"Don't question my missing sanity"

ANAKIN SKYWALKER in

The Senate wanted to just make one documentary, a focus on the most popular heroes: the Skywalker, Tano, and Kenobi trio.

And it starts off really well, really serious. The Clones are serious, Anakin and Ahsoka are (read as trying) serious, Obi-Wan is serious. There’s an added bonus of the 501st, 212th, and Kit Fisto teaming up for a sea-side mission. Unusual for three Generals— two of which were High Councilors— to be on the ground at once, but this is a big deal.

While making their way over, Commander Cody and Captain Rex with Ahsoka go over what its like basically living on the Star Destroyers, theres a lighthearted joke about how Obi-Wan’s flagship is called “The Negotiator” and all is well.

Then shit hits the fan when they’re on the ground, meeting up with High Councilor and General Kit Fisto. Despite being told that a bunch of camera droids would be there, the General is stripped down to his swim shorts— because really, they shouldn’t have expected anything different.

Obi-Wan is struggling to keep the serious facade as Anakin and Ahsoka try and keep straight faces at least, and it doesn’t help that Kit isn’t acting like anything is different. 

When the footage is released, the results for more Jedi documentaries come flooding in because the fights that were seen were ridiculous and Kit was telling the droids too much interesting information to cut him and his shirtless self out of the documentary aside from back ground appearances. And don’t even get the editors started on the backflips, battle-field smack talk, and other acrobatics the Jedi used, nor the fact that they had zero qualms about throwing caution to the wind to save their men— or that the Clones didn’t seem to mind getting tossed up by the Force to avoid a round of blaster shots by the separatist droids. Obviously a common thing.

So the Senate gives in, starts having camera droids follow more Jedi into battle. The public has their favorites and their favorite team ups.

The Skywalker-Tano-Kenobi trio is a fan favorite, of course, but suddenly there’s just so many more Jedi out there. 

There’s Plo Koon with Kit Fisto and Tauht on Khorm which had donations flooding into the Temple because “please, please get Commander Wolffe the help he needs for his eye!” “He deserves the best that the public can get the Commander for his bravery against that Darksider!” and also there’s an ongoing guessing forum somewhere on the Holonet that’s got people trying to guess Plo’s age.

While the Battle of Hypori’s camera droids were destroyed by Grievous, the footage was still in-tact as it was being sent over to the editing company and there was a mini-doc about that— there were many ‘Down with Grievous!’ posters and tag lines around Coruscant and the Republic worlds after that.

There’s a team up with Voolvif Monn, Agen Kolar, and Aayla Secura in the outer rim that was a fan favorite for the extremely contrasting personalities— Aayla being friendly and bubbly, Agen being openly for using thermals and Voolvif seemingly like he’d Rather Be Elsewhere until the battle ends and everyone’s surprised by the Shistavanen’s victory howl. The other Shistavanens of the uvena system go wild and that’s the most watched episode from that area.

And then the Senate asks if they’re allowed to enter the temple for filming because there’s been so much footage of battle, the Public also wants to see what home life is like. After some debate, they’re allowed in.

Like the start of the battle documentaries, Mace Windu, Yoda, and Cin Drallig attempt to be serious, as they’re the three who were still at the Temple at that time— but that falls to pieces soon enough because Cin has to break up a fight between two padawans in the sallies and its just: “Now what exactly are you fighting over?” “He called me ugly” “He called me a snot-nosed brat!”

And cue Mace just giving the camera droid The Look ™ and shaking his head with a “And this is what our esteemed Battlemaster deals with on a daily basis when he’s not teaching or checking in on the Guard” 

and the Temple documentaries are all down hill from there. It becomes like a drinking game to see how many times Mace looks at the camera droid in utter disappointment, how many times Jocasta Nu is seen hunting down someone who has late books, how many spontaneous fights break out in the halls that force the Temple Guard to show up and break them up, how many times Vokara and the other Healers are seen chasing down an escaped Jedi from the Halls of Healing, and more.

Speaking of the Guard, someone has a whole conspiracy forum on them on the ‘net. It’s also a game to play ‘spot the Guard’ and then it became a game of ‘spot the Guard doing something ridiculous in the background’ of the shot because sometimes they’ll just quickly do something stupid before righting back into position like nothing ever happened.

Palpatine, meanwhile, is seething internally at the Jedi Approval ratings. And ofc, following that, the Clone approval ratings. Already in the Senate are motions to try and confirm their sentience and get their rights, Clone Production slows down because more effort is getting poured into them to keep the ones on the field that they know in the documentaries alive. The Republic grieves for Master Di on Ryloth and the troops that followed him into battle because through the Documentary they got to know them decently well. 

At the end of every documentary episode, especially the battle ones, a list of names of all the Clones who died— and any Jedi or anyone else— goes across the screen in remembrance. There’s a large list on the ‘net as well.

The Public not only knows the serious and rigid forms of the Jedi, but now they know the absolute ridiculous sides of them and the Clones— along with the side that is emotional and grieving for fallen friends and comrades in arms.

Zuko, equally pissed: oh big deal, he was the FIRST person to ever offer to be my friend, EVER, and he never completely gave up on me no matter how much reason I gave him to, I would do ANYTHING for that kid

Aang, sobbing: I love you guys so much

Sokka: aw, Aang ❤

Zuko: we love you too ❤

Sokka, back to Zuko: anyway swords at dawn

Aang, still weeping: HOW am I supposed to CHOOSE

Katara: don't be silly, obviously you should go with Sokka

Toph: uh, what? He should go with Zuko

After all, if you want to buy absolutely nothing - if you want to create a way to live separate from society - you cannot do it like Thoreau; even Thoreau wasn’t doing it like Thoreau; you have to create an separate society, a self-sufficient community, and live in that.

And interestingly Seymour put his finger on “why communes fail.”

In his experience, which was deep and broad, experiments in self-sufficient communities/communes virtually always failed. And not because the idealistic fools weren’t capable of growing crops, or chopping wood, or whatever. It isn’t even the founders were stupid or ignorant or inexperienced, or because self-sufficiency only attracts dramatic personalities. No, the communities he observed consistently failed because they had no ability to resolve conflict. Every group of people will have to come to a tricky decision, resolve a sticky situation, have an awkward conversation or even just get along with unideal situations. They didn’t fall apart because a sheep fell in a ditch; anyone can get a sheep out of a ditch; they fell apart over the arguments about ideology, ditches, sheep and blame. It was always some issue of conflict or communication that broke these well-meaning, well-intentioned, well-educated people apart.

Step back from that and think: people frequently try to live outside capitalism even in this modern world, people frequently try to live in the most environmentally-friendly way, people frequently try to envision an alternative to a hostile state, even in this world where it is difficult or impossible to do so. For every utopia you might picture, people (being people) will have already made a decent attempt at building and living it, in the hope of showing it or even giving it to you. And those utopias aren’t here at the moment for you to have, because it’s terrifically difficult to make communities out of nothing. And that’s largely because it’s very hard to have communication skills about anything at all, let alone something that gets you mad.

All the mommy bloggers, all the brosephs, all the every single customer or client or other person you have dealt with who you wanted to fucking strangle, or at least wanted to be allowed one of those amazing moments of Put Down that viral reddit posts are made of, every single frustrating as fuck human: they will be part of your post-capitalist utopia.

They will not wake up, the morning of the revolution, and suddenly become different people. Your choices will be to line them all up against a wall and shoot them . . . .or figure out how to live with them in your community. (And multiple revolutions in the past hundred years have tried that whole "line them up and shoot them" thing, tried it REAL HARD, and it didn't work out great for them either.)

The more de-industrial, de-urbanized, de-impersonal, whatever, your ideal society is? The more it will involve having to work, and work well, and work effectively and without interpersonal violence (physical or social) against people who irritate the fuck out of you.

And no, we never really had any Neat Trick to make that easier in the past. What we most often had was survival pressure so intense that the threat of being ostracized (or having the group turn on you) was enough to force resolutions that nobody was really happy with, or that left an unspoken wound to fester for generations, or to offer up a scapegoat to vent the community's violence on and then pretend to move on, or . . . .

Etc.

the piece is called "Defenders of the New Republic"!!!

And also his kid, your bio-dad, is alive.

The other protagonists don't fault him for it. The narrative doesn't question his morality over it. He doesn't hem and haw over the decision or show regret after the fact. He just does what he needs to do and is done with it.

Sure, he has a moment where he doesn't really know what goal to set after he accomplishes his revenge but isn't that true for any life goal? And he almost immediately finds something new to pursue (piracy). And not only does he not feel like he's wasted his life in pursuit of revenge but the skills he built up in order to kill his father's murderer are what allows him the job offer from Westly in the first place.

Dad for One from One for All's perspective as an incredibly distressed ghost

Bonus: