(no subject)
Jul. 21st, 2018 02:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsBecause she is a sadist, jothra offered to DM a Clone Wars RPG campaign in which all the player characters were clones. Because we are masochists, we agreed that this sounded like a great idea. Last weekend, we played the campaign's thrilling finale, in which we all got brainwashed by Order 66 and spent the entire last battle fighting our own Jedi and rooting desperately for her to destroy us before we could kill her. A good and not at all emotionally fraught time was had by all!
As a result, the past week has been pretty much all clone feelings all the time around here, and the announcement that there are suddenly going to be SURPRISE NEW CLONE WARS was pretty much just the cherry on the cake, so it's probably time for me to do some catch-up Clone Wars posting.
1. Water War
Ah, yes, I'd heard rumors of this arc: The One Where Kit Fisto Wears Tiny Swimming Trunks.
In other, less important news, this is the first episode in a full-on fantasy miniseries, in which Padmé, Anakin, Ahsoka & Co. find themselves supporting a young fish prince in his attempt to Reunite His Nation On The Verge Of Civil War. Padmé is there to help with diplomatic mediation and only succeeds in making everyone more annoyed, which is honestly pretty consistent with the other times Padmé has attempted to help with diplomatic mediation. I honestly kind of love the idea that Padmé has this mental image of herself as a fantastic mediator and it's actually just not in her skillset AT ALL. Bless you, Padmé.
2. Gungan Attack
The fantasy miniseries continues, this time with Gungans, which is exactly what nobody asked for. I don't remember anything else particularly interesting here except some neat worldbuilding regarding underwater infrastructure. (I do appreciate that the Clone Wars has diplomatically decided to shorten 'Mon Calamari' to 'Mon Cala' in most actual conversation so we can all tactfully pretend that these nice fish people have a dignified alien culture of their own that is not 100% based on a pun around fried squid.)
3. Prisoners
Thus concludes a perfectly respectable fantasy coming of age arc for this teen fish prince, who Inspires His People and Kills TheMan Shark Who Killed His Father and is eventually crowned King Over All Mon Calamari. Good job, fish youth. HBO can pick it up as a sequel for Game of Thrones next season, we'd all watch it.
4. Shadow Warrior
This is the one where the leader of the Gungans is critically injured at a moment of crisis. Fortunately, Anakin and Padmé realize that Jar Jar looks just like the leader of the Gungans, so we can just have him stand in for the leader of the Gungans in his stead!
DEBI: Look, gang, just because you can't tell the difference between different Gungans doesn't mean they all actually look alike!
BECCA: Honestly, this is just really speciesist.
Alas, even though we felt very strongly that no actual Gungan would fall for this, the show does not agree with us and the Gungans do, in fact, fall for this. This eventually leads to a situation in which Anakin and Grievous are both captured by the opposite sides and a trade of prisoners is suggested. After some agonizing, Padmé agrees, which understandable but also probably the worst tactical decision made in the entire history of the Clone Wars.
5. Mercy Mission
Another full-on fantasy adventure, this one starring R2-D2 and C-3PO, who trundle through an underground realm and have numerous vision-seeing riddle-answering interactions withthe Fair Folk some magical underground lizard-people. This would be more fun if we hadn't felt so awkward about the depiction of the cute little 'primitive' aliens who live on the surface and kick off the whole interaction.
6. Nomad Droids
Droid Gulliver's Travels, basically? R2-D2 And C-3PO Have Various Comical Adventures While Just Trying To Get Home and it's fine, I guess.
7. Darkness on Umbara
CLONE FEELINGS ARC ALERT. Half this episode is just Anakin, Rex, and various clone troopers wandering around a dimly-lit jungle planet with a lot of beautifully-animated battle footage, but then Anakin gets unexpectedly called away and Rex is left with a general who likes ordering his clones on suicidal marches and does not like listening to criticism. WWI vibes all over, though at this point we weren't sure whether we were seeing just a clueless and clone-racist commander or an outright malevolent one.
8. The General
WWI vibes intensify, as the General orders more suicidal full-frontal assaults, various clone soldiers begin to push back, Rex is caught in the middle, and it's all very well-done but extremely stressful television.
9. Plan of Dissent
Clone troopers come up with an alternate plan for a sneak attack which the General refuses to approve or consider. The clone troopers do it anyway! It's a success! Everything's great!
Then the General tells them that they're going to be court-martialed and summarily executed without trial, because clone soldiers are not supposed to disobey orders under any circumstances. Everything is not so great.
10. Carnage of Krell
CLONE MUTINY, aka the thing I have been waiting for some clone or other to attempt basically this entire show! Lots of arguments and emotions about loyalty and orders and betrayal and clone justice and things about which I would have had feelings even before spending several months playing a clone trooper, but now VERY MUCH ESPECIALLY so.
A little bit of the bite is taken out of this whole arc by the ending reveal that the General is an active traitor and a proto-Sith, rather than simply the worst possible version of a Jedi commander, but, like ... we all know that that worst possible version of a Jedi commander is out there anyway. JUSTICE FOR CLONES!
Debi and I have seen a few more episodes than this, but in the interest of not breaking up other arcs I'm going to leave it here for now and then do another write-up once we hit the end of Season 4. (We're close!)
jothra offered to DM a Clone Wars RPG campaign in which all the player characters were clones. Because we are masochists, we agreed that this sounded like a great idea. Last weekend, we played the campaign's thrilling finale, in which we all got brainwashed by Order 66 and spent the entire last battle fighting our own Jedi and rooting desperately for her to destroy us before we could kill her. A good and not at all emotionally fraught time was had by all! As a result, the past week has been pretty much all clone feelings all the time around here, and the announcement that there are suddenly going to be SURPRISE NEW CLONE WARS was pretty much just the cherry on the cake, so it's probably time for me to do some catch-up Clone Wars posting.
1. Water War
Ah, yes, I'd heard rumors of this arc: The One Where Kit Fisto Wears Tiny Swimming Trunks.
In other, less important news, this is the first episode in a full-on fantasy miniseries, in which Padmé, Anakin, Ahsoka & Co. find themselves supporting a young fish prince in his attempt to Reunite His Nation On The Verge Of Civil War. Padmé is there to help with diplomatic mediation and only succeeds in making everyone more annoyed, which is honestly pretty consistent with the other times Padmé has attempted to help with diplomatic mediation. I honestly kind of love the idea that Padmé has this mental image of herself as a fantastic mediator and it's actually just not in her skillset AT ALL. Bless you, Padmé.
2. Gungan Attack
The fantasy miniseries continues, this time with Gungans, which is exactly what nobody asked for. I don't remember anything else particularly interesting here except some neat worldbuilding regarding underwater infrastructure. (I do appreciate that the Clone Wars has diplomatically decided to shorten 'Mon Calamari' to 'Mon Cala' in most actual conversation so we can all tactfully pretend that these nice fish people have a dignified alien culture of their own that is not 100% based on a pun around fried squid.)
3. Prisoners
Thus concludes a perfectly respectable fantasy coming of age arc for this teen fish prince, who Inspires His People and Kills The
4. Shadow Warrior
This is the one where the leader of the Gungans is critically injured at a moment of crisis. Fortunately, Anakin and Padmé realize that Jar Jar looks just like the leader of the Gungans, so we can just have him stand in for the leader of the Gungans in his stead!
DEBI: Look, gang, just because you can't tell the difference between different Gungans doesn't mean they all actually look alike!
BECCA: Honestly, this is just really speciesist.
Alas, even though we felt very strongly that no actual Gungan would fall for this, the show does not agree with us and the Gungans do, in fact, fall for this. This eventually leads to a situation in which Anakin and Grievous are both captured by the opposite sides and a trade of prisoners is suggested. After some agonizing, Padmé agrees, which understandable but also probably the worst tactical decision made in the entire history of the Clone Wars.
5. Mercy Mission
Another full-on fantasy adventure, this one starring R2-D2 and C-3PO, who trundle through an underground realm and have numerous vision-seeing riddle-answering interactions with
6. Nomad Droids
Droid Gulliver's Travels, basically? R2-D2 And C-3PO Have Various Comical Adventures While Just Trying To Get Home and it's fine, I guess.
7. Darkness on Umbara
CLONE FEELINGS ARC ALERT. Half this episode is just Anakin, Rex, and various clone troopers wandering around a dimly-lit jungle planet with a lot of beautifully-animated battle footage, but then Anakin gets unexpectedly called away and Rex is left with a general who likes ordering his clones on suicidal marches and does not like listening to criticism. WWI vibes all over, though at this point we weren't sure whether we were seeing just a clueless and clone-racist commander or an outright malevolent one.
8. The General
WWI vibes intensify, as the General orders more suicidal full-frontal assaults, various clone soldiers begin to push back, Rex is caught in the middle, and it's all very well-done but extremely stressful television.
9. Plan of Dissent
Clone troopers come up with an alternate plan for a sneak attack which the General refuses to approve or consider. The clone troopers do it anyway! It's a success! Everything's great!
Then the General tells them that they're going to be court-martialed and summarily executed without trial, because clone soldiers are not supposed to disobey orders under any circumstances. Everything is not so great.
10. Carnage of Krell
CLONE MUTINY, aka the thing I have been waiting for some clone or other to attempt basically this entire show! Lots of arguments and emotions about loyalty and orders and betrayal and clone justice and things about which I would have had feelings even before spending several months playing a clone trooper, but now VERY MUCH ESPECIALLY so.
A little bit of the bite is taken out of this whole arc by the ending reveal that the General is an active traitor and a proto-Sith, rather than simply the worst possible version of a Jedi commander, but, like ... we all know that that worst possible version of a Jedi commander is out there anyway. JUSTICE FOR CLONES!
Debi and I have seen a few more episodes than this, but in the interest of not breaking up other arcs I'm going to leave it here for now and then do another write-up once we hit the end of Season 4. (We're close!)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 08:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:38 am (UTC)I'd just like to point out you were all complicit in this, and you personally made me feel a lot of emotions!!
no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 10:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 01:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-21 09:56 pm (UTC)This weekend is all about the clone feelings. I'm thinking about trying to see if I can make a fic I was working on of older Rex having feelings about the Rebellion and clones work again. I'm currently rewatching the last season as I wanted more clone feelings. Also the clone campaign sounds so cool.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:35 am (UTC)(I was always excited to eventually watch Rebels and get to Rex but NOW MORE THAN EVER I am extremely looking forward to it.)
no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:27 am (UTC)And I do love the Umbara plot, but I did feel it detracted too much from it to have the Jedi General be so clearly evil. And it sort of cements my feelings on Clone Wars as a whole that, I love a lot of it, but it was still too shy about tackling the problems of the prequels.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 12:38 am (UTC)And yeah -- I also love the Umbara arc as a whole and the slow build-up it does before things are at the point of no return, and I sort of get why they didn't quite want to go all the way there, but man, they really had to go all the way there.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 01:02 am (UTC)...says the fangirl whose pseud dates directly to Les Misérables fandom and extensive roleplaying there, but hey, at least those idiots chose their own stupid destiny.
no subject
Date: 2018-07-23 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-22 04:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-07-23 04:38 am (UTC)