#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

[keferon]

Isn’t Vortex a fucking torture freak tho? 👀👀👀

Yep. He is. He is a lot of things actually. The more you learn about him the more fucked up it gets

[backpackingspace]

a rough sketch of an idea

Polites found odysseus in the sheep's field weapons and armor and body broken and bruised. It looked like he had been dropped from a great height. He felt his gut clench at the sight. It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. But it was the worst he had ever seen his friend.

Odysseus had been collecting more and more bruises over the past year, becoming more and more cagey about their source. About his training. "Proof of athena's favoritism" he called them with a grin "it'll all be worth it when I'm the best fighter around"

But polites couldn't help but worry. Pride and honors and achievements didn't matter if you didn't survive the training to get there. Polites desperately wished there was something more he could to do to help but even if he could convince odysseus to cease this insanity, how would even get out of it without offending the goddess?

"I take it training didn't go well, my friend?" Polites asked with a smile forcing his voice to keep its teasing edge. He extended a hand to help odysseus up off the ground.

"Shut up polites" odysseus grumbled as he threw a hand up to clumsily grasp at polites hand.

Despite the muscle odysseus was rapidly gaining polites could still haul him up easily. He'd thank the gods for his height but lately praying had left a sour taste in his mouth. As he dragged odysseus towards a well paid and secured doctor he eyed the broken spear, sword, and sheild. A glimmer of an idea started to take shape. It was likely odysseus would continue to break mortal equipment as he did battle with gods and his family had been pressuring him to choose a calling already....

"Eurylochus is coming from same tomorrow" polites chatted ideally, hoping to distract his closest friend from his pain. Odysseus groaned and banged his head against polites shoulder.

"Come now!" Polites chided through his laughter "you love the man!"

"Not when he's trying to bed my sister I dont" odysseus slurred somehow managing to drip annoyance through the concussion and other pains.

(@www-dot-why-are-you-here-dot-com tagged as promise! It's more on the angsty side of my headcanons so let me know if you only want to be tagged in the fluffy ones)

[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:

[hunter-burton]

Here’s Ship Art I did

I am A gabv1al fan I can deny it no longer

AND DAMNIT I REACHED 30 TAGS.

[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)

[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!

[kbsd]

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

[g00seg1raffe]

Obi-Wan Kenobi's net worth at the height of the clone wars - 52,365,000 credits. yeah... that's a lot.

general. my good sir. obi wan. why do you smoulder so hard these are mug shots

can you control yourself for like 20 seconds this is serious you are a war criminal

[voltoise-art]

They meet for tea every couple of months.

[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)

[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)