Luke Teaching Ben At His Peaceful Jedi Academy, "use The Force To Center Yourself" Vs. Ezra Teaching

Do you ever think about Hera with terrible postpartum depression. Do you ever think how she felt saddled with the child of her dead lover. Alone to raise him in a galaxy in the thrushes of war. Her at the front lines. Do you ever think about all the people who looked down on her for being a pregnant general. Do you think she ever felt resentment towards Kanan for leaving her with a whole living organism growing in her body. What do you think her view on pregnancy and carrying children was like before jacen? DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT???????

Kallus' motivations are so interesting

I just need to get these thoughts out so I’m throwing this ramble here:

Now, this may totally just be me thinking too much (fork found in kitchen) but I feel like when it comes to how we tend to think about Kallus’ characterization, the implications of Kallus’ experience on Onderon are very overlooked. 

So he goes to Onderon with “the boys”-- which, the term “the boys” has its own set of implications about how Kallus must have really cared for those troopers under his command but I digress– and on a patrol they’re attacked, yada yada, we all know the story. 

But Kallus becomes fully paralyzed. He doesn’t describe the extent of his paralyzation but given that he had to watch as his squad was “finished off one by one” it’s pretty fair to assume that he could not move whatsoever. The fear that any person would experience in that situation is completely indescribable, that is genuinely some shit straight out of a night terror. 

He is– as we know– spared (albeit we don’t get exact details (did the merc try to kill him but reinforcements arrived before he could? Did the merc think that Kallus was already dead? Secret 3rd option?)) and he makes a full physical recovery, but there is no way in hell that he is not coming out of that encounter with some crazy PTSD. 

There’s not a whole lot of info on Imperial mental health services but I don’t think it’s a longshot to assume that they are probably close to nonexistent.

So the empire now has… an ISB agent with field experience… with untreated PTSD… where said PTSDs inciting incident pertained to a Lasat… and they’re looking to make an example out of Lasan……….. Are you picking up what I'm putting down here…...?

If you aren’t; it is BY NO MEANS a wild assumption to say that the Empire– essentially– weaponized Kallus’ PTSD, given that he would be less likely to question the moral atrocities happening on Lasan since he was already biased against Lasat as a whole. 

Now, we don’t really have a solid grasp on what Kallus’ exact role in Lasan was since he’s  kiiiiinnnd of an unreliable narrator– I mean we’re given the line in Droids in Distress where he takes credit for giving orders during the siege, but Kallus routinely just runs his mf mouth whenever he’s throwing hands so it’s like…  that could either be the truth or a crazy exaggeration, we as viewers have literally no idea what’s going on there– but it goes without saying that Kallus is obviously not excused from his participation just because of (likely) untreated mental illness, but that is literally like the whole point of his character so like we all knew that

Now, after Lasan, Kallus does something really bizarre for an imperial to do; he accepts the borifle given to him through the Boosan Keerah, and even though he doesn’t know about the cultural significance of that, he still takes it upon himself to learn how to use this weapon. I think that literally any other imperial would have tossed that shit out on sight, so I think it does kind of imply that Kallus did have a good deal of respect for Lasat culture.

Now we can all recall how Kallus is so annoying and also batshit insane whenever he fights Zeb for the first season and a half of rebels, and ME THINKS that this is because he wants to prove to himself that if he were not paralyzed on Onderon, he could have saved the members of his squad. He had to sit by and watch them die, and I think that he just wants the vindication; now you may be thinking, But Emma, he beat the Lasat who gave him his borifle, why would he still be obsessing over this– say it with me now– he is mentally ill. No victory will ever be enough to prove this to himself. Point blank period. 

(edit:) He is for sure operating from a place of extreme predjudice and bias but I think it's worth noting that he’s not operating under the usual xenophobic imperial mindset that other species are automaticaly lesser than. (end edit) This weird obsession that he has in seasons 1 and 2 deels like it's mostly there because he wants to outwit and outfight Zeb (and the rest of the Ghost crew… but especially Zeb) (edit: Though it is 100% influenced by Xenophobia-- his mental illness and xenopobia DO coexist!!)

And after the Honorable Ones???? It’s literally never brought up again. He chills tf out so hard after that it is high key uncanny. And like, yes duh that is because– for writing purposes– that’s the beginning of his redemption and they want viewers to root for him as fulcrum, but it also implies that after finding common ground with Zeb, and understanding where he’s coming from and who Zeb is as a person, he realizes that he’s been CRASHING TF OUT for basically no reason. 

And he is SO QUICK to switch sides?? Like, he is fulcrum at least a decent time before the beginning of season three. The whole point is that the second he asks questions and delves deeper into what the Empires motivations are he is disgusted enough that he doesn’t just drop everything and disappear, no, he became a spy for the rebels because he wants to help. I feel like that just goes to show that, at his core, Kallus is a good person. A deeply confused, and hurt, and misguided person, but a good one. 

I dunno, this is just a really long winded way of saying that Kallus is the perfect example of an imperial pawn. Like the Empire is an incredibly effecient indoctrination machine that exploits people at every turn, especially their own soldiers, and I think that Kallus’ relationship with that indoctrination along with his own motivations is just super super interesting and I think about it literally all the time

I’m posting this late at night because I’m conflict avoidant but I’ve seen people say that kallus “all lives matter”-s Zeb on Barhyn (which somehow convinces Zeb and also endorses that message) which is just???? Completely incorrect?

kallus says something along the lines of “does that rule apply to imperials” when Zeb says that the empire views the rebels as a monolith. Zeb immediately claps back with “all the imperials I know”. Zeb doesn’t fall for that shit, because he’s right: all imps are the same. You chose to be an imp and you chose to be a monster. More importantly: Kallus is still a bad guy, and he’s wrong for believing that.

Kallus fucking defects. Like lads, this should be obvious. He realizes that he’s wrong too! The only good imp is a dead imp! He can’t be a good person and an imperial so he defects as soon as he realizes he’s a monster. He even goes the extra mile of becoming a spy: he could have cut lose and run or tried to be a “good imp” but he doesn’t. There are no good imperials.

No one’s operating procedure changes. Zeb doesn’t go easier on stormtroopers because he got convinced that you can’t treat them all as a monolith. When Kallus joins the rebellion he doesn’t do that either.

that’s all Jules has to say. If you need me I’ll be hiding away in a hole 👍

I feel like we as a society need to step back and take a moment to point out that Kallus' eyelashes are lowkey mad luscious

ESPECIALLY FOR A BLONDE GUY

Like what animator making his character model was like "hmmm i just feel like he's missing something..... OH! I KNOW; wet n wild impact black waterproof mascara 😌"

sure why not

nothing in the world makes me more evil than just being kind of annoyed

Never forget what they stole from us

(x) And by they I mean Favloni...

But yeah, remembered recently while ranting with a friend about how bad the Ahsoka show was, that it killed and ate the animated Rebels sequel. Am now grumpy.

When ur mutuals w/ some cool ass people rb if u agree