(this scene is why I watch this movie on Valentine's Day every year)

Spangle-cheeked Tanager

This has been happening all month with little to no international media attention. Here are a few organizations you can check out for resources or to support:

ActionAid India

SEEDS India

GlobalGiving <- No longer taking donations

And then I read a very thoughtful meta about how the Jedi are a small and marginalized religious group that are both lauded and exploited by the very Senate that they serve. And like. It's not wrong. The Prequels are very much about that!! But god it just reads so at odds to me because that's not the situation I'm familiar with and know.

It's just that the Clone Wars as a concept are just so small in comparison to the scale of this civilization on civilization war of the Old Republic. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me if the developers of SWTOR had that very concept in mind when they were creating the game: Take the Clone Wars and just make it bigger. Instead of a few million clone troopers versus droids you now have tens of millions of soldiers and conscripts on both sides, instead of a couple thousand Jedi versus a dozen of dark-siders and Sith, you now have hundreds of thousands of Jedi and Sith. Not only that, but the Republic itself is smaller, only really encompassing the Core Worlds and a good chunk of the mid rim, plagued by the Sith Empire seizing worlds from them and other worlds seceding in protest. It isn't just the Separatist Conflict, it's that on top of the war against an entirely separate sovereign entity that desires all of the Republics resources and planets.

It's also like. The Sith. No longer is it just Palpatine with his myriad groomed and broken boys and the occasional Fallen Jedi or dark sider, it's now a full blown concept and institution. Power schemes and backstabbing but also a full multilayered society of Sith, military, civilian, slaves all working in concert to be the aggressors of a very big and very costly galactic war. Sure they're kinda uh. Evil. Sometimes. Especially with Emperor Vitiate's stated goal of devouring planets but like. You get to see how sympathetic and morally nuanced people just living in this society can be, from the top all the way down to the bottom. It's not just spooky evil boogeymen cackling away in the dark, it's just mostly that.

It's a fascinating era to dig into and play around in, because you have things like Alderaan's civil war and succession crisis, the discovery of the Voss as a society of Force users who refuse to fall into a binary of dark/light and the Republic and Empire's desperate bids for favor, the politics of the Hutt Cartel and how they brush up against these giant nations, how places like even the outer rim are affected by this galaxy spanning conflict.