Anakin! Imagine what you would have become if instead of Qui-Gon, that other Sith had found you on Tatooine! Her fate could have easily been yours, Anakin. Why can’t you see that?
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.
Fuck, my sleep schedule does naturally fall into the 4am-12 pattern, doesn’t it
What fucking else about ADD/ADHD don’t I know?
Do you sit weird in chairs? Apparently that’s one.
Does criticism really REALLY really upset you, to the point that you get upset and consider walking away from whatever the thing you were criticized for was?
Is your sense of time utterly fucked?
Oh fuck. I was recently diagnosed but all of these things have been true my whole life lol
Imagine my surprise when I had this plus all the standard symptoms and got diagnosed at 31! *Fingerguns*
More Adult ADHD symptoms that people don’t know:
“Hyperactivity” can include chattiness, or an obsessive focus on one topic that you’ll happily go on about for hours in a conversation with *anyone* at the slightest provocation (last week someone brought up pockets in women’s clothing near the end of a small-group workout session and I may have spent the rest of the session giving an impromptu lecture about pockets while doing hammer curls)
Zoning out and staring off into space because you’re thinking really hard about something and then not noticing that people are talking to you
Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD. There’s this pervasive myth that folks with ADHD can’t pay attention but sometimes the problem is you can’t leave something alone.
Random impulsive shopping sprees that leave you wracked with guilt can be part of ADHD
Interrupting or talking over other people
P R O C R A S T I N A T I O N (because you can’t feel bad about failing a project that never gets started)
Worrying that you’re going to get fired every time your boss wants to speak to you privately (this is a sign of rejection sensitive dysphoria and emotional hyperarousal)
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got the attention to look up for now so ttyl, if you think you may have ADHD check out some of the blogs dedicated to it, read up on symptoms, and talk to your doctor, bye.
Everybody raise your hand if you developed a mnemonic as a kid where you flexed your right arm to remember which was right and which was left and kept that into adulthood because I’ve now spoken to three people who have a half-second “right-flex-okay-it’s-this-one” “left-flex-okay-it’s-the-other-one” process for figuring out which is right and which is left.
Oh my god. When I was being taught right-left as a kid my dad bought me a ring to put on my left hand to help me remember. To this day when I think right-or-left I run my left thumb against my ring-finger to confirm that it’s left even though i haven’t worn that ring for over 35 years (!!!).
I have so few of the popularized symptoms of ADHD and so many of all the less-known ones associated with it that l have no idea if I qualify for a diagnosis, but I’ve got to say it’s a bit of a relief to know how many other people have these issues at all. Like…it’s not just me??
Also Long Post that got way way way longer than I thought.
Threepio would never know it, but the errant suggestion of “Master Ani, might I suggest something more… soothing than this? I doubt you will be able to make any more improvements on myself. Might I offer crocheting or knitting? They are very useful skills and…” after the fifth time of being brought online would cause a ripple that would change the very course of fate.
Anakin’s first attempts at crocheting under Threepio’s surprisingly gentle guidance were unravelled almost as soon as they were completed. Partly because Anakin disliked the level of work he had produced but also to save on wool.
Eventually, Shmi was presented with a simple beige shawl with a couple of small holes and a wonky hem. She adored it.
(Oddly, people would always seem to be kinder, less brutal, less superior towards her when she wore it. Even Watto seemed to be in a milder mood. She always felt safe when she wore it.)
(She wore the shawl one morning to gather mushrooms after Ani had gone and she had been freed. It was old and holey and so very precious. So precious that when she suddenly felt it tug against something, a sensation of peril and dread, she stopped and turned back to her home, hoping it wouldn’t unravel and remembering the bit of yarn that could patch up the possible hole. It was only an hour later when she went back out to collect the mushrooms and found a Tusken-wrecked vaporator that she realised what had almost happened.)
Crocheting was soothing in a different way than working with machines or podracing. There was no adrenaline rush, no Watto hovering over his shoulder. Just him and the wool and the odd way the world seemed to narrow yet expand in his senses. He always felt better after crocheting. Calmer. More balanced.
Clone Wars: Infinities: What if the Father never rescued Anakin from the Dark Side?
Sounds interesting! Seriously, I would like to see Yoda & Palpatine teamwork… and failure. A bit sad for Ahsoka’s part though, Anakin and Son could just drag her to their side.
When I worked in a tea shop, I actually got a few people coming in requesting jasmine tea. Why jasmine? Because that’s what Uncle Iroh would drink on Avatar: The Last Airbender.
So here’s something to think about:
Even though he was royalty, Uncle Iroh was a master of preparing his own tea– even after he left with Zuko, he could always be seen preparing it on his own, eventually opening a successful tea shop when the one he worked at turned out to be awful.
For a firebender, heating a pot of water wouldn’t be difficult– a few seconds of rage and you’d have it at a rolling boil– but a rolling boil would ruin the tea.
The secret to a good cup of tea is often in the temperature of water that you use.
Jasmine, green and white tea tends to need between 160-180* F (71-82*C)– go any higher than that, and you’ll scald the leaves and wind up with bitter tea. Let it steep for too long, and it’ll scald anyway. So you can’t just boil the hell out of it and walk away; to be really good, a cup of tea needs a lower temperature and a softer flame. It needs patience and attention. And that’s where Uncle Iroh excelled.
It was such a wonderful character detail, and I love it so.
…I…wait…I just…b…
*Gags* “This tea is nothing more than hot leaf juice!”
“Uncle…that’s what all tea is.”
“How could a member of my own family say something so horrible?”
DO YOU MEAN THAT ZUKO NEVER PREPARED A GOOD CUP OF TEA BEFORE BECAUSE HE WAS TOO IMPATIENT TO PROPERLY HEAT IT AND THAT IROH PUT TWO AND TWO TOGETHER RIGHT THEN AND THERE?
“We’ll have to make some major changes around here!” — His next line which he says firmly, grabbing the teapot and looking at Zuko as he turns.
Like literally after this the main plotpoint between these two is Iroh teaching Zuko how to be more patient/kind/open-minded while also teaching him how to properly work in the tea shop and I just…do you mean to tell me those two were actually not just random meshing plotpoints but were a direct correlation?
So Wookieepedia says that Jango Fett saw the clones as nothing more than business. They were a job and that was all.
But he raised and trained 100 kids into soldiers over almost 10 years. He saw 100 kids every day for almost 10 years and he was in some way responsible for them. Yes, it might only be because he said he would, because he’s being paid, but after that amount of time you start to care whether you want to or not.
You watch these kids-with-your-face grow into adults-with-your-face. You’ve known them their whole (short, so short) lives. They look up to you, you trained them, taught them everything you could. And you don’t care at all?
Are you sure you don’t care? Or is that just what you tell yourself so you can sleep at night, knowing that they’re all going to die? If you can convince yourself you don’t care it won’t hurt as much when the inevitable happens. It won’t matter when they die because you never gave a damn in the first place. (That’s a lie, but it’s not one Jango lived long enough to have to face.)
Sure, one defected and you tracked him down and killed him. And then you felt so guilty you immediately set up a trust fund to take care of his son, even though you didn’t have to. That’s not the hallmark of a man who doesn’t care, that’s the hallmark of a man who only says he doesn’t. One who’s trying to save himself from the pain of yet more loss in a life already filled with it.
Step 1: it’s just a job, you’re getting paid well and you got a son from it. You Do Not Care about the clones.
Sibling rivalry is often a trite story of one sibling hating the other out of jealousy. On the surface, the Zuko and Azula may look that way. They have no problem blasting fire and lightning at each other and both of their parents had a favorite. But there’s so much more to it.
First of all, I would argue that in spite of many near-fatal encounters, they don’t necessarily hate each other. It’s far more complicated than that. How they view each other is closely tied to how they view themselves.
For most of Zuko’s life, Azula is the standard he’s held to. She’s ambitious, ruthless, and a prodigy. No matter what he does, he can’t earn their father’s approval like she can. And she rubs it in his face constantly. When Azula is cruel to Zuko, Ozai affirms that she’s not wrong to do so. Zuko rarely argues with her because he’s been conditioned to believe she’s right. Zuko has internalized the blame for how his father treats him rather than project it onto Azula, and accepts how she treats him as normal. He has plenty of bitter feeling toward her, but none quite as clear as hate.
Azula’s view of Zuko is even more convoluted. The first time we see Azula, she’s smiling because their father is about to burn him. The next time they meet, she berates him for being a failure of a son. It looks like she enjoys watching him suffer.
But when Zuko helps “kill” the Avatar in Ba Sing Se, we get to see them in a new context. In the rare moments that they aren’t pitted against each other by the ever looming presence of their father… they actually get along fine.
Every time Azula appeared happy to see Zuko suffering, it was at the hands of their father. It wasn’t just that Ozai hurt Zuko, it what that Ozai hurt Zuko and not her. Every time Ozai insulted or injured her brother, it cemented Azula’s position as the favorite child. And she had to stay the favorite child because she’s seen what would happen to her if she wasn’t. Deep down, she knows just how conditional her father’s positive regard is. When Ozai leaves her in the Fire Nation while invading the Earth Kingdom, the first words out of her mouth are “You can’t treat me like Zuko”. Being better than Zuko is part of her identity.
When Zuko defects from the Fire Nation and begins to succeed without meeting, or even trying to meet, the standards set by their father, it throws her priorities into doubt. In her mind, Zuko is supposed to fail. But she isn’t truly unnerved until she’s betrayed by Mai and Ty Li.
She is incapable of understanding why Mai would chose Zuko, and this drags to the surface her inability to understand why her mother preferred Zuko. She believed her mother loved Zuko and not her. Now Mai, her closest friend, loves Zuko and not her.
This conflicts with her entire view of the world. She sees the worth of a person as equal to their quantifiable skills and accomplishments. She has been admired, respected, and feared, but as far as Azula believes, no one has ever loved her. She was a prodigy who did everything right, while Zuko was the family screw up. Yet people loved him and not her.
For years, being better than Zuko was how Azula measured herself. Ozai said Zuko was lucky to be born. That he was worthless, weak, disrespectful, and both his children believed him. When Zuko left, he finally saw that Ozai was wrong about him. When Zuko returns during Sozin’s comet, Azula too is forced to see that her perception is wrong.
Zuko has become the embodiment of everything she lacks. She thought he was weak, but he’s not afraid enough to fight her fairly as an equal. She thought he was dishonorable, but really he was independent enough to break away from their father’s control. She thought he was worthless, but he’s found people who care about him in spite of his flaws.
Azula isn’t just trying to kill him, but everything he represents. And when she can’t, she breaks. Zuko is still standing. She has nothing left.
Word of God (Bryke) confirmed that at the end of the Agni Kai, Zuko felt pity rather than hate for his sister. This continues into the comics as he genuinely tries to help her. He knows that while she may not have been overtly abused like he was, she was raised in the same web of lies, agendas, and violence.
Their past left them both unable to trust people. Azula controlled everyone around her with fear. Zuko shut other people out and tried to do everything on his own. It isn’t until Zuko has left his old life behind that he slowly begins to let people in.
While Azula hangs onto the beliefs of Ozai and the Fire Nation, Zuko can see their situation from the outside. He sees two screwed up teenagers who spent their lives fighting their father’s war, manipulated into a conflict that isn’t their fault, forced to kill each other over choices made a century before they were born. It took Zuko years to figure out the hell that was his home life wasn’t his fault, but only a few minutes to see that it wasn’t Azula’s either.
Raf's rants 