thecleverqueer

[thecleverqueer]

I want to learn the words to “The Ghorman Anthem”.

I want to sing it when we’re forced to bring down our own government….

This lovely, made-up language…a doomed people singing a song they’ve probably sung proudly for millennia…tragic. Not their first, but their last… destroyed by a force they never stood a chance against.

There’s something poetic about it. Inevitable. It could be felt the whole episode. And, the song is so memorable, so hopeful and yet so drenched in unfathomable sadness.

They pass around Molotov cocktails, and hide their weapons. The Empire slaughters them systemically and without remorse. The whole episode. It’s so powerful.

We are the Ghor. We are the Ghor.

[thecleverqueer]

Mon’s speech to the senate. Just. Brilliant.

Evil does thrive in the absence of observational , tangible, objective truth.

Evil gaslights. Evil hides behind forty atrocities. Evil papers over its ugly to make it palatable and pretty to those that are asleep. Evil courts the worst among us. Evil flirts with the worst within us. Evil strips people of humanity. Evil others them. Evil makes a mockery of intellect. Evil takes joy in going backwards.

And, here we are.

It’s absolutely wild to me that the same folks that were whining about the Acolyte being political are 100% okay with Andor… as Andor tries without remorse to shove a mirror into these peoples’ hands while screaming at the top of its lungs to “LOOK!”

[thecleverqueer]

But really… the most compelling takeaway from Tales of the Underworld is that Cad Bane has a child, and he just sort of walks away from him.

Is it because he doesn’t want the responsibility? Does he not want to bring that kid into a life of crime? Will this kid show up again later on the right side of the law, or maybe the wrong side? Will he ever actually find out that Cad Bane is his biological father? I mean.. my god, man.

[thecleverqueer]

I don’t know, man. Asajj Ventress taking a former Jedi Padawan under her wing after everything just sort of makes perfect sense. I wish they’d give me a series. I’d give it a watch.

[thecleverqueer]

I’m looking forward to Andor…

And, I’ll be honest, I’m hoping they don’t pepper the shit with cameos. I don’t think that they will.

I will say having Mon Mothma give her Ghorman Massacre speech in front of Palpatine would hit pretty damned hard though.

[thecleverqueer]

Personally, I’m glad that Filoni opted to focus on the Master / Apprentice relationships in the Ahsoka series. I think it was fitting based on Ahsoka’s own trauma with her master that makes her reluctant to train or teach the next generation of Jedi, and while I still think Sabine was an odd choice, I do think that Sabine is a character that plays well off of Ahsoka based on their personalities.

I know there are chunks of fandom that are mad that other relationships weren’t explored. I think it’s also fair to say that, at this point, there are very few characters that Ahsoka doesn’t know in the time period, and making the show a cameo-soaked “Ahsoka and Friends” montage would have been tired, lame and pointless. I know some fans get rock hard on cameos, glup shittos and blurbos making nonsensical and inconsequential appearances, I prefer a good story that is focused and at least somewhat resembles something that makes sense. Throwing Rex and Barriss and force ghost Plo Koon and force ghost Yoda and force ghost Obi-Wan and Luke and Leia and Hera and Sabine and Zeb and Chewbacca and Han and R2D2 and C-3PO and Boba Fett and Mando and Grogu and Bo-Katan and Mon Mothma and ten other senators and force ghost Anakin and flashbacks of the Wrens and Rook Kast and Gar Saxon and Mace Windu and Baby Ben Solo and all the rest would have been so much that it would have completely taken away from Ahsoka herself… the titular character of the show.

So, I’m happy we just got Ahsoka, Sabine, Huyang, Hera, Ezra, Jacen, and the ghost/ spirit of Anakin Skywalker primarily because these are the people that matter most to Ahsoka at this point in her life. And, this allowed us to get a deeper understanding and appreciation for the character that mattered most in the story, Ahsoka.

[thecleverqueer]

I love how much Obi-Wan loves Anakin and Padme’s kids.

We see it all throughout his series.

He spends what little money he has to buy Luke a toy space ship. He dutifully watches over him everyday as he lives in a desolate, isolated desert scape.

He goes after Leia… fearful that he doesn’t have what it takes to save her any longer. He risks himself and everything else to find her. He taps into the force again after breaking himself off from it. He trusts her. He looks at her fondly. She reminds him of Padme.

Then, at the end, after Vader buries him alive, for a moment, he acts as if he has lost the will to live. He’s defeated. He thinks of the past. He feels that he failed Anakin. Flashbacks of their final moments on Mustafar plague him. Right as he’s about to give up completely, he thinks about the children. He sees flashes of Luke and Leia in his mind, and he draws upon the force. He is strengthened by his love and compassion for them. Even though he’d lost his family, lost Anakin, he still has an obligation to the kids. They provide hope to both he and the rest of the galaxy.

I don’t know. I just get all sentimental when I watch it. I just love Obi-Wan so much.

[thecleverqueer]

So, I’m convinced that Osha is going to end up being the Acolyte, and that she’ll ultimately kill Mae. Her character arc is playing out a lot like Anakin’s: lost her mother at an early age, trained late in the Jedi arts, inability to let go, in search of revenge. Mae’s just not “evil enough” , or at least, she doesn’t feel that way. She loves her sister, and wants her back in her life. Osha never really liked Mae. Mae made her feel less special (if that makes sense).

[thecleverqueer]

It’s interesting that the same folks bashing “The Acolyte” for “being woke” will praise Andor when in Maarva’s speech in the season finale she encourages the citizens of Ferrix to “stop sleeping” and fight the Empire (or… literally… “be woke”).

[thecleverqueer]

I’ve been relatively quiet about Tales of the Empire, but it’s been secretly eating my brain, so let me give you my two cents…

We learned virtually nothing new about Morgan Elsbeth. She engineered the advanced tie fighter. That’s about it. Everything else we knew. I didn’t hate the episodes. I just found them to be underwhelming.

But then, we got Barriss, and I had a lot of feelings about that one.

Firstly, I kind of assumed that they would take the Inquisitor route with her. I knew that they wouldn’t retcon her into the seventh sister, but I also knew that was her ticket out of prison. I didn’t hate it, hate it. I didn’t get it. The Inquisitorius was everything that Barriss stood against in the Temple bombing arc, but the will to live is a powerful drug, I guess. It wasn’t badly done. You could tell that she wasn’t fond of anything that she was doing. She wasn’t getting off on using the dark side. She was just trying to survive, and I respected that.

Second, I was happy to see them give her the redemption arc that she deserved. It’s an interesting take that she continued to play along with the fourth sister after she slaughtered that whole ass village, but then a switch finally tripped when the fourth sister attacked that non-binary Jedi after they surrendered. I think it was one part opportunity, but another part the fact that Barriss was also tired of running and being alone. Also, I love the fact that they slipped in a non-binary Jedi character into this.

Third, Barriss becoming an old butch healer in the last episode was exactly what I would imagine her doing after her moment of redemption. I believe her insane accelerated aging was in part due to her giving her life force to heal those that needed her, but also to atone for her past mistakes.

I’m not 100% sold that the woman that she sent the family with the force sensitive kid to was Ahsoka. It seems to be likely implied? I don’t know. I just think Ahsoka is still too bitter about what happened to her in her series to have made peace with Barriss (I could be wrong), but also, I struggle to imagine Ahsoka even having “coordinates” at that point in the timeline for anyone to track her to. Maybe this was in the post Vader duel times, and Ahsoka was on Lothal with Sabine training? Maybe Barriss had the space equivalent to Life 360 on Ahsoka like Bo-Katan obviously does? Eh. There are possibilities, I guess. That is a reunion that should absolutely be something fandom sees. We’ll likely never get it is because it would be gay (flamboyantly so after everything *gestures vaguely*).

And lastly, that ending…. Why?

I mean, my fear going in was that she would die unceremoniously at the hands of the fourth sister and what likely happened? Her last act on the living plane was to save an Inquisitor from Kenobi that few really cared about? Come on. I guess it was ambiguous enough that they could bring her back into future stories, but they slept on her for over a decade. My hope for her, at this point, is that she shows up in whatever animated show is next (my thought is that it will be a Ventress centric show that may or may not have anything to do with the path… I struggle to see Ventress getting tied up in saving force sensitive kids, but who knows), her popularity grows and she ends up showing up in the Mandoverse to haunt Ahsoka.

A girl can dream.

[thecleverqueer]

I watched the first two episodes of the Acolyte, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the Jedi are going to end up being behind the fire that destroyed Mae and Osha’s village and killed their family. My money is on Torbin being the culprit. I also think that there’s going to be a massive cover-up to save face which will serve to further vilify the Jedi. Their reasoning will be completely political. Osha will likely lose her shit when she finds out… like Anakin, she can’t let things go.

[thecleverqueer]

I’ve been thinking that it’s highly likely that Ahsoka is going to be in a place where she has to give the daughter her life force back on Peridea to bring back balance.

I’m still on the fence as to whether or not Ahsoka will ultimately die and become one with the force, or if she’ll become the avatar of the light side force god.

I guess we’ll see.

[thecleverqueer]

I don’t know. Maybe I mis-read the story, but I felt like the Ahsoka series wasn’t necessarily anti-Jedi. It felt more like Ahsoka finally accepted that she could actually be a Jedi after years of her believing that she was unworthy of doing that, and thereby giving her the right to pass on what she learned.

To preface, I do think her lineage had a problem with following rules. Obviously. Even Yoda broke rules when he went off on his trippy force adventure with Qui-Gon in the sixth season of TCW. It wasn’t that they all went against the Jedi teachings (save Anakin… which I won’t get into right now; I would possibly even argue for Dooku, but he was misguided and definitely did not go about anything in the right way), they just didn’t follow protocol. Most of them at least embraced Jedi philosophy (once again, save Anakin). They often broke rules and protocol loudly, but I can appreciate that as someone who hates the status quo and stringent rules. I say this to partially explain why Ahsoka often butted heads with Huyang about Jedi protocol. It’s not Jedi critical on a philosophical level as much as it is critiquing the protocols.

Now with that being said, let me talk about Ahsoka... Particularly, where Ahsoka was in her series and how that changes by the end of it:

Ahsoka struggled with the fact that she’d been trained as a soldier. Jedi were not soldiers; they were peace keepers. Ahsoka says as much to Rex on the Venator right before Order 66 was executed. She was incredibly torn by this. Ultimately, I believe it’s what caused her to leave the order in the first place. She listened to the words Barriss said, and agreed wholeheartedly. She couldn’t be part of the order as she was not a Jedi, but a warrior. It’s not that she didn’t want to be a Jedi, she DID want to be a Jedi. She just felt as if she no longer knew how to do that, or perhaps, couldn’t do that based on what she’d been doing.

It’s the main thing that she is stuck on when she had her flashbacks with Anakin in the World-Between-Worlds dream state. She struggled with her past. She was unable to reconcile the actions that she was forced to take during the war with her Jedi training that specifically told her not to do that. She mentioned that it wasn’t what she trained for, and by the time she was fighting the Siege of Mandalore, she only saw herself as a fighter. And, it’s something you saw in her character at the beginning of her series. She’s quick to draw her blades and come at you. She does not hesitate to fight Baylon at the reflex point on Seetos. It had unbalanced her, and that’s why she lost the fight.

Anakin basically told her that she’s more than just a warrior. All of the knowledge that came before him, the wisdom of Yoda, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan, lived on through her. She was part of a legacy. Still, she struggled because of what Anakin became, and was hesitant to share the knowledge that she possessed in fear of planting dark seeds. It’s why he told her that she lacked conviction. In Rebels, Ahsoka was trying to convince everyone including herself that she was not a Jedi, and it was a culmination of all of her trauma. This was the moment that she must live (and let it go of said trauma), or die and literally drown with it.

In the end, Ahsoka chose to live, and the white robes weren’t the only thing about her that had changed. In her second battle with Baylon, she’s not as quick to draw her blades. She’s more worried about finding Ezra and Sabine. It’s not that she was completely unwilling to fight, but the fight wasn’t what it is all about. She mentioned this to Sabine as well when she told her that “being a Jedi is more than just wielding a lightsaber.” Ahsoka released the trauma, and embraced her Jedi past. It was not explicitly stated, but it definitely felt implied.

[thecleverqueer]

Another tidbit that has been annoying me within the fandom is this absolute sureness that Tech “somehow survived”.

Y’all.

I mean, I get it.

At the end of last season, I was absolutely convinced that he survived the fall as well. How could he not!? He went through so much character development. And, what would the squad be without him?

Then I found out that season 3 would be the last season, and I pointed out that I felt because of this, Tech would be dead for real and that he would not be coming back.

Still, all of fandom is convinced that Tech is going to end up being this CX-2 guy, and I guess maybe if the finale is like two hours long, he could be.

But honestly, I feel like CX-2 is going to be Marroked. He’s very likely a whole new character that will inevitably end up being little more than a green fart… so… prepare yourselves.

[thecleverqueer]

Okay. So. I’m going to say it:

I don’t think we’re going to get the Clone rebellion show that everyone in fandom is expecting at the end of the Bad Batch. I don’t think it actually ever materializes.

I say this mainly due to what happens in Rebels.

In Rebels, Wolffe calls the Imperials when Kanan and Ezra show up so that the three Clones brothers don’t get into trouble for harboring them. We’re told that this isn’t the first time that Wolffe has called to report something to the Empire. If Rex and Gregor had been part of or lead an actual rebellion against the Empire, they would have been wanted men. Wolffe calling the Empire would have resulted in their demise.

Wolffe’s overall attitude towards the Empire while on Seelos leads me to believe that he actually never joins Rex in his efforts against the Empire during The Batch era. I think Wolffe is going to serve out his purpose with the Empire, and ends up retiring quietly. I think it is only after Wolffe retires from his Imperial duties that he joins Rex and Gregor in their already retired states.

Finally, I don’t think Rex is as concerned about fighting against the Empire as he is about saving his brothers who are enslaved by them. Meaning, Rex is only fighting for now because he wants to free his brothers. I don’t think he’s as concerned about freeing the whole ass galaxy from the grip of the Empire. He wants the Clones to be free more so than anything else.

I could be wrong, but I feel like a full-blown Rex-led Clone Rebellion would ultimately lead to a complete Rebels Rex retcon.

[thecleverqueer]

Also, I’m not sold on Barriss even being Ahsoka’s “nemesis”.

This is pretty much all of Ahsoka and Barriss’s interactions in The Clone Wars:

They had some weird homoerotic moment trapped in a separatist tank under tons of rubble.

They’re rescued by their masters after swapping lightsabers and holding hands.

They fought brain worms. Ahsoka awkwardly stares at Barriss. They eat. They get attacked by clones. They separate. Barriss begs for death after being infected by a brain worm. Ahsoka can’t do it because she’s “attached” to Barriss. She saves Barriss from the brain worm. They cuddle in the freezing cockpit until Kit Fisto arrives. Ahsoka panics because she’s worried about Barriss. Anakin says Barriss is fine. Ahsoka stares awkwardly at a healing Barriss as weirdly romantic music plays, then they pan off into space.

Then, they are seen walking together with younglings at the Jedi temple in one episode.

Barriss blows up the temple (out of literally nowhere).

Ahsoka tries to comfort Barriss. They share some very homoerotic glances in the hallway of the Jedi temple.

Ahsoka gets blamed for murder. Decides she’s going to go on the run which makes her look guilty. Barriss sucks at improving to get Ahsoka out of it, once again, sharing homoerotic glances.

Barriss beats the shit out of Ahsoka in a warehouse filled with explosive nano-droids for “reasons (?)”.

Ahsoka gets expelled from the order.

Anakin hauls Barriss in to Ahsoka’s trial, and Barriss confesses to the bombing. Barriss shoots Ahsoka this look that basically screams, “My god, I’m so sorry. I fucked up! Please forgive me! Please understand where I’m coming from! I did not mean for this to happen!” And, Ahsoka stands there looking utterly heartbroken as if someone donkey punched her in the rib cage.

That’s doesn’t really say “nemesis” to me.

I think boxing Barriss in as being this one-dimensional “nemesis” of Ahsoka is honestly unfair.

In fairness, Barriss was a character first. She was created and existed completely outside of Ahsoka’s orbit. She had a legends backstory, and, unlike Ahsoka, appeared in one of Lucas’s theatrical releases.

This isn’t to say that she isn’t intricately tied to Ahsoka in canon. I mean, she was Ahsoka’s first unofficial official ex-girlfriend, and the events that pretty much completely stymied Ahsoka’s whole trajectory in life.

However, to say that Barriss’s appearance in The Tales of the Empire is only happening so to deepen or enrich Ahsoka’s narrative, or is being done strictly because of Ahsoka is disingenuous.

People truly want to know what happened to Barriss, and it’s time that story be told. She was seriously the only character from The Clone Wars that had not had her story wrapped up. We even got the whereabouts, and ending narrative for the Zillo Beast FFS.

Barriss’s story was a crazy one because no one saw what happened coming, and it honestly NEEDS more backstory that we likely will not get. Still, having some sort of resolution to her narrative will be nice (even if it isn’t completely resolved at the end of this because there’s more-*fingers crossed*).

[thecleverqueer]

I think boxing Barriss in as being this one-dimensional “nemesis” of Ahsoka is honestly unfair.

In fairness, Barriss was a character first. She was created and existed completely outside of Ahsoka’s orbit. She had a legends backstory, and, unlike Ahsoka, appeared in one of Lucas’s theatrical releases.

This isn’t to say that she isn’t intricately tied to Ahsoka in canon. I mean, she was Ahsoka’s first unofficial official ex-girlfriend, and the events that pretty much completely stymied Ahsoka’s whole trajectory in life.

However, to say that Barriss’s appearance in The Tales of the Empire is only happening so to deepen or enrich Ahsoka’s narrative, or is being done strictly because of Ahsoka is disingenuous.

People truly want to know what happened to Barriss, and it’s time that story be told. She was seriously the only character from The Clone Wars that had not had her story wrapped up. We even got the whereabouts, and ending narrative for the Zillo Beast FFS.

Barriss’s story was a crazy one because no one saw what happened coming, and it honestly NEEDS more backstory that we likely will not get. Still, having some sort of resolution to her narrative will be nice (even if it isn’t completely resolved at the end of this because there’s more-*fingers crossed*).