perfectly into his story. Crosshair was perfect (I'll touch on the hand thing later). I couldn't have asked for more (except just give me more Crosshair. I will never be tired of him. I could watch a whole show of just him doing stuff).

I don't have a burning desire to punch Hunter anymore. Yay! But in all seriousness, I have developed a soft spot for him. As much as he got on my nerves in S1, I really do appreciate him a lot more. He does care deeply and has a lot he's struggling with.

Echo showing us why he's the ARC Trooper. Seriously, those scenes of him will always live rent free in my head.

Emerie! Really great character and very interesting.

*hides in a corner* Rampart.

The music and animation were phenomenal. Honestly, both were flawless. The music in particular moved me to tears several times. Props to the animators and Kiners because this is some of their finest work yet. That one shot of Crosshair catching CX-2's knife was outstanding.

I also loved the action, seeing the boys fight together, and final shot of the Batch + the epilogue. There is so much I adored in those moments and the rush of emotions I got each time. The epilogue was so personal and I might do a separate write up on it.

The themes of family and hope were also front and center and I loved every second of it. If anyone asks why I love TBB, it's because this is show about family more than anything. The Batch are a family and seeing them learn to be one is so beautiful. It means so much that Hunter, Wrecker, and Crosshair got to settle down together and raise Omega. It's just beautiful.

What I didn't like:

I wanted more deep convos. Whether it was because of a preference for action or time constraints, the writers just needed to have more deep character emotions and let them sink in. It's why "The Outpost" and Tech's convo with Omega are so well loved; they let us really be with the characters. I wish S3 had more of those moments because they make this show that much better. I just wanted more. And I know this show is capable of that. It sucks knowing what it could've been. So many moments could've hit more had they been given time to breathe or worked in a bit differently.

The way Tech was handled. Hats off for actually keeping him dead. I just wish we got proper closure on that 😐. Although Tech's death looms largely over the Batch, it feels like the writers brushed it off. Why didn't we get a scene of Crosshair learning what happened? I know the time skip implies they all processed Tech's death, but it still felt like something was missing. It felt like the writers expected us to also process it like the Batch and move on. Except, we're not the Batch. We don't know what went on in their heads because they're fictional. The audience relies on the writers to show us that grieving process and we don't get it. It also didn't help that it felt like they were baiting us with CX-2 at times.

Some of the plot lines being dropped for plot/time reasons. Look, I know that it's about the Batch and their journey on becoming a family. However, it felt like more was being set up and it might go no where. One thing I love about TBB in general is how it showed us how the Empire began to change the galaxy the moment Palpatine got what he wanted: total dominance. Clones began to take a stand. Talks of rebellion were already being whispered. I just hope that these storylines revolving around Rex, Riyo, and Echo don't wither away because TBB has ended. Or the Ventress thing. I know they said she'll be back but who knows when that'll happen. I also wanted to know more about the CX Program. That’s what fanfics are for, am I right?

The pacing was brutally fast. This ties into my points about the narrative being more plot driven and lack of time to fully flesh out ideas. It felt like there was almost no room to breathe at times because we jumped from plot point to plot point as each episode progressed. Don't get me wrong, TBB handled this way better than Ahsoka, but I just needed like two more episodes of the boys and Omega running around, ok?

Overall, this season just needed time.

What I am neutral on:

Scorch. Man was done dirty, but I didn't know who he was til this season. Sorry guys. Including him and not giving him anything wasn't a good idea imo though.

Crosshair's hand. I get both sides of the argument, I really do. First off, I'm a sucker for whump. I can't help it. Also, you can say that him losing his hand connects to him severing himself from Tantiss and the pain he went through. But at the same time, Crosshair's trauma isn't going to magically vanish by just chopping off his hand. If anything, it'll just add to the trauma. I applaud the writers for dealing with such a sensitive topic, but from a certain POV the hand chop is a quick fix to a storyline that could've had more substance with another season. I'm neutral on it because again, I see both sides of the argument. I think if we got more of a reaction from Cross, the situation would've been more clear (he was doing some crazy compartmentalization during the back half of the finale, let's be honest here).

Anyways, that's my review of S3 of TBB. Despite it's flaws, this little show still went out on a high note and I am very pleased with it. I love TBB with all my heart and I will hold it cherish it forever. Until next time everyone. I will still be talking about Crosshair and this show, don't worry. No matter what, I will never tire of this beautiful family ❤️

[andorshitdaily]

I want to see what happens with Dedra now that the narrative isn’t necessarily trying to get us “on her side” anymore. We know she’s still a woman in a man’s world and the show treats all of its characters as human beings, but we also know Dedra tortured Bix. What does that mean for her story, or how she’s treated in the writing? What did Denise Gough mean by “[going] full Dedra” when she discussed Season 2? Will Dedra and Luthen have any scenes together (Stellan mentioned wanting to work with Denise in Season 1)? My hope is that we see Dedra lose it, at least once; a snarling, rage-filled breakdown. I’m also looking forward to her dynamic with Krennic, assuming they meet. I hope we see her out of uniform and get a glimpse at her apartment. If she dies, I hope she makes it to the last episode and I hope it’s an ending worthy of her character. And of course, I’m looking forward to any and every scene with Syril and Dedra.

oh i am so ready for the Full Dedra

tell me what you want/need to see in Andor season 2!

[colleybri]

Andor and Rogue One: Sacrificing love and sacrificing for love

I often contemplate Luthen’s monologue from Andor episode 10: the full meanings and implications of what he has sacrificed. The clues to what his backstory might be and how his future might unfold. Perhaps the most intriguing item on his list of what he has given up is ‘love’. The difficulty of analysing this one is that the word has so many different meanings, and once again I’m rueful that in English we didn’t keep the Ancient Greek tradition of having different words for the many different types of love that we can experience. There are separate words for romantic/sexual love, the love between parents and children, between siblings and between good friends. There’s love in the sense of a strong liking (as in “I love chocolate”) and the love that develops over time in a relationship that needs a lot of work (as in an arranged marriage).

Luthen might mean one or all of these, but he might well also mean a very specific type of love: the one often called ‘universal and unconditional love’. The Greek word is Agape, (pronounced Ah-ga-pay). It’s the selfless love felt for humanity as a whole, and is that behind the willingness to do anything for someone without expecting something in return. It’s the biggest question Luthen will have to face. Is he ready and willing to die for the cause - and if so, will this kind of love be the motive? The problem is that in doing what he feels he needs to do for the greater good he thinks he is ‘damned’ as his actions are anything but loving, at least on the surface. He threatens babies, sacrifices innocents and plans to kill a man at his mother’s funeral. Perhaps he is a long way from ‘agape’.

Cassian is a little easier to track as we have at least the start and end of his story - Season 2 will fill in the remaining gap. The excellent Rogue One novelisation makes explicit that within the film Cassian has an epiphany and it’s made really clear in the extract below, which is from just after where he and the others volunteer to go with Jyn to Scarif (knowing full well the huge personal risk involved).

The novel earlier emphasised the ‘need’ in Jyn’s eyes, which is ultimately linked to her love (denied at first) for her father and her faith in his message about the Death Star. Cassian couldn’t go ahead with killing Galen and it’s interesting that here he now shares that ‘need’ to act: ‘He tried to imagine executing another coldly elegant mission for Draven and finding nourishment in the stale, momentary thrills of danger and triumph… He couldn’t survive that way anymore. …Jyn was changing. And through her, he would do what was required of him. They all would”. Interesting choice of words: ‘Coldly’.. ‘stale’. This will be the Cassian of the end of Andor season 2… Needing to find his fire again. It’s no doubt why we will want to watch the film again immediately afterwards, as Diego Luna has been urging us to do. I think we’ll need the ‘redemption’ part of the story.

With apologies to some of my Cassian x Jyn loving friends ;), this for me is the main canon ‘love story’ in Rogue One. Putting faith in Jyn’s own faith in her father’s message is for Cassian a kind of re-dedication to the cause - a renewal, perhaps, of something like the ‘vow’ that Luthen speaks of. But the motive this time seems to be something positive. In his monologue Cassian speaks of all the awful things he’s done on behalf of the Rebellion. Walking away now, as the Alliance wants to do, would be unthinkable. Making the ultimate sacrifice eventually becomes the only ‘choice’ left but I think it’s so important that Cassian makes it with a clear head and for the right reasons. It’s why I think that any heavy personal losses that Cassian might experience in S2 won’t come in the final arc, which takes place in the days just before the film - I don’t think Tony Gilroy would want us to think that Cassian is acting from any sense of ‘Oh well, my life is so shitty I might as well do this as I haven’t anything else to live for!’ That wouldn’t even be a sacrifice, which means giving up something you value. Instead, Gilroy explicitly says of Cassian that he is “someone who will consciously, open-heartedly sacrifice himself for the greater good”. In other words, he has a clear mind and is doing this for the ‘right’ reason. And the reason is love, I think - and in the ‘agape’ sense. In other words it’s not for love of Jyn or even love of himself (although I think he is genuinely and justly respectful and proud of himself when he dies) but for love of all those theoretical billions of strangers who might possibly be saved because of their sending the Death Star plans.

Cassian, Jyn and the rest of the Rogue One team make the final sacrifice for love. Unconditional love of strangers. The most selfless act of all. It makes me cry every time I rewatch, but the beach scene is a perfect visual representation. Cassian and Jyn are united in a platonic hug, comforting and literally supporting each other. No doubt thinking about all the loves and losses they have experienced in their mirror-imaged traumatic lives, war-torn from such an early age. They don’t want to die but are accepting of their approaching doom and the knowledge that in doing this they have helped each other to rediscover purpose and hope. They have “tried” as Nemik would put it. And finally, being swallowed up in bright transcendental light - recalling the sunrise Luthen knew he’d ‘never see’. Imagery of death but also of hope for ‘someone else’s future’, their sacrifice being the most selfless love of all.

So you can absolutely see the ending of Rogue One and the ending of Cassian’s story as hopeful, transcendental and inspirational as in that sense he is indeed ‘messianic’ as Tony Gilroy has described him. Not because he is a religious chosen one or a mystical figure - he’s an ordinary average man, who started out as a ‘loser.. .a nobody…’ who has done something extraordinary, for love. It’s a fully secular spiritual journey but no less powerful for that. His bible, as it were, has been Nemik’s manifesto.

As for Luthen himself… his fate is unclear. I’m not sure what might be coming for him, but I hope it does the character justice. Perhaps he will get some kind of glimpse of sunrise or perhaps his ending will - in contrast to Cassian’s - be in a totally sunless space.

“Tell him he knows everything he needs to know and feels everything he needs to feel, and when the day comes and those two pull together he will be an unstoppable force for good.”

[notasapleasure]

Wild hopes for Andor S2:

Oh, apparently blorbo *might* be in the trailer? Riding a speeder on Dantooine you say? Aughhhh don't toy with my emotions like this!!

So for posterity, before anything about s2 does actually become clear, my vague hopes/'if I got to write their story' headcanons for my Ferrix badasses are a jumble of the following:

I don't see them immediately going back to Ferrix, they're recognisable (Bix is known to the Empire, Wilmon will be known by association with Salman, Bee is known as Maarva's droid, they had an eye on Brasso as 'the big guy' even before he fucked shit up with the funerary brick...and I can't remember Jezzi doing anything specific but she'll have been seen round Maarva's home and funeral), and riot or not, I'd say the Empire will be in the mood to make an example of Ferrix rather than to go 'oops our bad we'll leave you in peace'. So it seems a bad idea for the fugitives to return there for their rebellion as soon as they've left.

On that ship we know there's a skilled electrician (Wilmon) and mechanic (Bix), and I've always presumed Brasso must know his way around a ship well enough to be able to take it apart, and that Jezzi has some similarly Ferrixian industrial skill. I thought it would be very sexy if they all got involved in making/repurposing tech for the rebellion. In my heart of hearts they're patching together the first fleet of X-Wings.

Orange. Ferrix orange (Brasso's felt jacket orange) and rebel pilot orange. And there's the shot of Cassian in an orange pilot's suit in the trailer. I just. I just have hopes. And dreams. And colour was so significant in Rogue One (the red of the force/rebellion...there was an awesome post on here pointing out way more examples than I'd noticed, but I always think of the lining of Jyn's vest). Maybe it's reclaiming Narkina orange, even? But the look of the Ferrix clothes reminds me so much of the OT aesthetic, I think that's got to be the more likely connection.

Bee? Kay? Do they meet? ಥ⁠‿⁠ಥ trying to suppress the thought 'what if Bee helps to make Kay possible?' but the thought has been thunk. (ETA: NOT into the theory that they're the same person that's not what I mean. I'm talking hardware donation. Wires and chips. Not personality)

Dantooine. Dantooine base. After all this time!!!! What Legends book did I first read about the base on Dantooine in?? idek but if I'd ever written the epic angsty plot follow-up to that one fic (only ever just one night) it would have involved the Ferrix gang making X-Wings work on Dantooine :') I have feelings about Brasso the wrecker learning to make things instead :))

It should go without saying that I want to see Bix channel her healing into getting stuff done and fucking up the Empire.

I guess my feeling is that if we're time-skipping over a five year period in a, what, 12 episode season? There's not time for a huge arc for all the Ferrix characters alongside everything else the show needs to cover. My cautious assumption is that this either means a load of them get killed off/sidelined early, or they're kept together in the same setting so their stories are interlinked, but presumably with focus remaining on Bix (and Bee). Dantooine/wherever the rebel base is beforehand/the move to Yavin struck me as a good place for this, where they can still be brought in and out of episodes through whatever time-skips happen because it's a place the title character is going to be coming and going from regularly, like Ferrix is in S1. Naturally it is a selfish thought to want to recreate the S1 dynamic :)) because I want my blorbo(s) to get to be relevant and a part of Cassian's life still, but if that suggestion about Brasso on a speeder on Dantooine in the trailer is remotely accurate then I will cry happy tears.

Who knows, if they get to survive, maybe all those heart-pulverising fics and fanarts about Cassian's (glass) stone being laid on Ferrix will find a place at the end of the series?

[rogueyami]

Garashir Fic Rec

Hey everyone! Finally I’m posting my garashir fic rec list. This is gonna be a long one so there will be a read more. So happy to share my fav fics because omg there are so many amazing writers in this fandom. Without further ado, here we go:

Why Don't You Run from Me by BlessedAreTheFandoms E, 19k

Set after interment camp 371. Julian is self destructing and he turns to Garak. I love a fic that explores Julian mental and emotional state after camp 371 and this fic really delivers. Mind the tags and grab some tissues!

call me by the old familiar name by simplyprologue M, 40k

This fic really has you on the edge of your seat. This is set quite some time after ds9 ended. Garak is Castellan and Kira is a military minister and they find Julian’s “dead” body delivered to them. Note that there is no major character death tag. You got Julian trying to expose section 31, Garak pining and devastated over Julian’s “death”, and them finally getting together :) I really love Garak and Kira’s friendship here too!

 Worth Waiting For by Syaunei  E, 48k

Orb of Time shenanigans featuring a new Kai! Julian gets thrown 37 years into the past where he runs into Garak when he was an operative of the Obsidian order on a Ferengi station. Love how their dynamic is reversed here where Julian is older than Garak lmao. This fic was such a treat to read!    

Especially the Lies by AlphaCygni M, 23k

We got the classic fake relationship featuring Lwaxana Troi! Julian is trying to get out of “dignitary sitting” by pretending he’s in a relationship with Garak, thinking he’s really going to fool Ambassador Troi lmao. But also it becomes so much more than that when they go to a gala and something seems to be amiss...

Standards of Care by sahiya E, 41k

A medical drama fic where Julian works on a cure for a dominion engineered plague that’s ravaging ds9. He’s working himself to the bone and Garak is there to take care of him through it all while helping in his own way. I really just adore sahiya’s works and recommend checking out their other works as well! 

A Bag Full of God by Vermin_Disciple  E, 35k

Garak and Bashir are married with a kid while living on Cardassia. Of course their peaceful life take a turn when they both get de-aged. They both are around 19 years old and that means that it was the time Garak was at his peak in the Obsidian Order. Super interesting to see this side of Garak where his loyalty lies with the order and Enabran Tain. He’s cunning, manipulative yet unpolished since he’s not the older Garak that we know.

Impact by sfumatosoup E, 40k

A post canon Cardassia story where Julian goes to volunteer as a doctor while also trying to look for Garak. There he meets a Vulcan, Radak, and I just absolutely love his character. A story about people being in love and struggling to let one they love know. it’s very sweet and of course Julian meddles in someone else’s love life before he figures out his own lmao. 

From Andor With Love by hingabee and PunishedPyotr E, 37k     

Julian goes to another medical conference and Garak tags along because Julian’s track record with these conferences is not... great. And yes, you guessed it, shit goes down at this conference too. A fun story where we see people from both Garak and Julian’s past and Kira is there too because she’s on vacation but she doesn’t get to do much relaxing either  

runner-up by meriwethersays E, 59k

Set post Far Beyond the Stars, Julias, a science fiction writer meets Elim Garak, a simple tailor and they soon get involved but of course, as we know with Garak, there is way more to him than meets the eye. Spy shenanigans ensue. Honestly when I started reading this fic I could literally not put it down.  

Outside Chance by wcdarling E, 49k

What if Julian actually got kicked out when Starfleet discovered he was an augment? This fic answers this question and more! We see canon events unfold and the war starts and Julian tries to still help as much as he can from the outside. 

take me closer, take my clothes off by wanderingwriter87 E, 11k 

When I first started watching ds9 and shipping garashir, I thought that Garak would def have Julian for a fitting to subtly feel him up. And lo and behold someone wrote a fic about that exact scenario thank you @wanderingwriter87 for your service!

A Well-Dressed Man by TheCheerfulPornographer  E, 17k

A beautiful story featuring Cardassian folklore, Garak making Julian a suit and of course Julian wearing the suit ;) you can imagine what happens next hehe

A Friend in the Dark by AuroraNova E, 26k

Starfleet finds out that Julian is genetically engineered so they want to court martial him. Julian accepts it and goes along with it but there is something very fishy going on here. Garak, experienced ex spy, tasks himself in rescuing and protecting Julian with the help of his friends. Julian and Garak are on the run, together they try to make the best out of a bad situation and do what they can to help with the war anonymously.

[kanansdume]

I have some rambly thoughts about the different approaches we're seeing to Andor (a serialized show), Obi-Wan Kenobi (a serialized show), and The Mandalorian (an episodic show) and how they work or don't work.

Serialized shows are, by nature, more plot-driven than character-driven. Which doesn't mean the characters aren't IMPORTANT to the story by any means, it just means that the show moves forward based on things like worldbuilding and the characters are often forced to sort-of react to things happening around them that the audience themselves may or may not be in on. In Andor, Cassian is far more REACTIVE than he is PROACTIVE, and that's mainly the point in season 1. Cassian is trying really hard not to get involved in the fight and wants to just hide and run away and pretend it doesn't exist, but the world and his own fate keep catching up to him and forcing him into situations he has to react to (the guards forcing him to defend himself leading to being forced to leave Ferrix and join the rebel attack on Aldhani, Skeen's betrayal forcing Cassian's own, the Imperial reaction to Aldhani meaning he can't come home, being arrested on Niamos for just being in the wrong place, Maarva's death). Cassian finally making the choice to get AHEAD of everyone else by saving his friends on Ferrix and getting them off the planet and then beating Luthen to his own ship to offer to join the Rebellion is a big deal because it's Cassian finally accepting that fate.

Obi-Wan Kenobi is also reactive, but it's character-driven because the first big choice he makes is to go save Leia in episode 1 and he gets progressively more proactive from that point on. The plot itself has logistical issues because the plot of saving Leia and Reva chasing them and going to Tatooine is SECONDARY to Obi-Wan reclaiming his identity as a Jedi. Obi-Wan's choices move everything forward. This is why the show was still so satisfying to me even if the plot occasionally was a little slapdash. It wasn't ABOUT the plot, really. In Andor, Cassian is the vehicle through which we are told the story of the galaxy and the Rebellion. The Obi-Wan Kenobi plot is a vehicle to tell the story of how Obi-Wan Kenobi healed from Order 66 and became the Jedi Master we know from the Original Trilogy.

The Mandalorian was an episodic show, which by its nature NEEDS to be character-driven because it really can't be plot-driven. Any overarching plot is generally REALLY vague and spider-web thin. In the case of The Mandalorian, the overarching plot of season 1 was "protect the child from the Empire" and the overarching plot of season 2 was "get the child to the Jedi." And this can be really great if done well! When the story really focuses in on the characters and how they grow through each successive small story, how the relationships build up over time, it can really make for a wonderful show. It isn't just Din's relationship to Grogu, either, it's watching Din create relationships with a NUMBER of different people like Kuill and Greef Karga and Cara Dune and even IG-11 that all come together at the end to help him protect the child when they're in need. Season 2 does something similar with Bo-Katan, and Boba and Fennec so he can create a new group of friends to help him protect the child in the finale this time.

But The Mandalorian has steadily moved away from being more episodic and is now trying to be more serialized, which has stopped working because this show and its characters were never built for it. Din is a character who actively avoids "being the main character" and it's become something of a defining character trait. Din isn't a leader, so giving him the Darksaber goes nowhere. He isn't someone who chafes at the status quo, so having him take off his helmet and need to figure out how to find redemption for that or if he even wants it goes nowhere. He has no connection to the New Republic or its problems, no real connection to Mandalore the place, no interest in cloning or Palpatine or the Jedi beyond how it directly impacted him or Grogu in the moment. And even the Imperial interest in Grogu seems to have completely disappeared.

The Mandalorian became the franchise's breadwinner and as such, they want it to get BIGGER, they want to make it RELEVANT to the Skywalker Saga when it was intentionally irrelevant by design and that was what made it good. The Mandalorian no longer knows what it is and what story it wants to tell in order to know how to tell it. It throws in a few random episodic things that now feel bloated and frustrating instead of fun and character-driven because they're taking time away from the more serialized story it's trying to tell with Bo-Katan and the other Mandalorians.

And of course part of this is due to the MCU-ification of Star Wars via Filoni and Favreau's stories. Andor and Obi-Wan are separate from that and so are allowed to exist on their own and shine on their own with their own styles. But they're trying to connect The Mandalorian, an intentionally irrelevant episodic show, to more serialized shows like Rebels and Ahsoka and maybe even something like The Bad Batch, and MAKE them all relevant by connecting them to the Sequel Trilogy somehow. The Mandalorian was a stand-alone in season 1, but it isn't anymore. It is intentionally being REBUILT into something that cannot survive without everything else it's connected to, and the same will be true of any of its spin-offs. They're so bound and determined to make their characters relevant to the Skywalker Saga that they're willing to ruin them in order to do so rather than accepting that their irrelevance is what makes them special.

[dorkydegeneracy]

You know, with all of the mediocre (at best) content that Lucasfilms has been releasing as of late, you would think they would pick up some interesting threads from previous good content and roll with those punches.

For example, WTF happened to Korkie Kryze!?!? Like who TF is he? Is he even really a Kryze? I understand that it is highly likely that he was created as a background/throw away character with no prospects, but people would LOSE THEIR SHIT if he just popped up in the next Mando project. A Kryze reunion between Bo & Korkie would be dope. He doesn't even have to be a Kenobi! (I mean, in my heart he is but let's be real, that would make less sense than Rey being a Palpatine.) Hell, let him be a NOBODY. Just admit that Satine lied! At least it would spice shit up.

Item 2: We are all waiting for Quinlan Voss to show up again! They gave us that crumb with The Path in the Kenobi show and then left us hanging. I mean, we got to see his badass girlfriend Ventress in The Bad Batch. That was cool, but is a giant FU to the end of Dark Disciple. Let me not harp on that tho, because who doesn't want more Ventress?

It wouldn't be the first time the franchise muddles canon. Which is even more reason why we should try to stitch some of the many loose threads that exist, instead of creating these progressive stories that are just plain BAD in every sense of the word.

Give us Crimson Dawn! Give us the Path! Give me more Dooku from Tales! Thank God the Mandalorian has finally become a story about restoring Mandalore! Can't wait for more of that! I hope they don't continue to make a joke of Thrawn!

This is even more frustrating because, through all of the crap they have been serving us, some folk at Star Wars can still manage to create compelling stories! Tales is interesting and is a great short form project that just makes me hungry for more like it in a longer format. After the shit that they delivered in 2022, they somehow managed to bury Andor, which was actually a good TV show and has so much promise. The Bad Batch kinda fell off, but I actually liked the way it ended. Omega is somewhere part of the rebellion and Commander Cody is still out there?!?

Sigh*

Yes, The Acolyte did this to me. I could go on, but I think I've already gone way too far as it is.

[gffa]

The latest ending of Ahsoka really made me realize one of the big problems with Felony's writing and why so much of the Masndo-verse and Felony's modern writing falls flat compared to OWK and Andor. Shock value. A BIG twist cliffhanger that leaves us all mouth open and HYPING up the next episode in hope and filling the forums with discussions in anticipation. Understandably, he can't write what we wrote in our heads for 7 days and top that. 1.

2. But once that shock is gone when the story has moved onto the next big thing, or you watch it again when you know what it pays off in, or watch the whole series or season again, it just doesn't hold up. It's empty. Vapid. Because it's all about the shock. The twist. The discussion. The hype fodder. It's not saying anything or adding anything. OWK and Andor was a lot better at that, without the use of the nostalgia baiting that Felony relies on. 3. It becomes an endless circle of low lows and high highs, while OWK and Andor both slowly built up to the crescendo of discussions and speculations and both have stayed in the fandom consciousness alot longer thanks to that. And because they have something to say, both to the world and to the viewer. While with the Felony and the Fraudrou verses, it's just a constant barrage of oh wow, moving on, what's next? ehh, it's over, let's move on.

I feel like one day I'm going to do a longer analysis on why exactly Filoni's writing feels weak to me (where I try to be more fair than I'm usually feeling about his writing), because I don't think he's without a lot of talent and there's certain things he really does get about Star Wars, but I think so much comes back to that he's a writer who is caught in a difficult position--playing in someone else's sandbox but has to now establish his own new corners of that sandbox and I'm not sure he's strong enough to be a big picture kind of guy when he works better in smaller focus. His work on TCW and Rebels is content that we do come back to again and again for analysis, during my rewatches of both those series, those shows hold up! But I think they're ones where he had stronger guardrails up, and he was forced to stick to things in one place. I think live action has been bad for Filoni's writing because of the way so much is structured, that there are multiple series going on and I feel like his writing doesn't have the patience to actually tell a story in a single space, that's why we get Grogu's story being split between The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett, that's why we get Mandalore's story being splintered across Rebels, The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and now Ahsoka. We still haven't even seen half of the events that happen in the Mandalore bigger story! And you're right that he and Favreau both lean too hard on the cameos and echoes/rhymes for nostalgia's sake. And those reference points are often extremely fun in the moment! And I'll grant that the Luke episodes are ones I go back to fairly often, because I think there's some really good content in there about what attachment actually means. But I don't think it's that surprising, looking back, how quickly the Favroni shows fell apart for us and how it doesn't feel like they're establishing anything that can support a bunch of books and comics. I suspect that Disney's not allowed to have books/comics/etc. based on Favroni's shows because they want creative control over those characters while they're still actively writing for them, but also I look at the OT and the PT and look how much was built off those movies+TCW as a foundation, I look at how much you're able to still watch those and find new things to analyze, and I just don't feel that with Filoni's writing anymore, not since Rebels, not to that level, anyway. (I'll grant that I've been a lot more excited about the Ahsoka series and what we can say about it/find in analyzing it than I expected, I expected nothing but shitposts like we did with Mandalorian s3, but I've had fun with serious meta in Ahsoka! I was genuinely excited to come on-line after episode 4 and talk about themes and structure and how well Filoni did with that there!) Ultimately, I think Filoni (and Favreau) both have a lot of talent, but I think they're being pushed too hard to make too much too quickly and that it shows that they're making this up as they go along, rather than that they had a vision they've been crafting for years and any kind of idea of where they want the end goal to be. Like, yeah, Lucas wrote some stuff on the fly, he changed his mind about things along the way, but he had an end point in mind for his story, so the echoes/rhymes felt more resonant for me. Favroni don't feel like they have any idea where they're going and so much winds up feeling like shock value and self-reference for nostalgia bad for me instead of something that's Going Somewhere.

[qpjat076]

actual serious thoughts™ on the Acolyte

Spoilers. obviously. under the cut tho because i'm sweet like that. also it's a bit of an essay.

I loved this show. I LOVED. this show. It had some ups and downs, but I really hope it gets renewed for another season. I was NOT expecting it to end so. . . open ended? I'm glad it did though.

Dividing my thoughts on this into PLOT and PRODUCTION. We will start with the PLOT:

The ending was perfect. The full circle of Sol and the crew spreading a horrible lie only to then be tainted in his death through a second lie is just so poetic. I was losing it, it was flawless and amazing storytelling. It seems SO in character for Master Vernestra seeing as I doubt the council or anyone knew of Quimir going all evil. . . I bet she told them his "death" was an accident. she doesn't seem at ALL like the kind of person to air her own failures loudly, and she'd see his betrayal as a personal failure. Or, if not, she she would fear (her first mistake) that the council would see his betrayal as her failure. Pride is always the fall of Jedi, we've seen it time and time again (because being prideful is the easiest way to let fear take control of your life). Anyway, 11/10 for that plot point being resolved.

for real though, there was NO WAY they were going to resolve every single plot thread they'd laid out across this show in one 40-minute episode. it would have been too crammed. nothing would feel satisfying. leaving a decent amount of food for thought was definitely the right move, so they could focus on the plot at hand (Osha, Mae, Sol, Quimir). and they've left me wanting more. if disney is so committed to the 8-ep bit they've got going (sans Andor for some beautiful reason), then this was the best way to get the extra episodes needed to address everything. I WANT MORE.

I want a whole season focusing on Quimir and his relationship to Vernestra. I WANT THAT TEA. How did Quimir get to Brendock? What was Vernestra's breaking point, or what was Quimir's? I want to know how the hell this all plays in to Plaguis. WHY IS HE THERE?!?! Are he and Quimir working together? if so, was Quimir Plaguis's padawan, and is Quimir now trying to usurp him? If so. . . then we know how that ends and that would be a helluva way to go about telling us a story (affectionate, star wars is at its best when its killing characters I love fr)

Speaking of Plaguis. . . HOOOOOOO BUDDY i was not just expecting his lil jumpscare and then NOTHING ELSE. I was down for it. I figured he'd be a part of it. I was whooping and *insert DiCaproio pointing meme here* at the screen, I was EXCITED to see him. and honestly I love that he just. . . wasn't elaborated upon any further. He didn't NEED to, because they're setting us up for more. I WANT more. I didn't, however, feel as good about the Yoda tease. . . i mean I WAS wondering where he was during all of this so it kinda worked? but also. that whole scene played out more like a marvel end credits "ooooh, what nostalgia character is comin back next?" kind of deal. moreso than plaguis bc like. . . i've never seen plaguis before. i know very little about him as only a movie/tv show watcher. but I've seen Yoda a thousand times, so the effect is lessened. Yoda IS needed to the story so I know why he's here, and I am interested to see him more in his earlier prime (and less cgi please lord don't do him dirty a second time). but it could've been a liiiiiittle smoother.

last thought: while sol's death was a little telegraphed (honestly, i wish Osha just saw Sol's body, no context for who killed him as opposed to the "mae killed him" bit), but the way Vernestra handled it made it all pretty forgivable. the twist wasn't his death or that Osha was gonna turn. we all pretty much could guess it. the twist was how his death was lied about, and I'm SO here for it. it balances out. this ep was amazing y'all i'm not over it.

Now for PRODUCTION (though I've kinda talked about it a little)

I know people have been overwhelmingly negative about this show. I really don't see it. And yeah, I maybe am the intended audience because I need to be restrained like a dog every time I see Manny Jacinto's arms. . . but that wasn't the only thing to like here. I liked the show even before that. It's interesting. Intriguing. Me frothing at the mouth over Arm™ was pretty minimal compared to how I'm rabid for more lore about these characters in this era.

I have three complaints: first some line delivery maybe could use a little work overall, but this last ep was the best it has been. also it's nowhere NEAR as bad as some line deliveries in the past (you know the ones). second, slow motion has no place in this world anymore in a non-comedic based fight scene. not since the matrix, anyway. that's the only exception. please let it die. never want to see it again. finally, I really do wish the flashbacks had been mingled more with plot and episodes as opposed to shelling them off separately. I also wish we could have seen a padawan Osha and Sol in flashbacks a bit too. . . though that may come next season (do another one disney). three complaints (four total with my mild beef against Yoda's intro) is high praise though, so hats off. Lee Jung-jae killed it till the very end, I was SO impressed how desprate I was to like him even though at the end. . . I didn't really want to. He made me WANT to believe he was good. Best part of the show hands-down. Amandla Stenberg was a much stronger presence towards the end, but at the very beginning I thought she did great too. While I wish she had more of a chance to stand out, I'm ever-hopeful she gets a greater chance to in the *hopeful* next season, especially without Lee Jung-jae stealing the spotlight every single episode. All the supporting Jedi martyrs killed it too. too bad I'll never see Jekki and Yord be funny together again, it's a real tragedy. Manny was awesome but also I'm a little biased (Arm™, also literally everything else about him in this show, costumes, fight choreography etc., hot DAYUM they knew what they were doing). So yeah. Awesome show, I hope the overall negativity towards it doesn't discourage a second season. It is wanted!!! please feed me.

[butterflydm]

wot reread: towers of midnight (chap 27-38)

spoilers for towers of midnight

This gritted teeth reluctance of Egwene's, where she knows that they can't afford to face the Seanchan now because the Last Battle is more important -- this is the vibe. This is the energy. We need more of this when talking about the Seanchan.

2. Anyway, Egwene is trying to reach out to Rand's allies to convince them that he needs to be convinced to stop his plan of breaking the seals. This section works better than the earlier ones imo because Darlin, etc. doesn't know about the big epiphany and Rand's shift in perspective, so instead of another person reassuring Egwene that Rand is ~much better now~, we get a more measured response that talks about loyalty, and the Seanchan to the west, and that they all knew that the Dragon Reborn would likely go mad before the Last Battle so this shouldn't really be a surprise and he's still the only horse in the race.

3. They receive word that the watchtowers of the Borderlands are beginning to go dark -- a sign that the Last Battle is truly beginning. Egwene learns that the Hall is meeting without her, and goes to the meeting. After some Aes Sedai political wrangling, Egwene manages to get them to trade authority over the armies with authority in dealing with monarchs and rulers, aka Rand, who rules Illian. She also does some important loophole closing to make it harder for another secretive group like the Black Ajah to depose an Amrylin as happened to Siuan.

4. There is a certain amount of hilarious irony in Faile being hurt over Morgase using a different name and hiding her noble identity given the way Faile entered into this story (though Faile does realize this herself after a moment). But then she admits to herself that her real worry is that Morgase, as a fair woman, might fairly decide that Perrin really is a murderer, and they would have to deal with the consequences of that decision.

5. While a bubble of evil attacks Perrin's camp, Morgase and Galad are talking off in the Whitecloak camp. Morgase thinks about how she wishes she'd done a better job teaching Galad about shades of gray, so perhaps he wouldn't have been drawn into the Children of Light, with their black and white philosophy. She does her best to impart some shades of gray teachings to him now: good people can make mistakes sometimes and that's as important as knowing if a crime itself happened (basically that intent does matter when judging for a crime). She does not quite convince him, because... idk we need to draw out Perrin's plot more I guess. And the bubble of evil means that Perrin is asking for more time on his side too.

6. Okay, so Tam hasn't left at this point. But Perrin has been casually talking about how Elayne is planning to marry Rand*, which means it should be buzzing around the camp as gossip, which means that Tam should already know about Elayne when he first meets Min in Tear. There was zero indication about this in the Tam scenes in TGS but since it seems obvious that Tam should already know, I'm going to imagine/pretend that he talked to either Min or zen!Rand (once he returned) about these rumors about the queen of Andor wanting to marry Rand.

Anyway, Tam tells Perrin that he needs to leave on special ~Aes Sedai business~ but that he's proud of him. I guess that's nice. And then he leaves, off to go be in the ending of TGS and nearly get killed by his son. So that's where Perrin is in the timeline.

*this really does illustrate how infrequently Perrin thinks of Rand and how quickly he manages to dispel his visions of Rand compared to Mat, since he apparently has NOT been watching Rand constantly having sex with Min in recent months -- or maybe the ~Pattern~ just knows that Mat is more interested in seeing Rand during those times than Perrin is? Because Perrin actually DOES know Min and Elayne both separately -- he spent that winter between TGH & TDR spending a lot of time with Min and she even confessed to him that she was fated to fall in love with Rand (though didn't know if he would love her back), and he was in Tear when Elayne and Rand were together as well -- so you'd think that he'd consider what it might mean for Elayne's marriage hopes that Min stole her boyfriend, since he doesn't know about the shared love confessions, yet the only thing he mentioned as a potential objection to the marriage is that Rand might be too busy ~conquering his next nation~. I mean, I guess he could have been making poly assumptions but that's really the sort of thing that maybe should have actually been in his thoughts at some point, lol.

7. Haha, Elayne finding a loophole in the "required bed rest for a week" rule laid down by her midwife. <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 ilu Elayne. Anyway, she's here to see a demonstration of Aludra's dragons! It's interesting that Mat explained to Elayne that Aludra's main motivation is to get revenge against the Seanchan, which potentially means that he told her about the Seanchan destroying the Tanchico chapterhouse and murdering & enslaving the Illuminators there. But, yes, the first public demonstration of the 'dragons' (aka cannons) is a success. After agreeing to give her all the resources that she requires, Elayne makes Aludra swear that she will keep the creation of these a secret, but Birgitte feels anxious about the idea of them anyway. "The world just changed."

8. Perrin's crash course in How To Wolfbrother: Dream Edition continues. This time, he's learning how not to be afraid of himself as Young Bull and how to confidently control the wolf dream around him when he's inside it. Over a handful of days. This is the first time Perrin finds out that this is the dreamplace of 'everyone' and not just wolf-related people. Hopper brings Perrin to a city so that he can walk through the 'fear dreams' of the people living there, so that he can do an accelerated crash course in How To Wolfbrother. And I do find all this wolf-development good but... wow, it feels so belated. Mat got his war memories in TSR and struggled with them over the course of TFoH but had basically accepted them by LoC. Perrin found out he was a wolfbrother in EotW and is only now finishing up his coursework in How To Wolfbrother.

9. It's interesting that the wolves are waiting on Dragonmount for Rand to face his moment of decision between destruction and life. We've only had hints of how connected the wolves feel to the Light & to the Dragon Reborn. Kinda wish we'd gotten more. One of the downsides of how Jordan kept dividing up the storylines and separating everyone, I suppose, plus the general theme of Team Light having rotten communication skills and keeping secrets from each other.

I really do feel like Sanderson rushed Rand too much in TGS and then idled with him in ToM and I think it would have worked better to have the ruthless Rand arc paced out more with the other characters in ToM rather than climaxing at the end of TGS. I'm also kinda... eh on whether or not we needed Perrin there ~in spirit~ with Rand on Dragonmount? I'm not sure we needed an outside PoV of this scene when we had an internal one already? I like the descriptions well enough but I am tired of always seeing Rand from the outside in ToM. But, anyway, Rand chooses life and the wolves all celebrate. It's kinda funny that the wolves are so into Rand and he... barely has any clue that wolves are related to the Last Battle in any way? I don't think anyone (Perrin) has mentioned that he's a celebrity to the wolves.

10. I am more than halfway done with ToM and I feel like barely anything has happened yet, lol. "Let's all catch up to Rand's moment of being awesome" didn't work for CoT and I'm not sure why Sanderson decided to repeat that again for ToM. There are definitely some chapters and PoVs that I am enjoying but overall this book feels like filler half the time, which is a WILD choice, bro.

11. Mat is dicing, and it seems to partly be a vibe check to see if his luck is with him (see, this is what I meant earlier about how Elayne's supernatural guarantee is more guaranteed than Mat's is). Strike nine-point-three as Mat notices the wide smile of a "raven-haired beauty". He is now preemptively telling (some) women that he's married in hopes that they will do the work of not being flirty rather than him doing it. Strike ten-point-three, as Mat regretfully thinks about how the innkeeper's wife is very pretty but her husband would assault him if he looked at her for too long so he only glances at her briefly.

12. He's been walking around with his face uncovered all day, hoping to draw the gholam to him now that he has a plan on how to deal with it. It works after a while and the two of them fight (in streets that are being kept clear by the Band keeping other people away). The gholam is able to get his medallion away from him, but Mat has borrowed two of the copies from Elayne and discovers that they still work against the gholam. Ah, and the secret weapon is finding a way to trick it/back it into falling into the Gateway created by one of the Kin. This is a good chapter, for the most part, except for some minor things here and there, that are mostly annoyances that were pre-baked into Mat's new characterization from Jordan in CoT & KoD. The gholam thing unfortunately does feel like it turned more into a personal vendetta, which I think is a shame, but I'm glad that channeling was an essential part of defeating it. Mat has, since parting from his slaver wife, now worked extensively with free channelers -- Teslyn saved his life against the gholam before, and it's Elayne connecting him to the Kin (who had to escape Altara to avoid being enslaved by his wife's people) that saves him here and helps him defeat the gholam.

13. Strike eleven-point-three as Mat notes one of the Kinswomen who is plump and pretty and would "fit nicely on his knee".

14. Yikes on bikes that Mat wants to give a slaver, who is hostile to channelers and who wants to torture and enslave them, a medallion that would protect her against channeling (though this plan of his does make an asshole move that Tuon pulls later somewhat ironic). Though he isn't aware of the copies' flaws, it sounds like, and one of those flaws is that they protect against some weaves but not against the most powerful, so Elayne could, for example, still balefire Tuon's ass if she were wearing one of the copies.

Also, I bet that Mat did NOT tell Elayne that he was planning to give her hard work to a slaver who would be willing to torture, degrade, and mind-break her if given the chance. Honestly, once Elayne does find out who Mat is married to, she has every right to feel completely betrayed by him. He used her to aid someone who would be willing to torture her and the people under her protection. And he's so deeply in denial about Tuon (thinking of her ~as a person~ as completely separate from her position ~as a powerful enforcer of slavery in a slaver society~ and behaving as if 'protecting Tuon' doesn't support the Seanchan Empire in any way -- this is the bullshit that his "your empire is my enemy but you aren't" double-thinking allows to him to believe despite it being nonsense) that it doesn't even occur to him that what he's doing here is a complete betrayal of the trust that Elayne has placed in him. And after Elayne saved his ass here too -- both with the copies of the medallion, and also because she and Birgitte are the ones who came up with this plan for him.

...I wonder if the medallion copies would prevent a sul'dam from using an a'dam, since (unlike the original) they do not allow the wearer to channel while wearing them. It seems logical that they would block the link created by the a'dam.

15. Anyway, Mat is basically pulling the exact same "I am on both sides and neither at once" routine with Tuon & the Westlanders that Gawyn pulled with the loyalist Aes Sedai and Egwene, so I can only hope that this means that Mat will come to his senses post-canon the way that Gawyn came to his senses and picked the right side once he learned that Egwene was imprisoned by the White Tower. There are a few easy ways that a post-canon narrative could make that happen.

Honestly, it's more likely that Tuon will grossly violate Mat's sense of morality past the bounds of what he can take than that she won't, given what we've seen of her personality and beliefs. If they have multiple kids in the future and Tuon raises them in the Imperial Seanchan way, Mat will rebel against having his kids sabotage and undermine each other to attempts to appeal to empress dearest; if he sees someone in a collar that he recognizes than this may bring things home to him in a way that it seems like he's forcing himself to ignore when the slaves are all strangers; if they have a channeler kid who Tuon tries to collar, etc. Lots of things could cross the line, and all of those things seem perfectly in her character as has been shown thus far in the books.

The interesting thing to me here is that Mat gets to fence-straddle without getting the fandom hate that Gawyn got for it. Is it simply because the reader got to know Mat for much longer before he started his fence-straddling ways in CoT? Is it because Mat has a more amusing internal narration so people are willing to forgive him for more than they would other characters? Is it because of who gets hurt because of the fence-straddling?

Gawyn's fence-straddling meant that he didn't help Rand during/after Dumai's Wells and he also killed some number of Warders during the coup. Mat's fence-straddling means that so far he's been complicit in forty Aes Sedai getting enslaved by the Seanchan plus an unknown number of injuries and deaths, and he's currently plotting to give Tuon a tool that would help her enslave more Aes Sedai (even if he chooses to be in denial over the fact that she could use it that way).

16. General Bashere and his army finally arrive with Asha'man to give Ituralde some relief. Rand shows up too, a little bit later, and apologizes to Ituralde for how he has failed in making peace with the Seanchan and in giving him the support that he needed. Rand goes out alone to kill a massive wave of Shadowspawn by himself.

17. Rand processes that he was angry during the recent fight with the Shadowspawn... and that that's OKAY. He's allowed to be angry as long as he processes and controls that anger appropriately and doesn't lash out at his allies. Very important step!

lol we also get updated on Min's Old Tongue prophecy analysis project re: Callandor. It's... lol, whatever. I guess it gives Min something to do.

Once again, I wish so much that we were actually in Rand's head and not just getting him filtered through other people's PoVs.

18. So Nynaeve has given a full report of her time with Rand to the Amyrlin & Siuan (who is clearly still one of Egwene's main advisors at this point? She's the only person in the meeting with Egwene and Nynaeve). She is capable of communication, just not with Rand. *sigh*

Nynaeve defends Rand here against Egwene (she says that if the Asha'man's behavior is Rand's responsibility, then the Aes Sedai's behavior is Egwene's responsibility), but was never willing to tell him anything when she was with him. The rest of the scene is them sketching out their plan to take out Mesaana (using Egwene as bait again). Nynaeve suggests working with Rand, but Egwene shoots the idea down.

19. Gawyn is just... casually hanging out with Elayne in Caemlyn? We didn't actually get to see their reunion? Well, that's disappointing. Gawyn guesses that Rand is the father of Elayne's kids and she mentions that if he is, it would be smart not to tell anyone about it, as it would make them targets. Gawyn and Elayne talk some various things through re: Rand and Egwene and, in the end, Elayne helps Gawyn let go of his hate of Rand. She releases from his obligations in Caemlyn, so that he can fully devote himself to Egwene & the White Tower. It's a sweet scene, honestly. It gets quoted sometimes as Elayne doing a Take That at Gawyn over classism but that's not really the approach she's taking at all with him.

20. While he's here, he takes out the dagger that was dropped by the assassin and examines it, getting a started reaction from one of the nearby 'Kin', who is actually one of the ex-damane (Marille), who recognizes the dagger and what it means. He finds out that the Bloodknives are Seanchan assassins who are sent personally by the Empress. Suicide troops left behind to murder Aes Sedai, in this case. They've murdered several women already, and those deaths are also ones that Mat is complicit in. We get a reminder here that "the Seanchan treated their damane worse than animals" as Marille cowers and whimpers when Gawyn's voice raises.

(And Tuon would happily do this kind of emotional damage to Mat's sister Bode, or to Egwene, or Elayne, or Aviendha, or Nynaeve, or Moiraine, etc. -- though that does remind me of how it, in retrospect, it does seem like the composition of Mat's party that escaped Ebou Dar was another deliberate choice to shield Mat from the true horror of what the Seanchan do to these women -- he has never met an native Seanchan ex-damane, who has had to reconstruct herself from the ground up after having been taught since fifteen or sixteen years old that she is a subhuman monster. But having someone like that around during the circus journey would have been an even stronger indictment of Tuon as a person and of her society as a whole, so potentially that's why Jordan avoided it)

21. So GAWYN gets to hear the explanation here that all sul'dam are capable of learning to channel, something that no one has ever gotten around to telling Rand. Kaisea, the ex-sul'dam (who was also Low Blood, it sounds like) that Gawyn meets here, is insisting that she belongs in the collar now. If Elayne is so sure that it will undermine Seanchan culture for this news to spread, then it's baffling to me that she isn't spreading the news! This should be a major (deliberately planted) rumor, especially in cities and villages near or across the Seanchan border (it's entirely possible that this was originally part of Jordan's plan for the Seanchan, before he decided to slow-walk them starting in CoT, for the sake of the outriggers that will never happen).

Gaywn learns that the ter'angreal rings that the Bloodknives wear gives them the ability to blur near shadows but it comes at great cost -- once activated, death will come to them, usually in a couple of weeks and at a month at the longest. Around now is when he gets the message from Egwene to return to the Tower. Instead of doing so, he has the knife sent back, with the message that the assassin is Seanchan (and the details of how they work). Also, just as the Seanchan declare their army Ever Victorious (and their empress ~may she live forever~) they also say that the Bloodknives are impossible to survive if you're their target. You can always count on the Seanchan to declare that they are The Best and Most Perfect at everything, despite the evidence being against them. From what I've seen in the books, the only thing they're actually 'the best' at is propaganda (though both of those traits -- claiming to be superior and only really being superior at SAYING they're superior -- are pretty common for fascist-style governments, so I guess that's all true to form).

22. Perrin is STILL planning to disband the armies that he has gathered (after the trial, before he goes back to Rand). wtf dude! I don't care if you don't want to lead them; hand them over to Rand and HE can lead them. He has stopped complaining about leading them publicly, at least.

23. Perrin has figured out that there's a connection between the weird dome in the wolfdream and the inability of channelers to create Gateways in that same area in the waking world. Oops, there's a section here where Faile's PoV becomes Perrin's for a few paragraphs and then swaps back to Faile's, without the normal spacing markers that the books use for PoV swaps in the same chapter.

24. Conclusion of the trial: Perrin "killed unlawfully" but did not "murder" the Children of the Light, because the Children did not have authorization to act within Andor's borders, so Morgase is treating it as a clash between two mercenary bands. Then she throws the sentencing to Galad. Galad asks if Perrin will stand by the sentencing, Perrin says that he will... but only after the Last Battle. Galad agrees to those terms and says he will name the sentence itself later.

(in light of our Dain Bornhald casting news -- this is the culmination of his own series-long arc, where he learns and begins to believe that Perrin was not responsible for his father's death)

24. Tonight is the night that Egwene plans to face off with Mesaana in TAR. They have their trap set. Egwene also asks Silviana to send Gawyn another letter requesting his return but to make sure that she asks this time instead of telling. Egwene would probably have had more success if she'd written the letter herself, lol.

25. The frustrating thing about the Whitecloak trial being the trigger for Perrin's character arc climax here is how he has committed much worse deeds since then and not regretted them. I don't care about the results of his Whitecloak trial. I want him on trial for selling two hundred women into slavery! Anyway, he's heading into the wolfdream to try to kill Slayer, while Faile is in charge of handling the retreat through the Gateways in the waking world. He isn't able to kill Slayer, but he finds the dreamspike that was being used to prevent Traveling and starts traveling north with it, so that his people will be able to leave.

26. While Nynaeve keeps an eye on the fake location for the TAR meeting that is meant to draw out Mesaana, Egwene attends the real meeting, which is between Aes Sedai, Wise Ones, and (for the first time) a handful of Windfinders. We know that Egwene's big goal is that she would like all women who can channel to be 'tied' to the White Tower in some fashion, so I'm guessing this meeting is going to be an attempt at making that work. The Windfinders describe the White Tower taking people in a very poetic way: "The White Tower inhales but does not exhale -- that which is brought in is never allowed to leave." And the Wise Ones are feeling some solidarity with that vibe.

Egwene agrees with this point and says that they may have been wise to keep their abilities a secret, but then says that the White Tower does have some knowledge that they do not... and they begin to work out a potential bargain. Accepted being sent to learn from Wise Ones or Windfinders... and apprentices being sent to learn from Aes Sedai and then being allowed to return to their people instead of being required to stay with the White Tower. It feels like she's taking the lesson that she saw with Nynaeve in the Testing here and applying it to the Aiel & Atha'an Miere. She also agrees that the ter'angreal that belong to the Aiel and to the Atha'an Miere can be agreed to belong to them, without the White Tower trying to snatch them away because they've declared ~all ter'angreal~ to be theirs.

27. They also talk here about the other 'common foe' that they share -- the Seanchan. That an alliance between their three groups will make it easier for them to stand together against the Seanchan. The bargain still needs to be ratified by each of the individual parties' people but it's a pretty sound one, imo.

28. Mesaana attacks the decoy location and, by ta'veren coincidence, Perrin's journey north with the dreamspike has led him to Tar Valon. And Gawyn manages to return to Tar Valon via Gateway right before the dreamspike arrives and cuts off the city.

29. Carlinya is dead OFF-SCREEN. She was killed by Mesaana off the page? That's so rude. tbh, I actually do wonder if maybe she was supposed to have been one of the women abducted by the Seanchan (due to the viewing that Min had) but no specific notes were left about it? While ravens are somewhat associated with the Dark One, they've been a lot more strongly associated with the Seanchan. But I do wonder if maybe the reason that ELAIDA was the named one who was taken by the Seanchan was so that the readers would be like "oh she deserves it tho" and not hold the Seanchan as accountable for their slave raid as they deserved to be, and as they might be if a non-hostile Aes Sedai were the featured one being abducted.

30. So Egwene, the Aes Sedai, & the Wise Ones are fighting Mesaana and the Black Ajah, while Perrin fights Slayer and Gawyn races to try to protect Egwene's sleeping body from the Seanchan Bloodknife assassin(s).

Nothing about this climax is impossible to do if Rand is still ruthless!Rand imo. He's not really related to what's happening here at all. Dragonmount could have happened after this and it would have been fine, story-wise. I'm feeling pretty strongly overall that it was a mistake to pull the trigger on Rand's epiphany back in TGS.

31. Perrin and his less than a week's worth of Accelerated How To Wolfbrother coursework vs Egwene's year-plus of training (since she started her dreamwalker training in the same book where Perrin & Faile got married, and they just had their anniversary), yet we're supposed to buy that he's become Epic Good at it.

I mean, Sanderson really was caught in a Catch-22 with Perrin tbh, because of how Jordan had stalled Perrin's character arc out. He is SO FAR BEHIND the other characters at the start of TGS that he kinda has to do this accelerated sort of character arc, where he went from driving in reverse to jumping ahead so that he could be with the rest of the pack but... man, there's just Too Much Perrin in this book.

32. The big battle: Gawyn kills the Bloodknives (proving once again that the Seanchan talk of being The Most Superior is just talk) but almost dies in the process. Perrin moving the dreamspike here trapped Mesaana in place; Mesaana attempts to use the same trick on Egwene here that Nynaeve used on Moghedien, imagining an a'dam on here, but Egwene is able to force the thought away and the collar off again (using, in part, the hard-earned control of being Aes Sedai, but also her Dreamer abilities in TAR).

But again, here, we have the reminder of how fucking awful it is to be enslaved by the a'dam, as Egwene fights her panic about temporarily being collared. So again, the narrative has not forgotten how awful the Seanchan are... in the plotlines of the female characters. Egwene is able to take Perrin's "it's only a weave" thought about balefire and turn it into "it's only a piece of metal" about the a'dam. And she is able to turn her will against Mesaana and defeat her permanently. When Egwene wakes up, she finds the bloody scene with Gawyn and the dead Bloodknives, and she bonds Gawyn to save his life.

33. The nightmare that Perrin pulled Slayer into is someone dreaming in terror about the Last Battle. Perrin seems like he's potentially realizing here the full gravity of the Last Battle in this nightmare? Maybe when he wakes up, he'll stop trying to send away volunteers who want to fight in the Last Battle. He's able to use the nightmare to destroy the dreamspike but has to flee before he can kill Slayer; with Hopper's last dying thought to him to "seek Boundless".

That seems like a good place to stop, since there's a PoV change in the next chapter.

[eagna-eilis]

As a person from a country which threw off an evil empire only to descend into instant civil war followed by theocratic oppression I actually really appreciate the insinuation, in Mando S3 E3, that the New Republic isn't all that great.

'Andor' went HARD on its parallels to Irish history. An incitement to rebellion occuring at a funeral within a culture which takes funery custom very seriously is not unique to us (in fact no revolutionary process is unique to us) but it does feel very true to Irish history. Gilroy was inspired by 1970s IRA funerals in the North, or so he has said, but to me it was more reminiscent of the funeral of Jeremiah O'Donovan-Rossa in 1915, or the funerals of the early hunger strikers in the period between the 1916 Rising and the beginning of the War of Independence in 1919. These, especially the 1915 funeral wherein rebel leader Padraig Pearse gave a rousing speech which ended 'Ireland unfree shall never be at peace', are considered by historians as pivotal moments for the shift in sentiment towards the ousting of British Imperial control in Ireland.

It is so resonant, then, that like in the history of my own culture the New Republic in Star Wars shows itself to be by turns incompetent, repressive, and undeservedly smug about its own project.

This often happens in revolutions. The problems which both predate and are caused by Imperial control do not simply go away because you took down the Cogwheels or the Butcher's Apron. (For those who don't know, that's the Union Jack).

Do I hate the thought that Cassian Andor and Jyn Erso may have died for something that still wouldn't have aligned with their ideals had they survived? Of course I do. Just as I hate how James Connolly died for the same reason in the history of my own country. Do I hate the idea that my beloved Princess-Senator-General Leia Organa struggled in vain against a government that SHE WAS INSTRUMENTAL IN CREATING only to have to turn around and start rebelling again because things went to shit? Yes. I hate it. Just as I hate how my country betrayed the heroines of our revolution (Markievicz, Gonne, Sheehy-Skeffington, Lynn, Skinneder, Farrell, Ffrench-Mullen and others) by ousting them from politics and curtailing their rights. I hate these facts of history, but I love that they are reflected in Star Wars.

I love that the New Republic sucks. I love it because it feels so fucking true to life.

The sacrifices that the rebels made, both Fadó Fadó in Éireann and A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away, were not worthless. Their ideals were good. They absolutely should have done what they did. Empires, British or Galactic, SHOULD be overthrown. Just because my country turned into a place where Catholic clergy traumatised generations through sexual predation, unjust incarceration for moral crimes, and the stealing and sale of babies approximately three minutes after the Tricolour went up and the Union Jack came down doesn't mean that we shouldn't have rebelled at all.

The question of 'what do you do with your revolution once you've got it' should loom large over any revolution. It is evident that the maintenance of certain statuses quo just lays the ground work for the wars to come.

Star Wars onscreen usually works in broad strokes. The minutiae are largely left to the writers of the novels, and to a greater extent those of us who write fic and meta, to create and interpret. This particular broad stroke, that the New Republic maintains certain injustices from the time before, is deeply compelling and I hope it's something that the canonical story and those of us engaged in transformative practice with it can continue to explore.

[olivermajor226]

CHOPPER MONOLOGUE

From ArtBomb, chapter 2. I just...it's been so long since I've been able to write him, and of course I'm pulling this out of context, but I think it stands alone enough, and Chopper should get the credit he deserves for this rant.

Sorry, Cass. Whatever goose chase Eirtae sent you and Kay on, well, uh, let’s just say the goose chase she took me on started far earlier. Like this morning. At 400 hours. And it started with calling me over and over, basically throwing a metaphorical stiletto at my head, so uh, little busy right now, and I’m already in deep shit with the other Mr. Syndulla, because we had, well, other plans today, important plans. But when a woman you respect with all your stupid synthetic life asks you to take her off-world, or rather threatens that stupid synthetic life if you don’t take her to Coruscant this instant , I mean, you do the chivalrous thing, yeah? Shit. Probably said too much. Don’t…don’t read too much into that, okay?  

You’re telling me Eirtae was on Coruscant this morning? Cassian asks in code, just because he’s pretty certain, then, Chopper did not get the heads up about the Semantics program. 

And he’s just telling Cassian everything.  

Even as he stands, still looking at the painting, he smiles triumphantly. That got anything to do with her secret plans for today? Cassian toys. 

I can neither confirm or deny…. 

But I just saw her, Cassian baits him

And it’s then he strikes gold.

Well, duh, Captain. Gods, I forgot you’ve like been literally nowhere since the Empire. No double and triple jumps anymore, Andor. We’re an inner rim system. It’s one jump, and only takes like twenty minutes to get to Coruscant, at most. It was actually really fucking bizarre and wild. She told me I wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and anyway, we end up at her favorite department store, and when someone tried to tell Eirtae I couldn’t go in, well, uh, I fear her wrath. She went on a twenty-minute tangent about how I was a decorated war veteran, and when that didn’t work she commed the retired Mon Mothma herself and let her give a piece of her mind to the sad little sixteen-year-old speciest mall cop. It was brutal. Then we’re the fanciest fucking store of my fucking life, just she and me, ol’ C1-10P, tracking dirt into the place, probably, and she’s charging all kinds of shit to her mother’s credit account, saying things like, “we need to defund the wealthy Chop. That’s how you take down the kriffing system.” Then when we were by the loading docks Eirtae tried to…liberate the loading bay droids, right there on the docking platform. Like right then and there. Actually convinced one of them, like the only barely sentient one of the bunch, who is honestly so fucking confused right now. I mean this bastard’s just your basic service droid, maybe a week into understanding he’s something separate from the boxes he’s loading into the Courier, and in his kriffing face is this beautiful, fiery woman delivering this passionate speech about how he’s her equal and deserving of rights and love and he already as her undying respect. Like this lucky son of a bitch who looks like a box, loading boxes, and he tells me he’s been online two weeks and in this once in a billion shot the angelic Eirtae Alniyat herself chooses to grace Coruscant with her presence, which I know she hated doing. Like it was really fucking hard for her to go back there, Cass, and he’s the only one she has time to save so she points to him and says, “you.”  

Chopper’s still going, but Cassian is already laughing out loud to himself, unable, truly, to believe what Chopper’s saying, save for the fact there are all these random snippets of his data of everything, although just visual, because say what you want about him, Chopper tells one hell of a story.

Then she apologizes, fucking apologizes, Cassian! And asks if he has kriffing autonomy, and of course each and every choice should be his. And he’s not so much an idiot he doesn’t directly load his own ass right onto my ship as soon as all the furniture is fucking loaded. And that’s when this woman turns to me and says, “Well, if it all blows up in my face, at least we did one thing right today, Chop. Gods, I love rebelling. Now let’s jump to lightspeed!” And I’m like, “yes, heh, adorable and all, love, but lets leave the fucking landing platform first, but also good idea about hauling ass because we just straight up stole this droid, from a soulless  corporation or not.” Like seriously Andor what in the fucking hell? Who is this fucking woman all the sudden?

Cassian is cracking the fuck up, laughing his ass off out loud, as Chopper keeps going. 

And of course ever since we got back Mr. Luckiest Box Alive keeps following me the fuck around and I don’t know what the fuck to do with him, Cassian. Because Eirtae’s got me on like five thousand errands, promising some shit about a surprise party and how everyone should believe in magic and there’s gold at the end of this kriffing rainbow if I help her and boy did my mind go to dirty places— I can’t help it I’ve had a crush on her forever and she’s so fucking beautiful and special. And even though I laid that all to rest a lonnng way back, really thought I had, today I’ve never seen her so…enraged with the fiery burn of a cause in all my fucking life and so she was just pushin’ allllll my right metaphorical buttons—then she looks at me dead in the optics like now she’s a Jedi fucking mind reader, points at me and says, “Two words for you, you smarmy astromech. Data. Sharing.” And I’m like what in the fucking hell?! So you know I log onto the old awful Network rumor mill and low and behold, what do I find out? Cassian Fucking Andor snogged our only monogamist Eirtae Alniyat and she got angry, slapped him then shoved him into some flower bed or some shit. And before I ask you if any of that’s true I gotta say, you broke this box’s motherfucking heart, because he was pretty sure his future included a lifetime with her, and he won’t shut up about it now, and like I can’t shake him, Cass. I can’t shake him! So either I’ve lost my touch, the whole galaxy’s gone wrong again, or he’s actually a kriffing genius because he’s worse than a motherfucking TIE-defender. And it’s all your fucking fault!!!