The Myth of Grand Admiral Thrawn

Comments · 181

• XI

  @xionkuriyama5697 · 2 weeks ago

  The thing that always struck me about Thrawn is that he reads as a hard sci-fi character dropped into a classic fantasy world that happens to be in space. Nobody knew how to deal with him because he was bringing things like cloaked asteroid fields to a universe where space battles are basically WW2 naval battles.

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• AS

  @Ashguy733 · 2 weeks ago

  "I subscribed for more and it was artistically done."-Grand Admiral Thrawn

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• MI

  @michaelramon2411 · 2 weeks ago

  Thrawn's key strength seems to be a penchant for out-of-the-box thinking and unconventional tactics, which particularly stands out in an Imperial Navy built around the straightforward application of brute force. He uses atypical technology in unusual ways, tries to strike where the enemy is weaker and always wants to possess the initiative. Effectively, he uses Rebel-like tactics against the former Rebels, which is why he stood out so strongly both in- and out-of-universe. But while that can get you an edge in any particular fight, you can't go around using the same trick twice, and there's a limit to how many useful innovative ideas can be applied to any particular scenario.

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• NI

  @nikolasrhine · 2 weeks ago

  It is so funny reading Thrawn's "I'm so much better than C'Baoth and he could never outsmart me" monologue to Pellaeon in TLC and then the next scene shows C'Baoth outsmarting Thrawn.

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• PA

  @parkerdixon-word6295 · 2 weeks ago

  Ugh, don&apos;t even get me started ranting about how Thrawn&apos;s portrayal by Zahn has changed over the decades since the original Thrawn Trilogy.<br>Like, I don&apos;t have a right to get <b>too grumpy,</b> because I&apos;ve yet to read a Zahn Book I didn&apos;t like, but early 90s Thrawn was such a delightfully <b>evil bastard</b> that I cannot help but be disappointed in how much of a charismatic anti-hero he became in books written in the 00s and beyond.<br>Thrawn never came across in the original books as being able to pull a magic rabbit out of his ass to solve problems, he was <b>really good at what he did</b> and knew when to go &quot;Oh, that&apos;s not something I was prepared for. Here&apos;s what we do to control the damage, but we&apos;ve accomplished enough of our goals to cut our losses here. We&apos;ll cushion that loss and move on.&quot;<br>Like, OG Thrawn was <b>genocidal</b> when he couldn&apos;t find a clever workaround, and the fact that he felt bad about it doesn&apos;t redeem him even a little bit. It didn&apos;t stop him from continuing the slow genocide of the Noghri, and that&apos;s the sin he died for in the end.<br>Later Thrawn portrayals soften him too much for my tastes. I like Thrawn as pure evil, just interesting evil, and I appreciate his appearances in Rebels and Ahsoka for the fact that they&apos;re <b>trying</b> to do that again, even if the writing isn&apos;t quite sharp enough to stick the landing.

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• CR

  @CrunchyCrepe · 2 weeks ago

  Thrawn was so incredibly good at gaslighting people into thinking he was an unstoppable threat, that he gaslit the entire fandom into thinking he was an unstoppable threat…

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• JT

  @jtsg464 · 2 weeks ago

  Inflating Thrawn reminds me of inflating how good a lot of famed military commanders in history. A combination of political/culture reasons combined with just people becoming fans of these commanders as, often due to those political/cultural reasons, they are told simplified or mythized versions of their actual history. You can see this across numerous periods, whether with antiquity, the American Civil War, World War II especially (both Allied and Axis). And it&apos;s not that the people that end up having this done to them, &nbsp;didn&apos;t do some noteworthy or even epic stuff. But like with a fictional commander like Thrawn, the myth outgrows the actual person. And their shortcomings and actual outright mistakes get glossed over or forgotten. Another good vid Corey.

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• DI

  @DisFantasy · 2 weeks ago

  Zahn was careful to avoid having Thrawn go head to head with either Akbar or Ibis.

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• RE

  @reze0n · 2 weeks ago

  There is a certain degree of irony that Thrawn being a master at bluffing and conning his foes was outmaneuvered by a band of professional conmen and swindlers. &nbsp;The notion of Thrawn intentionally crafting his own public image as the genius infallible tactician is a great, nuanced characterization that sadly writers couldn&apos;t keep going.

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• EM

  @emperorpalpatine66 · 2 weeks ago

  <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mODQMoFdQJU&amp;t=217">3:37</a> I love how you integrate liking and subscribing into the videos. It’s always fun seeing how you manage to fit it in

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• LY

  @lynngreen7978 · 2 weeks ago

  Zahn made 2 characters the readers liked, and he had to retcon out their ever having been evil.<br>For Mara he effectively took away her moral complexity and redemption, by claiming that Palpatine, who corrupted everyone around him, NEVER set her to kill anyone that was not evil.<br>For Thrawn, he took the man who was throwing the galaxy into chaos, rather than allow the &quot;Rebels&quot; to hold Coruscant, and claimed that destroying the ONLY unified force that could defend the galaxy against the Vong into ruin, was actuallly a clever plan to defeat the Vong. &nbsp;Obviously, Zahn did not know about the Vong when he wrote the trilogy, and Thrawn&apos;s actions had nothing to do with the Vong. &nbsp;Ergo, Thrawn never knew about the Vong.

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• MA

  @maciejkamil · 2 weeks ago (edited)

  Another common misconception about Thrawn is that he was benevolent, a star wars version of desert fox myth. In reality he literally had: an officer executed for a mistake, because &apos;empire is at war&apos;, attacked dwellers of Wayland and did other cruel stuff.

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