m i d n i g h t | w r i t e r

— Oops, I did it again, I forgot what I was loosing my mind about, mostly Star Wars but multifandom • writer

[ahsokutano]

fae | collector of EU novels | tired grad student | @faeriefully

⋆˙⟡ “Compassion, which I would define as unconditional love, is essential to a Jedi’s life. So you might say that we are encouraged to love.” ✧˖°.

[kanansdume]

Sad thoughts about the possibility of Quinlan Vos surviving through ROTJ, making him the singular true Jedi Master left alive.

With Obi-Wan dead, Yoda dead, Cere dead, and so so many others, Quinlan Vos is all that's left of those who were raised by the Jedi Order all the way to Mastery. And all around him are these half-trained Padawans who had to find a way to complete their training in hiding and persecution, who then raised half-trained Padawans of their own. These are the Knights of the Rebellion Era. And they're good, they're kind, they're strong. But they're not the same. They didn't get to grow up in the Temple and have a place they can call home, they don't all even know what it would've meant to have that community around you because they've never had it, they probably have no idea what it MEANS to be a Master.

And then there's Quinlan. The only true Master left, who's spent the last 25 years desperately trying to save as many Force sensitive children as he can because that's what it meant to be a Jedi and it's all he can even do anymore. Quinlan Vos, who is left in the ashes of the Empire that wanted him dead, faced with a bunch of Knights who barely know what it means to be a Jedi, all looking to him now. The last of his kind, the only one to survive. The burden he bears is so heavy, but there's no one else. It's the last duty he has as a Jedi, to try to take these young, scared, scarred Knights and find a way to raise them with the community they either lost or never had. To pass on what it means to be a Jedi Master, to pass the torch of knowledge so that some piece of it survives beyond just him.

[kanansdume]

I have further thoughts about Quinlan as essentially the Yoda figure of the new Jedi Order (whether it's Luke's Jedi or Cal's Jedi, doesn't really matter).

Quinlan would likely never take a Padawan again. His Padawan was brutally murdered during Order 66 and the Kenobi show tells us that he spent at minimum 10 more years doing nothing but saving more Force sensitive children from the Empire and getting them to safety. He CAN'T lose any more, he's hyper focused on saving as many Force sensitive children as he can and losing them would be a failure. So I don't know if he would ever feel like he could take on the commitment and responsibility of training a Padawan again, it would be too much and he's never truly ready for it after Aayla dies.

But he doesn't mind being a teacher IN GENERAL. He doesn't mind teaching classes to large groups of Jedi younglings or Padawans. That part he's okay with and he actually loves doing it. He loves getting to connect to all of them, he loves helping them connect to the Force and learn new things and see them glow when they finally figure something out that they've been working on for weeks. And of course he loves helping them commit mischief, he has NO problems telling them exactly how to pull pranks on Cal and Luke and Leia and Reva and Ferus and Ahsoka and anyone else who's still around.

And, of course, he's a carrier of memories. As the oldest living Jedi left, he has more memories of other Jedi and of the Temple and of what being a Jedi meant and what it was like to live that life than anyone else has. Yoda wasn't the ONLY older Jedi in the Order, there were a number of other Jedi who lived for centuries and had helped him carry that burden, but he'd been one of the oldest by the end and often was the one most Jedi went to for the wisdom and guidance he had to offer as a result of how long he'd lived. Quinlan doesn't quite have that same support, but the surviving Jedi Padawans do their best to help, to add the memories they carry to his stories, to remind him of things he'd forgotten already, to add the names of Jedi they'd known that Quinlan had never met or only known in passing. But Quinlan remains the one most people go to if they want to ask questions about what the Jedi had been like, or what it means to be a Jedi, or if he remembers if the Jedi had certain practices or traditions they could take up again. He knows they go to some of the others like Cal and Luke for wisdom and guidance, too, but there are certain things he knows that only he can answer anymore.

I don't know if he figures it out on his own or if someone like Cal or Ferus or Reva or Ahsoka points out that he's essentially become "Yoda" for the new Jedi, but it hits him like a speeder either way. A part of him rejects it, doesn't WANT to have to take on that mantle when he never should've HAD to as a species that didn't have a particularly long lifespan, doesn't want to think about WHY he's become "Yoda" despite his shorter lifespan. But another part of him is honored by it. Yoda had been someone everyone had loved, someone that had touched everyone's life in one way or another. He'd been everyone's Master, everyone's guide, everyone's mentor. And Yoda had loved them all back in return, he'd delighted in spending time with the younglings and the Padawans and the younger Knights, he'd always made himself available when they were struggling and needed help (or he'd come to find them before they had been willing to ask for help and sometimes even before they knew they'd NEEDED help). There are certainly worse roles he could fill, worse people for him to have become in his old age. He's genuinely honored that the Jedi who remember Yoda see a similarity between them and he refuses to take that lightly.

[pagecommando]

@mariacallous

[mariacallous]

Completely agree.

Also the choice to call her “mon mother” by the idiot being quoted…

[prince-atom]

The very first time Mon Mothma appeared, she was briefing the Rebel Alliance (and the audience) on the plan to fly into the Death Star, shoot the main reactor directly, and blow both it and Palpatine to smithereens. She was describing this plan to her organized military alliance of individuals, the one she helped put together, who were prepared to lay their lives on the line and kill a whole bunch of people to accomplish their goals.

Saw had a couple X-Wings and a dude known for having tubes.

If he had come in from the cold he might have been there at Endor.

[short-wooloo]

Not only that, but it's a plot point across multiple media (Rebels, Rogue One, Andor, books, comics, etc) that Saw's extremist tactics are alienating potential allies and validating imperial propaganda, surprise surprise, people don't like it when innocents are killed in the crossfire

And then there's the matter of end goals

Saw doesn't have much of a plan beyond "make the empire burn", he has no answers for what comes after, for what the galaxy looks like if/after the empire is destroyed, and based off real world historical precedent, it will be anarchic wars galaxy wide, and/or just a new dictatorship replacing the old

Contrast with Mothma and the Rebels goals, I mean, the answer is in their name, "Rebels" or "Rebel Alliance" is just shorthand for "The Alliance to Restore the Republic", bringing down the empire is just a step in the larger goal of bringing back the Republic, democracy, and freedom to the galaxy

[antianakin]

There's also some other nuance being lost here, I think.

Saw is someone who was doing ON THE GROUND rebel work since before the Empire took over. There's an entire arc in season 5 of TCW where we are introduced to him and he's already helping lead a group of rebels alongside his sister on their home planet to overthrow their Separatist ruler. Once the Empire takes over, we see in TBB that Saw has continued to do on the ground rebel work almost immediately, and not even just on his own planet since Jedi: Fallen Order shows him on Kashyyyk.

And Saw is not actually an ineffective idiot, either. One of the main things he tries to do in TBB is blow up a building where a lot of top Empire officials are meeting, including Tarkin and Krennic. And he almost succeeds! The only reason he doesn't is because TBB get in the way and so Tarkin and Krennic live on, and we all know what THEY'RE responsible for. Saw is the person that Galen Erso trusts to come save his daughter and he does. He is also the person Galen still trusts years later with the information about the Death Star. And during Rebels, as much as he is struggling more with empathy, he's the ONLY PERSON that truly realizes there's a bigger threat coming from the Empire and is trying to actively figure out what it is. That's not nothing!

I don't think that Saw's contributions need to be whittled down to "he died in a cave" in order to defend Mon Mothma's own contributions. Saw is one of the ONLY PEOPLE we see truly on the ground doing what he can for everybody IMMEDIATELY after the fall of the Republic. Saw is perhaps the only person trying direct strikes against the Empire to weaken it when it is still new. And yes, he doesn't succeed at being able to do some of those things, but he DOES succeed at others. The only other person really doing something like this is perhaps Rex, whose efforts are pretty focused in on helping the clones rather than everyone in the galaxy at large. Saw gave himself an impossible task because nobody else was doing it and someone had to. Saw is ON THE FRONT LINES in a way Mon Mothma simply is not for over fifteen YEARS. Saw did his part, he held the line for as long as he could, and it took everything from him until he was a shadow of the person he'd once been by the end. Of course Mon Mothma is more emotionally stable than he is by the time she finally decides that enough is enough and joins the fight on the ground.

I also think you can make a solid argument that Mon Mothma would perhaps not have had much of a rebellion to JOIN fifteen years into the Empire if Saw (and people like him) had not been spending those fifteen years doing what he could to help people, if he had not jumped into action immediately because he recognized that they had reached a point of no return far faster than Mon Mothma did (and without the insider information that someone like Rex or Bail Organa would have had).

In comparison, there's not a lot of exploration of Mon Mothma's early involvement in rebel actions within higher canon. She isn't around in the two Jedi video games nor is she ever in TBB in any meaningful way. The only thing I know of that really is starting to answer that question is the new book The Mask of Fear which, from what I've seen of people who've been able to read it thus far, seems to imply that Mon Mothma is primarily just trying to continue working within the political systems as she knows it. And while we as the audience know that this is going to be entirely ineffective, she doesn't have the information we do in order to realize that for herself. Not unlike Saw, she is working with the information and resources she has to do what she thinks will be the most helpful, it's just that she chooses to go through politics and Saw chooses to go take a more grassroots approach, and neither is enough on its own.

By the time of Andor, Mon Mothma is still primarily working within the political system, but has begun being more active within the rebellion by sending funds to certain people she thinks will help. She isn't involved in any of the day to day on the ground work at this point, whereas Saw has been actively doing so for over FIFTEEN YEARS. Saw is reaching the END of what he is able to do as a rebel, the end of what he can handle mentally in this battle, but Mon Mothma is, in many ways, just reaching the BEGINNING of her own battle. Mon Mothma takes another 3 years to recognize that the political path is completely useless and leave it to join the rebellion more full time. And as per what we see in Rebels, she isn't even all that good at leading the rebellion when she first starts. She gets there and her first act is to bring together all of the separate rebel cells into one alliance, and then her second act is to deny the alliance's help to a rebel base being attacked by the Empire because whoops the alliance maybe ISN'T ready to go face-to-face with the Empire yet. She becomes a stronger leader later, but she does not start out that way.

This doesn't take away from what Mon Mothma DOES ultimately contribute to the rebellion once she chooses to join, nor does it mean that Saw's later instability wasn't an issue that hindered him and his efforts to help people and fight against the Empire. So while I think it's unfair to dismiss Mon Mothma as someone who just "fights with the power of love," I think it's equally as unfair to dismiss Saw as someone who just "never had a plan and then died in a cave." Imagine what Mon Mothma might have been like if she'd been down in the dirt with Saw from day one, if she'd left her entire family and life of glamor and grandeur behind immediately, if she'd been in the trenches giving blood sweat and tears just to get a few supplies to the people who needed it because no one else would, and if she'd had to do that for several DECADES with nothing but a hope that one day they'd be free to keep her going. I wonder how well Mon Mothma would have stood up to that kind of pressure and if she'd have been any more mentally stable than Saw by the time Luke Skywalker arrived at Yavin 4. I genuinely don't think she would've lasted very long, and that's not an indictment against Mon Mothma or a personal bias against her, just an indication of how different these people are in what they were able to do and contribute to the same end goal.

I think what Andor and Rogue One emphasize so beautifully is this idea of passing the baton and of different methods being necessary when going up against a powerful enemy. Mon Mothma could not come in and be the leader she becomes in the rebellion if Saw had not spent pretty much his entire life fighting on the ground until he had nothing left to give. But equally, all of Saw's efforts could have been for nothing if someone like Mon Mothma had not been able to come in and take the baton and lead the rebellion into victory in a way Saw was no longer capable of doing. Like Luthen says, not every rebel gets to be a hero. Cassian works in the dirt and the shadows so that Luke Skywalker gets to be a hero later. And I think that that is also what Saw Gerrera is to Mon Mothma. They are two halves of one goal, two legs in the same relay race. I don't think we should dismiss either of their efforts just to lift up the other as the better rebel. You don't achieve victory without BOTH of them.

[corellian-smuggler]

Here’s the thing about the new canon.

Essentially they want us to watch the Original Trilogy, completely invested in the fact that our heroes will triumph, and then they want us to watch The Force Awakens and just be totally OK with the fact that everything we were just presented with over the course of three films is out the window.

They want Star Wars fans to spend several hours watching Han and Leia’s love story, watching them fight for each other, overcome personal obstacles to be together, make incredible sacrifices for each other–they want us to spend ESB and ROTJ rooting for them, want us to watch Han hold her close as they both smile at the end of the trilogy, want us to be happy and hopeful and thrilled that their true love has made it through–and then they want us to watch TFA and see that their marriage failed, and they want us to accept it.

They want us to get invested in our heroes–in Han and Luke and Leia–and desperately hope that they all make it through. They want us to be invested in their personal allegiances to one another to the point that we KNOW that Han will come back at the battle of Yavin for Luke and Leia, we KNOW that he’ll go out into freezing conditions to rescue Luke, we KNOW that he’ll run into Echo Base to rescue Leia on Hoth, we KNOW that Luke will ignore his Jedi Masters and abandon his training to go rescue Leia and Han on Bespin, we KNOW that Leia will risk her safety to go back for Luke at Cloud City, we KNOW that Luke and Leia will leave the rebellion and put themselves at risk to rescue Han, WE KNOW WE KNOW WE KNOW. The new canon wants us to sit there KNOWING ALL THESE THINGS, knowing that they are the most important damn things in the galaxy to one another, knowing that they’re family and that they love each other. They want us to know it and be invested in it and root for it–root for the strength of that bond and that loyalty and root for them all to make it through together–for all of them to triumph together. And they do!

And then TFA wants us to COMPLETELY CHANGE OUR MINDS and accept that all of that is destroyed. That bond is broken. Luke has abandoned his friends for some reason. Han has left Leia. Leia is all alone. And not only has that crucial bond just been cast aside, but their triumphs have all been undone. Empire defeated?? Welcome to Empire 2.0!!! Death Stars destroyed??? Welcome to Death Star 3.0!!!! Vader redeemed???? Welcome to Vader 2.0, and even worse, he’s your own damn son/nephew AND he kills Han!!!!!! It just takes their victory and deconstructs every single piece of it, and the only possible way that that maybe could have been tolerable would have been if AT LEAST they were still together, still true to the loyalty we knew, unstoppable and united no matter what new dangers they face, and they’re NOT. The Original Trio, the most beloved and iconic characters of all time, are just completely leveled to NOTHING. Fractured and broken up and reduced to these miserable un-versions of themselves. And the new canon wants you, as a Star Wars fan to accept this, because “Don’t worry!! We have these three shiny NEW heroes for you!!!! They’ll get a happy ending for sure!!!!” But??? What??? I don’t give a shit about their ending, what about the ending we were already supposed to have had???? The one you made me hope for for three damn movies??? The one I was lead to believe was true???? What about that ending??????

No, they decided that they were going to go back thirty years after the fact and change it.

But wait, you say, how did this happen??? How could these people at Lucasfilm who were claiming to “protect” Star Wars destroy Luke and Leia and Han like that?? How could they write a Han Solo who abandons Leia to do all the fighting all alone when there’s a fascist regime routinely trying to kill her and their son is a part of it and her brother has vanished without a trace??? How could they write a Luke who’s evidently turned his back on the galaxy–on the FAMILY–that needs him??? How could they have DESTROYED LEIA’S WHOLE LIFE????? ALL of their lives???? And for seemingly no reason!!!! They could have easily written a movie to introduce the new characters and create conflict without dismantling every single thing about our beloved trio and their dynamic. But they didn’t. They slaughtered them.

And then you listen to these people speak. And they start saying things like Leia clearly could never have been an attentive mother because she was too preoccupied with politics and her career. Han could never have been happy settling down and committing to something–not even his family–so OBVIOUSLY he left and he’s smuggling again. Han and Leia were too incompatible and could never have worked. Luke is off in EXILE because AREN’T ALL JEDI MASTERS SUPPOSED TO BE IN EXILE???????????

And you’re just. You’re floored. You’re blown away. It’s like those people didn’t even fucking WATCH Star Wars. Did they completely miss the fact that Leia’s character arc is about learning to care about things that aren’t the rebellion, and learning to rely on people–not just herself???? Did they not see how much she’s already lost–LITERALLY HER ENTIRE WORLD–and how much she had to suffer before she finally got something that was hers again? Did they not see the hell she had to go through to get it???? Did they really think she would throw that away after all that–did they think that LEIA of all people couldn’t have balanced a career and a family????

Were they just twiddling their thumbs when HAN SOLO’S ENTIRE FREAKING STORY IS ABOUT REALIZING THAT HE’S NOT A SMUGGLER, NOT SELFISH, NOT THAT MAN ANYMORE–MAYBE NEVER REALLY WAS THAT MAN. LEARNING TO COMMIT–TO STAY WITH LEIA AND LUKE AND THE REBELS AND SACRIFICE HIMSELF IF NEED BE????? HIS ENTIRE GROWTH AS A CHARACTER WAS AWAY FROM SELFISHNESS AND FLIGHTINESS. HE BECAME A STEADFAST, BRAVE, DEPENDABLE MAN COMMITTED TO HIS FRIENDS AND HIS LOVE AND THE CAUSE. HOW DID THEY WATCH THOSE FILMS AND SAY “WELL HAN COULD NEVER SETTLE DOWN.”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did they not notice that Luke’s DEFINING characteristic throughout the original trilogy is his loyalty to his loved ones??? His utter refusal to let harm come to them–to give up on them?? His refusal to abandon them???? And then they want us to believe that he… abandoned them?????

So essentially the thing about the new canon is that people who don’t understand Star Wars are suddenly in charge of Star Wars, and they go back and ignore the characterization of three entire films and present us with material that is entirely contradictory of the original trilogy, and then they don’t understand why people have reacted negatively. 

And then of course you get fans screaming about how it’s REALISTIC this way.

When the fuck did you get the idea that Star Wars is supposed to be realistic??????? Star Wars is NOT about realism. It’s a Space Fairytale. An epic saga. It’s not supposed to be Game of Thrones grimdark jam in the tragedy. It was never like that for forty years. It was never presented that way. George Lucas was ADAMANT in making this point. And that’s why it resonated with so many people–that’s why it was such a success. Because it was uplifting. It was inspiring. It touched that part of our hearts where those fairytales live–where it’s possible for our heroes to go up against the forces of evil and WIN and have a happy ending. That’s why they gave Luke and Leia and Han the happy fucking ending!!!!

And the thing with the new canon is that they don’t care. They don’t care about “protecting Star Wars.” They don’t care about what Star Wars stands for. They don’t care about what George Lucas created. They care about money. They don’t want you to be invested in Han and Luke and Leia anymore. They want you to care about Finn and Rey and Poe, and apparently no one at Lucasfilm understood that they didn’t have to destroy the old characters to get people to like the new ones.

And for the record, just because the people delivering this truly appalling “new canon” horrorshow AU are Disney and Lucasfilm does NOT mean that I have to accept it all as true. They don’t understand Star Wars, they don’t care about it, they’re not its original creator, and I don’t have to accept a single thing they say.

That’s the thing about the new canon.

[musewrangler]

OP just spoke my soul. THIS.

[alternicobase]

Star Wars: How the prequel trilogy mirrored and rhymed the original

[bedlamsbard]

I am actually crying right now because this is perfect.

[pep-no]

Awesome!

[casiaandor]

phil-the-stone

[nutwit]

wait are you telling me that the cinematography in the Star Wars prequels was designed to 1:1 reflect the shots in the original trilogy in order to tie the series together bc DAMN WOW

[the-far-bright-center]

Yes, absolutely.

“These aren’t merely just visually similar moments. They are carefully composed—in fact, the whole scenes in which they appear had to be carefully staged so that the key moments could be composed—in a direct symmetrical reflection of the earlier shots that Lucas wanted to quote.

What is this point of this? [Mike] Kilmo has his Ring Theory which describes structural reasons for the patterns. I’ve always thought of it more in musical terms, because that’s how Lucas describes it. He describes these moments as the same melody or theme, but played on different instruments. And what is the purpose of it when a particular melody is reprised in an opera, but given a different interpretation? To compare and contrast the two different moments, to mark the differences and create subtextual meaning.

In the case of these particular moments, he is creating bookends for the story of the entire saga. First, the murder of Qui-Gon by a Sith, which is what leads to Obi-Wan training Anakin and all the misfortune that follows, and this is inverted by Vader’s eventual sacrifice where he is able to turn back to Anakin again, and he dies himself. Pulling these two moments together by making these shots direct quotations of one another tells the story of the entire saga in miniature, and it’s beautiful to see.” [x]

[tarisilmarwen]

Important to note that Lucas understood why the bookends and parallel shot choice worked: because they were the same narrative theme echoing and repeating in the story, the same thesis in different fonts, different stanzas of the same poem.

It wasn’t just about, “Oh remember this moment/shot? Same thing! Isn’t that cool?” it had a reason behind the choice, it was deliberate in its paralleling because it was saying something about the wider saga.

It mirrors the metatextual Campbellian Hero’s Cycle Lucas styled Star Wars after in the first place. A closed circle. A complete circuit.

It ends where it began.

[astheforcewillsit]

i do think many of the people who have literally critiques against the Jedi Order are typically drowned out by tumblr just being a very "pro-Jedi" site in general, and misconstruing their arguments to make them look dumb.

But for in-depth, neutral conversations about the Jedi, i've found YouTube, twitter, and Redditt are really good. And shockingly have a larger reach than tumblr.

But i'd also really encourage Jedi Critical folks to put on an event or something to share their thoughts and ideas, because the analysis given are really good, but not often shared because of how bias this website is.

like "jedi critical week" where you all share really interesting analysis of the Jedi Order. It could be a really good academic space.

let me know if anyone bites at this idea, i'd love to see where it goes or help out.

[the-far-bright-center]

Nice idea — I am all for more academic analysis, especially with regards to the Prequels!

There are a lot of frustrating elements to approaching this topic in fandom, and one of them is that people are coming to it from so many different perspectives nowadays. There are die-hard OT fans, OT fans who also take the EU as canon, Prequels-fans, TCW fans, Disney tv series fans, people who take all of Disney 'new canon' (films, books, comics, shows) *as* canon, and then there are people like me, who are vehemently anti-Disney and only view Lucas' PT x OT films as 'canon' and see anything else as optional/supplementary material. I would love to participate in something like this, but in light of the above, I'm a bit unsure what approach is actually wanted/needed at this stage. The majority of my own meta analysis of the Prequels-era Jedi Order tends to revolve around the Skywalker family, with any other 'issues' covered mainly in how it relates to their storylines and the themes of the Skywalker saga.

I think this is where I tend to have the biggest mental block with discussing the concept of 'the Jedi' with other SW fans — in the fact that I don't see the Jedi (and Sith), the Jedi Order, or the Jedi vs. Sith conflict as somehow existing on their own, for their own sake. I see all the (Lucas-era) worldbuilding surrounding 'the Jedi' as something that was created in the way it was primarily with Anakin, Luke, and the PT x OT saga in mind. For me, these concepts exist in service of the Skywalker saga storyline, not the other way around. This leads me to be in direct conflict with other fans because many of them them tend to see 'The Jedi' as this fun thing they can essentially role-play and self-insert themselves into. Many fans want the Jedi Order to be the 'magical wizard school' trope or something, where they can have wish-fulfillment type fantasies about being cool space wizards wielding lazer swords and saving the day. For some, this is literally the main thing that draws them to Star Wars, and ok... fine. But that's not what I'm personally interested in, especially not since Disney tried to destroy the entire meaning of the saga with their fake-sequels and my entire raison d'être as a SW fan shifted to defending the Real Skywalker saga til my last breath.

So, a lot of fans have this emotional attachment to the Jedi being some entirely positive, flawless Order that they can have fun fantasies about. Or they feel similarly about it because their fave character happens to be a 'good Jedi' who is themselves uncritical of the Order. Since my main interest is Anakin/Vader and the Skywalker family in the Prequels and Original Trilogy, I personally feel the story is saying that the Jedi Order failed the Skywalkers in the Prequels era by denying them love and family, and then then Skywalkers are the ones to reestablish the Jedi Order as something new and better by the end of RotJ — in a way that serves the Will of the Force and all the peoples of the galaxy (not just the Republic), and in a way that won't deny its adherents love and family.

This is canon, in my understanding of the story. But if other people have different views of what constitutes 'real' Star Wars canon, then unfortunately my meta analysis will probably fall flat for them or will not be something they will be interested in. (For anyone who *is* interested, you can see more in my 'Jedi discourse' tag.)

[syndullahera]

THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999) - dir. George Lucas

[mcgregor]

THE CLONE WARS | 7.09 AHSOKA | 1.05

[antianakin]

Out of curiosity: do you believe Anakin was truly was the Chosen One or was it Luke the whole time?

Anakin. 1000% Anakin. I believe it's Anakin as per Word of God, as well, but I don't have the quote on hand right now.

Part of the weirdness over this is because of how the films were released, Luke is obviously the main character of the original trilogy of films, he's the one on the hero's journey, and there was never any mention of a prophecy in those films. So when the Prequels came out and made this whole prophecy thing for Anakin, it's understandable that people sort-of looked at it and went, "But if Anakin was the Chosen One, why is Luke the hero in the end still?" Which has obviously led to a bunch of theories that it was Luke all along, that Qui-Gon misunderstood the prophecy or just misapplied it to Anakin, or even that Luke BECAME the new Chosen One when Anakin fell (all of which are made worse by Rebels sort-of validating this take by having Obi-Wan claim Luke is the Chosen One). I get it.

But the entire purpose of Anakin's story to me only works if he IS the Chosen One and he just... fails. Anakin fails. He defies his own destiny and it destroys an entire galaxy. One of the BEST things about the Prequels is how hard they work to subvert certain tropes and narrative expectations. Padme and Anakin are forbidden lovers, but it's a toxic unhealthy love and the relationship is forbidden for good reason. Anakin is willing to burn down the world for Padme, but it's not at all romantic when the world is actually burning and it's going to burn both of them down with it. Prophecies exist, Chosen Ones exist, but prophecies can be DEFIED and Chosen Ones can fail if they're making selfish choices. You only get the happy ending from the prophecy if you're making the right choices.

So Anakin DOES end up destroying the Sith and bringing balance to the Force, but only when he makes a choice that's primarily SELFLESS in nature. He MIGHT'VE been able to destroy Palpatine the Sith way, but then he himself would still be a Sith and so the prophecy isn't actually fulfilled. There would be no balance in the Force while Anakin remains a Sith. So until he figures out how to leave his darkness behind, he'll continue to defy his own fate.

And that is a FASCINATING way to represent a prophecy and apply a destiny to someone without completely removing their agency or making all of their choices unimportant. Anakin's choices literally define the fate of the GALAXY because the prophecy only gets to come true when he makes the right choices. Theoretically, Anakin could defy this prophecy until he dies. Personally, I think that this is something that could happen. Anakin could make that choice, he could literally just defy the prophecy FOREVER and it would just never happen. It doesn't mean he ISN'T the Chosen One, he just chose incorrectly and so the prophecy never actually gets to come true.

I also like that this leaves room for other people to achieve the same end without being part of the prophecy. Theoretically, Palpatine could still be killed in other ways, even while Anakin's alive. The prophecy isn't stopping someone ELSE from killing Palpatine (or Anakin), it's just a LOT harder. We do see people more attuned to the Force kind-of stepping back from something they can feel is perhaps someone else's destiny or following someone specifically because they have a destiny for something, but the opportunity is there for regular people to step up where a Chosen One has failed. And it's one of the things I love MOST about the Star Wars universe, I love the way this worldbuilding works.

Luke is still a hero, obviously, he plays a major role in Anakin ultimately making that final selfless choice, his faith in Anakin and his refusal to kill Anakin and his adherence to Jedi compassion are what eventually help lead Anakin towards making the choice that allows the prophecy to finally be fulfilled. I'm not downplaying Luke's importance or his heroism at all, but I think it kind-of makes all of his choices even MORE heroic if he's NOT a Chosen One. He doesn't do these things because he was destined to do them, but because he's a good, kind, brave, strong person making the choice to do heroic things. He's choosing to do what he believes needs to be done for the greater good. He's just a regular person, with no prophecies to fulfill, having to step into the shoes of a hero because his father failed and threw the galaxy into chaos. How is that NOT more interesting than just saying Luke was the real Chosen One all along?

So you'll never catch me saying the Chosen One was anybody but Anakin in canon. It's absolutely Anakin and it'll always BE Anakin. You remove SO MUCH of the best parts of Star Wars if you take away that part of it.

[onlymollygibson]

And keep in mind the prophecy is never revealed to the audience. It could even be that it's a fragment of some old document so the Jedi Council doesn't even have access to the full thing. And what does bringing balance to the force even mean? We usually think of balance as a good thing, but maybe Anakin did exactly what the prophecy predicted and it was the prophecy itself that was broken.

[antianakin]

You're entirely right that we as the audience never get to hear the prophecy in full and it's entirely possible that the Jedi only have a fragment of it or that it's been misinterpreted to some degree. Yoda himself argues that it's entirely possible they've misunderstood the prophecy when he and Obi-Wan and Mace are discussing it in Revenge of the Sith.

But we DO know what balance to the Force means because Lucas has discussed it before.

The core of the Force. I mean you got the Dark Side and the Light Side. One is selfless. One is selfish. And you want to keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the Dark Side is that it goes out of balance, and then you get really selfish and you forget everybody.

The only way to overcome the Dark Side is through discipline. The Dark Side is pleasure, biological, and temporary, and easy to achieve. The Light Side is joy, everlasting, and difficult to achieve. A great challenge. Must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures, and overcome fear which leads to hate.

Lucas is mostly referring to balance WITHIN YOURSELF in this context, but it all connects to a greater metaphor for the entire galaxy.

Essentially, you have to think about the galaxy as a sort-of... metaphor of an individual. An individual has many different choices and personality traits and preferences and things that can cause them to react a certain way and if the individual isn't disciplined enough, those different parts of themselves could lead to them being selfish and making selfish decisions that cause them to be unbalanced as a person. Now look at each individual in the galaxy as representing sort-of... those different personality traits and preferences for the galaxy as a whole. If too many people start being unbalanced and more selfish and greedy, then the galaxy itself starts being unbalanced in that direction. And because the Force is connected to all living things, if the galaxy becomes unbalanced towards darkness, so does the Force.

Now let's look at the Sith. The Sith aren't unbalancing the Force simply by existing necessarily. They're not more unbalanced/dark/selfish/greedy than your average tyrannical ruler or slave owner like Jabba and the other Hutts or the Zyggerians or even Watto. But the Sith, due to how powerful they are, are uniquely capable of encouraging darkness IN OTHER PEOPLE and creating vast swathes of destruction and pain and fear if they choose to do so (which... they pretty much always do) and this has a ripple effect of causing people to start acting out of fear which just leads to more unbalance and darkness as a result. In our metaphor, think of the Sith as something like a trauma that causes you to reach towards more selfish tendencies as what would appear to be a protective measure (and something that probably makes you feel better in the short term) but in actuality just ends up causing you more pain in the long run. Often the best thing to do is to find a way to eliminate whatever's causing you the trauma in the first place.

Balance is recognizing that darkness exists, both in yourself and in others, and then working to find ways to CONTROL that darkness as best as possible and strive towards compassion and selflessness and much as you can. The Jedi eliminate the Sith as a matter of course because that's the only way to truly keep things in balance. So long as the Sith exist, people will be encouraged towards fear and selfishness because that's just what the Sith DO. Bringing balance to the Force is, in essence, defeating the Sith. Anakin doesn't fulfill the prophecy in ROTS, he fulfills it in ROTJ when he kills Palpatine and lets go of his own darkness (and then dies). Through his actions, the Sith are defeated, including himself.

I don't really think it makes any sense to claim that the balance spoken of in the prophecy is something that comes about when Anakin becomes a Sith and the Jedi die because balance is something that's generally associated with things like stability, safety, and security, as well as things like fairness and justice. But the Empire is a tyrannical government and if we assume they're supposed to represent balance, then somehow a world that is full of fear, death, pain, genocide, and slavery is synonymous with stability, safety, security, justice, and fairness, and that.... just doesn't work for me. In comparison, if you assume that the balance comes only when Anakin chooses to DEFEAT the Sith at the end of ROTJ, it also comes along with the END of the Empire and the victory of the Rebellion and the hope of the Jedi returning. Setting aside what Disney has done with the Sequels and the Mandoverse, the implication at the end of ROTJ is that the world can now start to recover and heal and get BETTER because the Sith are gone and the Empire is defeated. The Rebellion can begin a New Republic that will start to bring real stability and safety and peace to the galaxy because they fought with selfless compassion rather than selfish greed.

So yes, we as the audience never get to hear or see the full prophecy, we don't really know what it says beyond what we hear the characters say about it, and the Jedi themselves acknowledge that it's entirely possible to misinterpret or misunderstand it. In particular, they seem to question whether they'd be able to really identify who the "Chosen One" could actually be or not (they seem pretty skeptical when Qui-Gon brings it up and often talk about it later in terms of "IF" Anakin is the Chosen One). But that doesn't mean the Jedi are wrong about what balance means and in assuming certain things about what the prophecy is promising. And, to be honest, they're actually entirely correct about Anakin being the Chosen One who is supposed to be able to defeat the Sith and bring balance to the Force as a result.

The Jedi know EXACTLY what balance in the Force means because it's literally their job description to protect it. They just translate this to "peacekeeping" to everyone else because it's arguably easier to understand for people who aren't Force sensitive. The Jedi's entire culture is based around finding balance within yourself so that you can help others find balance. There is no one who is going to misunderstand what balance means less than the Jedi. They just didn't expect the Chosen One to defy the prophecy and reject his own destiny because they were choosing to believe the best of Anakin and trust him to do the right thing when it came down to it. And that trust got betrayed. But that's not the same thing as misinterpreting the prophecy, especially since we know it DOES come true eventually.

At worst, you could maybe argue that the prophecy never says that the darkness won't take over the galaxy FIRST before the Chosen One puts things back in balance and the Jedi are just assuming that the prophecy means the Chosen One will keep the Force from going out of balance entirely by defeating the Sith before things get that bad, but that's it.

[mylordshesacactus]

Oh god, I just realized.

I never noticed until I saw this moment in gif form. Aayla hears her men bringing their weapons up–and immediately scans the trees for the threat they must have seen.

She’s not looking at her troopers, she’s looking up and to the sides assuming they saw something she didn’t. Because what else could they possibly be aiming at?

[mylordshesacactus]

hoW DID THIS BREAK A THOUSAND NOTES

[alexkablob]

Because Star Wars is pain.

[now-you-sound-like-a-jedi]

The reason The Lawless arc of The Clone Wars is so incredible is because narratively-speaking it forms a perfect self-contained tragedy no matter which character's perspective it's from:

For Satine, it's a political tragedy in the style of Richard II, focusing on a conflict between vying factions and the fall of a well-intentioned ruler, but also with echoes of Dido, Queen of Carthage in the sense that it's ultimately not the politics that screws her over as much as it is the doomed love story.

For Maul, it's a revenge tragedy like Hamlet, in which his desire for revenge on Obi-Wan ends up not only doing harm to innocents (like Satine) but also to himself and his own family (as with Savage's death).

For Obi-Wan, he's the object of the revenge tragedy while also being trapped in his own Orpheus-and-Eurydice "you can't save her no matter how hard you try" narrative.

For Bo-Katan, it's about how her pride and ambition prevents her from seeing right from wrong and from noticing the writing on the wall until it's too late to stop the events which have been set in motion and too late to save her sister. It's the idea of a royal house torn apart by betrayal, remorse, and the dashed hopes of reconciliation.

For Pre Vizsla, it's similar to Macbeth in that his desire for power and his designs on the throne end up being his downfall.

In these episodes, every character is the tragic hero of their own little disaster, and I think that is just so cool.

[bilbobignaturals]

T A T O O I N E

C O R U S C A N T

A L D E R A A N

K A M I N O

M U S T A F A R

Star Wars planets. Part 1

[amikoroyaiart]

Han and Leia screenshot redraw

Inspiration:

Czytaj dalej

[onion-souls]

After revisiting the Phantom Menace during its 25th anniversary, I should probably actually sit down to watch the new ones I didn't see. But I kept stopping and doing something else last time I tried.

[onion-souls]

So I had the Rey Palpatine thing spoiled, like, immediately after that movie dropped, and we had people fanwanking over who she should really be descended from. You know, a secret actual Skywalker or Kenobi blah blah.

But I think the funniest character would be General Maximilian Veers.

Remember this guy?

First of all, the character didn't die on screen and the actor is still alive. You may have last seen Julian Glover as Maester Pycelle on Game of Thrones.

And on one level, it's just for the bit. You thought it would be one of the major players in the narrative, but it's just this guy.

And Rey like, fumbling around with the idea, like, "really? This guy? He's not even a force-user."

And then he pulls out his card from the Decipher Star Wars CCG, the highest level of canon, and reveals that he's force-attuned, the same Ability score as Leia Organa (premier), so fuck you.

But then I started thinking about it, and, huh.

Veers is super-competent (I think he's the only Imperial officer who got an unmitigated, no asterisk win against the Rebels on screen with no comeuppance), mechanically inclined, and works on these outer-rim middle-of-nowhere ground campaigns. Star Wars operates on a kind of supergenetic determinism where you will keep doing the same things and meeting the same robots as your parents. And maybe it's just my face blindness, but Daisy Ridley passes as a granddaughter of Julian Glover. Very similar facial structure, wide mouth, grey-brown eyes.

And, I don't know, there's maybe something to the idea of the retired Nazi grandpa archetype showing up in Star Wars. That's hasn't been done on screen and that might be interesting to see, especially with an Ex-Stormtrooper and this First Order and this Final Order thing (I genuinely can't figure out how connected and contiguous these groups are, and I am not reading a Chuck Wendig book).

Maybe he could be retired and in hiding from the New Republic in like a space jumper and cabbie hat, and going out to find his granddaughter after it fell. Is he a staunch loyalist or repentant? How does he view the First Order? Or does he come out of hiding hearing that (somehow) Palpatine returned? Maybe he could replace General Pride as the member of the First Order who is secretly working directly for Palpatine, since it's plausible that they knew each other.

[changelingsrule]

Also, Rey lived in an ATAT. What if it was none other than Veer's ATAT?

[onion-souls]

"You expect me to trust you? I was abandoned in a desert."

"I left behind a semi-automated AT-AT. You can live in those for decades, as long as nobody wraps anything around their legs. They're like a big friendly murder camel."

"It broke down."

"You're supposed to do maintenance."

"I was a child."

"You had an allied star destroyer in orbit right above you. Call them. Give them the old 'Cheers, it's Veers.'"

"It crashed."

"Maybe if a certain little girl took out the shield generator and turbolaser batteries, like a certain grandpa did, you wouldn't be alone."

[magnetarbeam]

Fic I'll never write: Han, Mirax and Jag's informational video that warns people of exactly what they're getting into by marrying a Jedi, and some expert tips for Dealing With It.

[djemsostylist]

Han has lived around Jedi for 40 years and is still utterly baffled by the Force. He knows it exists of course, he's been around Luke and the kids too long not to, but if he hadn't spent years watching the kids do things that shouldn't be possible and Luke know things he could never have known, he'd swear the entire thing was an elaborate hoax or some sort of long con. The Force exists sure, but there are moments when he wonders if it also somehow just doesn't.

Mirax barely notices the Force. It makes her husband a little more insightful and her children a little more talented, but overall, the Force barely impacts her life. Her husband was a cop and a pilot long before the Force, and as a Jedi he's hardly different from what he was before. The Force exists but it hardly matters, really, in the day to day of her life.

Jag had never wondered about the reason his father had survived ten years as a TIE pilot until the first time he flew with Jaina Solo and he could see the target she'd picked before she'd even picked it. He knows that most people can't understand their partner's intent and meaning without words, that his ability to read his wife and children is not something that most families have (his parents, after all, had always seemed a little too in sync). That he can sense her presence before she enters the room or know what his children are going to attempt before they attempt it is nothing he ever really contemplates--the Force is the Force, and his connection to it--however small--has shaped his life since before he knew of its existence, and it will continue to shape it long after he is gone. It will shape the lives of his children and grandchildren and through them, the galaxy that they will rule when he is gone. The Force is, and it's something he can put into words.

[02png]

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[howdidthisevenhappenanyway]

happy wash your fucking water bottle wednesday

[notthestarwar]

THE MOUTHPIECE IS THE MOST IMPORTANT BIT

Please guys I'm begging you

[predatory-lesbians]

no.

[spidergirlfangs]

☝️ taken by the mold