The Light Of Alderaan Still Travels Through Space And Time, If You Look Up At The Night Sky It's Like

Andor S01 // Andor S02E08

For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. STAR WARS: EMPIRE STRIKES BACK (1980) dir. Irvin Kershner

Asajj Ventress has been a slave, a Jedi, a Sith, a Nightsister, a bounty hunter, a fugitive, and an airport security guard too apparently

Some other willing dupe cozened by his useful—if elderly—apprentice, Darth Tyranus. The one keeping a seat warm for Anakin, who was ripening so nicely. Really coming along.

I think one of the best and unintentionally funniest worldbuilding aspects in Star Wars is the reasoning of why did Bail and Breha adopt Leia instead of having their own children. Leia is first established as the princess of Alderaan before she is written to be Luke's sister. So now we need to figure out how she got to Alderaan. She was adopted because she needed to be hidden and separated from her brother. Bail was placed there to be one of the only people who knew so there would be a reason why it was them who got her. They specifically wanted a daughter. Why? Because Alderaan is a matriarchal society, so they needed a princess. Why didn't the Queen and her husband have biological children? Because they can't. Why? Because the Queen can't have kids. Why? Because she got injured as a teenager and got her internal organs replaced and her body can't handle a pregnancy. How did she get injured so badly? She fell off of a mountain. How did that happen? She was climbing it. Why was the future Queen climbing a mountain in the first place? Because she needed to go through three challenges in order to inherit the throne and one of them required her to go through something physically impressive. Why? Because before that they just held a Battle Royale for all the heirs and the one left alive got the throne and they at some point figured out that maybe they shouldn't be doing that, actually. Oh, okay.

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

sooooo fucked up but padme and shmi are inextricably linked in anakin’s mind as both his family, his attachments and the people he will do anything to keep in his life, the secret-most part of him he gets to have all to himself, ANDDD palpatine is in that secret chamber too. he didn’t grow up with a father so he’s got palpatine and obi-wan to choose from, and obi-wan loves him obviously but can only say it when he thinks anakin is dying, like it or not there is a level of emotional repression in the prime jedi order that anakin simply never gets from palpatine who he kneels before and trusts without question. palpatine and padme the politicians he is told not to trust, shmi the mother he was never meant to see again. mother & father & mother to his children. each an attempt at a family unit he never really got. it’s the evilest dynamic of all time and of course it ends in a bloodbath

Andor S02E01: A Year Later // S02E09: Welcome To The Rebellion

Bonus:

- matthew stover

Worst couple you know (affectionate)