#Anakin probably has the same backstory

[froglover7789]

Why don't the prequels work as Vader's backstory? It's literally about how anyone no matter how good or well intentioned has the propensity for evil if they let themselves make bad decisions.

Narratively I think it's beautiful and tragic that way.

i think the prequels r actually about how corruption and manipulation and desperation and fear can ruin a person---not just bad decisions :3c and the prequels r consistent with some of the messaging of the originals in that way but that doesnt necessarily mean they serve as a good backstory

heres a handful of reasons why i dont think anakins back story really works with vader:

the originals imply that anakin and uncle owen are blood brothers or at least grew up together. owen sees anakin in luke and this is something that would only really be possible if owen knew anakin well as a teenager. this is also the reason why owen doesnt tell luke about the jedi; he thinks that luke will, like his father, run off to become some sort of war hero and die in the process bc thats what he thinks happened to anakin (some ppl think that owen suspects anakin became vader but i think this is a stretch). the prequels establish that they dont know eachother and didnt grow up together. owen doesnt know anakin outside of what he mightve seen in war/ republic propaganda and thats not very indicative of character. this also raises questions about why obiwan gave luke to owen/ why they took him in in the first place. it makes more sense for anakin and owen to have been very close bc then obiwan wouldve heard of owen and would genuinely trust him to raise his best friends son and owen wouldve cared enough about luke to raise him as his own

what we're led to believe in the originals is that anakin was a powerful jedi who lost sight of what he was fighting for. we're led to believe that he was torn, that the war corrupted him, that war isnt the answer. this works bc the originals r meant to be symbolic of the vietnam war (where the empire would be america) and so this idea of the consequences of war and the importance of peace is a huge part of the originals message. while this is somewhat supported by the prequels its undermined by the fact that anakins fall is mostly bc of YEARS of grooming starting from when he was a kid. this wasnt a normal, good man who lost sight of what was right and crumpled under the weight of a war. this was a man who was the most special of them all and fell bc he had space hitler literally whispering in his ear since before he knew he was a person. thats not the same thing at all! and that steals the implication that vader could have been any soldier, any general and makes his story all messy

side note- leia has vague memories of her mother which means padme shouldntve died in childbirth and should probably have died/ left the twins when they were at least a year or two old. this would also give more reason as to why the lars have luke call them aunt and uncle rather than mom or dad. i think what probably shouldve happened is that padme got pregnant right before anakin was shipped out at some point so he didnt know he had kids before "dying" and she ended up getting involvef in the rebellion/ fearing for her kids safety and had to get rid of em. literally anything else than what happened in canon lol like wtf is dying of heartbreak get OUT

my final thought i can think of rn is that having hitlers right hand man be a slave is just kinda a strange backstory? like i cant be the only one who doesnt like that. idk. doesnt feel right :/

obv most this stuff is just preference and obv you can argue against most of it. the prequels Do technically work but theyre not great backstory. im also not a fan of how the jedi order and all that mess was established. like you can only be one if youre raised one since diapers but luke literally didnt know what the force was until he was 19 but he ended up being one of the most powerful jedi ever??? yeah. makes perfect sense. :////

i do agree that the prequels r tragic and beautiful in their own right. i think the story they tell is good in some ways and bad in others ans one of the ways they r bad is how they tie in with the originals lol

hope this answers your question :3c or at least helps you see where im coming from :33

[grapenehifics]

Making of Monday: Can't Stop the Suns Part 1

(I am thinking SO positively rn that I am calling this part 1, like I will remember to actually write more. YMMV; we'll see how I do.)

I'm hard at work on the concluding chapters of Pick Up the Pieces right now, and working on Pick Up the Pieces means I also need to do a fair bit of rereading An Uncivil War, so it's very much on the forefront of my brain, and also I have yet to participate in a single MoM, so: here's some backstory on An Uncivil War.

Okay I actually need to back up even farther than that, all the way to Solsbury Hill and February 2020. I started Solsbury Hill - it wasn't called that, then; it didn't have a name, just 'weird doc file/outline I'll probably never finish because I don't have a track record of finishing creative writing projects, ever' - and then the very next month I started working from home AND season 7 of Clone Wars premiered.

To get ready for season 7 - and because I was home a lot more during the day, now, and didn't have to commute to work - we decided to do a rewatch of Clone Wars season 1 through 6. And you know how we joke about plot bunnies, and why they're called that? That the hardest idea is your first one and once you have that the ideas just keep multiplying? So, I'm sitting on an outline for what would become Solsbury Hill, and we're watching Clone Wars, and we get to season 5, and the episode with Ahsoka's trial, and I think to myself, huh. That's weird. Why is Obi-Wan acting like that? Why is he not sticking up for our Padawan? If he had, I bet things would have turned out differently. Ahsoka might not have left the Order. Anakin might not have turned to the Dark Side. Clone Wars is full of all these little things that individually might not be enough to push Anakin over the edge, but they start stacking up, collectively...

From there, it was a pretty easy leap to, 'what if Obi-Wan left the Order instead of Ahsoka', and that created this whole domino effect because Anakin would obviously leave with him, right, and Ahsoka was getting kicked out anyway, and now I've got this scenario with three Jedi on the run in the middle of a war.

And that was fascinating to me. Once I started thinking about it I couldn't stop. But I was also getting really into Solsbury Hill, at that point, so this new story needed to take a backseat. I dumped a bunch of notes into a Word doc and went back to my AU.

It turns out, though - and this was the first time I'd learned this about myself - that I liked having both an AU and a canon project going at the same time. Solsbury Hill and An Uncivil War both used such different parts of my brain and required a different skillset and researching vastly different things, and if I got bogged down in one it was nice to be able to switch to the other one and hack away at that one for a while. So I ended up, from early 2020 until August 2022 when I posted the first chapter of Solsbury Hill on AO3, working on both projects nearly simultaneously, although obviously Solsbury Hill (despite being three times longer) got to the finish line first.

For a long time - almost three years - An Uncivil War was just called, An Uncivil War. And it had this expansive outline that I just kept cracking away at, and whenever I came across something cool in another piece of Star Wars media or another show premiered or I read another book I'd think 'Ooh, that's neat! That's going in the fic!' and I'd add it to my to-do list. And at some point I looked at my word count and realized I was pushing 100k and not anywhere close to the end of the story I wanted to tell.

So, I started thinking about sequels, and series. I had (still have) this outline, fortunately, and there was one pretty obvious stopping point at what was then the mid-point of the plot. (I say, 'then' because it has since, of course, expanded. It turns out I'm very bad at guessing word counts.) So I took half my outline, dumped into a brand-new doc, called that one Pick Up the Pieces, and wrote the 'ending' of An Uncivil War, as much as possible, as if it were the ending, just in case I for some reason never got around to writing Pick Up the Pieces.

Because it was important to me that An Uncivil War be able to stand on its own. It's got a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the end calls back to the beginning, and the main threat to the characters is resolved, and they talk about what they're going to do next but even if that was the only story you had, it should still be a satisfying conclusion (or, at least, I hope it is).

But it isn't the entirety of the story I wanted to tell. Because they originally were one big story, I actually had maybe half of Pick Up the Pieces already written by the time I started posting An Uncivil War, so while the first part took me three years to write, the second has technically only taken me a year, but I was definitely not starting from scratch.

I also - and this should shock absolutely no one - was once again wildly off in my word count estimate. Pick Up the Pieces is, right now, already as long as An Uncivil War (120k), and I've still got three chapters left to go...plus a bunch more things in my outline I haven't gotten to yet.

So, in true Star Wars tradition, I'm now plotting a part three! Pick Up the Pieces, like An Uncivil War before it, has a logical ending point, so it will wrap up there, but the plot will move merrily along to the next thing on my to-do list, which is in fact the same to-do list I've had since March 2020. (It's a good thing I love this story so much or I would have quit long ago.) Part Three, at the moment, is tentatively titled Sometimes Fate Steps In, and I'm really, really sorry to have to admit that that's where all the smut is going to be. (I know. It's Solsbury Hill all over again.)

(I do love it, though. I feel like I should...apologize, to my fics, somehow, for having a favorite? I do have a favorite, though. It's this series. I love it so damn much. This is the one thing I write where, if you told me right now that I would never get a single comment or kudos on it, I would still write it anyway, because I just get so much enjoyment out of researching and writing it and re-reading it.)

(Which is not to say you shouldn't comment on it. Please, please do! You will absolutely make my day, week, month, year! But I love it enough to do it anyway.)

[hanasnx]

I JUST READ YOUR ADDITIONS THEY'RE BRILLIANT 10/10/10/10 tens acrossss the boaaarddddd. It's exactly everything I was picturing for him and more, and I could literally see all.

"just one more time, just one" I can literally see anakin's earnest little face, his pink lips that's he's been biting all night because he's physically incapable of hiding the fact that being in your presence gives him horrible, filthy visions. I can hear Hayden's voice this is ridiculous I'm screetching.

And I agree about Padme, for 10 years she existed in his head as an angel, a fantasy. If they hadn't seen each other again in AOTC, or if Padme wasn't as bonkers as she was (because she absolutely is bonkers for getting into that relationship with him, only slightly less bonkers and more composed than her husband), and the reader came along when he was just a year or two older, his focus would absolutely switch the second they make physical contact. Because that's another thing we can't even get INTO RN, HIS TOUCH STARVATION. Shmi was so physically affectionate, hands on little Ani's face, ruffling his hair, probably even bathing him too just to make sure he doesn't waste any water. To go from that to having a master who took years to get used to even having him around, I'd imagine the first woman who wasn't a authority figure, or comrade, or native to some random planet he met on a mission, to touch him immediately set his nerves on fire. So yeah I 1000% agree

Your mind 🧠🧠🧠 fr

-👑

ANON OUR MINDSSSS

the touch starvation is so real like he’s so incredibly needy for approval, validation, and AFFECTION. literally anything he does in the media i’ve seen him in is look to obi wan after for approval literally it must transfer to so many of his relationships.

tbh whenever i write for anakin i imagine that’s how the reader and him started and this is one of their sexual escapades. this exact fwb we’ve been talking about is my-personal-canon backstory in all 3 of my fics for the guy 💀 i just am having so much fun putting it into words and then GETTING TO TALK ABOUT THE LITTLE TWIST WHERE HE GETS JEALOUS OVER HER REAL ACTUAL BOYFRIEND AHSJDJDN🫠🫠

also omfg the “pink lips from being bitten” description u had 😵 bcos yes. he thinks about fucking you every which way whenever you two are within 30 feet of each other and whenever you’re further than that he’s thinking about the next time he gets within that proximity again istg

padme is crazy fr and that’s completely fine tbh looking through rose colored glasses every red flag was just a flag 💀 and who could blame her?? i would’a hopped on that dick first chance i got the same as her.

and yes the fycking 1000000% becomes obsessed when you met and you first touched him by putting a hand on his shoulder to ask if he’s okay. his nerve endings literally fried

he has an obsession i mean that sincerely bcos honestly hes so obsessive in canon media

[hollowwhisperings]

Worlds Disney Won't Let Nomura Use For KH (& the Worlds Disney Wants but Nomura Doesn't):

Toy Story: Nomura refused to make KH3 until Disney let him use Pixar... and thus Toy Story. Toy Story seems to have set up much of the premise of Phase 2 of KH & the emotional resolution of Phase 1 (saying goodbye to childhood, to Kairi).

Frozen: there are Theory Vids on YT that go into the idea in depth but, ultimately, it amounts to Disney changing its mind about letting Elsa have a Heartless between bringing Frozen up to Nomura BEFORE the film's release, the development of KH3, the successful reception of Frozen & susequent planning for a sequel, then the release of KH3. Elsa going Full Riku, Sora seeing her conflict firsthand (as opposed to in KH1 & the Anna POV KH3 ended up with) would have better enabled Sora's Context for RIKU'S villain arc (& why he was able to redeem himself).

High School Musical: the HetNorm analogies of musical theatre & Chad getting Mad at his best friend for [leaving him behind/having a girlfriend], followed by Everything About Ryan & Chad in HSM2... THOSE are the themese Nomura would be interested in & he'd even figure out how to make Basketball Heartless INTERESTING in order to use them. RIP Chad/Ryan.

Lilo & Stitch's World AND Moana's World: we will get one or the other, never both because Disney would see TWO indigenous islander girls & consider their stories interchangable. The only loophole I could think of that would enable both worlds to exist in the same game would be if Lilo's World was the "Future" of Moana's. As is, it seems Inevitable that Nomura will ask to use Moana: whether it's to compare Moana with Riku (island kids who want to explore, who get bad advice on heroism but ultimately choose 'love', who have Explorer Ancestors) or in parallel with Kairi (who is now starting her OWN journey, independently of her friends, and will ultimately lead her back to her forgotten roots)... Nomura will get his "playble Island World". If Stitch conveniently crash lands halfway through Moana's journey? EVEN FUNNIER.

The Goofy Movie: imagine getting Goofy Backstory all of a sudden, complete with the Awkward Realization that Goofy has had a Grown Up Son back home that Sora has been reminding him of. o_o;

Cinderella 3: this film is basically Chain of Memories but EXPLICITLY ROMANTIC. it would, hilariously, cast Naminé as Anastasia AND as 'Fairy Godmother'. The return to Cinderella's World JUST to emphasise Sora as CinderRiku's 'Dream'... using the Oblivion Keyblade & Sora's Necklace as a narrative glass slipper might even be overkill by that point.

Maleficent: Nomura probably wouldn't be interested in using a story about parental love, at this point in the series, except to point out Maleficent was Riku's Evil Fairy Godmother in KH1 & will be having her Comeback now that CinderRiku is rescuing his Prince Sorara with True Love... AGAIN (DDD's plotline is essentially the same as Sleeping Beauty's). There's no need to include Maleficent's World when its plot is playing out with the KH-original cast - it would be background repurposing to clarify narrative intent. though, given how slow audiences are about picking up on non-het romantic subtext... Nomura MAY need Maleficent's home turf after all.

Star Wars: it would be kind of redundant to have Jedi in KH unless they were redressed as ancient Keyblade Wielders. Star Wars would only hammer in the "Xehanort was actually Anakin Skywalker, now you need to find his Palpatine" thing for KAIRI & the Wayfinder Trio (who any present-continuation plotlines of Ancient Masters would naturally fall to).

[greeneyezblackheart]

AHHH I love hearing your a Star Wars fan! I love the original trilogy the best. The others are decent, but the OG trilogy is my favorite. My favorite is The Empire Strikes Back. It's honestly probably one of my very favorite movies of all time. A New Hope is a close second. Out of the three, Return Of The Jedi is my least favorite, but I still enjoy it. ☺

Of course, my favorite character is Han Solo (because of HF 😍😍😍). Boba Fett is also one of my favorites. He is such a cool character, even when we didn't know that much about him or his backstory. (The Book Of Boba Fett filled all that in for us, of course. But even when no one knew that much about him, he was still awesome.)

Star Wars has been one of those things that's kept me alive for a lot of my life, kind of like how you describe GNR did that for you. I went through some hard times when I was a lot younger at the peak of my Star Wars obsession, and watching the movies was such an escape for me. They used to brighten my day so much. And more recently, the Mandalorian did the same when it came out. I love it, as well as the movies, very much 💛.

And I'm the same with the three Indiana Jones movies. 😍💛

My favorite SW movie is Revenge of the Sith. I like Hayden Christiansen as Anakin/Vader. But I love the OG movies, too.

[shadowsong26fic]

Okay SWBB thoughts again…

I’ve got it down to three, I think, just need to settle on one, haha. And I am stuck, because while I am invested in all three, none of them are really Claiming me, the way some of my prompts have in the past? (I’m thinking in particular of how I ended up picking Take a Bond of Fate over some of the others I was considering that year). So, yeah, asking for Opinions!

Two of these were on my prior list, one of them was not.

Option 1: BSG crossover (Specifically the one where the TCW Disaster Trio (Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka), plus Rex and possibly at least one or two more clones (Cody and/or Kix?) ends up stumbling into a basestar somewhere during the timeskip at the end of season 2)

Option 2: Fleshing out Anakin and Ahsoka’s backstory in Devoted!Verse

Option 3: Building on this oneshot with Darth Lectys.

More details behind the cut

Option 1: BSG crossover

Specifically the one where the TCW Disaster Trio (Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ahsoka), plus Rex and possibly at least one or two more clones (Cody and/or Kix?) ends up stumbling into a basestar somewhere during the timeskip at the end of season 2.

(I did consider two other crossover possibilities; but the one with some subset of the Ghost Crew hanging out with Sam and his people on Caprica I think is more suited to either a one-shot or a Long Open-Ended AU and nothing inbetween, therefore it’s not really a good fit for the event; the Disaster Trio (with possible bonus Padme) ending up on Kobol while the first landing party is stranded there has both that problem and also that…while Obi-Wan and Ahsoka helping to keep Crashdown from spinning out was a part of it, the bulk of it would be Anakin and Baltar and Vision Quests and Mysticism which is not really my strong suit. Which is not to say I won’t come back to either of these ideas, but not for big bang. ...at least not this year, lol.)

Anyway. There are sort of two main Problems with this one. First, figuring out how to make this first contact instance not Immediately get violent; second...while crossovers are allowed for the event, and I’ve seen/read a few (even beta’d one) the rule is that everything submitted has to be comprehensible to someone who Only knows Star Wars canon (i.e., it has to stand on its own without requiring having read another fic/consumed another canon), and I’m not sure it will be. It would be all (or almost all) from the point of view of the SW characters, but I’m not sure that would quite cover what I need it to. And some of what I want to do (a much less Daunting variation on some of the Vision Quest stuff with Anakin without Kobol’s Vibes playing into it; some of what I want to do with Obi-Wan and a semi-OC of mine [who is technically a canon character but one with like two lines and no Official name]) might rely a little too much on knowledge of the second canon. While the Rex (& brothers) storyline might be a challenge for me since I haven’t touched on it much before, I don’t think it has the same problem. (Ahsoka is partly there because throwing a non-human into crossovers cuts through a lot of confusion and Misunderstandings; she’ll probably hang out with Boomer and/or another Eight who’s an OC of mine.)

…so all of that basically boils down to: I really need to try explaining all of this to someone who’s unfamiliar with BSG to be Sure, so definitely if you follow me and fit that qualification I’d appreciate your thoughts, but even if you are familiar with both fandoms…as a quick sanity check, does it seem feasible to make that work?

Option 2: Fleshing out Anakin and Ahsoka’s backstory in Devoted!Verse

The upside to this one is this is an AU I’m very fond of and have wanted to get back to for a while, and this would be centered on characters I write All The Time; plus the entire story is built on a very tight platonic/sibling/found family relationship which is always fun. And, while it would technically be part of a series, it could easily function as a standalone (without having to read the other stories in this AU) so I’m not worried about it meeting the challenge requirements. Plus, plenty of room for Cameos from other familiar faces/characters I like writing (Obi-Wan, Padme, Bail, and any Surviving Jedi and/or Inquisitors are off-limits but just about anyone else could pop up).

The downside here is sort of two problems, sort of the same one from two angles. Finding a specific/cohesive storyline in the like 7-10 years they’re together before running into Obi-Wan and Padme, and finding the right balance in tone with the awful stuff they go through and the fact that I want to write the two of them just being Siblings and Happy Together and Stealing Stuff Entertainingly. ...also it would involve a Lot of writing Kids, and while I’ve generally gotten positive feedback for Precipice/other AUs where I write Luke and Leia as kids...that’s different from a fic that will involve one focal character who is thirteen At The Oldest.

(I had also considered two other backstory pieces in the same universe; but fleshing out Padme’s backstory has some of the same problems despite having a few more goalposts along the way in terms of structuring the story, plus I’m not super interested in writing out how she and Obi-Wan came together at the moment though I do want to get there someday, and that would be a significant part of it. And Satine and Bo-Katan/Mandalore’s backstory also requires A Lot of thought and has even fewer goalposts, and might work better as background/a sidestory in the next arc of the main plotline where they actually Go to Mandalore rather than as a standalone story.)

Option 3: Building on this oneshot with Darth Lectys.

There are a lot of cool things I could play with in this one, lol. Some of which would be the same “let’s focus on Anakin and Ahsoka as Siblings” reasons I’m drawn to in Option 2; some of which would be that Lectys will be fun to write; some of which would be that whatever’s actually going on with Anakin/Padme/Obi-Wan/etc. is…well, ::gestures at 95% of the SW fic I’ve written/published:: it’s right smack in my wheelhouse, lol. And I do actually have an idea of where this one would go, more or less.

The problem is working out how the heck we actually got here, lol. Which, I mean, while it’s easier to summarize than the problems with the other two, that doesn’t make it any easier to actually resolve, so…yeah. Not an insignificant stumbling block, is what I’m saying.

Anyway, so that’s more or less where I am now. XD Feedback/opinions definitely appreciated, if anyone has any?

((in other news, TOB is very disorganized so no ETA on that because like. I need to get more of the miniseries sequence written before I can post it, lol; I swear I will get back to Protectors and/or Preludes at some point; Incinctus will probably flow if/when I sit down and rewatch the series or actually ask on the Castlevania discord for someone to bounce off of like I keep forgetting to do…anyway, hoping to get at least one of those out in the next couple weeks??? We’ll see where things go, lol.))

[magnhild]

ranking all of the star wars media i've seen so far because i think aside from andor (which i'm not watching til it's finished) i've watched all the (canon) pre-original trilogy content

(copied and pasted from my twitter)

10. solo

i won't say i disliked it but it didn't capture my attention either. it was kind of just there and i zoned out for most of it. i liked the droid but then she died :( i think it absolutely should've been allowed to be a comedy

9. rogue one

kind of the same story as solo; i don't really see why it needed to exist and nothing about it much interested me. i didn't actually like it any more than solo but i think if i flipped the ranking people would get mad at me.

8. the phantom menace

the beginning of my sw journey and yet sadly it did not leave much of an impact on me. the editing was. something. and it felt oddly-paced. sometimes the cgi and practical effects were really cool though (and sometimes they weren't).

7. attack of the clones

honestly this movie kind of felt all over the place? like so much happened but not really in a good way. the editing felt better than the first one though and it had less jar-jar which is always a good thing.

6. revenge of the sith

watching this after the clone wars added a lot more weight behind the events but also made anakin's turn so incredibly jarring. i feel like they really nerfed padme too :/ it's mostly the added context of the clone wars that puts this one above the other two in my eyes, even if it also manages to be a detriment. idk.

5. obi-wan kenobi

i think a lot of people didn't care for this one and i can see why but i thought it was fine. probably did not need to exist but young leia is the cutest little shit and her interactions with obi-wan really made the series for me. glad it was short though.

4. tales of the jedi

yeah i know it JUST came out but i'm putting it here anyway. on the ahsoka side of things i don't personally feel like her episodes added much except for maybe the first one bc i love backstory, but ahsoka is ofc my favourite character so i will never complain about more screentime for her. dooku's stuff was pretty interesting though and i like the context that it adds to his whole deal. i kind of feel we should've gotten it sooner tbh.

3. the clone wars

i think the main thing holding it bad a little for me is its length. i feel like it could've been cut down a fair bit, but for as many boring episodes as it had, there were plenty of great ones as well. i'd say that this is the piece of sw media that does the most for the franchise as a whole. it added SO MUCH context and opened up so many paths for more content. characters actually got to be characters, including the clones, and it makes the third movie hit that much harder. perhaps most importantly of all (this is a joke don't @ me), it gave us ahsoka, who i love very much, and who i find very interesting. i will never get sick of her.

2. the bad batch

though it had plenty of action and drama, the main draw of this show for me is the more lighthearted stuff. omega's addition to the sw cast was a very good decision and i loved every moment we got of her. to see a sw series that put more focus on family was really refreshing for me and i can't wait to see more of it next year. this show was also my first introduction to kanen and hera and goodness i had no idea what i was in for. 

1. rebels

if you've been paying any attention to my twitter at all this past week this should come as no surprise. like the bad batch, if there's one thing i loved most about rebels, it's the found family aspect. i loved seeing the main cast interact and all of their dynamics had a wonderful quality to them that i appreciated. and it gave me back ahsoka! and i love it for that. the entire show had this strong feeling of hope running through it, which of course made the second half of s4 hit all the harder for me. as much as kanan's death and everything surrounding it hurt me, however, i can only commend the series on the impeccable writing that led to that moment. everything was incredibly well-crafted, creating a moment that impacted me more than any other piece of media ever has before. it made me cry at fiction for the first time ever and i love it for that. but i also hate it for that. but i love it for that. i desperately hope that we'll get to see the main character again in the franchise's future, not just because i miss them dearly, but because i feel like none of their stories ar quite finished. i think there's a lot more we could see from them, with my biggest (and probably most unrealistic) hope being for a series focused on hera as she raises her son and works to move on from kanan's death, bc i feel like the series did Not give her enough time to grieve (not that i can blame it, war is busy). 

and there we have it! i don't know if my rankings are very controversial but, as i was saying last night on my twitter, i often enjoy tv shows more than movies, which is why they all ranked above them here. thank u for reading my long post.

[technoturian]

Okay, well, I watched Ahsoka.

I didn't have much investment in the plotline, as someone who DID watch Rebels but didn't enjoy it, I can't imagine how it was for people who never even watched Rebels. If you don't know or care about Ezra, Hera, Thrawn, the dathomir witches, etc, the Ahsoka show doesn't give you much reason to nor does it bother with more than a cursory explanation. Thrawn is especially a problem because they're setting him up like some SW Thanos and there was absolutely nothing about him that wasn't every other Imperial officer angling for succession. At least Gideon has his silly, narcissistic darktrooper obsession to make him stand out. Thrawn's just a chilly British guy who says "for the Empire" a lot. Groundbreaking.

Sabine was one of the few parts of Rebels that really stood out to me and they flattened her so much. Where's the artist? Where's the tech genius that was making superweapons in her early teens? How does it take until the last episode or so to talk about Mandalore? Her plot with Ahsoka happened so much off-screen that it lacked emotional punch. The only really exciting part of her storyline was when she chose to go with the enemy, and I was disappointed with how little conflict resulted from that. I loved that they went there at least, very unexpected considering Rebels' goodie-goodie "every episode must end with a heavy-handed moral lesson" thing that drove me up the wall.

As for Ahsoka herself... She felt like a generic jedi character for most of her screentime. That said, the visions of Anakin were some of the only stuff that landed emotionally for me and were definitely the highlight.

Ezra's actor did an amazing job, especially since I found Ezra to be a bit obnoxious in the cartoon and I found him so likable in Ahsoka, while still being very recognizable as the same character. The problem is the whole plot of finding him relies so heavily on the relationships and storylines built in a different show. I kept wondering how people who hadn't seen Rebels felt about this guy who has no backstory showing up with such obvious "main character" energy being put into him.

Also just an aside, wish they'd left out the contact lenses. It's not worth messing up the actors' eyelines and focus to match a cartoon character's eye color, I'm sorry but it's just not. Actually I feel like this is indicative of this whole experience: It was so important that all of the most minute details from Rebels made it in unchanged, regardless of how it hampered the show we were watching.

The only original -- at least, in that it didn't require investment in Rebels or Clone Wars -- idea this show presented that I was really invested in were the fallen jedi duo, who seemed full of potential... Until they ended up leading into a tease for the Mortis Gods, which is a plot I have less than zero interest in.

The show really just felt very flat, but in the exact opposite way The Book of Boba Fett was. TBoBF was all style and no substance, it didn't give me anything to care about. Ahsoka had a lot of substance and a lot of lore and just... a lot... happening, but it expected me to already care about it and skipped the part where it gave me a reason to.

If you're a Rebels fan you probably enjoyed it. (Maybe? I haven't really looked at reviews.) Which would make sense, because it was just a new half-season of the cartoon that inexplicably was made live action for no other reason than because these characters need to get some buy-in from the general audience before they show up in a team-up movie with the Mandalorian characters. I don't believe it makes a convincing argument for that buy-in.

PS: Also just as a KOTOR fan, the continued disrespect on the HK designation is intolerable. Justice for HK-47 and death to those personality-less pretenders.

[mrfandomwars]

Darth Vader? You mean Kane Starkiller?AU

Ok, so I remembered that originally Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker were two separate people (and that Leia wasn't Luke twin sister but a woman called Nellith Skywalker that was only going to appear on episode VI) and my mind went immediately to Star Wars: The Clone Wars and just-

Imagine this bratty little that's-where-Kylo-Ren-comes-from 13-year-old kid named Kane Starkiller that was about to be kicked out of the order because 'he is too angry' but Obi-Wan takes him in because he knows how that feels like and now Cody either is still a Marshall Commander and Kane becomes a 'Jedi' Commander or Cody becomes a Captain and Kane is the Commander now (which means someone else is now the Marshall Commander, maybe Wolffe or Bly? Maybe even Fox, so Palpatine has the highest-ranking clone under his thumb).

Anyway, Palpatine starts becoming 'friends' with him (since something probably happened that caused him to fail with Anakin, maybe Anakin got therapy and told someone something that Palpatine said to him that paint the Jedi in a bad light and they actually acted) and starts filling Starkiller's with things like "The Jedi Order is so bad, they wanted to kick you out when you have all this talent." "You poor boy, Obi-Wan doesn't give you a lot of attention, does he? He seems to only care about that Skywalker boy." (which is untrue, Obi-Wan loves his angry Padawan/kind-of-son and tries to pay as much attention as possible but there is a war going on so he has to talk about battle plans with people and has paperwork to do, and that's not even adding the fact that he is a kriffing high council member)"Skywalker obviously hates you, have you seen the things he blames you for?"(also untrue, Anakin will kick anyone who hurts his younger brother with Ahsoka close behind, besides, it's not his fault that Young!Vader is always causing trouble)"That girl, Ahsoka, she obviously sees you as competition and wouldn't mind if you 'mysteriously' died."(I dare you to hurt him with when Ahsoka is near because LISTEN, he may be mean to basically everyone that isn't Obi-Wan or Palpatine and sometimes he is horrible towards the clones but he has some funny jokes and sometimes when the 212th and 501st are working together he appears out of nowhere with meat and his book choices are dark and mostly poems/tragedies but they are GOOD (plus he understands the Padawan Generation W for War memes at the temple unlike sOME PEOPLE *Side eyes Obi-Wan and Anakin* so if you dare to hurt her younger (by a year) cousin you got a problem in your hands)).

Moving on, there are probably a lot of misunderstandings like that one time with Rako Hardeen were he was forced to become Quinlan’s/someone’s padawan or why Cody has the power to ground him.

(Side note: Kane is probably around 16 when he falls and Order 66 happens so don't think about that.

Also, Anakin probably died from a fatal wound in the battle of Mustafar and was only able to survive until a bit after the twins are born and named to request for them to be separated after Padmé died shortly after she gave birth to Luke and Leia/Nellith of some other injury she got when trying to convince her honorary younger brother to join the light side again and he was sure he wasn't going to be able to survive without her, even for their children.

Don't think about Anakin going with Mace and the other Jedi Masters to stop Palpatine and didn't want his padawan brother to be in a clearly dangerous fight that not all of them will come out of, especially unscathed and watching as Kane appear out of nowhere and betray the Order (their family) before becoming Darth Vader before escaping, heartbroken.)

The clones probably don't like him very much because he acts as if he is better than them and it took Obi-Wan threatening to ground him if he didn't call them by their name for him to actually do it but there are some things make him bearable, such as him making their Jetti smile, him sometimes helping in the med-bay which, while most brothers complaining about feeling cold and they having anger issues for a few weeks after he treats them, always makes more brothers survive, him dragging their General to the med-bay after a battle, between others.

(Another side note: It probably wasn't Fives that discovered about the chips in this au, because if he was, Anakin would probably believe him after they discovered that he was drugged sooo it was probably someone from the 212th who tried to talk to Cody and Kane about the chips and the fact that Palpatine was behind it. Idk why but I can see Boil discovering it.

Also, don't think about Cody stepping in front of Starkiller and trying to make him shut up and stop defending the Chancellor because he is clearly making thing worse and he doesn't want Boil his brother making something that they would regret later.)

Anyhow, I believe that if they followed the original plan, they would have made us like Vader a little bit more.

[nevertheless-moving]

i was Not expecting the timeline of the last point. this venerable peaceful space monk general Sith killer silver fox whose been showing a slutty little slice of collarbone for his whole repressed space monk life was out here recording greatest hits of queen - when? while back flipping through helping liberate a planet and using his funds to save the clones and idk, probably nursing a kitten at the same time. the clone who took a whole bunch of holos while he was the general goes from a respectable number of followers on space twitter and space youtube to being able to quit his job and move to a better house on social media revenue alone

yeah everyone is more than welcome to imagine their own public reveal version, I certain revolve many possible scenarios around in my head, many cakes and all that!

but 1) I get a certain delight in imagining full on Alec Guiness Obi-Wan being forced to deal with the absurd backstory that Obi-Wan has in this universe and also low key Ewan Mcgregor Obi-Wan's leaked nudes (sometimes you think of your best ideas in the shower! the data files were encrypted!! he managed to keep it a secret for over 30 fucking years, he really wasn't expecting a break-in at this point!!!! If there was going to be a break-in, he would have thought they would go for his military intelligence datapad!!!!! but nOOOOO)

just, like. B.K fans surrounding the temple and throwing their space panties at physically 58, mentally 81 year old Obi-Wan who is deeply done with this shit and too old to be climbing out the back window of Dex's, but is doing so anyway.

and 2) he feels someone walking over his grave just before the news starts to break. later he assumes this is because, you know, fuck. But us the audience can revel in the fact that this is just about when he joined the force in the original timeline

-

at any point that the reveal happens there are so many brains breaking because, as you already pointed out but it still bears repeating, Obi-Wan is ABSURDLY mary-sue in this au. someone does timelines and is like okayokay so he went. directly that photo where he's kindof smudged with charcoal and in a tank top carrying orphans,, he flew DIRECTLY from that to the studio and recorded good old fashioned lover boy?? two foundational moments of my sexual awakening?.?? ALRIGHT i'm just. I'm just gonna need a minute here. i'm just gonna look up real quick—oh fuck he's aged well, of course he's aged well he lives on coruscant, we don't have weather. oh fuck. oh fuck i guess i'm doing this. guess i'm going to the jedi temple. i'm a devoted father of three but i'm never gonna forgive myself if i don't at least TRY to shoot my shot.

-

And fuck yes a bunch of the clones who served right alongside him knew for a fact that he was BK and quite a few more strongly suspected what with the GAR footloose and private concerts/talent shows/music lessons/whatnot. No one was going to tell, obviously, even putting aside how much they owe Obi-Wan, there's how much they owe B.K, and they were literally bred for loyalty.

Buuut that doesn't mean they didn't have. some holos of commander kenobi shirtless and strumming. some holovids of the commanders humming to himself. Anakin playing air drums that you can inexplicably hear. the two of them jamming together on what sounds like an early version of Whatever It Takes.

something for a rainy day, or maybe retirement, if the news ever breaks—well—these might be worth something someday...

[yellowocaballero]

Obi-Wan’s a teen dad and Anakin DESPERATELY wants to do crime

A week after Obi-Wan formally took Anakin as his padawan, he left his quarters.

It hadn’t been Obi-Wan’s intention to spend a week lying in bed - or, at times, lying on the living room floor. Or staring blankly at the stove, or holding a toothbrush as he forgot what he was supposed to do with it. It had been his intention to handle the new...arrangements. Put on a brave face. Take care of business. There was so much to do, and Obi-Wan really did want to do it. But he stood in front of the stove staring at its knobs instead, lost.

Anakin had been a good sport about it, at least. He figured out alarmingly quickly how to work the stove and fry up the sliced fruit in their cupboards. Anakin didn’t understand that you didn’t fry fruit, but Obi-Wan ate it with little complaint. He put food in front of Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan ate it. When Anakin asked him, somewhat fearfully, how to use the shower, Obi-Wan showed him and then took one himself. After the third day he left the living quarters semi-frequently, which would have been worrying if Obi-Wan cared.

Obi-Wan’s depressed, grieving, and has an inferiority complex the size of an Alderaanian mountain. Anakin doesn’t know what’s happening, but he does know that the power grid failure was not his fault. Can Obi-Wan ever be a true Jedi and a competent master? Or is his backstory, as told by the Jedi Apprentice novels, too fucking weird?

Rest under the cut.

A week after Obi-Wan formally took Anakin as his padawan, he left his quarters. 

It hadn’t been Obi-Wan’s intention to spend a week lying in bed - or, at times, lying on the living room floor. Or staring blankly at the stove, or holding a toothbrush as he forgot what he was supposed to do with it. It had been his intention to handle the new...arrangements. Put on a brave face. Take care of business. There was so much to do, and Obi-Wan really did want to do it. But he stood in front of the stove staring at its knobs instead, lost. 

Anakin had been a good sport about it, at least. He figured out alarmingly quickly how to work the stove and fry up the sliced fruit in their cupboards. Anakin didn’t understand that you didn’t fry fruit, but Obi-Wan ate it with little complaint. He put food in front of Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan ate it. When Anakin asked him, somewhat fearfully, how to use the shower, Obi-Wan showed him and then took one himself. After the third day he left the living quarters semi-frequently, which would have been worrying if Obi-Wan cared. 

On day six, Obi-Wan worked up the energy to turn on his datapad, and was promptly bombarded with messages. They scrolled down the screen, a new one popping up every second. 

A lot of them were from his automated specialized education classes. Obi-Wan had finished the required padawan courses when he was sixteen, breezing through each course at his own pace virtually during downtime in transit and on missions. He had signed up for some Knight-level specialized education courses afterwards, loading as many on his plate as he could and managing special permission to complete them all virtually too. Apparently, he had a great deal of assignments due. 

Many messages from the Temple administration. Notification for mandatory forms to complete for requisitions, medical care...reports on the Naboo mission...a mountain of forms to complete for the promotion...a mountain of forms for the new padawan...a mountain of forms for processing Qui-gon’s death. 

Messages from his friends. How are you doing, Obi-Wan? Are you okay, Obi-Wan? Can we come over and talk, Obi-Wan? Obi-Wan, you stupid bastard, how dare you fight a Sith without me? 

Disturbingly, even the master of mission assignments had messaged him. Xe wanted to know if Obi-Wan was going to file for extended reprieve from missions to train his underage padawan in the Temple, or if he wanted to continue taking missions. Decide quickly, Knight Kenobi. Xe are willing to grant three years of light to no missions to help ‘facilitate Padawan Skywalker’s integration into the Jedi’.

The thought made Obi-Wan dizzy. No missions for years? He and Qui-Gon had barely gone weeks without a mission. But Obi-Wan had been thirteen, and Qui-Gon had a particular talent of taking an assignment to mediate standard legislative disputes and turn it into a three month embroilment in an endangered animal trafficking scheme. Staying stuck in the Temple for that amount of time made his skin crawl. Staying at home in the Temple so Anakin could integrate into the Jedi, become the Jedi he dreamed of...

Obi-Wan turned off the pad and tossed it across the room, letting it land on Qui-gon’s private meditation mat. Somehow, he couldn’t really bring himself to care. 

Five hours later, Obi-Wan dragged himself out of Qui-gon’s room to find Anakin lying on the floor with what looked like an entire droid disassembled over the carpet. He was kicking his feet in the air, lying on his stomach, stripping some frayed wire. 

Obi-Wan stared at him blankly, forms dancing behind his eyes. Anakin needed clothing. They had already processed him through his vaccinations - thank hell - and prescribed him some antibiotics for his multitude of intestinal parasites, but there was no way he was taking the pills. He needed to teach him how to braid the padawan braid. He needed to get them some food for the cabinets. He needed to…

“Are you hungry?” Obi-Wan rasped. His hair felt disgusting.

Anakin’s head snapped up, eyes widening. He scrambled off the rug, brushing a suspicious amount of dirt off his knees. “Yeah! I’ll make us that green thing!”

He shouldn’t let the nine year old work the stove. But Obi-Wan let him anyway, as he managed to somehow dump water in the kettle and place it on the stove, standing beside Anakin and waiting for it to whistle. 

I must be doing very well, Obi-Wan thought hysterically, as he stared at the old-fashioned durasteel kettle that Qui-gon had favored. He was releasing his emotions into the Force with perfection. He wasn’t feeling anything at all. He wasn’t thinking about Qui-gon. He wasn’t thinking about anything at all. His mind was clear and empty, and he was perfectly at peace. 

Obi-Wan tried to pour his tea, but he just couldn’t move. He stood and stared at the kettle for so long that Anakin eventually walked in and, straining on his tiptoes, sloshed the steaming water into the plastic white cup. 

***

On day seven, Obi-Wan managed to wrangle both himself and Anakin into some semblance of hygiene and clean clothes. Anakin needed a lot of help, which clearly embarrassed him, but Obi-Wan was too dead inside to be frustrated about it. 

He ended up tying his obi for him, as Anakin wriggled and tried to turn around to see it on the back. He’d have to show him how to do it himself later, but that was for later. 

“Why do I have to wear this?” Anakin whined. “It’s so heavy.”

“I’ll see if I can requisition you an outfit with less layers,” Obi-Wan said. A lighter outfit wouldn’t cut it, as Anakin had ramped up the temperature controls in their quarters a week ago and the rooms haven’t dipped below boiling ever since. “Hold still. Hold - hold still, please.”

“What does requisition mean?”

Anakin held still eventually. He managed to untie the obi in the first ten minutes, but Obi-Wan really couldn’t bring himself to care too much. Then they had to worry about brushing their teeth, and Obi-Wan had to teach him how to do that, and why was this so hard, why was everything so hard -

But when Obi-Wan eventually got them both out the door, he found no relief.The Temple felt different. Obi-Wan didn’t know how; just that it did. It was identical in every worldly way, yet mismatched in the Force. As if it was a different Temple, a pale echo from another dimension, that was the home of a different Obi-Wan. Or maybe Obi-Wan was different: maybe his Force signature was so warped and polluted that he tainted everywhere he went. 

They were all parts of the great whole of the Force. The Force was composed of every Jedi, every sentient being and eddy of wind. There were tens of thousands of Jedi in this Temple - how could the death of one man change it so thoroughly? Or had it just changed Obi-Wan?

Somewhat suspiciously, Anakin seemed to know the way out of the dormitories and into the main thoroughfare of the building. Obi-Wan kept a death grip on his little hand the entire time, slowing his steps so Anakin could keep up without having to jog. It didn’t stop him from trying to run forward every few steps, only for Obi-Wan to gently tug him back. 

“You weren’t supposed to run around the Temple by yourself,” Obi-Wan said flatly. Anakin grinned sheepishly, in what Obi-Wan was already beginning to recognize as his ‘Busted!’ face. 

“Why not?”

“You could have gotten lost.”

“I did get lost,” Anakin said proudly. “But then I found a secret service tunnel for the droids and I crawled through it and I found a server room and -” He stopped abruptly. “But that was way after the power outage yesterday. That I had nothing to do with.”

Obi-Wan...should probably care about this. 

He didn’t. He was too busy releasing his emotions into the Force, and returning his dark thoughts to the Force, and maintaining complete control over his body and spirit. There was no room in that for caring about Anakin, maybe, destroying the Temple.

Wasn’t he a teacher? Shouldn’t he be teaching?

“First rule of being a Jedi,” Obi-Wan said, exhausted, “learn to lie.”

There. That was a lesson. Qui-gon had said the same thing to him when he was fourteen. Obi-Wan was doing great at this. Anakin beamed and made a weird motion with his hand, clenching it into a fist and sticking his thumb out. Obi-Wan stared blankly at him until he put his hand down. 

Maybe it was because Obi-Wan was releasing all of his feelings and thoughts into the Force so well, but he couldn’t help but feel a constant prickling at the back of his neck. It felt like everybody was looking at them. A group of gossiping knights downright stopped talking when they saw Obi-Wan and Anakin approaching, and they broke out into whispers when they left. Padawans and initiates openly stared. Masters were too polite to stare, but their interest clearly peaked in the Force. 

By the time they got to the quartermaster’s and slid in line, Anakin was practically hiding behind Obi-Wan. Anakin had likely gone his entire life without anybody noticing him, blending into the background. Obi-Wan had learned almost a decade ago that it was a useful survival tactic for slaves. Although how he had ever done it, Obi-Wan would never know. The boy was a sun in the Force. Blinding and burnt, as broiling as the temperature he kept their quarters at. 

“Oh my. Padawan Kenobi, is that you?” Meela, the Quartermaster’s knight assistant, stopped and stared at both of them. She was carrying a large box of fabrics, and all of the other Jedi waiting in line stopped talking to crane their heads and stare too. “Oh! It’s knight now, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, before coughing. He hadn’t realized his voice was so hoarse - he hadn’t spoken to anybody but a nine year old in a week. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Meela.”

“Of course,” Meela said quickly. She was looking openly at Anakin, who was pointedly looking at Obi-Wan’s belt. “And you must be Anakin Skywalker! I had no idea you were so young. Is he even old enough to be a padawan, Knight Kenobi?”

“We determined that the creche wasn’t the best place for him.” Obi-Wan quickly grabbed his datapad, brought up the catalogue of items to requisition, and shoved it Anakin. “Pick out what we’re going to get. I’m certain you must be very busy, Knight Meela, so -”

“My, Padawan Kenobi?”

Obi-Wan refrained from gritting his teeth, before rotating on his heel. He stuck his hands in his sleeves, bowing to the aged Togrutan Jedi behind him. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Master Hashi.”

“My condolences for your master’s death,” Master Hashi said sympathetically. His watery old blue eyes were large and perfectly pitying. “It must be so difficult for you. And taking on a padawan so soon after your knighthood, as well.”

“He’s with the Force now,” Obi-Wan said. Smiling. He was smiling. Turn it down. Just a gentle smile. Remember Rishi. “But I appreciate your condolences.”

As it turns out, half the line just needed to express condolences for Master Jinn’s death, how sad, how tragic, how avoidable. He was so young. Obi-Wan was practically sweating by the time they got to the quartermaster’s desk, at which point he was promptly told that he was missing three forms. 

Obi-Wan stood in front of the quartermaster’s desk, gripping Anakin’s hand in his, trying not to unwind. “But I filled out the application on the portal -”

“Yes, but you need your knight’s identification code,” the Quartermaster said briskly. “You input your padawan code.”

“How do I find out my knight’s identification code?”

“It should be on your identification card, son.”

“I was only knighted a week ago.” They were staring. They were all staring - “They haven’t issued me a card yet.”

“I’ll refer you to my assistant, Knight Kenobi.”

Anakin tugged on Obi-Wan’s sleeve. “Are we not getting my new clothing?”

A horrible tremor rose in Obi-Wan’s chest: a choking, sinking feeling. It crawled up his throat, making his trachea burn and his head pound. It felt like a balloon expanding, splintering his chest cavity and threatening to crack him apart. 

Everybody was watching. They could not see it. Think about Rishi. Do not let them see it. 

After fifteen humiliating minutes sitting at a sympathetic Meela’s desk, Obi-Wan finally managed to secure them some clothes. Anakin also received the standard pack of Jedi personal items, including his own toiletries and datapad. They secured an identification code for Anakin and input him into the database, and gave him his own lanyard and set of cards. Older Jedi tended to keep them in a hidden pocket in their robes, but for obvious reasons they affixed them to the neck of younger children. 

But, without the identification code and five hundred more hoops, Obi-Wan couldn’t request a new living quarters and new furniture. He thanked Meela for her time anyway, stopped Anakin from attempting to requisition a B900-A40 droid with HyperFlex specs, and escaped something as simple as the Quartermaster’s trying to avoid rattling apart. 

Obi-Wan only exhaled when they were outside, looking at his datapad and marking off the first line. The to-do list scrolled down the screen, and onto another page. Anakin was already shifting from foot to foot, bored. 

“One down,” Obi-Wan said. “Three more.”

“Do we have to?” Anakin whined. “Why were the other Jedi so mean?”

Obi-Wan stopped short. He looked down at Anakin, who was fiddling with his obi again. “Stop messing with that. And they weren’t being mean, Anakin, they were just concerned.”

But Anakin just wrinkled his nose. “They were being mean. They were making you feel bad.”

How had he even - “If you keep quiet through the errands, you can have some fruit for lunch at the commissary.”

“Wizard!”

****

It quickly became obvious that nobody approved of Obi-Wan and Anakin.

Whispers followed them everywhere. Masters, old friends of Qui-gon, subtly disapproved of his choices. Which was nothing new - Obi-Wan had silently suffered almost everybody in the Temple disapproving of Qui-gon to him for years - but somehow it made Obi-Wan want to tear his hair out. The knights - the other knights - expressed incredulity that somebody knighted that morning received a padawan that afternoon. The padawans refused to even talk to Anakin, and he very quickly stopped trying. 

Obi-Wan’s own friends...he did not have many. He was never in the Temple long enough to significantly interact or make connections with any other padawans or knights. He was never home for longer than a few weeks, and if he was planetside for longer than a month then it was because Qui-gon was recuperating from getting blown up when Obi-Wan hijacked a pirate ship and crash landed it on a small moon. 

He used to have friends. Bant and Garen and Reeft and Siri...but a small and horrible part of Obi-Wan hated talking to them. A conversation with them always felt like they were trying to communicate with an Obi-Wan who hadn’t existed for a very long time, crying out over an impassable canyon. Meanwhile, Obi-Wan had begun resenting people who saw through him. 

Anakin was a stubborn and implacable kid, but he was very perceptive. He clung tighter and tighter to Obi-Wan’s robes the further they walked into the temple, and eventually Obi-Wan had to disentangle him and give him a quick talk about appropriate behavior. It was his tenth talk to Anakin about appropriate behavior - about everything from using utensils to washing his hair - but this was the first time he seemed to understand why. 

“So they don’t like you if you don’t do all the dumb stuff they do?”

“It’s not dumb,” Obi-Wan hissed. “And keep your voice down, this is a library.”

Judging from Anakin’s impressed gawking, this was his first time in a library. He clearly didn’t understand why they were supposed to be quiet either, and Obi-Wan was beginning to understand that Anakin refused to do anything unless you gave him a reason. 

Obi-Wan carefully placed him in a small chair in the children’s section, in front of a brightly colored plastic table. Some other initiates were sitting around coloring, or working their way through children’s books. Anakin squinted up at him judgmentally as Obi-Wan frantically grabbed the clunky and friendly library datapad and scrolled through the catalogue until he found a likely suspect. Bugs of Rainforest Planets, light on the words, perfect. 

“Just stay here until I come back,” Obi-Wan whispered, after a hurried explanation of why they were quiet in libraries. “Don’t leave this chair. Please.”

“I want more fruit,” Anakin warned. 

“You will have more fruit. Now please don’t move.”

This was not how you Jedi masters taught padawans. This was not how it was supposed to work. Obi-Wan was not doing this right. He was doing this terribly. And everybody knew, and everybody was judging him.

The children’s librarian was a kind, plump older Twi’lek with long silver lekku down to her waist. Madame Hallan had been a personal favorite of Obi-Wan’s when he was a youngling, and he knew that she still had a soft spot for him. She was probably the only librarian who didn’t explicitly distrust him.

He easily kidnapped her for a meeting - or, maybe, she took one look at his face and kidnapped him - and she shepherded him into her office. He had never been inside, and Obi-Wan felt weirdly on the other end of the fence of his childhood. It was bright and cheerful and had datapads scattered everywhere with tax forms. 

“I understand you have a new padawan,” Madame Hallan said kindly. “I saw him reading. He seems like a wonderful boy.”

She and half the temple understood that he had a new padawan. “I need your help,” Obi-Wan said, excruciatingly impolitely. Since when was Obi-Wan impolite? Since when was he lost? “It’s Anakin - I need to enroll him for lessons and I need some introductory literature for him and -”

“Dear, you’ll want to talk to Master Ravenholme for that.” Master Ravenholme was the Master of Education, and personal blight of many. “He’ll likely ask Anakin to take a placement test to determine which classes he joins.”

“Anakin can’t take a placement test,” Obi-Wan said. “He can’t read.”

To Madame Hallan’s credit, and raising a lot of questions about what exactly the other Jedi knew about Anakin, she accepted the information with a thoughtful look and a nod. “Does he know his letters and some words, or is it total illiteracy?”

Obi-Wan scrubbed his face. He was perched in the uncomfortable metal chair across from her desk, elbows propped on his knees. “It’s sporadic. He’s not totally illiterate, and I think he can read mechanical instruction manuals and labels and signs and that sort of thing...if it has to do with starfighters, he can write the instruction manual...I don’t know, I haven’t checked, but I can’t send him to class like this…”

“Calm yourself, Obi-Wan. Release that tension into the Force. Let’s take this one step at a time,” Madame Hallan said firmly, as Obi-Wan carefully breathed. “I will schedule a  reading and writing assessment appointment for Anakin for an assessment. Knight Fu and Knight Kili are available to administer personal tutoring until we get him up to speed.” Fu and Kili were two teachers in the special education department, which was somewhat lean for children over the age of ten or so. Most of the ‘delayed’ children were quickly assigned to the Jedi Corp. Obi-Wan was highly educated on this, and shamefully bitter. “Now, doesn’t that sound like a plan?”

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Good.” Madame Hallen typed something out on her computer, making Obi-Wan’s datapad ping. “I’ve sent you a few of the handbooks that we give new knights and first-time teachers. Hopefully they’ll be of some use to you.” She smiled reassuringly at him, oozing serenity. “I think you will make a wonderful teacher, Obi-Wan. Our Temple’s never seen a young Jedi as dedicated and hardworking as you.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

 “And I’m certain that once you and Anakin get settled in, no matter where he came from, he will make an excellent student. We’re all Jedi here, after all.”

Betting was not Jedi-like behavior, despite the fact that Obi-Wan was a world-class betting champion on three Outer Rim worlds (there had been a diamond heist), but Obi-Wan would bet five hundred credits right now that Anakin was not in the chair where he had left him.

In the end, Obi-Wan was pleasantly surprised. Anakin, obviously, was not in the chair where Obi-Wan had left him, but he was within easy searching distance and hadn’t destroyed any droids yet. Instead, he had just meandered to the large picture encyclopedia propped up on a wooden stand, flipping through the flimsi with wide eyes. 

Obi-Wan stood next to him, unable to smile but amused all the same. “Do you know what that is?”

Anakin nodded fervently. “It’s an encyclopedia! The padawan guy said it has pictures of every smart species in the galaxy.”

There were, of course, digital databases for these things, but kids loved flipping through things. “Sentient species. Did you learn anything?”

“Yeah!” Anakin lingered on a picture of a Togruta before flipping further at light speed. “The padawan guy said that Qui-gon was a ‘rogue Jedi’ and that he taught you how to do crime and conquer planets and backflip and stuff.”

Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose. Hard. “Please don’t listen to Temple gossip, Anakin. It’ll jump down Coruscant while the truth takes an airlift.”

“But you can do backflips, I saw it.” Anakin turned to look at him - eyes wide, unjudging. “What does ‘rogue Jedi’ mean?”

What did it mean? Obi-Wan had spent half his life wondering. “It means that Qui-gon and I had a lot of adventures,” Obi-Wan said tactfully. “My training was somewhat unconventional in comparison with many other Jedi.”

But Anakin just beamed. “That’s so cool! Is my training going to be uncon - unconvectional?”

“Unconventional.” Obi-Wan sighed. “And at this point, I’m afraid so.”

Was Anakin going to resent him for this once he grew older? He must. Anakin would never be a real Jedi, a proper one. Just like Obi-Wan wasn’t. And Obi-Wan had spent almost a decade now frantically, fervently, desperately trying. He had done everything: mastered the art of saber-fighting, excelled in as many topics as he could. He was an expert in diplomacy, politics, ecology, and tactics. Everybody who met Obi-Wan found him charming, graceful, and handsome - and nobody who ever met Obi-Wan liked him. He topped his classes, was better at saberplay than most knights, and had personally saved the lives of three princesses and a memorable duchess, and he couldn’t figure out how to be a Jedi.

Obi-Wan couldn’t teach what he didn’t have. And he would never be able to give -

“Cool! I want to backflip and conquer planets too.” Anakin grinned up at him, yellow teeth flashing in the soft library lights. “I already know how to do crime, I’m really good at it!”

“Jedi have diplomatic immunity, so technically I’ve never done a crime,” Obi-Wan said, somewhat testily. 

“What’s diplomatic immunity?”

“Lesson number two, padawan, is that it means we can do whatever we want so long as we can justify it in the mission report.”

“Wizard!”

Maybe Obi-Wan should just never repeat anything Qui-gon had ever said to him. Ever. 

In a roundabout act of bribery, Obi-Wan finally led Anakin towards the cafeteria. It wasn’t lunchtime, but few Jedi strictly followed the guidelines of breakfast, lunchtime, and dinnertime. This was mostly because the creche and Initiates did, and nobody wanted to be in the cafeteria while children were everywhere. Obi-Wan was somewhat infamous in certain circles for braving the cafeteria at 0500 hours, when the space was completely overtaken by retired and venerated Masters sipping tea and playing intense grudge matches of shogi. Obi-Wan had been forced into the matter by his habit of waking up at 0430, but the shogi skills he learned had once settled a trade negotiation between two tribal groups with an ancestral grudge on a Mid-Rim planet, so he had no regrets.

Anakin was practically crushing his hand in excitement. His head whipped around everywhere, eyes wide and drinking in the sublimely banal and boring sight. There was the salad bar, there was the meat bar, there was the drink fountain...but to Anakin, it was the most amazing thing on Coruscant. It almost made Obi-Wan smile. When was the last time he had that expression on his face? Even the beautiful spires of Naboo were commonplace to him. 

“And they just -”

“Yes, they just give you the food.” Obi-Wan stopped in the center of the crowded thoroughfare - where, thankfully, everybody was far too focused on their meal or their friends to care about the Temple’s newest spectacle. “I’m sorry, Anakin. What do you...eat, again?”

Anakin suffered this atrocious act of caretaking patiently. What had he been eating until now? Just the self-stable noodles? Had he been handling boiling water?! “At home we ate jinjaraak and ekijun. People with money had fruit and stuff.” He looked around hopefully. “And they just give you fruit -”

“Right,” Obi-Wan said. He struggled to remember the food Shmi had served them. It had been mostly gruel. Obi-Wan had been around the block enough to see that she had been an adept cook of terrible ingredients. “Could you give me an idea of what those are?”

“Uh…” Anakin made little slapping motions with his hands. “Jinjaraak is from clay and lard and spices. I help Mom make little cakes. Like this, see?” At Obi-Wan’s dubious expression, he quickly clarified, “From the good clay. Near the dried up rivers. Not the bad clay. That stuff makes you sick. O’la’rek ate some of that and she got super sick and she barfed up blue -”

  “Let’s get you some fruit,” Obi-Wan said.

Anakin got as much fruit as he wanted. Obi-Wan was too busy thinking about what ‘good clay’ could possibly mean to stop him. He could take the extra back to their quarters, anyway. 

There was a line for medical diets, and Obi-Wan eventually shuffled an ecstatic fruit-chomping Anakin into that line. He had to present the script the Halls of Healing gave him to the friendly yet belaboured Padawan working the booth that day, and waited patiently as the Padawan squinted at it and ran off to go get his supervisor. Anakin was in Rylothian Heaven, complete with the trees of plenty. 

Eventually the supervisor shuffled out, and when Obi-Wan recognized Master Law he bowed. The gruff Patitite squinted at Obi-Wan, then down at the effervescent Anakin with jogan juice staining his sleeve. It was a good thing Obi-Wan thought ahead and ordered extra robes.

“Kenobi,” Master Law finally said, with an air of crisp memory. “Iron deficiency.”

“Yes, Master.” Please don’t remind him. “I’m here with a prescription for my -”

“And the Vitamin D deficiency. And malnutrition?” Master Law squinted further at Obi-Wan, as if half-convinced that he couldn’t possibly be remembering correctly. “I had you eating Lo’rok paste for a month.”

“Yes, Master. After I was stationed on Neskar.”

“How the blazes was a Padawan stationed on -” Master Law cut himself off abruptly, staring down at Anakin instead. He looked him up and down with sharp eyes, seemingly picking out a dozen things that Obi-Wan just couldn’t see. “I’ll get you the nutrient shakes. See that he has one with every meal, three meals a day. I’m prescribing extra vitamin gummies, he’s a bit yellow. Those dietician hacks at the Halls of Healing don’t know anything about real food.”

Obi-Wan really didn’t want to get in the middle of that, so he just nodded. But Anakin blinked up at the man, flecks of seeds caught on the corner of his mouth. “What’s a gummy?”

“A very sweet, tasty candy,” Master Law said gravely. “Which young Padawans only receive when they are very brave.”

Anakin brightened. “What’s candy?”

“The best food in the galaxy.” Master Law’s stern countenance split into a sharp smile. “Seems like that’s just what the doctor ordered. If you’ve never had any, then that means I have to prescribe you a double dose.”

Anakin grinned to match, bright and wide, with yellow teeth and crinkled eyes. “That means I’m brave! I’m super brave! Padme said so, and you said so, so it’s like I’m extra brave!”

For some reason that he just couldn’t parse, Obi-Wan found himself anxiously saying, “I think you’re brave too, Anakin.” 

“Triple brave!”

The cafeteria was quickly proving to be Anakin’s favorite place in the Temple. Obi-Wan was reasonably certain that this was a good thing, because it made Anakin happy and happiness was good. That was a reliable fact of the universe: when happiness was scarce, sweet food could usually supply it. Sometimes you took what you could get.

Obi-Wan made an uncharacteristic move and placed a great deal of sugar on his oatmeal. Dumping sugar on oatmeal was crazy. This was probably what going insane felt like. Obi-Wan felt like a criminal. 

“You’re very boring, Obi-Wan,” Anakin said judgmentally. 

“I’m afraid so,” the ten time war veteran agreed. 

It could be worse. Nobody was around to see his shame but Anakin, and the small child wouldn't squeal. All he had to do was ply Anakin with nutrition shakes and fruit, take him back to their quarters, not leave their quarters again for another two weeks in order to recover from this experience, and -

“Obi-Wan! Goodness, Obi-Wan!”

Both Obi-Wan and Anakin jumped a foot in the air, Anakin fighting to keep his food balanced on his child-sized tray. But Obi-Wan recognized the voice, the smooth familiarity soothing his panicking heart and calming down his padawan by connection. 

Despite the fact that the voice was the last person he wanted to see.

Bant didn’t run, because she was a respectable Knight, but she did speedwalk in a dignified waddle towards Obi-Wan and Anakin. Anakin subtly slid closer to Obi-Wan, which he should really discourage. 

“Obi-Wan! Oh, goodness, you - you jerk, you big jerk!” Bant wrung her flippers, jowls shaking with the clear uge to wrap up Obi-Wan in her patented tight hug and foiled only by the tray that Obi-Wan was holding in front of him like a shield. “You’re an absolute bantha’s - oh!”

She had just noticed Anakin, who held his tray tightly. He was frowning at Bant, and Obi-Wan could feel a twinge of childish bad emotion across their still nascent bond. Wait. What bond?

Bant was oblivious, or put on a good show of it. “You must be Padawan Skywalker,” she said warmly. She bent down a little, and Obi-Wan was struck by nostalgia for her glimmering eyes and bright smile. Bant loved kids. Obi-Wan never had. “It’s so good to meet you! Have you been taking care of your silly master for me?”

Anakin pursed his lips judgmentally. “My teacher’s not silly,” Anakin said, a bit loudly. “He’s great and smart and does backflips. It’s not his fault he’s a jerk!”

Never mind. Obi-Wan was never taking Anakin out in public again. He carefully destroyed the urge to wince, settling for smiling weakly at Anakin. Bant looked a little taken back - shocked by the idea that Anakin could have taken her friendly teasing seriously. Or maybe that he would openly call Obi-Wan a jerk. Obi-Wan wasn’t going to contest it. It was fair. 

“Bant’s my best friend, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, with as much warmth as he could muster. His smile was looking more pathetic than anything, so he dropped it. “She knows how good my backflips are.”

“The best in the Temple!” Bant immediately swore up and down. “I’m awfully sorry, Anakin. I think your master’s the coolest guy here. Come on, why don’t you two come eat lunch with me and the rest of Obi-Wan’s friends? We’ve all been dying to meet the newest member of the family!”

A stone sank in Obi-Wan’s gut. He looked over the crowd, effortlessly picking out the familiar table in the back center. Sure enough, he saw the telltale gawks of Siri and Quinlan.

Joy. The two people he wanted to talk to the least. Those two ate Obi-Wan for breakfast on a good day. They would devour him now. They could smell weakness on him. He couldn’t get anything past them. They would take one look at him and know, just know - 

“Obi-Wan has friends?” Anakin asked dubiously. “But he just stays in his room all day.” Went tactfully unsaid: and nobody likes him. 

Somehow, the emotional obstacle course his friends were going to put him through was more appealing than the cold judgement of the nine year old. “I have plenty of friends,” Obi-Wan lied through his teeth. “Let’s go say hi.”

It felt like walking to the guillotine. Actually, Obi-Wan had walked to a guillotine before, and this was - no, it wasn’t worse. Hadn’t he done it twice? The first time was stressful, because he wasn’t sure if Qui-Gon had seduced the prison guard yet. The second time was fine, since he had hidden his lightsaber in the loose floorboard under the guillotine before he set up his own capture. So -  better than the first time, worse than the second time. 

Bizarrely, Siri and Quinlan grinned when they saw them. Obi-Wan was actively fighting the urge to hide behind the nine year old. The nine year old who he couldn’t possibly have formed a training bond with - he had been his padawan all of a week, it was impossible - but who had undoubtedly sensed his anxiety anyway. 

“Obi-Wan, I can’t fucking believe it,” Quinlan shouted, far too loudly. He and Bant’s trays were empty, while the slow eater Siri’s bowl of grains were half-eaten. They had been there for a while, probably hours, talking about life. He had always left after thirty minutes. He had stuff to do. “I must have left you ten damn voicemails -”

“You son of a varnaak.” Siri had a death grip on her spoon, wielding it like a lightsaber. “I’m strangling you with your intestine. Not inviting me to your own knighting -”

“If you’re going to be mean, we’re leaving!” Anakin interrupted, voice high and reedy. “I already said so! I will stomp your feet!”

“You’re not allowed to stomp their feet, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said, exhausted beyond measure. “Hello, all. Save the interrogation for after we’ve eaten, please.”

And maybe it was the sheer power of Anakin and his mighty feet, but his friends quieted enough for Obi-Wan to shove sugary oats into his mouth and for Anakin to polish off his fruit before starting in on his nutrient shake. Obi-Wan had to stop and take a napkin and wipe the seeds off the corner of his mouth, and help him to insert the straw in the protein shake, but the act of sucking on a straw amused Anakin and he didn’t hate the taste. There were friendly animal species on the cup. Special nutrient shake for chronically malnourished children - now with bright colors! 

His friends just watched them, without even food to make the environment faux-casual. Their dark eyes seemed to follow him, and Obi-Wan felt his skin crawl. He didn’t want to deal with this. He could barely deal with Quinlan on a good day, much less...today. Any day, lately.

Finally, his grace period seemed to tick down to zero, and Quinlan broke the ice with a fishing spear and an excess of exuberance. “Is this the famous little guy we’ve heard so much about? I hear you’re a good pilot, kid!”

And, just like that, Quinlan was Anakin’s favorite person on Coruscant. “I’m the best pilot,” Anakin asserted arrogantly. Obi-Wan mentally noted the tendency for arrogance and pride down in the ‘Goal Setting!’ part of his brain that was half-heartedly drafting a training curriculum. “I can blow up anything and anyone.”

“Sounds like Quinlan,” Siri snickered. Unlike Bant, she was terrified of children, but she hid it well. “He and your master are Joballian twins that way. Those two could start a fire in deep space.”

“So who are you people?” Anakin asked. Obi-Wan put ‘unbelievably blunt’ in his mental training curriculum. “Are you really Obi-Wan’s friends? He doesn’t like you.”

“I like them very much,” Obi-Wan said rotely. Quinlan pantomimed a shot to the heart. 

But Bant just smiled down at Anakin, unflappable. “You’re a padawan, young one. You should call Obi-Wan your master. It’s good to be polite.”

“Why should I have to do that?” Anakin’s voice tinged a little louder, and at a pointed look from Obi-Wan he toned it down. Siri’s eyebrows rose. “He’s my teacher, not a master of no one.”

Bant winced a bit, and all three of them rippled discomfort in the Force. So they knew, even though it wasn’t totally public knowledge. Quinlan had undoubtedly used his ridiculous clearance as a Shadow to access the Naboo mission records and spilled the details to them. Keeping it professional, as always. 

“Master means something very different to Jedi,” Bant said gently. “It’s a special relationship between two people. Every Jedi teaches and learns from each other, but your master is the person who guides you and makes sure you go to bed on time. It’s just the same word for a very different thing than you’re used to.”

“What do you mean by that?” Anakin gnawed on his straw suspiciously. “I thought Obi-Wan was the one who taught me.”

Quinlan, who had far more experience with the wider world than Siri and Bant, caught on first. He propped his elbows on the table, and Obi-Wan saw him visibly struggle for the ‘wise teacher’ tone before giving up. “The Jedi have different relationships than you’re used to, kid. Who took care of you and watched you all day back home?”

This was heading into dangerous territory, and Obi-Wan frowned dangerously at Quinlan, but Anakin just hummed. “Mom took care of me and we moved around together. But Old Lady Hun watches me and the other kids in the gathering space when Mom’s busy. And when Jipol was sick, Mom and I took care of her two daughters. And Old Man Wa taught me how to fix things. And -”

“Right. So the Jedi are like that. Instead of a very small number of people raising kids, every adult raises every kid. So, for example, any Jedi would tell you to stop running in the halls or stop you from misbehaving -”

“And every Jedi did, with this one,” Siri added. 

“ - but any Knight or Master would help you with your homework, too,” Quinlan finished, elbowing Siri. “We all help each other here. We share food, stuff, school, and teachings. That’s why we practice nonattachment - everything’s everybody’s, not just yours. Make sense?”

Anakin’s brow was furrowed. He paid close attention to everything - chewing everything over again and again until it made sense. Obi-Wan shoveled oatmeal in his mouth, glad Quinlan was doing this. “Why does nonattachment mean you don’t get moms or dads?”

Dangerous territory. Bant opened her mouth to say something soothing, but Quinlan beat her to the punch. “Well, to Jedi, we think the idea of just putting two or three people in charge of kids is pretty crazy. Kids are loud and bouncy. One or two people would get totally stressed out and make mistakes. And imagine just a few people teaching you about life. They could believe all this crazy stuff, and then so would you.”

“And what if the parent’s being a total jerk?” Siri pointed out. “Then the kid’s stuck with that. But when there’s other people around, they can stop and tell the parent that they’re being a total jerk. Then they have to cut it out.”

Anakin narrowed his eyes. “So nobody beats their kids here because the other Jedi would get mad?”

Awkward silence loomed. Finally, Quinlan said, “Yeah, totally. Anyway, that’s why our way rocks and makes sense. Boom. Teaching moment.” Quinlan slapped the table in victory. “We are so good at this. We’re going to be the greatest teachers ever, Anakin. Forget lame old Obi-Wan, he’s going to lead you down the path of boring. Stick with Knight Vos, I’m gonna lead you down the path that rocks.”

At Anakin’s deeply confused expression, Bant put a hand on his back. But when she spoke she spoke to Obi-Wan, gleaming eyes boring into his. “We’re Obi-Wan’s best friends. We’re going to be here for you almost as much as Obi-Wan is. None of us have padawans yet, so we’re all really excited to help you! Did you know I’m a doctor?”

Anakin perked up. He respected doctors highly - apparently it was a very prestigious position on Tatooine. “Wow! Obi-Wan’s friends with a doctor?”

“And I’m a superspy action hero, kid!” Quinlan flexed, tossing his dreads. “I can teach you how to hack into anything!”

“I’m a better pilot than anyone at this table.” Siri awkwardly waved her fist in the air in a pantomime of excitement. “I’ll help you...fly things. Which you can apparently already do. But I’ll teach you how to do it better.”

The idea was heady to Anakin. His eyes widened, filled with possibility and excitement. Of smiling adult faces, wanting to help. But he looked at Obi-Wan instead, fear sneaking in through the gap bored by long experience with misery. “So what does a master do, then?”

Obi-Wan smiled wanly at Anakin. Experimentally, he tried sending him as much warmth as possible. He didn’t have much to spare, but Anakin seemed to appreciate the sentiment. “I’ll protect you, Anakin. And I’d like it if you continued calling me Obi-Wan.”

And he knew that meant more to Anakin than all the rest. At least Obi-Wan won there. 

Although Obi-Wan had gone his entire life despairing for Quinlan’s future padawan, he somehow handled Anakin wonderfully. Even Siri awkwardly asked a question about Anakin’s favorite kind of ship - clearly expecting an answer along the lines of ‘a big one!’ or ‘one that shoots lasers!’ - and sat through Anakin’s ten minute scientific dissertations on the difference in engine ports between Genoshian Special X100 and Genoshian Special X200. 

When’s the last time Obi-Wan had a long conversation with Anakin, where they just talked about nothing? He’d been so selfish, focusing entirely on himself and not even thinking about Anakin. His friends were doing this a thousand times better than he was. They should be the one with a padawan, not him. Qui-Gon hadn’t thought he was ready for knighthood until - well, until it was convenient, but if it took him this long to be knighted he ought to be forty before he got a padawan. 

In a characteristically deft maneuver, Quinlan had flagged down a friend of his - Ku Lun, a friendly face and teacher to the Initiates - and gave Anakin a real world lesson in Jedi togetherness by asking him to walk Anakin back to their quarters. Anakin shot a panicked look at Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan deeply wished to send a panicked look back, but he just nodded supportively. 

“Don’t you want to ask Knight Lun about lessons?” Obi-Wan said. “You can work together to design your school.”

The concept of school, and the power to choose it, was obviously heady to Anakin, and he jumped off the bench with only a tinge of reluctance. “Come back to the room in thirty minutes or you’re fired,” Anakin told Obi-Wan gravely, yet nonsensically, before running off with Knight Lun. 

It wasn’t until the sounds of Anakin’s chattering faded, then disappeared completely, that Obi-Wan turned back to his friends with a sigh. Their plot had worked. Quinlan and Siri’s perfect score in tactics - second only to his more than perfect score - had won again. He was subject to the masses, and the masses were stressed over his wellbeing. 

Better make the pre-emptive strike. “Greetings, my honored friends,” Obi-Wan said dully. “My very best friends in the galaxy, whom I have not spoken to in months.”

“And whose fault is that, you asshole!” Quinlan thumped the table, making the plasteelware rattle, and cuing a withering look from Bant. “You drop out of contact. You leave on a routine diplomatic mission. You get wrapped up in an interplanetary war, obviously, because that’s how your routine missions always go. And you come back with a kid and the head of a Sith?”

“You have the situation well in hand, Quinlan. There’s nothing more I can teach you.”

“Idiot! I’m not asking for a mission report, here.” Quinlan set his mouth, as tempestuous as ever. “Are you okay?”

Was he okay?

Maybe Bant caught something on his expression, because she placed a reassuring flipper on his arm. “We’re sorry about Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan. We know how much he meant to you. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

“You can’t get rid of us just because you don’t talk to us.” Siri scooped the rest of her oats in her mouth, clearly regretful that she no longer had something to hide behind. “Reeft and Garen feel the same way. You’re lucky Garen’s on a mission, or he would have staked out your door.” He would have. Garen was insane. “I know they waived the two weeks in solitude considering your circumstances, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need it. Anakin needs -”

“As his master, I have the best idea of what Anakin needs.” Obi-Wan kept his voice flat, dispassionate. He wasn’t a child anymore, not that impetuous Initiate who yelled and stomped and screamed. Obi-Wan had drowned that anger under thick layers of Jedi robe years ago. “I appreciate and understand your concern. However, I ask for faith in my abilities to handle my padawan.”

“Oh, no. Not the ‘I Am A Perfect Jedi And You Are The Irresponsible Bugs Beneath My Feet’ voice.” Siri didn’t sound amused, as she normally would be while making fun of him. What was funny about speaking properly? “Don’t shut down on us.”

“I’ve never understood where you got the impression that Jedi don’t have feelings, Obi-Wan,” Bant scolded, “but you know it’s not true. Jedi feel their feelings. They feel them and release them. This is you repressing them. They’re just going to fester and get worse if you do that.”

“Yes, Bant. I recieved top marks in Philosophy 101, same as you.” Obi-Wan picked at his sealed up, the rims of thick juice sloshing in the corners, before forcing himself to stop. He forced his hands still on the table, pressing them down hard on the linoleum. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I don’t know what good a confession would do to all of you. Obviously I miss my master. Obviously I’m all…very sad about it.” Obi-Wan jerked his shoulders in a half-shrug, ignoring everyone’s unimpressed looks. “What good will talking about it do? I have to remain focused. In the real world, you don’t get the luxury of hermitage.”

“Luckily, you’re not in the real world.” Bant’s wry tone imparted the air quotes around ‘real world’. “You’re home. You and Anakin are safe here.” Obi-Wan snorted. “Knight Kenobi, what was that?”

Uh oh. But Siri unknowingly came to his rescue, leaning forward with as intent and sympathetic expression as she could wring from her usually severe countenance. “Don’t give me that dung, Obi-Wan. I cried for a month after Master Tahl died. You were there for me every second of it. What, are you so special that you don’t need help? Are you so much better than us that you don’t feel what every sentient feels? Your ‘better than you’ attitude doesn’t make you better than yourself.”

Bant made a warbling sound of frustration. “Siri, let’s not insult the person we are trying to help.”

“It’s not my fault he’s so - look, this is about Anakin -”

A tightly wound rope of...of something bad snapped in Obi-Wan’s gut. “You don’t think I can handle him.”

“Nobody’s saying that, brother,” Quinlan said, placating for the first time in his life, “but it’s like I was just telling the little guy, right? Nobody can do this by themselves. Cultures that try to do it are - they’re just crazy!”

“None of you think I can do this,” Obi-Wan whispered harshly, trying to keep the - the bad thing locked tight inside, incapable. It wouldn’t stop overflowing, a cup that runneth over. “Nobody in this Temple thinks I’m capable of taking care of him. They don’t think he can be a Jedi. It’s my fault. It’s because he has such a fuck-up for a master.”

Everybody around him suddenly radiated extreme alarm in the Force in unison. Was it really that unusual for him to say the words that swirled around in his head every hour of the day?

“Obi-Wan, we’re the fuck-ups. I mean, me and Siri and Garen. You and Bant are the Rylothian angels here.”

“That’s not what everybody else thinks,” Obi-Wan said lowly. “I’ve always been tainted because of Qui-Gon. Now just being around me is going to taint Anakin. Everybody knows it.”

“Tainted?” Bant asked with alarm. What was alarming? “What are you talking about -”

But Obi-Wan barrelled through her, unwilling to hear whatever sweet and placating words she had for him today. He stood up, carefully stepping off the bench and fussily fixing his robes with hands that did not shake. “We are going to prove it to them. Anakin will become a Jedi. I will make Anakin a Jedi, if it’s the last thing I do.”

He swept off, feeling a little bit dramatic, feeling as if he had expelled the smallest amount of emotion he could. That was the least he could give, portioning out bits of himself to the hungry and braying crowd. 

Why did they want these pieces of him so desperately? What was valuable about these hideous parts of Obi-Wan - the fear, the insecurity, the nightmares shaking him awake each night? People like Bant and Quinlan dug and dug and dug until they found what they were looking for, as if they wanted to prove something to themselves, to him, to the Jedi. 

Prove that he was inferior. Prove that he was just as wild and angry as everybody always said. Prove that his flimsy mask of ‘A Perfect Jedi’ was nothing more than a stage actor placing a pulp-mache bantha’s head mask over his face and strutting about as if he was a king.  Prove what Qui-Gon had always thought of him: that any love for him could only be held at arm's length, that a kid who needed to prove himself never required support or a helping hand, that there was no such thing as ‘good enough’ when you lived in competition with ghosts and shadows. 

Prove what everybody knew, and what Obi-Wan could not hide.

***

When Obi-Wan got home, Anakin was lying on the ground committing atrocities upon the ravaged corpse of a pilfered library droid.

“Please start putting down a tarp when you do that,” Obi-Wan said. “You’ve been getting oil into the carpet.” He paused a beat. “And please stop sneaking away from chaperones.”

“But I need to practice sneaking away from good guys so I can be good at sneaking away from bad guys! And it’s not like I was caught.” Anakin didn’t look up at him, absorbed in his work. “That’s Jedi lesson three, right? ‘Do whatever you want, just don’t get caught’?”

“When had - why do -” Obi-Wan pinched the bridge of his nose, already regretting the one day exposure to Qui-Gon. But..in the face of that logic, Obi-Wan was forced to concede. It was objectively true. “Yes. But make an exception for me. Just don’t get caught by others.”

“You got it! Hey, pinch this wire for me.”

So Obi-Wan lay down on his stomach across from Anakin, staring at him from over a sea of rusty machinery. His round little face, somehow still clinging onto baby fat, was smooth as only a child’s could be. It was flaky and rough from the blistering heat of twin suns, but he had ointment now. His featherly light blonde hair would darken without its sunshine bleach, and it would grow long in limp brown shags. He would look like his mother - if, apparently, there was no father to speak of. 

His expression was screwed up in concentration, tongue poking out of his teeth as he carefully screwed in a bolt where it likely was not intended to go. There was something strangely beautiful about him in that moment - an intelligence at work, a powerful focus rarely applied. He glowed in the Force like a sun, overwhelming and breath-taking. 

But when Obi-Wan’s breath caught, he wasn’t sure if it was the Force. Maybe it was just Anakin. Could you fall in love like this? Just by looking at somebody, just by feeling how great they could be? Stronger than Obi-Wan, more righteous than Qui-Gon? Kinder than Master Dooku, more vibrant than Grandmaster Yoda? 

Could he be better? Or would Obi-Wan only make him worse?

“Do you like my friends?” Obi-Wan whispered.

“Gimmie a min’.” Anakin finished screwing the bolt, huffing at the piece. “Bad. Gotta redo...what didya say?”

“Do you like my friends?”

“Oh!” Anakin brightened. “They’re super cool and awesome Jedi! They’re just like I thought Jedi would be. Bant’s a doctor! Did you know that?”

“I did.” A pang shot through Obi-Wan’s heart. “They’d be better teachers than I. I’m sorry, Anakin. I’m sorry you’re stuck with…”

“No way! I’m sorry you’re stuck with me, Obi-Wan.” Anakin’s expression crumpled a little, although he bravely tried to keep it straight. He was already picking that up from Obi-Wan. “I’m why everybody keeps looking at us weird...it’s all my fault. All the Jedi hate us.”

“Anakin, no. The Jedi love all sentient beings.” Judging from Anakin’s expression, Obi-Wan was speaking straight bantha poodoo and acting as if the Corellian moons were made of cheese. “It’s true. They’d - they’d all help you. You don’t need to rely on me.”

Wires hissed and sparked. Anakin was quiet for a moment, stripping some wires with a deft, chubby hand and tying them together. He reached out to grab a blowtorch, but at Obi-Wan’s dangerous expression he carefully retreated his hand. It was a matter of time until he was using his lightsaber to solder metal. Incorrigible. Finally, Anakin said, “What Mr. Quinlan -”

“Knight Quinlan.”

“Knight Quinlan was talking about how you’re just there to guide me and teach me the Jedi way for a few years. And they all acted like the master and padawan thing is so special and great, but…” His face crumpled a little, overcome by an emotion he couldn’t name. “When we had to leave Mom behind...I thought that meant that you were going to be Mom now. But they aren’t going to let us. They’re going to make other people teach me because they don’t like you, and - and - and!”

Fat tears were rolling down Anakin’s cheeks, no matter how hard he scrubbed at his eyes with his sleeve. Obi-Wan quickly sat up and moved closer to Anakin, wrapping him in a hug and letting Anakin press his head into Obi-Wan’s tunic. He would probably have to get this one cleaned with Anakin’s robe. He didn’t know why he was focusing on that instead of Anakin’s hitched breaths as he tried to control his tears.

“Nobody’s going to take you away from me, Anakin.” That wasn’t what he meant to say. That was far too possessive. That hadn’t come out right. But what had Obi-Wan meant to say? “We all just want what’s best for you. You might be happier with the others.” Obi-Wan faltered. “You could be a normal child here. Take lessons. Play with the other children. Learn and grow and be happy. My padawanship, Anakin...it was dangerous and isolated. That’s the kind of life I’ve always lived. I don’t want to expose you to that.”

Anakin separated from him, eyes red-rimmed but dry. “They aren’t strong! All the kids and the old people here - they’re weak! Nothing bad’s ever happened to them, so they think sad people like us are freaks. But you’re strong, Obi-Wan. I want to be strong and just like you. I’m not embarrassed to be your padawan.” He faltered a little, rubbing at his eyes. “It’s okay that you’re sad and that I had to make food for a little bit. Mom would get sad sometimes too. She couldn’t leave bed and stuff. I would take care of Mom and make her food. I don’t mind making you food. The slaves all had each other, we did, but...Mom and I took care of each other. We can take care of each other. It’s just you and me. Right?”

Obi-Wan embraced Anakin tightly, fighting to control his breathing. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t the correct way to do this. He had to be more like Qui-Gon - professional and strong and affectionate. Qui-Gon would have never let Obi-Wan cling to him like this, swearing an oath that neither of them should ever make. 

Nobody was going to help them. None of them had ever forgotten how Obi-Wan had been a failure as a child, and none of them were ever going to forget where Anakin came from. No matter what they all said, their bright smiles and helping hands - none of them understood what it was like. It was just Obi-Wan and Anakin from now on. 

In some strange way, it felt as if it had always been. As if Obi-Wan had only been alone, because he had not met or loved Anakin yet. 

This wasn’t the kind of master Obi-Wan should be. He should be discouraging this desperation and neediness. But he couldn’t discourage it in himself, and he had no idea how to quench it in either of them. 

As the Rylothians would say - if this was a sin, then hell had greater need of him than heaven. 

He would put in the request for active mission duty. If Anakin grew up like he did - in the midst of adventure and hardship - then he could attain the strength he so desired. That was all Obi-Wan knew how to offer, and that was Qui-Gon’s legacy.

“It’s just you and me, Anakin,” Obi-Wan swore, and damned himself. “It’s just you and me…”

[phoenixyfriend]

In the Tatooine Time Travel Fake Marriage AU, what’s ‘Uncle’ Anakin’s relationship with Little Ani like?

“BIG ME!”

“LITTLE ME!”

[tosses a delighted 9yo up fifty feet into the air while assorted onlookers scream]

More under the cut for the AU that probably needs a better name at this point but everyone’s managed 

Okay so obviously Little Ani is too little to be told the truth about the situation when they first meet. He’s six and, as bright as he is, six-year-olds are not exactly known for their discretion. There are too many secrets to juggle, so the only one he gets trusted with at first is the Jedi thing, mostly because Snips and Skyguy want to get a head start on teaching him about the Force. Little Ani gets the cover story they cooked up about Big Anakin being his mom’s younger brother, and he buys it because... well, slave families get separated all the time. The fact that his uncle managed to win his freedom and come back to save everyone is the part that’s basically a miracle.

Age six is a young enough divergence point that Big Anakin can look at the kid and go “nephew” instead of “me, but small.” It’s before enough Major Life Events (podrace, Naboo, Obi-Wan, Padme, the Tuskens, Geonosis, the war) that all the things Anakin considers integral to being himself are things that haven’t happened to the kid. They share the basic backstory of “born a slave, raised by Shmi, likes droids” and after that the story splits. This means that Anakin has minimal trouble with treating him like a younger family member, and oh man.

Oh man.

Anakin loves being a cool uncle. He is down. He is so ready to show this impressionable child how to hotwire eight different kinds of speeders and the best way to throw a punch. He is enamored with the idea that there is a small child he is not 100% responsible for but still has some familial claim to, one that he can get into tickle fights with and cuddle on cold nights and tell half-sanitized war stories to. Little Ani adores his uncle for a myriad of reasons, and is very, very willing to tell people how cool Big Anakin is, even if he can’t talk about the Jedi stuff or about how that massive slave release a few cities away last week was definitely the most reckless Skywalker.

The fact that they have the same name is a source of great hilarity for both (if for slightly different reasons), and they treat the whole situation as an inside joke. Generally, people differentiate with just Big/Little Ani, or they refer to the kid as Ani and the adult as Anakin (Ahsoka goes with Skyguy and Skykid, and Rex gets to learn that Little Ani loves it when he gets called Cadet or Private). Little Ani will definitely just say “Uncle Ani” and that’s clear enough for everyone.

Anakin and Anakin will regularly address each other as “Big Me” and “Little Me” as an inside joke that only one of them gets the full scope of.

All this to say, after the Naboo situation is handled and the reality of the clone chips starts to come out, and The Team comes to the Temple with Mace and Quinlan, and a very annoyed Maul in cuffs, there is a moment.

A very special moment.

Where Little Ani feels his uncle coming in from the hangars, and goes to whichever atrium has inside balconies instead of normal floors, and screams “BIG ME!” in excitement, while the crechemaster that was put in charge of him swears under their breath and chases him, a gaggle of small and curious children at their heels.

(Nobody approves of the screaming.)

This child with no sense of danger proceeds to fling himself off the balcony, trusting fully that his uncle will catch him, and causes at least three heart attacks. Force-sensitive children are resilient, but Ani is a reckless little fucker and his uncle has done nothing to curb the enthusiasm. He just shouts back “LITTLE ME!” and catches the kid, partly with the Force to prevent damage, and swings the kid around with the biggest damn grins on both their faces. Ahsoka is just as excited to see the Small Child she’s been a bad influence on. Rex is ruffling the terrible Initiate haircut. Quinlan is enjoying the sight. Maul is judging them all, not very quietly.

Mace can already feel eight headaches forming.

[inky-duchess]

Writing Theory: Writing the Unsympathetic Villain

In today's media, it is common for villains to be looked upon favourably by the audience. With villains getting redemption arcs left right and centre, it is the habit of the audience to ask why villains are the way they are and how they can become good guys. Characters are meant to grow within the narrative and while some writers prefer to offer the same chance to their villain (a perfectly valid choice), sometimes villains should not get the chance . If you don't want your work you put into your villain going to waste, then this is the guide for you.

Why Your Villain might be forgiven for being Evil.

They are aesthetically pleasing. (Some audience members forgive villains because they are pretty. We've all done it. No judging. Y'all know exactly who I'm talking about.)

They are probably more fun than your hero. (why be Batman when you can be Joker)

They have a tragic backstory.

They have a reason for their evilness.

They are more charismatic than your hero.

What Makes a Villain Unsympathetic?

What typically negates redeemablity for most villains in the eyes of the audience are the crimes. One cannot redeem Hitler, so to speak. If the crime cannot be forgiven it must be punished.

The Villains do not see anything wrong with what they did. Villains who do not repent themselves are unworthy of sympathy. Villains who continue believing in their idealogy long through the narrative, usually don't meet the audience's sympathy. We never ever forgive Dolores Jane Umbridge for her ideals and nor does she ever repent. When Voldemort rises to power, she stays at the ministry as his Inquisitor to interrogate muggleborns.

They have done terrible acts for their own gain. One could understand a villain destroying worlds for the protection of a beloved or an idea, such as Thanos wiping out the universe. We don't support it but we understand it to some extent. But to act out of greed for oneself is rarely sympathetic. For Example Emperor Palpatine turns Anakin's allegiances by playing on his weaknesses: his mistrust of the jedi council, the looming death of Padme and his insecurity. Even when Anakin has wholly given himself to the Sith, Paplatine informs him that it was his actions that killed Padme. There was no reason for this save to keep Anakin hating the jedi.

They are really just an unpleasant person. Villains who really feel villainy are those that make your skin crawl, they unsettle both the audience and the hero. Umbridge is magick Margaret Thatcher, Emperor Palpatine gives off groomer vibes, Warden Wharton is a greedy Bible-thumping slimeball, Percy Wetmore is a little shit, Claude Frollo is a racist piece of shit, Walder Frey is a creepy old guy and Joffrey Baratheon is a homophobic, racists, cowardly dickweed incest baby.

[not-the-tie-youre-looking-for]

Something that's been bugging me for years since the Legends finale. If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do you think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out? On the one hand, from Legends Thrawn's portrayal I imagine he would without a second of hesitation. On the other, Canon Thrawn has been much more... restrained? And on a third point, there's the fact that Legends and Canon Thrawn seem like they really could be the same person just at different points of time. cnt in next

...I'm just curious if anyone else was curious if Zhan agreed with that direction taken. Which, on that note, did Zhan ever say anything about his thoughts on how Rebels handled Thrawn? Both from a writing standpoint as well as an acting and musical one (Thrawn's various leitmotifs)?

Oh man. Ohhhhhhhh maaaaan. My friend, you have asked exactly the right person this question, because not only have I wanted to talk about this multiple times before, but I also have ~receipts~. 👀

⚠️Spoiler warnings for Star Wars: Rebels, The Mandalorian, the canon Star Wars novels Thrawn, Thrawn: Alliances, Thrawn: Treason, Thrawn Ascendency: Chaos Rising, and Thrawn Ascendency: Greater Good, and the legends Star Wars novels Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising, The Last Command, and Outbound Flight.⚠️

Oh man. Where to begin.

Lets start with who Thrawn is, because depending on who you ask, you're gonna get different answers—whether you're strictly a Legends fan, Dave Filoni, a guy who's only seen Thrawn in Star Wars: Rebels, Timothy Zahn, or just a writer/artist fan like me.

To Timothy Zahn, the man behind our favorite chiss, Thrawn is a character that is constant in both attitude and personality throughout all of his content. In multiple interviews, ranging from Thrawn's debut in Rebels to the latest about the writing of the Ascendancy Trilogy, Zahn states that Thrawn in canon and Thrawn in Legends are indistinguishable.

And so I present the receipts:

In a 2017 interview with The Verge on writing the first canon Thrawn book Thrawn, Zahn is asked the following question and responds as such:

How do you navigate bringing back a character who already has an extensive backstory and audience expectations, with telling a new story that fits in the new continuity?

Actually, I didn’t find that to be a problem. I’d never written Thrawn in this part of the Star Wars timeline, so it was simply a matter of bringing him into the Empire and chronicling his rise through the ranks. It’s still the same character as in the 1990s books, just a decade or two younger and in a very different military and political environment.

In another interview with The Verge in 2018 (a few months after the finale of Rebels aired) about writing Thrawn: Alliances, he repeats this sentiment twice:

Thrawn feels like if it had been written before the canonization purge a couple of years ago, or if you squinted a bit, it would serve as a perfect setup for Heir to the Empire.

Oh, I don’t think you need to squint at all. I wrote him in these two books to fit in with everything else I’d done. So if someone at Lucasfilm snapped their fingers, and suddenly all of my other books were canon, and there would be no real retrofitting that would have to go in. It would all fit together.

Thrawn: Alliances feels more at home in the new canon, especially because Thrawn has been fleshed out a bit more in Rebels. Was there any adjustments for that?

Not really. I’m getting to play with more canon characters like Vader and Padmé and Anakin, but the character himself, I still see him as the same person. He’s got goals, and he won’t necessarily share them with you, but he as long as you’re going the same direction, he’s happy to cooperate and assist along the way.

...and this is referenced again in a 2020 interview with Polygon about writing Thrawn Ascendancy: Chaos Rising:

Along with Thrawn’s appearance in Rebels, Zahn would pen a new novel, Thrawn, that chronicled the character’s early days as an Imperial officer. Zahn didn’t have to change anything with the character, telling me in 2017 that “he’s like an old friend who I understand completely.” While Heir to the Empire was no longer canon, a reader could easily read Thrawn as a precursor to that classic novel. Thrawn went on to become a major presence in Rebels, and Zahn continued to explore his origins in Thrawn: Alliances and Thrawn: Treason.

The next day, an interview with IGN was published on the same subject:

Thrawn is an especially unique case because Zahn has been able to effectively continue the work he started way back in 1991 with Heir to the Empire. That novel may not be a part of official Star Wars lore any longer, but as Zahn explained, Thrawn himself is basically the same character regardless of continuity.

[....] The closest comparison between Chaos Rising and Zahn's earlier EU work is probably 2006's Outbound Flight, which is set during the Clone Wars and details the first encounter between Thrawn and the Galactic Republic (while also retroactively laying the groundwork for elements of Heir to the Empire). That novel is no longer canon, but Zahn told us he prefers to operate as if it were. He's making a concerted effort not to retread the same ground as Outbound Flight and to avoid contradicting the events of that novel as much as possible.

So yeah. In Zahn's opinion, Legends Thrawn is Canon Thrawn is Book Thrawn, and there is no difference whatsoever between Thrawns in, say, Outbound Flight, Heir to The Empire, Alliances, and Chaos Rising. I wholeheartedly disagree, but lets move on.

Now that the books are out of the way, its time for Rebels.

In July of 2016, after the trailer announcing Thrawn's canon debut aired, Dave Filoni had the following to say about Thrawn's character in regards to Timothy Zahn:

“I was pretty adamant with a couple of people saying, ‘Listen, we need to have Tim sign off on this. This is kind of a waste of time [otherwise],'” says Filoni. “We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns, but without Tim’s okay, what does it mean? That’s not going to be good. Once we had some stuff, we wanted to do what we thought was right and make the character. Then we brought him in. We had the production fully prepared. I said, ‘Look, if there’s something that Tim says that I think is really valuable, even if it changes something dynamically, we need to be ready for that and see what we can do.’ I wanted to make sure we did this right by everybody. We brought him in and we didn’t really tell him why. We just flew him up to Lucasfilm and sat him down in a theater and said, ‘Hey, we’re bringing Thrawn into the show.’ He was like, ‘Wow.’ and I said, ‘Yeah, wow. And I’m going to show him to you right now and you let me know what you think.'”

(Before we continue, keep that first highlighted sentence in mind for future reference. I'm going to come back to that later.)

Fortunately, Timothy Zahn was delighted at the show’s approach to the Empire’s imposing blue-skinned Chiss.

“We showed him some of the scenes with him,” Dave Filoni recalls. “He looked like a kid in a candy store. I think it meant a lot to him not just because it was his character, but because you have to imagine what he went through when it was announced that everything is Legends now, not Expanded Universe. I get that and I’ve always appreciated the work that goes into the Expanded Universe… For Tim, I think it was us saying, ‘No, no, no. We really like your character. We want him to be part of the real thing. The canon universe.'”

So in 2016, before we even saw Thrawn in action beyond a trailer, we were told that Zahn gave the OK, and he was chill with the way Thrawn was created in the show. In 2017, he gave a little more of the background of this process in an interview with FANgirl Blog:

The events of Thrawn dovetail closely with Rebels and shed light on some of Thrawn’s more seemingly surprising actions on the show, like when he appears to lose his temper and yell at Lieutenant Lyste. What was it like to see Thrawn come alive onscreen? Is he how you’ve pictured him in your head?

I don’t see my characters in terms of voice or appearance, but rather as personality or attitude. That said, I very much enjoyed the way the Rebels team brought him to life, in his appearance, voice, and actions.

I also appreciated the freedom I had to tweak certain incidents, such as the one you mentioned, and give additional or alternate explanations for the viewers who may have thought those were somewhat out of character for him.

He doesn't really elaborate on this, but we can assume he had SOME creative input on Thrawn's character, and he was overall pretty happy with the choices made in the show.

But then, we have this from that earlier 2017 the Verge article:

When did you learn that Dave Filoni was intending to bring Thrawn to Rebels, and did you have any input into how the character would be handled?

[...] I didn’t have any real input into how Thrawn was going to be handled, mainly because the lead time of an animated series is so long that much of season 3 had already been finished. But I trusted Dave and the team to do the character right. After all, why bring him into Rebels if you were going to drastically change him? Having seen the entire season now, I think we can agree that my trust was completely justified.

So... he didn't have "any real input," but was satisfied with it in the end? I guess? I don't know. We're getting into some contradictions now.

The last thing I've got in regards to Rebels is an interview Zahn did with the YouTube channel Star Wars Explained after the finale aired, where he responds to the following:

“So, maybe let's jump over to Rebels for a little bit. Now that it has wrapped up, how do you feel Thrawn was represented in Star Wars: Rebels?”

“They did a really good job—they not only understood the character and how to write for him, but they also understood the meta around how you defeat him. The only way to defeat Thrawn is to throw something at him he can't control, or can't anticipate. Given perfect knowledge and control, Thrawn will always find a way to win. But they understood, this is how you defeat him, these are the things we can use against him... so his portrayal in general, is very good; he's smart, he's anticipating, he's a step ahead of everybody, he's looking at clues and picking up on them, so I was very pleased with how the Rebels team handled the character."

I think these quotes answer many of your questions, so to answer your initial question: If Zhan had been the writer for Rebels, do I think he would have had Thrawn bomb Lothal to bring Ezra out?

Yes—but ONLY because at that point, the only established™️ Thrawn content was found in Legends, where Thrawn was a ruthless and calculating warlord.

However!

I do believe that if given the chance to re-write the Star Wars: Rebels finale using his now-canon novels as a solid background TODAY, Zahn would choose to not let Thrawn bombard Lothal's Capital City.

I believe this because he made one single very interesting creative choice when writing Thrawn that completely overwrote Thrawn's pre-established Rebels character: Thrawn was not responsible for the civilian deaths on Batonn—Pryce was.

And that's that on that.

A few months ago I would have ended it there, but today, Thrawn's story is no longer just contained in the novels and Rebels, but also in that of The Mandalorian.

This is where I will proudly say I have no idea what the fuck is going on. Before The Jedi aired, I was 100% sure that the next time we saw Thrawn, it would be nowhere NEAR the Empire, because Zahn was pretty adamant in the novels that Thrawn was only in the Empire to help. His. People.

So now he's apparently doing fuck-knows-what in fuck-knows-where and is STILL associated with the Seventh Fleet and Imperial Warlords???

Huh??? Despite the fact that he held no true loyalty to the Empire or to the Emperor??? It's been months and I'm still confused as fuck. Add to the fact that Zahn also doesn't know what the fuck is going on to the equation and we get a big fat question mark with one pretty clear answer that Filoni said himself that we have to keep in mind:

"We, of course, can do what we want with a character that Lucasfilm owns."

So I don't think Zahn has much control over Thrawn as we would all like to think. We can hope he gives us the crazy Thrawn and Ezra Space Adventure™️ novel all we want, but ultimately, Thrawn's fate does not rest in his hands.

If you guys have more to add please let me know!!! This is, obviously, a topic I am very passionate about, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

[djrenard]

Titans West (a Post-Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths team)

Kid Flash aka Ace West & Wallace Rudulph West

R-iko aka Riko Sheridan

Power Girl aka Tanya Spears

Roundhouse aka Billy Wu & William Wu

Gorilla Gregg

Tress

Power Boy aka Matt Price

Thoughts: 

Kid Flash, Ace West, is primed to take center stage in his own book, and what better book than Titans West?  The Flashes have a tendency of being written as impulsive-support characters in the middle of a fight. Ace could approach the Speed Force a little differently; I’d like him to stand out. Instead of racing ahead of the team, he gets selected to lead his own team, which means he’ll have to learn to stand still and work on strategy. Using his super speed, Ace will be able to plan and pivot at the speed of lightning all while constantly coordinating with his team with split second precision.

Another angle I’d like to explore would be a Flash & Gorilla team-up. Gorilla Gregg has the same telepathic powers as his Uncle Grodd. Imagine Gregg in the field keeping the team in contact via psychic link. Imagine the types of things teenagers would probably want to keep private from their friends. Imagine the ways Gregg and Ace could potentially combine their powers; seven minds moving at the speed of light.

When I looked at R-iko’s wiki entry, the trivia listed a Fuefollet album cover on her bedroom wall. A real-world anecdote about me, I’m from South Louisiana and have listened to Cajun, Creole, Swamp Pop, and Zydeco music my whole life. Fuefollet is sort of a big deal for us and our cultural preservation attempts. Another fact about me, I work at a small TV station, KLFY, and in the past, we used to spotlight live local acts. Sometimes the only way for local bands to get recordings of their work, or well-lit photography of them playing, would be at our studio. Some album covers featured KLFY TV10 images in the background. Pressed vinyl got shipped around, some reaching as far as Japan where the band Zydeco Kicks found and fell in love with the music. The band has since visited the area and were excited to visit the station which they were very much aware of due to album covers. Anyway, I thought that was cool and now I feel connected to R-iko.

Power Girl needs a comeback. The more Super adjacent characters the better, so we don’t have to keep rebooting and convoluting the main cast. I think in the field Ace would call her PG.

I don’t know that much about Roundhouse other than he has a solid and easily recognizable design. Oh and I’ve always liked Bouncing Boy’s powers so...

Tress looks really fun to draw, and she’s a bit of a blank slate in terms of backstory and motivations so that’s cool. She’s like Marvel’s Medusa, DC’s Godiva, and Beast Boy all rolled into one.

Matt Price is likely Apokoliptian as evidenced by his omega beam vision. Exploring how absolute power corrupts would be fun. I’m seeing shades of Anakin Skywalker and Ben Solo as potential archetypes to start with.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

for @jedijune​​ - I thought I’d contribute some more to all the Jedi love. Press “j” to skip, it’s horrendously long.

A quick (lmao) tour of the Jedi Order’s views on blood ties and nuclear/traditional families in LucasFilms canon.

Basically, instances of Jedi calling each other brother, sister, father, etc. and their peers’ reactions to this. It’s a common misconception that despite the Jedi having their own unorthodox family structures and own ways of demonstrating love, “regular” familial bonds are taboo. Let’s see what canon has to say about that.

(This is already a very long post, so I’m ignoring Luke and Vader’s relationship, as well as Anakin and Shmi’s. Those cases are unusual and very complex, and my goal is to showcase the Jedi’s general take on family, not their opinions on two exceptions.)

1) Likening your Master to a family member = fairly common

AotC Obi-Wan and Anakin

AotC Anakin to Padmé, about Obi-Wan

Jedi Crash, TCW s1e13 Aayla Secura to Ahsoka, about Quinlan Vos and Anakin

Gone Without a Trace, TCW s7e5 Ahsoka to Trace Martez, about Anakin

Ahsoka and Anakin may be unusual Jedi, but Aayla isn’t. In RotS and TCW s7, we see her in a Council meeting despite her being a Knight. It means she is respected and trusted despite her youth and low rank. Aayla isn’t characterized as a maverick in any way despite her chaotic Master, and we have thus no reason to believe her openness about her relationship with Quinlan is an exception. What’s more, in the episode she’s specifically using that relationship to explain to Ahsoka how love for one’s Master and the importance of letting go aren’t contradictory. 

Obi-Wan doesn’t appear in the least uncomfortable after Anakin’s admission. He actually takes it so casually it seems to imply this is not the first time he’s heard this. Far from dismissing Anakin’s feelings or rebuking him for calling him a father figure, Obi-Wan uses the analogy to ask Anakin why he isn’t better behaved - he’s literally asking “well if I’m your dad, why can’t you be a good kid?” 

In all four cases, the Jedi comparing their Master to a family member is either talking to a non-Jedi or within earshot of one. Clearly they are not worried about giving a wrong image of the Order, so it’s safe to assume they’re not alone in their views. So yeah, calling your Master a father/brother - and probably a mother/sister? Not taboo.

2) Having blood ties within the Order = perfectly okay

The Unknown, TCW s6e1 Tiplar and Tiplee

Wookieepedia Stass Allie and Adi Gallia

These four women are Masters, not Knights. It means they have proven themselves to their peers - they’re not under scrutiny for potentially being “attached.” Adi and Stass both served on the Council, indicating the rest of the Council is fine with people having blood connections with other Jedi. If you look up the origin of Stass’ character, you’ll find it was Lucas himself who made her Adi’s cousin. 

Tiplar and Tiplee call each other “sister” in public, they are co-generals and they wear matching outfits (same cut, but the colors are inverted). Tiplee openly displays grief and affection for her sister, in front of Jedi (Anakin) and non-Jedi alike (the troops). Again, no taboo here. 

(Edit: Depa Billaba, Mace Windu’s padawan and Caleb/Kanan’s Master also had a sister in the Order, Sar Labooda. She died on Geonosis and her parentage to Depa is such an obscure piece of trivia that no material in the Legends EU or the Disney EU ever made use of it, but still. Depa served on the Council several times and both Depa and Sar were Masters, so the point stands.) 

3) Acknowledging blood ties to non-Jedi = perfectly okay

Kidnapped, TCW s4e11 Ahsoka to the Jedi Council, about the people of Kiros

RotJ Obi-Wan to Luke, about Leia

Ahsoka claims a connection to the people of Kiros in front of the whole Council, (she’s from Shili btw - she’s thus claiming blood ties as a Togruta, not geographical ties) and nobody reacts in any way to her outburst - no censure, no disapproving looks, nothing. Identifying with your biological people is fine. 

Obi-Wan goes a step further with this and praises Luke for caring about his sister. He is very clear about why Luke shouldn’t acknowledge the connection: their sibling bond is a good thing, but it’ll be used against them. You can’t see it in the screenshots, but Luke actually nods twice in this scene: once when Obi-Wan tells him to bury his feelings, and once when Obi-Wan explains why. Luke agrees that he shouldn’t show his feelings for Leia - so this isn’t a case of a Master forcefully repressing his student’s emotional life.

4) A broader view

a) Obi-Wan and Anakin RotS Obi-Wan to Yoda, about Anakin

RotS Obi-Wan and Anakin

Essays have been written on these two, so I’ll stick to this: when Obi-Wan tells Yoda he cannot kill Anakin because of the bond between them, Yoda does not condemn him. He does not say something along the lines of “suck it up, attachment is forbidden and you should have known better.” 

He says instead “he isn’t your brother anymore. The man you love as part of your family is gone. It’s not your brother you’ll be killing.” That’s very, very, very different. Yoda acknowledges and accepts the connection between Obi-Wan and Anakin, but he cannot let it stop them from doing their duty to the Galaxy. (As Aayla said in Jedi Crash, you can’t lose thousands of lives for the sake of one.)

b) According to the Order itself The Gathering, TCW s5e6 Narrator to the audience, about the Order

Narration guy is rarely entirely objective, so you can take it with a grain of salt. Still, Ahsoka and Plo’s relationship is generally accepted as the more overtly familial one of the show, and that’s what’s illustrating narration guy’s claim here. Seems legit.

c) Outsider POV The Citadel, TCW s3e18 Osi Sobeck to his droids, about the Order

Osi Sobeck is a complete psycho and an enemy of the Jedi, so make of that what you will.

5) BONUS CONTENT (not LucasFilms)

Darth Vader (2017) Kirak Infil’a to Darth Vader, about the Order

Darth Vader (2017)  Jocasta Nu to the Grand Inquisitor, about the Order

RotS novelization, Matthew Stover Dooku to Palpatine, about Obi-Wan

(Please note that I added those last bits because they fit in well, not because I see the old EU or the Disney EU as basis for characterization. For example, I’m not touching Dooku’s convoluted Disney backstory with a twenty-parsec pole.)

tldr: The Jedi Order is portrayed in canon material as pretty chill with traditional family structures among its own members. The Jedi have nothing against brotherly/sisterly bonds and they acknowledge that Masters are very much like parents. Using the complicated issue that is Anakin’s relationship with his own mother as the measure for our understanding of Jedi views on family is unfair and ignores tons of what Lucas (and later Filoni) showed on screen.