#yes this is about The Great War

[jedi-enthusiast]

Girl help, I’m having Thoughts about future scenes that I cAN’T FUCKING WRITE YET

[syn0vial]

boba fett's childhood is such an untapped goldmine of uncanny existential horror, even before he loses his father.

like, imagine growing up never seeing another child except those that are identical to you—carbon copies in every way, except their heads are shaved, they're plugged into machines all day, and they never stay children for very long. the ones that survive turn into men who look like your father, but your father calls them cattle, cannon fodder.

you're a clone, too. you should be cattle like them, but your father doesn't call you those things. he says you're his real son and that he loves you.

your father loves you. this is what distinguishes you from the cattle and the canon fodder. your father loves you and that's what makes you a person.

and :) then :) he :) fucking :) dies :)

[charmwasjess]

Hi Jess! I have been reading the Darth Plagueis book, wherein he says that to get a true Sith, you can’t just corrupt a Jedi, you have to go a lot further… as much as Dooku was the right hand man of Palpatine, I think he was a lot less “true Sith Lord” and a lot more “fallen Jedi”… thoughts?

P.S. what do you think would’ve happened if Obi-Wan and Dooku joined forces? I’m not sure if you have written about them yet 

Always good to hear from you, bud! :D What a fantastic question!

I’ll start off by pointing out that Sidious, who as The Big Sith Master is the only dude who gets to say who is or isn’t a Sith, seems to consider him one, in an official capacity. But I TOTALLY see what you’re saying, and I tend to agree with you (and with Plagueis!) I think Dooku’s storytelling role, his identity in the saga, is that of a fallen Jedi, not characterizing the typical qualities in a Sith Lord. He might be officially a Sith, but narratively, it almost doesn’t matter. 

You know, it’s Dooku: Jedi Lost, not Dooku: Sith Rising. There’s no denying that Dooku is an unconventional Sith, to say the least. He only flashes Sith eyes once. He still uses his Jedi lightsaber form - a lightsaber form which is all about disarming, not deathblows. He has a notoriously difficult time killing, and seems to put off important kills out of blatant sentimentality, or get someone else to do them, often halfheartedly. On the sliding scale from “moments where he visibly looks miserable” in Clone Wars to some of the Legends novels where Dooku as a POV character outright describes his own life in excruciating terms full of regret and desperation, we as viewers are to understand that Dooku’s decision is the ultimate sunk-cost fallacy, one he pays for again and again. A miserable dance that concludes on his knees with that very expressive final look at Sidious. We see that he has wagered wrongly, and more, in that moment, that he finally knows it – just as much as we do. 

And of course, there are plenty of reasons for the conflict in the character  - everything from his motivations of corrupted idealism to the simple fact of old habits. I mean, Anakin spent 23 years as Vader as opposed to 14 years in the Order; Dooku, a mere 13 years as Tyranus, with a 60 year Jedi career hardcoded into his body.

But I think it’s more than just how Dooku feels about his identity as a Sith. Some of it is surely how Sidious treats him. 

To Sidious, Dooku is a servant and a patsy, a stopgap solution to his Maul -> Anakin apprentice problem, and certainly not ever as an heir to his and Plagueis’s Sith line. He is not training Dooku to carry on the legacy and knowledge of the Sith after he’s gone. (It’s arguable that Sidious doesn’t think anyone will NEED to carry it on, as he himself will be immortal.) Still, it’s not hard to see that Sidious does not have a lot of motivation or time to thoroughly sithize Dooku or give him an equal stake. Dooku himself behaves unreliably, is resentful and argumentative, can’t stop collecting minions, and plotting to overthrow his Master seems to be the one part of being a Sith that Dooku actually enjoys. He’s a liability to Sidious- and teaching him more Sith lore and powers just makes him more of a threat. 

Dooku himself articulates it well, so I'll give the last word to him. Here he is talking about what it’s like to be a Sith apprentice from Yoda: Dark Rendezvous:

[itwasabeautifulwebbing]

baldur’s gate 3 really is the game of all time for the gays who want to celebrate both sad pathetic wet men AND women’s wrongs

[you-need-not-apply]

Talk about the climate crisis like you talk about other major issues. It is equally, if not more, important.

[psychomusic]

so. I've been reading some posts on the jedi order tag AND i won't talk about my opinion on "are jedi good or bad discourse" BUT i wanna point out some lore to everyone who's complaining about the jedi taking kids into their order: (in the EU) it wasn't always like this.

if you take swtor era (more than 3000 years before the prequels) there were many jedi who joined at an older age. like, for example there was a guy who broke his engagement to become one. most jedi remember their families because they were old enough when they decided to go.

THEN in darth bane's book trilogy (circa 1000 yesrs before the prequels) there is a passage where two sith lords are talking about taking bane, already an adult, to study at korriban. one doubted him because he was too old, ans the other told him he sounded like a jedi, and that ONE DAY jedi will have to accept only kids into their ranks if they really want to find "pure" people that can learn their lessons quicker.

one day!! so it wasn't always like that!! the ongoing wars with the sith, who corrupted and killed many of them, had pressured them into taking always younger people into their ranks.

also, consider a thing that this video explains super well: training to become a jedi is not like exercising, because there is a transformative lesson at the end of the training that changes everything. you can't just do as much as you can, but not finish.

the transformative lesson, as the video explains, is that through the force, everything is the same - from rocks and ships to life and death. at the end of the training you have to understand this fundamental truth.

yoda says "you have to unlearn what you have learned". during times where they were constantly killed off or corrupted by the dark side (and if you haven't learned this lesson you are more susceptible to this corrupting), younger people were taken in to actually finish their training (a training that was ultimately about being a good person AND that you could leave at any point if you weren't sold on that, too)

(remember that for the sith failure = death. like. that was the alternative for force sensitive kids. it's not like sith had any moral problem with taking kids away without consent. sith don't have moral problems: they believe that them being stronger in the force means they can do whatever they want as long as their strong enough to go and do it. there are MANY passages in many different star wars stories, even in different mediums, that say this out loud)

AND (this is more of a critical thought than just stating the lore) the fact that they started doing it out of necessity doesn't mean it's 100% good BUT you know. the whole set up of the prequels is that we're starting off the story in a period of crisis and decadence all around. most of the systems of the times were about to fall. OF COURSE they had problems. if they didn't, we wouldn't have the story to begin with.

that doesn't automatically mean jedi = bad and sith are better, tho. you wouldn't take the last, chaotic and decadent period to jugde something, would you? it's like deciding that the athenian democracy sucked because people at the times of Demosthenes failed at recognizing the new schemes in which the world was evolving into, and still believed that their city would be important as it had been in the previous century. They just didn't fucking expect the Macedons would conquer half the world known and more, and have the subsequent political power. Still, their experiences in the 5th century with democracy were very good, even better than ours on many fronts, if you contextualize a little. the jedi had flaws, and most importantly, they didn't fucking know the future and everything that ever happened, ever, so they made mistakes. that doesn't automatically make the system ill, or bad, or not-working. systems can have setbacks when the world changes. (just like athenian democracy had one when they lost the empire that was funding the democracy. they even had a tyranny for a while and then fixed the problems. that doesn't diminish retrospectively their democracy)

[kbsd]

grandpa never passed up the opportunity for a fit check, apparently

[just-an-enby-lemon]

If you are an "Odysseus deserves to be crying every day in Calypsos island for seven years." fuck you. No he didn't. Yes, Odysseus is a fucked up guy. No he didn't deserve that. Even if he wasn't my babygirl, pet liar, he would not have deserved that. I wouldn't have said that even to Theseus and I hate that bitch so fucking much. No one, no one, deserves to be a victim!

[hella1975]

i cannot stand the aot fandom this is not a new take at all they are universally intolerable but oh my dayssss u are FORBIDDEN from making ANY take about the show it's actually insane to watch. 'aot is perfect' no show is perfect. 'tell me you didnt get the show 😂🫵' people have different opinions/interpretations about things. 'eren is a good guy they could never make me hate him' i think there's actually 4 seasons and two movies explicitely using him as a tool to show that no one is 'good' or 'evil' they are only trying to survive. hello. the fandom r all so far up aot's ass that they actually discredit its writing in the process and it would be laughable if it wasn't so frustrating

[wonder-worker]

"As for the government of the kingdom, [Edward V] had complete confidence in the peers of realm and the queen."

"According to the Crowland continuator, [Elizabeth Woodville] seems to have taken the king's place in listening to his council immediately after Edward IV's death. It does appear that she expected to have some role in her son's kingship, and the Crowland continuator’s report of the letters sent to her by [Richard of Gloucester] indicates that she had good reason to expect to be able to work with him and the other councillors: 'the duke of Gloucester wrote the most pleasant letters to console the queen; he promised to come and offer submission, fealty and all that was due from him to his lord and king, Edward V, the first-born son of his brother the dead king and the queen'."

"[However], in what was Gloucester's first coup, Edward V was separated from his household and Woodville advisors. When the young king questioned the move, Buckingham was reported to have told the boy 'It is not in the business of women but men to govern kingdoms'. The blunt remark referred to the authority of Elizabeth Woodville as queen and the power she must have anticipated within the new political climate left by Edward IV's sudden death [...] While the veracity of this scene is questionable*, the words attributed to the duke no doubt seemed plausible to Dominic Mancini who believed they exemplified the popular sentiment held by men [...]."

-Dominic Mancini, The Usurpation of Richard the Third / J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship 1445-1503 / Alexander R. Brondarbit, Power Brokers and the Yorkist State, 1461-1485

*One of Mancini's key sources seems to have been Edward V's own doctor, John Argentine, who attended to him in the Tower. It's very likely that he was the one who recounted this scene to Mancini, which suggests that it should probably be considered more credible than not.

[realmothchu]

not enough married dinluke fics to my liking

[dozieoff]

Listening to Josh Groban sing about having a midlife existential crisis is a mood. (also I stan my buddy Oak, wish we had an official recording)

[bikananjarrus]

reading midnight horizon and this parallel sucker punched me in the chest (in the best way)

(midnight horizon (57-58) // kanan: the last padawan #6)

[love-little-lotte]

poldark + taylor swift lyrics

dress — reputation

gold rush — evermore

treacherous — red

labyrinth — midnights

tolerate it — evermore

say don't go — 1989 tv

afterglow — lover

the great war — midnights 3 a.m. edition

peace — folklore

this love — 1989

[nerdalmighty]

You know I'm right.

[dayurno]

my advice for anyone whos growing more and more frustrated with the state of aftg and fandom at large is that arguing is fun but you need to be happy. ok. you need to. its hard when bad faith takes are dropped to your doorstep but you need to be happy and enjoy yourself and have fun or there's no point in anything at all ever. ok. fandom is not real and nothing is worth more than your enjoyment. i love you please make sure to have fun and reach out to a friend today. for me