#synox

[jellyfishsempai]

This took forever and I don’t know WHY i did it in a square aspect ratio but eyyy the evil kids again!!!!

[vaguely-concerned]

I have genuine Deep Thoughts about this for all the characters in the Evil Campaign and I have been struggling to put it into words for so long, but like... selfishness/striving for self genuinely does seem like. the main redemptive force in that particular story. Which is so fucking interesting, considering the way it plays around with/subverts how Star Wars cosmology is most often posited in canon. I keep saying 'the Evil Campaign is a story about a group of very bad people whose sole saving grace and hope for salvation is that they love each other', and I think this is part of what I mean. The selfishness of love, and personal love; of deliberately choosing oneself and each other. The most immediate example is Aava's struggle for selfhood and freedom and individuation and separateness from the structure that has enslaved her — so SHE can get to choose what she'll be a part of, so her love along with all of her feelings and being can be unfettered. (Through victory my chains are broken, and so on, I guess!) 

But it’s also there in Blue and Zero and their dance around each other that has its own gravitational power on them both, ‘I want you and you want me but neither of us trusts it yet so we’ll just keep circling around each other and hoping’ vibes. But once they figure that mess out between them and connect with each other truly and honestly, I genuinely think they’d go the full ‘I would choose you. In every lifetime and over everything and everyone else in the world, every time, I’d choose you; as far as I’m concerned you ARE the world’ IMMEDIATELY, in a vaguely unsettling and stark but also weirdly moving and human kind of way. Again, the selfishness of love. Weird codependent love with a likely triple digit body count attached, to be sure, but very real and mutual love haha. Specific love and connection, built on ‘you are specifically you and I am specifically me and together there’s a specific we’, not a universal undifferentiated love. 

I feel like the arc was left abandoned about half-way through because of the point where the podcast ended, but that really does seem to me to be where we were headed, that’s the aching yearning thing that lies beneath their whole dynamic, for all the bullshit and fuckery (most of it Blue’s lol, a little bit of it Zero’s) resting on top. Maybe there would have been a lot more twists and turns along the way, but as the story stands I choose to take the near-miracle final dice roll in the last ep as an indication that Blue's need to be loved does win out over his ambitions and ego, when push really comes to shove. Not gracefully so right away, necessarily, but hey when has he ever been graceful about anything lol. I think he would choose his friends at the end of the day, not because he’s secretly good (lmao imagine!) but because that’s the kind of selfish he is deep down.  

You know the person who keeps choosing selflessness — who consistently subsumes his will and his self and his power, who surrenders his selfhood entirely into a larger cause? Who keeps deprioritizing his own personal feelings and connections to serve his role in something ‘greater’? You better believe it’s Synox baby!!! Which is why I’m not so sure there is a way out for him, or that he’d ever take it — or even recognize it if it was offered to him. (fucking ouch) 

And it makes me so fucking sad b/c in a way he’s doing exactly what he was ‘meant to’ as a clone, from his designers’ point of view, and what the jedi needed and profited from when it came to the clones during the war, however the moral implications of that might have sat with them. He’s still ‘following his programming’, he’s doing it all ‘right’, he serves and is ready to die for a higher ideal (an ideal that sucks absolute ass, to be clear lol, but is a dark continuation of what he was ‘born’ to serve, the Republic sliding quietly into the Empire). It’s why he’s such an interesting mirror to Bacta, whose individuation was born out of love and connection and, yes, loss. (Loss at Synox’ hands, even.) Synox clearly does care for the people under his command at least, but in his view of the world he’s not allowed to make that ‘important’ — soldiers serve and die, just like under the Clone Wars, but it’s all for the Empire and so it is justified. (Everything must be justified, if it’s for the Empire.) I don’t know if Synox can let people in close enough that he can experience a true personal loss when and if they die, because depersonalizing yourself that far means extending that to others too, even on your own side. And also I think that if Synox allows himself to think like that now, he would have to look back at what he’s done properly and I don’t feel like he would psychologically survive it. So. ‘Good soldiers follow orders’. And Synox did, he does, and he will, every time. And I feel like it’s going to doom him.  

(Considering Kat’s stated feelings within the podcast on the Sith/Jedi theology divide, I cannot imagine this emergent theme is entirely accidental hahaha. One of the most interesting and subversive examinations of the selflessness/selfishness dichotomy of light and dark in Star Wars in any medium, hands down. I don’t know that it’s The definitive answer in canon or anything (and frankly I think the franchise sprawls too much for such a thing to even exist), but it’s a novel and fascinating lens to read it through and I fucking love the story it produces. It really brings home how much Campaign Star Wars is transformative work, and the power in transformative work to examine and deconstruct the narrative framework of canon. Also sort that under 'Campaign Star Wars is a deeply queer work right down to the structural level', I suppose!) 

 + Headcanons for how defecting from the Empire would work (or not) for all of them under the cut to save people’s dashes at least a little!

Blue has the moral backbone of a chocolate eclair and conspired with rebels to fuck over a rival minister after like. a month, tops, in the job. He has NO principles or larger loyalties beyond ruthless self-interest, craving for recognition and needing his friends to love him, and he could just as easily do all of that with the rebels if that was made more convenient to him by circumstance. Give him a couple of hours to spin it until he's convinced himself 'no no I always meant for it to happen like this actually I’ve been playing 5D space chess all along don’t worry about it', and I think he'd be good to go as long as he had Zero with him lmao. Just remove him from his main means of exerting power (i.e. all that money, his position) and he's basically ineffectual and pathetic (affectionate). I don’t think he’d ever become a fundamentally better person no matter what happens, exactly, (maybe not even a particularly worse one, either) but he could be rendered a more harmless one pretty easily, is sort of what I’m getting at. You could harness his admittedly impressive drive and general nonsense into good-ish-ness (or at least less-badness) without that much of a narrative push. He has his own grand plans, and he probably would have worked just as easily in the Republic as he did in the Empire. Neutral awful posterboy.  

Zero's a simp (laudatory, honorific). He's here for the sake of love I mean a fat paycheck of course, he goes where Blue goes. and that's so valid of him. No tears spilled on his part methinks. He doesn't fuck with the Empire at all, really, he's just doing some compartmentalizing about it so he won't have to think about it. He’d jump at the chance to get out of there and bring his emotional support little bitch boy with him. 

Aava doesn't even want to be here!!! *teary voice* she should be at the club. She should be femme fataling it up in freedom and do her witch shit in peace. Out of the cast she’s also the person who’s not here of her free will at all and doesn’t profit from her position in basically any way. It’s all but stated that freeing herself is her deepest motivation. I suggest that they should all team up and kill Aava’s shitty abusive Sith mom together (Louphan you are not valid) and then run off together.

Meanwhile, in leaving the Empire Synox would have his whole sense of self obliterated in a way I'm not sure he could even survive, if it somehow happened. I love him. he's the worst of clones. he’s the best of clones. he's the funniest bitch in the whole show to me. Nightmare straight man of my heart. I still believe in my soul that he's a Spiffie and it brings me unspeakable joy to consider. But for all my love I really don’t think he’s ever making it out, he’s trapped by his own nature and history at this point. If he did make it out, it would be because the others fought to bring him with them (at least Aava and Blue seem quite fond of him (Zero less so haha), so it isn’t entirely impossible!).

This meta started life as a tag ramble under  drefvalentine's hilarious post over here! I’ve really been trying to capture this in non-fiction words for like a year now and today something finally just clicked into place for me, hopefully there is some kind of sense in this. Finally I can let go of it in my brain, at least, what a relief haha 

[scissor-spider]

I love the crew of the bluebird so much because yes, it is a dysfunctional found family, but mostly in the way that they have to hang out with blue because he’s their boss, blue and zero are obliviously in love, aava is extremely lonely and likes making fun of the others and everyone loves synox, who does NOT want to be here or be friends with any of these people.

[piratespencilart]

Finally drew some art for my Evil Parenting AU!!

(Aka the au where Aava and the rest of the Bluebird crew end up raising a Force-sensitive Rodian child... I’m emo about my own au tonight ok.)

[piratespencil]

Domesticity in Three Acts - Act I: Space Fries

Fandom: Campaign Star Wars

Rating: Teen & Up

Relationships: Bluebird Crew & Child OC, Tamlin & Child OC, Bacta & Synox, Bacta & Tamlin, Synox & Neemo

The first time that Greem and Tamlin meet, they’re both taking ballet lessons on a backwater planet called Vernin. Greem is four, almost five, and the six-year-old Zabrak that she meets is going by the name Juhani at the time. Later, she will learn his real name. For now, Juhani is as real as anything in her life.

Greem and Tamlin meet. The Bluebird and the Mynock crews collide.

Read it on AO3

(It’s been almost a year since I last posted anything for my Bluebird-crew-raises-a-child AU, but it’s back! The Mynock crew finally makes an appearance. <3)

[gdcee]

#13 is such a jaster palleter hehehe or #1 with anyone u want

fool do u not know i need only the barest excuse to spam everyone with jaster content

[drefvalentine]

this is first and foremost a Synox hate account, no empire simps permitted

artist credits in order: kristenvalerieillustration, corinnamariedrawsstuff, maggiedreadful, vonspe, kristenvalerieillustration (again), lesser-of-two-weeaboos, atmo-draws, soncjbird, and dar-as-rad

[tarrevizsla]

oh i forgot abt it earlier but jastor is definitely opposites attract initially. jaster face palming when he realized he's attracted to the greasy aristocrat with the strong jaw and strong convictions ooooooo

😳

incredible

jaster realizing he's into a dude who's practically nobility and tor realizing he's into some concord dawn hick... poetic cinema