Deep Dive, All That Jazz

An account I made to go deep into ( and celebrate! ) Star Wars : Rebels, and two characters in particular. My fanfiction ( The Mandalorian and the Jedi ) : https://archiveofourown.org/works/51672316/chapters/130624792

[glouchyouchy]

The Mandalorian and the Jedi, Ch12 - THE FINALE

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Hi there! I'm BACK, finally... And I take it back - I DO have what it takes. It took me more than a year, but I finished my fic. :)

A HUGE THANK YOU to the Sabezra / Ezrabine community and the greater Star Wars fan community, and an EQUALLY HUGE THANK YOU to those who have read, or are currently reading this little work of mine.

I've thanked those specific people already in the notes below each of the chapters... So I'd just like to mention them all again to honor them one final time here - it was truly a huge privilege interacting with you, enjoying your work deeply and being guided by and/or drawing inspiration from it, and just being fellow fans and people ^_^ :

@illuminatedquill @supernova-skywalker @jedimandalorian @lady-grey-1993 @alphaofdarkness @kelbies-fandom-locker @curvedcat @david-talks-sw @writerbuddha @kazoosandfannypacks @tarisilmarwen @jedi-nurse @seleneisrising

So... Yeah. That’s it! The final chapter.

As promised, there will be a short epilogue to this that I'll be posting around December or thereabouts ( work and personal obligations will be gobbling me up from now until shortly before the end of the year so... stay tuned ).

Once again, THANK YOU, leave a comment ( please :) ), and I hope you enjoyed reading this fic! :)

[ EDIT : I decided to post the Epilogue in its present form - after spending all night hastily editing it. I just couldn't leave this fic missing this last small piece, despite all the work I have to contend with at the moment. Hope you enjoy :) NOW I can say that this fic is truly complete ^_^ ]

[glouchyouchy]

Hi there! I just finished with extensively proof-reading and editing the last chapter and the epilogue of my fic ( for typos, grammar corrections, phrasing improvements, adding in details, etc - if there are any left, they should be few and far between ) :)

In case you haven't already, or have read it but would still be interested to re-read the work in its entirety, now's the time... Because this will be the final version of The Mandalorian and the Jedi. ^_^

Happy reading, and 'til the next fic,

glouchyouchy

[universesstardust]

Sabezra picrew my beloved ❤️

[ncc-60205]

Sometime after Thrawn’s campaign, probably!

Sabine shows Ezra around the rebuilt capital city and sibling shenanigans:)) A tribute for Kanan too.

[alphaofdarkness]

They are so fecking cringe (absolute dorks in love and lots of kisses to catch up on 🤭) ♡ uwu Happy Valentine’s Day everyone 💕💘

Inspired by this pose references by gonzais_ 💕

[commander-tech]

Sabine x Ezra

[chocomars]

There you are.

[seleneisrising]

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that Ahsoka is not a continuation of Rebels, specifically for Ezra and Sabine.

We know that there was a singular writer who, much to the dismay of other Rebels writers, wrote the show alone. And prior to the series, when asked how much they’d studied Rebels to prepare for their roles, both Sabine and Ezra’s actors said that they hadn’t looked at it too closely or at all. They had been encouraged not to in order to, and I’m paraphrasing, put their own spin on the characters.

And I only think that’s notable when you compare it to the testimony of both Anakin and Ahsoka’s actors, who said that they had done their homework for all of the iterations of their characters.

I also think it’s notable that the Rebels voice actors for Ezra and Sabine have been mostly silent about the show when, comparatively, Ahsoka’s va has been supportive.

So I don’t know and will never know for sure. This is purely speculation, and perhaps I’ve wandered into tin foil hat territory here. But it seems to me, given the bts information that we do have (all of this in addition to the Rebels storyline supposedly not even being included in the first draft of the show), that Anakin and Ahsoka’s stories are meant to be a continuation in Ahsoka while Ezra and Sabine’s are not. There is an awkwardly created distance, an intentional break where there shouldn’t be between Rebels Ezra and Sabine and their Ahsoka versions that makes it feel like Ahsoka was never meant to be a true continuation of Rebels.

[glouchyouchy]

If true, ( and it makes almost too much sense to not be ) then this explains A LOT.

[glouchyouchy]

Just getting this out of my chest a week after experiencing days of no power and water, and rationing out food and drinking water - super typhoon Fung-Wong, or what locally was named Uwan, is one of the most terrifying weather events that probably anyone will ever have to face.

[glouchyouchy]

The Mandalorian and the Jedi, Ch12 - THE FINALE

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Hi there! I'm BACK, finally... And I take it back - I DO have what it takes. It took me more than a year, but I finished my fic. :)

A HUGE THANK YOU to the Sabezra / Ezrabine community and the greater Star Wars fan community, and an EQUALLY HUGE THANK YOU to those who have read, or are currently reading this little work of mine.

I've thanked those specific people already in the notes below each of the chapters... So I'd just like to mention them all again to honor them one final time here - it was truly a huge privilege interacting with you, enjoying your work deeply and being guided by and/or drawing inspiration from it, and just being fellow fans and people ^_^ :

@illuminatedquill @supernova-skywalker @jedimandalorian @lady-grey-1993 @alphaofdarkness @kelbies-fandom-locker @curvedcat @david-talks-sw @writerbuddha @kazoosandfannypacks @tarisilmarwen @jedi-nurse @seleneisrising

So... Yeah. That’s it! The final chapter.

As promised, there will be a short epilogue to this that I'll be posting around December or thereabouts ( work and personal obligations will be gobbling me up from now until shortly before the end of the year so... stay tuned ).

Once again, THANK YOU, leave a comment ( please :) ), and I hope you enjoyed reading this fic! :)

[ EDIT : I decided to post the Epilogue in its present form - after spending all night hastily editing it. I just couldn't leave this fic missing this last small piece, despite all the work I have to contend with at the moment. Hope you enjoy :) NOW I can say that this fic is truly complete ^_^ ]

[glouchyouchy]

Hi there! I just finished with extensively proof-reading and editing the last chapter and the epilogue of my fic ( for typos, grammar corrections, phrasing improvements, adding in details, etc - if there are any left, they should be few and far between ) :)

In case you haven't already, or have read it but would still be interested to re-read the work in its entirety, now's the time... Because this will be the final version of The Mandalorian and the Jedi. ^_^

Happy reading, and 'til the next fic,

glouchyouchy

[glouchyouchy]

Hi there!

Life has been extremely busy these past couple of years, so I’ve barely had time to engage with Sabezra - and any other form of entertainment, come to think of it - but I suddenly had the urge to open my FF.net app and got a look at WHEN exactly I first uploaded my fic, the Mandalorian and the Jedi.

It was October 20, 2023, when I nervously clicked the ‘Publish’ button after writing that first chapter - very raw, and mostly written in the Notes app of my iPhone while I grabbed a sup or a drink on stopovers during the long drives between sites that I had to do at the time, and I didn’t even know then that Ao3 or Discord even existed - in which I basically wrote in a Sabezra scene into Ahsoka S1’s canon narrative as my way to deal with the absolute disappontment of not having any hint of a romance between Ezra and Sabine ( after half a decade since Rebels ended with that scene of her on his tower ). Then, as I wrote the second chapter, the first glimmers of a narrative ARC began to show… And of course, as many of my fellow and infinitely more seasoned writers here could probably attest to, that arc for a three-chapter, probably 20k-word-AT-MOST story that I had planned then with complete lack of confidence that I could actually will myself to accomplish such a feat given that I haven’t EVER written something that was narrative in nature, somehow became something that spanned TWELVE chapters ( and an Epilogue ) and more than 110k words - the writing and continuous editing and figuring out of the story of which very nearly forced me to quit for a time ( and I actually had to take a lengthy hiatus to get some much-needed separation from it, actually ) before I finally overcame the dreaded BLOCK and was gifted just the right kind of energy to allow me to finish my story in a way which ( I think, or at least I tried to ) honors the best of what we Sabezra shippers hope for these two.

All this is to say… I can’t believe it’s been TWO YEARS, and I’m posting this NOW because I expect that life won’t allow me to remember it on the actual day itself. Writing this story has been one of the most memorable and richest experiences I’ve ever had, from the act of actually planning and visualizing and thinking and writing it, to engaging with the community and those individuals I’ve already thanked ( and continue to thank ) for lending some form of help or encouragement which allowed this work to pull through.

So, to the present. I’ve got some inklings of narrative threads to follow for separate, in-universe stories to this one, but I don’t expect myself to be writing ( in fact, there hasn’t been an ITCH to write AT ALL - I suspect writing something as intricate as The Mandalorian and the Jedi does that to a person ) any time soon - though Ahsoka S2, methinks, has a very fair chance to change that.

‘Til then,

glouchyouchy

[seleneisrising]

The One About Ezra & Sabine's Fairy Tale - Part III

Part I || Part II

The thing about Otherness in fairy tales (or at least in the retellings I've been reading) is that Otherness has a dual role of 1) separating a character from their family; and 2) of being the Thing that draws that character to the exact right person for them outside of their family.

In Rebels, the Thing that originally makes Sabine and Ezra Other in their own families (Ezra's Force sensitivity and Sabine's Imperial/run away experience) finds its home in their mentors on the crew (Kanan and Hera) and makes them no longer Other.

But because this is only ever a temporary situation, because the First Story is a completion of their childhood and that there must be a Second Story and a journey into adulthood, a new Otherness is created for Ezra and Sabine when they meet:

They're the only children on the crew, and they have both been made (basically) orphans by the Empire.

This is initially what brings them together and unites them in a way that is different from any of their other relationships on the Ghost.

It establishes that they are separate from their (found) family and makes them the right person for one another.

Their First Story is concerned with their relationships with the mentors and the Family, but, over time, a closeness gradually develops between them as they grow up and away from the group. This implies that, as they move towards adulthood, when they prepare to leave and separate themselves from the Home and Family of the Ghost, their Otherness will be only be satisfied in one another.

They either are or they become the one and only perfect person for each other outside of their Family.

Someone to build their own Home and Family with.

This is the opposite direction from a sibling relationship because siblings generally grow apart as they age out of the family, not closer together. Siblings are a part of the family that is left behind at a childhood home, not the family to make a home with in adulthood.

Nowhere else in Rebels is it more obvious that Sabine and Ezra's Otherness is becoming shared just between them (dividing them from the crew) and is also making each other their (eventual) new Home and Family, than this moment right here.

Outfit as both Jedi and Mandalorian, Sabine and Ezra are also clad in the colorful way that only they have, making them an exception to the muted neutrals of the Jedi and the dull hues of the Mandalorians.

They have merged in a manner that is more indicative of spouses, not siblings.

After this, Sabine chooses (this time) to leave her childhood home and family and return to the Ghost crew where she and Ezra, more and more, are shown working only with one another, culminating in the final arc of the show.

This is why the Second Story is bisected into two parts: Sabine has only fulfilled half of the mission. Lothal has become Home, but it’s still missing her Family.

In the Epilogue, Sabine makes it clear that Zeb (along with Kallus) has found Home and Family on Lira San. Hera has found Home and Family with Jacen.

But Sabine? Ezra?

Not yet.

"Ezra's out there somewhere, and it's time to bring him home."

[glouchyouchy]

Beautiful analysis. 🥹

They are or have become perfect for each other.

[seleneisrising]

The One About Ezra & Sabine's Fairy Tale, Part I

I've been thinking about fairy tales, specifically the elements of Otherness and Death of/Separation from the Family.

Star Wars is a fairy tale, and Rebels begins when the Otherness of our co-protags has resulted in the loss of their families. Ezra's family spoke out against the Empire (at least in part because of his Otherness - Force sensitivity), and they were arrested for it. Sabine traded her traditional Mandalorian family for the Imperial Academy (making her Other in her family), which resulted in her clan not being able to bring her back home when she needed them to.

Usually, Death of/Separation from the Family catapults a character into adulthood and independence (like Luke and Leia at the beginning of A New Hope), but this was only temporary for Ezra and Sabine.

Rebels said that they weren't quite ready yet.

So Rebels interrupted this process to give Ezra and Sabine - in their First Story - a chance to finish out their childhood first.

Ezra and Sabine found, in the Ghost crew, a new family where their Otherness was shared (making them no longer Other), and this new family prepared them for adulthood when their own families couldn't or wouldn't.

But because Rebels delayed Ezra and Sabine's transition into adulthood, and because Rebels is Star Wars and Star Wars is a fairy tale, and because all children grow up, there must be a second story for both Ezra and Sabine. They cannot stay at home with their family - found or otherwise - forever.

And what I love about Rebels is that it set this up so beautifully.

We saw it coming in season three when Ezra and Sabine started breaking off from the Spectre group to go off on their own together. In season four, they were often coupled up alongside Kanan and Hera, mirroring them. By the end of Rebels, it was very clear that Ezra and Sabine had become the Kanan and Hera of a new story when both mentors passed on their leadership positions to their younger counterparts before they all went off in different directions.

This is where a new Death of/Separation from Family begins, so the the purgilling and afterward is the beginning of the Second Story, the journey into adulthood.

It's interesting to note that the First Story differs from the Second in that Ezra and Sabine involuntarily lost their parents the first time around. It was something that happened to them.

For the Second Story, the Separation from the Family is something that they both choose.

Ezra leaves them all behind. Sabine stays when everyone else leaves.

By the end of Rebels, Ezra and Sabine (now around the same age as Luke and Leia), are ready to take their next steps, leaving their family to journey into adulthood, and it's their Otherness (Jedi Ezra and Unconventional Mandalorian Sabine) that shapes the next part of the story.

Continued in Part II

[glouchyouchy]

The concept of ‘Otherness’ which eventually becomes the catalyst for an involuntary separation from the original families / groups / cultures to which they belonged previously, FOLLOWED BY the coming together of a group of ‘Others’ to form a found family through which they collectively work through and grow beyond their past and resulting trauma / issues / struggles, is such a great framework to understand what is probably the central theme of Rebels.

Terrific 🥹

[buscardieux]

Just saw a YouTube short pointing out the "mistake" of Dedra Meero claiming to have been raised in an "Imperial" kinderblock, despite being old enough to have lived through the fall of the Republic. Unlike Dedra, the Galactic Empire isn't old enough to buy revnog and peezos. So what gives?

The thing is, plenty of characters in Andor refer to the late Republic as "Imperial" in the present day of the story. For example, on Ferrix we hear that Kenari was the site of an "Imperial" mining disaster. But in Cassian's flashback, the mining disaster has clearly already happened - yet Maarva refers to the approaching threat of a Republic warship.

These inconsistencies aren't mistakes - they're worldbuilding. It illustrates that to people in the world, the distinction between the late Republic and the Empire has started to blur. Imperialism extends its influence not only in the spatial realm of planets and sectors, but also in the very minds of its subjects. Additionally, it mirrors something from the Prequels - by the end of Attack of the Clones, when we see Stormtrooper-like Clones boarding proto-Star Destroyers as the Jedi Council looks on, we are meant to understand that the Republic-Imperial transition is already well on its way.

The fact that Andor understands this, builds on it and communicates it to the viewer without banging us over the head with exposition-laden dialogue is just one example of why it's the best piece of Star Wars media produced... maybe ever? And the fact that this is lost on the Star Wars Content-Industrial Complex is disappointing, if not unexpected.

[thats-ee]

had to get this out before we collectively move on from coldplay ceo

[glouchyouchy]

I’d like to think that Yoda was moderating the kisscam 😂

[meldy-arts]

Highkey need them to get back together and stay together. They deserve to be happy 🗣️

[wadozoro]

NEW LOOK AT EZRA BRIDGER????

[sailforvalinor]

I’m not a Sabezra shipper, but honestly Hollywood has been so anti-romance lately that if it ever did happen I’d be cheering right along with y’all

[lorax177]

i never realized how much i hate modern art until i took a class in modern art

it’s so pretentious. like half of the pieces we’ve looked at have been purportedly commenting on elitism in art and income disparities when the piece itself sold for thousands of dollars to be put in a museum for rich people to look at. you’re supposed to look at barren canvases with vague splotches of color and meditate on the nature of life, navelgazing for an hour. bitch I can do that in my own home for free. most of the time the pieces themselves don’t require any skill, it’s just an asshole with some bright idea that ~~~no one has ever thought of before~~~ (which is bullshit, originality is a myth) and the gall to pretend that they’re saying something meaningful. A bunch of postmodernists specialize in literal plagiarism but with a different title. wow so edgy. really thought provoking. you sure are making a statement that’s relevant and people care about.

the most egregious example is this bullshit:

this is an overhead view of a plaza wherein some famous guy was commissioned to design a public art piece for. The brick and nonfunctional fountain was already there. The sculpture? a literal wall of iron bisecting the courtyard. this guy was paid over 100k to design this. 

Now, this is located in a city, smack dab in the middle of a bunch of office buildings. Workers who had to spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week doing menial desk jobs had to look at this ugly piece of shit. You want to have a nice picnic during lunch break with your work buddies? tough shit. You get tilted arc instead fucko. You can’t see from one end of the courtyard to another because some dick thought rebar sheet metal was more important. It also impeded movement between the buildings so that you have to go around this fucking obstacle instead of just fucking walking from one side to the other. 

So yeah, these workers got pissed, because you’re making an ugly place even uglier for obscene amounts of money without thinking about the ppl who actually have to look at it every day (who had no say in the design). There have been countless studies done on stress and related health problems in office workers and having to look at ugly as sin shit like this piece of work actually contributes to stress and decreases mental and physical health (as opposed to pretty scenery or plants etc). 

When the designer was told what people thought of his masterpiece, he threw an absolute shitfit. “art doesn’t have to be pretty”, he said. “art isn’t for the public”. 

while it is absolutely true that art doesn’t have to be aesthetically pleasing to be meaningful or relevant, putting this fucking monstrosity in a place where people are forced to look at it day in day out, in addition to the ugly buildings and streets and shit that comprises the rest of their lives is just kind of a dick move. Yes, people are painfully aware that life and art and all that shit isn’t always pretty. they’re the ones who have to live with that fact, not some pompous asshole who thinks he’s god’s gift to man because he put some metal wall in a plaza. 

And yeah, not all art is for the public. Art can be self-expression or just for your own enjoyment. But if you are being commissioned by the state, paid hundereds of thousands of tax dollars to make a PUBLIC art piece, yeah, it’s for the public! saying that other people have no say in what that public art piece looks like, implying that if other people don’t like your art that they just Don’t Understand True Art TM, is this hugely egotistical self-masturbatory elitism that puts the artist above the working people (when like the whole point of art is supposed to be disrupting this kind of bullshit thinking). 

But that’s not even the best part. This fucking douchebag, upon being told that people don’t want this metal wall in their courtyard and that they want him to move it, freaks the FUCK out about how he “designed it just for this space and taking it out of its context would destroy it”. Which like, yeah context is important when understanding the meaning of a piece. but literally the only meaning of this piece was “i got paid obscene amounts of money and im gonna use it to make the ugliest thing i can think of literally just because”. If you move it out of the context of the plaza it wouldn’t be impeding foot traffic or being an eyesore to the workers who are forced to spend their days there, which is destroying the purpose of the work. So in the end this guy opts to have the piece destroyed rather than moved because he can’t stand to have his ~~~high art~~~ removed from its PurposeTM which is to be unpleasant. i dont give a single goddamn fuck about ‘advancing sculpture’ or whatever the fuck, if it’s causing people stress on top of their already stressful lives just because you thought it would be great to create this atrocity in a place where no one can escape from, you’re not ‘advancing’ anything, you’re just being a dick.

So now the space has been converted to a rather plesant little oasis with plants and lots of benches. 

anyways thats my dissertation on how much i hate contemporary art and find it to lack relevance or meaning to the people it supposedly represents or defends. it takes itself too seriously and imposes arbitrary and hypocritical statements on the nature of art at the expense of any real substance. in the world we live in, pretty things for the sake of being pretty, having stories that are entertaining and engaging and relatable, having fun and feeling good in a world that devalues those things, etc. are far more impactful and radical than anything sitting in a museum created by some millionaire who jacks off to their “fine art”. thanks for coming to my ted talk have a good night