what do you know of loss?

no words for how much I adore these two characters and the ways their journeys parallel one another's... take this as part character study (what if they helped each other heal!) and part ship content (they were made for each other...) anyways. the shadowzel illness never stops

GAR Organizational Structure (with bonus despair)

point the first: the structure tcw gives us for the GAR is nonsensical. captains are leading legions, a battalion is apparently sufficient for a marshal commander, and generals are, oh my god, leading troops out in the field—the way no general irl actually does, because they are a strategic target and if the enemy kills/captures them it would be a tremendous blow. not gonna lie: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) is a disaster and should be ashamed of itself. 

i mostly ignore all of the above for my sanity, because 1) it’s more fun to watch jedi waving laser swords around amidst thickets of blasterfire, 2) the whole endgame is to kill them anyway, so who cares if a few jump the gun, and 3) maybe cody just really digs all those cool cats down in the 212th. maybe he runs ops with them whenever he can get away with it. whatever, it’s explainable.

(nothing will ever explain why rex, a junior officer, was leading a whole-ass legion. i cannot forgive. i will not forget.)

point the second: the only hard numbers we have for how big the GAR is are in the repcomm books, which put it at 3 million soldiers. this is. it’s. it’s absolutely ludicrously small. to put it in perspective, the united states armed forces alone comprise about 1.4 million active duty personnel in its various branches. that’s ONE military on ONE planet. the GFFA has anywhere from 12 to 70 million inhabited planets. sure, most of them won’t participate in the war, but even if you take the lower figure of 12 million, assume 10% are participants (whether as suppliers, victims, allies, or just re-supplied a star destroyer that one time), and take 10% of that as ACTIVE participants, then the number of planets the GAR needs to have a presence on is still 120 thousand. do a little math, and for the GAR to maintain a US-sized presence (which i think we can all agree is plenty large enough to bully a planet into submission) x 120k, the GAR would have to have 170 billion active duty personnel.

if the last number was too small, this one’s too huge. It’s beyond enormous. how do they feed everyone? but consider: the GAR wouldn’t have to have the same presence on all planets. some of them might be small, like the rishi outpost. some might not need active policing at all, such as core planets like alderaan. i’ll admit right now that i’m extremely lazy and don’t feel like crunching the numbers to determine the size of the GAR presence on upwards of a million planets. i’m just gonna say “one billion active duty clones for the war.” it’s still hysterically enormous, but it’s a lot more manageable.

my headcanon for the organizational structure of the GAR, using both wikipedia and wookieepedia for reference:

(“active duty” in this context (the context being slave soldiers) means all clones of age to deploy who are not on medical leave. the total number of cadets of all ages, who are not considered active duty, probably dwarfs this 1 billion figure by like a factor of 978645, which i’m not even going to think about because the sheer logistics of that is staggering. the only reason this army wasn’t discovered sooner is because of movie magic.)

the eagle-eyed among you may notice that several of the formations i’ve separated out (e.g. brigade and legion) are actually the same size irl. in my defense: it’s a billion fucking soldiers! there is no existing military structure on earth that can accommodate a command of that size!! something had to give!!

again, those keen-eyed among you may notice that there are no less than eight different ranks of commander, only three of which are supported by wookieepedia. in my defense: star wars gave us a crappy starting point, and i can only work with what i’m given. either i bump up NCOs to commanding platoons and companies and reinstall our beloved rex as captain of torrent brigade (my soul fucking shudders), or we have to deal with eight different unit sizes all led by officers addressed formally as “commander.”

(it is clone etiquette to address commanders by title and name in mixed company, save the highest-ranking officer, who is THE commander and may be addressed sans name. it is clone humor to fuck with non-clones by sending them on goose-chases in search of “the commander.”)

moving on.

according to wookiepedia, the ranks of jedi are thus:

as far as i’m concerned those ranks can stay as-is, with senior and regular generals getting scattered throughout the command structure wherever i feel like putting them. it’s not like they make sense as military leaders anyway; they’re last-minute pasties to cover up the GAR’s scandalous bits and make it fit for public propaganda.

of note, there are 12 jedi who sit on the jedi council, but only 10 sector armies. conveniently, yoda doesn’t need to command a sector army, because he commands all the armies. likewise, i headcanon shaak ti doesn’t actually have a command, as she stays on kamino for quality assurance purposes. gotta make sure there aren’t any ethics violations going on.

some may have noticed that fox, despite answering to the chancellor and not to a jedi, is in the “rear marshal” category. i did this (actually @countessofbiscuit did this and i shamelessly stole it) because i (we) headcanon fox not just as head of the coruscant guard, but the head of the CG, GAR military police, and penal battalions. he’s got a big command, too, even if he doesn’t have a jedi to show for it. plus, it makes for excellent intraservice beef if palpatine pushed for fox’s promotion against the prevailing cultural trends of the GAR. (poor fox.)

final notes on this already long-winded and horrific post: seniority within the ranks of the marshal commanders depends on the seniority of their attendant jedi and their own level of experience. e.g. mace windu is the senior-most jedi after yoda, so ponds commands the 1st systems army. however, ponds dies relatively early in the war, so bacara, despite being assigned to the 2nd systems army (i just made that up, i have no idea if ki-adi mundi has seniority after mace), outranks ponds’s replacement because he has more experience. most of this is tacit and doesn’t really affect anything except who sits where at mandatory formal dinners, but it’s also used to justify who’s allowed to eat the last donut—to mixed success.

how DO they feed everyone, though? like, seriously?

a-fuckin’-men 

( … but also, fucking men … one billion of them, set loose upon the galaxy? yah, they’re sterile; Kaminoans, for all their ethics violations, at least have a fine appreciation for genetics and wouldn’t play fast-and-loose with the galaxy’s gene pool like that, to say nothing of undercutting their own business and the despoiling of their IP. anyway!)

The tooth-to-tail ratio for the GAR must be insane, too. you’d have to start bolting entire support companies onto anything battalion-level and above. At least the unit breakdowns for the Starfighter Corps (one of three branches in the Republic Military, along with the GAR and Republic Navy) mention “X number of starfighters/flights/squadrons + support crews,” though they leave that helpfully vague. 

We might be able to get away with stuffing the soft-shells into the complements of Venators and Acclamators, which would operate kind of like FOBs, and allow you to keep your unit sizes pretty cleanly forward -combat heavy, assuming a mostly rapid-insertion strategy and troopers that have been cross-trained to hell (likely, what else are they gonna do, have a life and free time?). The RN got a very healthy injection of clone personnel, so the Department of Defense might have been able to get the Navy to play nice with all the GAR support arms (armor, engineers, artillery & ordnance, medical, quartermaster corps, &c.). 

you may notice I left Intelligence out of this, because there’s not canon evidence to support its subordination under the DoD – and I like the intelligence worldbuilding in RepComm, sue me. 

Clone Intelligence (CLONINT/“Corporal Clint” to the tired but opsec-respecting troops), that nebulous body who got the credit when Jaing and Kom’rk tracked Grievous to Utapau, is the military intelligence branch of the Grand Army. There was a bit of a stink between the Jedi Council and the Chancellor, plastered over for like a day by that paragon of diplomacy Anakin Skywalker, over the reporting lines for CLONINT – the Council had assumed that CLONINT reported to them, while Anakin made the point that as Supreme Commander of the GAR, Palpatine was entitled to intelligence directly and CLONINT were perfectly free to bypass the Council. 

All this to say – it works best for a proto-fascist state when there are as few blockers between the collectors of classified information and its ultimate recipient … which for Sheevy P’s grand purposes, would not be the Jedi Order. It would be Republic Intelligence (REPINT), specifically his close pal Armand Isard, who had the unique privilege of being both the Director of Republic Intelligence and Director of the Senate Bureau of Intelligence throughout the Clone Wars (like being the head of the CIA and FBI at the same time). The Council may think it’s a two-way street between them and Intelligence … but they’d be wrong. CLONINT reports to REPINT which reports to Republic Strategic Command, part of the Office of the Supreme Chancellor. 

Another subsidiary of REPINT was the Special Operations Brigade, our valiant lads in Katarn and those chaotic Nulls, who spend much of the books regarding themselves as something external to the GAR, because (without even touching their uncomfortable subordination to Skirata) they are – they sit within a totally different department. 

It makes Arligan Zey and Iri Camas kind of the odd-Jedi-out, since they’re both on the REPINT side of things. Canon’s a bit contradictory on the relationship between Zey and Camas, both of whom had been in command of the two SpecOps brigades at the start of the war, both holding the title of Director of Special Forces; given the staggering losses of Republic Commandos during the first few months, at some point the SpecOps brigades were merged, and Zey fell under Camas’s command. 

@kaasknot and I had a bit of fun working that out, and decided to let Zey remain as Director of Special Forces (with a slight expansion of his remit to include ARC and ARF tasking, as well as that of the RC’s), and slot Camas above him into the vacant position of Head of Clone Intelligence. We even gave him a Marshal Commander XO, CC-2067 “Reaper” to do all the real work and put the fear of Fett into REPINT cadets where necessary. (Somehow Alpha-30 landed himself a desk job as Zey’s attaché, but Reaper doesn’t goad him about it – they should’ve promoted the Alpha plank and he knows it.) (Cody and Reaper are on pretty good terms, Reaper lets Cody play with his bad batches, and there’s enough AOR distance between the two that who-outranks-who is more a matter of who’s-gonna-whip-it-out-first and excuse you, they’re marshal commanders, they’re better than that.) 

… and I wanted to talk about Commander Fox’s godawful remit, but this is unwieldy enough without getting into the Red vs Blue that is the Coruscant Guard vs CSF. another long-ass post, another time. 

Lmao Fox and his shitty-ass remit. It’s canon that the Coruscant Guard are trained separately from the main body of the GAR, which kind of makes sense—it’s harder to police people (read: control people) the way the proto-fascist state wants when you see yourself as one of them. Added to that, it’s also canon that Fox doesn’t report to the Jedi, but to the Chancellor himself, so he’s even more separated from his fellow clones.

Gonna tear that all that down and build it back up.

First: they’re not the Coruscant Guard, they’re the Republic Guard. They function kind of like gendarmes: military police whose jurisdiction also includes civilians. The Republic Guard consists of three branches: the Coruscant Guard, which polices civilian Coruscant and includes Senate security and the Diplomatic Escort Service; the GAR Military Police, which polices the GAR; and the Shocktroopers, who function as SWAT and also run the penal battalions.

There’s three other known CCs in canon that work with Fox, but their jobs are all fairly amorphous. Because canon can’t stop us, me and @countessofbiscuit agreed that Thire is in charge of the CG, Stone is in charge of the MPs, and Thorn, bless him and his hammer, is the strong arm of the shocktroopers. (The show pretty solidly names Thorn as part of the Diplomatic Escort Services, but Thire escorted Yoda and Stone escorted Hurricane Jar Jar, so clearly there’s some… wobbliness there. Conclusion: DES functions like KP. You piss someone off, or if you draw the short straw, you get shoved on escort duty and have to babysit senators. “Bend over and relax, Thire, it’s time to get fucked by the Republic.”)

Second: Fox doesn’t report to the Chancellor directly, because that’s not how the military or bureaucracies work. His direct superior is the Adjutant-General, who is in charge of criminal justice within the Republic military. The head of the JAG Corps, if you will—except this is Star Wars, so we’ll call it the Republic Adjutant Judiciary, the RAJ, instead (*makes a not-very-funny joke about imperialism and the British Raj*). The Adjutant-General reports to the head of the DoJ, the head of the DoJ reports to Sly Moore, Palpatine’s Chief of Staff and the chairwoman of Republic Strategic Command, and she reports to Palpatine.

But I think, for the sake of playing nice with canon, that Palps has once-weekly meetings with Fox, chain of command be damned. God knows you don’t want your control over your stooges to slip right before the final takeover.

Back to the Adjutant-General for a moment. This is entirely unsupported by canon, but it’s my take that Tarkin is the AG, at least until some time after Ahsoka’s trial. And in fact, that’s my entire justification: why else would Tarkin be involved in her trial, unless he was somehow highly-ranked in the JAG corps? He’s an upwardly-ambitious military officer; his promotion to Admiral came with a bureaucratic command rather than a fleet. It doesn’t last long, however, because eventually he gets promoted to Sector Governor, and Admiral Hyaleth Tiaan, a high-ranking judge within the RAJ and mother of the future Moff Tiaan Jerjerrod, rose to the position, which she held until the end of the war.  

Third: Coruscant already has civilian police, they’re called the Coruscant Security Force, and they’re bundled under the Homeworld Security Command. I’ll cut to the chase and tell you the HSC operates a lot like Homeland Security. Not surprising, given that the Republic was more or less designed as an allegory for post-9/11 America, but decidedly alarming for Coruscanti citizens. I’m not gonna get too much into that, because this post is ultimately intended to flesh out the shithole that is Fox’s job, but it’s very much relevant to mention that the CSF and the RG hate each other’s fucking guts. FBI vs local PD hate. State troopers vs city cops hate, and it’s not helped by the fact that Homeworld Security loans out RG shocktroopers to put the fear of Palpatine in the populace, which then gets taken out on the beat cops, who don’t like these genegineered fucks moving in on their turf.

So not only is Fox getting it from his brothers, who call him a rule-bound asshole and a blue flamer, but he’s getting it from the non-clones too, civilian and cop. Oh, and his boss is Palpatine.

Yeah. Hell of a job.

And you just know Palpatine manipulates this hellish chain-of-command to his gross advantage. He can be all grandfatherly with Fox – here, son, take your helmet off and have a caramel, how’s your week been? – in stark contrast to Tarkin/Tiaan’s jackbooted overlording, stoking division with his minions’ ranks. 

Also worth mentioning the other established natborn security force Fox and the RG have to rub up against: the Senate Guard. Yeah, that venal and nepotistic institution who nominally report to the Judicial Department and a Senate oversight committee, but who mostly take their own orders. One can only imagine how much the Senate Guard resented the arrival of these clones – who look better in plastoid than they ever will – on their turf, especially when the SG proved themselves so ineffectual during the Senate Hostage Crisis, and so prone to corruption as evinced by Captain Argyus, that Palpatine started phasing them out for shocktroopers and his own Red Guard. Can you say, bad blood? 

I just imagine Fox being all, “The brave boys in blue? Which ones? The tufted Senate peacocks, the jammy desk-brigade who aren’t fit to polish the shocks’ boots, or the bastards who infil now and then to have piss-up in our streets for the benefit of the HoloNews? And you wonder why I bleed red.”

what do you know of loss?

no words for how much I adore these two characters and the ways their journeys parallel one another's... take this as part character study (what if they helped each other heal!) and part ship content (they were made for each other...) anyways. the shadowzel illness never stops

world building concept for an old stuffy aristocratic society:

transitioning is perfectly allowed and this society makes space for trans people but it works in very repressed ways. you are supposed to come out privately to your parents who will then make a formal announcement that their heir has "found a job abroad". you will take a trip to a little hospital/boarding school/retirement home far into the countryside where you will live for a year with other trans people transitioning, you will be given all the medical assitance needed as well as classes on how to properly perform your prefered gender. how to dress, how to talk, the little social niceties needed, etc.

afterwards when you return home your family will throw a little party to reintroduce you into society and to welcome you back where they will claim you are a "distant cousin" that [deadname] found abroad that your family now wants to sponsor and is going to become part of the family. all the needed paperwork is quietly taken care of in the background by very well paid lawyers.

absolutely everyone knows what "finding a job abroad" and "distant cousin" actually means but it is extremely impolite to ever bring it up out loud. at most some people will gossip about behind closed doors. no mention of your previous identity is ever made again, you are supposed to act as if you are 100% cis.

you join a discord video call at the request of your long time mutual and instead of the 23 year old art history student you thought you'd been friends with you are greeted by two dozen middle aged business men huddled around a conference table intently staring at you

"Did you like our text post about the flock of gay seagulls?" one of them shouts, "We thought it was going to do numbers."

WEIRDLY SPECIFIC BUT HELPFUL CHARACTER BUILDING QUESTIONS

Doing a thing

Thanks for tagging me @twinkle-toph✨

RULES: Post the last sentence you wrote (fanfic / original / anything) and tag as many people as there are words in the sentence (unless you’re like me and write enough run on sentences to where you can’t possibly tag that many people for words).

From the fic where Tenzin gets his tattoos:

No pressure tagging: @kurocache @risingsoleil @chiefbeifongcanrailme @oldandirrelevant and anyone else interested :)

Reblogging with my response bc I feel like it's easier lol This is part of a fresh WIP for "The Other Side of Heaven."

Super vague 🤣 I just started it, so I gotta add more ingredients and get it cooking

Tagging (with no pressure ofc): @sheepwithspecs @superliz6 @linnorabeifong @weirfan22 @nyamadermont @oldandirrelevant @obsessedwithlinzin @vr-tb

“Good one, Linny,”

“Zolt, I’m not joking,”

Very bare bones dialogue from an old fic I was drafting by a new chapter for. I probably won’t end up posting it though. Thanks for the tag ! 🤍 I’m tagging whoever is reading this and @wilcze-kudly @nyamadermont @slowdissolve @cherrychonk @ozais-lobotomist @appalesbian

Always fun to do one of these, so thank you, @risingsoleil and @linnorabeifong for the tags!

Just when we thought they’d find a way to get along…

Your turn (if you’re interested):

@orangepanic @wishingforatypewriter @itsmoonpeaches @chocomd @m0use123

And anyone else who likes to play along!

Thanks @nyamadermont and @twinkle-toph!

Iroh paused, then added, “I still do everything. Just sickly.”

From The Draw of the Sea, an upcoming General Iroh backstory fic that includes the poor boy being very, very seasick.

@thatoneguy56fanfic @wishingforatypewriter @the-hopefulpenguin @lone-star-ranger @the-power-of-stuff @tamras-shieldmaiden or anyone who wants to participate!

Thanks for the tag @orangepanic!

From At Her Peril, an original historical fantasy WIP about an all-female crew of sky-ship pilots fighting Parliament and the French in an alternate Napoleonic Wars.

Tagging @therealtsk, @heyitschartic, @cpericardium, and anyone else who would like to participate!

HAPPY BARRISS DAY!!!! organized by my wonderful beautiful friend @americiumam and put together on @barrissday !! clawed my way out of art hell for this one . love you barriss and abby <3

Read the Thousand Names (Book 1 of the Shadow Campaigns) by Djano Wexler and man Winter Ihrenglass is such a good character y'all. We see her go from a relatively insecure and survivalist soldier who escaped to the Army from her hellhole orphanage to a competent lieutenant over the course of the book. She struggles and tries her best, has regrets from her past choices and decisions, but learns from them. Her relationships with Bobby and Feor are the best.

She's also a Butch Lesbian. I am pointing out here cause I've been reading a lot of wlw fantasy this past year and a half or so and I could count the number of books/series with genuinely butch leaning masc women on one hand. Maybe two if I'm a little less stringent. So I want to point it out to everyone.

Been thinking about the series a lot lately so I made a portrait painting of my favorite possessed soldier and Infernivore cause it doesn't get enough love :))))

I'm deeply fond of Thomas Nightingale and also he frequently makes me very sad, so I wanted to draw something about that. Also, I figured if anyone would suit Leyendecker illustration vibes, which I'm really into right now, he would.

(Drawn in alcohol markers and coloured fineliners, and image described in alt text.)

romanticizing your life is such a powerful tool and it’s a shame that it’s mostly used by people on tiktok to justify the purchase of expensive breakfast smoothies when there are few better ways to force oneself through unpleasant shit than imagining a cinematic backstory for your extremely quotidian suffering

finding the strength to walk home from the library at 3am in the freezing rain by imagining yourself as a Napoleonic soldier hightailing it from Moscow in 1813