#but was he a terrible evil jedi

[interdimensionalhellscapeportal]

A note- I've read most of the Star Wars books over the years, new & old, recently including Master & Apprentice. I was fascinated by the description of Rael Aveross as having a "heavy Outer Rim accent", and imagined different flavors of it- to me, the Outer Rim sounds like Shmi (swedish actress) or Jango (new zealand drawl) etc etc....

Only, this week at work I finally listened to Dooku: Jedi Lost, and discovered that Rael fucking Aveross is a Texas hoss wrangler.

Being from the South myself, I already despise badly done southern accents, and his was perhaps the worst I have ever heard. I will never recover.

#star wars #rael averross #dooku: jedi lost #offensive southern stereotypes #lol like really tho that accent would get you punched in the mouth across most of the region #whyyyyyy is it always a terribly mocked up southern drool instead of an actual accent that exists #the pain #he says senator palpatine and man #i can't imagine how ol sidious lived thru a jedi with that atrocity of an accent saying his name and calling him ineffective #that should have been the end of his carefully constructed cover #hick jedi exposes sith in senate: sheev palpatine attempts to murder knight rael aveross for adding syllables to his name #lord deliver me from the evil that is this accent

[gch1995]

HELP! I saw a post that compared Obi-Wan to Jesus! What is, in your opinion, the most fucked up thing Obi-Wan’s done??

Oh, while he was never horrifyingly evil at his worst, Obi-Wan Kenobi was far from a saint that so many of his stans paint him as either. He’s had quite a few shitty moments. He was generally a pretty terrible guardian, friend, and mentor to the Skywalker boys. Also, just not a very good person in general.

The worst moments he had would have to be:

• Cutting off Anakin’s organic limbs and leaving him to burn alive in agony on Mustafar-Anakin deserved to be stopped and held accountable for his crimes, but what Obi-Wan did here was just cruel and unusual punishment. He knew it, but he was too cowardly and vindictive to end Anakin’s suffering more swiftly when he had the chance.

• Using Padme, a defenseless pregnant woman, as live bait to lure Anakin into a position that would make it easier to execute him on Mustafar without her consent or knowledge-I get that Anakin was in an unhinged state at that point and needed to be stopped. However, Obi-Wan also knew that Anakin loved Padme deeply. He knew that she would be the last person that Anakin would ever be willing to physically endanger or harm. Considering she was pregnant with his kids, he would have reason to assume that she was one of the last people that Anakin still trusted. He knew that Padme was pregnant with Anakin’s kids.

Yet, he decided to further provoke an already unhinged Anakin by using Padme as bait to lure him into a trap that put him in a position that would make it easier for him to kill him for Yoda without Padme’s consent and knowledge. It doesn’t mean Anakin’s blameless for recklessly force choking Padme unconscious in a blind rage and paranoia like that on Mustafar. Regardless of the compromised sanity, Padme would still have had every right to hate him for doing that. However, between the two of them in that scene, Obi-Wan comes across as the more stable aggressor of that conflict, while Anakin was grappling with his sanity, really didn’t want to fight Obi-Wan, and probably could have been convinced to get back on that ship with Padme or surrendered to Obi-Wan if his friend and mentor hadn’t been trying to bait him into a conflict.

• Letting Anakin speak alone with Palpatine from the time he was a child under his care, in spite of suspecting he was shady. Then, enabling the Council’s decision to let Anakin join them, just so that they could use him as a spy with that friendship between him and the Chancellor in Revenge of the Sith, even though he knew it was wrong. Still, having the nerve to baselessly accuse Anakin of using his friendship with the Chancellor to get a seat as master on the Council afterwards- Obi-Wan wasn’t in the room when Anakin and the Chancellor were speaking. It was not his place to presume that Anakin used his friendship with the Chancellor to get a seat on the Council, which he didn’t. Even if he did, though, it sounded like victim blaming for Obi-Wan to be guilt tripping Anakin for having a friendship with the Chancellor that he and the Council, his guardians, allowed and encouraged for him to have from the time he was a child under their care to protect their public reputation in the Republic and to spy on him for their own benefits, in spite of their suspicions of Palpatine’s shadiness. He knew it was a bad idea for the Council to vote on letting Anakin have a seat, just so that they could use him as a mole to commit treason against Palpatine, but he still carried out their orders to Anakin because he was too much of a cowardly kiss ass to put his foot down and say no.

• Faking his death for a mission and disguising himself as Rakko Hardeen with Anakin because “he was too untrustworthy,” and then guilt tripping Anakin for getting reasonably pissed off about it after finding out- If a parent, family member, friend, or guardian ever pulled the shit that Obi-Wan did with Anakin in the Deception arc on me, then I would cut them off, and stop speaking to them forever. That’s not just an innocent misunderstanding. That’s emotional/psychological abuse.

• Encouraging Anakin to quit worrying about his mother the Jedi Council and Republic left in slavery when he has visions of her in danger, even though it is a fact that they could easily be true, which Obi-Wan knows well-Just bad advice from Obi-Wan that also would have made me cut off someone who ever did something like that to me in real life, too.

• Deceiving and manipulating an innocent Luke Skywalker to try to make him a weapon to finish off the monster of a man he and Yoda inadvertently helped turn his father into two decades earlier-It’s just fucked up to use an innocent man to clean up a mess with his biological father and the Empire that he had no hand in contributing to the creation of. Then, to never even express any signs of regret for it, even in the afterlife, makes it all the worse. At least, Anakin seems to learn to his lesson in the end for Luke. I can’t say the same thing about Obi-Wan and Yoda.

• Voting on Ahsoka’s Execution: The only reason why this one is not higher is because, though the evidence was not that great, I can see why Obi-Wan would doubt her innocence after Barriss framed her. At the very least, they took the trial to the Senate. Still very shitty.

• Shaming and dismissing Anakin for having his own opinions and trying to be a good person by just being himself- Yeah, he wanted him to be a perfect Jedi™️, but that entire lifestyle in the prequels was invalidating and unhealthy.

• His blind hypocrisy- Obi-Wan is very much the teacher of “do as I say, not as I do,” and Anakin clearly learned from example over 37 years in both the Jedi and Sith from those with positions of authority over him.

• The fact that he decided to honor Qui-Gonn’s dying wish to take on Anakin as a padawan, but then spent the rest of his life outright disrespecting his late master’s and his closest friends more balanced, compassionate, idealistic, open-minded, and understanding examples at their best to be Yoda’s blind ass-kisser to get on the Council and fit in repeatedly at all costs instead-Yeah, the Order is a cult that discourages individual emotional/psychological growth in the prequels. Qui Gonn was also corrupt in the way he only took an interest in little Anakin in the first place in his desire to use him as a weapon to destroy the Sith. It’s not just Obi-Wan’s fault he grew up to be that much of an infuriatingly close-minded ass-kissing conformist, but I also find him to be the most difficult Jedi of the prequels to empathize with for being that way because he actively put in an effort to not be anything better than that because he saw that trying to be a good person by trying to be true to themselves and explore possibilities outside of Yoda’s and the Council’s approval didn’t get Qui-Gonn, Anakin, or Ahsoka ahead in the Order.

All of Obi-Wan’s closest relationships were with emotionally-driven people, who, at their best, put in real efforts to be truly kind, spontaneously selfless, and self-motivated heroes for others in the galaxy who they felt needed their compassion and help because they genuinely cared about making a difference for the better, not just because it meant getting ahead or fitting in with the elites who held positions of authority over them in those organizations. It’s just difficult for me to empathize with a character who repeatedly rejected every opportunity he had to self-reflect and self-improve from Qui-Gonn’s, Anakin’s, Ahsoka’s, and Luke’s examples at their best, even though they were the closest to almost having true friends he ever got, so that he could suck up to the cold, close-minded, and elitist Yoda and Jedi Council who really never gave a shit about him or anyone outside of their pre-determined “greater good.”

I get that all the Jedi of the old Order and Republic were guilty of throwing away their agency, consciences, friendships, and relationships to serve corrupt authority figures with positions over them in public because they couldn’t feel safe saying no, and it’s not entirely their fault they grew up to be deeply dysfunctional adults. However, Obi-Wan is one of those old Jedi who rub me the wrong way the most for displaying that attitude in the prequels because he’s genuinely the most complacent with being Yoda’s and the Council’s close minded and subservient ass-kisser at all costs in public and private, and he makes an active effort to not self-reflect and self-improve because he sees it won’t get him ahead or fit in over and over again. While Anakin, Ahsoka, Qui Gonn, Ezra, and other more open-minded Jedi are more vulnerable to the dark side for wanting better outside of just Yoda’s and the Jedi Council’s boundaries in the prequels, they still have moments of self-reflection, they still have individual desires and needs outside of just the Order’s boundaries. They’re not comfortable in the Jedi Order, and while the ones who went dark were morally wrong to perpetuate crimes against them all for the Sith in their fear of the unknown, they weren’t wrong about deserving better than Yoda and the Jedi Council.

Most people in their positions in real life, in spite of all the grooming to be submissive to cult leaders and corrupt authority figures, would not feel truly comfortable being that way. Most would ask questions. Most would at least try to make an effort to be their own person with their own beliefs, ideals, interests, and motives outside of just their cult, even if they were too afraid to go public with it. Obi-Wan almost consistently makes an active effort to have no personal aspirations, identity, or life outside of just the Jedi Order. While it is tragic that he never felt confident enough to be someone outside of just Yoda and the Council, I find that really difficult to relate to because it’s not very realistic. Not to mention the fact that he was closest to people who genuinely cared about being good for something greater than just Yoda’s and the Council’s validation.

Like, why take on Anakin as a padawan to honor his master’s dying wish at all, if he only ever planned to dishonor his memory by making an active decision to be the type of Jedi that Yoda and the Council encouraged him and their recruits to be to fit in and get on the Council instead?

• His fighting style of baiting opponents into duels by egging them on and using their weaknesses against them-I know some people think it’s so cool that Obi-Wan is willing to bait his opponents into duels because it shows cunning and intellect, but it strikes me as a cowardly, dishonest, and dirty type of fighting technique in battle. He can’t just be clean, honest, fair, and direct when fighting his enemies. Obi-Wan always has to make it a game. Sure, later on Anakin attempts the same thing at times as Vader, but he also never got away with it. Obi-Wan kind of did because he was the “hero.”

If anyone who I follow wants to add any more, they’re welcome to:

@tragicfantasy-girl

@leias-left-hair-bun-again

@the-chosen-anakin

#anti obi wan kenobi #pt jedi critical #pt Star Wars #ot star wars #luke sykwalker #anakin sywalker #obi was a terrible guardian friend and mentor to Anakin and Luke Skywalker #no I don’t think he was evil or completely to blame for what happened to Anakin and the Republic #but he definitely contributed with his own shitty choices and qualities #yeah I get that he was a victim of lifelong indoctrination into Yoda’s cult so it’s not ALL his fault for being a narrow-minded asshole #but he also got paired with so many idealistic people who truly wanted to make a difference for the better because they cared #not just to fit in or be rewarded by Yoda and the Council by being an asskisser #and though he loved them all he almost consistently made an effort to not be like them because he saw it didn’t get them ahead #I’m not saying he’s responsible for all of Anakin’s Ahsoka’s and Luke’s issues #but he seemed to be more of a hindrance than a help in the Skywalker boys lives #because he was too afraid to be anything more than the perfect Jedi™️ according to Yoda and the Council

[marvelstars]

“He should have known better.” Leia passed the electrobinoculars to Han. “He was a Jedi.” “He was a kid with a dead mother.” Han raised the electro-binoculars, but he seemed to be looking more toward the banthas than the bones. “He vented his anger on the ones who killed her. I might have done the same thing.” “That doesn’t make it right,” Leia said. “And it doesn’t make me a Sith monster, either,” Han retorted. “What he did wasn’t evil, it was human. Later, he became Darth Vader and did a lot of terrible things, but don’t forget that he’s the one who killed the Emperor.” “You’re saying you forgive him?” Leia asked. “After he froze you in carbonite?” “I’m just saying that without him, Palpatine would still be Emperor.” “You’re saying Darth Vader saved the galaxy?” Han shrugged. “Well, Anakin Skywalker. Think about it. If he’d have been a nice guy, do you think he’d have ever gotten that close to Palpatine?” Han continued to watch the banthas through the electrobinoculars. “Maybe that was your father’s destiny all along, to save the galaxy just like his mother thought he would - well, maybe not just like she thought. But he did save it.”

Tatooine Ghost by Troy Denning

#Han Solo #Leia Organa #Anakin Skywalker #Shmi Skywalker #darth vader #star wars #Post ROTJ #Emperor Palpatine #Leia eoching Anakin´s words #while Han eoches Padme #Han knows what´s up #Han and Anakin would have been good friends

[phoenixkaptain]

Din Djarin and Luke Skywalker are both two men who get progressively scarier the more you watch them.

Like, Luke in A New Hope was baby af. He was a child. Even in the Empire Strikes Back, what a little guy. A tiny fellow.

Then boom, Return of the Jedi, and Luke is smiling and like “Tell these Ewoks that you are their God and that if they do not release us, you will be Angered…” He is in all black, he is missing a hand, he has gone off the rails conpletely. He’s like “How will I tell Leia that we’re siblings? …Oh! I know! Riddles!” Luke Skywalker gets struck by Force Lightning like nine times and still gets up and drags his dad’s lifeless body out. There were moments one might look at him and think, “no, ur wrong, he still babie” but you are the wrong one! He goes into Jabba’s Palace and straight up stands there smiling and threatening him the whole time. He’s standing on a plank over the Sarlacc and he’s still like “So this is how you’d like to play :)” Luke straight up snapped, he got spooky by the end of the og trilogy.

Din Djarin, straight off the back, is kind of intimidating. He is a man in full armour who hunts people and freezes them in carbonite and appears behind their shoulders when they least expect it. But, after Grogu shows up, you probably think “this man is weak to this baby, he will become soft” but no! The opposite happens!

I’m talking about episode 6. The Prisoner. I have wanted desperately to talk about this for days, but have only just found the words to do so. Let me explain.

Din Djarin is filmed and edited like a horror movie villain. Like a supernatural force of evil who stalks his prey. Straight up like a slasher villain out of the eighties. There’s hints of this beforehand, what with Din appearing behind a guy in the very first episode, and the fact that he has been shot point blank (many times) but no matter how many times he falls, he always gets back up. Okay, that’s all fine and good.

But episode 6 goes beyond that. He stalks a bunch if assholes through flickering red lights. He splits them up, he takes them out one by one, and the last person standing manages to get out, thinks they’ve escaped, only to die (technically) at Din’s hand anyway. He is straight up a horror movie villain I don’t know how else to explain it, he is a horror movie villain.

Don’t take this the wrong way. Being spooky and intimidating isn’t a bad thing, especially not in Star Wars! Luke Skywalker and his ability to say terrible things while smiling, Din Djarin and his predilection for appearing right behind someone, these ar egood things. I like these things a lot. I love these. I love that Luke is the cutest little scary fella in the galaxy. I love that Din is the most awkward little scary fella in the galaxy. I think it’s great.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, for one, I have been trying to word my view on Din Djarin for days now. I love this man, I have to mock him or I’ll feel incomplete. And I think it’s a disservice to pretend that Luke isn’t a person who most people in the Star Wars universe think about and shiver. Don’t get me wrong, I love sunshine boy Luke, but he isn’t really like that, at least not by this point in the series. He just strikes me as the type of person to say incredibly dark, deranged things with a blank face, then smile at cute kittens. Luke is messed up, and we should talk about it more because it’s very interesting to explore the various ways he’s messed up.

But for another, I am a big fan of Din and Luke being buddies who go absolutely anywhere and scare the shit out of people. A Mandalorian next to a Jedi Knight? Two people who eat Storm Troopers for breakfast?? Can you imagine how much the fragments of the Empire that are still left are quaking??? Those two would go absolutelu anywhere and the anyone on planet who ever sided with the Empire would give themselves up or run, immediately.

Like, Din singlehandedly took out that whole troop on Nevarro. All by himself, he shot out all of the Storm Troopers and everyone inside and I like to think there are whispered stories about him similar to the ones about the Boogeyman.

Now, I know Luke didn’t actually kill the Emperor and Darth Vader, but does anyone in universe know that? Or does everyone think that Luke not only blew up the Death Star, but he also murdered the two head honchos and came out completely unscathed? Luke is definitely a boogeyman.

I don’t know. Something about two terrifying men walking into a bar full of Imperials only to walk out five minutes later of a bar full of dead Imperials just really fills me with joy. Something about the mental image I have of Storm Troopers fearfully sharing increasingly terrifying stories about these two makes me happy. I like bad people being scared shitless, all right? Sue me.

#star wars #original trilogy #the mandalorian #din djarin #luke skywalker #dinluke #this isn’t really dinluke #but can you imagine if these two ever went on a date? #the restaurant would blow up #these two are magnets for trouble #who would both think the other is the magnet #i just want the bad guys to be scared #i want them to shake #i want them to quiver #i want them to fall to their knees #i want them to tremble and gulp and beg for mercy #is that too much to ask #the inane ramblings of a madman #long post #i should’ve written star wars

[sailorsol]

Star Wars takes I’m sick of seeing:

1. When a Jedi chooses to no longer follow the path of a Jedi, they are automatically a Sith. That’s like saying if you are no longer a practicing Jew, you’re automatically a Catholic. Being a Sith has a specific set of beliefs and doctrines that must be followed, the same as being a Jedi. One can choose to no longer be a Jedi and *not* be evil or Fallen in any way, shape, or form, and this does not make them a bad person.

2. That if the Jedi were just a bit more Mandalorian, it would have Solved All Their Problems and prevented Anakin from Falling. Usually this means that if the Jedi just showed more emotion/weren’t emotionally repressed/if Obi-Wan just told Anakin he loved him/was proud of him, Anakin wouldn’t have made the decision on multiple occasions to slaughter children. There are so many “fix it” fics where this is the underlying theme.

3. Likewise, the Jedi repress their emotions. The Jedi teach their students to be *mindful* of their emotions, to not react based on a person’s first initial knee jerk response. They asked Anakin to have the same level of emotional control as a kindergartener--you don’t get to punch someone because they took your favorite toy and broke it.

3. When Mandalorians adopt children (with or without parental permission) and indoctrinate them into their culture of weaponry and violence, it’s cute; when the Jedi adopt children (usually with parental permission) and teach them to control their emotions and their psychic powers based on those emotions, they’re an evil child-snatching cult. Only the Mandalorians are capable of forming a family bond and despite being communally raised, the Jedi are incapable of forming those same bonds, probably because of all that emotional repression. But if you violate the rules of the Mandalorians, you are cast out of said “family”, whereas even someone like Darth Vader was offered a way home.

4. Love = Attachment. Attachment is about greed and possession. We are told *and* shown on multiple occasions that you can love someone and let them go. Obi-Wan does it multiple times. But when you go beyond love, when you refuse to accept loss, whether it’s external like death or internal like someone choosing to leave you, that’s when you move into Attachment, and *that* is what leads to the Dark side.

ETA, because apparently I wasn’t done:

5.  The Jedi Order, which has existed for tens of thousands of years, should change everything about itself and its doctrines to suit one kid who doesn’t actually care about following other people’s rules in any circumstance.

6. Anakin Skywalker is the only Jedi who ever treated the clones like Real People, despite several blatant examples showing otherwise, and the fact that he was totally chill with them having their identities and free will stripped away from them. But because he was the only one who was Raised By A Real Mother, he’s the only one capable of showing compassion to other people.

7. That because they have accelerated aging, this makes the clones child soldiers. If they were completely non-human, no one would blink an eye at the idea of a species maturing at a different rate than humans. So they’ve only been alive for ten years? That does not make them children. Grogu has been alive for over 50 years and he’s still a toddler. Calling them children is infantilizing and demeaning. 

8. Listen, I love whumping on Obi-Wan as much as the next fangirl, but I’m kinda getting tired of the whole “Obi-Wan never goes to medical/doesn’t sleep/doesn’t remember to eat” thing. He raised a whole ass padawan to adulthood. We have never actually seen him deny himself medical care, sleep, or food. He might work longer hours during the war, but so does everyone else. And the only reason I can justify him not eating isn’t because he “forgets” so much as the poor guy probably has a terrible case of decision fatigue. If all he has to do is walk to the chow hall and get served what everyone else is being served, I don’t think he’d have that much of a problem. There are, of course, extenuating circumstances to all of these based on any prior trauma he may or may not have, but otherwise it’s infantilizing.

This post is brought to you in part by fandom as well as interacting with members of the Star Wars costuming groups.

#star wars #meta #shitty takes #can we please stop with these #i'm tired of having the same argument over and over again

[antianakin]

Am I the only one who just lost any and all love for newer Star Wars material due to Jedi hate ? Like- the only merch or show or even FANDOM topic I get involved in is clone wars stuff and MAYBE TBB. Like- why would I want the watch shows who attempt to rewritte canon and portray the very heroes of Star Wars as the bad guys ?

Why would I want to watch shows that assassinate characters left and right (looking at you, Ahsoka and Sabine) ? Why would I want to buy merch of characters who I not only NOT care about, but who also are used as meta mouthpieces for stupid Jedi hate ?

I think there's TONS of good newer Star Wars material, to be honest.

I loved the Kenobi show and it is arguably one of the most pro Jedi pieces of media to have existed since the Prequels films. Aside from one itty bitty somewhat awkward word choice in one line of one episode, there is absolutely NOTHING in that show that can be used to indict the Jedi or blame them for anything and it is arguably one of the only shows to really spend time MOURNING the Jedi and recognizing the horror of what was done to them. Rebels comes closest after this, but its structure makes it a little less visceral than the Kenobi show was to me.

I really adore Visions and I recognize that this is sort-of Star Wars adjacent more than anything else, but SO LITTLE truly understands what makes Star Wars compelling as a story and really hits on those primary themes the way that Visions does. There's SO MUCH Jedi content in Visions and I remember people complaining about how much Jedi content was in Visions and other people responding that if you were given free reign to just play in the Star Wars sandbox with near zero restrictions on what you could make with it, you would probably ALSO immediately go for the psychic space wizards with laser swords. Who WOULDN'T? Visions also just genuinely has some of the most engaging and heart-wrenching stories to come out of Star Wars in a LONG while and it does it in these beautifully animated 15 minute packages. It's such a gem and I am so glad to be alive at the same time as Visions.

Rogue One is older now, but both Rogue One and Andor, despite having zero actual Jedi in them, really hinge on the themes from the Prequel trilogy about the tragedy in the Star Wars universe, stepping up when no one else will, choosing to be selfless and compassionate for the greater good, etc. Faith and hope are MASSIVE themes within these two works and even though there aren't any space wizards, good or evil, in either story, they feel like some of the most pro Jedi things Star Wars has come out with in a while based on thematic messages ALONE.

The Mandalorian's first two seasons actually have this absolutely BEAUTIFUL story about the selfless sacrifice of one man as he gives up everything in order to help this child find his way back to the culture he'd been ripped from. Everything AFTER that regarding Grogu and Din's storyline is a piece of shit (it's not explicitly anti-Jedi or anything, but it undoes a lot of the things that made their story so compelling and beautiful), but the first two seasons are genuinely GOOD and very pro Jedi in a lot of ways despite the lack of many actual Jedi characters.

The Book of Boba Fett is a terrible show for a LOT of reasons, but shockingly none of them have anything to do with its treatment of the Jedi. If it ever ends up with a season two, I desperately hope they leave Mace Windu's name the fuck out of it, but at this point it is a pretty Jedi neutral show if you're willing to deal with the rest of its bullshit.

Rebels is also somewhat older now, and it has a few lines here and there that are a tad more Jedi critical, but it is by and large VERY Jedi positive and does also follow a lot of the themes of selflessness and sacrifice that go along with being a Jedi. It also has themes of mercy and patience and facing your fears in Sabine's storyline that got entirely thrown away in her later storyline. Just thought that was worth pointing out. For reasons.

TBB is also fairly Jedi neutral, but its treatment of the clones is basically the clone version of being anti Jedi, so I'm not sure it's actually any better. It just traded hating on the Jedi to hating on the clones, and I find that just as distasteful.

I can't really speak to things like comics and novels much since I don't tend to consume them really. I've read a few of the adult novels in the High Republic Phase I and the first one was genuinely very good, but there were some relatively heavy-handed Jedi critical themes within the third book of Phase I (The Fallen Star) that put me off of it a little. I haven't continued into Phase II or III at all, so I have no idea if those themes got continued in later books. I've heard generally good things about the Padawan book, I think.

The Cal Kestis video games, Fallen Order and Survivor, also have their small Jedi critical moments, but much like Rebels, it has these massive overarching themes and messages about compassion and selflessness and sacrifice and facing your fears and mercy. They are immensely Jedi positive in a lot of ways and I really enjoyed both of them.

So out of everything I have seen (and know about) the only stuff that's truly heinously and insultingly anti-Jedi is the Ahsoka show, the Acolyte, and Tales of the Jedi. Three shows and like 30% of one book. Out of a list of like ten different shows and one film and some books and video games. It's not even really HALF of the content we've been getting recently.

A lot of people talk about the Disney era like it's ruined Star Wars, or like nothing it releases has ever been good. But it just straight up isn't true. It's a little insulting to all of the genuinely wonderful work that is being done by all of these other creators to just brush aside everything that's been coming out recently as awful and bad because some of the MOST recent things have been pretty explicitly hateful towards the Jedi. It's not fun that we had the Ahsoka show immediately followed by the Bad Batch followed by the Acolyte. I hate that, too, it feels like we're on this neverending shitshow of stories explicitly aimed at hating a group of characters for no obvious good reason. But I don't think that the last 6 months or so of bullshit should overshadow some of the really beautiful stories we HAVE gotten within the last several years.

If you feel like things are getting difficult, maybe do a "good Star Wars" marathon of sorts. Watch the Prequels, followed by the Kenobi show, then Andor, then Rebels, then Rogue One, then the Original trilogy. This one long beautiful story of people stepping up to fight against selfishness and greed and darkness no matter what.

Or go rewatch Visions or read some of your favorite fanfics and remember all the things about Star Wars that are just universally cool and compelling across the world. Hell, you can try writing something of your own! Anything! A lot of my AU concepts stemmed from spite and really helped me feel a little bit better about Star Wars when it sometimes felt like I was just surrounded by the parts of it I liked the least. Go buy yourself a cool t-shirt or some fun jewelry. Find some pretty stickers and put it on a water bottle or an enamel pin to put on a canvas tote bag or a corkboard.

Curating your fandom experience goes beyond just the internet. There's a reason I am boycotting the Acolyte and it isn't because I think Disney or its creators are going to care at all. I'm doing it for ME, because I had such a shitty time watching the Ahsoka show and it made me so miserable each week that I seriously think I will be better off just leaving it the hell alone and just absorbing whatever ends up crossing my dash from a distance. I only participate in Star Wars fandom servers that I feel safe in and only really get into discussions with personal friends who I know well. If participating in Star Wars fandom is making you sad, maybe take a step back or find a way to create your own corner of fandom that feels better. Ignore the damn Ahsoka show, pretend it never existed. Ignore the Acolyte. Ignore Tales of the Jedi. Ignore Filoni-related bullshit. Focus on the parts you DO like, or give yourself the space to remember why you liked it in the first place.

#star wars #jedi #pro jedi #obi-wan kenobi #sw owk #kenobi show #kenobi series #andor #star wars andor #rogue one #star wars rebels #rebels #anti tbb #tbb wank #anti ahsoka show #anti acolyte #visions #star wars visions

[jedi-enthusiast]

I said I would get on my "let villains just be evil" soapbox again in the Jedi Appreciation server, so here we are.

LET VILLAINS JUST BE EVIL, FOR FORCE'S SAKE!!!

For some context: this was brought up on a discussion of how Kallus should've just stayed a villain instead of getting the shitty half-assed "redemption arc" that he did in Rebels and also how I would have done Rebels differently.

Now-

I am just...so utterly sick of people (both fans + some of the people creating new SW media) just not letting villains be villains and/or trying to soften them up or give them a sad backstory or whatever.

-----

I like Anakin/Darth Vader as a villain...fans try to justify his actions and say that he was right + Filoni is now under the delusional impression that Anakin was the "best Jedi."

I like Thrawn as a villain...I've also seen people justify his actions and say that he was "right" to steal important cultural artifacts from the cultures he's taking over/destroying because "they'd be destroyed anyway," like that makes it ok.

(I'm also terrified that Filoni is gonna try to give him some sort of sob story or redemption arc in the Ahsoka show, since that's pretty on par for what he's been doing lately)

I like Maul as a villain...and apparently people also try to justify his actions, especially in Rebels, for some reason. I don't even know how, but apparently they do.

I like Dooku as a villain and Filoni tried to justify his actions and make him seem "reasonable" in TotJ, like Dooku didn't become a fucking fascist dictator.

I haven't seen enough of the Sequels to properly gauge whether or not I'd like Kylo Ren as a villain, but plenty of people did! ...and then the directors gave him a half-assed redemption arc and called it quits.

-----

Like please, for the love of god, can people just let villains be evil and terrible people? Can we all just enjoy their characters as they are instead of trying to turn them into something they're not?

Because, at this point, the only villain that's safe to like is Palpatine--but I'm almost certain that people have tried to justify his actions too.

It's exhausting to have to explain-

"Yes, I like Anakin/Darth Vader because I think he's badass, no I don't think the Jedi were evil or in the wrong or that they caused his Fall."

"Yes, I like Thrawn because I think he's creepy and a formidable opponent to face, no I don't think he was benevolent for stealing cultural artifacts from cultures he destroyed."

"Yes, I like Maul because he's absolutely batshit insane, no I don't think his actions against Obi-Wan were justified or that he was right to try and manipulate/kidnap Ezra to be his apprentice."

"Yes, I like Dooku because he's a snarky asshole and also pretty badass, no I don't think that he was actually right or that the Separatists were right either."

etc. etc.

LET VILLAINS JUST BE EVIL!

#I would hope that this doesn't need to be said #but this post is pro-jedi #star wars #sw rebels #darth vader #anakin skywalker #thrawn #count dooku #kylo ren #darth maul #palpatine #anti anakin apologists

[organizationhimself]

just kinda having some thinky thoughts about how dark road totally rewired eraqus's character and what a phenomenal job they did.

like here's your problem you have. you need to take this cloistered old man who raised his students in the jedi way, somehow put up with Old Man Villainy being That Way presumably on the regular, lost every last iota of his shit and turned on the Apocalypse Child he adopted as well as his surrogate son who was infested with The Evil (which the series has long established as not necessarily being good or bad without context) to say nothing of the headtrip he gave his direct heir, and you need to reduce him to a version of himself as a child that is. like. fun. someone who has a genuine friendship with xehanort and is regarded by xehanort as someone who is a "sly fox," i.e. not the sort of buffoon who tests for mastery of the keyblade by child-proofing some orbs of light.

where do you even begin?

YOU TRAUMATIZE THE UNGODLY HELL OUT OF HI--okay i'm getting ahead of myself, let's start with principles.

because eraqus is principled. he believes really firmly in the light in a way that's nearly sora-adjacent in its intensity, but the thing is that sora has this flexibility that eraqus was simply not raised to appreciate. yes, nomura, we understand you like the bright sunshine one and the wry brooding one, you did it with sora and riku, god knows what you did to axel's spine to fit him into the sunshine kid's mold next to isa as brooding anti-crybaby, and now we're doing the same thing to eraqus. ok. i love it when you're optimistic, let's do it.

so first we need confidence. easy; he's a smug little rich kid. worked for riku didn't it? (source: kh1 manga, and the fact that you cannot convince me anyone can maintain a kid with that build on a budget) but we also need to see how dark road changed him as a person. let's contrast his uptight stick-up-his-ass future with a present day class clown who doesn't take things seriously; a headstrong fighter who jokes that he'll just run away. and hey speaking of emotional damage, let's start easing into the inevitable terrible, horrific, unspeakable traumas we're going to visit on this defenseless creature with a little one as a treat:

HIT HIM RIGHT IN THE GRANDPA.

and there you go! we now have a source for eraqus's rejection of the darkness that is not simply a function of his career as a jedi keyblade master, but has an actual personal experience he can point back to in order to say "hey, darkness is the pits!! here is why." it sets the stage early for him to be already butting heads with xehanort, who takes a much more flexible look at the worlds and the way they work and is more willing to view things from the perspective that he is not an authority on the moral peculiarities of whatever world he is currently inhabiting.

xehanort is also a child of destiny [citation needed]. an isolated visitant who was born for finer things but never slept a day in his life without waking up with sand in his mouth until he reached out and took his fate in his bare hands and let it drag him all the way to scala.

where he met the blueblooded child of a keybearing legacy thousands of years in the making, just like his.

and suddenly what you have are unwitting equals. we're ready to set them both up at the chess board; eraqus's legacy is plain, he moves first and he makes no apologies for it because it's his birthright. but xehanort's half of the board is still buried in shadow, implied but never stated, never surrendered to eraqus's probing questions or revealed by his moves, but already aimed at a clash with destiny, fated, inevitable.

shall we say, already written.

and this is brilliant!! now we have a source for our "sly fox," a reason for xehanort to be extremely familiar with the way eraqus thinks (and not to star wars on main but the obi-wan kenobi series did something really similar to this narratively by using anakin and obi-wan's familiarity with each others' fighting styles to predict the actions they would take in a situation, and i will actually never be over it in my life, absolutely stealing it for a xehaqus fic sometime, just shamelessly mugging ewan mcgregor in the street for that solid gold good shit). not only that, but we also have an explanation for xehanort's motivations as described by kh3. he is not looking at the fight from the perspective of one of the pawns; he is looking at the fight as a player, deciding which pawn gets taken. selecting which rook to sacrifice in exchange for the queen.

and eraqus is opposite him, doing the exact same thing (sort of, kh3 was a little cerebral with that), but there's an important difference here that we'll come back to later on.

so, okay. we have a vague outline in the shape of a sunshine kid now. he has confidence tied to his role in society, his legacy gives him perspective, his trauma ensures that he will one day calcify against the darkness with such emphasis that he will unwittingly pad the therapy bills of an entire generation. so far so good.

but uh, yeah, his kids? he fights them? like okay, axel has his differences with his kids too but he's not trying to kill them (mostly). eraqus really definitely for real is, and ven is defenseless. so that'ssss...hard to square with the sunshine kid we're building, nomura, how do we explain that? we really can't handwave it as amnesia this time, we're not working with ansem the wise here.

(BALDR. BALDR IS HOW--

ok but wait wait wait, before we even get to baldr, there's something we can do:

make eraqus impulsive.

and i mean impulsive. make eraqus spoil for a fight with so much unmitigated howler monkey energy that he will fight his friends just to vent. (this isn't even a unique thing, riku and xion and even sora do it all the time, and we're not here to talk about ven's crimes against miners but it's clear that violence is a spoken language in kh.) eraqus is fluent, so we're making it so that all of eraqus's intensity and passion can be focused on a single point if xehanort pushes exactly the right switches in his head.

and then, y'know, yeah. make baldr slaughter all of his classmates, several of them right in front of him, because of unchecked darkness and baldr's own inability to see past his own grief and resentment for long enough to understand that all he's really doing is inflicting his own suffering on other people in a murderstorm of nihilism and bitterness. unrelenting trauma conga line, check.

and now we have almost all the elements. eraqus's principles can't allow him to accept darkness, both because his grandfather was lost to it and because it left him (by all accounts a bourgeois slacker at the bottom of his class, someone vidar doesn't even consider as a candidate for one of the lights despite what baldr has to say about eraqus as a light source) one of the only survivors of an event that completely resculpted his life and community. time to pack him off to the jedi temple land of departure to be least okayest teacher of the year, right?

well...no. we need eraqus to wait.

because he doesn't take on students. and doesn't, and doesn't, for decades. first he fights xehanort, and as we have established he is spoiling for that fight (white moves first!). and then when xehanort finally visits him to drop off that half-dead kid he found (ven was like that already shhh), he's kind of like politely like "oh, you have apprentices. they seem...bright," like he's congratulating eraqus on finally reaching a life stage that eraqus should have hit approximately 50 years ago, and eraqus is like "yeah yeah whatever shut up anyway YOU'VE got one too now right." (yen sid talks about the role of "seeker" like it's a different thing from "keyblade master" so that's where i'm extrapolating this distinction from, but regardless i don't think anyone ever seriously expected xehanort to take on students.)

my point here is that eraqus waited until the last possible opportunity to take on students. to carry on the legacy that was so important to him as a child, and to re-experience the closest thing to the camaraderie he had as a keybearer-in-training that he could ever have back. that is how impactful baldr's actions were for eraqus.

i'm veering completely into speculation now but i think eraqus was terrified. how could he not be? his class wasn't even taking the mark of mastery and still got decimated by it. how could he risk going through that again, but from odin's perspective this time? what guarantee would he ever have to avoid the same tragedy his master had failed to prevent?

so, NOW we know why eraqus's mark of mastery was a handful of light pinatas and a duel. (i like to think xehanort felt a certain level of professional embarrassment for him and wanted to make it just a little more like a real challenge.)

(this is a sidebar and i'm going to talk about my other blorbo for a second but terra has a beautiful dream of being a sly manipulator. that's why he doesn't worry about investing himself in villain schemes, because he assumes he'll see the snare coming before he gets his head caught in it, but it's never coming from directly in front of him like he expects. so this is a dream that will never come true, but he has it, and i think given what we knew about eraqus as early as blank points, its only possible source is a master who was strict and exacting, but--very occasionally--also a sly fox who secretly delighted in his students' nascent abilities to surprise and outwit him.)

back to the trauma, we also have, obviously, the explanation for eraqus's attitude towards terra, and later ven. terra is a tragedy in slow motion that eraqus has seen happen before. baldr was unable to control his darkness; it overwhelmed him, and eraqus does not have the context that xehanort does, that baldr was in some ways a product of his own darkness-shunning society. even if eraqus does have that context, i can't really see him agreeing with it--and even if he at one point agreed with it, he would have gotten that context from the same guy who last showed up at his house talking about kicking off the apocalypse for the vine.

so like. eraqus has never seen any damn thing in his whole life that doesn't confirm his bias against the darkness. does that make him innocent of parenting Incorrectly? no, he is a Bad Dad. does it explain his hopelessly unsuccessful parenting strategies? yes, it does.

what it reinforces is also that eraqus didn't want to have to fight terra and ven. the original bbs is honestly not very good about establishing this: he cries one Sad Tear. yawn. still child abuse, asshole! the stakes in bbs are also not very well established, because there's approximately six people in it and some of them are just the same guy over again, so we don't really have a sense that terra being taken over by the darkness is like...gonna mean something to eraqus that is sincerely worth the personal cost of killing him. since we're clearly no longer worried about ven, there aren't other students to protect (besides aqua, but she's a really hard sell on the "needs to be protected from terra with so much urgency he must not live another moment" front). there is no immediacy to ven's status as Apocalypse Child; if anything vanitas seems like the obviously more important threat, and maybe eraqus should be less concerned about weeding out students and more focused on vetting friends like Old Man So Clearly The Villain My Guy. bbs eraqus is just genuinely hard to like as a character.

but now we have dark road context.

and white moves first.

eraqus is not seeing terra or ven in that moment, he's seeing baldr. he's seeing the summoning of kingdom hearts that almost was, and he is gripped by meticulously prearranged, bone-deep, irrational, traumatized, unbridled impulse. the emotion must vent. the thing he was powerless to stop has returned to haunt him and he must resist it. he knows what will happen if terra strikes him down here and heads back out into the worlds in search of other hearts, other lights. he knows.

but terra resists, using the full spectrum of his strength without remorse, and it is only when eraqus's keyblade is ready to fall from his hand that he realizes the truth:

My own heart is darkness.

and when this happened in the original birth by sleep all i could think was yeah star wars dad!! nailed it your heart IS darkness you fuckin dillweed, about time!! what took you so long!!

but after dark road, this context is completely changed. eraqus is not just realizing that he fucked up.

he is realizing that he fucked up the exact same way baldr fucked up.

that he let his own grief and suffering cloud his judgment and guide his blade to strike out at his loved ones. that instead of finding a way to live with what's already happened to ven, what was long ago fated for terra, he turned his resentment outward and gave that darkness leave to consume them both whole.

but unlike baldr, eraqus regrets it.

it is that moment that xehanort cuts him down anyway, not because eraqus can't be saved the way baldr couldn't but because xehanort is cleaving away the last of his own attachments to the world so he can follow through with the rest of his plans, and i am SO NORMAL ABOUT THI

but okay anyway. eraqus has exactly one move left.

he can't see the board. unlike xehanort, he has no extra pieces of himself he can just bandy about; the warriors of light must assemble without any of his direct input, chasing the echoes of eraqus's students and pushing and pulling in reaction to xehanort's steady advance through the center. he has only one chance. he can't afford to waste it.

the kings are meeting in the middle of the board. the stalemate will come any moment, when they're both out of moves and out of time, leaving the fate of the worlds undecided.

and it is at this moment that eraqus pulls the same penultimate move that xehanort himself used on baldr, confronting him with the first victim his darkness ever struck down. eraqus almost doesn't have to say anything, at all, because xehanort has to know what it means. has to know what it says.

xehanort resists. the world is too far gone. too many horrible things can happen in it; it must be reset. not purged and filled with darkness, like baldr wanted, but returned to a state that can never mutate into the conditions that made baldr exist in the first place. that doomed all their classmates to die. it's too late.

For us, perhaps...but not for them.

and now we go back to the distinction.

the thing that makes xehanort's chess game different from eraqus's is that, for xehanort, it's only chess. the pieces he's moving have ceased to exist in his mind as individuals. they are pawns on a line of white and black squares, and they may weave away from his will here or there but they cannot be swayed from their march.

eraqus never forgets.

and it's actually eraqus's capacity for forgiveness that i haven't even touched on yet. this isn't a word i ever expected to associate with him, but eraqus spends dark road forgiving. five minutes after any altercation he's already forgotten about it. name-calling. arguments. rejection. opposition. full-on fighting.

murders.

when xehanort kills baldr, eraqus is still calling out for him to stop. when xehanort later strikes out at him with darkness (the thing eraqus is scared of the most!!), permanently disfiguring him, eraqus has already forgiven him before seeing him the next time in person.

he does not forget that baldr is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want him to be killed for it. that terra is a person in spite of his darkness, and eraqus doesn't want to see it consume him. that ven is a person in spite of the darkness that was cleaved from him, and eraqus doesn't want to see it return.

(if you think about it the real tragedy is that we were robbed of him looking aqua in the eye and telling her that she isn't tainted forever, that it did not take her, and even if it had, that will always, always matter less than her finding her way back. i refuse to believe terra was not already made aware of these facts.)

but he also does not forget that xehanort is not a faceless player in the skies, impossible to convince of the significance of a pawn; he remembers that xehanort, too, is still a person.

this point is important because eraqus's last move is not a checkmate (I KNOW HE SAYS CHECKMATE but it is not checkmate), but it is calculated to produce something else: a concession. he doesn't need the board to support his win or xehanort's loss; he needs the player on the other side to put down the pieces and follow his beacon out of the dark.

and that is how nomura shows us our sunshine kid at last, fully formed, as he takes xehanort's burdens from him and spirits them both well beyond the reach of the board.

anyway yeah microwaving him in my brain along with axel (and also roxas and terra because if i don't collect all my blorbos AND their hot mess dads i'll never fill out my pokedex).

#eraqus #xehanort #kingdom hearts dark road #khdr #xehaqus #i would apologize for the length if i were sorry

[nateofgreat]

the dumbasses who think they know everything and were in George’s mind or something when he was writing the prequels and therefore their interpretation of them is “Right” and definitely what he meant and not completely opposite fanon….

just taking everything the fucking evil ass Sith Lord who manufactured a fucking galactic war to destroy the Republic and create the Empire/used the Clones to commit genocide/abused his power/played everyone and goddamn Anakin Skywalker says abt the Jedi as fact and totally correct and not biased at all.

like no i don’t think that’s the point of those conversations….you just wrongly think it is. the Sith are not “good” and murdering the Jedi and their babies was not getting rid of a “corrupt” (what the hell are they talking abt with that tired excuse? shut up) org. but also new official d*sney SW content feeds into those takes on the Jedi? especially with the sequel trilogy and D*ve Filoni’s works.

i mean say what you want abt the Obi-Wan Kenobi show and but it at least respected and admired and mourned them properly and showed how devastating Order 66 was from the POV of a youngling survivor and how traumatized Obi-Wan was from Anakin’s actions.

The dangers of writing fictional propaganda I suppose lol.

What's funny is that a lot of the things that the Jedi Order is blamed for are actually Palpatine's fault (an intentional design on his part) specifically for the purpose of distracting them or making them look bad.

Like everyone complains about the Jedi fighting in the Clone Wars when it was Palpatine himself who orchestrated the war and conscripted the Jedi to fight in it.

They complain that the Jedi command a "slave army" when the Clones are intended to be a metaphor for the draft, when Palpatine's the own who ordered their production and then literally enslaved them with inhibitor chips.

The Jedi "steal babies" (not true) and then Palpatine has all of the same babies everyone's so upset about the Jedi raising killed.

I don't understand why Disney's insistent on playing into it. It's like they don't get that the Jedi are the main selling point of Star Wars, they're not going to have much luck with the franchise if they waste all of their time complaining about them and acting like they all deserve to die.

As much as the Last Jedi's panned for this it at least presented the idea that the Jedi Order's failures didn't define them and that they could pass on what they learned from it all. Filoni looks more like he's going the route of, "They failed, they suck, they're wrong about almost everything, and they need to completely change." Which is uhh, not very intriguing.

I also prefer Kenobi, it was a good show. Most the complaints I see about it are mostly just minor plot holes and contrivances that I think could've been caught if they'd given the team a little more time to iron things out. So I blame Disney for that one. And showing how terrible Order 66 was fit nicely into it.

#Star Wars #Pro Jedi #In defense of the Jedi #Jedi Order #The Jedi #Dave Filoni critical

[gch1995]

Imo yoda has got to be one of the worst if not THE worst council member. Although I can understand the hate obi wan gets I can appreciate his character and think he can be redeemed to an extent. He shows sympathy and understanding at times and you can see he does care for anakin, but the cult he was in fucked him up; including his ability to empathise and understand others. Although he follows the council extensively he tries his best to make exceptions for those he cares about. (knowing about anakin and padme but choosing to ignore it because he knows anakin is happy like that, training anakin despite the council not wanting him to, yes I know it was qui gons dying wish but that is apart of it to an extent) the thing is being raised in the order took a massive toll on him and he seeks too much approval from them and doesn’t ever question their ways. He is a heavily flawed character but he does have redeeming qualities. Yoda on the other hand? None. Zero. Absolutely nothing. Nothing, not one thing about his character is redeemable. (Bit of a rant) This little green cunt is happily shown training a group of kids with lethal weapons in his fucked up cult. He is 500 fucking years old but never bothered to even attempt at learning how to speak normally, including when ordering the slave army he controlled. This fucker spent all his life supporting and feeding into the fuckery of the order whilst constantly telling himself it was the right thing. Arrogantly sitting in his little chair allowing slavery, making child soldiers and allowing god knows how much abuse to happen to others. This shit is responsible for approximately 700 years worth of abuse towards god knows how many others. This fucker straight up denies his responsibility for everything he’s done. And it’s not just the abuse. He’s caused billions to suffer because of his arrogance. The thing is, while I can find myself looking at a character like obi wan and thinking

“wow, this character is heavily flawed but has a lot of interesting aspects and I can sympathise with him at times. I like his character and the evolution of how he reacts and responds to situations although it’s sad considering his past and how those actions devolve into something horrific and unhealthy to the point where he becomes the abuser and carries on that line which is sad. Even though there are many things that he is responsible for there are times when it’s not his fault and I can empathise with that without excusing the ones he was responsible for even if they were heavily affected by the things he went through”

But when I look at yoda?

“I hope this cunt burns in hell for eternity for the things he’s done”

Legitimately cannot put into words just how much I hate him. He’s the one who’s heavily responsible for the way obi wan turned out and most of all:

He’s the one who tried to manipulate, gaslight and force Luke to kill his own mess of a father that he created.

I genuinely think he cannot be redeemed (for me, at least. I’ll never forgive that little shit) for everything thing he’s done. (Sorry for the long ask)

Definitely, agree with you! Within a Star Wars canon-divergent AU narrative that actually framed Obi-Wan’s bad choices and flaws as seriously bad ones in the story with stakes that he either learned from and self-improved upon before it was too late and/or didn’t learn from and suffered negative consequences for as a result. Yeah, he loses people he cares about, and, at least in regards to Anakin Skywalker and Ahsoka Tano, that is partially his own fault. However, while I do feel some sympathy for him and realize that he’s flawed, it’s difficult for me to get on board with his character in canon as he is written because he never actually learns from his mistakes on screen, nor are there any real stakes in him making seriously bad choices and not learning in comparison to Anakin and Luke. I don’t hate him, but it’s hard for me to get invested in a character who can always magically get the upper hand in his duels with his enemies or opponents suddenly getting baited, provoked, pushed into a corner, or dumbed down for him to be able to effortlessly defeat them. He also repeatedly gets away with being an asshole in many of the same ways that Luke and Anakin get framed as wrong for and/or suffer consequences for in the OT and PT movies when they don’t learn to be better. Yeah, Obi-Wan loses people he cares about, and at least in regards to Anakin and Ahsoka, that is partially his own fault, but there is no sort of humbling or meaningful development in canon for him.

Still, because, as you said, Obi-Wan also was a victim of Yoda’s cult who did genuinely grow to care for Qui Gonn, Anakin, and Ahsoka, in spite of being really bad at it, he does have a lot of potential to be a better character in canon-divergent/AU material that actually has him facing real stakes and learning to take real self-accountability for his bad choices before getting to earn the hero treatment in the narrative. Within canon and especially his fandom of diehard Kenobist fans, though, Obi-Wan is such a grossly overrated Gary Stu that I’ve genuinely began to find his character more annoying and boring than he was before.

Yoda, on the other hand, really doesn’t seem to have any sort of real conscience or significant guilt for being an asshole. Nor does he really feel like a person at all because the only things he cares about are avoiding the dark side and staying in power. He also has no real backstory, so I don’t understand why he’s become an unapologetically apathetic asshole, learned nothing throughout his life, and remained willfully in-denial for the past several centuries. I don’t understand why he was allowed to be in charge for so long. I don’t understand why he is the disaster of a person he is in the series because there is no development for his character. With Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme, the rest Republic senate, and the other Jedi they may not be wholly innocent, but I can understand why.

#anti yoda #i agree that besides Palpatine Yoda is the worst #Yoda is the worst Star Wars character #yeah technically Palpatine is more evil but at least he is framed as a bad guy #yeah Anakin Obi-Wan Padme and many of the other members of the fallen Jedi and Republic have committed inexcusable atrocities too #but at least I can understand why they became terrible people in their fear of the unknown when operating under compromised agency #at least we know they were actually victims who were products of broken systems and there is genuine humanity beneath their asshole side #i really don’t like canon!obi-wan kenobi #because he’s a Gary Stu #it annoys me because in contrast Anakin and Luke are constantly hit with warnings and negative consequences when they’re assholes #and it shouldn’t be that easy for obi wan to not feel the temptation of going too far dark at all #because in many ways he has many of the same flaws that Anakin and Luke display and/or develop #but somehow we’re supposed to believe he’s so great at avoiding temptation #in spite of also having a hair trigger temper being vindictive towards enemies and fighting dirty all the time #Kenobi has potential in stories that give him more conflict and stakes for being an assholr #or have him actually grow #but within canon and especially his diehard fandom obi-WAN’s character annoys me #I’m critical of obi-wan for how he’s treated in the canon narrative and his fan base but he does have potential #he did care about the skywalker boys in spite of often treating them both badly particularly Anakin #and he does have occasional moments when he questions Yoda’s and the council’s bullshit #so in a canon-divergent/au or a story from his pov that doesn’t completely let him off the hook for being an asshole #and refuses to let him actually be a hero until he actually can admit he fucked up I could see potential

[daisychainsandbowties]

Is it just me or does shin hati lacks personality?

i think it’s pretty obvious i don’t think of Shin as lacking in personality. i love what i’ve seen of her so far - think Ivanna is absolutely killing it with her performance so far, playing this mixture of intensity and homegrown Jedi calm, of a girl who is very alone and also trying to hold herself away from caring about anyone she might have to kill. i mean, i don’t know why you think she has no personality (i’d be interested in hearing your reasons) but to me she’s a fantastic character. if you know me you know that it takes A LOT for me to write fic for a character or a ship. so if wolfwren has moved me, i can pretty much guarantee i don’t sell out for looks with no personality.

but let me actually explain why i like Shin

firstly, she’s had very little screen time, to the extent i’ve probably got gifs of every frame of her so far on my blog. meanwhile Sabine has all of Rebels, Ahsoka has The Clone Wars, and Huyang is, frankly, a very typical example of a speaking droid. reminds me of c3po (i think he’s great, just not original characterisation). and they’ve all had more screen time in these four eps than Shin, who nonetheless has, in my opinion, demonstrated tremendous presence in every single scene she’s appeared in.

how she shows up on Lothal, stands there and says in her maddeningly calm tone, “we’ve been looking for this.” it’s just… so tongue-in-cheek, and Shin could so easily have sic’d the droid on Sabine and made her escape, could have smacked her against a wall with the Force and strolled away. but she chooses to stay. and the way she dances around Sabine’s blows… grabs the hilt of her saber to manipulate her in the fight, putty in her hands. flips her over her shoulder and plays plays plays with her… the grace and the wildness and the strange fascination of their fight. god she’s just!! so intriguing.

i think people pay too little attention to how much characterisation there is in a fight scene. we have Sabine fighting with a style that’s very much a mesh of form 1 and form 3. it’s defensive, it has hints of Ahsoka in it, her own modified and slightly more useful variation of Soresu (form 3) and then we have Shin. i need to examine her moves more closely to tell what forms (i think definitely forms plural) she’s drawing from - not much makashi, which makes sense since Baylan is Jedi-trained. her movements remind me of Maul’s style in The Phantom Menace, but there’s an element to her style that feels more… joyful, freeform, free verse.

she spins and pirouettes and barely avoids the cut of Sabine’s lightsaber. there’s relish in those movements. she can clearly block blaster bolts magnificently, has the athletic and acrobatic ability for ataru (the form yoda favours, and anakin to an extent). she’s a muddle of contradictions. silent so often but when she fights, when she flies that fighter…she’s golden.

and wry, too. watch for those slight smiles. the “you almost got them” and her hop-skip in the forest on Seatos, the “hello there” energy reminding me so much of Obi-Wan. and then her obvious terror when the Inquisitor falls, spewing green smoke. at the time i thought she was afraid for herself, of Ahsoka, but she was really afraid for Baylan. he’s trying to be a Jedi Master to her - there’s distance in their relationship, and GOD you can see her longing for contact, for touch, for something she can push and feel pushing back.

i think it’s why she antagonizes Morgan, why she waits to duel Sabine. she wants to… touch something and not just in a physical sense but in terms of connection. the light is so much about embracing life and i think of Shin trapped in the middle of that, not good or evil, light or dark, but caught in a terrible silence. her care and her fire is contained but it burns. especially when she fights, when she loses her temper “you have no power”, choking Sabine at the end, and that’s just the fire that creeps out under the door! beware the smoke.

the moments of fear, of guarded concern, of delight and fascination, anger and joy. i mean!! she’s a girl of few words, but when she speaks she SPEAKS. and when she doesn’t you can see so much going on in her body language, her face, her eyes, her actions. i think both of her fight scenes are beautiful examples of character through conflict.

i always use duels and fights for character-building. a fight is boring with nothing behind it - and with Shin we see, at first, fascination. wanting to prove herself, to show she’s the better padawan, but she also… i think she could have killed Sabine very easily. i would have run from Ahsoka too, but she honestly could have murdered Sabine right there. i love how they’re creating this sense that Shin is both… disturbed and intrigued by Sabine in episode 4. angry and also… holding her by the wrist, standing between her and Morgan.

listen, i am going to ship wolfwren whether or not my cows come home, but i really don’t bother with characters who aren’t interesting. so, yeah, i think Shin has plenty of personality! i love what star wars has been doing with the girls who have red(ish) sabers lately. i adore Reva, i am regularly insane about Trilla Suduri, and i think Shin is very different from them but no less fascinating! i’m loving the tentative line she’s walking between dangerous and vulnerable.

and, yeah, i think they should kiss.

#shin hati #wolfwren #ahsoka show spoilers #anon #i think it might be a case of wait and see? i’m not saying you’re wrong anon btw #you can (and should) feel however you want about a character #but i do encourage attentiveness with characters who don’t get many lines if spoken dialogue #they are often shouting in other ways 💖 #but yeah i love her. kissing her confused little forehead #have thoughts about loth wolves and shin i need to cook but!!! woah

[phoenixkaptain]

Luke’s biggest character flaw isn’t impatience or arrogance… it’s reckless optimism.

Like, Luke doesn’t actually think he can beat Darth Fucking Vader in a fight. He wants to get revenge, yeah, but he doesn’t think he’s a better fighter than Darth Vader, he thinks he’s luckier than Darth Vader.

Luke isn’t actually suicidal, despite how little effort you’d have to put in to provide evidence that he could be. He thinks, no, he knows he’s lucky. He’s used to being lucky, even. His survival tactics all sort of depend on Luke being the luckiest person in the room at any given time.

And he isn’t actually all that lucky, that’s pretty obvious, but he really just thinks “If I stay alive long enough, things will eventually just work out.” Like he believes in the Force before he even knows about the Force, almost. Some thingd are just supposed to happen, and his own continued existence as a free man is one of those things, so if he waits long enough, an opportunity will eventually show itself and all Luke has to do is grab it.

He is stupidly optimistic about his chances. But, he’s also not wrong? Like, he doesn’t win his fight against Vader, but he’s also one of the only people who have fought Vader twice and not died either time. He went and rescued Leia without a plan beyond “rescue Leia” and he made it out relatively unscathed. He got captured by a wampa and hypothermia, one right after the other, and he only has to spend a bit of time floating in space jell-o that isn’t quite set. He goes to Dagobah and gets the training he requests from Yoda, despite Yoda not wanting to train him. He rescues Han from Jabba the Hutt, and he doesn’t get fed to a sarlacc in the process.

But really, just look at his final fight with Vader. Luke just honestly believes that everything will be fine. He really thinks he can just ask his dad to please chill out and Vader will. Luke tells the literal actual Emperor of the entire fucking galaxy “No. I will not become evil. And I won’t be evil because I’m not actually angry at anyone.” Luke is the luckiest man alive, because he is still somehow alive.

Heir to the Empire really has him thinking “If I stay alive long enough, an opportunity will present itself” on the planet Myrkr. As in, the planet covered in ysalamiri that cut him off entirely from the Force. As in, Luke doesn’t feel the Force telling him to be patient because it’ll all work out. Luke just believes that.

And it only really hit me as I read that novel. Luke is aggressively, stupidly, recklessly optimistic at all times about his chances of survival. Like, he is one meta joke away from just being actively aware that he is a protagonist and therefore can’t die in the middle of a plot. He’s optimistic about his own life, his dad’s life, his sister’s life, his droid’s life; Luke is the most optimistic man alive.

He is not the most cheerful person. There’s a difference between optimism and happiness, and Luke is a character who is constantly doubting himself, but he also just fully believes in his own ability to stay alive. Like he thinks “As long as I’m in mostly one piece, that’s a success :)” He thinks “wow I’m a terrible Jedi. I don’t know what a Jedi is, but I’m pretty sure I suck at it,” while at the same time being the character who believes in and listens to the Force more than Qui-Gon Jinn.

All this to say, I really hope that one day I can be as optimistic as Luke Skywalker. That man felled a galactic Empire with enthusiastic optimism and familial love alone, I wanna be like that.

#luke skywalker #star wars novels #star wars original trilogy #heir to the empire #thrawn trilogy #luke is the most reckless man i can think of #because of his reckless optimism #i love him #all this to say #luke didn’t live fifty reckless years #spending all of that time thinking well it’ll probs all work out #for disney to portray him this way #luke is distant and zoned out and suicidally optimistic #he also has no idea what a jedi is #and i can’t help but feel that he would look at a description #then think back to yoda and obi wan #then try to emulate obi wan #and no one who wants to be a traditional jedi #should try to emulate obi wan #the inane ramblings of a madman #do not speak to me #luke is living force all the way #it’s the only explanation

[other-peoples-coats]

still thinking about palaptine's phone tree of doom/The Chip Lag Issue, and have come up with a third, even fucking funnier option for how order 66 rolls out:

Ol' mate sheev manually corrected for lag. Like sure, you have to squash the lag time down from like, millions of years to like. a reasonable but still funny time frame, but consider it.

Skeevy sheevy, the great wrinkled raisin of evil himself, sitting at his desk, looking at the Great Big Space Spreadsheet listing where every goddamn clone commander in the GAR is, along with the current lag time in communication, and sitting down to schedule out Enacting His Evil Plot.

Target roll out time is 5 pm CSC (coruscant standard time), because that's when it's Most Dramatic and also maybe most jedi are in temple to avoid peak hour coruscant traffic (but mostly the drama). The furthest flung CC+Jedi pair is on the ass end of the outer rim (lag time 13 hrs 54 min). Therefore, he has to send that message at........ass o'clock in the fucking morning, in order for it to reach where it's gotta go at the same time as everyone else gets theirs.

fine. no pain without gain, it's one day of getting up at 2 fucking AM and dialing a clone to tell them to murder a jedi. loathing feeds sith powers, getting up at 2 am to make a fifteen second holocall is peak fucking loathing, all is evil in the world.

Sitting down with his evil!space-appointment-calendar* (different from his personal calendar, his work calendar [delegated], his work calendar [not meant to be delegated but delegated to fox anyway], his work calendar [actually not delegated], his CIS war calendar, and his not evil-space-appointment-calendar), along with space!world-time-buddy.com and his spreadsheets of 'where the fuck are the murder targets and their murder weapons now'.

Planning out every fucking phone call - ok, kenobi is on utapau, 8hr 13min delay, that means the call to cody has to be at ....space world time buddy says 8:47 sharp! in goes the appointment to the evil space appointment calendar, "8:47 AM, Kenobi🔫🔫🔫🎉🎉🎉".

"9:13 am, Koon 🔫🎉"

"10:02 am, MULTI CALL COMMANDER ONLY, hy'rt, kleei, janso...[click to expand]"

"10:30 am, Tapal+ brat"

etc etc.

And then. Having to reschedule meetings around these totally fucking arbitary points in time. He's gotta keep it normal until go live! (or, well, go dead.) nothing to see here, pay no attention to the chancellor ducking out to make 15 second holocalls every eight minutes, it's fine.

Like yes awful terrible etc but also: the idea of lord evil himself blearily opening his holocom after a day of making fifteen second phonecalls at random points to compensate for lag is hilarious to me. by the 400th call he's doing the call centre mangled script like 'commander order execute clone 66. How may I order you today. Thank you for calling I am clone how may I execute you?'

*at least sleazy sheevy's evil appointment calendar opened up some once dooku became a head shorter. Can you fucking imagine the mutual monologing. this nine hour meeting could have been an email.

#coats chats #coats originals #order 66 #sheev palpatine #look I make myself laugh and that's what's important. #also yeah I was on the phone for work today and fucked up my script #'Hi thank you for calling I am [department] how may I charge you?' #I was the one calling. just a total shitshow beginning to end.

[antianakin]

@assaultmech71 I'm putting this in a separate post because it IS a little off topic and that particular post is becoming fairly long and unwieldy as it is.

Part of my dislike of Luxsoka (and Lux in general) stems from my dislike of the episode he's introduced in. Heroes on Both Sides is supposed to show us that there's genuinely good people with legitimate grievances on the Separatist side and that Ahsoka is like... being kind-of ignorant by assuming all of the Separatists are evil assholes. However this is done SO SO BADLY the entire way through. I've talked about Mina Bonteri's whole sob story about her husband on some sort of base that got attacked by the clones and how unbelievable it is that the clones apparently just attacked an innocent base full of innocent people or something. There's NO WAY that Mina's husband wasn't involved in something either war-related or just sketchy and evil.

Lux on the other hand is sitting there being paralleled with Ahsoka where they're supposed to recognize that their lack of knowledge of the other side has caused them to be a little prejudiced towards each other. But while Lux has never actually met any Jedi and is making his entire opinion based on a lot of propaganda, Ahsoka HAS met Separatists, they just come in the form of military generals usually. Lux I think specifies "any Separatists who AREN'T military leaders" which is pretty unfair because those military personnel are STILL military leaders and effectively Ahsoka's counterpoint within the Separatist organization. Ahsoka has seen these people who claim to fight on behalf of the Separatist government do some absolutely heinous shit to actual innocent civilians (she's there for the incident with the Lurmens, the Blue Shadow Virus, Ryloth, and the Holocron Heist arc at this point). Ahsoka has genuine evidence to believe that the Separatists are, at best, ignorant of what's being done in their name, and at worst complicit in these actions being perpetrated by their military. Ahsoka isn't naive or ignorant the way Lux is, it's not a fair comparison. So their entire connection here is based on what amounts to a lie.

Lux also literally gives Ahsoka a once over when she bandies his own words back at him and asks him if she looks evil, which is juvenile and gross. And yes, he IS juvenile and Ahsoka does call him out on it a little, but still. It's not exactly a GREAT first impression here.

So basically a large part of the reason I hate him is because his entire introduction is just really really stupid and he represents this radically unfair perspective on the Jedi at this point just to make a point that isn't even ENTIRELY true.

Then we come to their second meeting where the whole episode ends with them saying they were a "good team" except that Lux fucks up approximately 20 different times and Ahsoka has to keep saving his ass and doing all the work. And Lux also betrays her like 4-5 separate times, he slaps her ass and acts like a misogynist to keep up an act with DEATH WATCH, apparently doesn't know or just doesn't care that Death Watch are literal terrorists, and is just overall completely awful and useless the whole time. They're not a good team, he's just a massive fuck up with delusions of grandeur who Ahsoka has to keep bailing out of danger over and over again.

He's better by their third meeting during the Onderon arc, but by then whatever feelings he may have had for Ahsoka seem to have faded and he's got a new girlfriend he's focused on and Ahsoka ultimately lets him go. But she's also JEALOUS of Steela for a while and it's impossible to figure out what she's even jealous OF. Like babygirl, I'm so frustrated with you right now, but you can STILL do better than Lux Bonteri. At least she decides to just move on by the end and we never see him again.

So yeah, Lux is a terrible person, a terrible love interest for Ahsoka, and Luxsoka is a fuck awful ship and I'm just so glad it got abandoned before it actually went anywhere and never came back.

#star wars #ahsoka tano #the clone wars #tcw #star wars the clone wars #sw tcw #anti lux bonteri #lux bonteri critical #anti luxsoka #luxsoka critical

[jedi-enthusiast]

Just saw your excellent take down of MatPat's "the Jedi are Evil" series cross my dash for the first time and omg, finding out he did a series trashing the Jedi was a bit of a sucker punch 💀 I had no idea those videos even existed till now.

I've seen a lot of shoddily made videos from him in the past--he is notoriously bad about not doing any research on any of the media he makes videos about (I'm convinced he doesn't actually play/watch any of the stuff he makes videos on)--but the anti-Jedi series is probably his most egregious stunt yet. Really annoying to see they've all got millions of views, but that's about par for the course with YouTube's dislike of media based on East Asian and Jewish culture.

Thank you for making your response to his nonsense (and also for organizing it so well.)

Of course!

To be completely honest, me doing the takedown was mostly just so I would stop thinking up responses to his arguments while I was in the shower--it gets pretty annoying once you've thought "THEY'RE NOT A FUCKING CULT" while conditioning your hair for the thousandth time lmao

The Jedi are my comfort characters and I just enjoy watching them in SW media and reading about them in fanfics and talking with people about them. Their culture and way of life is just so beautiful and they're just genuinely good people, so it's such a disservice to them for people to frame them as "evil" or "the REAL bad guys."

And it'd be one thing to be like "I think the Jedi are evil because x, y, and z" but for him to pose it as a "theory" and say that he's looking at the Jedi "objectively" before completely taking things out of context, ignoring the Jedi's actual beliefs and practices, and reading everything in bad faith in order to confirm his own bias...that ticked me off.

Especially when he went on to blame the Jedi for their own genocide, say it was a good thing they went "extinct," and then attempt to absolve Anakin of blame.

But, then again, he also made a video on how "The Empire Wasn't Evil, Actually!" right after the "The Jedi are Evil" video...so I guess terrible takes aren't exactly out of place on his channel.

Who knows, maybe I'll make a video taking that down next.

(It'd have to be in a couple months tho because I'll be headed to college soon)

#star wars #pro jedi #pro jedi order #anti anakin skywalker

[aspiringwarriorlibrarian]

That feeling when you feel like you have to keep an eye open around people who call themselves "leftist", yet a number of their media takes frankly sound dangerously like they'd be supportive of extremely authoritarian or outright genocidal mindsets just because the bad guy "had a point". Like, I understand that people's morality shouldn't be judged based on their takes of media, and that media doesn't inherently inform every aspect of a person's moral system, but good lord does some of these things just makes me feel...unsettled at times.

Takes like "The Jedi deserved to be genocided because Dooku/Sidious were right about how flawed and corrupt they actually are" (ignoring how much propaganda those two are spewing and the sheer amount of corruption from the REPUBLIC around them, and how much Jedi philosophy isn't based on Christianity and fundamentally opposes everything they just said, and no Anakin isn't a good indicator of that corruption because he's a terrible person, patsy, and propagator for the space fascists). Or how the genocide of Mantle was good because Ironwood was "thinking about the bigger picture". This speaks for itself.

Or people who favor Thanos' "kill half the universe because overpopulation", ignoring how Malthusian (I think that's his name?) philosophy ignored how much technology and means of gaining resources would change overtime to accommodate for increased numbers, and that overpopulation has rarely been an actual issue because the lack of resources almost always comes from rich billionaires and corporations hoarding resources at the expense of everyone else, not the poor people trying to make a living.

Or Senator Armstrong's "social darwinist utopia" being a good thing, never mind that social darwinism is a fucking stupid thing that's never worked, or only favors those who already have massive advantages (ie, the people Armstrong knows are part of the problem), while screwing over the little guy. Also his gall of acting like war makes people strong while having never served IN a war, and saying this to a FORMER CHILD SOLDIER who know how hellish and evil war actually is.

Like, maybe you need to take a harder look at your beliefs if you keep on siding with the villains just because they have one or two good points mired in openly fascistic rhetoric.

"Genocide is bad actually" should not be the fucking hot take you'd think it is, but for some people, the only purpose of social justice is figuring out who is acceptable to hurt and how to hurt them in the worst way possible while still feeling righteous about it.