people are always like “oh I want Leia and Padmé to meet they have so much in common” but let’s be honest if Leia ‘I’d Stab Him Without a Second Thought’ met Padmé ‘I Can Fix Him’ Amidala there would DEFINITELY be blood
Luke and Padmé: there’s still good in him!
Leia, cocking her gun: not enough
honestly though can you imagine Leia ‘if he wants me that badly he can damn well get better himself’ Organa meeting Padmé ‘I’m sure with my love and encouragement he won’t kill kids (again)’ Amidala? ten to one Leia spends five minutes with her and starts dreaming of knocking her teeth out
Did you know? Obi-Wan’s original lightsaber was constructed from pieces of a Rolls-Royce jet engine, a World War I-era British rifle grenade, a flash camera battery pack, and a faucet handle.
anakin who was a slave until he was nine, who was a jedi for the next thirteen years, and who still called his teachers master, and who at twenty-two became vader, who has been vader for nearly a third of his life by this point in the kenobi series and who will have been vader for half of it when he dies
one fourth slave, one fourth jedi, two fourths vader, and in all his time alive there has always been someone he needs to call master, anakin who dies free in the arms of his son, who dies forgiven and redeemed and loved
I was just discussing how the the same concept can have very different meanings to different people.
For example, in Hawaiian, aloha covers the English words hello, goodbye, love, kindness, compassion, mercy, grace, etc. Because in Hawaiian culture, those words are all tied together. There is no real difference between hello and goodbye, both concepts are rooted in love. Yet English has many words to cover all the concepts Aloha covers, because in English, there is a cultural difference in understanding of these concepts.
And then of course I was thinking about how Jedi and Clones have very similar ideals, but different understandings of their meaning.
Selflessness is a trait both groups share.
The Jedi own nothing by choice, they are taught to be selfless. All that matters to them (in theory) is the Force. That’s the only thing that matters. They are part of a higher purpose, rendering material possessions mostly irrelevant.
But Clones own nothing because they are controlled. They are also selfless and they’re also taught they are parts of a bigger hole. But unlike Jedi, they are never taught self worth. Jedi are taught they are important parts of a whole. Clones are taught they are disposable parts of a whole.
Selflessness for Jedi is living for others. Selflessness for Clones is dying for others.
When Jedi say they are selfless, they mean they dedicate their lives to bettering the galaxy. They spend years mastering diplomacy, they spend years learning skills they can use to help others. They use their gifts to protect others, they use their influence to lift others up. They are ambassadors of neutrality to settle conflicts, they are protectors. The Force has blessed them with power, so they use that power and their lives to actively help others.
When Clones say they are selfless, they mean their life has no value and can be used to buy the lives of others. They are self less. They are a lesser version of self. They are just as smart and skilled as Jedi are, but they aren’t taught self worth, they’re only taught self sacrifice. So to them, selflessness isn’t living for others and helping them build a better tomorrow, but dying for others so a better world can be build on the backs of their corpses.
It’s the same word, but it has a vastly different meaning and that meaning shapes how they perceive themselves and how they perceive others.
I just wish we got a bigger insight to the subtle yet vast differences between Clones and Jedi.
it’s so important that they’ve shown how bad obi wan is at being obi wan. he reaches for a blaster first, not his lightsaber. he’s hesitant and doesn’t want to to take a mission bc he’s so frightened of another failure. he’s lost in a monotonous lifestyle and hasn’t used the force in ten years. he’s bad at lying. he’s bad at spinning tales and holding even the simplest of conversations. he sees visions of anakin in the desert and can’t meditate and his hands hurt when he fights. he’s lost to his emotions and is so so unbalanced. he’s still kind and witty and dry humored, but his heart is bleeding. he IS weak, just like vader said. not bc of age but bc of self inflicted wounds. he’s so out of touch with himself, and I’m incredibly thankful we’ve been given this insight into this part of obi wan’s journey
me: the idea is that this guy, perpetually, inflicts the pain he’s in outwards, recreates his own hells all the time. i think people are wrong when they assume that anakin changes. i don’t think anakin skywalker ever functionally changes; he’s in his forties and saying “i must obey my master” and he’s in his twenties and falling to his knees in front of palpatine and he’s a nine year old slave all at the same time, all expressions of the same scarred, wicked internal landscape. he lived this horrible experience when he was a child, so he’s always recreating his world in such a fashion that it looks the same way, so incapable of coping with the damage of his childhood enslavement that he never really leaves it. in the family at war novel, anakin thinks, “the jedi order had been his life. the jedi had freed him from slavery and offered him a home. despite all the reasons he had to follow ahsoka, abandoning the jedi felt like a terrible mistake. he owed them too much.“ but he doesn’t owe the jedi his eternal service - there is no good that you can do for someone that will earn your life’s service, but anakin is recreating this paradigm he was raised in, where he owes a greater power - an owner - not only his labor but his life, to repay the cost of his keeping. this is not a dynamic the jedi have forced on him; this is one anakin creates, because he is hitting the instant replay on everything he’s ever suffered. he is a nine year old slave and he is lying when he says he’s a person because he’s going to kneel to palpatine and he’s going to bring his son to palpatine because he must obey his master. he is a person, and he is lying.
me:vader as a character brings his past to the present, recreates the things that shattered him over and over because he can’t leave them behind - doesn’t know how, isn’t willing to, couldn’t begin to start. he strangles people with the force because the first time he did it, he was nineteen and had to make a choice between saving republic clone troopers and saving republic loyalists on jabiim, and either choice meant damning thousands of people to die, after every other jedi - including obi-wan - had been killed or thought dead in combat. when the leader of the loyalists attacked anakin for choosing to save the troopers, anakin strangled him, and stumbled backwards, and said “i’m sorry” but it was too late, he had already chosen to kill them all. he strangles people with the force because the worst thing he ever did in his own mind was strangle padme on mustafar, because he himself is attached to a breathing machine he has little control over, that he is forever bound to - but he’s always living in these places, these moments, so unable to get up and move on that he recreates his own twisted scars. it’s an obsessive act of re-opening the wound, bleeding perpetually. it’s stereotypical - it’s perpetual - it’s a caged parrot tearing out its feathers, seeking any kind of stimulation, anything to feel any kind of control.
me: this is why he drags obi-wan through the fire; not merely as revenge, though revenge is such a large part of it, but because he’s insatiably recreating what he’s lived. he cuts his son’s hand off because he lost all of his to his own father figure, he burns obi-wan because he himself is haunted by burning alive on mustafar and has to inflict it outwards - without any ability to soothe these festering psychological wounds on his own, he inflicts them outwards over and over, desperately reaching for any kind of catharsis, any kind of power over his own agonized life, striking outwards like a beaten dog that’s suddenly remembered it has teeth. he is the bottom, rotting dregs of human existence, that hideous thing that happens to people when they experience violence on violation on violence, so that the only way they know to understand their experiences is to strike outwards, to replay it, to analyze it from the angle of the aggressor this time so that maybe the power of violence will soothe their souls. darth vader is truly frankenstein’s monster; he has love in him the likes of which you can scarcely imagine, and rage the likes of which you would not believe. if he cannot satisfy the one…… he will satisfy the other. person beside me in the harris teeter checkout line: are you good
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.
Hi! Totally okay, this ask was very obviously sent in good faith even before you said so, which gives me a chance to happily yell about it, so I’m delighted!
Let’s start with what attachment is: InStar Wars and with the Jedi, it’s the concept of how you cannot hold onto someone or something so tightly because you are afraid of losing it and willing to do whatever it takes to keep it, whether that’s getting yourself killed or getting a whole lot of other people killed. If someone has a fate, you can protect them with your lightsaber, you can love them, but you can’t stop their fate (whether death or them leaving/going away from you), and going against this is going against the nature of the world. It’s literally a path to the dark side.
“[Jedi Knights] do not grow attachments, because attachment is a path to the dark side. You can love people, but you can’t want to possess them. They’re not yours. Accept that they have a fate. Even those you love most are going to die. You can’t do anything about that. Protect them with your lightsaber, but if they die they were going to die. there’s nothing you can do. All you can do is accept that fact. “In mythology, if you go to Hades to get them back you’re not doing it for them, you’re doing it for yourself. You’re doing it because you don’t want to give them up. You’re afraid to be without them. The key to the dark side is fear. You must be clean of fear, and fear of loss is the greatest fear. If you’re set up for fear of loss, you will do anything to keep that loss from happening, and you’re going to end up in the dark side. That’s the basic premise of Star Wars and the Jedi, and how it works. “That’s why they’re taken at a young age to be trained. They cannot get themselves killed trying to save their best buddy when it’s a hopeless exercise.” –George Lucas, Star Wars Archives 1999-2005
George Lucas, since the beginning, has consistently tied attachment’s context to possessive, obsessive relationships people have with things and that those feelings of attachment lead them down dark paths if they are not regulated and let go. It’s the entire story of Anakin’s fall, “ [Anakin] turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things.“ –George Lucas
This ties into how motivation is key for why a Jedi does something, because that’s how the Force works. If you do something because you’re afraid of losing that person, you’re afraid of living without them, then you’re connecting to the Force through fear, you’re seizing on that fear in your own mind, you’re drawing yourself closer to the dark side. If you do something truly and genuinely because you want others to be happy and free, then that is compassion and it’s the light side. Fundamentally, it’s about the feelings a Force-sensitive person feels when they do something, that’s the entire basis of how the Force works.
The Jedi speak of it in the same terms within the story as well. Anakin says that possession and attachment are forbidden, but compassion is central to their lives (Attack of the Clones). Aayla tells Ahsoka “don’t lose a thousand lives to save one” when talking about attachment to Anakin, because she doesn’t want to leave his side after he’s been injured (”Jedi Crash”). Anakin tells Ahsoka that they all struggle with attachment, when she wonders if she should have killed Barriss to prevent her from hurting the clones and Jedi and potentially millions of other people (”Brain Invaders”), etc. It’s consistently brought up in the themes of “purpose before feelings (because people will be killed otherwise) if you’re in the position the Jedi are in”.
Attachment and romantic feelings aren’t inherently the same thing in Star Wars or for the Jedi, attachment doesn’t have to be about a romantic relationship, it can be about an overzealous parent holding onto their child too long, it can be a Sith Lord’s willingness to murder anyone who gets in the way of their power, they can be willing to blow up an entire world to try to hold the galaxy in their grip. It can be running after your friends because you don’t trust them to be able to do it themselves and you are too worried about them, so you have no patience for being properly ready.
Which is why Obi-Wan reminds Anakin that romantic feelings within the Jedi Order aren’t forbidden, of course they’re allowed, they’re natural (”The Rise of Clovis”):
That all said, the Jedi do give up marriage as part of their commitment to the Jedi Order and it’s a combination of a) because they’re monks and b) their relationship with the Jedi Order is like a marriage in a lot of ways and you can’t whole-heartedly commit yourself to two paths.
If you marry someone, you should be making them your priority (setting aside political marriages or marriages of convenience, etc.) and Jedi can’t do that because they already have a higher priority. In a way, it’s similar to what attachment is, that you can’t save one life at the cost of a thousand, but it’s also not saying that marriages are inherently attachment, because it’s not like loving someone is the path to the dark side. It’s that specific concept of just what you would sacrifice for those feelings and, between their marriage to their Order and how much more difficult having a spouse or blood relative would be.
(And that they’re avoiding dynasties within the Order, like imagine if the Skywalkers were a separate family within the bigger Order, within a generation or two, they would have ALL the influential seats because the Force is just so incredibly strong in that family, they’d be on the Council, they’d get all the best positions, they’d get all the influence, it’d be so easy to not even realize how you’re favoring your sibling or your son because they share your blood.)
(In current-canon’s Dooku: Jedi Lost there’s another really good example–a Jedi on the Council secretly has a son that she brings to the Jedi Order and doesn’t tell anyone, but because she let her personal feelings cloud her judgement, she winds up being willing to do favors for the Hutt clan to get him out of his gambling debts, including some stuff that makes the Jedi Council vulnerable. Her motivations and secrecy are the problem there.)
(The example you’re thinking of above is Ki-Adi-Mundi from the Legends continuity! Because comics and books and such started coming out immediately after The Phantom Menace, they started doing worldbuilding, including a comic that had him married, since George Lucas considered that world separate from his own (the comics/novels/etc.) and let them have a good amount of free reign to do whatever. Once Attack of the Clones came out and the Jedi don’t marry, they had to scramble for a reason why he would be married, so they retconned the comics to say that he was married because male Cereans were rare and the planet had a low birth rate. This has been fairly explicitly nixed as part of the current Disney-owned Lucasfilm’s canon, Ki-Adi is not married there. But that’s why it was set up the way it was in Legends!)
Within the prequels, as far as I know, I don’t recall any Jedi being in relationships without breaking the rules (but I’m not familiar with all of Legends), but attachment and relationships aren’t quite the same thing. As Obi-Wan says, it’s not like those feelings aren’t allowed, they’re normal. But he does say that Anakin needs to make the choice to stay with the Order (and not let his relationship with Padme go that far) but this is also set during the Rush Clovis arc, where Anakin is falling into very dangerous attachment, and Obi-Wan is not unaware of Anakin’s feelings prior to this, it’s only when he sense “a deep rage” within Anakin just for mentioning Clovis’ name, that Obi-Wan says Anakin has to make a choice here (and of course he thinks the Jedi are better for Anakin).
George Lucas has also said: “Jedi Knights aren’t celibate - the thing that is forbidden is attachments - and possessive relationships.” (BBC News), furthering that the Jedi can have sex, can have romantic feelings, it’s just that they can’t devote their lives to someone in a marriage, because they already have done and a bigger duty.
So, personally, I think that if a Jedi could balance their feelings and still uphold their sacred duty, the Jedi wouldn’t really care. The Jedi aren’t actually hardcore sticklers for the letter of the law (I did a rewatch of TCW and, despite the numerous amount of times Anakin breaks the rules, not ONCE, not ONE TIME did he get in any actual trouble, because he often had good reason for it, the most he gets–when he genuinely endangers people’s lives by not wiping Artoo’s mission memory–is a scolding from Obi-Wan and then nothing), it’s about the spirit of the rule. If you’re following the spirit of it, if you’re genuinely balanced and in the light and doing your duty, they seem to be fine with you.
But, honestly, other than a handful of them, most of the Jedi just don’t even seem interested in romance, they don’t seem like it’s a thing that’s missing from their lives, they don’t seem like they’re pining for something they can’t have. It’s only a small handful that seem interested and even then they seem to want to be a Jedi more.
And for people who can feel the entire galaxy’s light in their minds, who can touch souls with other psychic space wizards or even non-psychic people, they have so much connection and warmth and love in their lives already!
the parallels of leia refusing to accept obi wan’s help insisting she knows better literally sprinting away vs leia sending a hail mary holo to him absolutely begging for his help
If the SW sequel trilogy was like repeatedly getting smacked in the face with a barbed-wire bat, Kenobi is like getting your hand tenderly held and sweet nothings whispered into your ear while it nuzzles you.
Okay so, I made this post in a mostly tongue-in-cheek way last night, but also… yeah?
I’m not sure if it’s entirely due to being directed by a woman of color, but I can’t help but notice how drastically different the tone is to what most people might have expected, and how it almost totally destabilizes every single toxic masculinity sci-fi trope (no wonder the dudebros are so angry). Because:
Just as with Deborah Chow’s previous SW vehicle The Mandalorian, much of the plot revolves around a tough, cynical, lone-wolf warrior forced to lovingly nurture and parent a small child (and in Obi-Wan’s case, a small FEMALE child, zomgz). Not only that, but all the emotional turmoil revolves around Obi-Wan still savagely mourning Anakin (and for that matter, Padmé, ANOTHER WIMMINZ!) No matter whether you read their bond as platonic, queerplatonic, or romantic, the point is that our Tough Manly Hero (except not) is driven by tenderness, compassion, trauma, and the agony of losing his life partner, a pain to which he frequently returns and the narrative emphasises. Chow has explicitly called it a love story, again however you care to interpret that, but that is a FAR different framing and approach to the conflict rather than MACHO MACHO WARRIORS SMASH HATE ANGER! I mean, sure, maybe on Vader’s part, but also the narrative in no uncertain terms frames it as wrong.
That, I think, is what drives the dudebros crazy, as much as the fact that the primary agency in the story belongs to a black woman. I reblogged a meta recently about how it’s problematic that the new SW material thinks that it can just change the villains to be more diverse without addressing the reasons why white men are more inherently drawn to the Empire’s power structure in the first place, and I think Reva has been somewhat under-developed by the narrative in the four episodes thus far. I would like to see them do more with her overall, but the fact remains that she is the primary plot driver of conflict and action. She takes a step or makes a choice, and Obi-Wan reacts to that, not the other way around. He spends much of his time in relation to her on the defense, and doesn’t even particularly try to go on the offensive.
It’s clear that the dudebros far prefer Vader’s style of things, as he relentlessly manipulates, murders, and punishes everyone in his vicinity, rather than Obi-Wan who just goes around being sad, parenting Vader’s child, feeling emotions, and otherwise busily deconstructing every single trope of the Rough and Tough Lone Warrior. He is about as non-toxic and driven by emotions (primarily love and compassion) as it’s possible to be, and the actions he does take and the adventures he goes on are instigated and facilitated by women. He has to be, as noted, a nurturing surrogate parent to Leia. He has to rely on Tala (another woman of color) for her expertise and skills as leader of a resistance cell. He never tries to confront Reva directly; he’s mostly just focused on getting safely away from her. In short, he totally removes every common indicator that you’d expect from a Hard Bitten Macho Sci Fi hero, and makes it generally impossible for these whiny pissbabies to project themselves onto him, despite being an iconic white male character of an iconic sci-fi franchise. Which is why, I think, their panties are in such a bunch.
I desperately want to see a one-on-one scene with Obi-Wan and Reva, and what I want most (and if I don’t get it, I’ll write it) is a moment where he apologizes to her for failing to prevent the Temple from being destroyed and the younglings, Reva’s classmates and friends and supposed-to-be fellow future Jedi, from being slaughtered in the one place they were supposed to be safe. (Watching that scene just a few days after Uvalde was… oof.) Of course, it’s not actually Obi-Wan’s fault, but you can bet that he does blame himself intensely for it, and it would again drive the racist asshats crazy. Things can, of course, be read on levels outside the strictly textual and surface-level, and the visual of the white man hero humbling himself before the black female antihero (Reva isn’t a villain like Vader, she’s clearly an antihero), and explicitly acknowledging the part he has played in failing to make a better system and a better world for her to live in, a world where she could have been safe and could have been what she was truly meant to be, would be incredibly powerful. It could also serve as an external, metatextual apology for the terrible way that John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, and Kelly Marie Tran were treated during the sequels. (And which, of course, Moses Ingram is now getting herself, since people suck.)
Anyway, contrast the Obi-Wan of the Kenobi series – desperately in touch with his emotions, grieving the loss of his male life partner, parenting that life partner’s young daughter, led by and reacting to the agency of powerful women of color, and otherwise rejecting every opportunity to be a Big Bad Action Dude – with the ham-handed Everything Is Bad Now grimdark and wanton character destruction of the sequel trilogy. There is an absolutely HUGE difference between the two, and no wonder the racist, misogynist, homophobic white fanboys can’t imprint themselves on Obi-Wan and are throwing a fit as a result. He is everything they hate the most, and obviously, that is great news for the rest of us.
Okay, well, I am dog fucking tired so it’ll be a short flail session tonight, but I have to crank this out before I hit the sack. Also, apologies since I’m sure someone has mentioned this, but I have been in standardized-test-grading purgatory and thus have not seen. Anyway!
Obviously, Star Wars loves itself a good hallway fight scene, but I was STRUCK with how much Obi-Wan’s rescue of Leia was paralleled with Vader’s attack at the end of Rogue One. And when I say “struck,” I obviously mean “consumed with arm-gnawing feelings about it.” Most people cite that scene as the scariest that Vader has ever been: it starts out when all the lights suddenly go out and the darkness is lit only by his lightsaber. He rips through the Alliance dudes like paper, he’s threatening to make all our heroes’ sacrifice irrelevant after they have already all died on Scarif, and he’s doing it to stop the Death Star plans from getting to Leia. The soldiers, running from him, reach a doorway, which jams. They desperately try to get through it, but can’t, until one of them hands the data chip through to another just as Vader is arriving to ice him. Eventually, they manage to get it to Leia, who refers to it as hope.
And then, contrast that to Obi-Wan’s rescue of Leia in Part IV. It starts out with all the lights going out, lit only by his lightsaber, as he takes out the stormtroopers. Then when he’s fighting his way down the hallway, his technique, while it’s just as commandingly competent as Vader’s, is entirely defensive. He’s not attacking them; he’s just trying to stop them from attacking him. He’s handling almost as many soldiers as Vader was, but they’re running after him, rather than vice versa. And he does this for precisely the opposite reason: to saveLeia, so she can grow up to become that hope at all.
And then, the stormtroopers reach a door. It jams. They try to force their way through, as Obi-Wan desperately holds back the windows from breaking and flooding the entire hallway, entirely willing to give himself up if it means that Leia gets to safety – which is, once again, the utter antithesis of Vader’s mindless murder spree at the end of Rogue One. Reaching Leia is the ultimate goal for both of them, but in diametrically opposite ways and for utterly opposite emotional reasons. One out of pure love, and the other out of total hate.
I just… am having Big Feelings about how they are so completelyanti-paralleled/narrative foiled to each other, especially after the opening sequence with both of them burned and in the bacta tank, having violent flashbacks to their face-off at the end of the last episode. Once again, as I said, they’re just so fucking haunted by each other, they’re tangled up beyond any extrication, and their actions remain, as ever, this total dark mirror of each other, and I can deal with this absolutely zero percent.
(Anyway, I obviously enjoyed other things about the episode, like Leia remaining the Galaxy’s Most Awesome Tiny Badass, Reva using the Force like a bad motherfucker as Moses Ingram is still sadly underused and I WANT MORE OF HER BACKSTORY GODDAMMIT, and the Hand Hold That Slayed Me Dead between Obi and Leia at the end, but yes.)
There’s something to be said about Vader’s fighting style and when he wields his saber with one hand vs two hands.
He often fights his opponents wielding his saber with only one hand. This is because his sheer prowess is unparalleled + great intimidation tactic to show how weak his opponents are. If he wields with two hands it’s either to 1) finish a fight he’s impatient with/wants to get over with as quickly as possible or 2) he knows the true strength of his opponent. Most of his fights against other Jedi (Kanan, Ezra, Kal) have been one-handed. This is even used artistically in the comics, Vader fights with one hand.
Two very telling fights is Vader’s fight with Ahsoka and Vader’s first fight with Obi-Wan in the Kenobi show. The second Vader ignites his saber against Ahsoka he grabs it with two hands, because he knows Ahsoka’s abilities and how he trained her into the perfect warrior. His body language during that fight was brutal. He’s moving.He’s swinging with full range of motion and running and putting his whole back into it. It’s probably the most effort we’ve everseen him put into a saber fight, not even against Luke in ROTJ. Every other fight has minimal range of movement, because he doesn’t need to. He’s that powerful.
So when he greets Obi-Wan after 10 years in the Kenobi show, what does he do? He ignites his saber and wields with one hand. Why? Because he knows. He knows Obi-Wan is weak and at his lowest point in life. He knows Obi-Wan is paralyzed at the very thoughtof seeing Anakin face-to-face. He doesn’t have to put in the extra effort, Obi-Wan has already broken down himself.
I don’t have a point here I just wanted to draw comparisons and analyze Vader’s fighting style.
One thing that I think gets overlooked about Obi-Wan’s withered Force use is that it’s not just a physical issue, it’s not just that he has to practice like a runner needs to do warm up exercises first, but that it’s about his emotional state. That he’s reeling from Anakin being alive, from his brutal fight with Vader, the physical pain that this most precious person deliberately inflicted on him with glee, all of that on top of that his family is still mostly dead and the few that are out there, he’ll probably never see again, he still can’t openly practice his faith.
But when the moment comes that Leia’s life is in danger? That is when we see Obi-Wan Kenobi step up his game. His lightsaber form is rusty, but he deflects those shots. His footwork is getting more solid. He holds back the entire ocean because her life is in danger.
This is what a Jedi can do, because they are focused on other people, rather than the attachment to their grief. When Obi-Wan is forced to shed all that pain and trauma, even just for a moment, that is when he can literally hold back the entire ocean pressing down on the cracking glass. When it’s for someone else’s sake, everything starts snapping back into place and he remembers the moves, we can see him get better and better and better.
Because that’s how a Jedi works, they can move mountains and hold back the ocean when they’re protecting someone, when it’s not about themselves, it’s about the selflessness that is the core of how the light side of the Force works.
Leia and Luke will never fully have their feelings about Anakin Skywalker in common, that Leia’s feelings will forever be complicated at the very best of times, neither of them will ever really know their birth mother, Luke has no memories of her, Leia only has a vague impression. They can bond through their grief at losing their parents in the same really terrible week, they can bond through their horrific circumstances in the Galactic Civil War, they can bond through just being siblings.
But it’s also comforting to think that they do have someone in common: Ben Kenobi. He may not have been in their lives long, but he was there for them at a pivotal moment, they felt his warmth and affection for them, he gave them both their first idea of what the Force was, what it felt like.
They both love their families they were raised by and wouldn’t change that, they needed to be hidden from the Empire, but it’s nice to know they had a point of connection, that at least one person in their lives was the same for both of them, the kind Uncle Ben figure they both shared.
I keep thinking about that Doctor Who quote: “All that pain and misery. And loneliness. And it just made it kind.”
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker both experienced unimaginable pain, misery, and loneliness. Both of them have lost everything they once held dear, people and principles alike, they’re two men living solitary lives, untouchable because they have made themselves so.
But we know where this story is going. We know that Obi-Wan will find hope again, that he will let go of the pain and misery, that it has made him stumble to his knees, but he still has kindness to give when he can, no matter how hard he works to suppress it, that urge is still there every single day, to be kind. And the moment he’s off Tatooine, the moment he’s not endangering Luke with it, we can see that kindness start to shine through again.
But Vader. Oh, Anakin Skywalker. All that pain and misery and loneliness. And it just makes him worse. He seizes on it and becomes cruel with it, he wants Obi-Wan to suffer, this person that he loved so much, the person that was one of the defining figures of his life, the one that this story is about, that theirs is a love story as the creators have said, he wants Obi-Wan to hurt, because he hurts. He drags Obi-Wan through fire because he wants to inflict his own pain and misery onto the people around him.
All that pain and misery and loneliness and such drastically different reactions to it. Even at Obi-Wan’s lowest, he still tries to find little ways to be kind, little gifts to give to bring light and life to others. Toys for Luke, treats for the eopie, money for the homeless vet, fixing Lola for Leia and teaching her about the Force and talking to her about her mother, every chance he gets to be kind, you can see him wanting to reach for it.
And every chance Anakin Skywalker gets to be kind, he rejects it and grabs hold of monstrosity with both hands. When he hurts, he wants others to hurt with him, he wants everyone to feel his wrath. All that pain and misery and loneliness and it just made him cruel.
the jabiim arc from legends is an underrated goldmine of fucked up content, and specifically the fucked up content i really love to see - Padawans At War, The Chancellor Is Being A Freak In Public, Anakin Skywalker Has Enough Issues To Instantly Kill A Bull Elephant, all of the things that i consider important star wars content. for context, obi-wan and anakin are called in to support other jedi generals and a republic loyalist faction of jabiimi on jabiim, where they’re fighting against separatist-loyal jabiim soldiers, decrying the republic’s imperialism and doing normal things like chanting for jedi blood in the rain. there’s no hope of enforcements and over the course of the arc, every single jedi master (including obi-wan, who fake dies, as obi-wan does every single time he dies) on the planet dies, leaving these kids - the “padawan pack”, a group of orphaned padawans - the only military officials in charge of the campaign, and in this scene, anakin suggests that they all make a final stand in order to delay separatist forces long enough to evacuate the rest of the republic’s forces and officially retreat. Getting The Fuck Out Of Dodge has been an ongoing desire and problem for our band of heroes. but this suggestion is a death sentence for them all, but it buys everyone else a little bit of time to get away.
right after this bit, though, there’s this, which fulfills the quota for The Chancellor Is Being A Freak In Public:
“persistence”, or the fact that palpatine can snap his fingers and the separatists are like cool, let that one singular communication through. that’s just our man on the inside, no biggie.
what’s fun about this is that anakin doesn’t want to leave his fellow padawans, but palpatine leverages his personal relationship with anakin to make it happen; he doesn’t say I AM THE SENATE, he says i’ve put my faith in you time and time again,andthen mentions the republic. palpatine does a really great job of making anakin do things he doesn’t like by presenting a worse reality - it’s his whole gambit in ROTS - but in this instance, the worse reality is failing palpatine. anakin’s made it very clear that if he absolutely feels it’s necessary, he’ll disobey orders, so what palpatine does here is really clever, in issuing a command in the one way that anakin can’t resist - staking their relationship, something anakin covets, on it.
when anakin leaves to go guide the evacuation, this is what happens:
because anakin most definitely did not go on to live a good life. in fact he lived the actual opposite of that. he fucked it up big time, dude. this line is like a sucker punch.
but, you know, all of these padawans die. one of these padawans even falls to the dark side in the fight where she’s watching all of her peers die horribly and violently, and then subsequently dies. every single jedi on jabiim died a brutal, horrific death, and at the evacuation, all of the orders fall on anakin because somehow, a nineteen year old is the highest ranking military officer left on the planet, which is really just, like, holy shit. how is that even a thing. but the chancellor promised an evacuation for the republic troops and the (now hunted) jabiimi republic loyalists, and then there’s too few ships to fit everyone on there, and the decision of who to save - the troops or the loyalists - falls on, again, the new highest ranking military officer on the planet, a guy who can’t buy a beer in the USA because he’s too young. anakin has literal seconds to choose what hundreds, if not thousands, of people he’s going to damn to death today, and he chooses to save the republic’s troops, and the loyalists open fire but - and it’s his baby boy time to shine - anakin strangles their leader with the force, which shocks them all so badly the republic forces have enough time to escape.
bonus points, anakin stumbles backwards and apologizes for strangling the guy, because it’s the first time he’s ever used the force to strangle anyone. so those are the circumstances baby darth vader learned his signature move. he even says so, later, while doing something fucked up:
because, well, the really great thing that happened was, after losing literally fucking Everyone, anakin was immediately (and i mean, like, he just walked off the ship from jabiim, immediately) stationed to a healer’s ward to go do healing. this will not be the last time anakin freaks out so badly at the concept of another person dying that he tortures them by trying to keep their hearts beating longer with the force. i rate the jabiim arc 10/10 at setting anakin up with more problems, a thing we all knew he needed.
what i really like, though, is how personally responsible anakin feels for all of this; he has to fix it, because he’s the one who broke it, even though he kind of isn’t, not here. i love that palpatine ostensibly created anakin his very own trolley problem, a thing that’s meant to be a theoretical, not a lived psychological experience. i like that a guy fresh from the horrific death of his mother, who makes a solemn pledge to stop his loved ones from dying, immediately tries to test it out with horrific results on his fellow jedi, because the alternative - being responsible for more death, feeling more grief, losing more people - is so untenable to him, and i like that ROTS isn’t just some one-off thing, it’s the culmination of years of this one guy getting the same wound ripped open, with no space or ability for any kind of closure for anything. it’s just damage all the way down. i like that anakin’s character begins as this really generous, kindhearted kid, feels-deeply kid, but it’s that same empathy, that same compassion, that makes it impossible for him to separate himself from this kind of massive, constant loss, that he can’t compartmentalize the horrors of war because he is just stuck living it. i mean, that’s fucked. that’s really fucked.
people will go “the jedi are beholden to the senate sweetie they’re legally obligated to fulfill a mandate” like they didn’t watch the part of the movie where the evil dark wizard goes I AM THE SENATE which indicates, in fact, that maybe it was a bad thing that the jedi were legally obligated to fulfill the orders of a political body. maybe it’s like dudes with telekinesis and laser swords shouldn’t be a thing you have on offer to George Lucas’ Metaphor For The Nixon Administration. it’s almost like there was a whole star wars movie where the head of state with full legal justification ordered a guy to go murder everyone he knew and despite that being perfectly legal, it was still a bad thing to do, like man now that i’m thinking about it, like really thinking about it, maybe “following orders” isn’t actually a justification for doing bad shit
i am ascertaining that anakin maybe had some psychological problems surrounding grief. i’m just getting the sense that maybe there was some trauma here.
this arc directly follows jabiim, which i discuss more in the link, but a short-and-sweet summary is that it’s a brutal arc where every jedi in the campaign other than anakin dies brutally, including obi-wan, who Fake Dies But In An Explosion So Everyone Verily Believed It, and at the end, with too few ships to evacuate everyone, anakin has to choose whether to evacuate the clone troopers or to evacuate the republic loyalists they had been sent there to aid in the first place, and he chooses the troopers, damning everyone else to die horrible, bloody deaths at the hands of the separatist-supporting jabiimi faction. you know, war.
this incident marks the second time anakin tries to use the force to, ahem, force someone’s body to stay alive, the first incident he does that being in the medcenter rotation he mentions in the first set of panels. i am downright obsessed with these moments. the psychological damages on display are as a vibrant as peacock’s plumage, my guys - i really dig this angle on anakin’s Horrific Tragic Fall To Follow more than i do other ideas that he was arrogant and self-absorbed, because aside from his insistence that obi-wan is holding him back in AOTC and the fabled TAKE A SEAT, SKYWALKER bit from ROTS, arrogance really doesn’t turn out to be anakin’s undoing. he kneels in front of palpatine without palpatine ever actually asking him to, and in ROTJ, the reason he refuses to just go with luke is because he has to obey palpatine - all of these moments are much less self-absorbed, and more palpatine-absorbed, and of course the focal point of that moment in ROTS is that anakin can’t stand to lose padme, and sells out everything he is and everyone he knows so he doesn’t have to.
but i think - judging by these panels - it’s a lot less about padme, and a lot more about shmi, and how her death is anakin’s proverbial ground zero, that thing that broke him so badly he literally never recovered. every time someone dies in front of him, he’s reliving that, and he’s at war, so people are always dying in front of him. he feels responsible for this hideous crime against his mother, so what really is it, to be responsible for a few more hideous crimes? he dreamed of becoming a jedi and freeing the slaves, he’s a jedi now, and he still didn’t free his mother - he feels complicit in what happened to her, and it allows him to be complicit in a lot worse. Darth Vader Had Mommy Issues And They Were Terminal (For Everyone Else) is my official take on the matter.
also, note - anakin trying to fix mechanical objects as an expression of his subconscious desire to Fix Everything, Ever is so good. it comes up all the time and it’s my favorite. are you ever so Problems Disease In Your Brain that even your hobbies are subconscious cry for help? like, come on. someone get this guy a pouch of fruit juice
you know john boyega was so right that finn would have a white lightsaber. the color of healed kyber- kyber that had been hurt and been used to hurt, but through healing and love being returned to it’s truest self. finn being taken and trained to hurt and choosing healing and love. finn using his powers to heal a bleeding kyber crystal when he’d only ever known the force as a force to hurt. white is also the color of stormtrooper armor, the faceless mask he was forced to become. he’ll always carry that with him, but now he carries it as a weapon to help others, a symbol of justice. he understood the assignment.
