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@starchivist
introduction: herro! i’m squeakem. no idea how often i’ll be posting, but there will be posts.
i’m (very. Very slowly) writing a whole bunch of star wars crossover fics — at the moment, the main crossing is my tma characters getting whacked into various parts of the gffa. ask for clarification on anything as needed — i like rambling, but i often have trouble finding a place to start, and so prompting questions are very helpful :D
enjoy the shenanigans! — squeakem
“I think Mace [Windu] is a well thought-out character who has the trust of a lot of people throughout the universe.
It’s important to have characters that people can look at and see that they’ve made a decision to be right. Now we have a lot of antiheroes, and I’ve played a lot of them, but there’s something to be said for the pure, unadulterated good guy.”
— Samuel L. Jackson on his character Mace Windu
There's a popular fandom trope where the idea of "letting your emotions go" or "giving your emotions to the Force" is taken VERY LITERALLY and the Jedi seem to sort-of literally be able to just... magically send their emotions into the void and stop feeling it somehow as part of their training and abilities. And it really just doesn't work for me.
Because it makes it seem EASY. Emotional regulation is SO HARD, it takes constant effort to recognize your own emotions and choose how to react to them in the moment without letting those emotions dictate your behavior. And the emotions don't just... disappear into a void. They're not gone. You don't just stop feeling them. That's not what "letting go" means. The emotions are always STILL THERE, regardless of how you end up choosing to react to them.
That's what the Jedi are trying to teach everyone, it's a large part of what they encourage others to practice in order to make better decisions and live happier, healthier lives. But if the Jedi have a magical ability to just make their emotions disappear into a cosmic void, that makes them feel like hypocrites because it's SO MUCH EASIER for them than it would be for anyone else.
And the whole point is that it's NOT. It's not easier for them to regulate their emotions than it is for anyone else. In fact, since being Force sensitive seems to involve a certain level of empathic ability to sense other people's emotions, without them even needing to be NEARBY, it's arguably HARDER for the Jedi to regulate their own emotions and reactions than it is for anyone else. But their teachings and beliefs prioritize things like mindfulness and non-attachment, so they end up being experts at it most of the time which can make it LOOK easy to an outsider.
The Jedi are an ideal to aspire to, and that doesn't work if the beliefs they espouse are hypocritical bullshit. They can't magically send their emotions away, they're just constantly working to make sure that their actions aren't dictated by their emotions.
Vaguely related to last night’s post, but I really enjoy how canon lightsaber colors can be used as a metaphor for the Force vs. the Dark Side.
Kyber crystals, which are attuned to the Force, come in a huge variety of natural colors (and there’s variation within the colors too): yellow, orange, green, blue, pink, purple, even black. They come in literally every color except red, which can only be found after someone has actively bled the lightsaber in order to torture it into serving the Dark Side.
The Force is this entire vast spectrum of color, and the Dark Side is just one tiny, corrupted corner of the spectrum, something that wouldn’t exist if people didn’t actively choose to harm others and induce suffering. The Dark Side isn’t equal and opposite to anything; it’s small and petty and unnatural and, most importantly, capable of being healed back to white, which isn’t actually a color, but a reflection of the full spectrum of light.
I’ve been thinking a lot about terms I’ve only seen in fanon for Jedi, such as “lineage-sibling” or “grand-padawan”, and I have no problem with the terms in themselves and have also used them in my fics, but I often wonder what that would actually mean to a Jedi. If specific familial references would actually hold that much weight. We know the Jedi consider each other family, but it’s based on community and shared devotion more than anything else, and that’s definitely special and beautiful. I just think some have a tendency to project a very nuclear structure onto independent lineages and I don’t think that’s a realistic lens through which to view Jedi culture, since most of them don’t know (or even want) life outside the temple. Like, I don’t think a lot of Jedi would have to dignify their masters by comparing them to a parent, because they are pretty far removed from the concept of one or two parents, and already value and love their master as a teacher and mentor, and that is the part that’s meaningful for them. I’m not trying to gotcha anyone with this, it’s just something I think about when writing Jedi family. I think sometimes we undersell how community based they are.
God. The Inquisitors are actually so thematically fascinating on a worldbuilding level, how they interact with the Force.
The Force is famously a fairly nebulous yet simple magic system: it is the unifying essence of all things in the universe and naturally bends towards cooperation and mutualism (this is reductively called the “Light Side” outside of Lucas canon), but can be manipulated by those who desire control and power over others in a self-defeating cycle of, for lack of a better term, attachment (as in the Buddhist root of all suffering). Lucas puts its fundamental dichotomy as compassion versus selfishness; embedded into this framework is the idea of choice.
The inherently cooperative Force does have an understandable will, a plan that lays out how the galaxy should move forward, and it seems to be (on the simplest level) to minimize suffering. Whatever consciousness the Force attempts to arrange its incomprehensibly varied sentient parts in such a way that they will work together to make the galaxy better, more mutualistic and compassionate. Everyone in Star Wars has a destiny, a correct path laid out for them by the Force, that if followed will help make this future a reality.
But choice is fundamental to the universe. Destiny can be subverted by conscious, sentient choice to turn from the path of compassion and take one of selfishness; this is what happened with Anakin in Palpatine’s office, when he refused to attempt to help Mace Windu remove Palpatine from power in any way (fans seem to forget that Anakin could have, at any point, helped Windu deflect the lightning, acted to take Palpatine into custody, or attempted to non-lethally disarm Palpatine; he did nothing and let the situation get to the point that Windu felt that the only decisive action he could take was to kill Palpatine), the compassionate choice that would have led to less suffering for the galaxy and instead saved Palpatine out of clear selfishness (see the line “I need him!”).
The universe of Star Wars wants to bend towards justice—when things are left to the Force, the Death Star blows up—but it cannot circumvent the choices of individuals to plunge it into suffering. Force-sensitive children are born with quick reflexes and the ability to sense emotions and connect with animals (skills associated with the reductively imagined Light Side) rather than Force lightning and energy siphoning and mind probing (associated with the Dark). In order to use the Force for evil, a conscious choice must be made to give into selfishness and thoughtless emotion.
That’s the core of the story, at least to me. It’s about choice, about whether you are willing to walk the long and hard path of compassion to improve life for all others or whether you will take the easier, quicker path of selfishness, improving your lot at the expense of others. Does Luke choose to act out of anger and a selfish desire to hurt Vader for what he’s said and done—which will make him feel better and safer in the moment, will give him power over someone who has hurt him and rejected him—or does he choose to spare Vader and face the real enemy in a much more difficult confrontation that can only be won by an outside act of selfless compassion—which nearly kills him, but leads to a galaxy truly free of Sith tyranny?
The mutualistic Force or the selfish Dark Side; there is always a choice to be made. Do you act to help everyone you can, or only enrich yourself and possibly a select few others? There Is Always A Choice.
And the Inquisitors, as all the best antagonistic forces do, push this fundamental principle of the universe as far as it can go. Unlike Palpatine, who at every point chose his own gain over everyone else in the galaxy, unlike Vader, who was manipulated by Palpatine but was ultimately faced with a choice all his own in which he sided with what he needed over what the galaxy needed, unlike even Maul, who was tragically raised to always choose anger and selfishness when faced with an alternate path, the Inquisitors are first presented to us as Dark Siders who had no choice at all in the equation (later attempts to walk this back not withstanding).
Trilla, the first Inquisitor to get a true backstory (no, I don’t think the few lines of the Grand Inquisitor’s ‘I used to be a guard and the librarians didn’t like me’ account in Vader 2017 really counts), was a teenage padawan—a child by the standards of her culture—drafted into a war by a government her people didn’t have representation in, who experienced a genocide so sudden she didn’t know it was happening until it was half over. She was captured by the Empire through no fault of her own, and was tortured and abused in order to force her into a predetermined role, a helmet made for her before she ever put it on. At what point did she ever have a choice? Where in her Fall to the Dark did she consciously step off the path of the Force’s will?
By the time we are introduced to her in Fallen Order, she has certainly regained some kind of choice; her first real act on-screen is to kill Prauf in order to hurt Cal enough to reveal himself. She was the one in command of the situation, and she could have easily found Cal out some other way (most obviously by searching the scrappers for anything associated with the Jedi, like the functional lightsaber Cal kept on his belt). She did not have to inflict that suffering, but she did anyway. That is a choice. When did it start being a choice?
Did it start when she first put on the uniform the Empire had made for her, and walked into the room where they were torturing Cere? Did it start when she was left behind by Cere on the floor of the Fortress and gave into her hate? Did it start when she was given orders to kill her first Jedi?
The concept of the Inquisitors ostensibly turns the entire premise of the magic system on its head. Here is a situation in which the default path is not the Force’s will, but the suffering of the Dark. Here is a set of characters who never once chose to Fall, but had their path set for them and were made to walk it. Here are antagonists who intentionally create suffering and act out of anger that can be said to be entirely blameless in becoming such. Is There Always A Choice?
And of course I would say yes, that what we see with the Inquisitors is the consequence of someone else’s choice—Palpatine’s, most obviously, but also Vader’s and Tarkin’s and a thousand others who chose themselves over the galaxy and paved the way for the Empire. The Empire exists in defiance of the Force’s will, ultimate proof of the power of choice, and the choices that created it are ones that fundamentally seek to deny the choices of all others.
The choice of Trilla’s Fall to the Dark, of all of the Inquisitors’, was very much one that was made, but not by them. What you choose impacts what others can choose, and if you consistently choose to corrupt and pervert the Force to such an extent that a galactic order of absolute suffering is created in an inherently mutualistic galaxy, you ultimately end up in a situation where you choose for them.
And the very nature of everything it took to get to this point, where the Inquisitors could be denied choice about whether or not to follow their destinies, proves how utterly artificial this lack of choice is. First it required a war, in order to manufacture consent for a genocide, in order to clear the way for a Purge, in order to capture a select few vulnerable force sensitives without anyone raising alarm, in order to put them in a prison, in order to torture them to the Dark. There’s so much required to allow Palpatine to subvert that fundamental choice for a little over a dozen people that it’s laughable. There is nothing more artificial than Fortress Inquisitorius, which is defeated by allowing the natural world in.
But that’s just how I answer the question posed by the Inquisitors. Anyone else could come up with their own, radically different reconciliation with the Inquisitors’ existence in a choice-based galaxy. There is so much to be discussed about how they fit into the greater story and ideas of Star Wars. They are so utterly fascinating, and canon doesn’t even seem to realize this!
so much could have been improved in the sequels if kylo ren hadn’t been force sensitive
no wait think about it. kylo ren not being force sensitive, but so desperate to be so he’s willing to do anything. he feels cheated out of his grand destiny, his powers that his mother and uncle (and cousin?) have. give me the story on the entitlement towards the force. it would have shown that the force is beyond biological, it always has been. it would have given a better reason for kylo ren to “fall to the dark side”, so desperate for a connection to the force that he plays the part of a dark sider, swinging a cracking red lightsaber around with no finesse or training, killing hoping that it will push him further into a dark side of the force he cannot feel. it would have given a reason for him to hate han; that because han isn’t force sensitive, it’s his fault that kylo isn’t either. kylo’s character would have been stronger because his choices would have been his own, instead of whatever whisper dream manipulations they were in canon. his evil has nothing to do with the force, but an entitled man trying to claim a power he believes is his by birthright.
this would have foiled perfectly with finn, too- one is a child born to the most powerful force sensitives in the galaxy who cannot feel the force. and finn is a child who was taken from his family, forced into soldier-hood, who feels such a deep and powerful connection to himself and the force that he breaks free. kylo ren, seething and entitled trying to claim a destiny and power that just aren’t his, and finn, who has suffered at kylo’s actions and still connected to the powerful light inside of him. the “nobody” hero of the sequels who has the power of the force and the legacy-born villain who doesn’t.
....I think I've reached the point where if I see even one more person explicitly parent-code a Jedi I'm going to declare it completely off-limits on my page under any circumstances.
That Master is NOT a parent and they do not NEED to be a parent to have a meaningful relationship with the students and children in their care. The Jedi Order doesn't need to mimic a nuclear family unit to be valid.
I like to imagine that at least once during the clone wars someone sent a report to General Kenobi and a very tired Master Kenobi just graded it and sent it back.
#my type of amusement varies based on whose report was graded#Ahsoka revises the mistakes and politely resubmits assuming Obi-Wan is teaching her how to write better reports#Anakin throws a tantrum because he’s a knight now and nothing is ever good enough for Obi-Wan anyway#Cody immediately picks up on what must have happened and sends the report back with some revisions accepted and some rejected#Mace calls him and tells him to take a nap#Yoda goes over the entire report with a green pen (Obi-Wan used red) and corrects the sentence structure to match his speech patterns#Waxer and Boil spend several hours overthinking whether or not the General is upset with them#Depa calls just to laugh at him like an older sister#Luminara wonders if this is a joke from Obi-Wan or a critique from Councilor Kenobi before she figures it out#Admiral Yularen just blinks at it because he knew working with Jedi was an experience but wow#Palpatine is enraged and seething at this power play he does not understand#it consumes his thoughts even after Obi-Wan sends an apology which obviously must be part of the power play
HEY HEY HEY you CANNOT leave these in the tags!! You CAN’T
#there has to also be a time when he corrects his own report
@flimsiplastfolio congratulations on having the funniest addition to this post
#quinlan vos just sends it back with more errors
honorable mention @foundfamilynonsense
Damn I wish we could perceive Luke and Leia as their own people and not as Padmé and Anakin's children only. "Luke got it from his mother/Leia got it from her father" they didn't even raise them???
Why is half the fandom now under the impression that Cody’s “actual name” is Kote? I know it’s a fun headcanon that got really popular, but the two don’t even sound that alike (based on the way Kote is pronounce in Vode An).
It’s Commando Cody: Sky Marshal of the Universe erasure!
OP imma reboot your tags bc I didn’t know all that stuff! I’ve only seen the first few episodes of Clone Wars so I’ve tried to sus things out through what’s most common in fanwork. I guess with the EU being a thing that’s not as accurate as I thought
#huh #i do like the ‘mando clone culture’ fandom has made #but it did always seem off to me bc of how regimented they are in the movies #they’re not meant to have a culture they were meant to be disposable #but of course they probably would end up making their own little one #but it probably would be less mando than fans write #i do like the word vod tho #its a nicer word than saying just clones #but who knows maybe they’re proud of that? (via @siarrawrites)
Reblogging your tags too x) I like the word “vod” too, tbh.
But yes the Clones’ ties to Mandalorian culture mostly comes from the EU writers (who created Mandalore almost from scratch, btw); they had quite an impact on the fans, but their work was later almost completely invalidated by the (Lucas approved/overseen) 2009 Clone Wars show. Quite a few people called it “character assassination,” which I find really funny because… no?
Anyway the fans never let go of this romantic notion of an all-badass, on-par with the Sith and the Jedi, essential to the Galaxy, ultra-noble Mandalore (*ahem* they destroyed their homeworlds through global war *ahem* the word “Mandalorian is never used once in Lucas’ movies *ahem*). And to appeal to them, Disney is now incorporating that image into canon.
Since the fans love the Clones, they want to shine the best possible light on them (which I’m all on board for), so they continue this trend of Mando-worship in their fanwork. And then newer people arrive, read a fic that uses “vod,” have people tell them that “yes, the Clones are totally Mando at heart, Jango taught them everything about it and also he was the disgraced leader of the True Mandalorians, not the pacifists you see in the show,” and the newbies roll with it, and in their fic the Clones use the word “aliit,” and in the next they’re fully fluent, etc. etc.
There’s nothing wrong with the way fandom developed the Clones, of course. Fandoms will do what fandoms do (i.e completely ignore canon and roll with their own ideas). It’s just that it’s not what’s presented in the movies or TCW, or even Rebels. You wanna see Mando Clones, you pick up the pre-2009 Clone Wars comics, or the Republic Commando books (… it’s Karen Traviss, read at your own peril), etc…
So anyway yeah I was weirded out by the ever increasing amount of fics that have “btw Cody’s real name is Kote” in the AN. Lucas named him Cody after a fictional hero from his own childhood.
Meet Commando Cody the rocket man, Sky Marshal of the Universe. He’s the origin behind Cody’s name, Cody’s jetpack (and thus all of the Clones’ jetpacks), and Cody’s rank of Marshal Commander.
So yeah. It’s not Kote x) (still an interesting headcanon though.)
AND NOW, ONTO “ACTUAL” CLONE CULTURE (aka I have been provided with an opportunity to yell about Jedi and Clones and dammit I will use it)!
TCW does address this question of what inspired the Clones as they built their identities. In Fives’ arc, Nala Se says this:
NALA SE: I’m afraid the Jedi have inspired creative thinking in some of the Clones. That is the cause of this type of divergent behavior.
We also see that a huge influence on the younger Clone troopers is Shaak Ti - she’s the one who teaches Echo and Fives the importance of unity, tying her own understanding of it directly to her identity as a Jedi.
We see Yoda teaching the Clones that they have value at the beginning of the war:
YODA: Come, sit. Your helmets, remove them. Your faces I wish to see.
THIRE: There’s not much to look at here, sir. We all share the same face.
YODA: Deceive you, eyes can. In the Force, very different each one of you are. Rys, always focused on the enemy, are you. For inspiration, look to yourself, and those beside you. Jek, concerned about weapons you are. Weapons do not win battles. Your mind, powerful it is. Outthink the droids, you can. Thire, rush not into fights. Long is the war. Only by surviving it, will you prevail. Yes. Clones you may be, but the Force resides in all life forms. Use it, you can, to quiet your mind.
And we see Plo do the same in the very next episode:
WOLFFE: We’re just Clones, sir. We’re meant to be expendable.
PLO: Not to me.
(By this point the Clones already have tattoos, painted armors and unique haircuts, but these are superficial ways of expressing your identity. It’s illustrated very clearly with the episode Innocents of Ryloth. Boil has a mustache and a Death Watch symbol on his helmet. Great! But he spends most of the episode griping about the hassle of protecting civilians, and using his duty as a soldier as an excuse not to take care of Numa. With the combined influences of Waxer, Obi-Wan and Numa’s delightful nature, Boil actually shows who he is by the end of the episode: a deeply caring man. That’s who is is, more than anything else. When Numa hugs him, he has his helmet on but she’s not afraid of it anymore. Because his face isn’t synonymous with who he is, no matter how ‘customized’, his actions are who he is.)
tldr: we’re told that the Jedi are the one who most fostered unity and creativity in the Clones.
(Again, visible in Innocent of Ryloth, when Obi-Wan’s influence makes his men appreciative of Twi’Lek culture - he even teaches them a Ryl word). Decades after the war, the GAR is remembered as the Jedi and the Clones (see Hera reminding Kanan of the bond between Jedi and Clones in The Lost Commanders.)
Also, remember the remembrance thing fics are so fond of using?
Ni su'cuyi, gar kyr'adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum - “I’m still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal” Nu kyr'adyc, shi taab'echaaj'la - “Not gone, merely marching far away”
from Wookieepedia
Guess what? The Jedi had memory moths in the pre-2009!TCW EU.
You whisper a name to the moth and it repeats it forever.
And actual canon has so much stuff about not actually being dead but passing into the Force, and just being on a path everyone will eventually walk, yada yada yada.
From Return of the Jedi:
LUKE: I can’t do it, Artoo. I can’t go on alone.
OBI-WAN: Yoda will always be with you.
To the Clone Wars:
YODA (s5ep18): One with the force, they are. And our job it is to remember that we will, in time, also pass on. Luminous beings are we, but temporary vessels, our bodies are. And we shall all find ourselves here in time. A moment of silence, I ask, to remember and to move on.
So even fanon Clone culture is directly linked to the oldest and most basic Jedi principles.
So if the Clones actually had traditions and philosophical/theological views in canon, they’d more likely to be inherited from the Jedi than the Mandalorians. No one in TCW states a connection between Clones and Mandalorians (not Maul, not Bo-Katan, not the Jedi, not Satine, not Almec, not Boba, not Hondo, not the bounty hunters, not the Republic authorities…) but TONS of what we see in the Jedi/Clones interactions points to Jedi culture being a HUGE influence on the Clones’ way of expressing themselves.
Last little note: Jedi culture is hugely emphatic on the irrelevance of where you come from compared to who you decide to be. While the Jedi have nothing against embracing your birth traditions (see their various traditional clothes, tattoos, jewels, their different accents/languages, their acceptance of other faiths - see Barriss’ prayer statue - and the fact that they keep the names given to them by their biological parents), not all Jedi feel the need to identify with their biological people, their identity is rooted in their role as peacekeepers, as they routinely states, and in their connection to the Force and their fellow Jedi.
Similarly, the Clones have different views on whether or not their origin defines them, some express themselves with alterations to their appearances, some don’t, and their sense of identity is most commonly rooted in their role as soldiers, their loyalty to the Republic, and their brothers.
Same basic structure.
Clone culture draws on Jedi culture.
Pass it on.
Great overviews of the Jedi’s relationship with the Clones can be found here (gifs from @laciefuyu) and here (”Your Body and Your Blade,” amazing fanvid by @trickytricky1)
I feel like when people make those posts about like "If the Jedi had done everything perfectly then Anakin wouldn't have been Like That and Done Those Things" actually just want the Jedi to somehow be omniscient.
Like they need to have somehow just known from the beginning of time that Palpatine was bad and evil and manipulative and engineering their destruction so that they could make all of the perfect choices to fight that same manipulation of Anakin and the Senate. But those "perfect" choices are only available with a certain level of information that would have required literal god-level omniscience to acquire.
"If the Jedi had done everything perfectly" is a nonsense statement. They DID make all the right choices, but they made the right choices for the information they HAD, and the resources they had access to. The Jedi did everything right with Anakin. They took him in, they loved him, they made exceptions for him, they were lenient with him, they gave him the skills and tools he needed to survive and thrive, they rewarded him, they trusted him, and he murdered them anyway. The Jedi were loyal to the Republic's ideals and protected as many people both within the Republic and outside of it as they could, they were capable of seeing its corruption but also capable of seeing that it was genuinely still one of the best options out there for most people, they fought against becoming soldiers and then accepted that role anyway when war broke out and people needed to be protected, and the Republic turned on them anyway. Because doing everything right wasn't enough.
I don't know how often people in other stories and in real life can say that sometimes you can do everything right and still lose before it sinks in for this fandom that it's something that also applies to THIS story. There are quite a few characters who absolutely made mistakes, who made the wrong choices, who succumbed to fear and greed and selfishness. But there are also characters who did EVERYTHING RIGHT and still lost because the whole point is to show that one person's selfishness can have a massive impact that goes much further than just them.
Headcanon:
If a Padawan dies before having the chance to become a Knight, they are given the honour and title post mortem
A sort of knighthood at honorem.
Well buddy thank you for breaking my heart-
adding an excerpt from my jedi headcanon doc (forever a WIP)
Death of an Apprentice
The death of a padawan is considered a tragedy. A bereft master will return to the temple as soon as possible after completing their duties. If on an extended mission, the Jedi auxiliary medical corps may be sent to retrieve the body. Upon return to the temple, the funeral is held. For the master, this is a time of deep reflection and self-searching. No blame is innately laid on them - the Force moves as it wills - but it remains their responsibility to understand why things happened as they did, and what part they played in them.
After the death of an apprentice, a ten-month period is cursory before the master may consider taking on another padawan, to allow for the wound left by a severed training bond to heal. Some masters choose to don a white cloak during this time, signifying that they are in mourning.
Another common observance is that of a posthumous knighting, usually done before the funeral; The apprentice's braid is cut, and altered vows of Knighthood spoken. Though departed, the apprentice is symbolically elevated to the status of knight, honoring their sacrifice and their service.
By the right of the Council, by the Will of the Force, I bid you farewell, [name], Jedi Knight.
thank you for breaking my heart pt. 2
Kind of rambling here. But related to that post I reblogged earlier, there really is something to be said about Star Wars’s constant fetishism of the idea of The Father, both in Lucas text, supplemental canon, and fanon…
Obviously there’s the whole thing in A New Hope where Luke’s arc and future is defined by two (at that point) metaphorical Fathers, the Good Father in Obi-Wan and the Bad Father in Vader. That’s as explicit as it gets, this idea that a boy’s coming of age must be defined by a patriarch to Guide Their Path in some way, and the patriarch must fit into the idea of the nuclear father (hence why Owen, only referred to as an uncle, is completely discounted in the conversation)
And then there’s the fact that almost every major sw spinoff of the past twenty years has been focused on patriarch-child relationships: Obi-Wan and Anakin with Ahsoka in TCW, Kanan with Ezra in Rebels, Din Djarin with Grogu (this one is most egregious imo, because it was originally written for Din to be a sort of temporary foster-father attempting to return Grogu to the Jedi, who had a more communal child-raising tradition for younglings, before it was abruptly rewritten into fitting the mold of nuclear fatherhood) in the Mandalorian, Hunter with Omega in TBB, Sol with Osha in The Acolyte, Anakin with Ahsoka again in the Ahsoka show, Maul with Devon in Shadow Lord, and even Andor, which originally seemed to buck this trend, made Luther and Kleya’s relationship explicitly paternal in season 2. There’s this constant focus on centering some approximation of fatherhood to the exclusion of all other character dynamics, an obsession with an older man training/raising a child into adulthood that almost all modern canon shares
And then there’s the way this has taken root in the fandom, where an incredibly common take is that the reason Anakin committed multiple genocides and became a fascist is that he didn’t have a proper father figure. If only Qui-Gon had lived, he could have taught Anakin the Necessary Male Lessons that could have saved him! The fandom writes essays on the Paternal Relationship That Never Was between Qui-Gon and Anakin, and ignores Shmi’s impact on Anakin almost entirely. No Order 66 AUs focus almost unilaterally on Anakin raising/training Luke and Leia, with Padmé in the background at best; Sequels rewrites will discuss at length how Han and/or Luke’s relationship(s) with Kylo should have developed with nary a mention of Leia; Kanan’s scenes with Ezra and Sabine are continuously analyzed and reanalyzed while Hera’s scenes with them are largely ignored, and so on.
Hell, going back to the texts of the movies, there’s a persistent thing where maternal characters who were originally significant are retroactively killed off. See Padmé’s retconned death in childbirth, Shmi’s abrupt fridging, and Leia’s bizarre death-as-redemption-for-her-son in TROS. The women are taken out of the picture so we can better focus on the Father as the most important figure in any character’s life. It’s everywhere!
Too many ‘Bail Organa wants to befriend clones’ and not enough of the other way around. Bail is nice to Commander Fox 1 (one) time and suddenly he has troopers all over his office. He always has a personal armed escort home whether he needs one or not. They’re offering him knives and shiny rocks and snacks and Bail just can’t bring himself to say no. He goes home to Alderaan for a week and gets a three dozen ‘priority messages’ that are poorly disguised “we miss you” notes. There’s snipers watching over his apartment 24/7. Bail does the bare minimum ONCE and he has the clones undying loyalty and he does his best to be worthy of that.
Hot Take: The “Jedi Code” isn’t about the Jedi themselves, it’s about the Force.
There is no emotion, there is peace. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force. When a Force-sensitive connects to the Force without the noise in their own heads coloring it, this is what they sense–peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, the Force. It’s not a life motto to live by (it is used as a meditation mantra in the canon, though), but instead A DESCRIPTION OF THE FORCE.
TO EXPAND FURTHER, the reason I like this is because it fits with two really interesting things about how this mantra is used in the canon: - In canon, it’s pretty much always used when someone is trying to reach the Force, whether to feel it more clearly or to calm themselves down, a mantra that’s basically “here’s what the Force is” is a way of helping to pull the noise out of your own head. Further, that is how the Force works, that it’s based on mindset and motivation, the light side is about approaching it from a mentally stable place, through compassion, selflessness and joy, the dark side is about connecting to it through the downward sucking spiral of greed, selfishness, and suffering, through pain and anger and hate and rage. The Force itself isn’t inherently these things, the Force is peace, knowledge, serenity, and harmony. Do your best to not confuse what the Force is trying to say with what you are bringing to it. - This is why it also fits with the other version:
Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet the Force. Because the Force, sometimes, is a paradox, in that the emotions that are soaked into it by every living being in the galaxy (as every living thing is part of the Force), it does have emotion, it does have ignorance, it does have passion, it does have chaos, it does have death. The two different versions of the mantra–and the riddle that they make when combined, because the Jedi Order taught both versions to their children–are about the riddle of the Force itself and what it means to reach out to this tremendous field of energy and psychic web, given that you’re reaching out with your feelings, you’re reaching out based on where your own mindset is coming from. It’s about how you affect the Force and the Force affects you, it’s a description of what you’ll find when you open your mind and heart to the Force.
We need to talk about Jedi Fallen Order.
Specifically Cere Junda (I love her).
One of the main themes of the story is the fact that nobody is perfect.
Cere Junda: Every Jedi faces the dark side. And it’s very easy to fail. Cal Kestis: You’re still struggling with the dark side. Even after cutting yourself off from the Force. Cere Junda: We will always struggle. But that is the test. It’s the choice to keep fighting that makes us who we are.
This is what is means to be a Jedi. If falling to the dark side wasn't so easy, the Jedi wouldn't need to exist in the first place. Their strength is their compassion. They choose diplomacy first because their goal is to defend life. They share a deep connection with the Force, but they don't weaponize it.
Cere used the dark side to escape Fortress Inquisitorius and killed everyone (except her former padawan) to get out. Her rage was so powerful that she cut herself off from the Force completely and stopped considering herself a Jedi. She feared that if she connected again she would succumb to the dark side entirely.
That is the battle. It's not about perfection but rather restraint.
She used the dark side and it didn't make her evil, but she struggled with it for years because of her own guilt and anger. She stopped herself from falling to the dark side, but she didn't fully trust herself anymore. When confronted with Vader once again, she almost allowed the dark side to consume her, but Cal reminded her that she still had a choice and she chose differently. Instead of using the Force as a weapon, she used it to create a force field to protect both her and Cal. She stopped herself from crossing the line, which takes a lot of strength considering she was facing the monster she felt so much hatred for. The monster who had brutally tortured her, not just physically but also mentally. The monster who forced her to watch as her former padawan succumbed to the dark side and became an Inquisitor.
Resisting the dark side is not easy. The temptation is always there, even for the Jedi, but their ability to rise above and choose compassion and mercy over rage and cruelty is what sets them apart. Sometimes they stumble, sometimes they fail, but failure is part of the journey too.
And that's a lesson that is repeated throughout the story of Fallen Order.
Eno Cordova: Failure is not the end. It is a necessary part of the path. Hope will always survive in those who continue to fight.
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Jaro Tapal: Get up. Try again. Padawan Cal: I just keep failing, Master! Jaro Tapal: Do you? Good. Keep failing, keep getting back up. That is the only way to succeed. Don’t allow yourself to be weighed down by ego and pretense. Let go of what you fear to lose and rise up.
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Cere Junda: Failure’s a part of the journey.
Failure is hard, but it always teaches a valuable lesson. Order 66 pushed Jedi survivors to their limits and tested them in ways they'd never experienced before. Cere's failure with Trilla haunted her, but she didn't fail because she was bad. She failed because the pain and the anguish became too much for her to bear any longer, and her failure put Trilla on the path that led to her becoming Second Sister. Darth Vader used Cere's failure to make Trilla hate her former master even though it was his own sadistic cruelty that wore Cere down to begin with. Despite her failure, Cere kept going. She kept fighting. And she never gave up on the Jedi Order.
