That Eldritch Bitch @swiss-army-gnat - Tumblr Blog

after the war ends, Obi-Wan desperately wants to quit the Council, but Mace keeps rejecting his resignations

so Obi-Wan decides to take matters into his own hands: if he can’t resign formally, he’s going to get himself kicked off

he starts by showing up to Council meetings intoxicated, and wearing increasingly outrageous (and frequently revealing) clothing

when his own efforts fail to get any reaction out of Mace, he recruits outside assistance

he sends Anakin wearing a fake beard and mustache to attend as him (which has the side benefit of convincing Anakin that he never, ever, wants anything to do with the Council)

Cody attends wearing Obi-Wan’s clothes and lightsaber, but making no other attempt to disguise himself

Quinlan breaks in during a meeting, makes out with Obi-Wan for two minutes straight, then smashes through a window to make his daring escape

Ahsoka does her best Hondo impression and shows up to kidnap Obi-Wan in the middle of a session, with Rex and the Bad Batch (in their normal, full armor) as her dastardly pirate crew

and while certain members of the Council are outraged, Obi-Wan still can’t even get Mace to consider his resignation

of course, Mace isn’t going to tell Obi-Wan that his efforts have backfired: this is the most entertainment Mace has had in YEARS, he’s wasn’t letting Obi-Wan quit before he started this, and now at least half the reason is that he wants to see what Obi-Wan’ll try next

skullinacowboyhat

thinking about the jedi archives and how canonically it contains the grand sum of galactic knowledge and is only accessible to members of the jedi order. as an information studies student and an aspiring archivist, that is absolutely insane to me, like how do they deal with copyright issues? how many stolen artifacts do they have? do they employ researchers outside the order to gather information and then gate-keep the gathered records? are you telling me exactly zero researchers are let into the archives? how do they index that shit? do they accept donations? what is the collection development policy?

archivalnerddel

Recently someone asked me what was the most unexpected thing in the Jedi Archives. The answer is we have thousands and thousands of pages of research notes and records from all psychological or anthropological research, surveys, and interviews. Most of these are not from Jedi researchers. The reason?

When researchers are interacting with participants, one of the AAA Code of Ethics dictates that you “must protect and preserve records of research and raw data”. Since the Jedi Archives are the most protected and preserved archives in the galaxy, a lot of researchers ask us to hold on to their data for safekeeping. It is also in a wing that only allows researchers and archivists into, as to protect the possible personal information inside. I think that how scientific fields interact is so interesting!

marlenverse

Bail Organa, to the Jedi Council: So, who’s your favorite Council member?

Obi-Wan Kenobi: I have no favorites. Truthfully, I believe I have a connection with all of them that’s different and unique. It’ll be impossible to choose.

Plo Koon, Mace Windu, Master Yoda, Depa Billaba, and literally every other Councilmember without hesitation, saying: Obi-Wan.

glumshoe

Imagine growing up in the generations after the Clone Wars and the difficulty of finding dating partners who are not also the descendants of Jango Fett.

systlin

I’m so glad my star wars shitposting is making you ask the really important questions here, Ship.

glumshoe

Fast forward a few thousands years and Jango Fett ends up being the patrilineal Most Recent Common Ancestor of space humanity.

glumshoe

I posed this question to my coworker an hour ago and when I came back I found him doing clone sex math

aces-to-apples

smhalltheurlsaretaken

I just… I just can’t get over Obi-Wan immediately recognizing Waxer and Boil in Landing at Point Rain, before they even have a chance to speak. Their armors are covered in dust, Obi-Wan is being blinded by the sudden light flooding in when he was just sitting in the dark, and they haven’t addressed each other by their names while they were opening the doors - assuming he could even hear them. There should be no way to identify them.

But he just knows them anyway.

Just like he knows Trapper’s name, and Jesse, Kix and Hardcase from the 501st even though they’re not his men. Just like Yoda knows Thire, Rys, and Jek after only a few hours.

It just makes me very emotional, okay.

smhalltheurlsaretaken

#were jedi good soldiers? probably not #but they did what no other general would ever do for them: know them (via @whorekenobi)

Kriff yes, this is the kind of tags I love to see. Chances are, many Jedi were bad soldiers - they had the instincts and a lot of useful skills, but not the training, and they didn’t want to be soldiers. They were reckless with their own lives, and the regular officers like Tarkin, Yularen or Kilian called them too soft, or said they ‘didn’t understand’ how the army worked, etc. They were keepers of the peace and diplomats first and foremost.

The Jedi being drafted was a tragedy - for everyone, except, that is, for the Clones. A sentiment the Clones themselves shared:

Catch me sobbing about Yoda knowing each of Thire, Rys and Jek’s weaknesses and strengths after just a few hours with them. Catch me crying about Dave F saying that the Jedi were the ones who inspired and encouraged creativity and self-expression in their troops. Remember “Plo’s Bros”? “Not to me”? Mace taking the time to save individual trooper time and time again? Compare that to the non-Jedi officers’ complete indifference (there is not one instance of a non-Jedi officer being friends with his men).

The Jedi tried their best to know them all, and they loved them all - and I am once again daydreaming about the Zillo beast turning Palps into a pancake and Talzin voodooing Dooku’s ass.

foundfamilynonsense

The Jedi being drafted was a tragedy— for everyone, except, that is, for the clones

Yesssss exactly but there’s more than that.

Before I watched the clone wars it always bugged me how the Jedi never could sense the clone troopers were the bad guys. These people are empaths, they can legit sense dishonesty and malcontent. Why couldn’t they tell the clones were bad?

And then I watched the clone wars and saw how fucking… brilliant and heartbreaking Palpatine’s plan really was.

Because who would bother to get to know the clones? They’re soldiers designed to go out and die. They all have the same appearance but they were also all raised under the same circumstances meaning whatever personality differences each of them had it was small. At least to an outsider.

Who would take the time to learn their names and their strengths and weaknesses and, beyond that, care for them and treat them as equals?

The Jedi. Of course the Jedi would do this.

And how would the clones respond to this? They’ve never been treated like this before, much less by people in positions of power. They would LOVE the Jedi. And how do they show that love?

The only way they knew how: loyalty.

Like, we see it a lot. Being loyal and helpful was the way clones showed affection. Probably because that’s what they were taught to do to people they respected on Kamino.

So like…. Now we have the Clone-Jedi bond just getting stronger. And so even after the Jedi discover it was fucking Dooku who created the clone army they still decide Not To Hold It Against Them.

We can’t be mad at the clones. They obviously did nothing wrong! They’ve proven themselves! We can’t become distant! We can’t punish them for this!

Like, sometimes tragedies are tragedies because they are a source of personal error. An ending of your own creation. But sometimes a tragedy is a tragedy because there’s no way out. The trap was too well designed. And all you can do is watch as the characters realize they’re in one long after escape is an option.

Palpatine did more than turn the Jedi’s own troops against them. He turned their own respect and kindness into a weapon.

royalhandmaidens

enough of the luke is like padmé and leia is like anakin takes

leia is the daughter of bail, who tried to save as many as he could and helped start and maintain the rebellion until his dying breath

leia is the daughter of breha, who nearly died after falling off a mountain to prove herself worthy of the throne, and then got up and climbed it again

luke is the son of owen, who knows how to survive and succeed against all odds and in the toughest of environments

luke is the son of beru, who’s kindness and compassion knew no limits, who brought people together and kept them together

mahgck

you have to outlive donald trump

mahgck

imagine how funny the internet will be on the day he dies.

antianakin

Regarding Codywan; which one of the pair do you think would be more likely to fail at self-care, forcing the other to get them into bed, insist they take a break from the planning table and so on?

Cody. 1000% Cody.

For one, Cody is simply younger than Obi-Wan and so is going to have less experience in general, but he's also led an IMMENSELY sheltered life that was full of lots of strict routines that didn't allow him to do much of anything beyond what the Kaminoans allowed him to do. And there is no indication that one of those things the clones were taught was good mental health practices. In fact, you could argue that we have evidence they were explicitly NOT taught mental health practices since I think they tell us in TCW that the clones were told they'd had regular stress somehow engineered out of them. If the Kaminoans believed that, then presumably they wouldn't have felt the need to teach the clones how to effectively HANDLE stress beyond just... pushing through it to complete the objective/mission.

Cody is an incredibly competent person who seems to be pretty steady in a crisis, for sure, but I think he's primarily steady IN SPECIFIC SITUATIONS, all of which relate to battles and war and dealing with authorities. Take him out of that situation and he's probably going to struggle a little more with understanding the parameters of what's expected of him. He'd pick that kind of thing up VERY quickly, but it seems like something all of the clones would have to learn after leaving Kamino. Basic things like how to go shopping or going out to eat, even going to a club and the expectations for the social interactions in those places is going to have a learning curve.

I also think that the clones are probably going to be fairly good at managing physical health because maintaining their ability to do their jobs in that way would likely be something the Kaminoans would have kept in mind, but managing their emotional and mental health would be something entirely new. Like I said, they have been led to believe they don't experience stress and all of its related problems, so understanding what they feel and the best ways to handle it are going to be completely beyond them.

And this is where the Jedi can come in. They're literally intergalactic therapists, this is their bread and butter. Helping the clones understand what they're feeling and how to best manage what's happening to them would likely be one of the first building blocks of trust between the two groups. But there's obviously one Jedi among potentially THOUSANDS of troopers, so they probably start by passing along advice to a few of the higher ranked troopers and hope that it trickles down through the other men. And this could easily lead to some bonding between Obi-Wan and Cody, with Obi-Wan recognizing when Cody is pushing himself too far for too long and learning his tells for when he's tired but can go a little longer vs when he's basically dead on his feet and SHOULDN'T go any longer, or when he's in a mood to listen to advice from someone about getting rest vs when he's in a mental place where that's just not going to be taken well and might actually cause Cody to push himself even harder.

I'll also point out that, despite popular fandom characterization, Obi-Wan really doesn't show any inclination to push himself beyond what he can handle in canon. In what I think is season one of TCW, there's a moment somewhere between Obi-Wan and Anakin where Obi-Wan asks ANAKIN if he's slept and can tell that Anakin hasn't, implying that Obi-Wan probably HAS slept despite the stress of the situation. And then there's Landing at Point Rain where Obi-Wan gets badly injured and proceeds to sit through the majority of the battle. He only gets up ONCE, when it seems like their defenses are about to be broken and he has absolutely no other choice but to fight, and then as soon as reinforcements arrive he immediately sits back down again and STAYS seated even through Anakin and Ahsoka arriving, their mission debrief, and being treated by a medic. Everyone else literally has to gather around him because he refuses to move from his seated position. He never tries to get up and fight when he doesn't have to nor does he seem to avoid or refuse medical aid once it's available. At the end, he keeps leaning on Anakin and Ki-Adi-Mundi as he is led to a ship that will take him away from the field so he can get MORE medical aid and doesn't seem to be refusing that, either.

Even in the context of the films, during the fight with Dooku where he gets badly injured, he stays DOWN after that and lets Anakin handle the fight instead because he knows that trying to get up and keep fighting would just be a distraction. And it isn't that he CAN'T get up, we see him stand up and limp away later, but that there would be very little point in him trying to do so. And he doesn't seem to be trying to hide his injuries after the battle's over, either, he's very obviously limping and holding his arm.

Which isn't to say that Obi-Wan couldn't occasionally choose to pull all nighters if he felt it necessary for one reason or another, or that he would NEVER push himself through pain or exhaustion in certain situations, but I don't think that the fandom characterization of him as someone who can barely take care of himself and constantly hides injuries and avoids medical attention to the point of literally causing himself further harm is consistent with how he's actually shown in canon. We don't ever get to see Cody react to being injured, but given what we know of the clones' upbringing, it just makes more sense to me that Cody would struggle with pushing himself beyond what he SHOULD and with managing his own emotions.

antianakin

Ohhhhh wait that's SO INTERESTING actually, the idea that he kinda gets MORE persnickety about taking care of himself when stressed because it's when he needs to be the MOST on his game, not the least.

Like you KNOW Obi-Wan's feeling kinda stressed when he starts carrying around little snacks or ration bars or whatever on his person more frequently so that he can make sure he eats even if he gets busy. Maybe he gets a little more fussy about being clean or something if he's stressed, making sure he sets a time to take a shower or even just bathroom breaks or something like that.

I think this falls neatly in line with what we see in Landing at Point Rain, too, where he gets injured and they're in an intense situation and he DOES NOT MOVE from where he's seated in the camp. He doesn't get up to have a meeting, he doesn't get up to greet Anakin and Ahsoka, and he doesn't rejoin the fight afterward (he DOES get up when he thinks they're about to have their defenses broken and needs to make a last stand, but that's different, and he sits down immediately when that particular threat disappears). He's clearly stressed and dealing with a lot, but he does what he needs to do to take care of himself as much as he can in the moment, including getting medical assistance once they have the time for it.

This is such a cool concept and I'm SO here for it!

ewock

insp.

softieskywalker

i think the key difference between george lucas’s star wars and disney’s star wars is that lucas is a man with an ideology. someone with a point of view, and all that entails. which comes with ideas of revolution, anti-imperialism, challenging the status quo, cultural appropriation and racist stereotypes. complex and contradictory ideas because that’s how artists are: complex and complicated people. disney is not. disney is a corporation. a corporation can’t have ideology, because ideology defeats the purpose of profit. and when the only thing you do is to turn on the movie manufacturing machine before you sit down and plan what ideas are you trying to convey to the audience, then your results are going to be washed out corporate garbage. and because when you’re a giant corporation who only cares about selling to the widest audience possible, you can’t take sides. you can’t decide on an idea. because you want to sell your product to people who are on the entire political spectrum. which results in movies without ideology, without purpose, without soul.

david-talks-sw

I have been looking for this post for years after I came across it and it’s finally here and I need to reblog this because it is absolutely and entirely accurate.

comebackali

#as I always say: lucas was making a samurai film and a ww2 flying ace film and a western film and adding laser swords#because he fundamentally LIKED samurai films and dambusters films and westerns and 40’s adventure serials#but disney are making a ‘star wars film’ and adding nothing because it already had laser swords and they have nothing else to say#xerox of a xerox baybeeeee (via harrietvane)

fladurblegon

“What if poor people abuse the system?”

The system intrinsically abuses poor people.

Hope this helps.

haven-of-dusk

I was rewatching RotS the other day, because I'm guilty of it being probably my favorite Star Wars movie, and one scene in particular struck me in a way I hadn't really thought about before.

Order 66 is already an incredibly tragic scene, with a fantastic score, that never fails to give me chills, but in this case I was particularly hit by the short sequence where Zett Jukassa is killed by the clones right in front of Bail Organa.

At first glance, it's just a fun way to do a cameo by George Lucas' son, and that's likely all it was intended as, without an additional thematic meaning. But the structure of the moment does say something about the Jedi that I think is important.

When Zett appears, he's clearly making a break for Bail's speeder, seeing it as a means of escaping the massacre and inferno inside the temple. Given his youth, it's entirely possible the lightsaber he's holding isn't even his, it might've been his master's, or just one he grabbed from a fallen Jedi to defend himself as he fled. But with the brutal efficiency of Order 66, he's probably seen a lot of people he knows and cares about slaughtered by the clones already, and is more than likely aware of the risks involved in engaging any clones in a fight.

Yet despite all of that, when the clones open fire, Zett's first instinct isn't to duck and hide in the speeder or get himself out of danger, it's to plant himself between Bail and the hail of gunfire and try to protect Bail. It's entirely possible Zett has no idea who Bail is, and at most he probably just knows him as a Senator and occassional visitor to the Temple, but it doesn't matter. When faced with danger his first instinct isn't to protect himself, it's the selfless instinct to protect others. And it cost him his life.

(I had a paragraph here talking about the plot of 'Padawan Lost' and its relation to this moment, but this post is long enough already so I might make a separate post about that).

The reason I find this moment so impactful is that it represents the type of 'light' Palpatine wanted to eradicate. Selfless good, protecting others and putting them before yourself, self-sacrifice, they're all values the Jedi represent, and they're all values Palpatine needs the galaxy to lose hold of if he wants his grip on power to remain.

It's a running theme throughout the OT, Andor, the Clone Wars, and more, that fighting FOR others gives people a strength they wouldn't otherwise have. Han chose to come back and help the rebels in A New Hope, Luke and Anakin defeated Palpatine because they were fighting for each other instead of for themselves, etc. Tyrants like Palpatine thrive when people distrust each other, when they're driven to look out solely for their own interests, because it keeps the people separated, oppressed, and severely lacking in morale.

Palpatine didn't just kill the Jedi, he symbolically slaughtered the galaxy's hope and selflessness, setting the perfect stage for his own power. And to take it even farther, he framed the Jedi as dangerous traitors. The symbols of good were, if one believed his words, revealed to be crafty villains who had fooled the Republic into trusting them just so they could gain power. He framed the Jedi as doing the very thing he did, so that he could be the galaxy's hope, putting a stop to the 'threat' and protecting the Republic. But if you can't trust the Jedi, who can you trust? Your neighbors? Your friends? Your senators? It's terrifying how Palpatine successfully generated the environment of fear and paranoia that would keep him in power while exterminating the organization representing everything that would ideologically undermine him.

And it's even more terrifying that some viewers of Star Wars have essentially bought Palpatine's lies and uncritically act as though the Jedi were some ultra-corrupt, morally reprehensible organization.

kcrabb88

Thinking again (again again again) about "Quinlan was here?" in the OWK show. The way Obi-Wan's fingers run tenderly over the carving that Quin left. The way his eyes light up. The way he smiles for the second time in the entire show so far. The way Tala chuckles when she says "yeah, he helps, smuggling younglings" with this deeply fond smile. The way Obi-Wan reads what the carving says like he's both hopeful again for the first time in years and also like he might cry. The way Leia asks "see what?" in a soft voice because she can tell it matters to Obi-Wan. Quin worried he was damned to darkness, but he’s actually a blazing light during the darkest of times.

Deb Chow I'm in your walls!!!!!!