Is Mandalore Important?

So I recently saw a post that had a Star Wars time travel fix-it proposal, where the time traveler (a “sane Darth Vader,” though I’m not quite sure what that means) decided upon ending up decades in the past that “fixing the galaxy demands fixing the Mandalorian sector first.”

And I’m still trying to process that?

Like, it would be one thing if it was a case of “Lots of terrible stuff has happened to Mandalore, so as long as I’m back in time I’ll deal with it.”  Or, “I can’t deal with the Sith until Palpatine takes over from his Sith Master, so I have a few decades to wait and might as well do something useful in the meantime.”  

But where does this idea come from that fixing the galaxy “demands” fixing Mandalore?

Mandalore is just such a… non-entity… on galactic politics.  Ever since they started focusing more on civil wars than wars of conquests, they aren’t exactly major power-brokers anymore.  

Now this prompt goes on to talk about Jaster, so presumably this is someone using Legends and far fonder of True Mandalorians than New Mandalorians.  So time-traveling Darth Vader takes out Death Watch, which presumably prevents the civil war that brings Satine to power.  So now we have no Death Watch and a mercenary captain on the throne instead of a pacifist Duchess, but what does that accomplish?  

Obi-Wan doesn’t become friends with Satine or spend any time on Mandalore.  Death Watch doesn’t find and rescue Maul and Savage, so they don’t take over Mandalore.  Much as I’d love Maul to die ignominiously in space, neither of those actually seem of galactic importance.

Presumably Jango wouldn’t disappear off to Kamino to be the clone progenitor, but that would hardly stop Dooku, he’d just find choice number 2.  A clone army of Bossks?  Sugis?  Cads?  It wouldn’t ultimately change anything.  

Okay, Mandalore would be armed, but I doubt they’d be part of the Republic under Jaster any more than under Satine.  So maybe if the Republic paid them enough they’d join the Clone War as “honorable” mercenaries on the Republic side, or maybe since the Banking Clans are pretty much Separatist the CIS would outbid the Republic and they’d end up supporting the droids.  They’re still a single sector recovering from centuries of wars and Palpatine is still playing both sides; I doubt it would actually tip the balance.  Maybe if Jaster managed to convince every system that tried to join Satine in neutrality to instead join the war, and all of them did, all on the same side, that would have an impact, but again, unless you take out Palpatine, in which case a whole bunch of other stuff also falls apart, I find it hard to believe it’ll be galaxy-shaking.

Am I missing something obvious?

I’m pretty sure the entire prequel trilogy happened without anyone mentioning Mandalore at all.  If Lucas can write an entire trilogy about why and how the Republic fell and Mandalore doesn’t come up at all, that would seem to imply that the Mandalore sector’s problems weren’t actually a foundational cause of the Republic’s fall - and their solution therefore wouldn’t solve the Republic’s problems, either.

So again, Death Watch did plenty of nasty stuff and deserve to be ended.  And it’s just fine to say “I want to write stories about the groups I like.”  

But even if Mandalore is well-liked among fans, that doesn’t make it important, and I’m pretty sure that doesn’t actually mean that  “fixing the galaxy demands fixing the Mandalorian sector first.”

(Now, if this is all a method of showcasing that even if Darth Vader might be sane again, Anakin has never actually had any skills in critical thinking and so he in fact doesn’t understand what is required to fix the galaxy, or perhaps interprets fixing the galaxy as becoming the next Darth Revan and leading an army of Mandalorians to conquer everyone and bring them under his Empire’s control rather than Palpatine’s, that could actually be a pretty cool story starter.)

"This thing's about three times as expensive as any one of us"

"And it's gonna have an even worse warranty if you mess this up."

MAINTENANCE AND DECK TROOPERS HELL YEAH!!

art by Chris Trevas/// Mhairi McFarlane, You Had Me At Hello/Holding On by Shane/ Lang Leaf, Twin Flames/ first eye drawing by Alice X. Zhang/ second eye close up art by Tony Pro/ The Song of Achilles/ to speak of precious evenings by littlekaracan/ battlefront ll stills/ Hamilton the Musical, who lives, who dies, who tells your story/mark z. danielewski, house of leaves/ 5000 letters/ Bastille, the Anchor/ fyodor dostoyevsky, the brothers karamazov/ Kote Darasuum/ Vode An/ street art/ The Arcadian Wind, envy green/ Margaret Atwood, There are better ways of doing this/ Power Politics Emily Dickinson, In this short life that only lasts an hour/ Maggie Smith, First Fall/ Carl Friedrich Lessing, "The Hermit" (art) + November by Margaret Atwood/ Brandon Sanderson, The Final Empire/ The Bad Batch s2EP03 screenshot of Cody/ Alan Stephan Foster, "The Fall" (art) + poem by @erdarieldraws

a gift for my codywan besties cilly, tea, kasey, aixa and lauren🫶

"I blame Red Riding Hood's Mom!"

"Obi-Wan was a parent surrogate for Anakin, but was terrible at it. He tried to instruct Anakin in the austere, objective Jedi way, but didn’t notice that Anakin did not have a foundation of humanity on which a conscience and good decision-making are based. Obi-Wan looked on Anakin as a brother... but Anakin needed a father. And there was no father. [The Prequel Jedi] unprepared to deal with, to guide, someone who was deeply mired in that world." - Aaron Allston, Star Wars Insider #145, 2013

"Obi-Wan trains Anakin, at first, out of a promise he makes to Qui-Gon, not because he cares about him. [...] He's a brother to Anakin, eventually, but he's not a father figure. That's a failing for Anakin. He doesn't have the family that he needs." - Dave Filoni, Disney Gallery: Mandalorian, “Legacy” 2020

"Anakin— yeah he ultimately makes the choice to turn to the Dark Side… but he has not, like… all of the systemic support that someone should have - when they experience trauma at the ages that he has experienced trauma - like, he has none of that, there." - Mike Chen, Star Wars Explained, 2022

The above statements are provably inaccurate, but hey it's a take that can be had. Sure. There's always more that could've been done.

Thing is, Anakin's story is one about personal responsibility. Per George Lucas, the core message of Star Wars, as a whole, is about you - dear viewer aged 6 to 12 who are starting to think for themselves - learning to be more selfless than selfish, more compassionate than greedy.

Anakin's story shows what happens when you don't do that.

Blaming the Jedi Order/Obi-Wan for what happened to Anakin is the same as arguing:

"Red Riding Hood getting eaten by the Wolf is her Mom's fault! What was she thinking, sending a child out to wander alone?! Of course she got eaten by a Wolf, she a kid, she don't know better!"

You can argue that. You can argue that Red Riding Hood's Mom should've gone with her to see Grandma. But that's not the point of the story, the point is "kids, don't try to take the quick/easy path because it's usually dangerous, and don't talk to strangers."

And I've yet to meet someone who would unironically blame Red Riding Hood's Mom. Because it's obvious that doing so would miss the point entirely.

Yet we do have a big chunk of the fandom whose takeaway from the Prequels is that Anakin's fall is on the Jedi's shoulders, even though that also misses the point.

That only indicates, to me, that what it's really about is...

For one generation, coping with a dislike of the Prequels. Trying to make them make sense and coming up with a headcanon that makes them "good," and nuanced.

For the younger audiences (first the one the Prequels were meant for but now also the Disney-era one), it's just them reciting what they've seen in the movies... which have been recontextualized and retconned through media written by people coming from that previous generation listed in point 1.

@theneutralmime

Based on your example I'm going to assume you mean "fix it" as in a happy fix-it AU and not "fix it" as in how I would make the movie better.

Doing a fix-it where the actual fix has to happen within the plot of AOTC is harder than it seems. TPM and ROTS are a lot easier because they're the beginning and end of the story so one small change can make a really large difference, but AOTC is the middle of the story so it's a little harder to make changes that really make a difference.

I dunno, I mean, they could've sent more Jedi off to fight Dooku when he tries to run from Geonosis which could've overwhelmed him enough to be defeated which would have garnered them an early prisoner of war AND kept the Death Star plans from Palpatine. Obi-Wan and Anakin also could've just brought in more of those clones who were on the transport with them which might've helped to distract Dooku long enough for him to be defeated. They mention that capturing/killing Dooku might even stop the entire war from happening because it removes the guy who's primarily going to be RUNNING IT from the Separatist side. Dooku's already revealed a small piece of information to Obi-Wan that they could attempt to pressure Dooku into revealing more about, potentially. The main problem with capturing Dooku here is that it's pretty easy for Palpatine to find a way to free him, he's clearly got plenty of resources he can try to reach out to on the Separatist side, he can just hire Cad Bane if he needs to or something like that.

Maybe Obi-Wan doesn't lose the fight against Jango on Kamino and captures Jango so they can interrogate him about everything HE knows which could potentially lead to not just the revelation of Dooku and the droid army and the planned war, but also maybe the trap that is the clones. It's possible that Dooku and Palpatine do what they can to remove Jango from play either by finding a way to assassinate him before he can reveal what he knows or freeing him (personally I feel like they'd just try to kill him, he's not useful enough to expend the effort to free him when it's easier to kill him). I imagine Jango would be willing to exchange information for protection from Dooku at the very least. Maybe. He's ruthless and entirely without morals if we go strictly by the movie version of him, but he doesn't seem like a complete idiot either and can probably recognize that Dooku isn't going to save him and is very likely to try to kill him now that he's been captured.

It's possible that you could try to go for an AU where, instead of following Jango, Obi-Wan stays on Kamino to investigate that, but then he's kind-of making the same mistake Anakin does in this film by abandoning the mission he's SUPPOSED to be on in favor of something he decides is more important. Obi-Wan's mission is to find and apprehend Padme's assassin and while it's pretty clear Jango was INVOLVED in the assassination attempt on Coruscant, it's also pretty clear that it goes deeper than that and THAT'S what Obi-Wan chooses to pursue. He makes his report about the clones to the Council and then leaves uncovering that particular mystery to them rather than continuing to investigate himself and letting Padme's killer go free. As far as Obi-Wan is aware in that moment, they can always come back to Kamino to investigate the situation with the clones, but they may never get another chance to figure out who is behind these attempts on Padme's life and who hired Jango in the first place. And by the time they DO figure that out, it's too late and the war has basically started and the Jedi no longer really have much time to investigate anything.

By AOTC, the "fix it" relies less on someone making a different choice and more on who the good guys can capture who will provide the most relevant information to prevent a war from starting and expose the true perpetrators. Dooku can reveal Palpatine in a way Jango cannot, but Jango is more likely to make a deal and reveal what he DOES know and he seems to know enough that it could really make a difference. At the very least I think Jango would be able to reveal that this war is a sham, that the same people are running both sides of the war, and that the clones are a trap, all of which should be able to do enough damage to the Sith plot to keep something like Order 66 from happening and ultimately still lead to Palpatine's exposure and defeat.

Anyway, I'm choosing to go hard on bird-lover Rex for my personal headcanon now. He came up with that particular symbol for his helmet because he noticed some native Kaminoan birds of prey diving for fish in the water and they had yellow feathers on their heads and they looked SO COOL and he did research on them and got super into learning about other kinds of birds as well, but he'll always have a special place in his heart for that little Kaminoan bird which is why he designed his armor after them, to represent their ferocity and resourcefulness that he hopes to replicate as a soldier.

Rex doesn't talk about his birdwatching in professional settings much, but he is absolutely the kind of person who keeps a little journal of the different birds in the galaxy he could see, both common and rare, and checks them off when he can. That's actually what the tallies on his helmet are for, too, sometimes he doesn't have access to his journal but he can make a mark on his helmet with something usually to remind himself of it. He's also the person who always sends the blurriest fucking pictures of birds into the groupchat like "Look at this insanely cool bird I saw!" and it's impossible to figure out what bird it even is because the picture is so bad.

I had a man, he was long and tall

He moved his body like a cannonball

(can’t get the idea of Poe singing folk songs for Finn out of my head)

You know what's something I wished fanon/fanfic/etc explored? The idea of clones, basically traveling the galaxy because of the war not only having their own traditions, but also picking up stuff and being taught things by various people they encounter. Not even necessarily like a culture/tradition. A planet's local militia taught a trooper how to weave grass during a long night waiting for orders.

Of course he brought this to his friends and now the whole battalion makes things from grass or leaves or thread. It's calming, it's fun, they experiment with materials.

The clones who've developed their own culture (not Mandalorian) but also enjoying learning and participating. Let them be happy and want to explore things beyond their DNA donors world. (I also enjoy the idea of them getting to relax and join in on fun, normal activities).

And the idea of different units having different traditions while also sharing them when they're deployed together is fun.

The idea of mindfulness being picked up from Jedi general's and everyone having a unique spin, either copying meditation or meditating while cleaning equipment.

Also I want people to appreciate the clones as their own people.

Yeah, I hardly EVER see the clones depicted as this really interesting mish mash of cultures due to potentially picking up a bunch of shit from civilian populations they meet and then just passing it around their own battalion which could then make it out to the GAR as a whole.

Weaving baskets is a cute one, it could also be something as simple as picking up new spices every time they land somewhere and so their food is this wild fusion cuisine of spices and maybe fruits/dried meats/nuts from all over the galaxy because they just pick up stuff that goes to the kitchens and the clones doing the cooking in the kitchens use whatever they've got available to try to make new dishes. And they end up perhaps getting really good at figuring out how to combine these different ingredients that, on paper, seem like they absolutely should NOT go well together and yet somehow they make it work. And so clone cuisine becomes its own completely unique thing. You could even compare it to Jedi cuisine where they probably end up combining things a lot themselves, but the Jedi would theoretically often have had more access to resources and time to learn whole dishes than the clones do so it's more that the Jedi prepare different specific dishes from a lot of cultures as opposed to the more fusion-style cuisine the clones have come up with.

Or games, it'd be so cute to have the clones picking up all these different sort-of idle games from different civilian children they meet, like gffa versions of hopscotch or hackey sack, maybe card games that aren't sabacc or board games that aren't dejarik but are more specific to this one planet or culture. Maybe the clones start coming up with their OWN card games as they go because they start getting bored of the few that they know and start getting creative from there.

And of course things like different styles of visual art like painting and tattooing and hair styles that they might pick up on and incorporate into their own style that either becomes very popular among the clones on its own or ends up sort-of hybridized and become its own unique clone specific spin on the artform rather than a direct imitation. Writing would be really cool, too, that they pick up things like novels or journals from different cultures and some of the clones start writing creatively and become really prolific among the GAR (and maybe the Jedi too) for their stories. Similar to before, they might start off sort-of imitating styles they see from other cultures, specific kinds of poetry or tropes, but then branch out and put their own spin on it or start combining different things they've learned from various cultures.

Some clones might end up sticking closer to one specific culture they've connected or that just matches their personal taste really well, while others embrace the fusion more, and everything in-between.

And of course we can bring the Jedi into it more, too, and have the Jedi constantly working to introduce the clones to more things, maybe things THEY know and love from various cultures that they think the clones would find fun or interesting. And not just that person's "birth culture" like Ahsoka teaching people about Togruta culture, but things from OTHER CULTURES that they themselves have experimented with and liked. Maybe Ahsoka has a Mon Cal skincare routine she fucking swears by, or a Zabrak meat dish that's her absolute favorite hands down because of how tender they cook it, or her favorite book is actually Rodian because she particularly loves Rodian romance novels. And she introduces the clones to THESE things as well because why wouldn't she? The Jedi have a smorgasbord of options available to them and their culture encourages learning and connecting as much as possible, something I imagine they'd do their best to pass on to the clones in any way available to them.

And of course the Jedi, as some of the only people really out there with the clones and interacting with them regularly, get to be the first to BENEFIT from the hybridization that the clones utilize and get to see more about how these different cultures they've learned and appreciated for so long can be combined in such new and different ways to create something entirely unique and beautiful, so they get to enjoy these things all over again and it's AWESOME! New favorite noodle dish that combined fish from Glee Anselm and spices from Pantora and noodles from Chandrila, new favorite poem that has elements of Naboo and Ryloth in it, new knitted scarf that combined a knitting style from Lothal and a pattern from Shili.

And I've been going more for physical material things so far like food and stuff, but you can include things like slang they pick up from other cultures or maybe rituals of some kind they saw someone do that they asked about and got permission to participate in that they continue to practice afterwards because it's nice and calming.

The interesting part about the clones is that they don't have a "birth" culture to go back to. They were raised in a very sterile environment where everything they were exposed to was something very specific and aimed towards a certain goal. So they might have a favorite fighting move from the ones they were taught on Kamino or a favorite ship to fly of the ones they were taught to use for war, but it would be SO incredibly limited to what the Kaminoans wanted them to learn and not intended to become something the clones really connected to culturally. The Kaminoans themselves clearly HAVE a culture of sorts, they seem to share a style of fashion at least and probably an architectural style, but this isn't something that was passed on to the clones or that they would've been allowed to ever really participate in (beyond maintenance to the buildings, but they wouldn't have gotten a say in things like paint colors or additions to the building for cosmetic reasons, etc). And of course I don't think canon supports the idea that the clones really had a lot of connection to Mando culture and certainly nothing that supports the concept that they would consider it their "birth" culture. Jango barely seems to have passed any sort of Mando heritage on to BOBA, so it seems INCREDIBLY unlikely he'd have passed anything significant on to the clones he DIDN'T consider his son. And the Mando trainers are a legends thing these days, and were never canon anyway, so their exposure to Mando culture would be even more limited than their exposure to Kaminoan culture quite honestly.

All of which means the clones don't really have a firm basis of a birth culture from which to start on and then sort-of experiment out from. They're almost entirely open to whatever they discover or are introduced to in terms of culture. They're not Mando, they're not Kaminoan, they're their OWN THING and they can literally incorporate just about anything and everything into the culture they choose to build and that's SUCH a cool thing to look at and to explore and I don't know if I've really seen that much of it in fics. Especially via the Jedi who are their own massively multi-cultural society and can take the opportunity to really widen the clones' horizons in so many ways.

if you fall I will catch you | I’ll be waiting

time after time

Sketch Week! (i couldn’t resist cleaning this one up a bit tho)

No Order 66 AU where Anakin leaves the Order after the war ends and he and Padme end up retiring to Naboo to try to raise the twins together, but neither of them ends up feeling particularly satisfied with life on Naboo (for Anakin it just doesn't give him any purpose the way he desperately needs and for Padme it's always been this perfect rosy dream and reality doesn't measure up), so they end up leaving the twins behind a lot so they can pursue other things and are pretty absentee parents in general. They mostly end up getting raised by Padme's parents instead, and while they're perfectly good guardians for the twins and raise them kindly and love them a lot, there's always an obvious elephant in the room regarding who ISN'T there.

This causes a bit of a rift between Luke and Leia because while Luke is trying to keep the peace and give their parents the benefit of the doubt as he moves on and figures out his own life with what he DOES have, Leia is less willing to just forgive and forget.

Luke ends up becoming a pilot working for the royal palace for a while, but Leia goes into politics (something she'd entered while younger because it's what her mother did and she'd been hoping it would get Padme's attention and bring the two of them closer; it didn't work out that way at all and now Leia's sticking with it at least partly to spite Padme) as an aide for her cousin Pooja who is now Senator of Naboo.

And it's here, once she finally makes it to Coruscant and starts working in the Senate, that Leia meets Bail Organa, still working as Senator of Alderaan. The two of them click IMMEDIATELY and Bail ends up becoming Leia's mentor in politics, as well as the person who actually introduces her to the Jedi themselves. Anakin and Padme had never really bothered to do so, both because they were so rarely around, but also because they had chosen not to give Luke and Leia to the Temple and decided at that point that it would be easier to keep the twins and the Jedi separate. Bail of course has no such compunctions and even if he knew about Anakin and Padme's feelings on the matter, I imagine he'd find ways to allow Leia to accidentally bump into some of the Jedi while she was on Coruscant. If he just so happens to double book himself for lunch with both Leia and Obi-Wan, it's hardly anything malicious and they may as well all eat together!

Leia finally feels like she has a parent who gives a damn about her, someone who acts like a parent to her, the parent she's always wanted. Her grandparents had always been incredibly kind and they obviously had to do a lot of parenting, but they'd always been very strict about making sure the twins saw them as GRANDPARENTS and not their actual parents, which just make the absence of their parents that much more obvious and painful. But with Bail, she's finally got someone who doesn't care that Anakin and Padme aren't there and doesn't feel the need to create a wall between them for Anakin and Padme's sake. Bail takes her under his wing, teaches her everything she knows, allows her to explore things she'd never been allowed to explore before, connects her to even more people who can help her understand herself better than she's ever been able to before. THIS is what a parent was supposed to do for her and she knows it, THIS is what selfless love looks like from a parent and she THRIVES under it for the first time in her life.

She eventually decides not to stay on as Pooja's aide because she has no real desire to become a senator for Naboo at any point, but she IS good at politics and desperately does want to help people any way she can, so she starts up some sort of organization of her own to help people around the galaxy (and connects it to the Jedi because deep down she KNOWS she was supposed to be one of them even though that path is now closed to her). But she doesn't go back to Naboo, she doesn't make her home on her mother's home planet.

She goes to Alderaan instead. And this time, she gets to stay there for the rest of her life.

I support Cassian entering his babygirl era

I immediately thought of RC. I couldn't resist.

Does anyone else just not get the hype around the Anakin scenes of ahsoka?

Like, these scenes are nothing, nothing actually happens, Ahsoka doesn't really learn anything or grow, she doesn't face her issues or her feelings about Anakin, apparently she now "chooses to live" but nothing prior brought this up as something she was dealing with, there's no substance to the scene, it just happens to happen, all it has going for it is the novelty of Anakin and Ahsoka's reunion, but even that's marred because it's not the Anakin and Ahsoka we knew as a duo, that due was played by Matt Lanter and Ashley Eckstein, Hayden (who is absolutely carrying the whole sequence) and Rosario Dawson don't have the chemistry that the clone wars actors have because they've never played the characters together

thinking about finnpoe/stormpilot again and I am not someone who believes things should be canon!!!! the problem was ALWAYS the abandonment of the characters in general, not that they never got together!!!! trust me, my friends and I can take care of that part. we have so much experience in smashing blorbodes together at the speed of light and generating fusion. the problem is that they looked at those characters who they spent a whole RECORD BREAKINGLY EYE WATERINGLY PROFITABLE MOVIE building up and went...nah, lets focus on the literal space nazi instead.

thinking about Obi-Wan and Cody's last scene together in revenge of the sith but specifically the NOVELIZATION and how Cody flirted with Obi-Wan in a way that made Obi-Wan Kenobi 'Master of Sass and Trolling', the FAMED Negotiator blush and duck his head!!! and wondering if perhaps the fact that this was potentially their last battle and that Obi-Wan had just killed Grievous and they all could practically FEEL the end of the war brushing against their fingertips had given Cody that spike of courage, hope, peace that had made him pursue the drumming of maybe maybe maybe to his heartbeat that led to Obi-Wan blushing so profoundly he tried to fucking laugh it off and then zoooooomed tf out of there on bogas back.

@foxquinweek day 1 : Royalty AU

fox being flustered bc of quinlan is so !!!!

Not gone, merely marching far away

Fives was among the greatest clones to have ever lived. He could've ended the war and prevented Palpatine's galactic rule if only someone had listened to him. His sacrifice still ended up saving many lives, and when he died, I like to think that he was greeted by his fallen brothers with open arms. They all knew what he went through, saluting his bravery and vigilance to always do the right thing, even when it would've been easier for him to simply do what he was told without question. His name may be Fives, but he will be remembered as anything but just another number.

I'm honestly not thrilled with how this turned out, but I'm at that point where I don't know if I'm just sick of looking at it, or if it actually sucks as much as I think it does. I started on it almost three months ago and decided to finally just finish it, so it looks a little disjointed. Whatever. I just have a lot of feelings about Fives and drawing is my outlet.

Anyways, it was getting a little too chummy on my blog, so I decided to post some sadness to break up the happy.