#Darth Hedone | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

berrylover0571 · 1 year

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The knights of ren in the comics are closer to a mercenary group that has a creed than anything near to the sith. They’re interested in hedonism and the masks are to be intimidating and nothing more. Vader worship was specifically Kylo’s thing, there’s a whole comic about the original knights stealing from Vader and fighting him. They’re very simple and shallow, yes, but they’re more an anarchist biker gang than a cult or a far right org

I don't know man, I think trying to get a kid to join their ranks by having them kill their brother and embrace a might makes right philosophy doesn't sound very Anarchist.

Like it's comical you think this gang that's hedonistic, and attempting to intimidate people is anything close to anarchism, that's not anarchism, and the Sith or dark side in general just totally not Anarchist it is Mystic fascism quite literally.

Also your argument Falls flat, because they aligned themselves with the same organization that was headed by Darth maul, who did not abandon his beliefs in the dark side, just his beliefs in the Sith order, the dark side being not a liberating Force but an oppressive boot on the Galaxy. They are not anarchistic, calling them Anarchist is not only a fundamental misunderstanding of anarchism, it fundamentally misunderstands what the dark side is.

They are a dark side organization, a brand new one that sucks ass and doesn't know what it's getting into, as opposed to the age old Cosmic horror that is the Sith, but they're still dark side Force users. As such they believe and abide by a might makes right philosophy, vaguely tied to fascistic tendencies, because that is what the dark side is and that is what the dark side does, it is a greedy, destructive, dominating Force that seeks to subjugate the galaxy. Every dark side organization, every single one, even the ones that are in some capacities redeemable or sympathetic like the night sisters and night Brothers utilize this philosophy to live.

They are not an anarchist biker gang, they are the proud boys, including all the weird initiations and a fetishism for power and nothing more.

If you look at the Knights of Ren and see an anarchist I fundamentally question your understanding of politics and politics of star wars, the light side is more aligned with anarchism, socialism, communism, and the democratization of life and the liberation of the oppressed. The Knights of Ren want to abide by the most powerful, they want to hurt people, and they want people to come into their ranks with that goal.

That Hedonism they're looking for? That pursuit of pleasure of some kind that endeavor to prove themselves? That's a Lust For power, it's very much Illustrated to be a lust for power. And this is very much heavily conveyed by the fact that when kylo Ren defeats their leader, Ren, they follow kylo. It's also reinforced by the fact that an episode 9, when kylo Ren abandons the name kylo Ren and just becomes Ben solo, they fight to stop him from defeating or helping Rey in defeating Sidious.

They are bad people who do bad things for bad reasons, that is the entirety of the dark side and the entire summation of what it believes, if you follow the dark side, generally speaking you're abiding by the tenets of the Sith because they are the highest order of the dark side, and thus the most powerful within it.

Those tenets are:

"Peace is a lie. There is only Passion.

Through Passion, I gain Strength.

Through Strength, I gain Power.

Through Power, I gain Victory.

Through Victory my chains are Broken.

The Force shall free me."

The proper way to understand this, if you really want to, is to add the prefix my before every single affirmation. Like so:

"My peace is a lie. There is only my passion.

Through my passion, I gain my strength.

Through my strength, I gain my power.

Through my power, I gain my victory.

Through my victory my chains are Broken.

The Force shall free me."

If you read that like every other fan of Legends who also thinks it's a good idea that Karen Travis made the word in Mandalorian for female the same as the word for sheath as in "sword and sheath," that sounds pretty pragmatic and like a good list of things to believe in some sort of self-help fashion.

But the very first affirmation informs us why this is not a reality, why this is not what they're actually doing. The dark side cannot let go, a dark side practitioner cannot let go of the things that frustrate them, they use it to hurt other people, in an expressly abusive manner. They have no inner peace, they have no interstability, they only have a deep passion, or a deep-seated pain. And instead of healing from that pain, they weaponize it, through that pain they hurt others, they gain their strength over others, and by dominating and using their strength over others, they accrue power, by accruing power they gain more power and thus gain victory and are able to bend the world to their liking, and thus since they're able to dominate the world through the express outward harm caused by weaponizing their pain against others, in an unhealthy fashion, with unearthly powers, they break the things they believe limited them and disallowed them from being able to do the stuff they wanted to do, they finally have broken their morality and any sort of moral compass, and seek only to dominate other people.

The reason why the Knights of ren, the night sisters, and the fanatical Dark Side users never really overthrow Darth Sidious is because he was the embodiment of the very thing they were all trying to accomplish, they couldn't do it because they couldn't go as far as he did, from literal birth to literal death he was constantly looking at people as pawns, he lived the very life of the Sith code. It was a code of no peace, of deep calculation, of taking every slight that was put against him, and bringing it back tenfold against the people who hurt him.

Darkside practitioners of any variety are not good, that is the clear and defined morality of star wars, and the effect of the dark side has on other people hurts them, it's not helpful. If you are a dark side practitioner you start rotting from the inside out, we see this with sidious, we see this with every single practitioner who does not turn away until later, their body rots, there's cars get worse and do not heal, they fester, they putrify, they know no peace, even in the pursuit of pleasure, the Knights of Ren were deeply scarred and hurt. They are bad people who do bad things, you do not care for other people and they are not seeking to overthrow the system, they are seeking to look for the best thrill to be able to gain more power.

On the inverse by abiding By the Light Side of the force, you are most likely abiding by the Jedi code, which a lot of people also seem to misunderstand because Legends made sure to make people think the Jedi were evil and the Sith were good because of course we're going to try and contradict the fucking six movies laid out pretty plainly the Sith were bad and the Jedi were good, the Jedi just fucked up in what they were supposed to do, which is fine, fucking up happens, forgiving yourself and choosing not to let that hurt yourself and others is what is the bad part. Light side of the force is as follows, and has a different word to clarify, "yet."

"There is no emotion, there is peace.

There is no ignorance, there is knowledge.

There is no passion, there is serenity.

There is no chaos, there is harmony.

There is no death, there is the Force."

If you read that as some individualist fuck nugget who decides that emotions are wholesale good and there's no new ones, the Jedi seem like unemotionless pricks. However when you add the clarifying word "yet."

"Emotion, yet peace.

Ignorance, yet knowledge.

Passion, yet serenity.

Chaos, yet harmony.

Death, yet the Force."

In the Sith emotions are treated as wholesale perfect, even when they're not and even when they hurt people. In the Jedi Order emotions are a part of us, and should not be weaponized but must be understood. It is through the understanding of our emotions, and understanding of how to handle them and be healthy, that we find peace. It is though we may stumble and be ignorant, our pursuit of knowledge and clarity through our understanding of inner peace, that we are able to consider ourselves knowledgeable and capable of learning. Through that we gain a deep-seated passion, a passion for what drives us, a passion to pursue good, a passion and compassion towards others, which reinforces and allows us to find serenity. And though it may seem chaotic, though it may seem wild and unkempt, though this wonderful and beautiful collection of a passionate many people coming together, this chaos is harmonious, it works towards a common goal, it is a flourishing jungle by which the greater Galaxy can benefit.

And in this, death is meaningless, for no amount of death can subjugate the living, it is through this passionate hope and desire to help others that we conquered death, we conquer our pain, we learn that letting go of the things that hurt us can help us appreciate the things we have and enable us to live and love the time we spent with the things we lost. There Is No Death when life is everywhere, when we are able to move on, to find a good community, to find and have support. The cycle of the force, this is the cycle of life, this is the cycle that we all must abide by, because the counter it, to subjugate it, to seek to chain it for your own ends, to dominate others and turn them into your pawns for your game, that is not passion, that is not victory, that is only pain and turmoil, and there is no serenity there.

The Knights of Ren are power hungry biker gang in the same vein as the proud boys are, they have bizarre initiations, a desire for power, and oftentimes they target very vulnerable people who they think they can subjugate, and when this backfires tremendously it ends up creating a much more worse organization and emboldening a much more worse person to do much more worse things, and they do nothing to stop it or to counter it or to fight against it.

They simply accept the new leader, follow right behind them, and question nothing.

"The nature of the Ren, according to Ren, was that it just existed. It had no conscience, neither acknowledging or expressing concepts such as morality, regret or concern for what it might destroy. Ren believed in this principle on a deep, personal level to the point where he did not consider himself the Knights' leader. All of the Knights, including Ren himself, followed the lightsaber and what it represented in their view."

In the Star Wars Universe having an absence of morality is still morality, this is why in episode 8, the last jedi, DJ is the bad guy who turns Rose and Finn over to the first order, because he doesn't abide by any morality, just the highest bidder. He may seem reasonable and come from a reasonable point of argumentation, but at the end of the day he's just looking for the highest payment, not liberation. His liberation is at the expense of other people's.

That is also why the Knights of Ren are bad people, because they're looking for a good death, their absence of morality is driven entirely by a lightsaber the path of brutality, outright and abject destruction simply because they wanted to destroy. The morality of the Star Wars universe is rather simple, clear-cut, and obvious:

The light side is good, the dark side is bad, and sitting and doing nothing in the face of evil, very obvious and direct evil, even when it's just a tiny biker gang with stupid looking helmets that aren't scary in the slightest, emboldens it to grow further and stronger and hurt more people.

It's why the Bendu was obligated to act, why DJ was a bad person, and why the Knights of Ren aren't anarchistic, but are more aligned with the proud boys in terms of their interpretation of fascist machismo. They are, to put it quite simply, a bunch of cowards Guided by a blatant disregard for life and other people's desire to live, instead only motivated by a deep-seated desire to hurt others. They want to hurt others. That's all they want. There's no dismantling, there's no questioning power, there is only the power they hold over others and using it to hurt them.

The Knights of Ren are not anarchist, the Knights of Ren are Fascist machismo in the Star Wars universe, the Star Wars equivalent to the proud boys, and they predictably fell in line behind Sidious the moment he came back into power and their beloved leader had a change of heart. Just like the proud boys.

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sithhoplite · 4 years

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Fydor Yahontov

Born: 16 Pall 2 BTC, Dromund Kaas

Species: Mirialan

Parents:

Darth Streer (Yozub Yahontov) Father

Darth Rhoth (Anavia Yahontov) Mother

Born of one of the few powerful alien families in the Empire, Fydor had a strong connection to the Force at a young age. His strength in the Force sealed his destiny to become Sith. His family while being Mirialan and thus noticeable in Imperial Society have served the Empire for 5 generations proving themselves each generation. Fydor is expected to be no different in that regard and is eager to prove himself to his parents and the Empire, to show aliens are just as capable as Humans and Purebloods. The one Sith he wishes to emulate the most is Ajunta Pall and he recently acquired the sword of Ajunta Pall at great expense.

Likes: Order and discipline, Books, Swordsmanship, puzzles

Dislikes: Wanton Cruelty, Hedonism, Traitors, Incompetent leaders, Sith or Imperial, Losing, Kiss asses

#swtor #sith warrior #Fydor Yahontove #my new OC

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arcann · 4 years

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tagged by @forceritual to talk about the overarching themes in some of my characters’ arcs. To clarify, I change the Consular story so that the Barsen’thor, in this case Tyzkaan, needs supervision during the first and second arcs as ordered from the Jedi Council which Yngram provided. I also change the Agent story where Exatlas is cipher nine during the first arc but after siding with Darth Jadus (and dealing with the consequences that comes from someone else thwarting Jadus) Nemore’xiel is promoted to cipher nine.

Blessaire: looking forward vs learning from your past, fighting isolation, dealing with leadership

Tizkaan: pride vs responsibility, dealing with impulses

Yngram: finding balance between fighting and dialogue, standing up for yourself, self esteem issues

Fallaz: pragmatism vs idealism, hedonism, recklessness

Willita: avoiding family with work, disappointment with the system, patriotism

Diokos: escaping cult ideologies, following orders, guilt

Noktemi: what to do with power, fighting conformism, narrow mindedness

Phierre: being new to a culture, higher and higher objectives, hastiness

Exatlas: resentment, taking control, atonement

Nemore’xiel: self sufficiency, grudges, paranoia

Under cut explanations for each character

Thank you for tagging me Dani! If youre interested in doing this consider yourself tagged

For a long time Blessaire didn’t know where she came from. She is curious about it but wonders if it’s a derailment from her progress as a jedi. Before her tutelage began she spent a lot of time a lot alone, trying to figure out her powers, something that works against her when the confronts Valkoriate directly and when it comes to joining the republics efforts against the empire and later the push against Zakuul.

Tizkaan comes to a lot of power at a very young age and the responsibility of dealing with it eludes her for a time. She has to learn how to control her emotions and see herself in her new position in the jedi order and stop focusing on what others think of her if she wants to stop people from getting hurt. She needs to get over childish rivalries she imagines with people who are on her side and work with them.

Yngram drags a lot of family drama to adulthood and it gets her down quite easily when she realizes she is now a jedi. She feels inadequate in that position and would rather find new solutions to old conflicts, which is sometimes shut down by others and she won’t argue her own point of view. It takes her time to be sharp the moment it takes to defend her ideals and identify the point where words won’t work.

Fallaz really doesn’t want to think about the needs of others. She thinks of short term pleasure and the rest is old news. She knows her lifestyle is not for the long run and at the same time wants to live forever. She wants to keep her friends close so they can enjoy all the shit that happens together and at the same time she has to care for them. The closer she gets to the top, the higher the stakes and the more she has to think about what she has to do instead of what she wants.

Unlike Yngram, Willita’s family is not something that weighs on who she is. She freed herself from it and now the anger and frustration that are left fuels her new purpose, the Republic’s army and her squad, even when there’s still people of her past worth spending time with. She has a hard time giving her all in the battlefield then going back home and realize it is not enough to achieve peace. She keeps trying and over the years starts to see flaws in the strategies chosen which makes her slowly lose hope in her ideals.

As a red sith, Diokos had his life planned for him before he could even make choices, yet derailed those plans before having control over his own life. The injuries that came from those setbacks made him gain his independence far later than people his age and when it came he found out that it was still supervised in many ways. He makes mistakes someone with more experience would not and has to look up to others when he knows they’re wrong. For a long time his solutions are passive aggressive and it makes his situation more precarious in the long run.

Noktemi earned everything she has through her efforts and pains. After she earns a seat in the Dark Council, in a position where she can help others, she has to will herself into finding new objectives that won’t benefit just her. A huge source of inspiration has been Kallig but this no longer brings her comfort when her plans go against the Empire.

Even though she was adopted by a bounty hunter, Phierre wasn’t allowed to hunt herself since the first time she did so it went incredibly wrong. She lost an eye in the process and she feels like she has to compensate for the time lost healing by joining the Great Hunt, which turns out moves her to the top. This only makes her push herself more and more as time goes by even when her responsibilities as a Mandalorian are made so that she learns from her clan, not limit herself to combat.

Exatlas’ family took his lack of force sensitivity harshly, shoving him aside from the spotlight and making it so that he could never elevate himself to a position other imperials could respect. In Jadus he saw a way to overcome such impediments but instead had a rude awakening where he was shown that not only was he tied to his status to the empire, but that he was also punished when looking out for success. His solution is to restart in the Republic, where suspicion and the search for atonement for the problems he caused while serving Jadus is tolerable over a constant boycott of his efforts.

Nemore’xiel spent most of 3643 BBY trapped inside Jadus’ dreadnaught. It was a harrowing experience but it put him in a position to stop Jadus once his plan had come to motion. How he worked afterwards was molded from that trail, being extremely resentful of both Sith and the Empire and wanting to exert control over others every chance he had, making it difficult to work in teams and yet coming to the conclusion that he will need help if he has made a decision to stand against the regimes that disturb him to his core, yet which he belongs to in many ways.

#oc: blessaire #oc: yngram #oc: fallaz #oc: willita #oc: diokos #oc: noktemi #oc: phierre #oc: nemore'xiel #oc: exatlas #long post for mobile #oc: tizkaan

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modmadtalks · 5 years

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Hey Mad! I've been a big fan of your Rire blog for a while, and I was wondering how you got as popular as you did? I'm trying to start my own ask blog and I'm finding it hard to get people to ask me questions, so I can't keep the blog up (since, yanow, that's how you keep an ask blog running). Any advice? (Also I love you and I hope you feel less stressed soon!)

Thank you so much, anon! @rireslittleplaythings is more successful than I ever thought it would be and I’m so glad people actually enjoy my portrayal of him.

Further answer under the cut because this might be a long one:

Tagging

Only the first five tags that you put will appear in the explore tab, so those are the ones that count. So, if your character belongs to a particular fandom universe, use those first five tags for that purpose.

Above, in the first five tags, I’ve included tags about the blog and Boyfriend to Death. After that, I’ve used more personalised tags. I’d also recommend that if your post contains content warnings, to include those first in your tags, but this doesn’t really effect blacklisting (example below).

(I’ve gotten rid of the actual gore because I want this post to be accessible. I’ll link to the original post here.)

It’s also really important that your ask blog is your main blog, because then you don’t have to rely on tags alone for popularity. Seriously, this is probably the key bit of advice I’d give to anyone starting out.

OC Blog vs. Fandom Blog

There are certain advantages to each, and it really depends on your preference. On the one hand its far easier to get people interested if the character your ask blog is from a fandom, as people will have a prior investment in the characters. However, if you have an OC blog, you get a lot more creative freedom. Sometimes you can compromise by making your OC a part of the fictional world, or by giving your character a world to exist in that helps people get invested. A really successful OC blog I really like is Wren’s @fangsandthorns universe (18+ if you wanna check it out).

How often to post

The key to success (in any blog really) is consistent uploads that give your target audience content they will like. The problem with ask blogs is that your productivity relies on the input from your audience, which is very difficult to achieve in the early stages.

There’s no shame in getting a second blog to send yourself asks - if anything, it will keep your blog active and give your audience an idea of what kind of content you’re going to deliver.

Above is an example of an early ask I sent myself from another blog.

When just starting up a blog, it pays to answer every question you get. I’m in the fortunate position where I can afford to be a little selective if my mental health takes a dip, but it’s best to be non-selective and punctual in your responses (at least at first).

On the same note, the majority of the asks I get are anonymous. I wouldn’t be able to keep my blog running without anon, honestly, and I don’t think I’d want to. Turning on anon is a good call if you want more asks.

How well should you know your character?

Especially if you’re doing a character that isn’t yours, you should research the crap out of them. When I first started up, I played BTD nonstop until I really got a feel for the character’s motivations and thought processes. It helps to get a character you can relate to on some level - for me, Rire echoed my own opinions on hedonism and the subjectivity of morals. This doesn’t mean to say that you have to be exactly like them: Rire is raping, murdering, demon king with yellow eyes. I am not.

However, don’t be afraid to get a little bit out of character. Its your blog, do whatever the hell you want with it! If you want to make a blog where Darth Vader has his own cooking show, where Hannibal Lector is secretly a nice person, or where Chidi Anagoyne is a crime fighting double agent, go and do it!

Blog Design

You don’t need to be good at art to have a successful ask blog. If that were true, I’d have about 2 followers. I used a still from the game as my icon for a long time before I ended up commissioning artwork, and it was fine!

Here is the first Rire fan art I ever produced for this blog, to prove my point:

Beautiful, isn’t he?

That being said, there’s no down side to being a good artist. It certainly helps if you can produce artwork, particularly if your ask blog is an OC blog. @idealmori ‘s contibutions to my blog have improved its quality so much and I love her to bits for it!

That’s all I can think of for now. I hope this helped, anon, and I wish you every success!

#long post #ask blog #mad talks #I'm doing pretty okay!#thank you for asking love #Anonymous

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darth-hedone · 2 years

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Darth Hedone (sithsona) backstory pt.1

So like the story the story I’m thinking is that she is from a sith planet which sounds cringe and Mary-Sue but stick with me here. Because of the way most sith are trained, if she didn’t have an unusual backstory I would have to insert her directly into the main plot of cannon Star Wars and make her the apprentice of an actual important character, which I don’t want to do. Also the final idea is inspired by the fact that my mom is a librarian. So the idea is that like a long time ago the sith had a temple / colony on some nowhere planet on the edge of wild space and it had a huge sith archive and a temple and not much else but as in cannon the sith empire fell and the sith mostly died out so this planet where Hedone is from just kinda got abandoned, slowly dwindling in population and living in near total isolation from the rest of the galaxy. Over time fewer force sensitives were born, and fewer people were born at all. By the time Hedone starts her journey into the wider galaxy, she and her mom are the only force sensitives in her tiny sith community, with her mother being much weaker in the force. Hedone’s father and brother are non force sensitive and fairly normal apart from the kinds of weird political and religious views that come from living in a community descended from sith cultists. Her mother however is the keeper of the archives, in charge of protecting, organizing, and maintaining the vast sith archive on their home planet.

#Darth Hedone #sithsona #sith oc #oc #Star Wars oc #writing #backstory

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vecna · 4 years

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For fandom meme-swtor?

Send me a fandom!

This one isn’t as spicy as the Dragon Age one, but I still got Wordy.

Also there’s lots of KOTFE/KOTET/etc spoilers in here, so don’t read if you don’t want to see em. (Looking at you, Chignon.)

The character(s) I first fell in love with:

My own OCs haha.

But more seriously: It was actually Darth Malgus! I was always going to play a Star Wars MMO, let’s be real. But when they started posting promo videos and cinematics for the game, my Sith-loving ass immediately gravitated to that guy haha. And then, it turned out he had the same VA as The Architect from Dragon Age, and that was it for me.

If we’re talking about companions, then it was probably Malavai Quinn. Sith Warrior was the first class I got to 50, and Quinn was the first companion that I really got overly attached to haha.

The character(s) I never expected to love as much as I do now:

Most (not all, but most) of the “new” companions that came in with KOTFE and beyond. I was initially really sour when I realized we were losing all our class storyline companions, and they were being replaced with a new crew of Lana, Theron, Koth, my mother-in-law Senya, etc. Especially when they – at the time – said we’d eventually get our class companions back, but it would be a while. So I started KOTFE sure that I would hate the new crew because I would rather have the old one…. and ended up liking them quite a lot! Mostly, lol.

The character(s) everyone else loves that I don’t:

Doc is the main one, jesus christ. If you didn’t read my last post, I just really really really do not mesh well with overly sexual and Adult Humor-y characters who scold you with a “You’re no fun.” if your OC isn’t into it. Doc is the worst example of it that I’ve ever encountered. I always play a male JK, and the fact nearly all of his convos amount to, “Boy, you and me are going to be up to our eyeballs in vagina when this war ends, amirite?” “You don’t want that? Come on, the Jedi Code doesn’t say you can’t FUCK, live a little.” “You’re no fun. Well, more for me.” drives me NUTS. This combined with how he interacts with Kira just does me in. Shoves him out an airlock.

Dark Side Jaesa is another big one, albeit mainly for OOC reasons. I just hate the fact that she even exists, really. I get the appeal of a story where a Sith corrupts a Jedi to the Dark Side, but the way she does a total 180 into gross hedonism while Serving You always just makes me cringe. Plus there’s the fact that straight dudebro gamers are really nasty with her, and she’s the main companion I always see men put into the slave bikini outfit, and just yikes.

Also just a lot of one-off NPCs that everyone goes crazy for and ships their OCs with, but I constantly forget who they even are lol. Attros Finn comes to mind. I don’t hate them! Just don’t get the appeal I guess.

The character(s) I love that everyone else hates:

Lord Scourge, although I’m not sure he’s really hated as much anymore. I just remember at launch, when all of the overly invested Revan stans absolutely HATED him because of what he did in the Revan novel, and then flooded the tags with vitriol over being “stuck” with him as a Knight, and having to hear about Revan in his companion convos. It was really, really tiresome! Maybe it’s because I never really cared that deeply about Revan as my personal character, but I could not understand the backlash.

Anyway, Lord Scourge is my favorite companion in the game by a long shot. I love the conversations you can have with him about the Jedi vs Sith, and I love the mutually respectful tone those conversations take. (Where other Bioware companions who disagree with you have a tendency to just go, “You’re wrong.” and shut you down.) The fact that he’s so tied in with the plot just makes me love him more, really.

The character(s) I used to love but don’t any longer:

Cytharat, Koth and Theron mostly. Although this takes a bit of explaining, and is a bit Discourse-y – because I really appreciate them as characters, but their role and Bioware’s decisions with them is what made me no longer love them.Here’s the thing: Bioware has a bad habit of introducing male characters that are bisexual, and then having them betray you, leading to situations where they either get murdered or vanish from the narrative entirely. Meanwhile, bisexual women like Lana are untouched and around forever.

I was overjoyed when I first saw Cytharat. Y'all know I’m a ho for purebloods, and the fact that he was Malgus’ apprentice was fascinating to me – and then he turned out to be a bi romance. I got very hyped for him, only to find out he dies like 5 minutes later – or if you save him, he’s never seen again. Huge letdown.

Koth was the first character I fell in love with of the new KOTFE crew – I even initiated a romance with him! – but it quickly became obvious there’s no way to play the expansion without him turning on you judgementally at some point or another. And then, hey big surprise, you can kill him or else he’s never seen again.

Theron I’ve loved since we first got to know him in the Forged Alliances content, but that whole storyline where he seemingly betrays you out of nowhere, only to later reveal he didn’t actually, idk. And then, once again, you either kill him or he disappears from the story. It felt like a weirdly shoehorned in plot for shock value, and robbed us of a second bi MOC character.

You see the trend here? I want to love these characters, but Bioware continually electing to do this shit with bi dudes is tiresome and makes me unwilling to invest any interest in the characters anymore.

The character(s) I would totally smooch:

None.

The character(s) I’d want to be like:

None really come to mind? I just want to be a Jedi, come on.

The character(s) I’d slap:

Hunter all day every day.

The pairing(s) that I love:

Haha, this question is hard, because most of the SWTOR ships I’m invested in are between my OCs and my friends’ OCs.

However.

SCOURGE / KNIGHT IS THE BIG ONE, THE ULTIMATE, THE ALL-TIME FAVORITE. It’s really hard to describe just how much I love this ship, and just how much time and energy I’ve invested into it over the past… 8 years wow……….. To the point of being almost territorial. And it’s also near impossible for me to talk about why I love it, because the version I ship is so personalized with my specific Jedi Knight, especially since it had to live exclusively in headcanon land for so long. Scourge is, more or less, my Knight’s support pillar and the thing that grounds him and keeps him humble, in a world where my Knight is surrounded by people who expect him to be a pure flawless messiah. But, I mean. How can you have a man look at your character and say, “I’ve waited 300 years to see your face.” and not immediately ship it. And then I finally got vindicated after all these years when it was made canon!

I really love Arcann / Knight for a lot of the same reasons as the above, but I just really adore his one (1) romance convo haha. Granted, yes he did a lot of fucked up things, but I was so grateful when he had like… a Zuko-esque redemption. Where he comes to your character and firmly believes he doesn’t deserve forgiveness, and especially doesn’t deserve affection, and is instead met with acceptance and a chance to grow and heal. That’s the good shit.

Others:

Lana / Warrior and Lana / Inquisitor are my particular jam. I endlessly enjoy the mutual respect between Lana and those particular PCs.

Malavai Quinn / Sith Warrior is a longtime fave, and although I DO love him with a female Warrior, I really do with he’d been an option for dudes as well. And I feel the same in reverse about Vette / Warrior – I do like her with a male Warrior, and it’s so sweet and wholesome and endearing, but man I wish she’d been an option for female Warriors.

I ship Risha with every woman – especially Vette and Sumalee – and will be salty until my grave that Risha / f!Smuggler isn’t possible, because I love Risha with the Smuggler but she gives me powerful WLW vibes.

Agent / Watcher Two is also a lowkey favorite, but I ALSO wish it could be done with a female Agent instead. Same with Agent / Raina Temple.

Agent / Vector is very sweet, but again, I will be salty until my grave that it couldn’t be done with a male Agent.

Can you guys sense a running theme here?

Finally: NGL I love Valkorion / Senya, even though that ended in pure disaster.

And people around here used to ship Keeper / Lokin, and tbh, I still kinda love it lol.

The pairing(s) that I despise:

In general terms, I fucking hate every single romance that involves the male PC romancing his padawan or underling, especially since most of them seem like very young girls. I don’t know why this is so pervasive in the game, but yikes Bioware. Consular/Nadia is the worst offender, but they’re all just cringe central for me.

But the big one is Agent / Hunter. This would have gotten me run off Tumblr back in the day, but god I hate this pairing. I mentioned in the last post that I just will never enjoy ships where the two characters actively want to murder each other, but. This just gets magnified for me with Agent/Hunter, where all the mind control and blatant abuse comes into play – and people have a tendency to write noncon rape fic of the two and present it as ~sexy rivalmance~, which is awful. Add to this the “no homo” reveal where Hunter turns out to be a woman, after getting everyone hyped about a dude flirting with their male character the whole game, and it’s just a huge No Thanks from me all around.

And for largely personal reasons I just don’t like seeing female Knights with Scourge. Listen, for YEARS I was treated like a pariah for shipping Scourge with my male Knight, while being unable to find Scourge content that didn’t have a female Knight plastered all over him. Even though he wasn’t even a romance option one way or another, the way the fandom treated m!Knight/Scourge with disdain while ardently shipping f!Knight/Scourge was offputting as shit. And then, after years, he was made a romance option for women AND men, and all these awful people acted like they were robbed, the way people reacted when Kaidan and Jaal were made bi in Mass Effect. I’m so tired. I never want to see Scourge with a female Knight again.

#misc: text #misc: meme #series: star wars #vg: the old republic #long post #scorpio-dw

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far-away-stars · 5 years

Note

THE EXTREMELY DETAILED OC ASK MEME for Iegan AND Apate!! I warned you. :P Stay tuned for more. Probably.

There you are. At the best of my abilities. may it curse your sleep and bless my crops. :’D

under cut cause it’s damn fucking long.

Illyrio

1. Age, Birthday, Star Sign

So, I don't really have month/day precise birthdays for my ocs? :'D I don't even know how that would work on SW and I suck at star signs so… I can say Illyrio is born in 3682 BBY and that makes him 42 during the events of Makeb (which is the year he meets Muhn, if that works as a reference), and that I fancy calling him a Scorpio cause I guess it kinda fits.

2. Gender Identity

Cis man. It never really went further for him, he always was comfortable that way.

3. Orientation and Relationship status (single, taken (by who?), crush (on who?))

Bisexual. Married to Muhren in 3637 BBY in canon universe; alternatively fancying his mess agent Blakk in other ones and .. well, both in some others. >>

4. Race and Ethnicity

Human, in SW standards, and then I couldn't really go in many more details 'cause, well, I still kinda want it to apply to his universe rather than trying to stick Earth labels and I don't have a clear faceclaim… let's stick to "not white".

5. Height and Body type

He's 1m77 aka 5'9". He's not overly muscular, but still very much in shape. He has a pretty athletic body even if he's essentially built for agility.

6. Headcanon VA

I cannot find headcanon VA for the love of me, so, well, I suppose simple the Inquisitor VA for now. :'D Euan Morton is a Broadway actor and singer after all.

7. Occupation

Dark Council Elite, leader of the Sphere of Expansion and Diplomacy, with direct oversee on the Voss' diplomatic situation.

8. Weapon of Choice(?)

already answered here

9. Hometown and current residence

He was born on Ziost, in a slave breeding and training facility. He lived some years in an apartment at Dromund Kaas but now has set residence in his mansion on Voss, despite his work not often allows him to spend long periods of time there.

10. Do they have any markings, piercings or scars?

They have a number of scars, most prominent being the slave marking on his face, the whip scaring on his back and the lightsaber mark on his chest.

11. Do they have any notable features, like horns, tails, or so on?

Aside from the slave markings and, I guess, the white hair (not that much of a significant feature when alien races are involved :'D ) he doesn't really have any, no.

12. Own any pets?

Nope, thank the Force, he doesn't have to deal with his daughter's Nexus anymore and he's happier this way.

13. Have any kids?

Yes, his daughter Khatyrkite, that he had at 23 and adopted when she was 7.

14. Can they cook? Can they bake?

No. Let's leave it to that. :’D

15. Can they sing? Can they dance?

They can sing but it's not that easy to make them. They can formally dance with dignity, but not much else. Too rigid.

16. Can they drive?

Yes, but prefers to be driven around.

17. Can they fight?

Yes, double-bladed lightsaber and Force training. When younger he was also quite dangerous bare-handed but he hasn't trained that skill in a while.

18. Have any special keepsakes?

Not really… his lightsaber, I suppose. Old beads for his braid. But he isn't emotionally attached to many of his belongings.

Interests

19. Hobbies

Some not-so-light reading, meditation, napping, listening/going to the Opera.

20. Clothing/Aesthetic

Dark clothing with gold accents, rich reds, furs, and expensive tastes. Sith aesthetic meets some vague Arabian vibes and have a hedonist child.

21. Fave food(s) and drink(s)

He likes finger-foods; salty, small quiches are probably some of his favorites. As a drink he likes fruity and spiced wines, cold or hot.

22. Fave Color

Blood red.

23. Fave Genre

History books.

24. Fave Season

Autumn.

25. City or Country?

He spends enough time in the city working, so country for his relaxing times, but he wouldn't give up the comforts of the City easily.

26. Guilty Pleasure

Power? Witch sometimes turns into sex.

Storytime

27. What’s their family like? Who’s in it? What’s their relationship with them?

Before Muhn his family was basically only his daughter, Khatyrkite, and they were close, despite Illyrio's initial efforts not to be so. She grew on him and managed to slowly but surely make his fear more of an after-though. He didn't want to get attached to someone so easy to love. An alien child with no practical education thrown into the Academy of Korriban? Khatyrkite had to work hard to prove she could do it. And he did make her work, considering it necessary that she could prove and defend herself without her father's title to protect her. They have great affection for each other, even of it's often left unspoken, and even if not as strong as before, they still have their Force bond to prove it, even to each other.

28. Are they literate? Did they go to school? How long? What level?

They are literate, and learned most of his basic knowledge during slave training. The rest he took up keeping company to the young Master during his studies and generally during slave life. Then there was the Sith Academy and then he was taken as an Apprentice and Abraxas finished his education. He learned the rest on the way.

29. What was childhood like?

Not much of a childhood, let's say that. Studies, collars, biological engineering, slave training directed into obedience and alienation to self.

30. What was adolescence like?

Spent serving as a company slave in a high ranking noble family in Ziost. Let's say stunted.

31. What’s their current main conflict?

Finding any peace between overworking and starting to let go but risking losing status/power and a certain state of security born from habit.

32. What steps have they taken to overcome this conflict

Trusting more of his emotional baggage, vulnerability and work on his husband.

33. How have they changed over time?

He has become less.. unstable. Sith training following his slave one had pushed on many of the emotions he had been repressing beforehand, so, well, it made for a powerful Sith, but not much of an emotionally stable individual. He got in touch with more of himself and on what truly he wanted to be for his Muhn.

For Fun

34. What’s their room look like right now?

It's a mix between his rich but organised deco and Muhn's pretty clutter and his plants. Rich, elegant colors overall, generally elegant but comfortable looking, cushions, big bed, big windows, woods, a library. His room is his comfort place, really, and probably one of the rooms he spends more time in aside from his training room and the gardens.

35. What are they like as a friend?

Bad. Bad-ish.

36. What are they like as a partner?

He.. gets better at it, given a little time. >> The sex is good.

37. Do they have any phobias?

They are not fond of deep waters, but can manage them. They detest Force inhibition devices.

38. Did/do they go anywhere special for vacations?

They haven't gone in one in… dam forever. They wouldn't know at this point, really. It's a mix between wanting to be in a place where he wouldn't be recognized and his desire to keep his status and power close.

39. Your character walks into a cafe. What do they order?

Rich, hot, spiced coffee.

40. What time do they go to bed, usually?

Depends, they are very used to an irregular sleep pattern.

41. What’s their morning routine like?

Depending on how much time they have, the very least composes shower and a minimum of beauty care, they usually pick their clothes the day before. They usually snack something quick if they have the time and take a caff or directly a stim, if need be.

42. What’s the dumbest thing your character’s done?

That's not to be discussed here.

43. What pokemon would your character be (if they’re already a pokemon/gijinka tell us what they are, and how that’s affected them)?

I.. don't really know? Struggling between a dark type or simply a snob-looking one.

44. What’s their pokemon team? Try to pick all 6.

Dear Force, so.. Any snake Pokemon is valid and he should have them, this being said :

Arbok

Serperior

Ninetales

Spiritomb

Sableye

Chandelure

+if I may, a couple of legendaries that rule the Sith snake aesthetic :

Zygarde

Shiny Mega Rayquaza

45. Theme song (and a playlist if you’ve got it!)

I will always put "How can I refuse" here, no matter the consequences. :'D

46. If this character was in a musical, what would their motif be (what kind of instruments do you hear, what’s the tempo, ect).

Oh my god, I don't have that knowledge. Something low and a bit fear-inducing, but with a melody of strings, violins and violas, cutting it like the fresh falling of rain in between dark, tempest-heavy clouds. Some quiet, deep, rich drums.

The Deep Lore™

47. What was this character’s biggest turning point in their life, something that changed them almost completely?

Discovering he was Force Sensitive.

48. What was their lowest point? What was their highest point?

Lowest : his years at the Academy. Highest : Becoming a Darth/marrying Muhn.

49. What are some themes tied to your character’s story? I'm sorry, I'm getting too stuck with some of those deep© questions, I'm giving them up for now. :'3

50. What are some motifs associated with your character?

Villainous behavior, hedonism, manipulation, pragmatism, hyper-emotionalism.

51. What were some inspirations for your character (people, movies, games)?

Well, the Inquisitor storyline from STWOR, certainly, tho I didn't end up keeping much of it. Aside from that nothing really comes to mind but I'm sure I'm missing stuff. :/ In six years he has been through stuff.

52. How are you and your character the same? How are you different?

We struggle with other people's expectations and we don't want to be seen as weak or exploitable, I suppose. For how different we are I suppose the rest is pretty more obvious, but, mhn, I blame myself much more quickly, despite my barriers, so, well, instead of killing people I just get sad, I suppose. :'3

53. Expectations vs Reality: what did you expect and what did you get with this character?

I expected a hot, sassy, dark side playthrough. I guess I didn't expect the angst, the fluff and the attachment. :'33

54. What does your character want, and what do they need?

He wants power, but he needs to unlearn what truly gives him value.

55. What’s your character’s core trait? What’s their best trait? What’s their worst trait? When happens when these all interact with each other? see point 49.

56. What’s your overall goal with this character? Will they get a happy ending or will they succumb to their faults?

They.. eh. I don't really believe in endings? People go on, one way or another. He's much more than a simple narrative for me, now. If I were to just see how much he has already done in his life I would say he's in a happier place now, so, I'm glad. But that's not who he is either. It's not about getting him fixed, not really

---

Apate

1. Age, Birthday, Star Sign

Born in 3678 BBY, the rest is not in my book. :’3

2. Gender Identity

Non-binary/agender, intersex.

3. Orientation and Relationship status (single, taken (by who?), crush (on who?))

Bisexual, kinda taken by Kitty, but it's in the "it's complicated" folder cause we technically didn't even set a meeting point for them. :'D also, precedently entangled with Mikawlas, and generally involved with many other . >>

4. Race and Ethnicity

Togruta. Their faceclaim-ish is Ezra Miller, so some ethnic inspiration there.

5. Height and Body type

They are 1m81 aka 5'11". They are slender with some athletic features, especially on the abdominal area.

6. Headcanon VA

I have no clue. :'D I'm sorry.

7. Occupation

Went from sex worker to owner of the Golden Rose Pleasure Center.

8. Weapon of Choice(?)

Sniper Rifle. They don't really consider their body or their pleasure expertise a weapon, no matter its potentialities.

9. Hometown and current residence

Grew up in a Coruscanti orphanage, now resides on Nar Shadda.

10. Do they have any markings, piercings or scars?

Aside from their natural Togruta markings, nope, and if they were to get them/had got them in the past, wouldn't hesitate to have them removed.

11. Do they have any notable features, like horns, tails, or so on?

Lekku and Montrals? :'D they are curved in the front so they do catch the eye.

12. Own any pets?

No. They didn't have the position for one for a long time and then never really gotten to it. Probably scared they would do a bad job taking care of one.

13. Have any kids?

Nope.

14. Can they cook? Can they bake?

They can't really, no. :'3 they can manage a survivalist meal but they essentially rely on other to get food.

15. Can they sing? Can they dance?

They can't really sing, but it's not a passion of their so they never really did any practice worth of it. They can dance, but only a selection of simple things, essentially for their job. They don't mind dancing casually, and are pretty good at it. At least, they are pretty to look at doing so.

16. Can they drive?

They can, they shouldn't, but they can. :'D

17. Can they fight?

They are better at ranged combat, but they can throw a hell of a fight nonetheless.

18. Have any special keepsakes?

I'm not sure if they have anything of Mikawlas, or even of their orphanage life.. they spent too much time on the street, if they managed to salvage something during those years it would certainly be a precious possession for them.

Interests

19. Hobbies

Taking care of themself with beauty products or with a mani-pedi is a luxury they couldn't afford for a long time and it does marvels to their mood so they indulge in gladly it when they have some me time. Also they have a sometimes strained relationship with their looks, so making themself pretty makes them happy. Aside from that they like simple pad games, to run and spend some time in shooting ranges.

20. Clothing/Aesthetic

They like shiny, they like precious fabrics, gold, their heels, shorts, skirts and dresses, some fashionable frills and classy, eye-catching outfits.

21. Fave food(s) and drink(s)

They like experimental foods, jellies and escargots the most probably. If they could only drink vodka and lemon sprite they would. Also champagne.

22. Fave Color

Rose Gold.

23. Fave Genre

Detective/crime stories.

24. Fave Season

They haven't experienced much of those, living mostly in ecumenopolises, so, if it's not artificial weather they probably would have complaints one way or another. Something temperate I suppose, late spring.

25. City or Country?

City.

26. Guilty Pleasure

Aside from sex? Mhn. The thrill of the hunt, maybe. But both of those things have been incorporated in jobs for a long time, so, well, aside from having a particular relationship with both, defining them "guilty" pleasures is complicated. I guess they like being pampered, sexually or not, so there's that.

Storytime

27. What’s their family like? Who’s in it? What’s their relationship with them?

They don't have a family, nor good memories from the orphanage, so, probably the closest they got to family was, first, at Madame's institute, where they really come in touch with a positive collective/community. They started coming in touch with themself and with others in a way that was more than family than ever before. Of course they wanted to rebuild that with the Golden Rose, even if it became with times more "officious" with the number of workers and clients and regulations that came with it. But they do want people to feel safe with the Rose, and want them to feel at least a little bit like family.

28. Are they literate? Did they go to school? How long? What level?

They are literate, and studied at the orphanage until they left, so, they are not very knowledgeable after that. They didn't continue studies, only tried to pick up some decent bases to start being more independent after Madame picked them up. They worked hard to be functional as owner of the Golden Rose, and that's where they are at.

29. What was childhood like?

They weren't very happy at the orphanage, didn't felt like they belonged. It ended up with them running away, so...

30. What was adolescence like?

A mix between rebellious orphanage life, naive Nar Shadda and bling/bling fascination and the basically spoiled, responsibility-free life as a Crime Lord doll. It was.. maybe not as practically formative as it could have, overall.

31. What’s their current main conflict? I'm sorry, I'm getting too stuck with some of those deep© questions, I'm giving them up for now. :'3

32. What steps have they taken to overcome this conflict? see above

33. How have they changed over time?

They became more self-aware, more conscious of themself and their choices. More independent, and such, with a bigger presence, allowing them to also create better and stronger bonds with people. With a helping hand they started shedding all the bad preconceptions they had on their life, even if it really took years and years to come to terms with some truth about themself and their past, but well, they got back on their feet. Now they have a house, they pay bills, they own and handle a host house that oversees many people that Apate wants to protect. So, well, I can't really tell how they changed, cause they didn't, not really. It was still them, all along, but I guess they own themself a bit more every day.

For Fun

34. What’s their room look like right now?

It's a pretty big room, but essentially on the minimalist side. Very clean and shiny, with its marble floors and big window on the High District. It's not cluttered and Apate doesn't spend that much time in it, but when they do they find it more peaceful for it to be essential but pretty and expensive looking in its decor and composition.

35. What are they like as a friend?

Devoted, sometimes harsh and too up-front, but also generous and affectionate.

36. What are they like as a partner?

They haven't had much experience in that field yet, so, maybe, distant, even if not on purpose. They are not really used to the practicality of building ties so ever-present and strong, they are still very much used to deal with things on their own. But very sweet, very tactile, very inquisitive, playful.

37. Do they have any phobias?

Of losing themself in someone's idea of them. Again.

38. Did/do they go anywhere special for vacations?

They haven't taken a vacation in ages, they want to quite bad. Anything different from Nar Shadda would be welcome, but they probably want the pampering vacation treatment. They do have an affinity for water, because of their ex, so maybe somewhere they could swim a bit.

39. Your character walks into a cafe. What do they order?

Everyday something different, they don't like caff but drinks it daily so spicing things up is their way. Now it's usually Terjam that buys caff for them, so they enjoy being surprised.

40. What time do they go to bed, usually?

It depends, the Rose usually "opens" late in the morning and closes later at night, but it depends if there are events or not, and if Apate has plans or not. They are more akin to the night life, and Nar Shadda Never really sleeps, so it's not unusual for them and some friends to have late evening shopping sprees or date nights or such. It will depend on how much work there had been during the day.

41. What’s their morning routine like?

They take their time. They wake up slow and then stretch and drink water and then shower, quick breakfast with either milk/yogurt/sweet cheese and some fruits while listening to radio/the news, and then make up and dressing up and then to the Golden Rose where they take a coffee and some pastries with Terjam before starting work around 10:00.

42. What’s the dumbest thing your character’s done?

Thinking it was a good idea to escape to Nar Shadda with no money or friends or knowledge of the city at the peak of 15 years old.

43. What pokemon would your character be (if they’re already a pokemon/gijinka tell us what they are, and how that’s affected them)?

Zughhh... Tsareena.

44. What’s their pokemon team? Try to pick all 6.

Shiny Goldeen

Gorebyss

Mega Diancie

Mega Altaria

Alola Ninetails

Sylveon

45. Theme song (and a playlist if you’ve got it!)

I don't really have one, ahh… Lady Gaga-ish feelings, but not as "hard".

46. If this character was in a musical, what would their motif be (what kind of instruments do you hear, what’s the tempo, ect).

Mhn, something lively and clear, but with a solid accompaniment, like some piano. Maybe a discrete but deep beat underneath, like almost a techno base.

The Deep Lore™

47. What was this character’s biggest turning point in their life, something that changed them almost completely?

There's been two. One when Mikawlas died, and Apate found themself mourning, furious, hurt and dependent on the little skills they had to survive from there on. The second was when Madame picked them up and helped them detox and then got them back on their way to manage themself independently and redefine boundaries in a way that could better connect them to themself and a thriving comfort zone.

48. What was their lowest point? What was their highest point?

Apate almost lost themself, and skipped many steps of their emotional and practical development growing up in not-so-healthy environments. They never really had a family, they rushed and yet mellowed through their adolescence without any real friends of their age, they suffered a big loss pretty young and then started living off favours and on the street without really a support and foundation to evolve.

Then they got back to their feet, and found their ambitious drive again, and created the Golden Rose and wasn't that just *chef kiss*.

49. What are some themes tied to your character’s story?

Former drug addiction, stunt in personal growth and past trauma being overcome, sex work and its relation to their own sex drive and desire, curiosity and extroversion, sex positivism, grooming, fashion and beauty care.

50. What are some motifs associated with your character?

Unsuspected assassin, Diva, fashion expert, sexy and capable, sass master.

51. What were some inspirations for your character (people, movies, games)?

Mhnhnjnnnn I dunno. There are pieces here and there but.. nothing that flashes in my mind.

52. How are you and your character the same? How are you different?

We like shiny things. They can pull it off.

53. Expectations vs Reality: what did you expect and what did you get with this character?

A character for smutty action, and I kinda got myself into angst but also a more vivacious and free-willed character I expected.

54. What does your character want, and what do they need?

They want the Golden Rose to thrive, they probably need a vacation.

55. What’s your character’s core trait? What’s their best trait? What’s their worst trait? When happens when these all interact with each other? see point 31

56. What’s your overall goal with this character? Will they get a happy ending or will they succumb to their faults?

Same as Illy's point.

#that was so long #aaaah #:'D what a mess #I hope it makes some resemblance of sense #oc : illyrio #oc : Apate #ask : Illyrio #ask : Apate #thank you for the ask(s)#u evil xD #askshivanulegacy

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winebrightruby · 7 years

Text

I am going to create a home that is gracious and serene. High ceilings, arches, columns. The sky blue ceiling to keep ghosts out, except the ones I love. A porch with a sturdy railing for me to sit on, a porch-swing for us to nestle into, glasses in our hands, in the evening.

His flowerbeds and my wall of star jasmine. Magnolia trees along with all his fruit. I will curate our library and drape our windows in sheer, lightweight fabrics. No lace, no velvet in the summer heat. Shades of blue like a promise of renewal, Mary’s colour.

I will decorate our fences in multicolored beads at the turning of the season, wherever we live, because I refuse to give up my City. I will wear pearls, rubies, sapphires, opals. Crowns and feathers. And I will apologize to no one for my insistence on coasters, for my fully-stocked bar, for the frivolous flowers on my tables, for unapologetic beauty for its own sake.

#my life is boring #to the radiant Southern sun #hedonism #aesthete #Darth Poeticus #in love with being Queen #perhaps that last one most of all #I am tired of compromise and bending myself out of shape #for people who don't care for me in return

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flyingseacow · 6 years

Text

Star Wars - The embrace and rejection of love (part 1)

After seeing The Last Jed twice I must say that I am firmly in the love-it camp. I understand some of the criticism, (the communication misnomer in particular) but there is just too much goodness for me to dislike it in any way.

One of the things the movie did for me was actually making Kylo Ren more appealing. He is still a walking garbage-fire and I want to see Rey to slamdunk him into a reactor core sooo much. But The Last Jedi did give me enough to put him into the mythology of the Star Wars universe in an interesting way.

And in doing so, I found an overarching theme that I need to talk about.

Love.

Love have always been something of a power in all the movies, but The Last Jedi punctuates it in ways I had not seen coming, and it is fascinating what love means for all the characters throughout the series, and so I will go through it under the cut, with focus on specific characters from The Last Jedi.

This part will focus on most of the force sensitive characters.

Obviously massive spoilers, and beware, this will be long.

Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader

So, while his presence in TLJ was near nothing, I need to begin with Anakin, for it all begins here. From the very first episode, Anakin is a person who embraces love, who hungers and grasps it with all his might. And this is his undoing.

Yoda is not wrong when he days that fear leads to suffering. It is Anakin’s deep love of his mother, and the pain of her loss that firmly puts him on the path of the dark. Not that Anakin wasn’t without troubling idea’s to begin with. Both due to Palpatine’s manipulations, but also most likely due to his upbringing as a slave. Anakin do genuinely want the galaxy to be a better and kinder place at first, but the Jedi clearly fails to bring him the right solutions, and the prequels does make a good job of showing the bureaucratic restraint that the order has been lulled into. Slowly Anakin turns to idelogy of fascism and dictatorship.

And so, when the he fears the loss of Padme, the love of his life, and the Jedi only tells him to let go, while the Sith offers to stall death, Anakin grasps love so tightly and so smothering he literally ends up choking it.

Anakin murders and burns down anything that stand between him and his love, and so he fails, killing the very thing he coveted.

Darth Vader is born from the ashes of lost love, and is terrifying in his coldness and effective destruction of everything standing in the way of the Empire. For Vader has given up everything for love lost, and so he only has the ambitions of the Empire to fight for, and a heartless Emperor to love.

Then Luke appears.

Luke, the very embodiment of Anakin’s love to Padme, one of the things he burned down a galaxy to protect.

Vader is now split, and the conflict appears. For throughout the years he has come to love the Empire, and the Emperor as only a trapped apprentice can, but his love for Padme was never gone, and now his son appears.

Thus, as any proper Sith would do, Vader aspires to overthrow Sidious, and place himself and his son on the throne. Had Padme not opposed him, Anakin would have done the same, killed both the Jedi and Sith, finally crowning Padme as eternal empress of the galaxy.

And so Vader’s offer to Luke is genuine, a last chance for Vader to fulfill his dream of remaking the galaxy according to his will, with his loved ones at this side.

But Luke rejects him, rejects the dream, but this time Vader refrains from choking love, instead falling back into the role of the apprentice, watching as Sidious tries to turn Luke into his replacement.

But this time Luke reaches out, offering a different path, a different love. And in his final moment, Anakin is reborn as Vader grasps this love offered, ending the nightmare he himself created and dies doing the one thing he always wanted.

To save those he loves.

Luke Skywalker

Luke is a mirror to Anakin.

Both embraces love, both fight for love, both will do everything they can for love.

But where Anakin would burn the world, Luke would burn himself first.

At all times Luke puts himself on the line first, leaving behind even destiny and power for the chance to keep people safe. Even when it seems hopeless, even when he knows it is a trap, a trick meant to harm him, he will try. He will go to Bespin, he will reach out for Vader when he glimpses the glowing embers of love. “I will save you” He says. “We will survive.” He says, radiating hope and positivety.

Where Anakin closed himself around the few, brutally cutting away anything that did not fit, Luke opens his arms, radiating love to all who will receive it.

It makes him perhaps a bit naive, and very vulnerable despite his power, but also makes him a glowing sun of hope.

It is no wonder that Skywalker becomes a legend.

And so Luke fails when his unending love is not enough. Not that Luke had not before meet those without love. The Emperor is a black hole of darkness, but ultimately evil in simplicity. Jappa the Hut was greed and hedonism personified, and Luke only gives him the simple chance of letting go.

Deep evil is not confusing to Luke, but an absence of love and an obstacle to be overcome with love.

But what does one do when evil appears in someone who was already loved? Someone who was surrounded with love for whole their lives? Someone who Luke deeply and sincerely love from birth? His own flesh an blood?

This is not a new thing in neither stories or real life. How often do we not hear of people committing atrocities, and their families stands left behind, confused, betrayed and uncomprehending how this could occur?

And so Luke fails Ben, and he cannot comprehend how, cannot fathom why, and in one horrible moment Luke acts with the blind terror of seeing something alien and foreign, something terrible and threatening.

The Rejection of Love.

Vader may have struggled with his love, but he did not reject the very idea of it, he may not have seemed to feel worthy of Luke’s love in the form it was given, but he was never denying love, only what his options where, what reality offered him.

But not Ben. Ben was a deep churning darkness, a chaotic maelstrom of violence and hatred, rejecting the hands reaching for him, surrounded by light as he was.

But despite the urge to end the threat, Luke still cannot commit to it, he acted with instinct, not thinking, and will forever be tormented with the shame of it.

But he almost did, and so everything he build is destroyed, the Legendary Luke Skywalker is a lie, and his actions, his failure sets loose a new darkness on the galaxy.

And so Luke hides himself away, placing himself as the greater threat, and thus removes it. For he can only worsen it with his failure, if he tries to mend it, he is likely just to make it worse.

Shame is obviously a motivator, the sheer pain of failure, not just to the galaxy, but to his family.

Perhaps he sought out the first scriptures with hope, searching for an answer, or maybe he saw the whole Jedi order as a failure from the beginning.

After all, the old Jedi created Vader, and he created Kylo.

“The Force does not belong to the Jedi”

So arrogant the Jedi where, claiming ownership of something that truly belongs to all living things. It is better if they all die out, that they are destroyed, so that they cannot harm others, no longer create monsters by failing love, as he did. It must be his mistake, and his alone, for how else could a boy, a sweet young boy surrounded by so much love, ever reject it so willfully and darkly?

Ben also failed Luke, but Luke struggles to understand this, and may never understand what fully created Kylo, for Luke is love.

Luke understands love, he even understands, and fears, the absence of love. But the willful rejection, the violent wish to burn down even those wanting to help. That he cannot understand, and so he hurts and hides himself in agony and bitternes. Ironically falling into the same darkness that his father did, binding himself to an idea.

And so Father and Son mirrors again. Anakin ends in bitternes from trying to control his loved ones and the world around them, Luke ends in bitternes from trying to shield his loved ones from himself and his failures.

And it is in the end, when Luke returns to his love, when he finds forgiveness, not from the one he failed, but from himself and those who truly love him, that he finds peace.

Kylo Ren/Ben Solo

Where the Skywalkers both embraced love in different ways. Kylo rejects it.

Kylo is chaos, death and destruction, and seemly without reason.

Previous sith always had a goal, an outlet for their passions; power, revenge, a belief in a specific order of the universe, or simply the preservation of love.

What do Kylo want?

“Burn the past, kill it if necessary”

But when you simply burn away everything, kill and salt the past, reject everything given to you. What is left?

Destroying the past may free you to become something new, but you need to have something to become at first. And Kylo has nothing but the destruction of himself.

Killing Han Solo did not make Kylo stronger, in reverse it simply made him weaker, more lost and chaotic.

It is no wonder Snoke is so disappointing,but is perhaps of his own making, something was missing in Snokes plan, in his training. For Kylo, despite his raw power, fails to focus, fails to fully dedicate himself. His anger explodes in childish fits, flashy and destructive, but ultimately pointless.

Kylo is, in many ways, the worst sith to ever grace the galaxy.

Kylo cannot become as Vader, will never be able to reach the power Vader had. For Vader did not reject love, Vader did not kill the past just to become something else.

Anakin became Vader in the name of love.

Poisoned, warped love, but still love.

And as long as Kylo keeps trying to kill those who loves him, and whom he loves back, regardless of how hard he tries to deny these feelings, he will never be able to become what he thinks he needs to be.

His goal is hollow, pointless and nothing but empty destruction. For each bridge he burns, he simply kills more of himself, becoming less and less.

And perhaps he already know this himself.

But Kylo is so obsessed with killing the past, so blinded by his ritualistic rejection of love, that he cannot grow, cannot center himself, cannot admit that his failures lays at the feet of his own actions. Instead he acts as a destructive toddler, crying and screaming at a world that does not grand him the things he feels entitled to.

And he keeps chasing any lead that may justify his beliefs, punishing and killing any who tries to disprove him.

So he is drawn to Rey. For Rey has power, Rey has focus. In Rey he could find proof of his beliefs. He sees how she clings to her past, to a hope of love lost. If only she could be convinced to let go, as he tries, to burn her past, and become more powerful for it.

Kylo needs Rey, in a deeply selfish hunt for confirmation.

“You are nothing, but not to me.”

And so he has believes. For Kylo had spend so much time rejecting love, that he has convinced himself that love cannot make a person grand. That it is only through rejection that you can become great.

Kylo proposes Rey to follow him, as Vader proposed Luke.

But Vader loved Luke. His offer was toxic, but laced with true affection, love and passion. Vader had a goal, a dream of a future he wished to see forfilled.

Kylo belittles Rey, mocks her feelings for Han and Luke, tells her she is nothing without him, spitting in the hope and love of a future in the light that she offered first. For Kylo does not have anything to offer but fire and destruction, he only wants her to convince himself of his delusion. He does not want an equal, he may seek her out of loneliness, but he refuses to truly listen, refuses to acknowledge that he might have been wrong.

And so Kylo fails.

He may have been manipulated by Snoke for years, and his family may have failed to reach him or even understand the depth of the darkness he was falling into.

But he still made the choice to reject love. Makes it abundantly clear that he does this by choice, by forceful ideology. Rejecting and killing them at any moment they do reach out. Rey tried to hard, so naively to reach him, guide him back to the light, prepared to forgive even his atrocities, if only he will help end the nightmare of the First Order.

And yet he still rejects love, continuing down his spiral of darkness into mad nothingness.

Rey

Where Kylo is chaos, Rey is focus.

Where Kylo destroys and rages, Rey builds and learns.

Where Kylo regresses, Rey grows.

If Anakin and Luke are mirrors, Rey and Kylo are counterpoints to each other.

Rey, who has been through more hardships than most. Anakin at least had a loving mother, and an owner who saw value in keeping him well fed and encouraged his passions.

Rey was left alone for so long, with nothing but a faint hope of her family returning. Yet she clings so deeply to this hope, grasps at the flickers of love she craves.

Yet Rey isn’t bitter.

She is curious, and compassionate, with a strong sense of justice, and once she sets a goal, she keeps to it.

At first this is a hindrance. Her hope and obsession with staying and returning to Jakku harms her. Yet she cannot let go of the smoldering embers of love for her family.

For Rey embraces love.

Not with the consuming fire of Anakin, nor the enveloping light of Luke.

But with dedication.

It is almost frightening what Rey can do once she sets her mind to it. The force comes easily to Rey, and not just the light side, even the dark side she explores, and with a willingness that horrifies Luke.

And one wonders, the prophecy that Anakin was thought to embody, what if they were wrong? What if it is Rey, who will find the balance between light and dark, and walk the grey path?

Luke does not comprehend the dark, he knows what it is, but he does not contemplate it.

Rey does. Rey meets the dark, willingly, raging in righteous anger, yet without getting consumed. For Rey understands the dark, have lived in nothingness, and pain and loneliness, with only her hope and her focus keeping her afloat for so many years.

And when offered kindness and love, she takes it, embraces it and returns it.

It was not an instant thing. Han Solo offered her everything she may have dreamed of; the life of a pilot, freedom and something that could have been a new family. But Rey had made a promise, a pact with herself bound in love, and at first she turns away, pained, confused and sad. But still grateful.

Finn leaving also hurts her, and with the reveal of her force-sensitivity she is torn and pained.

But Rey grows, she overcomes. She finds a new hope, a new plan, and forges a new pact of love. This time founded around Finn, a person whom she now loves, and who loves her in return, who fought for her, who bleed for her.

The one who came back.

Rey learns, she adapts and flourishes.

She doesn’t understand Kylo, cannot see how he can reject so much love offered. But she has hope, and she can face the darkness, so she searches for Ben, and naively, thinks that she has reached him.

Luke did the same for Vader, so why could she not do the same? Finn turned his back on the First Order, so why should Kylo not be able to do the same? She decided to forge a new path, and leave Jakku, searching for answers elsewhere, so why should Ben not could do the same?

She have found the legendary Luke Skywalker, and found him wanting, yet she still believes in the legend.

And here she fails, and Ben fails her.

But she moves on, hurt, betrayed, hopefully wiser.

For Rey is focus, Rey is dedication, Rey is a new beginning. Forged in love, in hope, in darkness embraced and overcome.

For when Rey confronts the truth of her past, she lets it go, she does not burn it away, but accepts it and turns towards her future instead. There may no longer be any love in her past, but she can grow from this, she can release herself from the pain, and beyond it is her new life. For she have found new loved ones, people who deserves her love, who loves her back.

Rey does not need to kill the past to become who she is meant to be. She makes the choice to become something herself.

There is a irony in a way, for if Rey did turn to the dark side, If Rey did let herself fall into despair, and burn everything away, she would likely have become the most terrifying sith ever. With her power, and her focus, and her easiness with the Force, she could have destroyed Kylo in an instant. He was lucky she rejected his offer, he would have been nothing compared to her. Snoke was a fool for simply wanting to kill her. Had he done as Sidious attempted with Luke and succeeded with Anakin, he would have gotten the Vader he coveted.

And so Rey instead is now affirmed in her beliefs of love, choosing Finn, choosing the Rebelion, choosing the light? That remains to be seen.

As of now Rey has closed the door, and turned her back on Ben.

For Kylo is a self-destructive black hole.

And Rey is pulsar of focused dedication and love.

TL:dr - The overall theme of Star Wars is love. Anakin, Luke and Rey all embrace love in different ways, making them dangerous, powerful and flawed people. Kylo rejects love, making him a terrible and childish person, but at least The Last Jedi made him slightly interesting and made him fit with the rest of the story, if only in confirming his uselessness.

#star wars #The last Jedi #fan speculation #my essays

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wits-writing · 6 years

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Star Wars: The Last Jedi movie review

Back in 2015, The Force Awakens brought Star Wars back to the big screen by introducing us to the new characters that would be carrying the saga into the future. It operated mainly on laying the groundwork for what was to come. Rey (Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega), Poe (Oscar Isaac) and Kylo (Adam Driver) all showed the potential of this new story was vast, but whether it could all pay off was always down to whatever writer/director Rian Johnson managed to do with Episode VIII.

With The Last Jedi, he’s managed to craft a tale that goes beyond any expectations. This movie isn’t about any major plot twists, reveals or simply moving the overarching plot along, it’s about exploring the place these new characters are forging for themselves in the galaxy. It takes the legacy of Star Wars and makes exploring what legacy means one of its central themes. It’s about what The Resistance is fighting for in their struggle against The First Order. This is the most human movie to ever come out of Star Wars, a story that explores the importance of hope in the darkest of times. There’s so much going on in this movie that I barely know where to start, but it all comes together to form something uniquely its own.

[Full review under the cut.]

For the first time in Star Wars history, The Last Jedi picks up immediately where The Force Awakens left off. Even though The Resistance managed to destroy Star Killer Base last time, The First Order is still using their vast resources to go after them and snuff out the one obstacle keeping them from total galactic conquest. What’s left the Resistance fleet are running on what little power they have against First Order Star Destroyers capable of tracking them through lightspeed. General Leia (Carrie Fisher) and Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) manage what little resources they have left until they find a way to signal for help. Meanwhile, Finn and Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a Resistance maintenance operator, work together to find a way to stop the First Order from tracking them while Poe tries to buy them as much time as possible.

During all of this, in the far reaches of the galaxy, we also pick up with Rey as she’s meeting Luke Skywalker (Mark Hammill) and tries to convince him to return with her to the Resistance so they can save the galaxy. Rey’s journey in this movie mainly concerns her looking for someone to give her meaning so that she’ll finally know where she belongs after a lifetime of solitude. Luke’s more concerned in his own interrupted isolation than he is with defeating The First Order or showing Rey the ways of the Force. He’s grown to resent his own legend as a Jedi and is determined to die alone as the last of their kind. All he can think of while talking to Rey is how he failed Kylo Ren and that he never wants that to happen again. He doesn’t believe the Jedi should own the Force, because the Force is not a power that belongs to anyone but the thing that binds all life in the galaxy together. Hammill brings a strength to this performance that sheds new light on one of the iconic heroes of movie history.

Rey’s personal arc concerns her search for belonging. She wants to be shown who she is and what to do with that. Now that she’s discovered the Force as it exists in side her, she believes it must mean something greater that connects her to everything else going on. She wants a destiny, prophecy or anything to tell her the “why” of how she ended up where she is now. When Luke refuses to give her that, she starts to sense something she hadn’t before. A connection between Kylo Ren and herself start to develop and she takes that as a sign that there’s something they are meant to do together. They discuss their respective connections and experiences with the Force together and how they ended up where they are in life. The more they talk the more Rey believes there’s something more to Kylo and that he has a chance to be Ben Solo again, while Kylo believes Rey will eventually succumb to the call of the Dark. Eventually, she’s able to find her way towards understanding how to forge a path for herself without anyone needing to tell her about it. All she needs by the end is to know who she is as part of the Force and that will help her carry on the legacy of the Jedi in her own way.

The story of the Resistance fighters as they try to find a way to escape The First Order’s pursuit is a story of desperation. Poe, Finn and Rose are all looking for a way to win against all odds during The Resistance’s darkest hour. Poe Dameron was the least fleshed out of the new main cast during The Force Awakens, now The Last Jedi gives us insight into his approach to the fight and how that changes over the course of the movie. He’s willing to strike powerful blows against the enemy no matter the cost to The Resistance and early in the movie, that cost is heavy. His cocksureness puts him in immediate conflict with Admiral Holdo. She wants him out of the way to make sure his brazen attitude doesn’t cost them any more than it already has. Over the course of Poe’s conflict with her over this, he ends up seeing what these superior officers need to do to make sure the spark of hope can keep shining. Oscar Isaac does a lot with this material to bring new depth to who Poe is beyond “the best pilot in The Resistance.”

Finn and Rose’s story to find someone to help the Resistance escape takes them to a planet of gambling and drinking where the rich elites of the galaxy live in the lap of luxury with the privilege of not having to acknowledge the conflict going on or worry about the possibility of The First Order’s encroaching rule. Kelly Marie Tran as Rose brings an immediately compelling new perspective to the war going on in these movies. Rose grew up on a planet that was subjugated by The First Order and she sees the hedonism on display as an extension of the cruelty that she lived under growing up. The people on that planet grew rich by war profiteering, selling weapons to both sides and then drinking the night away without a care for the consequences. Finn sees through her perspective how war creates suffering beyond the immediate casualties of battle and understanding what The Resistance means aside from “the people who fight The First Order.”

On the other side of the conflict, Kylo finds that he’s lost his favor with Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis) after his defeat on Starkiller. Kylo’s getting further away from the dark master he aspires to become, and he blames Rey for it. He wants to rise above and become someone who strikes fear into everyone’s hearts the way Darth Vader did. There’s a desperation to destroy any remnants of who Ben Solo was so that he can find what he’s meant to become. While the movie let’s Adam Driver portray Kylo as a conflicted figure, especially as he explains why he’s chosen this path, it also never let’s us forget that he’s a villain and his actions are all well within his control.

Snoke’s presence in the movie is used as a marker of a constant threat, since his Star Destroyer is the main one tracking the Resistance fleet over the course of the story. He obviously serves a similar role to the Emperor in the original Star Wars trilogy as the grand master and manipulator behind the main bad guys our heroes are fighting. However, The Last Jedi finds a couple ways to subvert that archetype that’s exemplary of a motif in the movie flaunting of not letting the audience get too comfortable thinking they know exactly what’s going to happen in these new movies.

The Last Jedi plays around with audience expectations in a way that never feels like it’s trying to totally subvert what Star Wars is at its core. It starts doing this from the moment Luke takes back his lightsaber from Rey only to immediately throw it away behind him without saying a word to her. That’s early in the movie and exemplary of how the rest of it plays. The more the movie goes on, the more moments like this pile up and it’s all with a purpose. The theme of this movie is the necessity of new generations to learn from the old, but more importantly how it’s necessary to move passed that and forge something new. To paraphrase how one old character puts it, a master’s duty is to make sure the student grows beyond them. Tradition and dogma are only stepping stones to forging an identity or making a difference in life. All of this comes together especially well in some gorgeously composed final sequences, courtesy Johnson and Director of Photography Steve Yedlin.

Rian Johnson and the crew behind The Last Jedi craft a look for everything in the movie that expands what a Star Wars movie can be visually. The new creatures we meet, including the puffin-like porgs and some crystalline foxes, are well put together blends of CGI and practical effects with behaviors that breathe life into the settings where they’re found. The sets are put together to set the mood of their scenes well and serve as tableaus for some incredible moments, including the casino planet mentioned earlier, Snoke’s throne room and the planet where the final battle of the movie takes place, where bright red minerals are covered by a layer of white salt. This also allows the settings to operate as strong backdrops for some of the absolute best action sequences that have ever been in a Star Wars movie, including a stunningly choreographed lightsaber battle and what may be Luke Skywalker’s finest moment.

The Last Jedi is a movie with so much going on that how much of it holds together would be impressive under normal circumstances. That it does all of this as a means of making Star Wars feel fresh again after 40 years as one of science fiction’s most enduring cinematic franchises makes it feels like a miracle. It’s enjoyable, thematically rich, and makes it clear that this trilogy is its own story beyond the legacy of the original three movies, while still carrying that legacy with pride.

Above all else, it’s the best goodbye to Carrie Fisher we could’ve asked for.

#Star Wars The Last Jedi #Star Wars #The Last Jedi #Movie Review #Wit's Writing #Star Wars Episode VIII #Rian Johnson #Rey #Finn #Poe Dameron #Kylo Ren #Luke Skywalker #Leia Organa #Daisy Ridley #John Boyega #Oscar Isaac #Adam Driver #Mark Hammill #Carrie Fisher

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saintheartwing · 4 years

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May the Force Be With You, Pt. 3

Darth Raize had been sure of only a few things in her life when she was younger. The Force was awesome. She wanted to do what Sith and Jedi could do. And she loved her parents. A cute girl with her hair tied into an adorable bun that had lived on Tattooine, she’d yearned to do what Force users could.

Darth Furiosa had lived a fairly normal enough life...for a child of the Sith. Her people were from a different galaxy where the Sith reigned, or at least, an offshoot of them who had developed a slightly more “liberal” view on what it meant to be a Sith. It was in essence, more about hedonism and feelings and freely enjoying oneself without tying yourself down to strict rules and moral codes.

Everything went wrong with their parents, though. That was a shared trauma they could speak up. For Raize, she’d found her parents had taken off, because in order to pay for the home she had, they had taken on immense amounts of debt. But now it had come time to collect, and they had to run. They left behind a datapad for Raize to find when she came back home from a day at the local community school, urging her to meet them on the outskirts of the territory, just grab what she could and run, and destroy the datapad too so nobody knew where they’d gone.

Unfortunately, that was when the debtors hired muscle had shown up. Raize had only just smashed the pad across the room and had raced for her room to grab a pack when hired goons with guns had smashed their way into her home. The good news was she’d learned that day she HAD force powers. She COULD do what they did. Truly, the force WAS awesome.

But she never saw her parents again, and all the love she’d had for them turned into hate for not telling her about the danger they’d been in, for not WAITING for her, for just taking off and assuming that she’d find them.

Furiosa’s mother and grandmother had taken her to the galaxy that Raize had called home, and they’d gone right to Coruscant upon hearing it was the “hub” of commerce and industry and politics, the center world of the galaxy, where the government ruled. What they hadn’t counted on was having Jedi there.

Luke Skywalker may have been more willing to go easy on them had Furiosa’s mother not casually tried to use a powerful Jedi mind trick to force the assembled senate to leap from their balconies to their deaths when they’d refused to give her a position of power. It also hadn’t helped that Leia was there too, and though she was still learning how to be a full Jedi, she was surprisingly a good match for Furiosa.

Furiosa couldn’t believe a newbie who’d barely swung a lightsaber was matching her skills as Luke fought off her grandmother and mother. And the more Furiosa fought, the more angrier and more furious she got, and unfortunately, she got sloppy. Leia had told her to give up, she was only making it worse, her and her family were going to prison for what they’d just tried to do. Yelling furiously at Leia to shut up, Furiosa had swung her saber, only for Leia to slash at just the right angle, breaking Furiosa’s saber apart just as Luke blew Furiosa’s mother up against a wall with a Force push, guards rushing to pin her down as he turned on Furiosa’s grandmother.

He’d ordered her to stand down. It was over. Come quietly and peacefully, and you wouldn’t be harmed any more. Leia had been grateful to see such compassion from her brother even now, after all, this was the same person who’d tried to talk down not only Jabba the Hutt, but Darth Vader himself, even the Emperor to an extent. Furiosa’s grandmother had not taken this well. She’d spat at him, and lunged at him, lightning crackling from her fingers.

This had not ended well, because that had been when Han had appeared, having come back from the bathroom, and his blast shot soared through the air, striking the side of the woman’s head, and she’d slumped to the floor, dead. Furiosa’s mother had screamed, sending guards flying, Leia had dived for several, using the Force to keep them from cascading down, down the large abyss below as the Coruscant senate decided they should take action too.

Those who had weapons began firing them at Furiosa’s mother, Han joining in, Furiosa trying to keep a Force shield up, but she was being steadily knocked back, further and further towards the edge. Luke had called out for them to stop, she was about to topple over, but too late. She fell back. NOW the shooting stopped.

Luke raced forward, arm stretched out. He reached out with the Force, trying to pull Furiosa’s mother up...and she’d slashed at his hand with her saber, angrily snapping at him, and he’d lost his concentration. This time she fell...and nobody caught her as she finally hit the far-off floor below with a sickening, wet CRUNCHING noise that echoed through the air as Furiosa screamed, and barreled out of the room as fast as she could before anyone could stop her.

She had forcibly taken over a ship in the dockyard, killing the guards who were on duty, and headed to its pre-programmed destination...Nar Shadaa. A place known for lawlessness. A place where she could build herself up.

But she wasn’t the only one going. Raize had decided to go there as well. She’d read from her parents datapad that they’d once LIVED on Nar Shadaa. They’d even left behind a little keycard to their old home but they’d moved to avoid debtors and to give birth to Raize in a slightly safer place. If anything was still there though...Raize would take it.

In a matter of months, the two would find each other. Raize had taken a new identity, she’d set up home in her parents old, tiny apartment and had met Furiosa when she’d tried to steal her credits from her pocket. She’d taken her fellow teenager home, and they’d struck up a conversation...and then she’d been staying over.

Soon they were eating meals together, and sharing one another’s secrets, and showing off how they could use the Force, and Furiosa had taught Raize the Sith Code.

“Peace is a lie. There is only Passion. Through Passion I gain Strength. Through Strength I gain Power. Through Power I gain Victory. Through Victory my chains are Broken. The Force shall free me.”

“I dunno...I think you’d look good in chains...and maybe a ball gag?”

“Oh, you naughty girl!” THWUMPH. And a pillow right to the face!

Yes, it had been a pretty good life, but they’d wanted more. And that was when they found...perhaps even created...what led them doing so well.

The apartment complex was the largest building in Nar Shadaa’s capitol, and Raize had been looking out the window, talking about how much she yearned for a more beautiful, better place for them to live. That had been when they’d both felt a strange tugging sensation, pulling them to the top of the building, to the roof. They’d gone to the top of Nar Shadaa’s tallest tower, and had reached out with the Force, and had stepped through what appeared, to them...to be a rip in the very air before them, and they’d vanished for what seemed like only a day.

When they’d returned, they’d aged a year. But they’d brought back quite a lot, backpacks filled with items from far, far away indeed. Items they intended to make use of...and to reverse engineer, and to exploit. And the best item of all…

Was a slightly dusty black binder filled with discs. Discs loaded up with music. Hundreds, if not thousands of songs and they intended to hear what was on them. It was hard to find a disc player that worked on those particularly odd, alien ones, but Raize was skilled in the tech department, she’d been tinkering for years, she had a keen mind for engineering and her efforts bore fruit as they heard the music of another world. Clearly what they had found was a rip in space. The Force had given them a way to go to another realm just by stepping through this rip, and as long as nobody else found it...they could exploit it.

Exploit it they did. They passed the music off as their own. Nobody could call up the artists themselves and disprove that the two weren’t making their own music. They sold the songs to the masses of Nar Shadaa, then across the Outer Rim. Soon it was spreading through the galaxy, song after song stolen by Raize and Furiosa. They were quickly becoming insanely rich, and within just a month, they’d bought the entire apartment complex, forced everyone else out, and had ordered renovations to make it into what they REALLY wanted.

More and more money flowing in meant more power. They set up meetings with the Hutts, who were very, very interested in the relaxing jazzy music they’d uncovered. They liked the slow, methodical beatworks and rhythm, the deep, soulful singing. The two women spent weeks cozying up to the Hutts and learning the inner workings of Nar Shadaa, and soon, they’d gained contacts...powerful contacts. Criminal contacts.

It was amazing, really, what money could buy. Including, perhaps, an election. The Galactic Republic still had representatives on the planet who were TECHNICALLY in charge, even though the Hutts were the ones who really ran everything. The Representatives were more figureheads, it wasn’t like the laws they tried to pass really got followed. But Raize and Furiosa had decided they wanted to kick them off the planet. They had the money to buy advertisements and support in various media stations, they could astroturf supporters for rallies, they’d even begun buying their own fleet now, a fact that people were becoming increasingly aware of because all of a sudden a LOT more ships with the “Dyad’s” logo on them were soaring around Nar Shadda’s skies.

All of it was a show of soft power. And it appeared to work. The Galactic Republic were forced to leave Nar Shadaa, exiting the race for Representatives, and the women held a triumphant press conference.

“We are really looking forward to making sure Nar Shadaa is represented by actual Nar Shadaans.” Raize had insisted. “My own parents were from here, and they had to leave because the system just didn’t do enough to protect them. Now we ARE the system, and that changes. It ALL changes.” Reporters murmured and whispered, others shouting out questions, photos being taken of the women as holo-vid cameras recorded their every movement and word from their lips as Furiosa spoke up.

“We’re going to be improving the docking yards for ships, for one thing. And we’re going to completely get rid of the current police department and put in some more competent cops, and we’re going to do the same to the military if it won’t adhere to our stricter rules. No more slacking off. No more messing up. No more listening to rules shackled in red tape! Without the Galactic Republic holding us back, Nar Shadaa will be more bright and beautiful than ever!” Furiosa said.

They began calling on reporters, who asked various questions, including very easy softballs, like the fact the reporters noticed a wedding ring, one of them asking “when did you get that”?. There was a lovely “Awww” moment as the couple kissed, explaining how they’d finally gotten engaged, and were going to have their wedding soon. But then another reporter spoke up, a Trandoshan in a soft white suit, wearing thick goggles and looking disturbed.

“You’ve dismantled the police department, the army, AND you’ve begun developing an increasingly large fleet. You own most of the media companies here on the planet, and you’ve kicked off the only outside influence the planet had, meaning all that’s left in terms of people in power, are you and the Hutts, who run the Underworld, and you’ve made it no secret that you’re on good terms with them. How is what you’ve done not just replaced one type of authoritarian rule with another that’s even more fascistic? What exactly is to stop you from deciding “You all don’t get to vote because you don’t vote the way we like”, or to create a standing army that’ll stomp out any opposition to you, or from passing laws that say criticizing you is punishable by death? Why should the people trust you to do the right thing when it doesn’t appear that anyone could stand up to you if you chose to cross the line?”

There was dead silence reigning. Nobody said a word. They slowly turned to look at the reporter, then at Furiosa and Raize. The two women stared back at the Trandoshan, looking faintly as though they’d been whacked in the face.

“Look dipshit, you got a real shallow view of “the line” if you ask me, a real shallow way of thinking indeed. I don’t care about “looking like the good guy” to sheltered people. Grow up.” Raize remarked.

“You didn’t actually answer my question.” The reporter said. “What’s to stop you from doing any of the stuff I just mentioned?” “Next question? Any other questions?” Furiosa inquired, ignoring him. But none of the other reporters said anything, all of them were beginning to look uncomfortable as Furiosa gave the reporter an irritated look. “What is WITH you? You don’t care about the people of Nar Shadaa? You only care about the stupid assholes from the Galactic Republic being kicked out, is that it? The only reason they got their position is because they’re from wealthy families. Why do you only care about rich people? What about the common man that deserves to have a say in how things are run, the people who actually live here, are FROM here, having a say?” “But you weren’t even born here. You’ve said as much.” The reporter remarked, looking stunned. “And YOU’RE both rich. What are you talking about?” “That’ll be all for today. Thank you for coming.” Furiosa said as Raize gave the reporter a very dirty look, the Trandoshan blinking back at her as they walked off.

Slowly but surely, things began to change. Very wealthy people on Nar Shadaa who hadn’t pledged loyalty to the Hutts or to the Dyad began to die. A very mysterious string of suicides. All of them conveniently leaping out the windows, them AND their families to boot. And then, there’d been the incident on Coruscant. As Nar Shadaa’s representatives to the Senate now, they’d been invited to join in on sessions there when it came to passing galactic law. At first, people found it slightly odd...they dressed rather darkly, they were clear Force users, but nobody objected openly to the two, or really cared that they were often more busy making out in their senate seats, or whispering amongst each other, or reading books rather than listening to other Congressmen and women.

But then IT happened. Raize had been complaining about the influence of the rich on Coruscant. “It’s disgusting, really. It’s almost like they’ve bought the police and treat them as their own private security force. Look at how much money they give to the police authorities here, it’s blatant what they’re doing, buying preferential treatment!” She’d been telling a gaggle of reporters as Furiosa nodded.

“But you have your own enormous fleet YOU bought, and your own private army and everything, isn’t that hypocr-” One of the reporters began to say as Luke Skywalker, now in his thirties, took notice of a guard who was angrily accosting a small group of twi’lek refugees who’d set up a tent.

“You can’t stay here, there’s strict regulations that say no domiciles are to be set up within one mile of the Galactic senate. Where are your papers? Show me your papers right now!” The guard demanded.

Furiosa frowned over at this. Luke was about to walk on over, he was taking a few steps towards the guard when Raize angrily grunted, and then the guard’s neck twisted, and he flopped down dead.

“Good lord!” The reporter who’d spoken up gasped as people shrieked, others staring on in horror at this cold-blooded murder.

“I’m surprised you didn’t torture him first.” Furiosa chuckled as Luke gaped in astonishment and shock and horror before he angrily turned, wheeling towards Raize.

“Raize, you shouldn’t have done that!” “What?! What was I supposed to do? Just let him harass that innocent refugee?!” Raize angrily inquired. “Maybe if your stupid planet didn’t have so lousy a system, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen!” “It’s not up to YOU to decide who lives and who dies!” Luke told her. “If you don’t like how something gets done, you change it from within. You force the system to be held to account, that’s how Democracy works.” “Your senate’s proof Democracy DOESN’T work, how well did they do in stopping Darth Vader from coming to power, or the Empire itself?” Furiosa snorted. “If you’ve got more power than the other side, that’s really all that matters. Laws mean nothing if they’re not good enough.” “You murdered that man. It doesn’t matter if you think it was justified, you murdered him, and you’re going to stand trial.” Luke told her.

“Yeah, good luck with all the paperwork arranging that. Furiosa and I are sick of this place. We’re not coming back. Bye bye.” She said with a sneer at Luke, she and Furiosa leaving the reporters behind as they shouted questions at the women’s backs, Luke shaking his head, going over to the refugees, trying to calm them down as they clung to each other in terror.

“Are you alright?” “Y-You’re not g-gonna snap our necks, are you?” The oldest of them asked.

“Why would I do…” Luke said at first. But then he trailed off, realizing why. No wonder they were so scared of Force users. People like them could do anything they felt like. It was probably terrifying to non-users to see the Force used like that, and so...casually. How many people probably walked on egghsells around Furiosa and Raize out of fear THEY’D get the same treatment? How many walked on eggshells around him out of the same type of fear?

“...why don’t I buy you all lunch?” He asked comfortingly. “And we can talk things over. And find you a better house than a tent in the street.”

Well, with that incident, Nar Shadaa was kicked off the Senate. Raize and Furiosa were condemned by the Galactic Republic, but they couldn’t openly make a move. The Dyad’s fleet was now positively enormous, and any attempt to bring them in to face justice would mean open warfare. People whispered on the streets of Nar Shadaa about the power of the planet’s new, de-facto rulers...the Dyad…

Darth Raize and Darth Furiosa. Who could possibly stand up to them?

Well...the only one who had come closest had now been found passed out in an alley, some random schmuck with a marginal grip on the Force whom Leia was helping into her and Han’s vehicle as they headed to the room they would be staying in. Kendall awoke, yawning a bit, then gasping in surprise. He was in the backseat with Leia as she smiled at him, whilst a very clearly infuriated, bound-tightly-by-electromagnetic-ropes 8t88 the robot sat next to her. On top of that, his head was in his lap. He was still conscious, clearly, they’d removed the head but had ensured he didn’t shut off to make it clear he wasn’t going to try anything funny, but it was quite an odd sight.

“Whatever were you doing in that alleyway? You’re lucky I sensed you.” Leia told him as she looked him up and down. “Though I almost couldn’t, your grip on the Force is very…” She hesitated.

“I know, I know.” Kendall sighed as he covered his face with his hands, bending over a bit, groaning. “I’m not very good. What were you going to say? Minimal? Minor? Peripheral? Insignificant, maybe?”

“I would actually call it...sectional. Maybe...narrow.” Leia admitted. “All life has the faintest of connections to the force. Yours isn’t that faint compared to the average person in the street. It’s only a...small torch light compared to the larger flame that my own powers represent. It’d be like comparing a candle to a flashlight, then that flashlight to a flood light. It’s not bad, really, it just isn’t quite enough.”

“I figured that out quick.” Kendall muttered. “Still, I’m very glad to meet you. I recognize your faces, you’re Leia and Han. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Once we get out of this car, we’ll need to change those faces.” Han held up a small pen-like thing. “This’ll cast a holographic image over us to change our looks. Nobody will know the difference.” He said with a grin. “They’re very handy. Perhaps we should make one for you.” “We actually saw your assault on the building. For a first time, and...for such a young Jedi, it wasn’t half bad.” Leia offered.

“I appreciate those kind words but…” Kendall trailed off.

“I don’t even need the Force to read your mind, I can tell you may be at your lowest point.” Leia spoke softly. “But we’re here to try and investigate what the Dyad is doing, and you can help us. And we can help you.” Leia added. “You have real potential. I’d be happy to try and bring it out.”

Kendall glanced back at her, biting his lip before he sat up. “You know what?...okay. I’m willing to try anything.” He said with a nod. “Teach me. Teach me in the ways of the Force.”

“The first thing you should know is the mantra.” Leia said with a smile. “There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.”

Kendall quietly blinked, looking at Leia, then he took out his lightsaber, staring at it. Those were nice words. There was a comfort to them. But at the same time, it reminded him of the type of dogma he’d had to recite in Church. He thought of what Leia had said, and a new code came to mind, the words springing from his lips as if they’d always been buried inside him.

“...Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force.”

Leia looked surprised. Her eyes went wide before she smiled softly. “Interesting. Do you come from any type of family with Force powers?” “I don’t know. But…” He trailed off. “...well, my Dad never told me who my mother was. He always said I was a gift from God. Well, I don’t believe in God, but I sure believe in the Force now. Maybe...maybe I was a gift somehow from the Force. If only I could talk to him again, make him...wait.”

His blue eyes went bulging wide. The legends about the Jedi...he’d heard whispers and possibilities. What if…?

“Is it true that the Jedi can talk to the dead?” Kendall asked, eyes wide, turning to Leia as she looked upon Kendall with clear pity in her eyes. “I heard how Jedi can...can become ghosts that linger on and talk to people, can...can they talk to the dead?”

Leia quietly sighed. It was good he wasn’t asking if they could bring back the dead. That was often a very common request but the path down that was often one leading to the Dark Side. This was more understandable. It was natural to want to just talk to the ones you love just one more time.

“Yes...we can. Death means becoming one with the Force. Most sentients lose their ability to speak to the living, but if you master certain techniques, you can...get around this.” Leia confessed quietly. “I’m able to talk to the Force, to hear what it says. I may be able to help you learn this technique, and perhaps, if you continue down this path, you’ll be able to reach out to your Father. If he was a Force sensitive, it’ll be far easier to speak to him.”

For the first time in a long time, real, genuine hope swelled in Kendall’s frame. A gleaming, bright smile came to his features. “...thank you.” He whispered, taking Leia’s hand, bowing his hand. “Thank you, thank you, THANK you. You’ve no idea how much it means to me.” “Believe me. I do.” She murmured quietly. “I really, really do.”

#Star Wars #fanfic #drama #LGBTQ #LGBT Rights #action

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oh-my-hubris · 7 years

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Religion, Jedi, Hedonism, Sith (C-c-c-cocaine)

I’m the only one who will think that title is funny. Listen to “Feel Good Hit Of The Summer” before you judge me.

A meta rant! It’s . . . long.

Like most of my rants, this is not going to be terrible coherent. Consider it more a series of talking points.

A friend ( @darth-char let me know if I need to untag you) recently got me thinking about external religious influences on the Star Wars and then because I’m a faggot, I had to write them down.

The Jedi are pretty clearly intended to be a very, very christian take on Buddhism. I say Christian take because with my background, that’s what I see. It reminds me of when the teacher of my Ba’hai youth group (long story but she had been Presbyterian before converting for the sake of her husband? Bit of a bitch really) tried to teach a bunch of grade school kids about Buddhism. Very watered down and easily digestible.

Becoming one with the Force is pretty clearly Nirvana.

The ban on attachments is very Buddhist.

The acting always from a place of inner peace which is not a thing human beings are actually capable of but sure why not?

Warrior monks (Western (read: socially Christian) Pop-Culture is obsessed with Buddhist warrior monks (Iron-Fist, Bullet Proof Monk, Avatar: The Last Air Bender).

But, the attempt to give the Buddha a glowstick is not the point of this little tirade. What we are interested in today is the Pope Hat he’s wearing. Darth-Char specifically pointed out the relationship between Christian ideas of Purity and the Jedi’s habit of pretending that this world is less important than the next.

“Luminous beings we are, not this crude matter,” says Yoda while being a shit on Dagobah before pinching Luke to drive his point home. And this is weird because, for the Jedi, the goal is to become one with the force. Jedi Force Ghosts (and really ghosties in general) happen either when the dead dude’s will is strong enough to choose to remain behind (a sith option), something went the fuck awry, or there is a purpose they must fulfill (guiding Luke’s hillbilly ass to greatness).

Okay, so, Enlightenment Lite: All souls return until they are ready for Nirvana and people like the Buddha or the Dalai Lama will choose to return to guide others. Unless Yoda’s wrinkly green tuchus shows up to tell what’s-her-name to kick the Solo kid in the dick (regardless of whether or not that’s a good idea, let’s be honest) that’s not what’s happened.

So, if the end goal is “be one with the Force,” and to return to a state of peaceful non-existence, why the ghosty-ness? Why the obsession with remaining pure and apart from the earthly world, a trait usually used to ensure one’s place in the next.

Because Jesus.

Because Star Wars is written by people who are at least socially Christian and our society equates goodness with being separate from the mortal realm. This is also the source of a lot of the contradictions within both Star Wars and Religion that drive people nuts.

On the other side, we have the Sith, who are clearly written as hedonists through the same lens that the Jedi are written as buddhist. The sith praise indulgence in all things. Hell, there’s implication during the Bounty Hunter storyline that incest is seen as a “weird kink” within the Empire. Publicly frowned upon but otherwise no one bats an eyelash. This is, naturally, written to further distance the player from the “bad guys.” Hedonism itself is seen as a way of making sure we know that the sith are evil nasty bad.

It doesn’t work, but I’m pretty sure that’s the intent.

The hedonism of the Sith, in addition to not being actual hedonism (another rant) is no more or less sustainable than the utter abstinence of the Jedi. Look! The Force In Balance! On accident! Because Star Wars.

More interesting to me however, is an accidental reversal they pulled between Christianity and Satanism that makes sense as if memory serves The Sith Code is a direct snub at the Jedi Code sort of how the Laveyan Satanic Bible (btw, Laveyan Satanism is hedonism in a stupid hat) is a snub at The Bible. Christianity, and I’m being broad here, is referred to as a “right hand path” religion, meaning in essence that the end goal is to become one with the universe/God’s Love/the void etc. Left hand path faiths emphasize a retainment of self post-mortem.

Real quick. Picture heaven. Did you picture people being people?

Yeah.

Most Christian sects are accidentally left hand, let that sink in a minute.

We see a lot of Jedi manifesting as Force Ghosts. We see them preserving themselves in noetikons. Which is all very left hand.

But still, they insist there is no death, there is the Force?

It ties into the idea that attachment is sinful. That this mortal flesh is sinful. You’re not supposed to care about living or dying. You’re not supposed to want to remain behind as who and what you are.

But why not?

I think my problem with the Jedi is the inconsistency with which they’re written. Just about zero (0) jedi we’re introduced to keep to their fucking code. And if the narrative addressed this, it would be fine but every single jedi is the exception. The one who kinda fucked up.

So, back to the initial point of the rant, why is attachment seen as evil/misguided through the skewed lens of our heavily Christian society? Because it is distracting. Because society for a long time required that everyone be focused more or less all the time on society rather than on the self. So the self became anathema. Concern yourself not with yourself but with society because then we’re all looking out for each other became concern yourself not with this world but with the next because then at least we’re all going the same way. And the easiest way to control people is with shame, because it’s internal and takes very little prodding.

#blorgh #ask me about my opinions on evil in fiction #and my opinions on how the jedi Order SHOULD have been fucking handled

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