#capnseamus

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

I get that there were books that people valued but honestly mando clones always felt so shoehorned. Jango was adopted, so genetics don’t really apply. Sure in legends he trained the clones, but they don’t have beskar armor passed down, they don’t have many cultural touchstones. Like I adore the Jedi, but if you gave me a story about non-force sensitives with no lightsabers trained by the Jedi and said they were Jedi I’d be disappointed to not get a Jedi story and that they wasted a cool concept

This has got to be my new record for how long it's taken me to answer an ask xD

I mean, in the movies/shows it's not even particularly obvious that Jango was the Clones' main instructor. In TCW there are mercenaries that were hired for that, and the Jedi send Shaak Ti to oversee the process, but there's no mention of this being a radical difference between the newer generations and the Clone 'veterans.' For all we know, mercenaries could have been involved from the start.

From what little we get in AotC, Jango really could just have been chilling on Kamino because it's safe and remote, and so the Kaminoans could have easy access to his DNA if need be. If he was regularly taking jobs for Dooku, like Padmé's assassination attempts, maybe he wasn't even on planet that consistently. I do think he was somewhat involved in the training, but a lot of it was probably automatized too (we see the Cadets training on computers) - and one dude alone obviously couldn't have been personally involved with all of the Clones' training. At the very least, it's not realistic to imagine that all three hundred thousand first gen Clones had regular interactions with him.

I wouldn't mind so much the case you described, but... that's not even what happened with the Clones. Nothing in the movies or the shows said "yeah, they're kinda Mandos," that was all supplemental material - because in the movies Jango himself wasn't actually supposed to be Mando. Mando armor wasn't that sacred cultural heritage yet, just some really good armor a skilled bounty hunter would be eager to get his hands on. But really, it's not even for any of these reasons that I mind the Mando!Clones fanon - I'm cool with Jango being in charge of their training and with being Mandalorian himself, by adoption or otherwise. What does annoy me is that Mando!Clones is made out to be a huge part of their identity when they were never written this way.

Rex and Boil had Mando symbols on their helmets as holdover from the early days of TCW when the writers were working a bit with the EU authors and drawing ideas from the EU. It never went beyond that and it all got scrapped by season 2 anyway, when they rewrote Mandalore entirely and TCW started to distance itself from the EU a lot more. Nothing else connects the Clones with the Mandos. I used to love the headcanon! But it's a headcanon, not something at the core of their characters. It's fanon, even.

[gffa]

Unpopular Option: Mara Jade should be brought back into canon, but should never be Luke's wife. Being married to someone isn't a core characterization or interesting, and that being the only thing people know about her is kind of sexist. Being a force sensitive former Imperial agent/former smuggler is really interesting.

strongly agree | agree | neutral | disagree | strongly disagree I very strongly agree that Mara shouldn’t be brought back into canon just to be Luke’s wife and I’m wary that bringing her back would get overshadowed by that assumption, beyond whatever her character actually does or says in the actual stories.  I’m also really fond of the idea that Luke may just never get married, he’s not interested in it, and bringing Mara back to canon would put pressure on the idea of oh well of course he’s going to get married! But neither do I think it should be completely off the table if they do bring her back.  It’s not impossible fit a Luke/Mara relationship into the shape of the canon, they’ve already done so with Thrawn and post-ROTJ Legends is very different from post-ROTJ canon, so there’s no reason it couldn’t work with Mara as well. I’m not sure I trust LF to be able to bring Mara back, establish her as her own character for like 10 years in books and comics, and then see if she and Luke could have a relationship.  I suspect if she does get recanonized, it’ll be a very minor role and Luke/Mara won’t happen, so this is all mere speculation won’t matter. I do agree with the heart of what you’re saying, though, which is that Mara shouldn’t be boiled down to just being Luke’s wife, when she had her own entire backstory and her own internal world and own set of really cool, awesome scenes and character arcs that had nothing to do with him.  If they can keep that about her recanonization, then whatever else they do/don’t do with her, I can live with!

[jedi-order-apologist]

I'm curious what your thoughts are on Jedi recruitment. That seems like the one area where I feel like the prequel Jedi kind of miss the mark. We don't see really any adult students, Mace voices the opinion that Anakin is too old at 9, and George even talks about how if they had gotten Anakin younger it would have turned out differently. I feel like there's a weird implication there that mindfullness can only be instilled in children younger than 8 years old,

I suppose I see it more as adoption rather than recruitment. And while I can see why one could argue that the Jedi should be more open to adopt in older children (after all, Luke managed to learn), I think they had reason to believe that it was safer for someone to go untrained than for them to be trained on top of a shaky foundation. Early childhood is really critical for development, so unhealthy habits learned in that period are going to be very difficult to unlearn, and when that can affect how you engage with something as powerful as the Force, well, of course the Jedi are going to be cautious about teaching someone like that to use the Force.

I’d also point out that the Jedi didn’t just take a look at how old Anakin was and then reject him because of an arbitrary cut-off point - they tested him, and as part of that testing, prompted him to examine his feelings. Which he refused to do, and instead got defensive. That’s what the Council made their decision based off of - not “oh, he’s nine, that’s too old,” but rather “he’s too set in his habits and doesn’t respond well to our methods, he’s too old.” This is also the case with Luke in ESB - Yoda tests him first, and it’s after Luke repeatedly reacts with impatience that Yoda decides that Luke is too old to begin training. So the way I read “too old” is less about strictly age and more about how far you’re settled in a mindset that’s incompatible with Jedi training.

[narkinafive]

Oh boy, Jesse being one of the two people on trial during Fives "We're not droids, we're capable of thinking!" In terms of not listening to Krell really sucks now.

hey bro i dont want to think 

[rinasaurusrex]

I am low key very invested in your D&D character, please keep the updates coming.

i absolutely will since i spend 97% of my time dying to talk about my character but i can’t talk about a lot of my character with the rest of my party due to that whole “Nobody Knows I’m A Pirate (or a lesbian)” dynamic we’ve got going

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

To be fair - Ahsoka beat Maul, and Bo Katan was given rulership. Sabine defeated Gar Saxon, and then chose Bo Katan for rulership. It makes sense from a char stand point that she just thinks she'd never truly earned it, and seeing Din walk in with the saber she was watching it happen again, and terrified that her chance to do it "the right way" was gone. I do agree that Mandalorian politics are bonkers and I can't wait to see Din get dragged kicking and screaming into them.

I gave up on what made sense for Bo-Katan character-wise a long time ago tbh xD with the constant talks of “my sister did a better job than I ever could” undercut by Bo-Katan constantly rejecting some people as Mandalorians and trying so hard to unify them as warriors (aka: the precise opposite of everything Satine did), and her losing the planet three times now (one time to Maul, then she gets it back, then loses it to the Empire/Gar Saxon, then she gets it back then loses it to the Empire/Gideon) I honestly think she should quit. 

I also don’t think the Darksaber will ever truly unify squat. It’s a stolen artifact from a peacekeeping culture turned weapon of domination (yikes), nobody agrees on what the rules are, apparently (I mean, Vizsla didn’t even try to use it to get Mandalore to rally behind him - he had to do the whole crime-syndicate fake attacks thing!), it has never succeeded in bringing Mandalorian together for more than a few years in canon, and not all clans recognize its legitimacy, originally. 

Poor long-suffering Din might actually be what Mandalore needs. A guy from their culture who puts a different spin on it, has a very, very strict moral/honor code and actually keeps his word, lowkey loves the Jedi Order, is just one tin can’s worth of done and would rather tie all Mandalorian leaders to a chair and yell “that’s it, we’re at peace now!” He really reminds me of Satine in some ways  lol, and she kept Mandalore unified for twenty years without an army and without the saber! I say we tie him to a chair and make him Mand’Alor xD

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

I would wager Ahsoka not stacking up is the fact that they wanted Filoni to direct her episode, and he's only got a handful of live action episodes under his belt. He's not going to film as good of an action scene as someone whose done two MCU movies. For the darksaber rules I wonder if Bo could accept it from Sabine because Sabine didn't take it from Maul in combat, or Bo accepted it from Sabine, and sees how that went, so she needs to win it now.

Ah, that’s a very valid point about Filoni. Hm, too bad. 

Well since Sabine didn’t really win in it combat (or she won it from Saxon, but he hadn’t won’t it in combat) by the new rules it shouldn’t be hers to give away. 

And Mandalore did stay united under Bo-Katan’s (second) reign - they all bowed to her even though they saw Sabine give it freely, and they lost Mandalore (again) because the Empire just exterminated them, not because of the saber in any way. But seriously, Bo-Katan should know better (ah! not that she ever does) than to expect it to work out this time. She lost Mandalore three times and is on her fourth attempt at conquering it. Vizsla had the saber but didn’t ever try to use it to legitimize his claim, he won, and then he lost. Gar Saxon didn’t have the saber, and he kept the planet for years, and then he lost. Bo-Katan didn’t have the saber the first time, she won, and then Empire kicked her out. She did have it the second time, though not by combat, she won, and the Empire crushed her.

The only common denominator to these Mandalorian leaders is failure, and it’s not even linked to the saber itself. There is literally no chance of that stupid thing ever managing to unite and keep together Mandalore for longer than a decade. It’s so cursed it spent 15 years in a Dathomirian witch lair on a shrine to the last person to die upon its blade, with the dead person’s true love’s name written with blood on the walls. 

And no mention was ever made of needing to fight to get the saber. It was always more of a “you want it? come take it” kind of thing. Maul didn’t get the throne because he’d won the saber, he won the saber because he’d won the throne by killing Vizsla in a duel. 

It’s also kinda pointless drama anyway - Bo and Din could just spar if that’s really the big issue. Also, there were no witnesses, and Bo-Katan is certainly not above spinning the truth to serve her own interests *cough* Maul murdered my sister *cough* Even by the retconned rules there shouldn’t be any drama.

I’m endlessly entertained by the insanity of Mandalorian politics. 

[jedi-order-apologist]

In regards to why people were mad that Krell was an exception, who had fallen. I think the same fans who buy the "jedi must not have emotions," and express anti-Jedi sentiments, see Anakin's compassion as something that makes him not like other Jedi, and his compassion for his troops as an extension of that. "If Anakin cares too much, a normal Jedi must not care at all." It's a short step to wanting Krell to be the norm, and justify not liking Jedi.

Anakin’s compassion was never the problem, it was his willingness to burn down the galaxy to spare himself the pain of loss (i.e., attachment). But I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with the message that that’s a bad thing, especially if they’re unable to separate that attitude from the concept of caring about someone (because if you really cared about someone, you should be willing to do anything to keep them with you...never mind how unhealthy an attitude that is). But Anakin’s desperation not to lose anyone doesn’t come from a place of caring, not even caring too much, because it’s not about the other person, it’s about him and his pain from losing them. Of course he still does care! And that is tangled up in it as well - but that’s not the part that the Jedi have an issue with.

But for those who can’t separate those two concepts, saying “this attitude is dangerous” is the same as saying “love is dangerous”, and so they assume the Jedi don’t care about anyone despite being shown that they do. So when they finally get shown a Jedi that doesn’t care, they take it as validation and get annoyed when it’s shown to us that that lack of compassion is fundamentally at odds with Jedi beliefs and a result of falling away from them.

Basically, the conflation of love and attachment (which are two separate things) causes a lot of confusion in fans, I think.