#synox

But it’s also there in Blue and Zero and their dance around each other that has its own gravitational power on them both, ‘I want you and you want me but neither of us trusts it yet so we’ll just keep circling around each other and hoping’ vibes. But once they figure that mess out between them and connect with each other truly and honestly, I genuinely think they’d go the full ‘I would choose you. In every lifetime and over everything and everyone else in the world, every time, I’d choose you; as far as I’m concerned you ARE the world’ IMMEDIATELY, in a vaguely unsettling and stark but also weirdly moving and human kind of way. Again, the selfishness of love. Weird codependent love with a likely triple digit body count attached, to be sure, but very real and mutual love haha. Specific love and connection, built on ‘you are specifically you and I am specifically me and together there’s a specific we’, not a universal undifferentiated love. 

I feel like the arc was left abandoned about half-way through because of the point where the podcast ended, but that really does seem to me to be where we were headed, that’s the aching yearning thing that lies beneath their whole dynamic, for all the bullshit and fuckery (most of it Blue’s lol, a little bit of it Zero’s) resting on top. Maybe there would have been a lot more twists and turns along the way, but as the story stands I choose to take the near-miracle final dice roll in the last ep as an indication that Blue's need to be loved does win out over his ambitions and ego, when push really comes to shove. Not gracefully so right away, necessarily, but hey when has he ever been graceful about anything lol. I think he would choose his friends at the end of the day, not because he’s secretly good (lmao imagine!) but because that’s the kind of selfish he is deep down.  

You know the person who keeps choosing selflessness — who consistently subsumes his will and his self and his power, who surrenders his selfhood entirely into a larger cause? Who keeps deprioritizing his own personal feelings and connections to serve his role in something ‘greater’? You better believe it’s Synox baby!!! Which is why I’m not so sure there is a way out for him, or that he’d ever take it — or even recognize it if it was offered to him. (fucking ouch) 

And it makes me so fucking sad b/c in a way he’s doing exactly what he was ‘meant to’ as a clone, from his designers’ point of view, and what the jedi needed and profited from when it came to the clones during the war, however the moral implications of that might have sat with them. He’s still ‘following his programming’, he’s doing it all ‘right’, he serves and is ready to die for a higher ideal (an ideal that sucks absolute ass, to be clear lol, but is a dark continuation of what he was ‘born’ to serve, the Republic sliding quietly into the Empire). It’s why he’s such an interesting mirror to Bacta, whose individuation was born out of love and connection and, yes, loss. (Loss at Synox’ hands, even.) Synox clearly does care for the people under his command at least, but in his view of the world he’s not allowed to make that ‘important’ — soldiers serve and die, just like under the Clone Wars, but it’s all for the Empire and so it is justified. (Everything must be justified, if it’s for the Empire.) I don’t know if Synox can let people in close enough that he can experience a true personal loss when and if they die, because depersonalizing yourself that far means extending that to others too, even on your own side. And also I think that if Synox allows himself to think like that now, he would have to look back at what he’s done properly and I don’t feel like he would psychologically survive it. So. ‘Good soldiers follow orders’. And Synox did, he does, and he will, every time. And I feel like it’s going to doom him.  

(Considering Kat’s stated feelings within the podcast on the Sith/Jedi theology divide, I cannot imagine this emergent theme is entirely accidental hahaha. One of the most interesting and subversive examinations of the selflessness/selfishness dichotomy of light and dark in Star Wars in any medium, hands down. I don’t know that it’s The definitive answer in canon or anything (and frankly I think the franchise sprawls too much for such a thing to even exist), but it’s a novel and fascinating lens to read it through and I fucking love the story it produces. It really brings home how much Campaign Star Wars is transformative work, and the power in transformative work to examine and deconstruct the narrative framework of canon. Also sort that under 'Campaign Star Wars is a deeply queer work right down to the structural level', I suppose!) 

 + Headcanons for how defecting from the Empire would work (or not) for all of them under the cut to save people’s dashes at least a little!

Finally drew some art for my Evil Parenting AU!!

Fandom: Campaign Star Wars

Rating: Teen & Up

Relationships: Bluebird Crew & Child OC, Tamlin & Child OC, Bacta & Synox, Bacta & Tamlin, Synox & Neemo

The first time that Greem and Tamlin meet, they’re both taking ballet lessons on a backwater planet called Vernin. Greem is four, almost five, and the six-year-old Zabrak that she meets is going by the name Juhani at the time. Later, she will learn his real name. For now, Juhani is as real as anything in her life.

Greem and Tamlin meet. The Bluebird and the Mynock crews collide.

Read it on AO3

this is first and foremost a Synox hate account, no empire simps permitted

😳

incredible