#more rants about gffa politics

[praetor-canis]

You know, I don’t think people, including in-universe characters like Padme, recognize just how hard it must have been for Anakin Skywalker, someone that has never truly participated in an election or voted for anything, someone that came from feudalistic Tatooine and grew up in a dystopia-like paramilitary group, to fully embrace the values of democracy. And to be able to sacrifice everything in protecting it.

Clearly, the transition is a lot harder than it seems in theory. We see this in real life too

#sw meta #anakin skywalker #star wars #gffa politics #more rants about gffa politics #politics

[nevertheless-moving]

thanks again to @dykerory and @willowcrowned for this genius au. this is an incomplete collection of very specific set of headcanons/daydreams i had about a tangential version of your au that made me emotional in the middle of the woods. whenever you feel the time is right, i’m very eager to hear your og version on the ‘but obi-wan, tho!’, because i admittedly pushed this one’s resolution really far chronologically because i wanted batman to be involved.

continuation from here

note: my understanding of dcu is as sporadically informed as my understanding of the gffa. 

newly graduated clark kent gets his first journalism job and starts settling more and more into the superman thing. the rest of the justice league has been around but his entrance onto the scene is the one that really inspires the various heroes to actually start coordinating to deal with the weirdness magnet that is dcu Earth. Clark is in his early 20s. Anakin is in his late 30s.

He’s been living on Earth, without the force, for nearly 2/3rds of his life. He has a close knit circle of friends who were kind to him even when they thought he was just a weird and crazy emo cult victim (the gradual increase of public encounters with aliens and superpowers sparks some awkward apologies, Anakin at 38 just waves his friends off, smiling and changing the subject, neither confirming nor denying his high school ramblings of spaceships and magic. it doesn’t really change anything).

He lives an hour’s drive from smallville, and runs a successful auto shop. people travel from pretty far to check out some of his more wild and specialized motorcycle abominations. makes enough money selling them to rich idiots to fund his free auto-class and auto-repair programs for impoverished communities.

It took a while but he eventually came around to the idea of helping people without physical force (ironically, this is happening around the same time Clark is coming to the realization that he can help people with physical force). Generally respected as a pillar of the community. When people start to realize how profoundly weird he is as a person in a number of inexplicable ways, someone will generally pull them aside and quietly whisper that he was in a cult at a child, no one really knows much about it except that it’s what inspired his anti-modern-slavery work, which is a little telling. Not married. Was in a long-term relationship for like 9 years. It didn’t end well but no-one knows the details.

Has several cats. 

He’s- wistful but settled. He’s been through a lot of therapy. He meditates every morning and night, clearing his mind and examining his emotions in the way Obi-Wan taught him. He thinks Obi-Wan would be proud of him. He know his Mom would be.

Once he gets used to the idea, he never really stops loving the concept of learning just because. Duel bachelors degree in in african american history and american literature, masters in engineering, masters in astrophysics a phd in theoretical physics, another phd in medieval folklore. He’s worked a lot of jobs. 

He was already pretty well versed in astronavigation back at the temple. Over the course of his time on earth, he gets more educated in earth astronomy and physics. With is increased knowledge, his theory for ‘how did i get here’ shifts from slight hyperdrive miscalculation, to big hyperdrive miscalculation, to some sort of hyperlane incident. he realizes that none of the stars he knows are familiar in any NASA database. He must be beyond wildspace, which helps him let go of the last bit of hurt he felt that Obi-Wan never found him.

Then he really learns physics- and- light doesn’t exactly work like that right? He thought it was just primitive Earth understanding but... he gets a phd more or less accidentally, trying and failing to disprove that the speed of life is constant constant.

Get’s another even more accidentally, explaining how alternate universes might form if we assume slightly different universal constants. He publishes his thesis anonymously around the same time metas are becoming a household term, and at least one science journalist speculates on it and how alternate universes might explain the increasing prevalence of wildly different superpowers. He doesn’t claim credit for the honorary diploma awarded to the unknown theorist- he doesn’t want to risk drawing any attention to him and by extension Clark, who’s alien differences are far more of the ‘military experiment interesting’ variety then his.

He stops tinkering with Clark’s ship. He finally gets how it works. Now that he realizes how FTL travel has to work in this universe, tinkering with the mechanical generation and harnessing of the massive quantities of energy necessary to do is startlingly familiar. But it doesn’t matter. No matter how far and fast he travels, he’s never going to be able to get back to the life he used to know. 

Perhaps this is what being the chosen one actually means- he’s meant to live a life without the force, so that when he returns to it in death he’ll be able to somehow...educate? the force? maybe?

Ok, he’s not great at the metaphysical spiritual side of things, but he does accept that going back is out of his control, and he’s doing good here, even if it’s not galaxy altering.

Despite all the therapy, he never doubts that his early life was real. He has his saber and deep, deep down he can feel a spark in the kyber. He can’t do anything with it, but it’s there. There’s also pieces of the utter wreck that was his ship in the cellar, next to the sleek unblemished pod that Clark arrived in. Shortly before Clark becomes Superman, he asks for his help in melting down his old ship to make unearthly alloys. 

He’s not surprised when Clark tells him he met a ‘real’ ‘magic’ user- it stands to reason that considering how relatively easy it is to convert energy from one form to another in this universe (Clark can fly), at least one kind would bend to sentient willpower in a similar way as the force does.

It’s still a little nervewracking showing his lightsaber to someone new for the first time in a decade. Zantana scrutinizes, bewildered. 

“There is some sort of power locked within, but it’s unfamiliar to me,” she admits finally. “I could probably brute force it and force the energy to release itself, but it would likely destroy the container.” Anakin politely refuses. 

Later, after the justice league’s formation, Clark mentions to J’onn that he has a friend who might be able to work on his ship. J’onn is extremely doubtful when he’s brought to a bizarre autoshop in the midwest that looks half-like a roadside attraction. Anakin sighs and digs his hands into the guts of the craft, muttering incomprehensibly and yelling at clark to melt down some pieces from the special scrap pile. A few days later he explains the patches he’s done to an impressed J’onn. When he asks how a human came to learn such things, he’s absently informed that,

“I used to work in a junkshop in Tatooine. All sorts of ship parts came through.”

“I’m unfamiliar with this world.”

“Tell you what, if you ever meet anyone who’s heard it of it, send them my way, and I’ll make your next repair free.”

“Oh! I’m afraid I don’t have any earth money...”

“Ugh, of course you don’t. it’s cool, capitalism sucks anyway and everyone’s entitled to free transportation, regardless of the area they happen to live. I do ask that if you can’t pay for the repairs that you spend an equivalent number of hours either attending one of my free auto classes, or volunteer at a community-led charities of your choice, here I’ll get you a pamphlet-”

So the Martian Manhunter becomes a weekly volunteer at a Midwestern Food Waste Reclamation Facility. J’onn J’onzz ends up becoming Anakin Skywalker’s friend well before he becomes comes truly comfortable around Kal-El. For a telepath, 39 year old Anakin’s Jedi orderly mind is a soothing relief.

(again, Anakin has spent far more time meditating on Earth then he ever did at the temple. Before all this, spent five years dutifully memorizing the Jedi way even as he struggled to live up it’s basic practices. For the first few years on earth, religiously practicing every meditation technique Obi-Wan ever taught him, thinking obsessively about the philosophies he never had time to really process, is just a desperate attempt to reconnect with the force, prove himself worthy of it. But even after he gives up on ever touching the force again, he keeps up the practice, he can’t release his emotions exactly, but he does find peace. The tendency to stop mid-rant to earnestly pronounce made up zen bullshit and then sit quietly for an hour before picking up on his tirade again as though there was no interruption is one of the things many things people find profoundly weird about him)

Kal-El doesn’t stop asking new aliens and dimensional travelers if they’ve ever heard of Coruscant, or Hutts, or the Jedi Order. Anakin might have given up, but Superman remembers his older brother scrubbing away his own tears to focus on helping Clark calm down enough to touch the floor again. The more the Kryptonian’s powers developed in alarming ways, the more Anakin set aside talk of missing his home galaxy. Anakin might have claimed it wasn’t like that, but Clark was determined to take every chance his increasingly weird life threw at him, no matter how vanishingly small.

In the middle of his first battle with Braniac, Clark starts insulting his incomplete database. The world collector pauses, demanding a more precise explanation. Clark complies, giving his best technical description of Coruscant’s cityscape, Tatooine’s binary star system, and so on. Braniac is so distracted that Superman recovers completely from his kryptonite poisoning and easily saves the day.

Neither the lantern corp or the denizens of the neutral zone have the answers. Superman doesn’t mention it it Anakin, but he never stops looking and listening.

“How did you even meet that guy?” Flash asks curiously after stopping to say hello on one of their after work laps of the country. 

“Aliens among us support group,” Kal-El responds deadpan. 

“Oh. Wait, what? He’s an alien? I thought he was from the future or something! You’re messing with me. No way that’s a thing. How many people are in the support group? This is a joke, right?”

“Sorry, most of them aren’t out and I don’t want to violate their privacy- a lot of them have high profile jobs. How do you think I met J’onn?”

“SUPES I’M FREAKING OUT RIGHT NOW YOU’VE GOTTA STOP”

Anakin is just sort of vaguely known by a solid chunk of the super community as ‘that one midwestern zen space mechanic’ and no one really questions it because everyone’s life has just gotten so goddamn weird. A few of them know he used to be a space wizard of some kind. Space wizards now being a regular hazard of life on earth, no one has reason to doubt this, and it’s as good an explanation as any for Anakin’s general vibe.

well. almost no one doubts this. Batman does not simply accept Anakin’s general bullshittery without carefully investigating and drawing his own conclusions. He does not share these with anyone.

But one day Clark- this is well after Superman became Kal-El to him, and not long after Kal-El tells him to call him Clark- comes up to him and asks for his help finding about an alternate universe. Knowing and dreading where this is going, Batman stalls,

“Shouldn’t you be asking one of the league members who regularly travels between universes?”

“I have, over the years,” Clark admits, awkwardly scuffing a boot on the floor of the cave. “But no one’s familiar with the exact one I’m looking for, and I thought since you’re a detective, and also one of the smartest people I know, you might be able to help me...”

“You’re an investigator yourself, and you can survive the vacuum of space,” Bruce shoots back flatly. “I’ve told you before Gotham is my priority, and this has ‘personal project’ all over it.”

“Come on, B, please,” Superman pleads, trailing Batman around the cave like an overgrown puppy. “In a few months it will have been 30 years! He’s my brother! Just let me see the research you’ve already done!”

“Who says I’ve already done research on your brother?”

Clark shoots him a look. And Bruce concedes the point with a grunt.

“I’ll need need to talk with him first,” Bruce finally concedes. “Bring him by the cave. Take the-”

“Take the tunnel entrance, I know, I know,” Clark agrees with a grin. “This doesn’t mean he’s authorized to know your secret identity. Thanks Bruce, this means a lot. I’ll ask him tomorrow about his schedule.”

Superman flies off and Batman scrubs his face with a gloved hand. After a moment he pulls up Anakin’s file on the main monitor. Bruce honestly respects and likes the man, as much as he respects and likes anyone who’s not family. He admires his sense his style, appreciates his upgrades to the batmobile, and is impressed by both this civil rights work and his additions to the scientific community.

That doesn’t mean he’s not convinced that Anakin’s brother is a bit insane. Again, he’s not judging! He dresses like a bat to scare random henchmen and beat up actual demigods! He wishes his rogues gallery was as capable of directing their ptsd-inspired delusions and staggering intellects towards such productive pursuits!

Bruce was already in quiet awe of the Kent’s ability to raise an outrageously superpowered being without blowing up a chunk of the country; their success in derailing a supervillian origin story just puts him over the edge. He stares at the three most likely profiles he’s pulled together. Christen Jones, from a negligent family, death certificate filled out suspicously sloppily at age 3. Earl Lucas, went missing at age 9, both parents dead in a violent assault. And Jake Hayden, who at age 5 disappeared along with the rest of his family in a seismic accident later linked to Luthercorp.

Anyone of them could have suffered on the streets for years and coped by establishing an elaborate fantasy world, aided by self medication, only to eventually be picked up by the Kent’s and start healing. Certainly Anakin had the intellect to create worlds in his mind. All his rogues were smart enough to create their own little realities in their heads- it doesn’t mean they were actually reachable. 

Unfortunately Anakin had a Kryptonian younger brother who was determined to actually find the space wizard knight homeworld, even as the 'Jedi’ in question had slowly moved away his reliance on the delusion as an adult. Batman really didn’t see any way bringing up his conclusions to Anakin or Clark could possibly be helpful, and so many alien allies had a ‘If you find about the Jedi please contact Kal-El of Krypton on Earth’ pamphlet that it would be excruciatingly awkward to try and discretely correct anyone.

Bruce was not looking forward to this conversation.

#star wars #star wars au #dc #crossover #batman #anakin skywalker #corn boy anakin au

[gffa]

I just wanted to let you know how absolutely appreciated you are. You kinda feel like the last bastion of hope because I love the Jedi and drifted away from fandom several years ago because the anti-Light/anti-Jedi hate got so strong. So everything you write, I hoard in my greedy goblin hands because it is just so important and valid and makes me feel less like a "bad" fan because I love the Jedi.

I wish I could say you were the first person I’ve heard this from, but you’re very much not.  I personally know several fans who have drifted away from fandom for this exact reason and I’ve had several more mention in passing that they don’t feel they can say anything because the anti-Jedi stuff gets so strong.  (It does help a little to hear from others that you’re not alone, though.  *hugs*)I think a lot of people in fandom don’t really see it, either because they agree with it or because they just don’t talk much about the Jedi publicly or they just haven’t run into it or whatever other reason, and it’s difficult to explain why it gets to be such a problem.  It isn’t the disagreement, it’s that I can’t write a post talking about the Jedi without someone feeling they absolutely must chime in about how problematic the Jedi actually are.  It’s that we’re not given room to make our own space in fandom and have fun here without someone making sure to wet blanket it.I don’t post much of the dramatic stuff to this blog, because it wouldn’t make me happy to drag it out publicly, but also I try to be aware of the spotlight that might shine on someone and I don’t want to draw them into a big fight about it.  Instead, I usually just block and move on, ranting at friends privately, getting it out of my system, and letting it go.But a couple of weeks ago was an extra bad day for this–about seven different reblogs trying to argue with me in one day is too much, especially when I was making a point of (among other things) “I’m feeling kind of crowded out of fandom even in my own space, so I’m going to reblog a bunch of positive stuff to cheer myself up!” and it stung an extra lot that that’s when I got a bunch of reblogs trying to argue with me.  As if the real person trying to cheer themselves up was less important than making sure Tumblr User Lumi knew they disliked the Jedi on her own posts.I’m not saying this to tell people they’re not allowed to disagree with me (obviously they are, public spaces have a certain degree of “you just have to learn to deal with people disagreeing with you”, just like anti-Jedi people have to learn to deal with me disagreeing with them, we have to learn to deal with them disagreeing with us!), but more to illustrate what it’s like and why I’m starting to push back more and more.  Or at least why I snap sometimes.  It isn’t about each individual instance, it’s about the constant stream of them.  It’s about how many people I know who have left fandom because they didn’t want to deal with people constantly arguing with them.  It’s about you drifting away because there wasn’t space for you.  It’s about how exhausting it is to have to constantly push back to maintain boundaries.It’s about getting commentary like, “Well, if Jedi fans weren’t completely blind to their faults, they wouldn’t have to deal with this.” when a) HARD DISAGREE and b) trying to police fandom that way is really shitty behavior and c) because I’m talking about behavior on my posts.  Not out in the wilds of tumblr or YouTube or Twitter or wherever!  On my posts.  Usually of the completely without good faith approaches variety.No, just because I disagree with someone’s set-up of the blame game in the GFFA political sphere, that does not mean it’s my own fault for getting constant shit on my own posts.  And that is what’s driving fans out, not that people disagree with them.  And I’m really sorry that you had to face some of that as well and I hate talking about it this way because it feels like people are going to read this and go, “Well, I’m definitely not going to talk about the Jedi then, if that’s what she has to deal with!” and I hate talking about it because I can only truly speak for myself, my experiences may be more heightened than others’ or may be less than others’.  But I’ve felt it and I’ve talked to others who’ve felt it and I’m tired of people I want to talk with fading away because we can’t have a fun post without someone chiming in BUT THE JEDI WERE BABYNAPPERS!!11!Anyway, if I’m cranky, it’s because it’s difficult for me to approach this topic without getting mad, but I’m not actually in a bad place with this anymore right now.  As well as I don’t want to alienate anyone–if you’re approaching me with genuine care and an honest willingness to agree to disagree, then you’re fine!  And it’s helped a ton that I have found some really sweet people to interact with who I’ve been enjoying seeing their posts!  And it’s been slowly putting me in a better place and I want to gently encourage more people to come have fun with us, because the more of us there are, the easier it is to create the space we want to see and have fun in our own sandbox.AND I AM GOING TO BUILD A JEDI TEMPLE SANDCASTLE IN THIS SANDBOX AND ANAKIN CAN JUST FUCK OFF IF HE GETS SAND DOWN HIS SHORTS AND WANTS TO COMPLAIN OR WHATEVER.  ;)I debated a long time about whether to say anything or not about this, but ultimately I think I’m responsible for letting people know when I’m in need of something.  And that means trying to explain as best as I can where I’m coming from and what I’m hoping to set down.  And, as always, if anyone wants to talk to me privately about this, because you don’t want it to be A Public Thing, whether you’re worried about angering me (don’t worry about it, this isn’t about one specific thing, it’s about a larger pattern of behavior, so you can relax! ♥) or if you just want someone to be frustrated over how you feel you can’t say anything in public, feel free for that, too.  ♥

#i should have a personal tag around here somewhere #hitting post before i regret it #also posting this at like 10pm at night because then that totally keeps it on the down low #that's definitely how tumblr works yes

[pacificwanderer]

Two guys posted a Youtube video of them showing their female friend the Last Jedi. They asked her about Finnrey. Her response was "didn't she friendzone him?" She talked about Ben and Rey balancing the force and when they touched hands she said "oh, what's this?" excitedly. They looked annoyed, but it goes to show how clear Reylo is to a causal.

LOL. I mean, my spouse isn’t a shipper and thinks it’s obvious as hell. I also have a friend who barely knows who Darth Vader is, but she actually had a conversation about Reylo with me back when TFA came out because she thought it was obvious.

It’s kind of easy to get bogged down in tumblr bullshit, which does a really great job of convincing people not to believe their eyes, or their ears, or what they know. But when you strip it all down, and take away all the bullshit and politics and fake morality, it’s not hard to see.

I don’t have a problem with people not shipping it. Like, you do you, it’s fine. And I don’t mean any disrespect to anyone who wishes their ship was more prominently featured. I also really dislike the whole friendzone concept in general (which isn’t a knock on you, Nonnie, you’re just telling me what happened in the video). I think fi//nnr//ey is a great ship, but I don’t often interact because I don’t like people telling me I’m a horrid person in my inbox etc lol AND it’s fine to have friendships that turn into relationships, that being said, what they do and say and how they do and say it in movies is entirely intentional, if it’s not important, they cut it out. 

So, they have Rey interacting predominantly with Kylo Ren, and that’s for a reason. He’s her love interest, whereas she has friendship and found family with the Resistance (so far, it’ll be interesting to see where she starts EPIX because I have a feeling it’s on Jakku alone).

And, well, Rose is Fi//nn’s love interest, quite clearly. People can argue til they’re blue in the face, but he spends the entirety of VIII with Rose (she both saves and kisses him because she’s fallen in love with him), and then taking care of her at the end AND worries/checks on her in the comics.

So yeah. I’ve been in situations where I wished certain things were different, but even I know when things aren’t going to turn out the way I want them to. So either I come to terms with it, and continue to enjoy the thing, or I move on. 

And then there’s a whole fucking contingent of fake fans that for some reason think that romance isn’t a huge part of SW (FUCKING NEWS FLASH, it is and was and ever WILL BE very important in this series), who are fighting against a rising tide of change in the fandom where people who aren’t them are taking an interest in “their thing” and they don’t like it. Well, they can get fucked. SW belongs to everyone and no one fan is better than any other. Whether you saw the movies during their debut in theaters, or you’re just getting into it now, it’s for everyone.

You’re not stupid for liking SW, or for liking the romance, or for liking Reylo. And I am sick to death of these shits thinking they can bully the fandom into getting their way. I hope, more and more, to see the galaxy opening up so that everyone can feel (and see) that they have a place in the GFFA. 

It’s so strange to see so many fanboys struggle with the fact that this is a female driven narrative that is quite clearly making its way through the Heroine’s Journey. Many women see it because it appeals to us, it’s meant to appeal to us, because we see ourselves in it.

Anyways, that turned into a bit of a rant lol. Thanks for the chat, Nonnie! Joke’s on them if they don’t want to see it, I guess.

#epix speculation #asks and answers #anonymous asks #ask pacificwanderer #rant #long post #and I mean there's a whole bunch of other shit that goes into all of this #but I gotta finish some work lol #I wonder if epix will piss more people off than viii did #we'll find out I guess #reylo #Anonymous

[padawanlost]

I wonder how an AU Supreme Chancellor Amidala would deal with the greedy mega corps who are the main problem fostering the already present corruption in the Senate even more. Would she be able to actually get things done and while probably not saving the Republic as a whole still improve things? Valorum did try but he wasn't very successful after all.

I think weall, myself included, love to daydream about Chancellor Amidala fixingeverything but, realistically, she wouldn’t be able to accomplish much in termsof institutionalized corruption and elitism. Assuming she takes office rightafter ROTS, her first priority should be stabilizing the government, dealingwith the CIS, demilitarization and figuring out how to insert trillions of clonesinto the economy without inciting a major social and political breakdown. Thatshould take years.

But let’ssay she comes up with this new government reform that fixes all these issuesand make everyone happy. She still wouldn’t fix everything. First, she won’tbecause she can’t. That’s not the Chancellor’s role. Unless she takes a moreauthoritarian approach to ruling (which we all know she won’t), she would needthe Senate and the society’s support to solve issues like slavery andcorruption because it’s not just a matter of passing laws, it’s also a culturalchange. The GFFA’s culture would have to accept and adapt to these new laws butthat doesn’t happen overnight, no matter how great the law is on paper.

Imo, thebest to fight corruption is through prevention. You can pass all the laws inthe world, but until the citizens become constant and willing participants inthe political process by monitoring and demanding transparency andresponsibility, not much will change. Unfortunately, the GFFA is a mess. Itlooks like majority of the citizens don’t see themselves represented by thatSenate or completely gave up on the it as an institution and that worksperfectly for any corrupt government. Again, any lasting reform on this frontwould take years.

Padmé could(and should) put some anti-corruption mechanisms in places. But the megacorpswere so corrupt, powerful and such vital part of the Republic, she could potentiallystart a war if she were to weaken too much of their power in the Senate.Considering what happened during the clone wars, I believe she would end upmaking some compromises.

When itcomes to fighting institutional corruption, we can’t forget that Padmé nevertook a strong stance against it. Anakin was the one who ranted about corruptionevery chance he had, not Padmé. It’s can be hard to admit it, but unless thecorruption was right in her face and her people were suffering because of it,she wasn’t too bothered by it. I’m not saying she took part in it, but herfaith in the system was so great she ended overlooking a lot of things sheshouldn’t had. She also understood the importance of working well with thesecorporations and that’s why I don’t see her burning bridges and jeopardizingthe Republic and Senate’s stability to defend a cause she wasn’t never THATpassionate about.

Padméwasn’t a revolutionary politician. She was ever interested in changing thestatus quo. She looked like one only because everyone else looked so incrediblycorrupt and dispassionate by comparison. But she wasn’t fighting to abolishslavery, she wasn’t fighting against economic inequality, corruption, etc.Padmé – like Bail, Mon and pretty much every senator who ever fought againstPalpatine – just wanted things to go back to the way they always were.

Sadly,Padmé died before we could see how life under the Empire would have changed herpolitical views so maybe she could become the burning bridges type ofChancellor. But judging only from what I’ve seen when she was alive, I don’tthink she would be the type of chancellor that would buy such fight against themegacorps. There’s just too much at stake, especially if we are talking about ascenario where she becomes Chancellor right after the clone wars ends. Wouldshe try to fight corruption? Would she try to pass laws to limit the powers ofthe mecacorps? Absolutely! Would she jeopardize the Republic’s newly found stability by doingEVERYTHING that needed to be done? I don’t think so.

I dobelieve in Chancellor Padmé. I believe she would be great for the Republic, butthe sheer size of the galaxy would’ve made it impossible for her to change toomuch in only 4 years.  

#ask #anon #padme amidala #gffa politics #sw meta #meta: padme #AU

[ladililn]

What Rogue One taught me about the Jedi, despite no Jedi actually appearing in it

So I initially started writing this for @rogueoneanniversary last year, and then Real Life happened and I disappeared from Tumblr and then Tumblr disappeared from me and now here we are, a full standard year later, and guess who still has (now very belated) Thoughts she wants to share? This girl! Because guess who still hasn’t gotten over this movie? This me! (Not sure whether @celebraterogueone is the correct place for this now?)

The first time I saw Rogue One, I completely missed the fallen colossus in the sands of Jedha. I just thought it was an overhead shot of some weirdly-shaped mountain. The second time, it took a moment for my brain to register and make sense of the image, and then I wondered how I'd ever missed it.

This one object, one blink-and-you-miss-it set piece, tells us so much about Jedha and the "ancient religion" of the Jedi and themes that run through the entire saga and even, I think, characters who aren't even in Rogue One (there's a reason the fallen Jedi statue looks exactly like Old Ben). It immediately calls to mind Shelley’s Ozymandias:

I met a traveller from an antique land 

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone 

Stand in the desert…Near them, on the sand, 

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies[…]

[…]Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

To return for a moment to Admiral Motti’s “ancient religion” line in ANH—I’ve seen people point that out as a plot hole, or at least an early inconsistency, given that the Prequels show the Jedi faith alive and well a mere nineteen years earlier, which doesn’t seem very ancient. I find that charge specious for several reasons—first of all, “ancient” doesn’t mean “dead." I think you could easily and accurately refer to Judaism or Christianity as “ancient religions,” and both of those are alive and well now. The religion began a long, long time ago; thus it is “ancient.” I’d also argue that we hardly needed the Prequels to belie the idea that the Jedi Order was beyond human memory. We know in ANH that Obi-Wan used to be a Jedi Knight, and although Alec Guinness looked (and was) older than Obi-Wan’s actual age, there was nothing in that movie or the other two OT movies to indicate human lifespans differ significantly in the GFFA.

Still, I see the disconnect. On the one hand, we have a not-that-ancient man who was once one of the “guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic.” On the other, you have Luke, who’s never even heard of the Jedi, and Han, who doesn’t believe in the Force. Again, some see these as errors, considering Han was already ten when the Republic fell, meaning the Jedi were still getting up to their incredible and well-documented feats when he should’ve been old enough to be aware and remember.

Explanations for this seeming disconnect can be found across the franchise, and they boil down to two main points: the Jedi’s (relative) lack of reach throughout the galaxy, and Order 66. 

Here’s a fun figure: how many Jedi were there in the galaxy before Order 66? 10,000. Ten fucking thousand. That’s a ridiculously tiny number. A laughably tiny number. A Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale number. An entire galaxy, all those planets and star systems, billions and billions (trillions? quadrillions?) of sentient beings, and you could name every single Jedi in a few hours. Put them all in the smallest NFL stadium, and they couldn’t even fill half the seats. 

Sometimes I find the Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale-ness of the GFFA frustrating (although IMO the “why is this galaxy filled with the same 10 people?!” complaints fans like to toss around ignores the history of the mythic storytelling tradition Star Wars is very much a part of and how the franchise fits into/plays with those genre conventions, but that’s a rant for another day). But in this case, I fucking love how ridiculous a number 10,000 is. I think it’s perfect. Our view of the Jedi’s relative size and stature in the galaxy is warped by the lens through which we see the galaxy; up until Rogue One, we’re pretty much just hanging out with Jedi. Not only that—in the Prequels and TCW, we’re hanging out with the best of the best, the council members and the freaking Chosen One. They’re the elite among the elite. The 1% of the 1%, only more like the .001% of the .0000000000000001%.

There’s an excerpt from the Rogue One novelization that I think illustrates my point perfectly. This comes from a section of the book that’s meant to be “supplemental data [from the] personal files of Mon Mothma,” a document entitled “Short Notes on the History of the Rebel Alliance Navy” (side note: how much do I love in-universe archival material? a whole fucking lot) (all emphasis mine):

What worked in the Clone Wars cannot work again: the partnership of Jedi Knights and Kaminoan clone armies constituted a peerless weapon that no longer exists. 

Consider a brigade of clone troopers served by a Jedi commander: Such a unit might penetrate a world’s orbital defenses and seize control of the entire planet while taking (and inflicting!) minimal casualties… [W]hat blockade could be thorough enough to keep out a handful of determined star fighters and a single clone drop ship? 

...With the Clone Wars’ end, the destruction of the Jedi Order, and the decommissioning of the Kaminoan cloning facilities, the self-proclaimed Emperor and his military advisers determined that the future of warfare was in large-scale naval weaponry—in a fleet of battleships and battle stations that could atomize any enemy, whether on a planet’s surface or among the stars. They rebuilt a military not for precision strikes but for hammerblows… No potential rebellion could dare eschew infantry altogether, but—lacking the elite support of the Jedi or clones—the cost in lives would be abominable…

From an in-universe perspective, the Jedi are OP as shit. Guys, these are a tiny handful of beings with the ability to move shit with their minds! They can run and leap insane distances at inhuman (yeah, I know that’s an impossible term in the context of a galaxy filled with humans and aliens, but you know what I mean) speeds, they can move in ways other people could never imagine, they have the sort of reflexes that allow Anakin to participate in a sport other members of his species, the most populous in the galaxy by far, physically cannot. They can manipulate the environment around them telekinetically. They can manipulate people telepathically. Their weapons can cut through anything. It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: they are literal space wizards. I know this is all obvious, but think about it from the perspective of your average galactic citizen: here is a microscopically tiny group of people who can literally do magic.

Why are there so few of them? Well, the Force moves in mysterious ways. But also, there don’t really need to be more. Talk about casting an outsized shadow: 10,000 people holding the entire galaxy together. Like Mon Mothma says, one Jedi (and their handful of trusty clone troopers) = an entire fucking battle station in terms of military power. And with the Sith so long in hiding (side note: the Rule of Two makes the Order look positively overpopulated), the Jedi have had no real opponent of their own stature and ability level to contend with for a long, long time. (We see, especially in TCW, how difficult it is for a non-Force user to be made into a credible threat for the Jedi in any circumstances. Those plotlines almost always require characters to be nerfed, either by having to hide their powers (because undercover), being restrained by the Code and not wanting to harm civilians (a Jedi’s primary weapon—though obviously not their only weapon—is hard to make nonlethal, or at least non-maiming), or conveniently forgetting most of their powers.)

Now, it could be argued that there do “need” to be more, because are they actually doing such a great job guarding peace and justice? Are they successfully holding the galaxy together? Even before the Clone Wars, we see in TPM that their power doesn’t extend all the way into the far reaches of the galaxy. Of course, you could also argue that the lawlessness of the Outer Rim has less to do with the Jedi’s inability, in terms of sheer forcible (sorry) power, to do anything about it, and more to do with the politics of the Republic, and you could be right. But that’s part of the point. The Jedi are enforcers of peace, not rulers. They’re not supposed to be making decisions on galactic policy. (That “supposed to” is key, but again: a story for another day.)

So my point is: sure, on Coruscant in the year 20 BBY, you’re not going to have anyone blinking and saying “Jedi who?” It’s a Core World—the Core World—and most of the characters we’re familiar with in the Prequel Era are by necessity among the upper echelons of galactic society, or at least moving in circles that bring them into contact with the upper echelons. High-ranking politicians, rulers of various worlds, heads of planetary militia—people who have reason to be interacting with the Jedi. (Even the criminals they interact with are top-level, crime bosses and legendary bounty hunters. You’re not going to call a Jedi to arrest a petty thief.)

99.999% of the galaxy’s citizens have never seen a Jedi in person. (We’re going to leave beside the issue of the media in the GFFA, because that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of, uh, mynocks?) The farther you get from Coruscant, the farther removed you are from galactic high society, the less you probably know about the Jedi. Han, growing up on the streets of Corellia, has no reason to be an expert on Jedi. I’m sure he’s heard rumors, but he is perfectly justified in being a skeptic, particularly once the Jedi disappear seemingly easily.

Which brings us to the Jedi Purge. Here’s the thing: Order 66 wasn’t just about literally killing all the Jedi and burning their Temple down. It was a planned cultural genocide as well. A revision of history. We all know the line from 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” Palpatine destroyed the memory of the Jedi as surely as he destroyed the Jedi themselves. We’ve met, in various canon sources, history professors who lost their jobs because any mention, scholarly or otherwise, of the Jedi Order had become verboten. We’ve seen kids studying for their galactic history class in which one of the questions concerns Mace Windu, leader of a “criminal gang that interfered with a legal execution on Geonosis and sparked the Clone Wars.” Talk about revisionist: that goes against everything Palpatine himself said and did during the Clone Wars, a not-insignificant timespan of at least three years of his own personal history he has to revise, but in his role as Emperor, he can pull that off. This is what totalitarian governments do. We already see it begin in RotS, when Palps tells the Senate all about the Jedi Order’s attempt at a coup. And it’s effective! Five years on, Tarkin himself says the Jedi already feel like a distant memory.

And of course it’s fairly ludicrous (though not, I suppose, impossible) to assume that the statue on Jedha fell and was partially buried in sand within the last 19 years. But that’s one of the things I love most about Star Wars, something it’s particularly famous for: its Used Future aesthetic, the continued reminders that this is a galaxy with a history, one as complex and mysterious and tangled in its own legends as our own. That fallen colossus is one of many clues throughout canon that the Old Republic, the Jedi Order, belief in the Force—all were in decline long before the events of the Prequel Era.

Similarly, it’s clear that Jedha itself, once among the most holy sites in the galaxy, was also only a shadow of its former glory long before it got wiped off the map entirely. From Wookieepedia (again, emphasis mine):

As more of the galaxy was mapped, more direct hyperspace routes were discovered. These new passages made the old, winding routes, such as those connecting with Jedha, obsolete. The once-popular Jedha became an antiquated curiosity rather than a relevant destination, a location for those who desired spiritual guidance, a deeper purpose, or to simply exile themselves from the larger galaxy.

It’s typical Imperial excess to take the idea of Jedha’s long-buried secrets lost to the sands of time and literalize it by blowing the damn thing up. Horace Smith’s Ozymandias is less famous, but as (if not more) relevant to our discussion (“The City’s gone,” anyone?), and I leave you with its last stanza:

We wonder,—and some Hunter may express

Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness

Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,

He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess

What powerful but unrecorded race

Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

#rogue one #star wars #rogue one: a star wars story #jedha #star wars meta #jyn erso #bodhi rook #cassian andor #chirrut imwe #baze malbus #guardians of the whills #jedi #jedi order #jedi meta #star wars planets #ms #my thoughts #sw #eta: oops i meant to do a cut but instead i just did a line #weirdly this doesn't look as long on my dash as i thought it would so i guess i'll just leave it..............uncut

[praetor-canis]

Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.

Mao Tze Tung

This is almost starting to become a trend for me. Read something in a completely different language, reach a particular line or phrase and my mind immediately triggers over to Star Wars and GFFA politics. I truly wish the writers of the SW franchise could see things more in this light.

I wish that they could see politics in itself is a war, that the politicians don’t have to pick up a weapon or face assasins and terrorist attacks to be exciting characters.

#chinese history #chinese culture #politics #i wish the creators of SW could see politics in this light #sw meta #star wars #more rants about gffa politics

[gffa]

gffa give me the strength to write good meta, the patience to always do it politely like you, and the willpower to not let anyone ruin my genuine enjoyment of the Pew Pew Saga and my love for the space wizards 🙏

Hello there!  I hear what you’re saying and sometimes it’s very hard not to let fandom steal away your genuine enjoyment of the Pew Pew Saga and your love for the space wizards.  I spent a lot of months struggling through that and it was really hard, as well as I know there are several others going through this right now that I’m keeping in mind and want to gently encourage along with you, so the best advice I can give you is:  Take breaks when you need to!  Find the people you enjoy talking to, the ones you can trust to be on the same wavelength as you when you need it!  And be really ruthless in maintaining the boundaries you set down for yourself.That last one is really hard but is so vital.  If you’re not in a headspace where you can shrug off some of the stupid shit fandom does or says, then you need to be really good about not going into those spaces or reading the commentary.  One thing I did that really helped me was I installed tumblr savior (since it works better than Xkit’s blacklist) and dropped a handful of usernames into it, like “USERNAME1.tumblr.com/post” or “USERNAME2.tumblr.com/post” and now they will instantly disappear from my dash, I never see them!  I also started blocking people who sent me crappy things, just blocked and never looked back.  It made a big difference.This is separate from also having to do a lot of navel gazing about understanding that those things exist, sometimes you’re going to run into things that frustrate you, and you have to make your peace with that fact of life.  Not that you are suddenly obligated to tolerate shitty behavior or anything like that, but the fact that you cannot isolate yourself completely, no matter how hard you try, if you want to be in fandom.  That sometimes you’re going to run across some things that annoy you.  But balance that with realizing that it’s also okay to set down boundaries for yourself, that you don’t have to read or engage with stuff if it’s not good for you.And then get really stubborn about saying, no, I will not let someone else steal my joy in this thing.  For me, getting it set in my head that a lot of what I do on this blog are things that I would do regardless of what the rest of fandom does or says, really helped.  “Would I write this piece of meta, even if nobody ever saw it?” is a helpful question to me, because the answer is sometimes “no” and that means it’s not something that’s going to make me feel good when it’s done.  But far more often the answer is “yes” and so I write it, it’s on my blog, I’m happy that it’s there, and I go reread it sometimes.  I love scrolling through my own blog, I love having all the things I’ve posted about in one place, and when fandom is getting on my nerves, I have a blog that just makes me happy to go look at.  I feel like, yes, I’ve built something that makes me feel satisfied.Further, it helps that I’m yelling about things I love.  Yes, of course anger is something we all deal with, there are things in SW that I, too, intensely dislike or want to rant about.  But, no matter how satisfying it is to vent about them (which is very, very necessary sometimes) or how much I get legitimately angry about the behavior in this fucking fandom, no matter how much I get that anger sometimes has its place, I’m not ultimately satisfied by it.  I am ultimately satisfied by loving something, it makes me feel good looking back, I yelled about it because it was fun for me to yell about it, because it made me a happier person.That’s my big advice on how to interact with fandom in a way that doesn’t steal your joy for the Pew Pew and the space wizards.  Retreat back to a few friends you trust when you need to, set down some hard boundaries (block people that are shitty to you and don’t look back, but also stay away from places that will frustrate you, even if that means you have to tell YouTube that, no, you don’t want to hear from literally every Star Wars reaction/theory/”canon” video on their site, I say while I flop dramatically onto a fainting couch and press a put upon hand to my head), and write meta that makes you happy to have written it.  Yell about the character you love, just because it makes you happy to yell.  Recognize that not all of fandom is meant for you, that some places are going to be “off limits” to you, by the dint of your own boundaries.Maybe sometimes it means spite-loving something for awhile, the whole, “The more fandom hates this thing I love, THE MORE I AM GOING TO LOVE IT.” and just keep doing that until you love the thing just because you love the thing.  Yeah, there were some days in 2018 where I spite-loved the Jedi because fandom did them So Wrong, but eventually I learned to let go of my care about what fandom does or says, because I had the shows and movies and comics and books in front of me, because I had this huge backlog of posts where the point wasn’t yelling at people for doing things wrong, but about how much I loved this thing that the Jedi did, and bit by bit, I found a little more stability.  I can look back on my blog and I have this big archive of posts I’ve made and realize, oh, I don’t give that much of a shit about fandom trying to steal my joy, because look at all this joy I have, it’s mine and they can’t touch it anymore.I’m still going to have bad days, everyone does, that’s how people work.  But remember that the Jedi would want you to look inside yourself, find your own boundaries and path forward, find what brings you to the light, to compassion and kindness, that makes you a joyful person, and they’d want you to let go of the bad stuff, because it’s only eating away at you.  It won’t be easy, it’s a lifelong path, but it’s one that will lead you to true joy.

#Anonymous #i should have a personal tag around here somewhere