Movies & TV

In some ways Luthen is the actual embodiment of the values of the Sith.

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.

Through passion, I gain strength.

Through strength, I gain power.

Through power, I gain victory.

Through victory, my chains are broken.

The Force shall free me.

I read this a bit differently. Revenge was sweet, but this had been her goal even before Syril. Her pursuit of Axis gave her purpose, and was central to her self-conception as a contributing member of a greater community.

As an orphan within a discompassionate system, she might only have ever gotten a glimpse of positivity from her authority figures by standing out in a way that pleased them. This was central to her conception of self-worth. Indeed, that's what earned her a position in the ISB. The ISB must have felt cozy for her. Regimented, uniform, and full of individuals like her who sought to define themselves by standing above.

Dedra never learned what love was. Her closest proxies were praise and respect, and alliance was her stand-in for brotherhood. Her happiest moments on camera (prior to her brief triumph over Luthen), were when she worked alongside Attendent Heert, and when Partagaz praised her for her tactful rule-breaking. She got recognized for her differences from her peers, which scratched that itch she struggled so hard to reach.

Dedra's got a keen eye. She knew Axis was important, and saw him as another chance to earn praise and respect — to earn recognition as an individual for standing out and above. She was close to killing the Rebel Alliance before it ever existed, and her goals were the empire's goals, even if they were too stupid to see that. She would make them see. They'd have no choice but to realize how special she was, and paradoxically, how much that proved she was one of them. And had she succeeded, she would have been proven correct.

Ghorman ruined this. If Axis was captured in 3 B.B.Y., every project of the Empire would have gained breathing room including Ghorman, including the Death Star (whether she knew of it then or not). Whatever the import of the Ghorman project, she correctly assesed that the capture of Axis would have served it too. But she was taken off of that and had to come to terms with a new goal at Ghorman. Being taken away from leadership on the Ghorman project just as it was coming to completion robbed her once again of the emotional payoff of triumph, which was the beginning of her unwinding. Why did she care if someone 2 steps up recognized her? She wanted the people around her to see that she was more than a cog in the machine — an unachievable goal on a top-secret project she didnt even get to complete. Already, her peers saw her as a failure after Axis eluded her for so long, and Major Partagaz, her father figure, thought her not capable of finishing the job (correctly so, in my opinion).

When she was free from the Ghorman Project, it was her chance to pursue Axis again. And she might have discovered that he was no longer the fulcrum of the Rebel Alliance if it wasn't for the stroke of luck that the Death Star project provided. If Axis had a connection to that, she could secure its secrecy by capturing the enemy superspy. But if she told the ISB what she knew of the Death Star, she risked losing the moment like she did on Ghorman, so she took a bad gamble.

Partagaz was right in that she was too close to Axis, and to the completion of the Ghorman Project. She couldn't calibrate her enthusiasm and that's why he knew when to pull her back. She denied him that opportunity in her final operatio, whoch fucked Partagaz over in the end.

Ultimately, at Narkina 5, she not only became the cog in the machine she feared she might become, but she would much more literally build cogs for the machine that destroyed her: The Death Star, the final symbol of the Empire

feel-good fascism

That's an apt description of it. It wants you to just accept what it has to say about humanity, which is incredibly nihilistic and misanthropic, by creating strawmen that don't actually exist. Seeing what the author has to say about Palestinians tells you everything you need to know.