#and not a generational tool of imperialism

[veilofdesire]

.

[mekanikaltrifle]

i know I'm still technically on Mage time but... urge to draw Andrea. Becoming present...

[handweavers]

there is a specific type of politics that i find a lot among artists of colour of my generation living in the west where we talk a lot about war and empire and racism and it's a lot of like decolonization buzzwords and talking about "embodied approaches to collaboration and knowledge production" and bringing science and ecology and historic cultural practices into our art and there is this heavy emphasis on the mutual aid instagram infographics thing and it constantly feels Iike everyone around me is dancing around an understanding that is just outside of their grasp and i think its because everyone is afraid of marxism in an explicit sense, rather than just the vague defanged "leftist" sense, which isn't a coherent ideology at all nor an actual Foundation of tools through which we can seek to understand the world. the scientific method for understanding economics is dialectical materialism, and to truly understand how capitalism and colonialism and patriarchy function you need to be willing to learn materialist analysis. like to actually understand What imperialism is and how it differs from colonialism, the actual material function(s) of capitalism and Why things are the way they are, to see with clear eyes the roles of racism and homophobia and transphobia and ableism, and to write and make art about it in the way I think many people desire to, where you are not dancing around an understanding of the realities of the world but actually biting through the meat of it, you need to understand materialism, you need to understand that imperialism is not the same thing as colonialism it is the highest stage of capitalism, and really dig into that. otherwise my peers will just keep dancing in circles and saying things that not only do not reflect reality but actively benefit the systems that harm us as well as the billions of our people who do not live in the west, and all the jargon like "we are decolonizing our mindsets with multidisciplinary ecologies" or whatever will never actually like... have the impact that is desired because it's not touching the face of reality idk how else to say it. like what are we doing here lol

[notvv0ltz]

Please talk about Georgia (the country!!), the pro Russian ruling party Georgian Dream overridden president's veto of foreign agents law (russian law). People of course are pissed and protesting. Like, why there are only up to 5 people talking about this on tumblr?

Once again, by accepting this law the parliament betrays Georgians and it sabotages it's road to EU and they want country to become a Russia's puppet. I don't care what you all think about EU, Georgia and Eastern Europe in general suffered from Russian imperialism for centuries. Please reblog.

More information about this law and how it completely disregards privacy and will work as a tool for oppression (from this post):

[havoc-7]

I wasn’t a die-hard Tech Lives believer (more of a “I HOPE Tech Lives” believer) but the end of the show has me grieving hard all over again, so here’s my little ode to Tech based on things I’ve noticed about him from rewatching the show:

Tech LOVES his brothers, and he genuinely misses Crosshair. When he has his heart to heart with Omega in the ipsium cavern, the way that he mentions Crosshair—even though that wasn’t even really what they were discussing—shows how often Crosshair is on his mind, so much so that he can’t really talk about people leaving and changing without bringing him up. When they get the Plan 88 from Crosshair, Tech is vocal and insistent about doing whatever they can to bring Crosshair back—because “he is still our brother.”

Tech is incredibly moral. Not that he’s any more moral than I think generally TBB is, but he’s not afraid to speak up when he sees something that he disagrees with fundamentally. “The systematic termination of the Jedi is a big one for me.” “There’s a fundamental different between taking fire in battle and being used for target practice.” Even in just the first episode, we see how firm his opinions are, based on what he believes: that people are people, that HIS BROTHERS are people, that they deserve better, that there is such a thing as right and wrong.

Tech may be practical, but that doesn’t make him any less crazy than his brothers—in fact, I would argue he is one of the more unhinged members of the bad batch. His plans and ideas see everything factually, factoring in risk not as an emotional factor but as a numerical one. He knows their skills, and what they are capable of, and he pushes them to those capabilities, even if the resulting strategy is absolutely insane. The best part is, as insane as he may be, his brothers trust him, because, as Tech himself said, he is seldom wrong.

Tech has a beautiful sense of wonder and awe for the world around him. How many times do we see him go wide-eyed as he encounters something that absolutely fascinates him—even if that thing is a Zillo beast that just ate an entire Imperial crew.

Tech is INSANE. Not unhinged, like I said earlier, but skill-wise, ability-wise, he is an absolute powerhouse. I will forever be grateful to the writers of TBB who gave us a techy, intelligent character who is not your average scrawny computer guy that we get in action movies. You have to have a lot of guts to be the guy in your squad who turns your back on the fight to bend over a computer and hack into a file or break an encryption or alter the programming—already a delicate operation, but with the added risk of getting shot with your back turned. He frickin wields double blasters so that he can shoot more clankers more efficiently (if that’s not practical Tech, I don’t know what is). He DOESN’T WEAR LEG ARMOR SO THAT HE CAN CARRY HIS TOOLS WITH HIM INTO THE FIELD. In “Faster,” we see his hand inching towards his blaster, ready to defend and protect the second it’s necessary—and you know he would’ve beaten anyone to the draw. He fought a group of Imperial troopers!!! With a broken leg!!!!!

Tech was amazing, and I hate that he’s dead, that we never got to see him grow old, that he never saw Crosshair again. But WHAT A LIFE HE LIVED.

[ryin-silverfish]

Y'know, as much as I like to sass Li Jing (who deserves every bit of sassing) I'm not exactly a fan of the "power hungry usurper" theory.

Don't get me wrong, Li Jing is an asshole; he's just not that flavor of asshole, both in JTTW and FSYY.

In JTTW, he's the Lawful Stupid general who's way too trigger-happy. Like, he's ready to execute the Mighty Spirit God for losing to SWK, and his reaction to SWK filing a lawsuit against him in the Lady Earth Flow arc is "How dare you sue me! Eat sword!"

That said, he is also terrified of Nezha. In the aforementioned scene, Nezha steps forth to block his blade, and he just panicks bc he forgets to bring his pagoda with him, and thinks Nezha is picking up the whole "patricide" hobby again!

In FSYY, his Asshole Arc starts after Nezha's death, when he shouts at his wife for crying after seeing Nezha in a dream, and later destroys Nezha's temple for fear that it will get him into trouble at court.

Historical context: the last part is reminiscent of the destruction of 淫祠, illicit temples that aren't officially sanctioned by the imperial bureaucracy. Permitting their continued existence may look bad on the local officials, and Li Jing said outright that, since he didn't want to associate with the two corrupt ministers at King Zhou's court, if someone used this to attack him politically, he could very well lose his job.

It's the assholeness of a petty bureaucrat who values his job more than his dead kid, but if he is truly power-hungry, he won't have any problem with bribing the corrupt ministers and getting chummy with them.

...idk man, I feel like Li Jing as your conniving, power-hungry martial usurper archetype is just giving him too much credit. He strikes me as the sort of man who doesn't even have the creativity required to be a proper traitor, and will blindly uphold the old laws and order against all logic and common sense.

That's why I don't have a problem with Li Jing being used as a tool by smarter, more powerful figures and factions. My problem is with the choice of that faction; like, even for a Lawful Stupid celestial with a hard-on for rules and hierarchy, the Dead People Supreme Court doesn't have that kind of authority over him.

[fuckyeahisawthat]

i rewatched Dune Part Two recently and one of the most striking shots for me was the one of the Fremen attacking the Sardaukar on wormback, while holding the Atreides flag.

Like, we just saw the Sardaukar forming up with their numerous flag bearers, even trying to maintain their flags raised after the nuclear detonation (in a shot that mirrored the famous "Raising the Flag in Iwo Jima" statue to me btw, nice nod to imperialism).

And then the Fremen arrive, but they're not bearing their colors, their flags, not fighting in their own names, instead it's the Atreides colors. The colors of their new, imperially appointed rulers. New pawns in the warfare between Great Houses, soldiers instead of freedom fighters. Urgh. Wish i could make gifsets.

Yeah yeah yeah it's horrifying!! You are watching a national liberation movement get successfully co-opted by a superpower and it's awful!

They did such a good job making it feel creepy and foreboding when the Atreides symbols and motifs start re-appearing in the last hour or so of the movie. The second Gurney shows up he immediately re-introduces the Atreides way of looking at the world, and it's disturbing how easily Paul falls back into thinking like that, seeing the planet and its people as tools to be used in an inter-imperial power play. (It's right after Gurney tells him about the family nukes that Paul has the signet ring out for the first time since the beginning of the second act and we're like OH NO.) This is before he drinks the Water of Life; he is already starting to think like a colonial duke again some time before he declares himself one.

After the opening montage where we see the piles of bodies being burnt, we don't see the stylized Atreides hawk symbol for most of the movie. The next time it appears is on a vault of nuclear weapons, which are never treated as anything but a curse. It's so important that Stilgar and Chani are with Paul and Gurney when they open the vault so we can see their horror at these weapons and the gleeful, casual way Gurney talks about them. Chani is also seeing an aspect of Paul that she hasn't really witnessed before--Paul, the Future of House Atreides--and she does not like it.

And then of course the whole ending battle is making the point over and over again with repeated imagery that Atreides and Harkonnens are exactly the fucking same. All the imagery from the initial Harkonnen attack on Arrakeen in Part One--which at least shows the Atreides as brave in the face of overwhelming odds--gets inverted into something that's supposed to make us shudder. That scene of Gurney hacking his way through the crowd of soldiers with someone carrying the Atreides flag behind him? Nightmarish.

All of this stuff is super important to what the movie is trying to say because it is very very easy for us to buy into the Atreides' propaganda about themselves being the good guys. If we're paying attention to what Chani tells us in the literal first 3 minutes of the first movie, we already know we should be viewing them with a bit of critical distance. And while I think there is plenty in the first movie to make us side-eye their noble image (Leto saying we will bring peace to Arrakis?? fucking yikes dude), it's easy to forget that because Leto generally seems like a good dude to the people close to him, and he dies tragically so we never get to see much of what kind of colonizer he would have become. And I think it's easy to start thinking well if only Leto the more reasonable parent had lived then things wouldn't have turned out this way.

But fucking desert power?? That was Leto's idea. This is Leto's dream being realized. The plan was always to use the Fremen as pawns in the power struggle between the Great Houses. Maybe not quite in the way that Paul does cause he definitely goes off with it, but the end result is just as much a product of Atreides imperialism as it is of Bene Gesserit religious colonialism. The Atreides aren't inherently any more noble or benevolent than the Harkonnens in their intentions, they just have better PR. But the end result is exactly the same: a pile of dead bodies being set on fire.

[icedb1ackcoffee]

Corrupted by Design CH 1 | Feyd-Rautha x Reader

After generations of pillaging and destroying their ecosystem, you are assigned by the Emperor to work on with the Harkonnens to improve their planet’s agriculture as Imperial Ecologist. However, Giedi Prime is far from welcoming, and you must fight to survive the horrors you endure at the hands of the Harkonnens. When you catch the eye of the Baron’s youngest nephew, and most prized possession, you step into a world complicated by politics and revenge.

Tags: Unbeta'd, AFAB Reader, multiple OCs, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, enemy to friends to lovers/enemy lovers, slow burn, fake science, blood, violence, gore, body horror, cannibalism, uncle/nephew incest (implied), eventual smut, etc.

A/N: I’ve never read the books, so this is a combination of the Villeneuve films, the Dune Wiki, and a heavy dose of just making shit up lol. I try my best to make Reader as nondescript as possible, but there are mentions of having periods and body hair in later chapters. As a warning up front, this will not have a Happily Ever After ending, but maybe more like Happy For Now?

Please mind the tags; this is very dark, but that comes with the territory.

Chapter One: Like Meat (Spoiled)

Previous Chapter ⦾ Next Chapter

When you first arrived at Giedi Prime, nothing could have adequately prepared you for the shock the harsh environment brought. 

Approaching the planet, dark, heavy clouds of pollution choked its atmosphere, seen even from your descent into the atmosphere. Any hope you’d had on your mission here began to wither as you saw the goliath manufacturing plants and landfills that scarred the horizon on all sides. Even the advanced Sardakaur technology on this ship couldn’t soften the harsh winds. Could this be the reason why they accepted you— a last-ditch effort to salvage whatever was left of this godforsaken planet…?

When you landed, you rose unsteadily to your feet and grabbed your luggage. Two large bags and one satchel tied at your waist. The rest unloaded off the ship, full of your tools and plants. Your entire life packed away, always ready for the next move. An escort accompanied you off ship, the rest staying inside. Not that you would blame them; if it was not required of you, you would not leave, either.

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[trixree]

The brain worms are ON ONE tonight folks I am thinking about Cody/Maul/Obi-Wan post order 66 living on tattooine together

like what if Maul sought out Obi-Wan's Commander shortly after O66 to get obsessive freaky closure about how Obes died (feels robbed of the kill, generally mentally ill about it, etc.) and is like "he is useless to me with all this fucking Imperial programing in the way" and does Force Stuff to break Cody's chip and what if Cody Wakes Up and goes "I can use this fucked up little guy to get to my General, who I believe survived, and then I'll just kill him easy peasy and live happily ever after with my husband" so he tells Maul that Obi-Wan is probably alive, actually, and cue a really violent road trip of them retracing Obi-Wan's steps in the hours after O66 via Imperial intel and hyper competence on both of their parts and

OH NO WHAT IF THEY START TO FALL IN LOVE like the forced proximity of it all...LISTEN TO ME. the intimacy of fighting alongside someone and having a functional partnership that's turned Dependency on both of your part's because you were both Traumatized in surprisingly similar ways (raised as a tool of violence for someone else's purpose, same guy actually!) and also have a similar goal via your mutual obsession with this one guy and actually, he's not that bad for a sith/clone, and by the time they get wise to Luke's existence and gun it for Tatooine, Maul is like "if I kill Kenobi this is going to upset Cody. That is Unideal. Can i live with not killing Kenobi?" and Cody is like "I cannot kill him afterall, I like him too much, how the FUCK am I going to explain this to Obi let alone any of the mind control & sorry i tried to kill you shit"

and what if Obi-Wan kept Luke because Reasons and is just so goddamn thankful for some extra childcare help (Luke's in his terrible 2s and he's force sensitive -- Obi's more sleep deprived than he ever was during the clone wars) that he really doesn't give a shit at all that it's his ex that tried to kill him for some mystery reason and motherfucking Maul on his doorstep. help is help 🙏 and they bang and stuff of course okay I'm only human

[mesetacadre]

are these groups part of the proletariat?

farmers

priests/nuns

retail salesmen

strippers

people who invest in stock

taco truck owner

actors and singers

Priests, salesmen, sex workers, and actors/singers are all workers. Priests sell their labor-power to the church they're a part of, traditionally for extremely low wages as well. Salesperson is just one function a worker can have within a retail workplace, sex workers sell their labor-power to a capitalist as well. Actors and singers, and more generally people in the entertainment industry sell their labor-power in exchange for a salary. As I explained in the post I assume you're asking about, in some cases that salary is so high that it enables some workers to acquire private property and become part of the bourgeoisie themselves. In any case, the basic economic relationship is still that of a proletariat's

"Taco truck owner" has it in the name, they own a small amount of private property, and sometimes 1 or 2 workers. Investing in stock requires capital, and stock itself is also capital.

As for farmers, it depends on what exactly you mean. Historically, although nowadays it is practically extinct, the peasantry as a class were a holdover from feudal production, an exploited class distinct from the proletariat. Their production was individualized, as opposed to socialized in the case of proletarian production. They often produced only for themselves and some type of lord who owned the land. They were largely adjacent to the proletariat, but some aspects of their economic relations also sometimes placed them closer to the petty-bourgeoisie.

Most farmers nowadays are large landowners who own large amounts of machinery and employ specialized workers, while others (in the imperial core) are still landowners but they instead rely on cheap labor by migrant workers, sometimes undocumented ones, allowing for practically slavery conditions. These agricultural workers are proletarian, distinct from their historical ancestors of feudalism, in that they only earn a salary, and don't own their tools nor their land. Their production is also almost exclusively geared towards the national and international market, it's not individualized production. This is even more marked in the imperialist relations that govern the monoculture plantations of the global south.

[chronostutter]

AM is so fascinating to me bc he is so blatantly the embodiment of like, american/western ideals taken to their extreme and bloody end, and that still does not spare him from being absolutely misinterpreted by people online

and like, his proximity to sexual violence/rape does not exist without reason. i know a lot of people (rightfully) are uncomfortable with fiction including these beats/themes, but it is very much a narrative tool used to further exemplify his connection to militarization/imperialism. he is the magnums opus of a warmongering empire—the ultimate patriarch, the unloving god, etc— and his actions are gratuitous and horrific all as a reminder of this fact.

idk, obviously mileage for these topics can vary (which is why i rarely want to be like "WOW THIS IS GOOD!" because i know many people who simply cannot stomach these types of works) but he is written that way to get a point across, and it does so nauseatingly well ❤️.

but alas. people tend to discard aspects of a character that make them uncomfortable/refuse to engage with the source text so now we have people who think AM is just some sad angry ai. when actualy he’s like if you gave one of those bigoted generative models access all nukes ever and poor temper management LOL

but ah well such is the nature of the beast

[ladyloveandjustice]

So the reason I was rewatching ATLA in the thros of my sickness was because I watched Big Joel's breakdown of the live action series and areas where it failed and didn't make sense and it made me want to rewatch the cartoon again.

I went ahead and watched the Big Joel video because I figured I wasn't going to watch the rest of the live action series at this point--(it's fun to yell at it with friends but also it's probably better to take those opportunities to watch something we actually like. 3 episodes is enough of a chance, and the only scene I liked out of that was the stupid little fight where Aang threw plates at Zuko)....and man, now I'm definitely not going to watch the series.

There really did just drain away Katara's entire personality and her agency. I honestly don't understand why adaptations are so afraid of letting her be the angry, stubborn, opinionated person she is in the show. I mean I know why, sexism. It's like writers cannot fathom a girl being nurturing and kind while also having a hot temper and being passionate and outspoken. She's not a hard character to get! But they cannot hold those two concepts in their brain at the same time! It's really sad!

But there are two points that really get me

--they...they seriously have Aang agree with Paaku's sexism towards Katara. When she tells him about it he's like "well maybe you shouldn't fight" It's apparently there for in plot reasons like blabla the spirit just told him the avatar should work alone and he's scared his friends will get hurt but I don't care. no. I don't want to see Aang being a tool like that. I don''t think in the original series there's actually any situation where he'd diminish her ability to fight or side with the systemic oppression of women, and there definitely isn't any situation where Katara would silently take it lying down. She'd have kicked Aangs ass (verbally) (perhaps accidentally physically considering what her waterbending does when she's angry) and honestly, I think her trust towards him would have broken so badly it would have been really hard to repair. But that didn't happen, because like Joel said, Aang isn't a dweeb and he respects Katara, and Katara is his equal who wouldn't take that shit.

--They have Iroh excuse his actions at Ba Sing Se (to a guy who's brother was murdered in the battle) with "it was war, we were soldiers". This is played straight, like Iroh is in the right, not as a character flaw to be explored- we're supposed to think Iroh is right to say that. Like he wasn't the GENERAL of the army trying to invade and colonize a city? It wasn't war, it was violent imperialism and people defending their home. How the hell do you misunderstand that. The original show never had Iroh make excuses. The original show wasn't afraid to demonstrate Iroh was a pretty monstrous person when he was leading the invasion- his casual joke about burning Ba Sing Se to the ground in that flashback is so jarring coming from Iroh, supposed to make us see how even he was unbelievably cruel at one point, even he was part of the system of imperialism, but it took his son's death for him to change. And he did change, he started questioning and working against the system he once upheld, and dedicate himself to taking care of Zuko.

But he was a war criminal, and he knows that! I think that's in part why he wanted Zuko to take the throne, he knows someone who did what he did shouldn't be in charge. I think the Iroh we know in the show would have understood if someone who's family member died in that battle was angry at him for starting it. I think he's equally angry at himself, holds himself responsible for his son's death in a battle he commanded and could have refused to fight, and that his son's death is what made him realize what he was inflicting on others.

It's such a stupid decision and shows the writer doesn't have a single thought in their head about imperialism or Iroh's character, that they don't even understand it. incredible.

So yeah, those things alone are enough to not make me want to watch this show. The thing with Iroh shows a disdain for the core themes of the show, and Katara and Aang being stripped of what made them good characters, but even just active characters....nah not for me. I will continue watching reaction videos and breakdowns though, love that stuff.

[qqueenofhades]

As an immigrant from an authoritarian country who cannot vote in the US either, thank you for your posts encouraging those who can to vote. Thank you.

I do think that a lot of the "voting is useless and stupid and you shouldn't do it!!" comes from the fact that the Online Leftists have generally grown up in an environment when voting is both always possible and can make a real difference in your government, so they take it for granted and/or actively disparage it. They think that the Correct Ideology will magically manifest in any geopolitical, social, or cultural setting if they just think it hard enough, tools like voting are "dirty" and counterproductive to making things get bad enough that the people are all in for The Revolution, and aren't really fond of flawed and slow democracy anyway, which goes backward and sideways as often as (or more than) it goes forward. They want a benevolent dictator to instantly implement everything, regardless of the fact that "benevolent dictator" is a contradiction in terms, and just like the right-wing nutcases, don't want the people to have a say in anything if there's a chance they'll reject it or force them to settle for a compromise or anything less than absolute power.

This is why American Online Leftists (and frankly, those from other countries who want Cool Lefty Points and/or are steeped in tankie ideology) spend all their time attacking the establishment political party that is overall closest to their beliefs, rather than the nakedly authoritarian and fascist one, which they either ignore, discount, treat as trivial, or actively root to win in order to "teach the Democrats/the country a lesson." While there's nothing the Democrats could ever do that would actually satisfy them, they like to post BIDEN GENOCIDAL FASCIST AMERICA IMPERIAL DICTATORSHIP screeds because they know that unlike in an actual genocidal fascist dictatorship, where such social media posts would get them promptly persecuted, arrested, disappeared, or thrown into the gulag, nothing will happen to them at all as a result. Because they have no conception of actually living in an authoritarian society (although that will change in a hurry if Trump gets elected again, God forbid), they are able to tell people not to vote, to complain about Oppression, and otherwise do things they would not actually ever be able to do if they hadn't grown up in a western democracy, however flawed and bedeviled. So yes, they absolutely do insist that voting is meaningless because they have never lived and grown up in a place where it is either restricted, just for show, or not available at all, and they refuse to listen to anyone who tells them differently, because they secretly think the "right" kind of dictatorship would be fine.

[sepublic]

Now that I’m older, it’s occurred to me that Jack Sparrow really does play the role of the mentor figure in Curse of the Black Pearl. He’s definitely a very cleverly subversive take on the trope, but he is a take on it nonetheless; The older figure who teaches our young, hotshot hero how to act and passes on wisdom. “I knew your father.” An experienced member of a forbidden group that our protagonist learns to accept he is a part of. Acts as a call to action, and isn’t introduced until past the first few scenes of the film.

By contrast, Elizabeth and Will are established in the movie’s first scene, which further strengthens the actually hot take that they’re the main protagonists of the film and the trilogy as a whole, not Jack. Jack is just less recognizable as a mentor because he breaks a lot of the rules (more guidelines really) of the trope, and is treated as more than just a tool for our main character’s growth; He’s someone with his own life and wants and stake in this, too.

Jack Sparrow is ultimately the Gandalf, the Obi-Wan of Pirates of the Caribbean. And that leads me to my argument that PotC is the Star Wars of its generation, with its own Empire Strikes Back and everything. It’s got a lot of the same tropes and structure, but it’s mixed around and dressed up in such a unique way that most people fail to realize this at first glance. 

Take for example, the dynamic of Davy Jones and Cutler Beckett... This is just Vader and Tarkin in A New Hope; A more iconic, supernatural threat, physically imposing, who is nevertheless subservient to Just Some Guy who is British and represents the Machine that strips the world of its magic and wonder. Vader and Jones are more romantic, they’ve got sad backstories and are humanized to the audience; But Tarkin and Beckett are banal and simple, just ruthless men who don’t care, like in real life.

But while Tarkin dies in the first film to make way for Vader taking the spotlight, as well as his similarly theatrical Emperor, the creators of PotC clearly wanted to explore the dynamic of a supernatural force straining against his imperial collar, and the tension of knowing he is contributing to the decline of his own kind. They took Vader and Tarkin’s relationship and made it front and center, happening at the end of the trilogy and not at its beginning. And it is Beckett and the imperial machine that is emphasized as the true evil, whereas in Star Wars, the Empire takes orders from Palpatine and his Dark Side shenanigans, who are framed as the foundation for the conflict.

The crew reinvented Star Wars for a new audience, rather than just... pulling off of the brand and imagery of Star Wars, or copying it word-for-word. They understood the core foundation of the story and the earnest creativity that comes into making something both familiar yet inarguably new, which subverts the stories that came before it in a meaningful manner.

[fanfoolishness]

Cal Kestis needs to be needed.

I'm replaying Fallen Order and able to pay a little bit more attention this time (the first time around, I was mostly just dazzled). Cal has just landed on Kashyyyk having taken down an AT-AT to help partisans fighting the Empire. Saw Gerrera thanks him for the help, but when he hears Cal's here on Jedi business, he's skeptical and scoffs that the Jedi are dead.

It gets interesting here. Cal holds out his lightsaber, a challenge to Saw's offhand comment. And Saw needles him. Asks him if he got the lightsaber off a corpse. Cal fixes Saw with one of those thousand yard stares the boy is too good at and tells him quietly that his master gave it to him.

Saw is a master at what he does. He's charismatic, he gets people to lay down their lives for him and his causes. He knows how to handle them. He sees this fresh-faced kid in front of him with a lightsaber, who immediately starts asking about how to help the Wookiees, and Saw realizes he's got his angle.

(I think Cere clocked that he was sizing Cal up right away, and was concerned well before Saw left the planet.)

So when Cal meets up with Saw in the forest trench to find out the plan, Saw knows just how to play him. He gives Cal the mission of entering the Imperial base and freeing the Wookiees. Is this strictly necessary for Saw's plan to work? Probably not, but it'll be a useful distraction, and more importantly, Saw knows how Jedi are drawn to helping innocents like moths to a flame. If the kid becomes loyal to him for this mission, he'll be a useful tool in the future; if he fails, the main plan isn't jeopardized and he's still a good distraction.

So he lays a hand on Cal's shoulder and tells Cal to free the prisoners. With his lightsaber. The same weapon he just called Cal a graverobber about. Someone older and wiser might have seen a red flag there! But Cal Kestis?

Cal is ecstatic to be needed. To be helpful. He's so proud already he has to brag to BD about it immediately.

Cal instantly looks up to Saw. I think he recognized Saw's leadership skills, his charisma, and his battle prowess, and was taken right back to Master Tapal; but he's not old enough or experienced enough to see the way Saw is looking at him and figuratively licking his chops. All Cal sees is someone who's fighting against the Empire, making a difference, and thinks that he could make a difference again, too.

Cal is the classic smart kid who achieved too quickly, never learned how to fail, wound up spending a lot of time with adults who praised his skills -- and he hungers for that praise still. You can see how he lights up in general when he realizes he's done something really skillful -- taking out that AT-ST walker puts an actual grin on his face, the same grin he probably got as a Padawan when he knew he'd executed something tricky. He loves to be told he's done well, especially after five years in the Bracca scrapyards where standing out could mean being found by the Empire.

(Look at this smug little dork, getting hydrated after destroying a scout walker. Also, two seconds later Cere asks how he's doing with the Force and Cal cheerfully says well, he's not dead yet! and he'd rather not talk about it! But that's a whole rant for another post.)

The Jedi Order specifically put Cal with Master Tapal because they realized he had a problem with not knowing how to handle failure, but because their training was cut short, Cal never did learn the lesson. He blames himself completely when something goes wrong (Cere reminds him that saving the Wookiees and the Partisans is out of his control, a warning he shrugs off instantly even before they get to the fight); he can get a success, but he craves more. He's always looking for that person who can tell him that he's done right, who can give that external validation to help him feel useful. He sees instantly that Saw -- clever, resourceful, respected -- could be a person like that, and Cal just glows around him despite having known him for all of five minutes.

Cal doesn't realize he was being handled, and very skillfully so.

He still doesn't realize that going into Survivor, is still working for Saw, but there's a reason Cere isn't on these missions with him; not only does she have her own goals, but she doesn't trust Saw or his methods. I'm sure she sees that need Cal has to feel needed, to feel useful, and frets about it privately; there are some things that are just too entrenched to root up entirely. Once Cal starts growing comfortable with his powers again, the urge to help, to succeed, to do right by those he looks up to is very, very strong.

After all, how do you think Bode found his angle?

[idkman-ijustwannamakeatournament]

Round 1: Match 17

"Two Sides of the Same Coin"- Two things that are regarded as part of the same thing. Even if they're very different, they have at least one common thread that helps them fit into this trope.

Propaganda (under the cut):

Hajime Hinata and Nagito Komaeda:

"Both of them grew up talentless in a society where talent is basically everything, where the prestigious Hope’s Peak Academy believed and enforced that if you don’t have a talent then you won’t ever really amount to anything or live a fulfilling life.

The difference between them is that Nagito accepted his place as a “stepping stone” for people with talent, viewing himself as worthless unless used as a tool, while Hajime tried to get into Hope’s Peak Academy and discover a talent so he could be confident in his future, taking drastic measures (signing up for an experimental project that ended up erasing his entire personality) to become something more. the parallels between them make me unwell"

Wen Kexing and Zhou Zishu:

"the two of them are quite different in a lot of ways! wen kexing is much more flamboyant and dramatic, always standing out and wearing bright colors and looking for a show, while zhou zishu is much more subdued, trying to go unnoticed and draw the least amount of attention possible. wen kexing is all for big displays of bloody violence that have little planning and are intended to be watched and attributed to him. zhou zishu is all for subtly and covert ways of getting rid of people that can't be traced back to him at all and wipe out all witnesses and is always having to plan like 10 steps ahead. wen kexing is super talkative while zhou zishu is generally quiet. wen kexing represents the terror on the martial arts world while zhou zishu represents the terror on the imperial world. wen kexing is from the ghost valley that uses the water of lethe/oblivion, the inverse being drunk like a dream which is used by window of heaven which is where zhou zishu is from.

as for similarities, they were both innocent children set up to have a good and upright life, but experienced a loss that set them on a path that lead both of them to become the leaders of two of the worst/most evil organizations in the world. their martial arts abilities are equal to each other. and they're canonically soulmates and say that they're the only ones who can truly understand each other."