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“Are you going out?”
Eli winced as he stood in front of the open door to their dorm. His roommate had appeared to be deeply engrossed in something on his datapad and Eli had hoped to slip out unnoticed. Apparently he’d been wrong.
“Uh, yeah…” Eli said, turning back to face the room. “Since we don’t have classes today, I figured I would run some errands quick…”
Thrawn had already put his boots on and was walking towards him. “I will accompany you.”
That was the last thing he wanted, but Eli had quickly learned that once Thrawn had made up his mind about something, it was difficult to dissuade him. Still though, he had to try. “It’s really not that exciting, I’m just going to get some civilian clothes, extra socks, all that.” Thrawn’s expression hadn’t changed and Eli continued on. “Most of my normal clothes didn’t make it on the transfer over from Myomar Academy and I’m tired of wearing this uniform in my free time, you know?”
Thrawn nodded once. “That is a wise idea. Having different clothes to wear will make it harder for people to identify us as students of Royal Imperial when we go out in the public. Anonymity, correct?”
“That’s… the idea,” Eli replied, but Thrawn had already passed him and was partway down the hall.
So that was how Eli found himself in the back of an airspeeder with his roommate, with the speeder pilot taking them to the nearest trade district. Thrawn hadn’t said a word once Eli had flagged down the speeder, and he was currently on his datapad again, reading through whatever he had been working on back in their dorm room. Eli sighed to himself. He had truly wanted one day, or even just a few hours, to himself, to explore the never-ending city and be free of obligations towards anyone else. Apparently that would have to wait.
The lights of the city flashed by the window and Eli slouched back in his seat, watching them pass the edge of the education district and on into the next one. He hadn’t had a lot of time to observe the city with how busy he’d been trying to cram all his remaining classes into one semester, so seeing the city spread out into the horizon on all sides still had the same humbling feeling as when he first arrived on the Strikefast. So many billions of people, living and breathing, existing… The speeder’s pilot took a sharp turn downwards and Eli looked out the window, seeing the lower levels of the city below them, and his stomach felt hollow. Lysatra had hardly even a fraction of the people Coruscant had, and trying to imagine them all, with all their lives and hopes and dreams…Even Royal Imperial itself was larger than the towns he’d had grown up in. Eli had never felt so insignificant. He slouched further in his seat and looked over at his roommate.
Thrawn was still completely absorbed in his datapad, the same stoic expression on his face as he rapidly tapped away at the screen, seemingly completely unaffected by whatever emotional reaction Eli was having to the city passing by outside the window. Perhaps, Eli thought to himself, the cities of his roommate’s homeworld were much the same; that he’d already seen it all and this was just passe. Or maybe he found it too ostentatious and was choosing to ignore it. Eli slouched further back into his seat and crossed his arms.
“Is there something you need?” Thrawn said without looking up.
Yes , Eli thought, to be back at my old academy and spending my off-days with my friends , but left that thought unvoiced. It wasn’t wholly Thrawn’s fault that the actual Emperor Palpatine himself had reassigned local nobody Eli Vanto to Royal Imperial. Besides, Thrawn himself surely would have rather been with his own friends and people than alone on Coruscant. Eli kicked at the partition that separated them from the speeder pilot with one of his boots. “Not really… what are you looking at on your datapad?”
Thrawn’s eyes flicked to Eli for a moment then returned to the datapad. “Art.”
The response had Eli remembering Thrawn’s notice of the artwork displayed in Commandant Deenlark’s office. “You really do like art?”
“Hmm… yes,” Thrawn said, not looking up. “It can be a good way to understand different species’…” His brow furrowed for a moment. “... culture values? I think that is the correct phrase.”
“Seems like a better way to judge the artist’s cultural values,” Eli said. “You can’t judge an entire people by one artist.”
“Perhaps not, but one can see repeated ideas between different artists to see what matters to the species as a whole. It can be very important.”
This seemed a bit ignorant to Eli, but he wasn’t sure he could argue it very well. “I can’t imagine every… every Twi’lek for example, that each one of them has the exact same values. Even in a general sense, a community of Twi’leks here on Coruscant is going to have a different culture than on Ryloth, or than a community out in Wild Space. Certainly not all Chiss can have the same values, and I’ve only met one”
Thrawn paused for a moment before responding. “That is true.” He tapped at something on his datapad. “Looking at this is still helping me to better understand human culture. About half Coruscant’s people are humans, as well as most people in the Imperial Navy, so I wanted to understand.”
“I guess that makes some sense,” Eli said, trying to subtly look at the datapad and failing; it was turned fully away from him. “So it’s human Coruscanti art today then?”
“No, the artist for this work is from Chandrila, but the collection of works is from many different human settlements and planets. You were correct in saying that you cannot judge an entire people from one artist or artists from just one region, but sometimes sentiments can be shared between all of them.”
Trying to understand the whole of a species based on art alone still seemed off to Eli, but they had at least ten minutes before they landed at the trade district, so killing time by humoring his roommate seemed to be better than being lost in his own thoughts. He looked back out the window. “So what is this collection telling you about us humans? Any deep observations?”
“More than you are assuming. I am finding that humans are very creative, able to view things in abstract ways, to take apart and put together concepts that seem at odds with each other.”
Of course humans seem creative when you’re looking at their creative works,
Eli thought, eyes unfocused as he watched the blurry city lights go by. “So it’s
only
humans who are good at creative thinking and problem solving?”
“No, of course not,” Thrawn continued, undaunted. “All species must be able to adapt or die out, but this is truly on a level I have not seen before. The ability to imagine in ways outside of common ways of thinking, to make connections where there seem to be none, it is unexpected. The unexpected can find you off guard and put you at a disadvantage, both on a personal level and also in a naval career. It is both important to be aware of this and it is also a great skill to be able to do. I have never seen anything like this in my entire life.”
Unexpected… surprising people in naval battles…? What kind of art could he possibly be looking at??
Eli thought, before turning back to Thrawn, who looked up from the datapad at him. “Okay. Alright. What is this brand new art style that has you almost in
awe
over human creativity? We’re not that exciting.”
Wordlessly, Thrawn tapped the screen and handed the datapad to Eli, who looked down --
“What. What the hell is this??”
Thrawn looked back at him with a bemused expression. “I thought it was obvious. The images in this collection are common models of ships, reimagined as human-like figures in erotic poses. This one displayed here I believe is a Corellian HWK-290 Light Freighter. If you are familiar with this model, you can see the transparisteel windows on the torso are the same shape as on the freighter-”
“Stop, stop. What??” Eli slammed the datapad on the seat beside him. “First of all, I never want to hear you say the word ‘erotic’ ever again, second of all, what?? You were going on about ‘imagination’ and ‘creativity’ and you were looking at bad fetish art the whole time?”
Apparently completely unaffected by his outburst, Thrawn picked the datapad back up. “Yes, I was, and I think words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are not helpful here. Even if the technical skill isn’t as high as other artists, the image still has meaning.”
“Meaning? Shipgirl fetish art!? Are you serious right now?”
“Of course,” Thrawn said, closing the image and navigating to something else on the datapad. “I did mean what I said earlier, about creativity. I would have never considered looking at a ship in this way. It is very unexpected and imaginative to see what most would view as a lifeless object in such a manner.” He presented the datapad to Eli again. “Look, here is an image of one of your own Imperial Fighters. How clever to use the cockpit pod as the head.”
A Tie Fighter shipgirl stared sensuously back at Eli. “Wh- no! This isn’t impressive at all!!” he said, shoving the datapad back. “Do you really think humans are the exclusive creators of weird fetish art on the HoloNet? Just because you’ve never seen this before doesn’t mean it’s new.”
“I never said it was only humans, but it still shows a great amount of creativity, a type of creativity I have seen time and time again with human art more than any other.”
Stubborn to the last , Eli thought, exasperated. “Okay then, wise guy. If we humans are so creative and so imaginative, what prompted you to look this up? Huh?”
“I was not looking for these pictures,” Thrawn replied as Eli rolled his eyes. “I had heard there were places on the HoloNet where I could access holos and stills of artwork, and as I said before, I wanted to study human culture.”
“Just go to an art museum then! There’s one right by the trade district!”
“That museum is run by the Imperial Center, and only displays works that reflect their cultural values, not the values of humans as a whole across the galaxy.”
At that, Eli frantically looked up at their driver; to his relief, they seemed to be paying no attention to the almost-fight in the back seats, instead focused on driving the speeder. The last thing he and Thrawn needed were to be brought up on treason charges over a conversation about the Imperial Museum not having enough suggestive artwork.
Thrawn seemed to not have realized what he was saying could be considered insubordinate, (and in a Royal Imperial student uniform, no less! Eli thought, ) and was continuing on his explanation. “The site on the HoloNet I am using is for amateur artists mostly, so they can share their work with other artists, and get feedback and critique as well.”
He was navigating away from the page with the image and Eli looked a little closer at the site-
“You have an account on here? Are- do you post on here??”
Thrawn looked up at Eli. “Yes, I have an account, but no, I do not post any artwork. Having an account lets you save pieces into your own collections, and also to communicate with the artists. It has been very helpful to learn more casual Basic than what I can learn from a training course or from speaking to our instructors and classmates.”
Probably how he learned words like ‘anonymity', Eli thought, crossing his arms and slouching back into his seat. This was not how he wanted things to go today. He’d just wanted to get out of his stuffy dorm room, get some clean socks, have a few hours where he could just switch off and walk around. Explore the city, buy some shirts, just be regular for five minutes instead of whatever all this was about… weird holonet fetishes, in the back of a public speeder no less!
Their driver coughed, pulling Eli from his thoughts. He angrily looked up to see Thrawn staring at him, one eyebrow raised, and Eli realized with slowly dawning horror that he’d said most of that out loud. His voice froze in his throat as he tried to think of something else to say, but Thrawn raised a hand to stop him.
“Vanto,” Thrawn said, “I did not mean to make you upset.” Here he hesitated for a moment. “I had thought…”
Realization dawned on Eli as he thought back. “Oh, you thought all humans were so casual about weird fetish stuff? Because so many of us post stuff like this on the HoloNet? I told you, you can’t just judge an entire people by whatever weird art they make. I told you!”
Thrawn, to his credit, looked sheepish. “You did. I… apologize.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eli said, leaning further back into his seat and propping one of his feet up on the partition. “Never show me anything like that ever again. And don’t go looking at stuff like that in a public speeder!”
“It was for r-”
“Yes, I know you were ‘doing research’ or whatever, but anyone else who sees you isn’t gonna buy that. Do whatever you want in private, preferably when I’m not there. Definitely when I’m not there.”
“...I understand.” Thrawn put the datapad on standby and back into his pack. “You do not need to apologize for your outburst. We will go to the trade district and… ‘just be regular for five minutes’,” he said, and smiled. It was a weird look on him, and Eli regretted every single thing in his life that had led up to this speeder ride.
“Sure. Great. Let’s do that.” With that, Eli went back to scowling out the window.
The silence in the speeder was broken after only a few moments, by a voice from the front of the speeder. “Have you seen the ones of the Z-95 Headhunter? That’s impressive stuff.”
Eli looked up in alarm; the pilot was looking at him in the rearview screen and seemed to be holding back laughter. Thrawn, however, seemed to not notice. “I just saw those earlier, actually. Impressive how they incorporated the engines into the design…”
He tried his best to tune them both out and watched the approaching landing platform for the trade district. This was going to be a long day… and a long few months at Royal Imperial.