A More Civilized Age: A Star Wars Podcast - 60: Dark Disciple

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

60 episodes. Minus like, a dozen Andor eps. Plus a bunch of Patreon bonus Q&As. That's how long it's taken us to get through the original run of Clone Wars, plus the Legacy materials released soon after the end of its 6th season—culminating with today's episode on the Asajj Ventress/Quinlan Vos romantic adventure Dark Disciple. It's truly all come down to this... Which means, of course, that we spend nearly the entire first hour of this episode talking instead about Star Wars Celebration 2023, or at least the bits of it that had happened by the time we recorded early on Saturday. Next Time (for some reason): Solo: A Star Wars Story Show Notes Ronto Wrap Asajj Ventress Ball Gown Concept Art Hosted by Rob Zacny (@RobZacny) Featuring Alicia Acampora (@ali_west), Austin Walker (@austin_walker), and Natalie Watson (@nataliewatson) Produced by Austin Walker Music by Jack de Quidt (@notquitereal) Cover art by Xeecee (@xeeceevevo)

Let us return once more to a more civilized age, a Star Wars podcast. I'm Rob Zackney, joined by Ali Akumpura, Austin Walker, and Natalie Watson. We are continuing our tour of the post-cancellation Season 6 Clone Wars cleanup materials, the things that didn't get produced by the time that they called time on Season 6 of Clone Wars and put the show on what appeared to be a cancellation. It turned out to be a very long hiatus. This time, we've all just read Christy Golden's Dark Disciple, a tragic romantic adventure about Assange Ventress and Quinlan Voss

teaming up to kill Count Duku. As always, we're supported by our patrons at patreon.com slash civilized. But before we get into Dark Disciple, we should also address some of the things that we learned at Star Wars Celebration and some of the changes that have unfolded or been announced to the world of Star Wars. They should invite us.

They should. Every time we talk about this, it's like, they should invite us, and then we think about why they might not invite us. But this time they should. Right. Well, we've said so many nice things. About Andor.

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing, right? You know, maybe the biggest thing coming out of this is there's three new movies being made, and one of them is being made by Dave Filoni, is directed by Dave Filoni. Faloni's getting his movie which I'm happy about

I'm putting all my cards on David Filoni I know Disney is as well but all of my chips my whole bet is on Dave Filoni I'm a Flonny stand now I stand with Dave Poloni I'm gonna get myself a hat

and a clocoon figure I knew this is happening like first it was the Yodapel and the Filoni pill yeah the Yoda pill was the hardest pill to swallow now it's Yeah, I would so much, if you had to make me rank dudes,

Follonee way higher on the dude list than Yoda. Oh, then Yoda? Yeah, I mean, obviously. Then after what we've read? Oh, my God. Yoda's in the shitter tonight. Yeah, so Follone's going to do some sort of Avengers movie with the Mandalorian characters, the Mandoverse, as is being called inside of the Star Wars fandom these days.

We did it's an Avengers movie? He's bringing all the threads together. He's doing the, I'm not willing. Oh, he's doing, okay. Like, this is what it's been building to, and that's what makes me skeptical of it. Focus on the New Republic, and we'll close out the interconnected stories told in the Mandalorian book of Boba Fett and Asoka. My favorite Dave Filoni stuff, of which there is a lot, is not the big event stuff. It's the fun episode.

I guess live action-wise. Mandalorian is at its best when it's a guy going on an adventure with a little guy with him. And it's not at its best when Boba Fett shows up and when Asoka shows up and when other major Star Wars characters show up. Yeah, because they're like the, they're not who they are. Like, they're just not being themselves.

It feels like... I mean, that is the biggest problem, right? I mean, literally, they are not who they are because we're using fucking CGI Young Effect. But, and also, like, it just feels so divorced. Also, that leads me to the next announcement

which is that Daisy Ridley is starring in a sequel trilogy, a sequel sequel trilogy. It's not a whole trilogy. I think it's just a one-off. I think it's a one-off film right now. It's announced as, what's she doing? She's rebuilding the Jedi Order? Learn another story.

Read another book. People keep doing this. And it's not working out. It's not a good idea. Don't do this. What was the lesson? It would be a hell of a comedy, though. if you made a movie about someone who received about, like, two days of formal instruction, basically, like, attend the Jedi learning module and is attempting to, like, reconstruct.

Luke tried to rebuild the Jedi from first principles already, and now Ray's only real Jedi teacher was Luke on his worst days, being like, you don't fucking get it, kid, stop it, burn it all down. And, like, I like that turn for Luke. I'm a depressed, I'm a doomer Luke, like, defender. Um, but what are you doing, Ray? How is your, ah, how do you go from that to then doing, then do it like, I'll do it. Well, the answer is that Charmine Obit Chinoi, who people really, really liked, um, what was the Marvel thing she just did? Miss Marvel, right? Um, uh, I've heard good things about previous films that she's made. But the quote here from her is, I've always been attracted to the hero's journey and the fact that the world needs many more heroes. And it's like,

I can't like I can't what are you talking about like what is she doing I don't know like and like also what's heroing about like building a building like go out there and do stuff what are you doing so here's the other thing so I like I would say this was one of the first it always sounds like it well I don't think it does anymore but I think it always sounds at least in theory like an interesting concept like you're going to have so many cool characters come out of this this goes back to Like the original Star Wars EU novels. Now, admittedly, the person they chose to, like, lead this arc was Kevin J. Anderson, who was, like, sort of renowned as kind of being a hacky, like, licensed novel writer. But really the thing you run into fast is where the, where does drama come out of the whole, like, we're creating the Jedi Academy? We're going to teach the next generation of Jedi. Well, like, I think it would be interesting, but schools are not, they do not tend to,

to be grounds for like great drama if you're just focusing on the training and like the the system actually working and producing the person you're supposed to be training they become interesting when they fail when they when they're not all they're cracked up to be and so like every time they've done a ah like there's new Jedi entering the ranks to you know rebuild the order and to fill in alongside Luke Skywalker half the stories end up being about ooh the Jedi are not good. Oh, this Jedi has gotten a little dark-sighted. Is this Jedi going to get a little bad?

Is it about to get worse than killing a billion people? Right. Well, like, this is the thing, right, is like you have the normal failure stories of schools or the normal melodrama stories of high school kids who are like getting up to no good and they're like they're having like young, like Y.A. adventures. Like you get that style of story and then also they're Jedi, which means they're going to kill a bunch of people if they go bad, right? And then it's not just going to be.

realm of, like, the Jedi should not exist. Like, there's a character in the old EU, Kip Duron, introduced early as, like, he's such a powerful force user. This guy's, like, stronger than any Jedi you've met. Like, he's stronger than the emperor. He's huge. Like, when you touch his little, like, midichlorian noddle in his brain, like, everything just explodes.

It's wild. And over the course of the EU, because they never figure out what to do with this character, he, like, goes, he goes dark-sided, grabs, like, the successor to the Death Star, wipes out, like, a bunch of planets, billions are dead. redeem him and then but he ends up being kind of a right wing Jedi even when he's good for like the rest of the EU he's like I didn't need to take the white gloves off and it's all right now Kim we know we you've killed a lot of people but bring it down you're one of us now why isn't this motherfucker still running around it's well you know what we're going to have a lot

to say about that today you know sure fucking will uh there's a third movie this one is being directed by James Mangold. So we've said, okay, first movie that was announced as a full, I mean, there's three movies. The Faloni, Mandalorian, you know, megaverse movie. The Obai, Shanoi, Ray,

School for Jedi. What's the Xavier School for Gifted Children? It's that. It's going to be, Ray becomes Professor X, but for Jedi. And then the third one is from James Mangold, who directed Three Tenta to Yuma and Walk the Line. Yeah, Copeland.

Logan, most recently. Kate and Leopold? Did he direct Kate and Leopold? Dude, yes. That's so funny. He's a Hugh Jackman whisperer. But, too, he is just like one of those, like, he would be one of those studio directors in the 40s or 50s where it's like, you're doing a Western day.

Okay, I'm doing a Western. Okay, you're doing a Pure Peace Romantic Comedy. Okay, I'm doing period of Peace Romantic Comedy. Rob, how was Ford Ferrari? Didn't you? That's a car movie. movie was that good he directed that it's it's fine like you know it's one of the movies that really does earn it's like dad movie descriptor i think the big thing is it's one of those movies that

would have been fucking awesome if it wasn't so heavily cg'd like it's like they cheaped out 1999 ford v ferrari would have been great yes but he was busy doing girl interrupted then which i didn't realize he did that oh shit wow um he's currently about to put out indiana jones and the dial of destiny which is a terrible name for me still i still i still believe that the Dial of Destiny sounds like a, like a phone-in show on Nickelodeon, like a game show. The Dial of Destiny, yeah. It's like a Sun Dial. Like, Legend of Hidden Temple.

Yeah, 100%. Yes. And then, and it's also making a Swamp Thing movie, but then yes, he will be doing it. He will be going back to the origins of the Jedi. His movie will reveal, quote, the dawn of the Jedi. It's at 25,000 years before the prequels. Um, we're going to learn about the first Jedi. The dawning of the force.

Opens 25,000 years ago, a bunch of force users decide they need to create a place just for force users. One of the shit of the galaxy could touch them. Jedi land. That's it. Uh-huh. Uh, he describes it as being a little like a biblical epic, which is very funny to me. I'm so curious about that. We'll see.

I mean, who knows if any of these get made? Who knows? How many Star Wars movies have been announced and canceled? Until I see a trailer, it ain't real. So there were also cancellations announced, right? There was the rogue Starboard Celebration.

There's a consolidation around like the Faloniverse right now. Everyone is positing Faloni as like the next Lucas essentially. He's like really like if you could tell baby Faloni 20 years ago that he'd be, oh my God.

Oh my God. This is the thing is I'm not excited about this particular thing But if someone, in my heart of hearts, I believe Star Wars is better when someone has the keys to the kingdom. And when someone is someone who, like, deeply cares about it. I do wish he'd say laser swords more often. I wish he could care more, but also less. Do you know what I mean? He needs to hit that Lucas zone.

That's my hope. Like, that's not true. Obviously, we're seeing that with a vandalore. But, like, I hope there's, like, wisdom in there. Yeah. But they did cancel. Right. A month ago, Variety reported that the Kevin Feigey Star Wars project was dead, and then so is the Patty Jenkins Roke Squadron story, which felt like the sort of thing that was going to end up being, I don't know.

I guess we'll see if any of that stuff lives in other formats. So this is the thing. My take on this has been that it felt like for a while Star Wars was trying to do a bit of a, trying to build towards some sort of Marvel concept where we're going to attach big names to projects. but the projects are just going to be like exploitations of the IP effectively. And like I think Solo was kind of the perfect expression of that. You'd say there was a bit of that going on in Rogue One where like they hire big names with like distinctive styles and they flinch. I don't know what Gary Edwards was doing on Rogue One. He made a bunch of great movies and then they decided they didn't like what he'd done with Rogue One and Gilroy like was called in to fix it up.

But like I don't know what the story is there. But we do know that like Solo, what we had going on. was, what was it? It was Lord and Taylor. Was that right? Yeah, Lord and Taylor were brought in to do the solo movie. And then it seems like they flinched because, like, Lord and Taylor make, like, goofy, like, lighthearted films with a lot of, like, meta-humor. And it seems like, you know, Kathleen Kennedy or the people, like, you know, running Star Wars didn't actually want a fully Lord and Taylor take on solo.

Right, right. And they bring in Ron Howard to clean it up. They bring in Ron Howard to, like, he's another one of those directors. Like, he'll do anything. He'll deliver, you know, to spec can direct any material. And so that's how they end up handling that. I don't think it's a terrible movie, but it's kind of anodyne. I don't think it was going to be a successful template for, like,

compelling Star Wars stuff moving forward. It's like, it's got to be Star Warsy somehow, but, like, not too distinctive, even though we want, like, the creative cachet that comes from. hiring big names. I would hope that what they've learned kind of post and or is, actually if you're going to hire, like, big-ish names,

like, you actually just let them do their thing. Yeah, give them some leeway to really swing. Otherwise, what's the point? I feel like most of, most of Star Wars problems have come from, like, this, like, creative, problem with creative oversight. Like, there's, like, some sort of, like,

original, uh, idea that gets, like, very, very far into production. Like, look at, you know, the Abrams sequel trilogy, look at Solo, look at Rogue One, all these different, even Obi-Wan, like there have been so many instances of like them going so far with some, you know, creative vision and then just so much oversight. I don't know if it's just like there are too many stakeholders that are like, and this is what I think like you're speaking to Austin with like having a singular creative vision. If there's someone that's taking a big,

step up in that way that can be like a singular voice in guiding where Star Wars goes. I would be clear really quick because that was not announced. Filoni didn't get the crown, right? He wasn't knighted.

The rumor was that that was happening behind closed doors. This is like the first step of it, which is what you would do, right? You'd be like, all right, bud, make a movie. Let's see how it goes. And you can imagine if that movie hits

and does numbers, I can imagine, him stepping into that role more fully and also this is the first it's there's a degree to which like you have to you have to be happy for him because he's been stuck on TV for 20 years and doing the best work in the series until and or period in that 20 years you know so 100% he's definitely he's definitely the guy to give the keys to for sure there's no one else that has that like breadth of experience and knowledge and And, like, love of the IP has been embedded for this long.

Like, he is really... He has dialed in on what makes Star Wars kind of cool. Whereas, like, I think, you know, with Abrams you saw, you know, he was like, here are the iconic visuals of Star Wars. Here are the beats that make Star Wars, Star Wars. But, like, he didn't actually understand the universe any. Not know. Or, like, why people, like, are interested in it as a setting.

He was just, like, they like the look in the beats of the original trilogy, so I'm just going to serve that up again. Whereas Faloni, sometimes to a fault, but I think it's authentic, and it's a good instinct for someone who'd be in more of a creative helming role trying to figure out what else you can do in this universe. He does have a proclivity for kind of the weird, goofy stuff on the margins, where like any time, like, you know, you've had a thought of like, what a cool place, what a cool alien. I want to know more about what that is. Faloni kind of seems to have the same impulse. All right, we should keep moving through these. There's an Asoka trailer that we shouldn't watch.

If anybody already did, I'm sorry This Assoca trailer I did but I'll forget it Yeah, well that's good I mean it's it's effectively Rebels Season 5 That's what that show is We cannot watch it live

Like it is the follow-up directly to the final events of Rebels Like it is It is picking up that ball And in that way again it's another Flonie push I'm guessing Filoni is making the Asoka show or is like has some sort of you know exactly credit that he and Favre are splitting on a bunch of things where exactly exactly and so that is what that show is filled with Rebel's characters we'll get to it at some point and then there was stuff that was shown but only behind closed doors there was an Andor season two trailer that was shown behind closed doors that leaked I peaked at the leak and was like this quality is bad enough that I can feel good about not watching it It'll be out there eventually.

Excuse me. It'll be out there eventually. And then there was also a leak of the Acolyte trailer, which is the other upcoming Star Wars show that I keep forgetting about, from Leslie Headland, from Russian Doll, which is the very end of the High Republic era, which is the pre-prequel era. It's about 100 years before episode one. And the stuff that I heard about that, and I think I-09 did write that up yesterday, is it's very Jedi-focused because that's what that era is about. And specifically lots of talk about, like, who gets to have the power? Who is? Here's the quote.

Here it is. Over the montage, someone says, the rest of the footage plays mostly in montage. We see footage inside of what looks like a Jedi temple. several younger Jedi sneak through tight spaces. Someone scales up the side of a temple. There's a scene in the snow, a Nimordian appears. And finally, Stenberg's character says, over the montage, this isn't about good or bad.

This is about power and who's allowed to use it. And there was some sort of interview, and I don't think it's written up here in the I-09 thing, but I have it right here from a different chat. A quote. And then it's like, well, we're in this era of people, piece and nothing's wrong because we're in charge, which is a strange thing to say. And again, they might be correct, but I would assume that in this very, very vast galaxy, people would go,

I don't agree with that. And I guess that comes up of an IGN piece here. And so there's this, there's like a broader thing of like trying to set the groundwork for the state of things in the prequel trilogy. And I really, I really, I really. am curious to see how much this still just wraps up being like well the Jedi are the ones you should have the power the good Jedi and if there's bad Jedi you just get rid of them right we'll see I'm I'm I watched a little bit of this leak when it when it first dropped and now it's like been scrubbed from the internet it looks like all of the High Republic stuff I've seen in terms of like big swooshy white robes and golden lightsabers that feel a little more medieval in ways and

you know that's interesting i guess um those are the big things uh they're re-releasing um return of the july into theaters which is exciting oh there's also that uh that jude law show that i keep forgetting about as well yeah yeah skeleton crew this thing was announced at some point and like i completely fucking forgot about it's like uh it's being described as being like an Amblin entertainment movie. It's like a kid's adventure movie, but Jude Law is there. Yeah, it's Star Wars, Star Wars,

colon, skeleton crew. Do we know nothing about it? Jude Law is there. There was footage. It says in this Kotaku piece, audiences were shown a trailer that features kids living on an unnamed forest world. They do boring kids stuff, like go to school and all that, but want more. They want adventure, and they find it.

incredible time to end or here Then it goes into like what the footage looks like What Disney company.com has their write-up of it Which they say Skeleton crew follows the journey of four kids Who make a mysterious discovery on their seemingly safe home planet And then get lost in a strange and dangerous galaxy

Finding their way home and meeting unlikely allies and enemies Will be a greater adventure than they ever imagined. Sure. Sure. You know, I will I will say, I mean, I'll see it for Jude law, obviously, and it's for Star Wars.

But I feel like there aren't that many live action movies for children like anymore. Yeah. Like most children's movies are animated now that I think about it. So it's like, it's kind of cool that they're doing this live action kids adventure thing.

Because I just, like, last one I could think of as like Jumanji. was like a really big one. But that, like, even still kind of like... Was that still for kids by that point? Like... It goes a little older. Like, I feel like it skews a little older.

But, you know, so it's... I don't know. I'm interested in that. That sounds cool. There's also a babies show that just... What? That got announced. There's, like, a baby Star Wars show.

What? Like, Muppet Babies? Like, uh, Star Wars Kids show. This is making me think, like, what is for kids? kids right now in Star Wars like they don't have a clone war's right now this is it's called

it's called it's called Star Wars Young Jedi Adventures it's premiering on May the 4th it's set in the High Republic area uh sorry era um

this is for children this truly is for babies this is for like literal babies um it's aimed at preschoolers and therefore, quote, the show's character's tone and life lexons woven throughout each episode were written just for them. And our talent and team was committed to honoring the cinematic legacy while staying true the expectations of parents for the youngest of audiences. The answer to rewind for a second of like what is for kids these days is a much bigger question across all of media and culture.

Because what happened is YA stuff is what's for kids these days. And it always was. That's what YA. Y.A. does not mean 20-year-olds. It means 14-year-olds. It's always meant. That's like what the literature category means. But that stuff blew up so big post in the era of Twilight Divergent Hunger Games, like that stuff. And so something like Mandalorian is not, I mean, Mandalorian isn't YA because Mando himself is too old. He's not like a 19-year-old or to a 24-year-old. But the content in that show is not so divorced from other. types of Y.A. stuff. I would say that what we're, the main movies were four kids in that, in that, you know, 10

to 18 bracket when they were coming out, but they were bad. But it's been like four or five years at this point. And like, I don't know, I don't know that I'm like 12 in watching Bad Batch, right? Maybe they're doing that. But like, do you need that clone wars attachment? Like, is that show like, are they just playing

in Lego Star Wars and like waiting for the next trilogy? Yeah, it's like, it was Tales of the Jedi for them. I don't We haven't seen it yet, right? But I think the actual answer here is what's for them is all of the Marvel content in the world. This is like Star Wars has taken a bunch of L's is the actual answer in the last decade. And the people who held on are people who have long-term commitments to it. Yeah.

Or people who've been. The frequency by which Marvel puts out stuff compared to Star Wars is like a lot. There's so the volume of, I mean, Star Wars used to have a giant volume. of Star Wars stuff, but now everything's been, like, extremely consolidated. And I feel like there's just more Marvel to watch than Star Wars. But, yeah, you're right. Bad Batch doesn't, the vibe I get off. I don't know, we'll get to Bad Batch, right?

Bad Batch has some young characters in it, I know. So that could be... I also think there is an element of, like, the young adult stuff, the stuff that, like, is aimed at teenagers and above took over to such an extent that, like, you also pretend it's for grownups too but fundamentally it's just not really that adult like yes there are allusions to like more mature

conflicts to open up in like in Marvel but they are resolved through the means of like you know superhero storytelling as you might expect not but actually like comics like in places have gotten more like very serious mature

like about how you resolve some of these tensions but the films you know they're so formulaic and they so and they sort of you know try to keep these concepts of good and bad pretty distinct from each other like here are your

heroes here are your villains you guys always win that we're sort of in this weird place where there's a lot of things that we don't think of being as four kids that are like they are for kids just that a ton of adults are also into them

and also because there's like not a lot of options for adults either right that's the other weird part is what happened to like, you know, the non-franchise, you know, film for, you know, drama for adults. There's not many of those either, you know, being released. So I think it's kind of this weird thing of the industry's on a really good way to create a huge, like, tranche of, like, viewers. And you, you know, it's sort of a one-size-fits-all filmmaking where you get, like, you know,

kids and adults and it's widely profitable but it does leave the thing where it's like well what's the equivalent of I don't know yeah like things like the Goonies

things like Sandlot what's the equivalent of that and you know what's the equivalent of like Michael Clayton yeah right there's just there's not the thing that kids are watching of course is Lego Star Wars summer vacation which came out last year

you know Lego Star Wars summer vacation the it's the one where Anakin Skywalker's Force Ghost tells Finn about a trip he once took to Emperor Palpatina's Darth Vader during Empire Day and when Princess Leia's Force Ghost tells Finn about a trip that she and Hans Solo took the young Ben Salon when she was a child when he was a child before receiving Luke's Jedi training He should watch this we need to watch this book We need to watch the Force Ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi And Kenobi tells Finn of his previous summer adventures

Are you going? Are you in living? We need to watch this. Younger Obi-Wan Kenobi dressed in a Hawaiian shirt sneaks into Tajvath's palace. What? Do you want to see the trailer? Do we want to watch the trailer before we talk about this book? Yeah, yeah. Let's watch this trailer.

Wait, can I also, can I also ask why Chubaka was wearing clothes on the stage at Star Wars? That wasn't Chubaka. That was a different wookie who's a Jedi. I can't believe you've done this again. Not all wookies are Chubaka. Why is, why are, why are they wearing clothes? I've never seen wookies wearing clothes. Why?

Wookies wear clothes sometimes, don't they? When do they wear clothes? Will you wear clothes? Uh, I don't know. When they want to stunt a little, or when they've got Jedi robes. Yeah. I just want, are you talking about the one who has the Jedi robe on for Acolyte? Is that the one you're talking about?

Yes. Yeah, back then it was illegal to be naked, so you have to wear clothes. It's all in the lore. it's not more but at some point a shift I just want to know about when when wookie stopped wearing clothes do you think that this rookie went to the went to the Jedi temple to be a Jedi and was like

I feel naked everybody around me has clothes on Ali's video has frozen in a smile and I was like what is happening why is Ali just grinning nonstop oh Ali's gone for me Oh, Ali's just gone for you.

Okay. Yeah. Is Ali's on the call? Allie's typing. Ali's typing. Oh. And it would drop VRB. Yeah.

So yeah, this is an image from a High Republic thing. Uh, you could see the wookie here is wearing clothes, so. Okay, but on wookie planet. Kashik. Yes. Uh-huh. Do they wear clothes? Do wookies wear clothes?

Images. Do their heavy coats of long fur? Whikis do not generally wear clothes. No clothes. For practical purposes, they will wear tool belts. That's what I'm saying. Who's making the wookies put clothes on? Yoda.

This is another reason why I fucking hate that little frog. Perhaps more comfortable you would be. Sport coat comes out, a little tie. Civilized you should dress. I love. the like 70s portraits of Chewbacca the 70s portraits of

like this this not actually well this one's not actually Chewbacca this is probably some from some this is it's not I can tell yeah that's not Chewbacca that's not Chewbacca but I don't know it's from

probably some his head upy got hot big. This guy's sexy. Yeah. This might be the sexiest rookie. This is just the Star Wars.com looky.

But look at like Rookie history. Okay, here we go. Look at these guys. Look at this group of fucking guys. Yaruah. That was Yerua. Who is the elder statesman of the wookies?

He represented. That's a senator. He's a senator. That first one that you sent. That's why he has swag. Damn, look at all these dudes Look at them I want to hang out with them

They just won a championship They do I don't know what of But they did They beat the shit out of the other team They look like kings The braids Are my dude in the back

It was like those long ass braids That he has with like the fat I also did the one doing the goofy smile In the back row Where he's got the arms crossed And like hey hey Everyone's trying to be serious. He's like, come on, we just won.

The one of the top right has maybe killed somebody is the thing. That face? This is the Sopranos. To me, this is the Sopranos. To me, this is the Sopranos. Like, that's Tony, top right corner. Uh-huh. I feel like Polly.

Polly is the one. Who are you saying is Polly? I need to know. I'm saying Goofy smile is Polly. You think goofy smile is Polly. Okay, I can see it. Yeah. I feel like he, like if you could catch Polly off guard, he would kind of give him.

Top left. Pussy's top left. Pussy's 100% top luck. Christopher is bottom left because he kind of like doesn't. He looks a little shy. He looks a little shy. He's like a little overwhelmed. Polly is actually my man with the braids.

I think that's a Polly expression. I've seen that Polly face so. many times. Yeah, yeah. Allie, are you back? Allie is connected to the call for me now. Oh, no. Maybe.

So who's the junior that's going to get got here? Oh. I don't think if this is, if this is like a faithful photo, we're like, we're, we're, like, FBI surveillance team, sort of like, take, like, you know, we're dead to be the angelic looking one bottom, bottom middle. Bottom middle. Yeah, 100%. It has to be that motherfucker.

He's got the halo. built in. Like, I see, I see the memorial picture already. It's that, it's that photo cropped. Looking a little too naive, looking a little too much like he doesn't know something everybody else here does. You know? Yeah, you're right. In the two, the two wookies in the back right. Yeah. Like, this, this photo is taken like six months before three of these people were whacked. Yep. And the two in the upper right take over the cashie cartel. Yeah. Yep. Oh, my God, I want the show. Let's make crime

wookies. I really stand by the next whatever the next show is it should be we've done we've done like

the heist Tony Gilroy we need like the mobster mafia Star Wars. I want that so bad. And not this bullshit where it's like oh we go to crime planet

no no no sopranos. Like it is like let's get into not like we're pikes on our way of life is to run crime families. No, fuck that.

No. Regular planet. Crime happens there. Who's running it? Yeah. And then when we know now the answer is, what's his face from Andor? Not Tay. What's the guy that they end up meeting with?

The shitty guy whose son is going to marry the daughter. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. What's his whole organization? No, that's not uncle. It's not uncle. It's that guy. Yeah.

Yeah, I want to know what he's got cooking. He sucks too much. I want a new guy who I can like a little bit, but, uh, but that vibe, you know. Well, that's the guy you set up as like, he's going to be the boss that gets taken down in the, like, you're cheering on your prime family phase, like season one of Peaky Blinders. Or it's like, Godfather One where it's like, yeah, go, take him down. It's good that you're going to become the, you're going to be the good mobster who replaces our evil bad mobster. Uh-oh, wait a second. Allie's back.

Hi, Allie. Hi. Hi. Howdy. Hi, who are these wookie? Oh, that's the first of the Wookie Crime family. That's the Sopranos. Yeah, we did a whole breakdown while you were.

Okay, cool, cool, cool, cool. It's fine, welcome back. All right, are you ready to watch the trailer for a thing that's already out? Star Wars Summer Vacation? A terrible news for everyone who's looking forward to rebels. Yeah, no, we're going to watch this instead, period. We're not. I mean, one day, you know.

We should on the first day of summer vacation. Yes, that's cute. This has Patreon backer written all over it. It does. Uh-huh, 100%. All right. This is the Lego Star Wars summer vacation. Are you seeing the video?

Yeah. Okay. Oh, yeah. Three, two, one, go. Lucasfilm Limited. Damn. Okay. This is it, everyone.

We're here. It's been. To have some fun. Strapping, baby. Lando here. This is like Landau's Pleasure Cruiser. High fighters, no threat of annihilation. Oh, this looks so hype.

Best vacation ever! Summer's about to end. It's a vacation. Relax. Hello there. Who are you? Obi-Wong Kenobi. And what is in this?

Oh my God. Does that reality? How do you think of it? That kind of holiday? So far Abidi-Rabody And don't forget my shoulders They really burn

One never knows how long A moment will last You must learn to enjoy Yourself What do you know about vacations Damn, get them No No

The trip isn't about the destination It's about the journey Go Go Go Go Go Go! We'll be declared rulers off the beach. Ruler? Everybody Limbaugh. Oh, my.

Yo! Who's next? Did he just decapitate somebody? With limbo? We have to watch this. I'm not saying it. Oh, that's the Disney Hot Dog. It's a what?

You put the Disney Hot Dogg into the show. It literally is weird out. What is the Disney Hot? Don. If you go to the Disney restaurant, Arantho Rat. Yeah. We do have to watch it. You see that the tune was called Scariff Beach Party.

Oh, my God. This party all took place before the Scariff Beach was blown up by the Death Star. Oh, I see this hot dog. This looks gross. This is too much. It's so good, actually. No, it's so good. Yeah.

Like, when I go to Disneyland, it's the first thing I go eat. It's the first thing. It's like a hot dog. this hot dog thing. It's a hot dog and like a pita with like Kohl'slaw on it

and I know that that sounds disgusting. Okay, that's not what I'm looking at. But it's good. There's a list of 10, here's this world

that we live in. This is what I found was MickeyBlog.com's 10 favorite hot dogs at Disney. But maybe none of these are the dog you're talking about. No, it's not.

What are you talking about? You get it at Ronto, Ronto Roasters in Galaxy's edge from the in the Black Spire Outpost and my mouth is watering just looking at this. That's just like a Euro but with a hot dog

in it. Exactly. Instead of I feel like it would be better if it had like Euro meat. Yeah, YerMeet's great. The vegan one, the vegan one has kimchi in it like a kimchi slaw. It's really good and like spicy mayo. Oh my God, I won't be so badly. I would eat it.

Yeah, I would eat it. I don't know you not eat it. I'm at the Ronto zone or whatever the fuck you say. Ronto Roasters. Yeah, I'm there. Get in Ronto raps. It's delicious. The day that we go to Disneyland.

It's going to be, it's going to go wild. It's going to be a, it's going to be a, it's going to be a nuts-o day. Also, you'd be out in L.A. for any sort of Game Fest stuff or? I don't think so. We'll see. There's a chance I have a meeting there around then, but not like a, yeah, who knows. We're not announcing anything this year. Right.

But we could, but I'm just saying, like, I'll be out there. Natalie's always out there. Send AMCA to Disney Room. Please. I want to go at some point. I just don't know this June is going to do it. We'll see. Right, yeah, yeah.

We'll find an off-season time. We got to find it. But we do have to find a time. Is the one to go to the one out there or is the one to go to in Florida? Well, I haven't been in the one in Florida. I haven't been in the one in Florida. We should research. Because we're going to do it once.

We're not going to be in the hotel. We should do the hotel before they shut the hotel down. Do you think the Florida one is made just because the bad hotel is there? Also, because it opened later. That means they learn things. Well. That is true, right? The Star Wars Hotel is kind of bombing.

They're shutting it. They're going to shut it down. We got to go. That's what I heard. They're not going to do. I thought we talked about this. No. They're apparently they're canceling.

Oh, there was a new incentive for guests to stay. They lowered the prices. Yeah, they lowered the prices at one point because it was like nobody was doing it. Good. And then I think they're like not going to do it. Star Wars immersive hotel. It's closing permanently from October. Fuck, we got to go!

Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Hold on. This year? No, no, no. The article I'm reading is from October. It could be done. Oh, oh, okay. I thought you said, okay, okay, okay, okay.

From October as in, that's this article is from October. Okay, okay. I thought you meant it was closing this year. Okay, I misunderstood this. I don't know. I misunderstood this. It says, uh, voyages that had low occupancy, because it's all like a, you know, you've got to go for a set amount of days.

it's like a story arc that you experience. So ones with low occupancy, they canceled and they rescheduled them to like, you know, fill up the voyages more. So. Wow, they're changing. Okay. They fucked. They did literally just change something on the fifth, which is it used to be that

you could get, um, you could, you could, you could book tomorrow. But now going forward. Sorry, yes, starting this coming October, it's going to only be open on the weekends. Fridays, stays starting on Fridays and Sundays. So it'll be open for Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then Sunday, Monday, Tuesday. But then there will not be a midweek stay. So, like, you won't get like a Wednesday through Friday stay, which is out of available. Oh, that's going to be more Star Wars than going aboard a galactic star cruise that it feels like it's struggling.

That's the whole thing It should have been It should have been that to begin with They should roll that into the story Making a struggling Galactic Cruiser That isn't doing what it used to Because then whatever

What are they called? That's really cute I'm your new captain Captain Honda I bought this It still is a fortune It still is a fortune to do this We should just start saving up money

And just We should just go We should go we should do it we should do it they should give us a discount and then we should do it yeah we should get a media pass

you're trying to revivify your luxury they need the like you know when somebody like does like a review of MMO like a year later like here's with all the patch notes and everything we're gonna we need the like good they know they didn't patch it is the problem

maybe they know that we're gonna show I go up and be like, yeah, that was mid. We spent how much money on this? But we will participate. Like, the theater of it all, we are going to be in it. Yeah, for people who don't know, there's like, you're playing mini games, you're, like, talking to crew members and character. It's a larp. It's basically a low-key larp.

Yeah. For thousands of dollars, which is the thing we ran into last time. It starts at, like, $5,000. For a two-person cabin. So, if you like to have. So, that's. It's so expensive. How did they ever expect anyone to do this?

It's so expensive. This is like VR if you could only use it for two days. All right, I'm closing on this. We should talk about this book. We should. Does it speak to this book how much we are not talking about it? No. Okay.

I have to admit, though. Okay. Where do we start? What? We should start with this. No, hang on. Natalie had admission. I would start Natalie's admission.

I did cry. Wow And they were like They were like angry tears Because I was angry That it was making me cry That it like brought me to that place That I cried in this book

That like I ultimately feel I just Yeah But I did cry There's tears Tears were shed What is this book Rob? Can you set it up for us

Can you give us the high level Breakdown Well So as we learn in the forward to dark disciple This is of course the like What seems like an unedited arc Like before they would have cut it down for episodes Because there's a lot that happens here

It is eight episodes It was an eight episode So it was two four episode arcs Which I think makes a lot of sense This was season This was season This would have been You think about something like the

The Savage and mall you know, arc that's like split across multiple two or four episode arcs, it's similar to that, right? Where you could imagine, I would imagine we get the first half of the book through, the episodes are Lethal Alliance, The Mission, Conspirators, Dark Disciple, and I would imagine Dark Disciple is the episode that takes place back on Dathamere, with the snake stuff, etc. Then the second set of four episodes was saving Voss part one, saving Voss part two, traitor, and the path. And so those are the back half of this book, where they start by needing to save Voss, which.

So what's going on here, Rob? Yeah, so this is. Oh, you started to say, as you learned in the intro or in the foreword. Yeah, this was a group of episodes that were unproduced at the time of the series cancellation. it seems like Katie Lucas was kind of the maybe the primary writer behind some of this or was she mostly writing speaking from the perspective of like someone who liked to write Assange.

It seemed like this was her baby. This was her baby. This was an eight episode arc written by, I guess one of the original writers of the book, or of the, not the book, of the original arc scripts, of which all eight episodes were written, is my understanding, but not produced.

We saw a little bit of footage. There's like, there's like a short story reel that is, that was made similar to the Crystal Crisis on Udipal, but it's not, it's like three and a half minutes long. And none of the final voice actors are in it. And the effects are even more preliminary than what we saw in Udipau. And none of the scenes hit, because it's none of the important stuff, basically. It's like the initial chase scene, bounty chase scene, and then a duku, the duku fighting the bounty. hunters on Serrano, which like doesn't even really happen in the book that much. Like it's sort of in, we kind of get the after-math of that encounter, but we don't actually

get that encounter the way it is in the story reel. And then there's like a few loose clips of a few other things like Assange talking to Duku at that party. And then there's like the quickest clip ever of the snake stuff happening on Dathamere. So very little of it is out there to see. But a lot of it, I guess, got translated. into this book. Yeah, it gets, so we get a novelization instead of the produced episodes.

And where it sort of takes as this point of departure is Duku finally done it. He's committed too many war crimes. There's too much genocide happening. And the Jedi, unfortunately, are like on a web conference when he kills a bunch of people. And this is just too much for them. And they finally have their moment of, should we just kill Count Duku? And the minute they come to that conclusion, they realize two things. There's only one person in the galaxy they feel is up for sort of leading an assassination mission against Duku.

And that is Ventress. And there's only one Jedi with the undercover experience that they feel is necessary to carry up this mission. successfully, it's Quinlan Voss. And so the first, like, third of the story is Quinlan Voss in this, like... By the way, the coin finally dropped here. Like, what has Quinlan Voss for a while?

I've been like, oh, he's just this, like, a real, like, Chad Jedi, like, you know, he's out there in the world working out. No, he's their Sonny Crockett. Right. He's their Miami Vice Jedi. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's their undercover cop Jedi, and he goes so far under the man, he doesn't even know which

way's up anymore. And that's what happens to him when he it is basically sent to win Ventress's trust without her knowing he's a Jedi and they go do a bunch of bounty missions together. And there's a bunch of bounty hunter adventures. One of them goes real bad. He confesses to her that he is a Jedi

because at this point he's in love with her. Yep. Yeah. And then we're on to sort of the second. And she says, I know, which is this incredibly deft, like, you know, toss, just very careful maneuvering, because the first half of this book is Ventures being absolutely taken advantage of in the worst, like, most evil Jedi manipulative were the good

guys, but actually are going to reduce this person and instrumentalize them way. And then having her be like, oh yeah, I know you're a Jedi, is so, it's so clearly a way of like washing the Jedi's hands from this, because this means that she's been playing along. And that makes it more okay than if she'd been deceived the whole time. But don't worry. Well, she figured that out pretty late. She does figure it out pretty late. But it means that they never have the, there's never the fight. She never goes like, how could you have lied to me this whole time?

Because she's at, well, at this point. There's a version of this where you're in the telling lies verse. Right. Where it's like that British police scandal where it's like undercover cops are like marrying activists. Yes. And like having entire double lives with them. And then being like, well, Simon's over, goodbye. But we get worse things here, so.

Yeah. So once he confesses this, it is time to, she, you know, she wants to know what's up. And the answer is we want to assassinate Duku. She decides to go along with that, but it's got to be her way. And so she feels Voss needs to be trained to be ready to face Duku, which means going to Dapamere to get darkside training. And he gets a little darksided. And she's, you know, pitching this idea of.

You have to, like, embrace the dark side, but not, like, fall into it. You have to touch it, but not become of it, and it's a fine line to walk. Voss maybe is less successful at managing this than we might hope. They go on their mission to assassinate Duku. It goes horribly wrong. He is captured. Next arc is trying to rescue Voss. But in the...

Before he's rescued, Dukeu successfully... seems to turn him based on some information that Ventris has been hiding from him. And so when they rescue him, Ventris immediately picks up on something's profoundly wrong with Quinlan Boss. Oh, by the way, he's been in the period that he's been theoretically turned by Duku, it comes out that Duku has a new general. General Enigma. Sorry, Admiral, Admiral, Admiral Enigma, who seems to be Quinlan Voss doing some dirt. And it's like on TV all the time?

That's the way they talk about. One part where it's like, oh, it's all over TV. Everyone wants to know about what Admiral Enigma's whole deal is. And so he's televising this? Yeah. He's a face tattoo and he's on TV all the time. Which raises all sorts of questions about the Jedi being. But we don't really know if he did any of that stuff.

Maybe it was just photoshopped. It's like freeway chase cameras, but of like whittling boss. obliterating Republic outposts. And they're like, we need to hear him out. Maybe he's still on mission. Let him cook. So then they go rescue him. And like, so there's a lot that there's some repeated beats here, which I think

There's so many repeated fucking beats in this whole book, dude. There's two rescue missions. First, Ventris is like, I got to save my boyfriend. And there's only one group I can trust in the galaxy to help me with that it's the band of bounty hunters led by Boba Fett that I worked with in that previous arc and Enbo is there he wasn't there last time but he's here now he's part of the crew and he's really cool and she makes note of that uh-huh she's like oh I know I know that guy the mission goes really well like it turns out if you need to get anything done the galaxy

you hire bounty hunters uh like they they rec house We'll get to how badly they wreck house in a second. But when she goes to rescue Quinlan, he turns on her and won't go with her. She gives up. The Jedi haven't given up. And Quinlan's friends, his sort of his main buddy in the Jedi order and Obi-Wan, both sort of try to sponsor another rescue mission to get Quinlan. And when they pull him out that time, Ventris detects that he's been turned, that he is, in fact, He belongs to the dark side.

But nothing ever happens. And no one believes. Well, because Obi-1 doesn't feel like nobody else feels it. Everyone else is like, look, he's, you know, he's better. He, you know, it was all a part of the master plan. He was playing 40 chess. And this is where it's really, I really want, we'll talk at length about this. Because I think this becomes really interesting because she detects immediately he is of the dark side.

He is, he's not a dark Jedi. The Jedi don't detect it at all. And, like, they're repeatedly scrutinizing. They send him on missions. And they don't pick up on it, but things begin going wrong often enough that they begin to suspect they may have a traitor. In all of this, he patches things up

with Ventress, and she no longer detects the taint of the dark side on him. But then the Jedi are suspicious, and when Yoda talks one-on-one with Quinlan and really like probes deeply into his mind, Yoda realizes he is a dark

Jedi, and this is all gone horribly wrong. in his dark darkness i found yoda said deeply deep secret powerful the history of items does the force permit voss to understand oh yeah that's right the history of a soul does the force permit me to understand unacceptable in a court of law it is but of lying no jedi will accuse me shut the fuck up you little green monster so yeah we have to get into that eventually because uh it makes no sense to smoke so just to move on from that to smoke like Quinlan out they go on one final mission

we're gonna this time we're really gonna assassinate the shit out of Duku and the mission goes horribly wrong well hang on the capture Duku

the mission goes successfully but then to bring him into custody Quinlan reveals himself helps Duku escape kills his old best friend using the

they set up an entire new alien species for this book and their weird like bee stinger thing they have like a bee stinger and if they sting somebody like a bee they'll die from it they'll also die from it and Quinlan

the guy tries to use it on Quinlan and Quinlan throws him at someone else so that he kills another innocent person and also dies in the process. This is our big, like, oh, he's evil. For sure he's evil. Is he?

Because after the escape... I mean, he killed his best friend by making him use his... He didn't have like a whole name for it. It's like... This is still 40-chast? It's like he's got a proof he's down. Right.

This is like they... No one was watching. That was just him. He could have, he threw Duke away. He killed a bunch of people he didn't have to in that moment. He was in too deep. He got caught up in it, maybe, but he did it.

So he escapes. Ventris is pulled into this, not knowing what is happening. She doesn't know any of this has happened. He's just like, drive. And so she starts driving the car, and the Duke who's there. And she's like, what the fuck is going on? Right. Imagine if I'm Ventures in that Duke, like I, ooh.

And where do they go? Of all places, they go back to Christophis. It's so funny. It's so funny. It's so funny. of the first, like, three seasons of Clone Wars of, like, crystalline cities. And everybody is like, why is Duku

going to Christophis? And everyone's like, he has some deep wounds there that he has to work through. They hung so many L's on him. But it was all kind of weird and disjointed. A strange campaign, it was. But Duku explains DeVentress.

No, no, baby. Yeah, I'm a little dark. No, no, no. Not Duku. Voss. Yes, boss. Explains de Ventress. Baby, I'm not really dark-sighted. Like, it's still you and me. We're going to run away together after all this is over.

I just need to, like, keep Duku's trust, so he shows me who the real Sif Master is. So he is like, it's the classic, like, no, we can't bring the cell in. We need to unmask the mastermind at the top of the organization. Baby, how could we ever run away when we know Duku is right behind us? Babe.

200 pages ago. you were saying we have to shatter Duku because it'll destroy the entire war he's an evil man and we're going to assassinate him what happened you know it's fine I've lost the plot I've lost the plot

he's evil he got darksided that's what he is evil that is what happened like blast the shit out of Duku's secret base on Christopsis he bounces artillery uh huh and Ventras is like

Like, mortally wounded Well, he is going to kill Voss With a big electricity bolt And Ventris has a moment Where she sees all possible futures She connects to the Force In this looper Gives her a gift for being a nice person

And she pushes Las out of the way With her body? Question mark The Force couldn't do this so she instead takes the brunt of the lightning attack by the way the worst lightning attack you've ever seen it's the evilest most gruesome lightning ever

it leaves sick but kind of beautiful scars all through her pale body it's fine uh she dies she's gonna die from this but she's gonna die with love and light in her heart love is good it turns out and it lets her save boss I can't swear she also got really fucked up in the Republic bombing the building, though.

Oh, they all got super fucked out. Yeah, yeah, no, she did. Sorry, but the lightning scars was from the lightning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all got fucked up during the whole fucking. Oh, no, those are grievously wounded is when they bond the shit out of the building, right?

And he was already grievously wounded. He was wounded and then... She was more grievously wounded. He was wounded when they... Everyone is like at, like, 5% health, right? Yeah, they are really at, like, we gotta really make it seem like they got hurt from that over and over again for every sequence

because he gets fucked up the initial fight. Then he gets fucked up when her ship gets shot down. And she is, she tries to, she tries to like, force, like control the crash landing, but instead she force controls them into an incoming shot. So it crashes, that hits the ship harder. And he wasn't in a sea, he wasn't seat belted. And so he just gets flung around the ship. And then the artillery strikes hit him hard. So he's just on his last legs, but nevertheless can do the sickest, most evil lightning attack you've ever seen. And, yeah, then she

dies in Voss's arms. Okay, that's when I cried. And then there's the real fucking kicker. Forgiveness is limitless in the giant order. There's nothing you can do that will ever cause them to truly turn their back on you. Everyone is just a prodigal son in waiting. Unless you're a...

If the prodigal son returned from a killing spree. Like, if that story was like, you know, we rejoiced the return of the land that killed a hundred people. Well, they go out of the way to make Well, we don't know that he killed How many people did he kill? How do we know at one point?

Admiral Enigma, you are such a mystery. Anyway, so Quinlan is light-sided by this experience. He takes Ventrists to Death Mirror, lays her to rest among her sisters, the equivalent of like, Daphimiri Forcers up here where it's like, ah, goodbye.

And that is like, I'm really healed by that. Obi-Wan is there being like, I know you need a buddy to be here for this. And then it's like, boy, it's a long way back for you, huh, boss? And he's like, yeah, he has me the rest of my life. But I'm a good Jedi again, and I feel really bad about all this. But in time, I will atone. And so he's back.

Like, I'm so mad. A book that I was convinced was going to be like, both of them are dead at the end of this. This is like Jedi, like Romeo and Juliet type shit. Remember, he's alive in Obi-Wan. He was working with the path. Remember his name is on the wall in the fucking Obi-Wan show? Oh, my God.

They fucking love this dude. They can't let this dude that we don't care about at all die because he was hot shit in the Dark Horse comics, which aren't even canon anymore. That's right. Instead of the character that we've spent years with at this point, coming to know in love and be invested in her relation, in her, her arc. She can't kill off in a book no one's read.

Austin, she saved the Jedi order. Oh, my God. No, she? Isn't that what we all wanted for Ventures in the end for her to like spend years being like, oh, I was rejected by the Jedi and my master was rejected by the Jedi? And I have resentment about this and like abandonment issues. And at the end of the day, what I'm going to do is keep them from assassinating somebody. Because they almost lost their way.

I'm going to walk into the Jedi temple. I'm going to feel out of place. I'm going to feel like an alien. I'm going to feel like I should, I do not belong here. She goes in there many times, and it sucks for her each time. And everyone's really shit to her. Weirdly, except for Yoda, who is one of the only ones who's like, yeah, she's cool now. But every other Jedi.

He's trying to find her funny. He lives for 900 years. He's like, seen it all. He's like, ah. face turn. Yeah. Well, this is the thing. So what Obi-Wan says, the thing that you're referring to here, is after Voss is like,

she saved me, she saved me over and over again, Kenobi says, yeah, we were there. We saw the whole thing. And she said, Obi-Wan says, she didn't just save his life. She saved Quinlan. And I believe she may have saved us. And continues later, we lost our way. We lost it when we decided to use assassination, a practice. is so clearly of the dark side for our own ends, well-intentioned, though it may have been.

All that has happened since, Voss succumbing to the dark side, the deaths he is directly and indirectly caused, the secrets leaked, the world's placed in jeopardy. All of this can be traced back to the single decision, masters. I submit to you that Voss's fall was arm-making, and a solid of interest his death is all in our hands, that Voss is here with us today, devastated, but on the light path once more is no credit to us, but to her. And this is the part I have highlighted. she died a true friend of the Jedi

and I believe that she deserves to be laid to rest with respect and care with all gratitude for the life she gave and the life she's restored to us and the bitter lesson that came at so dear a price we are Jedi and we must all of us always remember what that means shut the fuck up Obi-Wan Kenobi and they don't they don't put Quinlan on library duty for the rest of his life he's like out and about

yeah Like, for real? She was the, like, the whole, I thought this was, like, trying to parallel with the, with her whole description of, like, the sacrifice that must be, the life sacrifice. Like, she is the life sacrifice for the Jedi order, essentially, until the next fuck shit happens.

But it's the thing, what did she save them from? It's done. Do you know what I, what's the? She saved it from, like, getting worse, I guess. Like, it's not. nominally better. Like, there's no... Like, you bought yourself

another week, I guess. The thing is, like, she hit a three, but the team is down by 40. Do you know what I mean? Like, it's done. It's over. The other team got the bench warmers in, bro. Like, it's over.

This is a practice game now. Yeah, you're in an exhibition. You ain't making the playoffs. So, hey, sometimes a team can go on a little run, though. Yeah, it's fun. At the end of a season. But,

okay, let's go back. Yeah, let's rewind. Let's talk about what sets up, like, here's the other thing. Season 6 Clone Wars was going to go hard. We open on one of those pathetic

and, like, horrifying things, where it opens a board of refugee ship, fleeing this planet that, like, Duku is basically, like, raising because they've thrown, it was that species that Austin cited before. I figure what the name is

with the little stingers. The Mahaharanhi? Maron, Maron? Maron feels right. Yeah, Maron's right. M-A-H-R-A-N. And so it's just them huddled in the hold of a refugee ship while the fleet has been, like, trapped by Duku.

And the Republic defenders are being cut down, and finally they lose the battle. And she thinks the refugee we're with, think they're going to be boarded, and she makes the decision she's going to go down fighting. She's going to go, you know, fight to the death. She makes her way to the bridge to see the Jedi master in charge of the fleet begging Duku just like let these people go. Like you won, just like let this be the end of it.

And Duku says, like, I know the Jedi Council is listening to this conversation. I know they're on the line. And a lesson needs to be taught here. The more you resist, the more people are going to die. And so he opens fire on the refugee fleet. And this refugee we spent the opening sequence with. never gets to, like, go down fighting. She just gets to watch as, like, her death warrant designed, and all of them are dead.

It's unclear whether they even leave the room. It doesn't matter. That ship jumped up. She thought there'd be something to do. That's what I'm saying, though. Like, it's, like, you didn't even, you're, you're positing her as, like, this, like, self-sacrificing warrior that's not going to go down without a fight. And then you just blow her up anyway. Like, she doesn't even get a sequence to, like, dude.

Yeah. But it's so good, because, like, it's. It is like, you at least think it's going to be like this tragic heroic death, but instead it's just an execution. Like, this is what is happening is these people with like, you know, fully realized individuals, you know, she's family's there. She's like, she makes the decision. Like, this is my hour. Like, it's time to go face this. And it's like, you're up against like the mechanized armies of the separatists.

Like, they're just going to murder you. A single heroic act is not like the Anakin Skywalker single heroic act or Luke Skywalker single heroic. I also have bad news for the Maron who have this like venomous stinger the enemy you're fighting is droids it's droids they're droids you can't what are you gonna do bud you're gonna stab one are you gonna get them with the venom

they're not they don't have blood so maybe she was hoping that like the ducal was gonna be there like the guggles dudes would show up like the the fucking minion man and she can get his ass but it's like it's brutal though it's opening it's like all these people get

killed for no reason to be like cruel and terrifying um and it causes the jedi order to kind of snap where they finally sort of have this moment and i cannot believe we've gotten this far without them having this conversation it's kind of a repeat of when they decide to arm the rebels on uh what's that planet you know where um they said you know the the the the mojadine and the Stinger missiles. Oh, oh, who? Onderon. Yeah.

Yeah. It's a similar thing to like, oh, man, we finally need to contemplate. Do we need to do something that's like maybe a little bit dark? But here it's, should we just kill Duku? And once again, we just encounter. This is Mace's suggestion, right? Which I need to say something, which is I read most of this book in text, but I also listen to some of the audiobook.

And there's one voice actor. There's lots of sound effects. and music. Like the Star Wars audiobook production is always filled with like the background shit that makes it try to feel Star Warsy. And in this case, it was one reader who's doing all the voices. And his Mace Windu is terrible. He's doing, he's trying to do Samuel Jackson, but what he's giving, you know, let me just, let me just drop in a few minutes here. You can hear, you can hear the narrator doing a few different of the Jedi voices from this early conversation. For almost three standard years this war has raged, said Plokoun, the Keldor member of the council.

His voice was muffled due to the mask he wore over his mouth and nose, a requirement for his species in this atmosphere. We can barely even count the numbers of the fallen, but this. He shook his head. All directly because of one man's ambition and evil, said Windu. "'It's true that Duku is the leader of the separatists,' Kanobe said. "'And no one will argue that he is both ambitious and evil. "'But he hasn't done it alone. "'I agree that Duku may be responsible for every death in this war,

"'but he didn't actively commit each one.' "'Of course not. "'But it's interesting that you use nearly the same words as Duku. "'He placed the blame for the casualties squarely upon us.' A lie, that is, Yoda said. He waved a small hand dismissively. Foolish, it would be, for us to give it a moment's credence. Would it be truly, Master Yoda?

Windu asked with a hard look on his face. As a senior member of the council, he was one of the few who dared question Master Yoda. Canobi raised an eyebrow. What do you mean, Master Windu? asked Yoda. Have the Jedi really explored every option? Could we have ended this war sooner? Could we, in fact, end it right now?

Something prickled at the back of Kenobi's neck. Speak plainly, he said. Windu glanced at his fellows. He seemed to be weighing his words. Finally, he spoke. Master Kenobi's right. Duku couldn't have done this completely alone. Billions follow him, but I also stand by my observation that this war is Duku's creation.

Those who follow him, follow him. Every player is controlled by the Count. Every conspiracy has been traced back to him. Anakin's brow furrowed. You're not saying anything we don't already know, Master. Windu continued. Without Duku, the separatist movement, would collapse. There would no longer be a single seemingly invincible figurehead to rally around.

Those who were left would consume themselves in a frenzy to take his place. If every river is a branch of a single mighty one, then let us damn the flow. Cut off the head and the body will fall. But that's what we've been... Oh, Anakin's blue eyes widened with sudden comprehension. No, Canobie thought. Surely Mace isn't suggesting Yoda's ears unfurled as he sat up straighter. Assassination, mean you? How do you get there?

You know, you just don't have a Samuel Jackson in the tank, is what I would say. Generously. You're going through your reference, you turn on Django Unchained, it all gets crossed up overnight, and it turns out it's been a while. He doesn't have that many lines in the previous. trilogy. Yep. Uh-huh. So, you know. But yeah, so he's like, we need to consider just killing Dukkah.

And everyone's like, whoa, pretty dark. I'm like, is it, is it dark at this point? That's the first question. It's like, is this actually dark? Is this darksided at all? Well, because they set up every single time that they go to kill Dukkah. I don't know if I'm going to do it when you could just have like a, fucking Anakin, like, backstab, light the lightsaber, like, ding, done. Snival shot, ding, boom, done. Are they not fighting to kill Duku every time we see them fight?

Are they fighting to, like, arrest him? And I guess the thing is, a lightsaber, a lights, an important thing about a lightsaber is it cauterizes a wound as soon as it delivers it. So you could, for instance, disarm Duku literally, and then be like, aha, we got you, buddy. And is that what they're going for every time they fight? Because they shouldn't be. What they should be trying to do is win the fight.

They should be trying to kill him. And I did it. But Duke is a bestie. You can't hurt Duke. He's one of us. He's one of us. He could be returned to the light side. If only Duke had a woman to die for him, maybe he could have been redeemed.

If only. You know? I do. God, because every Jedi have, the Jedi dudes are kings of having women die for them. That is like the thing they fucking do. Duku did have a woman die for him. It was his sister. It was his sister. It was his sister. Oh, yeah.

Yeah, to become true evil. Which an important thing, an important thing to note here, because I want to just double check on this really quick. Jedi lost, Duku Jedi lost is not out as of when this book comes out. Right? Ooh. Okay. Jedi Lost came out in 2019

and Dark Disciple came out in 2015. So none of the Asadaventra's characterization we happen to get from that, none of the stuff with Kynarik, her former master, none of the stuff around her seeing Duku fall into what he is has been written yet or exists yet in the public imaginary or in Christy Golden's knowledge. You know what I mean? So none of that's there. So it's not bouncing off of any of that shit at all. If anything Duku Jedi lost is like another attempt to characterize Ventrists. and Duku after this book comes out to kind of shift some things. If only they'd had that reference going on.

Yeah, I mean, it'll all be different. Yeah. I do want to say my favorite part of this conversation is they're all sort of talking about Duku. And Plokun says, like, hey, the war's been going on for a while. Couldn't we be put to blame for all of that? Because, like, we're fighting this war. And Yoda, the first time he chimes in this conversation says, no. Don't say things like that.

that is foolish it would be for us to give it a moment's credence you don't want to even just think about he said shut the fuck up and sit down you don't want to reflect a little bit on your your actions the past year and a half or so no

a lie that is but they decide to do it and they decide like you said earlier Obi-Wan was like well you could use ventures for this and well we can and Voss to get venturous. He's our undercover guy. And we get a little bit of undercover Voss to begin,

fucking around. And it's like real undercover stuff where he's like got a character. He's like, I'm in the black market art world. And the thing he's doing is cool, which is he has psychometry, which is the thing of he can touch an object and read its emotional character or emotional state and then see a vision of something about it. And so he's using that to try. track down the true like how did these relics get stolen how did these black market goods

wind up where they are and I'm going to feed that back up and it that rules that part great voss in general for the first half of this book is an incredible deconstruction of the virgin chad binary because he is the chattest dude who's ever lived and he's never had sex in his life he's never touched a boob he's that he is it is important that he is flustery that he is, or he's flustered and blustery, that he's, like, overwhelmed by these feelings he's never had for another person. He is huge, and she loves this about him. She is absolutely in control in the first half of this book.

But also, he is the dudeest dude who's ever lived. He is surfing always. I don't know if he's on a grappling hook, that's surfing to me. If he's doing a backflip, that's a surf to me. He is all, it is an incredible display of long, haired, tattooed-faced dudeness. He's down with his bros. He's out drinking.

Yeah, they make a point when he returns to the Jedi temple that he's met with so many hugs, claps on the back, and handshakes. He goes to the cafeteria and he fucking loves it. I know what you talk about this. I have a, I wrote a new rule. It's called the cafeteria rule. And it's a retroactive thing I want to apply to every Clone Wars episode. And it's this.

Would I rather have an entire episode about the cafeteria in the Jedi Temple or the episode they gave us? And I think, unfortunately, the majority of episodes failed this test. I would so much have a... We get this little glimpse at the cafeteria in the Jedi Temple, and it's like, I want to know everything about this place. Tell me more about what's happening in this cafeteria. How many people are around? Especially since they're, like, eating steak and just, like, the, like, opulence of the, like, meal that they were having, like, really... That would be in terms of like...

There's even that bit in one of the early hunts where they're hunting down this guy and they find that he's like trying to like do crime to give his family money and food and support his family. Where Voss has the thought, he's like, most people don't get a good meal at the Jedi Temple.

Like, which also is just a statement about the fucking state of the republic. That like people don't know where lunch is coming from. But him at the Jedi Temple, he's like, all right, I guess prime rib for fourth meal today. And it's like, I want to know so much. And you pull up at your table with your boys.

Right. We need to do a new skip list episode, but it's the cafeteria rule. That's what I'm saying. I want to know. There's so much that, like, think about the moments that we saw in the Asoka trial stuff of like, ooh, there's these guards with the golden lightsabers, like the dual side of lightsabers. Like, that was cool.

Getting a slight vision of the Jedi cafeteria was so much more interesting. I need to know what life is. I can't believe we watched all of Clone Wars. And we don't really know what life is like in the temple. We saw... You know, like, day in the life temple day. Right? Yeah.

Right. We've seen Baris Offi's little, like, cell or little quarters. We've seen a lot of hallways and walking around. The other reason I like the Asoka trial arc is we get the investigation arc there where, like, they're investigating around. We get a vibe a little bit more. Oh, because there's people who work here who aren't Jedi. It's unbelievable. I mean, we had this whole prequel trilogy set or prequel series of the Clone Wars, and we just don't know what life

is like there, we should not only be learning about the cafeteria today. This shouldn't be when we learned about it. I should have seen Obi-Wan and Anakin get breakfast together. Except maybe it doesn't matter all that much except to Quinlan, right? Maybe it's like when he's in the temple people are going to go in the cafeteria, you know he loves that

place. But I wasn't going to eat in the Jedi cafeteria today, but Quinlan's here so you know he's going to be holding it down. But it's such like a classic like just episode to do in like a kid's series or whatever like there's the day in the life episode of like following them from the

moment they wake up to like when they go to bed and there's a crazy adventure in the middle of it but like you have the mundanity of like regular life couching it in this like we should have had it by now a big part of this for me is you're getting to see and this is something that just comes through in the books so much more than it does in the clone war series or the prequel movies, is the Jedi talk a lot of game about no attachments, but they have friends. They hang out together. They talk about, they go out for drinks, apparently. Presumably, they talk about the big game or about what books they're reading or about

what, like, they have relationships. And the shows and the movies are not interested in showing us the day-to-day life of that, because it kind of undercuts the core. Like, if the thing about the Jedi is, they don't believe. leave an attachment and that makes them unable to serve Anakin Skywalker in his time of need, then you really need to push that part of it. But if what you're telling me is Anakin could have gone and got a beer with Quinlan Voss at any point, like, I mean, obviously he doesn't like Quinlan Voss.

We learned that through this book a little bit. Mostly he doesn't like Assange, and by extension, doesn't trust Quinlan. But like, if there are these support structures and if you can be a bro, if you can be hanging out with other Jedi and like chopping it up, then that makes the Jedi a lot more likable as a unit, even though the council still comes across as a bunch of assholes in this. So, you know who does like Asage

is Obi-1 Canobi. Oh, yeah. Because he, he sort of comes over to, in the cafeteria, he comes over to the table, and it's like, hey, I need a minute alone with the boss here, and he starts to sketch out the mission. But also on the way,

just gives a few tips for making Assange like you. let me let me let me let you know what uh what you're getting into with sage ventrous here put you on game i think the reason why obiwan could never commit to sateen is because of ventrous damn wow even the way that he talks about it here yeah i feel like i don't know just there was something about the the repartee of it all that like he doesn't have that repartee with satee he does not anymore maybe he used to when they were both younger they were you know you know hitting each other with barbs, but yeah, he only flirts.

He doesn't really flirt with Satine. Not at all. Adventist is, though, like, great ass. That is a hundred and satisfied. You know, it's, he comes over and he's like,

listen, she loves to be flirted with. We flirt all the time. What, you never flirted before, Quinlan? Come on, bud. I'm flirting all the time. Like, literally.

I've got a princess in every port. Voss, Okay, she's a very striking woman physically, says Obi-Wan Kenobi. It might tip her off if you don't notice her. And she likes to trade barbs. Voss snagged a fried Kajaka root from Obi-Wan's plate and popped it into his mouth. You were fighting her and chatting at the same time? Kenobi nodded.

It's, he searched for the word. Banter. You flirted with her? Sorry, this is how Voss sounds in the book, in the audio book, by the way. He's like, he's like committed. He's so gormless. Oh, my God. It's incredible.

Come now, Voss, you can't tell me you managed to go undercover in all sorts of shady places without flirting yourself. With Venturous, it's a power play, a way for her to exert control. It will serve you best if you engage in it with her. And Voss tapped his chest. Jedi, he said exaggeratedly. No attachments, remember? How far is too far.

And then this is the fucking best. He's like, be a little rough around the edges, leer a little bit. She'll make it plain that she's not interested. and take satisfaction and shut it you down. It rules. That part's great. Yeah, there's something clinical about,

like, being like, oh, I let her do that to me because she likes it. Well, okay, now that is. Okay, maybe. Back on board. Uh-huh. But there's a little, like,

this is like pickup artist Kenobi. Uh, shit happening here, which is like where to me, the mission already starts kind of on this dark footing. Uh-huh. Where it's like, Obi-Wan Adventurists, we talked about, like, they have this, like, flirtatious relationship.

There's this, like, weird, like, attraction in their, their fights and their banters. And then here, at the end of it, Obi-Wan's like, all right, let me break down how to get under this woman's skin and make her like you. And it's like, oh, right from the first, like, he's kind of stage managing a relationship that's good, like, to her going to seem organic. Right. But he is, he's done an advanced recon and, like, is, like, drawing a map. they could have instead said what we need to do is go to ventris hey listen i ventriss and i go back a little bit could obiwan say and and then like i'm going to go talk to her and tell her we want to do this we could offer her a pardon if she and they probably could have done it because she probably

she helped asoka a hundred percent and annaic was choking her yeah and she was still like whatever well like we'll roll that i will give you the info you need by the way why doesn't anikin trust her after that you know yeah come on Because in his mind, he bent her to as well. Right, of course, yeah. So, yeah, it should be clear that this is not them going to her and asking for help. It's sending Voss to, like, eventually earn her trust and then convince her to help him kill Duku, which is a bad plan. What were they doing this whole time, by the way?

Like, we get, we get like three different missions that they go on. And then we get O'B.B.O. and checking in on Voss, like, multiple times to be like, hey, how's it going? because we're waiting around for you to, like, actually kill Duku. That's a lot of travel time. This is the most efficient way to do this, is, like, let them just hang out for a year. It's not the most efficient way to do this, but, Allie, come on. This is the most classic fan fiction structured, like, Star Wars story I think I've ever seen in the canon. Where it's like, we're going to take these two characters, and we're going to, like, launch this ship.

And we're going to send them on adventures, but the adventures are incidental. Right, so you can fill in the gap. happen off screen where it's like oh that was a pretty crazy mission huh anyway so since it was so harrowing let's talk deeply about each other's feelings and that's what we're going to spend like all the page count on and so it's it's very much got that vibe of like aside from the first like meet cute chase and maybe the rescue of those kids but we really sort of hop skip and jump through these adventures they go on a lot over them talking in the ship after yes 100% um It just, it doesn't make sense why they would do this strategy.

Because how do you go from Voss being a rando bounty hunter who falls in love? Like, and the ideas that, you know, that ventures becomes attached to him. How does Duku get woven in as like the, like, the next mission? Like, why would Voss bring a, why? At some point, he has to say, can we go kill Count Duku? Right, exactly. He has to do the reveal. you this whole time.

Exactly. Not a good plan. There's not going to be a fucking bounty hunter mission on the boards for killing Count Ducca. Or like how else do you bring it up? Why the fuck isn't there?

Yeah, why isn't the Jedi just saying let's have an assassin to assassinate him? Let's put some money up. Boba Fetz crew will do it for 250. You know what I mean? No, but what's kind of great here is that they serve a prime rib for lunch.

They got quixal roots or whatever. The Jedi are so convinced they're the biggest badass is in the galaxy You can't hire someone to go after the Jedi We've got to the Jedi We've got lightsabors

And the Force We're unkillable In Order 66 He's going to get them all Because they really do think They are that good And it turns out If you just want to own Duku

You get a couple guys With goofy outfits And heavy hardware And he's going to go Get sorted out And the Jedi Just won't do it They're like

Gotta send a Jedi To kill a dark Jedi And it's like I don't know You can send some guys with guns guns. You could literally just send some guys with guns and a net. The net. A net. The net gets Duku. There's a gun to Duku's head and they don't pull the trigger. Fucking Looney Tunes episode.

Bosque, the Trandotian bounty hunter, had the blicky next to Duku's head. Pull the trigger. Pull the, just do it for fun. Like... It would have been awesome. They would have been awesome ending. to the clone wars is Duku just gets rolled up on by a bunch of bounty hunters

they put him on the ground and shoot him and shoot him in a net in a sticky net damn I spent so much of this especially the last half of this book being like please just kill Duku

like just him I know I know I from like the 50% mark I kept like checking how much further I had gotten in the like how much was this

this whole book I was constantly checking how much left is there of this book? How could there be more shit to do? Natalie, when they went on the first the assassination and I checked like where I was

in the terms of progress I was like I guess this assassination mission is going to go on for a while. Yeah. So they team up. I guess it's worth saying when we first see Ventris she is the emo is

bitch that's ever lived. She is like looking through her goggles at happy people and being like they're fools. There's a specific thing here. Ventress's gaze lingered a moment on a family, a male and female Murallian, or Murielan with three younglings of various ages. The male was giving one of them a ride on his back and the boy was clearly delighted. The adult female, presumably the mother looked on smiling fondly with a muttered oath of self-chastisement. Ventures returned to her search, but she couldn't shake the image. Once, she belonged to to a family, a sisterhood, strong and proud. Now they were dead, and she would never hold a sister's child.

All because of Duku. Those Muriolan's were fools. They did not understand how easily and completely a single moment could destroy everything. Let them laugh in their ignorance and play with their spawn while they could. Mewa. She's so... She's so emo. And I think this is the other thing that hangs over this.

How long was she on Dathamere for? Like three days Yeah Because she's taken as a child Right Doesn't remember that part of her life Was raised by a pirate Until he was killed

A good pirate Well yeah Is he good or is he just like So in this she says he was In Duke and Jedi Lost I believe it's kind of portrayed That he was not And like that it was the Jedi Master

Who showed up and sorted that guy out Yes Was raised by then the Jedi Master He gets killed by more pirates Evil pirates Yeah Yeah And then she kills all their asses

And goes and joins stucu Yeah And becomes And then when she's got nowhere else to go She returns to daffamir Which we saw happen We see that arc And I'm not saying

That she cannot have an important relationship To her place of birth That she could not have come to this late They didn't give us that But they didn't give it to us. This was literally our complaint during those episodes. I remember. I was like she, I, we, her sister's name gets said like one time and then she gets fucking

murked by a statue falling over. Like this, that whole arc was the, her sisters get name dropped more in this than that. Yeah. The arc about them. Yeah. Exactly. Um, that whole arc was like, yeah, it was like family reunion for literally one night. only and then they get everyone gets killed the next day and so it's like all this shit about like

she had her sisterhood taken from her and like get the idea that like this was a possible life she could have lived was taken from her people she abstractly cared about died um people she just met uh but there's such a special when get to dathamere in the book and she has to be like oh we have special ways of doing things here she hasn't done any of them she literally says that she's like I didn't get to learn them because the first night I took the accelerated course right yeah they put me in the black coop I'm gonna put you in the blue goop the blue group is where regular night sisters go through

I don't know anything about that I mean heard about it I heard about it sounds evil be careful and none of it hits for me because of that and so like all of this like bemoaning the the sisterhood she lost feels like it wasn't supported by what came before it in any real way and that's just it's a bummer it's a bummer that this book just would be better if she had gotten more if we had spent a season with her with the night with the night sisters yeah the night witches night witches night sisters night sisters i want like the other thing is uh the whole bounty hunting aside for them like we have the whole like comedy adventure where he keeps like interrupting her bounty uh trying to like steal it and along the way showing he's got such prowess that you know of course it makes sense for her

to work with him, even though that's not really convincing. It's like he is just kind of interfering constantly, and there's nothing in this that suggests she needs a partner or that, like, having two of them would allow them to do twice the work. But either way, they go on this whole adventure, and it sort of ends on our first, like, kind of weird note, which is when they finally get the guy who, it sort of sounds like he's sort of a midnight run situation where he's, like, embezzled from a crime family.

But he's, like, hiding out with his family. Right. Guy's not really a crook. Guy's not really, he hasn't really done anything that bad. He's stolen from murderous thieves. And they run this guy in. They take him probably to his death, having, having, like, fulfilled this bounty. They rip him away from his family.

And it's like right from the first, we are in the, like, it makes sense, here's the thing. Like, I kind of like that this comes through. It makes sense for Ventras to do all this stuff because this is how the has worked for. It is a hard place. You do have to like get your hands dirty to like survive and and make like make progress in this world. Voss is doing this all by choice to like win her trust and just like play act as like I'm a hardened bounty hunter for reasons. And right from the first, so immediately he's doing stuff where it's like, it feels like a Jedi shouldn't be doing this. It like, you know, as part of him going undercover and doing this, he is doing bounty hunter stuff that is like you are, you're just taking. a guy from his family and sending him to be executed by the mob. Yeah. And it sort of like, I kind of

like a story that's structured like this where there's when Star Wars rules thinks he falls. Right. And then there's where I think he's starting to fall. Right. Which is much earlier because, like, none of this is a necessary evil. All of this is happening

effectively by choice for the sake of expediency. And so, like, long before, Voss has like done anything like you know killed the big monster on dathomere anything but long before this there's a lot of moments where you're like what are you doing like this extended manipulation of ventress and then the fact that you're just like knee deep in gangster shit well I think the thing that I like about this sequence I already mentioned this before the thing about the guy Voss specifically saying you know this guy can't even afford the sort of lunches we get back on the Jedi Temple Like, the picture of the world that this is showing us is one in which this shit happens all the time. This is mundane. There are people who slip into criminal activity because it's easier to do that or it feels necessary to do that to take care of the people that they care about. And bounty hunters roll up to take care of them on behalf of crime lords. This is, again, this is the world that the Republic has left these people in.

right? And I think that that's, as always, the stuff that that is most exciting to me about getting these extra little bits of the world. It's like, what's the world like for regular people? What's the world like for people who can't, you know, but yeah, this is the bit where Voss is like, he's passingly familiar with the Rang Clan and he knows that Muragi had been right, even though he took money that wasn't his, he wasn't the villain. And Ventures doesn't stop to be like, Ventures doesn't even consider to accept the bribe. that that they're being offered right ventures like i can't help you i'm sorry uh you know lowers his blaster and and brings him in and knocks him the fuck out or whatever um and that's that for him

and then and then she contextualizes like all of these missions like all of these little adventures one of them ending in the death of an entire family um is as like that's not even you know this is just like a taste of bounty hunter life like these aren't even later on Yeah, which like, I don't know. It's just like it feels at odds with the idea that like Voss is like going deeper and deeper into it. How does he not know this shit already? Yeah, he's been, he's the undercover guy. Like they keep positioning him as like out of his element, but also the only possible person who could have possibly been able to.

pulled this off. So it's like, like you, you brought up the virgin tad dichotomy and there's like, this is like a tent there's something wrong here.

Like there's something that like doesn't quite. Where he's like, the gangster's family all got killed? It's like, where you've been undercover? What are you on pantora? Like what do you do? You know, actually this is Pantera.

They're doing this on Pantera, which by the way, we would have finally gotten to see Pantora. the planet where the Pantorans are from in this arc, the actual planet, not the moon. Not the moon where the snow and stuff is. That's this place where, like, Chucci is, you know? Oh, Dan, that would have been sick.

And George Lucas statues. In fact, I think the George Lucas statue gets mentioned very briefly. The, like, they describe someone looking very, like, gregarious and authoritative, a big statue of a guy on Pantora. I'm pretty sure that's the senator, due. who is George Lucas. Anyway. So, you know, like,

he convinces Asaj to take him on as a partner, but along the way, she's also like, I'm going to hold you to high standards, training. And he's not using the force.

He likes being told what to do. He sure does. Which is like he's a Jedi, so of course he does. He doesn't use the force in outward ways. He tries to push his body in, which I don't understand how you even, I don't understand how you

shut off your reaction time. I get not using force push, but there are times when it's just like, she's beating the shit out of me in our sparring matches, and I'm like going as fast as I can without using the force. But I guess, I guess people just have like a force switch that they can. Well, it's explained because she says she knew he was a Jedi the whole time because of that exact thing, because of his reaction speed, which is so, Oh my God. Just say you're a Jedi. You should have just been like, or at least here's the way I would do this if I'm Quinlan

Voss, is I go, yeah, I'm sort of a Jedi, but they kind of let me run free. They let me do what I want to do. I'm loose. I'm a loose cannon. You know, I check in now and then, but I kind of just did a bounty hunter thing. I'm kind of a bad boy, you know? But I have a cooler lightsaber than most people, you know? He doesn't.

He just as a regular green lightsaber. For some reason I thought, for some reason, I thought that one of them had the golden light saber shit. going on in this book. And they don't, do they? I thought she does. On the cover, she has the golden lightsaber, like the yellow lightsaber,

and he is a green one. So maybe she does have a yellow lightsaber here. Remember there's a swap. No, yeah, it says the... There is. She, her lightsaber is yellow. Okay.

It's in the book, yeah. Does that just happen off screen? We never saw her make that lightsaber, did we? No. Like in this book in a previous arc? He asks her, like, where'd you get a, or like, how did you learn

how to use a lightsaber or whatever? And she's like, it's a sword. something like there's not it's a laser sword also we should say an important thing that the book doesn't mention until like halfway through is the massage ventures has hair now yeah oh yeah

she's like platinum blonde um it's just true and I it's wild to me unless I missed it early on that they don't mention that about her until like the midst of their bounty hunting adventures they sort of don't mention it into

well or is it even until Dathamere even maybe No, because they, no, no, no, because she does the, she does the flirt. She shows him her flirt technique and specifically, well, because like they're talking about this mission and she has to get this guy in and she's like, oh, I'm going to show you what I'm going to do to him. I'm either going to do the like, the easy way, which is the like hair talk, or I'm going to go

whole hog and like, how could they make my girl so cringe? How could they do this to her? Well, Voss is even more cringe in this. Well, it's adorable, but it is cringe. Because he's like, ooh, she was doing the sexy thing, and I can't even see what the, like, level-up version of this is. But, yeah, I don't, how do you feel about her having hair on this? I love a time skip.

I love seeing, I love a second character design. Our friend's at the table right now is currently Allie playing a time-skipped version of a character. with a different haircut. So, you know, there's credits to that, but, like, Ventress was a bald baddie. Yeah, I do think that there are some images that I think work for me, but I kind of also feel like partly them working for me makes them cringe. Do you know what I mean? Like, Star Wars can't just let someone be dark side looking and also have a redemption art. They have to externalize everything in visual language to the most basic shit you've ever imagined.

so that she like literally glows bright and white in a beautiful moment at the moment of her redemption. Do you know what I mean? She's like she couldn't remain a bald batty because now she's not evil anymore, you know? Who, excuse me? What is this from? I just go through adventurous hair. Bad. I hate this image.

I'll put this in the description. That's what she's looking like in throughout dark, a dark disciple. I also don't really know what to make of, like, how heavy-handed the, like, physical sexual tension is throughout this book. Like, what of the first... I thought it'd be smottier. I'll be honest. It was, but, like, it, it was smutty for, like, clone wars, I guess. Yeah, I guess.

Like, the way that she's, like, the back of me is all you're ever going to see or whatever. I'm just, like, damn. I miss that line. Damn, okay. She says, she says, she felt him watching her as she strode off. She didn't care. Let him get an eye full. The back of her was all he was ever going to see.

Right. Okay. Sure. Uh-huh. It's weird because I feel like, I mean, the book breaks the initial biggest rule of sexy writing, which is you've described a character as being lied because you don't know how to say like agile but fuckable, which is like the quickest shorthand any fick writer knows that they have available

and then they do it twice because Voss is also described that way and it's like all right like this is not going to be a book that hits the sexy notes but I think it hits the relationship stuff or I think that they're flirting is a little cringe but basically works

I think seeing them train together or reading about them training together fundamentally works and the descriptions of her as being like constantly competent and then learning to enjoy, learning that her sexuality can be something other than a weapon is not bad.

You know what I mean? I think that stuff is the feeling of like wanting to be looked at is not a bad thing to explore in fiction. And for someone for whom everything about who she is, from her skills in combat to her appearance, to her flirtation has always been a weapon, there is something really nice about the segments early on. in this book of her getting to have. I mean, this is the thing that's, this is the part that, like,

pisses me all about this book is that, like, the Jedi give her the thing she's never had, which is a real life relationship with another person who she can trust, a notion of affection that isn't clouded by instrumentality or someone trying to use her. And then, and then, of course, it's a lie, right? And it's just like, I spent the whole first half of this book being kind of furious on her behalf from getting caught up in another big players game she's a pawn yet again and someone's big bullshit plan about conquering the universe or having their way with the galaxy and it sucks because unlike like ducu sucks and we know from jenai lost and from the savaggio press art that the way that ducu teaches people is is terrible i mean voss even repeats this and

says later i saw how he taught you i understand now how bad it must have been for you this is the first time that we've seen her even still caught up in the, in the horrible, you know, the Jedi are going to use her to try to get what they want thing. She at least gets some moments of like peace and starts to open, see a version of her life in front of her that would be genuinely enjoyable for the first time ever. And they render that stuff, I think, pretty well. And so knowing that it's all going to fall apart, because you know it's not going to end with her and Voss running away together. But it could have. But it could have. It could have. It could of like why not why couldn't she have seen what was coming and then been like we have to leave we have to

stop being Jedi we have to go live somewhere else she has seen what the force has shown her about the future and the future is bad for the Jedi the future is bad for anybody's holding a lightsaber I mean not at that point at that point the thing she tried was taking a bullet for him you know no yeah at the very end but anyway I think that that part of the relationship stuff mostly worked for me. I mean, I think that's why I ended, like, I got emotional at the end was just because, like, finally there was this, like, other path that was not, you know, Sith, Sith Apprentice. And Apprentice, it wasn't failed, you know, revenge seeker.

And it wasn't lonely, you know, goth, emo, bounty hunter with no ties and attachment to anything that's, like, basically drinking the night away. Like, she's described as, like, basically being, like, an alcoholic in, like, just spending her nights in bars when she's not working and, et cetera. So, like, the fact that there was this other, like, potential life for her that had, like, love, that had companionship, that, like, she finally got all the things she was wanting. To, for that, like, the... We got there in a kind of convoluted, fucked up, deceptive way. But then it was there in this genuine way. way of them loving each other and then it was you know destroyed by the dark side it just like

it it was it sucked i didn't want her to die like she just didn't it sucks and it sucks and it sucks more because we get the stuff that seems genuinely good for her first which is like why they wrote it's a tragedy right it's meant to be a tragedy i don't know that it's actually a tragedy in the definition thereof it's sad um but like why couldn't quit Quinlan had, have died and ventures walk away. Like, why not? Someone cares more about keeping Quinlan in the, in the timeline, because I'm going to do a Quinlan show later, you know? So I don't believe, because this is the thing.

I truly believe that that decision is a franchise decision and not a storytelling decision. And that is, you know, and I think that that sucks. That to me is like, if I believed in my heart of hearts that Christy Golden, who was writing this book was like, and maybe she was. Maybe she was one who pitched it. I don't know. But it feels franchise related. It feels like an investment in Quinlan Voss more than it feels like a decision that arises naturally out. I mean, maybe the other place it can naturally arise out of is that like Star Wars has fucked up relationships with women and with redemption. And it always likes to be like redemption comes at a cost. Yes, you can save Darth Vader, but he has to die doing it. You know what I mean? Yes, you can save. Ben Solo, but he dies doing it. This is a classic way that the shit goes in Star Wars. The EU was filled with stories like these about people who fell to the dark side and then had a brief reconnection to the light side, because they're all just mapping Darth Vader

over and over and over again, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway. I do kind of like that there is a broader sense of, like, the galaxy just kind of is also a tragic place in this way, though. Like, I really do like that the mission that really brings them close is rescuing this, like, mob bosses' family from this Blackson Fortress. And no sooner have they done it, they deliver the kids, they restore this family.

And as they are taking off, they run into a Black Sun, like, mercenary fleet coming to just, like, obliterate all these people. This entire rescue house is going to be moved it. Yeah. And there's that great beat where they're like, they couldn't have been called here for us. It would have happened too quick. They were just coming to do this, like, anyway, basically. Yeah. Which is like, yeah, it's like what you said, Rob.

It's just a great illustration of what the state of the galaxy is, you know. Which I think it's a good thing to have, like, running in the background here. And I dig this. It's this notion of, hey, there's things that are just so off the rails regardless of Duku and the separate. Like, this is not a well-ordered galaxy, right? This is not a, the Jedi are, you know, everything was going fine until the separatist war kicked off or anything like that. It is, things have gotten pretty chaotic outside off course on, really.

Like, it have been for a long time. And the fact that he is so naive about it. And the bounty hunters fundamentally are not, right? The bounty hunters are out there, like, dealing with this galaxy as they find it. And Voss is, like, stunned at, like, the sheer implacable violence that is being visited on people out on the margins. or away from the sort of spotlight of Corrassant in the Jedi Order. Which, again, how deep undercover were you that you didn't know this shit? Well, so, you know, maybe it was a ton of different art stings.

You know, maybe that's the thing. He was doing nothing but busting up like semi-white-collar criminal, like, rings. That's very funny. Oh, I'm their top undercover guy. I've gone after some of the hardest art-art-thieving crews that you can imagine. It's so funny And then they again During that final mission

It becomes clear That he can't He loves her He can't keep it a secret from her The deception is killing him So he says I'm a Jedi And she says I know Yeah no shit

What? Yeah You move too quick That jump should have killed you You know It's been clear to me For a little while now so what the fuck are you doing and he explains finally oh they sent me here to get you to help me kill ducu

and she agrees to do it but says we got to train you up first well and so this sets up immediately so when he talks to canoby because he's doing his regular check-ins like connobe's basically running him on this on this op and the minute he's like ventras and i have teamed up she's on board with the plan as a willing participant Obi-Wan's like, well, wait a second that's not really what we discussed. And it's the minute she's consented to this and she's bought in,

Obi-Wan's like antennae begin twitching because he's also picking up to like Voss is in love with her and is completely bought into the idea that she's, you know, different than she's been, that she's redeemed. And Obi-Wan just one doesn't think that's possible but two, he's just getting a bad vibe from,

like the plan. was, it seems like, almost to get someone close to her that she trusted and then maybe get her to go on this mission thinking it's like her idea to go after Duku. But the minute she's like, I'm going to help the generator kill Duku, and she's, you know, there's evidence that she and she and Voss have gotten close. Obi-1 begins to feel the mission has slipped away from them, which is funny because like this seems like almost the only way it could have succeeded is if she buys in. But it's like he was comfortable. with the idea of we're going to trick Ventris

into being a weapon in our hands to stab into Dukku's heart. The minute it is we're going to work with Ventris as a partner in going after Duku, he loses complete faith in the mission. He wants to scrub it. Like from here until basically the end of the novel, Obi-Wan is going to repeatedly be sounding the alarm

that we just need to cut losses here. This is getting out of hand. And so, yeah, either to Dathir. She tells us, finally. about, like, Kynaric, her previous master, her Jedi Knight master, and about Duku, and about Duku coming to kill all of the Knight Sisters. She gives, she makes her lie, which evens everything out. So that way they both lied to each other.

So now things are even. The whole story is going to hinge on. And the second she does it, you're like, oh, it's over. You fucked up. It's, it's, it's, you're, yeah, played a little. losing hand. Ventress tells, so Quillan Voss's master, or not Kynaric, FOM, Thome, Thome.

Thome, Fom, yeah, Thome, who, I mean, this is set up quite a few times throughout the book that, like, Voss is not a regular Jedi, like, he allows his attachments to grow a little bit more strongly, and, like, for some reason, like, it's described. in his relationship with his best friend Desh, I think it's Dash and other, you know,

and with his master. And Ventris tells him that Duku killed Tholm in the battle that Tholm died at in order to fuel hatred,

anger, revenge in Vos against Dugu. So it was like a strategic like tool and that was going to be something she would return to over and over again throughout their training like remember what dugu did to you remember what he took from you which yeah is the is like the crux of the tool the crucial lie though is that fucking ventures killed him like very much executed very much very die wished him a very die and he did and recovery so bad for it uh oh yeah thal

Um, I, yeah, he died, uh, he died hard. Oh, no, I was there. Uh, I watched. I was like, I was standing like real close, not too close, but like close to see what was going on to get a real good look at Duku killing Thome, but like, not close enough that I took any part in it. Don't worry about it. And also Duku loved doing it, by the way. He, like talked about it all the time. He showed me his lightsaber. Which why do you introduce that? You can't put that above the mantle. Your boyfriend can touch. things and read what the past was. Don't even say that lightsaber exists. Well, and it's so funny, too, because I guess this is where it becomes tragic. She's been talking about, like,

we can't have any weaknesses. Do people find your weaknesses and use them to break you down. And then she deceives herself into thinking, but this weakness we can tolerate because this one keeps me safe. Emotionally, this keeps me safe. It allows this relationship to continue flourishing.

And I'll tell them the truth later. Once we're done the mission, I'll be safe to do it. it. Well, and the thing is, it's a lose-lose situation because the truth is she killed his master. And if he knew about it, Duku would still probably be able to pray on that in some other way. Right? Like, Duke would be like, do you really trust her even after she killed your master? And I get the idea would be like, well, she was honest about it and he would have already processed that. But if you don't think Duku would still get his little fingernails under there somehow. It's still like, go on touch the lightsaber. There's a huge difference between I killed your master.

I was an assassin. I didn't. I wasn't really fully. like I was not making knowing choices. I was doing what I thought. And then here this is a worse decision. To make you experience your best friend's last moments. Yeah, that part's on. Also like the timing of the betrayal, right? Like you can processing information is easier to do when you're on an evil planet

learning how to be evil. And she could be like, yeah, be fucking mad at me about it. Like we're going to stay on this planet and you're going to be fucking mad and you're going to get stronger for it instead of being like two weeks into a torture and be like, ooh. I'm really weak. and this, I'm, I'm, I'm, like, you know, Duke has got me. I feel like that would have been better, better, like, dark side fodder than killing

the innocent sleeper fish. Right? Or a snake? Or the snake. Like, really, really feel hate. Also, it's like, it's super, I forgot how bound up. He's such a baby. She makes out with him the second after she tells the lie.

It's like, she's like, right, she's like, right at the goal line where she's like, I want to, I want to get with Quinn's. Lynn Voss. Yeah. And so she's just like got to clear this hurdle like, who can't deal with home right now and get straight to, is there anything other else that the Jedi forbade that maybe you're curious about? He kissed her.

He kissed her. He kissed her. She set it up. Uh-huh. But he gets a lot in this book. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

They kiss a lot in this book. That's nice. They do kiss a lot. They're always kissing. of their relationship, especially on Dathir? I can't handle this. I can't.

Are you reading? I believe, Austin, I sent you this passage because I was like, this is mortifying shit. This is just, this is, Jedi are embarrassing. Voss's head, this is right after their kiss. So this is a chapter 14 opens. Voss's head and heart were a whirl

with emotions as the days unfolded. Ventrish was opening him to a new level of being, a plane of intensity, depth, and sharp sensation. She had awakened in him a hunger he had never suspected, though now he realized that the other Jedi had known of it. Voss had grown used to being called unorthodox and a maverick for the simple delight he took in his force abilities.

No wonder the Jedi order had preached against attachment or exploring the depths of one's feelings, for who, having once tasted what Voss now shared with a sage ventress, would turn away from it. He reveled in their passion, cherished the sweetness of simply being able to reach out and stroke her cheek

knowing she savored the gesture. He realized the emotions to which he was joyously giving full rain had been dormant within him for a long time. Damn. Perhaps as soon as he had met her and that exciting, frustrating, fun chase for the volpie.

I... This whole early bit of the relationship really feels like she's fucking him so he's like, oh yeah the Jedi are not shit right like he seems so much more into this than he is while she's like oh this is this is going to get him darksided this is how i'm going to teach him that light side is mid well we just don't like we spend a lot of time in his point of view i think

here and then like the time that we do spend in ventures's point of view it's her being like i'm feeling stuff too but i'm trying to keep a level head because i know what's like what's best for getting us to kill Duku. But, like, I am experiencing confusing feelings. And I am, like, things are a little, like... Because the shit's new for her, too. Not kissing so much. Like, it's indicated that, like, she has, like, dated around here and there.

She has, like, been with people, but nothing serious. Nothing that she's ever opened herself up as a person to another person. Because any, the only relationship she's ever had in that regard have been brutal and evil and exploitative of her. and the so like when we do get in her head about that stuff I think that you're right that like she is there is an element of control here but it does get to her eventually

it does she does genuinely have these feelings by the time we're sitting in her perspective like she's fully bought in like she's so deep in love with Quinlan and like willing to sacrifice for him willing to go on rescue missions like all that kind of stuff we just don't spend as much time with like the sorting out of the emotion i think and we don't get anything like you know this is another book where like it's clear that the dark side and the sith are two different things and i really do wish we got a little more of her like dark side ideology besides which would have been somewhat of like the knight sister's ideology besides just like you have to be willing to hurt people to get what you want you have to be willing to be violent you have to give in to your passion emotion stuff. It's kind of there,

but it's never really scaffolded out as like a schema that I understand what she believes because what we know she says is she talks a lot about how she almost fully fell to the dark side but never really did and pulled herself back from it. But like she was out there killing people for Duku left and right forever. But in her mind,

and even in the way it just gets talked about generally, she never truly fell the way Voss does in this book. She never got yellow eyes, right? She never got Anakin yellow eyes with the red rims, you know, and that's the, that's fully falling to the dark side in, again, in visual language in Star Wars, and that does never happen to her, but she never really explains how she walked that line, or if there was a particular reason, you know, I would have loved to see, or again, where the Knight's sister beliefs fit in adjacent to Sith beliefs, since they are still out, right?

called dark side force users in this book multiple times you know there's the um you know it certainly seems like the implication is she viewed herself as like a soldier in ducous cause and was loyal to him like wasn't sitting there being like and someday i'm going to usurp and become the master that wasn't the she wasn't like an a Sith apprentice who's like I'm going to rise uh this way but yeah like they don't super you into it and then our one demonstration of let me show you how the night sisters relate to the dark side of the horse. He falls to the fucking dark side in the middle of it.

He goes, like, first of all, it's like, it's such a bad decision. She's like, you have to go dominate this little, like, monster creature in our sacred lake. And then she's like, actually, I'm kidding that. I was kidding. You need to kill it. You need

to choke the life out of it. It's just a harmless, deep sea creature. And it's dangerous, but like, it just wants to be left alone. like you're going to have to kill this thing and feel it die. It's the most ancient fish that like how it like will contain, like contains base. Like, I don't know. The way that it's described feels like this, it's like a fucking force fish.

Like it's this special special, special fish. I really think that they're trying to do Lovecraftian and horror stuff with this fish. Everybody sees it and it's different. One of them says it's pure white. One of them says it's enormous and his eyes and pincers. it's, you know, in this deep place that's, like, ancient and it's filled with dark side power. But then you just kind of lift it up out of the wall. They do this whole build to it.

And then it, like, it doesn't live up to the hype, you know. I know it kind of has a second round, you know, against Quinlan, but it never really feels like it's thought of right. Yeah, but I do think there's sort of something interesting about how that falls flat because it falls flat from Quinlan's perspective, too, right? He's like, this isn't scary. this is just like cool. Like I've actually seen shit. Like the Knight Sisters didn't, he assumes, apparently. And I know what like I've seen like ferocious beasts that outclass this.

And this is just like a cool fish. Which again, part of the problem here is also, Assange is like, and then you go down and you fight the fish. And it's the evil. That's what I heard anyway. My sisters told me that they were very skinned up. One of my sisters died fighting the fish. And it's like, all right, you know, we fight all sorts of shit as Jedi. That's not the part of this that I need help with.

And again, like, you're on a world where like, oh, we keep our corpses in the trees so we can summon them back to fight again. Except, of course, I didn't put them in the trees because I didn't get that part of the Knight's sister training. It's so rough. It's so rough that she's left with no real connection to the – they should have let her be there for a year and do intensive catch-up training. and, like, really come to understand them and be part of them. She has the bow. Instead, it's like, someone who took a weekend trip to, like, the country and their family emigrated from.

And it's like, I didn't really understand myself until I visited Dathamere for this one week. And I brought back this bow I got from the gift shop. Like, you know, I don't know. Again, like, I know there's versions of this that work. I don't think we got the version of it that works because of the specific way we saw this shit play out. Also, because Talzin is a manipulative. She's a thing.

This is a thing. Right? Mother Tousin sucked. She's a bad mom. She's not a good... She sucked. The plan sucked. Everyone died because she sucked.

Her plan sucked. And once you were all dead, she was like, don't worry. There's more than one way to skin a cat. No, there wasn't. She got owned, like, repeatedly. And she got taken out by Jar Jar Jar Binks. Like, ultimately, the person who punched her ticket was Jar Jar Jar Binks. Towson doesn't show up in this book.

You know what I? I mean? Like, there's no moment where she reaches out and Talzin guides her. There's no, like, Towson did not ever check back in with Asha Ventress. She, she's not, like, she's not a leader. She's not, like a guy, like, she's not, she's just, like, a mastermind villain character. She doesn't have the actual, like, her role as, you know, mother of the night sisters, mother of the, you know, Dathamarian male warriors, whatever. Like, doesn't,

she's never really acting in that role. She's always, like, it's always revealed to be a part of some selfish conceit, some selfish, like, self-sustaining, self-preserving thing. So she's never mother. She's never mom. But, like, in the, okay,

but in the same era of when these episodes were written, she's literally Darth Mal's mom. Yeah, but that's, but she's not serving that. role. Do you know what I mean? Right. Oh, sorry. You're saying, yes, she is going.

She does literally give her life for ball. Right. Like, you know, I mean, the, the writer's room was like in that. Yes. Could have thought of her as a caretaker in that way and could have shown her as one in this book at any point and just chose not to. Even a flashback. Even a conversation between Quinlan and Assange's like, Towson, here's a story

about me and Towson from the time I was here. We don't get that. She does about her sisters a lot. Maybe Talson's name shows up in this book briefly. I think she says it once when she's, like, explaining another thing. But she's way tighter with the sisters that went to go kill Duku with her, which she shouldn't be because she just met them still. It truly, I remember us talking about that arc and it feeling like she went to camp for a weekend. Do you know what I mean?

Like, they don't, I don't know. Maybe I can hand wave it and say, like, if all I wanted was a line here. Yeah, go ahead. What was the point of bringing up all of, like, what she talks about, like, her sisters and, like, the sacrifice and, and the, like, cocoons and how you can rebirth them, but she didn't get to learn it. And then, and, like, Quinnin's taking this all in. And then, Quinlan at the end decides, we got to bring her back. We got to bury her here. And then, like, I for, she's going to come back, right?

It planted a stupid seed in my head that she's going to, like, because of it, you know, because she was returned that. you know, Quinlan somehow managed to, like, do the resurrection ritual. And I thought she was going to fucking walk back out of the pool. But instead, we got, like, the forest ghost, sister, you know, whatever. Not actual forest ghost, but ghost in the forest somewhere. Right, because remember, no one knows how to do that except for... Exactly. Well, yeah, I mean, that was actually the weird thing about me for this book, is that, like,

we have Ventures specifically talking about this burial ritual for the night sisters. And then Quinlan Voss is like, oh, have. to go lay her to rest properly and doesn't do that? Like he puts her in the pool instead of hanging her up. I think that we were supposed to understand that the pool was involved in the tree ritual in some way. Well, the pool was where you sacrifice. The pool is like where it is like where the sacrifice, this was the other thing that I

thought was going to happen because I thought it was going to be like her her sacrifice of love was actually going to like resurrect. herself or something because she talks about in order to do to like truly know the dark side or to like cross over this you know mastery test you have to sacrifice something that you love or like that like is innocent or that is whatever she talks about there being a life sacrifice and then she is a sacrifice she literally sacrifices herself and then And then her sisters are like, what's up? Welcome back.

That's it. Welcome back to the sister pit. He doesn't know about like the actual very ritual. So he's just like, uh, toss, splash. I've done it. I have borne her body back to her kind and just jumped in their sacred well. It's so funny too because the book is, again, the book is like, this place is, evil this place is darksided as fuck and like you can't give like it can't unpack the idea

that dark side it wants to be like dark sided and light side it aren't so simple but also this place is dark side as fuck be careful like it's evil here they can't ever let it the dark side it has to be the dark side it has to always be the dark side they can do it as much like there's no room for this Ryan Johnson like hey we might have had this wrong type of thing. Get that shit out of here. Now, could a dark side person become good? Yes, when they die heroically by sacrificing their life for somebody else. And if the force acknowledges them in that moment, it makes them glow. Or if another person dies for you, then you can, then you can, it doesn't matter what evil things you did, then you're good again. Don't worry about it. But yeah,

all this death and mirror stuff is caught up in that. And it's just like, it's, it really is the most, like manichaean, like this whole, the world is split into good places and evil places and in this evil place, the world is filled with creepy little snake monsters that you have to choke to prove your dominance. There's a little fish,

a little evil fish. The other planets don't have evil little fish like this planet. And it's just so up its own ass in this way that's so basic when the purpose of this book is about, you know, one of the key things is about like, oh, hey, this person Assange comes from a history of abuse.

and hasn't had the opportunity to be this other version of herself. And oh, my God, the second she's able to glimpse that because someone in her life cares about her enough for her to give her the space and let her feel safe enough to explore these other feelings, she's able to develop those things. And oh, my God, when you take this guy who was, they make a point of saying Quinlan Voss, like, grew up in the temple at a younger age than even most people,

the most Jedi of Jedi's, the like guy who has it in his heart in that way, when you pull him out of that world and he gets a taste of something else, Oh, my God, would you imagine? His emotions change. His beliefs change. He becomes self-interested. He gets too big for his britches and tries to make the big 4D chess play and it's going to backfire and turn him evil.

They want to say all that stuff. But fundamentally, there is the light side and there is the dark side. And it's held up by like a universal true morality that can't be shuddered because it's the backbone, the metaphysical backbone of the world of Star Wars. Which is how you also, like, and it is bound up in this like, wide. why is it bad? Why is there a big takeaway from this that we were wrong

to try and kill Ducca currently? It's the like, no, like sometimes things are contextual and there just cannot be room for that in Star Wars as it is constructed, even though they keep telling stories where it's clearly like,

hey, this is all contextual. So the other thing I just want to touch on here. So she makes him kill the big magic force fish. Yeah. And he's like, oh shit, I loved it.

it. Oh, God, I loved it. I shouldn't tell her how much I loved it. Yeah, the training thing, I really got a lot out of it. It went fine. I loved it. Oh, my God. Like, choking its life out of it was the coolest thing I've ever done. And so once again, like, this is a get, this by the way, I think it was a glimpse of what, like, the Ray movie will be like, is somebody who just didn't get formal training being like, I'm pretty sure I understand how this worked. I'm pretty sure that you're just like, don't worry. This is I can learn the Knight's sister way. of connecting the dark side go kill the magic fish I never did it nobody ever did it but I kind of heard the principle just go do it

and immediately he's like oh pure evil kind of cool I hate I hate this is where the book kind of starts to turn for me

I guess that's not true I think through the assassination attempt I was still having a pretty good time the assassination is going to happen on raxus

Prime, the Senate planet for the separatists, right? Where Duku is receiving an award. A humanitarian award. Do you all want to, can I give us the, people want to listen to Duku deliver the speech that he delivered?

Because that's on YouTube all over the place. Let me screen share again. Is this from the audiobook? This is from the audiobook. Yes, exactly that. I believe that's going to be where this is from. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, so they're going to go there. I guess we should set this up a little bit.

they're going there on undercover sort of they both there's a whole again in the most i'm pro this fanfic way they go shopping together they get quinlan voss dressed in real clothes instead of the one leather tunic he owns god he sees her in the dress he sees her in the dress he becomes he thinks about her naked he thinks the line for when he sees her in the dress that had me laughing that had me we're going to start using this in real life The outfit was elegant and subtle. The woman in it was vibrant and strong. The overall effect made Voss like a falcon poised

in that exquisite instant between free fall and flight. And for a moment, he couldn't breathe. Damn, you got me feeling like a falcon poised. I do have to just, just while we have this second here, because I don't want to forget to mention it later, why do the Jedi bury her in this dress? Why did they find it? Why did they mention this?

again? Yeah. She's married in distrust. Yeah. What the fuck was wrong with them? Like, Quinlan's doing kind of a vertigo thing at the end. Babe, I hope you come back to life, and I hope you're wearing that sick dress that I liked. That's sexy.

Also, it's not even a dress, right? It's a two-piece. It's a two-piece. The top section, here we go. She wore a two-piece sleeveless. First of all, he fell into a stunned silence. Voss thought he had seen a Sajvent. in all her guises. He'd seen the efficient warrior, the cold rager, the temptress practicing both the

wink and the nod and the full-on gambit. Just stop. And most beautiful and most amazing of all, and most epic and most cool, he'd seen her by starlight, just her lying in his arms. But this is something else again. She wore a two-piece sleeveless bodice of rich ebony-hued fabric with hints of a subtle swirling pattern of dark purple embroidery. Lacing of the same deep purple cinched it closed. The top section enclosed her breasts and revealed a small patch of her taut stomach. The bottom section flared over her hips. A midnight black skirt slit in the front and back fell to the floor.

She had just finished concealing her lightsaber in a band around one slender but powerful thigh. As she straightened their eyes met. But I am in someone's diary right now. I am in someone's fick. This is somebody else's ship. I'm here for the ride. Which is he gulped air and said, hi, you look. Emotions flitted across Ventress's face, annoyance, pleasure,

and something he'd never thought to see there. Embarrassment. Go ahead, spit it out, she muttered. You look, and then in parentheses, his internal monologue, like a goddess of love and war and hope and ecstasy, like a glimmering star that I have somehow been blessed to hold, like the rest of my life, and then coming back into his dialogue voice.

Nice. He wanted to kick himself. And Ventra rolls rise, he says, yeah. No wonder you Jedi are so frustrated. No rid of. She didn't have to get pretty woman. Like, Ventress was hot when she's like, she's always been hot.

assistant. It's an empty black, deep purple. Uh-huh. Deep purple trim. Yeah. And the top hat. Uh-huh.

She's about to do a show with the amazing Jonathan. Like, she's like, she's like a parody of a magician's assistant. You know, Ventress can pull it off, but it's not that dissimilar from what she always wears is the thing. Do you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. Ventress wore a tight black two-piece outfit where her tummy was

going? Yeah, it's ventrous. That's like, that's default outfit. I see her kill a bunch of clones in that, you know? It's goofy. It's goofy. It's goofy. All right. I did feel like I was on a ride, though, through that whole, I was like, whew, I'm riding. Okay, woo, whoa, whoa.

Sorry to interrupt, but I, I just wanted to Google this real quick, and I found it. There's concept art specifically for when they were developing Dark Disciple of her in different. outfits can you post it can you yeah it's in general I would have liked to see it yeah it looks fine like her her regular look is hotter her regular look is hotter it's this is it this it's this like second page yeah I guess that's fine the fucking snake necklace thing is doesn't work that was

fucking why the fuck why because she killed the snake I guess Like is that why she brought She's like the symbol of the dark I know but I mean it literally calls out her snake Like it calls out Quinlan remembering her snake necklace As she's like running away from him or something like

I was like They go to the party They both They both gel at oh my gosh Austin Yeah What does assassination mean to you? What do you think of assassination?

Not this! She was next to him Hit the fucking button. Boop, done. She... You can never hit the button because he will just force lightning you in the split second between...

Go for it. Let's have the fight here surrounded by all these other people who you were supposed to protect. Good luck. I bet he ends up killing a bunch of people and that probably hurts his reputation. People have to be ready to make a sacrifice.

Assassination does not mean I challenge you to a midnight duel. Yeah. Again, this is what I mean. When I say like, are the Jedi holding back normally? because this is exactly some Jedi shit. He's there, he gives a speech. He has to meet and greet with a bunch of people. She shows up and, like, you know, stands near him and is like, I'm here, man.

Like, come find me if you want to fucking fight me. They're too performative. They're like, they're fucking, they're like, it's all like a performance. But she was next to him. She got to his back. All she had to do is. They must duel. They must duel.

And now they have to go dual. And they set up a whole dual situation. Before that happens, though, Duku has to receive an award. I'm going to count us in on Dark Disciple Count Duku's speech. Three, two, one, go. 19, B, B, B, B, B.Y, Racta Secundus. Oh, wow, there's like a whole, they, like, faked it real well here. This is an honor to stand here before you.

for you represent the freedom and the future of our galaxy. The once Great Republic and Jedi Order have become victims of their own ambitions. And the Supreme Chancellor is no more than a pawn of corporate monopolies. I mean, I mean. As a people, you called out for change. You called out for leadership. And I humbly answered that call.

Together, we challenge the system. We asked for equality. And how were we met with war? The Jedi secret army of clones was revealed. And their treachery was far greater than we could have imagined. Countless living beings, these clones the Jedi created, have been sent to their deaths. Sure. While we sacrifice mainly droids.

Our soldiers of flesh and blood are willing participants. They are your fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, who fight not because they were grown and designed to do so, but because they know in their hearts that they are fighting for a just and noble cause. We should not talk about the droids. We're just like I'm not talking about them. I can't even get into it. to be your leader during this unfortunate war,

but I shall receive this humanitarian honor and take it as a sign that my leadership has met with your approval. Let the celebration begin. There's a part in the middle of this where Voss is like, damn, he's spitting. This is clearly edited out the Voss reaction, but Voss grimace slightly and said to Ventress,

He makes a good point in the middle of, in the middle of this. Scrub the mission. Scrub it. This is not the guy. He's not the guy. And Ventures knows that, by the way. Coming into this, Ventress does have a lot of doubts about Voss being ready for it because they had to rush to get it done.

The halfway through the training is when she gets the call that's like, oh, yeah, he's going to be, he's going to be touchable. He's going to be at this event like next week. so you better hurry up and she has to be like all right I guess we're going to go do the fish thing I don't know

that you're ready for the fish thing but we're going to go do it which you know maybe that's part of the problem is she didn't have time to do the build right on the fish

well she didn't get to build the fish up in his mind so that it really felt darksided you know but not too dark sided you would be in control yeah exactly

who bungee jump into the dark side and then be sort of brought back so yeah to your point Rob what happens is not an assassination attempt she challenges Duke

to a duel and says, meet me over here at by moonlight or at midnight or whatever. The one thing he's untouchable at. It is literally, let's go strength for strength against this dude who's like the best that ever was at this. Yeah. They know that he will still cheat and have grievous show up to help. And so he tells, or she tells Voss. Which would only happen if you give him a heads up.

Grievous isn't there with his headers. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Correct. Uh-huh, 100% Uh, and so she has Vos go in like 1V1 Grievous and like take his Lasapers away and lock him in a room

Which goes well Yeah, he does that So many moments where they should have just started murking people Yeah, again, should have killed Grievous at this moment He's like, I don't have time to kill you It's like I feel like we're pretty much to the point We would take an extra minute I gotta go!

Yeah, and also if you come back home You're like damn, we didn't get Duku, but we got Grievous That's still a dove. You're still posting numbers, you know what I mean? Like no one's mad at that You know, I think Matesbindu would be like, well, you know what? It was worth it, you know? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Maybe he's for the best that we did not go all the way down. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And then they go to try to 2V1, Duku. Duku the God. You know what I mean?

Duku can't be beat like this. Well, and, and, and, Quinlan won't shut the fuck up. Like, they do get the drop. on him, where Grievous doesn't show up. Quinlan does, and Duku's like, uh-oh. Like, wasn't prepared for, like, two people to be after me. Like, this is not, this is, like, not what I was, this is not what I was set up for. And then Quinlan starts being like, hey, I've got the best teacher over.

My girlfriend is the best teacher. You didn't appreciate her, but I do. She taught me so much about the dark side. Idiot. And I know all your secrets. Idiot, moron, stupid. So she's been teaching you. And it's like, Adventress knows.

It's done. It's a rap. A bag has never been fumbled quite so loudly and cartoonishly in the history of Star Wars, I think. This was an unbelievable miscalculation. Why the fuck would you tell Duku that you're dating? his former, why the fuck? The Jedi don't even know yet. You haven't even really told them really quite yet.

And you're coming out to Duku? The guy who does this? Poised like a falcon that he had to be to blurt it out. He needs to unpoise the falcon. Let me fucking tell you. Unpoised. Now is not the time, my man. Get your head in the game

You know the Instagram boyfriend soft launch We're like Post a picture of someone's hand on the table This is him being like What would it feel like to tell someone I'm dating her Let me just try it out Ooh, it feels good Before I get home

And then we'll see what happens Unbelievable He wants the stunt Like he's dating ventures Like you would want to brag about it I drag about it. But they just whips their asses. And that's not, like, it turns.

Like, it starts turn fast. The fight gets away from them. It's wild, because it's not like, it just turns from that information alone. Like, eventually Grievous does get back in the fight and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, yeah. Droids show up, yeah. By the way, there's some fun droid comedy throughout this that made me wish it was real, or not real, it's real, it's a book, but that it was visualized because I love some battle droids. I love it when they do a little comedy, and there's a lot of that throughout the book.

It's good. Thumbs up. I'm excited, by the way, that they're going to be in the gentleman. I order two game. There's like a bunch of battle droids in that because I'm ready for more battle droids in my life. And that comes out later this month. So it's good to know there's going to be battle droids in my near future, you know. But it's just the fact that he knows this is enough for him to get the upper hand

and start beating them 2V1 so that when Grievous shows up, he can like kick Voss off of building down to another level or maybe they get, Ventris gets kicked. Ventris gets separated. That's sort of this. Voss gets dragged away. She gets back up there in time to see that he can't be reached. And they really want you to feel the thing of like, why isn't she coming to help him? And like, because she's surrounded by 80 dudes.

Like, what do you want? Yeah, they basically describe the shot you would have gotten the show, which is them being pulled away from each other. Or from Voss's perspective, her being glimpsed almost as if through a tunnel as she runs away as the, like, droids close around him. And they really want to make a lot of that being like a key. feeling of, but he spots the snake necklace around her neck. Was she really just using him? Because that's what Duku was saying to him immediately. Like, you're being used.

You're being fooled. You don't, she's, she's manipulating you. I know that she said the same thing about me, but I'm telling the truth, buddy. And it just doesn't, I don't, this particular thing doesn't make sense because we know how fights and Star Wars work. They met by chasing people in weird ways to a city. Sometimes you run left so you can go forward. That's how Star Wars running.

fights work, I don't, it's not enough for me to believe that was, I mean, it isn't the big final thing, right? But it introduces doubt in his mind that then Duku can play with, right? That she did like fight her way forward through a horde of battle droids and grievous to come rescue him. But that's just not how she's ever fought. Let me just pause. It just makes it feel like they, like, they haven't actually, like, they didn't learn anything.

They're like, that their relationship is so valuable, that is so vulnerable, that one seed of doubt sewn by Duku has just the ultimate power to bring them like just crashing down any sense of love or trust between them crashing down.

It's first relationship stuff for Voss right? Where it's like make out with a girl and he's like we're in love I think we're going to get married as soon as we complete this mission I'm not going to be a Jedi like Ventress is my life now

and like I'm poised like a falcon in flight And then you see her with like three battle droids And you're like what she, what's she doing with those battle droids What do they have like they know her? Why do they do they know her? Do you know them? Why do you say you couldn't hang out tonight Now I see you with battle droids?

I don't think you should talk to battle droids anymore I don't think you should talk to you've battleroid numbers in your phone still? Are you all you talk to the battle droids too? Duke who's like but she's made out with other people, Quimmy. What makes you special? And he's like, oh shit, what makes me special?

Oh, shit. Right, nothing. I'm not special at all. I'm a piece of shit, actually. Yeah. This yellow tattoo. What's up with this stupid yellow tattoo on my face? I'm an idiot.

She always calls me idiot. Maybe she means it. Which, by the way, that's her pet name for him in this book. It's idiot. She eventually also slips in handsome every now and then, which are both nicknames a mean girl will have for a dog, which I kind of think is funny. So it's, yeah, but it's like he's just, it's, it's completely, it's completely brittle.

He, which again, like, also is the whole part of like, everyone, like, so much of this is, like, telling us that Quinlan boss is cool in the, like, in the, like, in the, what are the tattoos about? He does not come up cool. Do we know what the tattoos are about? I don't know what the tattoos are about. being cool? Yeah, it seems like a bad thing to have if you're an undercover agent.

Bright yellow tattoo on your face. Don't mean it's sort of say it's like it's his home world like custom, blah, blah, blah. But he doesn't have like attachment to his home world. His home world in that way. Judd I love to like, they're like, don't be attached to your home world, but feel free to like wear, like wear traditional garbs.

He's not human? No, he's far. which is a near-human species from the planet Kifu and Kifax and they're near-human but distinguished by their scarlet blood and facial tattoos which indicate their clan affiliation on their species homeworld. There we go. Scarlet blood, not like our red blood. Does it suddenly feel a little racist?

I mean, let me tell you. They're really doing the like, she's pure than snow and he's, and he has dark skin stuff throughout this book. They did that multiple. There is multiple, multiple, like, descriptions of his, like, dark hand on her pale.

But the minute they're like, he ain't actually human. I'm like, oh, dear. Oh, no. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Okay, they're called Cooper type of face tattoo. He is.

He is. That is where he's from. They don't describe why he has it, though. No, I'm not. He is a guy that has... Same. Yeah. They just say he's a guy

with a tattoo from Kifu. Apparently there is a high-republic character who also... A lot of high-republic stuff seems like it takes place there maybe in the comic, so maybe there's the other stuff to read.

Anyway... He got a little high-vis strip across his face. Yeah. It looks really good on a gray-scale book cover. I will say that. Yeah.

It looks sick. There. So while Voss is contemplating do I touch the stick? Ventress is down bad and he's just racked with guilt about how this is all unfolded and imagining what Voss is going through

and she turns to the only people she can imagine helping her rescue Voss her old bounty under friends frenemies the Boba Fett gang yeah she calls them a syndicate at one point which is funny to me

It's six people. Chill. Also, Dengar doesn't make the cut, by the way. I noticed that, too. I was like, where's Dengar? They traded Dengar for Embo before the trade deadline hit. They were like... Embo's very good.

Like, Dengar didn't exactly show us a lot on that train. No, no, it's true. If Enbo got on that train. Oh, it all gone different. Yeah. Sorry, girl, you're getting trafficked. It's done. Embo's here to make sure that happens.

She pays them An exorbit All of the money She has saved up Incredible amount of money Two hundred Thousand credits Feels like a lot of credits

It's a lot How much is a galactic credit We've done this right How many we pee-pee-pies Oh please it was Whoopi-Oopies I don't know how I remember that But I do

It's 250,000 credits is what she pays It's a lot of money It's her whole life savings It's everything that she has Everything that she's made from all the jobs It's everything And they're gonna do it

So they go do it They do They go to his home planet And they wreck house And she goes But here's the thing She's like I'm gonna go get Voss

You just hold down the landing pad And she goes to get Voss And he's turned on her He's like He's touched the lightsaber And he turns on her And she's like Please no

Like you know You don't understand And he's just completely like He's lost himself in his rage Against her And she has to run from him He's got the yellow eyes He's like

He's like chasing her With the battle droids And she comes out Trying to escape from Quinlan and Duku's in a net tied up on the ground with boss standing over the gun to his head

and it's like they just didn't they weren't even contracted to do it Duku made the mistake of being like we're under attack what's going out of the landing pad I better check it out and he got got by a bunch of battle

by a bunch of bounty hunters that were not even there to deal with him uh huh yeah should have pulled the trigger shoot him just shoot him go click the be you know the Galactic Republic will pay you for it.

A hundred percent. They'll fucking make you kings. They'll give you each to your own planet. Imagine Boba Fett showing up at the Jedi temple with Duku's head on a platter to give the look on Mace's face. Please. Delicious. Finally, Boba Fett does something cool.

So she just, she hops aboard the ship that she hops aboard the escape. That's that. That whole mission was just kind of show how much better these bounty hunters are at everything. than, like, the Jedi. And, like, Assad's whole... Yeah, why don't the Jedi just do this? Why didn't Obi-1 go with them for the assassination? Like, what is...

They were just, like, Voss's goddess. Yeah, like, if we know that Ventris has a ship of the cloaking device, it comes up over and over again. They're able to hide from the imperial or the separatist ships all the time. They're able to board them. This would have been an easy mission to put six more Jedi on that ship. and have them all go undercover and Jedi mind-tricked their way in

and get... I mean the original assassination attempt, not even this. But by this, just, like, it's nothing. The ship could fit so many people on it also bring some Jedi through. This is done.

It's over. They don't do that. Back on Jedi Corrassant, Jedi Temple on Corrassant, they're watching the hollow vids of Admiral Enigma. People are gossiping about him. Ventruses like dimly aware. that Enigma had won a battle.

But she's hammered. Yeah, she's a super drunk. She's like, I am completely dissolute now, just drinking nonstop. And then Dash seeks her out. Yeah. And it's like the Jedi have given up on Voss, but I haven't. So she's dragged back to the temple to stage another rescue operation. Uh-huh.

So we're going to re-rack this time with a Jedi rescue mission instead of a bounty hunter mission. She negotiates for, I forget, is here where she gets the guarantee of a pardon? Yes, this is the guarantee of the pardon. If I rescue, if I help bring in Voss and save him, then you'll give me a pardon for, I mean, she doesn't even offer it, right? They offer, or she doesn't even ask for it, right? They offer it outright. Yoda offers it. Everyone's like, yo, what?

And, you know Pardons are for Jedi only Yeah, uh-huh, basically So yeah, so they go to get him He's on a ship And the big thing here is that she doesn't When they finally find him in a cell She's like, this is a fucking trick

He's still evil He's still dark side of this fuck How can no one else feel this? this is all ploy to get in under you know and hurt us from the inside um no one believes her and this is one of the beats that does interest me so for like at this moment she feels it clear his day that like he is yes that like there's hatred radiating off him and obiwan doesn't pick up on it at all when they go back to the jedi council they don't pick up on it they are rejoiced that he's back um and so she he does some library dude

for a month and they're like all right good you're good to go didn't kill anyone in the library so we're good but she won't even speak to him he's trying to be like you don't understand what happened to me he's trying to make it up to her trying to like open that conversation and she will not engage with him knowing that he is given over to the dark side and so he starts doing missions for the Jedi they keep finding like little side missions that like

for instance they find a depot with tons of important supplies for military supplies and helping civilian populations and he's like I'm going to go check out the rest of the space and then a minute later as they're trying to unload the supplies he's like holy shit this whole place is wired wired blow we got to get out of here

and the stuff like it starts happening they start wondering like Quinlan's always alone when these things go wrong and it always feels like we don't get like the outcome that we really wanted yeah they go to like a separateist listening post but everyone's already gone from it it's been completely emptied out

And then they're like, Quindlin, can't you use your, like, your item reading power to see if anyone's here or if anyone's like, if there's anything left? And he's like, yeah, everybody, I used it. Everybody's gone. Everybody just, everybody bounced. It seems like there's nothing here for us. And then they realized, like, well, we can only rely on him telling us the truth when he uses that. We can't ask him to do a deeper sweep because if he's lying, it'll just be him lying more. But I, yeah.

They're also pointedly in this part of the story. everybody's like I know Ventra's thought that she was stark-sighted but she's just upset about getting broken up with he came back to the Jedi instead of being with her so we don't really have to we can take that with a grain of salt

this is why Patty's her bad it's so like this is where like the there's just no consistency because then they fucking walk that back and say no it's because Ventress loved him that she could she was uniquely poised

to be able to see like what was actually going on in him whereas us Jedi because we are our we were actually clouded by our like we were you know our visions were cloudy and then they like then they flip it yeah again so she finally like he manages to link up with her and once again he tries to be like please talk to me you don't understand what was happening like you don't know what I was going through I know I was like really messed up and this time she's like holy shit he's on the level like there's no hatred in him at all like everything he's telling me is true there's no deception in him and at this point the Jedi are like do we really trust him they send him an interview Yoda and that's where Yoda says the thing that Austin

Yeah, the history of the soul does the force permit. Maybe this is why the Jedi don't fuck with love and attachment. It's not that it's evil. It's just like, Yoda is just like, fucked up, love will have you. You know, like, right sometimes it is. And wrong other times. Like, it's just it fucks with you. It's not that it's evil.

It's just another variable. Right. It messes up your readings. You know, you can't get, sometimes it gives you accurate readings. And sometimes it doesn't. And that actually makes it worse than if it was always giving you bad reading. If it was always clouding your judgment, you would just know not to trust it when you were in love with somebody.

You'd say, well, I can't trust anything I feel about you because I'm in love with you. But when it sometimes gives you pristine, clear, you know, the sort of like a moment of clarity, vision of the truth, that means you trust it even when you're absolutely being lied to. But also, maybe part of what's happening here is Voss does change from that earlier moment to when he talks to her later, because what shifts is. is what his objectives are. When she sees him in the, in the, when they rescue him, at that point, is he already all the way to, I'm going to kill and replace Duku so that I can then face down the dark

lord of the Sith and then rule the galaxy by myself and save everybody? Is he already there or is he still in a more primal, like, angry, I can't believe you betrayed me mode and she senses that? I don't know. We're not in his head basically at all here. Oh, here's the, oh. Here's the thing I just remembered about the thing about her realizing that he had been a Jedi is we're in her head a lot in the first half of the book.

And it never crosses her mind in her narrative voice that he's being a little weird with his reflexes. She is never before the moment where she's like, I know, thinking to herself, this motherfucker acts a lot like a Jedi. And I mean, again, in the back half of the book, we're never in Quinlan's head. We're mostly in Asages or Obi-Wiwold. there are point of view characters and so we don't get the interior of Vos scheming we just get what he's saying

and I do think that there's kind of a good trick of alienating us from him there because suddenly you're like I don't know if I trust this guy whose head I was in for the whole first half of the book you know and like I kind of like this notion that they're getting at it's one of those like things that you'd love to see them complicating things a bit

which is that like it is unclear as to whether is he loyal to Duku is he actually like gone all the way through his looking glass where he's like, no, the way I can most successfully complete this mission and like save the galaxy and all of this is to lean fully into this and do Sith shit all the way up to the point where I'm introduced to the devil himself and I kill him. And then we'll be golden. And then we can run away.

Which is how it always works, right? Which is like Anakin is the outlier in the way that he got brought into the fold. We see this shit of like, oh, I just get close. This is what Duke who's trying to do with Obi-Wan, right? When they meet in Attack of the Clones, we're like, oh, there's really a Sith Lord at the heart of the Galactic Republic. You should join me, Obi-Wan, and help me save the galaxy. Like, that offer, it's what Darth Vader offers to Luke and says, we could take on the Emperor together. This is, again, like, the classic Sith thing of, like, the way you turn a Jedi is by convincing them that you two could do things the right way, you know? And it's what, Duke who does it to Quinlan throughout this. He doesn't come out

say, oh, he does tell him he's going to give him an introduction to the dark lord of the Sith, which, by the way, they start calling Quinlan a dark lord in the final act of this book, which is like, did he really go all the way to dark lord status? Is that quick? I guess he's a Jedi master, so he gets to like skip some levels, but. There's like some skills that transfer over his credits, transfer. Right, right. Yeah, the credits transfer. You're no longer Admiral Enigma. You're Darth Enigma. If he'd become a Darth That's the point of no return

You can be an admiral You can be a dark lord But you can't be a Darth Once you're at Darth You have to die to save yourself Like Vader did Otherwise Well Vader was

It's not just him It was Luke that also Right yes Yeah It was Luke's like sacrifice That or like love Or whatever Yeah

So yeah Admiral was out here doing the shit or Quinlan Voss despite being a Jedi mode again is still doing shit for Duku. Yoda IDs him is still being evil and they as you said

before sent him on one final mission to prove Well Obi-Wan and at what point is Obi-Wan going to get benched for his attachments by the way? I think he needs a couple of butts in the library because this is wild first of all being like I don't think that we should kill Duku

I think that that's evil but if we should do it I have this hookup. I think that we should reach out to Ventras, which is his idea in the first way. But then he's like, listen, Voss, we don't know if Voss is evil, and it's a bad thing to assume

that a guy is evil when he's our brother. Let's just send him to kill Duku again a second time, and he will prove to us that he's nice and he's with us. It went really well the last time. Think that Mesa Wendu and Kiadi Mundi have their heads.

on right. And I hate that shit. I hate feeling any sort of camaraderie with those two assholes. Because they're the only ones who are like, no, we have to kill him. It's done. It's done. We can't, we definitely can't go let him be cool with Dukku. What are you talking about? I mean, I guess if we get Dukkah dead off of it. What better task to reunite him with his car and after. And if it goes sideways, then we'll know. And he'll surely be in control of the situation. And like, Obi-Won and Anakin, you follow him and make sure it's on the level. Oh, this is

one of the best scenes in the book, though. Like, they hack battle droids in some way and are like pirating them around. It's so funny. This is the highlight for sure. Spoiler, Luke is still, I mean, Voss is still evil. He doesn't

kill Duku. All the shit killed me. All the shit were like, again, it's what we talked about. When they show up to get, to get to Ventrace's getaway vehicle. He goes in, he's like, all right, Ventures. I had to do this alone, baby. And no secrets, though.

And she's like, you're keeping secrets. That's literally secret. Your secrets. You became Mr. Secret. What are you talking about? Why don't we just go? Why don't we just get out of here? Which, again, is an echo of Padmay to Anakin being like, what if we just leave?

And Anakin being like, no, I have to do this. This is important to me. Because, again, it rhymes, I guess, making me hate that it rhymes. rhymes, and he goes to go confront Duku, quote unquote, but really what he's doing is getting Duku off the ship, I guess, and, and guaranteeing, again, Anakin and Obi-Wan overhear him say, and then you're going to, like, introduce me to your master, right? And that's finally the moment when Anakin is like, all right, no, wait a minute, wait a second. The fact that they're just sitting behind the one desk in the room.

funny they oh i forgot about that they go out of their way to be like the room only has one place to hide and it's behind duke's desk like this is a comedy now we're in a comedy we are in a comedy now and then they confront them and then they aha and fucking and go after them yeah and this all culminates with an arrest yeah they get them they have the upper hand here but use it to apply handcuffs. And we got to go back to it. Now, they authorize an assassination mission against Duku.

Mm-hmm. But now they busted him alongside Quinlan and they're like, we got both of them. We rounded him off. And they're told outright. They're told, this is a thing. They're told to kill

them. Kill outside. If you get them, you want to execute them. It's an execution. And everyone's like, execution. Shit. And I don't even fully understand how this all unfolds either. It's like, arrest them and lead them off the ship and get with the clones. They're also now here. Like, a clone assault party has landed. Yeah. And they're here to like, take them away, boys. Why?

They don't, no, no, no, don't they transport them to somewhere else to, like, bring them to the brig? But why are they not with them at the whole time? That's what I'm saying. Obi-Wan and Anakin are like, oh, we have to go make a phone call. You can bring them to the prison. No, they can't. Commander Cody's good at this. He's fine. What the fuck are you talking about? It's Duku and Quinlan Voss.

And Quindelan Vaz, who you just saw, the only reason you're here is to test him and he failed the test is what happens. Y'all, they should have been dead in that room. And I know what you're thinking. I know there's some listener out there who's like, I can't believe AMCA, this podcast whose morals I trust is pro-assination. I am pro-assination sometimes. It's called Star Wars. They're in war. They kill people all the time.

This is the thing that we have to remember. Like, the Jedi kill people all the time. They act like they don't. The fact that they dress it up in other terminology, even if you say to someone, come with me, you're under arrest, and then you stab them, you have still killed them.

That is how it works. And they're perfectly fine with doing that other times. We've seen us so. Kaka kills so many people. We saw her we cut four people's heads off that one time. Remember that? She cut four heads off in a row. They are capable.

It's not like a, oh, no, he's an innocent. We never kill. They kill all the fucking time. But these are their dudes, and so they're not going to kill them. They'll kill Mandalorians. They'll kill Death Watch all the time. They'll get their own dudes. They'll be as hell about this.

Yeah. And it's like, again, the whole, like, Duku is one of the special cases where it's like, oh, we shouldn't, like, execute people or we shouldn't, like, do targeted political killings. It's like, no, this is the guys where you make exceptions. Like, this is, like, literally, this book opens with him massacring, like, hundreds of thousands of people, like, wantonly. You know that I've been a Duku defender. He's got to go. This book is very clear that he is a fucking genocide guy.

Yeah. Like, killing the refugees on the way out is not, there's no argument for it. clarifies the moral stakes of the entire thing. There's no speech you can give after that. Right. The big humanitarian award speech. Right. It's meant to be deeply hypocritical, right?

Whatever right thing he is saying there is meant to be clouded as clear as day. That's a speech about how he is manipulating people with good hearts who believe that shit because it's not wrong, but he's using them as cover for him to do genocides and throw the galaxy deeper into chaos and terror so that his lord can take. advantage of that, you know? There's no... Well, it's like, again, like Star Wars kind of being onto something. It's the whole like bureaucratic neoliberalism is letting you down. Right.

Murder is fascism. Fashism is the way. Right, right. Because there is no other option presented to people. There is no... Right. There is not an actual, you know, I was going to say a third way, but that's, that is... They only have the third way in fascism, right? They don't have... a sort of socialist or anarchist

or leftist position in this world that is not completely corrupted from the inside out, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. And then naturally, it's Dash, right? Who blows it? Like, fully?

Where... Of course. Quinlan gets close to him. Force yanks the lightsaber off his belt. He's loose. In seconds, like 100 clones are dead. And then Dash... has his

Maron birthright used against him yeah deeply sad the land they didn't fucking put force cuffs on them like anti-force

energy cuffs or something they just have regular handcuffs they should have brought these people you know they should have brought them

immediately the Citadel the anti-Jetai prison yeah they should have fucking carbon

frozen every single one of them they should have just killed them there that's the thing they should just kill them is like yeah all right

we're taking you away to the transport and then they don't make the transport you just tell them that so they don't think that like they don't they don't feel the pistol being cocked against her

right and they escape and they get into Ventress's car space car and she's like what the fuck who also should have just taken the shot

when she had it Duku is hurt on the ground from all this why the moment that Dugu is in her ship this book doesn't have five pages left. And like,

and then they're killed and then that's it. You know, like, we get the escape. She's like, what is going on? He's like, I'll explain later, baby. Just trust me.

We gotta get Duku to safety. All of this drags so bad because it is just Quillan be like, I'll promise, I'm going to tell you more in a second. And he does that every three pages for the whole final hundred pages of the book, basically.

Touch you, Obi-1 being like, be sure to disable the ship, but she's such a good pilot that she does. dodges at the time the disabling shot is coming and so the ship basically explode she crash lands it and now here's the thing duku horribly fucked up in the crash like this dude like they're they're trying to like hike their way out of the wilderness now who's based on christophis and like he needs to stop and be like i think i'm bleeding out and ventris and assage have another conversation where he's like baby just like trust me

like let's just roll with it and it's like could just kill him it seems like he might just die from blood loss, but they get to the big base. The fact that, like, that Duku tells Quinlan, like, hold me up so that I don't look like a weakling in front of my droids. And Quinn's like, you are a bitch. You are, you are, like, come on, bro. You were Quinlan fucking Voss. And now you are, like, you're carrying Duku home?

That's the actual thing about. A little arm around him helping him walk through the woods. If the end of this book was going to be that Ventress, a character we like dies, saving Quinlan Voss's soul or whatever, I better come out of this book thinking Quinlan Voss rules. And I don't. I come out thinking he's a piece of shit, that he's boring, that he's a nosy. Like, it's nothing. Like, I wanted to come out of this, going into it knowing that Ventress came out with a bad

ending, which is what I already been told, that I wouldn't like, I came in knowing Ventress was not going to come out of this looking. Sterling and that, you know, all but been told to me that she didn't make it out of this book. This is the last Ventures story is what I'd heard. And so, like, we don't get another Clone Wars arc with her as far as I know. You know what I mean? She does not pop back up. We are done with Venturous at this point.

Until Obi-Wan Season 2. Right, exactly, when he resurrects her on Dathamere, and then they just live a happy life together. The end, it's an AU. We're don't worry about the moochie more. What's going to happen? But what if she pops up in the Asoka show? imagine it. I could imagine them going to Dathamere and then like

they resurrect her and here she is. She should be a Force Ghost in the Ray Show. She shouldn't do that but they She deserves it. I hope that Ray Show isn't bad. It's going to be bad. It feels bad. It's going to be so bad. I'm so low

on Star Wars right now. I'm so I need it. I Andor had a date by the way. It's next August. Not this August. next August. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, long way away.

So, I'm gonna. Don't talk to me in August. You're gonna be busy on Wednesdays and Thursday. This is the only thing I'll be tweeting about.

Well, this is, like, it's just, Twitter make it to August 2024. Where the Ray thing ended. It was just such a, like, oh, what's my name? Ray Skywalker.

And I was just like, every time I see a thing that's posted that's like, so there's this return of the Jedi Re release and the news post for it on Star Wars. com keeps saying shit like

the well-loved entry in the Skywalker saga, shut up. Don't talk about it like that. Don't lie. You are lying. No, no, no. Return of the Jedi is a well-loved entry. Return of the Jedi. I'm just saying they're reducing it. But they're reducing it to being

a part of the Skywalker saga instead of the end of the original trilogy and like the one of the emotional high points of Star Wars writ large. It's now just like one step in the Skywalker saga now and that just is brutal to me.

Well, and it's also like kind of the, it also touches like on my misgivings with some of the like the, uh, the Mandalor saga. And it's like, it's kind of treating you organize these things by categories, but not everything's a fucking saga. Like, sometimes there's just settings and stories you tell in them and they don't need to be fucking sagas

that's like, oh, there's like a whole arc here that like it's all planned out is this beautiful journey. And it's like, the Skywalker saga basically like, no sooner has that phrase been uttered than the preposterousness of it is revealed by like the fact that after Force Awakens

you get two sharply divergent movies about like what is any of this about or mean and the last of them is like one of the worst like Star Wars movies. I will say I don't mind coming out of this somehow we're back at Star Wars celebration but we didn't talk about it but they did debut the sort of like

new timeline eras. There's like the nine symbols the dot of the Jedi which is where one of the new movies is going to take place about the first Jedi, which somehow, they already have the lightsaber icon in the middle of their chest, and it's already split into

light side, dark side. That's just built in. So it's Dawn of the Jedi, the Old Republic, the High Republic, Fall of the Jedi, reign of the empire, Age of Rebellion, the New Republic, Rise of the First Order, and then the new Jedi Order, which is they're really calling it that. That's going to be where the new

race show is, is the new Jedi order. And so, I don't mind that. I don't mind there being like, here are the big timelines. Here are the big eras. As an old school, R. P.er,

I like being able to be like, ooh, I want to do a story set in the High Republic. I want to do a story set in the old Republic. That's like, those are fun ways to talk about eras. I don't mind that existing.

But like, thinking about it in terms of this is the Mandalorian saga, I think has done this dirty in terms of the, instead of saying these are stories that are taking place in the era of the new republic, in the era of the first,

the rise of the first order or whatever. Also, some of these areas, is are no time at all and some of them are huge swaths of time and there's like hey if these things are if a thing is going to be a thing you'll know because it'll develop organically like the reason we're talking with like the mandolorean saga is because like those episodes hit in clone wars they built on it like it sounds successfully uh like they built on it successfully in rebels mandolore is hitting but it's not like any of this was from the start like 10 years ago you know 15 years ago they're saying we need to tell the mandolore saga

like no that's not how this works and what does concern me is you have things that people like which is the mandolar stuff and then it's like and they're going to love the new Jedi order and it's like you have a pitch document effectively you have no idea what that is like maybe they will maybe they won't but like

if it turns out to be a loser are we just wedded down to this idea of like the future of this is like we're going to make the new Jedi order era work because it's like if anything has been shown you need to be able to cut bait on these ideas and say like you know what we're going to focus on some other corners of the galaxy stuff that's working right now yeah yeah yeah anyway speaking of not working that we

don't want to yeah uh duku's like i need to make a phone call and like they get into the base and quinlin's like not without me i need to be on this phone call too and so the climax what's he what's he really think it's going to happen i don't know i don't know what he's not a real person anymore with real motivations. He's a fucking cartoon character of a dark-sided guy. Like, he,

uh, the fact, the fact that it's like constantly positing him as playing like, 4D chess with everyone where like, oh, no, no, no, no,

ventress, what you have to understand is I'm actually playing Duku even harder than you think. And no, no, no, as soon as I get this Zoom invite, I'm going to find the dark sit-board. He doesn't even get the invite.

He gets to stand behind Duku during this. Zoom call. He's not even his own member on the Zoom call. Switching up his face, staring at the tiny little... He's stuck in the fucking blurry background. Yeah, uh-huh. He's not even... Yeah. Like, do I know that guy? Shit, he's wearing a road. Fuck. Right.

What do you think you were to... Why would you think... Have you seen... There's that... There's that bit where, uh, in DC Comics, where I want to say it's Lex Luther or the Joker unmasks, uh, the Flash. And he's like, I don't know who you are at all. Like, you're just some guy. Why would I have a super...

I would have known who you were going to be just because I saw your face. You're just some randau from a different city. And that's exactly what is here. Like, Clinton Foss isn't going to learn shit from this call. And Duku introduces him as his new assassin. And Palpatia is like, really? We know how that went.

You're doing the assassins again? The past six times you've done that. Stop it. And then, Vaz's like, but I thought I was like a mentor. I thought I was going to be dark-sighted too. I thought we were going to take down Cidias. but I'm just an assassin

Duke is like No no of course We're equals We'll bring him down together Of course No he doesn't even do that That's what I'm saying No he does say that Duke who says that's him

Because then Quinlan's like That's not how the rule of two works I know And Duke's like we'll make new rules We'll be the new Sith I'm a senator It's a nightmare And then the entire time Ventress is just letting

this happened by the way like she you know she's just giving up she power it just like I felt like I was watching someone like in a just a toxic relationship like just like getting lied to getting deceived getting exploited and them just like being completely helpless and powerless and letting it all happen and just trying to do like it literally felt like somebody watching when you watch your friend just like make terrible decisions about something or somebody you love make terrible decisions and they're just going further and further down the path and you've said what you could to try and deter them and it's not happening they cut you out the group chat uh-huh yeah they stop coming to you for advice yep because they know that what they're doing is on some

fuck shit and now and then they're and then it's too late and then instead you just get reduced to being like their rock bottom awakening moment by dying by being killed and that's it's the whole thing right the rest of this is they they get stuck inside of the christophis like holdout chamber and the jedi and the clones are just shooting the shit out of it and finally you know obi won is like this is all fucked up we have to go in there we can't just like kill them with artillery shells like we shouldn't be trying to kill venturous especially ventures is trying to help us which like Obi-Wan's right about this. At least one thing.

Obi-Wan is like, you know, Ventris is the person who has been on the right side of this the whole time. They go in. They do a big confrontation. We skipped a thing, by the way, which is earlier, Anakin held his own 1V-1 against Duku during, like, the ship rescue attempt. Anakin was fine for that. And so they finally, like, they're on their way in to save Ventress and Voss. and while that happens is when the big final thing happens, right? Duku tries to Lightning Foss for some reason.

Yeah, right? This whole thing he was so disjointed. I was like, why does the end of this book start to, like, I just don't have the sense of what happens? Because she takes him aside to be like, you need to tell me what is going on. Yes. And now he gives her the speech of like, this is my big plan.

Like, this is how it's going to help us be free of all this. Like, we got to find the big... I did it for us, babe. Is this the point where he admits that he did actually go dark-sighted? Yes. But now he's not. And now it's like, it's all the play. I think it was actually a little bit earlier.

He was like, you know what? You were right about me back then. But now, now we're going to get out of here. There's a whole meeting that they have. We skipped this. There's a whole meeting that they have in the park where they're just like hanging out on on course in a public park making out. Yeah, we forgot to talk about that.

lean back kiss forehead situation and there and she's like let's just go let's just get out of here and he's like no one more thing we got to get ducu we got to once we get ducu it's we're good um and again this happens like this is what i'm saying like the back half of this book is just every scene three times yeah over and over again rule of three um it uh so i'm just going to read this is like the big thing duke vah says i can handle him i know what i'm doing assage i said we're doing it for us and I mean that. He took her good hand in his. You've told me your existence has been nothing but pain and loss. Never feeling secure, never having a home. You deserve so much and I can get it for us. The life will be able to have together once. And then she says, what kind of life will that be,

Quinlan? Her voice broke. The kind where we're slaves to our hatred, our rage. That's what the dark side made me. That's what it does. Nothing is ever enough. You get more and more, but you're never happy. It's a trap baited with all the things you want most. That life, it's not worth living. She squeezed his hand imploring, I already left it behind. You left that behind. You can too. You have a choice. All at once, warmth flooded through her. It was as if she was being bathed with soft light. It washed away the pain and the fear and the anger, leaving only perfect clarity in its wake. Ventress realized that it was the force, but it had never felt like this, and it was giving her a gift. Time slowed to a crawl, as a sudden calm sense of knowing

permeated her. She saw all at once every possible outcome of the turn of this fraction of a second, every convolution, every manifestation, every repercussion that would echo far into the future. Death and life and new chances lay down one path, the restoration of balance, fear and disaster, an existence that could never be called living but merely crawling about in the shell of flesh that had no spark of joy. That too could be the future, burning vengeance and only increased the hunger for more. She had just told her. Vos that he had a choice about what path he wished to walk, and the force was revealing to her the outcome of her own choices. Now, this moment, this instant, this breath, Ventress chose.

And the thing that she chose was being shot by lightning. The most violent bolts of force lightning Voss had ever seen. They danced and crackled about her hungrily, almost like living creatures. Her body spasmed and her face contorted into a mask of absolute agony. Blood trickled from her eyes, her ears, eyes, and nose. They really go in. They really do. Christy Golden really said, I'm going to make this the grossest shit you've ever seen in Star Wars. And then she dies slowly for page after page. There are multiple times I thought she was dead and she wasn't yet. Yeah, so she could tell Voss that she was proud of him for in the like last two minutes of this to be like oh you saved me instead of killing

ducu thanks for that this whole exchange this is bullshit the whole like duku's like if you kill me i win which i don't think ducu's wired that way he's not doing the whole like he no then the dark side will own you he doesn't that's palpity and shit that's not ducu shit but anyway ducu's doing that I am not your kind Voss said his voice thick I do not feed off vengeance Truth was quiet It did not need to shout or to demand

It simply existed I am a Jedi Voss who begins his lightsaber Ventress were still alive And hope cruel and beautiful Anagnos and flared in his chest As he rushed to her Where does Duku go after this

How does the how is the scene stage What is happening? Don't know Duku like vanishes How does he get away Where does he get away? Where does he go? I don't know.

What you don't understand is he has the power of Scooby-Doo. And when you have this power, you can just leave. Oh, wait, no, this is how they handle it. Chapter 42. It had been a long, excruciating few months. Voss had held dentress in his arms afterward. How long he did not know. But at some point, he heard Blasterfire and Obi-1 can

be shouting his name, calling for help. Voss had gone, and the three Jedi fought together as yet, Duku eluded capture. So all of this is like... Again, for the listener who hasn't read this, it's page after page. From when Duku says do it, the lightning wasn't for her, it was for you, et cetera, and Vosty activates his lightsaber. Two, three, four, five. It's six pages before you learn that Duku eluded capture.

And during those pages, there's no Duku. Duku was just in the room while Ventris is slowly dying and saying how proud she is of her idiot boyfriend. So bad. And when they had first kissed, Asage Ventress had changed everything in his world and was still changing it right this minute. Finally, someone changed something for this poor tattooed boy. and again the end of this one page was like and always remember that I loved you with all my heart he had known it but he never had heard it from her lips

now he found he could speak the simplest of words I will and I was like damn she died and the next page was like she took a shattering breath and kept talking I was like what do you like come on let her die with fucking dignity instead of once again like just carrying all

of the emotional fucking weight and responsibility of the situation at hand. It's so funny because there's that forward that you mentioned before, Rob, the Katie Lucas one. Are you going to bring up what the story is all about? Oh, yeah. Because I need you to know the way the audiobook works. I was like, I got to the final chapter. I was like, I'm going to listen to the final chapter while I eat dinner, basically, after recording last night.

and I sat down and turned it on and after the final page ends in the audiobook, that's when they play the foreword. The narrator reads the forward and yes, in the forward, Katie Lucas explains when we find the exact where does she say it?

I haven't highlighted. It's close to the end. I thought it was close to the end here. It is. It's on page 14. I'm using an e-book, so I'm at a location on a page. Oh, I see. It starts with, I was sad to see that Clone Wars was canceled.

Right, I see it. Yes. You want to just read it? You have it. Sure. I was sad to see that Clone Wars was canceled before the episodes could air, but feel relieved that Ventress will finally be given her due with the publishing of this novel. At its core, Dark Disciple is a story of redemption, a story of how people,

of how people can be unbelievably broken and yet find a way to rebuild despite the odds. All of us are given chances time and time again to transform our lives and it is our responsibility to seize those opportunities before they disappear.

And for me it's the graph right before. Oh yeah? You order to read that one? That one's a banger too. I've always been drawn to resilient female characters having grown up obsessively watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Vendros was the punk warrior witch of my dreams.

Her strength and vulnerability resonated profoundly with me. I was thrilled to be assigned the Dark Disciple episodes and had a hell of a time writing them. I was in the throes of a bad breakup and writing for Ventra's and Voss was incredibly cathartic for me. This is what I thought Natalie was going to read because the reveal of like I was going through it, you know?

I was going through a breakup. It was just me, my box set of Buffy DVDs, and Ventress is Voss. This is a self-report. It is, it is, and it's like, the thing you're imagining for yourself is like, Voss is the foil

that you create for this, and he's this, like, punk sack of shit. It really is the most I can fix him relationship. It is. And it's like, it is the most, like, like, you are Christ, basically.

Like, talk like the sacrifice is you like you will do anything you can to fix him even sacrifice your own life to fix this fucking guy a guy who by the end you no longer feel has anything special like it's one thing if it's like voss was truly the best of us and to bring him back is like you know if he's like if he's like genuinely like the lancelot of the jedi and like restoring his soul is like yeah that is something it's worth like all the jedi laying it on the line and for her but by the end of this he's a he's a loser

his idea his scheme sucked every single thing he did he took it too far he gets kissed by a girl he's like she's my wife now

I will die for her she's like choke this fish but like don't like it too much he's like oh my god I just want to kill things and choke the life

out of the now forever can I get more of that please like he's tortured by Duku and he's like I'm not gonna touch that lights every

touches the light Saber. I'm Admiral Lindigma now, but I'm going to get to the bottom of this. As soon as I get added to that group chat. I'm going to find that fucker. Like we don't even know if he was actually there or not. We don't know. Was he being tortured the whole time or was he out there? I'm not clear on that. Also, I think he was out there. Go ahead, Allie. To your point before that, like, we don't get a lot of Voss at the end of this book like we don't get any of his interiority around being darksided and it like completely abandons some of i think what the interesting stuff that they set up with his character where it's like

you initially have this guy who's like i feel like the jedi temple is home with me i feel like i have you know 10,000 brothers and sisters because i was let into this life even though i was denied the family that i had and then once venturous pushes on that the tiniest bit he's like was my life actually mid like does anything like I have stories like I I was having fun but I don't think any of the stuff really means anything to me and we don't get him darksided being like oh that's why I don't care I don't have this attachment to the Jedi temple anymore because it was it was falsified from the beginning and like because we don't see well it can't go there right it can't let itself ever go to the conditions the Jedi live under are our fabric and manipulative

but I it could if you do it from Voss's perspective and then yeah and then have him come back and be like oh you know the Jedi Council truly loved me like they've supported me in this like post whatever like it would be I mean it would be worse but like we should be talking about Voss's emotional bonds instead of just abandoning them and then being like oh well Ventress died for him so he feels bad about all the stuff that he did, so he's

fighting the Clone Wars again. For the next three weeks until all the Jedi get killed. Like, that's the other half of this. That's the other half of this is that, like, this is for fucking nothing. This is all for jack shit. Because everyone's about to get murked in a couple days.

Once it all goes bad, he's going to be like, well, time for me to disappear. Going to sign my name to this little escape hatch thing on this planet, and I am gone. But we know he was working with the path or whatever in Obi-Wan. He sees the name written and they remember they're like

Yeah, he helped some people after, you know, yeah, Quinlan's been through here which he's going to show up, right? He's going to show up at some point in some of this Mandalorian verse shit or in Obi-Wan season two or somewhere.

I mean, look forward to 100 articles that are variations on who was the mysterious new Jedi that was introduced this week on whatever you're right here's a screenshot of him from when he appeared in

attack of the clones in the background Phantom Loss's appearance in the new Star Wars thing makes this Clone Wars character's fate infinitely more tragic he's in he's on tattooing

in the background in Phantom Menace which is the thing here I'm going to send that screenshot of him within 12 feet of Jar Jar Binks to the Anakin. There he is.

Just chilling. Undercover, maybe. And again, like, it's the Star Wars shit, right? He's just a background guy with a yellow face tattoo and someone was like, now that's my guy. That's a character. This is the opposite way, though, right? Was that he was a comics guy

before the Phantom Meta's question mark. And then now he's like an Easter egg in that. I believe that that's... And I feel like this is an acceptable. According to Reddit, Quinlan Voss George really liked Voss, so he put him in a background shot

in episode one. That makes sense. Okay, yeah. My question, this guy says, my question is, why didn't Voss go up to Quigon and say what's up? Yeah. Why didn't Quigon enlist his help on the mission to get the part for the Nubian? They obviously knew each other. They were from the same order.

Uh-huh. They could have got to do you then. Great question. Well, okay, wait, no. It says that extra wasn't Voss until the comic creators took that look and added backstory to that person. Later on, they retcon that Quinlan was deep undercover during the events of the Phantom Menace and was sadden to find out Quigon died.

Yeah, I'm sure he's broken up about it. All right, I have in the moment that this went long, someone sent me the leak of the Andor Season 2 trailer. Yes! Do we want to wait or do we want to see? No, I can't say that right now. No, I got to say this. I need to be, because I hated that like the end of this work is so bad.

And I want to be. You want to be cleansed. I want to flush the bad vibes off of the podcast speed. Oh, this is like us being tossed into the force witch pool. And the old ghost spirits. Yeah. This is still a cam rip, but it's the best camera if I've ever seen. However this person got to see this.

They should have called this person. They should have seen this person who's dead center with the camera. I don't know how this person got away with this rep. Oh, my God. My wife is pregnant. I'm texting her. I need my phone. I need to text.

I need my phone out right now. I need to tell this person, this friend of mine, you sent this to me while we were literally wrapping up an episode. So now we get to record a live reaction. thanks to you. So shout outs to my unnamed friend. All right. Are we ready to watch this? I'm ready. I'm so ready. You know what? I am not going to drop the audio into this because of fear of being legally obliterated by the Disney company, the Disney Corporation, by Mickey Mouse. And so you can go find it yourself. It is a minute and ten seconds long. It starts with people cheering. Okay. So three, two, you know, if you're listening at home, And you don't want to hear this, have a good weekend. Have a great weekend. Whatever.

It's not a weekend for you. All right. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening, etc. Patreon.com slash the symbolized. If you're Disney, sorry about it. Bye.

We didn't get this. We didn't get this. This is hypothetical. Three, two, one, go. a body cam right all right lots of

backs of heads people walking blocking bro bro I'm gonna

I'm gonna die gloves Mommy! Luthorne! Luthan! Luthan! Ooh! oh my god

yes oh my god Cyril's hat Cyril's hat Cyril's hat Seerle's hat Seerle's hat Seel's hat

Seel's hat Who's new guy with fluffy hair Did y'all see new guy with fluffy hair Was he the flame thrower guy? Is he the flame? Wait who's the flame thrower guy There was a flame thrower I'm gonna show you who I'm god

Oh, him getting ready. I know. Cere cleaning up in the mirror. He's deciding to be hot now. Well, he's, he's out with wiki. Also, this, this look for Vell with the fucking black on in the streets with a gun. I don't know who these folks. Is that Cyril and a beret?

That's Cyril and a beret? Yeah, that's him. That's his hat. Reading a secret message. Uh-huh. Who is that? Is that Bix and. And or?

That's definitely Bix and Or. That's Bix and Or. Uh-huh. No more Timpem. There is, uh... Don't more Tempt him. Who is this? Do we know?

Oh, that's, um, Clayah. That's Clayah. Looking, looking sharp. Mother. Mommy's sighting. Mommy's here. Who is this? Maybe uncle?

Just a cool guy. Oh, maybe uncle. Is that? The house repair shop guy. Uh-huh. Uh, we got moving down the hallway. We got. Rally's.

Is that a rally or protest? Or a protest. Uh-huh. Uh, we're about to get the fluffy hair guy. Okay, what's up? Can you go ahead? Is this a flashlight beam? Or?

I think it was a flashlight beam. That was a flashlight beam, I think. If I did not go back? Yeah, it's a flashlight. It's very bright flashlight beam. All right, this guy. Who the fuck is this? We don't know this guy.

I don't know. I don't know who that. We don't know who this is either. No, that's, that's, no, that's a girlfriend, right? Is it? That's her. Maybe everyone has this more like like 20s vibe to them like which is really like everyone's in like trenches and and and you know pin curls and all this kind of stuff. It's really interesting.

This guy. Yeah, who's that guy? I don't know that girl. Who's that girl? Oh, they like they were like with each other. God, this look for Cyril. I'm obsessed with him. This like cool.

Like, okay, the torture guy gets two shots in this trailer Yeah, but that's when you're down on him Oh Yeah That's him That's him Here's new guy again Oh yeah, flame throw

Yeah, see? That's him? God damn I think that's just a cut But flamethrower does hit People shooting Wait, is that not the kid? Is that with a rifle? Hang on

Oh, oh They wouldn't put a dead character would they? There's someone on the floor. Wait, was that a... It's like frame by frame here. Frame by frame here. All right.

There's that. There's flamethrower. There's someone yelling with a rifle. There's... And or the rifle. There's the title card. There's an eye with something in it. Sleepy.

Sleepy with a gun under the pillow. Sleepy with a gun under the pillow. Yeah. Part of guys, more of a protest. I definitely think that's a protest. I'll see if I can catch it here. Yeah, that's a protest. No one's happy here.

You're right. The fashion is wild here. These big hats. Yeah. I think that might be the kid, though, because this is like a time skip. Oh, you're right. There's the time. It's five years.

Well, the whole season is across five years. Yeah, you're right. You're right. It's, what's the kid's name? Whose dad died. Whose dad gets hung. The bomb kid. Yeah, the bomb kid.

All these shots are just people from the back here. Not melting. No, what's his name? No, it's not Melchie. It's, um, where the fuck is Frasso? Where is Frasso? Where is Frasso? Or?

Oh, uh, not 2B. 2B is from near. Oh, fuck. Where the fuck is 2B? What if 2B just showed up here? B2, B2, B2. B2, B2, B2, Emo. B2 Emo.

Oh, God. Oh, God. This looks so good. Actually, I don't want her B2, B2 is just happy. somewhere. And B2 is not in a pasture somewhere. Remember Andor? Oh my God. I do remember Andor. I love Andor. Because I'm excited to watch Rebels. Me too. I'm psyched. I'm psyched. You know, I'm

psych to watch Rebels. I wish we didn't have to watch solo first. We have to. We're doing that. We got brought up today. We got brought up in this fucking call. Was it brought up by you? Because somehow something. No, it wasn't brought up by me. I was going to call it out, but I decided to just let it let us move on. Earlier, yeah. Yeah, you brought up solo. So we're going to do solo now. We're done with Clone Wars for years now.

We're done with it. We've wrapped Clone Wars seasons 1 through 6 plus the legacy materials. You know what's funny? We'll be back for the final season. As we've been recording this, the 15th anniversary Clone Wars panel has been happening, like, live happening at celebration. Which we can't watch. Yeah, no.

Because there's season seven stuff in there probably. Yeah. almost certainly God, have there been any other big announcements while we've been There's been a couple I'm trying to see

High Republic is like book series is going to end they're moving into the final phase of that next year Um says here

The Mandalorian's relationship With droids It's completely messed up I think that's about a scene In the most recent Mandalorian episode Which we'll get to As a bonus zone

At some point Yeah Yeah I don't see any other big, big news from it, so. All right. So solo next time. And then people have been asking us how we're going to do rebels. Because rebels does not have the clean arc delineation that Clon Wars did.

It's mostly just because it's the same crew every week, right? So there are one-offs and there are next time on style continuation things. The nice thing is, I think we have a pretty clear startup situation, which is there are four shorts that they released ahead of time that are like short episodes, one per each like member of the crew or something. So we think we do four shorts and a pilot? We're going to do a four shorts and then a two-part pilot called Spark of Rebellion. Yes. So that is 101A, 101B, these are the production order numbers, just explain what I mean. It's Machine and the Ghost, Art Attack, Entanglement, and Property of Ezra Bridger.

Those are the first four episodes, first four shorts, rather. They're like three minutes each. They're tiny little web shorts, basically, so I'll link those. I'll link those probably in the next episode description, but people who want to get a head start. And then Star Wars Rebels, Spark of Rebellion is the actual TV movie pilot, for this show. So we'll watch those shorts and then the TV movie pilot

and that'll be our Rebels intro. You know, but first we have to watch solo. Yay! Apparently. I also will say someone was not mad at us but that we watched,

we watched some trailer we watched was not the Rebel's trailer they would have preferred us to watch and that's, you know, know that happens obviously i'm trying to see if i have the other version the other one that there's a better trailer out there i think that there's a less spoilery more vibes trailer that they would have liked us to to see well first impression already happened it already happened it already you know

that's how it goes um you know but i'm ready to watch rebels i'm so excited to watch it like i i i'm really i'm really i was hype after that trailer we saw uh-huh me too so The other day I discovered that also there's a huge battle sequence in Solo that just didn't make the final cut. There's a little bit of him training. There's an extent of bit of him training. And then way more of that wild infantry battle he's a part of. And it just didn't. It looks cool.

Not in the movie. But I think they didn't release a 4K of Rogue 1, but then I think Solo was the first 4K they released of the new films, which is kind of strange. but that's very weird that's just you know important information for the high-fi enthusiasts

among us anyway we went back yeah next time around we are going to be watching solo and then we are going to be off to rebels and then

let's see I'm trying to think now it'll probably be this and solo that we're going to be talking about on Q&I oh my God well and did we not talk about we didn't the previous stuff we didn't did we so we have a lot of Q&A yeah oh that's right yeah we didn't talk about udapal we didn't do right no one wrote in about

utapau yeah no so we're gonna be covering and it's gonna be a a packed Q&A I bet we should do we should just focus on the legacy stuff for the Q&A right yeah maybe people have solo questions but we'll see how that's that we'll look at the question yeah send a in. I don't know what we'll get to them. We'll get to them at some point. And so Patreon backers, we'll get to hear that Q&A. If you want to hear that or just support the show, you can do so at patreon.com. I've said patreon.com. And truly it does.

Patreon.com slash civilized. Until next time, please rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. And remember, Gwilandvoss was just not worth all this. Oh, my God. I would trade for Assange to come out of this in a heartbe. beat. Yeah. Much more interesting character to have around in the background of Star Wars.

And we were so high on Quinlan after the, before that. He was so much cooler when he just showed up randomly in the middle of the hut chase. And he was just like, Obi-Wan's all serious. And like, we need to be, like, do serious Jedi stuff. I would have rather than have broken up at the end and been a will-day, won't-day, indefinitely. Yeah. 100%.

Then this. Then just kill her. The final, here's my big final thought. I know we're done. My big final thought on the Ventress thing is the thing that made Ventress cool by where she was at Clone Wars is that she had sidestepped her way out of the Jedi Sith, light side, dark side stuff. She was still like pulling on the dark side in its abilities, but had proved that that doesn't mean that you have to be like a Sith who wants to conquer the galaxy, that you could just be like a badass bounty hunter off to the side. Because morally, she was no more in the Merck than the average bounty hunter who is not an existential threat to the world. I think that's a more interesting character to exist than Lightside redeemed Quinlan Voss.

Who's, who's, who's, who's, so psychology we don't even get to see after this. It's not like, it's not like we loved a Quinlan Voss who, this is not Majima. Right. Yes. To stay on Star Wars, it's not Anakin. You know? It's not Majima either, though. It's not Majima where you meet Majima in Yakuza 1 through 6 and you're like, who's this weirdo?

And then you find out the heartbreaking, tragic story of how he got to be kind of. the weirdo. We don't see Voss after this, basically at all, ever. We get, you know, as far as I know,

he's not like a major character that we're going to get more of in rebels or something. You know what I mean? So, not worth it. Ventress had like an interesting metaphysical point.

Ventress was around way fucking more. Like, Retris was just like way and more appearances. And would be a core character to keep in the, in the back pocket that we could have seen more of

going forward. So. Yeah. And then to fucking preamble the whole thing And say this is a story About how much I love girl bosses And how much I love You know

Stories about you know Coming back from being broken beyond belief Quinlan didn't fucking come back Ventris did all the work for him Like Quinlan didn't make a choice He didn't do anything It's extremely buffy though This is like I love it when women are strong

and by strong, I mean, they're manipulated by men and they're like to destroy their lives over and then redeem them. Terrible. Quillen Falls wasn't worth it. You're right. And we don't even get an angel out of him. Like there's not going to be another book about him

where he's like sexy. We could have gotten an angel out of him where it's like, he's like, I just need to go. Like again, the Miami Vice ending where it's like, well, I've got to go back undercover. Do you have the canon amount? Yeah, exactly. Here are the canon listings of Quillen-Vos appearances.

Phantom Menace, first appearance. Star Wars Galactic Defense, which is a tower defense game. Brotherhood, he's in Brotherhood as a background character, which is, which actually this just came out last year, 2012. That's the, that's the Obi-1 Anakin book, right? That's the Obi-1-Annequin book. He's in there somewhere. He's not, he's not like...

It's not about him, but he's not about him. He's not even in the summary of it on Wikipedia. Bombad Jedi, he was cut from. Oh, my God. He was going to be in Bombad Jedi. What was he going to do in that? He was going to be undercover using abilities to make Jar Jar look like a Jedi. Oh, so he was going to be like force puppeteering from the...

Actually, imagine how good Dark Discival could have been if Jar Jar Jar Jar was in on this mission. And it's like, Mesa thinking, Yusa overthinkin. One guy, Obi-Wan, goes, there's one person in the galaxy who I think is capable of assassinating Count Duku. And his name is Jar Jar Binks. Perfect. He was in Choose Your Destiny, a Clone Trooper mission, mentioned only, which seems to be a audiobook, Choose Your Own Adventure book. He was in Jedi Crash. he was mentioned. He was in Hunt for Zero. He shows up in Destiny, the Yoda one where he sees

visions of various Jedi. He sees him there. He's in Dark Disciple. He's mentioned in Revenge of the Sith. He's mentioned multiple times in various comic, like three different comic, uh, Darth Vader issues, issue 7, 17, and 25. He shows up in a vision to Darth Vader. He's in Obi-Wan part three mentioned only. He's in a Rebel's webcom. though he only appears in someone's imagination, he's indirectly mentioned in Battlefront 2 Inferno Squadron, the Battlefront 2 book novelization. And that is it in canon Star Wars media.

Okay, but it's canon anymore. Right, yeah. But Dark Disciple was written in this new canon era, so it's not like, do you know what I mean? Like, there isn't more Quinlan Voss in canon than what we've seen. Not really. And we could have had more Assangeventry.

And we could have had more Osage. There was already Morisadventrists still in canon. Ah. It's very annoying. It's a terrible trade. Terrible, terrible trade. I guess we just have to carry our copies of Dark Disciple to the Dathamir Darkside Pit and put them in and watch them dissolve with the green mist.

And hear the spirits of the forced witches go, Sister. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be. We're going to be. We're going to be able to be. We're going to be. I don't know.

We're going to be. I don't know.