A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 125: Revenge of the Sith (Novel) Pt. 1

Episode Date: January 8, 2026

This is A More Civilized Age: Three hours of podcast when another team would make an hour and a half. Distractions. Diatribes. Deep dives into the databanks to learn, live on air, factoids about characters who hardly matter. But that's what makes A More Civilized Age A More Civilized Age: All of it might matter. Five years running and it's still asking questions a first year podcast might.  And today it is going to learn what it already knew: That Anakin Skywalker is driven by love and fear in equal, but precarious measure. That Obi-Wan Kenobi, the ultimate blueprint of a Jedi, always knows when he's looking at a butt. That R2-D2 and C-3PO are slaves, but like, don't worry about that so much, they're more like friends, right? That Palpatine always has a plan, but always loves to pivot. And that Padme was there, too. And it is proud to be your podcast. Next Time: Chapters 8-14! Show Notes Camile Paglia about Revenge of the Sith It's All Stover, a Matthew Stover Podcast, hosted by Carter Richmond and Ina Hosted by Rob Zacny (robzacny.bsky.social) Featuring Alicia Acampora (ali-online.bsky.social), Austin Walker (austinwalker.bsky.social), and Natalie Watson (nataliewatson.bsky.social) Produced by Michael Hermes Music by Jack de Quidt (notquitereal.bsky.social Cover art by Xeecee (xeecee.bsky.social)  

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zagney, joined by Alia Kampora, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are, as always, supported by you, our listeners, via patreon.com slash civilized. So head over there if you'd like to support the show and get access to all our Q&A episodes and various special editions. This week, we are reading Revenge of the Sith. Yeah. No, I know. You're thinking, but you watched Revenge of the Sith.

quite a while ago over Rob's objections that you should watch them chronologically. And so you should keep revenge of the Siff. We needed to watch that movie, man. After you finished, yeah, it turns out you know, the whole, well, as I learned from the footnotes, there's a concept of like

dramatic irony here. Yeah. Very important, narratively, the things like this. So we are reading the Revenge of the Siff novelization by Matthew Stover, which is,

is awesome how do we how do we get put on to this this is one of the books that many people have been telling us to read for years um i would say that someone who i know as a game designer uh carter richmond is the person who most has been and used to run a a matthew stover podcast i think used to because they read all of the stover books uh at this point not just not just the star wars to they ran out of they ran out of they ran out of over yeah he's stover yeah he's Stover is over. Yeah, exactly. But they couldn't have watched the space to it?

I think that they were happy to. The name of the podcast was It's All Stover, which is a great name. Oh, wow. Fantastic. Shalza Carter and Pfea, who I think Ina were the two co-hosts. Yeah, so I think that they did. I think they did all of the books that exist for Matthew Stover. You know, if you dig into it, he is not written a ton of books.

He's like, people really love the ones he's read or written. He's written like three or four main Star Wars ones. We've been recommended all of them by other people. Also, the New Jedi Order book, Traitor, has been on our things people voted for list. And the Shatterpoint, the Mase Windu book, has also shown up repeatedly as a book. I feel like I've seen the Minder book. And the Minder book. A few times too, which is like, what if we gave Luke Skywalker while PTSD for some, like,

yeah, truly dark shit happening at the end of the war? And I think actually this book was one of the things that like popped on our old, remember we did that poll like three years ago about other things to cover. I want to say this was on that pole, not as high as some of, not as high as Thron trilogy, not as high as Cotor, but up there in that top 10 or whatever. So I think that's how we got put on to it originally the first time we started talking about it. So today we're going to be covering the first section of the book, the first seven chapters, which. is the space battle. Yeah. That's it. And as the authors, as the authors note,

or sort of sheepishly admits here, they, so Stover had not seen the movie. Stover was going off of a script. And not even the final script. And in the script he was working from, the space battle was huge. Like it was like, it was like 130 pages of space battle described in like, what sounds like maybe painful detail.

And so he's like, all right. Well, like a third quarter of this book needs to be the space battle. And then apparently he sees the movie. And he's like, oh, that's like 15 minutes of screen time. And it's 150 pages of book. Yeah. It's the whole first seven chapters of the book. I think the later chapters must expand in length because we're doing this in three parts.

and this is the whole first part, but it's not the first full third of the book. It is the first quarter of the book, so it's quite a bit. And I think the original script was like 30 out of 125, 130 pages is when I think the footnote said. I guess it's worth noting, I think most of us,

maybe not all of us, I'm not sure, do have the 50th anniversary version of this, the 20th anniversary version of this book, I think, which has a bunch of footnotes from Stover in it. The original version does not have that. I am reading it digitally, and then after I finish a section, I come back through and read the footnotes.

I don't want my first read through to be, I want to feel it and then go through and go, ah, that's why you did that. Yeah, I don't want to be talked to as I'm reading. That might be a good call. Don't speak to me while I'm reading. It brings the meaning sometimes. Yeah. Stover seems charming. It's fun, fun stories here about like how it all, but there's maybe just a, just a bit more in the footnotes. of like, do you see what I did there?

It's fucking wild. Really? And the answer is like, yes, I did, because you're kind of writing the least subtle book I've ever read in my life. That's almost the charm of the book is that you're willing to be the most melodramatic person ever. But then there's a footnote that's like,

do you think it's an accident? The Palpatine is whispering into Anakin's ear on the other side of his shoulders from where he's carrying Obi-W-W-W-W-W. It's like, yeah, dude, I get it. I get it. Who are the one who's telling us? It's dramatic irony.

We know. That's the whole, yeah. Hey, reader, let me put you on game. You have dramatic irony? I will say, I think that's part of what's interesting about this book. There's like three books in this book. One of them is mythopoetic, like, high-minded, what is the force, the dark, the light. One of them is like, is pretty strict military sci-fi for someone who doesn't.

not read books. And so you get phrases like, Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi, we're the go-to guys for the Jedi Council, right? Like, real, you don't read books stuff. And I'm not, that's not a, I'm not a judgment. It is really like you were writing the mass market adaptation of what is going to be the biggest, you know, summer blockbuster of the year. You need to anticipate that people who are reading for the first time or read one thing a year or who've never read this style of book before. And the third one is, As he points out, like, Greek tragedy, you know, extremely melodramatic, extremely interested in the bond between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. And he slips into what he calls in the footnotes, the storyteller mode, which is this kind of like, again, high melodrama.

You know, this is what it means to be Obi-Wan Kenobi. This is, you know, what it is to be Anakin Skywalker today. The side of the book has what I think is a quote from later in the book. And so I'm not going to read it out loud. but like this is the this is it right this is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker and in those modes he goes into a present tense he is really the he also describes these sectors as being freeze frame moments and it's like taking a moment from the movie hitting pause and then getting a ton of character interiority and i think those are the moments that both make the book sing and then i don't need him to in the footnotes to tell me that they're banging

There's a lot of like reach down to the book and give me a high five right now. Marks of the footnotes. Yeah, there's a footnote that is just told you. It's so funny. Now, if you made me write footnotes on something I wrote 20 years ago, I might also do that. But, you know, with a bit where he's like. Yeah, I guess yourself up. Why not?

Yeah, I guess, yeah. The bits where he's like, it fucked me up writing this about Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker and how they should have been boys forever. That's true. Yeah. I get it. Is anyone else doing the audiobook? I am also doing the audiobook. I'm bouncing between all of these modes because this is who I am.

Yeah, I've been like splitting my time between the audio book and an ebook that I have. And the funny thing about the like perspective changes in the audio book is that they play this like wishing sound effect before they do it. It has the like, it's not like, I was going to say reality TV, but it's more than that. It's like true crime type, like we're going back to the narrator now type stuff. Totally. It's very, very funny to listen to. I got to shout out the reader for the audiobook who is Jonathan Davis, not corn, Jonathan Davis, different Jonathan Davis, who does, who does the audio, who's a lot of audiobook narration. He did Book of the New Sun, which I listened to extensively for the show by genre section on Book of the New Sun.

And that is like such a different book because it's this very. complex, weird, post-apocalyptic, you know, dark future sci-fi, science fantasy thing. That is, that is tonally way different than this. And it's really funny to have him

now be like, Anakin Skywalker did a backflip, you know? Which is a lot of this, that's the other part of this. He does do the little voices. Did you get, did you get him doing Anakin doing a Yoda impression? Did you, were you listening for that line? I did not listen to that. But it's

How funny how he can like kind of do an Obi-Wan, but Anakin just sounds like protagonist. Like he might as well be Ezra. It's very funny to be. His Obi-Wan's pretty good. His Duku is pretty good. Yeah. And I think to that end, and we should probably like get into summary and like dig through it. But I think Stover kind of gets these characters.

I think that's the other nice thing about this book. I, and maybe gets them in a different way than what other people. He has a conception of these characters that is fully featured. he understands Anakin and Anakin's relationship to fear. He understands a version of Duku that I think is pretty distinct from the Duku we've seen before as being just kind of a sociopath, being a solipsist, and really digging into that stuff. He really gets Obi-Wan's relationship to the force in a way that I don't know that we've seen delved into very much. Padme's on a page or two, but we don't really know anything about her yet.

I'm sure we'll get... She's getting in the way of the boy. She's getting to... Yeah, we'll get that. We'll get that. We'll get that. Yeah. The moment where he's hanging with Padmay and Artu comes out of the closet, I'm like, God

damn, we're just... We'll talk about this later. We'll talk about it later. We'll talk about it later. Okay. I have a big question asked. Okay. But yeah, I think that that's...

Those are... What are your general feelings about this book? I will say, I like how you broke it down, Austin, into the three books, because I think that's very true in my experience of it because when we're talking about burning shrapnel, like blazing across hulls, my eyes start to glaze over and I'm like, okay. Oh man, you are not cut out for battle tech books. I guess watch this face is not reading battle tech fiction. But when it gets to

Obi-Wan and Anakid were more than Master and Padawan. They were brothers. They were more than brothers, he says. And they were more than brothers. Just two dudes with butt. Juicy asses. It's wild, dude.

That's what I'm going. Yeah, yeah, yes, yes. I'm reading this book. My eyes are fixated on the page, on the words themselves. So, you know, there's just different stuff for everyone. And I love the melodrama of it all. It reminds me of a video of Camille Paglia, who I often quote as being Joyce Carol Oates,

but it's not Joyce Carol Oates, but when I remember it in my mind's eye, I remember it as Joyce Carol Oates saying this thing. But there's a great video that we can. link that I actually was just resurfaced because I was talking about it with someone recently where

she describes watching she she catches Revenge of the Sith on like on TV it's playing in like a syndicated marathon or something it's her first time ever she's never really been into the

Revenge of into the Star Wars movies she watches it and she talks about how the battle on Mustafa is like the best scene in filmmaking in the 21st century so far. She was like this is

Greek tragedy, they're brothers, there's love, there's betrayal, blah, blah. It's an incredible video. Watch it because it's just it's just amazing to see someone with Zero stake in the game goes so hard for Reven to the Sith.

I'm like, she gets me, she gets me. But in that, you know, in that same way that she described kind of the Greek tragedy of the scene on Mustafa. I think of that as I'm reading this book. And it plays into, I love it. it is at its best to me when it is playing into the fact that this has all already occurred and that we everything has been determined and it does so in a really interesting way that that it feels like you're you're going back in time to these moments with these characters but that it is back in time that it that it has passed and that there is nothing that can be

done to save these characters at this point in time. But it does feel transportative. Is that a word? Transportative. We know what you mean at the very least. To being back in that moment just before the fall. So that's, I'm enjoying it so far. I'm excited to get more into, less, less into action sequences and more into, although I think

it does write them pretty well. It's certainly approachable for me as somebody who is not oft imagining ships. Serulian beams coruscating through layers of duristial armor. Yeah. It doesn't come up

for me a lot. It's funny because like some of that stuff is some of that stuff is really traditional military sci-fi, the space battle stuff. And some of it is like because it's so interested in the forces, because it's so interested in what the experience of being these people is,

it slips between those two modes a lot in the on foot sequences and especially in the lightsaber battles where like how Count Duku will sometimes describe in the narration, because you're kind of in Duku's perspective for that chapter, will describe like the force sending him information

or like him picking up things, not sensing through the force, but like the way he describes it actually, the thing that I think of a lot, the thing I've been thinking about a lot, is the force will throw something. It's not that someone's using the force to throw something. And maybe that actually just reflects his weird solipsism,

but he describes the force as if it's a presence in the room that is itself moving things in a way that's not just Anakin does a force throw. Or he senses the force up the stairs in a really weird way in a certain segment. When we get there, I'll try to point out the thing I'm talking about. And that stuff, I think, is more like the introspective parts of the book

than the space battle, which just the space battle really does take up a chapter in a way that's fascinating. Yeah, I definitely have the same exact reaction where I was like, I bet I'll like this book more when they're not in a space battle. But for what was there, I mean, it was still really interesting,

and the characterization is so in point that I'm really having fun with it. There's something like that feels maximalist in the way that it's written that really reminds me of the prequels in terms of like everything just feeling larger than life and having all these set pieces that feel really filled in like I you know I don't want to feel like dismissive when I say that this book is really verbose um but like there are times when that really works and there's times when it really does it and when it's really working I'm like this is Star Wars I'm in it it it feels huge it

feels like everything's happening at once. And then there's moments where there's a line like, Jedi and Sith and Sith and Jedi spinning, whirling, crashing together, slashing, chopping, parrying, binding, slipping and whipping, and ripping the air all around them, and stars of power. And I'm like, I fucking get it. Yeah, dude, they're fighting.

Like, I get it. We move on. Yeah. It's wild because it's like, I think Jedi and Sith and Jedi actually hit something interesting, which is like, oh, Duku is the moment at which is the moment at which a Sith still has Jedi like characteristics and Anakin is the point at which a Jedi begins to become a Sith.

That's great. And I didn't need the rest. You know, I didn't. I, you know, it is what it is. Twirling, twirling. Yeah, it's truly. It's someone just being like, okay, yeah, turning and turning the widening

guy, yeah, I got it. But what if we did that for like, I don't know, just stunts it out of like 10 minutes. Eat your heart out, Yates. Yeah, dude. You don't get it. It's bad out here, man. You thought you understood war? Not like these guys. So I echo everything said here. Like I as someone who grew up being like, yum, yum, yum, space battles, lasers, all this. I'm still like, God damn, this is, this is a lot of, a lot of action. And I would also say, like, I read better military

sci-fi. Like, in terms of like battle writing, I think this is not terribly accomplished. in places it's very, very good. And in places, I think it is a bit tedious in this opening section. I think the book overall, like I'm kind of charmed by this edition. I'm reading the author's note up front, sort of laying out the fact that George Lucas basically says, just go wild with it. Like, have fun with the, like, here's the script. It's adapted however you want. We're not, you don't retell the movie.

Just do what you need to do. just don't change the story. And so he gets a sort of carte blanche to do his own take on it and describing, yes, the central narrative challenge of writing a novelization of this, which is everyone knows what's going to happen. So what's the, where do you find interest in this? That stuff's all good. It's fun reading.

The little freeze frame moments are cool. Like the things that he's trying to draw out about the characters. It reminds me of why I find a lot of the setting so compelling because when you do have characters who are in this sort of like mythic space, like there's not one Odysseus, for instance, in like Greek storytelling tradition, right? There's like he could be a hero. He could be an evil snake. He could be a tragic. Like there's a lot of things you can do with that character. Right.

And so like there's not one ducu, right? It's not the same ducu of like ducu Jedi lost. That's right. But it still feels authentic to what Christopher Lee put on the screen. Like this is a ducu. It's shifted off axis from some of the other ducos we've observed. But there's a truth, there's a truth to it in its approach on these characters. And I think that's what like operating that mythopoetic space allows you to do,

which is that the characters themselves are so simple that you can almost imagine any facet. on them. And they feel like you could interpret that into that character. And so you can always come and reexamine these characters because you're always like different authors, different creators will find a different way to sort of have the like catch on different aspects of the character. And I think this broadly does that stuff pretty well. It's been the most interesting part of this so far. As for like summary stuff, I don't think there is too much to summarize. Like this is the opening space battle and the rescue of Palpatine from the start of. the movie. The catch is every time we have the characters introduced, we do have these

freeze frame present tense moments that are meant to fill in the character's mental state and context for where they are at at this moment in the story. You might have a flashback to something else that they are reminded of over the course of the story. But for the most part, It is what you remember from the opening of the film, Big Space Battle, landing aboard the... The Invisible Hand. The Invisible Hand. Wink.

See, because capitalism and because actually the true invisible hand behind it all is Darts Sidious, and he's right there, huh? I think the choice that is being made here is also... When in the movie, we spend almost our entire time of the rescue hanging out with Obi-Wan and Anakin. And here, we actually mostly see the rescue unfold from the perspective of the Sith agents who were watching this unfold. So we spend a lot of time watching Dukhu and what he thinks is his role in this plot, what he knows from collaborating with Palpatine. We spend a portion of this watching it from Grievous's perspective as he oversees the, the, the, the waning stages of the space battle.

So what is distinct here from what you see in the film is the film is very much like what Duke who sort of acknowledges is he's watching a comic adventure unfolding as as Anakin and Obi-One have little Anakin, little antics and bits as they make their way to rescue the chancellor. But we spend a lot of our time in this dug into the interior space of the characters on the way to these final of these final. showdowns. And then we conclude with Anakin crash landing, uh, the ship on, on Corrassant, um, as after after the battle. Um, so that is that is where things leave off.

So we do not get to, um, Padmay is horribly miscalculated. Hey, I have great news. Um, I'm so curious. I'm so stoked. I'm so stoked. Yeah. But, uh, for the, for the moment where, we're, we're here. So opening, opening. sections, like very much trying to paint a vivid tablo of battle. The thing that's I found really interesting here. Stover seems

really convinced that Star Wars needs to adhere to hard sci-fi rules. Wait, wait, wait, wait, before we I just want to, can I, before we get to sci-fi- Before we get to chapter one, I want to ask questions about the introduction. Because there's

two introductions to this book. There is, the one that's like, this story happened a long time ago, galaxy far, far away. And in that section, one, and I'm curious how people took this. It's also happening right now as you read these words. Obviously, I think partly he's setting up his moves between past tense and present tense, because he goes into present tense whenever he does the, like, this is what it means

to be Obi-Wan Kenobi stuff. But he's also writing this book in 2005. And I actually had one other 2005-related question. He writes his book. This book comes out before the movie comes out. So this could be your first time reading about what happens. And I'm curious, like, I dismissed the idea that he was being explicitly, hey, it's 2005 and we're in Iraq right now. Until I read the footnote about the invisible hand where he very explicitly is like, oh, yeah, all the bad guys are the conservatives very explicitly.

And I'm curious whether else read that section or that phrase, it's happening right as you read these words to be that. Well, I mean, you have to remember, I cracked this book open a few hours after we learned that the United States has just abducted a president from his palace in Venezuela. So there was a bit of like, I'm a bit on the nose, I think, Mr. Stover. And yet you appear to have been spittin, as it were. You did call this. And so there's there's a bit of resonance there. For sure. But it's hard on the sleeve.

It doesn't surprise me that Lucas wouldn't trust this to someone's similar sort of mainstream lib sensibilities. Of the time. Yeah, for sure. Then the second introduction starts. And I think it instantly brings up stuff that we have been asking for five years on this podcast. What's the media like in Star Wars during the Clone Wars?

How do people, what do people think about the Jedi and about Obi-Wan could Nobie and Anakin Skywalker, and we get answers to that stuff. And why is it that everyone turns on the Jedi so quick? And this little like four page intro or whatever hits a lot of that stuff. We know the word HoloNet is used in ways here that I don't know that we've really heard. Sorry, I was saying. So we got like three intros.

We have the author's note. Oh, right. Well, the author's note isn't in the original. It's not an intro to. Yeah, you're right. There's that intro too, yeah, which I think you summarized really nicely, which is George said go wild. They're called laser swords.

Then there's his opening crawl. Then there's the opening crawl. And then the intro intro is people watching the invasion of course on on CNN. That's right. And the parents being like, oh my God, we're fucked. Yeah. And all the little little younglings in the galaxy being like, don't worry, mama, don't worry, Papa. Master Kenobi and the hero with no fear will save us.

Yeah. Yeah, because the kids love Obi-Wod and Anakin. They are action heroes. They are movie heroes to them in a way that's like, I think, really interesting to think about. He uses the word younglings

to just refer to children in general around the galaxy. Which is a rule they adopted at Galaxy's Edge. I guess they did do that. Yeah, that is true. Yeah. And explicitly, I think that that divide,

he's like, adults have been made cynical by all of this. Like, he says, adults across the galaxy watch the hollow net with ashes where their hearts should be. They have been, they have been living through news about war and seeing firsthand how bad everything's going, which ends up being also a big part of the backstory that's gestured at with Obi-Wan and Anakin once chapter one proper starts. Is that like they're both exhausted from what sound like a bunch of really fucked up terrible battles that they've lived through. and the adults have been paying attention to that. But because of the effectiveness of the HoloNet propaganda machine, the kids are just like, yeah, Anakin and Obi-Wan,

they're about to show up and save the day. I think that that's fascinating. Yeah, to the kids, it's like a string of wins. Every battle is something one and therefore good. And the adults see the ramifications, like, the lives lost, the resources drained. There's a great paragraph in the opening, in the first opening paragraphs where Stover is describing the battle

and says, you know, killing beings you have trained with and eaten with and played and laughed and bickered with. From the inside, the battle is desperation and terror and the stomach-churning certainty that the whole galaxy is trying to kill you. And I think like the adults get that battle comes at a horrific cost and even more so that the Republic side of the battle comes at arguably a more significant. I mean, it's hard to argue significant. Battle droids are people in a lot of ways. And also battle droids are being printed by the.

hundreds of thousands, if not millions. They are, there seems to be an endless supply of battle droids. And on the Republic side, it is clones, it is Jedi, it is presumably members of the galaxy who have taken up arms, who have joined forces on their respective planets. and that is a very real cost to a being watching it on the hollow net who, you know, is seeing this battle. So don't worry, Gaines is going to get us through this. Is the most beloved man in the galaxy. That's what I'm saying.

What? Yeah. This was like the hardest pill for me to swallow because I, I, I. I just have such a hard time picturing Palpatine. I mean, Ian McDermid is a fantastic actor. He is really good at being a devilish, impish, you know, ruler from the shadows. I have never found him particularly charming or persuasive in his portrayal of Palpatine.

So it was, it's, it's, I'm, I'm using my imagination skills. I'm imagining a world in which Palpatine has, has come to power with the support of the people of Corrassant, that the people of Corrassant look to Palpat, like, when he became chancellor, that that was something that was, you know, had a lot of public backing towards. And that's not to say there's, like, clearly tons of propaganda on the HoloNet

that would be influencing the general public in how they perceive Palpatine. But it seems like he really, and especially in how Anakin describes him, which was the most eye-opening part of this, because Stover really strives to sell you that Palpatine is one of Anakin's dearest and nearest and closest friends. Yeah, Anakin really loves three people. Obi-Wan Kenobi, Palpatine, and then, like, R2D2 is like half a person, and then so is Padme.

So that's right now, that's what I feel about Anakin's guy. I want. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's more in on Palpatine than I think the movie ever makes me think. Oh, yeah. No, 100%. Like, it is, this is my dad. And it's like, I don't, this is a take. It's a take.

It's an interpretation. There are moments they gesture at it in the movie and in Clone Wars, but I don't think they ever fully, because I think they also have to get to, he's very quick to turn on Palpatine when he finds out he's a Sith. It breaks differently in the end, but like his first instinct is, I am calling. calling the police. I need to go tell my buddies about your whole Sith deal. But I do think there's an interesting move here where it's made more resident now

that the wiser, more cynical adults are actually the more effectively propagandized people in this story, that the children foolishly believe in heroes, believe in the story of the goodness and indomitability of Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker. But they have placed their trust in the, their cynicism has led them to conclude the Republic is fatally flawed. It is falling apart. And the only person who can hold it together and promises them a fix for this is Palpatine.

Like this is the cynical, wiser response to this is we need a man like Palpatine in charge at a moment like this, which is a very 2005, like, like, lesson to draw from this. where you had a lot of people who were completely sincerely convinced that, like, it was a good thing that someone like George W. Bush had risen to power at such a moment because it was a moment that was made for him. And it was like, no, this is not a Prince Hal turning to Henry. Like, there was nothing, there was nothing before or after 9-11 that suggested he ever had, like some reserve of judgment or steel or nerve or courage. It was just kind of a hard-headed asshole. And he was before and he was after.

You've said a lot when we hit on this stuff. It's like there was a real ideological, rhetorical position that was like, we need tough guys. We need people who are willing to do what it takes no matter what it takes to win us this war and get us through this dark period. You brought that up a lot, Rob, during the first Harkin appearances in Clone Wars. And that was all over the place of that. There was a lot of like, well, thank God Al Gore didn't, wasn't the one here. And, you know, there was a lot of from other folks. Oh, my God, I wish we had Al Gore instead of this guy.

But there really was among a certain sort of self-described realists, you know, out there who are like, well, you know, at the end of the day, we need someone who's going to do what we need to do. And you can imagine that maps here pretty nicely. Also, they don't trust the Jedi. They don't trust the Jedi. Jedi this book describes as like they're falling. Like people keep seeing Jedi falling to the dark, including a name that we should. Maybe we remember. I don't know.

Do people remember Deepa Blabba? No. That's Canaan's master. So in this timeline, Canaan's master fell to the dark side. In this version of it. Yeah. When that part came up,

God, I'm trying to find it because it pissed me off in the moment. Oh, yeah. It's worse listening to it. It's so bad. It's because the stories are out there. Not on the HoloNet, of course. The HoloNet news is under control.

the office of the Supreme Chancellor, and not even Palpatine's renowned candor would allow tales like these to be told. But people hear whispers, whispers of names that the Jedi would like to pretend never existed. Sorabulk, Deepa Bilaba. Yeah, well, Jedi who have fallen to the dark. Who? Who? Add it to Sullivan's post. Add it to Sullivan's post. Two more Jedi on the, on the, You don't know about Sorabulk? You don't know about the weakway Jedi master from the bulk family on the room. I can't believe. I can't believe.

So, I'd be like, look, no one wants to tell you this, but Deepa Balapa felt. It'd be like, shut the fuck up. That's right. You're making this up. Stop it. The important thing to know is this is like super part of his whole strategy. Not for you to know. Y'all have read him say this.

But for the listener who is not reading along, one of the things he says in the first introduction, I talked to George Lucas about writing this book. He's like, I had a two-part plan. Part one, Greek tragedy. Part two. You ever hear about a little thing called the expanded universe? Or, you know, part of his, part of his, one strategy is about people who know what's going to happen here because they understand that, you know, Anakin is Darth Vader. And they know that Anakin's going to fall.

So you got to write the Greek tragedy. His other interest is serving the people who are reading this book because they read everything in Star Wars that comes out. And so his strategy is like, people know about Deepa Balaba. People know about Sora Bulk and they know what happened on Jabim and they know all of the, they know the Alpha, one of the Clone War troopers and they know. And like, we don't know. I got to tell you, buddy, we don't care. We don't care.

And I think it's funny because it's just like, I think in the time and place, I think it's probably the right, it's an interesting strategy at least because I would have probably, I wasn't. I wasn't doing it. I wasn't, but I was a Star Wars head in the way that I guess I theoretically am now. Maybe I would have been reading

the Clone Wars comics where Anakin has to go to Jabim and see all of his friends fucking get murdered and have his heart broken and he chokes a guy briefly where he force chokes an ally briefly.

Like, I get it. That might have hit when he references Jabim in this book. But I didn't until an hour before we started the podcast so I could know what the fuck happened on Jabim. And I think those references

is basically work, but when you, but when you lay them, when, when Anakin says, I don't want what happened on your beam to happen again. That works. But when you do the line you just read, that's like whispers of names that I would like to pretend never existed. And then you say names that people don't know, it doesn't hit. It can't. Right. Right. Because if you're, if you're in, uh, if you're in the book two, which is I just watch Revenger's and Sith and that movie ripped and I and all I want is to read more about my dear Anakin and his fall and his and his relationship with Obi-Wan and and maybe a little bit on some other people too. I'm not going to know who these people are because all I've watched are the movies.

I don't know these guys. You run into the problem of a lot of Star Wars names are kind of crap. Like things that need to evoke like a thing I think a lot about is like the final battle of the French and Indian War in North America takes place on the plains of Abraham. Like that is the name. Like, do you need like, that doesn't need, I can just be like since so and so fell on the planes of Abraham. And like the biblical connotations, the like, oh man, I'll put that with some real shit.

J-Beem. J-A-B-I-I-M. I got to tell you. It's J-A-B-I-I-M for the listener. J-B-E-M. It's fucked up. I just read this. It is the third collected

clone, I think it's Clone Wars Volume 3, is that's actually what it's called. Yeah, Clone Wars Volume 3. And it's called Last Stand on Jabim. It's like four or five issues. The very short version of it for, for y'all, I don't think we should like cover this in a bonus. I don't think it's worth all that. Is that Obi-Wan and Anakin, maybe not Obi-Wan, maybe it's a different guy, actually. Anakin and a bunch of other Patawans are on Jabim.

Jibim is a planet where there are some, separatist sympathizers who've risen up against the Republic led by a dude named something cloud it's named like his name is like cloud cloud it like genuinely is

one of the goofiest names I've ever heard and he's like a badass with a sword and a shield and the very short version of this is all the Padawans die except for Anakin Palpatine makes sure that Anakin can escape with his life.

And at the very end, there are only enough transports come to get the clone troopers away from the incoming separatist forces. And so Anakin explicitly gets the clone troopers on board the ships and leaves behind a bunch of civilians. And one of his civilian military allies steps to him to be like, dude, we just lost a bunch of our lives. You said you were going to evacuate us. Anakin force chokes him for a second and like tosses him down to the ground.

And then he's like, oh, sorry, I shouldn't, I shouldn't have done that. And all the while, there's like a fucked up clone trooper who's whispering in his ear about how if you just let us assassinate the enemy leader and let us kill our prisoners of war, it would all, this would have all gone easier. So Anakin's coming out of that. And the diehard Star Wars fan will have just read that comic, right? And we'll be coming into this being like, oh, shit, Jabeem. But that's not me. I love that also, because you got to keep like shading it. Like, at that point, it's like, dude, this guy isn't falling.

it's over. He's done. The more you shade in, the more you shade in, like, and here's some other fucked up stuff that Anakin did. It's like, yeah. Yeah, because he's fucked up, actually. He should be in jail now. This is not, oh, man, I hope he doesn't become

Darth. He's like joking. Someone is being like, how can you abandon it? It's like he's like yeeting people off the roof at the Saigon embassy. Like, go fuck yourselves. I found the name of this guy, by the way. The name of the, the, the Jibimi Seperist commander is

out. Stratis and he has a group of secret commanders called the Nimbus. Yeah. Yeah. He kills a bunch of Padawans. Oh, yeah. You know, not just Greaves out here getting dubs. That's what I like to hear.

All right. Chapter 1, Anakin and Obi-Wan. Rob, you were saying. Okay. So Stover is like, makes this move a few times throughout this opening stage. He's like, no, Star Wars space combat doesn't make sense. So I'm just going to pretend it's, so he starts talking about like, oh, nobody but a Jedi

could command a fighter that's moving the significant fraction of the speed of light. Do you have any idea how fast the speed of light is? It is not compatible with the scale of combat we see in Star Wars. Like it is like he begins to write about, if you've read the, uh, oh, how, the culture novels in banks it opens on like a battle and this is a very sort of hard sci-fi space battle thing to do which is it will be over in an eye blink that it is like people just like seeing things on a sensor firing torpedoes it's like two ships passing by each other blasting away with torpedoes as they like whip past each other at the speed of light and then somebody

dies somebody somebody wins and that's it there's no drama there's no like you know drawing up like yard arm to yard arm like it's uh you know uh master and commander it is just cold it's clinical it is like math equations being done faster than a human could contemplate because the distances are also vast that's not star wars combat star was basically like it was pretty good when war was fought with biplanes and uh sailboats and so we're just going pretend that like all this stuff operates like that and stovers here kind of being like no There's a, there's a, so he's got the, he's talking about the ships moving at the speed of light and only Jedi could pilot them. He also taught, there's a moment where Palpatine is looking through the viewport at the entire tablo of the battle.

He's like, but, but he's not a viewpoint. It's a, it's a computer simulation that takes the vast distances between the ships and makes it look like they're all like right next to each other. But obviously they're like, you know, thousands of kilometers apart blasting away. But like, and they're just kind of weird little moves. Because it's like, no, dude, like, it's Star Wars. They're, they're literally on top of each other. We know what these battles look like. It's not, yep.

You know who understands that is George Lucas. There's that footnote later on in aboard the ship about the anti-gravity stuff, about how there is a, sorry, not anti-gravity, but simulated gravity aboard the ship. And the footnote is like, you know, I went to the editor to be like, hey, like, how do I make it? There has to be some sort of gravity generator in here. George knows this isn't how it works, right? And the editor's note back is like, yeah, dude, George just thinks the way that he wants it to work is fun.

And that's George Lucas, you know, and I definitely think the moments, Rob, you're right, that the moments were Wurstovers reaching for some sort of grounded. And I get the point. The point is he's trying to emphasize, Anakin Skywalker is like that. Anakin can do this stuff that nobody else can do. Of course, what we do know is lots of people fly fighters in Star Wars.

Droids fly fighters, clones fly fighters. Eventually the rag-tag squadron that blows up the Death Star, which does include a would-be Jedi who's using the force, flies fighters. So it doesn't quite, that part I think doesn't quite work. The stuff that works for me is Obi-Wan and Anakin finishing each other's sentences and maneuvers and relying on each other and bickering. There's a lot of Crystal Crisis of Udipau here. Remember the unfinished animatic episode that we watched of like, oh, this is them in the final

moments before it all falls apart. And they are, you know, Anakin has been, has already been scolded and has been lectured so many times that he already knows the lecture that's coming. Obi-Wan has heard for, you know, years now how much Anakin loves R2. And so we get the like, the little aside of R2 proving himself. And Obi-Wan be like, damn, you, I guess you've always been right about that little droid.

I guess maybe droids are people. Rest and piss are for. That's right. But yeah. And they do finish each other, like, oh, the intimacy in this combat. And you know, you know, you know, we're already at a different level. When there's a moment that's just narrated from

Obi-Wan's perspective, and Anakin replies to it over the radio. Yeah. And Obi-Wan's like, what? Did I say that out loud? No. It wouldn't matter if you did. Yeah. Oh, my heart.

Yeah, dude. That stuff is the real stuff, I think. You know, the man he flies to rescue was a closer friend than he'd ever hope to have. the the where's the other bit here where did I write the word Yowie for the first time now that's the word brat

because he's a huge brat here it is he locked a snarl beneath his tweet his tweet but need his teeth twisting his starfighter around another explosion that could have peeled its armor like an overripeithorian starfruit he hated this part hated it

flying for droids this is Obi-Man Kenobi his cockpit speakers crackled there isn't a droid that can outfly you, master. You know what? So true. And that's how we get Anakin entering the scene.

That's right. Let me just like from up until this point, we've been in Obi-Wan's perspective talking about, you know, we're in the cockpit with him. Yeah, we're in the heat of the battle, uh, opening paragraphs of this chapter. And then Anakin enters via, via essentially telepathy.

Yeah. Well, well, well, if it isn't the blowjob brothers. It's very funny. And the place this all gets to is this then is Obi-Wan and Anakin. They are closer than friends, closer than brothers. Though Obi-Wan is 16 standard years, Anakin's elder, they have become men together.

Neither can imagine life without the other. The war has forged their two lives into one. And that is like the big picture thing, right? And it is maybe one of the great, the thing that's already there in Revenge of the Sith, the movie is like, oh, they do complete each other. Like, Obi-Wan needs Anakin's impulsiveness. You know, Anakin needs Obi-Wan's restraint. They have, they came up together in a way that very few people get to, and very few people

would want to when it comes to living through war. And if that stuff doesn't hit for you, the book. probably won't hit for you because it is the loudest thing in the book is their love for each other at this point. You know, together they are unstoppable. They are the ultimate go-to guys of the Jedi Order. When the good guys, capital G, capital G, absolutely positively have to win, the call goes out. Any other first chapter things that we want to call on?

I'm trying my best not to just read a bunch of shit, but. I know. Well, one thing I do want to call out is there's a bit. in the first chapter where Obi-Wan describes, like, sort of the differences between him and Anakin and describes seeing Quigone in Anakin in a way that almost like hurts his heart in how much he misses Quigon to see him in Anakin

is like a reminder of having lost him. But that, to kind of zoom out a little bit, that Anakin and Obi-Wan work. working together has changed both of them for the better in a lot of ways. And that that working with each other has led to them rubbing off on each other. And one of the ways in which Anakin has rubbed off on, on, um, uh, Obi-Wan is that, you know, it, it's, he, he's like loosened up a little bit, that he, that he, when it comes to this kind of like,

tag team operation, the way that, like, he, he almost allows himself a bit of playfulness in, in the way, in their partnership. And he describes it as this clenched jaw insistence on absolute correctness that Quigon always said was his greatest flaw. It's a quote from the book. Obi-Wan Kenobi has learned to relax. He smiles now and even jokes and has become known for the wisdom, gentle humor can provide. And so the idea that there's like some of Obi-Wan sort of like absoluteist, like, know-it-allness has been leveraged into a way of being humorous or that he's, that he's allowed himself to kind of ease up, even though he can't help himself, but that his delivery of it

is lighter than maybe when he was a Padawan under Quigon. and that has been a result of his relationship with Anakin, who is so loose and so impulsive. And that was a really nice detail that comes out in this first chapter. I like that it gets at this thing, which is the only one we see in episode one is on his way to being a little prick. Oh, yeah.

He really is. And in some ways, his friendship with Anakin has saved him from becoming. that sort of Martinette figure that he was on his way to being because he's ended up being this, you know, older brother parental figure to, it's kind of an irrepressible little kid at first. And then a comrade in arms for the duration of, what it points out, it's been like a war that's gone on most of their lives. You know, something's been happening since Naboo.

I also like this notion of, it's kind of like, it comes off. It comes up often, you know, the Sith rule of two and things like that, these sort of dualities. But I do like here this notion that within the Jedi Order, the healthy version of this is that opposing characters end up complementing each other really, really well. That Quigon's curiosity and open-mindedness was a decent foil for Obi-Wan's doctrinaire, you know, superciliousness, you know, at first. and now in Obi-Wan and Anakin, a similar dynamic is being found where they are balancing each other out and uncovering each other's best traits.

Yeah. Yeah. It's well-rendered. I also like the bits here where it describes like, here's all the things Obi-Wan is good at as a Jedi. Doesn't really like any of it. Doesn't like it.

He wants to get the job done. This is actually the opening of this section, which I thought was really, interesting because I felt myself kind of bulking against it and then trying to do the like backwards like I have been so spoiled by the Obi-1 that we've seen in Clone Wars who is the sort of Anakin impression like playful and you know quirky at times and like you know able to to sort of quickly go through through situations but yeah so the the actual quote is a phenomenal pilot who doesn't like to fly a devastating warrior who'd rather not fight a negotiating a negotiator who'd rather not fight a

negotiator without peer who frankly prefers to sit alone at a quiet cave and meditate. Which like I I guess that's true. I guess when you really think about it that is true. But there's like, I think the part of it for me was like, prefers to sit alone at a quiet cave and meditate. Like I think there's something in Obi-Wan where it's like, these talents are spoiled by the war.

Yes. Less than he doesn't value them. Because like all of the jokes that we made about Obi-Wan like wanting to be Indiana Jones, wanting to be an inventor, wanting to be an archaeologist. Like, I didn't see that in any of these, in this discretion for him. So I was like, wait a minute. But I think the like overall characterization of Obi-Wan ends up being really good in the book otherwise. But I was like, damn. I guess you could say that about Obi-Wan, but I don't know that it's that I would say that about Obi-Wan. It made me wonder what his life would have been like

in peacetime, right? Because, and also like, you know, I think so much of that, that stuff that we know about Obi-Wan is the stuff about like wanting to be an adventurer, wanting to be an anthropologist. He loves to learn about other people's cultures and go talk. He loves to like, go be the person who's like, oh, we can talk to the Yeti species instead of killing them all Anakin. We get that from Clone Wars. And it is funny to think about those traits in a different time. Would he have just been a scholar? Would he have just been a teacher? Would he have just been? How much time would he spend on Corrassant versus deployed to some dig site or to go make contact with new cultures.

Like I think both versions of that can work, but they're fun to think about it. It goes back again, Rob to your thing of like, there's many versions of Odysseus. There's many versions of Obi-Wan. This one is the person who's beset upon by war. He's the one who grudgingly is using all of his talents to do this instead of as far as Stover is set up, kind of just like just chill, chill. Focus on his meditation, focus on Jedi. training instead of being out in the world.

And that is distinct. And actually, it ends up, it ends up rhyming with, with Obi-Wan in the cave on Tatooine, which maybe the book will get to in the end, right? Oh, he just wants to sit alone in the quiet cave and meditate. Well, guess what, buddy? You know, get ready to learn Tatooine. Like, that's where you're going. And so, and there's a lot of that in here, right?

There's a lot of, you know, later on in this reading that we did today, there's a bit where it's like, Obi-Wan will decide, you know, to live or to die. And when he makes a decision, he'll commit to it. And like, yeah, so true. Eventually, he will make the other version of the choice. So. Mm-hmm.

Another thing I really love about this opening for Obi-Wan, oh, sorry. It starts by saying inside he still feels like a Padawan, which is like, we know this because his growth as a Jedi was kind of stunted by Quigon's death. But the book doesn't go into here, into it here and instead shifts to like, you know, you don't grow truly until you've become a master

and then it just like completely goes into the Anakin stuff instead of that. And I was like, that is interesting choice. It is. I'm wondering if we'll get more Quigone here throughout the book. The book feels like it could bring us Obi-Wan and Quigon stuff that, or at least reference it because of the way that it's able to go back and forth in time a little bit. So we did also skip the other intro. There's four intros if you count the other one.

There's that one page about the dark. That seems like every section is going to get one of those, like every part, every part. So the part one, victory one is like, the dark is generous. The dark is, did you know there's no light without the dark? You know, day is an illusion. It's so funny. I had to read this like three times because I like hadn't gotten like into the book yet. I was like, what the fuck?

Yeah. Do we want to talk about the dragon and an Anacocon? We have to talk about the dragon in Anakin's heart. Okay. Raise my hand really quick. Did anybody read the footnote that sends you to the back of the book to read about... Yes, but I didn't go to 430. Okay.

I didn't go to page 432 yet. Okay. It's not a spoiler. It's a behind the scenes thing. But let's talk about the dragon that's here. And then I'll tell you about the dragon in the back of the book. What's up with the dragon in the center of Anakin's heart? You know how there's dragons inside the sun?

Yeah, so there's dragons that live inside suns, which are smaller than the dragons than the sun dragons who live inside fusion furnaces. Wait, no. Other way around, right? Maybe? Other way around, yes. Sorry, this was written very confusingly, but Anakin is, we're sort of being introduced to Anakin's greatest weakness,

which is his fear. He's incredibly powerful, the fastest, the strongest, unbeatable, unstoppable. He is the best. He is known as on the hollow net, the hero with no fear, except that fear is his, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, you really get the sense that in Anakin's mind and body is to, is to be either consumed by fear or consciously, um, sublimating it somehow, consciously trying to control it, trying to force it down is very, it feels like a struggle. It feels like something that takes a lot of force and, and willpower. Yeah.

Anakin's will is referenced a lot in throughout this chapter and in the following chapters. Do we want to just read that section? The Anakin sometimes thinks. of dread section because it seems like it's going to be center to all this. Yeah. Anakin sometimes thinks of the dread that each at his heart as a dragon. Children on Tatouine tell each other of the dragons that live inside the suns. Smaller cousins of the sun dragons are supposed to live inside the fusion furnaces that power

everything from starships to pod racers. But Anakin's fear is another kind of dragon, a cold kind, a dead kind, not nearly dead enough. Not long after he became Obi-Wan's Padawan all those years ago, a minor mission had brought them to a dead system, one so immeasurably old that its star had long ago turned into a frigid dwarf of hyper-compacted trace of hyper-compacted tracement metals, hovering a quantum fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Aniken couldn't even remember what the mission might have been, but he'd never forgotten that dead star. It had scared him. Stars can die. It's the way of the universe, which is another manner of saying it is the wheel of the force,

Obi-Wan had told him, everything dies. In time, even stars burn out. This is why Jedi form no attachments. All things pass. To hold on to something or someone beyond its time is to set your selfish desires against the force. That is a path of misery, Anakin. The Jedi do not walk it. That is the kind of fear that lives inside of Anakin Skywalker, the dragon of that dead star.

It is an ancient cold dead voice within his heart that whispers. All things die. And it continues from there. This dragon thing really keeps going. Even stars burn out. But this is it, right? Everything dies. He's afraid of death.

He's afraid of losing people. He wants to protect people. Tell me if you've heard this one before. But this idea of the dead star dragon, the cold dragon of fear, this is the thing that that Stover returns to again and again to characterize. this part of who Anakin is. I like that. I like that this dragon is described as cold,

and I think it's interesting rather than, like, you think of the dark side, you think of red, you think of hot, you think of giving into your passions, giving into fire, rage. Like, I think that characterizes so much of the dark side to me, but it's interesting to think of the dark side in Anakin, or rather his path to the dark side,

as being this very cold, frigid feeling, this thing that ices him out from those around him, this, like, you know, cave of frost growing inside him, that it renders him. I don't know. I think of like in the moments where he gives into it, when he gives into his fear, it's like what comes over him is almost,

it isn't, it is almost, it makes more sense to me for him to be so suggestible, for example, to someone, or by someone like Palpatine in those moments, because it's like, it's almost as if he goes, numb with the with the intensity of his feelings. It's like it's like he just turns into this cold weapon that can be deployed. Like that something whispered in his ear is then like coldly and harshly executed in this like unfeeling way.

I mean when you when I think of Anakin in the temple, He's like, as he's like moved through all, like he's, he's dead. He's dead. He's like he's died and he's dead. It's not until he sees Obi-One again where he kind of is resurrected back to feeling. So I think that it was surprising for me in my first reading of it to be like a cold, like to imagine this path to the dark side being something so cold, but I think it speaks to the loneliness.

and and like frigid experience of ending up as Darth Vader. Like, that is a very cold existence. I was really kind of cold on this metaphor at the time. Not cold on it. It felt a little tortured to me until you have brought me to Darth Vader and him as the cold dead dragon, the, you know, barely alive. I think that works for it really well. this was not in the book originally in the way that it is.

This is the footnote that it was so big it needed its own thing at the back of the book, which is Stover submits this book. Two months later, he gets a call from Howard Rothman at Lucasfilm. And there's some other people from Lucasfilm on the call. I'd lost my shit because Mr. Rothman had called and said, George doesn't like the dragon stuff. it all has to go. And they needed the changes by the day after tomorrow.

He'd called me at night to give me a head start. And so that dragon stuff, the previous dragon stuff, is not in the book anymore. This dragon stuff is what he landed on overnight after he cursed everyone out on the phone. He goes into detail about how he said a lot of really bad words to them. But they seem not to hold any grudges against him. And they just kept saying over and over, we have complete face. than your ability over and over again whenever he was like, it's impossible for someone to do this. It's a core metaphor for the whole book. How am I supposed to do this? And what it seems like,

so what he says is like George Lucas doesn't like the dragon metaphor. And at that point, one, the dragon metaphor seemed to be about his rage and not about his fear. That the dragon was a dragon. You know, and I'm kind of paraphrasing trying to maybe read between the lines here. What he says is, you know, initially, the original version of the dragon motif was woven into Anakin's fault. It's the dominant image I used to track his descent. And it's that he is filled with a sort of the rage of the dark side, the anger of the dark side, the passion, like you said. And so I think what he's done is he moved it to the dead dragon inside of a star instead

in order to get George's approval, basically. And George's thing was, I don't like this because. it feels like there's something outside of Anakin making him make bad decisions. Oh, the dragon is making him do it. No motherfucker. Anakin is making bad decisions. Seems to be George's position. He didn't curse.

He didn't even have the conversation with the guy himself. He sent his guy to do it, you know? But presumably you could imagine George reading this book and be like, this is all pretty good except for that dragon bullshit. And then he's like, I'll change the dragon stuff, but I'm keeping the dragon. He also talked about having a drinking a half gallon of Californian brandy in order to Ooh, the finest brandy in all the land In order to suit his mood that night

Have you ever partaken of E&J? Yeah, uh-huh, yeah Yeah, I did not like the drag, I did not like imagining a dragon inside Anakin at first, but I think I get to it if I think of all of the fire and rage that is that is the fall that is everything Anakin does until the fall ends up at

the dead dragon in the dead star He burns out like the star burns out Yes exactly that's great that's fantastic It didn't have to be a dragon He could have just been the dead star It could have just been the dead star The kids are talking about dragons The kids love dragons

Have you seen those books? They love them Yeah. You're with Lucas Alley? I am. Well, just because I think that it gets to such a better place with this. Like the, that it's like, you know, we think of Anakin as someone who's so motivated by pride and anger and waste potential

and, you know, listening to things that he shouldn't have and not being able to achieve his goals or whatever. But that they use the word dread here instead is just like, feel so much more. in line with what turns Anakin from just being a brat who wants to be on the council

to I need to become the most powerful person impossible to keep everything that I have in a snow globe basically. I also just like, you know, like when we think of Anakin like culturally, I guess,

you know, we think a lot about like pod racing and droids and stuff like that but the thought of like, you know, that this idea is introduced by saying that the HoloNet calls Anakin the hero with no fear. And then the fear that is in him

is this like childhood mythology that he has that was bigger than anything that, you know, your child, you think of a dragon, you think of something that can't die and like approaching death as something that you're so afraid of that it is like eating at you that like there, I can't become

more so powerful that I can't die like there there's no example in the world that can give that to me and it has become inside of me that fear that like I get why palpatine being like no people don't have to die you can you can you can you can reverse that is like enough of a magic elixir skill issue yeah yeah well and specifically the way that it's overfrabes it is like his real fear in a universe where even stars can die is that being the best will never be quite good enough. He's the best. He was like,

this is what it means to be Anakin Skywalker. You're the best at piloting. You're the most powerful Jedi of your generation. You know, you're the strongest. You're an unstoppable warrior. Mom still died in your arms.

Mom still fucking died in your arms, dude. Sorry. You know? Mm-hmm. One other thing that I don't like about using a dragon as the metaphor is that I don't find

Anakin, Anakin's flaws to be, like, bestial in effect or, like, I wouldn't describe him when he's, like, in his, like, rage state.

Like, I think his fears are deeply being oriented fears to use, you know, or, you know, in our world, yeah. People oriented. In our human, human-oriented fears. Like, it is, yes, there is pride. There is ego,

but there is, there's, yeah, the fear of losing someone no longer having that person exist on the same earth as you. Nowhere in the world can you find that person ever again or in the galaxy. Like that is a deeply, deeply human emotion to, and I know there are examples of animals who mourn. We're not getting into that. But like, allow me. But, and so to imagine the darkness inside him as something like, and huge and, like, you know,

like the monster that is a dragon is like, it just doesn't, it doesn't click for me. Again, like, I think a dead star, something else, I'm not going to write the book for him, but like, it just, it doesn't align with me in the ways that I see Anakin. When Anakin is fighting, he's almost like in tears. Like he's deeply emotional when he's in these moments of rage.

And I just wouldn't characterize him as as sort of like beastly or like animalistic in his, in his rage encounters. Yeah. There's, I am so split about this entire passage. Like parts of it like literally as you're reading awesome, parts of it are like this fucking rules. And then parts of it are like, but then the dead star, I think really dead star dragon is kind of whack. A lot of the other stuff works.

but there's two things. One is this moment of Anakin encountering the Dead Star does remind me of a bit on the good place where they introduced Ted Danson's character to the concept of mortality. And he just freaks out.

Like he's an immortal like angel effectively and the like he reasons out like so wait. So when you die, you just aren't anymore. But then what is me? where do I go? And they're like,

well, you don't go anywhere. You're just dead. And he's like, but that's me. What? No more me? And like it sends him into a spiral. And that it's kind of like,

this reminds me like, Anakin's seeing a dead star and just having this breakdown. And it's like, yeah, dude. Like, hey, there, Slugger, this can happen.

The other part, the thing I do like about this metaphor a little bit is that the star dragons are this vestigial childish belief that God is there and he loves you. That there are, there are friendly dragons in the stars and the sun. There's tiny little dragons powering your heater. There's there's tiny little dragons over the power plant in the, you know, in your computer. They're all, they're everywhere. And what I kind of like about the Death Star Dragon is this realization on Atkins part that if all that's true,

But then there's also a reverse of that coin, which is that there are dragons that are indifferent to you. They are dead. That the warmth they provide the goodness of the galaxy, there are places where it no longer reaches. Yeah. That the magic of the universe, the sense of warmth and protection you get from it is dispelled. And the thing he's projected into it is like where I used to believe that the galaxy was full of these like, magical beings that were fundamentally benign and providing us warmth, I'm now equally aware that there are beings out there that are the void, that are indifference, the cruelty and callousness.

Well, and maybe this is the thing. He wants to be the sun dragon. He wants to be the thing that warms the planet. Natalie, you were talking about his love of other beings for the listener who's not reading along. Stover has decided that instead of saying the word people or human, which obviously not everyone is human in the Star Wars universe. But instead of saying, like, Anakin cared for people. Duke who's going to make that point? Oh, he sure does. Anakin loves other beings.

He wants to protect other beings. And the clones are referred to as beings in this. And there's a little... All the beings watching the hollow net. All the beings watching the hollow net. Yes. And there's a bit in this intro or this first chapter, not the intro.

I'm so intro obsessed, clearly. in the first chapter where he's like, we got to go help Oddball, our clone friend. And Obi-Wan is like, he is doing his job. Oh, we got to do ours. You know, and Anakin's like, but the clones are in trouble. Like, they're getting eaten alive over there. And Obi-Wan is like, yeah, and they would all trade their lives to save Palpatine.

And that's what they're doing. We can't save everyone, Anakin. And Anakin's like, don't remind me because this is what my whole character arc is about. And that's it. He wants to be the sun. He wants to light up everyone's life. He wants to protect everyone. He wants, if he could do it, he would make the crops grow.

And as I'm sure we'll get to, if not him, then who. You know, someone's got to be the sun, God damn it. And it's going to be Anakin Skywalker or else. Have we made it the chapter two? Me playing Pearl Jam's Wish for Anakin and just watching him meltdown. Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, so chapter two,

Duku watches them arrive aboard ship and contemplate. So there's a few things. We learn what Duke who's understanding of what this plot is, because we all know this kidnapping of Palpatine is fake. But what was the plan? What did Duke who think the plan was? And what we learn here is that Duke who has been solved in this vision of he's going to get God, he's been booked to lose,

and he's going to be arrested by the Jedi at the end of this fight, at the end of this battle, and taken into custody alongside Palpatine. and then he will come to Jesus in Republic custody and realize what the separatists have wrought and turn against his former cause, but also because he's a man of such integrity and virtue and has been such a, he was driven to his rebellion by his disgust at what the Republic has become. He will also become sort of the beloved turncoat that has returned to save the Republic and also to refound the Jedi Order along, like, along better,

better, more just, more bold lines. And there's a bit here where the passage sort of notes that Duku himself can concede that there are times he is tempted to believe in this vision of himself that is the, that is the lie. And what's interesting here, too, is that this version of, like, Duku is the lie of Duku is one that we've returned to a lot with the passage from the novelization of attack of the clones where he's pitched to Obi-Wan is basically, hey man, like the republic's already fallen, it's being run by a Sith Lord. It is irredeemably corrupt. It can't support, it can't support its citizens. There's no, there's no help for people who need it, but there's always, you know, benefits for people who are connected.

And so there's always been this notion that there's parts of Duku, like, damn, his critique really does bear some weight. Like, maybe this sort of a tragic heroic figure. And what we're playing with in this passage is that that's always been a projection. Like Duke's actual ambitions here are rancid. Duku is different. Catches a glimpse of the figure he cuts and can't but Marvel at it. It's like the portrait of Doreen Gray. Like, he can't help but be struck by his own figure.

in the way it is rendered on the hollows and in in public life. But then, yes, Austin, to your point, there's this awareness that, and then we get the intro from Dexter. It literally is that. Yeah, he is, he is rendered as a sociopath. He is described as not having love, hate, joy, or anger. He understands jealousy, the book says. He understands possessiveness. He does have a sense of internal justice in the sense that he sees that the world should be one way.

And when it isn't, he calls that injustice. He's deeply intolerable of anything that doesn't fit that. And fundamentally, here's a use of the word beings, he is entirely incapable of carrying what any given creature might feel for him. He cares only what the creature might do for him or to him. Very possibly, he is what he is because other beings just aren't very interesting or even, in a sense, entirely real. And it goes on to explain that he sees the world in two categories, the world of people in two

categories, assets, potential assets, or threats. And that's it. If you could either do something for him or you can't. And if you can't, you're a threat, and so he's going to get rid of you. And that's the vision of Duku that we get here in kind of. contrast to Duku Jedi lost, in contrast to, I think, the Clone Wars cartoon, or maybe not always in contrast, because this Duku, this Duku is perfectly, I think, consistent with many of those actions.

If you think he, what he's doing in all those other moments where maybe there is something else happening is projection or cover, you know, and I think that's totally fine. You could totally read this Duku into that stuff. Even Duku Jedi Lost, I think becomes interesting in so far as so much of this is a story told the ventress eventually. And she's doing an awful lot of interpreting. Let's be clear. Of this book says.

Oh, my God. It's Anakin, right? Who was like, I always thought the dark side would be hot. Yeah, because of Ventress because he fights Ventress in, so Ventress at this point is in some the comics. And she is importantly, I think debuts in the Tartikovsky Clone Wars animation. And she and he have a fateful duel on a jungle planet in the rain and the dark. Hmm.

Yeah. We should watch that at some point. I wanted to watch that for a long time. And I don't know, maybe, maybe for five years. For five years. Maybe this is our excuse because it gets referenced here. Durgh, who's also from that, gets mentioned here, weirdly. But yeah, I think, yes, this Duku could fit those other visions.

But you're right. The adventurous position in Duku, China Law's adventurous perspective, shades a lot of what we know about Duku from that book. Well, because the end of it, it's her ultimate disillusion is like he sent her on a to kill his sister's last tie too. It's like, I want you to find Rosebud, and I want you kill it. I want you to go find, oh, you go find that sled. Break that shit over your knee. Yeah. Just get that shit. Hey, there's a possibility he hasn't burned. I want you to make sure it burns. Yeah. So, like, the ultimate irony is she learns all his sad backstory and like the tragedies of his life. But then ultimately, he's beyond that. He doesn't care anymore. He sees fully embraced like who he is and what he is.

So I don't think it's necessarily inconsistent, but this is a much more like fully lacks the ability to relate to anyone, but also as an asshole and kind of likes it that way and likes the way that allows them to instrumentalize everything. Yeah. To his, to his ends. And so just to just to run this off, his actual plan is once that he's because, become sort of the head of the new Jedi order and Palpatine is running the show. Then they're going to install the empire, a Sith empire, and we're going to get all those non-humans. We're

just going to crush them into dust. Wipe out everyone in the separatists. That's why it's all the separatists, the backbone of this is non-human species, sort of contributing their genius and their resources to the war efforts that they can be villainized more easily and then have their assets forcibly taken from them. That's the whole plan. And so, yeah,

what he's looking forward to is like he is going to inaugurate like a thousand years of darkness basically for non-humans. Yeah. And which the empire does do. Like that's, you know what? He would love what happened.

He would love the series on Kashik. He would love. He would love the original trilogy. for sure for sure unfortunately he doesn't get to live to that doesn't make it the one of the big differences real quick we get this mention of this character

Laurian nod who is his childhood friend I think we might put Cepo Dias in there from Duky Jedi lost as his childhood BFF you might remember but the situation with Laurie and Not is very different Luriannaud comes from a book

called Legacy of the Jedi which is a young reader Scholastic novel when he said he was going to bring in the EU. He meant it. He's bringing in books. He's at the book fair. He's at the book fair. He's at the childhood book fair.

Books you got at the book fair. This came out in 2003. It was part of Clone Wars, the big Clone Wars project from after attack of the clones going into the Tarnikovsky shorts, the mini cartoons. And it is a generational novel running from when Duku is a Padawan through. the Clone Wars about about, but it's for, we have to understand it's for 13 year olds, it's for 12

year olds. Like, I don't think there could be, there could be, there's crumbs for sure. And so it's about, it's about Duku and his BFF, Lori and Nod, his master, sorry, his his, his, eventually him and his Padawan, uh, quigon,

and then eventually Lori and Nod, who becomes a space pirate, It's a whole thing. But the very short version is a lot of that story is about Duku having kind of always been a sociopath, right? Like that is he always, he never understood friendship. He kind of gets at some of that here with the description of him and Lorian Nod. And Nod eventually like tells the Jedi Council, hey, look out for this Duku guy. He's no good.

And then Lurian Nod goes off to become a space pirate. So maybe he was also no good. So, you know, it is what it is. But I do think this is a very funny example of Stover being like, I know what I could work in. You know, the scholastic order. The Jedi would not want to tell, though. Oh, yeah.

And then this one guy left the Johnny, John Irred to be able a pirate, and it was fucking awesome. Oh, does he have a bronze statue? Is he one of the lost 20? Can't tell that one. Can't tell that one, because you just have Paduan. Just fleeing. Like, yeah.

Yeah, you know what? I'm just going to become a corsair. And peace out. Yeah, 100%. That is the thing that seems to have happened to this guy. So, oh, well. He also tried to kidnap a senator. It's a whole thing.

Anyway. It is so wild to me just on the subject of the Lost 20 that we've talked about the lost 20 before. These are the 20 named Jedi who have left the Jedi order who there are bronze statues of at the Jedi Temple in Corrassant, and Duku is one of them, and it is wild to me that Duku is a statue at the Jedi Temple and also is the current, it is now, it is current time,

and he is the leader of the separatist movement, and there's this like quiet, respect for the fall? The idea that he is immortalized in bronze for all eternity alongside these other 19 Jedi is...

It's hysterical critique of liberalism, though. And again, completely on point. Yeah. Like, the Jedi are like, damn, these people must have had such good points to turn their back on the order and the Republic and just like seek their fortunes elsewhere. And then like one of them comes back and is like,

and here I am to unleash the most untold horrors on the galaxy in millennia. And they don't take the statue down. They're like, we should really think about, we should reflect deeply on this. We used to have such good debates. And now he's, now he's, why can't we go back to the days of the more like meeting at meeting at university or clashing on the morning, on the Sunday shows, rather than having starships like wiping planets out. Damn, yeah.

Those are the good old days. It's funny. It's funny that they even gesture at like, oh, yeah, the lost or a whole group of people over time who explicitly, the phrase is they resign their commissions of Jedi knighthood in service of ideals higher than even the order itself. self-professed. That is like the way the narrator, which I guess we're inside of Duku's head at this point, sort of. But this is not him. This is a dialogue from him. And it's not even explain. Say what you will about racism. At least it's a belief system. I like, what do we, and so, you know, what they say is that he, the thing that made him leave was he didn't want to serve the Republic. The Jedi are forced to serve the Republic. He didn't trust the Republic because of the high, of the high degree of corruption that was there. Isaac Chotner

So why didn't you want to serve the Republic Well obviously I couldn't serve The various interests that the Republic Tell me what interest are those Well like the Nemoids Interesting what about the Nemoids Well they're not like us What do you mean by that?

It just goes on The thing that's fucked up And this is the thing This book does a lot Just like the Clone Wars series To try to unravel Some of the strangest knots in the prequels. And so it's like, okay, he and the movement, the separatist movement,

is about the terrible economic corruption at the heart of the republic. A guy like Duku, with all his money, could buy change in the republic. But he wouldn't do it. And again, this is he wouldn't, he doesn't, he isn't doing because that's not his plan. But, you know, the public persona of him is he wouldn't do it because he doesn't believe in government corruption from moneyed interests. All right. Who's, uh, who's, uh, whose money is, moving the Confederacy again? Oh, the techno union, the trade federation. And I think we've been here before.

This book doesn't do it. I think we do have a canonical answer, which is the banking clans, all of that stuff. They were secretly funding the Confederacy. They were not in public, until the very end of the war, which is in Revenge of the Sith, when this all, their actual status becomes public in these final days of the war. But nevertheless, man, it's very, This book doesn't say that. This book says on one page,

the Confederacy is about the Confederate systems, the CIS, the separatists are about getting the corruption out of the republic. And on the next page, it's like the techno union, the banking clans, the trade federation. Huh?

What are we doing? Okay. I guess there's lots of ways to be corrupt. I want to read the sentence that Duku is introduced in because it's in this, the introductory pet, like paragraphs that we mentioned before of the

like people watching the hollow net what they think of Palpatine what they think of Annen and everything else and it's they go through the three leaders of the separatists to or the three including grievous as a way to sort of pivot to grievous

to make him a monster and inhuman and you know this is all the way in the beginning of the book yes yes yes yes so the political heart of the separatist confederacy count duku is known for his integrity his principal stand against the what he sees as corruption in the senate though they believe he's wrong many respect him for the courage of his mistaken convictions convictions which yeah people like him that's

that's how that goes and so like i get why he would believe this plan people are out here on khorasan right now being like you know that i don't like grievous and i have really big racist feelings about the Nemoideans just like this book does. But I will say that Duku guy cuts a dashing figure and he fights for what he believes in. You got to give him that. And hey, some Jedi just have needs the order can't satisfy. And you just got to remember that by having a bronze statue in your temple forever. But I do.

I think I do think, let's imagine you are blind to the force the way that we now know. They haven't really, they've dug into it a little bit, he's dug into, he's dug into, so for digging this a little bit at the end of this reading where he's like, there's a brief moment

where I guess Obi-Wan and Anakin can like feel the purity and clearness of the force for the first time and forever again where the darkness recedes. But you can imagine, if I'm Obi-Wan Kenobi and my master,

Duku, right? Quigant's master was Duku. Duku, five years before this happens or whatever, 10 years before this happens, goes, The Jedi are supposed to serve something higher than the Republic. The Republic is corrupt. I won't do it.

I won't be a... I'm turning in my lightsaber. I'm turning in my cool robe. I am going to go back to just... You can keep your lightsaber. Okay, well, we know... Thanks, Yoda. I appreciate it.

I'll hold on to it, I guess. You could imagine someone like Obi-Wan going, I'm not going to quit the order over this, but maybe we should keep in mind what Dugu has said here. He was willing to give you. give up his knighthood. Maybe he was a master by then. I'm actually not sure if he was a Jedi master or not.

But he's like, I'm going to give it up because fundamentally it doesn't serve the force. We don't serve the force. We're serving a corrupt republic. And you could imagine the Jedi patting themselves on the back as they put the statue up and continue to serve the Republic, which is like, let this be a reminder that we all are supposed to think about our relationship to the force in the Republic with, you know, a degree of care and we should make sure we don't we don't betray the force for political ends anyway how about them clones like so i get how you can get there but what i don't

get is keeping them up as you're as you he's fallen to the dark side maybe you convince you you're like that's the man he was and we that's the one we should remember is when he was he was a guy so good he left this all behind it's a shame what happened to him after that what do they call him again, Darth evil tyrant man? But I guess now I wonder, I guess the HoloNet doesn't know that yet, right? Like the knowledge that he's a Sith lord is restricted to the Jedi. Because we- Oh, I guess it's a good question, yeah. In what Allie just read.

He's Count Duku. He's Count Duku. He's described as a man of class and elegance and principle. And so I think what that tells me is that the people don't know he's a Sith Lord. They don't understand that the

separatist movement even is perhaps has been infiltrated by Sith, or maybe they don't even understand really what being Sith or having Sith involvement means. And so, in their

eyes, this is Count Dukyu, a former Jedi who left the Jedi order founded the separatist movement based on principles of, you know, allegedly against corruption and in the Republic

that is spread throughout the Republic. And look, he's banding together all of these different beings from all these different places. surely, like, that is somewhat of a, there's like a legitimizing to the separatist movie. I mean, fucking, there was the court, remember in the Clone Wars where the separatists

and the Republic met in the, like, in Switzerland. So, so, yeah, I don't think, I don't think the people know that Count Dugu is a Sith Lord. Yeah. I think this is something. being held very close to the Jedi's chests. But the Jedi should turn on TV and be like, what is the news saying about Duku?

And it's like, why do they think he's so cool? And it's like the principled Count Duku has destroyed another Republic fleet. Yeah, his... But the public are aware of two Jedi, at least two Jedi that have fallen. So the They know about Dark Jedi They know about Dark Jedi They don't know that

For from what it seems like Count Duku is not necessarily a Dark Jedi Or maybe he is But you know That seems unclear They should probably stop calling him Count Duku And start being like Dark Jedi

Ducca Like more criminal The guy that left the Jedi Duku The first The first The first page of that Jabim comic, Last Stand on Jabim I was telling you about, starts with two Jabim separatists, two like human jabimi separatists, uh, talking to each other. And they go,

the Republic forces are on the move again. I know, and I hear that they have Jedi with them. I didn't even think Jedi were real until last week. Is it true they steal babies? Yeah, and cut women in half with their laser swords. Then you also heard that they grow their soldiers in vats and ride giant four-legged months? What's that? A planet quix? and they turn an AT-A-T equivalent is walking towards them, a big giant four-legged monster. And then later in this comic,

like, not that far after this, Obi-Wan is telling Anakin, like, you have to remember, there are billions of people in the galaxy. Most of them don't know that we exist. Many of them don't believe we exist. They don't know what the fuck we are. And so, like,

that seems like in the canon at this point, in what is now legends, at the time was the expanded universe, they were really, like, people don't know shit about shit. They don't know what the Jedi are. They've heard rumors. Many of them have heard rumors that paint them pretty badly.

There's a LinkedIn post waiting to happen here about like the Jedi, the Jedi order collapsed because they did not have a brand strategy. They didn't. They didn't have anybody on PR. They didn't have anyone going on the Sunday morning shows, man. Eight lessons that the fall of the Jedi order teaches us about brand strategy and brand equity. it's look, the Jedi thought they were too good for TikTok, but they needed to be on there. They needed to be out there getting their side of the story out.

So the other thing that Duku does have one little bit of sentimentality. He doesn't like the fact that this plan hinges on killing Kenobi and recruiting Anakin. And he tries to remonstrate with Palpatine. Hey, like, Can I be so urbane, though. And like, he's practically my grandson. Like, I trained Quigon, Quigon, trained Obi-Wan. Like, this guy's in my professional lineage. I think we should, I think we should keep

Canobi around and kill, kill Skywalker. Because Skywalker seems like a loose cannon. And, uh, Cidious is like, shut the fuck up, basically. In so many words, he's like, stop thinking so much and just get with the program. But Duku's sort of sitting there having this misgivings about this plan. He's like, yeah, Anakin's like very powerful, but he's a dope. And Kenobi is someone not like me.

And that seems like the sort of person that we could really use around the new order. I don't know that I'm fully on board with what with what Sidious is planning here. Oh, well, I guess here we go. They've arrived here at my, at the room where we're holding Palpatine hostage. So we'll see what happens. And then we get the fight. And then we get the fight. And the fight is, the way he renders it is pretty clever, which is in the movie, it's very fast.

Like, he just gets, he just gets God. It's like three minutes that fight in the movie. It's nothing. It's so quick. This is like three chapters. But I do like that he, he calls the sound of footnote, but like, Duku is an incredibly vain scholar of the Jedi and a scholar of the sword. And so everything that he sees Obi-Wan and Attican do, he's like, oh, yes, I see what move, I see what school of lightsaber combat you're using. I see what maneuver you're doing.

He starts naming all the lightsaber forms and shit. Yeah. And so he is, he views this as like a, almost like a fencing lesson. That this isn't a real fight that he's, there's nothing they can pull that he hasn't seen before. And he's like almost half in the fight for, for a good portion of it. As he just sort of like moles over their training and what's lacking in them and all this. And then there's a moment where they're moving faster than he was expecting. And he gets a boot to the face.

And the name of the Mike Tyson, everyone's got a strat. until he gets punched in the mouth. There's a bit of that where he gets, he gets his shit rock for the first time. And then he realizes that, uh, Anakin changes forms and he goes to what is it, the Vopod style?

It's not Vipod. It's, um, I think it's Dijen-So, which is like a variation of Shien or something. This is, but either way, he goes for the,

he goes for the heavy bruiser style of combat, but he's moving at a blind. spending speeds, where there's any of the drawbacks of that. It's, it's like, what if Donkey Kong could also turn the fastest in Mario car? Like, it's, it's kind of that where this is, uh, this is something, something I can't counter. And we get inside his head as he begins to have his entire being concentrated down to a desperate fight for his life. It's really well rendered. The stuff of like the force closing in on him to where he, he starts with, with a perception, a force perception of the entire big open space.

If you remember this from the movie, it's the sort of like observation deck with Palpatine like manacled in on a big chair, kind of echoing the eventual Palpatine chair in Return of the Jedi, except he's technically locked into it. And he starts with a huge, he can feel it all. But the force kind of silhouettes and closes in or vignettes around him until it's just like he can barely feel the stairs, then he can only really feel himself. And you can't see. You can't see.

Like every blow, every Perry requires him putting all his effort into stopping with the next killing blow. And that's all he can manage to do in this fight. That like now every single ounce of his strength in his consciousness are just trying to prevent the next blow from coming in. This is the part where this transformation of him being afraid. Right. Well, and going from saying, Anakin, you're afraid to him being afraid and needing to like

lash out in feet. in order to just make some space. This is also where he does the thing I was talking about before. I now have it about the way he describes the force working. He says, while effortlessly deflecting a rain of blue streaking cuts from Kenobi, Duku felt the force shove the situation table away from the wall and send it hurling. He uses lines like that a lot. The force is doing something.

Kenobi isn't doing it. The force is doing it. And it actually made me really, it made me start to think about the force. and there's some other stuff later in here throughout it, where we don't have to go down this rabbit hole right now. But, like, later on, it describes Anakin, Anakin reaching out, and the force catches his lightsaber for him in a key moment. The force is doing things in this book in a way that makes it feel very active.

And then it starts to raise questions about, like, it comes back to the sun dragon, right? If the sun dragon is in every sun, if the sun dragon is in every fusion reactor, if the force is in all things, why is the force like helping, it's helping that he can catch the lightsaber. It's doing it. The force catches it for him.

It's helping Obi-Wan throw the table. It's throwing it. Obi-Wan isn't even throwing it. The force is doing it? If that's true, then is the force also raising, oh, you know, Darth Vader's hand in lightsaber later? Is it also an active agent in history in that way? We've gone, we went deep on this in Cotor 2,

Q&A recently, But I think this section is something I wish I'd had in mind or had read it by then in order to talk about it. Because once you think about the force as being an active agent in any time someone calls on it even, not just in choice making or the long curve of history, but in the day-to-day actions of an empire that's about to rise, is the force present there too? If the force is in all things. And I'm really curious to see if we wrap around to some of that stuff as the book goes on. And I think it's like, it's really interesting to use what would have been a jump around

lightsaber fight to start to color in the experience of the force for these people over and over again. Because I think that that stuff is, is one of the, one of the benefits of a novel is you can go along on some of the more weird metaphysical stuff, you know? You can also have, you can also have Anakin say, or you can have the book say, The loss of his beloved partner will add just the correct spice of tragedy to give melancholy weight to all of his words. You can have Anakin say, this is the one for me. As they're about to charge into Fight Duku, I'm ready, master.

I know you are. They stood side by side a moment. Anakin didn't look at him. He stared at the door through the door, searching in its shimmering depth for a hint of the unguessable future. He couldn't imagine not being at war. Anakin. Obi-Wan's voice had gone soft and his hand was warm. warm on Anakin's arm. There's no other Jedi I would rather have it my side right now. No other man.

Anakin turned and found within Obi-Wan's eyes a depth of feeling he had only rarely glimpsed in all their years together and the pure, uncomplicated love that rose up within him then felt like a promise from the force itself. I wouldn't have it any other way, master. I believe, his one-time master said with gently humorous look of astonishment at the words coming out of his mouth that you should get used to calling me Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan, Anakin said, let's go get the chancellor.

Yes, Obi-Wan said, let's. I just want to emphasize, this is every six pages of this book. Yeah. In the middle of a fight, before a fight, after a starship crash.

That's how we were all looking at each other aboard the Star Cruiser. I mean, you're fucking A. We're living, man. This is life. This is going to be it forever. I think that that particular part of this, though, is really fascinating.

Not just the relationship between them, which is juicy and fun and joyous. But it's also like, oh, yeah, they've been at war for years. Anakin has not been a man outside of war. He was a child, and then war started. He was still a Padawan when war started. That's the thing that I always forget about is, like, attack of the clones ends, and he's still a Padawan.

He becomes a Jedi Knight off screen. We don't, you know, they reference it here, which we'll get to in a moment, his Jedi Knight ceremony and the sniffing of his Padawan braid. But, like, he has never. been a Jedi Knight outside of war, ever. So I think that that's using the brief moment before the Duku fight to talk about that is fantastic also. I just going back to the fourth stuff a little bit because I'm really looking forward to

the book digging into this stuff more. I think the first moment that it felt sort of, I'll just read the line here where it's Duku going through his internal thought. And he says, they allowed the force to direct them. Duku directed the force. And I was like, what does Cray, I have to say about this? I'm saying. Oh, yeah.

I'm saying. I'm saying. Did she feel, when you were a Sith, do you feel like you were directing the force? But, like, you know, it just sort of sprinkled in here in both Duku's sort of ego about himself and his power. And then the ways that he's like, he's a sense. about the things that he is capable of versus what Anakin and Obi-1 are getting reversed by him, not realizing that they've grown as people and not realizing that, like, maybe that is not the way that the force actually works for him for them.

So I really, really love that line. So I hope that we're getting more of that kind of vibe as we go forward. The things of him being at the center of the universe, the force like, that stuff's great. You know, he's the axis on which everything turns. Cool. To your point about, like, the force being present in those moments and even having this perception of the force doing things. With this with Kautor and a lot of the stuff lately, I keep thinking about, like, the line from Hanif of Durkib, where in, it's not like Nikola Tesla knew all those people are going to die. But there's line I always, like, there's like,

I think about a lot, which is no one wants to. imagine their God as the knuckles cracking on a father watching his son picking a good switch from the tree. And certainly no one wants to imagine their God is the tree. And I think that's like that is both like a brilliant line about like the limitations of faith or an immature faith, religious faith that like if God is everywhere, he's got he's in those moments too. But in particular, the relationship that like the Jedi have with the force in many ways as well is like it is to the things that Craya was bringing up. Like does this thing have a will of its own? Like how confident are we that oh when the good things happen that's the that's the true force that's the

light side of the force speaking. But when the Sith used it to choke someone, it's death or right, you know, burn up like extinguish a planet's entire population. That's just the dark side. That's right. And it's certainly comforting to think that. But in these moments, as these stories converge to this like moment of prophecy, it's like, it does begin to feel like, well, is the force also conspiring here to make these things happen? Yeah. And we'll get the bit and a little bit of Canobi in the water as the waterfall, all of that stuff. And we can talk about that when we get there. But yeah.

Also, Dad, if you're, if you're listening to this, I got you that Hanif Abdurkerib book. There's always this year. You should read it. It was a Christmas present. You should read that book. It's good. Honest great. Anyway.

And we got a dramatization of him cornering Duku and Palpatine, a little more verbose than do it. We get slightly more there. But it is where Duku realizes, oh, this was the plan. And we spent a little, we spent a moment inside his head as he realizes all his vanity, all's grandiosity, that he is effectively just an object lesson to Anakin Skywalker, that he has been brought to this point where he's going to be a victim. And that is all he's going to be. That is his role in the story.

Now, I tend to subscribe to the pivot theory of shoes, which is that there is no outcome that sheave isn't able to, like, if they lost. I mean, he pivots here. He would have done what shit, what what, what, what, Duku's counting on.

Like if, if, if Obi-Wan and Anakin didn't win that fight, I, like, she would have been like, fuck it. Uh,

yeah, like my good friend, count Duku saw the light aboard the invisible hand and he's here to save us now. Yeah. Uh, but he doesn't win the fight. And so she was like,

cool. Yeah, I kind of figured we go this way. Uh, Anakin's, Anakin's a fucking bruiser. Love this kid. Love him.

Uh, I got that dog. He's got that dog. He's got that star dragon. He does have that. Star Dragon in him. I love the bit where Anakin makes Dukus, like,

catch his breath in his throat. He was like, oh, yeah, we know. Because there's two Sith lords. And Dukes like, uh, and Anakin's like, we know all about D'Arcidious. They're probably arresting him right now. And Duke is like, oh, wow, yeah.

I hope that goes okay for him. It's really funny. Or her, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know, actually. I guess it could be, you know. I should check the biases, really. I really should. Because I have no idea.

It could be anyone, really. That was the count in me. I'm trying to be better about it. I have apologies. I do think we get, we do get Dukyu fucking up. He has the chance here. In the movie, he doesn't say a word after the lightsabers are around his neck. But here he says,

Chancellor, all you had to do is say master. All you had to do is say Sidious. I know. What are we doing? Come on, man. you could have gotten your way out of this. He doesn't have it. And this really brought into prescriptive for me, like,

so many people didn't break character. Like, this is where I don't believe in conspiracy theories because I don't believe that, like, that many people can be aligned in a goal and are that good at lying. And you're going to say that, like, the blade is at your neck. Your head is about to get cut off. And you're not going to be like,

but fuck that guy. Like, you just, should know like no don't what the fuck man he says please you he says all the way please you promise me immunity we had the deal help me he's saying many words why are you role playing like oh man and then palpidine spin is a deal only if you released me not if you used me as bait to kill my you're the dark lord that's an again that's a dark lord that's the dark lord of the Sith that's him he's been manipulating all of us we got to kill him right now that's all you have to to do. And he doesn't even do. He doesn't...

Anakin, finish him. And Anakin in this version is like, I shouldn't do it. He's, I don't want to do it. I do it now. And he does it. But like, there's all this time. You've all of this time. Duku, that's on you. You know what? That's on you. You could have saved yourself. You, you kept to the script too long. You know, I lost some respect for you today. At least this version of Duku. The racist. I should have any respect for anyway. And again, we really cannot over-emphasize how much he is constantly shit-talking alien species and droids in this book is nonstop. He can't wait to put everything against them and kill every alien in the galaxy and rule as the ruler of man, human man.

Human man? That's right. and just subjugate every alien species out there. He cannot wait for that. He's so gassed to do that. Unfortunately, he just lost both of his hands and about to lose his head. Yeah. Also, he thinks grievous is a monstrosity.

The book thinks that grievous is a monstrosity sometimes, too. Like, in the intro, the book is like... The book hasn't seen the episode of the Clone Wars where his dog gets. killed. Oh, that's right. I forgot. Yeah, of course. I think you cannot underestimate the degree to which grievous in the cartoon becomes kind of a sad little figure, but like, if you only saw the movies, I think we're going to get it here. Yeah, we'll see. I think we're going to get some grievous interiority. I hope so. If we got, if we got, I see glimmers of it. I see, you know, uh, yeah, there was a, there's like small pieces of, of, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, there was a, there's like small

pieces of of there's one one line he's talking to his droid guy is that the bit or is it is it the

is it the he's had friends and family that all died stuff it's that stuff yeah it was like yeah he was a man with a job

and a home and friends and family and now he was a accountant I don't know what he was doing he was hanging he worked at an office he were a tie

you ever read the killing joke yeah one bad day That's what happened to me. So I do like that after he beheads Duku. Yeah. Anakin has this crisis of like, who am I? And realize he hasn't really asked himself that.

Yeah. And now maybe it's too late to ask himself. But also the thing I really love is it gets highly impressionistic here. He'd been having a dream. He'd been flying and fighting and fighting again. Somehow in the dream, he could do whatever he wanted. In the dream, whatever he did was the right thing to do, simply because he wanted to do it.

In the dream, there were no rules. There was only power. And the power was his. Now he stood over a headless corpse that he couldn't bear to sea, but he couldn't make himself look away. And he knew it hadn't been a dream at all, that he'd really done this. The blades were still in his hands.

And the ocean of wrong, he died into it closed over his head. Good shit. I love it. The dream is all the things that Anakin has been in. inherently good at, the draw toward flying, fighting, daring rescues, being the hero with no fear, but it's always been this continuum that it is a dream state of him performing these feats without context, without vision, of not really questioning the degree to which he's been a weapon pointed in these various directions this whole life. And now he wakes up from the fantasy of

what we just read pages of, which is him sort of dancing a spaceship through space combat, the thing he's best at in the world, weightless, carefree. and that it's all been leading him to this, that it was a dream, that he is sort of now waking up to the reality of like what the war has made him, what he's allowed himself to become. And the degree to which he's indulged in fantasies of power without accountability, it's just who would notice in the context of space combat or, you know, pod racing, Who would notice sort of the poison in his glee? Totally.

In a moment that should be victory for him. And I think Stover does something interesting. I haven't quite figured out what I feel about it, but he's drawn a line between, in Anakin's own head, between this moment and the killing of the Tuscan Raiders, the sand people to save his mother, where he, you know, specifically, he starts to say, I couldn't stop myself,

but he can't even get those words out without him saying to himself, oh, I'm lying. That's actually a lie. That's not true. And the book suggests that back then, that moment, when he loses himself on Tatooine, he really loses himself. That is a moment of rage. He is not present in the moment.

He has not made a choice. He is driven by something else. The dragon, the bad, is alive and killing the Raider, the Tuscan Raiders. Here, the book, says, suggests that he understands he has made a choice. And his choice was to murder an unarmed prisoner. He realizes he says, it says he'd become a war criminal. He feels like a guilt hit him like a fist.

He says it was wrong. Palpatine is trying to tell him, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's okay. Revenge is good. Revenge is the foundation of justice. Anakin is like, no, it isn't. like what happened. He's not buying any of the stuff that Pappity is giving him. Yeah. Yes. This stuff is really interesting. He's even like quoting Mace Windu to himself about Mace Windus like there's no such thing as a second chance.

And I think that one of the difficulties that we've always had with Anakin in the movies especially, but to your point earlier, Rob, we were talking about the Jabeem comic, where it's like, oh, this guy already fell. This guy hasn't already fallen. This version of Anakin is constantly catching himself. He has the bad thought, and then he remembers Obi-Wan's voice, or he remembers some of his training, or he feels bad about it. He doesn't, he did a bad thing here, and he instantly is like, oh, I'm, am I a murderer? Oh, no, are we the bad? He's like, have I done a bad thing here?

Is that what I am? And it really emphasizes the need of Palpatine to constantly soothe and direct. him towards his worst self in a way that actually underscores a sort of tragedy here. Because if the other version of Anakin, who is forced choking dudes in the middle of the war, is there, it's what you said before, he's already fallen. But this does make him feel in play in a way that a lot of the movie didn't. Some Clone Wars episodes make him feel like he's already fallen, you know? But yeah.

I think something's done well here is, is like the way that, A small bit of corruption can corrupt things that were not themselves corrupt, like, that suddenly become uncertain of what your motivations were. A movie, I think, a lot about, is Christopher Nolan's insomnia, which is the Al Pacino goes up to Alaska basically to solve a crime. And, like, long story short, like, gets caught up in a shooting where he accidentally, question mark, kills a partner who's about to, like, dime him out for being a corrupt cop. Yeah. And when we see it in the film, it certainly looks like an accident. There's a deeply confusing sequence. Like there's someone out there with a gun. And when he, you know, when you see it happen, it's it, you, you understand how he made that call. But the thrust of the whole movie is that Al Pacino's guilt is so overwhelming because he's already, he made one small corrupt decision. Like before the movie even beginning, did one corrupt thing. And it is just poised.

He cannot, he can't look at his own actions and absolve himself and say like, he didn't intend this. I didn't intend harm. I wasn't doing something bad because he's, he's allowed that one little bit of corruption in. And so now everything that happens that makes him question himself, he can't silence his doubts. And it drives him to make worse and worse decisions. I think there's a bit of that happening with, with Anakin, this, this notion of, the second he admits that in killing Duku. There's a part of them that was just like, yeah, fuck this guy. He deserved it. Now he can't, he can't quite, like, he can't stop questioning, like everything he's done.

Like, maybe everything he's done has been evil and toxic and corrupted. Maybe that's just who I am. And that's what Palpatine is sort of feeding on. Like, yeah, it's just time to embrace who you are, man. Like, you're just, you're just a killer. And they're, you know, yeah, this is Duku, though. Well, this guy has like the blood of millions on his hands. Like you executed him, but like, I don't know. There's people you murder him. There's people you just summarily execute. I think there is a meaningful difference here.

Did you notice the line that he gave him? I'm pretty sure this is a quote going forward. He says like he was too dangerous to live. This is, I believe, what Mace Window says to Anakin. And we'll see if he says it in this book. But in the movie, that's what Mace's argument to Anakin is when they go to confront Palpatine. He's too dangerous to let live.

We can't make him stay in trial. And so it's fun to have it put in Palpatine's voice here first, you know. So exit Duku. Uh-huh. Natalie, you wanted to talk about Anakin's hand. Well, I wanted to bring this up because we get in the previous, you know, we kind of been talking about a sequence of chapters that are all, all encompass the Duku fight.

But back in chapter two in Dugu's introduction, Anakin has a vision of of seeing Count Duku on his knees. He has a vision of Count Duku's death. Yeah. And this was one part of what I wanted to bring up. And then I wanted to talk about Dugu's, I mean, Dukun's hand feelings, the feelings of his hand. So he has this vision as he's like,

essentially they're approaching, you know, making the plan for how they're going to confront Dugu. And he has this vision where he says he sees Count Duku on his knees. He saw lightsabers crossed at the Count's throat. Clouds lifted from his heart, clouds of Jabim, of Arraganar, of Camino, of even the Tuscan Camp. For the first time in too many years, he felt young, as young as he really was. Young, free, and full of light. Master, his voice seemed to be coming from someone else. Someone who hadn't seen what he'd seen.

Hadn't done what he'd done. Master, right here, right now, you and I. Yes, he blinked. I think we're about to win the war. And I just wanted to bring up this moment as a contrast to the reality of, of what Anakin experiences. There is no light. There is no lifting of the clouds

when Anakin actually does what he does. And it's interesting that in this vision, Anakin, there's, it implies that Anakin understands that he is the one who will do this. It says, someone who hadn't seen what he'd seen,

hadn't done what he'd done. And I guess it, I mean, arguably it could be what he'd done as in on all these planets. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's what it's in reference to. But the idea that he has, he has the fantasy of ending the war, of saving everyone as he's, as he's entering that room, the general's room or whatever to save. Palpatine and the reality of the experience is so divorced from the fantasy of it, I thought was quite interesting. But I don't know what to make of the fact that he gets dark side tingles in his phantom arm.

Before this vision, he talks about he, he's like looking at his fist. the fist that is now made of metal and and cogs and whirls and and everything and he talks about having this red hot pain going through his fist from his from his shoulder all the way into the tips of his fingertips so in his his you know, physical shoulder that is, you know, of his original body, into his bicept of his original body, and then into the fingertips that are the, you know, mechanical hand replacement. And Obi-Wan questions him and is like, you know, why did you equip your replacement arm with pain sensors?

And Anakin's like, that's the thing. I didn't. Um, and he says, the pain is in your mind, Anakin. And Anakin says, no, Anakin's heart froze over. His voice went as cold as space. I can feel him. And he says that he can feel Duku on the ship. Um, what do we make of this?

I think in this thing, it's supposed to be like, because Duku cut that arm off, Anakin can sense him through its absence. But it's also, just, yeah, to underscore it, like, this is a book that's very interested in. The big metaphor of mechanization means the death of the human side of you, because that's the next chapter we're about to get to is grievous, the mechanical monstrosity. That stuff was all there in the first few pages. You know, I'm really enjoying this book. it still has all of the Star Wars racism and Star Wars weird ableism that we've talked about

for years. It's like page three before they are calling Nemoideon's venal and treacherous innately. It's page five before they're talking about grievous as a terrible fusion of flesh and droid. Now, obviously, they're also saying, like, his droid parts actually have more compassion than his flesh parts. He's just a bad dude. but I don't think

we've talked about this before Luke losing his arm in the original trilogy and getting it replaced with a robot arm is meant to introduce the fear that the dark side will take over him just like it did his father who we learned after he loses

his father takes his hand right and so I don't I don't think I don't think you're wrong in identifying his black glove fist that he's opening and closing over and over again which will one day be Darth Vader's hand

here as being like tied to the dark side. It's the core visual of Anakin slipping and then Luke, the thread of Luke slipping. So I think you've identified that key thing for sure. And it is described as like there are other points, I believe in the Duku fight where Anakin like nearly crushes his own light. like he can't control this fist as much as he can control the rest of this body or it it it is like he talks about almost crushing his lightsaber right um in and breaking it because he's so angry at imagining what palpatine must have gone through to be so scared in the

beginning of this encounter he he like he finds palpatine and palpatine's like puts on this performance of being like this incredibly fragile, scared person. And in Anakin's mind, he imagines, oh, my God, what must they have done to Palpatine? What must have Count Dukhu have done to Palpatine to make him so scared, to make this man I love so terrified, and he nearly crushes his own lightsaber? And so, yeah, I think there is something to. this will become the fist of Darth Vader, a fist in which he will, you know,

rule cruelly and without, you know, just without restraint, really. And that, you know, Darth Vader is impulsive and punishing. I mean, he, like, just kills people. One of them in this reading. Did anyone pick this up? No, make sure if you missed it.

Oh, I forgot there's a footnote for it. That's right. Yeah, one of the Imperial officers from a New Hope who died. I think it's New Hope who gets, the one who gets choked, maybe. Nita, Captain Nita. Captain Nita is here being a hero for the Republic and giving Grievous an extra chance to surrender. He's really, he's really pulling the strings. He's really like, listen, Grievous, I went to bat for you, basically.

He's like, I made a personal call. So, yeah, now I think you're totally right in terms of identifying that connection here. And though an interesting thing here is we also get the other half of. Andigan is just good with machines. He does some shit throughout this where he's like activating the internal electronic systems of ships and doors and stuff where he's just like flicking electrons around in there to like do all sorts of wild stuff with the force in a way that we've never seen any other Jedi do all that. You know, it does raise some questions when he's like, oh no, we're stuck between these two rayful. fields. I don't know, man. Can't you reach into the wall with the force and turn them off?

You've been doing that. In the spaceship, like it's no big deal. My favorite bit of this is when they use the like droid talking text style to say, in the force, the field signatures of the magnetic locks on the chancellor shackles were as clear as tech

saying, unlock me like this. A simple twist of Anakin's mind popped them open. This is what I'm saying. So like that there is a the contrast there between Anakin feels machines and feels for machines in a way that Obi-Wan

can't and that's kind of one of his strengths is his love of R2 is his love of clones who are not machines but who are the result of a sort of scientific experiment gone mad like he he does see the world as a broader thing versus Obi-Wan

Canobey who is always talking to animals or riding animals or is in the waterfall is the nature imagery stuff, you know, I think that there is a real, that is one of the key image distinctions between them, the big contrast between them. So, yeah. But don't forget when Obi-Wan gets his ultimate at the end of the grievous fight and becomes one with the force and is able to tell R2D2 to access its combat sub-programs and divert power to its booster rockets, claw arm, and cable gun.

He does do this. But I do like that surrender does. We should wait until we get there. I will talk more about that until we get there. But, yeah. You know. Grievous is here. He's got a skull face.

He's got a... Grievous looks so fucked up. Yeah. And the air smells like reptilian stress hormones because of the, the noidians being blown apart by fighter fire or whatever, you know? Don't tell me that. But it does smell crazy in there, though. Yeah.

know it do. You know it do. It's going real bad. Bro, there's the bit where he clonks one of them on the head on the head and gets brains all over his hand. That one in the movie. They didn't put no nemoidean brains in the movie. That was fucking crazy. That was crazy. Oh, yeah. I don't think there's a whole lot to say about the grievous section myself. I do find it funny. the bit where he realizes

the chance like gone and he's about to lose his shit on the junior officer and he's like maybe you want to look at the maybe you want to check before you put this through on the main feed let's not screen share until you see what's on my monitor bro I was really hope

I'll call you back I'll call you back he's indisposed right now I was really hoping he's taking a shit right now yeah we treat him well we let him have bathroom access I was really hoping we would get competent grievous here because Oh no. The grievous in

the Tartikovsky Clone Wars is like a nightmare. Like, is killing Jedi. Uh, I'm sure. Maybe we'll get some of that here. Not, not yet. Not yet. Right now we still got kind of scheming cartoon supervillain who fails

and has to flee at the end of every episode grievous. Who kills his own guys because they annoy him. He does have a cool droid he likes though. IG 101. where he's like, I think it's really interesting he does not let the Nemoideans speak back to him but IG 101 at one point is like

wouldn't it be wise if we just killed these guys and he like says like no it wouldn't because XYZ reason this is what we just is what Sidious wants or whatever and he doesn't like he doesn't scold the droid he's like cool with the droid so he fucks with droids he's all about droid rights

you know who is it Can we talk about Anakin and Padmay? Is that in here? Is it the next chapter? Wait, all I want to say is that throughout the grievous section, Palpatine keeps telling Anakin, leave Obi-1 behind. That's right. He does do this.

And Anakin's like, no, that's my fucking bro. That's my dog. That's my God. We're close to than two men could possibly be. We have become men. together. You could never understand us. And I just love that his love for Obi-Wan triumphs. It really does. Obi-Wan opened his eyes to find himself staring at what he strongly suspected was

Anakin's butt. It looked like Anakin's butt. Well, his pants, anyway. Anyway. Sometimes you wake up looking at Anakin's butt. Sometimes, yeah. You're like, I've never seen Anakin's butt upside down before. I do love... I can recognize it. He can recognize it. He can recognize it. Oh, yeah. He does what he come and he goes, have I missed anything? Shout out to Obi-Man Kenobi. You're funny as hell, my man.

Palpatine is like holding onto his leg or whatever. And he's like, are you well? So funny. You're a funny dude. Meanwhile, Palpatine for the past hour has been like, ditch this, like, fuck this guy. Like, let's get out of here. Obi-Wan's like, are you- Hey, are you good?

I mean, the whole time, Obi-Wan has been like, remember Anakin, the only thing we're supposed to do is rescue the, rescue the chancellor. Don't try to kill Duku. he's you know he should have been more locked in he should let he should let the chancellor he should be like don't worry too much about the chancellor we're trying to save the republic i also do we talk about um duku or duke who uh palpatine trying to be like you should definitely go kill kill grievous oh you should kill grievous and you should leave obi one before we have time for the grievous thing because you know i there's like a

line there i don't know that i highlighted it but that Anakin is like, no, I am not really going to do that. Like, your safety is my priority. And Palpatine says, I'm not safe if he's alive. So we have to go and do this. And Anakin is like, well, I have orders from the council. And you're not the council, which is like, we're still at this point of Ankin's life, I suppose. Just really interesting priorities here.

It's so funny because, like, Palpatine is consensus. that Obi-Wan is like 30 seconds away from waking up. And he's like trying to get Anakin to like leave the room so that when Obi-Wan wakes up, he went, Ah, Anakin had to go take care of something. Ah, we have to wait for him to respawn in here. Don't worry about it. We'll just hang out.

It's so fucking funny. Leave me and Obi-Wan here and you go grievous. And then when you come back, Obi-Wan just might be like suffocated or something. He just might be out. I don't really know what's going to have to. He might be at the bottom. him of the elevator shaft.

I don't know what's going to happen. It's, anything can happen. It's really funny. Want me to make it an order? I can order you. Can't say that. He's like,

nah. He's like, no, you can't, dude. And of course, we get classic Anakin because he's like, right now you're not allowed

to order me around. Maybe that'll change. Maybe one day you'll have supreme power. And maybe that'll be better for everybody. But that's not true right now, man. He's such a doofus.

It's very good. God I love Dork, Anakin And speaking of Dork, Anagan So Yeah My note here is actually just Ah

Are R2 D2 and C3PO Anakin and Padmae's kids? I don't I don't know maybe So they're trying to escape R2 has been separated from them Anakin is like, we can't go without R2 And Obi-Wan's like

Listen, man, And we have to live. We have the chancellor. R2D2 is cool. He is a droid. I am sorry. But he's not just a droid. It is a droid.

You're right. He says, it is a droid. You're right. He says, it is a droid because Obi-Wan doesn't believe droids are people. And Anakin has to be like, he, he's a droid. And then we get this little inset that is about how it starts. There are so few things Jedi ever owns. even his lightsaber as a possession

than an expression of his identity. And so you're like, okay, interesting, where is this going? Anakin had no devotion gift for his new wife on his wedding day because he didn't own anything. So what he brought her, because he doesn't have anything, what the book says is all he could do is bring her a friend. I didn't have many friends when I was a kid, he told her. So I built one.

And C.3PO? Yeah. Oh, the red flags are so big. He gives her C3Pio as a wedding gift. And Stover has to try to do this very weird dance where, okay, you have to understand, John, I don't have anything. So he gave her something important. But he didn't really give, you know, he, droids aren't slaves.

He was a slave. So he would never, he would never give someone. another person as a gift. So he kind of just said, like, I need you to take care of my friend, C3Pio. That's my, it's not a gift, it's not a gift. It is a wedding gift, but it's not a gift. I'm not giving you a person.

And we get this weird note that on, in feed, on Nabu, droids are actually treated with respect. They're treated like living beings. Especially, actually, I should, I should you read the sentence. Padmae had then extended her hand and graciously invited Cthripeo to join her staff. Because on Nabu, high-functioning droids were respected as thinking beings. And C-3PO had been so flustered at being treated like a sentient creature

that he'd been barely able to speak beyond muttering something about hoping he might make himself useful because, after all, he was fluent in over 6 million forms of communication. So, Anakin gives her C-3-Pio as a wedding gift. And then two years later, he finally has an object that he can give as a gift instead of a friend. And so he gives her his little fucking rat tail, Padawan braid, which is the only object Jedi are apparently allowed to own as their own that they can think of as real objects

that they are their own. And he gives her that. And she's like, well, I got you something. Well, I got you a friend. My personal droid R2D2, who can now become your astromech droid. And by the way, because Nabu has the best droid makers in the galaxy,

He's sick as hell. They put a bunch of aftermarket shit in there. He's leveled up a bunch. That's right. Yeah. 100%. And then it's like, oh, and that's why he loves R2 so much, because R2 is like a gift from Padmei.

And there's a lot there, including droid personhood, including this is the only real Padmae stuff we get in the first seven chapters of this book. I don't even know where to start. Um, let's start with the fact that, uh, a PSA to all Bushwick guys don't get any ideas about cutting off your rat tails for your girlfriends. It's not a good idea. It's not going to go over well. If you're going to, uh, a lock of your lover's hair is only something that a, uh, a, uh, a beautiful maiden can provide. It needs to go in a handsome but understated locket as you take to the sea Right You have to go on a voyage immediately

Yeah Well he is kind of doing that right he's gonna go off to war So maybe he's like hey remember remember me with this No but no but Padme would need to be going on the voyage I see right Padma would need to be going off to war in the sense isn't the Senate sort of like war You know here's my rat tail Oh, man.

Thanks. So like, should I, like a bracelet? I don't, it kind of clashes, Anakin, with everything. No, I'm not going shopping to find something that will go with it. You know what? I'm going to put this, I'm going to put this in my underwear drawer. That's right. So I'll always know where it is and it'll be very press.

That way. We'll lose it. Thanks, babe. That means a lot. That's horny. That this really. Rat tail. in the underwear drawer.

This really emphasized to me the other half of this, which I had not really thought about a lot. Earlier I talked about how I don't often remember that, oh, right, Anakin's been at war the entire time he's been a Jedi Knight. I forget that he's still a Padawan when he and

Padmay get married. He's not even a Jedi Knight yet. It's at the end of attack of the clones. She's problematic, folks. I don't know you should marry Padawans. I mean, and you know, I'm here for Jedi having romance. You shouldn't marry a Padawan.

You shouldn't marry a Padawan. But he's, he's just cut up in like bureaucracy, right? Like, he's not that. No, in that one he's still, I mean, yeah, he's, I think he's of age, but he's still a Padawan. And I don't think that's a bureaucratic thing. He should still be a Padawan in the attack of the clones, right? What if you keep failing your final exam and you just like keep having to repeat your senior year of Padawan, but you really want to settle down with your boo.

What are you going to do? I think maybe you should leave the Jedi Order, actually, in that situation. In that particular situation? You know, it's not like, you're right. It's not like, oh, I keep failing my CPA exam, you know? Also, again, if, can you imagine, like, if Schmey doesn't die? And he's like, no, I'm serious, but this girl's one for me. She's a senator and she lives at 500 republica the best the best place and she lets me

sleep over there all the time. Whenever I want. I don't have to sleep in the, I don't have to sleep in the, in the, the, in the, the Padawan quarters. I just use that to store my toys. But, but, but I, I get, I get to, I get to hang out with her at 500 Republic. So I think this is good. Do I, like, what do you think, mom? Like, she, me is calling the police. I mean, where is shmi if she doesn't, if he saves her? Is she still in tattooing with? No way. She was married to some guy.

She's in love with the guy who bought her. Bought her, right. Yeah. Oh, God. Yeah. No. We're bringing, free Shmi, free Shmi and we're bringing her, we're putting her up in a nice condo. I see.

Um, she could go hang on Thib in Nibu. I was going to say Nibu, yeah, I was going to say like she could be, you know, all the in-laws can get to know each other. All these, all these people should have said on Nabu. This whole thing goes better if you just show it. Nabu seems great. It's got the water. I mean it. Yeah.

Just chill. Why are you got to do all this for? Why are you got to do all this for? Your life wasn't good enough on Thid, in Theid on Dubu? It's beautiful. It's like Italy. They shot that in Italy. Like, it looks great.

Go hang out. I want to go to there. Yeah. I know the food on Nabu is good. I know it's good. I know it's good. I know it's, I know there's like mad flavor. Oh.

I'm sorry, I can't, I can all eat pasta on Nabu. I just get ruined me for. For Corrissonti pasta. Yeah. It's weird. When I'm on Nabu, it doesn't even affect me. It's like I lose weight. You've heard about the Nabu diet?

I think the pizza on Corrassan's better. I know it's from Nabu originally, but to my taste, I like the Corrassan pizza. I got to tell you. You can't get Dollar Nabu pizza. You can't get it. Look, look, I know it's sacral. I love the Sith slice. I love the Sith slice.

I can't. Look, is it like a little dark side to put that many toppings and have it rise that much? Maybe that it's my weakness. Did you see, by the way, Rob, where Matthew Stover is from? No. He's from Chicago, buddy. He's a Chicago boy. Uh-huh. Perfect. Wow. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's our little... Go ahead. I just want to rewind and, like, really zoom in on this a little bit more. Please, please. Because what is the established lore of how Anakin got Artu before this? Like, I assumed that they did the, like, Starfighter thing when he's a kid and he, like, defeats the... Is that above Tatooine or Naboo at this? Nabu, but Artuus is his joy for that.

Like, Artu's here, no, Artu goes and, like, hides in a Nabu starfighter in that scene. And Anakin happens to, Anakin happens to get into it. But aren't they still hang with each other by attack of the clones? That's the thing. They're 100% arbiter. Go ahead. I mean, like, the assumption, at least in the, in the thing is that they stayed together after that because R2G2 was, like, the lone survivor from the other R2 units in this assault.

and then is on that same ship and they just kind of, it's like a meat cute. It's like a their soulmates or whatever. How the fuck is he owned by Padma? Like where do we get that from? Because they're like, I don't know. I don't know. I just like, it never occurred to me to think about how Anikin God are too

because I thought that they like just stayed with each other after like a chance meeting. Yeah, apparently that is Padma's droid. It's on her starship. That's her starship. Remember the other four R2 units that I'll get blown off the super silver cool ship she has? That is hers. And she, Artu accompanies her to Corrassan specifically.

And then, I don't know, somewhere in there. Maybe R2 is with her the whole time. I don't know. I'm trying to remember how does R2, R2 and C3PO go to Geonosis together at the end of attack of the clones. Ask me anything about attack of the clones. I don't remember. I don't remember.

When is R2... What's Anakin doing in attack of the clones? Before... He goes to the drawing factory. But before... Just because they're hanging out, he's protecting her in attack of the clones the whole time

on Nabu. So is R2 just there with her? And then the two of them are so connected for the rest of the film that they're together? Man,

she's so dastardly manipulative. She's like, I bet you miss this little guy who you had those adventures with when you were a kid. But he's my droid. Not yours. You guys get along way better and seem to be able to like communicate like telepathically almost. But he is technically mine. I'm looking and there's lines in the script where it's like, Anakin is saying she, meaning Padme,

programmed R2 to warn us if there's an intruder. I think he's just her droid in that movie. but they're hanging the whole time. That's great. Which is really goofy because that's not the type of droid he is. He's not a hang around the house droid. He's specifically an astrobeck droid. It's a very particular thing.

Does she like let Artu stay with him in that first scene where like she gets at the elevator and she arrives and I don't know. I'm looking. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I think that they travel together the whole time. They're not selling the Padmei and R2 set. They are not. No.

That's not coming as a duo, you know? It's going to be Anakin and R2. If you get, if it's not a standalone R2, which it should be. Which it should be. Which I'm all for, to be clear.

Yeah. But if you're going to see it, it's going to be an or even an R2C3PO. You know, they, they tend to stick together. Yeah. Him giving her C3Pio was also very funny. Him being like, when I was a little kid, I didn't have any friends, so I built one. And now I'm giving him to you.

And also I don't have any use for him anymore because I'm a Jedi and they're going to make me get rid of him. It's so bizarre. Oh, wow. It's also like the fact that it's like tied to their marriage is like, that's why I'm like, yeah. Are R2D2 and C3O their family? Like, is this an offspring of their relationship? Like, is that... Like, they are so entwined in the bond now that I was like...

What? I think it's like becoming each other's dog parents. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I have to leave my dog with you. And she's like, I've got a working dog. You can take my working dog with you after the war fields. God.

They're a weird couple. They are weird. And maybe that's what Stover's stumbling over. Meanwhile, you got Obi-Wan being like, don't need the force to bounce a quarter off of that. And it's like, this is just healthy, romantic feelings. These are, that's how you feel about your bestie. Yeah, I...

That's what it's like... I am desperate to see how the Padme, Anakin stuff, is going to get written in this book. And how... Oh, I'm like, I am. her telling him that she's pregnant is going to be. I'm stoked. Yeah.

It's imminent. We're pages away. Yeah, it is imminent. It is. Well, we should continue our pages. Again, I don't, not too much happens here, right? No, I kind of feel like from there it's like, and then they got off the show. I mean, I guess let's zoom in briefly on the thing.

Natalie, you were just talking about this a little while ago. I think it was you, Natalie, which is when, sorry, I just scrolled past him looking at his butt again. When they get to the, when they, they get captured because they get stuck in a trap and like a Ray Shield trap. They lose their lightsabers. There's a whole bit about Anakin and Obi-Wan, you know, bickering about the lightsabers getting lost again. There's a lot of people having bad feelings. They get led to, to grievous. and Grebe's is on like the command center of the ship, the bridge of the ship.

And we get this long thing about Obi-Wan being like in the waterfall of the force. They describe it. This is Obi-Wan Kenobi in the light. And he's at complete peace as he's led into the bridge. The force flows over. Sorry, he doesn't even need to reach into the force. He has already let the force reach into. him. The force flows over him and around him as though he's stepped into a crystal pure waterfall

lost in the green coils of a forgotten rainforest. When he opens himself up to that sparkling stream, it flows into him and through him and out again without the slightest interference from his conscious will. The part of him that calls itself Obi-Wan Kenobi, is no more than a ripple, an Eddie in the pool into which he endlessly pours. And we get this kind of description of, Everything in the room, including the droids, as being kind of one with the force. The walls are one with the force. Everything is the force. And so he has this complete moment of clarity.

In fact, he is the moment of clarity. He is barely even a person anymore. He is all 16 of the super battle droids. He is all eight destroyer droids. He is the clothing, the boots, the drop of reptile-scented moisture that rolls off from the misting sprays they use to keep their internal temperatures down. And because of that, he gets to do a bunch of badass stuff. You know, the section ends with just as he will let himself live or let himself die.

You know, he's going to give himself to this moment. This is how a great Jedi makes war. They are warriors, and he is the best of them at this particular thing, giving himself over, not mastering the force, but becoming a sort of conduit for it. He gets their lightsabers back and he fights his. they fight their way out, you know? Cool. And yes, there's the bit at which he goes,

Artu, and Artu, just simply by hearing him say it in the way that he does, Artu blasts grievous in the hand and fucks him up so that he will drop the lightsaber. Artu has like an inspector gadget array

of special attacks. This is called out early when Obi-Wan's like, oh, I don't know what to do about these buzz droids. and like R2 activates the buzz droid killer like tentacle. He's always got a little something for them. Definitely. That description of Obi-One, man.

It is like, yeah, there's a moment like L.A. story, if you've seen that, the Steve Martin movie where like they turned, like someone turns the shower handle to slow-mo and just begins like slowly shaking their hair out in like the silver spray. of the water. That is what you want in the force. That is, it's like, he's just taking the best shower you can imagine. He's just showering with existence. I'm curious if we get

this again and again, the way that we get the Sun drag, or the Star Dragon, or whatever, is the waterfall going to be the Obi-Wan thing in contrast to the star dragon? Because the dragon will die, and eventually Obi-Wan is going to go to a dead place, to a desert where there's no water. Right.

It's described at one point, oh yeah, here it is, in the fight with Duku, that Anakin and Obi-Wan allow the force to direct them, whereas Dugu directed the force. And so there's definitely a dichotomy being drawn between the dark side, which commands the force and the light side being the force speaking through or moving. moving through them. So an idea that we've seen a lot in Star Wars, but is really being reinforced here as like the actual workings of the force is that when you are a Jedi, you are allowing it to pass through you

and to be a Sith means to command it and manipulate it to your will. Totally. And they're brothers and best friends. It would be a, and they always will be. And sometimes they kiss. Now, they don't say that. But I believe it.

You know, I think it might be part of the great power of the, of the duo, is that they don't get to, right? That's the, that's the, the juice. Oh, no, it's sublimated sexual energy that, like, oh, no. That's rough. Yeah, so they, they, they are fighting grievous. Like I said, Kenobi goes, like, alt mode and was, you know, almost had Grievous on, at his, at his sword's blade when Grievous escapes through an escape pod. and the end of this is there's two interesting things

one is we get the perspective of Lorth Nita who is on he was the person that was communicating with grievous before and trying to arrange his surrender and he sees this ship that Anakin and Obi-Wan are trapped on with no escape pod

left, basically doomed to fall, doomed to fail, doomed to crash and burn, and is like, you know, talking about the helplessness that he feels, he talks about the irony of everyone doing the right thing and everyone doing their best, and it's still amounting to, and it amounting to the Republic winning this battle. However, losing Palpatine, losing Anakin, losing Obi-Wan would mean losing the war. And he talks about not being a religious man, but in this moment he got down on his knees and he prayed.

God damn it. He did. And so that was kind of just interesting to get zoomed out of the being in Obi-Wan and Anakin's perspective for a second and seeing kind of the tragedy unfolding or the perceived tragedy unfolding from an outside perspective. It makes me feel like we're back in

the introductory chapter with the adults watching the HoloNet who the kids are cheering on and know that Anakin and Obi-Wan are going to save the day, but the adults know that this is something different or that this is the real cost of war that is being displayed on their screens.

And then we swapped back to Anakin Skywalker doing an epic, the most epic maneuver of all, landing of crashing cruiser. Yeah. I was going to just, earlier, I wasn't sure about this. I had to double check it.

Lorth Nita is the one who says the Millennium Falcon couldn't possibly have a cloaking device. It's too small. that's that guy Darth Vader chokes him to death so rip to Lord Theta in Empire Strikes Back

yeah Anakin we get Anakin is the best at piloting he does stuff that's impossible I think this is fine but like the rest of this section had higher points of Anakin force stuff going on and so like

I get it what it feels like is a writer who is like he couldn't do that I know. I'll make the point that he couldn't do that. You know, I'll make the point that the thing that's incredible is that he couldn't do it. It's like, oh, he's in a, he's in a busted bridge on the ship and the console's controls are designed for alien hands, and he's never flown this before, and the ship is like basically destroyed. It can't be done, but he does it anyway, because that's who he is,

and he can kind of feel the future. He can, like, intuit how machines work. Okay, cool. I think it's cooler when Denzel does it in flight by just flipping the plane upside down. I think that's cooler. Yeah. Denzel could have been a Jedi.

They should let Denzel be a Jedi. Well, not too late. He will be. I guess you're right. Yeah. He could be in one of these old Republic projects or the High Republic projects where he could be like,

he could be like an older Jedi master at this point. It would come across great. He'd be a great Sith Lord. He'd be a good, so he'd be a good, you know, he'd have it. You could do the light side thing too, but I think, you know, we've seen a lot of corrupt Denzel. He's good at it. Yeah, I want to see that for sure. We're just, again, just making training day.

Just making training day. Yeah, just doing it again. Yeah. No, I think it's tough. This first act, right? The emotional climax is Anakin killing Duku. and so there is a bit of like, all right, now we got to get them off the...

Here's another action sequence. Yeah. But like the stuff that Stover was able to dig into for this opening is over. Like... Yeah. We got to get down to course. We got to get into the...

We got to get into pregnant Padmay. We got to get into the... I'm really excited to see how the Jedi master stuff goes, because remember, like, so much of this... Of Anakin's motivations are like, I deserve to be on the council. And they're not letting me.

and then like if there's all the stuff about them like wanting to use him to spy on palpatine. So I'm curious about all that stuff. I'm excited for where it goes from here. I did want to just shout out that Stover in the comments or in the comments in the footnotes is often telling the reader outright. Oh, I'm quoting the Dow de Ching here over and over again, which is, you know, the ancient Chinese academic and religious text that is one of the sources of Taoist thought and is pretty key

to some of the kind of Eastern philosophy, Eastern religious spiritualism stuff in Star Wars. And so it was nice to see him be like, oh yeah, this quote about water, that's from the Dow. Oh, this stuff, this quote about the job of the good is to

is to save the bad and the bad is the task of the good or whatever is that's just from the Dow I've just rewritten it a little bit and then and then you know in true Star Wars fashion in the same footnote or the next footnote be like

you know say something deeply Christian I forget the exact footnote in there but there's something in there he's like Christianity I was like ah yeah okay yeah cool yeah it's all in there this is it this is Star Wars So, yeah, excited to see how it develops.

All right, so next time we're reading part two. I think so. It'll be, I think it'll be longer, if that's fine. Is it too long? Because we just did three hours on a space battle. We did. That is my one. Let me see.

Let me look. Let me look. Yes, we're going to Oudapal, which, by the way, Utapal gets mentioned a bunch here. One of our favorite places. All right, this next section, this section that we just read in this in this edition the physical edition of the book that i have in my hands was 136 pages this second section would be let me see this starts on 1440 pages that was

lasers that's true that's true that is the that's my one like okay that it's going to be a lot of politics happening a lot of relationship happening in this next section then let me look at the Let me look at the table of contents. Go ahead. In the book's defense, we had 40 minutes of, like, first impressions. We did. This is true. This goes from 142 to 312, which means the final section would then be from 313 to...

Okay, here's my argument for it. That does not give us a lot for part 3. Part 3 is really short. Part 3 is only like 100 pages. from 312 to 419 so we should split part 2. But we might still only do three episodes. It's just that where we cut this. Right.

You know what I mean? It looks pretty. Yeah. Let's cut it on. If this was 130 pages, then we should probably do about that again. 142 to, do we want to go to the end of chapter,

the end of chapter 14, which is, which is, seven chapters a piece. Yeah, I think that might work. Okay, yeah. I like that. I like that.

So we'll go through the end of chapter 14. Okay. And that leaves us off with death on Oudapal. And there's only 21 chapters of the book. So, yeah, we're just going to do seven chapters an episode. That's perfect. Beautiful. Yeah.

Love it. Cool. We're going to make it three parts of the way through, or two parts of the way through seduction. That's right. Part two. Part two. Oh, wow.

It's going to be steamy between Attic and Padme. Oh. Can't wait. Hold on to your butt. Obi-Wan, don't mind if I do, my dear. I mean, that's the other thing that we haven't said here, and I don't want to make us go longer. But I do, I will say, it is so funny to read a book from 2005 before any of the stuff

we think about exists. Asoka, Asoka who? Asoka who? You know? Saw Guerrera, who? What, nothing, none of that stuff has happened. They were talking about Jibim. I don't know, no.

I don't know, no brain worms from genosis. I don't know, no, what are other bad things that happened to these people? Yeah, Asoka getting kicked out of the order. That didn't happen. That doesn't come up here. Don't worry about that so much. Mortis. Mortis is in here.

Mortis is not here. I guess, you know. Never met him. At least we have sexy ventress. Ventress is here. Yeah. Sexy Ventress mentioned. I want to see, is there more ventress in this book?

I want to see. I'm not going to hold. I'm not going to hold my breath. I feel like you're just a wink to the fans. Like that hot. That hot batty. That hot baddie. The very end of that comic, the trade paperback that I was telling you all about,

the Jabeem one, end with a two-parter, not a two-parter ends with two, I guess it is a two-parter about Anakin and a guy who was a Jedi who was raised by the sand people by the Tuscan Raiders and like, wears the mask, but he's a human. And he tells that guy about what happened.

and he's like, you're the only one I can tell about this, actually. And the guy doesn't portray him to the rest of the Jedi. But then the final two pages of that comic are Ventris having kidnapped Obi-Wan Kenobi, and he's like trying to break him and turn him to the dark side. And she's put him in a little mask. It's a whole thing. So the fandom at the time. And Anakin told the guy raised by Tuscan Raiders that he killed a bunch of Tuscan Raiders that he killed a bunch of Tuscan Raiders.

And the guy is like, I get it. I'm the only one you could tell about that. Stupid. I don't like it. It doesn't hit for me. That is bad. That is bad. But I am intrigued by this torture scene between Ventris and Obi-Wan.

Very interesting. Yeah. I'll drop the images in the chat, you know. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Well, I think that is our cue that we reached the end or the Nader, another episode of a more civilized age. This episode is produced by Michael Hermes and supported by our listeners at patreon.com slash civilized.

So next time, the next seven chapters up until the start of death on Utapal. Do not read Death on Utapal. Save that for the finale. So that's what we're covering on the next installment. Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And continue to enjoy those footnotes. Like, give us over a little high five. When he's like, you see what I did that?

You like it? Like that? It's got a fun Comic-Con. Like, uh, like convention. Like, like doing a panel. The footnotes are like giving a panel energy. They really are.