#kinman doriana

[wisedo]

Inktober2023 Day 2 - Spiders

Palpatine and Doriana in an AU where all naboolians are half-spiders

[2stepadmiral]

Been listening to the Thrawn trilogy again recently, and it brings to mind some of the shortcomings of how Thrawn has been portrayed in the Disney Canon.

To be clear, I’m not saying that Thrawn in the Disney Canon has been badly done, or that his character is out of whack, or even that he hasn’t been portrayed as intelligent, let alone, strategically, brilliant. The real problem with his portrayal narrows down to two specific aspects. Number one: his lack of competent subordinates, and number two: his lack of situations where his strategic genius can really be displayed.

On the first problem, Thrawn was introduced in Heir to the Empire with his second in command being Captain Pellaeon. Throughout the trilogy, they are given a clear Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson dynamic. This works on many levels, offering the reader Pellaeon as a stand-in for the reader, having him ask questions about and work out for himself the admiral’s actions and thought process. This provides an organic way to explain Thrawn’s plans, his analysis of problems, and demonstrate his character and brilliance without relying on monologue or use forced exposition. The dynamic is sort of re-created with Jorj Car’dass and Kinman Doriana in the novel outbound flight, with both characters filling the Watson role to some degree.

In rebels, Thrawn has no competent subordinate to do this with. He either has some random, incompetent officer of the week who we don’t see again for a while, a recurring incompetent officer who we’ve seen before, and will likely see again, Ruhk, in very brief instances which gives no means of understanding Thrawn’s character or intellect, or Governor Price, who is decidedly not a military officer and has a very distinctive flavor of incompetence related to her political nature. With most of these characters, the grand Admiral doesn’t waste time breaking down his analysis of the rebel plan or gives a few hints that go completely over their heads. There is one occasion where this dynamic works in his favor, specifically when the idiot captain wasn’t picking up on the fact that they had captured Hera while Thrawn dropped increasingly obvious hints as to who she was. this made for a dramatic and pretty well done revelation as to how intelligent he was, but it only worked the one time. Moving forward, he continued having a deal with these idiots subordinates, which gave no opportunity for him to really stretch his strategic muscles in that same Sherlock/Watson dynamic. The one episode featuring Colonel Yularen was an exception, as the Colonel’s competence gave Thrawn a good partner to work with and demonstrate this dynamic with, but very briefly and only this one time. The rest of the time, he’s working with idiots that don’t provide this kind of competence for him to play off of.

In Ahsoka, Thrawn gets captain Enoch and Morgan Elsbeth, and both characters have an air of competence that should have translated to the Sherlock/Watson dynamic, but Enoch literally never questions anything Thrawn orders him to do, making him completely useless for this dynamic, and Morgan has the dynamic only in a few brief scenes, scenes where the situation makes it difficult for Thrawn to really stretch his chops.

The second problem stems from the situations that Dave is putting him in. Thrawn is a military and strategic genius, who thrives in situations where it is straight up one fleet fighting another fleet, both in large scale campaigns unfolding over a period of months as well as individual battles. He can identify an enemies likely tactics through understanding of his enemies psyche, and understanding he gains through careful study of artwork, artwork that can be created by or simply enjoyed by individuals or entire cultures/species. He can use this understanding to carefully craft strategies against enemy factions and commanders, and he can do this in the heat of an impromptu battle, or in the context of carefully laid out campaigns put together in whatever time frame he required. The entire Thrawn trilogy puts both of these abilities on display, introducing him by immediately crafting the perfect battle plan against a suddenly appearing New Republic task force in the first chapter of the first book, and then later consistently crafting one brilliant plan after another that builds on each other like a series of chess moves.

Now, the thing is, it’s pretty easy for a strategist to show his competence in a theater of war against affection of close to equal strength, such as the Empire and the New Republic in this timeframe of five years after Endor. It’s difficult to show the same kind of cunning and brilliance when the context is in all powerful galaxy spanning Empire trying to track down and eliminate a number of small rebel cells instead of going toe to toe with an enemy fraction of equal strength. As such, it makes sense that Thrawn was sort of out of his element in rebels. Even so, he was never really given an opportunity to demonstrate his strategic brilliance, simply because the circumstances of this timeframe made that impossible. They could show him being just barely one step ahead of the rebels as they try to escape his ship, or the factory he was inspecting, or a trap he had laid the plans for and entrusted to a less competent officer, but the effect of this makes him seem simply competent instead of brilliant. When they could show him engage in a proper battle, the sheer volume of resources, personnel, and fire power at his disposal, makes his victory pretty much certain when his enemies are a ragtag group of rebels, with significantly fewer fighters, warships that are significantly weaker and older, and transports that are completely unarmed. This lineup makes any real strategy to defeat the enemy, excessive, and unnecessary, and really difficult to show. That’s why the only two real battles he engages in (Atollon and the attack on the Lothal factory) do nothing to display the grand admirals intelligence. He wins by default based on his overwhelming firepower and resources, not based on a specifically tailored strategy for that particular situation with that particular commander.

In Ahsoka, they touch on his strategic brilliance and tendency to read his opponents, but because his overall goal here was simply to escape, and buying time rather than actually destroying his opponent was all he really needed, it doesn’t come off as brilliant and it doesn’t give him an opportunity to really show off his intelligence. In the final episode of Ahsoka, they could have had a five minute scene when Thrawn returns to the galaxy and meets a new Republic task force, and then proceeds to utterly annihilate the force, despite having only a single damaged Star Destroyer at his disposal.

I remember reading recently that when adding Thrawn to rebels, the biggest challenge was creating situations where he would be involved, but it wouldn’t be his fault that the empire lost. My response to that is simply, then why not have the rebels lose every now and then? Why not have them barely fail to acquire their goal simply because the Grand Admiral was distantly involved, or have them fail outright every now and then because he outthought them at every turn? Maybe have an episode or an arc where they try to help Senator Garm Bel Iblis (who I am very sore about his exclusion from rebel specifically and Disney Canon in general) defect from the Empire and escape Corellia, but due to Thrawn intervening at the last second, the senator’s family is killed.

Point being, I believe that Canon Thrawn is just as intelligent and strategically brilliant as expanded universe Thrawn, he just hasn’t been given situations where he can thrive and truly demonstrate that ability.

[deep-aural-fixation]

I've been listening to the recent Oitbound Flight audiobook, and have a few thoughts. I've had the older one since the early 2000s, and it's an abridged version. It's a decent telling, and I'll forever appreciate that this was what made me realize that I had been pronouncing C'baoth wrong all those prior years (seriously, Star Wars novels need a pronunciation guide).

New one is really nice. And the voices are a lot more varied. However, I cannot help but hear Kinman Dorian as anyone but Mr.Burns. Every one of his lines, I have seen Mr.Burns delivering it. And Qennto can only be Macho Man Randy Savage to my ears. That one isn't as close as Doriana/Burns, but I see Randy Savage in all his neon tassled glory every time Qennto pipes up. Thrawn has his Mikkleson voice, and he does a good job of it. And Car'das sounds like a total weenie, which is a fun.

And Ar'alani has a Colonel Klink voice.

Not complaints or even nitpicks, that's just where my mind goes. I don't often gravitate to audiobooks for that reason. Can't wait to see where they go with the Survivor's Quest one.

[doctorwenqing]

okay no offense mr. zahn but i’ve read at LEAST four fanfics that start exactly like this

[aliastov]

kinman doriana being like "sorry chancellor palpatine i've got to go" and then getting on a holocall with darth sidious is the funniest thing i've read in any star wars book ever. like you know palpatine is doing his best not to giggle the whole time

[dalekofchaos]

Darth Plagueis A Star Wars Story fancast

My other Star Wars Fancasts 

Canon

Legends

KOTOR

KOTOR II

The Force Unleashed

Shadows Of The Empire

Boba Fett

The Thrawn Trilogy

Prequel Trilogy Reboot

Original Trilogy Reboot

Ralph Fiennes as Darth Plagueis

Bill Skarsgård as Young Sheev Palpatine

Doug Bradley as Darth Tenebrous

Robert Caryle as Darth Venamis

Anthony Hopkins as Cosinga Palpatine

Seth Green as 11-4D

Nicolas Cage as Vidar Kim

Colm Feore as Sate Pestage

Robert Picardo as Kinman Doriana

John Bradley-West as Pax Teem

Hiroyuki Sanada  as Sifo-Dyas

Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn

Ewan McGregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi

Ray Park as Darth Maul

Jackson Robert Scott as Anakin Skywalker

[hegodamask]

10 years on and I’m still trying to process that scene where Palpatine flirted with the hostess…

The steak, “are you one of those men with a friend in every space port?”, “I’m always eager to make friends”, when she jokes about him being a Jedi, when she touches his chin, the fact that Kinman Doriana is just sitting there, “getting to know the galaxy’s women, he means”, “trails of conquests.” I’ve never been the same since.

[rugessnome]

Hego Damask: let! Wat! Tambour! listen to schranz!

Rugess Nome: ...

Nute Gunray: ...

Count Dooku: ...

Cosinga Palpatine: ...

Kinman Doriana: ...

Vidar Kim: ...

Mak Plain: ...

Greedo: (at least it's not j i z z lol)

Qymaen jai Sheelal: ...

Larsh Hill: ...

San Hill: ...no one's stopping him?

Yoda: ...

Bastila Shan: ...

Valenthyne Farfalla: ...

Wat Tambour: H a r d t e c h n o SCHRANZ m i x 10 HOURS

11-4D: ...

Caar Damask: ...

Sifo-Dyas: ...

the entire Order of the Canted Circle: ...

3 Maladians: ...

Darth Plagueis: I literally cannot tell that metallic banging and your music apart.

[girlbossk]

kinman doriana is a really familiar name but i can’t remember if he’s real nice or evil or just ends up getting murdered

[sabbathism]

#palpatine’s staff when they move to coruscant for the first time: 🤯 😱 😰#kinman doriana who loves debauchery and the seedy underworld life but will definitely get mugged on his first night out: 😏#sate pestage who has to show them all around and make sure no one dies: 😒 😤#star wars

had to keep the tags

Ok so Palpatine’s family was rich so like he had experience off of Naboo at 17 but like imagine how fucking funny it would be if someone who has never left Naboo suddenly had to live somewhere like the coruscant mid to lower levels

I honestly think it would be like enchanted type shit with a character from a fantasy kingdom is magical transported to like the big city

Like ✨this✨

To this

Anyway I propose a fish out of water oc from Naboo that gets adopted into a rowdy group of Coruscanti locals

bonus he gets a makeover so he doesn’t immediately get mugged out and about in elaborate Naboo dress and still looks like a total dork

[carrdas]

» a cursory glance at jorj car’das’s career ( part one, 27 BBY - 12 BBY )

born on talus  ( one of the five brothers of the corellian system )  in 50 BBY, then moving to the system capital of corellia & that planet’s capital of coronet city at the age of three, car’das had always been around & involved with starships. not uncommon for a corellian, the need to be out amongst the stars was something that was always a part of him. his mother was a mechanic, working at the coronet city spaceport, & his father was an low-level engineer for the corellian engineering corporation. in his earliest memories are starships. he wasn’t ever interested in making or repairing them … but flying them? absolutely. 

he attended primary & secondary & academy schooling in coronet, specializing in navigation & starship piloting, then took a few temporary shipping jobs with freighters which were taking cargo to some ports in the outer rim. he loved the traveling, but quickly discovered that there was much about the galaxy that he didn’t know. returning to coronet after a trip out to lothal, he got into contact with a friend from his academy days, maris ferasi, who told him of an available navigator’s position on board the bargain hunter. he jumped at the chance for more stable work, work that would take him off world for longer than a week or so at a time. 

six months into his time on the bargain hunter, car’das & the rest of the bargain hunter’s crew were stranded in the unknown regions of the galaxy after a nasty run in with a hutt, & taken captive by commander mitth’raw’nuruodo of the chiss expasionary defense fleet. they spent three months in commander thrawn’s company, learning about the chiss & also receiving lessons in minnisiat & cheunh while also giving thrawn lessons in basic & informing him about the galactic republic. upon their departure back to the regions controlled by the republic, car’das was offered a job by another human from the republic, doriana kinman, an aide to then chancellor palpatine. however, doriana was also an agent of the more shadowy figure darth sidious, working to achieve his master’s goals from the highest seat of power in the republic’s bureaucracy. kinman recruited car’das to create & run an intelligence network on behalf of darth sidious & his agents, which would be disguised as a smuggling operation. after receiving encouragement from thrawn, to whom car’das had grown very close, he decided to accept the job & began immediately upon his return to republic space, in 27 BBY.

he was given a few contacts & a few resources with which to begin forging this smuggling & intelligence network, but after the initial aid of kinman, the operation became almost completely his own. he created further contacts, he recruited more information brokers & spies, he began to build a smuggling operation that gained a fair amount of traction in the outer & mid rim worlds. 

while still marginally small, especially in contrast to the vast holdings of the hutts & other outer rim kingpins, car’das’s ingenuity & his talent for the work  ( a talent he hadn’t really known he’d possessed until it was required of him to cultivate it )  helped him start an organization which would eventually, by the time of his abrupt departure from the known galaxy in 0 BBY, be one of the largest & most comprehensive smuggling operations in the galaxy.

in the years leading up to the clone wars, car’das’s main focus & concern was building his contacts, his network, & his organization. he fed intelligence on the growing separatist movement, as well as the countermovements of galactic systems & senators, shipping & smuggling trends, potential troublemakers & subversives, to kinman during this time, establishing himself as a valuable source of information. when the clone wars broke out in 22 BBY, car’das’s intelligence network became even more vital. 

however, his smuggling operation also received a boost during the war, as well. 

he spent the war years sending information to kinman, yes, but he also made a name for himself & his organization in the galaxy’s fringe. he smuggled supplies, necessities, luxuries that months prior would have been easy to find, bacta, etc. all to war torn worlds whose officials were willing to pay. his organization was reliable, professional, & daring. their success rate was surprising to all but car’das. he’d made certain to hire the best pilots, the best people, & had won their loyalty with his courage, charisma, & strategy. 

when the war ended in 19 BBY, car’das’s organization was no longer a small operation, only known by a few. it was at that time recognized as an up-and-coming group, with the connections & clients that might, in a few years’ time, rival the hutt’s vast smuggling empire. 

in the immediate post-war years, he continued in his role as an informant – his intelligence network was still a crucial part of his organization. however, as the war had proven, smuggling was, in general, the more profitable of his two enterprises. his focus moved more & more to that side of his work, while his intelligence network began to take on a more personal role. he still gave information to imperial central, through kinman, & did see some value in helping the new government create a stable environment in the galaxy ( while still making certain that his smuggling was viable & not giving the bureaucracy enough information to sink his livelihood ) – but as time drifted on, he beceame disillusioned with the empire’s ability to provide order, & as kinman’s duties took his focus elsewhere ( also in consideration is the fact that darth sidious had taken over & the need for a covert, independent intelligence network had somewhat dissipated ), car’das became less & less likely to pass along what information he learned. 

he instead began to build a private library of datacards. he’s seen how valuable information can be. but, again, all this took a back seat to his smuggling. 

in 16 BBY, thrawn returned to car’das’s life, & with him, some of car’das’s waning interest in the success of the empire’s new order. he began to feed useful & pertinent information to his friend, who spent the next few years rising dramatically in the ranks of the imperial navy. by the year 12 BBY, car’das had completely abandoned handing over any useful data or intelligence to imperial central, & instead only gave information to thrawn or kept it for himself. 

by this time, his organization had spread across the galaxy, with operations from the raioballo sector in the outer rim all the way to takodana in the mid rim. 

[vadianna]

Outbound Flight

I liked Thrawn so much that I decided I needed to read the alternate version of what happened in it.  And it existed!  Which was great.  It’s not really an alternate version, which I knew, but it’s still a Thrawn story, so.

Not so great - the short story Mist Encounter was in the back of Outbound Flight, and it was the first chapter of Thrawn.  Like, unambiguously.  Zahn just took a short story from 1995 and used it as the first chapter of his new novel 22 years later.  Not just any short story.  I did not dig this out of RPG supplements/magazines/whatever it was originally in.  This was in the in-print paperback version of Outbound Flight, where everyone can see.

Otherwise, I liked Thrawn a lot better, though Outbound Flight was... okay.  Mostly what killed it for me was the extensive space battles, which I have a hard time picturing and tend to throw me out of the narrative in these novels.  And I probably should have known better in a novel where the plot was an exploratory mission by six Dreadnoughts tied together, but here we are.

Wow, this wound up being talky.  Whatever.  I guess I didn’t talk about Thrawn, so I’ll talk about this.

I tend to hate unnecessary cameos in these, but I know that’s just me, and I know why they’re there.  Anakin and Obi-Wan are in here, and I loved seeing them early on in the padawan training, and I love them in general, but they didn’t serve a purpose other than to get a little more perspective of Lorana, which could have been done without them.  

The plot was... good.  I did like the way the Chiss Ascendancy was set up, especially the bureaucracy that Thrawn had to navigate (more successfully here than in the eponymous novel - it is his home turf, but I do like that both versions of Thrawn aren’t super-thrilled with doing it).  And I liked the way he captured and used Car’das and his crew to his own ends, though I wasn’t super-thrilled that Ferasi, who had more knowledge and seemed generally more useful, wasn’t the perspective character.  For whatever reason, Car’das was the preferred contact, and Ferasi was implied to be attracted to Thrawn.  Whatever.

It... didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me why C’baoth was allowed to do Outbound Flight, or... why Palpatine would care enough about it to let it happen so it could be destroyed?  I guess the idea was that Palpatine could push the project through, if C’baoth was so hot for it, and kill a dozen or so Jedi that way, but it seems like a lot of work for a man who has a long game going that ends with all of them dying anyway.  Why C’baoth was hot for it also wasn’t clear - he wanted to investigate the disappearance of a Jedi, but... that wasn’t really explained.  I assumed it was referencing another story, except usually in-universe references... explain better than that?  In general, it seemed more like Palpatine thought C’baoth was annoying, and this was as good a way as any to kill him, which amuses me greatly.

It’s also both annoying and hilarious that C’baoth is portrayed as such a jerk, but so good at his job that even the Jedi Council is falling all over themselves to give him whatever unreasonable thing he wants.  This is essentially what happens in Thrawn too, to Thrawn, for similarly unclear reasons.

Whenever I read one of these, I think about how to portray Thrawn without a buddy, and it’s a fun challenge.  I like him, but I finished this and the Thrawn trilogy wanting more from him.  Thrawn felt a little better, I think he was a little more open in it, and also that his lack of skill with diplomacy was a thing.  But he’s a little clinical and godlike when he’s a detached genius like this, even when he’s obviously fallible, by long-distance Force choke or Kinman Doriana hitting the button, or whatever.

[doctorwenqing]

i laughed very hard at thrawn’s “perhaps” and then the next line hit me like a brick to the head

[celinamarniss]

Your characterization of Palpatine seems a lot more cerebral and self-controlled than some other authors' interpretations. Is this a reflection of your view of the character, or does it tell us more about the people through whose perceptions these opinions are being mediated? Mara, Kinman Doriana, and (although he's never directly a point-of-view character) Grand Admiral Thrawn?

Timothy Zahn: It’s more the latter, combined with what I assume would be Palpatine's natural craftiness in trying to make himself All Things to All People. Mara, Doriana, and certainly Thrawn are themselves cerebral types who value self-control and would be rather disconcerted by someone who appears as either a wild-eyed maniac or a vicious control freak. Ergo, for them Palpatine casts himself as someone they can respect and work with.

(x)

[fanwarriors-des-fandoms]

[FFN FanWarriors]

D'autres faits Légendaires #3 - Tout connaître sur Kinman Doriana

Faits bonus à notre autre recueil "Des faits Légendaires en vrac". Il s'agit ici de biographies plus complètes de personnages, de réponses à des questions posées sur la saga, etc... [En lien avec la chaîne YouTube de la Guerrière du Fandom.]

>> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13333079/3/D-autres-faits-L%C3%A9gendaires

[hegodamask]

blorbo asks: star wars

answering for @libraryoftheancients and the anon who asked too. thanks!

disclaimer: i'm keeping my answers within my specific niche because star wars is just so huge. if i considered my faves in the franchise as a whole we’d be here all day!

blorbo: Do I need to say it? Do I actually need to say it?

scrunkly: Plagueis in the sense that yes, he's a terrifying and evil Sith lord, but he's also just a quirky guy. He's a nerd! He's polite to droids! He’s my baby actually.

scrimblo bimblo: I’ve been thinking about Shmi Skywalker a lot recently. Actually I think all the Sith Mothers ™ are underrated queens. They don’t get enough love from the fandom or the writers unfortunately.  

glup shitto: How can you narrow this down when Star Wars invented the glup shitto??? Every very member of Palpatine’s political squad is my glup shitto: Sly Moore, Sate Pestage, Kinman Doriana, Mas Amedda, Sim Aloo, Janus Greejatus, literally all of them.

poor little meow meow: Maul with his sisyphean struggle to get true revenge and become a major player in the galaxy 😔

horse plinko: Palpatine, obviously. He deserves it. 

eeby deeby: SNOKE. Never want to see that mf again 😤