deadcatwithaflamethrower:

jhaernyl:

hotbunking-vacheads:

bomberqueen17:

tobermoriansass:

chamerionwrites:

tobermoriansass:

brotheralyosha:

tobermoriansass:

Ideological purity games and its impact on the tenuous political alliance of the Rebellion: Discuss.

I would pay actual literal money to see Saw Gerrera call Mon Mothma a dirty liberal, you just know that it’s happened.

Also you might have mentioned this already but the core of the Rebellion leadership (as far as I know) mostly made up of powerful people from the Republic who never would have imagined themselves fighting a guerrilla war, while most of the groups who are both able and willing to fight against the Empire are probably ideological and nationalist groups who were already fighting against the Republic, including the Republic leaders who joined the Rebel Alliance. So I bet there’s plenty of planets where there’s an official Rebel Alliance cell that’s semi-competent and the unofficial resistance that’s actually effective, and Mon Mothma has to balance helping the local resistance just enough to keep the Empire from winning completely while also somehow not pissing off the people who they’re actually allied with. Imagine Mon Mothma’s exasperation as she tries to convince a Rebel Alliance cell led by an Old Republic bigshot to stop attacking the local resistance long enough to actually fight the Empire.

there are few things that definitely happened in the Rebellion ranging from like Bail Organa generally breaking all the rules all of the time just to help people in a way that provokes many many mixed feelings in the breasts of Rebel leadership to Saw Gerrera calling Mon Mothma a dirty liberal. Multiple times, many of them during the dramatic fight breakup where everyone goes their own way angrily and angstily. and i would pay good money to watch this movie probably definitely more money than i would pay for a sodding boba fett movie if that’s next on the cards*

ANYWAY. SO. YES this thing definitely happened at some point. like, i refuse to believe that a bunch of people who’d been fighting each other before suddenly calmed down and gave up on their previous enmities, or that the old republic guys suddenly cooled their jets and were like ‘yeah these people we used to call terrorists are now our friends i guess’. there probably are some really really really dubious deaths that took place that weren’t entirely just ‘the empire murders more freedom fighters’ but like, there were LEAKS because there were GRUDGES against these nationalist/ideological type cells who’d been fighting long before the rebellion got sucked into guerrilla warfare and who’d once been the kind of terrorists these guys fight, or the kind of strategic troop placement that puts these guys on the frontline – because they’re gung-ho about killing imperials! they literally volunteered for it! – where they catch all the flak until like, some of the more principled parts of rebel command cotton on and nip it in the bud.

so like i did talk about the rebel leadership being overwhelmingly from non-separatist worlds a little bit before but like, between then and now i also binge read through the entire legend and canon wookieepedia pages on specforce and specops rebel members in a completely normal way like a completely normal person and i discovered that apparently their specops and specforce troops are overwhelmingly made up of people who are from formerly separatist worlds and don’t have too many qualms about fucking shit up for the empire, possibly mostly also violently.

which means that in the early days of the coalition the tensions must have run really fucking high as republic military structures defected and joined in with the rebels and all of a sudden they’re supposed to trust a bunch of former terrorists to carry out their high security, high priority covert actions against the empire and not think that these guys are just making a power grab here, or that these guys aren’t about to turn on them at any given moment. there probably were lots of questions over the credibility of the defections and whether or not they would tarnish the reputation of the rebellion and pull them further into violent revolution and possibly eventually the overthrow of the republic structures from inside. whether or not this is a secret plot by separatist elements to completely dismantle the republic altogether – whether or not they get to have primacy in the rebel government at all (it’s telling that the only named leader so far who comes from a system that had a separatist world in it is senator vasp vaspar and he’s the minister for industry, aka the dude who allocates resources for the rebellion which means he probably gets the dirty job of shunting weapons and materiel around to rebel cells correctly and making the kind of decisions that maybe a whole lot of other people don’t want to make because it gets people killed or put at risk of dying).

and these tensions in the higher leadership definitely spilled over into the ground level because how do you reorient yourself to think about your former enemies as your allies? there are rebel cells on the ground who believe in non-violent resistance and there are separatist-defector-nationalist type cells that are used to using all kinds of violence to make a point, some of it quite brutal and provocative. there are guys in the latter who probably do not want to collaborate with former republic military guys because these are the same guys who were busy running over their lands and murdering their friends and families a couple of years ago, or at least were the guys giving orders for this to happen. the old republic defector folks probably definitely have some of these folks killed thru gross negligence or intelligence leaks but like, these guys have definitely had some of the old republic guys murdered and the rebellion probably has to develop an entire new section dedicated just to peacekeeping and diplomatic resolutions among the various factions in the rebellion, in its early days at least, if only because mon mothma and bail organa cannot singlehandedly keep the peace between all the various factions and ideologies and like *somebody* has to fight the empire at *some* point. 

also like, there probably were serious conflicts over who got to command which of these cells and why and whether or not mon mothma got to give directives to members of these nationalist type insurgent/former-separatist cells even if they’d formally signed on to the rebellion, or whether their own commanders got to decide where these people were deployed unless they volunteered to enter the action – and then on top of that each militia probably had their own forms of government/structure that ranged from a standard military type thing to more anarchist set-ups where everything is governed by community consensus and what i’m saying is, the early days of the rebellion were a fucking mess and a lot of people had to take a crash course in the intimate details of outer rim style politics to figure out how to work with these guys.

Are you me? Are you me?! Because I think about this

ALL

THE

TIME

I mean. Clearly it’s a step up from a genocidal fascist state run by a literal evil sorcerer, but the Republic was pretty messed up. The whole reason for the Separatist Crisis in the first place was the colonialism of the Core Worlds toward the Outer Rim; Palpatine took advantage of those tensions to manufacture a war and seize power, but the tensions themselves were real. And I haven’t even mentioned the rather skeevy church and state relationship between the Jedi and the Republic, or private corporations like the Trade Federation having Senate seats, or the use of human cloning and what essentially amounts to child soldiers that everyone in-universe seems to brush off like it’s nothing, JFC.

And then so much of the rationale for the Empire taking power was to restore “order” to the galaxy, and you just KNOW that they used ruthless putdowns of the remaining separatist forces as a propaganda tool to consolidate their power, and I have always, always wondered about the people who went directly from fighting the Republic to fighting the Empire. And how furious the knockdown-dragout shouting matches they must have had with the former Republican leadership were. And how some of them probably didn’t trust them enough to join the Rebellion at all, certainly not at first. And how many of those separatist-insurgents-turned rebels thought bitterly, in the aftermath of ANH – Sure, we are all Alderaan, but would we all be Ryloth would we all be Antar would we all be Fest

And all of this? Is now practically canon. I was also browsing the internet to cope with my nerd feels (as you do) and here is Cassian Andor’s canon backstory:

“Andor grew up in the wilds of the Outer Rim and came of age fighting against the Republic during the tumultuous Clone Wars. His father was killed at the Carida military academy during a protest against the expansion of Republic militarism. Though not a formal Separatist, Andor became part of a confederacy-backed insurrectionist cell at a young age, tossing rocks and bottles at Republic walkers and clone soldiers…in the time of the Empire, Andor was drawn into anarchist movements that continued to defy Imperial edicts.”

JUST

GUYS

Do you think

When Jyn says those were Alliance bombs that killed him do you think inside part of him is just saying I know, I know, it wasn’t the Empire that killed my father either

And it’s not that he can’t work with them, not that he doesn’t respect them – even admire some of them. But how much do you think he resents them sometimes, these Core Worlders with their clean hands and clean consciences (because it isn’t murder when you’re wielding a pen instead of a knife. Isn’t terrorism when you plot a bombing on the floor of the Galactic Senate, instead of a dingy basement), these ex-senators who mourn what he never can because they believe that the Empire killed their Republic when in reality he knows, he knows that their Republic birthed the Empire

okay okay so i have already written some bit of my thoughts about the intra-Rebellion tensions during the lead up to the galactic civil war here and here so i won’t repeat those points here and i’ll jump straight to “

Sure, we are all Alderaan, but would we all be Ryloth would we all be Antar would we all be Fest

“

the thing is, this wouldn’t even really be a hypothetical question for these guys. sure, alderaan is destroyed under the most technical definition of genocide: its blown up violently, destroying an entire people, apart from those scattered across the galaxy. but its not like the empire doesn’t pursue an um, cleansing policy across other planets – especially outer rim planets. there’s mass slavery and enforced labour and imprisonment of all kinds of species, the twi’leks and lasats and wookiees and geonosians are the examples that spring to mind. and that’s just the active cleansing & murder. if you take into account ecological ruin and the devastation of slavery wreaked on species like the mon calamari, or on planets like raada, samovar and wadi raffa (and oh an endless number of planets) , the empire has an even bigger death toll, an even bigger number of worlds its already essentially destroyed and devastated. not wiped off the map, but ruined and left with such scars that can’t ever really be healed, you know? and like you said, its pretty certain that the empire was ruthless and brutal with the former separatist worlds so its likely that their populations were subject to brutal labour & slavery that almost certainly killed them. 

so by the time they get to the battle of yavin and the destruction of alderaan i don’t think it would even be a hypothetical question so much as ‘of course its alderaan’. because alderaan was a core world and it was rebel leadership and yes its tragic and yes its horrible, but all the separatists who’ve died working the mines on kessel, or working their own worlds to death, and all the lasat and wookiees and twi’leks who’ve been brutalized just don’t get that same kind of memorializing, that same place in serving as a uniting symbol and banner for them to come together. and on one level its natural, because alderaan is such a stark symbol – but then what about all these other worlds? they’re not symbols and they’re not this kind of stark kind of violence, they’ve just been quietly and systematically eliminated over twenty years of forced labour, prison camps and ecological devastation. 

(and then thirty years down the line, ryloth is still steeped in absolute poverty and they can’t even get the new republic to help them fight the encroaching gangs being funded by the first order, even though hera syndulla was so instrumental to the rebellion and fighting the empire)

so i mean, i think there definitely was immense bitterness – all unspoken – and that it all kind of rankled, which is why i also think that its completely plausible that not even a year out from the fall of the empire and there’s already a new separatist union that’s been formed. i mean, take a look at the declaration of rebellion, specifically at the opening paragraph:

We firmly acknowledge the importance and necessity of the institution of Galactic Government. We accept that all must subjugate themselves to that Government, giving up certain rights and freedoms, in return for peace, prosperity and happiness for all.

that sounds like a nice statement, but if you’re a separatist turned rebel and you’re reading a document that’s been drafted up by a senator from an inner rim world that was never really pulled into the separatist movement, that’s going to read like a red flag. who’s all? what rights and freedoms? galactic government by whom? who the hell is the we who acknowledge the importance and necessity of the institution of galactic government as compared to being the anarchist movement the empire claims they are? when they say ‘subjugated’ is everyone going to be subjugated to the same laws equally or are some people and some worlds and some interests more equal than others?

and the document goes on to lay the blame for tyranny solely at the feet of palpatine and the empire and not at the feet of the republic who were already corrupt and venal and turned a blind eye to slavery, colonized the outer rim territories and then plundered them for their resources and later went on to militarily suppress them when they rose up in revolt. i mean, its obviously a political decision but man, i can’t imagine that these guys would be happy to take it lying down. it’d be a case of swallowing one bitter pill after another after another. they can’t lament the stuff these guys lament. they’re not even sure that after the war is done, after they win against the empire, these guys aren’t going to turn around and stick a knife in their backs while telling them to wait their turn for justice. 

you bet there were fights and ugly simmering tensions that sometimes errupted, especially among younger and newer recruits who hadn’t learned how to fully play the game yet. you bet also that there were secret plots and contingencies laid in place in the eventuality that galactic freedom was actually established, so that they would never again be put in a position where they could be exploited, or where they would have to wait with their hands outstretched for the republic to do something, anything while the hutts and black sun and all the various gangs ran wild.

i think yes, they’d respect them but its the kind of respect that’s always tinged by a dogged wariness. when is the credit going to drop, the holoknife going to slip. 

so i think when cassian’s having that conversation with jyn about alliance bombs killing her father – man i think he’s a mess of emotions. he lashes out so much in the following moments and with good reason. his entire childhood has been marred not by the violence of the empire, but the violence of the republic. to him the fascism of the empire is the logical extension of the militarism and imperialism of the republic – and you know, i think at some point he’d have to deal with the fact that the dude who recruited him used to work with republic intelligence during the clone wars, and in that process he’d have to confront the fact that a lot of their strategies now were being borrowed from there. the rebels are right, yes, but what if their actions aren’t. what if they’re borrowing things they’ve done before under the republic. 

so like, i think there’s that element of rage that oh my god its only a betrayal to you now that diego luna puts on screen, but i also think there’s that element of world-weary cynicism of like, well what did you expect honestly, the chalarax can’t ever really change its spots – just look at our declaration of rebellion, just look at our leadership, just look at how everyone treats the separatists, as if we weren’t separatists first, as if we weren’t on the frontlines against tyranny first. and another layer of cynicism because her father, at the end of the day, was to all extents and purposes a collaborator. i mean galen erso only really gets out because lyra erso smacks him over the head with facts many times, he doesn’t exactly come across as super moral (also i mean, its not like the fault he built in was super easy to get at, the only reason they managed the first time was because luke was there and luke had the fucking force with him). and his father, on the other hand, was murdered for protesting at carida. like, the scale is different and ugh. so i do wonder how much sympathy or compassion he’d have for her in that moment – some level i think, but if i put myself in his shoes i’d also have about the same reaction i have to um white folks from scotland telling me that they suffered more at the hands of british imperialism than india did. 

so you bet he resented the rebellion sometimes and honestly, i think that moment when he snarls i’ve been in this fight since i was six at jyn, that split moment where he looks absolutely vicious, is those years of resentment (probably unvoiced) coming to the fore because he can do this to her, but he can’t do this to draven or to mon mothma or any of the senators who refuse to take up arms because of their fine principles or worse because they think there’s no point fighting the empire. 

This is so much more background than I’ve ever managed to digest and I am so pumped about this. I wish I were the person to write the terse political dynasty thriller epic about the undercurrents of the Rebellion.

I can’t, I’m terrible at that sort of thing, but I did give Kes Dameron a bitter betrayed-by-the-Republic Outer Rim dying-ancestral-planet backstory that colors and shapes his Rebellion patriotism. (We’re not there yet in Lost Kings but I did post a snippet about it a while back, tentatively titled Fuck Your Republic, which I do plan on folding into the continuity somewhere.)

I’m reblogging this, though, so I can try to reread and digest it, because it’s a Lot. 

…….The GFFA has a planet named Samovar. How am I even still surprised by these things.

@deadcatwithaflamethrower

I am drawing hearts all over this and fighting off rabid oc plotbunnies.

*feeds the plotbunnies so that they attack in stronger numbers*

All sorts of interesting parallels to real life politics. Narratively, countries/regimes creating their own monsters is really interesting, but actually pretty common. And of course fascism coming from militarisation and imperialist/colonialist leanings is historically the most common cause. Which makes me think that people saw the Empire coming from a mile off and were then ‘I told you so’ about it.