Pika the Marauding Missingno

You didn't need that save file, did you?

[nopebucky-deactivated20230101]

if you believe that fictional representation matters (it does, yeah) but then turn around and say “it’s only fiction, learn to tell the difference” when ships you enjoy come under (legitimate) criticism then…what r u doing honestly. why.

[shipinpeace]

I honestly don’t see how these two ideas negate each other. Fictional representation matters, but it won’t have any effect on reality unless certain conditions are met. 1. Discourse about representation has to happen IRL. 2. People need to start changing their views. 3. A peace of fiction needs to be widespread or viewed by many people. 4. There has to be a lot of such fiction available to the public. 

Fiction alone will never change opinions, but it can help change them by making certain topics more relatable.

Murder in fiction has been romanticized for centuries, yet most people seem to be aware that it’s wrong in real life. 

[nopebucky-deactivated20230101]

That isn’t necessarily true. There are many anecdotes from people who have been negatively effected by people in fandoms creating content with underage characters x adult characters, for example, because abusers having access to this content means they can and will use it to groom potential victims. I’ve been a victim of similar things.

Having abuse normalized / romanticized in fanfiction / any fiction = creating an atmosphere that enables irl abuse (a lá fifty shades of grey). It’s not an epidemic, maybe, but to say we shouldn’t be critical of our content is a very dangerous thing. 

But yeah, they absolutely do negate each other. You can’t clamour for representation in fiction on the basis that it effects reality, but then disregard that argument to brush off people saying that you should be mindful of what content you create online (which, by the way, is a public space lots of people have access to).

[shipinpeace]

It’s interesting - you’re the second person today who’s mention abusers using shipping content as grooming. I will not dismiss this claim, even though it doesn’t sound too reliable, but instead I’d like to discuss it. 

Keep reading

[marauding-missingno]

Hell yes, shipinpeace!

It seems like most antis want all creative works to look like this: 

...and that’s it.

It’s creatively stifling and it’s boring, and that’s not how art works. 

The more I read stuff from antis (IDK why I keep doing it, glutton for punishment I guess), the more I keep thinking - wait. Banning ships they don’t like isn’t going to solve any of the problems they seem worried about, but there are other things that will. Just to take the two most common anti-ship arguments I keep seeing, for example: 

1) "I’m an abuse survivor and I don’t want to see that stuff.” - 100% fair enough. So promote accurate tagging. Trying to tell writers and artists what they can and can’t write, draw, or create is going to get you literally nowhere. You might get into a tumblr argument for your efforts, but that’s it. 

Telling artists and writers that you respect their right to create, but could they please return the favor and respectfully tag their works for certain ships, extreme violence, etc. so you can make an informed decision about which fictional worlds to engage with - that’s more than fair enough, and it’s likely to make them want to work with you rather than roll their eyes and blow you off as a hater. (Which is exactly what happens when you call someone a rapist for writing reylo, a pedo for writing obikin, or whatever else.) 

2) “People need to know that [insert behavior here] is abusive and not okay.” - Also 100% fair enough. So promote abuse awareness. Make educational posts about what abuse does and doesn’t look like, and ask people to reblog the hell out of it. 

The problem with 50 Shades of Grey (other than it was written like utter shit) wasn’t that it portrayed an abusive relationship, it’s that people didn’t know what abuse vs BDSM actually looked like, so they’d read 50 Shades and think it reflected a normal kinky relationship.

The answer here isn’t to ban 50 Shades. It’s to promote kink awareness and abuse awareness and educate people on how to tell the difference. That way when stuff like 50 Shades *does* crop up (which it always inevitably will), people will see it for what it is. They might enjoy the book and they might not, but if they already know what abuse looks like and what fully consensual kink looks like, they’ll know which one is being portrayed and have no misconceptions. 

Same goes for Reylo or Quiobi or whatever else. There is nothing in the world wrong with making educational posts about why staying with a person who abuses you isn’t healthy, or what steps to take if you’re a teen at school and you see an adult behaving inappropriately with you or another student. Posts like that are helpful. That’s how people learn valuable things.

But calling someone a rapist or an abuser for writing fanfic is just absurd. If you’re worried a certain trend of popular fiction is sending harmful messages, then address the messages (”this is what bdsm is about, and this is what abuse is about, and here’s how to tell the difference”). Don’t guilt and shame people writing fiction and try to force them to stop, and don’t insinuate that people who write fiction are automatically advocating the IRL reenactment of what their fictional characters do.

Censorship isn’t the answer, folks. Education is. And the reason “representation matters” and “quit telling me what to ship” aren’t mutually exclusive is because the former is advocating additions to the marketplace of ideas (and therefore expanding horizons) while the latter is advocating the censorship of it.

[kalinara]

I’m going to change gears from my usual anti-Kylo Ren tirade for this post:

I am really fucking tired of seeing Anakin Skywalker apologists blame Mace Windu, or otherwise imply that Mace Windu deserved his fate, just because he happened to rightfully believe that the man was not emotionally equipped to be a Jedi.

Here is an unpleasant truth for all of us: Mace Windu was right.

Anakin wasn’t equipped to be a Jedi.  He wasn’t equipped to live with Jedi restrictions the way the others were.  He wasn’t equipped to have to deal with political machinations or secret Sith scheming.  He wasn’t equipped to leave a loving mother.  He wasn’t equipped to balance Palpatine’s gaslighting with his Jedi trained perspective and self-awareness.

He wasn’t even equipped to leave the Jedi Order of his own free will and use his training and skills and connections to establish a life that suited him better.

Mace was right to be wary of Anakin.  Because Anakin did end up turning on the Order.  And Mace absolutely did not deserve what happened to him.

Mace Windu did not yank Anakin off of Tatooine while leaving his mother behind.

Mace Windu did not create the culture that raised Jedi from birth, without standard family attachments.  Mace was in fact as much a victim of that culture as Anakin or any other Jedi.

Mace Windu did not create the code or restrictions that forbid Anakin from marrying Padme.

Mace Windu was never cruel to Anakin.  He may have distrusted him or not been as warm as Anakin would have liked, but you know what?  He had no responsibility to do so.  He wasn’t Anakin’s master.  He’s certainly not a brother or father figure to him.  SO WHAT if he distrusted Anakin.  He’s allowed to have a fucking opinion.

Newsflash: in your life, you’re going to meet people who don’t trust you.  You’re going to meet people who dislike you.  You’re going to meet people who don’t know what to do with you.  And guess what?  You get the fuck over it.

There was no indication that Mace Windu was unfair to Anakin.  He opposed Anakin being a master.  Okay.  Anakin was twenty-three years old.  We have never seen a master that age.  Obi-Wan was still a Padawan at that age.  Anakin may have been a war hero, but that doesn’t mean that Mace can’t have legitimate misgivings about Anakin’s emotional readiness for the job.

There is no indication that Mace Windu mistreated Anakin.  If anything, he tried to protect him.  He knew Anakin and Palpatine were friends and he tried to spare Anakin from having to be part of the confrontation.

If you can’t defend Anakin Skywalker’s choices without slamming a man who did nothing to deserve his murder at Anakin’s hands, then you have to wonder how defensible Anakin actually is.

[marauding-missingno]

I think the Jedi Order in general was corrupt as fuck, their dogma was beyond toxic, and the Jedi were just as gasglighty to Anakin as the Emperor, if not more so. But that being said - yeah, that wasn’t Mace specifically, and he didn’t write the code.

The reason I don’t blame Anakin for attacking Mace in the RotS scene comes mainly from the Wrong Jedi arc of TCW. The entire goddamn council screwed the pooch there, but Mace is one of the more vocal ones among them in that particular clusterfuck, and once Ahsoka was proven innocent, Mace tried to justify their bullshit (“this was your great trial” implicating her lack of a fair trial was the will of the Force or some shit) whereas the others were trying to apologize. This scored Windu some MAJOR jackass points.

So now fast forward to the RotS scene where Anakin walks in on Mace vs Palps. Mace is the same fuckwit who was perfectly happy to nearly get Anakin’s padawan killed with the whole “lol fair trial, who needs one of those?” line of thought. And now here’s Windu again, getting ready to kill ANOTHER person Anakin cares deeply for with the same exact line of thought. So Anakin ain’t having it. Windu also proved himself to be a giant hypocrite here, in that he always seemed like such an undying hard-ass about THE CODE and THE JEDI WAY and LET’S NOT TRUST ANAKIN - but now here’s Mr. Jedi Stickler about to kill Anakin’s friend without a trial, after Anakin trusted Windu to go apprehend him, because Anakin mistakenly believed that Windu would uphold the code he seemed to have such a giant fucking boner for every other time.

At this point, it’s kind of hard to blame Anakin for wondering who the villain really is, and for making the split second decision to save his friend rather than save the hypocrite who fucked over his padawan, hid behind “the will of the Force,” and is about to do the same damn thing to another friend because “the Code matters enough for me to give you tons of shit in its name and drive Ahsoka away from the Order, but it only matters when I say it matters, and I say it doesn’t matter now, so I’m gonna kill your friend after you took a leap of faith and trusted me to arrest him instead.”

[kalinara]

I’m sorry I can’t really hold with any defense of Anakin that starts off suggesting that the Jedi and Palpatine are remotely equivalent.

The Jedi, furthermore, NEVER gaslighted Anakin. They have, if anything, been a bit too forthright. There were no false pretenses in Anakin’s recruitment. They didn’t think he was suited. They were right.

That’s what Anakin defenders ignore. There is this idea that the Jedi were Anakin’s neglectful parents, but that is missing an important point. The Jedi are a semi-militant religious order with very specific rules and restrictions that are applied uniformly. This was made very clear to Anakin from day one. It has also been made very clear that people who are unable to follow the tenets of the Order are free to leave.

It’s like a Catholic priest complaining about not being able to marry, or a Shaolin acolyte not wanting to be vegetarian. If you want to be part of a religious order, you conform.

Now whether or not Anakin could truly comprehend what he was agreeing to is questionable. He was 9. But that’s more on Qui-Gon who pushed the issue. The Jedi didn’t want to bind or control Anakin at all. They would have been very happy if Qui-Gon had placed the kid with some home on Naboo.

But I really think you need to watch Revenge of the Sith again, because the scene was very clear.

The Jedi wanted to CONFRONT Palpatine and take him into custody. They expected a fight but they were not the aggressors. And they did not go there to execute him without a trial. They were trying to bring him in so there could be a trial

Palpatine attacked MACE with force lightning. Mace defended himself and turned it back, but again Mace wasn’t actually the aggressor. All Palpatine had to do was stop attacking. And Anakin knew that.

Anakin did not kill Mace by mistake. He didn’t just walk in to see Mace standing over Palpatine and misunderstand the situation. He knew who was using Sith lightning. But Anakin chose to protect the man who could theoretically help him save Padme and murdered a good, heroic man who had always been civil to him.

There is a reason that Mace basically represented Anakin’s point of no return when killing the Tuskan Village or executing Dooku (…without a trial, I must point out) was not. Because that was the moment of Anakin’s true, conscious, decision to join the Dark.

That is when Anakin finally knelt to Palpatine of his own free will.

[marauding-missingno]

The Jedi were a toxic cult, and they mentally and emotionally fucked Anakin up six ways to Sunday. They told him his best qualities (passion and loyalty) were flaws, and they convinced him he was defective for having perfectly normal feelings and needs (such as the desire to love and be loved). The Jedi were basically the “pray away the gay” religious lunatics of a galaxy far, far away, and that sort of shit is a recipe for disaster any way you slice it. But since they didn’t get a chance to brainwash Anakin from birth, he knew better, so all the Jedi dogma did was serve as a method of crazymaking. Just because the Jedi believed their own bullshit doesn’t mean it was any less toxic or any less reality-denying for Anakin. 

(There are absolutely some valid criticisms to make about Qui-Gon, but if the Jedi had refused to train Anakin, the alternative would be leaving a ridiculously powerful Force sensitive kid to be found and trained by whatever Force user or group of Force users found him next - Sith, rogue dark siders, whatever. So refusing to train Anakin at all could have been just as dangerous and disastrous as what happened in canon, where the Jedi pretty much pushed Anakin to the Dark Side themselves, to the point where they did most of Palpatine’s work for him and all the Emperor really had to do was sit in the background of Anakin’s life and say ooga booga at the right times.) 

And I think I remember the RotS scene pretty clearly. Anakin walked into the room and saw Windu had pretty much won the fight. Anakin said they needed to arrest Palps. Windu then turned around and said no, we’re just gonna execute his ass without a trial. I mean, yeah, Anakin obviously knew Palpatine was a Sith Lord by now, but that’s exactly the point. Here’s Mace “Hardass Jedi Council Guru” Windu spouting the exact same justification for executing a defeated opponent sans trial that Emperor Sith-face used - “he’s too dangerous to be left alive.”

So from where Anakin is, the Jedi have proven themselves to be just as dark and corrupt as the Sith. They’re of the same mind, spouting the same party line. So Anakin chooses to save the person who has offered to help him as opposed to the hypocrite who’s mistrusted him and didn’t give two shits about sending innocent Ahsoka to her own execution because fair trials are just too inconvenient sometimes. 

[kalinara]

Your account ignores that Anakin clearly witnesses who is casting lightning at whom.

For one Ahsoka hadn’t been invented, and no supplemental materials have linked her to that scene. So your interpretation is interesting but not supported by what actually happened.

[marauding-missingno]

Anakin saw Palpatine disarmed, shriveled, and being clearly overpowered by Windu. Yes, he was casting lightning, but the point still stands. Anakin already knew he was a Sith, but Windu was also acting like a Sith, so it was basically a decision between Sithy Person #1 who says he wants to help Anakin vs Sithy Person #2 who’s a total hypocrite and has already fucked up royally in the past and gotten someone else close to Anakin nearly killed by doing the same exact thing he’s doing now (”who needs a fair trial?”)

Ahsoka is canon. You can’t just selectively throw out canon because it hurts your argument. (I mean, I suppose you can, but it doesn’t make a very convincing case.) If you’re trying to argue that, from a meta\narrative standpoint, the prequel trilogy did a lousy job of showing the nuances of what caused Anakin’s fall and failed to portray him as a sympathetic character, that’s all well and good, but that’s an entirely different debate. If the argument is that Anakin - as a canon character with his canon experiences - didn’t really have a legitimate grievance with Windu or any in-character reason to save Palpatine’s life instead, I strongly disagree with that, and the Ahsoka debacle is a significant part of the reason.

[kalinara]

Seriously dude, aren’t you tired of repeating yourself? The movie makes it very clear that Anakin knew who was attacking whom. They could have made it a misunderstanding. They very specifically did not.

And Windu was NOT acting like a Sith. The man was holding his lightsaber as Palpatine shot lightning at him. Anakin could see that. Mace was turning the lightning back.

Moreover, Anakin has already murdered a prisoner without a trial on Palpatine’s order. So there really is no room for a moral high ground.

Ahsoka is canon NOW. She was not canon in 2005 when the scene was filmed.

Ergo, the scene was not about Ahsoka. None of the supplemental material written after her creation rewrote that scene.

Furthermore, your interpretation actually makes Anakin much worse than the actual movie did.

Anakin chose Palpatine because he believed that Palpatine could give him a way to save his wife.

Ahsoka did not die. She left. If anger over her fate influenced Anakin’s decision to murder Mace, then we add a subtext of disproportionate retribution. Besides, Anakin could have left WITH Ahsoka.

What happened with Ahsoka was not Mace’s fault and was not relevant to this confrontation at all.

Honest your contrived gymnastics to make Mace at fault for Anakin’s crime are transparent and boring. I doubt I will engage with you again on this matter.

[marauding-missingno]

Killing him without a trial is Sith-like. It’s the exact same thing Palpatine the Sith told Anakin to do to Dooku. That’s the point. It’s not about moral high ground, it’s about Windu parroting a Sith Lord, thus being Sithy.

It’s irrelevant when Ahsoka was conceived. From a canon standpoint, she was a part of Anakin’s past in that scene. A big part of what TCW did was fill in some blanks with the characters’ past, this being a prime example. Again, if you want to argue narrative sloppiness on the part of the prequels, fine, but that’s an entirely different argument.

Your contrived gymnastics to ignore Mace’s faults are likewise transparent and boring, and I’m not going to spend a significant of time weeping into my pillow if you choose not to engage with me again. 

Bye.

[kalinara]

I’m going to change gears from my usual anti-Kylo Ren tirade for this post:

I am really fucking tired of seeing Anakin Skywalker apologists blame Mace Windu, or otherwise imply that Mace Windu deserved his fate, just because he happened to rightfully believe that the man was not emotionally equipped to be a Jedi.

Here is an unpleasant truth for all of us: Mace Windu was right.

Anakin wasn’t equipped to be a Jedi.  He wasn’t equipped to live with Jedi restrictions the way the others were.  He wasn’t equipped to have to deal with political machinations or secret Sith scheming.  He wasn’t equipped to leave a loving mother.  He wasn’t equipped to balance Palpatine’s gaslighting with his Jedi trained perspective and self-awareness.

He wasn’t even equipped to leave the Jedi Order of his own free will and use his training and skills and connections to establish a life that suited him better.

Mace was right to be wary of Anakin.  Because Anakin did end up turning on the Order.  And Mace absolutely did not deserve what happened to him.

Mace Windu did not yank Anakin off of Tatooine while leaving his mother behind.

Mace Windu did not create the culture that raised Jedi from birth, without standard family attachments.  Mace was in fact as much a victim of that culture as Anakin or any other Jedi.

Mace Windu did not create the code or restrictions that forbid Anakin from marrying Padme.

Mace Windu was never cruel to Anakin.  He may have distrusted him or not been as warm as Anakin would have liked, but you know what?  He had no responsibility to do so.  He wasn’t Anakin’s master.  He’s certainly not a brother or father figure to him.  SO WHAT if he distrusted Anakin.  He’s allowed to have a fucking opinion.

Newsflash: in your life, you’re going to meet people who don’t trust you.  You’re going to meet people who dislike you.  You’re going to meet people who don’t know what to do with you.  And guess what?  You get the fuck over it.

There was no indication that Mace Windu was unfair to Anakin.  He opposed Anakin being a master.  Okay.  Anakin was twenty-three years old.  We have never seen a master that age.  Obi-Wan was still a Padawan at that age.  Anakin may have been a war hero, but that doesn’t mean that Mace can’t have legitimate misgivings about Anakin’s emotional readiness for the job.

There is no indication that Mace Windu mistreated Anakin.  If anything, he tried to protect him.  He knew Anakin and Palpatine were friends and he tried to spare Anakin from having to be part of the confrontation.

If you can’t defend Anakin Skywalker’s choices without slamming a man who did nothing to deserve his murder at Anakin’s hands, then you have to wonder how defensible Anakin actually is.

[marauding-missingno]

I think the Jedi Order in general was corrupt as fuck, their dogma was beyond toxic, and the Jedi were just as gasglighty to Anakin as the Emperor, if not more so. But that being said - yeah, that wasn’t Mace specifically, and he didn’t write the code.

The reason I don’t blame Anakin for attacking Mace in the RotS scene comes mainly from the Wrong Jedi arc of TCW. The entire goddamn council screwed the pooch there, but Mace is one of the more vocal ones among them in that particular clusterfuck, and once Ahsoka was proven innocent, Mace tried to justify their bullshit (“this was your great trial” implicating her lack of a fair trial was the will of the Force or some shit) whereas the others were trying to apologize. This scored Windu some MAJOR jackass points.

So now fast forward to the RotS scene where Anakin walks in on Mace vs Palps. Mace is the same fuckwit who was perfectly happy to nearly get Anakin’s padawan killed with the whole “lol fair trial, who needs one of those?” line of thought. And now here’s Windu again, getting ready to kill ANOTHER person Anakin cares deeply for with the same exact line of thought. So Anakin ain’t having it. Windu also proved himself to be a giant hypocrite here, in that he always seemed like such an undying hard-ass about THE CODE and THE JEDI WAY and LET’S NOT TRUST ANAKIN - but now here’s Mr. Jedi Stickler about to kill Anakin’s friend without a trial, after Anakin trusted Windu to go apprehend him, because Anakin mistakenly believed that Windu would uphold the code he seemed to have such a giant fucking boner for every other time.

At this point, it’s kind of hard to blame Anakin for wondering who the villain really is, and for making the split second decision to save his friend rather than save the hypocrite who fucked over his padawan, hid behind “the will of the Force,” and is about to do the same damn thing to another friend because “the Code matters enough for me to give you tons of shit in its name and drive Ahsoka away from the Order, but it only matters when I say it matters, and I say it doesn’t matter now, so I’m gonna kill your friend after you took a leap of faith and trusted me to arrest him instead.”

[kalinara]

I’m sorry I can’t really hold with any defense of Anakin that starts off suggesting that the Jedi and Palpatine are remotely equivalent.

The Jedi, furthermore, NEVER gaslighted Anakin. They have, if anything, been a bit too forthright. There were no false pretenses in Anakin’s recruitment. They didn’t think he was suited. They were right.

That’s what Anakin defenders ignore. There is this idea that the Jedi were Anakin’s neglectful parents, but that is missing an important point. The Jedi are a semi-militant religious order with very specific rules and restrictions that are applied uniformly. This was made very clear to Anakin from day one. It has also been made very clear that people who are unable to follow the tenets of the Order are free to leave.

It’s like a Catholic priest complaining about not being able to marry, or a Shaolin acolyte not wanting to be vegetarian. If you want to be part of a religious order, you conform.

Now whether or not Anakin could truly comprehend what he was agreeing to is questionable. He was 9. But that’s more on Qui-Gon who pushed the issue. The Jedi didn’t want to bind or control Anakin at all. They would have been very happy if Qui-Gon had placed the kid with some home on Naboo.

But I really think you need to watch Revenge of the Sith again, because the scene was very clear.

The Jedi wanted to CONFRONT Palpatine and take him into custody. They expected a fight but they were not the aggressors. And they did not go there to execute him without a trial. They were trying to bring him in so there could be a trial

Palpatine attacked MACE with force lightning. Mace defended himself and turned it back, but again Mace wasn’t actually the aggressor. All Palpatine had to do was stop attacking. And Anakin knew that.

Anakin did not kill Mace by mistake. He didn’t just walk in to see Mace standing over Palpatine and misunderstand the situation. He knew who was using Sith lightning. But Anakin chose to protect the man who could theoretically help him save Padme and murdered a good, heroic man who had always been civil to him.

There is a reason that Mace basically represented Anakin’s point of no return when killing the Tuskan Village or executing Dooku (…without a trial, I must point out) was not. Because that was the moment of Anakin’s true, conscious, decision to join the Dark.

That is when Anakin finally knelt to Palpatine of his own free will.

[marauding-missingno]

The Jedi were a toxic cult, and they mentally and emotionally fucked Anakin up six ways to Sunday. They told him his best qualities (passion and loyalty) were flaws, and they convinced him he was defective for having perfectly normal feelings and needs (such as the desire to love and be loved). The Jedi were basically the “pray away the gay” religious lunatics of a galaxy far, far away, and that sort of shit is a recipe for disaster any way you slice it. But since they didn’t get a chance to brainwash Anakin from birth, he knew better, so all the Jedi dogma did was serve as a method of crazymaking. Just because the Jedi believed their own bullshit doesn’t mean it was any less toxic or any less reality-denying for Anakin. 

(There are absolutely some valid criticisms to make about Qui-Gon, but if the Jedi had refused to train Anakin, the alternative would be leaving a ridiculously powerful Force sensitive kid to be found and trained by whatever Force user or group of Force users found him next - Sith, rogue dark siders, whatever. So refusing to train Anakin at all could have been just as dangerous and disastrous as what happened in canon, where the Jedi pretty much pushed Anakin to the Dark Side themselves, to the point where they did most of Palpatine’s work for him and all the Emperor really had to do was sit in the background of Anakin’s life and say ooga booga at the right times.) 

And I think I remember the RotS scene pretty clearly. Anakin walked into the room and saw Windu had pretty much won the fight. Anakin said they needed to arrest Palps. Windu then turned around and said no, we’re just gonna execute his ass without a trial. I mean, yeah, Anakin obviously knew Palpatine was a Sith Lord by now, but that’s exactly the point. Here’s Mace “Hardass Jedi Council Guru” Windu spouting the exact same justification for executing a defeated opponent sans trial that Emperor Sith-face used - “he’s too dangerous to be left alive.”

So from where Anakin is, the Jedi have proven themselves to be just as dark and corrupt as the Sith. They’re of the same mind, spouting the same party line. So Anakin chooses to save the person who has offered to help him as opposed to the hypocrite who’s mistrusted him and didn’t give two shits about sending innocent Ahsoka to her own execution because fair trials are just too inconvenient sometimes. 

[kalinara]

Your account ignores that Anakin clearly witnesses who is casting lightning at whom.

For one Ahsoka hadn’t been invented, and no supplemental materials have linked her to that scene. So your interpretation is interesting but not supported by what actually happened.

[marauding-missingno]

Anakin saw Palpatine disarmed, shriveled, and being clearly overpowered by Windu. Yes, he was casting lightning, but the point still stands. Anakin already knew he was a Sith, but Windu was also acting like a Sith, so it was basically a decision between Sithy Person #1 who says he wants to help Anakin vs Sithy Person #2 who’s a total hypocrite and has already fucked up royally in the past and gotten someone else close to Anakin nearly killed by doing the same exact thing he’s doing now (”who needs a fair trial?”)

Ahsoka is canon. You can’t just selectively throw out canon because it hurts your argument. (I mean, I suppose you can, but it doesn’t make a very convincing case.) If you’re trying to argue that, from a meta\narrative standpoint, the prequel trilogy did a lousy job of showing the nuances of what caused Anakin’s fall and failed to portray him as a sympathetic character, that’s all well and good, but that’s an entirely different debate. If the argument is that Anakin - as a canon character with his canon experiences - didn’t really have a legitimate grievance with Windu or any in-character reason to save Palpatine’s life instead, I strongly disagree with that, and the Ahsoka debacle is a significant part of the reason.

[kalinara]

I’m going to change gears from my usual anti-Kylo Ren tirade for this post:

I am really fucking tired of seeing Anakin Skywalker apologists blame Mace Windu, or otherwise imply that Mace Windu deserved his fate, just because he happened to rightfully believe that the man was not emotionally equipped to be a Jedi.

Here is an unpleasant truth for all of us: Mace Windu was right.

Anakin wasn’t equipped to be a Jedi.  He wasn’t equipped to live with Jedi restrictions the way the others were.  He wasn’t equipped to have to deal with political machinations or secret Sith scheming.  He wasn’t equipped to leave a loving mother.  He wasn’t equipped to balance Palpatine’s gaslighting with his Jedi trained perspective and self-awareness.

He wasn’t even equipped to leave the Jedi Order of his own free will and use his training and skills and connections to establish a life that suited him better.

Mace was right to be wary of Anakin.  Because Anakin did end up turning on the Order.  And Mace absolutely did not deserve what happened to him.

Mace Windu did not yank Anakin off of Tatooine while leaving his mother behind.

Mace Windu did not create the culture that raised Jedi from birth, without standard family attachments.  Mace was in fact as much a victim of that culture as Anakin or any other Jedi.

Mace Windu did not create the code or restrictions that forbid Anakin from marrying Padme.

Mace Windu was never cruel to Anakin.  He may have distrusted him or not been as warm as Anakin would have liked, but you know what?  He had no responsibility to do so.  He wasn’t Anakin’s master.  He’s certainly not a brother or father figure to him.  SO WHAT if he distrusted Anakin.  He’s allowed to have a fucking opinion.

Newsflash: in your life, you’re going to meet people who don’t trust you.  You’re going to meet people who dislike you.  You’re going to meet people who don’t know what to do with you.  And guess what?  You get the fuck over it.

There was no indication that Mace Windu was unfair to Anakin.  He opposed Anakin being a master.  Okay.  Anakin was twenty-three years old.  We have never seen a master that age.  Obi-Wan was still a Padawan at that age.  Anakin may have been a war hero, but that doesn’t mean that Mace can’t have legitimate misgivings about Anakin’s emotional readiness for the job.

There is no indication that Mace Windu mistreated Anakin.  If anything, he tried to protect him.  He knew Anakin and Palpatine were friends and he tried to spare Anakin from having to be part of the confrontation.

If you can’t defend Anakin Skywalker’s choices without slamming a man who did nothing to deserve his murder at Anakin’s hands, then you have to wonder how defensible Anakin actually is.

[marauding-missingno]

I think the Jedi Order in general was corrupt as fuck, their dogma was beyond toxic, and the Jedi were just as gasglighty to Anakin as the Emperor, if not more so. But that being said - yeah, that wasn’t Mace specifically, and he didn’t write the code.

The reason I don’t blame Anakin for attacking Mace in the RotS scene comes mainly from the Wrong Jedi arc of TCW. The entire goddamn council screwed the pooch there, but Mace is one of the more vocal ones among them in that particular clusterfuck, and once Ahsoka was proven innocent, Mace tried to justify their bullshit (“this was your great trial” implicating her lack of a fair trial was the will of the Force or some shit) whereas the others were trying to apologize. This scored Windu some MAJOR jackass points.

So now fast forward to the RotS scene where Anakin walks in on Mace vs Palps. Mace is the same fuckwit who was perfectly happy to nearly get Anakin’s padawan killed with the whole “lol fair trial, who needs one of those?” line of thought. And now here’s Windu again, getting ready to kill ANOTHER person Anakin cares deeply for with the same exact line of thought. So Anakin ain’t having it. Windu also proved himself to be a giant hypocrite here, in that he always seemed like such an undying hard-ass about THE CODE and THE JEDI WAY and LET’S NOT TRUST ANAKIN - but now here’s Mr. Jedi Stickler about to kill Anakin’s friend without a trial, after Anakin trusted Windu to go apprehend him, because Anakin mistakenly believed that Windu would uphold the code he seemed to have such a giant fucking boner for every other time.

At this point, it’s kind of hard to blame Anakin for wondering who the villain really is, and for making the split second decision to save his friend rather than save the hypocrite who fucked over his padawan, hid behind “the will of the Force,” and is about to do the same damn thing to another friend because “the Code matters enough for me to give you tons of shit in its name and drive Ahsoka away from the Order, but it only matters when I say it matters, and I say it doesn’t matter now, so I’m gonna kill your friend after you took a leap of faith and trusted me to arrest him instead.”

[kalinara]

I’m sorry I can’t really hold with any defense of Anakin that starts off suggesting that the Jedi and Palpatine are remotely equivalent.

The Jedi, furthermore, NEVER gaslighted Anakin. They have, if anything, been a bit too forthright. There were no false pretenses in Anakin’s recruitment. They didn’t think he was suited. They were right.

That’s what Anakin defenders ignore. There is this idea that the Jedi were Anakin’s neglectful parents, but that is missing an important point. The Jedi are a semi-militant religious order with very specific rules and restrictions that are applied uniformly. This was made very clear to Anakin from day one. It has also been made very clear that people who are unable to follow the tenets of the Order are free to leave.

It’s like a Catholic priest complaining about not being able to marry, or a Shaolin acolyte not wanting to be vegetarian. If you want to be part of a religious order, you conform.

Now whether or not Anakin could truly comprehend what he was agreeing to is questionable. He was 9. But that’s more on Qui-Gon who pushed the issue. The Jedi didn’t want to bind or control Anakin at all. They would have been very happy if Qui-Gon had placed the kid with some home on Naboo.

But I really think you need to watch Revenge of the Sith again, because the scene was very clear.

The Jedi wanted to CONFRONT Palpatine and take him into custody. They expected a fight but they were not the aggressors. And they did not go there to execute him without a trial. They were trying to bring him in so there could be a trial

Palpatine attacked MACE with force lightning. Mace defended himself and turned it back, but again Mace wasn’t actually the aggressor. All Palpatine had to do was stop attacking. And Anakin knew that.

Anakin did not kill Mace by mistake. He didn’t just walk in to see Mace standing over Palpatine and misunderstand the situation. He knew who was using Sith lightning. But Anakin chose to protect the man who could theoretically help him save Padme and murdered a good, heroic man who had always been civil to him.

There is a reason that Mace basically represented Anakin’s point of no return when killing the Tuskan Village or executing Dooku (…without a trial, I must point out) was not. Because that was the moment of Anakin’s true, conscious, decision to join the Dark.

That is when Anakin finally knelt to Palpatine of his own free will.

[marauding-missingno]

The Jedi were a toxic cult, and they mentally and emotionally fucked Anakin up six ways to Sunday. They told him his best qualities (passion and loyalty) were flaws, and they convinced him he was defective for having perfectly normal feelings and needs (such as the desire to love and be loved). The Jedi were basically the "pray away the gay" religious lunatics of a galaxy far, far away, and that sort of shit is a recipe for disaster any way you slice it. But since they didn't get a chance to brainwash Anakin from birth, he knew better, so all the Jedi dogma did was serve as a method of crazymaking. Just because the Jedi believed their own bullshit doesn't mean it was any less toxic or any less reality-denying for Anakin. 

(There are absolutely some valid criticisms to make about Qui-Gon, but if the Jedi had refused to train Anakin, the alternative would be leaving a ridiculously powerful Force sensitive kid to be found and trained by whatever Force user or group of Force users found him next - Sith, rogue dark siders, whatever. So refusing to train Anakin at all could have been just as dangerous and disastrous as what happened in canon, where the Jedi pretty much pushed Anakin to the Dark Side themselves, to the point where they did most of Palpatine's work for him and all the Emperor really had to do was sit in the background of Anakin's life and say ooga booga at the right times.) 

And I think I remember the RotS scene pretty clearly. Anakin walked into the room and saw Windu had pretty much won the fight. Anakin said they needed to arrest Palps. Windu then turned around and said no, we're just gonna execute his ass without a trial. I mean, yeah, Anakin obviously knew Palpatine was a Sith Lord by now, but that's exactly the point. Here's Mace "Hardass Jedi Council Guru" Windu spouting the exact same justification for executing a defeated opponent sans trial that Emperor Sith-face used - "he's too dangerous to be left alive."

So from where Anakin is, the Jedi have proven themselves to be just as dark and corrupt as the Sith. They're of the same mind, spouting the same party line. So Anakin chooses to save the person who has offered to help him as opposed to the hypocrite who's mistrusted him and didn't give two shits about sending innocent Ahsoka to her own execution because fair trials are just too inconvenient sometimes. 

[kalinara]

I’m going to change gears from my usual anti-Kylo Ren tirade for this post:

I am really fucking tired of seeing Anakin Skywalker apologists blame Mace Windu, or otherwise imply that Mace Windu deserved his fate, just because he happened to rightfully believe that the man was not emotionally equipped to be a Jedi.

Here is an unpleasant truth for all of us: Mace Windu was right.

Anakin wasn’t equipped to be a Jedi.  He wasn’t equipped to live with Jedi restrictions the way the others were.  He wasn’t equipped to have to deal with political machinations or secret Sith scheming.  He wasn’t equipped to leave a loving mother.  He wasn’t equipped to balance Palpatine’s gaslighting with his Jedi trained perspective and self-awareness.

He wasn’t even equipped to leave the Jedi Order of his own free will and use his training and skills and connections to establish a life that suited him better.

Mace was right to be wary of Anakin.  Because Anakin did end up turning on the Order.  And Mace absolutely did not deserve what happened to him.

Mace Windu did not yank Anakin off of Tatooine while leaving his mother behind.

Mace Windu did not create the culture that raised Jedi from birth, without standard family attachments.  Mace was in fact as much a victim of that culture as Anakin or any other Jedi.

Mace Windu did not create the code or restrictions that forbid Anakin from marrying Padme.

Mace Windu was never cruel to Anakin.  He may have distrusted him or not been as warm as Anakin would have liked, but you know what?  He had no responsibility to do so.  He wasn’t Anakin’s master.  He’s certainly not a brother or father figure to him.  SO WHAT if he distrusted Anakin.  He’s allowed to have a fucking opinion.

Newsflash: in your life, you’re going to meet people who don’t trust you.  You’re going to meet people who dislike you.  You’re going to meet people who don’t know what to do with you.  And guess what?  You get the fuck over it.

There was no indication that Mace Windu was unfair to Anakin.  He opposed Anakin being a master.  Okay.  Anakin was twenty-three years old.  We have never seen a master that age.  Obi-Wan was still a Padawan at that age.  Anakin may have been a war hero, but that doesn’t mean that Mace can’t have legitimate misgivings about Anakin’s emotional readiness for the job.

There is no indication that Mace Windu mistreated Anakin.  If anything, he tried to protect him.  He knew Anakin and Palpatine were friends and he tried to spare Anakin from having to be part of the confrontation.

If you can’t defend Anakin Skywalker’s choices without slamming a man who did nothing to deserve his murder at Anakin’s hands, then you have to wonder how defensible Anakin actually is.

[marauding-missingno]

I think the Jedi Order in general was corrupt as fuck, their dogma was beyond toxic, and the Jedi were just as gasglighty to Anakin as the Emperor, if not more so. But that being said - yeah, that wasn't Mace specifically, and he didn't write the code.

The reason I don't blame Anakin for attacking Mace in the RotS scene comes mainly from the Wrong Jedi arc of TCW. The entire goddamn council screwed the pooch there, but Mace is one of the more vocal ones among them in that particular clusterfuck, and once Ahsoka was proven innocent, Mace tried to justify their bullshit ("this was your great trial" implicating her lack of a fair trial was the will of the Force or some shit) whereas the others were trying to apologize. This scored Windu some MAJOR jackass points.

So now fast forward to the RotS scene where Anakin walks in on Mace vs Palps. Mace is the same fuckwit who was perfectly happy to nearly get Anakin's padawan killed with the whole "lol fair trial, who needs one of those?" line of thought. And now here's Windu again, getting ready to kill ANOTHER person Anakin cares deeply for with the same exact line of thought. So Anakin ain't having it. Windu also proved himself to be a giant hypocrite here, in that he always seemed like such an undying hard-ass about THE CODE and THE JEDI WAY and LET'S NOT TRUST ANAKIN - but now here's Mr. Jedi Stickler about to kill Anakin's friend without a trial, after Anakin trusted Windu to go apprehend him, because Anakin mistakenly believed that Windu would uphold the code he seemed to have such a giant fucking boner for every other time.

At this point, it's kind of hard to blame Anakin for wondering who the villain really is, and for making the split second decision to save his friend rather than save the hypocrite who fucked over his padawan, hid behind "the will of the Force," and is about to do the same damn thing to another friend because "the Code matters enough for me to give you tons of shit in its name and drive Ahsoka away from the Order, but it only matters when I say it matters, and I say it doesn't matter now, so I'm gonna kill your friend after you took a leap of faith and trusted me to arrest him instead."

[redeyedbastard]

Literally 95% of ‘Callout Posts’ on Tumblr

Okay, now first off, nobody send hate (but if anyone does because of this it ain’t my fault lmao), but tumblr user @genericusername4206969666 Is a BAD. PERSON. Examples include

They ship this one thing I don’t like. x

They don’t agree with my headcanons x

They said this one thing that could be bigoted if you take it out of context and quint through a glass of water. x

They don’t use the same labels as me for similar ideologies. x

This one person on anon said that their friend’s mother’s cousin’s baby sister’s Chihuahua the heebie-jeebies x

They once called a girl in second grade a smelly cootie face. x

As you can see they’re literally trash and everyone needs to know, so make sure this goes as viral as possible!! Stay safe sweeties!! And here’s the link to their blog, just in case! x Update me with more reciepts, and if they change their username, let me know to edit it in! <3 <3

[marauding-missingno]

This is so perfectly accurate I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. 

[twerkstallion]

Just gonna say I went into the obikin tag to find some new stuff and instead I found some very convincing and well put together arguments against obikin and they made me sad BUT cmon guys. There are some real issues here. I was supposed to be asleep hours ago so we will discuss later but I just wanna say…. there are Problems™

[kimmsauce]

Or you could simply ship what you enjoy? Why does the opinion of random, usually ill behaved people on the internet matter when it comes to the things you enjoy in fandom about fictional space wizards?

The problems, as you call them, are what make Obikin so interesting, ultimately tragic and triumphant. They’re two incredibly codependent, often terrifying, men who love each other enough to see it through betrayal and the galaxy burning and beyond.  

*shrugs* I’ve been shipping this longer some anti’s have been alive. I have zero fucks to give about whatever has their panties in a bunch about it. I hate seeing their negativity ruin things for other people.

[marauding-missingno]

Preach! 

You have absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. Obikin is a ridiculously complicated mess, and that's a big part of why it's so damn fascinating. And even with that aside? They. Are. Fictional. Characters. You owe no apologies to anyone. 

Let the self-righteous soapbox harpies screech all they damn well please. That shit ain't your problem. You don't owe them your guilt, and you sure as hell don't owe it to them to sacrifice something completely harmless that makes you happy. It's pretty damn pathetic that they feel like the best way to address their own multitude of issues is by berating and shaming people for producing and consuming art they don't like. And that's really all they're doing. 

Don't let their Grinch-ass misery steal your joy. Read what you love, and love what you want. Fiction is fiction for a reason. 

[marauding-missingno]

Inspired by a few jagoff antis in the Star Wars shipper tags, but universally applicable.

It really saddens me that people are getting bullied into feeling morally obligated to abandon ships they like just because some salty-ass antis got nothing better to do than try and validate their own sorry selves by sitting around spewing false accusations. 

If you’re one of those asshats who’s pulling this shit - plz go take a giant flying leap. And you fuckers know EXACTLY who you are. The ones who are saying shipping Fictional Character X with Fictional Character Y makes someone a rapist or an abuser or whatever the ridiculous fuck else. The ones who conflate creating and consuming fictitious works that contain questionable activities with perpetrating those acts IRL. The ones who think protecting imaginary people justifies harassing real ones while you hypocritically assume the moral high ground.

Fantasy is fantasy for a reason - it allows us the ability to explore beyond the bounds of what’s possible or acceptable in the real world. Okay, so you want to argue life imitates art and therefore art should be forcibly censored? Fine. Don’t you have bigger fish to fry than whining at fandom shippers? You know, like getting DVDs of Breaking Bad and the Sopranos taken off the shelves because it glorifies making meth and encourages people to participate in organized crime? How about getting adult toy stores with leather floggers and fuzzy handcuffs shut down because they romanticize violence, even though that stuff’s clearly for roleplay between consenting adults? Let’s get rid of Pokemon too while we’re at it, because that glorifies dogfighting rings and promotes taking wild animals out of their natural habitats to be kept in captivity. 

Sound ridiculous? GOOD. Because quite frankly, so do you.

If you’re not personally comfortable dabbling in certain fantasies, that is 100% your choice. But you don’t get to make that decision for the rest of us, and you sure as hell don’t get to guilt, bully, and shame real people for their fictional shipping preferences while posturing from some ridiculous position of assumed moral superiority. 

If you’re doing this, YOU are the bully. YOU are the aggressor. You are the goddamn problem. If you’re accusing fictional character shippers of being IRL rapists or abusers or whatever the hell else and demanding they apologize to you for having the audacity to put you in the position of “needing” to bully them for The Greater Good - you’re also a gaslighting asshat. 

Conversely, if you enjoy reading fanfic about fictional characters in a fictional world, and you fully realize it’s 100% fiction - you are doing absolutely NOTHING wrong. Enjoy what you love. Haters gonna hate. Let their hate be their problem, not yours.

[yol-ande]

You know, I truly don’t understand why people genuinely, outside of fanfic’s narrative, equate Anakin’s marriage and Obi-Wan actions in Rako Hardeen mess as a cases of “they are both keeping secrets and it’s bad!!!!!!!”, because those things aren’t the same at all.

I don’t say that Obi-Wan doesn’t lie, but bringing up every other argument - from not talking about Melida/Daan and his apprenticeship, to not talking about Satine and/or Siri, and general “do as I say, not as I do” attitude and emotional detachment - would have more sense than citing Rako Hardeen clusterfuck.

Was Rako Hardeen arc complete bullshit? Yes. Could it be perceived by Anakin as a personal betrayal and breach of his trust? Absolutely, since this plan was not only poorly thought-out, but also cruel. (Thus excluding fics that explore validity of this feelings.) 

But. When it comes down to it, Obi-Wan kept Anakin out of this mission because it was a matter of mission security. They are friends, true, but the ties between them are not only personal, they are professional as well. They *are* (para)military, they got missions and objectives, they are expected to be professionals first and foremost and separate their professional and personal lives, and their hurt feelings don’t really matter in this setting. 

Obi-Wan understands it perhaps too well, since it’s obvious he doesn’t really comprehend how much he hurt Anakin. But I said it before and I will say it again: it’s not exactly a failing; he fulfills his duties to organisation he is a part of, as he should.

Anakin, on the other hand, doesn’t understand it at all, since he repeatedly breaks the Code, which is not only a philosophical, but also official and binding code of conduct, and his only concern seems to be not getting caught. Not to mention that he repeatedly risks internal security of the Order by talking about its internal affairs with people who aren’t a part of it, risks its integrity by effectively - though unwittingly - spying on the Order for the Chancellor and one of the Senators, risks operational security of several of his missions because he is more concerned about Padme and/or Palpatine than the Order, and didn’t bring formal inquiry into all of his missions only by chance.

Frankly? Obi-Wan had right to not bring him on the known.

[marauding-missingno]

Not comparable at all. The Rako Hardeen incident was 10000% worse.

Obi-Wan not disclosing his past is one thing. Bro’s got the right to his privacy. But there’s a huge difference between keeping secrets because “nunnya yo beezwax” and deliberately manipulating and exploiting someone who cares deeply for you - which is what Obi-Wan did in the Rako Hardeen clusterfuck. 

Add to that Anakin’s history as a slave, and it gets even more reprehensible. The kid likely grew up being told (implicitly, explicitly, or both) that his only value as a person was what he could produce for the benefit of others. So here comes Obi-Wan, and basically confirms it because “we needed your reaction in order for the story to be convincing”? That shit’s fucked. I don’t mean slightly unethical, I mean it’s so fucked even the friggen “We are Jedi Borg, feelings are irrelevant, you will be assimilated by the Code” Council thought it was a bad idea, and that says something.

[jhaernyl]

I disagree.

You are looking at it from an emotional standpoint, which is basically what Anakin did.

What @yol-ande does is looking at it from a military standpoint, because at that point in the story, both Anakin and Obi-Wan are military officers in a militarized outfit (the Jedi) and decisions have to be taken that are less about ‘this will hurt your feelings’ and more about ‘let’s pull this operation off in the best possible way’.

Anakin wears his heart on his sleeve, he is passionate and straightforward and he really, really sucks act acting. 

He is also showed as having little to no discretion and as sharing military information with those he cares about, regardless of whether or not those people should know about those information, whether or not they are supposed to be told those information and at least once before, in the Clovis operation case, got involved in a discussion about a secret military operation that involved having a Senator lie to another it (when he and Padme disagreed) in a senatorial pod on the Senate’s ‘floor’ while other pods were orbiting nearby.

(Yes it is stupid, yes it makes both Padme and Anakin look like morons but if you take TCW as canon we are going to take all of TCW in consideration).

Discreet, Anakin is not.

Obi-Wan has to undertake a deception (and given how defeated he looks in the Council in the beginning, not one he wanted to undertake) that relies on everyone reacting genuinely to his supposed death and no one breathing a word, to anybody, about what’s going on.

Anakin being told would not have resulted in stellar acting and Anakin fooling everybody.

It would have resulted in Anakin trying not to spill the beans to Padme, Ahsoka and the Chancellor (who would have all of course wanted to be near to Anakin, in this moment of grief and suffering, if for different reasons) while feeling trapped between lying to them and exposing what was going on, which would have led to Anakin crumbling and going ‘look don’t tell anybody but …’ (and the Chancellor wasn’t supposed to know, as far as I remember).

And then you would have also had Anakin being angry at the Council, like he got angry at Obi-Wan later, for making this happen at all and Anakin feeling bad because he had to try and lie at the people he cared for.

Because Anakin has no problems hiding his secrets from Obi-Wan, even when they could be politically and military disastrous, but he confides in the Chancellor and with Padme? Oh no, Anakin tells Padme about everything up until the end and even then, he tells her what he did as soon as they see each other.

Anakin is the very definition of ‘loose lips sink ships’.

So no, it is not the Jedi being Borg-like or unfeeling.

It’s military ‘Need To Know’ procedure and Anakin very much needed to not know to be credible and military operations tend to be about, y’know, efficiency and objectives, rather than coddling the emotional feelings of all involved.

The whole Rako Hardeen operation wasn’t about making Anakin feel bad.

It was about saving the Supreme Chancellor for death, insofar as the Jedi knew.

If we are making this about Anakin, you know what else could have hurt Anakin? Losing his friend, insofar Obi-Wan knew.

If we are looking at this from a military standpoint, you know who could have benefited from the Chancellor dying and the GAR losing it’s supreme head? The Separatists, because not only the Republic would have been paralyzed until a new Chancellor was elected, but morale would have tanked disastrously and Senators would get scared and the GAR would have lost it’s Chief not to mention the reaction widespread around the Republic, given Palpatine’s popularity. Not to talk about the damage to the Republic’s government, once you consider how much power had by then been centralized in Palpatine’s seat.

Clearly, one individual loose-lipped Jedi’s feelings came before all of that.

Not.

[marauding-missingno]

There’s two entirely separate issues here - keeping Anakin in the dark, and deliberately exploiting him as part of the ruse. Even if keeping him in the dark was deemed to be the best solution, it being a Need To Know mission is not an excuse for cruelly exploiting him.

I do think Anakin is a better actor and secret keeper than a lot of people give him credit for (he put up a pretty good front in the Slaves of the Republic arc, and he did a pretty good job shutting the hell up about his marriage to Padme and opening a giant can of whup-ass on a whole village of sand people), but even if they still wanted to keep him in the dark (whether because they didn't trust him to STFU, or they didn't want to put him in a bad position), there is no reason on any planet in any galaxy why he should have been forced to watch his best friend’s death and then been left to grieve and come off the rails for days or weeks or however long it was before the lid finally got blown off the whole dirty deal.

Easy solution: Send Anakin and Ahsoka on some faraway mission out in the middle of Asscrack Nowhere in the BFE System. Then, feel free to stage whatever fake-ass deaths you want. Anakin never needed to know about it, and his ability to keep a secret or not would be totally irrelevant because he’d be out mediating peace talks between warring bantha herds on some outer rim shithole or something.

Plus the fact that they dragged the whole charade out was just plain inexcusable. Even IF Obi-Wan was determined he “needed Anakin’s reaction” for whatever jacked up reason, it was downright cruel and just plain dumb to not tell Anakin immediately after it happened, or at the very LATEST, after the funeral. Cruel for obvious reasons, and dumb because look what happened.

Yeah, the Chancellor's death likely wouldn't have been a good situation (as far as the Jedi knew - obviously it would have turned out to be a great solution because bye bye Darth Sidious), but they HAD to have known Anakin was going to flip out and go rogue watching Obi-Wan get murdered like that. And I don't buy for a moment that anyone thought Anakin would take the Chancellor's death better than he'd take Obi-Wan's.

What makes the whole thing even more horrible is that Obi-Wan *knew* what it was like to watch his master die in front of him while he was unable to stop it, yet he’s totally fine putting Anakin through it too? The whole thing just reeks of absolute careless cruelty that could have been very easily avoided if the Jedi had even a fraction of the compassion they so boldly profess to have.

For the purpose of the greater Star Wars narrative, I understand the importance of this plot arc (Obi-Wan had to do something horrible enough to completely destroy Anakin's trust in him, thus explaining why Anakin went to Palpatine rather than Obi-Wan in Ep 3 with his concerns over Padme), but from an in-universe POV, it was inexcusable.

[yol-ande]

You know, I truly don’t understand why people genuinely, outside of fanfic’s narrative, equate Anakin’s marriage and Obi-Wan actions in Rako Hardeen mess as a cases of “they are both keeping secrets and it’s bad!!!!!!!”, because those things aren’t the same at all.

I don’t say that Obi-Wan doesn’t lie, but bringing up every other argument - from not talking about Melida/Daan and his apprenticeship, to not talking about Satine and/or Siri, and general “do as I say, not as I do” attitude and emotional detachment - would have more sense than citing Rako Hardeen clusterfuck.

Was Rako Hardeen arc complete bullshit? Yes. Could it be perceived by Anakin as a personal betrayal and breach of his trust? Absolutely, since this plan was not only poorly thought-out, but also cruel. (Thus excluding fics that explore validity of this feelings.) 

But. When it comes down to it, Obi-Wan kept Anakin out of this mission because it was a matter of mission security. They are friends, true, but the ties between them are not only personal, they are professional as well. They *are* (para)military, they got missions and objectives, they are expected to be professionals first and foremost and separate their professional and personal lives, and their hurt feelings don’t really matter in this setting. 

Obi-Wan understands it perhaps too well, since it’s obvious he doesn’t really comprehend how much he hurt Anakin. But I said it before and I will say it again: it’s not exactly a failing; he fulfills his duties to organisation he is a part of, as he should.

Anakin, on the other hand, doesn’t understand it at all, since he repeatedly breaks the Code, which is not only a philosophical, but also official and binding code of conduct, and his only concern seems to be not getting caught. Not to mention that he repeatedly risks internal security of the Order by talking about its internal affairs with people who aren’t a part of it, risks its integrity by effectively - though unwittingly - spying on the Order for the Chancellor and one of the Senators, risks operational security of several of his missions because he is more concerned about Padme and/or Palpatine than the Order, and didn’t bring formal inquiry into all of his missions only by chance.

Frankly? Obi-Wan had right to not bring him on the known.

[marauding-missingno]

Not comparable at all. The Rako Hardeen incident was 10000% worse.

Obi-Wan not disclosing his past is one thing. Bro’s got the right to his privacy. But there’s a huge difference between keeping secrets because “nunnya yo beezwax” and deliberately manipulating and exploiting someone who cares deeply for you - which is what Obi-Wan did in the Rako Hardeen clusterfuck. 

Add to that Anakin’s history as a slave, and it gets even more reprehensible. The kid likely grew up being told (implicitly, explicitly, or both) that his only value as a person was what he could produce for the benefit of others. So here comes Obi-Wan, and basically confirms it because “we needed your reaction in order for the story to be convincing”? That shit’s fucked. I don’t mean slightly unethical, I mean it’s so fucked even the friggen “We are Jedi Borg, feelings are irrelevant, you will be assimilated by the Code” Council thought it was a bad idea, and that says something.

[qirahsoka]

“sometimes i don’t think you realise how alike you two have become.”

[marauding-missingno]

OMG YESSS I THOUGHT THIS TOO. And god damn, Vader was acting SO MUCH LIKE ANAKIN in this scene anyway. This tie-in was the perfect touch. 

[moonlightsdreaming]

Like, I’m reasonably sure that that recent TFA fandom Kylux fest kerfluffle was probably performance art, but I’m still stuck wavering between, “What a shitshow this fandom is.” and “Give me a minute and let me grab the popcorn.” Congrats, Kylux fandom, you were once reasonably chill, but now you are truly worthy of the rest of TFA fandom.

[marauding-missingno]

Ohhhhh, I wanna know what happened! I’m over here chillin’ in Obikin land, and the worst drama we seem to get is when some random-ass hater spams our tag (along with fifty billion other ship tags) onto some Butthurt Wanker Manifesto in which they issue a grammatically questionable royal decree that all ships except their ship are evil and problematic and cause people to get mad bantha disease and promote abuse of pet nargles.

[moonlightsdreaming]

I didn’t witness much of it firsthand (and much of it seems to be gone now) but I became aware of it when I saw this thread on fail_fandomanon.  Basically a Kylux fest thing imploded because of wank surrounding who was/wasn’t allowed to participate (based on what other ships the participant shipped–basically, if you shipped Reylo, you couldn’t participate) and I strongly side-eyed the whole thing as suspecting it was a giant performance piece. You know, sometimes I weep for how quiet Obikin (/Anidala/Obianidala) fandom is, because I AM RUNNING OUT OF FIC TO INHALE HERE, I miss having a megafandom to just gorge myself on, but it is nice to have a quieter fandom where there aren’t enough people to make a trash fire fandom out of. Most of the people I follow are pretty chill and fun to read–but I know that could change in an instant if it got really popular again.  But right now, it’s quiet and that can be kinda nice sometimes!  (PEOPLE SHOULD STILL JOIN ME, THOUGH.  You’ll get like six months of awesome gorging on stuff!  :D)

[marauding-missingno]

Hahahahaha oh sweet mother of Yoda, this is bringing joyous tears of lulz to my eyes and conjuring sweet rapturous nostalgia of Fandom Wank past (journalfen rest its merry soul). As hilariously absurd as I find shipper pissing contests to be, I just cannot wrap my brain around somebody being like “hey, you have awesome content to contribute to this ship, but you also ship Some Other Thing on your personal blog, therefore you are BLASTED OFF THE FAMILY TAPESTRY, doomed to live your fandom life in exile, dragging ghostly chains of mortal shipper sin and sporting the Cone of Shameful Pr0n around your grubby peasant neck where’er your unwashed feet may tread.″ Just - really? Hey guys, the 2005 Harry Potter fandom called, they want their batshit drama back. (Though I gotta say, if it was fandom troll performance art, my faith in humanity just might be slightly restored as opposed to further obliterated.) 

And OMG I kind of cry about how quiet the Obikin contingent is. You would THINK that with all the verbal forepla....er...*ahem* bickering and bantering these two idiots got up to in six seasons of TCW (plus the four-ep Crystal Crisis story board!) there would be plenty of shipper fodder to go around, even if you’re not into the prequel movies at all! But nooooo, people gotta be all quiet and stuff. Pffffft. They know not what they miss out on. 

[moonlightsdreaming]

Like, I’m reasonably sure that that recent TFA fandom Kylux fest kerfluffle was probably performance art, but I’m still stuck wavering between, “What a shitshow this fandom is.” and “Give me a minute and let me grab the popcorn.” Congrats, Kylux fandom, you were once reasonably chill, but now you are truly worthy of the rest of TFA fandom.

[marauding-missingno]

Ohhhhh, I wanna know what happened! I’m over here chillin’ in Obikin land, and the worst drama we seem to get is when some random-ass hater spams our tag (along with fifty billion other ship tags) onto some Butthurt Wanker Manifesto in which they issue a grammatically questionable royal decree that all ships except their ship are evil and problematic and cause people to get mad bantha disease and promote abuse of pet nargles.

[aerisefikura]

Me using the block button on antis in my favorite ship tags:

Light ‘em up.

[marauding-missingno]

Haha yeah that pic is me, but with flaming not blocking. Idiots wanna fight, might as well give ‘em what they came for. 

[a-smiling-travesty-hasmoved-blog]

“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”

[marauding-missingno]

This would make an amazing major arcana Tarot card for The Lovers. 

[loveulads-deactivated20160619]

[marauding-missingno]

I am going to hell for how hard I laughed at this. 

[markantonys]

palpatine just wants to be hip (insp)

[marauding-missingno]

Meanwhile, in every fanfic ever....