Day: I love him beating that man and walking out with a robot head. Let's hope he frees Demerzel for real.

Dawn: I love Dawn with his bare lil femurs believing for one moment someone from Empire is coming to save him (but it'll be Gaal).

Dusk:

These are my pure, unfiltered post-episode thoughts but just... why. why did they do most of that 😭😭😭

DEMERZEL. For the love of god WHY did they kill her??? I literally cannot comprehend it. I am enraged. Maybe this is personal bias because she is my favourite Foundation character, but I think she is one of the most effectively done morally grey characters EVER. She is kind and evil and loving and ruthless and she has lived for so so so long and she was enslaved, and I just wanted to see how Day was going to set her free... I knew it was going to be sad. But I didn't think it was going to be THAT. Why did they kill off a 20,000 year old god over some fuckass baby??? They reduced her down to only her role as a mother - are they being sexist??? oh my GODDDDDDDD I am screaming

Bayta Mule. I'm not going to say anything else about that. It had better be a fucking fakeout so help me god

Okay back to Demerzel because I can't take the levels of stupid happening here. Why did she just crouch over the baby??? Why did she not (gently) yeet the baby. POV you are an ancient godlike being and you just sit there and let the baby dissolve UNDER you as you melt into slag. COOL COOL COOL COOL

I will give the show (and, let's be real, Terrence Mann) credit for the Brother Darkness bits. They were very well done, his acting was great, and it was satisfying to watch him fully go off the deep end. Good stuff!

BACK TO THE SCREAMING. You cannot tell me that this galactic empire with its extremely advanced cloning technology cannot create more Cleon clones out of all of those hunks of dead Cleon littering the palace. They're even freshly dead, they have SO much genetic material to work with. that baby would not be the end of the dynasty. and having her ALMOST clasp with the head and then get called away just felt so convenient... and then Day getting shot as well and their whole arc this season amounting to nothing... ALSO, WHY MAKE HER CANONICALLY DANEEL AND THEN KILL HER???????? I am losing my goddamn mind

[Repost]

The Cleons have the most recognizable face in all of human history. Thev've been around for 500+ years, ruling most of our galaxy in an age where everything is recorded and their faces are plastered EVERYWHERE. While they are distant figures for the people in the rim, they are either tyrants or an oddity. But they are there. Perceived and known of.

Royalty/the wealthy/the powerful have always shaped beauty standards. Did the Cleons shape how masculinity is performed? Are they trendy? (If yes: My god, I'm so sorry guys.) Did their looks give birth to an eponymous adjective? ("Man your evebrows are so cleonic. I wish mine were like that.")

Or are the people feeling fatigued by them? Indifferent? When you're seeing something so often, it naturally looses all novelty. You grow blind to it. Don't get me started on how their sameness dehumanizes them in a very special way to the public eye. You could argue that every person in the public eye is dehumanized, but they are to the most extreme degree. They're more of an idea, an icon, a fixture, than a person. They are unchanging to such an extent that I'm sure that normal citizens often don't even know what Cleon is sitting the throne right now. ("11, 12, 13? What's the difference!")

What does this physical sameness do to them? Internally, our appearance shapes part of our identity. Externally, observers attribute certain personality traits to us because of our appearance. It could be informed by stereotypes, experience, culture etc. It's more extreme with public figues were massive swathes of people project onto them. But this external attribution also expresses itself like this for public figures: Their deeds are more easily remembered and associated with them because of some physical attributes they had. (Eg.: Strong rulers easily remembered because of their strong physique. Physically desirable person ironically remembered for their reclusive nature and bad luck in romantic relationships. etc.) This happens because people only have this parasocial bond with them. There is nothing personal they could anchor their memories of them to, so their appearance it is.

The Cleons are afforded NOTHING of that. Internally, they are alwavs confronted with the reality that their appearance isn't unique. Just a copy. There is no way they can build a sense of self around their appearance on their own. How would there be? It's already tainted by someone who came before vou, will come after you. You sit with 'you' at the breakfast table every morning and vou rock another 'you' in vour arms and see him grow into 'you' while you age into an elder 'you' and you know how your face will wrinkle iust so because you have seen it before. You see all their growing pains and their insecurities and maybe the pride and confidence they find in their appearance and you are horrified because you feel/felt the same. Externally, people will still attribute some characteristics to them. But again, it'll never be one Cleons own thing. To the public eye, all their individual personality quirks and all their actions blend together and are attributed to the one in whose shadow they all live. Cleon I. No matter what vou did in your reign, in the end it's just another Cleon who did it. So what do you do when you yearn to be seen? When you're torn between the need for individuality and the pressure to conform and be just like I?

You become exceptionally awful. You can try to be good and kind and just but Empire isn't good and kind and just. Both in its nature and because vou must be like the one who started it all. He was none of that. You'll be forgotten. Mavbe some zealots will see your noble efforts and praise you and erroneously liken vou to Cleon I, the great whose footsteps you almost fill. Almost. But Cleon I wasn't good and you must strive to be like him. You break trying to be like him and when you do another atrocity, something you think is your own, you are the most like him. Temporarily, maybe for a lifetime. a generation, you will be remembered as `'that one Cleon. Decoupled from your appearance, you will be 'that one' who did something exceptionally horrifying and the smidgen of uniqueness you have will be reduced to the dead vou left behind and vour regnal number. But after some time, when that generation who saw and lived through your atrocity dies and the people forget, it'll be the deed of just another Cleon. History is taught and people will remember: "Didn't XII commit a genocide too? And XVII? And XXIII? And I? They all look the same. Isn't it the same?"

(Man that was a tangent.) Back to their appearance: It doesn't help that they are so statuesque, "classically" handsome and very "masculine". Almost a carricature of a strong and healthy ruler. As I said they are a symbol. Could that be a beauty standard people strive for? Do you want to look like a symbol? An ideal? Doesn't it almost feel blasphemous to want to look like a person who is so much larger than life? Doesn't it feel silly? Disrespectful? Both for imperial lovalists who don't want to hear about silly beauty standards and for all the dead Empire has caused.

(Okay funny thought: Technically, we don't even know if they are considered good looking. Never once is there an allusion to it. ( think? Please correct me.) Understandably. People constantly have to pander to them and there is no appropriate room to verbalize wether vou think a Cleon is hot. Or at least honestly. It'd be funny if beauty standards shifted so wildly in 20.000 years, that they are considered ugly Imao)

i kindaaaa

I don't know if I'm ever gonna finish this, I kind of wanted it to be in the style of the living color mural but also realistic?

Explanation under the cut. and feel free to discuss! This is my first (wip) fanart in a long time, and while I'm not motivated to finish it, I was damn well inspired to start it.