Exit, pursued by a trilobite.

Don't listen to her. She's just a cat in a coat.

Whereas the reality is far more like

Nate is Dooku right before his Fall. He’s decided to run off and Handle Things Himself instead of becoming a Sith in the wake of (his son’s) Qui-Gon’s death.

His crew:

Hitter - Infamous bounty hunter Jango Fett. Trying to hunt down the people the Galidraan governor sold his armor to.

Hacker - Nine year old Anakin Skywalker, supervised by his mother Shmi. He managed to find their slave chips before Gardulla the Hutt sold them on and they’ve been stealing both credits and people ever since. Shmi thinks the whole idea of stealing from rich people is fantastic, btw. Anakin’s just happy his mom is happy.

Thief - twenty-two year old ex-Sith apprentice Maul, who managed his escape from Sidious by literally blowing up his house one time. Still technically on the run. Wanted in sixteen separate systems for credit fraud.

Grifter - Hondo Ohnaka, down on his luck and looking for a new crew. Dooku has tried to him no fewer than six times, which is why Hondo says yes when he asks him to do crimes.

I can’t decide if I would go throuple like Leverage canon for Maul/Jango/Shmi. On the one hand, it would be funny, and Shmi deserves to be worshipped by both a soft battle hardens Mando and a wild young Force User. On the other, I do think that Jango and Shmi would have an issue with Maul’s age in a “I don’t want to become a surrogate parent in a romantic relationship” sort of way.

Jango is about 34 here, Shmi is probably between 36 and 42. Maul has been on his own, if I want to steal from what little we know of Parker’s backstory, since he was probably 12. He’s not in any way a child, or inept; but he’s young and he’s damaged. He probably sometimes acts like Anakin and sometimes like Dooku because his sense of self and experiences left him both stunted and aged beyond his years.

And he puts it on and he goes “Now Shmi will stop yelling at me when I punch droids”

my fetish

my friend's fetish

Here are the originals too:

we know Aral's "green silk rooms" line, of course, excellent paragraph:

"The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present--they are real."

on the one hand, yeah, very true observation, but I think given the context of what else is going on at that point (that Cordelia and by extension the reader don't find out about until later), I think there's another layer to it.

because that describes the whole Escobar war pretty much exactly. Death wholesale, by the shipload, all for the sake of killing Serg before he can become a nightmare of an emperor and destroying his political allies' popularity so they don't become a problem afterward. sound familiar?

And at the time he says this line, making sure all that happens according to plan is Aral's job. Because Ezar ordered it, and (more importantly) because Ezar convinced him it was necessary. He phrases this in general terms, but I don't think he's actually talking abstractly here, and I don't think he's being a hypocrite given everything else we see of him as a character. He seems to believe - after trying to exhaust other options - that the Escobar plan is necessary, but given how he handles it afterward (drinking, downward spiral, basically suicidal), I don't think he views it as forgivable.