#Tusken massacre

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

oh hey, remember that post about how Anakin and Ahsoka's relationship was a lie from the very beginning because every happy memory she has of him she formed when he was already a mass murderer? how the idea of Anakin before he fell to the dark side she has in her mind was never even the truth?

well it took me ages to realize but the very first mission they have as master and apprentice brings them to the place he committed the mass murder. like i knew it but I didn't get what it meant. ahsoka spends the whole movie thinking anakin is just grumpy about his past but he's dragging the ghost of a horrible massacre!! and still thinking that little kid is annoying for being so bubbly and upbeat about a planet he hates so much!! he thinks it's her way of thinking that's wrong and needs to be corrected, never once realizing as he's walking across Tatooine that he absolutely should not be mentoring a child when he has killed dozens of them.

he just expects to build a master/apprentice rapport with her - expecting trust, obedience, attention of her - while just... lying. about everything. I don't even mean this in a bashing way, just in a 'it's fascinating and bonkers when you think about it' way.

it's not just ahsoka's image of anakin that was missing a VERY critical piece that would change her entire perception of him if she had known, it's that anakin is reminded by circumstances of that critical piece at the very start of their relationship and doesn't seem to think it matters.

he lies to obi-wan, but they have a prior relationship he doesn't want to destroy. but he lies to ahsoka knowingly as he builds a relationship he did not have to build. I don't know what I think about that other than huh, there's a lot of unpacking to be done here

[jedi-enthusiast]

Ok, since apparently I have to explain this to some people- (*cough* Stanakins *cough*) -here's a quick, easy to understand, post on the topic:

NO AMOUNT OF TRAUMA EXCUSES MASS MURDER, CHILD MURDER, OR VIOLENCE OF ANY KIND!

Zero.

Nothing.

Nada.

I don't give a fuck that Anakin was a slave for 9 years, I don't care that he had to be separated from his mom at a young age, it doesn't matter that he watched her die ten years later.

NOTHING excuses the fact that he literally MURDERED an ENTIRE VILLAGE including THE FUCKING CHILDREN!!!

And, frankly, if you think that committing mass murder and child murder in response to a loved one dying is a "reasonable," "understandable," or "the only human reaction"- (because, yes, I was told that if I wouldn't commit mass murder if my mom died, then I wasn't human) -then please, for the love of god, stay away from other people and never pursue a career in the justice system.

Like, seriously, what the fuck is wrong with y'all?

[marvelstars]

Padme & Anakin anger &flaws

I may be in the minority but I do think Padme is principled and brave a lot, she has been that way since she was a kid, she was bassically trained to be that way so she could become a strong/good leader for Naboo and guess what Anakin is/was very principled and brave as well, the fact both of them share this about the other is one of the biggest reasons why they became involved and fell in love but Padme also is flawed, I don´t believe she was without flaws and one those flaws involve being almost as angry as Anakin.

We already saw Anakin´s reaction over Shmi´s death, Padme is almost as angry over Corde´s murder in AOTC, in the novel of Attack of the Clones Padmé has a moment in which she wishes she could murder the trade federation leaders and Count Dooku over Corde´s death and she wonders if that was how Anakin felt with the tusken raiders after they tortured and killed his mother, the main difference between them is that Padme would have to use considerable effort to do that which would lead to her thinking things over better, while Anakin could kill a lot of people just using his mind in the rush of the moment, he didn´t even needs his lightsaber to do that, so his control over himself has to be more constant.

Both Padme and Anakin share a perspective of justice being something that not neccesarily can be always tackled by a system, in fact Padme´s words after leaving the Senate to go rescue her planet was that there wasn´t probably any hope for the republican system, a concept like justice isn´t easily tackled by a system, especially one as flawed as the republic, Padme simply thoguht the republic could be fixed when she grew up and Anakin shared this sentiment as well but he wasn´t as hopeful as her.

So both have this rightheous anger in them and in Padme´s case that included her helping Anakin hide what happened to the tusken raiders, maybe she thought him being expelled from the Jedi Order and going to jail wasn´t the best way to deal with that, I personally think maybe that could have protected him from Palpatine but he surely would have found a way to become Anakin´s guardian and lawyer if that happened but my guess is that Padme simply had compassion for Anakin´s circunstances, because the origin of Anakin´s reaction was precisely being taken away from his mother, leaving her a slave which lead to her death and Padme knew as well as Anakin did that the dead of Shmi Skywalker would not garner justice from Jabba, the Republic or any other system or government body in the galaxy, literally nobody cared she died, only Anakin and the Lars family did which made Padme sympathetic to Anakin.

Padme also is very principled but imo she seems used to have a pov particular to her station which also leads to ignore some things people who had not been in her place experiment daily, she shares this flaw with Bail Organa as well. Slavery for Padme seemed a very horrible and sad reality but it wasn´t one of her priorities to end it, her priority was to help turn the republic into a more equal and fuctional body that could better deal with those situations and many others around the galaxy and she actually came close to discovering many of Palpatine´s schemes for this reason, which was why he and Dooku wanted her dead and she never semed to quite make the connection between slavery and the clones but then again nobody else did except for maybe Anakin and ironically Palpatine and Count Dooku.

Both Padme and Anakin were children forced into adult situations and both were told or were forced to, since a young age, to reppress their emotions, Padme as Amidala, Anakin as a slave who had to control his emotions so he would not bring trouble to his mother or himself and later as a Jedi. Imo this made both of them develop a kind of double life, Anakin in particular hated the Amidala persona, because Padme seemed so emotionless when she was that way but curiously enugh as Vader, one of his main go to presentation cards is to act almost as emotionless as Queen Amidala.

What I don´t view and never will see as part of Padme´s flaws is her love for Anakin or her wish to save him from himself in ROTS.

Those are not flaws, those are part of her strenght as a character imo because while she certainly wasn´t of the oppinion that eveything would be alright after what Anakin did, in fact Lucas commented she would not have stayed his wife had she lived, she definitely could see he wasn´t in his right mind on Mustafar, so their marriage may have been over if Anakin followed her but she still cared enough for him to try to help him get back to his own senses, because she knew if she gave Anakin that opportunity, his own horror over what he did would be as strong as anything she could tell him and he would have directly taken matters into his own hands even if they meant his death and this opportunity is precisely what Luke presented to Vader in ROTJ, which lead to the biggest victory over the darkside in the series, so no Padme´s love and compassion for Anakin will never be flaws from my pov, just like Anakin only could find himself again because he was able to feel compassion again as Vader. Both are connected that way.

[sad-stucky-shipper-107]

The tusken massacre controversial take (both sides)

tw: mentions of rape, torture & racism

People WILL probably block me for this but IDC because I went up ahead and read up on the tuskens on the official Wiki and while I definitely DO see how it could be interpreted as racism (I genuinely believe Lucas Did Not mean for it to be read as such) . But. BUT.

I'm not saying the murder of the tuskens was "justified" but it was definitely a much. much. more complicated situation than people make it out to be. It is CANON that Tuskens are mistrustful to the point of Xenophobia of the other settlers on the planet, settlers who by this point have been there for generations. So the argument has to be made that their culture and traditions would NOT change overnight if at all. And therefore Anakin was right about one thing, (and I am willing to die on this hill.) the tusken children Would have grown up to be the same torturers and killers (possibly rapists, there were very few reasons for them to keep Shmi alive and none of them good)

Now, am I saying that killing children for something they might do or in this case Will do in the future is wrong? I'll be very honest, im only 70% sure my answer would be a definitive No. The other 30% is genuinely considering it. I cannot comment upon the female tuskens as there is literally almost NOTHING about them in Canon verse and so I know nothing about how culpable they are in this. But motherfucker NEITHER DO YOU.

Anyway yeah there are many tribes of tusken and some of them peaceful but this one was Definitely Not. We were sown this. This wasn't a matter of racism. this was a matter of Murderous, Torturing, Kidnappers. Who kidnapped and possibly raped this guy's mother.

Fact: Shmi was an innocent woman who had done NOTHING to the tusken

Fact: She was tortured at their hands for days

Fact: If someone did that to my mom, I'd be pretty murderous too especially if someone had been grooming (palpatine) me to give into my worst nature from age 9.

Idk man, things are definitely not as black and white as we are making them out to be. On EITHER SIDE. And if we're talking about bringing up the consequences of his actions before the senate? Most of them are not Nearly empathetic enough even give a fuck. They need the Hero With No Fear too much and even if they didn't they would NOT give a fuck. The jedi council definitely would but they would ALSO debate this, like a LOT.

EDIT: ALSO ALSO, ONE MORE HLL I'LL DIE ON, ITS MENTIONED IN WOOKIEPEDIEA THAT 1 TRIBE WAS A COMMUNITY OF 20-30 PEOPLE, STOP CALLING IT A FUCKING GENOCIDE. IT WAS A MASSACRE. IT WAS A FUCKING MASSACRE WHICH WAS UNACCEPTABLE BUT IT WAS VERY DIFFERENT FROM A GENOCIDE.

Edit 2: The tuskens also engaged in slavery. Definitely not the "🥺 innocents" people make them out to be.

[phoenixyfriend]

Context: There was an early draft of one of the film scripts that included Darth Sidious bribing the Tusken Tribe to kidnap and torture Shmi.

No Character Bashing in the reblogs. It's a heavy subject and one of contention, but please keep all discussion of Anakin's actions civil. This is about Palpatine, not Anakin.

* this includes the kidnapping, the start of the war, Anakin's uncharacteristic visions, and the moment of death itself

"Other reasons" also means "more than one of the reasons in this category."

[antianakin]

@theneutralmime

I mean, the answer is that you're supposed to feel sympathy towards both of them I think. Sort-of. Arguably, you're SUPPOSED to feel more sympathy for Anakin than the Tuskens since, by the time of this film coming out, there WASN'T a lot out there that explored the Tuskens as a people and certainly nothing that was positive about them. I think the intention is to recognize that this was a horrible thing that Anakin did, and that killing "the women and children" was definitely crossing a line, but that Anakin's reaction was very sympathetic and understandable after what had happened to his mother. I usually liken this scene to Anakin killing an entire pack of wolves down to the last puppy because one of them attacked his mother or something. Not that that's how we SHOULD view the Tuskens, obviously, but that I think that's how LUCAS sort-of viewed the Tuskens and the emotions of this scene.

There is nothing about what Anakin does that is "normal" and I think that that's something that's made very clear in the film. Anakin is getting the Imperial March music, he's clearly falling into his own darkness here, this is a first major step towards becoming Darth Vader. Padme claims that to be angry is to be human, and she's not wrong, but being angry to the point of massacring an entire village down to the last child is uhhh... perhaps NOT so human. Or it's human, but it's still fucking horrific and not something that should be condoned the way she's doing in this scene. She prioritizes comforting Anakin over anything else, despite the fact that he's showing zero remorse FOR THE TUSKENS (he shows remorse for having acted unlike a Jedi, yes, but no actual remorse over the Tuskens being dead, it's a very important difference that a lot of his fans choose not to recognize).

The appropriate Jedi reaction would've been, yes, to simply remove the body without being noticed and just leaving the Tuskens alone at that point. The Jedi do not have the ability to fix the strained relationship between the Tuskens and the settlers and even if they did, this would not be the appropriate time or place to attempt to do so. ALL that can be done in this situation is to retrieve Shmi's body so that the people who love her can get some closure over what happened.

And arguably, a true Jedi WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN ON TATOOINE IN THE FIRST PLACE. Remember, Anakin has been assigned to be a bodyguard for Padme to keep her from being assassinated after multiple attempts on her life recently. He chose to ABANDON that duty in order to go to Tatooine to try to save his mother instead. Padme seems to be understanding about this and chooses to go with him, but that doesn't negate that Anakin was fully planning to just abandon her entirely for his own selfish agenda. If he wanted to go to Tatooine to save his mother, this is something he could've and SHOULD'VE discussed with Obi-Wan and the Council much earlier and they could've let him go handle that while someone else got assigned to Padme to protect her. But once he took on the responsibility of protecting Padme, it was no longer appropriate to just go off to Tatooine to try to save Shmi. He shouldn't have been there when going there clearly meant leaving Padme unprotected. He abandoned his duty, something no real Jedi would ever actually have done in his position. Had Anakin been honest about his dreams and desires earlier, he might've gotten there before Shmi was too far gone which could've kept him from choosing to massacre the Tuskens simply because getting Shmi to medical attention would've been the first priority. If he'd been honest about it, then Obi-Wan probably would've been sent with him which might've helped him manage his emotions over it all more properly.

Anyway, I think the intention here is for you to recognize that this was a pretty horrifically violent thing for Anakin to have done but that ultimately Anakin is the most sympathetic party. HOWEVER, from a more modern perspective, this is an incredibly racist intention that is absolutely based on old movies depicted Native American and Arab people in incredibly racist ways. Lucas has openly admitted to using old Westerns as inspiration for this sequence in particular. It's intended to be VIOLENT, but I don't think he recognized it as RACIST, not really. When Anakin calls the Tuskens "animals" it's perhaps meant to be a little shocking, but not actually intended for us to realize Anakin is a bigoted racist asshat. Given that we've never seen anything positive about the Tuskens before this, they only seem to use animal-like sounds to speak, they're shown to be very violent and territorial themselves, and are scared off by Obi-Wan sounding like a bigger animal in ANH, it's not hard to agree with Anakin's assessment that they're not far off from animals. And given the fact that they're clearly designed to look like Bedouin Arabs, this is... really really uncomfortable these days.

Which is why we've seen more and more Star Wars media trying to undo some of that and represent the Tuskens better. A legends comic set just after AOTC introduces a Jedi who was a human that was raised among the Tuskens and considers himself one of them and pushes against Anakin's bigotry towards them. The Mandalorian has Din capable of reasoning with the Tuskens and communicating with them via sign language, he even mentions that he spent some time with them some years ago when he was injured and they took care of him. We see Din convincing a group of Tuskens to fight alongside some settlers in order to achieve a common goal. In The Book of Boba Fett, the Tuskens save him and he spends some time being taken care of them and being fully inducted into their culture himself. We see a lot more of Tusken culture in terms of their traditions, their dances, their dress. We are allowed to see them being silly and kind and determined to learn new things. There's also a short story in one of the anthology books that I think looks at the Tuskens more and represents them very positively, but I haven't read it myself.

So with all of that in mind, it is now VERY difficult to look at what Anakin did to the Tuskens and not feel sympathetic towards the Tuskens equally as much as Anakin. Yes, what happened to his mother was horrific and he's entirely within his rights to be upset about that. But massacring the entire tribe down to the last child is by an EQUALLY horrific thing to do. Keep in mind, no matter how powerful Anakin is, he is still one person and he claims to have murdered the entire tribe. In order to do that, he'd have had to HUNT DOWN some of the ones who probably tried to run. And while he doesn't mention them, this seems to be a fairly normal tribe which means it wouldn't just have "women and children" but it would also have had elderly and infirm who could no longer fight, too, even if they were "men." Anakin would've murdered them, too. Anakin doesn't just condemn these people for what happened to Shmi, he condemns them for BEING TUSKENS based on what he says to Padme. They were Tusken, so they deserved to die. It's as simple and awful as that.

None of this is to say that what happened to Shmi was okay or anything, but Anakin's actions are equally contemptible. Anakin's actions aren't just borne from anger and pain, but also from racism he presumably ALREADY HAD prior to Shmi's death. And while the origin of those feelings is perhaps understandable given the environment he grew up in, that doesn't make it OKAY.

So sure, feel sympathetic towards Anakin, you're SUPPOSED to feel sympathetic towards Anakin, but, especially these days, you're supposed to feel sympathetic towards the Tuskens, too. What happened to Shmi was horrible and unfair and what happened to the rest of this village was also horrible and unfair. Neither side was necessarily "in the right" here, and when we condemn Anakin for the Tusken massacre, it doesn't mean we don't recognize that what happened to Shmi was terrible and inhumane or that Anakin's feelings about it weren't valid. It just means that his reaction to murder all of them is based at least in part in racism against the entire species and that's something that needs to be recognized as the horrific thing that it is. You can feel bad for Anakin's loss here and condemn what happened to Shmi and ALSO condemn what happened to the Tuskens as a result at the same time.

[mrfandomwars]

I was just reminded that you can hear Qui-Gon's voice telling Anakin to stop in AOTC when the scene changes from the massacre to Yoda

[dustbunnyprophet]

Anakin Skywalker/Consequences Of His Actions - Tusken Edition

I'm currently reading efface the footprints in the sands by @blackkatmagic (go and read it if you haven't already!) and now I desperately need more fics where Anakin is facing consequences for the Tusken massacre in aotc.

Any recs?

[jedi-enthusiast]

Snippets of my fic, but for later works that I haven't written yet and it'll be a while until I get to part 1/?

----------

"My mother was killed there, Ahsoka, I don't want to talk about it!" Anakin almost shouted, eyes as sharp as his words. Seeing her expression, his own softened, and he sighed, "…it happened when I was a padawan…I got there just in time to watch her die…that's why I don't like talking about Tatooine."

For a moment, Ahsoka felt sympathy, grief for her master's pain as if it were her own---even though she didn't really remember her own mother. But then-

"Tuskens," he practically spat, more to himself than anyone else, "they got what they deserved."

…

Something cold crawled down her spine.

"What?" She asked, voice almost too quiet, even to her own ears.

Maybe she'd just heard him wrong. Maybe he'd just misspoke. Maybe she was just misunderstanding him and he would explain and everything would be ok.

He shook his head, "nothing you need to worry about, Snips."

And with one final pat on her shoulder, he was gone. Leaving her alone, frozen in place, and unsure of what to do. But…Cody had always said that she could come to him for anything, right?

Her comm was in her hand and she was punching in his comm code before the thought had even finished.

He picked up on the second ping.

He was smiling when he answered, but his expression immediately changed once he laid eyes on her.

"'Soka? What's wrong?"

Earlier in her padawanship she might've brushed off Anakin's words as nothing, as something that she was probably just reading wrong, but after his behavior on Kadavo…and when they thought Obi-Wan died…

"Cody…I think Skyguy might've done something…"

"...something bad."

[laurabwrites]

WIP I'm Accepting I Will Never Write

My brain has been generating too many Star Wars ideas for me ever reasonably get around to writing all of them, so I'm going to start dumping them on here (maybe AO3 as well, not sure yet) once I've accepted it's an idea I won't get to. So, to start off:

Anakin got Arrested at the Start of the War

In this one, Anakin's massacre on Tatooine was revealed shortly into the war (Qui-Gon Jinn's ghost, A'Shared Hett or Padmé having a conscience, doesn't matter it's not the point of the idea and I don't think it affects the plot). Anakin goes to Jedi jail in the Temple and the war proceeds apace.

At the end of the war, when Palpatine sets off Order 66, the Temple Guard who in another timeline became the Grand Inquisitor lets Anakin out. They would be killing all the Jedi, but somehow the Jedi have been alerted and the Temole seems strangely light on clone troopers they could be using as backup. The Grand Inquisitor knows this, Anakin doesn't. He's been in Jedi jail and has no idea what normal operations in the Temple have looked like for the past three year. They manage to get to the atrium of the Temple with the objective of getting out and rounding up some clone troopers to come back with. Except there's this Tortuga fighting both of them. She's not getting in any hits in on them but this scrappy, can't be more than 16, 17-year-old is holding both of them off while simultaneously organizing the Padawans and Initiates to grab younglings and run.

Then the 212th enters, Cody and Rex frog marching Obi-Wan in.

Which gives Anakin the opportunity to villain monologue about the Jedi Order not understanding emotion, they threw him away, Palpatine recognizes his true power, Obi-Wan will see the destruction of everything he holds dear, blah blah blah. Basically entitled white boy I did no wrong (ignore the dead children), you'll regret being so mean to me (enforcing the consequences of my own actions), ranting regurgitating Palpatine's bullshit about Jedi.

Meanwhile, the Grand Inquisitor is noting that a lot of kids are safely getting the fuck outta Dodge and the 212th is getting some good lines of fire. Why are they letting Anakin monologue instead of enacting Order 66?

Finally as Anakin is winding down, Obi-Wan speaks up: yes but, you see, you made one critical mistake.

Anakin, sneering: oh what's that

Obi-Wan: you hurt your Padawan-sister

Obi-Wan Force pushes Ahsoka and every remaining kid out of range while the entire 212th opens fire on Anakin and Grand Inquisitor.

Inquisitor is dead on the ground (sorry buddy, you were just a plot device to get Anakin out of his cell and show off how badass Ahsoka is with Soreasu mixed into her Jar'dai (I think I spelled those right...)). Anakin is on his Force bullshit, not quite dead, as Obi-Wan, Cody, and Rex come over to check.

Anakin: you won't finish me off, you're a Jedi, you're too weak.

Rex putting three rounds in his chest and three in his head: I'm no Jedi, slaver.

Backstory to get to this scene that slammed into me like a ton of bricks months and months ago:

212th never split the 501st off since Anakin wasn't there to get Knighted. Therefore Fives went to Obi-Wan when he found the chip. Obi-Wan got Shaak Ti to distract the Kaminoans, so Quinlan (or another Shadow, but I like using Quinlan for the known connection to Obi-Wan) could dig in Kaminoans' files and find documentation as well as an emergency counter signal. Obi-Wan dechipped his battalion anyway, not wanting to rely on the counter signal being permanent. They then jammed Coruscant's communications when Cody got the Order from Palpatine. 212th then uses the counter signal on the Corries, as they go to the Temple to grab whatever Masters were on planet. The clones and a fourth of the Council go kill Palpatine as he's declaring the Empire on the floor of the Senate.

[palfriendpatine66]

🚨New fic alert 🚨

Read here to be sad about an Anakin who learns to let go, does the right thing, and a tooka cat who saves the galaxy

[reconstructwriter]

Reblogging for everything @mysteryteacup said, especially the 'act like a Jedi and solve the problem that started everything'. YES!!!

Legitimately curious - what would you say would be a suitable punishment/rehabilitation plan for Anakin? Because yeah, throwing him out in disgrace wouldn't help anybody, but a massacre isn't exactly the kind of thing one can make amends for.

Different anon:

one thing I feel like people disregard about Anakin's slaughter of the Tuskens coming to light is that the Jedi would make //him// do reparations. like that would be part of his rehabilitation. the biggest issue I have is not that he doesn't face any consequences for his actions, it's that he faces no accountability. anakin himself making reparations forces him to take responsibility, to reckon with the consequences of his actions head-on, to learn from it. that's his prerogative as the perpetrator, to make amends. that's just my two cents on the matter

So, the Tuskens situation is kind of hard to work with because it's a complicated one:

It took place outside of Republic Territory, and thus outside of official Jedi jurisdiction.

There is not an official way to serve justice, because the local government is Hutts, and they don't care what happens in the Wastes.

The other form of justice is what settlements like Anchorhead mete out amongst each other, which isn't going to work here because they view Anakin's actions as justified; Anakin killed several dozen Tuskens in response to the deaths of almost thirty settlers (Shmi, along with over two dozen of the people who went out to try and save her). Tatooine settler justice cannot be involved, because they do not view this as something that was done in error or maliciousness. This specific point is why, if Anakin had killed only the active combatants of the Tusken tribe in question, the Jedi may have reasonably assigned him to some extensive therapy and not actual reparations, as the situation had been one where dozens of people were dying for no reason, and he was removing a repeated threat from the board due to the fact that there are no jails willing to hold a Tusken; the Hutts wouldn't care to jail them, and the settlers wouldn't be able to fight off the tribe coming to rescue their own. Playing judge jury and executioner would still be wrong, but a contextual argument of "they have killed dozens of people and have demonstrated an interest in continuing to do so" would hold some weight in his defense of his actions. Unfortunately for everyone, Anakin killed noncombatants, and more specifically he killed kids, so he doesn't have any kind of rational excuse here. Like. Boy. You killed babies. That will never be defensible.

There is no way to serve reparations directly to the tribe/clan he harmed, as they are all now dead.

The Jedi don't know if the nearest related Tusken tribe is going to demand Anakin's death for what he did, because like... death penalty is a lot but also. He. Killed babies.

Anakin still insists that what he did prevented the tribe from doing more of the same, and that they were little better than animals.

Depending on when we have a reveal happen, and why, the war is still going on, and they can't just get rid of one of their most effective field generals.

Depending on when we have a reveal happen, and why, he has infant twins that need him.

For the ease of plot, we'll go with either the war didn't happen, or the war is over.

I think that the best way to address this is by dipping into Legends and grabbing A'Sharad Hett.

So, obviously the first step is to have Anakin attend some... very extensive therapy that, at some point, forces him to recognize the inherent sanctity of life and the true atrocity of his actions. Step one is to feel remorse, and it might take Anakin a very long time to do that.

Once he does feel remorse, we move to step two. This is where Knight Hett comes in.

For those unfamiliar, A'Sharad Hett is a human Jedi Master who was raised Tusken. His mother was a human that had been adopted into the tribe, and his father was a Jedi Master that left the Order to marry her and have A'Sharad. His father trained him until his death, and at fifteen, he was found by Master Ki-Adi Mundi. As A'Sharad had already been trained as a Jedi for most of his life by his father, the age limit did not apply to him as it did to most of the children that join, and he was taken on as Ki-Adi's padawan.

The thing is that... A'Sharad finds out about the Tusken Massacre in canon (Legends), and he doesn't tell anyone. He doesn't try to hurt Anakin or anything, but tells him that these actions are his burden to carry, and he must endeavor to do better. He could have reported him, and it may have even gotten him expelled from the order, but he didn't. Due to this, we can read into A'Sharad putting a greater emphasis on repentance than on punishment.

Once Anakin has gotten to the point where he can recognize that what he did was a massive fucking problem and qualifies as an atrocity, we reach the question of reparations. How do you engage in reparations when the people you hurt are all dead? How do you engage in helping a people when all the ways in which they struggle are due to a system, a cartel, that you cannot hope to fight against yourself, and couldn't even when it was for your own sake and that of your loved ones, let alone for strangers?

I would suggest finding the tribe or clan most closely tied to the one that he killed, with the caveat that they don't want to kill him in revenge. With A'Sharad as interlocutor, we find out what they would want from Anakin as his contribution to make up for their loss (not that anything could ever make up for what he did). In pursuit of that, they have him live with and contribute to that tribe's way of life for a year, under the supervision of A'Sharad Hett (who also is there to make sure Anakin is more of a help than a hindrance). He would not necessarily live as one of them, but he would work and sleep and eat and all such things until he had come to understand them, at least a little, and contributed in a way that could count as some way of trying to make up for what he's done.

A year seems like a little, and tbh it's a length of time chosen with the idea that:

The Tuskens still on-planet probably don't want him there any longer, but just giving them raw materials (namely water) isn't going to cut it. They don't need him.

Seeing as they don't actually need him, Anakin and the Jedi all know that he can help more people if he is not on Tatooine, but rather being put into places where his skills can be put to the greatest use. Whether that is as a Jedi or as a civilian is dependent on the third point, which is

If the twins are alive, then Anakin... kind of needs to get back? To his babies? And his wife? Unless Padme is dead, in which case Luke and Leia have spent the first years of their life with Owen and Beru, in easy driving distance for Anakin to see them at least once a week.

It's not a perfect solution by any measure, nothing ever could be (because, again, baby murder), but I think this is a form of reparation and repentance that would work for the Jedi's general philosophy, for the limitations of the systems they are working within (both Republic and Hutt), and what the people most directly affected by Anakin's actions would actually want out of him.

[mirrorofliterature]

why am I choosing to join the anakin skywalker squad.

why.

me, seeing the most notorious villain in film history: he needs to be protected, actually.

and what I mean is that oh god the tragedy of anakin skywalker could have been so easily protected.

another tragedy that could have been saved by simply being a house husband.

[antianakin]

If you were in charge of the Star Wars Prequels how would you have written Anakin? (assuming the only thing you can't do is erase him from canon :P)

Would you learn into Anakin's evilness or try to make him more sympathetic?

Honestly? I don't have THAT much of an issue with Anakin's general characterization in the Prequel Trilogy. I think for the most part that Anakin is a really interesting character in the Prequels and pretty unique as far as villain origin stories and action heroes of the time tended to be written. The focus on Anakin as FEARFUL, as someone who CRIES a lot and is AWKWARD and honestly not suave or smooth AT ALL (unless he's giving himself over to darkness, generally) is actually a really interestingly novel choice to go for. And that unique aspect of him is, arguably, why Anakin was so despised in the Prequels for being "whiny" and "annoying" and people really did not vibe with this weird awkward dude as proto-Vader. Obi-Wan as the much more competent, smooth, suave character with all of the snarky one-liners comes off looking much better in comparison. Same with Padme, usually.

So I wouldn't actually change the CORE of Anakin, the journey he goes on and the way his vices tend to be shown. TCW has already done that, they've just replaced Anakin's less likable characteristics with Obi-Wan's much more affable personality. They gave him snarky one-liners, he's now suave and smooth and charming, etc. It's annoying and it's boring.

But there are two things that don't work for me that I WOULD change if I were capable of going back in time and influencing Lucas's mind towards certain rewrites.

One is that I would make his romance with Padme more believable. The problem with the romance in AOTC for me is that you can completely believe that Anakin would be into Padme, but it feels a lot more difficult to understand why Padme is into Anakin in return. Especially after he murders an entire village of people down to the last child (we'll come back to this one). So we need to be told more WHY Padme is so into him when he is this weird, awkward, whiny manchild. Like, sure, he's pretty, but being pretty isn't enough to explain why Padme is willing to jeopardize her entire career to marry him by the end of the film.

So Padme either needs to be more corrupt, more angry herself, more connected to this part of Anakin that desires power, or they need to show us a better genuine connection. One of the things from the extended/deleted scenes from AOTC that I think could've helped with this is the bits where Padme mentions she had thought she'd be a wife and a mother by now and we see how close she is to her own family when she takes Anakin there. We know how close Anakin was to his mother and I think it would've been REALLY easy to use that as an easy connection. You could even help along the next movie by having Anakin mention that when he was a kid, he'd always sort-of wanted a big family. He didn't HATE that it was just him and his mom obviously, but it had been a sort of dream of his that one day they'd be free and he'd find a beautiful wife and have a big family for Shmi to dote on later in life. This gives Anakin and Padme a shared dream that neither of them is allowed to pursue due to their chosen careers. They've both sacrificed a desire for a family in favor of duty to the galaxy so when they get together later, you can kind-of understand why. No one else gets it but each other, etc.

The second thing I would change is the Tusken Massacre. I think that going as far as completely massacring the entire village is too far too soon. This is something that works only if you as the viewer don't truly see the Tuskens as equal to humans like Shmi or a people like the Jedi. The Tuskens aren't QUITE animals maybe, but they're also just savages who torture innocent women to death, so their deaths aren't sad for THEIR sake, the massacre is sad because of what it represents for Anakin - it's the beginning of the end. And obviously from a modern viewpoint, this really doesn't work anymore, especially with the way the Tuskens are being written these days. It also feels a little redundant with Order 66. It's not as impactful that he murders Jedi children when we already saw him murder Tusken children in the last movie. Baby murder is baby murder, there's no escalation in the evil he commits aside from sheer numbers I guess.

So I would probably have Anakin either choose to just leave the village quietly without killing anyone, or have him stop at just the guards/men and leave the women/children alive and either way he admits to Padme that he WANTED to kill them all and only just barely stopped himself. This also helps the romance aspect in that now you don't have to figure out why Padme is super chill with marrying a MASS BABY MURDERER and her moral code is a lot less gray. If he only killed the people who attacked him in the village or didn't kill anyone at all but just WANTED to, then you can dismiss it a lot easier. The rage is sympathetic and understandable and relatable, but Anakin is still mostly in control of himself. Padme can say that she's felt the same rage and not acted on it, so Anakin is the same. She can insist he would never murder Jedi younglings to Obi-Wan in the next film without sounding like an idiotic hypocrite.

(There's obviously a LOT of other issues with the Tusken Massacre in terms of how the Tuskens are written and presented in this film that could be rewritten to be a lot better and make the Tuskens more sympathetic, etc etc, but that's not really what you're asking me about and I'm not necessarily the right person to speak to that anyway.)

[eightiesfan]

I don't remember that movie...

[reconstructwriter]

Yeah even the whole 'wipe out an entire tribe of people down to the last babe in arms' is not just from a series of bad days. That took something deeper. Anakin believes a clearly racist testimony from someone who had 'tracks in the sand' as his evidence. You ever seen tracks in dry soft sand like that?

He also murdered every single person there. Which would've included the elderly and the babies and probably a few pregnant women. AND those people wouldn't have just lined up to get slaughtered or attacked him - some of them would have fled. Which means this isn't even just 'oh, he lost his temper' because Anakin would've had to hunt down women and children running from him.

Someone: Anakin fell because he had a series of bad days! If he didn't have them he would have been fine!

Way to ignore the tusken massacre and the way Anakin threw the clones lives away the second someone he dimmed more important was in danger, he didn't turn bad over night nor from a week to another

"It is a deliberate path to the dark, not a series of bad days." - Jedi Master Sskeer, Chapter 23, Star Wars The High Republic: A Test Of Courage by Justina Ireland