Anakin Skywalker Deserves to Die

I reserve the right to kick you out of my space whenever I want and for whatever reason

[antianakin]

MY STANCES ON CONTROVERSIAL CHARACTERS ARE AS FOLLOWS

Anakin Skywalker: This one's fairly obvious, but I'm one of the people who doesn't see Anakin as redeemed by the end of ROTJ just because he saved one person he personally gives a damn about. My definition of redemption is about atoning and making amends, and Anakin has no possible way of actually DOING THAT for most of the things he's done, so there's no real way of acquiring redemption. He can be a better person, he can be forgiven by individual people for things he's done to them, he can keep choosing to be selfless instead of selfish, but none of that necessarily means he has to be considered redeemed. If you think he's redeemed at the end of ROTJ and that's what brings you joy in your interpretation of the story, great, I honestly don't care. But if you choose to come into my notes and get mad at me because I don't think the space fascist is redeemed just because he decides to save his own son, you will now be blocked on sight, I'm done having that conversation with people.

The Jedi As A Whole: Wonderful people with a beautiful culture that never did a single thing to deserve what was done to them. They were not corrupt, they didn't need to reform their culture in a single way. There was nothing more they could've done for Anakin or the Republic that would've stopped what happened. They don't steal children, they adopt them from parents who choose to let their children lead a better life, and become part of the large extended Jedi family. They are intergalactic therapists whose literal way of life IS therapy for those who choose to follow it. They were outplayed, but they did everything they could've possibly done. Sometimes, it is possible to commit no mistakes, and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life. (Side note here: This is an incredibly pro Jedi blog, if you come on my blog and criticize the Jedi in any way, you will be immediately blocked, I am so done with this fandom's anti-Jedi sentiments, consider this your warning.)

Padme Amidala: Deserved better from the Prequels, has such potential and promise and I want so dearly to save her from her toxic ass marriage to a fascist MAGA manchild, but damn am I glad Luke and Leia didn't have to grow up with her as a mother some days. She's so flawed and selfish sometimes, and so desperately wants to save the galaxy that it kills her.

Qui-Gon Jinn: Not a super-enlightened maverick, not an abusive neglectful asshole. He wouldn't have saved Anakin, he didn't know better than the Jedi Council, but he also didn't uniquely traumatize Obi-Wan or abandon him because he was more invested in the glory of the Chosen One than in his current apprentice. He was a good Jedi who loved being a Jedi and loved his apprentice and trusted in his own interpretation of the Force's will enough to push for something unorthodox and dangerous.

Bo-Katan Kryze: I wish I could like her, but the writers are making it SO HARD. They don't seem to ever remember that she gleefully set an entire village on fire because they dared ask for their enslaved people back and to not be occupied anymore, but I do.

Satine Kryze: I wish I could like her, but I don't have enough nostalgia for her to overlook how bad the writing is for her. She treats Obi-Wan like garbage, brings out the worst in him, acts very arrogantly about just about everything and never has to take responsibility for her own mistakes so she gets to die a martyr.

Aleksander Kallus: Literally has to have his ENTIRE BACKSTORY retconned so he can be "redeemed" within the span of one episode. Also manages to "All Lives Matter" Zeb into thinking that judging Imperials for their fascist choices is the same as judging an ENTIRE SPECIES on the actions of one individual who was acting in self-defense anyway. Stop saying he's got the best redemption arc in Star Wars, it sucks fucking ass and he's not a fucking Fulcrum, he just stole the title from Ahsoka and didn't earn it and he was a shit spy anyway.

Crosshair: Bigoted dickhead who treats everyone like complete crap and then goes full fascist as a punishment for the world when no one wants to risk their lives to save him. His redemption arc was completely half-assed and he should've had to do a LOT more to gain people's forgiveness and absolutely no one should've been forced to apologize to HIM.

Bode Akuna: Basically just Anakin lite and we all know how I feel about Anakin. No sob story justifies anything he's done and I didn't find him all that interesting or sympathetic, personally.

Rafa and Trace Martez: I actually loved them, I thought they had an interesting relationship with each other and with Ahsoka, I appreciated how different they felt and the arc Ahsoka goes on with them. I don't mind that they used them to showcase the rising anti-Jedi sentiment among the citizens of Coruscant, I just wish their opinions hadn't been presented as though they were right. I love that we see they've joined a rebellion of sorts post-Order 66 and I wish we'd gotten to see more of Trace, Rafa, and Rex working together rather than the absolute trashfire that we're actually getting on TBB.

Ahsoka Tano: Relationship status: It's complicated. I DO like her, generally, but I REALLY dislike the way she's constantly written in later stuff to be better than everyone else and to have basically zero flaws so that she can end up like a messiah or a goddess of light reborn or something. It's boring, it's annoying, and it just isn't any good. I particularly don't care for how she consistently gets utilized to bash the Jedi Order and absolve Anakin for all of his sins. Ahsoka deserves better, but I'm also immensely frustrated with where her story's taken her and the way fandom tends to treat her. We also just straight-up need more main female Jedi characters and as long as Ahsoka's around it feels like it'll never happen. She's completely irrelevant to the story overall and I'm annoyed at how much Felony is trying to make her more significant than she is instead of just letting her stand on her own for once.

Sabine Wren: I love the Rebels version of her, but the Ahsoka show version sucks. I have decided it simply does not exist for Sabine. That isn't the real Sabine and it never will be. That's not Sabine's story, the real Sabine would never try to be a Jedi because quite simply she doesn't NEED to be. And the real Sabine would NEVER disrespect Ezra's sacrifice by undoing it and then leaving him to deal with the fallout. It's stupid, it's ugly, and Sabine deserved better.

Hera Syndulla: Much like Sabine, I love the Rebels version of her, but the Ahsoka version sucks. The Ahsoka version deserves to be kicked out of the army or whatever, she's a terrible mother and an even worse General and quite honestly not that great of a friend. The real Hera would NEVER act like orders didn't matter just because she doesn't like them or refuse to see the logic in letting go of Ezra after he's been missing for 10 years so that those resources can go to people who they can confirm are still alive.

Shin Hati: She's so so so boring. She has the personality of cardboard, it basically consists of "crazy eyes" and that's about it. She is pretty literally just Darth Maul but a girl. Like every single part of her character so far is indistinguishable from Maul aside from the cosmetic stuff. I hope she dies in season 2 and never gets a redemption arc. I'd say Sabine deserves better, but honestly Ahsoka!Sabine deserves her.

Grey Jedi: Stop trying to make fetch happen. It's not going to happen. Let Grey Jedi stay in fanon where it belongs, none of your faves are Grey Jedi in canon and they never will be.

The Acolyte Jedi: Fuck 'em all, I guess. Especially Sol, that fandom/Filoni Qui-Gon Jinn knock-off. The real Qui-Gon Jinn would wipe the fucking floor with Sol.

Senator Tynnra Pamlo: I have become her staunchest supporter. If Tynnra Pamlo has no fans, then I am dead. I think she gets a particularly bad rap because she's kind-of technically an antagonist in Rogue One (although the MOST minor of antagonists) but she's nowhere NEAR as bad as people made her out to be. Unfortunately Andor decided to turn her into a bitch for no reason, and that's just made even more people hate her.

[spaceshipsandpurpledrank]

[unleashthegoats]

Episode 34: They Needed a Pilot

We’re back with another look at a character that had a lot of potential in the Sequel Trilogy that got completely squandered. This time, we’re looking at Poe Dameron, the fan favorite rebel pilot that no one ever seemed to know quite what to do with despite all of the mighty potential of Oscar Isaac.

[antianakin]

Echo getting written out of TBB is SO FUCKING FUNNY because the way it's written feels like when an actor wants to leave a long-running broadcast show and do other projects but they're convinced to keep coming back to do cameos every so often because the fans love the character and it's still good money.

Except it's all the same actor this time. It's still Dee Bradley Baker who is doing like 20 other characters on the same show. He hasn't gone anywhere or reduced his workload at all by having Echo be "written out" of the narrative.

So the only reason Echo gets reduced to "reoccurring guest star" instead of main ensemble character is because the writers just didn't want to write for him anymore.

[antianakin]

Lmao, well 1) I'm not sure TBB really HAD enough plot for that to be true, and 2) The most overpowered character in TBB was Omega by virtue of being the specialest baby to ever special baby, so I don't think the writers were all that worried about having an overpowered character on the show.

But also, I'm about to put my own tinfoil hat on because I DON'T think that the writers treated Echo and Tech the same way in how they were written off and I have a personal theory about what WOULD'VE happened with Tech if the show hadn't been cancelled. I haven't talked about it on here before because, well, I dislike this show and I dislike Tech as a character, so it just hasn't seemed worth it, but I want to compare how Echo's character and narrative was treated in comparison to Tech.

So my theory is that Tech was never intended to stay dead and that he would've been that sleeper ninja assassin guy that was chasing after them in the beginning of season 3 that just kinda... disappeared after a while. I think that was going to be a whole long-running arc where they discover that it's Tech but that his memory's been wiped to turn him into this sleeper assassin and they have to figure out how to save him, but that when the show got cancelled, they had to abandon that storyline because they did not have enough time to actually complete it. But they also couldn't get rid of it entirely because they were probably a little too far into the process by the time they were told that this would be their last season. (I also think this is probably where they would've revealed Cody's fate, he would've ALSO been a sleeper assassin of some kind likely, but that's not really the point here.)

I could be wrong, and I can't remember exactly the clues I saw in the third season of TBB that led me to believe that it was Tech, but... that character just kind-of shows up as a mysterious villain and then disappears later with zero explanation. The entire narrative around the sleeper clones who've had their memories and identities erased just gets dropped entirely without any real kind of conclusion about it. And of course the easiest way to utilize a set up like that is to take the character you thought was dead and bring him back so he's alive but not... himself. And this also provides an excuse for the notoriously anti-clone main characters to actually try to DO SOMETHING to help the clones trapped as sleeper assassins (not dissimilar to how they didn't give a damn about saving any of the clones from Hemlock until they had to save Crosshair and Omega from him). The set-up is all there and all extremely obvious and textbook, and then it never went anywhere, so Tech just... stays dead.

So I am convinced that Tech's "death" was not truly him being written out of the story but a set-up for a much bigger arc that only didn't happen because the show got cancelled. Whereas Echo leaving was clearly a way to just get him out of the story since TBB were absolutely never going to get involved in a bigger clone rebellion, it just wouldn't make any fucking sense for these extremely anti-clone characters. And Echo is a character who consistently just kept getting sidelined throughout the show even when he WAS on it more regularly. You could FEEL how much the writers didn't care about him and didn't want to try to explore him or give him much of a personality because they couldn't fit him into some kind of terrible action hero archetype the same way they could all of the other characters.

If you're being EXTREMELY kind, you could maybe theorize that they were planning a spin-off with Echo and Rex that focused more on the clone rebellion storyline, but I'm not personally convinced that this was ever the intention.

And even Echo's choice to leave is just... written differently. Echo is in CONFLICT with the other characters over an issue that has never been explored for him before and is only just coming up now so that he can have an excuse to walk away. And then the aftermath of it focuses on, ironically enough, TECH. There's an entire episode focused on Omega and Tech and their respective reactions to Echo's decision to leave. It's not really about ECHO or his motives and what actually caused his conflict with the other characters, it's about Tech and how Tech is different but that doesn't make him bad and Omega is just lashing out at him because she's sad and they have to bond with each other or whatever.

Whereas Tech gets to "die a hero." His entire death scene is about how much he CARES about the other characters, about how much he's willing to sacrifice to save them and about how quickly he puts all of those pieces together and makes that decision because he's The Smart One. And then his death haunts the fucking narrative for a while as they all get to be super sad about it and those narrative are ABOUT TECH, about how the characters felt about him and how his loss impacts them.

So I don't think either Tech or Echo was just written out of the show because they felt like they'd written themselves into a corner with them and needed them gone. I think Tech was written out because they wanted to add some stakes to the show and start to seed a new narrative now that the Crosshair/Hemlock stuff was coming to an end they needed a new long-running mystery to explore. And I think Echo was written out because the writers realized that they didn't care about him and didn't want to write for him and just came up with a random motive that seemed plausible but wouldn't eliminate him entirely so they could bring him back in as a deus ex machina every so often.

[antianakin]

Echo getting written out of TBB is SO FUCKING FUNNY because the way it's written feels like when an actor wants to leave a long-running broadcast show and do other projects but they're convinced to keep coming back to do cameos every so often because the fans love the character and it's still good money.

Except it's all the same actor this time. It's still Dee Bradley Baker who is doing like 20 other characters on the same show. He hasn't gone anywhere or reduced his workload at all by having Echo be "written out" of the narrative.

So the only reason Echo gets reduced to "reoccurring guest star" instead of main ensemble character is because the writers just didn't want to write for him anymore.

[stars-kenobi]

love is stored in the jedi

[antianakin]

In reference to some people about a certain character (stolen here)

I love that your comment seems to imply that this is about fans of a specific character, but like. This is all fans about almost all characters, ESPECIALLY in Star Wars.

And it goes both ways! People will make shit up for characters they like, sure, but they're just as inclined to make shit up for characters they hate.

I'd be willing to bet that the way I choose to interpret Obi-Wan (a character I like), feels wildly out of character to some fans. And I'm just as willing to believe that the way I interpret Anakin (a character I dislike) ALSO often feels wildly out of character, especially to people who like him more. This is why I tend to disagree with most Jedi critical and/or Anakin fans about how they view Anakin AND the Jedi.

This fandom is absolutely enormous and so there's a lot of wildly contradictory views on the story and its characters. That's just part and parcel of being in a big fandom.

[luck-system-shenanigans]

i should be allowed to kill alloromantic people. like. ugh.

"i view romance as Friendship But Better" THATS EXACTLY THE FUCKING PROBLEM

[antianakin]

"Anakin would have not fall if the Jedi had trained him in a forest planet ​🙂​"

I don't think he would but I also don't think a few trees would have stopped him in willingly partaking in mulitple genocide so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, that's a new one.

I wonder how they explain away all the OTHER Jedi who don't become racist, sexist, genocidal fascists despite also being raised on Coruscant. You'd think there'd be TONS more of them if the lack of trees was the true culprit here.

[lucasandryawaifu]

The excuse was that Anakin want from a sand planet to one made of concrete. Apparently, his missions don't matter.

I personally think Anakin wouldn't have liked at all being isolated from others but what do I know?

[antianakin]

I mean, look, here's what I CAN say about this. If the Jedi are primarily living and training somewhere that ISN'T Coruscant, but nothing else about the worldbuilding has changed, it makes it a little bit more difficult for Palpatine to spend time with Anakin, which is really the actual major thing that defines whether Anakin falls or not.

However, if we presume that the Jedi not being on Corsucant WOULD change the worldbuilding, then we have to assume they're not particularly involved in politics anymore. This would pretty dramatically change the storyline since it would likely impact the kinds of missions that the Jedi tend to take or get given, and it would impact how much power the Republic Senate actually has over the Jedi.

But look, I know Anakin canonically does not like sand and therefore likely has no real appreciation for the beauty of a desert, but it's not like real life people who live in deserts are somehow uniquely fucked up and would be far better off if they lived in an area with forests instead.

And why is a forest somehow better than, say, an ocean planet? That's still pretty opposite of the sand planet, so maybe Anakin should've been raised on somewhere like Mon Cala instead. Or perhaps, since snow is still water and the temperature on a snow planet would be extremely different from a sand planet, maybe Anakin actually would've been better off being raised on something like Hoth. What makes a forest uniquely capable of sparing someone from misery and distress that no other environment is able to do?

And Anakin is hardly the only person coming from a planet that would be wildly different from Coruscant. Why is Coruscant uniquely awful for Anakin but not for, say, Kit Fisto and his padawan Nahdar Vebb who are presumably both from primarily water planets and whose people seem to live primarily underwater? Or someone like Plo Koon who literally can't even breathe the air on Coruscant and has to constantly use a mask just to exist among the other Jedi? What would the explanation be for why ANAKIN is pushed to darkness as a result of being raised on Coruscant after coming from a sand planet, but none of those other characters have any issues with it and remain good people until they die?

I don't think that being raised in a place with more trees would have necessarily meant that the Jedi were totally isolated (unless the original post you're referencing explicitly says so). There are notably QUITE A LOT of trees on our own planet despite there also being eight BILLION people also living here. So theoretically living on a planet with forests on it would not automatically have to mean that only 10,000 people could live there at once, and there could be other communities that are also on that planet that Anakin could interact with if he wanted to. And also, since this is Star Wars and they tend to travel between planets fairly often, if this fictional forested planet is in a system that has other inhabited planets or moons, there could be communities there that Anakin could interact with as well, even if the Jedi are alone on their own planet/moon. So I don't think that isolation would be that big of an issue, honestly, especially since he'd always have other Jedi around him as it is.

But regardless, this is one of the stupidest arguments I've seen for why the Jedi fucked up with raising Anakin and led him to his doom. People are truly willing to reach EXTREMELY FAR to find some way for Anakin's choices to be the Jedi's fault instead of Anakin's.

[inquisitor-apologist]

See the thing about me is I’m generally a very pro-Death of the Author style guy. I’ve read the original essay, I understand the concept, I often engage with media through that kind of lens, I get it. But this fandom as a whole seems to have NO IDEA what that concept even means.

You stop being able to apply Death of the Author when you’re actually like. Centering authorial intent. You can’t make a post like “oh the Whole Intended Point of The Original Trilogy was that Luke rejected the teachings of the Old Jedi™️ and chose love over dogma” and then when someone pulls up GL interviews showing that he did not actually intend to communicate that Luke rejected Jedi teachings and was in the right for that say “well, death of the author, that’s my interpretation!”.

Like, cool buddy, if that is for some reason what you want to take away from the Original Trilogy (I can’t imagine why, given that the teachings of the Old Jedi barely exist in the OT, but you do you) that’s fine and it does fit with Death of the Author, but you brought up authorial intent. You weren’t arguing that your interpretation is valid, you were arguing that it was in fact the express intent and vision of the creator, which is a completely different thing incompatible with Death of the Author analysis.

If someone’s criticizing RotS/the Prequels from the angle that they failed to create an effective ‘inevitable tragedy’ narrative as was intended… it’s entirely fair for someone to bring up behind the scenes material and quotes demonstrating that Lucas did not in fact intend to create an ‘inevitable tragedy’ narrative in the first place! You can’t apply Death of the Author if your analysis supposes that the author is alive and intended [x]! The entire point of Death of the Author is that the author’s intention becomes irrelevant once it is released and that the meaning of a text can only be found in the interpretation of the audience!

[antianakin]

"Anakin would have not fall if the Jedi had trained him in a forest planet ​🙂​"

I don't think he would but I also don't think a few trees would have stopped him in willingly partaking in mulitple genocide so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, that's a new one.

I wonder how they explain away all the OTHER Jedi who don't become racist, sexist, genocidal fascists despite also being raised on Coruscant. You'd think there'd be TONS more of them if the lack of trees was the true culprit here.

[thedunesea]

"ROTS is unbelievable, Anakin turns from hero to child murderer in five minutes."

Anakin has been a child murderer for three years by the time we get to rots, and the escalation is actually frighteningly clear, without even considering tcw:

-Kills enemies in anger (Tuskens)

-Kills children in anger (Tuskens)

-Kills enemy in cold blood (Dooku)

-Kills perceived obstacle in fear (Mace*)

-Kills perceived obstacles in cold blood (Jedi Temple)

-Kills children in cold blood (Younglings)

I still love him, but every heroic thing he did doing the war was done by a child murderer. Only it was children he didn't know and we didn't see.

*I know he didn't directly kill him but it amounts to the same

[sevdahalma]

Fandoms really need to learn the difference between arranged and forced marriage since arranged marriage tends to be a fairly popular trope/au. Because they are NOT the same thing. Like you do realize a lot of the world still practices arranged marriages? And that even if it’s not common in your culture it’s not something to be portrayed as inherently backwards, evil, or barbaric? So many fics, AUs, and headcanons etc perpetuate a lot of really ugly stereotypes without even realizing it

The amount of people romanticizing forced marriage and abuse is also horrifying

[sevdahalma]

And I’m saying this as someone who got married this way - please stop turning our perfectly normal lives/marriages into tropes that spread disinformation and romanticize abuse

[peach-pot]

you can always be aro/poly, it’s awesome, but also some people need to stop acting like anytime someone doesn’t center their whole social life around their romantic partner they’re soft launching a coming out, like GIRL… amatonormativity is fake for everyone not just aspec polyam people

[type-40-nightingales]

Vader just assuming obi-wan raised luke and then getting offended when he finds out he didnt

Vader: YOU ARE HIS GODFATHER !

Ghost obi-wan: .... no one told me that ?

[antianakin]

Ghost Obi-Wan: And even if you had told me that, I STILL probably would've given Luke to someone else to raise because it was a lot more likely that I'D be discovered and hunted down and killed by the Empire and the whole point of this plan was to keep these two innocent newborn children from being killed and/or captured and tortured by the Empire their father brought into existence. You lost the right to have any kind of say about how your children were raised the moment you decided to try to choke their mother to death while she was still pregnant with them. Why don't you try THANKING me instead for ensuring that BOTH of your children were raised in good, loving homes with families who ensured they grew up to be better than you ever were?

[antianakin]

People seem to really really desperately want Jedi characters to get married, to the point of coming up with some kind of specific Jedi marriage vows or practices that wouldn't somehow be forbidden as if it is impossible to be in a long term serious relationship without getting married at some point. Or as if the problem is the specific wording of the vows and not the INTENT behind them, the EXPECTATIONS that come from having a legal spouse.

Relationships are about love, marriage is a business transaction, and while many people tend to conflate the two these days, there IS a difference between them that matters. Jedi don't get married because it is a business transaction that comes with stipulations, but this does not keep them from having relationships. If they wanted to get married, they could simply stop being Jedi, but most if not all Jedi we ever meet seem perfectly happy to just not get married.

[frogofbog]

Marriage isn't a requirement for a happy relationship, whether platonic or romantic. And marriage IS a transaction, no matter what culture you look at. It may be different things, but the act of marriage is in and of itself a transactional relationship.

"marriage is a culturally sanctioned relationship recognized by society as having a continuous claim to culturally defined obligations <- labor, property, sex, economic aid, etc."

Also not everyone experiences (or wants to experience) the relationship that marriage creates. Marriage is not necessary for long lasting and healthy relationships. And the Jedi show that- they generally don't get married because they don't need to in order to show their care and have those strong relationships.

[elucubrare]

You’ve heard of “i didn’t say it was good, i said i liked it,” get ready for “i said it had some technical problems & didn’t fully deliver on its themes, not that i didn’t like it”

[elucubrare]

#I voiced a criticism of some of its aspects#which in no way implies I did not like it#“and especially does not imply that I would like to hear a defense of it of the form 'shut up and let people have fun'”

REALLY endorsing these tags from galileosballs