Call me T. He/him. Queer. 20s. Find me on AO3 at Shadowmatic. My queue tag is Spoons queue because I tag things for the queue when I have the spoons for it.
Here's an underexplored and juicy plot point in the prequels that I can't stop thinking about! Because Sifo-Dyas was killed so early in the new canon timeline of the creation of the clones, with Dooku impersonating him to handle the subsequent details, we don’t even know exactly what he intended the clone army to be.
I think there’s even an argument to be made that Sifo-Dyas intended the clones to be culturally Jedi. Raised and trained in the Jedi Temple(s), learning Jedi skills and ways of life, growing up in a shared community alongside the Jedi. The clones serving not as an emergency button to hit in case of war, but as a support to the overstretched, under resourced Jedi Order in an increasingly violent, chaotic galaxy, one that might prevent the war he foresaw from ever even happening.
To begin, I’ll briefly touch on the galactic situation immediately before The Phantom Menace. Time and time again, we’re given a picture of the Jedi Order that is being stretched to its limit. All across the galaxy, Jedi temples such as the ones we see operating in the High Republic era in the Acolyte, are being shut down because the Jedi just can’t staff them. The novel The Living Force, set immediately before TPM, deals with the repercussions of these shut downs for the people living in those sectors - destabilization, a vacuum where the power hungry and corrupt can come into the space left and make life awful for the people. Problems arise, these systems go to the Republic for help, the Republic can't help due to bureaucratic red tape and lack of Jedi resources, and this creates more bad feelings about the Jedi and a great environment to grow the Separatist cause.
"I always heard so much about the Jedi. I never saw one, but they told me that was because you saved people -- and then you left!" - The Living Force
Enter Sifo-Dyas. As a member of the Jedi Council in this era, he would have overseen dozens of these painful but unavoidable closures. More, he was trained by Lene Kostana, a High Republic era Jedi, who remembered the golden age of the Jedi, all of these Jedi outposts, temples, and cultural centers being open and thriving, and surely filled her Padawan’s head with these stories. When Sifo-Dyas foresaw a coming cataclysmic war that would destroy the Jedi Order, it's not hard to see where he might have made a connection between the pervasive problem that was a lack of Jedi resources, and the galaxy falling further into darkness. In fact, it's exactly what happens in the prequels with a little push from the Sith.
The Living Force novel tells us outright that Sifo-Dyas’s original plan before deciding on the clones was to use his role as a Jedi Seeker to fill the Jedi Order with as many new Jedi as possible to counter the coming threats:
“(Sifo-Dyas) was always in a big damn hurry. Like the Republic would end if he didn’t swell the ranks.” - The Living Force
Wow, Even Piell, that line aged like milk, buddy!
Ki-Adi Mundi frowned. “Indeed, sometimes those he brought to us were not even viable candidates.” - The Living Force
So, Sifo-Dyas was originally trying to bring as many kids into the Order as possible, and didn’t particularly care if they were very Force sensitive. An intriguing detail, when considering how closely he might have imagined the non-Force-sensitive clones to work in Jedi roles.
Interestingly, he didn’t actually abandon that “swell the ranks” plan - he got his ass fired, so he couldn’t bring any more Jedi in the conventional way. Sifo-Dyas is in a desperate situation here, he feels he's running out of time, and he needs to get as many people into the Jedi Order as quickly as possible. I think you might see where I'm going with this.
“The future should remain unseen, but unfortunately, Sifo-Dyas has little choice in the matter.” -Lene Kostana, Dooku Jedi Lost
We know he arranged the initial order for the clones, but not how he intended to use them, or saw their role, or even if he would have agreed with Jango as the DNA donor, since that part came in from Dooku. If Sifo-Dyas, lifelong Jedi and true believer in the Order, was creating something to help defend his people in their darkest hour, it stands to reason that he might look within his own culture for their training, instead of outside of it.
Did he see them as a secret weapon, a surprise help in the hour of greatest need, as they would ultimately function as on Geonosis? Or did he envision the clones being raised with Jedi involvement on every level of their development, growing into keepers of the peace to fill those hundreds of empty temples and outposts and restabilize a galaxy sliding toward darkness?
I think an important clue that supports the latter argument is that as Sifo-Dyas is literally falling out of the sky to his death, he is busy trying to get a message to the Council that he ordered the clones via a recording:
I've seen a vision of the future that I feel warrants an army. You've disagreed with me, but I felt I had no choice. Therefore I have ordered one: a clone army from the Kaminoans. Something must be done, and I made that decision. - Sifo-Dyas, Force Collector
He's hardly trying to keep the (currently embryonic!) clones a secret here. He seems to think he's done his part and the Council has no choice but to take it from there, and follow through with his unmentioned plan. He has delivered the needed personnel. And bear in mind, Sifo-Dyas did not expect his death to be a 10 year old mystery. He seems to have spent his very last breaths protecting Sillman and therefore leaving a witness to everything that happened. His last words are literally “Come find me!”
These are not the actions of a man who has set his plan into perfect motion and a magic army will appear just at the right time in ten years. This is a man who is facing his unexpected death and realizing that he needs to tell the Council, who disagreed with him but he clearly still trusts, what he did because he won't be there to handle the details himself. It's almost poignant.
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I worried about making this post at all because I’m not actually interested in blorbo apologism. Sifo-Dyas’s story is much more interesting if he is a good man forced to go to desperate, awful lengths to keep the apocalypse from happening. Whatever he intended the clones to be, it ended in Order 66; in a way, it doesn't even matter. And yet, I think there’s something compelling there too, and I think canon gives us just enough - at least make an argument for a culturally-Jedi clone army what-if.
I need to add to this post that if Sifo-Dyas somehow survived the crash and the Jedi found out about the clones prior to TPM, I still don't see him having a huge role in the prequel story.
Because the Council, after they finished going YOU DID FUCKING WHAT would have assigned him to Creche duty for the rest of his living days. Consecutive life sentences. No chance of parole.
Master Sifo-Dyas? No, never heard of him. Oh, the you mean the Lost One? Buried under a literal pile of babies. So many diapers to change.
psa to everyone. while many demonyms are also adjectives (american people + americans, german people + germans etc), when not referring to the region caribbean is an adjective and NOT a demonym. its caribbean people but its NOT caribbeans. it sounds and feels weird when you call us caribbeans so dont do that.
AITA for not telling my new party why I broke things off with my cursed greatsword?
I know how it sounds, but like, bear with me.
I (28/F/former paladin), had been travelling with a cursed greatsword (Immeasurable/F/Sword) and was really into her for a long time. When we first met she told me she was the disembodied spirit of an ancient warlord and beamed images of a beautiful raven haired warrior in gorgeous blackened Gothic armor into my mind, she told me it was her true form and I was super into it so I forsook my paladin oath and we started hooking up
Early on in our relationship she was really supportive when I started to transition, telling me she was "nearing her apotheosis" as well. I didn't think much of it at the time, and dutifully listened to her when she told me to travel the kingdom and assemble the ritual objects for her ascension. There was a team of adventurers that tried to stop us and she told me to kill them but one of them was my former best friend Sir Roderick The Bold (25/M/Paladin) so I refused and only incapacitated them. She didn't like that and we had a huge fight about it after we'd left
Long story short after I'd done the ritual and assembled the artifacts she revealed her true form was a ruse and she was actually just a mass of tentacles and eyes (which I don't mean to yuck anybody's yum mentioning, it's just that tentacles don't really appeal to me lol)
She said she was going to consume the world, "starting with you" and that I had "outlived my usefulness". I felt really shocked and betrayed and helped the adventuring party that was following us around to defeat her and seal her back in the sword (which I left there), but I feel really bad about it
I sorta got adopted by them since then and they keep telling me things like "Good job resisting the influence of the cursed sword!" And "How did you break free of her mind control?" Or "I am happy to see you've chosen the path of righteousness." And I haven't told them I wasn't ever under a spell or anything, I was just really mad at her at the time and lashed out. AITA?
I consider myself a real hater but sometimes you really do go too far with haterism. once I had to break mutuals with someone bc they hated the entire art form of poetry and the final straw was when they started hateposting about soup. The food
trans men absolutely are in sex work, the majority just present as women for work because it's much harder to make money if you don't. You don't see them because they're forced to detransition for work or you haven't even tried to look for the ones who are presenting masc. They're all over the sex work forums if you know what to look for and how they talk about it.
there is no "trans men aren't pushed into sex work" privilege. It is not a privilege to be forced into it AND have to detransition for it. This isn't a competition
All discourse around transmasc issues seems to boil down to:
issue faced by transmasc people gets systemically erased and ignored
rest of the community assumes this means transmasc people don't face this issue
transmasc people who claim they do get accused of lying, making the issue "about transmascs" or just plain ignored, making actual discussion of the issue impossible.
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i think being proud of where you come from is one of those things that becomes fun the more specific you get. like "proud to be english" bad rancid vibes. makes you sound like the kind of person who rants about immigrants. "proud to be from yorkshire" better vibes. i cannot deny the yorkshire cultural heritage. "proud to be from pocklington" absolutely fucking hilarious please never let anybody kill your pocklington pride.
I love how it's literally canon Cass would randomly break into Steph's house and Tim's apartment and also the manor before she was adopted and had zero remorse each time. Waking Steph up in the middle of the night while sitting on her bed. Eating Tim's rice krispies and using all his hot water then leaving without even saying hi. Lounging in Bruce's chair and snooping around the manor while he's being investigated for murder. Showing up in a dressing gown at the door to the manor when a social worker tries to investigate Jason Todd's death, offering zero explanation of who she is because technically she had yet to exist at that point. Breaking into the batcave when she needed information and kicking Dick in the face when he tried to stop her. Breaking into the CIA to remove all evidence she exists, cementing her status as an urban legend. The chances of Cassandra Wayne appearing randomly in your house are low
saying this as a lesbian who loves women's boobs--sexually, even! but i don't think that we as a society should consider breasts inherently female or inherently sexual. a flat chest should not be seen as the "default" for gender neutrality but instead just one way a person can present. boobs should be normal. anyone of any gender can have boobs
Imagine if we did the “public libraries are punk” thing for other subcultures. Imagine if people made shirts that said “Soup kitchens are grunge” or “Mixed Use Urbanism is Juggalo”.
Last year, I befriended a Catholic seminarian. We've gotten to be pretty decent friends. Seeing as he was staying in town for the summer and I wasn't, I entrusted him with caring for my plant.
He did a wonderful job, but as he was returning my plant to my custody, he explained "I watered her every other day, I gave her new dirt, moved her into the sunshine, prayed the rosary-"
"What?"
He looked at me, confused. "Isn't she a plant you pray with?"
"No," I said slowly. "She's a prayer plant. That's the... colloquial name of the plant."
Upon seeing his stricken face, I realized something went wrong. Turns out, this entire time, he's been including my plant in on his prayers and leaving her near icons.
Listen, totally cool. My plant becoming Catholic is a great deal for her not dying over the summer. But now I must navigate this interfaith household. Keep me in your thoughts.
hey as a local aroace, i want to specify something.
we're no strangers to love. you know the rules and so do i (do i). a full commitments what im thinking of. you wouldnt get this from any other guy. i just wanna tell you how im feeling. gotta make you understand. never gonna give you up. never gonna let you down. never gonna run around and desert you. never gonna make you cry. never gonna say goodbye. never gonna tell a lie and hurt you
if i see another person basically go "but what if this character who is explicitly neutral nonbinary is actually just a binary trans egg because nonbinary people arent REALLY as trans as binary trans people im so woke actually" i will start killing people
They call it that Good Ol' Mountain Dew @tesdradgon - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
