Twoooooooo hundred job applications in the last two weeks~

I'm losing my miiiiiiiiiiind~

do me a solid and just reblog this saying what time it is where you are and what you’re thinking about in the tags.

WAIT SHIT IT'S UNDERWORLD SAGA DAY

I may not be on main about it much but know in my head it is 24/7 blorbo lockdown right now

So last night I finished reading Rise of the Red Blade for TotE Vibes Research purposes and the two Inquisitor characters in it really illustrate exactly why I think Barriss is going to survive and escape them.

Because the thing is that there are two kinds of Inquisitors! The ones who volunteered, and the ones who...didn’t. Iskat (RotRB’s focus character) perfectly exemplifies the first type: she had some traumatizing experiences at a young age, fell through a number of institutional cracks in the Order, had a really terrible master (meet me in the pit, Sember Vey), everyone was too busy to give her the follow-up they would under normal circumstances, Palpatine had an agent actively gathering information about her and pushing her to become Worse—she was a pre-selected candidate who was offered the choice to come quietly when Order 66 hit, and she took it. By that point all of her issues and doubts had been exacerbated to the point where it wasn’t hard for her to make herself hate the Jedi, and then she rationalized her way through any indication that her freedom was a lie and doubled her way down right into hell.

By contrast: Tualon, Iskat’s crechemate situationship guy. He had some issues but was not someone on Palpatine’s radar; Iskat left him to die in Order 66 and he survived getting shot by darksiding out about her betrayal. Because of that he was taken alive and they did some shit to him. When Iskat runs into him at the Inquisitor HQ after he’s freshly-inducted he can barely remember why he hates her, or anything else from before he was taken. He woke up in the room where you fight Trilla and they fully shattered him and glued a semblance of a person back together out of the wreckage, just COMPLETELY Winter Soldiered the guy, and the only way he had to cope with it is to lean into a weird codependent situationship with Iskat.

And that distinction’s always been there with the Inquisitors; you have the true believers who ended up hating the Jedi or wanted to go on a power trip (or had the kind of revenge plan only a 12 year old could come up with and then stick to for a decade, in one case) and didn’t need any additional coercion to volunteer, and you have the ones that they broke. In the former group you’ve got the Grand Inquisitor, Reva/Third, Lyn/Fourth*, Fifth, and Iskat/Thirteenth. For the most part they’re certified freaks, but they came by it naturally. (Reva’s a different flavor.) In the latter, you’ve got Trilla/Second, Seventh, Masana/Ninth, Tualon, and probably most of the others. They all got disassembled and reassembled without much care given to the process and are all Coping with it badly in different ways, whether by deciding it’s Empowering, Actually (Trilla & Seventh) or by becoming completely jaded about everything (Masana & Tualon).

(*We obviously don’t know a lot about Fourth yet, but the fact that she shows up to recruit Barriss while rocking yellow dark side eyes before ROTS is even over tells me she’s definitely a volunteer.)

All this is to say: The Grand Inquisitor is making a colossal mistake with Barriss from the drop, and it’s why I think she’s going to win their battle of wits and escape. Because he is treating her like she is an Iskat and she could not be any farther from it.

He sends Lyn to get her to come quietly! They actively withhold information from her about what happened to the Jedi and what her expected role in it is! That’s not how they recruit the ones they think will be a problem; if that were the case she would have been stunned out of hand and woken up on a rack.

Instead, he’s giving her special attention,, he’s training her—he doesn’t think they need to break her. She’s just got a few...pesky hang-ups from her time as a Jedi that need ironing out**. He’s projecting on her; he doesn’t just want an empty shell holding a lightsaber—he wants Barriss Offee, loyally kneeling at his side, fully believing in their mission. She’s his favorite.

(**That “mercy only breeds defeat” line isn’t just a generic darksidism; I’m pretty sure he’s directly critiquing how Barriss got caught because she showed mercy to Asajj Ventress.)

And surely that's something he can turn her into, right? Because she hates the Jedi, right? She attacked them, she outsmarted them, obviously she’d be down for wanting to wipe them out! He was there when she confessed and, like pretty much everyone else in the room save for Ahsoka, he didn’t hear a single word that she said—just what he wanted her to be saying. He’s got a deeply incorrect idea of her, and that idea is “she’s just like me for real.”

And he’s wrong, because the Inquisitorius is everything she feared the Jedi Order was becoming—literally, an army fighting for the dark side—and the Empire is everything she knew the Republic was becoming. She might be prone to despairing, it might in some hypothetical be possible to get her into the same resigned despair trap as Anakin, but she would never actually want to serve the Empire, and they don't think they'll have to try hard to convince her to.

She loves the Jedi, she loved being a Jedi, she wanted to save them. She wants to be one again more than anything even though right now she thinks she doesn’t deserve it, thinks that she’s already too broken to reclaim what she was. But I think being surrounded by actual fallen Jedi and being told over and over again that she’s like them is, in the end, going to be what reminds her that she never stopped being a Jedi in the first place.

And as long as she can make sure her captors don't realize that's true until it's too late, she'll be home free.

Hi Tumblr!

Local queer trans girl werewolf VTuber weirdo here letting your know that I am approaching nearly 12 Months of being unemployed.

Over the last 12 months I have:

Submitted 3,000+ applications/resumes.

Had 100+ interviews.

Got 1 job that I was constantly misgendered at, and upon informing HR, was then cyber-stalked by my bosses.

Got 1 freelance opportunity who, after two weeks, realized they had hired too many people and then let everyone go who was hired - me included.

Ran out of unemployment, drained my savings, maxed out my credit, and fully lost my insurance.

Unfortunately, even if I got a job RIGHT NOW, I would be unable to pay rent and bills for the foreseeable future.

I am constantly applying for jobs and trying to keep everything above water, but at this point I've become desperate for help.

If you have the ability to donate or contribute, you can use any of these below:

P@yPal: Paypal.me/kdinj Ca$hApp: $KdinJ Kofi: ko-fi.com/kdinjenzen

Additionally, if you have any leads on possible jobs you can feel free to message me as I'm actively applying to everything I can right now.

At some point in your life, you were taught that being slightly annoying is an unforgivable sin. Maybe it was by your parents or a teacher or a friend or a bully or an older sibling. But someone taught you that being slightly annoying is a crime punishable by death.

You must unlearn this.

You must accept that all people will be annoying at some point or another in their lives, maybe all of their lives, and that this is okay. It is okay for strangers on the bus, it is okay for children in the grocery store, it is okay for people on social media, and it is okay for you.

If you ever want to truly love your fellow humans, if you ever want to truly love yourself, you must have forgiveness for being annoying.

Hi Tumblr!

Local queer trans girl werewolf VTuber weirdo here letting your know that I am approaching nearly 12 Months of being unemployed.

Over the last 12 months I have:

Submitted 3,000+ applications/resumes.

Had 100+ interviews.

Got 1 job that I was constantly misgendered at, and upon informing HR, was then cyber-stalked by my bosses.

Got 1 freelance opportunity who, after two weeks, realized they had hired too many people and then let everyone go who was hired - me included.

Ran out of unemployment, drained my savings, maxed out my credit, and fully lost my insurance.

Unfortunately, even if I got a job RIGHT NOW, I would be unable to pay rent and bills for the foreseeable future.

I am constantly applying for jobs and trying to keep everything above water, but at this point I've become desperate for help.

If you have the ability to donate or contribute, you can use any of these below:

P@yPal: Paypal.me/kdinj Ca$hApp: $KdinJ Kofi: ko-fi.com/kdinjenzen

Additionally, if you have any leads on possible jobs you can feel free to message me as I'm actively applying to everything I can right now.

yall do realize just because something has been a target of misogynistic criticism, that doesn't make stanning it completely uncritically in response some kind of revolutionary feminist praxis. right.

Congratulations to Marcille DungeonMeshi for achieving Pathetic Little Man status on tumblr, a hard glass ceiling for many female characters to break. I look forward to calling you my sopping wet beast and poor little meow meow for fandom days to come. Keep trucking babygirl, you'll bag Falin one day

i think that people should start using “in poor taste” as a descriptor again given it is often the most applicable and clearest phrase when discoursing about media and analysis; sometimes a piece of art isn’t actually THE most problematic thing of all time is is. ​just in poor taste (not JUST in poor taste as a reductive take on potential harm but/and as in regardless of intent the impact is this was an offensive or stupid take/choice)

Kanan and Fulcrum are twins.

Ahsoka Tano and Caleb Dume were not twins. They were born on different days three years apart and raised in different crèche clans. Caleb wrote his name in a grammar textbook beneath Ahsoka Tano with Sakshi Adelė and Olub Bolane between them.

But Caleb and Ahsoka died on the same day.

Caleb Dume died with Depa Billaba in the Kalleran snow. He was killed by blaster bolts that never touched him and was cremated in a pyre that burned only a padawan braid.

Ahsoka Tano died on a Venator above Mandalore with the click of a button and a “don’t make me regret this.” She was buried in a mass grave she dug herself.

Agent Fulcrum and Kanan Jarrus were born on the same day. They were both born in the snow. They swaddled themselves in tattered cloaks; their first cries were choked sobs. Tears froze to their cheeks. Around them, the Force wept at thousands of deaths and millions of minds robbed of their will.

We gotta start describing patriarchy as a system of male supremacy again bc if I have to hear one more person droning on about how men are actually not benefited by patriarchy im honestly gonna lose my shit

I don't think I'll ever be over the way that the thesis statement of OWK is represented, more than anything else, even more than Reva's plotline honestly, in Haja.

Like.

Genuinely? The one "twist" I wasn't emotionally prepared for was that Haja was legit, and he really was trying to help, and there really was a massive grassroots shadow-network underground railroad evacuating Jedi survivors and Force-sensitive kids across the galaxy, and he really was part of it.

Because the thing with his whole setup--the magnet tricks, the motion-controlled windows, the cold-reading, the crowd-working kid identifying obvious offworld marks, the "audience plant" stormtrooper playing along over the comm? Yeah, they're cheap tricks, but it's a SOPHISTICATED setup.

This guy is a straight-up conman. He really is every bit the sleazy grifter he appears to be.

That matters. That's important. Haja is not an angel. He's a mid-level fake psychic, callously cashing in on the Jedi's legacy to do, like, bullshit fortune-telling. It's--it's the way you can see this guy's whole backstory in a few minutes of screentime. Because we DO see him identify a Force-sensitive kid....and the escape he offers them is genuine.

So: Haja. And the story we can see in him at a glance.

He's a scam artist! He's dressing in knockoff porn-vid robes, waving his hands, and babbling half-remembered vague tropes before murmuring generic platitudes and sending rubes on their way. The Jedi are dead, right? It's not like they're around to be offended. He's not even really lying, right? He gets people what they want! The Jedi stuff just lets him upcharge! He's just skimming a little, a man's gotta make a living.

And then, one day, someone came to him who'd used all their hope just getting there. Someone with a Force-sensitive child, and the Empire on their heels, stumbled terrified into his little den of cheap tricks, because they'd heard a whisper of a rumor that there was still a Jedi alive on Daiyu.

And in that moment, Haja learned that he was a better person than he'd ever realized.

They must have staked everything on reaching him, and then they found him, and what they found was...Haja. Just some guy in a cheap costume. Just some guy, and not a particularly great one. How much is the bounty on a Force-sensitive youngling? Enough to retire on. Enough to set you up for life. And Haja is just some guy, who had just been slapped in the face with the reality of what he was capable of doing in the next five minutes.

There are moments when you learn who you really are, and sometimes you surprise yourself.

After all that time "acting like a Jedi," when given the opportunity--he chose to act like a Jedi.

Ultimately, the thesis statement of OWK is: There is a galaxy full of Hajas. And that's hope enough to keep going for.