ok so im laughing really hard bc I was rewatching some of season one of tcw and there’s this scene where aayla swoops in and saves commander bly, which i made this gif of bc i thought it was rad
but now i’m cracking up bc if you look at the individual frames
ok so theres bly
here comes aayla
nyoom
she’s got him!
up they go!
ok so then it shows this, and im trying to figure out whats happening
as far as i can tell, he’s got his arms around her waist, makes sense
k now what does she start doing? she fuck ing flips herself upside down
I know this nose art is for the Bad Batch, but I can’t help but imagine another Clone Unit with a stronger claim on the Senator as a mascot. (And how much Anakin would FLIP THE FUCK OUT)
—
Morale Booster
“REX!”
… And it looks like the paneling repair will have to wait, as his General’s boots appear next to his head beside the transport’s landing gear. He pushes himself out from under the machine on a dolly, flat on his back.
“Sir?”
“What is THAT?!” his fearless leader yelps, pointing dramatically, emphatically upwards and towards the nose.
He scoots out farther, past General Skywalker’s legs, and props himself up on his elbows to take in the three-quarters-finished pinup Hardcase has been taking such pains with for the last four hours.
“Morale booster, sir. Couldn’t do something clever like the 104th and their Plo’s Bros or anything, so–”
“So you chose SENATOR AMIDALA?!” Did his voice just crack? It did.
He shrugs. “Sure. She’s been through enough hell and high water with us.”
“She’s a SENATOR!”
“And she’s a keen eye with that blaster,” he reasons, jerking his head up to the painting, and the flawlessly detailed replica of the Senator’s favored sidearm, primed to fire and held at a jaunty, confident angle. He even got the chipped paint over the trigger guard right.
“Got the looks for it too!” Hardcase yells down from where he’s shading in a long bare stretch of thigh, pausing to vigorously shake his can of spray paint. “We might finally be able to give the 327th a run for their money, with General Secura and all.”
“GENERAL SECURA is half naked on the nose of a transport?!”
“What? No!” Of course not, that’s just tasteless.
There’s a clatter from up above as Hardcase puts his paints down and leans over the scaffolding, a hand wobbling skeptically. “Well… Technically…”
“She’s in her usual outfit, y’know, with the–” Rex explains, and zig-zags a finger down from his head, mimicking the General’s lekku straps. “–and the leather pants.”
“It’s just a little leg, Anakin, I don’t see what you’re so upset about.”
Oh thank all the stars and little planets. Backup. General Kenobi steps up beside his former Padawan to admire the paint job himself. “Excellent work on her hair, Hardcase,” Kenobi continues, tilting his head.
“Thank you, sir. Run a probe with some white and a little metallic gold through the wet paint, gets it to streak so the shine looks real.”
General Skywalker is starting to do that thing where he puffs up like an angry coppi lizard and splutters furiously while he tries to think of something else to be upset about. He can hear Fives rolling his eyes from the opposite side of the transport. General. Honestly. If you’re trying to keep a relationship secret, openly displaying your klik-wide jealous streak is not how you do it.
“The 212’s is worse, anyway,” Kenobi muses idly, as Hardcase carefully adds the supposedly “very distinctive” freckle high on the Senator’s hip, just below the split in her modified favorite Council dress. Skywalker starts to go wide-eyed at that, because his sabacc face out of genuine combat is complete sleenshit, and startles when his master continues.
“She’s on the 212th transport too?!”
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. We can’t have duplicates, that defeats the purpose,” Kenobi says, in that too-reasonable tone he takes on when he’s deliberately fucking with his former Padawan.
“’Cept Master Ti,” Echo yells, from somewhere inside the paneling he and Rex had been working on.
“Except Master Ti, yes,” Kenobi agrees, and shrugs. “But that’s to be expected. Rather like how so many people have that arm tattoo of a heart with the ribbon that says ‘Mom’.”
Rex personally knew of at least eight other clones that had that exact tattoo, though the ribbon was usually striped like Master Ti’s headtails, and nods agreeably. That seems to have sufficiently diverted Skywalker, or at least confused him.
“Then how is it worse?” Skywalker asks, a little desperately, then his face lights up completely with slightly malicious anticipation. “Is it the Duchess?!”
Oh boy. Rex looks up at Hardcase, who is biting down on his paint-splattered fist to keep from laughing, as General Kenobi gets that look.
“Certainly not,” Kenobi says sternly, and waits a full beat to drop his bombshell. “It’s me.”
Skywalker just stares.
“Though I’m reasonably certain Duchess Kryze had something to do with it, given the way I’m half falling out of my robes.”
Now he looks vaguely green.
“Or it’s some perverse joke of Master Windu’s. It seems his style. Cody refuses to tell me.”
And before Skywalker can come up with anything else to protest, Kenobi adds:
“Besides, Senator Amidala loves it. Hers, I mean. I haven’t asked her about mine.”
Apparently even Jedi can choke on air when sufficiently surprised. But really, where did he think they’d gotten the preliminary sketches from?
General Windu wants to Have Words with whomever was responsible for this idea. General Kenobi claims ignorance.
THIS IS THE BEST POSSIBLE ADDITION TO THIS
I was honestly surprised nobody had done one yet ^_^
“For when you need to RISE to the occasion of battle…”
@forcearama: *waves awkwardly* hi! i am a Fan of the delightful effervescent joy you bring to the star wars fandom and felt it was Important that you see this if you had not yet seen this.
1. Thank you for these lovely words! *waves back*
2. I saw a fleeting glimpse of this post last night, and I meant to come back to it today and then I forgot, so thank you for bringing it back to my attention.
DEAR. LORD.
I swear every time this shows up on my dash I’m in a very public place on my laptop and I want to look and study and…yeah…(ahem)…but my sense of self-preservation tells me to *abort! abort!*
I swear I’ve been side-eyed at least 5 times because of this post.
it’s stupid, he tells himself, shucking off his boots and climbing up into the umbaran bunk, swallowing the unease down as best he could. he’s not a cadet anymore, he’s a soldier, and he’ll carry himself like one.
but it just reminded him of –
sitting in the mess hall, and brothers clustering around him, but always sitting alone, even if he got there first, even if he sat closest to the food or viewscreen or another advantageous seat usually fought for. the one time he just felt desperately lonely, and rested his head in his hands, sniffing back tears.
his squad, in their bed tubes, giggling and talking, and him opening his up, just to find them all suddenly pretending to be asleep. he slides back into the wall and pretends to ignore the whispering and laughing that starts back up as soon as he leaves.
sitting in a corner of the training grounds during free time and reading through a holo; he never learned how to interact with his brothers so why bother trying it now?
sitting in the ‘fresher for too long, arms curled around his knees and rocking back and forth, not sure how to describe what he’s feeling right now, but that it aches. ( he’s starving for touch; the kaminoans raise clones to be a tightly-knit group, easily physical and interacting with one another as easy as breathing – unfortunately, a pariah is built just as reliant on that touch, that communication )
somewhere along the line, when he wasn’t there, there were rules set up, and he feels like he’s always left out of it. he’d get disappointed looks or disgusted ones when he followed the orders or instructions they were given, and there were jokes he was never in on, games he didn’t know the rules to.
he thought the 501st was going to be different.
general skywalker smiles at him and tells him to get some rest, and dogma, still with some of the shiny not rubbed off him, immediately responds i’m fine. that’s something they’re meant to do, right? try and look tough? and rex translates it for him, puts a hand on his shoulder and says the general’s giving you an order, dogma, and that makes sense.
and fives, too, offering to take dogma under his wing while two of the old 501sters did the same for tup – and he does. he has friends in the 501st, but he stands with dogma and talks to him and chooses to.
but then he’s following the orders like he should like he should and he can feel them drawing back like they always do but he doesn’t know what to do outside of them because what if he chooses wrong –
jesse clears his throat. ‘ here comes dogma. ‘ his name, turned again into an insult, something said in a bitter tone or with a sneer.
he’s fine. it’s fine. he’ll just do better tomorrow.
You know, with all the language throughout Star Wars about “giving in” to the Dark Side, how the Dark Side makes you more powerful, how the Dark Side makes you age strangely and destroys you, it sure doesn’t sound like an “opposite side of the coin” so much as the “deeper end of the pool,” like it’s actually the true form of the force and being a Jedi is about keeping it tamed so it doesn’t eat you the way it actually wants.
the force is entropy
Eldritch Jedi pls
This is one of the reasons i love the second Knights of the Old Republic game, wherein one of the major characters (who defines herself neither as Jedi nor Sith) actually views the Force this way, saying “I hate the Force. I hate that it seems to have a will, that it would control us to achieve some measure of balance, when countless lives are lost.”
It’s also the game that gave us the two most entropic, eldritch characters in the franchise: Darth Nihilus, whose dark-side-borne ability to feed on the Force and consume life itself has twisted him into a half-living “wound in the Force”, more presence than flesh
and Darth Sion, whose entire body is a ruin, his flesh nothing but ragged scar tissue, every bone and muscle broken and torn, kept animated by will alone as he forces himself, second by agonizing second, to exist
I wish there were more horrifying perspectives on the force like that
This is one of the reasons the term “Light Side” never felt right to me, even before it was used in any official media; The Force always struck me more like an ocean than a binary concept: the deeper you go, the darker and more crushing it gets — at a certain point becoming an effectually consistent darkness — and while light filters down and fades for some distance, if there is a truly light “side” it’d be the surface.
Which isn’t to say “the Force is evil unless you flounder about near the top” — just that it’s a natural force, and as such is something you need to respect and be adequately prepared for. (Take electricity, for example: super awesome and pretty dang useful, but OH HOLY SMOKES don’t try and harness it unless you REALLY know what you’re doing!)
In this sense, being tempted by the Dark Side is less a case of “Hey, I wonder what’s on the other side of this coin it looks pretty cool haha oh whoops I’m Space Walter White now,” and more one of “The deeper into this thing you go, the harder you’ll need to fight to resist the ever-increasing pressure, to remain whole, even to just see whatever the heck you’re actually doing.”
(which is why Jedi training is so important: those padawans gotta build themselves a mental Deepsea Challenger!)
THIS META BLESSED ME
Okay but let’s suppose, for a moment, that the Force is actually malevolent.
That would make a lot of sense.
Consider, for a moment, an eldritch parasite. This ancient being feeds off of the life-force of other creatures. Not that unusual, as most living things also consume other living things, to various degrees. But this one is technically somewhat removed from the usual structures of biology. It is a passive and opportunistic predator, for the most part. Whenever a living being that is connected to it – however weakly – dies, it consumes part of its energy, and gets bigger.
As life in the galaxy flourishes, and time passes, this singular entity gets bigger, and bigger, and bigger. Like a catfish; the only limit to its growth is how much it can consume to fuel it. The larger it gets, the more it is able to sink its invisible claws into other living beings, until eventually there is hardly any life out there which hasn’t been ‘infected’ by it, and slated to become its spiritual dinner as soon as its biological form gives out.
And here we actually come to – of all things – the midichlorians. Which, the Jedi use to measure someone’s sensitivity to the Force, which works because midichlorians are the vehicle for the predatory parasite to infest living beings. The immune systems in some people begin to develop a certain degree of resistance to them, which is why some folks have more, and some have less, and this directly correlates to their Force sensitivity. The more midichlorians you have, the worse your immune system is at fending off the parasite.
The Force counters the risk of being bred out of subsequent generations by developing camouflage, and adapting itself into a more seemingly-symbiotic relationship with its prey.
What the Jedi see as the ‘light side’ of the Force, is a reflective layer that this predator has created via its connection to all living things. This network is the honey trap that encourages the beings still strongly connected to it, to spread that connection, because it affords them advantages while they are still alive. But its elements are comprised mostly of echoes and reflections of their fellow prey organisms. Force Ghosts that resemble the departed. Emotions that are transmitted along this layer and between individuals. Small amounts of power that can be siphoned off to impact the environment, and can also spread the Force to whatever living thing it comes into contact with.
This being is huge now, it needs a lot of juice in order to maintain its existence, let along continue to grow. And like most predators it’s willing to expend a certain amount of energy in order to guarantee a bigger pay-off.
The deeper you go into the Force, the more the Force starts exerting its own will through you. And the less you see of the reflected camouflage of it, and the more apparent it becomes that the Force wants large swaths of death to feed it. Which is why Dark Siders often become so preoccupied with things like Death Stars.
But it’s a balancing act. A large population of relatively peaceful Force sensitives, like the Jedi, cost more than they’re worth, because beyond a point they take too much energy from the Force and don’t kill enough people to pay for it. A single individual abusing their powers for self-gain and murdering left and right, though, accomplishes the goal of feeding it. The Force obviously doesn’t want its food supply to die out completely, but this explains the persistent cycles of the Star Wars universe – as a soon as a group of peaceful Force users becomes prominent, they get wiped out by a few Dark Siders who have tread too deeply past the reflective surface of the Force, and become actual vessels for its will.
And then when the Dark Siders have finished killing a whole bunch of people, it’s time for them to go, too, so that they don’t wipe out the entire populace and kill off the Force’s food supply beyond its ability to reasonably recover. The peaceful types then see an upswing, as they are more adept at spreading the Force. So the cycle goes – Jedi spread the Force, Sith kill the Jedi and feed the Force, Jedi kill the Sith and resume spreading the Force. It’s a planting and harvest cycle, and the galaxy is populated with the Force’s living spirit crops. Anakin Skywalker, who was arguably one of the beings most closely connected to the Force, and had an extremely high midichlorian count, basically lived this cycle in its entirety as an individual – he spread the Force as a Jedi, he killed people as a Sith, and then he ended it all in order to preserve his progeny for the next round.
tl;dr – the Force wants to eat your soul. The reason the ‘light side’ types always get so up in their own asses is because what they perceive as the Force is basically their own reflections dangling in front of them like an angler fish’s lure. The reason the ‘dark side’ types get so messed up is because they’re basically the equivalent of those grasshoppers who get infected with a parasite that makes them drown themselves.
This point of view would actually explain both No-Attachment rule and the Order’s cradle-robbing – some more self-aware Jedi saw the Force for what it is and pushed for a rule that potentially would cut births of Force-sensitive kids to a bare minimum. And those who were born Force-sensitive thanks to a quirk of the Force are to be taken from the society in the quickest way possible before they mess up, given tools to keep it at bay, and indoctrinated to never want to dabble in the deeper ends of their ability. It would also explain the whole debacle of Unifying vs Living Force and why Jedi seem to prefer the former – all of the description of the Living Force I came across present it as more ever changing, nearly organic entity and Jedi that use is as more responsive to its nudges, so potentially more inclined to being “corrupted” by it.
Once I saw a gif of Ewan McGregor kissing Temuera Morrison while both were in costume and it changed my life. I’ve never been able to find it again but I live in hope.
To put it technically, Padme got totally screwed during the editing process of both Attatck of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. She was easily the most deleted character in both films, with entire subplots excised that drastically undermined her personal motivations and importance to the overall saga.
All of these scenes are available within these two longer videos, if you’ve never seen them or want to rewatch:
5. “A Stirring in the Senate (Bail’s Office)” (ROTS; 07:24-09:22)
Three major scenes were cut from ROTS dealing with the formation of the Rebellion in the shadow of Palpatine’s growing power, of which Padme was a key founder. I’ll say more of this subplot later, but I will say that a major aspect of Padme’s character marginalized in ROTS due to these cuts was her position as a political nemesis of Palpatine.
4. “Padme’s Bedroom” (AOTC; 12:06-13:28)
This is a scene that really would have helped the Anakin/Padme romance, it’s true importance is due to the stories Padme tells about the holopictures that hang on her wall. In one she is exuberant and passionate, hugging two alien children. In another she is stoic and reserved, ready for her first day as a junior legislature. Both of these offer a look into Padme’s past, which we almost never receive. We also get a peek at the pain she herself holds within: those kids she was hugging were members of a species whose sun was about to explode; Padme was a part of a project to save the children, but the kids were never able to adapt off-world and they all ultimately died. Having to deal with helplessness, extinction, and survivor’s guilt before she’s ten years old, and still ending up as good a person as she is: that takes strength
3. “Padme Addresses the Senate” (AOTC; 00:01-01:58)
I have a pretty simple reason for loving this scene: “My noble colleagues. Less than an hour ago an assassination attempt was made against my life.”
Less than an hour ago! I know there’s no shortage of Padme being a badass in this movie, but I personally find this way more stone cold than waving a blaster around. Someone tries to kill her, she loses a very good friend (and six others apparently), and then she immediately strolls into the Senate anyway. Knowing that one of the beings in that room likely tried to kill her.
Besides, this would have reinforced Padme’s role as a political nemesis of Palpatine AND helped the audience understand that Padme had transitioned from Queen to Senator.
But, really, she’s just badass.
2. “Padme’s Parents House” (AOTC; 09:00-12:05)
There are too many reasons to count why cutting this scene was criminal. Helping add some spark and depth to the Anakin/Padme romance, offering the audience a look at Padme’s mother, father, sister, and nieces, and showing a largely different side of Padme are some major ones. Besides the radical change in attire (you’re fooling no one, Padme), we get to see her loosen up and be a daughter/sister. Immediately she’s much more like a 24 year old, blurting out “we’re STARVING!” to her mom, rolling her eyes at her sister, and staring longingly out windows at a hot boy hoping no one will notice (while, once again, absolutely everyone noticed).
1. “Seeds of Rebellion (Padme’s Apartment)” (ROTS; 09:23-10:25)
I began and ended with elements cut from Padme’s Rebellion subplot, because I feel that’s the biggest blow to her importance in the saga as a whole. In the theatrical cut it is still possible to infer that she helped found the Rebellion, because she is so close to Bail and Mon and is such a staunch defender of freedom. But the audience shouldn’t have had to infer, and at least one of the three rebellion scenes should have made it into the film.
With Padme as an explicit founder of the Rebellion, then Leia leading it and Luke joining it in the OT becomes so much more powerful. It also helps give depth to the resolution of Padme’s “original sin:” being the one who got Palpatine elected Chancellor. The OT becomes the story of Padme and Anakin’s kids helping fix their parents’ biggest mistakes: Leia fixes her mother’s political FUBAR, while Luke fixes their father and the mess he made of the Jedi religion.
Raf's rants 