#cal rambles about sw

[arliganzey]

My headcanon stats and thoughts for Jedi Master Arligan Zey that no one asked for:

Age: 49. He seems older than Obi-wan, but is only 'graying' by the end of The Clone Wars so he's not that old.

Height/Build: 6'4. He's described as a "large, muscular man" with "huge" hands. I could go taller... but... then Bardan (a foot shorter) would never be in frame in my mind's cinematic universe. In Order 66 when Zey is angrily tracking down Vau to ask him why Kal got beat up, he's described as a 'giant hawk-bat of a man.'

Physical characteristics: All we know is he has a beard, his hair is "shaggy" in 501st, and he's graying. That's... it. So I'm going with mousey brown hair. Hazel-brown eyes, with crow's feet. He has a long, straight nose and a prominent brow. Zey is, as I previously described, "kinda handsome."

Alignment: Lawful good. He's close-ish to lawful neutral, at least when he's dealing with Kal (see: turning a blind eye to the terrorist op in Triple Zero, also asking Vau to spy on Kal which I'm not saying was a smart move but it's... not lawful good!)

See how we err toward lawful neutral/true good/true neutral? Very mindful.

Facecast: Christoph Waltz: This is who Krad based her Zey art off of! He has had a pretty long acting career so it's nice to see lots of pictures at different ages.

Zey at the start of the war before the light has left his eyes (Waltz is a little older than my Zey headcanon age btwfyi)

More thoughts in no particular order:

I think Zey is a little less refined and a lot more rough and tumble, he seems deeply uncomfortable with the desk job as Director of Special Forces and gets visibly upset/angry at a few points in the book. He's capable of being the diplomatic Jedi, but he's also been described as crashing through conversations.

I have about a dozen more points to cover but this is already getting long, so consider this my Arligan Zey primer. More to come!

[redbean-nom]

ahsoka: here's my resume *briefcase full of purified inquisitor sabers*

Considering Ezra was missing in another galaxy and not even hat man will tell us what Ahsoka has been up to, Cal is probably the only one with any particular records and history that Luke could have heard of what with all of his wanted posters. Luke must think Cal is really cool and experienced, right?

oh absolutely, but can you imagine if cal had to apply for the jedi academy

(donation doodles! // tip jar)

[shastafirecracker]

I've been feeling some kinds of ways since I finished Jedi: Survivor so I'm going to ramble some thoughts that other people have probably already had, about something that blew my mind as an extraordinary example of medium-as-storytelling. big honkin spoilers for Je:Su below.

So, "turning to the Dark Side" in SW is usually going to be a plot beat in the two primary forms that SW media takes, right: visual (movies, TV) or written (all the books, but also in fanfic). In both cases, as the audience, you're largely going to have to take the author's explanation for how it feels, why a character is doing it, and what the motivations are behind it. Even in visual media you're more likely to be told than shown, since it's established as an extremely internal, feelings-based experience for the characters. Because it's not a process replicable in real life, storytelling explanations for the difference between how light and dark side Force usage feels is going to have to rely on metaphor, and on the audience's willingness to engage in pathos. Which, to be fair, audiences are famously great at! There's been mixed results in SW media, but it's perfectly possible to make turning to the dark side a very engaging story beat that feels emotionally real and justified.

Then, there's interactive media. I'm fascinated by the storytelling potential of narrative games because of the different way they demand that the audience engage with the story, right, the way that physiological input from the audience changes the connections that the brain makes to the input it's receiving. The way having to press a button to make the next action happen manipulates the lizard brain into believing itself the cause of the effect, even though the forebrain understands that the story is just as predetermined as a published novel, so the button push is really not very different from a page turn. It's a potent tool for manipulating the audience's emotions and engagement, very easy to fumble but pretty mindblowing when executed well.

There were definitely moments in Survivor when I was like "ok am I going to be allowed to actually play this game some day" when control kept being taken away from me in favor of cutscenes. But as the story went on and I got into it, I stopped minding the times when my thumbs were still, and barely noticed the transitions between "I am making this happen" and "I am watching this happen." That's good narrative game storytelling, for sure. But it still felt like a good story that happened to also be a good video game, not quite meshing the two in a meaningful way. Until Nova Garon.

A lot depends on how you play this, I'm sure, but in my case I pressed through the end of the game from the last Dagan fight to credits in one sitting. Because of how tired my hands were from the physical demand of the Darth Vader fight, and because I had been maining blaster stance for much of the game, I made a semi-conscious choice when I reached Nova Garon to use my saber as little as possible. I one-shotted a lot of unarmored officers from across rooms, having decided that Cal felt cold with rage and tightly coiled, so it would make sense for him to not even give these people the honor of being killed by a lightsaber. So I'll grant you that I was adding my own hot sauce to the delicious angst recipe the game had already made for me.

Then you get to Bode and have a really long cutscene that doubles down on the idea that Cal's anger is, at that moment, cold. He's tightly restrained. For several back and forths in the conversation he even still tries to be neutral in front of Kata.

So, for me at least, it REALLY fucking worked as a storytelling move when Cal explodes. Bode runs off, you chase, and the very first thing you're faced with is a room packed with a comical amount of enemies, the kind of melee scrum you've been trained by the mechanics for the whole game to approach with a whirlwind lightsaber freakout using either double-bladed or dual stance, ideally using Slow to buy some time. I had truly played into the game's hands like a fool here because I only had blaster and single stance as options at the time. So I'm looking around my screen in that split second, considering my stance and Force and slicing options, prepared for punishment, barely registering the notification scroll on the right side of the screen because a whole bunch of new databank entries get dumped by the Bode cutscene - the last one of which is, iirc, 'Kata Akuna.'

So Kata Akuna fades upward and is replaced by the same size white text, relatively small, suggesting a button press to you, like it's done a dozen or more times before to say stuff like 'press O to dash' or 'press R1 to tame the creature,' relatively benign things that are always very useful tools that you use over and over and over as soon as you gain them. Except it says 'press [button command you already know and have internalized as your most powerful Force tool with the longest cooldown, which you were just thinking about using] to have Cal embrace his darkness.'

And like, the phrasing is fascinating to me there. It's always fascinating to me how anyone talks about playing a video game, anyway, like "I just beat Ganon" or whatever instead of "Link just beat Ganon," because of course you feel ownership of the actions of the protagonist of a piece of interactive media in a way you rarely feel ownership of the actions of anyone in a book or movie. Previous button instructions in this same game have said 'press [blah] to do [thing]' without a given addressee, leaving the player to probably interpret that, unconsciously, as the unspoken 'you' that is typical in English grammar. 'You press O to dash.' 'You press R1 to tame the critter.' But - 'press [dah] to have Cal embrace his darkness' is so - unsettling and offputting, separating you, player, from Cal, protagonist - and it's occupying a VERY important space because the buttons its asking you to press are ones you already probably wanted to press, but instead of doing the thing you wanted it to do it's going to do some kind of new, horrible, unknown thing that is almost certainly going to be bad for Cal.

Then you press it, because you have to, and it's the best fucking shit that's ever happened to you, the player. It jumps your level by 10, instakills half the people in the room, makes you fast and powerful and nigh unbeatable. Depending on what difficulty you've been playing on, it may make a combat encounter that looked like a surefire several-deaths-in-a-row run into something as trivial as a roomful of bugs. It lasts an insanely long time. It's godmode. It's a broken mechanic. It makes your screen bleed. The unbridled glee that you, the player, probably feel while killing that room full of people is at stark odds with the circumstance you are in, storywise, because you are supposed to be feeling grief and rage and driving urgency to hunt and catch your fleeing enemy. But instead you have a moment in this room of, if you're like me, hooting and hollering while doing a big old war crime, just because it's suddenly easy and fun.

It took me a couple more 'embrace the darknesses' to realize that Cal only has one stance in that mode. Anything you've learned before is thrown away - earned skill ditched in favor of brute strength. And I didn't really care? Even though I did really enjoy how skilled I had gotten with my favored stances, because the combat in Survivor feels really good, and also I knew they'd be back after no more than 2 minutes in dark side mode. So even though I didn't get to do the moves I'd spent so long mastering, every 'embrace the darkness' was a little indulgence of having my cake and eating it too. It started to feel like an insta-win mechanic against any enemy of a low enough level, and a safety/turtling mechanic against slightly more difficult ones. I wanted to trigger it as soon as the cooldown ended even when I didn't need to, just for the fun. I felt safer having it available.

And all of that - as a mechanic - is the single most compelling depiction of the Dark Side that I've ever seen in a piece of SW media.

The way it shows up as an understated suggestion in your periphery. The way it cuts through every Gordian knot in front of you. How fun it feels, how unfair it feels, how safe it feels to have it on your side. As a game mechanic it places the audience in the position of actually feeling what before only metaphor could attempt to describe - the way turning to the dark side is all about letting go and letting loose. Being a nuclear reactor mid-meltdown. Laughing and button-mashing and going "oh no, oh shit, I shouldn't be doing this" but not stopping. And also, as the player, your mind is not clouded by any mysterious outside control - you're aware of what you're doing, you're aware you're making choices here, you could definitely stop using the mechanic after the first instance where the game has to put a finger on the scale for a moment to teach you the controls. And maybe you do make that choice, idk how you play. But you get through the massacre and at the end when Merrin asks Cal not to kill one last person, and Cal agrees, it doesn't feel cheap? It doesn't feel like Cal 'snapped out of' anything. It doesn't feel like there was anything for him to snap out of, because he, like you, has just been making these choices for room after room of enemies, and frankly no one's been around to ask him to stop before now. He still seems reasonable, and so a reasonable request by someone he cares about still reaches him.

The Dark Side isn't the grief, pain, suffering, anger, etc. It's the release from those. And this one moment of a game mechanic explains that so powerfully and succinctly, in a way that other mediums can't replicate. It's one of the the best uses of a medium in the service of the story since House of Leaves. It's still making me have to lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling weeks later.

There's more to say about how the menu screen changes once Cal's embraced his darkness, altering his internal landscape in a way that doesn't change what you have access to but which can never be unseen. About how 'Slow' as a mechanic is gone forever, the most powerful Force ability Cal had just eradicated by an imposter version (a better version, the insidious inner voice wants to say). About the dramatic, overwhelming way the game chooses to command you to embrace your darkness next time, when the whole screen goes red and black. And the phrasing is different there, too, not 'have Cal embrace his darkness' but just 'embrace the darkness,' because this time you and Cal are not being treated as semantically separate entities. The first time, it's like maybe Cal wouldn't want to, so you, player, have to be the little Sithy whisper in his head that makes him do it. But the second time, Cal wants to do it so badly that his desire to embrace the darkness overpowers your, player's, agency to attempt to make any other choice. Even if you could have won that fight another way, Cal didn't want to win that fight any other way. He takes away your UI until you free him into his darkness, release him from his complex suffering into the simplicity of power.

It's just so fucking good, okay. It's such good storytelling, structurally. The way the player's choices and Cal's actions are on a surface level one-to-one correlated but actually form this intricate internal conversation. Using the most important thing a video game can be - fun - as a tool to describe a very dark place that anyone might go to internally, whether in a reality with space magic or not. But! Not by doing the thing that's been done before, the old "you [consumer] should feel bad because your act of consumption made the characters feel bad" fourth-wall-breaking meta thing that shames the reader for being entertained by others' pain (aka experiencing pathos, an extremely normal and not-shameful thing for humans to do). Survivor uses the audience's enjoyment of the medium against them narratively, in a gleeful and not-shaming way I don't think I've seen from media before, and I love it.

anyway I have no big conclusion here, I just am a writer who gets impressed when other writers do good writing. props to Respawn for making me writhe in my feels.

[cloveisinhell]

clove, he/him, 15, block don't report

this is my blog for vent/ed shit & other various ramblings related my to rapidly declining mental state. ask for my main if you want, i'm sliiightly less mentally ill over there :P

I love theater, dan & phil, my chemical romance, vampires, car seat headrest, and other things of the sort. dms are always open, i'm quite a bit of a yapper but i also really enjoy listening to people talk about stuff.

want to know exactly what's wrong with me? i'm diagnosed with some stuff, but i'm sure as hell not listing it. draw your own conclusions based on my posts if you must.

#clove says things <- original posts/rambling tag.

stats/other disordered shit under cut

height: 5'1

hw: no clue.

sw: somewhere around 105? idk.

cw: 88.8 (as of december 20th)

cbmi: 16.8

gw1: 90lbs (12/20/24)

gw2: 85lbs

gw3: 80lbs

ugw: 75lbs

generally i try to stay under 1000cal per day. usually end up eating 600-800, but if i set really low cal limits i find myself more likely to binge.

inbox & dms are always open! i’d consider myself fairly knowledgeable on harm reduction in regards to both eating disorders and self harm.

[hurricanek8art]

Okay this made me rabbithole a little because I hadn't thought about it and I had to look it up because I was curious. According to Wookieepedia:

▪︎There are ten known Inquisitors, not counting Barriss or an apparent unnumbered Inquisitor from the tabletop games, which have this kind of dubious NuCanon/Legends canonicity about them that I honestly don't know what the deal is.

▪︎Out of this ten, Ahsoka Tano has fought six of them, and killed three of them.

THERE ARE LITERALLY MORE INQUISITORS THAT DO HAVE PERSONAL BEEF WITH AHSOKA TANO THAN ONES THAT DON'T.

AND THE ONES THAT DON'T HAVE PERSONAL BEEF WITH AHSOKA INSTEAD HAVE IT WITH EITHER OBI-WAN KENOBI, KANAN JARRUS AND EZRA BRIDGER, OR CAL KESTIS. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Also, Ahsoka's tied for highest Inquisitor kill count at three. Who is she tied with? DARTH VADER. YOU KNOW, THE GUY THAT RUNS THE STUPID PROGRAM.

The Inquisitorius is actually a huge mess and I love it. Party City budget Sith. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I do love that now, in addition to the Fifth Brother and Seventh Sister, there is a significant portion of the Inquisitorius that have /will have personal beef with Ahsoka Tano

[zorosdimples]

i really appreciate you holding on for the wild ride, it ended up being much more of a word vomit than i anticipated 😅 this is also gonna be long to explain it all but:

okay so my OC, calrik, is from an original fantasy fiction work i have tentatively called ‘homeward bound’; it’s been a passion project for like idk 10+ years and the characters in it are like the original 4 OCs for me lol. he (funnily enough) resembles laios physically (blonde, 6’4, a guard so Fit, brown eyes) but also has freckles and is a wolf shapeshifter (simply put, but it’s more complicated than that) (which is probably that’s why I love laios, your honor). premise of that WIP’s world is an empress (ilantha) of celestial blood and her three closest and highest ranked guards (saelihn, merric, and calrik) (none of which start out in those positions except the empress) up being divinely intertwined in changing the course of the empires’ history. fated love, fated loss, coronations and galas and sneaking away to not get caught, fae and wolf shapeshifters, personified celestial bodies and primordial / ancient spirits, heinous war crimes, children with trauma responsible for way too much, not a parent in sight lmfao. that being said, the kidnapping was happening from the Big Baddie™️ in that world and calrik busted in.

with the SW AU, it’s an AU of my own work (lmfao). calrik is an inquisitor, brother to merric (supreme leader); sae is a force sensitive rebel (not proper Jedi) and tasked with transporting / protecting ilantha (actual Jedi, Princess of Alderaan). the girls get captured, put on star killer base, and interrogated by the guys. of course they pair bc where else would the enemies to lovers come in. cal interrogates sae, and she’s restrained. since sabers turn on, they have an activation mechanism hums. so while he’s interrogating her, choking her, calling her pet and telling her to speak up, he traces the humming, vibrating end of the saber—while ignited—along her body until its against her thrumming cunt. hence: a lightsaber vibrator as means of an interrogation method.

now Laios…… holy shit yeah. that’s exactly what im thinking about!!!! an aphrodisiac that the longer the body doesn’t register you’re breeding (aka using it), the worse it gets. teaching him how to touch you, and he ends up being exactly the touch you’ve always imagined having. its so innocently perfect, and before he’s even had his turn, a glob of cum has stained his pants. he’s panting, pupils swollen; at one point you have to remind him to take the armor off because he’s so into you, enraptured. now imagine you’re the monster that hit him with the pollen……………….. like a fae dryad or somethin………. holy shit yeah.

thank you for indulging me 🙂‍↕️ im so sorry this is a damn novel lol

putting this under the cut since i rambled A LOT!

sav what the FUCK that world you’ve built sounds so incredible and well thought out; i LOVE fantasy but it’s daunting to write/create fantastical worlds because there are so many elements you must consider and balance. effective world building is a feat—and you have so many interesting characters that you’ve also created to boot! i’m obsessed with how similar cal is to laios ooohuuhgghhhhhh i will lose my mind (go insanely horny) over him.

AND THE STAR WARS AU???????? okay first of all: brilliant, show-stopping, incredible. putting your own ocs from an original story into a pre-existing fictional universe is so big brained of you i don’t even know what to say. and enemies to lovers…my favorite flavor, truly. can i just say i wanna be in sae’s place because oh my god? i’m seeing the vibrating lightsaber vision and i want to experience it so desperately it’s not even funny.

finally LAIOS, MY LOVE! i have a bit of a reputation on my blog for being a virgin killer because there’s nothing more sexy and delicious to me than teaching someone inexperienced how to touch you; molding their concept of sexuality, exploring their interests, and leaving a lasting impression on them (even if you don’t stay together because they will never, never forget their first). and laios is the perfect virgin in my mind because he’s eager to please and he’s utterly shameless. he will lick your armpits and spit on your clit and suck on your tongue without a second thought because it feels and tastes so good; he has a one-track mind and it makes sex with him almost a religious experience. the sex pollen trope on top of that makes him feral for you…i don’t even know what to say about the idea of you being the monster—like…UGH. he gives you a run for your money!

anyway thank you for sharing with me; i’m kissing you and your gorgeous brain <3

[cherryflavorednothing]

About me ♥

My name is Bellsy & I'm 17

I have 2 small dogs (they love being held like babies!! they're so cute!!

I recently shaved by head & it's half brown, half pink bc my roots are growing out

I've been homeschooled for the past 2 years (grades 10-11)

I adore sweet smells & tastes, I'm obsessed w/ fruits

I have OCD & depression (and physical stuff like IBS)

My favorite games are animal crossing (especially hhp), sims 4, and minecraft

I have a bunch of random fears, like boars & moldy food

I'm amazing at rambling (as you can prob tell)

Feel free to message me or send asks even though I'm garbage at responding

cw: ed content, please don't use this to trigger urself, & if you're not struggling, please leave. regardless, stay safe ♡

Please block, don't report

Numbers below

Height: 5'4 (exactly 162 cm somehow??)

Sw: 163 (74 kg)

Gw1: 155 (70 kg)

Gw2: 145 (66 kg)

Gw3: 130 (59 kg)

Gw4: 115 (52 kg)

Ugw: 108 (49 kg)

I'm high res, 600-1200 cals

Also idk what kcals are and I'm too lazy to learn lol

[seven-oomen]

B

Hi, Ben!  I hope your day is going well!  Had a further thought I forgot to include in my last msg.  So, speaking of Moulin Rouge, and that episode of My Life Is Murder where Tem plays an aspiring musician (I would include a video or picture, but YT and Google are not cooperating today), imagine one of the three walking in on another singing a lullaby to which ever little one you decide on (or just a random foundling, even.)  I feel the best potential options here would be Satine or Jango walking in on the other (especially if the sexin’s have happened but the feels are still a WIP), both of them walking in on Obi-Wan, or Obi-Wan walking in on the two of them doing a duet.

Similarly, for the whole FIL thing; presuming that you’re going the “unexpected encounter lead to unplanned consequences of the natal variety” route, this could also work with him sending the two of them to check on the little one only to find Obi-Wan singing to him, or even just “accidentally” leaving a baby monitor turned on so they overhear it.  (Do I maybe have a thing about dudes who can sing?  That’s not important right now.  XD )  Hell, if you haven’t used it yet in Caught Somewhere In Time, I imagine one finding the other singing Cal to sleep would cause a rather powerful heart boner.  XD 

I feel like I had other thoughts, but I have to clock back in from lunch, so I will hush for now.  I hope you’re feeling good and the writing is flowing!  Take care!  *HUGS!*

Hi B! I have lots of thoughts, so In this one I’m just gonna wish you a good day at work and then write out an entire post for our little Jangobitine au. Because I have inspiration. And yes I am going to count my ramblings into my wordcount for nano cause I’ve only been editing and formatting today and I haven’t been writing. (Though I already passed 50K, I still want to get my 30 day badge XD).

I know I don’t have a way to tag you, but I will mail you the link. Promise.

And including your last message so I can answer both in one ask:

And oh, yes, I LOVE Moulin Rouge.  I remember seeing it in the theater when it first came out, and the soundtrack was in fairly regular rotation in my CD player (not to age myself or anything XD ).  Literally as soon as I hit send, my brain went "did you really just space on the fact that Ewan was in that, too?" XD  And the two of them were one of my favorite parts of Aquaman.  Everything about the two of them was just adorable, and I loved that they let her be taller than her love interest.  I'd seen jokes about two Satines in Ewan's character past before, but I think it was seeing her with the paler hair in Aquaman that made me go "wait..." and look up Satine Kryze's height on Wookipedia (which I'm pretty sure is Nicole's rl height, too.)  Hmm...her as Boba's mother just amuses the hell out of me for some reason, while her as Omega's mom could definitely explain the blond hair.

Speaking of nephews, a fair amount of SW fic I've read mentions Bo-Katan's nephew/Satine's son in ways that either heavily imply or outright state that he's Obi-Wan's son, and I don't know if he's technically alive at this point in canon (and I doubt they'd ever actually make that lineage real), but I'd love to see him roll up to Luke's Island of Misfit Jedi and watch the fallout of them all learning who he is, and also for more crossing of the Mandalorian/Jedi streams.  XD

[jeromefart]

Jedi survivor comes out TOMORROW! heres my current thoughts n shit

im excited. not exactly hyped as i could be as im more excited for totk coming out in a few weeks. but ik this game is gonna be awesome. ign and some other game critics rated this game suuuper high. the lowest rating so far is 81% on metacritic, which was bombed by one random whiny 50/100 review. so i think its safe to say its gonna be good lol

i saw another review and i didnt wanna read much for spoilery things, but i read the first 2 sentences which said they wanted to focus on the important quest but kept deviating to explore elsewhere, and said “that doesn’t feel very jedi knight.” but from the interviews i’ve read with cameron, the point he emphasized most was that these are trying times in the universe and we are going to see cal do unconventional things that aren’t what a classic jedi would do, because he can’t do that. plus it’s a video game, if you feel bad about doing side quests, then that’s your problem. games need extra content other than a main story (this was fallen order’s biggest flaw in my opinion).

i have a slight feeling the negative reviews are from people who aren’t exactly attached to the previous characters. a big part of fallen order that made it as fantastic of an experience as it was for me was that i immediately connected with the protagonist and other characters. their emotional journeys meant something to me, and it was a very emotionally impactful experience to see it play out as i progressed. watching cal come to term with his fears and dark past, he was able to reach a new level of strength needed to face darth vader and escape with his life. and while it’s not a dramatic end to the story, they end up back in square one, it’s still important. it’s easy to dream big and want to restore the jedi order. but finding these kids puts them at risk. when they reach the end of the story, they realize they should let the force decide the futures of the force sensitives, instead of deciding it for themselves. i believe cal’s mentality was along the lines of “i don’t want others to experience the same suffering i’ve been through because of my own actions.” and he has visions of himself turning to the dark side and having to kill what he sought out in the first place. the fear and likelihood of failure is too much of a risk, even if it’s the only option they have left.

the whole point of this series is how these characters are entering dark times where they need to make increasingly harder decisions. lines are blurring and survival is slimming. having some sort of attachment to these characters is important. who these characters are and what compels them to do what they do is vital to appreciating any story. so in short, anyone who’s giving an extra low rating probably didn’t understand it.. or care about it. i understand just wanting to play a game, but when reviewing something, you can’t ride off the plot because it didn’t spell out everything for you. im sure this game will also have a heavy deal of nuance, which we saw a lot of in andor as well (which gained the same sort of criticism. people not caring enough to fully understand. just wanting cool action sequences). and we know sw fans aren’t exactly the brightest sometimes😊

anyway im totally just rambling for the sake of making this post longer. i don’t have any predictions, i already know its gonna be good 🤷‍♀️

things i dont want: romance. we just dont need it. (and fans of a certain ship can SHUT UP AND DIE)

[eggdrawsthings]

Anymore info/art you can offer up on that padawan, i really really like their design (sorry if youve already answered this somewhere, im new)

oh hhahah dw anon, i dont think i ever talk about them here. I only rambling about Phong to my friends in our group chat, and rotating them in my head sometimes lmao. i gotta admit that i made them out of a whim cos i wanted to have an OC to work on my pose studies. Also i wanted to see our traditional clothing (this particular one is called áo tấc/áo ngũ thân) mixed w the Jedi robe. So yeh other than some random tidbits, i dont have any elaborated background story for them like other cool SW OCs u saw on this hellsite YvY Well a bit about Phong is they r an ace enby, goes by he/they. They prob existed around the same time as Cal, maybe a bit b4 the war started, so they def met Cal and Grogu before (prob even Ahsoka on some rare gathering occasions but they r a quiet little lad so i dont think they have the gut to approach her out of nowhere haha). They are headstrong tho, and is very interested in learning about other civilizations that also wield the Force (a bit of a nerd i would say). They def look up to Eno Cordova, and later on Chirrut (they met during a mission on Jedha) I dont have that many sketches of Phong. they mostly exist in my brain and i only have the drive to actually work on them again lately lmao.

[arliganzey]

Some GAR HQ Zey thoughts in no particular order:

In addition to the blue lapis desk and bantha leather chairs, Zey’s office also has a small sofa and table up against the wall. It’s meant to be for less formal, private meetings but Zey doesn’t have many of those (if at all). This is referred to by Maze and Zey as the “nap couch” because it’s where they take 20 minute power naps. Those two can probably count on one hand the number of times they’ve seen their actual beds since the start of the war.

When Maze says Zey “makes caf” it should probably be clear that the tapcaf machine actually makes the caf--it's one of those 'put cup down and push button' machines. But Zey has taken it upon himself to make sure the tapcaf machine is up and running, like actually cleaning the machine when the 'clean' light goes on instead of ignoring it and hoping for the best like everyone else does.

It’s also Zey who gets a mini conservator put in and stocked with milk/cream/etc and actual mugs in addition to the to go cups. He gets good caf instead of GAR issue, but he keeps it on the down low because he feels bad he can’t distribute the good caf more widely in the field. GAR HQ just has “the mysteriously good caf.”

Zey’s love language is serving caf. It's always been his thing, making sure there's caf out for visitors, and now that there's a war on, he still makes a point of it.

[racco0nriotgrrrl]

Hey everyone! I just kinda wanted to share the story of how I developed an ed because I’ve never actually told this to anyone before. WARNING: it might be triggering to some!!! This is a very long ramble of over sharing so if you don’t wanna read it, no worries.

I was underweight for almost all my childhood after 1st grade because I was on anxiety and ADD meds that supressed my appetite and I ran cross country and did swim team. It wasn’t until I stopped taking these medications around 7th grade because my parents finally listened to me when I told them I had insomnia and falling asleep at 11pm after laying awake for hours and then waking up at 3am multiple times a week wasn’t a normal sleep cycle and insomnia was a side effect of these meds. After this I gained weight, reached a healthy weight and my parents weighed me periodically as they always had when I was underweight and having, been indoctrinated with diet culture from the media already, seeing the pounds go on upset me, despite the fact that my parents were happy I was at a healthy weight. My newly un-medicated anxiety didn’t help. I was about 12 at this point and thought I was fat. I eventually started to grow more comfortable with my body by the time I started highschool but I missed hearing “you’re underweight” at the doctor or having people say “wow you weight nothing!” When I was picked up. I’ve also always hated having boobs. I always wished I was flat chested and as I gained weight my chest had gotten bigger of course which made me uncomfortable. But It wasn’t until I was 15 that I one day mentioned in conversation to a friend that I thought I was thin. My friend responded with “...I mean I wouldn’t say you’re thin... but like thinnish.” I was devastated. I thought I had gotten fat. How could I not have seen it in the mirror before? I was huge. I thought I should have never let myself gain weight after I stopped my meds. I was at a healthy weight already (the SW in my bio) but I decided I needed to lose. I started restricting. I skipped meals, didn’t pack myself lunch or stayed at school and did homework so I could miss dinner and then lied that I was with my friends if I knew my family had a high cal dinner planned. I started exercising whenever I could when no one was home. I weighed myself daily on the scale in my parents’ bathroom after they left for work in the morning. After this I’ve always had terrible anxiety about gaining weight. The numbers started to go down and of course that became addicting to see. My ed had developed and my restricting got more and more extreme until I reached the point where I am now. I’m back to the same weight I was right before I stopped my meds. I’m now trying to maintain my weight and really not lose anymore because I realize how unhealthy I am. I still feel a lot of guilt when I try to eat more because I’m still terrified of gaining weight. I’m scared I’ll end up back at my SW again and I still have body dysmorphia that makes it hard for me to be happy with my appearance. Anyways thanks for reading my story of you did. Stay safe everyone and please recover if you can <3

[arliganzey]

Hello!

First of all, I'm living for your Rep Com musings. 😍 As a relatively new fan to the series, I've been wondering how the Skirata gang would handle some of the "official" canon stuff like the inhibitor chips. If you ever have time or inclination, I'd love to know your thoughts. 🥰

K'oyacyi! 😊

Thank you, vod!! I have DO have a lot of thoughts. I've only just bEGUN with my Repcomm BS

So new canon and Republic Commando/Legends canon...

I think a lot of what’s in current SW canon is just incompatible with Repcomm/Legends. Like even entertaining the idea of inhibitor chips in Repcomm, I think the Nulls would have found out when they hacked the systems on Kamino. That derails like a looot of the book plot. Even if they didn't know what the chips would be used for, the idea that there's a way to control all of the clones against their will would make it impossible to continue supporting the war.

I also don't like the inhibitor chips. I think it's a lazy plot device. It also ignores the very easy totally applicable reality that by the third year of the war, there could have been widespread discontent with how the war's been conducted and talk of clones being a 'slave army' to the Jedi.

I think Repcomm did a really good job laying out how Order 66 was totally possible just based on the conduct of the Jedi during the war. And I'm not a Jedi hater! The Jedi Order had its motivations and loyalty the Republic for many reasons. And the moral high ground of thinking they're 'doing the right thing' by keeping the Republic intact.

TCW was a kids show that didn't dig into the morality of the situation and slapped inhibitor chips in the clones.

I have thoughts about the Jedi pertaining to Zey's storyline/motivations, but another time!

The only current SW canon stuff that could have been interesting to see written into the Repcomm series if it was written now is if we had the New Mandalorians/Kryze government and also the diaspora of surviving exiled True Mandalorians with Jango Fett as Manda'lor calling upon the Cuy'val Dar to train the clone army for the Republic. There would be a loooot of explaining to do, I think it would be really hard to argue Jango would do something like that for the Republic when they instilled a 'pacifist' government on Mandalore, even if it was for revenge on the Jedi. But with the right motivations/set pieces it could have been a way to tell the story of the true Mandalorian's cultural genocide and the after effects.

All right, that's enough, getting off my soapbox now~

Idk, I am very happy writing my silly little fics, OCs, and headcanons in the Repcomm/legends canon.

[arliganzey]

Since I have infinite time (not) I now have 4 fics I'm working on:

Again and Again: the smutty fluffy story of Vau/Zey finding love after the war

A fic picking right up at the end of Hard Contact because I need to know literally everything about Zey and Etain training resistance fighters on Qiilura

A fic where Maze is introduced to Zey and Bardan for the first time and then I'm just going to follow their GAR HQ shenanigans as I see fit

A fic about my OCs Cael and Jatne meeting on Coruscant that I've been picking at for 6 months don't look at me

I need to work on my time management skills ASAP.

[arliganzey]

Kal vs. Satine would be funny as hell. She's everything he absolutely loathes in one taller than him package. 😂

I first read this as 'what if they were in a gladiatorial style fight?' And I was like, oh that would not be a spectacle! It would be taking a lamb to the slaughterhouse. An execution. Just plain murder.

But did you mean a verbal confrontation?? 😂

Definitely would depend on the context they meet, but Kal doesn't give any respect that isn't earned, so it would probably get a little ugly and result in him walking out (before he can be escorted out). But yeah I'd pay to see his short ass exchanging words with Satine who is half a foot taller than him AND wearing a headdress that gives her another half foot on him.

[arliganzey]

SOON

I’m due to rant and rave about Arligan Zey and Republic Commando again very soon