#The Last Jedi Erasure

[bookatans]

This is probably going to be a very long post but the more I think about the rise (and subsequent fall) of the New Mandalorians, the more that I get wrapped up in not only the colonialism committed by Satine and the movement, how it began in such a horrifyingly understated way, but also how it paved the way for Mandalore to be destroyed thanks to the almost-complete erasure of their culture.

First of all, Canon verse deciding to remove the True Mandalorians (and placing the "Old" Mandalorians in a similar, though less prominent position) feels particularly underhanded and paints everything in a black and white manner. Satine: a sympathetic character who is the only one standing against Death Watch, the last shred of peace left for Mandalorians to cling to. Which. Last standing? Yes, definitely. But not the only one.

A war where Death Watch and the New Mandalorians were the major players, only to have Death Watch defeated – even with the assistance of the Jedi keeping Satine alive – makes little sense from a technical standpoint. Is it impossible? Probably not. All sorts of things can happen in history, pure dumb luck makes every difference, but it's unlikely. A party which seeks peace is not going to survive against another ultra violent, volatile party that's pissed off at you because you want to erase the culture that they so deeply value.

Which, yeah I don't buy it. Even with the Republic stepping in later on, it's fishy. But for the sake of my sanity, I'm mostly focusing on Legends, because the more you try to create a coherent timeline (seriously, how is Clone Batch Math easier than this?) for the Mandalorian Civil Wars, the harder it is not to give up entirely.

Anyways. Satine did not survive years of conflict due to mere smarts and perseverance, and did not end the war by being charismatic and having good people skills. She was the LEAST THREATENING PARTY in a three-party war, hunkering down with her Jedi protectors and playing politician while the actual warriors in the conflict weakened one another and – for the True Mandalorians – were wiped out.

True Mandalorians. Death Watch. New Mandalorians.

So, okay. The approximate dates of the beginning and end of the Mandalorian Civil Wars don't necessarily make sense with Satine’s age. She'd have been slightly younger, and Canon seems to have a tendency to just wave their hand in the general direction of a time period and deflect onto another topic.

Which, you know what? Fine. I can work with that without having to think too hard about the dates. It kills me not to delve into it further, but. No. It's not like Disney's gonna pay me to fix their broken timeline.

(But if I had to, I'd shift Jaster's death to 47BBY instead of 52BBY, and push the Battle of Galidraan a year back to 43BBY, and—)

Here's what's important to remember, though:

- There are two Mandalorian Civil Wars. The first being True Mandalorians vs Death Watch. The second being the much shorter, and quickly solved Death Watch vs the New Mandalorians.

- The massacre of the True Mandalorians happened shortly before the beginning of the second civil war.

- The True Mandalorians had already been dealing with Death Watch for years, and they were winning. Death Watch wasn't just on the run, they were weak, they had to resort to TRICKING THE JEDI into killing the True Mandalorians for them.

Who wasn't weak? The New Mandalorians, the people that actively choose to turn their back on a culture that had survived for centuries. And yes, Death Watch remained even after the True Mandalorians fell. Tor Vizsla targeted Satine and the New Mandalorians viciously after that, there was even more destruction, but it wasn't with the severity with which he'd prosecuted the True Mandalorians.

Here's what happened next: Jango Fett escaped his enslavement. He hunted down Tor Vizsla, and he killed him. Whatever strength Death Watch had regained in those few years didn't matter, because the second their leader was gone they were certainly left unorganized and at a disadvantage.

Giving the New Mandalorians the opening they needed to cement in people's minds to their beliefs and convince the House and Clan leaders that abandoning their old ways was the solution. After all, how much more of Mandalore was left to destroy? How many more had to be lost?

With the public's approval and the Republic’s help, Satine Kryze and the New Mandalorians scavenged the corpse of Mandalore, and they took what they deemed fit, left the rest to rot and – given time – be erased completely.

What's worse is that Satine's activism and speeches made it sound like that made sense (because, to Satine, it did make sense); abandon what Mandalore once was because that's the reason we've been destroyed, isn't it? (Not entirely untrue.) And these people, whose world had been ravaged, who's clans and families had wrecked everything with in-fighting, were tired and desperate enough that they listened.

Actually, here's what's really worse — Satine got LUCKY! The first time! It should not have ended like that. But because she got lucky, because it worked once, she tried to do the exact same thing when the entire galaxy went to war. And she ignored the suffering of people whom she should have known empathy towards, who were going through the very same torment she experienced as a child. Because her position of superiority where peace is the only answer was so ingrained in her beliefs, because she was ARROGANT.

And because peace was the only answer, because she'd disavowed any sense of warrior culture from her people, Satine had as much a hand in dooming Mandalore as everyone who went in with the worst intentions. Does it matter that it was doomed regardless, because Maul was the great evil that came to destroy them? No. Maul was just the most convenient means to an end the resurrected Death Watch could find, but if not him it would have been anyone — anything – else.

I do feel for her. She had to experience her father's death so young and step into a role he'd left behind, didn't get a proper chance to grieve because she had to be strong for everyone else who was grieving. She gave up the possibility of love for duty. Satine was a good leader, I won't argue that, and she was the last stand between Mandalore and total annihilation, but she was also deeply flawed.

[padawanlost]

Is it normal for Star Wars novels to contradict each other sometimes? How do the writers stop many inconsistencies from happening?

Is it normal for Star Wars novels to contradict each other sometimes? How do the writers stop many inconsistencies from happening?

Yes! But why it happens depends on a lot of things like “what’s canon (to you)?”

Unlike most franchises, Star Wars doesn’t have an quick and easy answer for what is canon and what’s not. I’ve wrote a little about this here, if you’re interested.

But the gist is: over the last 40 years, a lot of different people wrote a lot of different things so inconsistencies are simply a fact of life. Here’s a example: when was Anakin Skywalker knighted?

Before 2008 the ‘canon’ answer would’ve been: shortly before the end of the clone wars, as seen in Clone Wars (2003).

But after 2008 the official answer would’ve been: right after the end of Attack of the Clones, as seen in The Clone Wars (2008).

Lucasfilm checked everything but sometimes things slipped through the cracks. Considering the enormous amount of star wars lore published since the 70s, I don’t find the inconsistencies all the shocking.

I believe the biggest issue for most fans was the “Disney re-writes”. Currently most debates come from that and the erasure of over 30 years of lore. So now you have entire characters and arc being rewritten after so many fans spend years of their lives consuming that particular content. The most obvious example is Luke, Leia and Han’s lives post-ROTJ. Imagine spending 30 years of your life reading about their lives, their children and grandchildren…and now being told that that never happened and the Skywalker lineage is dead and gone.

This is happening to many arc and characters which makes the debates very confusing because it’s like arguing about two different stories lived by characters who only share the same name: The Luke Skywalker who died as greatest of all the Jedi and the Luke skywalker who disappeared on everyone.

Anyway, inconsistencies are part of the packaged at this point. as new movies, shows and characters are altered or introduced, more and more of them will appear. You can go mad trying to solve it or you can just accept it as part of fun lol

[quasi-normalcy]

It also, like all of these sharp reversals, fundamentally misunderstands the point of The Last Jedi. The middle film in the trilogy was about many things, mostly the idea of handing Excalibur to a new generation (“we are what they grow beyond”), and the idea that a person’s worth is not measured by their parentage (“Rey from Nowhere”). The Rise of Skywalker erases these decisions in a blind panic but never really thinks about what that erasure means. It becomes a story about angry parents and uncles yanking Excalibur back so that they can ride in the Millennium Falcon one last time, and about how a seemingly unimportant young woman can only matter if she has the right blood in her veins.

The Rise of Skywalker Wants to "Fix" The Last Jedi: The Results Are a Nightmare

[thewriterowl]

Chapter Four: Father & Son

Luke’s self-promised timeframe for his father is coming to an end and it does not seem like Anakin Skywalker is ready to break free from the grasp of Palpatine nor the Dark-side. Now fearing his presences is making Vader obsessed, now fourteen-year-old Luke decides an escape is needed and a change in plan is unavoidable.

Running into familiar, and unfamiliar, faces and from both his father and his friend, Jedi apprentice Din Djarin, Luke fears the changes he has made are becoming uncontrollable and more dangerous than originally believed.

--

Time for an update! Apologies if this chapter isn't up to par--the erasure of it the first time really pulled the rug out from me :/

But this is the last "build up" chapter. Next installment is time to get back into the Owl-pain! :D take that as whatever kind of hint that you would like, but I do hope this father & son chapter is enjoyed!

As usual, hope you like the update! let me know what you think!

[thehollowprince]

I feel like a lot of people overlook the tragedy of the Prequel Trilogy, not because if was bad storytelling or anything of that nature, but because of the doom we all knew was coming. Even if you had only a passing knowledge of Star Wars before sitting down to watch the prequels, you would have an understanding of the tragedy this trilogy was going to end on. We all knew that the Jedi were going to fall and the Empire was going to rise.

Even knowing that, I find myself playing with "What If's"

What if Anakin had accompanied Windu and the other council members to arrest Palpatine? The master stroke that would have been. Like, I understand why Windu ordered him to stay. Despite so many claims to the contrary, Mace Windu was not a heartless and unfeeling dick. He (and the entire Council) knew that Anakin had a lot of respect and admiration for the Chancellor. Windu even says to Anakin that he senses the conflict in him before they head to arrest him and tells him to stay, which serves two purposes - to prevent Anakin from having to strike down a man he looked up to and also ensuring that Anakin didn't get in the way if he couldn't let go of those feelings.

Side note: I also love how the first person Anakin runs to tell that Palpatine is a sith lord is Windu himself.

But back to my point: if Anakin had come with to arrest Palpatine, it would have gone a lot differently.

For starters, there's the fact that Anakin was one of the most powerful Jedi the Order ever had, even at the young age of twenty-two. And while he may not have been as experienced as the other members of the Order present for Palpatine's arrest, he more than made up for it in raw power. There's also the added benefit of throwing Sidious off balance. This is someone he'd spent the last thirteen years grooming to be his next apprentice, meaning that (presumably) he'd be a bit more hesitant to strike him down, especially after he'd just sacrificed his other apprentice earlier in the film.

The other half of what would have made that such a beautiful moment is the fact that Anakin was the "Hero of the Republic." Palpatine himself went out of his way to not only ensure that Anakin was put into high-win engagements, even going so far as to pull him out of situations he felt the Republic would lose (Umbara anyone?), but he also ensure that Anakin got a lot of publicity for it in the Holonet.

This is an individual that the Republic as a whole looks to as what they think the Jedi should be. If he was the one who arrested Palpatine for corruption and orchestrating the entire war that cost billions or credits and countless lives, the people would have stopped to listen. Even if ultimately they didn't believe him, they would have paused to listen, as opposed to if it was just Windu who had made the arrest.

It would have been Palpatine's own arrogance that would have led to his downfall and the disruption of a thousand years of sith manipulation, and probably the erasure of the Sith Order entirely.

It's a beautiful What If scenario, thwarted by the tragedy of the entire situation taking place in a prequel trilogy.

[ainyan]

I have a character development question about your Chiss ladies! How do they feel about the Force and its users - the Jedi and the Sith? If they were Force-sensitive, would they choose to train their skills?

So I have five main Chiss ladies - the two you know, and three more I've mentioned.

We'll start with the best. Miurani'kal'istae is, like many Chiss, untrustful of the Force. She's not terribly fond of most Force users and she absolutely hates it when anyone uses the Force on her. The irony is not lost on her that her mother-in-law is the former Grandmaster of the Jedi Order, her best friend/sister is a Sith whose power is constantly growing, she was the vehicle for one of the most powerful Force users ever known for over five years...

And her beloved daughter is shaping up to be a Force user every bit as powerful as her famous Shan ancestors. It's all throwing her for all kinds of loops - but she's managing, with the help of her thankfully Force-null husband.

Cip'rys's relationship with the Force is significantly more complicated and even more confusing than Nikali's. For countless generations her family worked to help smuggle Force-sensitive Chiss children out of the Ascendancy, away from the policy of erasure by any means necessary. She was raised to believe that the Force was simply another trait, like cobalt skin or freckles, and that it was their duty as Cipari to ensure that those unfortunate enough to be born Sensitive had a chance to live their lives.

That policy spelled the downfall of her family and led to the extermination of every last Cipari but herself. So it might be understandable that Cip'rys is horribly conflicted as to whether or not it was the fault of the Force, the Ascendancy, or just sheer bad luck that left her bereft of family and home. So while she doesn't share the general Chiss revulsion against the Force - a part of her feels that the galaxy would be better off if the Force just went away.

The last three are Liandyn, my Chiss Jedi Knight, Kyn'aria, my Chiss Jedi Consular, and Kale'syn, my Chiss Sith Inquisitor. All three of them were given no choice - Liandyn and Kale'syn were taken from the Ascendancy by the Sith and forced to learn the ways of the Force, while Kyn'aria was one of the Chiss children smuggled out of the Ascendancy by Cip'rys's family and given over to a Jedi enclave in the Outer Rim to train.

In the end, it wasn't a matter of if they wanted to train or not - they were all powerful enough that it was train or die. It's fortunate that all three of them found joy in learning the ways of the Force, and revel in their own ways at being powerful Force-users - and powerful forces - in the galaxy.

Curious to know more about the development of one of my OCs? Ask!

Thank you for the ask!

[comradejarjar]

not to start an essay at eleven pee em but at the beginning of one course last semester the professor started off by saying ‘yes this is a course focusing on civilization but remember that the word civilization is flawed. who decides what a civilization is? why do we consider some places and times civilization and not others? remember the colonial implications of the word, and that the idea of ‘civilizing’ was often used for cultural erasure and stuff’ and like. of all the times ‘civilized/uncivilized’ is used in the main six star wars movies, (and also the eu but i’m less familiar), it’s almost always said by a jedi (usually obi wan kenobi). Obi-Wan kenobi considers blasters uncivilized, and jokes about it when surrounded by clones, all using blasters. The highest praise he can give the old republic is that it was a more civilized age. jar jar is dismissed as unintelligent by qui gon just because he uses a different dialect and is a Teenager. like, I know GL wasn’t really thinking about the Implications of this, but honestly while the OT talks about restoring the republic, the prequel trilogy starts out by explaining it was broken from the start, and that it needed more than just restoring, and the thing about the republic is that the jedi were a fundamental part of upholding those structures and systems. a lot of people seem to forget that luke wasn’t just about restoring the jedi, he was also revitalizing them. doing it his way, with love and respect, as opposed to the jedi’s more impersonal sympathy. where was i going with this

[ksera-sera]

I heard somewhere that the last thing was active suppression and erasure of the Jedi by Palpatine which totally tracks with his whole deal.

some of my fav 'inconsistencies' between the prequel trilogy & the OT and by fav i mean i genuinely think these were good calls:

it is NOT normal for Jedi to become force ghosts when they die. that's like a brand new skill Yoda just unlocked. if Luke tried to tell ppl about Obi-wan's force ghost literally no-one, even ppl who were familiar w the Jedi when they were around, would know wtf he was talking about

R2-D2 knew everything that went down during the prequels and just opted not to tell anyone ever which is fully in-character for him

becoming a Jedi was a whole process involving 15+ years of training and formal trials to determine if you were ready for knighthood and then with Luke Yoda was just like 'yeah fuck it you're a jedi knight now. burn the jedi temple did. made up all the rules are. gives a shit who does.'

everyone just kind of forgot who the Jedi were within the span of a generation. love that.

[aomoviegeek]

Even though Disney/Lucasfilm would never pull this off (since they love Rian Johnson & TLJ so much), I think this actually would’ve worked. I would’ve loved to see it.

Just split it into two parts (Episodes 9 & 10) so that we can have a real sequel trilogy, bring back Lawrence Kasdan & Michael Arndt to co-write the films with JJ instead of Chris Terrio, create a mix of used & unused footage of Carrie from both TFA & TLJ to create Leia’s role in at least 9. You can even re-introduce Rose and make her a more well-written character.

I think it would’ve brought at least a little bit of life back into Star Wars & the sequel era compared to the state it’s in now.

[lauransoverthinking]

I’m so confused by the Tales of the Jedi commentary re: the things Dooku says about the Jedi being how the creators feel about the Jedi…. People. Please. The final scene of his arc is him hanging out with the big bad. He is not the hero here.

He is the protagonist, but not the hero. That is an incredibly important distinction.

If Dooku is the one who said it, you should be INCREDIBLY SUSPICIOUS OF IT.

None of this was Dooku gives voice to the thoughts of the creator. It was don’t believe the shit the villain tells you. We are literally watching this person fall. His takes are hot garbage. His narration is unreliable.

[yraelviii]

(I mean, I am only going off the movies here, but) What I saw was also Obi-wan discovering evidence of the clone army's creation and Kamino having been thoroughly covered up through data erasure in the Jedi's own archives without their knowledge, and then *that* particularly suspicious tidbit just being completely ignored and never followed up on after Kenobi reached Kamino. They don't know for sure who ordered the army so entirely too far in advance of any senate talks of making a clone army, or who was able to infiltrate Jocasta's Perfect Archives (Jocasta, love you dearly but humble yourself to doing a collection audit once in a while. Maybe keep holo-pullslips to see who last accessed which files, maybe a change-log? Back-up copies?) and erase an entire planet's existence from the galaxy's awareness until the time was just right for a Star War, and eventually everyone forgets to question how convenient it all is? Or just doesn't get the chance to say "wait no we're being railroaded here, this is just what they want to have happen."

[takes down battered old soapbox]

See, one of the arguments agaist the Jedi that I just Don't Get is the whole "they committed a war crime by drafting a bunch of clones into the army!" I watched the prequels again recently. and that. is not what happened.

I don't know about everybody else, but what I saw was Obi-Wan tracking down Jango Fett during his investigation of the assassination attempt against Padme, and getting sidetracked by a bunch of Kaminoans going "hey!!! we have your order ready for pickup!!!" then going to report it to the jedi coucil and them going "we.. didn't order...a million identical human men... maybe... the republic???? we'll tell them and try to get it sorted out???" and then the senate hears about this and goes "oh!! elite soldiers!! how convienient and not at all suspicious!!!" (i assume there were at least some senators who didn't like the idea, but it had to be a majority). And then they drafted the clones into the war and went over to the jedi and said "hey, you wouldn't mind leading these guys into battle, right??? i mean, you are peacekeepers, so it's kind of your job to fight on our side in a galactic civil war lol" and the jedi said "well, we serve the republic, and there are obviously some atrocities being committed... and it seems like there might be some sith activity involved... so... okay. but we don't like this. we're peacekeepers not soldiers."

The Jedi weren't the ones who drafted the clones??? Yes, Yoda brought them to Geonosis, but (i believe) the senate had already approved their use as a military force, and he was trying to save his family from being decimated by battle droids. I think that's pretty understandable.

Anyway. Just needed to get another rant out of my system.

[thotvengers]

Yea um put Poe to where Luke is and put Luke to where Kylo is and just throw Kylo off of this whole image thanks

[yourlocalfandomfrickfracker]

Man oh man do I have some mixed feelings about this here latest episode of TBoBF.

I’m gonna specifically focus on my mixed feelings about Grogu’s future, because smarter people than me have already taken these last two episodes to task for sidelining the main goddamn character for plot that could and should have been saved for TM season three.

To start with the positive, it’s very, very good that Grogu is shown to have a say in whether or not he becomes a Jedi Knight; that Luke respects Grogu’s personal agency and asks our funky little fella to be honest with himself about what he wants. All too often I see the anti-Jedi clowns equate being a Jedi to being a prisoner or a slave and while there’s already so much canon evidence against this that they ignore it’s nice that the most mainstream piece of Star Wars content right now is doubling down on “being a Jedi Knight is a choice, and a choice that’s best made with serious self-reflection.”

I wish I could enjoy that in a vacuum, but...

This fandom has made it damn near impossible for me to not balk at the idea of a Jedi becoming a Mandalorian. I cannot understate how that whole concept has been soured for me. Frankly, I never liked it much to begin with, but now I can’t stand it.

Because it almost never leads to a cultural blend. 

(The Jedi are a good example of cultural blend, actually. Look at any Jedi character and you’ll see a fusion of Jedi aesthetics and the aesthetics of their homeworld. If the Jedi demanded absolute conformity, would you see Zabrak or Mirialan Jedi with tattoos, or Togruta Jedi wearing akul teeth? No, you wouldn’t. But we do.)

It almost always leads to cultural erasure.

(Because traditionalist Mandalorians, when played straight, do demand absolute conformity. Look no further than the Armorer denouncing Din’s status as a Mandalorian when he admitted to removing his helmet in front of others. The other traditional Mandos we see outside of the CotW sect aren’t as strict about helmets, but they certainly have some hardline ideas about what does or doesn’t make someone a “real” Mandalorian.)

And it almost always comes from Jedi-critical or anti-Jedi writers who want to prop up the Mandalorians as superior.

(It’s not just fanworks, either. KT had her favorite mouthpiece OC, Clown Skirata, slowly but surely bully Etain into divorcing herself from her culture, along with some post-Order 66 Jedi who had to stop being Jedi or die by Skirata’s hand. Fuck off.)

I cannot stress enough how much I don’t want any of that touching Grogu or his character arc with a ten-foot poll.

You cannot show me yet another gut-wrenching Order 66 flashback with Jedi dying to protect a frightened Jedi youngling, and then expect me to be excited about the prospect of that same Jedi youngling not reconnecting with the culture that was stolen from him by Palpatine.

Because that’s a foregone conclusion, ain’t it? There’s no real mystery here, no real “will he, wont he,” because we all know the writers are gonna have Grogu pick Din. Grogu is a big draw for the show, and status quo demands that he be right by Din’s side for season three.

(And, let’s face it, they’re not gonna let any Jedi characters we care about stick by Luke’s side, because otherwise they’d get murdered down the line by Supreme Fuckboy Kyle Ron. Swell.)

Anyway, wrapping this all up before I get too lost in the sauce: my enthusiasm for TM season three is in the critical care ward on life support, and I’m not looking forward to all the anti-Jedi Mando stans hooting about how Grogu made the “right” choice.

[moxiebustion]

In a more meta sense, I hate the whole 'grey Jedi' thing because it's very existence pivots around a central idea that none of the people who preach it seem to be willing to unpack.

That they think being Good is BORING.

They think being kind and selfless and willingly sacrificing your own desires for other peoples - not even people connected to them personally, more the horror - as some kind of soul crushing self-righteous goody two-shoes cavalcade of yawns.

Therefore, they rail against the 'complacency' and the 'rigidity' and the 'zealotry' and sometimes the 'arrogance' of the Jedi...

... but underneath it all their stated problems with them seems to be that they find them boring. They weren't quippy, lone wolf, screw-the-rules types (like Anakin) and somehow that was the greater sin than... well, anything Anakin actually did.

But I guess it's easier for someone to say the Jedi were repressed and severe and complicit in their own deaths than to admit that they committed the cardinal sin of being boring. You can hang your hat on them being 'just as bad' as the Sith or 'only one half of the balance and that too can tip too far' or 'just claiming to be the good guys, but they weren't and here's why'. To say you don't like them because they're BORING is... well, it sounds petty and small minded.

Now don't get me wrong! I get wanting to dig into a well played villain. Villains get to be sexy, they get to have no inhibitions, they can have tragic, complicated backstories and you can examine a lot of interesting things through that lens. I'm not saying that re-examining a text from different perspectives isn't a worthwhile endeavor. It is, in fact, very transformative in and of itself.

But this habit GFFA fandom has of taking the villains, and the philosophies of said villains, who were absolutely and clearly, with no ambiguity, in the wrong for the entire text and twist it like a pretzel in order to makes them somehow RIGHT? To take the actual genocide, murder, cultural erasure in the text itself - all of which was hardly the invention of George Lucas, who was born a year BEFORE WWII ended and was raised in the post-war boom years where the memories of the latest state sponsored mass murder were still fresh - and somehow spin that into being necessary, righteous, justified?

For the metatextual crime of being BORING??

That's just intellectually AND imaginatively lazy.

You think the villains are more interesting? Great! Tell me a villain's story, unapologetically. Get into the head of that guy. Don't smooth down their disturbing and uncomfortable rough edges. Cut the page with them and let them bleed. You don't have to suddenly goodsplain all their past actions to make them interesting or tell a good story with them.

You want to take a Villain on a redemptive journey? Great! Star Wars is all about that! But don't Bo-Katan Kryze it and just wipe away all the stains. The stains, and how the character washes them out, and what ones they have come to terms with keeping, are what makes them interesting.

None of this 'I-did-whatever-I-want-and-I-was-right-because-it's-me' stuff. I mean, this isn't a sermon, forget all the moral and ethical wishy-washy paradigms or whatnot, that's for philosophy degrees. It's just bad storytelling. I mean YAWN. How boring is that? What was the point of Anakin saving Luke if you're going to say that wheezy mofo was always right somehow? Or that he couldn't make any choices of his own? Where is the emotional weight behind that one last day making one final, much better choice? What's interesting about his character if he didn't make a bunch or wrongs he couldn't right?

And as for the 'grey Jedi'? The ones that don't fall, just, you know, dabble a little and that's somehow okay because they're special and can control it? My dudes, if you're on a boat and it catches fire and, instead of just tossing the burning bit like a sensible person, you put a hole in the bottom to put out a fire, there's no 'using a little bit of the water' and staying afloat. Even if you put out the fire, that water's going to keep seeping in. You either plug that hole or you sink. There's no 'grey Jedi'. They're either rising or they're falling. Or, you know, a Sith. That's not speculation or opinion. That's TEXT. That was how the world was set up to run. You can write all the AUs you like, go for it, but don't pretend Mordor is a holiday resort in canon.

Which circles me back. Evil = interesting, good = yawn?

What was it Ursula K Leguin said about the treason of the artist? The unwillingness to admit to the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain? The idea of a 'grey Jedi' is attractive only because you think good is boring. That a good, mature, self-controlled or righteous character can't have any interesting conflicts, that just because they serve a higher purpose that's impersonal to them they can have no internal anguish, no personal drama or self-growth through making mistakes.

Screw that, my friends. That might be the laziest take of them all. There's plenty of narrative prospects in an unashamedly good character, in how they are tasked to try to change the world around them, and the compromises and lines they have to draw to do that. Don't believe me? Watch the entirety of Ted Lasso. Take a gander at Aziraphale in Good Omens (whom Michael Sheen had much to say about playing different shades of good and how rarely people dig into those layers). You can even do this with characters who did drown in violence and darkness; check out Rurouni Kenshin, the legit former murderer/assassin who reversed the blade of his sword and swore to never take another life. There were a hundred books about that oath being tested every way to Sunday and any one of them would have fit thematically into Star Wars just fine.

Hell, watch Obi-Wan, in anything he's ever been in. That poor guy got put through the wringer in every possible way, personally and professionally, and every single time he held fast. He was faced with terrible, devastating obstacles and moral mazes and he had to deal with them even while irrevocably bound to his principles which a lot of the times just made his job that much harder to bear. Finding his way both despite and because of those inhibitions is exactly what made him so interesting. He never once said 'screw-the-rules' and just did what we wanted; he bent and he bartered and he did whatever he could live with and was steadfast and kept the faith even when he lost everything, and that gave us some of the most interesting stories in all of Star Wars. It was the fact that he didn't screw the rules that made it so.

Because, as it turns out, breaking the rules and tearing down restrictions baked into the world building don't make a character interesting. Lizzy Bennet isn't suddenly going to start dropping F-bombs and declaring she's going to study at Oxford with the men. She has to come into her own in the sitting room just like every other woman of her day - and the fact that she does get what she wants without breaking the strict social conventions of her day makes her timeless. More than that, it makes us root for her. A character's struggles against the obstacles the narrative put in their way - be it a comedy of strict social behavior or promises made or, yes, an oath to serve a higher purpose, is the very essence of what makes drama. The narrative isn't served by giving characters free rein with no consequences. How they deal with consequences is what makes them characters, and characters you want to play with.

You don't have to dip a character into the sty of continually losing against their worser natures to tell an interesting story about them. You don't have to grubby them up to make walking through a moral maze any less white knuckled and high stakes. And you don't have to pretend that having a little darkness inside of them is somehow a good thing, something that can make them more morally complex, when the text itself has said, over and over and OVER again, that it's the fight against that darkness that makes the characters good. Even good people do what needs to be done and have to live with consequences. They don't need to make deals with the devil of the GFFA to earn a little moral complexity on the way. CF: Andor.

Meanwhile, I hear they're doing a show about a Sith infiltrating the 'arrogant' 'complacent' Jedi.

YAWN.

Wake me when they write something more interesting.

I don’t think some people realize why the gray jedi thing pisses some of us off so badly.

Imagine you like lord of the rings and you decide to look around the fandom.

And it turns out that 10+ or something years ago someone wrote a piece of fanfiction where they rewrote the rules for the ring. So instead of it only having one master and corrupting everyone else that tried to use it, it sometimes chooses to take a new master if it feels the person is worthy of it. And therefore this author’s self-insert OC can now use the one ring in all its glory without getting turned crazy.

This fanfic gets published (as some fanfics do) and most of the fandom has read it and loves it.

Now, when you (someone who has only dealt with canon works written by Tolkien) see this fic you go… huh. That’s nice, but it goes against the very point of the books and the lore tolkien created. So while it’s a good fic I’m not going to interact with it.

But then people keep harassing you for taking about/ writing the one ring the way tolkien wrote it to begin with.

And they SWEAR that this is the Actual lore of the one ring, and that YOU are wrong. Which is completely insane to you, because FRODE TOOK IT TO MORDOR FOR A REASON. There is only one lord of the ring!! That’s literally the name of the series that’s what it’s about!! If what the fandom was insisting about was possible, there would be no plot. In the original books.

This is why we are so upset over gray jedi!! Bc if it was possible to use the dark side but still be a good guy then wtf is wrong with Anakin? Why the fuck did Darth Vader fall to the dark side? Why did Luke struggle so much? If you can have your cake and eat it too why are the movies so fuckin long?? Why did Luke fail against Vader in Empire? what lesson did he learn in Return? Why would the movie be called Return of the Jedi if Luke had not learned the Jedi ways????

You can write OC’s as gray jedi all you want but when you start forcing it into canon it literally ruins the movies!

[gffa]

"He issued Order 66 and most of the Jedi died that very day.  Not just full Knights either.  Padwans, younglings.  That was the Purge.  Order 66 stil stands.  Jedi are to be killed on sight.  Even people who MIGHT be Jedi.  People like me." “But their boss... he was worst than any of them.  And he’s still out there.  The monster of monsters.  Pure, true evil.” I AM SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS. Because this isn’t new, but it’s hitting me all over again, how brutal this genocide of an entire people was, how it’s not just the eradication of them, but true erasure of them.  Luke doesn’t even know what the Purge specifically was, he knew the Jedi existed, but by this point we’ve also seen the Empire’s decades long attempts to rewrite history, that we’ve seen a ton of examples of how they make Force museums “disappear”, they kill anyone who talks about the Jedi or the Force, first they branded them traitors, then made it so you’re not even allowed to talk about them, you can’t stop and think or discuss how maybe erasing the entire people of them could have been done differently, even in Jedi: Fallen Order, just Prauf expressing the idea “I don’t believe all of them could have been traitors” is enough to cause tension and that’s only five years out from Revenge of the Sith. By this point in time, twenty years later, the full scale propaganda attack against the Jedi has erased almost everything of them, all that’s left are the handful of people who managed to hide.  Both Jedi and people who could have been Jedi. This is what genocide looks like.  Not just murdering the Masters and the Knights, but the children, too.  Hunting down Eeth Koth, who had left the Jedi Order, who had started a biological family, who had changed religions, who swore he was done with all of it, wasn’t enough to save him.  Darth Vader still murdered him for being a Jedi and stole his newborn child to take away and make into their own creation.  We saw it in Rebels with the Empire trying to steal Pypey, just because the baby was Force-sensitive. This is what genocide looks like, that it’s not actually about what they did or didn’t do, it’s about being part of that group, it’s about destroying everything they built, it’s about chasing down the remnants of those people or even people who could find the remnants of the Jedi. And that last line--”The monster of monsters.  Pure, true evil.”  The haunting specter of evil for these people who have already suffered so much, imagine knowing that he’s out there, that he’s unstoppable, that he’s stronger than any of you, that you know nothing about him, only that he wants to and will kill you if he finds you, the sheer amount of terror that has to put into people who already have no support structure around them, who have to live in constant fear of the mundanity of people turning them in for reward money and live in constant fear of Vader or the Inquisitorius finding them. Just because they were born with the potential to be Jedi.

[crispyjenkins]

hi! i am just very confused about one of ur posts with the mandalorians and cultural genocide and was wondering if maybe you can explain more? i thought mandalorian culture was about like family and arts with the colors and stuff? is it really just about war? i know a lot of people headcanon that the clones are mandalorian but now i feel uncomfy about putting a warrior culture on characters played by a maori actor, whose people still struggle with martial race stereotypes today :(

hello!! i am absolutely not an authority on this topic, so i’ve compiled a bunch of posts that explain it better than me, but short answer is: mandalorian culture is not all about war. there is a ton of intention put into mandalorians (specifcially not death watch, who literally fought in the civil war because the true mandalorians were like “maybe stop pillaging and killing people for no reason” and they didn’t want to stop; or the new mandalorians who threw out every god and myth important to the true mandalorians, as well as its language, cultural importance/sacredness of armor, religious customs, etc, because Satine interpreted true mandalorian culture as nothing but war, but that is extremely extremely not the point of the resol’nare or the codex) and how they draw on Māori culture and customs, because temuera morrison played jango fett in the prequels.

your concern is so so valid and absolutely something to keep in mind when interpreting “canon” and “legends canon”, but satine’s take on true mandalorians is inherently false.

links under the cut with a lil explanation for each! (edit: this is long as fuck, i’m so sorry 🥲)

we’ll start with this one which is from star wars insider issue 86, because it covers a lot of the basics of how eu and legends wrote mandalorians. HOWEVER, also keep in mind this groundwork was all laid by karen traviss who is a racist, sexist, classist, homophobic dirtbag, like i don’t even know where to begin with her, but her early work for jango fett in the republic commando novels is still important to understanding mandalorian culture in current continuities. (i also believe this issue was from before clone wars began airing)

this one goes more in depth than the post i recently reblogged which i think you’re referring to, about the imperialism of the new mandalorians and their cultural genocide of true mandalorians more or less based on satine kryze’s experience with death watch, a splinter cult off of the true mandalorians (i’m using cult intentionally here, btw) who literally just didn’t want their murdering and stealing to be regulated.

this post is about mental illness in true mandalorian society, which is intrinsically tied to the root of true mandalorian and early mandalorian religion and daily culture, and the concept of fighting stagnation and destruction/war against the things that are choking you and stopping self growth, it’s not about conquering people or planets, it’s about bettering oneself constantly, based on the mandalorian creation myth ( @izzyovercoffee goes more in depth with this in the post). death watch, and many fans, interpret this ideology as the right to violence and the destruction for destruction’s sake, which isn’t what it’s about at all.

alright this one is directly related to the concepts of the last one, and surmises a lot of the points, and is maybe the easiest post in my list for a quick understanding of mandalorian philosophy?

here’s a shorter post that gives a little more insight/reiterates new vs true mandalorian ideology, because lord knows my autism brain likes more than one way of explaining something.

this one is an interpretation of canon and new mandalorian imperialism, which is technically headcanon, but boy howdy does canon not disagree with it, and forms the basis of my own interpretation of mandalorians as a whole

here’s a cool post going into the language mando’a and how it cannot be separated from culture, which i think is incredibly important to keep in mind when looking at new mandalorians and how they don’t use mando’a.

more explanation and interpretation of new manadlorians and their portrayal in the clone wars, and why it’s important against all the canon content we got before clone wars aired

this one is from before boba’s return to “canon” material in season two of the mandalorian where he and jango were reconfirmed as mandalorians, but is still super, super, super important in relation to mandalorian diaspora, and the way writers cannot separate mandalorians from their roots in māori culture, when it was created because temuera morrison played jango fett and his clones. also goes into how important “family without blood” is as the basis of mandalorian family and cultural structure, which explains a lot about the show the mandalorian!

this one’s just a cool take on the parallels between mandalorians and jedi, who are also rather disgustingly misinterpreted by fans (interestingly as the opposite, as complacent and too bureaucratic vs the violent and imperialist take most have on mandalorians).

here’s a post going into how din djarin’s tribe/sect in the mandalorian tv isn’t a cult, and how that relates to bo-katan kryze, her position with death watch, and her connection to the new mandalorians because of it.

okie the next few are about how māori customs, things of cultural significance, etc are intentional in the portrayal of (true) mandalorians

this one is about the keldabe kiss or the kov’nyn, forehead-kiss, headbutt 

this one is a video of boba fighting set to te reo māori thrash metal, and a short explanation of the importance of the battle its about, which i think is important in remembering that while the māori people today do suffer from awful marital stereotyping, you cannot divorce them from their own form of warrior culture without erasing that history or importance; there isn’t anything inherently wrong in warrior cultures, just how white people interpreted and appropriated it.

THIS ONE I LOVE and is mr morrison himself bringing the traditional māori dance the haka into boba’s fighting style in the mandalorian tv, as well as the use of māori-style weapons 

which also relates to this post by @catboydindjarin

and sums up my feelings on associating mandalorians and the māori people, how important jango and boba fett have been to people like temuera morrison and daniel logan (who played lil boba in atoc) and bodie taylor (who played the mid-20s clones). as a white person, it’s incredibly important for me to remember the stereotyping and violence still being done to indigenous and first nations people, and to be aware of and respectful of how i use and take pieces of the those cultures in anything, but especially fictional aliens. but to pretend forms of battle, pretend weapons and songs and philosophies that do involve violence were not and are not still culturally important to those peoples is erasure, and is what satine kryze chose to do when faced with a completely different people’s violence.  to separate (true) mandalorians from the māori people is to erase them from the narrative completely.

so!! on a lighter note, here’s a post with bodie taylor and captain typho’s actor jay laga’aia performing haka with mr morrison during an aotc press event

here’s an excerpt from one of the repcom novels about jango being a Dad and how important children are to the true mandalorians 

it won’t let me upload gifs at the moment so here’s a post of several delightful gifs of mr morrison on set for aotc with a rainbow umbrella

here’s one that touches on the importance of armor color as you mentioned in your ask

this wonderfully funny textpost from @letitrainathousandflames that illustrates more of the mandalorian parental instinct (which is shown time and again in extended/legends canon to be more important than “war” or battle)

here’s some highlights from the eu about boba reconnecting with his mandalorian heritage after jango’s death

this one is a short post by @jester-mereel about what jango chooses to be jaster’s legacy, which is vital because jaster mereel the one who created the super commando codex and the true mandalorians, is the one who looked at how people like tor vizsla were using their heritage and thought “we can do and be better than this”

here’s the wookieepedia article on jaster mereel (all wookieepedia stuff should be taken with a grain of salt, of course, especially in regards to the jedi order but that’s another matter)

here’s the wookieepedia article on the supercommandos, which is what earlier material referred to the true mandalorians as, basically the commandos that followed jaster and the supercommando codex

here’s the one on the codex if you want to jump to that specifically

this is an actual copy of the basics of the codex as well as the resol’nare or six tenants, which existed far before jaster, but what jaster used as the ethical basis of the codex (the site is written from the point of view of a supercommando, just a heads up if that’s confusing)

here’s the wookiee article on death watch, i trust you to keep an open mind and don’t take anything said by the vizslas or bo-katan at face value, because, again, they splintered from the supercommandos because they wanted to keep stealing and killing people just because, and used the “savage warrior past” of mandalorians to excuse it

here’s the mando’a dictionary that’s most accessible, also remembering that translations are interpretations (specifically the discourse about “k’atini” comes to mind) and is constantly being revised

and then some of my favorite excerpts from it, in relation to what mandalorians actually find important:

“Ni kyr'tayl gai sa'ad” | adoption vow - lit. “I know your name as my child.” (meaning adoption is no less important than blood heritage, and in some interpretations is actually more important)

mandokar | the *right stuff*, the epitome of Mando virtue - a blend of aggression, tenacity, loyalty and a lust for life (and aggression does not always mean violence)

“Gar taldin ni jaonyc; gar sa buir, ori'wadaas'la.” | “Nobody cares who your father was, only the father you'll be.” (Lit: Bloodline is not important, but you as a father are the most valuable thing.) Mando saying emphasising the importance of a father's role, and that a man is judged more by that than his lineage. (this dictionary chooses to gender things unnecessarily, when words like “buir” are gender neutral, but you get the gist: parenthood is very important to mandalorians, which is of course the entire basis for the mandalorian tv plot) 

demagolka | someone who commits atrocties, a real-life monster, a war criminal - from the notorious Mandalorian scientist of the Old Republic, Demagol, known for his experiments on children, and a figure of hate and dread in the Mando psyche (again, children being more important than violence)

bajur | education, the raising and nurturing of children - a wider meaning than just school work, includes preparation for life and survival Aliit ori'shya tal'din | Family is more than blood.

shereshoy | lust for life and much more - uniquely Mandalorian word, meaning the enjoyment of each day and the determination to seek and grab every possible experience, as well as surviving to see the next day - hanging onto life and relishing it. An understandable state of mind/ emotion for a warrior people. Closely related to the words for live, hunt and stay safe - and, of course *oya*. All from the same root.

and since you mentioned color, this post is so feckin cool as it talks about white =/= purity, and goes into quite a bit about the “destruction” in mandalorian culture being about the rebirth, not the violence

and then here’s a few links to content in the mandalorian tv

“the poc experience of keeping ur mouth shut bc ur too tired to argue w/ a white person“ about boba downplaying his mandalorian-ness to bo-katan, a known violent xenophobe 

more on din’s sect the children of the watch not being a cult vs death watch

some cool thoughts on the differences in how boba and bo-katan interacted with din during season 2 which i think is important in terms of illustrating the differences between death watch and true mandalorians, again

a cool dialogue on din and removing his helmet in season 2 and his religious/cultural views in relation to being mandalorian

i spent like three hours on this and i definitely only meant to give you like. five links. but uhhh i hope this helps!! feel free to shoot me further questions, but just keeping in mind i am not māori and cannot speak to the māori experience in fandom or in regards to jango fett and the clones.

i hope you’re safe and well!! 🌻