People are actively encouraging hate towards Moses Ingram under the guise of “fair criticism.”
People are insulting how she chose to wear her hair natural, they’re calling her “a diversity hire.” They’re all ranting about how she’s “stealing the show from Obi Wan,” when Obi Wan is still the focus of the show. People are hating on her for her natural hair. I’ve seen them insulting her for her “nappy hair.”
Let’s be real, if Reva was a white man, she’d be universally loved. People hating her for “being angry,” would call Reva badass if she was a white man. Her ambition would be praised, and so would her attitude. But no, Reva is a black woman, and these so-called “fans” hate her for it.
Moses Ingram opened up about how she was apprehensive because she knew Star Wars fans might harass her because of her race and gender (and, if you look at the fan response to her character, she was literally right), and y'know how these fans reacted?
My sympathies to Moses Ingram, she really risked it all for this role, only to be met with such disgusting behavior. I really hope she’s okay, and I hope that you’ll all show her support, because she doesn’t deserve this.
Watching these first two episodes, it’s like all faith in the goodness of the world left Obi-Wan after he thought Anakin died. Like there’s no light left in the world, no true hope, because he shows no drive to try and make the world better. There’s just grey grief and endless days that all look the same. Sure, Obi-Wan speaks about training Luke one day, but that’s still a safe, abstract future. It’s not here and now, like when Nari shows up needing help. It’s not actual action, actually having to do something and having the hope that it will make things better.
And Bail calls him out on that. That’s it’s not Luke and protecting him that has Obi-Wan chained to Tatooine and his passivity. It’s Obi-Wan himself that’s stuck in hopelessness. Like after the loss of Anakin, after he destroyed Anakin, there’s no way for him to believe that Obi-Wan Kenobi could bring something good to the world. And no way for him to actually trust in the kindness and light of others. The brightest light has burned out and he’s stuck in darkness.
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.
[id: expanding brain meme that goes “Thinking Leia is feral because she’s Anakin’s daughter” > “Thinking Leia is feral because she’s PADME’S daughter” > “Realizing Leia is feral because there’s an entire TCW episode where the plot is that Padme calls Bail and says “BAIL MEET ME AT THE DOCKS BRING GUNS” and he just fucking does it because he’s insane”]
girl help im experiencing shrimp emotions about the Jedi refugee bunker messages
It’s–these are the barest handful of survivors of a galaxy-wide genocide, and none of them will ever see another of their kind again. So they carve their names into the walls, just in case. Maybe one of your friends is still alive and you’ll never see each other again, will not, cannot, but the Force is with you still and maybe someday they’ll see your name and know you got this far. Maybe someday you’ll see theirs.
But then it’s not just the names, it’s–the sigils. The blessings. The Jedi maxims.
A smuggling ring that evacuates what should have been the next generation. These Force-sensitive children who will never, for their own safety, be raised among their own kind. Will not. Cannot.
Separate the lock from the key. Scatter the survivors, never in the same place, so that only one (one of these Jedi who take strength in connections, who were nevermeant to be alone) can be lost at a time. In case there’s an after. In case someday, somewhere, for someone, there’s an after.
The Archives were seared from existence. Surviving Jedi temples and outposts and scattered texts are reduced to rubble every day whenever they’re found and it would be madness to send a child looking anyway. So how do you pass on what little remains? How do you tell these frightened children who should have been Jedi what they had the right to know? How do you give them the culture that could have been theirs?
Scratches on concrete. No way to give them long messages, no time to try. This is the only chance you will ever have to tell them something, to make sure the core of who the Jedi were survive, to try to help them understand. To preserve.
What do you pass on?
Proverbs. Meditation mantras that double as survival advice. The sigil of your Order, all the comfort your kind have left. (The base of what will someday become the rebel starbird, rising from ashes, but they don’t know that yet, half of them will die before they see it.)
What do you pass on? Only what’s most important. Only what cannot ever be lost.
The Force will be with you always. Only when your eyes are closed can you truly see the Way. For light and life.
Obi-Wan in all the other posters is holding a lightsaber, like in the fifth brother’s poster. See Obi-Wan in Tala’s poster:
Butthis is Vader’s poster:
Is that meant to be Obi-Wan without a lightsaber, symbolizing Obi-Wan’s reluctance to fight Vader?? Or is it…someone else? Vader’s past self? Or someone else entirely? WHO IS THAT!!??
I think Vader was feeling a deep and supreme disappointment at seeing Obi-Wan again. He’s been thinking of almost nothing else for ten years, wanting revenge on master Kenobi, the warrior that bested him in battle and maimed him completely, and he was probably imagining some intense rematch in which he would overtake Obi-Wan as he was in his prime. And instead he’s met with this old man who hasn’t held a light saber in ten years, running away from him, no desire to fight him, none of the old Obi-Wan spirit familiar to him.
It makes total sense to me that Vader let Obi-Wan go. To kill him then, as a weak man who had no interest in fighting him (and barely could) would not have satisfied his desire for revenge. And that disappointment is probably going to FUEL his ANGER and HATE and omg so excited to see these next few episodes
we will each be challenged: our trust, our faith, our friendships. but we must persevere and, in time, i believe a new hope will emerge. may the force be with you always
