Oya Mandalore

Been a really productive couple of weeks.

I'm nearly done with this college semester, which is nice. I have a lot of bandwidth to get other things done with. Finally not hopelessly overwhelmed with housework, which is great.

I'm consistently going to the gym and am seeing strength gains pretty quickly. I'm writing my workouts down, and it's really satisfying to look back and see that I'm lifting weights that last week would have been impossible for me. One of my big goals is to work my way up to an unassisted chin up, and progress is definitely being made!

I'm also tracking my food, which I avoided for a really long time because I associated it with almond moms with an undiagnosed eating disorder. I'm actually really enjoying it, I like having 'stats' on myself, and it's helping me stay consistent, eat better in the mornings especially, and not just mindlessly snack. I'm down 2 pounds so far- which for doing it for 2 weeks is just about perfect.

I'm also doing knitting for Christmas presents, seeing as I'm a broke college student who has a lot of time right now. Very fancy scarf for my grandma, several neckwarmers, a lot of scrunchies, and a headband or two. It's really fun to be knitting again, I hadn't touched it for several years, but I still remember the important stuff.

Winter Burrow is a lovely little survival game recently released on Steam. You play as a mouse. Very enjoyable.

Not loving the super early sunset.

Whoops. Didn't mean to go nearly two months without touching this site. I've just felt too busy and overwhelmed lately to sit down and write an entry and take my time commenting and replying, no matter how badly I would like to replace a lot of my social media use with DW.

Figured it'd be nice to take an inventory of what's happened and what I've been up to for the last two months.

-Andor Season 2 finished, and just, holy shit. Top tier. This is the best on-screen Star Wars ever. Kleya is now one of my favorite Star Wars characters ever. Luthen's arc wrapped up perfectly. I am so satisfied and happy with all of it, and so relieved that it's just OVER now. I don't have to worry about a third season totally bombing. It exists in its entirety, it is finished, and it is amazing. That's a really good feeling.
Feel free to yell with me about it in the comments! I'm not going to say too much more about S2 without putting it behind a cut or something, I know a lot of people still haven't watched it, and I really respect wanting to be in the right space before taking that dive.

-My mercs clan's big con for the year happened, it went fairly well. Stressful as all cons tend to be when you're in charge. There were a few logistical issues, and a few people clashed a bit, but overall we had a great time and raised a good chunk of money for a local children's hospital.

-The week after that I went to Joliet Star Wars Days, and got to meet a ton of cool costuming club people. And two of my friends got engaged! It was beautiful, the proposal went perfectly. We ate out a BBQ place, that was really nice.

-My summer class, Principles of Microeconomics started, right after I got back from Joliet. It's going okay so far. I'm glad it's the only class I have this summer.

-Accepted a small bookkeeping job from a church in a nearby town. So far they are being a total pain to get in contact with but I'm still really hoping that once things are up and running it'll be a good gig.

-Got a new laptop, it's very nice to be able to sit wherever I like to do computer stuff rather than being stuck on my desktop on my room or using my cheap-ass previous laptop.

-Still super into Sleep Token, listening to Atlantic right now.

-Went clothes shopping with my mom, which was great because I got a lot of pants and a couple shirts that I do actually like. It was terrible because I was having trouble with the shirts and feeling pretty bad about my chest and told her I wished that I didn't have boobs. She reacted to this with a pretty unsympathetic noise. I proceeded to have a huge crash out as soon as I got home about how badly I want to have top surgery and how badly having top surgery would upset my parents.

-Went to my first pride! I got to go for a troop, so I was wearing my black mando kit for a couple hours in 98 degree heat. Brutal, but so much fun. I kitted down when I couldn't handle it any more, and spent the rest of the time running around having a great time in normal clothes. Had three tacos, a rainbow slushy, bought a couple pins and got a lot of free stickers. It was really great, and I'm really happy I got to spend time with the 501st people who were there.

-Started playing Prado, which is an adventuring game that you make progress in by walking, as counted by your phone's pedometer. It's pretty cool, and definitely getting me to walk more.

I think that's everything really major. Time sure is flying, but writing out everything does make me feel like a lot is happening as well.

That was a really, really good day.

Slow morning start. Didn't do much until about 10, when I decided to take my meds and go to Mickey Ds. In the drive through, I got my APPROVAL LETTER FOR MY THIRD MMCC KIT!!! EEEE!!!

No fix list! I have the first approved Post Imperial Master kit! It's approved and I'm going to be able to troop in it for May 4th!! I have bragging rights forever!

So that delayed the rest of my day while I texted absolutely everyone who might care about that. By the time I was done freaking out, it was time to go to the college for my appointment filling out the FAFSA. Not great but I'm glad it's done and the guy who helped me was lovely. Before heading home I picked up some leather dye.

Got home, and discovered my amazon package came! New shoes and 9 volt battery holders! So I dyed the belt loops for my new holsters, did a few finishing touches on my flak vest, and upgraded my helmet fan. Then went to get celebratory Approval Tacos with Cyare. We had a nice night, and I did some work on my big final accounting project.

And Andor season 2 is tomorrow. Things are great- that was such a kickass day. Currently procrastinating going to bed because I don't want this epic day to end.

Leaving this daily journal public because I want the day my PI Master kit got approved on blast for all to see!!

I've already made a tumblr post about this but I want to talk about it again on a website where I don't have to worry about phrasing things in a way that I'm okay with getting spread around to dozens, possibly hundreds, of strangers.

The fandom pretty much agrees that the animated clone model looks absolutely nothing like Temuera Morrison, who is a Maori man, and the clones look like pretty generic White Guys. I agree with this, and it's especially egregious with the bad batch, who bear basically no resemblance to the clone model, and certainly none to Tem.

The animated model has straight hair with the exception of some cadets clearly based off of Daniel Logan, who has wavy hair. Temuera Morrison has very curly hair. (See tumblr post for a couple pics from one of the few movies he grew his hair out for.) The animated model is very angular, while Tem has a rounder face shape and features.

For years the tumblr fandom has been aggressive and accusatory about fanartists whitewashing the clones. I think this is a problem for several reasons.

1- Bringing attention to the fact that a professional animation studio creating models for one of the biggest media corporations in existence did a shit-awful job at representing a Maori man is different from getting after fanartists who want to draw their blorbos. Of course fanartists should think about this too, but it's different. You should not attack individual people in the same way you would attack a company.

2- A lot of fanartists are young, probably teenagers, who don't have a wide base of artistic expertise yet. They have a comfort zone and have not stepped outside of it. They probably haven't thought of going back to use the Jango Fett actor as a reference instead of just referencing the characters they are drawing. This isn't a moral failing and everybody needs to stop acting like it is.

3- What has ended up happening is that the fandom has created a culture of fear where you had better make it CLEAR that when you're drawing a clone, you are not drawing a white man. The fandom has failed to motivate people to draw Temuera Morrison. So long as you are not drawing A White Man.

And this has created a strange phenomenon where people will draw the clones with a significantly darker skin tone than Tem has. His skin tone, depending on how much sun he's had lately, varies from quite pale to a warm medium tan. I've seen fanartists drawing the clones as black, complete with a delineating line where their palms are light. Drawing a Maori man as a black man isn't as progressively inclusive as everyone seems to think it is.

I keep seeing people bemoaning the 'loss of melanin' specifically- especially with Echo, who, sure, looks like a damn ghost now, but with all the clones in general. The animated model skin tone is not the problem. These are men who grew up on a planet with like 8 days of sunlight out of the whole year and they were inside for those 8 days anyways. They live in armor. They aren't getting tan. The melanin is not the issue.

Especially wild is when I see skin tones that are darker than Tem has ever had, but they leave the hair... straight. Or give the clones loose fluffy wavy curls.

And I feel very confident in saying that fanart of clones who just sort of look like if you race-bent the animation model to be black (in the more extreme examples of this) is a result of fandom witch-hunt fear culture. Fanartists feel like if they don't make it clear that they are Not Drawing A White Man they'll get cancelled. So they draw A POC Man but don't really bother actually looking at Temuera Morrison.

Just... either draw Temuera Morrison or draw the animated model. Stop inventing a third guy that doesn't look like either. And I'm not going to cite some Moral Impetus or guilt trip anybody- which is exactly the sort of shit you get on tumblr and exactly the kind of thing that got us to this point in the first place. Draw either Tem or the animated model for me, because the third guy annoys me.

While I usually don't go in for projecting modern western LGBT culture into the GFFA, or any fictional universe outside of ours, really- (because it's so much more interesting to think about and discuss how sexuality and gender would work if you you build it from scratch in a fictional world!) -I do enjoy using that framework to discuss character's experiences. Because it's a common language with accepted terms.

With the disclaimer that I do not think Mereel would ever describe himself as aroace (or bi, or gay, or pan, or any of the labels we use), and I also fully acknowledge that this headcanon isn't exactly text-supported what with Mereel's explicit reputation for 'debauchery,' (good for him), this headcanon is near and dear to my heart.

I love the idea that the thing about sex that Mereel enjoys the least is... the actual sex. He doesn't mind it, but everything else about it is more important to him. He loves the social maneuvering and clever dialogue it takes to convince someone to sleep with you, he loves new physical experiences of every kind, he loves an endorphin rush.

Mereel certainly doesn't want a relationship. He's friendly with other clones, but doesn't seem to care about anybody outside of his family and other clones. (Just like his daddy.) I think that the idea of a committed relationship scares him. He's avoidant even to his family- there's a lot about his inner world that even Kal doesn't know, and doesn't realize that Mereel has hidden from him until they find Ko Sai on Dorumaa.

It's also very funny to me if technically, Mereel is less horny than Ordo, who is down very bad for Besany (and has never been attracted to anyone else, so, demisexual, but still). I just love a little subversion of expectations there.

In general, given the Nulls' tendency towards extremes, I think they're all very likely to be somewhere on the ace spectrum. Plus the handful of allusions towards Mandalorian attraction being personality-based, and placing less importance on physical attributes, and you have a delightful little bouquet of potentially ace-leaning traits.

Considering Bardan adds a whole other layer to this- I also think of him as asexual, possibly aromantic, although my textual evidence is basically 'well he never expresses interest in anybody so you can't tell me I'm wrong.' But if he was- consider for a moment being raised as a Jedi in a culture that encourages (depending on your sources) celibate behavior. Consider leaving that culture, and how it might feel to find yourself simply not having a set of experiences common to everyone around you.

I think he might feel like it's some sort of failure to break away from Jedi ideology, and would feel guilty about that. He may even try to manufacture the sort of feelings he feels expected to have. Which is just delicious to me- I love you Bardan, and your constant identity restructuring and guilt surrounding it.

Bardan and Mereel with similar but completely different sexual experiences is just... so tasty.

What can I say? This place is cozy.

I've been on tumblr since about 2015 (subtracting a 2-3 year break in there when I deactivated my old blog, heartache-hit-the-trail, and then later came back as kaelidae, which is now lazerbang). I made some great friends, back when the culture actually revolved around talking to other people and sending asks.

Lately it's really felt like just another Content Consumption Website. I've made a couple friends, but its mostly just people liking posts. People don't even reblog and talk in tags as much. The only asks I get are art requests (yay!) and spambots with fake fundraisers. Of course, I'm guilty of not sending asks anymore too.

It doesn't help much that the only fandom I'm actually interested in participating in is Republic Commando. Not Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008). Not The Bad Batch. Just repcomm, and if you're into repcomm, it's pretty much impossible to avoid tcw/tbb. Not that I necessarily hate them, I'm just not compelled by it in a way that makes me want to participate in fandom about it. Because they're kid's shows.

Top that off with actually enjoying repcomm, all of the characters (Yes, I said ALL the characters), and not being interested in complaining about how a 20 year old book series reads like it was written in the 2000s- although I will die on my 'repcomm is incredibly progressive and forward thinking in 2004' hill- and tumblr accounts that don't irritate me on some level are few and far between.

Every time I have a good fandom experience, it's not some fanart or a post I made getting a lot of notes. That tends to be some of my worst fandom experiences. Every time I have a good experience, it's having a conversation about something I or someone else made, telling a story with them, inspiring each other. I have literally two people I roleplay with and that is the pinnacle of my fandom experience.

I don't know if I'll be able to build the sort of community I'm looking for here, but even if it's just me yelling at two other people, that's better than my ever-increasing tumblr blocklist. To be honest, me migrating is spurred partially by getting blocked on tumblr. Not that I mind- my own blocklist is huge. It's just that a site where the main purpose is to share around content, even more than to make it yourself, kind of conceptually breaks down when you can't stand a majority of the other people there.

I find myself frequently on the defensive on tumblr- and sometimes going on the offensive as a reaction to the outright hostility being levied against my favorite thing. It just plain isn't healthy. So I think I'm going to keep posting fanart there, but move a majority of my fandom interaction over here, where you seem to have to try a lot harder to get in a fight, and it's more one-on-one, rather than on a stage for your followers.

And if only two or three people talk to me, that's totally okay.