#v wars meta

[adh-d2]

If there's one thing The Bad Batch nails every time, it's a dramatically lit face-off:

The animation on this show is just goddamn stunning.

[ospreyeamon]

the falls of the revanchist jedi

The narrative doesn’t directly examine why the Jedi who followed Revan and Malak fell. It is spoken of as a given – they followed Revan into war, so they followed Revan into darkness. That’s not how people work though. That’s not even how people under the influence of the Dark Side of the Force work. Spending twenty years as Palpatine’s thrall didn’t prevent Vader from throwing his Master into the reactor shaft to save his son. Revan can murder every NPC available to be murdered until reaching Rakata Prime only to pull a 180, redeem Bastila, and be feted as a hero of the Republic, Sith-eyes and all.

All but one of the surviving Revanchist Jedi who followed Revan and Malak into the Mandalorian Wars followed them again into the Jedi Civil War. Even the Exile, that lone dissenting actor, can say that they would have fought with their fellows against the Republic had their connection to the Force not been severed; that they were unable, not unwilling. Yet, the Exile can also say that they would not have followed Revan and Malak in attacking the Republic, that they went to war to defend the innocent. Many of the other Jedi who joined the war effort alongside them must have felt the same way, in the beginning.

Many of the soldiers of the Republic like Carth Onasi returned home after the Mandalorian Wars were over, even those like Saul Karath who would bow to Revan again. What then are the factors that led every surviving Revanchist Jedi, save the Exile, to follow Revan from the Mandalorian Wars into the Jedi Civil War?

1) The Mandalorian Wars changed the Jedi who fought in them. The Exile’s dialogue provides the different reasons why they might have left to fight in the war – to protect the innocent, to test their power, to defend the Republic, to win glory – reflecting varying motivations of Knights and Padawans recruited by Revan and Malak. However, despite the differences in the initial reasons for defying the Jedi Council to answer the Republic’s call, they all would have gone through similar uniting experiences during the war. Terrible experiences. Shared hardship often serves to reinforce group identity.

Older Jedi like Kavar and Arren Kae had fought wars before, but the initial expedition led by Revan and Malak was almost entirely composed of young Knights and older Padawans. Military morality, ethics in warfare, tends to be rather twisted from the perspective of modern western civilian morality. Your ability to prosecute the war and the safety of your soldiers takes priority over the lives of enemy, and sometimes even allied, civilians. Ruthless is more than a virtue, it’s a necessity. Collateral damage is an inevitability. For young relatively inexperienced Jedi, raised on ideals of valuing all life and always seeking non-violent resolutions, the transition to military command positions where they were not only required to kill, not only required to led troops to their death, but required to give orders which they knew would directly result in the deaths of civilians would have been distressing.

We know that the Exile once led troops directly into a minefield during the Battle of Dxun, but I think that barely scratched the surface. We aren’t given the full laundry list of the Mandalorians’ war crimes, but at the very least it includes the crime of aggression, murder of civilians, use of child soldiers, and conscription of captured civilians into the Neo-Crusaders and for forced labour. Given this disregard for the lives of civilians, I consider it likely that the Mandalorians also used hostages and headquartered themselves inside buildings like schools and hospitals. I suspect both sides used poison weapons, nuclear weapons, torture, and executed prisoners of war.

2) The Battle of Malachor V was a purge and a crucible of conversion. Kreia, HK-47, and the recording of Bastila Shan all say it; “a series of massacres that masked another war, a war of conversion”, “the intention was to destroy the Jedi, break their will, and make them loyal to Revan … Revan was "cleaning house" at Malachor V”, “to convert the last of the Jedi who fought beside [Revan] – and murder those who would not”. The Jedi in the radius of the Mass Shadow Generator would have included the Jedi Revan did not believe would agree with the plan to invade the Republic.

I think many of the Revanchist Jedi had already been falling by inches before Malachor. The Mandalorian Wars were brutal and one of the major symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is emotional dysregulation. Irritability, anxiety, depression, guilt, anger – the ongoing effects of trauma make a person more susceptible to inadvertently drawing on the Dark-Side of the Force. Using the Dark-Side of the Force was forbidden by the Code enforced by the Jedi Council, but the Revanchists had been pressured to compromise their ethics in other ways to effectively prosecute the war.

For any Jedi who had not already fallen, the detonation of the Mass Shadow Generator was a final blow they could not withstand. They all fell – into the Dark-Side, into death, away from the Force.

This was the conversion that Revan desired. The moral conversation – the acceptance of actions that violated their previous moral code, the previous moral code that would not have permitted making war on the Republic. The conversion in the Force – pushing Jedi to the Dark-Side ensured that they would not be accepted back into the Order by the Jedi Council even if they desired to return.

3) The Jedi Council’s decision to exile the Jedi who returned to face them was a gift to Revan and Malak. The Council’s judgement might have been rooted in their discomfort with what the Exile had become but the reason they publicly gave is that the Exile disobeyed the Council to follow Revan to war. That reason applied equally to every single other Revanchist. By exiling the one Revanchist to return the Jedi Council exiled them all, whether or not they intended to. They may not have, but by deciding to keep secret the true reasons behind their sentence of exile they ensured the other Revanchists could interpret their judgement no other way.

Telling the Revanchist Jedi they would never be welcome to return to the Jedi Order ensured that they would never go back. Onwards was the only path left to them.

4) Revan was extremely charismatic and competent. The Revanchist Jedi had already decided that Revan and Malak judgement was better than the Jedi Council’s when they chose to defy the Council’s orders to follow them to war. Revan, Malak and the Revanchists then won the war for the Republic. In fact, Revan even discovered the shadowy threat the which had been the Council’s justification for sitting out the war through engaging in it, while the Jedi Council remained ignorant.

The Republic government probably bungled the early stages of the Mandalorian Wars by not intervening sooner. The Mandalorians were committing more than enough war crimes for them to justify it, but they allowed Mandalorians to expand their territory, build their forces and industry, and entrench their advantage. When the Republic did enter the war, it wasn’t because the Republic leadership had made a strategic decision, or even a moral one; it was because some corrupt politicians organised bribes to fast-track Taris into the Republic because it was under threat and they wanted to protect their business holdings there. The Jedi Council was also tangled up in the culture of corruption; Lucien Draay was given a seat on the Council even though he’d been accused of planning and assisting the murder of four Padawans because of his powerful family connections.

The Old Republic was more an aristocratic republic than a democratic one. Alderaan, Onderon, the Empress Teta system – they were all monarchies during this period, not democracies. If aristocrats could hold power through right of blood and plutocrats through wealth, then why shouldn’t Revan lead the Galactic Republic by right of merit and conquest?

Revan was secretive, but at least some of the other Revanchist Sith knew about the shadowy threat – the True Sith Empire. If the Republic was going to need to fight another war against an even greater enemy, surely it would need better leadership. Leadership like Revan.

[musclesandhammering]

Loki deserves to have an active role in the multiversal war. He deserves to fight alongside the Avengers. He deserves to save the day, he deserves to use his new time powers against a big bad, he-

[psalmsofpsychosis]

so i talked about Din being so ungodly unpredictable, and after digging a bit deeper beneath the surface of The Mandalorian season1 and 2, i think now i know why.

To the surprise of absolutely noone, Din Djarin is a rogue!! He's a rogue character, that's the foundation of his personality, at any point of his characterization he's designed to stray from structure and to undermine it.

But he's also a knight! and this introduces a very intriguing and fascinating conflict at the heart of his character: the duality of honor, and how he orients himself towards that specific value. He's a knight and a knight is bound by honor and servitude; but in order to save his honor he has to choose what and whom he serves at different points of the narrative, and he has to disobey in order to obide by his honor. A rogue character by definition is the least honoring person, a knight is most honorable. So the heart and the lungs of Din Djarin's characterization is his struggle with servitude and where his values lie, and it's never "this" or "that"; he's constantly switching between rogue and knight in the bat of eyelash, just when you think he's bound to code he abandons mission and when he's supposed to stray he stays and binds himself to a child.

I think introducing him in the position of a king is the most outrageous and hilarious plot twist, because narrative wise, all three archetypes of the Rogue, the Knight and the King have in common the conflict of honor, while the King is most bound to obedience and the Rogue is least concerned with it. So i'm actually quite curious now to know where they'll take season 3 Din Djarin, simply because this is such hefty faceted dynamic and it's quite frankly very ambitious to tackle, we haven't had an archetypal story this intricate in star wars since, well, the original trilogy.

[clonehub]

im reading a book about linguistics so you know what that means! more clonelang headcanons

the clones are very much a tightknit community, but they're also very much hierarchical. in casual conversation, im thinking that anyone can open a topic of conversation, but that a) seemingly irrelevant subject changes can be seen as rude, and b) interrupting is definitely rude

to the second point, obv when conversations get excited or animated within a group of people, there's going to be overlap and interjections, and they can't really be avoided. but clones are distinctly focused on turn-taking and waiting for one person to finish (esp a higher up) before speaking. there's no set order (like age or rank or vet status) to a conversation, but they're v organized in that way. one shows that they pay attention by more or less being silent and facing the speaker (the way one would when receiving orders) and only making small noises or physical displays of assent/dissent.

[iniziare]

Tag drop: Guizhong (don't mind me re-dropping this with the fixed ones, shh)

[burdenedreverance]

The Importance of Duty and Choice

du·ty

noun

a moral or legal obligation; a responsibility.

choice

noun

an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities.

If someone hasn’t guessed a big theme of this blog is the overarching idea of ‘duty’ and ‘choice.’ At what point does someone’s responsibilities end and the consequences of choosing. I like to believe that in writing the character that is Hayden I’ve somewhat developed a throughline in his threads and asks, that he feels obligated to use his natural abilities for a ‘just cause.’ Often times that manifests in a physical bravery and moral courage, as it is the easiest that comes to him. 

But a big question people might have is why does he feel compelled to act this way? When one takes a duty onto them it is usually by some outside force more often than not; society, work, religion, etc. These external forces which speak of responsibility and the burdens we share as a collective. That is not always the case. It has been well documented that an individual might simply feel compelled to aide in the public good, for no reason other than it is the right thing to do. Regardless of the sacrifice to themselves, or livelihood. It is why we place such high emphasis on personal responsibility and personal sacrifice. You do not have to do these things, you choose to. 

Hayden falls into the latter category, of those who merely feel compelled to look after his fellow man because they are human. That by merit of sentience, existence, and common history he has a responsibility to look after them. To fight the battles that some cannot. He was born with a higher-than-average physical ability, and he is a strong-willed man. If he was born with more wit, perhaps smarter, then he might turn those attributes to the common good. 

But he was not. By circumstance and the choices he made, it has made him a fighter. A warrior. His duty isn’t to merely offer his life, to die, it’s to achieve something in the process of it. If by living his life he can better those around him, himself, and the world; than that is his duty. It’s also his choice. I think it’s important to recognize that. That he doesn’t follow dogma merely because of the faction or organization he serves, if he did then his duty would end and begin where they told him it did. 

Is it tragic? Maybe. I don’t particularly see it as that. I don’t think Hayden’s story is particularly sad, to me at least. I think it has elements of sadness, of strife. It also has reassuring moments of victory and vulnerability. He falters, he fails, he grows. When someone is guided by their heart, they’re gonna make the wrong choices. It’s accepting those choices, learning from them, that matters more. 

It might even seem idealistic, or naive. After all, choosing to suffer on the behalf of those who would regard you little is an net loss. There are some people who will never improve, some people who are beyond saving. There are values that you could potentially attach to the lives of people in dangerous situations. ‘Should I protect myself because my worth and skills are of more use than that of this child? This random civilian?’ The answer is always the same for Hayden. It may not be the right answer, it may not even be the sensible answer. 

Circling back. Duty and choice. Responsibility. Burdens are not easy to bear. 

He chooses to be obligated to the world. ‘If not me then who?’ You can’t begin to change the world, or even those around you, without mastering yourself. And these standards, yes standards, he sets for himself is in the hopes that those after him does better than he ever could. The biggest misconception of Hayden is that he thinks he can do it on his own; in reality he’s just someone who believes in setting the example. 

I think at the end of the day, his joy outshines any melancholy in him. 

[tyrannuspitch]

i need to think more about asgardian religion. but i also need to sleep. but ummm thor's faith as a fundamental need vs thor's willingness to radically rebel and leave everything behind vs thor's awful tragic soul-crushing life vs loki's tendencies towards doubt and nihilism vs loki's occasional stark black and white patriotism vs loki condemning himself while thor refuses to let him go while their RELIGION apparently condemns him too..... i am rotating it all in my mind

i know it's loki who says of himself he wld go to hel even after an honourable death and he's maybe not the most reliable source, like maybe there ARE interpretations by which valhalla is not Just Point Blank Space Racist... but i am also just Intrigued by the possibility of a thor who DOES think loki is Fundamentally Damned but loves him regardless

[snipsnipsnippy]

every time I engage with the Star Wars fandom, I am reminded how much I hate the Star Wars fandom because the Star Wars fandom really hates the Star Wars fandom

[nicolabarth]

You know what I really really like about this? Obi-Wan is doing a thing here has been mostly been done by Sith in all of the Star Wars movies and series. He’s appealing to Reva’s emotions. He’s using her emotions to get her to do what he wants. This is not a “I’m a good guy and I beg you to do the right thing” kind of speech. This is a calculated move. He learned something about her and he’s deliberately using that information to channel her anger and hate away from him towards his enemy. He is manipulating. He’s doing it with a good reason and for a good cause, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is manipulating her.

Also:

Idk, if he just misjudged here, but before he proved that he knows Anakin better than anyone. So maybe he lied on purpose. Or he just didn’t care enough to think about it carefully.

But basically:

Vader is asking her here if she was really stupid enough to believe Obi-wan.

I really love a little bit of darkness in my jedi.

[girlswithambition]

Shoutout to Ursula, Palpatine, Kyubey, and all the characters who played a role in their protagonists' bad decisions but escape most of the blame for them. Expert manipulators exploiting surface-level readings.

[starsinlegions]

tag dump

[ospreyeamon]

:/ feelings about kotor 2’s light side ending

Reactivating the Mass Shadow Generator on Malachor V feels wrong to me, thematically. The Sith Lords is a game which is deeply concerned with the past and the past’s continuing effect on the present; the history of the Mandalorian Wars, the ongoing trauma left by the Battle of Malachor V, the tangled legacy of the Jedi and Sith, the cloud of questions around what Revan was doing and why, the linking of the characters’ backstories to these histories and the histories established in the first game.

The Exile must learn to live with their past and carry its lessons forward, even if they have spent the last eight years trying to forget. The final sin of the Jedi Council is their refusal to learn from their mistakes or even to acknowledge that, in hindsight, those choices were mistakes. Activating the Mass Shadow Generator again seems unlikely to achieve anything it did not the first time; destroying the planet can’t change the things that happened there.

So, for me, a better ending would have been to leave Malachor V behind, leave the past behind, knowing it is still there. Kreia’s visions for the futures of Visas, Brianna, Mical, Telos IV, Dantooine, and Nar Shaddaa are of hope and healing. If Malachor V is not destroyed it leaves open the possibility that, in however distant a future, it too will begin to heal.

Blowing up Malachor V feels more the like same kind of choice as hunting down the Jedi Masters to kill them; the Exile trying to resolve their history by stabbing it. But you can’t kill memories, or consequences, or pain. You can only learn to live with them.

 (In a game so occupied with choosing, could you not have let us talk our final cutscene options over with Bao-Dur, Bioware?)

[amongthevipers]

i am once again thinking about viserra getting eaten by cannibal

she was so desperate to prove she was a true targaryen by claiming a dragon that she had to claim the most dangerous one and it ended up being her downfall

like do i think a sixteen year old getting eaten by a dragon stopped the war between her family? not at all, do i think there was a pause, a calm while the blacks mourned? hopefully.

[repairise]

southernwood :   how seriously does your muse take themself ?do they prefer a solemn   &   intellectual atmosphere or do they delight in jokes   &   banter ?

botanical hc's

i think it honestly depends who she’s with. people like linoan and tina, who she’s resigned herself with the duty of protecting, are likely to encounter a more serious safy. she’s also more likely to hold herself seriously in front of nobles/ people of a higher tier in the hierarchy (this includes knights, professors, even the house leaders.)

but i think with friends she’s much more light-hearted. think the youths of leif’s army like tanya, osian, ronan; these people, i feel, she’d be much less uptight with. hell, throw lifis into the mix, too. people who are in a more or less equal footing with her will enjoy a casual safy.

[kadextra]

q!Forever & q!Bad, comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin

(little meta rp analysis & appreciation)

Comedy and tragedy- complimentary concepts when it comes to the dynamic that is these two characters.

Their lore together is truly like a soap opera to me in the way it operates, entertaining in how goofy it is- I laughed so much during interrodate. They had a whole elaborate musical prank war over a stolen gun (which neither of them even had, they’re just too dedicated to the bit.) The first thing they say to each other after q!Forever returns from the nether is “You look terrible!” 💀 and my guy gifted a bloody chainsaw as the flower of the day to q!Bad in purgatory 1 which was happily accepted.

Even when the characters show attraction for each other, it’s usually through some ridiculous romcom thing. q!Forever is in love with q!Bad dressed as pink barbie and thinks photos of her are the best gift a person could ever receive?? 🤨 q!Bad daydreams about q!Forever as a lobster with blonde hair and a six-pack??? brother be projecting him onto larry the lobster from spongebob squarepants dude what is wrong with them 😭 sometimes I wonder how they’re able to do all these bits in improv and take it seriously, it’s impressive

The characters are not normal, their relationship is not normal, it cannot be viewed normally. the ccs know exactly what they’re doing in creating whatever *gestures* this is, and it’s amazing. over the top, cute, played perfectly for comedy

But the characters aren’t just that, you can’t have them without the inverse 🎭 like a punch to the gut after all the sillies, they really know how to do tragedy well.

I very much look forward to whenever they’re at the top of their angst game, bc they both LOVE to make their cubitos suffer. to an insane degree. My god these two can’t go 3 days with their characters experiencing some peace and joyful whimsy, they *must* rp their ocs actively dying, horribly diseased, going crazy

And they go hard with it. I’m very serious when I say multiple times during the lore I’ve had to get up and walk away to calm down because it was too intense. super special shoutout to the q!Forever first happy pills arc stream & October 1st q!Bad psychotic breakdown stream. I’ve never been so shocked as I was watching those live, the stamina to do highly emotional rp like that is actually nuts. some of the most angsty mfs on this server fr (the #1 spot goes to quackity though. hey maybe i’ll make a tierlist)

So when Bad & Forever bring the best of their angst ability into serious rp interactions together that Aren’t comedic…? we are in for a treat. that talk they had right when q!cellbit died to the code, the richas rescue mission, the election, voting arguments, post-ron kidnapping, colorblind test/therapy, flower of the day. many scenes that are seared into my mind, but none is more so than The Happy Pills Proposal. goosebumps whenever I think about it… the scene ever. the way it was framed, the lines they said, how it had tense, chilling buildup before a literal explosion. how are these people capable of doing the most silly things and then turning around to stab us in the heart 50 times

So you bet I’m crossing my fingers for a meeting between @v@ & q!Bad. Forever is absolutely killing the role so far. If q!Bad gets involved I can already taste the glorious angst…. since he has specific traumatic experience in also being possessed, & having killed his possessed friends in another life. he recalled the memory when talking about how to save q!Forever last night. fun! *shaking*

anyways that’s all :D love these characters, I had been wanting to do a little meta appreciation post for a while so I thought why not now ^^