For all you Bendu fans, did you miss the part where the Bendu literally just sat around and did nothing, then threw a tantrum when someone called it out on it? The whole point of the Bendu as a character is that for all the things it says, it’s a giant hypocrite? You know, like what people like to accuse Jedi of being, when the Jedi very much are not?
I have recently been informed that the term “gray jedi” actually has several different meanings that noone seems to actually agree on. So, for the sake of clarification, in my Anti-Gray jedi posts, I am referring to the definition of a force-user that uses both the “Light” and the Dark Side in “equal” amounts. That is the concept I am referring to as bullshit.
Luke, Rey, Grogu, Ezra, Cal, Kanan, and Ahsoka are not grey Jedi nor are they going to be grey jedi
They are all light siders
Grey jedi do not exist
There is no grey side of the Force, and you cannot use both sides of the Force because
You cannot have balance by using both sides of the Force (for the record, “light side” is something that never comes up in Lucas’ SW, it’s always “dark side” and the Force itself, implying that the Force is light) because the dark side is imbalance by its own nature, and light is balance
In terms of the wider, galactic-scale story of the sequel trilogy, Kylo is the hero’s direct personal antagonist, but Hux is the overarching villain and drives the plot more (until Episode IX, where, somehow, Palpatine returned). Then in Episode IX, Hux is integral to the triumph of the Resistance over Palpatine.
Because of all this, Hux’s character arc covers the wider-scale story of the sequel trilogy pretty extensively, but because I get the sense he wasn’t intended to be that significant, it doesn’t overlap with the established protagonists’ arcs all that much besides being kind of a background antagonistic force.
So, basically, if there were to be a book or movie about Hux covering the events of the sequel trilogy, it would be pretty easy to tie the original story together without just rehashing and rewriting. And the best part is that, like, if this hypothetical story were to really get into it, Hux turning against the Order in the end and getting it defeataed could be such a good character story to go with the plot story. The fanatical idealist who, although too much of an extremist to be a good person, stuck by his principles even when that meant having to destroy his own life’s work to prevent it from being used to destroy the galaxy.
Anyway, get Hux a spin-off and boom you’ve got the perfect premise to tie together the sequels as a cohesive single storyline instead of a jumbled unplanned mess, a proactive protagonist (and one who isn’t overly similar to other current canon SW protagonists), and a great tragic character arc that resolves in a way perfectly fitting a “well-intentioned extremist” type villain protagonist whose whole shtick is “fix the galaxy at all costs.” I’m sleep deprived but thanks for coming to my TED talk.
ALSO also, it would be really easy to have Hux as a protagonist without having to villify the actual good guys, since he has plenty of also-evil enemies who could provide conflict, and you could also work in a lot of conflict around his failing health and attempts to cover it up and stave off his own potential death by overwork. He’d be a great basis for a story from the villain’s POV but without putting the heroes through awful character derailment.
The Funniest Possible Star War: an AU where the Kaminoans get wise just a LITTLE earlier.
Like. Instead of waiting until the inhibitor chips are activated and the Empire is already ascendant to realize that the Galactic Empire absolutely will not allow there to be a planet that mass-produces clone armies for the highest bidder, they have this realization BEFORE Order 66 goes out.
AU where the Kaminoan government looks at their position, looks at the likely fallout, and weighs their futures under a Galactic Empire to whom they are a threat that has outlived its usefulness VS a grateful but still slow-moving Republic, with all its factions and legalities intact, its social mores primarily unchanged….its army filled with thinking, feeling men to whom Kamino is their homeworld and who are in control of their free will and thus capable of refusing orders that strike at their own hearts…its main enemy in the form of the Separatist Alliance neutralized but not utterly annihilated, ripe for both sides being played against the middle…
And quietly, about six weeks before Knightfall, without telling anyone, just…..deactivates the chips. Sends out a pulse via comm channel designed to fry or alter them. Remote killswitch. Something like that.
So Palpatine like. He’s WON. He’s TRIUMPHANT. He kills the Jedi strike team, gets Anakin to kill Mace Windu, names his new apprentice Vader, has him swear allegiance, sends him to wipe out the Jedi, goes all “COMMANDER CODEEEE”
“exEcUtE oRDeR SIxtY sIx”
and
nothing
happens.
Cody politely asks for clarification because that’s not a term in the GAR manual, sir, apologies. Long pause. Cody equally politely apologizes and explains that he’s in a pitched battle, sir, but I’m sure the General will contact you when we’ve taken the planet.
[Palpatine voice] “Hwat.”
He hits the next button on his carefully-curated Order 66 contact booklet for the high-priority targets he wants taken out before the general transmission so they don’t get any warning. He sits impatiently through the tinkly elevator music.
“COMMANDER REX EXECUTE ORDER 66″
Rex blinks, explains he’s not familiar with that code, sir, but Rex is a little less polite than Cody due to long-term exposure to Anakin Skywalker, and has the presence of mind to also point out that the Supreme Chancellor isn’t even technically IN the GAR chain of command, he’s a CIVILIAN leader, what’s going on–
Palpatine hangs up on him.
Okay, fine, whatever. Annoying but not unsurpassable, those two were ALWAYS an irritant, their clone commanders must have done something to the chips, it WAS a clone from Skywalker’s battalion who nearly discovered them after all. He’ll take out the rest of the Council and the all-call general transmission will take out the rest of the Order, he can deal with the treacherous 501-B and 212th later–
Shaak Ti’s clone commander asks in abject bewilderment how the Supreme Chancellor even gothis personal comm number. He’s not even on duty. It’s 3am. Half the Council’s clones don’t even respond. Those that do just promise to have their Jedi call back about this Order 66 thing when they’re available.
He sends the general transmission with significantly less gravitas than originally planned.
Heimmediatelystarts getting confused email notifications. Unduli sends a TEXT from some random rank-and-file clone’s comms politely reminding him that she was present for the most recent strategy meeting and there was no operation codenamed Order 66, and reminds him coolly to respect the chain of command. Depa Billaba’s commander not only calls back but actually GETS HER ON COMMS to ask if she knows the term. They patch her padawan into the call to puzzle it out. The padawan asks Palpatine what happened to his face. He sits through three full minutes of playful banter before screaming and cutting the line.
Anakin gets downstairs to kick off Knightfall. The 501st blinks at their orders, exchange long looks, agree wholeheartedly, and stun him in the back the moment he turns around before dragging his ass to the Temple medical wing.
“They didn’t seem to understand the fact that Anakin is simply greedy”
Some of the people had a hard time with the reason that Anakin goes bad. Somebody asked whether somebody could kill Anakin’s best friend, so that they really gets angry. They wanted a real betrayal, such as, “You tried to kill me so now I’m going to try and kill you.” They didn’t seem to understand the fact that Anakin is simply greedy. There is no revenge. The revenge of the Sith is Palpatine. It doesn’t have much to do with Darth Vader; he’s a pawn in the whole scheme…“ - George Lucas, The Making of Revenge of the Sith page 188
I think I should probably unfollow some of the Star Wars blogs I follow, not because I don’t like their content or even think they’re wrong, but because a good 25% of my dash is people emphatically pointing out that attachment is supposed to mean possessiveness, that the Jedi were good people who thought good things, and that Anakin was a selfish dickhead + cool motive, still baby murder.
Like. This is all correct! And I appreciate that these blogs, which are far more popular and active than I am, probably get a lot of people insisting the opposite and are just as tired of that. But to me it feels like evangelism with some vague “it’s ‘Eastern philosophy’ so if you don’t like it you’re a closed-minded bigot” thrown in and it’s really goddamn annoying when my personal approach to the infinite interpretations of space wizard drama is to just take it for granted that the fic is set in a universe where whatever point the author wants to make is objective fact.
Is that universe the same one as canon? I don’t know and I don’t care as long as you tell me a good story about it. I have 2-3 essays I want to write about how Star Wars is fucking dark and how actually saying “oh it’s based on Buddhism so it’s morally superior to whatever you think” is kinda fucking sketchy and how bitch, all this nonattachment doctrine sounds a whole lot like the lies my depression tells me, but this isn’t the place for them
(in part because desktop tumblr on a tablet has an issue where I can’t scroll down far enough to see most of the “post” button and so can’t draft or queue anything)
so instead you get this vague irritated incoherent rant that won’t fix anything or make any point or change anybody’s mind I’m just fucking. Frustrated. Ugh.
It’s painful enough that Obi-Wan can’t use the Force because people would know he was a Jedi, that he can’t even speak about the trauma of living through his people’s genocide, that he can’t even practice his own religious culture, but what’s really destroying me is that it isn’t just the Force stuff that Obi-Wan is no longer doing, it’s the Jedi philosophy of emotional regulation that comes with the Force and being a Jedi.
Obi-Wan has fallen to his grief, it is consuming him, it is warping him, it’s not just that he’s turning away people like Nari, but that he’s also holding onto his pain, he’s not letting it go. The Force is based on your emotional wellbeing, if you connect to the Force through anger and fear and pain, that is the dark side. If you connect to it through compassion and calm and love, that is the light side. Jedi have to accept the circumstances they find themselves in, they have to let go of their hurts, because their connection to the Force is fundamentally about that emotional wellbeing, it’s not just Jedi philosophy, it’s literally how the Force works.
But Obi-Wan isn’t a Jedi anymore. The time of the Jedi is over.
So he holds onto his pain, he holds onto his hurt, he holds onto his attachment to Anakin, which is the inability to accept that life changes and you have to let go when it’s time, you cannot grasp onto something so hard that you crush it because you are afraid to live without it, that’s what attachment is. It is everything the Jedi have trained against doing.
But the time of the Jedi is over.
The Jedi and their light and their teachings and their ways are gone, so he holds on because he doesn’t know how to let go of mourning Anakin and the Jedi, even when Bail Organa himself calls him desperately and pleads with him to help save Leia. It’s not until Bail hauls his ass all the way out to Tatooine and tells him, right to his face, “Move on. Be done with it.”
Those words brought me to tears, because Bail Organa isn’t just telling Obi-Wan to rescue his daughter to be a Jedi again, but telling him to let it fucking go, because that’s what Jedi do. Protect people with your lightsaber when you can, love them and help them when you can, but when the time comes, if you can’t save them, you have to train yourself to let go.
George Lucas says that’s how the Force and Star Wars and the Jedi work and I am IN PAIN because Obi-Wan truly believes that the Jedi are dead, that his old life is dead, and it’s not just swinging his lightsaber around or making people float that he’s buried in the ground, but his willingness to accept the circumstances he’s in and to move with the flow of what’s happened.
The Jedi say you can’t destroy yourself in your grief–and Obi-Wan is destroying himself in his grief here, he is doing exactly everything that the Jedi warn will happen when you don’t let go.
He’s been unwilling to let go of his feelings, because he’s not a Jedi anymore.
He doesn’t connect to the Force because that would mean he would need to let go of his feelings and he can’t do that.
The time of the Jedi is over, he says, and we see what it’s doing to him, how it destroys him day by day. He may not be sinking into the dark side, only because he’s not using the Force, but he is suffering all the more for it, because he has forsaken the lessons of the Jedi. Because the time of the Jedi is over.
And a twist of cruel irony, rejecting who he is as a Jedi because it hurts too much and it’s easier to wallow presumably does the same thing it did to Kanan: it cuts him off from Yoda (and probably Qui-Gon too), all he has left of the Order and of home. By refusing to let go of the pain, all he gains is more loneliness and pain.
Y’all want to see a page from the comics that Haunts Me™
Star Wars: Darth Vader and the Cry of Shadows #5
Anakin Skywalker Darth Vader: Child Killer is such a Theme in Star Wars media. It should just be a cliché. It’s a very easy shorthand to communicate to an audience that a person is losing or has lost their humanity, and is becoming the embodiment of pure evil, and yet, every time, it makes me cringe.
It reminds me of a fascinating sequence when Vader kills his younger self in a vision in Darth Vader (2015) #24. There’s this really charming exchange where he kills Obi-Wan (again)and gets the last word this time (not that he’d probably been obsessing over what he wanted to have said or anything of course not).
“I’m more powerful with every step I take away from you.” Sure, Jan.
Anyway, the memory of young Anakin Skywalker shows up allllll angry because Darth Vader killed his beloved Master!!
They fight, and of course Vader wins (it is his vision after all). He then says it himself:
“You were a child. I am well accustomed to killing children.”
Anakin Vader knows what he’s doing. He knows what he’s done. He is able to admit it to himself, without any self-censure. It’s just a statement of fact. He is an executioner of children. This is the evil of the dark side at play. He’s lost all compassion, all humanity.
It’s very fun to tell stories about ~sexy and morally ambiguous gray jedi~ and easy to avoid engaging with the premise of Star Wars worldbuilding that the Sith and the dark side are evil, and that evil has a real, concrete meaning (aka children die).
I love the comics a lot for not shying away from engaging with Vader’s worst deeds. There’s so much fascinating characterization and worldbuilding going on, and you get to see panels like the first, which can haunt your nightmares! So it’s good times all around, highly recommend
It’s apparently impossible to even open a Darth Vader comic without the younglings showing up hahaha sorry after finishing this post I just opened Darth Vader (2020) #7 and this flashback was the beginning haahah it’s almost like Anakin isn’t over it, or something.
Though that makes sense from this from Darth Vader (2017) #21:
What I find so interesting about this motif is the unsaid implication of what Anakin believes he did. Darth Vader is not only an executioner of children but he believes himself to be the executioner of his own child. I have thought so many times about the murder of the children,and specifically his belief that he murdered his own child being the cornerstone of what keeps him in he dark side and unable to turn back when he has so many chances. The comics further do a wonderful job,like in his force vision of Obi-Wan forgiving him,showing that it is his own self hatred and belief of going too far that keeps him in the dark and under the assumption that there is no going back or returning to the light.
And you show perfectly how it’s a reoccurring theme in the comics that it is the children he focuses on and comes back to again and again. For the audience absolutely,it is the ultimate act of evil that humans abhore,the abuse and murder of children,the ultimate innocents. But I think it further illustrates his absolute self hatred,because as you said he knows what he did,and he knows what he is. And that specific self hatred,Anakin Skywalker child killer,Anakin skywalker slaughterer of his own child,it is the root of his own self agony and loathing that keeps him so firmly planted in the dark.
I love the comics for that further layer of nuance it lends Anakin’s redemption and relationship with Luke. We know why and how Anakin is redeemed,but it is interesting to examine that the revelation that he didn’t butcher his own child like he thought,was the slightest,minuscule lessening of guilt and self hatred that could allow the dimmest glimmer of a thought that a return to the light and redemption was a possibility. With the knowledge that there was one less child he slaughtered,it allowed Anakin the forgiveness he had sought all along,not Obi-Wan’s,who would have willingly gave it,but his own,which he was unable to give and why he stayed in the dark.
After watching episode 3 of Kenobi, I rewatched The Phantom Menace and I am feeling a certain way about things.
Little Anakin is so cute. He’s so sweet and genuine and he has such generosity of spirit. I understand why Qui-Gon believed in him. Of course he would think there’s no way this boy could grow up to be so violent, to drag someone he loved across a burning fire. How could he?
I see Obi-Wan with an arm around Anakin and turning to Anakin and promising him, promising him that he will be a Jedi. The weight of that promise being that Obi-Wan will stand with him and guide him and teach him so that he can become the best version of himself, the one that he dreams he can be. Obi-Wan promises to love him.
Before Obi-Wan makes that promise, we’re shown the seeds of Vader. They are small. Those seeds are so small. They are so tiny they haven’t even started to break from their shell. But they are there. And someone has to recognize them. Someone has to point them out and look at them and ask what they will grow into and ask if it’s really a good idea to water and fertilize the good sprouts when the bad seeds could grow along with them. Maybe it would be better to let fate take its course. Maybe on their own, the bad seeds won’t grow so large. Maybe they won’t even grow at all.
When the Council shines a light on those seeds, Qui-Gon disregards them because he sees how great the good sprout could grow. He says look at this beautiful plant I have nurtured, let me do the same for another. He’s not finished nurturing the first plant.
When the Council asks Anakin to take a look at those seeds, examine them, study them to see what they truly are, he refuses. When they ask if he is prepared to dig them out, because he is the only one who can dig them out, he refuses. He glares at them when they step back.
But the sprout is so good and full and has so much potential. There is time, he will grow, and he can learn to examine the bad seeds within. He can learn to see them for what they are and root them out so that they don’t strangle the good growth. He will not choose to let them grow. They have faith.
Qui-Gon asks his first plant to share with the new one, to guide him, to let him grow, to nurture him. And he does. Obi-Wan does all of that for Anakin and more. He allows them to become intertwined and supports Anakin as he grows but Anakin does not grow to stand on his own. Because ten years later he still refuses to examine the bad seeds and dig them out, they have grown beneath the dirt and strangle the roots of that sweet and genuine boy who helped those strangers in need. His good stems are struggling because of it.
The bad seeds breach the surface and Anakin pushes them back under the soil. He doesn’t snip them. He doesn’t pull them out by the roots. He doesn’t even dig into the dirt to study them. He buries them so that Obi-Wan won’t see. So that he won’t have to see.
They continue to grow together anyway. Until the bad seeds breach the soil again and Obi-Wan has to snip the stems because Anakin won’t do it himself. He didn’t snip them deep enough. They grew back. And now that little boy who had such generosity and so much love to give to others is dragging the man who promised to love him across a blazing fire.
Love this metaphor. I think it’s important to note also that the “bad seeds continue to grow anyway” because who keeps nourishing them? Sidious. And they didn’t necessarily begin as bad - perhaps sick, one could say, a little damaged but through no fault of their own, not yet - but rather grew to become such as the plant they sprouted rotted and festered with time. Those seeds could have just as easily flourished, grown healthy and strong instead, with compassion and love and all the heart that sweet boy came into the Order with had there not been poison in the soil the seeds were planted in. But you can take any seed and stick it in salted earth and no amount of rain or sunshine or tender coaxing will keep that plant abundant and green. The leaves will yellow and wilt, the stalks will sag, too thin and sickly to bear their weight.
maul is not like the antithesis of obi-wan but the negation of him. or rather specifically what obi-wan stands for (which is just the jedi order As An Institution). and the only way obi-wan is ever able to process the fatal contradictions that maul poses is to kill him, because you cannot acknowledge those contradictions (ie, the myth of meritocracy & cosmic justice) and FULLY internalise what they mean without giving up on the jedi order As An Institution and obi-wan is incapable of doing that. so he kills maul
So I’ve been thinking about this scene right here:
I always found it odd that Rex would mention Hevy in that list despite only knowing him for such a short amount of time. Especially when you think of Hardcase who we know has fought beside him for a long time or Tup who died right before Fives. That is until I remembered what happened in the episode Rookies when Rex goes:
And later in the episode we see this:
And then it shows Rex leaving first because “I’m always first.”
And we all know how that episode ends.
Now move ahead to Plan of Dissent and what do we see?
Rex is in the back. He probably blamed himself for Hevy’s death and felt guilty for being the first one out not even realizing Hevy wasn’t with them. He was the one to give Hevy the job to fix the remote. He never stopped to check if Hevy was behind them until it was to late. He mentions Hevy because he was probably Rex’s biggest regret. He was a shiny who just saw real combat for the first time. Rex probably spent nights lying awake thinking of how Hevy’s death could have been avoided. Of what he could have done different. It’s something he probably never lets himself forget.
I have a very spicy and galaxy-brained take that none of you are prepared for but I’m gonna say it anyway.
To clarify: In Star Wars: the Clone Wars season 1 episodes 11 and 12 “Dooku Captured” and “The Gungan General” (2009), Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi meet Hondo Ohnaka for the first time when they, along with Count Dooku, are captured and held for ransom by him. This establishes the dynamic between Anakin, Obi-Wan and Hondo. Later, in season 5 episode 5 “Tipping Points” (2012), the conclusion to the Onderon story arc, since the Jedi and the Republic cannot directly interfere with the Onderon Rebellion, Anakin pays Hondo to deliver heavy weapons to the Onderon rebels so that the rebels will get the reinforcements they need but Republic will have plausible deniability, so overall Hondo has a small but very impactful role in the Onderon arc. The Onderon arc is crucial to the backstory and overall character arc of Saw Gerrera, who eventually becomes a huge pain in the Empire’s ass, but most notably raises and trains Jyn Erso, who then goes on to lead the mission to steal the plans for the first Death Star. In addition, Dooku later sends Grievous to destroy Hondo’s stronghold to get payback which is the beginning of how Hondo eventually loses his crew, which results in him eventually meeting Ezra Bridger, thus getting involved with the Rebellion, and in Star Wars: Rebels season 3 episodes 1 and 2 “Steps Into Shadow Parts 1 and 2″ (2017), Hondo informs the growing Rebellion of some old Republic Y-Wings in the possession of the Empire and helps them steal the Y-Wings before the Empire dismantles them. Those Y-Wings later become a key part of the Rebel Alliance fleet, and are the SAME Y-Wings used during the battle against the first Death Star. In conclusion, if Hondo Ohnaka had not decided to hold two Jedi and a Sith Lord hostage to make a quick million that one time, then the Death Star would never have been destroyed.
A lot of fic is predicated on the assumption of the Dark Side being a potential break-glass-in-case-of-emergency Hail Mary power-up. It’s in like a zillion of them; the hero is losing the fight, he unzips Dark Side and wins, then gets unfairly persecuted for just trying to survive. But–like Force exhaustion–I don’t think there’s much evidence of that, either.
TPM:
Maul vs Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon: there’s no indication that Obi-Wan leaned into the Dark Side here, or, rather, that Obi-Wan won because he leaned into the Dark Side. He wins after he calms down, even.
AotC:
Anakin vs Dooku: if Anakin tried to summon more power here, it sure didn’t work.
RotS:
Anakin vs Dooku: Anakin does win this fight after getting visibly upset, but Anakin was also always meant to win this fight. This was a fixed encounter, and I hesitate to use it as weighty evidence.
Anakin vs Obi-Wan: if Anakin tried to summon more power here, it sure as shit didn’t work.
ANH
Dark Side didn’t keep Vader from being punted into space like a field goal
ESB:
I’m not sure what you could even suggest as potential line-toeing here. Ironically, neither Luke nor Vader achieves their objective on Bespin. If the Dark Side is a hax power-up, nobody used it here.
RotJ:
Luke vs Vader and Sidious: so here’s the clearest case for a Dark Side power-up–Luke goes from getting bodied by Vader to just hammering him. A version of the script says this:
Itdoes say “realizes he is using the dark side” right there! But it also says that Luke has grown much stronger since Bespin. I can agree that Luke drew on the dark, but I don’t think his moment of superiority came solely from the dark side. I don’t think this was a Super Saiyan level of magic power jump.
And Vader was not on his A-game, either; even Like can feel how conflicted he is, and Darth Vader absolutely does not want anyone to know he feels like that.
I also think it’s worth pointing out that being able to pound Vader like that didn’t actually save the day for Luke. If he had killed Vader right there and attempted to finish off Palpatine still in full loyalty to the Rebellion, he would have gotten fucked--as he does immediately after this scene, when Palpatine accepts his refusal and effortlessly fries him. It was not a case of “Luke could have won if he’d just taken a lil bit of dark side, as a treat”.
tl;dr I don’t the dark side is a powerlevel button. Sith are not powerful because they can throw chairs around harder than the Jedi ever could, they’re powerful because they’re willing to do that unethically. They all talk it up as hot shit because the entire arc of every Sith is someone who starts buying their own bullshit.
e: actually, that’s a better way of phrasing it–the dark side is exactly like cocaine in that you FEEL like it’s given you all sorts of power but its effect is nothing more mystical what than you’d have gotten from an adrenaline rush.
We also have, in ESB, Luke asking whether the Dark Side is stronger and Yoda emphatically answering that it’s not. I suppose a viewer doesn’t have to take Yoda at his word but there’s really nothing to suggest he’s wrong about this when he’s not just there to teach Luke, but also the audience about the Force.
I think a lot of the misconception stems from the popular trope (outsideof Star Wars) of characters getting mad and that’s what lets them win. But Star Wars is, in some sense, an active rejection of that trope.
If anything, doesn’t Star Wars support the idea of the light side being more powerful?
TPM: Obi-Wan uses anger and then is about to get killed (would have if Maul didn’t waste time gloating). He calms down, uses (and trusts) the Force to get himself out of the pit, grab the lightsaber, and defeat his enemy.
AOTC: Dooku gets defeated by Yoda. He has try to crush Obi-Wan and Anakin, while they’re defenseless, to distract Yoda so he can get away. Because Yoda is skilled with a lightsaber and is able to use the Force to not be hurt by lightning (which was awesome).
ROTS: Obi-Wan manages to win the battle against Anakin, and Palpatine fails to kill Yoda
ANH: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful then you can possibly imagine” and Obi-Wan becomes a ghost. Also, Luke uses the Force (probably as calmly as he could in that situation) and manages to blow up the Death Star.
ESB: Not really an example here, Luke was defeated because he wasn’t ready.
ROTJ: Yes, Luke beat Vader while he was angry (and it does seem he tasted the dark side), but he would’ve been killed had he done anything to Palpatine. Bringing Vader back to the light ends up being what defeats Palpatine and saves the galaxy.
The dark side seems able to grant someone some power at extremely high cost, with the person’s mental health going to shit and the people they care about getting hurt. Anakin trusts the dark side to save his wife, then he commits genocide and his wife dies, largely because of him. He isn’t even any more powerful either.
The light side has people work really hard to learn abilities. Yoda literally had to fight his own dark side in order to learn how to manifest himself after death. But the abilities actually work, they do get more powerful, and it doesn’t come at crazy high costs like being responsible for genocide.
note on my advice in the next paragraph: you don’t have to take it if you don’t want to. I’m not here to police how other people’s fics go. The advice is just something I think would help fics feel more Star Wars and more enjoyable for me to read.
My advice for any Star Wars fic writers who want to give their characters a power-up, have them get tested by the Force and then give them the power-up. This could also give an extra chance for character development or introspection. And you don’t have to worry about your character being shunned! And if you just want something lighthearted or humorous (but still want the power-up), make the test lighthearted and/or silly. Who says the Force can’t have a sense of humor?
The dark side is alluring because it’s easy to give in to frustration and anger, because the dark side is quicker andeasier, but it comes with the cost of your mental health going to shit and you generally don’t get what you actually wanted/you drive everyone away because you’re being an absolute asshole.
The light side is a lot harder, it takes a lifetime of discipline to choose the light every day, to do the hard work to build yourself up, to face and let go all the toxic crap inside you, to really earn your skills.
The dark side is powerful, but it’s not more powerful. It’s an easier shortcut that will always, by narrative structure, come around to bite you in the ass again.
George Lucas was a visionary, Dave Filoni is a storyteller.
The united force of both George Lucas’ vision and Dave Filoni’s ability to tell stories is just one of the reasons why Star Wars: The Clone Wars is so good.
The Star Wars universe was big, and whole, rife with socio-political nuance from it’s inception. But the failing of the Movie franchises was being able to clearly represent these things.
Under George Lucas’ direction, specifically in the Prequels. the portrayal of the issues George centered the universe around were delivered in either a very stale or a very overstated way. There was always this disconnection from the human, breaking the suspension of the disbelief for us as viewers.
Take Padme and Anakin’s relationship in AOTC for example. For many it was unrelatable to see how Padme, in her heart, could still happily exist alongside Anakin. Same goes for the political aspect, the delivery was stale and depersonalised and therefore difficult for a viewer to contextualise in a meaningful way and thus the effect George Lucas was trying to create failed and the biggest teachings of the movie are shrouded in bore and cringe.
George Lucas was a visionary though, he always could see Star Wars from this very intricate zoomed out perspective, much like an omniscient being, he could see how things would play out, but he never could quite condense and communicate it effectively. Some say that that’s why ESB was one of the best films, was because George Lucas wasn’t sitting in the directors chair, yet his ideas were still being workshopped.
The same goes for the Clone Wars.
The ability that Dave Filoni has to write and connect with human stories became a superpower in the TCW arsenal. George Lucas stepped fully into his visionary role during this series, guiding the themes and ideas, but largely left the humanity to Dave Filoni. Through the lens of these two directors we were able to get a very nuanced character arc from Ahsoka, quite engaging episodes that explored deeper issues with politics and the contextuallisation of the larger universe for the first time.
The Star Wars universe started to feel large and feel real. But neither man could have achieved this without the other. While Dave Filoni has an excellent understanding of the Star Wars lore, he has stated that during the Mandalorian he guided his process by what would George do, and I don’t think that working alone, George Lucas would have been able to achieve the narrative clarity that Dave Filoni brought to the clone Wars.
I think it’s extremely important to appreciate all that Dave Filoni has done for star wars, as he has absolutely transformed it. But I think it’s also very important to remember, in the wise words of every Fanfiction.net fic disclaimer, “It’s George Lucas’ sandbox, i’m just playing in it.” And Dave made one of the best sandcastles ever.
Consider who the three main characters of Obi-Wan Kenobiare.
Obi-Wan, Vader & Reva. What ties them all together?
They’re all trying really hard to NOT be Jedi… even though, deep down, that’s who they are.
Because as the Grand Inquisitor puts it: the Jedi Code is like an itch; they cannot help it.
Take Obi-Wan, for instance:
He’s saying: “I’m not a Jedi anymore. That guy died the same day Anakin did. I’m just Ben.”
But it kills him that he can’t help Nari, he can’t help that dude who can’t feed his family, he can’t help those settlers on Mapuzo who were getting bullied by stormtroopers.
His character arc is the most obvious one: he is coming to terms with the idea that, yes, he still is a Jedi.
Becausethat’s who Leia needs him to be right now.
And it’s who Luke will need in the future.
Vader:
We know Vader’s road arc won’t conclude in this series.
For years, Vader is always THIS close to going back to the Light, then always stomps his foot on the ground and doubles down, going “nu-uh, I’m evil deep down inside, I swear! Dark Side all the way! Look how I’m killing this guy! See what a monster I’ve become Obi-Wan?!”
He keeps rejecting the Light and rationalizes his actions by saying the Jedi betrayed him, but deep down, he’s rejecting the Light because he thinks he deserves the pain that the Dark gives him. He’s a monster and he is where he belongs: in Hell.
But we know that, eventually, he lets go of the guilt, the anger, the fear, and does become that Jedi again, which George Lucas once described as “ultimate father figures”.
Because that’s what Luke needed when the Emperor was killing him: his father, the Jedi.
Now take Reva:
She’s saying: “I’m not a Jedi. The Jedi abandoned me. I hate them and I’m gonna have my revenge!”
That whole speech she gives in Part I?
She’s not saying that to the Tatooine randos (who the Jedi never protected in the first place because they had no jurisdiction in the Outer Rim). She’s repeating that to herself.
Clearly, she was a youngling when Order 66 happened, she got taken in and made into a monster. But not really, right? ’Cause the other Inquisitors? Now those guys are full-on psychopaths. She’s cute compared to them. They tell her as much.
She’s not as broken inside as they are.
And deep down, she knows it too. Which is why she screams, she pouts, she’s overly arrogant, reckless, mean and insistent, she’s overdoing it, she’s overcompensating.
“Look at my flips! Look at how I parkour! Would a Jedi be so badass?!”
She’s doing exactly what Vader is doing.
Only she’s doing it louder, because the good in her isn’t buried as deeply as it is with him. She’s stomping her foot and doubling down and insisting that “no, I’m bad, I swear”.
Because the alternative is accepting that - unlike Vader who made his own choices - deep within Reva lies the truth that what happened to her wasn’t her fault. She’s a victim of a galaxy-wide genocide. And it’s not her her fault. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people, and it’s unfair.
Which is why Haja takes her by surprise.
Why would this guy WILLINGLY say he’s a Jedi? Is he crazy? Doesn’t he realize what that comes with? The target it puts on your back?
Seeing him do that clearly hits her where it hurts.
Now, I don’t know if she eventually arcs and manages to become that Jedi once again… or if she’ll die trying… or if she does like Vader and rejects it for good.
There’s a reason Reva and Moses Ingram are positioned in the middle in all promotional pictures featuring the trio:
My guess is that it’s because while Kenobi is coming around to following the Way of the Jedi, and Vader is just blazing trails in the opposite direction… Reva’s fate is unclear.
When and why did the word attachment become a congruent synonym for love within the Star Wars fandom??
Sometimes I feel like reading Star Wars one shots or fics and it’s often the same statements that make me cringe and close the tab. Like „love isn’t allowed blah blah blah“, „the order is flawed because I cannot love another openly“, „how can the Jedi deem love wrong, it’s only natural“, etc.
Like what?
Even the movies make the distinction between love and attachment. Anakin tells Padmé for example that the Jedi do in fact love.
It’s just that the order comes first because as a willing member of said order that’s your duty. A partner would always come second. „Don‘t lose a hundred just to save one.“
And I mean even in real life there’s a clear difference between the two words: love and attachment. Most people wouldn’t tell someone they have feelings for, „I am attached to you“ rather than „I love you“. And I feel like just when you read those two phrases, they give off a completely different vibe. „I am attached to you“ seems more selfish, sort of cold and temporary, it implies a fear of loss somehow, whereas love sounds purer and honest and selfless and everlasting. (But maybe that’s also just me.)
And also how come when people say the Jedi or their Order was flawed, the only flaw they end up mentioning is the attachment rule. And that’s also only a flaw for them because they confuse attachment with love…
But like, you’re telling me an entire culture and people is flawed because they don’t put selfish borderline toxic romance on a pedestal, but rather see the flaw within exactly that type of „love“. And that to you is wrong because why?
Oh and of course how could I forget? The only other flaw that keeps getting mentioned is that they „didn’t do enough“ and they „let“ Anakin fall to the Dark Side and „allowed“ the Empire to rise. Yeah, let’s take all autonomy away from the edgy handsome villain and blame everybody else, because he baby.
Jedi have to go above and beyond to please the audience and are blamed and taken apart for every little mistake or not even mistake, just for „not doing enough“. But when is it actually enough? It seems to me never. What good they actually did gets ignored. On the other hand villains get to do the worst of the worst but get babied and praised for the smallest of kind acts. It’s just complete hypocrisy.
And to top it all of, a lot of the times the good guys or in this case Jedi are deemed as arrogant without really showing any sort of arrogance. What’s up with that? Why are they arrogant to you? Because they point out wrong from right, try to strive to do good over and over again as best as they can? I feel like people just really like doing what they want and desire with no regard to right or wrong and do not wish to be called out for it or face any sort of consequence. And when there’s somebody who does call out wrongdoings, they deem them as arrogant and hypocrites. And so the Jedi become the „actual bad guys“ and the bad guys become the heroes, who „are actually in the right“.
The honest answer–– as someone who has been in and out of the fandom, was a teen when the Prequels came out, and has always been pro-Jedi–– is: from the very beginning. The advertising for AOTC very much leaned on the forbidden-love trope and many people watched AOTC with the expectation that, as usual for forbidden-love stories, things would work out for Anakin/Padmé and the people “keeping them apart” to be proven wrong in the end. They did not expect Lucas in ROTS to then deconstruct the trope, show the consequences of “burn the universe down to save your lover,” and have Anakin be the direct cause of Padmé’s death.
The dialogue in the “attachment is forbidden; the Jedi are encouraged to love” scene in AOTC is not as clear as us pro-Jedi fans would wish. To teenaged me, Anakin was clearly saying that in order to get into Padmé’s pants and may have been twisting Jedi beliefs to justify why it’s okay to sleep with her. Lucas went very, very hard on the “show don’t tell” writing but the problem with that is some things need to be told, and if they are told, they need to be said from the mouth of someone who the audience knows won’t become Darth Vader.
(As a somewhat tangential but still related example: one of my grad school classmates in 2020, when our professor talked about not letting our students get attached to us, asked, “But isn’t attachment a good thing?” I actually used the pro-Jedi arguments/reasoning about attachment (without mentioning I got it from SW) to explain why it wasn’t a good thing. The professor backed me up 100%. Many people in the US really do think there is no negative meaning to the word attachment; they think attachment means connection.)
Worst of all, especially nowadays, people don’t realize Lucas was (is?) Buddhist. He was pretty darn clear about that during the Prequels; I’m not sure I knew any dedicated fan who didn’t know that. But that’s been forgotten over the years and the break between old fandom and new fandom with the rise of Tumblr and the Sequels bringing in new people doesn’t help anything. So the fact that a Buddhist made a film trilogy showing Buddhist ideals is just… ignored.
Yet despite all of that, I’m still firmly a pro-Jedi fan and have been since I saw the OT in 1994 and dived headfirst into what’s now Legends. Once you read what Lucas meant, when you think about the fact that the Prequels are a tragedy and deconstructing the forbidden-lover and will-do-anything-to-save-you tropes, yeah. It’s pretty clear the Jedi are meant to be the good guys and what attachment actually means.
When I first watched the fight, I was disappointed. It was clumsy. Awkward. Beautifully shot, but the fight was nothing compared to other light saber fights, and Darth Vader clearly letting Obi-Wan get away.
And then I suddenly smacked myself with the Clue Bat. Of course. That was the point.
Obi-Wan Kenobi has not wielded a light saber for maybe ten years. Both he and it have sat decaying in the desert. He doesn’t sleep well, he has a mindless menial job where he must let cruelty happen on a daily basis, so he can go home where his only social interaction is being cheated by Jawas and emotionally flagellating himself by fixating on a ten-year-old boy that he can’t even talk to.
He had to be asking himself – what the hell am I even doing here. I told Bail I couldn’t do this. I told him!
And then there’s Darth Vader. He starts out killing innocents because that will make Obi-Wan come to him. Only it doesn’t. What the hell is that? Then he draws his light saber and Obi-Wan runs. What the hell is this? He tried to provoke his old master with bullshit “I am what you made me” and “You should have killed me when you had the chance” and Obi-Wan doesn’t lecture him about the Force. He doesn’t say a single word! And then when they fight, he does it one-handed, and every ounce of Hayden Christensen’s body language screams disappointment. What the hell is this?
Anakin Skywalker didn’t spend ten years in the Imperial Brooding Chamber in his Castle Commemorating His Defeat on his Impressive Stone Throne of Angst, plotting his revenge like the Pettiest Most Dramatic Bitch in the Galaxy, for nothing.
This was supposed to be his Validation, and he ends up fighting a terrified hobo in a strip mine.
So, of course, he stops burning him. This isn’t what he wanted at all. He lets Ben go, because maybe if he does so, the Force will stop yanking his chain and give him the round two he always wanted.
And the best part? It will. Deborah Chow has slowly, meticulously showed the re-emergence of General Kenobi, the best of the Jedi, poking through ten years of loneliness and mourning. It will come back, it will come out, but Darth Vader might not like the result.
Why?
“The Jedi Code is like an itch. He cannot help it!”
in rhetoric there is something called a “tricolon” which is three words, phrases, or sentences that are parallel in structure, length, or rhythm. it’s memorable and catchy to do, like veni, vidi, vici.
sometimes the three parts work together to express one concept, something called “hendiatrys” (greek for ‘one through three’) like wine, women, and song cumulatively means hedonism.
a tricolon can also either ascend or descend in intensity and magnitude, called a “tricolon crescens” or “tricolon diminuens” and is incredibly rhetorically powerful. the first or final position in a tricolon is often the emphatic one, the one that lingers in the mind.
anyway the reason i’m thinking about tricolons is Star Wars, of course, as always. specifically, this passage from Kemp’s Lords of the Sith:
“You were a traitor, were you not, Lord Vader?” Vader’s breathing caught on the hook of sudden anger. “What did you say?” “To the Jedi. To Padmé. To Obi-Wan. To all those you loved.” His Master turned to look at him, his eyes reflecting the flames. Vader didn’t know the answer his Master wanted to hear, so he simply answered with the truth. “Yes.”
to me, this reads as a tricolon, with the hendiatrys lurking behind all three parts spelled out afterwards, to twist the knife. the problem is that arguably the three parts of this tricolon are not emotionally equivalent, and so it’s probably either crescens or diminuens.
if we look at it in terms of the magnitude of his treason, an external perspective might consider killing the jedi, killing padmé, and fighting obi-wan are a diminuens. however, i don’t know if vader would hear it that way. he cares more about individuals than institutions, relationships than duty.
the jedi are just not the thing that anakin loved most. that was kind of the whole problem. anakin loved padmé more than he loved the jedi. there is actually a step up in emphasis and intensity between the first and second terms, not down. this implies something about the step between the second and third terms.
why didn’t sidious put obi-wan in the middle? why is obi-wan in the emphatic third position? isn’t padmé the one anakin loved the most? so surely sidious would dig at vader with her as the final, emphatic point. but no, it’s obi-wan. his best friend, not his wife.
anyway, it’s a tiny moment and a throwaway phrase, but it’s been embedded in my brain and i can’t get it out.
