#obitine critical

[pigsgoquackquack]

My main argument against Obitine or Siriwan (or even Codywan) is that Obi-wan's greatest struggle is acknowledging his own feelings for others and the feelings(affection) others hold for him. That is the great conflict between him and Anakin, and what prevents them from ever being able to be fully honest with each other. Anakin bears his heart open for the people he loves to see, but Obi-wan keeps his protected in the palm of his hands, none of his love to ever be seen by those he loves until it is too late. By giving Obi-wan such an obvious love interest, it takes away from the vulnerability and significance of him finally bearing his heart to Anakin in the end of RotS.

[antianakin]

Do you think Satine's behavior towards the Jedi (the flunctioation in attitudes you pointed out in a previous post) could in part be beacuse she is resentful over Obi-Wan choosing them over her?

I think you could headcanon it that way, but I don't think there's anything in canon to support it really. We really BARELY understand Satine's opinion on the Jedi based on the like... 2-3 lines she has about it and that's almost exclusively about the Jedi's involvement in the Clone War rather than anything more general.

There's also no real indication that Satine is upset that she didn't get to be with Obi-Wan. The dialogue that we get from the one time they discuss it actually implies that the reason they're not together is because SATINE chose not to ask him to stay, so if she was resentful over Obi-Wan "choosing them over her", then she'd be pretty hypocritical. It's part of the reason I hate that relationship and that exchange, since it turns Obi-Wan's "choice" to stay a Jedi into not really a choice at all but just... a consolation prize when he thinks Satine isn't interested. Like, "Well I guess the girl I want doesn't want me, so I may as well stay a Jedi and now that we're both adults we're too stuck on our respective paths to try a relationship now." It stinks and it's horrible and I hate it so much.

Satine and Obi-Wan seem to exist in large part to be foils for Anakin and Padme. I think we're probably, to some degree, intended to look at Obi-Wan and Satine and understand that this is the choice that Anakin and Padme SHOULD'VE made (and could STILL make) but didn't. So Satine hating the Jedi out of resentment that Obi-Wan didn't stay with her seems to go against that whole theme, to me.

What little we DO have for Satine's opinion seems to indicate that she actually had a fairly high opinion of them, which is partly WHY she's so upset that they're fighting in the war. But she is explicitly shown to relax when Obi-Wan says he's there as a representative of the Jedi Order instead of the Senate. Her primary issue with the Jedi fighting in the war is that she believes it means they're not acting ENOUGH like Jedi as a result. She intentionally calls upon the Jedi for help finding the corruption in her government and trusts a padawan to teach a class of her children. And when everything goes to shit after Death Watch attacks, she reaches out to the Jedi for salvation.

For me, it would probably feel more accurate to say that her "shifting" opinion on the Jedi is a result of her clinging to her own ideals and her trauma with regards to those ideals and the war and her father's death and her estrangement from her sister all leading to a certain lack of flexibility that causes her to look down on anyone who doesn't live up to her ideals. I also tend to headcanon that Satine likely BASED some of her ideals on Jedi beliefs and philosophies (I'm sure she was already against war and pushing for peace by the time she met Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon but it would seem reasonable to assume she HONED her own ideals and beliefs while on the run with them and learning more about their way of life as a distraction from the horrors around them), which also probably doesn't help when it seems like the Jedi aren't willing to stand up for their beliefs when the going gets tough. It isn't FAIR and it doesn't take into account a LOT of the things that put the Jedi in that position, but it comes from a deep admiration of the Jedi (and perhaps even a misunderstanding of exactly what their beliefs are and how they apply them to real life situations) rather than a resentment of them.

[currentlyobsessedwithobi-wan]

I don’t hate Satine. I don’t like her either, I’m just let’s say neutral. And I don’t care what people ship (as I’ve said, I’ll read about any ship if the story is interesting enough). However I’m very much not a fan of the “Korkie is their secret child” theory. I guess I’m just not fan of the illegitimate children tropes to begin with. And maybe I’m biased, but I just can’t imagine Obi-wan having a child then acting as if they didn’t exist.

[antianakin]

I'm realizing that part of the reason I don't buy Obitine as a ship is because I can't apply the thwarted love story (the "We can't be together because who we are and the lives we've chosen are incompatible but we love each other because of who we are anyway" storyline) to Obi-Wan.

My interpretation of Obi-Wan does not allow for him to be someone who would ever be remorseful about choosing to be a Jedi. My Obi-Wan would never feel remorse about giving up a life where he COULDN'T be a Jedi. My interpretation of Obi-Wan requires that he love being a Jedi SO MUCH that nothing else even comes close, nothing else compares. There is no relationship, romantic or otherwise, that could ever eclipse what being a Jedi means to him. It's in his bones, his blood. He can no more feel remorseful about choosing to be a Jedi than he can feel remorseful about breathing.

The thwarted love storyline requires that the incompatibility is really really sad for the people involved even as they recognize it's the best thing for both of them, but I don't honestly believe Obi-Wan would ever feel that sad about choosing to be a Jedi over a relationship. I can buy that he'd feel remorseful about hurting Satine's feelings or breaking her heart or whatever, but not over the choice to remain a Jedi itself.

So I just... don't buy it. It doesn't fit into my interpretation of who Obi-Wan NEEDS TO BE as a character in this narrative for him to be remorseful over not being with Satine, it never will.

[antianakin]

MY STANCES ON CONTROVERSIAL CHARACTERS ARE AS FOLLOWS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[antianakin]

Number 9 for the ask game! For both disneycanon and legends :)

9. worst part of canon

Man, this is a hard question to answer, mostly because there's so many things I could answer.

So I am assuming here that when you say "Legends" you actually just mean Lucas canon that existed pre Disney canon since "Legends" has never been and will never be canon in and of itself. If you were hoping to hear me speak about something that was ACTUALLY from Legends, I'm very sorry, but I'm not familiar enough with it and I don't think it works for the prompt anyway, so all of my answers are going to be from Disney Canon or Lucas Canon.

Some of these will land more in the realm of "the concept is fine/good, the execution was bad" and some will be more "the concept in and of itself is awful regardless of whether it was executed well or not."

In the Ahsoka show, the concept of Ahsoka facing her past with Anakin and how that's impacted who she's become is a great idea and it's really the only way to move her character forward, but the execution of it was so badly done that I wish it had never happened and we'd just never seen Ahsoka again or ever learned what she felt about Anakin. I've spoken enough about this show for anyone more familiar with me to know why I feel that way. If you haven't read my posts about it and want to hear more of them, you can search under the tags "ahsoka show" and "anti ahsoka show."

Turning the Darksaber into Mandalorian Excalibur is, perhaps controversially, a bad concept. It's introduced in the hands of a Mandalorian, sure, but it's also introduced specifically as a stolen Jedi relic. And between those two things, somehow the fact that it was in the hands of a Mandalorian got considered the more important part of it rather than the fact that it was a JEDI relic that got stolen from them.

And unfortunately turning the Darksaber into Mandalorian Excalibur has made the Mandos even more boring than they already were. It forces everything that was established about them in TCW to be basically erased and ignored. The whole aspect of them having a government of any kind, having a Council and a Prime Minister, is gone, and leaders are chosen by who can wield a stolen relic real good (or, more accurately, who can wield a DIFFERENT WEAPON well enough to defeat the person who IS wielding the stolen relic) rather than chosen more democratically by the people themselves.

The Darksaber also just isn't even being used very well in the narrative. It got handed to Sabine and we went through an entire lovely arc for her to earn it both the Jedi way and the Mandalorian way only for her to hand it off the very next season to someone who hadn't earned it at all. Then that person loses it and it somehow ends up in the hands of Din Djarin who seems to START an arc about earning it only for that to just get completely dropped so he can hand it right back to the same person Sabine handed it to last time and then it gets destroyed a few episodes later. There's not been any point to the Darksaber at all since it first showed up in Pre Viszla's hands in TCW. It should've stayed a fancy-looking stolen Jedi relic (and arguably should've just been handed back to the Jedi) if they weren't going to do a single interesting thing with any of the Mandos who ended up with it.

Moving on from the Darksaber, and looking at the Sequels, I think killing off all of Luke's Jedi students and destroying Leia's New Republic was a terrible terrible idea as a concept. I understand the idea of like... "Darkness always comes back, the fight is never completely over" but destroying ALL OF THE PROGRESS made in the last trilogy by the main characters just to force the new characters to do the exact same thing all over again is stupid. There are ways to do "darkness always comes back" as a theme without making Luke, Leia, and Han's arcs completely irrelevant. It doesn't feel hopeful by the end anymore, it just feels a little pointless because if everything is always going to be destroyed over and over again then why try to build anything at all? What's the fucking point of it all if none of the triumphs last long enough to mean anything?

And adding onto that, making the New Republic completely incompetent and also so horrible that they're basically the Empire in all but name feels equally frustrating as a concept because now not only were they destroyed before anything meaningful could be done with them, but it's not even a bad thing that they were destroyed because Leia failed long before Starkiller blew up those five planets. The New Republic was a failure from the moment of its inception because it's just filled with and run by cowards and greedy assholes who won't help anyone or do anything useful at all apparently.

I won't touch on R*ylo much because plenty of other people have, but everything about that was awful and it never should've been made canon.

While we're on romantic failures, I don't think Obi-Wan has ever needed a romantic interest, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be done well. But Obitine just wasn't it. Obitine was executed so incredibly poorly that it just made both characters radically less interesting and if I didn't already enjoy Obi-Wan as a character, his relationship with Satine would probably turn me off of Obi-Wan entirely given that he's literally a sexist asshole to her. Obitine never should've happened and if they HAD to do it, they should've gotten better writers to handle it so that it didn't ruin a beloved character as a result.

I'm sure there's more I could complain about, but that's what's coming to mind right now.

[antianakin]

Honestly the Voyage of Temptation episode would've been way funnier and more interesting if Obi-Wan just... hadn't had any weird latent feelings about Satine, if he hadn't ever regretted leaving her and he was just totally fine about it all.

Just IMAGINE a scenario where both Obi-Wan and Satine are just... normal and professional around each other and at some point Anakin asks about their history and Obi-Wan's like "yeah and Satine asked me to stay with her, but I obviously said no and that was that" and Anakin just EXPLODES because WHAT?? When he and Padme first saw each other again, he'd nearly burst a blood vessel and he'd been so awkward and weird and he could barely manage to be in the same room as her, how is Obi-Wan so CALM about it all, he never would've guessed that Obi-Wan had had feelings for her. And Obi-Wan just kinda shrugs and is like, "I dunno, it was like 20 years ago, people grow up and move on and I like being a Jedi, it's not that big a deal." Anakin spends the rest of the episode trying desperately to get Obi-Wan to admit that he still has feelings for Satine, that he regrets having left her, or SOMETHING and it just never happens.

For one, it's fucking hilarious. Obi-Wan being a font of calm as Anakin runs around trying to force Obi-Wan NOT to be calm because HOW DARE Obi-Wan be normal about something Anakin is incapable of being normal about himself.

For two, it provides a really interesting and obvious counterpoint to Anakin in a way that I personally feel works WAY better than what canon actually did. Obi-Wan had feelings for someone, they were real, but he was a Jedi who actually LIKED being a Jedi and so he said no when his partner asked him for more than he was capable of giving and it just didn't cause him all that much distress. That contrasts SO WELL with Anakin who can't let go of anything or anyone ever, who literally held onto a childhood crush for TEN YEARS and was incapable of not being a creepy idiot around his crush for more than the first like 2 seconds of their interaction. Romance just doesn't have to be some big impactful thing for Obi-Wan in the way that it is for Anakin. It can be nice, sure, it can be fun, but it's not something he NEEDS the way Anakin does. He doesn't have any remorse or regret about choosing the Jedi. He never wonders about what might've been because he knows it would've just been way less satisfying of a life for him.

[antianakin]

Hello, do you have an AO3 account? Because I saw a thing on here about you writing an arranged Marriage AU for Obitine and I am interested. (Even though I don't think Obitine should be a thing. Maybe a fleeting crush when they were young brought one by being on the run together. But not much more.)

I mean, I DO have an AO3 account, but it's pretty exclusively for READING fics as opposed to WRITING fics. I don't really... write fics, I guess. I've done the AU posts here, but you'll notice that none of those are really... in prose. There's no dialogue, it's primarily just a recounting of events. And that's about as far as my creative writing skills really go.

The Obitine Arranged Marriage AU is something I wrote up on Tumblr, and you can find it here. I ALSO dislike Obitine and don't think it should be a thing and that's actually exactly why I wrote the AU, to explore what a relationship between them might have actually looked like and just how miserable and disastrous it would've been for both of them. What fleeting feelings had been there from their teenage hormones would NOT have lasted very long when up against some of the outside pressures they'd have faced.

The major thing I wanted to do in that AU was sort-of make something that went AGAINST a lot of the more popular tropes I see with Obi-Wan. So not only does it explicitly look at how BAD this relationship with Satine would be because of how badly matched their personalities are, it ALSO explicitly has Obi-Wan not at all happy in Mandalorian culture. He's not accepted within it and it's SO vastly different from Jedi culture that he can't be truly comfortable within it. He assimilates as much as he is required to as Satine's spouse, but he doesn't LIKE it much and tries to hold onto as much of his Jedi culture as he can, regardless of how uncomfortable it might make Satine or the other Mandalorians feel.

I tried to make the AU not like... a demonization of Satine, but she doesn't come off well in it, either. I'm not a huge fan of her character and I'm especially not a fan of her relationship with Obi-Wan. I am personally of the opinion that the way that relationship is written sort-of ruins Obi-Wan as a character in many ways, and that feeling absolutely comes across in this AU. Satine is... prioritizing other things in the AU above Obi-Wan, and while that can be an admirable trait on its own, it becomes very clear that it has an adverse effect on her personal relationship with someone she asked to make a major sacrifice for her. And as that relationship continues to dissolve and sour, she gets defensive because she's a teenager under immense amounts of political pressure and something has to give and she decides to let it be her relationship with Obi-Wan.

This is kind-of an exploration of exactly why this kind of relationship DOES NOT WORK unless both parties are particularly willing to enter into this dynamic. Satine CANNOT prioritize Obi-Wan over her people and her duty, but she married him, and Obi-Wan had certain expectations about how that would look that are completely unmet, which lea ds to resentment and frustration on both sides. Obi-Wan is also just someone who isn't going to be happy sitting on the sidelines doing nothing, so this dynamic works extremely badly for him in a way it may not for someone else.

Satine does ultimately come around and start to realize just how much damage she's done and tries to make amends, but in many ways it's too late. Obi-Wan is TRYING and Satine is TRYING, but they just. Can't. Connect. They can't understand each other now that they're not within the relatively simpler situation of being on the run for their lives, and that inability to see from each other's perspectives rips them apart.

All that to say that if you do not like Obitine, the Obitine Arranged Marriage AU is probably for you lol.