#LEAVE THE ALTISIANS OUT OF THE JEDI FEELS

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Apparently DJINN ALTIS is one of the names of the wall that gets Obi-Wan all emotional and stuff and to some that may be a cool Legends cameo but to me it's a villain origin story. (Mine)

[bh-52]

SkySnips apprenticeship thoughts.

How often did Anakin just out of nowhere cut short her lessons or skip them so he could go see Padme or Palpatine?

How long did it take him to really accept her as his Padawan? He was still whining about it in at least one of the audiobooks following the events of the clone wars film.

How long did it take for Anakin to make Ahsoka really feel welcome as his apprentice?

Does Anakin even know Ahsoka's birthday?

Anakin making her his gunner was probably revenge for her taking the wheel when searching for Plo.

Was Anakin trying to humiliate her by making her his gunner?

Did Padme ever have to call Anakin out on his treatment of Ahsoka?

Did he angrily rant to Padme or Palpatine about having a Padawan assigned to him when he didn't want one, as soon as he got back from rescuing Jabba's kid?

Did Anakin try getting out of having a Padawan, behind her back, after they got back from Tatooine?

Was Anakin trying to make Ahsoka mess up at the Citadel? He wouldn't stop whining about her being there or asking if she was really assigned the mission.

At the citadel, Ahsoka probably closed their bond to stop him telepathically berating her for coming, every few seconds.

He regularly takes her into warzones and on suicide missions, but he has a problem with her coming on a rescue mission?

Why couldn't he look her in the eyes and tell her how proud he is of her on Mortis?

Dark Ahsoka wasn't wrong when she said Anakin never really believed in or trusted her, since his attitude, behaviour and over protectiveness often proved that true.

Did he ever tell Ahsoka about what he did to the tusken raiders?

Does Ahsoka ever call him out on his habit of leaving in the middle of campaigns to talk to Palpatine in his office?

Did Anakin and Ahsoka ever consider joining the Altisian Jedi?

Shmi would've loved Ahsoka like a daughter.

Anakin is a hypocritical teacher.

Ahsoka should've gone to Dathomir with Anakin & Obi-Wan when looking for Savage.

[padawanlost]

Do you think Anakin would have flourished more had he been born during a different era of the jedi? And if so, which one do you think would have suited him best? :)

If AnakinHAD to be a Jedi then he should’ve been an Altisian Jedi.

 They wereopened-minded and encouraged their members to ask questions.

“It’s not wrong to have disagreements withthe Jedi Council. Qui-Gon had his differences with them, as do I. It’s notnecessarily a bad thing.”

“Master … howmany students have you taught?” Altis shruggedand looked off to one side as if calculating. “Probably thousands. I’m atraditionalist—I keep it simple. No point being more complex than we need tobe. So I teach being good, doing good,and asking good questions. That’s about it, really.” [No Prisoners by KarenTraviss]

They allowed families:

“You could stop, you know. Youand Geith could just be friends.” Ahsoka was a kid. She probably thought that life really was that simple.Callista tried to explain. “Our sect is made up of families. There’s no friendsabout it.”[No Prisoners by KarenTraviss]

They practiced compassion

“Attachment hasn’t … turned youto the dark side, clearly. Nor any of your followers.”

“Now we might get to your real question.” Anakin almost broke. He felt such compassion, such honesty and humilityin Altis, that he wondered if he could safely confide in him. It wasn’t fear ofAltis exposing his secret marriage that scared him, though. He was scared thatonce he discussed his turmoil openly, then he could never cope with being aJedi—his kind of Jedi, Obi-Wan’s kind of Jedi—again. And he had no idea wherethat might lead. [No Prisoners by Karen Traviss]

They understood what detachment mean and dealt with it in reasonableway, instead of shutting down all emotions and relationships.

“Well, if I give you an answer, then you needn’t feel you betrayed yourMasters by asking one.” Altis sat down on one of the bulkhead safety rails. “Idon’t know why Master Yoda or any of the other Jedi Council members rarelyprepare their followers for the fact that we exist and yet haven’t fallen preyto the dark side. It’s certainly true for many beings, Force-users or not. Buttheir problem isn’t attachment. Their problem is obsession.” Altis paused for amoment. Anakin felt he was being searched somehow, his thoughts probed. “Sobefore I could tell you if attachment was right for you, you would have to askyourself if you could handle it—Jedi or not.” Anakin was now ready to slam theramp shut if anyone looked like wandering in and cutting this conversation short.He had to know more. He had to be able to understand, so that he didn’t go backto Coruscant overwhelmed by the urge to confront Yoda. “How would I tell if Icould handle it, Master?” Altis shrugged. “Could you let someone go, if you loved them? Could youlet them walk away? Could you live without them? How far would you go to stopthem from leaving? What would you do to save them? Ask yourself, listen, and ifany of your answers make you feel afraid … attachment may be fraught withmisery, for you and those around you.” [No Prisoners by Karen Traviss]

They did humanitarian work

“Is there nothing we can do?”

“We’re doing it, Calli. Humanitarian relief.” There were hundreds oftons of supplies—food, medicine, water purifiers, tents—in the ship’s hold, boundfor Yarille. “Someone has to. A war’s not solely about fighting.” [No Prisonersby Karen Traviss]

 They didn’t follow the age rule and they didn’t “recruit” kids.

“They call you the Chosen One. Do you feel chosen?”

“Not really.” Altis had a way of disarming him. He wasn’t sure he’d havesaid that to anyone except Padmé. ���I feel … different. I don’t quite fit in. Itry. Maybe I started too old.”

“Callista was older than you are now when she became my Padawan. I thinksome life experience can make a better Jedi. But I wouldn’t want you—or MasterYoda—to think I was trying to lure you to our little community. I don’t seekrecruits.” Altis looked deadly serious now. Anakin knew exactly what he wassaying, weighing his words as carefully as a man could. “But if you ever getkicked out of the Temple, remember you can always find us. We never close.” [NoPrisoners by Karen Traviss]

 They understood where the Coruscant Jedi went wrong

As with all faith, some basic messages become distorted over time. Whyshould attachment lead to the dark side? Loving commitment is the cornerstoneof civilization, of society, and unites all living creatures. How can it bewrong? I assert that it’s fixation—obsession—that leads to darkness and evil.That blind focus can corrupt any area of our lives. We may do terrible thingsbecause we’re obsessed with a lover, with wealth, with power … oreven with a set of inflexible beliefs that have come to mean more to us thanthe welfare of living beings themselves. Do you take my point, Master Yoda?—MASTERDJINN ALTIS, in a rare exchange of letters with Master Yoda [No Prisoners byKaren Traviss]

[thesummerstorms]

In your Etain lives au, how would Kal be smothering/coddling her, like constantly hovering over her as she recovers, kind of babying her in that regard?

Sorry this took a bit- I’ve been kinda out of the RepComm headspace lately (other than crossing Etain into AUs of whatever I was watching/reading/playing which I do reflexively at this point tbh). This is all really rough, tbh, and I apologize in advance for length.

So this assumption is precipitated on three things from canon:

Kal likes to withhold information from folks “for their own good”

Kal, in any moments where he has softened into liking Etain, is incapable of recognizing her ability or agency, and repeatedly refers to her as a “kid” /is surprised when someone else reports on her field abilities /routinely leaves her out of her own choices

Kal tends to make other’s people’s suffering all about his own martyrdom/how he feels about the situation, rather than about them

There is definitely a lot of coddling. From the moment Etain wakes up Kal more or less tries to sideline her from anything important going on. To some extent that’s not all that unexpected: I do tend to headcanon Etain’s recovery as a long and awkward one, and she did just freak out the whole family by literally returning from the actual dead. (She talks to the gods ghosts stars dead Mandalores in her visions now and everything.)

Tl;dr of what’s under the cut: Kal’s method of “looking after Etain” is much more centered on his need to feel like he’s taking care of her rather than what’s actually best for her. In the process of “looking after his daughter”, he denies her a lot of her capability and agency at one of the moments when she most needs it, fails to disclose information to her, and fails to recognize her very real emotional/mental wounds, instead hyperfixating on her physical ones.

I imagine that Kal probably initially opted not to tell Etain that Darman was still with the Imperial army when she first woke up from her Force and sedation induced coma. Something that is, again, understandable in the most immediate moment- but something that he tries to carry on for too long in light of her fragility, even though she starts questioning as soon as she’s able, distressed because can’t feel Darman close to her.

Once she starts the transition away from spending most of her day in bed sedated and into a proper recovery, he’s constantly urging her to play it safe, to rest, not to worry. “Mediate, sleep, focus on getting better, don’t think about anything else”. “Leave that problem to me, you just take it easy, I’ll fix it, don’t think about it.”

 Etain is a person who despises sitting on her hands, whose crippling, lifelong fear is that she will be useless and unnecessary, and in the past, her only real way of coping has been to find some way to make herself useful, such as when she’s left on Mandalore to recover from her miscarriage and “take her pregnancy easy”, and instead throws herself into helping Mereel break and manage Ko Sai. 

But all of a sudden she’s confronted by her physical pain and temporarily diminished capabilities, and rather than help confirm her capability, Kal is looking at her with pity in the guise of love and cutting her out of key conversations he feels might be “too taxing”, giving her nothing she can focus on beyond how physically fucked up she currently is. Even when the conversation is all about “we’re going to rescue your husband, Etain”, Kal refuses to actually involve her in the process “in order not to get her hopes up prematurely”. He’s there to fix it and save everyone, so she should just be able to accept it and focus elsewhere, right?

He needs her to let him save her, to salve his own conscious- her recovery is in part about how he feels, consciously or not.

And on the emotional front…. well, Kal’s never been great at acknowledging Etain’s emotions. In the novels, when he’s not writing them off as due to pregnancy hormones or his own perception of Etain as young and child-like, he seems to fail to even consider the fact that they might exist.

Which leads me to believe in this case he’s way too blinded by his own perception of Etain as 1) an invalid 2) Darman’s wife and 3) to acknowledge that she’s really messed up in that moment. 

Kal blames a lot of her sudden change in temperament- her being withdrawn, angry, restless, guilty- purely on her physical pain or exhaustion. Which is not to say how Etain feels is never a result of those things, but often he’s dismissing the real concerns or emotions she’s feeling for a more convenient excuse of “well, of course everything seems wrong right now to you, but don’t worry, I know better and I’ll handle everything.”

He also sees how desperately she misses Darman (and she does) and attributes any grief she feels solely to this- because he sees her first and only as Darman’s wife/the mother of Darman’s child and assumes this is. 

He doesn’t see how deeply she’s troubled by her current lack of function, for lack of a better word, because he never really saw her as especially capable or directly useful to begin with. His understanding of her relationship with her injuries relates purely to the physical, and not how it’s affected her self-conception.

He never sees her as a “real” Jedi, so he can’t imagine, wouldn’t care to imagine, that she is actually grieving the Jedi Order- the people who raised her from birth, who she must once have had friends among, even if it was a long time ago, who she could never fully part ways from. Given that lack of understanding, he can’t begin to imagine how guilty she feels at her own grief, surrounded by people who she loves and who she believes to hate the Jedi. How isolated she feels at having no one who she can safely express that grief to. (And of course Kal is a big part of the reason why she feels unsafe in doing so.)

And because he has pigeon-holed her as a child, dependent on him roughly since he stopped hating her, before that even, he sees himself purely as her protector, and doesn’t realize that some part of her anger is actually towards him and how his decisions lead them to this moment and how he’s treating her now. (Although Etain feels guilty about that, too, and tries to quash it.)

Basically he has Etain pigeonholed into this very one dimensional idea of his injured child who it’s his duty to make sure everyone is Gentle™ to, and even if some part of it is born out of love, his pity and lack of awareness seriously negatively impacts both her own mental health and his ability to actually help her.

It comes to a head in a few distinct moments. He cuts her out of the rescue op for Darman and Niner. He initially tries to keep her separate from Scout.

And the big one is when he tries to keep her from going to the Altisians- because he’s afraid of putting her back in the control of the Jedi, because he’s afraid the Altisians are a tempting Imperial target and won’t stay hidden long, because he doesn’t trust Etain’s judgement and thinks she��s relapsing to what she knows in a moment of pain- despite the fact that Jusik, not being an actually trained healer, has accidentally injured her in the process of keeping her alive. 

He tries to keep her from something she needs both physically and spiritually, because Jedi, because she “needs to be safe”,  because “Mij is perfectly capable”, because he feels like he has to look after her and keep her close to him, and it takes intervention from someone else in the family (I haven’t decided who yet) to make him relent.

When Etain goes to the Altisians to try and recover, Darman realizes that the other Imperial Commandos are tasked with hunting them down, and, still caught up with his own trauma, opts not to be rescued so that he can stay on Coruscant and keep the other teams away from his wife.

Kal isn’t the one who comms to tell her.