Hey have we considered that the reason that one guy in the Prequels was really chill about offering some Jedi death sticks isn't some massive conspiracy that the Jedi are all doing massive amounts of drugs, or even that he didn't realize they were Jedi, but instead that arresting people for non-violent drug offenses is fucking evil and the Jedi aren't cops? And the people of Coruscant generally know that as long as they're not killing people the Jedi aren't actually interested in fucking them over?

In The Clone Wars season 2 episode 22 "Lethal Trackdown"-- written by George Lucas, Dave Filoni, and Drew Z. Greensburg -- we clearly see Jedi Master Plo Koon and Padawan Ahsoka Tano use the Force to evade paying the public transit fare on Coruscant -- after checking to make sure that the transit droid isn't going to catch them. There's no plot reason for them to skip the fare, they just do it out of seemingly habit.

The Jedi do not give a fuck about non-violent crimes against the state -- they are actively committing those crimes themselves.

Deathstick dealers get mind-trick-rehab as a harm reduction tool.

I want to emphasize that not only is there no plot-driven reason for them to jump the fare, but that neither of them even discuss what they're about to do. No patting themselves down for passes or change.

The equivalent of an Arch Bishop and a Novitiate Nun just decided to commit "crimes" together without hesitation.

Plo Koon doesn't even question if Ahsoka knows what to do! Force Fare Evasion 101 is obviously an Initiate-level class.

Do you see my vision -- tiny precious Jedi initiates who are made of goodness and light, and are also the bane of their creche-masters and the local public transit authority. The children yearn for the rails. Nothing can stop them from what they crave.

I see your vision, & I raise you:

There's not an official Force-based Fare Evasions class, because the Masters feel it would be setting a bad example for impressionable younglings who, after all, will have an entire apprenticeship in which they'll be practicing petty crimes & misdemeanors, & the justification thereof. Besides, they like a little plausible deniability when the Transit Authority occasionally comes to complain.

What there is, however, is an unofficial, hands-on seminar in the subject, taught by Senior Padawans when it's their turn to take a group of Initiates on a "field trip" to Umate Monument Plaza. Most Padawans given this assignment don't need to be explicitly told that this is the purpose of said field trip, because most of them remember their own Initiate trip.

Anakin did not know about this tradition. When Obi-Wan asked him if any of the kids had trouble with the skill & got a blank expression for his trouble, he came to the unfortunate realization that he had ¹failed to teach his Padawan a critical life skill, & ²he had not overseen his last field trip. Hawk-Bat Clan, however, felt that they were the most fortunate group of Initiates to ever walk the corridors of the Temple, because they got not only a 2nd field trip, but also milkshakes from a seedy diner out of the deal. Not to mention a new non-Jedi friend.

Maybe.

But my instinct is that he considers them suckers for doing it & losers for getting caught, & will thus feel that they deserve whatever they get.

Gen X loved dragged queens-

Legit, some of the same people who loved Bon Jovi & Twisted Sister are now crying about drag. Make it make sense.

Data: *insists he's incapable of love*

Also Data: creates a daughter and gives her a name that translates to "beloved"

I kinda think half the point of Data is the question "does the feeling matter if the action is good?"

He's behaved honorably on many occasions, but he doesn't have a sense of honor, just observations that tell him what honorable behavior looks like. He does brave, sometimes incredibly brave, things, but he doesn't have the fear response that makes courage courageous. He often behaves in loving & caring ways, but... How much of that is him imitating that behavior as he has seen it in other people?

How much of our honorable, brave, or loving behavior is really acting in ways we've seen demonstrated, or can extrapolate from things we've seen demonstrated, as the honorable, brave, or loving thing to do in the current circumstances?

Nobody really knows, but does it ultimately matter?

The irony of Worf constantly comparing Jadzia to Klingon women is that a female Klingon would have stabbed him by now for the way he is acting.

Grilka would have challenged him to a duel to the death if he acted like that with her.

Worf was in no way prepared for an actual Klingon woman. He needed a woman who was just as into roleplaying a Klingon as him, but was less into justifiable homicide than Klingon standard.

That's why they worked so well.

What if Ezri just told everyone privately, that were it not for Worf, Jadzia would've chosen them. What if the constant nature of Dax is to be a little goofy. What if that doesn't mix well with Ezri's awkwardness. Ezri says it to Kira in the turbo lift, leaving her there and in her bewilderment, Kira forgets to step off the lift. Ezri nonchalantly says it to Quark during a dabo game and while he's trying to process this, she leans over to the pretty dabo girl and says it to her as well. The entire station is stricken with a feeling of confusion, grief and regret, but Ezri just pulled the funniest prank ever (to her).

This is canon to me now. I really hated how Ezri said that Julian would’ve been the one had it not been for Worf, because it so would not have been. Jadzia turned Julian down years before Worf was ever a possibility, and Julian eventually accepted that. I get that they wanted to introduce the whole Ezri/Julian pairing, but making out that Ezri only went with Julian because Jadzia would’ve done had Worf not come along was a really bad writing choice.

See, I think she said that because Ezri was still fucked up trying to integrate her previous hosts. I don't think she was in love with him, I think Ezri herself had a crush on him, got that mixed up with the warm friendship feels from Jadzia, & thought it was love.

I furthermore think Bashir absolutely should have known better - may in fact have known better - & that it was a serious regression of his character to the kind of slimeball who takes advantage of women in a vulnerable place.

Worf, Sisko, & Kira should all have taken a turn kicking Bashir's ass.

just finished small gods by terry pratchett and now i'm a having an existential crisis about what religion even is and also the fact that terry pratchett was a real person that wrote books and i just get to read them for free from the library

That's actually one of the reasons that I always recommend Small Gods to anyone wanting to get into Discworld, & anyone I'm wanting to get into it.

Yeah, the fact that it's one of the 1st stand-alones after Sir Terry really hit his groove would probably be reason enough, but the philosophical & theological questions are the bigger reason. If a person can handle Small Gods, they can handle Discworld, but if they can't, they may as well stop right there. It's the perfect testing ground.

Anyone who reblogs this post will have their user written on a poster saying "We Stand With Palestine" that I hope to put up somewhere in the village I live in, or the town that the village is next to.

-- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

You know what. Given that Love Potions are basically the magical equivalent of a roofie I'm going to go ahead and say good for Snape. You go dude.

I headcannon that Snape is a more involved Head of House than McGonagall, & that one of the things he does is hold 2 whole-House meetings - one the 1st Saturday morning after the start of the year, & again after Christmas break.

When he 1st began teaching he only held the start of year meeting, to put the fear of God & Snape into the little cretins. But after 2 Valentine's Days as a professor he added the post-Christmas meeting, because the next selfish little shit in his House to drug someone with love potion will absolutely suffer his wrath, as will any accomplices either before or after the fact.

Casual reminder that, yeah, the Jedi train a lot with their lightsabers, but that they're also incredibly well-educated for the kinds of missions they take on, like Mace is just easily slicing into the power grid of this world here to find the person he's looking for and does so casually, this is the kind of thing that Jedi just know how to do as a matter of course. Sure, everyone has specialties, some Jedi are better at some things than other Jedi, but in general they are trained to be extremely capable in a wide range of capabilities because their work needs them to be. You drop a Jedi in the middle of nowhere, they're not helpless, they have missions to complete, like those are skills that are valuable. I think a lot about the argument on how Jedi aren't prepared for any kind of life outside of the Temple if they choose to leave and how that just doesn't track for me. We see Jedi being trained in a wide variety of skills, we see them in advisory positions to various people, politicians, students, rebels, farmers, city planners, etc. You have to learn a whole lot of skills--skills that could easily be used in the wider galaxy even not as part of the Jedi--like if Mace wanted to leave the Jedi, he wouldn't just have to bounty hunt, he was a theater actor, he knows how to slice, he knows how to organize groups of people, he knows galactic history, etc. Jedi are trained to know how to do really valuable things, that's why people ask the Jedi to help them!

I wish I could remember some of the titles, but I've read a few fanfics in which a Jedi Knight's education was widely considered to be equivalent to a graduate degree. I've read others in which Padawans would finish their baseline education at 16-18, & then start taking classes (usually distance, unless they were gonna be on Coruscant for a few months) through one of the Coruscant University branches. I'm thinking of one in particular in which Obi-Wan was finishing up his Bachelor's (IIRC) in Interplanetary Politics, or something similar.

Usually, though, I've seen stories in which the Temple has a pretty big education department, with Padawans taking a diverse coarse load of technical, scientific & humanities classes through a large portion of their apprenticeship. And then Knights & Masters themselves either taking or teaching shorter classes & seminars whenever they're on-planet long enough as part of their continuous education.

The one thing everyone seems to agree on about the Jedi, even those that have a negative overall interpretation of the Order, is that they are educated, very skilled, highly competent people.

I think, from the perspective of either having or being able to very quickly pick up the skills to survive just about anywhere, nobody in the GFFA is more prepared than a Jedi. I actually kind of wonder if that's part of the reason for the average citizen resenting them.

Bad enough they're a mysterious religious group with magic nobody else understands, bad enough they seem to be working for the Senate from the average person's perspective, on top of that they're extremely well-educated to a man. People in the real world often resent the hell out of someone who's too much smarter than them or who is substantially better educated than them. No wonder Sheeve the Skeeve had such an easy time turning the galaxy against them.

I can actually see that being a bit of a problem for a Jedi trying to hide post-66. There's very little they can't do if needs be to survive somewhere, but they'd have to be careful not to let on that they're too well-educated in a lot of the places they might hide.

The thing they wouldn't be prepared for isn't the surviving, it's the loneliness. They spend their entire lives with a community to fall back on, people raised the same, with the same cultural touchstones. People who have a Yoda impression, people who remember Master Leem's navi class & getting their butts kicked in saber classes. People who remember getting chewed out by Master Nu for overdue books. And all of that is suddenly gone, and they can't even share their stories or that wicked Yoda impression with anyone ever again. Even the memory of their people has to be silenced if they want any chance to survive. That's what they wouldn't be prepared for.

Also, Mace doing space Hamlet would be epic.

my toxic trait is that even tho I think garak and bashir are totally into each other I just can’t ship them because garak would never allow himself to be happy like that and it all just feels too ooc for him

that man can only pine

Mine is that Garak spent literally years teaching Bashir how Cardassians Did Things but - other than one time when he referenced Shakespeare to his father when Bashir wasn't even there - he was never seen embracing any part of human culture in return. Belittle, complain about, or claim to be baffled by, yes, but embrace? No. Right up until the last moment, no.

Bashir was prepared to meet Garak halfway but Garak was never there so Bashir finally walked away.

But that's my entire point. Garak's way of showing appreciation is different, Garak implies things tacitly and it's Julian's job to get that, Garak sees arguing as a form of respect. All that is fine, truly, it's who he is. But the endgame, fairy-tale, happy ending for Garashir that most people envision is that Bashir moves to Cardassia and they live there together for the rest of their lives. So Bashir, a man who is very human, and embraces his human culture to the point of trying to share it as a form of engagement with Garak, is going to live in a place where he is surrounded by Cardassian culture, manners, social practices, weather, lighting and heat preferences, casual racism (let's be real here, that's not going to change overnight), and when he goes home at the end of the day he's going to get the same expectations of conformity, where at best he gets to defend his own preferences as a form of flirting? I just feel, (personally, and I'm aware most don't agree) that Garak should have given a little to him.

Acknowledging that the Federation might not be terrible is fine and shows character growth, but he did it to Quark. The same way he quoted Shakespeare at his dad and even credited Bashir with being the one to expose him to the new idea it represented, but Bashir wasn't there. He doesn't give an inch to the one person who ought to be hearing it and I believe as a result Bashir walked.

If they'd been allowed to get together on screen I would have been disappointed if they hadn't addressed Garak's lack of compromise, because I find it hard to believe Bashir wouldn't eventually have asked it of him.

Oh, that's all very well said. I completely agree. I think they have the makings of a very satisfying endgame ship, and they're the only endgame ship I personally find satisfies me on every level for both characters. But as a romantic partnership, they haven't properly explored any of the compatibility issues most people would during a courtship. But that's no surprise - canonically, they weren't lovers and had no reason to explore those things. To make a relationship work, they'd have to do that work, and figure out if compromise is even something they're willing to do. I agree that if Bashir were to give up the comfort of his native culture to live on Cardassia, then it would be very much Garak's turn to accommodate and make space for Bashir's ideological differences.

It's interesting that you see Garak's failure to meet Bashir halfway as the reason Bashir "walked" away from their friendship. That's a fair headcanon. They certainly do seem more distant after season 6 (this was a deliberate choice by the writers because they wanted to discourage Garashir). I do like the idea of an unspoken ideological rift opening up between them, especially after Garak's genocide attempt, but I also think the rise of the Dominion war heightened the uncertainty of what it meant to be close to a Cardassian. They stepped away from each other because it was easier with all the things they had to reconcile with at the time--because the timing wasn't right--but that's not in my mind a reason to believe they can't return to each other and start again. The show leaves Garak very broken and it leaves Bashir without a really satisfying answer for where he is morally after Section 31 (it can be supposed, but is never addressed explicitly), and then it has them part in a heartbreaking scene that's more convincing than anything they did with Bashir/Ezri, which is why I think Garashir shippers keep pairing them up post-canon. But yeah, it would be too easy to believe they'd simply end up together "happily ever after."

But if you're not convinced, that's okay. Like I say sometimes, you feel what you feel. 🙃

Honestly, I think a lot of Garak's apparent unwillingness to embrace human culture lay in his exile. He seems like a guy who genuinely does find other cultures interesting, but it's one thing to feel that way when safely ensconced within one's home culture, & another entirely when unwillingly cut off from it.

I think to some degree his claims about Cardassian superiority were in earnest - he is, for better or worse, his father's son - but I think a lot of it was just an expression of how lonely he was, & how deeply he missed his home. Telling Bashir how much better Cardassia was is in part just how he chooses to tease him/flirt with him, & in part how he copes with losing everything. It's a way to express the constant longing without getting too maudlin & depressed about it, a way to remember the good parts. Probably also in part, it's him glossing over the bad bits in his own mind.

I think, once he could return home, that would go a long way towards making him willing to compromise with human cultural values, at least within their home. Once he's home, he wouldn't need to cling so desperately to it. Just being able to go home would have made a relationship much more possible, IMO.

And, I've not read them yet, but I've heard that the DS9 relaunch novels have Garak working towards remaking Cardassia into a more open & humane society. Which implies that Garak did embrace some aspects of human culture. He may not have said so to Bashir, but his actions on that front would surely speak volumes to a Bashir invested in the idea of trying to make a relationship work.

no but can we talk about ds9 & its depiction of black fatherhood on tv in the 90s? in its first 5 minutes it establishes ben and jake's relationship as the most important in the show and never minimizes it. it is beautiful and powerful and we don't talk about it enough!!!

Avery Brooks actually fought extremely hard for this. If I remember correctly he was very passionate about having this great example of what black fatherhood was/is vs how it's been portrayed forever. I won't spoil the ending if you're not there yet, but he had them rewrite part of it to adhere to that.

What's always been kind of amusing to me is, Star Trek is a franchise just filled with examples of bad fathers. Yet, while most TV & movies were full of terrible examples of black fatherhood, over half of the good dads we know anything about on Star Trek were black or POC.

Worf was a terrible father, truth be told. He did mean well - he certainly didn't intentionally give the kid abandonment & daddy issues - but he kinda really messed that kid up. He was too messed up himself to be raising a kid, I think. Bashir's dad sucked, & Riker's and B'Elanna's dads both walked out on them. Odo's "dad" was arguably abusive, & definitely a gaslighter.

Then there's Dukat: he planned on murdering 2 of his kids, & actually attempted to murder the baby. He walked away from his 7 legitimate kids - though they were probably better off without his narcissistic ass - in favor of Ziyal. The one he actually loved was the codependent kid who boosted his narcissistic ego, to whom he lied constantly, & who he endlessly manipulated & intermittently abandoned. I only put him below Sarek because indications are he wasn't home enough to fuck his kids up too badly

Which brings us to the 2 worst fathers in the franchise: Enabran Tain & Sarek of Vulcan.

Sarek messed his kids up so badly that his oldest grew up to be a cult leader, & his youngest had lifelong daddy & identity issues. Spock was intermittently estranged from Sarek for his entire life, because Sarek kept picking political fights with him, disapproved of pretty much all of Spock's choices (& made certain that disapproval was known), & acted like Spock was never Vulcan enough for his ass. Which, if that was gonna be a problem for him, why did he breed with a human woman to start with!? Maddening; no wonder Spock avoided dealing with him & his bullshit as much as he could.

Then there's Garak's sperm donor, who was frankly just a monster. He abused him, belittled him, manipulated him, denied him any love or even acknowledgment, left him begging for the slightest scraps of conditional affection, basically fucked him up in every possible way short of molesting him - as far as we know, anyway, & I wouldn't put that past him, either. He induced claustrophobia in the poor man when he was just a little boy. He cut him off from both himself, & his entire society, for his 1st mistake, & then tried to kill him. He died still unwilling to call Garak "son," even after Garak begged him to.

After that endless shitshow, anyone would look good, but Sisko was wonderful dad by any metric, & so was Sisko's dad. We didn't actually see Tuvok interact with his kids much, but the way he spoke about them made it obvious that he loved them dearly. And he was actually pretty good with kids in general. Chakotay's dad was a loving father, too.

The only white guy who was actually a good father that we ever see is O'Brien; although the girl spent much more time with her mother, a lot of that was just the circumstances. Well, I suppose Troi always spoke well of her dad, so that's 2. The only other good dad is Rom.

Upon rewatch, I am more convinced than ever that Kallus defected purely due to his infatuation with Zeb.

This guy had regrets about Lasan, sure, but he has zero compunction about mass arrests of innocent people, burning down refugee camps, and withholding rations from Rebel-sympathizing laborers. The only reason why he was, in theory, opposed the genocide of Geonosis is because he didn't see any point to it (and which he denied on these grounds).

He defected initially because he fell head-over-heels for Zeb, and only assimilated the ideological stuff later.

Rewatching the episode, it absolutely comes across that what Kallus wanted was closeness--the way he talks about his squad that the rogue Lasat murdered, the way his gaze lingers on the Ghost crew joking around with Zeb, the way he tries to get anything from Konstantine when he gets back, the empty and impersonal quarters, the entire way his arguing with Zeb so quickly falls into banter, the way he trusts Zeb even when he could have shot him and saved himself when they were out of the cave. Kallus does eventually come around on the ideology stuff later, but it felt so clear that his defection wasn’t because he realized the rebels were right about the Empire, but that he defected because he wanted to be closer to Zeb/had fallen in love with him and wanted that emotional closeness with him, that kind of loyalty that he saw Zeb display, the kind where you trusted your partner with watching your back, where you were vulnerable with them, where you’d share a warm rock so you could both live, where someone drove you crazy but they were there for you and pulled you out of the frozen ice cave no matter how hard it was for them. Which is so fascinating really, because Kallus is such a hot mess of a person, the guy defects because he wants friends, because he wants to be a monster fucker, not because it’s actually the right thing to do.  What a character, I love him.

I think this is only partly right.

That he defected because he wanted friends, I'll grant. It was textually obvious that he was deeply lonely, & that seeing the Ghost crew greet Zeb with joy & relief served to rub salt in that wound, while also showing him that not everyone felt as isolated as he did. That he didn't have to feel that way.

But IMO, Kallus' journey is greater than that. Getting dicked down by a furry should not be his main motivation in a franchise that struggles to portray one of its primary themes - redemption - in an appropriate way.

It makes me sad that it’s been a month since Michael Sheen has interacted with fans on Twitter (I don’t count the tweets for causes or charities). Except for the time some ten years ago when he got off twitter all together, I think this is the longest “hiatus” he’s taken. I’ve heard, “maybe he’s just too busy” and I’m sure that’s partly true but he’s been busy before and generally doesn’t stay away more than a few days at a time.

I think we all know the real reason he’s currently gone is because he was dogpiled over his statements not being pure enough about the current situation in Palestine according to the Twitter Foreign Policy Experts who thought they’d take it upon themselves to school a 54-year-old activist who’s been watching the shifting struggles of the world for decades. Anyone who’s been following him for the past few years should have noticed by now that he doesn’t take kindly to condescention or insults and he’ll readily block those who try. In their parasocial fantasies they forget that friendliness ≠ friendship and shit you can get away with saying to RL friends may not go down well with someone they don’t really know outside of their public persona.

I hope if he finally decides to start interacting with fans again they remember to show some goddam respect. He’s NOT your buddy. He’s a friendly stranger on the internet.

Addendum: if anyone tries to make this political I will block you, no exceptions. I don’t take kindly to condescension or insults, either.

Honestly, I really believe that constant, *to her (Twitter) face* attacks about social issues are why JK Rowling went off the deep end with regard to trans issues.

People for years were on her ass about her allegedly racist naming choices for non-white characters, for her allegedly antisemitic goblins, for racist undertones in the house elves, on & on & on. None of which were entirely fair criticisms, IMO, & I don't believe she meant any of that stuff the way it was taken. But people felt no compunction about throwing all of that directly at her, constantly.

I'm not even saying she didn't have some problematic comments about trans people (plus that trash non-Potter book 😬), but then people jumped from 0-to-bigot right out the gate. And I'm not convinced she really was at the time. I think she was a middle age, religious white lady who didn't have much exposure to trans people, was uncomfortable with it - because of that & because of some trauma of her own - & probably would've come around, at least some, given some time & understanding of where she was coming from. But she got dogpiled for yet another thing where people felt she wasn't with the program enough, which made her defensive, which lead to more pile-on.

I think it was the final straw after all the other things for which she was accused of being a bigot, & she dug in her heels about it. And now we're at the point that she's angrily funding explicitly anti-trans causes & legislation - which I don't really think she'd have done before - & anytime someone wants to talk about Harry Potter or write a fanfic or anything, they feel it necessary to preface it with a 6 paragraph repudiation of JKR, filled with assurances to anyone reading just how much they despise her politics, & that they are of course themselves not nasty bigots like her.

Yeah, she should've gotten the fuck off Twitter for a while once she started getting upset, but people also talked to her in ways you'd never dare talk to your unrepentantly racist grandma. If people want to jump down celebrities' throats every time they say something not acceptable to their sensibilities, with no regard for any nuance or considerations, we'll lose the ability to talk to them at all, & some of them are gonna lose their shit & become a tangible part of the problem.

I am gonna be extremely irritated if it gets to where the 6 paragraph repudiations become a thing with Good Omens stuff because people overreacted to the perceived impurity of Michael Sheen's activism.

Broke: Star Wars mentioning Kalluzeb on their social media is queerbaiting

Woke: Star Wars is finally acknowledging the beautiful queer story they created. Kalluzeb may not make it into the shows, but this acknowledgment is meaningful for the fans

Bespoke: Star Wars is canonizing a queer furry couple to spite Ron DeSantis personally

Oh, I really hope that's what they're doing. I can't tell you how happy the idea of them doing it for spite makes me.

Tfw your student is apparently still bothered by your 20+ year mass murder, child-killing, genocide spree:

"Is that what this is about?"

Really???? You're still hung up on that??

How much apologizing does he have to do??? (I mean, once would be nice.)

FR, I know that in Legends Leia forgave him (kinda), but I genuinely prefer that she refuse to. Because even after everything, he's like this.

the way miss joanne purposely kept snape's response to dumbledore asking him about why he didn't just ask voldemort to spare lily and kill james and harry...

there is a lot of evidence that snape did just this. voldemort does not hesitate in killing james, but he does for lily.

but why not just write snape saying out of his own mouth, "yeah i tried that but he refused." jo intentionally wrote it so we never find out snape's response. dumbledore cuts him off and asserts that snape's intention was to let lily's husband and child die.

but why do it like this? snape doesn't defend himself after this, but that doesn't necessarily mean it was because dumbledore was right. he may have shrank back not out of shame at the truth, but out of despair of how little dumbledore thought of him. he might have moved on to ask him to hide them all because he thought it useless to explain himself if *that* was how lowly dumbledore thought of him, and/or realised dumbledore's opinion of him didn't matter righr now, what mattered was keeping them safe.

dumbledore clearly didn't really believe snape truly loved lily or at least thought he had gotten over it. why else was he brought to tears at snape's patronus? "after all this time?"

the point of this post isn't necessarily to argue snape's intentions, but to highlight how jo makes snape ambiguous deliberately.

Thing is, he never really defended himself when Lily accused him of things, either. Well, he tried occasionally pre-Hogwarts (like after dropping that branch on Petunia's head, a denial she refused to entertain), but when she accused him of planning to be a Death Eater, she didn't really give him the chance to deny it before she was back on a tear about it. It seems people were always telling him what he intended, rather than actually asking, because they didn't really care what he had to say; they'd already decided. Doing it this way highlights how misunderstood & overlooked he was, especially since it's right after seeing a youth that was full of Lily doing him just as wrong.

Mind, I don't think he intended to save Harry & James by going to Dumbledore - he wanted a first line of protection for Lily, knowing he couldn't really rely on Voldemort's mercurial mercies for her safety. It's not even that I think he especially wanted them dead - though I'm sure James' death wouldn't exactly have brought a tear to his eye - but Lily was his focus & concern. He wasn't gonna be upset about Dumbledore protecting all 3, he just wasn't thinking about the other 2.

Which is fair enough, IMO. Who the hell risks being tortured to death for an enemy's safety? What reasonable person would even expect such a thing? Really, doing it the way JK did also highlights how unreasonable & moralizing, how self-righteous & condescending, Dumbledore could be.