Thrawn - Blog Posts

[ T H R A W N ] Sunset by @foreverforty2

again with feral thrawn, trying to improve the image quality

💙

Thank you

In honor of Thrawnezra week (March 7th-13th, mark your calendars lol) I made a playlist, dedicating a song to each person who has reached out or touched my artistic life in some way, especially through the tough times when anti’s seemed to get me down. When I think of all the people who reached out with love and support versus anti’s hate, the lists don’t even compare! I hope you enjoy the song I picked for you (if you don’t it just means we need to get to know each other more).  

Anti, Anti

Seize the Power by YONAKA - For anyone out there who is afraid to write what they want, out of fear of being harassed. 

None of Your Business by Salt-n-Pepper - For @labextia​

BOO HOO by Neoni, RIELL - For @diamonddove​

Therefore I Am by Billie Eillish - For @forever42​

Mean by Alyssa Reid - For that one anon with a fire tongue (I don’t know who you are but I love you). 

Obsessed by Mariah Carey - For @draculard​ (LOL, XD love you Drac)

I Spit on Your Grave by ZAND - For me (gotta have one for myself, after all)

Fighter by Christina Aguilera - For @twodragonsflying​

F** You by Lily Allen - For @cheeriosandwine​

Crazy, Mad, Insane by Beast in Black - For @hjbender​

Don’t Kill My Vibe by Sigrid - For Everyone!

Happy Thrawnezra week!

AO3 Thrawnezra Collection

there's something so compelling about stories where a character's virtues intensify into flaws that lead to their downfall. loyalty and love becoming so all-consuming that compassion outside of them ceases to exist. duty overwhelming any moral compass until order becomes more important than justice. selflessness so intense it becomes self-destruction. let me watch while whatever saved the hero in the beginning destroys them. let me see them fall to their own worst impulses disguised as what once made them good.

okay so i just finished the first thrawn book right? and like all of it is making me feel insane and i am sure someone has pointed this out already but do you wanna know what makes me feel extra insane?

thrawn send eli away to protect him

like sure he also sends him away to help the chiss and so he could reach his full potential and bla bla but look - thrawn realizes very early that eli is a target as long as he's with him

and then that is proven over and over again throughout the book until it finally accumulates in this - pryce outright threatening thrawn right after she showed how incredibly ruthless she is

and then the very next scene is thrawn and eli talking about that very conversation, it's eli first acknowledging how dangerous pryce and the high command are and then confirming - even if he might not be fully aware himself - that he is loyal to thrawn not to the empire

which, let me remind you, comes after yularen just pointed a blaster at thrawn and accused him of treason

and i think that moment of eli pledging his allegiance to thrawn is the first time thrawn realizes both the depth of which he cares for eli and that he will be eli's downfall if he keeps him around

which then leads to him sending eli away to the chiss and this fucking devastating journal entry:

like for a moment i was confused bc it happend so fast without a goodbye, plus he offered it to nightswan first and it kinda felt like eli was just an afterthought but no oh fuck no

like nightswan thrawn would have send to help keep the chiss safe, to utilize his abilities to help them fight whatever enemies are lurking in the dark, but eli, oh no, thrawn never planned on sending eli away in the first place, not until he realized it was the only way he could keep him safe

and yeah eli will obv also be beneficial to the chiss, like ofc he will, he's smart as heck, but below all that is the simple fact that thrawn is doing all this empire shit to keep his people safe so even if the empire falls that is still the safest place for eli to be

and I'm just feeling very emo about that

I think if you really want to know what kind of a person Thrawn is, all you have to do is to look at the Empire of the Hand, which is described thusly on Wookieepedia:

“…a confederacy composed of native species that Grand Admiral Thrawn founded in the Unknown Regions that adopted the order and efficiency of Emperor Palpatine's New Order, but without the Emperor's megalomania, the Tarkin Doctrine, and the institutionalized xenophobia…

…an original combination of Chiss and Imperial tactics personally arranged by the Grand Admiral, such as respect of the enemies, careful consideration of soldiers' lives, surgical strikes, demonstrative invasions, preventive strikes and the significant use of intelligence gathering.”

So the Galactic Empire at its most effective without the tyranny, bigotry, fascism, and compulsory membership. Not bad for an organization founded by a warlord.

Also, for anyone who is unfamiliar with the more obscure Legends Thrawn books (pssst! you’re missing out, I gotta say 😉), the Hand is like the little group of friends he made out of the aliens and Chiss at the end of Lesser Evil. Now take that, add everyone in the seventh fleet, and multiply it by a couple tens of thousands, and you have an idea of what it was like.

Plus they eventually developed Chiss-built star destroyers and Stent. How dope is that?!!

Bowie as Thrawn; part image edit, part painting. base image is David Bowie; background by @nasa : “A view of crescent Jupiter from Juno.”

template image under the cut:

Thrawn’s first time using Imperial technology.

Instagram @ forever_42

You know, I don’t think I’ve seen any fandom hate the target of their fanning like the Thrawn fandom. And I don’t mean comments like “you magnificent bastard, you!” (because if there’s anyone deserving of the moniker, it’s Thrawn, lol) I mean things like “he’s an arrogant piece of crap and deserves to be mocked” or “I hope Filoni humiliates him” or “he’s a moron and I hate him.”

I think part of what’s happening is that he’s a morally complex character in a time where moral nuance is deeply unpopular. People see the world in terms of heroes and villains. Good and evil. Luke Skywalker and Emperor Palpatine. There’s no space for someone who isn’t exactly good but isn’t entirely evil, either (which is not only more reflective of how human beings actually work, but was the entire POINT of Thrawn in the first place, lol). He works for the empire? He’s evil. 100%. His reasons for doing what he does don’t matter, he’s scum.

That and people really just don’t “get” him. It makes sense—within Jungian typology he’s the archetypal INTJ, leading with subjective, seeminingly mystical and otherworldly visions/ideals only he understands; he uses impersonal and unfeeling logic as his main tool; he refuses or is unable to understand/acquiesce to societal pressure; and his emotions, motives, and values are very private. I suppose it’s no surprise, then, that fans gravitate toward conventional, familiar, “safe,” ISTJ Everyman characters like Eli and Samakro. Even if they share Thrawn’s values, even if they ALSO work for authoritarian regimes, the ever-important S groundedness is going to make their motives make more “sense” to most readers (hence their placement as audience surrogates).

And lastly there’s also the assertion that he’s “just a male power fantasy” for “obnoxious nerds,” as though there aren’t women (like myself) who find him inspiring, too.

A lot of fans project onto him many positive characteristics due to the new canon books, but it’s all the same Thrawn, he just gets darker over time.

Old EU/Rebels Thrawn: Ruthless. Coldhearted. Calculating. Mean.

Book Thrawn: Nerd. Socially inept. Meets his crush’s racist parents with a smile. Wants to save everyone in the Galaxy. Writes poetic and emotionally charged farewells. Can’t drive. Likes to cosplay.

It’s more that like the six new Thrawn novels recontextualised him so that a lot of people who read them don’t see him as a real villain anymore, understand that what he is doing is necessary for the greater good, and although the narrative of Rebels had him as a villain, objectively viewing what he actually did against what he threatened to do, he really seems to be not bad on his own merits. Just when following other’s orders is it when he seems evil, like Boba Fett did originally. Personally, I think that the live-action will start off with Thrawn still being the villain, then reveal Ezra to be now allied with him against the Grysk of those novels, have him be training those Chiss children Thrawn kept bringing up. Like if those Grogu experiments from The Mandalorian turned out to be not to give regular people Force powers like people thought, but allow Chiss children to not lose their abilities growing up?

oh boy. honestly (and leaving aside the fact that the post that prompted you to send this ask had a different point) i usually don't answer asks about this topic anymore because it's one of those things where everyone thinks they're right and the discussion just goes in circles because nobody ever wants to admit that the other side might have a point (including myself. i know i'm right. period. jdfhdfh) but i'm in a Mood today lmao.

just so you don’t misunderstand me (because that’s happened so many times i have to say it), no matter how hard i argue for him being a villain, i literally love him so much. he’s one of my favorite characters, if not the favorite character. my #1 blorbo. my glup shitto. and i love when he’s being an asshole. it sounds crass but i love when he has rukh, idk, murder a tractor technician (rest in peace king) or blows up people or bombards innocent civilians. like, people love vader because he’s so iconic right? it’d be boring as hell if he just didn’t mow down rebels on the regular during his Empire Prime Era(TM) yeah? that’s how i feel about thrawn. oof

objectively viewing what he actually did against what he threatened to do, he really seems to be not bad on his own merits. Just when following other’s orders is it when he seems evil

i'm assuming you're talking about book!thrawn? i'm not quite sure what you mean by 'what he threatened to do' but i am saying that maybe he isn't ~evil~ on, like, palpatine levels, but he definitely isn't a good person. i’ll even give you textual evidence to support that claim! since people are so adamant that new canon thrawn is the only valid characterization!

he murders at least two troopers and causes v-wing crashes with casualties to get onto the strikefast

he condones slavery (”imperial assets”) and i literally don’t care if he’s just saying that because he needs to keep his rank or whatever because he could’ve said so much more in that scene (like. “look vanto that fucking sucks but we can’t do anything about it because we’ll get shot” or whatever hsdhf)

he thinks dictatorships are cool and fun, effectively expressing the same views anakin did in aotc (literal quotes: “quick and utter ruthlessness is necessary when the galaxy is continually threatened by chaos” or “the Republic was weak and fragmented [...] The Empire, in contrast, is unified under a single man and a single vision”)

according to thalias, he’d resort to “straight-up, coldhearted murder“ to get out of getting captured

in the ascendancy he does seem to value non-chiss lives in contrast to most of his fellow chiss (and if that isn’t worth thinking about, nudge nudge, the ascendancy doesn’t seem too different to the empire in many respects does it?) but only as long as they’re useful/non-threatening to him (“He cares about non-Chiss lives.” - “Yes, he does. You threaten his people, and see how fast that changes.”)

^ that last point is literally, literally in relation to samakro ordering an orbital bombardment, which. that’s poetic as fuck, my dude.

the whole “i see people as assets” conversation with ar’alani

i could find more but i think i’ve made my point 😶 lesser evil characterizes him as very sympathetic, obviously, but there’s literally quotes like “If you lie to me, I will eventually know that. Do you wish me to explain what would happen then?“ (god i needed to include this quote because hnnn WHAT A GOOD QUOTE)

who does that sound like? that sounds like it’s the same thrawn as in legends and rebels, imo. [happy sigh]

zahn even said that if disney were to make alllll the old shit canon again, he wants the character and story in the canon novels to line up and make sense with the legends novels. i can’t find a source for that now, though, which is regrettable. maybe i dreamed it.

but! from an interview with the verge:

as for your theory about live-action thrawn: noooo way. there’s no way filoni or favreau or whoever writes it actually reads the novels and includes that material in one or more of the upcoming shows. especially stuff about the sky-walkers. or the grysks. i’d be SO HAPPY, even overjoyed to be wrong in this instance but everything we’ve seen so far points to them going in direction of referencing the heir to the empire trilogy. there’s statues of ysalamiri in thrawn’s office in rebels. they canonized mount tantiss on wayland in the bad batch. the mandalorian is set in 9ABY which is exactly when htte is set kshdfdh

look i’d literally love for him and ezra to be allies and fight the grysks and for sky-walker rights and shit but anon. it’s very, very unrealistic that that’s gonna happen :/

awaiting orders

blue man hot. That’s it that’s the post.

Here is a short fic very similar to this idea;

And obviously, much more can be done and it could go 1000 different ways. Got my own Thrawn clone AU already going in my head and being written out… Thrawn clones are very compelling OCs because they can be as similar or different from the original as you like…

One of the ideas for Thrawn, which I liked very much, is the one I read long ago in an interview with Timothy Zahn (so I may not remember it exactly correct) and it went something like this:

After Thrawn's death at the hands of Rukh Luke and Mara discover that Thrawn left clones of himself scattered around the galaxy, imprinted with all his knowledge, precisely in case he died. Which is so Thrawn, but I digress.

We already got to see Luke and Mara accidentally destroy one of these clones in the old Expanded Universe, but what we never got was Zahn's idea for a sequel, which was to have one of these clones actually wake up, and The Hand of Thrawn and Empire expecting him to continue off where original Thrawn left off, and this clone basically.... not wanting to.

And as much as I like Thrawn, and I understand why Zahn was asked to write about Thrawn who guarantees book sales, I think this would have been such a better route to take in the new canon.

First, the idea is intriguing. Thrawn's clone who has same mind, same skills, same knowledge, but who almost crumbles under the pressure of expectation to fill in Thrawn's boots and who is haunted by memories of atrocities that aren't his but feel like they are.

Second, we would get a character who we could genuinely get behind. Without the ifs and buts and evil deeds to overlook. Who would have all the exciting skills and tactical brilliance, but always aim them in the right direction, but still with the question of: will he turn into Thrawn over time? Will he step over the line?

Third, it would be so interesting to see him in a completely different settings, surrounded by the Rebels or the New Republic, people who are kind and compassionate and understanding. Imagine Luke's compassion, who had visions of himself in Vaders helmet for this guy who sees Grand Admiral Thrawn every time he looks in the mirror. And who knows others see that as well.

Fourth, it would be so much in line with the message in Star Wars. Luke didn't follow in his father's footsteps. Boba Fett didn't become Jango, neither did all clones follow Order 66.

And Thrawn's clone wouldn't become Thrawn. Everyone has a choice to say no and do the right thing.

My first (finished) fanfic… “Miithrawn”

Explicit, F/M, Thrawn/OC, 21k words, 12 chapters, completed:

Grand Admiral Thrawn crash lands on a remote planet and is rescued by a wild woman. Upon being recovered by the Empire, he takes the woman with him to his ship.

- (chaos rising)

- (greater good)

- (lesser evil)

writing a Legends Thrawn fic and need to redo everything to include day drinking and snarky comments

Commissioned birthday gift from @mittheresabosen to @draculard  “Something from a fic of theirs/depressive Thrawn image” Chose Anchored Planned only to make the skin… Look wet, but I was just having too much fun with rendering the water… 

Finally got on Tumblr… as of 12/12/21. Maybe next year I’ll finally get on Twitter sometime. No snap no tiktok too old and lazy for all this crap 🙃 3 Thrawn & sluts header image: @aamutakkipaholainen ; Thrawn painting: ymirr-art-blog. #thrawn #thrawnedit #thrawnart #starwarsthrawn #starwarsnerd #starwarsfan https://www.instagram.com/forever_42/p/CXaHBq8rBqI/?utm_medium=tumblr

This is olllddd, February 2018 old. But turns out I forgot to post it here, so.

Thrawn’s age is both a mystery for us and the crew of the Chimaera

Everyone on the Springhawk (and the rest of the ascendancy tbh) found Thrawn to be an anomaly. Because while he was extremely annoying, he was also very hot. But anytime someone asked Thrawn out (or propositioned ;) him), he always turned them down, sometimes politely sometimes not. Everyone eventually just came to the conclusion that Thrawn doesn't do romance.

Cut to twenty years later, a human shows up in the Ascendancy and introduces himself as Thrawn's husband and everyone loses their damn minds.

Because somehow Captain Mitth'raw'nuruodo fucked off to the Empire, found some ridiculously attractive twink twenty years younger than him, married him and then sent him off to the Ascendancy for safe keeping.

I think Ahsoka was good and all, but it would have been so much funnier if Morgan had gone through all that trouble to get Thrawn back to rebuild the Empire, and Thrawn was just chilling with Ezra

She finds them gossiping and sipping space martinis

Animation enjoyers @ Dave Filoni

Novel enjoyers @ Dave Filoni

Do you think Eli and Thrawn ever explored each others bodies

One of the things that I don't understand in Star Wars is the way they handle blockades. Like in s3 of Rebels when Thrawn attacks Atollon

I've never understood why they don't just go around the planet??? Like, there's no imperials there???

Like, surely they all would've been able to escape that way? There's no way that there's only one hyperspace lane to get off planet, and it's not like their goal was to travel directly to Yavin IV either. They could also travel to the other side on the surface of the planet too if space travel isn't an option.

Am I just dumb? Is it explained why they can't do that and I'm just an idiot?