#and are called full or half clones respectively | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kaibutsushidousha · 6 months

Note

Do you have any predictions on how Lorelei Barthomeloi's going to look like now that Dead Apostles Ancestors have gotten their buffs and Lord Trambelio has less than half of the od that Ciel has? How would you design the Aristocratic faction's big shot?

I don't have a direct answer to the question. I believe everything that was previously established about Lorelei's brand of magecraft is no longer applicable after the remake. So instead I'll use this convenient ask as a platform to write a post I've been meaning to write for a while. A commented translation of Lorelei's old profile focusing on what I believe still goes and what I believe no longer does.

Introduction: Barthomeloi Lorelei London's Clock Tower, a central institution of the Mage's Association, is the proud home of The Queen: the greatest mage in the present era. Clock Tower's assistant headmaster. The current Wizard Marshall, commanding a choir called Battalion of Clones. Her magecraft's element is wind.

This initial part I think is maintained in full. There is a huge asterisk on the Battalion of Clones, but I'll get to it when I reach the profile section that explains what the Battalion was.

She's also a vampire hunter who previously defeated 2 out of the 27 Dead Apostle Ancestors and handed them to the Church.

Her track record is confirmedly gone with the remake. Sorry, only Ciel is allowed to be cool now. But when Ciel is fighting Vlov, she mentions some madman who invades vampire lairs from the front door and challenges them to fair duels, and that's 100% Lorelei.

She's an orthodox mage with nothing unique about her magecraft, but since she has the highest value in every stat, she consistently produced excellent results in every situation. She believes simple is best. The archetype and perfect model of the idea that one who is strong enough doesn't need a special ability.

This part I can very confidently say is gone. I can even bring up two completely different reasons.

The point of Lorelei favoring high stats over gimmicks is to portray her as a mirror to nemesis Ortenrosse. And the point of pre-remake Ortenrosse thinking little of unique powers is that he was Brunestud's first follower and held too much respect for the moon man to devote himself to something beyond a vampire's basic kit. However, as of the remake, Principles are part of a vampire's basic kit. Having unique powers is now built into Brunestud's blueprint, so there's no reason for Ortenrosse to continue committing to being boring. Ortenrosse will have a power defined by his Idea Blood and the Barthomeloi will have a magecraft system suspiciously similar to Ortenrosse's Principle.

Nasu mentioned the Barthomeloi family once after establishing the remake lore. In Clock Tower 2015, the Barthomeloi are namedropped as the Lord family commanding the Department of Individual Fundamentals. Shortly after, Sanda established Individual Fundamentals is run by Solonea and Policies is run by Barthomeloi, with Nasu trying to clean up the retcon by saying in his blog that the Clock Tower 2015 line is just wrong. But it's very telling that at some point Lorelei was slated to Individual Fundamentals since studies to foster one's unique abilities are very much the opposite of what our beta version of the Barthomeloi family would be about (it does speak about Lorelei as an individual, but we'll get there).

In fact, her standard combat stance is to bring along 50 elite mages and slaughter the enemy by commanding and instructing them without a shred of disorder. She takes the form of a young empress conducting an orchestra. All troopers, unified by their unique lack of uniqueness, are first-class mages, with Lorelei herself being supposedly able to take on a Dead Apostle Ancestor in direct solo combat.

First, let's address the elephant in the room that with Ancestors being raised to the ballpark of gods, there's no way Lorelei can 1v1 them anymore. She could easily be stronger than McDonell and Karmaglyph, but the power gap can't be that big.

Now to the part that matters. The Battalion of Clones. I think the section above already makes my point clear enough. Lorelei taking Individual Fundamentals somewhere along her character retooling shows an abandonment of the "unique in their lack of uniqueness idea" angle.

What Lorelei ultimately got was Policies, whose most featured members are Goredolf and Hishiri. Both of them are mages who default to their unique abilities (Musik's metalized punches and Hishiri's Mystic Eyes), and Dolf is far from what anyone would call elite.

Of course, the answer could easily be that the Department is bigger than Lorelei's elite squad. You can be from Policies without being from the Battalion of Clones. In fact, you could say there's evidence for it, considering Goredolf from Policies first entered Chaldea with a group of exactly 50 mage followers. If he was part of the Battalion, it should be a group of 49 followers plus himself. Unrelated, the idea of Lorelei lending Dolf the Battalion still feels insane to me, even for an operation as big as entering another Lord's nest.

Anyways, the biggest argument against my ideas is that Fate/Labyrinth confirms that post-Remake, the Battalion of Clones still exists by this name despite the concept that names them, the idea that all 50 shared the same non-identity, being seemingly discarded. Much to think about.

Explanation: Assorted notes One of the Lords, the ruling class of London's Mage's Association. Her family has one of the oldest bloodlines in the association but their origin and style of choosing heirs is kept a secret.

This part touches the core of Lorelei's expected backstory in Tsuki 2, so I'm fully confident it stays. It's absolutely essential the Barthomeloi, this inexplicably ancient lineage of mages who carry this generational grudge against the oldest mage-turned-vampire while coincidentally sharing his core philosophies, does not want to reveal its origins. Haha, who could their originating ancestor possibly be?

They have some modicum of friendship with the fellow Lords of the Archibald family and only them.

This part says more about Kayneth than it says about Lorelei and her dad. There's not much I can say now, but I'll come back to this with a Kayneth appreciation tangent when I get to the line about Lorelei's personality so I can elaborate on the implications.

They left no written records of why their family is named Barthomeloi.

I'll say this stays as is. Nasu clearly has a really dumb wordplay 20 years in the making that connects the meaning of Barthomeloi to Ortenrosse and we know he wouldn't throw a stupid pun away.

The clan first appeared at the time of the Clock Tower's foundation, attained their Lord title through their powerful Blue Blood (noble Magic Circuits), and stood at the top for centuries since.

Changed. Case Files Material's timetable places the Clock Tower's foundation in the 500s and the introduction of the Barthomeloi in the 1000s.

Their current head sees the name Lorelei as nothing more than an appendage added to her name after she took over as the family head. They all only consider the sound "Barthomeloi" to be their name.

Lorelei growing up without her own name is a thing I'm 50/50 on. The bit seems to exist mainly as a thematic extension of the old Barthomeloi and Ortenrosse pursuit of a lack of individual identity. A Barthomeloi has to be the Barthomeloi ideal instead of their own person. Much like the instrumentalists in the Battalion of Clones were all clones of each other and therefore clones of nobody, the conductor is likewise raised to be a clone of previous conductors, tracing all the way back to the original, who in some major ways can't escape being a clone of Trhvmn Ortenrosse. And I already made clear that I consider this character trait to be dropped.

But. The purpose of the Department of Policies and the Clock Tower timetable establishing that the Barthomelois arrived laying the groundwork for the Clock Tower's aristocratic system shows that their unreasonably controlling aspects are still a core element of the Bartholomei character, meaning Lorelei being raised without a name is still a thing that can still happen even without the anti-individuality themes.

Perhaps due to the perfectionism beliefs on every generation's part, the Barthomeloi heads are raised exclusively within their manor, never appearing to others until they are fully accomplished mages. Nothing embarrasses them more the stepping into the big world without being ready for it. Consequently, at the moment they first step into the Mage's Association, they're already the commander of a department.

This part I feel like it stays at is. There's no need for it to be gone. This homeschooled ignorance can play into Lorelei's waifu side.

In a sense, they're more fervently aristocratic than the Dead Apostle Ancestors, and consider even their fellow Lords to owe obedience to a nobler, more capable blood. The only mages that the Barthomeloi heads see as their equals are the embodiers of First Magic.

This one is a bit that I absolutely need to stay as is because it's so much more interesting with newer context. The text says "embodier" rather than user, so it should refer to witches in general, and it's now established that (non-Meinster) witches in the modern era are regarded as living garbage by the world of magecraft at large. It's fascinating to me that the Bartholomei are defined by their dedication to their arbitrary social tier list and said list simply just

S: Barthomeloi, trash

D: Everyone else

F: Vampires REEEEEEEEEEE

She holds a peerless obsession for the king of the 27 Ancestors, the White-Winged Duke Ortenrosse, and is participating in an operation squad to thwart the Aylesbury Ritual that he has been arranging for the past few decades. She never engaged in early-stage sabotage for one reason: to lure out the White-Winged Duke and watch the mortified screams of the disgraced vampires as she thwarts the ritual mid-procedure.

Needless to say at this point, this is the part that needs to stay exactly as is. It's the conflict that gives her reason to be in Tsuki 2 and what the majority of her other character traits in this profile exist for.

Source: The Dark Six (title subject to change) She's the leader of the Mage's Association's Aylesbury Inspection League... except no other mages cooperate with her due to her excessively aristocratic principles, making our problem girl a solo leader. That's not how it works, dear. Due to her special upbringing, she has no interest or tolerance for domestic chores.

This is all purely Lorelei waifu points, so that will be kept intact.

Her personal principle was to measure someone's worth not by their personality, but by what makes them unique. Therefore, she's relatively interested in people with powerful talents.

I imagine this will stay, although it will be a lot less meaningful now, considering that Lorelei's innate interest in unique abilities will no longer be an antithesis to the anti-uniqueness tradition that was going to define the Barthomeloi and Ortenrosse.

This character is thoroughly aristocratic in her beliefs, however, because she believes her blood is the only noble one, she cares nothing about the other nobles. Lorelei sees no difference between the working class and the ruling class. What makes one from either category stand out is not their birth, but the individual abilities they learned.

Lorelei's most important waifu factor. Absolutely stays. But let's get to what really matters. Kayneth. The only guy who maintains a friendship with the Barthomeloi family. What does this say about him?

See, Kayneth is a genius who knows he's a genius and loves the feeling of that. He's prideful and loves boasting. He felt the need to replace a perpetual motion engine with a ball of mercury just so he could better brag about his aesthetics. His material profiles even cite his likes as "himself". His self-esteem is absolutely top-tier.

But as much as Kayneth loves praising himself, he always implies that he doesn't like being praised by others. The higher echelons of the world of magecraft are a field of equivalent exchange, where everyone only helps others for their own benefit and these kinds of deals that define Kayneth's upbringing are only worth trusting when both sides are on an even playing field. He 100% believes that he's special, but can't react positively to special treatment.

He's madly in love with Sola-Ui, a woman who treats him with cold indifference. He fails his relationship with Diarmuid because Diarmuid just wanted someone to deposit his loyalty on and Kayneth is unable to process an uneven relationship in good faith. So when Lorelei's profile tells us that Kayneth holds a major friendship with the guys who treat him the same way they treat the janitor, all I can think is "Yes!! This is so Kayneth!".

She is the typical archetype of the character who shoves away her human side as hard as she can... She is currently being considered for one of the main heroine slots, maybe...

With all the random mentions the Barthomeloi/Policies get, I feel like it's pretty much guaranteed at this point that Lorelei will be a main heroine in Tsuki 2. But with the remake being set in 2014 and Lorelei being defined as young and new at this, all the Barthomeloi mentions in Case Files and stuff should now be about her father (not that any of them said anything character-specific).

#type moon #barthomeloi lorelei #trhvmn ortenrosse #kayneth el-melloi archibald #it's a shame i didn't find room to mention dorothea coyett here #she's really made from the same skeleton as lorelei

20 notes · View notes

jacquelinemerritt · 1 year

Text

Star Wars: Exploring the Canon - The Clone Wars Saga Part 1

Originally posted January 4th, 2017

In which we look at the first half of the canonical works set in the Clone Wars: the theatrical film, and the first three seasons of the TV show.

This review is part of a series of pieces on the entirety of the Star Wars canon. See them all here!

To preface this article, I want to try and point out the absurdity of following an article written about two films and a comic mini-series with an article written about six seasons of television, a comic mini-series, and a full-length novel. If you’re wondering why it has taken so long for me to get this part written, here’s your answer: there is just so much to write about that even after watching The Clone Wars all the way through, I wasn’t sure of where to start. We’re going to break this down by season though, starting by analyzing the first film and then tackling the show season by season until we reach the third. As for seasons 4-6, the comic, and the novel, expect me to cover them in my next installment.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

When I first saw the theatrically released Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I was incredibly dismayed. I thought it was a disgrace to have a Star Wars film released in theaters when that film told such a gutless story, took no risks, and had next to no consequence within the story’s universe. To be perfectly frank, I think all of that is still pretty true. The film tells the story of Anakin and his new apprentice, Ahsoka Tano, being called away from a battle on the world Christophsis in order to rescue the son of Jabba the Hutt (yes, you read that right, Jabba has a fucking kid), and it quickly devolves into four seemingly separate “episodes” that never actually feel like a full story but technically are all connected. The ridiculousness of this plot combined with a bad sense of humor brings it down, and there is no way this film deserves to be a part of the theatrical Star Wars canon.

But, just because the film fails as a theatrically released Star Wars film doesn’t mean that it fails on other terms. See, this “film” isn’t really a film, but rather a bafflingly marketed and constructed television pilot that combines four episodes meant to introduce the characters of The Clone Wars TV show and set up the lighthearted tone the show holds onto for its first season. In that respect, Clone Wars actually works. Each of the four set-pieces of the pilot all accomplish different things: the first set-piece on Christophsis establishes Anakin and Obi-Wan’s relationship as it will play out for the rest of the show and introduces Ahsoka Tano, surprisingly selling Anakin taking her on as an apprentice pretty well; the second section introduces the clone army as actual characters, rather a faceless proxy army, Captain Rex, and Asajj Ventress while letting us see Anakin’s first attempts at being a teacher; the third set-piece introduces Padme Amidala and the political and underworld arenas of Coruscant she’ll reside in; and the fourth set-piece introduces Count Dooku as he will be presented throughout the entire series, allowing Christopher Lee to transition him from an adversarial mastermind into an over-the-top campy villain.

Don’t get me wrong. As far as TV pilots go, it’s a little underwhelming and not the most interesting thing you’ll ever see (even if you’re grading it on a curve for being the pilot of an animated kids’ show). But it works a damn sight better as a TV pilot than it ever could as a feature film, and had it aired as a two-hour special on Cartoon Network like was originally planned, it would not have gotten nearly the level of backlash it did from fans and critics like me who found it intensely underwhelming.

That’s really it. There isn’t much to talk about with this film. It has a consistently annoying tone, no real thematic tissue holding things together, and the performances by most of the actors are fairly underwhelming. The only standouts on display are Christopher Lee, reprising his role as Count Dooku for the final time (I know it’s been said, but this guy seriously never gave a bad performance in his career), Samuel L. Jackson, reprising his role as Mace Windu (you could make the same argument with this guy too), and Matthew Wood, who voices the battle droids in this film. Now, let’s be real, the decision to make the battle droids constant comedic cannon fodder is dumb, but Matthew Wood sells it like a pro, imbuing the droids with a level of personality that makes their poorly written attempts at comedy come off as charming, and when the writing of these jokes improves across the series, Wood is right there ready to use that material to make the droids pretty funny at times.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 1)

This is probably the best time to point out that Star Wars: The Clone Wars is really weird to watch because for some unfathomable reason it was aired, written, and produced out of chronological order. This makes viewing it chronologically on Netflix a pain, because you have to bounce around a whole lot just to see the first three seasons in their proper order, and as a result you see glimpses of the improvements in writing and storytelling from the later seasons but are still forced to sit through the slog of the first season that’s only interested in telling safe, episodic stories that don’t challenge the characters or the audience in any significant way. For what it’s worth, it’s still probably the best order to view the series in, as it paints a much more complete picture of the Clone Wars itself, but I found myself annoyed with the logic of airing and producing the episodes out of order, regardless of whether I watched it in the order it aired or the chronological order.

This strange ordering of episodes also isn’t helped by the fact that it pushes the series premiere episode, which is a genuine delight, to being seen after about five episodes and the feature film pilot. It is definitely a better introduction to the goals and aims of the writers than the feature film ever was.

The premiere episode of The Clone Wars follows Yoda on a diplomatic mission to persuade the king of the Toydarians to join the Republic. The episode’s main conflict arrives when Yoda’s vessel is attacked by a Separatist warship and he must land on the surface with only three clones by his side. Meanwhile, Count Dooku and Asajj Ventress are attempting to lure the king of Toydaria into joining the Separatists by proving to him that the Separatists are more capable of protecting him and his people than the Jedi and the Republic. Ventress challenges Yoda to make it to their location by nightfall, and Yoda accepts, battling an army of droids with the help of those clones in order to reach the king.

This is a fairly basic premise with clearly defined stakes and characters, and in the hands of George Lucas, it probably would have turned into twenty minutes of Yoda engaging in meaningless conflict where he doesn’t run into any significant challenges. In the hands of Dave Filoni’s team, however, this episode becomes a chance to reclaim the character of Yoda as he was presented in the original trilogy, and it’s truly amazing to see this Yoda again. Unlike in the entirety of the prequel trilogy, the Yoda we get to see is not the introspective mopey Yoda, but the silly, unpredictable guru that pranks Luke in order to test and teach him. Yoda’s students in this episode are the clones that travel with him, and he asserts to them that they are not the same faceless drones that Lucas intended, but unique individuals with differing skills and internal lives. Filoni’s team even has the wisdom to play Yoda’s strange behavior and unpredictability directly into fight scenes, as he outthinks droids with ease and uses risky strategies to play the droids’ advantage in numbers against themselves. By letting us see Yoda the incorrigible trickster again, The Clone Wars lets us know that it cares about recapturing the wonder and magic of the original trilogy, and that makes this first episode an incredible introduction to the show.

This episode also makes clear another one of Filoni’s goals, albeit in a much subtler manner. As I mentioned last time, the Toydarians as they are presented in The Phantom Menace are a harmful racial caricature of Jewish people, and that racism makes parts of The Phantom Menace pretty difficult to watch. This episode, however, hints at the way the Toydarians will be treated throughout the rest of the show. It shows the Toydarians as a peace-loving people that draw on a cultural heritage with an uncanny resemblance to ancient Judaism. This comes through far less in this episode than it does in later episodes, but throughout the show, the Toydarain people are essentially the equivalent of the Kingdom of Israel under the rule of King Solomon. They are incredibly wealthy and influential, they have a rich, long-standing culture, and they are ruled by a wise King who ultimately desires nothing but peace. I will admit that my connection with my Jewish heritage is a bit weak, so I am not the best person to judge whether this is still hurtful, but it seems to me that by keeping the Toydarian connection to Judaism and replacing racial caricature with a connection to a great cultural heritage, Filoni’s team effectively reclaims the Toydarians. This isn’t to say that their work makes the racism of the first film any less hurtful–far from it–but it adds a dimension to this alien race that, in my eyes, makes them far less hurtful to be associated with.1

Most of the rest of the first season doesn’t quite hit the heights this episode does, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t solid episodes throughout. Some standouts are “Rookies,” which introduces us to the character Fives as he and other newly deployed squadmates fend off a commando droid attack; “Lair of Grievous,” which is twenty minutes of General Grievous kicking serious ass when Dooku betrays him and sets a trap for him in his own home; “Dooku Captured,” where we first meet the pirate scoundrel rapscallion Hondo Ohnaka (voiced by the ever perfect Jim Cummings) after he captures Count Dooku; “Trespass,” which introduces us to the Talz people and sets up an interesting conflict between an authoritarian military society and a young woman who believes in the power of diplomacy; and “Hostage Crisis,” wherein a group of bounty hunters hold a group of Senators and Anakin hostage in order to break Ziro the Hutt out of prison.

There are two episodes in Season 1 that manage to be as strong if not stronger than the premiere and those episodes are “Jedi Crash” and “Defenders of Peace.” These episodes contain some downright excellent storytelling. They challenge Ahsoka by making her face the potential death of her master, forcing her to come to terms with the Jedi Code’s requirement to remain unattached, and they then quickly challenge the entirety of the Jedi order. We meet the Lurmen, a pacifist group of monkey-like creatures that culturally resemble aboriginal and African tribes, and they explain to the Jedi that their role in the Clone Wars has spread more pain and suffering across the galaxy than it has relieved. Their chief even points out the hypocrisy of the Jedi espousing a philosophy of peace while taking on a role as military generals! The episode moves from that point to challenge the Lurmen chief, as he must accept that pure pacifism isn’t an adequate philosophy when their village is attacked by Separatist forces testing out an experimental weapon, and the younger generation has to stand up and fight so the older generation’s insistence on absolute pacifism doesn’t get them all killed.

It’s seriously really good. And George Takei is in it too. Go watch it now even if you’ve already seen it. I promise you’ll thank me afterwards.

What’s wrong with the rest of the season then? Well, nothing really major. It’s passable kids’ television, but most of the episodes I haven’t mentioned by name don’t offer any challenges at all. The closest we get are in the episodes set on Ryloth, wherein a revolutionary insurgent is forced to work with a Senator he believes is corrupt and uncaring (who on the reverse believes the insurgent to be power hungry and after control of the planet), but these two characters aren’t given enough screentime beforehand for this to be meaningful to us. The other episodes are even worse, with the episodes surrounding the Separatist battleship Malevolence being solely concerned with sending the characters on MacGuffin quests and having them triumph due to Anakin being a better military strategist than Grievous. It’s fine, and well-constructed I guess, but it’s honestly pretty boring and uninteresting, and the next time I watch this show, I imagine I’ll be skipping past most of these episodes.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 2)

The second season of Clone Wars is about as solid a season of television as I can possibly imagine.

To be clear, it’s not the greatest season of television I have ever seen. But damn is it good. Pretty much every single episode in this season either challenges the characters personally, raises the stakes for conflict in the universe, or calls the morality of the Republic and Jedi Order into question. It starts off with “Holocron Heist,” in which badass bounty hunter Cad Bane breaks into the Jedi Temple and steals a holocron for Darth Sidious in order to kidnap Force-sensitive children across the galaxy. And then there’s “The Deserter,” where Captain Rex meets a clone trooper who went AWOL and established a family on an unoccupied planet, “The Mandalore Plot,” which has Mandalorians being awesome and Obi-Wan being a massive flirt, “Cat and Mouse,” which has Anakin piloting a stealth fighter against a Separatist general who is literally the only person who knows how to fight against those…

If I wanted to, I could spend a lot of time writing about each and every episode and their strengths, but that would take way too long, so you’re just going to have to trust me when I say that the entire season is solid as hell. Instead, we’re going to take a look at two standout story arcs that take place over multiple episodes in Season 2 and dissect them in detail to look at why they work as well as they do.

The first arc we’re going to look at are the episodes that follow Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-Wan, Barriss, and Luminara as they lead Republic forces in the Second Battle of Geonosis in order to destroy a droid factory that has been recaptured by Separatist forces. Our heroes arrive with a massive Republic force, but the Separatists have them outnumbered even still. Their plan doesn’t survive first contact with the enemy, and Anakin and Ahsoka are forced to fight their way through immense odds just to get to their original landing point. After they are reunited, Anakin and Luminara work together to serve as a distraction while Ahsoka and Barriss sneak into the droid factory in order to plant explosive charges and stop the production of endless reinforcement for the Separatists.

What makes “Landing at Point Break” and “Weapons Factory” special isn’t really their plot. The mission our heroes are on isn’t particularly complicated, nor is it even that novel of a story idea (especially considering that we’ve already seen a pretty boring Battle of Geonosis in Attack of the Clones). These episodes are special because they completely shatter the perception of the Jedi as genuinely unstoppable warriors that dominates the prequel trilogy and most of the episodes of this show. Anakin and Ahsoka’s fight to reach Obi-Wan is desperate, and while at no point do they stop being powerful warriors, they are quickly forced to turn to clever tactics and their wits in order to get past the Separatist forces that would block them from their goal.

That same desperation is present in Ahsoka and Barriss’s quest to infiltrate the droid factory. They’re forced to sneak through behind enemy lines, going through a hornet’s nest where any wrong move will get them caught and lead to their failure. And you know what the writers decide to do? They have Ahsoka and Barriss make one mistake, wake one Geonosian, and when that Geonosian catches up to them, their mission is nearly brought to complete failure and they are forced to bunker down in a droid assault tank in order to both set off their own explosion and have a chance at survival. They are then stuck underneath a mountain of rubble and debris with little oxygen, and Ahsoka only barely manages to send out a signal to Anakin using her communicator, letting him know they’re still alive and leading him to continue the search until they’re rescued. These episodes are tense and filled with danger, and I find it genuinely impressive that Filoni’s team was able to get such great mileage out of a story that so easily could have turned into a retread of the battle from Attack of the Clones.

The next two episodes we’re going to look at are “The Zillo Beast” and “The Zillo Beast Strikes Back,” which besides being regrettably named, are filled with some of the most interesting and challenging material in this series. These episodes follow Anakin and Mace Windu, whose use of an electro-proton bomb on the planer Malastare causes an ancient beast to awaken in a clear nod to the Godzilla film franchise. This beast is genuinely fearsome, as its scales are strong enough to resist even a lightsaber, but Mace Windu and Anakin argue against Malastare’s leaders, who want to kill the Zillo, as to do so would be to take the innocent life of a creature that is the last of its kind. Anakin is eventually able to argue that the creature’s impervious scales would be useful for military research, so he and Mace Windu devise a plan to stun the beast and take it back to Coruscant, in order to trick the Malastare leaders into believing it is dead. When the Zillo arrives on Coruscant however, Palpatine quickly pushes to kill the beast using Malastare fuel, which the creature is weak to, and when his scientists fail to administer a lethal dose, the Zillo breaks free and wreaks havoc on the streets of Coruscant in a number of clear nods to Godzilla and King Kong. Eventually, the Jedi are able to kill the beast by hitting it with a lethal dose of fuel, and despite the lives they managed to save, all of the Jedi deeply regret the loss of the Zillo beast’s life.

The nods to Godzilla and King Kong are some of the coolest things about these episodes, but beyond that, these episodes have some pretty challenging thematic content. For one, this is the first time we get to see the Jedi Order faced with a legitimate moral dilemma, as for a lot of reasons, killing the Zillo is pretty defensible, but it still goes in direct violation of their Code. They decide against killing the Zillo, but because of their use of deception and pragmatist arguments, the Zillo ends up being put in a place where it will have even more power to do harm, close to a person who wants it to harm people so it can be put down rather than kept alive. In a lot of ways, Anakin and Mace Windu’s decision to bring the beast back to Coruscant is reckless and misguided, and we are shown just how blind the Jedi are to the dark forces that surround them on their homeworld. It is this blindness that leads them to do the very thing they sought to avoid: taking the life of an innocent creature that is likely the last of its kind. The shadows of the Dark Side are everywhere, and when the Jedi are too blind to see their own mistakes, innocents like the Zillo end up suffering more than the Jedi ever will.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Season 3)

This is where it starts to get incredible.

Like, really fucking incredible beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

Season 3 of The Clone Wars does more to expand the mythology of the Star Wars Universe than George Lucas has done since the release of Return of the Jedi.

I hear what you’re saying. “Jacqueline, how can you possibly make that claim? Lucas made three prequel films after Jedi that included important details on the world of Star Wars, the Republic, and Jedi Order that it’s impossible for a single season of television to outdo that.” Lucas did a lot after Jedi, and I am not trying to deny him or his importance to this universe. George Lucas, however, was entirely wrapped up in his goal of telling a story about a fascist government’s rise to power, and in focusing on those political details, he lost sight of the wonder and mystique that makes the Star Wars Universe as compelling as it is. Dave Filoni and his team, however, do everything they can to further Lucas’s message in the prequel trilogy, and they do that without losing sight of the fascinating mysticism surrounding the Force, the prophecy of the chosen one, and the tug and pull of balance between light and darkness that defines the universe.

Now, there legitimately isn’t a bad episode in this season, but like last time, two arcs told over multiple episodes rise to the top and that’s what we’re going to focus on.

The first arc that does this is the Nightsisters arc, which follows Asajj Ventress after she is betrayed by Count Dooku and left for dead. She manages to survive her ship being fired upon by another Separatist warship, and she returns to her home planet to the witches of Dathomir in order to find her heritage and get help in her quest for revenge against her former master. She and the seemingly invincible witch Mother Talzin first target Dooku directly, sending Ventress and two Nightsisters in with cloaking magic and a poison designed to weaken Dooku and make him easy to kill. Dooku is still a force to be reckoned with, however, and he dispatches Ventress and her sisters without significant difficulty. Ventress and Talzin then hatch a more sinister plan, testing the males on the far side of Dathomir until they find one who is worthy and take control of his mind so he can be planted as a traitor in Dooku’s ranks. When Dooku takes this man, named Savage Oppress,1 under his wing and trains him as an apprentice, Ventress sneaks into Dooku’s vessel and makes Savage turn on his new master. Her plan fails, however, and Savage quickly regains control of his mind and turns on the both of them, escaping back to Dathomir and seeking guidance from Mother Talzin, who tells him of a “brother” he must seek while showing him a vision of the Sith Lord Darth Maul, a Zabrak and Dathomir Nightbrother just like him.

We’ll talk about Maul next time, when we actually get to see him in action, but suffice it to say, closing out a set of episodes that explores the dark mysticism of the Star Wars Universe by promising the return of one of Star Wars’ most badass villains is a pretty risky decision, as is the depth of exploration of the Dark Side that we get to see here. The Nightsisters are absolutely fascinating on their own as a less-than-savory mystical underbelly that neither identifies as Jedi or Sith, and Mother Talzin is an imposing figure who, if she did not prefer to keep to herself and her coven, would be a far greater threat to the galaxy than the Sith could ever dream of being.

Of course, the main attraction of these episodes is that they finally put Asajj Ventress to use as the complex character she was always meant to be. Ever since I was a little girl watching Genndy Tartakovsky’s Clone Wars animated mini-series, I’ve been obsessed with this character. She has such a rich and tragic backstory, and as a young girl with her own demons boiling up under the surface, Ventress appealed to me with her mastery of the Dark Side, dual lightsabers, and dominatrix-like attitude (which is turned up to a ten in The Clone Wars, as she is referred to as Mistress by everyone around her). Up until Season 3 though, The Clone Wars didn’t really put her to good use. Sure, she was an assassin, and she had those dual lightsabers, but in this show she has been far less of a pure, unadulterated badass, as she’s the villain and the heroes have to beat her.

These episodes turn that on its head perfectly. Dooku’s betrayal of her makes sense, in only the way an abuser’s decision to abuse can; she has consistently failed to achieve victory against the Jedi after all, and as we see her backstory unfold over a few short flashbacks, watching her being taken from her family as a child and witnessing the murder of the Jedi who taught her how to use the Force, Dooku’s betrayal becomes an opportunity for her to finally exert some agency over all of the horrible things that have happened to her. She will have revenge against Dooku, because damnit, this is the first time she’s ever been powerful enough to strike back against the people who have hurt her the most. It becomes even more heart-wrenching to watch as any knowledge of the prequel trilogy’s storyline lets us know that she is doomed to fail in her quest for revenge, as Dooku survives until Revenge of the Sith to be killed by Anakin Skywalker. Despite having the power to strike back against her master with “dark magicks” and a monstrous warrior, she still ends up without enough power to take any emotional closure for herself through revenge.

The second arc of note in this season is the arc set on the planet Mortis, following Anakin, Ahsoka, and Obi-Wan as an ancient distress signal calls them to an incredibly strange planet.

But I’m not going into detail on those episodes.

They are amazing. Make no mistake.

But I would not dare spoil the details of what happens in them to anyone who hasn’t seen them.

Trust me, just take my word on this, and go on Netflix, to Season 3 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and watch “Overlords,” “Altar of Mortis,” and “Ghosts of Mortis” right now. If you don’t watch anything else from this show (and seriously, you should, it’s great), then still watch these episodes. You don’t even need that much context to enjoy them, because as long as you accept that Anakin has an apprentice named Ahsoka, literally anything else you could need to know follows logically from Anakin and Obi-Wan’s characterizations in the prequel films. You have my word, a Jacqueline Merritt guarantee, that you won’t regret the time you spend checking these episodes out.

Next time, hopefully not two months from now, we’ll explore the rest of The Clone Wars, the comic Darth Maul: Son of Dathomir, and the novel Dark Disciple. See you then!

Critical Eye Criticism is the work of Jacqueline Merritt, a trans woman, filmmaker, and critic. You can support her continued film criticism addiction on Patreon.

1Any of my Jewish readers who disagree with my belief that the Toydarian’s are less hurtful because of their characterization in The Clone Wars are more than welcome to challenge me on that, as I am open to hearing any criticism of my argument here.

2I could also go into more detail on the character of Savage Oppress and how he is actually quite fascinating despite having an absolutely terrible name, but exploring his character is best left for our exploration of Darth Maul in the later seasons, as their arcs are fairly closely intertwined.

#star wars #star wars the clone wars #the clone wars #tcw #ahsoka tano #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #master toda #count dooku #christopher lee #george takei #ashley eckstein #star wars canon #skip this one too #i am posting it primarily because i want it to be up here #but again #if you want good discussion/analysis of clone wars #listen to A More Civilized Age

7 notes · View notes

frostycatblr-fandom-files · 10 months

Text

Comforting Little Brothers

Warnings and Information: Scruffy's story continues on in the fourth installment of the NTMY,B universe. Canvas is not having a good time since Scruffy's brush with death, so Scruffy's paternal instincts are on full display. Are there recreation rooms on a Venator class starship in canon? Maybe not explicitly mentioned, but we can pretend chances are good given the size of and the multiple purposes these ships serve in SW canon. Some more minor expansion of Faro, Gunnar, Cryfar and Fluke's story with more emphasis on Stick and Scruffy, and my takes on some softer aspects of Clone Culture. The Clones are artistic AF because I say so (*gestures at their armor designs*). That bird exists in SW because I say so [there's only so many times I'll open Wookiepedia for species that probably have one or two lines of Canon/Legends information]. No Mando'a here. Star Wars and real-world swearing. My usual use of italics.

Word-count: 5,324

He felt, in a word, just terrible, really. Canvas had been doing so well since finding his identity, getting his Name from one of their COs, but since Scruffy’s brush with death - only a matter of two agonizing minutes for this little brother - he’s… regressed. Canvas has regressed badly in the week and half they’ve spent aboard the Venator class ship that’s been stationed above the planet while Scruffy recovers to the satisfaction of the medical crew.

Scruffy can’t blame the lack of sleep he’s been getting, sleep that would accelerate his recovery and get him combat-ready sooner, on poor ‘Vas…

Poor ‘Vas who’s been having nightmares about the tripwire and detonation. The feeling of the brother who took care of him fading away under his hands, and the chest compressions Stick performed on Scruffy failing to bring him back. The detonation was Scruffy’s fault in the first place. If he’d only watched where he’d put his damn foot, his little brother wouldn’t be having these nocturnal terrors about losing more brothers close to him.

Nightmares that were only getting worse, leading to a devastating and vicious chain reaction of consequences. The worse the nightmares, the less he slept, and the less he slept, the more paranoid he would become. Paranoia that worsened the nightmares.

Nightmares where Gunnar hadn’t just tried to race across No Man’s Land to selflessly provide cover-fire for a trooper who wasn’t dead after all, but he had triggered the landmine nearby instead of the CIS battle droid. Where Cryfar hadn’t just fallen backwards into a deeper pit and presumably broken his neck or his skull after losing his footing on the soil softened by the rains, but had either drowned or been swept away in a flash-flood. Where Faro hadn’t just been shot by the BX commando, but had his spine broken over the clanker’s knee, too. Where Fluke hadn’t just been effectively poisoned by his spoiled rations and died in his sleep, but he’d been… Maker, poor Canvas couldn’t even say.

And now, he, Scruffy, was showing up in these nightmares. The more the medics said he recovered and got closer to battle-ready, the more Canvas seemed to regress.

Scruffy couldn’t let his little brother go on this way, but he wasn’t sure how he could break the anxiety spiral this time. All the worry stones in the galaxy couldn't help him right now. Sedatives just made him fitful and sick to his stomach. They'd tried; many times. It was hard to think at 0300 in the morning as he listened to Stick trying to coax Canvas back to his bunk while he feverishly messaged the CO back.

“Hey, do… you want to try one of those strategy games they gave us as cadets, Canvas?”

“No.” Canvas snaps back, squeezing his knees tighter under his chin, thin GAR-issued blanket draped around his shoulders as he sits, hunched, in a corner of the room.

Sir, please, with all due respect, I’m not sure the sedative is the best call. Yes, I know he needs sleep, believe me. But he was sick for an hour afterwards the last time we tried it. He’s not eating regularly again.

Placating hands are raised to chest level, trying to show the lack of threat. “Okay-okay. What about walking around the ship to tire you out?” Stick suggests gently, trying to buy Scruffy time to find or outsource a potential solution.

“We’re not supposed to leave our quarters,” Canvas drones in a flat intonation, “we’d get in troub-”

“Well not if a CO said it was okay!” Stick blurts in interuption, a wide-eyed look thrown Scruffy’s way. He remembered the warning from his batchmate that this brother of a different batch was once pretty tight-fisted about the rules and regulations as a Shiny, because they offered comfort and stability to a cadet with a higher than typical obedience before he learned that the regulation manuals couldn’t teach you everything. The reg manuals couldn’t teach you about the effect losing your brothers has on a soldier. Canvas stopped being quite such a stickler for the rules when Gunnar disobeyed the order to retreat to the natural cover provided by a ridge before returning fire and-

> Good idea, see if walking around the ship will help him. Permission granted.

Thank you, Sir.

He pitches the communicator onto his bunk and strides across the private quarters suggested by the medical crew that was mercifully signed off on by the COs. “We’ve been granted permission. C’mon, you two.” Scruffy declares, hoisting Canvas up to his feet by the wrists. “Let’s go stretch our legs, little brother.”

Canvas slumps forward, fatigue weighing down his every limb. He’s so tired. He’s so paranoid. He’s so traumatized. “O-okay…” Scruffy supports him on one side, Stick the other, and the three Clones leave their temporary quarters to walk the ship aimlessly. Scruffy didn't have anywhere particular in mind, just anywhere else away from the room Canvas has effectively made into a foxhole.

I should thank the brothers in Laundry for sneaking us all these extra blankets, soon, Scruffy thinks to himself, tucking the blanket Canvas had essentially swaddled himself in back over his shoulders when it slips.

“Hey, Scruff? I thought of somethin'. You know where the replacement armor depot and rec rooms are on this level, right?”

Scruffy gives his batchmate a quizzical look. “Yeah… why?” He'd already gotten the parts of his armor that couldn't be repaired after the detonation replaced and repainted in their unit's color. He'd had to make several secretive runs to collect more paint after he kept knocking over the containers in his haste to rescue Canvas from yet another panicked awakening several nights in a row. Had to send several sets of sleepwear to Laundry after hastily smearing paint on them to clean his hands. Clean hands Scruffy needed to clean up his brother's tears or hug him or pull him out of bed to settle him down.

"Back so soon, Scruffy! This is the second time tonight. Whaddya need?"

"Clean set of sleepers, please… Got paint on em, don't want the stain to set."

"Uh oh. Canvas again, yeah? Poor kid. Here… Fresh set of sleepers for the three of you. Blankets, too."

"Thanks… appreciate it. Off to the armor depot to pick up some paint remover."

Stick scratches behind his left ear to think. “Well I uh… heard a rumor that if you ask someone in the depot for it, they've got a bad batch of armor paint they're trying to find uses for. Say it's too thin and runny to properly adhere to plastoid but it'd probably be better suited for wood or something."

It has turned out that more Clones than just Carver, and Stick, as Scruffy had come to find out, had a penchant for finding and collecting the odd scrap of wood here and there as little tokens from this ongoing campaign. Or as art material. The General has joked fondly on more than one occasion that they must have cut as many logs as they have battle droids with their lightsaber in the name of their men so the troops have more manageable sized pieces of wood to work and create with.

"How beautiful it is that so many of these men desire to breathe creation into this galaxy, each work of art as unique and distinct as them all."

"So… that's a 'yes, I nicked myself with my own lightsaber and would like my team medic to check the wound' because you got excited rather than tired, then, General?"

"Hah, I suppose so."

Disposable canisters of paint and brushes from the depot, some whittled token for Stick to work with and paper-like material for Scruffy in case he doesn't care for the wood he's selected from the scrap pile, they find an empty, circular table in the unofficial rec center and "make camp", so to speak. Scruffy is flanked by Canvas on his left, Stick his right, to allow him to keep Canvas close in the way that's most comforting to him while keeping his more dominant hand free. In the matters of painting, Scruffy found his right hand was better suited for controlling the brushes, while he felt he was better with a blaster in his left.

They were trained to be dual-handed, ambidextrous, on their mother-world of Kamino. But brothers tended to favor certain hands for certain tasks. Stick always ate with his left hand, and shot primarily with his left, too. However, when he creates, like Scruffy, he's right-handed. Canvas is the inverse; primarily right-handed when it comes to how he eats and fights, but left handed for most other matters. Scruffy was more balanced, equally comfortable using either hand for anything at the end of the day.

Canvas doesn't want to do anything but watch, too tired or too uninterested, arms stitched tightly around Scruffy's waist with his head laying over his brother's heart. Stick is more interested in rifling through the colors the crew stationed in the depot gave them for their creative efforts; decided on what carved item he wishes to paint, at least.

He's not sure what he wants to paint yet, but Scruffy knows that he should at least get started on something to keep himself calm instead of actively fretting. If Canvas's ear was just above his heart, then he was probably using this organic timer to measure out his own clarity and calm. "Hey, could I borrow the blue?" Stick requests in a soft voice. By following his batchmate's lead, maybe, hopefully, Stick hopes Canvas will be kept calm enough to decide to test his luck and sleep.

"Sure. Whatcha paintin'?" Didn't look like anything Carver made to his memory, so it must have been one of the friends his little brother made during his time as a Shiny. Looked to be some kind of livestock from some far-flung corner of the galaxy.

Stick shrugged. "Uh… I forget what he called it. Just remember he said it was mostly blue."

"Fair enough."

"What're you painting?"

"Mm," Scruffy hummed in thought, laying down a washing of white paint as a base coat on the wood square in careful, steady strokes, "thinking about that still. Maybe an Aiwha. Or a bird. Or… something." Just needed something to keep him busy, keep him engaged and focused on something that would keep Canvas's mind occupied on anything else. Anything else than the memory or thought of the dreams he's been having about losing his brothers. If silent observation was what he wanted, found comfort in, Scruffy would give that to Canvas.

He'd go so far to give the armor with the collar of paint around the neck off his back to a brother in need. Whatever it would take to uphold that oath to Faro.

I'll protect our little brother.

I'd do anything to comfort him, too.

So yes, we're now sitting in the rec room at nearly 0400 after spending half an hour walking around aimlessly before we got the paints, and-

"You've gotten really good with a brush, Scruff."

The compliment throws him off track for just a heartbeat, the break in the comfortable silence only punctuated by the soft inhale and exhale of breath between the wet sweeping of paint-laden brushes unexpected. "Thanks, Stick." There's a muted hum of agreement from Canvas that he can feel through his brother's chest. "Thank you too, Canvas. How're you feeling right now? Sleepy?"

There's no reply, verbal or otherwise, and the soft patter of his heartbeat Scruffy can just barely make out being held so close, like he'd drift away with the tide if Canvas relaxed his arms even a fraction, changed only slightly.

"That's okay, brother. You don't have to answer. Only wondering." Scruffy assures him, the arm draped around his shoulders constricts softly to give him a comforting squeeze. "Like… have you been told why his name is Stick, yet?" Scruffy feels the answer, a gentle bumping of Canvas's chin against his chest as he shakes his head no.

His batchmate chuckles quietly. "It's silly. I scratched my CT number into a stick I found nearby and used it to hold my place in line for receiving our evening rations because I desperately had to, y'know, "help a thirsty tree"... One of the COs was wondering why there was a gap in the line and asked why there was a stick in line when he went to inspect things, asked what a stick was doing in line right around the time I came back. Looked the CO straight in the eye and said "Oh that's me, Sir!", completely serious-like. I accidentally named myself Stick."

"And… you didn't want to change it?" Canvas asks in a small voice. It's the first he's spoken since he suggested he believed they'd be in trouble if they were out of their room after-hours on this part of the massive Venator-class ship.

Stick smiles brightly, surprised just like Scruffy that Canvas was actually talking. "Nah. The look on the CO's face was too funny and the joke got away from me quickly. Took on a life of its own so fast that other soldiers actually kept using that placeholder I made to keep my spot in line several times. I just decided to lean into it; claim it for myself."

"Do you… still have it?"

Stick nodded, blotting the smallest brush clean for Scruffy so he could use it next. "Yeah. It's in one of the lockers with the rest of my things back in the room, actually. Here, trade with you so you're not trying to use the edge of such a thick brush to paint such thin lines, Scruff."

"Oh, thanks…" Scruffy murmurs, finding the tiny tip much easier to control to properly convey the shape of his subject. A little bird sitting in cupped hands.

"Is that a… uh, what'd the General call them again? Spearoos?"

Scruffy chuckles, amused by the mispronounced attempt. "Sparrows. Little birds they'd see at the Jedi Temple, apparently. They sounded cute." he admits with a shrug. The more he learned from Canvas about the various birds of the galaxy, the more he could understand why they fascinated this brother from another batch. There were just so many. So many fascinating evolutionary niches, adaptations, colors, sizes, even types of plumage. There was no shortage of information to learn about avian life of the galaxy outside their rainy mother-world.

"What kind of…?" Canvas yawned halfway through his question, head drooping a little deeper.

"Oh… I dunno yet." Scruffy suddenly had an idea. He'd come back to working on the sparrow. Hands cupping the sparrow now found themselves at the ends of bent arms encircled in armor. "You'll get to decide once I'm done painting you."

"... me? You're gonna paint me?" Canvas stubbornly blinks away the fatigue steadily tugging his eyelids shut the longer they're in this quiet recreation center. Every Clone who comes in from the outer halls of the ship, initially bursting with exuberant laughter, falls silent when they see the three brothers sat around the little table, one of them slumped so far down in his chair while draped in a blanket, practically sharing his brother's shadow. The rumors have gotten around fast.

If for any reason you see a particularly anxious trooper huddled in the hall outside the infirmary, that's not a Shiny scared about his check-up. Please seek out Scruffy or his batchmate Stick immediately. They'll be the only ones who can settle Canvas down.

The permanent crew has heard of the ordeal just a week and a half ago, and they've made sure to advise all brothers and batchmates to show Scruffy, Stick and Canvas some extra support and patience because this "I'm having too many nightmares to sleep properly" cycle has been going on for four days, at least. Those entering the room become hushed with one quick glance at the trio.

Scruffy waves in return to those entering to be polite. At last, he answers Canvas with a "Yeah, why not?" paired with a little shrug and gentle nod. "Would be good practice, too."

Thank Kamino's steady rains and her endless, yawning seas…

Canvas was actually asleep.

This whole time, Scruffy just needed to hold Canvas close and sit in relative quiet in order to coax his brother into sleeping. With any luck, a sleep that was not burdened with pain-soaked memories of how he'd lost his batchmates to this galaxy. Hopefully that sweet-tempered, tiny smile was brought about by dreaming of happier times with those brothers. Maybe he was dreaming of Faro holding him and maybe all his brothers close during one of the rare times they had no training, no studies to complete. Or remembering a time he perhaps straddled Gunnar’s shoulders to reach or see something on a high shelf, maybe even racing down the halls pretending they were riding on the back of an Aiwha, instead. Maybe he was hand-sparring with Cryfar for fun, throwing sloppy punches with the intention of making a brother crack and break down into peals of laughter that lasted until their sides ached and their heads felt light. He could have been fantasizing with Fluke all the planets they’d see once they were shipped off to fight in the name of the Republic, the name of their brothers, their homeworld.

Fantasizing and brainstorming their Names. Their paint patterns. If they’d get brave and step outside the uniformity of the regulation haircut and get wild with it. If they’d be lucky and survive long enough to no longer be Shinies, but be the seasoned, experienced soldiers they’d been bred for, bred in the after-image of a late bounty hunter. Wishfully thinking they’d outlast the war.

Similar things Scruffy had done himself with his own batchmates.

“Who’s scuff mark is that?” Stick mumbles, whispering in a sleepy voice as he points to the scuff that spans across the split in the chestplate that denotes the “pecs” of the armor, just under the chin of the Phase II helmet.

“Faro’s…” Scruffy whispers back, carefully dabbing his brush to gather a miniscule amount of black paint to mix into the white on the makeshift mixing palette to make more of the light gray. “His scuff mark is above ‘Vas’s… almost like he’s…”

Looking down on his little brother.

Oh how poetic.

“Kriff…” Stick murmurs, thinking the same exact thing, bottom lip quivering. He’s heard what Scruffy experienced in those two minutes, heard the dreamscape he wandered through, heard the promise made to a fallen brother. “Do you… think he is, if he’s able to?”

Scruffy never had the time to ask Faro questions like that. Questions he wished he’d thought of at the time in hindsight. “If Faro can, I hope he does…” Could Faro see how confident and self-assured Canvas had become after adopting a name from the words of a CO? Did Gunnar feel honored that his bravery inspired Canvas to offer support to their brothers in the middle of a firefight? Would Cryfar laugh knowing that Canvas would take a deep breath to settle himself if he got overexcited or stumbled over his words? Could Fluke find it in him to be glad rather than guilty that Canvas inspected his rations for signs of spoilage no matter how tired, how hungry, he’d be to avoid preventable sickness?

Would ‘Vas’s batchmates never doubt for a moment that they’d asked the right person to take the task of protecting their little brother?

"Wow… it really looks like him so far." Stick whispers.

Scruffy needs to give the work more color still beyond the shading of the white armor and the paint of their unit. He'd done all the linework and painted Canvas in his armor and his six little scuff marks. But now he needs to take care to mix up the paints available to him to get the skin tone just right. There had been no basic brown in the depot to build off of, so he'd have to create it himself.

Let's see… complimentary colors could make brown in most cases. And Canvas… in natural light, in perfect health, didn't he have more red undertones to that bronzed skin? Almost a less saturated mahogany? Hmm. He'd have to play around with the color mixing for a while to make sure Canvas didn't end up looking so light and pale, or too dark.

After a painstaking process of getting the shade perfect, Scruffy could finish capturing his brother's likeness. The jaw and broad nose looked less flat and stiff with the color introduced by his brush. Carefully building up that color, Canvas's face on the cut of wood became softer, rounder, more humanized.

Human. They were all human. Their General told Scruffy when he first found his name that they, the Clones, the sons of Kamino, all of them felt unique in the Force. Cut from the largest bolt of cloth the galaxy had ever kriffing seen to anyone else, but distinct to the Force-wielders.

"There is a protective nature to you, son. You might make a fine leader for your brothers in this war. I can feel it; how many of them feel safer with you watching out for them. Perhaps… even the ones who don't want to admit it. But especially to that brother who I came to assist in his descent from the treetops, just the other week."

"M-me, a leader? Oh, uh… Thank you, General… I don't know what to say."

"You are very perceptive, Scruffy; it has been hard not to take notice. And I can sense that you have questions. You are welcome to ask."

"Do you still hear the fluttering? When talking about our brother we're all worried about, I mean."

"I do. The sound has… gotten slower, less frantic. But I do not feel it means he's giving up. I sense it means something else for him."

Scruffy has to pause for a moment, giving the paintbrush to a half-asleep Stick so he can adjust his support on Canvas, carefully sit him up so he doesn't strain his neck with an uncomfortable angle or lack of support after he's practically doubled-over since sitting at the table. "Easy… please stay asleep…"

Stick gives his batchmate the brush again, murmuring that he's just gonna lay his head down on the table and rest his eyes. The sun is slowly peering over the horizon on this side of the planet and it's getting in his eyes. It's almost daybreak.

"Go ahead, I'm almost done. Just need to… paint one last… thing, then we can see if we can carry him back to the room before this side of the ship officially wakes up."

The little sparrow. Scruffy just needed to finish the little sparrow, but Canvas was likely in a deeper sleep now because shifting him didn't cause him to stir in the slightest. So he wasn't available to say what kind of sparrow Scruffy should try painting. But at least Scruffy knew his brother's favorite color.

Orange. He could make the little sparrow orange.

Not just any old shade of orange, either. A very distinct orange.

Saffron.

A beautiful surprise sometimes found in the middle of golden and blush-pink sunrises. Dramatic and demanding in the red and purple sunsets. Canvas hoped to try something with Ithorian saffron in it one day. And as far as oranges went, to Scruffy's recollection, it didn't show up in many birds and their plumage across the galaxy.

Stick yawns and tells him not to be a perfectionist about it. Just paint the bird orange, add a few details and call it good. Scruffy carefully hums in agreement, saying it shouldn't take long. He should be finished soon.

The CO strides down the hall, hearing the chatter through the Clone rumor network that the trio from his unit could be found in the rec center. There's been a lot of chatter.

"They've been in there since almost 0400. It's nearly time for the mess to start serving breakfast for this side of the ship. You think they're okay?"

"I dunno. You've heard how Scruffy's brothers have been since the guy got himself blown up and came back from the dead; Stick actually wants to talk to him again and the other one… what's his name again? Vas?"

"Canvas."

"Ah, got it. Well Canvas has been inseparable from Scruffy ever since-"

Why were so many troops of a different unit stopped in the hallway, slowly peeking into the doorway of this level's rec center in groups before moving on to get some sleep? "Boys, you know what safety protocol is for the halls." Too many brothers lingering in the halls made for dangerous bottlenecks. Too many lives to potentially lose in one place if they were to come under Separatist fire. There's a mixed rippling of apologetic sorry sir-s and we'll go-s and you should see it for yourself-s that makes the CO sigh gently. "That's what I'm here for, trooper. Get yourself to bed and sleep well."

"Yessir." The reply comes with some salutes.

The CO finds the three young soldiers of his unit, his brothers, slumped at the table together, asleep, save for one. Head propped in his hand, elbow firmly on the table, Scruffy was just teetering on the edge of consciousness, his left arm curled around Canvas. Almost all Clone brothers have the same rich, brown eyes, but there's something that is profoundly, simultaneously doleful and calm when Scruffy looks up from the table to politely acknowledge his superior officer.

"Good morning, Sir. Sleep well?"

He can tell Scruffy hasn't gotten so much as an hour, or even half, of sleep since granting "permission" to roam the ship to ease Canvas's paranoia. He wonders whose idea it was to stop by the depot for the bad batch of armor paint and come into the recreation center on this level.

"Well enough, I suppose… Have you gotten any sleep, soldier?"

"No, sir. But…" Scruffy glances down at Canvas, still fast asleep, still bearing that tiny, tender smile, "...that's okay. I'll get an opportunity later. I think… I think this is the way to help 'Vas, though."

The CO is slightly surprised. Holding him while he sleeps, like a little nat-born child? Was it really that simple in the end?

He has to check,"Did you get a sedative from Medical?"

Scruffy shakes his head. "No sir."

"Huh. Well, if it works-"

"-don't kriff with it." his soldier closes out the saying held close to the heart of many a battlefield medic. "Should… probably get back to our room so others can use the rec room without needing to walk on their toes. Stick. Wake up, brother. C'mon…" Created and trained for war, but so perceptive and kind, Scruffy is telling his CO indirectly that he'll get the three of them out of everyone's curled hair.

Scruffy will have his hands full carrying Canvas back, and Stick is bleary-eyed as he stumbles to his feet, swearing sharply under his breath when he drops the whittled farm animal. (Hmm, he's curious as to who made that; it doesn't seem like Carver's work.) The CO stoops down and reaches under the table, "Here, just follow your brother, Stick. I've got it." He collects the other item that bears evidence of importance to his brothers, and with relief finds the paint is long dry. He'll return to clean up their table later.

"Thanks, sir…" Stick yawns, trying to clear his vision. He nods simply, hand on Stick's shoulder to better guide him after Scruffy back to their room.

As they walk in relative silence, aside from Scruffy's soft-spoken "conversation" with himself, seemingly.

That's been a new quirk for this soldier, since the detonation. Since his batchmate brought him back from the brink. Talking to himself.

Except just as they reach the quarters temporarily assigned to the trio, the CO catches Scruffy drop a name for the first time. "Wish I knew what your favorite color was, Faro. Maybe I could've made your brother's portrait even more symbolic by making your scuff mark your favorite color instead of the color of Our unit. Really make Canvas look like a painter's pallet or something; wouldn't that be funny?"

Scruffy was talking to Faro. That was the third batchmate Canvas had lost not long into his first campaign off of Kamino. He remembers Faro for his stoicism and a fond eye he only seemed to hold for his batchmates, for whatever the reason. Sadly the COs and the General never had the opportunity to get through to this soldier before he was forever lost to the galaxy not long after finding a Name.

For the first time, before he'll have to give it to Scruffy, the CO takes a closer look at this thin sheet of wood he picked up off the table.

It's a face that millions, maybe billions of Clone troopers bare, but it's still undeniably Canvas. The portrait has his gentle, coal-dark curls of hair and the dark, doe-like eyes that exaggerated his emotions. He remembers seeing Canvas, then just a number, a plastoid puppy, when he disembarked the gunships full of reinforcements. The kid had such an expressive face. And here, it was captured in a perfect expression of serenity.

Canvas has been painted in his Phase II armor, save for his hands at chest level; lacking the gloves and gauntlet plates. Cupped in his hands is a little orange bird, backdropped by his gray-ish scuff mark. But his scuff mark near the plackart is not glazed over in Their color. It's completely barren of paint.

The scuff marks of his batchmates are coated in paint, however. Faro's above Canvas's. Gunnar's is on the left shoulder bell and part of the shoulder on the chestplate. Cryfar's is on the left, on a lower part of the chestplate just before it touches the seam where chest and backplate meet. Fluke's is on the right side of the chestplate, near the space the arm comes through.

His batchmates' scuffs surround his own with color to frame Canvas's gentle hands, carrying a little orange bird, and the CO can see with each deliberate stroke of the brush that this entire portrait has been carried out with the sentiment of another brother's love for him.

Bacta, nysillin, both were some damn good stuff in the way of medicine out in this galaxy, but love…

It didn't matter the type. Romantic. Platonic. Familial. Love was some of the best medicine to soothe a troubled mind, a fearful heart, a struggling brother. It was far from Canvas's fault something in him was so fearful, so frightened again; like he had been from the very first step off the gunship.

It was far from Scruffy's fault as well, the CO hearing the thin GAR-issue mattress creak with the additional weight as two troopers sandwich Scruffy once Stick joins them. They were young. These three were more experienced than when they had been Shinies, but they would all have their slip ups. Even him, and his other commanding officer who he worked with regularly due to the nature of this campaign.

The General blames themselves for trying to warn Scruffy too late about the laser trip wire. Each CO individually blames themselves for not looking out for his brother better. They'd just rather Scruffy not take the blame while he's focused on trying to take care of a slightly younger brother once again because he has so much love for his brothers.

That was a good thing.

"Sleep well, boys." He sets the portrait of Canvas down near the bed, pulling one of the many, many blankets he finds on the floor up and over Scruffy and his little brothers.

A brother's love could be such a healing thing.

[Clone OC Masterlist]

Tagging @stardust9905 just to make sure that you see this, since you had asked if there was going to be more. 🩷

[FIRST INSTALLMENT] [PREVIOUS] [NEXT]

#frostfics #Comforting Little Brothers #star wars #star wars the clone wars #swtcw #sw tcw #tcw #star wars tcw #the clone wars fanfiction #tcw fanfic #star wars headcanons #tcw headcanons #clone oc: canvas #clone oc: gunnar/faro/cryfar/fluke #clone oc: scruffy #clone oc: stick #clone oc: commander juke #clone oc: captain law #jedi oc: caelen

4 notes · View notes

ahsokryze · 1 year

Text

I posted 2,726 times in 2022

161 posts created (6%)

2,565 posts reblogged (94%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@kckenobi

@gffa

@katierosefun

@barissoffee

@vanillachip101

I tagged 2,718 of my posts in 2022

#i knew queue were trouble - 1,783 posts

#obi wan kenobi - 640 posts

#ani and obi - 273 posts

#anakin skywalker - 239 posts

#obi wan kenobi spoilers - 227 posts

#ahsoka tano - 212 posts

#kenobi series - 132 posts

#disaster lineage - 116 posts

#sw rebels - 107 posts

#tbobf - 101 posts

Longest Tag: 113 characters

#he leaned in and quietly said “remember it’s my birthday today…so you know…i’ll be waiting for my gift from you…”

My Top Posts in 2022:

Ahhh yay you're accepting prompts! Maybe please be okay for the disaster trio? Thank you!

of course! thanks for the prompt! // from these prompts

please be okay: Obi-Wan isn't feeling well, causing him to act differently.

~ ~ ~

Finally making it back to their apartment in the Jedi temple after a long mission, Anakin let out a sigh of relief as he and Ahsoka entered through the front door. It felt good to be back home again after the long two weeks they'd had at the front.

Taking a moment to hang up their cloaks onto their respective pegs, Anakin and his Padawan then silently made their way into the living space. Ahsoka made a beeline straight for the kitchenette. Anakin smiled; she seemed to be thinking the same thing as he was—they needed food.

"Anything good in there, Snips?" he called out, slowly following behind her. "I think we..."

He trailed off.

Because, as he glanced over at the couch, Anakin noticed a tuft of auburn toned hair peeking out from behind the arm of the couch.

They weren't alone.

"Hey..."

"Master?"

Ignoring Ahsoka's question, Anakin curiously padded towards the couch with caution.

"Obi-Wan?" he said. "Is that you?"

There was no reply.

But, as he made it round to the other side of the couch, Anakin didn't need an answer now that the prone form of his former Master was lying in front of him. Mystery solved.

Obi-Wan seemed to be asleep—how the Jedi Master had ended up falling asleep on the couch of his former Padawan's quarters, Anakin had no idea—but something wasn't right.

There was a flicker of warning in the force.

"Hey, Obi-Wan?" he said, kneeling down in front of Obi-Wan's head to get a better look at his face. Obi-Wan's cheeks looked a little flushed and Anakin could see little droplets of sweat beading on his forehead.

"Master?"

He reached out to gently shake Obi-Wan's shoulder, but was immediately met by a striking warmth under his palm—Obi-Wan was too hot. Fever hot.

This wasn't good.

"Obi-Wan? Hey, wake up for me."

Obi-Wan's eyes fluttered. He let out a quiet groan.

Anakin ran his hand through Obi-Wan's sweat-slicked hair, brushing it back.

"Obi-Wan?"

When Obi-Wan's eyes finally flickered open, Anakin couldn't help but notice how distant and cloudy his gaze was.

"Hey, what's going on, buddy?" He tried to meet Obi-Wan's eyes. "What are you doing in here? Were you... hey..."

Obi-Wan didn't reply. He looked confused, delirious, almost... scared. Obi-Wan never looked scared.

"Master?" Obi-Wan murmured, dazedly meeting Anakin's eyes. "Master Qui-Gon?"

See the full post

89 notes - Posted June 13, 2022

Hm what about.. "I don't feel so good" by anakin? Willing to bet he never does lol

thanks for the prompt! // from these prompts

“I don’t… i don’t feel so good.”

~ ~ ~

“That’ll be all, Master Kenobi.”

“Thank you for your time, Master Windu.”

As the blue holo-image of Master Windu finally flickered out on the holodisplay in front of her, Ahsoka stretched her arms, stifling the yawn she had been holding in for the last half hour of this century-long debriefing.

“Tired, young one?”

A hand on her shoulder, Ahsoka looked up to find Master Kenobi looking down at her with a knowing smile.

“Who wouldn’t be,” she murmured, looking around as the small group of clones and military officers began to filter out of the briefing room, most of them rubbing their eyes and stifling yawns. When she glanced back up at Master Kenobi, he seemed to be watching them too, and when he met her eyes again, she didn’t miss the flicker of exhaustion behind his gaze which seemed to prove her point.

"Well," he whispered, "I think you'll find that the feeling is mutual, Padawan." He gave her shoulder a pat, and Ahsoka smiled back. "Come on. Let's get out of here."

"Gladly," she replied, before turning to look at her own Master, who was standing a few feet away, leaning against the side of the briefing table. "You coming, Skyguy?"

Anakin hummed, waved his hand. But something about his demeanour made Ahsoka pause. He looked… off. Something wasn’t right.

“Master?” she said, craning her head. “Are you okay?”

Anakin nodded his head. But the distant haziness of his eyes betrayed him, as Ahsoka scanned his face, noting the paleness of his skin, the light flush of his cheeks. Beside her, Obi-Wan stepped forward.

“Anakin,” he said, “Is everything all right?”

Anakin didn’t reply.

“Anakin?”

Anakin brought a shaky hand up to his head, took a wobbly step forward. Simultaneously, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka started towards him, quickly closing the distance.

“Master?”

“Anakin, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t… I don’t feel so good,” Anakin murmured, holding his head. And then, his knees buckled, and the young knight collapsed right into Obi-Wan’s arms.

“Anakin—”

Lowering themselves to the floor, Obi-Wan held Anakin's unconscious body in his lap, desperately trying to get a response from the younger man while Ahsoka watched by in shock.

"What's wrong? Is he okay?" she asked, her eyes wide as she watched Obi-Wan check for Anakin's pulse, holding his fingers over his neck while Anakin's head lolled against his arm.

"He's burning up," Obi-Wan said, running his other hand over Anakin's forehead, brushing back his hair. Then, he looked up, serious eyes meeting hers. "Ahsoka. Call for the medics."

With another worried glance at her unconscious Master, Ahsoka nodded her head and lifted her comlink.

~ ~ ~

92 notes - Posted March 17, 2022

okay so like i’m just thinking about how we’re gonna get a soundtrack for the kenobi series

like, a soundtrack for obi-wan.

A SOUNDTRACK FOR OBI-WAN KENOBI

AHHHHAJSHSHKAJSHSJAHH

110 notes - Posted February 9, 2022

If you’re still doing prompts, maybe ‘right as rain’ with obi-wan? Thanks!! :)

thanks for the prompt! // prompts closed

right as rain: Obi-Wan says he’s fine right before collapsing.

~ ~ ~

“Master, that did not happen. I don’t believe you.”

“Uh, yeah it did,” Anakin said, crossing his arms. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Snips.”

“Oh really? So you “didn’t lie” when you told me that there wasn’t any activated droids in the battle simulator room the other day?”

“Because there wasn’t! That was just a big coincidence, Snips—how was I supposed to know that Master Drallig had wandered in and decided to turn on all the droids for a combat training class?!”

“Uh, maybe by checking the schedule?”

“I did!” Anakin exclaimed. “I made sure—”

He was cut off, hearing the front door open behind him. Turning round in his chair, Anakin watched as a raggedy-looking figure stepped in through the door. His eyes widened.

It was Obi-Wan.

Suddenly forgetting about their previous conversation, Anakin shared a quick glance of concern with Ahsoka, before he stood up and promptly closed the distance between his former Master, feeling Ahsoka do the same behind him.

Obi-Wan looked terrible. His tunic was all torn and ripped from hem-to-hem, his belt was missing so he was holding his lightsaber gripped in his hand, his face was littered with newly-formed bruises, and his hair was in complete disarray.

“Obi-Wan,” he whispered, half in shock. “What the hell happened?”

Obi-Wan was silent for a long moment, his eyes clouded with something Anakin couldn’t quite make out. But then, he spoke.

“Bad day.”

Obi-Wan took a step forward, and Anakin only stood there, stunned, as the man limped further into the apartment.

Sharing a mutual glance of concern with his Padawan, Anakin quickly moved to catch up with Obi-Wan, who had come to a stop.

“Hey,” he said, wrapping his hands lightly around Obi-Wan’s forearms. “Obi-Wan?”

He looked him up and down, met his eyes. Obi-Wan shakily clenched and unclenched his grip on his lightsaber. He gave it to Anakin to hold.

“Master…” Anakin said, taking the lightsaber as Obi-Wan placed it into his palm.

Giving him a feigned smile, Obi-Wan weakly patted his shoulder.

“I’m fine, Anakin…”

But then, in natural Obi-Wan fashion, the older Jedi began to sway on his feet, and Anakin had to reach out to catch the man as Obi-Wan collapsed into his arms, pulling him down to the ground.

“Obi-Wan!”

Holding Obi-Wan in his arms, Anakin desperately looked down at his face. Obi-Wan’s eyes were fluttering weakly.

“Hey, hey, hey—stay with me, Master,” he said, brushing back Obi-Wan’s matted hair. “You’re gonna be okay. Just stay with me.”

Looking up at Ahsoka, Anakin urgently met her eyes.

“Ahsoka, go call for the healers.”

See the full post

139 notes - Posted June 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Prompt List

❀✿❀✿❀✿❀✿

Fever and Sickness

“Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

“You’re shaking.”

“Come here. I’ll keep you warm.”

“You’re burning up.”

“How long have you been hiding this?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I don’t... i don’t feel so good.”

“Could you bring me another blanket? It’s cold in here.”

“I felt fine this morning.”

“Stay.”

“It’s not that bad. I’m fine. Really.”

“It’s okay. Rest now.”

Hurt/Comfort

“Okay. Okay. You’re bleeding.”

“Oh. That’s not good.”

“I’m sorry, but this is gonna hurt.”

“Don’t move—don’t move!”

“Out of everything that could’ve happened, i was not expecting this.”

“Squeeze my hand.”

“It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”

“Let me help you.”

“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”

“You’re okay—breathe.”

“I think it’s broken.”

“I can’t move.”

“Okay, yep, that’s starting to hurt.”

Fluff

See the full post

172 notes - Posted March 6, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

2 notes · View notes

angeygirl · 23 days

Text

Well, I was asked to talk about Villain OCs, time to talk about Villain OCs

Now this art is mostly from two years ago. I used to challenge myself to draw all my OCs once a year but it got to be too much after a little while. Either way, here you go :P

The Prince of The Skies (The Prince, Pride)

The Prince was originally one of Mable’s pokemon, (an unfezant nicknamed Ribbon) who was accidentally turned human along with the rest of her team. Ribbon met an expert in magical artifacts (we’ll get to her in a minuet) who offered him a chance with some of her spells. The one he picked turned him into a vampire. While he originally intended for it to be temporary, Ribbon was corrupted pretty early on and had to be changed back by force.

Now, in the intro post I mentioned that alternate timelines come into play. This is probably the most obvious case. In Vanilla (the main timeline ie, no mods) Ribbon is secretly very ashamed of himself after changing back. He was in full control but became such a different person while corrupted that it didn’t matter. In situations where he never reverts to his human self, he couldn’t be happier.

Overall, the Prince is very dramatic and flamboyant. He thinks too highly of himself but also has the power to back it up. He doesn’t forgive easily, but is a surprisingly graceful loser (if only to catch his enemies off guard when he gets revenge) He also respects when someone resists being drunk from. If you can keep him back three different times, he’ll never come after you again.

Brayden (The Flame, Wrath)

Bradyen is the first fusion on the list. His technical name is Blazeden (blaze/den) as he’s a fusion of a blaze (yes, from minecraft) and a human named Aiden (also from minecraft, but like, the spin off that took over my brain for a year in 2017) This is pretty fitting, actually, since the name Aiden means ‘fiery’. For simplicity's sake, Aiden starts as a bully who later on tries to stage a coup on a sky island. When the people rejected him, he started a city wide fire. Blaze are fire spirits that might actually be mechanical (it’s minecraft, who knows for sure) but either way they spit fireballs at anything that get too close

The result of combining an arsonist with a fire spirit is a person with flames always licking the inside of his chest. Brayden was held captive in a research facility when he was young but was convinced to work as muscle for his captors for a short while. After realizing he was being used, he broke out of containment and now lives on the edge of society. Aside from his destructive tendencies and hair-trigger temper, he can be a decent person to hang out with. Then again, he also sets forest fires for fun. He’s in the middle between bully and criminal, but powerful enough to be a pretty big threat. He can also hover and set himself on fire, just because.

Scarecrow (The Assassin, Greed)

Scarecrow is an expert in potions and magical artifacts. Most of the time she serves as mercenary who collects things and ingredients for other people, one of those ‘will always help for the right price’ type of people. Yes, she was the one who introduced the Prince to the dark magic need for his transformation. How exactly does she find things from distant places so quickly? How did a candy fox end up in the pokemon world? Portals. She has an artifact that lets her open portals.

Flore/Dandelion (The Weed, Gluttony)

Quick backtracking, remember how Mable was cloned three times? No? Ok, well their names are Z, Stormy/Wolfworm and Flore. Z is half porygon-Z, Stormy is half Wither (yes, again, minecraft) but is called Wolfworm in the Nightmare animitronic AU and the name drifted to try and make things easier (it didn’t).

Flore is the third and final of the clones, taking after Flowey (undertale) While all three are adaptable shapeshifters, Flore is the most trickstery of all of them. She also possesses the power to rewind her actions if she dies, meaning she can see the whole world as a game in need of a villain. That’s it really. Her motivation could be something super meta, and probably was during the beginning since she’s at least a little self aware due to Flowey, but really she just likes the spectacle of being violent and knows that whatever she does won’t have lasting consequences.

Flore also switches forms a lot, her favorite being her hybrid self, her human disguise and her monster form that looks an awful lot like her Nightmare Panther. That’s exactly what it is btw, she really likes being 10 feet tall and full of teeth. She also likes to swing around on vines in a sort of acrobat way and fights with a comically large hammer.

Her title of The Weed has a double meaning. First, she's literally part plant and second, she chokes out life wherever she pleases. Where Wolfworm constantly eats out of necessity, Flore destroys anything and everything all for the fun of it. Flore knows what she's doing and doesn't care, unlike Wolfworm who is too childish to understand. This difference is why Flore is assigned the sin of gluttony, while Wolfworm is not a part of the rainbow at all.

Dr. Losco (The Scholar, Sloth)

Supposedly brilliant, Dr. Geno Losco is both a mafia boss and a scientist. Not a mad scientist, though. He's quite rational. So rational that he never does his own dirty work and would much rather pay off people to do anything and everything for him. While not as destructive, Dr. Losco's crimes include taking credit for other's discoveries and finding ways to manipulate more money into his pockets... that will then be used to pay off other people.

(PS. losco is the Italian word for sly or untrustworthy. No one in-universe seems to know this)

King Andrew (The King, Wrath)

Andrew’s name is really confusing. In-universe his original name was Andy (a combination of Aiden and Tiny) but then renamed himself. The thing is, when he announced his name by saying “It’s Scourge, then” nobody heard him properly. Is that a dumb way of explaining how he got the name Scourgeden (Scourge/den)? yeah, probably. The thing is, I have no way of being sure anyone will know how to pronounce Scourgeden so I started calling him King Andrew as an evolution of Andy. He’s Scourgeden in my heart, though. As a Nightmare animatronic his name is Cyrus (because it sounds like scythe and calling him Scythe would be dumb)

King Andrew shares his human half with Brayden, hence the Aiden part of his name. The cat half is Scourge from warrior cats because it was 2017 and no one has the power to call me cringe but myself.

Andrew regards himself as a noble leader ruling a clan of other unwanted science experiments hiding in the shadows. He started off by solving other’s problems but started getting too violent His blood brother, Lance (Lucas (minecraft, last time, I promise) + Ocelot (real life) = Lancelot) saw the oncoming corruption and tried to resist him. They fought and Andrew was forced to declare his brother dead to him. The next few weeks were a bloodbath as Andrew killed keep his title, doubling down and not letting anyone oppose him. By the time the dust had settled he had seven teeth in his collar like a crown.

If this sounds like it could be a fantasy novel, I wrote a 12 chapter long story about this on DeviantArt and even if some parts are kinda odd, I’m decently proud of it.

There’s also a point in the story that Lance and Andrew chose to be blood brothers unlike Brayden and Andrew who are only brothers because they share a human half. Andrew highlights this by only calling Brayden his half brother.

While both of them represent the sin of wrath, The Flame is the burning outward wrath that hurts other caught in the crossfire while The King is the cold inward kind of wrath that hurts the one committing the sin in the first place.

Lydia (The Swan, Envy)

While Lydia doesn't tell much about her past, she is well known as an incredible singer and performer. She often talks about the magic of theater, and the magic of her psychic-type pokemon. She would do anything to stay in the spotlight, even if that means using her pokemon for unsportsmanlike purposes. She’s also rumored to have a mad uncle she was supposed to be looking out for, but the man doesn’t seem to know who she is. It’s Edward btw. She was sent to Pibbina to look out for him after he cut contact (forgot his family even existed) and secretly resents needing to leave her up and coming career because no one else could be bothered to make sure he was still alive.

#oc lore #info dump #yes I know I need to update the art I'm sorry

1 note · View note

the-firebird69 · 7 months

Text

There are several people here who are real stinkers cuz they're teeny and they are more like proper and one of them is BG news 33 houses left and they lost only people they didn't lose the houses 33 they only have that and it's really not lucky number so within that number the houses are divided by race and clan we're looking at now it appears that there are three minority morlock no those are the ones moving in they actually moving in there are 30 they're occupied and 10 being fought over those 10 hardly have any people left and very few generals and kernels and out of those 10 five of them are bja for a trumpsters those households mostly in South America and one of them is in the Middle East and they're losing the area and yes split between them. Another factor is that the ones they lost have gone to a myriad of people they can't focus on anyone it went to the pseudo empire and it went to minority morlock and it went to some foreigners and us and Max and they hate it so what we're saying is that the clones and the Mac morlock are being pushed out and permanently and it's because they suck really bad and a lot of people are doing it it shows. There's a lot of stuff happening and this is pretty big. The house is that are falling now are mainly Trump and VGA is not true but out of the 33 remaining houses and yeah that's the number there are about 10 bja and about seven trumpster but out of the houses that are a side there are 217 about 80 are bja the generals in them and 70 trumpster and that leaves 67 half of those are BG and it's kind of big the other half are other races of Mac morlock and then call him that cuz they're nut cases. .. but out of the 13 rulership houses only one is BG and there aren't any clones well okay they're part of the remainder is about 35 that remain in about 20 of those so clones with generals and there are two leadership houses for the clones and we're down to 11 minority morlock have five so we're down to six and the rest of them are these miscellaneous races and they rule over a lot of stuff they're Max and they come from different clans, they're treated better than BG and have a little more power but they're not respected much they say. The reason why we're talking about this is because you're getting down to a smaller number and you don't act like anything's happening to you you say you can do anything and it's absolutely not true and you develop a steam ahead from Air and does nothing for you so we don't want to see our son get hurt because you're a bunch of spazzes doing stupid things you think would work because of randomness and some idiot is imitating JC and he gets grabbed every few minutes and he starts trouble and they beat his people up.. the neighborhood is a shambles you are losing people faster than any other group on Earth than any other group in history and faster than any time in history. You dwindle as a matter of course can't seem to figure out who you are in the end you say you do it the whole time and we're all sick of you idiots.

There is a nutshell there's a there's a lot of stuff happening here I'm trying to get it out there but we're updating people in the status of the neighborhood full of yakking assholes give a bunch of bleeding sheap. Can you suck very badly to a very small straw

-we're going to go through your ranks but today it's Saturday and the pseudo empire usually sits back those maintenance upgrades equipment brings more down it's like taking a break but for real they're doing that today and you sent 20 out you more luck and they are going to attack you rather than wait for you to die. Is it forces you out to try to move and it forces you to gather them it's going on now. Along with these households you're a generals get killed from the new households and quite often and they're like six star generals and it's going to start going downwards. Hello and see how hard it is and don't like it because these guys drive the trucks better than them faster and more and things like that they are seeing it. Good size forces develop. And they're doing it today. 20 I've already left and really that leaves 13 also not a great number and if 10 leaves it'll be three all of them are jesus's number and Mary. And we use the number two to go after you idiots and other s.

-so basically you have a war on today inside and outside and you're not doing very well and the house is the one out there and lost people a lot of people and the people we announced as dead are dead they were living in other houses other people's houses and or we're heads of houses that left and it became 33 most likely the case and it was a horrible night a lot of people were mourning and they woke up sad and they should you're sitting here bullying their son and you're getting nothing and still doing it

-there are few other things happening I'm just sitting here spending his time you say but we're doing it and on purpose

-there's a giant number of things going on and there are other things in Charlotte county

-one of those things is we have to weed you out there's too many people interrupting and we need teams to form up and I want you to meet with me now and what do you think

-Charlotte county is firing people that work during the weekend and they found them to be detestable they want them out of every uniform that there is and it is the pseudo empire is being pushed along by Ken and others who can't stand your attitude and they're going to fire a bunch of you and you're going to March around the same dumb things

-they also canceling mortgages of you warlock and they're getting evictions ready for Monday and they're tired of you your generals are terrible and they don't do the job and they said so but they're forced to be contended with and they're going to fight the evictions and things like that there are other things and they're getting it ready today and tomorrow for Monday

-we are going ahead and we're watching them get ready to evict almost everybody here in an effort to clear the neighborhood of you miss grants they don't want you stuck to him that's what they're saying they're doing things that are wrong and I want you out and they're horrific people and people do say it's like having a dog or a cat as a neighbor and they do say it and they say you're ridiculous you can't be dealt with or negotiated with in any way to run around saying you have to let people know it and we just don't want to deal with you either and they're going to evict 50% of you that's the pseudo empire and she'll be harassed to no end but that's what you want to do and it probably won't work too well but it's going to go in court and you'll attract attention we need you to

-furthermore they're going to go after your land in Florida and tons of it and businesses and they say that you took it from them and you did and they're going to court to sue you for them back and for damages

-there's a ton of people who are pushing for him to post and you guys do nothing it's effective you just bother him a little you're idiots

-there are other things that they're getting ready to do and doing one of them is preparing to shoot you for what you're doing to our son and they are getting ready to do that shortly they can't stand what you're saying and doing at all and they're getting ready to do it in a few minutes they say it too

There's other news around the world the items below conduit in line and more are being sought by everybody and the houses and they are tracing down huge ones and big lines that go under the ocean to secret lairs and to the islands and we feel that our son is correct and they're going mad looking at these islands off Florida too Puerto Rico and places like that and the keys and they're finding the lines and they're pulling it out the line that goes to Puerto Rico is like 3 ft wide that's the conduit but the lines that are supplying power cuz they're taking power by the way they're tied into the grid are pulling about 400 amps a minute that's really 400 * 60 24,000 amps and it's silver it feels all the way out there that's like 500 miles at about 3 lb of foot which is a lot it's ridiculous 75 million or something crazy I don't think that they were tabulating how much they were using it's kind of a waste but they wanted to win your stuff's hard to find their stuff is hard to find and they're getting wiped out and they're hitting you're hitting the night sweat and quite often and they're losing and they know it and they're in trouble and they're starting to scramble and they're trying to get their masters out and resisting and they're going after you as the computers right now they're wondering what to do with the lines and they don't know what to take them out or not but there's fighting over them so if they leave them in there they're going to get pulled out so taking them out and they're spooling them and they're going to try and use them again and they're going to rip each other off and it'll disappear

-other things are happening but we're going to publish it's huge

Thor Freya

Olympus

He's under serious duress folks we need to recognize it and address it

Frank Castle hardcastle

I wrote up a report last night I feel it was ignored I'm writing another one up but says what we have to do and we'll probably end up doing it he says and it's good make a note that we should do that

Duke nukem Blockbuster

We're doing everything we can is not true we need to do more things and we're going to start doing it here to gain control over this area we do not have control of it

It says that there's an action over there and there's a ship above him and a situation is atrocious he never thought his worst nightmare would be this bad so I guess we should probably change some things and he says yeah I guess so and he really means it okay he never thought that would be the stupid and it really is stupid and we have so much cover we should be creaming all of them completely and would not doing that either

Thor Freya

0 notes

archetypesanalysis · 1 year

Text

The Mandalorian Season 2: The Lover

Now that Din Djarin has passed his first trial as the Warrior, the Armorer sends him off for his second trial when she makes him and Grogu “a clan of two”, and tells him to act as a father to Grogu until he returns Grogu to the Jedi or that Grogu comes of age. The second trial involves the Lover archetype. This is further evident with the season 2 promotional poster and logo depicting Din looking at Grogu because Grogu is now his priority.

The Lover desires physical sensations and emotional connection. A person connected to the Lover can appreciate sensory experiences like eating food and listening to music, which helps them to enjoy life and be creative. The Lover is empathic and compassionate as it helps a person to experience the joy and pain of themselves and others. The Lover also helps people to embrace others for their differences.

Din Djarin does not start as a great Lover due to his questionable parenting. In “Chapter 9: The Marshal”, he says that Grogu goes wherever he goes, even that means going to a gambling arena where Gor Koresh says that it’s no place for a child. In addition, he does not mind doing a shootout with Cobb Vanth in front of Grogu because the kid has “seen worse”. Fortunately, Din does have some positive Lover traits, and this is evident when he teaches Cobb Vanth to respect the Tusken Raiders, and he later unites the people of Mos Pelgo (now renamed Freetown) and the Tusken Raiders to kill the krayt dragon. Season 2 puts Din on a journey to access the Lover archetype in its fullness.

“Chapter 10: The Passenger” serves as a warning for Din about the active Shadow Lover: The Addicted Lover. His willingness to bring Grogu wherever he goes puts Grogu in danger, and this is evident when a raider threatens to hurt Grogu in the beginning of the episode. Din’s inability to set proper boundaries puts him at risk of leaning towards the Addicted Lover. This in turns affects Grogu when he keeps eating the Frog Lady’s unfertilized eggs – a sign of an Addicted Lover. A person possessed by the Addicted Lover is eternally restless as he is forever searching for something to satisfy himself. When Din does not allow Grogu to get close to the Frog Lady’s eggs, Grogu wanders over to the eggs of the knobby white ice spiders and eats one of the eggs to satisfy his hunger, which awakens the mother and baby spiders.

The restlessness of an Addicted Lover is like a person struggling to find his way out of a spider web, which is described as maya in Hinduism. He thinks his way out is to go deeper, but it only traps him there. Din Djarin, Grogu and the Frog Lady are stuck in a web of maya, surrounded by the spiders. Din chooses to run away and heads to his half-repaired ship is the right decision as he is taking the only way out of the spider web. He is rewarded with the New Republic X-wing pilots coming in to kill the spiders, allowing him to live another day.

On the other hand, “Chapter 11: The Heiress” serves as a warning for Din about the passive Shadow Lover: The Impotent Lover. A person who is possessed by the Impotent Lover lacks connection with others, lacks the ability to feel, and lacks the capacity to enjoy life – basically, these are symptoms of depression. The depression becomes a barrier that causes the person to be detached from the Lover. Din rejecting Bo-Katan, Koska Reeves and Axe Woves as Mandalorians just because they take off their helmets puts him at risk of leaning towards the Impotent Lover. Although Bo-Katan says that Mandalorians are stronger together, she herself does show signs of an Impotent Lover: she calls the Children of the Watch as a cult, she puts her mission to retake Mandalore over Din’s quest to return Grogu to a Jedi, and she does not accept Boba Fett as a Mandalorian just because he is a clone. She is a Warrior disconnected from the Lover. Din choosing to accept the Nite Owls as Mandalorians and continue his quest to return Grogu to a Jedi is the right decision as he values the connection with others. He is rewarded with Bo-Katan telling him to find Ahsoka Tano in the city of Calodan on Corvus.

After experiencing the bipolar Shadow Lover, Din Djarin begins to make adjustments to his parenting skills in “Chapter 12: The Siege”. He begins testing the waters by lifting his helmet slightly when having a meal with Grogu, shifting himself away from the Impotent Lover. He leaves Grogu in a school under Greef’s advice as it is unsafe to bring Grogu on their mission to take down an Imperial base, shifting himself away from the Addicted Lover.

His Lover archetype gets expanded upon meeting Ahsoka Tano. She teaches him about the Force, describing it as an energy field created by all living things. Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette describe the Lover energy having an immediate and intimate contact with the universal consciousness like “the Force”. This connection helps people to value and appreciate all living beings regardless of their differences. Din’s acceptance of the Nite Owls as Mandalorians even though they do not follow the strict helmet rule is his first step to become the Lover to its fullness. In “Chapter 13: The Jedi”, Din teams up with Ahsoka to free the city of Calodan from the control of Morgan Elsbeth, despite the Mandalorians and the Jedi are ancient enemies. In “Chapter 14: The Tragedy”, he accepts Boba Fett as a Mandalorian despite both of them have different values. In “Chapter 15: The Believer”, he and Mayfeld develop a newfound respect, and he lets Mayfeld go, forgiving his transgressions. Din’s ability to love those who are different than him shows that he is becoming a great Lover.

“Chapter 16: The Rescue” serves as the final test for Din Djarin in becoming a balanced Lover. He gathers Cara Dune, Boba Fett, Fennec, Bo-Katan and Koska Reeves to aid him in rescuing Grogu. Everything he does is out of his love for Grogu. When Din removes his helmet for Grogu to see his face, he finally lets down the barrier between them and avoids the pitfalls of the Impotent Lover. He also lets Grogu go with Luke Skywalker, establishing an appropriate boundary that helps him to avoid the pitfalls of the Addicted Lover. With that, Din has passed the test.

Now with the Darksaber in his possession, his next trial will involve the Magician archetype.

#the mandolarian #star wars #din djarin #grogu #the mandalorian season 2 #the mandalorian season two #the mandalorian analysis #din djarin and grogu #sw the mandalorian #star wars the mandalorian #king warrior magician lover #archetypes #archetypal psychology #the mandalorian meta

1 note · View note

phoenixyfriend · 3 years

Text

Ezra and Fulcrum’s Wacky Adventure

Ezra's attempt to save Ahsoka on Malachor by fucking around with space-time goes wonky, and the two of them end up in the first year of TCW... with Vader in pursuit.

"You're Ahsoka... from the future?"

"Sure am, Skyguy."

"And that's your padawan."

"A friend's padawan. His master died recently, and I'm keeping an eye on him until we figure something out."

"Right, right... and, uh, mister tall, Dark, and horrifying?"

"Oh, that's future you."

"..."

"Yeah, Palpatine's a Sith Lord and he's been grooming you for a decade. Shit’s fucked. Anyway, get ready to jump, Vader’s gaining on us."

I just have this mental image of hyper-competent "I am no Jedi" Fulcrum leading 20yo Anakin and angstiest ever Ezra on a merry ride called "avoid Vader before he kills us all."

Intermittently she tries to talk Vader down with "Padme's still alive!" and that sort of not-quite-reassurance, and Anakin is getting very concerned about... many things.

Smol Ahsoka is very "future me scares me." Like yeah Fulcrum is a badass but Fulcrum is also incredibly blase about like. Really horrifying things.

Fulcrum's had a long time to come to terms with "Vader is probably Anakin" and a week or two to come to terms with "Vader is DEFINITELY Anakin and also trying to kill me and this child (teenager) I'm currently in charge of." She's coping by making very morbid jokes and being scarily calm about things, and just overall Very Unperturbed about, like, an explosion going off two feet away from her.

She keeps dropping bombs like "Yeah, all the clones have mind-control chips in their heads with orders to kill us or themselves and I remember like a solid half of you trying to kill me in particular, it was a very formative experience for how I dealt with the rise of the Empire" with the most unassuming, bland smiles.

Everyone's horrified except Fulcrum herself and Ezra, who grew up in the Empire and has never known anything else, but ALSO he's consistently freaking out and having negative reactions to shinies and even some of the older clones because even painted phase one armor is setting off 'These are stormtroopers' PTSD.

So there's:

- that general "Vader fucks around and everyone, including Sidious and Tyranus, is trying to figure out the identity of this absolute motherfucker wrecking everyone's shit with no restraint or apparent care in target allegiance"

- "a friend from The Future shows up to tell you about the horrible, horrible fate everyone is going to suffer, now you have to fix it"

- "Future Me tried to kill The Little Sister?????"

Do you think your teenager is traumatized now, Anakin? Think again! In eighteen years, it's going to be so much worse, and it's going to be in large part your fault!

Fulcrum, smiling: Humor makes the trauma bearable.

Anakin: [concerned noises]

@atagotiak: I have this mental image of Anakin and Fulcrum making the very inadvisable decision to spar

Fulcrum thinks she’s able to handle it. She’s not.

She has the skills! But. Uh. Panic attacks are fun, especially when they take the form of "my brain flipped a switch and I could no longer process that this was a spar and not a fight to the death."

Ezra suggests that maybe she'd be better off sparring with General Kenobi instead of Skywalker. Ezra can spar with Mini-Soka and Anakin, he's fine with that. He knows Vader is Anakin but it's just a Fact, like "there are this many stars in the Chommel sector." It's certainly true but he has no emotional connection to this information.

Tia: It’s not great for Fulcrum mentally and also tbh it seems like there might be a risk of her injuring Anakin. Probably not too seriously just because the sabers aren’t gonna be full power but still, seems like something to avoid

Does she flinch around non-Rex 501st clones? Probably!

Fulcrum: Here's a list of clones we're likely to encounter that I'm not going to panic around.

Anakin: ...there’s only three names on this list.

Fulcrum: Yeah.

Tia: Trying to figure out what her opinion of Bail Organa must be. Which is complicated by how I haven’t seen Rebels.

I mean yeah there’s some degree of trust and respect and stuff there. But in the novel at least I didn’t really get any friendship vibe from them. To be fair I’m pretty sure they barely knew each other at the point.

“He’s trustworthy but a much sneakier motherfucker than anyone gives him credit for.”

"We aren't friends but I would lay down my life for him without hesitation"

"He's very soft compared to Jedi or clones but he's almost stupidly brave and apparently tried to help when he saw the Temple go up in flames, it's wild."

"But you're not friends?"

"Nah, future Bail was kind of my boss and I saw him once every two years if that. He has my ultimate respect, though. Ten outta ten, would become a black ops agent for again."

Tia: “Also his office is very fun to break into”

The looks that last one gets her.

Obi-Wan was nodding along because Yeah, he Gets It, Bail is incredibly impressive for a politician, he's a good man with a good heart and nerves of steel! Obi-Wan also finds him worthy of total loyalty! This is all--his office is What.

Fulcrum: Hey, you wanna know something terrible?

Anakin: No.

Fulcrum: Too bad, telling you anyway.

Fulcrum gets a lot of mileage out of being the future version of one of Anakin's current Five Most Important People (Obi-Wan, Padme, Ahsoka, Palpatine, Rex) since the twins haven't been born yet and Shmi's already dead.

Also, Tia pointed out that Caleb is like eleven at this point, and that’s very awkward for Ezra.

#Ezra Bridger #Ahsoka Tano #Fulcrum #Anakin Skywalker #Darth Vader #Bail Organa #Obi Wan Kenobi #time travel #sw rebels #star wars #the clone wars #Phoenix Posts

965 notes · View notes

blackkatmagic · 3 years

Note

Hi Kat! I hope your doing better. My birthday is on the 29th and I was going to ask if you had a snip bit of It’s Not the Waking to share, but I do see that you probably need to be resting right now. So if nothing is readily available please ignore this request. Your health comes first. :)

Happy birth!!!

Something’s wrong, Cody thinks, and it sits like a stone in the pit of his stomach. Fox wouldn’t have ordered the troops off of Alderaan, wouldn’t have demanded that Cody wait for him the moment he got to the cruiser, unless something was wrong.

He doesn’t pace, doesn’t let himself give in to the rising tension that eats through his muscles as he watches Fox’s shuttle slide into the bay. Boil met them in the hangar, slid into place at Sinker’s right hand like it’s something that he’s trained for, and Sinker hadn’t protested. He’s on his comm, though his helmet is muted and Cody can't hear what he’s saying; he’s still talking to Doom, likely, and Cody almost wants to tell Doom to delay, to wait until Cody hears whatever Fox has to say in explanation, but—

Fox wouldn’t have given the order without reason. Cody knows that.

“Sir,” Sinker says quietly, though from the angle of his helmet Cody can tell his eyes are still on the shuttle as it settles. “Reports of trouble in the Stygeon System, Nuiri sector. Imperial holdouts refusing to acknowledge you. They're refusing to submit the records from the prison on Stygeon Prime.”

That was a Sep prison, back during the war, Cody thinks with a frown. Dooku used it for the prisoners he reallydidn’t want escaping. “Any clones inside?” he asks.

Sinker shakes his head. “Imperial officers only, as far as we can tell. If there are clones on the inside, they haven’t woken up yet.”

Woken up. Cody still doesn’t know any other term that they can use, but that one doesn’t fit. Doesn’t work, or imply the willing compliance, stripped of anything like opinion. As far as he’s been able to tell, all the clones are awake. Every last one of them, two years too late, with nothing but memories that aren’t nearly hazy enough and a fanatic sort of certainty that they’d all rather die than go back to sleep.

“Who’s closest?” he asks curtly.

There's a pause as Sinker relays the question, and then tips his head. “Commander Davijaan’s got a wing in the next system over, but Commander Jet has a cruiser that can make it there within two days.”

The familiar names make Cody close his eyes, his chest full of broken pieces. He’s looked, briefly, to see who’s survived this long, but—not thoroughly. Sometimes it’s easier not to know.

“Have Davijaan scout the system and see if he can get in. Jet should move to reinforce him. I want that prison broken open and all the holdouts taken into custody, if it’s possible. If not, just get rid of them.”

“Yes, sir,” Sinker answers, sliding back a step, and Boost takes his spot, practically shoulder to shoulder with Boil. If it was just up to Cody, he’d boot them both in the ass and tell them to stop hovering, but.

This isn't just about him. It’s all the clones. He needs to keep a hold of whatever fracturing bits of the Empire he can, because otherwise someone could step in, take power, who knows precisely what happened to them the first time. Someone who can recreateit, and no part of Cody can let that happen.

With a hiss, the ramp of Fox’s shuttle hits the deck, and almost immediately the squad starts to filter out. 91st, Cody thinks, and all of the old units have been scattered and mixed and broken, but—Neyo reclaimed these ones. And, indeed, it’s Neyo right behind them, armored and stiff and—

Shaken, Cody thinks with a jolt. It’s clear in the set of Neyo's shoulders, the fact that his arms are folded across his chest, nowhere near his blasters. It’s a vulnerable position, if there's an enemy, and there is.

He opens his mouth, takes a step, ready to call out, and then realizes with a lurching jolt like ice in his gut that Fox wasn’t the first one out.

“Neyo,” Cody says, a sharp crack across the bay, and Neyo turns his head, looks over. Pauses—

“Fox wants you to clear the bay,” he says. “Anyone you can send out, do it.”

Boost takes a short breath, grip tightening on his blaster. “With all due respect, sir,” he says. “There are already fewer people in here than I’d like.”

Neyo doesn’t snap, doesn’t waver. “Trust me, Sergeant,” he says. “You're not going to mind in about five minutes.”

A thread of dark, creeping suspicion twists through Cody's chest. “Vod—” he starts, halfway to a test, and Neyo snorts.

“I'm me,” he says, bitter humor with an edge of bite. “Udesii, vod.”

Calm down. Cody's about as calm as he’s going to get, and it’s not very. Still, between Fox and Neyo, odds are that this likely won't get them all killed outright, so he nods. “Boil, make the call,” he orders, and Boil shoots him a sideways look through the visor of his helmet but taps his comm. A moment later, there's an organized retreat of all the other clones in the bay, even the mechanics abandoning their work to retreat into the main part of the cruiser. Cody waits as they filter out, Neyo's squad following, and then raises a brow.

“Well?” he asks.

Neyo takes a breath that’s not quite steady. “Pull up your mask,” he says, and then calls back into the shuttle, “Clear!”

Cody raises a brow, but tugs his hood back up, the scarf into place. A bare moment later, there are boots on metal, Fox’s heavy stride, and an echo of lighter, almost entirely inaudible steps. When Fox appears at the top of the ramp, he’s not hanging onto the aide, doesn’t even have his blaster drawn. Surprised, Cody hesitates, but Fox looks at him for a long, long second and then says gruffly, but almost gently, “Come on.”

He’s not talking to Cody, that much is clear. And, a bare second later, the aide slides up next to Fox’s bulk, half-hidden behind him but obviously free of the binders. Fox glances back at him, apparently seeing something that Cody can't, because he reaches back, closes his fingers around the aide’s elbow. It’s not a punishing grip; Cody doesn’t have to move closer to be able to see that. Like his voice, it’s practically gentle, careful, and Cody can't even begin to fathom what changed in the space of a shuttle ride to convince Fox that this man isn't a threat.

“Fox,” he says, a little wary, because if the aide is an Inquisitor of some sort, if he’s controlling Fox—

“Emperor,” Fox says, and comes to a halt at the base of the ramp, several strides still between them. The aide is tense, dark gaze flickering from Cody to Fox and back, and beneath the edge of his coat Cody can just make out a fisted hand, clenched around something silver.

A weapon. Fox left him a weapon, Cody thinks, and raises his gaze to meet Fox’s eyes through the dark slash of his visor.

“Something you want to tell me, Fox?” he asks, flat, and Fox’s bark of laughter is almost enough to startle him.

“Yeah,” Fox says, a challenge, and draws the aide forward. Reaches for his other hand, and the aide looks as confused as Cody feels but he allows the manhandling without protest. Lets Fox pull his other hand up—

He’s holding a lightsaber, and Cody's breath leaves his lungs all at once.

“We didn’t kill all of them,” Fox says, ragged, and suddenly the angle of his body, ready to put himself between the aide and everyone else in the whole hangar, makes perfect sense. “Cody. We didn’t kill them all.”

#my writing #it's not the waking (it's the rising)#commander cody #commander neyo #commander fox #ferus olin #star wars

269 notes · View notes

thekingofwinterblog · 2 years

Text

An Easy Step

Grime and Kisses

---

Over the course of half a year, Sasha had quickly become one of the most frequent civilian visitors to the Aquarium of the Pacific in quite some time.

Though most people with a year-long pass tended to actually visit the park's many exhibits, as opposed to almost always beeline for one specific part of the complex.

One of its less popular ones at that.

It wasn't that Sasha never went to any of the other parts of the park, she did sometimes, especially if she came early.

It could be nice to visit the other parts of the park, to watch the sharks, the seals, and the other animals.

But the simple fact was that there was only one thing that brought Sasha here, time after time.

Today though, Her Beau was talking to a group of school kids as the last part of her shift, and showing them the various amphibians here.

That meant she'd have to wait all the way until the shift was done and the kids had left before talking to her.

And so, Sasha took an independent look around the section of frogs, olms, Salamanders, and… Toads.

There was a reason she rarely visited this part of the park, except when coming to pick up Anne.

She usually got melancholic when going around this place.

It was something she and Marcy had in common. Unlike Anne, who was able to draw not only strength from these creatures, but enthusiasm, all Sasha felt was melancholy as she watched these, smaller, unnatural versions of…

God that was a weird way to think of them. But it was how she now saw it.

To her, it was now the Toads and frogs of Amphibia who were the usual versions of their respective races, while it was these Earth-based ones, so infinitely lesser in size, intelligence, and worth that were the abnormalities.

She had similar issues with birds after coming back, but since the only giant birds on Earth were currently in a government lab, probably being cloned, or whatever the hell U.S.A's scientists were doing with them, she'd eventually gone back in her head to think of regular-sized birds as the "normal" sized ones.

Not so with Amphibians.

For her, the only regular ones were the ones like Braddock, Percy, the Wartwood Gang, Beatrix… Grime...

Her eyes went over the room, and its exhibits, noting the artwork she knew Anne had designed herself to make it seem energetic and interesting.

Finally, her eyes went to the exhibit that she'd put off the longest, the Toads exhibit with-

She froze. Then looked again to make sure she hadn't misseen. Then she burst out laughing. Not hysterically so, but if Anne and the kids hadn't been in another room of the overall section it would probably have disrupted the tour.

As it was, she was only glared at by a couple of other, unaffiliated adults.

She didn't care. She had a big grin on her face, one that remained when Anne finally came over, her shift at its end.

Anne immediately noticed what Sasha was looking at, and in turn, gave her own grin.

"I see you're fond of Grimothy, Sash."

Plastered below, on the side of the Toad exhibit, was another one of Anne's cute artworks.

This one featured an adorable looking toad, with a comically serious expression, a scar across one eye, and his other one a bright, pure green.

It was absolutely adorable… And for Sasha, absolutely hilarious.

"He would murder you if he knew you represented him like this."

The tone made it clear Sasha found it all absolutely hysterical.

"Yeah, probably. I think he once threatened to eat Sprig alive if he called him Grimothy again. At least that's what Sprig said."

She hesitated.

"You… Really do like it then?"

"Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, I actually tried to get him on board with a stylized picture of himself to get the Tower Toads more accustomed to him."

Anne chuckled.

"I'm guessing he wasn't on board with the awesomeness of a stylish selfie?"

"Nope. In the end, I just ended up using my own face. Actually, we made a crap ton of merch with that design."

"You're kidding."

She flashed her a full-toothed, cocky grin.

"Nope. I was REALLY popular in the tower, everyone wanted a piece of me, and we plastered my face on pretty much everything."

Anne smiled at her, but Sasha could tell she wasn't sure if she was joking or not. However, rather than question her account of events, she decided to pounce.

"Well… It is a pretty amazing face. I can see why they'd want it… but… I'm not sharing you..."

As she spoke, her grin was a playful one, the kind she used when she was in control, and both she and Sasha knew it.

Her hand went up to Sasha's cheek.

"With anyone~♡"

Then, still stroking Sasha's cheek, she leaned in, their lips meeting in a kiss that Sasha instantly melted into.

Anne was more than capable of kissing Sasha in a way that made it feel like lightning was going through her spine, that incredible passion flowing through both of them… But truth be told, Sasha had always preferred the other kind of kisses.

This kind. The more subdued, but no less affectionate kind, where she could take her time and savor the feeling of just how wonderful it was to be truly loved and love someone in return.

Eventually, the kiss did end though, and the two young women left the aquarium together, though reminiscing on the world of frogs, toads and other amphibians weren't quite over yet.

---

"Oh yeah, it was a brutal training regiment. I'd start with teaching everyone Tai-chi each morning to get them all stretched and ready for the meat grinder."

When it came to Amphibia, Anne had come to notice a pattern with both Marcy and Anne.

Neither of them liked to talk about it and generally avoided speaking about it if at all possible.

Then, something would get them in the mood, and they would just talk, and talk about that world that was now lost to them.

They all had their own ways to deal with she supposed.

Then I'd run them ragged, having them follow me for a jog for 4 hours, before we moved on from that to frog jumps! Man… And back then I didn't even question how it was that I always lasted the longest. By the end, when everyone was completely winded from the training, I was still fresh and ready for more."

As Anne listened to Sasha talking about running the toads ragged, there was… Something in the back of her head stirred. Hadn't she seen that once? A whole horde of toads running across a field?

That vague memory though was immediately washed away by the image Sasha was describing.

"Really? You frog jumping?"

"Yeah. It's actually the best method toads have for training their legs and arms, and I had to lead by example and all that."

It took her a few seconds after she was done until she realized what Anne had actually been talking about.

"Ohhh… Right… Yeah, it did look preeetty silly."

The image Anne had in her head of Sasha frog jumping across a field, followed by a horde of tired, out-of-breath toads did indeed, look very silly.

Sasha quickly changed the topic.

"But man, can you believe we didn't notice any of the gems' powers at the time?"

"Well… To be fair Sash, me, and Marcy didn't really go out there and really push ourselves to the limit like you did."

"You still broke an arm."

Sasha pointed out.

"That healed in two days."

True enough.

"Alright, you've got me there."

Anne, Marcy, and Sasha had all gone through Amphibia while carrying the power of the 3 gems inside of them, which Anne had made great use of at various times after fully unlocking them, and Sasha and Marcy had both embraced their parts of it during the final battle.

All 3 girls had assumed that was the end of it. Well, at least until they got back home, and started really going into detail about said stories to, amongst others, Anne's parents.

At that point, her parents had noticed some… Things about their stories in Amphibia.

Like the fact that Anne and Marcy had both broken bones(Anne her arm, and Marcy her leg) during their times in Amphibia, that had healed completely and cleanly in less than a week, as opposed to the two months such injuries would usually take.

Or that none of them had really gotten truly sick during their time in Amphibia, despite all the unclean water meaning they should have had constant health problems from said water.

Or the fact that Sasha was strong enough that she could kick through stone.

That last one was what had clinched it for all 3 girls that the gems' effect upon them had been way more thorough than they had initially assumed.

Once she'd realized that this was a thing, Anne had originally assumed that this kinda stuff would have gone away with the gems.

But it hadn't. And if that was the case, Sasha and Marcy would have lost this aspect after their respective temples anyway, which they had not.

On the contrary, Sasha had reached her absolute physical peak only after her separation from the powers.

One part of this aspect that had disturbed all of them once they realized it, was that one of the reasons they hadn't noticed it, was that in the moment, all of it had seemed completely natural to them.

Andrias had sent Sasha slamming into a wall so hard, that the stone around her had cracked. Why shouldn't she just walk it off with no issues, that was natural right?

Marcy had fallen down hundreds of flights of stairs, and only broken a leg, and gotten some bruises? That's to be expected.

As for Anne, she could distinctly remember a time when she'd had to carry all the plantars on her back and run through a field of steam vents at a speed that any pro-athlete runner would envy. Back then, it had seemed so… Natural.

There were many more of those instances. Moments of a surge of power, endurance, and agility that Anne frankly hadn't even noticed as odd.

Like her brain had been rewired to think of it as normal.

But the absolute cake was the kind of injuries Sasha and Marcy had recovered from.

In Sasha's case, during Sasha's big duel with Darcy, the mechanical abomination had inflicted two massive injuries on her that by all accounts should have drastically crippled her ability to move.

It had almost completely severed one of her Achilles' tendons with a thrown laser knife, which by all accounts should have meant many surgeries, and years and years of physical therapy.

Sasha, despite the insane pain from the injury, had not only managed to fight on in spite of it, but internally, the muscles had eventually healed perfectly.

And then there was her back… The damage from the scythe had been 2-3 Inches from inflicting what on any normal person would have been permanent, irreversible damage on her spine.

Even as it was, the damage should have left her with chronic back pain, and massive problems bending over for the rest of her life.

Instead, she'd pushed through, and it had healed fine internally, just like her leg.

And then there was Marcy… Anne did not want to imagine what sort of horrible tortures they must have done to her, to replace her red blood with a green liquid that no one had been able to identify.

But whatever it was, Marcy had survived it and was now just as functional as any other, healthy young woman. Other than having a green liquid in her veins instead of blood anyway.

Either way, none of them had any answers to the details of how this had worked.

Was it some trace of the power still residing in them even after the main power was gone? Had being vessels for the gems changed them on the basic level?

The truth was they didn't know. They didn't know how it worked, the limitations, or anything about them really. And it wouldn't be until she was 91, that she would get the chance to ask the only one who could have explained it, about anything.

As she reminisced about this weird aspect of her life, she thought back to all those times she had a massive burst of strength when she needed it.

Holding back the giant red killer Mantis, running across the steam field during the trek to the spring at the top of the mountain, running from the giant rooster…

"The chicken!" Anne suddenly exclaimed, taking Sasha completely by surprise and making her jump in her seat.

"What? A chicken? Where?"

Anne almost laughed.

"No, no, not here. Back in Amphibia, there was this chicken, and… Well, It was during the first couple of months, and I was sooo tired of eating bug meat and vegetables, so when I heard there was this chicken hanging around nearby with eggs, I thought to myself, why don't me and Sprigg go over there and get ourselves some eggs to make delicious omelets out of?"

Sasha glanced over at her, frowning.

"Chickens in Amphibia grow 10 meters tall. Their roosters almost twice that."

"Yeah… I wasn't really all that familiar with how birds in Amphibia were all huge, evil monsters back then."

"Okay, but… I… Really don't see how this is related to what we were just talking about."

"Well, here's the thing, when me and Sprig inevitably had to run for our lives from the monster, we ran through this giant, open field… And there, on the other side of it? There was this giant horde of Toads running in a jog."

She grinned sheepishly.

"It was such an odd sight, even for Amphibia, but I'd completely forgotten about it until you mentioned training Toads with Jogging!"

Sasha's expression was one of shock.

"Wait… I REMEMBER that! Yeah, we were running, and on the other side of the field, there WAS a giant chicken running through it. Like, I don't recall seeing it chasing someone, but yeah, I remember that! Holy crap, if I'd just looked left, I'd have seen you!"

"Man, imagine that. We could have met WAY earlier. Man, can you imagine how different it could have been?"

Sasha didn't immediately reply. In fact, her expression turned sour.

"What's wrong?"

"You almost died… You almost died, and… I was right there… And I didn't even see you. I didn't even know you were there."

Oh, right. When you looked at it from that angle… Yeah, she understood Sasha's expression. It was one of regret.

"Eh, it's fine Sash. I "almost died" about twice a week back then."

"It really isn't Anne. You could have… I wouldn't have..."

She took a deep breath, forcing herself to be calm, obviously still conscious of the fact that she was driving.

"Well… You are right about the fact that things would have been different. For one… Well, Hop Pop didn't really become a symbol for the rebellion against Grime until after he ran for Mayor. That was the big turning point. Before that, he was just another frog not paying his taxes. And there were plenty of those."

"Um… He did pay his taxes. I know. I was there."

"Okay, so bad wording. The fact is that he was Seen by the rest of the valley as not paying his taxes. No one actually cared if he did or not. The important thing was that he stood up to the tax collectors, and that's what people cared about."

"So, political nonsense you mean."

"Yeah pretty much. My point is that if we'd met then, this would have been before Hop Pop became this big symbol of resistance when he stood up to Toadstool. Which in turn means Grime wouldn't have had any reason to kill him. Which means… Well… We wouldn't have had that big fight on top of Toad tower at the very least."

"Huh… Yeah, that… Makes sense."

The two of them drove the rest of the trip home in silence, each thinking in their own way, about how things could have gone so, so differently, had Sasha just turned her head left on a morning in Amphibia so long ago.

#amphibia #fanfiction #an easy step #sashanne

30 notes · View notes

testudoaubrei-blog · 3 years

Text

“I’m loyal, that’s my whole thing.” - Scorpia, Season 4 Episode 6, Princess Scorpia

“Everything they taught us in the Horde about loyalty is meaningless” - Lonnie, Season 4 Episode 5, Protocol

Rewatching Season 4, I just finished Princess Scorpia. This is an episode that has always stuck with me, especially the A plot of Scorpia realizing how badly Catra has treated her and everyone else and deciding to leave. One thing I’ve been thinking about since I finished the series, though, is what this episode is telling us on a larger level. Looking beyond the character arcs and more at this show’s larger themes and message. Because this show is very much a show that says things, made by people who believe them. That earnestness and depth is one reason I keep coming back to it.

In the pull-quote above, and throughout the episode and before it, Scorpia defines herself in terms of loyalty. It is her identity - as she says, that’s what Scorpions do, they’re loyal. Her actions for three and a half seasons bear this out. When she first shows up, she tries to position herself as Catra’s new best friend, the one who won’t leave her and will stick by her no matter what. And that’s what she does, until this episode. She sticks by Catra through Catra’s increasingly villainous plots and erratic behavior. But she doesn’t just stick around. Until the portal, she barely contradicts Catra, and even afterwards, does so only furtively and immediately backs away as soon as Catra pushes back. For more than a year of show time, Scorpia has not just stood by Catra, or supported her, she’s actively assisted her in her most villainous and destructive acts. Scorpia is fighting by Catra’s side, eagerly carrying out her orders, and doing her utmost to see that Catra succeeds. But her loyalty goes beyond this practical help. Because for all that Catra loudly declares that she doesn’t need a new best friend, she consistently seeks out connection throughout the show, even when she’s at her most isolated in season 4. She needs moral support, and connection, and to know that she isn’t alone. Scorpia provides that, and keeps Catra going. Though Scropia isn’t initiating Catra’s various misdeeds, she’s assisting and supporting Catra throughout. On a personal, psychological level, the only word that seems adequate for this is ‘ennabling’ - Scorpia, sweet as she is, is Catra’s enabler. We see in the next few episodes what happens when Catra doesn’t have Scorpia’s support - she breaks down, and realizes that her actions really do have consequences, and that the affection she took for granted for so many years is something she can’t live without. But as long as Scorpia’s still around, Catra can’t make that realization.

Now I’m not going to say that Scorpia is morally culpable for Catra’s own actions. She’s not. Catra is solely responsible for her various betrayals, manipulations, violent outbursts and assorted murder attempts against...most of the rest of the cast (though being raised by Shadow Weaver sure as shit is a mitigating factor). But while Catra is obviously being a bad friend to Scorpia throughout, Scorpia isn’t actually being as supportive or helpful to Catra as she thinks, because Catra doesn’t actually need unconditional support, she needs people to be honest with her and express to her how she’s hurting them. She needs people who will stand up for themselves just as she needs to take responsibility for her own actions. This is part of why she and Adora have such a healthy dynamic in season 5 - Adora doesn’t take her crap, and Catra takes responsibility for her crap.

However, Scorpia -is- responsible for her own actions. And as I said above, she’s been with Catra every step of the way as Catra has attacked just about everyone and made war on Etheria. On a larger, political level, Scorpia is a willing participant in upholding the Horde’s oppressive system, and executing a war of aggression and colonization against innocent people. Speaking of colonization, perversely, she’s loyal to the very organization that dispossessed her and literally stole her birthright, then discarded it like a useless trinket when it was no longer useful to them. No one ever suggests ‘why don’t we let Scorpia connect with ~her runestone~’ until Glimmer does (and Glimmer’s motivations and arguments aren’t exactly forthright). Scorpia’s loyalty makes her an accomplice in her own oppression (like a bunch of the themes in this show there’s some interesting post-colonial stuff that the show doesn’t fully explore, probably because Noelle and the crew felt self-conscious about telling a post colonial story, or just didn’t know where to go with it). Interestingly, Scorpia’s loyalty to the Horde here parallels her loyalty to Catra, which has made her completely disregard her own wellbeing, which is the most obvious take away from the episode.

But I would argue that everything above shows that for Scorpia loyalty has been a way of avoiding developing her own moral compass. Scorpia repeatedly shoves aside questions of right or wrong in favor of being loyal to her friends and to the Horde. Loyalty has made Scorpia not only willing to accept her own mistreatment, but to willingly mistreat others, and to keep herself from asking any hard questions about what she’s doing or why. This is despite the fact that Scorpia is, by inclination, an incredibly gentle, kind and compassionate person. She’s willing to silence the best parts of her nature out of loyalty to Catra and the Horde. In the end, she also commits acts of violence and perpetuates the oppression of Etheria. And this is so insightful, because we see this sort of thing in our world all the time. So many oppressive institutions depend upon the loyalty of their members to keep them ‘just following orders’; so many abusive systems depend upon loyalty to stifle dissent and silence potential whistleblowers before they even speak. We see this in some of the most oppressive institutions and the worst scandals in our own society, and looking back through human history we see it in some of our nation’s and our species' most infamous crimes.

And when we look at the Horde as a system that Hordak has built in imitation of his elder brother’s empire, we see just how central loyalty is an ethos. Hordak himself is motivated entirely by loyalty to Prime - being a former clone, he spends the entire series not fully capable of accepting himself as an autonomous being (even when he acts like one and enjoys it, there’s some fucked up religious shit there that I won’t get into). He seems to have instilled this in his followers. The Horde Trio, Catra and Scorpia all hold loyalty as one of their highest values. Catra clings to it as her biggest accusation against Adora - that she was disloyal, as expressed in Catra’s perception that Adora broke her promise and abandoned her. Loyalty keeps the Horde Trio together and fighting for the Horde, and Scorpia with Catra. I think we can read between the lines and say the Horde runs on loyalty (as well as fear) and this is a very insightful portrayal of oppressive military and paramilitary institutions like armies of conquest and occupation and other instruments of state violence.

There’s another, related way of looking at how a sole reliance on loyalty as a moral framework has stunted Scorpia’s moral growth, and I think that brings together both the ways that it makes Scorpia willing to accept her mistreatment and participate in the mistreatment of others. Namely, loyalty in the Horde style isn’t just sticking with someone or something, but subsuming your own will into theirs. Following orders. Supporting your friend in what they do no matter what. Whatever you call it, it’s about turning off your own self - your self preservation, your self respect, your conscience, whatever other things you value - and just going along with what the person or institution you are loyal to wants you to do. And this is where Horde loyalty goes full circle, back to its origin - Horde Prime, the narcissistic self-made god who wishes to control or destroy everything that is not himself. Loyalty as Hordak conceived of it and as the Horde believes in it is a reflection of Prime's absolute control over all his domain.

In a way, self-determination is one of this show’s highest values (together with love). It’s at the heart of Adora’s 5-season, 3 year struggle to become her own woman and her own hero as she shrugs off one imposed destiny and then another and finally embraces what she wants. In a more negative form, it’s at the heart of Catra’s arc, as she finally accepts responsibility for her own actions and their consequences and starts working to make a world that she actually wants to live in, as well as admit to herself that what she really wants is love. And I could go on. This self-determination is existentially, obviously threatened by Prime chipping people, but it is also stunted by horde-style loyalty that demands unquestioning support and obedience.

Both the Horde Trio and Scorpia reject the Horde’s ideal of loyalty and walk away, but I think it’s interesting how they do it. Neither rejects loyalty entirely (not on the way Adora does) - the Trio, realistically, remain loyal to each other and simply walk away and walk out of the war (this might save their lives), joining the other disillusioned cynics in the Crimson Wastes. They reject loyalty to the horde and embrace a more supportive and respectful form of loyalty to each other. Scorpia leaves, but she actually comes to her crisis and makes her decision out of loyalty, and because it’s clear that her loyalty isn’t returned. The immediate situation - loyalty to Emily and Entrapta’s memory on one hand and Catra’s orders on the others - creates the conflict between loyalties that forces Scorpia to actually make her own choice rather than deferring to Catra. But she also reflects how Catra betrayed her loyalty to Entrapta, and thus how all of her friends’ loyalty to Catra is not returned.This is another point about horde-style loyalty - it’s one way - Hordak or Catra will demand your loyalty, but they feel no obligation to return it, which reflects Prime’s view of every other being in the universe as disposable. It’s only when she’s with the Princesses that Scorpia starts to find a new moral center, though sticking up for and protecting her friends remains important to her. In neither case, though, are these kinds of loyalty coming at the cost of either the Trio or Scorpia’s autonomy or ability to make moral choices of their own. In the very next episode, she says she wants to 'be A good friend' which is how the Princesses typically describe sticking together, which is a much more active and holistic concept than 'loyalty'. Scorpia confesses that she doesn't even know how, but she wants to learn and thinks the princesses can teach her.

There's another interesting counterexample to Horde Loyalty. Adora repeatedly breaks with the people around her to do what is right. First she leaves the Horde, then walks away from Catra by stages when it is clear that Catra is going to continue to harm other people and Etheria. Then she walks away from Glimmer, defies Light Hope and breaks loyalty with her supposed destiny and purposes as well as loyalty to the homelans she has never known. By season 5, Adora is loyal only to herself and the people she cares about, but she isn't constraining her will to anyone else's. For all that she seems like a rule follower Adora has a rebellious streak a mile wide, and she will do what is right, no matter what. This is what allows her to save the universe 3 times.

So the show’s argument is that loyalty is not a good moral framework to base all of our actions around. I don’t think it goes so far as saying that loyalty has no place in our ethics (being a good friend, which is such a huge part of the show, certainly includes loyalty, especially sticking with people when the going gets tough), but the show stresses time and again that being loyal to something or someone shouldn’t make you disregard yourself and what you think is right. Because it’s only by living out our own values and taking responsibility for our own actions that we can come into our own as moral beings. Moreover, if we insist on maintaining loyalty to institutions that oppress us and others, we can’t dismantle the systems of oppression that are holding us and other people down. (Yes, this is a pretty radical message, but I suspect that Noelle is some kind of anarchist? Anyway, it’s a thing.)

Okay, so that’s what I, a 35 year old, get from this kids show. I think it’s also worth pointing out that this lesson applies to younger viewers too, in their most immediate lives. Younger viewers will have had friends who didn’t treat them well, or might not have treated other people well, and who might have pressured them into participating in the mistreatment of others (this is kind of how bullying works a lot of the time). I think it’s important that younger viewers see how being a good friend never means disrespecting yourself or other people and it means a lot to me that She-Ra shows this in such a nuanced and realistic way.

#she ra #she ra spoilers #spop #she ra netflix #she ra and the princesses of power #meta #analysis #scorpia

167 notes · View notes

ecto-stone · 3 years

Note

So I don’t really know that much about that my blood au you created could you tell me a bit about it?

Ha hah I Hope this is Edible

So My Blood Au is just Me dumping all the cool stuff i can think of into a DP what if Vlad is Good ^For Starter MB Vlad or Vladimir Jude Masters is a Paranormal investigater/ hunter/exocist in a sense. He seemingly Perfect in People eye, Not Really on the inside as he have many problem stem from living so long and going though alots of thing that he prefer not to talk about that he hide from People , go so far as to adjust his own emotion to what he find fit to the situration making him really hard to read. (Not Jack and Danielle, those are close enough 2 peel him like an onion if they sense something off). -Vlad And Danny are not same kind of Halfa in this AU, Vlad is Two soul (Half Blue Demon Vampire Ghost, Half Human twisted together and blend into one) and Danny is Soul within soul (Going though the accident give him two identical soul that over lapped each other) -Ghost are nerf and ecto beam and ecto Base attack can harm ghost but they can't harm Physical thing in living world Unless they are infuse with Core element same with Human entering Purgatory. -The world have 5 Realm: LivingWorld, Purgatory (GhostZone), Elsewhereness, Fairy Land and Unworld. +Going with the idea that originaly Vlad is supposed to be a vampire and many ghost in the series feel like they are more supernature creature then Ghost. Living world now have many Human and other Creature living among each other , hidden in plain sight +Purgatory: Where Ghost go and heal before they move onto Elsewhereness (Heaven in this verse) or Rebirth back to the living cycle. There are many area in Purgatory that fit human decription of after life look like , this is due to collective faith and ideal of many Ghost focus with each other to created these Resting stop. Incidentally like the living world these area are also watch over by being call King and Queen of the Death (Caretaker and protector of the Death soul, a being with incredible power capable of bending reality). Most well known one are the King Dark, Prince Argon and Princess Dora of the Dark Age Zone. Queen Desire of the thousand and one night. ect.. newest King of the death is Ghost Writer (library of the forgotten) but he prefer not be refer to as king, just Ghost writer. +Elsewhereness: The final resting Places of enternal Bliss. Once the Soul is ready to let go of all earthly desire, they are send here. Not much is known about this realm or it location. When a Soul reach enlightment it will automatically know where to find it. The realm also House many god. +Fairy Land: Home to care taker of the childhood inocent and many god that work to keep the universe running. Most common creature that live here is Fairy with two side one silly colorful side that appear to children to granted what ever their heart desire. The other is the Blue fortune side that Weaved the fabric of Luck and fate. +Unworld: A Dark realm with one way in no way out. It house many dangerous creature, ancient outer god and unspeakable Evil that have been banish to through age by god and human. >the Origin Story: +Vlad and Jack are Friend from Childhood (Their Bond are really tight kinda like Sworn Brother ) unlike their canon counter part meet in college. They Hunt Ghost but in more of a Release soul from their earthly bound kind of way via the info they get from the Masters Family Grilmore. (There is one major inconvience is that You need to wait for the correct day and time to perform ritual sending ghost back to purgatory so they can Move on to Elsewhereness/heaven of this verse ) +They Meet Maddie in college (Maddie and Vlad almost alway in a total clash with each other with Maddie tech almost Hunter like way in dealing with ghost and Vlad more traditional Way of Handling them) Which end with Three of them forming the Original Ghost Trio. With Maddie accept Vlad and Jack Respect the Death ideal. And Vlad and Jack incorperate More Technology into their Asset. +Maddie point out the inconvinient of having to wait for the correct day for each ghost to send them back to Purgatory (Their room are fill with

Container for ghost), Which lead to them comming up with the idea of Making a Ghost Portal. <Note: MB Vlad is not into Romantic relationship, Platonic one Matter to him more> >The Accident: No diet soda the Accident is purely due to one miscalculation that cost Vlad life (his Head got Blash Clean off infront of Jack and Maddie) In that Split Second of His face getting disintigrating, Vlad get a Glim into UnWorld (the Realm where are Demon and evil of the four realm are banish to) and Got Latched on and Pushed Back to the living world by a Demon Vampire Ghost Both Soul are now inhabited Vlad headless lifeless body, in Which about 3 day after Vlad burial that Vlad Body got completely decontructed inside the coffin and recontructed into a body that is more fitting to host both . Vlad have a hard time remembering Who he is after kinda get rebirth and Wander the world until he Get Suck into a Natural Ghost Portal and got Flunk Back in time. >Journey of an Immortal Being: -Vlad Stuck in the Past, He recovered his memories, Going through existenal crisis, Evil phase, Evil make me feel bad, Not Evil anymore, Found out that he is immortal now, Existenal crisis part2, Acceptance, Travel the World and Start doing the what ever he like, learning old way of magic still helping ghost and other supernatural being. -Caused several Major Change to the past that Mythical Creature got un extinct. (Due to the Law of life and death this does not affect who get born or not, it just that the world got alots more races now and those used to be born human in the original timeline might get born as another races entirely) -Get Mistaken for Messiah.( Look You can't kill Vlad, He would just be gone for like 3 day then comeback) -Caused the legend of Dracula. -Vampire cult have a horrible obession with Vlad as a Whole. Look like vampire act like one, can walk in plain day light and more importantly the ability to Open a Portal to Unworld . ( Vlad don't use this ability much and can only open small one as it is very energy consuming) -Meet his own ancestor Which is the Fentonightingale that Later Splited into Fenton and Nightingale (later change to Masters) leading to revealation that Jack and Him might be very distant Related. -Bickering With Time God (Do not trust the Clock Man that work for the Eyes) -Get Caught in War far too many time. -Meet Phantom (an odd entity that is oddly clingy to him) in the Great War. -Meet Other Some of the DP ghost when they still alive -The Horrible Bar incident that reveal Phantom true nature, an evil being that wish to turn the world back to it original nature of nothiness and try to turn vlad to the his side, Kill, Seal in Rock Case covered with Sigil to prevent Phantom from escape, Chuck it into the ocean. - The Contruction of the Coffin Ghost Portal. (Havent actually went into the Purgatory caused the CCP is one Way Portal. -Forming of many Hidden town that home supernatural being. Amity Park is one of them. - And many more unseen story >Daddy Stolen Ribbone saga (MB Vlad is sterile, he want to have kid but can't.) -The Vampire cult that he have grudge with attemp to Clone or at least created a child that have Vlad Power through ritual and cult like method. Imagine Danny Clone but even more mess up . -Vlad end the life of most of them by his own hand (they are suffering, it is best to let them go) -Birth of Danielle: +Danielle Evelyn Masters or just Dani/Dee for short is the only Stable child come out of this whole odeal. She is Created From Vlad Ribone like a Twisted Eve. And like in the book it caused both of them to be very attached to each other in a Fatherly Daughterly Way. +Dee Have Vlad Ghost power and Demonic Power but No ghost form (Her default funtion as both and whether she is in ghost mode or Human mode is all Up to energy control) and no connection to Unworld there for she can't open portal to Unworld. Dual Soul nature Wind/Fire.

+She like Frog and is interested in Marine biology (which Vlad have full support over, she have a room fill with Vlad hand made frog plusie that she all named. +He raise her teach her everything he know about how to deal with supernatural being and how to Snipe Vampire from a long distant with pin point accuracy.

+An kidnapped incident with the Vampire cult latter resulted in Dee Death at the age of 12 (1999), and Vlad becoming fully Merged into one Being with Plasmius. and wipe out the entire vampire cult in a horrible Vlad the impaler way). +After wiping out the remainder of the cult, vlad go into retirement and work as a wall Painter < he work supper fast on celling painting and no one know why> >The Boy Who Fly (2 year before the start of actual MB story) -Danny Gain his power at the age of 10, his parent know. The event of Portal acivation caused the whole town to have a black out. -They move House alots for 2 year. And Jack try his best to make his family as normal as they can be after accidenly k his friend all those year ago and now half eff his own son. -They finding out amity park their new home is on accident when the RV engine die mid way through the middle of no Where (The town shown it self to those in need) -Danny hide his abiltiy. But after a gym incident. and getting Praise by his peer for it instead of scold like with the adult Danny start getting bolder using Floating power around his new friend when no adult is watching. <Vlad who is Working on the Giant Raven paiting for the School Saw this and know imediately What Danny is> -They offically meet each other on the the roof top, when Danny mom ask him to go down the store and by some bread and he decided to try to Air Frog Swim to it. They become friend and Vlad even teach Danny how to fly properly before having to leave (they visit each other alots after the revealation, and vlad is a good adult friend that Danny can talk to) (Danno forgot about the bread and return home breadless) -Jack may stop with the whole Paranormal hunter/ghost scientist job but not Maddie. She keep doing it behind his back due to danny special need in ecto base consumtion (he havent grow abit since the accident and keep getting smaller and it concerning) -Jack found out and they have a Fight. which lead to Maddie go to his Sister house. -Danny Found out about why his dad was so stressed out about ghost thing now. When looking through his parent old stuff with his new friend tucker. (Dude why does your parent have a Picture of the wall painter in thier old junk). He show the image to Vlad. -Danny Get jack to tell the story about the inccident. Dad what if i tell you that Your friend who die 18 year ago survived and is on our front door right now. Reunion, Jack feeling guilty about making them both like this. Go Get Maddie. Happy reunion of the trio. -Fenton Parent become accepting to Danny condition, Danny have a good mentor that can teach him ho to control his power And they live happy ever after for now

#Q/A #good god how do you add read more on a QA #my blood AU #Danny Phantom #danny phantom au #god this is long #hachi text

139 notes · View notes