#Anakin is the perfect you can't save him until it's too late

[pumpkinrootbeer]

i really do think the systematic execution of the jedi has kinda sorta ruined all future star wars media for in the sense that i am always going to be thinking about the space empath monks who were genocided. there used to be thousands of them and now there's like. 7. functionally an entire culture dead. they can show me all the grogus in the world, im always going to think about how they had to step over the dead babies.

[reallybadfeeling]

I have talked about this song so SO MUCH. Yet, after watching Kenobi this song is EVEN MORE my go to Obikin/Vaderwan song.

Like, look at these lyrics!

I've tried to sit down and write this song out Feels like a thousand times But I was always too scared of what I might find But if I keep on blocking this pain out It might be too late To heal my heart somehow

HOW

Don't wanna open that wound Don't wanna replay that night Don't wanna think about you You are no longer mine Don't wanna write you a love song When I know that love is gone 'Cause if I let myself think of you I might lose my mind

DOES

It's the heart and bones It's an empty soul The dreams at night that shake me to my core And I can't get up off this floor It's in the bones of me An empty soul in me The dreams at night that shake me to my core I can't get off this floor

THIS

Don't wanna open that wound Don't wanna replay that night Don't wanna think about you When you're no longer mine Don't wanna write you a love song When I know this love is gone 'Cause if I let myself think of you I might lose my mind

NOT

It's the heart and bones It's an empty soul The dreams at night that shake me to my core And I can't get up off this floor It's in the bones of me An empty soul in me The dreams at night that shake me to my core I just can't take this hurting anymore

SCREAM

Don't wanna open that wound Don't wanna replay that night Don't wanna think about you You are no longer mine Don't wanna write you a love song When I know this love is gone 'Cause if I let my mind think of you I might lose it all

OBI-WAN?!?

I've tried to sit down and write this song out Feels like a thousand times

I mean, seriously! (Get ready for me giving a deep dive behind my reasoning once again.)

The subtle differences in the repetition alone! Like:

From "don't wanna think about you, you are no longer mine", to "don't wanna think about you WHEN you're no longer mine" and then back to "don't wanna think about you, you are no longer mine". Like, the evolution of Obi-Wan at first thinking he isn't allowed to think of Anakin as his after he killed him, to Obi-Wan not wanting to think about Anakin because he left him behind and he certainly can't call him his when he became a Sith. And finally accepting that Anakin isn't his anymore because there is no Anakin left for him to save!

From "when I know THAT love is gone" to "when I know THIS love is gone". From a general sense of having lost just about everything he loved and with it the ability to love at all, it evolves into accepting that he lost Anakin's love in specific.

And the "if I let myself think of you I might lose MY MIND" becomes "if I let myself think of you I might lose IT ALL", because Obi-Wan doesn't have the luxury of thinking about Anakin anymore when he's face to face with Vader himself telling him that he killed Anakin that night.

And of course how can I not mention: from "I can't get off this floor" , it changes completely into "I just can't take this hurting anymore". Seriously, it almost feels like at first he just accepts this pain because he deserves it, just to evolve into a desperate cry to just put an end to it all, it's just too much and he needs to be free of it instead of just taking it all passively.

And then the song goes back to the beginning, which is really just perfect. Because the idea is that the singer at first was struggling to put down into words their feeling, but by the end of the song, they tried and they tried until they finally did manage to write the song. And it's done. It's all out there. It's a cathartic liberation. They finally faced the loss of someone they loved. Just like Obi-Wan had to have the whole journey, just to go back to Tatooine, but this time with a whole new perspective and attitude.

ALSO, a list of my favorite Infinite Sadness™ lyrics:

It might be too late | To heal my heart somehow

Don't wanna open that wound | Don't wanna replay that night

The dreams at night that shake me to my core | I just can't take this hurting anymore

If I let my mind think of you I might lose it all

And this is always the fucking reason why my Obikin playlist is fucking named after this fucking song!

[binaryeclipse]

Obikin + 86. and 100. for the ask game, please? 😊

I DID NOT FORGET ABOUT THIS MY BRAIN HAS JUST BEEN A PILE OF GOO FOR SEVERAL WEEKS.

I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On + Accidentally Saving the Day

Sadly (?), anon, you are getting more comedy from me.

I think this one would be best done from Obi-Wan's point of view and just getting to show the dichotomy between his emotions, his thoughts and his actions. Also there's nothing better than Obi-Wan being turned on by Anakin just being Anakin.

They're on a mission. It's like any other mission. Anakin's been pushing Obi-Wan's buttons in between the two of them cracking wise at each other and bantering up a storm. Obi-Wan is at peak "you frustrate the hell out of me but you're also my best friend in the entire galaxy" and honestly I feel like that's the sweet spot you need to get Obi-Wan in to get the horny brain working. Just look at (most) of the classic Obi-Wan pairings, this man has a particular fondness for infuriating individuals.

And of course, inevitably, they run into a wall. Or a dead end. Something Obi-Wan can't think his way out of and he's basically three seconds away from snarking "good job, genius" at Anakin even though this is at least half-way Obi-Wan's fault too and. Anakin just has the most hair-brained idea. He's either a genius or a moron. He's both. And Obi-Wan does not think this is going to work, it's not going to work, Anakin, and Anakin's all smirks and electricity like "I don't see you coming up with a better idea, old man" and. Point.

And it works. It works almost two well. Obi-Wan doesn't even feel undignified doing it. It's just the perfect combination of Anakin's outside of the box thinking and genius level intellect that immediately starts the admittedly always low level of arousal Obi-Wan feels around his former apprentice (that he ignores, because he's in control of his emotions) into a burning bonfire.

Because Obi-Wan is already weak for Anakin, but when the bastard actually shows competence? He's used to Anakin's skill in fighting but what really really gets Obi-Wan is Anakin's intelligence and those moments when he rises above his raging emotions to actually make effective use of it.

They get out with the maguffin and back to the ship and into hyperspace and they have that long journey back to Coruscant and. Well, Obi-Wan spends the first few hours just. Consumed with horny. Anakin's back to being his regular dumbass self but it's too late, nothing is going to put out the fire until Obi-Wan does something about it.

So of course he grabs his idiot former apprentice by the face and kisses him. And of course Anakin just melts for him, all his confidence and snark falling away to this hesitant shy thing in his grasp he wants to utterly wreck. What a good boy he is.

The journey back is suddenly not long enough because Obi-Wan has plans and it involves fucking Anakin over every surface of the ship.

Thankfully, Anakin is very much down for that. Yes, please, Master.

[him-e]

It bothers me people complaining about Luke in tlj, I know int the ot he's this hopeful hero and I know the character is iconic but you can't expect Luke to be the same before and after rotj, I mean, Vader death and redemption affected him, becoming a master affected him, Ben and the rise of the first order affected him. If they have put a Luke that was the same than in ep iv it wouldn't be realistic, Luke has grown, it's not the same 19 years old boy

Sometimes growth weighs you down, instead than lifting you up. Also, I feel like this sort of (not really) antiheroic-anticlimatic approach is just par for the course with the setup for this new trilogy. The OT’s curtains closed on such a finite, unequivocal happy ending that a sequel trilogy couldn’t be anything but disruptive of this happiness and fulfillment not only on a galactic scale, but on a personal level too. (after all, the “star wars” in star wars are all but a backdrop to this huge familial drama, aren’t they?)

You have what’s basically a carbon copy of the old Empire on the rise, and this happens despite the fact that our heroes have been in charge of the galaxy for all these years. So what went wrong this time? Because, obviously, something DID go wrong. And this time you no longer have the Jedi Order or the corrupted Republic of the prequels to blame. By signing up to the entire premise that kickstarts TFA, you must know you’re going to be faced with some hard truths, uncomfortable truths about your heroes, sooner or later.

and like, I’m a major Kylo/Ben stan and even I don’t think that Luke’s misstep destroys his characterization. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t devastating from Ben’s perspective, because it was—waking up to your uncle and most powerful jedi in the galaxy hovering on you with his lightsaber ignited because he’s afraid of you? TERRIFYING. Twice as traumatizing if you consider that Ben’s parents (from his perspective) gave up on him and passed him off to Luke, so the moment when Luke, the last person entrusted with his *soul*, no longer thinks he can be saved, is the moment when Ben just stops fighting and lets his shadow loose (and for god’s sake, I can’t stop thinking about this, it’s haunting me. when did this account become so deep).

But on Luke’s part, it’s just human. A human error. 

And to be clear I think there’s a fundamental difference between the joyous, abstract idea that “everyone can be saved”—and getting to actually save in a blaze of glory, age 24, your absentee murderous father whom you have never spent more than 3 hours in total with—versus living every day, every hour of your life with someone who is practically your own child and pouring in him all your love and your wisdom AND YET. The darkness continues to only grow and grow in this kid, and it seems that whatever worked on your father isn’t working on him for some reason and maybe you’ve grown old and the Light has dimmed in you and maybe you were wrong and some people are just too dark to be saved and maybe…. Luke doesn’t outright say it, but I think these thoughts were the dark side tugging at him without he realizing it. Not Snoke, just Luke’s own dark side that has always been there. It tugged and tugged until something snapped. And you know the rest.

So what is that destroys Luke’s character? This one moment in which he thought he could save a million lives by killing one à la Stannis (or, like any parent of a problematic child knows, has a fleeting “I wish you were never born” thought and instantly regrets it)? The fact that he didn’t try to fix it immediately later? The fact that maybe he felt so ashamed and guilty and devastated that he had to literally cancel himself from existence, not even telling Leia? (he still can’t tell the truth to Rey, a perfect stranger who has almost no dog in this fight, six years later, so it’s clearly something that ripped him apart)

Oh, okay, Luke isn’t hopeful anymore. And? I will always scoff at the idea that once people subscribe to a happy, bright, optimistic version of yourself, you are forever obligated to perform that character even if it doesn’t represent the real you anymore, and you’re not allowed to show your scars. Life has a tendency to break you. Especially as you grow old.

But what prevents it from being a bleak narrative is that Luke actually has his own [ redemption ] arc in this movie and reacts. He reacts because Rey makes him react, she violently calls him out on his apathetic bullshit and leaves with so much of his old stubborn hopefulness that it reminded of who he STILL is (so much for *Rey only revolves around Kylo*—Rey is MUCH more proactive and assertive of her own agency in this film than in TFA, where she just reacted to what happened to her. In this movie? She’s deliberately the catalyst for MANY things. She actively makes choices. On her own). 

It’s like he suddenly wakes up.And what he does is going to confront Kylo, who is entirely his demon, his own Frankenstein’s monster, created by his hubris (so much of TLJ is about hubris and its natural consequence, failure), and ask Ben forgiveness. This is truly the most heroic thing to do, for someone who spent years wrapped up in his own guilt and unable to process it and believing the only way to atone was to die like a hermit. I was actually surprised they gave the climatic Jedi vs Sith lightsaber battle to Luke (I was expecting Rey), and I’m still shaking for how beautiful and poignant that scene is. “See you around, kid”.

That’s a lot like Obi Wan in ANH but also… much more complex than Obi Wan in ANH. While Obi Wan was guilty of seeing the darkness too late, Luke is guilty of being hyperaware (perhaps, it’s precisely Anakin & Obi Wan’s cautionary tale that made him paranoid about Ben’s darkness, effectively turning his legitimate concerns into a self fulfilled prophecy). In the end, the stakes of Luke’s sacrifice are even higher than they were for Obi Wan in the OT, because a) that’s literally all that’s left of the Resistance that he’s dying to save, and b) we know that the root of Ben’s wrath is precisely his relationship with his family and specifically with Luke. Luke who failed Ben so BAD because it was a relationship that involved trust, parental care, and power imbalance. Luke who still loves Ben so much. Luke who was probably (at some point) Ben’s one true hero, even more than Han. We already have the backstory at this point in a way that we didn’t when we saw Vader strike Obi Wan down—but Ben/Luke is much more visceral, much more painfully the decisive factor in Kylo Ren’s villain origin story than Obikin ever was in the creation of Darth Vader. So the last duel is emotionally charged in a way that the OT’s Vader/Obi Wan one wasn’t, because we have taken young Luke’s place in watching his mentor (and hero) sacrifice himself for him (for us) and it’s much clearer that he’s also sacrificing himself for the villain, too.