#obviously there's the fact he's a side character in an underfunded children's cartoon

[nicki0kaye]

you.

@mymblesbuir, you get it

that bitch was so ready to die. it was pure chance he was able to escape, and like. Obviously he does create a plan on the fly, but I think that shit was him moving on instinct. And even then, it was a CRAPSHOOT that the Ghost would catch his escape pod at all.

and there was no plan beyond that.

he barely integrates into the rebellion, is still talking like a bond villain, idk maybe its just how I see him, but the man is not adjusting. Not in how he speaks or carries himself, and that has to be a choice for such a calculating person. I do think there's an aspect of he just can't turn it off, but I also think that he just straight up doesn't know what he'd do if he DID. Like...he has no idea what to do with himself. He is consciously out of place, in part because he never thought he'd get out. I don't know if he still believes he should be out beyond, like, having no choice and also being a genuine asset for the rebellion.

idk, its just something I love to think about, how out of place he is and how conscious he must be of that fact and how much of it is his choice to remain so obviously Imperial-in-Rebel-Clothing. How much does the dissonance bother him? Is he doing it to keep ppl at a distance? Is he playing to ppls expectations or his own? Is he genuinely so focused on work that he doesn't care to loosen up or is he using work as an excuse to avoid having to rebuild outside the strict but known social parameters of the Empire?

is he genuinely comfortable in his own skin, or is it just the skin he's worn for so long, he can't trust what he might find underneath? There's so much more going on, after all. Him 'finding' himself is such a low fuckin priority.

I got to explore that a bit in my 'Meet the In-Laws' Kalluzeb fic for those curious. The context is he's met with his older brother, Tuz, who is giving him flack for covering his tattoos and keeping up a fake accent. Tuz insists it's because Alex was ashamed of his family. Alex goes off;

"I was an Imperial spy who had defected to the Rebellion," Alex hisses. He can hear his own voice going pitchy from stress, from the strain of keeping it lowered and this private conversation private, but he has to explain, or more accurately, he couldn't stop himself from explaining, now, if he tried. It just has to come out. Tuz has no idea what wound he's prodding at– (Would Zeb? No, Alex has never told him, not in so many words. He's never told anyone.) "I was under constant scrutiny after–after nearly two decades of pretending to be a model example of the Empire's–of humanity's superiority, hunting down and snuffing out any descent! Do you know what would have happened if I suddenly dropped that act? Hmm? After switching sides? When everyone around me was scrutinizing my every move, because they either suspected or were out right certain I was some triple agent? Still bowing and scraping for the Emperor behind closed doors? All the grace I'd earned would have gone up in smoke, that's what. Wasted on something as juvenile as ego." Blood now pounding in his ears, Alex starts punctuating each declaration with a rough stab at the table. "They needed to trust me. I needed them to trust me so I could do my job! Yes, I hid my tattoos, because I didn't have time to waste, explaining how I got them and whether they were authentic. I didn't start talking like I used to because it didn't matter, and it would have only distracted from the karking war." He cuts himself off, there. Swallows down around the rest–how isolating it was, how claustrophobic it felt at times, how maddening the contradiction of it was, that he was free and still, voluntarily trapped in his Imperial costume. How he had so many selfish reasons for leaving the Empire and near all of them were set aside for the sake of the Rebellion, and that it ate at him– –that it eats at him still, 8 standard months out and still stuck in his ways, afraid of upsetting the tentative balance he's found with Zeb in their new home. It's choking him slowly, and still he clings to what he knows, falls back on the bad habits and the lies, continues to make excuses for why it just isn't 'the right time' to begin his soul searching, to find who he 'really' is. (When is he going to admit to Garazeb how afraid he is that there's nothing under the costume to find?)