I know that the way of commissioning fanart lieth madness. I still want to commission an Ar’alani/Thrawn/Eli spoon trio.
With Thrawn in the middle of it because Thrawn is always in the middle of everything.
Also still kicking around that AU where Commander Mitth’raw’nuruodo decides that Anakin and Padme absolutely cannot be left on their own and brings them to the Ascendancy.
Okay so I’m rewatching the complete star wars saga with my cousin who’s never seen sw ever really at all and it is the greatest damn thing ever. We agreed that Qui Gon Jinn is the sassiest mf in the history of all the Force ever and that, with new viewing glasses (read: shipping goggles) he and Shmi could totally be a Thing
sure, fine, jyn erso and cassian andor are both notable figures who are now gone.
cassian andor was a soldier, and an important intelligence operative. news of his death does spread among the rebels, as much as any news about one of their own ranks can. only a few know what his death means. news of his disappearance spreads further - or rather, news of the disappearances of his aliases, his covers, spreads unevenly. people did not see him regularly, after all. some people mourn him, but his disappearance did not come as a surprise to most.
jyn had no family or crew left. they all died with her. alliance leaders knew that they were putting her in danger when they pulled her back in. they are sad, but not regretful. besides, they didn’t make her do it. they said they couldn’t sanction her actions, in fact.
bodhi rook was on his own from the moment he defected. he carried galen’s regard, hope and desperation with him. but galen is dead, his wishes carried out (bodhi hoped it would be enough for both of them). those he left behind either believe him to be a traitor or -- well, they can’t risk talking about the possibility that maybe he was something more than that. maybe someone hesitates, maybe someone else switches sides. most of them never know what happened to him. maybe none of them ever find out. by the time anyone joins the rebellion, the defector pilot few outside his own crew knew could be trusted is long-forgotten, and there are other battles that must be fought.
chirrut and baze were the last of the temple protectors; left behind, waiting for something to happen after the temple had been destroyed. they loved each other fiercely. they loved their friends -- both those they fought alongside until the end, and those who were long, long absent. baze felt like he had lived past his time -- like he had already lost something extremely important, some crucial part of the world, and he didn’t know how to get it back. and chirrut was all he had, maybe all he’d ever had. and he loved him, and he outlasted him. not by long. chirrut -- well, chirrut believed that it wasn’t lost. that the world wasn’t lost, that nothing could be lost, in the end. that it all comes back to you. and chirrut died with baze, for his friends, for all of their friends, and for the belief that nothing is lost, and that his death was -- not a tragedy, or at least, no longer unthinkable. they both died too young, and shaped by so much loss, too much loss, too much lost quickly.
none of them left anything behind. they left nobody behind. they didn’t die alone.
there is no memorial for rogue one. where would they put it? maybe nobody remembers the name rogue one -- the planet they had descended to with that name was destroyed. they died there. those who had fought for and with them and who had carried their crucial message back to the alliance -- they remembered the soldiers who saved them, who saved them all. and they drank to their memory and then they went out there again and fought. they knew precious few names -- and it’s a shame, and some of them are sad about it. there was not time. how did everything happen so fast?
they were not princesses, or farmboys on a quest, or rogues. they were not destined heroes, and nobody writes their story down. hardly anyone in the alliance above those of very top rank can write fluently enough for that. a few records, a few notes. their names said quickly at one ceremony that’s really about something else. nobody was left behind to honour; and there is so much work that is left to do. there is no justice here; somewhere someone wishes they could hold cassian one last time, somewhere someone jyn used to share drinks with every few months feels wistful and guesses maybe she’ll never come back. bodhi never returns to the secret place he stored his few keepsakes, the memories he wanted to keep, and nobody else know where to recover them. but the rebels are not in charge, and their news cannot be broadcast. they are just gone, and in some ways there is nothing left of them. barely a sign they were here at all.
nobody remembers rogue one. but darth vader descends on a few brave rebels who are desperately trying to keep the information they died for safe. they are nothing to darth vader; they are just nameless weight for him to crush. but they are not crushed. not in their totality. they do not let those that came before them down. they do not let rogue one down. they run.
and eventually, the information passes into new hands. they pass it on and they transmit it and they keep it safe and eventually it makes its way to her. to somebody who does not know the story of how it reached her; it is not that she does not care for those who have come before her, but how could she know, how could she take that time? it had been passed forward and forward and on and on, with the hope that it would mean something. and to find out who all of these people were? there is no time, there is never time. there is a ship that can burn planets from the sky, and this is the only piece of information that says it can be defeated -- and here’s how. the only piece of information about how to defeat it in the whole universe. and it has made it, improbably, across so much space.
and the information has finally made it to leia. what did they give her? what did rogue one -- not leave behind, but hand to her? hope. but more than hope. rebellions are built on hope, but this one is also built on faith. built on faith in everyone who came before -- that they did their best. that nobody broke the chain. that there was no sabotage. that they were all brave and true, and if they died, they died because they had to. and in this way their deaths were noble, and selfless; in this way their deaths were not about their own selves or their own ambitions. they were about this moment -- this moment of knowing that not all is lost. that not everything has to be left behind, and consigned to history. this moment of knowing that there might be hope and justice and life after all.
and this is how rogue one is radical, this is how i learned to love it, sobbing away at all of the death. this is why i keep thinking about, of all things, hamilton:
Legacy. What is a legacy?
It’s planting seeds in a garden you never get to see
I wrote some notes at the beginning of a song someone will sing for me
and it’s a song written for someone who we do remember, whose name -- not everyone, but a lot of people remember two hundred years after he died. but what about all the crucial moments -- all the important actions that have been taken in our history that we do not remember. what about all the people who were written out of history, or who were not actively written out but just had no time? they did not have the time to write and be remembered because they were too busy living, taking the desperate actions that saved them or those like them, or that let us live today even though we don’t know their names. what about the heroes of social movements and revolutions and... so many tiny points. so many things that happened in order to let other things happen. maybe nobody left them out, it’s just that nobody knew. nobody knew what started it all. and yet it started. and their actions were honoured, knowingly or unknowling, by those who saw them through.
don’t get me wrong. i want someone to have remembered them. to have sat in a crowded bunk on a cargo ship somewhere and to have lit a candle -- hell, what kind of power do they have? if not a candle, a shitty old wall-light that keeps flickering off -- and to have recited their names, or at least remembered their names, on the way to a mission, a battle, god knows where that they don’t know if they’ll survive, but maybe, maybe. i want people to know who made it possible to survive. but what if nobody did know their names, what if the leaders did not pass that on, what if they did not even have a proper list of who had gone on that suicide mission, those who had disobeyed orders -- no documents, just a few suspicions and fudged records for individual alliance soldiers?
there’s still leia, saying that word -- “hope”. there’s still that. hope in the future, which also means faith in those that came before. and there is worse than to be that person who has so much hope in the future -- so much that you are willing to risk everything because that is the only way you can build a better world. there’s a crew of people who know they won’t survive and what makes it worth it is knowing that they’re passing something on -- not their names, not their lives, but a chance. and after a certain point -- a certain point that’s arriving much too soon, but it’s arriving anyway -- they can’t do anything else. somebody else has to carry on the song, the story, even if they don’t know how it began.
it’s because they knew; the moral arc of the universe does not default to good. you have to make it happen. who else, if not us?
that idea that i said earlier -- that chirrut sees in the force. that it is not the end. this is a way in which the end is not the end. they die, but their deeds live on. and not as monuments; as starting points. as something grasped in one hand, and passed to another. as action. as life. as a breath into somebody’s mouth when they were drowning. this is how it comes back to you. you put something good into the universe -- and you have hope that it will lead to something else good, because this is where you are done. you live on through an action. through the way you changed the world.
and if they didn’t leave anything behind? it’s because they were not alone at the end.
i think everyone has forgotten that snooki called luke the last jedi in TFA and that miiight be why the movie is called the last jedi. also he is legit the last jedi. rey isn’t trained so.
