fialleril:

I am, sadly, pretty unsurprised that I’ve never seen politician!Lando in fandom before, because in general the Star Wars fandom (and the Expanded Universe) seems to characterize Lando largely on the basis of a single statement from Han Solo about him.

Han tells Leia that Lando is a card-player, a gambler, and a scoundrel, and the Expanded Universe took that and absolutely ran with it, and, possibly because of the EU, fandom has taken it as gospel truth, too.

But the thing is, that’s only what Han says about Lando. It’s not at all what we actually see of Lando on screen.

The Lando of ESB is, in a word, responsible. That’s how he characterizes himself, a bit ruefully, and it’s borne out by his actions throughout the movie. He’s clearly been a very successful businessman for a while now, and he’s just as clearly respected and liked by the people of Bespin. He tells Han and Leia that he’s one of the few gas mining operations that’s still independent, and he’s clearly proud of this fact. He’s just as clearly invested in the work that’s being done on Bespin. He doesn’t just own the operation. He very obviously cares about it, and about the people who work for him. His decision to give Han, Leia, and Chewie up to Vader is ultimately an effort to save as many people as he can, made because he knows he’s caught between a rock and a hard place but, no matter how much he cares for Han, he is the administrator of Cloud City and the lives of everyone there are dependent on him. He’s responsible for them, and he’s willing to risk himself to protect his people. Only after he’s done all he can to protect them does he allow himself to try to help Han and co.

And when we see Lando again in ROTJ, he’s joined the Rebellion and been commissioned as a general. A general. For a guy who, so far as we know, has held no prior military rank, and who joined the Alliance maybe a year ago, that says quite a lot. Clearly, he’s committed himself to this rebellion – and he’s proven himself, both as a rebel operative and as a leader. From what we see of his interactions with his fighter squads, the other rebel pilots seem to both like and respect him.

So maybe Han is right, and at one time Lando was a card player, gambler, and scoundrel. But that’s clearly in his past, and the Lando we actually see on screen isn’t a scoundrel at all. He’s a respectable and respected businessman and city administrator, with an impressive military record and quite a few well-placed connections in Alliance leadership. He’s shown a definite aptitude for administration and civic leadership, and always puts the people he serves first even at great risk to himself.

In short, he’s excellent material for political office.

Lando Calrissian for Republic Chancellor 2018.

prokopetz:

prokopetz:

The thing that gets me about Darth Vader’s volcano castle is, like, when did he have the time to set all that up? Given the established timeline of events involving Darth Vader between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, we basically know that he’s never had more than a few weeks of downtime at a stretch – certainly not the months or years of inactivity that would be required to establish and manage a permanent household of that scale. Is the castle his vacation home? Is a volcano castle the galactic despot equivalent of a cabin with a nice beachfront view? Does Darth Vader get paid vacations?

And, like, if it is a vacation home, can you imagine being the guy whose job it is to live there when Darth Vader is out oppressing the galaxy and look after the place? Just being a volcano castle off-season caretaker? How would you even apply for that job? What are its qualifications?

kyraneko:

unbreakablehaven:

tyrannosaurus-trainwreck:

kyraneko:

fahye:

banthacakes:

bookelfe:

orlofsky:

andriseup:

liz-squids:

bookelfe:

As an occasional visitor to Star Wars fandom, here are some things I would like to see come out of Rogue One:

–
the fic about the reactions of the Empire’s IT and records management
departments when they learn that some trigger-happy general just
literally blew up an entire unique archival repository of key bureaucratic data
– the comic about the first time some maintenance
technician tries to repair something on the Death Star and the guy’s
like, ‘where’s the documentation?’ and their boss is like ‘um, well,
funny story about that….’
– the in-depth analysis about various
mistakes the Empire makes in the original trilogy and how they operate
in context of an organization that has just, I repeat, LITERALLY BLOWN UP ALL OF
THEIR OWN BACKUP DATA. Of course it’s easy for any random hero to
impersonate a Stormtrooper! THEY DESTROYED ALL THEIR OWN PERSONNEL
FILES.

Rogue One, or, Why All The Empire’s Librarians and Archivists Joined the Rebellion

@earendils @butneverstoptrying

Rogue 2 plot summary: a bunch of Imperial waste management techs go AWOL and steal the Death Star plans back from the Rebels because how else are we supposed to get the dianoga out of the pipes when we have literally no idea where half of these ducts go or what they’re for

they complete their mission but in the end decide not to delete the plans from the main Alliance computers after they’ve made their copy because ehhhhh what if we never had to fix anything on that piece of shit again, what if that, it’s insured right?

This also explains why none of the bridges or giant pits in the floor have railings: literally no one knows if they’re supposed to be there or not, and once someone tried to drill into the floor to install some and destroyed the main air circulation wiring for half the station, now everyone just has to be real careful all the time

It also means that when they built the second Death Star in ROTJ they had to start entirely from scratch, yikes

in the end they decide not to delete plans from main Alliance computers because their heist crew contains one records manager who’s like ‘look, we’re SUPPOSED to have redundant data backups, this way we’re not even paying for the storage!’

Paging @fahye because PUBLIC SERVANTS

this post has made the rounds amazingly on my dash and now it’s LITERALLY CALLING MY NAME.

pour one out for that tfa fic I was writing about della calrissian, disgruntled member of the new republic capital electoral commission, just trying to do her job and not get involved with the rebellion AGAIN.

never doubt my commitment to space bureaucracy.

I LOVE PEOPLE!

(Seriously, who’s up for a zine/anthology/cooperative AO3 series (group? tag? IDK) around the theme of various public servants sabotaged the Empire, joined the Rebellion, or avenged the besmirchment of their domains. #public servants of the empire, or the like.)

I love the way the glaring fucking design flaw that’s been pointed out since New Hope came out (your flying doom-planet that you’re going to use to subjugate the galaxy will explode entirely into so much space-dust after a love-tap from a single-pilot fighter if it’s in the right place? were you people high when you designed this?) just got shutupshutupohmygodshutuped away with Secret Rebels Sabotaging Things.

And it explains so much else, about everything, doesn’t it?

No guardrails over fucking bottomless pits? Some rebel sympathizer on the allocation committee line-itemed half the safety shit right out of the budget.

Helmets with no peripheral vision because fuck you, that’s why? The woman who designed them got conscripted into the job, and the only thing that makes her smile is watching those douchebag noncoms crash into each other in Y-intersection corridors.

Nobody notices there being extra stormtroopers running around? With the way Lieutenant Bob keeps dicking with the schedule, nobody can say for sure there shouldn’t be purple flying monkeys manning the security checkpoints.  He’s run three Emperor Inspection Drills in as many weeks, and just three days ago he put the entire unit on duty at once and left the overnight shift “TBA.” He’s doing more to tank morale than Vader’s temper.  Coincidentally, Lieutenant Bob’s homeworld got hit with a punitive tax hike six months ago, and people are literally starving in the streets.

The guy who checks itineraries and rosters for incoming shuttle flights believed the hype about joining up and seeing the Galaxy.  Turns out fuck literally every actual thing about this job, from officer infighting to civilian casualties to Vader’s last-minute order to have every surface in his on-board suite kitted out with fucking lava lamps, of all things.  Like, they’re in space.  He gets that, right?  They can’t just stop by SpaceMart and pick up stuff like that.  His boss is a dick and he was up all night making lava lamps out of cooking oil and food coloring, and you know what?  The last thing he wants to do right now is check the manifest on the next delivery of cooking oil.  He’s had enough with cooking oil.  He took five showers when he got back to his quarters, and he still smells like fucking canola.  The Wookie and the guy who hasn’t shaved in a month and the guy still picking half a tumbleweed out of his hair can blow up the entire fucking station for all he cares–he will help them plant the explosives, if it comes down to it–so long as they don’t make him talk about the cooking oil he’s signing off on as being delivered.

“Look, we can spend our shift dealing with the hell octopus in the trash compactor OR we can just assume that it’s supposed to be there, for some reason, and move on with our lives.”

#as far as we’re concerned trash monster is on the blueprints

This is why nobody is concerned with the extra stormtroopers wandering around. “Are they supposed to be doing that? If they weren’t, would there be anything to tell me? Fuck it, no problem, no paperwork, I wonder what’s for dinner?”