The Younglings deserved better

This is a somewhat obsessive Pro-Jedi blog dedicated to the Jedi Younglings named Petro, Katooni, Byph, Zatt, Ganodi and Gungi who appeared in Season 5 of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. They were awesome kids who deserved the best and I refuse to accept their deaths as canon. 

[younglingstan]

I’m back with another character portrait for my WIP Fanfic. This time we have Katooni, done by the incredible @jzeten.

This was a hectic project but I am greatly satisfied with the final product. 

In this portrait, Katooni is based on an unknown young woman who cosplayed as Katooni at SLCC16 here ( https://twitter.com/missingwords/status/771491834488958976 ). The world may never know who she is but she has made an even greater contribution to the Star Wars fandom through this artpiece. 

[younglingstan]

I’m back with another character portrait for my WIP Fanfic. This time we have Petro, once again, done by the incredible @jzeten

There were a number of issues with this project but I am satisfied by the Final Result. I hope everyone else is as well.

[gardenvarietyhuman]

💥🙌👏

[ineffablebookgirl]

Well shit, Henry Jenkins, out here in 1997 dropping truth bombs

[rhube]

Seen this quote before, but not so well-cited.

[ahsoka-in-a-hood]

Do you ever think about Coruscant.. Do you ever think about how it was once an earthlike planet, presumably with it’s own rich fauna and flora. How when the jedi first built their temple there it was a completely different landscape. They probably had farmland and gardens and animal friends. And how over the centuries the city grew and grew and pressed and pressed around them until they were stone walls and a city who’s poverty only grew deeper and into darker depths

[younglingstan]

According to Legends, Coruscant's first layer of planet-wide cityscape started in 90,000 BBY which is 53,547 years before the Jed'aii order was founded. I'm not sure there are any records of what Coruscant actually looked like before the city.

[distantconstellations]

If Ahsoka had remained a Jedi and was a victim of the genocide/temple massacre, people would see it more as the horrific tragedy and action it was and understand how far gone Anakin Skywalker really was.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

You know what? I’m tired of phrasing it any more nicely than this: 

If you think the premeditated and near-complete destruction of an entire groupe of people and the hunting down of any survivors and sympathizers (including children and the elderly) by stormtroopers was meant to be a commentary on the people who got exterminated rather than the guys commanding the stormtroopers, you are, in fact, not thinking. 

[beginnerblueglass]

This shouldn’t be necessary but I feel like some of y’all need a reminder

Anakin Skywalker committed murder, mass murder, and genocide. He was not forced into it, he chose to. Manipulation does not equal forced participation.

He can be a character you like, I like him too, I think he’s interesting. Let’s explore the reasons and explanations for his crimes but let’s not get too carried away with defending him.

[phantom-of-the-keurig]

Little fun fact about fortress inquisitorius from either one of the collectible lore pieces in Jedi Fallen Order or the concept art book, I can’t remember which

Anyway, there’s a reason the windows are made to break. You see, the entire Fortress was designed with the purpose to keep prisoners within at all costs, especially in case of a full on riot / prison break.If that means flooding an entire section of the base and drowning everyone (prisoners or troopers) in there or sinking the whole base itself under, so be it.

So yes, Obi-Wan just escaped the same way Cal Kestis did. But no, they didn’t upgrade the windows. Because that’s the whole point of them. You have to remember, most force sensitive that are brought into the Fortress at this point are untrained or have very, very minimal training. They aren’t like Cal Kestis, or Obi-Wan, they wouldn’t be able to control the water like that to get to safety.

The windows are breakable so that when desperate force sensitives try to escape, they either accidentally break one of them and drown in the ensuing flood of water or the Empire decides to cut their losses and purposely floods an entire section. And this comes straight from canon source material.

[jedi-order-apologist]

The idea of grey jedi implies that the Force works in a spectrum and I don't see how would that even work in canon, as if add a bit of light + a bit of dark then you good to go.

I think there’s two different flavors of “grey jedi” that people mean when they use the term. One is the “Jedi that doesn’t follow the [old] rules or left the Order but didn’t fall to the dark side” idea - usually applied to Qui-Gon in the first case, also Luke to an extent, and Ahsoka in the second. I don’t think this use of the term is claiming these characters are in some hypothetical grey area in between light and dark - I think they’re just using the term as convenient shorthand for “Jedi/Force users I personally approve of”. Either that or they interpret the Jedi through a fixed mindset, viewing characters through as inherently being lightside, being darkside, and if they don’t fit whatever they think those static concepts are, those characters must be grey - rather than through a growth mindset, where the light is about active resistance of the dark, continually striving to be a better person, and the dark is about giving in to temptation and defeatism.

I think the films reflect the growth mindset - they don’t talk about characters being dark, they talk about them being seduced by it, consumed by it - it’s not an inherent quality of an individual’s character, but a universal philosophical concept existing within everyone, within nature - to be confronted and resisted.

The second kind of “grey jedi” thing is the “both light and dark” interpretation, and as far as I can tell, is based off of the KOTOR games (you can find “grey jedi” robes and such), where light side/dark side is an alignment spectrum. Here’s a picture from a quick image search to show you what that looks like, in case you’re unfamiliar:

Force powers are also selected individually, some of which are light or dark aligned, but a player can use either with a reduced/increased penalty to their Force Points (basically a stamina bar for Force powers) depending on how aligned you are with the alignment of that power. So you could be playing entirely light side and zapping enemies with Force lightning if you really wanted to, since the game only awards alignment points according to dialogue choices, leading to gameplay that lets you rob and massacre people without consequence if you know your way around it. Hence, a precedent for edgy “grey jedi” who can do whatever they want without being accountable to anyone or anything.

As much as I love KOTOR and KOTOR II and think they’re very fun and worthwhile games, how the Force works there is based on having functional game mechanics, not based on how the Force worked in the films. Star Wars doesn’t run on an alignment system. As I said above, darkness (and light, though I will point out that “the light side” is not actually something that was talked about in the first six films - the Jedi only spoke about seeking balance, and Luke called it “the good side”) is not an inherent quality to someone’s character, but a philosophical concept. People are not light or dark or grey - the dark exists, it will always exist because selfishness and greed and cruelty and suffering will always exist, and people either resist it or they give into it.

[bpdanakins]

As someone who used to subscribe to the whole Grey Jedi thing, influenced heavily by the KOTOR games, I gotta say that, when you examine the two “grey” characters in the game (Jolee and Kreia), they’re not actually grey?

Jolee is very clearly still light side, even if his alignment bar says otherwise. He defends the Jedi/takes their side in things, likes it when the player takes good actions, follows Revan out of exile to help stop Malak, and stands up against a dark side Revan. He literally cautions against the dark side and the Sith. Depending on player choices, he dies trying to save the galaxy, trying to help people. Narratively speaking, he’s light side.

Then we have Kreia. She’s definitely a archetypal morally grey character; her ideas of what is good and bad is all over the place and can be quite harsh at times, etc. She says she doesn’t like the Jedi or the Sith, but she still takes up the mantle of Darth Traya at the end. Her entire goal through KOTOR II was to manipulate the Exile so she could kill off the Jedi council and kill the Force itself. The Force makes up all living things, and iirc, she acknowledges that many, many would die from it (I’d argue it’d kill everything, bc it’s the Force). She’s willing to decide the fate of the entire galaxy simply bc she doesn’t like one philosophical interpretation of the Force.

She’s dark side. Her plans are completely selfish, and though she claims to care for the Exile, her actions shows us she never truly cared about what the Exile wanted or felt, at the end of the day. 

The mechanics of the game tell us they’re grey. The alignment bar and background are grey. But the story still clearly adheres to Jolee ultimately choosing to stand against DS!Revan (even though Revan can convince a few others to join them, even though he knows Revan will probably kill him), cautioning against the dark side, and bringing himself out of exile because he wanted to help, etc. And Kreia’s entire story is one of selfishness and greed, which are the staples to the dark side. 

The whole alignment bar thing makes sense to an RPG, in wanting to give the players the choice of playstyle, but it doesn’t work in the lore or even within KOTOR’s own story when it comes down to it. 

[matrixdragon]

Kreia was apparently supposed to be some sort of condemnation of the Light-Dark divide and the ‘moral superiority’ of the Jedi. What she ended up being was a selfish, spiteful idiot that wanted to kill a lot of the galaxy because it refused to do what she wanted. Generic sith, all the way through.

[thatfunkyopossum]

not to be that person but

Rex and Ahsoka could have easily taken the entire venator star destroyer they were on at the issuing of order 66 if the both of them kept their brains in V&D. Hell, if REX SPECIFICALLY kept his brain in V&D.

Could have saved 7400 people. Could have started the rebellion less than 2 days after the birth of the empire with a fuckin star destroyer and like 400 smaller ships. 

[thatfunkyopossum]

I’m not talking out of my ass here either. Ahsoka and Rex were both acting insanely weird in the last episode of TCW and I think its honest to god JUST so that tcw would stay canon compliant, and have order 66 take place on a cruiser. But the issue is that to make that happen, Ahsoka’s brain fell out of her fuckin ear and Rex gave up on saving his brothers immediately!!! what!!!!!

If Maul hadn’t been let out by Ahsoka, which he wouldn’t have been if Ahsoka hadn’t been dumb in this episode, and she’d had a droid make a distraction or have a droid lure Rex to the medical facility, dozens of clones would have survived.

Then, if Rex and Ahsoka had their brains still, after Rex was dechipped one of them would go “Hey, that surgery took literally LESS THAN 30 SECONDS (yes, less than 30 seconds, i TIMED IT)” then they’d look around at the unconscious troopers at their feet and say “Hey, these are living creatures that I love, and valuable allies, and potentially dangerous enemies. Since that brain surgery that freed Rex took so little time, we could dechip all of these clones in like five minutes. Sick!”

Then if Rex, with his battle strategist super soldier brain, had been like “Hey so Ahsoka, hide in an air duct, we need more time to dechip everyone on board this ship so I’m going to go to the bridge and get us out of hyperspace” and Ahsoka, with her smart tortuga brain, had said “I will go continue the proud Jedi tradition of hiding in air ducts” and then done that, Ahsoka would have been completely safe! ITS A MASSIVE SHIP, WHAT ARE THEY GONNA DO? SEARCH EVERY SINGLE AIR VENT? TURN THEM OFF? SMOKE HER OUT? THEY GOTTA BREATHE GUYS.

So Rex goes up to the Bridge and is like “hey boys, orders from Lord Shiteous, we’ve been told to drop tf out of hyperspace until Tano’s dead. No chance of escape that way.”

They drop out of hyperspace. Nice, more time to dechip everyone on board! Bonus, if Maul escaped on his own (Easily explainable: the relic he was in was probably old and didn’t work so great since satine let it stay around) he now has no reason to destroy the hyperdrive generators. He can just leave. Even if he doesn’t realize they’re not in hyperspace anymore and he destroys the generator, they’re still not in hyperspace and they still left hyperspace safely.

All that happens then is that Rex and everyone who’s dechipped has to carefully lure a friend to a medical facility and dechip them. Bam!!! Amazing!! Everyone’s free!

It wouldn’t be that hard!!!

[younglingstan]

I had an idea like this for a fanfic. The rebellious clones would be known as the "Lost Legion".

[robotsandramblings]

so it’s possible Gungi [the wookie] wasn’t the only survivor of that padawan group…

could that be Petro? 

it sure looks a lot like him!

[younglingstan]

Is that Petro?

[minniethemoocherda]

Gungi appearing twice in The Bad Batch Season 2 trailer! Does this mean we will finally learn what happened to the younglings?

[younglingstan]

We know Hondo named a ship after Katooni so she’s dead. Everyone hated Petro so he’s definitely dead and not a lot of people cared about the others. Honestly, I think Gungi is the sole survivor and that makes me really sad. 

[quietpersephone]

Gungi nation, rise up!

[younglingstan]

I’m really happy that Gungi is alive but I’m really gonna miss the others...

[younglingstan]

You know what I’d like to see?

A short series that focuses on Jedi who survived both Order 66 and the Jedi Purge. Each episode would focus on a specific survivor while also being self contained in the process. 

[hermitmoss]

Gungi, Byph, Zat, Petro, Ganodi and Katooni working towards constructing their lightsabers on the Jedi vessel Crucible.

[younglingstan]

I miss them so much

[younglingstan]

I am so fucking furious over Caleb’s whitewashing in the Bad Batch.

Every time I talk about this on Reddit, I get downvoted to oblivion and people tell me that my vision is off or I don’t understand how skin color works in certain environments.

You simply cannot convince me that these two boys are the same character.

Their designs are radically different from one another.

And why was Caleb/Kanan’s backstory changed? What was wrong with it?