Drunkdrivingthedeathstar - You Don’t Go Around Killing People. It’s Not Nice.

Imperial Probe Droid Near Echo Base

by DayDreamOrNightmare

we’ve all had better times to die

Okay, so. Star Wars has all these concepts that weirdo New Left boomer George Lucas tosses in there but because of storyteller limitations it would kill the plot to fully explain them all, so later writers have to come in for the spin-off materials and bat clean-up to fully explain all this crazy crap. And I would like to talk about something that made me actively angry at first, but which I now adore. And that is the Naboo.

So much about Naboo culture is infuriating from a logical standpoint. They have a queen, okay. A constitutionally elected queen? Weird, okay. Don't know why they'd do that but... She's FOURTEEN? Excuse me? Is it a ceremonial thing or, oh no it's not? Legit head of state? Why does she dress like that? Why does she talk like that? I'm so tired.

Here's the explainer. Let me go cook.

There's this joke in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the last living human goes back in time and finds out humans aren't actually from Earth, but an alien culture that tricked all the middle managers, pedantic weirdos, and other infuriating folk into getting in a space arc which they gave the wrong evacuation coordinates to simply get rid of them. The Naboo are like this but they're all artists and poets and hippies, but like classy ones. They fled their home planet during a war and crash landed on Naboo, then did a colonism to the Gungans because, hey, they were fleeing a war and it was do or die. This spiritual rot in their creation story is later rectified by Padmé. But it's super important to their cultural psychology. They're hippies, but will subjugate if needed. They are "peaceful" but I guarantee you every single one of them has a tiny extremely shiny pistol up their sleeve and they will draw down on you if backed against a wall.

The scene that I think says it all is at the end of Phantom Menace when Padmé is surrounded by Nute Gunray and his droids, they've got her dead to rights, but Sabé her double creates a distraction so the queen can make it to her throne. This one piece of furniture is the Naboo in a nutshell. It's richly carved with artistic details, it has two seats to the side so the queen's handmaidens can read the lips of people in the back of the room and use hand signals to communicate with the queen while she can remain focused mostly on who is speaking to her. It is hundreds of years old. And it has a secret compartment in the armrest that is FULL OF GUNS. Layers of artistic opulence hiding their true intentions.

The Naboo were created to be backwards compatible with Princess Leia. They're compassionate pacifists, but they will shot you if needed.

Why do they elect teenage royalty? It's a little creepy. It's giving "age of consent is emotional maturity". It makes no sense.

The explanation they give outsiders is they want youthful idealism untainted by cynicism. What they don't tell you is that they take kids with stated interest in politics and put them in an advanced highly competitive Leadership Academy which is like Model UN mixed with Battle Royale. Well, they don't kill each other but it's intense. It's like what the clones went though just all diplomacy training and tea ceremonies all the time. Which is crazy but so Naboo.

Oh, and all the delegates for the royalty election run using pseudonyms for security. Imagine voting for the head of state but you can't run a background check. It's so crazy.

Why does Padmé dress like that? Well, fashion is one of Naboo's major industries so it's like she's wearing the entire Fall line catalog at once. To advertise not only the talent of her people, but to show how much they favor her. BUT that dress has multiple layers of padding and resin armor. And aforementioned spots for those little silver blasters. And it breaks up her silhouette making her harder to shoot. And it's so elaborate you pay more attention to the crazy dress and not if the person wearing it is really the queen or a decoy. Everything about Naboo is like this.

Queen Amidala has that weird accent while Padmé does not. Because all her handmaidens helped create the accent together so they all can imitate it. It's like if you gave girls at a rowdy sleepover the job of federal counterintelligence. That's what they came up with.

The handmaidens wear colorful identical clothes so you can't tell them apart, hoods to partially conceal their identity, and they don't wear the queen's fancy makeup. So one of them can be the queen and spy on people in the audience. Because the Naboo don't trust shit for shit.

Their public face is so silly to hide all the truly weird shit they do behind the scenes.

They use their reputation as artist hippies to conceal multiple layers of subterfuge and disguise their methods of self defense and assuage their paranoia due to wartime trauma and their disturbing colonial past. All of them are completely off their rocker even by Star Wars standards. And I love them so much. They put on a show so everyone thinks they have them figured out but what they have going on is far more weirder and more sinister than meets the eye. You know how catty, neurotic, and competitive art school students stereotypically are? Yeah, planet art student. Love them!

There you go, @charmwasjess

ANDOR 2.04 Ever Been to Ghorman?

A Bonus Page

First - Prev

Other Skywalker Comics

So, let's talk about Emperor Palpatine's last week leading up to the conclusion of Episode IV. Just for a moment, let's consider the position this horrible old space warlock was in, shall we?

Military Intelligence Director Orson Krennic colludes with ISB to commit ethnic cleansing on Ghorman. In typical Krennic fashion, this plan goes neither as smoothly nor as quickly as it was pitched to you as being.

Grand Imperial Admiral Thrawn disappears. Your single best military commander just disappears. Reports indicate space whales are involved??? What???

In response to Krennic/Partagaz's actions on Ghorman, Mon Mothma declares open rebellion on the Senare floor. Her speech is broadcast across the entire galaxy due to what is the first in an absolutely CASCADING series of failures by the ISB. Mothma successfully evades arrest, and escapes Coruscant to Force only knows where.

Darth Vader has taken this increasingly dire moment in Imperial politics to apparently take some sort of Sith PTO at his personal residence on Mustafar. Just about as far out of reach as he can possibly for anyone.

There is a catastrophic data security breach at ISB. It turns out an overly ambitious field agent has been invited to several Signal groupchats about the Death Star that she wasn't supposed to be in, and her collecting of all this vital data in one place has led to a Rebel mole piecing together that you're building the Genocider 5000 instead of a super cool renewable energy program.

Said Rebel infiltrator is then immediately killed by his contact, Luthen Rael, formerly known as Axis. Luthen spreads word of the Death Star to his allies, and then kills himself when confronted by ISB. Maybe your two most important links for piecing together the Rebel Alliance have been lost.

The Rebellion begins spreading propaganda publicly. Their manifesto is playing on just about every available radio frequency.

The ISB collapses. Supervisor Partagaz takes his own life. Colonel Yularen is left with an agency staffed by effectively no one. Your entire intelligence gathering apparatus that was working just fine last week now functionally no longer exists.

NOTE: the following events occur within the span of only 48 hours.

Due to the leak at ISB, the Rebels have discovered the existence of the Death Star, and in very short order manage to steal its schematics. Your special projects divisions on both Eadu and Scarif are destroyed. Director Orson Krennic is KIA.

Darth Vader is recalled from vacation early, and boy is he being awfully himself about it.

You disolve the Imperial Senate. Much as you had anticipated, this is making a lot of people very angry and is being regarded as a bad move.

Darth Vader has lost the Death Star plans. Nobody knows where they are now.

Grand Moff Tarkin blows up the planet Aldaran, a not insiginificant player in the Galactic economy.

Obi Wan Kenobi infiltrates the Death Star, and then quite literally vanishes. Vader is not taking this development well.

LESS THAN 24 HOURS AFTER BECOMING FULLY OPERATIONAL, THE DEATH STAR IS DESTROYED. Grand Moff Tarkin is KIA. Admiral Motti is KIA. General Tagge is KIA. General Bast is KIA. General Molock is KIA. General Romodi is KIA. Colonel Yularin is KIA. Darth Vader is MIA. Millions of soldiers and skilled military professionals are killed. Quanities of money so vast they cannot be comprehended by the mortal mind have gone up in a flash of smoke and light.

The culprit of this unfathomable trespass is soon revealed to be a 19 year-old boy. His name is Luke Skywalker. You now have not one but two of these freaks of nature to contend with. And you don't know where either of them are at the moment.

What the Hell is an Alluminum Falcon?

Honestly, I kinda feel bad for the guy. Just a little bit. If I were his age (ancient) and his condition (rotting from the inside out, filled with cosmic evil) I might just have had a stroke and died. It is amazing he made it all the way to be thrown down that reactor shaft in Return of The Jedi.

rise, sister.

prints🌙

Image description: it's a drawing of Ahsoka Tank from Star Wars. She looks adult, she's wearing a detailed headpiece with fabric hanging from it like a veil. She's looking off to the side (left) with an unimpressed look, her mouth is partly open, one of her eyebrows is raised. Her screen-right hand is held up to point at something off-camera that she finds offensive. There's no colors, it's just line-art. For context, the prompt was 'what if Ahsoka was Anakin's Master and she met him as a kid'. End of description.

ANDOR 2.09 "Welcome To The Rebellion"